by Lila Savage
Ella thought, No one touches Bryn but Jill. The thought was sad and hungry and tense, like the hunched muscles in his shoulders. There was nothing she could do about it, of course. Bryn could barely stand to be in contact with his own skin, and even Ella’s increased proximity in passing made them both duck and veer as if she were carrying a steaming pot of water to the kitchen sink. If at times she felt her physical presence was intrusive, at other times she felt as insubstantial as in the type of dream where one is merely an observer, disembodied eyes floating in the stairwell, watching Bryn manifest his defeat, watching Jill shriek and sob from beneath a crazed snarl of dirty hair. Of course, even her gaze felt intrusive, all the more so because she felt so impotent. This was truly what her nighttime panic was about: not whether she had left some menial task undone, but that she was failing—daily—to ease any part of Bryn’s burden.
· 24 ·
Ella felt as though she had entered a war zone. Bryn stood in his place at the window, his posture stiff and tortured, his face almost gray with fatigue. Ella realized he had not met her eyes once since she had arrived. The tension in the room was shimmering and syrupy; Ella found it hard to breathe, and her heart rate refused to slow. This was made worse by the fact that she couldn’t pinpoint the specific threat making her adrenaline surge and therefore couldn’t talk herself down. She stood beside Bryn, within reach but without touching. They contemplated the old snow in the yard, the deepening shadows of late afternoon, the sky heavy, almost oppressive. Dead vines blew in the garden, and the wind cut in around the edges of the glass to bite them. As Bryn turned to look at her, Ella feared that his eyes would be dead. Instead, she saw that he was drowning, not in tears but in a kind of panic that was very still. Jill splashed in the sink behind them, but they were scarcely aware of it. Ella felt, abruptly, like she was on the verge of drowning with him, as though his grief were flooding the room, reaching her ankles, beginning to climb her calves. Jill left the bathroom and Ella fled into it, locked the door behind herself. She turned off the water and sat on the closed toilet lid. She was afraid she would cry, she wanted to vomit, there was so little of her armor left.
Ella thought of how, many months before, Bryn had described trying to take Jill to the Alzheimer’s center for adult day care, how he couldn’t bear for her to see the name of an affliction so much like her own written in a sign above the door, couldn’t bear for her to hear it there, again and again, said so casually, for at that time she knew what it meant, knew that in some sense it applied to her. How many thousands of times worse must this be now? Ella bit her hand and tried to think what she should do. She would go back into the den and pull him to her; there was nothing else to be done. And then Ella’s fear flared up between her and the bathroom door and she cowered. Would his sadness fill her? Would he push her away in discomfort? And then the worst of her fears overwhelmed her. How could she hold him without crying? Without her attempt to comfort slipping over the line that protected them both?
Somehow, she couldn’t imagine offering him only a part of herself, she couldn’t imagine real solace that ended after only a moment. She tried to imagine her hand, chaste and kind, upon his shoulder, only the image wouldn’t stay within her control, his hands, scaly and inflamed, wouldn’t continue to dangle or clench, but pulled her body and her psyche to mesh harshly with his own. The imagined scene played out in her mind, and Ella felt ashamed at the dread and yearning that washed over her. What kind of sickness was this, that his brokenness glimmered with erotic power?
It wasn’t just that she wished to comfort Bryn. She felt aware of his hunger in a way that viscerally bypassed her thinking and emotional selves, it was like an inky-hot injection spreading through her veins and intestines, pooling fiery and viscous between her abdomen and the tip of her tailbone. His desperation stirred something wild and distasteful in her, she could almost feel the weight of him pressing her to the floor, her knees spread wide, her skirt bunched at her waist. She could almost hear his zipper and his breath, suddenly loud with his face pressed close to her own, with Jill whispering and pacing unseeingly at the periphery, like a ghost who manifests as chill where there ought be no draft.
She tried to shift her thoughts elsewhere, flung her attention to the dirty floor, to the dripping faucet, but still the specters loomed with sexual menace. She was sweating. A part of her, usually feared, usually shackled and ignored, longed to remove all barriers between herself and Bryn, to join him in the thrilling, sickening free fall of his grief. It would be like drowning beneath the ice lid of a frozen lake, or like kissing with a mouth full of broken teeth and blood. It would mean an exquisite, excruciating oneness. The door remained closed, though even out of sight she could taste the ache of his need. She felt lascivious and dreadful, tears burned in her eyes even as she succumbed to the image of his hands on her body, the pull of which she was abruptly forced to acknowledge. It was so powerful as to feel nearly inevitable, as though all of the days and months leading up to today had been discreet exit points Ella had stubbornly, incorrectly regarded as unnecessary.
He seemed nearly unrecognizable, her kind and rueful friend with the sadness just beneath his easy grin. She had always felt so safe with him. That wasn’t true, or it was and it wasn’t. He was safe in that he was so principled, so measured and restrained, so utterly careful in his dealings with Ella. The unsafe part was Ella herself, how, the moment they had met in that sunny, bare living room, there had been a certain warmth, a natural sympathy, which would have been lovely to encounter if he had been a plump and permed woman of advancing years or a grandfatherly fellow with chicken legs emerging from his shorts hitched high over a jovial belly. In either of those circumstances Ella would have thought, Oh, I will like this job, and that would have been the end of that.
Ella had read an article recently, an unserious snippet of pop psychology claiming that people register almost on sight, animalistically, whether each new person falls into the category of someone they would have sex with or not. This had felt so true, when Ella had read it, and involuntarily she had thought of meeting Bryn, of that quiet spark of recognition that had flashed within her. It had been the same last week at Alix’s art opening, Ella had walked in and seen a woman so deliciously androgynous, so handsome and chic, that Ella had automatically smiled at her with frank admiration. The woman, standing next to what turned out to be her partner, had returned the smile, her eyes revealing the satisfaction of being admired by someone one admires in turn. Sexual compatibility had quietly flared between them, a pleasant charge that wasn’t disruptive but likely followed each of them home that evening.
Ella didn’t really know how Bryn felt about her, whether the attraction was mutual, and it was almost irrelevant. They existed on an island; there was no one else, only Ella, only Jill, only Nick and Lisa. There was no one age-appropriate and beautiful, divorced or widowed, offering chaste comfort aloud while silently planning her future with this Good Man who would eventually, tragically, become available. Ella had imagined this suitable girlfriend before. She would have a sleek, expensive haircut, the sort that professional women of a certain age could easily afford, and she would like biking and camping and a glass of wine with dinner. She would seem so patient when Bryn explained that he wasn’t ready, and she would say, We can both use a friend right now, and he would accept that, and within three years they would be married. It had surprised Ella when she had imagined this, the twist of jealousy and dislike that had stirred in her. She resented this woman she had imagined, with her jutting collarbones and gym-toned upper arms and her muted desperation that Bryn would remain naïvely oblivious to. When Alix had picked her up that night, Ella had said, “Bryn will find someone else, don’t you think? He’s a catch for a man his age, even if he isn’t working. A woman meeting him now, she would have proof that he would be a caring companion for old age. And he’s so good-looking.” Alix had murmured her agreement without enthusiasm, accompanied by
a sideways glance that wasn’t entirely pleased.
It had made Ella feel a little abashed, that glance. Hadn’t they objectively acknowledged that he was an attractive man? He wasn’t an acquired taste, it didn’t take a discerning eye or quirky predilections to see his appeal. He was like Paul Newman or Robert Redford at sixty, the sort of man whose prime spanned three or four decades. Ella assumed that women, and yes, probably men, flirted with him at the grocery checkout, at the DMV and the corner coffee shop. Likely they had always done so and it hadn’t changed as his hair had silvered and lines had etched around his penetrating, smiling eyes. Likely he took it for granted, the thoughtlessness of beauty in a straight man who is neither vain nor sexually opportunistic. His beauty seemed more remarkable with the seasoning of age, for aren’t we all, to varying degrees, beautiful at the height of youth?
Ella felt guilty about her disparagement of Bryn’s imaginary, age-appropriate future girlfriend. Why did the woman’s veiled desperation inspire disdain? Why was it something she felt an urge to protect Bryn from? Why, in fact, did Ella imagine her to be desperate? She would be in her fifties, still younger than Bryn, but old enough that her singleness would feel abject, more permanent with each passing year. She would previously have grown increasingly resigned to some compromises. Maybe he didn’t need to be taller than her. Maybe he didn’t need a full head of hair. Maybe he could earn less than her. Maybe she would be smarter than him. And then Bryn would have appeared at her grief group, chivalrous, funny in his mild way, six foot three, with movie-star good looks. Decidedly earning less than her. Decidedly emotionally damaged. A fixer-upper, but such a desirable one. She could afford, at this point, to prop up his burdened eaves. That first day, she would have looked around the group furtively for competition embedded in its ranks. She would have forced herself not to swoop down on him as the session ended, would have forced herself not to metaphorically grip his wrist with her beautifully manicured hand.
This was absurd, and not a little sick. There was no age-appropriate woman; every attribute Ella burdened her with came from within Ella’s own internalizing of the culture’s fear and cruelty regarding women of advancing age. She was a composite of Ella’s insecurities, both about what she lacked now (toned athleticism; affluence; cosmetic and material polish; mature, bourgeois emotional restraint) and what she feared she might become (desperate in the face of waning sexual power; calculating; competitive; indiscriminate). Where did indiscriminate come into it? Because, although Ella admired and desired Bryn, although, in her way, she loved him, he was not the sort of partner she sought. Not just because he was old, and emotionally wrecked, and, well, her boss. Not just because he wasn’t Alix, who was, after all, her actual, chosen partner. It was because he was too conventional, too male, too closed. Because, on the rare occasions when he irritated her, it struck her as in a particularly unsexy way. The transparency and predictability of his masculine rivalry with Nick. The grim yet manic smile that stretched unnaturally across his face when he was concealing something truer, darker, more private. The way she felt compelled, due to the intersecting motivators of people-pleasing and paycheck, to laugh at his less clever quips. None of it was his fault, not exactly, it was just that it reminded Ella that she was actually smarter, more clever, more verbally dexterous than the faux appreciation to which her relative powerlessness reduced her. It was her role, as girl and employee, to laugh, to burnish his tarnished masculine ego, to stroke it tenderly like a penis reluctant to swell. Yet didn’t a part of her seek that role? Didn’t that masculine vulnerability stir within her strangely maternal yet girlish longings, equal parts mother, daughter, and lover?
Would Bryn expect Ella to spend sleepy weekends playing with the grandkids? The idea was sobering. Not because Ella disliked children, she liked them fine, but because she had planned her life quite differently. She never intended to give a single hour to any child’s sporting event, it was a minor but cherished check in favor of the “no children” column. She loved Alix for a million reasons, and one of them was that there was never the ugly blare of sports-related broadcasts anywhere in their home. Another was the absence of masculine moodiness, the entitlement that permitted their sullenness to slosh onto other people’s cheer. Likewise the absence of masculine neediness—Ella never suckled Alix like a baby. Really, men were so uninteresting, domestically if not sexually, but, often enough, sexually as well. Ella tried to remember whether she had ever enjoyed sex with a man, not measured by orgasm, something easy enough to achieve under all sorts of tedious or inhospitable conditions with a firm touch and a little grit. The better measure was whether he could make her want. Did Bryn make her want? The idea of Bryn made Ella want, but the idea was Ella’s, her mind weighted by the heft of him, her pale limbs gripped in his coarse hands, his grizzled cheek hot against her face, or her thigh. It wasn’t actually difficult to make Ella’s mind want, it was trained along familiar, practiced lines. It guided each object of fantasy, whispering directions from offstage: You want her almost to the point of violence. You must be very discreet, risks abound. The wrongness of this is foremost in both your thoughts and hers. Had men made her want in the flesh? Women frequently had, women she had found only mildly appealing, only moderately interesting, could kiss her and she would feel something involuntarily shift and tighten within her, a small surge of heat that was mystifyingly visceral rather than cerebral, a shocking break from Ella’s normal mode of being, living in her mind, her body a heavy, ignored vessel that moved her thoughts from place to place and occasionally distracted her with hunger, tiredness, and pain. Likely it happened with men, too, but unreliably. She remembered the disappointments more keenly than the rare and unexpected successes.
But it must be admitted that Bryn filled her with a tenderness she didn’t seek. That felt like the greater betrayal, as far as Alix was concerned: the way that tenderness was shot through with wanting, the way the tender wanting had grown even as it was starved, for Ella never fed it, never prodded or stroked it or whispered encouragingly to it in the moments before sleep. In all honesty, even the things about him that irritated her could be endearing, for love, as far as Ella was concerned, could not exist without the presence of imperfections. Not just because people couldn’t exist without the presence of imperfections but because love wasn’t two charmed vessels bumping rhythmically until they chimed, rang true. Love had everything to do with the ache of vulnerability. It was Ella’s younger sister, crying, at twelve, with a stained sweatshirt and a crooked part in her hair, the tenderness splitting Ella wide open, unbearable. It was her grandmother overcooking the peas and carrots, and Ella cross, because they weren’t tender-crisp for Thanksgiving, and the crossness not really being about the soft and pale vegetables but about her grandmother no longer being bigger than Ella, and infinitely more capable, and showing Ella how things should be done. It was about being cross that her grandmother’s vision was going, and cross that she got tired now, and couldn’t time it so all the dishes were cooked and relatively warm in the same brief window where a quick benediction could bring their forks to mouths in unison. Ella didn’t want to be the one who cared most about things turning out just so; she didn’t want the spot on the silk tablecloth from India to tear at her, a reminder of how everything was becoming less perfect, devolving toward incoherence and loss. The spot on the tablecloth was Gemma’s crooked part, was Jill’s dirty fingernails, was Bryn’s forced grin and unfunny joke, was Alix’s future crow’s-feet and tea-stained teeth. It was love as anticipation of loss, it was love as shared burden of pain and embarrassment. It was pain transformed into gratitude, for without the ache, a stained tablecloth was merely flawed, merely unlovely, but the ache was like a caress on her grandmother’s wrinkled cheek, a comb straightening the crooked part. Slowly Ella rose and opened the bathroom door.
· 25 ·
It was spring and it had been six weeks since Jill’s move. Ella had a book she thought Bryn would like, and she e-mailed him
, said she might bring it by sometime. He said that would be fine and he had a little something to give her, too. She didn’t go. It just seemed like, once work with her new client, Nancy, was done for the day, it was easier to go home, or to get things for dinner, or take care of that phone call, whatever. Bryn was fine. Probably.
And then one day Ella felt uneasy and she tried to put her finger on what it was. Hadn’t she done everything right? Hadn’t she been professional? Hadn’t she been sympathetic, supportive? A friend? Wasn’t that what he had needed? And then it occurred to her she had done what was safe, which wasn’t necessarily the same thing as what was loving. She had felt so proud that she had kept herself under such tight control, and now it seemed that it hadn’t been anything nearly so admirable, for the veneer of will had been girded by fear. She had held him at arm’s length, that was what she had done. She had determined he didn’t want or need anything more from her without trying to find out if that was actually so. It was done, and Ella grieved. And then, she decided, she could still apologize, which was a terrifying thought, all of the risk without any of the reward, for his need was now gone.