12. December 1995, Part I“Tell her I called.”
DECEMBER 1995, PART I
“TELL HER I CALLED.”
A fter his final exams, the inevitable happened – he got the letter informing him that he was on academic probation. His scholarship would be suspended while he worked on improving his grades. But of course, he couldn’t work on improving his grades if he didn’t have a scholarship to pay for classes.
Could he appeal to Father Molloy? Maybe – if Father Molloy hadn’t long ago accepted a position as the headmaster of a Catholic prep school in Boston. They had fallen out of touch after Father Molloy wrote his letter of recommendation for the scholarship at USF.
That was it. The worst had happened, or at least the worst after losing Julia – his academic career was over. There was nothing more to fear.
As he scrounged around the drawer in his bedside table for a bottle opener, he stumbled across an old calling card Julia had given him when she moved away to college. He thought he had used them all, but he must have overlooked this one.
At first, everything had gone according to plan. William exhausted the phone cards Julia gave him, and she sent him letters each week. She came up for her birthday and the holidays, since William couldn’t get away from work, and they spent as much of that time together as they could.
After the holidays were over, their parents balked at the credit card bills, and they had to call each other less frequently. The demands of their coursework intensified. Her letters became more sporadic. Sometimes she forgot when it was her turn to call him.
On the rare occasions that they did connect, her talk was full of the work she was doing and the people she was meeting down there. Especially Kevin Beale, a fellow Bay Area native and aquarium hobbyist.
William tried to convince himself that it wasn’t what he feared. He reminded himself of all the evidence, running down the mental checklist, ticking off all the boxes: Kevin was just her friend, her only friend in Santa Barbara – first, the hapless grad student who had taught her marine biology summer camp. Then, the T.A. in her freshman marine ecology course. Then, the coordinator for her summer internship on the Channel Islands.
She went to his apartment all the time to help him with his saltwater aquarium. She had always been very open with William about that; nothing to hide. Kevin was nearly six years older than Julia, short, bespectacled, and hirsute.
No threat at all, William constantly reminded himself. Nothing to worry about.
But he did.
Innocent or not, Julia’s friendship with Kevin was a distraction. Especially after Kevin became the coordinator for her summer internship on the Channel Islands.
“Kevin wants me to stay and help with the preparations for the internship on the Channel Islands,” Julia had told him back in May. It had already been two months since William had seen her. He had been counting down the days until she came home. They were going to spend two blissful weeks together before her internship began.
He felt the hot anger rising in his chest. But with forced calmness, he said, “You’re not coming home.”
“I would be an idiot to say no.”
His voice shaking with restraint, he said, “Do you know what this means? By the time the middle of September rolls around, it will have been six months since we’ve seen each other.”
“Did you really mean it when you said you didn’t care how long you would have to wait? Because this opportunity won’t wait.”
He had meant that when he said it back in March. She had came home from spring break and broken the news to him about her summer internship, crushing his hopes of spending all summer with her.
“It’s three months out of our whole lives,” she had said back then. “Please don’t ask me not to do it.”
Softening in response, he had picked up her hand and touched the ring on her finger. “I would never do that. I don’t care how long I have to wait.”
But now?
Carefully, he said, “I did mean that. But I thought we would at least see each other from time to time. That’s what you said when you told me not to come with you to Santa Barbara.” He hesitated, then added, “I miss you.”
“It’s not like this is any easier for me.”
“You’ll have something to occupy your mind,” he said bitterly.
“Yes, I will. Am I supposed to apologize for that? I know you don’t know what you want to do with your life and you don’t love working in the restaurant. But please don’t take your frustration out on me!”
Her sharp tone stunned him to silence. Was that really what she thought of him? That he didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life? Hadn’t he told her, over and over again, that he wanted to love her until the day he died? That the rest was just gravy?
He tried to see things from her perspective. She was lonely, struggling to make friends at school.
“What did you expect?” he had once asked her, mid-way through her first semester. “It’s SoCal.”
“I guess I expected a university full of people who had to get straight A’s in order to get in,” she had answered. “I didn’t expect to suffer social death if I didn’t join a sorority.”
She was trying to keep her grades up, but she was finding it harder than expected. In fact, nothing about studying marine biology was what she had expected.
Like an idiot, he had suggested that maybe she could shift her focus to being a naturalist, rather than a marine biologist.
“I don’t want to be a naturalist. I want to be a marine biologist,” she had snapped.
“Okay, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have opened my big mouth.”
“I don’t want to sit around talking to people all day about animals. I want to get out there, touch them, get my hands dirty. Help save them.”
But at the tail end of her sentence, her voice had started breaking. Gently, he said, “Hey. What’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” she had said, her sniffles belying the denial. “I’m just afraid you’re right. This has been my dream since I was twelve years old. I’m not the kind of person to just give up on my dreams without a fight. But no matter how hard I try, I’m just failing.”
He knew she was ambitious and focused; it was one of the many things he admired about her. But sometimes he wondered if she was determined to justify her choices to herself – or maybe even to him – even if it came at the expense of him.
Now, after a long pause, Julia said in a guilt-laced tone, “I’m sorry. But I don’t like feeling like I have to choose between you and my lifelong dreams.”
“I’m not asking you to.”
“It sure feels like you are. And I won’t do it.”
But she had chosen, hadn’t she?
He should have followed her down there when he had the chance. Maybe if he had been there to support her, she wouldn’t have struggled so much. Since he wasn’t, she had to make a choice. She could invest time and energy in rescuing a relationship with someone who lived hundreds of miles away – someone she hadn’t even seen in six months. Someone who had no direction in life. Or she could invest them in rescuing her academic career and her lifelong dreams.
All because he didn’t listen to his gut and move down there with her.
Surely fences could be mended. When it came down to it, they had everything going for them. It had only been three and a half months. He would use this calling card to tell her how everything had turned out. He would find a job in a kitchen and work hard so she could focus on her studies. He would rent a little apartment for them so she could move out of that noisy dorm and study in peace. He would cook her meals and put them in the fridge so she’d have something to eat, even when he was at work. He would keep his fucking mouth shut, and never again question her choice of major – or her fidelity to him.
He would make her an offer – a month, let’s say. Just give me a month with you in Santa Barbara, and if you don’t think it’s working out, I’ll be on my way.
He tried her dorm first, but there was never any answer. After a couple of days, it finally dawned on him – she must have come home to spend Christmas with her family. He called her parents’ house every day, but she never answered. It was always either a family member, or the answering machine. He hung up every time.
So then he waited until the first day of the winter semester at UCSB. That night, he took a few pulls from the bottle of Jameson at his bedside. It dulled the electricity buzzing through his veins, just enough so he could pick up the phone and follow the instructions on the calling card.
“Hello?”
The Valley Girl accent told him it was her roommate. What was her name? Oh yeah – Tiffany. “Can I, um... is Julia there?”
A pause. “Kevin?”
His stomach heaved violently. He almost said no – almost missed an opportunity – but then he caught himself and said yes.
“Oh! I could have sworn she said she was heading over to your place.”
His field of vision reeled. His pulse thudded just behind his Adam’s apple and swished through his ears. A giant vacuum of panic sucked all the air from his lungs.
“Tell her I called,” he wheezed, and slammed down the receiver.
Nothing to worry about, he reminded himself. No threat at all.
Except that Kevin was a Silicon Valley trust fund kid from Atherton. And he really enjoyed working on aquariums with Julia. Imagine all the aquariums he could build for Julia, with all that money.
William sat hunched over on the edge of his bed, feeling the hot anger rising from some pit of darkness within. Julia wasn’t the kind of woman to go after a guy just for his money. But why couldn’t Kevin just ask Julia about his aquarium in some innocuous public place?
How could he spend all that time around Julia and not fall in love with her?
William would have to be in denial to pretend he didn’t see the way Kevin hugged Julia just a moment too long. The way Kevin’s eyes lingered on her with the same appetite, the same admiration, the same love that William’s had.
He had seen all of that in September, when he visited Julia after she returned from the Channel Islands. How stupid did she think he was? How much of a pushover? Was he really just supposed to stand there and pretend he didn’t notice another man making inroads on the best thing that had ever happened in his life?
The anger itched his fingers now, as it had that day with Kevin. Compelling him to action.
The anger.