“Isn’t it sweet?” says Olivia when she sees my interest in her bracelet. “Ottavio bought it for me at a craft fair. He loves to give me little presents.” She smiles adoringly at this token of her lover’s affection.
“But . . . you do know what it means?”
“Oh, I’ve changed it to What would Je ferson do? You know, Thomas Jefferson. He was a Unitarian.”
I’d almost forgotten how the Stockton house is like living in Alice’s Wonderland. Things oftentimes don’t mean what you always thought they were supposed to mean. And absolutely anything can happen at any moment. Usually the last thing you expect.
“I’m sorry you ended up being the bearer of the bad news last night,” says Olivia and gently touches my shoulder. “Bernard really should have explained Gil’s reasons for breaking up. It was only a matter of time before he found someone.”
“Just because he’s dating a woman doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s going to marry her,” I say.
“When people deeply desire something they can move very swiftly,” she philosophizes. “Almost as swiftly as when they’re fleeing from something.”
“That’s sort of what I wanted to talk to you about.” I gather up my courage because I can no longer keep this matter to myself. I’d even recently read the name for my disease in People magazine. Rather than look at Olivia I flop down on the love seat and stare up at the bookcases with carved beveled tops and etched glass doors.
I finally blurt out the words as if they’re sparks erupting from some banked fire. “I—I’m a sex addict.”
Chapter Sixteen
OLIVIA LOOKS AT ME WITH CONCERN BUT I ALSO THINK SHE APPEARS slightly amused at this proclamation. And though her eyes are quick to read a human face, she rarely comments unless specifically asked.
“Seriously,” I continue, “all I think about is sex. I hardly finished any of my schoolwork on time and almost received incompletes in two classes. Even my dreams are filled with men and, well, you know. . . .”
“Some of the best Presidents and artists have been sex addicts,” quips Olivia. But then she turns serious. “Hallie, a sex addiction entails having sex with inordinate frequency, not just thinking about it. Thinking about sex qualifies merely as lust. And I’d be very surprised if most of your peers were not in a similar predicament.”
“Well, that’s just it. They’ve pretty much resolved the problem one way or another—by settling down with a steady boyfriend, or going through a few of them. But to me it seems like such an important decision to choose the guy who will be the first one—that I should really love him and he should love me.” I roll over on the small sofa and face the wall. “Maybe Bernard and I should go and see a psychiatrist together—do they have double rooms over at Dalewood?”
“There’s absolutely nothing wrong with you and you don’t need a psychiatrist,” replies Olivia.
“You wouldn’t say that if you knew how insane I’ve felt the past few months.” Such an aching and longing had arisen inside of me that at times I couldn’t catch my breath and actually felt as if my heart might explode.
Olivia gently takes my chin in her hand and swivels me around so that I’m facing her. She has a wonderful way of giving her entire attention to a young person. “It’s perfectly natural for a woman about to turn eighteen to be contemplating romance.”
“All the time?”
“Intimacy gives shape to your desires from out of all the scattered images in your mind. Then it becomes a melody that you can remember, thereby repeating the ecstasy. You just said that you managed to finish your assignments, despite your preoccupation.”
“Yeah, but I think I could of done a lot better if my brain hadn’t been so distracted.”
“I’m quite certain that there are more than a handful of college freshmen who feel that additional time spent hitting the books rather than the hay could have transformed C’s into A’s. If it weren’t for the interruptions caused by mating rituals, parties in particular, there’d be a greater number of students on the dean’s list all across the country.”
“I suppose sex is more or less what everyone majors in the first year.”
“Except for you,” clarifies Olivia.
“It sure feels that way. I hardly thought about it at all last year. And now suddenly I’m possessed.”
“Last year you had other things on your mind. And besides, you were a girl then.”
“Most of the freshmen guys read Jack Kerouac’s On the Road and then went around thinking they were really impulsive and cool, and acting as if the girls should fall all over them.”
“If you want to study Mr. Kerouac for his development of ‘spontaneous prose,’ that’s one thing; however, I certainly wouldn’t use him as a guide to relationships and personal responsibility. In that area he and his friends were sorely lacking, leaving in their wake an untold number of distressed women, minor felonies, and unpaid bills.”
“At least the guys felt as if they’d found a book with some answers,” I say. “Because what I’m wondering specifically is, how do I know if a guy is the right one?”
“Hallie, you’re either having flashbacks to Sunday school or else you’ve been watching too many romantic comedies. No one automatically knows for sure—an orchestra doesn’t play Rachmaninoff, and fireworks don’t explode overhead the way they do in Bernard’s favorite movie, To Catch A Thief. You have to find out over a period of time. Although that doesn’t mean you have to sleep with them all to find out. Usually dating is sufficient. But inevitably you’ll have to kiss a few toads along the way.” She is tender with her words, treating them like pressed flowers that might fall apart if roughly handled.
“What if I make a mistake?”
“How do you mean ‘a mistake’? It’s perfectly acceptable to have safe sex. That’s why there are red-light districts and escort services. In fact, someone has even figured out the number of calories you burn off during intercourse, and so I can only assume that somewhere sex is part of a weight loss plan. Furthermore, I’m inclined to agree with Nietzsche when he posited that certainty causes more madness than doubt.”
“So I should just go to a bar and pick up the first guy I see and get it over with?”
“Of course not! I didn’t mean to sound crass or unromantic. But don’t fret so much about being in love. Your stirrings of desire mean that you’re ready to make love. You’re not necessarily ready to choose a partner for life and start a family. The mistake would be to convince yourself that you have to be in love with some young man in order to give yourself permission to act upon your feelings. Believe me, you won’t end up as damaged goods. Though there are of course certain people in this country who’d like for you to believe that.”
“It shouldn’t be this complicated. Should it? Maybe I’m just not ready.”
“What happened with Craig, if I’m not being too inquisitive?” asks Olivia. “He’s a nice young fellow. And he certainly cared for you. In fact, I rather miss having him around, taking soil samples and talking to the trees in the backyard when he thought that no one was watching.”
“Sure, I would have liked to stay with Craig. But now we live fifteen hours apart and can’t see each other. I wasn’t even planning to be here for the summer. And if Craig gets the chance to come back, which he’s not even sure that he’ll be able to, it will only be for a few weeks in August. So we agreed to see other people. And I have. There’s this guy Ray who really wants to be with me and I do, too, but . . .”
“If he’s a pleasant fellow and it feels right, then why not?” she asks.
“I don’t know if I love him. I mean, Ray’s nice and he brings me CDs that he knows I’ll like. His clothes are always neat and clean and he takes me to real restaurants instead of college hangouts. I’ve invited him to come and visit this Friday before he leaves for New York. So it’s sort of now or never.” I decide not to go into detail about the ultimatum.
“As the great Persian poet Rumi wrote, you must open your h
ands if you want to be held,” she quotes.
One could easily assume it’s Olivia’s firm belief that some well-placed verse has the capacity to solve most of the world’s problems.
“But for the rest of my life he’ll always be the first,” I say.
“Yes, eventually somebody has to be,” she agrees. “Now, do I need to give you The Talk?”
“Yes. I need all the talks.”
I turn my face back to the wall and this time Olivia doesn’t seem to mind speaking to the back of my head.
“Number one, don’t make the mistake I made. Be sure to tell him it’s your first time. And I certainly wouldn’t count on any orgasms in the near future.”
Quickly turning my face back around I give her a questioning look.
“You know, climaxes,” she says.
“Yes, I mean, I’ve read . . .”
“Men have them all the time, of course, but it can take years for women to have a single one while actually making love.”
“Why?”
“Same old story, like they say about Ginger Rogers—she did everything that Fred Astaire did, except on six inch heels and backward.”
“But it doesn’t seem fair,” I say. “We have the hymen, we have the cramps, we have the babies, and we don’t get the orgasms for maybe years! What do we get?”
“A higher threshold for pain.” Olivia smiles wryly. “And believe me, it comes in handy when you sew children’s Halloween costumes.”
“That’s it?” I ask. “That’s The Talk?”
“Well, there’s one other good thing for the girls,” she says slyly.
“Please tell me before I have a sex change.”
“Multiple orgasms.”
“Maybe that explains my mother having nine kids.”
“Speaking of children, be sure to use a condom. Men think they’re the only ones who despise them, when they’re universally abhorred. If only the Christians understood that free condoms can advance committed relationships and the institution of marriage more than all the abstinence crusades and prayer vigils in the world.”
“In health class they taught abstinence,” I say.
“That’s because the so-called ‘educators’ hired by parochially minded school board members are afraid that teaching safe sex will encourage promiscuity. Yet they claim to teach English and I don’t see anyone running around speaking it properly.”
“What about afterward?” I ask. “Then will I know whether or not we’re truly in love?”
Olivia runs her fingers over my disheveled hair. “Sometimes you don’t search for love, exactly, but for what makes you feel alive.”
I let out a teenage moan. It’s all too complicated. However, I know what’s not alive, and that’s the gardens. It’s time to get to work on both the yard and then the design competition. Love will have to wait.
“I’d better start working on the lawn while I can still use the mower and not a scythe,” I say.
Olivia rises and looks out the window. “It’s such a shame to cut the grass. Grass is so democratic. Walt Whitman said it was the handkerchief of the Lord and also the beautiful uncut hair of graves.”
“Well, Bernard is currently paying me fifteen dollars an hour to give the grass a crew cut,” I say. “But definitely call me if Mr. Whitman is offering twenty to leave it alone.”
Chapter Seventeen
THE YARD IS READY TO BE CONDEMNED BY THE DEPARTMENT OF Agriculture. In the way back, just beyond the orchard, where the woods begin, I spy a half-dozen deer plotting a takeover. The buck-eye trees are in full bloom and the breeze carries their noxious odor right into the shed.
Another rancid smell awaits me deep within the shed, where a quick inventory illustrates the need for a varmint excavation. Apparently a squirrel decided to take his leave of us inside the leaf blower and has been going to heaven just an ounce at a time since at least the middle of winter.
A further accounting reveals that we’re out of everything from mower gas and oil to weed killer and trash bags. Likewise, Bernard hasn’t bought one plant or started any seedlings in the greenhouse. What have these people been doing all spring? It’s already June and everything at the nursery is going to be picked over, if not gone entirely.
Buying the actual plants and flowers will have to wait until the weekend. I make a list of the basics—whatever’s necessary to get the mower going and start a general cleanup. Before heading to town I stop in the kitchen to grab a sandwich and check the message pad by the phone. Nothing from Auggie. Maybe he changed his mind. And nothing from Ray, though we have a definite date for next Friday. At least I think we do. And no word from Craig, either. We were in the habit of talking on the phone once a week during the school year, usually on Sunday night, and it has been his turn to call for the past three weeks.
And to think I’d actually been considering getting a cell phone. Why bother if no one is going to call me except Bernard? Anytime a good late-night movie was on he called my apartment, told me the channel, and we watched it together over the phone, complete with Bernard doing his favorite parts along with critiquing the costumes. The good thing about this situation was that even though my roommates knew I wasn’t having real sex, between the overheard snippets of dialogue and our discussions about what everyone was wearing, they at least thought I was having phone sex.
When I try to start my car the engine groans and then there’s a thud that sounds as if it dropped onto the driveway. Mr. Shultze, the new neighbor, and owner of Lulu the Great Dane, has been watching this automotive drama unfold from the adjacent front lawn, where he’s pruning a tree with one of those poles that have a small saw at the top. He’s your typical male Ohio retiree—baseball cap with whatever branch of the service he was in emblazoned on the front, big American flag hanging out front, and tons of tools, parts, and paint cans neatly organized in the garage.
I climb out of the driver’s seat, open the hood, and start by checking the oil. Voilà! That’s the problem. It’s completely dry. Only how did that happen? I’m almost positive the gauge says it’s supposed to be full. Is there a leak? I check underneath the car but nothing appears to be dripping and there aren’t any stains on the gravel.
There’s no oil left in the shed and so I wander over to Mr. Shultze, introduce myself, and ask if I can borrow just enough to get to the gas station. Fortunately he seems thrilled to be able to assist a neighbor in need. When he returns with a brand-new can of motor oil I explain how the gauge says that it’s almost full. I don’t want him to think I’m an irresponsible car owner.
“Uh-oh,” says Mr. Shultze. “Sounds as if your gauge may be broken.” He bends down close over the place where the oil goes and studies the engine. Then come noises from the back of his throat indicating that all is not well in Cabrioletland. “This has been dry for a while. I’m no professional mechanic but it’s safe to say you’re going to need a new engine.”
Judging by the number of shiny tools in Mr. Shultze’s garage it’s safe to say that he probably could have been a professional mechanic and that he’s undoubtedly correct.
“A new engine! That’s going to cost like $2,000.”
He nods in agreement and says, “Maybe $2,500, depending on where you go.”
“How could I be so stupid?” I lean my head against the hood of the car as if in agony. “I remember looking down at the gauge one time and thinking that I must have the most oil-efficient car ever manufactured.”
“It could happen to anyone.” Mr. Shultze says this in a nice-enough way, but it’s clear that something so dumb would never have happened on his watch.
“What should have been two dollars and fifty cents’ worth of oil is now going to cost me a thousand times as much!”
“I have a buddy who works at a yard in Cleveland who might be able to find a good used engine for you,” he offers. “Sometimes people total the back end and the car itself isn’t worth repairing but the engine is fine.”
“I’m definitely interested, i
f you don’t mind,” I say appreciatively.
“It would only save you about five or six hundred—I mean, a good used engine is always saleable.”
“That’s still five or six hundred I don’t have,” I say. “Thanks for your help. I’d better go see if I can borrow the Buick.” I nod in the direction of Olivia’s car and then head back inside the house.
Olivia is busy at her writing desk and Ottavio has a pile of travel guides on his lap. They’ve been talking about taking a big trip to Italy to meet Ottavio’s relatives and then visiting the Greek Islands for some relaxation and classical culture.
I explain that my car conked out, without going into all the details. As it happens, Olivia and Ottavio don’t have any special plans for the afternoon and she’s happy to lend me the QE2, so designated by Bernard because it’s more like driving a living room set than an automobile.
As soon as I enter the hardware store, Mr. Burke gives me a big smile and shows me some new super-strength lawn and leaf bags that he especially likes. The Stocktons have an account here and my name is listed on it, so technically I can spend as much money as I want. This is a detail obviously not lost on Mr. Burke, particularly since he doesn’t appear to be as busy as he was before the big discount variety store opened up a few miles outside of town. And when I’m painting, the tab often runs into the hundreds of dollars. Sometimes it’s hard to believe I’d managed to go from local juvenile delinquent to valued customer within the short space of a year.
After finishing my shopping I notice the long yellow line of empty buses lurching toward the high school and realize that it’s time for classes to let out. I’m sure that Gwen and Jane, my best friends from high school, are busy with finals and all sorts of end-of-senior-year stuff, but I decide to try and dig them up so we can make plans to get together.
Pulling into the parking lot it doesn’t appear as if anything has changed. Kids still come hurtling out the doors in a frantic rush, as if being freed from a long imprisonment. Only I’m astounded by how small the brick building now looks. I remember it as being much larger and more imposing. Though it’s just as ugly as ever. Apparently they tried to tart up the front with some hedges, but if you ask me, the dark gray cinder-block tomb still screams out: Hunker down and pray for daylight!
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