Lessons in Love (12 page)

“They have air-conditioning.” She watches me like I’m my own tennis match.

“And where else — oh, I bagged UCLA for numerous reasons…my dad didn’t really want me that far away and my mother…” I stop. “I have family and I want to see where they’ll be…and UVM and Bowdoin — it’s so pretty in Maine and up there — and also New York, with NYU and Columbia. And also UCL, in London, and Oxford, too — because how GREAT would it be to go there? Hello, punting and…” My mouth is open but Mrs. Dandy-Patinko is quiet so I clam up, too.

“And you’ve done all these applications?”

I nod. “And the supplements. I get too worried about how much work I’ll have and time management, so I tend to just plough through. Of course the finishing touches are pending. That’s on my to-do list for the weekend.” I pause. “And I need teacher recs…”

“Yes.” Her voice is low, hesitant. “You’ll need those.”

I search her face to figure out what I’ve done wrong. She fiddles with the collar of her shirt, pressing the points down. I reach to do the same. I’ve found that in stressful situations I sometimes mimic the person I’m speaking with. Arabella first noticed this, and we had a sign — she’d sort of wiggle her pointer finger —to alert me. Now I notice it myself, but miss her wiggling at me. A recent email from Arabella let me know her father, Angus, is doing much better after his ill health this summer. She sounded good, normal even, and I make a mental note to email back. To tell Charlie when he gets to Hadley. “Did I forget something?”

“You’ve done absolutely everything,” she says. “You’ll need to tour, of course…”

I pull my red book out of my bags and flip it open. “All set — a day tour at Harvard…and BC, then weekend in Maine and Vermont — and the others I’ll…”

“You’ve done it all,” she sighs, still fiddling with her collar. Then she clasps her hands in front of her and I fight the temptation to do the same. “But, Love, you can’t apply to that many.”

I stop, cross my hands over my chest, even though I had a sneaking suspicion that was coming. “Why not?”

“Because — it’s a fortune, first of all…and — before you say you earned money working this summer and can afford it — I’d like to suggest something to you.” She smoothes her clownish shirt and takes a plain piece of paper from a stack on the side of her desk. “Here….” She draws a couple of triangles in the upper right hand corner. “That’s UVM and Bowdoin. Then here — on the other side — is UCLA, which I know you’ve negged for now.” She takes a deep breath and I wonder if it’s inevitable that teachers pick up the teenage vernacular. Some sound sad, the slang betraying their years, but people like Mr. Chaucer and Mrs. Dandy-Patinko get away with it. Chaucer because he gets it and Mrs. DP because she’s just so not currently in high school and so bedecked with quilted vests and loafers and kindness that it fits in an ironic way. Maybe I pick up details like this for future stories or maybe, like the humor as defensive tactic, I sit here sucking up all this useless crap to avoid the true content of the conversation. “Love?” Mrs. Dandy-Patinko taps her Hadley multi-colored pen on the desk. “You listening?”

“Yeah,” I rejoin the college appointment as she’s saying —

“And down here is FSU — excellent writing program — hot, though, you said. And over here are the New York schools, and…” she keeps going, filing up the page with arbitrary designs until I get her point. “What does this look like to you?”

“A bad map?”

“Exactly,” Mrs. Dandy-Patinko nods. She hands the paper to me. “A
very
poor map. And your college search — it’s not meant to result in that. You see, people find a school — a kind of school — a type — large and rowdy — academic or sporty — geographically desirable or one with an outstanding Latin American program. But they don’t apply to every place.”

I imagine playing pin-the-tail-on-the-college, basically me, in a blindfold deciding my future. “The only thing I know…or that I think I know…” I loathe my indecisive-sounding voice. “I want to do is apply for the Beverly William Award.”

Mrs. Dandy-Patinko nods and breathes through her nose. I can’t tell if she’s happy about what I said or dubious. “Great. That’s a concrete plan.”

“Solid.”

She taps her cheek, thinking. “You’ll need to be nominated for that — just to apply. But you know that.” She checks something on her computer screen. “And there are three runner-up awards, too.”

I try not to take that personally, but I wonder if it’s her job to remind me how unlikely it is to win the Beverly William. “Oh.”

“You’ll have to file the paperwork by…looks like this year’s deadline is right after Columbus Day.”

Sighs pour out, one after the other as I picture Columbus Day weekend — usually fun-filled and festive — instead plagued by applications, paperwork, and proofreading. The biggest part of the BW Award is the creative writing sample. You can only submit one and the travel grant stipend is pretty much based on that — whether the committee thinks your writing stands a chance in the real world.

“But the Beverly William Award is just one thing, right?” I pause. “I bet a lot of other Hadley people apply, too. Not to mention writers from all over the country. The world, probably.” She nods. “So what does the other stuff say, that bad map? That I want to…?”

“What it says to me is that…” She begins to tidy her desk, signaling to me that our appointment is over. “Is one of three things: either you haven’t found the right school, you haven’t admitted to yourself what your real focus is and selected schools with the same leanings, or…or you need a break.”

“A year off?” I ask. I blush. “I feel like you’re telling me I’m not good enough.”

“I think we both know that’s not true…” she tells me. “But, I guess we’ll see how you react to your actual campus visits. Maybe you’ll get snowed in at UVM and think forget it. Or maybe you’ll check out Columbia’s writing program and feel it’s perfect. Or not. Harvard’s the first interview on your list, correct? Then you can do a handful at the Campus Collegiate Conference.” The CCC (unlike chocolate chip cookies — the other CCC), comes to town like the hellish version of the circus — you run from one building to the next interviewing with on-the-road admissions people, tailoring yourself to what you think they want to hear.

Mrs. Dandy-Patinko hands me a list of dates and times for interviews and visits and I nod, taking in that Harvard — that esteemed centuries old place that, right now, I equate with both the epitome of academia and booty. I smirk and remind myself that while she’s cool, Mrs. Dandy-Patinko isn’t
that
cool. Harvard. That Harvard. Only a couple of weekends away.

“So, what do I do now?” I stand up. By her clock I have only a couple of hours until my weekend — my real weekend meaning Charlie — finally kicks off.

“You do what you’re doing — think about it — about where you could really not just enroll but LIVE for the next four, three, or six years and…Love?”

“Yeah?”

“No matter how many places appeal to you? There’s still one out there that’s going to feel like home.”

Charlie’s mouth is on mine and his hands are doing the guy puppet show; snaking across my back as a team, then separating with one on my neck, the other plunging down my already stretched out v-neck. Then, just like that, he stops.

“What’s the name of it?” He’s slightly out of breath, as though we’ve been jogging for a while as opposed to pawing each other in the dark at the oh-so-very Hadley Friday Night Flicks. The audience is made up of freshman, flings, and few film buffs all folded into uncomfortable chairs built for test-taking, not movie watching.

In the dark I look at Charlie’s eyes, watch the screen’s images flicker on his face. Then I turn for a second to the movie. “A Room with a View.” I point and do a quick recap. “See, she’s the main character — and they’re in Italy now — which is supposed to represent the feeling side of things for her, you know, the lusty countryside with passionate people. Lucy — that’s her name — has to sort of choose between Cecil, who’s very uptight English, i.e. the intellectual side and George, who’s all lust and feeling. You can tell because George has floppy hair — that means he’s basically out of control in movie terms. You know, visually.”

I get all this out in just one breath, maybe two. Charlie raises his eyebrows, letting his hands drop from ten and two o’clock position on me to his lap. “I did this comparison paper when I was at LADAM,” I explain. “Of the movie and the book and all this EM Forster stuff.”

I look at the screen where, finally, in a moment of pure emotion, George grabs Lucy in a field of flowers and kisses her. I lean in towards Charlie and whisper, despite a glare from one of the Film-heads behind me. She’s already kicked my chair once “by accident”, meaning it wasn’t. I continue with my analysis. “It’s also a study in agrarian life versus…”

“I didn’t mean what’s the name of this movie.” Charlie plays with my fingers absent-mindedly, as though they’re not attached to the rest of me, tapping my knuckles, thumbing the side of my thumb. I wonder if he notices the peeling skin where I nibbled too far in science this week.

“Oh.” I wait for him to explain, feeling stupid for my many ramblings about
A Room with A View
.

Charlie stands up, further annoying the girl behind us. Charlie deals with her with his newfound diplomacy. “One moment and you, too, will have a Room with a View.”

He steps into the aisle and gestures with his head for me to follow. When I first met him, I doubt he’d have said anything to that girl. Or maybe he’d have made some sarcastic comment about how she could rent the damn thing any day of the week. But not the version of Charlie that’s made to appease his parents, the Charlie who dropped his fishing rod and pick-up truck and donned a tie and sorts jacket on more occasions than necessary at the end of the summer.

Still, he isn’t so reserved that he missed the opportunity to grope me in the dark, and in this I find relief. Not just that he still wants me after being dropped back into HighschoolLand, but that he’s not so playing by the rules that he’s lost his ability to relate to the masses. And that in those masses, I’m still the one dating him.

“So, what
is
the title?” Charlie’s voice echoes in the high-ceilinged corridor. The AV room is in the basement of the Science center, cloistered away from the thick heat outside.

“Of what?” I pause by a sculpture that’s boxed in by plexiglass. Hadley’s forever trying to merge the artistic realm with the scientific, as though shoving a sculpture near the Bunson burners and soapstone counters will solve everything.

“Man, are you out of it or what?” Charlie flicks his eyebrows up then pushes past me. He opens a swinging double door that leads to my science lab and goes through. My heart speeds up, wondering if he’s truly annoyed or just perturbed.

“I love that you just parade around here like it’s your school,” I say. And I do. That confidence to burst through doorways without knowing what’s on the other side.

“Oh, it’s definitely not that,” he says. He doesn’t need to elaborate with more than a sigh. “This is Parker territory, for sure.”

I’m about to object when Charlie flicks on the lights. Basking in the thoroughly unflattering green hue provided by the fluorescent tubes overhead, I watch his hand as he touches the wall. Set into the concrete (again, science is “hard” and “earthy” and so the building is made out of slabs of stone and concrete) are years worth of names, each one given a plaque. “See? Here you go. Proof.” He touches the thin rectangle that reads “Parker Anderson” then spins around so he’s facing me. “So, what does a guy have to do around here to get an answer?”

“To what?” With my head tilted to the side, my hair barely touches my shoulder. Right now, I feel naked without it. I never knew how much I hid behind my red shagginess until now. “You’ve been enigmatic all night.”

Charlie points to his chest. His pale yellow Oxford shirt is thin, rumpled, a plain white t-shirt underneath, his jeans faded. My lungs feel depleted of air when he’s in front of me like this, like part of me wonders how I have him, or why. If suddenly he’ll come to his senses and wonder what the hell he’s doing with a high school senior with a lame haircut. Note to self: graph confidence level and see how faltering of it relates to insecurities with new ‘do.

“I’m not the enigma here.” Charlie leans against the wall, his head to turned toward me.

I shift my hands from my front pockets to the back, thinking about all the times I wore these pants this summer. They’re not really cropped, not really full-length, just really soft cotton in a color some catalogue would call bleached sand. I feel like I’ve mis-dressed. We aren’t on the beach anymore, we’re in my science classroom, only this time my relationship feels like the experiment.

“See?” he asks. “Just then. Where’d you go?” He shrugs.

“I’m here!” I say and shuffle forward so I’m just an arm’s length away. “It’s only…”

“Only that you’re not.” His voice isn’t unkind, not upset. More confused. “Did I miss a memo? I thought I was supposed to get here, to campus, asap so we could…” He puts his arms around my waist, the heat from his palms penetrating the fine cotton of my t-shirt. I try not to focus on his usage of “asap” as one word rather than an abbreviation. In my journal — and to Chris — I’ve spewed my grievances about people who pronounce it “a-sap.” Here, in the murky swamp light with Charlie, I annoy even myself with my ramblings, so I try to explain.

“I want to be here.” I bite my upper lip. “I do. All week I’ve been waiting for you, you know, counting down the hours…” He smiles at me. “See? Now I feel stupid. It sounds silly, oh here I am in English class counting the minutes…”

“I never made fun of you.” Charlie’s confusion spreads across his face. “Where’s this coming from?”

I sigh and back up, then look around us at the multiple sinks, the eye wash centers, the lab counters and solid floor. Outside, the chapel bells rings, informing all of us who haven’t been signed out for the night that there’s less than two hours until curfew. I’ve been using up my minutes over-thinking everything rather than throwing myself into the night with Charlie. “Okay, I know I’ve been kind of out of it…it’s not intentional. Not that this makes it any better. But I’ve been writing so much, and trying so hard…” I look at my shoes. “And I felt like I was trying to hide my high school status from you —”