The Love Letters of Abelard and Lily

by Laura Creedle

  “You never should have failed this project,” she whispered. “Total bullshit.”

  Mom never swears unless she’s really angry. Guess she was that angry.

  She picked up my Populations in Peril project and my paper and left. I watched her go, wondering why she wasn’t this much of a badass all the time.

  Before lunch I stopped by robotics to wave at Abelard from the doorway. He was busy, and he didn’t seem to notice me. And so I watched as he lifted a wheel assembly to the work surface in a swift, assured move, like he’d been building robots all his life and didn’t even have to think about it. His hair curled around his ears and the straps of his protective glasses. He was wearing a gray T-shirt old enough to be really thin and a little small and that clung to his broad shoulders and chest. I stood in the doorway and watched him, and I realized that I could stand there watching Abelard forever.

  He was beautiful, and he belonged to me. My boyfriend.

  I met Rosalind at our normal spot for lunch. Middle of May and sweltering hot at noon. Like summer anywhere else but Texas. The courtyard crowd had definitely thinned out.

  “Should we go to the cafeteria?” I suggested.

  “We could go eat in the theater,” Rosalind replied.

  “Absolutely not. You’ll just go back to working.” It was the day before opening night, and Rosalind was spending most of her free time in the theater. It was a wonder she actually made it to classes. “Speaking of work, we should stay out of the theater until dress rehearsal tonight. Do you want to go have an iced mocha after school?”

  “I can’t. Richard and I are going to walk to the taco truck and hang out with a couple of his friends.”

  Rosalind didn’t look at me. It has always been my job to distract Rosalind before dress rehearsal and opening night.

  “Is that all right?” she asked.

  “Of course,” I replied. Because—love. It’s not like I don’t know. But it still felt weird.

  “I saw your mother leaving school. What was she doing here?”

  Brain surgery. I hadn’t told Rosalind about the brain surgery. I didn’t want to tell her. Not right before a performance, anyway.

  “So apparently, the school never got my 504 accommodations from our middle school,” I said. “Dr. Krenwelge is ever so sorry.”

  “She is?” Rosalind raised an eyebrow. Dr. Krenwelge is not sorry for much.

  “Yes. She’s going to have a ‘talk’ with Coach Neuwirth.”

  “Well,” Rosalind said. “A talk.”

  “Well, indeed.”

  I stayed after school for tech rehearsal. I had a little money, so I walked to a neighborhood coffee shop and had a mocha and a bagel and read in peace before rehearsal. Nice.

  Mr. Turner thanked me for showing up to theater and then made me promise to wear all black, no white on my shoes this time. There was very little stage arrangement, mostly just moving a desk and a couch back and forth, so I managed to break away at seven and text Abelard briefly.

  “Lily?”

  “Abelard. I’m backstage at the theater. I’m working tech. Not sure how long I can talk.”

  I’d put my phone on silent, so I had to stare at the screen.

  “Alors tant pis!”

  Tant pis—“too bad” in French.

  “Indeed,” I sent back. “Suppose we couldn’t take that trip to Portland. What would we do?”

  “It doesn’t matter. As long as we are together.”

  “Really?” I texted.

  “We could both go to the Isaac Institute. They have an early college program.”

  College. With Abelard. It was not something I would’ve dared to dream about, but Dr. Brainguy had almost convinced me that college was a possibility. Maybe he could even write me a recommendation. A whole world of fantasy scrolled through my brain: the two of us at college, strolling down a tree-lined campus, studying medieval texts in a library, kicking leaves and laughing, images culled from a website somewhere. And then another image, a distinctly unbrochure-like image of us alone in a dorm room. Low lights, soft sheets. Bed.

  “OK,” I texted.

  Mr. Turner signaled me from the curtain.

   Chapter 27

  I didn’t text Abelard for the rest of the week. It was torture. After catching me with my phone, Mr. Turner had told me to keep it out of the backstage area. Abelard was busy getting ready for the regional robotics competition. We were both busy.

  Rosalind’s parents came opening night to see the play. So did Mom and Iris. I met them in the lobby at intermission. We all agreed that Rosalind was a great actress. Iris was deeply impressed with her costume, a little green velvet shrug over a pale green floating floral dress. Glamorous. With her hair in a stylized thirties wave, false eyelashes, and bright lips, Rosalind looked less like a twelve-year-old than I’d ever seen her.

  Richard was working the stage, too. Like me, he was dressed all in black. I’d catch him in the wings watching Rosalind twirl across the stage, effusing about being madly in love, which is what her character does. And it was as though it was all for him.

  Sunday after the last matinee performance, I stayed to help break down the set. Rosalind’s parents were there. I think they came to every performance. They hung out in the theater near the orchestra pit until Rosalind came out from backstage in her street clothes, still wearing the makeup and eyelashes. Richard and I were pulling apart a riser with a claw hammer and a crowbar when Rosalind approached.

  “Come meet my parents,” she said, holding out her hand, inflecting her voice in exactly the same way her character in the play had compelled her dreamy boyfriend to meet her eccentric parents. Life echoes art. “Come on, Lily. You too.”

  We trudged down the steps. Richard extended a hand, looking at once serious and awkward. Introductions all around.

  “Richard is a great artist. You should go see his portrait of Rosalind,” I said. “It’s in a glass case by the office.”

  Sometimes a work of art is so good, so inspired, that the art teachers don’t want to leave it on the walls to face the kind of standard asshat vandalism that my FCP endured. Once in a very rare while, they whisk a meaningful piece of art to the glass-enclosed cases in full view of office security. Richard’s portrait of Rosalind was such a work. It would be hanging in a museum someday. Pretty sure.

  Rosalind’s dad lifted an eyebrow. Apparently my endorsement was worth something.

  “Yes, go do that,” Rosalind said, drifting closer to Richard. “I’m going to the after party.”

  She looped a hand around Richard’s arm, and he smiled reflexively.

  Rosalind’s mother looked down at Rosalind’s hand, snaking down to hold Richard’s hand. Another minute and they’d be making out right here in front of everyone.

  “Okay, Lily is staying too, right?” Rosalind’s mom said in a high voice. “I’m sure she needs a ride home.”

  Rosalind looked at me beseechingly. I was her only chance to sneak off into the unknown recesses of the theater with Richard. I hadn’t planned to stay for the after party. I’d planned to go home and sit by my cell and wait for Abelard. But I guessed I could text Abelard in the theater as well as I could at home.

  “Sure,” I said.

  Richard had his arm around Rosalind’s waist by the time they left. They kissed each other delicately in full view of the stage. I had a moment of jealousy. Negotiating a physical relationship with Abelard would never be that easy. But then, he was Abelard. I would never want anyone else.

  At seven, I took a break from tear-down, which was almost done anyway. I dropped into a seat in the middle of the theater and pulled out my cell.

  “Are you there, Lily?” he had texted.

  “Abelard. I’ve missed you terribly.”

  “And I you. It’s been too long.”

  “Eons,” I texted back. “Weeks at least.”

  “Months.”

  “Years. Time has ceased to have meaning.”

  “Then let this sep
aration of our persons more firmly unite our minds,” he texted.

  I’d left my copy of The Letters of Abelard and Heloise at home, so I didn’t have a retort. Note to self: Bring copy of book everywhere.

  “How was the robotics competition?” I asked.

  “We came in second.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “We expected to win,” he texted back.

  “Condolences. Did the winning robot crush your robot within its steely jaw?”

  “No, it did not.”

  “Push your robot over the edge of the cliffs of despair into a bottomless lake of lava?”

  “Not that kind of robot,” he texted back.

  “Don’t leave me in suspense. How did their robot destroy your robot?”

  There was a pause before Abelard texted me back. I looked up at the stage. Pretty much bare. A couple of people were pulling the big wallpaper backdrop into the wings.

  My phone buzzed.

  “I love you, Lily. In spite of your disturbing obsession with robot violence.”

  “I love you too, Abelard.”

  “I’m leaving town in a few days,” he texted. Suddenly. Abruptly.

  The pit of my stomach dropped ominously. Someone laughed backstage. The sound reverberated, ghostly in the empty theater. Most people had congregated in the greenroom. It was a weird time to leave. Finals were next week.

  “OK.” It was all I could think to write. What did this mean, leaving?

  “It won’t be long.”

  “Will you be back next weekend? I want to see you.”

  Okay, now I just sounded desperate and needy. Don’t be desperate. Don’t act like this is a big thing, because it isn’t.

  “I don’t know. Maybe,” he replied. Less than reassuring.

  “We could see a movie next weekend. Or play chess.”

  “Yes.”

  “OK,” I texted back. The end of our conversation.

   Chapter 28

  Abelard and I talked every night for the next couple of days. But we didn’t talk about where he was going or what he was doing.

  On Wednesday, he left. Abelard was traveling with his parents. Wherever Abelard was, I hoped he was not being tortured by strange smells and odd food. I hoped he was not on an airplane.

  I was out of my normal routine as well. I spent much of the week doing tests in Dr. Brainguy’s office. I did the Stroop Effect test, where they give you the word blue in red ink and ask you to name the color of the word, because apparently having ADHD is a lot like being on Everest above twenty thousand feet. I talked to a very nice psychologist and told a stone-faced graduate student named Karen what was missing from the picture of the barn, what was missing from the duck, what was missing from the boy. I did puzzles, and, ironically, filled out a million bubble sheet tests. I had an MRI, and I was signed up for a SPECT and a full physical with my pediatrician and an EEG and an EKG. I think Dr. Brainguy invented tests just for me.

  Friday. I was sitting in the waiting room between tests, reading Anna Karenina with only half my brain. It was the only practical piece of advice my father had given me: Read Anna Karenina. But I couldn’t stop thinking about Abelard, out in the world, traveling to some distant location with his parents.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about him.

  And while I was thinking, my phone buzzed in the way that could only mean one thing: Abelard.

  I shoved Anna Karenina into my backpack and dug around for The Letters of Abelard and Heloise, and my pen and notebook. I still had a few good quotes I’d recorded but hadn’t used, lovely things about his superlative intellect and a few choice bits about his poise and bearing and dress, because apparently the original Peter Abelard was pretty hot as well.

  I had something saved for when he finally did text.

  “Lily?”

  “Abelard,” I texted back. “I have made it an observation, since our absence, that we are much fonder of the pictures of those we love, when they are at a great distance, than when they are near to us.” Heloise’s words.

  No answer.

  “You have given me great opportunity to love that picture.” My words. And a playful reminder that he hadn’t texted me for a day or two. Honestly, though, I didn’t care. I was just glad to hear from him.

  I skimmed the book, and my eyes lit on a passage full of longing and despair. There’s actually a lot of this in The Letters of Abelard and Heloise. It’s not really a happy story. I circled the passage aimlessly, drew little stars around the edge because the words were beautiful, if tragic.

  “My dad finished grading papers and decided we should go on vacation.”

  “Really?” That was sudden. “Two weeks before finals?”

  “I only have one final. It’s take-home.”

  No finals. It figured. Most teachers tell you that you don’t have to take the final in AP classes if your grade is high enough.

  “Where are you?”

  “New Mexico.”

  My stomach did the late-day flip-flop, even though I wasn’t on drugs. New Mexico. But Abelard didn’t like to travel. I waited.

  “I’m at the Isaac Institute,” he texted.

  “Wow!” I texted back. A stupid text that meant nothing. Just a chance to make sense of Abelard at a school in New Mexico. Funny. I’d imagined the Isaac Institute was in Austin, just across town. It had never occurred to me that it was someplace else.

  “I got accepted,” he texted.

  “When do you start?”

  “In June. But they want me to stay for a two-week orientation session before the start of classes.”

  “So, now?”

  “Yes,” he replied.

  This couldn’t be it. No. He had to come back. Abelard had to come back.

  “What about the end of the semester? Don’t you have to finish school?”

  “Mom arranged it with Dr. Krenwelge. I just have to email my final.”

  Why did Dr. Krenwelge have to be so understanding? So helpful?

  I had a sudden memory of the last moment I saw Abelard. Abelard in the robotics lab the moment before he saw me: the way his shoulders sloped down to his narrow waist, the intense look of focus on his amazing face. And I realized that moment now belonged firmly to the age of dinosaurs and medieval lovers, and soon the memory of his smell would be gone, and all I would have left was the picture that Richard drew of Abelard.

  Over.

  And it hurt. Not a metaphorical my-heart-pains-me-so-and-I-think-I-have-the-vapors feeling, but a real dizzy, nauseous I-might-throw-up-on-the-pale-green-carpet-or-stop-breathing feeling. Strange.

  “I’ve been on the waiting list for three years,” Abelard texted. “I was up before, but Mom didn’t want me to go.”

  “But now she does?” I texted back numbly.

  “Not really. But she agreed to it.”

  I put the phone down and frantically searched the book for a passage that would make sense of everything. After all, Abelard and Heloise were separated by a great distance, and they still managed to write. I searched for a passage . . . but nothing came. I kept returning to the same paragraph over and over, the one about loss and pain that I’d circled and starred. Lines that taunted me, because love is about sacrifice and suffering.

  I had this picture of Abelard in my mind, a horrible image that I’d pushed out of my brain because it was awkward and uncomfortable. Abelard at twenty-five, still living with his parents, his mother washing his clothes and cooking him breakfast and treating him like he was still ten years old. His mother, arranging his social schedule like playdates in the park. His mother, interrupting every moment alone.

  And yet, Mrs. Mitchell had agreed to let him go. Abelard might not have another chance to escape the gravitational pull of his family.

  “Awesome!! You should totes go!!” I texted. Plus happy face, surprised emojis. Maybe I was laying it on thick. I didn’t think I’d ever said “totes” before to anyone.

  “Lily?” he texted. Clearly, Abelard wa
s not convinced.

  Hard to see my phone. Big fat sloppy tears clouded my eyes. I put my palms over my face to stop them from coming, because I’d already attracted the notice of the receptionist with my sniffling. I stayed there with my hands over my eyes until I heard my phone purr into life.

  “Lily, I won’t go. Not without you.”

  “Yes you will,” I texted back.

  I couldn’t find a Heloise response that made sense. I kept returning to the same passage over and over, like a reproach. His next message came before I could find an answer.

  “We commonly die to the affections of those whom we see no more, and they to ours: absence is the tomb of love. But to me, absence is an unquiet remembrance of what I love, which continually torments me.”

  “Stop it, Abelard,” I murmured.

  It was killing me to think of him at the perfect school somewhere in the mountains of New Mexico, where he would take college courses and live in a dorm and have teachers who understood him, and he’d be surrounded by smart, like-minded girls who would see only his beauty and natural brilliance. It was killing me to think I would be here alone with a hole in my head, a little piece of my soul gone, love and purpose and meaning all fled. It was killing me to think that there was a right and a wrong thing to do. Right for Abelard was wrong for me, and wrong for Abelard was right for me. And nothing made sense except that love is sacrifice and pain. He needed to go to that school. It was all he’d ever wanted.

  Before me.

  I had to let him go. Because pain. Our world together was too golden, too perfect to last.

  I knew how to make Abelard enroll in the Isaac Institute. Me and Dad, living the dream in Portland. Abelard would believe that.

  “I’m moving to Portland,” I typed.

  I hit Send.

  And then, instantly, I wanted to take it back. Why did I tell Abelard I was moving to Portland? Why did I lie to him?

  “Portland?” he texted. “You’re moving?”

  It was too late to tell the truth. Some lies are just too big to retract.