Good Girl : A Memoir (9781476748986) (11 page)

“I love you,” she said.

“I love you, too,” I choked out through my tears.

We had been in something profound together, from the moment I had been conceived, all of those brave choices she had made in order to get herself free and get us to the land. Even though I had felt betrayed when she had her second family, and part of that urged me out on my own, I also felt that we were still in it together and always would be. As her oldest child, her only girl, who had the exact replicas of her hands and feet, the same pale freckled skin, the cleft of the Tomlinson chin,
and the name Tomlinson, too, I was about to take all of that and go out into the world to make my fortune, but we would always be joined together.

S
imon's Rock was as good as I had expected it to be, even better. I had gotten everything I'd wanted. I was still sometimes sad for no reason and deeply insecure, but I thrilled at my new life, and for once, I had the good sense to value it in the moment.

I'd landed on the smoking hall, even though I had checked the box that I didn't smoke on the housing form, for fear Mom would see. I lit a cigarette on day one and didn't put it out—simply hiding it during holidays at home—for the next fifteen years.

I fell for the most glamorous boy I'd ever seen. Nok was half-Thai, a product of the melting pot of New York City. He was handsome and worldly, even though he was only one month older than I was, which put us at the far end of the spectrum of the youngest kids in our class. I was far too shy to approach him directly, but I made plenty of eyes at him from across the dining hall. And the next day, I was happy to discover we were in the same writing and thinking workshop, a weeklong intensive program designed to get us accustomed to the school's educational principles. It was based on a great books curriculum, so we read everything, starting with Sophocles and Plato. We were expected to discuss the ideas behind the work and make connections to other writers and thinkers and our own ideas and lives, both in the classroom and in response journals, where we wrestled with the material in a more personal way, as well as papers, where we formed our theories into more developed arguments.

It was all so good. Getting up, rushing down the hallway to get ready in a long line of sinks, smiling to the new friends I was already making—my boisterous, hilarious, always-in-motion RA, Lucy, with her badass mama-bear vibe, and a petite dark-eyed hippie, Beth, who I forgave for liking the Grateful Dead because she'd actually gone on
tour with them over the summer, living on saltines and Captain Morgan with orange Crush, earning my admiration for her independent spirit.

Hurrying up the path to the dining hall for coffee and Cracklin' Oat Bran, then down the path to the classroom buildings, new notebooks and pens stuffed into the black velvet backpack Mom had sewn me, I found everything unexpected and wonderful.

At my classroom building, I nervously slipped into a nondescript room dominated by a big round table. I ducked my head, excited and happy and scared to be there. I had gotten my wish, and I had no idea what it would be like, or if I would be able to pull it off. I glanced nervously at Nok. He smiled at me. A great, wise smile I would find out was the perfect expression of his dark, dry wit. I smiled back, dropped my eyes.

At the end of the first day of class, we all made our way to the dining hall, where after we ate, we could sit on a balcony overlooking campus and smoke cigarettes and gossip. We had homework, but most of us had been waiting forever for a moment like this, and we weren't about to go back to our dorms and crack books just yet.

We hardly slept that first week, staying up late talking and flirting, dragging ourselves out of bed for class in the morning, cramming as much experience as we could into every moment. Classes were helmed by brilliant, turned-on professors and peopled by equally brilliant, turned-on students. It was as if I'd had my brain cracked open and fried in a pan like that antidrug commercial, except for one crucial difference: I'd always wanted to fry my brains with opinions and feelings, just like this. Such intense thoughts and experiences were where the good stuff happened.

By the end of the first week, it felt like Simon's Rock was ours. We loved it, and it loved us back. We knew our way around campus, through the airy atrium with its central pond filled with rocks and greens and frogs, into the library, where we picked up our reserved reading for class and flirted among the stacks of books; across the flat courtyard that led up to the student center, where we smoked cigarettes
and caught up, before going to the wall of cubbies, where we might find a note from a teacher or a friend, or a slip letting us know we had a care package; and then, down into the bookstore, where we could buy Pepperidge Farm cookies and the books we needed for class, which I loved feeling all stacked up in my arms; and the wilderness we escaped to just beyond the edges of campus, across Alford Road, past the big red barn, to Green River and the Labyrinth, through cornfields and out into the woods; or up the gravel road behind the dining hall, where Nok and I walked on the first Friday night.

We had dropped acid, and everything was heightened, not so much from the drug itself as from the intensity of paying attention to see whether the drug had affected anything yet, and also from looking for signs as to what was happening between us.

I almost couldn't believe it could be this easy. I had stepped into a perfect version of my life—the cutest boy in our class, whom I'd liked from the moment I saw him, was walking into the night with me, just me, and we were laughing and talking about the books we'd read that week and about writing, which we both liked. The air smelled so cool it was almost damp from the dense groves of pines and hardwoods that surrounded the road on each side. We crested the top of the hill, and the world opened up to reveal a fat, silvery moon hanging just above a perfect little chapel in a vast green lawn.

Next to the chapel was a building with a low porch roof. We climbed up, as if ascending into the sky to touch the moon, the acid coming on in a way that felt warm and dreamy, as if I were one with the world. He leaned me up against the building, and we were kissing under the effect of the drug and the moon and the happiness of this first perfect week of heaven. We wandered back toward our dorms around curfew, although I already knew that the door to my dorm was always propped open, or if it wasn't, I could climb in through the window of the student lounge. There was no need to worry.

Until the next day. I was nervous about seeing Nok. I thought he was everything I wanted, and he had to be my boyfriend. My happiness
depended on my ability to make him like me, but I doubted myself, deeply. I didn't know what to say, how to be cool around him, or anything. Nok told me that he didn't want to be tied down. We'd never gotten to the point of being anything, really. But I was distraught, and I hung on.

The following week, we slipped into his dorm room one afternoon when his roommate was at class and fooled around in the dim late-afternoon light that wafted in from beneath the blinds, full of the heightened excitement of hearing people moving to and fro in the corridor outside. We didn't have sex, but it was more than I'd ever done before. I knew he wasn't a virgin, and I was sure everything was happening as it should with a beautiful boy who was gentle with me and knew how to smooth over an awkward moment with a dry, self-­deprecating joke. Even when he again told me that he really thought we should just be friends, I held out hope for our future.

When Nok quickly began seeing a beautiful older student, I did not handle it well. As always, it was proof that I was nothing and no one cared. I had been a fool to expect my new life to be any different than my old. What I wanted was perpetually beyond my reach.

I
was enamored of the upperclassmen, because they seemed so much cooler and more in the know, and I made friends with as many of them as I could—like Natalia, a pretty redhead who smelled of cigarettes and Obsession and always had a complex romantic life unfolding around her, and her roommate, Stephanie, who had grown up in Boston. Stephanie's friend's band was opening for one of my favorite punk acts, 7 Seconds, at the Channel in Boston during one of our first weekends at school. I rode to the show with them, overjoyed at how far I'd come. I was only fifteen, but I could now legitimately say I was a college student hanging out in the city. My real life had begun.

Cocky with my newfound independence and a sense of my own maturity and worldliness, I reached out to my dad to let him know I'd
be in Boston with some friends for a concert. I had only seen him once since the Cure concert two years earlier, but I still felt close to him because of our letters.

Even though I was intent on seeming cool in front of my new friends, I was sure my dad could hang. And, as always, I really just wanted to see him. Actually, I wanted to impress him: if I hadn't been able to woo him with the sweet girl I'd been, I would woo him with the wild child I'd become. Because Stephanie was friends with the opening act, we pulled up behind the venue where the bands loaded in their gear. My dad approached, sussed out the situation, and immediately had to get on top of it. He saw a skinhead with braces, bomber jacket, and shaved head, his neatly rolled blue jeans above oxblood Doc Martens.

“I didn't know you hung out with skinheads, Sarah,” he said. “There's a lot of ignorance and hatred in that culture. You have to be careful.”

“Not all skinheads are racist,” I snapped back. “I'm friends with S.H.A.R.P. skinheads, and they fight for equality and tolerance.”

“That's still fighting.”

“Someone's gotta fight for what's right,” I said.

He stepped back a little, surveyed me and the pack of drinking, smoking kids.

“You know what, if you don't want me here, I should go,” he said.

Just like that, I did not want him there. I wanted to be fifteen. I wanted to drink beer and kiss the cute guy I'd been eyeing from the opening band. I wanted to go up front for 7 Seconds. I stared back at him, not begging him to stay, for the first time in my entire life, not making everything okay for him.

“Fine, Sarah, I'm gonna go,” he said.

“Okay,” I said. “Bye.”

He walked off toward the street. I stood there, stunned. Maybe I hadn't been particularly welcoming, but I hadn't been actively trying to reject him or push him away. I didn't have it in me to want to hurt my dad. I'd just needed him to acknowledge the sophisticated girl in
the big city I'd become, after years of striving, largely out of my desire to be close to him. I hadn't even stood up for myself. I had simply sidestepped my usual role. And by doing so I had betrayed him. He wasn't walking away, like a parent would, to give me space. He was reacting out of his own chronic insecurities and issues, and I would not be forgiven. He would not see me again for the next ten years.

A
fter my dad left, I threw myself into the pit by the stage. I went to where the heat and the noise and the boys were. I wanted to get slammed around and feel something on the outside that hurt more, or at least felt different, than how I hurt on the inside.

At the show's end, I was sweaty and wrung out, my body high on the adrenaline of the music and contact. I wanted the feeling to go on and on. I asked for another beer. I went to the after-party. The dingy apartment with stacks of empty beer bottles in the kitchen, the crappy stereo playing lo-fi punk loud, the crowd of people laughing, talking shit, and drinking just the right amount of too much; I needed all of this to shut out everything I felt.

At the end of the weekend, we drove back to Simon's Rock. I was hungover and sad. Instead of wanting to take a long, hot shower and climb into bed with a tall glass of water and my journal, I wanted more of everything, for the distraction to never stop. I didn't ever want to pause and feel what had just happened. And so, for a long time, I didn't.

A few weeks later, I got a card from my dad that read: “I'm terribly sorry about last weekend, I hope it didn't upset you. I have been a compulsive gambler for on + off, mostly on, almost 20 yrs. I've completely ruined my life over it. For the last two or three months I've been trying to get myself together enough to come together with you. My final realization was that I couldn't unless I quit gambling, because the only two things I was sure about was that I loved you + that I wanted to be honest with you. There was no way I could do that + still gamble. But quitting is not a cure-all. I just see how self-centered + really insecure I am, I don't know what else to say, but I wanted to say something. Thank you, just being around you has a positive effect on me. Love Dad”

The adult I longed to be thrilled at the grown-up way he'd leveled with me. But it was both too much and not enough. I'd had friends whose parents were alcoholics. But I didn't understand what an addiction to gambling meant. I didn't understand why he couldn't just stop. That part didn't really matter, though. What mattered was the confession itself. This was his first truly honest letter to me, and I saw it as the beginning of something new between us, a deeper, stronger relationship. I didn't want to jeopardize this by admitting how much he'd hurt me, so I wrote him back a gentle, conciliatory letter.

While I dug into my college adventure, a part of me continued to watch the mailbox. I kept expecting a letter, any day now; and then, any week. The fact that I sometimes doubted him now only increased my desire for our new closeness. I knew what he was capable of, and I wanted the good stuff all of the time. Instead, I got nothing. When he called me a month later and promised to visit me at school in a few weeks, I decided I'd believe it when it happened. Of course, it never did. He was once again gone, and his absence was his only consistent presence in my life.

I was older now, though, and really, I was more interested in boys than in my father. In mid-October, I gathered my courage and called Oliver. It was clear even to naive, fifteen-year-old me that his mental
state had worsened, and it was hard for me to feel much more optimistic about his future prospects than he was. But I swooned when he told me that I was the most beautiful person he knew, and he'd fallen in love with me that summer. We talked about meeting up, and I held on to this dream, even amid my new life, more comfortable waiting on the promises made by a man who'd given me little to believe in than I was in my day-to-day reality.