Love & Lies: Marisol's Story (18 page)

“Well, what’s her name?” Mom wanted to know. “What’s she like?”

“Her name is Olivia. She’s a . . . teacher.”

“A teacher? So, she’s older than you.”

“A little older, yes.”

“Have you met her, Lee?”

“No, Marisol keeps her away from me, too,” Lee said.

“I don’t ‘keep her away’ from anybody. I’ve only gone out with her a few times. I don’t know why we’re even talking about this.”

“You can’t blame your mom for being curious,” Lee said. “It seems strange to me, too, that you never want to talk about this Olivia person.”

“When there’s something to tell, I’ll tell you. I’ll tell everybody! I’ll take out an ad in the
Boston Globe
!” I forked a big chunk of salmon into my mouth and took out my anxiety by masticating it to pulp.

“Well, I certainly hope Olivia is as nice a person as you
are,” Mom said, reaching over to squeeze Lee’s hand. “You’re just the kind of daughter-in-law I’d love to have someday!”

After which Lee was careful not to look at me, I was careful not to look at her, and my father was careful not to look at anyone.

*  *  *

I got home at about nine thirty to an empty apartment. It took me ten minutes to get my stuff ready for the weekend in P’town, and by ten o’clock I was in bed, covers up, lights out, brooding. Partly about that daughter-in-law remark—God!—which had made everyone but my mother highly uncomfortable, but mostly because tomorrow morning Olivia would see that Gio and I were both absent from her class and would probably be angry with me again. Which were more difficult, relationships with friends, family, or lovers? Or did I just suck at all kinds of relationships?

Even gnawing on my poor fingernails wasn’t calming me down, so I finally got up and turned on the light. I could work on my assignment for tomorrow’s class, even though I wouldn’t turn it in until the following week.
An incident I usually avoid remembering, or a time I felt really frightened or defeated. Or a fight I witnessed between two people I loved. And what lay behind these events.

The minute I sat down at the computer, the cat leaped into my lap; I had to admit that Birdie’s furry creatures had wormed their way into my affections pretty quickly. Peaches turned in a circle three times and settled down on my bathrobe, completely nonjudgmental about my ability to write a novel, or get a girlfriend, or pay the rent. Her steady purr began to relax me.

One of the best things about writing was being able to go into another space, far back into my brain, where the unthought thoughts lived. I let real life sink into the background and tried to become Christina. The idea of witnessing a fight appealed to me, but rather than use my own memories, I really wanted to try to incorporate the idea into my book. What if Christina witnessed a fight between two people she loved? Who were they? What would the circumstances be?

One of the combatants could be Natalie, but who was she arguing with, and why? After a minute of sitting there, watching Natalie and waiting, another woman appeared in my mind, someone who had a lot to say to Natalie. I started to imagine them talking, and I wanted to write it down, but the second woman needed a name. When I realized the second woman was Dorothy (aka my mother), the writing came in a flood.

“My daughter means more to me that anyone on earth,” Dorothy said. “And I will
not
let anyone hurt her.”


“Why do you think I would hurt her? Can you read the future?” Natalie said.


“No, but I can see the present, and when I look into your eyes, I don’t see love.”


Christina walked in with the second bottle of wine just in time to hear this accusation. “Mom, stop it! You don’t know what you’re talking about!”


“Christina isn’t a child, Dorothy,” Natalie
said. “You can’t tell her who she’s allowed to play with anymore. She’s an adult.”


“She’s not as experienced as you are—she’s never been in love. She doesn’t understand that people can be cruel to each other!”


“I don’t know why you’re saying these things,” Christina told Dorothy. “I trust Natalie completely.” She poured more wine for Natalie and for herself.


“Do you think she loves you?” Dorothy said.


“Now you’re the one who’s being cruel,” Natalie said. “I talk about my feelings when I’m alone with Christina—not in front of her mother!”


But Dorothy kept her eyes on Christina. “Do you?” she repeated.


“Yes,” Christina said at last. “Natalie loves me and I love her.” Her hand shook as she raised her wineglass.


Natalie smiled at her across the table. “We belong together,” she said.


“I doubt it,” Dorothy said sadly, as she refilled her own glass. “But I don’t know how to stop you.”


Wow, I hadn’t seen that coming. I’d never heard my mother say anything like that to anyone before, and she’d never met Olivia, so where was this coming from? It was a weird variation on our dinner-table scene earlier. Very strange, but I
liked the tension the scene was setting up, so I kept going and wrote another scene in which Christina and Natalie were back in Natalie’s apartment. Although Christina dismissed her mother’s predictions earlier, now she starts to worry. But when she presses Natalie for reassurance, Natalie becomes angry with her.

And when I wrote this line for Natalie, “‘I would have admired you more if you didn’t believe every word your mother says,’” I could hear Olivia’s anger behind it. Which was really freaky. I had to remind myself I was making up these characters; they weren’t actually Olivia and my mother and me.

A key turned in the apartment door, and Birdie and Damon burst in in their usual boisterous manner.

“Get a towel from the bathroom,” Birdie ordered. “She’s dripping all over everything.”

“So am I!” Damon said. “I’m drying my own hair first.”

I knew there was music to be faced with Birdie, which should be gotten out of the way before tomorrow morning, so I opened my door and stepped out.

Birdie stood on the small mat in front of the door holding Noodles as she shook herself violently.

“Is it raining?” I asked.

Birdie’s own hair was matted to his head and water dripped into his eyes. He raised one eyebrow but didn’t bother answering the question.

“Sorry. It was fine when I got home,” I said.

“It’s been pouring for twenty minutes. Which is exactly how far from home we were when it started.” He looked
toward the bathroom. “Bring a towel for me, too, Damon. Sometime this millennium.”

Damon stalked back into the living room with a towel wrapped tightly around his own head, tossed another towel to Birdie, and threw the third one on top of the drenched doggie.

“Oh, thanks, Damon,” I said. “You give
my
towel to the dog.”

“I just grabbed what was hanging there.”

I got down on my knees to dry Noodles, since the boys were busy with themselves. She licked me in gratitude, or maybe so I could be as wet as the rest of them. “So, is your mom coming over to take care of the animals this weekend?”

“Yes,” Birdie said, his voice muffled by terry cloth. “Speaking of which!” He pulled the towel down and turned to glare at me. “What is that note you left me? We’re riding down to the Cape with
Gio
? You invited him on our trip?”

“No! He was going down anyway to visit his new girlfriend in Truro. So get that I-told-you-so look off your face. His dad loaned him this big car, and it just makes sense for us to all go together. With five of us sharing gas it’ll be cheaper than the bus. And more fun, too.”

“Oh, yes,
fun
! Because we’re all such good friends.”

“Birdie, you hardly even know Gio. You were in a jealous snit last spring because you didn’t have a boyfriend. You wanted to spend every minute with me, and I wanted to spend time with Gio. It’ll be much different now. And Gio certainly won’t be interested in Damon.”

“Why not?” Damon said, looking hurt.

“I mean, he won’t be interested in you romantically. He’s straight,” I explained.

“He’s straight,” Birdie repeated, “but he likes lesbians.”

“He doesn’t like ‘lesbians.’ He likes
me
,” I said, then amended that. “He
liked
me. Past tense.”

“Do you know for a fact there’s a new girlfriend?” Birdie asked.

“Yes, Birdie. I know her.”

“So, he’s not staying with us, right?”

“No, he’s staying with Diana. In Truro.”

“And I won’t have to sit up front with him, will I? In case he has cooties.”

I sighed. “No, douche bag, I’ll sit up front.”

Then another possibility occurred to him, and he poked his finger toward me. “Is Olivia coming?”

“Is Olivia that beautiful woman?” Damon asked, looking back and forth between us.

“Yes, she’s beautiful; no, she isn’t coming. Lee’s coming, and she and Olivia don’t seem like a good match,” I said.

“Ooh, keeping secrets from the girlfriend already! Not a good sign!” Birdie taunted, shaking his head.

“Who’s Lee?” Damon wanted to know.

“Keep up, D.,” Birdie reprimanded him. “You’ve met her. Baby dyke. Nice hair, good teeth.”

“Won the Preakness last year,” I said, thereby totally confusing the baffled Damon.

Birdie pretended to think. “You know, Lee seems more like the kind of person you usually hang out with. I mean, I can’t really imagine your fabulous new girlfriend stuffed into
the backseat of Gio’s crummy car for three hours.”

“I don’t think it’s crummy; it’s his father’s.”

“Whatever. Olivia just seems too chic for your usual crowd.”

“Believe me,” I told him, “I’m considering tossing a few people out of my ‘usual crowd’ as we speak.”

He shrugged. “Okay, okay. Don’t be snotty—I’m letting your ex-boyfriend drive me to Provincetown.”

“We’re all thrilled,” I said, tossing the damp, smelly dog towel in his face.

E
VEN THOUGH
I
’D TOLD
B
IRDIE
the ride down with Gio would be fun, I actually had more than a few misgivings about it. There were too many variables: Was Gio a decent driver, and if not, could I wrest the wheel from him before Birdie started to crab about it? Would Lee feel uncomfortable around these three guys she didn’t really know, who could all be odd in their own not-so-charming ways? Would the car be funereally quiet except for those moments when Birdie was embarrassing the hell out of me? And, worst of all, what if Gio’s visit to Diana’s turned sour and I ended up babysitting a bummed-out guy all weekend? All five of us had personalities that could be rough around the edges; what were the chances we’d have a great time all together?

And yet it certainly seemed like we were going to. My roommates and I picked up Lee at her apartment and then caught the T over to Back Bay, where Gio had the car ready to go. It was awkward at first, because Birdie reminded me within everybody’s earshot that he was
not
sitting up front, and then before I could sit there myself, Damon plunked himself down in the shotgun seat and Birdie yelled at him to “get in the back of the bus with the other homosexuals.”
Obediently Damon crawled back out and let me get in the front passenger seat, but not before I shot Birdie a look of disgust. Somehow excitement about the weekend was enough to get us past these initial stupidities, and we settled into the car. Gio stopped at a Dunkin’ Donuts before we got on the highway, and the caffeine and sugar pumped up the excitement level even higher. When Damon yelled, “Road trip!” in his best Keanu-Reeves-wasted-on-pot voice, even I did not scoff.

As we lumbered down the highway, Gio asked Lee where she was from, and she told him. When he said he’d been to Indiana many times because his grandparents lived on a farm there, the girl began to honest-to-God
glow
. She leaned as far up into the front seat as the seat belt would allow, and they traded stories about riding on tractors and detasseling corn, whatever that meant. It turned out Gio had a whole bunch of relatives who didn’t live far from the place where Lee grew up, and her high school played against his cousins’ high school in sports, blah, blah, blah. Lee had a story about sitting out in a soybean field in August looking for shooting stars that had Gio howling with laughter. I didn’t get it either, but when Birdie said, “What the hell are they talking about?” I didn’t chime in. Obviously, if I got tired of sitting in the front seat, Lee would be happy to take my place.

Right around ten o’clock I had a few moments of agony imagining Olivia walking into the classroom at the Center and seeing both me and Gio missing. She would be thinking I’d lied to her and she’d be . . . what? Hurt? Angry? But surely I’d be able to explain everything, eventually. She couldn’t stay mad forever at someone who had announced
her love in such an adorably awkward way, could she?

I was still embarrassed about that, but I was starting to think,
What the hell?
It was the truth! When I thought of the anemic feelings I’d had for Kelly, my supposed “first girlfriend,” they were just little puffs of smoke I’d been eager to fan into some flaming passion. But it had never really caught fire for either of us, which I hadn’t entirely realized until Olivia appeared and my emotions leaped to fiery heights I hadn’t known existed. When you feel that way, you want to tell the other person—it’s only natural! And having sex with Olivia only made me love her more, because it made the whole thing feel real, like a grown-up emotional experience, not just some kid crush. I knew that no matter what happened down the line, I would never forget Olivia.

Gio turned out to be a good driver, for which I was grateful. He was careful and didn’t take dumb chances, but he could also put the pedal to the floor when the situation called for it. Meanwhile Birdie started singing old Madonna songs in that way he has where you can’t tell if he really likes the music or is just making fun of it. Damon joined in too, but without the irony. I got them to shut up by reading some poetry by my new favorite poet, James Merrill, who writes incredibly complicated poems about contacting angels and spirits through a Ouija board.