by Liz Kay
In the kitchen, I brace my hands on the counter, but I can’t keep myself up. I drop down into a squat, curling over my knees, my arms up over my hair. “Oh god. Oh my god. Fuck.”
I can hear his footsteps coming closer. “Look, I get it,” he says. “Some girls are married, and some girls are fucking married. Whatever. Let’s not make a scene.”
I’m rocking from my heels to my toes. I’m trying to breathe.
“Jesus. You’re a disaster. You need to get your shit straight.”
I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m fine. I stand up in one fluid motion and push my hair out of my face. “I’m fine,” I say.
“You call this fine?” He’s got a glass of scotch in his hand, and he’s pointing it at me. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
I take a really slow breath. I can do this. I can handle it. I’m fine. I press my lips together. It might look like I’m smiling. I try looking him in the eye. “My husband is dead.”
“What?” He shakes his head like I’ve said something impossible. It’s not impossible.
“My husband.” I say it slower this time. “He’s dead.”
“Like … recently?”
I nod. I think I look like I’m smiling again. I might be trying to smile. “Mm-hmm.”
“Oh Jesus, honey, I’m sorry.” His jaw relaxes, and he takes two steps toward me and pulls me into him. He’s cradling my head in the crook of his elbow, holding the glass of scotch next to my ear, and he’s making this rocking motion like he’s shushing a baby. He brushes my hair back off of my face with his other hand.
• • •
Tommy sits me down in the living room and goes out to retrieve the scotch. “We’re gonna need more of this,” he says, handing me my glass. He sits on the floor in front of me, one leg stretched out. He leans back into the couch and closes his eyes. “All right, let’s hear it.”
“There’s nothing to hear,” I say. “He just died.” I take a drink of the scotch. I’m not so much sipping it anymore as sucking it in. “In March. He was in a car accident. Dead on the scene. Thank god. I mean, that it was fast. Not that it happened, just that it wasn’t some lingering thing. You know?”
“How long were you married?”
“Ten years.”
“And your kids?”
“They’re six and nine.”
He reaches one arm back over his head and squeezes my knee.
Then I’m crying, and I haven’t cried in months. I cried a lot in the beginning, but it made the boys so sad, and now I don’t cry anymore, and I’m telling him this too, like he’ll believe me when I tell him I’m not crying, even though I’m sobbing and my hands are covered in snot. Through it all, he just sits there, shaking his head occasionally and pouring me more scotch.
• • •
I remember waking in Michael’s room in his apartment in Boston, watching him dress. He was still so young then, his face like a baby’s, but he had the body of a man. He stood at the dresser, buttoning his shirt, buckling his belt, fastening his watch around his wrist, and I thought, This is how a man moves in the world, how he fills the space around him.
I hadn’t intended to go home with him. I’d just been tagging along with a friend. She wanted to go home with him, and he was really more her type. Clean-cut, businessy, athletic. We left the bar in a group. I hadn’t been angling to be the one riding back to their place on his lap. I was just the last one in the car, and it was a small car, and then he patted his legs. I was wearing this short skirt, so when he draped his arm around me, his hand was resting on my bare thigh. My flight home for the summer was three days away, so it wasn’t like we were starting anything. It was just for fun, just a fling.
I didn’t plan to think about him through the summer, but I did. I thought about his hands. He had these big, strong hands and this sweet boyish face. He looked like a Boy Scout. He looked like the kind of guy you’d want with you if you were lost in the woods, worried about bears. I remember feeling lost that summer, and very much alone. Jenny had moved in with Todd by then, and my parents spent most of it traveling.
I had an assistantship, so I was teaching that fall when I got back to Boston. The second week of class, I walked out of the building, and there he was, sitting on the wall by the front steps.
“I would have found you sooner if you’d told me your last name,” he said.
“Would you?” I said.
He jumped off the wall, and I walked toward him, and I dropped my bag at his feet.
“You know my friend tried to set me up with this girl, and I said, ‘I’m seeing someone. Or I will be once I find her again.’”
I probably would have married him right then. Michael always made me feel found.
• • •
I feel like someone is hammering nails into my temple. I turn my head to get away from it, and it feels like my skull is cracking open. I have to stay still. Everything is broken. Everything hurts.
“Hey.” There’s a voice in my ear, and someone is touching my head. “You’ve got to get up now. You’re gonna have to move.”
Hurts, I try to say, but it doesn’t come out.
“Jesus, Tommy. What did you do to her? Just get out of my way,” I hear another voice say. “Sweetie? It’s Daniel. I’m gonna help you, okay?”
I try to nod.
“Here’s the thing, honey. You’ve been poisoned.”
“She’s not poisoned,” Tommy says.
I just whimper. I have been poisoned. I think I might die.
“I’m gonna need you to drink something for me. Can you do that?”
“Uh-uh.” I can’t open my mouth at all. I think if I do, all my organs will come rushing out.
“We’ve got to sit her up,” Tommy says. He pushes past Daniel and slides onto the couch next to me. “Help me pull her up.”
“No, no, no, no, no,” I mumble as they pull me into a sitting position.
None of my muscles seem to be working, so they just prop me against Tommy, and he grabs me by the chin. “Open your eyes. You have to open your eyes.”
I do, but it hurts. It hurts so much. Daniel is smiling at me though, and he looks happy to see me. “Yay! Baby’s awake!” He claps. “Okay. Now I want you to drink this.” He hands the mug to Tommy. It’s clear I’m not holding anything. “You just take a sip.”
I shake my head. “I’ll throw up,” I say.
“Just try.” Tommy holds the mug to my lips. I try to swallow. I do swallow. But then he tips the mug into my mouth again and it’s too much. My stomach seizes, and I feel everything start to come back out. I slap my hands over my mouth, but it just runs through my fingers, down my shirt, all over Tommy. And then I start to cry. Again.
“Jesus Christ. Ah, god, get some towels,” Tommy says. I wish I were dead.
“Oh, honey.” Daniel pats me on the arm. “It’s okay, sweetie. Girls throw up in his lap all the time. You’ll feel better now.”
“Fucking towels, man!”
Daniel runs down the hall, and Tommy pats me halfheartedly on the back. “Don’t worry about it,” he says, but it doesn’t sound very sincere. When Daniel comes back, he has these fluffy white bath sheets. They look expensive, but he just wipes my face and hands, mops up what he can. Tommy dabs at himself with another towel and stands up. “Get her showered off and put her in the sauna. She needs to sweat some of this shit out.” He walks off down the hall, still wiping at his hands with the ruined towel.
Daniel gets me back to my room and turns the shower on, and I stand under the water for I don’t even know how long. I can’t lift my arms to wash my hair or anything. I just stand there, hoping I’ll come out clean.
When I finally come out, I find a robe hanging by the door and pull it on.
“You decent?” Daniel calls through the crack in the door, but he doesn’t really wait for me to answer. “Brush your teeth, sweetie.” He fusses over me like a mother, finding my toothpaste, combing my hair. “All right, let’s get you out
to the pool house. Sweat lodge time.”
• • •
It’s early. The sky is a dusty blue and the sun’s just barely over the horizon. In the pool house, the sauna is on but empty. Daniel plants me on the bench and promises he’ll be right back. I let my head fall back against the wall and close my eyes, waiting.
I hear the door open, but I don’t bother moving.
“How’re you doing?” It’s Tommy’s voice this time. I wish he weren’t here. I don’t want to look at him. I don’t want him to look at me. I keep my eyes closed and just shake my head, and I feel him sit on the bench next to me.
“You’ll live,” he says, sighing. I finally lift my head and turn to look at him. He’s bent over, resting his weight on his knees. He’s just got a towel on, fresh from the shower. His hair is wet, falling forward around his face. He glances up at me. He looks tired. He looks wrung-out. “Sometimes I have bad ideas.” He shrugs.
Just then, Daniel comes back with two mugs in his hands. “Coffee.”
“I don’t want coffee,” I say.
“You want this coffee,” he says. “This is prescription strength.” He hands me a mug and passes one to Tommy.
“I’ll check on you in twenty,” Daniel says. He reaches across and pats me on the knee. “You’re gonna be fine. But drink that. All of it.” He ducks out and closes the door.
It’s sweet as hell. Full of sugar. I don’t really do sugar. “I don’t really do sugar,” I say, half to Tommy, half to the mug.
“You couldn’t drink it without the sugar. It’s so full of Oxy, it would taste like shit.”
“It’s full of what?”
“OxyContin. He crushes the pills and stirs them in. Works faster that way.”
“Seriously?”
“Just drink it.”
I do. It helps. But the less I hurt, the worse I feel. “I’m so sorry about all of this.”
“You’re fine.” He rests his hand on the back of my neck, gives it a quick squeeze. “I’m the one who fed you all that scotch. I knew where we’d end up.”
“You must think I’m such an asshole.”
He laughs. “Yesterday, I thought you were an asshole. Today, I like you. Today, you’re just as fucked-up as the rest of us.”
I turn my head to look at him. He’s folded over again, resting his elbows on his knees, holding his coffee in both hands. He has a tattoo on his right shoulder, and this close I can see how some of the edges are blurring, like it wasn’t outlined very well.
“You didn’t like me yesterday?”
“No.” He shakes his head. “But I like you now.”
• • •
By the time Daniel retrieves me from the sauna, the headache has subsided into a dull but persistent throbbing. “How are we doing?” he says.
“Mortified.”
“No reason for that. Usually, he gets them naked at night, and they spend the next day crying. This is much classier. You’re raising the bar.”
“Stop it,” I say.
“Seriously, honey, Tommy told me about your husband. You needed a little meltdown. You earned it.” He kisses me on the cheek. “I’m going to take you back to your room, and we’re going to get you dressed, and I have some drops for your eyes, and by the time we come back out, you’ll look totally human, totally beautiful.”
• • •
I do not feel totally beautiful by the time I come back out for breakfast, but I do feel like I can stand up at least. From the hall, I can see that Alan and Joe are already at the table, and when I see them, I start to panic.
“Jesus.” I turn to Daniel. “Do they know?”
Daniel follows my gaze to where they’re sitting and shakes his head. “First of all, there’s nothing to know. You had a few drinks and cried about your very legitimate grief. So what? And second”—he leans in like he’s telling a secret—“those two were so shitfaced last night, they wouldn’t have noticed if the two of you had been fucking on the coffee table.”
I let out the breath I’ve been holding, and for a second I rest my head on his shoulder. He smells clean, like soap and shampoo. He smells like someone who has his shit together.
When I reach the table and sit down, the two of them don’t even look up. Alan is holding a cup of coffee up to his mouth but not drinking it, and Joe’s eyes are closed. Daniel sets a plate in front of me—fried potatoes, eggs, a piece of toast. Daniel points at the fork and says, “Eat.” He brings me a new cup of coffee. This time it’s black and sugarless. By the time I’ve eaten half the toast, Tommy walks in.
“Good morning,” he says loudly, and everyone sort of grumbles in return. “Sorry to make you all get up so early. Especially you two.” He waves his hand at Alan and Joe. “You guys look like you had a lot of fun last night.” Alan kind of half smiles and nods in agreement. “Either way, we have a lot of work today. Alan has some potential investors coming in tomorrow. They’re gonna want to see some pages.”
• • •
By noon we have exactly two of those pages, and Tommy says there’s no way we can break for lunch. He has Daniel arrange for the housekeeper to put out a tray of food on a side table.
“Grab something,” he says to all of us, “and then it’s back to work.”
I don’t feel like eating, and he obviously doesn’t either, but Alan and Joe have finally recovered enough to be hungry, and they converge on the table like vultures. Tommy’s been standing most of the morning, moving from me to Joe, looking over our shoulders, pointing at our screens, shaking his head. Now he sits down next to me. “How’s your head?” he asks.
I shrug. “Better. You?”
“I’ve had better days,” he says, “but I’ve had worse too.”
“I’m really so sorry,” I say.
He makes a dismissive face. “Forget about it. It’s nothing.”
“It’s humiliating.”
“What is?” He narrows his eyes like he’s concentrating. “Oh, right.” He reaches over and raises a strand of my hair like he’s inspecting it. “Did you get all of that shit out of your hair?”
I slap his hand away. “Fuck you. God.”
“Hey, you’re the one who wants to wallow in it. We can wallow. I’m all over the wallowing.”
“You are a dick,” I say, but I do laugh.
“I’m a goddamn saint. I totally took care of you. I didn’t even have sex with you when you were passed out.”
“Wow,” I say. “Thank you for not being a sexual predator.”
“What?” He looks at me like I’ve lost my mind. “Have you not seen me? I mean, c’mon. Consent is implied.”
“Seriously?” I say. “Do you come by asshole naturally, or do you have to work at it?”
“I don’t really have to work for much of anything, honey.” And I know he’s just teasing, but the expression on his face, his eyebrow slightly raised, his tongue just at the corner of his lips, this expression is totally filthy. I think I might blush.
“I must have forgotten,” I say. “You’re like the sexiest man alive, right?”
He presses his lips together and holds up three fingers. “Technically, no. Not this year. This year I’m number three.”
“Hard to believe,” I say, shaking my head. Hard to believe.
• • •
Joe looks right at Tommy. “I think we need to go back to the name thing. I don’t care what little miss poet says, the main character in a movie needs a name. How ’bout Matilda?”
Tommy sighs and rubs at his brow.
“She can’t have a name,” I say. “She’s representative of all women.”
“This isn’t some art film. We want this shit to sell, right?” Joe looks at Tommy. “Or you just doing this for fun?”
I take a deep breath, pinch my lips with my teeth. “Okay, but you know what? The creature didn’t have a name in Frankenstein either.”
“Yeah,” he says, his voice a little louder, “and that’s why everyone thinks the monster’s named Franken
stein because people need a fucking name.”
“No, it’s because they’re illiterate.” I toss my pen on the table. It clicks against my glass, and Joe looks pointedly at it and then raises his eyebrows.
“Enough,” Tommy says. He raises his left hand, his palm pressed flat in Joe’s direction. “We’ve wasted enough time on this. Don’t bring it up again.”
Joe throws his hands up. “I don’t even know why I’m here. Bitch is always right, huh? What, did she blow you or something?”
I open my mouth, but Tommy sits up straight and puts his hand on my arm.
“You got a problem, Joe?” he says. “You feel like you need some more attention?” He’s raising his voice. “You want to fucking blow me? Or you want to do your goddamn job?”
• • •
By the end of the day, my back is in knots. Daniel slipped me something he said was ibuprofen over dinner, but I’m pretty sure it was something much stronger. Still, it’s like the stress of holding up my head is just too much. I roll my shoulders, twist my neck.
“Hurts, doesn’t it?” Tommy says.
We’re inside, and I’m sitting cross-legged on the couch. It’s raining, but it’s still hot, and the back door is open. We’re watching the water spill across the terrace in warm waves, listening to it drum. Tommy says it won’t last long. He walks to the window and leans against the wall, looking out.
I lift my hair up off my neck and massage it, try to force out the tension. Alan and Joe are at the bar fixing tomato juice and beer. “You want one?” Alan yells, but I just wince, and Tommy shakes his head.
“I am not a believer in that hair-of-the-dog shit,” Tommy says, but he’s not talking loud enough for them to hear. He walks back and sits on the arm of the couch, resting his feet on the seat beside me. “You gotta walk through the pain sometime, and you may as well do it now, or when you wake up, it’ll just be sitting there waiting for you.”