by Ben Karwan
‘Why did you learn three languages?’ asks Aaron. The question has obviously been on his mind for a while.
Marjolijn politely corrects him – she speaks five languages – and gives a quick rundown of her reasons.
‘What order did you learn them?’ asks Teddy, speaking for the first time since his failure of an introduction. I’m almost embarrassed for him, and hope he isn’t making Marjolijn uncomfortable.
‘I learned Dutch as my first language and Arabic as a small child – my mother is Lebanese – and I learned English at school,’ she says. ‘German and Polish came in my early adolescence, as I made a number of German friends and my mother had a close bond with a Polish family, who now reside in Australia.’
Around eight o’clock, Mum arrives home.
‘Hi honey,’ says Dad. We’re all still around the dinner table even though we’ve finished eating. ‘I thought you were working late?’
‘I was supposed to cover for someone in the ER but they cancelled their plans.’ She places a box on the bench and her handbag next to it. ‘I’m Lauren,’ she says, offering her hand to Marjolijn. ‘Lovely to meet you.’
‘Pleased to meet you. I am Marjolijn.’
The box contains a cheesecake Mum picked up on her way home from work. She cuts it into generous slices and I jump to my feet to hand it around the table. The six chairs are occupied, so Mum sits on the kitchen bench.
‘May I ask if you follow a religion, if it’s not too personal a question?’ asks my mum, and my heart sinks. ‘I don’t know a lot about the Dutch culture, I’m afraid.’
‘Catholicism is the most prevalent religion in the Netherlands, though I myself do not subscribe to any of the monotheistic doctrines,’ she says. ‘But I do envy those with faith.’
I wait for Mum’s lecture preaching Christianity but it never comes.
‘Thank you very much for your hospitality,’ says Marjolijn at around nine-thirty. ‘I had a lovely time meeting you all. Hopefully you find your tongue next time,’ she adds to Teddy.
‘Are you sure you don’t need a lift somewhere?’ says my dad.
‘No, I appreciate the offer but I have already arranged a lift from a fellow cast mate. Please, if you ever find yourselves in Amsterdam, do not hesitate to contact me. I hope we stay in touch.’ She gives us all a final hug and disappears through the door.
Teddy releases all his tension as soon as she’s gone. ‘I can’t believe I choked. That was probably the most famous person I’ll ever meet.’ He looks furious with himself.
‘We should probably head off, too,’ says Elliot. ‘Come on, Smooth-Talking Theodore C. Block.’
Teddy’s still shaking his head at himself when he leaves.
‘Good luck with your offers tomorrow,’ Mum calls after them.
I freeze. I completely forgot that university offers are coming out tomorrow.
Chapter Twenty-five
In the morning I’m incredibly nervous about checking to see if I have an offer. I spent all my time worrying about Mum’s reaction but now that I’ve decided this is what I want, I don’t know what I’ll do if I don’t get an offer.
The clock ticks over to nine am. I log in and my profile pops up on the screen, with a dialogue box.
‘One new message.’
I click on it, half-expecting an apology and encouragement to reapply next year. But it isn’t a rejection letter at all.
I got in!
Oh my God!
It’s all I can do not to squeal and jump around. This is actually happening – a Bachelor of Arts. The message outlines the course requirements and how to accept the offer, followed by a link to the course website.
I click on the link. The website lists a number of fields from which we can choose one or two majors. A few jump out at me, including Linguistics and Creative and Professional Writing. Three years of writing! This is amazing!
I read further and find a section that lists the languages that we can study. Italian, French, German, Arabic, Dutch … The last one catches my eye.
My bedroom door opens and my parents’ heads poke in. ‘How’d you go, Princess?’
‘I … uh … really well, I guess. I have an offer for a BA.’
I expect Mum to criticise the course but she doesn’t. ‘Congratulations,’ she says. ‘That’s what you wanted, right?’
‘Yeah, it is,’ I say. I keep scrolling up and down the information page, trying to absorb as much as possible. Mum being positive about it just makes it sweeter. It’s going to make the next few years so much easier for me if she’s supportive. I look over at her and smile.
‘Have you had a look at the subject options?’ asks Dad, sitting himself on my bed.
‘Yeah, I’m just doing that now. Creative and Professional Writing is jumping out at me; it looks great. It’s a mixture of creative writing, literature and journalism, I think. And from what it says here, we can do another major if we want to. I’m thinking I might pick up a second language.’
‘That,’ says Dad, ‘sounds like a very good idea.’
‘Before you enrol in a language course,’ starts Mum, and I expect her to say ‘explore your options,’ but she says, ‘double-check it’s a beginner level one.’
I feel like my smile stretches right off my face. I thought maybe she was going to be okay with the course, but now she’s actively trying to help. I just want to hug her. I want to hug everybody right now – I’m actually going to uni to study what I want!
I click on the link to read about Dutch and it says they have three streams: one for beginners; an intermediate level, for those who studied Dutch in year twelve; and an advanced course.
Marjolijn’s comment about laziness has really stuck with me. Maybe Dutch won’t be the most useful language in terms of the amount of people who speak it, but I hope to stay friends with Marjolijn. And, like she said, it’s lazy for me to expect everyone else, her included, to speak English.
Mum and Dad both give me a huge hug.
‘I’m so proud of you,’ Mum whispers into my ear.
My smile just keeps growing. ‘Thanks, Mum.’
I text Elliot to tell him about my course as soon as my parents leave. He replies almost immediately saying he got into his first-preference law degree.
I bounce around the house all morning, not having an outlet for my excitement. I still owe Elliot a payback for writing on my arm, so I ask Mum if I can borrow her car to go to the shops. I tell her I need to pick something up for Elliot, which is a half-truth.
In a stroke of good fortune, the hi-fi store is having a sale with twenty-five per cent off DVDs. I snake my way through the aisles until I have a collection of films that a) are really old, b) are really bad or c) I know Elliot hates.
The cashier gives me the weirdest look when I hand him nearly two hundred dollars’ worth of terrible movies but he has the professionalism not to comment.
Loaded with the DVDs, I drive home. Once I get to our street, I notice Vincent isn’t in Elliot’s driveway.
I ring the doorbell and wait.
‘Jennifer,’ says Mrs Carter, opening the door, ‘how lovely to see you. I’m afraid Elliot is out at the moment.’
‘That’s what I was hoping. Listen, this is probably going to sound weird, but while we were away, Elliot and I pranked each other a bit. I was hoping you could let me into –’
She holds up her hands to silence me. ‘Say no more. As long as nothing is irreparably damaged, go for your life.’
‘Thanks,’ I say, and scurry forward towards his bedroom. ‘How long do you think he’ll be gone?’
‘He should be home in about an hour. Is that enough time?’
‘Plenty, thank you.’
I carry the bag of DVDs into his room and close the door. Typing any changes I make into my phone so it will be easy to undo later, I take all the DVDs off his shelf and replace the disks with the ones I bought, making sure the movies he really hates end up inside the covers of the movies he particularly lo
ves.
Once I finish, I put all of the new DVD covers (containing his old movies) into the bag and go back home, satisfied with myself.
The only problem with my prank is that I have no idea how long it will take Elliot to discover it. I could’ve used two hundred dollars a lot more wisely and it won’t even be worth it if he finds out what I’ve done straightaway.
I’m busted when he taps on my window that night, looking unimpressed.
‘Hi Elliot,’ I say after removing the flyscreen. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘I hate you,’ he says.
I grin at him. ‘Good heavens, why do you say that?’
‘Hmmm, let’s think. I went to put on Saw before. Imagine my surprise when I opened the cover and it wasn’t inside.’
I fake a gasp. ‘You mean the case was empty?’
‘Instead,’ he continues, ‘I found a copy of Calamity Jane.’
‘Let me use my metaphorical beard of wisdom to help you with your conundrum,’ I say, miming a stroking action from my chin to my ribs. ‘Maybe you’ve lost the ability to read?’
‘Jen, this is quickly losing its hilarity.’
‘No,’ I correct, ‘I don’t think it is.’
Look of Doom.
‘Fine,’ I say. I search under my bed for the Calamity Jane DVD cover and throw it back at him, leaving the others where they are. (He hasn’t yet figured out I switched a whole bunch.)
Once I give him back his DVD, we both congratulate each other on our uni offers with more sincerity than we had over text message.
‘Is your mum okay with you doing arts?’ asks Elliot.
‘Yeah, I think so. She’s actually been really supportive.’ I smile as I speak.
‘That’s so good,’ says Elliot. ‘What about you? Are you excited?’
‘Yeah, I am,’ I say, ‘but it’s weird – I’m so nervous. I’m not going to pull out or anything but I have this funny feeling in my stomach. I don’t like not knowing what’s coming.’
‘That’s a fairly natural response, I think. It’ll be exciting and so much fun. We won’t have to deal with high-school drama anymore.
‘I know, it’s a stupid feeling.’
‘That’s the inherent thing about feelings,’ says Elliot, with a smirk. ‘They’re valid, simply by virtue of being felt.’
He can be a real smart-arse, that kid.
Chapter Twenty-six
High school didn’t prepare me for university in the slightest. Our teachers always told us that at uni, if we were a minute late to class, the doors would be locked and we’d be marked absent, and that nobody would remind us about assignment dates and we would be expected to do all of our learning by ourselves.
Maybe it’s just that I’m only in my second week and they’re trying not to scare us off early but I already have the due dates for my major assignments in three of my classes, one of my professors told us in the first lecture last week that he’d like to start his morning lecture ten minutes late – he wants time to have his morning coffee and cigarette – and all of my lecturers have office hours and actively encourage us to come to them with any questions or concerns we have about the course and the content. They don’t exactly give off the aura of ‘do it by yourself because I’m not going to help you’ that our high-school teachers prepared us for.
In true first-year style, I scored a horrible timetable for my first semester. I’m taking two writing classes, each of which has a one-hour lecture and a two-hour tutorial per week, and my Dutch and Literature classes each have two hour-long lectures and a one-hour tutorial. Yet these twelve hours of class time are spread over four days.
Today I’m filling the break between my lecture and my tutorial by meeting Elliot for lunch. He goes to the top uni in the state, which is only about fifteen minutes from my campus.
The professor finishes his lecture by instructing us to take notes on the excerpt of Monkey Grip in the reader before class next week and reminds us that our tutorials begin this week. ‘Please make sure you double-check your timetable. It has been updated a number of times over the past few weeks and I don’t want any of you heading off to the wrong room.’
I slip my notebook into my backpack and file out of the theatre behind my classmates. Just being at uni is still kind of a surreal experience.
Once we’re out the door, everyone disperses, going off in different directions. At school, everyone followed the same study pattern and it was uncommon to find somebody who wasn’t studying at least three of the same subjects as you. But uni is different. With the way my course is structured, some of my peers could be headed from the writing lecture to criminology, others could be headed to ecology. Or economics. People can really do whatever they like here.
I have to walk through a group of smokers, who are taking up a small alleyway, to get to the tram stop. I quietly excuse myself as I slip between them, through the cloud of cigarette smoke, trying not to inhale. The urge to cough builds inside me but I wait until I’m out of their line of sight to do so.
About twenty students climb onto the same tram, which is already packed. I take one of the only remaining seats, next to an old lady who shifts her handbag across to make room.
‘Just finished uni, have you?’ she says with a smile. ‘Make the most of it, because you’ll miss it when it’s gone. What are you studying?’
I smile back and tell her about my course. My gut reaction on receiving my offer was to do a double major in Creative and Professional Writing and Dutch. But after attending a few information sessions and talking to course advisors, I’ve ended up with a much more complex study plan. As part of my Bachelor of Arts I’m majoring in Creative and Professional Writing and taking a minor in Literature. Although it adds an extra semester to my study, I’ve decided to take Dutch as part of a Diploma of Languages. I can cross-credit some of my second-year Dutch subjects towards both my Bachelor’s and my Diploma.
The old lady chuckles. ‘Things weren’t that complex back in my day,’ she says. ‘What type of writing do you do?’
‘Well, I don’t actually do a whole lot in my free time but the course covers heaps of stuff. Short stories, novels, scripts – a few different creative types – but we also do journalistic writing, interviewing and editing techniques and stuff like that.’
‘Sounds fascinating.’
‘What about you?’ I ask. ‘How do you spend your days?’
Her answer surprises me. She’s easily in her late seventies, if not older, yet is still a working academic and a practising veterinarian. She’s on her way to Elliot’s uni, where she has a class to teach on advanced surgical procedures in veterinary medicine. Her class, she says, is one of the last classes people take before becoming qualified vets.
I don’t often think about skills like that being taught. Mum probably went through a similar thing, learning how to perform surgery on people. I imagined that she studied textbooks until she knew human anatomy backwards and could perform surgery with little to no hassle. I’m not sure how comfortable I’d be if I were the first patient a young surgeon ever operated on.
I say goodbye to my travel companion at the tram stop as we head off in opposite directions. It takes me about ten minutes to find the cafe Elliot told me to meet him at; the campus has such a complex layout.
Elliot greets me with a hug and we find a table.
Since high school has finished and we’re no longer driving across the country together, it feels weird not seeing Elliot every day. To be fair it’s only been three or four days since I last saw him but it feels like much longer.
‘How was your first week?’ I ask. ‘I feel like I’ve hardly spoken to you.’
‘I already have three assignments due by Friday,’ he says. ‘They’re giving us all this stuff to memorise. If we don’t understand all the basic terminology and really simple stuff, we’re going to have no chance of understanding case law and the more complex stuff.’ His bag bulges with textbooks. The zip is a few centimetres away from
being fully closed. It looks ridiculously heavy.
‘You know my dad said he’ll help you with anything you’re stuck on, right?’ Dad tells me to pass on that message at least once a day. He likes Elliot and he likes the law, so he said he’s happy to tutor Elliot if he wants.
‘Your dad’s a superstar. I don’t want him to do my work for me, though.’
‘I know,’ I say. ‘I’m pretty sure he means he’ll help explain things if you get stuck or confused or whatever. You know, talk you through the judgements and laws … I don’t really know what I’m talking about.’
‘You don’t say?’
‘Shut your face. Just ask Dad if you need help.’
Elliot smiles his stupid half-smile. ‘What about you?’ he says. ‘How was your first week?’
I tell him about my bad timetable and how unlike all my expectations uni has turned out to be.
‘Made lots of friends?’
‘Not yet,’ I say, ‘but I’ve only had lectures so far and it’s tough to talk to people in a lecture.’
‘Fair call,’ he says. ‘I’m sure you’ll make a million friends very soon and find a cute boy and be happy forever.’
I’m about to call him an idiot but a buzz on the table distracts me. I apologise to Elliot and take the call. Our food arrives (my French toast and Elliot’s bacon and eggs) as I answer.
‘Hi Mum.’
‘Hi Jen. What’s the date of your performance, again? I just went to mark myself as unavailable to work that night but I forgot the date.’
‘April fourth,’ I say. ‘It starts at seven-thirty, I think.’
‘April fourth,’ she repeats. ‘Okay, brilliant. Have a good day and I’ll see you tonight. I love you.’
‘I love you, too, Mum.’
‘Well, things seem to be going swimmingly there,’ says Elliot.
I shrug. He’s not wrong.
‘What’s happening on April fourth?’
‘My dance concert,’ I say. ‘You’re coming, too, by the way. You don’t have a say in the matter.’
‘Oh right. I’d forgotten you’d gone back to dancing,’ he says sarcastically. ‘If only you mentioned it every five minutes …’