“Because we didn’t,” she said. “We didn’t do this twelve years ago. This is way overdue. You were insanely angry at me and never let me see it.”
“I was angry at David. I don’t know what I was with you. Angry never fit the definition. All the talking out loud I did, none of it was confrontational, not with you.”
“Then what was it?”
“Denial. Holding it frozen in place so it could keep being perfect. If it wasn’t perfect it was useless. Sometimes I pretended you were dead because it was easier to maintain the illusion. These weren’t my finest moments but they’re the truth.”
“Well, I’m alive,” she said. “And imperfect. I have my flawed, weak moments. I have my dark times and my anxiety attacks.”
“Hello? Have we met?”
She went on as if she hadn’t heard. “I have ex-boyfriends who stay in touch with me and to an extent, I have David. I made my peace with him. He’s married now, he’s having a kid. His health is fragile and we keep in touch. We’re not best friends, but we have our inside jokes and our history and our regrets and our guilt. We saw each other at Lancaster. We went for coffee and we forgave each other. He writes me. Do you want me to tell him to stop? Because I will. If it matters to you, I will and I won’t think any less of you.”
“Dais, I don’t know what the fuck I want when it comes to Dave,” he said, looking up at the ceiling with his empty palms up. “As little as possible. That’s what I want.”
She nodded, stirring the soup again. “Do you trust me?” she said. “I already know you trust me with your heart and your love and your goodness. But I want you to trust me with your darker moods. I want you to trust me enough to be annoyed or irritated with me. Or even flat-out angry with me. I want to be able to tell you David wrote me without it raising your suspicions. And I want you to be able to go back to New York and trust I’m going to be faithful to y—”
“Stop it.” He stepped and took her by the shoulders. Hard. Her spoon clattered into the pot as he pressed his forehead to hers, pulling air in through his teeth. “Just stop,” he said. “I never once thought you’d cheat on me ag—”
“I can’t stop,” she said. “I can’t not think it. You wanted to kill him, I watched you try to do it. I wanted you to turn around and throw all that rage at me where it belonged. I kept waiting and waiting for a fight that never came. Empty mailboxes, no messages on the machine, the sound of you fucking breathing on the other end of the phone but never saying anyth—“
“Because it killed me,” he cried, letting go of her. “What was I supposed to do? You were the one thing I had left. The one fixed point in my life and I found you fucking David and it was ruined for me. I didn’t want to know, didn’t want to hear, didn’t want to see. It was changed forever and nothing would get it back the way it was.”
He had paced away during the rant but abruptly turned back now. “Is this really what you want?” he asked. “Me yelling at you? You want me to get in your face, call you a whore, shove you around?”
“No,” she said. “No, not now. But back then I would’ve taken anything but the silence.”
“Well this is now and I’m not that guy.”
“I know.”
“But I was,” he said. Their eyes caught and locked. Inside his damp clothes, his legs were quivering. “I did trust you with my dark side. Up in your room at Jay Street, all those nights we were high and insane. I was more than a little rough with you. I made you cry. I made you bleed. I tied your hands, scratched and bruised you, fucking pulled your hair out. We got off on making each other hurt in bed. You’ve seen me at my worst, but not once while I was beating up David did it occur to me to turn around and belt you one.”
She was shaking her head, staring at the tiled floor. “This conversation isn’t going where I wanted it to.”
“Take it somewhere else then,” he said. “I feel like we’re not telling each other anything we don’t already know.”
“What would you have done if I came to your room that night?”
“I can only answer that in hindsight. It’s easy to say now I would’ve let you in and talked to you. Would I though? I honestly don’t know. I might have locked you out and ignored you. I might have let you in and sat there like a stone. I might have thrown you up against the wall and fucked you and then made you go. I might have just cried. I don’t know.”
She nodded, hugging herself, one of her palms moving up and down her bicep.
Erik’s arms were crossed as well. “This is old pain.”
“But it matters. Don’t tell me it doesn’t, otherwise why did you need to get out of here so fast?”
“The letter brought it all back,” he said. “I didn’t want it to but it did. Wondering why you did it. Wondering how you could do it. What did he have that I didn’t.” The words fell in a tired vomit on the floor. No commitment was in them, but they were squatting illegally in his heart and he evicted them. Turned them out on the street, yanked them loose like rotten teeth and let the bitter taste flow through his mouth.
“I didn’t know how to get past it. I didn’t want to get past it. I was too tired. I had no fight in me left anymore. David took the last of it. He took you and he took my will to keep going. I felt used and useless. I told Will I couldn’t pretend it never happened. I couldn’t get back with you and act like we weren’t changed. No matter what I did or said or forgave or forgot, from that day on you and I were different. And I hated it. I didn’t want us to be different. If it couldn’t be us, it was no use to me. So I left. You know this, Dais. We’ve talked about this. What can I tell you you don’t already know?”
With an exhaled sigh of frustration he sat down on one of the kitchen stools, leaned on an elbow and ran his hand through his hair. His other hand reached to take hers and they held still a long while. No sound but the tick of the clock and the low murmur of bubbling soup.
The tension eased up in his gut, unwound like a severed vine and fell away. His love for her stirred in his heart. An easing in his crowded mind, knowing this was part of the fight. And the fight was good.
He drew her closer to him, bringing her between his knees. He slid his arm around her waist and laid his head against her. Her heart was kicking hard against the wall of her chest, but the hand caressing his hair was calm.
She was wearing her oldest, sloppiest jeans. The ones that hung loose on her hips. His fingertips ran along the waistband, pushing it down a little, until the red-lettered fish emerged. He touched it. Ran the ball of his thumb over it. Then pressed the daisy on the inside of his wrist against it.
“I know you,” he said. “I know you like I know myself. If it had been me—me who slept with someone else and you who walked in on it. Much as I tell myself you would have left me the same way, I know in my heart it isn’t true. Sure, maybe you would’ve gotten out of Dodge and gone home to let the shock dissipate. But when I called the house or showed up at the door, on my knees begging to explain, you would have answered. You would have given me something. A few words. A timeframe. A status.”
He looked up at her. “Sometimes the pain of you sleeping with David is so insignificant when I put it next to the time I threw away. I could have fixed things so long ago. Or at least closed things. One phone call or letter. One cup of coffee. I don’t know if the regret for that will ever go away. I hate what I did.”
“I know you do,” she said.
“But I guess today was a day when you sleeping with David hurt more. Still…” He put both his arms around her waist, holding his wrists in the small of her back. Her eyes filled his vision, drawing him up. His heart slowly turning about, preening in the mirrored reflection of her love, viewing itself from all sides.
“This is now,” he said. “I’m not holding over your head something you did when you were twenty-one and traumatized. Not anymore. Will it bug me if he writes you? Sure. I’m human. Do I trust you’ll be faithful to me? Yes, I do, and what’s more, I’m intent on fucking you so good,
you won’t want it from anyone else. Furthermore, I— Stop laughing.”
Her hands were over her face, her shoulders quaking. He sat up, took her wrists and pulled them away. “Stop laughing.”
“I’m not laughing,” she said, sniffing.
“I never fell out of love, Dais,” he said, his thumbs smudging the tears from under her eyes. “I fell out of touch. And I know it killed you. I’m here now. I’m back and I’m here to stay. I’m fighting triggers with trust. I got a ton of fight in me now but not enough to keep secret grudges or keep score on who screwed up and who was the screwed. This is the new us and it’s the us I want. Whether I go out for a run to clear my head or I go back to New York, my keys are on top of the piano. If I could detach my dick, I’d leave it on top of the piano, too.”
She blinked at him.
“You were supposed to laugh at that,” he said
She tried, but her face crumpled and a fresh stream erupted from the rims of her eyes.
“Come here,” he said, pulling her into his lap. “It’s all right.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, curling into the circle of his arms.
“Shh…” He held her tight, feeling the world shift back into proper place. “I love you more than I ever loved anything in my life,” he said, sliding his jaw along her head, a bit of her hair twined about his fingers. “I didn’t come back to fight you. I came back to fight for you.”
“You don’t have to fight too hard.” A long breath cascaded out of her chest. The weight in his lap turned soft and pliant. “You’re the one,” she said, her thumb gliding over his tattoo. “You’re still the one I can tell anything. You’re still the one, when my sentences run out of words, you finish them by looking at me. But at the same time you’re surprising me. I still get to discover you. I love who you’ve become. And I love that who I’ve become still works with you.”
He reached to touch the hollow of her throat where the gold fish and the pearl nestled. “You’re the best thing to ever happen to me twice.”
THE SPRING BREAK VISIT was the turning point. In the wee hours of the night he returned home, Erik’s cell phone rang. Adrenaline sliced through his chest as he fumbled for it on the bedside table, thinking, Mom. He squinted into the stabbing light from the display. It was Daisy.
“Hey,” he said, falling back into the pillows.
“Hi,” she said. A single wretched syllable and her voice disintegrating into four kinds of despair.
“What’s wrong?” he said, alert but still slurred with sleep. “What is it?”
She was crying. Hard. Words slipped through the weeping but he couldn’t grasp them.
“Honey, what’s the matter,” he said. “Tell me.”
“I can’t,” Daisy said. “I can’t do this anymore.”
He sat up. “Do what anymore,” he said as his heart kicked up another few beats.
“I miss you,” she cried. “You weren’t even gone an hour and I fell apart. I miss you so bad.”
“I miss you too, and I—”
“I want you,” she said. “I want you here all the time.” Her voice splintered apart as she laid herself bare to him. “I want you here all the time, Erik. I want you here with me. I can’t keep saying hello and goodbye to you. I can’t be away from you anymore. I can’t. It’s breaking my heart. Erik, I can’t…”
“I know,” he whispered. “I know it’s hard.”
“I love my necklace, but it’s not helping me get through. I love texting all day and talking on the phone all night but it’s not helping me. I love that I always know where you are, but it doesn’t help because you’re not here. And I just want you here. I don’t want to wait another bunch of years to be sure of what I already know. I’m sorry, Erik, I just…”
“Don’t be sorry,” he said. “I need to know this.”
She was weeping again. “I want you here all the time.”
“Dais,” he said. “I’ll come.”
Her sobs hitched to a stop. Her breath was still choppy over the line but she was quieting down. “I don’t mean drop everything tomorrow and move,” she said. “I just need to know you—”
“I’ll come, Dais,” he said. “I’m done with this too. It’s pointless. It’s making nobody happy. Nothing is keeping me here. My life is with you. I belong with you, and I don’t have any more time to throw away either. All right, honey? This is it. No more long-distance crap. I’m coming to live with you in Canada and we’re going forward.”
She sniffed hard, let her breath out. “All right.”
“I love you,” he said. “And I’m coming home.”
“I love you. Come back to me.”
He texted Will the next morning.
If you got room at your feet, I got a really big problem to lay there.
He sent it and shoved the phone in his back pocket. Took it back out and added, Help.
Will rang him a few minutes later. “Talk to me.”
“What’s it going to take to get me to Canada? How did Lucky do it?”
“She got student papers,” Will said. “She applied for a master’s program at UNB and got in. That’s one of two ways you can come here and stay longer than six months. Student papers or working papers.”
“Okay,” Erik said. “So I either go back to school or I get a job.”
“A job with an open-ended contract,” Will said.
Erik started writing things down.
“Actually you have a third option,” Will said. “You marry Dais and come here as a non-working spouse. Stay home and take care of the kids.”
A wincing pause.
“Fuck, my bad,” Will said. “Sorry.”
“I can stay home and take care of your kids,” Erik said. “You can fulfill your dream of banging the manny.”
“You’re flirting with me,” Will said. “That’s what this is.”
“You wish.”
“You fucking tease. Where was this attitude back when I could’ve done something about it? You’re hurting my feels. I should let you rot there in New York.”
“Don’t,” Erik said. “Help me. Let’s just table the third option and let me try getting there on my own.”
“All right, all right. Let’s see.” An exhaling sigh. “Technical theater jobs up here are so heavily unionized. You barely have a chance unless you have an uncle or a godfather who’s already in.”
“Doesn’t have to be the theater. I’ll wait tables.”
“Dude, you need something long-term to get working papers. Let me think.”
“What about citizenship?”
“You’re way ahead of yourself. Lucky’s not even a citizen. She’s a permanent resident. That’s a ton of bureaucratic bullshit but it won’t kill you. We need to get you here first.”
“All right,” Erik said, scribbling again. “Stupid question but am I going to have to speak French?”
“Oh yeah,” Will said. “New Brunswick is officially bilingual. You’ll definitely need French to get your papers.”
“Fuck. Really?”
A long, sober moment of silence.
“You can’t sort of do this, Fish,” Will said. “Draw a line and get on one side or the other.”
“All right,” Erik said. “I guess I can audit some classes here the rest of the year. Dais will help me.”
Will burst out laughing.
“What?” Erik said. “Son of a bitch, are you fucking with my head?”
Will responded with a string of French.
“Goddammit, Kaeger,” Erik yelled.
“I had you,” Will said. “Aw fuck, I shouldn’t have laughed. I totally had you.”
“How do you say asshole in French?”
“Mon tabarnak,” Will said, howling laughing. “J’vais te décalisser la yeule, calice.”
“I didn’t miss you,” Erik said. “At all.”
“Oh man,” Will said, chuckling. “All right. I’m sorry. I’m hanging up now. I’m going to call in every favor I can think of. Someon
e has to know somebody who knows somebody.”
“If you owe anyone blow jobs, now would be the time to deliver.”
“No way, I clear all oral debts immediately. You don’t want that bad credit following you around.”
Credit made Erik think of financial details. A long road of paperwork and hassle and stress rolled out in front of him like an ugly carpet.
But Daisy.
Waiting at the end.
She answered the phone. She wasn’t married. She was free and you were free and you got another chance.
Draw a line and get on one side or the other.
He scraped his toe on the floor in front of him and stepped across. “Help me,” he said to Will. “I want this.”
“So do we. We’ll move the Earth.”
IN A PERFECT WORLD, the technical director of the Imperial Theater would have retired or quietly expired of a heart attack, leaving a vacancy for Erik to step into. And he and Daisy would have spent their working days under the same roof.
Unfortunately the director was young, hale and hearty, and any vacancies at the Imperial were under union stronghold. Will didn’t dare pull a string for fear of making enemies. Pipe dreams were extinguished and other avenues explored.
The entire province of New Brunswick had not one graduate theatre program. Erik would have to go back to school in an entirely unrelated field. Now chasing down thirty-six, he didn’t feel enthused about starting from scratch.
The Fredericton Playhouse was his most promising lead. He interviewed twice and got on famously with its board. But they had no openings. They kept his resume and his number and promised to be in touch.
Night after night, through the spring of 2006 when he came to Canada every few weeks and his time left at Brockport dripped away, he and Daisy held onto each other and talked the problem to shreds.
“You and me,” Erik said. “Eye on the prize. I don’t care what it takes. You and me. It’s all that matters. It’ll work out.”
“Worst case, I’ll leave here and we go back to the States,” she said. “We have a ton of options. It’ll work out.”
They reassured each other and made love, and then tossed and turned through the night.
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