The Paper Shepherd Read online

  “Hey Max, your girlfriend is in your room.” Max grumbled back something unintelligible and kept walking. As he reached his room, he saw that the door was unlocked and slightly ajar. He put his hand on the door knob and slowly pushed the door open. There, sitting on the chair at his desk was Tiar waiting patiently for him. When he opened the door she jumped up, a huge smile on her face. She had driven the 260 miles alone just to see him. Max tossed his keys onto his desk and wrapped both of his strong arms around the young woman he loved so much.

  “Bird. You’re here. You’re actually here,” Max said into her hair.

  “I tried to call so many times, but I couldn’t get through. I had to see you.”

  “You’re here. You’re really here,” Max said. “Everything will be okay.” Max squeezed Tiar tighter. It was entirely right to have her in his arms. This was love. Tony was right. He must have misread something. It couldn’t be wrong to be with Tiar. It couldn’t be. He had no doubt of that. He squeezed Tiar with all his strength so she could ever slip away from him. His arms closed in tighter. He was grabbing his own shoulders, his arms across his chest. Max looked down. Tiar wasn’t there anymore. She had disappeared.

  Max woke up with a start. It was Friday morning. He had had this same dream every night for the past three. It was unbearable. To not have Tiar with him was bad enough. To have her and lose her every single day was torture. Max stood up and put on his bathrobe. He assembled his towel, soap, and everything else he would need to take a shower. It was going to be a long and busy day, but at the end of it, he would get to talk to Tiar and this whole awful week would be over.

  Tiar sat at the deserted intersection on route 17 listening to the squeal of windshield wipers. The sign in front of her had two arrows. Above the rightward arrow, it said Brighton. Above the left, it said Jamestown. Tiar was about to turn right when she thought about what lay beyond Jamestown. Going west on 17 meant going to Pennsylvania. There, the road would end at interstate 90 which would take her all the way to Ohio and Max. All she had to do was get back on 17 going west and she would be merely one intersection away from him.

  Tiar thought about all the circumstances that had to line up to get her to this intersection. She took 219 south from Hectortown to Salamanca and got on 17. She turned east toward Brighton just like she was supposed to. But, then she had misread her uncle’s fuel gauge and thought she was almost out of gas when she in fact had over half of a tank to spare. This was why Tiar was at this intersection in front of this sign instead of speeding by it at 60 miles an hour. She only had access to a car because her uncle had gone to a conference of plastic surgeons in San Diego and had gotten a ride to the airport with a coworker to avoid putting extra miles on his new lease. Smart move, Tiar thought. She normally would not have been willing to take the car without permission (she never could have gotten permission) but her guidance counselor invoked a scriptural reference—comparing not going to Brighton to Jesus’ parable about “casting pearls before swine”. Dr. Glending must have known that in any battle of conscience between disappointing her uncle and disappointing Jesus, Jesus was going to win.

  Tiar pulled over into the soft shoulder and put on her four way blinkers. She reached into the glove compartment and pulled out a map of New York State. She looked back up at the white iridescent letters on the bold green background like a taunting grin, daring her to see her future reduced to a binary decision. Brighton, Jamestown. Brighton, Max. Is this a sign? Tiar asked, looking up at the roof of the car as though some guidance would be displayed there. She looked back down at the map. From this intersection, it looked like she could find her way to St. Andrew’s in five hours. However, once she got there, she had no idea how she could find Max. St. Andrew’s only had about a thousand students, but the chances of her finding some one who knew Max, if he had as small a social circle as he did at St. Jude’s, seemed awfully slim. She had a post office box for him, but didn’t even know what dorm he lived in. This is stupid, she thought.

  Tiar traced route 17 on the map in the opposite direction. In three or four hours, she could make it to Brighton. She had the address and phone number of a girl, a pre-veterinary student named Susan, who was waiting to take her to dinner and a tour of every nook and cranny of Brighton University. Tiar looked left again. Something was wrong with Max. She could feel it in the pit of her stomach like an undigested pill. Something is wrong, but what? she asked the dark, foggy road. Tiar put on her left blinker, then quickly switched it to the right, then turned it off all together and put her head down on the steering wheel. Off to her right, the envelope of photos she had brought with her had opened on the floor of the car on the passenger side and had spilled out. Tiar picked up the photo on top. It was of she and Max on the grass before they left Canada. It had been an exhausting day. Max lay in the grass with his arms folded under his head, a big smile on his face. Tiar lay with her head on his lap, drifting off to peaceful sleep. Tiar smiled to herself. She had such a safe feeling associated with that day, one that made her current turbulent emotions seem entirely impossible. Then, out of nowhere, the high pitched scratchy voice of her seventh grade health teacher interjected, nice young ladies do not put their heads on young men’s laps. They will think you want to give them a blow job. Tiar had to ask Jen later that day what that meant. Root beer almost came out of Jen’s nose as she laughed at her friend. You really don’t know anything, do you, Ti?

  Tiar sat up and looked at the picture more closely. It’s not like we have useful books in Catholicism like the Karma Sutra. She wished she could go back in time five years and deliver this snappy retort. The Bible is no help, she thought. St. Paul talked in his letters to the Corinthians about wifely duties she was obligated to perform but was not exactly clear about what these wifely duties were. Tiar was sixteen before it occurred to her this might not mean cooking and cleaning. Is that what Max wants from me? Oral sex? Tiar wondered. It didn’t seem like Max, not the Max she knew. Still, he was almost twenty now. He must want something more than kissing, she reasoned. Her heart sank a little. I’m sure Michelle didn’t mind. Tiar thought about Jen’s description from five years ago and shuddered. The whole concept was confusing and hideous to Tiar then, and it certainly wasn’t much more desirable to her now. But, if that’s what he wants, that’s what I’ll do, she thought, to keep him “entertained.”

  She turned on her left blinker and took off the parking break. You will not, she told herself. You allow that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, to teach and seduce my servants to commit sexual immorality, John’s voice from the Book of Revelation rang through her head. Are you really going to let a stranger named “Jez” decide your life for you? she chastised herself. Then, who do I believe? She thought, exasperated. Do I drive there tonight and have sex with him? Do I go to Brighton and prepare for my future? John and Paul were clearly not going to resolve this for her. She tried to think of a Gospel that would clarify her path. God gave you five talents, and he wants ten back in return! “You wicked, lazy servant!” The epitaph from Jesus’ parable of the three servants reached two thousand years through history to chastise her. God gave you a brain and an education for more than doing laundry, cooking stakes, and oral sex. Tiar knew all too well what happened to servants who didn’t meet God’s expectations-- the Gospel of Matthew was quite explicit-- Wailing and gnashing of teeth. Her wifely duties would just have to wait.

  20

  Max climbed the stairs to his dorm room one at a time. He was in no hurry. It was Friday, and he had called his house dutifully to speak to Tiar. But, one of the first things Eleanor had said after picking up the phone was that Tiar was not there. Her guidance counselor had arranged for her to visit Brighton University over the weekend, and she was staying with a biology student there. Eleanor’s tone of voice made it clear she thought this was an excellent and exciting development.

  Max was in an understandably poor mood. His sense of value in that which he treasured most in the world had been un
dermined. He couldn’t talk to the one person he trusted more than anyone in the world. That same person was visiting another university, making plans to be away from him for yet another four years. This was worse than the fear he had had all week, this confusing tangled conundrum of marrying love to lust in some biblically acceptable way and whether or not he should pursue that right now. This was confirmation of something far more troublesome. Whether or not he could silence the anxiety about graduating early or the doubts St. Paul had raised in his mind about love, Tiar was slipping away from him and he had no way to stop it. He had to deal with all of these realizations alone. His friends were all bound by vows of celibacy and trivialized and intellectualized the pain he was feeling. He couldn’t talk to his mother, who didn’t know about his clandestine courtship. He couldn’t talk to Tiar. He didn’t even know where she was.

  Whether trivializing the underlying cause or not, Tony could not stand idly by and watch Max mope around his room. He dragged Max out to Pugs for beer and darts. The distraction had worked tolerably well for two hours, but now Max just wanted to lie down. Maybe if he slept he could see Tiar in his dreams. Max walked slowly down the hall, staring at the carpet. He was fiddling around in his jacket pocket for his keys when Jason shouted out from his room.

  “Hey Max, your girlfriend is in your room.” Max lifted his head and looked around the hallway. Am I asleep again? He wondered. Is this a dream? He was pretty sure he was awake. He quickly examined his hands. They looked like his. He took another look through the open door of Jason’s room where his hall mate sat playing computer golf. Every detail was exactly how it should be. As he reached his room, he saw that the door was unlocked and slightly ajar. He hesitated slightly before touching the door. What would be inside?

  Max’s maternal aunts all joked that Eleanor could see the future. They claimed that when she was growing up on the farm in Scotland that she could predict weeks in advance what lambs would get sick and which would stumble onto the train tracks that ran through their pasture. They said she would make bets with the other kids in the village about which day the first snow would fall. Max had never believed in psychic powers and accepted that his mother was simply the smartest person from her village, and very observant. Could the stories be true? Could the power be hereditary? Max’s heart skipped a beat. Could Tiar be on the other side of this door?

  He put his hand on the doorknob and slowly pushed the door open. There, sitting at his desk was Brandy. She didn’t stand up when he walked through the door, or even lift her head from the magazine she was reading. Max tossed his keys onto his desk.

  “Hey, Brandy,” he said listlessly.

  “Don’t sound so happy to see me,” she said, closing her magazine. “You don’t want me to get the wrong idea.”

  “Sorry,” he said, collapsing onto his bed. “It’s been a hard week.”

  “So, I heard,” she said, lacking sympathy. “Tony says you’re nuts now.”

  “Okay, Dee,” Max said, fatigue obvious in his voice. “I don’t mean to sound rude, but why are you here?”

  “Well, I came by two hours ago to see if you wanted to eat, but you were already out. As I was leaving, though, a funny thing happened.”

  “What’s that?” Max asked, uninterested.

  “I was just reaching the stairs when the phone rang. It was Tiar.” Max sat upright, his eyes wide. All sense of fatigue had left his body.

  “My Little Bird? She called?”

  “Apparently she called you four times a day for the past week. You didn’t get any of her messages?”

  “Who’d she leave them with?”

  “Jason.” Max shook his head.

  “She might as well have left them with a squirrel on the quad. I had no idea.”

  “Well, she was very upset. I talked to her for almost an hour.” Max’s face contorted into a look of sorrow and sympathy.

  “What was she upset about?”

  “I couldn’t understand it,” Brandy said shrugging. “She kept going on and on about St. Paul and wifely duties and the book of revelation. She was crying her eyes out.”

  “Tiar doesn’t cry,” Max insisted stridently. “I’ve seen her get whacked in the behind with a yard stick by a six foot tall nun. Trust me, she doesn’t cry.”

  “Fine, I don’t know if she was crying,” Brandy said defensively, taken aback at how Max seemed to take this comment as a personal insult. “It was a telephone conversation. But, she sounded hysterical. I mean, she was in a phone booth in Johnsonville? Jamesville?”

  “Jamestown?” Max interrupted. “What was she doing there? It’s not on the way to Brighton.”

  “No,” Brandy said. “It’s on the way to see you. Apparently, she got half way to Brighton and flipped out. She’d been driving for three hours when she called.”

  “So, she’s on her way here now?” Max said, trying to hide his excitement.

  “Heck no,” Brandy said. “I talked her out of it.” Max took in a deep breath and balled his hands into fists.

  “You did what?” he said with forced calm.

  “I talked her out of it. I told her you were fine, you weren’t sick or injured and you loved her and everything was fine. I told her she should go visit Brighton and have a great weekend because that’s what you would want her to do.” Max was silent for a moment. When he spoke again, his voice was slow and measured.

  “Why did you do that?”

  “Because you are fine, you do love her and you want her to visit Brighton,” Brandy explained. Max just stared at her blankly. “I’m not asking you, Max, I’m telling you.” Max got up and started walking toward the window. Brandy stood up, too, and grabbed his left arm.

  “Do you love this girl?” she asked pointedly. He shook her hand away.

  “Of course, I do.”

  “And you want what’s best for her?” He closed his eyes.

  “Yes.”

  “And you want her to visit Brighton.”

  “Yes.” Brandy put on her coat and picked up her purse.

  “Do me a favor, Max,” she said, rearranging her scarf. “Practice a few times what you’re going to say to Tiar when she calls on Sunday. The poor girl has enough pressure on her to pick the right college without thinking you’re angry at her.” She walked out and closed the door behind her.

  Max curled up on his bed. He did love Tiar. He was virtually sure of it. He wanted what was best for Tiar even if that meant being far away from him. But, he didn’t have to like it.

  21

  “I’m not coming out,” Tiar shouted through the door.

  “Fine. We’re coming in,” Sarah shouted back. A struggle ensued in the dressing room of Cici’s Top Drawer lingerie boutique at Rutherford town center shopping mall an hour north of Hectortown. Under the guise of beating the holiday rush at Christmas shopping, Jen and Sarah had dragged Tiar out shopping for underwear. They had been worried about Tiar ever since she came back from her trip to Brighton three weeks earlier. It seemed like her usual cheer had been drained out of her, like the tank that held her spirit had sprung a leak. At first, they couldn’t figure out why. But a few weeks after her return, it became obvious when they all piled into a limo from Chuck’s Chariots and Tiar wasn’t there. It was the first homecoming Tiar didn’t go to.

  This year was her senior year, the most important homecoming of high school. While they danced the night away under a tent of crepe paper streamers, Tiar sat home alone. Jen and Sarah took it upon themselves to cheer Tiar up. She looked so lonely and unwanted. What she needed was to feel beautiful and desirable again. What could cheer her up better than lingerie? Jen reasoned. And thus, Tiar stood, nearly naked, various items of her anatomy being hoisted and supported by dangling elastic straps and small metal fasteners, in a six by six room walled on two sides by mirrors. Tiar was pretty strong for her size, but with Sarah and Jen working together, they eventually pried to door open and tumbled into the room in a pile.

  “Hubba, Hubba,” Jen said. Sa
rah just whistled. Tiar seemed to be looking for a way to hide but the clothing she was wearing was not giving her much to hide behind. She tried pulling her hair in front of her like Botticelli’s Birth of Venus. Unfortunately, it did not cascade like the hair of the blond beauty in the painting—hanging only to mid-breast level. The net effect was to draw more attention exactly to what Tiar was trying to hide.

  Tiar was not used to wearing bras at all except to play basketball or run. Those bras did not involve metal in anyway. In fact, the whole idea of combining clothing with metal seemed ludicrous to her. But, Jen and Sarah were sure under-wires were necessary for a healthy ego. They reminded Tiar of scythes carried by the mythical grim reaper. Why anyone would wear such a garment was a complete mystery to her. To accompany this medieval torture device, Tiar was wearing something reminiscent of the Varriano Bridge around her waist. Jen had called it a garter belt. Tiar didn’t understand why this was something she needed. To hold up your stockings, they told her. My stockings stay up on their own, she argued. Not the new ones you’re going to buy. Why would I buy stockings that are defective? They’re not defective, they’re fancy. So fancy that the elastic doesn’t work? It was an argument logic clearly could not win.

  In the end, Tiar finally tried on the items Jen brought to her because she figured it would be less painful than the argument itself. She had miscalculated significantly the pain that could be inflicted by fabric and hook-and-eyes. Does the Geneva convention know about this? Tiar wondered. Tiar would rather have been anywhere but here. When she came home from Brighton almost three weeks ago, she had gone straight to the Franklins’ for dinner. As usual on Sundays, Max called promptly at six. When she had talked to him, Tiar had tried to sound happy. Tiar liked Brighton. It was undeniably a good school. But Tiar couldn’t picture herself being happy there. Not without Max. But she couldn’t let Max think she was weak. He would have wanted her to make the best of Brighton. He would have wanted her to look forward to going there. You don’t want to disappoint Max, do you? Her guidance counselor’s voice echoed.