Christmas karol, p.7
Christmas Karol, page 7
In her pocket, her fingers wrapped around her keychain. She drew her keys out slowly and, without looking at them, selected the smallest one. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and shoved the key into the lock of the mailbox labeled 3F. She wrenched the key to the left and yanked the little door open. She bent and peered inside.
Her heart gave a sickening thud. A thick white envelope had been shoved into the tiny rectangular box, folded over so it would fit. She pushed her glasses up her nose with a trembling finger then reached for the envelope. It flopped flat as she drew it out. And there, in the top corner, in bold blue print, was the word “Yale.” The envelope was thick. And large. Her keys fell to the chipped tile floor as she ripped the top of the envelope clear off and yanked out the packet. She scanned the cover letter frantically.
“We are delighted to offer you . . . Yale University . . . full financial package . . .”
She whooped out loud, flinging the packet up into the air. The pages rained down around her, sluicing onto the dirty wet floor.
“Oh! No. No no no no no!” She scrambled around, picking up the papers before they were soaked through. By the time she’d collected them all again and tidied them back into a sheaf, she was convinced she’d misread the letter. She rifled through the smudged and curling pages until she found the cover letter again. No, she hadn’t misread it. It was there. Right there in black and white. She’d gotten into Yale. All expenses paid.
A grin spread across her face unbidden, revealing teeth newly straightened by two agonizing years of braces. She clutched the papers to her chest, scooped her keys up off the floor, and unlocked the downstairs door. She ran up the dingy stairway, nearly colliding with Mrs. Lyman from 2R, muttering an apology in response to her scandalized tutting and patting down of her curlers. She arrived on the third floor and careened around the corner, holding the wobbly newel post to slingshot her around. She reached 3F, jammed her key into the lock, and came flying into the apartment.
“Mom! Fran! Fran! Mom!” she called out, breathless.
Fran poked her head out of the room they shared. “What’s happening?”
At eight years old, Fran was long and lithe. Her dirty-blonde hair fell to her waist and, today, she had pulled it into a high ponytail with an oversized green scrunchie. She was wearing black leggings and a baggy blue sweatshirt with a picture of a smiling snowman on the front. She was holding a Discman in one hand and pulling her headphones down around her neck with the other.
Karol grinned at her and waved the papers in her face. “I got in!” she shrieked.
Fran’s mouth came open and her eyes went wide. “In?” she said.
“In!”
“Like, in in?”
Karol nodded.
“Like, into Yale?!”
“Yes!!”
Fran flung herself at Karol, making her stagger. She wrapped her arms around her sister and leaped up to wrap her legs around her too. Karol laughed and hugged Fran tight, the stack of papers still clutched in her hand. They stood like that for a moment before Fran jumped down and started doing a crazy dance on the hall carpet, all elbows and flailing knees.
“Wahoo! Wahoo! Doo Doo Dah Doo! My sister’s going to col-lege my sister’s going to col-lege!” she chanted.
Karol laughed, her heart beating rapidly. It was true. It was really happening. She looked down at the cover letter again, checking, as Fran cavorted around her. It really said it. She was going to college. And not just any college. Yale.
The sound of coughing made Fran stop dancing and turn. Karol followed her gaze. Their mother was coming into the hall from the kitchen. She held a tissue up to her mouth, her glasses fogging as she coughed into it. A strand of bushy hair had escaped her hair tie and was hanging down in front of her face. When she saw her daughters grinning at her from the doorway, she cleared her throat, then smiled at them and shoved her tissue into the pocket of her jeans.
“What’s all this?” she said, reaching out for the kitchen door as if she was going to close it but just holding onto it instead.
“She . . .” Fran looked up at Karol. “Can I tell her or do you want to?”
Karol smiled and put her arm around her sister’s shoulders, pulling her in for a side hug. “Go on, you tell her,” she said.
Fran squeezed her eyes tight shut and bit her bottom lip. Alice looked from one daughter to the other, a confused smile playing over her lips. Fran opened her eyes, grinned, and said in a rush, “KarolgotintoYale!”
There was a pause. A moment of total stillness. And in that moment Karol was the same as she had ever been—a smart girl from the projects, destined to become a seamstress like her mother, or a store clerk or, if she was lucky, a secretary. And then the moment broke. And she was someone else entirely.
“What?!” her mother shrieked, clutching her chest. “Karol. Is that true?”
Karol nodded, grinning. She thrust the papers at her mother, who took them up with trembling fingers and pushed her glasses down her nose so she could read them. She scanned the page and then looked back at Karol, her eyes wide and glistening.
“Karol!” she whispered. And then, louder, “Karol!”
Karol and Fran both nodded like two bobble-heads, one tall one short.
“My baby’s going to college!” Alice clutched the papers to her chest with both hands. “My baby’s . . . oh Karol! First in our family! And not just any college! Yale! I’m . . .” A fit of coughing cut her off. She shook her head, holding a hand out to them: wait.
Fran looked at Karol and Karol, her arm still around her shoulder, pulled her tighter. She smiled at Fran, made a silly face. Fran’s face relaxed and she giggled. But when she looked away Karol turned to their mother. She watched her fight to get control of the fit of coughing. Watched the way her hand on the doorknob tightened and her body bent forward. And her elation misted and went thin.
But the next moment Alice was standing up straighter, pulling the tissue back out of her pocket and blowing her nose.
“Sorry about that!” she said lightly. “Oh my goodness, Karol, I’m so so proud of you, come here!” She held out her arms and Karol let go of Fran and went to her mother. But before she reached her, the door at the end of the hall—the bedroom door—opened and Karol’s father poked his head out into the hallway, the strands of his wispy combover mussed and out of place.
“Keep it down!” he muttered. “Some of us have to work nights. How do you think the electricity stays on in this place?”
“Ed!” Alice said, turning from Karol and waving the papers at her husband. “Look! Karol’s gotten into Yale!”
Ed cleared his throat wetly and turned his rheumy eyes on Karol. He shrugged. “Well she’s not going.”
“What?!” Karol surged forward but her mother put up a hand.
“Of course she’s going,” Alice said calmly.
“Isn’t.” Ed moved to close the door again. “Can’t afford it.” The door slammed and they could hear the bedsprings creak as he got back in.
Something flared up in Karol then and she stormed up to the door—the door she’d been told over and over again not to open when her father was sleeping. She rushed past her mother and slammed her fist against the door.
“I am going!” she yelled. “Because they’re paying for it! Everything’s taken care of, Dad. So I am going!”
There was no answer from the other side of the door. Alice came up behind her and pulled her into a hug. Karol found that she was crying—from anger or happiness or confusion she wasn’t sure which—and she nestled her face into her mother’s thin shoulder. Alice held out her other arm and Fran slammed into them, wrapping her arms around them too. They stood like that a while.
And then the screen went black.
~ ~ ~
“Your dad was kind of a jerk,” the little girl said. She shifted on the futon, pulling up her feet to sit cross-legged. She tilted her head to the side, one pony tail flopping forward. “Actually, he still is.”
Karol had been staring at the blank screen, lost in thought. But she turned, then, and looked at the girl. “What do you mean ‘still is’? I haven’t seen my father in . . . well in a long time. He could be dead for all I know.” She looked away. “Or care.”
The girl adjusted her purple-framed glasses. “He’s not dead. He lives in Sacramento with some lady named Amelia who sells nightgowns to housewives. He’s not very nice to her either. Although . . .” she looked up as if she was listening to something. “Apparently he likes the nightgowns. Whatever that means.”
Karol opened her mouth to ask how she knew all this but stopped, letting out her breath in a rush. It didn’t matter, really. And she was fairly certain the answer wouldn’t satisfy her. Her mind went back to her father. She remembered that day—getting into Yale, the whole world opening up for her—but she hadn’t thought about it in a long time. She examined it now in her mind. Her mother’s absolute certainty—even before hearing about the money—that Karol would go to Yale. Her father’s absolute certainty that she wouldn’t. And Fran, eight-year-old Fran, dancing with excitement for her on the rug.
“He could’ve at least said ‘good job’ or something,” Karol said softly. “Even if he thought I wouldn’t be able to go. Could have seen me, you know? Mom did. Fran did. But he was never there. He was always working or sleeping and, when he wasn’t, he was cranky and distracted and . . .”
“The job makes the money and the money buys the things that make your family happy,” the little girl said. “When the job comes first, everybody wins.”
Karol looked up sharply. “That’s . . .”
The TV went suddenly white, making Karol squint.
“Shh,” the little girl said, settling her bowl of popcorn on her lap. “It’s starting.”
~ ~ ~
Karol sat at a dorm room desk, bent over a thick textbook. She was scribbling furiously on a legal pad, her eyes darting from the book to the paper. Her hair, cut short in a bob, fell forward as she worked, and she reached up to tuck it back behind her ears. Her glasses had been replaced by contacts, her too-short clothes replaced by skinny jeans and a fuzzy pink sweater, bought with money from her off-campus job at a coffee shop.
“Come on Karol! We’ve been stuck in this room all day! This is pretty much your last chance to show me how awesome college is. And, so far, I’m really not impressed.” Fran was lying on her stomach on Karol’s bed, kicking her legs up in the air behind her.
Karol looked up and squinted at her sister. At twelve, she was almost taller than Karol. But she wasn’t awkward or gangly. There was a grace to her that Karol had never had. Her hair was braided down her back and her blue eyes were expertly traced in black liner. She wore black leggings under a black mini skirt with a fuzzy purple sweater just like Karol’s pink one. This outfit, too, came courtesy of Karol’s job.
Karol sighed and threw down her pen. “Sorry,” she said. “You’re right.” She got up and went over to the bed and flopped down next to Fran. They both rolled onto their backs and Fran nestled into Karol’s shoulder. A tightly-wound ball of tension released inside Karol and she held her sister close. Outside the window, bare branches swayed against a gray sky.
“You should come back with me,” Fran said against her chest. “Come home for Christmas.”
Karol sighed. “I can’t, Fran. I have to study.”
Fran lifted her head to peer into Karol’s eyes. “On Christmas?”
Karol laughed. “On every day.”
“College is sounding less and less appealing.”
Karol let out her breath in a long slow stream. “College is . . . it’s everything, Fran. It’s the answer to everything.”
Fran lay back down. “Sounds deep.”
Karol laughed and poked Fran in the side. She giggled. “I want to go to law school,” Karol said. “I’m applying. I want to study law.”
Fran wrinkled her nose. “More school?”
“They don’t let you become a lawyer otherwise.”
“What’s so great about being a lawyer?”
“Not being a lawyer exactly. Just . . . if I have a background in law, I can . . . I can help people. People like us. People who don’t have anyone to stick up for them.”
“We have people to stick up for us. We’ve got Mom!”
“Yeah but Mom can’t actually do anything.”
Fran sat up. “She does a lot.”
“That’s not what I meant.” Karol sat up too. They sat side-by-side on the narrow bed. On the white wall opposite, a wild-haired Albert Einstein stuck his tongue out at them from a poster Karol’s roommate had hung on the first day of term. Karol secretly found the poster sort of unnerving. But she liked her roommate. Not many seniors lived on campus and she was glad to have found someone in her year who wasn’t too loud and didn’t mind her studying late into the night. But her roommate had gone home for the holidays. Pretty much everyone had gone home for the holidays.
Karol flexed her fingers, trying to explain to Fran what was driving her. What held her here when everyone else had gone. “I want to help more kids go to college,” she said. “I want to make sure schools teach kids things they actually need to know. I want to make sure kids who don’t have their parents’ support still get to follow their dreams.” She stopped, puffing out her cheeks. It sounded sort of corny when she said it out loud like that. But it was true. A whole world had opened up for her since leaving home and she wasn’t going to squander it.
Some of the kids here, they came from money—from families where everyone went to college, where it was just expected. They thought Karol was weird for studying all the time. They’d stopped asking her to hang out with them, go to parties, go on dates. It wasn’t that she had no life. She had a life. Friends even. From her study groups mostly. And she’d been on a couple dates. With serious boys who talked earnestly about their classes but never really seemed that interested in her. Which was fine. She wasn’t really that interested in them. She was interested in school—the doors it opened for her. And she wanted to open those doors for everyone. She wanted to open them for Fran.
Fran got off the bed and went to the window. She looked down at the Christmas tree set up in the flagstone quad below. It never ceased to amaze Karol: the opulence of Yale. Soaring towers, Gothic archways, spires pointing toward the sky. Like a place from another time. And now that it was almost Christmas, it had become almost comical. Giant trees in every quad done up in gold and silver, crystal snowflakes hanging from the ceiling in the dining hall—twisting and sparkling in the light. And carols. You could hardly walk from your dorm to a class without happening upon some acapella group or other standing in the freezing cold singing “Good King Wenceslas” or whatever. Some of them in tailcoats and top hats. It was insane.
“Mom’s sick, Karol.”
Karol’s head snapped up, her mind crashing back to the present. Her sister wasn’t looking at her. She was looking out the window. “Again?”
“I mean, like, really sick.” Fran turned around and leaned against the windowsill. Karol saw tears swimming in her sister’s eyes. Watched her blink them away. “Nobody really tells me anything. But it’s suddenly so much worse. She’s gotten so thin. She looks like . . . like she’s eighty or something. And she’s always coughing.”
The fear that was always lurking somewhere came out into the open. Alice’s persistent, lingering cough was hard to ignore. But it wasn’t always so bad. And it was easy to explain it away. To shove the fear down deep and refuse to examine it. But what Fran was saying now, this was new. It hadn’t been that long since she’d been home.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You’ve been so busy. So . . . so focused. I didn’t want to . . .”
“She still won’t see a doctor?”
Fran shook her head, crossed her arms over her chest and looked away. “She says she’s fine. I think . . . I think she’s scared, you know? Scared to hear what the doctor says.”
Karol got up, if only for an excuse to move. “Well, I mean, this has been going on for years. She’s had a cough off and on for, what, four years or so? I mean, maybe she just has asthma or something.”
Fran met her eyes. “Maybe.”
Karol knew it wasn’t asthma. And she knew Fran knew it too. She felt the pull of home—the guilt pooling in the pit of her stomach. What if her mother was dying? What if she was dying and Karol wasn’t there? She closed her eyes again and breathed. She’d come home in the summer. After she graduated and before law school—if she even got into law school—she’d come home and be with her mother, and with Fran. Maybe it wasn’t really as bad as Fran said. Karol had been home a couple months ago. She’d talked to her mother on the phone just the day before. It couldn’t be that bad. She opened her eyes and smiled.
“Come here,” she said, holding out her arms. Fran stepped into them and they held each other, swaying for a moment in the tiny bit of floor space between Karol’s bed and her roommate’s.
“Maybe Dad’ll make her see a doctor,” Karol said into Fran’s hair.
Fran snorted. “What dad? Do we have a dad?”
“Doctor?” Karol said in a fake deep voice. “Nope. She’s not going to the doctor. Can’t afford it.” She pulled back from Fran and gave her an exaggerated look of annoyance. “And keep it down. Can’t sleep with all that coughing.”
They laughed together, conspiring to find it funny rather than macabre. “Okay well if you’re not coming home with me—even though I still think you should because who stays at school on Christmas and also we miss you—then we’ve got one day for you to convince me that I should magically become an A+ student and apply to a place like this instead of traveling the world and meeting a handsome stranger and settling down and having five hundred kids.”
