On the Road to Find Out (3 page)

It was all set: I did really well in school; I'd apply to Yale and go there.

In my mind, it was a done deal. What did I have to worry about?

After Walter-the-Man broke up with Deborah, he dated Sage, a cosmetician twenty-five years his junior. Mom kept telling him what an idiot he was, that he needed to grow the hell up, that Deborah had been his perfect match, that he wasn't going to do better.

He responded by telling my mother she needed a deeper hair conditioner and she might want to consider a French manicure because her fingers looked kind of stubby. Then he gave her a gift certificate to a day spa. My mother loves pampering and it stopped her from nagging Walter-the-Man about ditching Deborah. For about fifteen minutes.

When he started seeing Chef Susan, Walter-the-Man began to comment on Dad's cooking. He'd say, “Chef Susan uses pancetta and porcini in her omelets.” I had to look up both of those things and found out Chef Susan made eggs with bacon and mushrooms—big whoop.

He said things like, “Chef Susan thinks copper pots give better temperature control than those Le Creusets you use.”

Dad finally told Walter-the-Man he could go eat Chef Susan's food if it was so great, but when he had dinner with us, he might consider developing an interest in the weather.

Not long afterward, a copper pot appeared on my dad's stove. When Dad tried to thank him, Walter-the-Man said, “I have no idea what you're talking about, Matt.”

Walter-the-Man likes to try to use me as his servant. From his (GO DUKE!) basketball/football/volleyball/golf/shuffleboard-watching post in front of our TV he'll wave an empty bottle at me and say, “Hey, Alice, go fetch me another beer.”

I'll say, “No, sir, Walter-the-Man, I'm not your retriever. You can fetch your own dang beer. And don't be asking me to do your laundry or cook your meals or clean your toilet, either. If you want a maid, bucko, pay for one.”

But I'll always go into the kitchen and get him another beer.

Walter-the-Man may be a pain in the butt, but he's our pain in the butt.

 

4

A big mistake you can make with a New Year's resolution is to tell people about it, especially people who will remember and ask you how it's going. They're trying to be helpful, though sometimes you feel like you're being bullied by your own good intentions.

Of course I told Jenni about my resolution, since it was her idea to make resolutions in the first place, and also because if you don't tell your best friend about something, it's like it doesn't exist. That's part of what it means to have a best friend: you have a warehouse for all your stray thoughts, which, if you keep them in your head, don't seem as real as they do when you hear them come out of your mouth.

Jenni never forgets one single thing. We've been friends for more than a decade and although we're different in lots of ways, she knows me better than anyone. She'll remember what I wore the time we went bowling with these skeevy guys from Morgantown who tried to get us to eat mushrooms—not the kind you put in omelets—and she'll remember what flavor birthday cake I've had every year since we were six. She'll remember the time I drank a bunch of Southern Comfort and she had to hold my hair back while I puked and said I was never going to drink alcohol again, something I think about each time I drink alcohol, but she never mentions. She'll remember I said I didn't want to go to college still a virgin, but she doesn't point out I've never even kissed a boy.

She doesn't bring these things up to use against me, as some bad friends would, but instead waits for me to mention something or ask her a question: What was the name of that restaurant we went to that time in New York City? Where did I first have tiramisu? And then she'll tell me. So she's not only a storeroom for random thoughts but also the historian of my life.

A few nights before New Year's Eve, Jenni and I were at my house.

I had been complaining about my Yale rejection. Which was pretty much the only thing I'd talked or thought about for the previous two weeks. Jenni had been trying to comfort me, but like everyone else, she was so surprised I had been rejected she didn't know what to say except that they were making a big mistake. I'd given up trying to argue.

Jenni didn't understand why Yale was such a big deal to me, since no one from her family had even gone to college.

Jenni didn't talk about her plans for next year and I avoided asking. I didn't want to pressure her and make her feel bad if she chose not to go, which was kind of what I expected.

Instead, I kept trying to make her see what a failure I was and that I probably wouldn't get in anywhere else. But she loves me too much to see my flaws, and she indulges me when I spend hours pointing out these very same flaws. Jenni just kept saying, “They're making a big mistake. They'll be sorry when you're interviewed by Oprah.”

That night my parents went out to a holiday party. I had to beg them to go. Mom threatened to cancel because she was worried about me.

For two weeks I'd been saying I wanted to stick my head in the oven.

For two weeks I had barked and snarled at everyone who wasn't Walter.

I was miserable for darned sure, but I wasn't suicidal.

When I said I wanted to stick my head in the oven it was a joke. Black humor, people. But no one thought I was in a joke-making frame of mind.

I had to remind my mother we had an electric oven and if I tried to pull a Sylvia Plath, all I'd manage was to singe my hair and eyebrows off.

Still, before my parents went out I overheard Mom tell Jenni to keep an eye on me. Which is kind of funny, since Jenni does that all the time anyway. It's kind of her job. Just like my job is to make a lot of obnoxious comments. And to make her believe in herself more. For such an amazing person, Jenni can be a little insecure.

Jenni and I lay on my bed with a buffet of snack bags between us. Walter was on bed patrol, sniffing around and peering over the edge to make sure the perimeter was secure. Then he walked into a bag of Ritz Bits.

“Hey,” said Jenni. “He's in the bag.” She looked a little disgusted, though it's not like she hasn't seen him do this kind of thing seven thousand times.

Walter wasn't, technically, in the bag. Only his front end was. On a search-and-destroy mission, he grabbed a Ritz Bits, backed out of the bag, and retreated to my lap, where he perched to disarm it with his teeth.

“Okay,” said Jenni. “It's time to resolve.”

“Resolve what?”

“Resolve what we're going to do better next year. New Year's is coming, or did you forget because you don't approve of a holiday that's all about getting drunk and making noise.”

It's true. I don't like New Year's Eve. It's noisy and unruly and usually cold.

Plus, there's no good candy. The best holidays involve candy. I'm a big fan of Christmas, even though my family doesn't celebrate it, because there's so much good stuff to eat. Hanukah's pretty lame in comparison. Those gold chocolate coins we get for playing dreidel taste like poop medicine.

This year, I was too
dejected
(“sad and depressed”) to help Jenni bake Christmas cookies, which is something we always do. She likes to give them out to everyone she knows and even some people she doesn't know that well, like our UPS driver and the secretaries at school.

As far as holidays go, Halloween is tops in my book, except for the whole costume part. I try to be strategic about gathering a year's supply of Indian corn because it's seasonal, and even then, it comes only in small bags. If you get the larger bags of Autumn Mix, you end up with a few Indian corns, a lot of regular old candy corn, and a bunch of nasty pumpkins.

I can't stand the pumpkins so I make Jenni eat them. She likes to point out they're made of exactly the same stuff as candy corn so why don't I like them?

“BECAUSE THEY TASTE COMPLETELY DIFFERENT!” I have to gently remind her.

Jenni doesn't understand how shapes affect taste. She also doesn't understand the Peeps hierarchy.

It's a happy day when Easter Peeps make their annual appearance at the grocery store. I only like the yellow chicks, which must be eaten stale—or frozen, if you don't have the time to leave them out—and you have to nibble the butt first and then bite off the head. The pink bunnies are okay, but everything else in Peeps-dom is a wannabe.

Don't get me started on the purples and the blues.

Or on Peeps for other holidays. That's just wrong.

I'd gotten so worked up thinking about candy I managed to forget, for a few minutes, that my future career might be ringing up Peeps at a grocery store and asking, “Paper or plastic?”

“Resolution,” said Jenni. “New Year's. Now.”

I pounded my right fist on my heart and said, “I hereby resolve to be more like Walter,” which was, when you think about it, not a half-bad resolution.

“Alice,” Jenni said.

I said, “Walter is always in a good mood. He's curious and playful and interested in others. He's loyal and faithful and has a great sense of humor. He's open to new things and never bites anyone. He eats when he's hungry, and when he's full, instead of stuffing his face until he needs to go lie down, he stashes the leftovers. Now, it might be better if he didn't store them in the far corners of the closet or under the bed, since sometimes he forgets about the piles and they start to rot and stink, and Mom gets all, ‘You can't let that rat spread food all over the house,' and I have to clean up after him, but it's a good policy in case we ever run out of food. You can't fault someone for preparing for a rainy day.”

I stopped for a minute to poke Walter in the belly. He grabbed my digit with both of his tiny four-fingered hands and brought it to his mouth and licked it.

“And,” I continued, “Walter would not have been rejected from the one school he wanted to go to. He's never failed at anything in his life. And he loves me even though I'm a loser.”

“Alice, knock it off already. You are so far from being a loser that if all the losers in the world had a gigantic party, you wouldn't even make it to the C-list. Until two weeks ago, you had never failed at anything in your life. Come on, I think we should do this. Let's each think of something.”

“You don't think Walter is worthy of emulation?” I can get defensive on Walter's behalf, since there has been such a long history of bigoted persecution against his species.

“No, Alice, I am not saying anything bad about Walter. You know I like Walter, and I know you love him and, yes, I agree, he is a model citizen in many ways. You're right: everyone should try to be more like Walter.”

She offered him a Mini Oreo, which is okay for rats to eat since:

  1.  Chocolate is not toxic for rats the way it is for dogs.

  2.  I'm not sure there's any chocolate in an Oreo.

  3.  I don't allow anything in my room that might be dangerous for rats.

Walter held it with his hands at nine and three, like a perfect driver's-ed student, and began munching away in careful bites.

“What I'm saying, though,” Jenni continued, “is I think we need to find a way to get you to move on.”

“Okay, how about if I resolve to get rejected from more colleges? Oops. Never mind. That's going to happen anyway.”

Right after I got the bad news from Yale, I knew I had to submit applications to other schools. The guidance counselor, who never remembered my name, was no help.

She'd told me I had zero chance of getting into Yale in the first place and that I was crazy to even try. No one from our school had ever gone there, she said, and she advised me to apply to the honors college at the U. My English teacher, Ms. Chan, and Mr. Bergmann, my biology teacher, who really liked my paper on the plagued prairie dogs, had encouraged me and volunteered to write letters of recommendation. They both said that I was the best student they'd had in all their years of teaching.

For the first week after Rejection Day I did nothing.

Then I cut-and-pasted my personal statement into the Common Application form and sent it to a bunch of other colleges.

I spent very little time on the supplemental essays. Instead of writing draft after draft the way I did for the short-answer questions on my Yale application, I just typed them in and sent them off.

Walter had crawled up to perch on my shoulder and take a nap. As Jenni popped a handful of Mini Oreos into her mouth I said, “Maybe I could get a job as a spokesperson for the Rejected throughout the world. I could give speeches on the different ways to cry after you've been rejected. I could do a YouTube video showing the silent tears, the sniffling, breathy hiccuping gasps, the all-out sobs. I could be the poster child for rejection. I could teach other kids how to wallow.”

Jenni nodded and said, “Yeah, you've become a real expert on wallowing. I think you need to find something else to focus on. Before your best friend and your rat get sick of listening to you whine. A hobby. A project!”

She clapped her hands. Jenni is the queen of projects.

“You sound too much like Mom for me to want to talk to you,” I said, and got up.

All year long Mom had been telling me to relax, not stress out so much, take it easy, and I was like, “Oh really? You want me to sit around and smoke pot all day and drink Red Bull and grain alcohol all night like the kids in my school who will end up spending their post-graduation days inquiring, ‘Do you want cheese on that?'”

Relax?
Has she never met me? I have never been a
relax
kind of kid. Cripes.

And it's not like my mother is some kind of shiny role model of Zen-ed-out calm. Most mornings she leaves for the office before I get up. She spends long days chopping out cancerous moles and shooting wrinkle-paralyzing poison into the foreheads of wealthy women. Some days she puffs up their lips with the medical equivalent of Silly Putty.