Addicted
Page 15
His eyes widened. “We’ll find out.”
The prison guard did die, but it wasn’t from the gunshot. He was wounded when his colleague opened the door and tripped the rifle, but not fatally, and when he woke up alive in the hospital, he had a new lease on life. On the other hand, the guard who had caused the gunshot was so traumatized he went back to drinking after years of sobriety, and he eventually killed them both by running his car over a cliff.
“I didn’t see that coming,” Julien said as he clicked off the television.
“Really? I would think nothing surprises you. I mean you analyze stories for a living.”
“I figured the alcoholic would die, not the both of them. But that would be the Hollywood version. Foreign filmmakers don’t care as much about narrative symmetry, especially the Europeans.”
“Hmm, that’s interesting,” I said, impressed as always by Julien’s authoritative certainty. He sounded this way whenever he was giving an opinion on one thing or another, and just by participating in conversation with him, I felt smarter. To be accepted by my former professor as a sounding board, someone to converse with about movies or books, his book especially, was like being promoted to a position I hadn’t quite earned yet. “I remember you talking about narrative symmetry in class,” I said, wishing I had more to add but too dazed from my night with Liam to think any more clearly.
Julien seemed to be on his own train of thought. “Remember the paper you wrote on Morrison?” he asked.
I nodded, even though I had already forgotten the bulk of my class work from that last blur of a semester.
“You quoted the line from Beloved, about working hard to forget everything. To forget the painful things.”
“Oh yeah,” I said. “That was a great line…”
“Obviously Sethe is not a good example of that philosophy as a coping mechanism, but sometimes I wonder if that’s what it’s all about. Like the guy in the movie, he wasn’t a candidate for depression. He was just a guy who couldn’t forget the terrible things he had seen and done. Somebody else could have lived that life and been just fine.”
Again I nodded. Julien seemed to be broaching the topic of grief, maybe even his own grief, but I was at a loss for words. A brief flash of Liam kicking at the ground outside my car reminded me why.
“I put that quote on my syllabus one year, and my wife made the comment that I was good at that… good at forgetting. ‘Too good,’ she said.” He shook his head. “She used this shooting I had witnessed as an example. A drive-by. My whole fourth-grade class had seen it out the window of a school bus on a field trip. Two guys, standing on a corner, a couple of teenagers—dealers, probably—got shot in broad daylight while we were stopped at a light. Everybody on my side of the bus was looking.”
“That’s horrible,” I said, noticing how Julien’s face had become drawn as he recalled the painful memory.
“It was horrible. Tragic. But it didn’t take me long to get over it. Other kids couldn’t stop thinking about it and talking about it for weeks. I swear they had PTSD. But me? I just read my books, wrote my stories. I was doing all right. That first year after Renay’s death, I was so afraid of having the same reaction, I went in the opposite direction. I thought about it too much. I wasn’t conscious of it until I read the quote in your paper. I think I was supposed to read that quote again.”
He had been staring off into space, but now Julien turned and looked into my eyes. His expression was an odd mixture of pain and relief. He reached out and placed his hand over mine on the seat between us. “I thought I should tell you that.”
“I’m glad,” I said, uncertain how to react. I looked down at my hand under Julien’s, confused by the gesture. It would have been one thing for him to place his hand on mine in the daylight, at his office, in another context than this. Here we were in the dark late at night, with just enough light coming through the windows for me to see a yearning in Julien’s eyes. Before this, I had interpreted whatever intimacy there was between us as pedagogical, almost familial. This was different, though. My reflexes finally kicked in and I drew my hand back, standing up from the couch like I was spring-loaded. “I’m so tired. I’d better get some sleep.”
“Of course.” Julien stood too. Neither of us moved for a moment. He looked sheepishly at the ground. “Mischa, I’m sorry. I—”
“What? No—” I stopped him with a chaste pat on the arm. “Please, you have nothing to be sorry about,” I said, and shook my head, smiling uncomfortably as I made my way around the couch. I suddenly felt bad for making Julien feel like he’d done something wrong. He couldn’t have meant anything by touching my hand, could he? “I’ll see you in the morning,” I said.
“I’ll have to go into the office early,” he blurted, awkwardly pointing to his bare wrist as if there were a watch there. “You can come as late as you want. In fact, why don’t you just take the day off? One of us should get a good night’s sleep, right?” His voice had switched back into authoritative mode, as if he were trying to erase the fact that we’d just watched a late-night movie together and followed it up by talking about his personal life.
“Okay?” I sounded surprised as Julien disappeared upstairs, taking two steps at a time. I stayed in the darkened foyer for a few more seconds wondering what exactly had just happened, then decided it was probably in my best interest to forget all about it.
Chapter Twelve
I awoke after what couldn’t have been more than two hours of sleep. The only evidence I had slept at all was a wet spot on my pillow where I had drooled. A more levelheaded person would have taken a sleeping aid, but I had chosen to suffer through the night, thinking back over the past eight hours to all the magical and awful things that had transpired between me and Liam, and then the strangeness that had followed with Julien.
Fact: even after he had told me on no uncertain terms that we were done, I felt myself falling for Liam. As much as I knew I should focus on the bad and get over him, I couldn’t shake the vivid memories of his tenderness when we had made love, how he’d held my hand when I had told him about my father and stared into my eyes like he really knew me. I’d never felt that close to a man before, not even Bradley. Especially not Bradley. Also, fact: Julien Maxwell had reached out for me in the dark, and I still couldn’t make sense of it. In the light of day, it seemed clearer that he had been feeling something more than platonic, but how? Wouldn’t I have seen signs leading up to last night? Had he just reached out for me as a source of comfort and I had misinterpreted the whole thing?
In terms of Liam, I decided in the vague clarity I had gained after my two hours of sleep that I had to face the writing on the wall. I couldn’t keep giving in to moments of weakness and chasing after him. Actions speak louder than words, as Gracie would say, and Liam’s actions had told me that I was only desirable in brief spurts; that just as easily as he drew me in, he could cut me loose without warning. I had ignored his ambivalence and obsessed over him to the point of ridiculousness, and it was time to stop. What I really needed was to focus on other things—my future, for one. What was to become of me after August was still a giant question mark, and all I had done in the face of that uncertainty was to eat, eat, eat, and obsess, obsess, obsess.
But what was I going to do? I hadn’t even been bumped off the waiting list for the graduate program at Reid and hadn’t spent any time considering the handful of programs where I had been accepted. A tiny part of me had been hoping Julien might stick his neck out and put in a good word for me with the dean of graduate studies, but had the awkwardness of last night ruined any chance of that? If I were going to be proactive and find out, I would march into his office and confront the situation, but that option was off the table since Julien had basically forbidden me from coming in by “giving me the day off.”
“What do I do? What do I do? What do I do?” I said as I dragged myself out of bed, feeling heavy with defeat. All I wanted to do was eat, preferably tucked away in a dark corner somewhere
where no one would find me for days. I’d never been such a mess. Baby steps, I heard a voice of reason speak up in the back of my head. One thing at a time. The first thing I needed was a shower. After that, I would change into the nicest sundress that still fit my body, put on some tinted sunscreen that made me look half alive, and with my head held high, make my way into Julien’s kitchen for some breakfast. He would be at work by now anyway, so the only potential interaction would be with my number one teenage frenemy, Cecile.
Though simple, the plan took me a while to execute—the first two dresses I tried were part of my “wishful thinking” collection—but when I finally managed to clothe myself and headed into the kitchen, I looked more put together than I had all summer. A cool blast of air-conditioning greeted me upon entering, and I was relieved to find myself alone. With a deep exhale, I said, “Thank you,” and dragged my juicer down from its perch on top of the refrigerator.
“You’re welcome,” Cecile’s voice chimed in as she shuffled into the kitchen in her swim team suit and a towel. Hearing this, my stomach dropped.
“You want some juice?” I offered, opting for plan A: play it cool, act like the “Droolian Poundwell” incident never happened, try and reestablish a rapport.
“Sure.” She took the bait, ambling over to the counter and placing her hands primly on the edge of it.
I grabbed a bundle of yellow-green kale that I’d let sit a little too long in the fridge and held it up for her to scrutinize. “As long as you don’t mind me using this.”
Cecile shrugged, and I proceeded to shove the kale into the feed chute of my juicer, not bothering to rinse it. Her silence seemed like a good omen, and I tried to tell myself that her teenage attention span had probably already moved on from Gracie’s silly text.
“So, how’s your crush on my dad coming along?” she said, quashing my wishful thinking.
If only I could tell her it was quite possibly the other way around after last night’s developments. Of course, she would never believe me. I turned to look at Cecile, hoping to convey impenetrability. “Cecile, I told you it was my friend who had the crush.”
“I don’t believe you,” she said. “And because I don’t believe you, I’m going to ask you to do some things for me.”
“Oh, c’mon, Cecile. Life doesn’t work like one of your Disney sitcoms. A text from my friend isn’t grounds for blackmail.” I threw an apple on the cutting board and attacked it with the biggest knife I could find.
“Wanna bet?” Cecile lifted her phone from the counter and unlocked the screen. “Just dialing my dad at his office. I’ll let him know what I saw on your phone.”
“Stop!” I turned around, knife midair. “I’m serious.”
“What are you gonna do?” She cocked her head to the side. “Kill me?”
“What do you want, Cecile?” I felt myself tearing up. It was a result of my exhaustion and heartbreak over Liam, but Cecile’s taunting was the spilled milk that pushed me over the edge. “I can’t fight with you right now, okay? I’m tired, and I’m sad, and I don’t know what I’m doing with my life, and the last thing I want is to argue with you over some stupid text message you weren’t supposed to see—”
Staring at me like I had two heads, Cecile put down her phone.
“I just want to be your friend, Cecile. I mean that.” I saw her face soften and was inspired to keep going. “I can’t imagine how hard it is, losing your mom, but I do know what it’s like to grow up without a dad. I know what it’s like to be angry and to want to take it out on somebody, but I also know that that’s not worth it. And you’re better than that.” I detected a little tremble in Cecile’s chin and determined that something I said had gotten to her. She remained uncharacteristically silent as I turned back to the cutting board, tossed the two apple halves in the juicer, and finished off our drinks.
* * *
It turned out the tough love approach was the way to go with Cecile. Over juice, she told me that since her mom had died, she sometimes found herself being mean to people for no reason and had a hard time stopping once she’d started. I gave her my best attempt at sisterly advice about thinking before speaking and counting to ten when a wave of anger came on. It was cliché stuff I guess, but Cecile seemed to absorb it thoughtfully. We even hugged before she went off to swim practice, and my heart lifted just a tiny bit. Then, an ironically timed text from my mother popped up on my phone: Any news about grad school?
Without answering, I shoved the phone into my purse and headed for the door, remembering that I hadn’t checked in with my subletter for any mail delivered to my old apartment in the past few weeks. The day before graduation, I had provided the post office with my new address, but nothing had shown up to Julien’s house yet and I was anxious about it. Especially now that I was waking up from the Liam-induced fever dream that had taken over the first part of my summer.
The old apartment building was just as I had left it—slightly depressing, a little run-down, and mostly populated with old people despite its proximity to a college campus. When she came to the door, the subletter, Anjuli, looked entirely out of place in this setting. She was glamorous and 5'9" with the exotic features of someone with a diverse ethnic background. When we had e-mailed, I had envisioned something very different—a petite, similarly fluffy girl, perhaps with an Indian accent. Instead, she sounded vaguely British and looked like a runway model. I was completely and utterly intimidated before she’d even introduced herself.
“I’m Mischa.” I held out my hand and managed a pursed smile. I hated when I reacted this way to beautiful girls, but after the last twenty-four hours, I was battling a pretty bad case of self-pity. Also, I wanted to kick myself for changing out of the sundress I’d put on earlier and into my too-tight jean shorts that seemed to be shrinking even smaller under Anjuli’s gaze.
“You know? I think I’ve only gotten junk mail for you; otherwise I would have e-mailed you about it. But I did keep it all in a pile. Please, come in.”
I followed her inside and noticed immediately the cleanliness and order, not to mention the smell of fresh laundry, or a fancy candle that was made to smell like fresh laundry. I had never kept the place this nice—another strike against my already battered self-esteem.
In the kitchen, she handed me the mail and I flipped through it, seeing nothing of importance. “Shit!” I said under my breath.
“Are you waiting on something?”
“I’m waiting to hear from the grad school.”
“The one here?”
“Yeah. They waitlisted me,” I explained.
Anjuli placed her hands on her hips, her thin arms showcasing themselves in a perfect V. “So you’re thinking of staying even longer? Wow. I don’t even know if I’m gonna make it through summer term.”
“Why not?” I asked, slightly defensive.
“I don’t know, Oceanside’s kind of a weird place, don’t you think?”
“Weird how?” I had never considered it as anything other than a classic college town—albeit on the beach.
“I don’t know, maybe the summer is different, but the people here just seem… bored, or boring.”
“Where are you from?”
“New York.”
“That’s your problem, then. I’m from a small town in Iowa, so absolutely nothing is boring to me.”
She let out a low laugh that made me smile despite myself. “You’re probably right. I haven’t given it much of a chance,” she said.
Eager to leave this superior version of my apartment and its new, superior tenant, I told Anjuli I had somewhere to be, which was a complete and utter lie.
As I walked out the door, she called after me. “Hey, you should try going to the Admissions office on campus. They can tell you if the letter was mailed!”
“Yeah, that’s a good idea. Thanks!” I shouted back with absolutely no intention of taking her advice. I had already filled my week’s quota of face-to-face rejections—I couldn’t risk another.
“I will have two cheeseburgers, a ten-piece chicken nugget, large fry, and medium sweet tea,” I barked into the speaker box. And a straight razor.
“Okay, two cheeseburgers and a number four.”
“Whatever it is, yes.”
As some sort of twisted defense mechanism, I had always refused to learn the names or numbers of super value meals wherever I went. It helped me deny the frequency with which I ate the things. Over the years, certain drive-thru cashiers had even tried to bond with me, giving me frequent flyer–type bonuses like extra sauce, or a larger drink, but I did my best to discourage them. I had a strong need to feel anonymous in these transactions, as if I could be anybody. In a way, it was the same fucked up logic that allowed me to believe that shared plates and appetizers didn’t really count toward my calories for the day, because there was no telling how much I’d eaten versus the other person—denial at its finest.
Once my food had been paid for, bagged, and handed over in a sufficiently impersonal exchange, I decided to drive to the beach. Not just the beach, but the same spot where Julien had taken me for midday drinks and tacos on my first day of work. I knew I wouldn’t run into him there, after observing his workaholic habit of eating lunch at his desk every day, so I felt safe going there with my bag full of trans fats. Maybe I thought that sitting in one of Julien’s favorite spots would help me process what had just happened between us. Or maybe I lacked imagination when it came to favorite beach spots. Certain habits are peculiar to overeaters, and ritualistic choices about where to eat is one of them, so the odds were I had some strange subconscious impulse driving me there. But the minute I started to mull over whether or not Julien Maxwell could possibly have feelings for me, I felt myself shutting down, like there was no more room in my brain for new complications. Liam had maxed me out. Just pretend it never happened, I heard the voice of reason say. It sounded like a good enough plan for the moment…