by Dima Zales
Beth finally, if somewhat reluctantly, accepts that as an answer and drops the subject. She then pours us each another drink. We’re both feeling it now, and it hits us at the same time that we’ve been doing this on empty stomachs. We really ought to know better.
It’s ten-thirty, and the impromptu party we started is going strong. We moved down the hall from our room to the little study area in the corner between Melanie Vondreau’s corner room and Tishy Mccall’s large single. We brought the remainder of Beth’s gin and the vermouth. Jackie popped her head in and contributed a couple of bags of potato chips. Tishy had half a bottle of rum. Melanie had a bottle of peach Schnapps and three cans of orange juice. Her roommate Marcia Goldstein stuck her head in, surveyed the scene, ran out, and came back ten minutes later with several bottles of ginger ale and three boxes of microwaveable mini bagel pizzas.
Then Jane and Jessica heard us from all the way over on the opposite corner of the floor, and they immediately went upstairs to bring Mark and Allan down, along with two bottles of vodka, another bottle of rum, some instant margarita mix and a blender.
By now, I think nearly everyone in the dorm has at least dropped in and had a drink or two. We had to open the door to the little balcony that adjoins the study area to cool things off, with so many people packed in and warming the hallway up. I’ve lost track of how much I’ve had to drink, which I don’t think has happened since sometime freshman year. I’m not sure how I’m still on my feet at this point. But, you know what? This is exactly what I needed tonight.
I need aspirin. And then I need to vomit. And then I need to die. That might not be the right order.
This is why I haven’t gotten drunk like that since freshman year. It was a great party. Everyone was there. Unfortunately for everyone, if the sounds I hear from the bathroom are any indication they all feel pretty much the same as I do. Beth certainly does; “death warmed over” would be about ten steps up from how she looks right now. I don’t even want to imagine how I look.
I – very slowly – walk to the bathroom. I keep my eyes closed as much because I don’t want to see my reflection as because the light is so painful. I stick my head in the sink, turn on the cold water and splash my face.
At some point later, I cup my hand under the tap and try to drink a mouthful of water. It takes several tries before I can manage it. I’m not sure how I keep the water down. It seems like this task takes a good half hour.
I go back to my room, find my aspirin, open it, get three pills out. It seems like this also takes a good half hour. I take the aspirin, and thankfully they go down. Maybe they’ll even stay down. I slowly, carefully sit back on my bed and, an inch at a time, I get myself lying flat on my back.
I can hear the wind blowing against the window. There’s a small part of my brain that knows it’s just a light breeze, gently rattling the screen. But what I’m hearing right now is hurricane-force winds slamming against the window, shaking the entire building right to the foundation.
What did I tell myself last night? We really ought to know better.
I’m at Lardner, one zombie among a table full of them. The day was a complete loss. I didn’t get out of bed until an hour ago. I talked briefly to Brian, who spent last night studying and then went to bed at ten o’clock. He doesn’t feel like the living dead today; he was able to spend a productive day preparing for his last final on Monday. In my defense, if I had a final on Monday, I’m pretty sure – even with how I’ve been feeling – I wouldn’t have let go like I did last night. But I don’t have a final on Monday, so there.
Even with the lost day, I’m fine, schoolwork-wise. I do still have to finish my portfolio of lab reports for Advanced Organic Chemistry, but I got a lot done yesterday waiting for Beth to get out of her exam. All I’ve got left to do now is an hour or two of work, a quick proofread, and then print the whole thing out. I ought to be functional enough by tomorrow to do that.
As for Beth, she’s here, in about the same condition I’m in, halfheartedly pushing her food around her plate just like everyone else is. She’s got an early flight home tomorrow, back to Cincinnati. She already asked me to make her get to bed by nine o’clock, and somehow I don’t think she’s going to be fighting me on that.
When we’re done not eating, a group of us walk back to the dorm together. I think we’ve all got the same thought – if we walked back alone, we might slip and fall and not be able to get up and then we’d die of exposure. Beth is hanging onto my arm, which is probably a mistake because I don’t feel any steadier than she does. But we make it back to Carson House in one piece, we don’t lose anybody.
As I collapse onto the couch in the lounge, I feel stupidly proud of myself for surviving the trip to the dining hall and back, as though I’ve just returned from an expedition to climb Mount Everest or something. I’m not the only one; Mark Bainbridge plops down next to me, laughs weakly, and says “Does anybody else feel like they’ve been to Antarctica and back?”
“I was thinking the North Pole,” Kelly Travers pipes up from across the room. Just about everyone mumbles in agreement. Well, we may all look and feel like crap, but at least we lived to tell the tale.
It’s Sunday night, and I’m sitting in the lounge watching TV. Brian’s studying, still. I’d be spending the night with him, but I don’t want to risk having a nightmare and waking him up in the middle of the night, messing him up before his exam tomorrow morning. I’m lost in my own little world. I’m not even sure what I’m watching on TV when there’s a tap on my shoulder. John’s standing behind me. “Did your roommate leave already? I knocked on your door and she wasn’t there,” he says when I turn to face him.
“Yeah, she flew home this morning. What’s up?” I’ve got a good guess.
He’s not quite smiling, but he is standing straighter than he normally does. “I wanted to thank her. For telling me about Diana.” I was right. I catch myself from blurting out that he’s thanking the wrong person.
“Really?” is what I say instead.
“She was right about her.” I was right about her.
“And?”
He walks around, sits down on the couch. “We sat together at the movie last Friday. And we walked back together, just by ourselves. And,” his eyes don’t quite meet mine, “that’s it.”
“No, it’s not,” I say. A couple of weeks ago, I don’t think I would have realized that, and I definitely wouldn’t have said anything about it.
“Well, OK, I kissed her,” he says, and now he is looking at me again, “But that was it. Seriously.”
He leaves out the “so far,” but I can see it’s there. Well, good for him. Good for Diana. And I guess good for me. I still don’t want to see anybody else’s dreams, but I am glad to know that something positive has come from them.
Later, we’re still in the lobby when Diana comes in, and after she pulls down the hood of her parka and takes off her woolen hat she smiles at John as she walks past. She also casually but very deliberately runs her hand up his arm as she does. Seeing that, I can honestly say that Beth was right. I do feel more like a matchmaker than a pimp, and that’s definitely a good thing.
Monday night. I’m in Brian’s room, sitting next to him on the bed, staring across at the spare bed that’s just wastefully taking up space. “Why haven’t you gotten rid of it?” I ask. Then out of nowhere Glenn and Julie come to mind, the way they put their two beds together.
Or maybe it’s not out of nowhere that they come to mind. What was I thinking about them the other day? They might as well already be married. And I saw Glenn dreaming about an engagement ring. Was there a reason my brain picked up on that particular dream?
I take a deep breath. That can’t be it. I’ve known Brian for a grand total of seventeen days. I’m just being silly. Right?
“Sara?” I must have been lost in thought for a while; Brian looks worried.
“I’m fine. I was just…” I can’t tell him what I was really thinking, can I? It’s too m
uch, too soon. “I was just thinking, if you don’t want to get rid of the extra bed, you could put it together with yours and we’d…” There I go again. I really did mean to say “you” instead of “we.” But “we” is better, and I’m not sorry I said it. And Brian didn’t even blush anyway; he obviously agrees. “Well, there’d be twice the room. I think it’s a good idea.”
“I thought about it,” he says, but then he lowers his head a bit as he goes on, “I – there’s a reason I haven’t. But it’s stupid. You’ll laugh.”
I take his hand. “No. Just tell me.”
“It is stupid,” he insists. “I’ve been afraid to do it. I feel like, the minute I did it they’d replace my roommate. They’d know I was pushing my luck, and they’d have somebody new in here five minutes later.”
I do laugh, but not because it’s stupid. Well, actually, it is. But it’s also exactly what I might think in his place. “Can we call it superstitious instead of stupid? Because I’d kind of feel the same way if it was me.”
He’s not totally convinced, but he lets it go. “Great minds think alike?” he finally says.
“Something like that,” I answer, leaning over to kiss him, and then there’s nothing else either of us need to say.
A buzzing sound stirs me awake. An alarm. Brian’s alarm clock. But he’s not in the bed with me. He’s sitting on the spare bed, already dressed, watching me. He was watching me sleep. That’s one of those things that could either be creepy or incredibly romantic, and here, now, I vote for romantic.
“How long have you been up?” I mumble, yawning and stretching.
“A couple of hours. I slept like a log. How about you?”
I did, too. No nightmare, nobody else’s dreams either, as far as I can remember. Just good, solid uninterrupted sleep. I look at his clock. It’s eight o’clock. His flight is at – when was it? Ten-thirty. “Fine. Really great. But I have to get dressed, we have to get you to the airport.”
I throw my clothes on and I know I must look like a complete mess; clothes wrinkled, hair all over the place, but there’s nothing to do about it. Luckily, he’s ready to go. His bags are all packed; his ticket is already in the pocket of his coat, everything in its place. And so we’re off.
When Beth left on Sunday, I only walked her over to the train station and helped her up the stairs with her luggage. We hugged, and she reminded me that she was leaving Tuesday – today – on a Christmas ski vacation with her oldest sister, so she’d be out of touch until after New Year’s, and then she was off.
But for Brian I get on the train with him, all the way to the airport. I go through the X-ray machine and stay with him all the way to the gate. I curse myself for not changing my ticket so I could be on the same flight with him – we’re both flying into Philadelphia, after all. I guess that’s what I get for booking my flight too early.
So this is goodbye, for now. Who knows when or if we’ll be able to get together during the holiday? I am pretty sure we won’t be able to get together the way we were together last night until we’re back at school in January. I can’t believe I’ve known him less than three weeks; it feels like I’ve known him my whole life, and, yes, I do know how that sounds.
Anyway. We’re at the gate, and they start boarding his flight. I throw my arms around his neck, and I kiss him. I put everything I’m feeling into it. He does, too. It feels like the moment in one of those old movies where the girl is sending her guy off to war, and she kisses him like she knows it might be for the last time.
They call his row, and he breaks the kiss. He heads for the jetway, but he’s looking back at me the whole time. I stand there, exactly in that spot, until his plane is in the air and out of sight.
I can only imagine what Beth would think of all that. She’d say that it proves I really am a hopeless romantic. Maybe even a world-class hopeless romantic. You know what? She’s absolutely right. And I don’t care one bit.
9
(December 20-23, 1989)
I wish I could say I’m surprised, but honestly I’m not. I'm barely off the plane before I have my first argument with my brother. It’s a new argument, at least, not one of the usual ones, but I’m sure we’ll hit all the old favorites before too long.
Bob just got his full unrestricted driver’s license two months ago, and he came out to the airport to pick me up, which I honestly do appreciate. I suppose I could give him some credit and assume that his skills have improved since the summer, but – no. I don’t feel quite that generous. Or lucky.
“No, Robert, you’re not driving. What part of that do you not understand?” I only just noticed, I do the same thing that my parents do – when I’m annoyed with him, I call him Robert instead of Bob. I’m sure I’ve been doing it for years, but this is the first time I’ve ever been conscious of it. At least I never use his full name. When Mom or Dad were really angry at me, that’s what I’d hear. “Sara Katarina Barnes, come downstairs this instant!” is usually how it went.
“Like you’re so much better,” is his witty reply.
“Well, yes.” The truth hurts sometimes. “You remember, I’m the one who mostly taught you, and I remember exactly how well you did. I’m not getting in the car with you driving, simple as that.”
“Yeah, and since you’re the oldest, what you say goes, is that it?” He makes a face.
“I hate to pull rank,” I say, but obviously that’s a lie. I do it all the time with him. It might be a crummy way to treat my little brother, but it does have one advantage – it usually works. “Basically, yes. I’m the oldest, and I said so.”
He grumbles while we walk to get my bags and he grumbles while we go out to the car, and he grumbles all the way home, except for asking me if Beth will be visiting for a few days like she did over the summer. It’s funny, that was the first time in his life he ever called himself Robert. I assume he thought it sounded more grown-up and mature, for all the good it did him. At least Beth was nice about it. She didn’t torment him too much, even though he gave her every opportunity to.
I actually do almost feel vaguely bad about dashing his unattainable adolescent fantasies concerning my roommate, but she won’t be visiting for the holiday. Once I break the bad news he resumes the grumbling, and he keeps it up all the way home. When we finally get there, I park the car, and Bob’s out the door and on the way up to his room to do whatever it is that he does in there before I’ve even turned the engine off.
I bring my bags up to my bedroom, and then I head for the kitchen, fix myself a sandwich, settle down and wait for Mom to get back from the vet with Lumpy.
Even though I’ve been away at school for the last two and a half years, Lumpy is still definitely my dog. Mom and Dad gave him to me when I was twelve – he was my big Christmas present that year. It was a huge surprise. I’d always wanted a dog, as far back as I can remember. Right after my brother was born, the day Mom and Dad brought him home from the hospital, I have a very clear memory of asking if we could take him back and exchange him for a puppy, because a puppy would be much more fun to play with. I kept pestering my parents for a while but I’d pretty much given up hope, and then that Christmas morning there was a huge box under the tree. It was shaking and there were yelps coming from inside it. I opened it up and there he was – a beautiful golden retriever puppy.
He didn’t have a name at first. Dad told me that since he was my dog, it was my responsibility to name him. I couldn’t think of anything right away and obviously naming him was a really important job – who knows how he’d turn out if I gave him a bad name? It took almost a week, and how he finally got the name Lumpy is, he liked sleeping in my bed during the day when I was at school. When I came home, he’d still be there and I thought to myself that with him there the bed looked all lumpy, and there it was, that was the perfect name for him.
Everyone else thinks it’s an appropriate name because he sits around a lot and doesn’t do all that much and they think he isn’t very smart, but they’re wrong. He�
�s definitely smart – he understands everything I say to him, and he does whatever I tell him to do and he plays with me all the time when I’m home. I think the reason he doesn’t respond as well to anyone else is that he can tell they don’t love him the way I do. At any rate, it’s an hour later when they finally get home. I hear the car coming up the driveway, and I run out to meet them. I hug Mom, and I go and let Lumpy out of the car.
Just like always when I come home, he’s happy to see me. He jumps on me, he licks my face, he wags his tail frantically. He doesn’t do that for anyone else. And I have to tell him how wonderful he is, “Lumpy, you’re such a good boy! Yes, you are!” and so on. After a couple of minutes of that, he finally calms down enough that we can all go inside. “What did the vet say? How is he?”
Mom answers, “He’s fine, honey. We have to give him the new worm pills and they recommended we try this new food for him, but he’s perfectly healthy otherwise.” Mom told me a couple of weeks ago that he wasn’t eating as much as usual, and he’d mostly stopped barking at the squirrels outside. So I was concerned about him.
“Good. You had me a little scared.” I notice that Mom seems a bit distracted; whenever I come home from school she usually spends ten minutes hovering over me, telling me how much she missed me and all of that. But not today. Once the subject of Lumpy is done, Mom moves on to the question of holiday plans and I learn why she’s not her usual self.
She’s got a surprise for me. Apparently, she got a phone call last night from someone called Helen Alderson. It takes me a minute to process that. Alderson is Brian’s last name – Helen must be his mother. Mom tells me that she called to invite all of us to dinner on Christmas Eve. Mom patiently explains to me how very confused she was; she had no idea why some strange woman was inviting her family to dinner. It took her a while to realize what was going on. It wasn’t “some strange woman,” it was my boyfriend’s mother. Obviously it didn’t help that I haven’t mentioned Brian to my parents yet.