My Oxford Year

“Have you read Middlemarch?” I blurt.

“No,” he answers, seeming relieved that I decided to speak, taking a breath and a sip of his champagne.

“First of all, you should. Secondly, there’s this one part,” I begin, but the server interrupts us, dropping down a plate of Thanksgiving. It’s a decent effort, but as Bentsen told Quayle in the 1988 vice-presidential debate, “I knew Jack Kennedy and, Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.” Yes, there’s turkey, but the potatoes are roasted reds. There’s a puddle of pink sauce with the consistency of mint jelly (the cranberry, I’m assuming?) slowly making friends with everything else on the plate, including some unidentifiable wet bread (stuffing?) and, of course, courgettes. Always with the courgettes in this country. It’s all topped off with a culturally incongruous bubble of Yorkshire pudding.

“Happy Thanksgiving,” Connor says, lifting his glass.

I lift mine and try to maintain eye contact. “Happy Thanksgiving.” We smile at each other. I put my glass down without drinking. It’s turning my stomach and I seem to have acquired a headache just by looking at it.

He cuts into his turkey. “So, Middlemarch?”

“Right! So, the book is, like, eight hundred pages and the main character has been in love—” Next to my plate, my phone rings. “Sorry. Thought I’d turned it off.” As I pick it up, I glance at the name on the screen. Mom.

Connor can see it, too. “Take it,” he says.

“It’s okay.”

“Ella, it’s your mother. It’s a national holiday. You’re not going to at least say hi? Really, I don’t mind.”

He thinks I’m not answering because I’m trying to be polite. He has no idea. Connor probably talks to his parents all the time. He probably sent them a Thanksgiving cornucopia. Great. Now I have to answer it.

“Hi, Mom.”

“Hi, honey!” she bleats, obviously surprised I picked up. There’s a suspended moment of silence. “Well, happy Thanksgiving!”

I tear off a piece of Yorkshire pudding and pop it in my mouth. “Happy Thanksgiving to you. Are you going to Aunt Mal’s today?”

“Yes, soon. And how are you? Are you celebrating Thanksgiving over there? You sound like you’re eating something.”

“I am. I’m eating turkey at a hotel in Mayfair. Which is a sentence I never thought I’d say.”

“You’re not all alone, are you?”

Her suddenly worried tone instantly grates. I look at Connor’s handsome head bent over his plate. “No, actually,” I answer, because what the hell, “I’m on a date.” Connor’s head lifts and he smiles at me.

“Ooh!” she exclaims, just-add-water excited. I can sense across an ocean all the questions lining up in her head. I never talk about my love life. If that’s what you’d even call it. “What’s his name, is he English, what—”

“His name is Connor, he’s American, he’s a doctor.” Connor raises a brow at the inaccuracy. I wave my hand; whatever, close enough.

“He sounds perfect,” Mom breathes. “I didn’t know you were seeing someone, El. You never tell me—”

“We’re not ‘seeing each other,’ Mom. Unless you mean naked.” Connor almost chokes on his champagne.

“Oh, for cripes sake.” Mom sighs, well acquainted with my irreverence. Of all the traits my mother possesses, prudery is actually, surprisingly, not one of them. She works in a medical office, after all.

“You know me. No strings, just sex.” Connor leans back in his chair with his champagne and a huge smile.

“Eleanor! That mouth of yours.”

“What a coincidence, he said the same thing last night!”

She tsks at me. “I know you’re just joshing, but you be nice to him. You know how you can be.”

Yes. I do. I hurt men. I leave men. I lead them on and then walk away. It’s a good thing I don’t love you crashes through my head like a buffalo stampede. I ignore it. As much as one can ignore a buffalo stampede. “He’s fine,” I grit, my mood souring. “He can handle himself.” A misplaced flash of anger directs itself at my mother, and I try to dial it back. It’s not fair to blame her. I’m twenty-four years old. I need to be over this.

The bubbly suddenly seems like a good idea, after all. I take a large sip and, lightening my tone, say, “Look, we’re both leaving at the end of the year, going our separate ways. It’s stupid to start a relationship.” I almost forget who I’m talking about, but Connor gives me a cheeky thumbs-up, like he heartily approves, and I try to smile.

“Well, don’t be afraid to make the most of it,” she lilts. I repress a sigh. Here comes the lesson. “It’s like that fella says. You know, ’Tis better to have lost your love—no, wait. What is it? ’Tis better to—”

She’s attempting poetry? Really? “‘’Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all,’ Mom.”

“Yes it is, yes it is. And he was right, too. Believe you me. I should know.” She goes quiet, then sighs. “The holidays always make it worse.” Her sudden sadness guts me. It also irritates me, which is unfair. I take another sip of champagne as she asks, “Who wrote that again?”

Who did write that? Before I can finish the thought, the answer comes to me, as does a tightness in my throat. I swallow the bubbly like gravel. “Tennyson. Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Mom.”

“Right, right. Listen, honey, I need to leave for Mal’s. They say it might snow and I don’t want to be on the road if it does. Say hi to Connor for me. I love you.”

“Love you, too,” I reply. I wish it weren’t so automatic a response, but I can honestly say it’s not a lie. I do love her. In my way. Whatever that is. However I love.

I hang up and look at the phone. “My mom says hi.”

We take a moment to regroup. We both take a few bites and eat in silence. Finally, Connor says, “So, an eight-hundred-page book that I have to read . . .”

“Right.” I take a breath. I could just drop it at this point, but something compels me to continue. “So, the main character’s been in love with this guy for basically all eight hundred pages, even though she was married to this other guy. Then that guy dies, but she still can’t be with the guy she’s always loved because her late husband put it in his will that if she marries him—he’s a starving-artist type—she’ll be destitute, because all the money her late husband left her would have to be forfeited.”

“What a dick,” Connor observes, forking a potato.

“You have no idea. But, finally, as the love of her life is about to walk away for the last time, Dorothea—that’s the girl—finally breaks down and decides, screw it, and leaves everything behind to be with him.”

“Why?”

I look at him. Why? “Because love.” Connor takes another bite. I can feel the rambling coming on. I’m powerless to stop it. “It’s raining and storming and he’s about to leave and she just starts sobbing. She realizes in that moment love has a cost. And she knows that she’s going to have to figure out what that cost is. And that’s exactly what Dorothea says. ‘I will learn what everything costs.’ End of chapter.”