Hurricane Days (8 page)

To avoid accidentally flashing a stranger myself, I was sure to make lots of throat-clearing noises. That way if anyone who came in and wondered, in spite of the already running water and mushroom cloud of steam billowing from its top, if the shower was occupied, they would know beyond a reasonable doubt that it was. It was the fastest, most stressful, heart-pounding shower ever taken in the history of showers.

I wrapped myself in my fluffy, but slightly damp towel, imagined getting toe fungus and hurried out of the shower room. Struggling to hold up my towel, I flew down the hall, my eyes fixed on the thin industrial carpet beneath my feet. I felt like some kind of streaker. It was like the dream you have that you’re naked in public. Only I
was
naked, with only a towel between me and the leering public. When I got back to the room, Adrienne left to take her turn in the shower.

As I hurried to get dressed before she came back and walked in on me, I thought about my father’s description of when he was in the infantry, where there had been rows of commodes with no walls or doors and guys were just passing the toilet paper roll to each other, like passing the salt at a table. Dad liked to talk about things that made my mom uncomfortable, especially after a few drinks, just to see the expression on her face. That had been one of his favorite stories.

While Dad did his best to act like he had been okay with those kinds of facilities, I knew that I definitely was not. This type of living arrangement wasn’t suitable for me. This was the way people lived in Third World countries. Why did they even bother giving us a bathroom at all? I wondered angrily. Why not just have a trough behind the building where everyone could pee? It was all so gross and undignified. I’d come from a house with six bathrooms, not a straw hut in the jungle. If I was a princess, as Adrienne called me, then so be it. I wasn’t supposed to be squatting in public places or committing acts of indecency every time I took a shower. This was all wrong.

Chapter Eleven

That night, Robin knocked on Kendrick’s bedroom door.

“Come in.” Robin could hear the apprehension in her daughter’s voice. She was probably bracing for a conversation about body changes or menstruation.

“Hon,” Robin began. “There’s going to be more talk over the next few days.”

“Please,” Kendrick said. “I don’t care what they say. I know you don’t like puss–” She stopped herself before her mother’s eyes caught fire. “I know it’s not true,” she said softly.

“You shouldn’t be talking like that.”

“It’s how everyone talks at school.”

“I don’t care how they talk at school! You need to show that you have class, that you’re a cut above.”

“Yeah,” Kendrick grumbled. “Might as well just put a big target on my head.”

Robin’s mouth turned down in moderate disapproval, but she nodded, understanding what her daughter meant. “I’m sorry.”

Unbeknownst to Kendrick, that frown was also the expression Robin had given her doctor when she learned she was pregnant. While having a child was part of her plans, the timing was terrible. She had been working on tougher legislation for domestic violence and sexual assaults. A girl she’d known in high school had been attacked walking home from school one day. Hardly anyone wanted to talk much about it. And when her assailant was finally caught, his jail sentence was so light that to Robin it seemed he might as well have gotten a mere slap on the wrist.

Growing up in a male-dominated household, she hadn’t heard much about issues that affected women. It was understood that she couldn’t go downtown at night by herself, while Kenneth could. This had struck her as spectacularly unfair. Instead of joining in her frustration, though, her father and brother seemed to shrug it off. Even her mother seemed to think that it was just the way the world was.

But Robin had a chance to do something about it now. She had worked so hard gaining support for these bills; she wanted to see them through. She didn’t want to appear at state senate meetings with an expanding belly, because she knew that what her male peers said and what they thought were two different things. She could see it in their eyes when they nodded politely at her in the halls of the state capitol. They saw her not as a woman who cared about her career, but as someone only two steps away from being covered in strained peas and baby puke.

“You can say times have changed all you want,” Robin had told Tom. “But you still have to play with the boys if you want a career. You can’t be seen as someone who’s going to quit her job the first time there’s a skinned knee and stay at home to take care of offspring.” And she had really used the word “offspring.” It was the only way she had been able to cope with what was happening to her body and her head.

She managed somehow to not only deliver a healthy seven-pound baby girl but also get her bills passed, even if they had to be slightly diluted to please everyone. To demonstrate her down-home family values, she brought the baby along for the photo op when she signed them.

She then had taken Kendrick home and handed her over to the nanny who basically raised her during her baby and toddler years. Robin couldn’t wait to get back to the office to work on issues she cared most about. “You can be a father and a lawyer,” she’d said to Tom, “and nobody expects you to choose one or the other. And if you chose being a lawyer, no one would bat an eye or call you a bad father.”

Standing now in her teenager’s bedroom, its walls covered with posters of brooding musicians she’d never heard of and her desk strewn with worn-out Shakespeare plays, Robin was proud of the young woman Kendrick was becoming. She wished she knew her better and were closer to her. She had struggled with that for most of Kendrick’s childhood. Every now and then regret over the years she’d lost slipped in, but Robin had learned to put it out of her mind, like she did with anything she didn’t want to think about too much, anything that interfered with her ambition. She knew she’d made mistakes, but she’d never apologize for having goals. Nor would she ever join one of the support groups that encouraged career women to feel guilty, or to cope with their guilt. She saw flyers for them all around town—“How to Have It All,” “What’s Wrong with Having It All?” and “Split in Two and Suffering.” She despised the idea that women should feel ashamed for pursuing their dreams with as much drive as men did.

“Whatever you may hear,” Robin said carefully, “it isn’t true.”

“How many times are you gonna say that?” Kendrick asked with a smile.

Robin looked warmly at her daughter. She hoped she would grow up to be like her, at least in all of the ways she liked. She prayed that unlike herself, Kendrick would be honest about who she was, no matter what. Robin started to leave. “Don’t forget to read your
Bible
after your studies.”

Kendrick saluted her.

“Don’t be disrespectful, or that video game will stay in the store.”

Kendrick smirked. “Nah, you’ll get busy, then get it for me anyway to buy back my love.”

“Come here!” Robin ran to her and mussed her hair until they were both laughing. When they calmed down, Robin sighed. “Oh, you precocious thing! I love you, Ken.”

“I know.”

Robin closed the door and paused in the hall for a long moment. What would her daughter think of her if she knew the truth?

Chapter Twelve

Dr. Paul Gentry paced the auditorium stage, scratching his black beard, not really looking at us as we feverishly took notes. He seemed to be a pillar of composure, but he held his chalk like a cigarette, which made me wonder about his personal life. I couldn’t imagine him as a smoker. He was so neat and clean. His scrawny neck poked through a white shirt that was impeccably starched, and his gray suit was so perfectly tidy it could have still been on a hanger in a store. “Film Appreciation,” the words he’d scribbled on the board two weeks ago on the first day of class, remained on the blackboard, reminding us what he was trying to teach us.

“Film is a conscious art,” he said. “Meaning that every character, every scene, right down to the last detail, is put there to move the story forward. Everything is there for a reason.”

I smiled to myself at the truth of that statement. The predicament in which I found myself wasn’t an accident at all. Somewhere deep, deep down in the craters of my mind I’d known that this time was going to come, that one day I’d no longer be able to block out the memories of those schoolgirl crushes, no longer be able to convince myself that they were part of a strange phase that the
Your Body is Changing
book probably said was perfectly normal, not permanent and nothing to worry about. Then again, knowing Mom’s discomfort about all things sexual, I never got to read
Your Body is Changing.

I bet my guardian angel was knocking back martinis with her angel buddies at this very minute and having a good laugh about the ignorance and confusion that had kept me tossing and turning for days now.

Dr. Gentry passed out a list of approved films we could check out from the film library in the Performing Arts building. The one that immediately caught my eye was
Desert Hearts
, about a woman who goes to Reno to get a divorce in the 1950s and falls for a female casino worker. I’d seen a write-up about it in
Seventeen
magazine—a short piece about the shocking content of this new movie about lesbians. Somewhere in my mind, I’d filed it away under “Things to See Later When I Wasn’t Living Under the Same Roof as Dad.” Maybe when Adrienne went home some weekend I could check it out and rent the VCR in the lobby…

Later that afternoon on the way back from class, I spotted Adrienne heading up the hill to our dorm. There were so many hills in Tallahassee; it was the San Francisco of Florida.

“Hey, stranger!” I called to her in a playful tone.

Adrienne whipped around and smiled as she recognized me. Her long, highlighted caramel hair and twinkling dark eyes caught the sun as she stood there. She looked like a model in a magazine. Her deep red, silk shirt—the top buttons opened just enough to reveal her tan skin and long neck—clung to her chest. It was an image I knew I would always remember, like a favorite photograph you kept in your pocket even when it got tattered and creased.

I rushed to catch up to her, and Adrienne said, “You’re just in time. I was gonna order a pizza.”

“Oh, sure, make me fat.” I bumped her arm, teasing her. Although we’d begun like two anxious cheetahs sizing each other up in a cage, we’d quickly developed a familiarity that made us seem as if we’d been friends a long time. There was also an unmistakable spark between us, which made me nervous as well as excited. I was feeling giddy, my head floating somewhere up in the ozone as we walked together, feeling the warm, late afternoon breeze. The campus was so welcoming with rows of pink and orange hibiscus lining the walkways, everything flowery and friendly, matching my mood.

My excitement only grew with the revelation of every new detail, like seeing Adrienne in different light or shadows, revealing each new expression as a dramatic close-up, as in a movie. Even the thrill of how a different color shirt could contrast with her face—it was another thing to look forward to each day.

Inside the dormitory, Adrienne stopped at the sight of a chubby girl with cropped hair, walking in the opposite direction down the hall. “Oh God,” she whispered, gripping my arm. “That’s
her
.”

“Who?”

“The girl who…” she said, hesitating before pushing the elevator button. She spoke in hushed tones and waited until we were the only ones in the elevator. “She’s a queer. She cornered this other girl in the bathroom and tried to kiss her. She’s a total freak.”

“How do you know she did that?”

“The other girl told everyone. She was pretty freaked out.” Adrienne watched the floor numbers light slowly as the elevator rose. “I don’t blame her.”

My stomach sank to my feet, and I wasn’t sure why. After all, I had nothing in common with that girl in the hallway. A heavy sensation spread over my body, as if Adrienne’s contempt had been injected into my heart. Did a minute pass? Maybe two minutes? When we got to the seventh floor, I followed her slowly down the hall and into the room.

Adrienne slung her keys on her desk, at least I thought so. I heard the sound of them clanking against wood. When I looked up, she had the phone pressed to her ear.

“You want pepperoni?” she asked.

“That’s fine.” I unzipped my backpack and distractedly pulled out books. I wasn’t very hungry.

Chapter Thirteen

In the wee hours of the morning, when the whole house was quiet and peaceful…this was Robin’s favorite time. She could be alone with her thoughts, away from cameras and her increasingly annoying staff.

She climbed out of bed, careful to avoid a well-known creak in the floor. She couldn’t wake Tom anyway. His breathing rumbled on, low and steady, like an idling motorcycle. She envied his ability to sleep.

Making it safely out of the bedroom, she slipped down to the library in her bathrobe and slippers, clicked on the light and turned on the computer at her favorite cherrywood desk. In the shadows were bookshelves stacked with Southern authors, a popular feature of the mansion library. Carson McCullers was her favorite of these authors, though she couldn’t remember the last time she’d relaxed with a good book.

Robin had looked at the clock before she came down but couldn’t remember now if it was three o’clock or four. It didn’t matter; she knew she’d never be able to fall back to sleep. The curiosity was too much. She had to know. She had to see. Internet search history be damned. Planning to delete the evidence of her search afterward, she navigated to YouTube, where she typed “Eye of the Storm.”

Adrienne’s band appeared on the screen, performing to a large crowd at Boston’s House of Blues. The video had been recorded by someone in the audience. The quality wasn’t half bad, except for the occasional jerk down to the floor then back up to the stage. Adrienne was wearing a black leather body suit with a jacket that she eventually took off. Her voice was full and deep, even soulful. She owned the stage and the crowd, just as she had at their college parties, when everyone had gathered around her like magnets drawn to steel. Sometimes Robin would watch in awe, as she did now, captured by the idea of Adrienne, an otherworldly songstress singing a haunting rock ballad.