The Art of Confidence by Wendy Lee

Author:Wendy Lee [Lee, Wendy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2016-09-20T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

When I called my mother to tell her I was coming to visit for the weekend, I could sense the knee-jerk panic in her hesitation, before she said cheerfully, “Of course! Your father and I will be happy to have you.” You’d think she’d be more excited at the idea of a visit from her only daughter, but her hesitation was a natural reflex from earlier that year, when I’d announced two months before graduation that I was coming home.

“It isn’t for long, is it?” she had asked that time. “Did you get into a fight with Sam? You’re not in any kind of trouble, are you?” I could already tell the possibilities that were racing through her head: pregnancy, depression, an eating disorder, an altercation with the law.

“Can we talk about it later?” I replied.

“Sure, sweetheart, of course. Your father will pick you up at the train station.”

When I’d called her that time, I was crossing campus with a duffel bag of things I’d retrieved from my dorm room. It hadn’t taken me long to pack up. I barely slept there anyway, preferring to take advantage of Sam’s perpetually absent roommate. While I hadn’t fought with Sam, he also didn’t approve of my decision to leave school. At the moment, though, I had no choice. I had been suspended for the rest of the month, and I’d decided I wasn’t coming back.

As I walked across the main lawn, I noticed all the signs of spring—students in short sleeves, tender green grass, white and pink flowers on the trees, the occasional sound of someone allergic sneezing. It was a picture straight out of a catalog. If not for the actual college, then for one selling preppy clothes that let you pretend you went there.

My school, Amberlin College, was known for its New Hampshire location, lenient pass/fail policy, and focus on sustainability. The most popular classes involved farming skills and food preservation, in which students learned how to can vegetables from the college’s hundred-acre farm, which were then served in the cafeteria over the winter months. For someone like Sam, it was a perfect blend of food-based academics and practicality. For me, not so much. Amberlin had a small art history department but no applied arts.

The nearest town to Amberlin was so small that I had to take a bus to Boston before catching a train to Hartford. By the time my father picked me up from the station, it was after dark. He nodded amiably to me as I threw my bag into the backseat and got into the front. The radio was tuned to the Red Sox game so we didn’t speak at all for the twenty-minute drive home, but that wasn’t unusual. My mother was the one who worried for the both of them.

“Are you hungry?” was the first thing she asked when I arrived. Then, without waiting for an answer, “I put aside some dinner for you.”

Although my mother made elaborate meals while my brothers and I were growing up—exotic stir-fries, pungent curries—she stopped after I left for college.

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