An Off Year (21 page)

Suddenly, I had a real reason to be sad about going to college. It seemed like there was a glimmer of hope that Germaine and I might actually start getting along like human beings. And I was going to be leaving.

“What time is Dad coming to get you?” Germaine asked. I'd been there about a half hour.

“Not for another hour,” I said. “Do you want me to leave or something?”

“No!” Germaine snapped, and then softened, tried again. “I mean, no, don't be silly. I was just asking. Do you want some iced tea?”

“Sure,” I said. We headed back to the kitchen, and she poured two glasses. We went to sit outside on her deck. It was actually adorable as hell. Someone in a big hat was kneeling over a flower bed in the courtyard below. Two guys with huge arm muscles were drinking margaritas and grilling on a balcony across the way. Germaine waved to them.

“This is really good,” I said. I usually hated iced tea: it was the blandest of drinks. But this was minty fresh.

“Thanks,” Germaine said. “So, uh. Your year is almost up, huh?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, I guess it is. Time flies.” Or did it?

“Do you think you . . . you know, figured everything out?”

“Absolutely not,” I said. “I don't have anything more figured out than before. But, well, I'm not nervous. Right now. I'm nervous that I'm not nervous. I don't know.”

“I feel kind of bad for you,” Germaine said, pulling a cigarette out of a pack that was sitting on the table. She offered me one, and I waved it away. “I bet a lot of people think a year off sounds like a lot of fun, but you had to feel all this pressure to figure out life. And you can't do it in a year. You can't do it in a year at home, anyway.”

“You're right,” I said.

“I still would have traveled,” she said. “Although I don't think traveling abroad for a year when you're eighteen is the same as doing it when you're twenty. I don't know.” Germaine had spent a semester in London when she was in college, which I kind of thought was cheating, since I thought the whole point was to go somewhere where they didn't speak English. But, obviously, what did I know?

“I guess,” I said. “It's hard to know what I don't know. You know?” I was trying to be funny, sort of.

“I know,” Germaine said, but she didn't seem like she was playing along. “You're pretty spoiled.” I took a big gulp from my iced tea, because I didn't know what that meant.

“But I'm also pretty spoiled, I guess,” she said. “Dad let me sit around at home for a while without doing anything, too. Maybe I don't give him enough credit sometimes. That was sort of nice of him. I had friends who had to work through college and everything, or went to their new jobs the day after they graduated. The time after college is just tough. You're in school and you're in this make-believe land where you can do whatever you want, and then you come out again and it's the real world. It's a hard adjustment.”

“So do you miss college?” I said.

“Not really, actually,” she said. “I love my apartment. I even love having a job—I mean, it'd be nice if I had a more exciting one, but I like that when the day is done, I can just go home and do whatever the hell I want and not have homework or projects or anything like that. And I like that I can stay in on a Friday night and not feel like I'm missing out.”

“That's what I'm worried about,” I said. “I'm worried that I'm going to have to pretend to have fun when I don't want to.”

“You're not pretending to have fun,” said Germaine. “It
is
fun. But when you get out, you realize that there are many more kinds of fun out there. You didn't seem like you had that much fun this year.”

“I had some fun,” I said. “I liked visiting Josh. It was nice hanging out with Dad.”

“But come on, Cecily,” she said. “You had a whole year with practically no obligations. You had the year off! Do something with it.”

“I was figuring stuff out. I worked,” I said, suddenly wanting to put her cigarette out on her hand. “I took a class. I sort of traveled.”

“Come on, Cecily. I think that whatever it is that you think is so safe and nice is actually holding you back. Have a little fucking fun before it's too late,” she said.

“Too late?”
This conversation was freaking me out.

“Not too late,” she corrected herself. “Don't worry about that. It'll never be too late. Just . . . I think you'd regret it if you didn't make an effort to enjoy yourself a little bit more.”

“I'll make a mental note,” I said, polishing off my tea. “Have more fun.”

She laughed, but I wasn't kidding.

“Do you think I'm spoiled?”
I asked Jane, seeing her for what was supposed to be the last time before I left for Kenyon. Unless everything fell apart again.

“Um,” she said.

“Thanks a lot,” I snapped.

“Hang on,” she said. “I was just saying ‘Um,' for God's sake. I do that a lot.”

“My sister says I'm spoiled.”

“Why do you care all of a sudden what your sister thinks?”

“I don't know,” I said. “I guess I'm worried that that's why I screwed up, and that's why I didn't end up talking to too many people this year.”

“I don't think it's that,” she said. “I do think you're privileged, like a lot of the kids in this town are privileged. I think your problem, maybe, is that you haven't put yourself out there enough. You haven't had big challenges so far, in my opinion. You didn't think you were up to college because you'd never had to go outside your comfort zone before.”

“Whose fault is that?” I asked. “I demand to know who.”

She shrugged. “Let's not lay blame on anyone,” she said. “Although, yeah, I do think your Dad might have, you know, let some things slide for you. He liked the relationship he had with you and didn't want to mess it up by pushing you too hard.”

“But that's why we get along so well,” I said.

“Well, life's crazy,” she said. “He let you take the year off. He could have made you go. But on the other hand, you did all these other things that you didn't think you could do, or wanted to. You got back in touch with your friends even though it was easier not to. You went to class. You visited your brother. It sounds like you were able to see your sister without punching her.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I guess . . . even if we don't get along all the time, it's good to talk to her because I can see what's in store for me. After-college awkwardness and then a cute apartment?”

“Is that a question?” Jane asked with a grin.

“Maybe? Aren't you expecting me to have a revelation about how Germaine and I really love each other and maybe we're actually the same person or something?”

“What? No. That's weird. I just think family is important and you should have given her another shot, since I think you assumed she was the enemy if she was close with your mom.”

“You're an evil doctor,” I said, and Jane tried to laugh villainously, which was hard to take seriously when she was wearing a cute little black-and-white polka-dotted dress.

“Well, fine,” I said. “I didn't like everything I tried, though.”

“I think you went into a lot of it expecting not to like it, don't you think? You didn't exactly go full throttle—you could have done a better job getting out there and socializing, for instance. But you're not going to like everything you try,” she said. “That's the point of trying stuff. Some turns out great; some, not so much. Do you think any of these things have really hurt you, though?”

“I guess not,” I said. This was turning out to be one of those times when it wasn't too fun to talk to Jane.

“Not everything in college is going to be fun, Cecily. You're going to get your heart broken. You'll do badly in a class. You might get fat or have a bad roommate. But I guarantee down the line you'll still feel good about most of the things that happened, even if you don't feel good about them at the time.”

“Germaine said something else,” I said.

“What was that?”

“She said I should ‘have a little more fucking fun' before the year is up.”

“I don't think that's such a bad idea.”

“Um.”

“Now
you're
the one saying ‘um.' ”

“Seriously . . . I don't know what to do.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, yeah! I want to have a little fucking fun. But I don't know what to do. What do I do?”

“You've
forgotten
how to have fun?”

“Well . . . yeah . . . kinda. I never had to generate fun on my own. You know, I'd do something with Kate or Mike or whatever.”

Jane shook her head. “That's the saddest thing I've ever heard. We're right next to one of the best cities in the world. Go to a baseball game. The Sears Tower. The Art Institute.”

“That sounds a lot like
Ferris Bueller's Day Off
.”

“You could do worse. They had fun in that movie, didn't they?”

“Yeah. And a car got wrecked.”

“Then take the El.”

“Boy, you just have an answer for everything, don't you, Jane?”

“I guess I do,” she said, and handed me a note.

“Anyway, I'm just rusty, is all. I needed some time to sort some shit out, right?”

“I think you've done enough sorting for now.”

I read Jane's note: “Fun! Try! Good luck!” was the prescription.

“Our time is up.” She stood up, still a few inches shorter than me in her red, strappy high heels, and stuck out her hand. I gave a handshake I thought Angie would approve of.

“I think you'll be okay, Cecily. You just have to believe you'll be okay. Or better yet, don't think about it at all.”

I shook her hand. “We'll see. I'll give you a call in a few months if it turns out I'm living in a halfway house.”

“Goody.”

I walked to the reception room for what I hoped was the last time. Gina was working a piece of gum very noisily.

“I'll see you later, Gina,” I said as I headed toward the door. “I just want to thank you for all the support you've given me this year. I'll never forget you.”

“ ' Bye, Sally,” she said without raising her head.

 

 

Mike had come home for the summer, but I hadn't seen him much, since he had a job downtown. True to his word, he had kept in touch pretty well since I'd seen him in January. I didn't feel as weird about it, either, once I had started working and taking the art history class. I actually had things to talk about. He had enjoyed his second semester at Kansas. He liked going to basketball games. He was digging psychology courses. And he had started seeing a new girl named Kim, but “very casually,” he stressed. “We've just hung out a few times. She seems nice. I'm not really trying to rush into anything serious, though. That hasn't worked out so well for me.”

“Casual? Does that mean you dress down whenever you see her? It's not black tie optional?” I had to make jokes to keep myself from feeling too jealous. Then again, maybe Kim, or whoever he saw, felt jealous if he ever talked about me.

I called him up the day after I saw Jane.

“Hey,” I said. “Let's have some fun.”

“Okay!” he said. “That's a hard invitation to turn down.”

“Awesome!”

“So . . . what are we going to do?”

“I don't know,” I said. “That's all I've got so far. I'm supposed to have some fun before I go back to school.”

“I think that's a good idea, and I'll be happy to help you have fun. What do you want to do?”

“We could go to Great America.”

“Don't you hate roller-coasters? And fanny packs? And churros?”

“That's true,” I said. “I don't even know why I suggested it. How about, um . . .” I was totally going to cheat. “Maybe a baseball game, or the Art Institute, or the Sears Tower?”

“That sounds like
Ferris Bueller's Day Off
,” Mike said.

“Oh does it? I've never seen that movie,” I said. “But seriously, doesn't that kind of sound like a good idea?”

“You know what?” Mike said. “It does sound pretty fun. When are we going to have said fun?”

“How about tomorrow?”

“Sounds like a plan,” he said.

“I'll e-mail you,” I said.

I went online and ordered tickets to the White Sox game, and asked Dad if I could borrow the car. He seemed confused at first about what I was up to.

“I'm having
fun
,” I said. “Get it?”

“I think so,” he said. “I think I've heard of fun. I think you used to have some and then it went away.”

“Hmm,” I grunted.

 

 

I picked up Mike the next afternoon. He was wearing baggy khaki shorts, flip-flops, and a University of Kansas T-shirt.

“So now I guess you're all into UK, huh?” I asked. “For now, anyway.”

“It's laundry day,” he said. “And hell, yeah. Rock, chalk, Jayhawk.”

“I have no idea what you're talking about. Project fun commencing!” I yelled, and rolled down the sunroof. A drop of rain hit me on the head.

“That can't be a good sign,” said Mike.

“Project fun continuing!” I said, rolling up the sunroof, and we headed toward Lake Shore Drive.