“Think of all I’d learn in college.”
“You’d learn that you’re too good for God. That we came from monkeys. You’d learn a lot.”
“College would give me more options in life.”
“You don’t need options in life. You need Jesus. Options are fine if you’ve got them, but we don’t. We don’t have the money.”
“I can get financial aid.”
“Oh great, more debt. That’s what we need. I could use another few holes in my head while you’re offering.”
“You always say ‘our debt.’ I didn’t rack up this debt. You guys did. Why should it fall on me?”
“Because we’re a family. And families go through hard times together, that’s why. They don’t run off by themselves and leave the others alone to fend for themselves. I dropped out of high school to marry your father and have you. I bathed and fed you. I’ve worked six days a week cleaning motel rooms by the highway and six nights a week at a gas station to give you the best life I could. And it’s not much. But we have each other and we have Jesus.”
“I want more.”
“That’s greed and pride talking.”
“I’m tired of this town. Do you know what it’s like? To have his name? To wear that millstone around your neck? The stares and whispers? The weight of this blood?”
Her eyes blazed. She stabbed the last pieces of her cake with her fork. “Do I know what it’s like? Of course I do. You think people don’t whisper about me? They whisper about me most of all—wonder where I went wrong. Why I didn’t know. Why I wasn’t good enough. What more I should have done. God gives us trials. This is our place to experience them. You think I’ll let gossipers drive us from our home and fail God’s test? Think again.”
Guilt seized Dill. He felt that he was once again failing a test of faith. Like he was afraid to pick up yet another serpent. He hadn’t intended to bring up college. Certainly not on his mother’s birthday. In fact, he hadn’t even realized he’d been thinking about it.
“Mom, I’m—”
She didn’t look up. “This is the last I want to hear of this. I’ve not said much as you’ve gone running around with Lydia and Travis all the time. But now? I want you to honor me.”
Dill hung his head. “Okay. Fine. Sorry.” He wanted to tell her how much he’d miss Lydia when she left; that that was part of the reason he wanted to go. So that his life wouldn’t end right as Lydia’s began. But his mother surely would have been even less sympathetic about that.
A long silence between them. They listened to the clatter of their decrepit refrigerator and the ticking clock on the wall.
“Did I ruin your birthday?” Dill asked.
“Never cared much about birthdays,” his mom said, getting up to take the plates to the sink. “You’re a year older. That’s all.” But she didn’t say no.
The book. Perhaps his redemption. “Hey, I almost forgot. Hang on. I got you something.” Dill jumped up and ran to his bedroom. He hadn’t bothered to wrap The Templar Device. They didn’t have any wrapping paper, and he sucked at wrapping presents anyway.
He returned to the kitchen, the book behind his back.
“Dillard. You shouldn’t have,” his mother said. Of course, she didn’t say it in the sense of you shouldn’t have…kept me waiting so long, the way most people did. She meant it.
He handed her the book. “Mr. Burson down at Riverbank Books thought you might enjoy this. Happy birthday.”
She looked up at him. “Is it—”
“Of course it’s Christian.”
She leafed through it. Sure enough. Jesus. She leaned forward and kissed him on the forehead. “Thank you, Dillard. You’re a sweet boy. Between this and the call I got from your father earlier, I feel very blessed.”
“I’ll clean up in here, Mom. You can go read your book or take a hot bath or something. That’d make your back feel better.”
Dill went to the sink and washed the dishes. Soon, his guilt for bringing up college and excitement over getting his mom a gift she didn’t immediately hate had both worn off. A sort of dull ache mixed with anger replaced it. Anger at Lydia of all people. It was unfair to direct his frustration at her, even inwardly. It was unfair to blame her for the fictional zero-sum game of her successes equaling his failures. And yet he indulged the feeling. It wouldn’t be fair to be angry with his mother on her birthday.
First things first. I need to thank all of you who read and shared and said nice things about my interview with Laydee. That’s already become the most-viewed article here (thanks to all of you who retweeted it). I was so, so nervous, but she was so, so awesome and lovely and everyone buy her music, please and thanks.
Here’s a picture of me looking very happy indeed thinking about the whole affair. I’m wearing a Missoni top over a dress I snagged at Attic in East Nashville. My bag is from Goodwill. The wedges are from Owl and the necklace is Miu Miu.
It’s the end of September. So what, you ask? So if we consider autumn to be the Saturday of the year—and we should, because autumn is the most awesome part of the year, just as Saturday is the most awesome part of the week—then that makes September the Friday of months. Which means it is also awesome. Which means I’m officially on the lookout for good autumnal movies. Autumn porn, if you will. Leave me suggestions in the comments. I love wearing autumn colors. I love it when it gets cool enough for me to start doing interesting things with layering. I’m addicted to jackets (big surprise there, Dear Reader). Autumn basically turns me into a fifty-year-old woman. I go to Cracker Barrel and buy my Autumn Harvest Yankee Candle (the only thing with “Yankee” on it that makes it past the front door of most Southern households). This is only one component of my insatiable hunger for coziness. Pumpkin spice everything is another component. I would eat pumpkin spice scrambled eggs in the middle of October. I would eat a pumpkin spice steak. I would eat [insert personal choice of food that would be disgusting in pumpkin spice form].
I love a witchy, dark, gloomy autumn day, when it rains from the time you wake up until the time you go to bed. And you can listen to Leonard Cohen and wrap yourself up in a warm blanket of exquisite melancholy.
I will say this for Tennessee: it does autumn well. We break out the wreaths, the cornstalks, the hay bales, the wood smoke, and the scarecrows. The leaves are amazing. I can’t believe this is probably my last autumn in Tennessee for a while. I’ll miss it. I hope wherever I end up rocks autumn at least half as well.
I’m in one of those periods where every ounce of my mental energy is being diverted elsewhere (college-y stuff, etc. and so forth), to the point that I don’t feel like I have anything particularly important or insightful to say. That’s when I’ll sometimes answer frequently asked questions because HEY, FREE INTERNET CONTENT. Anyway, let us begin.
Q. Why do you always spell “Forrestville” as “Forestville”?
A. Because Forrestville is named after Nathan Bedford Forrest, the founder of the Ku Klux Klan, which makes my town’s name roughly as awesome as if it were “Hitlerville.” Oh! And bonus! It’s in White County (not named after white people, as far as I know). Point being: it’s the worst. And as I always say, forests are way better than racists. So I always write “Forestville” because YOU MUST BE THE CHANGE YOU WANT TO SEE IN THE WORLD. Anyway, the dropped “r” from Forrestville stands for “racist.”
Q. What year are you in school and where are you going to college? What do you want to study?
A. Senior and that remains to be seen. Here’s my list, starting with my first pick and then in no particular order: NYU, Oberlin, Smith, Brown, Sarah Lawrence, Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Cornell, Vanderbilt, Vassar, Wellesley. I want to study journalism.