I looked amongst the boxes and bags that lay in disarray across the common room of our newly inhabited dorm. The only order that emerged from the chaos was the four desks bolted to the adjacent walls. Daisy busily rummaged through one box, while Linnaea carefully unfolded, and then refolded each article of clothing she pulled from her suitcase.
“So what is it, like, a mental ward or something?” Daisy’s voice boomed from within the cardboard box. As I paused, she pulled her head out to look at me. I could feel Linnaea studying me from behind.
“Um, I don’t really know…” I began, as I slowly turned the pages in my day planner. “I haven’t been there.”
“Well, can she leave?” Daisy asked, tilting her head to the side, a piece of chewed gum peaking out from the side of her mouth.
“I’d assume not, she isn’t stable.”
“Uh, yeah…” Daisy murmured, distracted by the two notebooks she had unearthed from deep within a box that were now clearly stuck together by a wad of gum. I stood and moved into our bedroom, pausing at the doorway to study the two sets of bunk beds that were crammed into the tiny room.
Stirring behind me, Linnaea chuckled, “It seems rather improbable that four people can sleep in here, doesn’t it?”
“That’s the mildest way to put it,” I laughed. Sighing, Linnaea slid past me and sat on one of the beds.
“Yeah, a lot of changes in one week, particularly for you,” she said. I gave her a sideways smile and nodded, realizing how odd it was that these complete strangers suddenly knew nearly as much about me as my own friends back at home. In some ways, perhaps more.
A knock at our door caused us both to turn. “It’s for me,” I sighed, and turned to leave.
“See you when you get ‘home’,” Linnaea said, smiling.
In the doorway stood a monument of a man, a mold that should have been erected in some parking lot of a dive bar, standing as a tribute to boozing, smoking, and slovenliness. He wore an unevenly buttoned flannel shirt that fitted him tightly across his rotund stomach, and then hung lopsided and loosely at his waist. While his brown laced shoes appeared to be recently cleaned, the cuffs of his pants revealed the faintest layer of mud that had been nearly washed out, but not quite. Shaking away the thick curls that cascaded wildly from his matted head away from his eyes, he nervously rubbed his freshly shaven face. I had to give the man some credit: there was real effort put into today’s appearance.
“Everyone,” I swept my arm grandly across the room, “This is John. John…” I paused as I watched him walk into our bedroom. Embarrassed I hurried after him, grabbing his arm.
“Four people sleep in here?!” He asked incredulously, putting his hand on one of the top bunks and shaking it, apparently testing it for quality.
“Uh, yeah, can we leave now?” I said, blushing as I saw Daisy and Linnaea appear in the doorway.
“Oh, sure,” John sniffed, and tugged at his shirt. “Your brother’s waiting in the car anyway.”
Stepping out into the September air, I sighed heavily. This was my second night at my dorm, and again, I wouldn’t be hanging out with my new roommates. The day before had been a whirlwind. Pushed from event to event like cattle, we felt completely overwhelmed and entirely distracted by all the speakers, workshops, and information tables. The school had a formulaic way of ensuring that when the parents did eventually leave the campus, the students would barely notice. All had been going as planned for me until about 2 pm on Sunday when I had my meeting with my student advisor.
It began subtly: a small itch behind my ear, a scratch beneath my knee. As she flipped through my high school transcript, I felt flushed, but not in any unordinary way. Ah yes, she murmured, as I mentioned this high school and that English class. Oh really, she mumbled, as I mentioned my extracurricular activities: the sports, the student government, the paper. Uh huh, she muttered, at my final futile attempts as I desperately tried to make some impression on her. Finally, she looked up as she turned the last page of my file and gasped.
“You-you’re covered in hives!” She cried, pointing at my chest. Startled, I looked down to see my entire chest, arms, and legs covered in giant splotches. Sure enough, I was covered from head to toe in an overt allergic reaction. Almost as nearly as I realized it, did I begin to notice my throat feeling somewhat tight.
Am I having a panic attack? I wondered as I dumbly watched her dial the nurses office, and gesture wildly, staring wide-eyed at my body. I don’t feel panicked, I thought, tugging at my collar. It felt as if it was shrinking. Clearly, neither being noticed for leper-like qualities, nor being known as “that girl with the hives” was my ideal outcome from this meeting. Hence, I slowly packed up my things, pausing long enough to hear directions to the health center, and gracefully exited.
For the remainder of the day, I listened to the nurses whisper around me as if the reaction caused deafness as well.
She’s very stressed, one sighed.
It’s her first day of college, the poor thing, another lamented.
Did you see she’s just here with her father, and well, I heard about her mother and…
I closed my eyes. This is awful, I thought, as I slowly drifted off into a Benadryl induced sleep. What seemed like minutes later, a touch on my arm roused me.
“Ella,” my father said, looking down at me.
“What time is it?” I said, sitting upright.
“Nearly five,” he replied, checking his watch. “I actually have to catch my plane soon.”
“What?” I looked around, disoriented. “Did we miss all the events?”
My father shook his head, “No, I went to them alone.”
I felt my eyes begin to well. My father sadly smiled, and sat down beside me on the clinic bed. Studying the hives that had gradually started to disappear, he took my hand. “Ellen,” he began, but I heard his voice catch. A solitary tear slid from his kind, weathered eyes. “Ellie, if there is any reason why you don’t want to be here, and you want to leave, you can come with me right now.”
“I know, Dad,” I whispered, as I began to sob, sitting up to bury my face in his sweater.
“Ok.” He stood up, wiping his face. “I love you so much. Keep me updated…you know…on this whole thing.”
He swept his arm through the air, indicating that the hives were the “whole thing.” I laughed messily, with snot and tears dripping off my face.
“I really am such a piece of work right now.” I giggled, with tears still flowing down my face. “I missed my first day of classes!” Granted, it had been a mock class, but I had missed it nonetheless. I was already light years behind the other students who had had two days to socialize.
I slowly rose from bed, and wrapped my arms around my father. He smelled of mint shaving cream and vaguely of cigar smoke. For whatever reason, he felt the need to hide his smoking from me. Perhaps it was because he had quit both smoking and tobacco use years ago, and prided himself on his resolve to stay substance free. He had now been sober for twenty-one years, and he viewed most vices as character flaws.
Now, as I walked back to my dorm, memories of my father flooded back to me. Eighteen years under a roof with one man had made me not only the definition of a daddy’s girl, but ensured that I inherited every one of his qualities, save the obsessive cleanliness. This, in hindsight, was unfortunate. I had gained his temper, and his impatience, his serious demeanor. That, coupled with my silly humor, made me quite the anomaly. He never yelled, but when he was angry, a cold storm would come over him, and his low voice would send tremors through my body far before I knew why I was being called into the living room. It was then, more than ever, that I am sure my father saw glimpses of my mother in me, and feared for both of our sakes that it would be quelled by aging.
I pondered this as I stared out the window in the car, holding hands with my brother, as the small shops and restaurants passed by. What would she look like? Would it even matter that I was there? I sighed and tilted my head so it rested on John’s. “Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters” came on the radio and I shut my eyes.
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