Taking Off (21 page)

CHAPTER 50

E
rnest Hemingway didn’t go to college,” I said to Lea. We were at a new café in Seabrook.

“You don’t look well,” she said. “Are you okay? You’ve got these dark circles under your eyes. It’s not a good look for you.”

“I’m fine,” I said. “Did you know Dorothy Parker stopped school at thirteen?”

“Dorothy who?”

“
Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses
?”

“I don’t think glasses matter to most guys.”

“No, Lea, that’s not … never mind. My point is, college is not a prerequisite for success.”

“Well, maybe not in the olden days. It probably is today. Especially in the good old USA.”

“Why do you want to go to college, Lea?”

She looked at me. “You’ve got your serious voice and your serious face, and I do not like it.”

I munched on another salty fry. “Just answer the question.”

“It’s just what you do, Annie. You go to high school, you graduate, you go to college.”

“Then what?”

“What do you mean?” asked Lea, stealing one of my fries.

“Hey! You should have gotten your own.”

“Fries are bad for you.”

“Would you answer the question?”

“Didn’t I?” asked Lea, taking a bite out of my burger. I removed it from my hungry friend’s hand. Lea grabbed another fry.

“So what of it?” I asked. “What are you going to do after college?”

“Get married and have kids. Ga! Don’t make that face!”

“I knew you were going to say that,” I said.

“I knew you were going to make that face, which is why I was stealing fries and bites of burger instead of answering you. I thought you were the one thinking of staying here to be with Mark anyway. Or has that changed now that, you know, other things have happened?”

I studied my burger really closely.

“What?” Lea asked.

“Huh?”

“Why is your burger so interesting all of a sudden?” Lea asked.

My hand on the table was suddenly covered with Lea’s. I looked up. Lea’s face was frozen.

“What?” I asked.

“Are you going to break up with Mark?”

“I don’t know what to do, Lea. I don’t think I love him,” I said, quietly. “I mean, I love him. But I’m not in love with him anymore.” It hurt to say it, but it felt true. I was exhausted. I’d gotten very little sleep last night. “I don’t love him, Lea.”

Lea made a sad face. “I’m sorry.”

I pushed my fries away.

“I’m so sorry!” exclaimed Lea. “I’ve made you sad.”

“You didn’t make me sad. All this stuff is just sad.”

“Are you going to break up with him?” she asked.

“I don’t know how I’m going to do it. Just thinking of it makes me sick.”

“You’ve been together a long time. And friends for longer than we have!”

“I know.”

“Do you think you’re going to miss him?” asked Lea.

“Yeah, I do.”

“He loves you so much. It’s going to hit him hard.”

“Now,” I said, taking a sip of my Diet Coke, “you’re depressing me.”

“Oh, I’m a terrible friend!”

“So since you’re feeling bad and all for making me sad, answer another question.”

“Okay,” said Lea, agreeing despite looking like she really wanted to keep talking about how sad Mark must be.

“Are you going to college because you’re expected to or because you want to?”

“Didn’t I answer this already?”

“Nope,” I said.

Lea sighed. “Why do you think about this stuff?”

“Lea.”

“All right.” She paused, looking like she was thinking about it. “Yes, it does seem like it’s expected, like it’s thirteenth grade. But I’d go anyway, I think, even if my parents didn’t expect it.”

“Would you?” I asked. “Or are you saying that because you’ve been brought up to think that way, like being Methodist?”

“I like being Methodist.”

I smiled. “Yes. So do you think it’s like that?”

“Since that’s what I’ve always known, how would I know? And maybe I’m glad I was brought up with that idea.” She shrugged. “I’m looking forward to it. I mean, Annie,” she said, leaning forward, “I think the question is, why don’t you want to go?”

“I didn’t say I didn’t.”

“But you’re thinking about that, whether you really want to go.”

“Maybe I should talk to Mr. Williams about it,” I said.

“Any excuse to talk to Mr. Williams,” she said, grinning. “Look, I don’t understand what’s not to like about going to college. Maybe you don’t want to go because you’re being rebellious, you think that’s what’s expected of you, so you’re determined not to do it.”

“That’s just weird,” I said. “I don’t think that’s it.”

“Then, what is
it
?”

I hesitated. “I don’t know what I want, Lea. I’m not like you or Mark or my mom or my dad or even Tommy—”

“Speaking of Tommy—”

“—all I know is I like to read.” And I like to write poetry.

“Yeah. But—”

“And I like living in my house with just my mom and me with my dad coming over all the time and watching tele-vision with me. Sure, sometimes I go nuts and want my own car to get out of the house, but when I feel that way, I call Mark …” I stopped and looked down. “And Mark comes over and we drive and drive.” I was talking quietly now. “And I like riding in the car with him. Just driving around.”

“Okay,” said Lea. “Okay. It’s all okay, Annie. All that.”

I looked into my friend’s eyes, but wasn’t focusing on her. “But I don’t love Mark. And I can’t ride around in the car with him for the rest of my life just so I won’t have to stop and figure out what I need to do next.”

“No, you can’t,” said Lea softly.

I sighed. “How can I care so much about him, but it not be right for us to be together?”

Lea shook her head. “You want different things.”

“What do you mean? I don’t know what I want.”

“I’ve said all along I think you’re meant for great things. And Mark just wants to be here, stay here.”

“And part of me wants that too.”

“Do you think, Annie,” asked Lea, “that that’s just the scared part of you?”

I looked at Lea for a long time before answering. “Partly. But it also feels like … loss. Like I’m giving something up.”

“You are, Annie. But that’s just what happens in life.”

“Yeah,” I said. “But I don’t like it.”

CHAPTER 51

M
r. Williams was at my front door.

“Hi,” I said. Even if it was expected, it was still very odd to see Mr. Williams in my doorway and not in front of a blackboard with a piece of chalk in his hand.

“Hi, Annie.”

“I’m ready,” I said, grabbing my purse.

“Is your mom here? I’d like to meet her. We only got to talk for a moment on the phone.”

“She’s not,” I said, closing the door and locking it. I turned around. “I’m ready,” I said again. I was ready for answers, and a little nervous.

On the way to Houston, I thought about how weird it was to be in a car with Mr. Williams, just the two of us. His invitation had come after I’d told him my secret. It was getting easier to talk about my desire to be a poet, especially after having my first poetry reading at The Orange Show with my audience of one.

Lea had flipped out when I told her what I was doing today. She wanted to come, so she could stare at Mr. Williams throughout lunch. I said no.

“So, Annie?” Mr. Williams asked.

“Yes?”

He hesitated. “You haven’t talked about the
Challenger
accident at all.”

I still didn’t want to talk about it. I only felt like I could confide in Tommy about all that.

He must have known. He let the subject drop.

We went to Vargo’s, an established restaurant in Houston with a lake and a gazebo, footpaths and bridges, peacocks, and white graceful swans. It was a wonderful spot to discuss my future, and I had a feeling Mr. Williams was trying to draw me out with pressed tablecloths and rich desserts.

While we waited, I drank my iced tea and felt a bit out of place. I remembered a scene in Sylvia Plath’s novel,
The Bell Jar
, when Esther mistook a small bowl with cherry blossoms for soup. She drank it up and ate the crisp flowers. I had included the scene in my own Plath poem. I read later that nearly every poet has a poem about Plath.

I wouldn’t drink the finger bowl here, if there was one.

“What are you smiling at?” asked Mr. Williams.

“I didn’t know I was smiling …,” I said, looking up at the elderly woman at Mr. Williams’s side.

“Oh!” Mr. Williams said, standing. “I didn’t see you there.”

I’d imagined this poet friend of Mr. Williams’s to have long gray hair and wear big earrings. I’d been wrong.

Introductions were made. Professor Gaines—a petite, elegant-looking woman—sat down. She leaned forward and said to me, her head shaking a little, “I hear you are a poet.”

The words sent a sweet, true feeling through me. I almost denied it, but then nodded and said, “Yes, I am a poet.” Then I laughed.

“Well, it is a funny thing to be,” she said.

She ordered a glass of white wine and then turned to me. “What would you like to know, Annie?”

I looked at Mr. Williams, who raised his eyebrows.

“I want to know … to start with, I guess, when did you know you wanted to be a poet?”

Her blue eyes matched her blue suit. She looked frail, but when she talked, her voice was strong and clear. “I was about nine years old. I wrote a poem about my mean, sour brother, comparing him to a green apple. Why do you like to write poems, Annie?”

I smiled, thinking of the why.

“Ah!” she said, pointing. “It gives you joy.”

“It’s putting words together, side by side, shuffling them around, finding the more perfect fit, the better word, creating the rhythm on paper that I hear in my head, like painting music with language. You’re right. It does give me joy. And it helps me make sense of things, or at least get closer to the truth of things.”

She glanced at Mr. Williams, and they shared a smile. I played with my forks nervously.

“But you don’t want to go to college to learn more about poets and poetry?”

“My friends who want to be engineers or doctors, they’re so lucky. They’ll get to do what they love and get paid for it. Those of us who want other things …”

“Face a more uncertain future,” Mr. Williams finished for me.

“Exactly.”

“There’s no money in poetry,” said Mr. Williams, “but then there’s certainly no poetry in money and so it’s all even.”

“Robert Graves said that?” asked Professor Gaines.

Mr. Williams nodded.

She smiled a little mischievously. “Joseph Roux said, ‘Science is for those who learn; poetry, for those who know.’ ”

Mr. Williams laughed.

The professor’s eyes lit up with amusement. She looked at me. “You didn’t answer my question, Annie. Is it very important to you to learn about poetry?”

I thought about Van Gogh only selling one painting in his lifetime. “Poetry isn’t going to pay the bills.”

She laughed. “You are as stubborn as I am. You still haven’t answered my question.”

“I feel like poetry has me, and I have it in me, and I can’t silence it, but—”

She had her hand raised, so I stopped talking. “Then go to college and study poetry. That’s what you should do.”

I looked at Mr. Williams, and he smiled.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“I thought we’d be discussing it more,” I said, “that you’d want to know what I think.”

She looked at me, her gaze so direct and honest. “I was telling you what I thought. You already know what you think.”

“No, I don’t think I do.”

‘Then you need to think some more.” She picked up the menu. “Let’s order first.”

As we ate, Professor Gaines talked about how she too wanted to be a poet, but knew she couldn’t support herself. So she went to college and worked on an English degree, and then another, and another. And she ended up teaching poetry for thirty-five years, and being surrounded by the poetry of the masters and the poetry of her students. She’d loved it.

“So you think I need to go to college?” I asked.

“College will open up your life for you, not only in what you learn, but in whom you meet and what you experience. And you’ll find, I imagine, that you’ll be a better poet after you study poetry. It’s not always true. And it’s just my opinion. Ask someone else; get another opinion. But you’ve asked me, and that’s my opinion.”

“But you haven’t looked at any of my poetry,” I said, thinking of the poems in my purse. “What if I don’t have a gift for it? Can I learn to be a poet?”

“No one knows the answer to those questions, Annie.”

But I needed answers, was desperate for them.

“Professor Gaines,” I said, reluctant to bring up this topic but pushing myself on, “a poet has to reveal so much of herself in her poetry. Even when the subject isn’t personal, the poem feels very personal to me. If what I write isn’t any good, I’ll have put myself right out there for nothing.”

“Do you think so? Do you think it will be for nothing?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “If a writer or an artist is gifted, then even if she’s not able to make a living at it while she’s alive, she’ll leave something behind for people to enjoy. But what if you’re not gifted—not even a smidgen of talent—what if your poems or books or paintings are never enjoyed by anyone but you.” I shrugged. “Is it worth it to pursue it? How do I know if studying poetry is the right choice for me?”

“It might not be. But finding that out is learning something too.”

I nodded.

“You look disappointed,” she said.

“No,” I said, “just thinking.”

“Annie, I know you want answers, but have you considered that the journey to finding out these things is part of the point?”

I smiled at her. “I thought you’d be enigmatic, you know, giving me subtle messages that I had to decipher.”

She laughed. “Because I’m a poet?”

“Yes,” I said.

She peered at me. “You thought I would be like a Bob Dylan song.”

Mr. Williams laughed.

“You know who Bob Dylan is?” I asked.

“Pshaw. You’re so young,” she said. “I’m surprised
you
know who he is.”

“I’m surprised both of you know who he is,” said Mr. Williams.

“He’s a poet,” I said, then took a sip of my iced tea.

“I’ll toast to that,” said Mr. Williams, tipping his glass to mine.

And even Professor Gaines joined in the toast.

The times they are a-changin’
, I thought.