The Futures(80)

“Enough.” He stood up and pointed at the stairs. “That’s enough. Go to your room.”

My mother looked like she was on the verge of tears. She started to open her mouth. My father barked, “Nina, don’t. She needs to get control of herself.”

I scoffed. I knew he would hate it, this show of insubordination. “I’m not a kid anymore. You don’t get to talk to me like that.”

“You are. You’re a child, you’re our child, and you’ll listen to me.”

“I’m a person,” I shouted. “I’m a fucking person, Dad.”

My mother came upstairs, knocking light as a butterfly on my door. She sat on the edge of my bed. I was curled up, facing the wall. I had stopped crying an hour earlier, but my pillow was still damp with tears.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I mumbled.

She reached over and laid her palm on my forehead, like she was checking for a fever. “Honey. I’m sorry about your father. He shouldn’t have lost his temper like that.”

Why were we always apologizing for the wrong things? My father and his temper, Dot and her paranoia, my betrayal of Spire’s secrets. They were all proxies for the real problem. We talked in circles to avoid what we didn’t want to admit. My father, the chauvinist. My selfishness, my complete lack of empathy. But I feared my problems were anchored by even deeper roots than that. I didn’t know what it was to love. I had never known. All I had to do was look at my parents. My heart had grown a hard shell a long time ago, long before I had ever thought of boyfriends or lovers or careers or a life of my own. Maybe, under other circumstances, that shell would have made me impervious to heartbreak. But it was only a brittle barrier, and with enough pressure it had shattered and left me exposed.

*

A month later. Spring unfurls into summer with a string of sunny days. I scan job listings and compose halfhearted cover letters, but each attempt sinks like a stone. I hear about other classmates getting laid off, too many to count, classmates who have also moved back home or applied to the shelter of grad school. I ought to find solace in this company, in the collective misery of the country, but it does nothing to mitigate the specific pain—it’s like taking painkillers that flood the body when you have a big, throbbing splinter in your thumb.

There is a certain comfort to bottoming out. To knowing what you’re capable of enduring. These past months at home, I kept waiting for things to improve, for the upward swing to arrive. There was one more thing left, though. The last piece of the puzzle. A memory, one I had tried so hard to forget, that finally helped me understand why things had gone so wrong last year.

*

The night of the day when I found out the truth from Abby, after my mother left me alone in my room, I found I couldn’t stop thinking about it. What, really, was wrong with me? Why had I done the terrible things I’d done? The nasty voice that had started dogging me the summer after graduation, the doubts and insecurities: it seemed clear where that came from. I had always been the girl who did everything right, who had followed the rules and checked every box. The problem emerged from my failure to continue that trajectory. I had grown too unsure about everything. I hesitated, I wavered. I needed someone to tell me what to do next.

There was the clink of cutlery downstairs. My parents were going to eat dinner like it was any normal night, pretend that fight hadn’t just happened, like we’d been pretending all along. Then I heard a soft tap on the door. “Julia?” my mother said. “I made you a sandwich. I’m going to leave it here, okay?” Silence, but I could tell she hadn’t walked away. “Sweetheart. We were only trying to protect you because we love you so much.”

I took a long shower. I meant to leave the sandwich untouched in protest, but I was hungry, and my mother’s words had softened me. And while I ate, I started thinking. What if I was wrong? What if I hadn’t needed someone to tell me what to do next? Last year, after graduation, I’d had no idea what I was supposed to do with my life, and I wanted an answer. But what if the point was the question, not the answer?

It’s so tempting. Being told: this is who you are. This is how your life will go. This is what will make you happy. You will go to the right school, find the right job, marry the right man. You’ll do those things, and even if they feel wrong, you’ll keep doing them. Even if it breaks your heart, this is the way it’s done.

That night sophomore year. The memory I had been trying not to think about for so long. After Adam invited me into his room, upstairs at his party, he stepped close and backed me up against the wall. He leaned in and kissed me. For the first time all night—all year—I stopped thinking. I stopped thinking about everything confusing and difficult and uncertain. Doubts about my relationship, about friendships, about what I should major in. The sickening look of disappointment on Evan’s face, downstairs. The feeling of having too much space and not ever knowing what I was supposed to do with it. It vanished. Adam was such a good kisser. My mind was finally at peace, focused on only one thing: the person in front of me.

Then a bang sounded from the party below, a speaker blowing out, the music stopping abruptly. We pulled apart, and Adam looked at the door. A loud chorus of booing filled the void. And then, a second later, the music started again. Adam, satisfied that the problem had been fixed, turned back to me. There was a gleam in his eyes, a hunger for something he knew he was about to consume.