Fall Love

by Anne Whitehouse

  Bryce paid the driver, who helped Paul out. Alonzo, the porter, was on hand to help Paul along the way from the lobby to the penthouse, but Paul insisted on going it alone. He was clumsy, but he made it. When at last he was inside the penthouse, he was dismayed at how exhausted he was. He got as far as the living room and collapsed on the couch.

  "I'd be surprised if you weren't tired," Bryce commented. "Why don't you get right into bed and rest?"

  "Why don't you leave me alone?" Paul complained. He knew that he ought to apologize, but he didn't want to. He was getting a bitter pleasure from his rude behavior.

  "It's hard to feel helpless. You'll have to get used to it for a while. I know, I've been there."

  "You never had so much to lose."

  "Don't you believe it."

  Bryce's reply was instant, his voice low and chilling. Hearing it, Paul knew he had gone too far. He was ashamed of himself. But it seemed to him that he was set on a course, and he couldn't stop.

  "My injury seems paradoxically to have improved you," he continued. "When I first saw you in the hospital, you were in a wheelchair. Look at you rush around now, apparently elated."

  Paul crossed his arms and leaned back against the couch, waiting to see if Bryce would blow up at him. Bryce bit his lips in a thin line, as if he were biting back words that he might regret saying. Then he took a couple of steps backward, keeping his distance.

  "I know it's because of strain that you're acting this way. But I won't keep taking it," Bryce assured Paul. Then he left the room.

  By walking out, he's made a mistake, Paul thought. If he had stayed, I would have had to answer him. But now I don't have to. Like a predator stalking his prey, Paul seized on Bryce's error. Bryce is afraid of me, he rejoiced.

  Before the accident, his longing for Bryce to return to him had overcome his dread. But now he couldn't seem to stop himself from driving Bryce away. He was fueled by hatred he didn't understand. Darkness was settling over him. He couldn't stop it; he couldn't see past it.

  * * *

  Paul had drifted off to sleep while still on the sofa. The first sensation he was aware of when he awoke was the throbbing of his right foot in the cast. Even worse was the itch. It was driving him crazy because he couldn't scratch it. He tried to control it with his thought, but that proved impossible.

  He bit his lips and shifted the position of his other leg, stretched out on the sofa. He noticed that a fire was lit in the wood-burning stove, and that there were other homey touches in the room as well: a wreath of pine boughs exuding a sharp scent and underneath it, on the parson's table, an autumnal arrangement of gourds, striped green and white, solid yellow, and orange.

  "You're awake!" Bryce exclaimed, as he came in bearing a tray rich with the smells of a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. Paul looked up, and glanced away. He couldn't face it.

  "Take it away," he said. "I don't want it."

  Bryce's face fell. "I'll just leave it here on the coffee table. If you feel like trying a bite, please do."

  Pointedly ignoring Bryce, Paul stared straight ahead, focusing on the wall. If I pretend he isn't here, Paul thought, he might go away. In fact, Paul was aware of every move that Bryce made. Bryce stood, hesitating, and then laid the tray down as he had said he would. He backed off and waited, and finally he turned and quietly left the room.

  Yet Paul's victory was hollow; now that he let himself look at the tray, he was actually gloomy that Bryce was not there to share the experience with him. For the food was artfully arranged and not as hefty in its portions as he had feared: there were two slices of turkey (the white meat), a shallow pool of glossy, dark-brown gravy, a mound of chestnut stuffing, some crisped half-moons of potatoes, and strips of roasted zucchini and red peppers.

  Bryce must have ordered this meal from a very good caterer, Paul decided, for I doubt he could have prepared it, since he was at the hospital with me this morning. Paul couldn't help being impressed. He's trying so hard, Paul thought, but how can he win, when I am so dead set against him? Paul neither cared to fathom the source of his attitude nor change it. Still, though it altered nothing, he felt a tinge of shame on Bryce's account. Perhaps I ought to taste the dinner after all, he reflected.

  Yet he could scarcely summon up any appetite. As he looked at the beautiful plate without enthusiasm, he felt a surge of despair. He couldn't seem to be able to get a grip on anything.

  I ought to make the effort and try the dinner, he told himself. But his instinct was against him. Ignoring instinct, he spooned the gravy over the turkey, spreading it thinly. Picking up the knife and fork, he cut a small piece of the meat and conveyed it to his mouth. Yet stronger than the tastes of the turkey or the gravy was the sweet, sickening taste of the anesthesia, almost as strong as when he had breathed it just before the operation.

  He gagged, spitting out the mouthful of food. The taste was nauseating. Why did it still linger? Overwhelmed by sickness, he continued to gag, bringing up ropes of saliva, until at last he stopped. His face was broken out in a sweat.

  He took a deep breath. He picked up the plate of food and cast it forcefully to the ground.

  It landed with a crash, breaking into two. The Thanksgiving dinner lay scattered and spoiled, part of it on the rug and the rest on the floor.

  Paul could hear Bryce's approaching footsteps. I have succeeded in making him return, he told himself. He steeled himself for the onslaught.

  It seemed to Paul that an evil imp had gotten control of him. He waited, all anticipation, while Bryce came in. Bryce stood next to the coffee table, his hand covering his mouth, rounded in shock. He's expecting me to explain myself, Paul realized.

  Paul smiled cruelly. In a tone of justification and utter calm, he said, "The dinner was lousy."

  Bryce flew into a rage at last. "I've had it with you," he yelled. "Get out of my sight. Go to bed; I won't bother you again. You can starve to death for all I care."

  Sidestepping the mess of food, he gripped Paul's forearm, pulling hard, but he lost his balance and fell against the sofa arm, nearly toppling onto Paul, until he caught himself.

  Even this mishap couldn't make either man smile. Instead, they each glared at the other. Reaching for the crutches resting against the end of the sofa, Paul raised himself up. Then, while Bryce watched silently, with a nearly expressionless face, Paul hobbled from the room. He went to the bedroom, just as Bryce had told him to. He closed the door behind him. Ostentatiously, he slid out the latch, locking the door.

  By now, Paul's feelings and motives were so twisted that he couldn't begin to sort them out. For the next three days, while his mood grew blacker, he remained in the room, only venturing out to use the bathroom. Bryce stayed away, although, after all, he did leave trays of food for Paul by the door—toast, tea, broth, and the like. Sometimes Paul accepted them. In solitude he partook of the food, though not with pleasure.

  * * *

  Paul found the knife in the drawer of the bedside table, under some papers. He had been looking for a deck of cards, but he forgot the search when he saw the knife. It was a bright-red Swiss army knife, a thick one with six attachments, and it looked brand-new. He didn't remember having seen it before. He picked it up, enjoying its heft in the palm of his hand. He opened the largest blade and tested it against the plush of his thumb. Feeling how sharp it was, he shivered with fear and pleasure. He closed the blade and replaced the knife in the drawer exactly where he had found it. He shut the drawer.

  He lay down, trying to sleep, but he kept thinking about the knife. He kept seeing it in his imagination. He couldn't help himself; he had to take it out again. He knew what he was going to do.

  He sat up in bed, his left hand lying palm up in his lap, the knife opened in his right fist. Picturing the next move, he uncontrollably began to rub the inside of his wrist against the cloth of his shirt and pants over his stomach and pelvic bone. He rubbed hard, as if he were already rubbing away the blood, or as if he could rub away the despair
that had taken him this far.

  He said to himself, I won't be able to dance again. I might as well be dead. He repeated it, as if it were a lesson he was trying to learn. But his mind grew blank. No words, only the image of the knife—of its shining blade—filled it.

  He began to try to cut himself with the blade. He did it badly, like a coward. Instead of plunging the knife into his wrist and severing the vein, he began to saw at the skin over it. He couldn't bear to cut himself, but at the same time he couldn't stop himself from trying. He knew that he was playing a terrible game—a shameful game.

  At last he drew a few drops of blood. Bitterly gratified, he stopped to examine them. Soon he would start again, he told himself. He would keep at it until he really did it.

  A bright drop of blood fell and spread on the white sheet. He thought about getting a towel, and then he wondered why he should care if he was going to make a mess.

  But he had been accustomed to staging his effects. An idea would come to him, unbidden as a reflex. He would picture himself as he appeared to someone else—someone like himself, actually, who might be watching.

  Now, when he tried to imagine himself lying dead, propped up on pillows in the bed, with his veins opened like a disgraced Roman emperor, he couldn't concentrate on the image. It flickered in and out of focus, like a badly-made movie.

  He poked the tip of the knife into the cut he had made in his wrist. He drew more blood. The sharpness of the pain was an antidote to the dull throbbing in his foot. He raised his forearm and watched the blood trickle down in a zigzag. Can I keep this up? he wondered, fascinated.

  He heard the latch in the door turn, and the door open. He looked up. Bryce was standing in the doorway. He had unlocked the door with a key. They stared at each other, in shock.

  The moment seemed longer than it was. Soon, in quick strides, Bryce had crossed the room. He knocked the knife from Paul's hand, nicking Paul's finger in the process. The knife fell against the wall and clattered to the floor.

  "Look what you did! You cut me," said Paul.

  "What the fuck do you think you're doing?"

  Paul had never heard Bryce speak like this before. He pressed his wrists together, as if to hide the evidence.

  "Are you out of your mind?" Bryce continued. "Do I have to commit you?"

  Bryce was not shouting—though it would almost be better, Paul thought, if he was.

  "Why do you care so much?" Paul's words came out mumbled. His eyes were cast down as he spoke.

  In response, Bryce knelt by the side of the bed. He took hold of Paul's hands gently, separating them. He held them apart, cupped and exposed.

  Paul raised his eyes and looked at Bryce full in the face. He saw Bryce discover that the wound was, after all, superficial. Not until then did Paul understand that he wouldn't have gone through with it. And Bryce, Paul saw, had the tact not to comment. Instead, he urged Paul, he commanded him, "Don't do this again. Don't ever do this again!"

  And Paul let himself crumple and be caught in Bryce's arms; he let himself be held as he wept.

  Chapter 23

  The first snowfall of the season came early in the second week of December. Paul leaned on crutches in the open doorway of the penthouse to watch it. A few of the weightless, delicate flakes drifted over his face. Against his bare cheeks they melted and slid in lines like tears. The cold burned his skin red. He breathed in the tangy smoke which unfurled out of the chimney from the wood-burning stove and mixed with the frigid wet air. He looked west, to the river and the Palisades. A tugboat was pulling a barge upriver. For a moment he fantasized that he was not in the city at all, but deep in the provinces where nothing was happening but this lone boat going by.

  He had heard on the radio that morning that the Christmas tree had been installed in Rockefeller Center, and that this year it was the tallest ever. He pictured its dark green spire and below it, the skaters gliding and spinning on their lawn of ice. He imagined Fifth Avenue jammed with pedestrians, the shoppers snaking in long lines, waiting to see the elaborate displays in the department store windows. The Salvation Army volunteers were playing carols at street corners; drivers trapped under the changing traffic lights were yelling and honking their horns: Paul conceived of the sights and sounds of New York at Christmas that he was missing while he stayed at home, recuperating.

  Black curls of ice nestled in depressions on the roof. The garden was withered. The snow was not accumulating; it was too fine, almost gritty. A sudden gust of wind rattled the dead stalks of the plants, and then Paul heard a gentle, melodious wave of sound swell and subside, like clear water tinkling over pebbles. It was the Aeolian harp, now mounted in the window, that he had ordered for Bryce.

  He had entirely forgotten about it. Bryce must have installed it while I was in the hospital, he thought, and I didn't notice it when I returned. Or else he set it in the window sill later, during my black days.

  This was how he thought about those days when he thought about them at all. It was as if they were slathered over with black paint in his memory. He'd turned his back on them. He'd left them behind.

  Now, as he listened, the harp, played by unknown hands, gave him a symphony. The music soothed him like a medicine.

  In a way it's a pity, he thought, that there are no passersby way up here to hear the music and be eased on their way. Yet it's also a pleasure to think that the music is just for me. I am an audience of one.

  He was helpless to prevent the resonance of that phrase, the thought of how, as his own audience of one, he used to love to glimpse his reflection while he was dancing. He'd turned his back on that, too. Nowadays he avoided his reflection. He'd quickly grown adept at maneuvering his crutches, but he still didn't want to watch himself do it.

  When Bryce had offered to give a party, like old times, Paul had declined at first. The old times were gone, it was too painful to remember them, and he wasn't up to company—these were the excuses that he'd offered to Bryce and to himself. Since he'd returned home twelve days ago, he hadn't left the apartment, and he'd refused to see visitors. But now he began to change his mind about a party.

  * * *

  Bryce came in glowing from the cold. He was carrying a shopping bag. "Yoo hoo! I'm home," he called out. On returning these days, he gave Paul a warning first. When he remembered how that creepy silence behind the bedroom door had caused him to unlock it, when he remembered the scene inside which had accosted him, he shivered all over. He didn't believe Paul would soon try suicide again, but he wasn't taking any chances.

  "I'm lying down," he heard Paul call out from the bedroom, "just resting."

  "Okay," Bryce called back. How strange, he thought, that I should go from one sickbed to another, with only an interlude in between. How dreadful, not only that Paul did what he did, but that he used my knife.

  This was the knife he'd bought after that last good afternoon with his uncle Bill, when Bill had been well enough to whittle on the porch and had invited him to join in. "Got your knife on you, boy?" he'd asked, just as when Bryce was a kid.

  Bryce hadn't, and so he'd gone out and acquired one, but it had been too late to use it whittling away an afternoon with Bill. When he'd returned to New York, he'd tossed it into the drawer of the night table and then forgotten about it.

  When he considered the purpose for which he'd intended the knife, and how Paul had perverted that purpose, he was appalled. Now he contrasted Paul with Uncle Bill. Picturing Paul cutting his wrist with that knife changed his perceptions about Bill. Compared to Paul's depression and his evident panic, Bill's dying was dignified. Next to Paul, Bill seemed to grow in stature. Yet I could have predicted that, Bryce thought. What I didn't count on was that Paul's living alone in my house has changed my own feelings about it.

  When Paul locked himself up in my bedroom, which we once shared, I let him do it. Why? Bryce pondered. Because I was afraid of him. Because I was sorry for him. And because it almost seems more his room now than it does mine.
<
br />   Maybe if we split up, I'll sell this place to him, Bryce thought. I would, if he could afford it. But wait—if he gets a big enough settlement from the movers' insurance company, he will be able to afford it. I can ask a large price.

  These thoughts were freighted with Bryce's pain and embittered by his deprivation. Since his return, he had still not slept with Paul. While Paul was in the hospital, Bryce had reclaimed his old bedroom. But on the day Paul was discharged, he took possession of the room again. Now the door was no longer locked, but Bryce was still sleeping on the fold-out couch in his study. He was waiting for Paul to ask him to come back, to confess that he wanted him and loved him. He told himself that he would never impose himself on Paul; he refused to do it, and Paul—he knew—knew it.

  With the shopping bag still in hand, he approached the bedroom door. It was not quite closed. He tapped it lightly. "May I enter?" he asked.

  "Yes, come in."

  Paul lay on the bed, his head propped up on pillows. To Bryce his face seemed carved of ivory; he appeared slighter.

  "It's strange to see you like this," Bryce confessed, "as if we'd changed roles." He smiled, to soften the comparison. I'm still afraid of him, he thought. Paul did not smile.

  "I've brought you something." Approaching the bed, Bryce drew from the bag a large square box, wrapped in white paper and tied with yellow ribbon. He laid it on the bed. "Here," he said.

  "For me?"

  "As much as the harp was for me."

  Paul pursed his lips—almost a smile. "I was on the roof this morning. I heard the harp being played by the wind. I'm glad you put it in the window."

  Finally Paul turned his attention to Bryce's gift. He looked at it without touching it.