Page 58 of Since She's Been Gone

“Technically, I’m not supposed to access them, but since you thanked me …” He types some more.

“Thank you,” I make sure to say again.

He stares intently at his computer screen, searching and searching.

“I found her,” he finally says.

“You did?” I say more excitedly than I meant to.

“She was enrolled as a freshman in the Tisch School of Arts in the fall of 1973. It looks like she went on leave in spring semester of 1974.”

“On leave?” I say.

“She took a semester off,” he says.

A semester?According to the Bell hospital record, she was only hospitalized for a month between March and April of 1974. Why would she have taken an entire semester off?

“After she returned to the university, she transferred out of the Tisch School of Arts and into the College of Arts and Science,” Neil continues.

“Really?” I say. I thought she’d graduated from Tisch. She always made it sound that way.

“Is there any mention of why she took a semester off?” I ask.

“No,” he says. “But I see that she still graduated on time. Must’ve been a smart cookie to make up an entire semester.”

I wonder if I can contact someone who was with her at Tisch to see if they know why she took a semester off and transferred colleges within the university. The problem is she didn’t keep in touch with any friends from NYU, at leastnone that I know of. Maybe that was by design, related to what Pearl said, how Mom told her she was relieved to put New York behind her.

“Are you done yet?” a male student behind me in vintage Levi’s calls out.

Neil shakes his head behind the Plexiglas, displeased with the display of rudeness. “No, she’s not,” Neil tells him. The student rolls his eyes.

“Do you by any chance have a list of Tisch alumni that were freshmen in the fall of 1973?” I ask.

“The university doesn’t give out personal alumni information. Maybe try LinkedIn? You could do a search for NYU alumni that graduated the same year as your mom.”

The hope I felt a few minutes ago when Neil found Mom’s name in the database vanishes, and the desperation settles back in. He clocks my disappointment.

“Do you live in New York?” he asks me.

I shake my head.

“I can give you a pass for the university library if you want to search on one of their computers,” he says.

“Thank you,” I say. “I’d appreciate that.”

He hands me a pass. I thank him again and leave my business card for him to contact me if he comes across anything else.

I turn around to leave, passing the guy in Levi’s, who groans, “Finally.”

When I open the door to exit the registrar’s office, I almost bump into a man entering who puts up his right hand to stop me from crashing into him. I notice a small heart-shaped birthmark that almost looks like a tattoo on the top of his hand.

“Watch it,” he says.

CHAPTER36

April 1998

RETURNING HOME AFTERBetter Horizons was hard. Mom’s absence in our home was profound. Unlike before, when ED had given me a way out of feeling my grief by obsessing over my weight and food, I wasn’t running away from my sadness anymore.

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