Читать книгу Iris Has Free Time - Iris Smyles - Страница 21

During that first session, my NYU-assigned psychologist and I had a big blow-up/break-through. In tears, I ran to the door, yelling, “I can’t do this!” I meant continue to lie to her; finding my own life inadequate, I’d begun to make up all sorts of whoppers. She yelled back, “You can walk out that door right now and give up, or you can face your fears!” Holding the doorknob in my hand, I paused; I’m not sure if it was to consider what she’d said or just act like I was considering what she’d said, but either way, it was all very dramatic, and after a suitable beat, I sat back down. I apologized for my outburst and made a follow-up appointment for the next week.

I had every intention of returning the next week, too, but then, when our appointment rolled around, I wanted to smoke pot with my roommate, so I phoned and said I was sick and would be in the week after. She called the day before our next appointment, leaving a message on my machine to remind me. I was lying in my loft bed, listening to her concerned voice, imagining myself seated across from her in that small room—her eyes boring into me, her knowing that I was a fraud—when I started to wonder if maybe therapy wasn’t for me.

I didn’t return to the street fair the following weekend either, nor any weekend ever again. But this time, with the T-shirts, my quitting was tangible—my apartment was filled with hundreds of my unsold stock. And to make matters worse, I began receiving notices from the federal government. Something about there being a warrant out for my arrest regarding the “company” of which I’d named myself president. Since I hadn’t bothered to file a 1099—what’s a 1099?—“The Emperor’s New Shirt” owed roughly two thousand dollars in estimated back taxes.

Not knowing what to do, I ignored it. And not long after that, I moved. I broke my lease and moved into a new apartment located just above the Midtown Tunnel. Though I had decided by this time that I wanted to go to graduate school for English Literature, I still needed time to apply, which put me right back where I started: I needed a job. So when I saw an ad in the subway regarding a citywide teacher shortage, I figured since I couldn’t do, perhaps I might teach.

I got a job at a South Bronx public school so troubled that all the Teach for America recruits quit within the first month. Though I lacked the credentials, I was hired on the proviso that I enroll in education courses concurrently. And so I found myself all grown-up and firmly ensconced in a life that had nothing to do with any one of my very intricately designed daydreams.

I was a teacher by day, a student by night, and the serious girlfriend of a soon-to-be lawyer named Martin, whom I’d met one evening at Lex’s ’80s party. On the bright side, my new apartment, the one above the tunnel, had good closets, so I was able to stuff my T-shirts all the way in the back on a shelf behind the linens where, for a while, I never had to see them.

I finished out the year in the Bronx (the school, it was announced in spring, would be taken over by the state and restaffed), exaggerated my way into another job at a private school on the Upper West Side and, loading up on summer courses, earned my teaching certificate after two years. And then, just as things began to settle, just as it seemed the only thing left to do was get married and die, I broke it off with Martin, quit my job at the school, and moved again.

Packing all my things, the T-shirts were the last thing I found. Hundreds of them, stuffed in black garbage bags, evidence of a crime I could not forget. I couldn’t throw them out; I took them with me.