On the bus ride home for Christmas break, an idea came to her. Sam searched for a notebook in her bag and couldn’t find one. The only paper she had was the novel Clive had given her, Angel, which she had been carrying around for weeks and still hadn’t read. Sam sketched out the first draft of a letter to President Washington inside the back cover. She imagined sending it to the editors of the college paper, asking them to print it.
By the time her dad and her sister Caitlin arrived to pick her up at South Station, she had talked herself out of it. But a week later, Gaby was still on her mind. Sam emailed George and told him what had happened, and that she wanted to do something, a letter to the paper, maybe. George wrote back right away. He suggested that she wait until the start of the semester, and then circulate her letter, getting as many student signatures as possible.
On the plane to London, Sam tried to read Angel and found herself reading what she’d written instead. It was actually pretty good. She made adjustments, crossing out bits about Gaby that seemed too personal, trying to shorten and strengthen her sentences.
When she read it to Clive and asked if she was being too harsh, he said, “I don’t think you’re being harsh enough. Don’t hold back. Let her know you’re watching.”
One day, while Clive was out giving a tour of the Tower of London, she texted Gaby. Have you figured out day care for Josie yet?
Gaby replied, Ugh, yes. So expensive.
Sam logged on to her laptop and cued up President Washington’s speech, the one that made her apply to the college in the first place. When her face loaded on the screen, it was like seeing a friend, or a beloved wise aunt.
If women ran the world, they wouldn’t be afraid to speak truth to power, she said. If women ran the world, they would use power not for personal gain, but to lift up the voices of the powerless.
By the time the video ended, Sam was certain that not only should she send the letter, but that President Washington would want her to. She understood why George had suggested getting signatures. But there wasn’t time. And George didn’t know her peer group—everyone would have input, changes, ideas. It wouldn’t be as easy as just asking them to add their names.
Sam fiddled with the letter over the course of that day and the next. She stayed up working until three in the morning. In the end, she included everything: How Barney Reardon had decreased their pay, had made their insurance worse to the point where they couldn’t even afford to use it. How the kitchen staff kept the whole college running, and yet were treated as less than. She wrote about these women who worked more than full-time having to take food home to feed their families, having to sell students’ trash to keep their lights on. She wrote that it was massively unfair for an institution to brag about being family-friendly while ignoring some people’s children and embracing others’.
When it was finally done, Sam emailed the letter right away, before she lost her nerve. She didn’t sign her name in the end. She even went so far as to create a fake email account. She received a message back from an editor the next morning, saying the Collegian would be running the letter in February, when school was back in session.
At some point each day now, Sam checked. The month was half over and the letter had yet to appear. Whenever she saw her friends in the kitchen, she felt a rush of excitement, as if she were planning a surprise party that they would soon find out about. She imagined students picketing on their behalf, demanding change.
Sam resumed her place in the post office line.
The package turned out to be from her father.
She should have known. Every year since she could remember, he had given her a Disney princess valentine. He still did it now, in an ironic way. This year’s card, like all of them, was hot pink. Belle on the front wearing a yellow ball gown, holding a book, beneath the words Daughter: Someday You’ll Be Anything You Want!
Her father had also sent a large red satin box of chocolates, heart shaped, with a flimsy fake flower attached.
Sam typed out a text to Isabella: Not even a card from Clive .
Instead of hitting send, though, she deleted it, watching the letters disappear one by one as she tapped her finger on the screen.
She took a picture of the card and sent it to the group text she had with her siblings. There was a separate thread that included their parents, but this one was reserved for making fun of or otherwise discussing them behind their backs.
A text came back from her brother, Brendan, not to the group. Only to her.
Mom let it slip that Dad hasn’t had a single new project since August. She is freaking out. She’s taking all these extra shifts and basically working around the clock. I’m worried.
Their father’s business was unpredictable. Good years, and bad. The bad ones never got easier or less surprising when they came.
Caitlin was too young for this sort of information. Sam wasn’t sure why Brendan hadn’t included Molly, why he chose to single her out with the news. Because she was the oldest, she supposed.
Oh no, she wrote back.
We need to help, he wrote.
How?
Maybe we should each set a little money aside in case things don’t get better soon.
Sam would never say what she was thinking out loud. It made her feel like a selfish jerk. But—why was this their job? All her friends had their parents’ fortunes thrown at them. The idea of having to help their parents, reversing those roles, never would have occurred to any of them. Why, in her family, was it always about not having enough?
Her second thought was of her father, and the fact that he had thought of her even in a stressful moment, and sent his usual valentine as if nothing was wrong. He would never burden her with his struggles. Nor, she knew, would he ever accept a penny from his children.
She hoped Brendan was overreacting.
Okay, she texted back. I’ll try. Let me know if you hear more.
Sam texted her dad then. Love you, Daddy. Thanks for the card and the candy. Happy Valentine’s Day! Miss you.
She put her phone in her bag.
She was due at Elisabeth’s in forty minutes. An awkward amount of time. If she went back to the dorm, she would end up chatting in the hall, accomplishing nothing. She went to the library instead.
Once inside the heavy front door, Sam saw Julian, the Mollusk, with whom she’d had that brief semi-romance two years ago. He probably didn’t think of her anymore. He was leaning against the circulation desk, talking to some girl.
But still, Sam ducked into the stairwell to avoid him.
On the wall hung a poster for an upcoming job fair. GRADUATION IS THREE MONTHS AWAY! THEN WHAT???
She knew the date, but still this shocked her. Three months until college was over.
Before winter break, few of her friends had jobs lined up for next year. Isabella had interned at J.P.Morgan the previous summer and was offered a job there in the fall. But most of them didn’t know what they would do next.
While she was home over break, most people, hearing that Sam was a senior, only had that one question. It had become exhausting. It was like the way someone might ask a child what he planned to be for Halloween because it was October and then, in December, ask what he wanted for Christmas.
Recruiters had flooded the campus in recent weeks. Lexi had two offers from book publishers, one in marketing, one in editorial; Shannon accepted a position with a start-up in San Francisco. Several friends had begun to hear back from graduate programs. Suddenly it seemed like only Sam was without a plan.
She went to a résumé workshop at the Career Development Office, expecting the woman there to be impressed, imagining that she might say, I know of a great position for you!
The woman’s only feedback was that Sam should use a clearer font and not include her GPA.
“But my GPA is the only impressive thing
about me,” Sam said.
“It’s not considered mature or professional to include one’s GPA,” the woman said, sounding robotic, as if she’d said it a thousand times before, which she probably had.
Sam wondered then why she’d been made to care so much about a number no one would ever know.
“It’s an extremely competitive job market,” the woman said. “It’s important to do things the right way.”
In that moment, Sam sank deep into the dream of marrying Clive and moving to the country and not needing to compete at all. She looked at the woman, so smug, and thought with pleasure that there was another way, which she knew nothing about.
Now, red heart-shaped box tucked under one arm, Sam took the stairs straight to the library’s basement. It was empty, as usual. She selected a carrel in a corner and unzipped her backpack, pulling out her copy of Villette.
The box of chocolates sat on the desk in front of her. Sam looked away. She switched on the lamp and opened the book. But she had no willpower. Before she read a word, she lifted the lid. Inside was a guide to what each chocolate contained.
She would eat one piece now, and one after dinner. The rest she would offer to her friends.
Sam began with the best: a ganache-filled square, soft and easy in her mouth, melting quickly away. There were two others of the same variety. She ate them before moving on to the caramels, jaw aching as she chewed each one like a savage. Next, she nibbled the three flat crispy disks stacked inside a single ruffled wax-paper cup. Then the coconut, which she only half liked.
When the box contained nothing but undesirables—two chocolates with gooey pink centers and a foil-wrapped cherry—Sam sat back, breathed in. It would be better to leave them. At least then she could say she hadn’t eaten the entire thing.
On the other hand, maybe it was best to take the whole heart down at once and start with a clean slate tomorrow.
Sam ate the last few pieces, leaving part of a pink fluffy one, in a nod to restraint. On her way out of the library, she threw the heart-shaped box in the trash.
She immediately felt remorseful. When she was a child and her father gave her a box like that, she saw it as a thing of beauty and treated it as sacred. She kept those boxes on display in her bedroom, lined up side by side on the top shelf of her bookcase.
She could see them now—red and pink, foil wrapped or satin, but for one, her favorite, which was covered in a soft fabric printed with daisies. Sam thought she might cry. She wished more than anything to be that child again. Someone for whom all decisions were made, and love was background noise; uneventful, absolute.
* * *
—
Elisabeth wore an emerald-green wrap dress and tall black boots. Her hair, which was usually pulled back, had been blown out and fell in soft waves at her shoulders.
“You look pretty,” Sam said.
They stood in the front hall. Elisabeth fastened the back onto a gold earring in the shape of a knot. Sam thought it seemed too preppy for her. She usually wore silver, something dangly and antique.
Elisabeth acted embarrassed by the compliment.
“I don’t even know why we’re going out,” she said. “A prix fixe dinner. Valentine’s Day is such a scam.”
“That’s what Clive says.”
Elisabeth widened her eyes. “Oh! What did he get you?”
Sam was saved from having to answer by Andrew, coming down the stairs in a crisp white oxford shirt and navy pants.
“Baby’s fast asleep. We ordered you pizza,” he said. “It’s in there on the counter whenever you want it.”
Sam felt ill from all the chocolate. She wondered if pizza would make it better or worse.
When they were gone, she spotted a blue gift box on the table in the hall. It contained another box inside, this one covered in velvet. Sam lifted it out and opened the hinge. Empty.
The gold earrings. Andrew must have given them to Elisabeth tonight.
There was a card beneath the box. Sam slipped it out of its envelope. The card was made to look old, like a greeting from Victorian times: Cupid shooting a red heart from his bow, and the words I Love You floating above on a white banner.
Inside, Andrew had only written Love, A.
Ever since she got back from winter break, Sam had sensed that something was off with Andrew. She had joined them for Sunday dinner the past two weekends. Both times, he barely spoke a word to Elisabeth. To Sam, he was his usual friendly self. But it almost seemed as if he couldn’t see his wife across the table. She’d make a comment or praise his cooking, and Andrew wouldn’t look up.
Tonight things seemed more normal between him and Elisabeth. She thought so, anyway.
Sam went to the kitchen and put two slices of pizza on a plate. She ate them in quick succession, standing in front of the window that looked out on the backyard, even though it was too dark to see anything.
Clive called her cell at seven.
“I’m off to bed,” he said. “I started packing tonight. I can’t wait to see you.”
“Me too,” Sam said.
She had last seen him in London over winter break. A good trip overall, except that he kept pressuring her to decide things she didn’t feel ready to decide. In the end, she felt bad about this. She wanted to be with him. That was all that mattered.
But now Sam was worried about the weekend in New York City, which had seemed like a good idea at the time.
The moment she announced a problem, Elisabeth wanted to solve it. When Sam said casually, in the course of a conversation about Clive’s upcoming visit, that she wished she could take him somewhere instead of being stuck on campus the entire time, Elisabeth said, “We’re going to the city the weekend after he gets here. Come with us! We can give you guys a ride.”
She suggested that they leave on Saturday morning. In exchange for the ride, Sam and Clive would watch Gil that first night, and then they’d all do their own thing until Monday evening, at which point they would drive back. Two weeks ago, Sam thought it sounded like fun, and Clive said he was game.
But now the thought of them in the car for all those hours made her nervous. What would they talk about? What would they think of him?
Over break, she and Elisabeth had exchanged so many emails, said things that they probably wouldn’t have if they were in the same room. It had brought them closer, and yet when Sam thought of some of the things she’d said about Clive, she winced.
She kept thinking about a weekend last summer, when the two of them went to Liverpool and stayed in a house borrowed from friends of Clive’s who were on vacation in Amsterdam. Hand in hand, they walked through Sefton Park, where, Clive said, in springtime, so many daffodils bloomed that they completely obscured the grass. They ate meat pies and walked to the Beatles museum, where Sam bought a postcard to send home to her dad. They pretended that house was their own, lying on the couch in their underwear, making dinner together in the sleek kitchen, all marble and steel. She wanted to return to that moment, that feeling, now.
Sam unloaded the dishwasher, and then went upstairs. She checked on Gil even though she could tell from the video monitor that he was asleep. She straightened the den, stacking magazines into a neat pile, folding the soft knitted blanket someone had tossed down on the ottoman.
She was watching her third episode of The Office when Isabella texted a photo of an enormous bicep tattooed with the letter I in what looked like calligraphy.
V-Day with the stripper’s assistant! she wrote.
What is that? Sam replied.
He got my initial tattooed on him!
Why???
Because he loooooves me? Because we had tequila shots and the tattoo parlor was having a sale?
Of all the things a person might buy because it was on sale, a tattoo had to be the dumbest.
Sam wondered i
f Isabella would bring him back to the dorm again tonight. Their first meeting had been three months ago. Since then, they hadn’t seen each other, besides that one time when he came over with his gross friends. They exchanged dirty text messages a few times a week. Valentine’s Day seemed a strange choice for their first real date, but then the entire situation was strange.
When Sam scrolled through Instagram on her phone later, she saw that Isabella had posted the bicep picture. Everyone was demanding to know whose arm that was. Sam knew Isabella must be lapping up the attention.
Andrew and Elisabeth got home after ten. Elisabeth seemed tipsy. She kept giggling. She was talking faster than usual. She hugged Sam good night.
Halfway back to the dorm, Sam reached into her purse for her keys, and her hand landed on a foil pack of birth control pills, reminding her that she had forgotten to take one at the usual time, after dinner.
She popped the day’s pill from the package. As she lifted it to her mouth, it fell onto the sidewalk. Sam got down on her knees and felt around. The sky was so dark, it seemed like the middle of the night. The three closest streetlights had been burned out for weeks.
She took off her gloves. She turned on the flashlight on her phone and held it, hand shaking, over the concrete. No sign of the pill. She said a Hail Mary in her head, and then another, running her hand through the patch of dead grass that separated the sidewalk from the street. The earth was frozen, hard to the touch.
Finally, she felt something small and solid. She managed to roll the pill under her finger so that, by the time she picked it up, it was smeared with dirt. She imagined all the things it might have come into contact with—a dog might have just peed there, and she’d never know.
Sam swallowed the pill down, overcome with relief.
When she had returned from England at the end of August, her parents threw her a big welcome-home party. The morning of, Sam woke up and vomited all over her bedsheets. It was too late to cancel. Her mother quarantined her in her bedroom and put the guests in the backyard. She alternated between ferrying food and drinks to them, and checking on Sam.
Friends and Strangers Page 29