replied Jennifer, and they both laughed.
‘You? Self-doubt?’ said Julie. ‘Jen, what do you have self-doubt about? You’re brilliant, beautiful, strong…what self-doubt?’
Jennifer paused, then said, ‘Yes, well, it’s hard to argue with all that,’ not answering Julie’s question.
They hugged each other good-bye and as Julie watched her, a pit developed in her stomach. She loves that asshole, thought Julie, and was nearly knocked out by sympathy and pity and envy, yes, envy, goddamn it. Loves him! But then pity swam back into Julie. Loves him with all the bittersweetness of first love and now she’s trying to find a way to cope. Jennifer should talk to Tully more, thought Julie, heading back to her house. Tully would teach Jennifer how to cope.
Bright, beautiful, brilliant, billowy, blighted, blind, thought Jennifer as she meandered home, looking straight ahead with unseeing eyes. Yes, I’m all these things, I am so many things, so many of them good, some of them wonderful. I should know: I’ve been told nothing else my entire life, so how can it not be true? Yet it is as I have always suspected. All those things mean shit, for the world is full of beautiful people, full of beautiful, brilliant, billowy people. And so what? Ugliness is now inside me. Beautiful! What does beautiful have to do with anything? He does not want me. Everyone told me he was worthless and I was precious, but this worthless guy did not want precious me.
So if he was so worthless and still did not want me, how in this world could anyone worthwhile want me?
And he is not worthless. He is serious and strong. He is a lot like Tully. Maybe that’s why I just can’t stop. I’ve tried to do what Tully tells me to do. I’ve tried to study and drown myself in Tully’s heart because I know she cares so much. I’ve tried to eat, to sleep, and to listen to music. I’ve tried to look at other guys and think of Stanford. But what’s California to me without him?
I’ve tried to forget him. But every day I see his face above my face. Above me. I see his smiling face when I was a cheerleader and he was a football captain. When we played softball together. When he danced with me to ‘Wild Horses.’ When he was my friend. I have but a few memories, but the ones I have are all in my throat, the ones I have are all in my face when he walks by and smiles his ‘Hey, Jen, what’s happening?’ smile at me. I cannot even hate him. He has done nothing, this is not his fault. This is no one’s fault. Not even mine. Tully taught me how to fight, but even she cannot help me heal this sick, tired feeling inside me. And that’s how I feel. Sick. And tired.
Wednesday, March 21, Tully reluctantly went to dinner at Jennifer’s. There was something in the Mandolini household nowadays that reminded Tully too much of her own.
Silence.
Silence in the kitchen, silence at the table. Jennifer, Lynn, and Tony Mandolini sat and passed the spaghetti and dug into the meatballs and chewed on the bread, and around them there was no TV, no radio, no words, only silence! Just like home, thought Tully, and swallowed her bread too fast and started to cough, breaking the sound barrier. When she quieted down, she thought, I want to go home.
Lynn chain-smoked, unable to wait until she finished her dinner. Tony drank and looked only into his plate.
Tully could see that Jennifer was practicing voodoo self-control. She was counting the squares in the tablecloth and then the number of hairs on her arms.
My God, at least the radio used to be on. Maybe they started turning the radio off so that they could hear each other.
She’s doing it to them. They have no idea what’s going on, and she won’t tell them. They’re as lost now as she is. At first they thought she was doing so badly in school because she was so happy and having this great time, but they can’t even fool themselves with that one anymore. She is so obviously not happy. Maybe they’re afraid that thing is coming back to stay. I’m sure she’s anorexic. I wonder if she throws up? Would she tell me if she does? Would she tell even me that? Would she speak even to me?
After dinner, the girls washed the dishes and Mr and Mrs Mandolini went to catch The Deer Hunter before the Oscars, which were in a few weeks’ time.
‘So, Jen,’ said Tully when they were finally alone. ‘Tell me, Jen, how often do you pass dinner like this?’
‘I’m sorry,’ she answered. ‘Were we quiet?’
‘Quiet?’ said Tully. ‘What the fuck is wrong with all of you?’
Jennifer did not answer her, just kept on drying.
‘You gotta snap out of it, Jen,’ Tully said. ‘You just gotta.’
Jennifer said nothing.
‘You are making everyone miserable. We don’t know what to do for you,’ continued Tully. ‘And we all would do everything, anything, to have you back to your usual semi-normal self again.’
Jen smiled a little, but again did not speak.
‘Jennifer, tell me, are you anorexic?’ asked Tully.
‘Anorexic? God, no!’
‘Are you throwing up in the toilet?’
‘Tully, please!’
‘Jennifer, you really need to talk to somebody who doesn’t know you; you need to do something for yourself.’ Tully’s voice was getting louder. ‘And if you can’t, you have got to tell your parents to open their eyes and take you to a doctor, get you healthy again, get you on your feet again.’
‘On my feet again,’ repeated Jennifer dully.
‘Jenny, you have been taking this lying down, you lay down three months ago with him and you are still lying down, you have not gotten up, and you have to.’
‘I have to,’ said Jennifer.
Tully turned off the water and turned to her friend. ‘Yes, have to. You have no choice. Gotta do it, Jen. Just think, three months and you’re out of school, out of him, and then it’s summer! We work, we hang out, we go swimming in Lake Shawnee, and then it’s August and we’re off! Off we go. Hi-ho, hi-ho. Palo Al-to. A new life. I’m so excited. A beginning. So cheer up. And keep going. Come on, Jen. You’re stronger than all of us.’
‘No, Tully,’ said Jennifer. ‘You are stronger than all of us.’ Jennifer stood there blankly, her hands down at her sides.
The girls watched Love Story on the ‘Million Dollar Movie.’ They had seen it three times already, and the fourth time found them sitting and watching the flickering screen, absorbed in everything but Jenny Cavilleri’s death. Tully sat curled up on the couch entirely dry-eyed, entirely without movement as she looked unflinchingly and frightlessly at Oliver Barrett IV sitting at the Central Park ice skating rink without his Jennifer.
Tully’s own heart, however, was as frightened and tight as a narrow path in the dead of night in the dead of winter.
Jennifer did not even see Oliver sitting in Central Park. She was imagining Harvard and meeting someone like Oliver in Harvard. She tried to imagine holding her heart with both hands so it wouldn’t jump out of her chest for an Oliver in Harvard and drew a black blank. Instead, she remembered lying out in the middle of the night in her backyard on Sunset Court with Tully when they were kids. When they were about seven, eight, nine, ten. Eleven. Even twelve. Every summer, Tully would come over and make a tent in the backyard, and they would dig and twig, doodle and dawdle, talk and talk, and smell the Kansas night air.
‘Do you think the stars are this bright everywhere in the world, Tully?’
‘No, I think Kansas is closer to the stars than everywhere else in the world,’ said eight-year-old Tully.
‘How do you know?’
‘Because,’ said Tully, ‘Kansas is in the middle of America. And in the summer America is closest to the sun. Which means it’s closest to the rest of the sky, too. And Kansas, being in the