Amber

It is some minutes before I find Amber at the bottom of the stairs, cradling the kitten and weeping.

I ask Amber to confirm the obvious: "Are you crying?"

I barrel down before they can answer.

They are whole--no blood, no broken limbs. Aside from squirming to escape his obligation to comfort, the kitten seems happy. No pet has died to provoke their despair, but Amber's reaction is not far removed.

"Cornell. I heard back," Amber says. "They rejected me."

My head swims. I had wanted this for Amber so long. I had adopted a game of figuring out how to pack up our apartment. The travails of my job seemed small because I decided I would soon be free of them. I am distraught for Amber but mourn the crumbling of our future, too.

Amber reacts to my sadness and horror by trying to console me. I urge my composure. This is not my tragedy but by proxy.

They half-heartedly say something about Albany and getting a master's degree. They joke about moving to Ithaca anyway, for spite more than hope.

I touch their thigh and ask if they are feelings-focused or solution-focused. My feelings and ability to attempt to soothe Amber are vast. My solutions are few, having yet to have the time to investigate possibilities. In our relationship, they have never been dealt a greater blow.

As a Call of the Void, I wondered if I would feel relieved if we did not move (which was somehow mentally decoupled with Amber getting accepted). This would have been the most significant change of my life. Even when I worked at Maplebrook, I could go to family or friends within an hour. I felt trapped at the boarding school, but not impossibly so. Ithaca would have required completely upending my life.

I'm not relieved. I want Amber to have the best life. That has been an overarching desire since I met them, surely since I married them. I'm willing to endure the discomfort of a new job and move away from my roots if it makes them happier. Amber would have felt fulfilled in a way they never have been. The art world disappointed them. Gardening injured them and then tossed them away. Amber gives so wholly of themselves; it has always horrified me how little they get rewarded for this. For once, I thought that they would be suitably appreciated.

I am stuck watching this future recede. I had envisioned a new life, meeting people and exploring a city until I had made it mine. It was adolescent, as though I were the one matriculating. I had a fantasy of being uneasy at faculty parties, serving as Amber's anchor while lingering around the drinks with the other spouses.

I had begun rehearsing the breezy goodbyes to acquaintances -- the woman who runs the bulk food store, the librarian, and those who might notice a year later that they no longer saw us. I had nothing planned for friends yet. That would be awkward and tearful; thus, sketching it out would be no fun. The less significant associates, their "Oh! I'll miss you" with only a phatic force behind it, gave easy fantasies.

I never established whether my family realized the potential. I'd written it in detail, but I have grown beyond the idea anyone reads this. I did not savor a more direct conversation. I regret that, at best, its moment has been postponed.

Cornell's rejection was a form letter. It is naive that I expect something personal--the letter states they do not do this for the applicants they reject--but it seems an indignity they cannot offer Amber anything more than autogenerated boilerplate. They had put in dozens of hours for this application, going so far as to solicit input from faculty members, who seemed intrigued by the possibility of Amber working under them. We made our anniversary trip a visit to the campus for a conference. Amber was never half-hearted, so why can't the college seem a little sorry?

When Amber speaks to their mother, they sound more upbeat. They had five hours to process this news, which is why they did not send me their customary lunchtime email. The news was too massive for a few lines.

We cannot know the factors that dictated the rejection. It may have been something intangible, the day's caprice. So many apply to the doctoral program that most will be rejected. Yet I cannot conceive of my wife as "most." This is not merely a husband's bias. If Amber is not worth admitting, with all their skills, research, and plaudits, those who did get in must be inhuman.

Amber sniffs that this is the first time a college has rejected them. They try to grant the department might be accepting very few people. Why allow applications if they only intended to sweep them into the bin?

One doesn't want to be superstitious, but every time Amber emailed a professor, they replied that the lab was coincidentally beginning the obscure subsection of research on which my wife wishes to focus. Cornell is an impersonal institution in which one should refrain from investing intentionality and volution, but the university seemed to have the biggest crush. I assumed they drew hearts around my wife's name on their biology binder and practiced their signature as Mrs. Cornell University-Haqu.

I understand, as both the husband and a disinterested party as far as Cornell is concerned, I don't get to decide what Amber deserves. Cornell is concerned only for themselves, as one assumes they should be. They don't care they've broken Amber's heart.

There is a cynical node within me that wonders how many of these new doctoral students have the same last name as a doctoral student twenty years ago and twenty before that and going back to the foundation of Cornell.

Amber does not have that privilege. They talk about how, while they were in college, they got a Pell Grant, so they still count as a disadvantaged student. As a queer person twice over and a neurodivergent one to boot, the university could check a few boxes if they had accepted my wife, which is perhaps not how universities think.

I want to find an excuse for why Amber was dealt in his hand, something entirely out of their control. That is what I would like for myself, some way I could not blame myself.

I have proofread Amber's scientific papers, and I was startled when I realized they were not reenacting experiments whose results professors knew but were making publishable discoveries. Do all students accepted to the doctoral program speak of LAMP-1 proteins in mocha mice and the genes arbitrating cavefish blindness? Though I have taken and taught science classes, I have never done science. Amber is a scientist. They could do a great deal of good in the world, but that can only happen if they are permitted. Their greatness, however clearly I see it, needs to be fostered by an institution like Cornell.

Let's call it another year, but my confidence has grown a shade paler. Now that the university has rejected Amber, I cannot force my hope to overcome the notion they might again.

Amber will reapply. I do not know what they could gain this year would make a difference to the university. If they began a program elsewhere, trying for a master's at a lesser institution, would this preclude them from the academic glory to which they aspire? Would accepting anything less than perfection now close the door to it later? It is unexplored territory to me.

Amber will find a way to take classes. This is their nature, but I don't know the context. What will improve their chances and their prospects or forward their career? Another year at the animal hospital will give them a smaller paycheck and more heartache than they deserve. Does even the idea of it hurt when a part of them already had parsed out how to move to Ithaca in stages?

They talk about going to some one-year internship program downstate to bolster their next application--even if this means living there during the week and only seeing me on weekends. They do half-joke that they would want to take the kitten for emotional support.

In their position, I would be disconsolate, spitting at sour grapes. I am inured to the rejections I receive from publishers and agents. I did not, in total confidence, submit only to Penguin Random House. I can content myself with the lesser thing, as this has been the only way to approach what I want in life.

Call it the hyper-fixation of ADHD or their autism, but they're not going to give this up. How could they? Within days, they show me letters they're sending to other faculty members at Cornell, asking about the possibility of applying to their department. If they're doing this, they have done the research. They are following branching possibilities. They will attempt anything that is remotely feasible.

I do not know what the next year will bring. We will remain anchored in Red Hook. Things will not change conspicuously, no matter if I wish they would. I had grown so accustomed to quieting my fears for Cornell that it almost seemed like joy. I had taken delight in cheering for what I was sure was the winning team, so confident of Amber's chances that I stopped believing in anything else. To doubt this was to doubt Amber.

last watched: Fargo
reading: Nonviolent Communication