All We Know of Love

by Nora Raleigh Baskin

  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 happe
ned 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.

  The other two “left-behind” kids had already been picked up — first, Daniel Sou, and about five minutes later, Patrick Murphy went home. My stomach started to growl as the light outside the window went from yellow to orange to deep purple. Mrs. Bennett finished typing.

  “Maybe we should call your dad.” She smiled at me, searching her files for my emergency cards.

  My dad? It sounded serious. You never call the dad unless it’s serious. I had only a vague idea where my dad was, anyway. He left in the morning, dressed in a tie, and he came home just after dinner, when my day was over. Sometimes he packed a suitcase for an overnight business trip and left before I even got out of bed. I barely noticed the nights my father traveled and didn’t come home.

  Call my daddy?

  I started to cry.

  Mrs. Bennett stood up right away. “No, no, Natty. It’s OK.” She banged her knee trying to get to my side of the counter. And that’s when my mother showed up.

  She didn’t have an excuse like the other moms. “I couldn’t find my keys.” “I got mixed up with my car pool,” not even “I forgot.”

  She just walked in the office, her face blank, and said, “Is Natty OK?”

  When the girl kicks the vending machine for the second time, the suitcase in her hand comes undone, spilling its contents, mostly makeup, onto the floor — lipsticks and mascara wands threatening to roll away.

  “Oh, no,” she cries, but she doesn’t move. She’s young, I notice. Middle school — fourth, maybe fifth grade. I get the distinct feeling she is by herself; the way she doesn’t look around for help, knows it’s not coming.

  “Don’t worry,” I say, bending down. As soon as I begin gathering her things, she gets down on the floor beside me, as if she were waiting to be told what to do. I see a loose retainer nestled among her shirts and jeans and underwear, a notebook marked PRIVATE, and a couple of framed photos.

  “Are you alone?” I ask her.

  She closes the suitcase. I snap the clasp shut and we both stand. She looks at me a minute, and I recognize the face of someone who is searching for a reasonable lie.

  “Don’t answer that,” I say, holding up my hand, and just then, as if my gesture had something to do with it, a loud clap of thunder makes its way from the outside world into the bus terminal. It nearly shakes the room. I notice that the low hum of human voices from the waiting area stops momentarily and then swells even louder in reaction.

  “Weather,” I say to the girl, as if this means something. I feel like taking her hand.

  “Yeah,” she says.

  “Wanna go check the schedule?”

  It’s funny because I feel better already; just talking to someone fills up that space, even if it’s temporary. We walk together toward the rows of green molded plastic seats in the waiting area. At the end of each row of five, a metal ashtray is attached to the armrest.

  “I’m Natalie,” I tell her.

  She seems to hesitate a moment and then says, “I’m Claire.”

  The TV monitor in the sitting area tells us that my bus leaves in an hour, at three fifteen, and Claire’s not for thirty-five minutes. Without saying so, we take seats together. If someone happened to walk by and wonder, we’d just look like two sisters, two friends, in a bus station.

  We could be coming from somewhere, could be going anywhere, and nobody would know one way or the other.

  “Well, looks like we have a wait,” I say.

  “Yeah, we do.” She looks at me and kind of smiles.

  I can tell this girl is not going to ask me where I’m going, or why, or to see whom. First, because she’s too young to pretend to care, but also because she doesn’t want me to reciprocate. She won’t ask, because she doesn’t want to have to tell.

  I’ve heard of people who can identify types of perfume right down to the brand name and country of origin. I’ve heard of people who can distinguish different regional accents to the exact city and neighborhood and street corner.

  Me?

  I can feel guilt the way a hound dog can sniff out a bone he buried in the backyard years before.

  She happened to be in the bathtub when her sister, Lily, finally died.

  Claire slid down against the cold porcelain, and she listened to her mother crying. She watched the water deepen and nearly cover the pale skin of her body, imagining her belly an island, somewhere far, far away. Outside the door, her mother wailed. Claire could hear her father’s voice, weak but comforting, thick with tears. He was walking up and down in the hall, in and out of Lily’s bedroom.

  Lily’s bedroom: metal hospital bed, a bureau top completely covered with medicine bottles, paper cups, gauze, tape. And a smell like bitter chemicals and fresh laundry, and disinfectant, and her sickness. Didn’t everything smell of Lily’s sickness?

  But Lily’s toys were lonely, Claire thought.

  Some had never been taken from their boxes because Lily was too weak to open them. She would die soon, but people still brought her presents when they came. When the visitor left, sometimes her mother would offer the gift to Claire.

  “Would you like this doll?”

  “No way — that’s for babies. I’m not a stupid baby.”

  And then it was too late to take it back. Claire could tell, by the face her mother made, how she disapproved.

  What a horrible and insensitive girl. How could I love this child? How could anyone really love a child like this?

  “Lily’s at peace now,” Claire’s father was saying. “It’s OK. It’s going to be OK now.” His voice was headed down the stairs. To call the doctor? The ambulance? A hearse? Is that how they take dead bodies out of the house? But Claire’s mother stayed in Lily’s room.

  Claire wondered how long it would be before someone remembered she was in here. The bathroom door was shut tight. Was it locked? Hot steam still clung to the air. It completely coated the mirror above the sink. Silently, her knees lowered into the water and her feet rose up on either side of the faucet.

  A noise came from outside, from Lily’s room — a feral, frightening sound, until Claire realized it was only her mother. Claire imagined her mother’s body crumpled on the floor, as she had seen her so many times. But her hands, her hands would be up on the bed, holding on to Lily, even though Lily was gone.

  Claire wondered what would happen if her mother cried forever, as it seemed she had ever since Lily was born and had started dying right away. Would tears fill the house, flood through the halls, and spill out of the windows until they all floated away?

  She heard her father’s footsteps running back up the stairs. Clomping. Clomping. Heavy and loud.

  “Let her go now. Let her go. It’s been so long. So long.”

  But Claire’s mother continued to wail.

  Maybe if Claire turned on the water, the pipes would sputter, the boiler would crank on. Water would rush from the faucet and hit the surface, loudly and with urgency. Claire started to lean forward, but instead she stood, completely upright, the water now only covering her ankles and dripping from every surface of her body, her skin
wet and beginning to pucker with goose bumps.

  Claire turned and looked at herself in the mirror, but she couldn’t see anything. It was too foggy, too steamy, as if it was all underwater. She could only make out a shadow of herself in the glass while beads of water formed. While the air slowly cleared.

  It would only be a matter of time now. What little heat was left in the room would rise up and disappear. The swirling water would be completely drained. It would be quiet again, except for the noises from outside the door.

  She put her hands up to cover her ears. And that’s when Claire decided to run away. To see if anyone would notice she was gone. To see if her father would come and try to find her. And convince her she deserved to be alive.

  For a second I think that the boy working behind the counter here in Baltimore is the same one from the Stamford bus station back home, like I had come all this way just to end up right where I started.

  I am going to buy Claire something to eat, and then I’m going to find someone to help. She is definitely alone, but she hasn’t told me that. And she is definitely angry, but she hasn’t said that either. If there is some kind of security office here, I’ve got to find it and let them know.

  “Uh, excuse me?” I call out so I can get waited on.

  Is that the same kid? It couldn’t be, could it? The way this boy’s jeans are drooping, his faded T-shirt, and the shape of his hair from the back seem familiar. It’s the weirdest feeling, something from the Twilight Zone.

  Déjà vu.

  But when he turns around, I see it is a different person. There is no similarity at all. How weird. Why would I be thinking of that boy, anyway?

  I buy one of just about everything they have: little bags of snacks, chocolate bars, and those crackers with the yellow goo cheese you can spread with a tiny red plastic stick. And a bunch of different drinks. It’s actually pretty cheap down here. Claire carries the stuff back to our seats while I count out my money and pay.

  “Thanks,” I say, stuffing my change back into my bag. I should count it because this guy doesn’t look like he can add or subtract, but neither can I, so what’s the difference?