I Take You

by Eliza Kennedy

“You killed Mattie?”

  “Oops!” she cries. “I mean ‘the former.’ I get those mixed up. Former, latter. Left, right. Up, down.” She picks up her new drink. “Me, the rest of the world.”

  “I’m sorry I put you through all that.”

  “Heyyyyyyy.” She throws an arm around me and hugs me, a little too tightly. “Imma maida honor. ‘Swhy I’m here, right? To help plan wedding, help unplan wedding. Whatevs, babyloves. I’m here for you.”

  “Guess what?” I say. “I think I saved my job.”

  “Praise Jesus!” She slaps the bar. “I was worried we were gonna have one less lawyer in the world.”

  She downs another drink, which, oddly, seems to sober her up a little. She turns to me with serious eyes. “He’s waiting for you upstairs.”

  I set my glass down carefully. “He’s still here?”

  She nods. “What are you going to do?”

  “No idea. What do you think I should do?”

  “I don’t know, honey.”

  This is unprecedented. “You have no advice?”

  “Champagne!” she cries.

  The bartender places a flute in front of me.

  I shake my head. “Thanks, Lloyd, but I don’t think she meant to order it.”

  “No, but he did,” the bartender says, pointing behind me.

  Freddy and I turn. My father is sitting at a table in the corner. He raises his glass to us.

  “Well whup me with a hickory stick!” Freddy cries, touching her hair. “How do I look?”

  I slip off my stool. “I’ll be right back.”

  Dad looks wonderful, as usual. Fresh and well rested, although maybe a bit melancholy.

  He kicks out a chair for me. “Have a drink with your old father.”

  I sit down. “How was your day, Dad?”

  He gazes into his champagne. “To be honest, little one? It’s been a bit of a trial.”

  “Last I checked you were doing fine.”

  “Oh, you mean the business with your mother and Ana and Jane? That’s all been sorted out. But I’m afraid Trina has asked me for a divorce.”

  “What? She adores you!”

  “She did.” He tops off our glasses, shaking his head gravely. “But it seems I recently e-mailed her a snapshot that was rather …” He hesitates. “Unfortunate.”

  “Oh, Dad.”

  “I know, darling, I know.” He pauses. “I’m afraid this one is going to be expensive.”

  “No prenup?”

  He glances away.

  “You’re a true romantic, Henry.”

  “It has always been my weakness.” He gestures to the bartender, who brings another bottle of champagne. My father pops it open and pours. We raise our glasses, clink and drink.

  “Well, enough about me!” I say. “What’s going on with you, Dad?”

  He puts his glass down and leans forward, taking my hands in his. “I’m sorry, little one. You’ve been having a hell of a time, haven’t you? Is there anything I can do?”

  I look into his beautiful green eyes. Should I ask his advice? This is usually a terrible idea, but maybe in this case it’s the right thing to do. After all, I’m basically sitting across from my future self here.

  What the hell? It’s worth a shot.

  “There’s so much I don’t know, Dad. Can a person change? Should a person change? Can a solid relationship be built on a foundation of lies? Am I doomed to repeat your mistakes, only backwards and in high heels? Is the purpose of sex to make each other miserable? Can marriage ease that misery? Can one person ever be enough? Are we all just animals? If you want to help me, answer these questions. It’s pearls of wisdom time, Henry. Give me everything you’ve got.”

  My father looks totally befuddled.

  “Let me simplify,” I say. “Should Will and I get married, or should we go our separate ways?”

  Henry fills his glass again and waits for the foam to settle. He sips thoughtfully. “Do you love him?”

  “Yes. But it’s more complicated than that.”

  “I’m not sure it is, little one. You met someone, and you fell in love. Will it last forever? That question, like the others you posed, is interesting but ultimately unhelpful. I think you said it best yourself, last night. We need a new commitment to honesty. I was never truthful with any of my wives. And if you can’t be honest with the person you chose to be closest to in the entire world, why did you choose them? How real can that closeness be?” He takes another sip. “If, on the other hand, you can be honest, if you can show Will your true self, which must be a very, very difficult thing to do, you have a real chance. But only you can know if any of that is possible.”

  Henry actually said something meaningful. I can’t believe it. “Dad!” I cry. “You nailed it! Thank you!”

  “You’re welcome, darling.” He pats my hand. “Regardless, whatever decision you come to, I’m sure it will be the wrong one.”

  “What?”

  “Sorry, sorry!” he laughs. “I misspoke. The right one, I meant to say. Whatever decision you make will be the right one. I apologize, darling. I’m a bit …” His hand flutters to his temple.

  I put my head down on the table.

  “Is that your little friend from university?” he says.

  I look up. He’s staring at Freddy, who’s pretending not to notice.

  Dad smiles at her. “She’s grown rather attractive, hasn’t she?”

  I finish my drink and set the glass on the table. I stand up and pat him on the shoulder. “Henry? I don’t know what I’d do without you.” But I’ve already lost him—he’s gesturing to the bartender. “Same here, darling,” he murmurs. “Same here.”

  I walk back to Freddy and put my arms around her.

  “I need a favor,” I whisper.

  “Anything,” Freddy whispers back, gazing over her shoulder at my father.

  “Whatever happens tonight? I never, ever want to know about it.”

  She nods. The bartender sets a flute in front of her and pops open a dusty bottle. I kiss her cheek and walk out of the bar.

  SATURDAY

  28

  Inside the room, a couple of votive candles are burning on the desk. The doors to the balcony are open. Through the sheer curtains I see Will. He’s sitting with his feet propped on the railing. Holding a drink, looking out at the water.

  The door slams shut behind me. He stands and comes into the room, stopping a few feet away. He hasn’t shaved. He’s wearing jeans and a t-shirt. His feet are bare.

  “Hi,” he says.

  “Hi.”

  “How was your day?” he asks.

  “Fine. What have you been up to?”

  “Writing to you.” He’s watching me warily. “Talking with you. Thinking about you.”

  I nod slowly. “Is that it?”

  “That’s it.”

  I drop my bag on the floor. “Prove it.”

  I throw my arms around his neck and kiss him so hard I taste blood. He staggers and we fall onto the bed, me on top. I hike up my skirt and straddle him. His lip is bleeding. I lean over him and kiss it softly.

  “Poor baby,” I whisper. “I hurt you.”

  He smiles. “That’s okay! I—”

  I put a finger to his lips. I say, “Time for a little truth telling.”

  I start unbuttoning my suit jacket.

  “I’ve had a hard day, Will. A hard week, in fact.” I slip the jacket off my shoulders and let it fall to the ground. “I’ve spent a lot of time fretting about whether or not you and I should get married. A lot of time feeling guilty about the way I was treating you. A lot of time wishing I could change.”

  “But you don’t have to—”

  “Shh.” I unbutton my blouse and take it off. I unhook my bra and let it slide down my arms. I place Will’s hands on my breasts. I lean over him and he takes them in his mouth, lavishing attention on them with his lips and tongue and teeth. He tries to roll me over, but I pull back. I start unbuckling his belt. />
  “Now you, Will, have spent a lot of time telling me that I must feel shame. That I must regret who I am and how I behave.” I tug at the buttons of his jeans, and he lifts up his hips so that I can slide his pants down his legs, then his boxers. I stroke his cock with one hand. “And according to you, I feel this way because I’ve been brainwashed into thinking that monogamy is the only right way to love. Right?”

  “Can we talk about this later?” he asks breathlessly.

  I stop unzipping my skirt. “We need to talk about it now. If you want, we can get dressed and go downstairs to discuss it.”

  He puts my hand back on his cock. “Please keep talking.”

  I wiggle out of my skirt and panties. I help Will off with his t-shirt. I stretch out on top of him. I kiss him deeply on the mouth. Then I stop and look him in the eye.

  “The thing is, Will? You don’t have the full picture.” I kiss his throat and shoulders and chest. “Like I said, it’s complicated. Sometimes I feel shame. Sometimes I feel guilt. Sometimes I want to change. But sometimes,” I kiss his throat and shoulders and chest, “I don’t.”

  We’re both naked now. I move down his body and take his cock in my mouth. I slide my hands down his strong, slender legs. “You know what Emerson said about this, right?”

  Will stares down at me. “Emerson?”

  I look up at him. “Ralph Waldo Emerson.”

  “I know who Emerson is. I’m just … not really sure why we’re talking about him right now.”

  “He said, ‘A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.’” I stroke Will’s balls gently with my fingertips. “I don’t have a little mind, Will. I have a big mind. I’m complex, and contradictory, and messy, and inconsistent.” I kiss his cock. “I’m not an archetype, or a stereotype. I’m not a capital-W Woman, or a capital-H Human. You’ve oversimplified me. You’ve failed to see me as an individual. I find that extremely frustrating.” I put my mouth on him again.

  Will gasps. “My thinking was very reductive!”

  I look up at him, and through the tangle of my hair I can see him watching me. After a while I sit up, wipe my mouth with the back of my hand and smile at him. I trail my hand along the length of his body, admiring it. I straddle him again and lower myself slowly, feeling him fill me as he strains upward to reach as far into me as he can. I begin to move on him, pulling up so that he almost escapes me, then letting myself fall. He reaches for me again but I pin his arms to the bed.

  He says, “Lily?”

  And I say, my mouth close to his ear, “Shut up.”

  I kiss his mouth. “I don’t devote a lot of energy to wondering why I am the way I am. We spend so much time talking about men and women—what they want, what forces shape them, blah, blah, blah. Life is short, Will. People are unknowable. Enough with the pointless theorizing. We should enjoy ourselves.”

  “I couldn’t agree more,” he whispers.

  I release his arms and put his hands on my hips. “I wanted to tell you all that today, but I was busy.”

  He pulls my face down to his and kisses my lips.

  “I couldn’t figure out how to put it all in a text.”

  He covers my face with kisses.

  “I guess I’m not as talented at texting as you are.”

  That’s when he stops kissing me and smiles. He throws me onto my back. He grabs a handful of my hair and thrusts deep inside of me. I wrap my legs around his waist and my arms around his neck.

  It’s like the first three days all over again, but better, because I know who he is now, and he knows me. I know why it’s so good, why we’re so good together. We move to the sofa, where we knock over a lamp and it falls onto the floor. To an armchair. Against the wall, where we accidentally rip down the curtain.

  “You must think you’re really something,” I whisper. “All those women, falling all over you?”

  His lips are on my throat.

  “Is it the archaeologist thing? Is that catnip to the ladies?”

  “It doesn’t hurt.” He clears the top of the desk with a sweep of his arm and lays me across it. I pull him into me.

  In the bathroom he enters me from behind, standing so that we can see ourselves in the mirror.

  I say, “I was with a girl last night.”

  He rests his forehead on my back, groaning softly.

  “I could have had a threesome, with her and her husband,” I add. “But I was too heartbroken to go through with it.”

  He pulls out of me. I turn around and hop onto the edge of the sink. As he enters me again, he says, “Well you’re a fool, aren’t you?”

  I laugh. “Do you want to hear what happened?”

  “Yes,” he whispers.

  I smile at him in the mirror. “Yes what?”

  “Yes please. Please please yes!”

  So I tell him about Sandra, how I touched her and she touched me. I whisper it all in his ear. When I run out of things to say, I start inventing, all the things I would have done with her, and that she would have done to me, and that her husband would have done to both of us, and what we would have done to him. I keep talking. I tell Will all the things about me that he doesn’t know. What I like. What I love. What I’ve tried. What I haven’t. About the worst times and the best. I tell him my fantasies. I tell him how I do it when I’m alone. I tell him how sex makes me feel and why I love it. That another person’s hands on my body, or their mouth on my body, or their tongue, or their cock, makes me absolutely present, feels like something true and knowable and honest in a world that is otherwise totally unreal.

  We end up on the bed, our bodies twined together, crying out at the same time. He collapses on me, his head on my shoulder. He kisses my hair. We’re quiet for a long time as our breathing slows and our hearts stop pounding.

  I close my eyes. That was exactly what I needed. And exactly why I came upstairs. Maybe that was obvious. It was obvious to me.

  My mind drifts for a while. God, Will lasted forever. I close my eyes. I think about young men. They’re all right. They’re all so very, very—

  “Lily?”

  “Hmm?”

  He kisses my ear. “I’m glad you came back.”

  “Me too.” I open my eyes and push him off me. “And now I’d better be going.”

  “What?”

  I stroke his arm, from shoulder to elbow. I bend down and kiss his cheek. “I’m leaving.”

  “No!” he cries, sitting up. “We’re getting married.”

  I smile at him sadly. “We’re not.”

  He grips my hands tightly. “I thought we worked it all out. What about … what about what just happened?”

  “That was amazing. But it doesn’t mean we should get married.”

  “Don’t you—”

  “We can still see each other in New York,” I say. “We can date.”

  “I don’t want to date you! I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”

  “We can’t, Will. Even if we wanted to. I called off the wedding.”

  I try to pull my hands from his, but he won’t let me. “You didn’t! I talked to Mattie. I called off the calling-off. Please, Lily. I want to marry you. I want nothing more.”

  “You’re out of your mind.”

  “Don’t you love me?”

  “You know I do.”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  “What’s the problem?” I get out of bed and start searching for my clothes. “We’re the problem, Will. Everything you said today makes a lot of sense. Freedom, enjoying life to the fullest, refusing to control the one you love—all great principles to live by. And excellent reasons not to get married.” I find my blouse on the floor and shake it out.

  “No, they’re not! We’re—”

  “Just listen.” I start buttoning my blouse. “There’s a lot of stupid debate out there about who should be allowed to get married, right? But with the exception of a few wackos who think four people should be able to marry each other, or a man and his
goat, there’s not a lot of debate about what marriage is. It’s an agreement between two people. Two people who say, ‘You know what? It’s you and me, babe. Just the two of us, against the world.’ And if, at this late stage in human history, we can’t promise till death do us part, we can at least say that it’s for the foreseeable future. If that’s marriage—if marriage is about unity and togetherness and security—I think you need monogamy.”

  He starts to speak, but I raise a hand to stop him.

  “Life is full of uncertainty.” I reach under the coffee table for my skirt. “Full of peril. You don’t know when you’re going to get crushed by a telephone pole, or blown up in a terrorist attack, or run over by a truck. Or lose your job, or fall into a depression, or be diagnosed with cancer. Marriage is about safety. About having a port in the shitstorm of life. And I think that for a minimum level of comfort and happiness, you need to promise each other that your own bed is a sanctuary, that your partner’s body is yours, and yours his. I don’t think a marriage can work otherwise.”

  Yes, I am arguing for complete, total, full-on sexual fidelity.

  Turns out I’m a very traditional sort of person.

  Self-knowledge!

  “We can have a marriage that works,” Will says. “I know we can.”

  “We’re incapable of being faithful! You said so yourself, all day. What exactly do we have to offer each other in marriage?”

  “Everything that matters,” he replies.

  I step into my skirt and zip it up. “You only want to get married because it’s romantic.”

  “Wrong,” he says. “I want to get married because it isn’t.”

  He’s sitting cross-legged on the bed now. He gestures for me to join him, but I don’t.

  “Listen, Lily. Your parents’ marriages all failed miserably, right? Ninety-nine percent of all marriages fail, whether the people in them admit it or not. Do you know why? Because marriage, as it’s commonly conceived and understood, is kind of a scam.”

  I’m searching for my underwear, but this gives me pause. “Interesting phrasing.”

  “It’s true,” he insists. “You start out, and you don’t want to be alone. So you pick someone who attracts you. Someone who makes you hot, who makes you laugh. Who you can imagine spending your life with. And you fall in love. And it’s a swooning, blissful, fairy-tale romance. You expect the honeymoon to last forever, as you’ve been led to believe it will. But it doesn’t. It can’t. We have lives. Work. Family obligations. People talk a really good game about sharing a life, for better or for worse, but they don’t think past the honeymoon to the hard times and the routine. A good spouse is someone you can say anything to. Who you want to have kids with, share a house with. The person who will listen to your dreams and google your weird symptoms and call you on your bullshit and hold your hand as you die. That’s what marriage should be. Not some ridiculous fantasy of happily ever after.”