it—weeks, even. She finds she has an amazing capacity to forget. Sometimes she feels as if she is skating along the surface of her life, her past the dark, roilingwater underneath. When the ice cracks—and it does, it has—she moves a little faster, cutting deeper with the blade, working back to safer ground.
Turning off the porch light, Kathryn heads upstairs to her room. On an impulse she goes into her closet and takes down a box marked “College Papers”—she seems to remember having written about this once, long ago. It was her first year at UVA, as she recalls, in a composition course. The grad student teaching the class wanted the students to express themselves; he didn’t care much about form. He was always giving them assignments like “Describe a meal you love” and “Help a blind person visualize the color blue.”
Kathryn finds the course folder and leafs through it until she gets to the paper. Then she sits on her bed and reads it:
Kathryn Campbell
Composition I/Instructor: J. Trainer
October 14, 1986
The University of Virginia
Assignment: Write about something you’ve lost
Ever since Jennifer disappeared, I feel as if I’ve been wandering in a foreign country without a map. When I try, I can recall a blur of details about what happened after she left us that night by the river—Will’s strained voice on the phone the next morning, telling me that Jennifer hadn’t slept in her bed; the stiff formality of the thick-belted policeman in the driveway, with Mrs. Pelletier behind him on the porch, wrapped in Jennifer’s letter sweater; searching with Jack and Brian and the other volunteers through the spongy underbrush near the Kenduskeag—but mostly I don’t try. Remembering the details doesn’t seem to help.
When Jennifer disappeared some kind of time was permanently suspended. We don’t know if she’s dead, so we can’t bury her—no casket, no wreath of flowers, no eulogy, no funeral, no mourning. When I read about the relatives of soldiers in Vietnam still missing after fifteen years, people who believe that there might be a chance the person is alive, who cling to each fragile lead as if it might yield the answer, I think I understand. I loved Jennifer like I love my own family: imperfectly, carelessly, with an irrational certainty that while I might grow up, go away, move on, she will always be just where I need her, just the same.
A year before she disappeared, Jennifer got a passport. She always dreamed of traveling to foreign lands. I imagine that the telephone call will come in the middle of the night: Someone has seen her. She’s in London, selling jewelry on the street. In Paris, with some brooding French poet. Or a postcard arrives: She just wants to let us know she’s fine and living on a fishing boat in New Zealand. Climbing the Swiss Alps. Lying on a beach in St. Croix.
In my nightmares, I conjure other scenarios: They’ve found her body in the tall grass by the edge of Green Lake. They’ve found her in a shallow grave in the Maine woods. In the town dump. In a basement apple room.
In the four months since she left us, I think I’ve thought of everything.
Jennifer is my best friend, and now she will always be my best friend, because she exists for me now only as she was. There is a part of me that will probably never age, that will stay suspended, poised, eighteen years old and holding my breath, until we find out what happened.
At the bottom of the page, the instructor has written, “Kathryn—Fiction? Nonfiction? Who is Jennifer, and why should we care? We could use more details: The narrator talks about how s/he feels after his/her best friend disappears, but what does s/he miss about her specifically? Why was she such a significant person to him/her? Also, the narrator seems pretty detached. Have you researched this? Is it a typical response? (See Kübler-Ross’s study about the stages of grief if you plan to expand this into a short story.)
The imagery and analysis are
Turning off the porch light, Kathryn heads upstairs to her room. On an impulse she goes into her closet and takes down a box marked “College Papers”—she seems to remember having written about this once, long ago. It was her first year at UVA, as she recalls, in a composition course. The grad student teaching the class wanted the students to express themselves; he didn’t care much about form. He was always giving them assignments like “Describe a meal you love” and “Help a blind person visualize the color blue.”
Kathryn finds the course folder and leafs through it until she gets to the paper. Then she sits on her bed and reads it:
Kathryn Campbell
Composition I/Instructor: J. Trainer
October 14, 1986
The University of Virginia
Assignment: Write about something you’ve lost
Ever since Jennifer disappeared, I feel as if I’ve been wandering in a foreign country without a map. When I try, I can recall a blur of details about what happened after she left us that night by the river—Will’s strained voice on the phone the next morning, telling me that Jennifer hadn’t slept in her bed; the stiff formality of the thick-belted policeman in the driveway, with Mrs. Pelletier behind him on the porch, wrapped in Jennifer’s letter sweater; searching with Jack and Brian and the other volunteers through the spongy underbrush near the Kenduskeag—but mostly I don’t try. Remembering the details doesn’t seem to help.
When Jennifer disappeared some kind of time was permanently suspended. We don’t know if she’s dead, so we can’t bury her—no casket, no wreath of flowers, no eulogy, no funeral, no mourning. When I read about the relatives of soldiers in Vietnam still missing after fifteen years, people who believe that there might be a chance the person is alive, who cling to each fragile lead as if it might yield the answer, I think I understand. I loved Jennifer like I love my own family: imperfectly, carelessly, with an irrational certainty that while I might grow up, go away, move on, she will always be just where I need her, just the same.
A year before she disappeared, Jennifer got a passport. She always dreamed of traveling to foreign lands. I imagine that the telephone call will come in the middle of the night: Someone has seen her. She’s in London, selling jewelry on the street. In Paris, with some brooding French poet. Or a postcard arrives: She just wants to let us know she’s fine and living on a fishing boat in New Zealand. Climbing the Swiss Alps. Lying on a beach in St. Croix.
In my nightmares, I conjure other scenarios: They’ve found her body in the tall grass by the edge of Green Lake. They’ve found her in a shallow grave in the Maine woods. In the town dump. In a basement apple room.
In the four months since she left us, I think I’ve thought of everything.
Jennifer is my best friend, and now she will always be my best friend, because she exists for me now only as she was. There is a part of me that will probably never age, that will stay suspended, poised, eighteen years old and holding my breath, until we find out what happened.
At the bottom of the page, the instructor has written, “Kathryn—Fiction? Nonfiction? Who is Jennifer, and why should we care? We could use more details: The narrator talks about how s/he feels after his/her best friend disappears, but what does s/he miss about her specifically? Why was she such a significant person to him/her? Also, the narrator seems pretty detached. Have you researched this? Is it a typical response? (See Kübler-Ross’s study about the stages of grief if you plan to expand this into a short story.)
The imagery and analysis are
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