Part III
This is all you have. This is not a dry run. This is your life.
-Laura Schlessinger
College was supposed to be a fun time for me. What with my grandma dying shortly before my high school graduation, it had become a lot more work than I’d anticipated. I hadn’t wanted to go to college at Manchester College, but when I inherited my grandma’s house, it seemed to make sense. I’d planned to go to Ball State in Muncie, so I’d had to ask Dr. Al to get me in after applications had closed. It was nice to have someone to help me with difficult circumstances.
My mom had not wanted me to live in grandma’s house. I wasn’t sure if that was because she was lonely, or if it had something to do with the house. She and my grandma had a very difficult relationship, which didn’t seem like a surprise to me. Grandma was my mom’s mother in law. I wasn’t sure what to do about the house. It was my grandma’s, and I didn’t want to sell it. I didn’t really want to live in it either, because it looked like a Russian antiquities museum.
My grandma had spent my entire life doing what my mother called obsessing about Russia. Her library was full of Russian history books and political science books and biographies about Russian leaders. She’d collected all kinds of Kolkova and lacquer boxes, samovars and tea glasses, and many other items over the years. Her knowledge of the language, the history, the art, and the culture was amazing. It was her insistence that had made me learn to speak Russian. I was hoping that it would be useful in college.
Her tutelage had made me who I was, and my idea was to become a history professor. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to pursue Russian history as a specialty, but it made sense. I loved the tales that my grandma told me about the Soviets, and what little she’d told me about the Tsars. I think she talked about the Soviets more, because they had ruled the country throughout most of her life, and they really pissed her off. She was angry that they’d ever existed, but she also wasn’t too fond of the new democracy. She said that they were no different from the Soviets. She said that they only went by different titles.
At any rate, I started my first semester of college at Manchester, and lived in grandma’s house with the Russian chachkis everywhere I looked. Virgil also went to Manchester, so there was one good friend that I had on campus. History was a tough major socially, so I didn’t make friends the way I would have liked. I tended to find like-minded people on Facebook and chat with them. It made more sense to me, since I didn’t want to spend my time hanging out with a bunch of cheerleaders.
Facebook was where I met Tania. Tania went to Boston College which was her hometown school, and she was studying history as well. We were a couple of geeks when it came to history, and we’d hit it off online and chatted constantly like we’d known each other our entire lives. Tania said that her family was Irish, but she found Russian history fascinating. She was pretty sure she wanted to be a Russian history professor. As sad as it sounds, Tania was my best friend during my first semester at college.
Things were going as well as could be expected. I’d settled into a routine, and was comfortable with my living arrangements, and then everything changed.
It was November, and I was driving home from a late class one night. The weather was this horrible sideways 34-degree rain that only people who have spent their lives in northern Indiana or Iceland can truly appreciate. Since the town of North Manchester was a ridiculously small town that was mostly college students, senior citizens, and several forms of Amish, they didn’t feel the need to spring for very many street lights. All the hipsters hated light pollution, and it just wasn’t in the budget to make it so that people could see where they were going on rainy cold nights in November. I was making my way down Highway 13 to the house, when I saw a car behind me. I didn’t think much of it. It was late, and there was hardly ever any traffic on the road at that hour, but hey, what did I know? It was when the car pulled into my driveway after me that my heart stopped.
I’d started to carry a baseball bat in my car for just such an occasion, because after my family had started dying off, I’d gotten a little paranoid. I pulled into the garage that was attached to the single story ranch style house that my grandma had left to me. The car just sat there, and I couldn’t tell anything in the dark rainy night. I grabbed the Louisville Slugger that I now kept on the seat next to me and prepared to get out of the car. I jumped out of the car, baseball bat in hand and nearly took a swing at Virgil as he emerged from his car.
“Damn you scared me!” I yelled at him, swinging the bat and almost hitting him in the head. “What the hell are you following me for?"
“Because I wanted to talk to you, God,” Virgil replied. “Are we a little paranoid or what?”
I really wanted to hit him with the bat, but instead I put the bat down and walked into the house with Virgil behind me. He didn’t say anything as I put my stuff on the kitchen table and hung up my coat. I walked to the refrigerator.
“So, stalker of mine, are you thirsty?” I asked Virgil.
“Aren’t you the least bit curious what I wanted to tell you?”
I handed him a can of Diet Coke and opened one for myself. “What on Earth could be so important that it couldn’t wait until tomorrow?”
“Russia.”
I stood and stared at him as if he was insane. “The country? It’s been around a long time, Virgil. I don’t see it going anywhere before 3 pm tomorrow.”
Virgil pulled a piece of yellow paper out of his pocket and handed it to me. “Russia. There’s a class at Moscow University over Jan Term.”
“Yeah, so?”
“So, you need to go.”
“What makes you say that?”
“You live in this Russian museum. You love this shit. Your grandma would make you go. It’s like the stars aligned just right and here’s the opportunity of a lifetime. You can’t pass on this.”
I knew he was right. If there was ever anyone in the world that should go on a trip to Russia it was me. It was like I’d spent my whole life in training to do just that. I’d spent all the years listening to my grandma and looking at her Russian things. I’d written all of my elective papers on Russian topics, because I had a complete library at my grandma’s house to work from. There was so much that I’d learned, but so much that I still didn’t know. Spending time in Russia and taking a class in Russian history would be a great thing to help answer some of the questions I still had about that mysterious country.
“Are you still with me?” Virgil asked, waving his hand in front of my face.
“Sorry, I was just thinking,” I replied.
I looked at the flyer. The class was called “Tsars; Myth, Legend, and Facts.”
“Well, what do you think?” Virgil asked.
“I think it sounds amazing,” I told him. “I also think that there’s no way in hell that I can do this.”
“How can you not do this?”
“I can’t just go running off to Russia on a whim. Not even for a few weeks. My mom would freak so bad that they’d have to lock her up somewhere. Besides, I’ve never really gone anywhere. Russia’s a scary place. It’s big, and no one really seems to know what goes on over there. I’d probably be so lost that I’d never get over it.”
“You’re a wimp.”
“That’s not nice, and you’re right. There, I said it. I’m a wimp. Okay?”
“You know what I think? Honestly?”
I was getting angry with him and wanted to punch him right in the face. “What?”
“I think you’re saying what your mom would want you to. If you did what your grandma would want, it would be going to this class. Your mom is freaky scared of every little thing. I realize that you had a lot of bad luck last year, but none of them would be lying in a grave wanting you to pass up on something that would make a huge difference in your life because of them. Your mom needs to get over it. Shit happens. You should not quit liv
ing, because your mom is scared of nonsense.”
“You’re right. I’m afraid my mom will lose her shit, and I’ll be to blame. I’m also scared. I admit it.”
“You can’t be scared for the rest of your life.”
I had an idea. “Then go with me.”
“I would love to, you know that. But, I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Two reasons. One, because it’s cold as hell in January in Russia. It’s cold enough around here, so no thanks. Number two, I already signed up to spend Jan Term in Costa Rica.”
“Costa Rica?”
“I do intend to be a doctor, and they go there and work at clinics and stuff. I also bet there are a lot of tan guys on the beach too.”
Great, my gay ex-boyfriend was going to find men in Costa Rica, and I was going to sit cowering in fear of the whole world in North Manchester, Indiana. Even I was wondering if I would ever have the courage to leave Indiana. I’d wanted nothing more my whole life, but yet I was still stuck there. The worst part was that I could blame my mom all I wanted. The real reason was because I was scared to leave my home town. The outside world scared me.
The Ring of the Queen