The Futures(8)
“Hold this,” she said, handing me her cup. We found an empty corner on the terrace, forty stories above the street. A constellation of cigarettes moved through the night air. Music thumped from the built-in speakers.
“Where’d you get that?” I asked as she lit the end of the joint.
“Here. We’re splitting this.”
“I haven’t smoked since graduation.”
“That’s no way to live,” she said in a choked voice, holding the smoke in her lungs. Then she exhaled. “See? This party is awesome.”
We’d smoked half the joint when I saw Jake Fletcher across the terrace. I waved him over.
“Hey, Jake,” I said. “This is my friend Abby. My roommate from college.”
Abby held up the joint, but he shook his head. “I wish. They drug-test us at work.”
“Where do you work?” Abby said.
“Lehman.”
“Oh, well, sorry about that,” she said. “Great party, by the way.”
Abby got even friendlier when she was high. She and Jake started talking. My attention slipped loose, which didn’t take much to happen these days. There was a pause in the music, and the next song that played was one of the big hits from the previous summer, a song I’d heard a million times on campus in the past year. I leaned out over the railing. We were at the edge of the island, where the East River curves into the harbor. The shorter, darker skyline of Brooklyn sat across the water like another city.
I could close my eyes, and the sounds of the party weren’t so different from those in college, but I wasn’t tricking myself. The feeling in the air had changed. There was a whole world out there, beyond wherever we were gathered. It didn’t matter whether it was a cramped walk-up or a tar rooftop or a weedy backyard strung with lights. How you spent your time was suddenly up to you. There were other options. Infinite, terrifying options opening up like a crevasse and no one to tell you which way to go. I think everyone was wondering, through the haze of weed and beer pong and tequila shots, whether this—right here, right now—was in fact what they were supposed to be doing. I suspected I wasn’t alone in detecting a desperation in the muggy air, people laughing too loudly, drinking beer that hadn’t been chilled long enough.
My reverie was interrupted by the sound of my name. I turned and saw Evan pushing through the crowd. Evan, who was more than two hours late, his tie in a straggly knot and dark circles under his eyes.
“Nice of you to join us,” I said, more sharply than I’d intended.
“I’m sorry, Jules. I got held up at work. There’s this big new project, and—”
“It’s fine.” My cup was empty, and that suddenly seemed like the most pressing thing. I pointed at the kitchen. “Let’s go get a drink.”
We took a cab home that night, up the FDR. The old Crown Vic groaned as the driver hunched over the wheel, his foot pressed down hard, swerving between lanes and urging the car to go faster. The meter ticked higher, and I felt a prick of guilt for taking a cab instead of the subway. I leaned my forehead against the cool glass of the window and saw the Pepsi-Cola sign glimmering up ahead like a lighthouse. I’d been unfairly terse with Evan all night. We both knew what he was signing up for when he took the job at Spire. I turned back toward him, intending to apologize and to ask him about the new project he’d mentioned. But his eyes were closed. He was already asleep.
*
I guess I’m having trouble knowing where to begin. It’s true, that summer was when the feeling descended. Those hot, humid New York City days and nights when I was nervy and jumpy all the time, a constant thrum underneath ordinary movements, a startled sensation like taking one too many steps up the stairs in the dark. It seemed obvious enough, the source of it. I had just graduated. I was trying to become an adult, trying to navigate the real world. Trying to find an answer to the question of what came next. Who wouldn’t be made anxious by that? The problem existed in the present tense. But sometimes I wonder whether I got it all wrong. I wonder how far back it really goes.
*
Junior year of college, Christmas break. I was home earlier than everyone else because I had a light exam schedule that semester. My parents were out, and I was wandering around the house with nothing to do. I pulled out an old hardcover copy of The Wapshot Chronicle from one of the bookshelves in the living room. A frail, yellowed photograph slipped from the pages. It was a picture of my mother as a young woman, wearing a loose paisley dress, her long hair parted down the middle. She was sitting on a flight of steps with a group of girls flashing peace signs at the camera. On the back of the photograph, in her delicate handwriting, was the inscription: REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS RALLY, WELLESLEY COLLEGE, 1975.
I shivered. Her hair, her smile: it was like looking at a picture of myself dressed up as a tourist from another era. I closed the book, put it back on the shelf. Then I took the book out again, removed the picture, and put it in my pocket. I kept thinking about it, all through that week, that month. How different my mother looked back then. She was the exact same age in that photograph—a junior in college—as I was in that moment. She never spoke about college. When she occasionally talked about the past, the stories always began in law school, never further back than that. Law school was where she and my father met. Both of them graduated near the top of their class and took jobs at high-powered firms before my mother left to raise me and my sister. I don’t think she ever stopped comparing herself to my father, who is a senior partner and a widely admired attorney. She excels in other ways instead: charity boards, meetings and lunches, a perfectly slender physique. Her energy is always channeled to productive ends. But maybe that wasn’t how she originally intended her life to turn out. Maybe there was another trajectory, one she’d been careful not to reveal to us.