Tell Me

I can see her in my rearview mirror.

I try to keep my eyes on the road ahead, but the red truck behind me lingers at the edge of my peripheral vision. When I begrudgingly steal a longer glance, I see she’s got one hand at the top of her steering wheel – calm, casual-like – and an unreadable expression on her face. That eternally vague expression gets under my skin like nothing else.

That’s what this is all about, really. It started with the phone call from the manor—they told me they were closing for repairs after a fire had afflicted the old building, the dry wood being perfect kindling to spread the flames. We had to cancel the regal weekend away we’d planned a year in advance. I’d held back tears when I told Cam our anniversary weekend trip kept me going through a tough work year, the thing I had been looking forward to for so long. Gone.

Cam had been considerably less upset, hardly phased at all. And that had set me off.

Five years is the longest relationship either of us has been in, and we’d wanted to make a celebration of it. To have our plans canceled felt like a targeted affront to our relationship. Stewing alone in my disappointment felt like a betrayal. It’s a recurring theme with Cam and I: me being too sensational and her being emotionally disengaged.

It was part of her charm at first. Mysterious. Intriguing. A difficult puzzle to solve. Initially, our contrast was what we thought defined us as a couple, a strength of our shared character. We’ve balanced each other’s extremes for five years, but this emotional withdrawal was my tipping point.

Granted, I shouldn’t have stormed out like I did. I could feel myself getting hot, and I knew I was making a futile decision even while I grabbed my car keys. A tendency to be both over-emotional and completely self-aware is a cruel curse. I should’ve initiated a mature conversation, encouraged her to help me understand her reluctance to communicate, and maybe tried to get to the root of the problem. But where Cam runs cool, I am blazing.

Now, I try not to catch her eyes in the mirror; I don’t want to give her the satisfaction of having my attention. My skin feels sticky in the summer heat, and the red-hot fever of anger only adds to my discomfort. I roll my window down to let in some air, but it’s too humid and only makes me feel stuffier. I speed up and lower the window all the way. It brings some much-welcomed coolness inside.

The road is dusty and dry, and as we drive, the dirt kicks up from the side of the cars. On either side of the track is farmland, going for miles, crops in various stages of growth stretching as far as I can see. In the distance, cows and sheep graze, the grass burned yellow-green by the Texas sun. The road is used mainly by local farmers, connecting the rural land to the next town. We still haven’t passed another car, and we’re unlikely to, as Cam’s in the farm’s truck and town folk don’t like to get their cars dirty.

I wish she would use the secluded road to make some romantic gesture, drive up beside me, and yell apologetically out the window, begging me to forgive her and disclose all her feelings. But she’s as emotionally repressed as any Southern country boy I’ve met.

Cam’s Mama didn’t expect her to be a girl, having had three sons before and her husband being one of six boys. In her childhood pictures, it was easy to mistake Cam for one of her brothers, especially when she was photographed on the farm. I used to imagine that they all shared a wardrobe filled with four identical sets of shirts, jeans, and boots and that they all lined up, looking like quadruplets behind the wooden chair in the kitchen, waiting for their Mama to give them identical haircuts. Cam was brought up just like her brothers, and the boys in her area – especially those whose daddies were farmers – were supposed to be strong and collected; the skills to wrangle cattle were valued a thousand times over emotional perceptiveness.

I look back in the mirror—Cam has the same expression. One lazy hand on the wheel, emotionless stare. She hasn’t even taken off her cowboy hat in the heat. I feel my frustration bubbling up again, and I pull over to the side of the road. She follows, and I’m out the door before she parks.

It amazes me that we can be so different. I’m aflame with irritation, and she’s so controlled as she idles over to me, the slow close of the truck door echoing along the deserted road.

“I’m sorry,” she says, the easy drawl of her accent matching her nature – composed, going nowhere fast.

“Are you? You know, most of the time, I can’t tell.”

She shrugs. “I’m sorry that it upsets you, but I can’t change who I am.”

One of the only passionate expressions Cam ever reveals is a surety in who she is. It comes from regretful experience, the lost years when she knew exactly who she was but denied herself the luxury of living it. It reminds me of the first – and one of the only – nights she opened up to me, a year after we’d met at a party in uptown New Orleans while visiting a friend at Loyola. After too much wine, Cam had told me about the time she’d kissed a guy when she was seventeen. As she spoke, her voice cracked, and she cleared her throat to cure it. She remembered the weight of his hand on her back and the way he clung to her hips as though if he let go, she’d drift away. She said she felt like she did drift away in her head like her body had split from her mind like oil and water. She said it didn’t feel like her body was hers; he had taken control of it, and he would squeeze it and contort it for his own pleasure.

She’d stopped kissing him then, and when she got home, she told her parents and brothers that she was a lesbian. That night, she told me that every time she kissed a woman, her hand slid up a soft thigh, and every time she smelled the hot wetness of desire, it was her reward for being brave. It served as a reminder to be grateful to be able to live authentically.

“No,” I say softly. “I don’t want that. I just want you to tell me what’s happening in your head.”

As usual, there’s a pause where there should be a display of emotion from Cam.

“I’m kind of hungry,” she offers.

“Cam.”

“What?” She chuckles. “I’m telling you what I’m thinking.”

“Hunger is not enough. I want substance. I want… I want to know when you’re sad. And I want to know why you’re sad and how we can deal with it. I want to know what I can do to make you feel better. I want to know what you want. I know it’s not how you were brought up, but talking about those things is normal. It’s healthy.”

She looks away from me now. Even talking makes her uncomfortable.

“Okay, look, I’ll go first. I love how you look in that hat, but it’s driving me crazy that you can wear it in this heat.”

She laughs at the ground, taking under her breath, “You’ve always got it out for my damn hat.”

“Right, now you go.”

Another pause. She looks to me as if for help. When I don’t prompt her, she shakes her head. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Oh, Cam!” I throw my hands down. I hate how childish it is, but I’m on the last straw. “Can’t you just tell me how you feel? What can I do that will give you what you want? What can I do?”

“You want me to tell you what to do?”

“Yes.”

She smirks somewhat smugly to herself, then says, “Lean back.”

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