The Muse (7 page)

Two days later, we met up again at school and she paraded through the hallway with me like nothing had ever happened. She even slung one of her toned arms around my shoulder and laughed with me about how Rhonda Williams wobbled down the hall like a penguin with two left feet. I laughed like this was the funniest thing in the world, ignoring that inner beating in my brain that told me to shut the hell up.

I spent the rest of the school year laughing with her and her friends at Rhonda and other kids who weren’t perfect. I wanted to fit in. I wanted Barbara to like me as much as I liked her. My ticket on her train was laughter. My gang of friends laughed, so I laughed and watched in horror as the kids we laughed at turned red and blotchy or worse cried because of us. If I didn’t join in and laugh at nerds with glasses too big for their faces and pants too short to hide their ankles, or kids who were chubby and snorted when they laughed, or who were unfortunate enough to have a head full of frizzy hair or faces brimming with zits, then I feared Barbara would turn and look at me with that same look of disgust she did that day in the driveway.

She was my world, and I needed to prove my place, despite wanting to throw up every time my words or actions caused someone to cry.

I was one laugh away from being bullied myself. I didn’t have the gift of money like the rest of these girls did. I slid into this circle through the sheer luck that Barbara and I were born to mothers sharing a hospital room who later became PTA friends. If it weren’t for our mothers forcing us to play together on long, hot summer days at Spring Lake and our fathers eventually working together at the news station, I would be that girl walking halfway around the other side of the school to avoid Barbara and all of her pretty friends. Because my mother was fond of playing Rummy and drinking afternoon martinis, I escaped the cruel side of life. My best friend, Barbara, protected me from it. For a little while anyway.

Barbara and I, along with ten or so other girls, walked around the school with our heads held higher than the rest. Well, I didn’t carry mine as high, just enough to show I half-belonged. I walked with trepidation next to the girls with clout, with confidence, with power.

I used to promise myself when I’d laugh along with them at some poor unfortunate classmate, that one day I’d make up for the hurt I caused by doing good deeds for strangers. I called it my redemption process. That smoothed over the cruel callouses of guilt I suffered from doling out a lingering snicker that got all the other girls going even louder. I had a knack for getting the engines hot on the cruelty, and the rest of the girls would just sneak right in and take over the attack. So, after I honed in on some unsuspecting kid with stringy hair or a set of scrawny legs, and buttered up the path to his attack with some good old-fashioned insults, I’d slide backwards and plan more of my redemption process over again.

My redemption process sucked, but massaged the guilt at the time. I planned out this whole future for myself where I’d mow strangers’ front lawns, help the elderly with their groceries, volunteer to walk neighborhood dogs while their masters worked long hours, and definitely serve the less fortunate by spooning soup into their empty bowls at shelters. Yeah, I planned on being a martyr when I grew up and stopped bullying kids who didn’t come from upper middle class homes and who didn’t enjoy birthday bashes at a catered banquet hall, and who didn’t wear designer clothes and enjoy the best haircuts from the top salons and spas.

Not until after Barbara ran around the school spreading rumors that I was gay did I start to rethink that promise. Shortly after that humiliating day, I flushed my promises down the drain because what I endured punished me far more than any redemptive act I planned to take. The moment I got hit with my first rock, I realized good deeds would never make up for what I’d done to others. By the third time of being tripped in the hallway and falling flat on my stomach in a belly flop, I decided I deserved this treatment and it would serve as punishment.

I deserved a cruel life after all the pain I must’ve caused other kids. I’d never forget the agony on this girl Rhonda’s face the day I told her she couldn’t sit with us popular girls at the lunch table. She gathered her tray and sat alone and peeked up at me while shoveling a sandwich in between her chubby mouth, tears spilling down her cheeks.

I devastated lives, and when the tables turned, I had prayed the torture would take the sting away. Wishful thinking. Pain took on a whole new level when you realized you’d caused yourself this pain and deserved every blow.

I wondered, as I sat clinging to my steering wheel in the parking lot whether all of those kids I bullied had grown up to be like me, someone who lived life in the dark shadows always clinging to a false hope that maybe one day they’d smile and really mean it.

Chapter Four

On Wednesday night, Larry and I met over laundry. I was folding a towel, searching inside its folds for peace, when he asked me why I was so quiet.

I shrugged off his question. “I’m fine.”

He eyed me.

I waved him off. “Fold your shirt.”

He took my hint and didn’t say another peep until later when he dropped my bag of laundry on my living room floor. “I have cheesecake.”

Many stories unfolded between us over cheesecake. The creamy, sugary slices of heaven cocooned us into a safe harbor where anything could be revealed and not a single judgment passed. Larry always had a cheesecake on hand for those spontaneous moments when one of us needed to unleash. If, on the odd occasion, he didn’t have actual cheesecake, he always stored cheesecake flavored yogurts for emergencies.

I first learned about how Larry’s uncle sexually abused him when he was eight-years-old over a slice of strawberry. I confessed to stealing one hundred dollars from my parents’ savings jar to buy a new pair of jeans when I was a freshman in high school over a slice of blueberry. A talk over a slice of New York style helped him come to terms with the fact that his older brother might never answer his calls again because he feared Larry’s homosexuality. Most pivotal was when cheesecake paved the way for me confessing to Larry that I didn’t have one iota of desire for men. To this day, however, cheesecake never did drag the most embarrassing of truths out of me, the one that tortured me in the middle of the night, the one that swept sand over my dreams, the one that shoved me back down the dark tunnel every time something good started to poke its happy rays through the surface.

I feared the cheesecake that night. Its sweet innocence could reach up and into those guarded regions, curl up its magical swirls, and lead an army of ants to its death. What power did I have against it? I didn’t trust the cheesecake’s power to protect me against my ugly past that night. Though, a flicker of truth highlighted the fact that until I confessed this hideous part of my past to my best friend, I’d remain jailed to it. Still, I resisted. “I’m not in the mood for cheesecake,” I said.

He lowered his bottom lip and opened his arms up wide. “Come here,” he said. “Let me get a hug.”

I walked into his arms and sank into his embrace. He smelled like a spring day. He patted my back and cradled me to his chest.

“I’m feeling bad.”

“I know.” He continued to pat my back. “Tell me all about it.”

I clung to him, comforted by his long arms and big spirit. “I’m tired of myself.”

He rocked me.

Since tweeting to Eva, I had wasted countless hours escaping into a dream world where I captured her attention and the two of us twirled around in Twitterland bliss bantering back and forth like a couple of fresh, young lovers. I imagined her soft lips landing on mine, her warm eyes gazing lovingly at me, her soft hands caressing my skin. These daydreams stirred me and left me panting.

“You need cheesecake, darling,” he whispered.

My tears exploded on impact. I bucked against his chest like I’d just witnessed the end of a life. The pain seeped out, poking, pinching, and scratching its way through my tiny pores. “Yes, I need cheesecake.” I finally surrendered.

We left my bag of folded clothes in the middle of my living room floor and walked across the landing to his condo. Within five minutes, we sat cross-legged on his black Italian leather sofa and fed on red velvet cheesecake. I dug my fork into it. “I’m scared, Larry.”

He stopped mid-chew and squinted at me. “Of what, darling?”

I swallowed a bite, waiting for its magic to take over and help me voice the thing I promised myself for years that I’d never say out loud. “Of living the rest of my life alone.”

He dropped his fork on his plate, wiped his mouth with a napkin and sat up taller, “Finally.”

“Finally?”

“Yes, finally we can have this conversation.” He readjusted, folding his legs under him, steadying in for a deep talk. His eyes twinkled. His lips curled into a devilish smile. “I want to hear all about this girl who’s breaking your heart right now.”

“I never mentioned a specific person.”

“You never wear mascara, and for the past few days, you’re wearing it.”

I nodded. I needed another mouthful. I swallowed and stabbed the cheesecake with the fork waiting for it to help me explain. “She doesn’t even know I exist. Well, not really anyway.”

He scooped up a helping and fed it to me. “Tell me her name.”

I lingered on the bite, rolling the sugar around my tongue, mystified by its power to level out solid ground as I rolled out my confession. A smile fought its way to the surface. “Eva. Her name’s Eva. She just started at our New York City branch. And she’s why I joined Twitter.”

He giggled and scooted up closer. “She’s all you can think about, right?”

“So pathetic, right?”

“Very.” He wiped my mouth with a napkin. “However, it happens to the best of us. So tell me the real issue here.”

“Well, let me set the story for you. With my bio and my fake picture, I explained my exciting life. You see, I’m gorgeous, a professional writer, a world traveler, and as if that’s not enough, I can also run marathons in under two-and-a-half hours.”

He piled another forkful in his mouth. “You’ve created one hell of an alter ego, darling.” He twisted his mouth. “A world traveler? Really?”

“I could be.” I smacked his upper arm.

“A trip to the Smoky Mountains doesn’t count as world traveling, and neither does Skyping me when I traveled to Australia.”

I punched him again. This time even harder.

He winced. “I digressed. I apologize.” He rubbed his arm. “My point is, you could be all of that if you just stop being so hard on yourself.”

“So, I’m not gorgeous? That’s what you’re saying?”

“That’s your takeaway?” He sat back.

“Well?”

He sat up again and laced his fingers through the end of my ponytail. “If you’d style your hair in more than that ponytail, you would be.” He batted the frizzy end of it in between his fingers. “Seriously, get this trimmed.”

He dropped my frizz in lieu of another forkful of creamy cheesecake. He smacked his lips, swiping them with his tongue and wiping every last morsel of the decadence from them. His lips had kissed many. This fact only reminded me of how pathetic I was and that I would certainly spend the rest of my days failing at the one thing that came so easy to most every person on the planet. Geez, my cousin kissed her first set of lips at five when she and her friend, Mike, hid under a bush in a game of hide-and-seek. “When did you have your first kiss?”

“I was twelve. At George Washington Grove State Park in campground site number twenty-two. He was nineteen. His name was George and he invited me to his site to drink beer. I took three sips and then he moved in and started making out with me on his picnic table. His tongue was slimy and took up my entire mouth. He had just smoked a cigarette, too. He tasted like an ashtray. I wanted to throw up. His kiss grossed me out. I’d never tasted anything as disgusting. In fact, I swore off kissing for eternity after leaving his site.” He arched his eye. “Well, that lasted a day.” He giggled and scooted in closer. “The very next morning, my secret boy crush walked by me as I lathered soap onto my chest in the community shower. He smiled. I smiled back. He cocked his head to a changing stall. I followed. The rest was history, darling. Lot of first times happened that weekend for me.” He winked.