I sang Nicholas’s name to myself, my fingers traced the freckles on his forearms, and my face nuzzled his neck. I looked into his eyes and a tide of guilt swept over me, often, imagining my detours to Jeff’s, my journal entries composed of confusion and longing, wondering if it was possible to be in love with two people simultaneously. The tide swept out as I closed my eyes and he kissed me with what I imagined was the purity of a teenage boy.
When I pulled up to my mother’s house, I quietly entered and I heard her stir on the living room couch. It was after midnight.
“Wha’ time is it?” she said, her voice drunk only with sleep.
“Just after midnight,” I whispered, putting my hand on her arm. She raised her eyelids drowsily and said, “I’m so glad you’re home,” before turning over to face the wall.
Me too, I thought, and tiptoed to my bedroom to open my journal and write.
✵
“You’re growing up,” Jeff said. “That’s great. So glad to hear.”
I sat on the couch, frozen. I didn’t want to look at his face. He issued congratulations and went about his kitchen moving dishes noisily from counter to sink, his voice speeded up, my heart falling away to someplace unreachable.
I had shared with Jeff that I felt it. I was falling in love with Nicholas.
“That’s great,” he repeated, wiping his counters with a fast motion, crumbs slipping off onto the floor. “It must feel really good. Doesn’t it?”
I swallowed and looked down at the floor. The carpet was blurry. I let the drops fall on my cheeks.
“So did I tell you about that woman at work?” he asked suddenly. I shook my head without lifting it.
“We totally get along. It’s pretty nice, haven’t felt that in a while,” he continued, scrubbing a dish. He turned the water on full blast and I was grateful for the pause. I was suddenly reeling, wanting time to absorb the new atmosphere in his apartment.
He turned off the sink and looked over at me after some silence. “Shit,” he muttered. A tear dropped off the tip of my chin.
“Goddamn it,” he said when he sat down next to me. “Goddamn it.”
I started to shiver. “I’m sorry,” he said, “for whatever you’re crying about.”
A deep red cloud moved in over the place where my heart felt it had been.
“Whatever,” I answered.
“Look, Wendy,” Jeff began. I heard the shift in his voice, the one that delineated adult from child, teacher from student.
“I’ve known this for a while. You need to grow up, experience things that have to be experienced by someone your age.” He looked at my profile and I studied a stain on the carpet.
“I have to let you go, let you make your mistakes, live your life, so that you’re a mature, rounded person. I won’t lie, it makes me a little nervous, but it’s natural.”
“So since you’re in love,” he began after we sat in silence for some time, “I guess you can’t do this.” He reached over and squeezed one of my breasts. I pulled away.
“No more nights fucking me senseless in my bed, huh?” he said with a slight smile. “No more quickies in my bathroom, up against the sink, so I can see your face in the mirror while I...”
“Stop it,” I said. I stood up, almost losing my balance. “Stop.”
“I’m sorry,” he said quickly, his face changing. I looked at his face, his slight double chin, the way his hair formed silky ringlets on his head. His glasses were slipping off his nose and he seemed not to notice.
“I’m gonna go,” I announced quietly. He stood in the middle of his apartment and watched me. I shut the door behind me and the red cloud moved slightly in my chest. I walked as fast as I could through the corridors of his apartment complex until I reached the safety of outside. I started the ignition of my bus, the chugging and whirring mixed up with my sobbing.
✵
My junior year of high school began late in summer. My days were filled with Religion, Government, Psychology, Art History, and Business Law. After school, I raced onto the freeway that would drop me off on the west side of the Valley and knocked timidly on Nicholas’s window. He spied me through his window blinds and soon the door opened revealing me in my uniform, my backpack of schoolbooks, jingling car keys.
The warm August nights poured into September. Friday nights I gave Nicholas’s friends rides to his house, where we could expect to drink beer in his small bedroom, or we walked over to John’s garage for some manner of getting wasted mixed with improvised band practice.
We hiked up Stony Point one night. Our party of eight people cursed, called out drunkenly into the night, slipped on rocks and laughed with each other. Nicholas forged ahead both up and down the primitive peak while I followed the backs of his friends, carefully estimating my footing and wishing I hadn’t drank any Strawberry Hill at the top of the rock.
“Wendy’s doing okay,” he said when one of his friends asked why he wasn’t helping me down the face of the rocks. I felt my neck hairs bristle and my mouth tighten.
“Yeah, Wendy’s a trooper,” his friend agreed. My mouth untwisted and I stopped for a moment, leaning against the flat surface of a jutting rock.
I had somehow transformed into the responsible girlfriend, the only one who was still in school and got report cards, had a driver’s license and a car. My bus became a shuttle for nineteen and twenty-year-old boys that wanted to drink Jack Daniels mixed with Big Gulp cups full of Coke from 7-11 and play their instruments in a dark, musty garage outfitted with carpets, amateur soundproofed walls.
✵
“I’m gonna go outside and have a smoke,” I said to Jeff. It had been a month since I’d last seen him. I stood up from his couch and grabbed my bag.
“Just smoke it in here,” Jeff said. I raised my eyebrows. He opened the balcony door and gave me a clean ashtray I’d never seen before.
“You haven’t been coming over as often,” Jeff said after I finished half my cigarette in silence. “I guess you’re busy with what’s-his-name.”
I sucked in my cheeks and stubbed out my cigarette.
“I guess you could say that,” I answered. “And I’m trying to stay on top of school.”
“Ahh,” Jeff said, nodding. A dimple appeared in one cheek when he gave me a slight smile. “I like to hear that.”
“Just two more years,” I said, looking out the window at the Denny’s parking lot.
“Just two more years,” Jeff agreed. “Doesn’t stop me from wanting to fuck you now.”
I turned and looked at him. His words sounded crass and uncalled for in a way they never sounded to me before.
After he remarked a few more times that I was avoiding his apartment and how that hurt him, I felt the fingers of guilt close around me. I made an excuse and left soon after, even though it was a bright Sunday afternoon and school was still hours and hours away.
SEPTEMBER
1989
“Happy birthday,” I said into the intercom.
“Oh, yeah,” Jeff answered, his voice thick with sleep. “C’mon up.” He buzzed me in and I walked the hallways to his door.
When he greeted me, I snuck a look over his shoulder. Clothes were strewn on the floor, dishes in piles on the counter. I hid his birthday gift under my arm and he ushered me in.
“Jesse’s coming over in a bit,” he said, straightening up the apartment. “We’re going to a baseball game.”
“Oh,” I said, watching him. “I’m going camping with Nicholas. We’re leaving this afternoon.”
Moments later Jesse called out over the intercom and Jeff buzzed him in. Jeff was pulling on a baseball cap when Jesse bounded down the hall and opened the door.
“Oh, I have this for you,” I said suddenly after Jesse gave me a friendly hello. I handed Jeff the paper bag. Inside was the book One by Richard Bach. Jeff opened th
e front cover and read my inscription, which spoke benignly of friendship. He looked at me. I saw something shift in his face and suddenly wished Jesse wasn’t in the room.
“I love it,” Jeff said. “You’re the only one who knows what I really like, Wendy. You always write the nicest things for me on my birthday.” He crossed over to me and surprised me with an embrace.
“Hey, do I get one?” Jesse joked, and I pulled back from Jeff, my face reddening, wishing it was night, wishing our plans were different.
Jesse told Jeff he’d wait out front in his car for him. Alone, Jeff turned to me.
“Why don’t we just stay here all day and read it in bed?”
I smiled, silent.
“I know, I know,” Jeff said in mock apologetic tones. “You have a boyfriend and a life.” He tossed the book onto his mattress. “But someday he’ll be gone. You’ll be writing the books, I’ll be reading them.” I pressed my lips together and stared into his eyes.
“Sure you can’t make it to the game with us?” he asked when we were walking down the apartment hallway.
I started to say something about camping and he turned and hugged me. I held on until he said, “Well, if you decide not to go, I have my own special present to give to you, so stop by.”
We had one last embrace on the sidewalk as Jesse’s engine hummed.
I don’t want to write any more because I may be doubtful of some things and sure of others…so farewell for now, I wrote in my journal later that afternoon before I threw my backpack in the bus and headed out to Nicholas and to the coastal highway where the ocean was a stone’s throw from my open, sun-warmed hands.
FALL
1989
From five p.m. to nine p.m. Monday through Thursday, I walked the dimming autumn streets of the Valley, knocking on doors and offering subscriptions to the Los Angeles Times.
A group of us, ranging in age from sixteen to sixty-something, were shuttled in the company van by a friendly but firm taskmaster who frequently chided us for selling too few subscriptions. I stopped paying attention to him when he offered any one of us twenty-five dollars if we could come up with a good vanity plate for his new sports car. He had already tried 55 SUX, and the Department of Motor Vehicles denied him, so it was up to our crew to come up with the winning plate. I looked out the window trying not to roll my eyes as we drove through Van Nuys, Sepulveda, and Reseda.
I told my mother I was telemarketing in an office, hawking the L.A. Times. She looked closely at me and I looked away at the stack of free souvenir books I carried, one gift per customer that subscribed.
“Why do you have those?” she asked, her chin nodding in the direction of the shiny, softcover volumes.
“I send ‘em to people when I make a sale,” I lied.
Jeremy, a longtime seller and clearly the boss’s favorite, was instructed to accompany me on my first week, and he offered himself as an escort thereafter, especially when our supervisor pointed out that I was the only girl in the crew, not counting Hildy, our sixty-something seller, who carried a flask in her purse. I cruised neighborhoods with Jeremy who struck down all the stereotypes I had of the favorite employee. He was seventeen, a heavy metal fan, had long feathered hair and liked to party.
But work still came first. Awestruck at Jeremy’s ability to talk anyone into subscribing, I clammed up, feeling certain that selling was most definitely not one of my strong points. When potential customers invited us in for a smoke while Jeremy went on his spiel about current events and classifieds and daily movie listings, we leisurely entered their living rooms and Jeremy made the sales final. More often than not, the customers even offered us joints, or a hit from a water pipe, and Jeremy and I slapped hands in victory as we made our way down the street to the next apartment complex, high as kites.
When I sold only two subscriptions in an evening, Jeremy nonchalantly dropped a few of his subscriber cards next to my leg as we sat on a sidewalk for a spell.
“Really?” I asked.
He shrugged. “But practice your technique,” he added.
“I know, I know,” I said. “It’s just hard to do when you’re high.” He looked at me blankly, his brown feathered hair falling against his clean-shaven cheeks. I knew he did not share the feeling.
It was after eleven one Friday night. School and work had me exhausted, stretched out and dozing on the floor after snapping a quick bongload in my bedroom, incense burning to mask the smell. The phone rang and my body shot up to answer it before my mother could pick up the kitchen extension.
“Jeez, you’re alive?” Jeff said into my ear when I mumbled a hello.
“Yep,” I said, stretching out with the phone to my ear. I pushed away a pile of books and rested my head on my arm.
“I haven’t seen or heard from you in ages. I wondered if you were dead,” he said.
“Nope,” I answered. I peered down at my belly and watched it slowly rise and fall.
“Well, sounds like you’re beat,” Jeff said. He sounded alert and wanting to talk. “Stop by tomorrow if you want. I’ll be home all day grading papers.”
“Okay,” I answered, my eyes closing. I hung up the phone. I turned and lied on my back, my head hitting the edge of the answering machine. Dead? I was running around, alive, between Nicholas’s, John’s garage, and Notre Dame High School, while also selling subscriptions all over the Valley.
Alive, running, I thought as I softly entered sleep again. But where?
✵
As Thanksgiving vacation approached, my report card reflected the best grades I’d had since beginning high school. The report card was passed from my mother’s hands to my grandmother’s, and money was passed to mine. I was pulling in the minimum required subscription sales for the Times and scoring more than my fair share of joints and bong hits from generous and kind men and women across the Valley. I gave away the premium gifts when someone couldn’t afford a subscription but shared their marijuana. The pile of glossy picture books dwindled, and my mother stopped asking questions about my “telemarketing” job.
My paychecks and commission money bought dime bags and car insurance payments, fast food on the way home from Nicholas’s and Victoria’s Secret lingerie. The bus was still breaking down regularly. Extra commission money funded the resurrection of my bus in auto shops where it was perpetually being towed.
I was sixteen and a half and could see the time crunch in my schedule from studying, working nights, and playing weekends. Nicholas’s attentions were shared equally between me, his band practice, his sometime odd jobs, and drinking. Nights at John’s garage could go by without ten words between us, and after a bottle of Boone’s Farm, I felt justified in walking out, slamming the door and starting the ignition of my bus and taking off with as much dramatics as I could muster. Thus began the interminable discussions, slurred and messy, where I questioned Nicholas’s commitment to me and refused to give his friends rides anywhere. I ranted from the driver’s seat, Nicholas held his head down and answered me quietly from the passenger’s seat. The scene became a ritual we wouldn’t break from for a long, long time.
One night after such a discussion, I refused his friend Junky a ride home and denied Nicholas a night with me in his bed. I had the particular intention to stop by Jeff’s apartment on my way home.
The moon was high and white, round and perfect in the sky. I drove swiftly through the streets, my rationalizations increasing with each stoplight. It’s boring as hell at John’s garage. Nicholas is drunk most of the time. We’re never alone anymore, his friends are always around. Drunk as usual. When Jeff’s apartment was on the horizon, the voices dulled into nothing, replaced by a warm feeling lower than my stomach, creating heat in my fingertips.
Two hours passed slowly in his apartment.
“Beautiful,” he whispered at me over and over. “You’re getting so beautiful.”
The moonlight drifted in from behind the sheet on the balcony door. In its path I saw my clothes, slipped off as if in a spell, a random lighter on the rug, one of Jeff’s belts.
After, I closed my eyes and felt his heavy hand on my hip.
“So are you going to spend the night?” he whispered into my hair. My eyes flew open.
“No, no, forget it,” he said quickly. “Before I could get you again in the morning, the cops’d be banging on my door.”
I didn’t want to hear words anymore. He had spent the first half hour of my clandestine visit telling me that he finally felt like he could reasonably go out and meet women.
“I’ll either wait for one to turn legal,” he said, pointing a finger at my chest, “or I’ll meet someone sooner or later who is.”
NOTES ON AN EXCAVATION:
2007–2010
For nearly three years I met a Jungian analyst weekly, then twice weekly, in an office of West Los Angeles.
One of the times we met, she said, “It seems as though your natural state is one of hiding, secrets, shame; it is where you possibly feel most comfortable. From the moment you began hiding your parents’ alcoholism from others,” she explained, “you drew the cloak of secrets and shame around your shoulders so that it became something you would wear, always.”
I listened to her and tried to let the image sink in.
It was only until she said she had tremendous empathy for the child I was, the girl who so early on felt the need to take on secrets, to lie and hide for the sake of other people, to protect them, did I begin to feel the import.
It was then that the numbness was punctured and I started to cry.
The veil had been pulled back for a moment on all the situations I had participated in after Jeff. There were the infidelities, always preceding breakups with boyfriends and the periods of stable, pleasant and even fulfilling relationships I exchanged for thick lust with someone else, like a smoke I could, and did, get lost in. For as long as I could remember, there were the secrets I found myself weaving with a lover or potential lover, man or woman, the co-conspiratorial air that forced such strange intimacy.
Excavation: A Memoir Page 16