Things We Didn't Talk About When I Was a Girl Jeannie Vanasco

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WE HAVE TO KEEP MAKING ART

Rebekah calls me when I’m at the Baltimore airport.

When do you leave to see Mark? she asks.

In an hour, I say. I’m meeting up with him tomorrow evening.

That’s this weekend? she says. How are you feeling?

Nervous, I tell her. But mostly because I don’t know what else I can really get out of him. He’s answered most of my questions.

TV screens are showing the latest news story: families seeking asylum in the United States are being separated at the border.

It’s hard to focus on this project, I tell Rebekah, when our country is committing blatant human rights violations.

I understand why you’re feeling that way, she says. But please don’t stop working on this project. We have to keep making art. If we stop, then the other side wins.

I tell her about my friend Tom’s project, the one he’s doing about ISIS.

I probably shouldn’t say ISIS at an airport, I whisper, and then I worry that by whispering, I’m actually drawing even more attention to myself. Oh, and I should get going. It looks like my flight is boarding.

In line for boarding, the man in front of me asks, So what’s bringing you to Ohio?

Work, I say.

He’s pale-skinned, thin, looks fortyish but has a kid’s face—freckles dabbing his small nose and big cheeks. He wears a blue polo shirt tucked into dark jeans with a braided belt.

What’s your work? he asks.

Writing, I tell him.

Maybe I’ll sit next to you on the flight? I’d love to hear more about your writing.

I think, No you wouldn’t. Unfortunately, this airline doesn’t do assigned seating.

Once inside the plane, I search for a middle seat and apologize to the women on either side.

The flight attendant said it’s a full flight, I explain.

Sit, sit, they say—almost in unison.

We retire to our antisocial airplane props: magazine, movie, book, headphones. I open my notebook, tell myself, Write about your feelings. Instead, I write about booking, when I was twenty-three, a one-way ticket, New York to Paris, to declare my love for a man twice my age. He was a screenwriter. I’d met him at a magazine party in New York. But he lived in London, not Paris. My rationale: If I’m already on his side of the Atlantic, I can drop in casually. I explained this to French border control agents suspicious of my one-way ticket. I told them that I wanted to seem less desperate to the man. I told them that I’d be staying in Paris with another man, a French citizen. The man I was traveling for, I told them, he was an American screenwriter working in London. He divided his time between there and New York.

What’s his name? the agents wanted to know.

Which one? I asked.

The French one.

Cyril, I said.

Cyril what? they asked.

Cyril taught literature at a university in Paris, or maybe right outside Paris. He belonged to something called the Jockey Club (Proust mentions it, he’d elaborated, in À La Recherche du Temps Perdu). He published political satire under a pseudonym in obscure French literary magazines. I knew that much. But Cyril’s last name escaped me. Or maybe he never mentioned it. We’d met six months prior, in a Manhattan bookstore. I’d been reading Apollinaire when he introduced himself. We then spent the weekend together, meandering through the city and discussing books, before he returned to Paris. Come with me, he’d said, but I was already infatuated with the screenwriter (who seemed completely unaware of my feelings, though we emailed almost every day). In the months since then, Cyril and I had emailed. His email address translated to count of the dispossessed, or something like that, in Basque or another dying language. But I didn’t learn that until months after corresponding with him. By then I felt too embarrassed to ask him his last name; it seemed like something I should know.

You don’t know his last name? one agent asked.

No one travels like this, the other agent said.

So I told them, You’re just jealous because I’m twenty-three and unencumbered.

And that’s when they left me alone in a small room.

I genuinely didn’t see the problem. I wasn’t transporting cocaine or firearms. And who wouldn’t book a transatlantic flight that cost less than $300?

When the agents returned, they searched my bags—heavy with poetry books—and laughed while reading my journals.

What’s so funny? I asked.

They laughed harder.

I knew they were judging my sappy entries about the screenwriter. Yet things could have been worse. I deserved worse. But I was a young, well-dressed white American woman. My only repercussions? The agents stamped my passport with a travel deadline. I had one month in France, which was fine by me. It gave structure to my otherwise disorganized trip.

And why am I thinking about that trip? I’m not exactly sure. It was such a stupid, probably manic thing to do: flying across the ocean to stay in Paris with somebody whose last name I didn’t know—only because I wanted to drop into London to declare my love to some other acquaintance. And I did declare my love to the screenwriter. Over drinks at a London pub, I confided that I’d actually made the trip to tell him my feelings. And he told me he had a girlfriend. But then he invited me back to the house he shared with her, said she wouldn’t be home for a few hours, and I had sex with him there. I never thought I would do something like that, but I did. And for the next two years, whenever he visited New York, I’d sleep with him.

The plane lands, and I take a cab to the hotel. I am so glad I followed Chris’s advice. The hotel has a bar, a nice restaurant, a gym, a pool. I sit by the big window in my room, open my notebook, and think about my first paying job: motel maid. My first week there, a man invited me into his room. I was thirteen years old. He must have been at least fifty, though at thirteen it’s hard to guess adults’ general ages. I told him I had to work, and he told me he wouldn’t tell. I slipped into the nearest room and locked the door. He knocked, said, I won’t tell. I called the main desk, said that the man in whatever room he was in needed assistance. Strange that I’m only now remembering this. Or: not at all strange.

I’m reconstructing scenes from the past—when I should be reflecting on my feelings about now.

I write I feel and then draw a blank—as in, a line for a blank. I do this down the page.

I feel _____________________________

I find the hotel bar.

The bartender asks me what I’ll have, and I tell him a cocktail probably. But I need a moment.

Do you want something sweet or dry?

I like vodka-based cocktails, I say. I just need a minute to decide.

I’m going to make you a pretty in pink, he says and disappears before I can object.

I open my notebook, tell myself, Reflect on the rape. I write: I know how to order a drink.

Sports games play on the two absurdly large flat-screen TVs above the bar—except the third screen shows MSNBC. The journalists are covering the child migrants. I’m reading the subtitles—These are prisons. We’re jailing babies—when the channel suddenly changes to sports.

Hey, the other bartender says. I was watching that.

The remote is in my bartender’s hand. My bartender disgusts me, or I am transferring my disgust for the current administration to my bartender.

He returns with some magenta-looking liquid, and I stupidly thank him. I try it, and he doesn’t even ask if I like it. I don’t. I should tell him. But I don’t.

I write: I didn’t want pretty in pink, and now I’m going to pay twelve dollars for this disgusting cocktail.

The man next to me asks what I’m working on.

Work, I say.

He looks at me, expecting more.

I’m under a deadline, I say.

I get it, he says. You don’t want to talk to me.

It’s a tight deadline, I explain.

It must be. You’d be crazy to do work at a bar.

I smile a closed-lips smile. Why do I smile?

You from the area? he asks.

Baltimore, I tell him.

What brings you here then?

I’m here to interview the guy who raped me fourteen years ago. But I don’t say that.

Work, I answer.

I ask the bartender for the check, and he looks at my glass.

Did you not like the cocktail?

No, I tell him. It’s too sweet.

He doesn’t charge me for it, and I thank him. Why thank him for not charging me for what I did not order? Yet I do, twice: Really, thank you.

Back in my hotel room, I review my manuscript, consider the holes. I really need to reflect on how the rape altered my perception of myself.

I doubt it did. If anything, it cemented my sense of self. I already knew I cared too much about a man’s comfort. About a man’s approval. How many times did I tell men, in my twenties, after they rolled over in bed, That was amazing—a complete lie.

And that screenwriter, I’m now remembering, he refused to use condoms, and so after we’d have sex, he’d give me cash for the morning-after pill. And I genuinely considered him sweet and responsible. He always gave me the exact amount.

That way you don’t feel like a prostitute, he said.

This is uncomfortable. I need to move around. Endorphins will help me think.

I change into shorts, sneakers, and a T-shirt. Only one other guest is at the hotel gym. I’m happy the guest is a woman, because now I can experiment with these weight machines without feeling self-conscious. I hate reading the directions when men are nearby. A broad-shouldered man almost always intervenes, explaining how the machine works, what to do, what muscles the machine will work, and so on. And the man usually tells me, Start small. But today, with no men around, I confidently move from machine to machine. Turns out they are fairly self-explanatory.

I shower, put on pajamas, get ready for bed, open my notebook.

I feel _____________________________

Mark signed his initial email Your friend—probably because I’d led him to believe that we were becoming friends again.

I close my notebook and play a history podcast. The hosts are talking about upside-down crucifixion. I turn off the lights.

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