Chapter 9
THE CAMPUS CLOCKTOWER WAS IN FULL SILHOUETTE AGAINST THE setting sun, casting a long shadow across the main quad. In this light, the Coleman grounds looked like a photo accompanying an Encyclopedia Britannica entry for “college.” Watching fellow alumni filter out of stately columned buildings, with my friends close at hand, I remembered what it felt like to scamper across the green at this time of day, ambling toward the library, my head exploding with new ideas, my heart flush with whatever crush was consuming me that week. Back in the day, the whole world felt like it was for me, for us. I took out my phone and snapped a photo of the landscape.
Things are looking up,I texted Gabe. Thx for before.
Anytime,Gabe replied. He attached a photo of Ramona standing next to a magician and the near-hairless gerbil. I acknowledged receipt with a cry-laugh emoji.
Geeta had parked in the lot near the engineering quad, intentionally far away from the site of the dinner event. This way we could take the scenic route, enjoying a stroll down memory lane. Mercifully, Matt had decided to sit out tonight because he was concerned that the twins were sick. Neither one had a fever per se, but he sensed that Luna was developing one. “I don’t think it’s right to leave them with Dasha,” he’d said gravely as we gathered our belongings on our way out. “What if they need to go to the ER?” Geeta agreed that it would be best if he kept a watchful eye on the girls, but I couldn’t help suspecting she was just happy to attend the dinner unencumbered.
I was grateful not to have to listen to Matt on his latest Reddit board discoveries or answer any more of his questions about the provenance of those mysterious texts. Walking around campus with Leigh and Geeta took me back to the days when I had nothing to feel ashamed of, other than perhaps the previous weekend’s antics.
I smiled at my two dates. We were back together again somehow, and it felt miraculous. Geeta, her onyx hair in a perfectly messy updo, was wearing a low-cut, camel-colored wrap dress that accentuated her post-pregnancy boobs—all these years later she was still on the monochromatic kick. Leigh had put on a fitted silver jumpsuit, which made her look like liquid mercury. One half of her head was shaved and she had a beautiful diamond ear cuff. Inge hung off to the side, vaping.
Arm in arm, we walked up the hill toward the open fields where geneticists from the life sciences school experimented with hardier, tastier versions of garden-variety fruits and vegetables. “There’s where the magic happened,” I reminded them, as if they needed to be reminded, “when we drank hallucinogenic mushroom tea.”
Leigh gave a crooked grin. “The tea ceremony where you found a ‘rescue dog’ on a leash,” she said, her fingers making quote marks.
“The dog that turned out to be an everything bagel tied to a string,” Geeta said. We all burst out laughing. Of course she remembered the baked good I had hallucinated as a pet when I was tripping.
“And you wonderful women guided me back to sanity,” I said, tightening the link of our arms to draw them closer. The memory filled me with warmth, and I was tempted for a moment to tell them about my run-in with Desiree. But bringing up my encounter meant bringing up all that she stood for and all the decisions that drove a wedge between my friends and me, between their trajectories and mine. Because they both got the Memo. And I didn’t want to talk about it.
So I kept mum as we strolled past the art library, where we used to pull books from the stacks and search for the most flagrant nudes to prop open on the reading carrels where coffee-addled graduate students pulled their all-nighters. We cut across the main green and floated past the freshman dining hall, the science center, and the provost’s office. Everything was immaculately maintained, untouched by time.
I didn’t spot any evidence of the fifteen years that had passed until we came upon the soccer field. A hulking modernist building now occupied the far edge of the green. It shimmered like an enormous black crystal. With its aerodynamic construction and cantilevered glass wings, the structure looked nothing like the nineteenth-century Gothic revival architecture that proliferated on campus.
I glanced at my friends, who did not seem to find this new member of Coleman College’s real-estate holdings half as odd as I did.
“There it is. The Simcott Center for the Study of the Soul,” Leigh read aloud. I froze for a moment as I thought about what Desiree had said to me earlier, something about “new developments in the study of the soul.” Could it have something to do with this place?
“Is this, like, a divinity school?” I asked.
“You haven’t read about it?” Geeta asked, her eyes squinting incredulously. “It’s the S.C.S.S. Pronounced ‘success.’”
“Sorry, I don’t always read the alumni magazine,” I said.
“It was in the New York TimesMagazine,” Geeta said in a teasing tone.
“Even I know about this building, and I live in bloody Stockholm,” Inge intoned from a half step behind, vapor rising from the side of her mouth. “The architect designed our opera house, too.”
Leigh proceeded to fill me in. The S.C.S.S. was funded by an anonymous donor to honor a professor named Juliet Simcott, an eccentric theoretical physicist-turned-philosopher who embraced the counterculture in the late 1960s, then resigned from Coleman’s faculty and fell completely off the grid. Her whereabouts were still a source of Internet intrigue. Her book, Time Wounds All Heels, was now out of print. Copies, if they could even be found, sold for thousands of dollars on eBay.
“So it’s not a divinity school. More like a physics lab?” I asked, marveling at the building.
“Not really,” Geeta said. “It’s more about spiritual studies. Finding answers to all the unanswerable questions.”
“Good luck with that,” I said.
THE REUNION DINNER WAS INSIDE A HUGE CANVAS TENT. THE AESTHETIC was shabby-chic, with natural linen table runners and hemp-tied bouquets of local, seasonal flowers for centerpieces. My classmates swarmed around long picnic tables, mingling at full velocity, holding plates of tiny delicacies that had probably taken hours to create, only to be consumed in one quick bite.
I accepted a cocktail from a fresh-faced server who looked like an undergraduate and did my best to circulate with the slew of Class of ’07 luminaries. I felt a surge of joy when I spotted Keisha Phillips, my freshman year roommate, the one who inadvertently led me back to Hal. And there was a balder version of David Smalls, the soccer player—now hedge-fund manager—who Geeta was once so in love with that she threw up out of nervousness when he unexpectedly showed up at one of our house parties.
But now Dave was staring at Geeta, and she didn’t even notice he was there. She was busy holding court in front of a small group, talking about how her venture-backed company was on track to generate $100 million in revenue in the second half of the year, a prediction I found to be highly optimistic given what she had told me in our more candid private conversations, during which she often fretted about making payroll. I’d once congratulated her on having an entire country using her app as a pilot program, as I’d read in Company magazine. She’d confessed that the article had contained abit of an exaggeration. “Princess Francine of Luxembourg told me that her friends use it, so my PR team said I could say that in the interview,” she’d said. “I was skeptical at first, but the VCs said I should think of it like a manifestation.” Oh yes, the venture capitalists and their positive thinking. Now, perhaps because of that story, Luxembourg was one of the company’s fastest-growing markets. I had to hand it to Geeta. She turned faking it until you make it into an art form.
I came closer to Geeta and placed my chin on her shoulder. Without turning toward me, she reached up and gave my cheek a little pinch.
I looked to my right and saw Leigh turning her back on her ex, Emily, to chat with Lyndsey Bogatsky, the former poet who now worked as a rocket scientist at SpaceFisch. Emily tried to approach them as Lyndsey regaled Leigh with stories of boardroom humiliation at the hands of the company’s cantankerous founder, Levi Fischer. Leigh pretended not to notice Emily’s attempts to interject as she made some charming but obvious jokes about art not being rocket science.
Emily had been Leigh’s first love, the one Desiree had insisted that she ditch back in college. Watching Emily try so desperately to get her attention and Leigh trying equally hard to ignore her, I felt ashamed for both of them. I wondered if I should go hang out with Emily, but dropped that thought when I noticed who Geeta was talking to.
Here was Lonnie Berger, who’d been in our medieval studies class. Lonnie was always good at raising his hand and starting his question with his trademark opener, “Not to be whatever, but...” By which he meant “Not to make this all about me,” right before making his question all about him. Every moment in medieval literary history was an opportunity for Lonnie to reflect on his own personal issues rather than the assigned reading material.
I smiled at Lonnie and said hello. He seemed happy to see me and proceeded to recall with astonishing detail my feminist insights on Grendel’s mother in Beowulf,which was flattering even though it slightly weirded me out. I could barely remember reading Beowulf,let alone what I thought about one of the character’s mothers.
“Lonnie!” Leigh cried, darting over to us. “What are you up to? Not to be whatever...” It was slightly cruel, but I couldn’t help but laugh a little, along with my friends. I was giggling not so much at him, but at the memory of us all being together and unable to contain ourselves.
Lonnie looked confused. “Are you all okay?”
“Don’t mind us,” I said. “The cocktails are strong. So, Lonnie, seriously, what have you been up to?”
“Emerging market bonds,” he said. “I live in Park Slope with my wife, who works in beauty PR. She stayed home to watch our two kids so I could come here and reflect on the good old days before everything got so... you know.”
“So... what?” I prodded. He played with the dried-fruit garnish on his drink.
“You know, so adult and... stuck in the routine.” He paused for a second and laughed. “Sorry, this is supposed to be small talk,” he said.
“No, it’s okay,” I said. Lonnie always was into talking about his issues. Finally, we were in a venue where it was appropriate. We drifted a few steps to the right so that we were suddenly alone. “I hear you,” I said. “Everyone’s sort of killing it here, right?” I glanced down at my scuffed-up clogs.
“I’ll say.” He whistled. “What about you? I see that purple hair is no longer your thing.”
“That was only for a few months during our freshman year,” I said, surprised that he remembered that, too. “My mother begged me to dye it back to my natural color. So I did it for her birthday.”
“I saw your video,” he said, changing the subject. “You moved to Pittsburgh?” I thought for a minute about the pathetic video that I made before Sophie helped me reframe my current situation in a better light, and with better lighting.
“I moved there about a year ago. It’s been... a new adventure. Not a lot of Coleman people there, other than my boss.” I wrinkled my nose at the thought of Alice.
“Cool. I remember you hosted the best wine and cheese parties—I always thought they were the height of sophistication,” Lonnie said. “You even baked your own crackers! Who does that?”
“I still do,” I told him. I’d just brought a batch to a Memorial Day barbecue at Sophie’s parents’ house. That was how I learned that her mom was fatally allergic to sesame seeds, luckily before any real damage was done.
“Those were the days,” Lonnie said wistfully. “What else? Married? Kids?”
Deflation was rising in me. “I have a boyfriend but he couldn’t make it. And, as I mentioned in my video, I work at a feminist nonprofit, in fundraising.”
“Did someone say ‘fundraiser’? I am so overthem! Why can’t parties just be parties?” This came from a poofy-haired, overly made-up woman in a floral one-shoulder dress. I realized this was our class president, Allie Dourous—now known as Alessandra D’Ourous, the highly decorated film producer. Geeta and Leigh were suddenly both on the scene, as if pulled in by the exploding floral scent of Alessandra.
“We were just talking about your MoMA fiesta,” Leigh said, enveloping Alessandra in a theatrical embrace. “We are so there.” By “we” she clearly meant herself and Geeta because, not so shockingly, I had not been invited. By the way Alessandra glanced at me and then quickly looked away, I could tell that she didn’t remember who I was.
“Hi, Allie, it’s me, Jenny,” I said, a little too eagerly. “We were in Sociology 201 together.”
“I go by ‘Alessandra’ now,” she reminded me. “Wow, Jenny! You look so different.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I’ve been working on it.”
“Cool,” she said with a pursed smile. Silence hung between us. She couldn’t be bothered to even come up with something for us to continue conversing about. Then again, neither could I. The awkwardness led to my blurting out the question running through my brain.
“So, what is this party of yours?” I asked, surprising myself with my boldness.
“It’s our summer solstice gala at the Museum of Modern Art,” Alessandra explained in a drawl. “For young patrons. I’m the chair.”
“Wow, how’d you—”
“The solstice is on the twenty-first, and nobody is going to be in town then, so we bumped it up to the seventeenth. This way it can be more of a prelude to summer, a curtain raiser.”
“The seventeenth is my birthday,” I said dumbly, turning to Geeta and Leigh. “I guess you guys can call me from the party.”
Alessandra smiled politely. “I’ll let you know if we have any last-minute cancellations.”
My gaze moved from Leigh to Geeta and back again. Neither of them seemed to share my sense of injury. They were going to this party and there was nothing that I could do about it. I hated myself for being offended by something so ridiculous. It sounded like a big, fun event; of course, they wanted to attend. What did it matter that it fell on my birthday? It wasn’t like I was having a party. Did I expect Geeta to come to Pittsburgh and take me to Desmond’s Tavern for mozzarella sticks? Or... did I? I felt a lump in my throat. I needed to get out of there before I embarrassed myself any more than I already had.
“I have to make a call,” I muttered. As I walked toward the edge of the crowd, I decided to take Gabe up on his offer. This counted as a time of need, did it not?
It turned out not to matter. My call went straight to voicemail. Maybe one of the MILFs had already captured his heart. The thought filled me with a strange sense of dejection. I kept walking away from the party. I wasn’t ready to return to mingling. Next I tried Sophie, who’d surely have some words of wisdom. The phone rang and rang; then I remembered she didn’t do calls. Voice memos were more her jam, another of our intergenerational differences. I started to record one, but changed my mind.
I needed support, in real time. Which was how I found myself FaceTiming Hal. Much to my surprise, he picked up. He looked so cool—perfect stubble, tendrils coming loose from his golden man-bun. For a moment, when I saw those hazel eyes focused on me, I was glad I had called him to check in. He was just so nice to look at. Another thing that I really loved about Hal was how allergic he was to try-hard phonies like Alessandra. His instincts not to come to this event, it turned out, had been sound. Talking to him about what just happened would calm me down.
“Hi from the reunion!” I said, a little too desperately.
“Hey, hey. How’s it going?”
“It’s, well, a little harder than I expected it to be,” I said. “What’s happening over there?”
“Uh, not much, all good,” he said in that antsy way that indicated he was ready to wrap up the conversation before it even started. “You good, bruh?”
Bruh?He never called me that. Was he trying to pretend he was on the phone with a guy?
I told him about the solstice party, but Hal seemed to be only half listening. “I told you it was going to be annoying,” he said as he stepped into our bathroom. “Who wants to hang out with a bunch of insufferable tools anyway?”
“Yeah,” I said, noticing that across the lawn, Geeta, Leigh, and Alessandra were taking selfies together.
“All right, well... want to call me later?”
“Just stay with me for a minute?” My tone was vaguely pleading. The lump in my throat wasn’t going anywhere. “You don’t have to say anything. Just be with me, okay?”
He nodded and set his lips together, and in that moment of quiet, I heard the unmistakable yap of a dog.
“What was that?” I asked. “Am I disturbing something? Bruh?”
Hal started to sputter something about how the toilet had been acting up.
“Right,” I said stonily. “The toilet.”
“Hey, I—” he faltered.
“Whatever you do, don’t let that animal make a mess on the rug—the one you brought back from Costa Rica. Where we met all those years ago. So many years, Hal.” I tried to blink back the tears stinging my eyes and hung up.
I wasn’t in the mood to eat, but after taking a breather under a tree, I returned to my table. Dinner was about to begin. Thankfully, I was seated next to Keisha. She was always so wonderful to be around, and I hadn’t seen her in at least a decade. The last time we hung out was at her barbecue in Brooklyn, before she moved to Delaware, of all places. Keisha used to be so bookish and serious, studying to be a veterinarian.
She and I fell out of touch soon after she moved out of the city to take a job at a Wilmington-based pharmaceutical company. It had never made sense to me, Keisha’s dropping out of vet school to be a suit. She was still working at the same company, now as chief scientist. Her face was so bloated with fillers that it barely moved anymore. It was hard to tell, but she seemed truly happy to see me and ignored everyone else over the salad course.
“You know what I still think about a lot?” Keisha said. “The time in our junior year when you bought a last-minute ticket to Caracas and flew down there for spring break.” I had almost forgotten that I did.
“I wanted to practice my Spanish,” I said.
Keisha knit her brow. “Your Spanish was terrible.”
“Which was why it was brilliant to go.”
“Without a room booked or anything?”
I felt a tug of sadness. I used to have my own appetite for adventure. Maybe I’d given Hal too much credit for forcing me out of my comfort zone.
Keisha shook her head and rolled her eyes. “I was so sure you were going to get killed.”
“I almost was,” I said. “By my mother. She was expecting me to come home for the break.”
“I definitely would have killed you if I were her.” Keisha laughed. “Hey, speaking of your south of the border escapades, do you still talk to that handsome guy you met in Costa Rica? The one who randomly became my neighbor?”
“Sometimes we talk,” I said, smirking. “We live together, if you can believe it.” Keisha’s eyes went wide. “So I guess the answer to your question is no, not really.”
“What? Wow!” Keisha craned her neck and looked around the table. “Is he here?”
“He couldn’t make it.” I violently buttered my roll. “He appears to be hanging out with a dog.” Keisha looked at me with confusion. I took a big, buttery bite. “I don’t really want to get into it. Hey, do you have a dog? You always said you were going to have at least five.”
“Yes and no,” Keisha said with a resigned sigh. “They’re so much work. I’m on the board of a rescue shelter, but it’s in Maine, so I never have a chance to go out there.”
“That makes me sad,” I said. “Keish, can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“Why did you drop out of vet school?”
She paused, then shrugged. “Sometimes, you know what you need to do, you know? It was just in the stars, I guess.”
“Right,” I said meekly. Another one who got the Memo.
As the servers cleared our salad plates, I excused myself and headed to the bank of luxe porta-potties. On my way over, I saw Emily standing alone, blowing her nose as she observed Leigh huddling with Alessandra by a picnic table. Alessandra slipped Leigh what appeared to be a wad of cash, then Leigh extracted a small bag from her jumpsuit and passed it to her. Alessandra did a little dance move. Oh my god. It appeared Leigh dealt in more than just art.
Did I really know anybody? Had I ever known anybody?
Fifteen years ago, I was living my best life in this very same place, dancing and drinking and having midnight conversations about Greek mythology and ancient farming systems, and not feeling embarrassed about my thirst for knowledge. I had a passion and I had a plan: bake it until you make it! I was going to make a living by creating beautiful, delectable objects of substance in a world driven increasingly by bits and bytes. But here I was, surrounded by people in thrall to a woman with a fake name and a fake Italian accent, while my boyfriend carried on at home with a closet organizer named after a stinky cheese.
I unlatched the porta-potty’s plastic door. Once inside, I lowered onto the toilet seat, fully clothed, and allowed myself to cry. It felt so good, to let my emotions out. I stayed seated until there was nothing left inside my tear ducts, then moved over to the makeshift sink. I was working on reapplying my eye makeup in the mirror, using a Q-tip hack that Sophie had taught me, when the door creaked open. What the hell? I was sure I’d locked it.
“I’m in here!” I shouted, but it was too late. Desiree had found me.
“Don’t you worry, Jenny,” she said in a breezy voice. “It’s not too late.”