Love & Lies: Marisol's Story (26 page)

“Hello?” said a tentative voice.

“Lee, is that you?” I imagined her standing in a hallway, one foot balanced on the ankle of the other, biting her lower lip.

“Is this . . .?” A long pause followed, during which she couldn’t seem to say my name.

“It’s Marisol.”

“I know. We have caller ID.”

“Really? Even in Indiana, huh?” My attempt at humor elicited only a nervous noise from her. “So, how are you? Are things going okay with your parents?”

I heard her take a deep breath. “Not too bad. I went online and got some information for them from the PFLAG site, and it helped us start talking. I showed it to my friend Allison, too. She’s been over a few times; things are better.”

“That’s great, Lee. My mother would be so proud.”

“Yeah. So why are you calling?” Lee’s voice sounded tense, and I wished I could be there next to her, to reassure her I didn’t want to hurt her anymore.

“I wanted to talk to the real Lee O’Brien. The Indiana Lee.”

“Well, you’re talking to her. Did you have something to say?”

No more beating around the bush. “Lee, I’m sorry. I’ve been acting like a jerk. I don’t have a good excuse for it—I just let Olivia take over my brain, I guess. But that’s all over now, and if you come back—”

“You aren’t with Olivia anymore?” Lee said, interrupting.

“No, not at all. It’s a long story. I’ll tell you later if you want to hear it, but in the meantime, I think you should come back here. That’s why I called, Lee. Please come back.”

“Marisol, I can’t—”

“Yes, you can! Your sister wants you to come back too. And I need to talk to you. I need to see you. I . . . I miss you!” Once I’d said it out loud, I wanted to say it again and again.
I miss you! I miss you! I miss you!

“You do?” Lee’s voice was almost a whisper.

“Yes!”

She was silent for what seemed like forever.

“Lee? Are you still there?”

Finally, she said, “Marisol, how am I supposed to know what to believe? A week ago you were crazy in love with Olivia; I witnessed it, remember? And now you want me to come back and help you get over her? I don’t see what’s in it for me.”

“That’s not why I want you to come back. I want you to come back . . . so we can see what happens next.”

“I think I’ll just see what happens next in Indiana,” she said.

“Please, Lee! The thing with Olivia—she stunned me,
that’s all. Like one of those spiders that poisons its mate so it can devour it afterward. I didn’t even know her—if I was in love, it was with some fantasy in my head.”

She gave a little ironic laugh. “Well, you stunned me, too, Marisol. And I’m in no hurry to be devoured again.”

“I wouldn’t!”

“Do you remember one time I was complaining and you were impatient about it? Instead of whining about life, you thought I should get to work and change the situation.
Fix it
, you said. Well, that’s what I’m trying to do. But I have to fix it in Indiana first.”

If there was one thing Lee was good at, it was telling the truth.

“So, that’s it? You aren’t coming back?”

“Not right now I’m not. Who knows? Maybe I’ll apply to Harvard for next year, or Boston University, or Emerson, like Birdie.”

“But I’ll be at Stanford by then!”

“Yeah, I guess you will.”

There was a long silence after that. I couldn’t convince her, and I couldn’t believe it. I guess I really did think I’d been born lucky, that I’d always have a second chance to get what I wanted. But now the thing I wanted most was out of reach.

We each said a final few words, and I clicked the phone off. I was all cried out, but the pain in my chest hurt all the more for being cold and dry. How did people open themselves up to love time after time when it so often ended like this? I understood now why people went to bed when they’d lost love. Because you felt sick, physically sick. What else
could you do but sleep until the illness left you alone? I wasn’t even sure which emotions I wanted to go away: my insane infatuation with Olivia, or my newly recognized feelings for Lee. They were all mixed up together in a toxic soup that was making my whole body hurt. Maybe Lee was right to stay away from me until I’d gotten them sorted out.

And then I thought: What would Christina do in this situation, if it turned out that Natalie was not who she seemed to be? Or, what if Christina met
another
woman, someone who was not as bold as Natalie, someone she knew she could trust? A woman named Lily, or Lila, or Lydia! I jumped off the bed and opened my computer.

Every Thursday afternoon around four o’clock Christina noticed the same woman walk into the coffee shop across the street from Dr. Hester’s office.
Why only Thursday afternoons?
Christina wondered. And why always that coffee shop, which was an old-fashioned one that didn’t even make lattes or cappuccinos? And why did she always dress the same, in a white shirt and black pants?
Maybe,
she thought,
this is a silly thing to notice and to wonder about.
Still, she noticed and wondered.

The day was not over yet. Or the week. Or the semester. Or the year. Things could change. And I had work to do.

Chapter 3
“The profession of book-writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business.”

—John Steinbeck

Chapter 3
“Literature is the question minus the answer.”

—Roland Barthes

Chapter 3
“The suspense of a novel is not only in the reader, but in the novelist, who is intensely curious about what will happen to the hero.”

—Mary McCarthy

Chapter 8
“One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment.”

—Hart Crane

Chapter 8
“The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible.”

—Vladimir Nabokov

Chapter 8
“It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The writer shakes up the familiar scene, and, as if by magic, we see a new meaning in it.”

—Anais Nin

Chapter 9
“Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”

—E. L. Doctorow

Chapter 14
“You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.”

—Jack London

Chapter 14
“A writer lives in awe of words for they can be cruel or kind, and they can change their meanings right in front of you. They pick up flavors and odors like butter in a refrigerator.”

—John Steinbeck

Chapter 15
“The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say.”

—Anais Nin

Chapter 15
“It is impossible to discourage the real writers—they don’t give a damn what you say, they’re going to write.”

—Sinclair Lewis

Chapter 21
“Anxiety is the handmaiden of creativity.”

—T. S. Eliot

Chapter 21
“If the doctor told me I had six minutes to live, I’d type a little faster.”

—Isaac Asimov

Chapter 21
“When I stop [working], the rest of the day is posthumous. I’m only really alive when I’m writing.”

—Tennessee Williams

Chapter 22
“The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.”

—Mark Twain

Chapter 22
“The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”

—Sylvia Plath