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“Thank you so much,” I tell her.
And then we dig in.
The noise I make as I bite into my clam roll is damn near sexual, but I can’t help myself. Carter catches my eyes as he bites into his lobster roll, and in a show of solidarity, lets out a groan of his own.
I try to keep the smile off my face, but mouth full of food, and ketchup caught in the corner of my lips, I sit there and grin like an idiot at him. He grins right back.
For a moment, it feels like it used to between us: bright and warm, like the feeling between us is something magical and pure, something only the two of us together can produce.
18
CARTER
After we finish eatingat Shaky Jane’s, Angela goes back to the apartment to try and take a nap. And I’m left alone on the cliffs in town overlooking the water, with only my University of Maine email inbox for company.
I feel my stomach cramp with nerves as I hit refresh on the page that is nearly perpetually open on my phone. I haven’t checked it in days, for obvious reasons, and I’m dreading it. I also need to cancel the class I’m teaching this week. Though I’m sure my students will understand—it’s not them I’m worried about.
It’s what probably won’t be there.
No interview opportunities. No successful postdoc applications. Nothing telling me I’ve been shortlisted for the next round.
This endless waiting is the experience of everyone in the last year of their PhD, and while I’m looking forward to being done with my degree, I also want to know what’s next. And I’m well aware that my personality—extremely controlling, emotionally reserved—is not suited to this type of waiting game.
The longer I have to wait, the more I wish I wanted to be a park ranger in Maine. I’d get to do what I loved—be aroundnature. And I’d be close to home, and crucially, it would be my choice. I wouldn’t be at the whim of whatever funding body deigned to put money towards conservation that year.
That’s another reason I check my email with dread. Last week, I interviewed for a job on a research project that would see me spend a few months out of each year in Iceland, studying the sea bird populations there. It’s a dream job.
I did the application a few months ago, when Angela still wasn’t speaking to me unless she absolutely had to. And even if she still hasn’t forgiven me completely, I’m determined that she will. That we’ll finally have our second chance. And I won’t jeopardize that for anything, not even for the perfect job. I won’t make the same exact mistake I made last time. The other people in my PhD program would call me crazy for that type of thinking—but Angela matters more to me than my career.
There are no job offers in my inbox today though, and I’m filled with a mixture of relief and disappointment. There is an email from my supervisor, Professor Judith Clarke, though, informing me that she’s read the latest chapter of my thesis and has returned it with comments. She’s also encouraging me to apply for a teaching job at the university for next year. It would be more of what I’m teaching now—undergraduate courses in science—but with the potential to advise master’s students in wildlife conservation. It’s perfect.
I close my email and scroll to my messages. On the family group chat, my younger sister Elle has just texted to let us know she’s landed a summer internship.
Elle: I got an internship for the summer! In marketing.
Mom: Amazing sweetie!
Dad: Good job! Your first big kid job.
As usual, my parents responded immediately, congratulating her. I can read between the lines though, and can see that they’re relieved, as they always are when Elle does something to indicate she’s finally found direction.
She’s only nineteen, so really they shouldn’t be worried. But I was the first child they raised, and I never needed to be directed, at least not in a way they understood how to point me. Elle is a different story in that she more obviously needed them, and they spent her childhood fussing over her and leaving me to my own devices. I don’t begrudge my sister any of this, because they treated her the way a childshouldbe treated. And I know that my parents sense that something is amiss in our relationship, but they don’t know how to identify what it is.
Lucky for me, I do. It’s like this: they don’t feel like they really know me, but they think that it’s because I don’t tell them anything. In fact, they don’t know me well because whenever I share something about myself, they respond without asking for any further information. It puts me in the position of having to ask for their attention, and for their love. And that’s something I won’t let myself do. If someone isn’t interested, then I’m not inclined to share myself with them easily. Even if they are my own parents. Perhaps especially so.
They say they’re proud of me for getting a PhD, for example, but they have no idea what I actually study beyond just “birds” and “the outdoors.”
Despite my clear-eyed view of this relationship, I still feel guilt over it. Because I could share more, I could try harder. I could, at the very least, tell them I’ve been stuck on a remote island for the last three days. What if there’s an emergency?
I’d tell the paramedics to call Jamie or Hunter before anyone in my family.
That thought sets me on edge enough that I decide to call my mom.
“Carter!” she says when she answers, the surprise in her voice clear.
I don’t remember the last time I called them. Or when they last called me.
“Hey Mom, how are you?” I put on my “speaking to my parents voice,” i.e., an easy, laid back voice that communicates everything is all good, all the time. I’ve got it under control.
