by Julie Hilden
Then, as the woman holds the blade against my neck, Ilan starts to finger her, softly at first, then harder and harder. I can’t see his two fingers holding her clitoris in their thin vise – but I can imagine them exactly.
I know the way his fingers slip around slightly, skewing off their motion as she becomes wet. I know how much it frustrates him. I know he is touching her now in just the way he likes to touch me, when he wants to make me come quickly: the fastest, the most effective way he knows. The two fingers, the fast rubbing, the helpless response – I know them. well. But as always what I thought was mine, only mine, is not mine at all.
She lifts her head slightly, loses contact with my throat. ‘Keep the blade down,’ he cautions her. ‘Keep it down, or I’ll stop.’
She nods. He fingers her harder. He’s getting to her, I can tell. I imagine she’d pant with arousal if she could – but of course she cannot, for she still must hold the blade. As Ilan moves his fingers harder and faster, the blade scratches my throat. I can tell that the woman doesn’t intend to cut me, but in her pleasure, she squirms into it.
‘Keep it down,’ he says to her again, in a low, serious voice. ‘Keep it touching her throat.’
The sting of the cut begins to spread outward from the line she draws on my neck. It’s still just a trace, I can feel it is only superficial, but the pain is soft and warm and sharp, like a poison honey.
I watch Ilan get the distant look of concentration he always gets when he focuses on increasing his fingers’ speed. And I feel her press the blade into my neck just a degree harder – because Ilan wants her to, and because right now she’ll do anything he wants, as long as he does not stop touching her. I know how compelling he can be; how with touch, he convinces.
Suddenly the woman draws back a little, increasing the space between the blade and my throat. I anticipate that she’ll lunge for my neck, or perhaps simply place the blade carefully, to make a deliberate cut. Pressing the blade down once, forcefully, might be enough – and it could happen so fast that Ilan could not stop her, even if he wanted to.
I watch her, waiting. But instead she carefully sits back, removes the razor blade from her mouth, and places it on the nightstand.
Visibly annoyed, Ilan puts the fingers with which he has touched her in his mouth; opening his lips, he skates the fingertips over the ridge of his bottom teeth, and looking at her, he licks them. She shudders with arousal.
‘It’s not over yet,’ he tells her. He lifts the razor blade, its silver shine darkened with my blood, and offers it to her. ‘Come back and finish what you started.’
‘No, that’s enough. You can hurt her, but I’m not going to help you. Do you ever let her speak?’
‘I let her speak all the time, and even when she doesn’t speak, I still listen.’ He pauses. ‘Now get out. If you can’t keep your promise, I’d like you to leave.’
She dresses quickly and departs – angry, contemptuous, relieved.
We are alone. At the end we are always alone. This is supposed to be the end – the very end, it occurs to me. But it feels unfinished – the promise, whatever it was, unkept.
Ilan unties me slowly. The cords have marked my skin; red lines remain on my wrists and ankles. I have such fair skin that everything marks me.
I go into our bathroom to clean and bandage the cut on my neck. The sting of the Mercurochrome echoes the original sting of the cut’s infliction. I place a white gauze pad over the cut and affix it there with adhesive tape. Then I put on the white shirt I was wearing earlier. I think of taking the gag off, but I do not.
I leave the shirt open as I look in the mirror. Though the cut on my throat is masked by its bandage now, the light scars on my arms from Ilan’s previous cutting – or, rather, from my own cutting, with his hand over mine – are still visible. My unbuttoned cuffs fall back to reveal them, their white traces on my fair skin like lines in wax.
The delicate scars strike me as practice, practice for something that has yet to occur: the imprecise pencil sketches that precede the completed painting – with its thick, precise, final application of paint.
Who am I, I think as I look in the mirror, and when did this start?
Ilan walks into the bathroom to stand behind me. As soon as I see his face in the mirror, he says, ‘It’s over. It’s all over.’
He reaches around me to button up my shirt, fasten my cuffs and remove the gag. Then he turns me around and holds me to him, as if I had been hurt by someone else entirely, and having saved me from that terrible man, he is comforting me now.
‘It was the last time,’ he says. ‘I promise.’
‘I am glad,’ I say dubiously.
‘You don’t believe me?’
‘Why should I? I could have died there. She was the one who decided I wouldn’t, not you.’
‘Well, that’s not quite true. We can talk about that. I think you have the wrong impression. Do you want to have dinner, Maya?’ he asks me nervously.
How long has it been since I have seen him nervous, uneasy? Even with the actor he was only jealous, angry – not vulnerable this way. He finally knows he could lose me – I think he does, at least.
‘We could go someplace nice,’ he offers a second later.
‘Sure,’ I say. ‘We haven’t gone anyplace nice for a while.’
‘This was the last time,’ he repeats.
I only shrug. ‘Where do you want to go to dinner?’ I ask him.
We choose a small, dimly lit Japanese restaurant a few blocks from the loft. At dinner Ilan feeds me, slipping small, fat dumplings into my mouth with slim metal chopsticks that he handles deftly. We barely speak throughout the meal.
We share a wooden platter of sashimi. In my mouth, each piece feels for a moment like a second tongue.
For dessert, I order green tea ice cream and like that it is bitter. I feel it melt across my tongue, sticky and viscous and strong.
When we’ve finished, we linger at our table and talk of what we’re writing, not of what he has just done. He tries to sound happy about my success – suggesting more actors to interview, other secrets they might hold.
I can barely listen, though. I know this is the moment when I should leave him. I should carefully explain the reasons – reasons that should, anyway, be all too evident by now – and then I should present my decision.
I am close, but I can’t quite do it. The feeling is powerful, and yet hard to explain. I had thought, when we married, that our marriage would be a house, twisted and crooked but solid, that I could live in all my life. Now I hesitate, waiting on its threshold, unable to close the door.
Back at the loft, Ilan grabs my shoulder and says urgently, ‘Why won’t you talk to me, Maya? I know you’re thinking things you won’t tell me.’
‘This whole time, were you ever scared I’d leave you?’ I ask him. ‘You just go further and further. Did you ever think you’d lose me?’
‘I knew you wouldn’t leave,’ he says, and my heart sinks: is he right? ‘You would never be able to be with anyone else,’ he tells me confidently. ‘Neither could I. For us, it’s for life. You know that, don’t you?’
‘I can leave.’
‘No, I don’t think you can. But we can end this. Things can go back to normal.’
I only snort and say to him nastily, ‘I doubt it.’
I don’t know why I can’t help him with this; it’s almost as if some part of me wants it never to stop.
Ilan leads me into the bedroom. He reaches under our bed and takes out a metal box and places it on the bedspread. Then he opens it, and hands me a package covered in soft cloth.
I open it gingerly, for I feel how heavy it is, and there it is – the gun: small and silver and seemingly delicate, but heavy in my hand, its cold weight both familiar and strange.
It’s only an object,’ he reassures me. ‘Nothing magic, nothing we can’t overcome. It’s going to be yours now, not mine. We can keep it for protection. We’ll drive upstate some weekend an
d I’ll teach you how to shoot.’
He shows me how to load it, how to work the safety. Then, while it is still loaded, he hands it to me. I point it at him. Then I take the safety off, the way he showed me. As my life with him has taught me, anything is possible.
‘You’re kidding, right?’ But he has an edge to his voice.
‘It’s only an object,’ I tell him. ‘Don’t be scared.’
He puts his hand on the barrel and brings it slowly down. I don’t resist him. He takes the gun from me, replaces it in the box, and slips it deep underneath the bed again.
‘I’m willing to do whatever’s necessary for us to stay together,’ he says quietly. ‘I just need you to tell me what that is.’
‘The gun isn’t the only issue,’ I tell him. ‘It’s everything. We’re past the point where we could solve it. The woman you brought here, what did you ask her to do? Was she really going to kill me?’
As I finally voice the question, I feel almost as if I am awakening from a dream, unable to believe that what we’ve done could have been real.
‘No,’ he says slowly. ‘She was just going to go to the edge.’
‘If she’d made a mistake, I would have died. You could have killed me. You might have loved me once, Ilan, but you don’t love me now.’
‘Of course I do. Since the day we met I’ve been obsessed with you, and you know that, Maya. I love you just the same as before, don’t you see that? Maybe even more, because now I know what you’re willing to do for me.’
‘I love you too,’ I tell him – and it is the truth, I know that as I say it. ‘But I still don’t think you can ever change.’
‘I’ll show you,’ he promises.
* * *
After our conversation, Ilan and I begin to seem, at least from the outside, almost like a normal married couple – our life full of ease, devoid of outward sorrow.
I interview another actor, find out another confidence – it is easy, since now the subjects are strangely eager to divulge them to me. Believing I will find their secrets out anyway, the interview subjects at least want to be able to try to charm me into writing a favorable piece.
Ilan begins work on an article too – about the long-standing claims of an affair between the mayor and his aide. The rumors have gained some new credibility now that the aide has been fired and the mayor has a new girlfriend. Ironically, there are some rumors that they played S&M games together, which Ilan will doubtless repeat in the article as if, to him, they are shocking.
To prove a point to me, I think – to prove that he has changed – he is writing the piece by himself; he does not even ask me to look at it before he submits it. I do not see it until it is in print, and when I do, I tell him, truthfully, how good I think it is, and so does his father. For once, his father’s compliment means something to him – means a great deal.
Ilan seems content in our new life. Yet one thing troubles me: he sometimes seems strangely preoccupied, distant. At movies, I look over and see him in rapture. If I whisper something, he does not hear. He is more alone in his thoughts than I have ever seen him, as if he is deciding something without me.
He sleeps unusually late – so when I rise, rather than rising with me, he only ducks his head down beneath the covers, into the warm space our bodies’ heat has left. It reminds me of how I used to sleep to escape him, and I wonder if he too feels the need to escape something – perhaps our odd normality, or his uncharacteristic fidelity.
After a few weeks, we begin to have sex again, but only rarely, and in only the most ordinary way. We do so as if our bodies are fragile.
One night Ilan slides away from me, carefully reaches inside me, and adeptly, painlessly, he pries my diaphragm out.
‘The child,’ he says. ‘It’s time.’
‘Okay,’ I breathe at him.
For the first time since one foolish night in college, there is nothing protecting him from me, or me from him.
‘I can feel your cervix,’ he whispers.
‘I can feel you in me,’ I whisper back.
And with nothing between us, we couple. He moves on top of me. My arms hook under his shoulders; my breasts press against his chest. My legs hold him to me; my arches are fitted, once again, to his curved calves. As his narrow hips twist him farther inside me, he rises up on his strong arms and kisses me deeper too.
This is our marriage as I always wished it to be – I feel how it could have been all this time. Our sex that night feels very intimate, almost disturbingly so, and I realize how little emotion has gone into it for so long, how different being aroused is from being moved.
It makes me wonder if there is a lost happiness inside me from years ago, sealed off, immaculate, that could someday be born in a child. I wonder if Ilan and I could change after all, if a child could change us, change the deadly pattern we have followed like a plan or destiny.
I remember how I used to believe secretly, especially when we first married, that what would end my arrangement with Ilan would be my pregnancy. The writing room, I thought, would someday become a child’s room, and the trysts would end. With our little daughter playing in the loft, Ilan could never bring the women home.
Over time, I had forgotten how much I wanted this child. But somewhere underneath, I still did. Now I feel the wanting again – starkly there, a pure force. Each time we have sex without contraception, and we do so many times in the weeks that follow, it seems to sharpen.
I even begin to dream of children – though they are never delivered naturally, only by cesarean. Always, I am cut open, and blood seeps out of the cut and is stanched. Always, the babies bloom like flowers from the tuliplike white shells that surround them as they are lifted from my sundered womb. The child – Ilan’s child, dark-haired and pale, real and otherworldly – is lifted out in her white sac. A scalpel opens the sac, and I touch our daughter.
Again and again we try to conceive, as if conception would break the pattern, as if this tiny new life would give us new lives too.
Maybe it is that way, sometimes, for other people, but it is not that way for us. Twice, my period arrives exactly on the day it is scheduled to come. The only difference is that this time, I cry at the sight of the blood.
Ilan reassures me that it’s only been a little over two months – I’ll get pregnant soon – but I think he sees the blood as I do: as a bad portent. Rather than being graced with a child, it seems we will only have more of the blood that lately has been everywhere. It is as if blood is seeping out of the sides of our lives; as if our lives themselves are dying.
Nevertheless, we keep trying. Spring coaxes out all the mothers, or the nannies, in the neighborhood, with their babies in their jaunty strollers, and I see how tired yet happy they all look. For our second anniversary, Ilan gives me a machine with which we can listen to the baby’s heartbeat when it arrives, and I give him a dwarf rabbit in a cage, telling him that the baby will like it too.
As I wait to see if my next period will come, I watch Ilan closely for signs of the transformation he has promised me. And he does act as if he’s changing – he is romantic, caring, tender toward me all the time, in a way he rarely has been before.
It should make me feel hope, I know, but I feel an irrational dread instead. I fear that Ilan is not changing: he is merely holding off. However much he speaks about it, I still wonder whether he truly wants a baby, wonder how he is tolerating our current monogamy.
Secretly, I begin to believe that he may be imagining something he can do that will be so bad, I will have no choice but to leave him. But I wonder what could possibly be so bad as that, when everything that has come before has not been enough to convince me.
I fear what will come, and at the same time I want it to happen, so that at least everything will be over. I know I should leave – preempt this final blow – but I am too frozen to do so, and since Ilan has tried so hard to keep his promises, I don’t know how I could explain my leaving. He has been perfect, the perfect husband.
<
br /> Months of trying to conceive pass, until we are well into the fall, and I am feeling desperate for a child. I almost forget the feeling of suspicion and dread that haunted me, so absorbed am I in my worries about when I will be pregnant. Each time my period comes, I cry. I had not known just how much I wanted a child until I began to try to have one.
One day in October, in order to distract myself, I go into the office for a while. I chat with an editor for hours, and then finally sit down to work. But when I do, I realize I have forgotten an important disk, and I return to the loft in a taxi, shielding myself from the rain and wind. From outside, I can see that all the curtains have been drawn.
The first floor rolls by as the elevator quietly rises. As I cross our threshold, I hear a door banging in the wind and feel a draft of cold air. My first thought is that a window is open and I must shut it; a storm is beginning, and the draft will only increase.
‘Ilan?’ I call out, but he doesn’t answer. I intuit and I fear, my heart quickening, that there is a woman here. I am home hours earlier than I said I would be. It is as if I am back at the summerhouse, about to look through the fan – about to see her.
I see it first out of the corner of my eye, and then, in dread, I turn to see it directly. On the white wall is a single, partial handprint in blood, smeared in its imprinting, like a child’s print on curling construction paper to record the size of his hand.
Ilan is on the leather couch just below it. His dark eyes are closed. Blood covers his sliced wrists, running in trails down their sides. The cuts are deep, directly on the vein, the kind he told me would surely kill.
He must have put his wrists up to his face at some point, because there are streams of blood caked on his eyebrows and eyelashes, too, and blood has dried in his hair in odd, dark clumps. It stands up in places as if mussed from sleep.
On the floor, the printed swoosh of a Nike logo is the only relief from the blood footprints.
I kneel down and hold him, hold his wrists as if I can close them now. A great sob comes out of me. The bedroom door keeps banging senselessly in the wind.