The Truth Is a Theory Read online

  The Truth is a Theory

  © 2019 Karyn Bristol. All Rights Reserved.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Book design by The Frontispiece

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  To my parents, who have always believed in me

  Chapter 1

  Saturday morning

  She had to watch. She tried to anchor herself in the kitchen, to hot coffee and the beginnings of a list—mac & cheese, milk—but as the storm door banged shut on her marriage, she dropped the pen and rushed to the glass, to Dana’s broad-shouldered march towards the car.

  She opened her mouth, then snapped it shut as a jumble of longing, regrets, and wishes surged up and snagged in her throat. She reached out her hand and it stalled against the windowpane, her diamond wedding band shooting flares in the morning sun. Her fingertips pressed against the cold glass. Her hand, her body was trembling.

  She willed herself numb, begged the chill of the glass to freeze her, make her immune to the pain. It was something she was good at, walling herself off from hurt, a skill she laughed off as a party trick with friends, ha-ha, just another one of her quirks. But it wasn’t a trick; it was survival. Other people ask for a hug when they’re feeling lonely or scared. She had taught herself not to feel.

  This morning though, as she watched Dana walk away, numbness failed her. Instead, all five senses were jacked up and bombarding her, distracting her from the moment, the meaning, as if they had stepped forward and said to her heart, “Don’t worry, we’ll handle this. Feel this instead.” Her cheek stung from Dana’s weird, last minute lean-in (was it intended to be a kiss? A hug? The reality was more scrape than caress because of her surprised flinch as his face came close). Her sinuses burned with his smell—Old Spice slapped on over restless, clammy sweat—and her ears were screaming with the echo of his “okay”, the only word he’d spoken this morning, choked out after he’d bent in and straightened back up. Okay what? Okay, that chore’s done? Okay, I’m out of here? This is all going to be okay? She couldn’t see how.

  Her eyes zeroed in on Dana, his rumpled hair, his wrinkled shirt, a look that years ago boasted of a late night of exotic cocktails and a need to touch, to slide hands in back pockets, to drape blue-jeaned legs over each other, and hours later, to fight off sleep because of just one more thing to say. Now it was simply an acknowledgement of uninspired exhaustion. She wondered if he had slept in his clothes. Or slept at all. She rubbed her eyes.

  She focused on his blue running shoes, knotted together and dangling off of, oh God, how many bags? Her heart skipped a beat. Clearly after all was said and done, a rapid getaway was crucial, no back-and-forth to load the car. Perhaps no “back” at all. She swallowed hard.

  He was leaving.

  The words had been handed to her last night over routine chicken piccata and the low murmur of the TV. His “Allie… ” had jolted her, lowered her fork; not so much the gravity in his tone, but that he’d said it at all. Addressing each other by first name after so many years was like a parent starting a sentence with your first, middle, and last name.

  They hadn’t raised their voices; there had been no argument over the glasses of chardonnay. Dana had presented his closing summary in his smooth legalese, in the way he’d been schooled at ironing the ache out of his words, and she soaked it in, her face still, the bullet points piercing her, drawing blood but absolutely no visible tears.

  He was leaving.

  She couldn’t hear the soft thud of each bag hitting the leather car seat, but as she stood behind the glass she could feel it, and every one punched a purple bruise on her heart. He glanced back at her as he shut the door, a quick shot of his broken expression, his weariness, and their eyes wrapped around each other.

  And he was everything.

  She didn’t know what to do with her arms, and for a moment this frustration almost reduced her to tears. She crossed them over her chest, but didn’t like that statement and thrust them down at her sides, where they hung, flaccid and useless. It was unbearable, this dilemma with her arms, and if she could have cut them off to solve it, she would have. She cast around for something to touch, to hang onto; her only option was a princess umbrella that one of the kids had dropped by the door. Without hesitation, she bent and straightened, her fingers a vise around the smooth plastic.

  Dana was behind the wheel. She raised the garish pink handle to wave, and her arm—extended now like the Statue of Liberty with a Disney prop—stalled in the air. As if she was commanding Stop! or maybe had a question.

  And the black Volvo drove away.

  Journal Entry #1

  Saturday night

  June 10, 2000

  I’m afraid of being alone. I’m wide awake in the bowels of my first night without Dana, and although I’ve plugged in and clicked on every slice of artificial life I could get my hands on—lights, TV, computer, both baby monitors—it’s like I’ve tried to light up the Amazon with a nightlight. I’m acutely aware that just beyond the yellow glow sprawls the bottomless dark, where there is no edge to my emptiness, no warm skin to delineate where I end and the dead, hollowed-out space around me begins.

  Sheer desperation cracked open this journal. But the calisthenics of writing is helpful, especially during commercials when it feels like my date has just gone to the bathroom and I’m alone at the bar pretending I’ve got a lot on my mind. The first mark, however, was daunting. The blank page sneered, daring me to begin, but the hovering, “How did I get here?” seemed so trite. In 32 years I’ve walked through many doors, but it’s not as if any of them loomed before me with a Let’s Make a Deal number above it and a heart-pounding decision attached. I floated through most of my life carelessly, unceremoniously, and the unselected doors evaporated in my wake.

  The journal was not my idea. About a month ago, Zoe—who I now believe is psychic—dragged me to her therapist. Sarah was younger than I expected and pretty, although she tried to mute it with a pair of thick, black-framed glasses, which probably did make me sit a little straighter. She suggested the journal. I backpedaled, stammered that when I was younger, writing in a journal was dangerous. I’ve always been terrified to pick up a pen and begin, lest the pen, on its own like the moving piece of a Ouija board, suddenly decided to scratch away at my smile to see what churned just below the surface.

  But ulcerous desperation—which has a taste by the way, a mix of tin and white chalk—shrinks the world into black or white. Curl up into yourself, or dare.

  And so, I have picked up a pen.

  September 1986: Freshman Year

  Erikson College

  Allie Mussoni scraped her flip-flop through a small pile of sand on the sidewalk; she was going to scream if her father didn’t say something soon. They had been standing among her small army of duffel bags and brown cardboard boxes for what seemed like hours while he wallowed in indecision about how to handle the send-off. Say something wise? That would have involved some preparation. Hug? Not in her father’s repertoire. Shake hands? Oh my God. She jammed her hands into the pockets of her Levi’s miniskirt and clenched her fists so tightly that her nails cut into the soft skin of her palms. The bustle of students, of the world, streamed by her; she glued her eyes to the ground, loath to offer anyo
ne a window into her purgatory. Tiny black ants, resigned to the fact that their home had been destroyed again, marched around her feet and towards her father’s—a film of dust had dimmed the sheen of his loafers. She fought the urge to tear her hair out. One, two, three.

  She rose up on the tips of her pink rubber soles and gave him a peck on the cheek. “Bye Dad, thanks for the ride.” She was already gliding away. “I’ll grab all this stuff after I check out my room,” she said to the world in front of her. Maybe the breeze would blow it back to him.

  She picked up speed and ran towards the red brick dorm, leaving him with his hands deep in his pressed khaki pockets. She turned around once, at the top of the stairs to wave, and saw him with his head bent, sagging towards the driver-side door of his sparkling silver sedan. He didn’t look up, and she didn’t wait.

  Her flip-flops thwacked loudly as she ran down the dark green linoleum hallway; parked baggage and emotionally-charged students and parents popped up in front of her, causing her to swerve and stumble, littering crumpled sorry’s and excuse me’s in her wake. Number 27. She paused to catch her breath in the open door. Her new home. A square overhead light, spotted with the shadows of dead bugs, threw harshness around the room, illuminating the patched cinder-block walls, the nicked wooden furniture, the scuffed linoleum. Across the room, a redhead leaned on the windowsill, forehead against the glass.

  Allie ran her hands through her long brown hair, and forced the corners of her mouth up. “So where do we pick up our leg chains and standard-issue orange garb?” She stepped into the room and dropped her purse on a gray-and-white-striped plastic mattress.

  Her roommate spun around. Red, puffy eyes, but Allie could see someone else was skilled in the decorative smile.

  “It is pretty grim. But I think we can make it cute.” The girl peered past Allie; Allie guessed she was expecting a set of parents to stagger in with boxes.

  Allie smiled. “You’re an optimist.” She stuck out her hand. “I’m Allie.”

  Megan introduced herself and glanced at all of her latched suitcases and taped boxes stacked neatly in a corner. “I didn’t want to start without you.”

  “Thanks. It doesn’t matter which bed I get or anything.” Allie surveyed the identical sets of beds, desks, and bureaus. Her green eyes darted back to one of the desks. “On the other hand, I’ll take the one with ‘I love Mouse’ carved on it.”

  “You’re kidding me. Mouse?”

  “In flowery cursive. Frightening, huh?”

  “Do you think he gave himself that name or earned it somehow?”

  “I’m scared for him in either scenario,” Allie said. “But the prize goes to the girl who loved him and just had to eternalize it on this sorry desk.”

  “Maybe he’s cute.”

  “Mouse? Now I’m scared for you.”

  “I can only imagine the field day my family would have if I came home and said, ‘Mom, meet Mouse.’ There would be mass hysteria, and I’m not talking about panic,” Megan said.

  Allie dropped onto the wooden desk chair and slid her hand over the cuts on the desk. I could come home with an orangutan and no one would raise an eyebrow.

  “Do you need help with your stuff, or… ” Megan’s finger scraped at the cuticle on her thumb.

  “Thanks, I left it all out on the sidewalk. And there are tons of frat guys out there helping new kids move in. Super charitable.” She paused for effect, “Although, I noticed they don’t seem interested in helping the freshmen boys.” Her eyes twinkled. “Let’s go introduce ourselves and point them in this direction.”

  Megan paled a shade and scanned the bare walls. “You don’t have a mirror, do you?”

  Allie shook her head. “It’s all outside. Come on, you look great.”

  Megan sighed, smoothed down her hair, then her shorts, and followed Allie out.

  –––––––

  “Music or TV?” Allie asked as the last box was dumped on the floor. She wanted to dive right in; the emptiness of the room made her nervous.

  “Music.” Megan clicked on the stereo.

  “Do you mind if I flip this on too?” Allie plugged in her TV. “It’s habit; I’ll mute it.”

  Megan pulled folded sheets and a rainbow-colored comforter out of an enormous Bed & Bath bag, and then made her bed with care, smoothing down the yellow sheets, throwing the comforter up in the air and then snapping it so that it billowed out over the bed and settled across it like a sigh.

  “Don’t judge,” Megan said as she pulled a stuffed yellow Labrador out of a bag.

  “You’re safe. I definitely don’t own a gavel,” Allie said. She grabbed a hammer and a box of nails. “Just a hammer.” She nodded towards both of their cheaply framed posters leaning against the wall. “What do you think?”

  Megan stared at the lineup. “Yours.”

  “Really? I like Ansel Adams.”

  “Me too. But I bet every room on this floor will have one. Yours will give the room more flavor.”

  “Let’s put them all up.” Allie picked up her funky ad for a cosmetics company—a huge pair of cherry red lips on a metallic silver background. She climbed up on her bed. “So how was your summer?” She slammed the hammer against a nail. Cement crumbled around the hole and fell onto her bed. “Uh oh.” She looked at Megan and smiled at her roommate’s wide-eyed look. “It’s okay, we’ll just take some posters out of the frames and tape them up instead.” She started pulling the frame apart. “This one can cover the hole. And then if we ever want to tunnel into the next room, we’ve got a head start.”

  Megan nodded.

  Allie sat down on her bed, brushed some cement dust off her quilt, and continued to pry the frame apart. “So, your summer?”

  “It was good. I lifeguarded during the day, at night I just hung out with friends.”

  “You’re lucky on both counts. I waitressed a lot, anything to get out of the house. And I didn’t see much of my friends.”

  Megan’s quiet made Allie look up and add, “Boarding school. Everyone’s all over the map.”

  “Wow, that’s hard.”

  Allie nodded. “You go from being glued together twenty-four/seven to being stranded at home in a neighborhood that’s moved on without you. It’s all or nothing. My boyfriend lives in Massachusetts and I think I spent every cent I made this summer getting up there on the weekends. Luckily the phone bill didn’t arrive before I left. My dad’s gonna have a heart attack when he gets it.”

  “Where’s he now, your boyfriend?” Megan handed Allie the next poster, a splashy vodka ad with two martini glasses bending towards each other; the tagline read Absolut Attraction. “You better take it out of the frame, I don’t want to ruin it.”

  “Princeton,” Allie said as she reached for the frame. “I know,” she said when she caught Megan’s impressed look. “For about a minute we considered going to the same college, but there was the small problem of the difference in our GPAs.”

  Megan chewed on her fingernail. “I know how that goes, my brothers are all at Ivys.”

  “Sounds like a lot of pressure for you,” Allie said.

  Megan nodded.

  “Dana worked his butt off for his grades, plus his father went to Princeton, so he felt like he didn’t have a lot of choice.”

  “How’d you guys do it? At boarding school, seeing each other all the time like that? Didn’t you get sick of each other?”

  “No, it was great actually. I mean, it can definitely get intense, but we had our own space too, time with friends… mostly because there’s a ton of rules and a jammed schedule with classes and sports, so there’s a lot of forced separation.” She paused a moment. “Of course, sometimes when we were together I wanted space, and when we were apart I wanted to be together.” She shook her head. “But it worked. Dana is super-driven, as in, he really wanted to get that A+, so h
e had to block me out sometimes.” She smiled.

  “And the rules blocked us too,” she continued. “Early on he got caught sneaking into my dorm room; I was really sick and he was bringing me ginger ale. He even held my hair as I was bent over the toilet… ”

  “Now that’s love,” Megan said.

  “That’s actually how he got caught, in the bathroom, holding back my hair. They didn’t suspend him because it was so clearly not a booty call, but we knew if he got caught again, we might both get suspended. So we didn’t sneak around after that, as tempting as it was. What about you, did you leave anyone behind?”

  “Not really, no. I had a huge crush on a guy I worked with, like blushing-every-time-he-looked-at-me crush. And he must have noticed because we actually got together a few nights ago at this keg party.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “Except I, mid-kiss and thinking I was so college, asked him straight out if this was a one-night stand. He just looked at me like I had two heads and eased himself right out of there.” Megan giggled. “Clearly it was a special night for him.”

  Allie laughed.

  “Hey, I was just getting the ground rules clear,” Megan said.

  “Very romantic.”

  “I have to admit, reality didn’t quite match the fantasy.”

  “He sounds like a prince.” Allie grinned. “But I guess you have to kiss a lot of,” she paused, glanced at the wooden desk, “mice before… ”

  “A lot of rats. A lot of rats is more like it,” Megan said.

  –––––––

  Before they could see or smell the cafeteria, Megan could hear the noise.

  “Ready?” Allie said as they looked through the door into the cavernous cafeteria. Allie’s eyes seemed to be glittering; Megan felt dread in her stomach.

  Not really was on Megan’s lips, but she nodded instead and tossed her long copper hair.

  Allie handed her laminated meal card to the bored gatekeeper and stepped inside for lunch. Megan followed as closely as possible and tried not to gawk. After two days of freshmen orientation, the school was ablaze with the fuel of the entire student body. The gently sloping, block-lettered signs—“Welcome Class of 1990!” and “The Choir Wants You” and “Join the Poetry Club”—that just last night had seemed friendly, and even inspiring, were now just wallpaper behind the sun-bronzed upperclassmen who were hugging, high-fiving, and screaming high-pitched, primal monosyllables as they reunited with friends they hadn’t seen in months.