Elizabeth Crane - The History of Great Things

Outside the room, Steven’s roommate and a couple of other guys you recognize are sitting on the floor, laughing. They might be laughing because Steven just got some with you and you’re now slinking away, or they might be laughing because someone made some joke about something else entirely, but the effect is the same. You plot ways to avoid running into any of these people ever again, which could be challenging.

When, a few weeks later, your period is three days late, you have cause to consider your options in the event that you might be pregnant. Your period’s been late before, but this is the first time there’s been any reason to worry about it. But there’s no worry really. You are pro-choice. It’s a bunch of cells. There is not even one fragment of a thought in your head that this could be the beginning of a baby, or that this is a medical procedure with any risks, however minor. You know about Roe v. Wade , although you don’t know who was who pro or con, or why, and you honestly don’t even care to be grateful for Roe or Wade or whoever it was who is totally doing you a solid right now. All you have to worry about is where to get the money for it. Otherwise, there’s no more than a vague I’ll cross that bridge if I ever come to it , and then your period comes, so the bridge is still at a safe distance. You might have three or four other pregnancy scares in the future, but those bridges aren’t even built yet.

Still, you won’t do sex again for a while.

The fall after you and Dad get married, he takes a year in Germany as a Fulbright scholar. You are twenty years old and have never traveled out of the country before and you are terribly thrilled. You ship a box of books and sewing supplies ahead of your arrival, as you’ll need something to do. Your main objective is to be a perfect wife. You rent a small furnished studio apartment near the university; there’s not much to it, but you will do your best on your tiny budget to make it homey: a couple of small plants, a fine linen tablecloth from the flea market for five marks (it has a small coffee stain, but you read Heloise and know just how to get that out with a little baking soda). During the year you will pick up more things along the way: a watercolor from a street artist ( It’s so dear, Mother, and just two marks! you write home), patterned curtains you whip up from some fabric remnants she sends. On weekends you and Fred explore parks, wander through museums, attend concerts at the university, budget down to the penny for a bus tour of Europe. You purchase a harpsichord on layaway, which is beyond over budget, but a piano is out of the question financially (not to mention that you wouldn’t be able to ship it home), and you will both make good use of it.

Early on, there’s an audition for choristers for an upcoming recital. You ask Fred what he thinks about you auditioning and he says he thinks it’s a marvelous idea, so you go in, and though you are not yet trained, they remark that they are stunned that you yourself are not a Fulbright scholar, and they offer you a few solo lines in the recital.

This, of course, is one of those life moments on which an entire future hinges, and you simultaneously know it and don’t. It burrows down into you, this recognition, locks in there the way a butterfly screw opens up behind the wall, and you are sure that this is the thing that will truly give you to yourself. You practice for four solid hours a day. You have never been so excited or nervous in your life, not going to college or getting married or even flying on an airplane to Europe. The performance goes well; you get to take a small but special bow, during which five seconds the applause goes down into that place in you that makes you feel absolutely alive; it is one of the greatest things in your history of great things. You are swarmed afterward, and Fred lets you have your moment, but he’s beaming almost as though it’s his own. You cannot stop smiling, write home a handwritten, five-page, double-sided, exclamation-point-riddled letter about it. All the faculty thinks I have a bright future as a soloist if I want it!

Two weeks later you take an overly long afternoon nap. You don’t feel ill, but you don’t feel well, and you have no name for this odd, uncomfortable unwellness, for a second you think you might be with child, but you have been cautious about that, marking your calendar diligently and counting the days, so that surely can’t be it, and it passes, and you are terribly relieved when it does.

— This is quite accurate, so far.

— I do have the letters you sent to Grandma from then.

— Oh! I didn’t know that. I’d like to read those. But, wait, I wouldn’t have written to Mother about anything like that last thing.

— I know.

Junior year, one Saturday night in your dorm room at GW, it seems like a good idea to drink a six-pack or two of beer because you have a paper due for rhetoric class, and halfway through the semester you still don’t fully understand what the word “rhetoric” means, much less how to write a paper on it. What does “rhetoric” mean? you ask your roommate. Kimmie is practically a hippie compared to you, wears peasant blouses and patched dungarees, ends a lot of sentences with the word “man.” Is that a rhetorical question? she asks, laughing a bit more than is warranted, handing over a small ceramic pipe. No , you say, it’s not, I don’t think I get it. It just basically means persuasion , she says. You exhale a lungful of smoke, say Huh. I thought it was more, like, philosophical than that. It could be , she says, but in itself it just means how you get your point across. You’ve now got a buzz on that prevents a real understanding of what “in itself” means here. In itself , you say out loud, and then it starts to ring around in your head, with added visuals, you picture same things in same things, books inside of books, pens inside of pens, pipes inside of pipes inside of pipes, infinite same things in infinite same things. Whoa , you say, a minute later or three hours later, one of those; neither of you has even a remotely accurate perception of time right now, and if you can’t understand the concept of rhetoric you definitely can’t understand the concept of time. In itself. What does that even mean? Okay, look , Kimmie says. What is your topic? Rhetoric. No, your paper topic. What are you going to write about? I don’t know! Well what does it say on the syllabus? Syllabus? Yeah, the syllabus, that piece of paper they give you with due dates? I don’t know if I still have that. It usually helps to have that. Syllabus. That’s a weird word. Syllabus. Sillibus. Sllbs. That’s a weird word, right? In your rhetoric notebook, folded among the notes you took in class that you can’t read because of your atrocious handwriting, you discover the document. Kimmie takes it, runs her finger down it to find Monday’s due date. Okay, easy-peasy. You get to pick your own topic. Basically all you have to do is make a statement about something that matters to you, and then argue a case that it’s true. Something that matters to me? Yeah, something that matters to you. Uch , you say out loud. You have no idea what matters to you, especially not after nine beers and three hits off Kimmie’s pipe, which you now notice is shaped like a nude man with a tiny bowl acting as his erect penis. Whoa.

Kimmie begs you to go out with her after your pre-buzz is fully on, one more hit before she goes, paired with another room-temperature beer that hasn’t had time to chill in the mini-fridge. You’re not going to get any work done now , she says. It’s ten o’clock already . You say I have to fry . Kimmie falls over laughing. You said you have to fry! No I didn’t, I said “try”! Whatever, are you coming, or not? No, I have to figure out what matters to me.