One Life With Him

by CD Reiss

  I’d been dominant because I knew myself. In knowing myself, I had the confidence to bind and hit and hurt, because I’d know when to stop.

  When we got home from the hospital, Monica and I eventually made love again. Still, I wasn’t myself. I was mostly me and partly someone else. An alien piece of meat had been lodged in me, and I didn’t know what it would do. Would it beat right for me or for the person it was meant for? Would it skip a beat at the sight of some strange woman? Would it break over a different past or a lost present? I kept imagining it jumping out of me like a frog from a frying pan, slapping on the kitchen floor with a splat, and beating on the tiles while squirting yellow plasma. Once, I dreamed it bounced out of me and landed in the pool to swim with Sheila in a trail of curly red blood. I laughed in my dream, but when I woke up, I ran to the bathroom mirror to make sure I had a scar instead of a hole.

  I’d felt like a foreigner in my own skin, dragging around a sack of muscle and bone held together with medicine. Even after the doctor appointments dwindled and life returned to something that looked like normal, I hadn’t adjusted to being two people in one body, and my wife knew it. She was drifting away like a bottle bobbing in the surf, tide by tide. She wasn’t Jessica. She’d never leave for someone else, but she’d leave with distraction and indifference. At the thought of the lost intimacy, I felt a blade of ice cold rage so thick, I had no room for a reaction or an emotion. My head was clear. The anger had pushed out all the clutter. She was mine to lose, but she was mine.

  Chapter 51

  MONICA

  I missed two things.

  I missed my freedom, and I missed bondage.

  I was caught in a nether region where I couldn’t come and go as I pleased, and I didn’t feel protected.

  I was being unfair, and I knew it. What man could be expected to keep up Jonathan’s intensity for any length of time? No human could be a raging lion after having their heart ripped out.

  So though we burdened each other with many things, I never burdened him with my longing for my dominant Jonathan. That man was gone, so I loved the man who’d replaced him. He was everything I’d almost lost in that fucking nightmare of a hospital. He was funny and thoughtful, gracious and wise. He was still the best lover I’d ever laid my hands on.

  “Hello?” Jonathan’s voice was thick with sleep. The sun was just coming up over Caracas, tainting the sky brown.

  “I’m coming back early,” I said as I walked across the tarmac toward the Gulfstream.

  Jacques waved. His copilot for the day took my rolling suitcase and stowed it underneath the plane.

  “Really?” Jonathan sounded as awake as if he’d had a gallon of coffee. “I have something for you.”

  “But I have to go right into the studio,” I said. “Jerry wants me to work on ‘Forever’ for this sampler idea he’s—”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “I’ll walk in the door the same time as if I’d stayed here. I just wanted you to know what I’m doing with your plane.”

  “Well, thank you.”

  “Don’t be mad.”

  “Goddess,” he said, and I heard something in his voice I hadn’t heard in half a year. It stopped me on the steps up to the fuselage door.

  “Yes?” I was shocked by the small sound of my own voice.

  “I don’t give a fuck about the plane.”

  “It’ll be fast. I’ll be home by lunch.”

  “Text me where you’re going to be.”

  “Why?”

  “What?”

  Fuck. I’d promised myself I’d never forget what Jessica had done to him, yet there I was, serial-bailing and giving him attitude about it. “It’s the same place as always,” I said, backpedalling as I snapped my seat belt. “I’m fine.”

  “Maybe you are,” he said, then his tone changed to sound more pensive. “Maybe you are.”

  He hung up, and I was left with an oddly shaped emptiness.

  Jonathan loved me. I never questioned that. His love was in everything he did. I heard it in his voice and felt it when he fucked me. Even when he took me like a stranger and reveled in hurting me, there was love in his abandon.

  I also didn’t question his commitment in what he’d thought were the last moments of his life. I was worthy of his love. I’d earned it, and he’d earned mine. We’d earned the easy part and the hard part. Most couples don’t face life-and-death tests of their love until they’re old and grey, or until they had children in middle school, but he and I had been put through the fire unprepared and come out stronger.

  Yet we’d missed the basics, and they weighed on me. I constantly forgot that we loved each other because of the daily misunderstandings and confusions.

  Like buying our house, which had been a series of misspoken desires, concessions, and bitter words left unspoken. Like water flowing downhill, it had been chosen via the path of least resistance. I didn’t even remember choosing our real estate agent. I just remembered her showing up.

  “So,” she had said pertly. Her name was Wendy. It suited her. “I understand you want to get moving on this before Mrs. Drazen goes to Paris?”

  I sat next to Jonathan on his couch, frozen in shock. “Paris? I didn’t say I was going.”

  “You’re going. It’s a huge opportunity.” He’d turned back to the agent, who wore a decal of a smile. “She’s the opening act for—”

  “Nobody,” I interrupted. “I’m not going. So anyway, no.”

  Like any real estate agent in Los Angeles, Wendy had been perky, perfect coiffed, and blandly unthreatening. She’d come highly recommended for her discretion, her taste, and her ability to seamlessly manage massive amounts of money.

  “What kind of house are you looking for?” she asked.

  “Kind of house?” I asked, stalling.

  Jonathan had been out of the hospital for a month, and we’d spent it managing a heart transplant. Appointments. Doctors. Medical procedures I didn’t understand. Big pills in little boxes. A diet and exercise regimen that made me shudder. And Jonathan himself, my husband, felt shaky and unsure. I woke up most mornings feeling unqualified to live my life.

  “Era,” Jonathan said impatiently. I heard the rasp in his breath. It was late afternoon, and he needed to rest. “Something modern. Fifties. I’m sick of leaded glass.”

  “I, uh—”

  “Did you have a neighborhood in mind?” Wendy interrupted me, making eye contact with Jonathan.

  “The hills,” Jonathan said. “Beechwood, maybe.”

  “Really, I think the ocean—”

  “Great. How many bedrooms? Or do you want to go by square feet?”

  “Big,” Jonathan told her. “This house is cramped.”

  “Cramped?” I interjected. I thought his house was palatial, but I’d grown up with eleven hundred square feet, and I didn’t like being bulldozed.

  They both looked at me, and I felt ashamed. Then I felt ashamed for feeling ashamed. I wasn’t embarrassed because Jonathan and I disagreed on the style or size of the house; I was embarrassed because we hadn’t discussed it.

  “Wendy, I’m sorry,” I said, standing. “We’re obviously not ready to discuss this. Can we get you to come back some other time?”

  “Of course!” she’d chirped and was gone in a flutter.

  “What was that?” Jonathan asked.

  “We weren’t ready to meet with someone about this. Not until we can agree on the basics. I didn’t…” I drifted a little then came to the truth. “I’ve never bought a house before. I’ve never met with an agent. I didn’t know what was expected.”

  He’d looked tired, as usual. He’d always looked tired in those first months, which was why I didn’t talk to him about anything important. I’d tried harder after the non-meeting with Wendy. I agreed to stuff and put my foot down on others, and we bought a big fat compromise of a house that I lived in but didn’t love.

  I hadn’t wanted to exhaust him. I thought it was the best way to help him get bett
er. I hadn’t had a period in months from the combination of anxiety and Depo-Provera. But when I got sick and thought I might be pregnant, I didn’t tell him because I didn’t want to start an argument about children. No stress. That was all I wanted.

  When he’d gotten back from the hospital, he couldn’t really walk. He just didn’t have it in him. He had a staff of people and a huge family, so he didn’t need me, yet I’d been surprised by how much he did need me. He needed to talk, and in those conversations, he laid out our future like architectural plans, pointing at the lines and angles I needed to see. I rarely disagreed with him. He was prone to frustration with his body and the exhaustion of small tasks, and I was still in a stunned state. I was functional, competent, and emotionally broken. But I’d thought I was handling our situation well. I was the picture of maturity and capability. I even laughed sometimes, when it seemed appropriate.

  “Children,” he’d said one night, on his back in the bed. The lights were out, and the flat latte color of the Los Angeles night sky lit the room. “When can we start?”

  “You mean start having sex again? Your doctor said anytime.” I leaned over him, half-sitting. His bandage had just been taken off, and the scar on his chest was still pink.

  “Fucking with intention.”

  “I’ve never known you to fuck without it.”

  He smiled and touched my lower lip. “When does that shot wear off?”

  My Depo-Provera shots rendered me infertile and nearly menstruation free for two to four months at a time. “Right after Valentine’s Day, I guess.”

  “No more shots.”

  “Jonathan, I… I think we should talk about that again.”

  His expression became wary.

  I froze, afraid of upsetting him. “I want children. You have to understand it’s… this is hard to say.” I touched his chest, brushing my fingers over the scar. “Everything seems so precarious.”

  “You’ll stop feeling like that once I can walk more than ten fucking feet. Soon.”

  “Let’s revisit this then. Please. I just need to know you’re strong enough to handle running out in the middle of the night for chili chocolate ice cream.”

  “Who makes that? It sounds disgusting.”

  “It’s delicious.”

  He pulled me to him, and I laid my head just below his chest. His heart beat in my ear. It sounded perfectly normal, a functioning organ capable of sustaining his body until something else broke. But it wasn’t beating with life. It was a ticking clock, and it would stop too soon.

  I’d gotten another shot in early February. I reasoned that he didn’t need to know. I’d put him off. I couldn’t do it much longer, but we were taking it one day, and one white lie, at a time. I’d need the next in June or so, and we could revisit then. Or not.

  But it always came up, even when it didn’t. When we talked about the house, we needed a bigger room just for the elephant, and after I dismissed Wendy the realtor, the animal only got bigger.

  He’d leaned on the arm of the couch and crossed his ankles, the same posture as the first night I’d gone to see him at his office, when I threatened him with a lawsuit. “Whatever we get should be the exact opposite of what I had before you were in my life.”

  “I think that’s reactionary.”

  “That’s a big word that means nothing.”

  “Don’t build us on top of what you did or didn’t do before. How’s that for a definition?”

  Who were we, standing half a room apart with our limbs crossed? How did any of this matter? How had it become important? If he wanted to pass the next ten years in a big modern house overlooking Los Angeles, who was I to say otherwise? Wasn’t that a small price to pay to be with him?

  “I want you to go to Paris,” he said. “You’ve never been.”

  “Who’s going to watch you if I go? Who will make sure you don’t forget to do what you’re supposed to?”

  “If you want children to take care of, that can be arranged.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Then you don’t need to baby me.”

  And that had been that. We got a house by default. The style he wanted and the location I wanted, because on paper, it seemed like a compromise. It had been more of a treaty.

  Chapter 52

  MONICA

  I ate a lunch of chicken fingers and half a radicchio salad in the engineering room. I shot the shit with Jerry and Deshawn. We talked about promoting the sampler, getting beer thrown at me in Caracas as a sign of respect, the roaches in the hotel, the excellent food. Half an hour later, we were back to work. Executives drifted in and out to listen to me. Eddie even showed up for fifteen minutes.

  My phone was facedown on the baby grand piano; its sheen let me know when the glass lit up with a call or text. But I couldn’t take a text. We were trying to get the last two words of the song right. Forever fuck. It had to sound like a powerful curse but be muddled, and on key, and gravelly and transcendent, all at the same time. My feet hurt, and my brain and eyes were so exhausted, the foam egg-carton pattern on the walls seemed inverted.

  I couldn’t possibly take a text, even from my husband.

  Only when I was done did I check it.

  —I want to see you—

  The text had come twenty minutes earlier, while I was in the middle of recording “Forever.” The song was based on a poem I’d written while Jonathan was in the hospital, and I had been so angry, I imagined myself in an eternal, raging battle with death.

  —Where are you?—

  Ten minutes later.

  —You were supposed to be out two

  hours ago—

  I scrolled through Jonathan’s texts. Jerry and the sound team packed up. I was going to have to deal with my husband. I had my career, and he knew what it entailed. He didn’t have the right to harass me while I was recording.

  I took a deep breath and called him from outside. “Hi.” The parking lot behind the studio smelled like sweaty asshole and stale cigarettes.

  “You’re out?” Jonathan asked.

  “Just finished up.”

  “I have a surprise for you when you get home.”

  Home. A house on the beach that already had too many painful memories. Medications. Falls. Fights. He’d been sick and pissed. I loved him. I’d never leave him, but some days, I felt as though we were coming apart at the seams.

  “The guys are going to dinner. I’m a little hungry,” I said. The silence seemed eternal, and though I imagined him staring into space with the phone at his ear, when I heard a car door slam, I knew he hadn’t been inactive. “Jonathan, it’s—”

  “Stay there.”

  “Not tonight, I—”

  “This sounds to me like you’re telling me no.” The calm, arrogant dominance in his voice was like a slap on the ass, because I hadn’t heard it in six months. “For the sake of clarity, goddess, when it comes to me, that’s not in your vocabulary. I don’t hear it.”

  I said, “Yes, sir,” with all the sarcasm of a spoiled adolescent and immediately regretted it. Luckily, my husband had already hung up.

  Chapter 53

  JONATHAN

  This shit stopped tonight.

  I parked in the back and went into the building. A couple of doors were ajar, and I could hear the laughter and mumblings of men. I heard her three doors down, her voice humming, piano strings getting hammered one by one, slowly.

  I slipped into the engineering room and looked at her through the window.

  She sat at the keyboard, scribbling in a notebook, then considering the keys again. Her back was straight, neck as long and white as a swan’s, her ebony hair braided and twisted onto the top of her head. A goddess. She’d waited. I didn’t know what would have happened with us if she hadn’t.

  The engineering booth was empty and dark, and I watched her like a movie. I saw her bite a fingernail. Close her eyes. Tap a finger then burst out with a word in one long note. It was you. She hit three keys, then three different keys,
sang the word again in a different register, and wrote it down.

  I felt as if I hadn’t seen the length of her neck in months, nor the delicacy of her wrists. I knew every inch of her skin, every curve of her body, yet that day, when she’d said no to me, I anticipated the prospect of showing her why that wouldn’t wash any longer with no little delight.

  I went back into the hall, closing the engineering room door.

  Chapter 54

  MONICA

  His scent cut through the dank musk of the studio before the sound of the door closing reached my ears.

  “Hi,” I said without looking up from my notes. “Can we go meet those guys? Jerry wants to lay out a plan for Wednesday.” His fingertips grazed the back of my neck, and I shuddered, closing my eyes halfway.

  “No,” he whispered.

  “I’ll meet you at home later if you want.”

  “Stand up.”

  I looked up. He stood over me, hand at the back of my neck, face broaching no arguments. I didn’t know what my expression said, but my mind went utterly dark for a second. I stood, reaching for my bag. He gently took it and laid it back down. I started to object but didn’t get past the first syllable before he had his fingers to my lips.

  “Unbutton your shirt,” he said.

  We gazed deeply at each other for longer than usual, and I knew even before my fingers touched my shirt that he wasn’t interested in a standard sweet encounter. He brushed his thumb over my lips, across my jaw, and lodged it under my chin, forcing me to look at the dusty fluorescent lights. I undid my buttons in a businesslike fashion while he spoke.