Love War Stories Page 9

  “And I hate rushing,” my mom says as she takes her coat off and goes to the bathroom in our suite.

  I’m furious by the time we get to the West End. I walk quickly in front of my mother and she takes her sweet time. David looks confused when he sees me come in by myself. I rush over. “Sorry, my mom was being all slow. I wasn’t trying to make you wait.”

  “It’s okay,” he says as he kisses my forehead.

  “Do you want to sit down?” I ask.

  “No, we have to wait for your mom. She can’t be that far behind.”

  “Yeah, yeah, you’re right.” I stand by the door and see her ready to cross the street.

  He rushes to open the door for her and takes her coat. She looks him up and down and smiles her approval. “You didn’t tell me how handsome he is, Belinda.”

  I roll my eyes. “I told you,” I say instead of “you probably didn’t believe me.”

  He spends more time talking to her than me as we eat. I keep trying to join the conversation, but the trill of her laugh and the confidence of his cut me off. I lean back in the hard, unforgiving booth. I’m glad she’s not spending the night.

  When we get our dessert, she asks, “What attracted you to Belinda?” Looking at him and then me, “You two seem so different.”

  I give her a dirty look she doesn’t see.

  “True. Belinda’s different. Quiet,” he adds as he looks at me.

  I soften my face though I want to give him the same look.

  He leans over and puts his hand over mine. “She loves me, understands me.”

  “Love?” My mom eyes me, and snaps back to him, “You don’t think it’s too soon for that? You’ve been dating a month and a half.”

  “We feel the same way about each other,” he says grinning.

  She doesn’t grin back. I grip his hand tighter.

  The last thing she told me that night was that the whirlwind, the fast love, was all bullshit.

  It’s an unusually warm winter day and the whole of the student body flocks to the steps. David sits with his girlfriend under Alma Mater, the statue on the Low Library steps. Same spot we used to sit a few years ago. Two red-headed twins sit by them and look at David and his girlfriend with admiration. To be claimed like he claims her. The girlfriend sits on his lap and gives him small kisses around his face and neck. The tenderness he displays has her beaming. He tilts his head down toward her, awaiting her pecks.

  When David finally reels her in, he gives her an infinite kiss.

  The girlfriend slides off him and sits between his open legs. She nuzzles her head in his thigh and rests there. Her eyes closed, pleased, sure of the crystallization of this moment.

  I turn away, looking at them is like staring into the sun.

  I wonder if he has told her his prepackaged tragedies spilled early and often, hastening you into love. Because what is love if not triumphantly saying, I know him.

  This scene is a curiosity now—a scene from another life, another Belinda where fat doesn’t insulate me/her, taking desire out of the equation.

  They both look up at the sky, melded together, his arms wrapped around her neck.

  He loves so carelessly.

  Lala comes into the office and I expect her to tell me another story about some dude. Lala has dates on any night of the week, and she seems to think it’s her duty to tell me about her sex life each postdate morning. She comes over and sits on my desk. Lala is the kind of woman who flirts with anyone. She crosses her legs and leans over, so I can see the tops of her breasts.

  “Carmen, you won’t believe this. Guess what I will be doing next September?” Her perfectly red matte lips spread into a delicious smile.

  I hate prenoon Q&A with Lala. I never have the right answer. But, I always give her one incredible guess. More to amuse myself than anything else.

  “You’ll be married?” I venture.

  “No, Carmen. You’re so funny,” she says as she slaps my shoulder. “No, girl, I’m gonna be like you. I’m gonna go to Columbia. Well, the School of General Studies. But still.” She kicks her little feet forward.

  Lala with a dream? This woman who has only talked about men and good dates. I thought she aspired to nothing more than having a decent job, going home, and having fun.

  During orientation as a first-year student, standing in the middle of College Walk, my whole body hummed. Glee hitching me to all the students who were assuredly rushing unrestrained to stunning futures.

  Oh, to retrieve yourself in the past, shake yourself like a snow globe, and be in wonderment, sure that only the best of futures is to come.

  “Oh, oh, what do you want to study?” I finally say.

  “I’m not sure, but I’m thinking sociology or maybe psychology,” she says coyly, as if I might find this geeky or something.

  “Ah. Cool. Good luck.”

  When I taught high school in Bernardston to these country white kids, the student in my class who stood out the most was Steven. Lanky and freckle-faced, he wore baggy pants that made him look hood but he had very white-trash long hair. I thought that maybe I had caught him at an in-between stage, and I was glad I was not the only one reproducing herself. I didn’t know which was there first, the baggy pants or the long hair, but I was curious to see which would win out. On my calendar, I marked the subtle changes he made every day. I wanted to know the day that he changed, that he made a decisive decision to be one or the other.

  It is the end of a Friday afternoon and Fridays are meant for escaping with the promise of whatever or whomever over the next two days. Or even the promise of oneself.

  Fridays are meant for stripping off facades. Women will pull out short skirts and tall heels when they have spent the last five days looking like reined-in versions of themselves. Because people become who they really are at the end of the work week. And who or what will I have to pull out?

  As I prepare for another shitty day teaching, Steven walks in. His jeans are tight and he is wearing a white T-shirt. His hair is long and flowy, and I imagine he has taken all morning to comb it out, so it gleams when he comes into my classroom. He sits down and smiles at me. He has always done that. Never gave me a hard time, even though scanning the room I always thought he was the likeliest candidate. For a few moments, I imagine pulling him aside and asking him how he made a choice.

  “When did you decide?”

  “I’d say this morning, but I think it’s been a process in the making.”

  “Was there anything that made you choose?”

  “Yeah, that girl over there. Becky.”

  I glance over at Becky. She has on black gummy bracelets made blacker by her pale arm.

  “She’s a quarter Mexican, but she grew up here all her life. I didn’t know what she would like. So, I figured I would try both to see.”

  I look at her again. I hadn’t paid much attention to her before. I was so focused on how Steven would change that I missed this quiet girl in the front of the classroom.

  She appears unassuming, like she wouldn’t know all these efforts were being made on her behalf. But she seems like she would be flattered by all this if she knew. Not in an obsequious way, but sincerely.

  “What do you like about her?”

  Steven blushes in our imaginary conversation. He too has freckles that dot his face, and moles on his skin. He has gone through this transition, made his choice, but I still didn’t think he had found the real him. I could see him scrubbed clean, hair cut off, walking a bit taller in the years to come. But he was on his way. On his way. At least he made a choice.

  I go home that night. I don’t eat or listen to salsa music for days.

  It’s so easy to get lost in this world. To forget who you are. I envy Steven’s youth, that he’s on his way, transitioning, that he had not broken down on the side of the road.

  Victor seeps into my heart. He is one of the best-looking men I have ever seen, and I doubt that he goes through as much pain as he sings about. Salsa is filled with
heated love songs, music for nights when you just can’t quiet your heart. This is not the salsa music you hear in cheesy beer commercials. This is for depressing Saturday nights that have lost their meaning.

  I accidentally stab the roof of my mouth with a Dorito. The pain stops me momentarily.

  My eyes water, and I press my hand against my cheek as if the pain were there.

  Hard, tsunamic waves of anger come rushing at me sometimes. I pull out the list I started keeping in Bernardston. Every humiliation, every transgression. The love he had for me “was like no other,” he said. All those things seem so glaring now, so blinding.

  I look at her sometimes, my old self, and the gulf between us widens and widens. She is too disgusted with who I have become. She slaps my thighs. Brings the gloom after I feast. Shakes old, slim pictures of her to make me remember. I shut her up, reminding her who she was, what she let happen.

  Every time Victor’s “Devuélveme” comes on my CD player, I hit rewind. Victor wants his ex to return his hands that caressed her, the smile and shine he brought to her face, and everything else he gave. I flatten my tongue against the roof of my mouth for a few seconds and start to eat again. I close my eyes and imagine what that would be like—who would I be if so many things were returned to me?

  When the giddiness wears down, and I come up from the intoxicating haze, I realize how boring stalking can be. I’ve been sitting outside for over an hour waiting for them to come out of the movies. I pull out my old Wharton application. The one I’ve been carrying for two years. Two years that I’ve been waiting for brave men to come out of the sky to rescue me like a POW. Just placing my hand on the application conjures up a new life. When I close my eyes, I can clearly see the girl I should have been.

  A few days ago, Lala tiptoed over to my desk and asked me what I was doing next year, so she could put in a good word for me with Annie, the office manager who is on maternity leave and Lala is stepping in for.

  Some Belinda shook her head and said, “No, I won’t be here next year.”

  Giving me a firm nod, Lala smiled. “Good.”

  It’s the annoyance in the girlfriend’s voice that startles me. It is Saturday night, and they come out of the movie theater on 106th and Broadway together. Their bodies look different; they don’t sound or feel so new anymore.

  “Why are you being such a bitch, Rachel?” he screeches.

  “David,” she says much lower, clearly hoping he’ll match her tone. “Stop. We’ll talk about this later.”

  “I took you to the movies. A movie you wanted to see. So what’s the problem?”

  “Nothing. Forget it, David. We’ve had a stressful day. Stop. Please.”

  I imagine the stony look on his face as I walk behind them. There is silence, and then I notice his balled-up fists and feel the shortness of breath immediately. I pull at the hood of my North Face to get it off of my face some.

  “Don’t tell me to stop. You stop,” he shouts. “I try to make you happy and nothing, nothing makes you happy.” His voice booms through the streets as he starts to storm ahead of her.

  I scurry my eyes away when she turns around. I feel her quickly looking at me and the guy walking his dog.

  She hurries to catch him.

  He growls something I can’t totally hear. From her back, I see the way she stiffens. But she doesn’t walk away, she doesn’t cross the street, she just stays next to him in silence for the next ten blocks.

  I stop. My body feels so heavy. Sweat streams down my face, and I have to catch my breath. I rustle in my pocket, looking for a tissue, and the best I come up with is a Post-it note and a Snickers bar that I grab like a sword. I take off my gloves so I can pat down my face. Then I force myself to move as there is no way I will be able to run after them.

  When we get close to the art library on campus, she rubs his arm and reaches for his hand.

  He lets her hand sit in his for a few seconds.

  “You aren’t being very nice,” she says in a cutesy voice.

  In a fluid motion, he yanks his hand away and smacks her arm. In the loudest city in the world, we are in the quietest corner and the noise crackles through the night.

  Her body is stunned and hesitates for one, two seconds. I know she’s confused as she reaches up and puts her hand over her tingling skin.

  They stare at each other. I feel my stomach’s seasick churn. David picks up his girlfriend after class sometimes. Those moments when he is so sweet to her, when he does things she could brag to her girlfriends about, those are the moments she will cleave to. He covers his face with his hands until the first sob begins and he frees one to pull her forward, his body surrounding her. They both cry, but as each second passes, his cries get louder. His body shakes so much that it shakes her.

  Softly, I walk backward. My eyes remain on them.

  Then there is an explosion. I splatter on the ground because I miss the steps. The boom of my fall makes a greater noise than his smack. “Owwwwwwwwww,” I yell out. I grab my left arm—the site of most of my pain. I rapidly exhale through my mouth. The bruising on my body is immediate. The red bricks pulverize my entire body, but I stay on the ground longer than I should.

  My heart is on my face.

  David comes back in the room, but I look at the pictures on my wall—they depict my life. There is no photo of this, though. The sting of the slap still splatters across my face. I keep my hand on my cheek to localize the pain. All the rage displayed in his face, in his hands, gone. He is slumped, empty, depleted of all anger. Just like that. Like a faucet turned off and on by careless hands. He kneels in front of me and nuzzles his head toward my stomach. There is no sound in the room because I stopped crying as he moved toward me. His hands touch me, not the same hands of a few minutes ago or even a few hours ago.

  “Belinda,” he says.

  I used to love when he touched me with those hands. But now they sting and make me someone else.

  “Belinda, sweetie, I love you. I’m so sorry.” His words catch in his throat. Belinda, Belinda has melted down between our fingers.

  “I love you, I love you,” he keeps saying.

  Even though my face is covered, my protective hand on my cheek, the pain runs through me. This pain and my body meet and bend me at their will. A silent reel begins to play in my head. There is a girl, smashed, imploding. There is stop, start. There is before. There is after.

  Soon his head on my stomach turns into his mouth kissing my belly, his lips crawling upward until he gets up from his kneeling position in front of me, and I have to move so he can lie next to me.

  I used to love his hands. They are stubby, almost incomplete. Masculine, chalky, dry hands. But how they held me firm. His kisses, his touch—now surface-level. But how they seal my shame.

  “Open your eyes,” he says. “I love you. I really do. Do you love me?” I don’t want to answer. But he keeps asking, so I nod my head.

  “Say it,” he says.

  I turn my face to the wall. This is my hour of grieving. But there is no privacy. I am watching this happen. Two bodies on this bed. I am this girl. Her cries pick up again and are a whisper. Her eyes are closed. She wants to be alone. He lies back down, his hands neatly folded on his stomach, gentle, almost asleep, before he turns to his side and puts his hand on her leg, kisses her back. Soon his hands are fondling her breasts. His insistence grows. He turns her face to his. Doggedly kissing her lips.

  He stops kissing me, sits up and says, “You can hit me. Here. Hit me right here.” I ponder the offer. Would we be on equal footing again? In number theory there are perfect numbers. A six divided by one, two, three can also be a six added from one, two, three. What divides can also add back to the original whole. I watch my movie instead, and I hit rewind. Untrueness wins out. Let us enter a new world. A world where what has just happened does not exist. My hand slithers toward him. I am no longer this girl. I don’t know him, I don’t know me. I slide my hand over the cracked shell of his face. It all d
isappears, falls apart under my touch. My lips part slightly as his inevitably inch toward mine and I kiss him like that night he took me to Ollie’s and asked me to be his girlfriend. He seems relieved, like I have forgiven him. He is more shattered than I thought, a man made up of pieces that don’t connect. He tries to get on top of me, but I push him away. I get on top of him. As I clap my thighs around him, I try to hold us together.

  I followed Rachel for the past week and a half to see if she was stronger than me, stronger than David. But when Rachel lingers outside her dorm, applying lipstick instead of going upstairs, I sit down in the portico across from her dorm. I know to wait too. I know her moves.

  In Bernardston, I could review it all. Food can only stuff so much. Each guy, worse than the one before—the boys who pave the path to David. How much I have given away. Little pieces of me. Gifts on the doorsteps of the ungrateful. I only blamed him, but he could not have broken me all on his own. Only cracked things break on the first blow.

  When David greets her, their newishness is evident. A happy couple. All over again.

  They kiss and desperately press their bodies against each other.

  People thought we were so strong. What they didn’t know was how insular our world was; it wasn’t strength. If we stayed and said, “This is normal. We are normal,” it’s like it never happened. There was always the opportunity to return to a before.

  For several months, the abuse brought us together—tightly gluing two shattered people.

  And then he broke up with me.

  He said he didn’t want to be those people anymore.

  Untethered in the world, I called him most days until graduation, waited for him outside of his classroom, his dorm. I didn’t know who else we could be.

  He is recklessly on repeat, though. Just the boyfriend I knew. Once upon a time. Not blooming at all while I birthed Belindas.

  I look down, admiring my spreading thigh. I trace the multiplying grooves carved into my skin, sparked by my dividing. How much it is changing—has changed. I know Rachel will be there until she recoils from who they are because there are no perfect numbers—what divides cannot also add to remake the whole.