Lovely, Dark and Deep

by Amy McNamara

“Yeah,” I say. My voice cracks a bit, scratchy from disuse. “He doesn’t do voice mail. You either get one of his assistants or no one. No distractions.”

  “I felt like I should tell him what happened. Apologize—to you both.”

  Silence.

  He pauses a second.

  “I just wanted to see if you were all right. I thought I might hear from Lenore down at the bike shop by now. Or from your dad’s lawyer, or something.” Another laugh.

  “I’m fine.” I emphasize the word a bit, try to sound busy, or distracted, like I need to hang up and get back to whatever fascinating thing I might have been doing. “My bike took the hit worse than I did.”

  If he only knew. That little wreck in the woods was nothing, miniscule, a small stand-in for the kind of thing that can really happen. Does happen, all the time. The kind of thing I’m trying to forget. I look at my scabby palms.

  “I’m fine,” I say again in a clearer voice.

  Long pause.

  My heart’s pounding so hard I can hear it. Worry for a second that maybe he can too. I should say something else, I just can’t think of what. It occurs to me that I could just hang up.

  “I asked around,” he says finally, voice low, cautious. “I heard your dad’s out of the country.”

  Aha.

  “Yeah, so?”

  “So, I thought maybe . . .”

  I cut him off. “I’m an adult.”

  Excellent. Heat creeps up my cheeks.

  “Of course,” he says. “I don’t mean to bother you, I just wanted to be sure you were all right, alone over there—if you needed anything.”

  “I don’t.” I try to sound crisp, my mother’s daughter. Regain control.

  “I couldn’t stop thinking, what if you’d hit your head when you fell or something, and you—I just wanted to hear your voice.”

  Hear my voice? Did he just say that? My heart picks up, even faster. Defies me.

  “It was just my hands, when I fell. And my knee. And they’re fine now. Everything’s all right.” My throat catches.

  Nothing’s all right.

  It’s a joke to say that, ever, to anyone. Tears rise up inside me like a rebel army. A flood after a drought. I am not going to cry.

  He hears everything. “You don’t sound fine. I don’t mean to pry, but you don’t sound fine. And I know most of your dad’s assistants left town when he did. This is a small place; people might leave you in peace, but they know everyone’s business.”

  “I have to go,” I say.

  I hang up and kick the pillow away from me. Now I wish I had that damn bike. I’m lost in the center of my bedroom for a second. Can’t figure out what I should do. One thing is clear, I can’t stay inside another minute. I grab my phone, earbuds, and pull on some running clothes. My hands shake so badly I can hardly tie my shoes. I don’t lock the door. I’m out of the house, across the main road and into the woods before I notice it’s nearly dark.

  no-person

  I RUN UNTIL I CAN’T.

  No music. Just the sound of my breath and the few tall weeds and low branches whipping lightly at me as I pass through. My skinned knee is bleeding again, sticking to the inside of my sweats. The little light left from the dropping sun is mostly hidden by the boughs overhead. I am a no-person in the woods. The last person in the world. I try to let out a loud shout. A triumphant “Ha!” But it comes out strangled and small. And suddenly it doesn’t matter that the woods are huge around me. I can’t get lost in them. Can’t lose myself. I won’t ever be free of what happened.

  I sink inside. As low as ever. Lower. There is no escape. It’ll always be part of me. The car crunching and collapsing around us while we flipped and rolled. So loud, so fast, then so quiet, so long. The before and after. All of it. The stopped moments where time’s an airless, endless slide show.

  My throat aches, it’s been so long since I’ve cried. I am not going to cry. Won’t. Can’t. I haven’t, not once, not since Patrick and I started that last fight. A sob chokes up. Another on top of it. I bend over, press my palms hard against my thighs, and pant. The way I’ve pieced myself together since then feels like it’s breaking apart, and I might not get it together again.

  I turn around and run back toward the house. I feel like I might run off the edge of the world. Like I might need to. I trip a few times. Slip on the sweet-smelling wet leaf rot on the forest floor. Down on my torn knee, scraped hands. Snot runs down my face and tears streak hot against my temples. My eyes burn.

  I run faster, harder. Like I can outpace the dark. When I fall, I get back up again almost between strides. The pain’s good. Feels like a solution to something.

  The trees thin near the house, the shore. It’s working. I’ll outrun it. This time. Leave the black feeling in the woods. Box myself up again.

  I’m nearly at the front door when I notice his car. If I’d been paying attention, looking, I could have hidden, waited him out. I stop short. But he sees me. He’s at the door, about to knock, leaning on crutches. I wipe my face, fast. The snot. Tears.

  “Hi, I . . .” He stops, taking in the full picture. A worried look comes over his face.

  “I was jogging.” I try to sound casual, which considering how I look probably just makes me seem demented.

  I shrug like everything’s normal. He just looks at me.

  “Sorry I hung up like that. I needed to get out for a run.”

  I wave my hand vaguely toward the sky, like it explains everything. “It was getting dark.”

  Try to breeze past him to my door.

  He grabs me by the elbow. Firm.

  “Wait a second,” he says in a low, calm voice. “You’re upset.”

  He’s so close I can smell him. He smells good. Soap, maybe. Laundry detergent. His eyes, dark with concern. My stupid heart climbs in my chest again.

  I try to toss my hair, look casual, like he’s got it wrong.

  “No, I’m fine.”

  He doesn’t buy it. Shakes his head.

  “I don’t think you should be alone right now.”

  “So, come in a minute, then.” I yank my arm free.

  He follows me in.

  “I need to clean up,” I say, leaving him standing in the entry. I go back to my room. It’s a pit. My clothes are all on the floor. Haven’t kept up on laundry. I dig through a pile for a T-shirt, a hoodie, a pair of jeans. Give them a quick sniff. Nothing smells too bad. I go into the bathroom and face the mirror. Dirt streaks run down my cheeks from crying and my hair looks like I’ve been camping a few weeks.

  Cold water on my face makes my eyes reappear, but my hair’s hopeless. Whatever. It’s not like I care. Maybe this will put him off. Make him leave me alone. I finger-comb it into a ponytail.

  When I come back out, he’s still standing by the front door, leaning against it, looking polite but concerned. God, how many times have I seen that look on people’s faces in the last few months? I wonder if I scare him. The idea almost makes me laugh. Maybe he thinks I’m crazy. Maybe I am.

  “Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to leave you standing there. Come in.”

  I motion to the living room. My dad has a lot of art, pieces he’s collected over the years, stuff from friends, but other than that, the place looks like a man lives in it. Alone. Battered couch and an old red velvet overstuffed armchair. Stacks of books like outcrops on the floor. At least a month’s worth of old newspapers. I step over a pile of them near the windows. Honestly, it’s a relief after the careful elegance of my mother’s town house. No cleaning crew here.

  Cal crosses the living room on those crutches. Looks out the wall of windows to the Atlantic. Black night outside, but the house is dark and you can kind of see out onto the water, the waxing moon starting to mirror its slivered self on the sea.

  “I forgot how great this little place is,” he says. “I was a kid the last time I was in here.” He walks back across the room, sits on the sagging couch, and lays the crutches near him on the floor.

&nb
sp; “I loved it as soon as I saw it,” I say. Look out the window, anywhere but at him. Pretend I wasn’t just staring. Wondering why he uses crutches when it looks like he walks just fine.

  All the things the old me would have said drift and float around me, twinkly and insignificant as tinsel. She trails me, frivolous, unaware. She’s busy thinking about what she can tell him about herself to seem interesting. And what she should hold back.

  “I don’t remember you here when your dad moved in,” he says, probably hoping I’ll say something, at least try to have a conversation. “He had a little party. Our family came. I remember running around the place with my brother.”

  “They split up—I was little. My dad left her—us—to come up here and work.”

  I try to seem casual. Sound normal. So he’ll see I’m okay and leave. Forget what I looked like at the door. Not that I really even care what he thinks. I don’t. Won’t.

  I click on a small lamp and our view of the water disappears into black. Now the window’s a picture of us. I turn away from it. Sit on the wide arm of the chair next to the couch.

  “Our house is basically an earlier design of this,” he says, playing along, like he didn’t just find me in the driveway looking crazy. “My father’s work got simpler over the years. Every project a little better, a scaling back of the last.”

  Dead silence. That ghost girl’s gone. I can’t make small talk. I look around the room.

  His eyes follow mine. Doesn’t seem uncomfortable with the quiet—unlike most people. He takes in the pitched ceiling and the dinged-up bleached wide plank floor.

  “And he let your dad have his say on a lot of the details in here, this has a wilder, more organic feel to it than most of his houses. They collaborated on this one, I think.”

  “Wild and organic,” I say. “That’s my dad. A force of nature.” But he doesn’t mess with how other people live, like my mother does. Never tries to make me do things or change who I am.

  Cal keeps his eyes on me in this calm, still way that makes me shift on the chair, talk more than I mean to.

  “Do you live with him? Your father?” I ask. It’s a stupid question, he’s obviously older than I am. There’s no way he still lives with his parents.

  One corner of his mouth lifts, makes me feel appraised and found to be young. “No. My dad’s in Montreal. He’s semiretired. Still does an occasional house.”

  “And your mom?”

  “Dead.”

  I can’t win. I shouldn’t even try.

  “Oh. I’m sorry,” I say. “About your mother.”

  The words are clunky in my mouth. Inadequate.

  He shrugs. “It was a long time ago.”

  I nod slowly. Try to seem less nervous and idiotic than I feel, like I’m not counting the seconds until I can go hide in my room.

  “My dad remarried. They moved to Montreal. Sent us to boarding school. My little brother and me. The place up here’s kind of a family house, for holidays and vacations.”

  We sit in silence. I’m getting good at that. His eyes are slate blue, the color of his shirt. He looks at me like he can see right into me. Like he might slip a hand in and unlock everything.

  I have to look away.

  My neck tightens, throat aches. Patrick looked at me like that when we first went out. I swallow, hard.

  “I-I’m fine.” I say for the thousandth time, even though he didn’t ask. It’s his eyes, searching my face. Makes me feel like I’m supposed to say something.

  “I was upset before. But I’m fine now. And I wasn’t upset because of your car or my bike or anything like that. I’m not hurt. You didn’t hurt me.”

  My words fly out in a rush. He listens like I’m saying something interesting, like he has all night.

  “How are you sick?” I ask.

  Curveball. I’ll do anything to get the focus off me.

  He’s surprised. His posture shifts. Hardens. He gives the crutches a dark glance.

  “I have MS.”

  A look of such pure anger flashes across his face it’s like lightning.

  I blink. Silence. I don’t know what to say.

  He looks at the ceiling, then back at me. Pushes his hair back with one hand, shrugs. “I probably shouldn’t have been driving that day. I was going too fast. Blowing off steam.”

  “Oh, it’s fine,” I say, embarrassed. Stupid, stupid.

  He looks around the room for a second, then back at me, pained.

  “You have no idea how bad I feel. I had to check on you. And then you sounded so awful on the phone. I knew you were alone. That your dad was in Europe.”

  Caught. I shrug. What does he want me to say? That I needed him to check on me? That all I really need is a new friend and everything will be okay? Or maybe I should stick to the truth. Tell him I want him out of here, that I just want everyone to leave me the hell alone?

  “I heard rumors about why you came to live here. I couldn’t not come by.”

  Of course. Rumors. He’s heard rumors.

  I stand. Maybe he’ll get the hint, leave.

  He doesn’t. I’m uncomfortable standing there. Not sure what to do with my arms.

  “Can I get you something to drink?” I ask, finally. “My dad has a few beers in the fridge, or seltzer? Soda? Or tea? I could make tea?”

  I need water, something. I go over to our little kitchen. At this point, if Dad had vodka in the house I’d pour a glass of that and drink it down. The liquor’s all in the studio.

  “Sure,” he says. “Seltzer’s great.” He’s smiling at me again. A half smile, like he knows something about me, like we’ve known each other awhile.

  I get myself a huge glass of the weird, iron-tasting well water that comes out of our tap. Drink it down. I don’t remember the last time I was so thirsty.

  He puts his hand on my arm when I pass him the seltzer. Looks right into my eyes.

  “Sit.”

  He pulls me down on the couch next to him. I can smell his skin, maybe his shampoo, something great. The heat of our bodies crosses the small space between us. For a second I think he’s going to kiss me. He doesn’t. Just sits next to me, quiet. I look away again.

  “What have you heard?” I ask, chewing my bottom lip. I move away slightly, draw my knees up against my chest, and lock my arms around them. I’m a fortress. “You said you’d heard rumors . . .”

  “Your dad told someone you were in an accident but that you weren’t hurt. That you were coming here awhile, before college.”

  Silence again.

  Like he’s waiting for me to say something. Spill. Not a chance. The thought of it makes me sick.

  “Not many secrets in a small town, are there?” I offer, finally.

  He looks at me, apologetic.

  My hands and arms start to shake a bit and lose their heat. Loosen their grip around my knees. I look at them, surprised.

  His eyes follow mine, and he lifts one of my clammy palms, traces lightly over the gouged-up spots with his finger.

  “God, your poor hands.”

  I try to keep breathing normally. Pull my hand away.

  “That’s not just from you . . . our . . . the bike and the car. You didn’t . . .”

  I can’t get enough air again. I hate this feeling. I try to relax a second.

  “I fell tonight, while I was running. I . . .”

  My breath catches. I look up at the ceiling to keep a hot tear in at the edge of my eye. It rolls down my cheek anyway. Stupid tear. I have to move away from him.

  “I don’t really want to do this,” I say, standing up, stepping away from the couch. “I came here to be quiet and not do this. I don’t want to do this anymore.”

  “Do what?” He looks at me like he’s trying to understand. More and more people talk to me in the voice you use when you talk to a disturbed person.

  I back away a bit more, move closer to the windows. I can’t be near him. The ocean pounds the rocks behind me like a giant heart.

  beh
ind

  a

  cemetery

  wall

  I LOOK AT Cal’s face like it’s far away. A trick that came to me in the hospital. Everything’s distant. Out there.

  My heart eases up a little. A few seconds like that and I’m almost calm. Head back to my safe perch on the arm of the chair. From there I look at the air just above his head so I don’t have to see his eyes.

  I can play it in my head anytime. In full color. The last six months of my old life. Can’t stop it, really.

  Our senior prank. Posting an ad in the New York Times Real Estate section with Patrick, listing the school as a home for sale by owner. Tennis courts, darkroom, roof deck. The Headmistress’s phone ringing off the hook. It was lame, but we thought we were funny. Retro, even, for being so lame. I was confident, sure of myself, of the unfurling of my glorious future. Then I wrecked it. Us. Everything. Upside down in the car, Patrick dead next to me. Crushed window glass sprinkled over us like dewdrops on grass. The frogs singing their endless night song.

  “Whatever my dad said is right,” I say, finally, picking at a bit of the tattered and matted velvet beneath me.

  He’s waiting to hear something. If I tell, maybe he’ll leave. An unfair transaction.

  “You probably know everything there is to know, anyway.” I’m trying to sound casual. “I was in a wreck with my boyfriend, and he died. But I’m fine. Now. I mean I was—I am.”

  I straighten my spine a little and try to imagine my eyes are turning to stone so I can’t really see the look on his face. Another hospital trick. I wish he’d quit looking at me like that.

  In my head, I’m running through the rules of normal social interaction, asking him in my mother’s overbright voice, “So, what brings you up here?” Tit for tat. We’ll play conversational ping-pong. The little trading of details; this about me, that about you. All those stories you swap so you can pretend you actually know each other. Only what’s the point? There is no point.

  I swallow and it feels like I’m going to choke. I cough a little and take a sip of water. Breathe.

  Cal sits silent, leans forward a little, forearms on his knees, holding his water, looking at me. Waiting, like he’s ready to hear more, like I’m going to tell him everything.