Excerpt of Skeletons by Kate Wilhelm

It was never easy being the daughter of Teresa and George Thomas Donne. That day it was harder than ever because I had to tell them I would not be graduating. I had put in my four years, but I had changed my major three times, and there weren't enough credits in any of my chosen and abandoned fields to warrant the magic piece of paper that said I was finished. Tess - she had insisted I call her that from the time I could speak - said bitterly that she had also changed her major three times but, on the other hand, had three doctorates. And Geo - George Thomas to the rest of the world - had a doctorate in economics and was adviser to presidents, kings, the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, and CEOs. My brother, Ben, would start his internship almost immediately after graduating from medical school in June. And my grandfather was a world-renowned Shakespearean scholar. I was an appendix in a family of brains. "I'll call you back," I told Tess, and hung up the telephone. Then I cursed.

Casey, my roommate, was grinning, listening. When I paused for breath, she said, "You're getting better, baby. Mama in a snit?"

"God, you wouldn't believe what she wants now."

"She'll spring for a mail-order diploma."

"Don't laugh." Casey could afford to laughat me. She had just finished her master's degree in computer science and had been accepted to the doctoral program at CalTech. She was mocha colored with short, nearly black frizzy hair, tall and lanky, all arms and legs and big brain. And she had beautiful eyes, almond shaped, slanting, brown with light flecks. When we filled out our census form two years earlier, she had come to a stop at the entry about ethnic origin. "How do I know?" she said after a moment. "I got so many races running in me, I could be a one-woman marathon." She entered Martian.

At the moment she was lying on her back on the floor, with her legs on the decrepit sofa that had stuffing leaking from one arm; we patched it now and then with Band-Aids. I looked from her to the rest of the room - boxes everywhere, some packed and taped, most not finished yet. It looked as if the Vandals had moved in, made a mess, and were getting ready to leave.

"Tess said since I don't have anything better to do, and nowhere to go, I might as well house-sit for my grandfather."

"Oh yeah? I thought he never left home."

He had never spent a single night away from home that I was aware of. I sat down on the floor. No chair was without a pile of stuff.

"He's been invited to lecture at Oxford. On Shakespeare. Tess said he probably won't go unless he knows he has someone reliable to watch the house. Me, reliable? Hah!"

"Wow! Really?" Casey swung her legs off the sofa and sat facing me. "Baby, that's incredible! Of course you'll do it. What else do you have in mind?"

The question of the day. My mother had asked it, now Casey, and I had no answer. My job at the bookstore did not pay enough to keep even this tiny apartment, and all Berkeley rents were fierce. Maybe I could find a new roommate, but probably not until the fall term, and I couldn't hang on that long.

Then I was thinking of the day I had arrived there to find Casey looking things over. The housing administrator had said there was someone willing to share an apartment, no more than that.

"Angela Casada?" I asked that day, ready to turn and run.

"Yeah, but call me Angela and I'll cut your throat. I'm Casey. Who are you?"

"Marilee Donne. Call me Lee."

"Merrily done?" She laughed. Her teeth were very white and large. Then she turned and waved at the apartment. "What do you think?"

It was small, two rooms. The bedroom was jammed with two narrow beds, two chests of drawers, two desks and chairs. The other one we named the Everything Else Room; it had the ancient green sofa, sink, stove and fridge, and a minuscule table with a faded and cracked red Formica top, plus everything else we owned.

"Listen," Casey said, leaning forward, all serious now. "You can't live on the street. You'd be like cotton candy on the midway, gone without a trace by the end of the first hour. You won't live in your mama's house. You can't stay here. The YWCA? That's where they house women with crazy men on their tails, gals on parole, addicts, shit like that. Why won't the old man just close up the house and take off the way other folks do?"

"Haven't you got it yet, after all these years? My family is nuts, crazy, wacko. I don't know why."

"Okay. Okay. Would he pay you?"

"Tess said he would, and the utilities and stuff are all on an automatic payment schedule through his bank."

"So you get room and board plus something. For how long?"

"He would go in July, start his lecture series in late August, and stay until around Thanksgiving."

"Five months of freeloading. Doesn't sound too shabby." She reached out and patted my knee. "And, baby, you need some thinking time. Come fall, you could go to the university there and take a couple of classes, finish things."

Things were always simpler for Casey than for me. She had known what she wanted to do from the day she saw her first computer. She called me her Renaissance pal - dabble in everything, commit to nothing. And I had broken up with my latest boyfriend, the one who was supposed to be for good, just a month earlier. I dabbled in life, too. In fact, I didn't have anything better to do than house-sit for my batty grandfather.

"Want to come and hang out after you visit your folks?"

"You bet. I told Pop I'd work in the store for a couple of weeks, give him a break; but then I'll head up your way before I check in at CalTech." Her family lived in Phoenix, where her father owned a small variety store. They had lived in Chicago until Casey was ten or eleven, when her mother became asthmatic. Casey hated Phoenix; she was doomed for a sojourn in hell, she had said morosely when she made her plans.

I picked up the phone and dialed my mother's number.