“He is not a terrorist! Just because he won’t surrender his civil rights to Bush’s authoritarian regime…”
I decided to mess with her. “They’re gonna come looking for him some day. You don’t want Alberto Gonzales kicking down the door to your crib. Know what I’m saying?”
She rolled her eyes. “They’re not going to come after him. And even if they do, so what? The research he’s doing…He’s working on a cure for diabetes…He knows a lot of powerful people….”
This was the problem. I cannot say again how smart Whitney is. Matter of fact, if I asked her now she could tell me where St. Tropez is and probably its off-season population and GDP without even stopping to consider the question. But there was something that happened to her brain whenever a penis became involved. The same brain that could master a regression analysis would turn to mush and pretty soon she’d be spouting nonsense as in the above.
“Whitney, seriously, I’d be careful with this guy.”
“Oh, come on. You think he’s in Al Qaeda or something?”
I couldn’t help but giggle at that. “If he were that devout, he wouldn’t be having sex with you, getting drunk with you…I’m just saying be careful of those passionate men. They always seem to get you in trouble.”
She brightened up at this statement. “Oh, so it’s not him you’re worried about. You’re worried that I’ll fall too hard for him and then go off the deep end when things don’t work out?”
Bingo, I wanted to say, but I just sipped my frosty drink.
“I’m not that person anymore, Amelia. I mean, I worked out all my issues at McLean. That thing with Tosin…I was just lashing out at him because I was taking his rejection as an extension of those feelings of rejection I had as a foster kid.” She was reciting a therapy session, obviously. “I’m all over that. Max is just what I need now, just fun, sex, no strings. Besides, he’s only here for another six months; then he’s going to France to continue his research.”
What a relief. How much damage could they do in six months?
“But what about Duncan? Big D?” I asked. We ordered from a friendly waitress who looked like she could be a model. I tried not to stare at her skinny legs, but they inspired me to get grilled salmon with vegetables instead of something slathered in cheese or cream sauce.
Whitney shrugged. “I think he wanted something serious. He kept wanting to have these deep conversations.” She made a face.
“Like, what’s the meaning of it all?”
She ignored the crack. “Did I tell you Max went to Palestine when Yasser Arafat died?”
It was my turn to sigh. “So, what does he think of you being this independent, sassy woman about town if he’s such a traditional Muslim?”
She was on her third glass of wine. Max loved wine, and of course, he’d introduced her to so many new ones since they’d been hanging out, she’d said.
“That doesn’t really come up. We both know we’re just in it for the sex. Unless it turns into something more.”
“Something more like what? Are you ready to convert?”
“Calm down, okay. He finds me sexy and intellectually challenging,” she said, making quotes with her fingers. “It could turn into something.”
“Right. But you didn’t answer me. Would you convert to Islam if it did?”
“You mean like start wearing a burka and stuff?”
“Whitney, I can’t stand it when you start talking like an airhead.”
“What?” She brushed a dreadlock off her shoulder.
“Why are you putting this guy on such a pedestal? You said he’s just in it for the sex….”
She looked up at the ceiling as if seriously pondering my question. “Wellllll…He’s so angry and he wants to change the world…kinda like your Caribbean guy.”
Can’t really compare the two, I thought. My so-called Caribbean guy did not wear a kaffiyeh and call America the Great Satan.
“You mean, angry like Bakari?” Bakari was another of Whitney’s mistakes. He was an African-American studies major who was trying to revive the Black Panthers to its former prominence. Whitney had fallen hard for him. Unfortunately, his revolutionary leanings straightened out when he was accepted into Yale Law School. Whitney dumped him shortly thereafter, but not before she cursed him out in broad daylight at Downtown Crossing. I was there when she called him a “bitch-ass, spineless, corporate sellout.” This is the same Whitney who works for Microsoft. But in her defense, she at least didn’t pretend to be a revolutionary. I wondered what would happen if her little Muslim revolutionary came up with the cure for diabetes and sold out to Merck or Pfizer.
“So when are you gonna go see him?” Whitney asked.
I shook my head as I took a bite of my grilled salmon steak. I really wanted fries and a huge burger, but I’m doing so well. Even my spin class instructor had noticed the difference. “Wow,” she’d chirped, sidling up to me in her barely-there little workout outfit. “You’re looking great these days.” That had made my day. Big-time!
“I don’t know. We’ve been e-mailing every day back and forth for the last two weeks, and it’s starting to feel so…so weird.”
“You’ve talked, right?”
“Yes, three or four times.”
Did we talk? If only she knew. I didn’t tell her that my phone bill would probably be a week’s salary and that it had gotten to the point where I had to hear his voice every day else I’d get all crabby and depressed. I know that’s not a good thing, but addictive behavior is in my genes.
Last night I’d barely gotten any sleep. The memory of the conversation still made me feel like I was living inside a kind of mocha frapuccino heaven, with swirly whipped cream on top.
He’d called me late and immediately said, “This is getting out of control. We spoke this morning but I feel like it’s been days.”
“It has,” I’d replied. “It’s been like eons.” If I’d heard anyone else speak those words I would’ve wanted to stab him or her repeatedly. This was me—unromantic Amelia, saying ooey gooey stuff to a guy. But it felt good.
“I’ll have to mortgage my house to pay your phone bill.”
“Oh, please. How was your day?”
“I worked out, then I worked, and tried not think of you. Didn’t work.”
“Same here. We’re so pathetic.”
“I liked your new pictures,” he’d said. I tensed up. I’d let Kelly take some new pictures of me since I’d lost these last couple of pounds, just so he could see that I was on the way to being less, um, less ample.
“Thank you.” At least he didn’t mention my weight.
“Ever think of traveling to the tropics to get some sun on that beautiful skin?”
“Are you saying that I look pale?”
He laughed. “I’m not walking into that one. I’m just saying you’d have a good time down here. There’s lots to do. Great food, great people.”
“You’re sounding like the tourism board chief.”
“I do my part to help the economy.”
“So this is not about you. It’s your patriotism doing the talking?”
“Yeah, that and my other selfish interests.”
“I see. I’m considering it. I’d like to do my part to help the Dominican economy.”
“I admire your generosity.”
“Awww, thank you.”
“I’m serious, though. I want you to be a part of my life.”
“I…okay. Yes, I feel the same way.”
And so it went. We talked about everything and nothing, and four hours later I was yawning but still unwilling to say good night. This was big trouble, indeed.
“So, why not go visit? Go down on spring break.”
Huh? Whitney interrupted my thoughts.
“Please stay here with me on earth while I talk to you.”
“Oh, sorry.” I rolled my eyes back at her. “I can’t go there alone.” I had never left the country in my entire life. Heck, I’d only been out of the
state of Massachusetts about five times.
“You wouldn’t be alone. You’d be going to meet him! What are you afraid of? Live a little.”
It wasn’t that I hadn’t thought of it. And we, Drew and I, had talked about it, but I was, as Whitney said, afraid. What if I hated it there? What if he hated me on sight and I was stuck in a foreign country for a whole week, miserable and alone?
“I’d offer to come with you, but I don’t want to be away from Max….”
“The sex is that good, huh?”
“Ooooh, girl, yeah, it is. Usually I have to be with a brother to get that kind of action, but this man is smoking…”
I tuned her out. I couldn’t help but be a little envious. I wondered if I would describe Drew as smoking if we were to ever, um, find ourselves in that situation.
“Wouldn’t it be cool if you went down and you guys just hit it off and you move down there and live happily ever after?”
“Thanks, Whitney. I never once thought of that the whole time I’ve been talking to him.”
“It could happen,” she said. “Well, no. You’d find some way to screw it up.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
“Seriously, though, Amelia, if I were you I’d go down there and lay out on the beach, go diving, know what I mean? It’s not just about going to meet him. It’s about getting away from this place for a week.”
“Yeah, you have a point. I’ll think about it.”
Later that night in bed I did think about it. So much that I could feel sand trickling between my toes as I fell asleep. I could smell the salty ocean in my dreams. Hear calypso music swirling and thumping like my heartbeat. See a ferociously beautiful sun high up in a clear blue sky. I didn’t want to wake up.
Chapter 9
My life was changing. I was becoming even more of a recluse; shut in by an irrational infatuation. Drew was making it so hard for me to live my life in peace without thinking about him constantly, craving warm weather, hot days under the sun, smoking nights under the sheets.
James and Kelly commented on the amount of time I spent on the phone and the computer, and Kelly one day actually bought me a phone card. “For your own good,” she said. The thought had never occurred to me, but it turned out to be a huge money saver.
I’d become so overwhelmed by this online/phone relationship that I’d forgotten to buy Ma’s groceries one week. She’d called me wailing, saying that I was intentionally trying to starve her to death. “Is that what it’s going to take?” I asked her. She hung up the phone. She doesn’t get my humor sometimes. I’d run out to the Stop & Shop early Sunday morning, dropped off the bags in her living room, and rushed back home to read Drew’s latest e-mail.
Hi, Amelia. It’s about 4:30 A.M. and it’s pitch-black outside. I’m up in the country, where I spend most of my time. I like it out here because it’s quiet, cool, and very beautiful. I think you would like it up here, too. I have a huge jacaranda tree in the back with a hammock under it. It’s great for reading or whatever else one might want to do on a cool afternoon. I came up with the idea for building schools while sitting here one day. I had started to feel restless again and worried that I would never accomplish anything that would change anyone’s life. It’s kind of like what you told me the other day about teaching. That you know you could be doing something else that’s more lucrative or even less stressful, but that you liked the idea that you were doing something that was truly important. I can identify with that. With you. Will you come down on spring break, Amelia? I know you have reservations, but with every day that goes by I become more and more consumed by thoughts of you. I look at your picture and I know that there is so much more I could know if I could just look into your eyes—in real life. I want to touch your hair, smell your skin, hear your voice without the static. I know you’re afraid of what may happen or what may not happen, but I don’t think you need to be. If nothing else, this would be a sunny vacation for you in a great place and you would have made a new friend. I’m awaiting your response.
Drew: I’m up early, too. I couldn’t sleep. I was really wrestling with a lot of things. On the one hand, I could use the vacation. I need to be away from my family and roommates right now. Sometimes I feel that there is absolutely no one in my life who gets where I’m coming from. That was a tangent, by the way. On the other hand, I feel strange flying two thousand miles to meet a man I’ve never met. I feel the same way you do. These days I can’t take a breath without thinking about you. And even with all of that, it still somehow doesn’t feel real. I don’t think it would until I could meet you in person. And that’s so exciting to me. Sometimes I think that it would be the best thing that could ever happen to me, and then other times I worry. What if we don’t hit it off? What if we hate each other? I know. You’ve already answered that question—I would have a great spring break on warm, sunny Dominica. But this life I’m living now, the one with you in the starring role, is so much fun. I almost don’t want to give it up. Do you get what I mean? It’s like the unrealness (Is that a word?) is much more fun than the possibility of real life. But I am thinking about it. Seriously.
Later, as I worked on my lesson plans for the week, I began to picture myself a brave heroine, willing to do anything for love. It had been done before. I tried to find precedent in the literary canon. People who had risked it all for love, or the possibility of love: Romeo, Juliet, Jane Eyre, Madame Bovary, even the tragic Antoinette Cosway from Wide Sargasso Sea…. The results did not look promising. What if I ended up like Antoinette? Crazy, locked in a room somewhere, while Drew went off with some other Jane Eyre…. Was I crazy? If I told my mother any of this she would laugh at me. “You’re going where to meet who?”
Actually, that made the concept a bit more appealing. Maybe then she would finally see that I just may not be here forever, and that it was time for her to start getting her life straight. If I did this, it would be the craziest and bravest thing I’d ever done. Was it worth it? He could be an ax murderer. A kidnapper. Or worse. On the other hand, he could be exactly what he said he was. Remember: Expect great things to happen and they will. Maybe I should ask him to come here, then. Whitney had suggested that. But I wanted to go there—at least to see what it was like in another country. I had no clue what I should do.
Treyon was back in school the next day. He seemed subdued, although he glared at me each time our eyes met. The vacation week was only two weeks away, and the students were restless. They owed me a paper on The Grapes of Wrath and I didn’t want to incite any more hostility. So we talked about Tom Joad and how he would compare with someone they knew in real life. Few hands went up when I asked the question, but then once Tina started talking the whole class got going. Yes, I told her, the Joadses’ struggle can be paralleled to the struggle for racial justice in America, but not just racial, but for all poor people, poor blacks, immigrants, laborers…. I told her that she might want to write her paper on the topic. Her eyes lit up and my heart melted. I’d give her an A just for tackling the topic. Three other kids asked if they could write their three-page paper on the same topic and I told them yes, of course. I felt so…so vindicated. See, I wanted to tell Tina, a book does not have to be by a black author in order for it to relate to your experience. But I decided to just bask in the glow of my kids actually showing that the text had provoked some thought.
I told this to the principal, Mr. Bell, and he seemed impressed. “See, I told you that you wouldn’t regret your decision to come here. Those private schools may be less of a challenge but the rewards are bigger here. You’re doing God’s work now,” he said. I laughed because I thought he was being facetious. But he was dead serious. I cleared my throat. God’s work. Oh, boy. I really needed to take my job more seriously.
“So you all ready for your trip?” Lashelle asked as Mr. Bell walked away.
“Yeah, gonna do some shopping this weekend.” I would have gone shopping anyway.
“Oh, Filene’s Basement is having
a big sale on swimsuits. You’re going to the Caribbean, right?”
How do I get away from her?
“Which country again?”
I told her and I felt as if she were quizzing me. As if she suspected that I might be lying and she was retesting to see whether I’d be able to keep my facts straight. She was really getting on my nerves, and her butt seemed even bigger than usual in that tight gray skirt. Didn’t she own a mirror? Or a sense of decency?
“Gotta head home,” I said, and grabbed my bag. I left her standing there.
As I drove home, the temperature dropped. Gosh, it was late March and the weather still would not break! But it had been a good day; I’d gotten my kids to talk, and it seemed that several of them had even read the text. I turned up the heat in the car. Now if this weather would just warm up.
Chapter 10
Our apartment is large but you couldn’t tell that from the clutter. Mountain bikes, skis, sneakers, posters, canvas paintings, frames, books are everywhere. I don’t mind the mess; most of the books belong to me. Kelly describes our décor as creative chaos. But whenever we have visitors they look around and say with awe or disgust: “Wow, you guys have a lot of stuff.”
Kelly, God bless her, thought it would be a good idea to have Whitney and her Tunisian over for dinner. She loves everyone who she thinks may share her hatred for capitalism, the G8, and status symbols. When I told her about Max, she pooh-poohed my worries. She thought it was quite admirable that Max was refusing to register with the USCIS. She thought the PATRIOT Act was unconstitutional on many levels, and thus it was okay for Max to ignore it. And put us all at risk for a raid, Elián González style.
But when Max entered the apartment I could see how Whitney had temporarily lost her mind. He was something to look at. Tall, dark olive skin, and light green eyes. My goodness, did all Tunisians look like that? And how long was the flight? Turned out, he was some kind of racial mutt; his dad was Tunisian and his mother was something else. Thank goodness for race mixing.
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