“Here, let me help you with that.”
We carry the mattress out to her truck, where I help her load it on the back and wrap it – almost tenderly – in plastic. The sky is streaked with gold and purple, and Joan’s not so ground down yet that she can’t take a moment to look up and sigh.
“I used to go to church, you know,” she says.
“Oh?”
She steps down from the flatbed and gives me a humorless smile. “They used to say that God never gives us anything we can’t handle. Kept saying we had to keep right on admiring the sunsets, smellin’ the flowers and trusting in the Lord, because when God closes a door, he’s always sure to open a window.”
“And you believed that?”
Joan shakes her head emphatically. “Nope. Soon as those words were out of his mouth I knew that numbnuts preacher had never read one word of the book of Job.”
“Or much of the New Testament. Wasn’t suffering sort of the entire point?”
“So they say. I wouldn’t know any more. Just another thing it took from me, I guess.”
It. The Other. She hasn’t said it yet. Some people don’t like to, like the very word could set a single cell – all it takes – off on its delusions of monstrous grandeur, breeding and swelling and bleeding its poison into the veins and then on into everything else. Brain, liver, lymph, kidneys and lungs. Just a freckle in the middle of his back. One damned spot that murdered sleep, solace, and everything else we’d ever taken comfort in. Even each other.
“Can I ask,” Because I have to know. I don’t know why, but I do. “What is it? Which one?”
She raises the tailgate. “Pancreatic.”
“Oh God. I’m so sorry.”
Joan shrugs. “It is what it is. We did stage three. We’re getting into stage four. You?”
“Me? Oh, no. Him. Skin.”
“Nasty. Hard to catch, sometimes.”
“Yes, it was.”
“Well, I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Yeah. Thank you.” God, if only she knew. I feel like a fraud as I watch her drive away into the sunset. Just like I told her it was nice to meet her, when it wasn’t. It was something, but it wasn’t exactly nice. The skin behind my ear tingles, demanding attention, but I’ve stopped that now. There are far more socially acceptable ways to self-destruct; instead I go inside, and start drinking.
The first glass of Rioja slips down far too easily. Halfway through the second I remember I have essays to mark. Last week’s text – Romeo and Juliet. I set a couple of pretty pedestrian essay questions – discuss the role of Mercutio/Rosaline/Friar Laurence blah blah – and one for the Emmas, the could-do-betters.
Romeo and Juliet contains some of the most famous words of love ever written in the English language, but love is not the only emotion at work in this play. Discuss – with examples from the text – some of the other emotions that Shakespeare explores, and how he evokes mood throughout the play.
I’m amazed to find anyone tackled that one, but someone did. I brace myself for a blizzard of misinterpretation, refill the glass and start to read.
I only stop when I find my wine glass empty again. This is…good. Better than good. It’s all here; the hot days and the mad blood stirring, the way the comparisons turn radiant – torches, jewels against dark skin, a dove among crows – when Juliet first appears to Romeo. The wild whimsy of the Queen Mab speech, the dirty wordplay in the marketplace.
“She’s got it,” I say, aloud, sodden enough to have strayed into Shaw. “By George, she’s got it.”
Then I scroll down.
Emma didn’t write this.
Well, she might have done. That’s anyone’s guess – and if I was of a suspicious frame of mind, which I am – I’d say she probably, almost definitely did. Because there’s no fucking way Milos Waxman did.
2
Milos
There’s no class on Tuesday morning, so you might think I’d get five minutes to schlep some laundry home. You’d think. And you’d be wrong.
Mom has set up an ambush. I thought she was out but I haven’t even gotten the lid off the fabric softener before she delurks from somewhere behind the garage and starts giving me shit.
“What are you doing here?”
“Laundry. What does it look like?”
“You didn’t call to say you were coming,” she says.
“Uh, because I live here?”
“You don’t live here,” says Mom, who I can already tell is in one of those fun, hair-splitting moods where she has to query and crosscheck every single thing that comes out of my mouth. “You have a key and you return like a homing pigeon every once in a while to do laundry and cadge noodles from the kitchen.”
“What? You expected having a college age kid to be any different?”
She folds her arms. I know that pose. She leans against the doorframe, but it’s a pathetic attempt at nonchalance. Like she’s trying – and failing – to hide just how thoroughly her feet are rooted on the floor.
“I got a call from one of your teachers,” she says.
I slam down the lid of the washing machine and sigh. Should have seen this one coming. This has got to be the work of Tom Tattletale, the English prick. “Who?”
“Never you mind.”
“I do mind. I have a right to know who’s talking shit about me.”
Mom sighs. “Nobody’s talking shit, Milos. It’s not talking shit when someone’s just stating facts.”
“Facts?”
“Like the fact you’re failing English again.”
I have to smile. He’s so predictable. “So Professor Moore, then?”
She gives me that long, snotty stare that I’ve felt on my own face often enough. That’s the trouble with family; you know them well enough to know exactly when they’re going to break or bend. Or not, in her case. When I was growing up she sometimes used to act like some evil fairy had danced by my crib and cursed me with deep-rooted stubbornness, just to make her life difficult. But there’s no such thing as fairies, and even if there were not even Carabosse from The Sleeping Beauty would have the level of chaotic-evil talent required to match the messes made by those three little letters – DNA.
“It doesn’t matter who called me,” Mom says. “It’s not the point. The point is that we talked about this. Your father and I are not about pouring money after pipe dreams.”
“Excuse me?” Oh my God, I’m going to be late. Late to another session of aching calves and grinding hips and sweating like a bull moose in a sauna. Some fucking pipe dream. “Did you miss the part where I was Tybalt?”
“What?”
“Ty-balt,” I say, like she’s an idiot. And she may as well be; goddamn, she was in the corps once upon a time. I remember she ditched the dance classes when I was maybe four, but this is ridiculous. “Romeo and Juliet, Mom. Tybalt is a principal dancer’s role; this could get me into a company.”
She shifts her weight, so that her shoulder presses even harder against the side of the door. Maybe that’s why she quit; she was expressive enough but not good enough to mask what she was really feeling. That’s half the art of it, looking light as air when you feel like lead, and keeping a straight face when it hurts like hell.
“For now,” she says. “But how long is that going to last, huh? The last time you danced–”
“–I was eight.”
“Yes, and you cancelled your lessons and refused to dance again for years. How do I know you’re not going to pull the same stunt now?”
“Um, because I’m not eight any more?” I can’t believe I’m hearing this. She is seriously going to beat me over the head with something I did over ten years ago? I was a kid. I was a whole different person then.
“You missed out on vital years,” she says. “While you were off pouting, those other kids were working. Did you ever think about that?”
“All the time, yeah. But I’m not playing catch-up any more, Mom; I’m playing Tybalt. Anyway, Misty Copeland didn’
t even start dancing until she was thirteen, and look at her now. Or whatsername – Lucie McLean, the Brit. She had that horse riding accident when she was twelve. Almost lost her leg, but she still ended up a soloist for the Royal Ballet in Covent Garden. If she can make it, I sure as hell can, because I didn’t even have a horse roll on me.”
She sighs, I sigh. The machine rumbles, releasing the smells of hot water and laundry detergent. We’ve both dug our heels deep on this and there’s no going forward, unless one of us can pull off the impossible and make a convincing case.
“Look,” I say. “I need this. I want this more than anything else in the world. I need to work, Mom. I’m already pushed for time and I need more hours in the gym and the studio to prepare – not less. I can’t be pissing away that time writing about…I don’t know…gay English kings and shit.”
“Gay English kings?”
“Edward the fuck whatever. I don’t know.”
“Milos, the mouth. Really.”
I sigh again, only because it’s a polite alternative to screaming. “I’m sorry, Mom – but seriously. What do you want from me?”
“Honey, I want you to have a back up plan. In case…”
She doesn’t say it, but she doesn’t have to. In case I drop out again in a shit fit. Like I did when I was eight, because I was eight. Oh my God, we’re going round in circles. “In case I don’t make it?”
“You could get injured. You just don’t know-”
“-no, I know I don’t know,” I say, my voice rising to a pitch that even I hate, because there are few things more annoying than the sound of raw frustration. “But who the hell does? Am I supposed to be a prophet now? Sure, I could spend my life grinding away in total obscurity, but that’s how it goes. That’s the risk you run, if you want to paint or write or act or dance. But what’s the point if you’re not even trying? If you don’t try you just become an artist who doesn’t…art. And that’s the saddest thing in the world; you may as well pack it the fuck up and go study accountancy, because you end up bumming yourself out and everyone else around you.”
She doesn’t say anything for a moment, a moment in which I let myself think that maybe we’ve connected at last.
But no, because fuck my life.
“You see,” she says. “Accountancy. That would be a great back up.”
“Oh my God, are you serious? I don’t have time, Mom. I barely have time for classes and dance already.” And that’s not even mentioning the camming, which is something that you’d need a whole pack of wild horses to drag out of me. There’s no easy way to tell your Mom that you make extra money by showing your butt hole to gay strangers on the internet. “Dancers don’t have time, period. I’ll probably be retired at thirty-five anyway. Maybe then I can go to night school and learn to count beans or whatever. Would that make you happy?”
“Not really, no.”
“Figures,” I say, and stomp off with that line from When Doves Cry playing over and over in my head; she really is never satisfied.
I’m running late for English class, but it looks like I’m not the only one. As I’m sneaking into the classroom I spot someone hiding just around the corner, and I double take because it’s the last fucking person I expect to see.
It’s Professor Moore.
He thinks he’s standing out of sight, but from my angle by the door I can see him side on. His head is bent and his arm likewise, and he’s talking in a low, urgent voice, but I can tell before I even hear a word that this is not a fun conversation for him. Tension radiates all up his back and legs; it’s practically crackling off him like static, and when he turns his head just a little I can see how the phone is cradled against his shoulder. His fingers are at work on the short hair just behind his ear, tugging and stroking.
“No, it’s not appropriate. I didn’t even think you were allowed to see me any more…no, I certainly don’t want to see you…forgiveness? Are you fucking kidding me?”
My hand is on the classroom doorknob, but I don’t dare turn it in case in makes a noise and alerts him to my presence. I’ve gone from watching to eavesdropping and he seems pissed enough to put a fist through the drywall. Or my face if it happened to get in the way. I could take him, obviously. I’m in better shape than most athletes, and for all he’s almost a full foot taller than me he’s probably got the body of a terminal desk jockey under that blue button down and chinos. Skinny, but not cut.
He takes a step away, hiding himself further behind the corner, and I cock an ear. Can’t help it. I’m just naturally nosy.
“…after everything that happened…and all you can give me is hollow platitudes about forgiveness and conscience?…well, you can go fuck yourself. Assuming you’re still allowed to, that is.”
He hangs up and turns around. Oh shit.
I’m still standing where I froze, my hand on the door.
He stuffs the phone into his pocket and quickly rakes his fingers through his light brown hair. “Oh,” he says, like nothing happened. “That’s handy. I was looking for you.”
I can feel my face turn as red as his. “Not as hard as I was looking for you,” I say. Maybe I’ve been rehearsing Tybalt too much but I seem to have a hair trigger lately; every time I’m put on the defensive I go off on the attack.
“Excuse me?” he says, taken aback.
“Did you call my mom?”
Tom Tattletale raises an eyebrow, then he reaches into the leather wallet under his arm, thumbs through the papers and fishes out mine. Romeo and Juliet. “Did you write this paper?” he says.
“I asked first.”
He lets out a short sigh. “Fine. Yes. I did call your mother, because you turned in this paper on Romeo and Juliet.”
What? What the hell was wrong with it? I admit most of this shit flies over my head but I know Romeo and Juliet pretty damn well by now. I might not know the words, but I know the moves. I know the feelings. “Wasn’t it good?” I ask.
“It was great,” he says. “It demonstrated a remarkable understanding of the moving parts, the stagecraft and all the emotional beats of the play.”
Ha. Nailed it. “Thank you.”
The eyebrow goes up again. His eyes are an extraordinary color - like, no color. I’ve seen gray eyes before, but they’ve always had tones of green or blue mixed up in there somewhere. His are totally monochrome, like watered ink. “Really?” he says. “And you’re just going to stand there and take credit for it, are you?”
“I don’t see why not. I wrote it.”
He actually laughs. I want to knock his teeth out. “Wow,” he says. “You really are a piece of...work.”
Shit? Was that what he stopped himself from saying? Or ass. Me, a piece of ass. Is that maybe why he’s riding me so hard right now? He wants to be riding me in some other way? Well, that’s fun for him, but he can always hit up my cam show. Right now I have bigger fish to fry, like not getting kicked out of English.
“Read my lips,” I say. “I. Wrote. It. Okay? Could somebody just once today have a little shred of faith in me? Please?”
“I’d love to, Milos. I would. But I’m basing my conclusion on your previous performances. You’ve never demonstrated anything other than a shallow understanding of any of the texts we’ve studied so far.”
Sonofabitch. “Yeah, well. I get this one.”
“You get it?”
“Yeah. Edward the whatthefuck or whatever - I don’t give a shit about some dead king and his boyfriend, but...I dunno. Romeo and Juliet...I get it. I...relate to it, or whatever it is I’m supposed to do.”
Because I’ve been there. I’ve danced at the ball with the Capulet knights; I’ve squired my pretty young cousin to the dance. I’ve brawled and screamed and drawn my sword and died a thousand times in the sweat and dust and gore of that bloodstained Verona marketplace. I’ve leapt and spun and landed on my feet so perfectly that everyone can see why they call me the Prince of Cats. I’ve eaten, slept and breathed Tybalt - he fills me, from the ends of my
hair to the hard tips of my blistered toes, and maybe that’s why it hurt so fucking much when this asshole called me shallow.
Okay, I’m not that great at words like he is. But I can feel. And I can dance.
“All right,” he says.
“All right?”
“All right. I’ll accept that explanation.” He hands me the paper. “But I want to see more of this, Milos. Relate more. Show me that empathy. Dust it off, dig deep and put yourself in the position of the characters.”
“I will,” I say. “On one condition.”
“Conditions?” He smothers a grin.
“Yeah. You don’t call my parents again. You should have at least given me the benefit of the doubt before you called my Mom.”
The smile fades from his eyes. “Yes. You’re right,” he says, surprising me. “I apologize.”
“You do?”
“I was...impulsive,” he says. “I realized too late that I was accusing you of something very serious. Serious enough to get you kicked out of school, when I should have given you the chance to redeem yourself first.”
“Or rope to hang myself.”
“Or that, yes. I’m sorry, Milos. I’ve had a lot on my mind lately; my life’s been a bit of a dumpster fire, to tell you the truth.”
Who was on the phone, I wonder? Whatever it was, it sounds heavy. “Yeah,” I say. “I hear that. We all have our problems.”
He smiles, which makes him look much, much younger. How old is he? Thirty? Thirty-five? Not too old. Not out-of-reach old. “Like being late for class,” he says, and waves me towards the door. “In you go.”
I walk into the classroom. Out of reach? Too old for what?
God, I’m going to have stop doing the cam thing; it’s putting all kinds of weird thoughts in my head.
*
I’m straight. I’ve always been straight, as far as I know. My first crush – before I even knew my dick was dual purpose – was on Margot Fonteyn. It was the holidays and she was on the TV, dancing the Rose Adagio.
“Change the station, Janet,” my dad said, but Mom said no. She used to dance before she had us kids, and she missed it, she said.
These Violent Delights Page 2
