Chapter 14
Emily’s mother drove her to Massachusetts, the trunk full of Emily’s things.
Her mother had worked overtime at the hospital for much of August, even though it was Emily’s last month before leaving home.
At summer’s end, her mother told Emily to make a list of everything she wanted for her dorm room.
“Pick whatever you want,” her mother said.
“I can afford it.” Emily had wanted to hug her but her mother wasn’t the hugging type.
Instead, they went shopping at Walmart, where Emily, despite her mother’s words, was careful with her choices.
They woke up at four in the morning for an early start on the long drive.
At dawn they reached Lake Erie, where the sky over the water was a soft pink.
They didn’t stop except for lunch at a Perkins in Pennsylvania.
The Allegheny Mountains sloped around them.
Emily’s mother was a silent driver who refused to let Emily take a turn at the wheel.
She greeted Emily’s roommate with suspicion, as though Florencia’s cheer was proof of mockery.
She wouldn’t stay to help Emily unpack; the drive home lay ahead.
Emily was so used to her mother’s icy efficiency that she recalled only belatedly how odd it was to other people.
Florencia, usually well liked, looked puzzled by Emily’s mother—a puzzlement that was, Emily would later learn, as close as Florencia got to awkwardness.
Emily and Florencia’s suite was composed of two rooms joined together.
Florencia explained that this kind of suite—a bedroom attached to a common room that opened onto the hall—used to be meant for one student.
Florencia said that she didn’t mind taking the common room.
She would probably be in and out a lot, and Emily struck her as a quiet type who probably liked her own space.
Emily’s mother looked at Florencia like she was nuts.
“You want the room people are gonna walk through, waking you up?” Emily’s mother asked Florencia.
“We can switch midyear,” Emily said hastily.
“I don’t get you,” Emily’s mother said. “Neither one of you.”
Florencia excused herself, saying that she needed to speak with someone down the hall.
Emily’s mother brushed her palms together, the gesture of someone whose work was done. Before she left, she told Emily that she ought to know something. “Your father called me, soon after your birthday. He said he didn’t approve of that Gen.”
“Why? What did he say?”
“Just that if I knew what was good for you, I’d put a stop to you seeing her.”
But her mother hadn’t, nor had she said anything about Emily taking the car that night. Emily had believed that her mother hadn’t noticed that the keys or the car had ever left their places. Now Emily wasn’t so sure.
She gave Emily a satisfied grin. “I told him that you were an adult, and he could mind his own fucking business.”
Emily wrote letters to Gen about her classes: the work was hard but she loved it.
She wrote about how, while she was studying in the grand, gray marble library, next to a window that overlooked the Yard, a hawk swooped down to perch on the other side of the glass and swiveled its head to stare at her with amber eyes.
Emily described the Lowell House bells, taken from a monastery in Russia; the largest was called Mother Earth.
Emily wrote that Florencia had the winning quality of genuinely liking everyone and attracted a crew of friends within the first week.
Florencia introduced her to Violet Okoro, a quiet pianist who had turned down Juilliard for Harvard, and Elizabeth and Rory Ryall, identical blond twins from Connecticut who were inseparable yet drove each other crazy.
The five of them ate meals at the same end of one of the long tables in Annenberg, beneath chandeliers and an old, arched wooden ceiling that made Emily feel as though she sat inside the belly of a big ship.
Florencia had gone for more cinnamon toast when the Ryall twins decided to interrogate Emily. “Anyone you’ve got your eye on?” said Elizabeth. “So many cute boys.”
“I beg to differ,” said Rory. “ Some, yes, but most of them are social infants. I swear, a full quarter of the incoming class is autistic.”
“ Rory . You can’t say that!”
“I’m not interested,” said Emily.
“You see!” Rory told her sister.
“I’m not interested in boys.” Emily thought of Gen, at that birthday dinner, flattening her palm against the table. Emily wished that Gen were here. She wished that she were more like Gen: brave. “I have a girlfriend.”
Violet glanced up from her book. Her brown eyes had heavy lashes, which, lowered again, made thick black fans against her brown cheeks. She turned a page.
“Oh,” said Elizabeth. “A girlfriend? Um, okay. Cool.”
Rory said, “Is she hot?”
“Yes.”
“I like this lesbian turn of events,” Rory said to her sister. “Less competition for us.”
“That’s a compliment,” Elizabeth told Emily. “You have our look.”
“But not our brand,” said Rory.
“God, Ror, you are such a bitch!”
Emily said, “I don’t want to have your brand.”
They looked affronted, which made Emily realize that they hadn’t meant straightness but wealth.
Florencia returned, her plate piled with fragrant toast. “What did I miss?”
Violet looked up again from her book. “Emily is telling us about her hot girlfriend.”
“So what did you say?” asked Gen on the phone.
“I had to censor some things.”
“I’m sure you did.”
“You are a little X-rated.”
“That’s funny, coming from you.”
“I said that you’re the smartest person I’ll ever know.”
“Oh,” said Gen.
“I told them how much I miss you.”
“I miss you, ” said Gen softly.
“When can I see you?”
“I’m coming to visit.”
“I can come to Ohio.”
“No, I want to be where you are. See your whole world. Let me.”
“When?”
“Soon.”
“You promise?”
“Yes.”
Emily arrived too early at South Station to meet Gen’s bus and sat in the waiting area for the trains, listening to the rapid flicker of numbers and letters shifting position on the arrivals and departures board. She tied and retied her ponytail. She was nervous, though she didn’t know why.
Gen stepped off the bus, weary-eyed and smelling of exhaust. The ride had been twelve hours from Columbus. She buried her face into the crook of Emily’s neck.
Florencia had made herself scarce, saying she’d sleep on the sofa in Rory Ryall’s triple.
She left a note on Emily’s pillow: We want to meet Gen!
Dinner tomorrow night? Let’s go out! The note crackled beneath Emily’s head as she turned to press her cheek into the pillow, Gen between her legs, the pressure of Gen’s shoulders nudging against Emily’s inner thighs, pushing them wide open.
Emily wanted Gen so badly it was like how people want what they can never have.
Gen asked if Emily was going to be quiet, and Emily said yes, not because it was true but because they both enjoyed the lie.
Gen tasted her, so lightly and at such length that Emily almost couldn’t stand it.
Emily told Gen to fuck her and was told no: this was her punishment for lying.
Emily cried out, so Gen did what Emily wanted.
The window was open to the warm autumn air.
Someone in the Yard called to his friends to catch up.
Gen was deep inside her when Emily came.
Breathless, radiant, unwilling to wait, Emily brought her fingers to her own mouth to lick them before touching Gen, but Gen caught her by the wrist. “You don’t need to do that,” Gen said.
“Feel how much I want you.” Emily marveled at how warm Gen was, how wet, the way she slid against Emily’s fingertips.
A door down the hall slammed. They always found themselves in the smallest beds, yet Emily never wanted a large one; she wanted things with Gen to be exactly like this: their bodies blurred together, Gen’s gasp against her skin, pleasure filling each inch of space.
Gen, wrapped in a sheet, walked barefoot around the suite. “You have a fireplace.”
“It doesn’t work. None of them do anymore. The college had them closed up because of the fire hazard.”
“You mean this room isn’t special? All the dorm rooms are like this?”
“More or less.” Uncomfortable, Emily recognized in Gen her own early astonishment at how saturated with privilege the campus was.
While Emily was still frequently astonished—the astonishment could arrive at any moment, by seeing a framed, handwritten poem by T.
S. Eliot hung on a wall, or learning that one of the clubs had a museum-worthy collection of Delft tiles, at which club members would chuck plates during parties—she had learned it was important not to show surprise, but rather to accept Harvard’s abundance as normal and deserved.
Gen studied a photo of Florencia and her mother, who looked alike: the same long black hair, plump cheeks, huge smiles, eyes crinkled at the corners. “I didn’t know Florencia was pretty. You didn’t say that on the phone.”
“It didn’t matter.”
“It doesn’t?”
Emily stepped toward her, opened the sheet around Gen’s body, and stepped into Gen’s shrouded arms. “No.”
The tension in Gen’s body slackened. “It’s been hard.”
“Classes?”
“No, that’s easy.”
“Track?”
“Easier.”
“You’re crushing the competition, aren’t you?”
“Hmm,” said Gen, which meant yes .
“It’s been hard to miss you.”
“Yes,” said Gen. “It’s been hard to miss you.”
Emily kissed her. “Be with me,” she murmured into Gen’s mouth. Gen pressed the heel of her palm between Emily’s legs. The sheet slipped to the floor.