Here I was.
Except, the other problem with living in the city is that everything is so damn expensive. So, as much as I wanted to get that double soy latte at my favorite coffee shop, I had to walk past it carrying a bullet thermos, one given to me last Christmas with a perplexed look on my mother’s face telling me she’d gotten it for me and it had been on my list. This made me happy—a full thermos of coffee that I’d made at home, a beautiful, sun-filled day in Boston, and an entire series of hours of freedom.
In some ways I lived this dual life right now, getting ready for grad school to start. I had scored an awesome apartment on the Fenway for dirt cheap. It might be the size of a postage stamp, but it worked and I didn’t have to have a roommate. The building had this strange series of little apartments at the corner of two wings of the building. If you can imagine, there was this column rising up eight floors that’s basically a triangle, and somehow legally the landlord managed to carve out a 180-something square foot apartment for me. For me, and seven other people who lived in the other apartments similar to mine in the building.
My bathroom was such that you couldn’t sit on the toilet without your knees going into the shower. The kitchen was a mini fridge, a microwave, a sink, and a two burner stove. My mattress, well...I ended up having to get a futon because you couldn’t open the front door all the way and have the mattress on the floor. I have to roll it up in order to get in and out of my apartment. But you know what? It’s mine, it’s cheap, and did I mention it’s mine? No roommates. I can walk anywhere I want in Boston. I don’t need a car; I don’t even need a bike. It’s perfect.
Mine.
Walking through the Longwood Medical Center, past hospitals and Starbucks, and Wheelock College, I looked at the old buildings juxtaposed with the shiny Cancer Center. I watch people walk past me, some of them in medical attire, some of them in scrubs, plenty of them homeless, and of course, the ubiquitous college students.
I’m one of them, right? I look at the crowd and realize that nobody’s the same. I can compartmentalize and categorize in my head: medical, medical, college, college, patient, college, college, medical. And that’s the easy way to go through life, right?
What does someone think when they look at me? I’m curvy. I walk with purpose. I have long, brown hair that sways behind me, slapping up against my back. I have wide, friendly eyes, but I hide them behind sunglasses most of the time, because men tend to make eye contact with me and then leer. I carry a book, a tablet—something all the time so that I can read and immerse myself in a world that has nothing to do with anyone else.
In fact, for the longest time I judged myself by what I didn’t have. I didn’t have popularity. I didn’t have a size zero waist. I didn’t have the latest clothes. I didn’t have parents who sent me to Vail for winter break, and to St. Martin’s for spring break. I didn’t, I didn’t, I didn’t.
Part of this whole integration thing is figuring out that if you spend your life judging yourself by what you don’t have, then pretty quickly you start to feel empty. It’s so much better to think of yourself in terms of what you do have. Today, I have some good books on my tablet, I have money in my pocket, I have a good coffee shop nearby, I have time, free time to explore, to read, to revel, and to ruminate.
That feels rich to me.
Boston Common was my target today. I loved to watch the swan boats. I hadn’t ridden them in years; tickets were only a couple dollars, but it was more fun to watch other people enjoy them for the first time. I found a park bench right across from the loading area and I just watched people, mostly families with small kids in strollers coming in, but occasionally a group of tourists speaking animatedly in another language. They would get on the boats, which looked like something out of the 1950’s—old and quiet and staid in a way that was calming. It was soothing, in fact, to imagine being out there in this machine that was built at a time when a weekend meant spending it floating on a lake.
The coffee was great. The weather was perfect and I felt my shoulders relax, my mind let go of the dreaded anticipation of that phone call from my mother and, just as I was able to stop looping this thought about Sam, about Mom, about Evan, and about my own inability to stop obsessing about things, I heard two distinct, familiar voices behind me.
Sam
Walking through Boston Common was awesome, especially on mornings after we’d had a gig. It made the music life feel more real. Raw. Like I had this secret life that the other people walking past me through the gardens, down the asphalt paths that bisected the grass at angles, didn’t have.
I could be up until four in the morning, strung out and blissed out, weak-armed and high on the beats themselves, and then wake up, at eleven or noon, with a pounding headache, in need of caffeine. A quick cup and then a walk, the blinding sun adding to my energy, always did it for me. Joe, for some reason, wanted to come with me this morning.
The guy certainly had changed since our geeky high school years. He’d been this sort of rude, rough edged debate geek who had morphed in college into something uptight but alright. Joe was that guy in a group who would moralize and tell everybody why they shouldn’t do something, and then, behind your back, do something even worse. The guy was slippery—he never got caught. But damn if he didn’t worry so much about his mom and dad, and what they thought.
I had the luxury of not giving a shit about my parents anymore. Dad had made sure that had happened. In fact, I didn’t really have any contact with them. Mom would try—she still had my phone number. I’d give her five or ten minutes but as long as she was still with Dad she was part of the enmeshed world. If you are married to an alcoholic, and you have kids with that alcoholic, and you let that alcoholic warp the kids, then you’re complicit too.
She wouldn’t see it. She couldn’t. And I had spent four years on campus going to the Al-Anon meetings, slowly unraveling the shit Dad had put us all through and finally figuring out why I was so angry at Mom. It’s easy—it’s always easy to be angry at the most rational person, right? They’re the one who is supposed to save you from the mess. Except, Mom expected everyone to rally around the least reasonable guy in the household and to tap dance around the fact that she was enabling him. So, this whole thing Joe had about sucking up to his parents—I didn’t get it. Then again, I didn’t have to get it.
“So...man, I’m leaving,” he said, his words clipped, his eyes barely making contact with mine.
“I know. You told me at the gig last night.”
“It’s sinking in, though.” He took a deep breath, as if it were foreign to him, and looked at me. “I need to leave soon.”
“Darla OK with this?” I knew Trevor was.
“Yeah, but Darla isn’t exactly thrilled. She didn’t even know what Penn was. She thought it was Penn State.”
We both laughed, an evil sound of condescension. Ivy League vs. flagship state university? No contest.
“I can take the train—it goes straight into South Station. I can be here in seven hours. Not every weekend,” he demurred, “but, you know....”
We resumed walking. Tourists were gathered around the little bronze statues of the Make Way for Ducklings ducks and I laughed, seeing little toddlers climbing on the momma’s back, parents geeking out and taking pictures. It was cute. There were lots of cute things when you looked around the Common on a Sunday morning: a million people with strollers, lots of tourists, a few strung out bums, but mostly happy faces.
It was so different from the Monday through Friday grind where you walked past people who were so deep in thought, bent over their smartphones. If the zombie apocalypse ever started on a work day I’m not sure how many people would notice before it was too late.
“When do you leave?” I asked Joe.
“About a week and a half.”
“You got a place? Already?”
“The power of Craigslist,” he said, stretching his hands out wide like a guru talking before an audience.
“You’re fucking kidding me.”
“Do you know how cheap a room is in Philly compared to here?”
“Not that you need to worry about that.” Joe’s parents gave him a spending allowance per month that rivaled some of the lower incomes in Dorchester and Mattapan—annual incomes, that is.
“No, but it’s more money for fun.”
“And train tickets,” I said pointedly.
He mulled that over. “Yeah. Darla’s going to kill me. So,” he said after a pause, “you want to take over my half of the apartment and share it with Trevor?”
The thought slammed into me—I knew what they paid. I knew what half of that apartment was going to cost. There was no fucking way I could afford it. On the other hand, what a luxury that would be. My own room? My own space? An actual bed? A decent roommate? And without Joe around, maybe some of the sexcapades would slow down. I thought about Trevor and Darla for a second.
No, they wouldn’t slow down but at least it wouldn’t be quite as crowded.
“Let me think about it,” I said.
We paused again. He put his hands on his hips. “It would make it so much easier for me to leave if you would just take over. Seriously.”
“I know,” I said. I was starting to feel a sense of anger and irritation rise up in me. Maybe I hadn’t gotten as much sleep as I thought. Or, maybe, I was just aggravated that I couldn’t figure out how to be stable, without a job and without money. Miracle of miracles, it just wasn’t happening.
“Dude, if this is about the money I can...you know, I can pay the first month, maybe even two months’ rent for you.”
“I’m not a charity case, Joe.”
“I know—and I’m not saying you’re a charity case. It’s just....” Those brown eyes stared into mine. I’d imagine that mine were as hard looking back as his were conflicted. “It’s just...my parents won’t give a shit.”
I thought about that for a minute. If I had six weeks or so, could I scrape together the next month’s rent? I didn’t know. I had a call out to Liam’s job tip—maybe that would pan out. Joe was staring at me expectantly.
He ran a hand through his hair. “Make it easy on me, Sam. Just take the place.”
“How much time do you need? Before you need to know, I mean?” I asked.
“Couple days.”
“A couple days?”
“Yeah,” he shrugged. “I have to list it on Craigslist otherwise, or Trevor might find somebody.”
“All right. Give me a couple days.”
Amy
No doubt about it, that was definitely Sam and Joe, and they were somewhere behind me.
I felt like an animal trapped—what could I do? If I turned around, they’d hear me. If I moved, they’d see me. I could tell they were close based on the sound of their voices. The sun felt particularly acute and my body warmed to a temperature that no amount of sunshine could generate. Each breath I took felt like an eternity as I overheard them.