2 - UNREQUITED
Janice
Lacey has a tell. Her chest goes pink first, up from the collarbone, then her neck, and she takes a drink she doesn't want so she has something to do with her mouth. Then she asks a follow-up question. She always asks a follow-up question. And what did she say?
Twelve years and it still knocks the wind out of me.
Because it isn't polite interest. I know the difference between a woman being a good sport about her friend's weekend and a woman whose body has left the table.
Her eyes lose their focus and she comes back a half second late.
I sit across from her imagining what's happening to her body while she says mm and right and that's so interesting, Jan.
No one is built like her. Not just beautiful, God knows. Built loaded. Everything in that woman is cocked and nothing has ever been permitted to go off.
And she goes home to Brad.
Brad, who once told a table of eight that he found the whole subject of sex ‘a bit tedious after a certain age,’ while his wife studied the bread.
Brad, who has the erotic imagination of a filing cabinet and who married a woman with that face and that mind and that pink climbing up her throat. Steady, girl.
"You have to come with me sometime," I said. "It's a professional development cruise, not an orgy."
"You've been asking for six years."
"And I'll ask for six more."
Then she gave me the look. "Easy for you."
"Because I was raised by hippies in a commune?”
"I didn't say that."
"You've been saying it since second year." I let her have the laugh. "Fine. Sure. That's probably why it's easy for me to want things, to walk into a room and be curious instead of afraid. I'll give you that one."
She always waits when she thinks she's won.
"Neither of my parents held a job through a whole season.
Neither of them ever finished anything. They handed my raising off to the commune the way you'd hand a coat to a stranger. People came and went, even my parents.” I turned my own glass once to see if she'd catch it.
She didn't. "And I went through med school.
Admittedly, I probably chose psychiatry because of them, but I went through it same as you. Nobody carried me."
"That's different."
"I'm sorry your father taught you that beautiful women should hide themselves and be ashamed of their bodies. I am sorry. But you don't have to swallow it just because he fed it to you."
Her face changed. Not hurt. Disgusted, and not with me.
"My dad had a reason." Flat. "My mother left him for another man. Walked out and never looked back once." She was talking to the table. "She didn't even leave me a note."
One woman walks out a door and a man spends the rest of his life making sure his daughter understands that a body is a liability.
I could put her on this table. Right here.
I could clear the glasses off with my forearm and find out in about forty seconds exactly how much is under that cardigan and she would let me, she would absolutely let me, and afterward she would cry and hate herself and I would have to watch that part too, and it would still be worth it, and…
Down! Down, girl! Jesus, the cat is hungry today.
"Lace—"
"Normal people can't just overcome anything." She looked up. "Like you did."
I reached across and put my hand over hers.
"Baby, that isn't how it is." Her fingers were cold.
"I never saw a stable parent. Not one. I've never had a model for what two people are supposed to look like together, so I don't have one.
My mom's family were incredibly strict with her.
Then she fell in love with a Jamaican hippie who promised her freedom.
I love that I was raised to be free. But I'd also love a family that stays.
I don't think I'll ever learn how to build one.
Everyone's carrying something. I'm only saying you can try. "
She shrugged, and drew her hand back, and put the shutters up.
I let it go. You don't press the same spot twice in one lunch.
But afterward I sat with my hand still cool from hers.
Either that woman finally comes loose, and God help every one of us when she does, because I have seen what's in there and it is not small.
Or she folds herself smaller and smaller around it until there's nothing left but an exceptionally good doctor in a beige cardigan, and she dies at ninety having never once been awake.
I am not going to let the second one happen.