Light Years (2 page)

She waved away my promises. “Don’t worry about it, just get your own key as soon as you can. It’s too late to worry about it today anyhow.”

My room was fairly large, but with two beds, two desks, and two closets there wasn’t much room left for anything else. There were two shelves above each bed, and one window. Gray floor, white walls. Home, sweet dorm.

I dropped off my bag, tossed my backpack on the bed farthest away from the door, went back, and hauled the rest of my gear up to my room. Then I went to find the cleaning lady. She was in the bathroom, mopping the floor with brown soapy water that reeked.

“Thanks,” I said. “I don’t know how long I would be sitting there if it wasn’t for you.”

She stopped mopping and straightened.

“You’re welcome.”

“What’s your name?”

“Yami,” she said. “My name is Yami Bouchon.” She sounded slightly defensive, as if she thought I was going to write down her name and file a complaint.

“I’m Maya,” I said. “Maya Laor.” I stuck out my hand. There was a slight hesitation on her part. We shook.

“Where are you from?” she finally asked. “Seems like you came from far away.”

Now was my chance to make something up. To leave everything behind like I dreamed about when I finally decided to come. I debated inventing a life in Bulgaria with a mad uncle locked away in a castle. A fairy tale to live in. Forget where I came from. Forget what I’d done. But I heard myself tell the truth.

Back in my room, I dug around in my big suitcase until I found a sheet and a thin blanket. I’d have to buy a pillow first thing tomorrow. I left mine at home because I ran out of room in my suitcases. For now, I rolled up a sweatshirt. Lumpy, but it worked.

I thought I’d fall asleep immediately. I was tired enough to sleep until noon the next day. But I kept thinking about things; about being here, about what would happen next week when classes started. I rolled over and grabbed a notepad and made a list of all the things I had to buy tomorrow.

I heard Yami finish in the bathroom. She swept the hall, starting at the far end, working steadily. Only after the hall door clicked shut behind her did I realize I still didn’t know where to get a key or whether the doors locked automatically when shut.

“Tomorrow,” I said out loud. “Deal with it tomorrow.” I resolutely turned over on my side, faced the wall, and willed myself to sleep.

*  *  *

The next morning, I woke up at six, confused with half-remembered dreams crowding my peripheral vision. On the bright side, I mostly slept through the night, waking up only twice. That alone was enough to put me in a better mood, and I hurried to get ready to explore this new place.

Once I got out of the university area, I found a Colonial-looking downtown with red-brick buildings and green-black shutters that housed everything from law offices to shops to restaurants. My favorite part was a little pedestrian-only boulevard full of small cafés and semi-expensive boutiques selling pretty nonsense. I bought breakfast at one of the coffee shops and sat down, fortified by strong coffee to plow through that damned welcome packet once and for all.

This time, not paralyzed with tiredness, I easily found the housing part and read where to get a key. The office was open from eight to five, which left me almost an hour before they opened. I studied the people huddled around mismatched tables, laughing or working in the chic café. A not-so-young mother and a blond toddler shared a muffin and a cup of hot chocolate.

My mother used to take me to coffee shops when I went with her on errands. She taught me to drink coffee. I learned to drink it to please her, to be able to share with her the joy of a really good cup of café au lait. Watching the mother and her daughter cheered me. People here couldn’t be too strange if they brought their kids to cafés in the morning.

But people did look different here, I decided after a careful study of my fellow patrons and the people strolling outside the
café. Clothes were baggier, hair was lighter, the colors, the styles—different. They walked differently, the pitch of conversations more relaxed, slower.

I finished my lemon-blueberry muffin, shouldered my backpack, and with one last look at the strange artwork hanging on one wall and the warped mirrors hanging on the other, I left.

It was a balmy day, not nearly as scorching as the day before. There was a slight breeze, and when I stood in the shade of the large tree on the pedestrian walk, it was actually comfortable.

“Excuse me.”

I turned.

“I think this is yours.” It was a student who I’d seen reading a book in a corner of the café. He was holding my welcome packet.

“Oh.” I reached for it. “Thank you.”

“You left it on the table.” He was tall, much taller than I expected seeing him engrossed in his book. I took a small step back and saw that he noticed.

“You’re a student here?” he asked.

“Going to be.”

“Welcome.” He spread his arms to encompass the university, Charlottesville, and the whole United States.

He looked very American to me with his light-brown hair and golden tan. I wondered if he was from some place like Nantucket or Cape Cod, places that seemed ridiculously American, like parodies of themselves. My family and I spent a couple of months in Boston once, where my father took a summer
course. We traveled on the weekends when my father was free, and the small towns and the friendly people living there had seemed like scenes from a movie.

“Justin,” he said, offering me his perfect hand to shake. “Justin Case. I’m working on my doctorate in history at UVA.”

His name confused me at first. Said quickly it sounded like “just in case” and it took me a moment to realize that his name was first name: Justin, last name: Case.

“Right,” I said, my teacher’s British English stumbling on my lips. We shook. What a funny language English was. Did his parents realize his name sounded like a sentence when they named him?

“My name is Maya Laor.”

“Where are you from, Maya Laor?”

“I’m from out of town.”

“I noticed,” he said. “From where, though? Your accent is very different.”

“Greenland,” I said, trying out the lie.

“You’re tan,” he said with a hint of a smile. “To be coming from Greenland.”

“It’s a beautiful country.” I resisted the urge to fiddle with my packet. “Vastly underrated. We have fabulous summers.”

“Really? I never knew that. The things you learn every day.”

“Right.”

“Nice meeting you, Maya.”

“Right. Bye.”

I walked away, unsure of why I was so annoyed, why my
heart raced. I thought he was watching me; but when I looked over my shoulder, he had already gone back into the café.

Walking back to the university area, I tried hard to enjoy the moment, the slow walk, the beautiful weather, the quaint shops and restaurants. When would triumph set in? When would I finally feel this success? I was going to UVA, I was out of Israel, I was going to get a college degree. I was miserable.

Tiredness lurked behind my skin, settling in my bones. It wasn’t jet lag. It was the same crippling weakness from Israel. Determined to ignore it, to make it go away, I took deep breaths as I walked, rubbing a fist against my stomach to ease the tension.

After Dov died, everyone had advice. My parents wanted me to keep seeing a counselor. My aunt thought I should go to Europe for a cost-be-damned vacation—she even offered to pay for it—and then come back and focus on getting a good job. She claimed she could get me that too. My best friend, Daphna, decided I needed to learn to meditate, possibly followed by a visit to an Indian ashram. She gave me books with pictures of emaciated yogis perched on the edge of a cliff, as if they were teaching the miracles of human flight instead of meditation. But it was nothing any books could help with. We both knew that.

Nobody thought I should leave for four years. Six months, twelve months, that was fine. Everyone went traveling after the army. But four years? That’s a long time to be gone. To run away. They were right, of course. That was the point.

I bought everything on my list. Got a key to the room. Tried to stay busy. The next day, I bought all the books I needed for my classes. They were obscenely expensive and I used the credit card my parents gave me, feeling guilty. The books for my two astronomy classes were beautiful, though. I spent almost an hour sitting on a bench in an enclosed garden behind one of the pavilions on the Lawn, looking at the pictures. The garden itself was something of a pleasant surprise. Like everyone who visited the university, I strolled by the Rotunda, admiring its perfect lines. Trying to see the backs of the pavilions that stretch out from it, I discovered that each pavilion had a garden open to the public. Each garden was different, perfect and beautiful in its own way. I tested out several before picking a favorite, the one behind Pavilion IV. Some of the gardens were open and seemed designed for parties or picnics, but Garden IV seemed designed for quiet thought. There were more lush bushes and full trees, more green and fewer flowers. The pavilion was almost hidden from sight, and sitting on the white bench tucked up against the red-brick fence, I could pretend I was happy to be here.

I found the library and used the Internet to write to my friends Daphna, Leah, and Irit, and my brother Adam. Leah had just been to a show by a modern-dance troupe I’d been wanting to see. Daphna wrote me a message complaining about her job, like always. I wished I were still there so I could take her out for a cup of coffee and we could both vent about stupid co-workers. I e-mailed my parents as well, letting them
know how I was, how my room looked, that I was doing great, brilliant, everyone here so nice.

I spent three days almost completely alone. I spoke only when ordering breakfast or lunch at the café or when I bought something at a store. I saw Yami twice, and we waved to each other but didn’t speak. I slept a lot, flipped through my books, and walked for hours, exploring the university and the town.

It was exactly four months since the funeral. Not even half a year. I knew my parents didn’t want me to think about it. But it wasn’t right not to think of it, of him. A person should linger with you after he dies. Besides, trying not to think of him was an exercise in futility.

On the fourth day after I arrived, the rest of the students came.

I woke up at seven to the sounds of shouted directions.

“No, Mom, not there! Here, here it is.”

Within two hours, the halls were jammed and the flow of new students seemed like it would never end.

It was hard to believe that this was the same street from five days ago. Cars were parked up on the curb, stopped in the middle of the road, hazard lights flashing. Hundreds of people were carrying brown boxes, straining, laughing that nervous laugh of stress and exertion. People were shouting to be careful, to lift on THREE, to please move your car so we can get through. Older students in blue shirts were helping new students move in. Parents were hugging their embarrassed children, kissing their foreheads, looking on fondly and with concerned pride as they helped them unpack their favorite shirts and their lucky
shoes. The students seemed so young, with round faces and shining eyes. Only two years younger than I was, but they seemed infantile.

Every door was propped open. People were meeting their hallmates, assessing the people they would have to live with for the next year. Some were scratching their heads at the logistics of cramming a TV and a mini-fridge into a room already stuffed. Closets bulged, beds were elevated on cement blocks to make storage space. Minivans and station wagons careened out to make last-minute purchases of shelves, rugs, and cinder blocks. It was chaos.

At first I thought I’d stick around and meet my new roommate, but as the halls got more and more crowded, I decided we would have plenty of time to get to know each other. I slipped out and headed to the Corner, the area near the university that seemed to cater to the student population, thinking to buy a cup of coffee. It was disorienting to have so many people around after pure silence. But even away from the dorms it was a mad rush of buying supplies and greeting old friends and introducing new acquaintances on the narrow cobbled sidewalk. Students buying books, buying T-shirts with
VIRGINIA
emblazoned across the front, reiterating their triumph of arriving here.

I turned and walked away from there as well. Crowds made me nervous, even well-behaved American crowds. The town felt flooded with people. There were suddenly minor traffic jams at every light. There were no parking spaces. The stores were full, cash registers dinging in joy. I really didn’t care about
meeting people, learning their names. They all seemed so young. They all looked alike. They dressed the same. The guys with their hats pulled low, slouching in their khaki shorts and gray T-shirts while the girls all wore cute little outfits that I hadn’t seen since I was a kid—baby-doll shirts, flowery skirts, high-heeled sandals or colored canvas shoes. Their blondish hair was pulled high up in cheerful ponytails.

Wearing dark-blue jeans and a black tank top, I felt old compared with them, like a big, dark lizard in the baby-animal petting zoo.

As the day wore on, parents began to retreat, to start their long drives home, to leave their kids alone and let them settle in. I decided it was safe to return and entered my building, which was nearly humming with chatter and nervous energy.

The door to my room was open, and four half-full suitcases lay on the floor. I peered in.

“Hello?” I said.

A girl turned from the closet, her arms full of folded shirts.

“Hi!” she said brightly.

“I’m your roommate,” I said. “My name is Maya Laor.”

“Oh, hi!” she said again, eyes wide with excitement. “I was wondering when I’d see you. I saw all your stuff already here, but I didn’t know where you were.”

“I got here four days ago. I hope you don’t mind I took the bed by the wall.”

“Oh, it doesn’t matter,” she said. “My name is Payton Lee Walker, most people either call me Payton or Pay.”

She was short, barely reaching my chin. She had blond hair up in a ponytail and wore khaki shorts, a white T-shirt, and pink flip-flops. She fit. I wondered how she knew to wear what everyone else was wearing. Maybe it was in the welcome packet. Maybe it was an American thing.