My dad moved out at the beginning of my sophomore year, renting a furnished apartment right near campus in a complex mostly populated by students. I was supposed to spend every weekend there, but he was in such a funk – still struggling with his second book, his publication (or lack of it) called into question just as my mom’s was getting so much attention – that it wasn’t exactly enjoyable. Then again, my mom’s house wasn’t much better, as she was so busy celebrating her newfound single life and academic success that she had people over all the time, students coming and going, dinner parties every weekend. It seemed like there was no middle ground anywhere, except at Ray’s Diner.
I’d driven past it a million times but had never thought of stopping until one night when I was heading back to my mom’s around two
A.M
. My dad, like my mom, didn’t really keep close tabs on me. Because of my school schedule – one night class, flexible daytime seminar hours, and several independent studies – I came and went as I pleased, with little or no questioning, so neither of them really noticed that I wasn’t sleeping. That night, I glanced in at Ray’s, and something about it just struck me. It looked warm, safe almost, populated by people who at least I had one thing in common with. So I pulled in, went inside, and ordered a cup of coffee and some apple pie. I stayed until sunrise.
The nice thing about Ray’s was that even once I became a regular, I still got to be alone. Nobody was asking for more than I wanted to give, and all the interactions were short and sweet. If only all relationships could be so simple, with me always knowing my role exactly.
Back in the fall, one of the waitresses, a heavyset older woman whose name tag said JULIE, had peered down at the application I was working on as she refilled my coffee cup.
‘Defriese University,’ she read out loud. Then she looked at me. ‘Pretty good school.’
‘One of the best,’ I agreed.
‘Think you’ll get in?’
I nodded. ‘Yeah. I do.’
She smiled, like I was kind of cute, then patted my shoulder. ‘Ah, to be young and confident,’ she said, and then she was shuffling away.
I wanted to tell her that I wasn’t confident, I just worked really hard. But she had already moved on to the next booth, chatting up the guy sitting there, and I knew she didn’t really care anyway. There were worlds where all of this – grades, school, papers, class rank, early admission, weighted GPAs – mattered, and ones where they didn’t. I’d spent my entire life squarely in the former, and even at Ray’s, which was the latter, I still couldn’t shake it.
Being so driven, and attending such an unorthodox school, meant that I’d missed out on making all those senior moments that my old friends from Perkins Day had spent this whole last year talking about. The only thing I’d even considered was prom, and then only because my main competition for highest GPA, Jason Talbot, had asked me as a sort of peace offering. In the end, though, even that hadn’t happened, as he canceled last minute after getting invited to participate in some ecology conference. I told myself it didn’t matter, that it was the equivalent of those couch cushions and cul-de-sac bike rides all those years ago, frivolous and unnecessary. But I still kind of wondered, that night and so many others, what I was missing.
I’d be sitting at Ray’s, at two or three or four in the morning, and feel this weird twinge. When I looked up from my books to the people around me – truckers, people who’d come off the interstate for coffee to make another mile, the occasional crazy – I’d have that same feeling that I did the day my mother announced the separation. Like I didn’t belong there, and should have been at home, asleep in my bed, like everyone else I’d see at school in a few hours. But just as quickly, it would pass, everything settling back into place around me. And when Julie came back around with her coffeepot, I’d push my cup to the edge of the table, saying without words what we both knew well – that I’d be staying for a while.
My stepsister, Thisbe Caroline West, was born the day before my graduation, weighing in at six pounds, fifteen ounces. My father called the next morning, exhausted.
‘I’m so sorry, Auden,’ he said, ‘I hate to miss your speech.’
‘It’s all right,’ I told him as my mother came into the kitchen, in her robe, and headed for the coffeemaker. ‘How’s Heidi?’
‘Good,’ he replied. ‘Tired. It was a long haul, and she ended up having a caesarean, which she wasn’t so happy about. But I’m sure she’ll feel better after she gets some rest.’
‘Tell her I said congratulations,’ I told him.
‘I will. And you go out there and give ’em hell, kid.’ This was typical: for my dad, who was famously combative, anything relating to academia was a battle. ‘I’ll be thinking about you.’
I smiled, thanked him, then hung up the phone as my mother poured milk into her coffee. She stirred her cup, the spoon clanking softly, for a moment before saying, ‘Let me guess. He’s not coming.’
‘Heidi had the baby,’ I said. ‘They named her Thisbe.’
My mother snorted. ‘Oh, good Lord,’ she said. ‘All the names from Shakespeare to choose from, and your father picks
that
one? The poor girl. She’ll be having to explain herself her entire life.’
My mom didn’t really have room to talk, considering she’d let my dad name me and my brother: Detram Hollis was a professor my dad greatly admired, while W. H. Auden was his favorite poet. I’d spent some time as a kid wishing my name were Ashley or Katherine, if only because it would have made life simpler, but my mom liked to tell me that my name was actually a kind of litmus test. Auden wasn’t like Frost, she’d say, or Whitman. He was a bit more obscure, and if someone knew of him, then I could be at least somewhat sure they were worth my time and energy, capable of being my intellectual equal. I figured this might be even more true for Thisbe, but instead of saying so I just sat down with my speech notes, flipping through them again. After a moment, she pulled out a chair, joining me.
‘So Heidi survived the childbirth, I assume?’ she asked, taking a sip off her coffee.
‘She had to have a caesarean.’
‘She’s lucky,’ my mom said. ‘Hollis was eleven pounds, and the epidural didn’t take. He almost killed me.’
I flipped through another couple of cards, waiting for one of the stories that inevitably followed this one. There was how Hollis was a ravenous child, sucking my mother’s milk supply dry. The craziness that was his colic, how he had to be walked constantly and, even then, screamed for hours on end. Or there was the one about my dad, and how he…
‘I just hope she’s not expecting your father to be of much help,’ she said, reaching over for a couple of my cards and scanning them, her eyes narrowed. ‘I was lucky if he changed a diaper every once in a while. And forget about him getting up for night feedings. He claimed that he had sleep issues and had to get his nine hours in order to teach. Awfully convenient, that.’
She was still reading my cards as she said this, and I felt the familiar twinge I always experienced whenever anything I did was suddenly under her scrutiny. A moment later, though, she put them aside without comment.
‘Well,’ I said as she took another sip of coffee, ‘that was a long time ago. Maybe he’s changed.’
‘People don’t change. If anything, you get more set in your ways as you get older, not less.’ She shook her head. ‘I remember I used to sit in our bedroom, with Hollis screaming, and just wish that once the door would open, and your father would come in and say, “Here, give him to me. You go rest.” Eventually, it wasn’t even your dad I wanted, just anybody. Anybody at all.’
She was looking out the window as she said this, her fingers wrapped around her mug, which was not on the table or at her lips but instead hovering just between. I picked up my cards, carefully arranging them back in order. ‘I should go get ready,’ I said, pushing my chair back.
My mother didn’t move as I got up and walked behind her. It was like she was frozen, still back in that old bedroom, still waiting, at least until I got down the hallway. Then, suddenly, she spoke.
‘You should rethink that Faulkner quote,’ she said. ‘It’s too much for an opening. You’ll sound pretentious.’
I looked down at my top card, where the words ‘The past isn’t dead. It isn’t even past’ were written in my neat block print. ‘Okay,’ I said. She was right, of course. She always was. ‘Thanks.’
I’d been so focused on my last year of high school and beginning college that I hadn’t really thought about the time in between. Suddenly, though, it was summer, and there was nothing to do but wait for my real life to begin again.
I spent a couple of weeks getting all the stuff I needed for Defriese, and tried to pick up a few shifts at my tutoring job at Huntsinger Test Prep, although it was pretty slow. I seemed to be the only one thinking about school, a fact made more obvious by the various invitations I received from my old friends at Perkins to dinners or trips to the lake. I wanted to see everyone, but whenever we did get together, I felt like the odd person out. I’d only been at Kiffney-Brown for two years, but it was so different, so entirely academic, that I found I couldn’t really relate to their talk about summer jobs and boyfriends. After a few awkward outings, I began to beg off, saying I was busy, and after a while, they got the message.
Home was kind of weird as well, as my mom had gotten some research grant and was working all the time, and when she wasn’t, her graduate assistants were always showing up for impromptu dinners and cocktail hours. When they got too noisy and the house too crowded, I’d head out to the front porch with a book and read until it was dark enough to go to Ray’s.
One night, I was deeply into a book about Buddhism when I saw a green Mercedes coming down our street. It slowed as it neared our mailbox, then slid to a stop by the curb. After a moment, a very pretty blonde girl wearing low-slung jeans, a red tank top, and wedge sandals got out, a package in one hand. She peered at the house, then down at the package, then back at the house again before starting up the driveway. She was almost to the front steps when she saw me.
‘Hi!’ she called out, entirely friendly, which was sort of alarming. I barely had time to respond before she was heading right to me, a big smile on her face. ‘You must be Auden.’
‘Yes,’ I said slowly.
‘I’m Tara!’ Clearly, this name was supposed to be familiar to me. When it became obvious it wasn’t, she added, ‘Hollis’s girlfriend?’
Oh, dear, I thought. Out loud I said, ‘Oh, right. Of course.’
‘It’s so nice to meet you!’ she said, moving closer and putting her arms around me. She smelled like gardenias and dryer sheets. ‘Hollis knew I’d be passing through on my way home, and he asked me to bring you this. Straight from Greece!’
She handed over the package, which was in a plain brown wrapper, my name and address written across the front in my brother’s slanted, sloppy hand. There was an awkward moment, during which I realized she was waiting for me to open the package, so I did. It was a small glass picture frame, dotted with colorful stones: along the bottom were etched the words
THE BEST OF TIMES
. Inside was a picture of Hollis standing in front of the Taj Mahal. He was smiling one of his lazy smiles, in cargo shorts and a T-shirt, a backpack over one shoulder.
‘It’s great, right?’ Tara said. ‘We got it at a flea market in Athens.’
Since I couldn’t say what I really felt, which was that you had to be a pretty serious narcissist to give a picture of yourself as a gift, I told her, ‘It’s beautiful.’
‘I knew you’d like it!’ She clapped her hands. ‘I told him, everyone needs picture frames. They make a memory even more special, you know?’
I looked down at the frame again, the pretty stones, my brother’s easy expression.
THE BEST OF TIMES
, indeed. ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Absolutely.’
Tara shot me another million-watt smile, then peered through the window behind me. ‘So is your mom around? I would love to meet her. Hollis adores her, talks about her all the time.’
‘It’s mutual,’ I said. She glanced at me, and I smiled. ‘She’s in the kitchen. Long black hair, in the green dress. You can’t miss her.’
‘Great!’ Too quick to prevent, she was hugging me again. ‘Thanks so much.’
I nodded. This confidence was a hallmark of all my brother’s girlfriends, at least while they still considered themselves as such. It was only later, when the e-mails and calls stopped, when he seemingly vanished off the face of the earth, that we saw the other side: the red eyes, the weepy messages on our answering machine, the occasional angry peel-out on the road outside our house. Tara didn’t seem like the angry drive-by type. But you never knew.
By eleven, my mother’s admirers were still hanging around, their voices loud as always. I sat in my room, idly checking my Ume.com page (no messages, not that I’d expected any) and e-mail (just one from my dad, asking how everything was going). I thought about calling one of my friends to see if anything was going on, but after remembering the awkwardness of my last few social outings, I sat down on my bed instead. Hollis’s picture frame was on the bedside table, and I picked it up, looking over the tacky blue stones.
THE BEST OF TIMES
. Something in these words, and his easy, smiling face, reminded me of the chatter of my old friends as they traded stories from the school year. Not about classes, or GPAs, but other stuff, things that were as foreign to me as the Taj Mahal itself, gossip and boys and getting your heart broken. They probably had a million pictures that belonged in this frame, but I didn’t have a single one.
I looked at my brother again, backpack over his shoulder. Travel certainly did provide some kind of opportunity, as well as a change of scenery. Maybe I couldn’t take off to Greece or India. But I could still go somewhere.
I went over to my laptop, opening my e-mail account, then scrolled down to my dad’s message. Without letting myself think too much, I typed a quick reply, as well as a question. Within a half hour, he had written me back.
Absolutely you should come! Stay as long as you like. We’d love the company!