All We Know of Love (8 page)

Then just before I step inside, I look up at the sky. It is threateningly dark. I wonder if it snows down here, but it doesn’t feel cold enough. It is damp and chilly, and I begin to feel a low dull cramp, a pleasant heaviness that makes my heart quicken.

T
he bathroom of the Baltimore bus station is disgusting. Beyond disgusting. Not only do I have three layers of toilet paper folded over the seat, but I am squatting with all my leg strength, while holding the stall door closed with one hand, since it seems to be missing a lock. Where the lock may have once been is a perfect circle, like the porthole of a ship, except that the only thing I can see out this window is a row of dirty sinks strewn with wet paper towels. I am holding on and trying to release at the same time.

This takes so much effort that I almost don’t see it.

Red.

Like the swirl of color inside a marble.

Blood.

A swell of relief surges through my body as I stand up.

I rub my belly, my womb, as if to thank her for forgiving my stupidity yet another month. Does this really make the fourth month in a row that I made unkept promises to myself? My immense gratitude and another set of renewed vows to take better care of myself last only long enough for me to realize that I suddenly have a great urge to call Adam.

I want to call Adam.

Just to let him know,
I think.

There is some logic in this, I rationalize instantaneously. The way you might scratch an itch that hasn’t yet registered in your mind as irritating.

I need to hear his voice. And now I have something good to tell him. I’ll sound cheerful and upbeat. I’ll have good news. Good news for him.

I got
“it,” I can hear myself saying already. I rehearse my words in my mind, and I feel excited just thinking about it. I walk out into the lobby of the station, and I don’t even wait to find a more private spot to make my call.

I check my cell phone for reception bars as I force out any thoughts that this is a bad idea, that if it doesn’t go well, I will feel worse than before I called. He could be busy, or uninterested. Or worse. Much worse.

But of course, there is always a chance he’ll be wonderful and loving, and kind and concerned. And I will feel so much better.

In this ridiculous debate, the desire to feel better wins out.

I call.

I can feel the excitement just pressing the buttons of his cell phone number.

“Hello?” Adam answers on the first ring. I pretend he has been waiting for my call.

“Hello,” I say back.

“Natty?” As his voice moves through me, an image is formed. My brain races to put the scene together based on the background sounds, the tone, the exact words.

Where is he? Is he alone?

He is smiling. I can hear it in his voice — a warm summer rain that has just ended, revealing a wet and glistening world, and I know he would like the analogy.

“Natalie.” He says it again, more softly. And I know he is alone. He wouldn’t talk like that in front of his friends.

“Hi,” I say, lowering my voice. Trying to sound as intimate, as if I am not surrounded by transient, rushing, waiting, loud-talking, bus-traveling strangers. I walk around searching for a more private area, but still concentrating all of my attention on this conversation, hoping to steer it in the right direction.

Then, suddenly, Adam isn’t saying anything.

Are you there?
I want to ask in a panic, but I know him. He is pausing, forcing my hand, forcing me to talk, to fill in the silence and betray myself as needy. It is like two people holding on to opposite ends of a rope.

I hear nothing in the phone.

In order to keep the line taut, one person has to keep pulling. Or the rope will fall. Why is it always me?

But it is.

“So where are you?” I ask, breaking into the anxious quiet, and giving myself away.

“Home.” And he pauses again. I can feel the pull drawing me in, like air into a bell jar.

“So what are you up to?” he asks.

I realize Adam doesn’t even know I’ve left. He doesn’t know that I’m not in town, not in my home, not at Sarah’s, not with my dad. I am on the road, hours and hours away. He doesn’t know that I crossed the Mason-Dixon line over ninety minutes ago.

And Adam hasn’t been waiting around for my “good” news, has he?

I got it.

He has not been waiting month after month, day after day. In fact, my menstrual cycle is probably not foremost in his thoughts. He has been with his friends having a beer, or watching TV, at practice, or eating breakfast, lunch, dinner with his parents and brothers.

No, if I tell him, he won’t even know what I’m talking about.

“So are you busy? Where
are
you?” he asks again. I know he wants to see me. Now. I have to change the subject. Distract him, letting him think that the possibility of seeing me is still real, even though it is not.

It is surprisingly easy not to answer Adam if I don’t want to. All I have to do is ask him something about himself. He falls for it every time.

“Are you in your room?” I ask.

“I am,” he says slowly. “I wish you were with me.”

I feel my heart sharpen, then leap, rise closer to the surface of my body. Breathing is one of those things you never notice until it changes.

“Why did you break up with me then?” I try to keep my voice airy, teasing.
I’m not a burden. I’m fun. Someone you want to be with. Someone who makes no demands.

“I didn’t,” Adam responds. “If you remember, Natty, it was all your idea.”

I can see his mouth, his hair, his eyes. I can see his room, the walls, the rug. His bed, the crumpled bedcovers.

I sigh into the phone. He’s going to do this again. I am trapped. Wordless, defenseless, turned around. I am sure this is manipulation. I just can’t figure out of what.

Because yes, he’s right. In a way. Technically speaking, it was all my idea, but it’s not that simple.

If I had to sum up the human condition, I would say life is one big rationalization. Or maybe a series of thousands, every day. Millions over the course of a lifetime. You can convince yourself of just about anything in order to sleep better at night. So if you think you’ve won an argument, or if you think the reality is so clear and so obvious, think again. When I broke up with Adam for the first time, I never thought he’d agree so easily, so quickly. So willingly. So comfortably.

We were in his room.

Adam had an odd collection of posters on his walls, which by that point I had memorized. There was a poster of Derek Jeter, poked full of thumbtack holes and slightly torn in the upper left corner. Muhammad Ali and Albert Einstein both looked out from across the room. Adam’s bar mitzvah sign-in board stood folded behind his door. I had opened it up and read it over and over when he wasn’t in the room, trying to absorb any detail, every year and day and moment of Adam’s life before me.

I had made it my job to learn everything I could about him. I listened to every story he told. I made observations that would have made my science teacher proud.

Though I doubted Adam could have named my favorite ice-cream flavor, or which AP classes I was taking in school, which CD I’ve been listening to over and over. Or my birthday.

“This isn’t a good relationship for me,” I told him.

And then there were the newer decorations in his room. Rap concert posters, ticket stubs, his team photos from lacrosse and basketball. On his desk were his laptop and scattered sweatbands, and one curling picture of me slipped into the frame of his mirror. I had given that to him.

“Why do you say that, baby?” Adam asked me, but his eyes were on his computer screen.

He rarely touched me after we did it. All the urgency gone from him. His body slunk away and slouched in his chair. I could feel his energy collapse into itself, away from me. But he would always kiss me passionately when it was time to say good-bye, as if to distinctly mark the separation.

It was his trademark. The good-bye kiss.

Adam banged at the keyboard. A rapid succession of instant messages chimed in and out, computer buddies opening doors and slamming them shut.

And I was left lonely, but not alone. His smell was on me, the soreness of my muscles and the memory that lingered between my thighs for hours. The fear that came over me as soon as I left his presence, the fear I had been foolish again. Taken a chance. I read and reread my health notes, and knew that withdrawal is not a viable method of birth control. Neither is the rhythm method. Neither is nothing.

I should have gone on the pill, but I was afraid.

And that’s when I told him for the last time. He was self-centered and narcissistic. He paid attention to me only when we were together and couldn’t seem to conjure up my face when we were apart. I was taking all the risks. I was the one who left school during
my
classes to be with him during
his
free periods.

He returned my phone calls, but rarely made them.

He took everything I offered, but offered nothing in return.

“My love . . .” Adam responded. “I offer you my love.”

Was he kidding?

He was not.

But then for a minute, I stopped. It seemed so honest. So perfect and so true. There is nothing greater than love. Everything else was just material, wasn’t it? Or immaterial, depending on how you looked at it. Gifts were just belongings. What did it matter that he didn’t buy them?

And after all, I’m supposed to take care of myself, aren’t I?

Birth control is ultimately the girl’s responsibility. This is the twenty-first century. What am I complaining about?

“I’m completely present,” he said. “I am here, aren’t I?”

He was. Here. And that was more than I could say about some people. Some people leave and never come back.

No, this is different. He is not good for me. This is not good for me. I have to be strong. I have to leave.

I could feel my heart literally breaking, cracking wide open with familiar wounds and pains I thought I would never feel again. I could feel myself walking away from an offer, an offer I had waited so many years to hear. If you had been walking in the desert thirsty for years and years, why would you turn down a drink of water?

I am here.

You’d turn it down if you knew for sure that it wasn’t real. If you knew it was a mirage. Why, then, did it appear to you as an oasis?

I love you, baby.

What is real? And what is not?

What
was
my mother going to tell me just before she took her coat from the hook beside the door, just after she dumped those cookies in the trash? What was she going to tell me?

About love.

“Natty? Are you still there?” Adam’s voice on the phone, breaking into the silence (returning me to the Baltimore bus station).

I am standing in the space between a vending machine and the wall. My shoulders are pinned, with my hand holding my cell phone, my hand up to my ear. I can see the grimly lit waiting room, just beyond the half wall. It is filled with people sitting, waiting. They all look pretty miserable.

It smells like urine in this corner. But it is as private as I could get.

Yes, I hear him. An incredible loneliness begins to wash over me, even as we talk it grows stronger.

“Yes, I’m here,” I say into the phone.

Then somebody starts shaking the vending machine.

“Ow,” I say as my head bangs against the metal side.

“What, baby?” I hear inside the phone. “What is it?”

“Can somebody help me?” It’s a little girl’s voice. “I lost my money in there. Can somebody help me?”

She is standing in front of the machine, a suitcase in her hand. I watch as she lifts her foot so it is nearly level with the plastic display of candy and kicks as hard as she can. She grunts as she lands her blow, but no candy drops out. She looks like she is going to cry.

She is a little girl and clearly needs help. I can only barely hear Adam asking me what’s going on.

I flip shut my phone without saying good-bye and step out of my corner to see what I can do to help.

The second time my mother decided to practice leaving, I was in first grade. It wasn’t that what happened was so unusual; it was the look on her face when it was over, like a scientist conducting an experiment, a reviewer watching a movie.

She forgot to pick me up after school.

No big deal. It happens. Even at six years old, I knew that. I had seen it before. I had seen other forgotten kids, whose mothers came rushing in and swooped up their daughters in their arms, smothering them with kisses and apologies.

“I called your mother,” the office lady told me for the third time. “I’m sure she’ll be here soon.”

The office lady, Mrs. Bennett, was nice. She always smiled, and she wore pretty sweaters every day, decorated with a different flower pin. And she was always typing, facing sideways to the front counter, turning her head when she needed to talk to students, smiling when she did, even if she was interrupted a hundred times. I used to wonder if Mrs. Bennett was typing the same thing, day after day, and just never got to finish.