In stark contrast to spring of my junior year, so far fall of my senior year was high-gloss-college-marketing-pamphlet perfection. Six months before, Quinn and I lay on my bed in our shared dorm room, her hand resting over my own, marking where there was no longer an embryo. The collection of cells of a mini me and Porter was gone. It’s not that Porter and I hadn’t imagined what a version of a little bit of me and a little bit of him would mix together to become. We had. But it was in that way one thinks about something so far off in the future and wholly unimaginable that it’s not threatening to talk about it. What do you want your house to look like when you’re a grown-up? If you won the lottery, what would be the first thing you would buy? How many kids do you want, and what would you name them? Being an only child, I wanted two. Porter said he wanted our children to have his athletic ability, not mine. We had both laughed and then agreed on that one.
But that was our future thirtysomething selves talking, so when I found out that my twenty-year-old self was pregnant, I knew I was never going to have the baby, and I knew the only children Porter cared about were his little sister, Rose, and the ones who showed up inthe copy ofDavid Copperfieldhe was devouring. There was no reason anyone, other than Quinn, needed to know I was pregnant.
Quinn and I made my appointment at Planned Parenthood for a Friday afternoon so I would have the weekend to recover. She told Charles and Porter we were taking a first load of things up to New York for summer break that was starting in a month, and we holed up in our room with a packed mini fridge and sleeves of Chips Ahoys, Oreos, and Fig Newtons. Quinn told me I could wear her favorite lavender wrap dress with a bird pattern on it to the appointment, asserting that it was important to look pretty heading into an ugly situation.
From leaving our dorm room to returning to it, only two hours passed, but I felt years older. Even though the cramping that kept me in the fetal position Friday afternoon and evening subsided by Saturday morning, Quinn stayed true to her word and remained locked in our dorm room with me until Monday. As we walked out our door to class, we were all talked out. But we locked eyes and knew our gaze meant one thing:It’s over, and we shall never speak of it again.And true to that lingering moment, we never did.
With the last of the autumn foliage dancing in the wind, Porter played incredibly, catching three touchdown passes thrown by Charles to clinch a win for the last home competition of the season. It was also the last home game of Charles’s and Porter’s college football careers and left Princeton tied for first place in the Ivy League. With our noses running, Quinn and I screamed and jumped and hugged one another, both in excitement and to beat the cold. Rather than run into the roar of his hyped-up teammates’ chest-bumping one another, I watched Porter clench his stomach and slowly amble off the field.
“Ready?” Quinn asked me, nodding for us to head out of Palmer Stadium. Before the game, Quinn and I had told Charles and Porter that we would meet up with them later that night at a party at our eating club, Cottage. After two winning seasons, we were bored of the hours of post-play-breakdown talk and reliving passes, completed or not, but the subject never grew old among the tight circle of seniorfootball players. Men can talk about a football game longer than women can talk about, well, anything.
“I think I need to check on Porter; something’s off,” I said, and pointed at him walking alone in the opposite direction of the sweaty throng of athletes on the field pogo-jumping in celebration, no one bouncing higher than Charles.
“He’s probably heading to the library,” Quinn only half joked, elbowing me. Both of us knew my boyfriend well. Porter was praised by his teammates and coaches for giving his all during every practice, every weight session, every game, every season, with his whole heart and physicality. But he preferred to spend his scant free time in the library stacks rather than competing with his fellow athletes to determine who could kick up and hold a keg stand the longest. With our senior thesis in full swing, I knew what others could not see: Porter was more focused on examining the conflict of man versus self in Homer’sThe Odysseyto present to his thesis panel than on bringing home another Ivy League championship.
Anyone watching Porter run and catch on the field would assume that was what he was meant to do. His feet were fast and intuitive, moving his body right to where it needed to be to receive the perfect spiral from Charles. While Porter deftly played the part of athletic marvel among his teammates and, frankly, the entire Ivy League, he treated football as his portal to his first love: a life of the mind. The field, for Porter, was the price to pay to live a quiet life between the pages of great literature. And because he did both sports and studies with such reserved grace and commitment, he was spared the ribbing by his teammates for not joining in on all the post-practice meals and weekend parties. Porter could explain without condescension that he needed to manage the distractions from his singular purpose and what he saw as a rare gift: a Princeton education. It also meant that it was easy for me to find him on campus.
“He’s a hot nerd, but a nerd,” Quinn added, smiling at me. “You two were made for each other.” This was a proclamation Quinn had stated frequently.
“I’m not a nerd,” I protested, running my hands down the requisite Ivy League student uniform of an L.L.Bean midthigh puffy jacket and duck boots. Plus, for my twenty-first birthday, my mom had finally agreed to let me get my hair highlighted for the first time, after years of begging, and I thought it looked pretty college-campus Cindy Crawford.
“Really? What’s in your jacket pocket?” I instinctively slapped my hand over my side. “Exactly,” Quinn laughed. “I can see the outline of whatever book you have to finish over the weekend for class. Anyway, I’m headed to the painting studio; I have no interest in listening to Charles and all those meatheads relive the whole season. Snore. Plus, I’m going to have a major hangover tomorrow after tonight’s party, so not much productive work will get done Sunday. I like to call it planning ahead.”
“’K. I’m going to wait for Porter outside Caldwell; then I have to lead my editorial meeting in an hour. Dinner at TI?”
“Yep, and I get to wear the pink Limited sweater tonight; you got it last weekend.” The past few years, Quinn and I had taken to combining wardrobes to maximize our mix-and-match style possibilities, which skewed in my favor. As generous as Quinn was, it was not always easy to be friends with her. Beauty was one of her defining qualities. Beer-and-pizza weight had somehow missed her, as had the summers of starvation to shed the resulting puffiness and bloating. Her hours of hiding in the art studios yielded faculty critiques that leaned more toward praise than appraisal. My best friend lived in a rare, blessed world where nothing ever went wrong. And she was genuinely nice. At an age and place where everyone was judging—looks, clothes, grades, future prospects—Quinn was the least judgy of all. She, more than any of us, admired Porter for unapologetically knowing exactly who he was at a time when most of us were trying on multiple personas.
I waited for Porter outside Caldwell Fieldhouse, leaning against the wall, hoping to shield myself from the whipping wind. I stood around for over thirty minutes, but Porter never surfaced. Annoyed, I walked toall of Porter’s favorite studying spots in Firestone Memorial Library, but he was nowhere to be found. I leaned in toward her good ear and asked Louise, the ancient, omnipresent librarian who had an inappropriate crush on Porter, if she had seen him. She said no but asked me to please tell him that she had Kafka’s three novels he had requested on hold for him at her desk.
I swung by the dining room nearest Porter’s dorm, but when I got there, I realized it wasn’t open. There was no use in checking any of the places around campus to buy food; Porter only ate in the dining halls or at his and Charles’s eating club, Cap and Gown. Regardless of his hunger, in Porter’s mind buying food when we were already on a meal plan was a waste of money. Porter’s ability to wait out a protesting belly in favor of judicious spending was impressive. He wasn’t ever cheap, particularly when insisting on paying when we went out on dates, but rather discerning and self-controlled in his spending as well as his time.
With the sun waning and the bite of nighttime nipping at my face, hunched inside my jacket like a turtle, I shuffled to the room Porter shared with Charles and knocked in rapid succession. Porter called, “Come in,” which was unlike him, his ingrained Southern manners typically prompting him to open the door with a welcoming expression and one of his soapy-scented hugs.
Porter lay on the bed with his dog-eared copy ofThe Odysseyon his chest, his eyes closed. Watching from the doorway, I noticed that his breathing was labored, and I detected a tiny wince every time he exhaled.
“Hey, Callie,” Porter said, measured, slower than his usual drawl. “How’d you know I was here?”
“I didn’t.” I pouted while untying my boots, bothered from my frigid campus scavenger hunt for him when all the time he was here. “I waited for you outside Caldwell after the game. Where’d you go?”
Ignoring my question, Porter directed, “Lie down here with me for a minute.” Not opening his eyes, Porter shifted his body over six inches,his left arm holding on to his stomach but extending his right arm for me to snuggle into.
Seriously, now he wanted to get busy? Could he not hear in my tone that I was irritated with him? Senior year I had earned myself the coveted position of news editor at theDaily Princetonian, and I was now officially late for my editorial board meeting because of Porter’s disappearing act.
“O-okay,” I stuttered, tucking into Porter’s arm, not wanting to aggravate whatever was causing him pain. I didn’t see Porter get hit or tackled particularly hard, and his agility, a marvel to me, never faltered. Nor did he get sidelined for an injury, so I wasn’t sure what was going on.
“Did anyone see you waiting for me?” he asked, cracking one eye open. It was a strange question. The whole team was used to seeing us together.
“I don’t think so.” Truth was, I didn’t really know.
“Coaches?”
“I don’t know, Porter, but who cares if they did? Football season is almost over, and you’re a senior.”
“Good. There was an NFL scout there today, and Coach wants me to meet up with him later tonight. I don’t want anything to seem out of the ordinary.” This was the first time in our relationship that I had heard Porter mention the NFL. A time or two, I had hung around while Porter kept Charles company watching a New York Giants game, but I thought it was more in support of Charles and his devotion to his childhood team than any real interest in joining the league itself.
“You want to play in the NFL? Seems a bit out of left field for an English major.” I don’t know what I thought Porter would become after he humored my father and his offers to introduce him to friends who had made their fortunes in finance at J.P. Morgan, Bear Stearns, and Goldman Sachs. I guessed a professor, given his love of academia and solitude, but I hadn’t heard him mention playing football afterPrinceton. Had I wrongly assumed the game was a means for him to be at Princeton, not the other way around?
“It’s good money.” Again, I was shocked. Porter, interested in money? He never discussed it with me, so I didn’t realize its potential importance in his post-college decision.
