Cyril in the Flesh

by Ramsey Hootman

  “Wow.”

  “The way I see it,” Greta says.

  “Here it comes.”

  “The way I see it,” she repeats, sharply, “is that you’ve got a choice to make. You can be miserable alone, or you can be miserable with someone who loves you.”

  He snorts. “Lady, have you not been paying attention? Robin’s spent the better part of five weeks trying to convince me she cares about me—just so that when she told me the truth, she could twist that knife extra hard. She doesn’t love me. She hates my fucking guts.”

  Greta spears a bit of biscuit with her fork and sticks it neatly into her mouth, without touching her lips. “You of all people,” she says, pausing to swallow, “should know that the heart has plenty of room for both.”

  “Does it matter? There’s no carrot at the end of this fucking stick. She’s dying. No matter what I do, I end up alone.”

  She sets her fork on the edge of her plate and looks at him for a long moment, steadily. “If you think the end goal of loving someone is what you get out of the bargain, you're beyond help. Everyone ends up alone. Eventually.”

  “And what really matters is the friends we made along the way? Don’t trot out your fucking high school philosophy with me.”

  Greta tugs a paper napkin out of the dispenser in the middle of the table and wipes her fingers, almost thoughtfully, before picking up her mug of coffee. “A lesson from my own life, then: You can punish yourself, or you can love her as she deserves. You can’t have both.”

  “If she can love me and hate me at the same time, I can sure fucking try.”

  She sips, then sets the mug down in exactly the spot she lifted it from, adjusting the handle so it’s angled in precisely the same direction. “And how’s that working out?”

  “Jesus Christ.” The woman treats everyone like a recalcitrant student—and she's not the slightest bit afraid of him. “Look, even if I wanted to—to whatever—”

  “Forgive yourself?”

  “I can’t. I’m not—fixable. Trust me, I’ve tried.”

  Greta pulls her phone out of her jacket pocket, briefly, consulting the time. “I need to go. I told Robin I’d take the kids for school again.” She zips her jacket up and stands.

  “You’re sticking me with the check?”

  She looks down her nose at him. “I suggest you use this opportunity to figure out how you’re going to tell them good-bye.”

  Robin is on the roof.

  He stands on the sidewalk and watches as she scoots butt-first down one of the valleys, squeezing goop from a caulking gun into the gaps under peeling shingles. Eventually, she lifts the gun to look at the business end, pumping the trigger in vain. “Shoot.” Still crouched low, she pivots toward the ladder, and sees him. “Oh. Hey.” She looks at the caulking gun, and then back at him. “Could you run down to the barn and grab me another tube? I mean, not run, obviously—”

  “I was right,” he says. “This whole time. You’re a fucking liar.”

  “Yeah?” She sits, dangling a leg over the edge of the roof. “So are you.”

  “If you weren’t dying,” he says, the word like chalk on his tongue, “would you have picked me up from prison?”

  She cocks her head. “If I told you I was dying, would you have gotten into my truck?”

  “No.”

  “Then don’t waste my time.” She lifts the caulking gun. “You gonna get me the tube, or should I come down?”

  He gets her the fucking tube. When he hands it up the ladder, she pops it into the gun, lops off the tip with a knife from her tool belt, and continues to work her way back up the next valley to the peak of the roof. Finally, after pressing down the nearest shingles one last time, she backs down the ladder, caulking gun held out so the gooey drippings land on the grass. On the ground, she fishes a screw from a can sitting on the porch and uses it to plug the end of the tube before letting it drop to the grass. “Roof needs replacing, but I’m not gonna get to it.” She uses the back of one hand to wipe her eye, leaving a streak of black caulk across her cheek. “Hopefully that’ll hold out another year or two.”

  “I can’t do this,” he says.

  She squints up at him, and then shifts slightly to put her face in his shadow. “Do what?”

  “Live. Without you.”

  Her smile is tinged with bitterness. “Sure you can,” she says, quietly. “You’ve done it for years.”

  And suddenly, he’s crying. Fucking crying. Not polite little sniffles, but full-on heaving, body-wracking sobs. Like he did only once, alone, when Tavis died. Except now he’s standing on the sidewalk in front of her house, a spectacle for the whole world to see.

  “Is everything... okay?” a man's voice asks, from a car. If it’s someone Robin knows, this asshole can’t tell through the haze of tears.

  “No,” says Robin. “But it’s not an emergency.”

  The car leaves. A neighbor comes out onto their front porch and goes back inside again. Someone crosses to the other side of the street to avoid the drama. He is still crying.

  At some point, through this ridiculous blubbering, this asshole manages to choke out the words: “I can’t—I can’t watch you die.”

  Robin waits, watching him, until, eventually, he simply runs out of tears.

  He pulls the sleeve of his t-shirt up to wipe his face, though it accomplishes little more than smearing snot around. His throat is raw. His gut aches.

  Robin is still standing there.

  She takes his right hand in hers, and then reaches slightly to capture his left. They stand face-to-face, his belly pressed against her torso. “We can’t have forever,” she says. “We never did. All we've got is now.”

  “Fuck,” he chokes. That’s all he’s got, in the end. “Fuck.”

  She squeezes his fingers. “Be with me, Cyril. While there’s still time.”

  Chapter 24

  “So here’s the deal.” Robin takes a swig from her half-frozen water bottle and hands it to him.

  “Wait, there’s a deal?” They’re standing on the back porch, in the shade of the house. “I feel like you should have mentioned this before I spent the last three hours cutting your siding.” He drinks, shakes the bottle to move the frozen core, and drinks again.

  She draws a circle in the air, prompting him to turn around. “If you stay—”

  He turns his back to her. “I thought I was the one doing you the favor here. Now there’s conditions?”

  “Just three.” She brushes the sawdust off his backside with a few brisk strokes. “One, you help me finish the house. Like, for serious. Not just giving me a hand now and then.”

  He turns to face her again. “Chica, I know fuck-all about construction—”

  “You have two hands and you can follow instructions.” She turns on the ball of one foot to present her back, casting her words over one shoulder. “I’ll take care of the rest.”

  He looks at her, and then up at the second story. He still doesn’t understand why she feels compelled to do any of this shit, but it’s her life. Or lack thereof. “Fine.” He brushes her off.

  “Two, my time is limited. So I need what little I have left to not be about...” She uses both hands to mime an aura around him. “This.”

  “You just gestured to all of me.”

  “Yes. Exactly. I’m not going to waste my last months on earth trying to fix—whatever it is that’s wrong with you.” She takes the water bottle back. He hasn't left her much that’s not ice, but she finishes it off and then presses the bottle, still beaded with condensation, against her forehead. “If you have issues with physical contact, or whatever the hell else you have issues with, just, you know, keep that shit to yourself. You want to eat yourself to death, be my guest. You’ll still be here longer than me.”

  His mouth goes dry. His fingers contract into fists. He could hit her. He sees it in his mind’s eye. All it would take is a couple of well-placed blows. She’ll be dead soon anyway.

  Jesus. What
, in all she has said, could possibly justify his fury? Because she’s right? Because she sees him for exactly what he is?

  Is it really so terrible? To be seen?

  “Cyril?”

  “Yeah,” he snaps, moving to open the back door. “Fine.”

  She plants a hand in the center of his stomach, stopping him. “I’m not done.”

  He brushes her arm aside and turns, taking the knob in one hand. “Maybe I better get some paper to write this down.”

  “Number three is easy.”

  He has one foot over the threshold. She can’t stop him, but he stops. Half-turning to look at the hand she places on his arm. “What?”

  “Kiss me.”

  Her eyes, when he looks at them, burn with a bright, feverish intensity.

  It’s not desire. He knows that. It’s the sleep she hasn’t been getting. The handful of pills she chokes down twice a day. The mounting panic as she watches the dregs of her life circle the drain.

  Take it, the voice inside him says. Take it anyway.

  “Be careful what you wish for, Chica,” he growls.

  She grabs his shirt with both hands and tries to yank him around. It doesn’t work. She’s strong, but not strong enough to move him. “What?” she says, giving him a shove instead. “You think you’re gonna hurt me? I lost a husband, Cyril. My mom. Found out my entire life was your own personal RPG. I’ve been poked and poisoned and sliced up and stitched back together again. You think a couple bruises are gonna break me?” She snorts. “Go on, then. Do your worst. I can take a little roughing up.”

  He obliges. There is a brief tussle of muscle and cloth, and then his hands are on her wrists, and she’s pinned against the side of the house.

  She doesn’t flinch. She just looks up at him, breath hot and close, one nostril curling in disgust. “See? You’re all talk. You never do a goddamn thing.”

  He tightens his grip. His knuckles are white. “I swear to God, I’ll—”

  She interrupts him with a bitter laugh. “Look at you. You’re shaking. You think you’re some big scary monster? Like you’re gonna hurt me if you don’t hold back?” She jerks one arm free, and then the other. “Fuck, Cyril. The only person you scare is yourself.”

  How casually she strips him bare.

  “Kiss me. Once. Is that really too much to ask?”

  It’s not love, either. It’s pain and cancer and loneliness and all the pretty lies he wrote, once upon a time. “Yeah. Sure.” He bends, hands propped against the house, and gives her a peck on the cheek.

  She slaps him. Hard.

  “Ow! What the—”

  “Don’t play stupid with me, asshole.” And she slings and arm around his neck and presses her lips hard against his mouth.

  Time freezes. He is suddenly conscious of the loudness of his own breath, exhaled through his nose. Blood, pounding in his ears. The slight friction of her shirt against his. A breeze ripples through the Tyvek covering the second-floor windows, like a handful of beads on a drum.

  But this is not the first time they’ve kissed.

  Each time the brain recalls a memory, it rewrites the experience anew. The memory of the memory replaces the original. A favorite moment may, in the course of a lifetime, be overwritten a thousand times. And because brains are meat, there’s no backup to prevent data loss. Details slip. One color substituted for another. A word or phrase exchanged for one with a similar meaning. The edges blur. Eventually, even the most curated memory will become so distorted it bears only the slightest resemblance to the original event.

  Perhaps that’s why he’s avoided thinking about the day he went to prison. The day she found out the letters were his. The day she kissed him good-bye. The feel of her hands on his body, the heat of her lips melting into his.

  Not for love, but spite. Because she wanted him to spend every second of his sentence knowing exactly what he’d missed.

  Then, like now, he didn’t care.

  Robin pulls back, slightly, and they breathe. Somehow, he is holding her. “I—” he begins, and she pulls him close again. Her lips part. They are both fragrant with sweat, and the taste of her is salty and sweet.

  The memory of five years past is utterly overwritten.

  When she steps back—or, rather, leans against the house—she sucks in a breath and runs a hand over her short hair. “Jesus,” she exhales. “Finally.”

  “Did I get it right? Or should I try kissing your ass next time?” There’s no negotiation between his brain and his mouth—the words just pop out.

  She blinks, and for a moment he thinks she might slap him again. But then she gives an appreciative snort. “Boy, you don’t miss a beat.”

  Chapter 25

  So they kiss. And then what? The universe doesn’t explode. This asshole doesn’t turn into a handsome prince.

  The clock begins to tick again.

  He opens the door, starts to go into the house, then thinks he should maybe hold it open for her instead, backs up into her, and nearly knocks her off the porch. He mutters an incoherent apology and then realizes, what the fuck is he doing? He reverses course and steps inside.

  He makes lunch. They eat. She leaves to get the kids. He makes dinner. They eat again.

  He stares at her across the table. Her lips are moving. He hears no words, except this: he kissed her, and she is going to die.

  No.

  Yes.

  “Cyril. Hey.”

  He is still sitting at the dining table. The kids are not. She is standing next to him. Her hand is on his arm. Shaking him. He feels nothing.

  “When was the last time you slept?”

  He says nothing, because he doesn’t know.

  “Where did you even go, last night?” When he doesn’t answer, she grabs his arm and pulls. “Come on. The kids won’t bother you in my bedroom.”

  He knows he has slept only when Robin clicks on her bedside lamp, though not how long. She sits on the edge of the mattress, sipping water and taking pills. When she finishes, she pulls her feet up onto the bed and covers herself with the comforter, pulling it half off him. “I’m going to sleep. You gonna stay here or go ransack my kitchen?”

  “Jesus. A little warning would be nice.” He yanks his shirt down over his exposed belly and heaves his bulk toward the edge of the bed, walrus-like, letting out a stiff breath when his feet hit the floor. He has to piss, at the very least. Then he can decide if he’s coming back to her bed.

  She reaches for the lamp chain. “Just keep your hands off the avocados. I’ve been waiting for them to ripen all week.”

  He leans forward to stand, then eases back for just one moment more. His joints ache. His back hurts. Everything hurts. How long had he wandered, before washing up at the doughnut store? Not that walking is the problem. Like he doesn’t know what causes this. He knows. He’s up two sizes since his release, at the least. But he’s still thinking about making a BLT. He rubs his temples with his hands. “Why?”

  “Guacamole.”

  “No.” He squeezes his eyes shut. “Why—me?”

  The chain clinks softly against the lamp as she drops it, and at his back he hears her shift toward him. “What do you mean?”

  “Why bother with—with my bullshit?” He’d agreed to keep it to himself, but they both know that’s a promise he can’t keep, no matter how hard he tries. He’s filled with bullshit to the brim. Every time he moves, it spills. “Why not spend the time you’ve got with your kids?”

  “You think I’m not spending time with them?” The vehemence of her reply catches him off guard. “They still have to go to school. Or do school from home. Or Greta’s. Whatever. What do you expect me to do, spend the rest of my very short life sitting next to them in front of a screen, just so I can sacrifice myself upon the holy altar of motherhood?”

  “Uh—no. That is not what I said.” Though it was, honestly, kind of what he’d assumed. She’d always placed her children first before all else.

  She lets out a huff o
f frustration. “I know. I just—I've already given them everything. You know that. From the day Seth popped out of me, my life belonged to him. And I’m not saying I regret that. I gave it willingly. But it’s hard as hell, Cyril, especially on my own. The only way I’ve made it this far is reminding myself, day after day, that in ten years they’ll be off to college. That as they become more independent, I become more of myself again. Except now I don’t get that. Maybe it’s selfish, but don’t I deserve something, too?”

  “And—what you want for yourself is...” He gestures to himself. “This?”

  She props herself up on one elbow, and then, on second thought, sits up and knee-walks across the bed. “I married an imaginary man,” she says. “Half that man was Tavis.” She drapes her arms around him from behind, resting her chin on his shoulder, and holds out the hand which once held her wedding ring. (The ring she’d thrown at him, and which he’d quietly tucked back into her jewelry box when she wasn’t looking.) “The other half was you.” She studies the band of lighter skin as if admiring a gem, angling it back and forth, and then lets her hand drop with a sigh. “As much as I hate you, Cyril—I have to admit that I love you, too. Surely you can understand that.”

  He doesn’t have to say I do.

  She smooths his t-shirt over his shoulder before patting his forearm. “If this was forever, I’d cut my losses and look for someone less... abrasive. If I had another decade, I’d care that you’re gonna die of a heart attack before you’re forty. But I don’t. All I’ve got is now. And right now? I hate you for what you did, but I also just... miss you.”

  He shrugs her off. “So I’m leftovers.”

  “Leftovers are all I’ve got, I’m afraid.” She slides her bare feet over the edge of the mattress, sitting next to him, and leans her head on his shoulder. “You’re... comfortable. You piss me the hell off, but when you hold me, I feel safe and warm. I could spend my last days on earth hating you, or I can forgive you and focus on the part of you I love. I choose love. Most days, anyway.” She glances up, flashing her broad-toothed smile. “Plus, you know, you’re cheaper than a hospice nurse.”