My Last Innocent Year(53)
“What else do you have?” Igraine asked, pointing at my backpack.
I took out everything I had: a hairbrush, a sweatshirt, a couple of spiral notebooks. Igraine studied each object thoughtfully, placed it next to her, then held out a small hand for what came next. The last thing I handed her was a soft zippered pouch. I watched as she unzipped it and pulled out a tube of cherry ChapStick, mascara, a couple of tampons.
“What’s this?” she asked, holding out a scrap of paper.
“Oh. My grandmother gave that to me. It’s very old. Those letters are Hebrew.”
She held it up to her face. “What does it say?”
“I don’t know exactly. It’s a prayer of protection, I think.”
“She gave it to you so you would stay safe?”
“Something like that.”
Igraine studied the paper again, so thin and worn it looked like a piece of muslin. Yetta gave it to me after my mother got sick. It was a copy of something her grandmother had given her, and it had been copied and recopied so many times it was nearly illegible. She’d once asked a rabbi to translate it, but even he couldn’t make out what it said. It might have been written down by someone who had been illiterate, he told her, who’d copied it from someone else; somewhere along the way, the meaning had gotten lost, like an intergenerational game of telephone. Even though I considered myself neither religious nor superstitious, I always carried it with me.
“I think it’s a secret message,” Igraine said. One of her eyes was tipped slightly to the side, making me think it might go lazy one day. Years later, my daughter Alice would get the same look when she was on the cusp of understanding something, and every time she did, I would think of Igraine.
Just then, Tom reappeared, a stack of manila folders under his arm. “Okay, time to go.”
I helped Igraine pack her bag, then turned to Tom.
“Professor Fisher. I just wanted to say, the last time I saw you—in Professor Connelly’s office—”
“Isabel, please,” he said, smiling. “I’m sure you had a very good reason for being there.”
“I know it looked strange. The thing is, I had spilled coffee on my dress and I was trying—”
He held up a hand. “Really. No worry at all. Randy’s my friend, and I would never betray a confidence.”
As I leaned down to help Igraine put on her jacket, she pulled me toward her and pressed her mouth to my ear.
“I think I know what it says,” she whispered. “The secret message. I know what it is.” Her breath was hot against my cheek. She smelled like apples and baby shampoo.
“You do? What does it say?”
“It says.” She flicked her gray eyes up to the sky and nodded, as if to say Oh yes, I hear you now. “It says, ‘Be careful, my darling. I love you.’”
I nodded my head slowly. “Yes. I think that’s exactly what it says. Thank you, Igraine. I really appreciate it.”
Tom walked over and placed a hand on the back of her neck. Igraine gave me a shy wave, then followed her father down the stairs.
16
IF you had asked me where I lived in May 1998, I would have said New Hampshire, which was ridiculous because in less than three weeks I would leave and never live there again. When I was older, four years would pass in a flash—I’d live somewhere for six years and feel like I’d just moved in—but then it felt as though I’d been at Wilder forever.
I turned twenty-two. Kelsey and Jason took me to dinner for my birthday. Debra bought me Memoirs of a Geisha. Time marched on, the warm weather making everything sweeter—students sprawled on the grass, boys playing Frisbee, girls in shorts and tank tops, their knees and elbows winter-white and ashy. One day, Linus came to French class barefoot. When the teacher asked him why, he shrugged and said, “C’est le printemps.”
On Monday, I stopped by Stringer Hall to drop off the last chapter of my thesis along with the latest draft of my story about Rosen’s. It had a title now: “This Youthful Heart.” I passed Daria in the hallway. I didn’t recognize her at first, but then she smiled her gummy smile and I remembered. Connelly never told me where he’d been all week, and I didn’t ask. Sometimes, right before I fell asleep, I imagined he’d gone somewhere with her, but in the morning, my suspicions seemed absurd. He had secrets, I knew, a life that didn’t involve me. One night while he was gone, I made out in the basement of Gamma Nu with Bo Benson, maybe to prove that I had secrets, too.
“Did I tell you Jeffrey Greenbaum got into medical school?” Abe asked during our weekly phone call. I was only half listening. Debra was in the bathroom dyeing her hair with Crashy Bellwether, and it was my job to watch the clock. Crashy was Debra’s latest protégée. A statuesque blonde with a high bosom and a distant stare, she looked every inch the sorority girl she’d been before Debra convinced her to de-pledge and write exposés about the Greek system for bitch slap, including the one that had gotten her into so much trouble with Gamma Nu. She didn’t talk much, which made her a perfect match for Debra. Crashy was her unfortunate nickname, although if you asked me, her given name—Prudence—was worse.
“You did tell me,” I said as the timer went off. “Time to rinse.”