Notice

by Heather Lewis

  To make her revisit it just to spare myself, this seemed close to something he’d do. Instead I put a pillow behind her so she wouldn’t have to lay flat. She sank into it while I wrapped my arm around her thigh.

  I kissed her for ever, her belly, her thighs, and I could feel her hands in my hair. Could hear her saying little things. Murmuring in a way I couldn’t make out and didn’t quite want to – afraid it might sound too much like what Beth said. And if they were both saying the same kinds of things, how could I believe either one of them? How could it be any more than the things people say when they’re together like this? And this was made all the more tangled by my wanting to believe Beth but not Ingrid.

  So, in this way, I came back to Beth just as I got inside Ingrid. I listened to Ingrid now because it was only sounds and breath, and my own breathing changed but not in the right way. I had to take my mouth from her, and just fuck her. Fuck her, while I tried to choke off my own sounds because they might end up in sobs if I didn’t get hold of myself.

  Ingrid tried to turn – first toward her bruises but crying out some when that hurt, and so toward me. I pulled out another pillow. Let her on to her stomach. I got myself up and behind her. Put my hand back inside her, and her asking all this time now for more of me, of my hand.

  I grew afraid of myself in this, afraid I’d get carried away, carried off to where she wanted me to go and then I stopped worrying.

  I fucked her until she was the one crying – out of a place I both knew and didn’t because usually when she got here she stayed silent and away from me. But this time, when I was starting to stop, she cried at me to keep on. She said, “Please, don’t. Please don’t leave me.”

  She’d never said anything like this and so I listened. I put my hand further into her and held it there, kept trying to get further inside. She held herself very still, and then I did this, too – I held still and held my hand still, still and deep.

  I stayed like this until she turned again. Turned toward me, and her face looked a way I’d never seen. She looked young and afraid and I opened my arms and she came to me.

  *

  It was a long time before she quieted. I felt helpless. I thought of all the stupid things to do – bring her a drink, a cigarette. I kept myself from doing these things until she got to a place of wanting me to. Then I was glad to have actual tasks. To be able to get up from that bed.

  I brought these things back with me – the bottle, our glasses. Made a separate trip for the cigarettes just to have more time with myself. I tried to drink the way she did, in the long swallows that were helping her, but for me it just brought back the choking. And the cigarette I tried did this, too, even more. I stubbed it out halfway finished, and that’s when she noticed me.

  She curled up near me and put her hand between my legs and I lay back. I opened my legs because she told me to.

  She stroked me and stroked me and I felt a calmness begin near her hand and then follow it. She trailed her fingers up my body to my throat and back down. Beth had done this too, and so I wondered: what is it about me that lets women know to do this?

  My breathing grew steadier and deeper and she talked to me in a way that said nothing. She said things like, “There, now. You’re all right. Darling, everything’s all right.” And I could see that it wasn’t, because I’d begun to believe her.

  When she put her hand in me I couldn’t be anywhere else but with her. I couldn’t do anything but feel what she was doing. And it was all slow and gentle and I wanted more of her than I could take. Tried hard to ask for her but now I was the one who could only make sounds and cries.

  She knew anyway. We were enough alike in these ways and so I felt her get very far into me and felt myself close around her. I wanted to put my legs around her, too, but I couldn’t move them. I felt limp and wonderfully exhausted, slack and peaceful. She seemed to find comfort in this because when I looked she was smiling. Not in any large way, but this small change in her face that I hadn’t seen in a long while, maybe ever.

  She took her hand from me slowly, let it stay underneath her when she sank into me. And I felt her hand and the weight of her body as indistinguishable things. And I came in this way, too. A way that made it hard to make out what was what, and harder to care because all that seemed to matter right now was her having had me this way.

  But it didn’t last. It went wrong because she wasn’t the right one to have done this, to have done me this way, done this to me. And so from underneath came an emptiness. Seeping through me, despite my attempts to keep it away. It nagged me. Gnawed from inside, forcing me to see Ingrid and I weren’t so very alike, or weren’t anymore. What still worked for her seemed now to fail me. Couldn’t keep pace with what Beth had begun – something that seemed unstoppable, yet might never finish. Or might finish me.

  Twenty-Four

  I slept, really slept deeply, for the first time in longer than I could determine. Still, I woke uneasy again. Felt nervous of Ingrid, and having her here. I was glad it was late. Glad there was less of the day to face. Glad that it was only a few hours until I’d see Beth because, in the backwards way I have of thinking, I thought she’d help me sort out something I’d never mention to her.

  I wanted to feign sleep, let Ingrid get up first and she did seem to be awake, though I didn’t exactly want to know for sure. I had my back to her because, the way we were arranged, her bruises gave her just one way to sleep, which was facing me.

  I could feel her body shifting, first in little ways and then she ran her fingers down my back, slipped her leg between mine. It seemed she’d woken to where we’d gone to sleep. I envied her this, wondered how she could manage it. But as I took her hand and pulled her arm around me and felt her mouth on my neck, I realized this was maybe only escape.

  Once I’d gotten to this, I couldn’t lie there any longer. If I did I’d see all of last night in this one way only and I needed it to mean more than that. At least for a while I needed it to because I was the one who’d begun from that place. Who’d needed to escape myself, the place Beth had taken me. That old place awash with sorrow.

  No matter how hard I wanted to, or pretended to, I couldn’t use Beth for escape. I’d never been able to. What she offered was its opposite. She plunged me into the very things I’d needed to get away from. Swamped me with them through the same means I’d always used to evade them.

  Sex with her wasn’t only sex. Not in the way I’d known it for so long. With her it became something else entirely. Something she knew so much better than I did. And her knowing more of this thing I thought I was expert at forced me to see I’d only known its most insignificant pieces. That for as long as I’d let myself remember, I’d kept it to these little bits.

  Thinking this way got me to the kitchen and smoking and making coffee, having my first cup there without Ingrid. I brought her hers trying not to think that this mimicked how we’d been at their house. I was tired of the way we couldn’t get beyond the things that had happened there, and that these things still happened to her.

  She let me alone. But when I got back into bed I felt her looking for a way in and it pressed down on me. It made me want out – out of the bed, out of the apartment. Made me know I had only the one place to go and not yet.

  The day kept awkward like this. The two of us not saying much, doing less. And me trying to keep from the one way we knew each other. She tried to get us back there a few more times, but I wouldn’t let her. I didn’t know until I was on my way to Beth’s that my reluctance was about her and not Ingrid. Or about both of them.

  In truth, Ingrid had never let me escape myself either. She’d begun this, started disabling my mechanisms. Not the way Beth had, but by being so like me I couldn’t not see myself. I’d seen myself in her. Seen all the holes in my system – in me – and how apparent they were to anyone who cared to notice. And Beth? She’d been the one who’d noticed, whether I’d been ready for her or not.

  I went into her office with this sti
ll in my mind. It kept me wary. Kept me from looking at her even longer than usual, and kept me on my feet even longer. She waited me out.

  When I finally sat down, I let myself look at her. And soon as I did something large and quiet took me over. The looseness of my body made me want to tell her all about Ingrid. But at the same time it made speaking feel too far away. And it seemed my hearing was off too because when she spoke to me, I barely noticed.

  “What?” I asked. And I wondered how long it had taken me.

  “Who was with you last night?”

  She said it without emotion. But the complete flatness of her voice made clear how hard she was working to keep it that way. At first I thought she somehow knew everything already. I nearly proceeded that way, but my general slowness let her be the one to say what came next.

  “I don’t think you should bring them home with you.”

  Now her voice wasn’t so steady and this and what she said gave me a direction to take.

  I said, “So you’re convinced those are the only people who’d come to my house?”

  My voice stayed even through this, but I wasn’t trying. It was this thing still inside me – this quiet that had hold of my limbs and seemed to be running the rest of me.

  “I’m saying it might be dangerous.”

  I had no clue how to play this. The urge was there, tell her about Ingrid, to use her as a weapon. Instead I said, “I’ve never done that.”

  “Then who was it?”

  “No one. All right? Who else is there?”

  We were still looking at each other. Her face had colored. She didn’t seem to know what to do with her hands. I surprised myself by getting up and walking toward her. I took one of her hands and, when she didn’t get up, looked too startled to, I crouched down. Was on my knees to her. And then, feeling out of my skull, I began kissing her hand. I did this until she let it open.

  I pressed her palm against my cheek. Held it there for a little while until I was kissing it again, sucking her fingers. She didn’t move for the longest time. Then her knees, which had begun firm together, loosened, let me closer. I put my other hand under her skirt. Ran it up her thigh to where her stockings ended. And just for a moment I found myself wondering if she’d always worn stockings or if this, too, had something to do with me.

  I couldn’t think this way for very long, so instead I listened for her breathing. I tucked my hand in back of her, pulled her close to me and lay my head in her lap. I had my other arm around her, too, but outside her clothes. She’d begun stroking my face and I closed my eyes and simply held on.

  We stayed this way for some time – not speaking, not moving too much. Finally she said, “Come on, let me take you home.”

  I knew what she meant and wished it was that easy. Wanted her in my bed more than I could ever remember wanting anything, except her, and just last night, just this way. To have to say no, to have to invent some way around it, felt like more than I could manage.

  What I said was, “All right.” And we got to our feet and got pulled together. We got ourselves outside and into her car. And I believed that between here and there, in those five minutes, I’d figure something out.

  I didn’t and, of course, she could feel me trying to. She kept asking me what was wrong. And then she pulled into the little lot by my place instead of up at the curb. From here, so clearly, you could see my lights on and I watched her noticing this. Ingrid might as well have been standing in the window.

  Beth faltered but, true to herself, she continued as if she’d seen nothing. She said, “Let me come in with you.” And when this must’ve seemed too plain, she quickly added, “I want to make sure you’re all right.”

  We’d gone again to that horrible place of pretending who we were to each other. Or she had. My head in her lap a few minutes ago and now it was simply about concern. It gave me the push I needed, though. I said, “I’m fine. You don’t need to worry about me.” And this came too quick and too sharp and she looked stung.

  “Look,” I said gentler, trying to patch things. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  She just sat there with her hands on the wheel and this strange look on her face. She still stared up at my window.

  I got out and walked around and into the building. Climbed the stairs two at a time. Ingrid met me at the door. She said, “You’ve been gone a long time.”

  This sounded odd to me, out of place. It made me wonder how much I could tell her when maybe it should’ve clued me somewhere else. Still, I liked her hands on me and her arms around me, and then I could play her game a little longer. Could see what she said as just nice. Simply about missing me and wanting me because after all she’d been cooped up here all day. I wondered how much longer she’d be able to stand it.

  She pulled me toward the bedroom but I broke away, said I’d be there in a minute. I went to the window, knowing I hadn’t heard Beth’s car pull away. Hoping I was wrong and knowing I wasn’t, I stood away from the window and pulled the shade. And then I went to bed with Ingrid, knowing I had to find some way to get her out of my place.

  Twenty-Five

  The next morning I decided it could be simpler than I was making it. That maybe Ingrid only needed to leave for an evening. I approached this while we were still in bed, having coffee.

  I said, “I need to entertain someone. Just for tonight.”

  She acted surprised and not surprised, all at once. She said, “If it’s money … You know I have money.”

  “It’s that, but not only. I quit my job. I can’t just keep on like this.”

  “Like what?” she said, and it sounded close to pouting.

  I didn’t say anything, and she caught herself. She said, “Well, I really should be getting back to my life.”

  I didn’t know if she meant this to hurt me the way it did. And then before I knew I had, I’d said, “I don’t want you going back to him.”

  “If I don’t, he’ll come looking. I’m surprised he hasn’t already. I suppose he knows where to find me.”

  I pulled the covers up because I felt cold as soon as she said this. And seeing me, she said, “He won’t come for you if I go home. I’ve taken too long already.”

  *

  We didn’t say any more about it and so later, when I left for Beth’s office, I didn’t know for sure what Ingrid would do. I puzzled this my whole way over there, still worried about it by the time I was sitting down and facing Beth again.

  She looked almost as if last night hadn’t happened. Almost. Something in her maybe couldn’t keep all the angles going either. But that didn’t change things much.

  She said, “I’m worried about you not working.”

  This was how she started. It annoyed me, her going back here. For this reason alone I said, “Oh, I’m working.”

  It was an ugly thing to say and I wished I hadn’t. I knew I was holding Beth accountable for Ingrid going home, for what she was going home to, even. And I knew what was really to blame were my feelings for her, for Beth. I blamed them for everything – their largeness, the way I could never put them away but always, always had to do something about them.

  Beth stared out the window. She wouldn’t look at me even when I began trying to mend things. I started lamely, saying, “I didn’t mean that. It’s not even true.”

  This last bit seemed futile. I knew she’d think I was lying. And then too, maybe what I’d been doing with Ingrid wasn’t really so different, was really just the same kind of work.

  “There’s just one, anyway,” I said, lumbering on. “Someone you don’t have to worry about.”

  She glared at me. “Do you think I’m stupid, or do you believe that yourself?”

  This was so unlike her, it stopped me. And maybe it was the truth in it. That somehow, once again, I’d forgotten to see how things were with Ingrid – the jeopardy involved, which was certainly more than with any commuter.

  “No,” I said, cowed now. “I suppose I don’t.”

  I would’ve s
aid whatever she wanted if only I could figure out what it was. I would’ve said it and even tried to mean it. “What do you really want from me?” This was what I finally asked and it wasn’t mean. I meant it as an actual question and this softened her.

  “I don’t know,” she said, and her eyes wavered, drifted to the window before they came back to me.

  We sat a long time this way, saying nothing until I felt the silence under my skin making me twitchy. And so finally, just to stop this feeling, I said, “Would you take me home now?”

  She didn’t say anything. She just got up, got her coat and we were out the door and into her car.

  She pulled into the lot again. Glanced up at my darkened window and then back at me. She wasn’t going to ask again, not tonight, I could tell. So I said, “Would you come in with me?”

  Again she said nothing. She just got out of the car. Did this before I had. We went around to the door and up the stairs, and this whole time I feared Ingrid might still be there, asleep maybe, or something.

  Beth stood behind me when I opened the door. And as soon as I saw the envelope – a fat one on the coffee table – I knew Ingrid was gone, maybe gone from me for good.

  I hesitated, or maybe I went backwards, or Beth kept going forward. Whichever way she was there, pressed up behind me, forcing me ahead.

  I went in, turned on a light. I tried to pretend the envelope wasn’t there. Beth stayed standing near the door. Her doing this reminded me she’d never been here before and that it wasn’t normal that she was now. It was too forthright and obvious, too planned. Somehow I felt like the lone instigator.

  I went to the coffee table because I couldn’t not anymore. I didn’t have the energy required for trying to hide things. I picked up the envelope. It wasn’t sealed, it was too bulky. There inside – one twenty after another, some fifties, even hundreds near the back. No note, which I realized was what I was looking for, what I needed more than the money, or at least in addition to it.