The Myth of You and Me: A Novel

by Leah Stewart

  “Good night,” he said again. And then he pulled the door shut.

  He had been right about my feet. On my back, I let them dangle off the futon, and then curled onto my side. Many times I had imagined spending the night with Will. I had never imagined it like this. Perhaps I had been wrong about his desire to kiss me, or perhaps that girlfriend was still a presence in his life. Several months after Sonia and Will broke up, Sonia showed me a letter he’d sent, in which he said he still thought about her, that he hadn’t really dated anybody else. She’d said, “What does ‘really’ mean?” I supposed he had dated other girls, but hadn’t fallen for any of them. I pictured him lying in a single bed in a dorm room, a snowdrift against a solitary window, dreaming of Sonia while the phone rang and rang, some girl he couldn’t love on the other end of the line. There was no way of knowing what would happen if I went upstairs.

  I heard him moving around up there, water running through the pipes. There was a creak as he got into bed. A click as he turned out the light. I lay awake for a long time, listening to the bed groan beneath his restless weight. I wanted to believe that I was the reason why he couldn’t sleep.

  16

  Over coffee the next morning I said that I should be getting back to Boston, but Will argued that in all likelihood Sonia still wasn’t home, and that as long as I was in Gloucester, I should let him show me around. To prove there was no reason for me to go, he called Sonia and left a message on her answering machine. I noted without comment the way he said, “Hey, it’s me,” the fact that he had her number memorized.

  The morning was overcast and windswept, but we went to the beach anyway, and Will fell silent at the sight of the white spray against the rocks. He was one of those hosts who, in showing a place to a visitor, seems struck anew by its pleasures himself. This was not one of the mild, welcoming southern beaches I was used to, but an imposing one, where you seemed more likely to drown than dog-paddle. The scene was nearly monochromatic, like a black-and-white photo, the sky light gray with a hint of blue, the clouds etched in darker gray, the water a matte silver-gray rolling with white. We stood on the sand, looking out at two blurred outcroppings, one supporting houses, the other a lighthouse. On our right were huge rocks—“Mostly granite,” Will shouted over the wind. After a moment he moved away from me toward the water. I stayed where I was, studying his profile against the dark, enormous rocks.

  With his hair blowing in the wind, that intense, unreadable expression on his face, it was a little too easy to picture Will as Heathcliff gazing across the moors. In high school I read Wuthering Heights and Pride and Prejudice over and over, torn between the murderous, consuming desire of Heathcliff and the secret, reluctant love of Mr. Darcy. On the whole I preferred Mr. Darcy, but when Heathcliff beat his head against a tree and cried that he could not live without his soul, I longed to be caught in the grip of a strange and violent passion. I thought with some amusement that with those two for ideals of romance it was no wonder I had so long harbored feelings for a man as remote and changeable as Will. I felt a little ridiculous, because it was clear to me that morning that I was still as enamored of him as I had been at sixteen.

  Will turned and caught my eyes on his face. “What?” he shouted.

  “You could be the hero of a tragedy,” I said, but he didn’t hear me. He came closer, and I had to repeat myself at a louder volume, with greater embarrassment.

  “God, I hope not,” he said.

  “I meant it in a good way.”

  “How can you mean that in a good way?” he asked. I couldn’t tell if he was amused or offended. I shrugged. “Come on,” he said, jerking his head toward the rocks.

  I clambered up behind him, wary of the sharp barnacles, and stood on the rocks, droplets of ocean water hitting my face, my hair tangling in the wind. I hadn’t dressed appropriately—I was wearing a T-shirt—and all the hairs on my arms stood up. I tasted salt on my lips and glanced over at Will.

  “Want to go for a swim?” he said.

  “You first.”

  “You’re really cold, aren’t you?”

  “I’m okay.”

  “You’re shivering.” He moved like he was going to put his arm around me, and then he hesitated. “Let’s get out of here,” he said instead. “Let’s go eat.”

  We ate lunch in town, and then spent an hour browsing through an enormous used-record shop. Will seemed to know the guy behind the counter, a kid with a seventies-era Rod Stewart haircut, but he didn’t introduce me. I wandered by, heard them talking about a band I’d never heard of, and moved on. Will bought a stack of records, and as we walked outside—the sun was out now, the sky blue—he showed me one of them and explained why it was a good find.

  “Now what?” he said, looking up and down the sidewalk. He seemed alert, almost excited. “How about a walk?”

  We followed the boulevard past the statue of a fisherman, then backed up at Will’s insistence to read the inscription—THEY THAT GO DOWN TO THE SEA IN SHIPS 1623–1923. “It’s touristy, I know,” Will said. “But it still makes me . . .” He shook his head.

  “Sad?” I suggested.

  “Yeah, thanks, wordsmith,” he said. “I was going to say it gave me a thrill of sorrow, or something poetic like that.”

  “That would indeed have been poetic,” I said.

  “Are you making fun of me?”

  “I’ll leave that to your judgment.”

  He laughed. “Come on,” he said. We walked down to the water, which looked prettier now under sunny skies. Will pointed to a contraption about two hundred feet out that looked like an enormous high chair and explained that during the St. Peter’s festival a greasy-pole contest took place out there, in which competitors—all men—walked an enormous, slick telephone pole to capture a red flag, most of them coming away with bruises or broken ribs instead. “I’m entering this year,” he said.

  I stared at him. “You are?”

  He nodded. “There’s a log in my backyard I’ve been greasing up to practice.”

  “Really?”

  “Every day after work,” he said. “That’s what I do with my solitary life.” He looked solemn, but now I understood he was teasing me.

  “You’d think I’d know better by now,” I said. “I believed you.”

  “That’s sad.” He shook his head. “That gives me a thrill of sorrow.”

  He took me to the lighthouse we had seen that morning from the beach, promising me a view of Boston. As we walked out the narrow point, the weather began to change again, and by the time we reached the lighthouse the breakwater was high, and the wind whipped away all sound and made my hair fly around my face. We looked out across the water. Boston was ghostly through the fog. Will turned to me and shrugged. He sat on the ground, and I sat beside him, my shoulder brushing his. We looked at each other. He gave me a quick smile and then gazed out toward Boston again.

  As we walked back down the point, our steps fell into a left-right, left-right rhythm, my stride as long as his. “Where do you think Sonia is?” I asked him.

  He shrugged. “Have you talked to Suzette?”

  I shook my head. “I couldn’t find her number. Did she get married or something?”

  “She is married,” he said. “I don’t know her new last name. Her husband’s first name is Chris. He’s an investment banker or something.”

  “You met him?”

  “I went to a party there once.”

  “So you know where they live?”

  “I don’t know the address,” he said.

  “You could draw me a map.”

  We walked in silence a moment. “Okay,” he said. “Before you go back tomorrow I will.”

  “Great,” I said, but I wasn’t thinking about Suzette, or Sonia, anymore. I was thinking about the fact that he wanted me to stay another night.

  For dinner we went to a seafood restaurant, a warm place where the light was dim and the wooden walls were a rosy brown. We sat in a booth in the back, drinking Ip
swich Ale, and ordered fish that arrived wrapped in tinfoil. We were still sitting there long after the food was gone. I was content, full and tipsy, feeling the sort of pleasant weariness that comes after a leisurely day spent mostly outdoors. Neither of us had spoken for a minute or two. I was studying the artwork and rudders hung high on the walls—I had already looked at the framed photos of actors and what Will called “famous fleet people” behind the bar.

  Will said, “Where will you go after this?”

  I laughed. “Home to pass out.” I caught myself and flushed. “Not that your place is . . .”

  He dismissed this with an impatient gesture. “No, I mean after you find her. What’s home?”

  What was home? The tree-lined streets of Oxford. The Nashville skyline. The red mountains of New Mexico. Yucca and brown grass. A white silo. Grit kicked up by a wind. All of it. None of it. The highway went everywhere.

  “Let’s talk about something else,” I said.

  “Okay,” he said. “I like your ring.”

  “What?” Without knowing it I’d been tapping my ring against the glass. It was the antique, set with five small opals, that Oliver had given me. “Oh, thanks. It belonged to Oliver’s aunt. He always said I reminded him of her.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she was wicked, and according to Oliver, so am I.” Thinking of this, I felt amusement and affection, only slightly tinged with loss, and I thought maybe this was how I could look forward to feeling about Oliver in the future.

  “Are you?” Will asked me, his voice low and flirtatious. But before I could answer, he said, business-like, “What are the stones?”

  “Opal. Really I’m not supposed to be wearing them. It’s not my birthstone, so it’s supposed to be bad luck.” Perhaps I had imagined that flirtatious tone. I almost hoped, my stomach still fluttering with nerves, that I had. Strange how uneasy I was at the thought of actually getting what I wanted. Maybe I was afraid of exchanging desire for disillusionment. I said, “You’re only supposed to wear them if your birthday’s in October.”

  “My birthday’s in October.”

  “Well, maybe you should wear it.” I took off the ring and presented it to him with a flourish. He put it on his ring finger.

  “A perfect fit,” he said. “How embarrassing.”

  “Why? We’re practically the same height. I’ve got big hands.” I held my hand up, palm toward him, and he pressed his hand against it. “Same size,” I said.

  “No, you’re cheating.” With his other hand he repositioned mine so that the heels of our hands were aligned. Now his fingers extended a little past mine.

  “Your fingers are longer but thinner.” I smiled. “They’re slender and tapering.”

  Will frowned. “I hate my hands. I look like I’ve never worked a day in my life.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. “I’ve always thought you had beautiful hands.”

  He looked at me a second—we were still palm to palm—and then he said, gruffly, “Thanks,” and withdrew his hand. He made a fist and cupped it, paper smothering rock.

  I blushed so deeply I was certain even the dim lights couldn’t hide my embarrassment. Why had I used those words always and beautiful? I might as well have told him I’d been in love with him for years. I wanted to shout, “You’re stupid!” and run from the room. Instead I caught our waitress’s eye and mouthed, “Check, please.”

  Will stared at the table, his hands hidden beneath it, and now I worried that he thought I had asked for the check because I was desperate to get him home and into bed. There was nothing I could do or say that couldn’t be misread. So I sat quietly until the check came, and then insisted, despite his protests, that I pay for my half.

  We drove back to his house in silence. He unlocked the door and went inside without a backward glance at me. I followed him, trying to decide if it would be too dramatic a response to pack my things and go. He went to drop his keys on the kitchen counter, and then he stood there a moment with his back to me.

  “So.” I swallowed. “I guess I should go.”

  He turned. “Go? What are you talking about?”

  “You just seem like you . . .” To my dismay, my voice sounded tearful. I wished I’d never come to Gloucester—it was unbearable to be around him—I wished I had never met him at all.

  “I don’t want you to go,” he said, as though the admission pained him.

  “Why not?”

  In two long strides he reached me. He reached out like a man hypnotized and ran the tips of his first two fingers along my collarbone. My breath caught in my throat.

  “Because,” he said. He touched my cheek, ran his hand down the side of my neck to let it rest on my shoulder. Then he kissed me.

  The beauties of his body, its hollows, its muscles, skin and bone. The valley above his pelvis, large enough for my hand, laid flat. The fine clear lines of the tendons in his neck. The thick veins rising from his forearms to spread across the backs of his hands. The grace of the small of his back. The heat that lived in his belly. To touch him was better than anything I could have imagined. I felt like I was getting what I wanted for the first time in my life, and this was both terrifying and exhilarating, a free fall. I hoped he couldn’t tell how badly I was trembling. Or was he the one trembling? I couldn’t tell, I didn’t care, it was us both.

  I woke in a panic, found myself alone in Will’s bed, and sat up. It was not just dark but black in the room. I must have had a nightmare. It had faded from my mind, but my body was still cold, my breathing shaky—the aftereffects of adrenaline. Will was gone. I imagined he’d woken with regrets, and had gone to sleep the rest of the night downstairs. My throat began to close.

  Then I heard the bathroom door open. At this evidence of Will’s presence, instead of a flood of happiness, my panic returned. I rolled over on my side, away from the door, and as I heard him approach I tried to breathe like I was asleep. The bed bounced under his weight as he eased back under the covers. I could feel him there behind me, on his side and propped on his elbow, looking at me. I thought, If he touches me I’ll know he’s not sorry.

  I felt him bend over me, felt him brush his lips against the place where my throat joined the hollow above my collarbone. I sighed with pleasure and relief. He put a line of kisses down my bare shoulder, and as I rolled toward him I thought again of dancing with him at the senior prom. I had never danced with a boy so exactly the right height. We seemed to fit together, in a way that suggested nothing had ever quite fit before.

  When we woke again in early afternoon Will brought two mugs of coffee upstairs, and we sat propped up in bed and drank them, my leg thrown over his. Will had opened the windows, and a breeze lifted the white curtains. I imagined I could taste salt on the air. I said, “Gloucester seems like a nice place to live.”

  “I like it,” he said. He set his coffee down and laid his palm flat on my bare stomach. “Maybe you should stay right here,” he said.

  I laughed. “In bed?”

  “Exactly,” he said. “This bed is a nice place to live.”

  “Won’t my muscles atrophy?”

  He grinned. “No,” he said. He moved closer and said into my ear, “Is it crazy if I want you to stay?” He took my earlobe into his mouth.

  “I like crazy,” I said. “Crazy’s good.”

  “Well, then,” he said. “Stay.” He kissed the side of my neck. “Everything you own is in the car.”

  “That’s true.”

  “We could move you right in.”

  “I could sleep in that back room. With my feet hanging off the futon.”

  “I don’t know. I was thinking you could sleep with Jessie on the dog bed.”

  I laughed. “I’m not sure how to take that.”

  He stroked the inside of my thigh. “I want you to stay,” he said.

  “Okay,” I said. “I just have to go back to the city first.”

  Will tensed. He sat up straight. “You really don’t,” he said.
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  “But I’ve got to find Sonia. It’s my job.”

  “Your job’s over.”

  I flinched. I swirled the coffee in my cup and took a sip. “Oliver left me instructions,” I said.

  “But he’s . . .” He stopped. “I just don’t think you’re going to find her if she doesn’t want you to.”

  “How do you know?”

  “What are you going to do? Hire a private eye?”

  “Suzette,” I said. “I’ll start with Suzette.”

  “And if she doesn’t know?”

  “Then I’ll find this Martin guy. He’s her fiancé. He must know something.”

  Will looked at the clock on his nightstand. “It’s late,” he said. “I guess we’d better get dressed.”

  I watched as he got out of bed and disappeared into the bathroom. When I heard the shower go on, I followed him. He was standing with both hands on the sink, staring at himself in the mirror. He turned as I came in. I touched his arm. “What’s the matter?”

  He pulled me close, holding me tight. “I’m afraid if you go you won’t come back.”

  “That’s silly,” I said. “Why wouldn’t I?”

  I found Sonia’s apartment empty and dark. This was no surprise—at Will’s insistence, I’d called her before I left and gotten the machine. I sat on the couch with my feet propped on the coffee table and looked at the map Will had drawn to Suzette’s apartment. First thing in the morning I’d go there. In the meantime here I was, alone again in someone else’s home. I’d felt sure of my purpose when I’d parted from Will, and sure, too, of the happiness that awaited my return, but suddenly, as I sat there in silence, some uncertainty began to creep in. Everything had happened so fast—maybe I couldn’t trust Will when he said he wanted to be mine. My memory of the last two days seemed like a story someone else had told me, as though I hadn’t been living my own life but some shadow version of Sonia’s. Will had always belonged to her, after all—what if our relationship could exist only in her absence, and was just an echo of theirs? I’d slept with her boyfriend, slept in her bed, and considered working at her office, and now I was tracking down her friends. Oliver had accused me of wanting to lead his life—maybe that was what I was doing with Sonia, moving in like a magpie, trying to take back the life that, eight years before, she’d taken from me.