In Between Days Page 9

  “Behind us.”

  Brandon nods.

  Richard stares at Brandon for a moment, unable to process what he’s telling him, unable to understand a single word of it. In the distance, he can see a young couple getting out of their car at the edge of the parking lot, then walking slowly toward the restaurant, their bodies silhouetted by the light from the lampposts. He watches them enter the restaurant, and then a few seconds after that he spots his mother’s minivan pulling around the corner and parking. Separated by about thirty yards, he can only make out two vague shapes in the front seat. He watches them for a moment, waiting for them to get out, but they don’t.

  “What’s this about?” Richard says.

  “No fucking idea, man. I think she just wants to leave your mom’s car here with you and then she and her friend are going to be coming with me.”

  “To your place?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why your place?”

  “I don’t know.” Brandon shrugs. “I guess she thinks it’s safer.”

  “Safer from what?”

  Brandon looks at him. “That, my friend, you would have to ask her.”

  Richard turns back to the minivan, and this time the driver’s side door opens and Chloe gets out. She is wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt with the hood pulled tight over her face and holding a Big Gulp. A moment later, the other door opens, and a guy gets out, a tall, lanky boy with dark skin and a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes.

  Chloe raises her hand tentatively, and Richard looks at her, suddenly processing what’s happening, then waves back.

  “You know that guy?” Brandon asks.

  “Yeah,” Richard says, nodding, looking at his sister. “I think I do.”

  Part Three

  1

  DURING HER FIRST SEMESTER at Stratham College, Chloe had lived in a small dorm on the east side of campus, in an old, ivy-covered brick structure that looked out upon the Stratham River on the north side and the central quad on the south. The building itself reminded her of the way that colleges were often portrayed in the movies, the resolute saneness of New England, the classic elegance of the East, but within its barren hallways she had sensed a broken promise, a corruption of the past. She had chosen Stratham College precisely because it represented to her everything that she’d once believed a college should be. It was situated in a quaint New England town; it advertised a liberal arts curriculum, with an emphasis on diversity and progressive education. It promised passionate professors, and even more passionate students. And yet, when she thought back on it now, when she thought back on those first six months at Stratham College, she realized that she’d spent the better part of those six months in a kind of self-imposed isolation. For one, unlike the rest of the students in her dorm, she had found it very hard to make friends at first. And it wasn’t because she didn’t want to have friends or because she wasn’t social. It was only that she didn’t like the type of socializing that went on at Stratham, the way they all shepherded each other around like sheep, moving in large herds, succumbing to the wishes of the group. It seemed diametrically opposed to everything she had been told about college. What had happened to individuality? she wondered. What had happened to discovering who you were and what you wanted to do? All that stuff they had preached about during freshman orientation and written in the campus brochure?

  And so, instead of joining up with one of the large groups of freshmen that had formed in her dorm, she had decided to go her own way and, as a result, had found herself frequently alone. She went to the dining hall alone, went to classes alone, even sometimes attended parties alone. Occasionally, she would be asked by a group of the girls on her hall if she would like to join them for a drink after class, but she always sensed that these invitations were being offered more out of sympathy, or pity, than anything else, and usually she would end up turning them down, claiming that she had too much work to do or that she had made other plans. And on the rare occasions when she actually did go along with these girls, she would simply sit there smiling, trying not to think about how much she’d rather be home in Houston or trying not to think about what she would say to Richard later that night when she got back to her room. At that point, she was calling up Richard three or four nights a week. He was her lifeline to the world of the sane. The people here are so moronic, she would complain. Honestly, if I told you how lame they were, you wouldn’t believe me. And Richard would laugh or sometimes offer his condolences or sometimes offer advice, assuring her that it would all eventually get better, though Chloe herself was doubtful.

  At the time, her only salvation had been her classes, which she had poured herself into with a kind of renewed resourcefulness and vigor. Class was the only place she felt at home, the only place she could be herself, and because of this, she spoke often, asserting her dominance over the other students, kids who would otherwise not look at her on campus, kids who would frequently ignore her when she tried to look for a place to sit in the dining hall or who would snub her whenever she showed up at a party unannounced. In fact, when she did go to parties, which was rare, she usually stood off by herself in a corner, nursing a beer, looking around the room for someone she might know, someone who didn’t have a personal vendetta against her or who didn’t consider her a freak, but usually the people she saw were people she didn’t know or people she had once known but who no longer cared to acknowledge her. By this point, she had declared a major in history, and so she’d occasionally see some of the other history majors at these parties, but even these students rarely said more than a few words to her before turning around and going back to their friends. After a while, she’d put her beer down on a table, or on the edge of a windowsill, and slip out the back door, realizing, as soon as she left, that no one in the room had even noticed.

  Alone in her dorm room, she spent long hours reading Marxist theory, populist theory, books on French intellectual history. She read books by Francis Fukuyama and Friedrich Nietzsche and David Kolb. She tried to ingest these books in the same way that the girls on her hall ingested Jell-O shots, but she found little sustenance in their pages. More often than not, she would find herself falling asleep on the floor of her dorm room or, later, when her roommate Lizzy got a boyfriend, in the annexes of the library. In the evenings, after the gym had emptied out, she would go there and work out for two or three hours. She liked the eerie quietness of it, especially late at night, the industrial sound of the Nautilus machines, the clanking of metal against metal, the shadows playing along the walls. Afterward, as the gym was closing, she would go into the girls’ changing room and take a shower, then stand there in front of the mirror and stare at herself. She could see her body fat shrinking, her muscles gaining definition, her breasts getting smaller. She had never been a beautiful girl, never been a “knockout,” as her father would say, but she’d always been cute, attractive, and now she was looking more and more masculine. To complete the picture, she decided one day to get her hair cut short, a style that was actually in fashion at the time, but which made Chloe look like a boy. That night, alone in her dorm room, she had cried herself to sleep while her roommate Lizzy was out at a party. She had thought about what her mother had asked her right before she left. So what do you think college is about, honey? she had said, posing the question somewhat casually, and Chloe had stood there, staring at her blankly, not knowing what to say. She wasn’t sure what college was about, but she was pretty sure it wasn’t this.

  Later, she would wonder whether her sudden change in appearance, her sudden androgyny, was what had initially attracted Fatima Mukherjee to her. Fatima Mukherjee, a girl from non-Western history class, a girl who had walked up to her one day after class and asked her to dinner. Chloe had always admired the way that Fatima sat at the back of the room and didn’t speak. Unlike Chloe, who spoke too often without thinking, who tried to answer every single question the professor asked, who tried to dominate almost every class discussion, Fatima sat quietly and listened. She
chose her words carefully, and when she did speak, everyone stopped to listen. She was clearly very bright, clearly very knowledgeable, and seemed all the more so because of her cautiousness and restraint. Thus, when she came up to Chloe that day and asked her to dinner, Chloe didn’t know quite what to say. She was a little taken aback, a little surprised, not only because someone was actually talking to her but because this person was also someone she admired.

  “I’m Fatima, by the way,” Fatima had said warmly, extending her hand. They were standing in the hallway outside the seminar room, students passing by.

  “Yeah, I know,” Chloe said.

  “You do?”

  “Well, yeah, you know, from class.”

  “Oh right.” Fatima smiled, looking around. “Anyway, so how ‘bout dinner?”

  “Dinner,” Chloe said, nodding. “Sure. Dinner sounds good.”

  The place where they went was called the Ambassador, an upscale Indian restaurant on the outskirts of campus that catered mostly to the college’s professors and administrators. It wasn’t a place that Chloe had ever been to before, but upon entering, she immediately fell in love: the rich smells of vegetable curries, the dim-lit atmosphere, the steady pulse of Indian sitar music. Fatima claimed that this was the only decent place in town to get authentic Indian food and that she only came here on special occasions. Then she looked at Chloe very evenly and smiled.

  “I’ve wanted to bring you here for a while,” she said.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why?”

  Fatima blushed. “I like the things you say in class,” she said. “You have an interesting mind.”

  “You think so?”

  “Yeah.” Fatima nodded. “I do.”

  On the walk over, Chloe had gotten the sense that Fatima’s interest in her might not be wholly platonic, and now her suspicions seemed confirmed. And yet, throughout the rest of the meal, as they talked about the professors that they liked, the courses they were taking, the people in their dorms, Chloe made no attempt to disabuse Fatima of the notion that she herself might not be straight. Instead, she listened intently, smiled occasionally, and spoke in oblique terms about her past relationships. She used non-gender-specific language when referring to her exes and simply rolled her eyes whenever Fatima brought up the issue of dating at Stratham. Oh God, she’d say. Don’t remind me.

  The truth was, she liked Fatima and didn’t want to ruin the meal. It had been way too long since she’d done anything even remotely social, since she’d enjoyed another person’s company like this, and she didn’t want this feeling to end. So she just sat there and listened. She sat there and listened and smiled.

  On the walk back to Chloe’s dorm, as they strolled along the narrow tree-lined streets of campus, Fatima had explained to her that there was a band playing the following night at one of the bars near campus. She said that two of her friends were in this band and that they were actually pretty good. Sort of a postindustrial punk rock sort of thing, she’d said.

  Chloe nodded.

  “You like music?”

  “I do.”

  “You should come then,” Fatima said.

  Chloe smiled and said she’d love to.

  Then Fatima put her hand on Chloe’s shoulder and squeezed it. “Great,” she said. “I’m so glad.”

  Later, as they stood outside of Chloe’s dorm, Chloe felt a sudden sense of remorse, a guilt for misleading her. She thought about her brother, Richard, and what he would say. They were standing now on the stone steps beside her dorm, the flowering scent of springtime foliage filling the air, the sun starting to set in the distance.

  “I feel like I should tell you something,” Chloe said after a moment, looking down.

  “Okay.”

  “I don’t really know how to put this, but I just wanted to let you know that I’m not gay. I mean, I like boys.”

  Fatima started to smile, then laugh. “You’re kidding me,” she said. “I had no idea.”

  Chloe looked at her. “Are you joking with me?”

  “Of course, I’m joking with you.”

  “So you knew?”

  “Of course, I knew.”

  Chloe, feeling suddenly relieved, started to laugh then herself. “God, I feel so stupid now,” she said.

  “Don’t.” Fatima smiled, then she reached out and touched her shoulder again. “So, tomorrow?”

  “Yes,” Chloe said. “Tomorrow. Tomorrow would be great. I’ll see you then.”

  • • •

  Over the next several weeks, Chloe and Fatima began to spend more and more time together. In the evenings after class, they would often hang out at the small house that Fatima shared with three other girls from her year. All three of Fatima’s roommates were also gay, though this seemed to be a nonissue for them, and it certainly wasn’t an issue for Chloe. Over lamb curry and wine, they would talk about gender politics, about Britney Spears, about the decline of punk rock. They drank a lot of wine, smoked a lot of cigarettes, and occasionally partook of the small stash of marijuana that Fatima kept hidden beneath her sink. Through her conversations with Fatima, Chloe had learned about the importance of graphic novels, about the ancient art of Indian cooking, about the difference between butch lesbians and femmes. She had learned that Fatima herself had not officially come out until her freshman year of college when she’d met a girl named Vanessa Holt, who had broken her heart so badly that Fatima still couldn’t utter her name without cringing. She learned that Fatima despised her parents, that she rarely spoke to them, and that she was putting herself through college on a student work scholarship. She learned that Fatima one day hoped to be a tenured professor of contemporary political history and that she was already making plans to pursue a Ph.D. in the coming years. Chloe liked Fatima, the way she seemed so together and yet so sweet, so unpretentious. She liked the fact that Fatima never made her feel stupid or wrong, and she liked the way that her voice sounded, especially late at night, after they’d had too much wine to drink and were lying around on one of the couches in Fatima’s house. She liked the way it lilted and rose, the way it fell into a soft and steady cadence, the way it lulled her to sleep, just as her mother’s voice, as a child, had lulled her to sleep.

  Of course, one of the fringe benefits of getting to know Fatima was the fact that Chloe now had access to all of Fatima’s friends, and Fatima, she soon learned, had a lot of friends. She seemed to know everybody, but especially those students involved in the student government and all things political on campus. She was a member of several student groups, including the Student Union, the Asian Student Alliance, and the College Democrats. She was also a member and cofounder of a group called the Open Forum for Political Thought, which was the first group that Chloe had joined. Once a week in the evenings, they would meet up in a small, dim-lit parlor on the third-floor annex of the Student Union Building and discuss the various political topics of the day. Though touted as an “open” forum, a forum that invited all political perspectives, it soon became clear to Chloe that the majority of the students who attended these meetings were radically bent. These were the campus revolutionaries and nonconformists. The environmentalists, the feminists, the Marxists, and pagans. She found their discussions to be exhilarating, their rowdiness intoxicating. They seemed to be tapping into a kind of deeply repressed anger that she herself had never believed she possessed. She liked the way they ranted and raved, the way they talked about sit-ins and protests, the way they referred to the administration as “money-hungry sheep.” The way they saw it, Stratham College was nothing more than a giant corporation and, as such, filled with the same type of bureaucratic bullshit that all giant corporations possessed.

  Afterward, they’d usually go to a small bar near campus called the Cove and continue their discussions over tall pitchers of Miller Lite. Usually, Fatima was exhausted by this point, burned out from having to moderate the discussion at the meeting, and more often than not, she’d want to talk abo
ut other things, like who was dating whom on Six Feet Under or what had happened to Mira Sorvino’s career or what type of lip gloss Chloe was wearing. Chloe would sit there and stare at her. She marveled at the way Fatima was able to shut off her outrage, the way she was able to suddenly shift gears. Chloe, who rarely spoke at these meetings, would be brimming with anger, wanting to continue their discussion, but Fatima would simply look at her and smile. She’d tell her that everything she was saying was true, of course, but that there was a certain point when you simply needed to stop talking about it.

  By this point, Chloe had allowed her hair to grow out again, and she’d also gained back most of the weight she’d burned off that past winter. She was starting to look healthy again, even feminine. She had also begun to notice that various boys at the Cove would now come up to her after the meetings and want to talk. They’d slam down their beers on her table, put their arms around her, sometimes make a joke. They’d invite her back to their houses or sometimes ask her for her number or sometimes suggest going around the back of the Cove to smoke a joint. Fatima would usually look over at one of her girlfriends at this point and shake her head, or roll her eyes, and then one of her girlfriends would very discreetly lean across the table and explain to these boys that the girls at this table didn’t like men. “We’re batting for a different team,” she’d explain, and then the boys would turn around, deflated and confused, and go back to their booths.

  “I hope you don’t mind,” Fatima would sometimes say to Chloe, touching her arm. “I mean, you didn’t like those guys, did you?”

  And Chloe would shake her head no, though sometimes she did mind. Sometimes she found herself craving male attention in the same way that Fatima and her friends craved revolution. Sometimes she found herself resenting the lesbian force field that seemed to surround her.

  In fact, given the strength of this force field, it was surprising to Chloe, even now, that she’d ever met Raja; though, of course, the specifics of how they’d met had always been a mystery to her. She remembered only that she had been sitting at the Cove one night with Fatima and some of her friends and that they had all been drinking a lot and that then, at one point, Fatima’s friends had stood up and left the table, and then a few minutes later a group of boys had come over and joined them. These were boys from the Asian Student Alliance, boys who Fatima knew and approved of, and after a while they had all started talking about some protest that was coming up at the end of the week, a protest regarding the unfair dismissal of one of the most popular professors at Stratham, a man who also happened to be Asian American. Sun-Li Kim, a Chinese American assistant professor of American lit, was being denied tenure, they said, and the following day they would be staging a protest outside the English department in which they’d be presenting to the chair of the English department a signed petition with over three hundred names.