Authors: Sarah Mlynowski
Thursday, December 18, 10:58 a.m.
“T
wo more minutes,” Flynn, the proctor/TA says.
I'm going to fail. Completely fail. How am I going to get a job this summer if I fail? It is humanly impossible for a mere mortal to answer all these questions. I still have so much more to write for this last question. My heart is racing and my hand is scribbling and I have to get this all down. Why can't we write with computers, why why why? Paper and pen are so archaic. How am I supposed to think? To delete? To spellcheck? I should have gone to sleep earlier. I need at least seven hours of sleep to perform properly on an exam. Next semester I'm going to bed early the night before all exams. At eight.
Only four of us are left in the room. Everyone else has somehow finished. How have they possibly finished? I haven't even started proofreading yet.
“Thirty more seconds.”
“Time up, everyone. Pencils down.” One more question!
Done! Flynn picks up my paper. His hands are thin and hairy. “How'd you find it?”
“Impossible.”
“Layla, I'm sure you did fine.”
All my TAs and professors know my name. I ask a lot of questions.
I walk to the door, disgusted with myself. Kimmy is waiting for me outside, smiling. “Not bad, huh?”
“I failed for sure.”
“What?” She's shaking her head in disbelief. “No way. It was everything we talked about. You knew that stuff cold. You taught it to me.”
“There was too much to write and not enough time.”
Kimmy gestures to the cafeteria, but I have to get away from school. “Let's go for sushi,” I suggest. “On me.” I know Kimmy doesn't like spending money when she's already paid for the food plan. I'm getting tired of cafeteria food.
She hesitates. “I want to get to the library. What about sushi for dinner?”
“Deal.”
“I still don't believe you failed,” she says as we enter the cafeteria. “You've claimed to have failed every exam so far.
And you said the same about midterms and you aced them. It's a little annoying, actually.”
She's probably right. I do always think I've failed, yet I always do well. But I'm not lying when I say the exam was hard. They're all hard. “We'll see. You found it all right?”
I take a grilled cheese and fries and she just takes fries.
She nods. “Yeah. Not easy, but much better than the midterm.” She watches me drench my plate in ketchup. “Would you like some sandwich with that ketchup?”
“Ha-ha.” Yum.
We sit in our regular seat. Jamie and Russ aren't here. They left the exam a half hour ago, so they probably already ate and are either studying or napping.
“I've been into vinegar on my fries lately,” she says, dribbling the clear shaker over her fries.
“Yeah? Why?”
“Russ does it, and now I'm addicted.”
I pop a sopping red fry into my mouth. Yum. “Let's eat quickly so we can get back.”
I think I'll miss the library when we're done. Is that weird? I love the quiet, the smell, the sense of purpose. I wonder if the hotel we're staying at in St. Bart's has a library. No, that would be weird. To be honest, I'm going to miss taking exams. The rush. The blood pouring from my brain to my fingers. I know I always think I failed, but I also know I won't.
“Only one more,” Kimmy says. Her voice sounds almost wistful. Semester's end means Russ goes back to Toronto. To Sharon.
“Only one more,” I repeat. We eat our fries slowly, as though hoping to prolong the day.
Friday, December 19, 10:42 a.m.
H
ead hurts, hand hurts, who cares, I'm done. I don't know how I did, probably not as well as I could have, but I don't care.
I raise my hand until a proctor picks up my exam. “Have a good break,” he says.
Oh, I will. I
need
a break. A break from studying, from clubs, from random exam questions, from my life. Exams are so frustrating. After an entire semester, they choose twenty questions to ask. Twenty random questions. Can those really quantify my knowledge?
What I really need is a break from Sharon and Kimmy so I can figure out what I want, who I want. Wish I were backpacking with Nick in Australia for the month. Now that's a break. He leaves for Sydney tomorrow. It's summer there, so I guess he'll be sitting on the beach and playing with kangaroos. No kangaroos or beaches for me. Toronto has already had three snowstorms. I'll be shoveling, not sunning.
I grab my pencils and student card, and bolt from the room. Kimmy is still scribbling away. She's all dressed up
today, in high black boots, a miniskirt and a tight blue turtleneck. She looks hot. So what else is new?
I pick up a sandwich in the caf, zip up my coat and return to the Zoo to pack. Flight leaves at nine. I have to make some decisions in the coming month about where I want to work, Toronto or New York. Maybe I should let my job determine my girlfriend. If I return to my job in Toronto, I'll stay with Sharon. If I'm offered something in New York, I'll stay with Kimmy. Luck of the draw. Maybe random is the way to go after all.
Tuesday, December 30, 2:00 p.m.
“D
o you like it, Kimberly?” my father asks.
“It” is a day in a Scottsdale spa. Facial, manicure, pedicure, massage. “Love it, Dad. Thanks.”
Valued at three hundred dollars, it could all be exchanged and used to purchase books next semester. My father the atheist refuses to call it a Christmas present, but that's what it is. I don't care what he calls it; it's still nice to get presents even if they don't know what I'd want. My mother, who's Jewish, was never good at presents, either, and it got worse when I was eleven and they got divorced. She'd buy things I didn't want, like rhinestone-your-own-T-shirt kits and glittery hair clips. When it comes to presents, my parents don't know me at all.
“Honey, you look tired,” my father says.
We're sitting on the patio of a trendy new Mexican restaurant in Phoenix. I've had a few too many margaritas, and my body feels rubbery and indestructible.
“I haven't been sleeping well.”
He runs his no-polish manicured fingers through his jet-black dyed hair. “Maybe LWBS isn't the right lifestyle for you.”
I shrug.
“You should think about your goals.” He's nodding as he speaks, his perfectly chiseled chin bobbing up and down. I wish I looked more like him and less like my mom. I have no chin. Just a neck.
“I do. I have two consulting company interviews through school.” Interviews for first-year students are the first week after vacation. Second-years have an extra week off for winter break. I could use that second week of rest, but three and a half weeks is already too long a time to have Russ off philandering with his precious Sharon.
I want my father to be impressed with my potential career, and I say, “Who knows? Maybe I'll nail a fantastic job. Some of them pay two thousand a week.”
He cuts his tamale into neat little sections and inserts a piece into his mouth. “So you're looking for a job. That's nice.” He chews slowly and swallows. “I was talking about your long-term goals.”
To get Russ to dump his girlfriend? “What long-term goals?”
“Marriage. Family.”
No pressure or anything. “I'm sure I can worry about that after I find a job.”
“I think you're missing my point.” He inserts another piece. “I can't pay your tuition this semester.”
I nearly choke on my refried beans. “What?”
“Too many leases went sour in the past few months and I need to invest my own capital into the business. I'm sorry.”
“But, but Dad⦔ Oh. My. God. What am I going to do?
“I'm sorry, Kimmy, but money's tight, and I don't believe that sending you to business school is my best investment.”
“How can you say that?” I ask, my hands shaking. “What could be a better investment than arming me with an MBA?”
“You won't be in the workforce long enough to make back that kind of money. If you go back to LWBSâ”
“I'm going back,” I say, suddenly determined. “I'll take out a loan.” Russ takes out loans. Lauren takes out loans.
“You want to go forty-five thousand dollars into debt?”
“I'll pay it back after I graduate. I'll get a job that pays well. I told you, I have two interviews lined upâone with O'Donnel and one with BCG.” I got rejected by everyone else, but whatever.
“Honey, you're twenty-six now, right?”
I nod, blinking back tears.
“Even if you do get an incredible job after graduation, you'll only keep it for a few years. You'll be approaching thirty and you'll want to settle down.”
Settle down? “You can't be serious. In case you haven't heard, two-income families are the norm.”
He scowls, and it's not from the jalapeños. “What about the kids?”
I'm not even dating the guy I'm screwing, and my father is talking kids? My back is beginning to spasm from the hard wood chair. “That's what day care is for.”
“So you'll ship your kids off to day care? You want your children to be raised by strangers?”
I was shipped off to day care when my mother had to get a job after my father left her. One woman was responsible for about twenty-five of us. I spent the first two weeks crying in the corner, and the rest of the time watching the small Polish woman picking up children by their ears. But anyway, why are we talking about my nonexistent children? “I don't know. Maybe I can get a part-time job.”
He points his finger in the air, dotting an
i
in the sky. “Exactly my point. Why spend all that on your education if you can't commit yourself totally to your career? There is no reason for you to have an MBA. You don't want to be a career woman. You want to be a wife and mother. And I don't want to burst your bubble, but in today's economy, managers aren't rushing to hire childbearing women. Remember Melissa?
When I hired her, she didn't utter one peep about wanting kids, and now she's six months along and I have to find someone to replace her while she's on maternity leave. Sure, she says she's coming back, but she doesn't have to let me know until the end of her leave. It's horrible for the company, I tell you.”
“Iâ” I think you're an asshole, I think but don't say. “I'll be right back.”
I lay my napkin on the table and scamper to the bathroom, as quick as my unpregnant body can take me. Although, since I haven't gotten my period in weeks, I could be pregnant, who knows? Not a big deal. I could just have it “taken care of.” Again.
I lock the stall and sit on the closed toilet, the tears freely flowing down my cheeks, ruining my mascara.
Taken care of. Can you take out the trash, please? I imagine a vacuum being placed up against my vagina, sucking out the debris. When I missed my first period, I'd been surprised. But excited. Wayne hated condoms so he'd been pulling out. I knew I was supposed to be nervous, devastated even, but I ran to the store to buy the pregnancy test, ran up to my bathroom and did it right away. Pink. Pink, pink, pink. Wayne and I had been dating a year; he would be happy, wouldn't he? Scared of course, that was normal, but
secretly
happy. He must have known there was a chance this would happen (they don't call pulling out sexual roulette for no reason). Maybe this was what he'd been planning. I called him at work, told him to come over as soon as possible. We sat in his car in the driveway, engine off. I didn't want my mother listening. I felt like Molly Ringwald in that movie where she and her high-school sweetheart are scared, but they drop out of school and make it work.
After I told him, he stared at the windshield. He turned the wipers on and then watched them go back and forth, back and forth. “Do you need money to take care of it?” he asked.
Take care of it.
I felt the baby die right then. Shrivel up like a popped balloon. “Is that what you want?” I asked, my throat contracting.
“What choice do we have?”
Instead of explaining the choices, I nodded.
In the middle of the night, I crawled into my mother's bed, crying. I hadn't done that since my father left. I told her everything, and that I wanted to keep the baby. Then she started crying, too, and told me that I couldn't keep it, that it would ruin my life, that I had to take care of it, take care of it, take care of it, and two weeks later I did. We sat together in the waiting room, my mother and I. She read the
Redbook
that was on a table and I stared at the safe-sex posters on the wall. Another girl, a tall blonde who looked about sixteen, was also there with her mother. We didn't make eye contact.
I called in sick for the next week. It's easy to get out of work when your dad's your boss. Told him I had bronchitis. Smoked a cigarette before I spoke to him so my voice sounded scratchy. Decided that since I was no longer pregnant, I might as well take up smoking. Went on the pill the next week. Wayne thought it was the best present everânow he could come inside me.
I doubt I'm pregnant again, since I'm a few weeks into my continuous birth control taking. My trick workedâI didn't get my period during exams. The only problem is, I realized that if I take the entire month, I'll start my next period on January 9, which sucks, because I go back to LWBS on the eleventh. Since I want my period to end on the ninth so there's none of that “aftermath” left by the eleventh, I have to get it on the fifth, which means I have to take my last pill on the second. Maybe I'll keep taking the pills straight until I go through menopause, and then I'll never have children. Then will my father encourage me to work?
What if I never get married? What if I decide to spend the rest of my life as a mistress instead? Under the circumstances, that seems likely. No worries, Dad, I think I'll just spend my life sleeping with men. Especially attached men. Have any friends you can introduce me to?
I sit on the toilet and pee out the margarita. What am I going to do? Drop out? Take out loans? Maybe my father is right. Maybe I don't care about my career. I never used to. I applied to LWBS only because of Wayne. Maybe I am wasting my money. Maybe I should throw in the schoolbag and head up to Alaska. I've heard the male-to-female ratio up there is comparable to LWBS's, but knowing me, I'd probably head straight for the guy with the serious girlfriend. The guy who stops calling as soon as he's out of the country. I pull a sheet of rough toilet paper out of the dispenser and use a square to dry my eyes. Why did I fall in love with a guy who loves someone else?
I'm in love with him. I love that the only music he listens to are soundtracks to superhero movies and that he hums them when he doesn't think I'm listening. The way he plays with my ears. The way he smiles. The way he smells.
I wish it wasn't so cold up in Toronto. He's going to need some body heat.
I take a deep breath and flush. I wash my hands and stare at myself in the mirror, at my bloodshot eyes. Maybe staying at B-school is a waste of time. Maybe I should drop out. My mother would kill me. She's a hundred percent behind me being in business school. Emotionally, not financially. She doesn't want me to end up like her. Happy housewife until she found out her husband was having an affair. And it wasn't a one-night-stand affair that was over; it was an I'm-leaving-you-for-someone-else affair. She got alimony, but she hated taking money from him, and so she got a job as a secretary, which she hated.
She blamed herself, said she'd let herself get treated like
shit. She'd always treated my father like the king he wasn't. Every Sunday she'd pick oranges off the tree in the yard and make him freshly squeezed juice. Each glass would take her twenty minutes, and sometimes he would ask for seconds. She was too tired to make herself a glass. She never made me one, even though I would beg. Once in a while, if my father didn't finish, I was allowed to drink whatever was left, savoring each drop against my tongue.
Maybe I'm more like her than she thought.
Maybe LWBS isn't for me.
My final Stats mark was posted before I left for the airport. Seventy-eight. The class average was a seventy-nine. Not great. Not horrible. Our group assignments probably raised my mark. I guess I did all right on the exam, which is good to hear. But I studied my ass off and came out average. It's a little sad.
What will I do if I drop out? Come back here? I don't know if I could live in Phoenix again. Last night I went to the same lame-ass bar I went to when I was twenty-one, and saw the same people who I hung out with, including Wayne and Cheryl.
Wayne pinched my ass when Cheryl was ordering a Heineken. “You're looking great,” he said. I thought I was looking thin. Exams will do that.
“Thanks,” I said, wondering if all men cheated. He cheated on me. Now he wants to cheat on her. Russ cheats on Sharon. My father cheated on my mom. Is it their fault? Or our fault for letting it happen?
What have I done? And what should I do now?