Notice

by Heather Lewis

  This didn’t put her off taking me driving, it only made her choose more carefully where to go. Since public places and someone else’s backyard or field or driveway were out, what she did was take me to her house. I don’t remember how it happened we went there, what her reason was, though I think it had to do with her picking up something to take back to the office.

  I went in with her. Edged around the corners of her rooms, not sure where to put myself, whether to follow her or not. This wasn’t conventional, even for us, and so I wasn’t sure of the etiquette. Still, when she went upstairs I went with her, and from there we went into the bedroom.

  I wandered around in there. Picked up stuff from the bureau. Looked at the pictures. Just being in there but not quite invited, I felt like the one in charge.

  Pretty soon, though, she was saying we should go. I don’t know what she’d been doing or pretending to do. I mean, it wasn’t like she’d found what she came for and so wanted to leave. She seemed hurried and off like the day before – addled – and this made me bolder. It made her easier to get at. So I was the one who lingered. The one who wanted to stay. Or at least acted like it.

  I was standing near the bureau and she came up behind me and then was standing beside me. All she did was take my hand, which she’d done enough times before. I was the one who kissed her. Finally kissed her mouth, and the way she gave to this, to me, the way her mouth softened and opened, and the way doing this seemed to calm her, all of this took me aback.

  I guess I’d expected her to stop me. I think somewhere I had convinced myself of this – that that’s what she would do. But she didn’t. I mean, look where we were.

  Her not stopping me was what I’d been wanting desperately and disorientingly for months. I’d been sure of this – certain that I’d been dreading her refusal, however she’d do it – that this was the fear that kept stopping me.

  Now, her letting me – I’m not sure what it did to me. The clear thing was she’d taken over. Whatever had flustered her an instant ago was gone and now I was the one giving way.

  I let my mouth go slack and felt her tongue in me instead of the other way around. That started something building in the hollow between my ribs, something unsettled and trembling that took all my wits. And then her hand was there too, first outside my shirt and then underneath it. This stroking did nothing to soothe me.

  I wanted just to be kissing her, to stay doing that a lot longer, but with her hand in my shirt, being able to want something that simple was already over.

  She kept her hand on my chest, between my breasts, but not really on them. I think I still believed it was there to push me away. But then I felt her other hand on my stomach and it got hard to breathe. I had to take my mouth away from hers, though I could still feel it; I felt things a beat behind her and was unable to catch up.

  I rested against her, put my face where I couldn’t see hers. She was unbuttoning my shirt, still with her one hand underneath it. Then she got it open, was kissing my shoulders and then my breasts. She ducked down some to do this, and with nothing to lean on I felt marooned.

  She had her hand in my pants. I felt the back of it against me, her fingers in my underwear, her mouth on my stomach. She was on her knees before me and I was faltering and shuddering and holding on to her shoulders.

  She leaned back to unbutton my pants. And while she did this she said things I don’t quite remember and didn’t believe. Things about loving me and wanting me, about wanting so much for so long to do this.

  Hearing her say these things backed me away until I felt the edge of the bed behind me, behind my knees, and so I knew I could fall. But it was a little longer before I did. She was kissing my stomach again. I wanted her to hold me up, but instead she was pushing me down, her hands on my thighs, and so I folded on to the bed. I let go of her and then let her.

  She got my shoes and socks off, my pants, my underwear. I still had my shirt on and I pulled it around me. But doing this made it hard to sit up and I felt I should try to stay upright. I had this idea I should keep an eye on her, except everything worked against this. All the weight of it did. And so I couldn’t hold myself up for long, not when lying back seemed so much easier.

  It was easier, once I let myself do it, which was when I noticed her taking off her clothes. On my back I could forget all of it except her mouth on me and how this felt and her hands still on my thighs first, and then her arms curled around my calves. Her weight on my legs made me feel all of it more. Made me feel her more. Made me feel maybe the best I’d ever felt. Enough so I couldn’t stand it and couldn’t stop it, couldn’t let myself come off.

  She could tell, I think, because she kept saying for me to let myself. Instead I pulled away from her. I kind of crawled away and then was kneeling with my back to her. She was on the bed behind me and she’d pulled my shirt off my shoulders. She kissed me there, and my neck, all the while murmuring to me in this way I loved and wanted more of but didn’t trust, in this way I wanted so badly to give in to, but kept fighting.

  She kept talking softly, and her arm around me, her hand moving from my stomach to my chest and then lower and back up to my throat, at first this was what held me up, what helped me. Her hand, not what she was saying.

  With her mouth so close to my ear I could hear every word but couldn’t hold on to any of it. The things she said worried me most, scared me most. Scared me for her.

  I’d kept hold of my shirt. I’d kept my elbows bent so she couldn’t take it all the way off me. But now I let my arms drop back behind me because I needed us to get to the next place we were going. Needed this because I thought it would stop her from talking this way.

  Once she had my shirt off, I had nothing on anymore and neither did she and this seemed to be what let us lie down together. I was on my stomach and she was behind me with one hand inside me and the other holding me around my waist. I could only make sounds and do what she wanted me to do, which was pull one leg up under me more.

  Her hand in me had me near begging her. I felt crazed in a way I didn’t know, or could barely remember. Crazed and swallowed somewhere and then coming up again and then not anymore. Just staying down there, staying with her and when I’d gotten to this place, she took her hand out and put it in my ass and then I was begging again. For real and out loud. Begging for more of her. Asking from this place in me that felt early, as in ancient, but still very young.

  I was pleading with her and she kept telling me to let myself. She kept saying, “Sweetheart, let yourself have it.”

  And her telling me this fastened me to her voice, to the sound of it, which was so gentle and knowing. So convinced about what would make me feel better. That the way to this was through giving in to her, to what she was saying.

  I could listen to her now because the words were about what she wanted from me, what she wanted me to do, and not how she felt, so I could be with her. I could be so close to her that she became who I most wanted her to be. For a little while she did. Until I did what she told me and let myself come.

  Once that happened, the shift in me was so fast I thought I’d go under for ever. This rage came up and over me with such fierceness and sorrow I feared I’d turn on her. But then instead of it swallowing me, I swallowed it. And before I understood any of it, I’d begun all the motions of loving her back.

  I got caught in this fast because it let me feel all those other things again. The first and most important of these was being turned on, the only one able to drown out the others. Or permit them. The one that allowed me to feel things I otherwise never felt safe with.

  But then all that was over too. And she seemed so at peace in my arms while I felt in pieces and wanting badly for her to notice except she didn’t, and so I was left alone in my head where nothing good was happening.

  All of this felt familiar and strange. It had something to do with how I managed the men, but in another way it had nothing to do with all that because the men didn’t start this trouble, the women
did. And not even all of them, and never anyone had like this, like Beth.

  Ingrid had begun it, had come closest. She’d shown me myself and where I was headed. She’d made it clear I couldn’t keep on with what I’d been doing. That it didn’t matter anymore how hard I tried, I wouldn’t be able to keep the things inside me where I thought they belonged. That it was only a matter of time and maybe of place before I lost hold.

  Until Ingrid, I hadn’t felt anything in such a very long while. I’d made sure of this. I’d promised myself. My life may have looked haphazard and I suppose a lot of it was, but I’d kept this one piece very well ordered. And even with Ingrid I’d seemed able to keep myself under control.

  But not with Beth. Since the first day I laid eyes on her I’d been fighting myself and then just plain pretending. Had done this by seeing what I felt for her in one way only. Had tried to make it just about sex, but then that was what led me here. What put me in her bed where feeling became suddenly everything until the feelings themselves overlapped and tangled up, impossible to distinguish, or stop, or recover from.

  These were the feelings that had made it necessary to stop feeling in the first place – necessary to stop all of them. Or at least dull them, blunt them. Find so many ways around them, to never allow them. To keep myself especially far from love and even farther from being loved because, of the whole lot of them, these were the only two that could actually kill you.

  All this crowded into me while Beth slept in my arms. And it made me panicky and flighty. Restless enough to get up and put on my shirt and my pants and then search out my cigarettes, which were caught in the sheets near her feet. I found myself wanting to wake her, wanting to shake her awake, and I did jostle the bed more than I needed but she was sleeping too deeply to notice.

  And because I understood so well this kind of sleep and how impossible it is to intrude upon, I went down the stairs and into the living room, curled myself into the far corner of the couch and smoked, wondering what day it was going to be and what it was I was supposed to do. I did this until she came down the stairs with my shoes in one hand and my socks in another.

  She handed them to me and I put them on – all this without a word passing between us. And we said nothing putting on our coats or the whole way in her car. And nothing still when she dropped me at my car.

  Twenty

  It was still dark when I got into my own bed and by then I knew which day it was turning into, and knew I’d call in sick to work. And I was sick, I supposed – and with the whole weekend looming.

  I spent the day in bed nursing a loneliness too large to ignore. A lovesick that wouldn’t let me alone. This was the place I called her from and so I wasn’t in my right mind.

  When she answered the phone, she behaved warily, needed coercing and cajoling. This just left me feeling sicker about all of it, and more to blame. She agreed to meet me not on this day but the next – Sunday – at her office.

  By the time I got off the phone it was early evening and dark out so I could feel at least that I’d gotten through the worst of the day and partway into night. And going by me fast and unfocused was a thought about heading for that parking lot.

  I went no further with this because meeting her tomorrow held me a little together, while at the same time letting me know how pulled apart I’d become. That it wasn’t really peace of mind keeping me at home, but the belief I was so fractured I could actually be in danger, or put myself there.

  This wasn’t something that occurred to me often and, even now, recognizing it was only surface. Pure practicality and going no deeper and so absent of true understanding. It would keep me safe though – as in at home for this night – but could effect no lasting change or even begin it.

  I had nothing in the house but booze and this situation almost sent me outdoors after all. The realization I didn’t know anyone who could get me anything better stopped me. And it let me know that if I was going to stay with Beth that would need to change.

  The way all this went reminded me none of it was new. But placing its origin – placing this at my origins – tired me so much I got a tall glass and began drinking. Did this until I found a place of comfort nothing could intrude upon, though just before I slept I thought of Beth sound asleep and this troubled me until it soothed me instead.

  The next morning my head hurt too much to lift but this wasn’t the drinking. Drinking never did this to me. I forced myself out of bed and through the motions of morning, though it was already a little past noon.

  I had about enough time to get myself together before I’d meet her. I winced some remembering that phone call. Now, seeing her seemed a very bad idea but still impossible to resist.

  I got myself dressed, and then I put on my coat. Noticing it was the one she’d loaned me, or given me – that helped not at all. So I walked over there already angry and beholden.

  She’d gotten there before me so I just walked through the waiting room and into her office. It seemed odd to be back here. The room seemed too small to hold us and I couldn’t tell if she noticed any of this because she just sat there as if I’d been keeping her. As if I was late, but I knew I wasn’t.

  I did my weekday thing of being unable to sit down, only it seemed worse and all about not looking at her. Still, the pressure to just get on with this was somehow even greater. I slinked, I truly did. In a very animal way I slid into that chair.

  Her body let go a little once I sat down. I didn’t see this so much as feel it. I did notice she’d uncrossed her legs, let them fall just a little apart. But seeing what I was looking at made me meet her eyes.

  She appeared just as wary as I was, but at the same time letting go to this unfounded faith. Or maybe this last thing was just happening to me. In any case I couldn’t hold on to my body at all anymore. My limbs fell into the chair very loose and heavy and pleasant. I rested my head and closed my eyes and then I heard her come toward me.

  I kept my eyes closed because this seemed the best way to handle things. She’d knelt before me, had started with her arms around me and her head resting against my chest and then my stomach. She just sort of held on to me and I didn’t know what to do. What to do in return.

  I’d had my hands on my thighs but now I put the right one, which seemed easier to lift, on her neck. I kind of rubbed her neck and I couldn’t get past thinking this should be the other way around. That I should be on my knees to her. But that was not how it was.

  Soon the same panicky flight thing began in my chest and I couldn’t believe she didn’t feel it in me. But maybe she did because she started rubbing one of my thighs with one of her hands and that made it all easier.

  I opened my legs more and I wanted so much to gather her into my legs and my arms, hold her with all of my body, but this sort of thing was clearly beyond me.

  Instead I just kept falling backwards, loosening myself and loafing. Letting her do it all. She’d opened my shirt and my pants, had done all of this so slowly I couldn’t place when it had happened. Only knew that now her hands were on my skin and so was her mouth.

  She stayed very slow, eased my pants down but left my underwear. She kept touching me so lightly I thought this by itself might kill me.

  I’d become very quiet. My breathing had dropped so far down. Nothing about me was awake except the places she touched. From here I cared only for physical comfort. I kicked off my shoes and shucked my pants and underwear. I was glad I’d never put socks on because when I wrapped my legs around her I especially liked having the velvety feel of her blouse against my feet.

  The sensation of this held me a little while but then her mouth took me over and I clutched her hands first and then her arms, pulled her into me and me into her.

  I’d gone to that place where nothing mattered but her and how she was making me feel. With this hitting me so hard, I wanted something more than a chair underneath me. I wanted maybe to be on the floor except it would’ve involved too much movement. It maybe would’ve spoiled some
thing and so I stayed put, recognizing that possibly what I wanted was to crawl away from her again.

  What I did instead was hold her even tighter, grasp her with my hands and my legs. The pressure of this helped me in a purely physical way. It spread the shivering that had fixed in my chest through the rest of me and this let me stay with her. Stay with what she was doing to me, which was bringing me towards feelings for her I could just barely take and then bringing me off.

  From there we did wind up on the floor. And me, I was weighted with all the same tangled mess – that same too strong love, turning in an instant to fury. I didn’t take her clothes off, only took down her underwear and hitched up her skirt. I did the least I could do to get my hand into her.

  She made sounds as I fucked her. All of it was so fast and so rough, so the back of what she’d done to me. I feared I might actually hurt her.

  But afterwards, she held on to me and was kissing me and saying those same kinds of things I couldn’t listen to. I found myself reaching for my pants and pulling them on. Seeing this as the way to be able to stay next to her and hear her.

  Once I’d dressed I found myself undressing her, pulling her skirt off first and then her blouse. I still needed something to do in order to listen.

  She kept on talking. It seemed to come from some dreamed place inside her I didn’t yet know and because of this feared. I stroked her body. Her belly and her thighs, her throat. I kissed her shoulders and breasts.

  These were things I’d been unable to accomplish the other night. And maybe she’d missed them because she left off talking. I heard just her breathing. I felt it go low, and then I felt her lower. She sort of murmured something and I kept my hand soft. I brought my face near hers, surprising myself because I wanted to know what’d she’d said.

  She didn’t say it again though, and my mouth was so near hers, still, what I did was bring my hand to it. I ran my finger along her lips and when she opened her mouth to this, I kissed her. This was where I got lost again. I caught myself lolling. I’d rolled off her a little and she on to me and so what I needed to do was regain my balance.