A Field Guide for Heartbreakers (16 page)

Chapter Eighteen

I
wasn’t ready to move. I still had things to figure out. Thus, I didn’t want Veronica to open her car door. But she did. As I climbed out behind her, I grabbed my story off the seat and stuck it inside my bag. “Where is this church?” Veronica asked.Roger pulled a map out of his pocket and studied it. “It’s two blocks that way,” he said, pointing down a normal-looking street.It relieved me that the street didn’t look like something out of a horror movie. Maybe the bones didn’t even look like bones. Maybe they were ground up into stucco or something. I mean, could a church really be built out of bones? Weren’t they prone to breakage and splintering? And what about osteoporosis? We filed down the sidewalk past other tourists.“My god,” said a woman wearing a Miami Dolphins T-shirt. “That place was satanic.”Once the woman was out of earshot, Veronica turned and looked at Kite. “Sometimes, tourists can be so close-minded,” she said.Veronica’s need to flirt and score points with every member of the male population was somewhat astounding. I watched her twirl her hair and glide giddily between Kite and Roger. She seemed to think that by standing in the proximity of guys, she was saying something important about herself. “What’s that?” Veronica asked. On top of a hill sat an enormous sand-colored church with tall windows and slender spires. “That’s Saint Barbara’s Church,” Roger said. With his long-legged strides, Veronica had to walk twice as fast to keep up.“It looks like a crown,” Veronica observed.“It’s supposed to,” Roger said. “But that’s not where we’re going. Sedlec is up ahead.”“Too bad. It’s totally cool!” cheered Veronica. She pulled on my arm and pressed her mouth next to my ear, but she didn’t say any words. She just released kissing sounds. It tickled so much that I laughed.“Hey, I want to hear the joke,” Waller said. Veronica pushed me toward Waller and fell back in step with Roger and Kite.“You should tell him the joke,” she said. Waller touched me on the shoulder. “Yeah,” he said. “Tell me.”I wanted to kill Veronica. Could she have stopped messing around for one afternoon, long enough for me to kiss Waller? Seriously. “Just like our love of roadside cows, it’s probably an inside joke,” Roger said.I nodded gratefully. “It is.”Soon the gates of the ossuary loomed before us. Kite was first in line, followed by Roger and then Veronica. I guess I thought that either Veronica would realize we were about to enter into a bone cathedral and refuse to go inside, or else she’d walk into the bone cathedral and the bones would be so tastefully and artistically attached to the walls that she wouldn’t freak out. She might have mistaken them for synthetic bones. If I hadn’t been told to expect real bones, I’d have assumed everything I saw inside was faux. Wouldn’t I?“Is it sick to want to see this?” Kite asked. “I mean, I can’t wait.”“So I take it you’re not religious?” Veronica asked.“I’m Catholic,” Kite said. “Lapsed.”“I’m really looking forward to this too,” Roger said. “Are you a lapsed Catholic as well?” Veronica asked.“I’m less lapsed than Kite,” Roger said.“Good to know,” Veronica said.The fact that Veronica was so clueless as to what the guys were really talking about bothered my conscience considerably. But I just couldn’t muster enough courage to bring up the skeletal remains.“Churches can be so threatening,” I said. I had
almost
convinced myself that the bones would be understated. That was not the case. Upon entering, we saw tall shelves showcasing skull after skull. Fibulas were wired to their lower jaws. And in a corner, a large coat of arms was formed from what looked to be the bones from dozens of arms and legs. A chandelier made of bones hung heavily above us. Pelvises. Scapulas. Spines. There was no mistaking what we were seeing. They were bones. Pitiful, ugly, innumerable bones. “Jesus,” Veronica said. “They look so real.” She tilted her head back, taking in the bone-decorated ceiling. They draped the tops of the high walls like an icing border on a cake.“They
are
real,” Roger said. “They’re from people who died during the plague.”“Yeah,” Kite said. “This place is an ossuary.”“What?” Veronica asked, covering her mouth with her hand. “These are people?”“They used to be,” Roger said.Veronica stared at me in disbelief. I felt that rubbery sensation return. It began in my feet and traveled upward.“You don’t look shocked at all,” Veronica said. “You knew! You knew!”I blinked at her. “I’m sorry.” “Why?” she yelled. “What have I ever done to deserve this?”I kept blinking. “Nothing,” I said. I watched her swing her arms like she was trying to propel herself outside. Behind her there was a doorway big enough for a doll that led through the bones into a small room filled with more bones. “Get me out!” Veronica yelled.Things started happening in slow motion. I felt my knees give way. Then I felt myself hit the floor. “Dessy?” Waller yelled.The next sound I heard was the noise of somebody repeatedly retching. “We’d better get out of here,” Roger said. Waller picked me up off the floor. I wrapped my arms around his neck and let my head lean against his chest. The orange-and-spice scent of his chest region smelled manly and safe. I caved against it. Then I heard the sound of more retching.“This is bad!” Kite said.“You grab her feet. I’ll take her arms,” Roger said. “Lucky for us she’s light.”I continued to hold Waller and didn’t open my eyes. But I imagined Veronica being removed from the bone church the way people carry rolled-up Oriental rugs. I’d betrayed her. And I wasn’t sure if she could forgive me.It didn’t take long for us to reach the car.“We need to clean her up,” Roger said. “She has puke on her face.”“And arms,” Kite said. “And shoes,” Roger added.This was very terrible news.“I have baby wipes,” I mumbled. “What?” Waller asked.“I have baby wipes,” I repeated. “They’re in my bag.”Waller set me down in the backseat and opened up my bag. He took out the box of wipes and then kissed me. Not romantically on the lips like I’d hoped and planned for. He pressed his mouth to the top of my head, then carefully shut the door. Had I wanted to jerk myself into a state of total alertness, I probably could have, but drifting in this odd place of half-awareness felt pleasant. When Roger opened the front passenger door, the sweet powdery smell of baby wipes nearly overwhelmed me. “Did anybody tell her what an ossuary was? She seemed genuinely surprised,” he said. “You’ll be okay.” He gently set Veronica in the front seat. “Hopefully, it’ll reduce the chance of motion sickness.”“What a god-awful place,” Veronica said. “That’s what hell will look like.” “I don’t think so,” Kite said as he strapped himself into the driver’s seat.Roger slid into the backseat beside me. “I think when we get to hell, we’ll all be very surprised by what we see.”They laughed, but not in an easy, free-spirited way. They seemed nervous.“If you need us to pull over, Veronica,” Roger said, “just tell us.”“I’ll be fine,” she said. “Just don’t parade any skeletons around in front of me.” “You got it,” Roger said.“This feels like the worst day of my life,” Veronica said. “Again!”I rested my head on Waller’s shoulder. My third flaw. It had finally surfaced, even here in Prague. Hamilton had said that the worst thing about me, the thing that rendered our relationship “over,” was my inability to challenge Veronica. “You surrender to her every whim,” Hamilton said. “You’re a serial caver.” “I’m a what?” I’d asked him. I’d fiddled with my purse strap while I sat in his Volvo. I didn’t want him to dump me in the car. I mean, I didn’t want him to dump me at all. But I always thought that when people broke up they should do it in an actual place. A restaurant, living room, or post office. I wanted a place I could return to and, in a gesture toward closure, relive what had happened a few times. “You’re a serial caver,” Hamilton repeated. “Veronica presents you with bad idea after bad idea, and you cave and cave again.”Hamilton was right. I didn’t even need him to laminate that flaw. From the backseat I watched Veronica nibble on her fingernails as we drove through the green Czech country- side. Kite adjusted the volume on the radio several times as it continued to pump out dance music. Crazy drumbeats. Hypnotic melodies. I guess it was an appropriate soundtrack for the day. As we entered Prague, I leaned forward and smiled at Veronica. She chose to ignore me. I wasn’t sure how my friendship with her had turned into such a struggle. Or why I’d suddenly decided to resolve our tensions by being actively dishonest.Originally, by not telling Veronica about the bone church, by tricking her, I thought I had stood up to her. But looking at it now, I realized that I was afraid to be honest with her, so I dodged the issue altogether by being dishonest. Hamilton thought that my dependency on Veronica crippled my own identity. I tried to tell him that after Mr. Knox left, things had shifted for her. My friendship with her hadn’t always been this way. But he’d looked at me and said, “Reality is reality. You’ve surrendered your trim tab to her.” Hamilton, whom I considered fairly deep, often spoke of trim tabs. It’s the small rudder that steers ships. He felt there was a considerable amount of honor in making conscious decisions toward your life’s goals. Hamilton believed that my three flaws rendered me goalless. I think that was the hardest part of his big lecture: the words, “You don’t have any aim. Take away Veronica, and I have no idea which direction you’d go.” It was a problem I couldn’t deny that I had. Yet it was one I didn’t know how to fix. I liked Veronica. Even if she did inhibit my trim tab. Hamilton had been quiet after that. I’d absorbed what he’d said and felt miserable. And then, in an effort to make sure that I hadn’t misunderstood anything, I’d asked my final question. “So we’re not just taking a break, are we?” We’d taken a break once before. After I’d scared him by reading a bridal magazine in his allergist’s waiting room during one of his monthly appointments.Hamilton kept his sunglasses on and stared out the windshield. “I’m headed to Dartmouth in a few months. Breaking up makes the most sense.”I nodded. And then I realized that I was home. He’d steered his car into my driveway and pulled the gearshift into park. Then he did the cruelest thing. He turned to look at me and said, “I still think you’re pretty great.” Lamer words had never been spoken. I got out of the car and walked into my house and ate dinner with my parents. Baked chicken and peas warmed from a can. There might have been a salad involved. “Is something wrong?” my mother had asked.“Cramps,” I said.Neither one of my parents asked me anything after that. We weren’t that kind of family. I didn’t tell my mom about the breakup for a week. And later that night, when I’d called Veronica from my bedroom and cried to her about it, she’d said the things I thought I wanted her to say. “What a loser. I bet he comes back. Crawling.”But I never told her about my flaws. Because that’s not how I wanted others to see me. It certainly wasn’t the way I wanted to see myself.I found it hard to stay awake inside of the warm car. Sitting between Roger and Waller made things feel warmer too, like I was positioned next to radiators. I tried one more time to lean forward and have a pleasant exchange with Veronica, but she wasn’t having it. So I settled back, closed my eyes, and leaned against Waller again. Except Waller smelled totally different. He smelled like leather. When I opened my eyes I was horrified to realize that I was leaning against Roger instead of Waller. I shouldn’t be leaning against Roger. He wasn’t my crush.“Tired?” Roger asked me.“Uh-huh,” I said. I sat up straight. I needed to say something right away to override this awkward feeling. “Nice belt,” I said.“Are you talking to me?” Roger asked.“Yes,” I said. “I like your belt.”“I’m surprised you can see it when I’m sitting down,” he said.Roger made a good point. While in a seated position, his belt was hidden under his shirt.“I noticed it while you were standing,” I said. “Sometimes it takes me a while to form compliments.”Roger laughed at me. And I couldn’t blame him. “Thanks,” he said.I stayed stiff and didn’t lean in any direction for the rest of the ride. What was wrong with me? Every time I opened my mouth around a guy, I had the potential to sound like a freak. Who openly admits to staring at the area located just above a guy’s crotch? Apparently I did. Kite and Waller parked the shoe-car in front of the dorm. Roger escorted Veronica and me back to our room. “Do you need anything to eat?” he asked.“No,” Veronica said. “I’m fine.”“Dessy?”“I’m fine too,” I said. We all looked at each other as if we knew we needed to part ways, but we also felt obligated to say more.“You two take it easy,” he said finally.He left me with Veronica in the hallway outside our room. “Do you think Corky is in there?” I asked.“I have no idea.” Veronica swiped her card and walked directly to the bathroom. I heard her brushing her teeth. Nobody was there. Not Corky. Not Annie Earl. Not Brenda. I opened our bedroom door and lay down on my unmade bed, exhausted. Confronting the remains of the dead
and
your personal flaws was a lot to pack into one afternoon. Veronica slammed our bedroom door shut, kicked off her sandals, and climbed into her bed.“I’m sorry,” I said. And I really was. Veronica pulled the covers over her head. I ignored this easy grab for isolation and walked across the room to sit beside her sulking lump.“You’re not the only one with gaping imperfections,” I said.She didn’t respond.“Aren’t you going to say anything?” I asked. “Don’t be like this. You’re acting very passive-aggressive.”Veronica threw the covers off her head, leaving several strands of hair swimming in the static air above her.“I don’t think that now is the time to be hypercritical of me,” she said. “Okay. But we were only in that church a few minutes. How many bones could you have seen?”Veronica slapped my leg.“Ouch,” I said.“Are you kidding me? How many bones did I see? They were everywhere, Dessy. I couldn’t not see bones. It’s what Disneyland would look like if Walt Disney had been a freak of nature with a bone perversion.”“I know,” I said, thinking back to the chandelier. Apparently it had been composed of every bone in the human body. “It was pretty intense.”“Those images are burned into my head forever. Can you imagine what my dreams are going to be like now?”“Listen,” I said. “Don’t torture me about this. I feel like rubber. My relationship with Waller has become absurd. When it comes to guys, I’m a failure.”“God, Dessy. What did you expect would happen with Waller when you began openly flirting with Roger?” I stood up. I couldn’t believe what she’d just said.“What are you talking about?” I asked.“Don’t play dumb,” Veronica said.“But I didn’t!” “You did. You touched Roger’s shoulder and complimented his belt!”“So?” I said.“Flirt!” she yelled at me. Then she reached out and mockingly put her hand on my shoulder.I swatted it away. I was angry. At Veronica. At myself. At my current situation. At my years of subservience. Still, I couldn’t see a solution to any of it.