by KT Morrison
9
Black Truths
Saturday, November 4th
Those words took everything out from under Max. She held back her own sob and struggled to keep her composure—for his sake—but the color dropped from his face in a heartbeat, leaving him ghostly and colorless, his eyes black and uncomprehending. Seeing her love so wounded tore at her heart.
“I’m sorry, Max,” she said, the words coming out as an inaudible whisper.
He shook his head, whispered, “No.”
“Maxy, I’m sorry …”
“Wait, no …” he said, the stunned and hollow look on his face opening now to sorrow.
“They did, Max.”
“Why?”
She struggled to answer. Tears bubbled in her lashes and Max seemed to retract in her vision, visibly shrink before her like he was condensing. He drew his knees to his chin protectively, hid his face from them, touching his forehead to his knees. Quiet sobs shook his shoulders.
The pain in her heart was physical, real, manifest. Her mouth fell open, and she squinted with an overwhelming sadness, and while her body shrieked for her to react, to go to him, it was Cole that got there first.
She watched as Cole walked to him on his knees and threw his arms around his good friend. Max fell into it, needing to feel someone hold him right now and both his hands gripped Cole’s upper arm, his fingers curling over the muscle. Cole held his friend as he cried but made no sound, his hand coming up and fingers weaving through Max’s hair. He softly said, “Dude, I’m so sorry, I am, I’m so sorry … it never should have been like this …”
“It was me,” Max sobbed, “I did it, I did it …”
“It’s okay, buddy, it’s okay …” Cole soothed him. “We’ll make it right … we will …”
“How? How will we make it right?”
“I don’t know, Maxy, we just will …”
Somehow she found her strength, got to her knees and joined them, slipping her arms around Max, underneath where Cole gripped him. She was face to face with Cole, both their eyes open and looking at one another, and while their gaze connected, trembling with pain, and the compassion they felt for their friend, she had an enormous urge to kiss him. His plump lips were set in a firm line in defense against the heart-wrenching moment, but she knew their softness, knew it and longed for them to be on hers. She shook her head in disbelief and he did as well.
“What did they say?” Max sighed.
“Maxy, Maxy,” she cooed, looking in his eyes now, running a thumb over his cheekbone, feeling her tears spill over and trace the angle of her jaw. “I told you: she knows. My mother knows …”
“But …”
“When you didn’t come for dinner last weekend, I said we would consider postponing … because of school … but she … she saw there was no ring, and I’m telling you … she knows …”
“Why … why did you go home without me?”
She set her face harder, still showed him compassion. “Why did you leave me? Why did you run away and leave me?”
Max sighed and thumped his forehead against his knees a few times. He groaned. He writhed away from both of them and they let him go so he could sit up straight again. With the heels of his hands he wiped at his cheeks and the hollows of his eyes. When he looked at them again, as if to speak, he hitched a breath and covered his face, rubbing at his brow with his fingertips.
Cole offered: “I’m sorry you saw us like that, Max. In the motel. We … you knew we did that. Maggie said she was open with you …”
Max sighed again, opened his mouth and flexed his jaw, his eyes turned up above and behind them, watching the raven that loomed from the log. “I wasn’t … I wasn’t running from the things you did … I ran from the things I did.”
Cole regarded him blankly, but Maggie knew what he meant. Now Max’s eyes moved to look into hers. He said, “You know.”
She nodded.
Cole said, “Know what?”
Max rolled his eyes. “You didn’t tell him?”
“No.”
Max lowered his gaze and shook his head, his mouth twisting around.
She said, “Tell me. Tell me what you did.”
He huffed with a laugh though she knew he didn’t think it was funny. Looking to her again, he said, “I watched you with Jay.”
Cole looked to her, but she kept her eyes on Max.
Max said, “I watched you draw Jay. I hid in your closet and I watched you tie him up with pink tights.”
“Which time?” she whispered, feeling her throat and face go hot, a tremor gripping the tendons of her neck and making her vision shake.
“I saw the drawings you did of him. You wore his fucking shirt. Right in front of me. I got in the closet to see if what I thought was true. He got hard, and you untied him. He jerked off in front of you and you held his … you held his balls while he ejaculated.” Max’s cheeks had taken on fiery roses as well, his eyes glistening with wet anger. “You cheated on me.” His voice was fierce but still somehow quiet and restrained.
In her periphery she saw Cole’s eyebrows raise high. Shame washed over her and she gripped her knees so hard her fingernails dug painfully into her flesh. “Oh. Okay,” she gasped. “I did. Yes.” Teardrops blinked off her lashes, and she watched them absorb into her black tights in dark expanding circles. Cole gripped her arm but said nothing. She looked to him, saw the disbelief, then to Max, saw his pain. “Max, I’m sorry. I really am.”
Max just stared into her eyes and kept his mouth closed. She felt agonal waves radiating from him, heard his breaths loud and slow and controlled. Without saying anything she pleaded for forgiveness with her eyes.
Cole cleared his throat, said, “You … you thought you could keep her if you let her …”
Max shook his head no. “Partly,” he said weakly.
She said, “You liked it. You liked what you saw.”
Max nodded and Cole frowned.
It was true. Max had fucked her in the alley next to Altieri’s then sold her on the idea of being with Jay. This was after what he’d seen. And he’d seen the worst of it. Saw her at her lifelong lowest: holding a stranger’s balls while he masturbated for her. When Max arrived that day, she’d worn Jay’s T-shirt, and he knew what it meant. That must have been devastating. Yet, her Max stuck with her, found a golden thread in her tangled woolen mess and plucked it, but now they’d come unraveled. It had all been doomed from the moment she’d donned another man’s shirt and hosted him in her dorm room. She’d ruined them. “Oh God,” she choked and curled forward.
Someone’s hand, Cole’s she thought, rubbed her back.
Cole said, “I … I showed Max your video … where I asked you to state for inculpability that you weren’t really cheating … to convince him to let me … be alone with you.”
She said, “I knew that.”
Cole said, “Max doesn’t know … you weren’t serious.”
Max raised his reddened eyes to look at Cole.
She whispered, “No.”
Cole said to Max: “She was joking. Maybe I thought she was, deep down, curious, but … I cut out the part that made it obvious she was playing along with me.”
Max’s haggard face didn’t change, his lips pursed and pouted, swollen almost, the seam woven in an archer’s bow. His shoulders went up and down once.
Maggie smiled for him though it was thin and wan. She said, “I think I mixed up feeding your badness with getting my own selfish pleasure, telling myself it was ultimately for you … I let it get convoluted because it suited me.”
Cole said to her: “Why did you cheat on him, Maggie?”
Max looked to the side of Cole’s face, then to her. She looked away.
“I was afraid, curious. Bad.”
“You’re not bad, though,” Cole said.
Max said, “She didn’t want to. But in the end she did.”
With both of them staring at her, she covered her face with her hands before she burst int
o flames. The skin of her back felt hot and wet, the tops of her ears burned. “I didn’t want to.”
Peeking through her fingers she saw Max still staring. He said, “You masturbated when he left.”
Cole flinched and groaned, sensing the angst that would deliver, maybe even affected himself.
Her mouth hung open, and she moaned. She pinched her nose and held it.
Max said, “I’m sorry I hid and watched. I’m sorry I saw those private things but … I knew …”
“I’m sorry, Max,” she said.
He said, “I just didn’t want to lose you. I told myself what you did was okay … and I … I know, I somehow liked it, too …”
Cole clapped him on the shoulder, gripped him hard enough his thumb dug into Max’s chest. Max put his hand over Cole’s but couldn’t look at him.
Maggie whispered, “It was good. What we did was good. I’m not sorry I liked it. I’m not sorry you liked it.”
Max raised his face to look at her. “I liked it too. I never felt closer to you.” Cole shook him lightly, rubbed his thumb into Max’s chest and he pat Cole’s hand. He said, “Whose turn is it?”
Maggie said, “Do you still love me?”
Max hung his head and flashed her a funny smile. “Maggie, come on. I love you so much.”
“I wasn’t sure,” she whispered.
Cole let him go and returned to sit, his eyes on her. She began to shake, knowing what would come next.
Max said, “The question is: Do you still love me?”
She nodded rapidly, earnestly, tears returning. “I love you so much, Max. More. More than ever.”
It was what he needed to hear, but she didn’t go to him. Not yet. She knew he wanted to know more. She waited, face scrunching up as she waited for him to build the courage.
He said, “Do you … do you love Cole?”
She nodded, held his gaze. Said the words. “I do. I love Cole.”
Cole covered his mouth with a hand in her periphery.
Max looked on the verge of tears. He quietly said, “How long?”
She said, “When Jay had me in my room, and I thought … I swear he was going to hurt me …” she whispered, “maybe worse …” then continuing, “I … I was afraid, no sad, horribly sad that I’d never see Cole again.”
Cole let out a low gasp next to her, coming to her and pulling her into his arms, her cheek pressing his chest and his hand cupping her head. She hugged him back.
Max watched, horrified.
She said, “But Max, I love you too, just as much as Cole …”
He scoffed, hung his head as he rose to stand.
He said, “You love me … as much as Cole?” His features fell slack with desolation.
She pushed herself from Cole’s clutch, standing as well, but Max stepped back.
She said, “I love Cole as much as you. Just as much, Max.”
“You were mine,” he whispered, and he took another step backward.
She pleaded, “Max, you’re not hearing me … I love you more than ever …”
With tenting, sorrowful brow, he said, “You were mine, Maggie …”
“I’m still yours, Max. I am.”
Cole stood now as well, mouth working, looking for something to say. At her side, he paused, then looking from her to Max, he stepped forward. Max didn’t retreat, looking to Cole, bewildered. He said, “You got between us. You tried to take her from me.”
Cole said, “I did. I was wrong. I did do that. I love her, Max.”
“You’re taking her from me,” Max said, raising his eyes to meet Cole’s.
“Max, it’s okay. We can figure it out … we—”
“You keep saying that … what are we figuring out? What’s there to figure? It’s over …”
“No, Max, it’s not,” Cole said.
Maggie said, “Max, it’s not over, don’t say it’s … don’t …”
As he turned to walk away, Cole gripped his arm. “Don’t, Max. If we all love each other, what can go wrong?”
“It already went wrong,” Max said, snatching his arm from Cole and turning.
She said, “Where are you going, Max?”
“I gotta … I gotta get out of here …” Max stumbled to the log arch that passed between the living area and the corridor that opened to the kitchen and dining room, waving over his shoulder as if he were gravely wounded, his posture hunched.
Cole said, “Max … we’re all equal, Max …”
“I love you both, Max,” she tried, but he didn’t stop, didn’t turn, instead passing through to the front hall with her and Cole following. “Max, I understand, I do. But please, don’t go. Max, look at me, we have a future.”
Behind her, Cole stood, and she wondered what his face registered. She hadn’t discussed any of this with him, but could see that Max saw himself losing and Cole winning. But she didn’t think it was like that.
She pleaded with him, even clasping her hands together in front of her. It didn’t stop him, Max going now and resting his hand on one of the curved metal shapes of a moose antler that formed the railing winding up the stone steps to the second floor. He paused a moment, his back still to them, not looking their way. She knew what he was going to do, standing there with his legs apart, between them the boots he pulled off when he arrived. Sure enough, he slipped one foot in and then another, stomping until his heels settled.
“Max,” she said, steadily but quietly. “You can’t go. We have a future. All of us do. All of us liked what we did. If we can just be honest …”
Now he did turn, his gaze low, then tracing from her knees up to her eyes. He nodded, but his expression showed no acceptance. He plucked his jacket from the newel post and thrust his arms into it.
Cole said, “Max, I don’t think you should go. I think you should stay.”
Max stood for a moment, his eyes lowered on her chest, not seeing; that well-educated brain of his trying to form all the complex shapes of their past and the present, assemble some sort of structure that he could rely on in the future. His hand fumbled in his pocket and she heard keys jingling.
“Please,” she said once more.
He shook his head, not angrily, just as if to clear its tangled mess within and then he moved to the front door, waving idly at them again, saying, “I need to get out. I just need to breathe.”
She tried once more: “Max, I’m begging you to stay.”
It stopped him, but just for a moment. Still with his back to them, he opened the door and the cold rolled into the foyer in tumbling balloons of frost. She hugged herself, took a step forward.
Max said, “I know. I hear you,” his voice whipping over his shoulder on the breeze. He stepped outside, left the door open and she went to stand in the gap. Cole came behind her, his hand on her shoulder. Together they watched Max as he made his way down the steps, pulling up the collar of his jacket. He rounded behind the vehicle that she called ahead and rented for him, wanting it ready at the airport, wanting so desperately for him to join her up here in the mountains. He opened the door and got into the car without looking up at them.
“Why would he leave?” she said to Cole, her voice pinched with the wind.
“He’s hurting,” is all Cole said, his voice low and unsteady.
Above the car, the iron chandelier rocked with the wind.
Key in hand, he slowly and steadily, but without looking, lowered it to the ignition and nosed it to the slit, pausing, frozen in thought once more. Maggie fell in love with Cole. The worst thing imaginable, but now it all seemed so inevitable. How had anything else been expected? He’d allowed her Cole. Allowed their union even though deep down he knew this would happen.
Inside, he was surprisingly empty. A pervasive numbness, a vague tingling, and yet what was curiously absent was the deep sharp emotional pain he would’ve expected.
He inserted the key, feeling the click of its teeth, metal against metal. With a quick turn, the rental came to life, dashboard lighting, ch
imes pinging. On his right, his gaze tracked up the stone steps from where he’d just come down. In that open ten-foot tall maw, standing clutched together, his best friend and the woman he was supposed to marry. His two best friends. He’d never been closer to anyone than he was with Maggie. Seeing them together, so close, looking like a couple, twisted at him, constrained his insides, but their compassion, their love for him was clear. Unarguable.
In gear, he let the Rogue roll forward, and once past the edge of the log-leg canopy, his windshield scratching under a driving sheet of cold dry snow, he wound the vehicle around, making a loop, coming back from the eye of the driveway to meet the needle that would lead him to the road out of to Schroon. On the left, vaguely evident through the white squall, he saw an offshoot from the drive that curled to the north side of the house, descending between low evergreens.
If he continued straight, he would come to the lake road that would take him to the hamlet, and from the hamlet to the highway, the highway to Vermont. He could get away from all of it; flee the impossible scattered mess of sharp tines all three of them found themselves in, casting their hearts and lust and desires out in a careless, dishonest, selfish game of emotional pickup sticks. In his back pocket he had his wallet, there was nothing in his overnight bag he needed, he wore his jacket; he had the vehicle; he had his keys, he could leave them … go back to school, get serious, get on with his life. Leave them both behind.
The wind shifted, and the car went solitary, lost in its own driving white storm. He squeezed the wheel, gripped it, rolling his fists in semicircles. He sat like that until heat blasted from the warmed-up vents. Decision made, he let off the brake, and the vehicle rolled forward.
Down between protective spruce the wind abated, and ahead he saw a log garage, three bays across, a second floor above with two dormer windows watching down on him. He bit his lip, second-guessing his second-guesses. How would he open the garage door? …
It opened on its own.
The heavy dark gray wooden door shook, jostling the silty snow that had collected on its frame, rattling and retracting, slowly rolling up inside. He imagined Maggie and Cole watching him from the warmth of the house, waiting for his decision, following him along, and opening the door from inside. The Rogue rolled in, coming to a stop nose-to-nose with the single headlight eyes of four gleaming Arctic Cats, and on the right, the tall tires of Cole’s lifted Jeep.