October 1991

CREATIVE NONFICTION

by Amy Kroin

          When I was a senior in college my ex-boyfriend told me that if I didn’t get back together with him he would set himself on fire on my parents’ lawn.
         He told me this during our October break, when most students went home for the week. No one else on my floor was there. He had barricaded us in my dorm room.
         Sean had broken up with me twice before the separation stuck. At the end of freshman year he told me he wanted to split up and I begged him to reconsider. I loved him but it was more than that: I’d been so shy and inhibited around boys all through high school and was afraid I’d be alone again if Sean left.
         He loved me too but wanted someone who would smoke Camels with him and drink and stay out all night. I’d taken a solitary nauseated puff of a cigarette just to appease him and wasn’t allowed to drink: I’d had two seizures as a kid and my neurologist told me to avoid horseback riding, gymnastics, and alcohol. The first two prohibitions were easy to comply with; the third, not so much. But I was a good girl and a rule follower: I took fake sips from a red Solo cup at the few parties I attended, likely fooling no one. Plus I hated parties, preferring plays and musicals and movie nights.
         Sean was loving when it was just the two of us. But he almost always refused to hold my hand as we walked around campus. When I reached for him he’d say “pas de PDA,” a mangled French sentence translating as “No public displays of affection.”
         I shouldn’t have tried to change Sean’s mind, but I did, and he gave in almost right away. We had a tearful goodbye before our summer break. He lived clear across the country and took a Greyhound bus home. He was robbed at a stop outside Chicago and lost all of the button-downs, khakis, and shoes he’d saved up for from working forty hours a week all through high school. He’d wanted to appear rich in college, or at least middle class, when in fact his family lived in crushing poverty. He’d already dreaded his return home, and now he felt he would need to get two jobs just to compensate for what he’d lost. Even his underwear and socks were gone, save the extra pair of each he’d stuffed into his backpack along with some books, photographs, toothpaste, and a toothbrush.
         He wrote me pages and pages of letters. He sent me his dog-eared copy of Don Quixote. He called at all hours. Sometimes there would just be silence on the other end when I picked up, or ragged breathing, or the accusation: “You don’t love me.” This became the refrain after I told him I couldn’t visit him. He kept on asking and I kept on making excuses. Now that we were 3,000 miles apart I realized that I needed a break from his intensity.
         When we reunited that fall he said he was sorry, for everything. Then three months later he cheated on me with a friend of a one-time friend. He told me two days after the fact while we were lying in bed. After my breathing evened out—which happened some time after I’d screamed at him and cried and ripped posters from his walls—I asked if they’d had sex.
         He wouldn’t look at me. “Does it make a difference?” he asked.
         “Of course it makes a difference.”
         “No,” he said. “We just kissed and stuff.”
         “What does that mean?” I said. “Were you naked? Was she naked?”
         “Yes,” he said.
         “But you didn’t have sex?”
         “No,” he said.
         He was lying but I chose to believe him. I was so naive that I did believe him.
         Over spring break we stayed at a bed-and-breakfast in Vermont and skied down bunny slopes. He kissed me, cuddled me, free to show his affection when there was no one around to impress.
         On the ride up to school at the start of junior year Sean broke up with me again. After everything we’d been through I felt bereft at the prospect of him leaving me. I also felt humiliated since at least four people knew that he’d cheated on me, something I would conceal from my own friends for years. “Let’s wait,” I told Sean. “Let’s give it a few weeks.”
         A month later I stopped pleading with Sean to change his mind. We broke up for real, signing off on our relationship with a slow dance to some awful Billy Joel song. And after a few weeks I felt an all-encompassing sense of relief. I almost instantly developed a crush on someone else.
         Sean and I still slept together every now and then. We sat next to each other in art history. But I realized how foolish I’d been when I imagined we’d spend our whole lives together. We were far better as friends, or friends with benefits, a term that hadn’t been coined back in the early ’90s.
         When senior year began we were still living in the dorms, but separate ones. I’d stayed on campus for the October break to focus on the novel I was writing for my senior-comp seminar. I was working when Sean knocked on my door one day.
         He had that look I’d seen so many times before. Ordinarily outgoing and lively, Sean struggled with depression. There were times when he completely shut down. He didn’t drink more than once or twice a week, but when he did drink he often had trouble knowing when to stop. 
         I’d tried so many times to convince him to try therapy. I’d once managed to get him to go to the school counseling center, but he did it just to placate me. I accompanied him and told the therapist that I was worried about Sean, who kept his head down throughout the session and scuffed his shoe against the floor and gave the briefest of answers to any and all questions. He wasn’t trying to be difficult. He just had so much shame.
         So I recognized that look on his face that October afternoon. “What’s wrong?” I said.
         He came into my room, shut the door. He didn’t say anything at first. I noticed his hands were shaking.
         “I shouldn’t have broken up with you,” he said.
         I tried to hide my surprise. “No,” I said. “You were right.”
         “I want to get back together.”
         “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
         “Why not?”
         Because you cheated on me, I thought. Because I don’t love you that way anymore.
         “Because I like Henry,” I said, naming my latest crush.
         It felt like the simplest excuse.
         By this point we were sitting on my bed, facing each other, inches apart. “If you don’t get back together with me I’m going to set myself on fire on your parents’ lawn.”
         My brain fixated on the location: my parents’ lawn. It was the easiest part of the sentence to absorb. My parents, or at least my mom, had always liked Sean. She knew he’d had a difficult childhood and it made her want to take care of him.
         “I can’t get back together with you,” I said.
         “Then I’m not leaving your room until you change your mind,” he said. 
         Sean had never threatened me before. His depression had scared me, but only because it made me worry about him. “I can’t get back together with you,” I said.
         Without another word, Sean got up and locked the door.
         Sean was in my room for three and a half days. There’s so much I don’t remember about this time. I know we must have gone to the dining hall together, but I don’t recall the specifics. Did we eat without talking? Did he try to stop me from telling anyone what was going on?
         And then there was Michelle, one of my best friends. At the outset of the break we’d had dinner together every night. But I know we weren’t in contact during this time. 
         I don’t even remember if Sean slept in my bed during those three and a half days. I don’t know if I’ve blocked all of these details out or if it’s just a simple failure to remember.
         Then there are things I can’t forget. There were no gender restrictions on the restrooms in our dorms, and Sean would come with me whenever I needed to use the bathroom. And every time we returned to my room he’d lock the door.
         I know I tried during those three and a half days to get him to talk, to help me understand what was going on for him. It felt like something had happened to push him to this point, but I had no idea what.
         One morning I got up to take a shower. For whatever reason Sean decided to let me go on my own. He tugged on the belt of my robe as I made my way to the door. He didn’t say anything but it felt like a warning to me.
         I can still see the expression he wore when I got to the restroom and turned to look at him: He was so watchful, so unsmiling, so unlike the boy I’d fallen in love with. 
         I went inside and counted to twenty. Then I peered out into the hall. He’d gone back into my room, and I knew I had maybe seconds to make my escape. 
         I ran up to the third floor and picked up the hall phone to call Michelle. The line was dead, which never happened. I ran up to the fourth floor and picked up the phone: same thing. I couldn’t believe it. I felt like I was in a horror movie.
         I ran to the other end of the floor and picked up the phone there. Finally: a dial tone.
         Michelle picked up on the third ring, sleep fogging her voice. I raced through an explanation of what was going on and asked if I could come over. I don’t think I even waited for a response. I knew I didn’t have any time to waste.
         I ran as fast as I could down four flights of stairs, my flip-flops smacking against the steps. I was so afraid that I’d come across Sean at every turn. I was so afraid that he’d hear me running, that he’d force me to go back to my room.
         When I got to the ground floor I decided to go out the back door, which faced the quad. It was risky because my room had the same view. But I’d also be in a more public part of campus.
         It was just past 7 on a Wednesday morning, a time of day when few people were ever out and about. And because it was break, the quad was completely deserted. Michelle’s dorm was a good ten minutes away. When I was in elementary school I was always one of the fastest kids in my grade. I was in good shape but I hadn’t run like that in years.
         I sprinted through the quad, my flip-flops nearly snagging on the roots of a maple tree. I braced myself for the sound of Sean’s footsteps but didn’t hear anything. I ran past the dining hall and down the wooded path that led to Michelle’s dorm.
         I darted up the steps and flung open the door. I can only imagine how I looked.
         Michelle was waiting for me. She hugged me and I started to cry. 
         We decided to call Jocelyn Olmstead, the director of residential life, for help in getting Sean out of my room. Her office technically wasn’t open until 9 but there was a 24-hour emergency number.
         Michelle and I met Jocelyn on the sidewalk outside my dorm. She was universally disliked simply because she always refused to budge when students complained about dorm assignments or roommate conflicts. But now she was like a superhero to me. “I need to know,” she said, “if you were in any danger. If you felt personally at risk.”
         It was an impossible question to answer. Was I afraid that Sean would hurt me physically? No. But there was the simple fact that he’d trapped me in my own dorm room. “I don’t know,” I said. “Most of the time I was more afraid for him.”
         When we opened the front door we discovered Sean pacing there in the lobby. “Sean,” Jocelyn said. “I’d like to talk to you about what’s been going on.”
         He looked at me and I could tell he felt betrayed. He didn’t say anything.
         “Let’s go up to Amy’s room so you can grab your things,” Jocelyn said.
         Michelle held my hand tight as they walked away. They were back downstairs minutes later, Sean’s backpack hooked over one shoulder. He strode right past me toward the door, refusing to meet my eyes.
         “Wait,” Jocelyn said. “I’d like to talk to you about how you’ve been feeling.”
         He didn’t listen. He just left.
         And in that moment, I didn’t care. I was just relieved that it was over.
         I spent the rest of the day with Michelle. She knew I needed a distraction, so we hung out in her room watching tapes of old General Hospital episodes. We ordered a pizza for dinner so I wouldn’t have to worry about bumping into Sean in the dining hall. She walked me back to my room at night and I locked my door as soon as I got inside.
         There was a message on my answering machine. “You didn’t have to get Jocelyn involved,” Sean said. Then there was a long pause before he hung up.
         Even after everything Sean had put me through I couldn’t help but worry about him. I couldn’t stop thinking about his threat. I called my parents to tell them what had happened and my father’s prescription was blunt and to the point. “He should be on Prozac,” he said. My father coped with depression and had been on the medication since it was introduced. It was 1991, three years away from the publication of Elizabeth Wurtzel’s memoir Prozac Nation. Antidepressants weren’t yet ubiquitous. I knew my father was right and I also knew that Sean would never consider going on any kinds of meds.
         I took to locking my door whenever I left my room, even if it was for a trip to the restroom. I immersed myself in my writing. I didn’t feel I could relax until the break ended and everyone returned to campus.
         After classes resumed I came back to my room to another message from Sean. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Amy, I’m so sorry.” I think we both felt the weight of that apology. He’d asked me to forgive him so many times before.
         The next phone call I got from him came a couple of weeks later. He had become friends with a classmate named Anna near the start of the semester, and he told me that the two of them had just returned from a weekend in Manhattan, where they’d stayed at a pricey hotel on his dime. I couldn’t begin to imagine how he would pay the bill. But he sounded happy. He told me that he and Anna were together now, and he hoped the three of us could grab a meal sometime.
         When we hung up I cried, mainly from relief but also because this meant our relationship was finally, finally over. 
         After that we became friends again. I liked Anna and was so grateful that Sean had shifted his attentions to her. And as the year progressed I spent more and more time with my other friends, seeing Sean less and less.
         The last time I saw Sean was a few weeks before I moved to Massachusetts for graduate school. He had moved to a studio in the city that he couldn’t afford right after commencement. I was reading in my childhood bedroom when I heard someone call my name. And there he was, on my parents’ front lawn.
         I went outside and he asked me if I wanted to take the train back to Grand Central with him and spend the afternoon at the Frick, the mansion-turned-museum on East 70th Street. I wondered why he hadn’t just called to invite me but didn’t think anything of it.
         He seemed happy that day, nearly as happy as he’d been the day we’d graduated. We spent a couple of hours at the museum and had dinner before I headed back home. I felt like we were entering a new stage in our relationship, a mature stage.
         On the evening of Bill Clinton’s election I was watching returns when the phone rang. It was Anna. I didn’t know how she’d gotten my number but as soon as I heard her voice I knew something was wrong. She told me that Sean had died by suicide the night before.
         I had spoken to him just two days prior to his death, right before I was headed out on a date with the man who would become the love of my life. I almost didn’t answer the phone. It was a quick conversation, maybe ten minutes. There was nothing to suggest that he was hurting.
         Sean lasted a year after he threatened to die on my parents’ lawn. Sometimes I wonder if he’d be alive if he’d given therapy a chance, or if he’d been on medication.
         Sometimes I wonder if he’d be alive if he’d managed to snag a good job, or if he’d been living with housemates instead of all alone in a tiny midtown studio. He was so proud that he’d found an apartment in a building with a doorman.
         But maybe it was an impulse. There was no note.
         He had spent his life craving an escape. He’d majored in economics and interned at the Federal Reserve purely to boost his job prospects when really he’d wanted to immerse himself in the classics: Sophocles and Euripides and Aeschylus. He wanted to put as much distance between himself and his childhood and adolescence as possible.
         When he asked me out in the fall of 1988 he had filled my dorm room with dozens of red and pink balloons and taped up a giant sign emblazoned with the question “Will you go to the fall formal with me?” A bouquet of roses filled a wine bottle. Taped to the ribbon of a Mylar balloon was a card. “If your answer is yes, let the balloon float out of the window. If your answer is no, puncture the balloon like it’s my heart and let it fall down to me.”
         I looked outside. There he was in the quad, looking up. It all seemed so romantic. It was what I had wanted for so long, for someone to woo me, for someone to want me. I pushed up the window and let the balloon sail away.