I'm Not Your Other Half (15 page)

“It's a lot more fun talking with boys,” said Annie, thus knocking the eight years in which she had talked exclusively with me.

Smedes just laughed. “When Jim and I were dating really heavily, that was what got me the most. All that fun. I kept wanting not to be having so much fun all the time.”

We all stared at her. Annie with confusion, me with excitement, Connie simply wanting the tampon. “I mean, sometimes you look at the evening ahead and you don't want to party. You don't want company. You don't want to make an effort. You want to sit alone in the front of the television eating cheese Doritos and sour cream.”

I was almost holding my breath. Say more, Smedes, I thought. I can't believe you feel the way I do. I can't believe another person out there—someone I like and admire—actually agrees with
me.

“But Smedes,” objected Annie, “if you feel that way, what's the point in dating at all?”

“I adore Jim. He's perfect for me. But we were suffocating each other, having all that fun. Jim kept telling me he couldn't breathe, and I felt the same. Now our relationship is semi-detached.”

Connie said, “Now if I could only detach that tampon from your iron grip. If you're going to give somebody something, you should do it promptly, Smedes, and without all this fanfare.”

“Semi-detached?” repeated Annie, visibly horrified. “Smedes, that sounds like a building.”

“Exactly,” said Smedes. She waved the tampon in the air like a cigar for congratulations. Connie caught it on to the second trip and abandoned us for the lavatory. “It is like a building, Annie. You have to build with the bricks you've got, and Jim and I decided to construct a semi-detached.”

The phrase settled on my mind as if I'd been hunting for it since last November.
Semi-detached.
You share some, you separate some. How come nobody I know does that? I thought. Everybody I know is so attached they're indivisible.

Smedes turned to me and made a face. “I mean, Fraser, we're talking here about a guy whose favorite activity is arm-wrestling. I kid you not. Jim goes hundreds of miles to watch people arm-wrestle. I went once and I said, ‘Hey, man, this is
yours
. I'm sticking to theater.'”

“So that's what you do?” I said. “Theater?”

“Stage work. Musicals. Soap operas on television. Shakespeare. I'm not choosy. Anything that takes acting. It's my only interest. Jim can't stand any of it.”

“Well, I don't see what kind of relationship
that
is,” said Annie stiffly. “You always off doing your thing and him always off doing his thing. Although I have to admit if Price's thing were arm-wrestling I would have real difficulties going along, too. But what do you do
together
?”

“We eat. I love food. Jim loves it even more. We meet exclusively at mealtime, and we eat together.” Smedes began laughing. “Why, Annie, sometimes we even talk. And it must be successful, because he's taking me to the Prom next week.”

She stood up to leave. She was so pleased with herself about the way she and Jim had worked things out. And so calm. That was what impressed me most. As if any clod could see that that was how you worked things. You start to drown each other; obviously, you both get out of the water.

I've been around the wrong girls, that's all, I thought. I was with the Annie-Lynn-Mom-and-Judith crowd. I should have been with the Smedes types.

“Well, I think it's terrible,” said Annie. “You're not even a couple.”

“Sure we are. Just a different variety from you and Price.”

Watermelon friends, I thought, looking at Smedes and not Annie. Maybe you have different ones all your life. Maybe some of them never even realize it. You get a truth from them, but they pass on. But as long as someone understands, you'll be all right.

I hardly noticed that Annie was leaving. I heard her say something about filling the water jug and I think I said goodbye, but I didn't notice. I said, “Smedes? How did you
know
? How were you
sure
?”

Smedes shrugged into her cardigan and draped her shoulder strap over it. She hoisted her books into her arms and checked around to be sure she was leaving nothing behind. “It was pretty obvious, Fraser. That kind of relationship is like ice on a windshield. You can't see a thing beyond it.”

The night of the Junior Prom I sat alone in my bedroom.

It's not a romantic bedroom. It's an ordinary square room in an ordinary house, with one chest and two windows. The bed has a plain ribcord spread, the kind that lasts for years and years, although you keep hoping it's going to tear and get spoiled so you can buy something new. When you lie down, you get rippled marks on your skin.

Semi-detached, I thought.

Like a building.

But Michael isn't like Jim. Michael never admitted to being trapped. Michael never said he wanted less. He said he wanted more. How could you have a semi-detached relationship with someone who wanted to emulate Annie and Price?

I wandered around the room. Annie's room is so romantic, I thought. Look at mine. A door set on two filing cabinets for a desk. I stared at the desk. My finished report on Eliza lay on top. A-plus. “Excellent research,” wrote Mr. McGrath. “The best organization I've seen in years.”

I'm not good at being a girl friend, I thought. I'm not good at being a date. I'm not romantic.

Even Smedes is more romantic than I am. At least she found a boy who matched her.

And I couldn't have called Michael up before the Junior Prom and asked him to be semi-detached. It would have sounded as if all I wanted was an escort and then I'd dump him until the next interesting weekend. How could a person even
use
the term
semi-detached
?

Annie was right. It sounded like a building. Two people in love didn't talk like that.

I wanted to be at the Junior Prom.

I wanted to be a girl like Jodie, my horizon only as wide as the next boy.

I wanted to be silly and happy and pretty and flirtatious and romantic as roses.

But it would not happen. I was no Annie, whose personality could shift as music changes keys, to match the boy she chose. I was Fraser, and I was stuck with myself, and I was not good at being romantic.

“H
OW'D THE INTERVIEW GO?
” said my father anxiously.

“Not so good. I kept yawning in her face.”

My father looked at me in utter disgust. He had raised me all these years so I could spend a college interview yawning?

“It was hot in there, Dad. I got sleepy. I kept trying to bite on the yawns and keep them inside my mouth, but it didn't work. My jaw cracked, and the yawns came out anyhow.”

My father sighed. “Oh, well. I'm not that crazy about this college anyhow. Too small. And too feminine. All these little bushes and pretty little trees and cute little dormitories. It's not my idea of a college.”

We walked back to the car. I had always thought of college as an autumn thing. Plaid stadium blankets and autumn leaves to scuff through. But summer hung heavy over the campuses we visited. Nobody was busy. They were too hot.

“I think our first priority in college selection should be air conditioning,” I told my father.

He was busy trying to find a place where we could have lunch. “The second priority should be that they have restaurants around. I can't believe how many of these colleges just squat out here in the countryside. What do they expect the parents to do? Bring picnics along?”

“I think I saw a restaurant about a half mile before we got to the campus, Dad. It was called the Four Bears, or the Six Doors, or something.”

We were getting punchy. Nine colleges in four days is a lot of campuses. It was necessary to keep a notebook so we could remember one from the other.

“Just don't choose that one where the freshman girls lived in a dorm that looked like a horror-movie set,” said my father. “Your mother would have a nervous breakdown visualizing you there. You'd have to major in writing occult novels.”

“It wasn't that bad. Lot of stones, and dead ivy, and a broken clock on the spire.” We walked over a steaming pavement to where we had parked our car. He was right about this campus. It was very girlish. I didn't feel a part of it. I felt too heavy-handed and organized and academic for this place. “I wish I were interesting,” I said.

“Interesting!” said my father. “You knocked the socks off everyone who interviewed you.”

“Not quite. But I meant
romantic
interesting.”

He got uncomfortable and started the car up instead of discussing it. We found the restaurant, but it turned out to be a clothing store named the Four Seasons.

“Check the map,” I said. “How far are we from the nearest town?”

“I'm sure we're not near any town. I had no idea this end of the state was so vacant. I don't know what happened to all this urban sprawl we keep reading about. There's nothing here but farms and colleges.” He opened the map.

“We're only forty miles from State,” I said. “Let's just drive down there, wander around a little, do some comparing, eat at the cafeteria, and drive on home.”

“As long as you put food first,” said my father, “I think I can go along with that.”

We headed with empty growling stomachs for the next university. If they have good food today, I thought, I'll probably choose my school on the basis of its cafeteria. I'm starved. I'm so hungry my stomach is flapping.

“Your mother really wanted to come on this trip,” said Dad. “She was heartbroken that she couldn't take the time off from work. It's lousy. She worked all her life to raise you from infancy to the moment when you'd start leading your own life, and now she's missing the special part. Seeing where you'll go, how you'll fit in.”

What if I never fit in? I thought.

“It's your mother's money paying for college, you know. Her only real purpose in starting that career was to send you.”

“Does she mind?” I said.

“Mind!” repeated my father. “Fraser, there's nothing she wants more in life than to have you succeed. Except maybe to go to Scandinavia.”

I laughed. “But you want to go to China and India.”

“That can wait. When we get you through college, your mother and I will hit Norway.”

“You shouldn't wait four years,” I said. “I can go to State, and it won't cost that much, and you can go this year.”

We were there. My father drove around the campus, the way he always does, past his old fraternity house, past the playing fields, past the building that was the entire engineering department when he was there and is now a tiny wing. Past the vast student center that always appalls him because it was paid for by alumni and he thinks it's too grandiose.

So, he understands that she wants Norway more than he wants China, I thought. Maybe what it is is that each couple has to find out what kind of pair they are. Semi-detached or fully intertwined, or anything else. As long as it works.

We got out of the car and walked up stone steps worn smooth by a hundred years of student feet. A few students from summer session were walking slowly across the grass. Several were lying under oak trees, spread-eagled to cool off, and one art class was sketching, except for the two class members who were napping.

“Twenty thousand kids here,” said my father. “A few of them have to be suitable, Fray. Somebody out there is going to think you're ‘romantic interesting.'”

He actually said it, I thought. Referred to my social and emotional status.

We were only steps from the cafeteria when my father took my arm, almost harshly, as if to stop me from doing something dangerous. “Sweetheart,” he said in a strange voice, “you can go where you want. Truly, any place on the globe comes second. Your mother and I want the best school for you. It probably isn't State. Don't come here just because it's easy. Don't come here just because it's familiar.
Do what's right for you
.”

We stared at each other. My father's eyes seemed to mist over, but maybe not. He turned and entered the cafeteria swiftly.

The cafeteria was vast. Several of the larger dormitories have their own cafeterias, but this one is also open to the public. It has two lines: the cheap one for soup, sandwiches, Jell-O and potato-chip packages, and an expensive one with as many choices of casserole, salad and meat as a cruise ship.

I can go anywhere, I thought. He promised. It matters more to Mom than anything. It's what she's working for.

Me.

I took a fork, knife and spoon. I took a heated plate, set them on the tray and began sliding it down the buffet rack.

As many colleges to choose from as dishes in the buffet, I thought. All different textures, flavors, varieties.

“Well, I'll be darned,” said my father, slipping his wallet back into his pocket as we left the cashier. “Look who's waving to us from across the room.”

I glanced over, expecting to spot some old alum he remembered from thirty years ago, but it was not. It was Mr. Hollander.

And Michael.

A good thing I had had practice making difficult walks. Like going to see the Liptons at the hospital waiting room. Walking toward Michael was the hardest thing I had done all summer. Any poise, any casualness I had acquired from visiting all those colleges left me. I was just an awkward high-school girl, stumbling toward a boy she had dumped.

“Hi there,” said my father, delighted. He and Mr. Hollander shook hands. “Michael here for an interview? Hi, Michael.” My father shook hands with Michael too. I just stood there with a heavy tray in my hands and tried to smile normally.

Michael looked appealing as ever. He was still lovely.

Lovely. Funny word to use for a boy. But he was, to me. I thought, I could fall back into you the way Kit toppled downstairs. Forever. Finally. And it might even be worth it. I said, “Oh, hi, Michael. How are you?”