I arrived at her office disheveled and discouraged. She’d gotten there already. She came out to the waiting room and took my arm in a way that reminded me we hadn’t always been like this. From here we went into her room and sat down. I felt oddly comforted and it made me unsure what I wanted from her. She seemed that way too – tentative, different than she’d been in a long while.
I didn’t say anything but found myself looking at her intently. Meeting her eyes for what seemed like ages. When she spoke, when she said, “Are you all right these days?” the sound of her voice startled me.
I didn’t know how she meant this. How widely she meant it. How much ground I was allowed to cover if I answered. The easy thing would’ve been to say, yes, I’m fine, but this was so far from true I couldn’t shape the words. What I said instead was, “I don’t really think so.”
I looked at her when I said it and wished I hadn’t because it seemed to have hurt her. She maybe wanted the other answer. How could I know what she wanted? “Are you?”
Her face changed again. She looked like she had no idea what I’d said and so quickly I added, “All right, I mean.”
Her eyes went cloudy and then teared and my own vision blurred from these same things, and we just sat there staring at each other.
I wondered about the way through this, how to come out the other side and quickly. But just when I thought I couldn’t stand this another moment, it grew sweet. Like we shared something, even if it wasn’t a good thing. And I felt a type of closeness I hadn’t felt in what had to be months.
And while this took over my body, while this sweetness roamed my chest and then the rest of me, taking hold in my limbs, I willed my brain to keep out of it, to stay still and not to wreck it, not to start me pumping to leave or push this into – sex because those escapes were there too – always there and calling.
She didn’t fidget, and she didn’t look away. But she didn’t say anything either. Not for the longest time. And then finally what she said was, “I’m afraid I’m not helping you.”
I couldn’t imagine how she meant this. I wanted to laugh, but she seemed genuine. Seemed not to see the absurdity of what she’d just said. This left me lightheaded, nearly giddy, unsure I could keep hold of what seemed maybe like anger.
There was so much room here for nastiness, for sarcasm. The only thing stopping me was the look on her face, still truthful and gentle. To meet that with cruelty seemed wrong. Instead, I said, “How do you mean?” And I truly wanted to know because the eeriest thing was the way I could never tell if she acknowledged all of what went on between us.
“I mean, I think you’re getting into trouble.”
I wondered if she was talking about herself more than me, if she meant I was getting her into trouble, because now her eyes left mine and stared out the window until this began to feel like all the other times she’d tried to keep herself away from me.
“How?” I asked her.
“You’re going back to it.”
“Not really, not that much. Not lately.”
“Weren’t you just last night?”
This threw me. And when her eyes met mine, they looked sore, achy. I tried to see what she’d said in some other way than that she’d gone looking for me.
At first I thought she’d maybe seen my car in the parking lot. Made her conclusions from there. But then I realized I hadn’t been using it and so what did that mean? That she’d actually been in that bar last night?
“I tried calling you,” she said. “I wanted to see if you were okay. I hadn’t heard from you. I was worried, and so I went by your place but there were no lights, and you didn’t answer but your car was there.”
Her eyes drifted away and when she started again, she said, “I saw you at the train station. With those men.”
She said all of this like it made sense. Like it was the most ordinary thing for a person to do, and it was hard not to go along with her. Not to feel that yes, of course, she’s the one who knows what she’s doing.
I kept my head just above water. I said, “What is it you think you saw?”
“I saw you get in a car with them.”
I wanted her to look at me because all I could see was her sitting in her car, watching for me. I couldn’t stand what this had me wondering and it made me plainer than usual. I said, “Look at me.”
But when she did she seemed to almost be crying and so I looked away.
I said, “So you imagined the rest of it.”
“Should I have stayed and watched?”
I wanted to say, what were you doing there in the first place? But this gave me too much to sort through. I felt both unnerved and afraid of her, and at the same time cared for – that she would go to such lengths, but out of what?
“They drove me home.”
“Oh, and that’s better?”
“No, that’s it. That’s all of it.”
I said this not quite understanding how quickly I’d become the one defending my actions. It served both of us, though. Let her stay above question and let me avoid thinking what the questions should be.
I stole a look at her and then another. And when I could be sure she’d gotten hold of herself I kept looking. This put us back to staring at each other, which started hard and almost mean before it went gauzy. I wouldn’t touch her. I kept telling myself this over and over in my head until I believed it, but I began to see leaving as the only way to ensure it. I thought, this time might really hurt.
So I did leave, and she didn’t stop me.
I went home to find something I never could have expected. Inside my building, just outside my door, Ingrid was sitting on the stairs. The way she looked – so lonesome, so much like I felt – it took away any will I’d ever had with her. And with Beth at my back, the sight of Ingrid felt like relief.
We went inside and she stayed standing near the door. She sort of hovered there like she didn’t know any better than me why she’d come. I put down my keys. I took off my shoes without thinking because my feet hurt, unaccustomed to so much walking.
I sat on the couch and waited. Ingrid finally sat down, but on the edge, keeping her coat on. She acted confused – with me or herself, I couldn’t know. Something looked even more wrong than usual. This made me reach over and pull her coat from her shoulders and then pull her toward me. I held on to her while she cried. I kissed her hair and held her.
I didn’t think I wanted to know what had happened – what on earth could’ve put it in her head to come here. I knew we’d wind up in the bedroom but I hoped it would take a while because I was afraid of what I might find on her body.
It was bruises, all along her left side. The kind you get from someone getting you down on the floor and kicking. She never said how. She never explained it. But then I suppose that’s what I offered – someone she could go to without explanation. Someone who’d simply know and know exactly.
We didn’t really do anything more than lay around with each other. Finally I went to find some ice. Being only as far away as the kitchen gave me the distance to wonder what jeopardy she’d put me in by coming here. And if she began making a habit of it? This appealed to me even as it frightened me.
I went back to her. Lay a towel on her side and then the ice and then put some pillows around her. All of this began me thinking about the way it had been in their house. Her having done this kind of thing for me. And I began to feel I owed her this. That she would do the same for me. That she already had.
Twenty-Three
In the morning, I had trouble with Ingrid even being there. I got up, took the towel away, now soggy and cold. I did these things trying not to wake her and she went along with this. She seemed dead to anything I might do and I was glad for it.
I needed time by myself. I needed at least to figure out what day it was and where I should be. It felt like Sunday but knowing it wasn’t did nothing to put me in motion.
It was late enough that the phone began ringing and I knew it’d be someon
e from work trying to find me. That was about the last thing I could see dealing with, so I unplugged the phone. I decided right then I wouldn’t go back to that job.
This meant having the day with Ingrid. Maybe it did. After all I didn’t know her plans. How long she expected to stay. I’d remained in between not wanting her there and feeling closed in, but at the same time afraid of her leaving, not for her but for me. Afraid of being alone with myself in a way that might make me look at the things I was doing.
Ingrid did stay. She spent the day in bed, not really ever awake. I waited on the couch, realizing finally that what I was missing were my afternoon drinks, the ones that usually started at lunch. I pulled out a bottle and a glass and lay there drinking awhile, watching Ingrid through the bedroom door.
About when I was getting dressed to go see Beth, Ingrid got up and went into the bathroom. After a while I heard water running. I heard what sounded like her getting into the tub and I went in to brush my teeth.
“I have to go out for a little bit,” I told her. And though she looked stricken, she must’ve pulled herself back from this because her voice was steady when she said, “Would it be all right for me to stay here a few days?”
I considered this, knowing I would never refuse. But that alone couldn’t keep me from considering just where this would put me. Would she stay here while I went back to work for real in that parking lot? It would increase the chances of her husband showing up, looking for me. Or sending someone else to do it.
“You can stay as long as you need … As long as you want.” This was what I finally told her. And when I began my walk to Beth’s I noticed my car parked in the little lot by my building. I wondered if I should move it, put it somewhere else. Whether it would be something that would tip Ingrid’s husband all the faster to our whereabouts. But, of course, I knew he’d find us easily whenever he bothered to try.
I got to Beth’s office still edgy and distracted. I couldn’t tell how she was. It seemed for ever since I’d seen her, what with all that had come in between. She looked different to me, but then she did look different during the week. More distant and composed, if only on the surface.
“You didn’t go to work again.”
She said this as a statement of fact. I was still standing, running my fingers over a glass paperweight full of trapped, dead flowers. This object sat on her desk, which meant I stood right behind her. Something I’d never done before while walking around.
She didn’t turn to look at me when she talked. Instead she looked straight ahead and at the chair I should’ve been sitting in. Having Ingrid in my home gave me some kind of false something. I guess bravado because I felt less like I needed Beth. Though I suppose I needed her more. If only she’d ever been someone I could talk to.
I’d moved so quickly to the other side of what I’d just been feeling. Began feeling so swiftly small and afraid, so in need, that I did sit down and when I did I astonished myself. I said, “I think I’m in trouble.”
She looked at me. She said, “Tell me what’s happened.”
I had enough sense to know I couldn’t do that, not exactly. I said, “I can’t go back to that job. There’s some way I just can’t. There’s too much else …”
I expected a lecture. Something standard she’d shift into from habit. Instead she said, “Do you want to do the other thing more?”
“No, I don’t think so. I don’t know. I just know I can’t play store any longer. I don’t belong there. I don’t know who I am there because I’m never there, not really, not me.”
“You belong where?”
“I don’t know. Maybe the other thing suits me better. It’s all clearer.”
I didn’t know why I was saying these things to her and I believed I’d better stop because it seemed dangerous. She seemed dangerous if I let on what really happened inside me.
I waited for her to argue with me but she didn’t, she said, “Why do you think that?”
“Because I know what to do, what’s expected of me.” And then I thought of Burt and said, “Most of the time, anyway.”
I sat there unable to say anything more. I gazed at her, while longing seeped into every space in my body. It gave me a strange solid feel, but with a weight to it. A weight so heavy I couldn’t have gotten to my feet if I tried. But she was on hers, holding her hand out to me. And then I was standing and we were walking out to her car. She had her arm around my waist and I was leaning against her, and now the heaviness of my body felt pleasant.
She drove us to a park near her house. No one much was there, it being later than dusk and cold out. I pulled at the coat she’d given me, drew it close. It was odd to be among swings and slides, things children play on. The cold air felt good, though. And she felt good, still with her arm around me, still guiding me. The sweet sadness of this made me want to cry. And then before I’d registered wanting this I’d already begun it. Had begun to cry from that place so big and so old I didn’t know where it began or what it concerned.
I cried in her arms for what seemed like ages. And when I couldn’t stand up anymore, we sat on a picnic table. We sat there timelessly, me gathered up in her arms and still sobbing. Then I’d stopped, or it had stopped, all this crying. And she’d moved us back to her car and there we were inside it. But this had happened too quickly. So quickly, I wanted her to turn down the street to her house. She didn’t. Instead, she drove me home.
My place did make more sense, what with her having a husband. But then here I was with someone else’s wife, so what could I do? She said, “Will you be all right? Do you want me to come in with you?”
Of course I did. I wanted her more in that moment than maybe I ever had. Though how I wanted her? I couldn’t be sure of this, except to know it wasn’t the same. Pieces of it were but the whole of it wasn’t.
And Ingrid upstairs? I couldn’t tell Beth about that. There was nothing to do. I said, “No, I’ll be okay. I’m all right.” And then I said, “Thanks.” And before I got out of the car I put my arms around her neck and held on for a little bit. And when I went up my stairs I felt nearly okay. For a little while.
Ingrid was on the couch and dressed. She looked like a wife all of a sudden. She’d fixed us dinner somehow or bought it somewhere. We ate and had some drinks and it began to seem normal to have her there. And though I’m not proud of it, it crossed my mind she might take care of money for a while. Postpone my having to go out again.
We were drinking still and smoking when the phone rang. And my instinct was not to answer, except for knowing it was Beth.
I picked it up and she said, “I just wanted to make sure you’re all right.”
I walked the phone into the bedroom, closed the door to Ingrid, but I still couldn’t shift gears so fast. I felt the jerky guiltiness in my voice when I said, “I’m okay, really.” And everything about the way I was speaking made plain my impatience. She couldn’t know why, just sounded sort of confused, and what she wound up saying was, “Tomorrow, why don’t you come later than we said.”
“When?”
“Six, I guess. That would be better I think. I have a full day and …”
She didn’t bother to finish as if she remembered who she was talking to.
“Six is fine,” I said. “I have some things to do, too,” and I didn’t know why I said this last thing and wished I hadn’t.
“Oh,” she said. “All right. Six, then.” And I felt her lingering and it felt brutish to edge toward hanging up, but in another awful way it seemed to be working in my favor.
“Okay, I’ll see you then,” I said.
I hung up the phone and went back to Ingrid. She still sat on the couch, smoking a cigarette, staring at her drink on the coffee table.
“Who was that?” she said like she’d had years of practice, which of course she had.
It startled us both. Her more than me because she quickly said, “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I asked that. It’s none of my business.”
I didn
’t attempt to explain, though a part of me wanted to. Here I was again with all this inside me I wanted to say but with the absolute wrong person to tell it to.
Instead I held out my hand and she took it. We went into the bedroom, me not knowing who or what I wanted exactly. I only knew too clearly it was Beth who’d started me needing and then changed the shape of the need.
Ingrid and I lay down together. It seemed at first that it might be like last night, with us just laying around. And, in a strange way, recognizing this – that this might be what I most wanted from Beth, or would’ve tonight – drove me past it. I couldn’t lay there thinking about her, about Beth. If I did it might start me crying again. Crying from that place I didn’t understand, and that’d give Ingrid all the wrong sorts of ideas about me. I’d be the last thing she’d want.
I undressed her and then undressed myself and she turned the covers down. She must’ve made the bed. I stood there, wondering at what I was doing. Not just this minute but with the whole of my life. Wondering how in hell I’d come here and from where.
These thoughts must’ve stopped me entirely because I heard Ingrid’s voice. Heard her say, “Nina, what is it? What’s the matter?”
I discovered myself standing stock still by the bed, but breathing hard, wishing I’d told her my real name because maybe then I would’ve felt like we knew each other.
“Nothing,” I said as I got into bed with her. But it wasn’t going to work. I could tell this already. I couldn’t get rid of all the things I was thinking. And when she began to touch me, at first just my neck, stroking a line under my jaw, I knew I’d never keep from feeling things either. And so with neither my mind nor my body a safe place to be, I looked to her body. Turned toward her and began touching her in return, and for a short while this worked.
I began to kiss her shoulders and then her breasts. Did these things until all I felt was her and not me. And this lasted until I pulled the covers back, saw the bruises on her side, by now purple and still reddish.
The sight of them caught me up, nearly stopped me. For an instant it ran through my mind to ask how it had happened. But I knew this, too, was about me, about keeping me from myself. And I knew it wouldn’t work. Besides, I knew exactly how she’d come to be hurt in this way. I could see it all – her on the floor and him kicking her. And I knew that the times I’d had this done to me I’d felt the least human of all.
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