How They Met and Other Stories Page 5

  “It’s just that Mercury’s in retrograde,” she said.

  “This has nothing to do with a fucking planet,” I groaned.

  “Down, girl,” Teddy sassed. “Down.”

  I put my head in my hands and took a deep breath, hearing the air suck against my palms.

  I felt Teddy pat my back, then start to rub it. Mmmmmm.

  “A little better now?” he asked.

  I nodded a little and he moved to my neck.

  “Let it go,” he said. “Let it go.”

  I tried to. I wanted to block it out.

  Miss Lucy had a steamboat. Miss Lucy had a steamboat.

  “What are you saying?” Teddy whispered in my ear.

  I lifted my head and told him. Then Heron and I explained what it meant.

  “So you’ve sat on the glass,” Teddy said.

  “Repeatedly.”

  “And, let me get this straight, the boys are in the bathroom—”

  “The boys don’t really matter right now.”

  “There will be other girls,” Heron comforted.

  “I don’t want other girls!” I cried.

  What I meant then: I only want Ashley.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about her. My body missed her. My mind reeled at her absence. I was a fucking wreck. It wasn’t pretty, and as much as I wanted to believe she was doing it to me, I had to begin to admit that I was doing it to myself, too.

  Why is self-preservation so much more of a bitch when it’s your mental health that’s involved? I mean, if there really was a piece of glass on my chair, I’d damn well make sure that I didn’t sit on it twice. If a steamboat was sinking, I’d know enough to head to the lifeboat. But a broken heart? At first I gave in to the temptation to think, nah, there was nothing I could do about it. I’d have to keep sitting on glass until someone was nice enough to take the glass away from my seat.

  Then I thought, To hell with that. I actually had to think of it in terms of sitting on glass for it to work.

  “What’s up with the whole couple thing anyway?” I asked Teddy and Heron at lunch a week or so after Ashley had dumped me.

  “What do you mean?” Teddy asked back.

  “I mean, why is everyone so brainwashed into believing that they have to be in a relationship with one other person? Look at us, Teddy. If anyone were to tell us that the whole girl-boy thing was natural and anything else was unnatural, we’d know they were completely wrong. But have them tell us that every person needs to be with another person in order to be happy, and we nod along like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. But there’s no reason for it, is there? It’s not a proven truth. It’s just some thing that our culture has come to spin itself around, mostly so we’ll procreate, and we’re the dupes who fall for it over and over and over again.”

  “I thought you were over the breakup,” Teddy said hesitantly.

  “I am,” I insisted. “Can’t you see that this is more than that?”

  Teddy clearly couldn’t see, because he was looking at me like I was fifty-eight varieties of crazy all at once.

  Heron, however, surprised me.

  “You’re totally right,” she said. “And I’m tired of it, too.”

  When I realized I was into girls, it was scary to let go of all the things I was supposed to be and all the things I was supposed to want. It’s like you’re a character in this book that everyone around you is writing, and suddenly you have to say, I’m sorry, but this role isn’t right for me. And you have to start writing your own life and doing your own thing. That was hard enough. But that was nothing—nothing, I tell you—compared to the idea that I could let go of the desire to have a girlfriend. Maybe not forever. Maybe forever. Certainly for now. Talk about something that had been ingrained. I wasn’t letting go of love or sex or the idea of companionship. I was just rejecting the package in which it was being sold to me. I was going to say it was okay to be alone, when it felt like everyone in the world was saying that it wasn’t okay to be alone, that I had to always want someone else, that the desire had to fuel me.

  I didn’t want to feel like I needed it anymore. Because I didn’t. Really, I didn’t.

  Ashley started fooling around with Lily White. She didn’t tell me this, but I could figure it out easily enough. Lily White was more scared of me than ever. And she’d started to smell a little like Ashley’s shampoo.

  Betrayal. Lust. Secrecy. Devotion. I think we do these things to feel more alive. When the truth is that alive is alive—you can feel it in anything, if you give it a chance.

  I thought more about Miss Lucy.

  I’d never pictured her with anybody else, just her steamboat and her bell. Trying to keep things together, even when the world was constantly throwing glass under her ass.

  “Do you think there was a real Miss Lucy?” I asked Heron.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “I want to find out,” I told her.

  The trouble I felt coming when I first met Ashley was nothing compared to the trouble I felt when I first realized I didn’t need her or anyone like her. People fall hard for the notion of falling, and saying you want no part of it will only get you sent to the loony bin. C’mon, you’ve seen the movie: As soon as the headstrong girl announces she’s not going to fall in love, you know she’ll be falling in love before the final credits. That’s the way the story goes. Only it’s not going to be my story. I am taking my story in my own hands. I don’t care for the way it’s supposed to go. Some people find happily ever after in being part of a couple, and for them, I say, good for you. But that’s no reason we should all have to do it. That’s no reason that every goddamn song and story has to say we should.

  I tried to explain myself to people.

  “You don’t know what you’re missing,” Teddy, who usually had about four crushes going on at the same time, told me. “It’s the best excuse in the world for getting absolutely nothing done.”

  When I called my sister at college and told her about my revelation, she acted like I’d announced I was shipping myself off to a nunnery. (Which would only be another form of crushing, if you ask me.)

  “Did someone hurt you that badly?” she asked.

  And I told her, no, it wasn’t that.

  “You want to be single?”

  I said yes. And then I told her that I thought single was a stupid term. It made it sound like you were unattached to anyone, unconnected to anything. I preferred the term singular. As in individual.

  “Does this have anything to do with…”

  My sister couldn’t bring herself to say it, but I was still impressed. Besides a few gender-neutral terms (like someone, see above), she’d never really acknowledged that I was a [whatever term you want for lesbian].

  “No, it doesn’t,” I told her. “I’d feel this way even if I were into guys.”

  “Well,” she said, “just don’t tell Mom. You’ll never hear the end of it.”

  I didn’t tell Mom. I did, however, finally speak to Ashley again. I couldn’t avoid her forever. As soon as Ashley sensed me not wanting her anymore, she stepped right back into my line of vision.

  “I miss you,” she said.

  “That’s special,” I told her.

  She laughed, and this time the laugh meant nothing to me.

  “There’s something I have to tell you,” she said.

  “Don’t,” I said.

  “You know about me and Lily?”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “I’m sorry. It just happened.”

  “Let it, then. Why not let it?”

  It felt so good not to care. Not to need.

  “Miss Lucy,” she said. Quietly. Sweetly. Trying to pull me back in.

  “Miss Lucy’s gone to heaven,” I told her.

  You never think of heaven in terms of who likes who, or who’s with who, or whether this crush works, or whether the sex is good. In heaven you don’t worry about what you’re going to wear, or what you have to say, or whether
someone loves you back, or whether someone will be with you when you die. In heaven, you just live. Because it’s heaven.

  “Let’s go on a trip,” I told Teddy and Heron. “Let’s drive until we find Miss Lucy.”

  The three of us. The four of us. The hundred of us. The thousands of us.

  You see, us doesn’t need a particular number to make it fit.

  I’m tired of convincing myself otherwise. I can put that energy to better use.

  Let the boys and girls go on kissing in the dark.

  I want more.

  THE ALUMNI INTERVIEW

  It is never easy to have a college interview with your closeted boyfriend’s father. Would I have applied to this university if I had known that of all the alumni in the greater metropolitan area, it would choose Mr. Wright to find me worthy or unworthy? Maybe. But maybe not.

  Thom took it worse than I did. We had been making out in the boys’ room, with him standing on the toilet so no one would know we were in the stall together. Even though I was younger, he was a little shorter and had much better balance than I did. Dating him, I’d learned to kiss quietly, and from different inclinations.

  He found the letter as he searched through my bag for some gum.

  “You heard from them?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “An interview?”

  “Yeah,” I answered casually. “With your dad.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  The bell had rung. The bathroom sounded empty. I looked under the stall door to see if anyone’s feet were around, then opened it.

  “No, really,” I said.

  His face turned urinal-white.

  “You can’t.”

  “I have to. I can’t exactly refuse an alumni interview.”

  He thought about it for a second.

  “Shit.”

  I had almost met Mr. Wright before. He had come home early one day when his office’s air-conditioning system had broken down. Luckily, Thom’s room is right over the garage, so the garage door heralded his arrival with an appropriately earthquakian noise. Thom was pulling on my shirt at the time, and as a result, I lost two buttons. At first, I figured it was just his mom. But the footsteps beat out a different tune. I did the mature, responsible thing, which was to hide under the bed for the next three hours. Happily, Thom hid with me. We found ways to occupy ourselves. Then, once Thom had moved downstairs and the family was safely wrapped up in dinner, I climbed out the window. I could’ve gone out the window earlier, but I’d been having a pretty good time.

  The trick was getting Thom to enjoy it, too. I wasn’t his first boyfriend, but I was the first he could admit to himself. We’d reached the stage where he felt comfortable liberating his affections when we were alone together, or even within our closest circle of friends. But outside that circle, he got nervous. He became paralyzed at the very thought of his parents discovering his—our—secret.

  We’d been going out without going out for three months.

  I’d picked my first choice for college before Thom and I had gotten together, long before I’d known his father had gone to the same school. Thom couldn’t believe I wanted to go to a place that had helped spawn the person his father had become.

  “Your dad wasn’t in the drama program,” I pointed out. “And I think he was there before Vietnam.”

  It helped that my first-choice college was in the same city as Thom’s. We’d vowed that we wouldn’t think or talk about such things. But of course we did. All the time.

  We were trapped in the limbo between where we were and where we wanted to be. The limbo of our age.

  The day of the alumni interview, we were both as jittery as a tightrope walker with vertigo. We spun through the day at school, the clock hands spiraling us to certain doom. We found every possible excuse to touch each other—hand on shoulder, fingers on back, stolen kisses, loving looks. Everything that would stop the moment his father walked into the room.

  He gave me a ride home, then drove back to his house. I counted to a hundred, then walked over.

  Thom answered the door. We’d agreed on this beforehand. I didn’t want to be in his house without seeing him. I wanted to know he was there.

  “I’ve got it!” he yelled to the study as he opened the door.

  “Here we go,” I said.

  He leaned into me and whispered, “I love you.”

  And I whispered, “I love you, too.”

  We didn’t have time for any more than that. So we said all that needed to be said.

  I’d never been in Mr. Wright’s study before. The man fit in well with the furniture. Sturdy. Wooden. Upright.

  It is a strange thing to meet your boyfriend’s father when the father doesn’t know you’re his son’s boyfriend—or even that his son has a boyfriend. It puts you at an advantage—you know more than he does—and it also puts you at a disadvantage. The things you know are things you can’t under any circumstances let him know.

  I was not ordinarily known for my discretion. But I was trying to make an exception in this case. It seemed exceptional.

  Thom stood in the doorway, hovering.

  “Dad, this is Ian.”

  “Have a seat, Ian,” the man said, no handshake. “Thank you, Thom.”

  Thom stayed one beat too long, that last beat of linger that we’d grown accustomed to, the sign of an unwanted good-bye. But then the situation hit him again, and he left the room without a farewell glance.

  I turned to Mr. Wright as the door closed behind him.

  I can do this, I thought. Then: And even if I can’t, I have to.

  Mr. Wright had clearly done the alumni interview thing a hundred times before. As if reciting a speech beamed in from central campus, he talked about how this interview was not supposed to be a formal one; it was all about getting to know me, and me getting to know the college where he had spent some of the best years of his life. He had a few questions to ask, and he was sure that I had many questions to ask as well.

  In truth, I had already visited the campus twice and knew people who went there. I didn’t have a single question to ask. Or, more accurately, the questions I wanted to ask didn’t have anything to do with the university in question.

  Thom says you’ve never in all his life hugged him. Why is that?

  What can I do to make you see how wonderful he is? If I told you the way I still smile after he kisses me, is there any possible way you’d understand what he means to me?

  Don’t you know how wrong it is when you wave a twenty-dollar bill in front of your son and tell him that when he gets a girlfriend, you’ll be happy to pay for the first date?

  And then I’d add:

  My father isn’t like you at all. So don’t tell me it’s normal.

  I am not by nature an angry person. But as this man kept saying he wanted to get to know me, I wanted to throw the phrase right back at him. How could he possibly get to know me when he didn’t want to know his son?

  Taking out a legal pad and consulting a folder with my transcript in it, he asked me about school and classes. And as I prattled on about AP Biology and my English awards, I kept thinking about the word transcript. What exactly did it transcribe? It was a bloodless, calendar version of my life. It transcribed nothing but the things I was doing in order to get into a good college. It was the biography of my paper self. Getting to know it wasn’t getting to know me at all.

  Sitting in that room, talking to Mr. Wright, I knew I had to get all of my identities in order. I realized how many identities I had, at a time when I really should have been focusing on having one.

  “I see that you haven’t taken economics,” Mr. Wright said.

  “No,” I replied.

  “Why not?” he harrumphed.

  I explained that our school only offered one economics class, and I had a conflict. A complete lie, but how would he know?

  “I see.”

  He wrote something down, then told me how important economics was to an education, and
how he would have never gotten through college—not to mention life—without a firm foundation in economics.

  I nodded. I agreed. I succumbed to the lecture, because really I didn’t have any choice. Judgmental. I considered the word judgmental. The mental state of always judging. His tone. I knew he wasn’t singling me out. I knew this was probably the way he always was.

  There were times I had gotten mad at Thom. Argument mad. Cutting-comment mad. Because his inability to be open made me a little closed. I didn’t want to be a conditional boyfriend. I didn’t want to be anybody’s secret. As much as I said I understood, I never entirely understood.

  Can’t you just tell them? I’d ask. After they became the excuse for why we couldn’t go out on Saturday. After they became the reason he pulled his hand away from mine as we were walking through town—what if they drove by? But then I’d feel bad, feel wrong. Because I knew this was not the way he wanted it to be. That even though we were sixteen, we were still that one leap away from independence. We were still caught on the dependence side, staring over the divide.

  It was different now, bearing the brunt of his father’s disapproval.

  I understood. Not all of it. But a little more.

  “…too many of you students ignore economics. You dillydally. You spend your time on such expendable things. Like Thom. You know Thom, right? No focus. He has no focus. He wouldn’t be right for this university. You show more promise, but I have to say, you need to make sure you don’t spend time on expendable things….”

  And suddenly I was sick of it.

  I looked to the door and saw something. A shadow in the keyhole. And I knew. Thom had never left me. He was on the outside of the door, holding his breath for me. Trying to keep quiet. Staying quiet, because his father was around.

  I was sick of it.

  The economics lecture was over. Mr. Wright didn’t alter his tone when he asked, “What are your interests?”

  “Your son in my room,” I said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “The sun and the moon,” I said. “Astronomy.”