Chapter Twenty-Five
A BOUT A MONTH AGO, BEFORE AWP, I had a pretty good idea how my First-Year Reading would go.
I’d picked out the perfect outfit—a chic wrap dress, with Hazel-inspired loafers and chunky earrings, that made me feel like a sexy English professor. I knew exactly which poems I’d be reading: the two best I’d submitted in my fellowship application, “The Only Good Straight Men Are in One Direction” and “Taylor Swift Sleeps with Someone New for the First Time,” fun, punchy pieces with bits of humor straight out of the Erica Go playbook. People would laugh and be delighted; it would be a bright moment of playfulness and accessibility amid a lineup of otherwise bleak, remote poetry.
My gut tells me that none of this is about to happen.
When we enter the bookstore, at least forty folding chairs have been set up in front of a podium and microphone. I recognize most people here—all the second-years, the first-years, faculty (including Erica, in bright-red lipstick), and a scattering of parents. Christine’s sister, putting her hand over her mouth and giggling into Christine’s ear. A tall Black woman who is clearly Athena’s mom sits in front. A graying mom and dad, flanking Morris, laugh in the corner.
A pang nestles deep in my stomach.
Will’s hand on my waist brings me back. “Good?” he murmurs against my neck.
My mom’s scouting for seats. “Yeah.” I force a smile. He’s unconvinced, I know it, by the way he glances at me a second too long.
My dad sits on my left, my mom on my right. Will goes over to Morris’s family, who’ve saved him a seat, and shakes their hands. Hearty laughter blooms from Morris’s mom.
Once the chairs are filled, Daniel Kitchener approaches the podium. His deep voice reverberates in the microphone, filling the small space.
“What a thrill to introduce tonight’s talents,” he says after welcoming everyone. “We’re running a tight ship this evening, with each of our ten writers getting five minutes to share just a snippet of what they’ve been working on this year. I know I speak for the entire faculty when I say I am constantly astonished by our MFA students. Their curiosity to push boundaries, to try something unexpected. To evolve a voice that is singularly their own.”
Erica’s in the front row, next to Jeremiah Brandon. I can see her profile from my seat. I don’t believe in a higher power, but I find myself trying to telepathically signal to her or the universe that that singular voice Daniel speaks of is mine . All I need to do is go up there, read my work, and she’ll see I bring the same deftness with language as Hazel or Will, but my work is more fun, brighter, more like hers.
My breath wavers as I picture Paul, Daniel, and Erica discussing it afterward. I’d like to propose Leigh for the fellowship, actually , Erica will say. She deserves this, don’t you think?
The first writer up is Wiebke, and then we alternate: poetry, fiction, poetry, fiction, with me in the middle and Will second to last. Each slot is only five minutes, a speck of time.
With just two people before me, my whole body is shaking. I will myself to stop and my leg jiggles, almost imperceptibly, but I feel it nonetheless—the embarrassing lack of control I have over my own body and its secret impulses. I wish Will had sat next to me instead of my parents. I want him to still me, like he always does.
Hazel’s up, in a white tee layered under a black slip dress, looking cool and confident as she grabs the microphone to adjust to her height, then keeps holding it, like she’s a pop star at a music festival. She reads two poems, neither of which I recognize from class—“Who I Am in Chinatown” and “I Teach a White Boy to Hike Up a Mountain.” She reads them like steady drumbeats; they build to a crescendo. I don’t know if I take a breath during one of them at all. I wonder suddenly if I’ve misunderstood Hazel—been distracted by her intense workshop persona, intimidated by her already-long list of published poems, threatened by her crush on Will.
Because her poems? They’re fucking great. And based off the rapturous applause when she finishes, everyone else thinks so, too.
“Wouldn’t want to follow that ,” Penelope, who’s in front of me, whispers to another second-year. My spine goes rigid and I glance over at Will in the corner, smiling and clapping like everyone else.
Hazel returns to her chair next to two people who are surely her parents. They sandwich her on either side, her mom whispering something that makes Hazel beam. Her parents look at each other with proud smiles. We did that. We made that , they’re probably saying, in that no-words connection partners seem to have after decades together.
The three of them look like a unit. A small, meaningful community of love.
Christine’s up next, then me. My skin feels too hot for my body. My lungs too small, my heart too heavy. I can’t concentrate on a single word Christine is saying. All I hear is some jumbled pattern of sounds, as if from a distance. Somewhere very far away.
People start clapping—Christine must be done—and I raise my hands, but I can’t put them together, as if they’re opposing ends of a magnet.
Hazel’s dad drapes his arm over his daughter’s chair, stroking the side of his wife’s shoulder with the tips of his fingers. My mom’s hands are grasped rigidly, my dad’s flat on his knees, his knuckles white. That’s when I notice neither of them is wearing their wedding ring.
“And next we have Leigh Simon,” Daniel announces, and the room quiets.
Those words I hear. But they do nothing to me—I feel no jittery urge to stand up and get the whole thing over with, no proud It’s showtime! inner voice. My legs aren’t prepared to hold the weight of this, the feeling of muscles seizing within my body, the drowning lull of my brain.
“Honey?” My dad presses his hand to my shoulder, and I know I’ve waited too long. This is officially weird. I catch a wide-eyed look between Hazel and Christine, Daniel’s confused gaze.
“I can’t” is what I come up with, the only two syllables I can make my mouth form as I get up from my seat and run out of the bookstore.
My parents find me first, unfortunately. I’ve commandeered a lone bench across the street, looking into the bookstore’s windows. The group of teenage boys sitting here scampered the second they saw me, the runs of mascara and nervous sweat across my face.
“What happened?” My mom puts the back of her hand over my forehead before I can answer.
“I’m not sick.” I brush her off and stare at the ground, willing away tears. “I just couldn’t.”
“You know, you didn’t eat much at dinner. I get low blood sugar if I skip a meal,” my dad says. He sits next to me and drapes an arm over my shoulders. “What if we go back in and ask if you can read at the end? I’m sure that wouldn’t be a problem, everyone wants to hear your poems—”
“What happened after I ran out?” I interrupt. I can’t see much through the bookstore windows from across the street, just some front bookshelves. Part of me wants to take the opportunity to concoct some sort of medical emergency, whatever will seem least embarrassing.
Leigh Simon, failing so miserably at something as insignificant as a poetry reading. If I wasn’t already out of the running for the fellowship, I definitely am now.
“We don’t really know. Your mother told everyone you had a migraine and that they shouldn’t worry because you get them all the time. That was about a minute ago. And now, we’re here.”
It’s jarring how I have no sense of time. It feels like I’ve been out here alone for an hour, not minutes.
“Thanks,” I say to my mom, who just nods.
We sit quietly on the bench. I half expect Will to come barreling out of the store, wild-eyed and looking for me, but he doesn’t. It feels like a cut, revealing some sliver of loneliness that I’ve tried to bandage over and over again.
“I knew it was a mistake to tell her at dinner,” my mom says in a low voice.
My dad scoffs. “If it were up to you, she wouldn’t know at all. You’d rather keep everyone in the dark about how you’re feeling, including me, pushing everyone away, snipping at anyone who tries to intervene—”
“Why did you marry each other?” I snap. “Why did you have me? How did it take twenty-seven years for you to realize you were so horribly incompatible?”
My dad’s mouth drops.
My mom purses her lips. “Honey,” she says.
I stand to face them, my vision glassy.
“I thought you were going to try. I thought you were going to therapy to make this work , because both of you wanted to still be a family with me. Did you try? Wasn’t I worth trying for?” The words come out like broken rocks, syllables snagging on one another, a pummel of unsaid words I’d wrapped up too tightly in my brain.
“Baby,” my dad says. “Of course you’re worth trying for. How could you ever imply—”
“ She implied,” I hiss, pointing to my mom. “She implied when she said I was just like you. You implied when you said I was just like her. It’s amazing, you know? I didn’t pay a lot of attention in AP Biology, but it’s wild how I somehow got the worst of each of your genes!”
It comes out a bit like a cackle, but now that I’ve started, I don’t know how to stop.
“Stop.” My mom glares at me, her voice rising uncharacteristically. “This is between me and your father. I’m sorry you feel like you’ve been looped into it, but this is the situation: We tried couples therapy, and it wasn’t enough. We are fundamentally incompatible with each other at this point in our lives. Twenty-seven years ago, even ten years ago, things were different. But when you’re in a marriage, even when you think you’re really in love, you end up compartmentalizing the little issues. And sometimes you get too tired of doing that. I am too tired. Your father is, too.”
Each word feels like a stone dropped in my stomach. She’s teary now. I can’t remember ever seeing her cry.
But regardless of her intentions, the words lodge themselves in me, the realization clearer and clearer in my brain. I never want to be a detail, a little thing to be tucked away, watching as the people I love grow tired of me, unable to do anything until it’s too late.
About an hour after my parents drive me home, before going back to their hotel, to their separate rooms, I get a knock on my door. Sure enough, it’s Will, standing on the welcome mat in front of my apartment door.
“Are you okay?” he asks immediately when I open the door, putting a hand on each of my shoulders.
The second our eyes meet, I feel naked. I’m unsure how to spin my emotions for him. I tried my best to wipe off my wet face before I opened the door, but my cheeks are still flushed with emotion, my eyes tired.
“Oh, I had a migraine.” He deserves more than vague, but I don’t have it in me tonight.
“I’ve never heard you say you get migraines.”
“I haven’t had one in a while, but yeah, I do. Don’t look at me like that, I feel much better.” I force a smile and let him in.
“Did you take something for it?”
“What?”
He leads me to the couch, dragging me onto his lap. “For your migraine. Do you take painkillers for it?”
“Oh. Yeah. My mom had some heavy-duty ibuprofen in her purse. But how was your reading? I’m so sorry I missed it.” I run my finger down the line of his cheekbone, feeling the weight of the lie begin to suffocate me in guilt.
“It was fine.”
I pull him in for a kiss, but he shakes his head and cups my cheek, his vivid hazel eyes worried and uncertain in the dim light of my apartment.
“I don’t believe that you’re okay. You seem off.”
“Please—” My hand goes to the back of his neck. “I just got into a fight with my parents, okay? But I don’t want to talk about it right now. I just want to hear about your poems and be with you. You’re what makes me feel good.”
He stares at me, searchingly, and I watch his pupils slide back and forth to look into both of my eyes, as if one of them will fib on the other. I offer a smile, and it’s not forced this time.
Satisfied, he leans in to kiss me. I deepen it with my tongue, and he hitches his hand up my dress. I arch my body into his, and he smells like trees and cedar and belonging.
But I can’t get out of my own head. Why does it feel like this is the last time we could be doing this?
“I’m sure your poems were the best of the reading,” I whisper. “Maybe you can read them for me later.”
“Mhmm, I can do that if you want.” He starts unbuttoning my cardigan.
“You’re going to get the fellowship. I just know it.”
I hope any tinge of bitterness in that sentence is counteracted by the way I lean into his mouth. I don’t mean it. I just can’t help it.
Will gives me a lingering kiss, then takes a deep breath and pulls away from me. “Leigh.”
Even right now, the way he says my name makes it my favorite word. His eyes shine bright and his thumb makes circles on the back of my neck, and I feel like he’s about to tell me three new words that could also become my favorites.
But he doesn’t.
“I pulled my name out of the running” is what he says instead.
I freeze on the spot, my stomach doing that familiar somersault, which so often happens in his presence. But this feeling is more like plummeting. I remove my hands from his shoulders.
“What?”
“Two weeks ago. I went to Daniel and said I didn’t want the fellowship. I told him to delete my application.”
I pause to process, and I don’t understand. I get off his lap and pull my cardigan back over my shoulder. “Why would you do that? I thought you desperately wanted this.”
He shakes his head. “I didn’t want to be something standing in your way. I wanted it, yes, but honestly, Leigh, I want you a million times more, and you deserve it more than me.” He moves to stand up and grab my hand away from my crossed arms, but I take a step back.
“So you thought I couldn’t just beat you fair and square?”
His brows furrow. “Of course I didn’t think that. You deserve it and I want you to get it.”
“And the only way for that to happen was if you pulled out?”
“No. I didn’t have to pull out. I just didn’t want it, and I knew I didn’t deserve it like you do. I’m sorry. I understand now how it may look—”
“I’m not being seriously considered anyway.”
The words ring loudly in the darkness of my apartment. He scrunches his face, shakes his head. “What are you talking about?”
Tears threaten to build behind my eyes. “At AWP. I heard Daniel and Paul talking to Erica after her keynote. They said the poets they were deciding between were Hazel and you.”
Realization washes over his face. His expression softens, and I all can see is pity.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
I scoff. “Why do you think?”
He shakes his head, frowning. “I honestly don’t know.”
“Because it’s fucking embarrassing,” I laugh. “I talked a big game. I really thought it was something within reach for me. But year after year, they pick the same type of writer.”
Now Will crosses his arms. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“They pick the guy! Or the girls that, I don’t know, workshop like guys! They choose the unoriginal poems that sound like every other poem to ever come out of an MFA program!”
His entire body stiffens, from shoulders to legs. My stomach pools with regret, some sour feeling. Don’t bring up the plagiarism , my brain screams. It’s too low a blow, you have no idea what the context was, just shut up—
“I didn’t mean that,” I say quickly.
“It’s okay. You’re right. I am unoriginal.”
I brush it off, not willing to open that box. “No, I’m sorry. That was too harsh. But you know what I mean. You and Hazel both write in a way that, if I’m being honest, occasionally reads as pretentious. It’s fine, really. Your writing is good. I’m just frustrated that they seem to only ever pick a certain kind of voice.”
“Yeah, you’re right. They pick the people who are willing to be vulnerable in their writing. You wouldn’t know what that’s like. You only write poems in the voice of someone else. And I think it’s because you’re too scared to be yourself.”
I gape at him. “So the only way for me to write vulnerably is to whine about my parents in a poem?”
It’s mean, but I don’t care. I don’t want to write about my parents like Will does. I feel like I’m being as vulnerable as I can be in my poems—and why isn’t that enough?
Will turns his back to me for a second, as if he wants to shield his face. He paces around the apartment, then shakes his head.
“You say you don’t like pretentious, Leigh, but it’s not true. You went to Rowan and Tufts and now you’re in a fucking MFA program, and you’re only interested in guys that look like me, aren’t you?” He spits out the words, frustrated. “Maybe that’s why I started going by William after Middlebury. Maybe that’s why I changed my glasses. Maybe that’s why I signed up for this stupid program in the first place. You want pretentious. You wouldn’t be attracted to me otherwise.”
I’m not sure what to say. My whole body churns with regret, but it’s too late. The inevitable has happened.
So I dig in my heels.
“No.”
He laughs coldly. “No?”
“I never asked for any of that.”
“No. But you like it, don’t you?” He steps closer to me, almost predatorily, takes off his glasses and musses up his hair. “If I was a frat guy from a party school, you wouldn’t like this anymore, would you?”
Yes, I would , my heart screams out, because it’s you .
But my brain makes the end calculation. A little pain now means less pain later, when he realizes being with me is a mistake. That I was never good enough for him. Just like my dad was never good enough for my mom; my mom was never forgiving enough for my dad.
Because Will can see it, can’t he? I’ll beg him to like me, contorting myself into some false person who will eventually disappoint him. Or, when things get to be too much, I’ll push him away. Just like I’m doing now.
I am my father’s daughter. I am my mother’s daughter. I don’t trust myself to make this work, and I don’t trust Will to wait around and try.
“I’m not interested in your psychoanalysis.” I wipe the tears off my face.
Will puts his glasses back on and takes a deep breath. “Leigh, sometimes I feel like this is just a self-fulfilling prophecy with you. You’re looking for reasons why this won’t work, and I have to be honest, it’s pushing me away.”
“As if you haven’t done the exact same thing.”
He bites the inside of his cheek. “I know, and that’s fair, but I’ve apologized multiple times. I’ve tried to show you in the last few weeks how much I regret it.”
There’s a beat of silence. Cut the cord , my brain pleads with me. Do it. Now. Quick.
“You shouldn’t have backed out of the fellowship. You’re just going to end up resenting me, and then you’ll leave me. I know it. You guys always do.”
“Who is you guys ? Your college boyfriend? Sometimes I feel like you don’t even see me —like I’m just another lit bro that’s going to break your heart. Is it simpler for you to understand that way? It’s like you’re reading a page and you’re only looking at the font without reading the words. What am I supposed to do to make you read the words? What am I supposed to do to make anyone read what I’ve written?”
Tears drip down my face. A vision flits across my mind: Will’s father, ignoring his writing, only interacting with the words that showed him the version of his son he wanted to see.
But I block it out. I’ve come this far. I’m going to see this through.
Because it’s not about the Leigh I am now, the Will he is now . It’s about who we’ll be later. In the blink of a second, I play out the next twenty-seven years of resentment, each of us compartmentalizing our incompatibilities. There’s only one conclusion. I just watched it screech to a halt an hour ago on a bench outside a bookstore.
“I don’t want to end up like my parents. I’m just trying to protect myself, and I don’t trust you, Will.” The words scatter on the floor like dropped bowling balls, loud and clunky, rolling until they hit someone. And Will looks like he’s been hit.
“Okay.” His voice is full of restraint. “Before either of us does anything rash, I think we should pause this discussion. I can tell emotions are high, and I’m empathetic that you’ve had a bad night and are recovering from a migraine .”
He says the last word like it’s code, and I hate how see-through I am to him.
“I’m not going to resent backing out of the fellowship. You don’t need to worry about that. But please consider writing work that’s really you . That’s all anyone wants.”
I wipe the tears still glistening on my face and nod. The apartment is unbearably quiet and all I want is for Will to step closer again and lock me in an impenetrable embrace, a weighted blanket against the doubts percolating in my chest.
“What now?” I step closer to him, an offering, but he steps back.
“I’m going to leave now. I— we —need a break.”
“A break.” The word seems to echo in the apartment. In only two words, I’m transported back into my twenty-one-year-old body, walking alone to my apartment in Middlebury, watching Will slip away for the first time.
You’re not…
Stable. Smart. Worthy. Enough.
“Just for a little while. There’s a lot going on with both of us right now and maybe we should sort that out first.”
Within seconds, I am a robot. It’s as if he’s managed to find the secret code to power me down, wrap me up in plastic, store me in a box. And I have absolutely no energy after tonight to make any attempt to break free.
“Yeah, okay.”
His forehead crinkles and he waits a beat, as if he thinks I’ll fight back. When I don’t, he walks to the door, opens it.
“Good night, Leigh.”
And with one short glance, he’s gone.