Star-Crossed (5 page)

When Piper took stage, I was slightly more interested. However, her pale white hair and gauzy voice didn't seem to match up with The Bard's prose, and many – including myself – were left both simultaneously sighing and stilled. It just didn't feel right. As Piper remained on the stage for another minute, waiting for some kind of response, Will finally settled with a half-enthused:

“Very good.”

And, smiling perhaps slightly too tight, he motioned for her to have a seat. I knew then that she wouldn't be getting the role. Nor would she be fit to play the nurse, or really anyone.

Piper walked offstage, her feet scuffing against the heavily-polished flooring, and left the rest of the lot to surrender themselves to Mr. Tennant's mercy.

Tyler's audition for Romeo went surprisingly well, and I was shocked at the fact that even when Will threw a series of random lines his way – playing the Friar – he was able to respond with prompt, convincing emotion.

He was good. He was excellent, in fact. But he didn't seem all that convinced of it himself.

“Maybe I'll get Benvolio, if anything...” he kicked at the backpack that sat like a crouched-over lump by his feet. “I'm definitely not fit for Mercutio. Or Tybalt.”

“Thou talk'st of nothing,” I said, and he smiled. “You did great.”

When Marius walked on stage, however, Tyler seemed to lower further and further into his seat.

“He's good,” he whispered as Marius took stage, throwing about an imaginary sword while running the Feud scene with Mr. Tennant - who was pretending to be Mercutio. The two of them went back and forth; Marius finally gave Will a theatrical stab, and Will went down on his knees as the whole crowd stood and cheered.

“Don't worry,” I reassured Tyler, my face burning. “He's nothing more than, at most, The Prince of Cats.”

Tyler gulped, nodding and brushing a bit of hair away from his eyes. In the dim shadows of the back rows, they looked almost emerald.

“Prince of Cats indeed.”

Marius, after giving a bow, leapt off the stage and raised his chin, just barely, to meet what was likely a very ugly scowl. His lip twitched in the corner; his smirk nothing but the smallest glimpse of any real, sincere smile. He drank down the praise like heavy liquor, dazed amidst the premature congratulatory shoulder-slaps from those around him; some that hadn't even read their lines yet.

On stage, Will was grazing over the rest of us while a pen hung from the corner of his mouth; a cigarette of sorts. When he saw me, he smiled, and I hoped to God my face wasn't red.

“Kaitlyn,” he said. “Why don't you come here and give it a shot?”

“Yeah, Kaitlyn,” Marius turned, glaring at me from the front row. A group of girls giggled. “Why don't you give it a shot?”

Tyler gave my elbow a small nudge, and anger poured over me like scalding water. I stormed down the steps and in less time than it took to make a wish and blow out birthday candles, I was staring Will down. Eye to eye.

I was convinced, very briefly, that this must have been some kind of dream. People in the real world don't look like he did, or possess me the way he was able to. I was dizzy and enraged, and pointing to the book in Tennant's hands, I asked:

“What would you like me to say?”

He flipped to a random page; his tongue pressing lightly over his bottom lips as he skimmed the words. Finally, he went ahead and spoke.

“
Marry, my child, early next Thursday morn. The gallant, young and noble gentleman, The County Paris, at Saint Peter's Church, shall happily make thee there a joyful bride.
”

The room lit up with soft laughter, snickering at Mr. Tennant's attempt to sound feminine. I realized, watching a slow smile fall over his lips, that he was testing my reaction. It didn't make sense for him to play Lady Capulet, maybe. But it made sense for him to see just how well I was able to lose myself at a moment's direction.

Digging my nails into my palms, wincing, I glared.

“
Now, by Saint Peter's Church – and Peter, too! He shall NOT make me there a joyful bride!
”

I didn't give him a chance to respond. I gave no one a chance to respond. In the silence, I walked offstage and straight through the theater entrance, forgetting my backpack that carried all the things I still needed. My wallet. A sweater.

Outside, the air still hung with a veil of cold frost.

Breathless, I shook my head, went back inside, and was met with an applause even louder than the one Marius had received. Tyler, too, had a grin that stretched from ear-to-ear.

“That was fantastic!” he said
fantastic
in a way that stretched out all three syllables, clapping his hands like a child. “I mean, really, really fantastic. Where did you muster that up from?”

I shrugged lightly, throwing my bag over my shoulder with a soft, strained sigh.

“Feel like walking with me to class?” I asked, half smiling.

That was all it took. He jumped up, simply contented to tag along, like a lost puppy dog, as we braved the everyday torrent of leers and laughter.

“When do you think we reached a point where people just stopped giving a shit about others?” I asked him.

Tyler straightened his jacket, the wrinkles on his sleeves giving everything about him away in the simplest kind of slip. Who he was, how he lived.

“
Childhood is measured out by the sounds and smells and sights, before the dark hour of reason grows,
” Tyler muttered, sounding slightly somber. “That's John Betjeman.”

“That's bleak, Tyler.”

He touched my elbow, and I let him. It was a nice kind of different, standing there with him.

Stepping back, he gave an encompassing gesture.

“That's all of this, Kait. It's everything.”

Then he just kept walking, paces ahead of me. And I didn't press him, or ask for him to elaborate, or give me some deeper answer. I didn't correct him about my name. I just let him go.

I just let him call me Kait.

In class, Mr. Tennant gave each of us a copy of
Lolita
, and I spent a solid minute staring at her lips before someone chimed in.

“Did you know this cover is actually censored?” they said. “In the original cover, the lips were supposed to be vertical. But you know why they switched it?”

Will sighed.

“I already know what you're about to say. You don't need to say it.”

But of course, they said it anyway.

“Because it looked like a vagina. That's why.”

The room hissed in quiet, suppressed laughter. In my opinion, I wasn't too sure that the vast majority of these people were mature enough to read such a great literary masterpiece. But here we were, reading it anyway.

We talked a bit about unreliable narrators, and I skimmed through the pages as Will's voice sang over my thoughts. I flipped back to the cover, looking at her lips again, and of all things, wondered how Humbert would have turned out if Annabel didn't die.

When class was dismissed, he called me to his desk with a harsh sort of tone, pressing his lips together tightly. I stayed seated until everyone was gone before approaching him, feeling vaguely uneasy.

“Kaitlyn,” he started, brightening. “I'd like you to know that the role is yours. Congratulations.”

“You mean, if I want it,” I told him.

For a moment, he looked puzzled.

“Do you want it?” he asked. In my skewed, blurred thoughts, I imagined it almost as if he had said,
do you want me
?

“Yes,” I told him. Both. “I do. Thank you so much, Mr. Tennant.”

There's a tactic that I've learned in my limited experiences with the opposite sex. That is, anything within the realm of making out and heavy petting. If you hug a boy, pay attention to where their hands fall, where they wrap their arms around. The neck, upper body, waist. Each has their own, unique translation.

Neck –
I love you.

Upper body –
I like you
.

Waist –
I want you
.

I slid my arms around his sides, standing on my toes so that my palms splayed across the breadth of his shoulder blades.

His hands fell on my waist.

As I drew away, he raised a hand as if he were about to pose a question; there was a hesitancy to the act. Slowly, gently, he traced a finger down my cheek, stopping at my chin. He tilted my face upwards to meet his gaze; heavy, full of a toying question and possibility.

And then his hand fell, both arms straight at his sides.

I was still staring, planted to the tile.

“Enjoy the rest of your day, Kaitlyn.”

Will was already at his desk, smiling with the utmost professionalism.

My heart skipped.

“You too, Mr. Tennant.”

FIVE

People often say that the direct link to our behaviors is through our parents. That whether or not we receive a certain amount of praise, or affection, or love can alter how we treat those around us when we're grown.

I'll admit, as a child, I loved my mother. Like most little girls do. She was a beautiful woman, whose smile was always soft and perfume even softer. Her voice always quiet, gentle, warm like a fine cordial. She had honey-golden hair and warm brown eyes, and she always wore her hair in curls; pinned up with jeweled combs that sparkled in a way that always managed to keep my attention.

However, I had few memories of my time with her. She was a distant woman, much too preoccupied with her own affairs to engage in the traditional mother-daughter tendencies; shopping, lunch dates. And as a child, most of what I could recall consisted of moments where I was scolded for getting into her things. Like her silk scarfs, or once, a set of those delicate combs. I remember sneaking in – I was maybe eight or nine years old – and opening up the jewelry box; noting how she kept them all spread out with a perfect spacing. Each centimeter calculated, perfect, just as she was.

I picked up my favorite one, gold with emeralds inlaid in the shape of a flower, and set it in my hair. I smiled at myself in the mirror, perfectly pleased. I was exactly who I wanted to be.

When my mother saw, she laughed, plucking the thing out of my hair in a way that unintentionally snagged against the thin strands. My lips puckered immediately when she set the comb back into her jewelery box, touching my face with a warm hand. She smelled of lilacs.

I loved my mother, though. I really did.

“Oh, you silly girl,” she cooed. “These combs aren't toys. We don't play with them.”

She was wrong, just like she was wrong about everything else. You see, all of the finer things were toys, just as all the pretty clothes for the pretty girls and pretty boys were costumes. All of the mansions and oceans that sailed yachts and dreams were merely sets for a grander scheme.

I was just too young to correct her.

And my mother, my beautiful mother with her kind voice and wandering eyes, she closed the silver box and left the room, beckoned by my father's booming laughter.

From the window, I saw as she ran out into the garden, surrounded by the same white lilacs that kissed her skin, and he swept her up in his arms like she was the only woman he would ever want. They were madly, inconceivably in love. He named stores stuffed with the finest clothing and jewels and everything after her.

If he could have, I think he would have written her name in the stars. He couldn't, of course. But he had one named after her. He kept the framed document in his office.

It's a funny thing, how people go. How you can be so consumed by one person, and then as the years go by, like a slow-working serum, something seeps into your skin that renders the person you once loved so dearly a total stranger. It's as if, despite the memories, and despite all of the things that we weep and beg and cry out to hold onto - nothing can save what is inevitably damned. There's that moment when you look at that person who once carried everything so intrinsic to your own being in the palm of their hand, and you think to yourself:
did I ever truly love you? Or was it for that moment of intoxicating thrill?

He tried to hold onto her, even after the affair was discovered; but she left anyway – as most people do. She left us for a life at sea; sailing yachts and remarrying in an event so lavish that it caught fire in the newspapers. For the water that maybe, she hoped, would carry her to a life that would give her some greater happiness.

My father sobbed. He kept the newsclippings for awhile until Vivian asked him to burn them. He broke all the crystal statues that my mother had kept – angels - in the study. Glass was sprayed like frozen rain, like ice; turning the stretch of marble floor into tangible constellations.

I remember my father, upon seeing me standing in the doorway, still in my pajamas – and how he looked so totally choked. He took my small hand, pressing it against a wet cheek that glistened much like my own. Tears streamed down my face as I stared at the mess, frightened and wondering how my father could have been capable of breaking so many things at once.

“Don't cry,” he said. “Everything comes and goes.”

And then he left; I was once again alone.

My father tried to hold on to me for awhile. His attempt at possession was desperate and destined to crumble from the beginning. We went to church, we prayed. We prayed, and prayed. We adorned our home with crosses and once again the crystal angels returned. I think deep down he was begging the Almighty to bring my mother back. But you can't change the stars, just as you can't change the mind of God.

Still, my father was drunk in blissful neglect; drowning in tears and something stronger.

He swept me away to the mountains out West, where at a grand ball accompanied by girls carrying a wooden cross draped in lace, I pledged my purity; a gestured solidified by the ring I still wore today.

None of it was about love, though. It was about control – and for awhile, I indulged him. I neglected boys and focused on my studies. I was accepted into Trinity, a success my father boasted about heavily, loudly.

When he met Vivian, the two connected instantly. Her husband, Marius' father, had also been consumed in an affair with some woman he met in Queens. She had a thick accent, I guess, and raven-colored hair; Marius showed me her picture once, a somber, hateful smile on his face.

“I hope it was worth it,” Marius muttered, and we both sat in a shared, understanding silence.

After that, we stopped going to church as often, even though the crosses still hung. My father treated our moments together more as a business transaction. If I needed something, he fulfilled my requests, and in exchange I kept my grades and sensibilities and everything else to his polished standards. When it came time to consider universities, he took care of it immediately, securing a spot at Yale – where he had attended, and his father before – so quickly that I barely had time to blink.

I continued maintaining my posture and smile, dressing in silk and wearing my hair and makeup and every piece of fabric that covered my body with a perfect, conscious manner. And I kept the ring on my finger, not as a gesture to my father's desire to maintain possession over my actions, but as a reminder to myself that I didn't want to let anyone else in. I wanted to keep that control; that safe, deliberate distance. I wanted to remain a perfectly painted mask. No emotions, no love, not risking the exposure of my own vulnerabilities.

I let them see what they wanted to see: someone kind, and good, and clean - that was enough.

And yes, for that, I thanked my parents.

That evening after school, my father called me into the parlor. I was still weighed down with my own thoughts of Mr. Tennant's hands on my waist. His fingers skimming down the length of my jaw-line.

My father was surrounded by his business partners, all in suits, their faces already flushed from the alcohol that slogged through their veins like motor oil.

“Kaitlyn!” he hooked an arm around me, and I fell against his shoulder. “Kaitlyn here is to be attending
Yale
this fall. Isn't that true, darling?”

In my mind, I imagined confessing that the spot had been financially secured, and what his reaction would be. I pictured his face swelling, along with the dozen other men in the room; expanding like balloons and so lit with spirits that if I were to stick a needle into their skin, they would have exploded into a mess of gin and brandy.

“Yes,” I said mildly, smiling and tucking a piece of hair behind my ear. I contemplated laughing to convey a bit more enthusiasm. “I'm quite excited.”

Docile and gentle. Meek and soft and quietly feminine. That was the way to deal with these kind of leery-eyed suits.

I pulled myself away when Vivian entered with a tray of new liquid concoctions, and made for a quick excursion into the elevator. I didn't dare take the steps and risk a run-in with anyone else that would feel like carrying a conversation.

In the library, Marius was sprawled out on a chaise lounge, scribbling in his journal and surrounded by stone statues of angels in various positions. Prayer, pensive, empty-eyes without any pupils. The walls were painted with a dark gold that glimmered when the sun hit in such a way that made the room seem like a particularly special place. Heavy paintings depicted Michael the Archangel, Adam and Eve, and the Virgin Mary. There was one of Christ on the cross, too, but Marius took it down each time he went in to write. It was one of the few things that he struggled to look at.

“Fuck him yet?” Marius called, slamming the book shut. I flipped him off.

“I'm enraged that you failed to tell me about your little decision to audition for the play,” I told him. “Just leave me alone.”

In my room, I slammed the door shut and threw my uniform jacket on the dresser. I yanked the tie from over my head, unbuttoned my blouse, and stepped out of my skirt. The folds crumpled at my feet, and I was left standing in only my underwear and a pair of knee-high socks.

I was thin, arguably too thin, and the full-length mirror that I stood in front of only served to elongate my limbs and torso, making me look like a doll. Hungry, starved.

Grabbing a bathrobe, I wrapped myself up and sat down at my desk, which was in a small side-room away from the actual sleeping area. I shut the door and turned the light on, blinking and rubbing my eyes and skimming over the pale pink walls; glossy and splattered with a pastiche of various magazine cutouts. Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, James Dean. Models with red-lipped smiles and full bodies and even fuller eyes. Pop Culture contemporary things; blown up and over-airbrushed photographs of stick-skinny models in lingerie and dark-stained mouths, sprawled out on white linens that only made their white skin seem so deathly pale. The small crystal chandelier made the lights dance in orbs over the eyes and silicone smiles.

I sat down at my desk, bag in tow, and pulled out my copy of
Lolita
, staring at the cover until I set it aside. Fingers tracing over my laptop keyboard, I punched in the first thing that came to mind:
nymphet
.

A list of sites pertaining to Nabokov's controversial masterpiece popped up, with nymphet being the coined term for Humbert Humbert's insatiable obsession. There was a slew of differing opinions, calling him a lover and a monster and ultimately, just a man. Seduced and sick and at the core of all things simply flesh and bone and blood like the rest of us.

There was a music video for some dark, throaty band that consisted of men with long black hair and heavy guitars. It started with a pale-eyed woman on a swing, swinging back and forth on this wooden plank suspended by a rope crawling with white roses. Her hair, too, was white. In a dark forest-esque sort of setting, a couple, two women - one with dark hair while the other's was fair - gazed at each other with an expression of lust and languish. The dark-haired woman wore a mask that was nearly identical to the one Mr. Tennant had been wearing at the masquerade, her upper lip lined with a faux-mustache.

It was both bizarre and disturbingly beautiful, and I imagined myself as the girl with fair hair, wearing gossamer clothes and angel wings; Mr. Tennant kneeling down on one knee, kissing my hand and looking up at me as if I was the only girl in the world with a beating heart. The rest of the Earth barren and lifeless.

I slammed my laptop shut, and after a brief pause, leaned down and withdrew a hidden box that I kept in the bottom drawer of my desk. An old shoe-box that contained all the love notes and jewels and sweet nothings that were the only remains of my sole perennial love. A love that lasted only as long as summer would allow; as long as I would allow. Our relationship died along with the leaves, along with everything else. Along with a part of myself that in with the first cold breeze granted me the harrowing awareness of the what I really longed for. Something real.

On my bed, I opened the lid of the box and set it aside gingerly. My fingers traced over the various pieces of jewelry that I now refused to wear; notes that were folded over half a dozen times. It was like the boy who had written them with such a hasty hand had always wanted them to remain a secret.

His name was Henry, with the first letter silent and the last letter drawn like the final note of a favorite song. His father was an obscenely wealthy man who crafted the fine jewelry that adorned the necks and wrists and slender fingers of those that had never seen a day of real labor. He had a crop of golden hair and blue eyes that were a touch too feminine; long lashes and lips that fell in a perpetual pout. Two years ahead of me at Trinity Prep, we met at a gathering when our parents introduced us.

He fell in love immediately. I fell into his arms in the same, hesitant way that one might if they were standing on the ledge of a cliff; contemplating how cold the water was below, or if the fall alone would kill them.

Henry was constantly giving me jewelry, draping blood-red diamonds and pearls around my neck in insane abundance. He wrote me love notes, little notes, about how he wanted us to be together forever.

Obviously, it didn't last. I left him at the turn of summer, before my Junior year. He was devastated. I was not.

If there's one thing I have always mourned the most, it's the inconsistent and unreliable burden that is our ability to remember. All of the beautiful images and delicate memories die so quickly – and they never return.