One of those seeds was where I applied to college. Technically, it wasn’t a mutiny, since they knew about it. I was allowed to apply to places that interested me as long as I sent in the paperwork to the ones my parents approved of as well. Of course they’d been thrilled when I was accepted to them all, but there was no doubt that they were pushing me in a certain direction.
Now spring break of my senior year was finally here, a time most teens loved, and I was dreading it. If only everything didn’t have to be decided right now. Mother and Father had given me until the end of the week to choose my college and my major. Starting college as undecided was not an option.
Stopping at the counter, I flashed my lifetime membership card and swiftly walked through the roped entrance.
“Hello, Miss Young,” said the old guard with a smile. “Here all day?”
I shook my head. “Half day, Bernie. Meeting the girls for lunch.”
“Should I be watching for them?” he asked.
“No. I’ll be alone today.”
“Very good,” he said, securing the rope behind me and returning to help with the line of tourists. There were definitely some perks to having parents who donated annually to the Met. And since I was an only child, I was lucky enough to receive the full “benefit” of their monetary donations, wisdom, and experience. They were loving, too, if love looks like a stiff upper lip of pride and approval. But I was often lonely, and at times felt trapped.
Whenever I started to feel like I needed a real mom type to bake cookies with, I asked to visit my paternal grandmother, who lived on a small farm in Iowa, a woman my parents checked in on exactly once every two months. They visited her annually, though they stayed in a nearby city hotel and worked from their room while I stayed on the farm with her overnight.
Speaking of grandmas, a very interesting-looking older woman was seated on a bench ahead of me and staring at one of my favorite pictures, She Never Told Her Love, by Henry Peach Robinson. The photograph was controversial. Critics said it was indecent and indelicate for a photographer to capture a dying woman in print, but I found the photo dramatically romantic. It was said that the photographer was trying to illustrate a scene from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. I knew the quote on the picture’s description by heart.
SHE NEVER TOLD HER LOVE,
BUT LET CONCEALMENT,
LIKE A WORM I’ THE BUD,
FEED ON HER DAMASK CHEEK.
TWELFTH NIGHT, 2.4.110–12
Consumption. That was supposedly what the woman in the photograph was dying of. I reasoned it was appropriate. Dying of a broken heart must feel like a type of consumption. I imagined it to be a squeezing pain that wrapped itself around a person like a boa constrictor, tightening more and more, crushing the body until there was nothing left but a dry husk.
As fascinated as I was by the photo, I was even more fascinated by the woman who sat staring at it. Her cheeks sagged, as did her heavy body. Strands of limp gray hair hung from a messy bun. She clutched a worn cane, which meant it was well used, and she wore a floral-patterned, butterfly-collared dress (circa 1970). Her feet were planted shoulder width apart in thick-soled Velcro-closed sneakers. The woman was leaning forward, resting her hands on the edge of the cane, her chin propped on her hands as she studied the picture.
For the better part of an hour, I sat at a distance, watching her and sketching her silhouette in my notebook. At one point, a tear ran down her face and she finally moved, digging into a giant crocheted bag for a tissue. What caused her tears? I wondered. Did she have a long-lost love of her own? Someone she had never shared her feelings with? The possibilities and questions swirled in my head as I adjusted my backpack and headed down the hall, shoes clicking on the marble floor. Noticing a familiar guard, I stopped.
“Hi, Tony.”
“And how are you today, Miss Young?”
“I’m well. Hey, listen. I need to do some serious work. Is there a less-trafficked place around here that I can go to before I meet my friends for lunch? The people are too distracting.”