I had just turned 20 when I met Franny, before these weekly drinking sessions at the local old-man bar became the norm. I was wasting time and money at the local state college because my high school guidance counselors decided that my intellectual promise and academic potential outweighed any real and vocal desire I had to avoid higher education at any cost. My parents heartily agreed, mainly because they had recently decided the best route to take was to do the exact opposite of whatever I thought was a good idea.
On top of that, we lived with my grandmother, the woman who first taught me to link fear and love. She used to be an unstoppable force, the reason why so many strong hurricanes are named after women. Now she was suffering from dementia, living as a prisoner locked inside of her own body. It had been two years since she got diagnosed, but in the recent months she had gotten really bad. With each repeated question or story, I felt a hot rage surge up in my chest and had to swallow the urge to punch a hole through the wall. It was time for me to get some space. You know, the good reasons to go to college.
Franny was teaching my 300-level Research in the Real World course. It was one of those writing classes they made business and sports management majors take to prove to the world that they weren’t entirely illiterate, but it satisfied like three requirements. I didn’t give a shit about the class, but Franny had a way of talking to you that made you feel like she was speaking directly to you, seeing you, gauging your reactions, which was a rare feeling in this place. She made a point of knowing your name, and getting to care about you as a person. She could see if you were having an off day just based on your face. She must have known from the start that I was in dire need of direction.
On the fifth day of class, I received an email from her with the subject “DON’T IGNORE ME – I AM NOT YOUR MOTHER!” in which she asked if I was doing alright, and if I was, to please start bringing my “goofy ass” to class because I was only allotted three absences for the marking period and I had already missed four, but she was willing to pretend she hadn’t taken attendance that day.
Her office hours were late, from 9–10, and it was already 9:15. Feeling a little unnerved at the thought of having another dark-haired woman disappointed in my academic performance—although not my mother, my grandmother, or my sister—I downed one, or three, beers before slipping on my shoes and stumbling down the uneven sidewalk to Franklin Hall.
I got lost in the labyrinthine building’s basement, where the lecturers were kept. I wound up drunkenly stumbling into her on her way out. She demanded a cigarette, offered to give me a ride home, and made me promise that I would show up to class more often and office hours less inebriated. I promised the former and was hopeful, but doubtful, of the latter. She understood.
“After all, I went here too,” she said, dragging on her cigarette.
It was weird how quickly she became like a big sister to all of us. The fact that the class had us work on our own research projects only solidified our connection to her. She’d send us emails at obscene hours of the night and morning with links to articles that might help us with our papers. She took notice of when we would respond, how we would respond, who looked like they hadn’t eaten or slept, who seemed like they were about to snap, who seemed to be drowning so she could throw whatever life preserver she had available.
This was not what we were used to, not me anyway. I came from a chilly family in a cold neighborhood in a nasty state, and then I went to a university in that same nasty state that was so big that if you died, no one would notice until your term bill was late. That being said, to have someone bring us—a bunch of drunk 18–22-year-old degenerates who numbed themselves with deep-fried sandwiches and any mind-altering substances they could get their hands on—“Thanksgiving Break Survival Kits” (aspirin—“headaches from your parents,” mints—“in case you run into an old fling,” and a chocolate bar—“I’m thankful for chocolate and you!”) was weirder than if she had just hauled off and hit us.
I know now that this was probably the kind of thing that got people fired, sued, or discussed in meetings with doors closed, but at twenty, I did not have the language for boundaries. I only knew who showed up.
How we felt about her made it all the harder to deal with her email, sent the Friday after Thanksgiving. In it, she let us know that she had just found out that her brother’s condition was in its final stages and she might have to leave abruptly before the end of the semester, but if that were the case, she would make sure we got full credit for our final papers and presentations. She asked us not to talk to her about it in person so she didn’t get emotional, for everyone’s sake. It would make sense if she did it for herself, but knowing her, she really did probably do it for everyone else’s sake—what do we even say? I was ready to go super bummed about having to reschedule the frat mixer this weekend, so I know how you feel?
This time I found her office a little easier. Not because of my impeccable sense of direction, but because the acoustics in those snaking hallways worked like microphones if you were in the right spot, and I heard her voice on a phone call. As I found my way to her, like a bat using sonar, I heard her repeat the same information at least three times. I heard the nearly imperceptible sigh that punctuated the sentences, the words sliding through involuntarily gritted teeth.
I knew immediately what that was. I speak that language fluently at home, to my grandmother.
I felt the surge of rage in my chest, and to be safe, I tightened my grip on the booze and stuffed my free hand in my pocket.
“Hey,” she said. “My God, you’re like the only person who comes to these things, huh?”
I smiled and clumsily held out the bottle of cheap flavored whiskey that tasted like you liquified a cinnamon stick.
“You know, if you wanted me to get real whiskey, I am old enough. I don’t have to use my cousin’s fake ID or anything,” she said, smiling.
“I figure this is, like, more efficient…”
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“No, no. When my brother got sick, I thought ‘glioblastoma’ sounded like a rocketship NASA had been designing for decades to make contact with Mars.”
Sometime over winter break, Franny’s brother died. Someone in class who was better at regularly checking in with her reached out to the rest of us to let us know that her brother had “lost his battle to cancer,” and I hoped Franny never saw that. She was hard to rile up, but the one thing that could send her to another dimension was hearing some moron talk about her brother dying like he could have beat it if he had only trained a little harder. People were stupid, and fate and luck often rewarded those who least deserved it. Fight had nothing to do with it.
“It’s weird, it’s like everything hurts but I also don’t feel anything… nothing feels as painful as it did when I was having to explain for the billionth time in an hour that there’s no more pudding and watching someone who used to wear his independence like a cape not be able to exist outside of his bedroom unchaperoned.”
“So, still terrible?”
“Still terrible, but now it’s regular terrible. It’s not supersized terrible, where you have all of this and the extra pain of watching someone you love suffer all the time.”
“The one time I don’t want something supersized.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Speaking of telling you about it, I wanted to tell you my news.”
“Tell me!”
“I’m joining the army.”
“Right, me too. What’s the news?”
“No, seriously, I’m joining the army.”
“You’re joining the army? On purpose?”
“It’s been a little while since you’ve been around. I’m not like you were. This school shit is not it for me. I’m a sophomore and I know that mathematically I won’t be able to graduate on time creditwise.”
“Is that true? Even with summer school?”
“The fuck do I look like going to summer school in my 20s?”
“Fair enough.”
“I hate rules and authority, but it turns out I don’t get anything done without it. I was raised to only react to threats of violence or extreme emotional, mental, or psychological abuse and I guess the conditioning stuck.”
“Hey kid, we have very similar origin stories. A little therapy. A self-help book. But the military?”
“I just need to get the fuck out of here. I can’t keep being here. I can’t keep living in this nightmare, I just can’t. I just have to get away.” I felt my chest constricting. Pins and needles began to prickle up on my hands and feet. It was happening again. Another panic attack.
She softened. She could tell. “This idea that someone has to abuse you for you to be functional, that’s not good. You’re just- “
“Full of potential, right? And I should be doing so much more?”
“This isn’t a pitch to get you to stay in school. You’re a good kid. I want you to be happy. You deserve to be happy. If you convince yourself you can only work under miserable circumstances is going to keep you from being happy forever. I don’t know how the fuck the military works, but you better tell me how to mail you letters. And if it’s anything like Catch-22, I’m pretty sure all my shit is going to be censored.”
One drink tripled and then tripled from there. I vaguely remember her walking me to my room, unlocking the door with her left hand, and holding me upright with her right. My roommate Chris, ever the fratboy, opted to whistle obnoxiously at us walking into the suite instead of helping her carry me to my bedroom. Like a ninja, in one move she threw her keys into her jacket pocket, swiped an empty beer can from off the Christmas tree, and chucked it at Chris’s head, nicking his shoulder. I went to laugh at him, but instead of a laugh, a steady stream of a liquified form of everything I have ever put in my body shot out of my mouth and onto the floor. Then everything went black.
I’m in a dirty, dingy basement. I’ve been here before. Everything is cold and dark except for the center of the room, where there sits a young boy in a beam of suspended light. He is the same boy as my other dream.
I was determined not to screw this up this time.
I went over to him, crouched down to his height, and tried to smile as comfortingly as I could. I went to console him, but I saw that his eyes, while concerned, were clear. He looked at me with a kind of quiet certainty and reached his hand out to mine.
“It’s okay to cry,” the boy said.
He reached into his pocket for a tissue and gently wiped away tears I didn’t know were there. I cried harder, and the boy wrapped his arms around me, his hands moving through my hair the way my grandmother used to when I was scared of the rain, one of her rare moments of softness.
“It’ll all be okay,” he said. “I promise.”
And I knew for a fact that the boy in my dream was me, because I wept with reckless abandon on his shoulder in a way that I, even in my dream, could never allow myself to do in front of anyone else.
I knew something else, too. I could feel that just outside the filmy existence of my dream that cocooned me in safety and privacy, there was a separate existence making sure I was alright. I knew whose hand rubbed slow circles into my back, steady and impersonal in the way of someone making sure you didn’t choke, didn’t stop breathing, didn’t fall apart completely—the same kind of quiet care I remembered from childhood, the kind that only ever showed up when I wasn’t fully awake to receive it.