Beyond the Break

by Kristen Mae

Her face warmed. “Can you imagine?”

  “Of course I can.”

  We sat quiet and still for a moment, neither of us sure of the right thing to say. Finally, I said, “I’m so sorry, Claire. For all of this.”

  “Oh, Hazel, don’t do that.” She tilted her head. “You couldn’t have known. We couldn’t have known.”

  I nodded. But I had known. I’d known from the very beginning that she would make me crazy.

  She stayed awhile longer. We made tea and coffee and sat at opposite ends of the living room couch, talking. She told me about her plans for being a mother and daydreamed aloud about what it would be like. She told me the whole story about her miscarriage, how Mike had carried her bleeding body to the car, how he’d held her hand while she delivered, and that without him there afterward she would have killed herself. That his affair had happened only months after the miscarriage, and part of the reason she’d been able to accept it was that she knew it was Mike’s way of coping with the tragedy. It had made things worse in the short run, she admitted, much worse, but she felt their relationship was stronger for it now.

  She convinced me to tell her what I’d been doing for the last few weeks, and I did—told her everything, even how I’d cut myself. She made me show her. “Don’t ever do that again, do you hear me?” she said. “Or I will put you in an institution. Don’t fucking test me.” I knew she meant it, and, though I wasn’t sure at the time if I meant it or not, I promised I wouldn’t do it again. Maybe part of me understood that the next time I picked up a knife and pressed its blade against my skin I’d think of my promise to her, and know that if she found out, I would lose her completely, forever.

  Before she left that afternoon, I gave her the drawing I’d done of her, and she started crying but wouldn’t let me touch her. She got in her car and drove away without looking back. I closed the front door and did that dramatic slide-down-the-wall-while-sobbing-uncontrollably thing that people always do in movies, except it was heartbreaking and excruciating and real.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Orchestra rehearsals began. James returned, and I was forced to give up my position in the quartet. He also took my place in the orchestra, pushing me back deeper into the violin section, to the spot I’d originally auditioned for. I could hardly see Claire over the other musicians’ heads. But every so often, I caught her watching me. During rehearsal breaks, I would feel the pressure of someone’s attention on the back of my head, and I’d turn and see Claire smiling and talking with someone, but her eyes would be on me. I would quickly return my focus to my music. I couldn’t let myself believe that I was special to her.

  Although we’d said we were friends, more than friends even, as the weeks and months passed, the distance between us grew. We didn’t call each other or text or try to fake our way through an awkward phase of readjustment. There was no game of who-will-call-first; we both knew, without needing to say so, that continuing our relationship would be unhealthy for all involved. For me, the added layer of knowing that Claire and Mike were about to have a baby was sufficient to force me to behave.

  My only comfort came from knowing that Claire had been hurt too. But that was a paltry comfort compared to the intolerable agony I suffered day after day, week after week. I didn’t cut myself, but I ran hard enough that I might as well have. I forced myself to eat only so that Claire wouldn’t feel compelled to intervene.

  Oren and I became strangers. He didn’t ask, I didn’t tell, but we held on, locked in each other’s orbits like a pair of indifferent planets, bound together only by the laws of physics and the difficulty of stopping an object already in motion. I had the feeling he was trying to wait me out, but there was nothing to wait for. I slouched around the house, surrendered my smile, allowed my unhappiness to fully engulf me. In a way, it was the first time I had ever let him see who I truly was, the first time I had been fearlessly honest with him. I was too destroyed to pretend.

  One night in October, there was a story on the evening news about a man who’d been arrested for raping a child who lived next door to him. I was standing in the kitchen with a plate of food in my hands, ready to sit down on the couch next to Oren. But when I heard the announcer say, “…was supposed to be babysitting the child,” a loud, primal scream burst out of me, and I threw the plate on the floor, smashing it into a thousand pieces, scattering rice and bits of lettuce all over the kitchen.

  Oren jumped up and stared at me, and I stared back, my chest heaving with a crazy, uncontrollable energy. The house had gone quiet. Oren must have turned off the TV. I bent to scrape up the shards and put them in a plastic grocery bag for the trash, then changed my mind and carried the bag of plate shards to the backyard, to the farthest point where the mowed grass met the tree line. I set the bag down and began to dig.

  I heard the screen door slam when Oren came out, felt his presence behind me, but I didn’t look up to see what he thought of my crazed burrowing. I ripped at the grass first to clear away an area so I could get my hands down into the soil, then began tearing at the earth with my bare fingers. A shovel appeared at my side. “Can I help?”

  “No. I have to do this myself.” I was breathless, scraping and clawing like a madwoman.

  “Don’t you at least want the shovel?”

  I dug harder, grabbing up great scoops of dirt and tiny earth insects and tossing it all aside. The ground was surprisingly unyielding, but I was about halfway to where I needed to be. “I want to do this by myself.”

  “But it would be easier—”

  “Goddammit, Oren! I said I want to do it by myself!” I didn’t even know what I was saying. Why couldn’t I use the fucking shovel? I didn’t know what I was even doing out here.

  Then Oren was beside me on his knees, reaching his hands down into the soil next to mine. I slapped them away. “It’s not your hole to dig! I’m the one who broke the plate!” I knew I sounded crazy, knew we weren’t talking about holes and shattered dinnerware, but I didn’t care. He fought to keep digging alongside me and I fought to keep his hands away, and soon neither of us was digging; we were fighting each other, hands and arms tangling, trying to gain control over the hole in the ground.

  For a second I thought he would give up and let me have my way, but then he pushed me, hard, so that I flew sideways and landed on my side in the grass. I popped up on my knees and faced him, fists clenched at my sides. He glanced at me and shoved his hands back into the hole. Sweat dampened his white T-shirt, and his muscles bulged and flexed with the effort of digging. Slowly, I knelt beside him, and together, we finished the job, digging without talking, the only sound the wailing crickets and our labored breathing.

  “Okay,” I said after a while. “That’s enough.”

  Oren’s arms were still pulling wildly at the dirt, but then my words reached his brain, his hands. He sat back, wiped a forearm across his brow and looked at me. “Thank you for letting me help.”

  I grabbed the sack of plate shards from behind me and dumped it in the hole. We pushed the dirt back over it in silence and sat staring at the mound.

  The rich, pungent aroma of the earth hit me then, sending my head spinning. I hadn’t noticed it before while I was possessed with the frantic urge to dig. To bury.

  “Hazel—” Oren was reaching for me, but I couldn’t bear to let him touch me.

  “I can’t!” I stood, too fast, tripped a few steps toward the trees and vomited. Not much came up because I hadn’t eaten dinner yet.

  It was dark now.

  At the end of November, Claire and Mike got their baby, and she took leave from the orchestra. I hoped she might invite me to meet her daughter, hoped that she might once again be my friend like she said she would, but she never called. The agony had been reduced to a dull ache, an emptiness that I could forget for several minutes at a time. But it was always there.

  I ran every day, faster and farther now that the weather had cooled. I practiced my orchestra music and toiled around the house, trying to make mysel
f care about wall colors and art prints and throw pillows. I tried drawing a couple of times, but I still couldn’t manage to produce more than a few shapeless lines.

  Oren took to throwing his arms and legs over my body in the middle of the night. At first I thought he was trying to have sex with me and pushed his limbs off angrily. But then I realized he was doing it innocently, in his sleep, and so I let him.

  My mom came to spend Christmas with us. “You’re so skinny,” she said, again and again. “Just so skinny.” She worried aloud endlessly, but I played the busy, doting wife brilliantly, even donning a hideous green and red apron with gold trim on Christmas morning and cooking a turkey that was much too big for the three of us. That seemed to appease her. “Maybe next year there will be four of us sitting here,” she said while we ate, and I smiled obligingly.

  Oren tried to stifle a sigh. We hadn’t had sex since I’d returned from Italy.

  For New Year’s Eve, Oren made reservations for the two of us to eat out at a nice seafood restaurant in historic downtown. We pushed our way through hordes of people to get to the little place, passing the shop where I’d bought the music box with Claire, and the spot where the sight of the tied-up dog had triggered my panic attack. “Oren,” I said, my heart suddenly racing, “I think this isn’t a good idea.”

  He turned to look at me and registered the panic in my eyes. “Okay,” he said. “Okay. We’ll go.” He led me back to the car and drove us to the ocean instead. The beach was crowded too, because of the holiday, but not shoulder to shoulder as it had been downtown.

  Oren pulled his key from the ignition and made a move like he might grab my hand, but caught himself. “Are you up for a walk down to the water?”

  I glanced down at my fancy dinner dress. It was red, the same color as the shirt I’d worn that night I’d gone out with Claire. That glorious night when she’d made me hit her. “Sure,” I said.

  We deposited our shoes under the boardwalk and walked down to the water’s edge and let the waves break against our ankles. We stood side-by-side, and I thought that if we were a normal couple, we would hold hands, maybe do something cute like link our pinkies. Like I’d done with Claire that day on the beach in Italy.

  “I’m scared.” He said it with a strong voice, so I could hear him over the waves, but he kept his gaze on the water.

  “I’m not going to kill myself.”

  “But you’re not living.”

  I didn’t flinch. Nothing he said could hurt me.

  He turned to me. “She’s moved on, Hazel. You have to move on too.”

  “She came by, you know.”

  His eyebrows went up. “She did? When?”

  “After you talked to her. I figured she would have told you.”

  “Oh. No, she never called back, so I wasn’t sure. But you seemed to calm down a little after that, so I left it alone.”

  “She stayed the whole afternoon.”

  He nodded. Under his chin, his Adam’s apple rose and fell. The waves crashed against our ankles. A little kid ran close behind us, squealing as he chased a sand crab.

  “We only talked. In case you’re worried.”

  “Do you love her?” His eyes were glassy.

  I hesitated, because I didn’t want to hurt him. I’d already hurt him so much. I was hurting him right now, I knew, but I couldn’t make myself lie anymore. “You know I love her, Oren.”

  He seemed to shrink and wither, yet no part of him actually moved.

  “I love you too, though,” I said. “I’m just…heartbroken. I’m sorry.”

  He shook his head. “I encouraged you.”

  “That’s true.”

  “I shouldn’t have.”

  I shrugged. “It’s done now.”

  “Do you want to leave me?”

  I considered him carefully. Why had it never occurred to me to leave him? I shook my head.

  “Then show it.”

  A few nights later, in bed, he said, “Tell me how it was with her.”

  “You’re crazy.” It came out a whisper.

  “You’re always thinking about her anyway. Might as well talk about her.”

  “Won’t it hurt you?”

  “I’d rather feel real pain than this…emptiness.”

  I sighed. I knew what he meant.

  “Tell me,” he said.

  I lay silent for a while as my heart sped up. He was right; I did want to talk about her. “Okay. Well…with Claire, I was surprised by…the feelings.”

  “Physical or emotional?”

  I took a deep breath and let the word rush out on an exhale: “Physical.”

  I heard him huff in the darkness. “Surprised? Why? How?”

  “I didn’t know my body was capable of…um, responding…like that.”

  He shifted in the bed like he was uncomfortable. “You mean she’s just that good? Or am I just that bad? Can I be better? Tell me what to do.”

  “Oh, Oren, now you sound like Claire with the uninhibited sex talk.”

  “You two…talked? Like how? During? Did that make it better for you?”

  I almost wanted to laugh. It felt so strange to talk to Oren like this. A tiny, dull throb began between my legs. For whom? Oren? Claire? I wasn’t sure. “She was wild,” I said.

  “Will you tell me some of the things you guys did?”

  “Are you sure about that?” But I wanted to tell him, even if it meant hurting him.

  “Tell me.”

  “Okay.” I took a deep breath.

  “Tell me everything. Start from the beginning.”

  I understood him, understood how his wanting to hear about Claire was like me cutting myself. A more acute kind of pain to break up the awful monotony of the dull, ceaseless ache. “Well…the first time something happened, it was me who initiated it. I kissed her.”

  “You kissed her?”

  “I know, crazy, right?” I couldn’t believe I was telling him this. “It was out of the blue. And she freaked out and walked away and left me standing there alone, and I cried all day after that because I felt so stupid.”

  “That sounds terrible. I was expecting to be turned on by this story.” There was a humorous edge to his voice; I had almost forgotten how funny he could be.

  “But later, she came back. And something was about to happen, and I froze up, had a panic attack, and then that fell through.”

  “This really is a terrible story, Hazel.”

  I couldn’t help giggling. “But…the next night…”

  His breath quickened while he waited for me to continue. His hand had somehow landed on my waist, and I left it there.

  “The next night, when I got out of the shower, I had my towel around me.” I had to whisper now. My whole body was enveloped in a raging blush. “She was sitting on the arm of this chair, waiting for me. She was very brave, Oren. That girl has not one shred of inhibition in her.”

  Oren’s hand had swept down my hip and over the edge of my T-shirt, hovering under the hem at the bare skin of my thigh. I felt a heat begin to build, a heat I didn’t trust and didn’t want to believe. I continued in a whisper. “She slid her hand up underneath my towel…”

  Oren’s hand went between my thighs, his knuckles brushing against my underwear.

  My heart slammed in my chest. “I’m afraid to say the next part.”

  “I’m afraid to hear it.”

  “She put her fingers in me.”

  He pushed my legs apart, pulled my underwear to the side and slid his middle finger deep into me. “Like this?”

  I gasped. Just like that.

  “Then what did she do to you?” His voice had a crazy edge to it, a mix of arousal and jealousy.

  “She…I can’t say it.”

  He yanked my underwear down, impatient and rough, then buried his finger in me again, cupping my pubic bone with his palm and jerking his hand hard against me. “You fucked her? But you can’t say it?”

  He was almost hurting me, but all my nerves h
ad started to buzz and I was having trouble telling up from down. I widened my legs. “She…kissed me.”

  He pulled his finger out of me and dragged a smear of hot wetness up and around my clitoris, making teasing circles that lit me on fire. “Where did she kiss you?”

  A moan escaped me. I couldn’t catch my breath. “Oren, what is this? Where is this coming from?” I couldn’t tell if I was scared, or turned on, or both.

  “Do you want me to stop?” His hand went still.

  I reached out for him and wrapped my arms around his neck. “Keep going.”

  “Then you keep going.”

  “She went down on me.” His fingers started up again, and I let myself melt around his hand as I remembered the feeling of Claire’s mouth on me. I still wanted to be sad, but I wanted to feel even more. I’d had such a small taste of what it was like to feel, and I wanted it back. “She licked me and sucked me and bit me. Everywhere.”

  “Jesus Christ.” He pushed up my T-shirt and put his mouth on me, trailing kisses down my abdomen. “You like to be bitten?”

  “Not hard,” I said, and my breath was going crazy. His teeth grazed along my hipbone, and I squirmed. “She liked it when I bit her, though. She liked when I did it hard.” I remembered her nipple between my teeth, the eruption of goosebumps when I’d let her go.

  “Holy fuck, would I pay money to see that.” He was still stroking with his fingers and his mouth was moving from one inner thigh to the other, kissing each of them in turn.

  “Oh, we’d let you see it for free, Oren,” I said.

  He growled and put his mouth on me, flicked his tongue on my clit until I spasmed around his fingers. I grabbed him by the hair and pulled him up so I could look him in the eye. “Now fuck me.”

  He sank into me before I’d come down, filled me up, and I surprised both of us by coming again. I wrapped my legs around him and pulled him deeper into me, groaning at the way it felt to be so…full of him. I scraped my hands through his hair and pulled his face to mine, kissing the taste of myself from his mouth, licking shamelessly so he’d know what I was doing. A low moan escaped him, and he slammed hard and deep into me. I moved my hips in rhythm with his thrusts until he finally shuddered and moaned and collapsed onto me, gasping and spent. “Hazel, my god. Holy shit. Holy shit.”