Tracy O'Neill - The Hopeful

I hadn’t gotten an allowance for years. Expensive as skating was, I could hardly have asked for anything more, and anyway, I’d never thought to because I’d never wanted anything you could buy, only what you had to pay for with work.

I decided to lie down and brainstorm.

I could look for a job, but I didn’t have time for that with all the work I had ahead of me. Also, I didn’t have a car or license.

I could ask my father for money, but I didn’t want to speak with him right now.

I could ask my mother, but she was in the doorway.

I sat up. “Hello.”

“How long were you lying there, Ali?”

“Twenty seconds?”

“I don’t believe you,” holding hips with hands, she said.

“Okay.”

“You know it’s vicarious, right? When you hurt, I hurt. When you were a baby, I was young again. After you lost a tooth, you saw a dollar under the pillow and called it magic, and I did too even though I put it there.” She sat at the foot of the bed, and laid a hand on my shin. Her hair had been blown brittle, and curled as pencil shavings.

“I’m sorry?”

“You don’t need to apologize. You just need to get better. You need to stop living in the past. Your depression is depressing me. I need some positivity.”

“Maybe I’m not living in the past,” I said. “Maybe I’m reliving in the present.” This reliving was the way I could switch my mood, as I imagined the body I’d shrink to skating capacity again. I could watch tapes of triumphant teenage girls who hadn’t developed sex organs and think that one of those little sexless bodies could be me.

“Denial is a critical step in the mourning process,” she said. “I can accept that. But you’ve had your time for that. Come downstairs. Mark is here to see you.”

“Not again. I just saw him. I don’t want to see him.”

“Well he wants to see you.” This seemed to cheer her. “It’s nice to feel special once in a while. When I was a girl, I hated my life sometimes. But then I’d have a little crush, and suddenly I had something to look forward to: someone wanted to see me, you know?” I didn’t, but she was already walking away. “I’ll see you downstairs.” She turned in the doorway. “And maybe a little perfume? You smell like a locker room.”

When I came downstairs to the kitchen, my mother was at the stove stirring something while Mark and my father sat at the table. They looked like a quaint little family.

“You again,” I said to Mark.

“Ali, don’t be odd,” my mother said. “We’re happy to have you for dinner, Mark.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Doyle.” He had changed into a different shirt than the one at the gas station, and his eyes looked somehow bluer. I guessed I could see how Lucy thought he was attractive for a Marxist, even if he wasn’t one anymore.

“You’ll never guess what Mark was just telling me about, Ali,” my father said. “M-O-O-Cs! Massive online open courses. With just a computer, students can sit in on lectures led by real Ivy League professors, even if they aren’t enrolled at real Ivy League colleges.”

“So who are the chumps still paying to go?” I asked pointedly.

“Ali, you want to take a walk outside? Get a little fresh air?” Mark interrupted. He was fiddling with the salt and pepper shakers, and I noticed some black flakes on his shirt.

“Fine,” I said because I didn’t want to listen to my father talk about college, boring, unspectacular college, anymore.

Outside, the ground was slushy, and when I looked up at the sky, the full moon was whiter than the premature snow. “So are you reading the Pascal that I left for you?” Mark asked.

“No, you’re not my tutor anymore, remember?”

“You should read it. We could talk about it. It would be fun.” He whizzed his jacket zipper up and down quickly as he spoke.

“For who?” I asked. “If you want to talk about Pascal, why don’t you go back to Dartmouth?”

“That’s exactly why I left graduate school, because I couldn’t discuss Pascal there. It’s all specialization. There is so much to learn, but graduate school is all about learning a lot about a little.” He stumbled a bit as his foot sunk in the gushy slush.

“So you don’t think it’s better to have learned a lot about a little than barely anything at all?” I knew I was being hard on him, but I couldn’t stop. Skating meant more than a degree that it seemed everyone got these days. Surely, my father knew this, if only he’d remember.

“The world is large. ‘C’est trop et c’est juste assez pour moi .’”

“It’s too much and it’s just enough for me?” I translated.

“Exactly,” he said. “Jean Cocteau.”

“I don’t know who that is.”

“French writer, artist, and filmmaker? Wrote Les Enfants Terribles ? It’s this novel about a brother and sister who grow up totally isolating themselves until their teenage years and then all hell breaks loose. His films are incredible. His illustrations. Everything. He’s one of my idols. The man could do everything, and actually did.”

“First Leonards, then the Green Party candidate,” I began. “History, then scientific ethics, now Jean Cocteau, and what will it be next? How ever do you keep track of it all, Mark?” I’d once asked him what was so wonderful about history. He said the past was realer than the future or the present. It was done, solid, immutable. It wasn’t passing or incumbent. And yet his interests were.

“What do you want me to say? I have attention deficit.”

“There are medications for that.”

“I can’t take the drugs without feeling miserable. I mean, you know that stuff is speed?”

“Speed? Like amphetamines?” I stopped and let my boots sink into the melting snow.

“Yes those.”

“You have a prescription?” It was vital not to reveal the hope involved in his deficit, but I was pulsing with the memory of the week Ryan landed the quad-quad. Maybe Mark was my source. I wouldn’t need to find John Doe, née Deer, again. I just needed a few more to build some momentum, blast back into shape, lose fifteen pounds. Mark could redeem himself to me, I could redeem myself to the world, and in turn the world would be redeemed to me.

“I never take the pills. They make my stomach feel like a washing machine.”

“Necessary evil.”

“Necessary only if you take them.”

“But do you have a prescription? Now? Still?”

“Why are you asking?”

I had pushed too hard. He was suspicious because he could hear that I cared. So I told him I’d asked because I didn’t think drugs should replace discipline. Amphetamines were like using steroids, and he shouldn’t be using them.

But I should, so the next day after school, I decided to ask Lucy if I could borrow some money. She wouldn’t care how I spent it, and I’d already arranged to go to a meeting with Mo. I could run the six miles to Lucy’s house. I congratulated myself on the perfection of my plan.

Lucy opened the door wearing a swirly pastel teddy with little margarita glasses she had embroidered into the bust. Sewing was a hobby she had taken up after leaving college. “I call this look Jimmy Buffet Loses His Lunch in Eternal Spring,” she told me. “Speaking of, I’m starving. Are you gonna eat that?” She pointed to my arm, grabbed it, and gnawed on the part below the elbow like a corn on the cob. She’d been pretending to eat my arm since I was a kid. It was how she said I love you.

“What other looks have you got?” I asked.

“A Night on the Town with James Bond in Cerulean Satin. That’s the one with the martini glasses. Shaken not stirred, of course. And then there’s The Marlboro Man Takes Manhattan in Scarlet Passion. That’s the one with cigarettes over a grid pattern.”