Ms. Robinson - A work of fiction
She was beautiful by all standards of beauty. Her elegance, grace, kindness, and romantic bliss, and she hated it.
Ms. Robinson sat in her room, on her white duvet, overlooking the New York skyline from her bedroom window. She gazed at the scattered people, moving like a polka-dotted optical illusion. You could be put in a trance, if you thought about how you fit in the mass of shuffling bodies. Ans that was her concern. She didn’t want to get stuck being lost, not in a sense of purpose, work, or love.
This is a story of love, but not love in the over romanticized way a movie scene kiss solves all problems. Love is dangerously addicting, pulling more victims than survivors, and even the survivors leave changed.
Ms. Robinson was changed in a way that made love her pet. To her it was a game of chess, where she thought three steps ahead of her opponent. No one could beat her, no one could love her, and that was how she preferred it.
“It’s just a cyclical cycle,” she explained to her mother for the fifth time that month after she pestered her about living alone. “They never like you, just the idea of what they want you to be, and slowly you get used to it. You get used to their company, their touch, and their face burns into the grey matter of your mind. Their laughter rings in your ears, and they invade your thoughts. I like my thoughts free of any man.”
Her mother never understood Ms. Robinson’s singleness. Her daughter was beautiful. Both men and women would stare as her silhouette floated gracefully down the street; and she heard many a man ask her for permission to court her. Her daughter had beauty that made her envious. Her husband, the only man she had ever loved, loved another woman. A woman with slender legs, a nice smile, beautiful crimson hair, and a laugh as light as a feather, all like her daughter. Her mother was kind, but never the star. She longed for her daughter to use the gift she was never given from God. How she would abuse God for making her ugly, for making beautiful women who tempt men. Stupid men, but men nonetheless who were needed in a woman’s life. She believed a woman would grow cold without the embrace of a man, and spiral into a downwards depression with an empty womb. Love, was her nourishment, no matter how sour she believed the sweet wine would taste—and she lapped up the measly drops her husband flicked her way after a night of engorging chocolates and sweet juice with his lover. In her dreams she is that woman, but when she looks at herself in the morning, before brushing her teeth, she cries.
“Maybe you just aren’t giving them a chance,” she sat closer to her on her bed, “you never know what would happen.” Ms. Robinson scoffed.
It was always like this. The same conversation of irritating beauty. She wants me to give my beauty to some guy just because he wants it? Because my beauty will get a guy? Keep a guy? I don’t need a guy.
“Maybe one day.” He smiles at her mother because it is the polite thing to do.
But she didn’t want one day. She wanted her silhouette flowing through the crowd at the amber hour, with her feet hurting, eyelids heavy with a smile plastered on her face as she shuffled her feet, text books in hand preparing for the rest of her life. She wanted to move through the crowd with a sense of purpose, with no boy on her mind who desired her for some pathetic superficial reason. She knew her worth now, and would be dammed if a boy saw her as just beautiful.
Ms. Robinson was about 15 when she allowed a boy to infiltrate her mind with the waft of emotion that is puppy love. Here was when she learned how dangerous love was. Her stomach bunched into a thousand knots when she saw him, and her mind raced with a thousand things to day, but her cotton mouth wouldn’t allow her to say a word. Her thoughts were devoured with his scent, and how it lingered on everything he brushed up against.
After school, they would sit in a classroom as she studied well past 6 pm. “It’s okay,” he would comfort her when she breathed a little too deep answering a math question that resembled more of broken English, than numbers. He would comfort her when her dreams grew too large to fit in her hands. “You will get to see the world at the skyline, and he part of it one day.” And she would smile, holding his hand, transferring her dreams to his calloused palms for safeguarding until she was strong to take it back.
This pure, gentle, puppy love was lost when adulthood struck midnight. It just ended, because time was cruel like that—as much as time healed, it also took people away. And Ms. Robinson knew that. She sealed her love, and kissed her puppy on the cheek, never breaking the vacuumed seal again. But she couldn’t stand her mother’s incessant whining.
“I’ll go to a party and see if I can find anyone!” she blurted.
***
The party began at around 11pm, with people pouring in like ants to the sweet bucket of jungle juice, laced with 3 bottles of vodka. Latin music was thumping, ping pong balls flying, people screaming, phones out capturing the latest Snap Chat story, bodies glimmering in the neon lights with a layer of sweat that resembled oil. Girls and guys with leis, floral shirts, and shorts all huddled together in the small apartment as they tried not to spill drinks on each other; but it didn’t work. Stacy was in the corner talking to a co-worker, Scott? Jose? It was hard to tell in the dark. Geo was drinking beer in the back because he kept losing at beer pong. Kevin was somewhere. No one ever knew where Kevin went during these parties. “Turn up the music!” someone screamed, as if the fact he had to scream didn’t signal that the music was loud enough already. It was sticky and hot; any fresh air that came in was sucked up by the five people closest to the sliding door that led to the patio. Everything else was recycled air, coconut flavored air.
The door opened for the thirteenth time at around 12 am, because Ms. Robinson kept vigilant, but instead of the hollering that followed suit, this single anomaly stood quiet, back against the wall. I recognized the glasses, and short spiked hair. It was Hunter. What’s up mannnnn? Someone slurred, slinging his arm around Hunter, putting his full weight on him, dragging him down.
A conversation to my left caught my attention. Do ya think she saw? No. No way she did. I don’t know, she seemed pretty upset. Oh man, I messed up; I shouldn’t have kissed him. It’s okay, there’s no way to know forsure. She left dude. She left.
Hunter! My man! Kevin stumbled over to him and planted a kiss on his cheek. Time to party! Hunter withdrew, with furrowed eyes. Party. Yeah. He grabbed a plastic bag—the dancing drunks didn’t move—and started picking up empty red solo cups that laid around. I lost sight of Hunter after a few minutes, he went behind the crowd. Everyone gets erased when they walk into the crowd. Over here! Get in the picture! Grab a shot! Shot! Shot! Shot! I’m done, can we go home? Turn up the music! Where is Stacy? She’s over there. How many more people are coming? The cops are gonna come soon dude, we should bounce.
And so, Ms. Robinson took that over heard advice and left home.
That’s enough! I’ve had it! Is that what people my age do? Ms. Robinson huffed as she shuffled back home, past her room into the bathroom to get ready for the night. It was a whirlwind of inebriated idiots with gyrating bodies who grab the first breathing body to try and find intimacy. She didn’t crave physical touch in the slightest, and slipped into her white duvet trying to understand what happened. The lack of love with intimacy jolted her. But sleep slowly forced her eyelids closed, and for the first time she didn’t dream of work or school, but her puppy love, the boy she swore to the deepest corner of the back of her mind because that innocent love didn’t exist in adulthood.
***
The doorbell rang, and I jumped out of bed with my baggy shirt and messed up hair to quietly tip-toe towards the lock. As I opened the door and your shadowing 5’7 figure with sleep deprived eyes smiled and dragged forward. You could hardly walk and I couldn’t believe the way your mariachi suit draped, sagging like 2 sizes too big over your usually angular physique. You were drenched, violin in hand, shallow breathing—with every step forward you winced. I stopped you three steps in and pried the sutured neck from your hand, setting it on the couch. You dropped your head down, then turned to look at me, emaciated and sullen, as if a cord snapped; with no energy to pull it back up, and all I could do was smile—a pained smile with furrowed brows. The last time I saw you was Friday night, three days ago; work has always been hard, but never this hard.
I held your face with my hand and pulled you into the curve of my neck, transferring your body weight onto me. The room was dark, the night still, as we shuffled slowly through, past the furniture, dodging the corners, almost falling over the chair, down the hallway to the bathroom. I flicked the lights on and you painfully sighed at the warm lights, burrowing your face deeper. It was as if the light was burning your ice-cold skin; but I had to sit you down at the edge of the porcelain tub facing me. “Hey,” I smiled crouching down, looking up at you as one would a little kid. Here you opened your eyes for the first time and smiled back.
I couldn’t leave you—not out of pity, but because you were mine. So, I ran a bath and as the steam filled the tiny room, I quickly unbuttoned the yellow buttons that held your suit together. They progressively came undone easier, and soon enough you were stripped down to your undergarments. As the water rose, I swiveled your legs around, and laid you in the lukewarm water to slowly thaw.
10 minutes went by without a word. Your eyes were closed, and you breathed a little easier for the first time all night. In one hand, I held your head above the water and ran my warm fingers of my other through your hair, down your jaw, and over your chapped lips and you smiled, eyes still closed. It was as if you couldn’t breathe no matter how hard you tried. Shallow, almost undetectable. The full weight of your head rested on my palm, and if I relaxed you would have surely drowned. Tension never once filled the room; I was just happy you were home. The water began to lose its heat, and your skin gained some plasticity so with my arms under yours I pulled you out and I wrapped you in a towel, dressing you linearly in your favorite red T-shirt and fleece bottoms. Ten minutes went by and I carried you to bed. Not a word uttered, just shared breaths that synchronized in harmony. You rested your head on the pillow, and formed the letter C with your body— I sat on the edge, interiorly to your stomach. The room was quiet, cool, and the pitch dark you can see in with acclimated eyes. Your body went limp again, with shallow breaths and I sat there helpless. I ran my fingers through your hair once more, lingering to graze over every strand and traced your hair line while you laid there unmoving. My hand followed down the base of your neck to your exhausted shoulders and instinctively pushed hard to release the tension. A moan choked out followed by a sharp inhale, and I jumped because I believed you were already asleep. You tried to pull away but your weak body acquiesced to my touch and I moved slower; I knew it hurt, but I couldn’t let you sleep like that. “Almost,” I whispered, kissing your cheek, and you relaxed your back to say I trust you. Each time your hardened muscle relaxed I moved down—your arms, to your hands, your back, hip, legs, and feet. With each new area, you retracted out of reflex, took a deep breath, and placed it back. After 10 minutes, it reached the point to where the receptors in my hand numbed.
The comfortable silence broke when the wind whistled for the first time through the crack in the window; as I slipped under the covers on my side, and with my hand on your back I felt you sigh one last time before falling asleep for the first time in three days.
***
Ms. Robinson jolted upright, flinging her hand to her right, grabbing a fist full of blanket. “It was a dream,” she breathed, sucking in air as if she had been the one close to death. “It was a dream.” She turned to her window, the beautiful 6 am sunrise over the skyline brought her back to reality. The amber rejuvenated her body and she smiled, “It was a dream.”