The Shape of Family Read online

  “As I recall, you’re already doing quite well in my class. You want to bump your A to an A-plus?” He smiled at her as he slid his pencil behind his ear.

  “Well, I . . . it’s less about the grade, I guess. I’m just looking for some way to get more involved on campus, and I’ve always loved plant science, environmental science. I helped my biology teacher with projects in high school. I thought you might have some ideas?”

  Dr. Choi reclined in his chair and studied her for a few moments. “Yes, in fact, I do,” he said at last. “I cross-teach in the Environmental Science Department, and I usually ask a few students to work in our Botany Lab over there. Four hours a week for a half-unit of credit. Some students do it their whole four years. Sound interesting to you?”

  “Yes, it does.” Karina smiled, feeling the first ray of sunshine in weeks.

  When she showed up at the Botany Lab the following Friday as instructed, a half-dozen other students were there. Dr. Choi matched Karina with Claire, an effortlessly pretty freshman from Pasadena, and tasked them with grafting stems for a hybrid breed of tomatoes. Karina hadn’t worked with vegetables since her mother gave up gardening four years ago, but she recalled intuitively how to pluck suckers from tomato plants, and the earthy scent on her hands felt good and familiar.

  Claire was bubbly and talkative, and when they finished up, she proposed that the whole group go out to a Thai restaurant, where they drank beer and shared heaping bowls of noodles and curries. The other lab kids, four girls and two guys, were all science majors of some kind. They were studious; their workload was heavy and their tastes fairly tame. Claire, who seemed like she could be friends with anyone, for some reason took Karina under her wing and invited her along everywhere. Outside the Botany Lab, the group studied together, ordered pizza to their dorm rooms, and occasionally went to a keg party, but rarely had more than a couple of beers. So, it was at the lab that Karina found her first group of friends.

  It was nice to have the companionship of a social pack, a group of people to travel with on the large campus. Karina finally felt as if she had a place to be, without awkwardly looking around at everyone else. She felt her old sense of confidence returning. Karina shared the bare minimum about her family life with her new friends: she was an only child, her parents divorced when she was in high school, her dad was a banker who worked a lot, her mom stayed home. All these facts were accurate. It was not the truth, but it was enough to satisfy her friends.

  They were all now discovering, at eighteen, the people they wanted to be, unconstrained by who they’d been before. Karina held out hope that she too could be someone new, that she might have a fresh start.

  20 | karina

  JANUARY 2014

  Karina laid eyes on James as soon as she entered the first session of the Environmental Policy seminar, a class intended only for upperclassmen, which she’d had to lobby her adviser to take. James was sitting in the far-right corner of the rectangular table, a goatee and John Lennon glasses camouflaging his youthful face. As the professor explained how the seminar would work, she stole glances at him, conveniently seated in front of the room’s only clock.

  The seminar would culminate in a group project to be presented at the end of the semester. The professor encouraged them to form groups that reflected different disciplines and strengths. Karina looked around the room and wondered if it had been a mistake to push so hard to be there. What did she have to offer her classmates other than one semester of basic college courses? She glanced up at the clock, and John Lennon caught her eye and gave her a small lopsided smile. When her stomach lurched, she knew she would stay in the class, no matter how unprepared she felt.

  The day of the next class, Karina spent twenty minutes choosing her outfit and another twenty minutes blow-drying her unruly wave of hair. She still arrived at the classroom five minutes early and was pondering where to sit when a voice behind her made her jump. “Decided to come back, huh?”

  She turned around to find herself eye to chin with John Lennon. “Yeah. Why wouldn’t I?” she asked, sounding more defensive than she intended.

  He raised an eyebrow and the corner of his mouth curled into the beginning of a smile. “It’s a tough seminar. Some people drop after the first class. I’m glad you didn’t.” The smile spread across his perfectly shaped lips. “I’m James, by the way.”

  She held her palm up and made a stupid little wave. “I’m Karina.” Then she walked around to the middle of the table and took a seat, and James sat down next to her.

  His scent was pure, clean—soap mixed with fresh cut grass. From the corner of her eye, she saw that he wore hiking shoes, athletic socks, khaki shorts and a worn, soft-looking red T-shirt with a faded logo. Distracted, she barely noticed when the professor asked them to form groups. The girl on the other side of James turned to him and Karina’s heart started to fall, but she tapped James on the shoulder. “Hey, you guys mind if I join you?”

  James’s face broke into a wide smile. “I was just about to ask you the same thing. I’m a poli sci major and Sophie’s econ.”

  “Perfect. I’m enviro sci,” Karina said, though she was technically still undeclared.

  They decided to meet at the library two evenings a week. Outside of those meetings, Karina daydreamed about James, imagining his fingers in her hair as he kissed her. She was sure he could see right through her attempts to sound intellectual. One evening, after Sophie left early for a sorority meeting, Karina and James stayed until the library closed at 10:00 p.m. James had his bicycle but she was on foot, so he offered to walk her home. Their discussion along the way drifted away from the seminar, to his summer plans to hike and repair the Pacific Crest Trail, and hers to work at an organic farming co-op in Ecuador. In the darkness across the street from her dorm, James held his bike steady with one hand, and leaned down and touched his lips to hers. Karina immediately felt goosebumps rise on her skin, and a sharp, tingling sensation on her tongue, zapping down to her stomach. She put out a hand to steady herself on his bike frame and wobbled it instead. The bike crashed toward them, digging a gash into Karina’s leg. She yelped in pain before trying to regain her composure.

  “Oh, no. I’m so sorry.” James knelt to the ground to look at her wound. “That’s pretty deep. You have to clean and bandage it well. I’ll come in and help you.”

  “No, that’s okay.” Karina, humiliated, forced a smile. “I’ll be fine.” She limped off by herself into the night, feeling as awkward and unlovable as James had now seen her to be. There wasn’t a single bandage in her room; she was too superstitious to have any of her old supplies around. Stephanie went to the residence assistant to borrow the first aid kit, then cleaned and bandaged Karina’s wound.

  “Wow, girl.” Stephanie smiled. “Where I come from, if you come back from a date with blood on you, we send a posse out for the guy.”

  “It wasn’t a date.” Karina grimaced as she climbed into bed. Her phone buzzed with a text message from James: Hope you’re feeling better ☺. Despite the pulsating, searing pain through her leg, she felt a flutter of excitement.

  * * *

  The next morning, when Karina was leaving for class, James was standing in the same place she’d left him the night before.

  “Still hurts, huh?” He grimaced as he saw her hobbling across the street.

  “It’s not bad,” she lied.

  “Liar.” He pushed his bike alongside her on the sidewalk. “Well, at least we’ll have a good story to tell one day.” His smile sent something warm flowing through her body. As they parted ways on campus, he said, “Dinner Friday?”

  “Sure,” Karina said. “Should we ask Sophie?”

  James paused before stepping onto his bike. “No, just us.”

  * * *

  On Friday evening James picked her up, walked her to his car and opened her door. She assumed they would go to one of the casual places just off campus, but he drove them downtown to a nice Italian restaurant where they were the younges
t patrons by at least a decade. He smiled at her in the yellow glow of the candlelight warming the table. “You look nice,” he said, admiring the dress she’d spent an hour picking out from Claire’s closet.

  “Thanks, so do you,” she said reflexively.

  “No, I mean it,” James said, holding her eyes with his, not looking away when it was uncomfortable for her. “You really look beautiful.”

  Karina felt herself flush and gave him a genuine smile before looking down at her menu.

  Over salads and pasta, James told her about his family. He and two brothers had grown up outside San Diego, in a pleasant suburb called Carlsbad. His father was a patent attorney with a big firm, and his mother was a special education teacher. She taught at the high school James and his brothers had attended and drove them all together. James described how embarrassing it was to be hanging out with his buddies, worrying his mother might walk by. Karina sympathized, but really she wondered if it would be that bad to have your mother so present in your daily life that she wouldn’t miss anything, much less everything. James’s older brother had followed in their father’s footsteps and was attending his first year of law school at UCLA. His younger brother surfed obsessively, and alternately threatened to drop out of high school or join the Marines instead of going to college. James spoke about his brothers fondly and referred in passing to their family vacations skiing or camping. The fabric of his life was clearly solid without holes in the center, without even so much as fraying at the edges.

  When it was her turn to talk about her family, Karina said she’d had a brother who’d passed away when he was young, and she didn’t like talking about it. James looked sympathetic and didn’t ask for more. She felt comfortable with him, despite their differing backgrounds, or perhaps she loved his world so much, she longed to be part of it. That night, when he walked her to the door, patient with her slow pace, he kissed her again, longer this time.

  The next morning, Karina woke early, desperate to talk to someone about the night before. It was Stephanie’s one day to sleep late, so Karina crept into the hallway to call Izzy on the East Coast. It turned out that Izzy was dating someone too, a med student from Spain.

  “Alvaro studies all the time, like literally every waking hour, so he’s a good influence on me. And I make sure he takes study breaks.” Izzy giggled.

  Karina then recounted every detail of her evening with James. “And the kiss . . .”

  “Well? Does he kiss as well as he talks?” Izzy teased.

  “No.” Karina paused. “Better.” They dissolved into laughter for a few moments. “But I don’t know, Izzy . . .”

  “Why, what’s the problem? He sounds perfect for you!” Izzy said.

  Karina knew something was holding her back, her fear that she didn’t really deserve someone like James. He didn’t truly know her, and if he did, he might not feel the same way. “I haven’t told him everything. You know, my family and stuff.”

  “Well, you just met,” Izzy said. “Give it time. Do it when you’re comfortable.” When Karina didn’t respond, Izzy continued. “K, it’ll be fine, trust me.”

  Karina spent the rest of the weekend alone, not even responding to Claire’s calls to join the group for dinner. She went running, read, ate by herself and wrote in her journal. By Sunday night, she’d made the conscious decision to allow herself to fall in love with James, to trust him. She fell hard, free-falling, weightless and airy, with all the courage it took to believe she would not hit the ground.

  * * *

  As a junior, James lived off campus in an apartment he shared with a friend. On weekends, Karina spent afternoons with him lying on his luxuriously double-sized futon or on the small, grassy hillside behind the complex, studying, reading books or just talking. They went to the farmers’ market, bought fresh strawberries that dripped sugary juice down their chins, warmed up frozen organic pizzas in the oven for dinner, tossed salads with bottled vinaigrette. Karina loved playing house, falling asleep in James’s arms at night and waking in his bed in the morning.

  Karina had told James she was a virgin in an awkward exchange not long after they met, when he’d surprised her by slipping his hand down her pants while they were kissing on his bed. “What?” he asked softly as she turned away, uncomfortable. “No one’s ever done that to you before?” She shook her head and felt his chin on her shoulder from behind, his arms wrapped around her.

  “It’s okay,” she whispered. “It’s just . . . I haven’t done . . . that.” And then, like an idiot, thinking he didn’t understand her, she felt the need to explain further. “I’m still a virgin.”

  He kissed her hair, her ear, her neck. “Yeah. I thought so,” he said, and she felt her heart sink, her lack of worldliness exposed.

  Then he whispered softly into her ear, “Me too.”

  James explained how he’d never had a serious girlfriend before. “Of course, my parents told me to wait until marriage, and there were years sitting in church, hearing about sin. Now I figure, I’ve waited this long, the first time should be special.” He leaned down and kissed her ear again. “With someone special. Like you.”

  Karina’s reasons for remaining a virgin didn’t have much to do with morality. She certainly could have found a way to lose her virginity in high school at one of those weekend parties when her parents weren’t paying attention. Joanie Teager had been so desperate to “get it over with” that she lost her cherry in the back seat of her parents’ Lexus sedan. “Those leather seats were so annoyingly sticky,” she had said to Karina and Izzy later, leaving the impression that was the most lasting impact of the whole experience. “I mean, I had to peel my ass off of there afterwards.”

  Now, Karina felt justified in waiting. All those awkward school dances when she didn’t have someone to hang on to, cute Kyle Derrick with his exploring hands at that party—something had held her back all those times, and she’d thought she was just a prude or self-conscious. But now she knew why she’d waited, and it was worth it.

  * * *

  On the Monday morning after that weekend, two months after James had first walked her home from the library, Karina made an appointment at the Student Health Center, from which she left with a nondescript paper bag containing her first four weeks of the birth control patch. In her dorm room, after showering, Karina stared at her naked figure in the mirror and contemplated where to apply the patch. It seemed like a monumental decision. Her only other such rite of passage had been starting her period at age thirteen, three months before Prem died.

  Karina had been terrified when she’d first seen the blood on her panties in the school bathroom that day, then excited, then terrified again. She was uncomfortable all day, with a wad of toilet paper jammed between her legs. When Mom came home that evening, she sat with Karina on her bed and matter-of-factly showed her how to wrap the wings of a pad around a clean pair of aqua blue panties from her dresser. Mom whisked away the dirty panties and scrubbed them clean, then stocked the bathroom vanity with boxes of pads in various sizes. Karina returned to school the next day reassured, grateful for her mother.

  The supply of liners and pads under the bathroom sink lasted six months. By then, her mother had retreated to Prem’s room for her daily prayer and meditation sessions, and she could not be reached for anything—not for something important, like where they would scatter Prem’s ashes, so certainly not for something as mundane as Karina’s dwindling supply of feminine products. By then, the casseroles and pies from neighbors and colleagues were depleted, and Karina and her dad were making weekly trips to the store on Sunday nights. They fell into the habit of stocking up for easy-to-prepare meals: cereal and milk for breakfast, turkey or peanut butter sandwiches for lunch, frozen lasagnas and pizzas for dinner.

  Karina had to give Dad credit for trying to make the new weekly ritual fun for her. He would send her off to buy whatever she wanted for breakfast and didn’t care if she came back from the bakery with frosted pastries, which Mom would have scoffed
at. On one such expedition, Karina ducked into the pharmacy section for a box of feminine pads and stowed it in the cart under the glazed donuts. Though she was certain Dad saw it, he never said anything. Not then, not later when she put it on the conveyor belt at the checkout, and not when she pulled it out of the grocery bag at home and took it to her room. Nor did he say anything when Karina bought pink Gillette Daisy razors and shaving cream (the same brand Izzy’s mom had chosen for her) and baby fresh deodorant in the months to come.

  Staring at herself in the mirror now, it was hard to believe five years had passed since then. She traced her fingers lightly over her inner thigh, where her smooth skin held no visible memory of the cuts they used to bear. She peeled the clear backing off the matchbook-sized patch, shaded to match someone else’s skin color, and pressed it onto the right cheek of her ass. Cheers, Joanie Teager, she thought.

  * * *

  Karina waited a few days to tell James, enjoying her secret in the interim. The next time they were together, she allowed him to remove all her clothes down to her panties and bra. Their kissing had grown more passionate, their touching more desperate, and it felt unnatural to stop short of where both their bodies wanted to go.

  Karina had mistakenly thought that she would immediately be protected by the force shield of the patch, not realizing it would take a full month for the birth control to become effective. At first, it didn’t seem so long—after all, she’d waited nineteen years for this, what was thirty more days?—but now, feeling James’s hot breath on her neck, his hands on her hips, it felt impossible. She took his hand and guided it to the patch. He pulled his head back a little. “What’s this?” he whispered as his fingertips encircled the outer edge of it, sending a tantalizing shiver down Karina’s leg.

  She smiled at him, suddenly feeling shy. “Birth control patch.”

  James’s eyes grew bigger and an incredulous smile spread across his face. “Really?”

  “Really,” she said, meeting his eyes. “I’m ready too.”