Falling Under

by Danielle Younge-Ullman

  “No what?”

  “No, yes,” I say.

  “Yes?”

  “Yes,” I say. “Stay.”

  “All right.”

  He puts his coat down, moves toward me, runs his hands down my sides, kisses my cheeks, my forehead, the tip of my nose. He runs his fingertips up to my shoulders and then down the front of my T-shirt where my nipples come alive and ache to be touched.

  I shudder at the heat of his palms and the friction of cotton on my skin, moan when my neck is kissed, my earlobe nibbled, my T-shirt lifted. Hands slide up my back, knead my muscles. Lips flutter kisses on my eyelids and his cheek rubs against mine.

  I hear my name whispered, hands cover my butt and pull us closer, hip to hip, chest to chest. We rock into one another, sway on our feet as our mouths meet.

  “Is it...”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s not too soon?” he asks.

  My fingertips on his chest, my lips on his collarbone where he smells so...sssooo...and he tastes...so very sweet and salty and...

  And he is in my bedroom.

  Too soon? Too late?

  Hot skin, and the sounds...the soft whishhhh of clothing falling, sliding down, off bodies to the floor.

  Too soon?

  We are bare and hot, entangled.

  Not soon enough, not nearly.

  We fall into and over and under one another, surrounded, slipping, subsumed with breath and heartbeat and heat that sears and need that howls.

  And now it is too late, far too late, for it to be too soon.

  Chapter 27

  So I have a lover.

  A boyfriend.

  A relationship.

  And I come close to happiness, the weirdest, scariest state of all.

  I paint in the day and I take my walks and talk to Bernadette and sleep with Hugo and begin to live like a normal person.

  Sort of.

  Because being happy makes me nervous, and living like a so-called normal person is not the same as being one.

  Some nights I wake, drenched in sweat with visions of explosions and crashes and loss rocketing through my head.

  “Shhhh,” Hugo says when it happens. “Shhh, it’s not real, Mara, it’s not real.”

  And I shake in his arms. “I saw...I was...You were...And then...”

  Sometimes, in the depths of his eyes, I see that he finds my dreams as horrifying as I do. But over and over, he says, “It’s okay, it’s not real.”

  “But—”

  “Look at me, I’m real,” he says. “Here, pull my hair.”

  Then he makes monkey faces and cuddles and cajoles me until I can laugh, until I can sleep.

  Sometimes if we are together during the day—weekends usually—I have trouble. I see him falling off an escalator, kidnapped, drugged, robbed, and left dying in a gutter somewhere. These things flash before my eyes and I banish them as fast as I can—snap! Snap!

  Sometimes they won’t go.

  Perhaps I am too happy. I try not to let the universe know I am happy. If I am too happy, I will lose Hugo.

  “You make love as if it’s the last time,” Hugo says one Sunday afternoon.

  I nod.

  “Always, every single time,” he says, his breath still short and beads of sweat still hovering on his forehead.

  “Yes,” I say.

  “Not that I’m complaining.”

  “I know.”

  He pulls me closer and draws his thumb along the line of my hipbone. I shiver and he places his palm on the goose bumps.

  “I want to be with you like this forever,” he says. “This is how it should be. I never realized it before, never had...this.”

  “That’s good,” I say.

  “I want us to be like this forever.”

  “Mm,” I say, “me too.”

  I shut my eyes tight. I try to seal in this feeling, to memorize it, to know the path that brought me here so I can always come back.

  But that night I can’t sleep. I wish he hadn’t said anything, because fear and dread move through me like hundreds of tiny, spinning wheels that collide and clang and ricochet off of my stomach and lungs and heart.

  I get religious when I’m afraid. I start speaking to God like I did when I was a kid. I find myself offering deals, though we all know you cannot bargain with God, whether you believe in her/him or not. If you don’t have faith on a normal day, I’m certain that God is unimpressed to have you show up on the doorstep to ask for an advance on your allowance or an extension of your life or whatever it is that has made you feel you are in extremity.

  And yet I do it, because I don’t know who or what may be out there, and you just never know what might help.

  I try not to ask for much.

  But I’m in love, and in the best of all possible worlds I would be allowed to have this love. I would be allowed to have this beautiful man who makes my soul feel lighter than I thought possible.

  “He makes me laugh,” I say.

  I am sitting near the windows in my dark studio, clasping my hands and looking up at the sky.

  My feet are cold but I do not move to tuck them under me or break my focus to go find a pair of socks. No, I am hard at work with wishing, also known as bargaining, and perhaps the universe will see my cold feet as an offering of some kind.

  “Doubt is so easy,” I say to the night sky. “Please help me not to doubt so much.”

  Moments of my parents’ relationship flash through my mind.

  “Please make him stay.” But that seems wrong, coercive. “Please have him want to stay. Let me be right, let us be right for each other,” I continue. And then, feeling frustrated with trying to find the right words, I close my mouth and try to lay my heart open. Perhaps all I am communing with is myself, but I visualize my awareness expanding outwards and simultaneously pull myself open to ask for what I need.

  And there, swimming in my ears and eyes, is Erik and beside him, Lucas.

  Lucas with the eyes of a child.

  Lucas and me and my failures, one leading to the next until finally there was death and no way to call him back, or do it over, or make it right. Not for me. Not with him. Not ever.

  And there, in my memory, still alive beneath my skin, is the thing I fear: that somehow, with Hugo, I will lose myself—I will betray myself, and then I will betray us both.

  I can’t bear it.

  Not again.

  I make love as if it’s the last time...because it might be.

  ***

  “I can’t believe she didn’t tell me!” Bernadette says, and strides back and forth in my kitchen.

  I sit and watch from my seat at the table. I’m feeling rather queasy at the news.

  “You’re the compulsive newsie—did you know it was her?” Bernadette asks.

  “No,” I admit. “I never made the connection.”

  It turns out Faith’s mom—the scary evangelist of our youth—is a member of parliament, and a very outspoken one at that. Problem is, she’s speaking out against gay marriage and has been from the beginning.

  “And she’s not one of those ‘let them have equal rights but let’s not call it marriage’ people,” Bernadette says. “She’s one of the ‘homosexuality is evil and gay marriage leads to bigamy, bestiality, and the legalization of incest’ people.”

  “I know,” I say, “And look at all those bigamists and sheep-fuckers that have come forward demanding equal status since they passed the legislation.”

  “Hey, sheep-fuckers are people too.”

  We laugh.

  “Seriously though,” Bernadette says, “Minister English is way far on the right.”

  I repress a shudder. “She tries to hide it, but she’s still...”

  “Scary,” Bee says.

  “Yeah. How’d she end up in politics anyway?”

  “I guess Mrs. English got involved with a bunch of causes and then tried to get her husband to run, and he said: no thanks, but you go ahead. Apparently he’s sort of...
bookish. First it was the school board, then city council, and the next thing they knew, she had all this support and was running for parliament.”

  “Wow. So should I even ask how they feel about Faith’s sexuality?”

  Bernadette’s shoulders droop and she sits across from me. “Faith hasn’t, uh...”

  “Told them?”

  Bernadette shakes her head. “She gave me this speech about her private life being private and how there’s no need for them to know.”

  “Uh oh,” I say.

  “And she...” Bernadette breaks off and gets up to pad back and forth on the linoleum again.

  “She what?”

  “She’s gay. Not bi, not confused. But she goes on dates with men.”

  “What!”

  “Her family and people from her church are always trying to set her up, and to keep anyone from suspecting, she goes.”

  “Bee,” I say, and get up from the table to pour her some water, “you’ve got to dump her.”

  Bernadette’s face crumples. “I love her though.”

  “But...”

  “And she loves me, she told me,” she says, and starts to cry. I wrap my arms around her and let her snuffle into my shoulder.

  I lead us to the front room, tuck her onto the couch with a fleece throw around her legs and feet, turn on the gas fireplace, and grab a box of tissues.

  “I’m so happy with her when we’re alone,” Bernadette sniffles, “but she’s paranoid in public—she won’t even hold my hand on Church. She doesn’t want to be seen near the village in case someone tells her family, so we spend all our time alone in our apartments. But she’s so beautiful and sweet. I just feel, when I’m with her, like I’m...like I’m home.”

  “But Bee, how can you be with someone like that? How can it work?” I ask, trying to keep my voice gentle.

  “I don’t know. I just don’t know. But I have to try. My family was, I mean, it’s always hard to come out, but my family was great—pretty easy compared to most people’s families.”

  “Still...”

  “I’m just saying. I never had any real fear that I’d lose them, you know? I was scared, but I knew they’d come around, I knew they’d still love me,” Bernadette says. “But Faith? For her, if she tells them, or if they find out somehow, it would be major. It would be major for her mom politically if it got out, and on a personal level they would probably disown her or try to lock her up or something.”

  “I know.”

  “You know that school they sent her to? In high school?”

  “I knew they sent her away somewhere,” I say.

  “Well,” Bernadette sits up and leans forward. “It wasn’t just an ordinary boarding school, Mara. It was like some kind of jail. It was one of those private schools in the Caribbean where they punish you with solitary confinement. They used to make her lie face-down on a concrete floor for looking at them the wrong way.”

  “Whoa.”

  “Can you imagine! And this was a ‘Christian values’ school,” Bernadette says. “Damned hypocrites who think they’re following the way of God when there’s no way God would sanction people being treated that way, or that God would discriminate against people for loving each other,” Bee rants. “It’s just wrong.”

  “I know.”

  “Thinking about her there, I could cry for days. It makes me want to hit someone. And then I think, how can she love them? Her family, I mean. How can she stand to be surrounded by such bullshit, and why doesn’t she just walk away? She could make a family with me.”

  “I don’t know if you can walk away from family, Bee,” I say. “You can try, but they’re still there, still part of you.”

  “I know,” she says. “I get it. And I get that she’s scared. I don’t know what to do.”

  “It’s not much as far as advice goes,” I say, “but maybe you just need to give it time.”

  “Yeah.”

  “See how it goes.”

  “I know,” she says, and wraps her arms around her knees.

  “Distract me,” she says. “Tell me about you.”

  “Okay,” I say.

  “And let me get drunk and crash on your couch.”

  “All right,” I say. “Let’s go get you another drink and then I’ll show you something really fucked up.”

  She gives me a nod and grins.

  “Follow me,” I say, and head for the kitchen

  ***

  Bernadette stands in the center of the studio.

  I have pulled the new paintings out of their hiding place in the basement and leaned them up against the walls for her to see.

  She looks from one piece to another, and for a long time she doesn’t say anything. I’m afraid to look at her face, but she’s holding her left hand over her heart and she has been taking huge gulps of grappa, which is not an easy thing to do.

  “This is all since you met Hugo?” she asks.

  “Yeah.”

  She reaches out to touch something on one of the first pieces—a painted clump of my hair. She shivers and then steps back.

  “Wow,” she says. “Is this...what technique is this?”

  “Puke-of-existential-angst-on-canvas?”

  “Funny,” she says.

  “Seriously, I don’t know.”

  “What about this one?” she walks over to a piece where I have layered the acrylic in huge, thick, circular sweeps and then, before it dried, carved the suggestion of a face into the paint.

  “I was awake at night,” I say, “and it just…there’s no plan. It’s like I get taken over and then hours later, I emerge, or wake up and...and this is what has happened.”

  Bernadette points at the face. “He was wrong for you.”

  My breath hitches. “Who?”

  She turns to face me and I feel like her eyes might burn right through me.

  “You know who,” she says. “I’ve never said it, but he was wrong.”

  “Bee, don’t.”

  She takes a step towards me. “He was wrong. And if he hadn’t died, you would have figured that out. I’m sorry he died, Mara, I’m really, really sorry. And I’m sorry for what it’s done to you, but you have to...well, maybe you have to do this.” She waves her hand towards the leaning canvases. “Maybe this will finally do it, but more importantly you need to—”

  “Please don’t start with the ‘forgive yourself’ bullshit!”

  “There’s nothing to forgive yourself for. You have to realize that you’re allowed to keep on living. And he wasn’t some kind of paragon. He wasn’t perfect, Mara, and you’re not the only reason your relationship was—”

  “Stop!”

  “About to break up!”

  “It wasn’t breaking,” I say, staring her down. “It was broken. And I’m the one who broke it.”

  Chapter 28

  In less than a month, Dad is back from Mexico and in treatment. I count myself lucky that he got himself home without my having to take the trip down.

  Surprisingly, Shauna is still with him. I can tell from her voice that something has changed. She sounds grim but not hysterical the way she usually gets.

  I head to the center, and as soon as I see the wedding band on her finger, I know what has changed.

  “For better or for worse?” I say to her outside the door to my dad’s room.

  She nods.

  “I would have come. Even if it was just the two of you on the beach.” As I say it, I realize I actually mean it. I would have somehow managed to get on an airplane and gone down there to be with him. With them. This love thing is messing with me. Making me all mushy and optimistic.

  “That’s sweet,” she says, “but I wanted to seize the moment.”

  “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” I say. “What you’re getting yourself into?”

  “I do,” she says.

  I take her by the shoulders and hold my face close to hers. Her big eyes blink but otherwise the gaze she returns is steady.

  “
Don’t leave him then,” I say, and hope my voice doesn’t break.

  “I won’t.”

  I believe her. That is, I believe her as much as I ever believe anyone.

  ***

  It doesn’t happen all at once this time, but instead creeps up on me.

  I tell myself it’s just stress, but if it is stress, it also increases my stress and therefore...it does not get better.

  With our bodies naked and Hugo’s arms around me, suddenly I do not trust his hands.

  Small patches of my skin, and then bigger chunks and then huge swaths, defect. They flinch and cry and ache—they flee from touch.

  When I tie his hands to the headboard, Hugo thinks I’m being kinky. I hiss at him not to move and I refuse him my most sensitive parts and I shut my eyes and tighten my muscles and grind against him hard and fast.

  I ask him not to talk, but what I really need is for him not to say he loves me and not to talk softly and not to invade my sore places with nice words or soft fingers or clean love.

  I still come most of the time, which is something.

  And Hugo is still amazed at how I always fuck like it’s the last time.

  He uses the words “make love,” but I am not making love anymore. I am fucking. I am begging my body to stay with me at least for that.

  I have dreams of Erik. I have dreams of Erik and Lucas and all of us together with paint brushes that we use to erase parts of each other’s bodies.

  I awake wet and take Hugo’s wrists in my hand and hold them over his head and lower myself onto his cock as he struggles to emerge from the fog of sleep. Faces of the men I’ve fucked leap into my mind, and then superimpose themselves on Hugo’s face. Lucas, Erik, Caleb, Sal and a few whose names I never learned, look back at me and their eyes are filled with hatred, with want, with need. I take my hands to my eyes in an effort to banish them and Hugo, now freed, brings his hands to my breasts and squeezes.

  I nearly scream.

  I want to hit him.

  It’s not really him I’m seeing, it’s just...hands...hands that want me, that want to do things to me and make me feel, and make me surrender and push past who I am and who I need to be and poke and prod and squeeze where I am young and raw and hurt. I cannot be touched. I might lose my mind. I might scream and howl for centuries. I might break into small, bleeding fragments and never be whole again because there is no safe place, no safe place...