What was this compulsive need to be lovable? They both had it, were driven by it, bound by it. They would even sacrifice each other for the sake of it.
But she sensed they were afflicted differently. He wanted to preserve his worthiness in the eyes of other people. It was because of losing his parents; it had to be. Parents were the only ones obligated to love you; from the rest of the world you had to earn it.
And what about her? Whose love did she so compulsively doubt?
She knew without thinking. From her earliest memory she had perceived the chasm between how she looked and how she felt. She knew whose love she doubted. It wasn’t her parents’ and it wasn’t her friends’. It was her own.
“And so what happened?” she asked dully.
“It was really my grandparents who mattered the most to me. You know they are old and very traditional. I held off doing what I had to do. I dreaded telling them.”
He had thought about this part too, she knew. He had planned this speech. She nodded.
“When I finally told my grandmother, I thought she’d fall apart.”
“She didn’t,” Lena guessed.
Kostos shook his head. “She told me she prayed every night I would have the courage to do it.”
She pictured their two grandmothers, Valia and Rena, two old ladies full of surprises. How much did Valia know?
“Valia didn’t say anything,” she said.
“I asked her not to. I wanted to tell you myself.”
Lena studied his calm face and suddenly felt affronted by it.
“I would be furious if I were you,” she said.
“But who does that help now?” he asked.
She felt furious even though she wasn’t him. She felt furious at him for having granted himself the right to dispense with her grievances too. “I would want to know what really happened,” she said hotly.
Kostos looked pained, but he shrugged. “I had to let it go. What did it matter? What would it help to give out blame?”
What did it matter? Kostos could decide that it didn’t. It was, technically speaking, no business of hers. And yet, in another bootlike strike, she felt quite sure, looking back on the past two years of her life, that it did matter.
That was the stupidity of loving someone from a different planet, wasn’t it? You didn’t just give yourself away to him. You put yourself in the path of crazy girls who made up babies, and strangling customs you didn’t even care about.
That wasn’t what she wanted for her life, was it? She had enough to stifle her without that. She thought bitterly of her father. She had enough of those old customs as it was.
And then, abruptly, she thought of Leo. Of his loft. Of his ruby red couch and the feeling of lying on it.
She lost her breath for a moment. It was almost intolerable to think of Leo in the same brain where she thought of Kostos. She felt unnerved, disassociated, as if she were living in two universes, being two people at the same time.
She had forgotten about Leo. The possibility of Leo. It came back to her like another kick.
Was she really so bad at forgetting? Maybe she was better than she thought.
There was the boot yet again, and it hurt. But wasn’t that what she wanted?
No. It wasn’t. Leave me alone, she felt like screaming. She didn’t want the boot. She didn’t need another crack over the head. She didn’t want Kostos. She didn’t want any of it.
“Carmen, what the hell are you doing?”
Carmen tried to be impervious to the devil glare coming from Andrew.
“I’m saying my line,” Carmen said.
“What’s the matter with you? You sound like a robot. You sound worse than a robot. I wish I could listen to a robot instead of you.”
Carmen made herself stand firm. This wasn’t Andrew’s first tirade, though it was perhaps the first aimed so directly at her.
“Try it again,” he ordered.
Carmen tried it again.
“Bleep. Bleep,” harangued Andrew. “Robot.”
She took a deep breath. She would not cry. He was tired. She was tired. It had been a very long day. “I think maybe I’ll take a break,” she said tightly.
“You do that,” he said.
You are horrible and I hate you, she said to Andrew in her mind, although she knew he wasn’t and she didn’t.
She staggered to the back door and pushed it open. The air was hot and sticky and it offered no relief.
She sat down and rested her head in her arms. Andrew was being hateful, but he wasn’t wrong. The lines had grown stilted in her mouth. She was thinking about them too much. Or more, she was thinking about the technicalities of saying them too much.
Some number of minutes later, Carmen looked up and saw Julia.
“Carmen, is that you?”
“Hey,” Carmen said, sitting up straighter.
“What’s the matter? Are you okay?”
“I’m having a bad rehearsal.”
“Oh, no. What’s wrong?”
“I think all the working on meter is just confusing me,” Carmen said truthfully.
“Really?” Julia looked genuinely worried. She sat on the step next to Carmen. “That’s no good.”
Carmen closed her eyes. “I can’t believe I have to go back in there.”
“You know what the problem is?”
“What?”
“This always happens. The first time you learn the structural stuff it confuses you. Totally standard. The thing you’ve got to do is just keep going with it and then you get it. It becomes natural as soon as you get a handle on it.”
“You think so?”
“I’m almost sure of it.”
After Carmen was released from her rehearsal of pain, she went back to the room, where Julia was waiting.
“Here, I tried marking it in a new way,” Julia said. “I think this will make it easier.”
Carmen looked at Perdita’s familiar words and they looked distant to her. Now that she was considering them in a different context, she couldn’t access them in the old way anymore. She couldn’t re-create the simplicity. She couldn’t seem to go backward. So maybe Julia was right. Maybe she had to go forward.
She appreciated Julia’s patience in staying up with her almost until dawn to make sure she worked through it.
Lena was angry. She couldn’t sleep.
She’d been accepting, she’d been numb, she’d been sad, now she was angry. She was cycling through the stages of grief, but on fast-forward and in jumbled order.
In the middle of a night long ago, she’d gone to Kostos full of ardor, wearing her vulnerability in the form of a fluttery white nightgown. Tonight she knocked on his door at the Braveside Motor Lodge battened down in a slick black jacket held tightly closed against wind and rain.
He’d put on pants by the time he opened the door. She looked past him to a familiar bunch of suitcases, a familiar mess of clothes, familiar shoes. It all carried a familiar smell that hurt her. Why had he brought so much stuff?
“You shouldn’t have come here,” she said, noting as she did that she was the one knocking on his door at two in the morning.
Surprise, pain, defensiveness took turns on his sleepy face. The creases of his pillowcase were still pressed into his cheek.
“Anyway, what are you trying to do? What did you think would happen?”
“I—” He stopped. He rubbed his eyes. He looked as though his own dog had bitten him.
“I just want to understand!” she exclaimed.
That was a lie. She didn’t just want to understand. She wanted to catch him and punish him.
Maybe he didn’t do that kind of thing. Maybe he was too good for it. Maybe blame didn’t matter and people who ruined your life didn’t matter to him. But maybe she couldn’t get past it.
“I wanted to tell you what happened. I thought you had a right to know.”
“Why? What business is it of mine?” she snapped. “You were married. Now you’re not marr
ied. That was years ago. Why should it mean anything to me?”
Another lie. Far worse than the first. Even as she said it, she didn’t know if she wanted him to believe her.
From the look on his face, he did believe her. “I—” He stopped himself again. He looked down. He looked at the night sky past her head. He looked at the few cars parked in the motor court. He did what he could to contain himself.
She clutched her jacket so tight around her middle she thought she might break a rib.
“I’m sorry.” He did look sorry. He looked sorry in numerous ways. She wanted him to continue, but he didn’t.
She felt like shaking him, screaming at him. What are you sorry for?
For coming here?
For thinking I’d care?
For caring yourself?
For breaking my heart?
For choosing other people instead of me?
For knowing how badly I want to hurt you right now?
For knowing I do care and that I hate you for it?
For having to see that I’m not who you thought I was?
She gritted her teeth so hard her ears ached. “Was I supposed to rush into your arms?” she asked derisively.
He looked taken aback. He was still believing she would be lovable. “No. Lena. I didn’t expect that. I just…”
“Anyway, I have a boyfriend,” she said conclusively, meanly, dishonestly. “Your timing is pretty terrible. Not that it matters.”
There was something horrendously liberating about lying. It was an experience she’d never known before this.
He pressed his lips together. His body began to close in. It took a lot to make him distrust her.
A part of her wanted him to get mad, to prove himself as nasty and as unworthy as she was. Could he even do it?
She wanted an inferno. She’d preserved their love so carefully in her mind these years, but now she wanted to burn the thing down. She wanted every part of it broken and burned and wronged and done.
No, he couldn’t do it. His stance was no longer open. His face was shutting down. He was silent as she smoldered.
“I’m sorry for everything,” he said at last.
She wanted to punch him, but instead she strode away. She turned the corner and listened silently for the click of his door.
On the way back to her dorm her walk turned into a run. She let go of her coat, let it flap heavily around her. She ran as fast as she could until she was out of breath and her heart was shuddering.
She realized later, shaking under the sheet in her underwear, that she’d never really gotten mad at anyone before.
When Lena awoke early the next morning, she was no longer angry. She was astounded. What had she done? How could she have done it?
A fearful, reckless energy prompted her out of bed and into clothes. She walked back to the motel, the scene of the crime, as if to prove to herself that she had actually done what she thought she had done. That it had really happened.
Had it really happened? What could she say to Kostos? Was she apologetic? She checked her heart.
She didn’t find an apology there exactly. She couldn’t quite define what was there: a strange brew of stridency and terror. What should she do?
As she walked along the open corridor, she was scared to see the remnants of the mess she had made.
She prepared herself to knock, but she saw when she got close that the door was already open. She thought of how much stuff there had been in the room, the number of suitcases and the piles of clothes. Now she looked past the housekeeping cart into a room clean and empty.
Tibberon: Oh, Len. Carmen told me what happened. Are you okay?
LennyK162: I’m okay. A little dazed maybe.
Tibberon: Do you want company?
LennyK162: I love your company, Tib, but I don’t need you right now. I’m not really even sad. I’m relieved it’s over. It’s been over for a long time.
Love was an idea. Nothing more or less.
If you lost the idea, if you somehow forgot it, the person you loved became a stranger. Tibby thought of all those movies about amnesiacs where they don’t even know their own spouse. Love lives in the memory. It can be forgotten.
But it can also be remembered.
Early in the summer, Tibby lost the idea of loving Brian. Because of the sex, because of the condom breaking, because of her worst fears seeming real. She couldn’t know exactly why. But she knew the darkest parts of growing up had become linked to him that night. Those dark parts had attached to him and somehow overwhelmed the fragile idea of love.
Tibby distinctly remembered the strange sense that night that her idea of love had vanished. It was a spell broken, a dream ended, and reality took over. She had come to her senses and realized that she didn’t love Brian, that his best qualities were actually his worst ones, and that furthermore, the fact that Brian inexplicably loved her was stupid and intolerable. She had awoken from a dream of love.
And yet.
Now it was all different again. Her dream had come back, and she didn’t know if she was waking or sleeping, what was real and what was illusory.
She called Lena even though Lena had her own things to worry about.
“Do you have any idea what’s going on?” Tibby raved. She was done with playing proud.
“With what?” Lena asked.
“With Effie and Brian!”
Lena was silent. Not for more than a second, but long enough for Tibby to know she knew something.
“Well.” Lena sighed.
“What do you know?” Tibby practically exploded.
“I don’t know anything for sure.” Lena’s voice was slow and steady. “I mean, I know Effie’s had a crush on Brian. But that’s been going on a long time. Everybody knows that.”
Tibby felt she might swallow her tongue. “They do?”
“Oh, Tib. Just a crush. You know, a juvenile kind of crush. Brian is very good-looking, obviously.”
“He is?” Tibby wasn’t breathing at all anymore.
“Tibby! Come on. You know what I mean. I’m not trying to torture you. I’m just stating the facts of the case.”
Tibby sat on her hand. “Okay,” she squeaked.
“Do you want to talk about this?”
Did she? No! But there was nothing else in the world to think of or talk about. “I have to know,” she said.
“I don’t think there’s much to know,” Lena said, and her voice was pitched for comfort. “Effie has a crush on Brian, Brian is miserable over you. I think they’ve talked on the phone a few times.”
“They have?” Tibby’s hand was asleep. Her ear was hot from the phone.
“Tibby, I don’t want to be in the middle of this. But I do want to be honest with you.”
“They haven’t…gone out together or anything.”
“I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so?”
Lena sighed again. “It’s the kind of thing Effie would mention. Trust me.”
“Do you think Brian likes her?”
“I have no reason to think so. But I do think he’s had a pretty lonely time.”
“Because of thinking I broke up with him?” Tibby asked vacantly.
“Because you did break up with him.”
“Oh.”
“Hey, Tib?”
“Yeah?”
“I don’t mean to bug you, but you really should have told Effie the truth.”
“Gee. Thanks.”
After she hung up with Lena, she sat at her desk and tried to unscramble her brain.
Effie wanted Brian. Brian was a dreamboat. Duh. Everyone knew that. Everyone wanted him. In fact, it so happened that he was way way way too good for Tibby.
It was base and painful how these things mattered.
Yes, Tibby had once forgotten how to love Brian, but her memory was now effectively jogged. Oh, how painfully she remembered.
Of course Brian was gorgeous! It wasn’t like Tibby didn’t know that! Tha
t wasn’t even what mattered!
But all the other stuff did matter—that he was confident and good and that he was an optimist and could whistle Beethoven and didn’t care what other people thought. That he loved Tibby! He knew how to love better than anyone. Or at least, he had.
Now the idea of loving Brian was back. Now she couldn’t remember the idea of not loving him. When she thought of Effie and Brian, she wished she could remember the idea of not loving him.
A spell broke again, a dream ended, but this time in reverse. Now not loving him was the spell. Not loving was the dream she woke up from. That was how it seemed to her. But how confusing it was! How could you even know what was real? Or what would be real tomorrow? She was so scrambled she couldn’t keep track.
Who was she that she could change her mind, her very reality, so completely? Could she ever trust herself again?
Over the next few days she wished she were working more at Movieworld. With her hours so much reduced, she had endless time to stare at her “Script” and wonder about these things. The more she wondered, the less she knew.
She tried to write her script. She had the idea it would be a love story. But she couldn’t hold on to any thread. All she could think about was love’s intermittency, and that made for no story at all.
Peter came to see Bridget in the lab a few days before she was set to leave for home. She had labels in her pockets, stuck all over her clothes. She had three different-colored Sharpies in her left hand and one in her right.
She’d avoided her lab responsibilities for almost the whole program. She knew she had won the notice of David, the director, for her work in the house, so she could get away with it. She liked being outside in the sun. She liked having her hands in the dirt. She did not like this part. So she’d saved her dues-paying until the end of the trip. She thought of Socrates before the hemlock. You had to pay up eventually.
She saw Peter and she removed the label she was holding in her mouth to say hello.
“How’s it going?” he said. They were much changed since the kiss on the hill, both of them chastened.
She shrugged. “Okay.”
He looked around to make sure they had privacy. “I didn’t want you to go without saying good-bye.”