Testing Kate

by Whitney Gaskell

  “Sorry, dude,” Fitz mumbled, before running off in the direction of the men’s room.

  “Oh. My. God,” Donna said, staring at me. She looked like she might throw up too. I had a vision of the entire cafeteria tossing up their lunches, in a grotesque chain reaction.

  “I have to get out of here. I have to change,” I said desperately.

  “Kate, why do these things always happen to you?” Donna asked, shaking her head in bewilderment. “You have the worst luck of anyone I’ve ever met.”

  “How the hell should I know?” I snapped. “It’s not like I asked for him to vomit on me.”

  Fitz’s friends, still at the next table, were howling with laughter. I turned to glare at them, but that just made them laugh even harder. Their faces were practically purple, and one had lowered his head down onto folded arms, his shoulders quivering with mirth.

  “Assholes,” I hissed.

  “Here, put this on.”

  I turned, and the pretty guy was standing there, holding out his corduroy coat. He nodded toward the ladies’ room. “Go on in there and put it on. It buttons all the way up.”

  I started to protest but realized that I didn’t really have a better alternative. It was either take him up on his offer or walk all the way across campus back to my office covered in vomit. And then I’d obviously have to go home early, which was so not going to thrill my boss, who thought that if he was in the office—even if he arrived early or stayed late—the staff should be there too.

  “Thanks,” I said gratefully, accepting the coat. “You’ll have to give me your name and number so that I can return it.”

  “I’m Graham,” he said.

  A week later, after I had the coat laundered, I called Graham to arrange to return it to him, and we ended up talking on the phone for nearly two hours. Graham had recently taken a biking tour through Ireland—he actually did stuff like that—and he made me laugh when he told me about a supposed bed-and-breakfast he’d stayed in, where his room turned out to be the very pink and very frilly bedroom of the proprietor’s teen daughter. The girl in question was in a sulk over being forced to sleep on the couch, and she and her mother spent most of the night screaming Gaelic curses at each other over the din of the television.

  At the end of the call, Graham asked me out to dinner, and I accepted. And, much later, after we’d moved in together, Graham confessed to me that when he was a young boy, school bus bullies had routinely called him a faggot, sneering at his finely chiseled cheekbones and full, pouting mouth. He’d started habitually pressing his lips together, trying to make them less pronounced and less noticeable; it was a habit he carried into adulthood.

  It turned out Graham wasn’t vain after all. Not even a little bit. He was just as self-conscious as the rest of us.

  Jen and I went jogging together around Audubon Park, shaded by the arching branches of one-hundred-year-old oak trees. The park was located across St. Charles Avenue from the Tulane campus, and since it was a sunny but cool Sunday afternoon, there was a busy throng of people out walking, running, bicycling, even picnicking.

  I had a theory that if I got into shape, it would give me more stamina for studying. When I mentioned it to Jen, she volunteered to go running with me.

  “I have got to start exercising,” she’d explained. “My ass is getting big.”

  We met in the Magazine Street parking lot. After stretching for a few minutes, we started at a light trot, moving in a counterclockwise circle around the pavement loop.

  “Did you go out last night?” I asked Jen. There had been a Bar Review at the Columns Hotel, but I’d passed on it. Instead, I went shopping yet again with Armstrong, this time for a sleek new bedroom set at a furniture store out in Metairie. Afterward, he took me out to dinner at an Italian restaurant that was—creepily—located in a converted funeral home. We had yet to do any actual work on his book, but I’d started to really look forward to my time with him. It was refreshing to be with someone who wasn’t attached to the law school in any way. And Armstrong was a born storyteller, particularly knowledgeable in Southern mythology, so hanging out with him was a bit like spending time with a gay Mark Twain.

  “Yes…Bar…Review,” Jen wheezed.

  She’s in even worse shape than I am, I thought.

  “Who did you go with? Lexi?”

  “Can’t…breathe,” Jen wheezed.

  She came to a sudden stop and folded herself over, bracing her hands against her knees.

  “I need to take a break,” she gasped.

  I glanced at my watch. We’d only been running for three minutes. But Jen staggered off the pavement and collapsed on a wooden bench overlooking the duck pond. I sat down next to her. It was a pretty place to stop and rest, except for the rank odor of bird shit.

  “Yeah, Lexi and I went to the Columns with Addison and Nick. And guess who was there,” Jen said, once she could breathe again.

  “Who?”

  “The mysterious Jacob Reid,” Jen said.

  “No, really? Did he hang out with you guys?”

  Jen shook her head. “Not at all. I don’t think he knew there was going to be a Bar Review that night. He was with some friends at the bar when we got there. And as soon as he saw Lexi, he went all pale and quiet, and then he left ten minutes later without even saying a word to her.”

  “Are you serious?” I asked. I knew Jacob was worried that someone at the school might find out about their relationship, but even so. Leaving without speaking to Lexi was pretty low.

  Jen nodded. “Lexi was pissed. She ended up downing about five martinis and spent the rest of the night flirting with Addison. Which he just loved, of course.”

  “I thought she said she wasn’t interested in Add,” I said.

  “She’s not. She was just using him to make herself feel better.”

  “You know, I’ve had a bad feeling about Jacob from the beginning,” I said. “I thought he might just be using Lexi for sex.”

  “You could be right. I know he called her on her cell phone, late, like right when we were getting to leave, and asked her to come over,” Jen said.

  “Please tell me she didn’t go.”

  Jen nodded. “Addison drove both of us home, and she had him drop her at Jacob’s apartment.”

  I sighed. “Lexi’s smart enough to know better.”

  “I don’t know if any of us are really smart when it comes to relationships,” Jen said darkly.

  “Maybe you’re right,” I said. “What happened to Nick?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You said Addison drove you and Lexi home. Did Nick go with you?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Don’t tell me he hooked up again.”

  Jen nodded. “He’s like some sort of a superhero when it comes to meeting women. And you wouldn’t think it to look at him. He’s cute, but still. He isn’t even that big of a flirt. I think it’s the All-American guy-next-door thing he has going on. Women are naturally drawn to that, don’t you think?”

  “I guess so,” I said, not convinced. “So who was it this time? I hope not someone from the law school. The last time he hooked up with someone from school, he spent the next few weeks skulking around campus, trying not to run into her.”

  “Actually, yeah. He left with Hannah Green,” Jen said.

  “Who’s that?”

  “She’s a One-L, although she’s not in our section. She’s pretty. Very thin, light-blonde hair. You know, the one Addison calls ‘Cameron Diaz,’ although I don’t think she looks anything like her.”

  “I know who you’re talking about. Addison must have been beside himself. He’s in love with her.”

  “Really? He didn’t seem to care. But, then again, he had Lexi to distract him.”

  We sat quietly, watching the ducks glide along the small pond. One of the ducks looked back at me, his small eyes bright with interest, as he waited to see if I’d toss him a saltine.

  “How’s your love life
going? You and Graham, I mean.”

  “Oh…good. I guess.”

  “What’s going on?” Jen asked. “You have to tell me; I get my vicarious thrills living through my single friends.”

  I snorted. “I haven’t even seen Graham in over a month. Not since that weekend he surprised me.”

  “But he decided he couldn’t live without you and came and found you. That must have been incredible. Make-up sex always is.”

  “I’ve always thought that make-up sex is overrated.”

  “And to think I had this vision of the two of you all tangled up in bed, feeding each other cut-up pieces of mango and papaya,” Jen said.

  I looked at her, my eyebrows raised.

  “I told you, I live vicariously through my single friends,” she said, and laughed. Jen had a great laugh, deep and froggy and completely unself-conscious.

  I kicked the grass in front of me with the toe of my running sneaker. A man clasping the hand of a towheaded girl appeared beside us. The little girl wore her hair in two sloppy pigtails and was dressed from head to toe in bright Crayola purple.

  “Here, give the ducks some bread, Lyssa,” he said.

  Lyssa clasped the slice of bread her father handed her and winged it like a Frisbee into the pond. The ducks all paddled furiously over to the soggy, sinking bread slice, bossing each other in loud honks as they fought over who would get the prize.

  “Honey, you’re supposed to break it into crumbs first,” the father said gently, handing her another slice.

  “Okay, Daddy,” she said, and this time she shredded the bread into confetti before she dumped it into the water. Lyssa clasped her plump hands together, eagerly waiting to see what would happen next. She gurgled with laughter as the ducks dove again and again, grabbing the bread bits. It startled me when I looked at the bland fleshy face of Lyssa’s father, as he watched his daughter indulgently, and realized that he was probably only a few years older than me. Parents weren’t supposed to be my age.

  “The weird thing is that I hadn’t planned to get involved with anyone this year, much less get back together with Graham,” I said.

  Jen nodded. “But you can’t control who you fall in love with. Or when.”

  “True,” I said. “Do you think Lexi is in love with Jacob?”

  “I don’t know. I think she thinks she is. I don’t know what she was like with guys she’s dated in the past. Although it’s hard to believe that only a few months ago, none of us knew each other. Now I feel like I know you and Lexi as well as I do my old high school friends. Better even.”

  “Boot camp is supposed to be like that too,” I said. “Although the army would probably be a cakewalk compared to law school.”

  “No joke. Did I ever tell you that the first time I saw you was when you and Nick came into Crim together? I thought you guys were a couple,” Jen said.

  “I thought the same thing about Lexi and Addison,” I said.

  Suddenly Jen sighed, and the smile vanished from her face. “God, sometimes I really wish I was still single.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?” Jen asked, looking startled. I realized that she’d been spacing out and I’d intruded on her thoughts.

  “You said you wish you were still single,” I reminded her. “Are you and Sean having problems?”

  “Oh…no. There’s nothing to talk about, really,” she said, although tension dragged at the outer corners of her eyes, and her mouth curled into a frown. “We’re fine. Sometimes marriage is just…well, it’s not what you think it’s going to be,” she said carefully.

  I looked at Jen, not saying anything. The conversation had suddenly become too serious to gloss it over with any of the idle gossip about our classmates that usually occupied us. Who had hooked up with whom at the latest Bar Review. Whether the guy who had fallen out of his second-story window had been drunk. Whether it really was true that one of the Two-Ls was putting herself through law school by stripping at a club in the Quarter. But I had never been married, so I didn’t have any real insight into what Jen was going through. Was it something serious, like her husband cheating on her? Or was it just that being around her single friends made her feel confined?

  But then Jen grinned at me. “Don’t pay any attention to me,” she said. “Everything’s fine.”

  I studied her pale face—the high forehead, the keen eyes, the snub nose, the wide mouth. She might not have been a traditional beauty, but Jen was really quite pretty in her own way. I even liked the slight gap in her front teeth; it gave her a witty, offbeat look.

  “Come on, let’s walk,” Jen said, standing suddenly.

  “I thought we were running.”

  “God, are you trying to kill me? And I can’t smoke if we run,” Jen said, pulling a pack of Marlboro Lights and a plastic banana-yellow lighter out of her pocket. “Hey, watch where you step, there’s a pile of dog shit right there.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Okay, this is it. Our last official study group before finals,” Nick announced.

  Addison hummed the theme music to Jaws.

  “I thought we were meeting next weekend,” Lexi said.

  “Only informally,” Nick replied.

  “As opposed to what?” I asked. “It’s not like our study groups have been run with military efficiency up until now.”

  “This is the last time we’re going to go over the reading assignments,” Dana explained. “Next Sunday we’re going to exchange outlines, and then we’re all on our own.”

  “When was this decided?” I asked.

  “We took a vote while you were in the bathroom,” Jen told me.

  “Oh, okay, then. As long as it was decided democratically,” I said.

  “And, as an initial matter of business, don’t forget you’re all invited over to my house for Thanksgiving,” Jen said.

  Finals started eleven days after Thanksgiving, so almost everyone was staying in New Orleans for the long weekend. Everyone but me, that was. Graham and I were spending the holiday with my aunt and her family in suburban Philadelphia. And although I was looking forward to seeing everyone and getting away for a few days, I was starting to regret my decision to travel.

  Up until now it had seemed like our first year would drag on forever (a truly twisted version of the fabled fairy-tale curse where instead of being able to sleep for one hundred years like lucky Sleeping Beauty, I’d spent what felt like the same amount of time stuck in a library cubicle). But now that finals were just a little over two weeks away—just two weeks!—I really didn’t have the time to spare for holiday festivities.

  “Are you cooking?” Lexi asked.

  “As if. Sean’s going to do all of it while I lock myself away to study. But don’t worry, he’s a pretty good cook,” Jen said.

  “I’m in,” Nick said.

  “I never pass up a free meal,” Addison said.

  “I can’t,” I said. “I’m going to Philadelphia, remember?”

  “Oh, right. I keep forgetting you’re leaving,” Jen said.

  “I wish I wasn’t,” I said. No matter how much studying I tried to fit in while I was away, there was no way it would be as much as if I just stayed in town. Panic flared, causing a tight, unpleasant pinching in my stomach. “I don’t know why I agreed to do this. It’s a crazy time to go away.”

  “At least you’ll get to see Graham,” Lexi said.

  I flew into Philly on the day before Thanksgiving and met Graham at the airport. He didn’t seem at all pleased to see me. In fact, he looked pretty pissed off.

  “Jesus, Kate, I’ve been waiting for hours,” he said. “You were supposed to be here at two.”

  “Sorry. The plane’s air-conditioning system broke. We were delayed leaving New Orleans,” I apologized. I kissed him hello, and he hesitated for a minute—not yet ready to forgive me—but finally he relented and kissed me back.

  “I’ve never met anyone who runs into as many problems flying as you do. Every time it’s something new,”
he said as we made our way to baggage claim.

  “I know,” I said ruefully. It was the bad luck. When Graham and I were on our way back from Italy a few years earlier, I’d been detained at the airport and strip-searched. It turned out that they were on the lookout for an infamous drug courier who just happened to match my exact description. Just the sight of rubber gloves still gives me the heebie-jeebies.

  “Mom locked herself in the bathroom with a bottle of wine,” Jenna announced when she opened the door.

  “She’s mad at Jenna,” Christy added from behind her.

  Jenna, nineteen, was two years older than Christy, but the two looked almost like twins. They were both tall and rangy, and both had a tumble of blonde-streaked hair, although Christy’s chin was squarer, and Jenna’s eyes were hazel rather than blue.

  “She is not,” Jenna retorted. “You’re the one who got her upset.”

  Christy snorted. “Yeah, like your getting a tramp stamp was my fault.”

  What the hell is a tramp stamp? I wondered. I wasn’t that much older than my cousins, but sometimes it seemed like they were talking a different language.

  “You’re the one who told her!” Jenna huffed.

  “How about a hello?” I asked my cousins. While they bickered, Graham and I were still standing on the front step, shivering against the frigid wind. I’d forgotten how freaking cold it got up here.

  “Sorry,” they chorused sheepishly, and stepped aside to let us in. My cousins hugged me hello, and I noticed that when Graham kissed them each on the cheek, Christy blushed. She’d always had a crush on him.

  “Your mom’s in the bathroom?” I asked, once the door was closed and we’d shrugged out of our coats.

  My cousins nodded.

  “She’s been up there for ages,” Jenna said.

  “Although maybe she’ll come out now that you’re here,” Christy added.

  “I’ll go find her,” I said. I glanced at Graham.

  “Go ahead,” he said. “I’ll deal with our luggage.”