In the Middle of Somewhere (Middle of Somewhere, #1)(12)
After I lugged in the stuff from my car, it only took me about an hour to unpack. I’d left my shitty furniture on the curb in Philly for someone to grab and I don’t have much stuff. The bed is here, like Carl promised, and a couch, but there’s no air conditioner and no way I was staying in this stuffy place without it. So I grabbed my keys and went to go find one, figuring I could stop and grab some takeout on my way back.
Outside, the sun was setting and the air was thick, at least as humid as it was back in Philly. It smelled nature-y, though, even in town. Like trees and water and lots and lots of oxygen. It wasn’t even 8:00 p.m., but almost nothing was open.
The town of Holiday—seriously? it sounds like something on a postcard, or one of those Christmas towns that only exist during December—is picturesque. I’ll give it that. The only thing I have to compare it to is Manayunk, a neighborhood in Philly that’s gotten really gentrified in the last ten years or so and now has freshly painted storefronts and arts festivals in the summer.
The shops here are all one of a kind. On Main Street, it’s touristy shops: candles with scents like “Winter Wonderland,” “Morning Rain,” and “Indian Summer”; expensive-looking kitchen stores with hand-carved cutting boards and Swedish-looking single-use gadgets with faces painted on them; specialty food stores selling dried fruit, tiny packets of nuts that are more packaging than food, and every conceivable type of preserves. And, every other storefront or so, shops selling Michigan paraphernalia: aprons and boxer shorts and visors and scarves; oven mitts and cookie cutters, field guides and notepads. Everything cut in the shape of the Michigan mitten (the oven mitts with hearts where Holiday would be on the map) or emblazoned with it.
Off Main Street it’s a bit more normal, but still, it looks like something from a movie set—so curated and clean. The sidewalks are even and wide, separated from the streets by decorative brick, and a line of trees alternating with lamp posts, mailboxes, and the most attractive garbage cans I’ve ever seen, painted a dark green, as if they too are a part of nature.
I finally peeked into an Italian restaurant and immediately regretted it because it was kind of a nice place and I was sweaty, wearing jean cutoffs and a black T-shirt with the sleeves torn off from Ginger’s shop, which said Tattoo Bitch in bold Gothic font across my chest. I asked the hostess if there was a diner or a takeout place nearby and was peppered with overly friendly questions about my favorite foods. I wandered off in the direction she had pointed, reminding myself that this was a small town and people were probably just friendly, not trying to give me the third degree.
At the diner, people stared again. I grabbed a sandwich to go and practically ran back to my apartment with it.
It’s finally sinking in. I live here now. I live here in this tiny town. Everyone knows each other and I’m a stranger. They’ll want to know me. Know about me. And then maybe they’ll hate me.
Before, I always had the option to just disappear. Don’t like the people in my classes? No problem. Hide out in the library or hop on the subway and go work somewhere else. Don’t want to run into an ex in the coffee shop? Slept with the bartender at this bar? Just walk half a block and go to another one. Have an awkward encounter with someone? Who cares? I’ll never see them again.
But now it all counts. There’s nowhere to hide here. No blending in or f*cking off. I’ve never felt so terrified or so exposed.
IN THE past week, I’ve cleaned my apartment, scraped together a quasi-professional wardrobe for teaching, finalized my syllabi for the upcoming semester, eaten at every single nonfancy restaurant in town, and answered some variation of the question “who are you” approximately eight thousand times. I ran into Carl, whose apartment I’m renting, at the diner and he was solicitous—how’s the apartment, how do I like Holiday—but I got the sense that it was mostly for the benefit of everyone else in the diner who was listening when he asked me if I had a partner. Kind of like he wanted to prove that he didn’t have any problem with me being gay.
Bernard Ness, the chair of the job search committee, had me over to his house for dinner. It was pleasant enough, and it’s lucky we have work to talk about, since I don’t think we have much else in common. He filled me in on enough departmental gossip to last a lifetime and the entire time I prayed that this would not become my life: gossiping about which of my colleagues is getting a divorce and whose forthcoming article should never have been accepted for publication.
And all week I’ve wondered when I’d run into him. Rex. Last night, I had a dream that I walked into the diner and he was working there, only it was one of those old-timey soda shoppes and he was wearing the whole soda jerk getup: white shirt and apron, black bow tie, dorky white hat perched on his perfect head. He made me a delicious-looking milkshake but then refused to give it to me. I know, right? You don’t have to be Freud.
Classes start on Monday, so the town has begun to buzz as students get back. Still, it’s nine o’clock on a Saturday night and it doesn’t look like anything is going on. At least I won’t have any distractions while I’m here; it’ll give me time to work on turning my dissertation into a book, which, among other things, will be required of me to get tenure at Sleeping Bear. More to the point, I’ll need to have a publication offer in hand if I have any hope of getting a job that isn’t in the middle of nowhere.