Page 6 of The River Is Waiting

“No.I’m just wondering if maybe we should slow down a little, you know?”

“Jesus Christ! How much more ‘slowed down’ can we be with you out in California, me in Rhode Island, and three thousand miles between us?”

“Corby, why do you sound so angry? All I’m saying is that maybe we both should have the freedom to go out with other people from time to time.”

If there had been Skype or FaceTime back then, she would have seen my despair. “I don’t need that kind of freedom because I know for sure that I want to share the rest of my life with you.”

“Okay, but Corby, I’m just not sure we’re in the same place about that. I don’t even know what the rules are for us as a couple. It’s confusing.”

“So who is he?”

“Okay, if you must know, it’s Brad Pitt. I couldn’t resist.”

“No, seriously. Who is he? And have you slept with him yet?”

“There’s nobody else, Corby. You’re jumping to conclusions.”

“Am I?”

There was a long pause on her end. “One of my housemates? Mason? He and I were eating breakfast yesterday and he said, out of the blue, that he has feelings for me. Which was awkward because the only thing I feel toward him is annoyance. I mean, he clips his toenails in the living room. And when he’s studying? He clears his throat so many times that I find myself counting instead of concentrating on whatI’msupposed to be studying.”

“Okay, who else?”

“No one else. The guy who runs the coffee shop I go to asked me if I wanted to go to some art show opening with him and I told him no, that I was seeing someone. But it’s gotten me thinking that if—”

“If someone better comes along? You want to keep your options open?”

“Okay, forget I even said anything. And stop being so fucking insecure. Because this is already a really stressful time for me with student teaching, okay? The kids in one of my classes keep testing me. And their regular teacher’s this hard-nosed disciplinarian who won’t even let the kids breathe. Yesterday she told me that if my classroom management doesn’t improve, she can’t see how she’ll be able to give me a good grade. But the thing is, she never leaves the room. She just sits on the sidelines and scowls. Whenever that class is coming up, I turn into a nervous wreck.”

I didn’t want to talk about her student teaching; I wanted to keep talking aboutus. As if I were qualified to give her advice about her situation, I said, “Just tell her you’ve got your own style and that you need her to leave the room when you have that class because it makes you nervous.”

“Oh yeah, that would go over big,” she said. “The thing I said aboutnot knowing what the rules were? For us as a couple? What if some guy I know, someone who’s just a friend, wants to go for a walk or to a movie. Is that—”

I barged in before she could finish. “Let me ask you something. That bracelet I gave you? Do you wear it or is it shoved in a drawer someplace?”

“I have it on right now, Corby. I wear it every day. Look, I know I’m not doing a very good job of explaining what I’m trying to say. But I’m just under so much pressure right now about the teaching stuff and—”

I told her I had to go but that we could talk later.

Hung up on her.

Paced back and forth. Guy at a coffee shop? I thought about that barista at the Starbucks on Angell Street: guy was so good-looking and gym-fit, you noticed him even if you’re a dude. Mr. Personality, too, with dollar bills and fives stuffed into his tip jar. Like I’d have any chance if I had to compete againstthatguy.

I went downstairs and stormed out of the dorm. Hoofed it from campus into downtown Providence and bought a pack of cigarettes. I only smoked when I felt anxious about something, a habit I’d picked up one exam week in high school. For a good hour or more, I kept walking, smoking, and thinking about what I could do so I wouldn’t lose her. By the time I got back, my throat burned from tar and nicotine but I had figured it out.

I’d never loved RISD and this semesterreallysucked. I’d gotten a D and a C-minus for midterm grades, the first in Spatial Geometry (if I wanted this much math, I’d have majored in it), the other in Ambient Interfaces (too many missed classes, plus the prof had an annoying laugh and bad breath). Then things had gone sour the first week of the new semester when I was hauled before the disciplinary referral board for something ridiculous that had happened before Christmas break. Having volunteered with some other guys to decorate the common area for the holidays, I’d gotten shit-faced. We all had, but I was the one who had written, in spray snow on the picture window, “Fuck you and the sleigh you rode in on.” Some dean had walked by, seen it, and made a complaint. The studentson the discipline committee—a trio of dweebs—listened to my lame defense about having exercised my First Amendment rights. “I’d like to think this is acollege, not aprison,” I said in closing. I concluded that me and RISD were a bad fit.

I didn’t bother to withdraw; I just drove away in my rusted-out Chevy Chevette and headed west. I was that sure that Emily was the one for me and the grand gesture I was making was going to convince her thatIwas the one for her. How many other dudes would ditch their college education for love?

Even gunning it, the trek from Providence to San Diego took me almost four days and earned me two speeding tickets (one in Pennsylvania, the other just outside of Little Rock, Arkansas), plus a loitering fine somewhere along Route 40 for napping on the shoulder of a highway. I played the radio all the way out there—listening a billion times to Rihanna, CeeLo, and that sappy James Blunt song “You’re Beautiful” on the pop stations and, as I drove west, Kenny Chesney, Rascal Flatts, and a bunch of stations hawking Jesus. The news was redundant, too—the Patriot Act gets renewed, the polar ice caps are shrinking, the trouble at Abu Ghraib prison. And if you’re planning to go quail hunting with Dick Cheney, better think again.

When I couldn’t stand the radio anymore, I’d turn it off and enjoy the silence for a while until my father’s voice would start playing in my head. “But deciding to leave isn’t the same as flunking out, Dad,” I’d insisted, interrupting his usual refrain about me being a disappointment to him. That earworm had begun in middle school when I’d gotten caught shoplifting Upper Deck basketball cards at the hobby store in the mall. The night my buddies and I had gotten pinched at Lantern Hill for underage drinking I’d been an embarrassment to him and myself, he’d said. (Of course, when he picked me up at state police barracks, he reeked of scotch.) I’d humiliated him the day he found out I’d gotten fired from my summer job at the A&P for helping myself to handfuls of cooked shrimp while, instead of herding empty carriages out in the parking lot, I was chattingwith the hot blond behind the fish counter. He reminded me that he’d gone out on a limb and asked one of his golfing buddies, an A&P district manager, to see that I’d get hired. He might as well just face it, he’d said: his son was a nonstarter, a slacker, a dud. During my freshman year at RISD, I’d gone to a counselor for a while because of my anxiety and we’d talked about my relationship with my father. “I don’t get it, you know?” I told her. “Supposedly, his students love him. And last year his university gave him some big award for this program he started down in Haiti. But at home, until he left my mother and me, he was always riding my ass about something. Hers, too. She got it worse than I did.”

“A lot of people are like that, Corby,” she’d said. “They have a public persona that’s different from who they are at home. Have you ever considered that you might have been the victim of verbal abuse?”

I’d stuck up for Dad. “He just wants to wake me up when he says shit like that. Give me a reality check.”

“So are you saying youarea loser? That thatisyour reality? Because you and I haven’t known each other for long, but I’d have to disagree.”

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