I said, standing in the doorway of the study. I was trying to discern if he was still working on the taxes, because if he was, I didn’t want to interrupt. The papers were strewn all over the top of his desk: tax forms, receipts, slips for this and for that. But Dad had a magazine open on top of the lot.
He raised his eyes as I came into the room. It was almost evening. On such a gloomy day, the passage of day into night was not noticeable until it had happened. He had the desk lamp on, and it bathed his hands and the litter of paper on the desk in a yellowish glow. The rest of the room was a deep, grainy blue.
‘I need to talk to you,’ I said. ‘It’s about going to college next year. I have to get these applications in.’
He rocked back in his chair and put his hands behind his head.
‘They’ve got deadlines. My counsellor at school keeps hassling me about it because I’ve put it off so long.’
‘Put what off?’ Dad asked.
‘Put off deciding where to go.’
‘Where do you want to go?’ he asked.
I set the applications down on the edge of the desk. Stuffing my hands into my pockets, I gazed at him over the top of the lamp. Silence.
‘It’s something I thought you might kind of like to help me decide,’ I said. ‘Like Paul’s dad. His dad decided that he ought to go to Ohio State. See, they have a good statistics department there. His dad thought that the job opportunities would be good in statistics.’
My father reached over and took the applications. ‘Have you figured out how much these places cost?’
‘Yes, Daddy. It’s at the end. I was doing that earlier. That’s why it took me so long. See. I calculated the tuition and my room and board. If I used that savings bond Grandma gave me, plus my money from work …Well, just look at it. I got it all figured up.’
He studied my calculations.
‘I could go to Fort Hayes. Or KU. If I get a really good scholarship, I thought I might try for Columbia. It costs a lot, I know, but if I got a big enough scholarship … It’s a very good school. That’s what Miss Harrich says.’ I paused. ‘What do you think, Daddy?’
He said nothing. He just read. Standing in front of his desk, hands still in my pockets, I rocked back and forth on my heels and watched him. I felt nervous without really knowing why. It caused a crawly feeling, primarily in my hands and feet and in the pit of my stomach. Desperately, I wanted my father to help me, to tell me where he wanted me to go and what he thought I should do, the way Paul’s father had done. That was the chief reason I had procrastinated with the applications for so long. I kept waiting for Dad to say something when I told him about the places I was interested in. I knew he cared about what I did, so I could never figure out why he left me to decide so much on my own.
‘It’d be nice,’ he said, ‘if you could go somewhere close to home. In case we needed you or you needed us or something.’
‘Fort Hayes? That’s nearest. If we don’t move. Are we going to, Daddy?’
‘I don’t know. No one’s mentioned it to me.’
‘Should I apply there?’
Again he paged through the various applications, checking my figures at the end. Then looking up, he handed them back to me across the lamp. ‘I trust you to do a good job, Lessie. You know better than anybody what you’d like to do.’
‘But Paul’s dad pretty much decided for him.’
‘How can that be right?’ my father asked. ‘You’re the one who’s going to end up living at the college and doing whatever it is you get trained for. Not me. You’ve got a level head, Lesley. You know best the things you’re interested in. You just go ahead and decide.’
‘Even Columbia?’
He grimaced. ‘That is a long way away.’ Then he smiled. ‘You’re a lucky girl. You got all your mama’s brains. And your daddy’s going to be proud of you, wherever you choose to go.’
I stared at the papers. ‘May I have money for the application fees?’
He nodded. ‘You let me know what you come up with and I’ll write you a cheque.’
I applied to the University of Kansas in Kansas City. I told them I wanted to study languages. Who knew? Maybe I would. It ended the visits to Miss Harrich’s office anyway. On the 27th of February they sent me a letter of acceptance. I showed it to my father, and after work the next evening he came home with a box of chocolate éclairs from the bakery at the supermarket and we had a family party.
No one ever did speak of moving, so eventually I concluded we weren’t going to. Mama continued to cast around the house restlessly during the month of February. Her agoraphobia worsened abruptly, and for a while she refused even to go next door to see Mrs Reilly. But she never said anything about moving. On my way home from school one afternoon, I stopped by the florist’s and bought her a bowl of forced hyacinths. It was only a tiny point of brightness in the winter-ridden days but it was the best I could do. The ground outside remained brown and unbroken.
Megan took up crocheting. She wasn’t very coordinated at doing things with her hands, so it took my mother almost three weeks of undiluted patience to teach her. Once Megan caught on, she crocheted and crocheted, turning out a thing that was five inches wide and about three feet long, because she didn’t understand how to cast off. It looked like a woolly blanket for a snake. I thought my mother was going to break a blood vessel trying not to laugh when Megan showed it to her. But she didn’t laugh. Instead, she said how nicely all the stitches were made and how she’d always wanted a crocheted belt. I don’t believe that’s what Megan had thought she was making, but she was so tickled by Mama’s comments that she immediately set about making another one.
I spent as much time as I could get away with at Paul’s house. All on his own he had converted the attic into a room for himself, so that he would have space for all his projects. Paul lived for the quiet, free moments he could spend up there and I lived for the moments I could spend with Paul. Sometimes I would sit on his bed and watch while he tinkered with one project or another. Other times we would lie, arms around one another, stretched out across the bed, and talk. We talked about ourselves, about school and our classes, about the future, about life, about dreams.
Our relationship moved with languid gentleness. Indeed, I suspect that if Paul’s family had realized how very little went on behind Paul’s closed door when I was with him, they would have laughed at us. As it was, I always had the distinct feeling from his mother that she was relieved to have me around. I think she’d begun to despair that Paul, happily shut up in his attic with his gerbils and his telescope and his dozens of notebooks full of observed astronomical minutiae, would ever get around to taking girls out. So sometimes I said things to Paul in their presence that intimated we were doing more than we were. I didn’t want them to know that we had such an innocent relationship because I think Paul would have gotten a real razzing. His mother kidded him a lot anyway in a cheerful, good-natured fashion, because he blushed really easily and it made everybody laugh. Paul hated her doing it, but I must admit, she was funny, and her teasing was a whole lot less caustic
