Romance Is My Day Job (5 page)

Craig and I cut classes together, lie out on the grass of the quad, smoke endless packs of Marlboros, and talk about nothing. We notice the weather, the changing skies, and, at one point, he sees a burst of sun coming through a patch of storm clouds.

“You see that?” he says to me.

“Yeah.” I note the gorgeous juxtaposition of storm and sun.

“That's pretty awesome,” he says.

“I'm calling it Craig from now on.”

He loves this. This is so
The Thorn Birds
. I've forgotten which characters we are at this point. But it doesn't matter—I've learned that love equals emotional torture. We may not wind up together since our destinies don't match: He wants to leave this world, I want to . . . well, I'm not sure yet. For now, though, I'm willingly stuck (obsessed) with him: how striking he is physically, that rocker edge to how he carries himself, his intellect, and that fine line between tenderness and volatility. We have long days that turn into even longer nights. I get tired of our routine, though I can't shake it. All I want is to be in his presence, keep idling with him in the grass, be wrapped in his vile comforter. But I know it will end. So much of his darkness rubs off on me. I slink from place to place, chain-smoking Marlboros, feeling low. It has to end, but I can't act on this.

Craig is especially sad one night, keeps looking at me as if I'm the most wonderful person on Earth. What should I expect? He doesn't seem to notice me much, unless I provoke him. But suddenly, he pulls me in close, looks deeply into my eyes.

“I love you, Schuntzie. But you're like . . . my sister.”

Is there any greater aphrodisiac than this? Soon after this, he dumps me for Peaches and Cream.

I'm deeply insulted by the whole sister thing. It's almost as if
The Thorn Birds
predicted this fall from grace, the inappropriate love with a near-sibling. Part of me is relieved I don't have to deal with this lovable hot mess anymore. I can get some sleep, don't need to save him from himself. But the connection I feel to him continues. I miss his sweet face, his friendliness, his wanting to sit with me in the dining hall. He seems even lonelier than I am, and we tend to find each other at the end of the day, in the bar or in the library. I hate seeing him go through this torment, especially when one day, he walks into the cafeteria with a bleeding gash on his cheek from a motorcycle spill.

His friends assure me he's not an alcoholic. This is college and people drink. Just because my maximum is four beers and Craig's minimum is twelve with a few shots of bourbon doesn't mean he has a problem. I have this feeling they think I'm overreacting.

I wait it out, knowing he will come back to me.

A few weeks later I discover that he's broken up with Peaches and Cream. I find him staring ahead stony eyed in the snack bar. He smiles when he sees me. I can tell he wants to escape.

“Wanna go for a ride?” he asks.

He's drunk, I can tell. Winter has set in. The streets are icy, and it's a terrible idea for me to get on a motorcycle with a drunk person. If I get on the bike, I'll deserve whatever fate comes of this disastrous decision. There is nothing stupider than drunk driving, unless you're a willing, sober passenger.

Of course I go. Even as I get on the bike, I hate myself. Love him, hate the power he has over me. This might be the only thing I have in common with Meggie, Mary Carson, Frank, and Father Ralph—the feeling of powerlessness. It's tragic true love. I can't stop it.

He starts up the motorcycle and we ride along the country roads. The wind howls and it's obvious he's smashed because he's swerving. Usually quiet, I start screaming in terror, into his back, into the air, hoping somehow he'll make it all stop, have some regard for my life. But he doesn't care. There is no thought given to my welfare.

I regret not caring for myself, that I'd feel desperate enough to get on a drunk's bike, that I've gained all this weight from drinking. That I'm practically flunking two courses. That this person with a death wish wants to kill himself and take me down with him. I have so much that I want to do. I vow not to waste another second.

Until he slows down and we are safe.

As we stand near his apartment, he invites me up. It's decision time. I could either go home and cure myself of this sickness or keep up the destructive routine. I go upstairs, still hating myself and feeling like that tragic heroine. As Craig drops off to sleep, I go back downstairs, watch people returning home at four o'clock in the morning, and think,
This can't go on.

The next day, I go back to my own cave again, start studying, staying in the basement of the library, going back home at a decent hour. Maybe I slip a few times with Craig, though we get no pleasure from it. It's like withdrawal—my hunger keeps getting reawakened and I feel as if I'll die if I don't have him again.

Maybe I have my own death wish, as I go through periods of drinking and lingering in bars until all hours, waiting for him to show. Then I'll buckle down and study again. When I do see him, I start vicious fights with him or I literally run after him—aggressive acts that were never in my good-girl repertoire.

What have I become?

One night, when Craig ignores me, I figure this is the end. Those images of death flash before me: that woman in the driveway; Craig lying passed out on his bed; a girl in high school who took too many pills but then changed her mind. Sad people who have lost their way—they're not just colorful characters in movies and books. Maybe I'm sad, too, since I can't do anything else to win him over—and why would I want to? My mission has failed, which prompts me to go out the door of the bar and sit in the middle of the main road.

Three things to remember: 1) At three
A.M
., the street is unlikely to have traffic. 2) I have great reflexes and can dive onto a sidewalk at the first sign of headlights. 3) I'm not Sylvia Plath. But it's definitely a moment of deep despair. I want Craig to see how far I've fallen—that I want a car to run me over (though I really don't).

I've only had one suicidal thought before this, on my fifteenth birthday, and it might have been food poisoning. While lying in bed sick I thought idly about running scissors across my wrist. Just the fact that this thought entered my mind scared me. This time, I want time to stop, to release this pathetic, fragile being I've become. I feel ridiculous, chasing after someone who doesn't want me. At least Father Ralph returned Meggie's love, cared for her well-being. Damn
The Thorn Birds
!

The light turns green, yet no car comes. I turn and look at the bar window to see if anyone notices I'm sitting in the road like a crazy person. Certainly not Craig. He probably doesn't even see me. The only person sitting in the window is Ben, and his expression conveys such compassion that I immediately stand up and get the hell out of the road.

This is absolutely not romantic.

I'm sort of fine after this until I realize my period is two weeks late. In my beloved romances, this moment is one of happiness, ending with a marriage proposal. For me, it's anything but happy. I summon abundant courage to approach Craig to tell him I might be having his baby. Worse, I
want
this baby. If I can't have Craig—and I shouldn't have Craig—I will raise his child.

“I might be pregnant,” I declare when he's alone at the bar.

“I'm sure I have a lot of children running around the world,” he says casually, his eyes cold.

It's easy for me to leave. Why would I stay for more? Craig isn't abusive. He's just living on a different plane from me. But a few days later I get my period and realize that, thank goodness, I am not with child. Still reeling from his casual dismissal, I try to keep my distance from him, though, as with addiction, I relapse one more time when I beg him to take me back, screaming at him in the quad (it's really attractive). He turns around and walks away from me forever. What's next, throwing battery acid on his motorcycle or sitting on his front stoop, waiting for him to come home?

My inner
Fatal Attraction
fades because it's hard to keep up 24/7. One spring morning, I'm sitting below an arch in the quad, absorbed in my Ovid translation. I've almost survived the year. Just a few more weeks before I can go back to long shifts at the dry cleaner's, get lost in making money for the following year, a clean slate. Everyone has a bad year, right?

Suddenly, I hear the roar of a motorcycle, and my stomach goes cold. As the motorcycle goes around the quad, I whip my head around to see Craig with one of my good friends on the back. It's nine
A.M
. No way were they up this early to go study. They spent the night together, probably didn't sleep a wink.

Tears run down my cheeks, my Latin work unfinished on my lap.

It's then that I decide to physically leave the school and escape Craig. Within days, I'm all signed up for a year studying in Paris, my childhood home. A girl can heal in a country with patisseries and Rodin.

 • • • 

Many years later, during a midlife torture fest of Googling exes, I look up Craig in the college alumni directory and his name has a black ribbon next to it, indicating death. I'm shocked and so very sad. He wrote letters to me about leaving this world altogether, but I figured he'd survive his dark thoughts and grow into the hero I'd dreamed he could be.

Every now and then, I think of him. When I see that same patch of storm clouds with sun bursting through, I think,
Hello to you, too,
Craig
.

1988, Junior Year Abroad

Paris is a little better than anywhere else. The candy is better. You can buy a whole fish and gut it yourself instead of face the prepackaged lump of whatever you see in supermarkets. The produce tastes fresh. You'll find entertainment and culture on most streets, even if it's just you and a friend playing hopscotch. Kings lived close to Paris. Great movies were made here. Simple and complex fashions thrive in Paris, and pastries look like works of art.

I need to be in France again. Because my father started an exchange program in Paris through his university, this city was my home for ages five through seven, and a sprinkling of two, three, and eight. I ate like a French girl, spoke like one, and got to visit castles, museums, and mountains. Pretty rough stuff.

Now I have the good sense to spend a whole academic year studying abroad in Paris—and it's way cheaper than another year at Oberlin. Off I go. I blink and I'm back in my former home, living in the Twelfth Arrondissement, near the Bastille, which used to be a prison (the guillotine fascinates me).

It takes so little for me to immerse myself in Paris life, the cobblestone streets, the narrow sidewalks, the quiet way the French speak on the subways. The most amazing bread ever, like you buy a baguette and eat half before you get home. French mayonnaise is out of this world. It comes in a tube that you squeeze and it looks like a star, like frosting. I could eat it all day long! Tomatoes, which I normally don't like, are robust and delicious. I live on tomato and mayonnaise sandwiches.

The only American thing I miss?
Full House
,
starring John Stamos. Oh, and nice people in the post office. French postal workers are abusive to us foreigners. If you ask for stamps in flawless French, they answer in English and scowl. But still, I love it.

I'm no longer that lovelorn sophomore girl who only cares about her next boy fix. I'm a college-junior Parisian for the next nine months, taking classes that are independently run by SUNY Brockport. The program has set up shop in the Latin Quarter, which is a primo party place for me. My hosts are the Chevaliers, friends of my parents, whose patriarch is related to a French prime minister. The Chevaliers have an extra room in their daughter's apartment. She is about twenty years older than me—or thereabouts—and seems amused by my girlish antics. I am happy to have my own space and lovely and familiar people around me.

There are challenges to being an American in Paris—and a redhead. I get picked on constantly in the metro. I don't consider myself a supermodel. In fact, I'm sure it's the deer-in-headlights expression, the Howdy Doody coloring, and my white sneakers that arouse these pests. If there's a crazy person, he'll come over and scream in my face from one stop to the next. I get hit on a little too much, so I go out and buy a fake gold band and pretend I'm married. That's right, married at twenty.

Unfortunately, this attracts even more crazies, so I pull out my baggiest clothes and pretend I'm six months pregnant. I stick out my belly—made rounder with each
panaché
(beer mixed with 7Up or Sprite) and many stacks of almond croissants—waddle down the street, take extra care in sitting down. Maybe I feel a little guilty when people give up their seats to me, but I'm just trying to protect my virtue. The idea of getting mugged, swindled, overpowered, or raped in a foreign country scares the crap out of me.

Add to this that French men can be terrifying, as well as irresistible to a twenty-year-old. They have a reputation for being gorgeous scoundrels. Despite this, I'm entranced by the beauty of the French. The way they talk and wear their hair; the large, soulful eyes; and how they can converse for hours about trivial things. Seriously, three-hour conversations about a type of herb grown in a remote region of France, an abstract cube in an exhibit by an unknown artist, the ribbon worn by a diplomat's wife fifty years ago. I'm American; I speak in generalities: love, politics, bathroom humor, books, celebrities. But I start to notice little things and talk about them.

My fluency comes back within five minutes. My former French self returns with a vengeance, along with the rapid-fire Parisian way of speaking. Who wouldn't fall in love with the cute streets, the architecture, the feeling of history, the dizzying array of gâteaux, the devotion to art, the café culture, and running up and down metro steps? Women wear patterned panty hose, something I never would have considered if I'd stayed home. I soon buy hose with dots, paisley patterns, and stripes. French sizes are unforgiving for the curvy girl, so I can't buy too much in the way of clothes. But accessories I can do.

Soon, I'm ordering my sandwich
au jambon
like a French girl, though my white sneakers give me away. I am
l'Américaine
at my favorite hangout, Bar Monaco in the Latin Quarter, where I get my morning coffee and afternoon
panaché
. I read my Sartre and Camus, smoke constantly, and question my place in the world.

I notice again how French people are smaller framed, and mostly have amazing legs and a refinement we bumbling Americans can't begin to attempt. At the same time, I miss the vulnerable, in-your-face, melodramatic, talk-everything-out mentality of the United States. Can I love both countries?

My school-year-abroad program begins in September, when I will officially be attending SUNY Brockport, but in Paris. It's a one-semester program that runs twice a year, and I will be attending both terms. This is the same program that my father started twenty years ago through the university. Now it's run by close family friends, the Wallaces. Eric Wallace, a tall, white-bearded man who always wears a green jacket and smokes a pipe, lovingly shepherds us through landmarks, takes us all over France, and teaches classes. His wife, Eloise, the epitome of French elegance and joie de vivre, teaches the language classes.

I've known them for most of my life. They are like second parents. From the time I was yea high, I tried to climb up Eric's long legs while holding his hands and then flip over into a somersault. Eloise indulged me at every turn, laughed at my antics, all while wearing fabulous lipstick, her hair pulled back in a flawless French twist. Now that I'm fifteen years older, these divine Wallaces feed me culture, tell me about books, and get me sloshed on red wine. Too many times to count, I stagger to the metro and wake up at home with a mild hangover.

We tour the Loire Valley, visiting places I already saw many times when my father led the program, the glorious châteaux de Chambord and Chenonceau. Now, as a twenty-year-old, I'm mesmerized by the wide, stony trails and well-maintained greenery leading up to spectacular royal castles. As we roam through the châteaux themselves, the giant rooms, the intricate upholstery, the velvet, the embroidery, the short beds, the flatware, I wonder how lonely it must have been to live in such an expanse—but how awesome! Your true love could be on the other side of the building. I dream about the French counterpoint to our Harlequin hero Devlin. He's probably a European prince, a Louis, but a tormented one with amazing clothes and an effortless way of being elegant, as the French often have. Maybe he's being groomed for a powerful position in court and has to marry some hideous lady-in-waiting. Only she's secretly not hideous. In fact, she's hot underneath that scraggly hair. If you pinch her cheeks, she has a nice blush. Faun would be
Faune
in French.

At night, after dinner, my group-mates and I bunk up in our hotel rooms, sometimes three to a bed, and gab and smoke until we collapse. That's what you do in France. When you're hanging out with students from other colleges, so close together in one program, things happen. Crazy things. Good things. I came to France to revive my soul, surely not to have a fling with an American boy. Why wouldn't I date an exotic Frenchman, my Louis? Well, maybe I need to get my feet wet first with a known element. My zest for life returns toward the end of the first semester. I am so zesty that I forgive all transgressions and want to hug the world.

Enter Hal, the loathsome pretty boy in our program who thinks he's the next Gordon Gekko. From day one, I hate him, with his fussy tie and button-down shirts. He's arrogant, thinks Ronald Reagan is God. I call him “the Reaganite” behind his back. Why would Hal even enroll in a French program—to make his curriculum vitae slightly less boring? I hate his dark, perfectly combed and gelled hair. I hate his crystal-blue eyes and tanned skin, as he is the type to hit Fort Lauderdale during spring breaks and guffaw during wet T-shirt contests. Hal has terrible pickup lines, which show his innate insecurity—at least in my book. He plays wingman to his more gorgeous friend Bill. The Reaganite lurks around parties and looks for people to notice him. My loathing for him grows over three solid months.

Until I slip.

One night in December, I feel great—weightless, happy, enlightened. People are festive due to the change in season, the lights in the trees, and beginning of the holidays, though Paris is different in its celebration, with no tacky plastic Santas on the rooftops. All you see are cheerful lights.

The elation flares in my chest and spreads out to my body. Who cares about Craig and all the sadness back at Oberlin? Instead, my every cell shimmers with joy over the human condition. We are on Earth to live and love (and eat patisserie). That is it. I have to do just this and make my life important. This sense of purpose makes me float. It makes me buy these amazing French cigars and smoke at least ten of them in one night.

As I step out of my apartment, I
know
I look fantastic—big hair, pretty smile, brown leather jacket, and all rah-rah. Soaring over the sidewalks, my peers, those typically French awnings, the kids with their ice-cream cones, I think how great it is to be alive.

I attend a program party with a premonition in mind. I want to be bad, the way I used to be when I was with Craig, fearless, daring (but minus the drunk motorcycling). Not only that, but I
will
sleep with someone. Sometimes it isn't so much a goal as divine knowledge.

The party takes place in Bill and Hal's apartment, celebrating the last weekend of the exchange program. We spent three months together, about twenty of us, and have become a family. I open the door to their apartment and enter to a bustling group. My friends mill around the living room, sit on the foam couches, and drink wine.

For once, I see Hal, really see him, and don't want to ralph my brains out.

Wearing a white button-down shirt and pressed pants, he is overdressed, as usual, ready to walk into a conference room and deliver a speech. Our eyes meet and he comes over to me.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey,” I say back.

The conversation of champions.

“You look nice.”

I know,
I want to say, but thank him instead. We sit on the couch and talk for hours. Who knew we would have so much to talk about? For once, I don't delve into the morass that is my family dysfunction. My parents have been apart for more than a decade and were remarried five minutes after the divorce papers were signed. My stepparents are fixtures I accept and even feel affection for from time to time, except when my father's wife is easily irritated and I have to walk on eggshells around her. Then there's my mother's hard act to follow, my dad's growing absence, and how much I miss my brother. But I don't mention any of this. I keep it light and happy.

During breaks, we mingle, conversing with others but rarely taking our eyes from each other. After midnight, people leave, and soon, the Reaganite and I are alone on his small futon.

You are mine,
I think. How could I have ever hated him?

The air is tense and my heart skips when he turns off the light. He comes over to the futon and kisses me. I feel his stubble on my face. Thank God it's a weekend, since my skin is about to have a scary rash. Yet I hope it stays awhile so that I have evidence of this debauchery and can show my friends.

Within seconds, I have his clothes off but keep my boots on the entire time. It dawns on me that this is my first one-night stand where there's no hope that a relationship will ensue, since the semester is about to end. I don't even like this person. Well, maybe that will change. I am a girl, after all. And a night of passion while keeping on your boots does mean true love.

Around five
A.M
. I put on my clothes—noticing my boots are still on—and leave his apartment. The victorious rush of leaving without being asked fuels me. I am such a strong, independent woman who doesn't need to linger. I can't waste a second since I have an entire day in which to spread the news of my whorishness. I want to scream across the Île Saint-Louis,
I just had my first one-night stand!
But I don't since it's five in the morning and the Parisians would give me constipated looks, since they have one-night stands, like, every day.
Quel est le
big deal?