What It Was Like

by Peter Seth

  She said, “I told them that I’m in love with you.”

  I snickered at that, but I couldn’t feel anything but the edge of dread.

  “You’re too smart for them,” I said. “The next time they say that, you can tell them that I’m obsessed with you too.”

  “But listen, listen, listen –” she said until I stopped talking and there was quiet. “I’ve decided . . .” she let that hang in the air.

  “You’ve decided what?” I asked, knowing/feeling what she was about to say.

  “I think it might be better,” she said slowly. “If . . . we take a break from each other for a while.”

  I wasn’t sure that I heard her correctly.

  “What?” I said. “I didn’t hear you. I thought you said that we shouldn’t see each other for a while.”

  “Only for a little while,” she said. “Until they stop with this torture. They’re always at me. If it’s not Eleanor, it’s school. If it’s not them, it’s Herb, always looking at me. Or my father, threatening that he won’t get me my car. They’re always at me, and you’re always at me –”

  “What do you mean, I’m always at you?” I interrupted. (I think that’s when the hall really started to tilt, and I had to lean against the wall.)

  “I mean that I’m always worried about not being home for your calls,” she said in a rush. “Or Eleanor not letting me talk long enough. Or trying to figure out when to call you at school, and knowing that you probably won’t be there. And fighting with them every weekend to steal time with you. I get so worked up every time I’m going to see you – and I fight with Eleanor and Herb before, of course – that after I’ve left you, I’m wrecked. I feel . . . I feel – I don’t know, I don’t know – used up by it all. It’s just too much for me. It’s too much.”

  She started crying, and this time, I let her cry. Theoretically I felt bad for her, a girl being forced to break up with her boyfriend. Myself? I tried not to feel anything myself. I guess, in retrospect, I was starting to go numb.

  “I made a deal with them,” she said. “I told them that I’d try things their way for a while. My father said he’d still give me the Mustang if I ‘straightened out.’ Those were his words.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked, trying to see exactly where she was going.

  “It means seeing their stupid therapist twice a week. And trying to get decent grades, finishing off my college applications –”

  “You mean you haven’t finished them yet?” I asked. “Not even NYU?”

  “You know what I want to do,” she answered back. “And it’s not going to college next fall! Are you having any fun?”

  “I have no choice! I don’t have grandma money. It’s either college or the Army for me. I’d rather not wind up face down in a rice paddy, if you don’t mind.” I didn’t stop, “What about your grandma money? What did that lawyer ever say?”

  “I never actually spoke to him,” she said. “He had to cancel that meeting, and then it never got rescheduled.”

  “Don’t you think you should, before you start making plans for your future?”

  “Please don’t talk to me like that,” she snapped. “You sound like Eleanor.”

  “That’s not a very nice thing to say,” I responded in a calm voice.

  “Well, neither is what you said!”

  I let there be a long pause. Then I asked the question.

  “So what does this actually mean?”

  She paused – I don’t know if she was choking up or what – and said, “It means not seeing you for a while.”

  “What about loving me ‘forever, no matter what happens’?” I said, quoting her very words as she left me on the last day of Mooncliff. “You remember when you said that –”

  “I remember!” she cut me off. “I didn’t say that I didn’t love you. I didn’t say that at all.”

  “I’m sorry,” I groped for the right words. “I just don’t understand. You say you love me, yet you want to break up with me?”

  “Not break up,” she said. “Just take a break.”

  “For how long?”

  “I don’t know how long!” she paused. “This therapist told them that it should be a total break, at least for a while. I’ll have to see what happens.”

  I couldn’t believe the words I’d been hearing – I never, ever believed that she actually wanted to leave me of her own free will – but here she was, doing it, breaking up with me.

  “You really think ‘boys are toys,’” I said.

  “Don’t say that; I’m serious,” she said, her voice breaking. “I can’t keep going on this way. I just have to change some things.”

  “But why change us?” I demanded. “I thought that we were one of the good things in your life.”

  “I’m sorry,” she wept. “But I don’t know what else to do. Everyone’s pressuring me, and I can’t take it anymore.”

  “OK,” I said, sounding casual as I was imploding. “Whatever you say.”

  “No, please don’t say that.”

  “What do you want me to say?” I asked, closing my eyes, my forehead against the wall. “You always said that you don’t want anyone to control you. Why should I think that I was any different?”

  “Please, I hate it when you sound so cold.”

  “Tell me, Rachel,” I said, my voice cracking. “After what you’ve just told me, what temperature am I supposed to be?”

  I heard her start crying again, and I was almost glad that she was. She was doing something stupid and wrong, and I couldn’t stop her.

  “We were supposed to make each other happy!” she sobbed. “I thought that if I loved you enough, everything would be OK.”

  “Why are you doing this?” I asked, trying to break through to her rationally, but losing hope.

  “I have to do something,” she said, trying to keep her voice from wavering. “I can’t go on, the way things are.”

  “OK,” I said, going back to cold, resigned. “If you say so.”

  “Just trust me,” she said passionately and finally. “Give me time, and I’ll make things better. I have to go. I love you. Goodbye.”

  And she hung up the phone.

  I have to go . . . I love you . . . Goodbye.

  ≁

  I stood there for a long time, trying to understand what had just happened. It didn’t seem possible. Rachel loved me, and I loved her. Why should we be apart at all? Something was wrong with the world. Very wrong.

  I don’t remember walking back to my room. I don’t remember much of the rest of that day, to tell you the truth.

  I did a lot of sleeping in the days immediately after Rachel broke up with me. (There, I said it.) And when I was awake, when my mind managed to focus, I debated over my next course of action. First I had to decide if I had any course of action to take. “Don’t make things worse.” Rachel was doing what she had to do; maybe I should trust her to come back to me.

  But she sounded as if she were in such trouble. Could I – should I just abandon her? Involved with Eleanor and Herb and her father, who knows what she was facing, even in the way of physical danger? None of them really seemed to love her or care about her. I did.

  But I was smart; I laid low. At least for a couple of days. I went to my classes and, on one level, paid attention to what was going on and being said. But, on another level, it was RachelRachelRachel all the time: what to do, how to get her back, how to survive until I got her back. I know now that I didn’t behave normally. But that’s because Rachel and I didn’t have a “normal” love. We had something deeper, much deeper, and when it was gone I kind of fell apart.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Roommate A asked me. It was late in the afternoon. “You’ve been sitting there for hours. You haven’t even moved.”

  “I’ve moved,” I answered him. “I�
�ve moved a great deal . . . inside.”

  I had given her three days of this nonsense; now I was going to call her. At 8:00, our regular time. As if nothing had happened. Going down to the phone booth in the mailroom, I recalled all the responses I’d gotten all the times that I had called the Princes’ number: “She’s not home. . . . She’ll have to call you back. . . . She’s doing her homework, sorry!” Of course, sometimes Rachel answered the phone herself. Maybe I’d get lucky, and it would be Rachel again this time, the way it always should have been.

  I sat in the booth and pulled the door closed behind me. I dug a handful of coins from my pocket and put them on the little shelf under the phone. I dropped two dimes and a nickel in the slot – bong-bong-bong – dialed and waited, rehearsing what I was going to say, depending on who answered. Maybe I could charm Eleanor; I could give it one more shot. Who knows? Maybe she could have had a change of heart.

  Instead, I heard: “The number you have reached has been changed or is no longer in service. If you feel you have reached this number in error, please try your call again. Thank you.”

  I tried the number two more times and got the same recording each time before I was convinced.

  Whoa! I thought to myself as I finally hung up. These people are serious. Changing their phone number to keep her away from me? Isn’t that a little drastic?

  Not to be outsmarted so easily, I called Information.

  “I’m sorry,” said the operator. “That number has been changed to an unpublished number.”

  “What do mean ‘unpublished’?” I asked, although I knew the answer.

  “The customer has chosen not to have the number published,” said the operator. “Can I help you with anything else?”

  “No,” I said. “Thank you,” and I hung up quietly.

  All I could do was go back to my room and think quietly about my options.

  ≁

  Over the next few days, I thought of the many ways by which I could get the Princes’ new unpublished phone number. One of the kids I graduated with, a guy who sat in front of me in homeroom for six years because our last names were one letter apart, worked for the phone company. I knew I could get the number from him. Or I could pretend to be some kind of door-to-door salesman or polltaker and try to get some information out of one of their neighbors. I also knew some of the stores that the Princes used in the town of Oakhurst, and I’m sure that I could make up something, like I’d found Eleanor Prince’s wallet right outside their store, and did they know her phone number so that I could arrange returning it?

  Or I could do what I eventually did: go to Nanci Jerome’s to flirt with her and smoke her hash in order to find out Rachel’s new phone number. (I stopped things before they went too far. But, of course, she was using me too. This is one of the many reasons why I didn’t testify at my trial: all this stuff should never have had to come out, and my testimony would have just added to the sensationalism of the whole thing. Rachel didn’t know about it for the longest time. But, in a way, she’s the one who practically forced me to do it. Just add it to the long list of actions of mine of which I am not particularly proud.)

  When I drove away from Nanci’s house, I was so close to Rachel that I had a hard time resisting the urge to just burst into the Princes’ house and take her away with me, after apologizing profusely for my transgression with Nanci. But I never did . . . either.

  The next day, when Nanci called me after finding out the Princes’ new number from her mother, I thanked her and told her she was a true friend. I’m not sure that’s exactly what she wanted to hear from me, but I couldn’t really worry too much about that.

  I debated about waiting until 8:00 to call, but I decided that was too obvious. I had to play this carefully. If the phone rang precisely at 8:00, they would know it was me. If I called earlier, I might catch them off-guard.

  I don’t know why I felt so confident as I dialed the new, not-yet-memorized number. I just felt that Rachel would be glad to hear from me, to know that I hadn’t abandoned her, that I was still, if nothing else, her true friend.

  The kitchen was clear. My parents knew that something was going on with me and gave me a lot of space. But I still pulled the long cord into the dining room after I dialed and waited, hanging in suspension as I had done so many times before. One ring, two rings. The line picked up; my heart braced itself.

  “Hello?” It was a cautious Eleanor. My timing was wrong!

  “Hello??” she said again, sounding even more suspicious. “Who is this?”

  I panicked and hung up. Which was a stupid thing to do: stupidstupidstupid. Now she would know that I was on to them and had found out their new number, and I hadn’t even said anything! I should have at least asked to speak to Rachel or something, and said what I wanted to say. Instead, I hung up like a fool. A fool and a coward.

  I went back up to my room to berate myself for this bad move.

  “What was I thinking?” I said out loud to myself. I sat on my bed cross-legged and bounced a tennis ball off my wall so many times that my father had to yell up the stairs, “Can you please cut that out? You’re shaking the whole house!”

  “Sorry!” I yelled back.

  I stopped bouncing the ball off the wall and just lay on my back, tossing it straight up in the air softly, hitting nothing. I couldn’t stop thinking about the bad move I had made. And what made it worse was that it was a bad move I had planned. Nanci told me that Rachel “clouded my judgment.” Maybe she was right. I had never before gotten such mediocre grades or been on such terrible terms with my teachers or lost touch with my friends from high school; so much of my mental energy was devoted to Rachel and the maintenance of our relationship. I admit that it was tough getting bad grades, grinding through my classes, and barely co-existing with Roommate A and his phony French cigarettes in that tiny room. But there were many, many moments of true happiness with Rachel – both actually being with her and when I was alone, thinking about her and us – that made it all worthwhile. Didn’t the Beatles just sing, “All You Need Is Love”? I believed that then (and, to some extent, despite everything that happened, still do).

  Anyway, I fell asleep in the way-too-late night, after deciding that, what the hell, I was glad the Princes knew that I had their new unpublished number. Now, whenever their phone rang, they would always have to wonder: “Is it you-know-who?” And Rachel would always be reminded: “He hasn’t forgotten about me. He still loves me.”

  I woke up the next afternoon (I guess it was actually the afternoon of the same day), and overnight I had come to another conclusion: I had to see Rachel one more time, in person. It wasn’t fair to me, it wasn’t really even fair to her, and it certainly wasn’t fair to Us – to The Zone – to end things on the phone. I had to see her once more. I wanted to see her tell it to my face: that we were over. Sorry, that we were on a “break” for “I-don’t-know-how-long.” Not that I was going to challenge her decision. She had the right to do and to feel however she wanted. But I deserved an explanation to my face. I was owed that.

  So I did the most logical thing I could think of: I went to see Rachel at Oakhurst High on Monday, to see her in person. I knew that I could ill-afford to ditch all my Monday classes, but likewise I couldn’t just let my relationship with Rachel end on a phone call. It was eating me up, this “wrong” ending, and I had to get past it if I wanted to move on with my life.

  I didn’t want to go to her house – or Manny’s condominium, for that matter. That would be even more complicated. And I wanted to see her as soon as possible, to get it over with now, Monday. OK, by ditching all my classes on Monday – or certainly the morning classes – I know that I was making my bad relationships with a few of my teachers worse, but I couldn’t just let things with Rachel end like this. If they were going to be finished, they had to be finished correctly.

  I don’t think that my parents totally belie
ved me when I told them that I had “Monday off” when I showed up super early by surprise to borrow my mother’s car. They didn’t fight me too much about it. They were pretty considerate of me and what they sensed I was going through at the time. (Maybe if they had been a little less considerate and a little more intolerant, I wouldn’t have gotten myself into the trouble I got myself into. I don’t blame them for anything I did; as I said, I was obsessed. I would have pushed back hard if they had tried to stop me and any of my carefully planned actions. I am completely responsible for everything I ever did, ever felt, and ever said.)

  It was very cold that Monday morning, right before Christmas vacation, but I wanted to get to Oakhurst High early. Maybe if I could see Rachel before her classes; see her early, and get it out of the way. But I was determined to make it “official” – face-to-face. It might have been her decision to break things off, but it would be on my terms, in person and final. Maybe I could even get back to Columbia in time for my afternoon classes.

  Unfortunately, on my semi-frantic drive to Oakhurst High in the Falcon in the early rush hour traffic, the car heater got stuck on high, so I had to keep the window open as heat poured out of the vents. I cranked open the window and turned the vents away from me, but by the time I was in Oakhurst, my body was covered with sweat while my neck and left arm were icy cold from the rush of outside air.

  And I didn’t leave early enough either. As I came in sight of the glass-and-steel palace of education, there were so many cars whizzing around – lots of nice GTOs and foreign sports cars – and so many kids crossing the street every which way, in the crosswalks and between cars, that I couldn’t really look for Rachel and keep my eyes on the road at the same time. There was a student parking lot with cars streaming in, but a guard in a uniform was standing at the big iron-pointed gate, checking parking permits, and I didn’t have one. It was getting closer to the start of school, and if I had any hope of finding Rachel before classes began, I had to get out of the car and find her on foot.