Falling Under (21 page)
“Absolutely.”
“Well, that’s not the most romantic adjective ever,” I say. He waggles his eyebrows at me in response.
I laugh and then reach out, pull one of his curls, and watch it spring back into place when I release it. He blinks in surprise and I do it again.
“I’ve been wanting to do that,” I say. “My hair is yours to command,” he says.
I start laughing. “Careful what you say, I do strange things with hair.”
“Really.”
“So,” I ask, seeing that he’s still looking at me as though he really, really likes me. “Was your last girlfriend the most boring woman in the world or something?”
“What!”
“Because I’m trying to figure out why you like me, and all I can figure is that you were bored to tears by someone in the past and are breaking out in the opposite direction.”
“I thought you didn’t want to do this,” he says with a teasing look on his face.
“Do what?”
“I think you called it ‘the litany’.”
“Oh, um . . .” I say, momentarily stymied.
“Ah ha!” he says, “but now you’re curious. You want to know things about me.”
“Don’t be smug.”
“Don’t be surly,” he shoots back.
“Well, hello!” I say, throwing my arms out, “you must be craving drama or something to still like me. It’s like: ‘screwed up, anti-social, crazy father, estranged mother, dead boyfriend—total package, wow, she’s for me!’ So I figure your last relationship must have been a snoozer.”
“No,” he says. “Not a snoozer, just not the right person.” “So you did have someone serious.”
“I had the same girlfriend all the way through university and for a few years after. Things just... stopped working. She wanted to travel, I was unhappy working in insurance and wanted to go back to school to become a vet. We both started making plans and they didn’t seem to include each other. It was sad, but it was just... over.”
“And since then?”
“Nobody serious since then,” he says. “Nobody that really intrigued me.”
“And I intrigue you? Is that it?”
“There’s that,” he says. “Plus you’re tough, smart, beautiful.. .”
“Oh my.” “. . . Sexy.”
“Ah ha.”
“But maybe it’s just because you make me laugh.” “Uh hunh.”
“Or maybe it’s because I like making you laugh,” he says, and he reaches over to me and starts tickling me until I shriek for mercy.
Then we neck on the couch for a while, and even though we’re both hot and breathing fast, we don’t do anything else. I should probably feel fourteen again, except I skipped right past this part when I was fourteen. Now I wish I hadn’t.
6
a.m.: painting.
The bubble piece is turning out less-than-Zen and not very geometric.
A small departure, I tell myself, and totally within reason. And besides, my mind is riffing on bubbles: Hugo and me in our own cozy, lust-filled bubble, Bernadette and Faith in theirs, my father who has lived in and burst more of them than I care to remember...
Shut up and paint, Mara.
I dip my brush into the white then start the next round shape. When I’m done, it looks like a cracked-open egg instead of a bubble.
More departure.
Oh, yes, I am cracking open, maybe cracking up, finding it impossible to live the way I’ve been living.
I layer more color on, thankful that I’m using acrylics since they dry so fast, and fill in the egg thing, making it brighter and thicker. Creamy white and blue, a hint of metallic gold,
it’s a strange, shimmery egg, a tactile egg that threatens to seep in between the perfectly rounded bubbles.
What the hell is happening? I don’t like asymmetry. I like clean lines, definite shapes. Things that have a beginning, middle and end. I like to have control over my creativity and I don’t care if that’s contradictory.
I leave the studio early for lunch.
As part of my self-healing act-like-a-normal-person re- gime, I have decided that today I will
go out
for lunch.
Woohoo, wild stuff.
I have a plan: I will walk along side streets, through the park, and then up to the Danforth again. I will buy a sub sandwich and an iced tea and a cookie. I will eat them in the shop. I will then take the same route home.
Feeling like a better-adjusted, stronger person, I will call the man I have a crush on and talk to him before going back into the studio to work.
People do these things every day, right? I used to do these things every day; at least, I assume I did.
And today I have a secret weapon...
I read somewhere that if you wear an elastic band around your wrist and snap it whenever you have a negative thought, you can break the pattern—kind of a low-tech biofeedback thing. It might have been a tool for quitting smoking—I can’t remember—but I figure it’ll work just as well for me.
So out I go, a thick blue rubber band on my wrist. Cross- ing the street, I give the band an experimental snap. The sound and the twinge on my wrist are quite satisfying.
I snap twice more and make it to the sub shop alive.
I manage to eat lunch without getting food poisoning, although it could set in later on, and I could be puking my guts out and then dry heaving, rushed to the hospital for dehydration. That is,
if
I could make it to the telephone in my weakened state, and what if I forgot to pay my phone bill! Have I? I make it to the phone but my service is cut off, so I stagger to my computer, send out an SOS, and then lay dying on the floor. Alone and dead. Alone, alone, no one knowing where I am or what has happened. Dying, dying, dead, starting to decompose...
Snap! Snap snap! Ow.
On the way back, I make eye contact with two people, though one of them does say, “What?” Perhaps my gaze is too intense. Perhaps I shouldn’t look at strangers. I could look at someone the wrong way and they might decide to shoot me, to beat me up...
Snap. As in, snap out of it!
Walking home through the park, I attempt to enjoy the fresh air. I envision myself as outdoorsy: going on camping trips, kayaking, learning to do an Eskimo roll, and sitting around campfires with Hugo and Pollock, and singing songs or roasting marshmallows or whatever it is people do at campfires. I would not be afraid of bears or malaria or getting lost because I would be a new person. A healed, healthy, better person. A person who does not get lost.
My wrist is rather pink by the time I close the front door behind me. But I am better. I must be getting better.
Bernadette drops by after work. She takes five minutes to vent about her boss and then says, “I’m in love with Faith.”
I sigh. “That’s what I was afraid of.”
“I’ve loved her since high school, Mar, I can’t help it.”
She flops down on the couch and twirls a strand of hair around her finger.
“You obviously think I’m crazy,” she says, and looks hard at me.
I sit down. “She seems nice, I’m just—”
“A mother hen?” Bernadette suggests, then softens the comment with a smile.
“Yeah, maybe.”
“Don’t worry, I’m a tough girl.” “Okay.”
“And I’m happy.” She sits up, leans toward me. “So, what about Hugo-boy-man-person? Is it still on?”
I feel my face color.
“Aha!” she says. “Very on!”
“It’s going well. But I, uh, can’t help thinking about... you know.”
“Have you told Hugo?” “Last night. He was sweet.”
“That,” she says, and taps my knee, “is what I would expect from him. I like him.”
“Me too.”
“This might be the year,” she says. “Of what?”
“Of us both finding happiness.” I make a humph-like sound.
She laughs at me... and hums on her way out.
6
And then there was Lucas.
Second year, Art History, first row. White-blond hair and the most infectious laugh.
He is beyond beautiful. Everyone wants him—men and women alike.
You take two months edging from the back of the class toward the front, until you are arriving early in order to get a seat right behind him. You see him in Technicolor, in shades of sunlight. You dream of him, look for him in the hallways, then turn your eyes away when your paths cross.
You have no chance. And anyway, it’s better to love from a distance.
One day he puts a hand on your arm and stops you as you walk by. “Mara, right?”
Your mouth opens, but no words come out. “We’re in Art History together. I’m Lucas.” Ab-da-da-ga-ga...
“It’s a nice name,” you finally manage to say. “Thanks. My parents say it means ‘light’,” he says. “You think it suits you?”
He laughs and his mouth opens to reveal a row of perfect, shining teeth.
“Nobody’s ever asked me that,” he says. “What do you think?”
“I don’t know, maybe you have a twisted soul. Maybe you like to torture gerbils or something.”You’re such a weirdo, such a dork—can’t you come up with anything better to say?
But Lucas shakes his head and chuckles and stares at you. “That’s an interesting possibility,” he says. “No gerbils
yet, though.”
“Good. That’s good.”
“Anyway, I missed class yesterday.. .” “I know—it ruined my day.”
“What?” He frowns. Shut up, Mara! “Nothing. Sorry.”
His eyes narrow. “No, I heard you.”
“Oh. I was kidding. Just kidding. You were saying?” “I just wondered if I could borrow your notes.” “Sure.”
“Thanks!”
His bright green eyes brim with curiosity and goodwill, and something about him demands to be liked. Something about him feels like everything you’ve never had and never been and must get close to.
But no one this good looking could possibly be this nice.
And there’s no way he’ll ever be interested in you.
But the exchange of notes turns into coffee on campus and then beer drinking at Sneaky Dee’s and a sweet, sloppy kiss outside at the bus stop in front of the graffiti art.
It’s a remarkably short journey from his lips on yours to your hands in each other’s pants to rolling around naked on your futon and laughing so loud that Bernadette bangs on the wall of your shared apartment.
And love is easy at first, because Lucas is easy to love. Miraculously, he loves you back.
Though you’re not quite sure he would if he really knew you, if he knew the things you’ve done and the family you have and the sad, dark, panicky places that come out and haunt you at night. He would never understand how being
happy makes you sad. How the happier you are the more you know the sky is about to explode into tiny, sparkling shards of glass that will pick up speed as they fall to the earth and slice right through you leaving your skin with little holes in it, leaving your heart bleeding.
These are not things that touch Lucas, not things he would find logical or right or positive, and he is very logical, right and positive. These are things you love about him and that you need from him.
You keep quiet about the you that lies awake at night, twisting the corners of the sheets around your fingers while he sleeps peaceful dreams.
In the daytime, Lucas has big dreams—he wants to sculpt huge pieces, create entire dwellings that are works of art.
“Like Gaudi,” he says. “Someday I’m going to make us a Gaudi house. Except the vision will be mine. We’ll change the landscape.”
You just want to paint and draw, but the idea sounds good, so you go along with it.
And there are nice things that you’ve never had before, like hugs, kisses on the cheek, ice cream at 3 a.m. And laugh- ter, lots of laughter. It bubbles up and spills over, stains you with regret for what you’ve missed.
You are young and in love and finding out what it feels like to smile for no reason, and draw pictures of bumble bees with Lucas’s laughing face, and make love on sun-filled af- ternoons, and sleep with your head on his shoulder and strands of your hair falling across his chest.
6
“I don’t know what the big deal is,” Lucas says over breakfast at his place. “People go away to school all the time.”
“I know. I’ve just... never been without Bernadette.
England is far.”
“We’ll visit her there, maybe travel a bit,” he says. “I know you’ll miss her, but you have me.”
“I know.” It’s not the same, but he doesn’t seem to get that. And you do have him, which means everything.
“Anyway,” he says, “now that she’ll be moving out, have you thought about where you’re going to live in September?”
“No,” you say. “Why?”
Lucas grimaces and looks away for a second. “My brother’s coming back from military college and my parents are bugging me to let him live here with me.”
“You never told me you had a brother.”
“Half-brother. It’s a long story,” he says, and then abruptly segues into his next subject. “You want to move in with me?”
You give your head a shake, not sure you’ve heard correctly. “Sorry?”
“Move in with me.” “Uh.. .”
“Come on, it’ll be great,” he says, and reaches across the kitchen table to hold your hand.
“But why?”
“I just told you—”
“Because you don’t want to live with your brother?”
“Not just because of that, I didn’t mean . . .” He breaks off and takes his hand away. “If you don’t want to, that’s fine.”
“Why?” was clearly not the response he was looking for—he’s hurt... sulking.
Still, you know too well from Mom and Dad about the fallout when things don’t work out, the price of moving too fast.
“Lucas, it’s a big deal. It’s not something we should do just for convenience.”
His face and neck start to get red and he stands up. Oh shit, oh shit.
“I thought we were going somewhere, I thought we were serious.”
“I, ah.. .”
“So what’s the deal, Mara? Is it just play for you? Just casual?”
His face is cold, angry. How did he get so angry so fast?
You want to speak but your throat is closing. Your mouth moves, but no sound comes out. This seems to piss him off more. He starts pacing, demanding an answer, but you can’t answer. You can’t speak at all. In your head, the voices of Mom and Dad are rising up, all the hateful words, all the shouting, the weeping, the screaming.
Mom crumpled on the floor, Dad throwing the pepper mill against the glass cabinet...