But me? No one really thinks that. I am lovable, yes, but not, people would say, in that way. Not like I might find myself hand in hand with a crush on a moonlit night, or spill a long friendship over suddenly into more, or feel passion that simply must be answered. People imagine I will have no relationship more passionate than a pen pal.
So when I say I love River Templeton, I fear you misconstrue. You think it’s cute or silly. Or pitiable. Or deluded.
But that misses the point. Love does not come from the likelihood it will be requited. If it seems reasonable, even inevitable, that soon enough Mab will fall in love with River, it must be because he is lovable. Should we not conclude, then, that I would love him too?
Or perhaps the inevitability has nothing to do with River himself and more to do with Mab being a teenage girl with a budding sexuality and nascent awareness of herself in the world. And am not I that as much as she? After all, they say the most sexual organ in the body is the brain, and by that logic, I am pretty well-hung. I do get that sex is corporeal too—I’m a virgin, not an idiot—and though relaxed muscles under your very own control must help, I am told that losing control is at least part of the point. Turning parts of my body over to others without feeling squeamish about it is something I must have more experience with than most teenagers. I can communicate “yes,” “no,” “stop,” and “more please” as well as anyone, even without my Voice, as long as you’re paying attention. And as for the other body parts involved, those are some of my most functional ones: earlobes to nibble, a navel to graze, warm lips and flushed skin and bated breath and a quick-beating heart, pheromones and erogenous zones. All the parts inside. I can feel my body move even if I can’t move most of it myself. And yes, I’ll have to find partners who will listen to me, who will focus on what my body wants and can do instead of what it doesn’t and can’t, who will look at me and really see, who are patient and gentle and kind. Will those partners be easy to find? No. Does anyone in any body think those partners are easy to find? Also no.
So perhaps the assumption that I could not possibly really love River is not about him and not about Mab and not about me and what I can do, but only about what I can’t, what I shouldn’t. A be-grateful-for-what-you’ve-got sort of argument. A learn-to-be-happy-with-settling-for-less approach. This logic reasons that after sixteen years trapped in a body in a chair, I should be used to it. I should know my bounds and strive for no more. I should lower every expectation to the bottom of a well.
I should shut up and find sufficient joy merely in being alive.
But, Monday would point out, those things are opposites.
Forgone happiness foregone concluded, that special state of resigned discontent we’re not supposed or even allowed to question, is a curse I share with my hometown. In whatever bougie Boston enclave the Templetons left to move here, everyone expects to be happy, and everyone, one imagines relatedly, expects not to be poisoned. If the water were contaminating wealthy Bostonians, that would be unacceptable and addressed.
But Bourne? Bourne is completely disposable. Like me, my town is not expected to aspire to happiness. We have neither right nor reason to expect we are not being poisoned. And that is not a coincidence. That is the reason Belsum chose Bourne for their site. That is the reason they did what they did to our water and soil and citizens so cavalierly. That is why I am the second kind of person in this world.
So this is where River and I part. At least one place. And I am not naive. I know he’s probably a spoiled brat. I expect he has unexplored, unrecognized privilege and an ego you could see from space. But that doesn’t mean I can’t love him. They say opposites attract. They say find what you lack in another. They say two halves make a whole. And besides, he’s just a kid—not his father, not his grandfather—so it’s premature to write him off. He can learn, and that’s even better. It means more if he’s kind of clueless and sort of a jerk, and then he realizes what his family did to ours, and then he realizes what families like his always do to families like ours. And then he sets out to change, to change himself and then his legacy and then the world. They say you cannot change a man. But they say I cannot do all sorts of things it turns out I can, including fall in love. And anyway, he’s not a man. He’s just a boy, and those are ripe for change.
This is why I made Mab promise to help him. Not because I feel sorry for him. Not because it’s the right thing to do. Not because what happened in Bourne is not his fault.