Russell came home from college the week before Christmas. The three of us drove to the airport to get him: my mom, me, my dad. My brother’s flight had been delayed by a snowstorm in Minneapolis. He’d been traveling sixteen hours by the time he landed at PDX at midnight.
He looked pretty different. He wasn’t all Brooks Brothers, that’s for sure. He had a plain blue hoodie on and jeans and Nikes. His hair was messy and he had a neck beard going. His eyes looked like he hadn’t slept in days.
My dad took his shoulder bag. I rolled his suitcase. You knew right away Russell would make a huge deal about how difficult finals had been, how tough Cornell was in general. This first semester had been a great ordeal: the stress, the pressure, the competition. His first semester, he confessed to us at the baggage claim, was the hardest thing he’d ever done in his life.
My dad loved this. He wanted to hear every detail. So Russell spent the car ride home telling us about the demanding professors and the three-hour exams. He told us about finishing essays on political ideology as the sun came up. He described the “brain food” and the Red Bull and the all-night cramming sessions at the library, which stayed open twenty-four hours during finals. Last of all was the big party Russell and his hallmates tried to have after finals: making margaritas and then falling asleep before they could drink them because they were so exhausted from so much work.
My father beamed with pride. My mother looked worried for Russell’s health. I said nothing and watched out the window at the passing cars.
• • •
Two nights later, a bunch of other recent Evergreen graduates showed up at our house. These were Russell’s close friends: David Stiller, Hassad, and some others who had gone to elite colleges. They too had stories of insane workloads and impossible reading lists. How had they done it? How had they survived? Listening to them, it was like they’d climbed Mount Everest or won a war.
My dad was smack in the middle of this too. He ordered gourmet pizzas delivered and a case of expensive beer. Russell and his friends were not of legal age, but that was okay. Since they had proven themselves in the academic big leagues, they were entitled to a few adult beverages.
I hung around in the background of all this. Skeptical as I was, I could tell Russell and his friends really had been through something. They had pale, sallow faces. People had lost weight, or gained it. They had bags under their eyes. One of the girls described having to study for finals while her roommate had an anorexic meltdown. The roommate had stopped eating at Thanksgiving. They had to call an ambulance and fly her home to Denver.
In bed that night, I thought about everything I’d heard. I envied Russell and his friends the intensity of their experience. Was there something similar that I could do? With my grades and my test scores, I’d assumed I was destined for University of Oregon. If I could even get in there. If I couldn’t, possibly Portland State. But maybe I could go somewhere else. Like art school. I didn’t know anything about art schools. I wasn’t even sure I was interested in “art.” But maybe I needed to think about it.
• • •
“Art school?” said Richie, when I asked him about it at Passport Photos. He made the hand gesture of a guy masturbating. “It’s bullshit. Are you kidding me? What will you do in art school? Pay somebody thousands of dollars to tell you what looks good? You either know or you don’t.”
I was there with the Canon, trying to talk Richie into selling it to me. He wanted a lot for it. And now there was the small issue of the gas up to Seattle, which I had paid for, plus the fifty dollars he’d promised me for assisting, both of which I wanted him to take off the price of the Canon.
Eventually we worked it out. I could have sold Russell’s camera and bought ten Canons, but I had a feeling he would want it back at some point, which he did. When he asked for it, I brought it to him and he complained that I’d changed the settings, which I had. Then I had to sit down and explain how it worked, which wasn’t easy with such a complicated camera.
Eventually, he took a few pictures of Mom and Dad and himself and vowed to take the camera back to college. I tried to explain that it was too complicated for casual use, but he didn’t think so. My dad agreed. That camera cost a fortune and had all the newest technological advancements. Obviously that was the one you wanted.
After all that, Russell took the camera upstairs and locked it in his desk and forgot about it.
• • •
As Christmas approached things got pretty hectic around the house. My father had his annual office party to organize. Plus his big case was still pending. He was up late almost every night, working in his office.
My mother had her own obligations. She did volunteer work at several places, including the middle school where Russell and I had gone. There was a big Christmas play and a bake sale, which she was in charge of.
Russell, who claimed he wanted to “do nothing but sleep and watch TV,” was constantly meeting up with friends. He surprised everyone by going on several dates with a woman we’d never heard of, Carmen, who went to Dartmouth and was a friend of a friend.
We also had the Oswalds over for dinner. They were my parents’ best friends. Henry Oswald was a lawyer too, like my dad. He and my dad were their usual self-important selves. The fact that Russell had just completed his first semester at Cornell should have overshadowed any stories the Oswalds had about their own kids, but that didn’t stop Henry Oswald from telling them anyway. Little Abby Oswald was taking special music classes because she had a previously undiscovered talent for the cello. We got to hear all about this. My father was visibly pained, but put up with it, just like Mr. Oswald had to put up with him when the conversation went back to Russell’s unbelievable workload at Cornell.
• • •
Another night a different carload of Russell’s high school buddies showed up at the house. These were the friends who had not gone to elite colleges but had stayed closer to home to attend Oregon, Oregon State, or worse. They had to be dealt with diplomatically. Russell pretended to sympathize with their difficult exams and nodded along with their stories about keg parties and fraternity pranks. But Russell didn’t take these people seriously. My dad ordered only one pizza. And no beer.
In the midst of these holiday activities I got the urge to hang out with Antoinette. I’d barely seen her in recent weeks. But surrounded by the endless college talk, I felt a need to hear her snarky, sarcastic voice. What I really needed was to get out of that frickin’ house. So I called Antoinette. I asked her if she would take me to Agenda, which had been festering in my mind as something I needed to see.