I felt something go wrong inside me, so wrong it was physical. A nausea of sadness, making me need to get rid of the envelope because it seemed to have caused this. I went into the bedroom as if Beth weren’t there. I didn’t know right away if she’d followed or not, then knew she had.
I opened a drawer in a bedside table, tossed the envelope inside and slammed it. The noise of this echoed as I fell back on the bed. I leaned against the wall, pulled a pillow to my chest and held on. Beth stood in the doorway. She looked odd – framed there with the light from the other room creeping in, and this room so dark, always so dark.
“That’s a lot of money,” she said, very matter of fact, like she wasn’t thinking what did you do for all that. Except I knew it was what she was thinking. And more than that, who did you do it for? This brought some new kind of fullness into my chest until I couldn’t breathe with all the anger there. And somewhere underneath this anger was fear. The fear that Beth knew exactly who’d been in my bed.
What happened then rearranged things. She came into the room and sat beside me. I didn’t know what I wanted from her anymore, or why she was here. I didn’t know why wanting her had made me send Ingrid away. Especially I didn’t know because in some big unformed way Ingrid was who I longed for right now. Though whether this came from guilt or desire I couldn’t be sure.
Or maybe I did want Beth if only she’d behave the way Ingrid did. If only she’d just once make things clear and keep them that way. Not pretend they weren’t happening. Not carve us up one day to the next. Not fuck my body one night and the next day make believe she only picked at my brain.
Beth took my hand, uncurled it from the pillow and held it in hers. She did nothing else for a long time. We just sat there with all these unspoken things pushing us first one way, then the other. Always winding up pushing us closer, except I didn’t want to be there. I wouldn’t go there this time. Not with this stuff simmering in my chest and then roiling.
I would’ve gotten up if I could’ve, but to do what? Calling Ingrid was on my mind, but there were so many things in the way of this. So many ways I could never do this, and these things making me want to. Letting me know I would. That it was only a matter of time.
Beth stayed very still. She still had her coat on and I realized I was still wearing mine. Realized how hot all this had made me – her coat on my body and my fury inside.
I pulled my hand from hers and took off the coat. Began unbuttoning my shirt only because I felt so heated, so closed in. I didn’t see what this would say to her.
She saw. She put her hand on my chest, went to start that stroking game again. But her hand there only made me feel the thing underneath it more fully. The smoldering, festering thing in my chest, burning hotter and sore, blistering. And her fingers trying to cool it. Trying to draw me into that marshland of hers. That place that pretended to be an ocean or pool but was really a swamp. Thick and slippery with quick-mud.
I wouldn’t let her. This time I would have none of it. Not her way. I grabbed her wrist and twisted until she cried out. I gave way a little and she regained herself.
She said, “Sweetheart, you’re hurting me.” Said this as if I’d made a mistake, as if I didn’t know what I was doing.
I twisted harder again. I wanted her to know precisely what I was doing and why. I wanted her to see exactly what she was doing. I said, “Ask your fucking questions. Ask the thing you need to know.”
I saw her face harden and sharpen. Watched her working a way out, an evasion. And I saw pain there. I twisted harder. I wanted to hear her cry out again, needed to, because it was the only place in her I’d believe.
I was yelling now, yelling, “Go on. Ask it. Or say it. I don’t care which.”
And when she did, it was both at once. And she was yelling when she said, “She was here. Wasn’t she? It’s been her the whole time. This whole time it’s been Ingrid. So who’ve I been? Tell me that. Just another trick?”
“You’re the one can’t decide. The one playing tricks all the time.”
“Goddamn you,” she said, and she pummeled my chest now. Loosening things there, breaking them up and apart. “You’re the whore,” she said, “not me.”
And then she really went at me. Went after me with her fists. And her words still spilling everywhere. “You fucking little whore,” she said half crying, half yelling. And so finally I was getting what I thought I wanted. I was getting the truth out of her. The truth I’d believed all along.
She was on top of me now, still in her coat. I scrambled to get some command, but she was too far ahead of me. Already she kissed me hard, in a bruising way that tore at my lips and my mouth. I wanted to hit her. I tried to hit her back, but she was too much in charge. And before long this felt good. It felt close to relief because right now I wanted someone beating me, and this seemed right – her being the one.
She got her hand into my jeans and then into me. She still yelled things. Was yelling, “Is this all you want? All you think I want?”
And she fucked hard and I gave way because the answer was yes. If I could’ve spoken, it would’ve been, and then I did. I said, “Yes,” but I said it in that other way that means fuck me, keep fucking me.
She did. She kept on and kept on. And she kept saying things, angry things I had no trouble hearing. She said, “I’ll fuck you senseless, you … Goddamn you.”
She’d gotten me out of my clothes, and she’d taken off some of hers. And she’d gone out of her head, but I was still in mine and registering everything going on – in my head and my body and the place in between them. That place being nearest my chest, where I wanted to feel deadness or at least hatred but instead could only feel loved.
I felt this the way I knew it. It wasn’t that place she’d brought me before – the one I needed so badly, and then right away needed out of. It wasn’t that tangled up thing, so gentle and soft and unbearable. The one I’d tried to turn into this so many times, every time.
And her words weren’t those ones, the ones she’d used all along. She wasn’t saying, “You don’t know how I love you. How I want you. How long I’ve wanted you. You don’t know what you mean.” But I kept hearing this anyway, echoing back at me. I could hear this so clearly, so much clearer than all the times she’d actually said it.
And she’d been right to tell me I didn’t know these things, couldn’t possibly know. I knew the things she said this time. She was the one who didn’t know what she was saying, or what she was doing. Her words had garbled with the strength of her hand. I couldn’t tell them apart, she’d so thoroughly glommed me.
My eyes closed and her hand hit me deeper and harder. And the words hit this way too, each time getting further inside me. Now just three or four, over and over. Now just “Goddamn you,” and “You fucking whore.” Again and again.
I let her do what she needed. I let her wear herself out on me, and wear me out. Liking too much how it felt, how it hurt me. How it made it all clear. That, always, this had been where we were headed. Where I’d push us. The place I was supposed to take her. The way I was supposed to make her take me.
But underneath, there was an uneasiness. That this wasn’t her after all, but who I needed her to be. Who I’d made her. I thought it was my job to show her herself.
I thought this was always my job – to make people see something ugly inside. Take them to a place in themselves they didn’t want to go, but had to. Let them do this through me and then let them discard me, discount me. Later on, making them pay me, never seeing how I paid for this too.
So I’d applied this to Beth. Made believe I’d show her something in herself she didn’t want to exist. Now this all seemed wrongheaded, about me so much more than her. Who I needed to see and not who she was, not entirely, not the whole of her. Not even most of her. And what if this was true of others?
The mistake I’d made, the mistake I was, only grew larger as I recovered my senses. She’d done just what she’d said she would do. She’d fucked
me so far into senseless I didn’t recognize myself coming back.
And I didn’t recognize myself coming, only knew she’d finished me. Was maybe finished with me, and if that were true then I had nothing left.
I lay there spent, or expended. I went to a place of not knowing anything anymore, especially who I was, or always had been. So maybe I had got this all wrong, even backwards. That Beth was the one making me see things inside, go places I didn’t want to go, but had to. And what I found there wasn’t ugly, not exactly. Messy and massive, monstrous even, but not evil, more a behemoth than a demon.
I stayed in a half-sleep for what must’ve been hours. Stayed suspended somewhere. And I suppose she slept too, sort of, because then it was light out and she got up from the bed cursing herself, but no longer cursing me. Maybe she simply realized there was someplace else she needed to be, and hours ago.
She left hurriedly. I didn’t know what I felt or how I felt but most of all I had this sense that whatever was inside me no longer mattered. That I’d forfeited all of that, forfeited mattering to her. I believed there’d be no point in ever going near her again.
And then I was sleeping some more. And the place I slept was endlessly black. Blank and empty before it gained substance. Before it consoled me in a way I remembered from somewhere as old as the place I’d gone in those times she’d loved me.
Then I was waking up again. And not wanting this, wanting so much to stay encompassed in darkness, this darkness, belonging only to me. But right away thinking at least I had that money. That it would buy me the time to work these things out – work out who I was now, or who I’d been all along.
I nearly expected Beth to have left money, feared maybe she had. That I’d find bills crumpled somewhere near me. But she hadn’t done this so I could slip back to that darkness. And it pulled me back, encircled and held on. And I was clinging to it, not wanting ever to leave it because it felt so much like I’d finally come home.
Twenty-Six
When I woke again it was late the next day. I got myself into the bathtub, turned on the water and let it fill in around me. I stayed there a long time, because it felt safe. Finally the phone ringing got me up and out because it kept ringing. It wouldn’t stop.
It was Beth. Her voice sounded tired and shaky, and she asked, “Where are you?” She said this like the pleading child I thought I’d become.
“What?” I asked, still confused it was her.
“Why aren’t you here?”
The question seemed foolish, too foolish to answer but hanging up would only start the ringing again and that would hurt my head. It seemed best to try and wade through this now, so I said, “I didn’t think you’d want to see me anymore.”
She didn’t say anything to this, not right off. When she did, she said, “Look, I’m coming over.” And then she hung up.
I was sitting on the bed now still dripping wet. I curled up under the covers and stayed there damp and shivery.
In not so much longer I heard her knocking, a tentative sound I could almost ignore. But then it got like the ringing had, louder and more insistent until I could no longer pretend it away.
I got up and found a towel, pulled it around my waist, and opened the door.
She stood there fully dressed. She looked put together, and I wondered at my thinking she’d look like me – wet and disheveled and terribly in need. She came inside quickly, put her arms around me, and I heard her murmuring in my ear, over and over, “I’m sorry. Sweetheart, I’m so sorry.”
I didn’t know what I felt from this. I thought I should be the one apologizing. My body began to feel weak, even weaker, my knees giving in, my arms heavy around her. We went into the bedroom, or she took me there is really what happened. It started out like the night before – with me in the bed and her sitting beside me – except the feelings were all so completely reordered.
I felt nothing like anger, nothing close to it. In its place was a kind of fear and a stronger desire but not for where I knew we’d wind up. Still, that felt like the one way I could get close to what I needed – fucking her did. Or having her fuck me, but not like last night. Letting her have me her way.
She seemed in no hurry to get us there. She sat with me, calmly. Again just holding my hand. The bed began feeling soft and warm and maybe she felt warm, too, because she took off her coat first and then her shoes.
She curled up next to me. She still had her clothes on, and this left me feeling smaller somehow. To be the one already undressed, but then I found I liked feeling this way in relation to her. I felt something like trust.
She’d stopped saying she was sorry and I was glad for it because, more than anything else, that had confused me. That she believed she’d wronged me, didn’t see it the other way around. I felt unsettled in a way I still couldn’t shake.
Little bits of it lingered, making me flinch when she touched me. Making me want to get up and get a drink or a cigarette. Making me want to do these things except for being the naked one, and this still feeling good but also leaving me someway trapped. And her having so much control again? It worried me. I couldn’t stop it from worrying me.
But then she stopped it. Her hands on me did. Soothing and steady, they were smoothing me out. Pulling me under something as dark as an ocean. Something resembling that black sleep I’d just found, and so I went to it ardently. Went to her. Let her take me under.
She’d put her hands on my shoulders. She was pushing me back, and in this way I realized I’d stayed taut. Parts of my body had, bearing no resemblance to all the swimming softness inside me. She got under the covers with me, still in her clothes. I nestled against her. I wanted to undress her but this seemed beyond me, her clothes too intricate. I guess what I wanted was her undressed.
She just kept holding on to me, stroking me. I did finally manage to unbutton her blouse because her staying this way, her doing what I somewhere most wanted, I still couldn’t allow it. It still made me need to do something else. I unfastened her bra, but once I had, I didn’t go any further and so finally she was the one who took off her clothes.
Once she’d done this and we were still simply lying there, in the same way with no direction, she began saying things. The things I’d heard in my head the night before. I’d heard them so clearly then. But despite my wanting to, I could only half-hear them now. Bits and pieces, reaching into me before fading. Then coming at me again.
This happening over and over, until I found them, somewhere, taking hold. And, for the first time, I saw all the questions inside these words. Could see how badly they needed answers. How badly she did. How much she needed me to answer the things she said with things of my own.
I didn’t know how to do this without going back to last night. I knew she didn’t want to and I didn’t either, but I couldn’t see another way. I said, “Ingrid’s not who you think she is.”
And I felt Beth immediately pull back from my having uttered this name, so I pressed on quickly. “To me, I mean. She’s not who you’ve made her out to be. Can’t you see this? And you’re not who I thought you were either.”
And I’d said this badly, too. Struggling on, I said, “That wasn’t you last night, that was me. That’s who I’ve always been. Can you understand I know this now? Can you understand I don’t know who I am when I’m with you? When we’re together? That you’re no one I’ve known? Do you know what this means? What this means you mean?”
I’d become bogged down in my own swampy earth. Unable to explain something I’d only just happened on to. Unable to understand it myself, and now asking her to.
But, however ineptly, I must’ve given her some piece she needed. She came back to me in her comforting way. Hushing me. Saying, “Shush, shush now, sweetheart. I do know. I’ve always known. It’s all right, now. Just be still.”
She began to kiss me instead of just holding me and I kissed her back. And things began to dissolve then – my thoughts did, the stiffness left in my body. And with everything abo
ut me more fluid it was so much easier to become absorbed in her – my body going first and then taking my mind there. My feelings seemed to have been there all along.
She was partway on top of me, but I couldn’t feel her weight. I had to shift in order to, and by doing this I realized she’d been holding off me. In this physical way, she protected me. Everything about her tonight seemed to treat me as fragile. And my typical aversion to this gave way to its sweetness, to a larger thing of being cared for. Of letting her care for me. Believing she cared for me.
I didn’t want to think anymore about the why of this. I didn’t want to be brought back again to the night before, or to anything before. I wanted us to start over. To begin here and for it to change us, to change me.
I still believed the way to this was through my body and hers. I shifted again. Slid fully underneath her and then I could feel her weight. The whole of her giving in and pressing me down. And her lips pressing me too, first at my neck and my cheek – this way until I turned my head a little and opened my mouth. And when she put her tongue inside, I opened more.
The way she kissed me put me somewhere I couldn’t recognize. It was too familiar. Familiar as something I’d wanted for ever but never quite had. My arms were holding on to her. First around her back, but then I moved a hand to her neck, and then my other hand. I held her so gently.
She held fast to me, turning so I was beside her and then I’d wrapped around her. My legs first, then my arms. And she was wrapped around me, and this felt all at once rare and too close. I pulled away enough to kiss her neck and then her shoulders, and now she loosened and fell back. Lay before me in such a way it made me unable to move.
I don’t know what I must’ve looked like, but what she saw made her move toward me in this hurried, comforting way. She began murmuring and it quieted me. Murmured more in sounds than words, and her hand went inside me with the same lilt as her voice. She seemed to know this always would soothe me.
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