Vaclav & Lena (24 page)

Vaclav does his tests now without studying; he goes through lunch without making jokes, without entertaining his friends, without doing any magic tricks. He’s busy writing notes, to read to Lena, to give to Lena, about how much he’s thinking of her, about how amazing he feels. He’s busy writing lists, planning the Russia trip. He’s coming up with ways to raise money, questions to answer, places to look. His favorite new idea is to raise money by doing magic shows. It’s so perfect, so perfectly full circle. He and Lena are together again—of course, they were meant to be, he the famous magician, she his lovely assistant.

A STORM WITH MANY EYES
…

V
aclav walks into school bleary-eyed. He slept not even one hour; he was on the phone all night with Lena. All night, making plans. He started to really picture getting on a plane with her, taking off, flying to somewhere they’ve never been. He knows they can do it, because they can do anything.

Vaclav doesn’t see Ryan right away, he’s so tired, and he’s still thinking about Lena, about how easy it was to spend eight hours on the phone with her. Ryan’s been watching Vaclav come down the hallway toward his locker, and she’s not alone. All her friends are watching too.

“Hi,” Vaclav says, realizing that something is wrong.

“You missed my show,” she says.

“I’m so sorry,” he says, realizing how completely he has forgotten about her.

“Lindsey saw you,” she says.

“What?” Vaclav says.

“Lindsey saw you sitting with that girl. In Fort Greene Park.”

“What?” he says.

“She saw you with some girl with frizzy hair.” This is the first time that Vaclav has realized that Lena and Ryan might be mutually exclusive.

Ryan has tears in her eyes.

“She’s just a friend.…” he starts, but Ryan is already walking away.

WHEN YOU ARE IN LOVE IT FEELS LIKE FALLING
…

V
aclav suddenly feels terrible about Ryan. The truth is that he hasn’t thought one bit about her since Lena came back. Now here is a churning in his belly and a prickliness in his brain that is distinctively not productive, and he feels he can talk to Lena about anything, so he brings it up. He brings it up with Lena the next time they are sitting in the park, under their tree, which becomes the best, most special tree in the world the moment they sit together under its branches and pick at its acorns.

“Have you noticed that we’ve kind of not done anything except see each other since we, you know, met up again?” he says.

“Yeah,” Lena says, her eyes shining, excited. “Isn’t it crazy?”

“I haven’t been doing anything for school.”

“Me either! It’s nuts.” She racks her brain for an example, an example to show him, like a gift. “I turned in a lab yesterday that I worked on for like ten minutes, in the hall. Right before class.” Her face is lit up like she’s got a lightbulb in her skull, and she feels like light must be sneaking out from the corners of her eyes.

“I haven’t talked at all to my mom; she doesn’t even know about you. She doesn’t know that you’re back,” he says.

“Yeah, I haven’t really talked at all to my mom either. I just haven’t felt like it.” This seems to him to be an incomplete comment. There is more than this to the secrecy of their relations, and they both know it.

“I mean, until today, I hadn’t talked to my girlfriend in a week,” Vaclav says, and as the words take flight, he hears what he is saying and what the impact will be, and he tries to say it like he is dropping a tiny marshmallow into a cup of hot chocolate, but it drops like the boulder it is.

“Yeah. I didn’t know you had a girlfriend,” she says. Holding back tears? Fists? She doesn’t know. She just knows she has to try to hold back, to hold on.

“Yeah. I’m sorry. I guess I should have told you that.”

“Yeah. I guess you should have.” She’s angry. She’s a comet crashing to earth. She’s trying not to explode, he can see that, but she’s going to make impact.

“Is there anything else you’re not telling me?” Lena is fuming. Her words rattle in her throat.

“Well, I’m sorry about not telling you about the girlfriend, I’m sorry if it’s such a big deal, I would have told you if I knew.”

“Well it’s not a big deal at all, then. It’s like you said, it’s not a big deal, right? Of course. It’s fine.” But she’s irate.

“No, it is a big deal, I guess. I mean, you’re a big deal. You’re such a big deal I haven’t practiced my magic at all since I saw you on that bench.…” Vaclav says.

“I can’t believe …” she says with a smile, and stops.

“What?”

“I can’t believe you still want to be a magician.” She pauses. “Honestly, grow up.” She says this like being a magician is both hilarious and pathetic.

Vaclav can only shake his head.

Lena stands, waiting.

“I can’t believe you said that. You’re exactly the same,” he says.

How can I be exactly the same
, she thinks,
I have never had any idea of who I am or who I was?

“You only care about you, about your fucked-up life. About going to Russia, about your parents. You don’t care about me.”

“How can I care about you if you don’t tell me anything about your life? You don’t tell me about your girlfriend, you don’t tell me anything. How can I know?” She picks up her bag and walks away.

I totally forgot about her, and about everything else, the moment you showed up
, he thinks.
I love you, I’m coming to Russia with you, I’d go anywhere with you, I’ve been with you the whole time, I’ve been waiting for you the whole time, I’d do anything for you, it’s always been that way
, he thinks, but she’s already gone.

She has no idea what to do, or think, and she’s thinking everything. She’s thinking
I love him, I hate him, how could he not tell me about his girlfriend, I hate her, why do I hate her, I don’t even know her, I can’t believe I made it sound like I think it’s stupid to still do magic, of course I don’t think that, do I? Maybe I do think it’s stupid that he still does magic. Is he right about me? About the way I was? How could he say any of those things?

Lena’s rage is new and strange to her, and confusing. She flies down the stairs to the subway, and the concrete steps feel strange beneath her feet. The subway feels odd, like a place she’s never been before. Her mind is still racing, and she doesn’t want to be away from Vaclav. It’s been ninety seconds, and it feels too long. She wants to go back, but she doesn’t go back.

Vaclav sits for a while, in case she’s coming back. Then he walks to the subway station, goes slowly down the stairs, and sinks into a seat on the subway. He looks at the ground, looks at the window. He hasn’t felt this lonely since the first time he lost Lena.

FALLOUT, OR FALLING OUT, OR FALLING IN
…

R
asia has already noticed that something is different with Vaclav, and the main thing that she has noticed is the absence of the girlfriend, what’s-her-name. This is a good thing. This is a thing she is not questioning. Vaclav has been staying late at school, and the business of him and the girlfriend doing homework in his bedroom before she gets home from work, this has stopped.

Rasia worries, of course, that the girl has broken up with Vaclav and hurt his feelings. This is unacceptable. Rasia feels capable of tearing the girl apart with her teeth, spitting out the skinny bones.

Em has noticed that something is different too. Lena is happier, lighter. She’s smiling. She’s obsessing less, about homework and school and student council. Lena’s even been late for school and staying out later with her friends. Em is always happy to see her be social. Always.

When Vaclav and Lena arrive at their respective homes early that night, slamming all doors, refusing meals, taking no phone calls, watching no television, both mothers chalk it up to the roller coaster of teenage hormones. Neither mother senses that this very day her child has learned that it is possible for a universe that is good and light and thrilling to tear at its seams suddenly and irreparably.

Lena races up to her room and sits on the floor, on soft carpet, with her fingers dug deep into the pile, her legs twisted beneath her, sobbing with her teeth clenched, her throat raw. She is so distraught she can’t see ever feeling better, she can’t see ever living happily in this human way, where everything good can come apart and go away, where terrible things have happened that cannot be erased, where more terrible things will happen after that, where good things will be defined by their endings.

Lena thought that Vaclav was a safe thing, and he wasn’t.

Vaclav stomps into his room. He slams the door and paces. Back and forth. Trying to understand and trying to figure out what to do next. He wants to make a list, but the things he’s thinking, he doesn’t think he can write them down. He starts but then stops, over and over again, writing:

What to do about Lena?

What to do about Lena?

What to do about Lena?

FALLING UP AND DOWN AT THE SAME TIME
…

L
ena lies on the floor, facedown, with the carpet irritating her cheek, half closing her eyes and enjoying, really enjoying, the exhaustion that is washing over her, the wet feel of her eyes, the tears on her face. She feels satisfied, and she falls asleep on the floor.

When she wakes up it is late, but Lena isn’t tired anymore. She feels good. She starts to feel like everything is going to be good, or better. She sees an opening, an opportunity. She dials Vaclav’s number.

When Lena calls, Vaclav almost forgets how bad he was feeling. When she apologizes, his anger seems to dissolve, and he forgets how hurt he was that she insulted his magic.

“I should never have gotten angry.”

“It’s okay, I understand.”

“I never want to argue with you. I never want to be angry with you again.”

“No, or me. That was horrible.”

Lena sees, sees clearly through the whole thing, sees an opportunity. Because of this arguing and making up, there is room, there is shifting, there is fluidity. There is suddenly an opportunity to say things they weren’t saying before.

“I love you,” she says.

“I love you too,” he says, feeling like he is falling up and down at the same time.

“I do,” she says.

“I know. You don’t have to explain it,” he says. “I know. I feel the same way.”

“I don’t know what it is, but I don’t want you to be with anyone else,” she says.

He’s silent.

“I know that’s stupid,” she says. “It’s just a feeling.”

“It’s not stupid,” he says. “It’s not stupid.” The way Lena is talking to him makes him feel like Ryan is about as appealing and important as an instruction manual to a game you don’t have anymore, a game you can’t imagine was ever fun for anyone. Vaclav forgets that a moment ago he was sure he didn’t do anything wrong, that Lena’s anger about Ryan was unfair. He should have mentioned Ryan, that was true, but he hadn’t been trying to hide her or lie, he had just forgotten.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I don’t want to be with anyone but you.”

Lena smiles and says nothing.

“I want to see you now,” he says. “I’m going to come over.”

“It’s the middle of the night,” she says.

“I mean it,” he says. “I want to be alone with you.”

“I can’t,” she says.

“I’ll come to your house tomorrow,” he says.

“My mom will be home all day,” she says.

“We’ll go to my house. My mom won’t be home until dinner,” he says. “Meet me after school.”

“Okay,” she says, and she hangs up, feeling surprisingly calm, like she knew that this would happen, which she did.

TRY NOT TO TELL YOUR MOTHER AT BREAKFAST
…

O
ut the window the sun is bleeding into the sky and birds are waking up. The house is quiet except for the shower running, and the boom, boom, boom of Vaclav’s heart pounding in his ears.

His alarm goes off an hour later, but he is already awake, unable to sleep for the adrenaline racing around his body, whirling dizzy in his brain.

Vaclav is so excited about being alone with Lena that it is all he can think about, and he is terrified that he might slip and tell his mother about it at breakfast. When she asks him what he is doing after school, he has to struggle to not say the thing that is constantly on the tip of his tongue.

In the middle of physics class, where his mind is wandering to Lena, Vaclav realizes that Ryan is still a problem. Ryan is sitting, sulking, two rows ahead of him.

How did it happen that Lena went, overnight, from a yearning to an addiction? She seems to have planted herself into his life and sprouted, almost instantly, without his knowing, from a tiny seed into an entire jungle.

Walking in the hallway, he finds that his friends are slightly out of step with him. They’re talking about the morning’s ethics lesson, which he practically slept through. They’re raving about a television show he hasn’t seen, isn’t interested in seeing. He wonders how they could possibly care about these things; he’s wishing he could tell them about his big, exciting news, and he’s feeling that somehow they are sliding away from him, just like everything else.

Lena wakes up happy, excited. All day at school, she gets absorbed for a moment, conjugating verbs or making a timeline, and then a thought of Vaclav washes over her, and her head spins with anticipation. As the time approaches when they will see each other, kiss each other, hold each other, they both start forgetting everything that could possibly be bad. The minutes pass slowly, and everything else in the world is starting to matter less and less and less.

After school Lena rushes to meet Vaclav, and everyone on the sidewalk seems to be an old lady, worrying the cement with their canes, picking their way along, getting in Lena’s way. Lena can’t breathe for seeing Vaclav, and she weaves and bobs through the crowds to get there.

When Vaclav sees her he tries to contain the run in his gait like a giggle in class, like a sneeze at a funeral, but when he gets to her a little bit of the run escapes and there is a bit of a hop-skip, but he doesn’t care, and he grabs her hand and says, “My mom isn’t home until six, come on.”