All the Roads That Lead From Home (20 page)

Emily
shrugged. They drank their beer, opened their textbooks, then closed them
again. They’d all aced the same exam Kirsten failed, and it was as if they’d
all come to the same conclusion at the same moment—they didn’t need to study so
hard.

“What’s the
deal with her hair, anyway?” asked Lee. “Major chop job.”

“Looks
like she did it herself,” said Emily.

“No way.
Really?” asked Tom.

“Sure. I
can see her standing there, in front of her mirror, going at it with rusty
shears.”

“Why
rusty?”

“Oh, I
don’t know. There’s just something decayed about her.”

Tom felt
bad again. He didn’t like Emily. She was arrogant and cruel, but what she’d
said about Kirsten was true.

***

The Econ. exam was one of
three Kirsten failed. She was up to speed in her American History course, but
when she opened the exam book to write the essay, she froze. Her mind ran down
one path, then up another. Words raced through, and she couldn’t capture them,
or even slow them down. Geology was a multiple choice, and what tripped her up
there was a sudden obsession with filling in the ovals
completely—perfectly—with no lead outside the line. The moment she finished one
she checked it again and again. She erased several answers to start over from
scratch, and when time was called, she’d completed less than half the test. Her
failures took air out of whatever room she was in. She went to the health
clinic.
I’ve got asthma
, she told the nurse. A doctor listened hard to
her breathing and disagreed. He asked if she were getting enough rest.
Well,
you know, we just finished mid-terms
. He said to go and catch up on her
sleep.

In her
Econ. lecture, she moved to the back, away from Emily, Lee and Tom. Tom turned
back sometimes and smiled at her. The others didn’t. One day he caught up with
her in the hall. She’d tried to escape, and wasn’t fast enough.

“Hey,”
said Tom. “You have time for a beer?” She pulled back, against the wall, and
hugged her backpack as if it were a stuffed bear.

“Sure,”
she said. She’d broken out in a sweat.

“How are
things?” asked Tom.

“Fine.”

They left
the building. Their path took them over the gorge. Kirsten walked on the
outside, away from the railing. The sunshine was painful. Tom put on a pair of
sunglasses. He looked like a movie star, she thought. Like someone important.

“We miss
you in the study group,” he said.

“I bet you
don’t. At least, Emily and Lee don’t.”

“Who cares
about them? You should come back. If you think you want to, that is.”

“I don’t
think I’d get much out of it. Besides, I’ve got a part-time job now, well, a
volunteer job, really, and I won’t be around as much.”

“Really?
Where are you volunteering?”

“The
counseling center.”

Kirsten
had never been into the counseling center, but she’d seen a flyer asking for
volunteers.
Are you good with people? Do you have time to listen? No special
training necessary. Call today to attend an orientation session.

With two
beers in her, Kirsten relaxed a little. For some reason, for the moment she
felt safe.

“We should
go out some time,” said Tom.

“We’re out
right now.”

“I mean at
night.”

“You mean,
like a date?”

“Why not?”

“Okay.”

But Tom
got busy with school again and didn’t ask Kirsten for a date.

***

The moment she walked
into the counseling center, Kirsten knew she’d done the right thing. The potted
plants were lush. Tropical. One was red and leafy. Later she realized they were
plastic, and wasn’t disappointed. Keeping a foreign thing like that alive in
the Dunston air—even heated air—would be hard. Yet, when she’d first seen the
town, the spring before, after she’d been admitted, having applied sight
unseen, she found it full of life. Lots of thick green trees and deer off in
the roadside woods. Growing up in Los Angeles meant both trees and deer were
scarce. She hoped—at times she was dead certain—that coming to school there
would mean a much needed renewal. Her own life taking shape, and rounding out.

Her father
wanted her to go to Stanford because he had. Though he knew she wanted to
escape the house he’d spent his whole life building, and the wife/mother he’d
spent years trying to improve, the moment never came when he could admit it to
her.
Do us proud
was all he said. Kirsten’s mother was devastated. They
had never been close, yet she couldn’t bear being left alone with a man who
thought she was his doormat. The mother knew that her own weakness, her failure
to take hold of her own life, had passed on to the daughter, who was equally
meek. Yet there was a sliver of steel in her somewhere, her mother was sure.
The question was where, and what would cause it to break the surface.

Kirsten
was shown to an African-American man who sat at a dusty desk. An ivy plant
trailed to the floor. It looked real. Her touch confirmed it. She was confused.
The fake plants were in front, and the living ones were in back. Which meant
you progressed from death to life, when it was really the other way around. If
not, that meant -

“Pray,”
said the man.

“What?”

“Name’s
Pray.” He pointed to a piece of wood on his desk.

“Odd
name.”

“Even
before I was born, my mother was convinced my soul needed saving.”

“Did it?”

“I’ve been
pretty good so far, but it’s too soon to tell.”

His teeth
were very white. The dreadlocks she wasn’t sure about. She’d always thought
they looked stupid.

“So, what
can I do for you?” he asked.

“I’d like
to volunteer.”

“That’s
great. Why would you like to volunteer here, as opposed to say, an animal
shelter?”

Was he
baiting her?

“Because
people seem to be in trouble,” she said. “The stress seems to be building up.”

“That’s
probably true. Well, Kirsten, why don’t you tell me a little bit about
yourself?”

It was
like talking about someone else. Growing up in Brentwood, coming to the Ivy
League to study—what, she wasn’t sure. Maybe theater, though she was terrified
of performing; so maybe history, though the relevance of that wasn’t always
clear because all of us, even historians, had to live in the moment, didn’t
they; so maybe Economics, since that seemed to be what made the world go
around—the trouble was she’d just failed her exam, and the grade report had
already been sent home, and she could just imagine how it would be received.
Her father could ooze disappointment like pus from a wound (she then apologized
for her choice of words).

She talked
more. It got easier. There were so many random points in her life, all these
things off the side, like how her aunt tried to show her how to paint once and
got fed up with her, or how she’d fallen in love with a palomino pony her
father said was too much responsibility for her, or how her piano teacher once
told her she was probably wasting her time. She told Pray she thought she was
supposed to connect all the points somehow, like the picture puzzles kids used
to do, because she was sure there was something underneath all the dots, if she
could only get far enough away to really look down and see it.

Pray told
her she should make an appointment with one of the counselors there. She
thought he meant so she could learn what to tell people who came in, at the end
of their rope.

“It never
hurts to explore these feelings in a safe environment,” he said.

The moment
she realized he thought she was nuts, she stood up and left.

***

The snow came on hard. A
March snow was supposed to have less force, or so she’d been told. Or had she
ever been told what snow was supposed to do, and if so, when? Kirsten’s
room-mate spent all her time at her boyfriend’s frat, leaving Kirsten on her
own. It was better that way. Celia, the roommate, talked a lot and wore perfume
that made Kirsten’s throat itch. The moment she left, taking the scent with
her, Kirsten stopped coughing.

The snow
fell for two days and three nights, and on the morning of the third day the
world had become visible once more, and blindingly bright. All the sunlight in
Southern California was nothing compared to this, yet Kirsten didn’t mind squinting
her way across the main quad, across the gorge where icicles hung like huge
teeth, around the athletic center, past the Physics building, along the edge of
College Town, then back to her dorm. She hadn’t attended any of her classes
for ten days. When that time reached a total of two weeks, a letter would be
mailed home, or so the student hand-book had said. Her father had suffered the
grade report in silence, but she was sure the letter would prompt a telephone
call, or worse, his appearance at her door. But no, he wouldn’t waste his time
coming all that way to fetch her back. He’d tell her to get on the next plane
home. He’d make himself scarce when she did return, avoiding conversation,
avoiding her, avoiding, avoiding, avoiding. Her mother wouldn’t meet her eye,
and then one morning, Kirsten would awaken to find her sitting on the end of
her bed, watching her sleep.

She
couldn’t go home. Not after submitting herself so easily to failure. She’d have
to stay right there in Dunston, and suffer it out, moment by moment.

Her room
felt too small, even with Celia gone. She moved Celia’s dresser into the hall,
wrestled her desk out there, too, and stripped her bed. The R.A. asked what she
was doing. Kirsten explained.

“You can’t
do that. This room is assigned as a double. Everything has to go back the way
it was.”

Kirsten
promised to replace the furniture. She locked the door. The room still felt
small. She tore down the curtains, and hoped the light would widen everything
it fell on. It didn’t. She needed a shower. She hadn’t had one for four days.
The sight of her own nakedness had become disturbing. There were too many
mirrors in the bathroom. She thought they should be painted black to spare her
having to see herself. She gathered what she needed—shampoo, soap, a towel that
stank of mildew because she’d never once put it through the laundry, different
clothes, none of them clean—and made her way into the bathroom. She turned off
the light. Without windows, she stood in total darkness. This is what the blind
experience all the time. That was both fascinating and terrifying. She inched
towards the shower stall, put her things just outside it on the floor, and slid
her hand along the cold, smooth tile until she found the lever that turned on
the water. She stripped. She found her soap and shampoo, and got into the
stall. As she was rinsing her hair, the light went on.

“What the
fuck are you doing taking a shower in the dark?” The voice belonged to a fat
girl two doors down. Kirsten had never learned her name. She didn’t answer.

“Oh, and
you might want to close the curtain.”

Kirsten
saw that she’d soaked the clothes she’d intended to wear because there’d been
nothing to block the water. She pushed down the lever, wrapped herself in her
wet towel, gathered her belongings, then returned to her room and wept.

***

Tom knocked on her door.
He smelled of fresh air and the Indian food he’d had for lunch. His presence
made the room warm.

“You look
like shit, if you don’t mind my saying so,” he said. His backpack hit the
floor.

“I’m
fine.”

“Have you
been sick?”

“No. Just
working hard.”

“You
haven’t been in class.”

“I needed
some time off.”

He sat
down on the end of her bed. She’d been sleeping in a sleeping bag on the floor.
When she heard the knock, she’d kicked the bag under the bed.

“You look
like you could use some fresh air,” he said. “Let’s go for a walk.”

“It’s
freezing.”

“It’ll do
you good.”

They sat,
not talking for a while. As he was leaving, he hugged her. She didn’t
understand why. She felt his heart beat through his tee shirt, and flannel
shirt, and the sweater he wore over all of that, and the heavy coat on the
outside. How could that be? How could anyone’s heart be that strong?

The moment
the door closed behind him, the room rushed outwards, spreading like a stain.
That’s stupid, she thought. It’s just a room.

***

The hour was late. She’d
been up all night for the second day straight. She was hungry. A candy bar from
the vending machine downstairs would really hit the spot, and then the thought
turned her stomach. Tom had called twice. She hadn’t answered. If she saw him,
she’d say her phone had run down.
Out of juice
, she’d say.
Like a
squeezed orange
.