Graduates in Wonderland (12 page)

I'm in deep. How do I handle this situation?

I keep waiting to fall in love with him.

Love,

Jess Pan(ts)

P.S. He calls me Jessi Trousers. And when we're arguing, he calls me “Jessica the Bestica.” And when he gets drunk, he calls me Jessibelle.

P.P.S. Oh, maybe I do love him so much.

MARCH 9

Rachel to Jess

Jess! I am so excited you've met your witty future British husband! When you two move to London, you'll only be a train ride away from me BECAUSE I GOT INTO MY PROGRAM IN PARIS!

Yes, I know you told me that there are many other ways to happiness, but I felt such relief and excitement when this time I opened the mailbox and found out that I got into my dream program at the Sorbonne. Cinematographic Studies with a brilliant professor: light, aesthetics, narrative, Fellini and Godard and a whole bunch of stuff you probably don't care about! The Cinémathèque and a million movie theaters, midnight showings of Charlie Chaplin, strange French farces involving slapping people in the face with fish!

Do you know what this really means? Obviously you do. Cobblestones! Croissants! Ballerina flats! Rodin Museum! PARIS! I keep thinking: It will be such a beautiful life.

Also, Eurostar straight to London, which is why you must make George take you there. This is all in a kaleidoscope cluster of images inside my head, by the way.

Amélie! Bicycles and red lipstick and negligees!

Okay. Focus, Rach. The countdown now commences.

I'm writing to you from my Fort Greene café. The waitress is actually a French girl who is totally incompetent, but has a lopsided smile and likes to argue with me in French about why New York is better than Paris. Her reason today: because New York is new and exciting, whereas Paris is old-­fashioned, stuck in the nineteenth century, and full of romantics.

Thank God for that.

More soon,
ma chérie
,

Rachelle le French

MARCH 11

Rachel to Jess

got hit by car. harrowing night. hard to type on tiny phone. my body is broken.

MARCH 13

Rachel to Jess

Oh God. If you couldn't tell from our phone call, Vicodin goes very well with antidepressants. Almost, you might say...
too
well. I wasn't hallucinating, but I had an overwhelming sense of peace in the emergency room.
So what if my head is bleeding and my body is broken? My spirit lives on!
This feeling lasted all through last night and into this morning, until I woke up, reached for a glass of water, and ended up knocking it off the table with my cast. Then everything came back to me. Including pain, because my meds were wearing off.

By the time Platonic Nick had taken me to the hospital, I knew I was all right—­hence my loopy responses to you on the phone involving proclamations of love to you and whoever that British boy you were with was. Please clarify because the pain pills confuse things. For a second last night I thought he was Jude Law. Up until the hospital, though, it was anyone's game. I keep going over the events in my head because I can hardly believe them.

Everything felt so routine. Sally and I had to work late that evening, so I ran out the door at 8 
P.M.
because Nick was having a dinner party. I was really looking forward to it because I hadn't seen him in a while and haven't been social at all lately.

It was drizzling and dark out when I left, with all of the streetlights reflected in the pavement. I climbed out of the subway at the Lorimer stop and pulled out my umbrella. I delighted in my bright yellow umbrella against the black and gold of the Brooklyn night. I was wearing a light blue silk dress that billowed out with all the wind. I felt like I was in
Funny Face
, after Audrey Hepburn gets her makeover and starts to jaunt around New York. Cross street, look both ways, nobody coming. Left leg extends out, right arm swings with it.

BOOM. Body soars and head hits the pavement. All I think is: “So this is what it feels like to die.” Because I am an exceptionally overdramatic person, and I have no idea what just happened to me, and for the first time in my life, my thoughts have paused.

And then: “This is so interesting, so foreign from everyday life.”

But then the stillness abruptly ended as the sound of car horns surrounded me. What happened was that I was crossing at the entrance to the freeway and someone in a pickup truck had made a blind left turn just before their light changed. Clipping me in the process.

Because pedestrians kept going on with their lives as if nothing had happened, I assumed getting hit by a car was not a big deal—­even though I couldn't get up for a few moments and cars swerved around me. The contents of my purse were strewn all over the street, and for a moment, I couldn't move my lungs, or my legs, and my arms were trembling uncontrollably.

This is really happening.

A man jumped out of the truck while I managed to stand up.

Guy: Holy shit. Holy shit. I am so sorry. Should I call an ambulance?

I wobbled to my feet.

Me: No, I'm fine! Really, I'm fine. Look, I can walk. I have to get to a dinner party. If something's wrong, I'll go to the doctor tomorrow.

Rosabelle was incredulous when I told her this part, but it makes sense to me. I was absolutely blind to anything that would distract me from my number one priority: getting to this dinner party on time. Apparently when you have a blunt blow to the head, your brain plays tricks on you. I just couldn't seem to shake the thought that everyone at the dinner party was waiting for me! Going to the hospital did not even seem like an option at the time.

Guy: Um, you're bleeding pretty badly. Fuck. FUCK ME!

Me: Where am I bleeding? (I had lost all sensation in my entire body. It felt like when your leg goes to sleep.)

Guy: Your forehead. Also your hands...maybe your legs?

Me: What are you talking about? I can't feel anything!

Guy: Should I...call an ambulance?

Me: Ahahaha, I can't feel my face!

Guy: —­

Me: Don't worry! I am so late! Tell you what, I'll give you a call if I have to go to the hospital.

Nobody understands how I just left without calling an ambulance. Not the police, not my parents, nobody. The thing I'm piecing together is that when traumatic things actually happen to you, you react in ways you never would have expected. If I had been watching this on any kind of TV show, I would have been screaming at the TV, “GO TO THE HOSPITAL, YOU IDIOT!”

Instead, I just walked away from the scene of my own car accident. I did manage to get the driver's name and number, as well as his license plate, before I ran off. Then (this part's a secret, because in hindsight it makes me sound crazy) I walked into a bodega to buy a bottle of wine, still thinking I could make it to Nick's dinner party on time. It wasn't until I saw the frightened expression on the cashier's face that I reached up to touch my head and felt blood. The guy motioned for me to look at myself in the security camera mirror and that's when I saw what he saw: girl walks into bodega caked in dirt and blood, forehead slit open, hands shaking wildly, crazed look in her eyes. Needs wine. He handed me a paper towel to put on my forehead.

With wine in tow, I kept going and buzzed Nick's door. I climbed the stairs to his loft and as he opened the door, I immediately dropped the bottle, which broke as it shattered down four flights of stairs.

Me: Sorry I'm late! There was—­

Nick: What happened to you?! Is your face bleeding? Your legs are all scratched up. And your face is
bleeding.

He took me to the hospital, but he had fifteen people at his apartment waiting for his return. He stayed with me as I called my parents and Rosabelle. She came running to sit in the waiting room for three hours. I have never been so glad to see someone in my entire life. She and I sat there for hours with a guy in a wheelchair who was vomiting into a bowl.

A Spanish soap opera played on the TV above us and it seemed to be on a continuous loop. I think. It's all a bit fuzzy. I also feel like Jude Law was in it.

Rosabelle kicked into high gear. You remember how she sees herself as den mother to everyone. She went up to the night nurse and gesticulated a lot before stomping back to me. From then until the time I was treated, Rosabelle would look up at intervals and yell, “She's bleeding from her HEAD.”

Finally a nurse called my name.

Once I was back in the examining area, the doctors examined me and finally they gave me painkillers. That's when I called you. In the postcrash haze, I was scolded by various members of the hospital staff for using my cell phone in the ER. But talking to you was so worth it.

So, physically this is my condition: bruised ribs, ripped ligament in my hand, eight stitches on my face. I got lucky. That's what the nurses at the hospital kept saying: “You are so lucky.”

It's hard to feel lucky after you've been hit by a car. My first reaction was wondering why the universe did this to me.

Here is what Claudia says (I have a week off of work, so I am seeing her every other day): “Stop talking about the universe.” This is embarrassing, but she actually pulled out a photo of the Milky Way and pointed at it. “You think the universe cares if you move to Paris or not? You think the universe put those stitches on your face?”

Come on, Claudia! I don't know! Probably not? And she counters, “Sometimes bad things happen and there isn't anything we can do about it in that moment. But we can't blame things on the universe.”

This has been a recurrent theme with us—­that I blame bad things on my circumstances rather than on my decisions or passive behavior. Being in charge of my own fate (and it being my fault) frightens me.

But since the accident, I've been having trouble sleeping. I turn off the light at night and climb into bed and lie still, blinking in the darkness. The same thoughts resonate in my mind: “I could have been killed in that car accident and all I would have to show for my life is being a shitty assistant and a pile of unpublished novels and no meaningful romantic relationships.”

I don't want to live like this anymore: aimlessly going to the same dead-­end job every day, only hanging out with Rosabelle and Buster, constantly imagining myself somewhere else yet always following my current trajectory along passively.

I'm not going to let myself make these mistakes in Paris.

But on to the aftermath of the accident. Here's a tip if you ever get hit by a car while running late to a dinner party: Skip the dinner party. Call the police instead, or else they will think you are just a crazy Frankenstein-­faced liar when you show up at their precinct the next day.

I need the driver to pay the hospital bills. New York is a no-­fault state, meaning that the person who caused the accident has to pay the bills—­my insurance won't cover it. I find it all incredibly confusing, and there's more to tell but it does hurt to type. I took off the cast myself today. My right thumb's all black-­and-­blue and I may have to have surgery next week.

Meanwhile, I'm so bored now that everyone's at work, and I can't turn the pages of a book without using my mouth. Entertain me! Tell me stories of deepest darkest China and witty Brits named George and what happens to him and an elusive halfie. Tell me about what you are writing for the magazine, and who you see, and what you do. I will be here, not crossing streets.

Okay. I love you. Wish you were here so that there would be somebody else to wear pajamas all day with me and tell me how bad my face actually looks.

More soon.

Love,

Rach

MARCH 15

Jess to Rachel

You're still alive! Frankenstein stitches and all! When we spoke on the phone and you were on Vicodin and antidepressants, you kept giggling about how the universe didn't get you this time and then you would laugh maniacally.

I'm also glad the universe didn't get you—­who else would pet all the horses? Who else has hair that curls while she sleeps? Who else but you is convinced that you are the reincarnation of Grace Kelly because you have the same astrological chart? See? The universe needs your brand of crazy. No, but seriously, I'm so glad you're going to be okay.

And I bet that dinner party sucked. What did you really think you would have missed? Official Dinner Parties tend to be awkward and forced. Although I'm sure you showing up covered in blood was a great conversation starter for the evening. Also, makes you seem very mysterious.

When George and I talked to you on the phone, he was supposed to be pretending to be Jude Law sending his well wishes, but he wasn't being slick enough to be Jude and we started arguing and then the whole thing deteriorated into shouting about what Jude would or would not say. Sorry that you had to listen to that in the emergency room.

But I guess it's indicative of my relationship with George, which teeters between friends and an old bickering married couple.

I would love to regale you with George stories like you asked. I wish I could weave you a tantalizing tale of seduction about a British man carrying me off into the sunset. But that is not the case.

The truth. I have to tell it to someone, because maybe it will force me to stop what's happening. In groups, George is the center of attention, usually half hanging off a chandelier while telling a story about the time he was so lonely he once befriended a sassy monkey who then stole all of his food in Malaysia, as the entire room hangs on his every word. And even at a distance, he maintains the same unwavering confidence and wit as he writes me e-mails on the hour and sends flurries of text messages.

But when we're alone, he becomes nervous, unrecognizable from the confident man I met the first night. He runs his hands through his messy black hair and he swallows a lot and his green eyes dart between my eyes and the floor. He says things like, “I've let my guard down around you, and I never do that with anybody.” I see a side of him he doesn't show everyone—­how he can be hurt and how concerned he is with being more than the guy with a glossy, charming persona. Which makes me feel even worse about my mixed feelings.