Falling Under

by Danielle Younge-Ullman

  “Turn me into a normal person?” I say.

  “Was that a joke you just made?” he asks.

  I open the door.

  “Maybe.”

  His eyes meet mine and he looks like he’s going to hug me, but I say, “Better not,” and wave my handful of tissue at him, “I might start again.”

  “Okay.”

  “Walk?”

  “Yeah,” he says, “just let me get his leash.”

  ***

  Bernadette is back from camp with a shaved head and a tan and everything she wears is cut off and frayed and tie-dyed. She looks awesome.

  You wonder if you should shave your head too.

  But Caleb loves your hair.

  Sometimes he looks at you the way he looks at a finished canvas, his eyes gliding over the edges of you and seeing to the center. The memory of that look makes funny things happen to your breath and it’s all you can do not to bolt out of Baskin Robbins where you’re sitting with Bernadette and run all the way to his apartment and stand in front of him and make him look.

  “How old is he again?” Bernadette says.

  “Thirty-four.”

  “And you don’t think he’s taking advantage of you?”

  “No.”

  “But he says he’s not your boyfriend? Does he have a girlfriend? He could be married.”

  “No, Bee, I don’t think so.”

  “But you don’t know.”

  “Well, no, but...”

  “Don’t you think it’s weird that he wants to be with a sixteen-year-old?”

  “No. Stop it! Can’t you be happy for me?”

  She glares at you, rubs her scalp.

  “Fine.” She sighs. “Is the sex good?”

  And then she sees the look on your face.

  “Ah,” she says, “I see.”

  In the month of August you work in the mornings, spend the afternoons with Bernadette, and go back to Caleb’s at night. He doesn’t talk much, but he always wants you. Surely that is enough.

  Sometimes you find yourself in North York, standing in front of Mom’s house again. Maybe she’ll come home sick from work and you’ll rush to help her inside and sit by her bed smoothing her forehead with a cool, wet washcloth. “I’m lost without you,” she’ll say. “Please come back.”

  Or you might get hit by a car, not badly enough to die, but enough that she finds you on the sidewalk with a broken leg or ankle. You’ll be bleeding, but it won’t actually hurt that much and she will run, panic in her eyes, and gently pick you up and take you to the hospital and call in sick for a week while she helps you get used to the crutches.

  But you’re a fool for wishing ill on yourself or Mom. Who knows how powerful your mind might be? If God exists, he or she might take your thoughts as prayers and you could get hit by a car and break your arm instead of your leg and not be able to paint and not get into art school because you have no portfolio. Mom could get sick and die and it would be your fault for thinking of it.

  From the want ads you’ve been clipping for him, Dad gets some job interviews. You and Bernadette offer to go with him to give moral support but he sees through you.

  “You don’t believe I’ll go,” he accuses.

  You say no and Bernadette shakes her head, but Dad sits on what’s-her-name’s couch and stares at the worn-out slippers on his feet.

  “Thanks a lot,” he says.

  You get a block away, walking in very careful steps with a very stiff back before you burst into tears. Bernadette holds you and lets you soak her shoulder and agrees with you when you blubber that he is SUCH an ASSHOLE.

  You stay away for a week, but finally you are too worried.

  You find Dad hopping from one foot to another and singing Bee Gees songs. He has a job.

  “And not one of those low-life jobs you wanted me to take,” he says. “A real job where they need guys like me—with talent, personality, skills!”

  He’s selling TVs and stereo equipment and he’s certain he’ll be running the place six months from now. And that’s not all...

  “I went to see Chuck and he hasn’t found a renter for the old place. We can move back!”

  “Really?” you say.

  “Really. And I think the three of us will get along just fine.”

  Which means the girlfriend is coming too. You might have to learn her name.

  “I know you like staying at Bernadette’s, honey,” Dad says, “but we wouldn’t want her parents to start thinking you’re a burden.”

  “Definitely not.”

  “And we wouldn’t your m—” He stops himself and clears his throat, “We wouldn’t want anyone to think your old man can’t take care of you, right?”

  “Right,” you say and try to smile. “When do we move back?”

  “September 1st.”

  Not only are your morning art lessons about to end, but you have less than three weeks left of sleeping in Caleb’s bed. And then you go back to being a high school girl.

  Ugh.

  You will have homework.

  And classes.

  And people at home who will know if you’re not there at night.

  How long will he keep wanting you?

  ***

  You never see Caleb in the afternoon, but you assume he spends it working. Today you go back early, hoping to find a safe place, hoping to get reassurance. You let yourself in and call his name.

  You’ve never been here without him.

  You wander into the studio and stand in front of the piece he’s working on, studying the composition and the way he layers his colors.

  Beside his easel is a sketch pad where he puts his initial ideas, and you glance over at it to see how the painting compares to the original sketch.

  Holy shit.

  What you are looking at is not the cityscape, but a sketch of you on a bed. There are dark figures around you, one of them possibly Caleb, though it’s hard to tell because the figures are ghostly and indistinct, while your naked body and face are rendered in detail. You seem a contrast of soft and sharp, made of angles: hip bones, elbows, cheekbones and knees jutting out, fingers like scissors, hair like needles, splayed out on the pillow. And then your eyes, breasts, belly and mouth are pliable, feathery and round. Your flesh is permissive, vulnerable, while the rest of you forbids with knife-like severity.

  And who are the figures around you? None of them is touching you, but there is a sexual feel to the sketch, and something scary. What does it mean? What is it he sees?

  You lean closer and then step further back, the way Caleb has taught you, to see if anything hits you differently, or becomes clearer. From further away the figure becomes less “you” and more “she.”

  From this perspective what strikes you most is the eyes, which are large and shadowed and fragile. They are eyes that ask questions. On a sketch pad, or an easel, they would look directly at the artist himself.

  Caleb is not in the drawing, but he is in the drawing. And he sees you surrounded by shadows. He knows every angle and curve of your body, knows your face better than you do.

  That night you grip him hard and taste the salt on his skin and will him to hear what your body is saying because you will never, ever have the words. Nobody, surely, has ever felt like this.

  Afterwards, as the drying sweat cools your bodies, you lie beside him and ask him if there’s anything else he wants.

  “Meaning?” he says.

  “Anything. Anything sexual or...anything else? Is there anything that we haven’t done that you...” You look down at the sheets, feeling suddenly shy. “Just if there’s anything you want, something I might not know you want, you can tell me and I’ll do it.”

  Caleb rolls onto his back and stares at the ceiling. Sometimes, even beside you, he is so far away.

  “You’re a piece of work, Sixteen,” he says finally. “What, are you wondering if I want to tie you up and whip you? Bring a friend and double-team you? Have you stick your thumb up my ass or something?�
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  You can’t tell whether he’s joking, serious, or pissed off.

  “If, uh, if that’s what you want,” you say.

  “It’s not,” he says, and then he shuts his eyes. “Go to sleep.”

  “Okay.”

  You’re silent for a minute.

  “Caleb?” you whisper.

  “Yo.”

  “Is there...could you...”

  “What?” he asks.

  “Do you like me?” you ask.

  He lets out a kind of laugh, a breath through his nose. He turns on his side and looks at you.

  “Yeah, you could say that,” he says.

  “No, but...”

  “Don’t worry, Sixteen, liking you is not a problem,” he says. “Well, actually it is a problem, but not that kind of problem.”

  “I’ll be seventeen soon. In October.”

  “Happy birthday,” he says and kisses you on the cheek. “In advance.”

  “You can say it to me on the day.”

  “Sure.” He squeezes his eyes shut.

  “And then you’ll have to call me Seventeen.”

  He chuckles at this and opens his eyes to look at you again.

  “How come you don’t have a girlfriend?” you ask.

  “Relationships are complicated,” he says. “People want too much from each other. You get into a relationship and then someone wants you to change, to become someone else, cut your hair shorter, see different movies, change your views, your routine, your lifestyle. They want you to pursue their dreams instead of your own.”

  “I wouldn’t.”

  “Wouldn’t what?”

  “Expect you to change, ask you to give up your dreams.”

  “Listen, Sixteen—”

  “You could call me Mara.”

  “Sixteen, I’m not...we can’t...”

  “Why don’t you ever kiss me? You’ve never kissed me. Don’t you think that’s weird?”

  “I—”

  “You’re not a bad kisser, are you?” You reach out and put your index finger on his bottom lip and stroke it lightly. “Don’t tell me you don’t know how.”

  His breath catches and his eyelids lower. You are on your sides, facing each other, with your heads cradled on your hands. You can feel the heat coming from his body.

  He brings his face close, touches his forehead to yours, and then moves so you are cheek to cheek and you feel his eyelashes flutter against your temple. You want to put an arm around him and pull his body closer, but instead you hold yourself completely still. He slides his cheek along yours until your lips are centimeters apart. You close your eyes and swallow and hope he can’t feel how nervous you are, because it’s ridiculous, considering the things you have done together, to be so nervous about a kiss.

  But you haven’t done this.

  You haven’t had his lips pressing onto yours, or heard the deep, low whimper that comes from the back of his throat when your lips move in response. You haven’t had him hold your face in his hands and felt him shudder, and no painful, heated ache has rocketed down from your open lips to your tongue and fired along your nerve endings and made you feel like your body was on fire.

  But now you have. And the world is a different place.

  Locked together in a tangled embrace, you travel past desire, past time and age and circumstance, past, even, the barriers of body, to a place where you are together, linked in the deepest sense. And for a few timeless moments, you are not alone.

  It is grief to come back, though you lay, still warm, in Caleb’s arms. He pulls the covers over you and, for once, does not turn away before he drifts into his dreams.

  But the day has changed you and you can’t sleep.

  Finally you slide out of Caleb’s grasp and get out of the bed. You pull on a T-shirt and sit on a chair by the window and look out. On Dundas Street a streetcar clicks and whines as it passes by.

  You reach your senses out and hold yourself very still. You look up toward the sky and see only dark against the lamplights, and your mind goes to color and the absence of color that makes black, and the vast universe out there in which you are very small. And those thoughts lead you back to Caleb, behind you in the bed, and the smell of you both, musky, dark, and sweet on your hands and in your breath. Caleb, who channels you with his artist’s eye and hand. Caleb, who is sexy and brilliant and elusive...and yours tonight.

  He does not want to be yours, though, and soon you go back to high school and he will remember to think of you as a child and what you both had tonight might slip away.

  How will you bear it?

  “Please,” you whisper to the night. “Please let me have this.”

  ***

  “It’s a great school, but don’t ask them about me!” Caleb says when you mention the Ontario College of Art. “I taught there for a couple of years.”

  “It didn’t work out?”

  He shrugs and grins at you across the table.

  “Students complained that I was surly and uncommunicative,” he says, “and I didn’t do so well with the faculty politics.”

  You’re out for dinner—a date—progress.

  Caleb has put on pants and a shirt with buttons instead of his usual jeans and T-shirt and he looks handsome in his brooding, pale-faced way. You are wearing a dress, high heels and lipstick. You sip at your glass of red wine.

  You laugh. “Surly, huh? Those students didn’t know what they were missing.”

  “Not everyone has your fine appreciation of character, Sixteen.”

  Now and then he reaches across to touch your hand, your face, or your knee. For the first time you talk about books, music and movies. Thank goodness Bernadette has been dragging you out to the rep cinemas, because you actually know who Bertolucci is and you’ve seen La Dolce Vita and La Femme Nikita, not to mention every film Woody Allen has ever made. Caleb chuckles and shakes his head and says you are a wonder.

  He orders you an Irish coffee and then takes both your hands in his and leans over to kiss you. Nothing in your life has ever been this perfect.

  He orders dessert and when it comes he takes the spoon and taps the surface until it breaks open and then dips the spoon in and lifts it to your mouth. You close your eyes to taste it, then open them to tell him it’s wonderful ...

  and everything in you freezes,

  because behind him stands your mother.

  ***

  Huge love floods you and you want to leap out of your chair and into her arms. What a fool you were to think you could be safe from this love—you never will be. And love is what you see in her eyes too.

  Then her face changes. Out goes the love and in comes the face that could freeze oceans, the voice that is like a whip cracking.

  “What is it you think you’re doing?” she says.

  She is so damned scary like this.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  “Where is your father?”

  “At home I think. Mom, uh, this is my...this is my friend, Caleb White. Caleb, my mom.”

  He clears his throat, looks from you to her and back, then reaches out to shake her hand.

  “Hello, Mrs....Ms....ahem. Nice to meet you.”

  It doesn’t go so well.

  ***

  “She didn’t mean it,” you tell him later. “And she can’t do anything to you. She wouldn’t even know how to find us.”

  “You’re under eighteen and you told her my last name,” he says.

  “Oh. Oops.”

  He sighs.

  “She won’t sue you or whatever it was she threatened. And I don’t care what she thinks.”

  “This is going to cause trouble for your dad, too, isn’t it?” he says.

  You look down. “She’ll just call him and scream a little.”

  “And what about your friend? The one you told him you’re staying with?”

  You bite your lip. “I’ll handle it.”

  He holds your head to his chest as you fall asleep.

  It’s Labor D
ay weekend and he breaks his studio schedule and takes you out for brunch and to the Ex where he rides the Octopus and the bumper cars and shares cotton candy with you. At night you drink cold beer and he rubs aloe vera on your sunburned shoulders and cheeks.

  On the morning of September 5th he gives you a gift—his sketches of you.

  When you ask why he’s giving them, he says, “Shh.” He kisses you and makes love to you and says your name for the first time; says it over and over.

  You wake in the morning and see him dressed and sitting at the foot of the bed. The expression on his face jolts you awake.

  You sit up. “What is it?”

  “I’m not the guy, Sixteen.”

  “What guy?”

  “The guy who can...I can’t do this. We can’t do this.”

  You reach for him, but he moves away.

  “Let’s be honest,” he says, “Long term, this is not going to work.”

  “Yes it is! It can, I promise you—”

  “You can’t hide out here forever. You need to finish high school and then study art somewhere and you need to be with people your own age and not hiding from your family, no matter how fucked up they are.”

  “No.”

  “And you’ll leave me, Sixteen, someday you’ll leave me. I’m not that great a guy and you’re practically a kid, and I’m old and cranky and jaded—”

  “I’m jaded, too!” you insist. “We’re the same.”

  “You’ll leave me, or I’ll leave you. We’ll get bored of the sex and you’ll figure out that you should have made up with your mother and finished school. You’ll resent me.”

  You will not cry, you will not cry...

  “I can learn everything I need to about art from you. That’s the only education I need if I’m going to be an artist. And I won’t be…we won’t be like that because we…” you stop as you feel your voice breaking and then continue, even with the tears running down your face. “Caleb, we love each other, you know we do. And she can threaten all she wants—I’ll fight. I’m willing to fight. And besides, in a year I’ll be eighteen and I can do whatever I want.”