by JA Huss
“Do you know who that Logan guy was?”
I squint my eyes at him. “How did you—”
“He came to me too.”
I shrug. “I have no clue.”
He narrows his eyes at me. “Did you tell Rochelle to get an abortion? And don’t say no, Bric. Because I’ve already pictured that conversation in my head. I already know how it went. Just plant a little idea, right? Just hint around. Just fuck with her head, right?”
I say nothing.
“Just like you fucked with Quin about that baby. You wanted him to stick around and so hey, you figured, why not make him jealous, right? Why not just take what he thinks is his and make it your own. I see you, brother,” Jordan says, pointing at his eyes, then me. “I’ve been watching you all this time. How you manipulated him. And Rochelle.” Jordan laughs. But it’s one of those sad, pity laughs. “You’re a sick motherfucker, you know that? Very fucking sick. Quin and Smith love you too much to come to this conclusion. They want you back. They will always take you back. But you do not deserve them. If you cared about them, you’d walk out of their lives and never look back.”
I swallow hard and wait for him to walk out. But he doesn’t. He goes behind the bar, picks up a bottle of whiskey from the top shelf, and grabs two glasses. He slams them all down on a table that was not upended by our fight, and points to a chair. “Sit your ass down, Elias. Because it’s time someone stood up to your mind-fuckery and gave it to you straight.”
I sit. He’s so fucking angry, it’s confusing. I don’t know what else to do, so I just sit as he pours drinks. Then he takes out a piece of paper, which I recognize as the police report Logan waved at me last week. The same report I held up for Nadia Friday night. And he talks. He drinks and calms down. His voice goes low, and sad, and soft. He talks for almost an hour as I listen. And when I finally get the whole picture. When I finally realize what I’ve done… I feel… just as broken as Nadia must.
“I’m sorry,” I say, after he’s finished with her story. “I didn’t know.”
“You didn’t care, Bric. You’re out for you, one hundred percent of the time. You can fuck up your life all you want. I do not give a shit anymore. But you’re not gonna fuck her up again. Not when I just got her feeling better. So you’re gonna make it right. Do you hear me? I don’t care how long you have to beg and knock for her to open up that door. I don’t even care if you have to break the damn thing down. You’re gonna go over there and make it right.”
“I will,” I say. “I’ll make it right.”
He picks up the drink he poured before he started talking and downs it in one gulp, slams it down on the table, and stands up. He eyes me. Challenges me. And for the first time in a very long time, I’m not in charge of a situation.
He walks out. The bar and restaurant went back to normal a long time ago. The afternoon is fading. My phone buzzes in my pocket, and for a moment I have hope that it’s Nadia. That she’s not in the condition he just spent an hour describing to me.
But it’s one of my mothers. Sylvia.
I want to ignore it, but I can’t. Because I fucked that all up too. So I tab the accept button and say, “Hi, Mom.”
“Are you feeling better?” she asks.
“No,” I say. “Worse, actually.”
“I thought so. I know you don’t like us to call you and so I typically respect that. You have your business and we have ours. It’s worked for a long time. But I don’t think it’s working anymore, Elias.”
“No, I guess not.”
“Would you like to try again? Or would you like to move on?”
Her words stun me for a moment. Even more than the words that kept me silent for almost an hour with Jordan. I want to die right now. Because she wants to know if they should just leave me alone. Just forget about me. Write me off. Cross my fucking name off that page in the Bible like I never happened. That’s what I want, right? I want to keep them as far away as possible. Pretend they don’t exist. The two worlds will never meet.
“We’d like to try again, Elias. But it’s up to you. It’s always been up to you.”
“I… I don’t know what’s happening to me right now.”
“Bad things, I think.”
For second I think she’s pulling some religious crap on me. A guilt trip about sin and all that bullshit. Like she’s one to talk.
“Bad things happened when you run from your problems. Isn’t that what you’ve been telling us? That one day we’ll have to account for all this.” I can picture her waving her arms in the air. All this… meaning the family. “We can’t run from it. We know that. And even though people up here leave us alone, they know how we live. Someone tried to burn the barn down last Thanksgiving.”
“What?” I say.
“We got it put out in time. Not too much damage. Abrem and Benjamin fixed it already. And we found seven calves gutted in the field last spring. We tried not to think too hard about it. And no one could fix that. But we know why it happened. So you’re right. All things come due eventually.”
“Mom,” I say.
“I am your mother. You were my first, Elias. Charity got pregnant before me. Many times. So you came fifth. But you were my first and only child, Elias. You are my only child. And I love you. I don’t want this. I don’t want you to feel bad about this. It’s not your fault we live a life you don’t agree with. It’s not your fault I chose this and brought you into this family. So I want you to know, I won’t hate you if you walk away and never come back. I won’t.”
I rub my hand over my eyes and hang my head.
“We love you. But we know how we choose to live isn’t… conventional. So if you want us to leave you alone, we will.”
I am broken. And they didn’t do this to me. I did it to myself.
“No,” I say, my voice hoarse and cracking. “No, that’s not what I want. Not at all. I’m sorry for how I behaved last weekend. I really am. It’s just… Luc,” I say, unable to keep my voice level. “And that girl I brought.”
“Nadia,” she says. “We like her.”
“Yeah.” I sigh. “Me too. I think.”
“You’ll figure it out, Elias. You always do. You were always going places. Never content to sit still for long. Always looking for an opportunity.”
Fuck. Is that how everyone sees me? Bric the user? Elias the opportunist?
“And look at you now. Such a successful businessman. We’re all proud of you, no matter what, Elias. Your father’s here. And he’s nodding his head.” I hear my father grunt out something that might be, We love you.
Pieces of me are shattered all over this fucking club. I am the broken glass under my feet. Because they accept me for who I am. And I have done nothing but punish them for what they are.
But that’s what I do to everyone who gets too close, right? I punish them. Push them away.
I break them.
And now I’m about to break everyone I’ve ever loved just to keep this dirty secret inside me.
I am Bric the user. I am Elias the opportunist.
“Then… that’s it, I guess,” my mother says when I don’t respond. I can’t respond. I don’t trust myself not to break any further. “Will we see you at the Labor Day reunion?”
“Yeah,” I say, barely managing to get the word out. “I’ll be there.”
“I’d appreciate it if you could do something about that music,” the building manager says as we walk down the hallway towards Nadia’s apartment. I knocked for ten minutes but she never answered. And the music is so loud, I doubt she even heard me.
“I think she’s dancing,” I say to the guy.
He shoots me a pissed-off scowl as he searches for the key to unlock her door. “Obviously. The neighbors down below have been complaining all day about the thumping on their ceiling.” He finds the key.
“She’s a ballerina,” I say. But yeah. I can only imagine what pointe shoes on a hardwood floor sound like from that perspective.
He opens the
door and the classical music pours out from the dark apartment. “Thank you,” I say.
“Just make her stop. I’ve already gotten six calls from the police and while the Mountain Ballet own several units in this building, they’re not the only people who matter.”
“Got it,” I say, starting to get annoyed. He turns his back to me and walks off, fielding complaints from neighbors as he passes them peeking out their doors.
I close Nadia’s door and shut them out. It’s no use calling her name. The music is way too loud. I can hear her in there. Jumping and whatever else ballerinas do when they are… broken.
I close my eyes for a second. Try to massage the building headache. And then I open them, take a deep breath, and walk down to the studio towards the only light in the whole apartment.
She’s spinning in the middle of the studio. The kind of spin that involves the opening and closing of arms and traveling diagonally across the room. When she runs out of space, she just switches direction and comes back the other way. No pause at all. And then she’s leaping, her legs scissoring into the splits as she checks her form in the long wall of mirrors. It’s a routine, I guess. Because she never stops. I watch her for a few minutes, thinking she’ll rest. She’ll mess up or get tired.
But she doesn’t. And pretty soon she’s doing those spins diagonally across the floor again.
“Nadia,” I say. She sees me. I know she sees me. It’s just an instant as she’s traveling in her turn, her head spinning with her body. She focuses on me. Spins. Focuses. Spins.
But she never stops. Her cheeks are flushed bright red and sweat is pouring down her face. Her body looks thinner than I remember. Fragile. Her pointe shoes have dangling threads and little shredded bits of satin barely clinging to the toes. Like she’s been in this room spinning and spinning all day and she’s worn them out.
“Nadia,” I say again. But she ignores me. She comes out of her last turn, changes direction, and leaps again. She’s starting over, I realize. “Nadia!” I yell louder. I know she hears me over the music. But she doesn’t break her routine.
I walk over to the stereo, search for the right button, and switch the music off.
She doesn’t stop. She’s manic with dance. And all I hear is the quick thumping of my own heart and the hard thud of her feet as she continues.
“Nadia, stop.”
She glares at me as she spins. Her eyes focus on me, then lose me in the turn, and focus again.
“Stop,” I say, walking across the room and stand right in front her. She comes out of her spin, dances around me in some elaborate swirl of her hands and arms and then just… spins in place.
I grab her arm, make her falter, but she yanks out of my grip and runs. Leaps. Arches her back until she’s bent over at the waist, staring at the ceiling in midair. Arms outstretched. She’s beautifully tragic in that moment.
All the things I learned about her today come rushing back.
You broke her. This is Jordan’s voice in my head.
She lands, and spins again.
I walk across the room, grab her arm tight, and make her stop.
“Let go,” she says, barely able to talk over her heavy breathing. She tries to yank her arm away, but I hold her tighter.
“No,” I say. “Enough. Stop dancing.”
She grits her teeth and hisses, “Let me go.”
I shake my head. “Not until you agree to stop.” I get a better look at her now that she’s still. Her face is too flushed. Her breathing too hard. Her muscles quake even though she’s just still.
She struggles, slips out of my grip, and returns to her manic dancing.
I broke her. Jordan was right. I did this to her.
She doesn’t need music. She doesn’t need anything but that mirror and those shoes. She’s not going to stop unless I make her.
So I make her. I cross the room, find the switch on the wall, and turn out the lights.
One final thump of ballet shoes echoes in the studio, and then, finally, she goes still.
“Get the fuck out,” she says. She can barely talk, that’s how hard she’s breathing.
“I can’t,” I say.
“Why not?” She’s so angry. And she has every right to be.
“Because the rules say—”
“Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!” She’s right in front of me now, her fists pounding on my chest. “Just fuck you and your—”
I hold my hand over her mouth. Just enough to make it hard for her to breathe and yell at the same time. She has to make a choice. One or the other.
She chooses to breathe.
“The rules,” I say, wrapping my arms around her tight—she begins to cry as I hold her—“explicitly state that you’re not allowed to walk out until I’ve taken care of you.” The last few words come out as a whisper.
“You walked out on me,” she says through her sobbing.
“I know,” I say. “I’m so fucking sorry.” I broke her. I made her trust me that night. I made her feel good. And then I fucked with her head and walked out. “You need to stop dancing, Nadia.”
“I don’t want to,” she says. I feel the warmth of her breath through the fabric of my shirt. “I want to dance until I die.”
“It’s… it’s called the drop, remember? We explained this to you.” I dropped her. I took her into subspace that night and then I left her suspended inside it until she dropped out on her own. “I fucked up.”
She just shakes her head and tries to wriggle free.
But I’m not going to let go. Because she needs me to make things right. “Be still now, OK?”
“I can’t,” she says, her voice breaking. “I need to dance.”
“No, Nadia. You need to be taken care of, that’s all.”
“I don’t want your pity. I don’t want you at all, Elias Bricman. I hate you.”
I nod my head as I hold her close. “I deserve that hate.”
“I don’t want to talk to you and I don’t want to see you.”
“Well, you’re in luck,” I say. “Because I’m going to do the talking and we’re in the dark right now, so you don’t have to see me.”
She starts to cry.
I pet her hair and say, “It’s OK. You can cry. All this is normal. Not normal,” I say, trying to figure out a way to explain it. “It’s expected. All these feelings. This manic desire to do something. I took you to a special place Friday night.”
“You took me to hell,” she says, sniffing back her sobs.
“I took to you heaven, Nadia. And then I left you in hell. I’m sorry. I didn’t know about Logan—”
“You had that police report! You shoved it in my face!”
“I didn’t know the whole story, Nadia. I swear.”
“You told me that night when we went out to Jordan’s party—”
“Jordan’s party?”
“—that I like little boys.” She’s crying so hard now, I can barely understand her.
“I didn’t mean it like that, Nadia. I swear. I didn’t know about Scott.”
That name is the last straw for Nadia Wolfe. She collapses. Like one of those toys held together by taut string. The ones that fall to pieces when you press on the button underneath them and release the tension. A push puppet. She’s a push puppet and I hate myself for it.
I pick her up off the floor, hold her in my arms, cradling her like a baby, and carry her out to the living room.
We sit on the couch. Her still in my lap. I hold her close, her head tucked in under my chin, and play with her hair.
I don’t say anything for a long time.
I just hold her.
Chapter Thirty-Four - Nadia
For the first time in days, I relax. Bric holds me tight, his thumb swirling small circles on the hot, sweaty skin of my shoulder. But then all the heat of the dance pours out of me and I begin to shake uncontrollably. I close my eyes, willing my heartbeat to slow. It’s beating so fast, I almost think it will never go back to normal. Almo
st panic about it. Almost need to get up and dance again to put it out of my mind.
But Bric is there, his lips on my head, saying, “Shhh, Nadia. Be still.”
I try. But it takes me a long, long time for my heart to catch up to his command. My body stays tense with shivering for so long, it freezes me from the inside out.
But after a little while, with his warm body pressed against mine, I start to relax. The convulsing wanes. The tears stop. And I am just nothing but wiped out.
I let it all go and close my eyes.
“When I was growing up,” he says, finally finding his beginning, “I had no idea we were different.”
His sister Keren talked to me a lot while Bric was busy getting drunk last weekend. She showed me photo albums. She hardly knows him, she said. They are so far apart in age, Elias was gone before she was out of diapers.
And my response was, “I hardly know him either.” So she showed me the photo albums.
“I thought everyone had two moms,” Bric continues. “I thought everyone had four brothers and sisters. It was just us five back then. But one day, when I was like… maybe six, I guess, I got two more moms.”
I try to imagine that in my head but can’t. “I have no moms,” I say.
“I’m sorry. I don’t even know what it would feel like to have no moms.”
“We’re opposites,” I say, my breathing finally slow enough to allow me to talk normally.
“Black and white, Nadia Wolfe.”
“Big and small, Elias Bricman.”
“Good and bad,” he says.
“Light and dark,” I finish.
“You’re the light, Nadia.”
“No,” I say. “I’m the dark part of this relationship.”
“Then one day,” he says, picking his story back up, “I was twelve. I know that for sure. I remember this day like it just happened. I see it in vivid detail. I was in town with my brother Abrem. He’d just gotten his license. Benjamin was with us. Just us boys rambling around in an old truck. Candace and Delilah were at home. They didn’t want to come and they were helping with the babies, anyway. And these kids came up to us and started saying things that made no sense to me. I knew by then that four moms was wrong. Not wrong as in sinful, or whatever. But wrong as in… out of the ordinary. They said a lot of awful things about me and my brothers and sisters. My moms and dad. I didn’t go to school. I think that’s why I liked Smith so much when I first met him. He never went to school ever. I was homeschooled until I got a scholarship when I was fourteen and left for Denver. I never really went back after that. Just… left it all behind. Put it away. Forgot about it.”