Make Your Home Among Strangers (35 page)

By Thursday of the second week of classes, I had enough homework to justify going to Ethan's Happy Hours without it seeming weird of me; I didn't want him thinking I was going just to hang out with him. Though maybe I was: I'd missed his joking around, and since he didn't know my new work schedule, I hadn't seen him even once at the library. That night, after checking on my specimens in the lab and wishing them good night the way Professor Kaufmann had to her own cell cultures, I went to Donald Hall. I got as far as the ground floor's glass-walled study lounge before spotting the back of Ethan's head. He was all alone in the big room, sitting at a huge conference table—a modern version of the one from my hearing.

—Is this not happening? I said.

He jolted at my voice and I laughed, but he didn't. He looked at his watch.

—Great. I was hoping you
wouldn't
come tonight.

I stopped just outside the room, remembering Thanksgiving and Leidy's
What the fuck are
you
doing here
, her inflection revealing something the way his just had.

—Nice to see you too, I said.

—No, I mean, this started ten minutes ago. I don't think anyone's coming.

I took off my coat and hauled my books from my bag to the table. I slapped down bio, slapped down Spanish. Don't worry, I said, I brought enough work.

—I wasn't trying – I didn't know it would be just us, he said.

—So this is like the Terror Squad of study groups? His face looked as if I'd hit the pause button on his brain, so I added, Terror Squad's just two guys, two rappers.

He nodded vigorously. Oh, right on. Like how the Silver Jews aren't actually Jewish.

I didn't know them or their music, but I played it off and said, They're not?

—Maybe one of the guys is Jewish.

He grabbed his pen and scrawled something on the back of his hand, digging deep into his skin, which flared up red around the marks. He said, Facts to look up later, and he clicked his pen shut, showing me his hand. It read,
Silver Jews
=
Jews?

—We're learning already! I said.

—I
invited
other people, he said. His back curled over the table as he bent across it to stare at me on its opposite side. He said, During study week last term there were fifteen of us. Really.

I tried to sound skeptical with my
Sure
, but I believed him—felt a little left out, actually, at having not been invited back then, after ice skating, like I'd failed some test that day. I thought of Jillian's mittens, the way he'd skated away after seeing them.

—No really, he said. Maybe since we're only two weeks into the spring …

He tapped his pen against his book so fast I almost asked him if he was a drummer.

—Stop freaking out, I said. Maybe everyone decided you're a shitty study partner.

—Ouch, he said. And for that?

In comic slow motion, he turned his face to his book, kept his eyes trapped to it. I thought he'd been kidding about the
aggressive silence
he'd described at Carter House, but he didn't speak at all over the next half hour, not even once—not when I said his name, or when I asked him what language his book was in (he told me later: Japanese), not when I said, If your balls itch right now, stay quiet. (He covered his mouth at that but didn't make a sound.) Thirty minutes later, I'd only read half a page, distracted by the effort of thinking up ways to make him crack. Then his watched beeped, and he clapped his book shut and yelled, Coffee break, before leaving the lounge.

He came back with two cups of the worst coffee I'd ever tasted. When I took mine from him, he said, Who's a shitty study partner
now
?

He took a thick gulp. I held the mug he'd given me—chipped and clearly swiped from the dining hall—in my hands, blew over the coffee's surface to cool it down.

—So listen, he said. I know we joke around a lot, and that's great – like actually great, not sarcastic great – but I want to say outright that I really wasn't trying to get you here alone when I invited you.

—What? I said. I didn't think that. Should I have been thinking that?

I gripped the mug like it was keeping me from running away. I sipped some coffee, winced at the bitterness.

—I wouldn't do anything
that
creepy, and I just want that clear between us. I don't want you to have the wrong idea about me.

My fingertips and palms started to burn where they met the mug. Dark oil swirled over the surface of the coffee.

—No offense, I said, but this coffee is
bad
.

He sat back down and blew air from his mouth, the sound like a wave crashing.

—The thing is, he said, I can't afford good coffee with four years of loans sitting on my neck, so since starting here I've trained myself to ingest this garbage. I buy whatever's cheapest, I'm talking the brands they use at gas stations, then I just brew the shit out of it.

I fought the urge to ask him how exactly brewing the shit out of something could be an antidote to anything. I sipped a little more, burning my top lip and barely getting a second taste, and he smacked his lap with his hands and said, So yeah, sorry you're a victim of what might be my ultimate Rawlings sacrifice.

—I wasn't – it's fine, I said. I took a good swig to prove it, like drinking dirt. I said, It's not much worse than Cuban coffee.

I made myself swallow more, knowing what this was a chance to do—not just study, but to let him know I was more like him than I'd accidentally made him think, that we were both making sacrifices, even if my mom didn't see that in me. I forgave my fingers and put my mug down.

—I have to tell you something, I said.

—We're breaking up already? Then he said, Kidding.

He sank down into his chair, hiding his height.

—I don't want you to have the wrong idea about me either, I said. Those mittens? Those ones I had when we went skating. Those mittens aren't mine.

He looked into his own mug, swished it in a circle. Color rose up his neck in blotches, connecting the dots.

He took too long to say, I don't know what you're talking about.

I felt sorry for him, the way his skin was such a traitor, but right then I wished for something that good at giving me away.

—Yeah you do, I said.

I leaned forward and wrapped both my hands around the mug again.

—My roommate gave them to me, I said. I guess she sees me as her charity case.

He still wouldn't look at me, but I needed him to understand I was an ally, a member of the same band. I decided to admit it: I said, So the thing about being an RA next year?

He slid up in his chair, tall again, his eyes hooded by his pale eyebrows but finally meeting mine. He said, I get it, you don't have to –

—I
do
need it. I gave a breezy snort and said, Where do I sign up?

He shook his head.

—It's too late. The deadline passed. But knowing you, you knew that already.

I nodded because he was right: I'd looked it up the day I got back to campus.

—Thank you for – for letting me know that about you, he said.

He spun his drained mug between us.

—So that ring, it's not really from your mom, is it?

—No.

—Did your roommate give you that, too?

—No.

—So … you
are
engaged to the Miami Dolphins?

That he was still joking made me not want to admit it exactly. I worried that if I did, Ethan wouldn't keep doing this, wouldn't continue acting like he enjoyed my company. Saying I was engaged to Omar would turn the way we kept trying to make each other laugh into a problem—at least to me. And unlike the first time I admitted it, I now knew his mom almost married young; I didn't want him putting me in the same category as her, as my own mom. And Omar did say it wasn't my real ring, that he only meant it to keep other guys away: certainly Ethan didn't count as
other guys
. With a thousand miles between us, couldn't I afford to be vague? It's not like me and Omar were a list of procedures in a lab write-up.

—It's OK if you are, he said. Even if it
is
to the Dolphins. You're really engaged?

—Only to their mascot. To an actual dolphin. That's okay, right?

His tense laugh shot across the table. He said, That's fine with me. Dolphins are smarter than us. Besides, I could never compete with a
dolphin
.

I pulled my bio textbook closer to me. He was too smart, too witty.

—Good thing you aren't trying to, I said. Because you're graduating.

—
Exactly
, he said, pointing at me. That is exactly right.

We'd saved it, whatever it was; we'd given each other permission to keep going.

—Now drink your shitty coffee and don't talk to me for another thirty minutes, he said. Time to get strict. I haven't earned a single beer.

—My roommate saw you at an arch sing last Saturday, I said.

—God I hate those things. Get to work.

—Did they cover any hard rock hits?

—The bonds of friendship coerced my attendance, OK? Now stop distracting me.

—You're friends with someone in an
a capella group
? What would Pearl Jam say?

—Seriously, he said. I'll kick you out of the group.

—One guy is a group?

—Lizet, really. Don't try me.

He stopped talking. I watched to see if he would smile down at his book, but he didn't. We both got back to work.

—The Mountain Goats, he whispered to a page ten minutes later.
That's
just one guy.

*   *   *

As winter got colder and the semester went on—and with Omar's ring on my right hand instead of my left—I stayed ahead of my work in the lab thanks to the extra hours I put in. I visited Professor Kaufmann's office a few more times, too, though usually about stuff I read for my bio lecture or even for calculus: it was helpful to get her take on things like parametric equations or the Krebs cycle. Ethan's Happy Hours became part of my week the way another class would. Other people did materialize, and in time I became one of what the group called the Regulars, even without the after-work beers. Leidy's calls dropped down to once a week when she got tired of leaving messages with Jillian, but even the weekly calls felt stilted and tired—she was annoyed that I'd asked to schedule our calls for a standing time instead of her calling whenever she wanted or needed. Scheduling shit like a white girl, she said, but I knew she was just mad, that she'd get over it. It didn't matter that things were off between us: I saved my real worries for Omar, who I could call as late as one or two in the morning when I'd get back from lab, and who I made check on my mom and sister at regular intervals so that I could shrug off my guilt long enough to get lost in my work.

She get trampled in front of his house lately?
I'd ask, making it seem like a joke though I dreaded what he might say. He'd laugh and answer,
Nah, she ain't doing that anymore
.

Good
, I'd say, thankful—but more than anything relieved—that my mom's adventures on the streets of Little Havana were dying down now that the legal battle over Ariel was so stalled and convoluted it was no longer fun being involved.
Don't worry about her
, Omar said week after week, and as my first set of exams came up, I was grateful for the permission to scratch her off the list, to put her out of my mind by believing she'd given up.

 

27

WHILE WAITING TO HEAR HOW
I'd done on those exams, I got an e-mail from Dr. Kaufmann. We weren't getting our grades back from her that way—that exam had been a lab practical, so we already had some sense of how we'd done—but my history with e-mails from professors was not good, and even though we talked in lab and during her office hours, she'd never e-mailed me before. My hands shook as I swerved the cursor to open it.

She wanted to meet with me outside of class; she had something she'd like to discuss one-on-one. The e-mail was written with the same troubling vagueness as the one I'd received months earlier from my writing seminar professor, but this was much worse: this was Dr. Kaufmann. This was a class required for my major. And this—whatever I'd done—would be strike two, and no matter how understanding the one woman at my hearing had seemed, there was only so much Rawlings would tolerate.

I scanned my mind for what this could be about. Had I left a supply closet or fridge unlocked? Had I open centrifuged one of the specimens she'd asked me to look at when it was supposed to be closed centrifuged? Had she glanced over my shoulder at my class notes and seen the list of embarrassing questions only I seemed to have and which I'd scribbled under the heading
Things to Look Up Later
? I'd been so careful around her so far, hoping to make up for all the times I raised my hand and revealed how little I knew, all the times she caught me pretty much fondling the equipment—the elegant pipettes, the test tube racks that kept everything snug and in place, the magical autoclave incinerating all evidence of use and making everything perfect over and over again. It could've been any or all of these things: she was so smart that I was certain she'd put these observations together and conclude, long before I figured it out, that though I was eager and good at keeping contamination at bay, I wasn't cut out for the hard sciences. I wrote her back, composing my e-mail in a word processing program first to make sure the green squiggly line of grammar impropriety didn't show up under every clause, and confirmed I could meet with her Monday at noon, right after class. She wrote back a cryptic,
That will be more than fine
.