Just One Day

Seventeen
DECEMBER
Cancún, Mexico
It has become tradition when we arrive in Cancún for Melanie and me to strip to our bathing suits as soon as we get into the condo and run to the beach for an inaugural swim. It’s like our vacation baptism. We’ve done it for every one of the last nine years we’ve come down here.
But this year, when Melanie digs through her suitcase for a bikini, I go to the little desk next to the kitchen that normally holds nothing but cookbooks and prop open my textbooks. Every day, from four to six, I am to have study hall. I get New Year’s Day off, but that’s it. These are the terms of my parole.
I kept my grades a secret throughout the entire semester, so when the report cards showed up at the end of the term, it was kind of a shocker. I’d tried. I really had. After my midterms were so dismal, I’d tried harder, but it wasn’t like my bad grades were a result of slacking off. Or skipping classes. Or partying.
But I might as well have been partying, given how tired I was all the time. It didn’t matter if I got ten hours of sleep the night before—once I set foot in the lecture hall and the professor started droning on about wave motion, writing up equations on the monitor, the numbers would start dancing before my eyes and then I’d feel my lids grow heavy, and I’d wake to other students tripping over my legs to get to their next class.
During Reading Week, I drank so much espresso that I got no sleep at all, as if I was using up all the credits from the class naps. I crammed as hard as I could, but by that point, I’d fallen so behind, I was beyond help.
Given all that, I thought it was miraculous I finished the semester with a 2.7.
Needless to say, my parents thought otherwise.
When my grades came through last week, they flipped out. And when my parents flip out, they don’t yell—they get quiet. But their disappointment and anger is deafening.
“What do you think we should do about this, Allyson?” they asked me as we sat at the dining room table, as if they were truly soliciting my opinion. Then they presented two options. We could cancel the trip, which would be terribly unfair for the rest of them, or I could agree to go under certain conditions.
Melanie shoots me sympathy looks as she disappears to change into her suit. Part of me wishes she’d boycott the beach in solidarity, though I know that’s selfish, but it seems like something the old Melanie would’ve done.
But this is the new Melanie. Or the new, new Melanie. In the month since Thanksgiving, she looks totally different. Again. She cut her hair all asymmetrical and fringy, and she got a nose ring, which her parents gave her crap about until she told them it was between that and a tattoo. Now that she’s changed into a bikini, I see that she’s let her armpit hair grow, though her hair is so fine and blond, it barely shows.
“Bye,” she mouths as she slips out the front door, her mom, Susan, thrusting a tube of SPF-40 into her hands. My mom is digging through a suitcase for her special magnifying glass so she can check all mattresses for bedbugs. When she finds it, she walks by me and pretends to look at my chem book with it. I snap the book shut. She gives me a pissy look.
“You think I want to be your warden? I thought I’d have all this free time now that you’re in college, but it’s like keeping you on track is its own full-time job.”
Who asked you to keep me on track? I fume. In my head. But I bite my lip and open the chemistry textbook out and dutifully reread the first chapters as Mom has instructed me to do for catch-up. They make no more sense to me now than they did the first time I attempted them.
That night, we all six go out to dinner at the Mexican restaurant, one of the eight restaurants attached to the resort. We go here every year for our first night out. The waiters wear giant sombreros, and there’s a traveling mariachi band, but the food tastes the same as it does at El Torrito back home. When the waiter takes our drink orders, Melanie asks for a beer.
The parents gawk at her.
“We’re legal to drink here,” she says casually.
Mom gives Susan a look. “I don’t think that’s wise,” Mom says.
“Why not?” I challenge.
“If you want my opinion, it has to less to do with the age than the expectation. You’ve grown up with a drinking age of twenty-one, so you’re not necessarily prepared for drinking now,” is Susan’s therapist answer.
“I’m sorry, but did you not go to college?” I ask. “I can’t imagine it’s changed that much. Do you not remember how all anyone does is drink?”
My parents look at each other, then at Susan and Steve.
“Is that’s what going on with you? Have you been drinking too much at school?” Dad asks.
Melanie laughs so hard that the special bottled water Mom brings sprays through her nose. “I’m sorry, Frank, but do you not even know Allyson?” They continue to stare. “On the tour last summer, everyone drank.” There is a moment of shocked silence. “Oh, spare me! The legal drinking age in Europe is eighteen! Anyhow, everyone drank but Allyson. She’s totally straight and narrow. And you’re asking if she’s boozing it up at college? That’s ludicrous.”
My dad stares at me, then at Melanie. “We’re just trying to understand what’s going on with her. Why she got a two-seven GPA.”
Now it’s Melanie’s turn to gawk. “You got a two-seven?” She clamps her hand over her lips and mouths, “Sorry.” The look she gives me is one part surprise, one part respect.
“Melanie got a three-point-eight,” Mom brags.
“Yes, Melanie is a genius, and I am an idiot. It’s official.”
Melanie looks wounded. “I go to the Gallatin School. Everyone gets As,” she says apologetically.
“And Melanie probably drinks,” I say, knowing full well she does.
She looks nervous for a second. “Of course I do. I don’t pass out or anything. But it’s college. I drink. Everyone drinks.”
“I don’t,” I say. “And Melanie has the A average, and I have the C, so maybe I should go on a few benders and things will even out. Maybe that’s a much better idea than this stupid study hall you have me in.”
I’m really into this now, which is kind of crazy, because I don’t even want a beer. One of the few things I like about this restaurant is the virgin margaritas—they’re made with fresh fruit.
Mom turns to me, her mouth ready to catch some flies. “Allyson, do you have a drinking problem?”
I smack my hand to my head. “Mother, do you have a hearing problem? Because I don’t know that you heard a word I said.”
“I think she’s saying that you might ease up a little and let them have a beer with dinner,” Susan says.
“Thank you!” I say to Susan.
My mom looks to my dad. “Let the girls have a beer,” he says expansively as he waves the waiter back over and asks for a couple of Tecates.
It’s a victory of sorts. Except that I don’t actually like beer, so in the end, I have to pretend to sip from mine as it grows sweaty on the table, and I don’t order the virgin margarita I really wanted.
_ _ _
The next day, Melanie and I are sitting at the giant pool together. It’s the first time we’ve managed to be alone since we got here.
“I think we should do something different,” she says.
“Me too,” I say. “Every year we come down here and we do the same things. We go to the same frigging ruins, even. Tulum is nice, but I was thinking we could branch out. Talk our parents into going somewhere new.”
“Like swimming with the dolphins?” Melanie asks.
Dolphin swimming is different, but it’s not what I’m after. Yesterday, I was looking at the map of the Yucatán Peninsula in the lobby, and some of the ruins are inland, more off the beaten path. Maybe we’d find a bit more of the real Mexico. “I was thinking we could go to Coba or Chichén Itzá. Different ruins.”
“Oh, you’re so wild,” Melanie teases. She takes a slurp of iced tea. “Anyhow, I’m talking about New Year’s Eve.”
“Oh. You mean you don’t want to do the Macarena with Johnny Maximo?” Johnny Maximo is this washed-up Mexican movie star who now has some job with the resort. All the mothers love him because he’s handsome and macho and is always pretending to mistake them for our sisters.
“Anything but the Macarena!” Melanie puts down her book, something by Rita Mae Brown that looks like it’s for school but Melanie says is not. “One of the bartenders told me about some big party on the beach in Puerto Morelos. It’s a local thing, though he says lots of tourists come, but people like us. Young people. There’s going to be a Mexican reggae band, which sounds bizarre. In a good way.”
“You’re just looking for a guy under sixty to make out with come midnight.”
Melanie shrugs. “Under sixty, yes. A guy? Maybe not.” She gives me a look.
“What?”
“I’ve sort of being doing the girl thing.”
“What?!” It comes out a shout. “Sorry. Since when?”
“Since right after Thanksgiving. There was this one girl and we met in film theory class and we were friends and one night we went out and it just happened.”
I look at the new haircut, the nose ring, the hairy armpits. It all makes sense. “So, are you a lesbian now?”
“I prefer not to label it,” she says, somewhat sanctimoniously, the implication being that I need to label everything. She’s the one who’s constantly branding herself: Mel, Mel 2.0. Punk-rock librarian. I ask her girlfriend’s name. She tells me they’re not into defining it like that, but her name is Zanne.
“Is that with an X?”
“Z. Short for Suzanne.”
Doesn’t anybody use a real name anymore?
“Don’t tell my parents, okay? You know my mom. She’d make us process it and talk about it as a phase of my development. I want to make sure this is more than a fling before I subject myself to that.”
“Please, you don’t have to tell me about parental overanalysis.”
She pushes her sunglasses up her nose and turns to me. “Yeah, so what’s that all about?”
“What do you mean? You’ve met my parents. Is there a part of my life they’re not involved in? They must be freaking out to not have their fingers literally in every aspect of what I’m doing.”
“I know. And when I heard about the study hall, I figured it was that. I thought maybe you had a low B average. But a two—point—seven? Really?”
“Don’t you start on me.”
“I’m not. I’m just surprised. You’ve always been such a kick-ass student. I don’t get it.” She takes a loud slurp of her mostly melted iced tea. “The Therapist says you’re depressed.”
“Your mom? She told you that?”
“I heard her mention it to your mom.”
“What did my mom say?”
“That you weren’t depressed. That you were pouting because you weren’t used to being punished. Sometimes I really want to smack your mom.”
“You and me both.”
“Anyhow, later on my mom asked me if I thought you were depressed.”
“And what’d you tell her?”
“I said lots of people have a hard time freshman year.” She gives me a sharp look from behind her dark glasses. “I couldn’t tell her the truth, could I? That I thought you were still pining for some guy you had a one-night stand with in Paris.”
I pause, listening to the shriek of a little kid jumping off the high dive. When Melanie and I were little, we used to hold hands and jump together, over and over again.
“But what if it’s not him? Not Willem.” It’s weird saying his name out loud. Here. After embargoing it for so long. Willem. I scarcely even allow myself to think it in my head.
“Don’t tell me another guy dicked you over!”
“No! I’m talking about me.”
“You?”
“It’s, like, the me I was that day. I was different somehow.”
“Different? How?”
“I was Lulu.”
“But that was just a name. Just pretend.”
Maybe it was. But still, that whole day, being with Willem, being Lulu, it made me realize that all my life I’ve been living in a small, square room, with no windows and no doors. And I was fine. I was happy, even. I thought. Then someone came along and showed me there was a door in the room. One that I’d never even seen before. Then he opened it for me. Held my hand as I walked through it. And for one perfect day, I was on the other side. I was somewhere else. Someone else. And then he was gone, and I was thrown back into my little room. And now, no matter what I do, I can’t seem to find that door.
“It didn’t feel pretend,” I tell Melanie.
Melanie arranges her face in sympathy. “Oh, sweetie. It’s because you were all hopped up on the fumes of infatuation. And Paris. But people don’t change overnight. Especially you. You’re Allyson. You’re so solid. It’s one of the things I love about you—how reliably you are.”
I want to protest. What about transformations? What about the reinvention she’s always going on about? Are those only reserved for her? Is there a different standard for me?
“You know what you need? Some Ani DeFranco.” She pulls out her iPhone and shoves the buds in my ears, and as Ani goes on about finding your voice and making it heard, I feel so frustrated with myself. Like I want to pull my skin wide open and step out of it. I scrape my feet against the hot cement floor and sigh, wishing there was someone I could explain this to. Someone who might understand what I’m feeling.
And for one small second, I do imagine the person I could talk to, about finding this door, and losing it. He would understand.
But that’s the one door that needs to stay shut.