by Emily Beyda
Finally he speaks. His voice sounds strangely far away. Like he is calling up to me from the bottom of a well. “I’m coming to pick you up,” he says. “At least let me drive. I’ll stay close, just in case.”
And I shake my head. As though he can see me. As though he is right there.
“No.”
I had never said no to him before. Not ever. Not like this, so direct. No obfuscation, no softening the blow. Just no. The word feels strange in my mouth, as clear as a bell, as heavy as a stone. It feels so good to say it that I say it again.
“No, I can’t leave, Maxie. I know it’s dangerous. I know you’re scared. But they know something. We need to protect Rosanna. You can pick me up in Malibu. I have the phone, I know my location is shared with you. Drive behind us, follow us there, don’t let yourself be seen. Stay close. I’ll call you if I need you, I promise.”
I can feel the ache inside me throbbing to life. I am propelled by the strength of her wanting. There is a long silence on the other end of the line. Maybe Max thinks if he says nothing, if he doesn’t make a choice, whatever comes next won’t be his fault. I can hear his breathing, gentle white noise. He is watching the ribboned lights of the freeway below, a glowing stream. He is picturing my profile in every passing car. He is trying to remember my old name. Because there is nothing he can say to Rosanna. But it won’t work. I want all of it, all of her, every part, even the parts of her Max doesn’t like. The parts he doesn’t know. And if Max remembers my name, I will not recognize it. It no longer belongs to me.
“Okay,” he finally says. His voice is impossibly small. “Be careful. Find out what you can.”
“Of course,” I say. “Of course I will. I promise I’ll be safe. Follow me. You wouldn’t leave me alone, would you? You’ll follow me, Max.”
A pause. A silence. And then: “Yes,” he says, “I will.”
* * *
—
At the table, Eleanor, Leo, and the blond man are waiting for me. Marie is talking to her husband, but I can see how her eyes shift, tracking my progress back into the room. I give her a real, tender smile. Dear Marie, I think. Sweet Marie. I wonder what she knows. What knowledge has Rosanna been protecting her from?
I suffer through dessert, a quince tarte Tatin with crème anglaise, espressos, chocolates, endless chat, vibrating in my seat like a bow pulled taut. I’m ready. When the others begin to stand, gather their things, I turn to Eleanor and Leo.
“Come on,” I say. “Let’s go. I want to see the ocean.”
The blond man wraps his arm around my legs. He’s as drunk as Leo is. I try to give Eleanor a sympathetic look, but she avoids my gaze. “Can I come?” he says.
“Yes!” I say. “Darling, of course you can come. Don’t be silly.”
A witness, I think. Perfect. He’ll protect me. He’ll do whatever I want. They can’t dig too deeply with him around.
“I’m bringing a date,” I say.
I bend over and kiss Marie on the top of her head.
“Bye, Edward!” I say. “Thanks for reminding her to invite me. What a great party, sweets! I’ll see you around.”
Marie stands to kiss me on my cheek. Her gaze is heavy with some powerful emotion, anger or fear or concern? Right now it doesn’t matter. I have other business to attend to, other deeper mysteries to solve. Inside, I feel that satiating hum. Rosanna is with me now.
The house looks exactly like I expect it to, big and clean and empty, looking out toward the ocean across a narrow swath of raked smooth sand. The ocean makes me nervous. I am nauseated by the heaving bulk of it, the vastness, water shaking like breath, in, out. It seems to whisper, words so soft I can’t quite make them out, a troubling pressure building in the back of my head. But Rosanna has seen the ocean before. Rosanna is not scared. The moon hangs over us, low and round, tinted orange like the bloody insides of an egg held close in front of a flashlight, pulsing with thwarted life. Beside me on the couch, the blond man shifts his body closer to mine. I still haven’t asked him what his name is. At this point I don’t care. I try to read the pressure of skin on skin as acquiescence rather than aggression, a sign that he is giving in to me. Not the other way around.
In the kitchen Eleanor hospitably digs for a vial of cocaine hidden at the back of the spice rack. They hadn’t needed to call anyone. This was probably for the best, that we keep it cozy, just the four of us, my situation is already complicated enough as it is, but it’s odd that Leo pretended there was a need. In the bright light of the large white room, I can see a dullness matting Eleanor’s skin. Thin lines at the corners of her eyes, hollows underneath. She looks haunted. Am I the responsible ghost? I think of her husband’s hand on my thigh. What is there between us? And what does she know?
She taps out a line on the coffee table, pressing her face close to inhale, motioning us over, the blond man and me. Leo comes in from the patio, where he has been standing and smoking a cigarette, letting a cold burst of air puncture the stillness of the room. He’s the only person I’ve met here who smokes other than Rosanna. Maybe he hoped I’d come outside with him, that we’d have some time alone.
Eleanor and Leo seem freed from pretense here and no longer sit close or even talk. They are focused on me. I can feel the warmth of their attention like two beams of light, and I am glad that I’ve brought along the blond man as insulation. They can’t ask me anything too personal with him here, at least not without implicating themselves. I put my hand on his knee and give it a grateful little squeeze, his body sloping softly into mine, and I tell myself again that I am in charge.
“Your turn,” Eleanor says.
I sit on the floor close beside her, trying to look casual, game. I hadn’t done drugs in my old life. I was too afraid of getting caught, getting used to a habit too expensive to maintain without some loss of autonomy or personal control. I guess I don’t have to worry about that now. I copy Eleanor’s movements, a finger over the nostril, lean close, breathe deep, throw my head back, laughing. It burns, a strange medicinal taste in the back of my throat, like baking powder, salt water, acrid. I wonder if I’ve done something wrong. I hope I looked the way Rosanna did when she did it. I feel a new steadiness come over me, my heartbeat firmer, a new, more certain, assonance. My body hums. Rosanna had been at home here. So am I. I slip my arm around Eleanor’s waist.
“Wow,” I say, “it’s been a minute.”
I smile at Leo, giving him the slanted glance Rosanna uses when she asks for a cigarette or orders something with red meat—look how bad I am, it says, look how fun it is to be bad, to be me. His face stays still. Maybe he doesn’t like his wife doing drugs. Maybe he’s jealous I’m paying more attention to her than to him, jealous that I brought along a human shield. It’s not my problem. These people aren’t my problem. I am theirs. I am overwhelmed with longing for Max. I don’t know what I was thinking, coming here without him. My brain feels like it’s bouncing around inside my head. All bloody liquid inside. But I’m here to work. I’m here to learn. For Rosanna’s sake, I have to at least try to discover whatever it is I came here to find.
“So how have you all been?” I say. “I mean, really. I want to know everything. Tell me about what you’ve been doing! It’s been so long, hasn’t it, since we all spent time together.”
This is good, I think. Casual. Vague enough to give them space to tell me whatever it is I need to know. Normally this is where I would describe a memory, bring up an inside joke, something we all know about, to make them comfortable. But Max hasn’t prepped me, so I have nothing to say. I thought my understanding of Rosanna was bone-deep, instinctive, but without my flash cards and memorized facts I am helpless. I am as bad as Max, both of us knowing so much less than we think we do. The blond man stirs beside me, restless. I try not to look out toward the night, where the palm fronds froth, cracking whiplike against the glass.
“And whose fa
ult is that?” says Leo, his voice light. He wants us to think he’s joking. He’s not. I am surprised that he has shifted so quickly to aggression, but then again, here I am in his house, another man’s hand on my knee. It must hurt. I smile up at him from the floor. So let it hurt, I think. Is he Rosanna’s married man?
“Come on,” Eleanor says, “give her a break. We have all night to catch up.”
She cuts me another line and I do it, my face floating up toward me through the dark glass. My phone nestles silent against my thigh. It feels heavier than it really is, dense. I wonder where Max is now. Is he close? Is he looking at my picture, blue in the shadows on the side of the highway? Is he trying still to remember my name? Or maybe he is calling Rosanna, letting her know what I have done. I lean forward and put my hand on the blond man’s thigh, touching him the same way that Leo earlier had touched me. I do not ask for permission. Across the room, Leo’s eyes lock on mine, flat and open, like a deer on a dark road surprised by headlights. I wonder if he’s scared of me. I hope he is.
“So what was it,” I ask, “that you wanted to talk about?”
“I thought you wanted to know how we were,” says Leo. “Keep it casual, right? The only thing we want to know is where you’ve been, but apparently we’re not allowed to talk about that.”
Outside the wind picks up, the palm trees leaning together in a huddle, a sharp sound of snapping fronds. I thought that this would be more interesting. That Rosanna’s secrets would be less mundane. But here we are, four lonely people, sitting too close together in a blank white room, so clean it feels inhuman, the violence of the outside world pressing close around us. There is something almost squalid about it. I think of Marie, smiling at her husband in the candlelight, and know I was wrong. She will never smile that way for me. There is nothing I can do, nothing I can learn, that will change the way she feels. Of course this isn’t a new discovery. Rosanna already knows about the hidden imbalance at the heart of their relationship. Maybe that’s why she’s keeping secrets—she knows there are things that Marie isn’t ready to hear.
“I don’t want to know,” says Eleanor.
“What?” says Leo.
“Just for the record. I don’t really care where she was. I mean, Rosanna, you’re great, but we didn’t even know each other that well before you went wherever you disappeared to. I don’t know why Leo is being so pushy. It’s nice to see you, welcome back. But whatever you’ve been up to just doesn’t feel like my business. Or his, to be honest.”
Leo raises his hands, an abrupt motion. “I don’t know what you want from me, Eleanor, Jesus. I’m just being friendly. Is that the end of the world? Showing concern for an old friend?”
An old friend, I think. Sure. I bet you two were really close. “It’s fine,” I say. “Please, I appreciate your concern. But I agree with Eleanor, I don’t really want to get into it. Let’s just hang out, okay? Have a fun night, old friends and new.”
I force myself to stop clenching my jaw and give them all what I hope reads as a warm, easy smile.
The blond man joins in, eager to please. “Yeah,” he says. “Thanks for bringing me, Rosanna. So nice meeting you guys.”
It sounds like he wants to leave, thinks I’ll take him with me when I go. My body feels electric, on fire with a slick, chemical rush, the back of my throat burning, all of me lit up. I wrap my arms around the blond man’s neck, feel the warmth of him, the blood beating so close to the surface of his skin. I want to bite down until the blood comes bitter into my mouth. I feel my own power coursing through my veins. Marie or no Marie, I am the one with the power now.
But Leo is still looking at me. “Speaking of which,” he says, “no offense, but why the hell is this guy here?”
The blond man seems to stop breathing. For one irrational instant I think I have killed him. Strangely, this idea is not particularly upsetting.
“Hey, man,” he says, “I’m just trying to hang. You’re the one that invited me.”
“Leo!” says Eleanor. “Come on. It’s not his fault. Be nice.”
“Actually, Rosanna invited you,” says Leo, “for some reason. I didn’t. My wife’s right. It’s nothing personal, but honestly, Rosanna, why did you insist on bringing this stranger home with us? I thought you wanted to talk. What exactly is it that you think is going to happen here?”
I think that you are going to tell me everything I want to know. I think that you are going to tell me the secrets of myself. I try to focus on that feeling from before, that power. This should be easy. I shrug. “I wanted him here,” I say. “So he’s here. That’s how it works.”
“No,” says Leo.
Now he’s not trying to sound nice at all. He’s given in to himself and he’s just mean, just mean, self-serving Leo, and I’m supposed to be surprised by this? I’m supposed to be hurt? I know you better than that, I think. And I don’t know you at all.
“That’s not how this works,” Leo says. He is standing now, pacing back and forth like a caged animal. “We haven’t seen you in so long. It’s been over a year? We saw each other every day, and then you disappear without saying a word.”
“Wait,” says Eleanor. “Every day? We barely knew—”
“Nothing,” says Leo, cutting her off. “Just gone. Christ, Rosanna, I thought you were dead. And now you’re back. But things aren’t the same anymore. You’ve walked back into a different world.”
“I thought you wanted to let things go?” I say. “I’m here, I’m fine, you’re fine, let’s just have fun together. If that’s not how you feel, why don’t you try being honest for once in your life. Tell your wife. Tell her why you’re so angry at me.”
Eleanor casts a look at her husband, silencing him. She looks at me with such sadness, recognition dawning in her eyes, and I think, Who is this woman? What does she think she knows about me?
“I don’t need him to tell me anything,” she says. “And I don’t need you to tell me anything, either, not in my own house, not with my children sleeping upstairs. Having you come back with us was a mistake. It doesn’t matter where you were or why you left, not really. We’ve grown up a lot in the past few years. I hoped you had, too.”
Leo looks at her with tenderness. He loves her, I think. In his own way. He might have been fucking me, might be jealous and possessive and controlling, but he certainly wasn’t planning on leaving. Rosanna never had a chance. I can still feel the pressure of his hand on my thigh and am filled with a powerful rage at his hypocrisy, theirs, the two of them so smug, like I’m the only person here who is pretending. As if any of us were in a position to judge. I’m leaving, I’ll leave, but I want to make sure they know I’m on to them. I see what they are. I want to stand up for Rosanna. I’m the only one who will.
“Have things changed?” I say, standing up. “Have they, really? Are we all so incredibly grown up now? Because it looks to me like it’s close to midnight on a weekday, and here we are sitting in your living room doing drugs while your children sleep upstairs, and that’s not very responsible, is it? It was the best thing I ever did, leaving. Cutting off toxic people like you. I wish I had stayed away.”
Eleanor stands up, too, directly across from me, the coffee table pressing sharp against both our shins. She is trying to look detached, I think, calm, but I can see how upset she is. I’m almost disappointed at her lack of control. She’s as bad as her husband. In a way, they deserve each other.
“Rosanna,” she says, her voice shaking, just slightly, no tears yet, “I’m glad, at least, that you’re alive. It was interesting seeing you. But I think you should go now.”
I take out my phone to text Max, holding it up to check the service, thinking of how I will wait alone on the beach. I will watch the waves until their motion feels natural to me. I will wade into the warm water, the moon’s light soft on my clean white neck.
“I wish I could say the sa
me of you,” I say. “Don’t worry, I’m going. I won’t be bothering you again.”
But as I move toward the door, Leo moves, too, stepping forward, blocking my path. He grabs me hard by the wrist, too hard, like Max, and no one is allowed to touch me like that but Max, and I raise my other hand to strike him, but just before I can, I see his face. Blank. So empty and clean that it scares me. And then, like watching a glass of water smash on the kitchen floor, a rush of emotion, confusion, rage, shock, all in the space of a breath. He lifts my hand up toward the light like I’m the winner in a boxing match and stares at it, looking for what, track marks, a mole, a scar? I try to pull my hand away, but he’s holding on tight. I’m not as strong as I thought I was.
“Wait,” he says.
He looks deep down into my eyes. Rosanna slept with this man, I think. She looks at him and sees a body she desires, a body she can control. I want him, too. I want to push him down on the couch, tear off his perfect clothes, scratch his skin, ruin him, all of this in front of his wife. He loves her, but he wants me. My power is undeniable. My body is a force more powerful than them both. He looks at me with that wild intensity, and I understand exactly what all this is about. He’s so transparent, hopeless, really. I give him a seductive little smile.
“You’re not Rosanna,” Leo says.
There is a long silence. Leo holds tight to my wrist. He looks down into my eyes, down to where I keep myself hidden, and I can feel him dragging me up into the harsh and burning light. And suddenly I am back in the living room of my parents’ house, the one we lived in toward the end, with filthy fluffy white carpeting throughout, all those closets, all those mirrors. My father is out for the night, business, he says, and this means that we probably won’t see him till late the next afternoon. This is what my mother has been waiting for. There are suitcases hidden under her pile of fur coats, and when she wakes me, late, the sky blue-black, the neighborhood quiet, we pull them out and creep downstairs. I barely recognize the mousy woman standing at the foot of my bed, her combed-back hair, black jeans and top, her puffy, makeup-less face. She is a stranger to me. But she smells like my mother, she has my mother’s voice, and so I, trusting, my tiny legs dangling above the dirty carpet, quietly put on my shoes and follow her through the darkened house. My mother does not have friends we can go to. My mother cannot drive a car. But what my mother does have is willpower and smarts and a handbag full of rolled-up dollar bills and the number of a taxi company. We will drive to a new town, take a bus, take another, paying in cash. We will disappear into the vastness of a country where nobody will be able to find us, the dogs on our tail losing the scent, panting, their tongues dry in the empty air. We will have each other. We will be fine. And then the door swings open. My father is standing there, rain blowing in around him, soaking the carpet at his feet. I turn to run upstairs, to hide, but he rushes forward, catches me by the wrist, and looks so deep into my eyes I think he will scoop me hollow, and then my mother is on him, screaming, and he hurls me so hard against the staircase that my head cracks, pain washing over me in a wave. Everything goes dark. I wake up to an open door, my father gone, my mother lying still beside me. The carpet is wet with rain, yes, but a deeper wet, too, a wet that is red and sticky and sweet, melted sugar, a dropped bottle of molasses seeping across the kitchen floor. I close my eyes again, willing it all to disappear. For the rain to come through the open door and wash it all away. Leo is still holding hard to my wrist. Still, he stares down into my eyes. Outside, the storm has picked up, wind beating hard against the windows, the sea growing louder and louder until it seems to shout, and Leo looks down at me the way my father did, and I wait for the moment of fracture, for him to throw me down on the hard edge of the table, for the sky to open up, for all of this to end like it was always going to—in violence, in darkness, in pain. But the storm does not break. It does not rain. That’s the only thing I can think of, looking from Leo to Eleanor to the man I’ve brought to their house, all of them silent, all of them looking at me. Why isn’t it raining? There is nothing but silence and the whisper-crack rush of wind outside. Whatever happens next, I hope it rains one last time. I want to see this dirty city clean.