Falling Under

by Danielle Younge-Ullman

  I wrap my legs around him and squeeze.

  His lips are hot.

  Hot and thick and moving against mine.

  He kisses me until I am dizzy, until I am past dizzy.

  His mouth moves to my throat, his tongue traces my collarbone. I moan and drag him back up to my lips.

  I am beyond dizzy, I am falling. Oh boy, I should not be kissing this man. I should not be sharing breath with him or feeling his heartbeat. I should not be pulling him closer and letting myself feel that crazy stupid thing people call love.

  I should not be falling in love,

  because love will pull me under.

  Chapter 12

  I am with Lucas. His hair is pale and his eyes blank, the way they always are when he works.

  I pose on the bed of our Belmont Street apartment. I am naked, arms crossed, legs crossed, eyes open.

  Under his hands, a lump of clay begins to resemble me. It is me, but not me. A separate me, distinct for her elegance, her mystery, her beauty.

  His thumb circles to create the contour of an ankle, then a knee, thighs...

  I shudder with want, and then with envy for the beautiful, half-formed other.

  He slices away to reveal a jagged hip bone, then the small of her back, the hint of vertebrae. I breathe faster. He looks, sees it, but his hands stay on her. Perhaps she is better. Yes. She is what he needs, what he thought I was.

  But maybe here, maybe this time I can want him, can make him stay.

  Yes.

  She begins to breathe and then to press against the callused warmth of his hands.

  My skin is burning. I whisper his name. “Please.”

  “Promise?” he says.

  I swallow. “Please?”

  He abandons her, steps toward me, reaches out.

  I lock my eyes to his. I must, I must, or he will disappear.

  He places a fingertip on my elbow, and behind him I see her. The limbs soften, her face dissolves, crumbles.

  He needs me, he has come.

  But the clay behind him is shapeless, is cold, and so am I.

  Even in dreams, I fail.

  Chapter 13

  Aaron Deeter is having the party of the year.

  No parents, indoor pool and sauna, a DJ. It will go all night and the entire school, minus losers, will be there.

  “I’ll die if we can’t go,” Bernadette says. “Martin can get us some weed, but we need to tell our mothers we’re staying at each other’s houses.”

  “Isn’t that kind of an old trick?”

  “We’ll have to risk it. Too bad it’s not your dad’s weekend.”

  “Because he has zero moral authority and doesn’t care what happens to me?”

  “Not true, Mar,” she says. “Well, maybe the moral authority part. Hey, even Faith English is going, and she has the strictest parents in the world.”

  “How?”

  “She said she’s going to a study-focus slumber party.”

  “What, did she spawn from morons?”

  Bernadette sniffs. “That’s not the nicest thing you’ve ever said.”

  “What crawled up your ass?”

  “Never mind. Nothing.”

  ***

  It’s easy to get stoned in a hot tub, and the weed from Martin is excellent stuff. In the sauna it feels even better, though it makes you thirsty. Someone brings beer and chips in there, and you and Bernadette munch and drink and laugh until you can barely breathe.

  You can feel all the molecules in every part of the air. So cool.

  But hot. Too hot to be cool.

  “Which is why I’m going to the pool! Ha HA! I rhyme!” you say to Bernadette.

  “It’s about TIME!” she says, and beams at you.

  “You’re a genius. You wanna come?”

  Some people push the door open and come in. Oh, that cool air is so nice.

  Bernadette looks at the newcomers and gives you the peace sign. “I’m cooool,” she says, and laughs. “I’ll come in a, what’s it called, a minute. In a minute.”

  “’Kay.”

  So sleepy, but the pool is very nice. Cold and floaty and nobody bothers you. Just floating, laughing...

  Finally, your feet and hands feel funny, pruny.

  Proooonnnneeeeee.

  Ha ha.

  They’re so pruney, you have to show Bee.

  Bee is where...?

  Sauna.

  Wait till she sees your feet, your hands...

  You find the door to the sauna, but it is so heavy. Shoulder against it, and then you are in.

  It’s hot, hotter than before.

  And what is that?

  Oh no. Nonononono.

  Something is wrong with Bernadette. She’s melted, she’s red, she has...multiplied!

  Holy cow, Bernadette has two heads, four arms intertwined and...

  FOUR BOOBS? No, no, this can’t be.

  “Mara!” She jumps up.

  “Bee! What’s wrong, what’s wrong! Are you...what the—?”

  Whoa. Holy shit. The other arms and head and boobs are not hers, they belong to Faith English.

  Bernadette is naked, yelling at you. “You’re supposed to be in the pool!”

  “S-sorry.”

  You stand blinking at them, trying to clear your head.

  “Get out!” Bernadette says. “Can’t you see when you’re not wanted?”

  “But...”

  “Get out, get out, get the fuck out! You’re not wanted!”

  Not wanted.

  You go. You go and you run, out the doors, into the yard past clusters of people smiling, singing, having fun. Behind the house is a ravine and you run down into it, away from the yelling, away from all of it.

  Bernadette has never spoken to you like that before, never ever. Worse, actually, because you saw it in her eyes. She hates you.

  And now you’re alone.

  Alone again, probably for good.

  Alone in a bathing suit with bare feet in the woods.

  With a spinning head.

  Well, who cares? You lean on a tree and puke out barbeque potato chips. You stay until everything stops spinning and the ground stops feeling wobbly.

  You get cold.

  Back at the house you find all your clothes except your socks.

  Somebody stole your fucking socks.

  Bastards.

  “You want a beer?”

  It’s Aaron Deeter, with his skier tan and rugby shirt.

  “Have you seen Bernadette?”

  “Think she left. Beer or no?”

  “What the hell—why be sober?”

  Sensation is starting to return and your feet are freezing.

  Aaron hands you a beer.

  “Can I borrow a pair of socks? I lost mine.”

  “Sure,” he says. “Come with me.”

  His bedroom walls are covered with posters of David Wilcox and the Grateful Dead.

  “Here.” He hands you a pair of grey wool socks with blue stripes and you plop down on the edge of his bed to put them on.

  You take long swigs of beer and try not to think of Bernadette screaming that you’re not wanted. But you hear her, over and over, and it hurts. It hurts so much you would do anything to get rid of this pain.

  Bernadette gone.

  Nobody left.

  Except Aaron Deeter, hovering by the doorway to the hall.

  His shoulders are nice and broad and he seems kind of sweet. He has clean socks.

  “Have you ever done it?” you ask him.

  “Done what?”

  “It. Sex. Fucking.”

  His face and neck turn red.

  Cute.

  “Sure,” he says. “Of course.”

  “I haven’t.”

  He leans on the doorframe.

  “Oh,” he says.

  “So...you know what you’re doing then?”

  “Uh...”

  “I mean, d’you sweat and grunt and then come in two seconds?”

  “N
o! Why would you think—?”

  “I’ve just heard that’s what usually happens.”

  “Well, not with me,” he insists.

  “Okay then,” you say, and take a drink. “You want to?”

  “Now?” he says, voice cracking.

  “Aaron, you’re a teenaged guy, you’re not supposed to turn down an offer for sex.”

  “I’m not, I’m not!”

  “Good. Just let me finish this beer.” You lay back, roll on your side, and tip the bottle up. You put the empty bottle on the floor beside the bed.

  “You might want to come in and close the door,” you tell Aaron, who’s still standing, like a doofus, in the doorway.

  “Oh, right. Right.” He closes the door, locks it, and comes to sit on the bed.

  You’re about to lose your virginity to a guy with Spiderman sheets. It would be funny if everything inside didn’t hurt so much.

  You hope it hurts when he does it. You hope it hurts and goes on for a long time and keeps hurting until it drives out the pain of no best friend, no one home, no one to count on.

  Aaron Deeter takes off his clothes and so do you. Music thumps from the speakers outside.

  He sweats and grunts and comes in two seconds.

  He rolls off you.

  “Sorry,” he says.

  You barely felt a twinge.

  Barely felt anything.

  “How soon can you do it again?”

  “Again?”

  “Yeah, again. You can do it again, can’t you? Here, let me help.”

  He will do it again. He will do it until it feels really good or really bad—either will do.

  The second time lasts a little longer and you figure out how to move your hips. After, Aaron goes to check on the party and brings back some tequila shots. The third time lasts too long because you are so drunk and sore now and all you want is sleep, not this beer-breathing, sweaty-smelling horse ramming away at you.

  You wake around 4 a.m. Your throat is dry, your mouth tastes like ass.

  Aaron is gone. You don’t care where or why.

  You can’t stay here. You can’t go to Bernadette’s house.

  Fuck it. You start the long walk home to Mom’s.

  You try to be quiet on the way in, turning the lock slowly, walking on tiptoe to the stairs.

  But you wipe out and yelp and suddenly the lights come on and Mom is at the top of the staircase with a baseball bat in her hand.

  “Don’ shoot, it’s me,” you say, and try to upright yourself.

  “Good Lord. What are you doing here?”

  “People keep asking me that. ‘What are you doing here, get out’,” you mutter. “I live here.”

  Mom puts the bat down.

  “Where is Bernadette?” she says.

  “Dunno.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “She’s gone, Mom. She left.” You start to cry. “Gone! Gone, gone, gone without me. No more Bernadette. Stolen from me.”

  You feel Mom’s feet thumping down the stairs, and she comes to stand below you.

  “Mara!” she snaps.

  “Mm?” sniff, sniff.

  “Do I need to call Bernadette’s parents? Or the police?”

  “No.”

  “Is she in trouble, or did you just have a fight?”

  “No trouble,” you mutter. “She’s probably at home.”

  “Is she drunk too?”

  Uh oh. “Drunk?”

  Mom folds her arms under her chest and shakes her head.

  “I wasn’t born yesterday, young lady. Don’t think you can bullshit me.”

  You hang your head, which feels like the inside of a bongo drum. Another whimper escapes.

  “Oh, go to bed,” Mom says. “You’re disgusting.”

  Chapter 14

  8 a.m.: I stare into space.

  9 a.m.: brush in hand. I’m supposed to be working, but instead I’m brooding. I’m thinking about Hugo—his voice, his mouth—and then Lucas, alive in my dreams last night.

  And my call display shows three calls from Erik, but there are no messages. Erik doesn’t call. Ever. I’m trying not to think about him and now this.

  And what have I got to show for my efforts this morning?

  A blob.

  A distinctly non-geometric, un-Zen-like chartreuse blob on a background of smaller red blobs.

  Christmas Travesty, I should call it, or Christmas Blob. Snotty Nose Blown onto Canvas is another option.

  Pathetic.

  Not only that, but I slept in this morning, and no amount of coffee is going to restore me to productivity today.

  Basically, love is bad for art. Lust too.

  I am jerked out of my morass of self-pity by a sharp tapping sound on my back door. I look out the window and see a stocky middle-aged man in a dark suit standing in my backyard.

  Sal—my unlikely patron and friend.

  I turn the painting around and open the door.

  “Thanks for scaring the crap out of me,” I say.

  “Aw, it’s good for ya,” he says, “besides, it didn’t look like you were doing much.”

  I feel my face flush.

  “Hey, kidding,” he says, then pulls me in for the European two-cheek kiss and simultaneously pinches my butt.

  I pinch him back.

  “Yow!” he says.

  “Hi, Sal.”

  “Hey, babe.”

  No one but Sal has ever called me babe, but somehow coming from him, it works. Sal is a New World man, a second-generation Canadian, a self-made man with expensive shoes, an Alpha Romeo, and the vocal delivery of a construction worker.

  “So, babe, I got your message,” he says. “Whadya got for me?”

  My five recent pieces are stacked on the back wall, but I’d rather he didn’t see today’s work.

  “Let’s go to the kitchen,” I say.

  Once inside, I offer Sal a drink from the bottle of grappa I keep especially for him, but he declines.

  “Too early,” he says. He settles into a chair with his feet planted wide and slaps his hands on his thighs. “Ya got coffee?”

  “Sure,” I say, and try to hide a smile.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Don’t give me that shit, what’s funny?”

  “You really know how to take up a chair, Sal.”

  “You expect me to cross my legs like some kind of fairy?”

  “Hey, I’m fond of fairies—both kinds,” I say, and take the espresso from the freezer.

  “I know, I know. Thing is, my boys need space, they need room to breathe.”

  I glance at his crotch. “Thanks for the visual.”

  “Oh, if it’s visual you want, I can do better.”

  “Don’t even think about it, Sal.”

  He grins up at me with a hand on his belt buckle.

  “Ya sure?”

  “Quite,” I say, and start the espresso machine.

  “Door’s always open.”

  “Don’t you mean the fly?”

  Sal guffaws and slaps his hands on his thighs again.

  I shake my head.

  “It’s good to see you, Sal.”

  “You too.”

  I hand him the coffee and sit down at the table. He studies my face.

  “You okay? You look a little off.”

  “I’m fine, Sal. I’m good.”

  “Tired?”

  “A little.”

  “Okay,” he says, “but I don’t like to see you...you know.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  He doesn’t like to see me falling apart.

  I wasn’t exactly at my best when Sal and I met. Lucas was gone and I was jobless, drunk nightly, unable to paint. Bernadette was worried crazy. My parents, of course, were happy in their lifetime presumption that I was fine. I wasn’t.

  I went to work as the nighttime security guard at a chichi Queen’s Quay condo building where I had lots of time to ponder the screwed-up state of my life and
sip from a flask I kept tucked under the desk. Sal was a slightly annoying resident who came in late and liked to lean on my desk and talk about his girlfriends, his stocks, and the bars he’d been to that night. His visits alleviated the tedium of my job, though, and I started looking forward to seeing him.

  One night someone called in a noise complaint and I found myself in the foyer of Sal’s stunning penthouse. He invited me to join the party, but I refused.

  A week later, he asked me to come up for a drink after my shift.

  I probably should have said no, but two things compromised my common sense: first, I liked him; second, in the brief time I’d spent in his foyer, I’d seen his walls. And his walls were covered, bursting, with unusual and fabulous paintings. The man had incredible taste, or a decorator with incredible taste. Either way, he had a Collection, and I had to get another look at it.

  Turned out it was his taste. His taste, his collection.

  “You’re thinkin’ I’m an unlikely collector,” he said when I asked him how he got interested in art.

  I was tipsy and therefore blunt. “It doesn’t really fit with your image.”

  He leaned back in his leather chair, loosened his tie and smiled.

  “My first wife, the best one, somehow she loved me even though she said I acted like a thug. A rich thug, I told her.” He cleared his throat. “Anyways, she was artsy-fartsy. She’d drag my ass to museums and galleries and shit. I was bored but I felt so lucky to have her, I’d do anything. Then I got into it. We bought some stuff and I thought, shit, this is a big investment, I better learn somethin’. Plus I didn’t like my lady knowing more than me, ya know? So I did some research, went to the library, talked to some people, got into it.”

  “Wow.”

  “So now she’s gone, but I got the passion.”

  “And the collection.”

  “Yeah. That too.”

  “What happened to her?”

  He sighed, then leaned forward and refilled my glass. “Ask me somethin’ else, babe, I don’t like that question.”

  That I could understand.

  “Or maybe I can give you the full tour? I can tell you’re dyin’ to look around.”

  “That’d be great.”

  The pieces on his walls made me ache, made me feel high, crazy, reckless.

  And Sal started to stand closer to me, to touch my shoulder or my waist as he guided me from one work of art to the next. Standing next to him, his breath tickled my neck.