The Truth Is a Theory Page 12

  The first ring of the phone exploded between them like a parent interrupting two teenagers on the couch. They looked at each other; the tomatoes on their hands amplified the feeling that they had been caught red-handed. Gavin dashed over to the intrusive machine and turned it off before any voice belched out into the room. After that, the answering machine remained off and the only discernible clue that something wasn’t quite kosher was when the phone would ring. And ring. And then the red blinking number of unheard messages would increase yet again.

  ————

  Gavin rehearsed his excuses in the bathroom mirror one morning as he knotted his tie.

  “Tess, I love you.” Good, an honest start.

  “Hell, I think I want to marry you.” So actually that’s why it’s good that I’m with Zoe now, it could be the last time I’m with someone else.

  Nope, can’t say that.

  “It just kind of happened. It has nothing to do with you.” He rubbed his hand over his chin. If I can’t come up with anything better, I deserve to get caught.

  “It wasn’t like I was out searching for something new. I was just closing a chapter.”

  Oh God. Maybe he should just stick with “Sorry.” But as he regarded himself in the mirror, now tied and ready to go, he knew that it didn’t really matter what he planned to say. If he got caught, there would be no second chances.

  But he was confident that he wouldn’t need one. No one would know; no one would get hurt. He and Zoe were in this with their eyes wide open. She was going back to school in a few days, and she had nothing to gain by telling Tess. Or anyone else for that matter, as her friends were all close with Tess. Maybe that’s the key; keep your affairs close to home.

  ————

  When it came time to say goodbye at the end of the week, they stood in the doorway of Gavin’s apartment (he hadn’t offered to escort her to the train). The mood between them seemed shrouded in casual banter and good humor, almost as if they were sharing an inside joke, which in a way, they were. Sharing something, anyway.

  “What can I say?” Gavin grinned. “It was great to see you.”

  Zoe returned the grin. “That was some drink.”

  Gavin laughed, leaned in, and kissed her for a full minute. “One for the road.”

  Zoe was hating this moment, and there was nothing about this goodbye that felt casual or good to her, although her face displayed nothing but a smile; if her affect could wink, it would have. She didn’t want to leave, and although she was confident that this wasn’t the end of her and Gavin, she wanted him to say something she could hold onto as she walked away. When it was clear that wasn’t going to happen, fury at Tess flamed inside of her again. She needed to go before she said something to tarnish these picture-perfect days she had planned to leave him with. She turned and started down the stairs.

  But she couldn’t resist one little jab into the fat of his self-satisfaction. “And don’t worry, your secret is safe with me.” She looked back over her shoulder at him and grinned like a Cheshire cat. “Unless she finds that red bra I lost in your apartment.” She sashayed down the stairs and out the lobby door.

  ————

  Gavin chortled once, a lame guffaw that was lacking in mirth, and took a step back into his apartment and closed the door. A wave of uneasiness swept over him. “She was joking, wasn’t she?” he said to the John Wayne poster on the wall.

  He peered discerningly around the apartment.

  ————

  When Allie and Megan finally put their duffle bags down in their dorm room, Allie shut the door behind them. “What’s going on?”

  “Oh, Allie.” Pent-up tears leaked down Megan’s face. “Last night. I had sex with Mark last night.”

  Allie searched Megan’s face. “Okay… ”

  “I was really drunk. Oh God, I hadn’t planned on it. I think I drank too many daiquiris. And I didn’t really eat much.” She took a breath. “We were walking down the beach, and I was happy, thinking what a great break it had been.”

  Allie nodded.

  “And the next thing I knew we were lying in the sand. I didn’t want to. I mean, not lying in the sand, that was fine. That was, I mean, we were having fun at first, but I don’t know, it happened really fast.”

  “It’s okay Meg.” Allie hugged her, and was taken aback by the trembling in her friend’s body. “Here, honey, sit down.”

  “I didn’t mean to have sex with him. It was very clear in my mind. But one minute we were fooling around, and the next,” she shuddered, “he was inside of me.” She sat down and stared at the floor. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

  “It’s okay. You guys were drunk, on vacation. Mark isn’t Baker, he’ll call you.”

  “He was drunk.” Then, in a softer voice, almost to herself she said, “I don’t think he could hear me.”

  “Hear you?”

  “I was trying to tell him to get off me, to stop. Oh Allie, I couldn’t get him off of me.”

  Allie inched closer. “What do you mean, you couldn’t get him off of you?”

  An edge of hysteria sliced into Megan’s voice. “I tried, but he was too heavy.”

  “You tried to get him off of you and he wouldn’t get off.”

  Megan nodded.

  “He wouldn’t stop when you asked him to.”

  Megan looked down and ripped at a cuticle.

  “Megan. It sounds like you were raped.”

  Megan looked up at Allie with brown eyes rimmed in red.

  “Were you raped?” Allie said softly.

  “No. I don’t know, it happened so fast. One minute it was fine, I wasn’t stopping anything because we were having fun. I wanted to be there with him, I wanted to be fooling around with him. And then the next minute, it was horrible. There was no time to scream because up until the very last second I believed I could stop it, that he would hear me saying no and just stop. I mean, you assume someone is going to stop when you say stop, right? Until he was inside me.” Megan shuddered again. “But rape? Mark? He’s not the type. I thought he was so nice. I liked him.”

  “There is no type. It sounds like rape to me.”

  “And afterward? He certainly didn’t think it was rape. He didn’t even know anything was wrong. I mean, he knew something was wrong I guess, but it wasn’t like he was psyched because he just got laid. He was confused.”

  “That doesn’t mean he didn’t rape you.”

  Megan wasn’t so sure. She couldn’t help feeling like she had played a part in the awful scene. If only I hadn’t gone down to the beach. If only I hadn’t been so drunk. If only I had protested more loudly, hit him. The only thing she was sure about was that she did not want to see Mark again.

  He called a few times over the next week, but Megan made Allie tell him to stop calling. Twice he started towards her in the cafeteria, but she fled before he got anywhere near. After that, she’d see him look questioningly at her from across the room, but he never tried to call or approach her again.

  His few attempts at contacting her confused her more; this wasn’t a rapist. How could he be if he didn’t even know it? The whole thing was just an evening that had gotten out of hand.

  And she had let it.

  Chapter 5

  Journal Entry #5

  October 8, 2000

  One of the hardest things about this separation, now in its fifth month, is when I randomly run into Dana. It shocks me every time—I literally gasp, then jerk my hand to my mouth and clear my throat or fake a cough. Of course I never see him from a distance or when his back is to me. No, he jumps into my line of vision from around a corner, or maybe he leaps down from the top of the canned goods, and my heart races and I want to throw my arms around him and hold him and there is nowhere to hide and I… cough.

  I’m much more composed if we’ve arranged to me
et. I have makeup on, I’ve contemplated my outfit, and we have an agenda—a meeting at school, a dance recital, or when one of us tags the other for time with Matt and Gillian—and we have time to emotionally prepare and suit up with the appropriate armor.

  No, it’s being blindsided that knocks me down and hurts the most. The most familiar images are jolting in their intimacy when I come upon him. The way his brown hair waves slightly around his ears; the way his favorite blue jeans fit, bagging just-so underneath the back pockets; the way his crooked front tooth gives his smile a twist of mischievousness. Then in an instant, those very same things become strange as we face each other in our new disconnectedness. It’s as if he morphs into something foreign right before my eyes.

  And then, as if just running into each other isn’t enough, we have to chat. The weather, what movie we’re renting; whatever it is, it all has to be vanilla, because anything more complex unleashes a thousand vultures. Even a simple “What’re you up to?” opens up a hunger: What are we up to? Are you thinking about me? And most importantly, do you still love me?

  So two people who have been naked and stripped of pretense with each other, and who’ve shared seasons of Olympic agony and ecstasy, face each other in a crowded store and discuss traffic. It’s the most disavowing experience, and walking back to my car I feel hopeless. Without anchor.

  I’ve been adrift like this before. Growing up, my family never had a true anchor. After my mother left, we bobbed among the deep bottle-green waves in three different rubber lifeboats, for years at the mercy of life’s wind and tides. Kevin and I, terrified and clutching each other in one boat, prayed to be rescued. Paul, in another, was tethered to us by a long rope, but for some reason, he couldn’t or wouldn’t pull himself over and climb in with us. Our father was in the third boat, not tethered to anything. His back was to us, and he was craning his neck out to sea as if looking for the Coast Guard, or an island, or just something to grab onto.

  Funny he never looked to us as a rescue party.

  And he certainly never rescued us. Not once. I have years of scar tissue on my heart—that pink, healed over new skin that looks so shiny and strong but is unforgiving and easily torn when tested. Once when I was about seven, maybe eight, I had thrown myself face down on my bed, sobbing because of something mean a friend had said or done. I can’t remember what; but I do remember sensing my father behind me. The air had shifted slightly, maybe I smelled the sharp spice of his aftershave. He had just come home from work, and he stood in the doorway of my room and paused, as if he was taking stock of the girl, the heaving shoulders, the poofy pink comforter, the dolls for the first time. I wished him over, prayed for him to sit down and put his hand on my back, to tell me it was all going to be okay. My sobbing became more dramatic, with tiny pauses in between the wails so that I could hear him, gauge where he was, be ready for him. He was a statue in the doorway for a long time. Too long.

  Then he slunk away.

  I was shocked into silence. I forgot what I was even crying about. I spun around. He was shuffling down the hall to his office; his bulging briefcase weighed down his right arm.

  He had stopped the tears, that’s for sure.

  Maybe he thought the dolls would handle it.

  May 1991

  New York City

  The sun bounced off the shiny Midtown skyscrapers and down onto the sea of sunglasses like a rubber Superball ricocheting around a crowded room. It was one o’clock on a Friday in May, and busy professionals had left their jackets on the back of their chairs and were stealing a few extra minutes over lunch to enjoy the spring sparkle. Allie and her friend Eliza were sitting at a bustling café eating salad and drinking cold iced tea with Sweet-N-Low, the standard pre-Memorial Day lunch for a 20-something woman working in the Big Apple. Allie, as a doctor’s receptionist, had an entire hour to kill, while Eliza, a trainee at a nearby bank, had about half that. But Allie had arrived early enough to get a table near the open French Doors.

  The two girls were part of a growing crowd of recent college graduates who lived on the Upper East Side and spent their money in the same neighborhood bars night after night. The dimly lit dives with graffiti-scribbled, one-stall bathrooms served beer and shots conveyer-belt style, and bartenders often had to slide drinks around patrons dancing on the bar, who may have been so moved because the booming music made conversation challenging (and because, why not?). The clientele was an easy-going, eclectic group with energy and humor, and through their frequent juxtaposition and strange “small world” coincidences (“you grew up with my roommate” or “my brother works with your girlfriend”) a core group had gelled. They no longer just happened to run into each other—the 30 or so young adults planned events, or at least what bar they would start off in, through furtive phone calls on the company dime. A real-life game of telephone.

  Allie and Eliza dug into their salads and amused each other with their versions of last night’s antics at The Dugout. Their crowd worked hard and played harder, often stumbling home at three or four in the morning for a few hours of sleep before trudging back in for another long day at work. The next day, the rehashing of the stories was always entertaining—it varied whether it was a comedy or horror show—and usually just a preview of the evening’s coming attractions.

  As Allie listened to a story about Eliza’s roommate, a sixth sense made her turn from the tale in time to see a couple strolling by, holding hands, their leisurely pace and casual blue jeans unique among the scurrying neckties on the sidewalk. It was Dana. And a very cute blonde.

  Eliza, mid-sentence, stopped talking. “Are you okay?”

  Allie didn’t answer. She was riveted to the couple crossing the street and gliding into the corner bookstore.

  She finally looked back at Eliza. “Actually, no. I need some air.” Allie wobbled as she tried to stand. She grabbed the back of the chair as a wave of nausea punched her in the stomach.

  “You look green. Maybe my story about Amanda’s hangover reincarnated yours.” Eliza half-smiled. “I’ll get this,” she indicated the tab, “and meet you outside.”

  Allie raced through the noisy café and out into the bright sunshine. She paused to get her bearings, to try to clear the affective smoke threatening to choke her. Then, unable to stop herself, she crossed the street and followed Dana inside the store, completely forgetting about Eliza and her half-eaten lunch.

  The Book Stop was small and cramped, with books stacked everywhere, and almost as an afterthought, narrow passageways cutting through them. The aisles converged in the children’s section at the back of the store, a welcome open space with stuffed animals and huge Babar posters. In the corner, a group of preschoolers were absorbed in story time.

  Allie’s eyes swept down the aisles and zoomed in on Dana and his cute sidekick in the back browsing through picture books and talking in library voices. They hadn’t noticed her, but she was an ill-fated deer in the headlights anyway. She had no plan. She couldn’t just stand there. If she ran out, they might look up and catch her fleeing the scene. Or worse, all the children in the corner might rat her out by yelling and pointing at the crazy lady with the brown cape of hair. And she really didn’t want to leave; she didn’t want to be left holding the happy picture she had just framed. She needed details. She scoffed at the shrill alarm in her head, shoved her shaking hands in her pockets, and marched over to Dana and the Blonde.

  “Dana!” Allie grinned as if this was the best interruption to her day.

  He glanced up. Surprise, then rapidly guilt, flashed across his face, finally settling into a resolute stiff lip. “Allie.”

  “What a surprise! How are you?”

  “Good. Fine.” There was a pall of silence. “We just finished exams.”

  “So school’s out. That’s great.”

  Dana’s restraint in the face of her Shirley Temple cheer made Allie’s skin crawl. Her grin felt frozen and ri
diculous, and despite her struggle to hold it, it slipped from her face. She bit her tongue so that she didn’t quip, “Can you believe this weather?” and glanced down at the book Dana was clutching. Goodnight Moon. She had a momentary snapshot of being curled up on a kindly neighbor’s lap.

  Dana noticed her eyeing the book. “We’re picking out books for Robin’s birthday.”

  “Your cousin? She’s going to be two, right?”

  Dana nodded.

  The petite girl by Dana’s side—who kept shifting her weight from hip to hip as if she was waving herself—was as conspicuous as Babar himself would be if he had stepped down from the poster on the wall. Allie was dying to ask, “Who the hell is this?” with the emphasis on hell. She didn’t know whether she should continue to ignore her, as Dana seemed to be doing, or introduce herself. She decided on something in between and eyeballed her.

  “Oh,” Dana said. “This is Nina, a friend of mine from Boston.”

  Nina stopped moving. Her perfectly tweezed eyebrows squeezed together at the term “friend,” but she smiled and stuck out five light-pink polished fingers. “Hi.”

  Allie stuck out her hand too, which was now surprisingly steady despite the fact that she had so many emotions flooding through her she felt like she might have a stroke right there during story hour. She didn’t know what she was feeling; jealousy certainly, but a resounding sadness too. Mostly she just wanted to smack the smile off of Nina’s face and scream, “I’m Allie. ALLIE. You must know who I am.” Instead she just checked to make sure that her smile was plastered in place and said, “I’m Allie.” She watched Nina’s reaction closely.

  Something flickered across Nina’s eyes—recognition?—but her smile remained neutral. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

  Really? Interesting. She glanced at Dana for a clue. He was giving her nothing, and in fact was suddenly studying the three bears in chairs as if it was his law textbook.