loose (21 page)

When he leaves, I am just a tiny bit relieved.

Kelly, who has been hesitant to workshop her story, brings in copies during the final week. Having finished my rewrite, I too hand out my story. Kelly’s is about a girl whose father gives weekly ear cleanings. The writing is suggestive and harrowing, and it’s clear something terrible and lascivious happens during these ear cleanings. We all rave, impressed. By now, Kelly is the talk of the workshop, but not for her writing. The way she walks, her pout. All the men whisper comments to each other, the same way the boys did back in high school about Jeannette. The girls keep their distance. I

• 157 •

L o o s e G i r l

feel sad for her. She overwhelms her talent with this need for attention. Her talent isn’t enough.

The second to last night of the workshop, Kelly shows up to the reading wearing a tight minidress patterned with big red cherries.

We all watch as she approaches, flirts with, and then leaves with the author who read. Before reading her story, I didn’t see our connection. Now I get how much we’re alike. She is me in bold print. I can’t know for sure whether her story is autobiographical, but it gets me thinking about my own past, about the lack of boundaries in my family. Is this why I’ve handed over my body to so many boys?

The next day, the teacher reads my story aloud. Listening to her read, I’m amazed I wrote it. It’s actually good. She congratulates me for progressing so much in the short time we’ve been together.

“You’re a real writer,” she says.

Her words feel like salvation.

K

s e n i o r y e a r . I turn myself toward writing. I find a fiction tutor since my college doesn’t have a creative writing department, and I start pumping out stories. As Dad warned, truths begin to slip out now that the war is long over. The long-standing fires in Kuwait, our country’s backing out of supporting the Shiites. Angry, I join other students to march and rally for peace in the Middle East. I take on an editor position for Clark’s alternative, liberal newspaper. I don’t know as much as I should, but it feels good to get behind something, to channel my anger into something real.

Leif moves into an apartment with a mutual friend and her boyfriend, and I find an apartment by myself. I try not to focus on the fact that the girl Leif lives with is stunningly beautiful. I don’t want to be one of those jealous girlfriends who doesn’t let her man have friendships with other girls, beautiful or not. But almost immediately, it starts to get to me. What I really hoped was he would want to live with me. Instead, he opted to live with the prettiest girl on campus.

• 158 •

T h e O t h e r S i d e o f t h e G l a s s Wa l l

“What about with the bathroom?” I ask him when I come to see his new place. “Does she come out of there in a towel?”

“I don’t know, Kerry,” he says. “I haven’t noticed.”

“Yeah, right.”

“I’m living with her and her boyfriend.”

I sit on his bed. I want something more from him, I’m just not sure what. To tell me I’m prettier? That he loves me only? That he’ll never love anyone else? I’m being stupid, I know, especially since I’m finding myself more and more bored with him. Our interests are too disparate. But this truth nags at me, making me cling tighter.

“Kerry,” he says, seeing the way I look, “this is ridiculous.”

“She’s very insecure,” I tell him. I wince inside. This girl I’m talking about is my friend. This is my friend whom I’m degrading.

“I don’t like her,” he says. “Can we drop it?”

I press my lips together, knowing he’s right.

K

t y l e r ’ s g e t t i n g m a r r i e d . Our father, in typical I-won’t-hear-it-if-it-makes-me-uncomfortable style for which we all make fun of him, calls me a month before her wedding.

“Tyler’s getting married,” he says with shock in his voice.

“I know, Dad. You do too,” I tell him. “We’ve all known for almost a year.”

But I can relate. It really is hard to believe. She’s made a point of being anti-marriage for a long time. A few years ago, when I told her I wanted to get married someday, even though our parents divorced, she said she didn’t.

“Mom and Dad never should have gotten married either,” she told me. “They were too different. Not at first, of course. But they went in different directions, like most people do over time. Humans aren’t supposed to mate for life. Patriarchal religions made that up so women would be under men’s control. Marriage is bullshit.”

• 159 •

L o o s e G i r l

But handmade invitations with sketches of herself and her fiancé, Gill, that say, “We’re getting hitched!” arrive in the mail.

Leif and I fly to Chicago for the wedding, which is really just a small party at a local bar she and her fiancé frequent. My mother is there with her boyfriend. Dad and Nora are there too. My sister wears yellow cowboy boots and a black dress that shows off the many illustrative tattoos on her back. Gill is in a charcoal gray jacket with a turquoise bolo. They stand at the back of the bar in front of a painting of Spike Lee and thank everyone for coming to celebrate their union. Tyler looks happy, but also something else. Sheepish, embarrassed. I’m not sure what. I hug her and say I’m happy for her, but really I’m bugged. Maybe it’s because she’s doing this thing she was so clearly against. Maybe it’s because she doesn’t seem to be taking it seriously. Whatever it is, I feel angry with her, and also worried.

When I tell Leif later, he shrugs and suggests I let it go. But I can’t. It’s all too familiar, her need for this security. She keeps it hidden behind her tough, anticorporate façade. She talks loudly about all the ways she’s getting screwed, about the environment, the gov-ernment, everything but her real self. I know what that feels like, that kind of vulnerability. I know how scary it is to have it hang out there, how much I work to hide it too. In truth, I would marry Leif in a second. I would marry almost anyone in a second, if that would make me feel loved.

K

j u s t a f e w months later, Leif’s and my beautiful friend and her boyfriend break up, and Leif is left with no housing. I suggest he live with me, and though he is still hesitant, he agrees under one condition: We’ll keep separate rooms, like proper roommates. I hate that he wants this. He doesn’t want our lives to meld. But I am well practiced at taking what I can get.

The fact that his marijuana dealer just moved in one floor below me can’t hurt my cause either.

• 160 •

T h e O t h e r S i d e o f t h e G l a s s Wa l l He takes the room I had set up as my office, but after a few weeks I work myself into that room too, and it becomes our shared bedroom.

With Leif firmly in my grasp, I focus more and more on writing.

I apply to MFA programs, my top choice in Arizona. Leif applies to music programs, including the same school in Arizona.

On Spree Day, we lie in bed, listening to the excitement and music outside the window. Leif reaches for me, and we make love. But unlike last year, I feel restless. I lie beneath him, uninterested, wishing he’d hurry up. I want to get outside, into the world. I want to feel like I did last year, enlivened and full.

I build a schedule. Every morning I wake at six a.m. On alternate mornings I write for three hours before my first class, and on the other days I run three miles around the indoor track at the gym.

During the day I attend class, work at the local bookstore, and am back in bed by ten. Leif has a schedule too. He sleeps until noon, then goes to his studio until two or three in the morning, leaving only for classes or to grab a snack.

I like my days. I like that I feel productive and energized.

Many nights, though, I wake when Leif comes home. I haven’t seen him all day. I watch him disappear into the bathroom and lie awake, listening. We haven’t had sex in weeks, living on different timetables. Moon shadows shroud the room. A car hisses by outside.

I listen hard, thinking maybe I hear him masturbating. Years ago I used to do the same thing with my father, lying on the futon in his living room, thinking I heard him and his girlfriend having sex.

Like those times, I feel slightly turned on, a voyeur to something I shouldn’t know, but I also feel terribly alone.

When he comes to bed, I shift, wanting him to know I’m awake.

I hold myself still, hoping he’ll move toward me, hoping we’ll make love, hold each other, anything.

But he turns away from me, asleep.

If things weren’t heading south enough, Dad calls to say he and Nora are splitting up.

• 161 •

L o o s e G i r l

“What’s the matter with you?” I yell, furious.

“Jesus Christ, Kerry. It wasn’t just me.”

“Why can’t you make anything work?”

“It’s more complicated than that,” he says. His voice is even, but I can hear his anger. My own anger sits in my throat like a rock. I know what happened. He doesn’t have to tell me. Nora finally had enough.

Later, Nora calls.

“You won’t give it another chance?” I ask.

“Honey, your dad’s being good to me, considering. He’s helping me buy an apartment in New York. But we’re not going to be together.”

I shake my head, anger at my father creeping up. As usual he’s spending money to assuage his guilt. Why doesn’t he try to change himself instead?

“We’ll stay in good touch,” Nora tells me. “You’re still my almost daughter.”

But I know that’s unlikely, and when we hang up, I cry.

K

“ w h a t k e e p s y o u in the relationship?” It’s our regular weekly session, and Deirdre is asking how things have been with Leif. I haven’t told her yet about my father and Nora. I didn’t realize why I was so mad at him at first, but since the phone call it’s come to me.

I’m terrified I’m destined to be like him, happy to have sex but un-willing to go much further.

The tree outside is thick with bright green leaves. It’s spring, the time of year I usually feel sexual and alive, when I tend to meet new boys. For the first time I wonder what kind of tree it is. An oak?

Spruce? All this time I’ve come here and I still don’t know.

“What is that out there?” I ask. “An oak tree?”

Deirdre follows my gaze to the tree. She looks doubtful. She thinks I’m evading the question.

“Why do you want to know?” She watches me, waiting.

• 162 •

T h e O t h e r S i d e o f t h e G l a s s Wa l l

“I’m tired of it,” I tell her. “I’m sick of spending all my energy trying to get loved.”

An eyebrow raises. “Is that what you’re doing?”

“Isn’t it?” I want her to give me something here. She’s the therapist. Take this away, I want to yell. What was I doing here if she wasn’t going to change things for me?

“Is that why you’re with Leif?” she asks, more questions to answer my questions.

“I don’t know,” I say, annoyed. “Maybe. Yes.”

“And then what?” she asks. “What happens when you get it?”

I shrug. I don’t know what she’s getting at.

“Kerry,” she says. She leans forward, her eyes sharp. “This is where you always are. Trying to get loved. Waiting for something always out of reach.”

Tell me something I don’t know, I think.

“You just said it yourself. You’re missing your life, caught in this place that’s neither here nor there.”

I listen now.

“What is it that keeps you trapped in this place?” she asks.

I just look at her, unsure.

K

t h e s u m m e r b e f o r e Leif and I will drive out together to Arizona, I go to another writing workshop in New York. This time I feel less anxious about leaving him. I’m excited to throw myself into the writing world again. I have more confidence, too. My story, about a retarded girl who gets gang-raped, was chosen for first prize in my college’s short story contest. I’ve also placed two other stories with small literary magazines. I didn’t get in to Arizona, but I plan to move there anyway, maybe take a class or two from the program, write a lot, and apply again. Leif will be starting his program in the fall. Our relationship isn’t at its best, but it’s secure. We’re moving across the country together. That’s got to count for something.

• 163 •

L o o s e G i r l

The first people I meet when I get to the conference are Melissa and Jen, and instantly the three of us become friends. I tell Jen my story about the three Jennifers from high school, and we laugh at our old selves, at the way we cared so much about belonging, even though in many ways I still feel the same way.

Within a day of arriving, there’s a boy. His name is Jason. He has dark eyes and messy hair. He smiles shyly when I catch him looking from across the room. He has a girlfriend, whose picture he showed me the first time we spoke, a girl named Leslie with long, curly blond hair. And, of course, I have a boyfriend. But this doesn’t stop me from thinking about him constantly.

At night, when we’re in our rooms I fantasize about him coming to me. I imagine a secret blossoming between us, the attraction too strong to control. During the day I try to time it so we’ll be in the same place, which isn’t easy since he’s a poet and I’m a fiction writer.

I go for runs on the forest trails surrounding the campus, knowing he runs too, hoping we’ll have a chance meeting. For the first time since Leif and I got together, my senses feel sharp, heightened. I’m taken with everything—the way the sun dances against tree leaves, the purple irises lining a walking path. Everything appears rich with life, with meaning.

A few times Jason and I actually talk. Each time it goes something like this.

Him: “How’s it going?”

Me: “Pretty good. How about you?”

Him: “Good.”

[Ten seconds of uncomfortable silence.]

Me: “You write poetry?”

Him: “Yeah, but I just started. I’m not any good.”

Me: “Oh, I’m sure that’s not true.”

• 164 •

T h e O t h e r S i d e o f t h e G l a s s Wa l l Him: [Looks down at his shuffling feet.]

Me: “I’d love to read some sometime.”

Him: [Nervous laughter.]