The Light in the Wound

by Christine Brae

  “To live without you is to be robbed of love and what is life without it? To live without you is death to me my love, but some call it life.”

  —Rumi

  Alex came over almost every other evening to keep me company. If you could call it that. Many nights were spent sitting by the front porch with me staring into space and him holding my hand. Some nights there would be bribes of rib sandwiches and chocolate shakes; on other nights, he knew to just hold me while I soaked his designer shirts with my tears. How long does it take for the shock to wear off? The physical pain was immense — I was sick to my stomach every minute of every day. No matter how much I tried, I still couldn’t believe that it had been so easy for Jesse to walk away.

  “Did you know that he had James beaten up after you guys watched that play together?” Alex asked out of the blue one night.

  “Alex, you really shouldn’t be listening to rumors. People just like to talk about him all the time.”

  “James is a friend from high school. He told me that Jesse’s friends threatened to hurt him even more if he didn’t stay away from you.”

  I nervously reached for the cigarette dangling from his lips and inhaled deeply. “Why didn’t you tell me this before? I seriously thought James just got annoyed with me about something. I never imagined Jesse would take it that far.”

  “What was the point?” He sounded resigned to the fact that it wouldn’t have made a difference. He was right.

  “A, please, please extend my apologies to James. I’m too embarrassed to reach out to him, knowing that I caused him so much trouble.”

  About two weeks later, I stood outside the school waiting for my ride home. As I walked down the sidewalk searching for Bernard, I saw Alex sitting on the hood of his car, fidgeting with his phone. He looked up and hopped off with the most beguiling smile. As he walked a few steps toward me, it warmed my heart to see him there.

  “Hi?” I asked with a puzzled look on my face.

  Two college girls walked by and did a double take. Hot guy hopping off of a Range Rover.

  “I told Bernard I’d take care of picking you up today. I had a meeting at the Taft Avenue office and thought I’d surprise you. I figured we’d grab a bite to eat on the way to your house,” he said as he walked over to open the car door for me.

  “Oh, that sounds good.” I smiled as I got into the passenger seat. “I don’t have any homework, so thank you for coming to get me.” We were quiet for a while listening to music until I asked, “Do you wanna swing by to check whether they have anything new at Bergamo? I wanted to try out some of their vintage stuff but they’re so expensive. Maybe they have a sale,” I rambled.

  “What about going to the GAP? They have some stuff out from their boutique collection, I saw them the other day,” he suggested.

  “I feel like they won’t fit me well. The more expensive brands make me feel more confident,” I confessed.

  “Isa, you look amazing in anything you wear. Old or new. Cheap or Pricey. It’s the way you carry yourself, your demeanor. Your fashion sense.” He turned to look directly at me as he said that.

  “Eyes on the road, A.” I giggled, as I gently pushed his cheek to refocus his eyes in front of the car.

  Ten minutes later, we pulled into the parking lot at Wal-Mart. “What are we doing here?” I asked, confused.

  “Proving a point,” he said, as he exited the car and ran over to my side to let me out.

  “You’ve been here before?” I wondered out loud, sincerely surprised.

  “Isa, everyone goes to Wal-Mart. My mom likes to get her kitchen accessories from here,” Alex replied, obviously very amused with me. He took my hand and led me through the parking lot and into the store. I had never been in a Wal-Mart before. It was surprisingly well organized, despite being huge and overwhelmingly full of people. Alex never let go of my hand as we wove past aisles of stuff. I would tug him to stop every now and then, as I picked up a thing or two that interested me. When we finally stopped at the women’s section, he pulled out a few dresses and playfully handed them to me.

  “What are we doing?” I asked, still confused about the point he was trying to make.

  “Isa, humor me, try these dresses on. I’ll wait out here for you.”

  I nodded my head in acquiescence. There were actually two or three pieces that I could actually see myself wearing. Inside the fitting room, I tried them on, until I settled on a pretty white, sleeveless summer dress that was held at the waist by a tan wrap-around belt. As I walked out of the fitting room, Alex grabbed my hand and shoved me toward one of the full-length mirrors. He mischievously checked my neck and arms. “No hives here. You’re not breaking out just because it’s a Wal-Mart dress.” He laughed.

  “What is your point?” I asked, exhausted by all his energy.

  “My point is that you look just as beautiful, just as sexy and just as well put together as you do every single day, no matter what brand you wear. This dress doesn’t define your loveliness. You do.” A moment of understanding passed between us as his gaze turned heated and his eyes swept over me from head to toe. I was familiar with that look, but he wasn’t the person whose eyes it belonged to. I knew just how to bring him back from his thoughts.

  “Aww, you’re so sweet, A. Are you going to buy me this dress?”

  “I don’t have $32.99 on me,” he quickly retorted.

  We walked out of the store with that dress, two picture frames and a bag of Twizzlers.

  Three months to the day Jesse and I broke up, I was in the teacher’s lounge in the College of Economics, performing a practice run of my thesis presentation. It was pretty late in the evening because I had to wait for my professor to finish with a 7:00 P.M. class. We worked together for a little over an hour and decided to call it a night. I was packing up my posters and shutting down my computer when Jesse walked into the lounge and stopped dead in his tracks. His face turned white as a sheet, like he had seen a ghost. I nodded and gave him the tiniest bit of a smile, while continuing to pack my things up to leave. There were still a few professors in the lounge, which made it easier for me to avoid any conversation and head out the door. He quickly turned on his heels and followed me out.

  “Isabel, wait up.” His strides were so huge that he caught up with me in no time.

  “I have to go home.” I was breathless, not from walking but from being intoxicated by his presence. I am an addict and he is my drug. Even the tiniest bit of contact with my skin, the proximity of the hairs on his arm brushing against me … I was losing it.

  He grabbed my elbow. “Isabel, please stop. Please talk to me.”

  “Why now, Jesse? Why? What do you want from me?”

  “Can we talk for a few minutes?” Those eyes. Smoky gray, pleading eyes.

  I walked over to the stairway and sat on the top step. “Okay, talk.” Oh my God. What a wimp I am. I’m going to cry, I’m going to start sobbing any minute now. Does he not know that my wounds are still raw? That nothing that’s happened in the past three months has helped stop the bleeding?

  He descended backwards a few steps and remained standing, one hand on the rail and the other in his pocket as he leaned in close to my face. “You’re still so beautiful. I miss you so much. I haven’t stopped thinking about you. I am so sorry.”

  I turned my head away. “Well, you accomplished what you worked so hard for, what you gave everything up for. Congratulations, by the way. Tell Katrina congrats as well.” He called her Kathy. She was Katrina to me.

  “Please, Issy.”

  “Don’t call me that. You can’t call me that!” I sobbed freely, swatting his hand as he tried to touch me. He glanced around nervously, making sure that no one was around to witness this scene.

  He lifted me up, carried me over his shoulder, and kicked open a door right by the stairwell. Great. How convenient, a utility room. Why did it seem that Jesse knew every single secluded area in this school?

  He placed me back down on my feet and backed
me up against the wall. His breath was fiery hot, and I was hyperventilating. He gently held my face, his hands underneath my hair.

  “Look at me. There’s never been anyone else. I tried to give you the time that you needed during the campaign. I was going to call you after we won the elections, but things were just so crazy. I didn’t want to ask you back and not have the time to show you how much you mean to me. You have to know that I am doing all of this for us. For you and me. For your family to respect me … and to assure them that I can take care of you. You have a future that has been set in stone from the day you were born. I don’t have that. There’s a lot of proving that I have to do for myself, for my family and for your family. Can’t you be with me through all of this? In the end, it will be you and me anyway.”

  “But I told you I didn’t need any of this. That all I needed was you. And you left me for your ambitions. When will I make it to the top of your priority list, Jesse?” I cried.

  “Isabel, you are my priority. Look at the big picture here. These are merely steps in getting to a future together.”

  “Why would you assume I was going to wait?”

  “I didn’t. It killed me every time someone mentioned seeing you. I tried not to care, I really did. Dane Williams once mentioned that you were the hottest girl in his advanced Macro class and Ryan had to hold me back from hitting him.”

  “You can’t keep attacking everyone who wants to talk to me. You don’t own me.”

  “But I want to own you, Issy. I want you to be mine. Only mine.”

  I honestly didn’t know what to think, what to believe. I knew that I forgave him the moment I saw him in the teacher’s lounge. I was lost and he was the only sense of direction I had ever known. Where would my roads lead if not straight back into his arms?

  I want to be owned. Being owned means never being alone.

  “What do you want, Jesse? What do you want from me?”

  “I want you. I want you every day. I want to be with you. I want to be beside you, around you, in you. There is no one else.”

  I let him kiss me. I missed his lips. His smell. His mussed up, unruly hair. His kisses started out tenderly and turned more urgent as his hands roamed freely across my body.

  “Issy,” he groaned as he lifted my skirt and pulled down my panties. A tiny gasp escaped his lips as he knelt down in front of me. “Come back to me, Issy. Be with me. Let me drink you. Let me taste you. I live for your taste. Please, Issy.” And his mouth was on me, teasing me, sucking me. It felt like he couldn’t get enough of my wetness, which felt like an overflowing faucet at that point.

  I cupped his face and pulled it toward mine.

  “See how good you taste,” he whispered, as he kissed me hungrily.

  “I want you, Jess. Please. Now.”

  With that he lifted me up by my buttocks, pinned me against the wall and sat me on top of him. We moved in unison and I was filled to the brink with him and with love for him. He looked into my eyes, never breaking his stare.

  “Fuck, Iss, you feel so good. I can’t hold on much longer, I have to let go!”

  An hour later, we were home in bed together. We talked about the past three months and the things we missed while we were apart. I didn’t have much of an update — my life had been in limbo for pretty much the entire time. But not for him. In the three months since we had last seen each other, he had managed to get a job offer with a large multinational company with travel opportunities abroad during the first three months of his starting date.

  “Congratulations, Jesse! I am so proud of you!” I leaned over to kiss him.

  “Let’s make this work, Issy, okay? I love you,” he whispered as he started to undress me again.

  “I love you too, Jess.”

  I slept fitfully that night and wondered what it was that bothered me about him being there. Jesse held me tightly as he slept, the weight of his arms reminding me that he was mine. I was supposed to be at peace, my world was going to be complete once more. And yet I felt anxious and afraid, knowing that I would never recover if he ever left me again.

  The next day, Jesse had to leave to attend an early morning meeting at school. We had a quick breakfast together, and he promised to pick me up after another thesis meeting that night.

  “I need to fatten you up a bit, babe. It looks like you’ve lost a ton of weight,” he said, as he held me close before walking out the door.

  Just as his car drove out, Alex’s car pulled into the driveway.

  “Was that Jesse I just saw leaving here?” He looked baffled, shaking his head in confusion.

  “I took him back, Alex,” I said.

  He turned right around, got in his car and drove away. As I stood in the driveway trying to make sense of what had just happened, my phone rang.

  “Hi.”

  “Isa, just tell me. What made you do that?”

  “Do what? I belong with him, A. I love him.”

  “It’s too soon. You were just getting better.” His tone was clipped, almost scolding.

  “That’s not true. I’m better now that he’s back.”

  I was taken aback by the absurdity of it all. I was defending my decision to Alex?

  “Whatever.”

  “Why are you so upset?”

  Silence.

  The next few weeks seemed to fly by with Jesse in my life once again. Not that anything had drastically changed. I was so busy working on my thesis that it took the pressure off of us trying to make sense of his crazy schedule. I heard from Alex a week later, apologizing for having been too busy to call or text or write. Betty was more blatant about his absence than he was. But that’s why I loved her so much.

  “You know he’s pissed, don’t you? He really can’t stand what Jesse did to you, and he thinks it’s going to happen again,” she said as we locked arms while strolling through the mall one night after class.

  “He should be more supportive than that. He saw how what happened killed me, why isn’t he glad that I’m happy again?”

  “Because he lived it. He saw firsthand how it killed you.”

  “So did you, and look, you’re still here.” I pulled her closer to me and leaned my head on her shoulder.

  “Isa, I love you dearly, but I’m not in love with you.” She looked me straight in the eye.

  “Stop, Betty. That’s ridiculous. I really just want him to know how much I value his friendship. Oh, wait, here’s the Sobe Clutch I was telling you about. Bleu Nuit or Amarante?”

  Saved by the Louis Vuitton store.

  “A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you can control it.”

  —John Steinbeck

  Evie and Seth were married on a glorious December afternoon, complete with a horse-drawn carriage, four bridesmaids and four groomsmen. The beautiful, historical Spanish church was nestled inside a park lined with trees and surrounded by a botanical garden. I took my role as maid of honor very seriously and helped significantly with the planning of the wedding.

  “My God, Isabel, you are stunning — more beautiful than the bride!” Jesse panted in my ear as he rushed up the church’s steps to greet me.

  “Shhh. Jess, Evie’s already stressed out right now!”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “My mother is here!”

  Claudia Holtzer made a surprise appearance that day that no one will ever forget. She flew in from Canada the day before without Gracie, who couldn’t miss school. Claudia insisted that her husband was going to give Evie away at the wedding. Evie remained steadfast with her decision to have my father (we do have one, after all) walk her down the aisle. My mother seemed to relent, although I always had the funny feeling that it was merely a temporary truce. As we were lining up outside the church to get ready for the procession, my mother walked up to Evie and asked her once again to allow my new stepfather to give her away. My father watched all this until he finally stepped into the ring to handle his ex-wife. She screamed and clawed at him and then fina
lly ... she fainted. Evie was beside herself with embarrassment and was visibly upset and in tears. Finally, everyone was ushered back into the church, the procession line was organized and the wedding was off to a start. Jesse and I were riding in the back of the ambulance with my mother.

  It was the same routine when we arrived at the hospital — migraine, unbearable pain, and the need for medication. I knew the drill. In my mind, I could recite the sequence of events that would follow. Jesse and I sat outside of my mother’s private room, while doctors tended to her and tried to contact her psychiatrist.

  “I’m so sorry, Jesse, you’re stuck here with me.” My eyes were filled with sadness because despite our efforts to forge ahead with our own lives, I felt so tied down to this.

  “I’m holding the hand of a beautiful bridesmaid, I am not in a meeting, I am not in class. I am where I always want to be.”

  “Jess, she ruined Evie’s special day.”

  “We might just have to get married abroad,” he said, as he laughed and pulled me closer to him.

  Three hours later, with my mother asleep in her hospital bed, Jesse and I made it back to the reception. We arrived just in time to join in the celebration. The reception had gone on for hours and the Spanish restaurant where it was held was reserved for the entire night. Evie was happily leading a line dance, while Seth was kicking back with his friends. Alicia looked beautiful, but troubled. I chalked it up to exhaustion with the two kids so close in age running her ragged every day. Jesse and I were contentedly doing a slow dance despite the fast beat, and it was a great way to end a very stressful evening. My mother was still in confinement, but I figured that I had until the morning to worry about it. We stayed for an hour or so and then took off to get some rest, knowing that the Claudia Holtzer saga was far from over.

  My mother remained for one more day and boarded a plane that night to return back to Canada with her husband to avoid another stint in rehab. Before she left, I was able to spend a few hours with her. We talked, we laughed; I told her that I loved her. I promised to visit her again soon and cried when I watched her walk away from the car at the airport.