Falling Under

by Danielle Younge-Ullman

  But Lucas looks incredulous, isn’t buying it.

  “Do you hear yourself?” he says. “My this, my that—if we’re going to talk that way, then what about me? What about my chance to prove myself? We only have a few weeks left and then we’re out in the world. I need to have something to show for my schooling—something big. You can replace the furniture, but my reputation? I have to build it. Why do you have to ruin this for me?”

  “But did you have to—”

  He shakes his head.

  “I never realized you were such a pedant,” he says, and then strides over to the couch and rips a tennis ball off, revealing the glue-encrusted fabric beneath.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Taking it apart. You win. You can have your couch back. And your damned underwear.”

  His rips off another one and looks at you. “Happy? Come on. Come and help!”

  He reaches for a third.

  “Stop!” you say. “Stop it. It’s fine.”

  “Oh no, it’s no problem,” he says. “I’m sure I can whip up something else by the end of the week.”

  He’ll fail. He’s neglected to hand in a lot of projects, done badly in his academic courses, and been warned that his thesis project better be impressive. He’ll fail and he’ll blame you. He’ll leave you.

  And you’ll prove to yourself, once again, that you are incapable of sustaining a relationship.

  Besides, it’s not his fault that he hasn’t had to work as hard as you have, not his fault he doesn’t understand. You are the one who is damaged, who is freakish and possessive and unable to let things go.

  “I’m sorry,” you say. “Please stop. Leave it.”

  He pauses, studies your face.

  “Really?”

  He’s not perfect, but he loves you. He loves you and he has stayed with you. No one else has stayed.

  “Really. I think it’s brilliant. I was just...a little surprised, that’s all.”

  His face, his entire demeanor changes and he is once again beautiful, sweet, warm.

  He picks you up and twirls you in a circle.

  “You are the absolute best,” he says, and kisses you. “I don’t know how you put up with me.”

  ***

  After the big showing—the tromping of half the school through your apartment and into your living room—Lucas is ecstatic.

  You have dinner at China Lily. His blonde hair is shaggy and his dress shirt is wrinkled, but he still looks like an angel to you. A fallen angel perhaps, especially with the bags under his eyes.

  Graduation looms, and so does the future.

  Your classmates have lofty goals, but you are living with a dreamer, so you’ve been trying to create art people will actually buy. Otherwise there is far too much waitressing in your future. Some of your professors are disappointed, but it’s not like they’re going to fail you.

  Lucas nudges your knee with his under the table.

  “Thank you for your patience,” he says.

  “With what?”

  “My thesis project. I realize now I should have asked you, but I was so inspired, and I wanted to surprise you. I just didn’t think. I was a bit obsessed.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “I get carried away sometimes,” he says and then looks down at his hands. “And I know I can be selfish. I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, Lucas, you’re passionate, you’re an artist. It’s part of what makes you talented.”

  He grins at the compliment. “It’s nice of you to say that, but I want to be nice to live with too. And I’m not the only talent in the household.”

  It’s your turn to grin.

  “We have a wild future ahead of us. We should move to Prague,” he says. “We can live cheap and travel Europe, sell our work to boutique galleries until the big ones recognize us.”

  “What about our families?” you ask.

  “They’ll still be here, sweetie.”

  “And my Dad?”

  “We’ll come back every few months to visit.”

  You sigh. “I worry.”

  “You worry too much. We’re going to make a life together, Mara, I’ve known it since we met.”

  You smile and tell yourself how lucky you are to have such a guy, such a talented, beautiful guy who loves you. If he’s a bit idealistic, acts like a spoiled child sometimes, well, you’re not exactly a prize yourself.

  And most of the time you’re happy. At least, you think so.

  Maybe once you’re away from here, out of school, far from your families and your too-small apartment, you might be able to feel your happiness.

  Because though Lucas is right beside you, though he is holding your hand and staring into your eyes with love, there is always that part of you he cannot reach, a part of you he does not even know is there.

  Someday he will, though. These things take time.

  Later, in bed, your skin wants to creep from his.

  It’s happened before, but in small moments, little twinges you could ignore. This is different. This is hating the sound of his panting and the feel of his tongue pushing into your mouth, this is every muscle in your body wanting to jump out of the bed and run so far he will never catch you.

  Nothing has changed in how he loves you, in how he touches you or the tender, sweet things he says. And you love him. You need him for his passion, for the way he sees everything as possible and the world as good. Nothing has changed in that.

  But something is wrong with you and you squeeze your eyes tight and grind your hips faster which makes him think you are desperate for him when in fact you are just desperate for it to be over. You lie awake all night staring at the ceiling.

  You begin to have headaches and avoid bedtime.

  You pick fights.

  You wonder why your body has abandoned you.

  But perhaps your body thinks you have abandoned it.

  Lucas begins to notice. He asks if you still find him sexy and if you still love him. You start giving more blowjobs. You try to keep clothes on during sex so he can’t touch you.

  “If there’s something wrong, you can talk to me about it,” he says one day when you won’t let him touch your stomach. “I’m your friend, too.”

  “I’m fine,” you say. “Just stressed.”

  He gets a phone call from his mother one Sunday afternoon and afterward loses his customary sunny demeanor. When you ask him about it, he shakes his head and rolls his eyes but doesn’t tell you anything.

  You wonder if you are frigid.

  But if you were frigid, you don’t think you’d be fantasizing about the new model in Life Drawing class.

  On the day he appears, disrobes, and poses on the podium, you feel hot where you haven’t in months. It would be a relief, except it doesn’t go away. What is it about him?

  It could be his body—he’s tall and lean and reminds you of Caleb. His hair is long, loose, and red, and freckles cover his torso and thighs.

  It could be the scars on his arm. It could be the way his eyes hit yours and held that first time, and the way he shook his head as if to dismiss a strange thought when he finally looked away.

  Day by day, you see more of his eyes.

  You know him. You don’t know him, know him, but you understand something about him—you are the same inside.

  Your drawing professor watches over your shoulder as you draw him and she says, “Yes, yes, that’s it exactly.”

  On his last day, you take a long time packing up, and he takes his time getting dressed.

  Chapter 30

  I hang up, put the receiver down and groan.

  “What’s going on?” Hugo says.

  We’re chopping vegetables, a novel activity in my kitchen, and Pollock, now a frequent visitor, is standing by waiting for bits of food to drop from the counter.

  I try to pin down a baby carrot in order to slice it.

  “You really want to know?”

  Hugo “accidentally” drops a piece of sun-dried to
mato on the floor, and Pollock dives for it.

  “I love gossip,” he says.

  “Short version: Bee wants Faith to come out to her parents, which will cause a major hoopla and possible schism in Faith’s family. Faith accuses Bernadette of being equally in the closet since the people at Bee’s work don’t know—”

  “It’s not quite the same thing,” Hugo says.

  “I know. So. Things got ugly and Faith has now accused Bee of being a hypocrite not only for the work thing, but also because she is working for a patriarchal, wasteful, consumerist industry whose sole purpose to make money off of women by making them feel shitty about themselves, while at the same time purporting to be a feminist, environmentalist and gay rights activist.”

  “Wow,” Hugo says. “Hey, do you have oregano?”

  “No.”

  “Basil?”

  “Nope.”

  “Chives?”

  “Uh unh. Onion salt?” I suggest.

  He looks at me and shakes his head.

  “Cheese?” he says, and gives me a hopeful smile.

  “Jackpot!” I open the fridge and pass him a block of Bleu LaRoche.

  He whistles.

  “I may not have herbs, but expensive, stinky cheese is another matter,” I say.

  “I like stinky cheese,” he says, taking a whiff. “So, back to Bernadette being a hypocrite in a patriarchal consumerist industry.”

  “Well, now she’s miserable and thinking about quitting her job.”

  Hugo turns to me, offers me a hunk of cheese, and pops it in my mouth.

  “Yum.”

  As we work, I keep glancing over at him, like he might not be real. I have to keep checking.

  We put our homemade pizza in the oven and turn on the timer. Pollock, presumably exhausted from begging, has passed out sideways on the floor.

  “Twenty-five minutes,” Hugo says. And then he turns to me. “What are you doing for the next twenty-five minutes?”

  He’s got that look in his eyes. It’s the look all men get in their eyes, especially the ones that like you and want to fuck you—warm and fuzzy with a hard-on.

  “Not much,” I say.

  He smiles. Desire doesn’t even get a chance before I feel tightness descending on my stomach and fear chasing circles inside me.

  What is wrong with me!

  Nothing. Nothing whatsoever. I let him pull me toward him. Our lips meet. I kiss back. I want to want to. I think, Hugo, Hugo, it’s Hugo. I try to focus my senses, to smell him, to taste him, to recapture the desire I had for him just a few days ago.

  Come back! Come back!

  I press myself closer but my body is saying, I’m not coming with you, you stupid bitch—exit! Exit!

  I break away from the kiss. I hold him tightly and hide my face in the crook of his neck.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah, um, can we just...”

  “Sure,” he says.

  We stay wrapped around each other and I squeeze him hard.

  I could do it. I could make myself do it and I could fake it so he wouldn’t know, as I did hundreds of times with Lucas.

  But Lucas deserved better and so does Hugo.

  Hugo does not deserve to make love to my fake, to my cringing double. And if I do it, someday he will see it’s not me making love with him and by that time, as much as I love him, I will also hate him. I will hate him for taking my unwilling body and not seeing, for so long, that part of me that hides, crying, in the corner.

  As we stand there, he begins to shift his weight from one foot to the other and soon we are swaying side to side. He has not asked me any questions. He has not tried to resume his seduction. He holds me and we execute a rocking, music-less dance.

  I begin to relax and let the heat of his body transfer to mine. I am safe for now.

  With every breath comes the knowledge that Hugo is precious to me.

  But how can I keep him? How can I make his face the first I see in the morning and the last I see at night? How do I keep him alive and healthy and safe? How do I keep him faithful and sane? How do I keep him in love with me?

  Because this is the love I want. This is a good love, a love that could be right. And if I accept it, if I give back to him what is in me to give, I will have purchased him with my soul. My soul, that has been broken and cobbled back together, with some of the pieces not quite fitting right. And though I believe in time healing these things, still, I do not love with lightness, and I do not hope with confidence and though what I need is forever unconditional, I do not believe in it. I have no evidence to make me believe in it. Oh, how I wish I could.

  Under my face, Hugo’s T-shirt is damp with my tears. He is still holding me tight and his hand is rubbing my back in warm, slow circles. I didn’t realize I was crying.

  “Sorry,” I whisper.

  “Shh,” he says. “It’s okay.”

  “People do this,” I say.

  “Do what?”

  “People manage to do it all the time, right?”

  “Um...”

  “I want to know,” I say, “Is it safe?”

  He keeps rocking.

  “Is what safe?”

  “Is it...would it be safe...” My voice is now nearly inaudible, but I continue speaking into his neck. “Will it ever feel safe to love you?”

  He stops moving, stops breathing even, just for a moment. Then he continues the rocking, holding my body still closer to his.

  “I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t know if love is supposed to feel safe.”

  “That sucks.”

  “Maybe. If we’re in it though, if we’re in love,” he continues, “we’re equally unsafe. Maybe there’s a safety in that.”

  “Maybe.”

  He pulls his head back and cradles my face in his hands.

  “I’ll love you the best I can,” he says, and there are tears in his eyes. “That I can promise.”

  I swallow the lump in my throat and nod.

  “Okay. Me too,” I say.

  He kisses me.

  And the lips kissing him back are mine, fully, willingly mine. And a sliver of relief slides in. We move our lips slowly, touching each other with our faces—cheeks, noses, chins, eyelashes. I am finally wanting, and thinking about us naked on the dining room floor when the buzzer goes off on the stove and the dog starts howling.

  We laugh and kiss one more time and go to retrieve our dinner.

  I have retrieved myself, at least for the moment.

  ***

  Life as a so-called normal person includes dinners out and political discussion and double-dating with Bernadette and Faith.

  Double dating with Bernadette and Faith includes witnessing them fight and being asked to take sides in their ongoing personal/political dispute about Faith coming out to her family and Bernadette coming out at work.

  We are deep in the west end, in a funky underground restaurant where no one from Faith’s family would venture. It’s dark and features wild paintings of orgies on the walls and sparkling 50’s vinyl benches. Ani di Franco plays on the sound system and Bernadette’s hands and arms move in punctuation to the dialogue.

  And then...

  Then there is Erik. Where he should not be.

  Erik, who should exist inside his apartment and nowhere else.

  Of course he must go out. He must have a life apart from what I see, but I’ve never imagined it.

  And now here he is, loose on the streets of Toronto, loose in the same bar as me and my new, normal life. Here he is at the next table, staring at me, witnessing me in my escape from who I really am, and from what I, what we, have done together.

  Erik, Erik, Erik. Where he should not be.

  ***

  A few words, alone in a classroom...

  “I’m not free,” you say, your first words ever to him as he lets his eyes rest on you, his message clear. “Not really, not for...not to...”

  “Everyone is free,” he says.

  “Yes, but
...”

  “Don’t bore me with boyfriends or guilt or bullshit justifications,” he says. “I don’t give a rat’s ass.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’ve seen you looking at me.”

  “I’m supposed to look at you,” you say, “I’ve been drawing you.”

  “You’re not drawing me now.”

  “No,” you say, with too much hot, fast liquid pulsing through your veins. “No, I’m not.”

  The classroom door locks so easily.

  And then you feel alive, really alive, for the first time in so long. Your locked-up self slides free and wants to put aside future and love and responsibility. She wants the eyes and hands of a strange man on her, wants to let the clothing fall off of her.

  You let her.

  And you let Erik into your breath, into your blood and bones, into you. Where he should not be.

  ***

  My fingertips are cold and I have lost track of the conversation. Faith is looking at me, waiting for a response.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, blinking. “Excuse me, I have to...” I gesture towards the back of the bar and stand up.

  “You okay?” Hugo asks.

  I give him what I hope is a bright smile. “Perfect,” I say, and start walking.

  There are stairs, and before I’m down them I hear another pair of feet descending. At the bottom, with my feet safely on the orange-painted concrete, I turn to meet him.

  For a moment we stand looking at each other, two or three feet of air and space between us. He seems even bigger, takes up more space than I remember.

  I swallow.

  “Hello.” Erik says.

  I cross my arms over my chest and try to slow my breathing.

  “Hello,” I say.

  “It all makes sense now,” he says. “But you forgot to mention your new boyfriend. He is new, isn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  He exhales. “Well, that’s good. If you’re happy...”

  “So far.”

  “Good,” he says, and looks away.

  “Uh, how are you?” I ask.