In Her Eyes

by Renée J. Lukas

  I set the bat against the wall, moving as if I had weights attached to my ankles. Why did it have to be her? She would make it harder than anyone, always viewing me as a product, even her property. She’d wear me down and possibly come close to getting me to change my mind. I had to be resolute in this decision.

  I opened the door, and she scurried in.

  “So glad you’re awake,” she said, sliding out of her overcoat.

  “A ten thirty house call?” I took her coat and hung it in a tiny closet by the door.

  “I know it seems odd,” she said, her expression hard to read. In fact, I didn’t think I’d ever seen her look like this before.

  “I’m quitting,” I said, shutting the closet door for emphasis. I had to get it out first, or I would’ve lost my nerve. She’d start in about this gig or that gig, and before I knew it, I’d cave. So there it was.

  “Excuse me?” Her hands were placed on her bony hips.

  “I’m leaving the band,” I said, feeling my voice getting stronger.

  “You can’t.”

  I smiled and nodded. I was ready for this. “I have to, Linda. It’s a matter of getting on with my life. I’m not getting younger.”

  “Don’t ever talk like that!” she exclaimed. “Your wild child image is our hook. You can’t be heard saying things like that.”

  “Oh, aging isn’t allowed?” I laughed. “I got news for you. I am, and so are you. Why the hell do you think I’m at home at ten thirty and not getting drunk at some bar? I’m not in my twenties anymore.”

  “You just can’t go,” she insisted, almost panicking. I was going to need to find a paper bag for her to breathe in soon.

  “Watch me.” I turned to the small alcove where the kitchen was. “You want anything?”

  “A stiff drink.” She plopped on the couch and stared at the wall.

  I went back to the living room, eyeing her. “You all right?” I had to follow my gut, but I didn’t want to accidentally kill her or anything.

  “You can’t leave,” she repeated. “Not when you’ve just been signed.”

  “What?” Feeling light-headed, I had to sit down. “What?”

  “Drunk Mother Records wants you,” she told me.

  Drunk Mother Records was the label for alternative rock, hard rock and anything considered to be “edgy.”

  “Why didn’t you say that first?” I grabbed her by the collar, while she laughed hysterical laughter. “You should’ve said that the second you walked in, you dumbass!”

  We laughed until neither of us could breathe. Then we spent the night talking about music videos, which songs we’d release, how to tell the guys… I wanted to play a trick on them and tell them that Linda dropped us. But she said that might result in violence or someone breaking an instrument, and she didn’t want that. It turned out to be one of the greatest nights of my life.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Adrienne

  Jacky and Dana had offered to sleep over nearly every night after the funeral. I always told them no, because I figured I’d have to get used to being alone sooner or later. They reluctantly agreed, but insisted on bringing me takeout because my apartment just happened to be on their way. And coincidentally, Jacky would just happen to have a board game under her arm. It was never Taboo, though, because you need teams. And it would have reminded us all of Carmen’s absence. After I told them the news about the band, the next night they barged in with a six-pack and snacks to celebrate my success.

  “To Eye of the Storm!” Jacky toasted. “Course you know you’ll have to take us out to someplace fancy since you’ll have all the big bucks.”

  Dana shoved her.

  “I wish Carmen had lived to see it,” I said. “She used to say she believed in me, but my dreams weren’t paying the bills.” And who were we kidding, they weren’t, until now. That was the cruelest part of her death, for her to be snatched from me just as my dream was about to be fully realized. How I’d wanted to share that with her! I couldn’t dwell on it, though, or I’d get this lump in my throat and my eyes would get cloudy.

  “She does see your success,” Dana said gently.

  “You really believe that?” I didn’t mean to sound insensitive. “You think there’s some white place in the clouds called heaven with a lobby where everybody can watch their loved ones on heavenly TVs or something?”

  “I don’t think it’s like that necessarily.” Dana pouted.

  When Jacky gave me the eye, I said, “Maybe you’re right. I hope so.” It was better than challenging the existence of an afterlife, especially since I really wanted it to be true now more than ever.

  Tonight it felt good to kick back with my friends and drink imported beer, catching up on everybody’s lives, while CNN hummed in the background. It wasn’t long before a press conference came on. I think my friends were still somewhat awed by the fact that I’d actually known this barracuda of a woman—Robin Sanders—a potential candidate for president. I couldn’t get my head around it either.

  CNN often played in the background of my apartment, a constant, antagonistic companion, broadcasting all of the backward things Robin was saying and reminding me of what that would mean for people like me if she took the highest office in the country.

  Jacky, Dana and I crowded around the TV at the moment we heard some of the things Robin was saying in her press conference.

  “We can’t let the bottom feeders undermine our pure American values!” she exclaimed.

  “She’s good,” Jacky said, leaning in.

  Dana and I stared at her for such a blasphemous comment.

  “No,” Jacky explained. “I mean she’s a good manipulator.”

  “Oh.” We murmured in agreement.

  It was true.

  “Who are the bottom feeders exactly?” Dana asked.

  There was no response. I think we all assumed they were us.

  What followed was another sleepless night for me. Too many troublesome thoughts, like scissors in my brain, kept finding their way in and out. Four o’clock turned to five o’clock. The more I thought about my past with Robin, the more I wondered, in my egotistical mind, if I alone might be able to change the collision course this country was on.

  I wrote a song in between periods of turning the light on and off.

  “It Just Takes One”

  It just takes one,

  It just takes one.

  Happiness set free

  high above the trees

  As far as eyes can see,

  Only you with me.

  It just takes one.

  Making freedom ring

  high above the trees

  Ideas can get set free

  if you let them be.

  Freedom is a choice,

  if you want, it will be.

  I shut the light off again, trying to will myself back to sleep or at least back to some measure of calmness. I’d have done anything to soothe my agitation. But nothing worked.

  As the late hours grew thinner, I decided I had to see her for myself, face-to-face, flesh and blood, to reassure myself that she wasn’t the monster I’d been envisioning—or seeing with my own eyes in front of a million microphones. I, like many others, didn’t want to believe what I sensed she might be capable of.

  I concocted a wild plan in the wee hours of that morning. I was going to fly down to Atlanta, and do what, I didn’t know.

  Then like all wild plans, it seemed dumber in the daytime. By nighttime, I decided I’d give her one more chance—unbeknownst to her.

  That was the night she appeared on America Tonight. She was all glamour under a navy Neiman-Marcus blazer and this absurd scarf. She looked like a 1960s flight attendant. They went to a long shot, and you could see her dark stockings under a skirt as she crossed those sexy legs. I almost lost my focus, as I took quick notice of all the little details of her, just as I’d done many years ago. She had longer hair than the last time she was on TV, dark curls falling across her shoulders, her
blue eyes flashing and intelligent.

  Watching her reminded me of my college history class. Fascism doesn’t begin with a bang. It comes on slowly, wrapped in a beautiful smile and a gorgeous laugh. Or, in some cases, simply a charismatic personality. Of course, I’d watched old newsreel footage of Hitler and wondered how a guy who seemed more like an angry version of Charlie Chaplin could attract so much attention. Maybe it was the same concept as screaming babies. You don’t pay attention to the quiet, docile babies who go with the flow. You’re just grateful they don’t make noise on an airplane. But the screaming baby is the one who gets attention, who needs to be tended to, who gets his needs met and who especially gets the press’s attention. In Robin’s case, I’m not saying she was Hitler, though in my mind, which was filled with confusion and disconnected thoughts, she seemed to have an immense power to persuade—and to use that power dangerously. So I guess dictators came to mind. Robin was so stunning, you couldn’t look away when she came on TV. She persuaded with a lilting voice and luminous blue eyes. She was more like a fascist disguised as a movie star. Of course, when my other friends condemned her and the things she said, I wouldn’t admit I used to know her. They’d be on my ass about talking to her, trying to get her to stop. I wasn’t sure I could. People like Jacky and Dana, even Jerry, were laid-back by nature and understood it was complicated. Or maybe they didn’t say more because they didn’t want to piss me off, which was easy to do these days.

  “Americans are ready for a change,” Robin began. She didn’t say, “I think they’re ready.” She stated it as a fact, as if she had some kind of inside information. “They want their schools to teach about Jesus Christ our Savior…”

  “Governor Sanders,” the reporter interrupted, “what would you say to those who argue that this isn’t a theocracy? That we’re not under religious rule in this country?”

  Robin pouted with extra sugar on top until it was almost a smile. “I have no problem respecting the religious freedom of all people,” she opined. Yet at no time did she encourage the teachings of Mormonism or Eastern religions. She walked the party plank, always citing one religion over all others, as though it were superior, then quickly backtracking to insist she meant all religions.

  For the longest time, I had hated religion. I thought it was the biggest cause of hate, division, anger, killing. I wondered, if religion never existed, would human beings have found a way to work it out, to get along better? Something about Robin’s interviews made me more philosophical, as if I felt the planet was on the line. Then I’d decide that with or without religion, it’s in our nature to kill each other anyway, so we would have found something else to fight about. I didn’t want to be cynical. I wanted to think of the best. I wished I could be like my old roommate, Ursula, who was naturally cheerful and idealistic. But since growing up with my dad, I never saw the silver lining first. It had to be proved to me that there was even a cloud before I could think about silver linings. I guess my childhood made me the kind of person who was always bracing for the worst and surprised whenever the worst didn’t happen.

  I’d seen a lot of footage of Robin getting in and out of cars. It looked like she surrounded herself only with people who kissed her ass. They were all deferential, “yes” people who wouldn’t tell her the truth if it slapped them in the head.

  I was scared. Scared of her arrogance. Scared of her rhetoric. I was scared of everything. I’d like to say I was scared mostly for my country and not at all scared about the possibility of seeing her again.

  * * *

  “Another one.” I gave the bartender a stern look of warning not to count my beers.

  Jerry slid his half-empty bottle closer to me, trying to scoot as far away from the chatty woman next to him.

  “I’m a huge fan,” she kept saying. She was an inch away from unzipping his pants.

  When his back was completely turned away from her, she started to get the message.

  “You and your girlfriend having a fight?” I teased.

  “Shut up.” He was hunched over his drink like it was his only prized possession.

  We tried to huddle together, while we could tell that several people in the bar recognized us. It was a small, overly crowded place, a favorite watering hole for the locals.

  “Any way I can talk you out of it?” Of course he meant the idea of me flying down to Atlanta.

  “I was joking,” I said.

  “Really?” He didn’t believe me.

  “Yeah, I only said I should go down there and kick her ass, not that I would.” Of course I was talking about the possibility of confronting Robin, after listening to all of her anti-gay rhetoric, just to see her face go white at the sight of me. She might even faint. And I might enjoy it.

  “Yeah,” he huffed. “Like you don’t care about her.”

  “Nope. Don’t give a shit.”

  Several beers later…

  When a Patriots game got interrupted by news on TV, everybody hissed at the programming switch. It was so crowded in there, we were lucky to have a seat. Most everyone was facing the TV, where they were showing a clip of the governor talking her usual bullshit about gays. My laugh must’ve been louder than the rest, because it caught the ear of a guy standing next to me.

  “You think that’s funny?” he asked.

  I was swirling drunk, the whole place dark and spinning. I managed to turn myself toward the sound of his voice. “Hell, yeah!” I exclaimed.

  “Why?” he persisted.

  “’Cause she’s a big lezzy, that’s why,” I said emphatically.

  “How do you know that?”

  “Uh, c’mon, man,” I was rocking back and forth on my heels. “I knew her real well in college.”

  “You knew her…”

  “In the biblical sense.” I laughed and turned away, trying to find Jerry.

  I didn’t know the guy was a reporter.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Adrienne

  I went down to Atlanta. I couldn’t help myself. I just wanted to get a glimpse of her and see what she’d do at the sight of me. It wasn’t much of a plan, but sometimes your heart, or your gut, leads you in a direction before your brain has a chance to catch up.

  When I got to the airport, a scandal was erupting all over cable news, and you could hear it everywhere on the TVs suspended throughout the concourse. There was even a photo of Robin and me at the bonfire in college! Larger than life, spread across the screen…I saw the headline: “Robin Sanders Hiding Lesbian Affair in College?” Immediately my heart sank. She’d think I’d done it on purpose! I vaguely remembered what I’d said in the bar. Shit. How did they get that photo? My mind raced. Nancy, the girl I used to drink with, had a copy. She took the picture. The reporter must’ve dug around and found my old college friend. As I pieced the puzzle together, I caught a few people staring at me. I tried to hide my face with my jacket collar as I sprinted toward baggage claim.

  The night of Robin’s big rally, I would be there. I had packed a special black dress for the occasion. I had it all planned out. But I had to get Jacky to email me a copy of a certain photograph. Then I needed to print it…

  I kept my head down as I went through the security line, so nobody would recognize me. I got inside with an 8 x 10 photo of us in college stuffed inside the back of my pantyhose near the waist. It was the perfect hiding place as my small backpack-style bag went through the x-ray machine. No one was focused on anything underneath my clothes.

  Once I got inside, I shoved through crowds of people holding up signs that made me want to punch each one of them in the face. I ignored them all and kept myself focused on the bigger picture. I hustled my way to the front row on the right side, taking note of a stage adorned with American flags. If it weren’t for them, I would’ve thought I was getting ready to watch a rock concert.

  It was odd, feeling different from everyone else, walking among the sea of barracudas. The only thing that kept me safe was if they thought that I, too, was a barracu
da. So I did the occasional fist pump when the warm-up guy mentioned “American values.” It felt weird, rubbing shoulders with people who I believed to be my enemies.

  When Robin took to the stage, she seemed larger than life. She owned the crowd, talking about her understanding of poverty, talking about her Aunt Clara who lived in a house with a dirt floor. I’d never heard her mention a poor Aunt Clara before. I think she made her up.

  “Whoever takes office next has to return this country to traditional values and stop unnatural unions from becoming law!” she shouted to the cheers of snakes in blue jeans and tacky t-shirts all around me.

  I was a foreigner in a strange land.

  As she spoke, I viewed her as the audience did—as a politician trying to get everyone on her side. She was a good orator, for sure, but I couldn’t see or feel a trace of the person I’d known. At times, it was actually frightening.

  When the spectacle was finally over, she broke to the right, as I’d seen her do at her other rallies, which was why it was part of my plan to stand there, and she proceeded to autograph glossy photos of herself or take selfies with adoring fans. Again, it was more like she was the celebrity and we were the paparazzi. At one point, I wondered if she’d even pause to give the time of day to little ole me.

  As she moved to the person right beside me on the left, I pulled out the photograph I’d been shielding so carefully. I raised it as soon as she got to me, watched her briefly startled by the picture of us at the bonfire. Then I smiled as she looked up. Our eyes locked. She knew I could see through her.

  “Make it out to Adrienne,” I said coolly.

  For a split second, the façade fell away as she gazed at me. Apparently, she’d paused just long enough to catch the attention of the press, and soon cameras flashed all around us. Everything happened in a blur as I was escorted forcefully to a waiting car.