Principles of Love (20 page)

“What you think is going to happen won’t and what does actually occur will be better and worse than you could have predicted.”

“Worse?”

“Sometimes. Sometimes life spins out of control and sucks.” I wait to see if she explains this, but she doesn’t. “And other times — most of the time — it’s pretty great. Pretty great mixed with the mundane.”

We set the chairs upended on the tables and Mable mops. “How’s Miles?” I ask. “How come he wasn’t here tonight?”

“Costa Rica,” she explains. “He comes back this week. And then — let the planning begin.”

Mable has yet to inform me of the date or details of the future wedding ceremony — part of me wonders if it will actually happen. Not to be a bitch or downplay their love, but I could see them just being eternally engaged; two of those children of the seventies who stay together and breed and bond without a license. Who knows.

I end the evening by singing her my latest jingle — an ode to the Beach Boys and surf scene with frothy lyrics about soapsuds and summer breezes. Outside, it’s still below zero.

Sunday morning is noticeably devoid of pancakes of any size or shape. Dad must have left early — since he wasn’t up to see me in last night when Mable dropped me off, and isn’t home now. I take a cup of coffee and a toasted Eggo waffle with nothing on it upstairs and nibble my way around the crispy edges. This is how I’d eat everything, given the chance (and if manners and social graces were not a part of my world at all). In the comfort of my room or with Mable or a friend, I’ll eat the sides of a Kit-Kat bar then gnaw my way through the wafer layers. Or I’ll eat the middle of a brownie and save the edges for last (note to self: must find life mate who prefers middles, since I like all things crispy and crunchy).

I log on and go right to JC Hall’s blog. This time, the entry looks different. Where it usually opens with a movie quote, there’s a blank banner. No date, no time. No paragraphs of thoughts. Just these words:

Meet me there.

Am I a dumb shit for thinking these are instructions for me to follow? Does he know about my blog-snooping? Or just a hunch? I take my chances and, without a shower or thought to attire, I lace up and run to the blue high jump mat. And, wait for it the bells to chime — nope — I find myself alone. But before I can wallow — he’s there.

Robinson, just like in the movie theatre of my mind, strides purposefully over to me and lifts my face up so it’s angled perfectly for kissing. Which is what we do. Finally. And it lives up to all the coming attractions. You know those small moments in your life when things seem to come perfectly together? This is one of those. I know I will look back on this kiss and smile — it’s the kind of kiss Mable talks about two decades later. The kiss from the boy you never thought you’d get. The kiss I hoped — but never counted on — having just for myself.

Still in my kiss-haze (read: me, dreamy, floating around like a moth), I get on with my Sunday night. After the seemingly endless communal post-chapel dinner, I go to the library to study. Study = make out with Robinson in between the Women’s Studies and Russian history stacks. I feel sure the dictators and female heroines are watching from their literary vantage points and cheering me on. At least I’d like to think so.

We’ve actually brought books so we can do our best mock-studying and while I flip through Fitzgerald’s
This Side of Paradise
, Robinson highlights nearly every line of his physics text.

“Let me explain gravity to you,” he says.

“Oh, Professor, please do,” I say, leaning in. My feet are on the rungs of his chair.

“Things fall,” he says and cracks himself up, pulling me into his mouth while laughing. We kiss and read and try to compose ourselves when anyone walks by. As I read about the guy in my book (and by read I mean mainly repeat the same sentence over and over again until it’s devoid of meaning), my heart is flipping around in my chest cavity. I am — we are — one of those library couples. The kind you see when you’ve come to look up some boring something or other and stumble upon holding hands. In the movie version of right now, the camera would be on a crane, fixed and held two stories up against the library window, focusing in on us — revealing how we look from the outside.

“And how does Fitzgerald explore the quest for self-identity in
Paradise
?” Mr. Chaucer asks. A week shy of spring break and everyone’s distracted. Thoughts of leisure days and sun-filled afternoons clouds the intellect. Not that I’m heading anywhere particularly warm nor exotic. For now, I’m in Robinsonland (like Disneyland but with very different rides). I’ve been the subject of Colorado’s gossip wheel and Cordelia’s half-nice, half-vicious questioning (Do you love him? Did you guys really do it in the library bathroom? Yeah. I want to loose my virginity with the smell of industrial cleaner under fluorescent lighting). I’ve been the subject of fawning (Robinson has left notes in my mailbox — but not cheesy ones. He’ll print out whole scenes from movies and recast us in the roles. He scanned my face and his into movie posters from
Casablanca
and
The Breakfast Club
(I was the prom queen — unlikely and he was the rebel — also unlikely, but cute).

“It’s the duality of his position,” Harriet Walters is saying when I tune back in. “Fitzgerald is toying with the reader — a typical male sensibility of politicizing the personal.”

Jacob buts in. “I disagree. I think it’s pretty simple. He’s trying to find out who he is because without doing that, happiness is impossible. Fitzgerald dangles the possibility of fulfillment and joy, but doesn’t let the characters have it unless they’ve put in their work.”

He looks at me when he says this and the combination of his navy blue stare and his words gives me chills.

“Maybe Fitzgerald… imagines the perfect-case scenario, but by doing this, blocks the reality of his everyday life,” I say, talking about a long-dead writer and myself at the same time.

“And?” Chaucer prods.

“And by doing this, he numbs any potential pain. But I think he also negates the possibility of finding something extraordinary.”

I blow off lunch and go to the computer lab — where I’ve only poked my head in before. Sitting with a view only of people’s feet (the room is in the basement), I start to write. Four pages come out before I even check the time. I may be late for math (AGAIN — crap!) but I’m finally on my way to writing my personal essay for the Hadley Hall awards.

Shock of the world — when I get to math, even though the period’s ten minutes underway, Thompson is nowhere to be found. We sit on the tables and hang out, wondering where she could be.

“Pulling the pole out of her ass?” someone suggests.

“Seriously,” Penelope Parker says, “That woman needs laxatives just to make room to breathe.” And, from what Cordelia says, that Penelope would know — having a slight tendency to overpop those pills.

Thompson never shows and — as per the handbook — after a twenty minute grace period, we are free to leave. This rule is some remnant from when a horse and carriage were responsible for providing teachers with the cross-campus commute, but we take advantage of it and head out before Thompson can return.

I walk home, done for the day, and wander around the house like it’s someone else’s. And maybe it still feels that way. Not all of the furniture is ours — in fact, a lot of it lives here permanently — and I realize, sitting in the formal chintz armchair, that all of this stuff will outlast us. I will go to college or whatever and Dad will stay here for however long and then we’ll be shipped out like the people before us and this same flowery chair will be the host to someone else’s ass.

All this seems very depressing — ah notes from Brick — and not even the note in my pocket from Robinson makes me feel better. I look for the remote control (the CCC come through once a week to dust, mop, and rearrange the semi-order Dad and I try to have around the house). It’s not in the coffee table drawers, nor is it perched atop the television. Unused side table? Yes, along with an old-fashioned key, one of those that looks as though it’s supposed to reveal a treasure map.

And it sort of does. Either boredom or curiosity pushes me to unlock the sideboard door. In back of some huge silver serving pieces for dinners my father has yet to host, I find a small pile of old photos and slips of paper. White-edged and slightly water-stained, the first photo is my dad at maybe twenty years of age. Was he at college then? His shirt is like something from the vintage store Mable took me to — open-necked, gauzy yellow cotton. He’s looking down in the photo as if something or someone is nearby and catching his gaze. Another picture contains a youthful Mable with hair down her back, tawny ringlets and coils all looped on each other — her arm is around a guy I don’t recognize with a full mustache and beard (may that look never completely return). Instinctively, I know what I’m looking for. Not a what. A who.

Is there are photo somewhere of a women with my shaped lips? The points at the top? Does she have red hair that spills from its bun? Or a pixie haircut like Mia Farrow in that scary baby movie? I’m paging through this pile like an FBI agent — trying to make sense of what I consider to be clues to my past. Where is the lawn these people are sprawled out on? Did Mable introduce my parents? I hardly ever think of
them
as my
parents.
And the yellow legal pad pages with obsolete phone numbers (they are obsolete, right? Like if I try them, would a voice on the other end of the line be my mother’s?). What do they mean? Why were they saved? I check my watch. Dad will be home any second. And though I hate to put the stuff away, I do. If he rifled through my drawers and journal I’d be pissed as hell, and maybe this is the equivalent for him. But it directly impacts me.

During our baked cod with breadcrumbs, broccoli and sweet potato, I broach the subject with my dad.

“Do you ever miss being young?” I ask. He doesn’t mind my hypothetical questions or past-searching, as long as I veer away from the touchy fringe of my mother and her whereabouts or history.

“Sometimes I do,” he says. “I’m more tired now, that’s for sure. But I like being where I am.”

I eat a mouthful of fish and think back to our conversation at the seafood restaurant the night before school started. “And do you really believe that everyone changes — forever? Like you never get to a point where you just are?”

“Best case is that you always evolve. Stagnancy is death.” Okay. Serious. Dad, meet Brick. Brick, Dad.

“It just sounds exhausting,” I say. In fact, I’m kind of exhausted just from all the mini-dramas and minutia of my daily existence.” Dad laughs. A big, happy laugh. He likes when I just let it all out and complain or talk about my teenage life, I guess.

“What brought all this on?” he asks and puts a broccoli spear into his mouth. “Remember you used to call it
little trees
?”

I nod. I used to imagine little broccoli forests populated by those marshmallow yellow bunnies — Easter Peeps. “Those pictures,” I look at dad. He chews and swallows and doesn’t eat more. “The ones in the cabinet — when are they from? Who’s that guy with Mable?” Dad says nothing. “Don’t you get it? I need to know this stuff — everyone has a family history, right? And I’m like supposed to be this educated confident person — isn’t that who you want me to be?”

“I want you to be who you are, Love. Not what I want.”

“Well, in order to do that — can’t you just give me something? Is she alive? Did she, like, die some tragic death or become a man or what?”

Dad stands up and clears his plate. With the water running, he says, “Are we going here again?”

“Yes,” I say and bring my plate to the counter. Water splashes from the fish pan onto my arm and face where the droplets feel suspiciously like tears. “We’re always going to end up back here.”

“Like it or not, Love,” Dad says and faces me, “this is your family history.” He points to himself and to me. “We’re it.”

So much for further lyrical inspiration and impetus for finishing my Hadley Hall essay. I spend the rest of the night on line, IM-ing with Robinson and Google-searching for cool things to do this summer. With the knowledge that I’m likely to be reaching into tubs of mint chocolate-chip and cookie dough to serve up smalls and double cones from the JP Licks in town, I’m trying to figure out a way to do something with music. Not band camp or anything, but teaching singing to kids or finding a kick-ass internship at
Rolling Stone
(never mind that this is never going to happen) or working more open mike nights at Slave to the Grind. I take out my journal and make lists of jobs and activities that sound good, provide at least some income, and get me out of the house.

Robinson slides his hands up my back and we kiss to the sounds of Roxy Music’s “Oh Yeah.” I love this song, even though it’s always struck me as sad rather than sexy. In this context, a dog food ad would make me excited. It’s Robinson’s first time in my room and he’s impressed by the books and breadth of my CDs, not to mention my double mattress. This last item, he eyes more than once.

“Get your mind out of the gutter,” I say. He kisses me again. “All right — my dad’s coming back in an hour — and I’m not taking any chances.”

I walk him out and we sit on the porch. Muddy clumps of earth and tire-treaded slush line the driveway. Farch (Farch = combo of February and March, the netherworld of seasons).

“Have fun in the sun,” I say, intentionally rhyming.

“I’ll try,” he says. “But I’ll miss you.”

Spring break starts tomorrow and by this time, Robinson will have landed in St. Bart’s and be well on his way to sipping rum-enhanced drinks, slathering on the SPF of his choice, and maybe ogling the bikini-clad hotties.

“Picture me in a bikini,” I say even though I’m more of a boy-cut short and bikini top kind of swimmer.

“I always do,” he says and we kiss goodbye.

The next morning as the campus clears out, I swing by the student center to empty my mailbox of the various slips of paper I’ve let accumulate. I usually take Robinson’s notes out and shove the other crap back in. Today, I take the lot of it out and stand over the wide mouth of the trash can, chucking out old notices for play tryouts and movie nights on campus. Then I come to a small packet, inside of which is an unlabeled CD. A Maxell, electric blue, eighty minutes. Probably mine or someone’s misplaced papers. I take the disk home and am psyched to find that it’s a mix — Robinson’s proof of missing me already — with some songs I know, some that I don’t. Already, just the first time through, I know I’m going to love this CD.