Then Came You Page 11

  I watched the space underneath the stall door, waiting for Kimmie’s feet to move. They didn’t. I’m fine, I told myself. Everything’s fine. But it wasn’t. It was my senior year and I was finishing four years on a campus full of people who I didn’t know and who didn’t know me. Not even my boyfriend knew how, on Mondays, I took the bus by myself to the mall and ate alone at the food court. Nobody knew the truth about my family; no one knew the story of my dad. Instead of real friends, I had acquaintances, interchangeable classmates I could sit with at dinner, who’d go in with me on a late-night pizza or walk with me to the clubs, people whose names I wouldn’t remember a year after graduation. Now it was June. Too late for fun, and instead of fond memories, I’d be left with nothing but regrets.

  Suddenly the tears were back. I buried my face in my hands, choking back sobs.

  “Jules?” came Kimmie’s soft voice. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  I nodded, then realized she couldn’t see me, and managed to croak out an answer. “Yeah,” I said. “I’m fine.” Peeking through the seam between the door and the wall, I could see her, standing in front of the row of mirrors. Kimmie had glossy black hair, so long it brushed at the small of her back, a sweet face with a pert nose and neat white teeth, and a figure that was notable only in the way in which it resembled that of a ten-year-old boy. She wore Keds, laced and tied in bows, and had a slightly pigeon-toed walk.

  Kimmie was a biochem major, and she played violin in the orchestra. Freshman year, I’d see her in the mornings, leaving the dorm for the day, with her black violin case in her hand and, on her back, a blue backpack as pristine as the day it had arrived from the L.L. Bean store (more than once I’d wondered if she had a closet full of dozens of navy-blue backpacks and just kept rotating through them).

  The two of us were friendly enough. We’d laugh as we sorted through stacks of applications, rolling our eyes at the obvious ways the high-school seniors tried to game the system. “Do you think anyone,” Kimmie would ask, pinching an essay between her thumb and first finger, “actually wants to spend a summer teaching English in Bosnia?”

  “I don’t think I’d even want to spend a weekend there,” I replied. We’d trade off taking panicky phone calls from the students or, more often, their parents, and sometimes at the end of our shift we’d walk to the student center and split a slice of cake (I’d have coffee, she’d drink tea). We weren’t friends, exactly, but that winter, Kimmie had started dating one of Dan’s friends, a high-fiving, barrel-chested lacrosse player named Chet who had, in the uncharitable parlance of my classmates, a touch of yellow fever. He’d dated a series of Asian girls since his arrival on campus — Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, conducting his own private waist-down tour of the Far East. For the past few months, I’d been seeing shy little Kimmie everywhere — sitting across the table from Chet in Firestone Library, trotting lightly up the stairs to his third-floor dorm room in Henry Hall, taking little birdie sips of her go-cup of beer in the Ivy basement, her hand with its short, unpolished nails resting lightly on Chet’s brawny forearm.

  I waited until I knew I couldn’t avoid coming out and letting her look at me. I flushed the toilet, rubbed my eyes, slipped the elastic off my ponytail and shook my hair out around my face, hoping it would cover up some of the blotchiness. Then I stepped out of the stall.

  “Hi.”

  She looked me over. “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m homesick.” It was the first thing that popped into my head, and it was, of course, ridiculous — we were seniors; we’d been away from home for four years. But Kimmie simply nodded. She held something out to me — a wad of paper towels, soaked in cold water. “Put this on the back of your neck,” she instructed, in her soft, lilting voice.

  I did as she told me as more tears welled in my eyes. It’s the hormones, I told myself. It had to be. Kimmie’s hand was light as she patted my back once, twice, three times, like a mother burping a baby. I waited for her to ask the obvious questions, about why I was homesick and whether that was really what was making me cry like this, given all of the other, much more obvious reasons — I’d been dumped, I’d gotten a bad grade on my thesis, someone had called me ugly on the Internet, I’d found out that I was pregnant. That last one brought a bitter smile to my lips, and it was that bitterness that finally stopped the tears. I walked to the sink, splashed more cold water on my face, and finger-combed my hair. Kimmie watched all this silently, standing a polite distance away from me, the bumps of her vertebrae showing through the fabric of her T-shirt, a few freckles dotting each cheek.

  “Want to go to Ivy? Chet and Dan are there.”

  “I don’t know if I’m up for that.”

  “Still life with oafs,” she said. I blinked, sure that I’d heard her wrong. She lifted her narrow shoulders in a shrug and gave me a surprisingly sly smile. “That’s how I always think of it. Dinners there. Parties. These boys.”

  “You think Chet’s an oaf?”

  When she smiled, a dimple flashed in one of her cheeks. “He’s a sweet oaf. But an oaf, yes.”

  “So it’s not true love.”

  She shook her head, hair swishing. “I just wanted to have some fun before I graduated.”

  I was startled at how closely what she’d said echoed what I’d been thinking, about how time was short and how I should have some fun, too. “And is he? Fun?”

  She smiled, shrugging again. “If you like beer. He took me to the beach once. Atlantic City.” She hummed a few bars of the Bruce Springsteen song of the same name, surprising me. I’d have figured Kimmie with her violin as someone whose knowledge of contemporary music ended at around 1890. “And to Six Flags for my birthday.” This was interesting. Princeton students made trips to New York City, for parties, or off-Broadway experimental theater, or museum exhibits, but no one I knew would ever admit to visiting an amusement park, waiting in line with the teeming, sunburned, flabby masses, unless maybe they’d taken mushrooms first and gone as a joke.

  Her smile widened, displaying small, even white teeth. “Chet’s afraid of roller coasters.”

  “He is?”

  She nodded. “Come on,” she said, and linked her arms with me, like we were schoolgirl chums. We walked through the soft spring night across the street to Ivy, Princeton’s oldest eating club, one that had always been home to the sons (and, since 1991, the daughters) of privilege, the future kings and queens of America, a club you had to go through a rush-like evaluation process called bicker to join. It was a gorgeous, blooming spring night, but I felt awful: my breasts ached so much I winced whenever my shirt touched them, and I had an acne cyst throbbing beneath the skin above my right eye, making me feel like my forehead was trying to give birth. The grand brick mansion halfway down Prospect Avenue, entering the dining room, with its wood paneling and high ceilings, the mellow gleam of lamplight on the tables brought me back to myself. I’d be done with the hormones soon enough, and besides, I was doing a good thing, a generous thing. All of this would work out: some poor infertile woman would get her baby; I’d get my money; my father would get another chance.

  Dan and Chet were out back drinking. Dan pulled me close, squeezing me too hard. The first time we’d had sex, he’d fallen to his knees in front of me, his arms wrapped around my legs, his face buried between them. “God, you’re hot,” he’d groaned. Looking down at him, his broad, muscled chest, his penis, moist and sticky at the tip, jerking in the air like a hitchhiker’s spastic thumb, a wave of something surged through me, a feeling that felt nothing like desire and a lot like nausea. I’d had to peel his hands off the backs of my thighs and run to the bathroom, where I’d bent over the sink, positive I was going to throw up, even though all I’d had that night were two glasses of Champagne. Once the urge had passed, I’d lifted my head, looking at myself in the mirror and thought, What am I doing? I don’t want to sleep with him. He’s a dolt. Of course I’d slept with him anyhow — at that point, it would have been rude not to — bu
t as I’d felt him push his way inside me (“Tight,” he’d announced, like he was paying me an enormous compliment), I’d felt sick to my stomach, disgusted with him and disgusted with myself.

  We’d slept together a few times a week since then, and Dan had been polite and accommodating each time. He was, I had to admit, nothing if not well-mannered. “Can I come on your tits?” he’d ask, in the same solicitous tone as a waiter asking if I wanted fresh-ground pepper on my pasta. He’d go down on me until I was sure his tongue was numb and his jaw was aching; he’d try his best to please me, and tell me I was beautiful. . but it never felt right, and I’d never been able to figure out why. He just wasn’t the guy for me, I’d eventually decided, and when he headed out west after graduation, I didn’t think he’d miss me much.

  I took a seat next to Kimmie, knowing how the evening would unfold. There’d be a game of pool, or croquet on the back lawn, with more plastic cups of beer. I could wander down to Witherspoon Street for an ice-cream cone, or go to the movies or a lecture or a concert. Eventually, most of the students would find their way back to Prospect Avenue. They would make their way from club basement to club basement, a subterranean version of the John Cheever story where a man traverses his neighborhood by way of the backyard swimming pools.

  I thought I could feel Kimmie watching me as the night went on — during the croquet game, when she sat on a plastic lawn chair and clapped as Chet smacked his ball through the wickets, then later, in the basement, where we shouted toward each other over the music. Maybe she was trying to figure out why I’d been having a breakdown in the bathroom, but she didn’t say anything. I made myself wait until eleven. Then I told Dan that I had an awful headache and was going home.

  “Do you need anything?” Chet asked. One of his muscled arms was slung loosely over Kimmie’s shoulders, and as he pulled her close, I felt a stab of something I couldn’t name.

  “Just some rest.”

  “I’ll walk back with you,” said Kimmie, slipping out from under Chet’s grasp and looping her arm through mine again.

  We crossed Witherspoon Street and passed the great gothic pile of Firestone Library, heading along a wide slate path. A sliver of moon hung above us. The sounds of an a capella group singing “Let Me Call You Sweetheart” underneath Blair Arch echoed through the night.

  “We should take a picture for the website,” Kimmie said, and I nodded, surprised because, again, I’d been thinking the exact same thing — how the night looked like a recruiting poster for Princeton, how there was no way you could stroll through campus on a soft spring evening like this and not believe that this was the most beautiful school ever imagined, that the students here were the luckiest, happiest ones in the world.

  “You want anything? Advil? Excedrin?” She gave me a coy smile, one I’d never seen in the admissions office. “Something stronger?”

  I must have looked shocked, because Kimmie laughed out loud and clapped her hands in delight. “Oh, come on, Jules. Don’t look so surprised.”

  “I thought you were a nice girl,” I blurted, which made her clap again, before asking, “So what can I get you?”

  I shook my head regretfully, thinking of my appointment at the clinic the next morning. “I better not.”

  “You don’t drink,” Kimmie observed.

  Surprised again, I answered, “I had a beer.”

  “You held it,” said Kimmie. “You didn’t drink it.”

  I didn’t answer. At parties, I’d ask for a beer, because it was more conspicuous not to have something in your hands, but I never had more than a few swallows, and, other than Champagne, I never drank anything stronger. I couldn’t risk it. Not after what had happened with my dad.

  We paused at the doorway to my dorm, Kimmie with her hands in her pockets, and me feeling, strangely, like this was the end of a date, when there’d be the predictable grapple for a kiss, or an invitation upstairs. An odd thought surfaced: that I wouldn’t have minded kissing Kimmie. In the faint glow of the lamp, with her lashes sweeping her cheeks, she looked adorable. I shook my head and told her good night, fishing my key out of my pocket and hurrying up the stairs, wondering what on earth that had been about. Spring fever, I decided. The end of college, the end of childhood, really, with real life looming ever closer — all of that could make anyone behave a little strangely.

  In my dorm room, I gave myself my last shot, then carried my plastic bucket of toiletries to the bathroom. I showered, shaved my legs and armpits and bikini line, and brushed my teeth. Back in my room, I pulled on panties and an oversized T-shirt and set my alarm for seven o’clock. I didn’t have a bike, but there were dozens of them, all around campus, left unlocked at the bike racks. I’d ride one of those to the clinic, do the donation, rest for a while, then pedal back in time for lunch.

  I lay in bed in the darkness, warm spring air coming through my window, and for the first time I let myself think about the result of what I’d be doing in the morning. If everything went well, in nine or ten months’ time there could be a baby, a baby who was half mine, at least genetically, a little boy or girl in the world whom I would never see, never know. It hadn’t bothered me before. Donating an egg wasn’t like having a baby and giving it up for adoption. The eggs were nothing more than possibilities. But still…

  Rolling onto my side, I imagined walking down a New York City street five years from now and seeing a little girl who looked like me, holding her mother’s hand. Or being in an airport or a theater or in line at Starbucks and catching a glimpse of a baby, a toddler, a teenager with blond hair and light eyes and wondering if, maybe, that had been my baby. Would I stare, or feel compelled to say something? Would the mother turn the baby away from me, hustling her down the street or hurrying her out of the store? Would the child know where he or she had come from, that there’d been a girl like me involved, someone who’d given away (or sold, to be honest) part of herself so that he or she could exist? Would the baby grow up and try to find me? Would she look like me? Would she struggle with addiction and never know why?

  I finally managed to fall asleep. When I opened my eyes I could see the line of sunshine underneath the window shade. I slapped off my alarm before it could buzz, grabbed my bucket, opened my door, and almost walked straight into Kimmie, who was standing in the hallway, fully dressed, neatly combed, her hair in two pigtails, each tied with a bright-blue elastic. Under the stark hallway fluorescents, I could see the smattering of cinnamon-colored freckles on her cheeks, and I thought she was wearing tinted gloss on her lips, something I’d never seen her do before.

  “Hey,” I said. “You’re up early.”

  She tilted her head. “I like it when it’s quiet.”

  I nodded, knowing what she meant.

  “You want to go get coffee?”

  Curling my arm around my bucket, I said, “I’ve actually got an appointment.”

  “So early,” Kimmie mused. “Bootie call?”

  I shook my head, still startled and charmed by this new sense of humor, a raunchiness I’d never suspected when we were filing applications or sharing snacks in the student center. “No bootie for me.”

  “So, what?” She gave me an assessing look. “Not a class.”

  “No,” I said. “I’m not the only senior in the world dumb enough to take a nine o’clock. It’s a. .” I struggled for a moment. “A doctor’s appointment.”

  I expected more questions, but Kimmie just nodded. “You want company?”

  “Oh, I…” I opened my mouth to tell her no thanks, but somehow, what came out was “That would be great.”

  Twenty minutes later, Kimmie and I had liberated a pair of bicycles and were pedaling through Princeton’s quiet streets, on our way to the clinic. “Are you sick?” she asked.

  “I’m not sick,” I said. “I’m selling my eggs.”

  She nodded. The wind blew her long hair back from her forehead. The bike that she’d taken had a metal carrier over the back wheels, and she’d stowed her violin an
d her backpack in there.

  “I need the money,” I continued. I wasn’t sure if it was the hormones or the impending procedure, which would mark the end of my time at Princeton, but I suddenly needed to tell somebody my story.

  “Loans?” Kimmie asked when we’d pulled up to a stop sign. If you needed financial aid, the university’s endowment would cover your tuition, but plenty of students — me included — took out loans for living expenses, books and travel and meal plans.

  “Well, yeah. And my dad’s sick. I’m trying to get money to help him.”

  “What’s wrong with your father?” Before I could say anything, she turned, flicking one pigtail over her shoulder, and said, “I’m sorry. That’s none of my business. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

  “No. It’s okay. He’s…” I paused. I’d never said this out loud before, not to a stranger. “He’s an addict. I’m trying to get money so he can get into treatment.”

  Kimmie nodded. She’d pulled ahead of me on her bike, so I couldn’t see her face. I wondered if she was shocked, or if somehow she’d guessed this about me.