loose (22 page)

[More uncomfortable silence.]

Him: “I better get going.”

Me: “Sure. Me too.”

Jen, who has a class with him, rushes back from her workshop one day to tell me he read a poem called “Temptress.” She tries to recount it, an obscure poem about being pulled somewhere he knows he shouldn’t go. We squeal and jump up and down. To Jen, my crush is meaningless. She knows I have a boyfriend, who will visit in just a week or so. For me my crush is something more. It allows that old anxiety, the pressure in the air that tells me I might get evidence that I’m worth something. This boy might want me, making me matter. All along I thought being loved by one boy would be enough. Love would free me from my desperation. Here I am, though, no different from when I was a teenager.

Leif visits near the end of the workshop. We have sex in the small twin bed. Our movements are familiar, always the same. His hand on my breast, mine at his back. Then my leg, his neck. My hand goes to his hair, his mouth to my ear. Our kisses could be diagrammed—

tongue here, bottom lip there. There are no surprises. The day he leaves, we ride down the elevator together so I can walk him to his car. Our plan is to meet in New Jersey, at my father’s apartment, and leave from there for our road trip west.

As we come off the elevator, Jason is there. My heart stops, then picks up tempo. Jason smiles nervously at me and nods at Leif. It is only a moment, but Leif sees it. I can feel the tension as we make our way through the parking lot.

“Do I need to be worried?” he asks when we arrive at his car.

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“About what?” I reach for his hand.

“Leaving you here.” He squeezes back. “With all these guys.”

“Honey.” I smile and hug him, smelling his familiar scent. I love him. I do. But like Eli said long ago, I don’t know whether that matters. Maybe nothing is ever enough for me. I push away the thought.

“You have nothing to worry about,” I tell him.

He gets in his car, and I watch him wind his way out of the lot. I walk back to the dorm, anxiety tugging at me. Jason is out there somewhere. How far will I actually go?

The last night of the workshop is the departure reception. I take a breath and go toward Jason. Any fool can see how irrational this is.

He’s still in college. I’m moving across country. We can barely hold a conversation together. We both have long-term relationships. But I’m not thinking like this. I’m all body. All need. Going to him is only about this moment. It is only about getting to that place inside. That place so many boys have touched, but then it slips away, eluding me again.

Jason smiles, but he also looks around, as though looking for an escape.

“Have I showed you Leslie?” he asks, reaching for his wallet. I stop him with my hand.

“I’ve seen her,” I say.

He looks at me, his mouth tight, and waits.

“You should come by my room tonight,” I say quietly.

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Where’s your room?”

“Camden Hall. Room 515.”

He smiles and nods at a guy nearby. It’s one of his friends. I look at the guy and he gives me a funny smile. Jason must have told him about me. About us and this little thing we have.

“Room 515, huh?”

I smile.

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“All right,” he says. “Maybe I will.”

He goes to walk away, and I grab his arm, afraid he won’t really come. I quickly try to think of something else to say.

“It will be our little secret” is what I come up with.

Later I lie in bed, waiting. There is a Lorrie Moore story in which the main character waits for her lover to arrive. She splays her hair just so on the pillow, pulls her nightgown down to reveal cleavage.

She holds her position for hours, her back aching from pushing out her breasts, but her lover never comes. In the story, it’s funny. But I don’t feel humorous right now. I’m leaving tomorrow. Leif and I are about to start a new life in Tucson. I try not to think about that. Instead, I focus on each sound I hear, the elevator door opening and closing, footsteps shuffling along the carpet, voices, water running through pipes. I wait, my eyes open, until four a.m. But just like in the story, Jason never comes.

• 167 •

10

The first week in Tucson, I’m energized. Leif and I find a house to rent, and I land a job in the university bookstore. I wake at seven a.m. every morning, leaving Leif in bed, and ride my bike in the frosty air to the store. And when I get home in the early afternoon, the air now warmed by the sun, I try to write. I set up my office in the house, a whole room dedicated to my work. I unpack my books of fiction and books about craft, my Writer’s Market book and Handbook of Literary Magazines. I hang my favorite quote—“Tell me, what will you do with your one wild and precious life?” by Mary Oliver—

above my computer. Every other day I go to the gym and do my three-mile run.

But day after day, I can’t write. I walk in and out of the office to get more coffee, a snack, to listen to one of Leif’s jazz CDs for inspiration. At two thirty, when the mail comes, I perk up, hoping for something good—an acceptance from a literary magazine, a contest win, but usually it’s just bills and junk mail.

When Leif comes home, I hang around him while he tries to hash out a composition on the piano.

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“Take a walk with me,” I plead. Or, “Let’s go out for dinner.” But he usually shoos me away, wanting to work.

Sometimes, friends he’s made in the music program come by, and I sit with them while they talk about scores and changes and com-posers, and I wish I had friends of my own. Even the bookstore where I work, the one thing I have going, begins to grate on me—all those students with their busy lives, all those people with a purpose.

I call Bevin, who moved to Portland, Oregon, with a few of our friends from college, and complain. She suggests I come for a visit.

My first night there, I meet a boy, and I know my life is about to take a turn.

His name is Zachary. Gorgeous, beautiful Zachary.

At the club where Bevin takes me, Zachary dances up to me, and then against me, his pelvis grinding into mine. Right there on the dance floor he kisses me, a kiss I can feel throughout my body, just like in those first few months with Leif. I know I shouldn’t, but I open myself, my body like a hungry flower, gone unwatered for so long. I’m not surprised by myself. Not at all. In fact, I knew it was coming.

Bevin is pissed.

“Kerry,” she says when she pulls me aside. “What are you doing?”

“I know.” I grin, but Bevin doesn’t grin back. “I don’t know yet,”

I say to answer her question.

“What about Leif?” She stares into my face, maybe looking for the girl she thinks I am, not the real me, the one who carelessly flings away her boyfriend’s heart.

“I don’t know,” I say, annoyed now. I don’t want to think about it right now. I just want to feel what I’ve been feeling tonight.

Back at Zachary’s house I can barely contain myself. I am lost in the old feeling, all body, all desire, all emptiness. We make it to his bed, but once there, I pull back.

“I have a boyfriend,” I say, breathless.

Zachary smiles at me. His eyes are a rich brown. A lock of his

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blond hair hangs in his face. “What are you saying?” he asks. “Do you want to stop?”

“No.” I laugh. “But I should.”

Zachary kisses me again. He strips off my shirt and puts his mouth on my breast. I feel like I might explode.

“Whatever you want to do,” he says between kisses. He doesn’t care. Why should he care?

“Just no sex,” I tell him. “Nothing to put my boyfriend at risk.”

He doesn’t answer, keeps moving down my body.

Such a ridiculous rule. I’m not stupid enough to think this makes it OK.

Back in Tucson, I try to get back into my life. But days when I should be writing, I call Zachary, and when Zachary isn’t available, I call Bevin and ask her about him. With Zachary on my mind I’m permanently aroused. I initiate sex with Leif every night. But nothing, nothing will fill this pit of desire.

Leif notices nothing different, and while this should be a relief, it bothers me.

A few days later, I fly out to my grandparents’ condominium in Florida for my mother’s second wedding. She has set up a joint celebration with my grandmother’s birthday. Donald, who when I first met him was scruffy and dressed in Levi’s and T-shirts, is clean-shaven and wearing clothes my mother has picked out for him. He even sounds like her now, discussing art and wine as though these were always his interests.

I’m tempted to tell Mom what I really think, that by controlling Donald she’s setting herself up for another fall. But I’m well practiced in keeping my real thoughts and feelings to myself with her, especially when her parents are around. They say things like, “Your mother has worked hard to get to this place,” and “Your mother has been through so much.” No one’s allowed to make Mom feel bad. I just nod and roll my eyes. Silence is still my main line of defense when it comes to her.

• 170 •

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 spend most of my time in the clubhouse gym, running on a treadmill, trying not to think.

The day of the wedding, I get drunk. Donald and my mother read vows to each other while Tyler, Donald’s two daughters, and I stand beside them. Whenever I glance at Tyler I start giggling, so I will myself to look straight ahead. My uncle toasts them, saying how nice it is to finally see my mother happy again. In many ways, I feel bad for him. Mom’s the shining star of that family, the firstborn, which means a great deal in a Jewish family. She can do no wrong. My grandparents approve of everything about her, her taste, her knowledge, her choices in life. All attention goes to my mother, no matter what her brother might do. He is always in her shadow, always the one who should be more like his older sister. Like me, he’s always been invisible.

My grandparents, following my mother’s lead, eat health food.

They collect art and modernist furniture. They believe their choices are superior to others’ and that they deserve only the best. But since my uncle’s arrival in Florida, he and his family adamantly eat Nathan’s hot dogs most every evening, and they make snide comments about my grandparents’ “weird” art. If his parents’ favoring of my mother hurts him, he refuses to show that. He proudly flaunts how different he is. Maybe I shouldn’t feel sorry for him after all.

After the ceremony, Mom gives my grandmother a pendant for her birthday that is supposed to represent a woman’s vulva. Grandma shows it off to me when I come over.

“Gorgeous,” she says. “Like a cat’s eye.”

I smile. “It does look like a cat’s eye, but it’s actually supposed to represent a vagina.”

“Really,” she says, studying it. “Your mother’s something, isn’t she? Where does she come up with this stuff?”

“She’s a gynecologist,” I say, as though this explains anything.

Later, I hear her telling guests who admire it, “Isn’t it lovely?

Kerry says it’s a vagina.”

Back in Tucson, I start to itch. My arms, my chest, and my back

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break out with a strange-looking rash. Leif starts to feel it too. I go to a clinic and leave with a prescription to treat scabies. After I rub on the lotion, I look up scabies on the Internet and learn that little bugs have been living and breeding beneath my skin. Horrified, I scroll down to see how I could have gotten them. Sure enough, they are passed by prolonged skin-to-skin contact or from sleeping in an infected person’s bed. I think of everything I’ve surely infected in the past few weeks. I borrowed a bra from my mother. I slept in my grandparents’ guest bed. And of course Leif. I’m repulsed, disgusted with myself. These bugs on me are fitting. I’m a filthy person, dirty-ing everyone who comes too close.

“So that’s what this rash is,” Zachary says when I call him.

“How could you not go to a doctor?” I ask. “You’ve had it longer than I have.”

“I figured it would go away.”

“Good thing you gave it to me. You would have had it for ages otherwise.” I laugh, but only to hide my rage. I haven’t forgotten what boys like, the easygoing girl, the girl who doesn’t demand too much. I don’t want to push him away with my anger, to make him stop wanting me.

He laughs too. “We better have sex soon, in case I have some kind of venereal disease.”

“Name the time and place,” I say, getting what I wanted.

“How about now?”

Something flutters at my throat. “I’d like that.”

“So would I.”

When I call Bevin to tell her I plan to say I got the scabies from her bed, she’s furious.

“You’re making me out to be dirty,” she says. “Leif’s going to think I’m a slut.”

I don’t say anything, aware of who’s really the dirty slut.

“Fine,” she says. “But you owe me big-time.”

“You’re the best friend ever,” I say.

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“No,” she says, still upset, “I’m not.”

My acceptance to the University of Arizona’s writing program’s spring term arrives the following week. Leif hugs me.

“All right,” he says. “This is what you’ve wanted.”

I keep my eyes on the carpeted floor, unable to look at him.

“What?” he asks, his voice changed.

“I think I need to go up to Portland for a while.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just until the end of the summer. Then I’ll start the writing program in the fall.” I peek at him and see the confusion in his face. My heart feels heavy, like a thick stone in my chest.

“Why?” he asks. Tears come into his eyes then. I want to throw something, scream. I don’t know what. Mostly, I wish I could cry too, but there’s nothing there. Just that thickness moving its way through my body.

“I’m not happy here,” I say. Hearing those words, hearing what he must be hearing, I quickly try to think of something else. “And I don’t want to start the program midway, when everyone already knows each other.”