“I regretted not going to bat for you when you had your … disagreement.”
Disagreement. More like a war of words. She and the TA had debated about one line from the poem—“How many loved your moments of glad grace”—and Sophie had found herself on the verge of tears. She’d had to leave the hall before the period ended. She’d dropped the class the next day.
“If it makes you feel better, after that, a bunch of us started challenging her,” Russell said. “‘Poetry isn’t math’ was our battle cry.”
It was what Sophie had said to the TA. A sort of retroactive relief—or maybe vindication?—crept over her. She’d had defenders in that class. Wingmen. Even if she hadn’t noticed them. Hadn’t noticed him. The truth was, she didn’t notice a lot of things at school. She kept her head down, wore blinders. It was a survival tactic. Only now did she wonder if it was a stupid survival tactic, like wearing a life jacket made of lead.
“I asked about you, after the class. Got some intel, about you being big city and all,” he said with a teasing smile. “But I never spotted you for more than a blur. Until tonight … I was debating saying something. You were looking pretty fierce, not fit for company.” He grinned again, but it was different, less oozy, more shy, and about a thousand times sexier. “But then you mentioned Ned Flanders, and I had to say something.”
“What? Is Ned like your spirit guide?”
He laughed. That big, open-chested laugh. “We lived all over, sometimes moving every year. All the places I lived, The Simpsons was like this one constant. They had it everywhere, sometimes it’d be English, sometimes dubbed, didn’t matter. It was my comfort food.”
“You make it sound sad,” Sophie said. “Living all those places sounds pretty great to me.”
“Things are not always how they seem.”
The look they exchanged was like a road map of the history they’d already traversed tonight. “So what was it really like?” Sophie asked.
“Ever see that movie Lost In Translation?” Sophie nodded. She loved that film. “Like that, over and over. But times a thousand because I’m black in places where they just don’t get black. In Korea, they called me Obama.” He sighed. “Before Obama’s presidency, I was Michael Jordan.”
“Is that why you came to school here?” Sophie asked. “Because you knew what to expect?”
Russell looked at her a while before answering. “Yeah. Some of that. Also, to piss off my parents. They thought I was crazy for coming here, but I thought I was making a grand statement. Like, hey, this is how it’s always been for me so I’m just going to go back for more.” He laughed, a little sadder this time. “Only problem is, they never got that and even if they did, being here isn’t really punishing them. Beyond the expensive tuition.” He threw up his hands. “Well, at least they’ve got a good journalism program.”
“And an excellent liberal arts curriculum,” Sophie added.
“And beautiful big-city girls who talk to themselves about Ned Flanders.”
“Right. I read about them in the catalog,” Sophie said, a little flustered by the beautiful comment. Also by the fact that they’d reached her dorm. “This is me.”
Russell took her hand. It was warm. “Ready to get your Hanukkah on?”
“Okily dokily,” Sophie said.
* * *
The suite was empty. Kaitlynn, Madison, and Cheryl had already left for the holidays, though they’d littered the suite with holiday cheer. Being in here alone with Russell, Sophie was suddenly knee-shakingly nervous, so she started talking in the same rapid-fire bap-bap-bap as Madison’s blinking lights. “And here is our fake tree, threaded with the traditional offerings of popcorn and candy canes. And you’ll notice the tinsel everywhere, not sure what that symbolizes, and that Santa balloon is made out of vintage Mylar. And if you breathe deep, you’ll catch a whiff of pine-scented potpourri. Welcome to the land where Christmas threw up.”
She was trying to carry on the joke of the Rudolph sweaters. But maybe it was a testament to how far they’d come tonight that the joke fell flat.
“Show me where you live,” Russell said softly.
Sophie’s quarter of the suite was like that thing on Sesame Street: One of these things is not like the other. No posters or corkboards with friendship collages. On her bookshelf she had a framed shot of Zora, an old shot of Luba looking glamorous and kind of mean, and a picture of her and her mother on a gondola in Venice. They’d had the same gondolier a bunch of times and he’d taken to calling her Sophia, crooning a song in Italian to her.
Russell was looking at the picture. “That was when my mom was in the Venice Biennale, a really big art show,” Sophie explained. Growing up, there’d been so many times she’d wished her mom could be a lawyer or a banker or a producer, the kind of jobs some of her friends’ parents had. But when her mother had been invited to show at the prestigious Biennale, and Luba had sold a ring so Sophie could accompany her, she’d been so proud of her mother, the artist. Glad that she’d stuck to her guns. It didn’t hurt that the trip had been magical: the gondola rides, the tiny zigzag of canals and alleys, the packed art galleries, and more than any of that, the feeling of some kind of portal of possibility opening. She hadn’t felt that way in a long time. She was feeling that way tonight.
“What kind of art does your mom make?” Russell asked.
“Sculptures. Though not the traditional kind with clay or marble. She works in abstract forms.” She reached to her top shelf and pulled down a small cube, all tangled wires and glass fragments. “Most of her work is on a much larger scale,” Sophie explained. “Like one piece could fill this room. Alas, my roommate Cheryl said she needed a bed so we couldn’t keep one here.”
For a second, she imagined Cheryl’s horrified expression if she had brought one of her mother’s larger, stranger installations. But then she remembered that Cheryl had seemed to admire her mom’s smaller piece. She’d held it a long time the first time she’d seen it, much as Russell was doing now. “Your mom makes sculptures,” she’d said. “My mom organizes bake sales.” Sophie had taken it as a veiled big-city comment, yet another sign of her otherness, but only now did she wonder if perhaps she hadn’t missed Cheryl’s droll brand of sarcasm.