The Man I Love

by Suanne Laqueur

  “No, it’s Daisy.”

  He stood up, and his chair fell over backwards behind him.

  “Hello?” she said.

  “Daisy.”

  “Yes, it’s Daisy. Who is this?”

  He filled up his chest. “It’s Erik.”

  “Who?”

  He gripped the edge of the desk, steadying himself. “Erik.”

  A few beats of confused silence. And then, “Fish?”

  She still won’t say my name, he thought, swallowing against his dry throat. “It’s me.”

  Silence again. He strained his ear, the receiver clutched in a white-knuckled grip.

  “Hi,” she whispered finally.

  “Hi,” he said. He felt a little light-headed. He sat on the floor.

  “Holy shit.”

  “Yeah.” He lay down. Better.

  “Why are… How did you know I was here?”

  “I didn’t. I was calling your mother to try to find you. It didn’t even occur to me you’d be there.”

  “I’m right here,” she said. “I came for Thanksgiving.”

  “Is this a bad time to call? Are you in the middle of…?”

  “No, no, I’m alone. I mean, everyone is passed out. I was just coming downstairs for some pie. And now… This is bizarre, just a minute.” Erik heard the scrape of a chair. “I’m sorry, I have to sit down.”

  “I was sitting. Now I’m lying down.”

  “Oh my God,” Daisy whispered.

  He closed his eyes. Imagined her sitting at the long farmhouse table. Pictured the kitchen and its butter-yellow walls. Francine’s treasured cast iron skillets, copper pots and pans, brightly colored enamel. The milk glass pendant lights casting a warm glow over it all.

  “You ruined my pie,” she said absently.

  “What kind?” he asked.

  “Apple. Mom made it.”

  “How’s your mother?” What did she make for dinner, he longed to ask. Does she ever make pepparkakor? Will you cut down the tree tomorrow?

  “She’s fine. She and Pop are fine.” Her voice seemed so small. Erik couldn’t tell if she was speaking softly out of courtesy for others in the house or if this was all the volume she was going to give him.

  “How are you?”

  “I’m stunned. Oh, you mean in general.” Now her voice rose up into a more conversational range. “I’m good. I’m doing well. Thank you.”

  He sat up. “I saw the article in Dance Magazine.”

  “Pardon?”

  “The article in Dance Magazine. About you and Will and the company, doing your first Nutcracker.”

  “You saw it? How?”

  “Believe it or not, Kees showed it to me.”

  “You saw Keesja? When?”

  “Just last week. I went to Lancaster.”

  “What for?”

  “Because I’ve never been back and it was time.”

  “Oh. I went back for the ten-year anniversary.”

  “I know,” he said. “I heard the thing on NPR.”

  “You did?”

  “I heard it when I was driving home from work. I had to sit in the car until it was over.”

  “What was that like?” she said.

  “Surreal.”

  “It was surreal being there. I hadn’t been back since graduation.”

  “I couldn’t believe when Will sent my necklace to me.”

  “Oh my God. We couldn’t believe when they moved the stove and it was underneath. I was so happy to see it. I knew you were heartbroken over losing it.”

  “I was. I took the earth apart looking.”

  “Will said you wrote him after. Letting him know you got it. But I guess he was hoping for something more.”

  A pointed edge to her last words. Erik closed his eyes and took hold of what he owned. “Yeah. See, I was extremely busy being an asshole, so I just sent the bare minimum.”

  “And what neighborhood of Asshole City are you calling me from tonight?”

  “I’m up in Brockport.”

  “I see. Me, I… Well, I guess if you read the article and heard the thing on the radio, you know what I’m doing.”

  “It all sounded fantastic. And I loved the picture of Will and Lucky and their kids. Two?”

  “Two and number three on the way. Will sneezes and Lucky’s knocked up.”

  Which seemed the perfect point to bail out of the chit-chat. “Dais?”

  “Yes?”

  “How would you feel about me coming to see you?”

  A clink of silverware on china. “Well,” she said, “I’m going back to Canada tomorrow.”

  He smiled. “I didn’t mean tomorrow.”

  “When did you mean then?” she said coolly.

  “Whenever it’s convenient for me to come out and talk to you and have your undivided attention and—”

  “You had my undivided attention for years, Fish. You were the one who disconnected everything.”

  He bit his lips. “You’re right. I should’ve said I would give you my undivided attention. Finally.”

  “What makes you think I want it? Finally?”

  “This was a bad idea,” he whispered.

  “What the fuck does that mean?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Fish,” she said sharply. “This was a really good idea. All right? It was a superb idea but it’s going to be a shitty conversation. You can’t call me out of the blue after twelve years of nothing, pick up where we left off and have it just be…just be fine. You can’t.”

  “I know.”

  “I did a terrible thing to you,” she said. “I never denied it and I still don’t. But you cut me off without even… You just walked out and never gave me a… Oh, Jesus Christ.” She wasn’t crying but her whole voice seemed to collapse in on itself. “I just came downstairs for some pie and all of a sudden it’s today.”

  He could barely push words through his constricted throat. “What do you mean, today?”

  “Today. The day you call. You think I haven’t been waiting? I haven’t been pining my life away but if you think there isn’t a part of my heart still wondering if today is going to be the day, you’re out of your freakin’ mind, Fish.” She sighed heavily. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m a little out of my own mind and like an idiot, I quit smoking a year ago.”

  “I’m sorry, I caught you off guard,” he said. “Honestly, Dais, I was calling your mother. I didn’t imagine you’d answer the phone.”

  “You think about someday, you prepare mentally for someday. But someday is never today. And now it is.”

  “I know.”

  “I’ve imagined this call for twelve years. Now you’re on the phone and I’m completely at a loss. I’ve forgotten all my lines.”

  “When you imagined this,” he said. “What did you have me saying?”

  Another heavy sigh, like a small windstorm in his ear.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t jump right into it,” he said quickly.

  “Well for fuck’s sake, I don’t think you called me for my chili recipe. You want to jump into small talk? Really? How’s the weather up there? You watch the game today—how about them Broncos, huh?”

  He laughed.

  “If you don’t mind, I think I’ll jump immediately into it because you could disappear again.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Oh, won’t you? You’re really good at it.”

  “I know. And I’m sorry, truly sorry it took me this long…to grow up.”

  An abyss of silence on the other end which he didn’t know how to interpret, so he rushed to fill it up with words. “I am not good at disappearing, Dais. I am spectacular at it. I made a conscious choice to shut down and ignore you all these years. And the last time you called, and I hung up on you? It was obnoxious. And cowardly. I’m sorry. And I appreciate you not slamming down the phone on me now because, well, I kind of deserve it.”

  More silence, then Daisy whispered, “Thank you.”

  “You’re we
lcome.” It felt lame in his mouth, almost pompous. Doing her some kind of favor. It wasn’t the tone he wanted to set.

  “God, if I can’t smoke then I need to make some tea.”

  “All right.”

  “I mean, I need to put the phone down, put the kettle on and breathe.”

  “All right.”

  “So give me your phone number and I will call you back”

  He felt a stab of panic at the thought of severing the connection. “You can’t take me with you?” he asked, cringing at how pathetic he sounded.

  “No,” she said. “Fish, I’m glad you called tonight. But all those years without a word… They’re kind of hard to just brush aside.”

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

  “So, I am testing you. May I?”

  “You’re testing I won’t go away?”

  “Frankly, yes. I waited twelve years for you to call. Now you can wait while I make a cup of tea and throw up.”

  He took a deep breath and gave her his number. “That’s my home line. 555-0411 is my cell, same area code. And there’s a phone booth downstairs. If I jump out the window I’ll land right by it so let me give you the number.”

  She laughed. “Don’t jump. I’ll come back. I mean, I’ll call you back.”

  “I am not leaving. I don’t care if the house catches fire.”

  “All right. I’ll talk to you in a bit.”

  Once she hung up, Erik collapsed on his back again, the breath rushing out of his lungs. “What just happened?” he asked the ceiling.

  He sat up. She was making tea. Good idea. He pattered into the kitchen, pulled the kettle onto a front burner and lit it, busied himself with mug, teabags and milk. He stared at the blue flames licking the edges of the kettle. He could feel his body on high alert, the minute twitches of his muscles, his stomach skittering and wobbling like a sick gyroscope. And yet. Another sensation. Something out of the past. A more profound rearrangement, somewhere deep in his psyche, the atoms and elements of his being sorting themselves out, shifting into the places where they belonged. He was realigning, the compass of his soul lining up with True North.

  I called her.

  I heard her voice. We spoke. We will speak again.

  It’s today.

  He was meant to do this. It was today and he was exactly where he was supposed to be.

  Living the truth. And being tested.

  He sat down, stared at the phone and waited for the water to boil. Waited for Daisy to come back.

  Human Cocaine

  The conversation was a long and arduous exorcism. Sprawled in bed later, limp and exhausted, his soul rid of demons and his bones drained of their marrow, Erik could keep only a few parts intact and clear in his head. But he remembered what was important.

  A strange reluctance gripped him when he faced the opportunity to tell her how she had hurt him. The time was here, he was ready and she was listening, but still he hesitated. It was a conscious effort to peel his fingers back from the pain he had clutched tight all these years. A miserly compulsion to continue hoarding and hiding the stash.

  Hurt, he remembered, was a habit.

  Say it.

  His mouth closed up in his hand, he could feel the command of his brain traveling along synapses and nerves, engaging the muscles in his jaw, making his tongue form words and his lungs push air behind them.

  Tell her. What are you waiting for?

  He dragged his hand away from his mouth. “What happened that day killed me,” he said.

  “It had to. And I’m so sorry.”

  “It haunted me. It still does.”

  “What haunts you, tell me. Please tell me.”

  He felt his eyes flare as he let the raw impact of the long-ago day back into his heart. “When I saw you with him,” he whispered. He had to be so careful with this grenade he had been carrying around. “Saw him where I was supposed to be. Where only I had been.”

  “Yes.”

  “It became all I saw.”

  “It must have. I wanted to die. I can only imagine what it was like for you…”

  Her voice was calm, humble. Above all, it was receptive. She was an empty cup, beckoning, and he gently let himself tip over and pour into it.

  “It was like an earthquake. Inside my head.”

  “A concussion,” she murmured.

  “It was a concussion. It was shocking on so many levels. Both what it was, and who it was. It’s… It shattered me. I truly felt like I was losing my mind.”

  “I know.”

  “And it broke my heart. I felt useless.”

  “After everything you did. I’m sorry.”

  This wasn’t how he thought it would be. He’d imagined a more dramatic disposal of the grenade: pulling the pin with his teeth and lobbing it. Massive pyrotechnics, the earth going up in flames. Instead it was as if a battle-hardened, veteran soldier had approached with quiet authority and held out a rough but wise hand. Give it here, son. And as Erik gave it up, he didn’t weep, but he put his forehead on the rim of the table and let the moment wash over him.

  The battle was over, he had surrendered his last weapon, and he was hunkered down in his foxhole amidst the smoke and rubble, shaken and spent. He ached all over. His skin hurt. Yet it was a leaching kind of pain, a detox. The poison was finally seeping out of his soul.

  At her own kitchen table, four hundred miles away, she waited for him. He could feel her patience like a low current through the receiver. He took his time. The storm passed. The smoke cleared. He picked up his head. “I don’t even know if this is a valid question anymore but why did you do it?”

  “Of course it’s a valid question.”

  “Probably not easily answered.”

  “Doesn’t dismiss it.”

  He waited, but she was quiet.

  “What happened, Dais?” he whispered, setting his empty cup on the table in front of her. “Please tell me.”

  She spoke in disjointed sentences at first. Memories and emotions pried from the vaults of her own mind. She had, as Erik had suspected, gotten high with David.

  “I was high, but I was conscious. I knew full well what was transpiring. I could have stopped it. I could have left. But I chose not to. Because I was done.”

  “Done,” Erik said. “Done with me?”

  “With me. I was sick of myself. Sick of who I had become. Sick of my head and my stomach. Sick of nightmares every other night, of anxiety every time you and I tried to make love. Tired of trying to be strong, tired of everything. I was just done.”

  The emotions were difficult but the story she told was simple. She did a few lines with David. Her head turned chemical. Then the air turned chemical. She began to feel something coming from David. And it turned her on. Turned on something long shut off. “And when my body responded, I didn’t think. I just went with it. I wish I had something more justifiable, something deeper or more profound, but I don’t. I hit the wall. I didn’t care. I didn’t think about you or the consequences. I don’t think I even thought about David and what he was getting from it. It wasn’t about connecting to another person. It wasn’t making love. It was purely selfish. It was human cocaine, and I just did a huge line of it.”

  “I see,” he whispered.

  “I’m sorry,” Daisy said. “I’m so sorry. It was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. I broke your trust, I threw us away and it was… When I think of my worst moment, and I don’t mean the worst thing that happened to me, but the moment when I was at my worst. My most despicable moment. That was it. I’ve never topped it.”

  “You were high.”

  “So what.”

  “You were weak.”

  “Weak is accurate. I was weak.”

  “And he preyed on it.”

  “I can’t speak for him. I don’t know his side of the story and it’s irrelevant. I only know what I did, Fish.”

  Erik was quiet, taking it in, taking her in as well. He knew the difference between I’m sorry I di
d it and I’m sorry I got caught doing it. He detected none of the latter here. She was remorseful, but not groveling. Dignity was in her self-awareness, her unflinching ownership of what she had done and her refusal to blame David for it.

  “I can’t think what else I can say,” she said. “I’m trying to give reasons and not make excuses. I don’t know if it helps or just makes it hurt more but I don’t think it’s much more analyzable.”

  “I’m just taking it in,” he said.

  “I understand.”

  “I imagined conversations with you too, you know.”

  “Did I follow the script?”

  “Dais,” he said, sighing. “I’ll be honest. Even in my head, in my made-up scenarios, I never addressed the issue.”

  “What?”

  “I only imagined talking to you. You and me. Just being us. In our little bubble, in our private universe. I’d just imagine the good parts. I never confronted you, not even in my head. We always said David only wanted what he couldn’t have. I think I only wanted what came easily. I didn’t fight for us. Not even in my imagination. I don’t fight, Dais. I walk away, shut it down, cut it off, bury it. I threw us away for…for what? I don’t know. All I know is twelve years later, you’re still in my head and I don’t stop thinking about you. I can’t stop thinking about you. And I really would like to come see you and—”

  “You think about me?” Her voice was blurred.

  “Of course I think about you.”

  “I think about you every day. I swear. I’m not trying to be maudlin or dramatic. But not a day goes by I don’t think about you one way or another.”

  “I do too. Every day there’s something, some little thing making me remember. It won’t stop.”

  “You see?” Now her voice was dissolving. She was starting to cry. In his ear, across two states, Daisy was crying for him. “I thought you forgot. I mean I just thought you left it. Got over me, moved on and forgot about it.”

  “I never forgot. I can’t. It was the happiest I’ve ever been in my life and I don’t know how to get—”

  “I’m sorry, Erik.”

  There. Finally. His name. He closed his eyes. “I never got over it, Dais,” he whispered. “I just left it.”

  “I’m sorry,” she sobbed. “Erik, I’m so sorry.”