After that, she doesn’t see him.
Her mom says, “You never go to Red Rocks anymore.”
Sam says, “Nope.”
“You’re all or nothing,” Courtney says, and that is true. Sam finishes the semester with an A– in statistics, but As in all her other classes. In accounting, Witchy sends her an email after her exam. Congratulations, Sam, you earned a 94.7 percent, which was our highest score. It was a pleasure teaching you.
Doc Martin wishes her good luck even before she takes the final. On the last day of class, he sees her leaving and says, “Hey, Sam.”
She stands there nervous in the doorway and he says, “I just wanted to say I hope you take Geology 102 next semester. It’s the sequel. It’s essentially the history of the earth.”
The history of the entire earth. How could anyone say no to that? But Sam says, “I don’t think I have space for another elective.”
Martin says, “What’s your major?”
“Accounting.”
For a second, he looks doubtful, or maybe disappointed. Maybe not. He just says, “Got it.”
“But I wish I could.”
They are standing there together, and everybody else has gone. It seems like the whole building is quieting down, and as he speaks, she notices the little green checks on his shirt. She sees them individually. Everything at that moment is so clear when Doc Martin says, “Just think about it, if you have time. Far be it from me to steal you for geology—but I gotta say, you have a talent for it.”
Those are the words she keeps hearing as she drives off in her car, and at the café, and in the library. She had pushed geology aside—but now she keeps thinking I gotta say, you have a talent for it. The words echo in her mind, because who is there to tell? Not her mom. Not right when Sam is getting her degree. Not Halle, home for winter break from Williams College.
Halle is writing an essay about sacred and secular imagery of motherhood—like how the Madonna and child started looking more realistic, so the child is not such a God but more of a baby in his mother’s lap.
“Here, look.” Halle shows Sam pictures on her phone and there is one of baby Jesus holding a string of coral beads while his mother (the Virgin) reads a book on a windowsill.
It makes Sam think of her mom when Noah was little—except Courtney would never let him play with a necklace; he would break the string. Sam looks at the picture and thinks those beads will go flying and after that Jesus will knock the book over the sill into the garden down below. “The situation doesn’t look so realistic to me.”
Halle says, “Well, it’s still a religious painting.”
They are sitting at the café after closing, and when Halle asks how Sam likes her classes, Sam says they’re good. She says it was hard at the beginning, but she has a 3.9 GPA now.
“Wow,” says Halle as though she is impressed, and then Sam regrets telling her because probably Halle is thinking North Shore is easy and 3.9 is not so hard to get. After that Sam doesn’t talk as much. She doesn’t mention Doc Martin or Witchy because she feels protective of them. Halle talks about her roommate and her roommate’s boyfriend, but Sam doesn’t mention Justin.
She has made some friends at the café. Jessie, Haven, Amy. They are work friends and they talk about their aggravations and their cars and little things. Before Christmas, they exchange joke gifts for Secret Santa. Sam gives Haven a giant button that says NO.
When she opens her own bag, she finds socks printed with little toasters and bacon and sunny-side-up eggs. As soon as she pulls out those socks, she thinks You are my piece of toast. Then all the other metaphors come back to her. You are my planet. You are my umbrella—all the lines she and her dad would think up on the sidewalk with his typewriter. Sam used to think Poems While U Wait meant poems you thought up while you were waiting for a customer.
Would her dad even recognize her now? Would he say Sam, I’m proud of you? Or would he say, What’s going on? All you think about is tests and grades. Maybe he would say, What are you trying for? Then she might tell him that she has a talent. She has not told anybody else, because it would be weird, and her mom might say, Oh great, geology. But Sam would tell her dad if he were here.
She would say, History of the Earth, the Sequel; should I take it?
And he would say, Why not?
She would tell him, Because I don’t have time.
And he would say, But don’t you want to know what happens?
She sends an email to Doc Martin and it says, Dear Professor, I keep thinking about your class and I would like to register but I don’t think I will have time to do a good job.
He writes back, Dear Sam, That doesn’t stop most people. Also, you can drop and get a refund.
And so she registers, and spring semester she is the busiest she has ever been. She works part-time at UPS, part-time at the Atomic Bean, and full-time on four classes. She wakes up before it’s light. She studies notecards at the rink when she takes Noah to hockey.
By February, her work friends start saying, Sam, we never see you anymore. By March, her mom says, You’ll get sick if you don’t sleep. Sam will drift off on the couch with her books open on her lap and her dreams are all mixed up. Rocks and numbers, payroll and orogeny. She is lying there when her phone starts ringing.
“Sam,” her mom says.
“What?”
Her mom is sitting at the table. “Your phone.”
By the time she unearths it from the cushions, the ringing stops. There is no voicemail, just a text from Justin. Ann fell call me.
“Hi!” Sam says.
“Hi.” His voice is cold.
“What happened?”
“Ann fell on the ice and broke her hip.”
“What was she outside for?” Sam thinks of Ann lying helpless in the snow. “Where is she? How is she doing?”
“She’s okay. Not great. She wants to see you.”