by Rachel Toor
Mom and I started fighting a whole lot more when she got obsessed with the college-admissions thing. She made me go with her on a big college tour at the end of the summer. I told her I didn’t need to visit colleges; I only wanted to go to Yale and I didn’t have to see it to be sure. I was going to apply early and that would be that.
She said I should keep my options open. She said I’d need to have backups in case Yale didn’t work out.
I accused her of not having confidence in me.
In the end, I couldn’t get out of the trip.
Some highlights:
1. Going to Yale we got ridiculously lost on the one-way streets in New Haven and ended up in some really sketchy parts of town. It was rainy and not quite as magical as I’d hoped. It was still my first and only choice.
2. At Trinity College a dad had a heart attack during the group information session and my mom was the closest thing around to a real doctor. So we waited with him for the EMTs and spent the afternoon with his daughter in the hospital.
3. When we stayed at the Four Seasons in Boston we got bitten by bedbugs, which was as uncomfortable as it was disgusting. All that money for an expensive hotel and it turns out the beds were already occupied—with creepy critters.
4. Also in Boston, someone broke into our rental car and stole my laptop. I know, I shouldn’t have left it in there, but I was tired because we’d been to Tufts, Boston University, and Harvard all in one day. Then I had to listen to Mom tell me eight thousand times that I shouldn’t have left my computer in the car. Also in Boston, we had a blow-out fight (see above, under computer loss) and I told my mother I wanted to go to college, to any college, just so I could get away from her. She said, “Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.” I said, “Fine.” She said, “Fine.”
5. In Providence, Mom got food poisoning. She stayed in the hotel room and barfed while I did the tour of Brown. I felt guilty for being so happy to get away from her for a bit.
6. I managed to convince Mom to let us stop at the Ben&Jerry’s factory on the way to see Middlebury. They had a “flavor graveyard,” where headstones mark the deaths of flavors that didn’t make it. It made me kind of sad to see where good ideas go to die.
7. Our rental car got a flat in western Massachusetts and while we waited two hours for AAA to show up, we had another giant fight.
8. A bunch of drunken frat boys at Amherst hung out the window of their house and screamed that Mom had a nice ass. I thought it was funny and laughed, and laughed even harder when she got mad at them, which made her mad at me too. I asked why she wore tight jeans and high heels if she didn’t want people to notice her ass. Then she got madder at me and we didn’t speak for the rest of the day.
9. The information sessions all sounded the same and were so boring I thought I was going to die. Except for the one at Trinity College, where the dad almost did die. Not funny.
10. I had on-campus interviews and Mom made me get dressed up, even though Walter-the-Man said Deborah said the interviews didn’t matter. Most of them were awkward and painful. The guy at Wesleyan had a half-eaten PayDay on his desk and I told him I thought if Pluto could be fired from being a planet, PayDay should be banned from the candy aisle. We had a lively debate about what makes for a good candy bar, though he was completely wrong.
11. This was different from the interview with the woman at Dartmouth, who asked me with a straight face, “If you were a vegetable, what vegetable would you be?” I thought she was kidding and laughed. She wasn’t kidding. So I thought about it for a minute and gave her an answer I thought she was looking for. “I’d be an artichoke,” I said. “Why?” She leaned in, as if she wanted to know. “Because I have a prickly, tough exterior, but inside there’s a big warm and fuzzy heart.”
Then she told me I was going to host a dinner party and I had to invite twelve people from any time in history. “Who would you invite and where would they sit? Who would be to your immediate right? Who would be at the end of the table?”
When I get asked a question like this, my mind goes blank. I couldn’t think of one person to invite to this made-up dinner party. Finally, I said, “Ben Franklin.” “Why?” she asked. So I said, “He invented electricity. Well, he didn’t invent it, but he figured it out with his kite-and-key experiment. He also invented bifocal glasses and the Franklin stove—which he didn’t want to patent because he thought people should be able to use his ideas for free. He started the first fire station, figured out how to predict storms, and mapped the current of the Gulf Stream. He invented the flexible urinary catheter when his brother John suffered from kidney stones. He was a postmaster, printer, and politician. He was a journalist, a businessman, a philanthropist, and a good swimmer. He invented swim fins! Swim fins! And the lightning rod! He calculated population growth! He invented a musical instrument called an armonica, which you played by rubbing the rims of glasses filled with water! And he wrote this funny letter to a horny young man on why older women make better mistresses. He was the Dr. Phil of the Founding Fathers.”
Okay, so I got worked up, but how can you not love Ben Franklin? The Dartmouth lady looked weirded out and said, “That’s one. Who else?” I told her Walter, and explained who he was. Let’s just say it went downhill from there. She couldn’t get comfortable with the idea of a pet rat. She cringed when I talked about him and that made me hate her.
12. Every night when we called home to talk to Dad and I asked him how Walter was doing, he’d say, “Fine.” And I’d say, “What? Why did you say fine? Is something wrong?” And he’d say, “No, nothing’s wrong. He’s fine.” “Then why didn’t you say he’s good?” “He’s good, Alice.” “Are you playing with him enough?” “Can I talk to your mother?”
At the end of the trip, I was more convinced than ever I wanted to go to Yale. I was a bit worried—though clearly not worried enough—about getting in. My test scores and grades were fine. But each of the colleges stressed the fact that their students had all done amazing, astonishing, unbelievable things before they turned eighteen. And the kids I met on the trip—you wouldn’t believe how many familiar faces turned up on the campuses; we could have hired a bus and all traveled together—were quick to tell anyone who would listen just how amazing they were.
And if they didn’t tell you, their parents did. You could see the parents sizing up the other kids and saying things like, “Oh, you’re so lucky you don’t come from New Jersey. There’s practically affirmative action for people from less populous states.” Or, “I heard it’s much harder for girls to get in than for boys.”
I think seeing these crazed, hypercompetitive parents was good for my mother. She backed off and said, “You’ll end up at the right place for you, Al.”
13
Saturday afternoon Mom and I went to the running store.
Even though I’d gone past it a zillion times, I’d never really noticed it. I could not believe there was a whole store devoted to running.
Are there also swimming stores?
And badminton stores?
As soon as we walked in the door, a tiny woman with a white-blond ponytail leaped up from a stool behind the counter and ran over to us. She said, “Dr. Davis! So great to see you!”
“Hello, Joan,” Mom said, and hugged her. “This is my daughter, Alice.”
The woman had a smile as big as the ocean and grabbed me by the shoulders to look at me, which struck me as quite odd since we were complete strangers.
She said, “Alice! I’ve heard so much about you. Still getting straight A’s?”
I looked at Mom, trying to figure out who this person was, and when Mom gave me the look that said, Don’t ask because I can’t tell you, I knew the woman had been a patient. Doctors are not allowed to discuss their patients and my mom takes that seriously. Sometimes she’ll slip up and mention talking to someone, like a news anchor or some local celebrity, and I’ll say, “How do you know that person?” and she’ll get quiet and say, “I can’t say,” and th
en I’ll know exactly how she knows the person.
“How are you?” Mom asked, in a way that sounded too serious for the answer to be good.
“Good,” Joan said. “Things are good.”
Mom patted her arm and said she was glad to hear it. Then she told her we needed to get me outfitted with running gear.
“I didn’t know you were a runner!” Joan said, her voice all bubbly again, as if she’d just found out I’d won a Nobel Prize. Her hair was pulled straight back from her face and when she turned to look at me, I could see she had lots of lines around her eyes, and freckles, so she clearly wasn’t one of my mom’s Botox chicks. She wore a stretchy long-sleeved shirt that fit so snug against her you could see the muscles in her stomach, a very muscular stomach. She sported loose yoga-y pants. The woman didn’t have a butter pat’s worth of fat on her. As hard as her body was, her voice was soft and girlish.
“I’m not a runner,” I said. “I’m trying. Just started.”
“If you’re running, you’re a runner!” she said. “Now, let’s have a look at your feet.”
Joan made me take off my shoes and socks and spent a long time examining my bare feet, which made me uncomfortable because my feet are ugly.
I mean, everyone’s feet are ugly—except for Jenni’s—but mine are the worst.
She watched me walk, made me stand, and finally sent me out the door to run down the block in a variety of shoes.
I couldn’t tell much difference between them, but Joan said I was a “slight overpronator,” which seemed like it could be insulting. She explained that most people either pronated or supinated, and that this had to do with how your foot rolled in or out after you landed.
The shoes she picked for me were hideous: yellow slabs, with pink and blue stripes, two down, two across. I didn’t mind so much that they were unattractive, but they made my feet look gigantic. There was a nicer, more streamlined purple pair with gray highlights I liked better, but Joan said those weren’t right for me.
And besides, she said, real runners don’t care what their shoes look like.
Mom said it was important I not get injured, and it wasn’t a fashion show.
I pointed out that was easy for her to say, in her Italian leather boots. She rolled her eyes.
My mother and Joan stood in front of the store and watched me while I ran down the street in different shoes. The best pair felt a whole lot springier than the ones I’d been wearing. I felt like I ran faster than I ever had and that I could keep going for a long time.
Joan said, “Whoa, there, doggie! Come on back.” She asked if that was my normal pace, and I got embarrassed. “It’s okay,” she said. “It’s good to be excited about running. I am!”
I knew this.
I could hear it in her voice and see it on her face. Everything about her said she loved running and loved to talk about it.
We found me a pair of black tights, a long-sleeved shirt with a zipper, a vest that blocked the wind, and some socks. “Never, ever wear cotton socks,” Joan said, “unless you want to end up with blisters. Believe me, I know a thing or two about blisters.”
She measured my chest, which would have been embarrassing except Joan was easy to be around and nothing seemed like a big deal to her, and fitted me for a sports bra for which I practically had to do yoga to get over my shoulders.
The back wall of the store was entirely covered with square pieces of paper with numbers on them. Some had names, and some had writing. The word START was painted below the ceiling in big black block letters.
“What are all those numbers on the wall?” I asked.
She smiled. “Ah,” she said. And instead of answering, she went over to a rack of brochures and flyers, pulled one out, and handed it to me.
“Are you busy a week from tomorrow?”
I was never busy on Sundays.
I shook my head.
“Can you get up early?”
“If I have to,” I said. For a teenager, I was an early riser. Jenni didn’t make it out of bed before noon on the weekends, and so I could never count on her to do anything before midday.
“I’m putting on a race—a 10K.” She must have seen that I was confused and said, “That’s 6.2 miles. One of my volunteers just bailed and I need someone to be on the course to help direct runners.” She reached under the counter and pulled a red shirt out of a box with tons of red shirts just like it. It said Red Dress Run on it and had a drawing of a bunch of men and women running, all wearing red dresses. She waved it in front of me and explained that many runners would be wearing red dresses.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because it’s fun and funny. And it’s Valentine’s Day,” Joan said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
I said, “Oh.”
“Would you be willing to work for a shirt?”
“Do I have to wear a dress?”
“Not unless you want to.”
I thought about it for a minute and said yes, I would. Volunteer. Not wear a red dress.
Joan rang up our purchases and the total amount was a very high number.
Mom handed me the bag and said what she always says when she buys me something: “Wear it well.” That’s what her mother used to say to her. I never met my grandmother—she died before I was born—but my mother talks about her, especially when shopping. Shopping was one of the things they loved to do together.
Joan said she looked forward to seeing me at the race, and I said it sounded like fun, which maybe it would be.
Mom thanked her and smiled at me in a way that made me tell her she had lipstick on her teeth even though she didn’t.
14
The next day I put on my new clothes and, get this: I felt different, like I was a real runner. When I headed out the door I ran stronger and faster than ever. My new shoes might have had wings attached to them, like the sandals that belong to the god the Greeks called Hermes and the Romans renamed Mercury.
I made it to the boulevard and could not believe how easy it was. I zoomed along and passed people right and left, all forward motion. I thought about what I’d learned in physics and how I had not only speed, the equation for which is distance divided by time, but also velocity, which is change in position over time.
I was a vector; I had magnitude and direction.
Then it all fell apart.
Somehow I had managed to run into what Jenni calls the Drop Zone or the DZ. She’ll come over, won’t say a word to me except, “I’m in the DZ,” and head straight to the bathroom. I don’t know where she came up with Drop Zone, except it probably has something to do with spending so much time with jocks. There’s also the PZ, the Pee Zone. They work the same way. I’m sure I don’t have to explain.
Every step I took made the feeling in my gut worse. I had to stop, walk, and waddle home. I thought I might not make it in time. That I did well in physics and understood Newton’s three laws of motion didn’t change the fact I barely made it to the downstairs bathroom. I’d never felt so relieved—or so much like a loser.
I could hardly control my own bowels, much less my destiny.
Walter-the-Man was parked in front of the TV in the Walter-the-Man-shaped dent in the couch watching a Duke basketball game. My parents were nowhere to be found.
“Yo,” he said.
“Hey,” I said, and came in and sat beside him.
He screamed, “GET IT TOGETHER! Did you see that? That was a foul. Are these refs blind? THAT WAS A FOUL, YOU DICKWEEDS!”
When he watched basketball games, Walter-the-Man tended to scream a lot. I used to find it amusing.
“Help a fellow out? Fetch a fellow a beer?”
Instead of arguing like I normally do, I went into the kitchen and got one for him. He held out his hand for the bottle.
“Still sulking, I see.”
“I’m not sulking.”
“NOT ANOTHER THREE! COME ON, GUYS, STOP TRYING FOR THE THREES.”
And then, “Looks like s
ulking to me.”
“I suck,” I said.
“And why is that?”
“You know why.”
“Tell me.” He screamed, “YES, OH YES! YES!!” and put his hands together as if he was praying, and clapped them like a lunatic as the ball went through the net.
“Vaseline! VASELINE!”
Maybe he said, “Gasoline.” Or maybe “Maybelline.” I had no idea what he was saying because he wasn’t talking to me anymore. He cheered for the team as if he was the sixth man, as if they could hear him, as if his coaching advice—“OUTSIDE! GOOD GOLLY, MISS MOLLY! WATCH THE OUTSIDE MAN!”—was going to be heeded by these five guys on the court miles away and visible only on TV.
He looked hard at me and said, “Okay, Alice, tell me why you wanted to go to Yale.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“Doing what?”
“You know all I ever wanted was to go to Yale.”
“And now?”
“Now my life is pretty much over.”
He thought about it for a minute, rubbed his head with his hand as if he was shining his scalp, looked back at the TV, and said, “ARE YOU KIDDING ME? ARE YOU GODDAMN FREAKING KIDDING ME?”
I slumped down farther in the couch and after two more baskets, Walter-the-Man started in again. “You’re probably right. If you don’t go to Yale, you are never going to amount to anything. I’ll make you an offer. How about if I give you seed money and you can start a meth lab—put all those math and science skills you worked so hard to acquire to use.”
“It’s not funny.”
“No, it’s not. You’re driving your mother crazy. She’s worried about you. Everyone’s worried about you. Plus, you’re messing with my ability to enjoy watching young people chase each other around the court. So tell me, why did you want so badly to go to Yale?”
“Are you kidding?”
“No, Alice, for once I’m not. Tell me.”
I let out a big sigh. And then I had to wait for another outburst to end.
Walter-the-Man said, “Good look.”
Walter-the-Man said, “REBOUND! REBOUND! YES, HE GETS FOULED. ANOTHER SHOT. TAKE YOUR TIME, TAKE YOUR TIME. YES! YES! YES!”