The Myth of You and Me: A Novel

by Leah Stewart

  If Suzette still lived in Boston, she’d know where Sonia was, but I couldn’t find a listing for her. So I got dressed, copied down the Cambridge address of the magazine where Sonia worked—that day was a Friday—and left to find someone to give me directions. On my way out I stopped at my car to repack what little I’d brought inside. I took Oliver’s package with me. Walking up the street, I turned for a last look at my car, which contained everything I owned. I almost wished someone would steal it.

  There was a Dunkin’ Donuts in Porter Square, and as I walked in, a small child with chocolate frosting around his mouth stared at me. I smiled at him, and his eyes widened. He turned to his mother and said in an audible whisper, “Mommy, that’s the biggest girl in the world.”

  “Uh-huh,” the mother said, turning the page of her newspaper.

  Waiting in line for coffee and directions, I thought of Oliver’s months-long obsession with chocolate doughnuts, how I’d fetched them from every doughnut shop in town, searching for the perfect one—until I began to complain that he was never going to agree I’d found it. On the rare occasions when I grumbled about doing what Oliver asked, he’d endure only a few complaints before saying, with mock sternness, “I’m the boss.” This always made me laugh, and because, in the end, what he wanted was so small, I’d stop complaining and do it. There’s something to be said for living a life subject to someone else’s needs—you never have those empty periods of vague discontent brought on by too much freedom, too little purpose. I never had to decide when to eat my lunch or what I was going to have. And then, too, I used to know that I was what Oliver needed, that I was necessary. I swallowed over a sudden lump in my throat.

  Behind the counter was a boy who spoke awkward English. I ordered a chocolate doughnut and a cup of coffee with cream. I confirmed that I wanted no sugar and then watched as he spooned some in anyway. He caught himself and looked up at me with a guilty expression. “That’s all right,” I said. “I’ll take it.” While he made change, I tasted the coffee and tried not to make a face. I put the address on the counter and asked him if he knew where it was.

  He let out a whistling breath, studying the address. I could feel the man behind me in line growing impatient. The boy said, “I think Harvard Square. Perhaps, yes.”

  “How do I get there?” I asked.

  “You take the T,” he said. “Across the street.”

  “That way?” I said, pointing. And then the man behind me stepped around and in front of me, jostling me out of the way so that hot coffee sloshed onto my hand and dripped onto my white shirt. I hadn’t even gotten my doughnut yet.

  “Can’t you see you have other customers?” he said to the boy behind the counter. He placed his order, not even glancing at me, even though I continued to stand there, mopping at my shirt with a napkin. He was tall, with floppy blond hair and a gray shirt tucked into black pants with an iron crease down the leg. If this had been Oxford, he would have patiently waited his turn. He would have overheard my request for directions and walked me out onto the sidewalk to show me where to go. He would have asked about my errand and expressed interest and concern. Here, he didn’t even thank the boy for his coffee. I followed him out the door, and on the sidewalk I said, “Excuse me.” He whirled around, startled, and I said, “That was really rude.”

  He turned scarlet. He stammered, “Well . . . you . . .”

  “I what?” I didn’t care that my voice was rising, that people were turning to look. “This is about you and why you would be so fucking rude. I’m looking for a missing person. What’s your excuse?”

  “You were taking too long,” he mumbled.

  “Well, I’m really sorry. I’ve no doubt two minutes of your time are more important than my missing friend.” I brushed past him. “Asshole,” I said, without looking back. Because I was at the corner, and the light had just turned, I crossed the street. I went into the T station. The escalator down was so long I felt I was descending into a pit of hell.

  On the train I stood even though there were plenty of seats, gripping the pole with one hand and holding my coffee with the other, the package wedged under my arm. I was still so angry I was shaking. I could still see that man’s scarlet face. He hadn’t put up much of a fight. My shirt was stained. My coffee was too sweet. It was only as we pulled into Harvard Square that I realized I had left the address on the counter, between the napkin dispenser and an advertisement for a frozen drink. I threw the coffee away as soon as I got off the train.

  I walked around Harvard Square for an hour, hoping to stumble across the office of the magazine. I tried to look through Sonia’s eyes at the gourmet food shop and the chess players outside the Au Bon Pain, at the tall man who called me darlin’ and persuaded me to buy, for a dollar, a newspaper about the homeless. If I could see this place the way she did, I would find her.

  Finally, past the main part of the square, I found a fancy-looking camera store next to a bookstore, and knew that if Sonia and I had been together, we would’ve parted company here—she to look at cameras, me to look at books, saying we would find each other again later. I went into the camera store.

  The clerk—he looked vaguely professorial, and I thought maybe everyone in Cambridge looked like that—knew where the magazine office was. The boy at the Dunkin’ Donuts had been wrong. It was on Massachusetts Avenue—the clerk said Mass. Ave.—outside of Porter Square, not far from Sonia’s apartment. He found a piece of paper and drew a little map for me. Looking over his shoulder at the carefully labeled streets, I asked if he knew Sonia. Indeed, he did. He said she was delightful, and that she came in all the time, for new lenses, for advice, for careful processing of her black-and-white film. The one-hour places, he said with contempt, never got the contrast right. Even in this big city the guy in the camera shop knew Sonia’s name.

  I was halfway out the door when he called after me, “Tell Sonia her black-and-whites will be ready in a couple of days.”

  “Okay,” I said. “If I see her, I will.”

  As I passed a low brick wall on my way back to the T station, I saw among a group of teenagers two girls, about fifteen or sixteen, smiling and frowning and rolling their eyes in unison. In my peripatetic childhood I had had other best friends besides Sonia—Terry in Virginia, Helen in England, and in Kansas, Dana, whose flat American vowels I religiously imitated, frantic to lose my British accent. So Sonia was not my only, or even my first, best friend. She was the last. It wasn’t that I hadn’t made friends since, just that I thought myself past the age of that particular kind of friendship. Adult friendship doesn’t grant you an exclusive, isn’t meant to be ranked above romance and family. I couldn’t imagine ever living that moment again, when you say, with a shy and hopeful pride, “You’re my best friend.” The other person says it back and, there, you have chosen each other, out of everyone in the world. You have fallen in love and said so.

  The teenagers looked nothing like Sonia and I had looked at their age. We had big hair—one of these girls had dyed hers blue. We wore Coke shirts and Swatches and acid-washed jeans. We said “fixin’ to” and “dang,” hung out with Southern Baptists, dated boys who drove pickup trucks. These girls probably snuck into rock clubs. They did drugs and went to poetry readings. They knew all about Zen Buddhism and read articles in The New Yorker. What I recognized was the way they kept looking at each other even though they were each talking to a boy. Every so often they exchanged these quick, knowing glances, each making sure the other one was still there, still with her. I wondered how long their friendship would last, and I felt sorry for them, because they didn’t know it wouldn’t.

  12

  On the long escalator back up out of the Porter Square station, people huffed past me on the left while I held on to the railing and felt myself lifted. I knew where I was going now, and I could see myself handing Sonia the package, see her tearing off the paper. I indulged a brief fantasy in which the package contained not only something for Sonia, but further instructions for
me, Oliver sending me on a scavenger hunt. As I rose into sunlight, I thought of how difficult it would have been for Sonia to do what I had done that day—buying a T token and telling someone the magazine’s address. For her these simple daily transactions would have been fraught with the possibility of error and confusion. It was no miracle for me to count out the correct change.

  I glanced over at the down escalator, and there, just passing me, looking straight ahead and frowning, was Will Barrett, Sonia’s ex-boyfriend.

  When I saw him, I thought his name. But I didn’t connect it to the boy I had known. That boy belonged to another time and place and was not supposed to be here.

  At the top of the escalator, I stepped off and and got on the one going down. I took the steps two at a time, running down the left side, halting in impatience when there was someone in my way.

  I reached the bottom in time to see Will push through the turnstile. I had to wait in line to buy a token, and while I stood there, almost frantic, I remembered senior prom, dancing with him, his warm hand flat against the small of my back. The woman in the booth slid a token into the metal dish, and I nearly fumbled it away trying to pick it up, but then I was through the turnstile and running, dodging people who reared away in exaggerated alarm. I saw him again just as the train pulled into the station. I shouted his name, but he didn’t turn, didn’t hear me over the hissing of the brakes, and then I was close enough to touch him. I reached out my hand toward his shoulder, and then the doors opened, and he moved.

  He got on the train. As the doors closed, I saw him clearly through the window, choosing to stand, as I had, even though there were available seats. It was definitely him. Same height, same proud nose, same deep brown eyes, so dark they were almost black.

  Same air of remove, as though, even on a crowded train, he was completely alone.

  I stood there and watched the train pull away.

  When I finally turned to leave, I found an old man behind me, leaning on a cane and watching me with curiosity. “Why didn’t you get on?” he asked.

  “What?” I was still rattled.

  “The train? You were running and running. I was thinking, ‘I wish I could run like her.’ But then you didn’t get on.” He cocked his head, waiting for an explanation.

  “Wrong train,” I said.

  “My dear, this is the Red Line,” he said. “Only one train comes through here.”

  The phrase my dear, the cane, the white hair, the light glinting off his glasses—I was seeing ghosts. Grief, memory—they were hallucinogens.

  “Are you all right?” the man asked.

  “Claustrophobia,” I said. At that moment it was true. I ran back up the escalator, through the glass doors, to the welcome light outside. Will Barrett, I thought, with some amazement. I was standing on a street corner, people darting around me, my heart still beating out the rhythm of his name.

  I met Will Barrett for the first time late in Christmas break my sophomore year, the night my parents dragged me to a party at his parents’ house. His father, like mine, was in the air force, and they’d been transferred to Clovis from Virginia, just as we had been more than a year before. Will’s father was a big man, as tall as my father and wider through the shoulders, and when Colonel Barrett greeted us, his expression suggested a smile without being one.

  “I see you brought your daughter,” Colonel Barrett said, speaking to my father but looking at me. He pointed into the living room. “My son’s over there, standing in the corner as usual.” He looked me up and down, pursing his lips in a silent whistle. “You’re almost his height. Do you play basketball, too? Will was the star of the varsity team last year, even though he was only a freshman.” He didn’t wait for me to say anything; he just took me by the arm. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll introduce you.”

  I’d never been a fan of meeting new people, especially not boys, and I didn’t appreciate the man’s grip on my arm, or the way he marched me toward the crowd of people in the living room. Colonel Barrett pointed again at Will, who I could see now, leaning against the wall with his hands in the pockets of his jeans. He was watching the partygoers as though he were at a much greater remove from them, like someone at a play. He didn’t seem to notice our approach. His black T-shirt—it said THE REPLACEMENTS on it—looked like it had been bought before a growth spurt. Worn thin, it clung to the muscles of his stomach and chest. Over that he was wearing an unbuttoned white oxford, no doubt a concession to his parents’ urging him to dress up for the party.

  As we got closer, dread blossomed in my stomach. This boy was so beautiful he could have posed for one of the posters I hung on the walls of my bedroom. When we were two feet away, he looked up, and I saw him wince, before he assumed an expression of resolute politeness.

  “Well, Will,” his father said. “Here’s someone for you to talk to. Cameron, tell him all about Clovis. Do you play basketball?”

  I shook my head.

  “Why not?”

  I had no interest in basketball or any other sport, or any activity that would cause large numbers of people to look at me. I didn’t think Colonel Barrett would sympathize with that. “I can’t dribble,” I said.

  “It’s easy,” he said. “You just . . .” He demonstrated with an imaginary ball, then looked at me expectantly. Will was watching me, too.

  “I can’t,” I said.

  Colonel Barrett shook his head like this was tragic. He jerked his thumb at his son. “He dominates the court. You’ll see.” With that, he strode away.

  I did my best to smile at Will, and he nodded in response. I turned and surveyed the adults. I saw my father on the other side of the room struggling to focus on what someone was telling him, and knew he didn’t want to be at the party any more than I did. At a safe distance from Will, I leaned against the wall.

  After a moment, he said, “I guess somebody should talk.”

  I glanced at him, but he was still looking out at the room. Even up close he seemed like a photograph. It was strange to hear him speak. “How about you?” I said.

  “I just did.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Okay,” he said. He paused as though searching for a subject. “I bet you get tired of being asked if you play basketball.”

  “You’re right,” I said.

  “If you play basketball,” he said, “then you never have to explain why not. That’s an advantage.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.” I looked at his T-shirt. “So, who are The Replacements?”

  “A band.” His expression suggested that he was trying to suppress disappointment. “You never heard of them?”

  “No,” I said. “Sorry.”

  We lapsed into silence again. Out in the room, the laughter swelled. A woman in a low-cut red dress, fancier than anything anyone else was wearing, put her hand on the arm of the man she was talking to, and leaned in like he was so funny she couldn’t stand up straight. Her breast brushed against his arm. Wine sloshed dangerously near the rim of her glass. The man, who wore a wedding ring, watched her with detached amusement. “Stop it,” I wanted to say to her. “You’re making a fool of yourself.”

  When Will spoke again, I jumped. “So what’s this town like?” he said.

  I thought of what I could tell him about Clovis—that the fundamentalists signed yearbooks “In His Name” and considered Mormonism a cult, that the kids who wore Megadeth T-shirts and smoked on the edge of school property were called thrashers, that people of Mexican descent were called Spanish, that Spanish kids hung out with white kids or black kids, but usually not with both, that when the fire alarm went off at school early one morning all the girls you otherwise never saw came out of the nursery, cradling their babies close. That after you suffered through the unbearable heat of summer days, you got as a reward a warm and crisp night, that the flatness of the land, the way nothing blocked your view of the sky, made you feel open and expansive, like a deep breath. “It’s okay,” I said.

  “Somebody told me
they tip cows here.”

  “Well, not everybody,” I said. “Not me.”

  “That’s good,” he said. “You shouldn’t. When you tip a cow over, it can’t get up. It just lies on its back with its legs wriggling, like a beetle.”

  “Really?”

  “Really,” he said.

  I stared at him, trying to decide whether to believe him. Finally he grinned. “I knew you were kidding,” I said.

  “Cows have a lot in common with beetles,” he said. “The Beatles almost called themselves The Cows.”

  I laughed. Then we were silent again. Every comment I could think of had something to do with cows.

  “So cow-tipping is out,” Will said. “What else can I do to fit in here?”

  “Let’s see,” I said. “Cruise Main. Join the Southern Baptist church. Change your name to Cody.”

  “Cody Barrett.”

  “That’s a pretty good cowboy name.”

  “I like it,” he said. “Let’s do it. You can call me that at school, and everybody will follow your lead.”

  I started to say, “Really?” then stopped myself. “That’s not going to work again.”

  He sighed in mock regret. “So,” he said, “you don’t tip cows and you don’t play basketball. What do you do?”

  “Nothing exciting,” I said. “I don’t play anything.”