The Truth of Right Now

by Kara Lee Corthron

  I never saw him act like that again. A smarter person would most likely have stayed clear of their teacher/boyfriend for a while if they’d witnessed him bugging out. Not me. It made me like him more.

  Last birthday, December 12th. Bobby wanted to do something special for me. I got permission to spend the night at Tracy’s and she agreed to cover for me just in case. A cold wind was blowing us all over the place that night when we stepped out of the car. He blindfolded me and led me to a spot in the woods. I could see nothing. I could hear the wind knocking the trees back and forth, which made the wooden trunks sound like screechy rocking chairs. I heard water and other nature sounds. Oh my God. He could’ve been a SERIAL KILLER! He could’ve been plotting to kill me and eat me and I would’ve just followed him right to my pitiful death with this big, goofy smile on my face. Such an idiot!

  “Stop here,” he said and he removed the blindfold and I couldn’t believe what I saw. This gorgeous, big, wild waterfall with snow and ice all around us. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. For some reason it made me want to cry, but I stopped myself because I was scared my tears would freeze to my face. I didn’t know where we were at the time since I’d stopped paying attention to our surroundings once we were on the interstate. Later, I found out we were in Ithaca. A magical place I’ll probably never go back to.

  He bought me a steak for dinner and we had profiteroles for dessert. I told him he could order wine if he wanted to. I didn’t mind. He said that was thoughtful of me, but he didn’t drink alcohol.

  I don’t remember too many details about the hotel. It was nice but generic. Just a regular, clean hotel. I don’t like admitting it, but thinking back to that night it was more like it was his birthday.

  He was relatively gentle. I’ll give him that. I didn’t know we were going to go all the way that night. I can’t believe I didn’t guess that he had that planned, but I didn’t. When he entered me, I screamed then covered my mouth. He tried to be more careful after that, but it hardly made a difference. I was glad when he finished. I just wanted to hide in the bathroom.

  “Are you all right?” he asked from the other side of the door.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” I lied. “I just need a minute.”

  I felt weird. Sore, yeah, but it wasn’t just physical. I wanted to go home right that second and spend what was left of my birthday just with Mom, watching cheesy movies. I’m not sure when I changed my mind, but when I opened the door, I saw him sitting on the bed with this sad I-just-lost-my-puppy face and then all I wanted to do was make him smile again. So I gave him a kiss and suggested we order room service sundaes. His lips curled into a smile though his eyes remained sad.

  “Do you have any idea how much I love you?” Yeah. He seriously said that to me! Those exact words. I had no idea how to respond. I was shocked, flattered, and a little scared. He didn’t need an answer from me, I guess. He picked up the phone to order our sundaes. While he held the phone up to his ear and had his back to me, he said, “I hope you don’t end up hating me one day.” For a second, I thought he was talking to room service. I figured it out and then I glanced down at the bed and thought I might faint. There was a lot more blood than I’d expected.

  Here comes the bad stuff.

  We tried to make plans for the future. This was like early February. I still had three long years to go until turning eighteen, which felt like decades. We decided that when I did turn eighteen, I would of course go to college, but should stay in state and far enough away to make sure I could live in a dorm. This way, when he came to visit me, we could have our privacy. I think his definition of “privacy” was the fact that my mother would be miles away. He was also waiting for his youngest child to reach middle school age. His marriage was over as far as he was concerned, but he wanted to wait until he thought the baby could psychologically handle the concept of divorce. I told him that all my friends were children of divorce and every one of them wished that their parents had done it a lot sooner. He was impressed by this. It wasn’t actually true, though. I never knew my father and having been raised just by Mom, the whole idea of divorce is baffling to me. Two people can’t live together anymore, so they stop doing it. That’s it. Yeah, I’m sure it’s sad for a while, but then you move on. It’s especially confusing to me where kids are concerned. There are kids in the world who are sex slaves and child soldiers, for Chrissakes, and we worry that a kid can’t handle seeing one parent less frequently than the other?

  I got off track. Divorce. His. Whatever.

  I fed him my fake divorce statistic and he couldn’t get over how mature I was for my age. He understood why I didn’t have a boyfriend before we started seeing each other. He was sure that no boy my age would be able to stimulate my mind. I was sure he was right. The more I got to know him, the more I loved him and the harder things became. By this time, my mother did want to meet my boyfriend, mainly because she felt disconnected from a huge part of my life. Lying to her was much more challenging than it was with the girls, so I just started avoiding her altogether.

  If “The Ballad of Lily & Bobby” were a real song, it would be in hopeless D Minor.

  On Valentine’s Day I was blue. I pretended to have big weekend plans with my fictional Bobby when I knew where the real Bobby was. He played hooky and took his wife on an overnight romantic getaway. To Ithaca. I couldn’t stop myself from imagining him making love to her on the same bed that I bled on, and I vomited in the hallway and got sent home for the day.

  “You’re making yourself sick. And for what? Some guy too afraid to meet your mother?” She said something like that to me. I had no fever or any other flu symptoms. She knew my illness was coming from a mental place.

  “Are you hiding something?” She wasn’t making an accusation exactly. I think she was just worried. I told her it wasn’t that serious. That mostly I was sick with PMS. This ended the conversation, though I have no idea why, since she clearly didn’t believe me.

  On President’s Day we did something reckless. His wife took the kids to see her parents for the weekend, and I went out to his house on Staten Island and stayed with him. How stupid was that? Did we want to get caught? I honestly don’t think I did. I can’t speak for Bobby, though.

  Nobody had ever told me I was beautiful before. Not like him. Mom said it, but she told me that when I was a twelve-year-old mutant, so it didn’t count. When Bobby said it, he meant it. It felt like he meant it. He thought I was so beautiful that he took a few photos of me. We’d just done it on the dining room floor, which I did not enjoy. Floors are hard. I was raising my leg to see if a sore spot was becoming a bruise when I heard the unmistakable clicking sound of a phone camera. We both laughed. Then I did a goofy pose and he took another. That one was just plain ridiculous! But then he did it again and I quit laughing. He apologized and promised to delete every single photo on his camera that day. ALL of them. With and without clothes. Which is the opposite of what he did.

  I always felt sad when our time together ended. I knew I’d have to go back to school and pretend he was just my English teacher and Folio adviser and nothing more. Seeing him at the front of the classroom talking about J. D. Salinger or the concept of allegory or whatever nonsense he was supposed to be teaching us was soooooooo depressing. Nobody knew him like I did. Nobody knew that he’d accidentally gotten his wife pregnant and done the right thing by marrying her, though it crushed his dreams. He’d dreamed of traveling around Europe and writing short stories. He’d especially longed to visit Prague and Vienna. The kids in my class dozing through his lectures had no idea how miserable he was inside. They probably wouldn’t have cared anyway.

  When it was time to go, I slowly put on my boots and concentrated really hard on NOT crying. He gazed at me from across the room with sad eyes of his own. Then the phone rang.

  “Hi, honey,” he said with a little sigh. He smiled, but rolled his eyes at me, so I knew he had to take the call. He went into the kitchen to talk to her. I didn’t under
stand how she could be so blind to his unhappiness. I thought maybe she didn’t love him any more than he loved her, but had the dumb idea of staying together for their kids. It didn’t make sense that she’d want to be with someone who was tired of her.

  I had to know what he was saying to her. I crept close to the kitchen door and listened. I couldn’t hear too well, so I pushed it open, just a crack so I could see. Something she said made him laugh so hard, he had to grab the tabletop to keep from falling over. Then he whispered something that I couldn’t make out and he smiled. The smile I thought was only for me. He said a few things so softly I couldn’t hear them at all, and then he turned away, making it much harder to catch words. I’d started to get bored when I heard something that I hoped I heard wrong. “I miss you.” He then turned enough for me to see a corner of his face and I knew he’d said it then because his face missed her too.

  I backed away from the kitchen door and ran upstairs. I had to make a quick stop. Real quick. Then I went into the bathroom and flushed the toilet. Then I flushed it again and again and again. I think I flushed it six times before he came upstairs.

  “Lily? What the hell? Are you sick?”

  “No,” I said and I made him drive me to the ferry at that moment. When he leaned over to kiss me, I jumped out of the car. He might’ve gotten some hair, but he made no contact with any part of my face. I wanted proof that I was the one he truly loved. His words weren’t enough anymore.

  The next day in class, I was terrified and excited waiting for him to get there. Tracy and Jackie were so on my nerves that day! They wanted me to do a “girls’ Saturday” with them. Something Jackie read about in O magazine probably. They wanted all three of us to go get massages and mani-pedis and cupcakes and crap. I politely said no (a bunch of times!) and glanced at the clock. He was late. Then they got these concerned, serious faces like they were all worried about me or something, because apparently cake and strangers painting your toenails can fix all your problems!

  Finally, he showed up. He seemed totally normal, not a care in his mind. He started writing some notes on the board and asking discussion questions about Native Son. It was like I wasn’t in the room. Then, to make matters worse, he gave us a pop quiz! Yeah, like I had plenty of time to read that damn book out at his house all weekend! He passed my desk after everyone was focused on the quiz and with almost no movement at all, he dropped a piece of paper on it, which said “See me in room 306. Now.” I looked up and he was already gone. As soon as I entered 306, he calmly closed the door and started whisper-shouting.

  “What is the matter with you?!” he snapped. I just stood there stunned. He’d never spoken to me like this before.

  “Answer me,” he ordered.

  I shrugged, thinking I might be able to play dumb for a while. Then in a flash, his face changed to the Bobby I loved.

  “Was it an accident?” he asked in a gentle voice. “If it was an accident, that I can forgive. We have to be much more careful, but if it was an accident, then I’m sorry, baby. I’m sorry for yelling at you. Was it?”

  It would’ve been so easy to say, Yes, Bobby. I certainly didn’t mean to leave my panties between your sheets on your wife’s side of the bed. I didn’t mean to leave the panties you bought for me special that say “Little Drummer Girl” with pink hearts dotting the i’s.

  “Please answer me, Lil. Was this an accident?”

  “No.”

  His face fell onto the floor. I’d betrayed him. I’d broken his heart.

  “You want to destroy me?”

  I shook my head, not knowing how to explain. I thought it was obvious. I was just trying to make it easier for him. His face. Oh my God, that sad, SAD face! He opened his mouth to say something, but it was like he couldn’t remember how to form words anymore. Until he got his memory back.

  “I’m . . . I’m sorry, Lily. But, um, I think we’re through now.” And he turned his back on me and left me alone in room 306. There was my proof. All he had to do was take the opportunity I’d dropped in his lap and choose me over his wife. He didn’t.

  I think I love too hard

  He wouldn’t let me apologize. There was nothing I could do. He wouldn’t return my phone calls or texts. It was like I didn’t exist. Like nothing had ever happened between us. I began to feel crazy and very, very unhappy. I went to his house. No one would answer the door. I KNOW they were home, and I know they heard me! He wouldn’t look at me or call on me in class, and he knew I was way too insecure to cause a scene in public. He stopped working late on the magazine, and when I politely—and calmly, calmly, calmly, dammit!—said we couldn’t make the deadline without extra help from him, he told me he’d put me in charge for a reason and trusted that I would figure it out. So I blew it off completely. Tracy was on staff and a flash fiction piece she wrote was supposed to be published. Because of me, no one was sure if the last issue of The Folio would come out by the end of the year or not. She kept asking, “What’s wrong? What’s wrong?” but I couldn’t tell her. So I disappointed her. We missed our hard deadline, then two subsequent deadlines, and I was fired.

  One night I sat in my room and listened to Feist’s “Let It Die” 57 times in a row. I know it was exactly 57 times because Steve Jobs was a demon and made sure that iTunes could keep track of such horrors. This was Sylvia Plath–level despair. Mom was terrified. During one of my crying jags, she joined in, begging me to tell her what was really going on. I was exhausted, so I told her everything. She took it well, considering. She hugged me a lot and cried a lot and cussed a lot and threw some shit. We went to school together the next day and talked to Vice Principal Monaroy. (Side bar: Who the hell is our regular principal? Is he dead? Is he a man? I have no idea.) He seemed totally stunned. He even asked me at one point if I was sure. I’m going to write that again. He asked me if I WAS SURE!!!!

  Mr. Monaroy called Bobby/Mr. Wright down to his office. As soon as he came through the door and saw me and Mom, I saw his eyes go a shade darker, but then he just walked in and acted like he had no clue why he’d just been summoned. Vice Principal Monaroy suggested I leave while he spoke to Mr. Wright, but I refused to go. I wanted him to have to look at my face. To acknowledge my existence. He spoke very softly to Mr. Wright, explaining each accusation. My mother sat there bristling. I know she wanted to rip his stupid face off his stupid head. When Monaroy was all done, Mr. Wright cleared his throat and launched a counterattack against me. He said we’d spent some time together after school working on The Folio and that I’d developed an unhealthy attachment to him. He cited my recent behavior on the magazine staff and the dozens of phone calls and texts I’d sent that had gone unanswered, and he claimed he was in the process of filing an order of protection against me because I’d been coming to his house to harass his family. Then this man who took my virginity away long before I was ready to give it to anyone looked me in the face and said, “Lily, you’re a very special person. I’m sorry you feel the way you do, but I’m your teacher. There have to be boundaries.”

  I might’ve laughed for a second before I lunged at him. Thank God my mother was there to grab me so he couldn’t add assault to my list of crimes. I would have killed him. I would not have left him alive.

  There was a full-scale investigation. It took some time and it was awful and everyone knew about it. Most people believed Mr. Wright, because he was well liked and nobody knew or cared who I was. It wasn’t much better when people believed me. Jackie did and she couldn’t stop lecturing me. Told me he raped me and no matter what I thought or did, it was still rape. She kept saying that word over and over again. She said it to me on the phone at night, during study hall, during English (we had a substitute by this point and she was a mean old lady and everyone blamed me for that), and she said it again one time during lunch, which caused me to throw my yogurt against the wall.

  I still don’t know if Tracy believed me. Like most of his students, she loved Mr. Wright, and at the time she didn’t love me so much. She w
as mostly nice to me when she wasn’t avoiding me, but she did admit once that she just couldn’t picture me and Mr. Wright together and she wondered if there was a slight chance that I might’ve misinterpreted his actions. “I don’t know how many ways penetration can be interpreted,” I responded. She never spoke of it to me again.

  The scariest times were when my memory got hazy and I felt confused and sad and I sometimes had trouble believing it happened myself. Robert Wright testifying that I was an obsessed, disturbed young woman couldn’t possibly be the same Bobby who couldn’t believe how much he loved me. It got so bad that Mom said I could switch schools or we could move. I don’t why, but her willingness to completely uproot our lives sent me the message that my problems weren’t fixable. That I wasn’t fixable. Mom’s never been the type to just throw up her hands in defeat. I think this was the closest she ever came to doing such a thing. I got tired of crying and tired of myself, and felt sure that I was not worthy of love. I tried to kill myself by cutting my wrists, which is harder to do than it looks in the movies. I failed. Duh. Mom begged me to have faith that this would all end someday like a nightmare. I decided to trust her, as much as it hurt. Mainly so I wouldn’t leave her all alone. That didn’t seem fair.

  Somebody told Mom about this “homeopathic psychologist” that she made me see. He turned out to be a big fake. He burned candles and played Indian music in his office, but other than that, he was just a bad psychiatrist. He barely spoke to me and sent me home with a prescription for Cymbalta after meeting me once. I didn’t want to take it. I thought taking medicine was not going to magically make my life better. I fought with Mom about it because she thought I should at least give it a try. So I took half the bottle in one sitting. This stunt led to my first extended hospital stay. Things were not going well.