Coming Back to Me

by Caroline Leavitt

  It was the weekend, he didn’t have to work, and that night, he sat up poring through the books, underlining passages. Suzanne came back from the hospital and, passing by him, stared at the titles. “Look—” he started to say, but Suzanne suddenly sat down and picked up the other book, leafing through it. “There’s something on this page about charging the atmosphere with energy,” she said quietly.

  He looked up at her to see if she was laughing at him. She still had her coat on. Her face was grave. Her eyes were red, as if she had been crying, her body posture was as exhausted as his own, and he felt suddenly moved. “You think this is stupid?” he asked finally.

  Her eyes met his. “I’d like to look at that book when you’re done.”

  He was desperate. He could believe in anything. That fairies lived in the woods. That ghosts haunted houses. That people could travel in time. There were lots of things that people had thought were insane at one time that had turned out to be true. At one time no one had believed in germs. No one had believed in other planets. Who knew what was possible? Who knew what could and couldn’t be done? The thing was, you had to risk everything, you had to try.

  He and Suzanne studied the books. They memorized the testimonials, which were his favorite part. A woman with inoperable cancer had been healed by the faith of her friends. A man with a rare and disfiguring skin disease had healed himself overnight by imagining his own private healer, which in his case, turned out to be a great white rabbit singing Jefferson Airplane songs. Gary and Suzanne learned a few healing exercises, how you could rub your hands together and charge them with energy and lay them over a person and cure them. How you could think of a silver cord connecting you to the earth, a power line you could tap into to boost your healing capacities. At night, he bolted awake. He calmed himself by practicing, by telling himself that, yes, he did feel his hands heating with healing energy, that, yes, he did think he might have seen a wisp of energy right there in the air. Yes, he could do this. Yes.

  The next day, he walked into Molly’s room just as the doctors were leaving. Good, he thought, good. You had to be grounded, the books had said. You had to feel strong. He sat by Molly’s bed. He tried to imagine, to see and feel and hear the silver cord, vibrating and sparkling, and instead, he felt himself tense because all he could concentrate on was the noise of Molly’s machine. He rubbed his hands together, trying to imagine sparks of energy the way the books had said. And then he held his hands up over Molly as if he were doing a massage. He moved them in slow circles, in swoops and dips. The movements were almost hypnotic. He felt himself relaxing. Put your belief in your hands, the books said. Make them heat like an oven. I believe, he thought. I believe, I believe. He felt something shifting inside of him, giving way. His hands, he told himself, were getting hot. His energy was setting off sparks. “You’re getting well,” he told Molly.

  The door swung open. A nurse came in, and Gary turned to her, trying to act ordinary. His hands hung in the air. He didn’t want anyone telling him not to do this. He put his hands by his sides.

  The nurse bent and touched Molly and whipped back up. “Oh, my God.”

  “What’s happened?” Gary felt a flash of hope. He could tell the nurse what he was doing. He could come in and do this twice a day, three times. Suzanne could do it, too. “She’s better, isn’t she?”

  “She’s burning up, spiking another fever,” she said. “We’ll have to pack her in ice.”

  Molly shivered uncontrollably. Her mouth flew open. The ice melted against the sheets and then her fever broke and two other nurses came in and changed the bed, rolling her carefully from one side to another, tucking her back in, and all the while Gary leaned against the wall watching in terror. “She’s fine now,” the nurse said, giving the sheet an extra pat.

  After the nurses left, he sat by her bed. He took her hand, which was cool and dry. He told himself one mistake didn’t mean anything, that he’d try again. He didn’t care how crazy anything was, he’d find the thing to make her well, to protect her.

  At work sometimes, he began to help Marty with the cleaning. “It passes the time.” Marty shrugged and leaned along the wall, smoking a joint, a goofy grin spreading across his face. “Jesus. Be my guest. Whatever floats your boat.”

  Gary found he liked mopping the floors, liked seeing the water sliding across the dark linoleum. He liked the sound of the vacuum, the backdrop of Marty’s voice rambling on about plot points in his horror movie, about actors he hoped to get. “Jack Nicholson,” Marty insisted. “If I can just get to him, I know he’d want to do it. It’s his kind of showcase role.” Marty was so lost in his reverie, Gary never even had to respond. Gary liked, too, seeing the building shining and clean and perfect. He stepped back sometimes, sweating, his muscles stretched. He felt himself and the building almost purified.

  To Gary’s astonishment, Suzanne began to get more clients. The phone would ring and he would brace himself, expecting the clipped tone of a doctor, the worried voice of Karen, and instead there would be a female voice, wanting Suzanne, asking for an appointment. He’d come into the house and a strange woman would be sitting in his kitchen, a blonde or a redhead or a brunette, there would be hair dusted along the floor, and Otis, sunny and happy in his seat.

  Suzanne got a bankbook and a checkbook. Having a bit more money made things easier, and it did something to Suzanne. He watched her cutting a woman’s hair. She had told him customers didn’t like to be watched, that hair was a private thing, so he leaned along the hall. She changed while she worked. He almost didn’t know her. The skittishness went out of her, she became calm and sure, as if light were glinting off her.

  One day, he heard a woman weeping. He quietly walked by the kitchen. Suzanne had her arms about a woman’s shoulder, she was speaking in a low voice. “Forget him,” Suzanne said. “You’re too good for that. You don’t need him.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “No, trust me. What you need are highlights.”

  The woman came out with reddish glints. She stopped short when she saw Gary. She gave him a doubtful look. “You look beautiful,” he said, and the woman suddenly relaxed. Her whole body seemed to beam. Suzanne, behind the woman, grinned triumphantly and gave Gary the thumbs-up. “Now, just because a guy likes it, doesn’t mean that’s everything,” Suzanne said. “Remember, I told you it was gorgeous, too.”

  The woman straightened. “That’s right,” she said. “Damn right. And you know what else, I like it now, too.”

  “That’s the spirit,” Suzanne said. “Come on. I’ll show you out.”

  When she came back into the room, she sat opposite him. She didn’t ask him anymore how his day at the hospital was, but he knew that she didn’t have to. He felt her studying him, gauging his mood. She was as silent as he was, and for the first time, he realized he didn’t feel like he had to fill in the silences with her, that he had to say anything. They were in the same place.

  “Now you,” Suzanne said.

  “Oh, no—”

  “Yes. Come on. You’re a bad advertisement for my work. Clients take one look at you and they get nervous.” She laughed. Her smile was friendly.

  He ran his fingers self-consciously through his hair. Then he laughed and sat in the chair. “Lean back,” Suzanne said. His neck arched and then he felt warm soapy water over his head, around his neck. He felt her fingers massaging his scalp, a shock of feeling. The shampoo was lemon and pine. “What is that?”

  “I make it myself. Commercial brands are too harsh.” She bent over him, her hair a satiny brush against his arms. “People don’t give beauticians the credit they deserve. There’s a whole science to it. I can look at hair and tell things.”

  “What things?”

  “I can tell if a person’s sad or in love just by the shape of their hair. If it’s dry on the ends or at the top. If it feels rough. I can tell if they’re drinking enough water, eating enough protein.”

  “What can you tell about me?” he said.
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  She was quiet for a moment. Her fingers stilled against his scalp. “I can tell that you’re exhausted. That you aren’t eating right. That—”

  “That what?”

  Her fingers began moving again. And then he felt a sudden pour of cool water. He smelled wintergreen. “That you need a rinse,” she said.

  She bundled him in a towel; she faced him toward the mirror she had hung up. She stared at his face in the mirror, frowning, and then she picked up the scissors.

  “Oh, no you don’t—”

  “Oh, yes I do. You have great long hair, but it has no personality to it. Just a trim. Trust me.”

  She worked around him, bending, her long hair brushing against him. She smelled of cinnamon, and every time she leaned closer, the scent grew stronger. “Done.” She put both hands on his shoulders and lifted them off, light as paper wings, and he looked over at her, meeting her eyes.

  Gary began to find that Suzanne now made it easier for him. He came home and found her singing to Otis the way he did. He found her dancing with his son, her face a map of delight. She worried about Otis the way he did. She bolted up when the baby so much as sighed. She stood over his crib watching him. It was Suzanne who came home with the side sleeper. “It prevents SIDS,” she told him.

  The house smelled different with her in it. Like cinnamon. Like lemon soap. It used to bother him before, finding bits of her all over the house, but now he somehow liked it.

  One day, after Gary had gotten paid, he decided to thank Suzanne by taking her out to dinner someplace fancy.

  “You don’t have to do that—” Suzanne started to say, but Gary held up his hand.

  “I want to.”

  He waited for her to change, busying himself with Otis. He was tickling Otis’s belly when Suzanne came into the room. She was in a soft, pale blue dress, barely grazing her body. Her hair gleamed around her. Something moved deep inside of him, startling him. He felt as if he were waking from a dream. “You’re staring.” She looked pleased and shy.

  He lifted Otis up. He turned from her. “Let’s get going.”

  They went to Patsy’s, a new place fifteen minutes away. It was a small, bright place, with yellow chintz curtains and tablecloths and a menu scrawled on a big blue blackboard. “They’re supposed to have the best desserts in town,” Gary said.

  He set Otis in his carrier down on the floor beside him and plucked up a menu. Suzanne took off her coat.

  “You look nice,” Gary said.

  Otis slept in the carrier beside them while they ate pasta and chocolate pie and cheesecake, and halfway through the dessert, Suzanne turned to him and speared a strawberry from his plate. “I couldn’t resist,” she said.

  Gary felt a sudden restless knocking in his head. He glanced around the restaurant, at the other customers noisily talking, gesturing, shaping the air with sound. There was a pale, balding man sitting by himself in a corner, staring at Suzanne. There was a buzzing in Gary’s ear. Gary looked from the brown-haired man to Suzanne, who was busy taking another strawberry from Gary’s plate. Her hand brushed his. She looked up at him. Her eyes were clear and full of light. He felt out of breath. He felt something tingling along his skin, something wrong. “What?” she said.

  “That guy over there is looking at you.” Gary nodded to the man who lifted his glass of wine in a toast to Suzanne. Suzanne looked from the brown-haired man to Gary. “Oh, the guy from the unpainted furniture store,” she said calmly.

  The man stood up and came over to the table. “Hello Suzanne,” he said. He nodded at Gary. “Bob Tillman,” he said, holding out his hand to Gary. “I own Wood You. The unpainted furniture store?”

  “Oh, yes, I know that store,” Gary said, shaking Bob’s hand. Bob looked from Suzanne to Gary and back again. “Half the numbers from your sign are gone. I keep repositioning the sign, making sure it’s getting noticed.”

  “That’s so nice,” Suzanne said.

  Bob waited, and then his smile deepened. “Well, it was nice to see you again, Suzanne. And it was nice to meet you—?”

  “Gary,” Gary said.

  “Gary.”

  Bob went back to his table. Gary felt his smile hardening. He felt a prickling of jealousy and he turned back to his cheesecake. “Nice guy,” he forced himself to say. “He seems really interested in you.”

  Suzanne shrugged. “He’s so not my type.” She stared down at her plate and then she looked up, draining her glass of water. “Let’s order more dessert,” she said.

  Gary told himself it was crazy, what he was feeling. It was just loneliness. Just pure human need. And maybe, too, it was just having someone know what he was feeling, someone going through it with him.

  “You should call that guy from the furniture store,” he told her.

  “That dodo?”

  Gary felt a flicker of relief. Cut it out, he told himself. “He seems interested in you. You should call him. He seemed nice enough.”

  “Yeah. Right,” she said.

  He tried to keep more and more to himself, going up to his office as soon as he got home, taking Otis out alone in the morning instead of inviting Suzanne to go with him. It’s fine, it’s under control. He told himself that a million times a day, and then he went in to take a shower, and there, in a silky puddle of the floor, was Suzanne’s peach-colored slip and it hurt him so much just to look at it that he strode out of the room again.

  He had a dream. He was walking through a field with Suzanne, holding hands because the grass was so high and rough. “This way,” she said, pointing her free hand to the back of a field. “See? There she is.” Suzanne pointed out Molly, all that red hair, burnished in the sun. “Molly!” Gary called. He felt exuberant. Molly was alive and romping through the high grass toward him. His heart was skipping. And then he turned and saw how happy Suzanne was, and he turned and kissed her full and hungry on the mouth and Molly disappeared.

  He bolted awake. He was sweating, horrified. He grabbed for the phone to check on Molly. “Critical,” the woman said, and then he stumbled down to the kitchen. He leaned against the sink. He grabbed for a bottle of wine and poured himself a glass. He had to calm down. He had to sleep. It’s a dream, he told himself. A dream.

  He was on his third glass, drunk, woozy, terrified. He had done this to Molly, this was his punishment. He hadn’t been vigilant enough, hadn’t been a good enough husband. Thinking about Suzanne had been the easy way out, that’s all it was. He was disgusted to have ever imagined kissing her, to have thought about what her skin might feel like.

  He was sitting on a chair in the living room when Suzanne came into the room. She had a short blue dress, her hair spilling down. Her beauty was so intense and real, it felt like a wound. He stood up. He hadn’t really slept in days. He was always afraid. And here she was.

  She walked toward him, stumbling, so that he had to catch her, and then he wasn’t thinking at all anymore. He was kissing her, sliding one hand up under her dress. And she was kissing him back.

  She grabbed him closer and he kissed her again. Longer. Harder. He bit her lips. He put his hand into her hair, against the back of her neck. He wanted to put his whole self up inside of her. He moved one hand up against her breasts. She moaned, and then abruptly he saw Molly, the way she liked to tilt her neck back for him to kiss, and he wrenched himself free. He shoved Suzanne roughly away from him. Panting, he stepped back. “No.”

  For a minute, she didn’t move. He heard her ragged breath. And then she stepped toward him. He had never hated anyone more in his life than he hated himself. He had never wanted anyone more than her.

  The phone rang. He could hardly breathe. He couldn’t see. But he made his way to the phone and yanked it up. “Yes.” His voice was cracked. He listened and then he hung up the phone.

  He couldn’t bear to look at Suzanne. She grabbed at his arm, and he recoiled, as if she had burnt him.

  “It’s Molly,” he said. “She woke up.”

  chapter seven
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  Moily woke in a strange high-rise apartment, unable to move anything but her eyes. The room was boxy, with a wall of windows that looked out on a skyline jagged with tall, silvery buildings. Metal and steel and glass and all that impossible blinding white. She didn’t know what city she was in. She didn’t know how she had gotten here or why she was lying flat on her back, a starchy sheet pulled over her. Her head felt cloudy, stuffed with tissue. She tried to find a memory, something, anything that might explain this. She strained, concentrating through the fuzz, and then an image shimmered and bloomed and made her catch her breath. I had a baby. His eyes were wide open. I had Gary.

  The past tense upset her.

  She scanned the ceiling. It had a swirling pattern of half scoops to it, like pearlized shells, and planted in the very center was a decorative white fixture that threw out lines of light. She had never seen any of this room before and yet she couldn’t help feeling that everything felt sickeningly familiar, as if her other life had been just a dream and now that layer had been peeled roughly back.

  Around her, organ music whined to a crescendo. She shifted her eyes from the window to the right side of the room. Her breathing, harsh and raspy, reverberated.

  And then she saw someone. A woman with a curly blond ponytail. She was washing dishes noisily in a kitchenette in the corner. Another woman, with a black bob, was talking to a man with glasses, throwing her head back and laughing, flirting hard. He dug in his pocket and handed her some bills. “Fifty dollars,” he said, narrowing his eyes. “But I want the whole night.”