In Her Eyes Read online

  In my next class, I started daydreaming about Robin’s face. I’d think about getting her to quit talking with a kiss on that angry mouth of hers. One kiss. Then maybe I’d know for sure. I’d know if it meant I was queer or just freaking out.

  A couple of months went by, and I noticed she’d only occasionally go out with me for a meal. She never wanted to party with me and my friends. After a while, her excuses about having to study started to hurt my feelings.

  “I’ll bet you’ve never had a beer before,” I said. It had been a long, boring night. Both of us had finished our homework and were watching a sitcom rerun. I can’t remember which one, only the nagging feeling I had that I wanted to see her drunk. I wondered what she’d be like if she lost control, if she wasn’t so guarded, so careful. Was there a real Robin hiding underneath?

  “Yes, I have,” she answered with a smile, as though she thought she was surprising me. “It was at one of my cousins’ birthday parties. It was gross.” She opened a textbook and flipped the pages so rapidly, I could tell she wasn’t reading.

  “Why don’t you hang out with us for a while?”

  I had to stop asking, I told myself, because it had started to sound like pleading. And I had to continue to not care, of course. I wrote her off in my mind. Screw her.

  I found myself a few nights later partying in my friend Nancy’s dorm room. About a million of us had crowded in there, the music so loud you had to scream at each other. My voice would be scratchy the next day. Also, the next day I’d find out we’d melted the speakers.

  “Your roommate is a real square!” Nancy shouted over a Violent Femmes song. “She thinks she’s better than us.”

  “No, she doesn’t,” I retorted.

  I don’t know why I said that. Maybe it was because I didn’t believe what Robin was putting out there. We all wear masks. Sometimes I feel now, as I did then, that there are two me’s—the one who could imagine a settled suburban life and a secure relationship and the other who inexplicably does everything wrong, who can’t keep a relationship. I felt this strange duality all my life, even sitting in a smoky dorm room, throwing back cans of beer until I couldn’t feel either of the two me’s wrestling inside anymore.

  That’s why I defended Robin. I figured she had the same contradictions, though I could never be sure.

  I was one person around Robin and a different person around my friends. I knew they didn’t like her. Nancy called her Morticia because of her long, dark hair and fair skin. Before a party would get started, she’d take note of Robin’s absence.

  “No Morticia?” she’d ask with sarcasm. “How disappointing.”

  That party at Nancy’s was the same night I met Sean Voight. He came over to me with eyes like a cat, so self-assured, as though he’d already gotten in my pants.

  “Hey.” He made little effort, just plunking down beside me, his hand wrapped around his beer can. He offered me one with the other hand.

  I took it from him, saying nothing. I despised the smell, but I enjoyed drinking it. Courage in a can. I hated to be an imitation of my dad, but I did like the sanguine feeling, the numbness, the journey to a place with no pain. I couldn’t make my uptight, judgmental roommate understand the poetry of a beer. She’d laugh in my face.

  “What’s your major?” Sean asked.

  “I dunno yet.”

  His eyes narrowed, as though he was trying to figure me out. “What do you like?”

  I shrugged. “I haven’t seen anything I like yet.” I shot him a flirtatious smile and got up to talk to some other people on the other side of the room.

  That’s how I got him on the hook.

  I didn’t like Sean the way I wanted everyone to believe. But I wanted to like him that way. I’d pretend I was one of the characters on the cover of a Harlequin romance, eager to feel his lips on mine. I’d close my eyes and try to make myself excited. I got news for you. It doesn’t work. You can’t manufacture feelings. I didn’t even have to close my eyes to imagine feeling Robin’s lips on mine. She’d just be talking to me and I’d ache to feel anything from her—the touch of her hand, even the brush of her fingertips, a sweep of her hair or that thin soft mouth, which was usually preaching to me about something sexist on TV.

  “You’re gonna be an activist,” I said one night in our room. I was stretched across my bed, trying to read about foreign governments.

  Robin was also on her bed, her head buried in the pages of a textbook about the history of filmmaking. She looked up, seeming somewhat surprised by my comment.

  “No,” she said.

  “You sure? You’re always bitchin’ about something. Sure you don’t wanna change the world?” I smiled a teasing smile.

  “I don’t like the idea of chaining myself to a tree.” She wrinkled her nose and returned to her book. She was so cute in that moment. And what made her so cute was that she didn’t realize she was cute. She had no clue. Eventually, though, a little smile appeared across her lips. “An activist,” she repeated, as though it was the funniest thing she’d heard. “Why do you say that?”

  I closed my book, took off my reading glasses and really looked at her. If I looked long enough, she’d get embarrassed. She seemed self-conscious too, but I couldn’t tell if it was because of me or just her personality. She was, after all, wound up tighter than a spool of sewing string.

  “You really care about people being treated equally,” I said thoughtfully. I didn’t want to make a joke about this.

  “I do,” she said, her face brightening. She turned to face me.

  “Seems like you got a lot of passion,” I continued. “You’ll probably wanna do something about it someday.”

  “Huh.” She smiled as though I’d hit on something deep down. There was a touch of surprise, it seemed. Then she returned to her reading.

  I could’ve watched her for hours. But I had to push through for a test, so I kept on reading. Like most of my college memories, the rest of the ones for that night were fuzzy. I can’t remember reading a single word.

  Nights were the hardest. I’d get ready for bed, usually wearing an oversized FSU Seminoles T-shirt and underwear. Robin wouldn’t look directly at me when I’d come into the room, wearing my shirt and skivvies. She seemed uncomfortable. But then again, this was a girl who was uncomfortable about restroom symbols, so it didn’t necessarily mean she was thinking of me the way I was thinking of her.

  I’d settle into my bed, which was parallel to hers with only a window and a nightstand separating the heads of our beds. Sometimes it would be so quiet, I didn’t want to breathe. That whole year I became a little neurotic, listening to the quiet, hoping my stomach wouldn’t make any noise. It’s hard to be cool in front of someone twenty-four-seven, especially if you’re asleep. You never know what sounds you make when you’re unconscious. Somehow, though, I was usually the one to fall asleep first. I could never hear her breathing deeply or snoring. Nothing. She barely made a peep. Sometimes I’d try to sneak a glance at her, with the sheet pulled up to her chin, covering her nightgowned self. She looked wrapped up like a mummy.

  When I’d roll over, facing the cinder block wall, I’d wonder if she was looking at me. It was an odd way to exist. And I did it for a whole year.

  Chapter Ten

  Adrienne

  I was elated the night I finally got Robin to agree to party with me—to come along to my boyfriend Sean’s apartment on campus. I remember the way yellow leaves gathered in piles along the sidewalk. Since this was northern Florida, we got a taste of fall color, but the way you could really tell that the season was changing was the slight bite in the breeze and the dense fog that had settled in during the night.

  In the hazy cigarette-clouded living room, I watched Robin dance. The light of the stereo cast a weird, haunted house-style glow on everything but made her face even prettier. Damn her.

  I don’t know why it was important to me, but when she took that first sip of beer, I couldn’t wait to see her lose control, I wa
tched with rapt attention as her neck arched back…

  I called her over.

  “Easy there,” I said, feigning caution.

  “What for?” she asked, already seeming loopy. “Isn’t this what you like? Gettin’ shit-faced?”

  “You make it sound like a bad thing.” I winked at my laughing friends.

  “It tastes like yak piss,” Robin said.

  “And you’d know that because—”

  “That’s all we drink in Georgia, the plum and piss state.” She raised her can at me in a mock toast.

  Touché, I thought, smiling at her.

  I’d introduced her to Sean’s friend, Boyd. He looked like a stick figure with a goatee. In my warped mind, I thought we could double date, so Robin would hang out with me more. It was all so twisted but innocent at the same time. But the more she danced with Boyd, the angrier I got. Sean kept inching closer to my face, searching for a kiss, but it felt more like he was zeroing in on a target. I was annoyed, swatting him away like a big, flying Florida bug. All I wanted to do was go back to the dorm room.

  Robin was drinking too much. Every time I looked up, she was cracking open another can. I didn’t want her to get alcohol poisoning like some friends of mine had back home. But I couldn’t hold a serious thought in my own foggy, beer-clouded mind.

  At one point, Robin came over to me when a slow song came on.

  “Well, you told me to get to know him,” she slurred.

  “Yeah, I know,” I said, looking every bit as puzzled as I felt. “Why aren’t you dancing with him?”

  “You know…” she groaned, stretching out the words. “It’s another slow one!”

  “What, you don’t wanna dance?”

  “It’s all close and sticky.” She ran her arms through the air, imitating what looked like a demented cat.

  When she stopped pawing at the air, I took her hands. “You like him?” I asked.

  “Hey, Austen!” Sean’s voice broke through the song and the moment. “You wanna go?” He jerked his head toward one of the bedrooms.

  “I think I better…” I gave a quick glance in Robin’s direction. Even someone as thick-headed as Sean could see she needed looking after.

  “Oh.” His face fell. He was a simple creature, I’ll give him that. How easy it would’ve been if Robin was as easy to read! Sean’s needs were clear—eat, sleep, get laid. He wasn’t even slightly more complicated than that.

  * * *

  The fog had thickened so much it was hard to find our way back to the dorm. Passing under a canopy of trees that looked like bony fingers in the hazy moonlight, I quickened the pace, feeling a little creeped out. It was really quiet; even our feet didn’t make any sound on the damp pavement. She hung on my arm, dragging behind. We started laughing because we veered off course, as you often do when you drink, and almost slammed into one of the benches alongside the walkway. Then we kept on laughing for no reason at all.

  I continued supporting Robin as we stumbled into the dorm room. She was squirming like a cat in my arms, trying to kick her shoes off but not succeeding. I remember sort of rocking her back and forth. I had enough beer in me to think I could do and say things that I wouldn’t dare to during the day.

  I took off her socks and shoes, and my hand couldn’t seem to pull away. I looked up at her, making sure she was aware. She invited me toward her, to lie on her bed, her eyes sparkling like beautiful evil, a temptation encouraging me to sin. (And I wasn’t even religious.)

  I’d spent so much time daydreaming about and wondering what she would look like under her clothes, and here she was, so close. Too close. I felt shy but pretended I wasn’t, letting my fingers glide over her silky shoulders as she inched her way out of her mostly unbuttoned shirt. There was a faint early morning light streaming through the window, outlining the curves of her, deepening the shadows on her face, accentuating her immense beauty. I’d felt like a poet whenever I thought about her, and now, with her here, I was stumbling and totally inadequate in my words and actions.

  “You look…good.” That was all I could say. Very unpoetic.

  She lowered her eyes. She didn’t seem to know how beautiful she was. And I wanted her to know, to show her. I’d never been with a girl before, so I was more scared than I’d ever been in my life. But it was okay, I knew, when I felt her shaking against me. There wasn’t enough alcohol to entirely calm our nerves. As our clothes fell away into a heap beside the bed, I could feel her smooth skin sliding against mine, her sinewy arms taking hold of me in a way I hadn’t expected. She was strong, as if she’d done more chores on the farm than she’d let on. When my lips found hers in the dark, it was electric. A surge of something went right through me—the softness, the surrender—like nothing else in my life. I understood so much in the space of a second—the burning flames inside that everyone talked about in the movies, the power of that spark…whatever it was between us. I felt it and didn’t have to have words to explain it. I now knew that anything was possible. I’d never known this with boys, and I knew I never would.

  I remember how we laughed to fill in the silence, and the intermittent whispers…

  She opened to me like one of the flowers I’d seen in a Georgia O’Keefe painting in art history class. It was beautiful, how she trusted me. And all I wanted to do was please her. She looked fearful, as if silently asking me if it was okay. I would do everything to make sure she knew it was. It was all okay.

  My life changed that night, only I couldn’t let her know.

  The next morning, when I turned to see her body next to me, I thought I was going to die. She was still asleep. Fear took over, spreading its tentacles all over me until I felt like I was choking. So I did the only thing I could to free myself—I bolted from the bed and took a shower. The fear of what she’d say in the sober daylight petrified me. What she’d think of me, of us, was too scary. I had to say something first. I had to prove to her that I thought it was a mistake, that I didn’t mean any of it.

  In the shower, I thought about what a prim and proper Southern girl she was when we first met—how she didn’t know any good bands, how she’d never smoked or drank. She’d surely hate me for this. She’d say I’d influenced her to be some freak of nature, something along those lines…

  I rushed back to the room and purposely made noise so she’d wake up and I could tell her that none of it meant anything, so she wouldn’t have to worry. I didn’t want to be the one she regretted.

  Only I didn’t say anything like that. It came out something like, “I should never have had that many beers!”

  “Oh, uh, yeah,” she said. “Me neither.” She seemed disoriented, just waking up. But as soon as she agreed, I breathed a sigh of relief, certain I’d done the right thing.

  If I’d waited too long, I might’ve become the target of one of her sharp attacks, like the sexist guys in heavy metal bands. It wasn’t a big leap to imagine being the object of her disdain or repulsion. After all, it always felt as though she was watching me, like I was peculiar, a curiosity, something she didn’t understand. I couldn’t take that, not that morning. My emotions were thin and hanging; I had to protect them from being severed, being hurt. Whatever was inside of me, it wasn’t anything that couldn’t be washed down with another beer or a night with Sean, the boyfriend I’d nearly forgotten about.

  Chapter Eleven

  Adrienne

  We said we wouldn’t get each other Christmas gifts, but I cheated. Since she’d admitted she didn’t entirely hate every heavy metal song, after the Christmas break I gave her a mix tape I made myself, hoping she’d think of me when she played it.

  “Thank you,” she said, turning it over in her hand. It was hard to tell if she was being polite or if she was really moved.

  As with everything else that school year, there were conflicting feelings bouncing off the cinder block walls nearly every day. Whenever I didn’t get the response from her I craved, I was sulky and moody.

  I’d been told since as
long as I could remember that feelings for girls would get me nowhere. Nowhere good, at least. Hitch yourself to a guy and you had it made.

  So it wasn’t hard for me to go from loving Robin to hating her. At first, she made me hate myself, with her self-righteous shit about women’s rights and her dark, brooding stare and dark classical music that she cut off whenever I came into the room. It was as if she thought it was too deep for me to understand. I hated her smile when she thought something I said was silly, as though it was beneath her. I hated her silky Southern voice that sent flutters up my spine whenever I heard it. I especially hated the way she sounded the first night I turned on the TV to watch heavy metal videos.

  “The women are barely dressed!” Robin screeched.

  “God,” I groaned. “You sound like my grandmother. Whenever I wore short shorts, she’d say ‘Put some pants on.’”

  “Why doesn’t it bother you?” Robin demanded.

  “Why should it bother me? I’m not the fashion police!”

  “I mean, how the men always somehow manage to keep their clothes on.” Her eyes were darker than usual. I swear if she’d had a pitchfork right then, she’d have used it on me.

  “I don’t give a shit.”

  She let out a bitter chuckle, a sound I’d come to know all too well. It was as if there was an inside joke and I didn’t get it. What I did get was the idea that if I liked watching these videos, I was somehow betraying my gender. I think she’d once called me “an affront to women.”

  “You don’t give a shit,” she repeated, “that women are always objectified, that we’re not people, but things used only for sex.”

  “It’s their decision,” I said weakly, trying to hold on to my pride. “Isn’t feminism about women making their own choices?” Yeah, that sounded good.

  “You’re missing the point.” She was flat, expressionless, and she slammed her book shut.

  Robin could make me feel like I was no taller than a blade of grass. Later, someone told me never to be with anyone who made you feel less than who you are. It’s a good idea.