19 Secrets (2/2)
”Okay then, maybe not. Anyway, this tall black guy with dreads, really cute, was like, 'You went to Greenbriar and you haven't read James Baldwin? What about Toni Morrison? You should read Ta-Nehisi Coates.' And I said, 'Hello? I just got to college. I haven't read anybody yet!' Vivian was next to me and she was all, 'Brooke texted me and there's another party that has a DJ, and the rugby team is there. Should we jet?' And I wanted to go to a party where there was dancing. So we left.” Will ducked her head under the water of the hot tub and came back up again.
”What happened with the condescending guy?”
Will laughed. ”Isaac Tupperman. He's why I'm telling this story. I went out with him for nearly two months. That's how come I can remember the names of his favorite writers.”
”He was your boyfriend?”
”Yeah. He'd write me poems and leave them on my bicycle. He'd come over late at night, like at two in the morning, and say he missed me. But the pressure was on, too. He grew up in the Bronx and went to Stuy, and he was—”
”What's Stuy?”
”Public school for smart kids in New York. He had a lot of ideas about what I should be, what I should study, what I should care about. He wanted to be the amazing older guy who would enlighten me. And I was flattered, and kind of in awe, but then also sometimes really bored.”
”So he was like Chance.”
”What? No. I was so happy when I met Chance because he was the opposite of Isaac.” Will said it decisively, as if it were completely true. ”Isaac liked me because I was ignorant and that meant he could teach me, right? That made him feel like a man. And he did know about a lot of things that I never studied or experienced or whatever. But then—and this is the irony—he was totally annoyed by my ignorance. And in the end, after he broke up with me and I was sad and mental, I came to the Vineyard and one day I thought: Eff you, Mr. Isaac. I'm not so very ignorant. I just know stuff about stuff that you dismiss as unimportant and useless. Does that make sense? I mean, I didn't know Isaac's stuff. And I do know Isaac's stuff is important, but all the time I spent with him I felt like I was just so dumb and blank. The fact that I couldn't understand his life experience very well, combined with how he was a year ahead of me and really into all his academics, the literary magazine, et cetera—that meant that all the time, he got to be the big man and I was looking up at him with wide eyes. And that was what he liked about me. And why he despised me.
”Then there was this week I thought I was pregnant,” Will went on. ”Gemma, imagine. I'm an adopted kid. And there I am, pregnant with a kid I think I might have to put up for adoption. Or have aborted. The dad is a guy my parents met once and wrote him off as a party person—because of his color and his hairstyle the one time they met him—and I have no idea what to do, so I spend all week skipping class and reading people's abortion stories on the Internet. Then one day I finally get my period and I text Isaac. He drops everything and comes over to my dorm room—and he breaks up with me.” Will put her hands over her face. ”I have never been as scared as I was that week,” she went on. ”When I thought I had a baby inside me.”
—
That night, when Chance came back from the fireworks, Willow had already gone to bed. Gemma was still awake, watching TV on the living room couch. She followed him as he rummaged in the fridge and found himself a beer and a leftover grilled pork chop. ”Do you know how to cook?” she asked him.
”I can boil noodles. And heat up tomato sauce.”
”Willow's really good.”
”Yeah. Nice for us, right?”
”She works hard in the kitchen. She taught herself by watching videos and getting cookbooks from the library.”
”Did she?” said Chance, mildly. ”Hey, is there crumble left over? Crumble is necessary to my existence right now.”
”I ate it,” Gemma told him.
”Lucky girl,” he said. ”All right, then. I'm gonna go work on my book. Night is when my brain works best.”