by Katy Regnery
I lean back down and close my eyes, breathing in his scent. The smell of his cotton flannel is familiar and comforting, and I long to drift back to sleep in his arms, but one thing is stopping me: my bladder is so full, it hurts. I need a bathroom.
I roll onto my back and pull myself up into a sitting position beside him with a grimace of breath-catching pain. On my left is the wall; on my right, Cassidy. And for the first time, spread out beside me, I realize how big he really is—he is sitting up in bed, but his bare feet still hang over the edge. I don’t want to wake him, but I don’t know how to maneuver my body over his when my hip screams in pain every time I move.
“Cassidy,” I whisper, shaking his shoulder. “Cassidy.”
“Mmm?” He sighs in his sleep, murmuring softly, “Let it go. Please let it go.”
I don’t know what he’s talking about, but he must be having a pretty intense dream because he’s frowning.
“Cassidy?”
“Hm? What?” He jolts awake, blue and green eyes opening wide. “Huh?”
“Where’s the bathroom?” I ask, keeping my voice soft.
He scrunches his eyes shut and scrubs a hand over his forehead. “You gotta get out of here. You gotta go.”
“Exactly,” I confirm, nodding emphatically. “I gotta go. Now.”
He lowers his hand and opens his eyes, blinking at me for a moment, as though confused by our conversation. “What?”
“I have to go!” I say, worried that if he doesn’t help me out of the bed, I’m going to pee in it.
“To the bathroom?”
“Yes!” I nod, glancing down at his legs, which take up more than half of the twin bed. “Can you . . .?”
His legs slide off the bed, and he sits up as I push down the covers and pull my bare legs out from under the sheets. For a split second, I’m aware of how naked they look. He took off your clothes. The thought passes through my head, but I put it aside. I’ll ask him about that later.
“You know where?” he asks, then quickly answers his own question, his voice still sleep-disoriented. “No, she don’t know where. You have to show her, Cass.”
Cass. As a nickname, it’s perfect, and I find myself wanting to say it, just to see what it feels like falling from my lips.
He stands up, stretching his arms over his head before offering me his hands. “Move slow.”
I scoot to the end of the bed and take his hands, leaning heavily on them as I drop one foot, then the other, to the floor. As I stand up, my hip throbs with such intense, searing pain, I cry out, and Cass squeezes my hands.
“It’s okay,” he says softly. “No hurry.”
Easy for you to say, I think. I’m about to pee on his floor.
It takes me a second to adjust to the pain of standing, and though my bladder is throbbing with a different sort of discomfort, I force myself to stay still for a second. I don’t want to move too quickly and pull the stitches.
“I know you’re hurting,” he says. “I’ll get you a painkiller while you, you know, do your business.”
I nod gratefully, following his lead as he pulls me slowly from the bed to the curtain.
“It’ll get better,” he says. “I promise.”
We’ve entered a living room, and I want to look around, to find clues about where I am and who he is, but there’s no time to linger right now. I follow him into a dark hallway, and he drops one of my hands to push open a door. I step inside. The bathroom is dark, lit only by the rising sun filtering through the window and a night-light on the sink.
My fingers search for a light switch on the wall inside the door. “Where’s the light?”
“Isn’t one.”
I blink at this odd answer as he pulls the door shut, leaving me alone.
My eyes adjust to the dim light as I brace one hand on the sink and pull down my underpants. As I lower myself to the toilet seat, I endure a whole new wave of unforgiving pain, but after I’m finally seated, my bladder empties quickly, and for a moment my relief overrides my discomfort.
Not in a hurry to stand up again, I look around. It’s the tiniest bathroom I’ve ever seen—just enough room for the toilet, the small sink beside me, and a shower stall across from me. Behind the door is a hook that holds a solitary yellowish-gray towel. Cassidy’s, no doubt, since he lives here alone. The sparse room is clean and very tidy, with a hand towel on a rack beside the sink and no other decoration. In other words, nothing else to look at, and no clues about my host.
I take a deep breath and hold it as I reach down for my panties, but as I pull them up, my stomach flips over. They’re grayish and frayed around the edges, like they’ve been washed about a hundred times. But more important, they’re not mine. Which means Cassidy undressed me all the way and helped me into these panties.
My cheeks flush with heat as I imagine being completely naked while I was unconscious. I mean, I know that he saved my life, and I’m grateful. But realizing that he’s seen me naked makes me uncomfortable . . . like he took something that didn’t belong to him.
Trying to shake off the feeling, I force myself into a standing position, gasping at the pain, and pull the granny panties up over my bandages. I’m further creeped out by wearing someone else’s old undergarments, but I tell myself not to be stupid. I’m lucky he found me, lucky he carried me somewhere safe, and lucky there was extra underwear to be borrowed at all.
Turning to flush the toilet, I find there’s no handle. I look to the left and right. Nothing.
“Um, Cassidy?” I call.
“Yeah?” he answers from outside the door.
“I, um . . . how do I flush the toilet?”
“Don’t worry about it,” he says. “I’ll take care of it.”
Um, no. No, you won’t. “That’s okay. I’ll do it. Where’s the handle?”
“It’s a composting unit,” he says.
A what unit? I stare at the toilet, feeling annoyed with it, then turn back to the door. “I’m sorry. What?”
“It’s not a regular toilet. You don’t flush it.”
Huh. Okay. I am from San Francisco, so I have obviously seen low-flow toilets. But a composting toilet is new to me. I sigh and decide to fight the flush-my-own-pee battle another time.
Reaching for the sink faucet, I find there’s only one lever, and when I turn it on, my hands are jet-blasted with a rush of freezing-cold water. I yelp with surprise, quickly turning off the water and staring at the tiny sink like it has hidden fangs.
“Okay in there?” he asks.
“Your water’s very . . . cold.” Like, Arctic cold.
“It comes from a cistern on top of the house,” he explains. “Gets chilly at night.”
Hmm. No electricity and no plumbing. Is he Amish? Where the hell am I anyway?
“I see,” I say, though my questions are piling up like crazy. I’m about to ask one, in fact, when I look up to see the face looking back at me in the mirror.
Oh, sweet Jesus.
It’s me.
My lips part, and for a second I feel dizzy, looking back at a stranger.
My face is bruised, with cuts and scrapes, and my lips are puffy and scabbed where they were split. On my forehead there is a white bandage. I pull on the corner to find an ugly gash beneath and quickly re-cover it with the dressing.
Taking a shaking breath, I lift the T-shirt I’m wearing and count six separate bandages on my left side. Some are stained with blood that has seeped through and dried. Tears start falling as I realize how badly battered I am. It’s too much to process.
“Brynn? You okay?”
“I’m . . . I’m . . .”
“Hey, um, can I come in?”
I can barely speak from crying but manage to croak, “Okay.”
He opens the door carefully, looking in without opening it all the way. When he sees me looking at myself in the mirror, he sighs. “Aw, Brynn.”
“He . . . he really h-hurt me.”
Cassidy nods in sympathy, but his eyes
narrow and his jaw flexes. I think he’s controlling his anger for my benefit, and something about witnessing his restraint makes me feel safe, makes me feel stronger.
“I . . . how long will it take for them to heal?”
“Stitches can probably come out in two weeks.”
I take a shaking breath, anxious to change the subject. Looking down at the underwear I’m wearing, I slide my eyes back up to Cassidy.
“You changed my underwear. I was . . . naked.”
His eyes widen as he stares at me in surprise, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “I had to.”
I need to know that he didn’t abuse the power he’d had over me. “Had to?”
He nods.
“Had to. Not . . . wanted to?” I ask, holding his eyes.
“I didn’t . . .,” he whispers, his cheeks flushing, his breathing quickening. “I didn’t hurt you.”
That’s a weird thing to say, I think.
“Hurt me? What do you mean?”
He shakes his head vigorously. “I would never hurt you.”
He’s so focused on this notion of “hurting” me that he doesn’t seem to understand what I’m asking him: I want to know why he took off my underwear. Because I wasn’t conscious when it happened, and I don’t know him well enough to trust him with my naked, unconscious body, I need for him to tell me about it now. I don’t want a black hole in my memories.
“Cassidy, why did you take off my underwear?” I ask him directly.
“Because it was bloody,” he says. “You’d been stabbed through the fabric.”
My heart drops. Of course. “Oh.”
Then he blurts out, “And then I had to take them off again when you soiled yourself. I couldn’t just let you . . . let you . . . lie in . . .” He gestures with his hands, dropping his eyes to the floor as his cheeks flush with color.
I blink at his chest as I process his words.
Oh, my God.
I shit or pissed myself, and he had to change my underwear. When he said “had to,” he meant it literally. And now I am ready to die of embarrassment. If a huge sinkhole suddenly opened up in this tiny bathroom and swallowed me whole, I’d be okay with that.
Alas, no sinkhole. Just Cassidy, who dealt with my bloody, shredded underwear once, and a disgusting mess in them later. No doubt he was trying to preserve my feelings by not mentioning either.
“Oh,” I say weakly, my cheeks aflame. “You had to.”
“That’s what I said,” he muttered. “Now come out of there and let me deal with the toilet.”
For the first time since I’ve met Cassidy, his voice is cool. I’ve offended him, and I couldn’t be more sorry. He carried me down a mountain to his home, sewed up my stab wounds, changed my soiled underwear, made me soup, slept beside me so I’d feel safe . . . and the first chance I get, I essentially ask him if he’d treated himself to a free peep show.
I’m ashamed of myself.
I reach for the doorknob, opening the door completely and taking a step toward him. Placing my hand on his arm, I squeeze gently and say, “Cass, I didn’t mean to accuse you of anything. I . . . I had no right to question you. I’m sorry.”
His eyes search mine with an intensity I can barely stand.
“You had a right,” he finally mutters.
“I trust you,” I say, surprised to discover I mean the three words without conditions or reservation.
“You probably . . . shouldn’t,” he says, his voice soft, low, and gritty, like he’s straining for control. Then he sidesteps me, into the bathroom, and closes the door.
I stare at the door, my mouth open, wondering what he means. He’s shown me nothing but kindness: why shouldn’t I trust him? What has he done that merits my distrust? Nothing. And yet I am unsettled by the comment.
My head aches as I make my way back down the hall, and I’m breathless by the time I reach the living room, winded by just a few steps. I place my hand on the hallway wall, looking around the living room as I catch my breath.
Like the rest of Cassidy’s house, it’s small but tidy, clean, and comfortable. A couch with an outdated pattern sits against the wall to my left, facing six picture windows like the ones in the bedroom. The view of Katahdin is just as spectacular.
In front of the sofa, there is a coffee table on top of a braided rug, and the wood planking on the floor is clean and shiny. I realize that the fireplace to my right accounts for the wall of brick in my room—it’s the backside of the chimney. On either side of the couch are end tables with lanterns, and over the couch is a large picture of an older man standing behind a young woman in her thirties. She sits on a stool, holding a little boy on her lap who appears to be about five or six.
I take two steps closer to the picture, to look at the faces, grateful for the sun breaking over the mountains, shining like a spotlight on the portrait. There is no doubt that the little boy is Cassidy, and the date on the bottom reads 1995. I do some quick math in my head and estimate his current age at about twenty-seven, which surprises me a little because he seems younger to me.
“Need some help getting back to bed?”
I turn to see Cassidy standing beside me.
“This is you?” I ask, looking back up at the photo.
“Yeah.”
“Is that your mom?”
When he doesn’t answer, I turn back to him. He nods but doesn’t offer any additional information. His face is tight, almost like it’s closing up before my eyes, which is strange, because the portrait isn’t hidden or anything. It’s right out in the open where anyone could see it. That makes it free game for conversation, right?
I turn back to it. “Is that your fath—”
“How about we get you back to bed now?” he says quickly, a sharpness to his voice.
“I’m not trying to pry—”
“I know,” he says, holding out his hand to show me half of a blue pill. “But if you’re going to take a painkiller, you should be lying down.”
“Yeah,” I say, looking at the pill longingly. “You’re right.”
He helps me to the bedroom and into the bed, giving me a fresh glass of cold water to wash down the pill.
“Sleep a while,” he says. “When you wake up, I’ll make you some eggs, okay?”
I nod. “Thanks, Cassidy. For everything.”
He gulps, his eyes darting away from mine before returning to rest on them. They are so warm, so tender, my stomach flutters in a way I’d almost forgotten it could. I have a quick flashback to falling asleep in his arms, to waking up with my head resting on his heart.
“You’re welcome, Brynn,” he says in that low voice that sings Beatles songs like lullabies. Then he turns and walks over to the curtain. “I’ll be here when you wake up.”
Hee-uh.
Just like Jem.
Which makes me realize that I’ve been awake for a while now, and this is the first time Jem has even crossed my mind.
Cassidy
As soon as she is asleep, I take down the portrait of me and Mama with Gramp, wrapping it in a plastic garbage bag and placing it on the top level of the barn, where we store things we don’t need but aren’t ready to throw away.
Then I go back into the house and take down all the pictures of me and my family, grabbing a photo album on the coffee table on my way back to the barn. Though there are no pictures of my father in the house, I still don’t want to talk about my family, because questions about my parents will inevitably arise. Heck, I couldn’t even let her finish the word father before the pressure in my chest had me so panicked and light-headed, I’m surprised I didn’t pass out.
And in the bathroom, before? When she lightly accused me of taking a peek at her naked body while she was unconscious? The guilt I felt . . . the fear . . . my God, I don’t know how I remained standing.
The truth is, yes, I needed to change her underthings, but I also peeked. And worse, I wanted to. I desperately wanted to look at her—to see the tender, vulnerable curves and valleys of he
r body.
I want to look at her every minute she’s in my presence.
Drinking her in is quickly becoming an addiction.
Does that make me bad? Does that make me like Paul Isaac Porter?
I promised Mama and Gramp that I’d live quiet so I couldn’t hurt anyone, but here I am with a woman living in Mama’s room, and my heart feels bleak when I confess to myself that I like her. I feel myself growing attached to her.
I pull the curtain to her room aside and feel my whole body recharge just from the simple act of checking on her. The covers rise and fall as she sleeps with her dark hair spread out on the stark white cotton of the pillow. My heart swells until my chest feels tight, and I rub the place over my heart with my palm, wondering if—I mean, if there were a parallel universe in which I was allowed to consider a future with her—one day I won’t ache with reverence at the very sight of her. I wonder if I could ever take her for granted, and somehow I know I never would.
Not that it matters. My dreams of devotion are pointless.
I remind myself that during a human being’s lifetime, their DNA methylation, or how genes are activated, is not static. For instance, a change in DNA methylation patterns can turn on a gene that should have stayed off, and cause cancer. Should my methylation change over time, the wrong gene could be turned on, and I could become a serial killer. I have no way to know and no way to prevent such an outcome.
But . . .
Live quiet, and no matter what happens inside of you, you won’t never be able to hurt someone, Cassidy.
I close the curtain to shield Brynn from my view and turn to face the living room. A low bookcase is built into the wall under the windows looking out at Katahdin, and the shelves are full to bursting with books about heredity, DNA, nature versus nurture, neurobiology, coding and decoding, gene expression and regulation.
I have read every single one, but the answer I want—the answer my mother so desperately searched for—isn’t in any of them. There are no guarantees, and only a monster would gamble someone else’s life when the possibility of a tragic outcome is so much higher than average.
My fists clench by my sides in frustration.