I gave her the wrapped cassette tape I made with songs I was starting to like—The Cure’s “Lovesong,” Erasure’s “A Little Respect.” Sometimes when she switched radio stations, she’d hear one of these and say something like, “That doesn’t totally suck.” Also, I’d heard many of these songs at the Cobra Club, although I wouldn’t tell her that. As I gave her my gift, I wondered if she was the type who would appreciate a homemade gift or if she preferred impersonal things from a mall.
When we looked down at the gifts we exchanged, we noticed they were about the same size. We tore into each other’s presents, and laughed uproariously. She’d given me a homemade heavy metal tape with songs I’d said I liked: Scorpions’ “No One Like You,” Dokken’s “Alone Again.”
I couldn’t stop laughing. This gift meant so much to me. It proved she was thinking of me over the holiday as I was thinking about her. But I kept the melodramatic sentiments to myself.
“We’re psychic!” she laughed, hugging me so tightly. “I love it,” she said.
“Me too. That’s…yeah. Something I wouldn’t have gotten for myself.”
“You couldn’t remember the bands!”
I nodded. “True. They say the best gifts are the ones you wouldn’t think of for yourself or that you forgot you wanted, something like that…”
“Do you have to analyze everything?” She stepped out in the hall and carried a couple more bags inside.
“Geez, the room isn’t big enough,” I said.
In one hand she carried an old guitar case. She opened it on the bed. “My dad picked this up at a garage sale.”
It was a beat-up guitar, just scratched enough to look cool, but one scratch away from being ready for the junk heap.
“He knows I want to play,” she said.
“That’s nice. Kind of like a peace offering?”
“I guess. But I’ve never had lessons.” She seemed embarrassed.
“You could learn.”
“I told you, no one in our town teaches it. They only have piano lessons.” She rolled her eyes.
“What about the music department here?”
She lifted it up. “I’m going to show up with this thing?”
I smiled slyly at her. She didn’t fool me. “You brought it back to school, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, so? I couldn’t have my dad see me leave it behind.”
“You could’ve kept it in your car.”
“What’s your point, RC?” She put it back in the case.
“I told you not to call me that.”
“Okay. My plan is to mess around with it where no one can hear me, like at the beach or a deep forest.” She tried to sound dramatic.
“Whatever works for you.” I laughed. As soon as I stepped out to go to the restroom, I could hear the muffled sounds of guitar strings being plucked. None of the notes worked right together, but they were each being tested. I smiled to myself.
* * *
While in the bathroom, I reminded myself to be cool and strong, like steel. I wasn’t going to be humiliated again by someone who said she “wasn’t queer.” I bristled at the word. As I washed my hands, I stared in the mirror and told myself what I had to do. There was something about being around my family, realizing there was no future with Adrienne no matter how I tried to imagine it, all of it conspired to close the lid on the feelings I had—even if they were the happiest feelings of my life.
When I returned to the room, I caught her playing, and she winked at me. I knew what that look of playfulness meant. And I had to lay down the rules quickly before I lost my nerve.
“Whatever happened,” I said, “you know, when we drank…it’s in the past. I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable.”
“You didn’t make me—”
“I’m not going to be drinking anymore.”
“Oh, great,” she replied sarcastically. “You went home and got born again, huh?”
“Not born again,” I corrected. “I had time to clear my head and…that person I was…that…wasn’t me.”
“Well, I slept with somebody who looked exactly like you.”
“I’m being serious. Why would you want to bring that up again?” After all, she “wasn’t queer.”
“Over the break, I missed you.”
“I missed you too,” I said carefully. The curiosity was killing me, so I had to ask: “What did you fight with Sean about?”
She rolled her eyes. “You know how guys get. They treat you like a prize. They think if you’re their girlfriend, they’ve won you and they’re entitled to keep you.”
“How very feminist of you,” I said, arms folded. Who was this new Adrienne? “So you said he didn’t own you?”
“Something like that. Now I come back, and you tell me you don’t want to have any fun anymore. It’s going to be a great year.” She was sarcastic.
I didn’t want to be her fun. My blood was boiling. She must’ve seen confusion and anger on my face.
“No more parties,” she explained. That was what she meant by fun.
“Oh. Yeah.”
She shrugged. “I get it. I don’t want to put you on the wrong side of Jesus.”
“I take my religion seriously.”
“And I take my lack of religion just as seriously.” Her slight smile, bordering on a full laugh, made me laugh too, in spite of myself. I couldn’t help it. Ripples of laughter filled the room. Did we laugh to relieve tension? Of course I had to analyze and dissect everything to death. I remembered the first night in the doughnut shop. All we could do was laugh. It was as if we had to distract ourselves from the spark of electricity that was always there between us. Sometimes it was so intense, we had to pretend it wasn’t there at all. Now I knew I wasn’t the only one who felt it.
“You’re awful!” I exclaimed, still laughing.
“I think I know what it is,” Adrienne said.
“Huh?”
“It’s from living in the South. You got a lot of preachers telling you not to do bad things. But it’s in everybody’s nature to do bad things. Being bad feels good.” She flashed me that devilish grin that sent chills down my back. “Like in church. I’ll bet they’re always telling you not to have sex. But everybody has sex. So everybody’s all confused, pointing fingers at everyone else when they’re doin’ it too. It makes you all look nuts.”
“Hey, you’re livin’ in the South too.”
“Florida doesn’t count as the south. Don’t you know that?”
“It seems pretty far south to me.”
“Everyone down here is from somewhere else.” Adrienne added, “Except me.”
“Except you,” I repeated with a smile.
“There are a lot of contradictions.”
“Yeah,” I sighed. “You got a few yourself.”
She lowered her eyes. It was as if I’d tapped into something private.
“You ever go to church?” I asked. “You know, before you became all badass?”
She smiled. “My dad used to say that no good ever came from sitting for hours in a place where they told you how bad you are. I pretty much agree with that.”
I laughed, thinking how she might have a point.
* * *
That night we ordered a pizza, sat in our room and talked. It was one of those nights I used to cherish. But now I had to be hard. No unnatural feelings or thoughts. I had to be tough. Remembering my father’s words, I would have to be tougher than ever before.
Chapter Fifty-Three
That spring, I had to take a class in political debating. I dreaded it, but it was necessary. In high school, I had vomited every morning I was required to do any kind of public speaking, and this class would be nothing but that.
The first day I thought I’d die when I saw the auditorium-size class. I made my way up the stairs to find a seat somewhere in the middle—not too close to be called on too much, and not too far away to be viewed as a slacker. I found an empty seat and glanced around at the sea of strange faces.
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“Hey, is this seat taken?” The question came from Chase, a tall, handsome guy with dark hair and a long neck.
“No,” I answered. I was immediately aware of the girls in the class who watched me with jealous eyes because this particular guy had chosen a seat beside me. I could hear their whispering the moment his butt hit the seat.
What I did notice was one late student, who managed to scoot in just as the professor made her way to the front. The student was Terri, the girl from my dormitory—the one Adrienne had pointed out as being “queer.” I watched Terri with great fascination as she made her way to a seat that was closer to the front. I’d never seen a girl cut her hair so short. It looked as though she’d shaved it in the back. I probably stared a little too long at her, but I found myself riveted to this girl who seemed to defy every social rule there was.
Professor Donovan was a young, slender woman in a black suit with inquisitive eyes that darted all around the room, waiting for us to get settled. She leaned against the podium, a slight smirk on her face as she got ready to tell us exactly how we’d be tortured this semester.
“As you can guess,” she said, “you’ll be doing a series of debates in this class. I want you to turn to the person next to you. That will be your debate partner.”
Chase looked expectantly at me. I nodded and smiled. He seemed pleasant enough.
“The two of you will present two sides of an issue,” Professor Donovan continued, “and the class will decide who wins the debate.”
I was filled with a familiar sense of dread, the blood pounding in my ears. Luckily, my partner and I weren’t scheduled to go in front of the class for a while.
* * *
“A petting zoo?” I screeched. “In this heat?” It would smell really bad. And in the muggy air, I could think of a million other things I’d rather do than go outside.
“Aw, c’mon. I heard it was fun.” Adrienne never showed much interest in animals, except for a yellow lab she made friends with in front of the dorm one time. She held his paw and rubbed his back. She looked very comfortable with animals, but she didn’t have any back home.
Of course I’d go along. I’d never resist any weekend activity that she suggested, especially when it included me.
“Is Nancy coming?” I asked tentatively, straightening my black, short-sleeved shirt. I’d never be a tank top kind of girl, but I’d bought a lot more short-sleeved shirts to survive the heat down here.
“No.” Adrienne broke out in a smile, knowing full well the reason for the question. “Or Becky. Or Sean.” She was right at home in a peach tank top, showing off her perfectly tan, sculpted arms. And those form-fitting jean shorts…
“I thought you two broke up.”
She glanced away and grabbed her keys. “We’re kinda on again. Sometimes he’s great. Sometimes he’s an asshole.”
“Sounds perfect.” My sarcasm was my default switch. I shook my head, following her out the door. It was my own fault. I made it clear there was no future between us. Of course Adrienne would go back to Sean. I really had no right to be angry. Or jealous. But of course I was.
“Did you ever have a family pet growing up?” I traced the car door handle as we rode down the highway.
“Not really,” she said. “Well, yeah.”
“It’s not a trick question.”
Adrienne laughed. “In our house, everything was complicated. My mom got us this dog. I don’t know what kind. It was like a lot of breeds in one.”
“A mutt?”
“Is that what ‘mutt’ means?”
“Uh, I think so.”
“Well, yeah. A mutt. Barney. I really loved that dog. But I was only six or seven. When Mom and Dad got divorced, he got rid of the dog because it reminded him of her.”
“Got rid of? You mean…”
“He found a farm somewhere,” she explained. “He didn’t have him killed or anything. But…” She stared down the road. “I was pretty sad.”
“I guess you would be, to get attached and then lose it.” Every bit of new information always made me feel closer to her.
“God, I hope he took him to a farm,” she said. “He told so many lies, who knows?”
* * *
I was awed by Adrienne’s ease with animals. Like Tarzan, she seemed to speak their silent language, compelling many of them to gather around her. It was the same with people. Everyone flocked to her.
“C’mon,” she called.
I shook my head. “No, that’s fine. I’ll see them in National Geographic.”
“It’s not the same.”
“Yeah, you miss that whole extra smelly dimension. You forget I grew up on a farm. They stink.”
“You’re supposed to be a country girl,” she laughed.
But it was my brother Kenneth who usually tended to the outdoor chores, while I was allowed to stay indoors and help our mother. That was one time when I certainly didn’t mind more traditional roles—because they kept me away from cow manure, flies, snakes and anything else that made me jump. There was a natural order to things—animals belonged outside and I belonged inside.
“Come here, Robin!” Adrienne called in a high-pitched voice, as if the fawn were talking. “Please come here and pet me. I’m really soft, and I’ll try not to bite your ass off.”
I rolled my eyes and laughed, still holding Adrienne’s cotton candy. “She really is enjoying your hand there.” I remembered Adrienne minutes before, swirling her tongue around and around the cotton candy. Some of the stickiness must have lingered on her hands.
“It’s the cotton candy smell,” she replied with a wink and a secret smile that stopped my heart with its intimacy. “Very alluring.”
Just a wink and a smile. That’s all it took. There was no one like her, no one with those lips, which always seemed to be on the verge of a laugh. There was just something about her that made me smile.
Then the stench of animal poop interrupted my daydream. No matter how cute an animal was, I was not getting near it. The first time my dad propped me up on a horse, it bucked me off, and I broke my leg. My uneasy relationship with the wild would continue whenever I saw a news report. Anyone who got too close to an unpredictable animal often paid for it dearly with a missing eye, a permanent scar or death. But the petting zoo was a fine place to be today, as long as I stayed on the other side of the fence.
I made an excuse and headed toward the nearest bench. While sitting there, I noticed a struggling caterpillar trying to cross the crowded pavement—determined to make it in spite of the stampede of human feet—a formidable obstacle indeed. He could so easily die, I thought, watching his tiny green body inching forward. At the same time, I was shamed by the plucky critter’s courage.
“Hey, Robin! Check this out!” Adrienne called to me.
Swimming in her smile, I was hypnotized into following her. I bolted up from the bench, started toward her and in a split second, looked down and realized I’d just squashed the caterpillar.
Minutes later, Adrienne tried to console me.
“It’s only a caterpillar,” she insisted, rinsing her hands under a faucet.
“You don’t understand!” My face had fallen to the ground.
“I don’t get you at all. You’re scared of a palmetto bug, but you’re crying over a caterpillar!”
“Will you stop calling them palmetto bugs?” I protested. “They’re roaches!”
“You’re still nuts.”
“What did you want me to see anyway?”
She shrugged as if she couldn’t remember. “Oh, the baby goat was eating out of my hand.”
“I took another life for that?” I stomped away, furious at myself, at Adrienne and the world.
All the way back to her car I was angry—angry that for a month I’d managed to keep my friendship with Adrienne as only a friendship and that she seemed to be okay with that. Not only was she okay, but obviously seeing Sean again. Even though I was the one who had laid down the law, I was still insu
lted that she would turn to him. If I wasn’t going to have Adrienne, no one should. Of course it was irrational, but “rational” was no longer in my vocabulary.
“I don’t know what your problem is,” she snapped, opening her side door for me.
“You’re my problem.”
Adrienne stood there with her hands on her hips, looking at me in the passenger side. “It wasn’t me who ended everything.” She slammed her door and went around to the driver’s side.
I stared ahead. I was embarrassed that she knew why I was so upset. I’d have to do a better job of lying. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.
“The hell you don’t.” She punched the gas and we roared out of the parking lot.
Chapter Fifty-Four
Robin would be the most gracious host, as usual, for her brother’s visit to the mansion, even though she was exhausted from a sleepless night, and more than a little shaken, in the aftermath of her visit to Carol. Kenneth had been obviously surprised to receive the invitation, but she had missed him. He would be a welcome distraction, which she needed, now more than ever. She hadn’t seen him in so long, she’d lost track of how many years it had been. She hadn’t been sure he’d even agree to meet with her.
Kenneth arrived in a simple corduroy jacket and jeans, never one for formality. Robin appeared in the doorway, as glamorous as the woman she was on TV. If he was surprised to see her, he didn’t show it.
“Ken!” She took both of his hands.
“Nice pad.” He smirked, glancing at the high ceilings and chandeliers. “My apartment could fit in your living room.”
“This isn’t the living room,” she replied. “It’s a sitting area.”
“So what do you do in the living room? You can’t sit in there?”
“Of course you can.” She smiled, seeing herself in his eyes. How absurd she must seem. She led him to a small room that was decorated like an upscale pub, with brown paneled walls and a pool table in the middle. She figured he’d be more comfortable here.
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