by Loren, Celia
Though Mirabel proceeded to dismantle Katy’s character at length, Ryder had a hard time listening to the rest of what she said. It wasn’t that he didn’t care, but rather that her words from earlier had fallen like an ultimatum on the table, not to mention the revelation that it was possible to be kind to someone without coming on to them. Maybe it wasn’t complicated, after all. He thought of his favorite books. Elaborate stories all, in which the lovers never quite got things together, most often because society had it in for them. Mirabel apparently lived in a world where society’s rules didn’t mean diddly: one could love whomever, do whatever with their days, counsel whatever to new, sexy, marine friends. Could it be possible that he and Chloe belonged to this new world, where things like decorum and legacy had less pull on matters of the heart?
“You want another?”
“Huh?”
“Okay, space cadet. Just wanted to see if you needed a re-up.” She tapped her empty mug. Ryder nodded, bemused.
Chapter Seventeen
“...and that was my favoritest day in the country,” Freddy Eyring concluded, clearing his throat for punctuation. It took a surreal amount of energy to smile, as if this forty-five minute anecdote had been in the least entertaining. But Chloe mustered, twisting the ends of her lips.
“More water?” Freddy asked. But before she could respond, he was filling her glass. Which about explained Freddy, in a nutshell. Perfectly decent on paper, albeit not a great listener. At least he wasn’t still tormenting fat kids on the playground. That was something.
“So,” he said, after an awkward lull. “What do you like to do? In your free time?”
All of my time is free.
Pine for a boy.
Plot my escape.
“I did Geography and Languages in colleges, so...that, I guess. And I like reading.” Freddy nodded. Chloe hated how lame this sounded even as the words entered the restaurant’s air. Elder Eyring had clearly been hoping she’d say something fun and sporty and game. I like traveling. I like skiing. I like tennis. I like massaging my good Mormon husband’s shoulders before I cook him a fatty feast.
“What do you like to read?”
Nothing you’d have heard of, jockboy. But no—Chloe had made a decision in the car with her father the other day. If she was going to submit to this part of herself, the cowardly, home-loving part that feared change more than it craved newness—she was going to do it right. She’d said yes to the date with Freddy, and in a tacit way this meant she’d said yes to all her father implied. Besides. Ryder wasn’t coming back for her. What was so wrong with a second-place life?
She took Freddy in, as if for the first time. His fork was poised over a small pillow of mashed potatoes. He’d gotten handsome since grade school. He had sandy hair and avid green eyes. He was on the thin side, but tall. His jaw was firm and set, but the skin of his face was pocked with some acne scars he’d acquired in high-school. His teeth were blindingly white, and when he smiled she was reminded of a Ken doll. And when he’d picked her up in his reasonable Prius, her father had grinned like a kid on Christmas.
“Novels, mostly,” she said, trying her best to sound sincere. “Classics. I like Woolf, and Flaubert. Dickens. The Russians are okay—I think Kafka’s my favorite? If I had to choose over like, Dostoevsky and those guys. I like Yates, for the twentieth century. And God, of course the Brontes. George Eliot. Jane Austen. Some Italians...”
Freddy’s fork continued to quiver over the potatoes. His smile remained fixed.
“Oh my God, that was so dorky. I’m sorry.” Chloe felt her face turn its trademark tomato.
“No, no! I think that’s so neat,” her date continued. “I haven’t read a fiction book since high-school. But I think it’s groovy that you like that. Makes you different from most of the dummies in this town.”
There it was: the fine edge of cruelty. A little vestige from his days on the playground, perhaps. She could tell that Freddy wanted her to lean in conspiratorially and make some mean remark about the dummies in Provo, but she couldn’t muster the energy. Besides, who were they to make fun of their families? Their homes? It wasn’t like either of them had gone very far from their parents. To the rest of the world, they looked exactly like the next Mormon couple on a parent-arranged first date.
“I’m sorry,” Freddy blurted. “That wasn’t nice. I love this town, obviously. I’m just a little nervous.”
“Nervous? Why?”
He finally set his fork down, and placed his beefy hands on the table as if to steady himself.
“You, silly!”
“Me? Why do I make you nervous?”
Ken-doll rolled his eyes and smoothed back his hair. He was relaxing into the evening, and Chloe was surprised to realize she was doing the same.
“You’re like the smartest girl I know,” he began. “You only ever talk to your sisters or your brother or that girl Gwen. Even when we were kids, there was something sort of stand-offish and too-cool about you. You knew who you were and what you wanted in a way the rest of us didn’t. It was...freaky.” Freddy’s eyebrows turned into one another, making him look for an instant like a caricature of a sad clown. For a weird flash of a second, Chloe wondered what it would be like to be naked with this man. His slightly concave chest. His freckly arms. She shook the thought away.
“You have no idea how wrong that is,” she said instead, sounding more sad than she meant to. “I don’t have anything figured out. I mean—I didn’t. Not back then.”
“Well, you sure fooled this town.” This time, when Freddy sought her gaze, Chloe didn’t turn away. She kept her hand on the table, inches from his own. She tried with all of her might not to think about Ryder, and what he might be doing at this very moment. Who he might be out to dinner with.
“That’s sweet,” she said, sincerely. She smiled.
When Freddy dropped her off (at a reasonable hour, like the perfect gentleman), Chloe watched Celeste and Marie dart away from the front window, where they’d clearly been spying. She tried not to let this bother her. Her sisters were younger and in some ways flightier than she had been at their age (she’d once compared them to Kitty and Lydia in Pride and Prejudice), but even so—their readiness to see Chloe fixed up with a milquetoast Mormon of their father’s choosing was a little disappointing. They’d never exactly had a girl’s pow-wow about Ryder’s leaving—in fact, no one in the family had so much as uttered his name since that horrible morning—but Chloe thought she could tell that the twins had opinions on the matter. Perhaps because they were still in school, where modern girls were supposed to be learning how to think for themselves, a part of her had hoped that they’d offer their encouragement to the dangerous marine who’d set their young hearts atwitter. But Chloe also knew she couldn’t exactly fault them for forgetting about Ryder. It was possible, she admitted, that they only wanted to see their big sister happy.
“Those two must keep your mother on her toes,” Freddy said, gesturing toward the window. He Ken-doll smiled again.
“Oh, Celeste and Marie? Yeah, they’re a hoot. Very...energetic.”
“They’re gonna make some BYU boys very happy,” her date continued. This led to a confused silence. “Not that I...that’s....oh, man. Another foot in your mouth, Elder Eyring.”
Chloe laughed. She had been a little haughty about Freddy after all; his self-deprecation surprised her. Without quite thinking about it, she moved to put a comforting palm on his hand, which lay on the armrest. His skin was smooth, touchable. He wore some kind of man-lotion.
No sooner had their bodies touched, than Freddy lunged over the armrest and took her neck in his hand. With the urgency of a fifteen year old boy, he mashed his lips—also lotion-soft—into hers, shortly following up with his muscular, fleshy tongue. Chloe was so surprised she didn’t know how to react for a moment. He was clawing at her, moving his hands like he hoped to enfold her. Eat her.
Finally, reason returned. “Excuse me!” she cried, pressing her hands
into Freddy’s chest and shoving with all her might. She felt fear in that instant, when her own weakness came up against his strength. Even given the tentative muscles of his chest, she knew that he was strong enough to make her do whatever she wanted. This knowledge shook her to her base.
Luckily, Freddy could take physical repulsion as a hint. He demurely wiped the back of his mouth with his hand, and for a moment it seemed like nothing had happened. Maybe Chloe had dreamed the past moment. Maybe her new, sexual self had an overactive imagination.
She waited for him to speak, on the off-chance that she had misinterpreted something. When Freddy said nothing, she readjusted her blouse and made for the door-handle.
“Well, this was fun,” she heard herself say, sounding confused and rattled. “But I—”
“I don’t understand,” Freddy said, in a low voice. “Everyone talks about it. And now you’re too good for me? After I bought you dinner?”
It was like the blood in her veins turned to ice water. Chloe’s grip on the door hardened, but she couldn’t bring herself to leave.
“What are you talking about,” she replied, matching his tone.
This time, Freddy made no show of his Ken-doll grin. He snarled the next words. “It’s all over this city that you fucked that little soldier boy. But when an actual clean, good man takes you out to dinner, you’re too good for it?” He thumped his head against the back of the carseat, laconic. “It’s as bad as your brother says. Must be. You’re nothing but a filthy, ruined little pricktease. A whore.”
The numbness chose this moment to return, and thank God. Chloe peeled herself out of Freddy’s car, dragging her heels. In the cool autumn air, she felt immediately, sinfully exposed in her thin cotton baby-doll dress and stockings. She hated the thought of Freddy watching her as she walked into the house, but when she heard the wheels of his car spin off into the road fast as lightening, she felt even worse.
A filthy, ruined little whore.
Chloe hovered outside her house. She wasn’t sure she could face her mother’s giddy “how did it go?” Or her father’s rare smile. Not tonight.
So instead of going in, she turned back toward the night and sat on the stoop. She let the numbness permeate, until it seemed like her heart was slowing down. Each time it beat, she heard the words again: Whore, whore, whore.
Just then, a strange thing happened. Instead of giving in to the numbness, as she’d been doing for weeks, some new emotion clicked over. Her blood started to run hot once more. She saw her recent days in Provo like a flash of images, a movie montage: her poised, perfect behavior in the temple and outside of it; her perfect daughter routine. The absence of all her beloved books. And now, this? Had her life finally come to this? Had she allowed her life to be so inertia-driven that she would tolerate a bully’s assault, his cruel taunts, and turn around and smile to her family that it had gone “okay?”
Chloe stood, and shook the gravel off the back of her dress. She wrenched open the doorknob, feeling powerful for the first time in who knew how long. Well, then again, maybe she knew exactly how long. Since twelve weeks ago, when the one person who’d decided to understand her had been driven from this roof.
Johnny’s was the first face she saw, hovering by the front door. Her brother had been acting even more strange than usual lately, and according to scuttlebutt (Celeste had a flirtation going with one of Johnny’s bowling buddies), the new mood swings had something to do with a medication he was trying to go off of. Try though she had to be sympathetic to Johnny’s outburst and condemnation in recent days, it was still hard to imagine forgiving her once-best friend for his cruel words. And now he’d gone and told Freddy something terrible, too?
Yet John tried to play the amiable part when she caught his eyes in the foyer.
“How was your date,” he murmured, a little shyly. She didn’t respond. She was worried that if she attempted to speak, she’d spew a black stream of furious bile all over her brother.
“Where’s Mom and Dad?” Chloe’s heart was racing. Johnny pointed in the direction of the kitchen. As she approached the familiar hearth, she heard the sounds of her loving family, cooing and chatting in the silky tones they always did. But for the first time, this did nothing to her heart.
As soon as she’d wheeled into the room, her parent’s faces fell. They could read her expression. Elder Johannes opened his mouth to speak, but Chloe held up a shaking palm.
“Wait, Daddy. I need to say something.” She took a shaky breath, summoned all the courage she required. “I’m not going to teach at the school anymore. I’m not going to lead or attend any classes, or ceremonies. I don’t really feel like going to church, either. That’s both because I don’t feel welcome in this community, and because I won’t have my faith feel like a punishment.
I’m twenty-six. I’m not your baby anymore. In this country, thank God, I can go and do and say what I want so long as I’m not hurting anyone. I’m sorry Ryder made you feel less powerful. I’m sorry he and I brought some vague shame on your precious, pristine house. But you should know that he’s the only person who’s ever actually tried to understand me, or make me happy. You should know that not all of us want your and Mom’s life. Or even your and Mom’s idea of God.”
To her shock, her parents just stood there, taking it in. This, then, was a third and most powerful incarnation of a new self—a Chloe 3.0. She felt like she could swallow the world.
“I’ve been called a lot of things lately. In this town, in this house, in this very room. They say I’m a harlot. A fallen woman. A whore. Well, only two people have ever made me feel like a whore, Daddy. And that’s Elder Eyring, and you.” She turned to go, feeling lighter than she ever had before. But instinct spun her heels. “Oh, and one more thing. I want my fucking books back.”
Chapter Eighteen
Ryder tried not to let his attention falter, when Mirabel started making out with her new girlfriend, Lexi. This was difficult. Lexi was a busty redhead with old Hollywood-style eyebrows drawn on in pencil. As their heads bent together in sexy conspiracy, his old self was all but screaming: this is so hot. This is so, so hot.
But the new, calm, well-adjusted Ryder didn’t give in to temptation so easily. For one thing, these were his two best—and so far, only—friends in the city, and he wasn’t about to become their creepy straight dude friend who couldn’t keep his drool to himself. For another, the little trio was currently sitting in a decrepit waiting room in Queens, waiting to see if Ryder had passed some obscure test that would determine if he was fit to work with other veterans. Nabby had recommended that he look into “giving back,” to his community, so here he was. At the scene of the crime, so to speak.
Mirabel’s lazy mouth descended to her girlfriend’s shoulder, and Lexi giggled with glee. The only other occupant in the waiting room was a rigid-looking old lady, who kept her eyes glued to the floor. Lord knew what she was thinking about the present company. Her penetrative gaze somehow reminded Ryder of Marie Christiansen’s pious eyes, when her father spoke at dinner table. And just like that, he was about as far from being turned on as it was possible to be.
“Strong?” A nurse in bubblegum-pink scrubs peered across the waiting room. Mirabel, to his relief, put her wandering hands back in her own lap. “Mr. Strong? Dr. Fisher is ready to see you?”
“Go get ‘em, tiger,” Lexi said, in her husky voice. Ryder blushed, which made Mirabel giggle. “You’ve got this,” his yoga teacher snapped, leaning forward to shake his knee. Their encouragement reminded him of barracks bonding. They had his back, these crazy two. He felt lucky to be part of a team again.
Dr. Fisher’s office was about as decrepit as Dr. Fisher’s waiting room. It was suddenly easy to see how high a priority the city considered their veterans to be.
“So you want to work with military men,” the grizzly doctor told him, thwacking his way over many teetering stacks of file folders to his flimsy desk. “Why is that, son?”
Ryder cleared his
throat, preparing to deliver the rehearsed explanation. As a fellow sufferer of PTSD, he knew what the men were going through. In service, he’d taken on leadership roles with courage and compassion. Etc, etc. But when he spoke, none of these reasonable explanations came out.
“Umm, I think I’m heartbroken? So I need something to fill up my time. Besides...her.” He regretted the words as soon as they’d been spoken aloud. Why would a doctor take any kind of chance on some casual jock? Veterans needed strong, committed support. Not just Average Joes walking in off the street ready to blab to anyone about their girl trouble.
“I applaud your honesty,” Dr. Fisher grunted, pushing his drugstore glasses an inch further down on his nose. “Most of the people we get in here are vaguely religious, tell me they’re ‘instructed by God.’ But I have a lot more faith in love than Jesus. I don’t know about you.”
Ryder just grinned. He figured the jury was still out on Jesus.
“I have a patient—nice kid, just finished his second tour in Afghanistan. Allegedly peace-keeping, but he’s seen some shit. He hasn’t been very receptive to traditional therapy, and won’t come to group. I see in your file here that you like to read?”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“Well, that’s good. Reading’s about the only thing Wally likes to do anymore. Maybe you two tough guys can get yourself a book club going.” When Dr. Fisher smiled, Ryder noted his crooked, yellowy teeth. There was something endearing about this flawed workhorse of a man, who was merely intent on doing his best by a bunch of broken kids. Ryder nodded enthusiastically, surprised at how good it felt to accept the assignment.
“Can’t wait to meet him,” he said, several times.
That night at his aunt’s place, in his old teenage bedroom, Ryder took stock. He ticked off his blessings on his fingers. He had his health (for the most part), two funky new bohemian galpals, he had his aunt, he had New York City. It was beginning to feel like Provo was just an extension of the bad dream his service had been. He tried to imagine the trajectory of his life, from the current course: he could keep going to yoga class, and follow Mirabel’s advice and seek teacher certification. He could volunteer with kids like Wally, and offer whatever expertise he could be expected to have about living after seeing so much violence. It almost felt like an argument for God, this second draft of a life. He could be a new kind of hero.
