Following My Toes (2 page)

Chapter 2

After Peter left I did not want to sleep. Actually, it wasn’t sleep I was afraid of; it was waking up. I hate that moment when you wake up the morning after something terrible has happened. At first you don’t remember; for about a second your life feels normal. And then it hits you. Oh yeah, my world is in shambles and I will never be the same. It’s like experiencing the awful event again for the first time. As it happened, however, waking up and remembering the night before was not as traumatic as I had feared it to be. On the other hand, sleep had been a nightmare. Literally.

I dreamt that I had been with Lacey, my best friend since 5th grade. We were at a high school dance, not the high school that we went to, but the high school where I taught. Except, in this dream, we were both students, conversing with the kids from my classes.

Lacey and I were standing together when the cutest senior boy, Matt Kendel, approached us. I was excited because I was sure he was going to ask me to dance. (Okay, two things: a: Matt was eighteen at the time of my dream, so it is not quite as gross as it seems, and

b: I am sure that in my dream Matt was meant to be symbolic of something, like an emotion or a fear. Really!)

So Matt came up to us, and instead of asking me to dance, he slunk up right in front of me, really slow. Then he took my face in both his hands, and he kissed me as if he were going to devour my mouth. But when he pulled away, he had turned into Peter. Peter took one look at me, said, “You are so selfish,” and walked away. Then I looked out on the dance floor, and I saw Lacey was now dancing/making out with Matt Kendel.

Suddenly I wasn’t a student anymore. I was a chaperone, and I knew their behavior was inappropriate, so I went to break it up. But when I tried, Lacey turned to me and said, “You don’t understand. You never have. Nobody is as blind as you, Faith.” Then everyone on the dance floor turned and started laughing at me.

So I woke up disoriented, but I had not forgotten what happened with Peter. I also had that “Eww, I dreamt I kissed a student” feeling, but in light of recent, more important events, I pushed that to the back of my mind. Instead I got up. My head was throbbing and my eyelids fought to stay open. It was like I was hung over—I must have been dehydrated from crying so much.

Once at school I gave my students busy work to do, and avoided conversation and eye contact with anyone who approached me. It wasn’t until lunch that I had time to call Lacey, and only then I remembered her role in my dream. But I didn’t mention it to her, I just told her something bad had happened, and we agreed to meet at her place that evening.

This felt natural. Growing up Lacey and I had shared every-thing—clothes, crushes, class notes, and all our secrets. She was more of a sister to me than my real sister Margaret was. But lately things between us hadn’t been quite normal.

It began with a telephone conversation we had one night. I called her because she hadn’t called me for several days. Fifteen minutes into the call she dropped the bomb.

“Oh, you should probably know, my dad was diagnosed with liver cancer. The doctors say he only has a few months to live.”

She described his condition as if she were describing an uninteresting book she had read—she sounded detached even as she admitted to being devastated. I didn’t know what to say, or how to crack her demeanor. And I never figured it out, not that I didn’t try. Four and a half months later I stood next to her at her father’s funeral on a cold March morning. The tears were streaming down my face, but Lacey’s eyes were dry.

“Faith!” she whispered fiercely, “Don’t be so dramatic. You didn’t even know him that well.”

That was the only thing she said to me all day, and she apologized later. I told her an apology wasn’t necessary, and explained I had been crying out of sadness for her. I didn’t tell her my tears had also been out of frustration. For the first time in our friendship I didn’t know how to help her. And that separated us.

She was in a slump for a while, but then started to find ways to make herself feel better. She redecorated her apartment, using this feng shui book a friend of hers from work had given her. She got into yoga and Buddhist philosophy, and started talking about fate and the paths we take. According to her, everything that happens, happens for a reason, and we have to trust ourselves and the universe.

It all would have been great if she weren’t also taking a lot of anti-depressants without going to therapy as well. In my humble opinion, she needed to talk to someone. But I knew she would lose her temper if I told her that, and I was too much of a wimp to risk it.

Anyway, the afternoon after Peter had broken up with me, I admit I was focused not on her, but on myself. Yet, once I remembered that dream, I also couldn’t stop thinking about her role in it. What did she have to do with the whole thing, why was she even there? (I might mention at this point, I sometimes feel my psychic powers through my dreams.)

When I got over to Lacey’s, she had just finished cooking dinner, some rice with chicken and vegetables.

“Would you like some?” she asked. I looked at what she had made, and it didn’t look like there was enough for two.

“Is there enough? I don’t want to steal your food.”

“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “I’m not actually all that hungry.”

“Then why did you make it?” I asked.

“I don’t know, I thought I was hungrier than I am. These anti-depressants do weird things to my appetite.”

I looked over at her, and noticed how thin she had become. Lacey always had a tendency to be small and round, but in an attractive, voluptuous way. I was always jealous of her looks, especially in high school, where I remained flat-chested through the 10th grade. I was sort of scrawny, with red hair and skin that freckles rather than tans. Although I’ve now grown into my looks, memories of the nickname “Pippi Longstocking” still haunt me. Meanwhile, Lacey’s lovely ol-ive skin and dark hair weren’t even what most people noticed about her. She had been the first girl in our sixth grade class to need a bra. However, after high school she became jealous of my ability to stay thin without a huge amount of effort. My figure was by no means boyish, but at 5’6” I was a size 8, and she didn’t think that I worked hard enough for it.

But then, Lacey always had a weird relationship with food. We would be out, or at her place, and she would start talking about how hungry she was. So we would go get something to eat. Almost inevitably, she would take a few bites, and claim to be full, while I’d feel like a pig for wanting to finish my meal. But that night at her place it was a non-issue. There is no better diet plan than a breakup; my heartache had caused my appetite to disappear. The chicken and rice remained on the stove, congealing at room temperature, looking more plastic and less appetizing as the evening progressed.

I sat down in her living room, which I have to admit, immediately invited me in. She had decorated the room in varying shades of blue, and anywhere you sat you could easily see the front door. There were plants everywhere, and shelves with books on subjects like the enneagram and new-age feminism, along with lots of framed photographs of her college friends and family vacations. There were two photos with me: one of the two us posing before a high school Christmas formal, and the other taken by Peter about a year ago. It had been a perfect lazy Sunday in July; our arms were around each other as we smiled into the camera, while the lake shimmered in the distance. None of the pictures were of her dad though; she put those pictures away.

Lacey poured us some wine and handed me a glass. I noticed she poured a fairly large glass for herself, and I stopped thinking about my own tragedy for a second. Aren’t you supposed to stay away from alcohol when you’re on medication?

“So tell me what happened.” Lacey said.

I took a sip of my wine. I wanted to be able to tell this story with-out crying, if at all possible. “It’s Peter. Last night. He said we...want different things...he said that...he met...someone else.” Too late—The tears were already streaming down my face. Lacey put down her wine, and came and sat next to me on the couch. She took my wine from me, and placed it on her coffee table. Then she hugged me close, for a really long time, while I cried on her shoulder. But when we pulled away I was reminded again of my dream, in that her face was not the face I was expecting to see. I mean, obviously it was her, Lacey, but at the same time it wasn’t. For a moment it was like we were in that movie, “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” I was looking at someone who appeared to be Lacey, but it was as if her soul had been replaced by a pod. Or whatever.

“ Oh Faith. I am so sorry. Did you see it coming at all?” Lacey handed me her Kleenex box, a dark blue floral design, perfectly matched to her living room.

I took a tissue and blew my nose. “Not really. I mean, yesterday my skin hurt all day, so I knew something bad was coming.” I caught Lacey rolling her eyes at that comment, but I pretended I didn’t notice, and went on. “And I suppose I should have known, especially when he didn’t come over on Friday or Saturday night. But he said he wanted to write, and he’s said that before, and meant it. And it’s not like things had been bad between us. They had actually been pretty good. Like, last week we went to this tiny little Mexican restaurant, and he ordered us a pitcher of margaritas, which he even paid for. And we sat there and drank and ate and talked for hours.

“It was like when we first started going out. He told me what he believes is the meaning of life, and I felt like he was telling me some-thing important, something that he wouldn’t tell just anyone. And then after that we went back to my place, and had truly good sex. I mean, truly good. And more than once, which is altogether impressive, considering how much he had to drink.” Lacey’s face turned white and she clenched her fist. I perceived this as a sign of sympathy.