Following My Toes Page 2

  “What does it matter?”

  “Do I know her?” I asked.

  Peter looked me directly in the eye, and simply said, “No.” And I believed him.

  “Do you love her?”

  To that he replied, “Yes. I’m sorry, Faith.” I didn’t believe him on that one, at least not the part about his being sorry. But there was nothing left to say. Okay, there was nothing interesting left to say. Not that I didn’t try. My dignity soon escaped me, and I kept Peter there for over an hour, begging him to stay, then screaming at him to go. It was not pretty. But in the end he left, and I was devastated.

  * * *

  Afterwards I realized I had more experience with heartbreak than I thought. For instance, I wasn’t making up that story about cutting the hair off of my sister Margaret’s Barbie dolls. They had been brand new, birthday presents, barely even played with. I was curious what they would look like with short hair, and jealous she had recently been the recipient of all the attention. So I stole them from her closet, and gave them both a horrible butch haircut.

  Margaret cried and cried, devastated I could have done such a thing. The only thing I regretted was my parents’ decree that my allowance for the next three months would go towards buying her new dolls. Looking back, I am surprised at my ability to be so careless and cruel. But at the time, I was mostly surprised with my power to make another person cry. Now I wonder, what separates me from a cheating boyfriend, or even from an abusive stalker? We all make mistakes, and I’m certainly no exception. Perhaps in the end it all comes down to our comfort level with power.

  I suppose that’s my problem. The only power I’ve ever been comfortable with is one nobody even believes I have.

  Chapter 2

  After Peter left I did not want to sleep. Actually, it wasn’t sleep I was afraid of; it was waking up. I hate that moment when you wake up the morning after something terrible has happened. At first you don’t remember; for about a second your life feels normal. And then it hits you. Oh yeah, my world is in shambles and I will never be the same. It’s like experiencing the awful event again for the first time. As it happened, however, waking up and remembering the night before was not as traumatic as I had feared it to be. On the other hand, sleep had been a nightmare. Literally.

  I dreamt that I had been with Lacey, my best friend since 5th grade. We were at a high school dance, not the high school that we went to, but the high school where I taught. Except, in this dream, we were both students, conversing with the kids from my classes.

  Lacey and I were standing together when the cutest senior boy, Matt Kendel, approached us. I was excited because I was sure he was going to ask me to dance. (Okay, two things: a: Matt was eighteen at the time of my dream, so it is not quite as gross as it seems, and

  b: I am sure that in my dream Matt was meant to be symbolic of something, like an emotion or a fear. Really!)

  So Matt came up to us, and instead of asking me to dance, he slunk up right in front of me, really slow. Then he took my face in both his hands, and he kissed me as if he were going to devour my mouth. But when he pulled away, he had turned into Peter. Peter took one look at me, said, “You are so selfish,” and walked away. Then I looked out on the dance floor, and I saw Lacey was now dancing/making out with Matt Kendel.

  Suddenly I wasn’t a student anymore. I was a chaperone, and I knew their behavior was inappropriate, so I went to break it up. But when I tried, Lacey turned to me and said, “You don’t understand. You never have. Nobody is as blind as you, Faith.” Then everyone on the dance floor turned and started laughing at me.

  So I woke up disoriented, but I had not forgotten what happened with Peter. I also had that “Eww, I dreamt I kissed a student” feeling, but in light of recent, more important events, I pushed that to the back of my mind. Instead I got up. My head was throbbing and my eyelids fought to stay open. It was like I was hung over—I must have been dehydrated from crying so much.

  Once at school I gave my students busy work to do, and avoided conversation and eye contact with anyone who approached me. It wasn’t until lunch that I had time to call Lacey, and only then I remembered her role in my dream. But I didn’t mention it to her, I just told her something bad had happened, and we agreed to meet at her place that evening.

  This felt natural. Growing up Lacey and I had shared every-thing—clothes, crushes, class notes, and all our secrets. She was more of a sister to me than my real sister Margaret was. But lately things between us hadn’t been quite normal.

  It began with a telephone conversation we had one night. I called her because she hadn’t called me for several days. Fifteen minutes into the call she dropped the bomb.

  “Oh, you should probably know, my dad was diagnosed with liver cancer. The doctors say he only has a few months to live.”

  She described his condition as if she were describing an uninteresting book she had read—she sounded detached even as she admitted to being devastated. I didn’t know what to say, or how to crack her demeanor. And I never figured it out, not that I didn’t try. Four and a half months later I stood next to her at her father’s funeral on a cold March morning. The tears were streaming down my face, but Lacey’s eyes were dry.

  “Faith!” she whispered fiercely, “Don’t be so dramatic. You didn’t even know him that well.”

  That was the only thing she said to me all day, and she apologized later. I told her an apology wasn’t necessary, and explained I had been crying out of sadness for her. I didn’t tell her my tears had also been out of frustration. For the first time in our friendship I didn’t know how to help her. And that separated us.

  She was in a slump for a while, but then started to find ways to make herself feel better. She redecorated her apartment, using this feng shui book a friend of hers from work had given her. She got into yoga and Buddhist philosophy, and started talking about fate and the paths we take. According to her, everything that happens, happens for a reason, and we have to trust ourselves and the universe.

  It all would have been great if she weren’t also taking a lot of anti-depressants without going to therapy as well. In my humble opinion, she needed to talk to someone. But I knew she would lose her temper if I told her that, and I was too much of a wimp to risk it.

  Anyway, the afternoon after Peter had broken up with me, I admit I was focused not on her, but on myself. Yet, once I remembered that dream, I also couldn’t stop thinking about her role in it. What did she have to do with the whole thing, why was she even there? (I might mention at this point, I sometimes feel my psychic powers through my dreams.)

  When I got over to Lacey’s, she had just finished cooking dinner, some rice with chicken and vegetables.

  “Would you like some?” she asked. I looked at what she had made, and it didn’t look like there was enough for two.

  “Is there enough? I don’t want to steal your food.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “I’m not actually all that hungry.”

  “Then why did you make it?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, I thought I was hungrier than I am. These anti-depressants do weird things to my appetite.”

  I looked over at her, and noticed how thin she had become. Lacey always had a tendency to be small and round, but in an attractive, voluptuous way. I was always jealous of her looks, especially in high school, where I remained flat-chested through the 10th grade. I was sort of scrawny, with red hair and skin that freckles rather than tans. Although I’ve now grown into my looks, memories of the nickname “Pippi Longstocking” still haunt me. Meanwhile, Lacey’s lovely ol-ive skin and dark hair weren’t even what most people noticed about her. She had been the first girl in our sixth grade class to need a bra. However, after high school she became jealous of my ability to stay thin without a huge amount of effort. My figure was by no means boyish, but at 5’6” I was a size 8, and she didn’t think that I worked hard enough for it.

  But then, Lacey always had a weird relationship with food.
We would be out, or at her place, and she would start talking about how hungry she was. So we would go get something to eat. Almost inevitably, she would take a few bites, and claim to be full, while I’d feel like a pig for wanting to finish my meal. But that night at her place it was a non-issue. There is no better diet plan than a breakup; my heartache had caused my appetite to disappear. The chicken and rice remained on the stove, congealing at room temperature, looking more plastic and less appetizing as the evening progressed.

  I sat down in her living room, which I have to admit, immediately invited me in. She had decorated the room in varying shades of blue, and anywhere you sat you could easily see the front door. There were plants everywhere, and shelves with books on subjects like the enneagram and new-age feminism, along with lots of framed photographs of her college friends and family vacations. There were two photos with me: one of the two us posing before a high school Christmas formal, and the other taken by Peter about a year ago. It had been a perfect lazy Sunday in July; our arms were around each other as we smiled into the camera, while the lake shimmered in the distance. None of the pictures were of her dad though; she put those pictures away.

  Lacey poured us some wine and handed me a glass. I noticed she poured a fairly large glass for herself, and I stopped thinking about my own tragedy for a second. Aren’t you supposed to stay away from alcohol when you’re on medication?

  “So tell me what happened.” Lacey said.

  I took a sip of my wine. I wanted to be able to tell this story with-out crying, if at all possible. “It’s Peter. Last night. He said we...want different things...he said that...he met...someone else.” Too late—The tears were already streaming down my face. Lacey put down her wine, and came and sat next to me on the couch. She took my wine from me, and placed it on her coffee table. Then she hugged me close, for a really long time, while I cried on her shoulder. But when we pulled away I was reminded again of my dream, in that her face was not the face I was expecting to see. I mean, obviously it was her, Lacey, but at the same time it wasn’t. For a moment it was like we were in that movie, “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” I was looking at someone who appeared to be Lacey, but it was as if her soul had been replaced by a pod. Or whatever.

  “ Oh Faith. I am so sorry. Did you see it coming at all?” Lacey handed me her Kleenex box, a dark blue floral design, perfectly matched to her living room.

  I took a tissue and blew my nose. “Not really. I mean, yesterday my skin hurt all day, so I knew something bad was coming.” I caught Lacey rolling her eyes at that comment, but I pretended I didn’t notice, and went on. “And I suppose I should have known, especially when he didn’t come over on Friday or Saturday night. But he said he wanted to write, and he’s said that before, and meant it. And it’s not like things had been bad between us. They had actually been pretty good. Like, last week we went to this tiny little Mexican restaurant, and he ordered us a pitcher of margaritas, which he even paid for. And we sat there and drank and ate and talked for hours.

  “It was like when we first started going out. He told me what he believes is the meaning of life, and I felt like he was telling me some-thing important, something that he wouldn’t tell just anyone. And then after that we went back to my place, and had truly good sex. I mean, truly good. And more than once, which is altogether impressive, considering how much he had to drink.” Lacey’s face turned white and she clenched her fist. I perceived this as a sign of sympathy.

  I continued on. “And the next day he stayed for a while. I cooked breakfast and we read the paper. I never imagined it was the last good time we would have together.” I resumed my crying.

  “What does he think is the meaning of life?” Lacey asked.

  Her words caused me to double take. I took a huge sniff, grabbed another tissue, and wiped my eyes. “What?”

  “You said he told you what the meaning of life is. What is it?”

  “He told me what he thinks the meaning of life is. I don’t know if he’s right.”

  Lacey grabbed the two used tissues I had placed on her coffee table. I meant to throw them out later, but she got up and put them in the wastebasket in the corner of the room.

  “Okay. But what is it? What did he say?” Lacey seemed kind of exasperated, which I thought was unfair. True, my crisis was not on the same level as what she had recently endured, but then again, it isn’t every day a boyfriend of two years dumps you either.

  “He told me the meaning of life is to take in the images around us as cosmic signs, and to turn them into ideas that we put out into the world. Then they’ll keep recreating themselves, but they’ll also be changing. Sort of like recycling. I don’t know, I was kind of tipsy by the time we were onto that subject. Why is it important?”

  “What do you mean?” said Lacey.

  “I mean, why do you care what Peter’s philosophy of life is? What does it have to do with anything?”

  “It has to do with a lot of things.” Lacey paced as she launched into her explanation, attempting to tidy her living room, which was already spotlessly clean. “It speaks volumes about who he is, what he thinks, and whether or not the two of you are actually compatible.”

  “Why wouldn’t we be compatible?” I nearly yelled. “We were together for two years. I would think if we weren’t, we’d have discovered it by now!”

  Lacey took a gulp of wine, and sat back down, directly across from me. “People change, Faith. They grow apart. It just happens. And it’s not anyone’s fault.”

  I wanted to throw up the dinner I hadn’t eaten. This was not the conversation we were supposed to be having. A year ago we would have talked for hours, eating chocolate and drinking wine, while she fed me tissues and cursed all men. But that was not going to happen tonight. So I asked her. “Who are you talking about growing apart? Me and Peter, or me and you?”

  Lacey looked at me with tears in her eyes. Softly, she said, “Oh, Faith. What Peter said, about the meaning of life—It’s something I told him, something I read recently. I’m sorry. It’s just that, well, we’ve all changed. I didn’t want it to happen, but once it did, it felt right. I couldn’t help it, and neither could he. We, you know, we connected.”

  My legs and arms had turned to stone. I sat there for what felt like a very long time, saying nothing. In reality, it was probably only a few seconds, a minute at the most. But time stood still. As Lacey waited for me to respond I was aware only of my own forced breathing. Finally I asked, “How exactly did you connect? I mean, to what extent did you...connect? Tell me. I need to know.”

  “Faith, we never meant to hurt you.”

  “How long have you been sleeping together?” I demanded an answer, but she just took a deep labored breath, as if she was the injured party.

  “Faith, I needed someone, and Peter was there. And he, well, he needs someone who is going to be more accepting of his lifestyle, of his choices. His working in a coffee shop, living on a shoe string, that never would have been enough for you. But I don’t care about that stuff anymore. I’ve realized what’s actually important. Don’t you see, everything happens for a reason. This will all work out.”

  “How, exactly, is this going to work out, Lacey? Because I don’t see it.”

  “You simply have to trust that it will.”

  “Don’t even talk to me about ‘trust’. I trusted both of you, more than anyone! Peter didn’t even have the decency to tell me the truth when he was breaking up with me. And you! You act like you’re still my best friend, you let me cry on your shoulder, when all the time, you’re deceiving me!”

  “Jesus, Faith, you can be so melodramatic. Did you ever stop to think this isn’t entirely about you?”

  There it was again. Had the two of them talked about me, agreeing I’m self-centered? It certainly seemed like it. But I wasn’t, was I? Suddenly I wasn’t so sure. If they both believed it, maybe it was true.

  I started to cry again. This time Lacey didn’t come over to com-fort me; instead she sat there,
drinking her wine. So without saying anymore, I got up, crossed the room, and closed the door both to her house and to our friendship.

  They say when one door closes, another opens. Little did I know I was about to open several new doors—which would lead me toward danger, adventure, self-discovery, and possibly even love.

  Chapter 3

  After Lacey and Peter dumped me I wasn’t myself for a while. Instead of being pleasant and stable, I spent my time:

  --Consumed with grief and anger.

  --Fantasizing painful death scenarios for both Lacey and Peter.

  --Not going out (except to work).

  --Not returning phone calls.

  Instead I stayed home, rereading the entire Sweet Valley High novel series and following a strict diet of ramen noodles, gummy bears and Tang (things that reminded of me childhood – thus giving me a false sense of security).

  My parents worried about me. I didn’t see them all that often because they live about 45 minutes north of Duluth, just past Two Harbors, in the bed and breakfast they own and run.

  Two Harbors is this little tourist town right on the North Shore of Lake Superior. It’s a huge summer destination. You could actually blind-fold a New Englander and take him to the North Shore, and once you take the blind-fold off he’d still think he was in Maine. At least that’s what I’ve heard; I’ve never actually been to Maine. But I understand the rocky beaches and crystal blue waves of the North Shore and the Atlantic are almost identical, the only difference is we don’t have lobster. (Well, not the only difference. And I suspect once you did take off the blind-fold, the New Englander would be kinda pissed.)

  The bed and breakfast my parents own is friendly and quaint. Their slogan is “a home away from home”—unoriginal, but true. And it’s not like I had a weird childhood, growing up with strangers always staying with us. My mom made sure we had family dinners, just the four of us, at least once a week. That is a tradition she still likes to maintain.