My Last Innocent Year(60)
Abe had gone to check out an apartment Kelsey’s parents had found, a junior 4 in a doorman building in Alphabet City; I’d agreed to take the smaller bedroom in exchange for lower rent. “Not horrible” was Abe’s review. “Small, but lots of light. And it’s not Brooklyn. I don’t know what you girls were thinking. I thought everybody wanted to leave Brooklyn.” Kelsey’s parents were laying out the security deposit and first month’s rent, which I promised to pay back, and come July 1, it would be ours.
Kelsey had landed a job at an art gallery in SoHo; we’d celebrated by taking her to get her eyebrow pierced. She spent the evenings leading up to graduation flagging items in the Pottery Barn catalog, wicker baskets and throw pillows and a bright kilim rug. Jason would be in New York too, in law school. He would be sharing an apartment on the Upper West Side with Bo and another Gamma Nu.
After our talk at Agora, I’d encouraged Debra to reach out to her mother. Marilyn swooped in—of course she did—and Debra’s psychiatrist adjusted her prescription. I think she might have gone to see Dr. Cushman a couple of times, although she never said. She seemed quiet, chastened. She hadn’t mentioned the sculpture stunt again and had spent the past couple nights at home with Kelsey and me. The two of them were even getting along. It was almost like it used to be, but I wasn’t upset she was moving to San Francisco. My head was quieter without Debra in it.
As for me, while I was moving ahead with the Alphabet City apartment and the job at Get Out!, which I’d finally accepted (and for the salary they’d offered, although I told Abe I’d negotiated fiercely), I was also looking for rooms to rent in town and circling want ads in the local Pennysaver. Connelly didn’t know about my New York plans. As far as he knew, I was staying at Wilder with him. We’d started meeting in his office again. He’d finally caught the mouse under the sofa, but he still talked about taking me somewhere. “I want to make love to you in a real bed,” he said. We would spend the summer together and he’d send me back to New York with a finished manuscript I could shop around. He’d worked with students before, he said, but none of them had what I had. I just had to want it badly enough. “I can taste it,” he said. So could I, how easy it would be to slip into a life he created for me instead of having to make one of my own.
One afternoon, I found myself alone in our dorm room for the first time in a long while. I stepped over the cardboard boxes Kelsey had brought us; Debra had already started packing a couple. I thought back to the day we’d moved in, carrying everything up the stairs, sweating and cursing. It didn’t seem that long ago. In a few days, we’d carry it all back down again. It hardly seemed worth the trouble. We’d always been on our way out, I could see now, even from the start, Wilder shedding students the way a snake sheds its skin: slowly but inexorably, the edges moving out to make way for the new.
I lit a cigarette, let it hang from my lips and walked into the bedroom. I opened one of Debra’s overstuffed drawers and pulled a sweater over my head, studied myself in the mirror, then took it off and put it back. I did that with a few more of her things, then noticed Kelsey’s jewelry box was open. I reached in and took out the silver bangle Jason bought her for Valentine’s Day, felt its cool heft against my skin. Then I picked up the ring her parents had given her for her twenty-first birthday and slipped it on my finger.
I rolled the ring around my knuckle and thought about the day I stopped stealing. It was the fall of my senior year of high school. My mother was home again after spending the summer in and out of the hospital, but she wasn’t painting. Every day I came home from school, hoping I’d find her at her easel, but instead she’d be exactly where I’d left her, in bed, her coffee cooling on the nightstand, the sandwich my father had brought her for lunch uneaten. I dreaded coming home, so I started walking instead of taking the subway, finding longer and longer routes so I could put it off a little longer.
One day, I stopped in a store on lower Broadway, the kind that sold vintage clothing but also new clothing made to look old. The store was empty; the lone salesgirl sat behind the counter reading a magazine. She barely looked up as I walked into the dressing room with a pair of jeans and a blouse. The jeans were nothing special, but the blouse was magical. I was beginning to learn how clothing could turn you into someone else, at least for a few moments in front of a dressing room mirror. I checked the price tag, but it didn’t matter how much it cost. I couldn’t afford it.
I stayed in the dressing room a long time. I had a rusty taste in my mouth, a prickle of sweat between my breasts. I’d never stolen anything from a store before. After a few minutes, I unbuttoned the shirt and placed it carefully in my backpack, then piled my books and folders on top.
“Thanks,” I said to the salesgirl as I placed the jeans on the pile and headed for the door.
“Hold on.” She looked up from her magazine. “How many things did you bring in with you?”
“Just the jeans,” I said, but I could hear my voice quaver. I was a good thief but a terrible liar.
The girl stepped out from behind the counter. She was older than me, with a short haircut and a nose ring.
“Give me your bag,” she said, resting a hand on her narrow hip. I passed it to her and watched as she dug out the shirt.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and I burst into tears, gasping, ugly sobs like something inside me had come loose. I was ashamed and scared and embarrassed, but mostly sad that the beautiful shirt would never be mine.