Star-Crossed (19 page)

Which is why my father married Vivian. It was better to spend the remaining time with someone so vapid that there was no expectation of any real attachment; any real feeling of that same connection that most soulmates share. They simply coexisted in order to keep one another company. That was enough; and if it wasn't, it was all they had.

“Overdose,” Marius said. “I'm sorry.”

A strange girl stared at me from across the room; I didn't recognize her. The emotion in her wide, brown eyes - or in the way she sat, hunched over as if suffering a bullet-wound – had for so long remained a foreign concept. Nonexistent.

Impossible. I don't have a heart.

I looked over at my hand, my fingers still touching Marius'.

“I need to go,” I told him. “But I can't have my father or your mother wondering where I am.”

Marius nodded.

“Don't worry,” he said. “Just go. But Kaitlyn, you should be fair to him. Let him go before he finds out and things get ugly.”

I was about to walk out barefoot until he handed me my shoes.

“You're one to talk,” I said. “You never let things go. You just obsessively write about them in that damned journal. And if you do, it's never before things end up detonating like a ticking time bomb.”

There was nothing he could say, and I tried to tell myself, as I ran through the black garden grass, that those two words –
don't worry –
were at least something to take comfort in.

On the street, surrounded by the embrace of soothing New York discord, I pulled out my phone.

First course of action: I called Tyler. My friend. My only friend. I told him my mother had died. I listened to him cry in near hysterics through the phone line, apologizing as if he had some part to play.

“God,” he said. “Do you want me to come over? My mom will let me. She'll understand.”

“No,” I told him. “No. I need to be with my family.”

A lie. Another lie. But I didn't give myself time to wallow in the fact that I was shitty friend, a dishonest friend. Maybe not even a friend at all. I simply wandered down the sidewalk, occasionally glancing at the dying bar signs with their rave-colored lights and wondering how long the bulbs lasted before they went out.

Second action: I called Will. My lover. My teacher. I flagged at taxi and wept against a disgusting window smeared with hand-prints. I handed the driver several crumpled bills, told him to keep the change. I stumbled up the steps and into Mr. Tennant's apartment. I fell into his arms, weeping, waiting for the small pocket of breath where I could finally choke out: my mom's dead.
She's gone. She's never coming back and I just don't know how to feel about anything or anyone anymore
.

Mr. Tennant took my face in his hands; tears brimmed and spilled down my cheeks; and after kissing them away, he took me into his arms and led me into the living room. We made love on the floor covered in only the muted images dances across a projector screen.
Harvey
. I savored the sounds of frantic breath, smacking lips; soft moans and aching fingertips. I listened to him whisper how much he had missed me in my ear, a stray hand tracing up my thigh that was still clothed. I hadn't even bothered taking off my uniform.

“I wish I could do everything with you,” I told him. We were on the floor, breathless, only our eyes connected. “You were my first, and I know that life is unpredictable and often cruel. But I wish that you could be my last.”

He touched the ring that rested against his chest. He touched my face. He kissed me. But he said nothing in return.

Third (and final) course of action: acknowledge that I was indeed delusional. That I had no idea what I had done, or just how deep the grave was that I had dug myself into. An explosive secret that once detonated would impact everything.

The thought frightened me to the point that it was almost paralyzing. I couldn't help but think of that old nursery rhyme, singing as a child while I ran in circles – hand-in-hand – with all the school-yard children.

Ashes

Ashes

We all fall down.

FIFTEEN

[I think that the biggest shock to me, after learning of her death, was that she was still in New York after all. Not in California, nor in some faraway country. After the funeral, which was an open-casket affair attended by essentially all of Manhattan's high-society inhabitants, I had succumbed to the realization of two things:

My mother, still vain even on the cusp of her own mortality, had left a beautiful corpse. She was just as candidly delicate from when I last remembered her; the snapshot image now vaguely speared by time. A parishma scarf, Jackie Q sunglasses, lilac perfume. It was my understanding that when her body was found, she was dressed in her favorite pair of diamond earrings; the bottle resting only centimeters from a perfectly-manicured hand. Her husband, who I refused to even find amidst the sea of identically-dressed men in suits, had found her the bathtub of their lavish suite at the Plaza. He had left, supposedly, to attend a business meeting.

The gossip was the she had caught him fucking their maid; incidentally, a teenage-thing from Thailand.

Lastly, she had died in a manner that was appropriately over-indulgent; a handful of Xanax chased with a bottle of Croizet.

I wondered how quick it was. I wondered if, in those last moments, she was ever conscious enough to realize that she was drowning. That she was dying.

Marius stood with his mother, stone-faced and staring at the casket. His hands nervously ran up and down the length of his tie, or tugged at thin suit lapels. My father's face held no expression as he watched me say goodbye to a woman that I had already said goodbye to once before.

At least I had Tyler, who stood beside me; his presence felt more like that of a guardian than a friend. He had dressed in a dark-gray shirt and black tie, black pants, and his uniform shoes. When he looked into her casket, his face lit up with a haunting, sickened awe:

“She looks like a movie starlet,” he said, pale and flushed simultaneously.

“She looks like a powdered body in expensive cloth,” I corrected.

Somewhere in the far back, Mr. Tennant was waiting to pay his respects. When I finally spotted him, dressed entirely in black, he acknowledged both Tyler and I with a small nod and placed a single white rose next to her photograph; oversized, black and white, heavily airbrushed.

It was strange and uncomfortable, watching him shake my father's hand. Will wore that same glowing, professional smile mixed with a proper empathetic softness; a tenderness reflected in the way his voice cracked, ever so slightly, when he spoke.

“I'm terribly sorry for your loss,” he said. “Kaitlyn is a very dear student. If there's anything you need, please don't hesitate to get in touch.”

Very dear student
.

Translation:
Mr. Laurent, I'm fucking your daughter.%

Juniper-dusted wind kissed my hair; sepia strands danced as I watched Mr. Tennant walk across the cemetery, hands in pockets, eyes low.

Tyler flocked to his parents when they called him over; gathering with tight-lipped smiles and grocery-purchased flowers wrapped in wrinkled cellophane. They hugged me tightly, then turned to my sole remaining parent and tried their best to create some kind of conversation.

He stared at them, bewildered. It was his first and only conversation with two people that were, for lack of a better description, poor. Not of his kind.

When they left, Tyler went with them.

“You sure you don't need me to stay?” he asked.

I shook my head, looking at my feet; ballet flats. My knees looked knobby, awkward.

“I kind of just want to be alone,” I told him. “I'm going to try and sleep this off. I need to be in best form for practice.”

“Yeah,” he said, glancing at Marius. At Vivian. “Are your parents coming to the play?”

I laughed. A horrible, broken, ugly sound. Then I glanced at the casket, now closed, covered in a littering of floral arrangements.

“Is my mother coming back from the dead?” I asked.

That was enough. Tyler's freckled nose crinkled; his green eyes hanging with a dampened look of apology and discomfort. He hugged me for a long, long time, then departed through the sea of black fabric and glittering faces.

I found Marius sitting next to a crumbling tombstone; the name once engraved had been washed out by time and weather. But even so, he was looking at the aged placemark as he if wanted to know who was resting beneath the ground. His shoulders were hunched, legs crossed, tie loosened, collar undone. When he heard my footsteps, he turned and glanced toward the crowd with tepid interest; any emotion shielded by a pair of stark-black sunglasses.

“I really am sorry about your mother,” he said, but he wasn't looking at me.

I nodded, but I wasn't looking at him.

“Me too.”

That night, I texted Mr. Tennant.

Come over
, I said.
Nobody's home
.

Vivian and my father went to stay in the city for the weekend. I suppose this was his way of apologizing to his new wife over the hours spent periodically sobbing over his previous. A small getaway; a brief and temporary slice of sweet escape in the form of cocktails and a candle-lit dinner.

He called me exactly seven minutes later; the vibration hummed over my skin.

“Hello, Mr. Tennant,” I said wearily. “I need you to come over. I have a homework-related question.”

“All homework-related inquiries can be addressed in the classroom,” he said. I could practically see the bleak smile stretch across his mouth. “Or you could ask me now.”

“Fine,” I sighed. “I need you to come over for other reasons.”

“What reason would that be?”

The chandelier cast white orbs of light over my funeral garb; a conservative black dress, long-sleeved, cut off at mid-thigh.

“I'm grieving,” I said. “I need you to come console me.”

He paused. I swear, I could practically hear the clock ticking in the background. Papers rustled; he was probably grading.

“Is it safe?” he asked. “Maybe you should just come here. I can call you a cab.”

“I would say that we're past playing safe, Will,” I told him. “You're a grown man. I'm eighteen. You're a teacher. I'm a student. And we're having sex.”

But when you rip this little dynamic apart at the seams; down to the fibers and bone and molecular construction of it all – we were nothing more than flesh, blood, and maybe a pinch of human consciousness.

Another pause, another sharp breath.

“So what do we do?” he asked.

“Right now,” I said. “I just want to feel you inside of me. That's all.”

There was a hint of desperation in my voice; the words cutting coarsely through lips bruised from biting down.

We hung up. I waited by the gates, skimming my hands over the pool water and watching as my face – moth-wing eyes, my mouth a smudge of pink, milk skin – disappeared amidst the rippling effect. I contemplated letting myself fall in.

A knock on the gates, a rustling in the leaves. Below my bare feet was the sunken grass and dusting of dried rose petals. Above was the far-cry stretch of galaxies.

Give me my Romeo
, I thought.
And when he shall die, cut him out in little stars; for he will make the face of Heaven so fine, that all the world will be in love with night – and pay no worship to the garish sun
.

I looked up, and there he was. Piceous hair, a full mouth parted anxiously. Sanguine eyes animated by the faint flickering of hope that existed in the several paces between our bodies.

“Hi,” he said, curling fingers around the iron-wrought bars. He was still dressed in black He hadn't changed, but neither had I. We were both still dressed for mourning.

“Hi,” I said.

My heart thrashed; my hands slipped through the gaps in the bars. Our fingers touched; gentle, timid, and my heart jumped.

We held hands and walked through the garden; Will remarked on the fountains and flowers, touching the occasional unblossomed rosebud and glancing at the phosphorescent pool.

“It's mostly for show,” I confessed. “Like everything else, I guess.”

We drifted through the grass like two silhouettes; joined by fingers and fading into that beloved place where it was just he and I; no prying eyes. No fear. No playing mindful of the things that lurked about.

In my bedroom, I closed the doors and let the blinds fall. Mr. Tennant took a few steps in; stopping, touching a spot of wallpaper or a crystal droplet from the chandelier. The door to my small office was open; my desk and laptop buried under various magazines. He glanced at the clippings plastered to every corner of the sugar-spun walls; examined a few cutouts of string-thin models with silicone-injected lips and eyes tinted with various otherwordly shades; amethyst, seafoam-green. His movements were careful, quiet; he brushed a finger gingerly over my vanity – a mess of scattered cosmetics – and smiled.

I felt particularly young in that moment; each centimeter of pink-colored and glossy, white brushed furniture a glaring reminder that for Mr. Tennant, walking into my bedroom was likely on par with stepping into a time machine.

He turned to me, a small twitch forming at the corner of his mouth. A shadow of stubble; sweetly sable eyes; slender fingers smoothing a black tie.

“Take your clothes off,” I told him, sitting on the edge of the bed. “Slowly.”

I leaned back; flipped off the lights; watching him stand with his eyes on my legs and his chest sinking as he took a long breath.

He loosened his tie, pulling it over his head, tossing it aside. His fingers worked against the buttons –
one, two, three –
the fair plane of his chest exposed as the shirt fell from his shoulders. Where it landed, I didn't care.

The metal scraping of a belt-buckle; the sliding of leather against leather. Pants buttons unsnapping as the wires in my brain synapsed. Fabric falling, crumpling at his feet.

He stepped out of his shoes, then socks, until he was only in a pair of black boxer-briefs.

I smiled, crawling to the edge of the bedspread and peeling his underwear down; a slow, relieved gasp – like the first breath of air after sitting in a stale room – escaped from between clenched teeth.

He knelt down, and I kissed his open mouth. His tongue grazed over my lips; he kissed my chin, my throat, my clothed chest. One hand cupped my face, the other traced down the chain that hung around his neck; he touched the ring tenderly, as if touching his own heart.

I unzipped the side of my dress, slipping out of it. He undid my bra, tossing it to the floor. I pulled my underwear down, kicking it off with a giggle that was only stifled when Mr. Tennant kissed me again; painful, perfect.

Our hands and fingers explored every curve and crevice; earlobe, inner-thigh, the curve of Mr. Tennant's throat. My mouth brushed against every bit of skin; tasted the salty tang between his legs and the metallic cuts from aggressive kisses.

He was on his back; his face flushed; utterly boyish and yet entirely a man. Every part of him glowed against pale pink satin.

I sank inside of him slowly; gaping and gasping, our noses touching, our breath a mixed fog. Our fingers intertwined as I rocked back and forth, watching him unfurl in that beautiful, erotic sense of simply losing yourself in another person.

His eyebrows knit; eyelids fell closed; lips pressed together tightly in a blissful fix. Our grip against one another tightened; I moaned against his chest.

We came together; a fiery explosion of white light. Maybe a part of us died right then; maybe we simply lost another piece of ourselves – a shard of our broken identities – in one another.

Eyes flickered open; we kissed like we were shy strangers - quick and timid.

“I missed you,” he said.

In my head, I heard:
I love you
.

“I missed you, too,” I said.

What I wanted to say:
I love you, too.

I avoided looking at the bureau. I couldn't think about what was hiding in that drawer.

Will kissed my forehead; his fingers on my temples; his eyes flickering back and forth against mine, like he was searching for the single secret I didn't want him to find.

“Are you going to Yale?” he asked, suddenly. “Have you entertained the idea?”

We covered ourselves in blankets; I snuggled against the crook of his arm.

“About as much as I've entertained the idea of walking into mid-afternoon traffic,” I told him. “Honestly, I don't know what I want to do.”

He chuckled, warm against my ear. I forced myself to shove out the thought that with enough funds, I could do anything. Anything with myself. Anything with him.

What had these eighteen years taught me?

“Have you been doing your reading?” he asked, a ringing playfulness in his voice.

“Have you been grading my papers?” I smiled.

We kissed, a small span of silence; slow, sweet, tender.

“
Come live with me
,” he said, taking my face in his hands. “
And die with me, and everything with me
.”