Still Life by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview

Still Life

Page 48

Boredom with the wrinkled napkin manifestos did not set in until her junior year, when she met Finn Portello, A/K/A Huckleberry, while she was seeking help at the financial aid office. There she met under-performing and perhaps disinterested Finn, who stared at her legs rather than her eyes. She was both flattered and curious about this underperformer comfortable in a world of over-achievers. It seemed base. He arranged a small grant for her in return for a publishable study about how privilege, as commonly defined, is directly proportional to financial success. Susan’s background was on the verge of totally negating this theory, but found it both amusing and rewarding to pursue the misinformation she’d compile. Besides, sex with Finn was a liberation of sorts.

So, Susan’s study began as a farce; a performance of academic rigor masking a quiet rebellion. She titled it “The Elasticity of Merit: A Study in Financial Mythology,” and filled it with graphs that bent truth like origami. She interviewed students with trust funds and trauma therapists, catalogued their anxieties about legacy admissions and artisanal granola, and juxtaposed them with her own upbringing with a single mother who worked nights at a veterinary crematorium and taught Susan to read using expired cereal boxes.