Falling Under

by Danielle Younge-Ullman

  Do you fuck a man for the sake of his art collection?

  Of course not.

  Do you fuck him for his excellent taste?

  Probably not.

  Do you fuck him for the artistic soul beneath the macho facade? Because you’re drunk and lonely and have nothing better to do?

  Possibly.

  Do you keep fucking him because you like him, even though he’s fat and bald and has at least three other girlfriends not to mention an ex-wife and a daughter your own age?

  Yep.

  For a while you do. And for a while you’re almost happy, if the absence of total misery and a good fuck to look forward to equal happiness, which sometimes they do.

  Then Sal, while helping me move to a new apartment, found out I painted.

  “Whoa, babe,” he said. “What’re you doin’ with all this? You do this?”

  “I used to.”

  “Used to, bullshit! What’s the matter with you?”

  “Sal, I can’t. I can’t talk about it. Can you tape this box?”

  “We’re not done talkin’ about this.”

  “Okay. Another day though, okay?”

  A couple of months later, Sal was still bugging me.

  “What are you working on? Why aren’t you painting? What the fuck you doin’ workin’ security? You gonna let it go to waste, babe, or are you gonna put your balls on the line?” Etcetera.

  I ducked and dithered and stonewalled until I was exhausted.

  One day, I lay on his satin-covered bed in a post-coital, alcoholic stupor, and he started in again.

  “You’re a fuckin’ mess, aren’tcha?” he said.

  “Hunh?”

  “About the art. You used to look at it like you wanted to eat it or somethin’, but now...”

  “What?”

  “Now you don’t,” he said.

  “So? I’m used to it. I’ve seen it. I’d rather look at you.”

  “Bullshit,” he said, and got up from the bed and started pacing naked around the room. “You’re avoiding it. That Kostabi in the hallway? The one you used to stand in front of all the time? Just today I saw you look away from it, like it might burn you.”

  I was silent.

  “You think I don’t know?” he said. “I may seem like a meathead to you—”

  “No.”

  “Or maybe I don’t seem enlightened, or whatever that shit is women want these days, but I’m not stupid, and I know an artist when I see one. I know when a person’s wasting their life, too.”

  “Can I have a drink?” I said.

  “And that’s another thing.”

  “What?”

  “You know.”

  I looked away. “Sal, I’m fine.”

  “Don’t bullshit a bullshitter, babe. It pisses me off.”

  I looked back at him. He stood at the foot of the bed, eyes glaring, penis dangling, hands on hips, looking like a bulldog.

  “What would it take to get you outta this sorry state?”

  “I don’t want out of it. I’m fine.”

  “Right. Listen, much as I think you’re a great piece of ass, I don’t think the drinking and the fucking are gonna do it for you long term.”

  I shrugged.

  “Fine, your funeral, babe,” he said, and walked out of the bedroom and shut the door.

  Great piece of ass. Humph.

  I found him an hour later staring out the window at his million-dollar view of downtown. I reached out to touch his arm.

  “Sal...”

  “I got an idea,” he said. “I’m gonna get you fired.”

  “What?”

  “From downstairs.”

  “Very funny.”

  “I’m serious.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Great idea.”

  “And I wanna buy all your stuff.”

  “What!”

  “Some of it’s shit, but some of it isn’t. I can do something with it.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like what? Like sell it, whaddya think like what?”

  “Oh. Well—”

  “Wait, I’m not done,” he continued. “And don’t say no right away.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m gonna buy your stuff, and be your, whaddya call it? Patron. I’ll be your patron and like, pay you to paint. But you gotta be disciplined, do it every day.”

  “And?”

  “And you gotta stop drinking—it’s shit for you, babe, and it’s gonna get worse.”

  “What else?”

  “Not much—just I own what you produce.”

  “What if I don’t produce anything?”

  “No paintings, no money.”

  “What if you don’t like any of it?”

  “Tough shit for me then, but I doubt it’ll happen, babe.”

  I moved to sit on the couch.

  “Sal,” I said, “I don’t know if I can. It hurts to paint the kind of stuff I was doing early on, it puts me in a bad place.”

  “Hey, start simple, you know? Abstract. I like that rectangular stuff, for example. Could you do more of that?”

  I considered. “Maybe, but...”

  “Come on, whaddya say?”

  Of course I said no.

  Of course he refused my refusal and insisted I think about it. Then he had a contract drawn up and couriered it to me with a big check for my completed works to show his good faith—a check big enough for a down payment, if only for a tiny bungalow in the east end.

  Coincidentally, I got fired because Mrs. Teimen on the fifth floor said she smelled alcohol on my breath and told the management she thought I was “fraternizing” with one of the residents. All true, unfortunately.

  I took the contract to my mom’s lawyer who suggested a few changes, including a renewal clause that would allow us to re-evaluate annually.

  It was time to get my shit together.

  Sal’s smile practically cracked his face open when I when I presented him with the modified contract. We signed it, got it witnessed, and went to dinner to celebrate.

  “I promise you, no more drinking after tonight,” I told him. “You’re right about that.”

  “Good girl,” he said, and ordered a bottle of Dom.

  Later we screwed like it was our final night on earth, until at last I slumped over him and buried my face in his neck.

  “So, babe, that’s it, hunh?” he said. “For the fucking, I mean.”

  His voice was hoarse, his eyes knowing.

  I ducked my head, swallowed. “Probably. Yeah. Don’t you think?”

  “I figured that’d be the deal when you said yes.”

  “Well, you know, otherwise it’s a little...”

  “I know, babe, I know.”

  “Okay.”

  “This wasn’t gonna be forever anyway.”

  “No.” I smiled at him and then lay my head on his chest.

  “I’ll miss ya. I kinda love ya.”

  My throat tightened.

  “Me too,” I said.

  “And you’re a great fuck. Don’t ever let anyone tell ya different.”

  Such a charmer, that Sal.

  And he basically saved my life, so I try not to disappoint him.

  He likes the five new pieces, pats me on the back.

  I help him carry them to the trunk of his car.

  “These’ll do good,” he says, and then kisses my cheeks again, gets into the vehicle, and drives away.

  Chapter 15

  You should be grounded.

  If you were grounded, there would be something to think about besides Bernadette not talking to you for a week. It feels like a year.

  And what kind of mother ignores the fact that her daughter comes home drunk, stoned, and deflowered (not that she knows that part), and wipes out on the stairs in the wee hours of the morning?

  “Am I not in trouble or something?” you finally ask.

  Mom’s eyebrows lift and she gazes at you over the “Number One Mom” coffee mug you gave her last year
. “Is there a number two?” she’d asked, and you’d both laughed.

  “Trouble? What for?” she asks.

  “For last weekend. I figured I’d be grounded.”

  “No,” she says and goes back to the work she’s doing at the breakfast table.

  “But I was drunk.”

  “Uh huh.” She doesn’t even look up.

  “And stoned.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Well...” You stare at her, willing her to look up, to respond in some way.

  Nothing.

  “Well, if you did ground me, I guess it would be hard to enforce.”

  “Why’s that?” she says, and scribbles.

  “You’d have to actually be home, you know, to ground me. You’d have to actually give a—” You feel your chin start to tremble and press your lips together.

  “Sorry? I didn’t hear that last part,” Mom says in a hushed, flat voice.

  You know better than to push when you hear that tone, but tears are leaking out of your eyes, running down your cheeks. And she’s actually paying attention.

  “You’d have to give a shit,” you say.

  There is a short, dark pause before she stands up out of her chair. It falls over and crashes onto the floor.

  “You self-centered little bitch,” she says in a whisper that sounds like a howl.

  She grabs your arm and yanks you from your chair.

  “Upstairs,” she says, and pulls you along behind her.

  In your bedroom, she pushes you against the door and glares up at you, face red, eyes fierce. All at once she jerks away like your skin has burned her and you slump against the door, knees weak.

  She grabs your suitcase and starts shoving your belongings into it, ranting all the while.

  “You want me to join the fucking PTA? You want me to make me responsible if you fuck up your life? Who pays for the damned house? Who works overtime and gets treated like shit all day long and has to fight for everything she gets? Who pays for the dentist and the doctor and your books and your clothes and your food? Who does EVERYTHING for you so you don’t have to live in a slum with your useless, loser, asshole of a fucking father!”

  “Mom—”

  “Don’t you tell me what I give a shit about, don’t you fucking dare. You know nothing. You don’t think I had dreams? You don’t think I wanted a better life than this?”

  “But—”

  She slams the suitcase shut, picks it up, and hauls it downstairs. You follow with shaking, rubbery legs, and a roaring panic building in your heart.

  At the front door, she confirms your worst fear.

  “Get out,” she says.

  “Mom, no!”

  “Go live with your father, see how you like that.”

  You’re crumbling from the inside. You sob her name again, but her eyes are cold.

  “Come back when you’re grateful,” she says, then pushes you out the door and locks it behind you.

  ***

  Sal is gone and I’m back to thinking about Hugo and this problem of falling in love.

  I really should have known better. I should have tied myself to the sink, run away to Tibet, cut off my ear rather than let myself fall in stupid, dangerous, duplicitious love.

  But what did I think would happen?

  But I thought I could handle it, thought I could control the progression.

  I figured I could control the progression, that’s what. I thought I’d step cautiously towards love, walk around it a few times, maybe poke it with a stick before I got too close.

  I am a fool.

  And now I’m all fluttery, wanting to paint hearts, flowers, birds...

  But there’ll be none of that. And yet somehow, I can’t bear the thought of another circle, square, or triangle. Perhaps today I will take the old route, the deeper, darker path...

  I stare at the green blob from this morning and take a deep breath. It’s been a long time.

  I turn off the music and shut my eyes, feeling odd, almost trancelike, as I prepare.

  Brush to paint, paint to canvas. I expand the blob. It creeps outward in snake-like tendrils, threads. Then the threads wrap around objects. They squeeze, pull, trap each object and then move inexorably out.

  And then the canvas is full, but the blob is hungry...

  Second canvas, sits to left of the first. Objects get larger and some are people. Stick figures tangle with the threads, fight, are sliced down, squeezed, squashed. Remains fall and gather in piles. They are shards of bravery, hope, the stuff of loss.

  It’s no longer me painting. My fingers, the brush, nothing seems my own. I simply watch the canvas fill up and provide another when the last is full. Fingers to brush, brush to paint, paint to hungry, hope-eating blob. The brush becomes inadequate, and fingertips take its place.

  The sun sets and I turn lights on.

  Paint. Only paint. No love, no lover, no friends, no family, nothing. I puke paint, hurl despair, betrayal and darkness out, and let it eat everything in sight. It takes everything I touch, even me. Especially me.

  I begin to run out of paint, but it is not done.

  Six canvases and the night is quiet and dark.

  I find scissors and poke holes in the canvas—gaping mouths with sharp edges, paths to nowhere.

  Poke, poke, rip, cut.

  And then every canvas I have is full, but it’s still not enough.

  I open glue, mix globs of it with the remaining paint.

  What now?

  All my life and the whole world outside this place, thrown out of me and onto the canvas.

  What more does it need? What is left?

  I wait for an answer.

  And wait...

  And then...

  Of course.

  Hands to scissors, scissors to hair, one clump. Clump to glue, and I place it, strand by strand, onto the canvas. It winds and sticks, and when I need more, I reach up to my head and take it.

  Cut, glue, brush, press, throw on, hang on.

  The sun comes up and whatever has been fuelling me begins to flicker and then goes out. I stand looking at the monstrous work I’ve created and feel…nothing.

  I am empty, sans paint, sans glue, sans hair, etcetera.

  Chapter 16

  So if your mom kicks you out and you lose your best friend and you have to live with your dad in his tiny apartment? Suck it up.

  The morning you arrive with your huge suitcase, Dad tries the heart-to-heart, but it’s not helpful to have him rant about what a bitch Mom is and then punch the wall beside the fridge, get hammered that night, and refuse to go to work the next day.

  Certain kinds of support are worse than none at all.

  Dad says you can skip school Monday and stay home with him, which gets you out the door and onto the subway lickety-split.

  Aaron Deeter is waiting at your locker.

  “I heard about your friend,” he says. “She do it to you too?”

  “Huh?”

  “Oh, uh, never mind, I figured you knew,” he says. “Anyway, I was wondering, you wanna go out this weekend?”

  “Wait a sec, what about Bernadette? What do you mean?”

  His face cracks into a grin and he leans in close.

  “Lesbo,” he says. “We’re talking full-on dyke-a-rama. Everyone’s saying that’s why you’re not talking to her, that she tried grabbing your tits or something.”

  “No, she didn’t. Jesus!”

  “So, what about this weekend?” he says. “We on?”

  “No.”

  “Oh. You busy?”

  “No.”

  His eyebrows lift and he hold his hands up. “So-rry. That time of the month?”

  You had sex with this idiot. Good God.

  “Get lost, Aaron.”

  He shakes his head and walks away.

  At lunch you walk your tray of goopy macaroni to an empty table, and sit. Before you take your first bite, you notice Bernadette a few tables away. Something is happening. Faith Engli
sh and her clique of preppy friends, Shelby, Ginny and Rebecca, stand over Bernadette.

  “Everybody knows what you did,” Shelby says.

  Bernadette’s hand has stopped, halfway to her mouth, with a carrot stick in it. She looks from Faith to Shelby and back.

  “Yeah,” Ginny says. “Faith told us all about you hitting on her.”

  “She was disgusted,” Shelby says, “Weren’t you, Faith?”

  Shelby stares at Faith until she nods.

  “I saw her running out of the sauna right after. She had to go and puke, she was so revolted,” Shelby continues.

  Bernadette’s cheeks are red, and you’re afraid she might cry. You get up, move closer. Bernadette and her attackers notice you at the same time.

  “Leave her alone,” you say.

  “Why don’t you tell us, Mara,” Shelby says.

  “Tell you what?”

  “Everybody knows you saw. You saw her grabbing Faith’s tits and trying to dive for her beaver!”

  “It wasn’t like that,” you say.

  “Mara, shut up,” Bernadette says.

  “But Bee, that’s not how it ha—”

  “SHUT UP,” she says again, emphasizing the “t” and the “p.”

  Suddenly you realize. Oh, fuck.

  “I mean, it didn’t happen,” you say. “Nothing happened.”

  “Right,” Shelby says, and smirks. “Keep talking, rug-munchers.”

  “This is bullshit,” Bernadette says, and stands up. “It’s all bullshit.”

  “Exactly,” you say.

  “Please shut up, Mara. You’re not helping,” she says, then picks up her knapsack and leaves the lunchroom. People snicker and call her names as she passes. She stands up straight and doesn’t look back.

  ***

  Bernadette doesn’t come to school for a week.

  A few people, fuelled by Aaron Deeter, call you dyke and lesbo. You stare them down and say nothing. A few times you pick up the phone to call Bernadette, but after the way you screwed things up, why should she trust you? You search for a way to make it right, something you can offer for the return of her friendship.

  One day, during calculus, you follow Faith into the bathroom. You get into the stall next to her, stand up on the toilet seat, and lean over the wall.