The Mark

by Jen Nadol

  I thought of the woman in the park playing with her dog.

  “But what if time was so short …” I stopped, knowing it would be nearly impossible to convey the full scenario. Lucas would think it was ridiculous.

  “Go on … so short that …”

  I shook my head. “Nothing. It’s just a hypothetical.”

  “Isn’t all of this?”

  “Yeah … but this couldn’t really happen.”

  He leaned back, smiling. “Try me anyway. I’m interested.”

  I could tell, his eyes, his attention totally focused on me. It was a thrilling feeling that I didn’t want to let go. “Okay,” I said, “what if time was so short that there was really nothing the person could do? What if they had less than twenty-four hours to live, were in no pain, totally unaware of their fate and enjoying their time.” I decided to go for it. “What if they were spending a beautiful day outside, in the sun, playing with their dog or their child? Would you interrupt that day with the news that they were about to die?”

  “I thought they were at the doctor’s office.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Maybe they were in the park that morning, before their appointment.”

  “And the doctor figures out they’re going to die that day? That couldn’t happen.”

  “That’s why I said it was a hypothetical.” I shook my head. “Forget it.”

  “No, no. Okay, I’m with you.” He thought for a minute. “I’m not sure.”

  “Maybe it’s a case-by-case thing?” I suggested hopefully. “If the person seems fine, untroubled, you don’t tell them?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” Lucas said, pinching his lip absently. “How could the doctor really know their state of mind? Or how they might use the news that they had such a short time to live? Maybe there were things that had to be done to secure happiness for the child or someone else important.”

  I nodded. I had thought that too, and had a creeping suspicion that the right answer was the one I didn’t really want. The harder choice.

  Our dinners came then. Lucas was right, the food was delicious. I hadn’t been doing much cooking at the apartment. I’d learned the basics from Nan and together we’d made lasagnas and stews and soups and fish. I’d come to associate cooking with companionship. It wasn’t the same doing it alone and just for me, so I’d been living on easy meals like a true college student: tuna fish, cheese sandwiches, pizza—sometimes takeout, sometimes frozen.

  “Now, this …,” I said in between mouthfuls, shaking my fork at the half-empty plate. “This is food.”

  “An astute observation,” Lucas said, his grin making me smile too. “See, I knew you were smart …”

  Lucas asked about my job, told me a little about his. The behind-the-scenes work of a teaching assistant sounded like a lot of reading, lesson plans, and pipe smoking with Professor McMillan.

  When we’d finished our meal, Wallace took our plates and our tiramisu order—one to share. Lucas poured the last of the wine, leaned back, and asked, “What would you do with your final hours if you knew you only had a few to live?”

  “I think,” I said slowly, giving the impression of contemplating, “my first impulse would be to find another doctor—and another after that, if necessary—and try to prevent it.”

  He nodded. “For the sake of discussion, let’s assume the diagnosis was irrefutable and somehow you accepted that.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I think my next impulse would be to do something crazy—try to squeeze in some of the things I’d meant to do but never got around to. See the Eiffel Tower or Statue of Liberty. Go bungee jumping. The problem with having only a few hours, though, is that it’s too short to accomplish anything important. No time for the life goals you haven’t made happen yet, whatever they are: write a book, have a family, try out for Broadway.”

  “Those are your life goals?”

  “Not mine personally, but you know what I mean. The kind of things that take work and planning.”

  He nodded. “So you’d take a trip somewhere on your last day?”

  “No,” I corrected. “That would be my first impulse, but I think I’d realize all the problems with it. I mean, what if my flight were delayed? Would I want to spend my final hours sitting in an airport? Just to see some building somewhere?”

  Lucas waited, quietly fingering the stem of his wineglass and watching me intently.

  What I’d thought about most the many times I’d considered this question was how Nan had reacted: calm, fully in control. I hoped I could be that way.

  “I think what I’d really do—and this may sound nuts—is nothing. I mean, there’d be a little business to take care of. I’d write a few letters, make sure I got them in a mailbox, and then I’d take my book and my favorite sweatshirt and find a comfortable spot—the park or a coffee shop—and try to enjoy the time I had left.”

  Lucas was silent for a minute, still watching me, still fingering his glass. “That’s a very rational response,” he said finally.

  I shrugged. “Well, it’s one thing to say it and another to act it out. Who knows how I’d really be.”

  He didn’t say anything, so I asked, “What would you do?”

  Without hesitation, he said, “I’d take the first flight to LA.”

  “To see your family?”

  “To see my family.”

  I nodded. I might have said the same thing if I had any family to see.

  We finished our wine with dessert. The tiramisu was amazing, as Lucas had promised. When the bill came, Lucas deftly took it from the waiter, shooing away my offers to go Dutch. “Of course not,” he said. “I asked you to dinner. Besides, you’re a poor college student.”

  “So are you.”

  “Oh. Right.” He handed Wallace an American Express card. Gold. While we waited, I took another look at our courtyard. The other tables had cleared and we were alone with the gentle gurgle of the fountain, candles all around. I could feel Lucas looking at me and turned to him.

  “What?” I demanded.

  “Nothing,” he answered, smiling. “You’re an interesting girl, Cassandra Renfield. How old are you?”

  Maybe I should have told Lucas the truth. But I was afraid it would shatter the perfection of this moment, the best I’d had in way too long. So I didn’t. “Eighteen.”

  He shook his head. “You’re the oldest eighteen I’ve ever met.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that.

  Gianna kissed us each on the cheek as we left, telling Lucas not to be a stranger. To me, she said she hoped I’d be back. She sounded like she meant it.

  We walked to the main street, the lamps lighting the now-empty sidewalks in oblong circles. We were close, but not touching. I didn’t know what to expect from Lucas. I’d never been out like this—a real dinner date, if that’s what this was. I wasn’t a complete innocent, but high school dates were fast food and football and movies and the mall, not this. I wasn’t even sure I was really on a date. What if Lucas just thought I was interesting? A student to mentor?

  And then he said, “My place is just down the block. You want to come up for a nightcap?”

  He’d put on an accent like in the old movies Nan used to watch, winking and raising one eyebrow. It was silly and completely charming. I felt like I might scream or faint. In a good way. “I don’t wear one,” I managed to answer.

  “Ba-dum-bump.”

  We stood there: Lucas smiling down at me, nonchalant, my stomach doing flip-flops. What would happen if I went? What if I didn’t? Would I ever get another chance?

  “Is that okay?” I asked, my voice calmer than I felt. Thank God for the wine. “I mean with me in class, you the TA …”

  “I think I clear the ethics board,” he said. “After all, you’re not taking the class for credit, right?”

  “True.”

  “Therefore, you are not being graded and I hold no sway over you. You stand to gain nothing by befriending me.”

  “If I would b
e the one gaining, why would you be held accountable by an ethics board?”

  He smiled again. “Excellent question.”

  He took my hand and led me to an old brick building down another quiet side street. I felt everything—Lucas’s firm, hot grip, the slight breeze, a spinning dizziness that was the wine and him all wrapped together. I took a deep breath, inhaling the warm night air to steady myself as we ascended his steps and went inside.

  chapter 17

  He was sitting on the edge of the bed, watching me when I woke up.

  “What time is it?” I asked, automatically looking at my naked wrist, my watch somewhere on his nightstand.

  “Shh,” he said. “Early. Just before eight.” He stroked my hair and it felt wonderful. I closed my eyes. “I didn’t want to wake you,” he said softly, “but I have an early meeting at school.”

  I started to get up. “I have to work anyway.”

  He shook his head. “No rush, Cassandra. Take your time, as long as you like. Just push the lock on the door when you go.”

  I propped myself on an elbow and looked at him, my eyes better adjusted to the light. He was amazing, I thought, his hair brushing the rims of his glasses. He smiled.

  “I had a nice time last night,” he said. “Can I see you again?”

  I smiled too, self-conscious about being this way—lying rumpled in his bed. “I’d like that,” I said, trying to sound like a college girl might.

  He leaned over and kissed my forehead. I watched him leave, my TA, his familiar bag slung over one shoulder. A shoulder that I had seen, had touched bare.

  I flopped back in bed, reveling in the warm, tingly feeling inside. I was really here, I thought, in Lucas’s apartment. I had kissed Lucas and … well, other stuff. I was a little embarrassed to think about that.

  I sat up, looking around his space, dying to learn more, know everything about him. I pulled on my sweater and walked to the living room, liking the scratchy feel of its straw rug on my bare feet. There was a stack of hardback books on his coffee table. I leaned sideways to read their spines: Our Century in Pictures, Ancient Greece, World Atlas. There were more books on shelves along the wall. Books everywhere, I realized. A short stack of paperbacks on the end table, another near the window, another on his desk beside three picture frames.

  I walked over to look at the photos. One was obviously Lucas’s family. Beautiful people on a beach near sunset. His mom and dad were gray-haired, but trim and smiling. Holding hands, of all things.

  The second was Lucas with a group of girls and guys. I recognized one, the pretty blonde from the coffee shop. The picture looked recent, had been taken on campus. She was next to him, his arm around her shoulder. I looked closely, but the meaning was unclear. The whole feel of the picture was casual, friendly. Still, I wondered, having seen them together at Cuppa more than once. I was jealous, but felt stupid for feeling so. After all, I was here and she wasn’t, right?

  The last photo was a little older. Lucas in high school, I guessed. Surrounded by other guys, all of them in faded sweatshirts, a football slung in one’s arm. It took me a minute to find Lucas without his glasses and made me wonder about my initial impressions of him. Here he didn’t look the quiet bookworm any more than the jock I sat next to in philosophy.

  I checked the clock and realized I needed to get going to be at Cuppa by ten. I still had to get back to the apartment for a shower and change of clothes. Drea would be at work, not that it mattered. I’d been worried last night, but her response to my text telling her I was staying with a friend from class had been a cavalier “Have fun.” Some guardian.

  On my way out, I took one more look at Lucas’s home, his personal space. I hoped I’d be back, but just in case, I wanted one final memory. Then I pushed in the button on the slim side of the door, checking the knob to be sure it would lock, and closed it carefully behind me.

  chapter 18

  I shouldn’t have worried that my first visit to Lucas’s might be my only one. In fact, I spent so much time there in the weeks following our dinner at Gianna’s that it felt more like home than Drea’s.

  Since Nan had died, I thought I’d come to like being on my own, which is basically what I was. Aside from her one tipsy night, Drea’s conversations with me had barely moved beyond “We’re out of Cheerios” and “Don’t forget to turn the fans off when you leave.” Spending time with Lucas now made me realize I’d been kidding myself. I’d been lonely. Really lonely. It was so nice to have someone to eat dinner with or walk beside in the park or just lie near, reading on the sofa. My hours, instead of inching along, seemed almost too short. And the mark, though it never left my mind completely, was less consuming. A soft tap on the shoulder rather than a constant, throbbing squeeze.

  I guess I kind of knew all along. That’s why I’d thought—briefly—about going out with Doug when he’d asked. I’d needed someone, but not just anyone. Lucas.

  I wrote to Tasha about him. We e-mailed more than we spoke now, and it felt funny, almost like writing in a diary—intimate, but disconnected.

  I’m dating my philosophy TA. He’s smart, gorgeous, so nice. It’s only been a couple weeks, but it’s going great. This might be the L-thing.

  I couldn’t even bring myself to write the word. Afraid to admit that I really felt that way about someone older and more sophisticated. It was hard to believe that a few weeks ago, Lucas had been a customer in the coffee shop, my TA that maybe I had a little crush on. He’d become so much more in the short time we’d been together, our relationship compressed like Philosophy 101—so much squished into so little time. It made any feelings I might have had for Jack Petroski seem silly and juvenile. This was a real relationship. With a top hat, Nan would have said. All grown-up.

  We went out to dinners—at Gianna’s and other places. Often Lucas waited for me at Cuppa near the end of my shift.

  “Your boyfriend is outside,” Doug said one day. My face turned pink at the word, especially on Doug’s lips.

  “Thanks.”

  “He teaches at the school, right?” Doug was standing beside me now, his voice a touch strident. Or maybe I imagined it.

  “Sort of. He’s just a sophomore, but doing a teaching assistant thing for the summer.”

  “Yeah. I’ve seen him in here before.” Doug nodded, casually polishing the cappuccino machine nearby. I willed a customer to come in, but the door stayed shut, the faint jingling of the bells only the wind. “Before you started here, actually, he used to come in a lot with a girl. Pretty. Blond.”

  “Oh yeah?” I tried to match Doug’s nonchalant tone. I think it was a strain for both of us.

  He shrugged. “They were probably just friends. Have you met her?”

  “No.”

  “Well, maybe it was something else,” he said. Then, more kindly, “That was a while ago.”

  The fact is, I hadn’t really met any of Lucas’s friends. I had asked him about his pictures, not about her in particular, but the group. The other students in the summer TA program, he’d told me, which meant I might never meet her. Lucas and I didn’t hide our relationship, but we didn’t advertise it either. On campus and, of course, in class we kept our distance. I would gladly have left philosophy hand in hand with him—wouldn’t have minded showing the girls in my class who Lucas thought was choiceworthy—but I understood, without discussion, that Professor McMillan might not think it okay for me to be his girlfriend, audit student or not.

  In the comfortable hours at his apartment, I fantasized about moving in with him. I doodled Cassandra Canton in my notebooks, liking the alliterative sound of it whispered aloud, then quickly scribbled it out before Lucas could see that I wasn’t the deep thinker he took me for, but just a silly schoolgirl after all.

  Sometimes, reading my texts, highlighting and underlining, I’d look up to find him watching me. It made my heart race.

  He liked discussing our lessons before class, arguing out the philosophies. It was a habit from our first dinn
er together that stuck. We agreed on Locke, but I frustrated him with Descartes.

  “How can you take him seriously,” I argued, “when he says things like ‘Because God has given me my understanding, all I understand, I understand correctly’? There are a gazillion holes in that.”

  “Cassandra, you have to consider the context …”

  “No. I can’t get past his ‘God this, God that.’ Plus, he’s a coward. His whole idea that you shouldn’t use your free will if you don’t understand something fully? Come on, Lucas, there would be no progress if everyone believed that.”

  “He didn’t mean we shouldn’t take chances,” Lucas corrected, “just that we should expect mistakes because our understanding is weaker than our will.”

  Lucas was incredibly well-read, always bringing bits of science or history or religion into our discussions. In class we had just started the section on determinism—the idea that there is no chance or choice—and Lucas and I were hashing out William James’s Divinity Street, Oxford Avenue problem. Once William James chose to walk down Divinity Street, there was no way to prove whether it was fate or free will that made him do it. He couldn’t test whether he’d had equal freedom to choose Oxford Avenue because he could never put himself in the exact same situation again. I was trying to wrap my head around the idea and what it could mean for the mark. I would have liked to ask Lucas, but I didn’t want him to think I was weird, bringing up my doctor-and-patient scenario again.

  “You know,” Lucas said, leaning back in the nook of the sofa opposite me. “The ancient Greeks were the original determinists. They believed your fate was decided from the time you were born.”

  “So William James knew which street he’d walk down even before he could walk?”

  Lucas nodded. “Something like that. The Greeks personified fate in three gods, goddesses actually, that controlled people’s destinies, spun the thread of their fate at birth.”

  “So they planned which street he’d walk down?” I persisted.