Earthly Possessions - Anne Tyler [20]
Saul Emory graduated and went away, and I moved on through the years until I was a senior myself, and secretary of the student body and first runner-up for Homecoming Queen. I had come into my own, by then. I deserved to; I worked so hard at it. The one thing I wanted most of all was for people to think that I was normal.
Through an enormous effort of will, I became known as the most vivacious girl in the senior class. Also best-groomed, with my Desert Flower cologne and my noose of Poppit pearls, and my Paint the Town Pink lipstick refreshed in the restroom hourly with a feathery little brush like the ones the models used. I had a few boyfriends, though nobody serious. And girlfriends too; we rolled each other’s hair up at I don’t know how many slumber parties. I never gave a slumber party myself, of course. No one ever asked me why not.
I would stay after school for sorority meetings, Honor Society, Prom Committee, cheerleading … but those things can only last so long. In the end I would find myself home again, walking into the overused air and my parents’ eternal questions: Why hadn’t I said goodbye that morning? What had kept me so late? Who was the boy who drove me home? And would I be staying in tonight, for once?
Then I would look down at them (for I was taller than both, by now) and everything came back to me: I remembered who I really was. In the smoky mirror behind my mother, my pearls were as outlandish as a string of bear claws. My face had a yellowed look around the edges.
I graduated from high school and got a part scholarship in mathematics at Markson College, over in Holgate. It seemed too simple. I kept wondering where the catch was.
Yet the day after Labor Day, there I sat in my father’s pickup with my suitcases piled in the rear. My mother didn’t come with us; it was hard for her to travel. As I waved to her out the window I had a sudden worry that she knew how glad I was that she was staying home. I wondered if that were why she was staying home. I waved all the harder, blew kisses. This was one time I didn’t try to get out of saying goodbye.
Then my father drove me to Markson College, started to speak but gave up in the end, and left me at the dormitory. I was almost the first one there because I’d been so anxious to arrive. My roommate hadn’t come yet, whoever she was. It was noon but the cafeteria didn’t open till suppertime, so I ate an apple I’d brought and some Fig Newtons that my mother had tucked in my suitcase. The Fig Newtons made me unexpectedly homesick. Each bite caused my chest to ache. I had to hide them away in a drawer, finally. Then I unpacked, and put sheets on one bed, and wandered up and down the hall a while peeking into deserted rooms. After that I spent half an hour sitting at my desk, looking out the window at an empty sky. I’d brought along some curtains, but wasn’t going to hang them till my roommate approved them. However, time was creeping. I decided I’d hang them anyway. I unfolded the curtains, took off my shoes, and climbed onto a radiator. Spread-eagled against the window, I chanced to look down at the quadrangle. And there was my fat cousin Clarence, lumbering toward my dormitory in that ponderous, tilting way he had.
I had known all along that escape couldn’t be so easy.
My father was in the hospital. He had had an accident while driving home. The doctors weren’t so much worried about his injuries as about the heart attack that had caused the accident in the first place. Or maybe the accident had caused the heart attack. I don’t think they ever did get it straight.
For three weeks we stayed near his bed—Mama in her wooden lawn chair that Clarence had brought from home and me in an easy chair. We watched my father’s face, which looked queer in horizontal position. His skin around his eyes had gone all crumpled.