by Vincent Lam
“I won’t make the cut-off,” said Fitzgerald. He looked up.
In the way that a mother asks a child to show her a boo-boo she said, “Show me.”
“I needed to ace this,” he said, handing her the paper.
Ming was embarrassed by his grade, by his lower lip drawn tight, and by her own result.
“The cut-off changes every year,” she said. It was believed that a magic grade point average was required in order to get an interview. Ming searched for an error in the addition of marks, hoping to find that ten points had simply not been added. She could give this to Fitzgerald like a gift, although this happening would be like finding a hundred-dollar bill lying in the street. Among the medical school applicants there were theories about MCAT scores, varying schools of thought about curricula vitae, and tales circulated about what so and so’s brother and such and such’s sister were asked in their interviews. Small groups of people who sat shoulder to shoulder in every lecture shared underground treasuries of old exams, but denied their existence to anyone outside their number. It would have been commonly agreed that Fitzgerald’s grade of seventy-eight was a liability.
“How did you do?” asked Fitzgerald.
“Okay.”
“Most people wouldn’t be so modest.”
“I lost two marks, but made them up with the bonus,” she said. She had to tell him. There was an accepted notion of I’ll show you mine if you show me yours, and she felt good telling him. Whenever Ming got her marks, the numbers first gave her a sense of relief, and only once this moment passed did she allow herself to feel some pleasure. Then came the fear that if she became pleased and complacent, she might fail in the future. She reminded herself of the ease with which perfection could be lost, and was wary of being satisfied with her grades. Now, it felt good to tell Fitzgerald that she had received a perfect score. Still looking at his exam, she said, “Get this regraded.”
“Found something?”
“I can’t find marks, but you understand this stuff. You’re losing marks on detail. The Krebs cycle—you know it better than I do. The problem is the way you study and write.” She said this not only to be kind, but because she found his answers elegant and insightful. Ming’s own responses were always factually complete in point form, convenient to check off for a perfect score. Fitzgerald seemed to disregard the assigned value of questions, and in some three-inch spaces he cramped his writing into tiny letters in order to include the essay-length breadth he felt was appropriate. In another section where a page was allotted, he wrote four lines and drew a diagram that, to him, encapsulated the entire issue.
It was Ming’s cousin Karl who had taught her the rules of academic success: be meticulous about details because it’s easier to lose two marks than to earn eight, understand what will be asked and prepare to deliver it, expect that the next test will be harder and that this is your reward for success. When Karl was eighteen and Ming was twelve, it was as a big favour to her father that her uncle had agreed to allow Karl to use some of his valuable time to tutor the B student, Ming. Karl was the shining boy who filled her uncle’s mantelpiece with academic trophies. He was on scholarship in his first year of university biology while Ming blundered through junior high.
Ming’s father impressed upon her the importance of learning from her cousin, of not bringing shame to her parents. She admired Karl’s easy confidence and the way he grasped everything he wanted—each award, each prize. He taught her a system—a way of breaking knowledge into manageable packages that might be related but didn’t have to be, that didn’t even have to matter, but the facts of which must be internalized, mastered, and displayed without so much as a momentary lack of confidence. To lose sight of any of these lists, subjects, or compartments would be to fail, and if you failed any part—whatever else had been learned would not matter when the time came to see if you would be allowed to write the next, tougher test.
“Well, congratulations, Doctor Ming,” said Fitzgerald, his grin too wide. She knew he genuinely intended it, but that it was hard to smile through his frustration.
“That’s a bit premature,” she said. She rolled his biochemistry final into a tube in her hand and said, “How was your Plato?” This was his humanities elective, and she did not take the same course so there could be no comparison.
“Top of the class,” he said.
“Wonderful.”
“In the philosophy department, that’s a seventy-one.”
“You need to strategize your electives,” she said. Hers was introductory psychology, a course that fulfilled its reputation of providing an easy A+.
“Next year,” he said. Each year, a few were admitted to medicine. Some rejected applicants decided that they had other things to do with their lives, and the remaining aspirants continued to fill out application packages and resubmit them. “I’ll be more strategic next year.”
“If you don’t get in, no one deserves to get in. This grade point business is a stupid, arbitrary system,” she said, profoundly believing this as someone who had completely mastered it.
“I’ll be happy when you get in,” he said. “Really, truly. Lots of people say that, but I really will be pleased for you.”
“Thank you,” she said. Ming believed that he would be happy for her, though many would say so and it would be fake. She wanted to tell him about how she tried to save seats for him in the lectures without wanting him to see that she was doing so, about how she liked seeing him ride his bicycle around campus in the snow—pants tucked into his socks—and about how certain things scared her just enough that she couldn’t indulge her present impulse to lean toward him.
Instead, she said, “I’ll jinx myself, talking as if I’ll get in. Don’t say ‘Doctor Ming’ or it’ll end up being a joke.” She looked at her feet and said, as Karl had once told her, “We have to dissect your study techniques.”
The following day, Ming went through Fitzgerald’s December finals and pointed out that he had mostly lost marks through a flagrant disregard for testable trivia. She introduced him to her scheduling system, in which each week was divided into a chart with half-hour time slots.
Monday
7:00: Wake up, wash.
7:30: Breakfast and pre-read a lecture chapter.
8:00: Bus to school.
8:30: Lecture.
9:30: Pre-read next lecture.
10:00: Second lecture.
11:00: Review morning lecture tapes while eating lunch.
12:30: Relax.
13:00: Third lecture.
Ming crossed out each time slot as it was completed.
Fitzgerald’s note taking had previously been limited to what he felt was conceptually relevant, summarized by diagrams. Often, details were not included in the diagrams because they did not seem important to him. A tape recorder and a yellow highlighter were the core of Ming’s system. After each lecture, she listened to her tape of it and ensured that every testable fact mentioned in the lecture was included in her notes. While studying, she highlighted notes as she committed them to memory, until her entire notebook was a glaring neon yellow.
“It’s not that concepts are unimportant,” Ming reassured Fitzgerald, “it’s simply that they’re not essential to scoring top marks.” She had mentioned that her cousin Karl was a surgical resident in Toronto, but did not explain that this was Karl’s study system. Why should she tell Fitzgerald, an “academic friend,” everything?
Each night they spoke on the telephone—always at the end of the evening so that there was no disruption of the sacred studies, nor a time limit. Conversations began with questions about the day’s lectures, but veered off more and more often so that they had to remind each other of their primary obligation to help the other study. They talked about what they would do, see, and allow themselves once they had fulfilled their delayed gratification of becoming doctors. Ming thought of the two of them doing these things together, far away from her family, yet she was careful not to refer to “we” whi
le discussing these fantasies. Although everything was fragile and crucial right now, it would all be perfect once they achieved the state of being medical students. It floated before them like a transcendental and elusive plane of existence. They allowed that it would be a challenging profession, but it felt obvious that once admitted, the difficult thing would be done.
Occasionally, they ate lunch in restaurants that did not have many windows. Ming was careful to place textbooks on the table, so that each other’s presence could be easily explained if she was seen by any of her cousins or family’s friends, who seemed to be everywhere on campus. Dinner or a movie were out of the question. Between classes, they studied in vacant classrooms. Once, while looking for an empty classroom, they both reached for an elevator button at the same time, and after their arms brushed, warm, went silently into the room, sat down, opened their books, and didn’t speak for an hour.
At night, the phone sometimes clicked softly, and then the sound became hollow with a shadow of breathing. When this occurred, Ming stopped talking and waited for the phone to click off. Fitzgerald learned to do the same. If the other line did not click off after several moments, Ming and her father would converse briefly in Cantonese, and then she would say to Fitzgerald in a voice that was halfway between meek library mouse and breathless seducer, “Thank you for helping me with my study problems,” and all three parties would hang up.
Ming was offered four medical school interviews, and Fitzgerald none. She felt that this placed a protective expiry date on their relationship, and wondered whether they might hold hands sometimes—couldn’t this be entirely platonic and also somewhat comforting? More and more, she wanted to grasp his palms, his fingers. She thought of him while studying, which scared her. Fitzgerald posed unusual questions to professors during lectures, which frequently provoked tangential answers. Ming found herself rewinding her tapes to listen to him ask these questions, and it bothered her that she wanted to hear his voice.
Because of the way in which her interviews were scheduled toward the end of March, Ming convinced her parents that the obvious thing was for her to travel to Toronto on Friday for her Saturday morning interview, then spend the weekend there and go to Hamilton for her Monday morning interview before returning to Ottawa. She insisted that she needed to travel without them in order to concentrate. Ming hadn’t asked Fitzgerald, nor had he made the suggestion, but between them they had decided that he would come to Toronto with her.
“You can help me prep for my interview. Afterwards, we’ll have dinner together,” said Ming. It was her reward to herself, she decided, this extravagant pleasure which was only possible in a city where she was a stranger.
“You get to choose the restaurant.”
“We might as well stay in the same hotel room.”
“Because of the cost.”
“I specified two twin beds.”
“Needless to say,” he added quickly.
After a pause she said, “Not to imply that you would imagine differently.”
He was her best friend and study partner, she reasoned, and therefore it was normal that she would want his company. Besides, it was her parents’ own fault that they would not understand this, therefore she would not tell them.
“Next question,” said Ming. It was one o’clock. That morning, they would travel to Toronto. They lay in their respective beds, in their separate homes, talking on the telephone. Ming was curled on her side in the dark. Her muscles ached as if they had been stretched beyond a natural length and then allowed to recoil into tightly wound balls. She imagined Fitzgerald lying on his back, the sheet of paper on his knees, the light from the reading lamp yellow on the page. She knew the paper he held, because she had given him this list of interview questions from previous applicants’ Toronto interviews. It had the pebbly look of a photocopy of a copy of a copy. He read questions, which she answered like lines in a play. Ming foresaw the aloneness of saying goodnight, and wished that she could hold him.
Even so, she felt panic as if being attacked when, at that moment, he said, “Do you think that if things were different, we could be lying together right now?”
“Fitzgerald, this is the worst possible time for you to say that.”
“Sorry.”
“The hotel has two beds, and the only reason I agreed to you coming is that we’re unemotional friends, and you’re supposed to help me with my interview. Not get me all screwed up.” She spoke as if the idea of Fitzgerald coming to Toronto was entirely his doing.
“But don’t you wish we weren’t afraid of each other?”
“We need to go through all the questions once more.”
“It’s better if you answer them spontaneously.”
“For you, that’s the way. For me, I need to be prepared,” she said.
“It’s more honest if you just go for it.”
“You think they want honesty?”
“They’ll throw you questions that aren’t on this sheet.”
“Fine, Mr. Interviewer. Make up something, then.”
Laughing, Fitzgerald said, “Miss Ming, do you really, truly, deeply care about humanity as you claim in your essay?”
“Doesn’t everyone who sits in this stupid chair?”
“Tell me, Miss Ming, what’s the most terrible thing you have done in your life?”
She had been thinking of this, of wanting to tell him about that which answered this question. It would be a trial run of telling it to a man she was in love with, as it would seem somehow necessary to tell such a theoretical man. This would be ideal, she had already reasoned, because Fitzgerald resembled a person that she might fall in love with. In this instance, however, their pre-set constraints meant that nothing would be lost by discussing this thing that she carried like a full bowl of water on her head—so careful to not spill it and yet every moment wanting to smash it into the ground.
Ming said, “Do you really want to know?”
“I must know, Miss Ming. We only admit the purest of character.”
“Forget the interview shtick. I want to tell you something.”
He said, “You want to confess that you fantasize about me.” They had both come to accept an ongoing flirtation of feigned seriousness. It allowed them to vocalize their desires in a way that—by being absolutely straightforward—they could treat as a joke.
She pulled her legs up to her chest. “I want to tell you something true and awful, which I really hate. Will we go on being friends?”
He said, “We’ll be the same people.”
“Except that there’s a part of me that you don’t see yet—that’s very dark—and you might think I’m a bad person.”
“You mean the fact that you’re withholding the truth—that you’re deeply and soulfully in love with me, as I am with you,” said Fitzgerald. Again, this reality was spoken directly to discount itself. This time, she felt, it sounded slightly too honest to function as the usual throwaway, and given what she was about to tell him, she felt angry at Fitzgerald for saying these words which mocked them both. Now scared, she said, “It’s awful, that our friendship has become important. I wanted to keep everything sterile. I wanted to go to medical school and start fresh.”
He retreated, saying, “It’s best that there’s…nothing between us, then.”
Briefly, she thought of making something up, of confessing to something silly. But Fitzgerald had a good instinct for knowing what wasn’t true, of hearing what didn’t fit. Besides, maybe she would tell him and he would hate her. It would be tidy and finished. She said, “I had this, you know, this relationship.”
“Sure,” said Fitzgerald.
“Maybe for you it’s no big deal,” she said. Then, “I’m being touchy.”
Ming’s chest pounded, and her breath felt as if it was coming through a small straw. She was afraid that her next word would crack, and was angry at herself for being close to crying, for not letting the silly fake-interview question slide away. She had come to assume Fitzgerald�
��s kindness, but now felt trapped in actually needing to trust it. She said, “It was from when I was twelve until not very long ago. With Karl, who taught me to study.”
A short silence, which seemed to stretch. A click, then the hollow tone.
The other line had been picked up. She could not see—little points of light swirled in front of her. The click had occurred only after she had finished speaking, hadn’t it? Or had it just clicked off? Had the other line been open all this time, and had it just clicked off? Ming’s stomach was tight. Was her father listening now, or had he listened? Wait…the telephone silence had that hollow sound right now. Was she fooling herself—what was a sound with no one speaking? Then, as she tried to discern the nature of the silence, as she wished that she could reach across the quiet to take Fitzgerald’s hand, Ming’s father said in Cantonese, “Little daughter, you have an important trip tomorrow. Sleep, please.”
“Goodnight then, Fitzgerald,” she said in a buoyant public voice. “He was pretending to interview me, Dad. Thanks again, Fitz, take good notes for me.”
At two o’clock Ming called back. “So?” she asked.
“We were friends before, and now it’s the same,” said Fitz.
“And?”
“And you are very honest. I shouldn’t come to Toronto, though.”
“That’s fine,” she said, “I don’t know why you wanted to follow me around.”
“You need to focus on your interview. I don’t want to distract you.”
“I’m curious as to why you think that if you had come, which I agree that you should not, you would have been distracting. We have an agreement. Nothing romantic, and so I’m confused that you would think that I might be liable to be distracted by you.”
“Then we agree,” he said.
At three-fifteen, Ming called Fitzgerald again, tried to keep her voice clear. She needed to tell it, the way a scab must, at times, be picked off the body and made to bleed before the finger is satisfied.