Chapter 15

July/August 1999

I never heard the word colic until Jamie was born. By the time Jamie was one month old and in the full throes of an endless crying jag, I decided the word was just a nicer way of describing a baby who cries all day, every day, no matter what. Or at least, that’s how it seemed to me as I held him while he screamed.

I went online looking for a list of suggestions for parents, perhaps helpful hints written in a cheerful tone. What I found was a list of things that make colic worse. Certain foods, although it wasn’t clear which ones, exactly. Excessive anger, fear or anxiety in the house (which, I would think, is the norm in a house where there’s a newborn). Overfeeding in what was referred to as a futile attempt to stop the crying.

Futile, indeed.

Jamie seemed to cry louder when Angela tried to nurse him, so much so that after a few weeks, she gave up. It didn’t help that she was suffering from a terrible case of post-partum blues. She didn’t want to go out, she ate only because she had to, and nothing I said was right. If things were bad between us before, now they were downright awful. Just the sight of me sometimes made her break into tears. After the night Jamie came home, we agreed to compromise and split the week in half—Jamie would stay with me Sunday to Wednesday, and he go with Angela to her parents’ house the rest of the time. In those early days, she left breast milk for me so I could feed Jamie, and those were my favorite times with him. Before the colic struck, he was an alert, peaceful baby, a good eater who looked into my eyes as he drank.

But after a week of crying, Angela claimed she could no longer take it, that she needed a break and would be at her parents’ house if I needed her. Winifred and Johnny tried to pitch in, but Winifred said the crying gave her migraines, and Johnny had no interest in changing diapers or getting anywhere near his daughter’s breast milk. So Jamie stayed with me most days and nights. I was the only one who could tolerate Jamie’s rages. It’s not that the crying didn’t bother me; I just looked at it as his way of talking to me. I didn’t know what he was saying, but it was clear he wasn’t happy, and it was up to me—his father—to listen.

Angela provided what seemed like gallons of milk, and I put them in the freezer. I set up his crib next to my bed. School hadn’t started, so Jamie and I had our days and nights free for his long crying jags.

“How is he?” Angela didn’t come over much, but she called every morning. I couldn’t imagine how she could stay away from our son, but I never criticized her. I could tell from the catch in her voice that she felt bad about not being there. I knew better than to voice my doubts about her mothering skills, although I constantly questioned them in my own mind.

“He’s good,” I told her, my voice loud enough to be heard over Jamie’s screams. “I mean, he eats and is gaining weight, so the doctor says he’s normal.”

“How can all the crying be normal?” Angela whined. I could tell it was getting to her, even over the phone.

“Babies cry. They can’t speak in our language, so that’s how they communicate.” I tried to stay calm. She should know this. I read all the books, so why hadn’t she? She’d known she was pregnant for months; I found out three weeks before Jamie was born.

The moment I saw Angela at her door that day, her belly swollen and her face uncertain, my romantic fantasy of our relationship was re-established. I had hoped that we would find our way back to each other, and although I knew things would be hard, I still believed I loved her.

Since Jamie was born, I found myself not only feeling unloving toward Angela, but half the time I didn’t even like her. It was hard to remember why I had loved her before. A shared interest in literature and her smile just didn’t seem like enough anymore. Now she seemed selfish and spoiled, more interested in her own comfort than what was best for our child. I knew I was being hard on her, so I tried to bury my doubts in the routine of daily life. But when she called to check on Jamie but showed only a perfunctory interest in him, it was hard to hide my feelings.

“Are you coming over tonight? Not to see me, but for Jamie?”

There was a long pause before she answered. “I can’t tonight. I think I’m catching a cold.”

I wondered if she was worried about Jamie catching it, or if she just didn’t feel up to dealing with his colic. I said nothing about the cold, and the call ended soon after. It was how our conversations always went during the time when Jamie cried from morning to night.

Just about the only thing Jamie found calming was a ride in the stroller. He could sleep there for hours, so I spent my August days pushing the stroller around the streets of Chicago. It was a way for me to get reacquainted with my hometown, and I narrated the sights for Jamie.

“That’s where we used to go on Friday nights in high school,” I told him, pointing to Rocky’s Pizza. “Deep dish pizza is the only real pizza.”

He snored in reply. “If your eyes were open,” I continued, “you would see Lake Michigan right over there. When I was a kid, I thought it was the ocean.”

One day, I strapped him into his car seat and we drove past my old house in Evanston where I lived with my mother and Maren. Unlike the stroller, Jamie did not find car rides soothing, so I had to speak up to be heard over his cries.

“That’s where I grew up.” I looked back at him and pointed to the house. It had been painted, and my throat tightened when I saw that the new owners had changed the landscaping and window treatments.

“It used to be different. But it’ll always be home.” Jamie stopped crying for a moment, frowning, and I imagined that he knew what I was saying. Then the car filled with the smell of his dirty diaper, and I realized he had more important things on his mind than a trip into the past.

His business done, Jamie resumed his crying, now with an urgent need for a new diaper adding to his misery. But for some reason, I smiled. We drove back to my apartment like that, Jamie irate and me feeling happier than I had any right to be.

* * *

In late August, I reported to the medical school for orientation. We were a small group, just 170 students in total. It was one of the reasons I chose Northwestern. I would be able to get to know my professors and classmates in a way that I wouldn’t at one of the bigger schools. We gathered in a large conference hall, and as the talk swirled around me, it struck me that I didn’t know a soul in the room. I didn’t even know if anyone from Duke was here, and if they were, we hadn’t known each other there and were unlikely to recognize each other now. I had been so busy the past two months, I hadn’t had time to feel nervous about starting medical school. But standing in the room full of my classmates, a wave of self-doubt washed over me. I’d never had any academic problems before, but I’d also never had a baby before. And Angela seemed to be letting Jamie spend more time with me every week. I was happy to be with him, but I didn’t know how I would manage once classes started. I hadn’t even considered day care options, since I had assumed Angela would take care of the baby when I couldn’t. But that assumption, as with the others, was turning out to be misguided.

Before I became paralyzed with worry, I forced myself to stay in the moment, not to think ahead to disasters that hadn’t even happened yet. There were bagels and pastries laid out for us to eat before the presentations began, and a series of facts were projected silently on the wall-sized screen at the front of the room. I grabbed a doughnut and some juice and faced the screen, pretending to be engrossed in the slide show. There were ninety-seven men and seventy-three women in our class. We came from forty-one states and fifteen foreign countries. Forty students were Northwestern graduates. The youngest student was eighteen and the oldest was forty-one. Most of us had majored in biology.

“Fascinating stuff.”

I turned to see a tall blond guy smiling at me. He had a deep tan and curly red hair that circled his head like an afro. He held out his hand.

“I’m Rob Lee. I don’t know anyone here, so I was watching the screen, pretending I care how many people here are from Korea. Nothing against the Koreans, you understand. I looked around and noticed you were the only other person in the room watching, too.”

He spoke slowly, with just a hint of nasal drawl. His eyes were round and deep blue, and they seemed to laugh even when his mouth wasn’t. I liked him immediately, and I could feel some of the tension leave my shoulders as we stood together.

“Now we both know someone else. I’m Ellison Emory.”

“Ellison Emory.” He seemed to consider my name carefully. “I like that. We can definitely be friends.”

I laughed and nudged him toward the seats. “Well, friend, it looks like the show is about to start.”

* * *

Orientation was both mesmerizing and overwhelming. Deans, alumni, students and faculty took turns talking about the philosophy of the school, what we should expect from classes, the forms we needed to fill out, where to eat, drink and live, and a host of other things it had never occurred to me to worry about. Some of the speeches were inspirational, like the one from a former surgeon general who went to undergrad and medical school at Northwestern. Others were frightening, like the presentation by a resident whose cheery delivery was belied by the dark circles under her eyes. After several hours, my head swam with too much information and my stomach grumbled with hunger.

At the break, I found Rob near the door. We agreed to head over to a Mexican restaurant around the corner, and we didn’t talk much until we had fish tacos, beans and rice on the table.

“So Rob Lee, where are you from?” The moment the words left my mouth, I hoped it didn’t sound like I was hitting on him. Rob looked at me with a look of mock horror.

“We’re not dating, are we?” I shook my head, laughing.

“Okay, that’s a relief. I’m from San Diego. Why did I come all the way to Chicago for medical school instead of matriculating at one of California’s fine institutions? Well, I have family here.”

At the mention of family, all my worries about Angela and Jamie came flooding back. My expression must have changed.

“Did I say something wrong?”

“No. It’s just that family is a sore subject with me these days.” I considered this. “Actually, it’s always been a sore subject with me.”

Rob waited for me to go on, and I debated whether to tell him about the baby. It was personal and I was a private person, but I wasn’t ashamed of Jamie.

“I have a son.”

I expected Rob to be shocked. I didn’t imagine that any of the other first-year med students were in a situation like mine. A few months ago, I couldn’t have imagined myself in this situation. I waited for his questions, but instead a slow smile spread across his face.

“Me, too. Mine’s five months old. He’s why I came to Chicago—his mother, my ex-wife, lives here. His name is also Robert, but I call him R.J.”

It was me who was shocked. I had started this day thinking I was all alone, and here was someone who might understand what I was going through.

Rob was one of those people who opened up right away, and he told me the entire story of his marriage, divorce and son’s birth over lunch.

“It all started with this guy named Butch.”

Rob then proceeded to take several bites of his food, chewing methodically, as if savoring every bite. I waiting for him to continue, but even after swallowing, he took a sip of his soda and savored that as well.

“Intriguing,” I prodded. Rob smiled and nodded in agreement but offered no more of the story. I looked at my watch. “Before my imagination runs away with me on the Butch angle, and also before I turn thirty, can you tell me the story?”

Rob wiped his mouth gently. “This story is too good to be rushed.” He laughed at the expression on my face.

“But I can see that you’re not a man who counts patience among his virtues.”

“Do you always talk like you’re in a play?”

“Only when I think it might annoy someone. Is it working?”

“Yes.”

“Good. So, about Butch.”

Rob was right in that the story of his relationship was fascinating. He told it from his ex-wife’s perspective, insisting that it could only be fully appreciated if you saw her side of things. He even gave it a title: “Maid of Honor.”

“It all started with a sandwich.”

I interrupted him. “I thought it all started with Butch.”

Rob sighed. “The sandwich and Butch. Without Butch, the sandwich is immaterial. Okay?”

I shrugged. “Okay.”

He cleared his throat and went on.

“Or it all ended with the sandwich. Cucumber and cream cheese on nine-grain bread. With chives.

“This was the sandwich Clarissa ordered from the vegetarian café around the corner from MarketingFirst. She shared the sandwich with Butch, who Sasha had begun sleeping with because he liked the Chili Peppers and found the everlasting popularity of the Beatles confounding, as did Sasha. Clarissa, who sat in the cubicle next to Sasha’s, offered her a bite of the sandwich. Sasha hated cucumbers, so she claimed she was allergic. Butch worked in tech services and loved cucumbers. By this time, Sasha had been having secretive sex with Butch for three months and she was starting to hate him. His love of cucumbers was just another strike against him. Clarissa gave him half of her sandwich and they spent the rest of lunch raving about its simplicity, its texture, its flavor.

“That was the moment Sasha knew that she and Butch were ending, and Butch and Clarissa were beginning. She hated Butch, she was pretty sure of that.

“But still.

“ ‘It’s too bad you can’t eat cucumbers,’ Clarissa said.

“She was the type of person who would still be talking about the cucumbers. It was nearly six o’clock and Clarissa and Sasha were the only people left in the office. At MarketingFirst, people set their watches ten minutes fast so when the little hand hit the five and the big hand touched twelve, they knew it was time to wash out the coffee cups, use the bathroom and shut down their computers. By 4:59, Sasha could hear the dead leaves dropping from the branches in the deserted parking lot.

“She’d once left at 4:59 as well. It took her a year of being a senior copywriter to realize that she could get more done after everyone else left. With meetings, emails and disputes with graphic designers, her days were a blur of futile bureaucracy.

“Clarissa had been a junior copywriter for just three months, in which time Sasha had never seen her leave before eight o’clock. In fact, Sasha had no idea how late Clarissa stayed, or why.

“ ‘Too bad,’ Sasha agreed about the cucumbers. Clarissa’s breath smelled like chives. It was, as far as Sasha could tell, the woman’s only imperfection. Sasha was twenty-nine years old and felt a deep distrust of 23-year-olds with unprofessional curly hair, perfect teeth and perky mannerisms.

“Before the cucumber talk could continue, Butch walked up. Sasha had never seen him stay late before, and he would not meet her eyes. She made up an excuse, gathered her things and left.

“Everybody liked Butch. He’d started at MarketingFirst the same week as Sasha. It didn’t take long for him to achieve celebrity status throughout the company. Of the ninety men who worked at MarketingFirst, he was easily the best looking. His competition was limited, but then, popularity is all relative. Of the 180 women who worked with Butch, those who cared about such things declared him hot. It was the highest of compliments at MarketingFirst during the late 1990s.

“Sasha met Butch when her computer monitor died. It was a simple repair, but he lingered while they talked. He was named after Butch Cassidy.

“ ‘My mom likes Paul Newman. I’ve never met a black person named Sasha.’

“His British accent made what could have been considered an offense sound charming. That was another thing the MarketingFirst women loved about Butch. His accent was clipped and exotic. It raised his hot quotient.

“Sasha tilted her head to the left. ‘My father loved Russian novels.’

“Butch smiled. ‘Bit depressing, the Russians.’

“ ‘So was my father.’

“Sasha and Butch knew each other for three months before they had sex. This was two months and three weeks after Sasha knew she wanted to have sex with Butch, but she let him figure it out at his own pace. She was impressed that it took ninety days.

“ ‘You are so exotic looking,’ he told her. ‘I love your hair.’

“Sasha couldn’t decide whether to take this as a compliment or as a ridiculous piece of unintentional racism. They had nearly the same skin tone, but to him, she seemed darker.

“ ‘Let’s just keep this between us,’ he told her the next morning. ‘No need to become the latest gossip at the office.’

“He chucked her under the chin and left. She marveled at the fact that he’d chucked her under the chin. She was sure that only happened in novels.

“At work, Butch no longer stopped by Sasha’s desk to chat. They sometimes ate lunch together, but only if other people were present. For three months, they had sex three, sometimes four, times a week. Butch was still his clever cute self, with the accent. Sasha liked him less each day. She did feel a certain ownership of his public image, and when the women at MarketingFirst wondered who he was seeing, it was an effort not to smirk.

“One day a woman named Carol Smalls leaned into Sasha’s cubicle. At that moment, Sasha was singing along to a mindless pop song playing on her computer while looking for a brochure she’d written on home equity loans. Sasha spent most of her days writing junk mail to convince bank customers to mortgage their homes in order to pay for vacations and other trifles. It was a rare moment of peace, so Sasha resented Carol Smalls’s interruption and wondered whether Carol Smalls ever considered changing her name to avoid the cruel coincidence of weighing more than 200 pounds.

“ ‘It’s nice to see you happy again after the thing with You-Know-Who,’ Carol said.

“ ‘What thing? Who?’

“Carol Smalls gave her a pitying look. ‘Butch. After he broke up with you.’

“Sasha’s confusion was genuine, so it showed on her face. She was awful at concealing her true feelings. She could only hide her lies.

“Carol patted her hand twice before Sasha slid hers away.

“ ‘Oh, we all knew. Once he stopped hanging around your cube, we girls all figured he’d moved on. You should never mope over a man, honey. Even when he’s as hot as Butch!’

“There was a note of clairvoyance to the MarketingFirst grapevine, since it anticipated Butch’s shift of affections from Sasha to Clarissa. It offended Sasha’s sense of melodrama that there was never an actual breakup, since there was never an actual relationship. Clarissa and Butch had sex (the night of the sandwich, Sasha would later learn from Clarissa), and things went from there. Sasha went back to nights alone, waiting out the last months of her sentence writing junk mail at MarketingFirst. Butch was still friendly, and Clarissa was still chatty, and Sasha couldn’t complain, mostly because she didn’t care enough to bother.

“Sasha quit MarketingFirst on her thirtieth birthday. That same day, Clarissa announced her engagement to Butch, who looked sheepish and pleased with himself.

“ ‘You have to be my maid of honor,’ Clarissa gushed. ‘If it wasn’t for you, I never would have gotten to know Butch.’

“Sasha wondered why Clarissa didn’t have any real friends. She wondered how long it would be before Butch pursued a new dalliance, and whether he’d go ahead and marry Clarissa anyway. She wondered if it were possible to come up with a worse idea—asking your fiancé’s former lover to be your maid of honor. But Sasha agreed to be Clarissa’s maid of honor.

“At the wedding, Sasha met Rob, who knew Butch from high school and had agreed to attend the wedding after running into Butch at Home Depot one afternoon. Rob and Butch had hated each other in high school, but Butch remembered things differently, and before Rob could think of a way to refuse the wedding invitation, Butch had him down on the guest list and vowed he would be devastated if Rob did not attend.

“Sasha had never looked better than at Butch and Clarissa’s wedding, since she wanted Butch to see what he was missing. Rob fell in lust with Sasha and they ended up having sex after the reception. Sasha got pregnant, Rob asked her to marry him and she agreed. Six months into the marriage, they realized neither of them wanted to be married to the other, so they got a divorce. R.J. was born, Sasha moved to Chicago to be near her family and Rob followed. The end.”

Rob sat back after he finished, grinning with satisfaction over the telling of the story and his meal. I could only marvel that someone else had as strange a story as I did. Actually, his story was much, much stranger.

“You tell that story like you were there, as if you were a secondary character instead of the person’s whose life was changed by all of that.”

He smiled. “Looking at it all from the outside is the best way I can deal with it all. And Sasha and I talked about it all the time—we have the same sense of humor, which is clearly not enough to keep two people together. Seriously, if she were here, she would tell you the same thing: besides R.J., the story of how we met was the best part of our relationship.”

I thought about Angela and wondered if I’d ever be able to laugh about it all.

“I know, it’s horrible and sad in its own way, but it is what it is. Either you laugh or you cry, you know?”

I nodded. “I hope I can laugh about my story, someday.”

“You will, don’t worry. What you need is some emotional distance, and always keep your sense of humor. Just figure out who your Butch is.” He glanced at his watch. “Now, let’s get back to orientation so we can find out how many of our fellow students are from Texas, Guam and the Balkans.”

As we walked back to campus, I had a thought.

“Rob, my son, Jamie, is almost two months old. Do you know anything about colic?”

* * *

That night, I went home exhausted at the barrage of information from orientation, panicked at the idea of starting law school with an infant, a depressed ex-girlfriend and no money. I called Maren, but she wasn’t at her dorm and her cell phone sent me straight to voice mail. Jamie and Angela were spending the night with Angela’s parents at their insistence (“We hardly get to see our grandson,” she told me, as if it were me keeping him away instead of Angela), and Rob was visiting his son. I felt like talking, but there was no one to call. Just as I was sinking into sadness, missing Jamie and wishing Maren would leave her cell phone on, my telephone rang.

It was Calvin.

After we said hello, there was silence. I didn’t know what to say, where to begin. I knew Maren had told him about Angela and Jamie. And I knew that even though we hadn’t spoken since his book tour in March and for years before that, I should have told him myself. But it was so complicated, and there was so much to tell. I hadn’t known where to begin. I still didn’t.

“Congratulations, son.”

If Calvin had ever called me son before, I would have immediately protested. You haven’t been much of a father, I would have told him. Don’t call me son. I had made a point all these years to call him by his first name.

But now, as I looked at the blown-up photo of Jamie I had put on the wall over my television, everything was different. I now knew what a miracle a son was. No matter what happened from now on, nothing would take that miracle from me.

“Thanks.”

“So, how is Jamie? How is your son?” The emphasis he put on the word this time said so much. He knew about the miracle, too.

“Jamie is amazing. He cries all the time, I never get any sleep, and he looks like Mom.”

I could hear the smile in his voice. “You’re in love, aren’t you?”

“Completely.”

And from there, talking to my father was easy. As long as we didn’t talk about ourselves, we were safe. I told him all about Jamie, and he wanted to hear all the details, all the things only another parent understands. The look on Jamie’s face when he’s almost finished with a bottle and his eyes are half-closed. The feel of his virgin skin against the rough beard I hadn’t bothered to shave. The mildly sweet smell of his head as he slept lying on my chest, the deep baby sighs that blew his warm breath against my cheek.

I told him about the differences between Angela’s urgency about feedings and diaper-changing, and my desire to just watch Jamie. Once, Angela and I were dozing off in the hospital room after he was just born, and Jamie opened his eyes and let out a squawk. I lifted him from the bassinet, holding him close to my chest.

“I think he’s hungry,” Angela had said, unbuttoning her top for a feeding.

I had buried my nose in the crook between his neck and shoulder. He was born with a full head of black, curly hair, just like mine if I let it grow out. Just like Calvin’s, I conceded.

“He needs milk,” Angela had insisted as his crying grew louder.

I took one last deep breath before I handed him over. When I explained it to Calvin, he understood how I could have spent all day basking in the sweet smells of my son.

* * *

I told Calvin all of it, and before I knew it, we’d been on the phone for an hour. It was the longest conversation I could remember having with my father.

“I remember when you were born, we always had music playing. Your mother loved Hall and Oates. I think she had a crush on Daryl Hall.”

I laughed at the thought of a young version of my mother paired with the shaggy-haired blue-eyed soul singer.

“ ‘Sara Smile’. She played that over and over. It made you stop crying—you had colic, too, you know.”

I hadn’t known that. It occurred to me that I didn’t know much about what it was like for my parents when I was a baby. They broke up when I was a kid, but things started going bad long before that, and most of what I remembered was tension and sadness.

“Did it drive you crazy, hearing the same song over and over? Especially Hall and Oates, of all things.”

“At first, yeah, it drove me crazy. I was more of a funk fan, or the R & B classics, Temptations, Four Tops.”

“Supremes?”

“More like Smokey Robinson, Minnie Ripperton. I never forgave Diana Ross for what she did to Florence Ballard and that whole Barry Gordy affair. Anyway, it kept you quiet, and when I listened to it, I realized that ‘Sara Smile’ is one of those little songs that perfectly captured a feeling. That late-night melancholy, loving someone so much that it almost makes you sad because you don’t believe it can last. The way you can look at someone and see the world in her smile. He has that line, almost at the end of the song, a throwaway ad lib: ‘Make me feel like a man, now you keeping me crazy, crazy, smile.’ I don’t even know what it means, but I know how it feels.” He took a breath and paused, as if he hadn’t meant to say so much.

“You know?”

I knew. It was how I’d felt about Angela, just last summer. It felt like a million years ago. Now we had Jamie, and Angela was like someone I didn’t know anymore.

“I felt that way about your mother once. I want you to remember that, Ellison—no matter what happened later, your mother and I were in love once. That kind of wonderful, soul-crushing love that takes over your entire being. We had that once.”

I took a deep breath. “It didn’t last. Why can’t that kind of love last?”

Calvin was silent for a long while. When he finally spoke, his voice was quiet, almost a whisper.

“The thing is, the love lasts, but it changes. You have to let it change, let it grow. Your mother and I were afraid to let it change, so when it did, we didn’t know what to do except hurt each other.”

He sighed. “Ellison, I know things haven’t been great between us. I know it’s my fault.”

One of the hardest things I’ve ever done is to swallow my pride with my father and talk to him honestly, without trying to punish or hurt him like I’d been hurt. But right then, I knew it was time to be a man who can admit his own faults, not just to himself, but out loud.

“It wasn’t all your fault. I did my part, too. There are things I should apologize for, too.”

I paused. Before I could continue, Calvin spoke.

“Maybe apologies are the wrong place to start. We can’t undo what’s been done. So maybe we should try to move forward. Since Jamie was born and you’re starting medical school, I’m feeling like it’s a time for fresh starts.”

“I think that sounds like a really good idea.”

He let out a long breath as if he’d been holding it. “So, when can I come see my grandson?”

* * *

Later that evening, I took a walk around my neighborhood as the sun set. Some people might be comforted by the quiet, but I needed the noise of the city to calm my insides. There was a cool breeze as I walked through over to Michigan Avenue, looking in the shop windows at vintage and designer clothing and passing by restaurants with people eating at wrought-iron tables on the sidewalk. The setting sun made the sky glow pink, and cars whizzed by me on the street. I stopped in a small music store called Chico’s. A cowbell rang when I opened the door, and the store was cramped and clean, full of racks of vinyl and a select few shelves of CDs. The walls were painted a deep, blood red, and the floor was done in black and white checked linoleum. A woman sat behind the counter, wearing Buddy Holly glasses and a white T-shirt that read “I’m not Chico” on the front in green block lettering. She had an enormous frizz of hair that surrounded her face like a sandy cloud, and she smiled and looked up from a thick textbook when I came in.

I was feeling loose and she seemed nice, so I tried for humor.

“Chico, any chance you have some Hall and Oates in here?”

She raised an eyebrow at me. “Reading is not your strong suit, I see.”

I shrugged. “You’re asking for it, aren’t you?”

She laughed and pointed to the back of the store. “Hall and Oates, in the back, alphabetical order in the 1970s. I assume you are talking about 1970s H & O—things went a bit awry for them in the 80s, for my money.”

“I wouldn’t know—I’m not a fan, really.”

“Right. That’s why you came in here looking for Hall and Oates. Don’t be ashamed. Nothing wrong with blue-eyed soul.”

I laughed and went to the back of the store. When I returned, I glanced at the woman’s textbook. It was the book for one of our first units on medical decision-making, which I recognized because I’d just bought a copy at the campus bookstore earlier that day.

“Are you in medical school?”

“Starts next week. Trying to get a head start on the reading, but all it’s doing is scaring me to death.”

“Northwestern?” She nodded. “Me, too.”

She gave a lazy smile. “Small world…and your name is?”

“Ellison.”

“Well, Ellison, are we going to listen to that, or did you just want to hold it all day? What song does a non-fan want to hear?”

I laughed and handed her the CD. “ ‘Sara Smile.’ ”

Her face brightened. “One of their best.”

We stopped talking and listened to the song. It was a comfortable silence, and I watched her as she closed her eyes and sang along to the second verse. Her voice was just slightly off-tune, but she didn’t care, and her lack of inhibition charmed me.

“You never told me your name,” I said after the song ended.

She grinned. “Chico.”

We laughed as I paid for the CD.