march
“I want you to get a job,” said Jane at our next appointment. This was possibly a good idea, as I was starting to get cabin fever as most people in Chicago did. Even though the rest of the country was apparently undergoing something called “spring,” here it was still winter. Still, going to work wasn’t really my idea of what to do on spring break.
“Ah,” I said. “Believe it or not, I don’t really need a lot of spending money. I’m actually saving money, when you think of it.”
“That’s nice. It’s not really so much about you earning cash. It’s about direction.”
“Well, actually, I met with a college counselor—”
“You did?”
“Yeah, and we agreed that I probably should go back to school anyway.”
“Well, first of all, I think that’s great that you met with a counselor,” said Jane, who looked so legitimately happy it was weird. “Was it helpful?”
“Um, yes and no. I’m probably just going to try to go back to Kenyon. I still think it’s the school for me. We’ll just see if it’s the year for me.”
“Cecily, that’s great! You have a plan, at least. That’s a big step.”
“Oh stop. You’re much too kind,” I said with pretend modesty, although I did feel embarrassed all of a sudden. I felt like I was being congratulated for getting a C on a test, or maybe just putting my socks on right-side-out.
“Well, anyway, you clearly still need to get out of the house and occupy yourself. And, yes, get a little spending money. Go out and have fun.”
“I’m not a big shopper,” I said. “Maybe you could take me.”
Jane ignored me. “Your dad works at the university, right? Maybe he can get you something?” She pulled out a piece of paper and began scrawling.
Actually, it wasn’t unheard of for me to go help my dad out with filing from time to time (like when I wanted to escape having to see people). I didn’t exactly love it, but there was something pleasant about hanging out in the offices.
“I guess, yeah.”
“And you’ll at least be around some people your age. Ooh! In fact, maybe you can sit in on a class or two.”
“Okay, Jane. Let’s not get crazy. Maybe I don’t want to be around people my age. Maybe I should just work in a geriatric home or something. All the old people I know seem to take a shine to me—Dad, you . . .”
“You’re very funny, you know that?” Jane said, and handed me the paper, which read, “Rx: Work!”
Ugh. For the first time I wished I was taking a fancy year off, because I bet I could be in Greece right now or something, getting swarthy and eating flaming cheese instead of agreeing to get a job and go to class. Greece definitely sounded more fun.
“Good-bye, Cecily.”
Gina was wearing headphones when I came out, listening to music so loud I could hear it from several feet away. I pounded on the countertop, just once, hard, with my fist, and fled before I could see her look up.
At home, Dad and I got into a stupid fight about me going to work with him. To summarize, it went something like this:
“Jane the Shrink says to ask if I can work with you a few days a week or something. I need structure and to get out of the house and to socialize.”
“Good, because I was going to tell you that you needed to find a job anyway.”
“Oh, you were going to tell me this? You were going to make me?” Suddenly the idea of working for my dad, which was only mildly annoying before, now seemed completely unfair.
“Yes.”
“What if I didn’t want to work? What if I wanted to travel?”
“Well, do you want to travel?”
“No.”
“Sometimes I don’t get you, Cecily.”
I shrugged. “I’m an enigma!”
He shook his head. “Don’t be cute. Here’s the deal. I’m not going to fund your year of sitting around doing nothing anymore. You’re coming to work with me on Monday. End of story.”
“Fine!” I said, and ran outside with Superhero to try to calm down and figure out what I was upset about anyway. Dad and I hadn’t been getting along so great lately, and it was making me feel guilty. Either I was clearly bugging him for, I think, not knowing what I was going to do with myself, or he was irritating me with his attempts to help me. I guessed he was being helpful, but I didn’t want it.
It didn’t help that by this time Germaine had found a job, too, one downtown doing some assistant work at a law firm. I don’t think she was happy with it at all: she came home every day crabby from the commute and from doing boring work, but despite her irritability, she seemed to get along better with Dad, who was nicer to her now that she wasn’t just lying around all the time. I didn’t mind the concept of working when it was my own idea, but I didn’t like it when it sounded mandatory. Plus, shouldn’t I try to find a job somewhere other than Dad’s university? I already knew that place. I was used to the vision of kids in backpacks crossing long paths on their way to class, the fliers taped to the ground advertising sit-ins or walkouts or dance marathons. I had been in the huge, scary library where everyone seemed strange and serious. I had seen the tour groups, wide-eyed or sullen kids and their parents being led around by some jerkoff prep kid walking backward, explaining excitedly how old the old clock tower was and the differences between the various a cappella singing groups on campus.
Dad would be farming me out for odd jobs around the department offices for a few days each week. To start off, I’d be filing for him. He had implemented a new filing system, finally, but he didn’t want to inflict the pain of reorganizing everything on his personal assistant, Sue, so he was going to inflict it on me for ten dollars an hour.
We drove to his office. Dad showed me how the new system would work, and I sat on my butt on the floor, reorganizing in the history department’s cozy reception area. I worked like this, in silence, for three hours. I didn’t mind it, really. I liked organizing things. It brought hope to whatever I was working on at that moment, like everything would be new and clean and ready for the future. Every once in a while, Hugo, the snippy receptionist, would clear his throat in a way that seemed like he was hinting at something, but I’d look up and he’d still be looking at the computer. Hugo always pretended not to know who I was anytime I came by to visit or called Dad’s office. For some reason, he seemed like he hated me, and that was fine. It probably would be a lot more boring in the office without someone to hate.
“Cecily,” Dad said, popping his head out eventually, “I have some meetings at lunchtime, so I can’t eat with you. Is that okay?”
“Fine,” I said. “I understand you don’t want me to cramp your style.”
“Here’s some money,” he said. “You know where the food court is, right? Hugo can show you.”
“I know where it is,” I said. I didn’t want to have to make small talk with Hugo, and I’m sure he felt the same way.
A chilly wind was blowing off the lake, making campus inhospitable, so I decided to avoid the food court and walk to Kafein, a dark and cozy café a few blocks away, where I could hide in a booth.
“’Scuse me,” said a girl walking past me on a cobblestone path that was typically shaded by trees in the summer. She looked about Germaine’s age, maybe a little older. “Do you know where Kedzie Hall is?”
“Sorry,” I said. “I don’t go here.”
“Oh,” she said, looking annoyed. “Thanks.” I couldn’t really blame her for being annoyed. I probably looked like I went there. Otherwise, why would I just be running around on campus, unleashed?
At lunch, I had a tuna salad sandwich on a pita and some potato chips and read one of the many free weekly papers that were spread carelessly throughout the coffee shop. Life in the city. It was sort of a mystery to me. Of course, we went into town all the time for dinner or plays or museum exhibits or baseball games, but we always came back home. Growing up and moving into a high-rise, walking to the grocery store, taking the bus a few blocks to listen to a concert? It seemed as attainable to me as becoming a professional skier.
I took a hot chocolate to go, walked back, and sat on one of the many cold marble benches that were scattered around campus—they all had dates stamped in the stone, for the class that had donated them. You’d think an entire class could afford to donate more than just a bench, but maybe they were more expensive than they looked. I felt like a spy, blending in with these other kids. I played a game—could I see myself among these students? Was I one of them, just waiting to bloom? Or was I really just not cut out for college? My hypothesis was that I’d find 75 percent of the people who left or entered the building repellent in some way.
At first I was pleased. A bunch of girls exited a dorm looking like the Louis Vuitton Mafia: they all wore expensive winter ski coats and carried big purses on their arms and sported jeans that I recognized from Germaine’s closet as costing close to two hundred dollars a pair. They seemed to be giggling about something, probably guys. And, as they passed by me, I saw their eyes glance over me, just quickly enough to know that they were evaluating me somehow. To be honest, I would have thought they were bitches even if they hadn’t looked at me.
But then classes must have let out, because dozens of kids suddenly came pouring out of the nearby classroom buildings. I saw all different kinds of people at once—nerds, athletes, weirdos, but mostly people who I couldn’t really categorize, people in jeans and backpacks and gym shoes. I got cold, and the game grew boring.
Dad also liked Jane’s idea of me taking a class, so he arranged for me to audit an introduction to art history. It was a lecture, so I wouldn’t have to participate and I wouldn’t have to take the final or even do homework if I didn’t want to.
“What’s the point, then?” I asked when he told me on the drive home from campus, and I instantly regretted it, because I already knew what he’d say.
“Are you really asking me this question?” he said. “This is what I do for a living. What’s the point? Oh, I don’t know, how about to learn?” he said, his voice rising. “To sit around with people your own age and do what people your age do? Or maybe I’m just trying to torture you.”
“You’re right, I’m sorry,” I said.
He was quiet for a second. “If you really don’t want to do this, then don’t, Cecily,” Dad said. “But I’m trying to help you. I’m not really sure how to help you right now, so you either need to give me input or just give me a break.”
“Okay,” I said. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll go.” I couldn’t really explain to him that I was terrified about going and sitting in a classroom with a bunch of other kids for some reason. Walking by them on campus, even sitting by them in the cafeteria, was a strange but usually tolerable experience. But sitting with them in a lecture hall for an hour, I’d be trapped. They’d immediately pick me out as a poseur the second I opened my mouth.
I didn’t know what to expect, really. I had liked the art history classes I had taken in high school, but I didn’t know what to expect from a college course. I wasn’t sure my brain would be up for any challenge.
The first day of class, I woke up with that first-day-of-school feeling, which made me feel immediately embarrassed, and then I felt embarrassed for feeling embarrassed in my own bedroom. Since I’d started working, I had to dress a little more presentably—not anything very formal, but sweaters instead of sweatshirts. I actually even broke out the ancient, crusty tube of mascara in my bathroom and put on a little bit of makeup. I wasn’t sure why; I was pretty certain that the majority of class would be spent in the dark, looking at slides.
“You look nice,” Germaine said that morning over our cereal bowls.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked. I rarely drank coffee, but I was already on my second cup. I felt jittery.
“It secretly means you look awful,” she said. “What do you think it means?”
As I crossed the quad later that day to get to the building where the class was held, I remembered what Mike had said about how I could be mysterious if I wanted to. While I didn’t necessarily feel like trying to be an exotic nonstudent, I realized that nobody on campus knew who I was. Nobody here could look at me and tell I wasn’t a student—that I had taken the year off, that I barely had any friends anymore, that I lived at home. For all they knew, I was the daughter of a famous person (Germaine had gone to school with one of Donald Trump’s kids). Maybe it was a cool thing, and not a terrifying thing, that I was going into the situation with a totally clean slate, and no one around to say, “Oh yeah, that’s Cecily: she fights with her sister, her hair looks like a Brillo pad when she wakes up in the morning, and she’s had to see two professionals just to get here.”
I was going to be whoever I wanted to be. I was determined to be optimistic about this.
I hiked up to the third floor of the building and found the classroom. It was hard to feel independent and confident when I was wheezing and my sweater was sticking to my back, but I purposefully chose a seat in the middle of a half-occupied row. The room was shaped like a small auditorium, and I looked straight ahead as I walked down the steps to my desk, instead of burying my chin in my chest.
I sat down, put my winter coat on the back of my chair, pulled a brand-new steno pad out of my messenger bag and a pen I’d stolen from Dad’s office, and lined everything up on my desk. I looked around, trying not to crane my neck too much. There were about twenty other students in the classroom, all silent. Some text-messaged, some riffled through their backpacks, some stared off into space. There was nothing on the projector screen in front of us, no teacher at the podium. It would be difficult to be the brand-new Cecily Powell if I wasn’t even in the right place.
“Excuse me,” I said to a striking black girl with short hair sitting to my right, who was entertaining herself by staring at her furry boots. “Is this Intro to Art History?”
She looked at me and nodded. Not friendly or unfriendly. Just answering my question. I nodded back. The New Cecily asked questions and got answers.
“Hi, everyone, sorry I’m a little late,” said the blond, mustachioed man who walked in and hurried down the stairs. “I’m Professor Gunderson. This is Intro to Art History. Let me just check on the slides and we’ll get started.”
The lights were shut off, I was bathed in a beautiful, colorful glow from what I think was a Picasso, and Professor Gunderson started talking. No attendance-taking or announcement-making, just talking about how he actually hated Picasso, but it was okay because he had reasons why, and here they were, and we shouldn’t be afraid to dislike something, even if it’s famous, as long as we could say why. I wasn’t sure if I should take notes or what, but it felt nice to sit there in the dark and just listen.