Page 23 of Spectacular Things
New Haven
Yale is beautiful in the fall. The professors are brilliant.
The assigned reading is fascinating. And, as Mia tells Liz after her first full day on campus, not only are the meals insanely good but every bite tastes especially transcendent when enjoyed in the high-ceilinged and deeply historied dining halls.
Every time she leaves her dorm room in Silliman College, Mia feels like she’s stumbling into the opening number of a musical about the ideal learning environment. Or growing up. Or Connecticut foliage and Gothic architecture.
And yet, two weeks into her undergraduate career, Mia is convinced she should go home.
Texting with her mom between classes and talking each night on Liz’s drive back from Primo Bistro, Mia knows her time would be better spent ferrying Cricket to school and soccer so Liz could head straight from one job to the other.
Instead of contributing directly to her family’s success, Mia’s days on campus feel like sitting in a warm bath, navel gazing between classes, meals, and her part-time job in the archival library.
It’s so solitary— so easy —it feels wrong.
During office hours, Mia’s academic adviser insists her homesickness is normal.
“You’ve never been on your own before,” Dr. Peters says.
“Every first-year grapples with living independently, but trust me, you’ll settle in and realize you belong here.
” Mia fingers the moth hole on the hem of her sweater.
She’s too self-conscious to disagree with Dr. Peters, but the professor has misdiagnosed her.
Rather than a maiden voyage into independent living, college feels like reattaching the long-discarded training wheels of Mia’s youth—hot dinners she doesn’t need to shop for, prep, or cook; bathrooms she never has to clean; countless free hours to read or mull over homework that isn’t due for a week.
She can physically and academically meander in whichever direction she pleases because here at college, her wants are the only wants that matter.
The design of the curriculum is so intensely focused on each student’s individual performance that it strikes Mia as a breeding ground for narcissism.
“I’m here to connect with people I might not otherwise meet,” another first-year from Silliman says over dinner.
His name is Landon and, from the first day of the semester up until exactly now, he has come across as the fourth-generation legacy from Andover that he is.
But now, touched by this sentiment, Mia smiles at Landon, grateful for the reminder that engaging her intellectually-curious peers could and should be one of the most enriching pieces of college.
With a newfound fondness, Mia watches Landon dip a wedge of baguette into his crock of French onion soup. “Look, education as we know it is dead,” Landon says, scooping up a glob of Gruyère while simultaneously puncturing the hope in Mia’s chest. “We’re all just here to expand our networks.”
“Gross,” balks Nell, Mia’s roommate, from across the table. She half-jokingly accuses Landon of being part of the problem while allowing her eyes to linger on his mouth. The two of them hooked up last weekend and now there’s a detectable crackle of flirtation in their public discourse.
“What do you think, Mia?” Nell prods. “Is college just a four-year tutorial in douchebaggery?”
Mia stirs her tea in contemplative circles, thinking of the four students in her eighteen-person seminar who showed up to class this morning still reeking of whiskey.
One of those students shares a surname with the looming biology tower, and another is known for speeding through campus in a matte black Range Rover with the vanity plate SUCKIT .
When the inebriated party of four were kicked out five minutes into class, none of them seemed concerned.
In fact, they were overjoyed by the professor’s instruction to go sleep it off.
“I think it should be easier to get in and harder once you’re here,” Mia says. “And I think everyone should have to volunteer off-campus or be held accountable for something other than their own transcripts.”
“Really?” Nell asks, surprised. “That sounds a touch like socialism.”
“Of course we do stuff outside of class,” Landon says indignantly, pushing away his empty crock. “Otherwise, we wouldn’t have gotten in.”
“And I think we should have to clean our own bathrooms,” Mia adds, ignoring Landon’s point and instead thinking of the knotted clumps of hair Nell leaves on the wall of their shower.
“You’re an odd duck,” Landon says, tilting his head as if appraising Mia for the first time.
And with that, he and Nell stand up to clear their places, leaving Mia alone with her thoughts.
She doesn’t mind. Rather, Mia idles there for another thirty minutes because she is plagued by so much burdensome free time.
Three nights a week, Mia works in the often-forgotten archival library, which knowing students frequent for handsy make-out sessions.
Sitting behind the checkout desk, Mia gets paid to do her homework during these shifts—and to look the other way when a couple emerges from the stacks with swollen lips and flushed cheeks.
Except for the sporadic moans and gasps emanating from the back wall, Mia relishes the peace of the library.
At home, her sister is a clomping, yelling, singing, chewing, ranting human sound machine permanently set to shuffle.
Cricket needs the TV on to do homework, her pregame playlist blasting in the car before soccer, a podcast to fall asleep, and a P! nk song to destroy in the shower.
It took enrolling at a school with fifteen thousand strangers for Mia to find her sanctuary.
Here, in the underutilized archival library, Mia can concentrate without interference and becomes even more efficient with her time.
For the past two hours, she has read Dublin headlines for her world history seminar without a single interruption.
The professor had emphasized the use of primary sources, requiring a minimum of five for their upcoming paper.
But Mia enjoys the elite access to the periodicals and has skimmed at least fifteen different papers from the period.
After completing her research for class, Mia still has time to kill before her shift ends.
She stares at the magnifying glass on the computer screen.
Delving into a foreign past inspires Mia to research a far more local subject: her mother.
If primary sources can ground Mia in 1919 Dublin, what color will they provide of Elizabeth Lowe from Warren High School in 1999?
Mia types her mother’s name into the database’s search bar.
It begins as a hopeful expedition to see photos of Liz at Mia’s current age and read up on her storied, if blunted, soccer career. She unceremoniously taps Return with her pinky.
The documentation propagates immediately.
All the could-haves and should-haves and would-have-beens if not for Mia.
The proof is right here, pages of her mother’s life before Mia arrived to ruin it all.
Headlines compete for her attention but nothing pulls in Mia like her mother’s young, jubilant face, so she clicks on the first image that pops up, attached to an article from the Richmond Times-Dispatch .
She zooms in and leans forward to inspect the slightly blurred and discolored photograph from the late nineties.
There is her mom, front and center and grinning behind a state championship trophy, surrounded by her teammates.
Mia doesn’t realize she’s beaming as she stares at the monitor, already blindly feeling around for her phone to send a screenshot of the image to her mom and Cricket.
The photo is too fuzzy so she zooms out again when suddenly her stomach constricts.
It’s him.
Standing at the far edge of the photo with two other men, his hands tucked professionally behind his back, is the mustachioed man Mia instantly recognizes as her father. The caption beneath the photograph reveals his other identity: Coach Richard Quimby.
Just as it took living among fifteen thousand strangers for Mia to find a few hours of silence, it required moving several states away from her family for Mia to learn her mother’s secret.
There in the archival library, Mia stumbles upon the truth of her existence, and it’s too late to unsee how it all started because there heis.
Mia takes a long, slow inhale and counts to four in her mother’s voice.
During the morning training sessions of her childhood, Liz taught Mia how to breathe through any minor injury she incurred on the beach—slicing her foot on a rock, tweaking her ankle, breaking a fall with her face.
Mia exhales and waits to feel the sharp agony subside.
When it doesn’t, when the throbbing in her head and gut persists, she inhales and counts to four again, her mind reeling for an answer that doesn’t come.
Her father was her mother’s high school soccer coach.
Mia shouldn’t be here. Or rather, if the world were a better place, she wouldn’t be here.
Mia exes out of the state championship photo.
The headlines celebrating her mother’s talent stare back at her, but she is no longer interested.
Liz Lowe, the once-promising soccer player, no longer fascinates Mia.
Instead, she clicks on the Search bar and types “Richard Quimby + Warren High School Soccer Coach.” This time, her pinky hovers over the Return key.
She knows enough to fear what she’s about to learn, and still, it’s much worse:
High School Senior Alleges Sexual Relationship with Soccer Coach
Former Players Say Warren High School Ignored Sex Abuse Allegations
Three Women Accuse Soccer Coach of Inappropriate Conduct