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Shine of the Ever

Page 16

by Foster, Claire Rudy;


  I was actually getting sicker. Every time I drank, I felt as if some deep inherent loneliness was trying to kill me. It got so all I did was drink, pretend, fail at pretending, drink some more. I forced a weak smile. “I’m fine. Getting ready for work. How’s your art coming?”

  “Arthur, art, Arthur, art,” she sang. She didn’t notice my mood when hers was so buoyant. She stopped being worried when I was hungover, didn’t bring me tea or juice and aspirin in the mornings, and ignored me when I slept over at Ted’s. My heart deflated in my chest.

  If I hadn’t been so low, I would have rushed to get out of there, away from her. I was sick of everything, including this relationship. I was still trying to prove I could move on if I wanted to.

  I threw my backpack on and carried my bike down the stairs. Had Alison sensed my secret intentions, gotten scared off? I didn’t have a choice, when it came to calling her. My fixation was like alcohol; we both knew I couldn’t stay away, had no sufficient reason to stay away. I would do it until I couldn’t anymore and even then I wouldn’t stop.

  I felt no ease until I pedaled up the driveway of the Reed campus. The arching branches dappled the ground with green shadows. Suddenly, I could breathe again. This place never changed, either. A girl walked by in shorts so small I could see a mole on the inside of her thigh, a tiny dot like a constellation, leading me in a better direction.

  Card Catalog

  Reed’s card catalog was an oak beast. The drawers opened silently. Its joints were worn smooth as vellum. It took up most of the reference room, squeezing the space, nearly pressing against the shelves. I put my hand against its polished flank and touched the brass pull on the LO-LOB drawer. I felt sad in other libraries, where people had to find their books using a computer. Using the catalog was a pleasure, a game. I could jump from subject to subject for an hour. Sometimes, I noted the pathways of my research in my notebook: whales to whale bones to corsets to Victorian women’s clothes to Victorian women to Victorian marriage. I kept coming back to the subject of love—or it came back to me, one way or another. One shelf, just eighteen books, was devoted to the study of love as pathology. Thumbing through them, I wondered if the feeling I had for Alison was a sickness.

  I had Ada, after all. Alison’s doppelgänger. Sweet in her own way, but frustrating too. Something about her made me want to smash a plate, scream, and tear her papers off the walls. The way she sat at the kitchen table with her shoebox of unused clippings, taking up space, infuriated me. I hated the way she waited up for me, no matter how late I stayed out. She wouldn’t leave home; we argued about it too often.

  “Go out, make friends,” I would say, my voice packed tight.

  “But I live with my best friend. I live with you.”

  “Call Arthur. He’d love to spend time with you. Holding hands. Whatever the fuck you do. Real estate people are parasites.”

  I’d slam the door, leaving her to cry. But nothing changed.

  The girl in the cowboy boots had hair the color of a rubber ducky, and she walked up to me as though she knew I was her destination. I slid open the LO drawer and pretended to pick through the hand-typed cards. Up close, the girl’s hair was dark at the roots, dirty black. Her shirt was so thin that I could see the tattoo on her chest, but the letters were too small to read.

  “Can I help you?” I asked. She was very pretty: square face, wide eyes. She smiled—used to getting what she wants.

  “I just came to look up bees.” She wiggled her index finger, made a buzzing noise.

  I led her to the other side of the card catalog, put my hand on the drawer—first step, catch the thread of her question.

  “Why bees?” I asked, skimming the cards with my fingers. I did it quickly, feeling her watch me.

  “You’re good at that,” she said. Her crooked smile. I imagined the transparent shirt in a pile on the floor. Her skirt hitched up, cowboy boots on. My fingers, flickering against her underwear. My cheeks went hot.

  “I’ve worked here for a while.”

  “Bees are endangered,” she said. “Honeybees. They get confused by the frequency of cell phones and wander off from their hives. They starve.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “It must not be in the library, then,” she teased. She could have been Alison’s twin in that moment. She had that same sureness, funny and serious at the same time. Five years ago. Two years ago. Whenever all those things had happened between us.

  “There’s always an answer.”

  “Good. Because I want to know how bees breathe. I’ve looked around and all the other libraries just have things about beekeeping.”

  “You don’t care about keeping them?”

  “Not yet,” she said. “Breathing first. The rest later.”

  I closed the drawer, passed behind her. The IO-IPB drawer whispered open with the sound of paper rubbing on paper. I started to flip through, slowly.

  “Your problem is that you’re being too specific,” I said. I flashed the card in front of her face like a magician’s trick. “Here.”

  “Invertebrates?” she read.

  “You may recall that the bee is an invertebrate.” That made her giggle. “I’ll show you where this stuff is.”

  I led her far back into a dark room with a single window, framed with honey-colored wood. A sunbeam illuminated a patch of floor. The girl stood in it; her skirt caught the sunlight. I felt along the thick spines of the reference books. The one I wanted was clotted with dust, which I blew away in one puff.

  “Found it,” I said, and she came to stand at my elbow.

  “Finally. I’ll know,” she said.

  I knelt and opened the book on the carpet. I was suddenly aware of the great space between myself and the other people in the library, each at their own shelf, bending to read the tiny rows of print. I imagined I could hear them rustling the thin pages far away, like mice hiding under dry leaves.

  The girl’s knees smelled of saddle soap and grass. Her legs were covered in fine golden hairs. She looked at me over the cliff of her patterned skirt and smiled. We were completely alone. I felt my thighs prickle, as though all the blood in my body had suddenly burst out of my veins.

  Ada would never know if I touched the back of this girl’s knee. If I kissed my way up her leg. If she shivered like a blade of grass. If she pulled us down to the floor. Whatever happened—it would be a secret.

  It wasn’t cheating, I told myself. The extra stuff was something I needed, that came to me at the right time. I kept the curled yellow strand I found clinging to my collar. I taped it into my journal, in the back pages. I washed my face before I went home that afternoon. The suds ran down my neck, releasing a sweet smell that was nothing like flowers.

  Balance

  At work, I looked for the girl with the cowboy boots—did I even know her name?—but she did not come back. The roses were blooming, and I lingered by the library’s open windows, watching the new undergraduates waft among the ginkgo trees. They seemed young, still protected by their parents’ money. In another few months, when midterms came, they’d seek refuge in the library with their fingers frantically leafing through the reference books. The place would stink with their stress. But now, summer’s last gasp, they lolled like happy dogs on the front lawn, baring their arms to the sun.

  I was replacing the battered cards in the catalog with freshly typed entries. It was easy work. I sat in the bay window by the reference desk with my back to the pointed arch leading toward the reading pit, the typewriter balanced on a rickety table so low that my thighs felt the clack of the keys meeting the paper. On my lap, I held a shoebox of creamy cards, blank, the best kind of archival paper.

  The librarian at the desk turned to look at me occasionally, but otherwise I was unobserved; my typing made a free-form punctuation in the library’s silence. I corrected fourteen cards from the AN-ANN drawer,
then slid them into place among their mates. The old ones were kept in a separate box, to avoid confusion. Stained, torn, marked by readers. On the card for Anna Karenina, a girl had written in loopy cursive “Free Yourself from the Tyranny of Love!” She’d drawn a key underneath, as though love was a set of shackles that grew on you, link by link by link.

  That’s how it felt, even though Ada could be so sweet sometimes. She’d been like a little kid lately, excited for school to start. She put away the collages; the magazines went back into the closet. Instead, she baked muffins in the morning and learned to knit. Instead of taking up the whole apartment, she curled up and seemed to need no space at all.

  “It’s nice to live with you.” Our feet touched on the sofa. The television played a sitcom neither of us was watching. Her wooden knitting needles trailed yarn. “Being domestic isn’t so bad.”

  I smiled over my book.

  “What’s that? More science fiction?”

  I showed the cover. “Philip K. Dick. It’s the one they based Blade Runner on. Very post-apocalyptic.” I rolled my eyes. Alison loved sci fi.

  Ada nodded but went back to her pattern. “Weren’t you an English major?”

  “A million years ago,” I said. Her forehead wrinkled as her fingers teased out a dropped stitch. “Not exactly the most practical thing to study.”

  She shrugged. “Those art classes I took weren’t exactly practical, either. It just seems like—well, you know.”

  “What?”

  “When was the last time you finished something?” she asked. She lowered her needles to look at me. “School? Job?”

  Not bothering to mark the page, I closed the book and put it on the coffee table. Her knitting looked like a meaningless tangle to me. “What are you getting at, Ada?”

  “Don’t be mad.”

  “How does anything you do have meaning? What is it for?”

  She folded her hands. This is the steeple. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pick a fight.” Her voice took on a faint whine. “Please sit down. We were having fun.”

  I stood up faster than I meant to. “You’re right, Ada, this is so much fun.”

  “Please.” Bewildered, her face turned toward me like a flower. Her eyes screwed up. The first stinging tears appeared on her lashes.

  I shook my head. When I got like this, my fingers itched. If only she’d apologize—but I was confusing her with Alison again; always asking me to work harder, go back to school. Apply yourself. Even now it got my back up. “I do plenty,” I said.

  “You do, you do,” she answered, reaching for me. “I’m sorry.”

  If this was going to work, I had to be calm. Let her touch me. She stroked the angry veins on the back of my hand. Alison knew how I could be; once, when we fought, I’d run out into the street with my shirt flying open. She used to let me go. I think that secretly we thrived on fighting. Our relationship was never domesticated.

  I let Ada soothe me and sat reluctantly in my place on the sofa. But I couldn’t read the book she handed me. I stared at the shapes of the letters, waiting to feel quiet again.

  Cutting

  I ended up limping in at three in the morning. I’d hit a pothole, blown out my front tire and skidded across the bike lane. My scraped hands fumbled the keys. I rolled the bike into its usual place in the hallway. The bent front tire wobbled in the fork. My palms were studded with angry red marks. The soap would sting my peeling skin something fierce.

  “You’re drunk,” Ada said as I came in. “Again.”

  “I had an accident,” I replied. I was always a bad liar.

  I heard crinkling, then the sound of tearing paper. “I have class tomorrow. Today, I mean. I should be in bed.” Her voice was high and snappy.

  As I walked into the living room, I noticed that the TV was set to the weather channel with the sound off. The cartoon sun frowned, catching a raindrop in his eye. Ada sat on the sofa with her arms folded—a tight, prickly ball.

  Beside her was my journal.

  The jolt shocked the alcohol out of my body. My stomach dropped into my gut, and my mouth filled with battery acid. Ada glared at me, her eyes dark slits.

  “Alison,” she said.

  The first bead of sweat dribbled into my ear. I wanted to snatch the journal and hide it in my shirt. It looked flimsy as a stamp. The spine was dull from wear. You’d think I would have learned from the last time. You’d think I might have gotten better at hiding my tracks. At the very least, I might have quit thinking my girlfriends were easy to fool.

  Her pink lips snarled open. “Anything else I need to know?”

  I felt the force of her disgust. I blushed. My vision blurred, the blood traveling through my eyelids pushed against my panicking brain. I hated her for exposing me, for looking so smugly furious, for finding the evidence.

  “You spied on me,” I said. My voice was low and nasty. She opened her mouth, but I slapped my hands together in the air; the meat sang. “Our lease is up at the end of the month,” I said. “I’ll crash with Ted until you get your shit moved out.”

  I went into the bedroom and pulled a few clean shirts out of the dresser. She’d stripped the bedding and thrown the sheets on the floor. The elastic on the fitted sheet puckered into a weak fist.

  Ada stood in the doorway.

  “You planned this,” she said. “You wanted me to read it.”

  “I need my notebook,” I said. I stepped around her and, before she could stop me, I plucked the journal from the cushions. My shaking hands had something familiar to hold, and I gripped the spine as hard as I could to keep myself steady.

  “Don’t go,” she called after me.

  I felt a tiny bud of pleasure slamming the door on her voice. Her endless waiting, the clinging—it was as though I’d severed the stem of an ugly flower.

  I called Ted from the phone in the lobby. My hand caressed the familiar, scarred black plastic. Already, I had a sense of relief. Escape. In two weeks it could all be over. Ada gone. The apartment quiet. A fresh start.

  I left a message, then headed down Belmont to catch the morning’s first bus. On the ride across town, I slept in my seat, falling into a sudden dream of scattered birds.

  The Bartender

  How much drinking could I do? It was a game. Even when I knelt over the library toilet to vomit whiskey and tater tots, I didn’t want to stop. I spent my workday leaning against the re-shelving cart, slowly sliding the books back into their places. The golden card catalog—robust, almost healthy looking—repulsed me. My hands felt dirty, no matter how times I washed them. I wiped my hands compulsively on my jeans. I drove back to Ted’s place with my sunglasses sliding down my nose.

  “Got your ID?” Ted asked as soon as I came in.

  I sprawled on the couch, groaned. “You’re going to break me.”

  “Well,” Ted said, pulling off his tie and going into his bedroom. “Dinner first. And I have to change out of my work clothes.”

  “Therapy is cheaper,” I growled. I put my feet on the floor and inspected my sneakers. I had a persistent ache, that’s what it was. Nothing seemed to make it go away. Alison still wouldn’t answer her phone. I couldn’t decide if disappointment was eating me or frustration at saying the wrong thing. My whole plan, if you could even call that, was so stupid and so transparent.

  “Did you shower today?” Ted asked

  I rubbed my chin. “Sure.”

  “Go do it again. And fix your hair. We’re getting you laid tonight.”

  I rubbed my eyes. My fingers smelled like cigarettes. My nails were turning a pale shade of yellow.

  “You’re such a princess, Ted. Costume changes and drinking, that’s your answer for everything,” I said. He laughed and started singing a show tune from The Music Man until, disgusted with his cheerfulness, I slouched into the bathroom. Ted’s razor was perched on
the slick white sink. I picked it up and twiddled it between my fingers.

  “Hurry up,” Ted called. “I want to get to Bluehour before the rush.”

  Bluehour was a nice place, fine dining, New American cuisine. A punk like me would stand out like a sore thumb. The thought made me smile and, instead of slicing my wrists open, I turned the water on and started to scrape the funk off my teeth.

  After dinner, we ended up at the Clinton Street Pub on the other side of the river. It was not Ted’s usual scene; he stood out here, with his nice jacket and wingtips, but I fit right in. The other drinkers wore dingy black and plaid and left their hair shaggy. They looked like me. The woman tending bar was no exception. Around her forearm curled a mermaid holding an anchor between its breasts.

  “She’s naked,” I stuttered.

  The bartender raised an eyebrow. “You noticed.”

  I tried to regain my footing. Close-up, this girl was pretty; she had a streak of blue in her messy hair. “I noticed you first, though,” I said.

  She smiled. I smiled back and turned away to the noise of the bar.

  “This place is a dump,” Ted said. “Below dive, even. The beer is cheap, and somebody keeps playing the same Stooges album over and over.”

  “Quit being a yuppie. That bartender likes me.”

  Ted grinned. “I bet you think strippers like you too.”

  We were squashed at a tiny table next to the pinball machines, which lit up and pinged at odd intervals. The flashing lights were out of sync with the jukebox’s ragged bass. I drank my beer and watched the High Life banner over the bar. Its endless ribbons cascaded into a foaming pint glass.

  When Ted headed home, I took the open stool at the end of the bar.

  “Back for more?” the bartender asked.

  “What’s your name?”

  She shook her head. “Another Pabst?”

  “Katie? Christina? Erin? I’m going to guess it eventually.”

  “Those are white-girl names.”

  I took the ballpoint from my backpack and helped myself to a stack of flimsy cocktail napkins. The couple seated next to me, wearing matching Dickies and messenger caps, wrapped their arms around one another. Their hands crept under each other’s shirts.

 

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