by Paul Kropp
I mean, it wasn’t that I’d done anything that awful. I’d seen a pretty girl, asked her out, gone on a date, made out at her house. Nothing special in all that. Any given day, any country on earth, that same story is happening a million times. It wasn’t that I didn’t care about Rochelle, or that I was only using her for my own needs. I mean, I loved her, kind of, maybe. Or at least I was in love, or something like that.
The only problem was what I hadn’t done, that I hadn’t admitted to being a high-school student. Okay, maybe it was more than that. Maybe I had said a few things to give the impression that I went to college.
Okay, admit it. I lied. I fabricated. I created the Alan Macklin that I’m going to be in a couple of years and I pretended that guy was already me. Is that so awful?
Yeah, it’s probably that awful.
I wouldn’t feel bad about lying to somebody like Mel Halvorsen, who didn’t seem to care much about the difference between truth and falsehood herself. I wouldn’t feel bad about lying to one of my teachers, because they expect it, really, as part of the job. But when you lie to somebody you care about, well, that’s pretty low. And when you drag in your friends to lie on your behalf, well, that’s even lower.
So I sat at Starbucks that afternoon and looked morosely into my grande cup. It’s a good word, morosely, because it even sounds like how I felt. Morosely. Lots of really good words in that vocabulary book I’ve been studying.
“C’mon, Alan, cheer up,” Jeremy said.
“Why?”
“What’s the worst that can happen?” he said. “You should always think about it like that. The worst thing she can do is tell Rochelle the truth, and you were going to tell her the truth anyhow.”
“Yeah, but it would be different coming from me. And she’ll probably dump me after she finds out.”
“There are a lot of fish in the sea,” he said. “I know a dozen girls at St. Hilda’s who are desperate enough to hop in the sack with you. And there’s always Hannah the Honker.”
“Rochelle is not a fish, Jeremy,” I spat back. “But you are a jerk. A total jerk.”
I might have gone on in that vein, but Maggie came in at the door and looked at the two of us. The look alone was enough to shut me up. In a few minutes she came over to our table with her double latte.
“Okay, I’ve been thinking,” she began. Her face was serious, but not angry. When Maggie gets angry her face tightens up and her little red eyebrows push together over her nose. When she gets serious her mouth tightens up and her cheeks look like a chipmunk’s. This was the chipmunk look.
“We can see,” Jeremy said.
“It’s time for the truth,” Maggie went on. “Either you promise to tell Rochelle or else I will. She’s got to know, Alan.”
“Right. I’ll tell her.”
“Tonight or tomorrow. Promise?”
“Promise,” I said. I was ready to cross my heart, but I thought that might be over the top.
“If she really cares about you, maybe she’ll understand.”
“Right,” I agreed. I try to tell myself this was true, but all the while my heart was sinking.
That’s when Jeremy decided to join the conversation, in his usual way. “Maybe she’ll take pity on you, Al. You might get to home base yet.”
Maggie stared at him. “Has it occurred to you, Jeremy, that your obsession with sex is a serious personal problem, verging on pathological in your case?”
“What, me?” he replied.
“Yeah, you,” Maggie shot back. “First base, second base, home run—you’d think that a relationship was a game where you keep score: guys over girls 9 to 4 in the fifth. It’s no wonder nobody will go out with you.”
“What do you mean?” Jeremy asked.
“I mean, you’ve never even been out with a girl—”
“C’mon, I’ve been out with lots of girls. I’ve already run all the bases. I mean, like…”
“That’s a crock,” Maggie told him. “Not one girl at our school has ever been out with you, nor would they, given your reputation as a perv. And those girls at St. Hilda’s you talk about, that’s all fantasy. Who was that last girl you talked about, Britney something? Well, I asked a friend over there and she says there is no girl with that name. In fact, she says that no girl at St. Hilda’s has ever even heard of you.”
Jeremy was visibly shrinking in his seat as we both stared at him.
“Yeah, well, you can’t always believe everything—”
“Frankly, I’d believe my friends over a slimebag like you,” Maggie told him. “There’s nothing that says a guy has to go out. God knows, I’d never been on a date until this year, and that’s the simple truth. But when you make up big stories about your imaginary sexual conquests and it’s all fantasy, well, that’s sick.”
Jeremy’s face was very pale, as if all the blood in his body had rushed somewhere else. He looked like a corpse.
“If all your fantasies weren’t fired up by porn movies, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe the only one affected would be you,” Maggie said. “But now the fraud is getting contagious, so,” she turned back to me, “it stops tonight.”
“Tomorrow,” I croaked. “I’ll tell her tomorrow.”
“Fair enough,” Maggie replied. “Better that she hears it from you. The truth will out,’ Alan, remember that.”
“Yeah, right,” I said. “Definitely.”
“And one more thing,” Maggie said, reaching into her notebook. “Here’s your final bill. I can’t keep giving advice to a client who isn’t honest about what he’s doing,” she said, and slapped the envelope on the table. “I quit.”
22
Some Truths Are Surprising
THE TRUTH WILL OUT. Sounds like Shakespeare. That’s the kind of thing he used to write. Out, out, damned spot, and all that stuff. Someday I have to read more Shakespeare. Maybe if I really were a college English lit. major I’d know all sorts of Shakespeare and could start spouting all sorts of wonderful quotes.
But I’m not. I’m a miserable high-school student who’s lied to the one girl who really likes me. I have deceived and taken advantage of the one girl I have ever loved, or kind of loved, or at least liked a lot. And I lied to the one person who was giving me really good advice.
I am scum. I am worse than that. I am high-school scum.
My only solace is that Jeremy is worse than me. He did lie—he lied to me, his best friend. And even when Maggie made it obvious, he still kept trying to cover it up. On the way home, he started coming up with even mangier lies—like maybe he mixed up St. Hilda’s and St. Clement’s, or maybe the girls he went out with were so upset when he dumped them that they lied to Maggie.
“Sure,” I said. We both knew that he was still trying to keep his cover, and how pathetic that was, so there seemed no sense rubbing it in.
But lying to your best friend is really low, about as low as you can go. And when I thought back to all the dumb advice he’d given me about girls, KFUG and all that, it made me cringe. I’m too trusting, I told myself. I have to learn how to separate the truth from the lies, and I might as well start with Rochelle and me. It was time to bite that bullet.
“Rochelle, I’ve got to see you tonight,” I said into her cellphone message box Saturday morning. “Is there any way?”
I had to beat my mother to the phone when she called back about an hour later. Rochelle had an exam that went to seven o’clock, but said we could go out for dinner after that. She said she really wanted to see me, too.
My hand was shaking when I hung up the phone. That girl was so lovely, so kind, so loving…how could I have been such a jerk? She thought I was just desperate to see her because I felt so strongly about her—and I did—but now I’ve got to deliver a little stunner. Uh, sorry, I’m not the Alan you thought I was. I’m just a miserable high-school student—a miserable, deceiving high-school student.
Maybe, just maybe, she’d forgive me. That’s what I told myself. And then I remembered t
hat it was Jeremy who had given me that hopeful scenario, and what did he know? Nothing. The truth was simple—I was toast. Worse, I was burnt toast stinking up the kitchen.
We met outside the room where she wrote her exam.
“Alan, you look so serious,” Rochelle said.
“Yeah, well, it’s been a rough couple of days,” I said with a sigh. “Studying for exams, you know.” No, stop that, I told myself. You’ve got to stop that.
“It’s always like that at the end of the term,” she replied.
I cringed. I should tell her. I should blurt out the truth, but I just couldn’t—not there, not with all her classmates looking at us.
“So let’s go have something to eat,” she said. “This is my last exam, so it’s time to celebrate. And I’ve got something kind of serious to talk to you about.”
“Me too.” Another sigh. “What kind of food?”
“Anything except Chinese,” she said. “Italian’s my fave. There’s a little place not too far away called Vincenzo’s or something like that. Might as well have a nice dinner before a serious talk.”
It shouldn’t have surprised me that there was a little awkward distance between us that night. We talked about nothing much on the way to the restaurant, and didn’t even hold hands or kiss. It was as if she already had a hunch what I was going to say.
Vincenzo’s turned out to be a nicer place than I had expected, not so much a pizza parlour as a decent Italian restaurant with a couple of things beside pizza on the menu. I said that the meal would be my treat. It seemed unfair that I should be dumping the truth on her if she was picking up the bill. And maybe, just maybe, she’d take pity on me if I were buying the dinner.
So we ate lasagna, drank some wine and talked about school and life and this universe or its alternatives, carefully avoiding anything important for maybe an hour.
I was good. I did not add to any of the lies I had previously told. I merely dodged sideways when she asked about Professor Jones, or my art history course, or why I couldn’t handle the menu when I had spent the whole year studying Italian. I would smile, be charming, and say nothing.
The wine didn’t help. The more I drank, the more beautiful and sweet and loving Rochelle became. I found myself staring into her eyes like some kind of lovesick puppy. And maybe I was in love. Maybe the love I felt had gotten that much stronger because it was doomed, because my little bombshell of truth would leave our relationship lying in pieces all over the battlefield.
“Chelle,” I said when the cappuccinos arrived, “I’ve got to tell you something.”
“Me too,” she said, looking into my eyes over the edge of her coffee cup.
“It’s hard because I really like you,” I began. “I mean, I really, really like you. You’re the most wonderful, most beautiful…and I don’t mean just beautiful but…”
“You’re making me blush.”
“Well, I’m saying that when we’re together, it’s so special.”
“Alan.” My name just hung in the air, the tone of her voice carrying so much feeling, so much sheer devotion, or fondness, or maybe love. “Alan, I know how you feel. I’ve felt the same way, since that first night.”
I had to get this back on track. I had to tell her the truth. Somehow.
“But the truth is,” she went on, “that we’re both pretty young.”
I raised one eyebrow. Did she know? Had Maggie called her?
“What I mean is,” Rochelle said, looking away from me, “this relationship we have is getting pretty intense, pretty fast.”
I nodded. That was true, very true.
“And I’m not sure I’m quite ready for that,” Rochelle said. “You’re pretty experienced with girls, but I’ve only had one boyfriend before you and…well…there’s something else.”
I put down my cappuccino cup. It was empty.
Rochelle looked upset.
“After we…the other night, well, you know, I got all confused. I want this relationship with you, really I do, but I got kind of scared because it was so…so soon. And I haven’t been entirely honest with you because, well, there’s this other guy…”
“Another guy,” I repeated like a zombie. “There’s another guy?”
“Well, it’s so weird, Alan. I mean, with you there’s this big physical thing. I can’t believe how I feel when I’m with you, but with him it’s so different.”
“With this other guy,” I repeated. I could feel the anger rising up out of my chest and into my head; I could feel my thyroid or pituitary or whatever gland it is pumping anger molecules into my bloodstream. I was jealous. I was hurt. I was mad.
“It’s more kind of spiritual, you know,” she went on. “Not that what we have isn’t spiritual, but there’s this big attraction…”
“And you like this other guy better,” I said.
She shook her head. “No, not better. It’s not like that. You’re both so very different. You’re so experienced, so confident, and he’s a bit younger and…”
“What’s his name?” I demanded.
“Alan, don’t,” she pleaded.
“What’s his name?” I repeated. “If you’re going to dump me, I want to know the guy’s name. It’s only fair, Rochelle.”
She thought for a second, maybe trying to decide if I were the violent type that would go over to the guy’s house with an Uzi. Ultimately, I guess she figured that wasn’t my style.
Here eyes were so apologetic as his name came from her lips.
“Braden,” she whispered. “Braden Boyce.”
23
When All The Birds Do Squawk
IT WASN’T FAIR, any of it. I’d only been in love for a week. I’d only been seeing Rochelle for a month and now I was…dumped.
This whole business of love and loss is really quite physical. When you’re in love, your heart beats wildly, you stand straighter, you smile more, you hear all the sweet birds sing. When you’re dumped, your heart relocates into your stomach, you walk with a stoop, you can’t remember what a smile looks like and all the birds begin to squawk.
The next day, I lay in bed. I told my mother I was sick and just lay in bed. In some other century, in the words of some romantic poet, I would be languishing for loss of my beloved. That’s a nice word, languish. It kind of sounds how I felt. I languished in front of The New Price Is Right, Days of Our Lives, a cooking show and Jerry Springer, interspersed with bits of the Discovery Channel. I knew I was terribly, terribly sad when Days of Our Lives started to feel like my real life, and the guests on Jerry Springer started to look like comparatively sensible people.
The phone rang at four. I could tell by the call display that it was Jeremy.
“How are you, guy?” he asked.
“Languishing,” I said. “I’ve been dumped. I have no reason to live.”
“Bummer,” he replied. That’s about as much sympathy as guys give each other. “But she’s only a girl, Al,” he went on. “You’ll get over it.”
“How would you know?” I shot back, then thumped down the phone.
I didn’t eat supper that night. My mother was convinced that I should go see Dr. Signurdson, but I maintained that my particular malady couldn’t be fixed by an antibiotic. I was in despair; I was cultivating melancholy. Somebody wrote a book about that once, Anatomy of Melancholy, just in case you wanted to dissect the emotion. I didn’t. I wanted to wallow in it.
On Saturday, the phone rang again. This time it was Maggie, so I picked up.
“We’ve both been dumped,” she began.
I sighed. “I know.”
“Those two-timers were seeing each other behind our backs.”
“Must have been.”
“Scum, they’re both scum.”
“Well, Braden is,” I agreed. “Rochelle, well, Rochelle, I think, well…”
“Al, you were taken in,” Maggie said. “You fell big time and she just played with you. She used you.”
“I guess.”
“So stop
moaning about it and get angry,” she told me. “You don’t see me moaning over Braden Boyce. No way. The guy wanted to get laid, and when I wouldn’t oblige him he looked elsewhere. I mean, what kind of guy is that?”
I figured that was a rhetorical question, so said nothing.
“A scum,” Maggie said, answering her own question. “But enough of that. Rochelle and Braden are ancient history. For current history, we’ve got a project on the role of women in World War II and it’s due next week.”
“We do?” I croaked.
“Yeah, I signed you up on Friday. I figured since you’re not a client any more we could probably do a project together. I thought we could do a PowerPoint show and dazzle the class. How about we get together tomorrow and do the research?”
“But I’m languishing,” I replied.
“Yeah, like Ophelia for Hamlet, and look where it got her—floating down a stream clutching a bunch of flowers. It’s time to move on, Al.”
“Okay,” I groaned. “Your place or mine?”
“Pretty funny, Al. You’ve got a high-speed connection, haven’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“So let’s get together at your place,” she said. “And I don’t mean to bug you about this, Al, but could I get that final bill paid? It is the end of May, you know.”
The final bill wasn’t all that bad: $20 for consulting time, $26 for Instruction Set 3, $38 for expenses for a total of $84. There was the guarantee, of course, which I could have used—after all, the Ultimate Goal hadn’t been achieved. But given all the work that Maggie had put into my project, I figured she deserved the money, and probably a lot more.
So I had the last payment ready when Maggie came pounding on the door of my house on Sunday afternoon. My mother was out, fortunately, or else she would have cookied poor Maggie to death. My father looked at Maggie with a question in his eyes, as if to say, So is this why I gave you those condoms? Which might be why I told him that Maggie was “a friend, just a friend.”