Junior year of college, Christmas break. I was home earlier than everyone else because I had a light exam schedule that semester. My parents were out, and I was wandering around the house with nothing to do. I pulled out an old hardcover copy of The Wapshot Chronicle from one of the bookshelves in the living room. A frail, yellowed photograph slipped from the pages. It was a picture of my mother as a young woman, wearing a loose paisley dress, her long hair parted down the middle. She was sitting on a flight of steps with a group of girls flashing peace signs at the camera. On the back of the photograph, in her delicate handwriting, was the inscription: REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS RALLY, WELLESLEY COLLEGE, 1975.
I shivered. Her hair, her smile: it was like looking at a picture of myself dressed up as a tourist from another era. I closed the book, put it back on the shelf. Then I took the book out again, removed the picture, and put it in my pocket. I kept thinking about it, all through that week, that month. How different my mother looked back then. She was the exact same age in that photograph—a junior in college—as I was in that moment. She never spoke about college. When she occasionally talked about the past, the stories always began in law school, never further back than that. Law school was where she and my father met. Both of them graduated near the top of their class and took jobs at high-powered firms before my mother left to raise me and my sister. I don’t think she ever stopped comparing herself to my father, who is a senior partner and a widely admired attorney. She excels in other ways instead: charity boards, meetings and lunches, a perfectly slender physique. Her energy is always channeled to productive ends. But maybe that wasn’t how she originally intended her life to turn out. Maybe there was another trajectory, one she’d been careful not to reveal to us.
But how would I know that? She doesn’t complain or wax nostalgic. She doesn’t tolerate moping—not in herself and certainly not in us. She was too busy shaping us into the best versions of ourselves. That was her job, and she was good at it. I turned out right. I fit smoothly into the world around me. My teachers liked me. I fell into a comfortable position within the social hierarchy: near the top of the pyramid, but not so high as to wind up a target of scheming usurpers. I never had a problem getting a date. I checked every box there was to check: friends, boys, sports, school.
It’s only now I see the red flags along the way. Cracks in the armor. I remember a writing assignment in English class, the year before I left for boarding school. Our class filed outside, notebooks in hand, and sat down on the grassy hill behind the gym. Our teacher told us to describe the scene around us in any way we wanted—to be creative, to free-associate. I never liked English as a subject. I never got what was so great about it. Still, I was surprised to find a bright red C on my essay and a note from the teacher asking me to come see him. He inquired, eyes full of concern, whether I’d understood the purpose of this assignment. I’d always done okay in his class before, even though I hated it. I could string together insightful statements about Hamlet, Lord of the Flies, you name it. But somehow, I couldn’t manage such an open-ended task. I struggled to fill those two pages. I had described the sights, the sounds, the smells. What else was I supposed to do? My stomach roiled with humiliation. What else did he want me to say?
But that was just one essay. One bad grade evened out by many good ones. The next year, I went away to boarding school, and I had never been happier. I started dating Rob. I played volleyball in the fall and lacrosse in the spring. I snuck cigarettes in the woods on Friday nights and sipped spiked hot chocolate at football games on Saturday mornings. I got straight As. Rob was recruited to play soccer at Harvard, and I was going to Yale. We agreed to try long distance, although I think both of us knew it wouldn’t last. And it didn’t matter, because on the very first day of school, I met Evan.
*
Three weeks after I found that photograph of my mother, I left for a semester abroad. She had been the one to persuade me to go. I’d lamented the idea of leaving, of missing Evan, of missing Abby and my other friends. “Don’t be silly,” my mother said. “They’ll be there when you get back.” She framed it as a decision to be made for practical reasons. When else would I get the chance to live in Paris? Why wouldn’t I take advantage of this opportunity? She was right, of course, but I had different reasons for going. Sophomore year had been a difficult one, a bad year capped by a particularly bad incident. I needed a change. I sent in my application the first week of the new school year.