The Forbidden Heart (8 page)

Did I do bad things in school? There’s a question that answers itself. Does it snow
in Alaska? From kindergarten on, I was impossible. I hated sharing anything with anyone.
I was aggressive and bullied whomever I could. By the time I was in the sixth grade,
I had probably had at least a dozen fights—in the girls’ room, in the hall, or on
the school grounds. I could kick and punch like a boy. Some of my fights were with
boys, in fact, and I didn’t lose. I got a few bumps and bruises, but none of that
caused me to retreat. I think my lack of fear for my own safety and of pain did more
to terrorize my opponents than anything else.

Mama was trekking a path right into the concrete sidewalks between home and my grade
school to have frequent parent-teacher and administrator sessions because of my bad
behavior. Whenever my father was brought in, called out of his office, the follow-up
was even uglier. He didn’t believe in things like time-out, sitting in a corner, or
losing privileges. What kinds of privileges did a ten-year-old really have, anyway?
No television, parties, or movies? I could live without any of it so well that it
frustrated him more. No, it was only his thick belt that gave him any hope, but I
frustrated him there, too.

Just as I was almost immune to the pain that I would suffer in a good yard fight,
I was also immune to my father’s thick belt. Tears would come to my eyes. I couldn’t
stop that, but I kept my lips sealed and my tongue paralyzed. I didn’t even moan.
I stood or lay there like a piece of wood. I knew my skin was nearly burned off sometimes,
but I wouldn’t cry out. Finally, he would give up, declaring I was simply impossible.
I would come to no good. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy. He expected that he would
stand in our living room one day and point at that front door just as he had today.
Sometimes I thought he was actually looking forward to the opportunity. It had finally
come, and it wasn’t because of some final straw. The accumulation was just too much.
He couldn’t swallow down another rule being broken, another law being disobeyed.

My schoolwork was in shambles. I was barely passing most subjects and failing a few
in the twelfth grade. I had a good chance of not graduating. Earlier that year, I
had been caught smoking some weed in the girls’ room. I suspected a girl named Carly
Forman had informed on me. A few weeks before, I had stolen away her boyfriend, Walter
Martin. It wasn’t hard to do. Carly was determined to hold on to her virginity. I
knew Walter’s buddies were with girls who were just the opposite, and he was taking
some heat for his failure to score. Carly was very proud and vocal about her innocence.
For me, attracting and tempting Walter was like shooting fish in a barrel. Although
he wasn’t bad-looking, I wasn’t particularly attracted to him. I did it only to get
back at Carly, because she loved spreading rumors about me and looking down on me.

Twice this month, Mama had been called and asked to come to school because of the
way I had used French words to curse out my teachers. My father had married Mama in
France and had brought her to America. She still spoke French at every opportunity
and did so with me and even with him from time to time. I was good at picking up some
curse words and creating some very nasty images, in addition to becoming quite fluent
in the language. Because of the way I looked when I spoke, my teachers suspected that
what I was saying was inappropriate, so they got translations that I was sure turned
their faces red, especially Mrs. Roster, my science teacher. She came down on anyone
who used “damn.”

I suppose if I listed the mothers who called to complain about me, the fathers who
spoke to
mon père
complaining about my influence on their perfect daughters, and the three police arrests
for shoplifting over the last two years, I could understand why both of my parents
were feeling defeated, especially when they looked back at the years of disappointment.

Five nights in these last two weeks, I had come home well after midnight. Twice I
snuck out of the house when I had been “confined to quarters.” Papa actually used
that terminology. He had tried to keep me contained by forbidding Mama to give me
any money. Once in a while, she snuck me a few dollars, but for the most part, she
was more afraid of defying him than I ever was. I had a stash of money that I instinctively
knew I would need someday, so I didn’t touch any of it, and I was always trying to
add to it.

This particular day, I got caught stealing fifty dollars out of Carrie Duncan’s purse
during P.E. I denied it, of course, but Carrie’s father had given her a twenty with
a bad ink smear on one side, and that twenty was in my possession. I was suspended
again and couldn’t return without both of my parents meeting with the dean. It looked
very ominous. There could be an effort to have me sent to some other school or brought
before a judge again, only this time with more determination to have me placed in
a juvenile detention center or something.

Two weeks before, I had met Steve Carson at the Columbus Circle mall. I saw him reading
the cover of a novel in the bookstore. He looked very interested in it, and then he
put it back on the rack. I thought he was a very good-looking guy, about six feet
tall, with a swimmer’s build. He had soft, wavy light brown hair and patches of freckles
on his cheeks but a look in his face that gave him a more mature expression. I prided
myself on always being a good judge of character and personality. I knew how to read
people’s eyes, the way they looked at other people, and the small movements they made
with their lips. Innocence and insecurity were always easy for me to see, as was arrogance.

I watched how Steve looked with interest at other people, skimming the surfaces of
their faces and bodies just like someone who knew as much about people as I thought
I did. He brought a smile to my face. Whenever I saw someone who interested me, I
suddenly felt very good, as if there was some purpose to being born, after all, because
most people bored me.

I watched Steve walk away, and then I shoplifted the book he had been considering.
It wasn’t difficult this time, because it fit so well in the inside pocket of the
oversize man’s leather jacket I was wearing. Despite being caught at it three times,
I was almost as good as a Las Vegas magician when it came to “now you see it, now
you don’t.” I left the store right after he did, and when he stopped to look at some
clothing in a window, I came up beside him and took out the book. I stood there looking
at it, and then he looked at me with a smile of incredulity.

“You just buy that book?” he asked.

“Sorta,” I said.

“Sorta? What’s that mean?”

“Sorta means ‘sort of,’ ” I said, and he laughed. “Here,” I told him, handing it to
him. He looked at it in my extended hand.

“ ‘Here’? You want to give it to me? Don’t you want to read it?”

“The last thing I read was a ticket for jaywalking, and you know how hard that is
to get in New York City.”

He laughed again, looked at the book suspiciously, looked back at the store and then
at me.

“Don’t worry. It was a clean sorta,” I said, jerking the book at him. “Take it. I
don’t want it.”

He finally took it. “If you don’t want it, why did you do this?”

“I saw you read the cover with interest and then put it back. On a budget?”

“Sorta,” he said, smiling.

“There you go, then. You have what you wanted at no cost.”

“Yes, but why did you want to do this for me? Who are you?”

“I’m not an undercover policeman working out an entrapment or anything. Don’t worry.
You looked like you really wanted it. I liked your look, so I did one of the things
I do best. I made some good-looking guy happy.”

He laughed but shook his head incredulously. I could tell he had never met anyone
like me. But then again, few people had. “My name is Roxy Wilcox,” I added, and offered
my hand.

He looked at it as if taking it would doom him.

“No diseases,” I said.

He took it, holding it very gently, almost too gently for a man who looked as fit
as he did. “Steve Carson. You liked my look?”

“Sorta,” I said, and he did that smile and shaking of his head again.

He looked around—to see if anyone was noticing us, I guess. Then he turned back to
me. “I guess you live in New York?”

“Right. East Side. You?”

“I’m going to Columbia. Junior. Born and raised in Rochester, New York.”

“Raised? What are you, corn?” I asked, and he laughed.

“You’re funny, all right. You go to school or what?”

“Mostly ‘or what,’ but I’m still enrolled in school. At least today.”

“College or . . .”

“High school,” I said. “A senior, but don’t hold it against me.”

He nodded. Then he looked at his watch.

“Heavy date at the dorm?” I asked.

“No. I don’t live at the dorm. I took a studio apartment on Jerome Avenue.”

“Oh, a loner?”

“I’m just not into the college rah-rah stuff. Can’t afford to fail anything. Besides,
I like being on my own.”

“Makes two of us.”

“So you’re a senior in high school?”

“I’m old enough. Don’t worry about that. I was left back three times,” I added, half
in jest. He looked as if he believed it and smiled a little more warmly now. I could
see he was very attracted to me, not that most boys weren’t.

I think that was a big part of what confused my parents and my teachers. I was, in
all modesty, quite beautiful, with a terrific figure, but as Billy Barton, a boy in
my class, was fond of saying, I was “hell on wheels.” The contradiction probably kept
me from suffering more severe punishments. Whenever I had been brought before a judge,
I could see the confusion in his face. Why would someone who looked like me be so
bad? Who was I, the daughter of Bonnie and Clyde? I knew how to be sweet and remorseful,
too. Each time, I was sent off with warnings. Most men, especially some of my teachers,
were easy to manipulate. But not my father, never
mon père
.

“So what do you want to do afterward?” he asked.

“After what?”

“High school,” he said.

I shrugged. “I don’t know. That’s too far away to plan.”

He nodded. I had the feeling I was beginning to scare him now.

“No, I don’t know. I might go into fashion modeling.”

“You could.”

“Thank you.”

He glanced at his watch again and then surprised me. “How about some lunch?”

“Lunch?”

“That’s the least I could do for a girl who risked her reputation and her uncertain
future for me.”

I shrugged. “Why not? Only, I didn’t risk my future. I reinforced it.”

He laughed. “You’re very funny.”

“I’m better when I’m really trying to be. So where’s this lunch?”

“I know this great sandwich shop on Fifty-Seventh.”

“Lead the way,” I said, and we started out together.

I suppose a relationship that began with a theft didn’t have a good prognosis, but
I was never one to care about long relationships, anyway. Maybe my mother’s relationship
with my father turned me off the idea. My guidance counselor, Miss Laura Gene, was
an amateur therapist, and she often accused me of always looking for ways to blame
my parents for anything and everything.

“One of these days, you’ll have to take sole responsibility for things you do, Roxy,”
she told me. “That’s when you’ll know you have become an adult.”

“Oh, I thought that was when I had my first period,” I replied, and she turned a shade
of purplish red.

She would definitely categorize Steve as an adult. He was obviously a very responsible
person and serious about his schoolwork. He was not my idea of an ideal guy, anyway.
I liked guys who weren’t uptight about their futures. When he told me he was very
interested in international politics, I thought he was going to start talking about
current events like my father and be boring, but he had a passion for what he liked,
and I was attracted to that for a while. It didn’t take me long to figure out that
he was not terribly experienced when it came to romance, despite his good looks. He
was an only child, born to parents who had him late in their lives. Cursing, sex,
drugs, and drinking were so alien to him that I thought at first he was from another
planet. But he didn’t prove too difficult to corrupt.

After lunch, we went for a walk in Central Park. He was going to go on to his apartment
to work on a research paper. I asked him if he wanted company later.

“Later? When later?”

“I don’t care. You tell me,” I said.

“It’s Sunday. Don’t you have school tomorrow?”

“I never let something like that interfere with my happiness,” I said.

He smiled, now far more relaxed. I could see he was intrigued with me, and for now,
that was enough for me.

“I’m not much of a cook, but I’m good at putting out a ready-to-eat chicken with some
vegetables.”

“I’m always ready to eat,” I said. “And other things.”

“Other things?”

“You’ll figure it out. You seem smart.”

He smiled and gave me his address. “Six-thirty?”

“Fine,” I said, and gave him a quick kiss on the lips, then hurried away. When I looked
back, he was still standing there looking after me, glancing at the book I had swiped
for him and then back at me as if he couldn’t believe that what had just happened
was real.

That was one of those nights when my father nearly took off my head, but I endured
the pain and continued seeing Steve on and off during the next two weeks. As it turned
out, he didn’t just have limited romantic experiences. He was a virgin. That ended
fast. I was able to spend that night later at his place because one of the girls at
my school covered for me in exchange for an iPod I had lifted. She really wasn’t much
of a friend, not that any of them were.
Mon père
was on a short business trip, so I was able to pull it off.