by Tyler King
“Yes, I put on a dress, and I’m transformed from a grotesque swamp monster.”
“No, no.” He gestures for me to walk ahead of him toward the stairs. “Just…Wow, that’s all. Very nice.”
We sort of match, too. He wears a tailored charcoal suit and crisp white shirt with a muted turquoise tie almost the same shade as my dress. We’re already fucking obnoxious.
Outside, Ethan opens the door of his truck for me and offers me his hand as I climb in. He pauses for a moment, staring at me. The muscle in his jaw flexes as he swallows. Something animal and instinctive skitters through my limbs. A creature that knows it’s been spotted by something vicious and hungry.
“You have to stop doing that,” I tell him.
He blinks and licks his lips.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
* * *
Ethan knows everyone. A guy on Broadway who stands waiting to park his truck and actually brings it back. The usher at the theater who escorts us to our seats before doors open to the hundreds waiting outside. The producer of the show who meets us after curtain call to give us a backstage tour and get my program signed by the cast. The chef-owner at the new Vietnamese restaurant our magazine’s food critics are raving about. Ethan shows up, and people drop what they’re doing to shake his hand, share a laugh. They look me in the eyes when they greet me and treat me like I’m someone, not just an ornament on Ethan’s arm.
“Please tell me you’re not blackmailing all these people,” I say, scraping the last bite off my plate.
He pauses, glass of wine at his lips, and tempers a subtle grin. “Not all of them, no.”
We sit in a corner booth, quiet and secluded from the capacity crowd. Dinner was delicious, the show spectacular. But it’s Ethan, the atmosphere he brings to a room; he walks in, and everything shines a little brighter. Colors more vivid. You didn’t know it till now, but you’ve been looking at the world through dirty, crusted glass. Ethan smashes out the window.
“How do you know all these people?”
“Mutual friends, mostly. Parties. That kind of thing.” Beside me, he shrugs, unimpressed with himself. “At one point it was very popular to know me.”
“Still is, I’d say.”
“It’s a particularly good week.”
The light fixture above our heads, woven wicker ball around a warm yellow bulb, casts tiny shards of light like fireflies across Ethan’s face that seem to dance as he talks.
“I had to call in some old favors. Bodies I helped dump. Couches I carried up four flights of stairs.”
“So don’t get used to it, is what you’re saying.”
“Avery, if this was the life you wanted, you’d have it.”
Heat rises over my face as I look down at my empty plate and reach for my water instead.
“But you’re not that girl.”
“Oh?” I say, propping my elbow on the table to rest my chin in my hand. “And what kind of girl am I?”
“You’re the Met on Sunday afternoon. The beach in winter. Jazz in the park and playing cards by candlelight during a storm.” His hand slides over my knee, fingertips skimming my skin with just the lightest teasing touch that sends static rolling through my body. “You are the woman men see in their dreams while they’re wondering how their lives became so empty and meaningless.”
“Ethan…”
“What?”
Looking into his eyes is like observing the Earth from space. And you think, how I can ever set foot on the ground again?
“You have this odd habit of speaking in wedding vows.”
“Do I?”
Back and forth, fingers tracing the curves of my knee, sowing madness.
“What would you say?” he asks.
“To marriage?”
“If I were to propose to you right now.”
His palm lies flat on my knee. Glancing over his shoulder, toward the dining room of tables and well-dressed people, he says, “If I told you that man there”—he nods toward a waiter across the room carrying a tray with two glasses of champagne—“was given a box, and in that box was a ring. That this man”—getting closer, coming toward us—“was instructed to put the ring in a glass”—eyes dead ahead, weaving through tables with expert balance, tray held high—“to fill that glass with the most expensive champagne money can buy”—Ethan’s hand slides to the inside of my knee—“and awaiting my signal”—he grips the back of my knee, firm and startling—“deliver it to you.”
My heart throbs against my ribs, anxious and terrified, the waiter coming closer.
Five feet.
Four feet.
“What would you say?”
He veers to the left, to the couple two tables away.
Air leaves my lungs in desperate relief.
“Christ, Avery.” Ethan smiles and takes his hand away.
Asshole.
“You have a deep, profound fear of commitment.”
“No.” I chug the rest of my water, pulse returning to normal. “I have a rational fear of being proposed to on a first date by a man I barely know.”
The humor leaves his face. He furrows his brow. “You keep saying that, but it isn’t true. You do know me.”
“Everything I know could fit on a Post-it Note.”
“Then ask me something.” He pushes our plates away, moves the utensils and glasses crowding the table between us. “Anything you want.”
“Is your mother the reason you weren’t at work last week?”
Ethan must have guessed I’d ask this question. It’s the one topic between us he’s thus far been unwilling to talk about. If the question affects him at all, he doesn’t show it. His perfect cheekbones and angular jaw stay steady, in place.
“Yes.”
“Tell me about it. Why?”
Leaning back, he grabs his wineglass and swigs the last of it. A sort of preparation happens: he runs his fingers through his hair, exhales, slides his gaze around the room before staring at his fingers drumming on the table.
“You met her,” he says, “so you know she’s sick.”
“Your dad said she had gone into remission, but now it’s back.”
The muscle in his jaw ticks.
“He smoked a pack a day. As long as I can remember, half the time my father was home, he spent it on the porch with a cigarette in his hand. Since he was a teenager. Then just before my brother died, my mother was diagnosed with lung cancer. Never smoked a day in her life, but you spend thirty years with a smoker and their lungs become yours.”
Ethan twists the stem of his empty wineglass between his fingers, drawing little circles on the table with the base.
“She was a brilliant surgeon. Loved to sail. Before cancer, my mother was full of energy. She’d put in twelve, fifteen hours at the hospital and still manage a smile when my father dragged her out for a dinner party for some asshole client. He quit smoking after they found out, as if it made a difference at that point.”
He clears his throat, eyes glassy. I reach out and take his hand in both of mine.
“Is that why you and your dad don’t get along?”
“One on a long list of reasons.”
“I’m sure he’s just as heartbroken as you are. He—”
Ethan snatches his hand from mine. “Please, don’t defend him. That man has smoked for two-thirds of his life, and he’s healthier than I am. Instead, he killed his wife.”
“Ethan—”
“Let’s not talk about this anymore, okay?” The darkness in his eyes recedes, voice softens. He trails his fingers along my temple and down my neck. “I don’t want to spoil the evening for you.”
I’d tell him he isn’t spoiling anything, that I’d rather he’d be honest and grim than pretend, but our waiter returns with a tray of desserts and a bottle of wine.
“Compliments of the chef,” he says, placing two dishes in front of us. “Here we have almond jelly with lychees, jackfruit, and strawberries, as well as mandari
n sorbet with currant cookies.”
The waiter then sets out two new wineglasses and proceeds to pull the cork from the bottle. He offers to fill mine, but I put my hand over it.
“Thank you, no. I’m okay.”
“Are you sure?” Ethan asks, holding out his glass to the waiter. “I promise not to think less of you if I have to carry you home.”
“No, really, I’m good.”
Looking a bit offended, the waiter sets the bottle on the table and walks away. Before I can decide which dessert to try first, I notice Ethan studying me.
“Do you have a preference?” I ask.
“You don’t drink.”
Shit.
“Any particular reason?” he asks.
My hands go to my lap, fingers twisting until Ethan places his hand over mine. He closes in, arm across the table in front of me, shielding us.
“Avery, whatever it is, just say it.”
I wish it were that simple. But the answer isn’t an easy box to open. It’s boxes inside of boxes, unpacking and assembling a whole person. An entire life and the people and places that made her this way. How do I explain it to him when he can’t see Jenny’s nose ring or smell the ammonia soaked into her clothes? Can’t watch my shrink’s glass eye linger on the other side of the room, like it was watching a ghost in the corner. Echo, sweating and thrashing, screaming for mercy and ripping at her hair.
“Hey, hey,” he says, wiping his thumb across my cheek. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t think I can stay here.”
My breath comes shorter, quicker. Fingers tingle.
“Okay. We can go.”
Pulling out his wallet, Ethan leaves cash on the table and takes my hand as we slide out of the booth. He takes off his jacket and places it over my shoulders, leading me through the restaurant and outside to the noise and throbbing activity.
“Tell me what you need,” he says, both hands cupping my face. Urgency forms creases at the corners of his eyes. “What can I do?”
This isn’t fair to him. Quiet mysteries and hiding in dark corners. I can’t expect total, unfettered honesty when I’m still concealing locked rooms behind mirrors and curtains. It’s about more than trust. It comes down to whether or not I want Ethan to know me. Not his imagined ideal or the character he pieced together with parts of himself. Beneath the person I’ve tried to portray since I got sober and dropped my first name. Me, and everyone that used to be.
So I make a choice, and hold out my hand.
“Take a walk with me.”
18
Sober
My name is Echo, and I’m an addict.”
In a room of Saint Francis of Assisi Church on Thirty-First Street, a room like a dozen others I’ve seen, I stand up from the metal folding chair. Beside me, Ethan watches, silent, concealing any reaction to me or the nine other people sipping coffee and eating doughnuts.
“I’ve been clean for eight years, and I still think about using every day. I miss it like you miss sleep when you’re working a twelve-hour shift and it feels like you haven’t seen your bed in days. I miss it the way people talk about their childhoods, the good old days, all golden hues.”
Then again, that’s the thing about the good old days: they were never so pretty as we remember. Even the memories we regret, the ones that keep us up at night when our mind wanders and we relive our mistakes over and over in the dark—they’re a little less painful than the real thing. The sounds have muted. The sting of embarrassment has all but faded, and only the red, swollen mark remains.
“Today someone asked me why I don’t drink, and I didn’t know how to answer. How do you explain that you’re a toy Mom took the batteries out of because the first time the kid played with you, you nearly burned the house down? That you have to stay broken because what you are is destructive. I know we’re not supposed to think of ourselves that way, but let’s face it, we were built for chaos. Not because we want to destroy—we’re not malicious—it’s just the way we were made. I don’t drink not because I’m afraid of what might happen, but because I know what can happen. And I might like it. That’s the sword we live under. Denying our nature. Withholding from ourselves the one thing we want most. Because our true selves aren’t meant for this world. We’d swallow it hole if we could—stick it in a needle and straight in our veins.”
They’re all looking at me. The gangly woman, all tendons and bone, flesh like socks after the elastic’s worn out. Big, bald, beach ball man with sweat stains under his arms and a second doughnut on his lap. Sweet, blonde yogi in a long-sleeved silk cardigan, no doubt covering her track marks. They’re all me. They’re some of you. They’re anyone at all.
“Anyway…”
I needed Ethan to see this. There’s no other way to understand it.
“Today makes it eight years, five months, and twenty-three days. I miss it, but it gets a little easier every day.”
As I sit, Ethan takes my hand, clasping it tight in his. He never lets go as we stay through another hour, listening to the stories and confessions, the readings and recitations. I think about nothing. Let my mind clear and wander into empty space. It’s been weeks trapped under this clutter, the layers thickening, hardening above my head. Tonight, it’s cracked, crumbling around my shoulders. Whatever Ethan sees of me now, at least it’s the truth.
When the meeting ends and we emerge from the bowels of the church, I tell Ethan about Jenny. About getting kicked out of school and my first shrink with the glass eye. He says nothing. To the sidewalk, the end of the block. Waiting at the corner for the cars to pass and the light to change. Then we just keep walking, his jacket over my shoulders and my hand in his. Back to his truck while I tell him about rehab and Maureen. His silence persists, impassive shadows across his face, to my apartment and upstairs to my front door. Every step, every minute, dread soaking into my bones.
I wouldn’t blame him now, as I put my key in the door, if this were the end. A cold good night and uncomfortable glances at the office. Stilted conversation as we both try to forget. I slide his jacket off my shoulders and hold it out to him.
“Invite me in,” he says.
“You don’t have to say anything. I’m sorry if I made this awkward.”
Ethan takes the jacket and drapes it over his arm.
“Invite me in.”
Intensity flares behind his eyes, in the tight restraint of his voice. His entire body radiating tension. I unlock the door and let us inside. The apartment is dark except for the light over the stove. Kumi’s in bed already and left me a night light. I turn to lock up and hear Ethan go straight to my room.
I’m not ready for the talk. Maybe he’s too noble, too kind to let this end without an explanation, but I’m not ready to hear it. I’d prefer the unspoken agreement to avoid each other and understand that when “everyone” is going out for lunch or to catch Navid’s next show, that doesn’t mean me. So I let him wait while I go to the bathroom to hang up the dress and slip back into my pajamas. I wash the makeup from my face and pull down my hair. Brush my teeth and sit on the edge of the tub, hoping he might give up and leave. But there isn’t a sound. Just the two of us on separate sides of the same wall, each waiting for the other to make the first move.
Fine. Let’s get this over with.
Ethan stands in the middle of my bedroom, his back to me, among the piles of clothes and unpacked boxes. Some of the flowers are still where he left them, others are scattered around the apartment, and a few that didn’t last are gone. I watch him until I can’t stand it any longer.
“Ethan.”
He turns, and in two strides he’s caught me in his arms. His body, his lips, press to mine. Deep, desperate. Holding me to him as if I might be ripped away. Sudden fever engulfs me as my hands find their way into his hair and tug, my feet pushing him toward the bed. Ethan sits on the edge, pulling me to stand between his legs. Hands slide to my ribs, up and down, skimming his thumbs over my stomach.
Inhaling, he b
reaks away. In his eyes I see the same fury and desire heating my blood, teasing my nerves like touching live wires.
“Christ, Avery.” Ethan licks his lips and looks me up and down. “What are you wearing?”
“Umm…pajamas?”
A tank top and lounge pants, to be precise. The same ones I slept in last night, and the night before. Because I hate going to the laundry and it’s impossible to find anything when all my clothes are strewn across the floor or stuffed in garbage bags. I’m lucky I find underwear in the mornings.
“You don’t even know,” he says, shaking his head.
“What?”
“How fucking sexy you are.”
Gripping my ribs, his hands slide up, just below my breasts, and I have to stop myself from shivering.
“I thought…”
“You were hiding in the bathroom because you thought I was dumping you.”
“Pretty much.”
“No. Not even a little.” He slides back onto the bed. “Come here.” And brings me with him to sit propped up against my pillows. “I’m glad you brought me there. I just needed some time to process, that’s all. And I wanted you to have space to decompress.”
“You’re not, I don’t know, mad at me or freaked out?”
“No.” Ethan wraps his arm behind my back and encourages me to rest my head on his chest.
Idly, my fingers trace the buttons on his shirt, up and over the tiny valleys of the fabric.
“I think you’re extraordinary. You don’t understand how rare it is to have that kind of willpower and persevere through the kind of shit you’ve been through. Fuck, Avery. I couldn’t do it. I’d have given up and shot myself a long time ago.
My hand fists his shirt. “Don’t say things like that.”
He places a kiss on my forehead and lays his hand over mine. “I’m sorry. But my point’s the same. Everything I learn about you makes me more convinced that you’re my hero.”
“Wow, that is depressing.”
“You don’t give yourself enough credit.”
“I give the minimal amount of credit for being alive. There are people out there who have it much worse. I’m not under any illusions that my circumstances approach anything nearing extreme.”