Give Me Your Answer True

by Suanne Laqueur

  “I’m a little drunk,” she said, smiling as she dragged the spatula in figure eights through the bubbling sauce. She was a lot drunk. She hadn’t tied one on like this in years. Her thoughts wheeled around like giddy seagulls, tumbling and giggling through her buzzing head.

  “You still have this?” John asked, crouched down at her bookshelf and holding up the battered copy of The Eyes of the Dragon, which he had brought to her in the hospital after the shooting.

  “Read it three times,” she said. “It’s one of my favorites. Did I ever thank you?”

  “Not yet,” he said, coming to lean on the counter and watching her slice strawberries and bananas. His body was relaxed and sexy, his teeth curled a bit over his bottom lip.

  “Thank you for the book,” she said. Her lips tingled as the words slipped through them. She fed him a strawberry, watched it disappear into his mouth and wanted to follow.

  He dipped a banana slice in chocolate and fed her. “You’re welcome.”

  She dipped her finger and offered it against his lip. He licked the chocolate off, then took her wrist, pulled it up around his neck as his other hand slid into the back pocket of her jeans. Then they were kissing and grappling up against the refrigerator door. A greedy need for skin swept through her, redolent with singed sugar.

  “It’s burning, Dais,” he said.

  “I know,” she whispered.

  “The chocolate,” he said, laughing.

  Daisy reached to turn off the burner and pushed the pot off it, shaking with a bald wanting and the sensation of being desirable. A man’s body, hard with the need to be inside her. Strong male hands running along her limbs and curves with a fevered knowledge.

  “You’re killing me,” he said, turning with her and pressing her up against the door of the fridge.

  She wound her arms tight around him. Her mouth open and hungry in his, sucking gently on his tongue, making him moan. Her heartbeat enormous in her ears. Her own little, whimpering noises in her chest. Her body melting, drunk on wine and lust. Spreading and arching as John’s palms swept from her shoulders down over her breasts and stomach.

  “I don’t want to stop,” he said against her mouth. “Please let’s not stop. I want to make love to you so bad.”

  He tugged her shirt free from the waist of her jeans and drew it up over her head. As the cool air swept her bare skin she froze. And remembered.

  Now filled with panic, her body contorted. She jerked her arms tight to stop him but it was too late. His eyes widened. His mouth parted in shock. She turned her face away, buried it in the fabric around her neck, tried to break free but his hands held her tight.

  “Dais,” he said.

  “Let me go.”

  His hands tightened. “Hold still.”

  “John, please.”

  A rush of air through his teeth made a soothing hush. “Let me see.”

  “No.”

  “I’m not going to say anything,” he said. “I’m just going to look.”

  She was crying then. “Please don’t.”

  He shushed her again. “Let me look.” His hands were gentle but firm as he guided first one arm, then the other out of her sleeves. She stood shaking in her bra as he touched the angry red lines on her ribs. Sobbed into her hands as he slowly turned her around and looked at her back. Breath through his teeth again but in an agonized hiss.

  “Honey…” His fingertips touched two particularly deep cuts—one at the bottom edge of her shoulder blade, the other lower down at the base of her spine. She made those on a bad night. Torqued her hand behind her back and slashed blindly with the glass, not caring if the cuts were pretty or part of the design. She couldn’t see them, couldn’t reach to tend to them and they weren’t healing properly. She didn’t want them to.

  John turned her to face him again. Shame, that old friend, sat on the couch in Daisy’s heart and asked what she had to say for herself.

  His hands slid up her shoulders, peeled her own hands away from her face. He held her head and put his brow against hers.

  “Do you trust me?” he said.

  “John, go,” she said, trying to twist away. “Go now before I do trust you. Go find a girl who’s normal, a girl with pretty feet and not all this baggage.”

  “I don’t want pretty f— Dais, you don’t know the first thing about what I feel for you and what I want.”

  “I know I’m only going to hurt you,” she said, the crown of her head against his chest. “You don’t want this. You love a dream, you love a girl you put on a pedestal and crushed on in college. I’m not her anymore. You won’t love who I am now.”

  “Look at me.” His thumbs were under her chin, making her head tilt up to his unsmiling face. “Do you trust me,” he said again, more slowly.

  She gazed into his eyes. It wasn’t like it was with Erik. No sense of falling slow-motion into another time and space. John’s being stayed separate from hers but his gaze was that of a danseur noble giving hand: Come here. Come dance with me. Let my strength be your strength.

  She felt him with her, felt her feet solid on the floor. This wasn’t a pedestal.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Then I want you to show me,” he said. “Show me what you use to cut yourself.”

  Her body tensed, and his hands moved soothingly at the back of her neck and her shoulders.

  “It hates to be talked about,” he said. “That’s how it keeps you a prisoner. But if you tell someone, if you show someone, you take away its power. That’s how you start to stop. Show me, Dais.”

  Her heart blocking her throat, she led him into her bedroom. On her windowsill, on a piece of black marble, she had made an altar. John looked at it a long time. Looked at the candle and the little bottles and the single piece of green glass at the center. He listened as she told how it started after the window broke in the diner and evolved into a ritual. He didn’t laugh or dismiss it. He nodded as if it all made sense.

  “It seems logical,” he said, picking up the large shard of glass. “In a twisted way. To hurt yourself as much as you hurt him.”

  A sob burst from Daisy’s throat and she buried her face in her hands.

  “This isn’t the way, Dais. It’s not gonna bring him back and it’s not gonna make you feel better. It’s only gonna make you bleed. And eventually it’s gonna kill you…”

  She nodded into her palms, sinking onto the bed. She could hear the tiny clink as John set the glass back down on the marble. Then he knelt between her feet, slid his arms around her. “I don’t want you to die.”

  She took her hands from her face as his fingers glided down the straps of her bra and along the lace edges of the cups. She stared down at her untouched, uncut skin as if it belonged to someone else.

  He kissed her mouth, still tasting like chocolate and fruit. She shivered in pleasure and fear.

  “I still want you,” he said.

  “No you d—”

  “Hey,” he said sharply. “Don’t tell me what I want. I’m not a kid and I don’t love a dream. I don’t cling to some stupid notion you’re something to be idolized and can do no wrong. You’re fucked up right now, but I don’t define you as this, Dais. This isn’t you. This is just a place.”

  With each powerful word John seemed to grow bigger. Wider. His shoulders touching opposite walls, unfolding like wings. Filling the dim room with his conviction. As she gazed up at him, Daisy’s eyes squinted, as if looking into the sun. A swarm in her chest like a cloud of bees. Deep within, a warm pulse began to beat. She inhaled him, took in his scent, his light and his words.

  “Tell me to go and I’ll go,” he said against her mouth. “But don’t tell me not to love you. It’s too late.”

  His kiss on hers again, the sweetness of it mixing with her tears. Strawberry and chocolate eclipsing salt. Snow melting in the sun’s warmth.

  “Stay,” she whispered.

  They carried the piece of marble out to the kitchen and tilted everything on it into the g
arbage. Back in the bedroom, John became her lover. He was strong and skilled and her body opened to his. As he peeled the rest of her clothes off, he kissed every scar. Before his tongue glided where she was wet and aching, he promised he’d help make it go away. She trusted him. As she unbuttoned and unzipped his jeans, she caught some of his light and began to burn even brighter. She remembered sex, remembered the musky smell of a man and the vulnerability of the first touch. The tender taut skin and the jerking impatience. She took him first into her hands, then into the wet behind her teeth and he gave a soft howl into the dark.

  “God, I wanted this…”

  She was off the pill and hadn’t bought condoms in years. She had no need.

  “I don’t have anything,” she said.

  “I do.” His silhouette was beautiful in the dark. Long sculpted muscles in his legs flexing as he knelt down, digging through the pockets of his jeans for his wallet.

  “Let me,” she said, tearing the foil open, shaking with need.

  “Marguerite,” he whispered, rolling onto her, sliding up her body. The unfamiliar sound of her own name was a revelation. She caught him in her hand, guided him in. He pressed down hard, pushed deep and she gave him her own howl, gave him her tongue, the beauty of her pain and her flawed passion. Gave him her name and her scarred, female power.

  “I love you,” he said. “I always loved you.”

  Being his dream come true bore her up on courageous wings. She flew with him through the night until John unleashed one last moan and buried his brow in the curve of her neck. His fists curled tight around her hair but he didn’t pull.

  “You’re mine now,” he said. “I swear to God I’ll keep you safe, Dais.”

  “No, say my real name,” she said.

  “You’re safe, Marguerite. You’re safe with me.”

  She fell asleep in his arms and dreamed Erik was behind her. He bent her over and pulled her pants down but then he left her like that, vulnerable and exposed, waiting to be spanked or fucked because she was so bad. Left her worked up, moody and humiliated.

  She woke filled with an anxious nausea. Her room full of wolves snarling and hungry. They sniffed at John’s sleeping body and growled their disgust.

  Dawn was easing through the windows as she crawled to the bathroom. She buried her face in a bath towel and cried carefully so John wouldn’t hear. She was sick for a long time, fighting with the minutes not to cut herself, but she lost. She had to get it out of her. She didn’t dare rustle in the kitchen garbage for her glass shard or in a drawer for a knife. Her shaking hands couldn’t get the right angle out of her disposable razor.

  Finally, she broke the kohl-caked blade out of her eye pencil sharpener and cut line after sloppy line into her skin until the shaking stopped. She put her head on the edge of the tub and closed her eyes, exhausted and half-smiling.

  She woke as one arm slid beneath her knees and another under her shoulders. John picked her up and carried her back to the bedroom. Spots of red bloomed first on his T-shirt, then on her sheets. He tucked her in and then picked up the phone and dialed. A slice of Daisy’s brain turned white with alarm.

  No. No don’t. Don’t tell. I’ll be good, I promise…

  Then it all faded to dull grey. Fuck everything. He could tell, he could call. She didn’t care anymore. She wasn’t getting up anymore. Not for herself. Not for anyone.

  “Mom, it’s me,” John said.

  A beat of silence.

  “I need help…”

  STATEMENT OF ADMISSION, Westfall Hospital

  Cross River, New York

  December 8, 1995

  Attending physician: Dr. Herbert Montgomery, MD, Psy.D.

  Admission referral: Dr. Janet Quillis, Psy.D.

  Patient name: Bianco, Marguerite C., DOB 12/15/71

  Patient is a single white female, age 24. Patient lives alone in New York City, currently employed by the Metropolitan Opera Ballet. Patient was brought to the hospital by her parents after her boyfriend alerted them to increased symptoms of depression including self-injurious behaviors. Patient presents as alert and oriented X 3.

  Both open and healed lacerations are evident on patient’s arms, legs, torso and back, two requiring sutures at this time with antibiotic treatment and tetanus booster. Some scars present on left leg are unrelated (see below).

  Patient reports self-injurious behavior began six weeks prior. Patient reports a recent history of increased cutting behavior with glass. Other presenting symptoms include hopelessness, helplessness and anhedonia. Patient reports passive suicidal ideation with no defined plan.

  Patient reports persistent nausea, difficulty falling asleep and staying asleep and decreased appetite. Patient also reports a history of nightmares and flashbacks related to her experience in the 1992 shootings at Lancaster University. Patient suffered gunshot wound to the left leg with subsequent complications from compartment syndrome. Full recovery of vascular and motor function.

  Patient is assigned an Axis I diagnosis of Major Depressive Disorder, single episode, severe, without psychotic features and a rule out of PTSD.

  Patient states she is in agreement with admission at this time.

  DECEMBER 13, 1995

  Dear Lucky,

  Hey darling girl. Thanks so much for the flowers and X-rated birthday card. You know how to make a girl feel special in the loony bin.

  I shouldn’t call it that. It’s not a bad place. Food kind of sucks but I’m not hungry these days.

  So welcome to rock bottom. May I take your order?

  Anyway…

  I’ve been sitting five minutes thinking of what to write. I feel embarrassed. I feel stupid. I feel so much and it hurts like hell and I tried to make it stop and it got out of control. John did the right thing by calling my parents. They headed straight for New York while John’s parents, who are both psychologists, made some phone calls. My mom was pretty adamant about me not being in a hospital in the city, not sure why. She must have some preconceived notions about Bellevue or something. Anyway, they found this place up in Westchester County. Pop’s gone back home but Mamou is staying in a hotel nearby and she comes every day. Only family is allowed so John hasn’t been able to see me. We don’t have phones in our rooms and it’s hard to have an intimate conversation on the payphone in the hall. But he writes the sweetest little notes and cuts the comics out of the newspapers for me, too.

  Pop’s going to run out of medals to pin on these heroic boys I fall for.

  A cardinal just flew by the window and now it’s sitting in the snow-covered bush outside. Pretty.

  I’ve been here five days now. Not sure when I’ll be leaving. Sucks to spend my birthday in this place but hopefully I’ll get out for Christmas. I’m on antibiotics because the two cuts on my back are pretty badly infected. Tetanus shot for the stunt I pulled with my pencil sharpener…

  God, I feel like an idiot. Like I took everything great that’s ever happened to me and just shit on it.

  They started me on anti-depressants. I don’t feel much different yet. Holding out hope I will. I’m really tired. The days are filled up with one-on-one therapy and group therapy and art therapy and therapeutic therapy, blah blah. Other activities where you have to show your face. A gym is on the premises and I try to get in there every day and stretch and do some resistance training. Don’t worry, I remember—low weight, high reps. I do my barrework in my room every morning. There’s enough space to swing a leg. My roommate doesn’t seem to mind. Her name’s April. She’s a cutter, too. Except she cut her face.

  Not much more I can say about that.

  I was just about to write “I’m all right” so you wouldn’t worry. But I know you’re already worried and obviously I’m not all right. I go between feeling numb and feeling like I want to claw my skin off. Jonesing all the time for something. Withdrawing from everything. Cigarettes. Caffeine. Sugar. Class.

  Cutting.

  (sorry)

  I don’t know what to do wit
h myself. Or I can’t get away from myself. Either bored out of my mind or trying to escape all the shit that’s in my mind. I suppose that’s the point. They say the first couple weeks of treatment are more about not doing than doing. I am supposed to not cut. Nothing else. Eat, sleep, go to therapy and not cut.

  So I’m not. For four days and eleven hours and (checking my watch) twenty-six minutes. Yay, me.

  The therapy is going all right. Actually it sucks. It’s a lot of silence. I know I have a lot to say but it’s stuck. Or I’m stuck. I don’t know if it’s the meds or me or the therapists. I’ve seen two separate ones but I can’t seem to make a connection, so I’m not exactly spilling my guts yet.

  I don’t know how it came to this, Luck. I’m going to be twenty-four in two days and what am I doing blowing out candles here?

  John said the sweetest thing: “It feels like your darkest time. But I think it’s going to be your finest hour.”

  I hope he’s right.

  I miss you, darling girl. The other night I couldn’t sleep and I was thinking about that god-awful horrible night at Jay Street after I slept with David. When you crawled right in bed with me and got me through it. I swore the sun wouldn’t come up the next day but it did. I’m trying to remember that.

  Write me a lot. I need it.

  Love,

  Dais

  P.S. I really will be all right.

  P.P.S. Won’t I?

  THE SKIES WERE WHITE. The Hudson river churned in milk-crested hills of grey. The Palisades thrust up vertical stripes of brown and slate. From the Henry Hudson Bridge, Daisy pressed her fingers against the passenger window and thought she’d never seen the gateway to Manhattan look so beautiful.

  “Wish it were a nicer day,” John said.

  She turned her smile to him. “I’m going home.”

  He squeezed her hand, brought it up to his mouth a moment, then let go as he slowed to pay the toll.

  “You sure you don’t want to drive down to Pennsylvania tonight? I don’t mind.”