Blood Ties (3 page)

“It’s close to Forest City … Winnebagos, you know, motor homes.”

The blank look was still there, then she said, “Jeesus, what drove you up north?”

I did a long blink, taken off-guard. I’d always been obsessed with Canada, the Maritime Provinces, Nova Scotia in particular. Ever since my junior year in high school, I’d wanted to escape Iowa. It wasn’t a stretch to understand why I wanted to leave but according to my family and friends, moving to a whole other country was a bit extreme.

The truth sounded so corny so I said what I could. I shrugged. “Thought it might be interesting, another country … ocean … trees … ocean ...” I plastered a pleasant smile on my face to hide the truth. The compulsion to come to Nova Scotia had been overwhelming, churning in my gut my junior and senior year. It’d been so strong that I’d considered dropping out of school and leaving. I was out sick half the time. It was a miracle I’d graduated and hadn’t been kicked off the basketball and track team. The coaches schmoozed the principal, all hush-hush. I paid them back with two state championships.

“How about you?”

She feigned a sorrowful sigh. “Sad, sad story. I almost burned down the all-girls private college my parents forced on me.” She shrugged. “I snuck in some boys and a little of this …” She imitated taking a drag from a homemade cigarette then waved her fingers in the air. “… and a little of that and the party got a little out of control.”

My new BF, a pyromaniac. A bit of that ran in my family too. One of my nephews accidently set my sister’s house on fire, four times. The most notable attempt was setting off firecrackers in the bathroom. He wanted to make sure he was close to water, just in case it got out of hand. I have an interesting family.

She shrugged. “I was infamous after that and decided to get out of town, escape the bourgeois elite. St. Germaine sounded as good as any. They have a great little graphic design department here.” She let out a dreamy sigh. “My goal is to live the life of a Bohemian in questionable art communities.”

I couldn’t see it. She looked like an ad for suburbian-chic with an urban, back-alley twist. I guess everyone could have their little fantasies. Me, I was trying to dump mine and fit in with everyone else. Nobody I knew lived in another world while they slept, but again, who would admit it.

I pulled out a box and handed it to her. She wrapped her arms around it and balanced it on her stomach. The box was big enough that it hid her face. I grabbed the garbage bags and hoisted them over my shoulders and kicked the door shut. We took off towards the apartment building.

She walked in short bursts, doing her best to keep up with my long strides. Her muffled voice came from behind me. “Boyfriends … I bet you’ve got a slew of them.”

I winced. Back home I hadn’t been into dating but had a lot of practice in maneuvering around them to the chagrin of my friends and family. It was a force of genetics that once you hit the age of fourteen, the Iowa frenzied mating dance began, not ending until there was a pack of little ones clamoring at your feet. The earlier you married, the earlier the parents could retire, the next generation bred to take over the farm. I don’t have anything against the concept of marriage, or mating for that matter. It’s just that I’ll never get married – ever. The mere thought of it makes me want to scream and run to the hills. My family calls it “Liz’s little phobia.” I always refused to justify or explain it. Hell, I didn’t even know why I’d rather slit my wrists than hear the Wedding March.

I shrugged. “Just taking a break. Yourself?”

“I’m free and clear. Cleaned out my closet when I left Chicago.” She struggled to get the box through the door without dropping it. A student propped it open and she stumbled through. I dropped my bags and grabbed it from her before it fell out of her hands.

“I’ll show you off when we’re done,” she wheezed.

I gave her a quelling look.

She grabbed the ties on the garbage bags with her fists and began to drag them up the stairs behind her. “Okay, maybe not. I’ve got your back.”

Good to know.

***

“You’ve got your lowers, uppers, and mids ... jocks, jockettes, geeks, geekettes,” she whispered as we moved down the hall. Most of the apartments had their doors open and she waved at the occupants. “hotties … normals, abi-normals, desperates, lactose-intolerants …” She saw the question on my face. “… sodaholics.” She paused to inhale. “Microbials, tree-huggers, hunter-gatherers, and band-geeks. We even have our own resident spook squad.” She waved enthusiastically to a group huddled on one side of the hall talking quietly. They were dressed in black on black, midnight hair defying gravity, white makeup, black lipstick and nails, with a couple pounds of chains and piercings. They gave her a brief nod then stared as I walked past. I gave them my best “please don’t kill me” smile. They raised a side of their mouths in half-snarls.

She lifted her hands in the air. “Isn’t this just phenomenal!”

I felt like a hick.

We went through the gauntlet of introductions. It took less than a micro-second for each of their names to float off to Neverland. I’d inherited my mother’s inability to remember names upon introduction. In some ways,
it’s a blessing; it left a few more uncluttered spots in my head. The good news is I remembered Jen’s. I wasn’t a total spaz.

I ignored the whispers behind my back. Instead, I played the mnemonic game in my head, memorizing faces and personalities. I was pretty good at it. I could run into someone ten years later and remember all about them, except their name of course.

The guys followed us around like a pack of puppies. They trapped us up against the wall. Dylan from the move-in welcoming squad was their leader. He’d put a shirt on and combed his hair. He looked better with bed head.

Jen shoved them away. “Back off guys. She’s dating a recently paroled ‘gangsta’.”

The silence was deafening. I turned around and gave her an eloquent look. She returned a look of innocence and shrugged.

A few more clustered around with obnoxious t-shirts sprouting animals and guns. It was obvious they were from the Hunter-Gatherers Clan. The one wearing a PETA – People Eating Tasty Animals logo had his buddy in a headlock. His friend’s t-shirt had a giant Bambi
on it with blood spurting out of its neck with the words “Got Deer?” in drippy red lettering. I had to look sideways to get the full head-on.

It was a mistake. This morning’s accident came back in a rush, but it was like two movies superimposed upon each other. The hallway lurched under my feet, crazy images flashed in front of my eyes. It was hard to breathe, the air felt like molasses, all thick and gooey.

“Liz, you okay?” Jen’s green eyes were only a few inches from mine.

I nodded then bent over and braced my hands on my thighs. I focused on taking slow, even breaths. I’d never hyperventilated but if I had to guess, I was on the verge of it. Perfect timing. I had to go crazy in public.

“Just remembering the deer,” I mumbled.

“Deer, did I hear deer?” I bent my head up and PETA boy was in front of me. I hunched back down to hide the roll of my eyes.

“She hit a deer this morning,” Jen said proudly, “and lived to tell about it.”

God.

“Yummy, what’d you do with it?”

“It ran away
.” I winced. A headache started to form right in the center of my forehead. The deer suddenly had blonde hair, stuck up on one side. It had a British accent. Why the hell it could talk was a total mystery. Hell if I knew what it had said.

“Ahhh, they’re such frisky little critters. Fun to play with … fun to eat.”

If he kept yapping, I was going to puke. I looked sideways at Jen and glared at her.

She shooed them away then rubbed my back, making little coos that it was going to be alright, that I was alive, not hurt, that it was normal for me to freak-out. She rambled on about some cousin of hers that had hit a skunk until I couldn’t take it any longer. I pulled back up and leaned against the wall. My head slowly cleared. The tight pressure of pain eased. I rubbed the muscle
s between my eyes.

“All better?”

I nodded.

“Wanna talk about it?”

I shook my head.

She gave me a quick grin, a forced grin. I wasn’t sure if she was upset that I wouldn’t talk about it or if she thought she should call the ambulance.

“Really, I’m fine. It was just a delayed reaction. I do that a lot, great in an emergency but the payback is a bitch.”

“
Okay,” she said.

She let it go. I’d kept my silence on my little psychosis. No need to draw suspicion that not all my rockets were firing. Most people didn’t see blonde deer
that could talk, or kiss for that matter, stalking the highways. No, nothing appropriate to share there.

***

I lowered my head as I walked into the bustling town square of our small village, carefully navigating the puddles left over from last night’s rain. It was a warm humid day, the air sweet, cleansed from last night’s downpour. My dress hung heavy and damp on my frame. I wiped the sweat from my hands on the apron around my waist and pulled a few strands of loose hair back behind my ear.

“Alisé.”

Squinting into the sun, I saw my father, a large man, pause from pounding on a piece of glowing metal across an anvil inside the arched doorway of his atelier, his metal studio. He stopped for a moment, wiping the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand and watched me with worry. “Where have you been, child? Your mother is having a fit trying to find you." He frowned, glancing towards the second story of our chipped and aged yellow and white stucco home, one of many that lined the cobblestone street. A closed sign, signaling the lateness of the day, was displayed in the window of my mother’s boulangerie-patisserie, combination bread and pastry shop housed on the first floor. “You’d better get quick, I don’t think I can hold her back from thrashing you this time.”

“Sorry, father, I just lost track of time.” A weathered window flew open with a loud bang and a livid face with a white cap peered out and screeched. “Alisé, you get yourself back inside at once to help with supper!” Her voice continued to rise in pitch. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you lately, running off … it’s that boy isn’t it!”

I winced. “Sorry momma, I’ll be right there.”

She slammed the window shut and I let out a resigned sigh. As I raised my foot to step over a particularly deep puddle, a pair of large, calloused hands closed over my eyes and a lean, muscular body engulfed me. A masculine scent mixed with horses and fresh grass filled the air.

A deep voice whispered in my ear. “Guess, my love ... my Alisé, whose hands hold your precious face?”

My heart fluttered. “Why, it must be my Michel, my only love …” I turned, softly laughing to see his face
.

I woke up with a start. A familiar ache twisted my heart. I curled into a ball, my pillow clutched in my arms, and wept. The force of my sobs shook my bed. Please God, please make it stop. I prayed for the dreams to go away.

Chapter 3

A soft glow illuminated a few hundred Art History 101 students crammed into a large amphitheatre. It was quiet, like the few moments before the start of a play complete with the occasional cough and shuffle. I stood at the back while I caught my breath from the mad dash across campus. I tried to breathe quietly, evenly. On the wall down in the pit, a giganticized painting was splayed out in illuminated Technicolor, floor to ceiling.

I was ten minutes late. No surprise there. I’d be late for my own funeral. No, I didn’t make that one up. My mom had screamed that clever epitaph when I showed up late for my piano recital. A feigned smash of my finger in a car door wasn’t believable enough, since my mom, suspicious as ever, took a closer look and discovered I had borrowed her green and purple eye shadow. She finally got the hint and didn’t force me into any more lessons when my years of crying and angry forté hadn’t.

A deep, masculine voice cut through the silence. Its intonations were beautiful, so melodic that it slid across my skin like sex on the wind. It held a hint of a French accent.

I waited until my eyes adjusted then made my way over to the left aisle, scanning the room for an empty seat. The only one available was five rows from the front. I carefully walked down the steps then began to make my way through nine pairs of legs, apologizing as I went. I tripped over the last pair of feet, banged my backpack against the chair and fell into it with a huff. It echoed across the theatre. Several
students looked in my direction.

I slid my pack down to the floor between my feet, pulled out a notebook and pen and lifted the chair’s attached tabletop. My neighbor handed me a copy of the syllabus. The professor’s name was Dr. Marcheon. Since his name had sounded familiar, I’d looked him up on the college
website. His bio displayed a long list of impressive credentials and memberships to several foreign art and restoration societies. It, of course, was obvious. He was one self-absorbed, arrogant PhD who got off on making student’s lives miserable.