Notice

by Heather Lewis

  When I finally untangled myself, it wasn’t as bad as I’d thought. They’d taken a strip from the side, not the whole of it. Still, when I made it into the bathroom, into the bathtub, the water stung. The thing hadn’t stopped bleeding and so the water was at first reddish and then turning less so as it filled in around me, becoming a lighter and fainter pink.

  I stayed there until I felt scared again. Got out in a sudden rush that dumped water all over the floor. I found a towel laying in the sink. One they must’ve used because it had these swipes of brownish red. And when I saw this I dropped it, but then I picked it up again because I was shivering too much to move and find another.

  I went into the bedroom, but in there were just more reminders and I needed badly to forget this. I stumbled around, bumped into things until I found my robe, and then the phone – this on the coffee table, near an ashtray and two glasses, a bottle of vodka they’d been into.

  I got my own glass. Sat down on the couch and poured a drink. I stared at the phone. But I didn’t pick it up until I felt the robe – thin terry cloth sticking to me. And then I saw the blood matted to it, still spreading through the weave. Saw that I still hadn’t stopped bleeding.

  I called Beth. She answered, sounding as sleepy and groggy as me, and I felt lonelier than I maybe ever had, her being there making me feel it more instead of less. I said, “I need to see you. I’m in real trouble.”

  Her voice got suddenly clear and awake. “Are you home? I’ll come there.”

  And I looked around the room and through the bedroom door, and said, “No. I mean, I’m home but please don’t come here.”

  “Sweetheart, what is it? What’s happened?”

  “Can I meet you somewhere?”

  She took over then. She said, “Go to my office. I’m leaving right now.”

  But she held on the line until I hung up first.

  Now I felt better for having things to do, though I couldn’t do them well or fast. I tried putting on underwear but it hurt too much, catching that piece of me that wasn’t there. And the first few pairs of pants I tried felt the same way – hurtful, nicking me if I moved. I searched the floor and then my drawers for the loosest softest clothes I could find.

  I ended up with a baggy pair of army fatigues, worn thin and soft. Found a crumpled bit of foil in the pocket, which only served to remind me how long I’d lived this way. But it didn’t stop me from hunching over it – half-naked with a lighter – trying to smoke what might be left in it.

  I pulled an old shirt of my father’s from a bottom drawer, the fabric so old you could see through it. From habit, I tried tucking it in, but this hurt too, so I just let it hang, buttoned it the best I could and then began growing worried about all the time this was taking.

  I put shoes on, put Beth’s coat on, finally found my keys and started for her office.

  It was colder outside than I’d imagined and so I pulled the coat around me, feeling drafts everywhere through my loose clothes. I hadn’t managed socks, so my ankles felt it worst. The wind ate into the burns from the cord.

  I trudged along, watching headlights coming at me and wondering what I must look like. I’d stayed far away from mirrors, not wanting to know this.

  I arrived before Beth did, and so I sat on the little concrete step outside the door there. My hands were jammed into the coat’s pockets. I found a pack of cigarettes I’d left there and a lighter. I smoked one after another, my lips feeling too big, numb, leaving blood on each filter. I did this mechanically until her car turned in.

  She came toward me, quickly crossing the lot, and seeing her, I felt suddenly dead. I stood beside her as she fumbled with her keys and the door. Caught a glimpse of her in the light there. Saw her seeing me and I didn’t like how she looked.

  Once she got us inside I shucked her coat on my way to the couch. Already I knew she couldn’t give the fixing I needed.

  I curled up on the couch with my back to her. Wanted her with me, and not. The sight of her had started these sobs in my chest, and then in my throat. Hurting me because of the rawness, how torn I was there. But I still couldn’t stop. Couldn’t stop from sobbing, though it seemed so important to, more this time than ever.

  I felt her hand on me, on my shoulder, uncertain but still soft and so making my crying that much harder to control until I left off trying. And then she’d curled behind me and was holding on, and for a time this was helping.

  We wound up turned around. She was propped against the couch’s arm with me leaning back in her arms. Her hands were stroking me. It felt sweet, having her hands on me, until one of them went into my shirt, which I hadn’t buttoned well, and this wildness started from her fondling me, my breasts.

  This simple thing crippled me, made me unable to move and so I didn’t, but went tight in her arms and this started her talking. Saying those things she always said, and her hands moving along my stomach and me feeling the little cuts there, but her seeming not to. All this continued until she got into my pants and I jerked away when she found the gash there.

  The feel of it must’ve startled her too, because she yanked away the same moment I did. Then her arms were around me again, and there was blood on her fingers, and she kept saying, “What’s happened to you?” and “Who did this?”

  I lay there mute, letting her keep on this way until it’d run its course and then she was quiet, except for saying, “Oh, sweetheart,” again and again. And her mouth was close to my ear and her kissing me near there, now and then.

  I felt my body letting go, leaning heavy into her, deadly. Her arms felt heavy too. A solid weight, lulling me. I think maybe I even drifted off, or half did. I remember feeling so tired again. I didn’t want ever to have to get up from this.

  But then she was getting us up. Held me tight around the waist and walked me to her car. Came around my side and opened the door for me, helped me in. I didn’t know where we were going. Panicked a minute she might turn toward the hospital or the police station. But she turned the other direction, which meant either my place, or hers.

  I knew she’d take me home. Much as I didn’t want to go back there, I couldn’t tell her. I hadn’t spoken at all this whole time we’d been together. I knew no matter how hard I wished it, we wouldn’t be going to her place. That I wouldn’t find myself in her bed, which seemed the only place I wanted to be, the only safety I could think of.

  I knew my place was safe, too. In the real sense of it. I knew they were done with me, that Ingrid’s husband was. That I’d never see any of them on purpose ever again. But going back there still felt very bad. And the closer we came, the further away went all that soothing and lulling until in its place were these bands wrapping my chest tighter and tighter. Wide but thin – sheet metal full of a strange current, filling me with a jagged, ragged energy that left me useless and disabled.

  When we got there, Beth nearly had to pull me from the car. So much so, I heard her ask, “Is someone still there?” Heard her ask this in an unnerved way, like this had only just now occurred to her and she was frightened by it.

  I shook my head in a disjointed motion that hurt my neck and I felt my hand go to my throat, felt the burns again, and it hurt inside too, it wouldn’t stop hurting there.

  She put her arms under mine and then around me when she’d got me to my feet. And then she walked me like you would an invalid. She walked me to the door and then through it and up the stairs. All the way, she was saying little things like, “It’s not so very much further.”

  When we got to the door she had to fish my pockets for the keys – that’s how worthless I was. And her going into my pants stirred that sore and so I cried more, yelped even a little. And she said, “We’re almost there, sweetheart. Almost there.”

  She put me on the couch and looked around the place. I took my glass, or someone’s, from the table and sucked at the vodka while she tried to make some kind of order of things.

  I felt embarrassed. Ashamed of how it looked, at how much yo
u could tell by looking. She brought me a blanket and wrapped it around me. She let me keep my drink.

  Through the door, I watched her changing the sheets. Felt more shamed by this than anything so far, and more cared for. These two things made me slump back, loosening those bands wrapping my chest until I found myself crying again – quietly at first and then heaving from it, afraid this time I’d never stop.

  Then she’d come over to me. She put the bullet on the coffee table without a word about it. That stopped me crying. She led me toward the bedroom and I found myself that same way as in her car. Fighting her every step, and her being that same way too, saying, “It’s all right now. No one’s going to hurt you.” But I no way believed her.

  She got me in there and undressed me. There were pillows behind me and the sheets felt good, soft and clean, and this calmed me some until I remembered the last one to change them was Ingrid. This sent me taut again, and Beth had gone away, had gone into the bathroom. I found myself afraid they’d stolen the money, Ingrid’s money. But Beth was back before I had time to check the drawer and know for sure.

  She had a bowl of soapy water and some washcloths, a bottle of alcohol, all these things in her hands. She put them on the bedside table, started dabbing at me with one of the cloths, cleaning my face. I felt childlike. It stung when she got at my face with the alcohol, when she bathed my neck with it. And so I behaved like a child, quivering when she put her fingers to my lips, mewling when they came back bloody.

  I didn’t want her to see the rest of me. I’d pulled the covers up and wouldn’t let them go. She pried at my fingers. Told me, “Just lay down, now. Sweetheart, let me do this.”

  I gave way to her. She seemed so much stronger than me, and this made me see I’d always thought I was the strong one of the two of us. I started to wonder if maybe this notion was as wrongheaded as the rest of my thinking.

  The cloth on my wrists made them feel better, but when she got to my stomach it hurt again. Stung from the touch of it, and then more when she used the alcohol.

  I didn’t want her to tackle that real cut. I wanted her to leave it alone, but I knew she wouldn’t. Getting to it stopped her, though. Caught her up, it seemed, because she started for it and then moved past to my ankles. And after she’d finished them, she went back to the bathroom.

  When she came in again she brought clean water and another cloth.

  I felt her hands on my thighs, her trying to nudge them apart – that’s how I realized I was holding them tight together and couldn’t seem not to. “Come on, baby,” she was saying. “I need you to let me.” And when this was too obtuse for me to follow, she said, “Come on, sweetheart. Just let me open your legs a little.”

  I felt them coming apart – from the force of her hands or my own inclination, I couldn’t tell. Her hands did feel solid. Solid and sure and making me believe her, though maybe not wholly because I was trying to sit up and watch what she was doing.

  Her face made me lie back again. She looked as pained as I felt. I fell back and tried not to cower, but this wasn’t possible, it hurt too much. Seemed to hurt more than them having done it. And I was crying and struggling that same way – inside myself, but showing no outward sign of it.

  And when I came up from this, came up for air, I moved in a jerky, jarred way that made her grab hold of my wrist. I drew back from the sting of her hand. She realized she’d hurt me because she let me loose right away and I pulled the rest of me back from her. I curled up afraid. Wanted the covers over me, but it would mean letting go of my knees. I’d hugged them tight to my chest and wouldn’t let go.

  She was trying to get me loose from myself. Did this first with words I could only hear bits of. I could only hear her saying, “sweetheart,” again and again until I couldn’t even hear that.

  I felt her though. I felt her hand stroking mine, stroking the back of it, the length of my fingers. And bit by bit I let her take it in hers. And once I’d let her do that, I let go of the rest of me.

  She kissed my palm and then my wrist, stayed doing this before she moved to my stomach and then my thighs, and then between them. My body wanted her, while the rest of me didn’t. My body maybe even needed her, needed what she was doing. And so this was another time it let me down.

  I hadn’t come off in that whole time with Burt and the others and so I told myself I had to have what she was giving me. Tried to tell myself the whole of me had to have it.

  But I couldn’t accomplish this. Even I couldn’t make this all right, make her doing this right, her doing it now. And I couldn’t stay away from what she might want or need. From what she might always have wanted and needed from me, when faced with me, with my need. From thinking that maybe this was the only way she’d known, ever, to help me.

  She had to work at it but she did finally bring me off, though it happened in a dead, overdue way, not satisfying either of us. Afterwards, she seemed not to know what to do with herself, not right away, and this made me turn from her. I pulled the covers around me and drew into myself again.

  I could hear her putting things away. Maybe I wanted for her to go away, but I couldn’t be sure of this, and I sure couldn’t have asked her to.

  I do know that when she’d taken off her clothes and curled up behind me, I didn’t want her anywhere near me. I pulled further inside myself. Tried to get far enough in there that I couldn’t feel her arms and legs wrapped around me.

  I couldn’t do this or she wouldn’t let me. And sleep wouldn’t come either. I stayed rigid in her arms with her still trying to smooth me out. And I felt wrong about this, like I was betraying her. And while I knew I had this backwards, it still didn’t feel backwards – even the thought of this, clear just a moment ago, turned unformed and gauzy, went slipping away.

  I never did drift off. I didn’t even pretend it very well. And I felt her struggling, too. Unable to settle herself or her body until finally she got up and I heard her dressing. And even though it was clear she knew I was awake, she said nothing to me before she left.

  Now, with her gone, all my tautness turned to heaviness. And with sleep dragging me this hard I felt afraid, not simply unwilling. I felt a tiredness so big, I feared I’d never wake up from it. I couldn’t fend it off, though. And when I went to it this time, I understood my fear. This time that black sleep was so endlessly empty it’d become the only place for me. The only place a person like me might want to stay.

  Thirty

  I did wake up. Woke up sore and feeling drugged and wishing I really was, but having no inclination to even find my liquor. I wanted to go back to that blackness where nothing ever happened or ever had. Wanted this the way a child wants death, or the way I had as a child. A want simply to stop it.

  All this swimmed in my head and sent me swimming. Maybe that was the real trouble about what had happened last night. Maybe it’d brought me too close to something I’d always longed for. Opened me again to the idea of stopping it all instead of trying to outrun it. Or run around it. And always instead running into it again, running smack hard up against it. And each time, it hurting differently and more, leaving me running out of ways and things to deaden it, dull the blow.

  Beth didn’t call, not that day and not the next and not the whole week. And so I went into the next one wondering if she walked around in the same blurred dream as me, though really I wasn’t doing much walking at all.

  I wondered if she was. Then decided she was going through the motions of her life in a stunned sleep. I used this as a way to explain her not calling. Tried even to use this to keep her close to me, keep us someway together.

  It didn’t work very well, or very long. Really, it didn’t work much at all. I kept at it, though. Kept it up another day or so even once I knew all the gaps and holes by heart.

  What I did the day after that, in the early evening, was go to her. I couldn’t not and couldn’t think much about why, about what I intended. Not even once I got there.

  I found her waiting on me a
s if the days, weeks really, hadn’t occurred. And it was curious to me, the idea of her waiting this way every evening. It put me off balance, but when I regained my footing I found myself angry, and then knew I had been all along.

  She met me at the door to her office, not the outside one. And right away I went at her. Physically, until we were clear across the room and I had her against the wall – crunched there between the wall and her desk.

  I pulled and pushed at her. Got her half sitting on the desk, and then got my hand into her. I fucked her and fucked with her. I kept this up a long time. All of me pressed against her and into her, my mouth so near hers, but not kissing her.

  I could hear her cries, which weren’t the kind from pain. Her taking pleasure in this felt like failure and so I had to see I’d come here to hurt her in the way I’d always known hurt.

  I finished her and then she slid down the wall, wound up slumped against it. I left her this way. Stumbled out her doors, craving that blackness, craving it physically.

  A tingling tiredness pulled me forward, little clusters of needles in my thighs, behind my knees, pricking the soles of my feet. And there was this other tingling taking over my chest and growing beyond it. Hatred for loving her and for letting her love me. It pounded there, mingling with the want for blackness until I had to see these two things together – as part of each other.

  With each step these blurred more, and when I got myself home and into my bed I couldn’t sleep right away for knowing the relation. For seeing that I’d needed her help in the most conventional of ways. That all the rest had been about covering this. A way to try to put her where I put everyone else.

  If I’d been able to do this, I wouldn’t have had to see the very thing I wanted someone to take away. This specific hunger for nothingness. And when she’d shown me it instead? I’d wanted her to take it away, or replace it. Wanted her to be what made it all stop, but in a different way – one that’d let me be still, and still stay here.