When It's Love (4 page)

I pet the cats, trying to distract myself. I think about which classes I’m going to take next semester, wondering if there is any way I could take Professor Sparling’s class again. Maybe I can get special permission from the department, or maybe I could arrange an independent study with him. How did I not think of this sooner? The campus offices are already closed for the winter break. There is no one I can even ask about independent study classes now. Crap!

It’s been seventeen minutes since I wrote to Professor Sparling, not that I’m obsessing or anything, but I have to check my email now. I simply can’t wait any longer. I open my inbox. What I see makes my heart skip a beat.

Dear Sydney,

You wanted to impress me? Really? Why would you have wanted to do that?

Best,

Paul

OMG! Holy fucking moly! I’ve received a flirtatious email from Professor Sparling, famous instructor and author of the beautiful memoir,
Indebted
. Instinct tells me to send an immediate reply. I should just go with whatever pops into my head because Professor Sparling could be sitting at his computer waiting to hear from me. (Dare I think such a magnificent thought?) I don’t want to waste time mulling over this, but it’s possible that seeming overly eager is not a good thing. I theorize that the best reply will be a speedy and coy one. I don’t want to be too direct.

Dear Professor Sparling,

Why do you think I wanted to impress you?

Best,

Sydney

Thirty seconds after I hit send I have a reply.

I haven’t the faintest, Sydney. Give me a clue.

Oh shit. I can’t tell if he’s annoyed or being playful. I’m so bad at this. Perhaps coy was a big mistake. Maybe older men don’t like to play. Professor Sparling is so out of my league. What could he possibly see in me? But he sees something, obviously, because he reached out to me, and I don’t want to lose his interest. What I feel for him is pure passion and I’m exploding with it. Of all the intense emotions I’ve experienced in life – rage, fear, depression and frustration – this passion is the only one that’s felt impossible to contain.

My hands are shaking as I type:
Professor Sparling, I wanted to impress you because I’m drawn to you.

If only I could write just how drawn to him I am. But that would come across either way too romantic or way too forward. It’s not like I can just write to my professor that I spent half of the time in his classes thinking about either kissing him for two hours straight or unzipping his pants. I can’t even say that I’ve been waiting fourteen weeks for him to really notice me. But most of all, I can’t tell him that he’s the one I believe can lead me out of the dark places where all I feel are shame and grief. I want to end my internal ache, push the pain away, and live the life of a normal college student. College years are supposed to be carefree, but I haven’t gone to any parties. I never even go out for dinner unless the Harts invite me over to Ottawa Estate, or Henry drags me somewhere. All I’ve wanted to do at Addison is be at home alone with my cats. My most social activity is watching movies with Henry. This little online flirty exchange, though, is giving rise to the part of me that has been totally shut down. Apparently along with the sadness inside my body lives a full-fledged diva, and these emails are waking her up like a kiss from Prince Charming. The diva’s voice is nothing like that of my withdrawn, anti-social persona who always dresses in gray and thinks she can’t compete with the Melanies of the world.

I stare at my computer screen waiting for a reply. It comes within seconds.

Sydney, Please call me Paul. And tell me, to which part of me are you drawn?

Call him Paul? No way. I can’t think of him as
Paul
. Not yet, at least. Part of the appeal, after all, is the fact that he’s my professor. I bet he’d like it if I dressed up as a schoolgirl in a teeny pleated, plaid skirt. I’m sure he would teach me a lesson or two!

I can’t believe this is happening. I am flirting with Professor Paul Sparling, man of my dreams, or at least man of my sexual fantasies. I wished for this a million times, but I never expected it to come true. And I never imagined it would begin with email.

This time, I don’t want to reply too quickly. Intuition tells me to have some restraint. Two minutes pass, then three, before I decide to screw intuition. Waiting is not doing me any good because it’s giving me a chance to overthink things, and I start to get a sinking feeling. What if I’m making a fool of myself? Have I already made a fool of myself?

I close my eyes and think about Professor Sparling typing emails to me, giving me his full attention, and flirting to boot. The thought is completely titillating so I stay with it. I don’t need to put my hand between my legs to feel the dampness. I am wet and the sensations coursing through my body are making me bold.

Professor Sparling, at least until you turn in my grade, I shall refer to you as Professor.

Regarding your parts that I’m drawn to, how specific would you like me to be?

I am staring at the time on my computer. Ten minutes pass without a reply. I’m tired of waiting and I’m just plain tired. But I’m also turned on. I shut down my computer and close my eyes, thinking of Professor Sparling standing before me in an unbuttoned shirt and tight boxer briefs that hug his erection. I slide one hand down the front of my sweats and cup a breast with the other, reaching my fingers over my puckered nipple. A small moan escapes from my throat. Maybe Professor Sparling hasn’t replied yet because he’s busy touching himself, too.

I was in kindergarten when I began to understand that my mother didn’t like me. On parents’ visiting day my classroom was full of proud mothers and fathers who admired their children’s drawings on the walls. Most of the children had two parents, and those who didn’t still had one doting parent. Parents hugged their children, held their children’s hands, and said things about our beautiful art projects. My mother took no part in it. She had simply walked me into the classroom in her clicking high-heeled shoes without looking around or saying a word. She fidgeted with the pale pink scarf at her neck as she nodded to my teacher. For a moment her eyes scanned the room. She must have noticed the happy families. I sat at my table, looking up at her. I remember thinking that she was the most beautiful mommy in the room. Her blonde hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She was wearing a loose fitting pink dress that fell to just below her knees. I waited for her to sit down next to me, but she never did. For a split second my mother looked down and her eyes met mine. She didn’t smile, though. She pointed at herself then gestured towards the door. With that she turned and walked out. She didn’t even say goodbye.

Around that same time I began to ask why I didn’t have a daddy. Whenever I asked, my mother would reach for a cigarette and light up before she answered. “Some people get daddies, some people don’t,” she’d say. She presented it as matter of fact, as if she were telling me that the earth is round. That was just how it was, and we were powerless to change it, even if we really, really wanted to. Until I was in fourth grade, when kids asked me about my dad I would say, “I didn’t get a daddy.”

The older I got, the more time I spent with my mother’s parents. My mother never seemed to care if I was home or not. In first grade I began to get off my school bus and walk to my grandparents’ house instead of going home. Soon enough I was sleeping at my grandparents’ almost every night of the week. If my mother ever wondered where I was, I didn’t know it. And if I’d disappeared all together she’d probably have been relieved.

My grandparents lived about 1/4 mile away from my mother’s house, all the way up at the top of the tallest Clarksville hill. Both descendants of original 19
^th
century Clarksville settlers, my grandparents were from well-known, well-to-do families. My grandfather’s family had owned Morrison’s Dry Goods Store for three generations before my grandfather sold it when I was twelve. He was ready to retire and my mother, his only child, had no interest in running the store. He said he couldn’t keep working until I was ready to take over the business (assuming that I’d want to stay in Clarksville my whole life). I was glad he sold the store and relieved me of any pressure to have to stay around and run it.

My grandfather was a tall man with a heavy build. He enjoyed playing golf and watching birds. He wasn’t much of a talker and when I lived with him he wasn’t the sort to show a lot of affection, but I always knew he was a decent man. He took a lot of shit from my grandmother, who was always complaining about a leak in the house, an ache in her knee, or a fly in the room. Everything bothered her, including me. But as long as I didn’t make too much noise and kept to my bedroom most of the time, things were decent. My grandparents ate breakfast and dinner with me. They took me where I needed to go. From time to time my grandfather would give me a sweet pat on the head.

High school was my refuge. People often hate it, but I had no problem making friends. Finally, I was in a place where home life was not the only life. Kids were old enough to know that not having two parents wasn’t the end of the world. Sheila’s parents were divorced. Taylor’s father walked out on the family a few years back. Everyone had some sort of family issues. I felt like just another kid from a broken home. Of course, my family was more mysterious, but by the time I was fifteen I’d learned to accept that. My focus was not on trying to figure out why my mother seemed to hate me, or who my father was, but on friends who were old enough to drive and take me out to the mall, or a lake, or anywhere but home. Before school in the mornings, I’d tie my long yellow hair into a ponytail, line my pale blue eyes in black eyeliner, put on mascara, high shine lip gloss, slip into something that showed off my body, and wait for one of my friends to pick me up and drive me to school.

As a teenager I did a good job of making up for all the physical contact I hadn’t had as a child. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I was a slut, but before I started going out with Jake Tennenbaum at the beginning of 12
^th
grade, I’d gone pretty far with a few boys from my school. I went further than the other girls I knew – or at least I was the one who admitted to going that far. I craved human touch. And I liked boys. I couldn’t help it. I just did.

Jake and I had known each other for years, but never really talked until we were assigned as lab partners in science class. I’d always had a little crush on him, but assumed he was way out of my league. At the time Jake and I started dating he was almost 6 feet tall and, although he wasn’t yet a man, had strong wide shoulders that signaled great physical strength. By the end of the year he was 6’2”.

Jake was one of the good guys, the kid who volunteered at our local home for the elderly, and worked as a day camp counselor during summer vacations. No one had a bad word to say about him. He was so honest that during a science test he hadn’t studied for, when I tilted my paper his way so he could copy my answers, he shook his head at me. He’d gone bowling with his friends the night before the exam instead of reviewing the biology material. Jake had made a decision not to study and he was going to live with it, not try to cheat his way out. He was noble in the way he owned up to everything.

Jake asked me out for the first time in the middle of a squid dissection. He was doing most of the work because I swore I would throw up if I had to touch any bits of squid. He held the little scalpel in his hand pretending it was a chef’s knife and he was in the middle of preparing a fine dinner of dissected squid for me. “Would you like your squid in butter or wine sauce?” he joked. “Would you like it whole or with tentacles on the side? And would you like to know the gender of your dinner? I believe we’ve got a female here.”

We were laughing so hard our teacher gave us a warning: one more guffaw and we’d be kicked out of class. Jake and I settled down and then very quietly he said, “If you don’t like this Lady Squid, can I take you out for a real dinner?”

I was completely taken aback. Jake could have had any girl in school and I couldn’t fathom why he’d want me. Of course, I agreed to dinner and he took me to the only Italian place in Clarksville. It was pricey and not often frequented by high school kids. The tables were covered in white tablecloths with little red candles as centerpieces on each table. After we were seated, and before we received our menus, a waiter came over and placed a basket of fried calamari in front of us. “What’s this?” I asked as I looked up a Jake. He winked at me and burst out laughing. “I called ahead so you wouldn’t have to wait any longer for your platter of Lady Squid.”

“I don’t know whether to laugh or throw up,” I said.

“Go with ‘laugh’,” Jake said.