Hard love

Tonight, the man with blond hair and blue eyes is unhappy.  He is staring at my folder instead of looking at me, and this is normal.  He doesn't like to look at me, not for any length of time.  Instead he finds constant reasons to shift around the contents of my file, glance at the guard behind the double pane of glass, or clean his glasses.  Surly, this can't be normal shrink behavior.  I've never been to a therapist before, though in the back of my mind something long ago learned reminds me that this is a psychiatrist, not a therapist.  Or maybe he's both?  Surely the county women's penitentiary doesn't have the budget for both.  They don't even have the budget for proper shoes. 

He clears his throat, I wonder what he is getting out of these sessions-my sparse answers.  Is he learning to read my unstated thoughts?  He must be analyzing something, because he keeps coming back for more. 
"Anna.  Your friend, Megan, spoke to me yesterday."  Megan?  My friend?  I suppose. 
"Yes?"  He clears his throat again, there must not be any phlegm left at the end of his sessions with me. 
"She said that about two weeks ago, she heard a fight.  You called her after, didn't you Anna?  Your neighbors heard a lot of shouting and banging.  They heard something hit the wall.  Do you want to talk about that Anna?"
For the first time, he has managed to surprise me.  I dig the bitten shards of my nails into my palms.  Emotion is pointless, life is now simply one breath to the next.  Breath.  In.  Out.  Reply.
"No.  No, I don't want to talk about it."  This was the wrong answer.  He seems at last to have struck on something that forces his eyes to my direct gaze.  I stare back, stubbornly denying emotion.
"Anna.  This is going to help you.  I want to help you.  Did you and John argue often?"  If I didn't know better, I would think he is genuinely concerned.  Damn shirk school must have taught him how to lie with his face. 
"No.  We didn't.  He was mad because I forgot to put dinner on.  He likes it ready when he gets home.  I was tired and I forgot and we fought." 
"Did John hit you, Anna?"  This seems to be the point he has been dancing around today, maybe even for the last two weeks.  He is staring into my eyes and seemingly without realizing it resting his body against the table. 
"No.  John would never hit me.  He loved me.  The neighbors must have heard when I threw the pasta pot at the wall.  John was a lot of things, but he was never abusive."  The shrink, what was his actual name?- deflates and leans back, eyes dancing back onto the file. 
"All right, I think that's enough for today.  We can talk about it more next week, if you're ready." 

After the guard takes me from the room, I run the inside of my right thumb along the faint scar on my left wrist.  A grease burn, has left the echo of my other life in a small depressed circle.

Just to be clear...

I still love you.
I still want to be with you.
Right now, I'm just angry. 
I want this to work. 
First, I need to be me. 
I am me.
I am happy.
And I want this to work.

Aftermath

The girl in the orange jumpsuit stares back at me.  Across the table, she seems too frail to have a file as thick as the one sitting on my lap.  Her brunette hair is pulled back into the utilitarian pony tail of all the women here, she looks no more than sixteen though the paper in front of me lists her age as twenty two.  Only a year younger than I.  I shuffle the file, collecting myself and remembering that she wouldn't be in here without a good blood chilling reason.  I smile, and I know that though it doesn't reach my eyes I'm young and handsome enough to make most of the women want to talk to me.

"So Anna, this is our first meeting.  Would you mind telling me why you're in here?"  She blinks, the orange fabric stiffly resisting the shape of her body as she leans back into the metal chair.
"I killed him."  This takes my by surprise, I have to glance back down at the file to check my facts before I speak again.
"Who did you kill, Anna?" 
"My fiance.  John.  I killed him with his car.  I stabbed him with the kitchen knife while I was making Spaghetti Carbonara." She looks at me, earnestly. 
"Anna, it says here "attempted homicide.  You didn't kill anyone; your fiance-John, he's not dead."  She lets a sigh escape, long and low.
"To me, I killed him.  I am here, and he is out there.  I will be here forever and even if I'm not, I will never see him again.  To me, I killed him." 
This job is still new to me, I'm not used to dealing with more than petulant teens and their parents.  These women are different, they are mostly my age and they are constantly full of surprises.  I find myself imagining another life, if I had met Anna under different circumstances.  In her booking photos, she has a spark in her eyes that has vanished in the subsequent six months.  In another world, I would have found her intriguing, pretty.  She is staring expectantly at me and I try to look as if I have not just slipped into my own thoughts. 

"Why did you want to hurt John?"  She gives a half shrug.  Her movements aren't defined, merely the suggestions of gestures. 
"He hurt me.  Again and again.  It was time for me to hurt him."  This is something I have been trained to deal with, back to textbook scenarios.  Except that the textbooks don't tell you that sometimes, attempted murders look like they need someone to wrap them in a blanket and give them them a can of Campbell's tomato soup.  Mmm mmm good. 
"What did he do to you?  Did he physically hurt you?"  That slight movement that suggests a shake of the head
"No.  He loved me.  He loved me and then he let me love him.  He loved me, let me loved him, and then let me go."
"He broke off your engagement?" 
"No.  He tried but that was only because he was scared.  I was scared too.  We were scared together.  And then he told me I wasn't enough, I would never be enough.  But he wouldn't let anyone else love me either.  I was alone.  No love."
This is the most she has said at once and she is moving, actually moving, to brush a stray hair from her eye. 
"He told you that you weren't enough emotionally?  Sexually?"
"Everything.  I'll never be enough, never be good enough.  He loves, loved me.  I think.  And then he tells me that I need to believe that I'm beautiful.  I need to believe that I'm enough.  And then. And then the one time I did believe he slapped me.  He called me a whore and he hit me.  And I took the knife and I tried to kill him.  And it felt really good.  But then, I loved him.  I love him.  And now.  Now I've killed him.  And I love him still."

For a moment, her eyes are shining and I see a little bit of the passion that blazes in the photo on my lap.  It's hard for me not to be enthralled in her blue eyes.  She stands then, and when she moves with purpose it's graceful and beautiful to watch. 
"Excuse me Doctor, I believe I've become too emotional to continue.  I'm sure I'll have plenty of time to get to know you, a lifetime if John has anything to do with it."
I catch what might be a wry smile, but it's gone too quickly to tell.  She moves to the door and the guard who has been waiting outside quickly escorts her down the hall, the shuffle of her paper slippers echoing off the cement corridor. 
I run my fingers through my hair, spiraling my fingers around the damn cowlick in the back that never seems to lay flat.  She is something different, never in my life have I met a woman more distressing or intriguing.  I know I should call my supervisor and ask to be taken off her case, I clearly have feelings in conflict to my position as counselor.  Instead I fold her booking photo and tuck it into my jacket pocket.  I can't wait to see her again. 

G

She had green eyes I think.  Or maybe I'm romanticizing blue, I haven't seen her in over a year and a half and I won't be seeing her again.  Never again.  Ever.  There is an eternity packed into that word; every time I try to think about it I fall into a hole in my mind and am halfway gone before I remind myself to breath.  Breath.  She can't, you still can.

The last time I saw her we were at the beach.  She had the bundle of incense and was using it to frighten away bad spirits, to the rest of us it was such a fun game but now I know-we know- to her it was real.  We stood there, eight girls, shouting our regrets to the ocean and the sand and the stiff New England air.  Other girls our age were in the woods, hiding their pot and their beer and trying to feel mature, we were holding on to youth with both hands.  I told her, told everyone, that I was going to tell the man that I loved the truth, I was going to tell him everything and pray to my lucky stars that his love would prevail.  I told them about my life and my love and I was so wrapped up in being young that I didn't even stop to wonder how she was doing, how everyone else was doing. 

I wouldn't talk to her again.

I remember too when we were young, art class; I spent a week trying to accomplish what she managed in forty minutes.  I was so jealous.  She was cool and free spirited and perhaps popular, I was those things only by association.  I didn't know, didn't understand that she had demons too.  We all have demons to fight. 

They didn't find her for two days.

My dangerous moods started when I was twelve.  Food didn't matter, I had dreams about bridges and falling but I was too scared of pain to dream in reality.  Lunchtime meant throwing out whatever dried up bread my mother had managed to throw into my bag and disappearing into my mind. I was the only one in the world who felt this, had to be the only one who understood what it meant to just want everything to stop.  I wish I had stayed with the family that loved me in the place I had known.  Maybe I would have noticed that she and I shared isolation.  Maybe, together, we both would have been ok.

By the time the school noticed, it was too late and she was gone.

In AP English we slaved together over Shakespeare.  I only had eyes for the tousled haired boy in the back of the class, daydreaming about tennis courts and movie nights and buffalo chicken pizza.  If we spoke it was surrounded by everyone else.  We spent days together in mutual silence.  I was intimidated by her- jealous that she was brave enough to shave her head and then go platinum blond, jealous that she looked so good and was so damned talented.  We were friends, sure, and she was one of three people to pay their share on my eighteenth birthday when the others left me to front the bill.  For Christmas she gave me a tiny drawing in a frame, my name.  I have lost it.  I thought at the time there would be plenty more years and drawings and time for casual conversation. 

I didn't know for two weeks.  We had known each other for fifteen years, and she was dead for two weeks before I knew. 

I could have done oh so much more.  I could have talked.  I could have listened.  I could have noticed when she took our playacting more seriously than the rest, could have wondered if for her the demons we ran from were real.  I wonder if she knew that we shared that dark part of our soul, that deep question mark of life's worth. 

They found her because she didn't call her dad for his birthday.

I love my father.  Sometimes I imagine if it was him getting that call from a far away city about his baby girl.  I imagine and I cry and I thank whatever God or Grace that I can for my fear of pain.  I love my baby sister and brother.  I hope that I am the first one of us to go because I don't think I can bear ever losing either of them, now or in fifty years.  I the man who stopped this part of me.  He told me to turn around and go home, he told me he loved me and that ocean water in mid January is far too cold.  He held me the night that my best friend called me and said, she's gone.  The night I grew up and realized that I am not immune, we are not immune.  She was so close and then she was gone.

But Gwen, I kept my promise from the beach that night.  I told him everything and what's more I haven't lied since and won't again.  If I had done that long before, maybe I would have had the time to notice that something was horribly wrong.  I miss you, I miss talking about Bjork and MOMA and how we were going to run away to Finland. I'm mad at you and mad at myself for ever thinking that there was no way out, mad and scared of losing another person that I love.  I know you don't believe in God or Heaven, and I don't really either- but some days I wish I did because the thought of being able to redeem myself to you someday is comforting.  I miss you every day, we all do- I hope wherever you are they have insane Scandinavian music and lots of colored pencils.

 

Liberal Arts Education Part III

Parts ONE and TWO can be read here.

Grace pinched her cheeks and bit her lips, studying her reflection in the stand-alone mirror in the kitchenette of the sorority suite.  The long white dress had a flounce around her neck and it perfectly offset her complexion.  She pinched her cheeks again, and then sighing turned away and drew a cigarette out of her clutch.  She settled herself into her favorite nook by the window and took a long drag, watching the smoke curl away from the fourth floor and drift away from the red brick building. 

“Gracie!” 

“Ow, shit!  C’mon Sue, you made me burn my dress.”  Grace rubbed at a new grey spot on her ruff. 

“Well you shouldn’t be smoking in here, you know the rules.  Anyway, you’ve made yourself stink like a coal miner, you know Timmy hates girls that smoke.”  Grace slid down from the window and dropped the cigarette in the sink.

“Why should I give two cents what Timmy hates?”

“Because he’s your escort tonight.  And because you’re about to be the youngest May Queen in this schools history, and it would be good for you to smell like one.” 

“Sometimes, Sue, I wonder if you’re my sorority sister or my mother.”

            Outside, the old bell in the center of campus began its slow process of chiming out the hour.  Grace glanced towards the mirror again, trying to smooth the burn away from the dress.

            “Oh dear god in heaven above let me.  And put some lipstick on, I know you hate it but biting your lips is not going to make them show in photographs today.”  Sue plunged into a cabinet and emerged moments later, victories with pin in hand.  She began deftly pressing the burned edge under, pinning a rose in place over her handiwork. 

            “Now one for your hair…Gracie!  What?  What happened to your neck?”  Gracie smoother her hair back in place, taking the lipstick from the counter and moving towards the door.  “It’s nothing, not a big thing.  Timmy just tried to get fresh with me the other night, that’s all.” 

            “That’s more than fresh Gracie.  Why didn’t you stop it?”

            “I tried, obviously.  It’s no big thing, I told you.  I just won’t see him alone again, that’s all.  It was my mistake to begin with.  Come on Sue, you know I don’t like boys like Timmy.  Let’s shake a leg darling, we’re going to be late for my coronation.” 

****

            All Anna wanted to do was sleep.  Sitting in British Literature, she suddenly begrudged all the naps that she had tried to avoid as a small child. Preschoolers and college kids she thought to herself, naptime should be required for preschoolers and college kids.  In an act of extreme cruelty on the part of the school’s administration, this classroom didn’t even contain a clock. 

Stealthily, Anna slipped her fingers inside her bag and felt for the smooth cover of her phone.  Finally encountering it between the pages of her dramatic literature textbook she waited until Professor Pless turned around before dropping it into her lap.  Nine forty five…the class would be over in five minutes and she would be free to sleep her day away until her next class at one.  Head on the desk, she watched the minutes tick by until the general restlessness of her classmates made it clear to the professor that class had ended and so had their attention spans.  Sweeping everything into her bag, she turned to leave but was met by the sharp glance of professor Sophia Pless. 

“Anna, do you have a class at ten?”

“No, but professor, I have something I really have to go do…” Anna thought about the few short minutes of brisk walking that stood between her and bed.

“If it can wait for a couple of moments would you stay and have a word with me?”  Inwardly heaving a huge sigh, Anna let her book bag swing to the floor again.   

“Sure, what’s up professor?”  But it wasn’t going to be that easy.  Pless insisted on moving next door to her office, and it was only after they were both settled into chairs and Anna had refused the offered tea that their chat began in earnest.

“Anna, I’m not sure if you know but you’re the seventy-fifth recipient of the Grace Turner Scholarship for Achievement in Literature and Journalism.”  Of all the things that could have come out of Professor Pless’ mouth, this was what Anna had least expected.  Shocked, it took her a few moments to register the fact that she should respond.

“Yeah, I guess- I mean yes I know I got that scholarship but I didn’t know it was exactly seventy five years since she died, I mean I didn’t know it was so old.” 

“Well, since this is an especially important year for that scholarship the descendants of Grace Turner are planning a visit to campus.  We were hoping that some past and present Turner scholars would be available to attend a dinner in their honor.  Would you be interested?  One Graces great-great-grand nephews is on our Board of Trustees I believe, and thus the administration is seeing this as an excellent opportunity to, uh, campaign.” 

Anna made herself count to three, thinking about the yearbook tucked into her bag that showed Grace laughing.

“Sure, that sounds like it would be nice.”

“Wonderful.  I’ll get you the details.  Oh, and Anna?  You don’t need to watch the time in my class, if it’s boring you I suppose I can always assign another paper…”

Anna smiled ruefully, swinging her bag onto her shoulders. 

“Yes professor.”

An open letter for S.

Oh honey.  There are some days-some days.  I want to tell you what he's been saying about you.  I want to tell you what he said that made me tell him that it was inappropriate for me to continue talking to him.  I want to tell you that before he booked that room for you on valentine's day he was telling me that he wasn't happy. 
I want to tell you because I've been there before, I've been that girl.  I wish I could save you from the hurt he is going to cause you someday.  Because I don't want him- I never have.  I am happily ensconced with the love of my life and I hope it stays that way until we are both old and grey and crotchety together.  I don't want him-but some other girl will-maybe already has.  I don't think I'm that special, I never have.  I refuse to believe that there are too men in the world who are as struck with me as my wonderful boyfriend and yours seem to be.  And mine is honest.  Which means yours has probably done this to every girl that has crossed his path- and honey he lives in a fraternity house.  Not all of them will have had the integrity or self respect to say no.
Sweetie, I'm saying that he cheated on you.  Not with me, but undoubtedly with someone.
I want to tell you all of these things, because from what I've heard you're a sweet girl.  But I cannot find a scenario that does not involve my own self destruction in this process.  Girls are notoriously vengeful towards the  bearers of bad news, and I just don't have the mental or emotional time right now.  I hope you find out soon-actually no.  I hope you never find out.  I hope you break up because of distance or growing apart or a stupid fight-because finding these things out hurts so much more then just having them end.  I promise you that. 

Good luck, honey.  I hope you two work out- but in the meantime don't stop looking for prince charming. 

Miss interpratation

Tonight it is him and me and the stars.  We are stretched on the hood of his jeep, falling into ecstasy with the ebb and flow of the wind and the throbbing crickets.
He looks into my eyes and tells me, love.
Right there with my cotton skirt pushed way up past my waist I am falling into reckless abandonment and I now and forever sever my pact with logic.

A breathless week later and my world is still spinning.  I lie in the half dark of his room, my accomplice having snuck away with the extra key a quarter of an hour ago.  It's my first time in lingerie and for some reason I can't get used to the feel of chiffon against my skin. 
Footsteps on the stair, awkwardly I contort myself into what I can only imagine is an alluring pose.  Voices, two of them.  Frozen the seconds take an eternity as his key fumbles in the lock and the door springs open.  She is beside him, full figured and coquettishly staring up at him; everything I'm not.  Staring, my voice catches in my throat.  Spluttering, I find vowels finally, and string them together. 
"She's beautiful."
Now, I'm a dove.

The man and his sister stand motionless, staring at the mussed bed and drapes blowing in the slight breeze.