Lessons in Love (19 page)

Which is just what Mr. Chaucer does when he sees me. He walks out of the faculty room eating a slice of banana bread so pungent I feel like I’ve eaten some, too.

I take a deep breath like I’m about to swim into oncoming waves. Then he shake-tilts his head again and no matter how I try to buoy myself, my confidence flags. I’ve already been discarded without so much as a thanks for trying. All of this makes me fairly certain I am ill-prepared for all those college rejection letters, the ones that start with “while we appreciate your efforts…”. Note to self” must apply to actual schools prior to getting barred from going.

“I could try…” I start and then reel the words back, remembering he doesn’t care for explanations.

“Here.” Mr. Chaucer pulls my story from his brown briefcase. “Walk with me to Maus Hall. I have to hand in some recommendation letters.”

One of them could be mine. He’s one of the teachers I asked to write on my behalf and I still need to get two peer recommendations — it drives me up the wall that I’ll never know what was said by either camp.

I take the story and hold it out, flipping through it to see if he made any comments. “You didn’t mark it.”

“I didn’t.”

Probably not marking it shows just how much he disliked it. I go a little ways in front of him and then stop so he stops, too. On the quad, fall is finally kicking into gear. Long pants, tanks tops gone, the air sliced with cool, the sunlight dappled and lower in the sky. Now that the dorms are finally all air-conditioned, the weather is finally temperate. Wish it were that way for my emotions.

“What could I do to make this better?”

Mr. Chaucer looks uneven as he holds the weight of his bag over one shoulder and tilts his head, frowning. “What makes you think you need to?”

“Well, I’m not in the class, right? And I’ve got enough humility to know that I could try again. So can I?”

He shakes his head again, sorry. “No.”

My heart is in my feet, all hopes of writing dashed. Probably I should tell Poppy Massa-Tonclair not to bother writing my recommendations, not to nominate me for the Beverly William Award. It’s futile. “Well, thanks anyway.” I wonder where I can go on campus to curl up, fit-tight, and be upset.

“Love?” He looks amused, and also baffled. A smile forms on his lips. “You know I’m letting you into ACW, right?” He waits for me to confirm.

“But you —”

“Didn’t get a chance to tell you before your pessimism took over?”

I give a half-laugh, the slow rise of happiness and excitement building in my belly as I wait for the reality to hit. “Okay. True. But you shook your head.”

He keeps walking and we wait for a car to pass before crossing the street that separates upper and lower campus. “I only shook my head because this — your story — it wasn’t what I expected. It’s wrong of me, I know, to have pre-formed visions of what students will bring to the table, and if anything, this proves to me I have to let those go.”

“I’m in?” I try not to squeal like a little girl getting cotton candy, but since I love cotton candy and I’m accepted into ACW, I can’t help it.

“You are. Number six.” Mr. Chaucer holds up fingers to correlate with my entry in to the class. “You know it means extra work, and deadlines, and lots and lots of revisions?”

I nod. Then I wonder what he thought he’d get from me. “Did you think I’d write a story set in high school?” I trot next to him, not quite puppy-like but close enough. “I work on the lit mag, remember?” The campus literary magazine, Fusions, considers all the submissions anonymously so no one gets preferential treatment. The main problem isn’t always the quality of the writing but that the stories never leave campus. Girls likes guy or the other way around or friendships get strained but it’s always loosely veiled visions of Hadley Hall.

“This is my stop,” Chaucer says when we’re on the stone steps in front of Maus Hall. “EEK!” he thumbs to the building. “You’ll need to report to the class this Sunday, then again on Wednesday.” He pauses. “You can ask Dalton Himmelman if you have any questions.”

“Dalton?” I wrinkle my nose. I knew he was in the class, but I didn’t know he was the go-to guy. But I’m in. All that work, all that worrying — a huge relief washes over me.

“Yes. And just so you know, he read your story.” Chaucer doesn’t apologize for this, as if handing off my private work was no biggie. Then he sees my dismay about this. “We all read everything in the group. So get used to it. You won’t be able to hide under that anonymous cloak.”

I mime throwing off a heavy cape, which I know I’ll have to actually do when it comes time to meet. “Did he like it, too?” I ask and wish I weren’t so interested in getting praise. But there you go, I am. And for some reason, from him especially.

Mr. Chaucer lets his bag drop from his shoulder and starts up the stairs. “He did.” He walks up to the double wooden doors and reaches for the brass handle. “Only…he didn’t think there was as much lurking underneath as the writing suggested.”

“What?” I need further info on this.

“With those characters — Amelia and…”

“And Nick Cooper,” I fill in. I can’t wait to tell my dad about the class. And Gala. And Chris. And Jacob. And Chili. The world, basically. It’s only after I go through the names that I realize I haven’t even thought of telling Charlie. And he was so good about asking after my writing. Note to self: deal with dwindling long-distance romance or perish.

“I liked them together. That ambiguous last scene with them on the beach? How we know that underneath it all, Amelia really loves the guy.” Mr. Chaucer opens the door and I can hear college chatter from inside.

“And Dalton?”

“He wasn’t convinced.”

Settling into a routine just happens. You think you won’t, that the newness of each season or year will stick with you, but everything fades out — and fester than you think. There’s the blur of classes, assignments, hasty lunches, furtive glances across the quad/room/field with Jacob. Some phone tag with Charlie, me taking longer to return his calls because of our lame phone system but mainly because I can feel things crumbling. There’s an old stone wall behind the Lowenthal Outdoor Gymnasium (aka the LOG), and when I’m treadmilling or crunching, I stare out at it, amazed it hasn’t toppled yet. Apparently it’s been in semi-disrepair for years. Some things are like that, I guess, collapsing over time — and maybe that’s what I’m letting happen to Charlie. Talking to him feels distant. The time I met him in the Square for a milkshake was brief and terse — not platonic but not connected, either.

“I never thought I’d tell you this much,” I say to Mary on the way down to dinner. Fruckner House has its own industrial kitchen and along with unbirthdays, one of the house traditions is eating sit-down meals thrice weekly.

Mary and I arrive in the dining room in time to sing “Happy Unbirthday” to Becca Feldman, who shakes her booty like she’s at a club rather than a same-old same old dinner. Mary leans down, whispering. “Well, I’m gald to know you — and spill my guts, too. You don’t think it’ll happen, that roommate thing. But it does — I mean, we’re cooped up nearly twenty-four seven, so what else are we going to do except bond, right?”

“Bond or perish,” I say with a mental nod to Lindsay Parish. If she and I had ended dup rooming together, no doubt my emotional well-being would have been thoroughly disrupted. She’s joined the staff of Fusions, the literary magazine, and I’m fairly certain she has little or no interest in the written word. Chris thinks I’m being paranoid but my instincts tell me that LP is set to invade every area of my life — right down to my extra-curriculars. Good thing she can’t get into ACW. A slight panaic grips me. She couldn’t, right?

“Have some food, Love.” Mary gestures at me with a forkful of mashed potato.

“Sign me up.” I reach for my own plate o’starch.

The unbirthday proceeds, with the cake set aside for after the meal. With each forkful of mashed potatoes, I feel the minutes draining away, pulling me closer to getting out the door and over to my ACW class. More than once Lindsay has tried to stop me by threatening dorm meetings (she decides when these blessed events occur) and upset me by announcing loudly that she has “co-head monitor issues to discuss with her co-head monitor.” I’m definitely not being paranoid. The girl’s a raging nightmare.

Most of the time at dorm dinners Mrs. Ray heads the table, presiding over all of us, while Mary makes me laugh and Lindsay makes it clear she’d love to stick her fork in my eye rather than into her few paltry lettuce leaves. Tonight is no exception.

“Just in case anyone’s searching for me after dinner,” Lindsay chews her lettuce and swallows. “I’ll be having parietals in Jacob Coleman’s room.” Mrs. Ray opens her mouth to remind us — yet again — of the parietal rules, but Lindsay keeps going. “We just have so many issues to discuss.” She gives me the pleasure of looking at my face and motioning to my chin with her manicured talons (of course, they’re not long talons because long nails scream mall and Lindsay is fat too pedigreed for that; hers are of the carefully sculpted oval variety glossed in barely there pink.) I swipe at it with my napkin, and of course have potato sludge on it. But I don’t let anything show.

“Gee,” Mary says to Lindsay. “I hope you can get all those issues sorted out, what with all the freshman needing your help here tonight.”

Mrs. Ray takes a sudden interest. “What’s this?”

Mary puts on her innocent face — easy for her since she’s so friendly and open. “Oh, I was overhearing the new freshman and how they could really use a hand getting used to writing five paragraph essays. You know, the Hadley gold standard.”

People use that phrase Hadley Gold Standard when they’re pressing a point. Mrs. Ray bites the line, however, and touches Lindsay’s arm. “Lindsay, it would be very courteous of you — as the dorm head — to spend the time with them tonight.”

Lindsay’s displeasure spreads from her neck tendons to her hands as she mutilates the next piece of lettuce. Perhaps if she ate something she wouldn’t be quite so cranky. “I really must meet with my co-head monitor.” Note how she uses the possessive and doesn’t mention his name, just in case Mrs. Ray thinks there’s any funny business between them. Which there isn’t. Right? I carpe a pattern in my potatoes as though this will clarify any lingering doubt.

Mrs. Ray taps her knife of her glass. “For those of you needing help in the area of the five paragraph essay — good news! Lindsay Parrish will be available tonight after dinner until lights out.” Mrs. Ray smiles at Lindsay, unaware that she’s ruined the girl’s night. And made mine just a bit better.

I smirk into my starchy food and nudge Mary under the table as a thank-you.

Lindsay mumbles into her salad. “Gold standard my ass.”

“No,” Mary says. “Mine is, actually.”

I crack up as I clear my plate and head out the door.

Mr. Chaucer’s apartment is in section of campus everyone refers to as The Stables, even though there are no horses to be found. Used to be, Hadley had a team of work horses and the wealthiest students kept their own carriage and top of the line stallions and mares. This was hundreds of years ago, though, when getting off campus meant saddling up. Then, in the 1950s it became chic again for students — girls, especially — to own a horse and they added a few small barns near the paddock. Now, the paddock is still ringed by a wooden fence, but it serves as an entryway to faculty housing.

The large barn holds a bunch of faculty apartments and the single stables were each converted into tiny houses. Mr. Chaucer’s lives in one of these. The stable houses form a semi-circle with Chaucer’s on the very far left, set back from the grassy paddock, shouldered by the woods.

The moonlight is dim now, the night sounds just starting. Branches crack when I step on them, grass swishes with my steps, and some sort of creature digs in a compost heap. I hold my notebook to my chest, take a breath and go inside.

Midway through the evening this is what pops into my mind:

I am guilty of thinking too much. Of planning out how things should be to the point where if conversations or kisses or dates or beach trips go differently than I pictured, I’m not as happy. This is something I’ve been fixing, slowly. But despite many days and times that I’ve fallen in to that trap, my ACW class is exactly what I pictured — only better.

The livingroom is small and somehow, even though we are landlocked, the wide unstained wooden plank floors, the windows trimmed in cracking blue paint, the sea chest coffee table and hurricane lamps, all make it look like we’re clustered together by the ocean.

“I liked the use of symbolism,” Linus says. He sips green tea from a plain white mug and leans over the round oak table.

The six of us — seven if you count Chaucer — are dispersed through the small room. Sara Woods is on an ottoman, her dark hair pulled back as she rereads Priss Giggenheim’s (short for Priscilla, slightly unfortunate nickname though if rumors are valid, not applicable) story. Priss and Oscar Martinez sit in two chairs near the ottoman while Mr. Chaucer stands and occasionally paces the room. Avenue Townsend (Avi for short, which suits him much more than his rock star sounding name, given to him by him rock star parents) whom I know from the Fusion staff, hasn’t taken his coat off. He sits chewing on a pencil and worrying the edges of his sleeves. His demeanor is like his writing — intense and dark with moments of funny.

Stacked in neat piles are student papers, books, and by a giant old dictionary are the applications for the Beverly William Award. I try to ignore them.

“Any more rain in here and it starts to be biblical.” Dalton Himmelman reaches for a bite size brownie at the same time I do and our hands brush for second. He’s on the floor with his back to the wall and I’m not so much next to him as diagonally from him with the snack tray in the middle. So far, I’ve been pretty quiet. I’m new and don’t want to burst onto the ACW scene too harshly. I’m more interested in the whole feel of it — on campus, but feeling off, something intellectual but that has so much feeling involved.

“Biblical? It’s not like she’s got an ark in here.” I nibble the brownie the way I eat all baked goods — edges first, then the softer inside afterwards.