Vocabularily Adventurous

I never told my mom that I only spent $127 on textbooks this semester, even though on some level she would have been happy to hear it. My mom had brought me up to shop for bargains, choose the product with the highest quality at the lowest cost. If she had known how frugal I had been, her face would have had such a proud look--I'd have smiled, and she'd have congratulated me. Her smile, though, would have been a little stretched. Like her budget, I guess.

She started growing me up around Thanksgiving, when I came home for the fall break to tell lies to my family and gripe with my friends. At Thanksgiving dinner she poured all of us a glass of wine--Grandma, Grandpa, my two unmarried uncles, my drinking-age brother, and me. I seemed astonished and made it as obvious as possible that this was my first alcoholic beverage. Granted, it was light-years better than the "bargain" stuff we'd been indulging in at school. (I never told her about that, either, but my secrecy had less to do with me being fiscally irresponsible.) She said if I wanted her to pay for my school books like she had promised, I'd have to type up a report, like some business owner; in other words, she stopped checking my bank account. The glass of champagne at New Year's was another tip-off, as was her polite refusal to drive me back to school and her insistence that taking the train would be a great learning experience. When I needed more than ever to stay her little girl, when I was still settling into College-Me and couldn't yet let go of Home-Me, she was snipping strings. Unfastening chains, unbuttoning buttons, unzipping zippers, tearing the Velcro off my kiddy shoes in one fell krrritch. I figured she'd drop me outright by June. I started clipping rooms for rent out of the classifieds.

I never felt grown up, though, until I talked to her on the phone one Thursday night in January. I was talking about all the new-semester expenses I'd been incurring. I complained that my checking balance had fallen below $300. Below $300. It was unheard of. I had even asked my bank to send me notifications every time it happened, so I could be ready for action?so I could transfer wads of cash from my savings account. Below $300, I said. On the other end, she laughed shortly and told me she couldn't remember the last time she had had $300 in her bank account. She mentioned her business expenses and lack of revenue, my college tuition payments, my brother's rent, and she laughed again to keep some semblance of flippancy in her voice. I'm glad it was only a phone call--I couldn't have watched her eyes flicker nervously while she let slip that she was foundering.

That's the moment I felt grown up. Not because I felt included in her adult world, not because it was like she had spoken to me as a trusted friend, but because, for as long as I've been alive, I have never once heard her say how hard it is to raise two children and put them through college. Of course I hadn't thought it was easy--in truth, I had never thought about it at all. I childishly assumed everything was great, but now that I knew the truth, I couldn't be a child anymore. By default, I guess that made me a grown-up.

My logic was flawed. There must be some middle stage where you struggle to reconcile the two extremes. I handled being an adult poorly for quite a while. The first thing I did was tiptoe around money issues whenever we spoke. I decided it would be charitable to pay for dinner when she came to visit. I completely ignored her when she offered to put money into my account or pay for my new pair of shoes. I never told her about my textbooks--luckily, she never asked. And once it took root in my mind that my mom was poor and I was selfish, an ugly weed of misplaced heroism spread like kudzu through my brain, settling comfortably in those sectors reserved for creativity, ingenuity, and common sense. Around the same time, I dropped out of school.

My first job was at the Portillo's where we used to eat lunch with our Christian friends after church. I brought in a little extra cash at a music studio, accompanying out of tune instrumentalists and vocalists who sounded like Stevie Nicks or Celine Dion before they were good. I applied at a bunch of the places at which I had always thought I might one day intern: publishing houses, newspapers, photography studios, libraries and bookstores. After a while I picked out a common theme: "Go ahead and graduate college, dear, and maybe we'll call you."

I'm no accountant, but I think it's safe to say that my expenses exceeded my revenues. It took me a while to figure out that I couldn't keep buying groceries for my mom and stopping at Payless or Kohl's on the way home, and Starbuck's coffee is too expensive to buy every morning. My mom stayed pretty quiet about everything--that is, she had stopped talking to me. I had played the adult card too often, and I don't think she enjoyed being told that I didn't need her. And I'm fairly certain she resented the fact that I had decided she needed me. Every time I mentioned Dad I made her cry, and every time I cited the fact that her daughter was the only one who cared about her, she would yell and scream about how her daughter should be at school making something of herself. But I was an adult now. I made my own decisions.

I don't talk to classmates and friends much anymore. Whenever I say, "How are you?" they respond with long and amusing stories about college and dorm life and ten-page papers. I don't like hearing it, because I always get this strange feeling that I should have stories like that too. It's silly, isn't it? Because when you do something for love, there shouldn't be any regrets.

Brooke wrote to her mother, finished her French assignment, tidied her desk, folded the laundry she did last week, swore off potato chips, and made a long list of New Year's resolutions that she fully intended to keep this time. Normally she was only half as productive, usually less. But she vowed never to let anything go by the wayside, always to keep her promises, and never to doubt again, filled with something like ecstasy because Aaron had kissed her.

That is, she imagined he had. She imagined that he had walked up to her in the cafeteria and taken the serving spoon out of her hand and let it fall with a dull smack back into the mashed potatoes, and she imagined that he had knocked her plate out of her hand and never flinched when it hit the floor and shattered into seven oddly-shaped, spinach-covered pieces, and immediately after in front of all the students and their half-eaten chicken and mostly-full glasses of Dr. Pepper he had pulled her to him like an ottoman and kissed her. And there were fireworks and a mariachi band and all the ice cubes melted because of the heat of his embrace, and all the cookies trudged away because even they couldn't compete with the sweetness of this moment. And Aaron tasted like engineering major, just as she had supposed.

She also imagined that the moment he let her go he pulled out his wallet and gallantly paid for the broken plate, then and there, because that's what knights in shining armor do.

Brooke decided that moments of epiphany like the one she had just experienced call for incredible productivity, because the energy won't expend itself. Didn't matter that she had invented the whole scenario--hope was more than enough. She half-ran to the post office, grinning and panting and remembering.

Julia met her there, though she hadn't planned it. Usually Brooke would fall into her lap without Julia expecting it, and that's why they had to be friends.

Brooke mailed off her mother's letter and coyly alluded to her moment with Aaron. Julia frowned.

Quite suddenly, Aaron was there. In person, not a character in the poorly-written fiction piece in Brooke's head. Brooke stared, terrified that he might actually talk to her. Julia knew she shouldn't be worried.

Aaron nearly shoved Brooke out of the way to mail his letters, and as he did she found courage stashed away somewhere near her feet.

"Hi, Aaron."

Aaron looked at her and raised an eyebrow and snorted a little and left. His friend followed, and five feet away they burst into laughter.

Brooke stood still and pondered this until Julia smacked her across the face. Brooke's eyes got wide, and then she smiled.

"Thank you."

"You're welcome."

"He really is a dick, isn't he?"

"He really is."

Brooke hiked her purse further onto her shoulder and sighed. "Same time tomorrow?"

Valérie was at the mirror again. I had always thought one's skin tone was one of those characteristics you just can't change, but her tan was peeling off at an alarming rate and without the tropical sun of her home, she'd soon look just like me: average.

She scrutinized her glowing, exotic skin, rubbing her fingers over her cheeks and forehead to smooth the flakiness that resulted from her sudden plunge into winter.

"C'est trop sec," she complained.

"That's why I brought the humidifier."

"Il ne marche pas."

"We just turned it on, give it a few days."

She couldn't be bothered to look at me when she spoke. Her pores required more immediate attention, and besides, she was used to knowing that people always listened to everything she said. She never had to check.

"It stopped snowing."

"Vraiment?"

"Yeah. You can go outside now."

"Faisons une promenade."

I shrugged as if I wouldn't agree, but both of us knew I would do anything she said, even if it was in French. I couldn't pretend I didn't understand, because I had made the mistake early on of admitting my proficiency at her language. So had she, at mine. Now we were stuck, forced to hear each other and even listen sometimes. Almost like friends.

I wasn't terribly excited to take a walk, as Valérie had decided we would do. I'd lived in the climate long enough to know I hated the cold, and snow is prettiest through a window. Valérie had never seen it, though, until she came here, and it was sort of my job as her more-knowledgeable roommate to make her experience the things that were most foreign. She refused to go out while the phenomenon was actually occurring, though, because droplets of water, however frozen, are not kind to straightened hair.

My coat was on, my scarf securely around my neck, my hat squarely on top of my head before Valérie could pry herself away from the mirror. I marched out the door and she followed very soon after, wearing only a scarf and mittens with her long-sleeved shirt.

"Where's your coat?"

"Dis, Mama, laisse-moi seule."

I was pretty sure I wasn't her mama, but I left her alone anyway. She'd ask to go back to the room for her coat the second she walked out the front door.

The pair of us clomped down three flights of dirty, wet stairs in our snow boots. I looked clumsy. Valérie looked regal. As we reached the bottom of the stairs Andy was opening the door. A frigid Chicago draft whisked into the entryway, and Valérie gave a little French shriek.

"Merde! Eets cold!" Anger and surprise were in English, but she was kind enough to keep the profanities in French.

"Ouai," I replied calmly. I chose whichever language she wasn't using, and I had gotten so good at it I never noticed anymore.

"Tiens, I'm getting my coat."

I waited.

Valérie was back in two minutes. It took longer than I had expected, and I blamed the mirror. Now properly attired, we journeyed out into the winter air. The sidewalks were plowed and there were long, dragging footprints where others before us had skipped and scuffed through the untouched snow. In my opinion, the purity was lost. Valérie was ecstatic.

To be continued...

Each white button slipped out of its respective embroidered slit without much resistance, and after withdrawing her arms from the long sleeves, she let the blouse fall unceremoniously into a pool on the tiled floor. She stepped out of her khaki trousers and silently removed the matching lace undergarments, followed by her nude knee-high stockings. Gazing at herself in the medicine cabinet's mirror, she unclasped the barrette at the back of her head, her hair tumbling over her shoulders and shimmering like freedom.

The water began steaming mere seconds after she turned the knob in the wall. She ran both hands under the hot stream that gushed out of the faucet before tugging on the lever that redirected the water through the shower head. After a short delay, it sputtered out, driving onto the porcelain tub's floor like insistent rain. She stepped under it's wet heat and slid the glass door so that not even the mirror could see.

She ran her hands over her scalp and slid her fingers through the thick waterfall of deep brown hair that cascaded down her back. The soapy loofah skimmed her body in earnest, removing any traces of the world of a few minutes ago. She turned off the water and stepped out of the shower a new woman.

One thick towel mopped up the beads of water that clung to her skin, and another held her sopping hair captive in a tower atop her head. She stared for another moment at her reflection, wrapped the towel around her torso, and opened the bathroom door.

Her husband lay a foot from the doorway, his head and shoulders propped up against the wall, the rest of his limp form sprawled on the carpet. His boxers were hiked up a bit from his graceless slide to the floor, and his hands lay open at his sides. His eyes were weighed down with long, dark lashes like a porcelain doll's, and his mouth was just open enough to show straight white teeth stained with blood. If not for several knife holes in his chest, he would have looked to be asleep.

She regarded him for a moment, smiling at how peaceful he looked. She had to step over his legs to get to her room, and the door swung shut behind her.

The first snow is always the best. Even when things aren't going your way, you take a walk in the first snow and you're okay. It's therapeutic.

There's something exciting in knowing that you've made the first footprints in the snow on your driveway. And there's something thrilling in walking down the white sidewalk, knowing that that mulberry tree on the end of the street was the same one that your cousin fell out of one summer long ago. Now the tree is covered completely in snow, a ghost of a plant waiting for spring’s rebirth.

I don't know why I've always found it relaxing to stand under a streetlight in the freezing cold with the wind whipping at you and the snow caking your hair—for whatever reason, it just feels right.

It's sad how no one seems to have time to enjoy the simple things in life. I was in my room all day surfing the internet, that day when the forecast called for flurries from the northeast, and I didn’t notice it was snowing until my mom came into my room to tell me. When I was younger, I remember sitting at the window waiting so impatiently for the flakes to start drifting from the clouds. It’s as if I suddenly forgot how to enjoy the small things that used to make me happy.

As it approaches, Christmas day is losing its shimmer, too. I had always been the one to get everyone up at eight o'clock so we could open presents; I was always the little kid, wide-eyed and excited about that jolly old elf and his magic reindeer. Now I find myself wondering just how late I can sleep in before tradition guilts me into crawling out of bed. Getting older, I realize that Christmas doesn’t hold the same thrill: I think about how much money my parents and relatives and friends are going to waste on me this year, and I think about how much money I'm going to waste on them. Christmas isn’t a fairy tale, isn’t a picture book. It’s a commercial holiday, all plastic and aluminum and hooked up to the internet.

I battled such thoughts as I trudged down the muffled street one Monday evening after Thanksgiving, picking my way through the snow that had been falling nonstop since Wednesday afternoon. I hadn’t thought about it, but it really was beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

My mittens were hardly conducive to typing in that ten-digit number on my tiny cell phone, but somehow I fumbled through. When I pressed the green “send” button, the phone’s screen glowed white and reminded me that Jake was about to receive a call, as if that hadn’t been my intention. The only other kid remotely my age that lived in the neighborhood and also one of my closer friends, we had played together when we both moved here about ten years ago. At that time, the other kids were too old or too young, so Jake was my only choice, even though he was six months older than me and a year ahead in school. Now we were grown up: he was at college, studying hard to do well on his finals, and I was here, on break, alone.

A click interrupted that tinny ring in my ear, and his familiar voice was my world.

“What’s up, babe?”

I stopped under the streetlamp and shoved my free hand as deep in my coat pocket as I could. Though I knew he couldn’t see, I shrugged. “Just thinkin’, is all,” I replied, using a sort of Huckleberry Finn accent that I employed when I didn’t feel like saying what was really on my mind.

“Thinkin’ ‘bout what?” he queried, using my accent and doing it much better than even I could. His tendency to excel at everything annoys me to this day and he knows it, but that’s also what I love about him.

“Thinkin’ ‘bout stuff,” I retorted, not sure if I wanted to explain my train of thought just yet, even though it was the reason for the call.

Unfortunately, Jake wouldn’t take a hint. The warm smile in his voice melted me, and, using the name he had called me for so long to remind us that we were more like siblings than friends, he said, “C’mon, sis. Spill.”

Boy, was this kid persuasive. I had no choice, so I did spill.

I told him how I thought I was losing myself. How I thought Christmas would be awful this year because I just didn’t have any enthusiasm. He nodded and ‘hm’d as he listened, just like he always had.

The more I spoke, the more I moved. I shoved some snow into a neat little pile with my feet, then kicked it, then started another pile, then scuffed all the way down the sidewalk and back.

“I don’t know if I’m hormonal or just insane,” I told him as I kicked at another make-shift mouse igloo. Jake’s silence told me he continued to listen attentively. “I haven’t been enjoying or looking forward to anything lately. Everything’s just so hum-drum, and I feel like that should... you know, bother me.”

Jake grunted like he understood completely, which he probably did—understanding me is another one of his many talents. But then he surprised me by going completely off-topic, or so it seemed at the moment. “What do you want most for Christmas?” he asked with this distant inquisitiveness in his voice.

I opened my mouth, about to reply, “A digital camera and an iTunes gift card,” then stopped myself. Now that I thought about it, this was one of the reasons I wasn’t looking forward to Christmas. The holiday had been polluted by the prospect of getting stuff and more stuff from everyone that could afford to give you stuff and all you wanted was stuff. The point of Christmas was to count how many presents you had and to relish the thought of ripping the paper off each one, hoping that there would be some expensive technological gadget underneath. And when it was all done you sat there frowning, looking over your mound of gifts to make sure you had ripped off all the wrapping paper you could. That was what was wrong about Christmas, so I thought carefully about how I would answer him.

“Friends,” I slowly replied after a long pause. “What I want for Christmas is all my friends in one room, sitting around a fire and talking and laughing and sharing cookies and cider…” My voice trailed off when I noticed how foolish I sounded. Friends, when I could have a camera or a cell phone? But then I realized that friends don’t cost money. How wonderful that would be, not having to worry about how much money you spent, how many presents you gave and received, or if your friends liked your present, or which of your cousins got the most and best presents. It would be heaven. And if that wish could come true, I wouldn’t need anything else. Not even the digital camera I have been drooling over for months, nor the baby grand piano that would require my parents to take out a second mortgage when I didn’t really need one anyway.

“Well, sis,” Jake finally said, “I think you’ve got a deal.”

I stood still, surprised, instantly forgetting about the miniature snow fort I was building with my toes. If I know Jake well, which I do, he’s up to something. And I know exactly what that something is.

People today want things and will spend vast quantities of cash to get them: wine, jewelry, a humongous tree. And of course, you can never use the same ornaments two years in a row—you have to buy new ones, or else what will the Joneses think? In the midst of these materialists stand Jake and me, kids that can’t afford to go to Macy’s and buy happiness like they do. Instead we borrow happiness, take it from life, from something as simple as a snowfall, from something as simple of a group of friends sipping cider and celebrating Christmas.

I smiled and thanked Jake for always being a phone call away, and as I hung up I decided what I would get Jake this Christmas. Something that can’t be found on the World Wide Web, or in a department store; something that doesn’t require a monthly payment plan or the fine print next to an asterisk. This year, Jake will get a particularly warm hug, with no hidden charges.

The moon was undoubtedly out, it being nearly midnight, but if anyone had been on the street they wouldn't have been able to tell. The old wooden houses on each side of the road had not been built well or with any thought to the problems that could occur in the future. The "street," if one could call it that, was only about ten feet wide at its widest, and the wind and wear had persuaded the buildings to lean towards each other, creating a sort of vaulted ceiling like the one in St. Paul's cathedral down the road. Therefore, if the moon had indeed been eclipsed by the power of witches (or, perhaps, Catholics), no one on Taylors School Road, nor indeed half of London, would have known.

That was why it was a bit reckless of Anne to slip through the uneven doorway of her home and find herself gingerly stepping across the street, pretending that she was successfully avoiding whatever muck had been deposited there. She looked left and then right, scanning the road, praying harder for the presence of light than for the absence of bandits. Directly across from her, the slight glow from the moon betrayed the metal lamp hanging just by the doorway of Jack's house; as usual, it was unlit. Her house had a lamp too, as did every other house in London, it being a law, but most people "forgot" to light them, no wishing to waste candles. There was a law that every house should have a lamp, yes, but there was no law saying they had to be lit.

Anne continued her slow journey across the road, but once she had reached the middle, her excitement got the better of her, and she ran the rest of the way. Meeting Jack in the middle of the night was scandalous and dangerous, but she loved the thought of adventure.

An hour passed. The moon had moved in the sky, even further behind the buildings than before, casting the street into pitch blackness. Anne reemerged from Jack's house, her sudden fear of being caught allowing her maidenhood to remain unblemished. There had, however, been kissing and cuddling, and Anne was so blinded by love that she skipped, eyes half closed, across the narrow road.

Halfway there she hit something dark and solid, and all she could feel was pain before falling to the ground. Whatever was leaking from her abdomen was warm on her hands, but the voices above her were cold in her ears.

"Nedget!"

"She sneaked up on me!"

"You loggerheaded scut!"

"Look, she bumped into me, and–"

"Ne'er mind it, let's trip before someone sights us."

Their footfalls had nearly faded away before Anne's world went black.


The rest of the historical fiction novella A Shilling's Worth can be found at E.G.M.'s Notebook.