by Paloma Meir
I sat up next to her, embarrassed by my misunderstanding her again.
“Aren’t you attracted to me anymore? That night on the sofa, you wouldn’t come upstairs with me.”
“I thought you were sleepwalking or wanted me to be asleep.” I was too shocked to say anything else.
“That doesn’t make any sense. I ask you direct questions all the time. I thought the sex scared you off. I don’t know. I was so lonely tonight. I thought if I came and just spoke to you... it wouldn’t upset you.”
I took her face in my hands and gently kissed her the way that I had seen Serge do many times the week he was here with us. She shook me off of her.
“That’s very sweet. I appreciate your attempts at being Serge-like but that’s not how we are with each other. Please don’t do that again. It makes me sad. I love the way we were together," She moved farther away from me. “The way we were on the sofa, not that you responded, that’s how we are. Don’t you like that anymore?”
“I want to be gentle with you Zelda.”
“It’s not like you brutalize me. We’re just very passionate. You’re being very dramatic. Isn’t that my role in our relationship?” She took my hand and put it on her cheek. “We can find our own way to be gentle, not Serge’s way. There’s nothing but time on this island.”
She was right. We could find our own way. She was here with me now. She had come to me as I had wanted her too and I had been too scared again to even see it.
“You’re going to be okay Zelda. You met me too soon. We fell to hard for each other and then something bad happened to you and you clung to me and I loved it because I’ve always loved you,” Tears formed in her eyes as they had been since I had come back onto her life. “You two talked about high school all the time, and you two were right he was all the gentleness that you have should have experienced when you were young. You had it now a little late at twenty-nine.’ The tears fell. “High school love, other than us, hurts because your feelings are new, everything’s fresh. It meant to end. It’s like you two found a porthole to the past. You’re going to feel better, and you’re always going to remember him. That’s just the way it is Zelda.”
“It hurts so much, even with you here. You’re the one I want to be with, he was right about that.” Full sobs now, my poor girl, “I don’t have anyone to talk about it with. I wonder how he is, but I know I can’t call him, or write him a letter that would be selfish. I have to let him go and it’s so hard Danny.”
“You can talk to me about him.” I meant that too. I would hate every minute of it but I would take her pain for her.
She did, she told me everything from the beginning from when we are all kids. We stayed up until dawn her curled up against me, her arm across my chest, very little tears compared to how she had been since I had come back to her. She told me of Paolo, her whole journey to our tropical paradise. She talked and talked and I listened. All of her crazy decisions because I had put her through hell. Serge had saved her. My buddy Serge was the superhero that I was supposed to be for her.
As she talked one story of their childhood stayed in my head. They were kids. Zelda was twelve her body fully grown her mind still a child. Her and Carolina played truth or dare. They already knew everything about each other so it was just a serious of dares. She had dared Carolina to eat a raw egg, silly things like that. Growing bored with their game Carolina upped the stakes. She dared Zelda to go into Serge’s room in her bra and underwear and sing a song and dance for him.
Serge was thirteen, if he was anything like me and he was, I know this because he was my friend even then, he was just trying to figure out all these new feelings. In dances Zelda with her new body in a tiny tank top braless and panties singing a Donna Summer song she can’t remember, but I can, doing an exaggerated dance for Serge who sat on his bed surrounded by his science books. I can see it as she tells me the story. Her arms flying around, her breasts flying up and down, singing her disco song of love.
She said his mouth hung open. She thought she had bothered him in the middle of his homework. Feeling bad about her and Carolina’s little game interrupting his studying she sat down next to him on his bed after her dance that would have driven any teenage boy mad, she kissed his cheek and apologized explaining it was a game of truth or dare, hopped up and went back to Carolina’s room. Serge didn’t say a word to her. Poor fucking Serge. I knew it was middle school.
As the sun came out her story ended, her tears stopped falling, she seemed tired and relaxed. I held her tight against me, running my hand through her hair. A gentle thing I did to her all the time. All the hugs I gave her, all the times I held her hand, all the times I had her wrapped up in my arms. I was gentle with her. I always had been. I loved her. I may have dropped the ball for her with bad results but she had been mine and she was again.
We were settled here on this island. She wasn’t going anywhere. Her train travel had removed her desire to explore the world. She had created a paradise here in Hawaii. She may see it as a luxury prison that locked Serge out occasionally but it didn’t have to be that way. It could be however we wanted it. We were young, we had time to build any life we wanted for ourselves.
“I’m not going to tell you what we should do but I’m going to say some things that I want you to think about.” I sat her up before she could drift off to sleep, “Look at me beauty. We could have more here Zelda. Astrid and Marco are great, well maybe not Astrid but there’s a world of people outside your jagged white security wall. I’ve met them when I go out and surf with Marco. Family people like us.” I kissed her forehead.
“Don’t fall asleep on me. Louisa needs friends and so do we. Let’s have a full life Zelda. I understand you canceling your parent’s visit, but it’s time we tell them and my family. It will be awkward but we want a family life. I know you do too especially, look at you with Louisa,” The smell of Astrid making bacon drifted through the windows of the cottage. We would miss breakfast that morning.
“You’re going to forget about your hopefully dwindling pile of money and we will live the way you lived with Paolo in Madrid. Put it somewhere and we’ll give it to our kids, one of which I’m going to give you in a few minutes. I’m going to take care of you. I’m going to go back to work and I have my own money anyway. We’re going to be normal, as normal as we can be and live our lives, we’re going to build a dream life together. Are we good Zelda?”
I knew talking about her money would make her think of how it ended her life with Serge but we needed to get that out of the way.
“That would be fine. I don’t want to think anymore. If you could make all the decisions for a while...”
“No Zelda. We are going to talk about things and make decisions together. It’s our life. You’re half of that. I love you. I’m going to give you our baby right now and exactly the way you want me to give it to you. I’m backed up from our sofa experience. How could have I have misread you? You’ll get your passion.”
I did too. We wrecked the room. I had to put my hand over her mouth a few times to quiet her. Sound carried over the cottage compound. I didn’t want to scare anyone. I filled her up with our babies. I kissed her hard. I kissed her soft. I held her hands down the way she liked, not for one second was it rough. It was all love.
Finished we lay together on a bed, now missing blankets and sheets tangled around us. We were wrapped around each other, a little sweaty from the heat of the day starting around us and fell together into a deep gentle sleep.
Trashed –
A Bipolar Love Story
by
Paloma Meir
Chapter One
It was my first real memory. I have glimpses of times before, my mother brushing my hair, my father pulling a coin out of my ear, but nothing solid. It’s as if my mind always ran at a mad speed, over processing.
The brush my mother ran through my hair was coarse and scratched my scalp but I didn’t recognize it as painful. It was more a texture to my skin. My fa
ther’s cold coin against my skin didn’t cool my aching head full of racing thoughts.
But this is my first real memory, a linear story that still unfolds in my brain that has calmed over the years. The meaning eludes me, and my many therapists have never shed light upon my screams and actions that day.
It was when we still lived on Mercer Island in Seattle. We wouldn’t live there much longer. The neighbors would gossip about my parents, asking what was going on our home to cause such behavior in such a pretty little girl like me.
I was almost eight. The sun shone, after many months of grey rain. My mother, so tired from working at home, minding me after a string of nannies quit.
She took me to the park, and rested herself on the bench, smiling at me as I played with a little girl my age. Even then I saw the relief in her eyes. I was not a stupid child. I knew I was different. I knew I was trouble, no matter how many times she told me I was her little angel.
I smiled back as my little friend and I dug a hole in the sand. The little girl wasn’t a creative thinker, and said that we would dig all the way to China. I didn’t tell her she was stupid, just dug alongside her, pretending like my mother that I was okay, that this is the way it would be from this day forward.
The hole was deep. We could reach our arms all the way in, scooping the bottom. The moist sand and the deep cold earth underneath my fingernails.
My hand grew numb, traveling up my arm, until I was freezing. That would have been okay if the birds hadn’t flown above squawking, distracting me, making me look up.
The sun caught my eye. It was large in the sky, and I knew that the sun was hot, and it should warm my body. No clouds were covering it.
I stood up and screamed, “Where is the heat?” over and over again. My new friend wanting to protect me from the sun that refused to provide warmth jumped up, opened her pink corduroy jacket to wrap around me. Laughing as if it were a game, saying she was cold too, that we should have our Moms take us for Hot Chocolate.
I smacked her head when she touched me with her arm while trying to keep me warm. Nobody ever thought I did it purposely, but the damage was done.
The little girl flew off head first into the climbing structure, cutting her above the eye. The blood poured down her cherubic face as she screamed louder than I had.
But I didn’t rush to her. I didn’t offer a helping hand the way she had to me. I just stood there watching, fascinated.
My Mother took me home. We didn’t go to the park again.
This is the story of how I got better, and stopped hurting everyone around me.
Chapter Two
“Celena,” My mother turned off the engine of her new car, a convertible she had bought to celebrate our move to the golden state of California. The car was a Volvo because she was still a sensible woman who led a minimalist life, as did my father. Both of them too intellectual to take the frills of life seriously. We agreed on that but not much else.
“Please remember the students are individuals, not stereotypes. No matter how indestructible they may seem to you. They can be broken…” She spoke as we sat in the school parking lot. I wished the top on the car were up, because even though she had a calming voice, it did project.
“I’ll remember.” How could I forget? It was all we had talked about over the summer and was the catalyst for our move, although she would tell her friends it was for the sunshine.
I had not meant to push the girl over the edge. I hadn’t really cared when it happened, when she made the live feed on the internet of her cutting her arms, saying this is what we all wanted.
And really nobody had wanted that, not even me, although the spectacle of it all did enliven my evening.
Her parents called the police, and though they and everyone in our small community knew it was me who spearheaded the campaign against the golden girl of my high school, there was no actual proof.
It had worked out well, I wanted to tell my mother. Life in Los Angeles, specifically the Hollywood Hills where we now lived was vastly superior to the low-key world of Seattle.
I knew not to say this to her. Better to pretend I was properly chastised. I did want the rest of my high school years to go smoothly. No more curious comments on my high school records.
College seemed the best option for my future, a good one too. I would be free of the tutelage of my parents, free to be whomever I was. I was counting the days.
“Okay, my darling,” My mother smiled, so much love she wanted to give me. A stirring of guilt, or maybe pity, passed through me. “Here,” She handed me a baggie containing Fish Oil, Vitamin B, a multi-vitamin and assorted calming herbs.
“I haven’t eaten yet.” I took the baggie from her, and slung my book bag over my shoulder.
“It has been a hectic morning.” She laughed.
It was true. We had only moved into our new home a week before. We were still living out of the boxes.
“I’ll take them with my lunch.” I smiled because that was what people did while conversing. Smiling was hard with the thought of what my lunch would be. My mother had put me on a strict vegan diet when I hit puberty.
My moods had demanded it, and, truthfully, it did even out the edges. But it was not a cure. As far as I could tell from my research, there was no cure beyond medicine, and I wasn’t going to take pills.
A real cure for the real problem beyond the symptoms of my obvious disorder did not exist. I did not let my parents, or the many doctors I had seen over the years know of the root problem.
I was dead inside and there was not a treatment plan for that.
I got out of the car and pushed my way through the throng of high school students so different from my last school. The girls all wearing raggedy denim shorts with those awful sheepskin boots. The boys belonged to the cult of Nike.
This surprised me. I had assumed Los Angeles had more individuality. My old high school in Seattle had more variety, although many had clung to the style of grunge clothes that had made my city famous when I was still a little girl.
Me? I wore a knee length A-line floral dress I had found in one of the vintage shops before we moved with black ballet flats. I felt no need to change my style to fit in. I knew that some would change theirs to follow my lead in no time.
I held the baggie of assorted pills over the garbage can at the door of my first class but thought better of it and put them in my bag to take with my lunch. I did want my time in this new world to go smoothly.
…
I surveyed the open air cafeteria at lunchtime, taking in the groups. The school was jock heavy, not interesting to me. I scanned for the popular girls, not knowing whether or not to sit with them. It hadn’t gone well the last time I had done that.
I saw across the field of the school a group of girls I knew would be the most fun, in their shorter shorts, over made-up faces, sluttishly splayed out over picnic benches. They would be the experimenters, dabbling in drugs and alcohol, sexually precocious.
Tempted, tempted, tempted but no. I couldn’t allow myself the luxury of losing myself the way that they did. Too much could be lost for myself.
I spied my group to be off to the side closest to the vending machines. Blonde, all of them. Most of the school was blonde, but these girls had the shiniest locks, with unnatural expensive looking highlights. Their outfits were the same as the others but their backpacks were Prada, Gucci, and other high-end brand names.
I didn’t squeeze into their table but sat at one over populated by second tier more studious looking girls. A few of them even wore their hair in their natural brown color.
I looked their way as I opened my bag, and took out a vile looking container of tofu veggie scramble. The prettiest girl, Cara, the one who would be only true friend and she would pay for that choice, smiled at me.
I smiled back trying not to stare. She was beautiful with her golden blonde waves that fell down her back, her bright deep blue eyes and California golden sun kissed skin.
I didn
’t feel a need to initiate conversation with any of them. I knew they would come to me because my look could be deceptive and really there was nothing more easily read than a teenage girl trying to figure herself out.
I may not have been beautiful by the glossy standards of the city but I was striking all the same. Pixyish is how people described me, which was laughable because I stood 5.9 and very thin, even by their exaggerated standards.
Done with my lunch I walked to my next class behind a group of boys that I was sure ran the male end of the hierarchy. Cute from behind, jovially laughing to each other. They seemed like a nice enough bunch. But the dynamics of boys did not really interest me, too basic, primitive. Eat, play, eat, play— boring.
I would be wrong.
Chapter Three
Tired at the end of my first day with a full load of AP classes I made my way across the football field to the lab where the Physics Club met. I wasn’t terribly interested in science but it came easily to me and impressed the colleges.
