Parts Unknown (15 page)

“Will you teach me to juggle?” I asked Dov one day when we met up at breakfast time. “I never could figure it out.”

“Sure!” he agreed, “If Josh lets you out of his sight for a minute.” Dov was munching an Aero candy bar while scrambling eggs. I’d never seen the man without something in his mouth – food, beer, cigarettes. Trevor was using the built-in ironing board in the kitchen to press his undershirts, as he did every morning. In fact, he ironed everything: t-shirts, pants, even his underwear, probably, though not when I was around. Finished, he stacked the shirts neatly outside his bedroom, tightened the laces of his running shoes, and jogged out the front door. Without him, the kitchen felt too small. It didn’t have room for both Josh and Dov, looking at each other through narrowed eyes.

I half-turned, feeling Josh’s arms slide protectively around me. He was always touching me, or near me, and I was immensely comforted by his presence. When he’d go to work in the evenings, I’d feel untethered until I could search out Trevor or Dov and bask in their companionship. I didn’t want to be alone, not for a minute. If I did, I might think too much.

I met Dov’s chocolate-y eyes. “Anytime Dov, okay? Or maybe when Josh goes to work. You know.” I turned and smooched Josh, ignoring the slight narrowing of Dov’s eyes, not so friendly anymore.

Back in the present, I shook my head to clear it. Enough of these ancient memories. It was all in the past, a silly fantasy world, a month of dreams turned to dust, so long ago.

Chapter 8

But I couldn’t help myself. Right after dropping Lucy off at preschool the next morning, I rushed to a bookstore. Thank goodness Barnes & Noble at the Grove shopping center opened at 9 am. I couldn’t believe Josh had written a bestseller, and I hadn’t even noticed. Geez, there was even a whole publisher’s display at the entrance to the children’s section. I’d probably walked past that bright red cardboard display half a dozen times, heading in there with Lucy to kill half an hour while she dismantled sticker books, and I had to pay for them.

I picked it up, curious. Weighed it in my hand. It was a little heavier than a few sticks of dynamite. Recklessly, I flipped it right open to the inside back cover. Might as well get it over with first thing. Yes—there he was, in full color. Staring right at me, his head tilted to one side, eyes squinting a little. He was so beautiful. I glanced at the biography paragraph quickly, but it didn’t really register: all that mattered was seeing his face.

I needed to read this book, right now. Touch, through writing, the most intimate part of Josh I could. Toting my purchase in its crinkly green bag, I strode, fast, to the nearby Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, recklessly purchased a large Chai Tea Ice Blended, and sat on one of the little benches inside the door—there was no room for tables in the tiny shop. I had three hours till I needed to pick up Lucy. Plenty of time.

It was like
Harry Potter
, mixed with superheroes—two concepts that your average ten year old would find irresistible. It was a tale of a school for super heroes (“supers,” they called themselves)—a place where kids with freakish abilities were sent to be among their own kind, where they learned to harness their powers and defeat evil. They lived in high-rise-style dormitories, with two sets of elevators, one leading to the girls’ area, one to the boys’. Downstairs was a warren of classrooms, auditoriums, and a dining hall. Many high-jinks ensued—elevators caused to go sideways instead of up and down; teachers stranded in the space-time continuum in retaliation for providing too much homework; entire meals turned to gelatin by the force of one unfortunate superhero’s sole power. Due to the destructive nature of the supers’ abilities, the entire building had to be completely flame-proof, invisibility-proof, explosion-proof, and drown-proof.

The young supers were properly angst-ridden about being estranged from their families, being born freaks and all. They resented being forced to learn fiendishly complicated ways to control their own minds and hence, their recalcitrant bodies. The plot thickened when a group of thirteen-year-olds discovered a competing nearby school, a place unknown to anyone, and in fact cloaked by invisibility. In this secret spot, renegade supers were being trained to become dark anti-heroes with a view to gaining control of the world. The supers would have to band together, contrary to the orders of their fuddy-duddy teachers, who refused to believe there was a dark plot afoot. The fate of the world
rested in their hands
. Oh, it was such fun. Thrilling, humorous, deft. It was, surprisingly enough, the book Josh was meant to write.

It was Monday. Five days till Saturday, at 2 pm, when I would manage to get back to that very Barnes & Noble, via some excuse. I had to see him.

~ ~ ~

Don’t think I hadn’t Googled Josh before now. When our relationship had ended, I’d put him away in a compartment in my mind, but that didn’t mean I’d forgotten him. He was always there, and I fantasized every so often that we’d meet again somehow, in some improbable situation—perhaps as senior citizens, on board a cruise ship, forty years hence. Our eyes would catch each others’ near the railing as we hobbled by, propped on our respective canes. We’d reminisce distantly about our youth, carefully sidestepping any mention that we’d once been in love. In other words: I was so disheartened I couldn’t even have decent reunion fantasies.

The thing was, he never showed up in my searches. A search several years ago for “Joshua Barnes” turned up an English scholar on Wikipedia (how appropriate!), the Facebook page of a pimply 17-year-old Wisconsin high school student, and a LinkedIn bio for a Unix administrator in Illinois. My Josh didn’t seem to exist, anywhere in the universe as indexed by Google. Maybe I’d made him up. A few botched photographs and email printouts constituted my only proof that he was real.

The problem was, real or not, I had never stopped loving him. I was convinced: you only get one soulmate, in this life. I had been fortunate to meet mine, as so many others hadn’t. And, even more amazing, I could have another chance. I could see him, at least, and remember.

By the time I picked up Lucy from preschool, I’d made it about a third of the way through
Supers
, and had craftily concealed it at the far back of my pajama drawer. I was still figuring out how I’d manage to sneak off to Josh’s book signing, but I had a more pressing plan for the next day: find out everything I could about Josh. Walking from the parking lot, through the security gates, and into the hallway to wait for Ms. Marcie to open the classroom door, signaling that school was over for the day, I only distantly noticed the other parents. The interlocking linoleum tiles on the floor caught my interest more than Christine and Jennifer. They were co-room parents for Ms. Marcie’s class. As from the bottom of a well, I heard them animatedly discussing plans for the class Easter party on Friday. Who would buy what. Sign-up sheets. Cupcakes. Plastic eggs. Other waiting parents chimed in. Nick, the cool stay-at-home dad, would make balloon animals. Jennifer wondered if frosted cupcakes would have too much refined sugar. Marjorie, the earthy-crunchy mom, suggested carrot sticks with dip, instead. I shook my head, irritated. They might as well be on Mars. For the love of god: who cared?

I was busy. In the tiles I could imagine whole worlds, each square another scene in the half-formed life I’d begun envisioning with me and Josh, together again. In one tile: our reunion. In the next: passionate lovemaking. Another tile had us dining leisurely at a romantic restaurant, gazing dreamily into each others’ eyes as we had so long ago. Conveniently, Lucy and George didn’t exist in these fantasies. I wasn’t sure whether they existed at all. Those squares were so compelling, they had the power to obliterate everyday life.

I realized with a start that the classroom door had been open for a few minutes now, and parents were filing out with their respective offspring, holding them by the hand, sometimes dragging them, juggling lunch boxes, art projects, and siblings in strollers. I hurried in to find Lucy, happily paging through one of those thick cardboard books featuring farm animals. “What noise does the duck make?” I asked, automatically. “Quack, quack!” squealed Lucy promptly. “Hey, guess what Mommy? We made bunnies today. It’s spring time! It’s Easter, coming up! Can we have an egg hunt?”

“Of course, honey. Just like we did last year. We’ll have an egg hunt in the front yard.” All the while, I was bundling her into her jacket, and grabbing her lunch, and holding the artwork away from me with two fingers—the Elmer’s glue was still damp. The bunny had several too many googly eyes—Lucy loved those things and would stick them everywhere.

“So tell me about your day,” I continued, shepherding her to the car. It was amazing that I was even able to speak. My mind was still a million miles away. But my daily life was so routine, I could live it even sleepwalking. Lucy began with the day’s highlight: “And Mark wouldn’t share the trike, and he kept hogging it up, until then, guess what, he fell off! ’Cause he was going too fast. And so he scraped his knee, and it was bleeding, and he cried so much! So Abigail called him a crybaby, and then he got so mad, Mommy, you wouldn’t believe it, he hit Ms. Marcie! He smacked her leg! And so
then
Ms. Marcie made him go to Mrs. Colfax’s office . . .” Lucy’s tale continued as I buckled her into her car seat, its cow print now permanently stained by milk and juice spills. I only had to nod, and laugh, and ask a few questions—“So what was your favorite part about making the bunny?” to get us safely home.

We read a library book about magic tap shoes, so insipid I couldn’t remember what I was reading even while reading it, and I got her ready for her nap. The only thing she would wear at nap time was a nightie she’d had since she was two—it didn’t even cover her underwear anymore. So long as she slept, she could wear a gold lamé tutu for all I cared. Nap time was my most precious time of the day—a god-given hour and a half when Lucy was there, but I needn’t be constantly aware of her.

I eagerly fished
Supers
out from the back of the p.j. drawer and recommenced reading. The more I read, the farther I sunk into an abyss I had no wish to claw my way out of. I remembered the power his words had had over me—a power long-forgotten, shoved away. Back, now. The sensuous way he shaped sentences, the way his punctuation was so exact yet unexpected. He could make love to me, just with words, in a book for children. The more I read, the more aroused I got, until, my face burning, I had to shove the book away. What kind of sicko gets off on G-rated young adult fiction?

I could fill up the rest of nap time, no problem: a film reel of
Josh’s Greatest Hits
started playing constantly in my head. It had been ten years, so of necessity the edges were fuzzy and the figures rather indistinct. Now that I had memorized Josh’s crisp author photo, though, I could mentally Photoshop his face onto the blurred body. Oh, look, this was a good scene: us, smooching in Hampstead Heath on the day after we’d met. In fact, I could replay that entire day constantly in my head—the dizzy anticipation, the desire, the day that never ended. The day I fell in love for the first time.

I heard a wail from the next room. It was one of Lucy’s peculiarities that she always awoke—in the morning and from her naps—crying. As if reality was a horrifying substitute for a loose, lovely dream world she didn’t want to leave.

That afternoon, Lucy and I would keep busy, like always. We’d have snack time, and story time, and coloring time. Maybe we’d drive to the Fairfax branch library and get our allotted ten children’s books. All marking time till tomorrow, when I’d begin researching the next phase of my life, in earnest.

In the meantime, I set her up in front of the easel I kept in the corner of the living room. It had been standing there forlorn, waiting for some inspiration that never came, for several years. It was Lucy’s now: I’d clamped a big newsprint pad to it, and I loved to watch her draw. She drew with so much energy and conviction—without self-editing or criticism of any kind. She knew exactly what she wanted to create, and with her fist closed vise-like around the fat Crayola washable marker, she created her own worlds of stick ballerinas, enormous faces with googly bug eyes, and exuberant dashed-off squiggles. She reminded me of myself as an eight or nine year old, enclosed in my upstairs room, with whole free weekend afternoons available to draw, draw, draw. I’d scarf scratch-paper pads from downstairs, or empty ruled accounting ledgers—whatever I could find—and sit there for hours with colored pencils, drawing fairy-mermaid hybrids and outrageous fashion designs. I’d get so tired by the end of the afternoon, after dozens of sketches, but I’d keep on, hoping for the revelation and excitement that maybe the next one, or the next, might provide. As if I kept drawing I could transport myself inside the paper itself, into a universe created and imagined wholly by me. As if I could have that kind of power.

“Mommy, look!” Lucy had haphazardly torn her latest piece from the pad, leaving a long trailing vee of newsprint in her wake. “It’s a picture of you. It’s from me!”

I looked like a demented alien, with eyes askew, one enormous, one tiny. Corkscrews of hair spiraled defiantly from my saucer-shaped head. “Honey, it’s beautiful.” I gave her a huge hug. “I’ll treasure it forever.”

~ ~ ~

I worried while preparing dinner how I’d even be able to look George in the eye when he came home, my head so full of obscene lovemaking fantasies I couldn’t even properly measure out the pasta, and ended up making enough for three nights’ worth. Just like that, in one day my entire view of George had changed. It was like holding a piece of wrinkled wax paper in front of my face. Without the wax paper, everything was crystal clear and super simple. I was a nice, boring person married to a solid, tenured statistics professor. We had a lovely daughter and lived in a rent-controlled apartment in a desirable location in Los Angeles. I had a comfortable life, an understanding husband, and mornings of freedom to do whatever I chose. Pretty awesome.