An Uncommon Education (43 page)

I shook my head.

She looked at me a moment too long, perhaps hoping I might reconsider, then fought against the corners of her mouth as they began to fall into a grimace. She finally achieved a game smile. “You know, if this country ever elects a woman president, I’d be shocked if she weren’t a Wellesley alumna.” The tree just outside her window was full of tiny green buds. She looked so peaceful in the frame of the shade, so well contained. She glanced again at my papered history, then shook her large, round head, like a stately ox ridding itself of flies.

She could see I was having fun watching her, and bristled. “Your grades are just not competitive with your peers, I’m afraid. We have even more students than usual applying this year, and with no MCAT scores yet, you’ll have to wait another year to apply, and then, of course, you’ll be competing with a whole new crop of students for available spots.” She brightened, closing the folder almost completely over one hand, “You know, many of our English majors also have great success as academics, in graduate school.” She looked down again, leafing through. “Though you’d have to take the GRE. Soon.” She grinned almost wolfishly at me. “Would you like to become a scholar of Shakespeare?”

“No,” I replied. “Not really.” I stood up and walked toward the window, wondering what else I could see outside if I got closer. I opened the glass and leaned out, the scent of warm, fragrant air almost overpowering. “This tree is incredible,” I said, leaning out farther and calling back over my shoulder. “What kind of tree did you say it was?”

“I didn’t. I don’t believe we were discussing trees,” she called back to me, standing up now, too. She sounded nervous. Maybe she suspected that the only real explanation for my behavior was that I intended to jump and she would have to try to prevent me.

I pulled my head back in dutifully and closed the window with care. The black sash fitted into its apron seamlessly. It was a pleasure to have closed it so neatly for her. I leaned against it. “I think our time here is done,” I said meditatively, closing my eyes. I knew I was laying it on thick and I didn’t care. I thought about opening the window again and climbing out onto and down the tree, the white buds falling like snow before me as I descended. I opened one eye and smiled at her. “You’ve really been quite helpful,” I said in my best Wellesley voice.

“Of course, dear,” she said. Her waist in its suit rolled around her middle, like a life raft. I thought better about throwing my arms around her to see if my hands would meet on either end and gathered my things instead, bowing just slightly as I left. She caught herself, then bowed quickly in return, like a plump soldier.

I walked by the students waiting outside in the hall wearing suits in muted colors, their stiff résumé folders on their laps, the solemnity of promise in their faces. At one point I had hoped to be among their ranks, and I still could not have said what it was that made me walk down the hallway and back outside, dropping my books and standing alone in the doorway of the building, looking up and marveling at the etched marble in the archway before stepping away from it and making my way onto the grass. I passed under the dean’s window and gave her a brief salute of appreciation.

I walked straight through the quad and onto Campus Drive, following it to the back entrance. My shoes were not designed for travel and it was almost ten miles to home. I took them off and began to run in my thin socks, feeling the slick way they made contact with the concrete, realizing they’d tear before too long and stopping only to pull them off and throw them into the woods that lined the college. I ran over the streets first, then through backyards and parks, taking surface streets instead of the highway. The cement was hard and warm from the day, the parks rich with grass, the dirt paths dusty and full of small stones; I wove through them, avoiding the roots and rocks, seeking out the softest footfall, though the farther I ran the more the bottoms of my feet began to tear and my shins began to burn, the pain clear and clean, like beauty. I turned onto our street before nightfall. As I ran toward the house I saw that the porch lights were on, as if they had been expecting me.

Thirty-One

O
ur graduation took place a few short weeks later. I had grown used to Jun not being there anymore, but the pain of missing her took me by surprise on that day, and I left quickly after the ceremony, using the pouring rain as an excuse. Much fuss was made over how we had come and gone in a downpour, which I didn’t mind so much. The college began fading into a pleasant, distant memory almost as soon as I left it.

What is it to say that the years that followed were my happiest, my most difficult? As my mother deteriorated even further, I became her primary caretaker, and was able to manage only brief weekly visits to Shattuck or McLean. My father insisted on driving me, though he had stopped going inside, just waited in his car. Sometimes he took a nap with the windows cracked open. He always seemed refreshed when I emerged.

My life took on a rhythm, and I passed the days easily with little time to wonder, meeting what she asked or needed as completely as I could, then sitting down with my father at night to eat dinner. As the care she required became more complete, it also became easier, more of a matter of habit, and it was a gift to offer it. Though I can’t say it wasn’t astonishing to watch her beauty and body fail, the tumors protruding like symbols on her neck and spine, so that they seemed to translate her body into something we could not hope to recover.

It became more comfortable for her to lie on her side or stomach, her head turned in profile like an ancient cameo, muted and still. She began to fail in the spring, and I took to letting as much fresh air into her room as possible, thinking at the end that it might infuse her with hope because I imagined this was something she might want, but the room was always a bit windy, shaken. Everything about us had begun to move in small, unpredictable ways. My father shied from the weather I was letting in, and stood at the door when he came to her room, watching. I think from where he stood the protrusions on her body were less apparent, so that the distance allowed him to imagine her again as whole. I think it was remarkable to both of us how smooth she had once been.

When we made it clear that we wanted her to die at home, Dr. Stern continued with his monitoring but came to our house to do so. The day before she died he strode into the room, the wind blowing his coat around him like a cape, and pronounced her comatose. After I closed the door behind him, I went through and closed all the windows and doors in the house, and when I was done, my father came back into the room and sat beside her. I took her other side, and the next afternoon we were listening attentively to her as she passed in a full sail of silence.

Her service and burial were in keeping with Jewish tradition, Grandmother Carol standing tight-lipped beside her grave, as though her daughter had only just begun to disappoint her. During the first day of
shivah
, she came and sat in a red chair in our house, one she’d given my mother as a housewarming gift. It had been made to look like velvet, and had scrollwork on the arms. After several hours had passed of her being uncomplaining but displeased, she asked me about my plans now that my caregiver role had ended. I told her I intended to attend the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at UMass with the goal of conducting medical research in neurofibromatosis and she shook her fine head.

“They used to say that girls went to Wellesley to make a difference in the world. It was your motto or something. Have you done that? Made a difference? Do you intend to?” Her face was open and curious, if not harsh. It was the most direct exchange we had ever had.

“No,” I answered. “I don’t think I have. Or will.”

She nodded, accepting my answer. “Your mother was the same way. Could have had an uncommonly good education, but she had other ideas. Perhaps if you had been a boy you would have done more with your potential,” she remarked.

“I have had a good education,” I said. “And now that I’m doing what I want with it, it’s also uncommon.”

“I meant uncommonly
good
Naomi,” she scolded. “You could have become a doctor, or even have done more with tennis. You didn’t even try to join the team, did you? What a waste,” she shook her head again, agreeing with herself. “You’re a lovely girl, mind you. You’ll probably make someone a fine wife. But you could have made something of yourself.” She smiled, suddenly, ruminatively. “I’m not sure if your mother ever told you that I played tennis rather well in my day. Of course it helped that I wore the uniform so well.” She looked at me approvingly. “You’ve kept your figure nicely,” she commented. I thanked her. My father sat with his head in his hands. The only other guest we had that afternoon was Dr. Stern, who commended me on my sense of filial duty.

“I spend a great deal of time at nursing homes with parents who have no children to look after them,” Dr. Stern intoned, “and I am glad to see a break in the pattern.” He must have been less than forty years old.

“A young man”—my father nodded his agreement after he had left and we sat in the darkened living room.

“I’ll be back,” I told him, standing up and kissing him on his bowed head.

It was a warm day, and I walked slowly to the Kennedy Birthplace, the papers warm in my hand. It hadn’t changed: still the neat brick path, the yellow door, the heavy flag above it waving its visitors in with majestic confidence. I wondered if Rosemary would be glad to know her things were returning back to the home where she had been a hopeful child, to the piano her mother had played, in the end, only in her company. It suddenly occurred to me that Rosemary, like me, had tried to hold on to the things she most feared losing, had created her own set of objects to cling to as she felt the intangible slipping. But the only thing that ever really gets irredeemably lost is the self, and it can never be held in the hands. Knowing this, with my mother gone, I felt ready to release my captured familiars. The door was unlocked, as usual, but for some reason it surprised me, as if I had expected to find people still living there.

There was no one in the hall. I took a long moment to enjoy the remembered smells, the small intimacies of the place. Then I unhooked the velvet rope to my right, walked into the music room, and pulled the piano bench gently aside. The papers fit well under the slats, and I stood up, rubbing my hands at a job well done.

“It’s about time.” A voice said behind me.

I turned around quickly. A much older woman stood there, but her hair was still black, her skin still a striking contrast to it—Mrs. Olsen.

“I’m only here on Tuesdays,” she said, answering my unspoken question. “Just as a volunteer. Impossible to be rid of me, I suppose.” She must have been near eighty, stooped over, her keen eyes hooded under their lids.

“Didn’t you ever wonder why I gave them away to you?” She gestured into the room. “How they ended up in your backpack?”

I shook my head. “I thought I’d stolen them, to be honest.”

“Hah! As if I’d ever let such a thing happen. Mind you, I should have been strict with you. You should have been taught a lesson. But when I found them on the floor—you must have been holding them somehow and then dropped them during your father’s incident—is he well, by the way?” I nodded. “Anyway, I found them just before you left and decided they should go with you. I figured such a curiosity belonged with a curious girl.” She smiled a little. “Actually, I don’t know what I figured. A little mischievous myself, I guess. And I had a feeling you would return them when you were ready.” With that she turned and walked away. I didn’t get the chance to ask her anything more or speak to her again. But there was something about that house, I concluded, that made people want it to live again, maybe even get a little messy. There had been children there, children who believed they might one day learn to fly. I let myself out.

I
looked at my father that night and wanted to tell him what had happened with Mrs. Olsen, and with what I’d found all those years back, but it didn’t feel like a story he needed to hear. Maybe one day. Instead of speaking, I just studied him, realizing that he was not yet old, despite what he might have thought. I think that for some time he had actually looked forward to aging, to the ease of entering into the expectation of death in a pleasant, open way. Maybe this was because he had always feared he couldn’t be the sort of father and husband he demanded of himself, the one who could sally forth and protect when the wolves appeared at the gate. He pulled his dinner into his mouth piece by piece, like a man pulling weeds from a garden without looking up, and I sent him to bed shortly after.

We had a handful of neighbors visit us the next day, and on the third day, more distant family friends, including the rabbi of the temple my father attended now twice a year, during the High Holidays. My father retreated into a back room with him, and I manned the door alone, welcoming some people I didn’t know, a few of whom knew me. Sometime after lunch I opened the door to a Mr. and Mrs. Nathanson and saw, out of the corner of my eye, the shape of someone so familiar that my breath caught in my throat before I could put a name to him. Keigo.

The Nathansons turned at my expression with pleasantry and befuddlement on their faces, and I made the introductions instead of throwing my arms around him. Someone else ran up the steps. Art. “I was parking the car”—he grinned. I wanted to hug him, too.

After I’d shepherded them all in and called my father out, I returned to Keigo and his former roommate, the
Troilus and Cressida
fan, Art. They were standing in the hall as the Nathansons and the rabbi and my father took seats in the living room.

“Can you stay?” I asked them.

Art nodded. I brought them into the kitchen, pulling what I could find onto the table for them until Keigo stopped me with one hand on my arm.

“Jun told us,” he said. He looked a little embarrassed, “She figured you would keep it to yourself. She had me subscribe to the
Boston Globe
three months ago, with orders to check obituaries every day. Though she was looking herself, too, whenever she could.” I laughed and then sat down at the table and began to cry. I had to put my head in my hands to finish. I lifted it and told him to tell her that I was beginning graduate school nearby. I didn’t ask what else she had told him, how else she was making her way. Her letters had slowed and become less detailed as she’d become busier with work, but they’d never lost their warmth. I still missed her, and I told him as much. I told him to tell her that her letters shouldn’t be so Japanese and British, that she could tell me about something other than the weather. Keigo nodded somberly.