by Pamela Ribon
“Long-distance boyfriend?” she asked. She had gotten friendlier with me since I’d been monitoring her weekly meetings. She was three weeks in now and her group was starting to get restless. They knew they wanted to have a rally by the end of the year. Now they had to figure out which of their causes was worthy of all their energies.
“He’s just a friend,” I said. “Smith, you aren’t supposed to be back here behind my desk.”
“Yeah, they sure do make lots of rules here, don’t they, Miss?” She smiled at me and popped her gum. She sat on my desk and opened up a magazine. “I’m bored with my class so I told my teacher you were helping me with Action Grrlz.”
They had come up with a name, at least.
“You know how Sandra wanted us to do something about animal rights? Well, it’s hard because we don’t have cars, so we can’t go and, like, protest the circus.”
“There’s Rodeo Day here at school.”
“Yeah, but I won’t be here then. We get the day off.”
I looked over at her. “Because you’re supposed to be at the rodeo.”
“Ugh, it’s not even about the rodeo. Nancy’s all pissed off because she wants the group to focus on something environmental and she says her dad works in oil and she can swipe some stuff from his office for our rally, but I don’t really want to do anything illegal. They all want to be renegades and shit. I want to get out of Austin. I want to go to a good college.”
“There is a good college in Austin, Smith.”
Smith rolled her eyes and pulled up her belt. “I’m so sick of Austin,” she whined.
She sat down on the floor and leaned back against a file cabinet. “Why are you talking to me like a teacher today?” she asked. “You haven’t even told me how kick-ass my new shoes are.”
They were kick-ass. Black platform boots with a nice chunky buckle in the front. Red flames surrounded the toe.
“They’re very cool,” I said. I didn’t know how she had picked up on my mood.
“What’s your problem, Miss?”
“Nothing,” I said. “I was just thinking. You ever been in love, Smith?”
She wiggled up her nose and pulled her head back. “Yeah. I’m not a nun or anything.”
“I’m not trying to insult you,” I said.
“Yeah, I’ve been in love. Is that why you’re upset? You’re in love with the boy that’s just a friend?”
“No. Today would have been my four-year anniversary with my last boyfriend.”
“When did y’all break up?” she asked.
“Almost a year ago.”
Smith huffed and stood up. “You are the boy-craziest girl I know. A year ago? Man, I’m sorry you’re so sad. It’s sad that you’re sad, but a year’s a long time. I broke up with Dustin after we’d been going out for almost my entire sophomore year and he was devastated. He still calls my house and he sometimes, like, rides my bus just to walk me home and I’m all, ‘Give up, Dustin! It’s over!’ You know?”
The bell rang. Smith hitched her backpack over her shoulder. “I think you should go out and celebrate. You and me should go do some tequila shots or something.”
She put her hand on my shoulder and looked me in the eye. “You’re too pretty to be like this,” she said. “Go out and buy some new clothes or something. Get laid.”
Sympathy from high school juniors. How very sad.
000024.
“Hello?”
Damn, he sounded exactly the same.
“Hi.”
Damn.
“Hi. Anna?”
“Yeah.” I heard my voice crack. I squeezed my free hand into a fist. I cracked my knuckles by clenching my fingers. I felt the blood rush through my joints, into my wrist.
“Oh. Could you hold on? I’ve got someone on the other line.”
He clicked over and I was left with silence. The forced pause gave me the first moment to think about what I was doing. I was calling my ex-boyfriend because I missed him on our anniversary. The anniversary we weren’t having. His anniversary with Anna K that he wasn’t even aware of because he didn’t know he was dating an Internet entity.
The truth was I missed him. Maybe it was because there was no one else in my life to miss and I refused to yearn for an invisible pen pal. I wasn’t going to be an Internet freak. It was wrong to pine over someone unattainable, someone who lived very far away and hadn’t even met me. At least Ian was real. Tangible. He was made of flesh within my grasp. And just like the pain inside of me, he was vividly palpable.
I heard him click back over.
“Hey, Anna.” He sounded like he’d been having a great day in a great week in a string of great weeks in this spectacular month, all part of a gigantically phenomenal year that had just been on the up and up ever since he walked out of our home and out of my life.
“Hi.” I went out to the balcony and sat on a milk crate. I lit a cigarette and heard him do the same. I didn’t know what his new place looked like, so I imagined him as a mirror image of me, though I doubted his knees were trembling.
“I was just thinking about you,” he said. His face just had to have matched mine. Smiling and warm, looking like he’d found something he’d lost. He remembered everything. He knew what we meant to each other.
“Really?” I thought that sounded casual enough.
“Yeah, I was listening to the Beastie Boys, and I think this CD is actually yours. You want it back?”
Ow.
Clearly his face looked nothing like mine. He just always looked that happy. New and Improved Ian didn’t need to call on our fake anniversary. He didn’t need a damn thing at all. In fact, he didn’t even need my Beastie Boys CD anymore.
I cleared my throat, pushing away the emotions fighting inside of me. I let it all go with a breath, telling myself it was good to hear how stable he is now. If Ian was fine with things, I could be fine with things. Maybe we were moving into that territory old lovers sometimes go where they stay close friends, having shared so many experiences that they become like siblings. I could make Ian into a brother. It could be healthy.
“That’s okay,” I said. “Just tell it I miss it.”
I heard him laugh through his exhale of smoke. “I will.”
We talked for a while. He went on about how things were for him, including his relationship with Susan, which he said was going well. He asked if I was seeing anyone. I avoided a direct answer by changing the subject entirely.
“We should go out,” new Sister Anna said casually. “Dinner or something. Susan could come, too, I guess.” Adding the girlfriend seemed like the sisterly thing to do. Sisters didn’t mind girlfriends at dinner, right?
“Yeah, let’s do that. Susan’s busy Saturday night, so I’ve got nothing to do. Want to meet at Chuy’s?”
That was our old Mexican food restaurant. Sister Anna was quickly morphing into Misty Ex.
“Sure,” I said. “My treat.” I guess for our anniversary present. The words were almost an autopilot response to making plans, as I often paid his way for things when we were together. I had a higher-paying job for a little while, and the guilt over having more money than my boyfriend resulted in me often splurging on the two of us so he never had to discuss his lack of money. I ended up spending way too much on the two of us, and he got used to me being the one to pay for things.
“Thanks!”
“Yeah,” was the only thing I could think to say.
“You know today would have been our four-year anniversary.”
And just like that, Misty Ex turned into Wishful, Wistful Anna Koval. He remembered. He hadn’t changed too much. He was still Ian. Maybe he could still be my Ian.
I got off the phone and found my CHANGE list. I had taped it to the inside of my bathroom cabinet, where I was sure Dale wouldn’t find it and tease me.
NEW HAIRCUT.
I’d get a new haircut for the imaginary anniversary dinner date and make him yearn for me. I’d show up collected, positive, and loaded with
self-esteem. I’d pay for the dinner not because I accidentally offered, but because I could. I’d show up gorgeous because I was. I’d shove away my feelings because they were pathetic.
Saturday afternoon I handed the stylist a picture of Jennifer Aniston on the cover of People, assuming hundreds of girls asked for Jennifer Aniston’s hair every day, ensuring the stylist would be skilled at that particular haircut. I wanted something different, but I didn’t want a challenge. I wanted trendy, but not something that only looked good in certain clothes. Something that I could pull up and get out of my face if I needed to, but still made old boyfriends yearn to be back in that place between your legs where it’s soft and smooth and smells like honey.
As the hair fell away, I couldn’t stop shaking my head back and forth. My entire head felt lighter. The stylist must have cut off about five inches. He gave me Betty Page bangs that I wasn’t too sure about but he promised I’d look great in. When he had finished and swirled me around in the chair to face the mirror, I lost my breath.
I looked horrible. My stomach sank as I felt the hot sting of tears behind my eyes. I started blinking, as it was very important to me that I not cry inside the salon. I knew the stylist had seriously fucked up my head because other stylists came by to coo over how great my head looked. They only get the other stylists to do that when someone’s head looks like it fell on a buzz saw.
It wasn’t until after I left the salon that I started to calm down. I saw a few people watch me walk to my car, and my gait became more and more confident as I counted off the number of glances in my direction. I caught a reflection of myself in a shop window, and when I couldn’t see my face my hair didn’t look so bad. Wait. Had I just decided the problem was my face?
Once in my car, I was convinced that all of the staring was because I had, in fact, become a hottie. I’d never been a hottie before, so I wasn’t used to all of the attention. I calmed down, settling into my new role as a “Did You See That Girl?” girlie. At a red light, a man took off his sunglasses to look at me. I thought we had canceled that maneuver back in the ’80s.
When I was seven, I had a friend named Wanda, who was the sweetest girl in the world. She had short brown hair that curled under her big ears and these huge green eyes that looked so innocent. She laughed very quietly and was the nicest girl I’d ever met. We were in Brownies together. Wanda had a tiny happy-face stamp that I coveted. She never knew. I stole it. She never knew that either. I leaned over one day during Art and swiped it out of her pencil box. Wanda assumed that Jesus needed to borrow her smiley-face stamp. She thought Jesus wanted to make a few stamps on his sticker book. I heard her say a prayer right before recess, asking Jesus to return her stamp when he was done with it. I was so guilt-ridden that I snuck back into the classroom during recess and tossed the stamp on the floor. She thanked Jesus for returning her stamp.
I’ve never forgiven myself for stealing from my best friend. I’ve never forgiven myself for letting her think the Lord takes things from little girls when he wants to play with art supplies. Because I’ll never be able to build enough Karma points to fix what I did with Wanda and her stamp, the Lord has punished me by sending me Dale. Dale is the best person in the entire world, and he’s replaced Wanda effortlessly. The problem is Jesus put honesty inside Dale. Lots of it. More than I need, ever. There are times when I forget how honest Dale can be. Then I go and get a haircut, convince myself that I’ve turned into a Maxim cover girl, and show up on his doorstep.
“Holy shit,” he said as he answered the door in shorts and a T-shirt that read I DON’T THINK I LIKE YOU ANYMORE.
“Or you could say hello.”
“Someone owes you a lot of money. You look like a Muppet.”
“It’s bad?” I touched the top of my scalp and smoothed down my bangs.
“You’re staying here until it grows out.”
I walked into his house and plopped on the couch. “I’m supposed to look like Jennifer Aniston.”
Dale stared at me, motionless, still holding the door. “That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard,” he said quietly.
“No, I’ve got something sadder.” I took a pillow and covered my face so only my mouth stuck out. “I have a non-date with Ian.”
As Dale listed the many reasons why he should be in charge of all of my decisions from now on, he tried to salvage what was left of my hair. We tried bandanas, but I looked like I was about to clean my apartment. Despite insisting how horrible I look in hats, he made me put one on. Dale’s never looked at me the same since. “I mean, you don’t normally look like Dianne Wiest,” he mumbled. He plopped the hat back on my head. “Now you’re Dianne Wiest again. Strangest thing.”
I named my haircut Betty, because Betty is the kind of name that you can hate without needing a reason. I hated Betty for making me think for even a second I was a Jennifer.
That night Betty was ready for my non-date long before I was. I was standing naked in my closet when Ian called to say he’d be an hour later than he originally expected. He called again forty-five minutes later to say he’d be another half hour. On any other evening I’d be fuming, but tonight I was grateful. I used the extra minutes to wet my hair completely and dry it again. I pinned the bangs back with a barrette, but they spiked up like baby hair. I released the bangs and slicked them down on either side. Then I sat on my bathroom floor and cried for a little while.
I decided to act like Betty was on purpose, that I’d invited her into my life. If I felt that I looked good, then I’d look good, right? I also wore bright red lipstick. Draw attention to the mouth, away from the head. Please, gentlemen, don’t look at Betty. She doesn’t like all the attention.
Chuy’s is a rather silly Mexican food restaurant. One room is covered in plastic fish ornaments. There’s a giant shrine to Elvis. Another room has hubcaps cluttering the ceiling. But they make a mean margarita and the place is always rocking with loud music and tipsy college kids, so Ian and I spent many, many hours there over our years together. I hadn’t been back because the taste of their tomatillo sauce made me too nostalgic.
I was leaning against the front door holding one of those vibrating pagers when I saw him pull up. The warm, comforting smell of fresh tortilla chips wafted over me and I tried to keep calm. I saw him get out of his car. The pager jolted to life in my hands, and my heartbeat kicked up a notch. It probably would have happened anyway, because I saw he was wearing a shirt I’d bought him for Christmas a few years ago—a blue button-down that brought out his eyes and made him look like a movie star. He must have worn it for me. He walked closer, smoking a cigarette, his head down as if it was raining. He looked up and saw me. He smiled.
I forgave him for being late. For being my non-date. For everything he did and didn’t do. Something in the way that boy smiled just made everything fine. My body had that same breathless, dizzying reaction it always got around him. It felt like falling forward, my feet weightless, my head high above my body as an awed voice whispered deep inside me, “Ain’t he something?”
I hated it and I loved it equally.
000025.
Subject: Sad Drunk Boy.
AK,
Forgive me if I skip the happy-happy in my e-mail tonight. While I usually flirt with ferocity and reckless abandon, this evening I’m feeling like a total loser.
My ex-girlfriend. The one I thought I was going to marry? The girl I love more than anyone else in the entire world? The one who loves Europe more than she loves me? Well, she also loves some French guy more than she loves me. Apparently. I just heard she’s getting married.
I heard this from a friend of mine who has a girlfriend who’s friends with her, so it’s practically fifth-hand information, but I can’t help but feel like it’s probably true. She’s probably getting married. She’s probably totally in love and so happy that she’s out of my clutches forever.
France. I know nothing about France. I know nothing about French men. Are they better? Is his name Jacques? Is he a
better kisser, just by his nationality?
I’m drunk, by the way. Totally drunk. Very drunk. I even went so far as to pull out old letters she wrote and I even watched a videotape that we made. To quote something I often hear you say, “I’m disgusting.” You aren’t allowed to tell anyone.
(Hey, don’t tell anyone this either: I still have some naked pictures of her. What am I supposed to do with them?)
I found the last letter she ever wrote to me. It says right here: “I love you. I love you forever. I will love you forever. I can’t believe how strong and secure that feeling is. Love forever. It’s the one thing that feels safe in my life. It will always be there. Just like you will always be there and I’m here for you.”
Can I sue her over this? Because here it is in writing, and now she’s marrying some guy from France. I like calling him that because he sounds made up. Some guy from France. (Don’t worry that I’m so overcome with grief by this letter that I’m clutching it to my heart, soaking it in tears, because the next sentence says, “I feel like I’m finally loosing all of my inhibitions.” She never could spell for shit. I’m gonna go find me a good speller. One who knows how to use an apostrophe, you know what I’m saying?)
Hey. I bet you’re hot. I bet there are all sorts of places on your body that drive men wild. Oh, man. I’m drunk. Ignore this.
But also: Are you hot?
-LD (the booze hound)
-----
Subject: re: Sad Drunk Boy.
LDobler,
Poor thing. By the time you read this you’ll surely be nursing a hangover. So grab some aspirin, a cup of coffee, wrap yourself in a blankie, and let Anna K soothe your pretty head.
That sucks about the ex. I’m sorry. I don’t even know what else to say about that, really. Do you want to talk t her? Do you want to find out if it’s true? Do you miss her or do you miss what you might have had? I’m asking lots of questions because last night I went out with an ex-boyfriend. I don’t really want to go into any specifics, but I feel like he thinks his life is better now that we’re not together, and I want to see him in pain. I want him to wince when I brush my hair back and smile. I want to see him need me.
