Sorrow

by Tiffanie DeBartolo

  I glanced down at the ground and swore I could see my tears hitting the dirt like raindrops. When I looked back up at October, I saw tears streaming down her face too, and they seemed to be falling in sync with mine, as if she were a mirror of me.

  “Joe—”

  “No. Listen. I remember the sound of the Porsche’s tires screeching and then a loud, dull thud, like a fist hitting a pillow. A second later I watched my brother land on the grassy median that runs through the middle of Miller Avenue.” I inhaled, but I couldn’t get a deep enough breath. “Almost immediately I remember thinking, This is all my fault.”

  October shook her head. Her face was all twisted up.

  “I ran to Sam and pulled on his arm, tried to get him to stand, until someone dragged me away. And I must have passed out then, because the next thing I knew I was lying on the sidewalk with a puffy down jacket under my head, listening to a paramedic tell Ingrid that Sam most likely died instantly. He didn’t suffer. That’s what the guy said. I sat up and saw my mom with her hands over her mouth, making a sound like someone was tearing her limbs off her body. It’s a sound I still have nightmares about.” I wiped my eyes with the sleeves of my fleece. “A bunch of fucking parents and kids from the swim meet had congregated around by then, and they were all gawking and crying and not minding their business like I thought they should. And you know what? If I had to pinpoint it, I would say that was the exact moment I started to disappear. Everyone was busy trying to help my mom, and as soon as I stood up I walked to Sam’s body—he was on a stretcher by then, covered in a plastic sheet next to the ambulance—and I pulled the sheet down to see his face, and despite what the paramedic had said, I was sure Sam had only been knocked unconscious because I didn’t see any blood on him, and that made me believe he was going to wake up and make it to Safeway for his Jell-O. It was explained to me later that Sam had been all broken on the inside, but on the outside he looked like a normal, still-living person who might just be taking a nap. After his death I imagined Sam and I had that in common: being all broken on the inside, while appearing to be normal, still-living people.”

  At this point, my stream of tears had become a violent sobbing. I’d never cried that hard for Sam, and I welcomed the release, imagining years of grief being set free. I could feel the salty sadness melting down my face, and when I was done talking I was lighter, calmer, at peace.

  Sam’s death lived deep in my body, and I’d never felt peace with regard to losing him. But I felt it then. And it felt real.

  October’s big, wild pupils were trained on my face, her expression solemn, sympathetic, hyperalert. I was still leaning against the horizontal tree, still keeping her at a distance, but when I got quiet she moved toward me, and I let her fold herself into my arms, let her rest her head in the curve of my neck, buried my face in her hair.

  “It’s OK,” she said. “You’re OK.”

  She placed her palm on my chest and began petting me as if I were made of fur. She leaned on me, and even though she was so small, she felt heavy. We stood like that a long time. Or maybe only a few seconds. Time was a blur. And at first being that close to her was fine. She was my friend and she was comforting me, and that felt safe, appropriate. But then it shifted. Only a fraction, but sometimes a fraction is all it takes to slip the whole world sideways.

  Suddenly I was awakened to the heat coming from between her legs, pressing into my thigh. I felt her lips resting against my neck, her eyelashes fluttering across my skin like a paintbrush every time she blinked.

  All my senses were alive, and I didn’t want to think anymore; I only wanted to feel. I reached up and put my hands in October’s hair, and it was fur too. I lifted her face, pressed my forehead into hers, closed my eyes, and in that darkness I saw us connected by thin, fuzzy strings of light that kept wrapping around us in big, electric circles, binding us together. I wasn’t completely on psychedelic autopilot though, because I remember struggling not to kiss her. And I remember thinking I don’t have to kiss her, because I was positive it would be just as satisfying to stand there and inhale her. My eyes were still closed, and I took long, deep breaths through my nose. And then I thought, How do I get inside of her? I need to be inside of her. But I didn’t mean fucking. I wanted all of me inside all of her, and I had a notion there might be a zipper somewhere on her body, and if I found it I could climb in and live there for the rest of the night.

  When I opened my eyes, I saw thousands of little gnats flying around us. Real ones, not hallucinations. I wanted to shoo them away, but my hands wouldn’t move from October’s hair.

  She rubbed harder against my leg and then caught herself and tried to pull away, but I didn’t let her go.

  “Joe—”

  Gently, I tilted her head up so that I could see her eyes. I didn’t think I would be able to hear her talking if I wasn’t looking into her eyes.

  Her glassy pupils met mine and she said, “Let’s go back to the cottage.”

  I took her hand and we floated up the hill.

  Inside, I was paranoid that the gnats from outside were all over us and said, “We need to take a shower.”

  She nodded, and we dropped our jackets and shirts on the floor by the table, and our jeans and underwear on the bathroom tile. I turned on the shower and we waited by the tub until the water got warm. Once we got in, our hands had minds of their own.

  The water didn’t feel strange like I thought it would, but October’s wet skin did. She was slippery and unctuous like mercury. Her breasts felt bigger in my palms. Her hands on my dick felt like a warm mouth. The stream from the showerhead above us was a waterfall; the soap on our bodies smelled like the wild fennel that grew all over the trails on Mount Tam, and I was sure I had never wanted to fuck a woman more than I wanted to fuck October then.

  “We can’t,” she kept saying.

  “I know.”

  But when we stepped out of the shower, we didn’t towel off, we went straight to the living room. October tore the comforter to the floor because she said it was covered in germs, and then she fell across the bed. I pulled her to the edge, got on my knees, and went down on her. And that wasn’t something I ever did without being pressured or prompted. It wasn’t something I’d ever been comfortable doing. I didn’t think I was good at it, and it made me feel feeble and awkward. But in that room I was free, and I still wanted to open October up and crawl inside of her, and I think I figured that was my way in. I swore she tasted like cake batter, and part of me thought it would be a beautiful dream to stay down there all night. But right before she came, she pulled me up so that I was on top of her, took my face in her hands, and said, “Joe, gravity makes perfect sense to me now. I can feel the pull of the Earth on my body. I can feel the weight of my spirit inside my body. And it weighs so much more than my physical body. I understand now. Gravity is Earth’s way of keeping our spirits on the ground.”

  I kissed her then for first time all night, certain there was nothing else happening in the entire world but that kiss. I even said those words to her, to which she replied, “Kissing is art. So is fucking. You need to fuck me.”

  She opened her legs and pulled me in, and it did feel like art. It felt like magic too. And religion. And eternity. And even though I was inside her, I could feel her inside me too.

  After we made love, October turned on the room’s old clock radio to a station that played mellow classic rock, and the crackly static of terrestrial broadcasting made the music sound even more mawkish than it already was.

  We lay in bed, talking, listening, and laughing at everything.

  We laughed at the things we saw in the paintings on the wall above the recliners. One was a painting of a mountain range, but I saw a menacing Jesus and October saw a goat man.

  “What’s a goat man?”

  “A man who is half human and half goat, obviously.”

  We laughed.

&n
bsp; The other painting was of a wave about to crash onto a beach, and we both swore we saw the wave moving in slow motion, both thought that once it broke onto the shore the recliner was going to get all wet.

  Hilarious.

  We laughed about the man at the cafe in Willits who used to be a lobster, and how his story all of a sudden seemed plausible.

  We got hungry and ate the miniature lemon pie with our hands. I couldn’t stop laughing about how good it tasted, and October laughed at me laughing.

  We even had a conversation about Cal and the predicament we found ourselves in. On our foggy, drug-induced ride, we both professed our unending love for Cal and came to the conclusion that if he loved us back he would want us to be together.

  “We need to tell him,” October said. “Tomorrow.”

  I nodded and agreed because at the time it made sense—but so did the idea of a man who was once a lobster.

  We kept floating into outer space on the songs, and then we’d come back to Earth, laugh at something else, and float away again.

  “You know what I could really go for right now?” I said after I finished the pie.

  “A beer.”

  I nodded.

  “Told you.”

  We laughed.

  Almost two hours later we thought we were coming down from the high, only to have another wave hit us. I wanted to be inside October again; she was warm and slippery, and my body was so sensitive I almost had to pull out. But then I lost myself in a vision of us being ancient Egyptians, fucking deep in a pyramid, surrounded by torches, and after I came I was so tired I wasn’t sure if we’d just had sex or if I’d hallucinated it.

  Minutes later, as I teetered on the edge of sleep, October gasped and said, “Joe!”

  I half opened my eyes, but they wouldn’t stay that way; words wouldn’t come, and I groaned so she knew I was listening.

  “I forgot to draw you!”

  The radio was playing an old Elton John song, but the last sound I remember hearing before I drifted off into dreamland was the sound of us laughing again.

  When I woke up, October was still asleep and I was hungry. I took a quick shower and went to the lobby for the free continental breakfast. The same lady who checked us in the night before was there, wearing a blue short-sleeved shirt with little American flags all over it. She barked “good morning” through a raspy smoker’s cough and handed me a tray.

  I wasn’t sure what October would want to eat, and I piled the tray with random options—two little boxes of cereal, milk, a banana, a cherry Danish, a bagel, two packets of peanut butter, a handful of bacon that I scarfed down on the way back to the room, and two cups of coffee with half-and-half.

  My head was all messed up, and I didn’t know how I was supposed to act. At first I felt light and alive, still coasting on the euphoria of the night we’d had. But then I made the mistake of looking at my phone while I waited for the bagel to toast. I had a text from Cal that said: How are things? How’s my girl?

  Kill me now, I thought. I was reprehensible, and I wished for bolt of lightning to strike me dead so that I didn’t have to face the consequences of what I’d done.

  October was in the shower when I got back. I sat on one of the recliners, drank my coffee, ate a banana, and considered walking out to the highway and hitchhiking as far away from there as I could get.

  When October came out of the bathroom, her hair was wet, and she was wearing her jeans and a lacy bra that was almost the same color as her skin.

  “Hey,” I muttered, nodding toward the tray of food.

  “Ah. Thank you. I’m starving.”

  She grabbed a sweater from her bag and slipped it on. Then she smeared peanut butter on half of the bagel and came over to the recliner where I was, even though there was an identical one right next to it. She sat down and nestled in beside me while she ate.

  I felt myself freeze up. Went dead inside. I didn’t want to be that close to her, and I almost asked her to move to the other chair, but she noticed the other cup of coffee on the tray and got up to get it.

  I got up too and relocated to the table, where I poured myself a bowl of cereal and pretended I was reading something on my phone while I ate.

  I’m certain it was obvious to October, notwithstanding her gift, that I wasn’t right that morning. But she seemed uncomfortable too, and when she spoke again, her voice was timid.

  “I can’t believe I forgot to draw you.”

  She drank her coffee and finished the bagel, and then she said, “We should head out. I told Rae I’d be home by noon.”

  I packed up my stuff while she packed up hers, and we walked out, stopping in the lobby to give our room key to the old lady in the American flag shirt.

  October wanted to drive, and as she turned onto the highway I leaned my head on the cold, dewy window, closed my eyes, and tried to isolate what I was feeling. The trouble was, I wasn’t feeling anything at all. I was numb. But it was the kind of numbness that felt like pain.

  Feeling nothing can sometimes hurt like hell.

  When we got to Ukiah, October pulled into a gas station and asked me to fill up the tank while she went to the bathroom. It was the first time either of us had spoken since we’d started the drive.

  We drove in silence for a little longer, but near Novato, October said, “Are you going to pretend to be asleep the whole way home, or can we talk?”

  Here we go, I thought. But I didn’t say anything. Once again, I was Mutant Joe.

  October tried to touch my hand, but I pulled it away and started playing Tetris on my phone.

  “Joe, please tell me what’s going on in your head.”

  “Don’t you know?” I snapped. “Aren’t you a mind reader?”

  That agitated her, and she said, “There’s no reason to act like an asshole.”

  “Fine.” I tossed my phone onto the dash and rubbed my face. “You want to know what I’m thinking? I’m thinking about the text I got from your boyfriend this morning. He wants to know how you are. What should I tell him? She’s a little groggy today, but she seemed great last night when I was eating her out on a cheap motel bed?”

  She looked at me and said, “Maybe you should tell him that.”

  “Jesus Christ, October.”

  “So, this is about Chris? You’re acting like this because of Chris?”

  “Don’t you feel even a little bit guilty?”

  “You know I do. But I thought we decided something last night.”

  “What did we decide?”

  “That we’re going to tell him. Today.”

  “Are you fucking kidding me? We were on drugs last night. We can’t tell him.”

  “We have to. It’s the right thing.”

  “Oh, now you want to do the right thing?”

  She glared at me, looked back at the road, then at me again. “Come on, Joe. Life is messy sometimes. And I know that what happened last night probably shouldn’t have, but it did, and it was incredible, and I’m not sorry about that. Besides, technically we didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “I bet Cal would disagree.”

  “Well, no one will ever be able to convince me it’s wrong to listen to your heart. If Chris were in this situation, I’d want him to do the same thing.”

  “I wasn’t listening to my heart last night, I was listening to my cock.”

  I’d hoped that would set her back, but she shook her head and said, “No, you weren’t.”

  She tried to touch my hand again, but I wouldn’t let her.

  “Joe—”

  “No. Pay attention to what I’m about to say. This can’t happen. And if you know what’s good for you, you’ll fire me, kick me out, and forget we ever met.”

  “I have no intention of firing you. You’re too good at your job. If you want out, you’re going to have
to quit.” She reached for my phone because hers was in her bag in the back seat.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Calling Chris.”

  I grabbed the phone before she did. “Are you still high? You’re not calling him! Do you hear me? You’re not going to take him away from me!”

  She turned her head and looked at me fully, for as long as she could before it became dangerous and she had to look back at the road, and I almost thought she was going to pull over so she could stare at me some more.

  The truth of the matter had dawned on her though. “I get it,” she said. “For you, this is a choice. It’s me or him.”

  “Yup,” I said sharply.

  “And you choose him.”

  I nodded. “I choose him.”

  I saw that hurt her. Finally. And my numbness had obviously turned to malice, because I distinctly remember feeling victory over that. I had wanted to hurt her. I wanted her to hate me.

  For the rest of the way, we drove in silence. And when we pulled in to Mill Valley, I said, “Drop me off at Equator.”

  She parked across the street from the coffee shop and said, “Don’t leave. Please. We need to talk.”

  I grabbed my backpack from the back seat. Before I got out of the car, I said, “Don’t tell him. There’s nothing else to talk about.”

  She glared at me. “You don’t get to tell me what to do, Joe. You don’t get to be the only one who has a say in what’s happening between us.”

  “There is no us!” I shouted. “That’s why there’s no point in telling him. This is nothing. And if you hurt him for nothing, then you’re just cruel.”

  I got out of the car, walked across the street and into Equator; only then did I look back to see if she’d driven away.

  She had.

  I didn’t order any coffee—too many people in line. I sat at one of the small tables against the wall of windows and waited for the queue to die down. It was a warm, sunny Sunday, and the place was packed. To my left, a mom was cutting up a waffle for her young daughter. To my right, a couple in yoga clothes were discussing their food allergies with the gravity of a United Nations Security Council meeting. A group of guys in cycling gear were loitering out on the sidewalk with little cups of espresso. Everyone talking and snacking and living the lives they wanted to be living, and I was alone.