Have Love (Have a Life #2)

by Maddy Wells

  have love

  a Have a Life Novel

  Maddy Wells

  Blue Heron Book Works, LLC

  Allentown PA

  Copyright © 2016 Blue Heron Book Works, LLC

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any format without the express written permission of the publisher. All rights are reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to any person living or dead or events past or present is due to the uncanny talents of the author

  Cover design by Angie Zambrano

  Blue Heron Book Works, LLC

  Allentown, Pennsylvania 18104

  www.blueheronbookworks.com

  Contents

  What I Did For Love

  Chapter 1

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  About the Author

  What I Did For Love

  Chapter 1

  Everyone agreed that Alexandra Pavlo, my sister, was the most beautiful woman ever to come out of Samaria, Pennsylvania. You could demand a picture of this beauty, but listing specifics would diminish them, as, taken individually you could say, I’ve felt skin as smooth, or I’ve seen dancers move with more grace, or even I’ve seen fires burn brighter than her smile. And you might be right. But you can know particulars without ever knowing the truth. Truth is never in the details, which you can feed on endlessly like a vulture pecking on carrion. And who has the heart for that? Truth is what the heart sees in a shock of knowing, despite the scraps of evidence the mind presents trying to convince it otherwise.

  Alex was my adopted sister and she had been with us since her mother dumped her in our garbage can in 1951, the same year I was born. My brother, John, who was seven at the time, was about to inter a dead frog in the can when he heard whining, thought it was our cat, but was equally interested to discover a naked little person lying on top of cucumber peelings and eggshells from the omelet my mother had made for dinner. The biggest scandal, as John told me and Alex when we were old enough to understand, wasn’t her actual appearance in our garbage can, which fact astounded us anew every time we thought about it, but that Alex was found without a stitch of clothing. Her mother hadn’t even put a diaper on her. The physician who examined her said she wouldn’t have survived the night in the cold spring air. That she did survive was a miracle, he said.

  What passed for a social service agency in Samaria was Mrs. Hughes, a stern, stork-like woman whose veiled hat, sprinkled with black dots, gave her the incongruous appearance of playing peek-a-boo when she tried to catch your eye. Mrs. Hughes decreed that our mother was a decent woman whose own brood was healthy and well-fed; that six children would be no harder to raise than five; and finally—no doubt to save Mrs. Hughes a good deal of work checking backgrounds and cross-matching personalities, which was anyway a science with a success rate no better than chance—Alex was ours. And so, like the stars of other miraculous births, Alex became something of a god, to me at least. And like all worshipers, I eventually came to believe that this god was given to me, specifically to me, to transport me out of my ordinary existence.

  When we were children, Alex and I were inseparable. We were nothing alike physically or intellectually, but we insisted we were twins. We pointed to the fact that our eyes were remarkably similar; the same sea-green almond shape curtained by black lashes on my face, fairer lace on hers. That, though, was as far as any physical similarity went. The chemicals that suffused her skin with light and grew her limbs into exclamation points for the creation of the universe itself, by some sad science turned merely functional in me. My droopy arches supported a white and sweat-prone body, and while my troubled skin technically kept things together, I knew, even then, I was a lesser breed, fated to carry water to gods and goddesses. Not drink with them.

  When we played together, we didn’t allow other girls in, mostly because Alex and I didn’t like other girls. As the sisters of four brothers we knew what cool games were and, to us, girls seemed lost in a hopeless, dreary world of dress-up and pretend. We derided their games and were outraged when one girl, who had just moved into our neighborhood, brought her harem of Barbies to a sleepover for grooming and a late night dinner with Ken. “Doll babies?” Alex asked. We rifled through the hamper of clever doll clothes and mannequins in disgust.

  We played with those Barbies in the only way we could think of which was to remove their clothes then stuff them in the garbage pail, tying the plastic bag around them tightly so they would suffocate. And they would have if Barbie’s owner hadn’t bawled until our mother rescued them. Rescued us. Our violence scared me.

  Like other children, though, as soon as we could say the word, we became obsessed with sex. We knew that this powerful force, made more potent by its concealment, was the key to the universe and we hurried to learn how it was done. A boy at school, Jeff McGinley, had bragged that his parents were experts, citing as evidence his nine brothers and sisters, and he let us sit on a branch sloping across his front porch, which offered a clear view of the McGinley’s bedroom so we could see for ourselves. Just as we were about to witness the crucial part of the act, a crow landed on our branch, its hellish cawing causing us to scream which alerted the McGinleys and possibly robbed Jeff of his tenth sibling, before we pulled each other down in our panic to escape, although not before we had good look at Mr. McGinley’s breathtaking hard-on as he came to the window to see what the hell what going on. Alex and I suffered broken arms from our fall and I held my caste like a trophy, enjoying the constant pain, because it cemented the exclusivity of our relationship.

  Even children, especially children I know now, understand power, and by the time we were teenagers Alex and I accepted the unspoken terms of our relationship. She would allow me to associate with her, and I would not reveal the fantastic truth I’d deduced: that while everyone including me adored her, she needed our adoration even more. When we turned our attention to boys, who were at first compellingly indifferent and later compulsively attentive, I could see that Alex was hungry for the adoration boys showed her. It was as if she didn’t exist if somebody didn’t love her. And, incredible as it sounds, she needed me even more than she needed the fickle attention of lovers. It’s true. All stars shine brightly, but it’s the ones whose praises are sung by poets that we notice. And I made sure that Alex was noticed. I echoed her life, made myth of her exploits, turned my adoring face in her direction so she could see her reflection in my loving mirror. Alex was the sun. But I was the moon.

  Despite the glamour of her unusual beginnings and hypnotic presence, I didn’t begrudge Alex her beauty. I wanted Alex to succeed, even if her high school idea of success—to be a rock star groupie—was, to me, a waste of time. For without her, how could I succeed? I was certain that I was destined to be the most celebrated actress of my generation, but I was realistic enough to have noticed that a pretty face opened doors, while my nose would be flattened in no time. I would have been a fool to let my best asset just wander off on a self-indulgent path while she could be doing something meaningful for me. I needed the entrée her beauty would give me. She needed my brains. And that was that.

  My tenth grade English teacher, Miss Betts, counseled my mother that I was emotionally stunted and suggested sending me to the Barnes School for gifted children to complete high school and lessen Alex’s influence. There I could develop my flair for drama. It was my only hope of developing my own personality Miss Betts predicted with the certainty of one wh
o had seen this kind of thing before.

  “Your daughter doesn’t know who she is,” Miss Betts said, peering into my eyes. “Here, look. Nobody’s home.”

  My mother ignored the warning, upset that anyone would see anything sinister in her daughters’ closeness. Her nurturing focused on corporeal, not emotional needs, and we were fit in that area. Her children smelled of cooked cabbage and Clorox, odors that signaled balance in her universe.

  Other teachers, too, would try to separate us, to dim our power, and we would become despondent. Not eating. Not studying. Denying them the pleasure of our exuberant selves, until they relented and reunited the Yin and Yang. We were like Siamese twins, our souls funded by the same will. Together, we were formidable.

  In the fall of our senior year, our father went to stay with a pretty young widow, Mrs. Pembrook, who lived two blocks away. When we saw him that Easter and graduation, he filmed us. He always had a movie camera in front of his face. It was a hobby of his, and although he had been doing that since I could remember, no one in our family except me seemed interested in the results. When I was alone, I would view the films compulsively on the projector that he had set up in the basement next to the washing machine.

  Alex and I were usually in the same frames, and though the camera adored her, it was my own faulty image that mesmerized me. I couldn’t stop looking at myself, especially the selves I had discarded, at four, ten, twelve. I would perform in front of the mirror, redo scenes I had acted in real life, give them nuances that the originals lacked. I found that if I couldn’t be beautiful, I could be fierce, kind, haughty, irresistible. Anything I wanted. I viewed myself as a work of art, never perfect, always in rehearsal.

  I found I could make my face and body behave at odds with my real feelings. I could mime hatred or love and remain unchanged. It was like watching another person. The day I discovered how to do that, I felt an almost terrifying power. But I also knew that control over my physical being, while powerful, was not enough. To charm open the door of success, to re-write my fate, I needed beauty. I needed Alex.

  So, was it love or calculation, this feeling that I had for Alex? I’ve lived with that question for years and have decided I should more accurately ask: can you love your jailer? Sure, I was imprisoned by the privilege and grace of being associated with such an exquisite creature. But only a cuckoo would fly a gilded cage.

  The summer of 1969 we were eighteen. We knew that our future lay outside Samaria, and in her first display of independence, Alex jammed shampoo and make-up into one of the matching sky blue Samsonite cosmetic cases we’d received as graduation presents and boarded the bus for New York as an advance scout.

  “Only one of us should go, it’s easier to crash with folks if it’s only one,” she said with more authority than I remembered giving her.

  I saw her board the bus at Broad and Third and remained in Samaria, sorting through our childish belongings to make room for our new adult life. Everything had to go. Records, books, clothing, diaries. I wanted no evidence of our former existence left behind. Ruthlessly, I tore up photographs, postcards, lingering a while over letters Alex had received from a boy several years older than us who had gone to Vietnam. She had sent me to his welcome home party to deliver the news that she no longer wanted to see him, but his reply—his dark crew-cut head in his hands weeping until I could no longer stand it and just left—I kept that to myself. I ripped his letters into especially small pieces.

  Then there was that box of junk I had shoplifted. Things we didn’t need: a 14-carat gold pen, dresses and bathing suits in styles and colors neither of us could wear. I had stolen them as presents for Alex, but she had only laughed at my daring in taking them at all. I didn’t just throw the pen away, I broke it, smashing its casing with a rock, twisting the cartridge out of shape. I cut up the clothing, mixing the pieces into unsolvable piles.

  I destroyed other top-secret things that I’d never told Alex about: the photos our neighbor Mr. Thwaite had taken of me when I was sunbathing (he had given me copies under threat of exposure, as it were); the condoms I’d found under the driver’s seat of my father’s car; splotchy 8 millimeter footage of hoochie kootchie dancers my father filmed when he was stationed in Corpus Christi that I stole from his underwear drawer; and my father’s warning, delivered as part of a midnight confession to me right before he moved in with Mrs. Pembrook, not to trust men, because they only wanted one thing.

  I bagged the refuse and dragged it to the garbage can. Several times during the day, I opened it to make sure that no one could use anything I’d put inside. Our things were imbued with our essence and I didn’t want anyone else to claim it. I didn’t donate our chattel to friends because we didn’t have any, which was a lucky thing because I would have rid us of them as well. We would be starting with a clean slate.

  John stopped by our empty bedroom and surveyed the place that had been transformed into a nun’s cell. “Are you going on the lam?” he asked. He laughed, but his face betrayed concern. He was worried about Alex being alone in New York, saying he wished she’d waited for him, because he was moving there as well. He was a painter and New York was where the painter action was. I told him I thought that was probably a good idea. When I’d thought about him at all, and really there was no room in my world for thoughts of anyone other than me and Alex, I’d noticed that he seemed an extraordinarily lonely boy. I never heard him talking to girls on the phone like my other brothers, and he didn’t go to his senior prom, although he told me not going was strictly a political statement. I thought New York, that world to which I ascribed as much magic and fluidity of form as Oz, would absorb him and give him what he needed, much as I believed it would do for Alex and me. And I was anxious to be free of his proprietary concern about Alex. As we would be in different arenas, I didn’t tell him to look us up.

  After two weeks Alex finally called. Everything was settled. She had prospects as a model, nothing immediate, but the woman at the agency had already sent her on three “go sees,” proclaiming Alex’s potential for a possible career if she stayed away from booze and drugs and men. And she had an apartment: a cool photographer’s loft, which unfortunately, in my opinion, still housed the photographer. She talked so much about him, a man named Lance who had taken the photographs for her portfolio, that I finally asked her if she was in love with him.

  “You’ll love him, Nadia, you really will,” she said, sidestepping the question. I could hear her struggle with a cigarette lighter. Finally a big exhale. She hadn’t smoked in Samaria. “He’s so into the moment. He never worries about anything.” She laughed. “He thinks life just happens and you can’t force it. I told him all about you.” She laughed again. She sounded older, but I was too excited about the prospect of moving to New York to analyze it. It was the first indication, though, that her life was taking off without me.

  “Is it hot there?” I asked, wanting to know what kind of clothes to bring, but also desperate to hear Alex talk about something besides Lance.

  “Lance says this is the hottest summer he can remember in the city.”

  I could hear traffic, sirens, on the other end of the phone. “Are you in the apartment now? It’s awfully noisy. I can hardly hear you.”

  “You don’t have to be so critical. I’ve only been here two weeks and I think I’m doing pretty good.”

  “I’m not being critical. I just said it was noisy.”

  I hung up uneasily. It was our first ever quarrel. I blamed Lance’s influence. This would change when I arrived.

  I didn’t bother buying new clothes for the move. Alex said that New York was such a separate world, anything I bought, no matter how with-it in Samaria, would be laughably out of style by the time I stepped off the bus. And I was not, no matter what, to look lost when I arrived at the bus station. “Pretend you know where you’re going, even if you don’t see me. Just find a seat and park it. Wear dark glasses so if you’re scouting around you won’t look like a mark.”

&nb
sp; “Aren’t you going to be there? Waiting for me?”

  “I just mean, in case something happens. It is THE CITY for God’s sake.”

  I shared the bus ride to my new destiny with Madison Avenue advertising types and a few hippie parents, most of them no older than me. Some already had more than one child. I swore that would never be me, taking the bus with kids clinging to me like possum. This was going to be my last bus trip anywhere. From now on, people would drive me and be damned happy for the privilege.

  A young girl in the seat across the aisle was juggling a crying brat with a Tarot deck, which she shuffled and spread on her lap over and over, apparently not liking the future she kept dealing herself. Scoop, shuffle, and lay them out again, a frown creasing her face. Finally, she turned and looked at me, her eyes large and unfocused, obviously stoned. She held out her infant.

  “Would you mind?” she asked, cocking her head towards the restroom. “I haven’t peed in hours.”

  I took the child and realized why she, and it must’ve been a girl because she wore a cheap pink crocheted jacket, wouldn’t quiet down. She was soaked to her armpits. She hadn’t been changed all day. I told her mother when she returned to change her kid’s diaper, but she just shrugged, singing to her girl, re-spreading the Tarot cards on her lap.

  While I felt sorry for my bus mates, I felt then, as I do now, that you will your own life. My bus mates’ lives were runaway trucks with no brakes. They were as responsible for the miserable banality of their lives as I would be for the sparkling brilliance of mine. I felt smug and wondered, as we pulled into Port Authority, an underground, stylishly noir-like bus depot, if New York looked different if your baggage included other human beings for whom you were responsible. It was different for Alex and me. We weren’t responsible for each other. We were just companions on the journey. I felt a rush of excitement that our lives were still to be written, not merely played out.