Falling Under

by Danielle Younge-Ullman

Ab-da-da-ga-ga...

  “It’s a nice name,” you finally manage to say.

  “Thanks. My parents say it means ‘light,’” he says.

  “You think it suits you?”

  He laughs and his mouth opens to reveal a row of perfect, shining teeth.

  “Nobody’s ever asked me that,” he says. “What do you think?”

  “I don’t know, maybe you have a twisted soul. Maybe you like to torture gerbils or something.” You’re such a weirdo, such a dork—can’t you come up with anything better to say?

  But Lucas shakes his head and chuckles and stares at you.

  “That’s an interesting possibility,” he says. “No gerbils yet, though.”

  “Good. That’s good.”

  “Anyway, I missed class yesterday...”

  “I know—it ruined my day.”

  “What?” He frowns.

  Shut up, Mara!

  “Nothing. Sorry.”

  His eyes narrow. “No, I heard you.”

  “Oh. I was kidding. Just kidding. You were saying?”

  “I just wondered if I could borrow your notes.”

  “Sure.”

  “Thanks!”

  His bright green eyes brim with curiosity and goodwill, and something about him demands to be liked. Something about him feels like everything you’ve never had and never been and must get close to.

  No one this good looking could possibly be this nice. And there’s no way he’ll ever be interested in you. But the exchange of notes turns into coffee on campus and then beer drinking at Sneaky Dee’s and a sweet, sloppy kiss outside at the bus stop in front of the graffiti art.

  It’s a remarkably short journey from his lips on yours to your hands in each other’s pants to rolling around naked on your futon and laughing so loud that Bernadette bangs on the wall of your shared apartment.

  And love is easy at first, because Lucas is easy to love.

  Miraculously, he loves you back.

  Though you’re not quite sure he would if he really knew you, if he knew the things you’ve done and the family you have and the sad, dark, panicky places that come out and haunt you at night. He would never understand how being happy makes you sad. How the happier you are the more you know the sky is about to explode into tiny, sparkling shards of glass that will pick up speed as they fall to the earth and slice right through you leaving your skin with little holes in it, leaving your heart bleeding.

  These are not things that touch Lucas, not things he would find logical or right or positive, and he is very logical, right and positive. These are things you love about him and that you need from him.

  You keep quiet about the you that lies awake at night, twisting the corners of the sheets around your fingers while he sleeps peaceful dreams.

  In the daytime, Lucas has big dreams—he wants to sculpt huge pieces, create entire dwellings that are works of art.

  “Like Gaudi,” he says. “Someday I’m going to make us a Gaudi house. Except the vision will be mine. We’ll change the landscape.”

  You just want to paint and draw, but the idea sounds good, so you go along with it.

  And there are nice things that you’ve never had before, like hugs, kisses on the cheek, ice cream at 3 a.m. And laughter, lots of laughter. It bubbles up and spills over, stains you with regret for what you’ve missed.

  You are young and in love and finding out what it feels like to get a zerbert and to smile for no reason, and draw pictures of bumble bees with Lucas’s laughing face, and make love on sun-filled afternoons, and sleep with your head on his shoulder and strands of your hair falling across his chest.

  ***

  “I don’t know what the big deal is,” Lucas says over breakfast at his place. “People go away to school all the time.”

  “I know. I’ve just never been without Bernadette. England is far.”

  “We’ll visit her there, maybe travel a bit,” he says. “I know you’ll miss her, but you have me.”

  “I know.” It’s not the same, but he doesn’t seem to get that. And you do have him.

  “Anyway,” he says, “now that she’ll be moving out, have you thought about where you’re going to live in September?”

  “No,” you say. “Why?”

  Lucas grimaces and looks away for a second. “My brother’s coming back from military college and my parents are bugging me to let him live here with me.”

  “You never told me you had a brother.”

  “Half-brother. It’s a long story,” he says, and then abruptly segues into his next subject. “You want to move in with me?”

  You give your head a shake, not sure you’ve heard correctly. “Sorry?”

  “Move in with me.”

  “Uh…”

  “Come on, it’ll be great,” he says, and reaches across the kitchen table to hold your hand.

  “But why?”

  “I just told you—”

  “Because you don’t want to live with your brother?”

  “Not just because of that, I didn’t mean—” He breaks off and takes his hand away. “If you don’t want to, that’s fine.”

  “Why?” was clearly not the response he was looking for—he’s hurt.

  Still, you know too well from Mom and Dad about the fallout when things don’t work out, the price of moving too fast.

  “Lucas, it’s a big deal. It’s not something we should do just for convenience.”

  His face and neck start to get red and he stands up.

  Oh shit, oh shit.

  “I thought we were going somewhere, I thought we were serious.”

  “I, ah...”

  “So what’s the deal, Mara? Is it just play for you? Just casual?”

  His face is cold, angry. How did he get so angry so fast?

  You want to speak but your throat is closing. Your mouth moves, but no sound comes out. This seems to piss him off more. He starts pacing, demanding an answer, but you can’t answer. You can’t speak at all. In your head, the voices of Mom and Dad are rising up, all the hateful words, all the shouting, the weeping, the screaming.

  Mom crumpled on the floor, Dad throwing the pepper mill against the glass cabinet…

  You grip the edge of the table and try to stop shaking. You must speak, you must do something...

  Lucas slams a hand on the table.

  Mom shouting, I’ll fucking kill you, you son of a bitch! Wish I’d never met you, you lying bastard! Dad screaming back, Stupid cunt!

  Help, help, help...

  Liar, you’re such a liar. Fucking slut. Loser, lowlife. Hate you. Hate you, wish I’d never set eyes on you. Get the fuck out, get the hell away from me and don’t come back. I won’t, up yours, you uptight bitch. Uneducated hack, fuck off and die...

  Lucas is shouting in your face, waving his arms. The earth is sliding out from beneath you. Then, just like every fight you ever witnessed, every fear you ever held, he leaves. Leaves and slams the door.

  And it’s over. Love always turns out this way.

  In the bathroom, you puke until there is nothing left and your stomach is heaving out bile.

  You huddle in front of the toilet and shiver.

  Eventually you get up.

  You will collect your things and go. One foot in front of the other, just get out, get home, get to Bernadette...

  In the closet, your backpack is tangled up in a heap of laundry. It’s too much, you can’t move anymore.

  Small. You need to get small. Curl up and hide.

  You wiggle yourself into the corner between Lucas’s Docs and an old camera case. Safe. Safe and dark. You are small and safe and dark.

  Shhh, Mara, shhh, it’s okay. It’s okay.

  You hug your knees and shut your eyes.

  Shhh...

  Shhh...

  You wake in total darkness, which makes sense, you realize, because you are on the floor of Lucas’s closet.

  What possessed you to fall asleep here?

  It’s unfortunate to wake
up like this.

  But to wake up and find that the daylight is gone and he is gone and something has just landed on your arm and run down it with tiny, scratchy feet is horrifying. You’ve jerked awake and now there’s no sound of movement around you. No sound, but something is there. You sit still, waiting. Soon enough you hear little scratching sounds, near your feet and above your head.

  Holy shit.

  Mice.

  If you’re lucky.

  It could be rats. Or very large insects, perhaps a spider, a tarantula! You have to get out of this closet before one of them jumps on your head or runs up your shorts, but you can’t see a fucking thing and what if you step on the one by your feet and it squeals or squishes and crunches and you feel its furry skeleton collapsing under your weight? Or you might just step on its tail and then it could bite you on the ankle and the other one might land on your head and...

  And what if there are more than two!

  You are holding yourself rigid, peering out the sliding doors of the closet into the gloomy grayish light of Lucas’ room. For a moment you wish he was here and then your entire body aches. It’s over.

  Good thing he didn’t find you here or he’d think you were a freak on top of thinking you are a...cold bitch. Yes, that’s what it was.

  If you are such a cold bitch, you should be able to move your damned limbs and get out of this closet without having a meltdown over a couple of harmless furry creatures.

  For the moment there are no scratching sounds, probably because the little fuckers are watching you. You put your hands on the floor and push yourself up into a crouch. Your back is killing you and your knees feel permanently bent, but you begin to push yourself up.

  Almost upright, you take one step forward. Something brushes your bare shoulder and everything inside you leaps up toward the ceiling. You shriek at the top of your lungs, whack your head, shriek again and then twist and hop and squeal your way out of the closet.

  Someone else is shouting.

  A shadow emerges from the bed...!

  Suddenly, the lights are on and you and Lucas stand, screaming, in the middle of his bedroom.

  “What the hell—?”

  “OH MY GOD, OH MY GOD, OH MY FUCKING GOD—!”

  You hop up on the bed and point to the closet.

  “Mice! Jumping on me!”

  Lucas shuts the closet door and leads you out of the bedroom to the kitchen where you see his hair standing on end and goose bumps on his naked arms and a bewildered look on his face.

  “What the hell? I’ve been looking for you all day,” he says. “What the hell were you… Am I losing it or did you just run screaming out of my closet at two o’clock in the morning?”

  “I’m sorry, I’ll go,” you say, and try to pull yourself together. “I know what you think of me, you don’t have to explain. I’ll just get my stuff.”

  “No, you won’t!” he says, and grips your arm. “I’m sorry we fought. I came back to tell you that, but you weren’t here, so I went looking for you.”

  You burst into tears and he wraps his arms around you and then you pull back to look at him. Your tears turn to laughter and it is long minutes before you can explain any of it.

  “If you still want to live together,” you say, “we can’t live here.”

  “Why not?”

  “The mice.”

  “Mice?”

  “In your closet.”

  “Oh. Right,” he says. “Okay. You know, it was just a fight. It doesn’t mean I’ve stopped loving you.”

  And you kiss him and tell him that fights scare you and when you seem cold it might actually mean that you’re frightened because you don’t really know how to fight and you’ve never done this before.

  “What do you mean by ‘this’?” he asks.

  “You know, having a relationship, being together all the time, love.”

  “Ah,” he says, “of course.”

  Chapter 26

  You like your walls bare, but Lucas says it gives him the creeps.

  When he moves in, he brings posters and you negotiate. He gets the walls of the living room. Over time, he gets more than that because his projects are everywhere. But everyone knows Lucas is brilliant—he cannot, should not be contained.

  So, even if it feels crowded, living together is good. Falling asleep and waking up together is good.

  And school is good too...except sometimes you feel small and dark in relation to the bright star that is Lucas. You begin to wonder if your paintings are too weird, too personal. Maybe to be a real artist you need to challenge people’s assumptions, make political statements, explore bigger concepts. Or maybe you should be thinking about your future and how you and Lucas will ever make a living when his installations cost thousands of dollars to create. Maybe only one of you can be a real artist and maybe it’s not going to be you.

  Doubt is bad for art. You know it. You try to push it back, but it eats into your work, into your satisfaction with your work and soon painting starts to feel like a chore.

  You speak to no one. It will pass and things will get easier.

  You miss Bernadette—the one person who might understand what you’re feeling. She has left a void that cannot be filled by Lucas and cannot be filled by letters or the occasional phone call. But you are loved by someone and there is a security in living together—a different kind of comfort.

  “As long as you’re happy, sweetheart,” Dad says when you tell him about your co-habitation.

  Mom says, “I brought you up to be smarter than this.”

  “After we finish school we’ll travel the world,” Lucas says. “I want to see Paris and Singapore and the Congo. And then we’ll get married and have five children and live in a big, rambling old house that smells like candle wax and clay and paint.”

  “And paint thinner and dust and unwashed dishes,” you add, shooting a look toward the sink.

  “We’ll have a maid,” he says.

  “With what money?” But you leave off, because there’s nothing worse than Lucas when you doubt his dreams.

  He teases you about your pragmatism, asks why you care if your art is saleable. He sculpts dead birds or crumpled pop cans, creates installations that fill entire rooms. His work is brilliant, but will anyone want to buy a beautiful sculpture of a dead pigeon?

  ***

  You could watch him work for hours—a hangover from Caleb, but that no longer hurts.

  Sometimes, sitting quietly inside the door to Bernadette’s old bedroom as he works, you feel more with him than you do at any other time.

  Once, you make the mistake of interrupting him. You take off your clothes and press yourself against the back of his flannel shirt. Your fingers go to the buttons of his jeans.

  He leaps up, almost knocking you over.

  “What the—?”

  “I just...never mind. Sorry.”

  “No, no. It’s okay, you just scared me.”

  “Sorry, sorry.”

  “I’d rather you didn’t...I need space when I’m working, sweetie, okay?”

  You bite your lip and turn your face away so he cannot see your tears.

  In bed that night he whispers in your ear, “How about now?”

  You shut your eyes and let him have your body.

  Afterwards, your thighs ache and your skin is raw.

  “I love you,” he says, and presses his sweaty body to yours.

  “Me too,” you say, and lie awake listening to him breathe.

  ***

  Hugo and I are determined not to rush.

  We go on another real date—dinner and a movie. We talk, we make out, I come to know the feel of his nose against mine and the exact contours of his mouth. I’ve never known a man’s mouth so well—probably because with every man before this, I was too busy getting to know their penis.

  I think about Hugo when I should be working, then work when I should be sleeping.

  When Erik comes into my thoughts, I remind myself that he is
the past and that I’ve done a good, strong thing. Every day with Hugo is proof.

  Work is a problem, because I’ve lost control of it. Every time I sit down to begin a new rectangle or square, I look up hours later and find something else in front of me. Burst bubbles and cracked-open eggs are the least of it—now I’m channeling the unfinished paintings of a soul in purgatory.

  When Sal calls to check on my progress, I stall. I have nothing for him, nothing I’m willing to share, anyway.

  When Dad calls from the airport on his way to Puerto Vallarta, I have a bad day worrying and trouble sleeping for days. Mexico is a long way from home, from me, if—let’s be real—when Dad’s drinking gets out of control and he loses his emotional balance again.

  “It means I’ll be getting a call,” I say on the phone to Hugo. “And this time I’ll have to go to freaking Mexico to rescue him.”

  “But you never thought he’d actually make it that far in the first place,” Hugo says.

  “And your point is?”

  “Maybe he’ll exceed your expectations, maybe he’ll be okay this time,” Hugo says.

  “I love your optimism, but no parent of mine has ever exceeded my expectations,” I say.

  “Oh.”

  “At least not in a good way.”

  “Got it,” he says, “You okay?”

  “Just worried.”

  “Want me to come over?”

  “When?”

  “Tonight. I’ll bring dinner.”

  “Okay.”

  We joke about him taking advantage of my vulnerable state of mind and seducing me and we laugh, a little awkwardly, because the time is coming where we’re going to have to do it. The whole build-up to sex thing is getting scarier by the day, and now I know why I never waited this long to sleep with someone. The longer you wait, the more intense your feelings and the more it feels like you’ll never be ready. And things get weird.

  We don’t make out all night, even though that’s what we’ve been doing every time we see each other. We don’t even kiss.

  We barely touch each other. We act like buddies.

  He actually makes it to the door and goes to put his coat on before I say, “No.”