She raised her arms to illustrate, shaping a curved wreath around her head. “I said something. ‘Stop’ or whatever but he kept going. I remember turning my head as much as I could and my cheekbone was raw against the rug. I spoke the way you do in a loud nightclub—shouting is useless, you have to throw your voice down into the middle of your chest. I didn’t yell, but he had a hurricane in his head and I had to slice my voice through it and say, ‘Honey, let go my hands, please.’ I knew the honey and the please would get him. Send a signal. He let go. Being able to get my arms under me and the grinding pressure off my shoulders and cheek let me finish. Or let me let him finish. I was done at that point. I had come to pieces. I had just enough strength to ride it out.”
“How was he afterward? Did you share with him what it was like?”
Her mouth opened and closed as a stream of flickering particles passed by her eyes. “I didn’t have to,” she said. “I don’t know if you believe me, I want you to believe me when I say I didn’t have to actively tell him. He rolled off my back and lay on the floor a few minutes, catching his breath. It was dark, so I couldn’t see him. He was a black-on-black silhouette. And he said, ‘Turn on the lights, I need to see you.’
“I crawled over to plug in the lights—my arms could hardly hold me up. We dragged ourselves on top of the bed, gulping water and gulping air. Then we stared at each other forever. Everything was gold and bright and beautiful and peaceful. I fell into his eyes and never wanted to come out. His fingers came up and touched my cheekbone, which was sore and stinging but I thought, It’s all right when you do it. And a second later he whispered, ‘Nobody scars you but me.’”
Rita’s head rose and fell as she repeated it. “Nobody scars you but me.”
“I loved it,” she said. “It literally made me feel safe and protected…” She snatched a handful of tissues and pressed them to her face.
“Are you all right, do you need to stop?”
“No,” Daisy said, muffled. “I’m blowing a bubble and I’m finishing this.”
“You’re doing great. Whenever you’re ready.”
Another breath. The slow release of her lungs and a shimmering sphere came into view. Soapy and iridescent. But strong. Her hands opened like a cradle for it.
“Do you have it?”
“We pushed it too far one night,” she said, feeding the words inside. “We went over the line and… He blew the whistle. Stopped the game entirely. He couldn’t do it anymore.”
“What happened?”
The bubble shook in her hands, threatening to pop. “This is hard,” she said.
“One word at a time,” Rita said. “Any words you want. I do not judge, blush or scare.”
Daisy licked her dry lips. She was pure blushing judgement and scared flat. Trapped between clinical terms and juvenile peek-a-boo euphemisms. Unable to just spit it out.
“One night he…” She swallowed, hating herself for being such a stupid prude. “He wanted to…fuck me in the ass and I…” Her chest seemed to collapse, a fine sweat dripped down her back.
“Take a deep breath,” Rita said, getting up and taking a bottle of water from the mini-fridge under her desk. Daisy drank a few sips.
“I don’t know why it was so hard to say,” she said. “I’m a grown woman.”
“You are now. You weren’t then. And parts of you are stuck back then, frozen at twenty years old. Let those parts thaw out now. You’re doing fine.”
Daisy sniffed hard, her face twisting. “That night…”
“Had you ever had anal sex before?”
Daisy shook her head and took another sip. The water bottle became her bubble, a tangible vessel she could fill. She aimed her words toward it.
“No, neither of us had. We were rolling across the ceiling and we didn’t know what the fuck we were doing. No buildup, no foreplay. We didn’t even use lube or anything. Just right to it…”
Rita said nothing but behind her glasses her eyes squeezed shut, then opened again.
“It hurt me awful. And I came so hard…” Her face burned as she remembered. Pain like a dirty spike into her belly, a caduceus of twin snakes spiraling up her spine.
Let me in.
Let me hurt you.
She was tearing and breaking. She cried down into the pillows, clenching his fingers. She felt bright, alive and beautiful. Wild and terrible. Dirt and gold in her veins, crackling blue behind her eyes. She left herself behind, left Erik behind. Nothing but the dark existed. It was the wolf. It had tracked her down and trapped her. At last. It curved around her waist, slid between her belly and the mattress and found where she was wet, wide and aching. She came, bucking up into the clawed fur on her shoulders. Its teeth closed on the back of her neck and pinned her. A feral animal, growling and groaning around the death grip on her nape as it came into her and killed her.
“I bled for a day and a half afterward,” she said. “And then Erik was out. Done. I remember he yanked my bedroom curtains open and plugged in my Christmas lights and he was shaking. Not angry, but adamant he wasn’t going to hurt me in bed anymore. That’s when I looked down at myself and saw what I’d become. How he’d pulled on my hair so much, it was falling out. My cheekbone still bruised. I was bleeding, with scratches all up and down my back and my arms bruised with fingerprints. And my next thought should have been how terrible I looked. That it was horrifying. But no, I thought it made me look…complete. Balanced. I don’t know what I mean.”
“Like your outsides finally matched your insides?”
Daisy closed her mouth up in a hand and nodded through tears.
THE SLAM OF HER BEDROOM DOOR. A chill on her bruised skin as blankets were yanked away. She guessed it was Erik, back again to try to get her out of bed.
“Get up.”
Daisy opened her eyes. It was Lucky, hands on hips.
“Get up, Dais. Come on.”
“Go away.” Her head was pounding. Her tongue was an emery board. Everything hurt.
“Up.” Lucky’s hands seized her, pulled her to sit. Her palms were cool on Daisy’s cheeks. Her bustling and brisk authority filled the room.
“What time is it?” Daisy asked.
“Three in the afternoon. You have to get up.”
“Why?”
“Because Erik is downstairs freaking out that you won’t get out of bed. Now come on. Stand up. Let’s get you in the shower.”
The royal we. Daisy stood on shaky legs. Her ass howled. Bunched between her legs, her underwear felt damp and sinister.
“I think I hurt myself,” she whispered, staring at the floor.
“What did you do?”
Daisy told her.
“Jesus God,” Lucky said, brushing Daisy’s hair back. “You stupid girl. Never, never do that without lube. Never again.”
Stupid was a slap in the face and tears sprang to Daisy’s eyes.
“Don’t worry,” Lucky said. “The bleeding will stop. Come on, I’ll help you.”
Pee. Brush teeth. Get into the shower. Lucky breezed in and out, supervising like a nanny. A new razor to shave, a fresh cake of Ivory soap. “Nice and easy when you’re washing,” she said. “Don’t go poking your bits any more than necessary.”
Her bits begged for forgiveness. Her shoulders barely allowed her arms to raise and wash her hair. Thick strands collected in the drain. Scratches stung and bruises winced.
Lucky brought towels, antibiotic cream, some kind of topical analgesic.
“Keep it next to the john and put a little on your butt every time.”
Two Tylenol. A cold soda.
“It’ll settle your stomach.”
She brushed Daisy’s hair.
“You need a trim. Remind me later.”
Picked clothes.
“You got this,” she said. “Everything’s all right. I told him everything would be fine.”
He needs you.
He needs to know where you are.
You cannot disappear.
When the soda was gone, Lucky brought a glass of water. “Pound the water today,” she said. “The damn ecstasy sucks you dry.”
Water in the desert…
Daisy drank it then pulled on jeans and a shirt. She changed it for a different shirt—the one Erik loved because it made her eyes pop. The thought of her clothes being a costume gave her context. This was a show. She put a bit of makeup on, getting ready for performance.
You have to be all right. Don’t scream. The men you love cannot bear it.
If you can’t be it, act it.
Scream inside. Smile outside.
“Good girl,” Lucky said.
At the top of the stairs, Daisy pulled up tall, a ballerina in the wings. On the bottom step, Will and Erik sat side by side, Will’s arm around Erik’s bowed shoulders, his jaw on Erik’s crown.
I hold it together. I have my hands on the curtain rope.
“I’m up,” she said, and pulled.
The boys turned around. She smiled. Her feet were light as she went down. Her hand caressed the banister. She kissed Will on the cheek, Erik on the mouth. Strode with blithe, happy purpose into the living room, ignoring the pain like knives up and down her hamstrings. She pushed up windows, letting cool fresh air in.
“Look how nice it is,” she said. “Let’s go for a walk.”
Erik’s face exploded with a grin.
“It’s all right,” she said, as his arms came around her and his relief exhaled onto her shoulders.
She put his jacket on—he loved when she wore his clothes—and they walked out into the sunshine.
“Are you all right,” he said after a few blocks. “Is it still bleed—”
“All better,” she said. “Don’t worry.”
“Not one of my greatest ideas.” His teeth worried at his bottom lip.
“Our idea. And we were tripping.” She gave him a playful, forgiving nudge in the side. “Jumping off the roof would’ve been a worse idea.”
He laughed a little.
They walked and talked about other small, meaningless things. She smiled and swung their joined hands between them. Acted like herself, or the self she used to be. She kept her other hand in her pocket, nails dug hard into her palm, pinning herself in place.
Hold still.
Don’t disappear.
Hours into days. A week passed. She forced food down, forced pleasant words out. She wore Erik’s sweaters. Her mouth gave and received kisses. She went where she was supposed to. At dance class, she danced. In academic courses, she listened and completed her work. In bed at night, she looked into Erik’s eyes and held him, her hand running through his hair, his shirt on her back.
“I love you so much,” he said.
“I love you,” she said, holding on with everything she had. All the while, a wolf had its jaws locked on her ankle, dragging her away.
Don’t disappear.
Don’t scream.
The eighth day dawned bored and looking for trouble. And she woke up needing to get high.
“I DIDN’T GO TO DAVID’S APARTMENT to get laid,” Daisy said. “Sex was nowhere near my mind. I went over there to get high. I can’t say it just happened. Nothing just happens. I could have walked out. I had legs. And I had brains enough to hesitate. I knew it was wrong but I did it anyway. I fucked him. Maybe I was fucking everything for the first time in my life.”
“Expressing a darker side of yourself. A less attractive side of yourself.”
“To David, of all people. Someone I didn’t even like that much… God, I suck at fucking up.”
Rita raised her eyebrows. “That’s quite a statement.”
“Well, I do. I’m not allowed to make a little error of judgment and hide it away. No, the universe has to send my boyfriend to walk in on it. First time I ever played with fire, I go to strike one match and burn the house down.”
“That’s not exactly your inability to fuck up properly,” Rita said. “If there is such a thing. I’d say it was fate dealing you a shitty hand.”
“It was me fucking up,” Daisy said. “Let’s call it what it was.”
Rita shifted in her chair. “Or we could look at it another way. Often people who are unaccustomed to showing weakness or asking for help, have to go about it in grandiose ways. Dramatic acts of…well, sabotage, you might say.”
But Daisy was done looking at it. “I hated myself,” she said.
Rita was quiet.
“I still hate myself.”
Depleted, Daisy sat and stared at the past for a long time.
“You said ‘hide it away,’” Rita said. “What if Erik hadn’t walked in? Do you think you would have eventually told him?”
“I had no plan of any kind. Not before. Not after.”
FIRST SHE threw up.
Then she pulled her clothes on and threw up again.
She wouldn’t let David help her. “Don’t touch me,” she said, hissing it as he knelt down next to her on the bathroom floor. “Don’t fucking touch me, don’t ever touch me again.”
She knew it wasn’t his fault but she was raw and terrified and had to throw it somewhere. She heaved as much as possible into the toilet and threw the rest at David. He could hold it a while. He had nowhere to go.
She ran back to Jay Street, only vaguely aware David was following her. What would she do?
Fix this.
Running down the sidewalk, her father’s voice rang in the vault of her memory.
“Fix this. Fix this right now, Marguerite.”
She had taken the netsuke, the cunning little Japanese carvings. Before she learned her father needed to have those baubles in his study never touched. Ever. They were set in a sacred, particular order that kept the universe in place. And she had not only touched them but taken them. Out of the study and into the living room to play.
The sun beat down on her head. Her father’s shaken anger loomed over her, tall and terrible.
“Fix this, Marguerite. You fix this right now.”
The soles of her feet slapping the sidewalk. Scurrying to obey and bumping into her mother. Firm hands on her shoulders, turning her around. “Say excuse me before you turn your back on your father.”
Excuse me, Dad.
A finger pointed to the study. Three smart slaps on her five-year-old fanny as she ran to put the universe back in order.
You stupid child.
No stupid girls are in ballet.
Now she had rearranged Erik’s galaxy. Disrupted and disturbed it.
She had to fix this.
She couldn’t let Erik turn his back on her.
Breathing hard, she stopped by the hedge between yards. Go to Erik? Right now? No. She needed a minute. To shower, to be sick again. To get rid of the rest of the high and gather her thoughts.
I fucked up I fucked up I fucked this up so bad.
Just fix it.
She turned to head inside and smacked into David.
Get the fuck away from me, she thought.
“Excuse me,” she said and brushed past him to go upstairs. She was going to throw up again.
You stupid girl.
“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” she said between heaves. Smashed the side of her fist against the vanity as another wave of it wrenched her apart. She flushed, wiped her mouth on the back of her hand and reached to turn on the taps of the bathtub. Then a noise like a metal avalanche ripped through the house. Breaking, dropping, shattering. Wood against plaster, steel against wood. Down in the kitchen things were being thrown together and torn apart.
She crept downstairs, a child tiptoeing on Christmas morning, not sure of what she’d find.
Go fix this.
Fix this right now, Marguerite.
A voice layered on top of the breakage now.
“You like fucking her? Did it feel good? I bet it did, you son of a bitch.”
Her kitchen was in ruins. Everything that could be on the floor was. A sea of broken dishes and glasses, silverware, pots and pans. A chair up
ended by the stove, the other by the fridge.
And blood.
Erik had David cornered between the sink and the door to the basement. Had him in a headlock and was punching him, over and over. Blood had spattered onto the wall, a chunk of plaster broken out of it, a jagged grey hole with a bit of the stud showing.
“Hope it felt good because it’s the last good thing you’re gonna feel in your life, Alto…”
“Stop,” Daisy cried. Shards of porcelain and glass under her shoes as she darted into the fray. “Erik, stop.” She got her hands on his shoulders, felt the muscles shifting like continents. All his power and rage going in the wrong direction.
“Let go of him,” she screamed. “Hit me.”
He didn’t turn his head, but his entire back seized up. He bucked and reared, just like Will did when he was shot. And just like Will he threw her off. She went down flat on her back in the wreckage, the back of her head banging hard against the floor. A spasm of pain between her shoulder blades.
Fix it, you stupid bitch. Fix it right now.
She got up, knees and hands pressing into sharp edges. The screen door exploded open and a new energy filled the kitchen.
“Get back.” With the confidant hands that had partnered her for years, Will put Daisy aside. He strode toward the corner and got his arms around Erik.
“Let go, Fish.”
Erik didn’t let go. “I’ll kill you,” he cried. “I’ll fucking kill you.”
The veins on Will’s arms popped as he heaved Erik back against him. “Enough,” he said. Then he did something and Erik howled. A cry of frustration and agony that made Daisy sink to her knees. He threw his head back across Will’s shoulder, his throat open and bared to the ceiling. His grip on David broke and David melted to the kitchen floor, blood streaming from his mouth and nose.
“Come on, Fish, let’s get you out of here.”
Erik kicked and writhed in Will’s grasp, sucking heaving breaths between his clenched teeth, fingers opening and closing into fists as he was dragged out.
Daisy’s fingers dug into her hair as she stared after them. She pulled hard. Harder. Out on the porch, Erik looked back at her. From the clasp of Will’s arms, his eyes reached hers, stunned and enraged and disbelieving.
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