I guess it’ll only be for a year or so, until I can pay off my credit card bills, but it’s still a little depressing. I don’t know why, since my apartment in Philly was kind of a shithole too. It’s weird, though. I’m supposed to be an adult now—a real professor with a real salary who moved to start a real job—but I’m still living in a crappy apartment, only now my concerns can be roasting and/or freezing to death instead of getting mugged.
I’d opted for an apartment that was close enough that I could walk to campus and the library. I figured if I was going to be living in the middle of nowhere, at least I could be in the center of what town there is. It’s a single apartment above a hardware store with a side entrance. Carl, the man who owns it, used to live up here before he got married, but it’s been empty since, so he let me have it dirt-cheap. At least I won’t have to worry about living in the same place as any of my students. Since Sleeping Bear College is so small, only underclassmen live in the dorms, and the last thing I want is to end up sharing a parking lot with a student angry about a grade on a paper.
After I lugged in the stuff from my car, it only took me about an hour to unpack. I’d left my shitty furniture on the curb in Philly for someone to grab and I don’t have much stuff. The bed is here, like Carl promised, and a couch, but there’s no air conditioner and no way I was staying in this stuffy place without it. So I grabbed my keys and went to go find one, figuring I could stop and grab some takeout on my way back.
Outside, the sun was setting and the air was thick, at least as humid as it was back in Philly. It smelled nature-y, though, even in town. Like trees and water and lots and lots of oxygen. It wasn’t even 8:00 p.m., but almost nothing was open.
The town of Holiday—seriously? it sounds like something on a postcard, or one of those Christmas towns that only exist during December—is picturesque. I’ll give it that. The only thing I have to compare it to is Manayunk, a neighborhood in Philly that’s gotten really gentrified in the last ten years or so and now has freshly painted storefronts and arts festivals in the summer.
The shops here are all one of a kind. On Main Street, it’s touristy shops: candles with scents like “Winter Wonderland,” “Morning Rain,” and “Indian Summer”; expensive-looking kitchen stores with hand-carved cutting boards and Swedish-looking single-use gadgets with faces painted on them; specialty food stores selling dried fruit, tiny packets of nuts that are more packaging than food, and every conceivable type of preserves. And, every other storefront or so, shops selling Michigan paraphernalia: aprons and boxer shorts and visors and scarves; oven mitts and cookie cutters, field guides and notepads. Everything cut in the shape of the Michigan mitten (the oven mitts with hearts where Holiday would be on the map) or emblazoned with it.
Off Main Street it’s a bit more normal, but still, it looks like something from a movie set—so curated and clean. The sidewalks are even and wide, separated from the streets by decorative brick, and a line of trees alternating with lamp posts, mailboxes, and the most attractive garbage cans I’ve ever seen, painted a dark green, as if they too are a part of nature.
I finally peeked into an Italian restaurant and immediately regretted it because it was kind of a nice place and I was sweaty, wearing jean cutoffs and a black T-shirt with the sleeves torn off from Ginger’s shop, which said Tattoo Bitch in bold Gothic font across my chest. I asked the hostess if there was a diner or a takeout place nearby and was peppered with overly friendly questions about my favorite foods. I wandered off in the direction she had pointed, reminding myself that this was a small town and people were probably just friendly, not trying to give me the third degree.
At the diner, people stared again. I grabbed a sandwich to go and practically ran back to my apartment with it.
It’s finally sinking in. I live here now. I live here in this tiny town. Everyone knows each other and I’m a stranger. They’ll want to know me. Know about me. And then maybe they’ll hate me.
Before, I always had the option to just disappear. Don’t like the people in my classes? No problem. Hide out in the library or hop on the subway and go work somewhere else. Don’t want to run into an ex in the coffee shop? Slept with the bartender at this bar? Just walk half a block and go to another one. Have an awkward encounter with someone? Who cares? I’ll never see them again.