Love Her Madly Read online

  A collegiate-level women’s coach from the frozen north, Coach Mike brought with him a wife and one-year-old daughter. He was a straight-up Adonis: sandy blond hair, fabulous muscles, eyes the color of the ocean, amazing yet hard-won smile. He quickly became my all-encompassing everything, and by trying to please him every goddamn day, I became a very, very fast swimmer. It could have stayed a crush, but his wife was struggling with postpartum depression, and there I was, adoring young person, ready and willing to be his secret keeper and confidant. I pursued him as stealthily as I could, finding countless reasons to steal a few chaste minutes alone with him. When I won the meet that guaranteed my scholarship, he took me out to celebrate. Back in his car, fueled by celebratory drinks, he touched me for the first time, and I could not fathom a greater happiness.

  I graduated, and we continued to meet up and fool around for the remainder of the summer, spending languid, sweaty evenings pawing and licking in the semi-privacy of isolated parking lots. I never thought of myself as a home-wrecker, but rather as his misplaced intended, his star-crossed lover, his water babe. He seemed vastly more sophisticated than the high school boys I knew. He would listen to me when I talked, for one thing, and he repeatedly told me I was beautiful. He whispered rapturous compliments into my hair about the merits of my long legs, my heart-shaped lips, and even found good things to say about my nearly nonexistent breasts. I believed every word of it, hungry as I was for his approval. He’d move the car seat into the trunk to make space and give me this smile that melted away my thoughts of everything but the anticipation of his hands on my skin.

  Despite our many lusty sessions, and even though I repeatedly told him I wanted to, we never had full-on sex. I wonder now if he feared I’d try to trap him with yet another baby. I was so obsessed with him at the time, it might have crossed my mind. He dropped hints that he’d leave his wife. He said she was crazy, and that he wished he could start all over with me. I was too blind to see that the little girl was the one who really had his heart. The end came when I went up to Big U. He stopped returning my calls, changed his number, disappeared. He was my first love, and he dumped me without a word of explanation. I tried not to let it get to me, and I reserved my crying time for the shower, which led to some long showers, which in turn, engendered the ire of my suite mates.

  I could have told those girls what was up. I could have confessed my heartbreak and fallen into their arms, smearing snail trails of grief mucus all over their Big U sweatshirts. I don’t doubt that they would have been kind to me and happy to listen. But I liked my misery complete and my depression abject, so I kept my mouth shut and my eyes glued to the calendar, counting the days until fall break would come and I could go see Mike in person.

  When that day finally came, I drove directly to the pool to find him. Instead of finding Mike, I ran into Ms. Johnson, my old JV coach, who, while giving me a look that telegraphed exactly how little she thought of me and my trampy ways, breezily told me he was gone. He wasn’t working at the school, and as a matter of fact, she’d heard he’d taken the wife and moved back north. So, heartbroken and misanthropic, I returned to my cramped, lonely suite, my pointless classes, and my nonexistent social life. Alarmingly, I had even lost all desire to step foot in the pool. I knew my scholarship depended on it, but I just couldn’t force myself to care. I essentially shut down.

  In truth, my epic failure as a student, and probably as a person, at Big U terrified me. It shocked me that I could surrender to apathy so easily, shaking off my dreams like slipping off a robe. It would have felt less alien to me if I’d picked up a heroin habit and became singularly devoted to my fix, because at least then there’d be something I wanted. Instead, I was bafflingly devoted to nothing. Under a bizarre haze of alien nihilism, I, the swimmer, was drowning.

  I guess this is to say that the morning of orientation, the life preserver of my second-chance school was wedged so tightly around my chest that I wondered how I could breathe. I was feeling so hopeful that things would turn out better that it made me a little nauseated. Steeling my nervous gut against the discordant odors of ammonia and grilled cheese sandwiches drifting in from the kitchen, I told myself life was about to improve.

  I was on the lookout for any evidence that my feeling was correct when an upperclassman girl switched on a microphone and began to rehash a bunch of stuff that I’d already read in the handbook. I spent the time surreptitiously searching for potential future friends. No one immediately jumped out at me, but considering my limited experience in that area, I didn’t have much to go on.

  I should clarify that it’s not like I never had any friends. As a kid, I had playmates and did time in uniform on a few in­glorious soccer squads. What I loved most, though, was dodging the asphalt-boiling summer days in the air-conditioned twilight of the local roller rink. In that glossy-floored paradise of Top 40 hits and snow cones, I felt at ease. I remember gleeful hours playing tag in my purple skates with the other girls. I went to all their birthday parties, invariably hosted at the rink and all serving the same rainbow-frosted ice cream cake. I even fostered an intense best-friend-forevership with another skating redhead before her family moved away to Georgia and we never saw each other again. I didn’t see any signs of pariahdom ahead, but it was on its way.

  Puberty struck with catastrophic vengeance. My bony frame erupted in fatty bulges, my skin went radioactive, and my hair morphed from soft strawberry blond waves to a hellish carroty bush. My mom put me in swimming classes to try to spare me the humiliation of being a pudgy, pimply ginger, and I realized that underwater, no one can hear you scream. My former friends morphed into shallow, vicious gorgons, consumed by their status in the junior high food chain. The skating rink parties of the past were now meaningless, as was every other pleasant or otherwise human encounter we’d ever shared. It wasn’t just that our friendships were so quickly forgotten, it was that those girls seemed to suddenly hate me with such shocking purity that I spent countless hours wondering what I’d done wrong.

  Obviously, my appearance made me a target. I did as my mother suggested, and pretended not to hear the mean jokes or nasty commentary. That worked great. Soon, I was feigning deafness seven hours a day (band class excluded), and I wised up to the fact that accepting the torment with a smile wasn’t going to do shit for me in the merciless world of preteen girls. Instead, I aspired to master the special art of disappearing in plain sight. I cherished the days that no one spoke to me, and then I’d go to swim practice.

  Girls from swimming helped fill the social vacuum that I’d earned with my celebrated awkwardness. Almost interchangeably quiet and sensitive, these girls and I would sleep over at each others’ houses, bake brownies, and engage in speculative conversations about boys, but no friendships ever stuck. The faces would simply change by the season, without any of us feeling bad about it. By high school, my swim friends had become my competition, not only in swimming but also for boys, status, and presumably, the opportunity to mate and further our genetic codes.

  By sixteen, my junior high pudge and acne had melted away like a half-remembered nightmare. I’d grown tall and lean, and my features had arranged themselves in a way that still verged on the elfin, but attractive elfin. I knew this only because a girl on the team let it slip that her older brother referred to me as Tinkerbell. It was great to no longer be at the very bottom of the social totem pole, but as far as the cliques went, I was over it. I had stopped seeking out friends and demurred from most chummy overtures. I expected the worst, and besides, with high school more than halfway over, there seemed little point in forging new bonds. I had books, and TV, and enough acquaintances that I didn’t feel like a total outcast, and while I was in the protective cushion of my home, that had been good enough. This time around, I knew I needed to find some people to call my own, or I’d be lost, lonely, or dead.

  My future classmates began to stir, and I tuned in again to what the orientation leader was saying.
She was copy-paper pale, with blueberry-colored dreadlocks, a nose piercing, and a wide smile that she wielded relentlessly. She began chirping that it was time to have fun and get acquainted through a really exciting exercise.

  The essence was, she would play music, and we would all walk around, saying our names aloud to anyone we happened to make eye contact with. Then, when she stopped the music, we would partner up with the closest person to us, and we’d receive further instruction.

  The music started, and it was perfectly awkward. I got to my feet and began circling with the others. We all felt stupid, so with a few exceptions, we were all smiling. I spoke my own name, dusty classic that it is, so often that it began to sound alien to me. When the music finally stopped, I was facing a wall. Someone tapped me on the shoulder, and I spun around. It was the perfect blond girl.

  “Howdy, partner,” she said, flashing me a smile.

  The speakers screeched to life, and Dreadlocks’ voice boomed across the sound system like a detonation. We all flinched and covered our ears. “Whoops,” Dreadlocks said, her voice reduced to a tolerable volume. I glanced at the blonde, her face a portrait of sarcastic bemusement.

  She was even prettier up close, unlike some blond girls who can sell the package at a distance but flatten and fade upon closer inspection. She had cool blue eyes spaced evenly under pale eyebrows that seemed arched in perpetual contemplation of a private joke. Her nose was small and slightly pert in the Nordic supermodel vein and buttressed on either side by high cheekbones. When she smiled, dimples and even white teeth appeared, completing the circuit of devastation. She was so naturally stunning that I didn’t even feel jealous.

  “Now everyone sit down across from your partner, join hands, and close your eyes.”

  The room filled with awkward murmurs. Blondie and I exchanged eye rolls.

  “Now we do the traditional orientation séance, I guess,” she murmured as we joined hands. Embarrassed by the intimacy of touching a stranger, I clamped my eyes closed.

  “Now everyone share something about yourself with your partner.”

  Suddenly I had the distinct feeling that she was leaning in close to me, and I heard her whisper in my ear, “Oh, your hands, they’re so . . . baby soft. Do you . . . exfoooliaaate?”

  My eyes snapped open. She shot me a really lecherous leer and began circling the top of my hand with her thumb. She licked her lips and shifted her eyebrows almost imperceptibly. I realized she was putting me on. Game on, weirdo, I thought.

  I dropped my head back and rolled my eyes around in mock ecstasy and moaned loud enough for a few surrounding parties to hear, following up with a strangled, “Oh yes!”

  I opened one eye. Blondie looked startled, but her face quickly cracked into a smile, and she loosed a low, throaty chuckle.

  “It’s not funny. Why would you laugh at that? We’re supposed to be sharing!” I stage-whispered, attempting outrage. Her face turned red, and she laughed harder. When she released my hands and shoved me, I broke. We tittered like hysterical preteens, rocking back and forth breathlessly, attracting stares.

  Our mirth was just receding when Dreadlocks announced that we’d begin again and find new partners. As the music started to play, I got up, wiping my hands on my jeans with a show of disgust.

  “Pervert,” I spat.

  She nodded appreciatively, brushing a smudge of dampened liner from beneath her eyelashes. “I’ll be seeing you around, missy.”

  I proceeded to meet a few other unremarkable students, including an uncomfortable sit-down with my new roommate, Annie. We’d already met that morning as my dad was helping me move in. She’d appeared as a large, quiet shadow in the doorway, and as I was under my desk trying to jerry-rig an electrical hookup, I didn’t notice her there until I heard my father say, “Oh, hello. You must be Ann.”

  We knew this crucial bit of information because I’d received a letter from the school with Annie’s contact information, just in case we wanted to get to know each other before the semester started. It seemed that mutually, we did not. After my dad left and we were alone, I attempted to build a conversational bridge (progress!) while watching her thumbtack photo collages above her bed. She nailed, with particular wistfulness, a smaller, framed collage that featured only photos of Annie with a tiny fella (Thomas, I would soon learn) who looked like a miniature Clark Kent. In one image, taken at prom, he sits on her lap.

  Anyway, it was soon established that we shared virtually no interests, be they political, academic, or arts and leisure. Our conversational fount slowed to a polite, if meager, drip and stayed there, permanently. I foresaw Annie as a quiet and sufficiently amiable cell mate, and one unlikely to invade my shower time to test-run eye shadow. I’ll say it: I was satisfied with the match.

  As for the blonde, I ran into her again that evening in the quad. She was sitting on a bench, surrounded by several students, smoking a cigarette.

  “Hey, you! Ginger!” she called out when she saw me.

  I pretended to look around like I didn’t understand. When I pointed to myself in mock confusion, she laughed, which I suppose was my goal.

  “Yeah, you. What’s your name?”

  “Gloria.”

  “Like an angel,” came a voice from the grass. I looked down and saw a guy with a great shock of spiky hair and a delicate build smiling up at me.

  “She’s no angel,” Blondie quipped. “My name’s Cyn.”

  “How appropriate,” I responded.

  She grinned. “Short for Cynthia.”

  “Right.”

  Cyn laughed. “I’ve always wanted to befriend a redhead.”

  “Well, in truth, earlier today I was sure I wouldn’t like you because you’re so very blond.”

  “That’s discrimination,” she protested. This topic was rapidly debated by the assembled group, while Cyn sat smoking, already their queen. She studied me from her bench. “Do you always dislike people on sight?”

  I laughed, because it was true.

  “I’m trying to improve,” I offered. “And you’ve already helped me so much because, although you are very blond, you seem utterly shameless, and I’m looking for a mentor.”

  She clapped with delight and made space for me on the bench next to her. “Have a seat, my child.”

  The evening hours passed easily as other new students drifted in and out of the orbit of Cyn’s bench. Eventually Cyn looked at her watch and announced that she had to finish unpacking or risk sleeping on the naked rubber mat that served as our dorm beds. As she left, another student quickly took her space, but the magical hour was over. I left soon after.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The next few nights, I took to walking to the bay after dinner. The quay at the bay front was a thing of real beauty, and by far the college’s crowning feature. An old mansion from the Roaring Twenties, now converted into classrooms, stood at the end of a long brick walkway. At its foot, a manicured lawn sprinkled with benches and palm trees offered an unimpeded view of sailboats. At sunset, the air filled with the scent of cheap tobacco and marijuana. By nightfall, the scene felt like The Great Gatsby transposed into the Summer of Love.

  I found a quiet bench and sat alone for a very long time, trying not to think about the disaster I’d made of things in the fall, trying not to think about Mike. Laughter floated up from the students who splayed on the lawn not far from me. I suspected I could have approached any group and been received with friendship, but I just couldn’t do it. The minutes lingered painfully as I remained trapped inside my head. When the agony of my stubborn shyness finally dug past paralysis to despair, I trudged back to my dorm alone. Annie was already asleep, oblivious to the party music floating up from the rooms below. I crawled under my comforter and felt with depressing certainty that I was destined to repeat all my mistakes and remain always alone, an outsider. I may have even squeezed out some silent tears of self-p
ity as the strains of “Space Oddity” echoed across the quad.

  The next night, determined not to repeat my pathetic loner act from the night before, I walked to the bay again, a smile of pleasant curiosity plastered on my face. I would talk to someone, anyone, even if it killed me. As I rounded the mansion and the bay came into view, I heard someone call out, “Hey, Ginger! Over here!”

  Under the glow of the lamplight, I spotted a halo of fair hair and a thin arm beckoning me over. My fake smile now authentic, I hurried over to join Cyn and her friends.

  I sat on a low wall and was introduced all around. It was obvious to me that these, though mostly lowerclassmen, were the cool kids. They were more attractive, slightly more stylish (I say slightly because the hemp and Birkenstock ethos of the campus was worlds away from chic), but more than their exterior signifiers, they had an innate cockiness that advertised their utter confidence in themselves, in their intelligence, and in their right to assert themselves on the world.

  Cyn lifted a bottle of amber-hued hooch and passed it to me. “Where you been, Ginger? I’ve been looking for you.”

  “Yeah?” I took a gulp from the bottle and grimaced at its fiery sting.

  “Great stuff, huh?” She laughed. “Don’t worry. Max here says that tomorrow, when the rest of the school comes back to campus from winter break, we won’t have to settle for Brand X.”

  “Brand X?” I coughed. “More like Skull and Crossbones.”

  Cyn chuckled. Max, the delicate guy I’d met on the quad a few nights ago, snorted appreciatively, and the conversation moved along fluidly. My presence unchallenged, I began to relax, and soon everyone and everything seemed perfect and right.

  A while later, after the bottle had been emptied and the group was discussing how to obtain further intoxicants, Cyn leaned over to me.

  “Hey, you wanna be my bathroom buddy? I gotta go.”