The electrical motor releases a high-pitched sound, like an airplane’s landing gear being tucked away after takeoff, as the canvas folds itself neatly into the back of the car. I rip open the envelope, finding three freshly printed one-hundred-dollar bills.
The humid August wind blows my loose clean hair on the drive home. I yank my sundress way up, hoping the sun will fix my seemingly permanent tan line from long hours of training in my basketball shorts. Out of nowhere, a rush of nausea comes over me, along with thoughts of tonight. Saturday night. No Nic, no Dad. What will I do? I try to pump myself up with the facts: I have lots of money, and a red convertible, and a storage bin of lies I can pull out to give anyone looking for the truth. But my head feels overwhelmed. All this space, but nothing to fill it up. Maybe there’s such a thing as too much space? I’ve been in secret love affairs with women and girls since I was eleven. Miss Lange, Nic, a handful of high school classmates, plus a few boyfriends along the way. Before all that it was Simon and Luke. The picture of being with no one is trying to hang itself inside my head. I start to panic. Heat rises from my body. The humidity, now stifling, makes it worse. I turn my face toward the open sky and gulp in a big breath.
The dark green exit sign for Connecticut Avenue looms over my head, and I watch it expand and land on me. The massive metal is smothering my chest. An old station wagon next to me seems to grow larger, too—invading my space. Driving down the exit ramp, my hands, feet, and face feel fat, like I’ve ballooned from 125 to 225 pounds.
I grab for distractions—the radio, the air-conditioning, the vents—anything to get my mind off the panic. Waiting at the traffic light, heart racing, I look around for a friendly face that might help me. But what would I say? “Hello, stranger, will you talk to me for a few minutes, until this panicky, distorted feeling goes away?”
A massive middle-aged man sits in the driver’s seat of a station wagon, talking to three hysterical kids in the backseat. The youngest one happily shows me her Cabbage Patch doll out the window. I force a smile at her. It helps. I wave good-bye as I turn onto Connecticut Avenue. I take deep breaths, and eventually I slip out of the panic.
As I turn the convertible into our driveway, Mom’s Impala sits alone. Tears stream down my face as I look at the four brown doors. If only she could escape. I can’t tell her. About him. About me. I can’t tell her how the love I have for her is so big, it hurts. And even if I could, would she be rested enough, happy enough, full enough, to love me back that much?
Once a year, on my birthday, I do get a delicious taste of her big love. And no matter how many years she writes “You’re my lucky 13” in my birthday card, I can’t help excusing myself from the table and bawling my eyes out in the first-floor bathroom while my cake is being sliced. Mom, like the chocolaty dessert, has always been divvied up among too many people to ever allow me to feel full.
9
Condemnation
I’m barely into the first week of my sophomore year of college when the shit hits the fan.
“It’s fucking bullshit,” I yell, speeding away from the public high school where Nic teaches. My aggression toward the accelerator is nothing compared to the anger I feel after the crushing meeting with my basketball coach.
Now a safe distance away from her school, Nic rolls a joint, shaking her head in solidarity from the passenger seat. I run a stop sign for no good reason other than I feel like it.
“Ya know, I bet she was just trying to motivate you,” Nic says.
I turn the van’s large steering wheel hand over hand like a bus driver, merging onto Veirs Mill Road, and hit bumper-to-bumper rush-hour traffic. Nic rolls up her window, then bends down, hiding below the dashboard to light the joint. Knowing the drill, I roll up my window, too, keeping the smell of pot away from nearby cars.
My mind spins. Every which way I turn Coach Norris’s words, I can’t make them mean anything else. Nic rises with a mouthful of smoke. She offers me the joint as we inch along, and I take it. I need it.
“How can she already know I’ll never be a starter? I’m only a sophomore!”
“I’m telling you, coaches say that shit to light a fire under you.”
“Have you ever told one of your players that she’ll never start?” I ask.
Nic takes the joint back, considers the question, then shakes her head.
“I’ll just ask her about it when she comes over this weekend,” Nic says.
“No, then she’ll know I told you,” I explain.
“She knows you’re going to tell me everything, you’re my girlfriend.”
“No! I don’t want you asking her,” I insist.
Nic looks at me and, playfully, blows smoke in my direction, giggling.
“Go the back way,” Nic suggests, pointing east.
I barely avoid the oncoming traffic as I floor it onto a side street of brick ramblers just like Nic’s. Their occupants probably have crushed dreams, too, and have settled for what someone told them they could accomplish in life. Fuck that. I look at the simple, small homes and know I don’t belong here. I would never tell Nic, but I don’t like driving this big brown masculine box, either. If one were to rip off the passenger door and stencil on a logo, it could pass for a UPS truck.
As I pull up in front of Nic’s rental, I feel nearly as underwater as I did when I walked out of Norris’s office with a fake smile plastered on my face, having just had my dream deflated. I turn off the ignition even though I want to drive away and hide somewhere so no one can see my hurt. I have barely enough energy to grab the door handle. My pulse seems to be missing. Nic gathers her things from the floor.
“I’m quitting the team,” I declare.
Nic opens her door and gets out of the van. I hear her chuckle.
“Very funny, hot stuff.”
* * *
I did quit the team a few weeks after my preseason meeting in Coach Norris’s office, but Mom and Dad didn’t get a bill for my sophomore year, even though I didn’t play at all—it was really decent of Norris to not yank my scholarship away. When I told her I was leaving the team, she didn’t try very hard to convince me otherwise. I lied, telling her my decision was because I wanted to focus on my studies. Another year of riding the bench seemed much worse than being seen as a quitter. Dad’s initial response was tinged with disappointment: “When you make a commitment, you keep a commitment.” Maybe that’s why he’s still married to Mom . . .
* * *
If I were Larry Bird, I could just raise my arm and rest my palm on the ceiling from the top bunk in my dorm at my new school. But I fall short by a forearm. I got stuck with the top bunk because by the time Mom dropped me off at Mount St. Mary’s College, a Division II school an hour and a half from home that recruited me to play basketball junior year, my two roommates had grabbed the prime real estate in our suite. Nothing has been sweet so far. In fact, I have felt awkward ever since I climbed into Mom’s Impala with my suitcases piled high in the back and we began the drive on 270 North. I feel like such a fraud.
After a month here, I am still completely uncomfortable sharing a room with two freshmen I have nothing in common with. My roomies are both from New Jersey and became instant best friends before I even had time to set up my hot-air popcorn popper. We are pleasant to one another, but mostly I keep a wall between us, not telling them much about me and staying to myself. I play pickup games in the gym every day after school with my teammates, eat in the cafeteria with a couple of them, or alone, and then study in the library. Other than my fellow players, I’ve only really talked with Todd, a New Yorker with an asymmetrical haircut who’s always dressed in black. My first week here, I was heading to philosophy class, and he told me my ankle boots were “flawless.” He gave me his number, a first. I haven’t called, but I’m pretty sure from the way he walked—all hips—that he’s gay. Most days, and nights, I stay away from my dorm room until I’m ready to crash or until Nic is supposed to call on the hallway pay phone—conveniently located outsid
e our door.
Tonight, with the room dark except for the glow of three bedside clocks and a desk lamp, I’m about to nod off when I hear the hall phone ring. My bunkmate slides back from her desk—wood scraping sharply on the vinyl floor—and walks out of the room. A few moments later, she returns.
“Tina, are you awake? The phone is for you,” she whispers from below.
“Yeah, okay,” I say, climbing down the small ladder attached to the bottom of the bunk.
I tighten the drawstring on my pajama bottoms—Nic’s baggy red sweatpants from the high school where she teaches. The black receiver dangles from the metal cord inside the glass phone booth. Slipping inside, I close the folding door for privacy. I feel safe in here. For one hour most nights, I get to fully be myself, no hiding, talking on the phone with Nic.
“Hello?” I say playfully, knowing it’s her.
“Hey, hot stuff. Did I wake you up?” Nic’s voice is unsteady.
“Hi, babe. No, I’m up.”
“How was practice?”
The question surprises me, since she knows official practice doesn’t start until mid-October.
“You mean pickup?” I ask, trying to gauge if she’s stoned.
“Yeah . . . pickup games . . . game.”
“Great. Mr. Sheehan was watching us today, and he said I grabbed at least eight rebounds over all the forwards and centers.”
She goes silent.
“Are you okay?”
The only response is her uneven breathing.
“What?” I say impatiently.
After a deep breath, she says, “It’s not the same . . . here.”
“I know. I hate it, too. But we’ll see each other next weekend.”
“You didn’t have to transfer.”
Her tone is clipped, and dead serious. I don’t feel like hearing for the hundredth time that the bed feels empty. It’s not like sleeping in a top bunk is some fantasy come true, but turning down the chance to play basketball again, along with a full scholarship for the last two years of college and my M.B.A., didn’t really feel like an option.
“I’m just not sure,” her words stumble out.
“Of what?”
She takes another big breath.
“Us . . .”
“Not sure?!” My breath shortens, my heart speeds ahead.
She falls silent. I stare through the glass box, my eyes following the row of door handles all the way down the hallway, dead-ending at the open bathroom door. I prop my foot against the glass.
“Not sure what?”
She hesitates, dragging out her words.
“How I feel . . .”
“About what? Like you aren’t sure if you love me?”
“Yeah . . . I’m not sure . . . I think I need some time,” she apologizes.
I clutch the metal phone cord, which refuses to bend. The word edison—her school—is spelled out in chunky white letters down the right side of my sweatpants. My brain seizes and sentences refuse to form. My chest feels like it’s pulling in every direction. Finally, she tries to explain. “I’m sorry, but you left, and now I don’t know . . .”
Like waves cresting, emotion rises from my belly, curling through my chest and throat, and crashing out of my eyes and down my face. I use my T-shirt as a tissue. Then the heaving starts. I try to wrangle for control. Out of nowhere, a chubby girl with a towel wrapped around her head stares at me from outside the pay phone, jolting me. I quickly wipe my eyes and reach for a smile to prove I’m fine, but it’s futile.
“Are you going to be much longer?” the girl mouths from the other side.
I shake my head, cover the receiver, and mouth back with a lifeless shrug, “My boyfriend.” She nods with mild sympathy at my guy trouble and shuffles away in her flip-flops. At least I feel safe knowing if she’s going to gossip about my weeping, late-night call, she’ll be sure to say that I was on the phone with my “boyfriend.”
“How about I call you this weekend?” Nic offers, like she’s bargaining with a child.
“Sure,” I mutter softly.
“Okay,” she says.
“Bye.”
I hang up, dropping my head into my hands. A whirlwind of thoughts, mostly regrets, blows through my mind—my stupid cheating, my blatant flirting, my overconfidence that she would never leave. But then, like a crazy person, I have the opposite feeling. Hope strikes. Maybe Nic’s just having a bad day. I am convinced she’s not breaking up with me. But then, just as fast, a lump swells in my throat, recalling her tone—different from anything I’ve ever heard from her. Different from the emotion-filled threats of the past.
In a daze, I enter my dark room, the desk lamp now off. The freshmen are tucked in, and only the hum of the mini fridge sounds alive. I slowly climb the ladder to my top bunk and pull the covers over my head. Rolling facedown, I mute my cries into my pillow, soaking the floral pillowcase Mom picked up on sale. Eventually, needing air, I let a sob slip out.
“Tina, are you okay?” my bunkmate calls from below.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I pipe up, doing a bad impersonation of being fine.
I swallow hard, cough, roll over noisily in my bed to mask the crying. For sure, my bunkmate knew that was a woman who asked to speak with me, the same woman who calls regularly. I can tell both roommates suspect things, the way they look at each other when one of them answers the pay phone and it’s Nic. If I fall apart, they will figure it out for sure. I bite my lip and bury my face back into my pillow. Fuck! I have no idea how I’m going to get through this night.
One of the only people I am able to confide in about my breakup is Dad. While I am away at school, he writes to me often, always telling me how much he misses me and trying to pin me down for our next dinner. His last letter, written on British Airways Concorde stationery, ended with a guilt-inducing “Well, love, just want you to know I’m thinking of you and love you very much even though I don’t see much of you. Strange—life will be over and we’ll be asking why? Keep me in your love and prayers. Miss you. Love and Blessings always, Dad.”
During one of our reunion meals, I tell him that Nic and I aren’t together anymore. He doesn’t seem to care much about the breakup, maybe because I lied and told him it was mutual. Maybe because when something isn’t about him, he mostly seems uninterested.
At the end of my first semester at the Mount, I am summoned to the dean of students’ office. He closes the door to his office before speaking.
“Your roommates have filed a complaint,” he says, going on to explain that they claimed I hit on them and made them feel uncomfortable.
In a state of shock, I feel ashamed and embarrassed, even though as sure as I am of being a great jump shooter, I am sure I never, ever looked at those girls with a shred of interest, never mind doing anything but trying to hide my sexuality from them. Still, their intolerance and flat-out lies, probably due to their suspicions about my lifestyle, result in the dean transferring me to a “single”—a two-hundred-square-foot box with cinder-block walls, and a very hard get for someone still new on campus. I would have been glad for the chance to be roommate-free, only now, my housing situation makes me feel as if I have leprosy. Also, I’m not sure if it’s a coincidence or not, but there’s a gay gal on my floor—a funny party animal named Max—who fortunately does have roommates who seem to love her.
Trying to salve the pain of being moved into a single because my roommates told lies to the dean, I’m determined to do an even better job of passing for straight during my second semester at my new school. My plan is to stay focused and firmly committed to my business degree, particularly after learning from my advisor that by taking just two extra classes in economics, I can earn a minor in the subject. I like the sound of it: “I’m majoring in business with a minor in economics.” Lots of my decisions get made because I like the sound or look of something. Truth is, I’m not even sure how I feel about economics. Or a lot of stuff I do.
In March, during the playoffs, I have a lot
to prove, both on the court and off. As captain of the team, I lead the Lady Mountaineers to one win shy of making the Final Four and am voted Most Valuable Player. I don’t even attend the annual sports banquet to pick up my trophy.
10
Mysteries
Finding myself single at the end of my junior year and back at home for the summer, I’m in need of something to fill my time and a way to make money. So when Dad offers me a full-time job for a few months, answering the phones, filing, typing envelopes, and doing brochure mailings, I grab it. Since we are partners in crime, I figure it will be a breeze.
These first few weeks of vacation, Dad and I have been making up for lost time, since we couldn’t spend as much time together while I was away at school. No matter how late we stay out or how much we drink, Dad never misses 6:30 a.m. mass, or even seems hungover. Even when I nod off at my office desk, he lets it slide, never getting mean. Anyone else, he’d fire on the spot. All I get is another invitation to lunch. I haven’t had the chance to snoop around the office much because he hasn’t been away in nearly a month—an eternity for him. But I look forward to another peek around. I know he’s got more secrets for me to uncover.
Staring into the ladies’ room mirror at the University Club, I fluff up my curled hair, making a sexy face, and kiss the mirror, leaving a bright red lipstick print behind. A toilet flushes, and I rush out before anyone steps out of the bathroom stall. Breaking rules, even something as minor as my lipstick graffiti, makes my heart race with the exhilaration of a game-winning shot, as I hustle back to the table where Dad and his Middle Eastern business associate, Hassan, are still deep in serious conversation. Dad invited me to join them after their business meeting for an early dinner—code for “Dad wants to start drinking as soon as possible.”
Swaying through the crowded dining room in my new summer dress—a fitted mini—my confidence soars in response to stares from the mostly male crowd. A new bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape—our third, on top of the gin and tonics we began the evening with—rests next to the gorgeous arrangement of white roses in the center of our round table. I’m flying high on the right balance of excellent appetizers, expensive booze, and the beauty of the dining room.
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