Weird Girl and What's His Name (13 page)

I saved the file and closed it. I got online. I sent Rory an IM.

I waited there, chewing at the edge of my thumbnail. He was still online. But the cursor was just blinking in white space. I logged in to the
Phorum,
but he wasn't in the chat room. I logged out, came back to the IM. Still blinking. Still blank.

Blink. Blink. Blink.

Almost a half an hour later, I turned off the computer. I turned off the light. I stumbled over to the bed and cried for a while until I fell into a deep, empty dream.

six

S
O THIS IS MY MOTHER.

Mom. Mother. Mama. Ma. None of these words felt right. She was like an iceberg. Floating and cold and distant. She was so far away still. She was standing right there in front of me. For nine months I was in this woman's womb. We were once connected by actual flesh. This was a completely alien concept. Completely abstract. She was a dream to me. A flickering image I only barely remembered.

And now there I was with the real thing. My mother. She was tall and slender and reminded me of a roughly chiseled sculpture that sat outside the First Carolina Bank on Dalton Street. Her eyes looked like mine as they looked at me.

“It's you,” she said.

“It's me.”

She had an armload of books and three-ring binders that she slunched onto the dining room table. She dug a BlackBerry out of her purse and dialed a number. She's making a call, at a time like this?

“Leo? It's me, Chris. Call off the dogs. Yeah, she's here.” My mother handed me the phone. “Talk to your grandfather.”

I blanched, shaking my head. No way. He would kill me. Through the phone, somehow. Phone bullets.

“Leo, she's a little freaked out, but she's fine. You're fine, right?” She was speaking to me. My mother was speaking to me. I nodded my head. “She says she's fine. Yes. Yes. I'll have her call you later, okay? She just got here. Yes—why would I? . . . Now you're being ridiculous. I said yes, didn't I? Okay, goodbye.” She tossed the BlackBerry back in her purse.

“They're worried sick about you.” She rapped her fingers against the kitchen counter. “You're going to have to call them, you know.”

“I know.”
Memorize her! Memorize her! She'll go away!

“What were you thinking?”

“What were
you
thinking?” I parroted. No, no, that was all wrong. I wasn't angry anymore. I loved her. Look at how cool she was. That silver ring on her thumb. Her cowboy boots. She was so fucking cool. She was the coolest woman I'd ever laid eyes on. I couldn't believe this was my mom.

“Oh, brother.” She sighed and flipped her hair with her hands. “Listen, I'm starved. Can we wait until after dinner to get into all the psychodrama? I assume you're staying for dinner.”

Of course I was staying. I had already staked my claim, put my duffel bag in the spare room and taken a shower with her weird narcotic soap, and I'd been sitting there at her kitchen counter eating hot bread for a good half hour by the time she got home. I was staying. She wasn't getting rid of me.

“Now, ain't that a picture?” Walter came in, stamping his boots on the gnarly braided rug. “Mother and child reunion. Whaddaya say let's eat?”

J
AY WAS IN MY ROOM AT
Janet and Leo's and suddenly I felt completely inadequate. I had the sneaking suspicion that Janet only invited her to dinner because she was trying to keep tabs on who I was hanging out with. As for Jay actually agreeing to this supremely awkward grandparent dinner/inquisition, I guess she figured after I drank her beer all the time, the least I could do was pay her back with gargantuan quantities of free Polish food. We'd retreated upstairs while Janet put the finishing touches on the meal.

“Man, it's like a shrine in here.” Jay glanced around my bedroom walls. “I had no idea they made Hobbit wallpaper.”

“Well, they're actually posters—”

“I was being sarcastic.”

“Right . . .” I felt strangely off-balance with Jay there. Like suddenly my room was smaller than usual, or something. “You're into
Lord of the Rings
?”

“Never seen it. Well, I saw part of one of them on TV once at my cousin's house.”

“Seriously? You've never seen, like, any of them? At all?”

“Yeaaah, I'm not really into, like . . . wizards and shit.”

“But, Jay! It's not just about wizards and shit! I mean, wizards are awesome, Gandalf's the coolest, but . . . it's all about humanity and like, good versus evil.”

“And beardy guys with swords?” Jay asked, eyeballing my Aragorn posters.

“That's Aragorn. He's like, this total badass. He's just, like, roaming the forests, carrying this tragic, impossible love for Arwen, but they can't be together because she's an elf and he's a man, and, meanwhile, he knows he's the king, and he doesn't let on, because he's too lovesick to even deal with it. Seriously, he's the hotness. You have to see the trilogy. It's epic. I'll bring over my DVDs.”

“Mmm, can't wait.” Jay picked up a book from my shelf. “You're reading Sam Shepard?”

“That's my mom's.”

“I had to see
Fool for Love
for this playwriting class I took back at Smith . . . not my cup of tea. All that macho cowboy stuff.” Jay shrugged and put the book back.

“Oh, it's not all macho cowboys. Most of his stuff's really weird and funny. Like, in
The Unseen Hand,
there's a—”

“Wow. Really?” Jay interrupted, holding up my Mulder and Scully action figures, still in the original packaging. “Just when I thought you'd told me all your deepest, darkest secrets, the truth comes out. Wizards. Elves. Kirk and Spock. Mulder and Scully. Lula, you're a
nerd
!”

“First of all, those are collector's items. Second—”

“
Nerrrrrrd
.”

“It's not like I carry around a Klingon–English dictionary.” I knew a kid who did that. Steve Meese. Now
that
guy was a nerd.

“So you won't be mad if I crack this open—” Jay flipped the Mulder figure over, her hands around the protective plastic casing.

“HEY.” I reached out and grabbed it out of her hands. “Not cool!”

“Nerrr-errrrd.” She sang softly.

“Okay, yes, I am a bit of a geek. I enjoy escapist entertainment. Listen, I'd rather watch a bunch of elves and wizards trying to save Middle Earth from the forces of evil than, I dunno, the
Bachelorette
or the
Real Housewives
of wherever getting their butt fat injected into their lips.”

“Point taken,” Jay laughed, gazing up at my wall of
X-Files
posters. “How'd you even get into this, anyway? This show came on when you were, like, two.”

“Reruns.” I put action figure Mulder and Scully back in their places on my shelf. “Rory and I started watching it together. It's one of our things. Or, it used to be.” Past tense.

“Ahh, now it all comes together.” Jay lay back on my bed, her hands behind her head. “You've seen one unrequited white hetero love story, you've seen 'em all.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“I mean I totally get it. You thought your buddy Rory was the Mulder to your Scully.”

“Well . . . yeah.” I sank down into my desk chair. “But, no.”

“Or, wait, did you think, what's her name again, Sam? Was she supposed to be the Scully to your . . . other Scully? . . . Scully's the chick, right?”

“Please don't tell me you've never seen
The X-Files.”

“Honestly, I tried, a million years ago, back in junior high when it first came on. Not into UFOs, not into unrequited heteros. I did get into
Buffy
for a while, but just for Tara and Willow.”

“Jay. I'm coming to your house with all nine seasons and you are not going to see the sun for three months.
X-Files
is literally the best show ever.”

“Dude,
The Wire
is the best show ever, and we are done talking. But, back to my question. Rory. Sam. You. The fact that Ms. Adorable Pouty Redhead is duking it out with the Beardy Swordsman over there for bedroom wall supremacy. Did it ever occur to you that maybe you're not gay or straight? Maybe you're bisexual.”

“First of all, Ms. Adorable Pouty Redhead? That's Special Agent Dana Scully you're talking about. Who is not only an FBI agent but also a medical doctor.”

“So she could arrest me and tell me whether or not I should start watching my cholesterol?”

“And perform an autopsy, if the need arises.”

“Impressive,” Jay remarked. “You know you're allowed to be an FBI agent-slash-doctor and be adorable at the same time, right?”

“Sure, I'm just saying. Agent Scully occupies a place of honor in my bedroom wall pantheon because she's a total badass, not just because she's some cute chick. And anyway, I thought you said one time that bisexuals don't really exist.”

“Oh, I only meant, you know, sometimes people say they're bi when they're really just too scared to commit to being gay. Listen, you can't take everything I say while we're watching
Dr. Phil
at face value. I'm sure there are some legit bi people out there.”

“And you think I'm one of them?”

“Well, your average lesbian probably wouldn't deliver monologues about the ‘hotness' of Mr. Pointy Cheekbones from
Lord of the Rings.
On the other hand, Agent Scully notwithstanding, it sounds like you made a pretty definitive effort toward initiating the sexytimes with your lady teacher. So . . . there's that.”

“Yeah, there's that,” I sighed, sinking down into my desk chair. “Can I be honest?”

“Please.”

“I don't think I really wanted to sleep with Sam. But I liked her. I like her. I mean, I . . . care about her life, and stuff. I don't really care that much about any of my other teachers. Like, I don't bear them any ill will, or whatever. But I don't get to school on Monday morning and think ‘Hey, I wonder if Mrs. Dalrymple got up to anything fun over the weekend.'”

“Lula, there's this fascinating social concept called ‘friendship,' where you're allowed to be interested in another person without having to declare some kind of sexual allegiance. You're even allowed to be interested in one of your high school teachers. Beneath all the fangs and gore, they're regular people just like you and me.”

“Fangs and gore?”

“I'm trying to speak to you in your idiom. Listen, seriously, I think I'm starting to get it now. You're trying to figure out what flavor of queer you are, if any, and you've got Scary Leo downstairs running interference, so you're, like, couching it all in TV shows instead of going out and actually dating people.”

“First of all, I'm not not dating people because I'm scared of Leo. Nobody at my school was ever even remotely interested in me. My nickname was Weird Girl. Second of all . . . Leo's scary, but he's not that scary.”

“Dude. You practically saluted him when we walked in the door.”

“I'm not . . . I wasn't . . .” I trailed off. Jay stared at me coolly. “You're right. I'm afraid of him. I'm afraid of what he thinks of me now.”

“Well, he hasn't kicked you out of the house yet, so he's one up on my dad,” Jay said softly.

“I don't think he'd kick me out just for being gay. Leo's always saying how civilians waste too much time worrying about gays in the military when they ought to worry about veterans not receiving adequate healthcare and stuff. Plus, he's like, really into Barbra Streisand.”

“Now
that's
gay.”

“I know, right?” We both laughed. I dug the toe of my sneaker into the carpet. “But I'm scared of him thinking I'm . . . ruining my life or something. I'm scared of him not being proud of me.”

“Everybody's scared of that with their parents,” Jay said gently. “You just have to do your best. That's all.”

“I'm scared of other stuff, too, Jay.”

“Well no wonder. You sit up here alone watching all this alien abduction, wizard apocalypse stuff.”

“No, I mean . . . like, when I went to meet my mom. I haven't . . . told anybody this. She was saying how my dad . . . how they were friends but they didn't really love each other. It wasn't meant to be.”

“Ah. You were an accident baby.”

“Yeah. But, more than that. Apparently, um. My dad was gay.”

“No kidding.” Jay sat up. “Huh. And you can't figure out if you're gay like him or not. This is all kinda starting to make sense now. You know it's not genetic, right? You can't inherit being straight or gay. Otherwise I'd be a happy hetero just like my mom and dad.”

“I know. It's more like the whole . . . him not really loving her thing. It doesn't feel too good. I mean, I knew she didn't want me when she left me here with Janet and Leo. But to have it confirmed. That I was just this, like, error. I mean, not like a minor error, like they were so crazy about each other they couldn't wait for the wedding night, or whatever. I mean like, these two people never even really wanted to sleep with each other in the first place. They were just . . . I don't even know, drunk and lonely and trying to pretend they actually loved each other. And then I came along. This mistake that neither of them saw coming. That neither of them wanted.”

“But, Lula, come on. So what if they didn't plan to have a baby? You're here now; your grandparents love you—even if your granddad is scary. They plastered the whole town with flyers when you left.”

“I know, I know. It's not that, it's just . . . lately I've been thinking, what if I'm always going to be this superfluous person, roaming the planet all alone, never fitting in, never connecting with anybody because I wasn't supposed to be here in the first place? You know how, like, when two people are in love, and everybody says, oh, it was meant to be? It was written in the stars? Lately I can't help thinking: what if I'm not meant to be
with
anybody because I wasn't even meant to
be
?”

“That is . . . one of the most depressing things I've ever heard in my life.” Jay sighed. She got up off the bed and knelt down in front of me, her hands on the arms of my desk chair, holding me steady, so I couldn't turn away.

“Lula. Look at me. You're just a kid. Just because you haven't met the Mulder to your Scully yet, or the Scully to your other Scully, or whoever it is you're looking for, it doesn't mean you're superfluous.”