mouth. We were in her minivan, parked in the circular drive outside my dorm. The floodlights by the main entrance had just flickered on automatically, tuned in to the dusk that now settled just after six o’clock. The day had been bright and cloudless, and warm for early December. Gold leaves lay dried and broken under the windshield wipers. She had driven to Lawrence to take me out for Thai food; I had a box of leftover Chicken Satay on the floor mat between my feet.
“It’s not that big a deal,” I said. “A lot of students work. Most, probably.”
She leaned forward and rested her chin on the steering wheel, gazing out through the partially fogged windshield. Her black knit hat was a little too big; the edge of it fell just above her eyes. She looked befuddled, cute, a child dressed up for a greeting card.
“Sorry,” she said finally. “I shouldn’t bring you into it. You’re right.”
A truck with a camper shell parked in front of us. A stout woman wearing a Kansas City Chiefs jacket got out of the driver’s side and walked around to the back, meeting a girl who had gotten out the other side wearing sweats and a T-shirt. The woman opened the shell and helped the girl take out a basket of folded laundry. They fussed with the basket for a moment, pulling something else out of the truck to cover the clothes. The girl gave the woman a quick kiss and carried the basket up the sidewalk to the front doors.
The truck pulled away, but my mother continued to stare straight ahead.
“Where do you do your laundry?”
I looked at her. She sounded strange, as if she were asking a question with an answer she could not bear.
“Here,” I said. “They have machines in the basement.” I watched the girl with the basket walk up the steps to the front doors. “Some people just do it at home because…I don’t know…they go home.”
“Home,” she repeated.
I rested my head against the cold glass of the passenger door and gazed almost longingly seven floors up to the dark window of my room. I did feel bad for her. I knew her sadness was real. But I was tired, tired in general, and specifically tired of hearing how much she didn’t like all the changes she had brought on herself. Her problems were not my problems. At that particular moment, my problem was this: I had an organic chemistry test in five days, and even if I spent every spare moment until then studying, I was still probably going to fail it.
“I’d better get going,” I said.
“Just stay a little longer, honey. Okay? I hardly ever get to see you.”
“I have to study.”
She patted my knee. “Just a few more minutes. To talk to your mom who just drove an hour to see you.”
“I have to be in the building by six. I’m on duty tonight.”
Her mouth tightened. “It seems like a lot,” she said. “This job seems to take up a lot of time.”
Actually, it didn’t. It should have, maybe; but I wasn’t really doing the job. At the start of the year, I had every intention of being an excellent RA. I hung a sign that said “RA” by my door, and also a message board with a dry erase marker. But now the first semester was nearly over, and I didn’t know the names of most of the girls on my floor. I was too busy. In addition to a lit class and Spanish, I was taking five credit hours of organic chemistry and five more of physiology. I woke every morning with a deep sense of impending doom, a never-ending worry that I should be studying more.
“I don’t mind it,” I said, lying. This year, especially, I hated the dorm. I felt ten years older than everyone else. “And this kind of job looks good on med school applications. Seriously. They tell you to do stuff like this.”
“I just hope you’re spending time on your schoolwork.”
I registered the words, felt my body react: my teeth clenched, my breathing quickened. “Mom. I study. You have no idea how much I study.”
“I’m sure I do have an idea, Veronica. I went to college.”
I ran my tongue along my teeth, looking away. The comparison was too ridiculous to respond to. She had majored in education.
“I just…” She turned to me and sighed. “I imagine you spend a lot of time with Tom.”