Some of the best explorations into mental illness, in my humble opinion, are those that approach the topic with a sense of humor. In this sense, “Timeline of Events in Lieu of a Lobotomy” is a masterclass in the delicate balance between the light and the dark. On the surface we have a simple story: a woman, Lydia, and her dating life. Beneath the surface, however, the novel is a rich, fun, complex depiction of the inner voices that can dominate our thinking. Lydia’s inner voices (her “women”) are distinct, based on people from her past, and these dives into her backstory are integrated seamlessly into the narrative in a way that doesn’t slow down the read, but enhances. Lydia’s take on modern society is witty, a little biting, and over all delightful. The dialogue is utterly believable, both between characters as well as between our inner voices. I would gladly stay with Lydia and her inner voices for many, many pages, which is a winning sign of a fantastic novel to come. — Guest Judge Nick Fuller Googins
My women camped out in my frontal lobe. But it could have been my hippocampus. I’d never really given it much thought because they were always there, always chattering: Ruth, Jane, Miss Spanelli. Ever-present in my life since sixteen. I had a feeling a new woman was coming. The chatter had been a quiet hum that day. I’d been good, done as they’d asked for the past week. Read my books before bed. Flipped through news outlets judiciously so I’d know how to answer when someone inevitably asked about the Speaker of the House and macroeconomic forces. Signed up for French lessons again. Listened to an album Miss Spanelli deemed a “necessary education.” Jane even told me I looked pretty when I got dressed and walked to the date. I wore the lipstick she said gave me a “hot little pout.”
“I have a good feeling about this one,” she said. But she also had a good feeling about the last one, and he said going down on me gave him pink eye.
Straightening my shoulders, I pleaded with my council to stay quiet as I pushed open the door. It was March 16th; New York’s spring was still a tease. The darkly lit bar was empty, except for one person. He looked down at the table, wearing a dark blue shirt with tufts of hair peeking out. Sensual for a Wednesday. His hands lay face down on the table as he looked out the window, mouth slack. I liked finding him at this moment, entirely unaware of me.
I exhaled and walked toward him. “Gavin” was the name attached to his dating app profile (the meat market, my women called it). He’d messaged me only a few hours before, asking if he could take me to drinks. I liked his straightforwardness and agreed.
Gavin hugged me tightly for a stranger. He smelled faintly of Tide detergent, like a little boy whose mother still did his laundry. His profile mentioned he was a writer, and there was enough of an age gap between us that 9/11 came up a few times. He smiled and said I looked nice. I dutifully committed his birthday to memory and smiled back.
We talked about the origins of our names. His, his mother’s father. Mine, my mother’s mother. Gavin started laughing when I told him about the man on the street who walked up to me, said he hated me because I was “Fucking. Ugly,” each word punctuated with a withered pointer finger, which then was followed by an apology because he’d just broken up with his ex who was Polish and was I Polish because I looked exactly like her and could he get my number—all in front of a crowded cafe at 9am. I’d practiced this bit with my women, figuring out how to land each beat.
He told me he practiced Deism, and I didn’t follow but lied and said I understood. He told me about his dad’s alcoholism and how he’d passed away some years ago. I told him about my mother and her AA membership. For weeks, she’d come home complaining about the sweets-laden tables. “I need to quit drinking, not start being a diabetic,” she said. She gained thirty pounds anyway. She stored hard candies in her cheeks, letting the glucose syrups and Red 40 seep into her gums. Whenever she yelled at me, her stained tongue flapped out, and I couldn’t help but laugh. Then she’d scream louder.
“Children of alcoholics,” Gavin said, toasting his glass to mine. “You don’t get it unless you do.” As he tried to get the bartender’s attention for more drinks, I studied his face. His eyes were unquestionably green. No back and forth at the DMV for him.
My women watched him, curious.
“He’s cute!” Jane exclaimed. “I wonder what his writing is like.”
“Every man in Brooklyn looks like David Koresh,” Miss Spanelli said through a mouthful of popcorn, the sound thundering in my gums. “More people should talk about that.” I could feel her gesture as she made this statement. She made the same movement in my high school art classes to demonstrate how to hold paintbrushes with care and consideration.
Two hours later, Gavin and I had a bad drunken kiss where we bumped our teeth quite badly. He kept leaning further into the kiss, our mouth bones clacking together. It was agonizing. I pulled away for a moment, thinking he also understood what was happening, that he was as embarrassed as I was. Those big green eyes gave away nothing.
Despite what Jane said, I couldn’t figure out if I was attracted to him. He walked like a school shooter beside me, his trench coat caped around him, strutting like he didn’t know how to move with his newfound adult height or mass. His overgrown haircut only added to the Columbine effect. I gave him my number, though, hopeful, maybe even a little surprised by how much I hoped he’d call. He leaned in to kiss me again on the corner, and I demurred.
After we parted ways, my women started giggling. “Someone has a crush!” Ruth and Miss Spanelli chimed. “Give him hell,” they shouted through hiccupped cackles. “You always do.” I could feel Jane’s weak smile. It hummed near my temples, like holding my head against the comforting rumble of the washer-dryer unit as a child.
“Don’t listen to them,” Jane said in her soft lilt. “He’d be lucky to be with you.” Sweet Jane. When we knew each other in college, people always called her an angel without an ounce of irony in their voices.
* * *
“Do you have a screwdriver?” Gavin texted me a few days later. Walking the forty minutes to his place, I smoothed my skirt and tried on different smiles. My reflection in the ground-floor windows looked garbled. Gavin walked out wearing swim trunks and a faded T-shirt with holes along the collar.
“You’re really saving me,” Gavin said and kissed my cheek. “I don’t know anyone else who lives this close.” The intimacy surprised me, like the hug. “I just moved in. Half of my shit is still in boxes. The other half is useless.”
“What’s the screwdriver for?”
“I’m taking some doors off their hinges. I want the space to flow. Do you want to come in? I could get your opinion.”
I peered behind him at the apartment’s long, dark hallway. Taking my hand, he gently tugged me forward.
“Why do you hold hands like a corpse?” Ruth said. “You’re being off-putting.”
“She doesn’t know him, Ruth. Jesus,” Jane rebuffed. “She doesn’t have to do anything.” She’d been pretty quiet the past few days. I could feel her stiffness as she moved around on her throne. When the two of them first took up residence, Miss Spanelli and Ruth had bean bags that sounded like ants were crawling in my ears for months. Eventually, I rectified the seating arrangements. At first, I thought barstools were the answer, but Ruth kept rocking back and forth impatiently. Then it was Adirondack chairs, followed by a subway bench seat after Jane joined to make three. They played Jello, letting their bodies go limp and screaming “Whoa!” and “Sharp left turn!” as they crashed into each other. Some days, it made me smile to myself. I finally landed on marble thrones. It felt fitting. The rest of the throne room was unremarkable. Everything was intangible to me, like a mist, other than the flowers someone brought in each week, like a corporate office.
My hand clamped onto Gavin’s per Ruth’s request. She still terrified me. As we walked through the hallway, which seemed far longer than it needed to be, I thought about how Ruth and I met. I started dating a contentious boy in my freshman year of college. He’d recently gotten out of a prolonged fling with a sophomore—Ruth—who also happened to take his virginity. In the planetarium of all places. Against the rings of Saturn. Or so people loved to whisper when he and Ruth showed up at parties, their pinkies intertwined. Ruth loved that rumor. They were beautiful together: tall, intelligent, and complementary in their interests. She was into French, the Bolsheviks, Annie Ernaux, and the political shortcomings of the US government in the Middle East. He preferred astrophysics, classical trumpet, robotics, fine art.
Oliver and I had an art history class together. He was also British and one of three straight men in the class, so every girl leaned in as he answered the professor’s questions. He loved Klimt. He spoke at length about The Dancer during our lesson on Symbolists. He monologued about its color, the woman’s coquettish look, the subject’s tragic end after heartbreak. We made eye contact throughout the ninety-minute period. As people packed for their next class, he held eye contact with me just a beat too long, then smiled and pushed his glasses up. I was always a blusher, and my face turned pink immediately. Oliver glanced toward the door, and his smile dropped. Ruth was waiting in the hall, like she often did, with a stack of books held at her hip. I tried to see what she was reading, the style of pen she used, how she pulled her blonde hair into a simple knot to communicate the effort she was putting toward studying. She stared at Oliver, then gestured her head to signal their immediate departure. Ruth turned her gaze toward me. She half-smiled, glancing over my clothes, my eighteen-year-old face beaming with earnestness, my nails chipped from anxiously picking off the polish. Then she walked off, and Oliver followed.
Back in my dorm room, I asked my roommate if she knew anything about Ruth. Our college was small, and most of the students were nosy. What else were students going to do, tucked away in the woods of Vermont, than walk the grounds for hours playing Thoreau, go to niche clubs, and viciously gossip?
“I think she’s from Georgia. No, like the state. You can’t really hear it in her voice, though. I don’t think she wants people to know.” My roommate was also obsessed with Ruth, whose collegiate royalty partly stemmed from her parents. They were both, allegedly, CIA agents. Ruth was meant to follow in their footsteps, but whenever anyone asked, she brushed it off.
“She’s a genius, obviously,” my roommate continued. “She interned with the Department of Defense last summer. She’s taking a stop year at some point to write a novel. Thirty-six on her ACT. No, I’m not kidding. Look at the newspaper article she was interviewed in. But I’ve heard that she’s struggling hard in Chinese 201 right now. She was asking around for a tutor the other day.”
Weeks later, I found myself at an off-campus house party. Drinking had started early. In the living room, clusters of students danced, some standing on the couch, some shuffled into dark corners. Oliver and Ruth were at the center of the mass, oblivious to the other partygoers. People had started saying they were on the rocks, so their appearance that night felt intriguing.
Oliver held Ruth’s hips, leaning to whisper something in her ear. Laughing, she pulled her hair into a loose ponytail as sweat trailed down her sternum, dampening her collar. Her hands tilted back to find his temples like she was playing the harp. He moved her dress up an inch, his hands gripping the thin fabric unabashedly. I wondered what their sex was like. I wondered if she relinquished control in those moments, letting Oliver push and pull and contort her body just like he wanted. My straw screamed at the end of my drink, one foot dangling from the kitchen barstool. I accidentally kicked over a plant perched beside me. Ruth stopped swaying and turned toward the noise. I ducked my head in embarrassment.
She collapsed the distance between us in a few strides and loomed over me. A drop of her sweat landed on my shoulder. I didn’t move to wipe it away and instead shook the ice around in the empty cup, eyes to the ground. “Stop staring at my boyfriend.”
I looked up to see if she was serious. Her face was twisted in anger, and I cackled, the sound wet and stupid with vodka. She stepped closer.
“Stop staring at him, you fucking freak.”
“I’m not staring,” I said, slurring a bit. “I’m looking.” My drunkenness came crashing down on my head as I sized her up. She was tall, lanky. Probably ran cross-country for her high school, flouncing around in tiny shorts, bows in her hair to match. Graceful, athletic, dedicated—right in all the ways my younger self had been wrong. The dancing and sweat had smeared her eye makeup, the black shadows making her eyes more pronounced. Up close, her eyes were bluer than I thought. Her mouth had gone red and chapped from biting her lips. She looked brazen as she yanked a loose strand behind her ear. Ruth glanced back at Oliver, who was now deep in conversation with another partygoer, then returned her attention to me.
“In what world?” she sneered, her voice low enough so only I could hear.
I didn’t notice her full drink until the cup moved from her hip toward me in one sweeping arc, its contents splashing into my face in a muddle of alcohol and soda and juice. Red rivulets ran down from my head into my open mouth, down my ears, onto my shoulders, and soaked into my shirt. Ruth smirked and shook the cup over my head. She stood there, I think, waiting for me to cry. Hoping, really. You would think the whole party would stop and make a scene, but no, only the two girls beside me gasped in a hushed, self-conscious way.
It was only in the next moments after I clocked Ruth in the nose that the crowd roared.
I’d never punched anyone before. I thought about it a lot, the desire pacing through my head frantically: what it would sound like when my knuckles hit their skin, seeing how strong I actually was in moments beyond my control, the push of their body away from my force. I liked thinking of myself untethered, unbridled. I imagined how good it would feel to let something out so that people could feel it.
Ruth’s head snapped to the side, and she cried out. It wasn’t a slap or a push but true close-fisted violence, and everyone heard the brutal connection between me and her. Someone killed the music. Everyone stopped, eyes ping-ponging between me and Ruth, taking in the blood dripping through her hands as she cupped her face in pain.
“I’m going to kill you!” Ruth’s screech broke the silence. She lunged toward me, red smeared around her face, and I couldn’t help but laugh at our twinned appearances. Her hands sank into the sides of my head, nails piercing the soft skin behind my ears. She gripped and yanked, strands of hair tearing from my skull. Someone in the room whooped, “Girl fight!” and we were enveloped by tens of college kids bellowing and lowing. Latched onto my hair, Ruth swung my body from side to side until she threw me off balance, and I skidded to the floor. The pain shot down from my tailbone into the soles of my feet. Ruth saw her opening and pinned me with her knees. I felt oddly proud. She reeled back. I wanted to see her face when she finally made contact. I wanted to see the pleasure my pain was offering her. I wanted to know how her mouth would turn from snarl to glee, giving me what I asked for. But instead, I winced my eyes shut like a coward.
She slapped me so hard it felt like betrayal. Left-handed—even more unexpected. The tears streaming down my cheeks gave the slap a hateful sound. Then she stopped; the tension left her body, her knees sliding to my sides. I watched her chest heave as her breathing slowly returned to normal. Our eyes met, and something like understanding passed between us. I felt the dampness of her on top of me, how much this had taken out of her. My heart pounded as the heat from our bodies mounted. A foreign warmth flooded my system. She smelled like sweat and gardenias and other people’s cheap beer. “Hit her again!” someone called insolently.
Oliver finally ran over and helped Ruth to her feet, then pulled me up too. She protested at this, but Oliver’s look chastened her. He stripped off his shirt and held it to her nose, ushering her to an empty bedroom and away from everyone’s stares. I let myself be guided outside by my roommate, who suddenly appeared, joint in hand, saying something like, “What the fuck? What the fuck, Lydia!” She grabbed paper towels on the way out and started patting me down on the porch. I sat on the wooden deck, trying to answer her questions. No, I didn’t start the fight. It just happened. Yes, I was fine, mostly. The screen door swung open and shut as people came out to stare, asking my roommate what my problem was. The door clattered again, and I began to protest, “Leave me alone!” but it was Oliver. He held up his hands in surrender. He kneeled and put his hand on my shoulder.
“You okay?”
I nodded but couldn’t look at him.
“I didn’t mean to hurt her. I’m really drunk.” I murmured, punching up my pitifulness.
“I know. Someone told me she threw a drink at you. That’s fucked.”
I shrugged.
“Is her face all right?”
“Her nose stopped bleeding, so I don’t think it’s broken. I’m going to take her to the clinic on campus, but I wanted to make sure you were okay before we left.”
He squeezed my shoulder and went inside to get more towels for my wet shirt. A few days after the fight, he texted me to say that he’d gotten my number from someone in our art class and wanted to check on me. And kept texting me for a week straight. He explained that he and Ruth had decided to break up. “She’s too high-strung,” he explained. “And I really can’t get over that she threw a drink at you.” We spent a semester together, dating casually and avoiding Ruth’s glare in the library, the dining hall, the common rooms.
* * *
“I should’ve kicked your ass,” Ruth called from her throne, halting my nostalgia.
Gavin and I reached his door, and he turned to smile sheepishly.
“It’s a wreck, I’m warning you now. You can sit on the couch. I’ll be done in a sec. Maybe we can go on a walk or something after.” I sat obediently and took in the boxes that grazed the ceiling, the scissors on the counter, the tape stuck to the fridge.
“This is weird,” Jane piped up. “Why didn’t he just call one of his friends for this?”
“This is the most entertaining she’s been in weeks,” Ruth retorted. “Don’t fuck this up.”
I let my women bicker over Gavin as I took in the rest of the apartment. My eyes caught on a scrap of paper on the fridge. A poem in neat handwriting. A heart at the bottom.
Gavin finished with the last screw and placed the door against an empty wall.
“What do you think?” The apartment looked the same. Small and shitty. He didn’t wait for me to answer before he sat beside me.
“My ex and I ended things a few months ago, so I had to find a new place to live,” he explained. “She still lives in our old place. Got to keep the TV too. It always works out that way.”
“Oh. I’m sorry about that.”
“Yeah, but it’s cool. We’re still friends. It was amicable, for the most part.”
“How long were you together?”
“Three years. We met in grad school. Camille was on the poetry track.”
“Oh no,” my women all moaned in unison.
I immediately imagined her. Small ears. Swedish father.
“It’s for the best,” Gavin paused and said earnestly, “Has anyone ever told you you look like Susan Sarandon?”
I guffawed, and he leaned in closer.
“No, really. It’s something about your mouth.” This felt like a well-worn move, but I decided to let it be. Our second kiss went better than our first. He picked up the right rhythms after a few minutes.
Gavin and I unexpectedly spent twelve hours together, walking through the park, telling stories, punching ourselves up. As the day darkened, we got Thai food, and I told him how my parents met on a blind date when they were fifteen. He held my hands across the table, listening intently.
“This is all starting to make a lot of sense,” Gavin said.
“What is?”
“You.”
My women perked up at this. Despite the council’s initial concerns, they seemed satisfied with Gavin on a surface level and, more than that, with how I acted around him. I was charming. I was intelligent. I was funny. I was like them.
Gavin asked me to sleep over, but I declined.
“Make him wait,” Miss Spanelli said. “Men are absolute imbeciles until proven otherwise.”
* * *
At work that week, I sequestered myself in a conference room for three hours. I searched Gavin’s first and last name to glean what I could, seeking what I could become for him. But he was a ghost. I managed to find his best friend’s Twitter and a photo of Gavin five years prior, but not much else.
“What about Camille?” Miss Spanelli pushed.
“Camille, Camille, Camille,” the others whispered like a spell.
I found her online quickly after guessing her graduate program, but most of her accounts were private. She had a few poems published. They didn’t make sense to me in a beautiful way. None of the pages included an author’s photo. Her running tracker hadn’t been updated in three years. She followed The Drift, as I correctly guessed, but I couldn’t cross-reference much else. Registered Democrat. Mother from Louisiana, but a 617 area code. (“Northeastern dad?” Jane wondered. “Or she moved after college,” Ruth replied.) Worked at a nonprofit.
Then I found her secondhand clothing website, a gem. I loved how, when modeling their clothes, the sellers from these websites contorted themselves to look like a Venus de Milo statue in the 1280 by 1280 pixel frames, Camille included. Boat-neck shirts, jean shorts, long cotton dresses in sky blues and yellows. I thought about the girls I saw on the street who looked like her. I would follow their flounces, my head turning to capture some of their ease like a flower following the sun. Camille’s face was cropped from each photo. I could only see the ends of blonde hair, the hollows of her collarbones. I imagined her pretty.
Based on her reported measurements, Camille was smaller than I was. I felt an anger stir deep in the back of my throat. “Fuck you,” I whispered. I felt guilty moments later. I thought back to the summer spent with Jane when I’d secretly try on her clothes when she left the apartment, everything just small enough to cause me immense anguish.
“Oh, honey, I wish you had told me,” Jane murmured.
“Stop defending her,” Ruth cut in. “That was absolutely bizarre.”
I kept scrolling until I found it: a photo of an item left unsold for three years—a now-unfashionable skirt in a gaudy pattern. Up from the skirt, Camille’s frame was hinged at the waist, arm akimbo at her side. No nail polish, but well-groomed cuticles. Her shoulders pushed forward slightly, like she wanted the whole photo-taking experience to be over already. And then, there she was: an oval-shaped face with a delicate mouth and an unremarkable nose. Her eyes, though, gave me pause. Framed by long dark lashes, her eyes were big and open—the eyes of innocence, the eyes of a child. Her hair was longer than I expected, hitting just above her belly button. A life-changing chop must’ve happened in the past three years. It looked soft and fragrant, like winding it around my fingers would have left the scent on my hands for hours after.
A loud rap on the conference room door and a jutted thumb propelled me out of my stupor. I wiped my mouth and made my way back to my desk.
* * *
After three weeks of seeing each other, Gavin and I had sex. He showed up at my apartment with flowers, and we ordered Guinness at a dive bar nearby, sitting beside each other rather than across. I told him about the neighborhood book club I’d been inducted into that afternoon, after I asked an older man how he was finding the book propped open on his table.
“I should have more of a connection to the community here,” I said. “I’ve lived here four years, and I only recently could tell you the name of my bodega man.”
That wasn’t true. His name was Mustafa, and we knew each other well. He sometimes sold me cigarettes and toilet paper, but he mostly sold me Honey Buns and sea salt potato chips and plastic-wrapped brownies at 2am that I ate rapidly in the low light of my laptop screen while I watched YouTube videos of ultramarathon runners finding their purpose in life. My women hated every second of it.
“Yeah, I get that,” Gavin nodded. “My ex used to teach literacy courses at the library. I think she really liked it,” He sipped his beer, looking out, letting his arm rest unconvincingly around my shoulders. “She had this incredible ability to command people’s attention.”
“I told you you should’ve started volunteering with the neighborhood mutual aid group months ago!” Ruth cried. “Instead, all you do is wish your life away, tucked into your screen.” I worried my hands under the table, feeling like my feet were slipping underneath me.
Miss Spanelli had spent her weekends teaching refugees to weave their way through their emotional traumas with thick ropes of natural fibers. She displayed their weavings proudly throughout our classroom, gesturing at their colors and patterns to captivate our young minds. Some were intricate, while others were just solid blocks of color. I always wondered what was going on with those who only wove swaths of blue.
During our watercolor unit, she stood behind me in a disheveled smock and instructed me to use a fan brush to capture the pine groves I wanted to paint. Her hand lay atop mine and moved the brush in short, clipped strokes.
“You have talent. You just need to use it,” she said, exasperated.
In the previous unit, I’d failed to capture a skeleton torso in charcoal pencil with enough anatomical accuracy for her liking.
“This is a female skeleton. The pelvis should be broader, child-bearing, sensual,” she wrote in my feedback letters.
Miss Spanelli was a young teacher—pretty enough that boys made comments about her, cool enough that girls clamored to know about her life outside school. My Algebra crush doodled her name in the margins of his notebook paper. She set up a record player in the classroom, and we took turns playing music on Fridays. When my turn came, I chose a Bikini Kill record, hoping she’d be impressed. I glanced back at her as I placed the needle on the vinyl, and Kathleen Hanna began to howl. Miss Spanelli looked at me, standing beside the record player, and frowned.
“Fuck, I love this song,” Gavin said, knocking into my now-adult shoulder as he stood to dance. “Get up. Up! Show me your moves, kid,” Gavin exclaimed, reaching around my waist.
My arms made awkward right angles as my pelvis tried to move to the beat.
“More passion,” Miss Spanelli roared. I could feel her standing up and miming the moves alongside me. I gyrated harder.
“You look so good,” Gavin breathed into my ear. A wave of attraction toward him bloomed. After a few more songs, he collapsed back in the booth.
“We should go,” he said, his hands skating along the hem of my dress. I nodded, face swept up in a blush. In Gavin’s apartment, clothes came off quickly. His mouth on mine, Ruth’s gripes dulled to a whisper. Jane called out, “Use protection!” and Miss Spanelli agreed that I’d probably waited long enough.
“But it could’ve been a month if you want my honest opinion,” she said.
When I spoke to other people about sex, I seemed to have had a lot. My gynecologist. My more unprofessional colleagues. My sexual partners. Forty-ish partners last time I counted. For me, it wasn’t about the act itself. I took no pleasure in the in, the out, the moans, the wetness. I just liked the control. The men I had sex with were not allowed to pleasure me. “It’s just easier if I do it,” I explained. I didn’t want their half-assed attempts at gender equality, the spit-slick ego posing as altruism. Their orgasms, erupting and engulfing their bodies as I watched from above, meant I was a catalyst. Not the giver, the taker. “Tell me no one does it like this,” I made them say. “Tell me you’ll remember this forever,” I whispered as their eyes rolled back, and they entered a place I knew I could only make them go. My women turned the lights out when I had sex. Surprising, I know. The fifteen, twenty minutes it lasted, I was alone.
Gavin gave more input than usual and asked that I lie on my stomach while we grasped hands. He would come at me from above.
“I don’t usually—” I started to say.
“Please,” he protested. “This sounds weird, but it only really feels good like this. It’s something about the intimacy of it.” He looked so earnest. Begrudgingly, I got into position.
“Talk, keep talking to me. Yes, it does feel good, doesn’t it?” He grunted. I tried not to think about how little of my face was visible. When I peered over my shoulder, his eyes were shut in deep concentration. This was the sex he had with everyone because it was the kind of sex he had with Camille, I realized. I could picture it. Hair thrown over her shoulder, small, pliant, perfect, whimpering softly, her heat blurring the boundary between their bodies. Back arched like a bow.
“Oh God!” Gavin cried, collapsing on top of me. Heavy breathing filled my ears. Wow, he kept saying over and over. Sweat and cum pooled on my lower back.
“That was so great,” I said, smiling back at him. “I’m glad we did that.” I heard Ruth make a sound of disgust.
“Where the fuck is a towel?” Ruth demanded. “Why don’t you just go on birth control like everyone else? God, why is there so much?”
“Was it good?” Jane offered. “I hope you told him what you actually liked.”
Gavin got up to get water but returned without a towel. I covertly wiped my body on a T-shirt I found near the floor. He leaned down to kiss my forehead.
“How nice,” he hummed. He sat down beside me and traced a finger on my shoulder.
“This isn’t the time for pleasantries,” Miss Spanelli interjected. “Ask him. Ask him about her. He’s vulnerable.”
“Hey, can I ask you something?” I said.
“Sure,” he replied, pulling out a pack of cigarettes from his bedside table. “I’m going to smoke, if that’s cool.” Propping the window open, he turned back to me.
“With Camille, you never really explained why you broke up.”
He laughed and flicked ash. “It’s pretty straightforward. I wasn’t expecting it, per se, but it made sense. Cam realized she was also into girls. And she wanted to explore that. Outside of our relationship.”
“Sweetheart, you’re fucked. He’ll never be over that girl,” Jane said.
“I’m sorry,” I replied.
He shrugged. “Cam was the best she could be about it. It’s hard, though, knowing it’s not something you did or could’ve done. I can’t be angry at her, so the anger just festers.”
“Did you love her?” I pushed.
“She might’ve been the love of my life,” he said, ashing again.
My head felt like it split open, and crows flew out. The pain wasn’t from my feelings for Gavin—I didn’t love him—but that knowing I’d never heard someone speak about me this way. Like how they spoke about Ruth. Or Miss Spanelli. Or Jane. A certain type of loveliness. They glowed with people’s love, their respect. The right kind of woman. The right kind.
Gavin stretched his arms and yawned. He didn’t say anything about my sleeping over, just made himself look pathetically tired. I wished him a good night and hurried outside. The walk home, Ruth was on a tirade.
“See, Lydia. You’re no one’s first choice. After this ends, Gavin will lump you in with every other girl who’s failed to make an impression on him. You’re just a cheap imitation,” she said. “It’s tragic that you will go through life incapable of being yourself, not for any good reason like religious persecution or political oppression, but because your base self is so fucking intolerable that it’s practically a survival mechanism to be someone else.”
The lampposts lining the sidewalk started to blur and smear. Their voices started to drown out the cars, the foot traffic.
Miss Spanelli joined in, “Perfection is attainable. It takes diligence and practice, but what is worth more than creating the ideal? How are your French lessons? Did you listen to that Hailu Mergia album I suggested? If you aren’t putting forth the effort each and every day, then this is worthless.”
I broke into a sprint. Pumping my arms behind me, I pushed until I could hear my heartbeat roaring in my ears.
“Is it embarrassing, Lydia, to try so hard and never be enough? I love watching people get bored with you.” Ruth shrieked.
“Ruth—” Jane chastised.
“That’s why we’re all here, right? Because we’re all what you can’t be? Gavin knows it, too.” My apartment came into view as I pushed my fingers into my temples. Jabbing in the code of the door, I launched myself up the stairs, turned the lock, threw loose change in the blender and turned it on high to drown out Ruth. I flipped open my laptop while the violent metal screamed in the background.
I navigated back to Camille’s vintage store online and stared into her eyes. I searched her full name again. I wanted to see her move through the world. I scoured the internet to find a video of her graduation ceremony. Her last name was in the middle of the alphabet, making it hard to guess when she might walk. Thirty minutes went by. Nothing. I tried fast-forwarding but missed too much. I started back at the beginning and waited. One hour and thirty-three minutes into the video, her name was called. She walked on stage wearing sunglasses and a white lace dress, her hair beaming in the sun. When she shook the dean’s hand, she looked ecstatic.
I went back to the photo of her face. I touched the screen, following the curve of her jaw with my finger, outlining the shape of her lips. I scrolled furiously. The unsold skirt was still there. Adding it to my cart, I entered my credit card information and clicked purchase.
“Oh, fuck,” I said. I turned off the blender and returned to the screen. A confirmation message arrived in my inbox moments later.
“You just made this so much worse,” Jane sighed.
Another email pinged my inbox. “Send your seller a thank-you message,” it read. The cursor blinked at me, taunting. “Hi Camille,” I typed. And then everything came pouring out. My mother’s addiction, and how in therapy, they always told me I could never be perfect, no matter how hard I tried. Perfect wouldn’t get my mother’s attention. Perfect wasn’t real. But it was, I swore up and down, if you tried hard enough. I could try hard enough. How I tried to apologize to Jane after our kiss. The letter she sent that I stowed in my underwear drawer, all these years later, covered in her lipstick marks, telling me she liked me too. Her shirt I stole and slept in when I felt like nothing. When I cried to Oliver about my drinking, that I’d been the one to lose it on Ruth. How I asked him, over and over again, all the things he’d liked about her, memorizing them like a prayer. Her favorite books. Her favorite movies. Miss Spanelli’s secret smoking habit, the American Spirits I found in the top drawer of her school desk. How I found her years later on Facebook and drunkenly messaged her. “I think you’re beautiful,” it said. “I’ve always thought you’re so beautiful.” My women had cringed at this, yet another desperate attempt. How I ran down to the bodega afterward. Honey bun. Bakery brownie. Dumplings. Pad Thai. Plantain chips. Camille, I’d slapped myself so hard. Again. Again. Again. The bodega man smiled and said, “I hope you’re having a good day.” I’d punched the wall. Again. Again. Again. Lying on my bed, gazing up at the ceiling, I’d hoped I’d hear from her. How my women came to be, one by one, because it seemed like they belonged there. Like I willed it. Like I needed them after we met. Men are so easy, I typed. But women, they are so perfectly terrifying.
I stared at the wall of text. “Thank you.” I signed the message and pressed send.
Cecilia Beard is a writer based in Brooklyn, but her heart belongs to North Carolina. She often writes about the moments in relationships that crack you open. Her work has appeared in Off Season, Expat Press, Off Assignment, and Catapult. She’s also pursuing an MFA in Fiction at Brooklyn College.