My Dark Vanessa(29)

“How are you doing?” he asks.

I smile brightly, tug at my backpack straps. “I’m fine.” I know I can’t show even a hint of distress. If I do, he might decide I can’t handle any more kisses.

“I was worried you might be feeling overwhelmed,” he says.

“I’m not.”

“Ok.” He exhales. “Sounds like you’re doing better than I am.”

We decide I’ll come by later, after faculty service hour when the humanities building is quiet. When I’m nearly out the door, he says, “You look lovely.”

I can’t stop the grin from taking over my face. I do look lovely—dark green sweater, my best-fitting corduroys, my hair falling in waves over my shoulders. That was on purpose.

When I return to the classroom, the sun has set, and there aren’t any window blinds so we turn off the lights, sit behind his desk, and kiss in the dark.

*

Ms. Thompson organizes a Secret Santa in the dorm and I draw Jenny’s name, which seems like it should hurt. Instead all I feel is a vague annoyance. I take the ten dollars I’m meant to use on a gift and go to the grocery store, buy her a pound of generic-brand ground coffee, and spend the rest on snacks for myself. I don’t even wrap the coffee; at the gift exchange I give it to her in the plastic grocery bag.

“What is this?” she asks, the first words she’s spoken to me since last spring on the last day of the year—the I guess I’ll see you around she tossed over her shoulder as she left our dorm room.

“It’s your gift.”

“You didn’t wrap it?” She opens the bag with the tips of her fingers, like she’s worried what might be inside.

“It’s coffee,” I say. “Because you were always drinking coffee or whatever.”

She looks down at it, blinking so hard that for a moment I’m horrified, thinking she’s about to cry. “Here.” She thrusts an envelope at me. “I got your name, too.”

Inside the envelope is a card and, inside that, a twenty-dollar gift certificate to the bookstore downtown. I hold the gift certificate in one hand and the card in the other, my eyes darting back and forth between them. Inside the card, she wrote, Merry Christmas, Vanessa. I know we haven’t kept in touch but I hope we can work on repairing our friendship.

“Why did you do this?” I ask. “We were only supposed to spend ten dollars.”

Ms. Thompson moves from pair to pair, commenting on all the gifts. When she reaches us, she sees Jenny’s red cheeks, the vacuum-sealed bag of cheap coffee fallen out onto the floor, the guilt all over my face.

“Mmm, what a nice gift!” Ms. Thompson says, so enthusiastic I think she’s talking about the gift certificate, but she means the coffee. “As far as I’m concerned, you can never have too much caffeine. Vanessa, what did you get?”

I hold up the gift certificate and Ms. Thompson gives a thin smile. “That’s nice, too.”

“I have homework to do,” Jenny says. She picks up the coffee with two fingers, like it’s something gross she doesn’t want to touch, and leaves the common room. I want to say more, to shout after her that the only reason she wants anything to do with me is because Tom broke up with her, and that it’s too late because I’ve moved on. I’m doing things now Jenny wouldn’t even be able to imagine.

Ms. Thompson turns to me. “I think it was a thoughtful gift, Vanessa. It’s not just about how much money you spend.”

I realize then why she’s being nice—she thinks I’m so poor that a three-dollar bag of coffee is all I can afford. The assumption is both funny and insulting, but I don’t correct her.

“Ms. Thompson, what are you doing for Christmas?” Deanna asks.

“Going home to New Jersey for a while,” she says. “Might take a trip to Vermont with friends.”

“What about your boyfriend?” Lucy asks.

“Can’t say I have one of those.” Ms. Thompson steps away to check out some other Secret Santa gifts, and I watch how she clasps her hands behind her back and pretends not to hear Deanna whisper to Lucy, “I thought Mr. Strane was her boyfriend?”



One afternoon Strane tells me my name originated with Jonathan Swift, the Irish writer, and that Swift once knew a woman named Esther Vanhomrigh, nickname Essa. “He broke her name apart and put it back together as something new,” Strane said. “Vanessa became Vanessa. Became you.”

I don’t say it, but sometimes I feel like that’s exactly what he’s doing to me—breaking me apart, putting me back together as someone new.

He says the first Vanessa was in love with Swift and that she was twenty-two years younger. He was her tutor. Strane goes to the bookshelves behind his desk and finds a copy of the poem Swift wrote called “Cadenus and Vanessa.” It’s long, sixty pages, the whole thing about a young girl in love with her teacher. My heart gallops as I skim the poem, but I feel his eyes on me so I try not to let it show, shrugging my shoulders and saying in my laziest voice, “That’s kind of funny, I guess.”

Strane frowns. “I thought it eerie, not funny.” He slides the book back onto the shelf and mumbles, “It got under my skin. Made me start thinking about fate.”

I watch him sit at his desk and flip open his grade book. The tips of his ears are red, like he’s embarrassed. Am I capable of embarrassing him? I forget sometimes he can be vulnerable, too.