In the fifteen weeks since starting her freshman year at the University of Nowhereville, Sophie had counted at least a dozen What the Hell Have You Done, Sophie Roth? moments. The first was when Sophie’s mother dropped her off at the dorms, which were covered in brick and ivy, just like the catalog promised. The rental car’s engine had not yet stopped ticking when Sophie understood that the idea of a college in the country, in the middle of the country—pastoral was how’d she’d been describing it to friends back in Brooklyn—wasn’t so much pastoral as it was foreign, as if she’d decided to enroll at the University of Beirut. Attendant sinking feelings in the stomach soon followed the revelation that really shouldn’t have been a revelation—it was so obvious. It had been obvious to all her friends, who were perplexed by her choice to go here, and to her mother, who wasn’t.
As she and her mother hauled her suitcases into the dorm, Sophie didn’t dare let her feelings show. It would only make her mother feel guilty. The University of Nowhereville being pastoral wasn’t the real reason Sophie had enrolled.
The second What the Hell Have You Done, Sophie Roth? moment had come later that weekend when she’d met her roommates. Nice girls, pretty girls, welcoming girls, but that first night together—beer and pizza with crusts thick as the length of Sophie’s thumb—Sophie had had to say I’m kidding at least a half dozen times, a trend that continued well into the term until Sophie finally realized that sarcasm was like a separate dialect, one not universally understood. “You’re so big city,” one of the Kaitlynns (there were three on her hall) would say. Sophie was never quite sure if this was an insult.
Sophie had imagined she would be the mysterious one on campus—she was from the big city, after all—but it was the girls from the small Midwestern towns who had dreamed of going to college here all their lives, whose parents had gone here, who were inscrutable.
The guys were no better. Strapping and big-toothed specimens, with names like Kyle and Connor. At the start of term, one such guy had asked Sophie out on what she’d thought was a date, but what had turned out to be a group outing to play ultimate Frisbee. Sophie had been grouchy about it, but then to her surprise had gotten into the game, catching a scoring pass, talking smack against the other team. On the walk back to the dorms, Kyle/Connor had said, “You’re really competitive, aren’t you?” Sophie had no doubt as to whether that was an insult.
That was What the Hell Have You Done, Sophie Roth? moment number four—or maybe it was five. There’d been several with the boys here. She was starting to lose count. She’d long since lost hope.
She had no one to blame for tonight’s What the Hell Have You Done moment except herself. Finals had ended two days ago and most of the students had decamped for winter break. Flight prices back to New York halved if Sophie left the following week, so she had to stick around and twiddle thumbs. Earlier that day, Sophie had been selling her books back to the bookstore—getting a pittance in return, because two editions were about to be updated, the clerk explained, causing Sophie to get into an argument with the poor sap about why all textbooks should be digital and updated automatically, only it wasn’t really an argument because the clerk wanted nothing to do with the debate. On the way out she’d seen a flier for caroling on the quad that night. And for some reason, she’d thought: This seems like a good idea.
Sophie wondered when was she going to learn that lots of things seem like a good idea but a small amount of analysis might uncover that such seemingly good ideas are, in fact, intrinsically faulty. Take communism. Seemed like a good idea: Everyone shares, no one goes hungry. But maybe give it a good think and you’d come away understanding for it to work you’d need an inhuman capacity for cooperation, or a much more human capacity for totalitarianism. Anyways, she’d heard Luba describe breadlines and bugged phones and Siberian gulags enough to know which way that went.
A caroling concert? She really should’ve known better. The entire point of a caroling concert was to join in. First of all, Sophie was Jewish. It was bad enough that she’d basically skipped Hanukkah this year, but to spend the last night of the Jewish holiday serenading the birth of Jesus. . . . Just. No. And even if they were to throw in “I Have a Little Dreidel” (they wouldn’t; dreidels were as foreign to Nowhereville as moon rocks) Sophie wouldn’t sing. Not in public. Not here.
In her defense, she did like Christmas carols, not the horrible dirges sung over mall speakers, but people singing in pretty harmonies. Sophie remembered when she first heard carolers, wandering the streets outside her apartment in Brooklyn. They had harmonized so beautifully, Sophie had asked her grandmother if those were angels singing. “No, darling,” Luba had replied, “just gentiles.”
There was nothing wrong with the singing tonight. It was fine. But not remotely magical or angelic. And everyone seemed to be wearing Christmas sweaters. Like with appliques of Rudolph or Santa on them. One girl even had a sweater with a tree that actually lit up. If Sophie had gone to NYU, such sweaters would’ve been worn ironically. But here, they weren’t. Everything was so godddamned sincere.
Including the carols. Not that she expected ironic Christmas carols—Jingle bells, Batman smells, Robin laid an egg. . . . Wasn’t that how they sang it in elementary school? But there was so much eye-shining and heart as they pa-rum-pum-pum-pummed about Little Drummer Boys. Plus the sweaters. She couldn’t take it anymore.
“Oh, the Ned Flanders of it all,” she muttered to herself. Which was something she’d been doing a lot lately. When she admitted this to Zora, her friend had warned that it was a certain step on the road to Crazy Cat Lady-ism. Sophie had laughed but when she thought of her mother, alone in the apartment with only her sculptures, and now Luba’s cats, for company, it didn’t seem quite so funny.
“Yo, you just say something about Ned Flanders?”
Caught Cat-Ladying out loud? Oy. Sophie felt as though she’d been spotted streaking the quad naked. She pretended she had not heard the question.
“You did. You said, ‘the Ned Flanders something something.’ ”
She turned around. Standing about three feet away was one of the Black Guys on Campus. Sophie hated herself for thinking of him like that—she’d grown up on the Bed-Stuy side of Clinton Hill, after all—but here, it was hard not to. There seemed to be like twenty black students at the entire college, a lot of them scholarship students like her. She knew this because she’d met quite a few at that Dean’s Reception for Excellence the first week of school. She’d been flattered by the invite until she walked in and was given a handout with still-open work-study slots and understood that it was a get-together for all the scholarship students. She’d hid out in a corner, eavesdropping on a bunch of guys from the basketball team (basketball was huge here, she’d been surprised to learn) comparing notes about some of the sillier comments they’d gotten in their first week. Sophie had been dying to chime in with some choice examples of her own, but stopped herself. Though she may have felt like a minority here, she was still white.
She tried to remember if this guy had been at the reception. He was looking at her like he might know her. “I didn’t say it so much as mutter it,” she said, or, rather, muttered.
He laughed. A big, open-chested laugh, and for a second Sophie felt the tiny thrill of landing a successful joke, but it was followed by doubt because people here didn’t get her humor. When she made people laugh, she suspected it was after she’d left the room. Which annoyed the shit out of her. Back home, people at least had the decency to laugh in your face.
This caroling thing was a supremely bad idea. She turned to walk away.
She felt a hand, a huge hand, on her shoulder. “Sorry. I’m not messing with you. For real. Just I was thinking the same thing.”
She turned around. “You were thinking about Ned Flanders?”
She waited for him to say “Diddly-oh,” or some such. It would be exactly what the Kyles or Connors would say. Then they’d ask her major. But he just smiled, a slow oozy grin, too hot for this cold night. “Yeah. Ned Flanders,” he said. “Among others.” He made it sound risqué, the among others, and Sophie felt herself flush.
He stuck out a hand, sheathed in a fingerless glove. “Russell,” he said.
She looked at him, or rather up at him. He was very tall, a whole foot taller than Sophie, at least, and Sophie was five feet five. Tall enough to play basketball. Maybe he was on scholarship, same as her. The thought was as reassuring as his grip, which was firm, not crushing; he wasn’t one of those guys who had to break your hand to prove just how much they treated you as equals.
“Sophie,” she said.
“So, Sophie.” He opened his arms wide. “What brings you here?”
It felt like a variation of the What’s your major? query, the implication really being, What are you doing here? Sophie hated being asked her major. (She didn’t have one; she was a first-term freshman for Christ’s sake. Not everyone had their lives figured out by the time they exited the womb.)
As for what was she doing here . . . A year ago, she hadn’t even heard of this place. Her high school guidance counselor suggested it, apparently knowing the ins and outs of obscure colleges with ridiculous endowments. When the school made a financial aid offer so generous, so above and beyond anywhere else, Sophie simply couldn’t turn it down. Before she’d had time to think about what it would mean—all this pastoralia, et cetera—she had enrolled. Now she found herself checking off days in the calendar, awaiting her parole. (And yes, she knew she was being hyperbolic and dramatic and it was a free fifty-grand-a-year education and she should be grateful, but no matter how many times she told herself that, it didn’t erase how unhappy she was.)
“I believe in the value of a liberal arts education,” Sophie said now. It was her standard response to the annoying question she’d grown accustomed to, along with iceberg lettuce in the salad bar and cheese served on top of things that wouldn’t seem worthy of dairy.
Russell laughed: “I meant here, at the Ned Flanders-ist Christmas Caroling Concert of All Time.”
There was something about the way he said it, as if he and Sophie were on the same side. It loosened something in her.
“I’m doing anthropological research,” she said.
“An ethnography of sorts?”
“Yeah,” Sophie said. “I’m particularly interested in the sweaters. The symbolism of the light-up ones.”
Sophie paused a beat, waiting for the blank expression and the really? she would’ve gotten off a Kyle or a Connor. To which Sophie would’ve had to say, no not really, just kidding and the conversation would’ve fizzled.
But Russell was nodding along, stroking his chin in exaggerated professorial motions. “I believe those represent a mating ritual.”
“A mating ritual?”
“Yes. You see the male lights up in order to attract the attention of the female so that procreation may ensue.”
“Like fireflies?” Sophie asked.
“And anglerfish,” Russell said.
“Here’s a question: are the sweaters mating, or the people in them?” Sophie asked.
When Russell grinned, he no longer looked professorial. “Couldn’t tell you, Sophie,” he said. “But both prospects scare the shit out of me.”
Sophie laughed. Not fake-laughed or polite-laughed, but her real laugh, with the almost snort at the end. It had been awhile.
“You wouldn’t find it so funny if you knew the rest of the ritual,” Russell warned, a hand over his mouth, all conspiratorial.
“I’m almost afraid to ask.” Sophie tilted her head up to listen. She was flirting a bit, something else she hadn’t done in a while.
“ ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’ is like a trigger. As soon as they hear it, all those sweaters . . .” He shakes his head. “Just trust me. You don’t wanna see it.”
“What? Is it like a sweater orgy?”
“Think about it. The lighting up of Rudolph’s nose, all red and pulsating, it’s a symbol for—”
“I get it,” Sophie interrupted, waving away the image. But she was still laughing “You’ve put a lot of thought into this.”
“Scary, ain’t it?”
Sophie wasn’t sure if he was referring to the amount of thought he’d put into it or the vision of all these nice, clean, singing people having an orgy. But when, a few moments later, the carolers chimed in with the opening notes and words, “Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer, had a very shiny nose . . .” Sophie and Russell looked at each other, and, as if by some mutual agreement, took off running.
The problem was, there was nowhere to go. The campus was pastoral, surrounded by farms and woodlands. There was a small commercial strip but places tended to shutter early, even when school was in session.
They were standing in front of the student union, which was open, but going inside felt like admitting defeat, and after the last few months—or maybe the last few minutes—Sophie couldn’t bear it.
But then Russell said, “I’m parked just over there.” He flashed the key remote and a car with Texas plates chirped and lit up.
“I’m not going to wind up at the bottom of some limestone quarry, am I?” Sophie asked, almost as a formality, to prove that she, a tough New Yorker, wasn’t just naïvely getting into the car with him. But then she worried that he’d take the question differently, because he was black. And then she chastised herself for obsessing about this. Zora was black. She never acted this way around her. Then again, Zora wasn’t a guy.
But he just grinned again and undid the top two buttons of his coat to reveal his sweater underneath. Heather gray and plain. “No Rudolph, no light-ups. You’re safe.”
Once in the car, Russell flipped the ignition and started driving. He seemed to have a destination in mind, which was a welcome change. Her few outings with the Kyles and Connors had been group affairs with everyone chiming in, What do you want to do? I don’t know; what do you want to do? It made Sophie want to do precisely nothing.
The car was plush, leather interior, that new-car smell.
“Nice car,” she commented.
“Thanks,” he said. “Hand-me-down.”
“Really? My hand-me-downs are usually more of the winter-coat-slash-ice-skating variety. And yachts. Everyone gives me their castoff yachts. It’s really a pain.”
Russell laughed. “Yeah. I hate it when that happens.”
On the dash were the controls for butt warmers. Sophie loved butt warmers. Loved anything that made her warm. She’d been surprised by how cold it was here, a chill that never left her bones. She’d stand under the shower for twenty minutes and still be cold. She missed her bathtub.
“Shall we fire up the butt warmers?” Sophie asked.
“We can fire up anything you want,” Russell said, which made the need for butt warmers immediately redundant. Russell switched them on and Sophie grew the toastiest she’d been since winter had descended, as if on a schedule, the day before Halloween.
“How about some tunes?” he asked.
“Sure,” Sophie said.
He turned on the stereo. “You spin.”
Sophie looked around for an iPhone or a dock or something. Russell glimpsed her and said: “It’s voice activated. Just call out a song.”
“Ohh, magic,” Sophie said. Except then she realized that she wouldn’t have the luxury of browsing Russell’s collection to see what he had. Sophie had the musical taste of a fifty-year-old woman, in other words, her mother’s musical taste. But that was embarrassing. What did normal people like? Zora was into this indie folky music that put Sophie to sleep. Maybe Kanye. Or was that too presumptuous? Lorde? Didn’t everyone like Lorde?
“It’s not a test,” Russell said. “Just tell it your favorite song.”
“ ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want,’ ” Sophie blurted.
She started to explain that it was the Rolling Stones but Russell was already asking the magic car to play track nine of Let It Bleed. A few seconds later, the opening chorus of choirboys singing (sounding much better than tonight’s carolers, Sophie thought) filled the car, followed by Mick Jagger’s beautifully ruined voice.
They drove, and let Mick Jagger croon them over the dark country roads. Sophie loved this song, and mouthed the words, but resisted the urge to sing out loud. One of the What the Hell Have You Done, Sophie Roth? moments had involved an ill-advised rendition of “To Sir, with Love” on the karaoke machine in the common room. “Maybe not the best choice if you’re tone-deaf,” one of the girls had said. She’d been trying to be helpful, but none of Sophie’s NYC friends—some of whom had attended the performing arts high school—had ever seen fit to make such a comment.
Sophie wasn’t sure where they were going. It was rural out here; they just seemed to be driving, but that was okay. Driving and listening to the Stones definitely qualified as the best date she’d had here so far. (Not that this was a date. Was this a date?)
After about twenty minutes, Russell pulled off the highway. In the middle of an otherwise empty stretch of road, all lit up like a beacon, was a diner. Not just a diner, but an old-school, aluminum-sided diner. It looked like a giant Airstream trailer.
“What is this place?” Sophie asked as they crunched over the gravel parking lot. It was so completely unexpected, like being handed a beautifully wrapped gift for no special reason.
“This,” Russell said, “is the best pie in the state.”
“But where did it come from?” Sophie heard the question. It was the diner equivalent of What are you doing here? But the only diner-type places she’d seen around campus had been chains: Applebee’s and Fridays and the like.
“Oz,” Russell said.
That seemed exactly right. Oz, like it had been blown in on a twister, or like it was in Technicolor after everything these past few months had been in black and white. Maybe when people asked Sophie where she was from—in that overly solicitous but also mildly suspicious tone that suggested that wherever it was, they were glad they weren’t from there—she should stop saying Brooklyn (so big city) and start saying Oz.
Oz was packed. They found the last remaining booth. A waitress in jeans and a T-shirt with a Saint Bernard in an elf hat on it plopped a couple of menus on the table. “Merry Kiss-My-Ass,” she crooned in a smoke-scarred voice.
“Right back at you, Lorraine,” Russell said. “What’s good tonight?”
“Why you always ask me that?”
“I like the way you talk pie.”
“Oh, stop it.”
“Also, I have a guest.”
Lorraine glanced at Sophie. “So you do.” She cleared her throat. “We got some specials: banana cream. Reese’s peanut butter pie, sweet potato. Plus, the cherry’s good. Fruit’s frozen but the cherries were grown only two miles from here.”
Russell looked to Sophie. “Well?”
“Do you have apple?” she asked.
Lorraine looked at Russell. “Really?”
“Hey, I didn’t know.”
“Didn’t know what?” Sophie asked but nobody answered her.
“Two apples then,” Lorraine said. “You want ’em à la mode or with cheese?”
Sophie winced. Pie with cheese. Why not add some gravy while you’re at it?
Russell registered the look. “You ever had apple pie with cheese?”
Sophie shook her head.
“But you know it’s no good?”
“Yep,” Sophie said.
“Without ever having tried it?”
“Well, I’ve never had apple pie with toenail clippings either, but I’m pretty sure where I stand on that.”
Russell smiled. Lorraine tapped her pencil against the pad.
“We’ll take one of each,” he told Lorraine. He turned to Sophie. “You might be tempted.”
“Don’t bet on it,” Sophie said.
“I always go for the long shot.”
He was teasing her, Sophie could tell, but she wasn’t entirely sure he was teasing her about pie.
“That all?” Lorraine asked.
“Almost,” Russell said. He looked right at Sophie, as if they were in cahoots. “Coffee. Right?”
“Obviously.”
“Two coffees, please.”
After Lorraine left, Sophie looked around. It was an interesting mix of people; farmers in Carhartt, but also people who looked at home in a city, even though the nearest city was more than a hundred miles away. How had they all found out about this place?
“Is this place on Yelp?” Sophie asked.
“Don’t think it has a name, let alone a Yelp listing,” he said.
“How’d you find it?”
“You knock three times on the fourth red barn on your left and someone whispers you directions.”
“Very underground,” Sophie said.
“Yep,” Russell said. “Only for the cool kids.” He gestured to an elderly couple behind them. “The ultimate insiders.”
She laughed at that. Not that she’d ever been an insider, but never less so than in the last three months. “I miss diners.”
“They’ve got good diners in New York,” Russell said.
“They do. There’s this one me and my mom sometimes go to for upside-down dinner, which is—”
“Breakfast for dinner,” Russell interrupted. “Big fan of the upside-down dinner.”
“Me, too. Wait, how’d you know I was from New York?”
Russell didn’t answer. Or let his oozy grin do the answering.
“Oh, I see. It’s obvious. Because I’m so big city.”
“Big city?”
“That’s what they tell me here all the time. Only they don’t mean it as any kind of geographical designation. It’s more of an all-purpose commentary on how strange they think I am. You watch foreign films and are sarcastic, therefore so big city.”
Russell thought about it a minute. “You eat spicy food, therefore so big city.”
“You read the New York Times and not for an assignment, totally big city.”
“You listen to jazz, whoa, big city.”
“You wear black, definitely big city.”
“You are black, definitely big city. Only then they call you urban.”
Sophie laughed. “Sometimes I think big city is code for Jewish, even if people here don’t realize it because they’ve never met a Jew before.”
“Seriously?”
Seriously. When Sophie first got here, she’d been asked about what kind of church she went to. She’d explained that Jews went to temple (not that she did; her family wasn’t that kind of Jewish). She’d been incredulous that people did not know this, but a lot of people didn’t. Her mother had packed her a small menorah for Hanukkah, but it had remained stuffed in the far reaches of her closet. Sophie couldn’t bear the number of explanations that lighting the candles would require.
Sophie was wondering how much of this to tell to Russell, but he was now looking at his phone and then he was waving Lorraine over, and for a small second Sophie feared she’d gone too far (she was always going too far) and if he was asking for the check. But instead he asked Lorraine if they had hash browns. “The patty kind, not the chunky ones.”
“Chunky ones is home fries. Hash browns is the patties. We got both,” Lorraine said, exasperated, though Sophie was beginning to suspect she enjoyed being exasperated by Russell.
“Okay. Hash browns. With a side of apple sauce, and sour cream.” Russell looked at Sophie. “Right?”
“Right,” Sophie managed to say. Barely. Because of the sudden lump in her throat. Hash browns, basically latkes, with applesauce and sour cream? This was Hanukkah food.
“How did you know?” Sophie asked when she’d recovered.
“Genius thing, called a calendar,” he said. “It’s got all kinds of intel.”
“The dates, maybe, but latkes are insider knowledge. Where are you really from?”
His grin was a little bit wicked. “You suggesting a brother from Texas can’t know about latkes?”
“I’ll bet it’s a violation of several state statutes, actually,” Sophie said.
Russell laughed. “Probably right. I used to date a Jewish girl.”
Well then. “So they have Jews in Texas?”
“This wasn’t Texas.”
“Oh.” Now that she thought about it, he didn’t sound like he was from Texas. But she didn’t sound like she was from New York, either. People on campus were surprised by that. She guessed her accent, at least, wasn’t so big city. “So where are you really from then?”
“Really from? Not sure I’m really from anywhere.”
“Now you’re just trying to be mysterious.”
“How’m I doing?”
“You’re James Bond. But even he’s from somewhere.”
His face seemed to flatten out a bit. “Haven’t lived anywhere long enough to be from there.” Then he listed a roster of places he had lived: Dubai, Seoul, Amman, Mexico City, and, stateside, North Dakota, Colorado, and most recently, Houston, Texas. “My father’s in the oil business,” Russell added.
“Oh, I thought . . .” Sophie began as her brain fully digested yet another thing that should’ve been obvious. Russell was rich. Why had she had thought he was on scholarship, when all evidence pointed to the contrary?
“Thought what? That I was big city?” Then he looked up at her and something in her expression must’ve given her away. “Oh,” he said. “You thought I was a jock on scholarship.” His tone was still light, but a little guarded now. His version of a just kidding.
“Sorry,” she said. And she was. More than that. A bit devastated. Somehow Sophie had gotten it into her head that she and this guy had something in common. The optimism that had been speeding along all night crashed into a brick wall.
“Nothing doing,” Russell said, his expression saying otherwise. “Lemme guess. Basketball.”
Sophie had lost the thread of conversation. “What?” she asked. “Oh, right, I guess.”
Russell made a sound, kind of like a cough. Sophie snapped to, looking up at him. She expected anger or derision but it was worse than that. He was like a Christmas tree after you unplugged the lights. Sophie had joined the ranks of dumb commenters. She had let him down. Part of her wanted to explain why she’d thought that, and how she really hadn’t, and to tell him about her black best friend and growing up in Brooklyn and all her big-city (urban) bona fides. But she didn’t. Because somehow, he had let her down, too.
Just as the evening spectacularly stalled, Lorraine arrived with all the food stacked up her arms. Pie with cheese. Pie à la mode. Hash browns with applesauce. Only instead of sour cream, she brought cottage cheese. Figures, Sophie thought.
The food just sat there, cooling on the table between them. Sophie was desolate, miserable, and terribly homesick all of a sudden. This had to be the worst What the Hell Have You Done, Sophie Roth? moment so far.
She’d come here for knowledge but Sophie felt herself growing dumber by the minute. Case in point, what had just happened. It wasn’t as if she was unaccustomed to being around rich people, all kinds of rich people. Though her neighborhood had been gritty and cheap when her mother leased their rent-stabilized apartment before Sophie was born, over the years it had gentrified. When Sophie was ten, a family bought one of the nearby brownstones and gutted it before moving in. They had a daughter, a girl Sophie’s age named Ava, who quickly became one of Sophie’s close friends. Over the years, Ava always offered to pay for Sophie, for her movies, for her dinners, for weekends away. At first the gestures—BFF subsidies, Ava called them—had been sweet, but then they had stopped feeling sweet and had only made Sophie hyperaware of what she lacked. She started declining the subsidies. Ava carried on offering. Sophie started resenting her for it. Sophomore year they’d had a huge falling out. “I’m not a Neediest Cases,” Sophie had screamed. The offers stopped. And the friendship died soon after. Sophie felt bad about it, but was never sure how to repair things.
She wasn’t sure how to repair things now, either, but as the food sat there untouched, a glaring reproach, she knew she had to. Russell had already rescued the first half of the evening. Not just by making her laugh and getting her away from a possible sweater orgy, but by giving her some space to be herself again. She hadn’t realized how much she needed that. Of all the things and people she missed lately, it was odd to find herself at the top of the list.
She took a deep breath and out of the silence said: “What I was going to say before was that I thought you were like me.”
He looked at her again, which was something, but it was clear from his foggy expression he didn’t get what she meant.
So Sophie told him what she hadn’t told anyone else here, though she knew it was nothing to be ashamed of. It was something to be proud of.
“I’m on scholarship. I guess I thought—hoped—that if you were too, it meant you might be like me.”
The silence between them stretched. Sophie wasn’t sure her admission had done anything to save the night, though it had righted something in her. But then Russell said, “Who says I’m not?”
He slid the cheesy pie across the table toward her. She was unsure if this was a challenge or an olive branch. Either way, she picked up her fork, and though the pie looked profoundly unappetizing—the cheese had bubbled into a blister—she took a small, tentative bite.
And. Oh. My. God.
The sharp tang of the cheddar brought out the hint of savory in the crust, and contrasted with the sweetness of the apples. And then there was the collage of consistencies: gooey, crumbly, juicy, all of it warm.
She took another forkful, larger this time. Russell watched her. He seemed amused. She took a third bite. Now he was smiling, a sort of shit-eating grin.
“What?” Sophie asked.
“Thinking I won that bet,” Russell said.
They demolished the pie and most of the hash browns. They weren’t too bad with the cottage cheese, after all. Pretty soon all that was left was a sad lump of ice cream. When the check came, Sophie reached for her bag. Russell shook his head.
“I was planning on paying when I thought you were rich, so wouldn’t it be patronizing to let you split it now?”
Sophie laughed at that. “Wait, you thought I was rich?”
Russell quirked an eyebrow and attempted to look bashful.
“So, does that make us even?” she asked.
“Not really keeping score,” Russell said. “But it does make things interesting.” He laid a pair of twenties on the table.
“Thank you,” Sophie said. “For everything. But especially for the latkes. Those will probably be my only ones this year.”
“Why’s that?”
“Tonight is the last night of Hanukkah. The latke window is closing.”
“Aren’t you going home for the holidays?”
“I’ll be home for Christmas and New Years but no, not Hanukkah this year.”
“Why not?”
Sophie paused, wondering which way to answer that. “Two hundred and sixty-seven dollars,” she said finally.
She told him that this was how much the price of tickets dropped if she left next week. Sophie had fought with her mother about this, which was unusual. She was accustomed to frugality. It had always been that way, a matter of necessity with just the two of them and her mother’s slender income. But also because any surplus had gone to Sophie’s college fund. Then last winter, right as Sophie was filling out her applications, Luba had a stroke. She’d lingered in a sort of twilight and neither Sophie nor her mother could bear to put her in one of those public nursing homes (they were so Soviet). When she died, five months later, Sophie’s college savings was history. NYU had said yes, but Sophie’s dream school was suddenly exorbitant, even with a financial aid package. Then U of B came along with its generous offer.
Sophie’s mom hadn’t been able to fly her home for Thanksgiving. And now, this latest postponement. These were the first holidays with Luba gone. Sophie wondered if that wasn’t the real reason for the delay. Maybe her mom wanted to skip the holidays this year. Maybe Sophie did, too.
Thinking about all this, Sophie started to cry. Oh, for Christ’s sake. This most certainly qualified as a What the Hell Have You Done, Sophie Roth? moment.
“You okay?” Russell asked.
“Holiday stuff,” Sophie said, wiping her nose. “I don’t even know why I’m crying. Hanukkah’s lame. Who cares if I miss it?”
Russell was looking at her. Curiously. Softly. Knowingly.
“Who says you’re missing it?”
Since they’d started this Hanukkah thing, Sophie and Russell decided to see it through, by lighting the menorah she had buried somewhere in her closet. It was Luba’s. The last time they’d used it was a year ago, just before the stroke. Hanukkah had come crazy early, colliding with Thanksgiving, so they’d had a huge feast: turkey and brisket and latkes and potatoes and donuts and pie for desert. But Sophie could only allow herself to think about that for a second. Summoning those memories was like touching a burning pot. She could do it only briefly before she had to pull away.
As they drove back to campus, Sophie realized that though she had a menorah, she didn’t have candles. They drove to the grocery store on the outskirts of town. It was empty, the aisles small, the floors dingy and scuffed. Russell pushed Sophie around in a rickety cart as the tired stock boys watched them warily. Sophie whooped with laughter. Grocery-cart derby. Who knew that would make such an excellent dating activity? (And by now, she was pretty sure this was a date.)
The candle selection was unsurprisingly pathetic. A whole shelf of plug-ins, an odd assortment of birthday numbers (4 and 7 were disproportionately represented) and some glass emergency candles, meant for blackouts and other catastrophes. Nothing that would remotely fit a menorah.
Russell had his phone out, searching for stores that would be open this late. But Sophie was already reaching for the emergency candles. “This holiday is about being adaptable,” she said. “My people are notoriously scrappy.”
“I can see that,” Russell said. “So how many we need?”
“Nine,” said Sophie. “Eight for the eight nights of Hanukah, plus an extra lighter candle. If we’re being official about it.”
There were nine emergency candles on the shelf.
“Wow,” said Sophie. “That’s almost like the actual Hanukkah miracle.” She explained the origins of the holiday, the oil in the menorah that should’ve lasted a single night lasting eight. “It’s really only a minor miracle,” she added.
Russell looked at her and cocked his head. “Not sure there is such a thing as a minor miracle.”
They drove from the store back to campus. Let It Bleed was still playing, and they put “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” on again. This time, Sophie sang along, quietly at first, then belting the words. If she was off-key, she didn’t care.
Back on campus, after Russell parked his car, they walked through the quad toward Sophie’s dorm. It was empty now, no sign of the reindeer orgy they’d escaped. That all felt like a million years ago.
“Why’d you talk to me earlier?” Sophie asked. “Was it really because of Ned Flanders?”
“Partly,” Russell said, stretching the word out in a way that made Sophie want to scratch it.
“What’s the other part?”
“You don’t remember me then?”
Remember him? She would if there was a reason to. She was sure of it. Except he was looking at her like they had a history.
“Poetry Survey.”
Sophie had only been in that class for a week. She’d hated it so much. It wasn’t even taught by a professor, but a TA with a nasal twang who had insisted on very specific interpretations of the poems. She and Sophie had gotten into it about the Yeats poem “When You Are Old.” It was yet another What the Hell Have You Done, Sophie Roth? moment, a big one. One that made her question coming here.
“I regretted not going to bat for you when you had your . . . disagreement.”
Disagreement. More like a war of words. She and the TA had debated about one line from the poem—“How many loved your moments of glad grace”—and Sophie had found herself on the verge of tears. She’d had to leave the hall before the period ended. She’d dropped the class the next day.
“If it makes you feel better, after that, a bunch of us started challenging her,” Russell said. “ ‘Poetry isn’t math’ was our battle cry.”
It was what Sophie had said to the TA. A sort of retroactive relief—or maybe vindication?—crept over her. She’d had defenders in that class. Wingmen. Even if she hadn’t noticed them. Hadn’t noticed him. The truth was, she didn’t notice a lot of things at school. She kept her head down, wore blinders. It was a survival tactic. Only now did she wonder if it was a stupid survival tactic, like wearing a life jacket made of lead.
“I asked about you, after the class. Got some intel, about you being big city and all,” he said with a teasing smile. “But I never spotted you for more than a blur. Until tonight . . . I was debating saying something. You were looking pretty fierce, not fit for company.” He grinned again, but it was different, less oozy, more shy, and about a thousand times sexier. “But then you mentioned Ned Flanders, and I had to say something.”
“What? Is Ned like your spirit guide?”
He laughed. That big, open-chested laugh. “We lived all over, sometimes moving every year. All the places I lived, The Simpsons was like this one constant. They had it everywhere, sometimes it’d be English, sometimes dubbed, didn’t matter. It was my comfort food.”
“You make it sound sad,” Sophie said. “Living all those places sounds pretty great to me.”
“Things are not always how they seem.”
The look they exchanged was like a road map of the history they’d already traversed tonight. “So what was it really like?” Sophie asked.
“Ever see that movie Lost In Translation?” Sophie nodded. She loved that film. “Like that, over and over. But times a thousand because I’m black in places where they just don’t get black. In Korea, they called me Obama.” He sighed. “Before Obama’s presidency, I was Michael Jordan.”
“Is that why you came to school here?” Sophie asked. “Because you knew what to expect?”
Russell looked at her a while before answering. “Yeah. Some of that. Also, to piss off my parents. They thought I was crazy for coming here, but I thought I was making a grand statement. Like, hey, this is how it’s always been for me so I’m just going to go back for more.” He laughed, a little sadder this time. “Only problem is, they never got that and even if they did, being here isn’t really punishing them. Beyond the expensive tuition.” He threw up his hands. “Well, at least they’ve got a good journalism program.”
“And an excellent liberal arts curriculum,” Sophie added.
“And beautiful big-city girls who talk to themselves about Ned Flanders.”
“Right. I read about them in the catalog,” Sophie said, a little flustered by the beautiful comment. Also by the fact that they’d reached her dorm. “This is me.”
Russell took her hand. It was warm. “Ready to get your Hanukkah on?”
“Okily dokily,” Sophie said.
The suite was empty. Kaitlynn, Madison, and Cheryl had already left for the holidays, though they’d littered the suite with holiday cheer. Being in here alone with Russell, Sophie was suddenly knee-shakingly nervous, so she started talking in the same rapid-fire bap-bap-bap as Madison’s blinking lights. “And here is our fake tree, threaded with the traditional offerings of popcorn and candy canes. And you’ll notice the tinsel everywhere, not sure what that symbolizes, and that Santa balloon is made out of vintage Mylar. And if you breathe deep, you’ll catch a whiff of pine-scented potpourri. Welcome to the land where Christmas threw up.”
She was trying to carry on the joke of the Rudolph sweaters. But maybe it was a testament to how far they’d come tonight that the joke fell flat.
“Show me where you live,” Russell said softly.
Sophie’s quarter of the suite was like that thing on Sesame Street: One of these things is not like the other. No posters or corkboards with friendship collages. On her bookshelf she had a framed shot of Zora, an old shot of Luba looking glamorous and kind of mean, and a picture of her and her mother on a gondola in Venice. They’d had the same gondolier a bunch of times and he’d taken to calling her Sophia, crooning a song in Italian to her.
Russell was looking at the picture. “That was when my mom was in the Venice Biennale, a really big art show,” Sophie explained. Growing up, there’d been so many times she’d wished her mom could be a lawyer or a banker or a producer, the kind of jobs some of her friends’ parents had. But when her mother had been invited to show at the prestigious Biennale, and Luba had sold a ring so Sophie could accompany her, she’d been so proud of her mother, the artist. Glad that she’d stuck to her guns. It didn’t hurt that the trip had been magical: the gondola rides, the tiny zigzag of canals and alleys, the packed art galleries, and more than any of that, the feeling of some kind of portal of possibility opening. She hadn’t felt that way in a long time. She was feeling that way tonight.
“What kind of art does your mom make?” Russell asked.
“Sculptures. Though not the traditional kind with clay or marble. She works in abstract forms.” She reached to her top shelf and pulled down a small cube, all tangled wires and glass fragments. “Most of her work is on a much larger scale,” Sophie explained. “Like one piece could fill this room. Alas, my roommate Cheryl said she needed a bed so we couldn’t keep one here.”
For a second, she imagined Cheryl’s horrified expression if she had brought one of her mother’s larger, stranger installations. But then she remembered that Cheryl had seemed to admire her mom’s smaller piece. She’d held it a long time the first time she’d seen it, much as Russell was doing now. “Your mom makes sculptures,” she’d said. “My mom organizes bake sales.” Sophie had taken it as a veiled big-city comment, yet another sign of her otherness, but only now did she wonder if perhaps she hadn’t missed Cheryl’s droll brand of sarcasm.
Russell turned the piece in his hand, seeing how the light played into the angles. “My grandmother used to make these things . . . not sure if you’d call them sculptures or what, out of wood and sea grass. On Saint Vincent. Ever heard of it?”
“It’s an island in the Caribbean, right?” Sophie said.
“Yeah. It’s where my mom’s from. She came to the States for college, met my dad, and never went back. I used to go spend summers on the island with my grandmother. In this little house, painted in island colors, my grandma said, and there were always cousins running around, chickens and goats, too.”
Russell was smiling at the memory. Sophie smiled along with him.
“Then my father started sending me to camp during the summers: tennis camp, sailing camp, golf camp. We only go to Saint Vincent for vacation now, every year for Christmas. Last few years, we’ve stayed at a fancy resort, like tourists. And people treat us different. Like tourists. Even my own people.” He set down the sculpture, his expression wistful and yearning. “Except for my grandmother.”
Sophie closed her eyes. She could picture his grandmother, a beautiful lined face, hands tough with years of solid work, a stern manner that masked a deep ferocious love. After a bit, the image of his grandmother merged with Luba, who she pictured last year, broom in hand, swatting the smoke alarm after it went haywire from all the latke frying. Instead of pushing the memory away, she let it wash over. She was surprised to find that it didn’t burn. She could hold on to it. Then she opened her eyes. “Is your grandmother still alive?” she asked.
“Yeah.” Russell smiled.
“Are you going to see her?” It suddenly felt very important to her that he was.
“Flying down Sunday,” he said. “Looking forward to it.” He paused. “And dreading it. You know? Holiday stuff.”
“It’ll be okay,” she told him, but the words ricocheted back to her. It’ll be okay. That’s what people had been telling Sophie for a while now. After Luba died. It would be okay; time heals. After she started college. It would be okay; leaving home is an adjustment. Sophie hadn’t believed it. You can’t undo loss. You can’t unmake a mistake.
But now she was wondering if a garden of memories might not grow over the hole of losing Luba. And if college wasn’t a little like that first swim every summer—no matter how much Sophie looked forward to it, she still had to get used to the chilly water. Maybe anywhere Sophie had gone this year would’ve felt like a Nowhereville.
Because this Nowhereville had diners dropped from Oz. It had wingmen who had her back in poetry class. It had people like Cheryl, who, come to think of it, was pretty big-citily sarcastic herself. And it had guys like Russell.
What if the mistake wasn’t coming here, but being blind to any of that?
What the Hell Have You Done, Sophie Roth? she thought to herself for the umpteenth time. But it felt different now. If she’d made a mistake, there was time to fix it. And more than that, she was looking forward to fixing it.
They unplugged all the Christmas lights and laid the candles out in a vaguely menorah-like shape on the ground. Sophie found Luba’s menorah and put it out, too. They lit the candles. Where there was darkness, now, a warm glow of light.
“Normally you’d say a prayer in Hebrew,” Sophie said. “But I kind of think we’re doing our own thing, right? So I’m going to offer my thanks to that dumb caroling concert tonight.”
“Okay then,” Russell said. “I offer mine to reindeer sweaters.”
Sophie chuckled. “To cars with butt warmers.”
“And butts in butt warmers.”
“To hash browns,” Sophie said.
“Don’t forget pie.”
“Pie with cheese.”
Russell pulled Sophie into his lap. He was tall and she could sit in the fold of his legs, her own legs crossed under her.
“To perfect fits,” Russell murmured.
“And imperfect fits,” Sophie said.
Sophie reached up to touch Russell’s lips, and he grasped her fingers, kissing them, one by one: thumb, index, middle, ring, pinky, and back again.
“To Ned Flanders,” Russell said.
“Oh, yes, a thousand times to Ned Flanders. We should devote the holiday to him,” Sophie said.
Russell lifted up her hair and kissed her on the bony ridge of her neck. She shivered. “To the Rolling Stones,” he murmured. At that moment, not even Mick Jagger could’ve sounded sexier.
“And not always getting what you want,” Sophie said.
“But sometimes getting what you need,” Russell said.
She kissed his lips then. They tasted of apples and cheese, of the revelation of things you never imagined going so well together. She tasted melting ice cream, too, melting defenses, herself melting into Russell.
She kissed him, not knowing if the kiss would go on for a minute, an hour, the whole night. She kissed him not knowing what would happen next semester, next year. But at the moment, none of that seemed to matter. The kiss was what mattered. Not just the kiss, but what the kiss said. What it unlocked. What the night unlocked. What they had unlocked.
Tomorrow would be different. Sophie understood this.
There really was no such thing as a minor miracle.
