Love, Mitchell
Stephanie read the e-mail twice. Then a third time. She inhaled deeply through her nose every time she reached the end, needing to keep back her tears. Relief, sadness, and a sense of deep, deep longing. She closed her e-mail without answering Mitchell’s message and left the library. Outside, she let out a brief, involuntary moan. Then she felt better. Not good, not normal, but better. Something had been cleared away. She felt she would never forget this day in her life, the cold air on her face, the gray sky, the worn grass, the red brick, the bare trees, and the voices of her classmates in the distance. She walked back to her room, and as she made her way down the paved pathways, she listened, with childlike concentration, to the sound of her own footsteps.
THE NEXT MORNING Stephanie woke up early, had a quick breakfast of raisin toast, and headed toward the other end of the campus, to the history building, where her academic adviser had his office. Every first-year student was assigned an adviser, a professor randomly selected and, more often than not, ill-suited to his advisees. In Stephanie’s case, this was Professor Haupt, a short, good-humored man whose glasses were almost always pushed to the top of his forehead, balancing uncertainly, waiting to be called into service.
Stephanie knocked softly on his door, nervous because she was visiting right at the beginning of office hours. When no one answered, she turned to leave, only to see him coming down the hallway carrying a cup of coffee and a large muffin on a paper napkin. He seemed so contented that she didn’t want to disturb him. She began to write her name on the sign-up sheet outside his door, as if this had been the original purpose of her visit, but when he saw her, he called to her.
“Sarah! How can I help you?”
“It’s Stephanie,” she said.
“Oh, right. Beg pardon. I got the S right, at least.”
He invited her into his office and she sat down in a wooden chair across from his desk, which was noticeably messier than on her previous visit, at the beginning of the school year. There were stacks of file folders, fat with student papers, as well as piles of books, all of them about Lincoln or the Civil War.
“I’m reviewing a new Lincoln biography, and it’s taking over my life,” Professor Haupt said, clearing a space for his breakfast. “I’m also writing a book about Lincoln, fool that I am. If you go into academia, do yourself a favor and stay away from the great men. They’re already covered in other people’s fingerprints, so the best you can do is to write about the fingerprints — or over the fingerprints. Remind me, what are you thinking of majoring in?”
“I haven’t decided yet,” Stephanie said. “I came because I need to use my freshman drop — for Psych I.”
“Are you sure?” Professor Haupt asked. He pushed his glasses down and began to search for her file. “As I recall, that’s not the most challenging course on your schedule.”
The freshman drop was a kind of safety net for first-year students, allowing them to stop taking a class midsemester, no questions asked, and with no adverse effects on their GPA. Students often invoked its magical powers in conversation when they were feeling nervous about an upcoming test or paper, but Stephanie had not yet heard of anyone actually using it. She wondered if she had misunderstood and suddenly worried that she would be penalized for using it on a gut course.
“I just failed the midterm,” she said.
“You can make it up on the final and with the labs.” He had found her file and was flipping through it. “At the very least you could wait a few weeks and see how you feel.”
“I don’t want to study psychology,” she said. “It’s not what I want to learn right now.”
Professor Haupt’s face registered surprise, and she knew she sounded stubborn, like she was issuing a pronouncement to the world: I refuse to learn psychology. The truth was, she didn’t want to waste her psychology professor’s time. Or her own. She had other things to learn.
“Fair enough.” He handed her an add/drop form and continued to look through her file while she filled it out. “I didn’t realize you were from Willowboro,” he said. “That’s a very small town.”
“It’s not that small,” she said, feeling defensive. He probably thought she was on the slow side. Admitted for geographic diversity.
“Don’t get me wrong, I love Willowboro.” Professor Haupt pushed his glasses back up to his forehead.
“You’ve been there?” Stephanie said.
“Many times. I wrote a book about the Battle of Antietam.”
“The single bloodiest day in American history.”
“That’s right! My book was actually about the hospitals that sprang up nearby, the way people turned their houses and barns into makeshift infirmaries. You probably already know this, having grown up in the area, but Lincoln visited several of these residences. But there are no official records of it. All we know of his visits is from the letters that soldiers wrote home. Apparently, he gave speeches at each one — incredibly beautiful speeches. One man wrote to his daughter that every soldier was moved to take out his handkerchief.”
“That’s interesting,” Stephanie said neutrally. She was a little bit suspicious of anyone who fetishized the Civil War. It was always men and boys who knew the battles intimately, memorized the gains and losses and the weather patterns and the terrain. She got the feeling they saw these old, prenuclear wars as a kind of lost sport — a pure, brutal game that could only exist in a simpler time.
Professor Haupt pushed his glasses back down to sign Stephanie’s add/drop form. “I would give anything to hear those speeches. History is such a heartbreaking field. Don’t become a historian.”
“I won’t,” Stephanie said. “Thank you.”
Classes were letting out when she left the history building. Stephanie headed toward the campus center to get her mail. She was waiting in line at the packages window when she saw Raquel checking her mailbox. Her maroon hair was in a stubby ponytail, and her natural color showed at the roots like a dark halo. She must have felt someone staring at her because she looked up and Stephanie had to wave.
“You disappeared!” Raquel said.
Stephanie just nodded.
“You waiting on a care package?”
“Yeah. Probably another Bible from my aunt.” Stephanie still felt compelled to be sarcastic in Raquel’s presence.
“Isn’t it totally bizarre that we’re studying serotonin right now?” Raquel leaned in to whisper, “I mean, considering?”
“That’s karma for you.” Stephanie had no idea what she meant. She was just trying to get this conversation over with. She realized she’d been fooling herself: She and Raquel were no longer friends. They were acquaintances, and in a few months, they’d be even less than that. At graduation, Raquel would go back to using her real name, Kelly. Her hair would be a deep, good-girl brown, her clothes would be ironed, new, preprofessional, and she’d have a one-way ticket to graduate school. That was her future, if she wanted to take it, and she would, because it was never really going to be any other way. She was like Theresa, except she wasn’t as kind.
The boy working at the package window called to Stephanie, and she used it as an excuse to say good-bye to Raquel, who seemed equally relieved to go.
“You have two,” the boy said, glancing at her slip. He excused himself and then returned with a large box from her aunt and a small white FedEx package from her father. It had been mailed two-day express, a lavish expense. Guilt sickened Stephanie. It felt like a poison she had to spit out.
Back in her room, Stephanie opened her aunt’s package first. The box was full of food: pretzels, Hershey bars, dry-roasted peanuts, raisins, jars of peanut butter and Marshmallow Fluff, gummy bears, gum, mints, and a shoebox of homemade chocolate chip cookies. At the bottom of the package was a folded-up newspaper article and a Garfield card containing a ten-dollar bill and a coupon for Herbal Essences. How did she know Stephanie’s favorite shampoo? Families were so strange. The trivial things you knew, the big things you didn’t. The two getting confused, one masquerading as the other. Her aunt had written a short note: