Been There, Done That Read online

  Before we began to sing, Shelby spoke again. “There’s just this other thing I wanted to ask? Our meetings? Are they always at this time? Because my Christian fellowship group meets now, and I’d really like to be able to do both.”

  I was toast.

  Jeremy poked his head out of his door as I walked past. “Hey, Katie. How’d the rehearsal go?”

  “Okay.” I tried to sound nonchalant. He followed me to my room. I sat on my bed, leaving the maple desk chair for him. He perched on the edge, then sprang up, too antsy to sit still. He looked like he had something to say, but he didn’t say it. I spoke to fill an increasingly awkward pause. “We’re changing our name. The Wallflowers, I mean.”

  “Oh?” He looked confused, as if I’d changed the subject, when, in fact, I had not. “To what?” He stuck his hands into the front pockets of his soft blue jeans. His forearms were brown and ropy with muscles.

  “The Alternative Prom Queens.”

  His eyebrows shot up. “I like it.” And then, “Tiffany told me you’re Jewish,” he said abruptly. Oh, God—he was here for another talk: it’s bad enough that you’re a lush, but this lying has got to stop.

  “I’m not really,” I said, ready to come clean. I pulled my backpack onto my lap and opened the front pocket. I rummaged around the pens before realizing I wasn’t actually looking for anything. I was just trying to expend some of my nervous energy.

  “Oh, I know.” He shook his head. “You’re just half, and you’ve barely even been to Temple, and you love lobster.” He smiled. “You’re like me.”

  “No. I’m not.” I looked into his eyes. How could I lie to him? “I’ve never been to Temple,” I said.

  He shrugged. “I’ve only been once. My grandmother took me, and I was so young, I barely even remember it. My mother had a fit.” He snorted. “All those Jewish mother jokes—my mother’s nothing like that. Which is the point, I guess. Growing up, she didn’t dream of being a teacher or a nurse or even a housewife. She just dreamed of being Presbyterian.”

  “That’s awfully specific,” I said.

  “Okay, she would have preferred Episcopalian, but this was close enough.”

  He told me everything. How his mother made him take tennis lessons and dance classes (“You saw what good those did”). How she developed a passion for sailing and shrimp cocktail. How she tried to keep him from making friends with children of dubious ethnicity (“Anyone whose name began or ended with an o was automatically out”). How his mother, Sylvia, once told she looked French, started calling herself Sylvie. This after a phase where she tried to head off any ethnic connotations by saying her name was “Sylvia—like Sylvia Plath the poet.” As Jeremy remarked, “The suicide bit didn’t faze her. Sylvia Plath was a pure-bred WASP who went to a Seven Sisters school, and that was good enough.”

  As for his father: “He sells life insurance, which explains a lot, I guess—everything’s very big picture, like how much are you going to have when it’s all over. Also, he’s a big believer in the American dream; anybody can work their way up, and all that. So he doesn’t care if someone’s Jewish or black or Chinese, as long as they’re not poor. He has no patience for poor people. He believes welfare shouldn’t be reformed, it should be abolished. His father was a roofer—my mother doesn’t like to talk about that—and he figures if he could make it to the middle class, why can’t everyone else?”

  “And he thinks you should be a doctor.”

  “No, he’s decided I’m going to be a doctor.”

  “Why?”

  “My second-grade teacher said I had this incredible aptitude for science. That pretty much sealed it for my dad. That’s what I get for being able to name all the planets.” As he talked, he walked idly around the room, examining the posters before settling on my bed, close enough to talk, but not awkwardly so.

  I’d never heard Jeremy talk so much about himself. He told me that he wanted to travel after graduation, that he wanted adventure. He told me he wanted to “get more in touch with myself.” Then he laughed and said, “I can’t believe I just said something so trite.” But after all those years about not thinking about religion (“Officially, we belong to the local Presbyterian church, but we didn’t actually show up except for the occasional Easter”), he’d been wondering about his Jewish side. He told me about his mother’s parents, and about his cousins—how warm they were, how funny and open. How they made him feel he should explore his heritage.

  This was so not the time to say, “The thing about me being Jewish? It was a total lie to avoid spending time with Tiffany.” Instead, I allowed a long, full pause into the one-sided soul-bearing discussion. “So, what’s your Jewish mother like?” he finally asked.

  I tried to skirt the question. “It’s not my mother who’s Jewish, it’s my father.”

  He wrinkled his eyebrows. “O’Connor?”

  I couldn’t believe I’d made that mistake twice.

  “Changed from Cohen.”

  He nodded. Then he put his hand on my cheek and held it there. For a wild, incredibly stupid second, I thought he was giving me a Hebrew blessing. But then he leaned forward and kissed me. My lips tingled. My stomach warmed. Then I realized who and where I was, and I lurched away. “Oh, my God,” I said. “Oh, my God, oh, my God.” I put my hand over my lips in a bizarre gesture of modesty. I felt like a child molester.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I thought . . . I don’t know. We seemed to connect and—”

  “Just because I’m—Jewish?” I asked.

  “No, of course not. I’ve liked you from the beginning.” He stood up and tugged at his golden brown curls. He looked about sixteen years old. “I guess I thought it was mutual, but it’s not, I guess, and . . . and . . .” He let out a huge, agonized sigh. “I feel like such a jerk.”

  “It’s not you,” I said. “It’s me.” And that was true, perhaps for the first of all the millions of times that line has been uttered.

  “Right,” he said glumly. Good God, he looked like he was going to cry. I wondered if he’d ever said those same words to any of the leagues of girls who’d fallen in love with his J. Crew looks.

  “No, really.” I put my hand on his arm, but when I realized I wanted to keep it there, I took it away. “I have this thing, this problem with men. I’m not sure how I feel about them.” Once again, I was allowing a speck of honesty to float up above the lies.

  He blinked at me. “You mean you’re . . . gay?”

  I opened my mouth to speak, and then I shut it. I could hardly explain that the love of my life had dumped me on my butt a week after my twenty-ninth birthday. I could hardly say that I’d vowed to only date men who I could conceivably end up marrying some day. I could hardly say that he’d be perfect if I were ten years younger—except that if I were ten years younger, he’d be eleven. I looked at the floor. “I’m not sure yet,” I whispered.

  He stroked my hair, much of his confidence clearly regained: it really was me and not him. “When you spent the night in Boston, I just assumed it was with a man.” He gazed at me, oozing sympathy. “I guess you’ve got a lot to work out.”

  “I guess I do.”

  Tim answered his phone on the first ring. “What’s new, Kath?” he asked. By now, I knew he had Caller ID, so I wasn’t surprised that he knew it was me.

  I’d planned to make it all funny, and I didn’t know what to do about that catch in my throat. “I’m a Jewish lesbian,” I blurted out.

  twenty-three

  Okay, so I should have come clean to Tim about my screwup with the Wallflowers (which were, as I’d told Jeremy, henceforth to be known as the Alternative Prom Queens). I could have slipped it in: “The group that I thought were hookers? The funniest thing—they’re just a bunch of girls who like to sing!” But Tim was so sympathetic about my new identity crisis (“I’m sure there are plenty of Jewish lesbians who live happy, full lives”) that I didn’t want to ruin the moment, especially after he said, “Great work—I’m really impressed
” when I told him about the incident I’d witnessed the night before. I was even dumb enough to feel all warm and tingly when he said he’d come up for my first concert. Maybe then we could talk about our kiss—and what it meant for our future. It wasn’t until I got off the phone that I realized what a disaster that would be. One look and he’d know what I should have figured out from the beginning: that I’d hooked myself up with a bunch of virgins.

  I tried not to think about it. I was so busy with classes and rehearsals, I barely had time to think about why I was at Mercer in the first place. I began to envision a new kind of article, a human interest piece not unlike the one we had proposed to Dr. Archer: thirty-something career gal infiltrates freshman hall and tells all—how college kids have changed over the years, their priorities and their goals. I floated it by Tim, who said, “I hate those gimmicky pieces.” Then, to smooth my ruffled feathers, he added, “Though I’m sure you’d do a great job on it.”

  The Alternative Prom Queens had scheduled a concert already, so we were rehearsing constantly. Add to that time for shopping and alterations, and I was hardly ever in the dorm. Our new look was a radical departure from the novitiate garb. We were to dress as, well, alternative prom queens. Taffeta was de riguer, but creative alterations and accessories were encouraged. After a night at my apartment, I claimed to have hit the jackpot at a thrift store and presented the group with three frilly monstrosities. “Can you believe anyone would actually wear these?”

  In truth, they were former bridesmaid dresses. I don’t care how pretty something is at first glance (not that any of these were); once you’ve seen the exact same dress on three to ten other women (not to mention the occasional flower girl), it’s hard to love it. I unloaded a shiny turquoise tent, worn for my cousin Sharon’s wedding, and the purple velvet thing I’d worn as a bridesmaid for this girl called Celine. When Celine worked—briefly—in Salad’s advertising department, we went out for drinks two or three times. I was astonished when she asked me to be in her wedding—and had no prepared excuse for why I couldn’t do it since I never, ever could have seen it coming. She had ten bridesmaids at her wedding, though, and I, too, would have been hard-pressed to come up with ten really close friends. Still, I kept wondering if any of the others had ever seen her through a bad breakup or a death in the family or even a bad case of the flu, or whether she’d chosen us all because she thought we’d look good in purple velvet.

  As for the third frilly dress, it came from Marcy’s wedding. That one I kept for myself. I was her maid of honor, after all. The dress was peach lace, and it looked downright fetching when I cut it to mini length and paired it with red high-tops.

  Relations with Tiffany were becoming even more strained. She had a boyfriend—her first, as far as I knew—but instead of growing giggly and elated, she had become even more morose and nervous. Ethan and Tiffany had met in a study group, but from what I’d walked in on one afternoon, it appeared that they were engaging in some highly un-studious behavior. After that time, I jiggled my key in the lock for a while before entering. I never caught them again, however; he wasn’t around much. Tiffany, on the other hand, was almost always in the room, engaged in the age-old pursuit of waiting by the phone. When she did go out, to classes, mostly, the first thing she’d ask upon her return was, “Did I get any calls?”

  Once, I replied, “Yeah, your mom.” Her face lit up and then fell in such quick succession that I wondered if she didn’t detest her mother for the instant’s heartbreak.

  A couple of girls from her fellowship group stopped by one day to ask Tiffany to join them for ice cream, but she turned them down.

  “Why didn’t you go with your friends?” I asked after they left. I could have had the room to myself for an hour. A whole hour!

  “They aren’t really my friends,” she said. “They hardly even know me.”

  When Ethan did call, Tiffany’s voice became breathy and giggly. She’d take the cordless phone to her bed, where she’d sit with her knees to her forehead, seeking privacy in the darkness between her thighs and chest. Then she’d hang up, lunge into her closet and grab some clothes that were no more flattering than the ones she was wearing. She had lost weight. I wasn’t sure whether love diminished her appetite or whether she was unwilling to sacrifice valuable phone-sitting time for a meal. For Ethan had informed her, early on, that he didn’t leave messages. “I don’t like machines,” he’d said. Tiffany believed him, but I was inclined to think he wanted to see or talk to her when and only when it suited him; otherwise, he couldn’t be bothered.

  It was driving me crazy. I wanted to be annoyed or vaguely amused. Instead, I was worried. “Want to see a movie tonight?” I asked one Wednesday evening. She was sitting on her bed with her arms around her knees, staring into space. “What?” She looked surprised. She shook her head. “I’ve got too much to do. You know, reading.”

  “You might want to think about playing hard to get,” I blurted. “Some guys like you better when you seem less available.”

  She glared at me, and I realized with a shock that Tiffany no longer wanted to be my best friend. Quite the contrary. “Mind your own beeswax,” she said, and it would have been laughable had it been said without such venom.

  As for Jeremy, he was the other friend I’d lost. It was different, of course. I didn’t feel sorry for him; I just missed him. He was the only student I’d met here who resembled an adult. Now I felt uncomfortable every time I ran into him, so I avoided him as much as possible. If I was about to leave my room and heard him outside, I’d stall until he was gone. A month in a dorm, and I was acting eighteen.

  After my fight with Tiffany, there was nothing to do but leave. It was three o’clock on a Tuesday, but the sky was so black it looked like early evening. I sat in my Civic and waited for the deluge. When most people think of fall in New England, they picture red and orange leaves flaming against a sharp blue sky, but that’s just part of it. Late September brings violent weather shifts, seventy and sunny one day, forty-five and pounding rain the next. There’s nothing like a good storm to rip those pretty leaves off the trees and catapult us prematurely into winter. September is hurricane season. Headache season. The low pressure from the incoming storm made my brain expand. My head hurt like hell, and I’d forgotten to stop by College Drugs for a bottle of Aleve.

  It was the kind of day when all I wanted was to read a good book beside a roaring fire, a cat on my lap, a mug of sweet tea on my table. But I don’t have a fireplace. Or a cat. And without those, the whole tea ritual seems kind of empty.

  Right now, I’d settle for being back in my apartment. I’d been here for four weeks already, and I’d learned nothing. I’d retraced my walk to the library on several evenings and hung around that dorm looking for the girl with the long, shiny hair and had come up empty. I wasn’t sure I could stand three more weeks—especially if it meant admitting defeat at the end. As such, I was doing the only thing I could think of to get the damned story finished in time for my deadline, if not before. I was stalking a source.

  Okay, Tim had written off Chantal as being a dead end, just a small-time hooker in a small town, but I wasn’t so sure. It is hard to keep a secret in a small town. Maybe she’d heard or seen something. Or maybe not. I’d run out of ideas, and Chantal was my last hope.

  Her blinds were drawn. With the front window being positioned under the upstairs apartment’s landing, there wasn’t much light to be let in, even on a clear day.

  It was 2:30 and five minutes after the sky had begun to unload when I saw a man scurry to her door, head down, and knock. He wore a jean jacket that looked to be highly effective at absorbing rain. He was fortyish, with a large rear end and no neck to speak of. The door opened briefly and he slipped inside. I tried not to think about what was going on in there, but it was hard not to. I shuddered. Really, what did I expect—Richard Gere? At least this guy looked clean. Well, cleanish. I hoped he was nice to her.

  At 2:50, the door opened again, and th
e man slipped out. I looked away, although of course he was fully dressed. Once I saw his pickup truck leaving the parking lot, I got out of my car and sprinted for Chantal’s front door. Fortunately, I’d brought a slicker to Mercer. It wasn’t very warm, but at least it kept me dry. She opened the door immediately, probably expecting the big butt guy to have come back for seconds. She wore a bathrobe: red and black flannel, not exactly what I would have pictured, but it does get cold here. She stared at me.

  “I was hoping to catch you before your three o’clock,” I said, as if stopping by my hairdresser’s for a bang trim.

  “My three o’clock what?” she said carefully. For at least a half a second I considered that maybe she was just having an affair with the guy in the pickup, but surely an affair demands a little foreplay and after play, not to mention a nice meal. Twenty minutes wouldn’t cut it.

  “You probably don’t remember me,” I said. “My name is Katie. I came here a couple of months ago.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “July twenty-seventh. Three o’clock. Except your name was Kathy then.”

  I blinked at her. “You have an amazing memory.”

  “I can’t exactly keep written records.” She crossed her arms and hugged herself, providing a kind of flannel armor. “Look. If you’re going to take me in, just take me in.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “You got nothin’ on me,” she said. “But if you’re going to book me anyway, I gotta call my lawyer to bail me out. My daughter gets out of after-school care at six, and they get really pissed if you’re late.”

  I couldn’t believe I once thought Chantal could be a college student. She was almost young enough, but her teeth were too crooked, her eyes too weary. Only her hands bespoke a woman of leisure. Her fingers were long and smooth, her oval nails painted a delicate shell pink.