Chapter Twenty-Nine
T HERE ARE ONLY SO MANY Writing Center sessions you can swap with people before you eventually have to go to your assigned time and date. I know Will will be there. I’ve tried so hard to avoid him after class, but at some point, you have to rip off the Band-Aid.
I see the back of his head first. He’s in a session with an undergrad; he’s wearing the green cable knit I like. And when the shift manager says, “Leigh, your appointment is here,” I watch his entire back stiffen. But he doesn’t turn around.
To my dismay, my appointment is Lucas.
“My professor wasn’t very happy with my last essay,” he says as a hello.
I remember the session. It’d been a tricky English assignment. I felt confident in how I helped him, but as he’s the writer and not me, there was only so much I could do.
“How did you feel about the essay?” I keep my voice even-toned to avoid provoking his defensiveness.
“I appreciate what you did for my first essays, but I think this isn’t working anymore. I think I may need to switch to a different consultant.”
“You’re welcome to do so.”
This was obviously the wrong response. Lucas’s gaze grips me by the throat. “Or maybe we can start doing these sessions like how I want to do them. I know you’re a grad student, but you’re the consultant. You work for me .”
I don’t want to make a scene. “Let’s just take a look at this new essay. Hopefully we can begin a dialogue to make sure you get the most out of these sessions.”
He nods, his eyes intense. I see them pore over me, like they always do. I hate him, and still I feel my body enter its problem-solving mode when it comes to solving this particular equation: How do I keep someone who is making me uncomfortable comfortable? How do I mediate? The people-pleaser in me wants to curl into a ball of nothingness. Docile, calm.
We work on the essay. He tells me that he wants me to fix the structure, the first paragraph, the conclusion. He wants me to fix the bibliography, the entire paper’s grammar. He asks for more and more. It’s not in my job description as a consultant to do any of this. And yet.
I rewrite the entire first paragraph for him, transforming it from scattered to cohesive, like I did as a copywriter with client briefs. He must like it because he puts a hand on my thigh under the table.
“See, you’re good at this.”
His breath crawls across my skin, and it’s unbearable. It’s not like the praise that would come from Will, how I reveled in it, how it made me feel precious, how it felt stabilizing. From Lucas’s mouth, it feels hollow at best, gross at worst.
I shove his hand off me. “I shouldn’t have done that. You’re supposed to write the paper, I’m just supposed to guide you. And I actually don’t work for you. I work for the Writing Center.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Will at the circular table in the middle of the room. I’m not sure if he’s listening. But his hands roll into fists.
“You’re supposed to provide a service. That’s the entire point of you. Now let’s look at the rest of the paragraphs,” Lucas says, low and quiet.
And that’s when I snap. Docile be damned.
“This session is over.” I stand up. “I’m no longer taking appointments with you. You can find another consultant if you want. And please don’t touch me ever again.”
Lucas’s eyes narrow. He glances around the room and puts his palms up, as if he’s the victim here. Then he stands and looms over me, leaning.
I look past his shoulder at the shift manager, who has a puzzled look on her face. I shake my head. I can deal with this.
“I think it’s a bit inappropriate, Leigh.” His voice is coated in defensiveness. “You’re the one who’s been flirting with me this whole time. But if you’re not into it anymore, of course I’ll see someone else. Don’t want this to be too hard for you. But you’re the consultant. You’re the grad student. I’m just a senior with no power here.”
I spit out a laugh. “Please leave.”
Lucas makes a big deal of packing up his backpack, and that’s when I notice Will talking to the shift manager at the front. Lucas leaves the room, and Will’s expression is like ice.
I try to leave the center to take a moment before my next appointment, but Will stands in front of me at the door. It’s the first time we’ve really looked at each other since before spring break.
“You okay?”
“Yep.” I try to weave past him. “I’m fine.”
“Leigh.” He catches my wrist, light and gentle.
“I can handle it, thanks.” Part of me wants Will to run after Lucas, to pin him against a wall, to threaten him if he ever speaks to me again.
But I don’t need any of that. And Will gets that, too.
He nods and lets me go.
I’ve been writing a lot. The words fly out of me these days, and I wonder how much of that is due to Will or Bridget or Erica, the people who’ve challenged me in the ways I needed.
I’m submitting to journals again. It strikes me that I have nothing to lose, that these editors around the country don’t know me and never will, that I don’t need a fellowship to have permission to be a writer.
My phone pings with an email, and I sit up. It’s Goldfinch Review , responding to the poem I submitted last week on a total whim. I wrote it after talking to Erica in the bathroom and having another session with Bridget. The poem’s about watching the end of a marriage as a kid, grappling with the perhaps unfair feelings I’d had all along. That maybe my resentment toward my mom had been an easy way to cope, not a reflection of reality. A reality where she and I have more in common than I wanted to believe. Can you really be a bad guy when you’re hurting and misunderstood, too?
Hi Leigh!
We are thrilled to accept your poem “Portrait of My Parents, Who Look Like Me” for our Issue 109.
Please let us know if your poem is still available. If so, we will be in touch soon with our contract and other details. Thank you again for considering our journal! We look forward to your continued support.
On another note, we see in our system that we received an email about your poem “Usually, Two Lefts Off Belvoir Blvd,” published last year in Issue 106. So sorry we are forwarding it to you belatedly. I don’t think any member of our staff caught it until now, but when we searched for your name in our inbox, it popped up. Hope to hear from you soon.
Best,
Priya Gupta
Poetry Editor, Goldfinch Review
And below is a forwarded email, and it undoes every rotten thought I’ve had in the last two weeks.
Dear Goldfinch Review editor,
I read “Usually, Two Lefts Off Belvoir Blvd” by Leigh Simon in the current issue. Do you mind please forwarding her this email? We’ve lost touch and I would greatly appreciate it. Sorry that this is weird.
Thanks.
?—William Langford
Leigh,
I know this is extremely random. I should have contacted you years ago, after that day in June. I don’t think I was really ready until I read your poem here.
“Usually, Two Lefts Off Belvoir Blvd” broke me open. I felt the words slither down the page in such a sly way that I was left gobsmacked by the end of it. The structure, the diction. I imagine you with those fancy long tweezers fancy chefs use to plate fancy dishes, choosing each word so carefully for its spot on the page.
I know this is presumptuous. I know very little about your life beyond your writing and our conversations in high school, but I feel strongly that I know you. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that this poem is actually about your relationship with your mom. It resonated with me and made me reconsider my own relationship with my dad, who died a few months ago from a heart attack. It felt almost too intimate. Like I wanted to look away but couldn’t. I saw myself in it. Your words a mirror.
I know we barely know each other, but I’ve always wanted to. In high school, I harbored a crush on you, especially after our conversation at homecoming. You were the first person to look at me not like a disappointment, but like something worthy, which is why I was hopeful, at the time, that you had a crush on me, too. But it’s always been my impulse to push away the things I like, the things that like me back. I think that’s why I pushed you away at Middlebury. I regretted it almost immediately, though it probably doesn’t matter now and you have long since moved on. Even so, I wanted you to know. You deserve better than what I could ever give, even though I wanted to give you everything you wanted and everything I had.
If it’s not already obvious, I don’t tend to do these kinds of things. I don’t expect a response, I just wanted to say that. Please ignore this if it’s too weird. I’m pretty sure it is.
I hope that things are well. I look forward to reading more of your work.
Yours,
Will
My eyes flood with tears. Part of me knows that it might not have changed anything, had the letter been forwarded a year ago when Will wrote it. I wasn’t in the right place—I would have convinced myself he didn’t mean it, that I wasn’t worthy.
But if he had said this, before my parents’ separation, perhaps right after Middlebury, six years ago, I would’ve believed him. I would’ve contacted him.
It’s six years we’ll never get back.
Looking at his letter with fresh eyes, after all that has happened, makes me realize one thing: It was never just physical. Or nostalgia. Or an itch that had to be scratched. This strange, horrific, beautiful thing has always lingered between us—in the nooks of my rib cage, the early wrinkles of his rare smile, the angles we made grasping for each other. Despite our superficial differences in taste or personality, Will sees everything I am and could be, and I see the same for him.
It was never a sure thing, but we made it one. And in that way, we’re not like my parents at all.