My Dark Vanessa(39)
“I don’t hate you,” I say.
Jenny glances at me in the mirror, a doubtful look. “Sure you don’t.”
I wonder if she would be hurt if I said I don’t really feel anything at all toward her anymore. That I can’t remember why losing her friendship had felt like losing the world, or why that friendship seemed so profound, never to be repeated. Now, it only strikes me as embarrassing, like any other outgrown phase. I think of how wrecked I was when she started going out with Tom and he began appearing everywhere, sitting with us at every meal, waiting outside our algebra class to spend the two minutes it took to walk from one building to the next with her. I denied being jealous, but of course I was, both of her and of him. I wanted it all—a boyfriend and a best friend, someone to love me enough that nobody could weasel their way between us. It was a pulsating, monstrous wanting beyond my control. I knew it was too much to feel, let alone show, yet I couldn’t stop it from letting loose one Saturday afternoon, screaming at Jenny in the bakery downtown, crying like a toddler throwing a tantrum. She’d promised we would spend the day together, just us, a throwback to the pre-boyfriend days, but within an hour Tom appeared, pulling up a chair to our table and nuzzling his face into her neck. I couldn’t take it anymore. I snapped.
That happened in late April, but the anger had been brewing within me for months, which explained Jenny’s lack of shock, her immediate response like she’d been waiting for my dam to break. As soon as we were back in our room, she said, “Tom thinks you’re too attached to me.” When I asked her what that meant exactly, “too attached,” she tried to shrug it off. “It’s just something he said.” I didn’t care what Tom said about me; he was just some boy who barely spoke, his band Tshirts the only interesting thing about him. But it killed me that Jenny deemed it something worth repeating: “too attached.” The implication of what being too attached to another girl might mean made my hair stand on end. I said, “That’s not true,” and Jenny flashed me the same doubtful look she gave me now. Sure, Vanessa. Whatever you say. I didn’t argue further; I shut down, stopped speaking to her, and we fell into the silent standoff that had held until now. Deep down, I knew she was right; I did love her too much, and I couldn’t imagine ever stopping. But less than a year later, here I am, not caring.
She leans over the sink, rinses off the soap, and pats her face dry as she says, “Can I ask you a question? Because I heard something about you.”
I blink, jarred from my memories. “What did you hear?”
“I don’t want to say it. It’s really . . . I know it can’t be true.”
“Just tell me.”
She presses her lips together, searching for the right words. Then in a low voice, she says, “Someone said you were having an affair with Mr. Strane.”
She waits for my reaction, the expected denial, but I am too far away to speak. I’m watching her through the wrong end of a telescope—the towel still pressed to her cheek, her flushed neck. Finally, I manage the words “That’s not true.”
Jenny nods. “I figured.” She turns back to the sink, sets down the towel, and picks up her toothbrush, turns on the water. In my ears, the sound of the tap amplifies to an ocean. The bathroom itself seems to turn watery, the tiled walls undulating.
She spits into the sink, turns off the tap, looks to me expectantly. “Right?” she prompts.
When had she been talking? While brushing her teeth? I shake my head; my mouth flops open. Jenny studies me, something unspooling behind her eyes.
“It is kind of weird,” she says, “the way you always stay in his room after class.”
Strane starts appearing everywhere, like he’s trying to keep an eye on me. He shows up in the dining hall and watches me from the faculty table. He’s in the library during study hour, browsing the bookcase directly in front of me. He walks past the open classroom door during my French class, stealing a glance at me each time. I know I’m being surveilled, but it also feels like being pursued, oppressive and flattering all at once.
One Saturday night I’m in bed, hair damp from the shower, homework laid out before me. The dorm is quiet; there’s an indoor track meet, an away basketball game, and a ski meet at Sugarloaf. I’m dozing off when the sound of a knock jolts me out of bed, my books falling to the floor. Throwing open the door, I half expect Strane to be there, for him to grab my hand and lead me to his car, his house, his bed. But there is only the lit-up hallway of closed doors, empty in either direction.
Another afternoon he asks me where I went during lunch. It’s five p.m. and we’re in the office behind his classroom, the rest of the humanities building now empty and dark. The office is barely bigger than a closet, with just enough room for a table, a chair, and a tweed couch with threadbare arms. It had been full of boxes of old textbooks and long-gone students’ papers, but he cleaned the room out specifically for us to use. It’s the perfect hideaway—two locked doors between us and the hallway.
I tuck my feet up onto the couch. “I went back to my room. I had bio homework.”
“I thought I saw you sneak off with someone,” he says.
“Definitely not.”
He settles into the other end of the couch, pulls my legs onto his lap, and plucks a paper from the to-be-graded stack on the table. We sit in silence for a while, him marking up the papers and me reading my history homework, until he says, “I just want to be sure that the boundaries you and I have established are holding strong.”