Pages for You

by Sylvia Brownrigg

  “I thought maybe you had already flown the nest. Or, you know what I mean, flown back to the nest.” Was it possible that Anne was nervous? “The way you fledglings do, around Thanksgiving.”

  “I’m staying here.”

  “Not for the whole week?”

  “No. My roommate invited me to go to New York. Another friend asked me to go to the Cape. I haven’t decided which I’ll do.”

  “That’s where I’m going New York.” Well then: that decided it. “I can’t wait to get the hell out of here.” But Anne seemed to feel she’d said too much. “So. I take it you’re not here to talk about your term paper? I’m not Bob, as you’ve probably noticed.”

  “I know.”

  There was a pause. Anne waited, still as a cat. Her eyes had again that translucent intensity that Flannery found infinitely distracting. The pause expanded with Flannery’s silence, till Anne finally said, “Look, I have to—” and Flannery spoke at the same time, right over her.

  “Do you want to go out for a drink?”

  That shocked her.

  “A drink? When—now?”

  When? Flannery hadn’t thought that far ahead. “Sure—now. Or—later.”

  Flannery watched the possibility travel across the instructor’s face, like a breeze. What it would take: letting go of responsibility; release; the chance of risk.

  “Sure, Flannery. I’ll have a drink with you,” she said. “What the hell? Let’s go.”

  They were both startled into silence by their daring decision, and conversation between them stuttered like a broken faucet. Flannery followed Anne out of the building and into the gray dampening streets. She had no idea where they were going, and in spite of Anne’s shorter legs had to jog some to keep up.

  “So—” Flannery kept her head down as they passed the brightly lit bookstore/café, where Susan Kim might lurk. “You had a lot of students come by about their papers?”

  An immediate cringe. Why talk about that?

  “Yes.”

  “It must get a little repetitive after a while, all these paper ideas.”

  “Mmmhmm.”

  A spell of brisk heel-chatter—Anne’s. Flannery’s, flat, were quiet.

  “I guess it’s a pretty key part of the class, though. The term paper.”

  Anne declined to dignify this vapidness with an answer. She was not going to make it any easier by speaking, apparently; leaving Flannery plenty of room to dig her own ample, comfortable grave.

  “At least you don’t have—I mean, at least you’re free over this break.”

  “Not exactly. I have a paper of my own to write. I’m going to be on a panel at MLA at the end of December.”

  “MLA?”

  “The Modern Language Association. Their year-end conference, where everyone in all kinds of fields, including me, prostrates themselves trying to get a job.”

  Of course! She had a life outside of Intro to Criticism. Flannery would have to remember that. She would have to bear that in mind.

  “Well then, I’m glad I caught you before—”

  “Here we go.”

  They were at the bar, thank God: the Anchor. Together they ducked out of the cold and into its dim jukeboxed interior. The warmth here, Flannery hoped, might stem the flow of her wintry inanities, and she’d find a way to make herself shut the hell up.

  The bar was almost completely empty at that hour.

  “At least we won’t have a problem finding a table,” Anne said.

  “Yeah. It’s probably good that no one’s here.” Flannery allowed the reminder to hover: this is a student-teacher meeting. We’re not supposed to be doing this. It had the desired effect of throwing Anne a little off her rhythm. Anything, Flannery felt, to disrupt for a moment that stern assurance.

  A plump, mannequin-faced barmaid came by, scrutinized Flannery, understood that she was underage; then asked anyway, with a skeptical drawl, “What are you having?”

  Flannery ordered a White Russian. Anne started to comment, but checked herself and ordered a gin-and-tonic. When the barmaid had gone, she leaned over the table. Her eyes were fireflies, suddenly, of brightness.

  “AWhite Russian?” she teased. “That’s a kid’s drink!” Flannery shrugged, unembarrassed. She felt better in here. It was nice and dark, and the jukebox soothed with a series of Glenn Miller classics. “They taste good.”

  “I suppose it’s a step up from a daiquiri.”

  “So what do grown-ups drink? Gin-and-tonics?”

  “Yes, that. And other things. You’ll have to learn.”

  “You’ll have to teach me,” Flannery dared. Before even having a sip! The barmaid brought their drinks, and they waited till she had retreated to continue.

  “How old are you, Flannery?”

  Anne’s low voice caught at Flannery’s throat. That voice: she wanted to own it. She looked away. “Seventeen.”

  “Seventeen!” The startlement was real. “My God. You shouldn’t be drinking that! You should be drinking a Coke. You should be drinking a glass of milk. Your bones are still growing.”

  “So how old are you?” Flannery challenged.

  “Ancient. Twenty-eight.”

  Twenty-eight. Like everything else, of course, it was perfect. It sounded wise; well traveled; sophisticated. Promise-filled.

  “Well, cheers.” Flannery lifted her glass, her own gray eyes alight now, she knew, with some unsuppressed delight in the company.

  “Cheers,” Anne answered. “To what?”

  “To twenty-eight.” Flannery clinked her glass to Anne’s. “It’s a beautiful age. In my opinion.”

  The word reached Anne and softened her. Warmth moved her mouth into a heart-shaped pleasure.

  “Cheers,” she replied again, with a sudden shyness that made Flannery swoon.

  “To seventeen.” Clink. “Ditto.”

  They drank, as Glenn Miller played on.

  “Thanks for the Marilyn Hacker book. I haven’t had a chance to look at it yet.”

  Something like relief loosened Anne’s shoulders. “She’s a wonderful poet. Deceptive—a great formalist, under the conversational style.” Anne sipped her drink. “Something you said the other night about your love of rhythm made me think you’d enjoy her.”

  Flannery thanked God in heaven that she’d never have to know what she might have said about her love of rhythm.

  “What other poetry do you like?” she deflected. So they talked poetry for a while; or Anne did. Flannery had to plead ignorance. As in so many things. Poetry hadn’t, she explained, made it onto her first, introductory platter. Anne asked her what had, besides Criticism. “Revolution, Art History, World Fiction. I was taking Animal Behavior, but had to drop it.”

  “That’s an eclectic mix.”

  “Well, I’m undeclared. —In my major, I mean.”

  They both let that pass.

  “So: World Fiction. Who do you read in that? What is ‘World Fiction,’ anyway?”

  “Fiction—from the world, I guess.”

  “As opposed to fiction from other worlds?”

  “Yeah.” Flannery liked the joke. “That’s probably the kind I’ll write.”

  “Ah.” Anne took another sip of her drink, rummaged around in her pockets for her cigarettes. “You’re hoping to write?”

  “Not hoping to, exactly.” Flannery looked puzzled. “I just do.”

  “And isn’t it a little—daunting, if you write, to be saddled with a name like Flannery?”

  Flannery’s shoulders rose involuntarily, their customary punctuation. “I’m used to it. I mean, I’m used to my name. At least I’m not called, you know, Jamaica.”

  “That’s true,” Anne said with a tilt of her head. “But then, who is?”

  “Oh—Jamaica Kincaid. We’re reading her for World Literature. She’s incredible. I love her.”

  Interest sharpened Anne’s focus. She thought, maybe, of bluffing recognition, then decided against it. “I don’t know her work.”

&
nbsp; “You don’t?” Flannery said, a little too eagerly. “You’d love it. God, it’s so crazy, and lyrical. Beautiful.”

  Then she quieted down and looked into her milky drink, embarrassed. Having, as usual, given too much away.

  So that she had the bad luck to miss the gold that had come into Anne’s eyes, which suggested otherwise.

  “So. Flannery.”

  Anne reached for her hard pack of cigarettes. From the box she slowly drew a Marlboro. With the other hand, she found her lighter.

  “Do you have a boyfriend?”

  After a flick of her thumb, she lit the cigarette, capped the lighter, and took a drag, watching Flannery through narrowed eyes.

  Flannery sipped her drink.

  She watched Anne smoke. Anne knew damn well how good she looked when she smoked. She was enjoying it. So was Flannery, who was reluctant to interrupt her. Also, she liked inhabiting this moment of suspense. Finally, though, she answered.

  “No,” she said. Then, after another pause: “Not at the moment.”

  Anne nodded slowly, almost unnoticeably. But the cigarette had dwindled to mostly ash: she had smoked it down fast.

  “So,” Flannery continued. “Anne.”

  But she had the disadvantage of having no cigarette. All she could do was stir around the last swallows of her thinning drink, clattering the melting ice cubes. She’d have to start smoking. There would be no other way through this.

  “Do you have a boyfriend?” A slight, risky emphasis on the “you.”

  Anne waited. She stubbed out her cigarette slowly, thoroughly, crushing the sparks as though the most important thing right now was to make sure she didn’t set fire to the Anchor Bar by leaving any of the butt alight.

  “No,” she said.

  She took a sip, then licked the gin from her lips.

  “Not at the moment.”

  The two women looked at each other, each wearing a small similar smirk. Flannery lifted her near-emptied drink for a last taste of vodka and cool Kahlúaed milk. Anne, seeing her, lifted hers, too, and simultaneously they said, as their glasses met in a low-pitched kiss:

  “Cheers.”

  The White Russians were beginning to add up. She’d had only two, but so early in the day and on an empty stomach, they were threatening to produce a certain restlessness. It wasn’t revolution yet, but it might get there, and Flannery was pretty sure she wanted to avoid that.

  “I’d better go,” she said, looking at her watch.

  “Seven-thirty? We must be getting close to your bedtime.”

  “They close the dining halls. I wouldn’t be able to get any dinner.”

  “Can’t have that.”

  “Well, my bones are still growing. As you say.”

  Flannery thought she’d gotten the hang of the banter, finally; but then realized, with a small seizure of regret, that Anne was genuinely disappointed.

  “Though I could stay—I mean, I have some ramen noodles in my room . . .”

  “No. I have to go, too. I have to get ready for New York.” She tidied up her relaxed face, and something of the hardness came back to the set of her mouth. She called the barmaid over so she could pay the check and wouldn’t allow Flannery anywhere near it. Flannery felt humiliated, like a child.

  “But you shouldn’t—I mean, I asked you—” She retreated rapidly back into nervousness.

  “Leave it, Flannery I’ve got it.”

  Silenced.

  Then, one last glitter. A flicker. A jewel in the eyes.

  “Next round’s on you. All right?”

  A line that led, with a speed Flannery couldn’t later reconstruct, into an awkward barlit embrace goodbye, serenaded by Glenn Miller; a bland, mutual wish for a happy Thanksgiving; and a going of separate ways, back on the melancholy early-evening street. Anne off to her mysterious elsewhere home and Flannery to the dining hall, to catch what scraps of dinner she could.

  Where she could wonder, slowly, what had just happened.

  Once she got there, of course, Flannery was far too overwrought to be hungry. The place was deserted, with most of the students gone now, and Flannery took a forlorn plate of congealing lasagna into a dim corner where she could sit privately with her treasured reliving of their encounter. Soon, though, she was discovered.

  Flannery had almost forgotten about Cheryl, who seemed to have become consumed by Iowan Doug. Cheryl was not a person Flannery was prepared to talk to right now. How could Cheryl be equal to the magnitudes of life? The great swoops of passion, the certainty of heartbreak?

  “Hey, Flannery. Haven’t see you in a while.”

  “Yeah, hi. How’s it going?”

  She sat opposite Flannery with an overspilling bowl of salad-bar salad: yellowish broccoli heads and withered mushrooms struggling to stay on board a Lo-Cal Ranch-drenched mess, across which rust-brown BacoBits scattered guilty nuggets of flavor. Flannery took a cheesy bite of lasagna, not because she wanted any, but to make her own silent point, if only Cheryl knew it, about the dull folly of dieting.

  “How’ve you been?”

  “Fine. How about you?”

  They traded news and Thanksgiving plans. Cheryl was flying West first thing in the morning—her parents were missing her so much, she said, adding endearingly, “I can’t wait to see my dog!” Flannery explained her dilemma: whether to accept the offer of her roommate in New York or that of Nick on the Cape.

  “So what’s going on with you and Nick, anyway?” Cheryl’s cheek dimpled with innuendo.

  “Nick? Nothing.” Flannery glanced around to see if he was nearby.

  “Oh, come on. I keep seeing you two together. What’s up?”

  “Nothing, really. Anyway, Nick is—” Flannery started, then stopped, confused. She realized she’d never articulated the fact that Nick was gay. But he was, surely. Wasn’t he? “I don’t think Nick has those kinds of feelings for me. You know, we’re just friends.”

  “That’s not what he told Doug.”

  “What?” Flannery was unprepared for this.

  “He told Doug he has a huge crush on you. Come on, it’s obvious. You can’t pretend you haven’t noticed. And he’s so cute! You’d make a great couple.”

  Flannery pushed her chair back abruptly. There was no way to do this gracefully, but she tried to extricate herself from the conversation, the dining hall, the nauseating congealed lasagna, with some bungled excuse.

  Cheryl carried on. She was a determined character.

  “Doug and I are going to the movies tonight, if you want to join us. Nick might come along, too.”

  “Thanks. You know, I’d love to, but—I’ve got some reading I’ve really got to get done.”

  Cheryl shook her head.

  “Reading?” she said. This time even Cheryl didn’t believe her. “Flannery, it’s Thanksgiving break.”

  When she understood that the poems by Marilyn Hacker were about what they had seemed to be about—a passionate, illicit affair between two women, one older than the other—Flannery had to hide the book beneath her pillow. She got up and stretched her nervous arms. She walked to the window. She inhaled the sobering, icy air and exhaled a word, or sound, without meaning to. “God,” it might have been, or “Fuck!,” or possibly just a moan, a sigh from the anxious hollow of her unschooled heart.

  She saw a figure, bleach-headed, crossing the half-lit courtyard. Flannery withdrew silently back into her room. It was Nick. She turned off the light, hoping he hadn’t already checked for its reassurance, and then waited. Waited in the stillness—her roommate was off at the lab probably, as usual—for the knock on the door. He’d said something to her at breakfast about going out later for a drink or a movie, and she’d casually agreed. Yes, but that was a lifetime ago. Before she’d ever heard of Marilyn Hacker. Before she knew that Anne drank gin-and-tonics. Before she’d been issued a hasty promise: The next round is on you.

  “Jansen?” He knocked on the door.

  She pretended she was dead. Or elsewhere
.

  “Hey! Jansen!” He knocked again. “Are you in there? You’re not passed out in a drunken stupor, are you?”

  It was a joke, but she was insulted. What did he think of her?

  “Shit.” Then a pause, as he apparently scribbled a note on the message board her roommate had tidily stuck to their door the first week of the semester. (It was decorated with kittens, but there was nothing Flannery could do about that.) Flannery heard Nick’s retreating steps but stayed still anyway. Wide-eyed. In the dark. What if he was waiting on the stairs? She couldn’t meet him now. It was impossible.

  Besides, she found the dark quite comforting. Quite relaxing. The dark had been a good friend to Flannery these past months. It had allowed her liberties she would never haven taken in the light, nor even when drunk. Alcohol did not open any genuinely new territories. It was merely a tongue-loosener, for a shy girl, and a dance-encourager, for someone who was just now, belatedly, starting to inhabit her body.

  It was the dark that had taught her those tricks in the first place. Flannery took slow, deep breaths, feeling the familiar shape of her self.

  It was the dark that, pulling at her now, allowed Flannery to recognize that she would have to meet those bold, terrifying poems with some voice of her own.

  For hours in the dark, Flannery just thought. Felt. Heard words in her head and wondered which ones she’d choose to write down. A story or a poem? Or, best, neither? Over uncounted hours in the night her mind traveled the possibilities.

  At an uncertain point in the underground journey, she heard her roommate come in. Midnight or one, probably. She heard the roommate go through her evening preparations, find her room, turn out the light. When the silence had stretched into a probable sleep, Flannery got up, turned on her own light again, and started to read more of the Hacker poems. They continued to make her jump and sweat. She put them back beneath her pillow, then turned off the light. Then breathed, thought, wondered further. Then turned on the light. Then wrote some lines on a piece of paper. Then rewrote them. Then went to the window and swallowed great gasps of night. Then came back to her desk. Then took the book from under the pillow, read a few more poems, returned them to her pillow. Then pulled out thick strands of her fair hair, dropping them without thinking onto the floor. Then read aloud what scratches she had so far, in a soft murmur, loud enough that only the writer in her could hear (and not the reined-in student or the timid stumbler). She nodded. Then raided her supply of Pop-Tarts. Then, as the black outside finally softened and gave way to indigo, she let her fingers tap out some lines, and printed them. When she saw and heard them in the rhythms she wanted, she cut them out, line by line. Then, her fingers trembling a little, she placed each thin strip carefully between different pages of a thin book. Her own copy of At the Bottom of the River by Jamaica Kincaid. When she was finished, the book was flagged with a dozen flickers of paper ends, like bookmarks.