“Ending Freshman Year”

By Christine Stoddard

 The cathedral overlooks a hobo park, where art students paint and flykites on humdrum Sunday afternoons. Sometimes lovers set out old-fashioned picnics there, with a wicker basket and red tablecloth. Buttonight it is empty, devoid of all the usual associations. I stare at themoon as my sister pushes an archaic microwave into the trailer ourparents towed down from home. The moon cackles at the grunting girlwith Tweety bird eyes. It always takes my side.

“Need help?” I mumble. I don’t really mean it. I’m standing in front of Sacred Heart, wondering how I can stuff the silver night clouds into thetrailer. I, the greedy, nostalgic girl that I am, want to take everything.

My sister growls, not even bothering to face me, and hauls a beigetelevision set from the moving cart she wheeled from her dorm to thestreet. The TV reminds me of one of the Jurassic computers on which Ifirst practiced typing “Ariel Heart Love” back in kindergarten. I wouldprint out ten sheets at a time and scribble pink crayon hearts all over.

My sister drops the giant box on the trailer floor and then fishes out anavy and white plaid bedspread from the moving cart.

I immediately stand up straight and ask, “Hey, where’d you get that?”

“Huh?” She flashes me her trademark ‘I’m studying Film at the bestpublic art school in America and therefore holier than thou’ look.

I asked again, “Where’d you get that?”

“This bedspread?” She picks it up again from where she’s dropped it.“The trash. I was just going to wash it and use it. It looks almost new.”

“Almost.” I bend over and finger the majestic blue paint stain shapedlike a castle. That’s where we were supposed to live one day. I traceover the tiny torrents I had overblown in my mind.

“Oh, I didn’t notice that stain,” my sister murmurs. “Whatever.” Shescrunches up the bedspread and pushes it into the trailer. Then shereaches into the moving cart again, this time for a box brimming withglittery, ceramic fairies. They carry Celtic crosses and crystal balls, thesacrilegious sprites. I try to ignore the fact that they smell like wetrubber cement because of what rubber cement triggers in my head.

“Are you sure you still want it?”

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“The bedspread?” My sister stares at me, those fairies still in her cut-up hands. “Yeah, I mean…look at it.” She points at it with her pixiechin. “It’s fine. What difference does one little stain make?”

It makes a royal difference. “No, you’re right. No difference at all.” Ipause. “You’re not going to sleep with it, are you?”

“It’s a bedspread. What else would I do with it?”

I gulp through all the B.S. sloshing around my skull. A good answer hasto exist in there somewhere. “Use it as a drape in one of your films. Orlie out your equipment on it instead of on the ground.”

“I hadn’t thought about that, but, no, I’m going to sleep with it.”

“How about that torn-up corner?”

I immediately seize the bedspread, pressing it close into my body,remembering how it felt the first time my skin touched it. It still feelssoft and welcoming. I almost draw it up to my nose, but stop when mysister starts talking.

“What tear? Is it serious?” She steps closer to me.

My hands skims over the mass of cloth until they stumble upon whatmy heart hoped I would meet again. “Here. See?”

“That’s weird. It looks intentional.”

Forgetting my censorship, I blurt, “That’s because it is.” My mind jumpsto those sturdy wrists trembling with the opening and closing of kitchen shears. He had needed the scrap of cloth for another one of hisflamboyant collages. It was supposed to fill in a gap of his stormy sky.

“How do you know?” She scrunches up her round face and licks herupper-lip. It’s a habit of hers. I picture his lips and the way a fleck of gesso always managed to cling to his moustache back when I still knewhim.

“I…I mean,” I say, stumbling for a valid response, “It looks sointentional, like you were saying. It couldn’t have been accident.”

My sister shrugs her shoulders. “Yeah.” Then she grabs a bouquet of wilted purple flowers from the bottom of the moving cart. “I can’tbelieve how much crap I had in my dorm. I should just throw it allaway.”

I cringe when she says that, as if memories were so disposable. When Iwent up to help clean my sister’s dorm, I was so upset to see thediscarded bits and pieces of student’s lives crumpled up in the hallway

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trashcans. Perhaps I am too sentimental. Evan was the opposite,always focusing on what was to come instead of what was before. Mywatering eyes jump to the ground and then back to his bedspread, stillpinched by my sister’s grip.

“Mixed media’s the art of the future,” Evan explained the day my backfirst lied on that navy and white bedspread. He was hunched over amassive board of foam core, slicing out the contours of a silver knight. The knight, tall and brawny, held a shield that barely concealed his bigbody. On the shield was a neon green peace sign, just like the onepainted on the city book mobile where Evan and I first met sevenmonths before college began. I couldn’t tell if Evan was alluding to ourfirst encounter or not.

I sat on his dirty floor, trimming strands of gold wire Evan would twistto form briar bushes to frame his noble knight. The television hummedwith the voices of Biblical scholars as a punk song played from hiscomputer, but everything was turned down too low for me to make outthe words. I couldn’t tell Amorite from anarchy. I glanced up at thebeads of sweat growing on Evan’s bare back. My gaze returned to thecoils of wire before bouncing to the damp blue paint smeared onEvan’s jeans.

“What about multimedia?” I asked him, a couple minutes delayed. Ialways did that, treating conversations like I lived underwater whereeverything was stretched out for too long and words arrived too slowlyfor landlubbers’ tastes. In the end, that’s why Evan broke up with me. Iwas too distracted for his quest-oriented lifestyle.

“Mixed media, multimedia—same thing.” He paused and then set downthe X-acto knife. “Ah, done!” Evan flashed at the knight at me andsmiled. “It looks better than I thought.”

I grinned. “It looks great. Why—”

 Just then Evan started to sit down on the bed. I tried to stop him but hehad already brushed against the spread when I cried, “Stop!”

“What?”

“Look.” I pointed to the blue stain he left on the cloth.

“Ha, it looks like a castle.”

I smiled. “Yeah, but won’t your mom get mad?”

Evan suddenly clasped my face and pulled me toward his puckeredlips. First I tasted the saltiness of his tongue and then I tasted the gumI hadn’t realized he’d been chewing. He ruffled my hair and told me he

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loved me. I cooed in his ear. We continued that way until he climbed ontop of me for my first time. His first time. Our first time.

My sister snaps her fingers in my face, snatching me from my reveries.I hop a little and catch my breath in a way I haven’t done since thatnight with Evan. “Yeah?”

“How many times do I have to repeat myself? I know it’s a full moon,but, really…you’re acting dreamier than usual.”

“Oh. Sorry. I didn’t hear you.”

“Ugh.” My sister rolls her eyes and places her hand on her hip. “Couldyou watch my stuff while I go back to the dorm for the aquarium? It’sthe least you could do.”

I nod, only then aware that I’m petting a small, white splotch on thebedspread. Somehow the bedspread found its way back into my grasp.

My sister wrinkles her nose, squints at the splotch and covers hermouth. “Eww! Is that what I think that is?”

“I…” I know it is but that confession will remain unspoken. I lock it up ina chest and feed the key to one of the ink dragons lurking around mybrain. I love and hate how his illustrations still linger.

“That’s seriously disgusting. No wonder they threw it away. Some poorgirl would rather toss it out than wash her ex-boyfriend’s…yuck.” Sheshuddered. “You know, you’re right. I’m putting this back in the trashwhere it belongs.”

My sister yanks the blanket away from me, but holds it far from herbody as she walks back to her dorm. For some reason I can’t move. Ifeel like she is throwing away one of my memories, just dumping it intothe trash with all of the other freshman castaways. I stand by themoving cart, wishing I had insisted on keeping it. Wishing Evan hadnever discarded it, even if the blue paint stain would have angered hismother.

I close my eyes and let the breeze caress my lips and tousle my hair,imagining the sight of Evan’s empty dorm room. The only trace of himis a tiny tinge of blue paint on the corner of his desk. And maybe athread from his bedspread floating through the air, moments fromfalling to the floor.

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