“I had some fun,” I said. “I liked visiting Josh. It was nice hanging out with Dad.”
“But come on, Cecily,” she said. “You had a whole year with practically no obligations. You had the year off! Do something with it.”
“I was figuring stuff out. I worked,” I said, suddenly wanting to put her cigarette out on her hand. “I took a class. I sort of traveled.”
“Come on, Cecily. I think that whatever it is that you think is so safe and nice is actually holding you back. Have a little fucking fun before it’s too late,” she said.
“Too late?” This conversation was freaking me out.
“Not too late,” she corrected herself. “Don’t worry about that. It’ll never be too late. Just . . . I think you’d regret it if you didn’t make an effort to enjoy yourself a little bit more.”
“I’ll make a mental note,” I said, polishing off my tea. “Have more fun.”
She laughed, but I wasn’t kidding.
july
“Do you think I’m spoiled?” I asked Jane, seeing her for what was supposed to be the last time before I left for Kenyon. Unless everything fell apart again.
“Um,” she said.
“Thanks a lot,” I snapped.
“Hang on,” she said. “I was just saying ‘Um,’ for God’s sake. I do that a lot.”
“My sister says I’m spoiled.”
“Why do you care all of a sudden what your sister thinks?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess I’m worried that that’s why I screwed up, and that’s why I didn’t end up talking to too many people this year.”
“I don’t think it’s that,” she said. “I do think you’re privileged, like a lot of the kids in this town are privileged. I think your problem, maybe, is that you haven’t put yourself out there enough. You haven’t had big challenges so far, in my opinion. You didn’t think you were up to college because you’d never had to go outside your comfort zone before.”
“Whose fault is that?” I asked. “I demand to know who.”
She shrugged. “Let’s not lay blame on anyone,” she said. “Although, yeah, I do think your Dad might have, you know, let some things slide for you. He liked the relationship he had with you and didn’t want to mess it up by pushing you too hard.”
“But that’s why we get along so well,” I said.
“Well, life’s crazy,” she said. “He let you take the year off. He could have made you go. But on the other hand, you did all these other things that you didn’t think you could do, or wanted to. You got back in touch with your friends even though it was easier not to. You went to class. You visited your brother. It sounds like you were able to see your sister without punching her.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I guess . . . even if we don’t get along all the time, it’s good to talk to her because I can see what’s in store for me. After-college awkwardness and then a cute apartment?”
“Is that a question?” Jane asked with a grin.
“Maybe? Aren’t you expecting me to have a revelation about how Germaine and I really love each other and maybe we’re actually the same person or something?”
“What? No. That’s weird. I just think family is important and you should have given her another shot, since I think you assumed she was the enemy if she was close with your mom.”
“You’re an evil doctor,” I said, and Jane tried to laugh villainously, which was hard to take seriously when she was wearing a cute little black-and-white polka-dotted dress.
“Well, fine,” I said. “I didn’t like everything I tried, though.”
“I think you went into a lot of it expecting not to like it, don’t you think? You didn’t exactly go full throttle—you could have done a better job getting out there and socializing, for instance. But you’re not going to like everything you try,” she said. “That’s the point of trying stuff. Some turns out great; some, not so much. Do you think any of these things have really hurt you, though?”
“I guess not,” I said. This was turning out to be one of those times when it wasn’t too fun to talk to Jane.
“Not everything in college is going to be fun, Cecily. You’re going to get your heart broken. You’ll do badly in a class. You might get fat or have a bad roommate. But I guarantee down the line you’ll still feel good about most of the things that happened, even if you don’t feel good about them at the time.”
“Germaine said something else,” I said.
“What was that?”
“She said I should ‘have a little more fucking fun’ before the year is up.”
“I don’t think that’s such a bad idea.”
“Um.”
“Now you’re the one saying ‘um.’ ”
“Seriously . . . I don’t know what to do.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, yeah! I want to have a little fucking fun. But I don’t know what to do. What do I do?”
“You’ve forgotten how to have fun?”
“Well . . . yeah . . . kinda. I never had to generate fun on my own. You know, I’d do something with Kate or Mike or whatever.”
Jane shook her head. “That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard. We’re right next to one of the best cities in the world. Go to a baseball game. The Sears Tower. The Art Institute.”
“That sounds a lot like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.”
“You could do worse. They had fun in that movie, didn’t they?”
“Yeah. And a car got wrecked.”
“Then take the El.”
“Boy, you just have an answer for everything, don’t you, Jane?”
“I guess I do,” she said, and handed me a note.
“Anyway, I’m just rusty, is all. I needed some time to sort some shit out, right?”
“I think you’ve done enough sorting for now.”
I read Jane’s note: “Fun! Try! Good luck!” was the prescription.
“Our time is up.” She stood up, still a few inches shorter than me in her red, strappy high heels, and stuck out her hand. I gave a handshake I thought Angie would approve of.
“I think you’ll be okay, Cecily. You just have to believe you’ll be okay. Or better yet, don’t think about it at all.”
I shook her hand. “We’ll see. I’ll give you a call in a few months if it turns out I’m living in a halfway house.”
“Goody.”
I walked to the reception room for what I hoped was the last time. Gina was working a piece of gum very noisily.
“I’ll see you later, Gina,” I said as I headed toward the door. “I just want to thank you for all the support you’ve given me this year. I’ll never forget you.”
“ ’ Bye, Sally,” she said without raising her head.
Mike had come home for the summer, but I hadn’t seen him much, since he had a job downtown. True to his word, he had kept in touch pretty well since I’d seen him in January. I didn’t feel as weird about it, either, once I had started working and taking the art history class. I actually had things to talk about. He had enjoyed his second semester at Kansas. He liked going to basketball games. He was digging psychology courses. And he had started seeing a new girl named Kim, but “very casually,” he stressed. “We’ve just hung out a few times. She seems nice. I’m not really trying to rush into anything serious, though. That hasn’t worked out so well for me.”
“Casual? Does that mean you dress down whenever you see her? It’s not black tie optional?” I had to make jokes to keep myself from feeling too jealous. Then again, maybe Kim, or whoever he saw, felt jealous if he ever talked about me.
I called him up the day after I saw Jane.
“Hey,” I said. “Let’s have some fun.”
“Okay!” he said. “That’s a hard invitation to turn down.”
“Awesome!”
“So . . . what are we going to do?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “That’s all I’ve got so far. I’m supposed to have some fun before I go back to scho
ol.”
“I think that’s a good idea, and I’ll be happy to help you have fun. What do you want to do?”
“We could go to Great America.”
“Don’t you hate roller-coasters? And fanny packs? And churros?”
“That’s true,” I said. “I don’t even know why I suggested it. How about, um . . .” I was totally going to cheat. “Maybe a baseball game, or the Art Institute, or the Sears Tower?”
“That sounds like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” Mike said.
“Oh does it? I’ve never seen that movie,” I said. “But seriously, doesn’t that kind of sound like a good idea?”
“You know what?” Mike said. “It does sound pretty fun. When are we going to have said fun?”
“How about tomorrow?”
“Sounds like a plan,” he said.
“I’ll e-mail you,” I said.
I went online and ordered tickets to the White Sox game, and asked Dad if I could borrow the car. He seemed confused at first about what I was up to.
“I’m having fun,” I said. “Get it?”
“I think so,” he said. “I think I’ve heard of fun. I think you used to have some and then it went away.”
“Hmm,” I grunted.
I picked up Mike the next afternoon. He was wearing baggy khaki shorts, flip-flops, and a University of Kansas T-shirt.
“So now I guess you’re all into UK, huh?” I asked. “For now, anyway.”
“It’s laundry day,” he said. “And hell, yeah. Rock, chalk, Jayhawk.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. Project fun commencing!” I yelled, and rolled down the sunroof. A drop of rain hit me on the head.
“That can’t be a good sign,” said Mike.
“Project fun continuing!” I said, rolling up the sunroof, and we headed toward Lake Shore Drive.
The Sears Tower was not that fun, actually. After paying a ridiculous price for parking, we were herded into a room-size elevator with a bunch of tourists and whisked up to the 103rd floor. But instead of being inspired by the magnificent views, all I could see was cloud, and some smokestacks in Indiana.
“This is kind of boring,” I said.
“I don’t feel too good,” said Mike, backing away from the railing.
“I just don’t think there’s that much to see,” I said. “I think this is why they only spent a few minutes here in the movie.”
“Do you mind if I go downstairs?” said Mike.
“Are you afraid of heights?” I asked.
“Apparently I am,” he said.
“Yeah, let’s go,” I said. “Wow, I didn’t know that about you—and heights.”
“Now you know,” he said.
“I feel so close to you, Mike,” I said, squeezing him around the middle.
“I’m going to puke,” he said.
“Leaving! Leaving now.”
The Art Institute went a bit better, although we realized that it was the first time that either of us had gone without a class or our parents. I had just found out the week before that I had passed my art history class (as opposed to failing, so I felt like quite the winner) and was ready to show off my skills.
“Where do we start?” Mike asked, our voices echoing inside the big marble hall. “I used to like the medieval weapons when I was little, but I don’t think I need to see that.”
“Ooh, wait!” I said. “I know something.” I pulled him upstairs past a big bronze, muscular nude statue (“That’s what I look like naked,” I said as we passed it) to the huge A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, the painting of a bunch of French people strolling around on a sunny day in a park in the middle of the Seine. Then I told him everything I’d learned about it in art history. Not very eloquently, though.
“Um, so this is by Georges Seurat, and it’s influenced by the Impressionists, but it’s actually Post-Impressionist. And if you look closely, you can see it’s actually made up of little dots. That’s called pointillism. A lot of people think it’s just a picture of a really nice day, but other people think it’s a representation of social tensions between city dwellers of different social classes, who, like, gather in the same public space but don’t, you know, communicate.”
“Very impressive,” said Mike. “Did you read that off the card on the wall?”
“What? No! I learned it in class.”
“Well,” Mike said, leaning forward, “it pretty much says all that stuff right here next to the painting.”
“What the hell!” I said, and then lowered my voice. “I don’t get what the point is of learning this stuff in class if you can’t impress people with it and make them feel bad for not knowing it. I think they should remove the thingies from the walls.”
“You know what else?” Mike said. “This is the painting they were looking at in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.”
“Is it?” I said. “I guess you’re right. No wonder it looks so familiar.”
After the Art Institute, we headed back down Lake Shore Drive, south toward Sox Park. “I’m excited for a hot dog. And fireworks,” I said.
“And baseball,” Mike said.
“Yeah, that, too,” I said. “I hope it doesn’t rain.”
Of course, the skies opened the second that we took our seats, which were just barely beneath the small, flat roof. Rain poured down two inches past my knees. I stared at the fat guys on the field running to unroll the blue tarps.
“It might let up,” said Mike.
“I’m getting a hot dog,” I said.
After we devoured two delicious, smoked grilled-onion-covered kosher hot dogs apiece, it rained harder.
“I’m not sure I feel like sticking this out,” I said. “Are you mad at me?”
“No,” Mike said. “Not at all.”
I had brought a tiny travel umbrella with me, so we were only half soaked when we got back to the car.
“I’m afraid this day has been hit and miss, funwise,” I said. “But thanks for coming with me.”
“Hey, I thought it was pretty fun,” said Mike. “We saw a lot of things.” His cell phone rang.
“Hey, girl,” he said as he answered it. “What’s up?” I tried not to eavesdrop as I pulled down the visor to look in the mirror. I took the rubber band out of my hair so that it could dry in a normal fashion without getting too frizzy.
“You should wear your hair down more, you know that?” asked Mike, once he had said good-bye.
“Aw,” I said, and hoped I wasn’t blushing.
“It looks nice. Anyway. I think I know where we can have a little more fun tonight.”
“Where?”
“A party.”
“Oh yeah? Where?”
“Meg’s house.”
“Ugh. No,” I said.
“Come on.”
“Mike, no. Seriously. It’s okay. I’ll drop you off, and you can go.”
“It’s across the street from your goddamned house.”
“So?”
“What else do you have going on?”
“A lot, thank you very much,” I said.
“Cecily,” he said. “It’s going to be fun. I wouldn’t take you there if it wasn’t going to be fun. When was the last time you saw anyone from school?”
“School.”
“You need to come.”
“You need to shut up.”
“Don’t be such a fucking baby,” Mike said. “Maybe I’m not the best person to dispense advice on how to live your life, but this seems like the kind of thing that would be good for you to do. And I don’t want to be friends with a shut-in anyway.”
I was quiet. I wasn’t sure what the problem was myself. I had proven that I could hang out with college kids. I had a friend to take me to the party. It wasn’t like I was afraid of there being any kind of fight with the people there. But I just wanted to go home and watch TV. And not see Meg.
Kate and I met in high school, but Meg had been my friend since grade school. Until about the end of junior year in high school
, when suddenly she became this totally fake bitch. Also she made out with Mike one night and didn’t tell me about it for four months.
I used to hang out with Meg and Mike separately until junior year, when the three of us were in a study group together in history. I didn’t really notice, maybe, how much fun we were having, working and taking breaks to look at the yearbook and make fun of people. But Meg did. We began hanging out more together, the three of us, going to movies and a few concerts at the Metro, this noisy dark club in Chicago that was relatively close and located in a busy-enough neighborhood that Dad thought was safe if we had a male chaperone. One night Meg called up Mike and they ended up hanging out at his house. They listened to music. They kissed.
“I just thought you should know,” she had eventually told me. Our friendship was already strained at that point. We seemed to be pissing each other off more—I thought she was acting irritable and bitchy; she claimed I was immature and rude. She had asked to have lunch together that day, which I thought was kind of weird since we hadn’t eaten together for a few weeks. We were sitting on a park bench downtown eating chicken wings, trying not to get too messy.
“I don’t know if I still like him,” Meg said. “But nothing else has been going on. I just—”
“Thought I should know, thanks,” I said, cutting her off. “Anyway, I gotta get back to class.” I tossed my bag of bones in the trash and walked back to school, leaving Meg with her car. I never brought it up with Mike, he never brought it up with me, and it was all much easier, since he didn’t seem to be hanging out with Meg anymore after that anyway.
Meg and I never had, like, a huge door-slamming, face-slapping, all-out fight. But after she told me that she made out with Mike, I think I talked to her about two more times, ever. It had been a little awkward avoiding someone who lived so close to me, but it’s easier when she’s trying to avoid you, too. I don’t think Meg wanted to have to explain or apologize, which was fine because I didn’t want to hear it.
“What do you think everybody thinks of me?” I asked suddenly, as we got closer to my house.
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