The Great Perhaps (28 page)

“We were just on our way to an interdepartmental meeting,” Professor Dobbs says, obviously lying. “I hope whatever questions you had about class could wait until next week? If not, why not send me an email this weekend?”

Amelia, a spate of red hives blistering along her neck, silently nods. She steps aside, watching them climb into Professor Dobbs’s car. She hears the engine start up, watches the automobile as it speeds away. She stands in the parking lot alone for some time, quietly ignoring the red sores throbbing all along her hands and face. As she walks home, her hands begin to tremble uncontrollably, her blue eyes filling with tears. She lets out a howl, a single sound that is not a word at all, unless it is all words, all feelings, the sound of her heart combusting, the noise of it echoing in the empty space of the faculty parking lot. She staggers back toward her house. Suddenly she wonders if anyone will be there when she gets home, if, for once, just this one time, there might be someone she can talk to.

O
N
F
RIDAY AFTERNOON,
T
HISBE GOES TO CHORUS PRACTICE
a half an hour early: she pretends to be practicing the piano, but really she’s desperately hoping to see Roxie. She is wearing her sister’s glittery eye shadow and pink lip gloss. She has fixed her hair three times already. With her fingers on the dusty piano keys, she closes her eyes and begins to pray dramatically:

Oh Heavenly Father, please forgive my stupid, stupid actions and grant me a reprieve from the stupid, stupid thoughts that I am having. Please don’t let her come. Let her quit chorus or maybe make her move away. Don’t let me ever see her or talk to her or be close to her again. Let me be normal. Let me be like everyone else. Don’t let her be nice to me. Let her be totally mean. Let her spit in my face. Let her burn my hair and stab my eyes out with a hot poker and let her shoot hot arrows into my throat and thighs and stomach cavity. Do not let me have any feelings for her. Do not let me imagine the feeling of her lips…No. Give me some tropical disease instead. Give me some incurable illness like leprosy or malaria or gangrene. Let both my arms fall off and all of my teeth rot and let maggots crawl out of my veins. Let birds peck out my eyes and spiders make their cobwebs in my lungs but do not let me think of being in love, dear Lord. Do not let me think of love.

When the other girls arrive, noisy, giddy, jostling, Mr. Grisham hands each of them that afternoon’s sheet music. The chorus forms a half-moon around him and Thisbe notices the empty spot where Roxie’s bright face should be, but isn’t. She keeps glancing at the stupid clock on the wall, missing her cues for chord changes, watching as three-thirty comes and then silently slips away.

In the middle of “Miss Otis Regrets,” her fingers start to feel clammy and uncooperative, splayed like claws across the black and white keys. Thisbe, without a word, stands and rushes out, past dopey-faced Mr. Grisham, past the half-ring of startled chorus singers, who immediately begin to whisper and snicker, through the wooden door, down the yellow-tile hall, collapsing in an empty stall in the girls’ bathroom. She begins to cry right away, not even knowing why, not even bothering to wipe the tears from her face. She kicks at the dirty floor, then the stall door, then tears the roll of toilet paper from its roller, flinging a loose, wide sheet of it into the air, before covering her face with her hands, kneeling beside the commode, gritting her teeth in fury. When she has stopped crying, she washes her face, marches down the hall, past the musical recital rooms, past the door where she can hear Mr. Grisham making clumsy work of the piano as the girls sing “In My Life,” past the front double glass doors, to where her bicycle is locked up. She is not sad anymore, just angry, and she is not even sure why she is angry, only that she feels incredibly betrayed. She unlocks her bicycle and begins to pedal off—where, she isn’t sure, just around. She pedals up and down the silent tree-lined streets, hoping to see Roxie walking alone or riding her own bike. Thisbe glances in store windows and stops at the café on Fifty-fifth Street, but in her weak, busted little heart she knows all of this is hopeless. She has no idea what Roxie’s phone number might be or where she actually lives. She has no idea where Roxie goes when she’s alone.

T
HISBE GETS AN IDEA
and pedals back down her street into the garage. She finds Roxie’s guitar case standing upright in the corner. Thisbe searches through it, finding a phone number on the inside of the black cardboard lid. Running inside, she grabs the cordless phone, rushes to her room, and dials. After three rings, she hears a voice, coarse, perturbed, unapologetic, which she knows has to be Roxie.

“Hello?”

“Roxie?” Thisbe asks, her hands clammy again.

“Yeah?”

“It’s Thisbe. From school.”

“Oh.”

“I didn’t have your number. But then I found it in your guitar case.”

“Okay.”

“I was worried because I didn’t see you at chorus practice.”

“I’m not doing chorus anymore.”

“Why?”

“I’m just not.”

“But why didn’t you tell me? I was waiting for you.”

“It’s not a big deal. I just decided today that I was sick of it.”

“What about your history grade?”

“Mr. Grisham can fuck off. I hate the chorus. I’d rather fail.”

“But then you’re going to have to take his class during summer.”

“I really don’t give a shit.”

“Why are you so mad?”

“I’m not mad. I just don’t know why it’s any of your business.”

“It’s not. I just thought we were friends.”

“We are. But I don’t like people butting into my business.”

“Well, I’m not. I just didn’t see you at practice and I thought you were sick or something.”

“I’m not sick. I just didn’t want to go.”

“Oh, well, do you want to meet somewhere? You can come over and we can write some songs together or something.”

“I don’t think so. That’s kinda boring.”

“Why are you being mean to me?” Thisbe asks, her hands beginning to shake.

“I’m not being mean.”

“Yes, you are.”

“Whatever.”

“Well, do you want to do something or not?” Thisbe asks.

“I think I’m just going to stay here.”

“Oh. Well. I guess I’ll see you in school tomorrow.”

“Sure. Whatever.”

“Okay, well, ’bye.”

“’Bye.”

Thisbe hears the dial tone after the lines disconnect. She stares down at the phone, then, without thinking, she quickly dials Roxie’s number again.

“Hello?”

“Roxie?”

“Yeah.”

Thisbe notices the way the other girl sighs when she says
yeah
, as if Roxie can recognize the tremor of her voice, as if she knows what Thisbe is about to say.

“It’s Thisbe again.”

“Yeah.”

“I…I just…why don’t you want to talk to me?”

“I just have other things to do. I mean, it’s like it’s no big deal.”

“I know, but…are you…did I…do something wrong?”

“What?”

“The other day? Did I do something wrong?”

“What? No. I mean, it’s no big deal. Listen, I have to go,” Roxie says, though both of them now know she is lying.

“Don’t you…don’t you want to be my friend?” Thisbe asks, but her words are too weak, too lame. They fly awkwardly through the telephone wires, their meaning disappearing somewhere along the way.

“You’re being weird,” Roxie whispers, like there is someone else in the room, a boy or her mother maybe. “I’m going to go.”

“Wait…,” Thisbe whispers. “I just…I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I’ve never done any of this before, with anyone.”

“I have to go,” Roxie says again, and this time Thisbe knows that Roxie has decided never to talk to her again. The other girl says goodbye and then hangs up and Thisbe sits there, cross-legged on her bed, listening to the dial tone buzzing in her ear. She switches the phone off and wonders if God is watching her now, and what He might be thinking. She stumbles down the stairs, back to the garage, and pedals off on her bicycle. It is just past four o’clock now. There has got to be an evening mass somewhere at five. She does not know how long it will take to ride there but she decides she has to go to the big cathedral downtown. She will go there and light a candle and kneel in the silence and be surrounded by simple, holy things: crosses, and stained-glass windows, and statues of saints. What she needs now is to confess, to tell God and the world the truly horrible things she is feeling. With her feet on the bicycle pedals, she rides as quickly as she can, humming “Miss Otis Regrets” as she dodges late afternoon traffic on her way to the lake along the bicycle path.

I
T TAKES
T
HISBE
more than an hour on her bike: exiting at Chicago Avenue, then heading west—taxicabs screaming past, tourists and shoppers rushing across the street, ignoring the flashing stoplights—Thisbe does not know where the cathedral is exactly, and once or twice she circles the same block, hoping to find it. Turning left down State Street, a smile crosses her reddened cheeks as soon as she spots its magnificent sand-colored stone and blue-bronze spires rising high and majestic into the sky. She finds a parking meter and locks her bicycle up, then straightens her skirt and fixes her hair, which has begun to come undone. She marches up the stone steps toward the great wooden doors, already beginning a Hail Mary as she grabs the great gold handle, but the door refuses to budge. Thisbe tries again, with no luck, then grabs the handle of the adjacent door, but finds both of them are locked. She places her ear up against the thick ornate wood and thinks she can hear singing. There is someone in there singing, without her. She rushes down to another set of doors, then another, finding all of them locked tight. She has begun to sweat, from the long bicycle ride and her anxiety, and still she is sure she can hear singing. Why won’t He let her be saved? Thisbe begins to knock quietly on the door, then louder, then louder. Tourists and residents passing by stare at the strange girl in the gray skirt banging on the cathedral doors. “Hello?” she pleads, “Hello?” but no one seems to hear. Finally, trying the center doors once more, she knocks as loudly as she can, and then she can hear the lock begin to rattle and turn, and the door beside her unexpectedly squeaks open. An old man, with a gray jumpsuit on and an enormous ring of keys in his hand, pokes his head out and frowns, gray eyebrows knotted above his empty blue eyes. “Why are you banging on these doors? Don’t you know this is a church?”

“I thought…it’s not open? I mean, why are the doors locked?”

“We’re shampooing the rugs.”

“Well, if I could only come in for a few moments…”

“The church is closed until tomorrow morning. Nine o’clock mass.”

“But I only need to come in for a minute or two.”

“Come back tomorrow, young lady.”

“But I heard singing?”

The old man squints at her, then smiles. He opens the door a little and points to a large utility cart full of brushes and screwdrivers and vacuum heads, where a large silver radio is blaring an aria.

“I can’t just come in…for a few seconds?”

“You’re too young to have done anything that can’t wait till tomorrow,” he frowns, then nods, and pulls the enormous door closed. Thisbe hears the lock turn and the music begin to fade. Taking a seat on the stone steps, she begins to glare at the busy people walking around, as if they don’t mind that the end of the world is coming.

O
N THE WAY BACK
south to her neighborhood, Thisbe decides to go to the secret field by herself. She hopes Roxie will be there, hiding in the waist-high weeds, and the thought of holding her hand, and the feeling of lying beside her again, are too powerful to ignore. She pedals faster now and gets to the field just as the sun has begun to set. Leaving her bike in a dark green thicket of grass, she climbs up the path, feeling the wind and dry flowers rubbing against her bare knees. She runs toward the secret spot, sure for a second that she will see Roxie there, smiling, stretched out on her back, but no, it is empty; maybe there will be a note or some letter or something, anything, a sign from the other girl, but, looking around, Thisbe sees she is alone, and that there is nothing, nothing but the music of the air wandering through the prairie grass. Frowning now, she takes a seat, then lies back in the stiff gray and green and brown thistles. She closes her eyes, her ears cupped by the soft, pleasurable silence of early evening.
Why wasn’t the church open? Why didn’t He want me to be forgiven?
Thisbe opens and closes her hands, grasping at the dry grass, wondering,
Why have a church at all if God isn’t going to be around to see you when you need Him? Why? Maybe…maybe because it isn’t as simple as just going to church to find Him. Maybe because it’s all a silly idea anyway. Maybe because He’s not hiding in that church in the first place. Maybe He doesn’t like to be kept on the inside of things or put in boxes or Bibles or prayers or churches. Maybe, if He is really real, maybe He’s alone here, waiting in this field, and all He really wants is for me to think about Him. Maybe He doesn’t care about me being a martyr at all. Maybe He only appears when I’m happy. Maybe He wants me to sing even though I’m bad at it. Maybe He wants me to sing because it makes me feel happy and that’s all He really wants for me anyway
. Thisbe places her hand on her chest, then, moving it, she places her palm above her belly, to the exact spot where Roxie first touched her, and then, drawing in a breath, she tries to sing. What she sings is “Ave Maria,” and her voice, unsure, tremulous, frightened, rises through the field grass as invisible and weak as the wind. Pressing harder on her diaphragm, she tries again, this time letting her lungs ring, like two golden bells, not caring who might hear her, sure no one is listening anyway. This time, the sound is a little stronger, a little more careless, spiraling up from her open mouth. Once more, she tries to sing a solitary note, and, as she holds it, the sound suddenly takes flight, reaching the lowest of the low-flying clouds. Thisbe holds in her diaphragm, her eyes closed tight. Like a kite, the note quickly soars up, and then so does she, the single note rising in her chest like a balloon. Now she is truly flying, her feet leaving the ground, floating on her back, her eyes closed tight, her song lifting her closer and closer to the clouds, until finally, fighting against her breath, she begins to descend. When she alights on the grass, she begins to laugh, opening her eyes, glancing at the world, looking out past the small field, the thistles gently brushing her face and hair.