An Uncommon Education (18 page)

We lifted her to her feet and managed to make our way through the woods, puffing in the cold and the effort of moving her. We pulled her through the door of the nearest building, Tower Court, where we shouted at the girl on front-desk duty to call an ambulance. It took her a second to comprehend us and then another to move to help us, her sweater set carefully laid against her body. We were all so wet by then it must have looked like we had fallen in together.

After the ambulance arrived, I sat down in a chair in the common room in a daze, finally realizing that some time must have passed because I was nearly dry, the left side of my body where I had supported her already faintly damp, sticky now in the heat of the room. Only the wrist of my jacket was soaked. Her friend had sunk into the chair across from me and closed her eyes.

I watched her for a moment, the even part in her straight hair, the worn jeans, the muddy boots. I tried to imagine where she had come from before here, what state her home was in. I didn’t feel like I could leave yet. I had seen something she hadn’t chosen for me to see, and the awkwardness of that knowledge kept me pinned to my chair, not wanting to draw any attention to myself and the reason I was there.

“Are you all right?” I said, loud enough for only her to hear me.

“She’s a fucking idiot,” she replied, her eyes still closed.

I nodded. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Maybe”—I knew what I was going to say next would be clumsy, no matter what—“maybe she’ll get some help. Maybe after they release her from the hospital. I’m sure she’ll be fine.” I didn’t believe myself, and the doubt bore into my stomach, making me wrap my arms around myself reflexively.

She opened her eyes, only to stare out the window. “She will be fine,” she agreed quietly. I nodded. It would have been a good time to leave but I didn’t.

She looked at me, a half-smile playing on her mouth. Her expression was direct now, friendly, as if she could erase everything that had come before if she simply wanted to. “Look,” she stood suddenly, “I have to go. Come join us for coffee tomorrow night. She’ll be out by then. My last name is Abrams. Julie Abrams.” She grabbed a scrap of paper off of a small table and jotted down her number. “Give me a call, we’ll treat you. I’ve got class in ten minutes.” She thanked me. I shook my head to wave it off but she was already running out the door. She popped her head in a second later, “What’s your name?” The woman at the front desk looked from her to me.

“Naomi,” I called back.

“You’re kidding,” she said.

“No,” I said. She just shook her head, dropped it with a wave, and was gone.

Fourteen

I
don’t think I spoke to another person until late the next afternoon, a Saturday. Amy, now officially a joint major in astronomy and economics, had night lab on Fridays, and I left for the library most mornings before she woke. On Saturdays she tutored at the lab. I spent that morning doing research for a paper due later that week, picked up lunch on my way back to the dorm, and worked on an outline for the next few hours, halfheartedly waiting for Amy to get back. I looked up from my work shortly after three, stretched my neck, and wondered how cold it was outside. The dorm was stuffy and quiet. I stared idly at the phone, as I had done several times since the evening before, when I was finally calm and warm and dry, wondering if the events I’d witnessed had taken place, or if they’d only been the result of an overactive imagination. I had seen a woman walk onto ice, smile, and fall. I had watched her friend retrieve her, had helped to bring her out of the lake. And just like that, it occurred to me that we had actually saved her life.

I looked from the phone to the window. The sky was gray. Amy would be back any minute. I heard myself sigh in the room, hating how stuck I felt, unsure of what to do. What was the big deal, Amy would have said. I hated to admit even to myself how shy and self-conscious I’d become.

The doorknob turned and Amy flounced into the room, scowling. “Colder than a witch’s tit,” she muttered. “And I have night lab again tonight. The fucking idiot I had to tutor couldn’t even find
Cassiopeia
on a
star
map.”

“Cassiopeia?” I asked. “Wasn’t she the goddess of vanity or something? Is she easy to find?”

Amy was glaring at me. “Cassiopeia, Naomi? The Wellesley ‘W’? God. Sometimes I wonder where your head is at.”

Right. I hadn’t realized that Wellesley had a constellatory presence, as well. I sighed. Amy paid no attention.

Her face was blotched on the cheeks, sallow under the eyes. “I’m ordering a pizza,” she turned to me, belligerent. “Do you want some?” I knew if I said no I’d piss her off. She was in the sort of mood where she demanded any and all attention be given to her, primarily so that she could spit it back with sardonic jibes.

“I’ve got plans,” I said, breaking her gaze and standing up as soon as I said it.

She didn’t respond for a minute. “With a guy?” she barked. “I didn’t think you knew any.”

I stared at her, wondering if she knew how unpleasant she could be.

“No,” I said. “Just coffee with friends.” Amy took me in a moment longer, huffed, and began unwinding herself from her coat and scarf. I picked up the phone. The paper Julie had given me had gotten smudged so I had to look in the directory for the number. Amy watched me as I held the receiver to my chest. She was conspicuously silent. The call was picked up after two rings.

“Julie speaking.” The voice on the other end was very formal, perhaps mockingly so. I told her who I was, feeling instantly like an awkward prepubescent girl calling her crush.

“Naomi!” she exclaimed. I could hear her rustling something in the background. I forced myself to drop the phone cord I was twisting in my hands, and then she was speaking before I had a chance to get even more tongue-tied. “Meet us at the Hoop in a half hour,” she said, more of a command than a request.

I had never been to the Hoop, the student-run coffeehouse in the basement of the Schneider Student Center; it was a place for artists and upperclasswomen, people who seemed, in general, to be living an entirely different reality from mine. Julie hung up just as I was forming another question. I already had an impression of her as someone who exited conversations a moment before they ended.

I threw my coat and hat on and walked out the door with my scarf still in my hand, refusing to meet Amy’s look. “Bye,” I said, slamming the door and walking quickly down the hallway.

The afternoon was unexpectedly chilly. I knew I wouldn’t get warm between my dorm and Schneider so I hurried as fast as I could, pulling my jacket around me. I was surprised to notice that the left wrist of the jacket was still completely soaked; I shook it as I walked, then shrunk my fists further up the sleeves, drawing myself into the driest parts.

The entrance to the Hoop was at the bottom of a short flight of steps. There was only one door in, and the ordering counter—a high, stone semicircle—monopolized it, the days’ offerings written on a board in colored chalk. Various semisophisticated sweets were on display in large covered glass jars: biscotti, chocolate-covered espresso beans. I thought I should order something just in case I was early, or in case they never showed up, but I didn’t like coffee. I chose hot chocolate before I had time to think of something more suave, a drink that might have offered a more stylish defense.

There was nowhere to leave my jacket, and when I took my drink from the hip woman behind the counter who never made eye contact, it was hot, almost burning in my hands. The air in the basement was overly warm, too. My wrist felt only vaguely wet now. The Hoop was comprised of four connecting rooms, each room separation created by an arch rather than a doorway, so that its structure echoed that of an underground cave. I wondered what it had been before it was a café.

I found Julie already seated in the room directly to the left, the most immediately accessible but also the most deeply interior; it would have been directly underneath the center of the building. It was the quietest area in the Hoop, the women there studying in hushed conversations. Julie’s half-drowned friend was with her, her back to me. I hadn’t realized how tall she was until she turned around to greet me, walking halfway across the room and shaking my hand as a man would before hugging me vigorously.

“Sorry to scare you so bad,” she said, pulling back. “But I’m all right, see? Strong as an ox.” Somehow we were standing by their table. Her greeting had taken me by surprise. I couldn’t think of the last time someone had spontaneously grabbed me.

Julie stayed seated, smiling at me. “Hey, Naomi. Meet Ruth,” she gestured upward, to her friend. “Ruth, Naomi.” “Seriously?” Ruth said, still standing, grinning. “I thought Julie made it up.” “I’m pretty sure,” I said. Ruth laughed in a way that made me think she would have laughed at anything I had said. I sat down on the last chair at their table and Ruth sat, too, so that she was between Julie and me, her back again to the doorway. I had the feeling after I sat down that Ruth had pulled the chair out for me, though I think it was my imagination working through her warm greeting.

“You know, I always loved Ruth’s speech to Naomi,” she said, sitting down beside me, “but I never thought I’d find a Naomi to say it to.” She took my hand in hers. I was so surprised I thought I’d have to pull away, but I managed just to blush and keep my hand where it was.

“ ‘For whither thou goest, I will go,’ ” she began to recite from the Book of Ruth. “ ‘And where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall
be my people, and thy God my God.’ ” She dropped my hand. “Except I can’t believe in any God, even if you handed me yours on a silver platter.” She winked at me and sat back in her chair, her expression one of total satisfaction.

“She’s not an anti-Semite,” Julie said, watching my face. “She’s just a card-carrying atheist.”

“It’s true,” Ruth nodded. “I hate all religions. Are you Jewish?” she asked me, now examining my face as well. I wondered what I had revealed there. I nodded. “Good. Most Jews I know have serious God issues, too. Understandably, of course! They tend to get atheism better than most atheists.”

She reached forward to lift a huge, steaming mug to her lips. “You know, it’s my third time falling through the ice since freshman year,” she went on, failing to acknowledge what I was pretty sure was a complete change in topic.

Julie’s expression quickly soured and she looked up, interrupting Ruth. “Are you a first-year?” she asked.

“No,” I said, “sophomore.” I felt suddenly embarrassed. As far as they could tell, I must have appeared out of nowhere.

“Strange that we’ve never seen you,” Ruth went on. I was grateful to her for thinking this odd, or at least pretending to. “Where do you live?”

“Stone-Davis,” I said.

“We know someone who lives in Stone-Davis, don’t we?” As soon as Ruth said this, I knew that it was as uncool as I’d been afraid it was.

Julie shook her head. She was wearing a brown fitted sweater with a light-blue scarf and no jewelry. Her hair shone even in the half-light of the room, the way my mother’s did. Ruth was as ungainly as Julie was polished: her sweater strained around her middle, her pants too short at the ankles.

“No, wait.” Julie corrected herself, inverting her wrist and pointing one finger toward Ruth. “Linda lives there.” “Oh, yeah!” Ruth said. “Do you know Linda McDade?” I shook my head. “She’s art history,” Ruth said encouragingly. I shook my head again. “Don’t think we’ve met,” I said. I wondered under what circumstances they would grow tired of me and ask me to leave. “I think Hillary Clinton might have roomed there all four years,” I tried. “I think you’re right!” Ruth confirmed. Julie sighed loudly, blowing the few stray hairs on her forehead upward. “This paper’s due tomorrow and it’s just not happening.” She leaned toward me, crossing her arms over her notebook. “So,” she said, “how’s it going?”

I had no idea how to answer her, there were so many things going, so few going well. “Good,” I shrugged, “I guess.”

“So, it’s all good?” Julie was sniffing me out. I shrugged again. “I guess.” I forced myself to release my shoulders, stopping just short of an old habit of cracking my neck. She smirked a little. “Right,” she said. “How’s the whole Wellesley thing working out for you?”

I wasn’t sure if I knew the answer to that question, or maybe I just hadn’t admitted it to myself. “It’s been pretty hard,” I said. I felt immediately exposed, unsure. “I mean . . .” What did I mean? I attempted to collect myself, sound less cagey, more confident. “It’s a great place, just lonely.” It was hard to believe that the words had come out of my mouth. I wonder if social inactivity had left me too contained, susceptible to overflow. I stared down at the table. “I’m taking Shakespeare with Professor Pope this semester. It’s not going that well.”

“Oh, Christ,” Ruth said, “are you a favorite?” She turned to Julie. “What do you think? Not a favorite?” She looked at me. “You’re certainly not androgynous enough, but he does like a pretty face. You’ll learn a lot from him, though. Are you thinking of joining Shakes?” I shook my head, confused. I knew very little about the Shakespeare Society. I’d heard of it, but it was something that was kept quiet on campus, a place other students seemed to both respect and hold in mild suspicion, though I couldn’t remember anyone mentioning what went on there.

“I’m not doing that well in Pope’s class,” I repeated.

“I’m thinking he’s given her more than one minus on the midterm.” Julie was looking directly at me, squinting.

“B double minus,” I blurted. “But that’s not important.” I tried to summon control of the conversation. “Is everything okay with you?” I asked Ruth.

It took a moment for either of them to respond. It seemed I’d startled them. Maybe they hadn’t expected me to assert myself so much as to redirect the conversation. But I was an expert, by that point, at deflecting. So much so that I sometimes wondered if taking attention away from myself had become the most noticeable thing about me.

“Sure,” Ruth said. “I just need to learn how to dress better for the occasion. Last year I had silk undies on, and they weren’t warm enough. I went with wool yesterday, but it gets too heavy. Even a light wool.” She grinned. “It’s a study.”