by Jana Casale
In the locker room an older-middle-aged woman was crouched down naked.
“I dropped a little gold key,” she said, looking under a bench, “if you happen to see it.”
“Like a diary key?” Leda asked her.
“Wow, that’s a great reference,” the woman said. “A little bigger than a diary key.”
She helped the woman for a few minutes, looking under the sink and by the showers. The woman’s body was linear enough, but it was still lumped in places. Leda figured there might be something wrong with her for not being more ashamed of how lumped she was, but in the moment she didn’t pay much attention to it. Finding the key felt pressing and more important. She helped her look for a little while longer, but in the end they both gave up.
“I’m sure someone will find it,” the woman said, but Leda didn’t think it was likely. She couldn’t imagine what this little gold key looked like, and she couldn’t imagine that anyone else would be able to either.
That night she canceled her gym membership and ate a piece of cake. Two days later she’d think about rejoining as she tried on a pair of jeans. In her was a yearning greater than hunger and greater than thirst. It was an unyielding trauma and torment that plugged away in rhythmic consistency. It was sanity and insanity and cellulite that would never go away.
CHAPTER 10
Loneliness
She could hear it in the sound of a coin dropping and in leaning down to grab it, the rush of blood as she stood back up. In the touch of a gum wrapper in her pocket and in the redness of her coat, the space between each button. On the nape of her neck and in the sound of cereal pouring. She was lonely.
At night she would wrap her arms around herself and run her hand over her back with her fingertips. My back no one is touching, she would think. The daytime was mostly taken up, but the quiet moments that were not taken up were wrought with emptiness. On her lunch break at school she was surrounded by couples walking through their springtimes together. She’d sit in a corner with a sad sandwich pretending to read on her phone as she listened to them sputter inanity at each other. Won’t I get to talk about light fixtures? Doesn’t someone care what type of light fixtures I like? she thought.
There were many things she could not do alone. Many places that would emphasize her pain and all the beautiful things she violently hoped for. She once heard a girl at a party talk about the Saturday night she went to a nice restaurant by herself.
“You wouldn’t believe it, but I went to Il Capitano alone last Saturday,” the girl said.
“You could have called me, I would have gone with you,” another girl said, touching her shoulder in condolence.
“No, I decided just because I’m single does not mean that I can’t go to a nice restaurant on a Saturday night. I mean, really, do I have to have a boyfriend to have dinner? It’s insane.”
The wide-eyed stares of all the other girls listening to the story of the lonely meal circled the girl. Leda looked at her and thought, You are lonely and kind of fat like me. You are fatter, though, and probably more lonely.
The girl took a nervous bite of a crostini and then said, “And it’s a great way to meet guys.”
Leda would get together with her friends for girls’ nights and they would go out to eat or to a bar to have wine and appetizers. She’d dress up and wear extra eye makeup. It was nice to feel like she had somewhere to be. Her friends would laugh and talk about men. They would say things like, “I so needed this girls’ night,” or “I wish he would text me.” The night was always an array of happiness and absence, but really, at least it was a way to not feel like you were as glaringly single, alone, without. There were so many times when to just stand without a man seemed like the most painful way to stand, and girls’ nights provided a parenthetical escape from this burden. Most weekends, though, she just stayed home.
One Sunday afternoon Leda braved a Klimt exhibit at the MFA alone. Her friend Sonja canceled last-minute because the guy she was seeing wanted to get lunch.
“He was really hungry, and we stopped at this great taco place,” she said.
Leda envisioned them eating tacos as they laughed and talked about all the great sex they were having and what light fixtures they liked.
She walked alongside the Klimt paintings, focusing on what she must look like to all the other museumgoers. She stood up as straight as possible and came up close to each painting and then moved far away, as if she had some deep understanding of perspective. She took out a small pocket notepad from time to time. In the notepad she wrote: “dreamlike” and “colorful.” That was the last time she ever used the notepad. Years later she would find it in a box marked “mismatch” and would wonder what “dreamlike” and “colorful” meant.
Upon noticing a girl laughing an embarrassed laugh at her boyfriend’s whispers in front of Adam and Eve, Leda decided it was time to go. I wish I was The Kiss, she thought, and neglected to visit the gift shop.
On the train ride home she smiled at a boy, but he looked away.
That night she microwaved soup and watched four hours of a game show she didn’t know the name of. She dreamt about the boy on the train whispering to her about melted candy neatly spun and then rehardened.
The loneliness was manageable enough with girls’ nights and busying oneself, but the ever-present need for sex was not. It was like a phantom limb that she’d reach for. Every day she was reminded that there was no arm. Sexless by a trauma that didn’t exist. People aren’t meant to live like this, she’d think when she’d smell sweat or eat a lemon ice. Sometimes she’d be alone in an elevator with a man and be reminded of just how much she burned for touch. She would get dizzy just from sensing his body beside her. It took all her willpower not to jump on him and try to have sex between floor stops. She never acted on the impulse, of course, although there were several occasions when she almost attempted conversation. Once a man in a suit who smelled like rhubarb asked her what time it was. She answered, “Yes,” and before she had time to explain that she was so lonely, and that she did love rhubarb, he was gone, out of her life forever on floor seven. The rest of the day she walked around thinking up everything she should have said instead of “Yes” that could have led to their subsequent love affair. “It’s four thirty” seemed most plausible.
Leda had never actively been conditioned to believe that she needed to be with a man to be happy. Her mother certainly was not the type to instill values of happily-ever-after or any fairy tales of the sort. Since she was three years old her mom had been saying, “Dreams first, boys second.” Leda had a vague memory of herself in a sandbox allowing a little boy to steal a shovel away from her and her mother taking it back, saying, “Dreams first, boys second.” From then on she wanted to believe shovels were a part of her dreams, and that no boy would steal a shovel away from her again.
By middle school there were no more sandboxes, just glitter eye shadow and flavored lip gloss. It became clear that the girls who were worshipped, the girls who mattered, were the girls who were “going out” with boys. There was Sandy Lourrie, who was dating Kyle Fielding, and wasn’t she pretty, and it’s no wonder Kyle would want to date her. Isn’t Kyle so hot? She’s so lucky, but really it’s no wonder ’cause she’s so pretty. Maybe Sandy will invite us to her birthday party, and we’ll get to hear all the great things about Kyle.
When she was sixteen her cousin dated a doctor. At the family Christmas party all the women gathered around, saying, “A doctor, did you hear? A doctor. She’s dating a doctor. Did you hear that she is really dating a doctor?” The rest of the night her cousin floated around on her doctor and ate potato salad with swift overachieving mouthfuls.
Leda wasn’t in any way conscious of why or how being with a man made you superior, but it was an inescapable fact that was muddy and absolute. Once a girl had a boyfriend she had solidified her desirability through the commitment of a man. She was linear e
nough to be loved. She had won.
Leda remembered a woman at her mother’s work who had been promoted to vice president of the company. There was a party for her that Leda attended with her mom. The cake said “Congratulations Susan!” Everyone talked about Susan and how she really deserved this, and did you know she went to Yale? Isn’t that amazing? After they gave a toast, Susan made a speech. She thanked everyone who had helped her, and talked about gardening because she was alone and all she had was her azaleas. Everyone smiled politely as Susan went on and on about her garden. Leda thought, This woman is talking about her garden to show us she is happy, but she is talking so much we can see that she is sad.
Leda did not want to be Susan. Somewhere beyond her shovel dreams it was clear that for her life to really mean anything she would need to be with a man. It was plain and yearning, powerful and stifling. And above all else, she wouldn’t be lonely.
CHAPTER 11
Stars
Like so many times before, Leda only thought she wanted to go to the party. All her young adult life she clung on to the idea of party as a representation of social perfection. In her mind there were streams of colors and dancing and pithy conversation between bright cocktails and four-inch heels. If she were ever to stop and consider what party actually was, not solely as the conceptual fantasy she envisioned but in its naked and fluorescent reality, she would have been aware that what it meant was the physical realization of how alienating social interaction could truly be, and she would not have gone. Instead she put on lipstick and a short dress.
When she walked in, Sonic Youth’s cover of the Carpenters’ “Superstar” was playing in the background. It’s such a sad affair, she thought along with the lyric. The party unfolded in the living room before her eyes. People standing around, talking, holding drinks. Someone somewhere laughed, but she wasn’t sure where.
In the kitchen was Kate, the girl who invited her. Kate wore crop tops in winter and was blonder than necessary. Leda didn’t particularly like or dislike Kate. For her, Kate fell into one of those in-between categories of friendship. They met in their Comparative Zoology class, where their tentative interactions developed through confusion over exoskeletons and homeostasis. After the semester ended there was the standard moment of will-this-friendship-continue-now-that-we-don’t-have-to-try-to-understand-homeostasis? For a while it did. Kate asked Leda to coffee, and Leda texted Kate on occasion. If they bumped into each other they would always embrace. She even thought: I like Kate. She’s my friend, after they chatted about pesto for a few minutes waiting in line at a sandwich shop.
A few weeks later she asked Kate if she wanted to grab lunch. Kate said yes and motioned excitedly. The Friday they were supposed to meet up Leda didn’t hear anything from her, so she texted, “Hey, girly, are we on for lunch??” She never heard back. The rest of the day she envisioned all the reasons Kate hadn’t responded. Maybe she had a death in the family or her phone broke. Maybe she doesn’t like me, she thought. That night on her way home she went for a slice of pizza. Kate was there with some friends, sitting in a booth, laughing and motioning excitedly, just like she had the day they agreed to have lunch. She’s so fake, Leda thought, and walked all the way around the restaurant to avoid bumping into her. As she fell asleep that night she relived the moment Kate mispronounced “horticulture” in class.
Three months later she got the mass e-mail invite to the party. It said: “Come to Kate’s Super Fun Unbelievably Cool Over-the-Top Amazingly Excellent Party!” Underneath there was a picture of a sloth with a party hat. Leda thought the invitation was obnoxious and pretentious, and she was also still very hurt about the lunch, but it didn’t stop her from wanting to go. She knew that fickleness was the exchange for loneliness and was hoping that at least she’d meet someone.
“Leda! I’m so excited you came!” Kate enveloped her in a flurry of blondness.
“Yeah, thanks so much for having me!”
“Your hair looks so cute.”
“Thanks. I love the apartment.”
“Oh, yeah, it’s great, right? Good for parties, anyway.”
“Yeah, it’s so big.”
“Well, help yourself to a drink. We have beer on the porch.”
That was the last time Kate and she ever spoke. Kate had six more parties, but Leda didn’t attend. Years later she would hear Kate married a guy named Gage and worked at a bank.
Leda waited near the door for her friends to arrive. She had invited Anne, a friend her mom once described as having a slutty face. While she waited she pretended to admire Kate’s book collection, which consisted of the Twilight series, three diet books, and Chaucer. Fat: The Enemy and The Canterbury Tales. It was a lot of looking busy to do, but she didn’t feel like forcing conversation with strangers. Once Anne was there she figured things would be easier.
Despite her slutty face, Anne was a good friend. She and Leda had become close over the last few years and would sometimes spend hours on the phone chatting about boys and being bloated. Anne was one of the few people on earth who rarely judged the emotional impulses of others, and because of this, Leda confided in her long secrets of quiet desperation with little worry. Anne invited her boyfriend, Luke, to the party. She was never single and Luke was her newest boyfriend.
“He’s nice but emotionally unavailable,” she would say. Leda had never met him before.
“Leda!” Anne walked in just as Leda was about to pull out a book on the dangers of processed foods. The girls gave each other a big hug.
“This is Luke.”
“Hey, I’m Luke.”
Leda shook his hand. She could see what Anne meant about him being emotionally unavailable.
They got drinks and started to talk about school in an empty, distant way. Had Luke not been there they would have been talking about him, but since he was, they danced around their familiar conversation topics while Anne worked to occasionally include him.
“Luke plays softball. Don’t you, Luke?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh, really? That’s cool,” Leda said, and took a small sip of her beer. She hated beer, but it was preferable to standing there with a soda having to explain why she wasn’t drinking. She’d grown accustomed to drinking intolerable drinks at parties by holding her breath and taking small sips. Once a doctor asked her if she drank.
“Socially,” Leda said.
“What does ‘socially’ mean? I always wonder,” the doctor asked.
“It means that you drink enough so that no one asks you why you aren’t drinking.”
She often looked back on that conversation as one of the most profound and true things she would ever say. It was the cornerstone to her doctrine of personal drinking habits.
“Leda, are you here?”
“What?”
“Do you know any guys here?” Anne said.
“Oh, I thought you said, ‘Leda, are you here?’ ”
“No.”
“Oh…No, not really.”
“Babe, do you want another beer?” Luke said, wrapping his arm around Anne. He tucked his hand in her back pocket. Leda tried not to show her disdain, but she hated couples who couldn’t stop touching each other in public. She remembered a couple at the train stop sharing an ice cream. They were giggling and passing the cone back and forth between kisses. She seriously considered pushing them onto the tracks. It wouldn’t be until years later that she realized all the anger was just loneliness.
“Thanks, babe,” Anne said as she kissed Luke before he walked off.
“Luke seems nice,” Leda said.
“Yeah, he is.”
“And he’s cute!” She didn’t really think he was cute, but this was courtesy.
“Thanks, yeah, he is. We got in a huge fight today, though.”
“Why?”
“He didn’t want to come to the party ’cause he wanted to pl
ay video games. Yes, that’s a true story, and this is my life.”
This was a common fight between the two of them. Leda spent many Saturdays texting with Anne as she sat in Luke’s apartment watching him play video games. Sometimes he’d take her out for Applebee’s afterward, and her texts would dramatically switch from things like “I can’t stand this” to “We’re eating breadsticks!” Breadsticks appeared to be the difference between a good relationship and a bad relationship.
“That’s insane. How did you get him to come?”
“I promised him he could play video games all day on Saturday and Sunday next weekend.”
“That seems worse than not coming to the party.”
“Seriously, I know.”
“He seems sweet, though.”
“Yeah.” Anne smiled. “He is.” She looked warmer and more relaxed than she had seconds before, as if she’d thought of something wonderful and bright. It was the same kind of look a person gives when they get good news or are nearing the start of a vacation. Leda felt an intense pang of jealousy.
The rest of the evening Luke didn’t leave Anne’s side. He kept touching her elbow or wrapping his arm around her or kissing her cheek. Leda tried to look away for the most part, but it was impossible not to acknowledge. “Aww,” she said when he kissed her hand. Anne pretty much ignored the situation or playfully fought him off. She’d whisper apologies to Leda from time to time about him being all over her, but clearly she loved it on some untouchable level that their friendship fell beneath. In the tiers of Anne’s life I fall below neck kisses, Leda thought. It wasn’t anything to feel bad about, really; what there was to feel bad about was the lack of kisses on her own neck. If only, she thought, taking a breathless sip of beer.
