Someone Else's Love Story

by Joshilyn Jackson

  I said, “I only had Coke,” but I was sick and hot, and my jaw felt permanently clenched. I felt drunk plus plus; it was not like any kind of buzzed I’d ever been.

  Walcott helped me sit up, and the world swayed around me. I leaned the other way and puked a thin stream of bile onto the ground. Walcott sat back on his haunches. I ran my hands down my body. I had my T-­shirt on, but my bra was down around my waist, like a weird padded belt. My scared hands went shaking farther down my trembling body. I let them go sneaking up under the skirt Walcott had just pulled down. Yes, my panties were missing, and there was a strange slick of something tacky, drying in a trail that ran down the crook of my thigh.

  My perma-­clenched jaw was sore and shivery, but nothing else felt sore. My hands kept wandering around between my legs. They couldn’t help it. Walcott sat, not looking away, as my hands went feeling and digging, afraid. My whole body was filthy and sweaty and sticky, the back of my bare legs glued to the ancient, cracked vinyl, but I felt like regular old me down there.

  “Did someone . . .” Walcott couldn’t finish. Couldn’t say the word.

  “I don’t think. Because it would hurt, right?” I asked. “I mean, how many times have we watched SVU?” And we sat looking at each other, thinking of hot actors pretending to be cops and saying words like tearing and vaginal bruising and brutal. But I kept touching myself, down between my legs, and I felt regular and fine.

  “Your underpants are gone,” Walcott said, so earnest that it struck me as hilarious. I started giggling, and Walcott said, “Shandi, you are so messed up.”

  “I don’t remember drinking,” I said. “I don’t remember anything.”

  “Someone dosed you,” Walcott said, sparking into a kind of savage rage I had never seen on him before. “Who the fuck? We will go in there, and you show me. I will kill him.”

  But I didn’t know, not at all. I shrugged. Walcott deflated as fast as he had swelled, and his mouth worked like it did when he was nine and had decided boys were not allowed to cry, no matter what his momses told him. He scooted closer and picked something out of my hair. He showed me. A piece of grass.

  I kept rooting around in myself, not realizing my fingers might be pushing more of that tacky slick up inside myself. I was too sick and dizzy. I couldn’t understand how all control over my basic human person could be taken away from me so easily.

  I said, “The ground looks like a damn kaleidoscope. You’re right. Someone dosed me, but I don’t think he . . .” I stopped, too, caught on that word.

  I should have kept talking. If I couldn’t say it to Walcott, I wasn’t going to say it to anyone. And I didn’t. Not then and not ever, until now.

  I told William all the things I should have told the cops four years ago, or at the very least my parents. It took a long time to get all the way through. I had to pause and savagely hack up the red pepper or wait until tears stopped splashing down and salting the butter.

  William made it easier.

  Nia or CeeCee—­my best girlfriends at GSU—­would have gotten all moist and huggy until I choked and wept myself into a snotted-­up silence. Some dry, judgmental detective might blame me for not policing my Coke.

  Not William. He didn’t even look at me. He got some of Natty’s art paper from the stack on the bar, tore it into squares, and started folding. Our eyes never met. Not once. I told the garlic and the corn and the beautiful white cream while William sat on the other side of the breakfast bar, so involved in making origami animals it was like we were in separate boxes with a wall between us.

  He was listening, though. I’d learned that the more he fiddled or folded or tapped out an arrhythmic pattern while staring out a window, the more of his attention was engaged.

  I told him how I lost myself. I’d lost time, too, lost memory. Lost my shoes and my pink lacy panties. If I’d lost nothing else, that wasn’t due to me.

  The Golem had put himself in charge. He could have called in friends. He could have held my head underwater in the frat house bathtub until I was drowned and dead and gone. He had left me, helpless and exposed under the stars for any number of strangers to find, to do whatever they wanted, too. It was pure luck I’d called Walcott earlier, pure luck that Walcott had chosen the right campus, had seen my car and found me. Nothing had been up to me.

  By morning, what memories I had were misty and riddled with holes, courtesy of whatever had been fed to me. At first, it was only that it was easier to think of it as a dark blue dream. After Natty happened, I thought it was necessary. I made my son be wholly mine, scared I couldn’t love him unless I let my intact hymen mean he was some kind of miracle. Too scared to test it, until the Circle K. There, ready to put myself between Natty and bullets no matter where he came from, I’d learned that I’d been lying for no reason. There, I’d finally stopped.

  By the time I finished talking, the soup was bubbling on simmer, and William had an army of paper animals lined up in front of him. I realized they were all different sizes of jumping frogs. For Natty. He’d been making the frogs Natty was missing, and that almost undid me. I put my head down and breathed through it, my whole face crumpled up like an angry fist.

  He stayed seated with the breakfast bar between us, and that was smart. I think I would have stabbed anyone who tried to touch me in that moment. I had the onion knife still handy.

  When I stood up straight again, he said, very low and simple, “I’m sorry.”

  Not like an apology. Just sympathy, but I almost dissolved again. I tamped it down and flapped my hand at the air, like I was moving us along.

  I said, “That day in the Circle K, I stopped pretending. Nothing like a gun in the face to make a girl reassess her life choices. If I let my pregnancy stay a miracle, then whoever the guy is, he still owns me. It’s complicated, because I wouldn’t trade Natty back for anything. But that man took something from me. I got Natty, and I technically still had my virginity, but I lost other things that night. I want them back. He owes me those things back.”

  William said, slow and thoughtful, “You want me to help you find him.”

  “Yes. I don’t know anyone else who could help. I don’t remember what he looks like, sounds like, or anything about him.” I said. “All I know is, Natty’s carrying parts of him, inside his cells. I thought because of your job, you might know how to find him.”

  After a thoughtful pause, William said, “I’ll tell you what’s of interest to me. The gym bag, with your clothes from that night. Was it plastic?”

  “No,” I said. “It’s cloth.”

  “Excellent,” he said. “Do you still have it?”

  “You have it.” I nodded to the bag I’d pushed to the back of his kitchen counter. “I dug it out for you this morning. I didn’t touch anything. I wasn’t even sure it would still be there. It was buried under about fifty pairs of shoes.” I took in a huge breath, pulling in good, clean air, and then pushed it all back out, trying to imagine it was taking every bad thing inside me with it.

  “Okay. Here’s what I can do.” He starting ticking things off on his fingers. “A detailed analysis of fibers left behind. If he’s left hairs with a follicle or semen”—­I winced at the word—­“and it hasn’t decayed, I can get his DNA fingerprint. I should probably get samples from you, too, to distinguish your cells from his. And I’ll need Natty’s for comparison.” He steepled his fingers together and pressed his hands into his forehead. “Do you understand what you lose, if I take that bag? I don’t know police procedure, but I’d guess this would invalidate the bag’s contents as evidence.”

  I nodded. I’d walked out of the Circle K thinking the Golem should be found and put in jail, but by morning, I’d realized this would never be an option.

  “I can’t do that to Natty,” I said.

  Up until now, only a select group of ­people knew how Natty came to be, and they all loved my kid right straight
down into his bones. They would never tell him. Finding or even prosecuting his father wouldn’t change how I felt about Natty. I knew now that nothing could, but it would change how he felt about himself. My child would not grow up thinking of himself as a rapist’s kid, the product of an awful thing that happened to his mother. There could never be a trail of arrest and court records. He could never know a man was in prison for making him. This was nonnegotiable.

  William asked, “Why do this at all? You plan to take my results to a private detective?”

  “Probably,” I said. “I want to know who he is.”

  If I asked, Dad would pay for one, no question. But I had this crazy-­firm belief it wouldn’t come to that; William would deliver Natty’s father to me. I’d long avoided faith, because in my family, it meant an awful choosing. There was no acceptable third way. It was synagogue or church, Bible or Torah, brisket or bacon. A burger ordered with cheese or without was such a statement that by kindergarten I knew to pick the chicken nuggets Happy Meal. The mildest allegiance was proof one parent was the rightest and the most beloved, and I refused to call the winner and the loser in their war.

  Natty’s eyelashes were still the holiest thing I knew, but I found I could have real faith in my gas station Thor. Both kinds. The assurance of ’Aman I’d learned in Hebrew school, and the substance of things hoped for, too.

  “Say your detective finds him. Are you going to hurt him? Kill him?”

  I almost smiled. Then I realized William wasn’t kidding.

  “No. I can’t go to prison. I have to raise my kid. But he doesn’t get to know me and me not know him. I can’t let him . . .” This was the part I hadn’t been able to put into words. Walcott had asked me this same question. If I couldn’t maim him or put him in jail, why ask William to help me at all?

  But William was nodding. “If you know who he is, you’re one up on him. Right now he still has all the power.”

  “Yes!” I said, staring at him. God, but he was beautiful, and he got it. Paula could call him her Au-­tastic Dr. Ashe—­how I hated that oh-­so-­possessive pronoun—­but he’d seen right into the meat of this and nailed it in two sentences. It made me mad that Walcott, a poet, supposedly able to plumb the human heart, couldn’t. He thought since I couldn’t prosecute the guy, I should walk away. He’d gone all Yoda on me. Do, or do not. He couldn’t see that the in-­between was all I had.

  “Okay.” William put his hands down flat on the counter and stood up, barely favoring his shot side now.

  He came around the counter, toward me, and my breath caught. I turned toward him, waiting, something warm uncoiling in my belly. I realized that now, yes, now I was ready to be touched. Not in sympathy. Not all moist and huggy. I wanted him to come around the counter and put his hands on me and pull me to him. I wanted him to erase whatever had been done to me with the force of his own body and my absolute consent.

  He came in close. So close, I could feel leftover, sleepy heat coming off his skin. He reached one long arm around me, took the bag, and stepped away.

  “I’m going to grab a shower. I’ll go into the lab tomorrow, see what I can learn.” He headed for his room.

  I literally felt myself deflating, all the air going out of me. I leaned against the counter, watching the man I wanted walk away. Damn, but he looked good doing it.

  I watched William until he disappeared around the corner. He had recovered a good measure of the animal grace I’d seen in his body at the Circle K. I pulled a plush white paper towel off the roll on the counter. I scrubbed my mouth, wiping my kiss-­me-­not thick coat of lipstick away in a crimson smear. I took the band out of my hair and shook it out.

  Walcott was right, in one way. I had been clapping to save Tinker Bell, throwing my whole heart at a pretend. I’d had a lot of practice. But the pot of velvet chowder on the stove behind me was my last. I was finished playing pattypans, and Paula better watch her effing back.

  This was real. This was right-­now real. I’d told the truth and handed William the bag, setting more than one thing into motion. I was done with lies and miracles, done letting my body be a dead zone under a crinoline. My body was broken in a different way from William’s, but ever since the Circle K, we’d both been busy healing.

  Mine was ready.

  As soon as his was, too? I was going to try it out.

  Chapter 8

  Wednesday night, and William is driving home from the lab. He’s gone in twice this week, but not to work. He’s still on leave. He’s been picking through the flotsam of Shandi’s nonmiracle. It’s the only thing he’s found that can distract him as he waits for Detective Bialys to call him back and give him an update on Stevie’s medical condition.

  Very few other ­people on the planet are seeking this information. According to Bialys, only the Grants and the clerk from the Circle K robbery have called the hospital to ask. The only ones who care to know if Stevie is still living are ­people Stevie himself might have killed.

  The doctors won’t release that information. They tell the police, though, and Bialys passes the news along to William. He makes an exception because if Stevie dies, then William is the one who killed him. Bialys behaves as if this gives William the same rights as a relative, or perhaps a cop.

  William spent the morning analyzing the fibers gleaned from Shandi’s skirt and T-­shirt, but today, Bialys should know if Stevie’s life support will be continued or not. The simple molecular structure of ancient polyester couldn’t hold William’s attention. He did what was necessary, but by lunchtime, he returned to the cell samples for targeted testing, learning more than Shandi had ever asked to know.

  Natty interests him enough to be distracting. They’ve been constructing a giant Lego spaceship. The child grasps the spatial relationships, even though the set is meant for teens and adults. As they work on it, he climbs William as if William were playground equipment and plops himself unceremoniously into William’s lap. William, whose brain is also exceptional, was never a cuddlesome child. Natty reads phonetically and can intuit the meaning of unfamiliar, complicated words from context. He also looks directly into William’s eyes and begins dialogues. William was nonverbal until he was almost two. At that point he began speaking in fully formed, precise sentences, but mostly for the purpose of disseminating information. He didn’t engage in true back-­and-­forth dialogues until he was well into his preschool years.

  William was only supposed to compare Natty’s DNA to the other samples, establishing parenthood. But he kept testing. The human genome has been fully mapped, but not fully interpreted. Otherwise, William could have looked at the fingerprints and seen all that Natty was and is and will be. Natty has a superior intellect, but has paid no genetic penalty that William can find. His intelligence is like William’s athleticism. A gift. William’s speed and his excellent hand-­eye coordination are atypical for a person with his genome.

  Curious, he took the genetic material he had left from Shandi’s Person X, amplified it, and checked for strings of code linked to the autism spectrum. William has these abnormalities stacked in every cell of himself, deletions and duplications on chromosome 16.

  Shandi does not. Natty does not.

  Natty’s father does.

  Interesting.

  Early in his marriage, the idea of children made him physically aware of the absences and wrongfully duplicated base pairs that he carried. To procreate would be to risk a specific kind of failure. But Bridget, deeply Catholic, felt guilt over birth control.

  It fell to him to be meticulously careful. It was William, always, who stopped, who opened the bedside drawer, who rolled on one of the condoms he kept stocked there. He did not believe in sin as such, but he posited for Bridget that he performed the bulk of theirs. Bridget didn’t argue it, but she took it to confession every week.

  A ­couple of years into the marriage, she stopped him as he reached for the drawer
, boosting herself up on an elbow to kiss his shoulder, his neck. “Will, I think you’ve made your point.”

  He hovered over her, braced on his arms.

  “I’m not making a point,” he said. “I’m having a basic understanding of human biology.”

  She kissed his neck again, ran her hands down the length of him. “I’m having one, too, and I want babies.”

  He was taken aback by the plural. “How many?”

  “Oh fifty, at least,” she said, her breath in the hollow of his throat. “But we can start with one.”

  Poised over her, body surging toward her cell by cell, he heard his voice saying a true thing. It sounded harsh and loud, almost angry. “It could come out like me.”

  Bridget dropped onto her back and grinned up at him in her best way of grinning, the way where her eyes crinkled up until they were almost gone. She pulled him to her, saying in his ear, “I want your babies, stupid man. Specifically.”

  After, they lay face-­to-­face with their legs in a tangle, his genetic material already making its way to the only exact, specific egg that could ever have been Twyla.

  He brushed her hair back from her eyes and said, very solemn, “Bridget. God was right. It’s better with no condom.”

  She laughed, looking up, pretending to scan the ceiling for impending lightning. “Dial the blasphemy down a notch, if you please. You know anything over seven gets me antsy.” It was a sentence she said frequently, but never when she actually thought he’d been irreverent. A private joke for William and Bridget. God wasn’t in on it.

  Twyla had not been a genius. Her developmental progress fell within the norms delineated in the book that Bridget kept on her bedside table. Twyla achieved milestones on schedule, rolling over, sitting up, and babbling in the proper order, at the proper time.

  In a room of a thousand human babies, an impartial panel of judges would not have chosen Twyla as superior. But to William, her genome was so beautiful. He could find himself in her, literally, and all that was not his belonged to Bridget. The genome told him Twyla was nothing that did not come from one of them, and yet, in a way so unquantifiable it had smacked of magic, she had been more than the sum of their parts. She had been her own empirical self. Twyla had been best, and William could have found her in that room of a thousand babies with his eyes closed.