Seeing Double

by Karen Runge

  He’d put his fingers in my mouth and sometimes I sucked them, sometimes wanted to bite. Imagined it clearly: the crunch, the blood. The expression in his face of pain and surprise. Shades of horror, shifting in his eyes. His image of me, reversed. Closer to the truth. I fantasised about that; I tormented myself with the fantasy. Wrapped my arms around his neck instead, crossed my legs behind his back. Consumed him with my body. When he collapsed against me, sweat and skin and desperate breath, I never felt so strong. Protective. Resentful. Holding him, then pushing him away.

  “Get off of me, you’re too heavy.”

  “Get away from me, I can’t breathe.”

  He still lived with his mother. His bedroom was next to hers, at the top of the stairs. A wall between them. Us. She wore nude makeup like she was still seventeen. Like she was still pretty. When I first saw her she was dressed in jeans, too blue, too tight on the hips and too loose around her legs. A blouse, tucked. Pale paisley print, I think. And then there was me on her doorstep. She stared. Her expression: braced. Then stupefied. Then horrified. Her eyes widening, her lip curling like she’d just been slapped. Like she wanted to slap.

  Me, in my sleek black jeans. My low-cut tee. My violent red mouth. Asking, “Is James home?”

  And she stared.

  When I’d come round before and she wasn’t there, I’d wondered about this woman. I’d walked every room in her house: invader, inspector. Seeing things she wouldn’t want me to see. Touching things she wouldn’t want me to touch. Tampons hidden beneath a collection of handkerchiefs, stuffed in a small woven grass basket by her bed. Pictures of herself on her wedding day, her left shoulder trimmed too close to the frame. Evidence of her former husband, and how he’d been clipped free. She’d decorated her house with the banal taste of a woman who imitates what she finds in magazines. Beige and chic and IKEA made.

  That day I asked, “Is James home?”

  And I read in her eyes what she wanted to say.

  Get away! I think.

  Keep your cunt away from my son!

  These voiceless things I used to hear. Vicious. Hilarious. And always, far too loud.

  It’s common for mothers to be horrified at the fact that their sons, even their precious baby boys, are objects and victims of lust. Mothers are supposed to be prepared for this. Still, it comes as a shock.

  Not my son, I think they think. Even if he’s nineteen.

  And so they hate the girls—or boys—who prove them wrong.

  And that was me. The one who proved her wrong.

  “Is James home?”

  My eyebrow raised. My smile a smirk. Almost. Standing on her doorstep, looking past her shoulder. My heart thick in my chest, thundering. Not staring back, though she stared at me. And poison passed between us.

  Every time after that he’d rush downstairs when I rang the doorbell. Knowing maybe that she might turn me away. Just might. But mother is one thing, and lover is something else. Each can get away with murder. But not the murder of the other.

  Eventually I’d smile at her. Say hello to her. In wounded moments say to him, “Your mother hates me.”

  And he’d say, “I don’t care what she thinks.”

  Not refuting, not exactly comforting. Still.

  I’d take revenge on her by being loud in bed. A trick I’d learned from Gab, knowing it left his mother helpless, tormented. If she listened, I don’t know. If she turned the TV volume up, I don’t know. Either is possible. Maybe she turned the TV off altogether and masturbated downstairs on her little beige couch, wrenching agony out of herself to the sounds of his headboard banging, the sounds of my exaggerated shrieks. Unzipping her skirt and slipping her fingers down her wide white cotton panties. Leaking stifled dreams.

  Once we had sex just as I started menstruating. I left a pool of blood that soaked straight through to the mattress.

  “Oh no,” he said, horrified, peeling back the sheets. “Oh no!”

  I didn’t curse the timing. The stain was something she’d have to deal with. Something she couldn’t deny.

  I was petty like that.

  I sucked his fingers, and I wanted to bite.

  But I’ve already told you that.

  I hated her, maybe. I loved him, maybe. We lay naked on his bed and smoked cigarettes. The sex was clumsy, rough, sometimes absurd. A boy raised on pornography. He’d only had one other girl before me. He always felt guilty afterward. Like he’d just done something bad to me. That never made sense. This ridiculous, reflexive guilt. A denial of my own senses. Or a misunderstanding of them, at least.

  Was that why I did it?

  That day, she opened the door to me. I smiled and I didn’t smirk. I pushed past her when he came down the stairs. We went to his bedroom. I took off my clothes.

  “I’m tired,” he said.

  “Fuck you,” I said. Or maybe I said, “Fuck me.”

  He didn’t want to look at me. His eyes shifting around me like I was a mirage he couldn’t see clear.

  “I just had a fight with my mother,” he said.

  As though I wanted to hear anything about his mother, in this place that was his, in the space that we shared.

  He said, “No,” but he was nineteen, and few things can outweigh this promise: my body is yours.

  This promise I made.

  I lay on his bed, on my side. Bare and eighteen with my hair falling over my shoulder. Sliding my hand between my legs.

  “Please don’t do that,” he said. “I don’t know if I can.” Standing by his window, hesitant. Fully-clothed against me.

  “Yes you can,” I said.

  He wanted me to hug him, talk to him. Be a friend to him. Did I want to do that, be that? I wasn’t sure. Looking at him, and the hurt in his eyes. Shutting it out.

  “Come on,” I said.

  And he came to me easily enough. His penis still flaccid. A vulnerable curl, a boneless finger, soft and sensitive in baby pink. Saying, “Not now. I can’t and I don’t want to.”

  But standing where I kneeled.

  I didn’t bite. I wanted to. I know it crossed my mind. How easy it would be to bring my teeth together in that moment. Feel the burst, tough and turgid between my teeth. Tense. Exploding.

  The truth is I hated him then. Then. He pulled away to climb between my legs. Just moments before he’d said, “Not now.” He’d said, “I can’t and I don’t want to.”

  I looked up into his face. I saw a little boy. Fragile, feeling. Far from me.

  I kicked him. Just as he was climbing over me. I raised my knee in one swift motion, so fast and so sudden I didn’t even plan it. I swear. I didn’t even mean it. I don’t think. He sucked back a mouthful of air and his eyes rolled back in his head. He fell over onto his side, his hands clamped over his crotch. It was almost funny. Almost. Except once he’d got his breath back, he looked at me with different eyes. His mother’s eyes. Horrified, stupefied.

  “What the fuck are you.”

  “Why the fuck did you do that.”

  “Get away from me.”

  “Get out.”

  When I told Daniel this story, he laughed. We laughed. He laughed like he was proud of me.

  “Was that when you knew?” Daniel asked. “Was that when you knew that you liked the pain?”

  “But I’m the one who hurt him. He didn’t hurt me.”

  “Yes he did,” Daniel said. “Of course he did.”

  And laughing again, he kissed me. “So he was your first,” he said. “Your real first, on your own terms.”

  But was my real first really him, this boy who trusted me, this boy I hurt, who maybe hurt me? Or was it Daniel?

  Or was it you?

  – NINE –

  You.

  He drove a scooter, gunmetal grey, battered. He wore a leather jacket over an old black T-shirt washed pale. A smirk a touch too roguish to be sweet. The scooter had illegal plates, and the license he carried was illegal, too. Bought on the black market for the price of one of those craft
beers that were now all the rage in every bar in their quiet, quasi-quaint neighbourhood.

  “I’m Neven,” he said, and offered his hand to his new friend’s wife. His grip was crushing. Ada flinched.

  “Sorry, too tight.”

  She grinned. “Never.”

  Neven was Daniel’s find, a gift he’d discovered drinking alone at a dive bar after work. He presented the gift now to his wife. Watching her watch him. Watching him watch her.

  “You should have some fun while you’re still here,” he’d said. “My wife loves meeting new people. She’s a great cook too, if you’re sick of the local food. We’re lifers here I guess. But we know what it’s like to be alone here, with the culture shock and language barriers and all those nightmares it entails. We like to take care of people. You’re leaving soon, right? Well, anytime. Just give me a call. Anytime. We’ll show you a good time. My wife. You’ll like her.”

  Neven’s eyes had narrowed even as he’d smiled. Nodding, taking Daniel’s details. A crease in his brow as he bowed over his cell phone, exposing the smooth, vulnerable sheath of bare skin on the back and sides of his neck. There’d been a look in Neven’s eyes as they’d parted, suspicious, but also curious.

  He’s not a fool, Daniel had thought. But maybe that’s what makes him exactly right. For her.

  And now, judging by Neven’s gaze, Daniel knew that his instincts about the rogue traveller had been correct. That gaze followed Ada as she walked away, as she returned a few minutes later with their drinks pressed against her belly, holding the tall glasses in an awkward, triangular clutch. Neven’s eyes flicked to and away from her, watching her go, watching her return. Fixed on her again as she sat back down to join them. His eyes slightly narrowed. Alert, intent. A predator’s glare.

  Not so fast, Daniel thought but didn’t say, leaning back, his arms folded. She’s still mine.

  But it was good that Neven looked at her like that. Nothing if not interested. Because she had a way of interesting men, and sometimes women too. A quality that had gone a long way in helping him decide that, yes, he would marry her. If not her, who else?

  Neven watched her hands, then stared at the obsidian pendant that hung from her neck. It stopped just short of the kiss of her cleavage. He looked at the obsidian and not her breasts. She was pretending not to notice this—the deliberate aversion of his gaze. Ignoring, too, the relish smoking just behind his eyes.

  “Your name’s Ada,” he said. “That’s interesting. You know, in a way our names are sort of the same.”

  She frowned. Presumptuous. She glanced at Daniel. This clown? But she kept her voice light. The voice she might use with a child. “The same? How so?”

  “They’re both palindromes. You know. They’re the same backwards, forwards, reversed. The same.”

  “Ah,” Daniel said. “I’m not sure I would’ve spotted that.”

  Reversed.

  Ada’s eyes had widened. For a moment she looked shocked, but then she shook her head and smiled. A real smile, if a nervous one. “I don’t think that means anything.”

  “It means everything. People with palindrome names have duality. We don’t have such fixed personalities. We’re more flexible, complex. More evolved.”

  “Hey!” Daniel laughed.

  Neven smirked. “No offence.”

  They were at the bar not far from the river. They sat at one of the wooden tables outside, scarred surfaces, broken benches that rocked when they moved. Music leaked out from within, old jazz, saxophones screeching. The air was warm, the wind chill. Condensation slid down the sides of their glasses.

  “At least they don’t play Korean pop,” Daniel said, after a pause.

  Neven nodded. “That shit. It’s all over my neighbourhood, student-infested shithole that it is. But this area seems nice.” He glanced around, then back at Ada. “I might consider moving.”

  She started. “You’re not just passing through? I thought—”

  Easy, Daniel thought at her. Easy. Though this was a revelation for him, too.

  “Well, I’m not sure what kind of a life I’d be going back to. Work’s easy to find here, the air’s not as bad as everyone says, not all the time, anyway. We’ve got cheap living expenses, high pay, flexible hours…”

  She nodded. “All true. But people tend to get stuck here. You should know that. It’s always just, six months, a year, and then…”

  Neven lifted his shoulders. “Yeah, sure. But if I’m stuck then I’m stuck, right? For the moment I’m not sure I have any place better to be. We’re all just travelling around really, aren’t we? Far from where we come from. Looking for home.”

  Frowning, agitated, Ada fiddled with the laminate menu in front of her. It was split at the corners, hard plastic curled back.

  Picked, peeled.

  “This isn’t home,” she said. “Or if it is, God help us.”

  “You believe in God?”

  She glared at him. “If I did it might be just to spite him. If I didn’t, it might be just to piss him off.”

  “So that’s a yes?”

  “I’ll keep that between me and God.”

  “That’s a yes.” He took a mouthful of beer. Swallowed. “You poor little thing. God doesn’t give a shit if you spite him or not.”

  “We won’t know that until the end, will we?”

  “True. But Hell might be a nice place to visit, I think.”

  “We’re already here,” she said.

  “Not a happy woman?” Neven turned to Daniel. “You should take better care of your girl.”

  Beneath the table, Daniel slid his hand over to Ada’s leg, squeezing her knee. She lit a cigarette, blowing smoke over her shoulder. Spoiling her perfume.

  “You shouldn’t smoke,” Neven said.

  “Fuck you.”

  And the three of them laughed, each recognising an undertone. Blunt, brutal, beautiful. Tension shattering to finely ground glass.

  Neven took another sip of his drink. “Beer is a bit dull,” he said, and moved to stand. “How about a round of shots to go with it, yes?”

  “Sure. How about—”

  “No, no, that’s not how we do it.” He bumped the table as he stood, swinging his leg back over the bench. Beer spilled, glasses rang. “It’s my idea, it’s my choice. And it’s on me.”

  He came back with tequila shots. Frozen glasses and wedges of lime. A grin of his own as he set them down.

  – TEN –

  I will be yours. I will be your friend when you ask me to. I will let you fuck me when you want to. I am surrendering my body as well as my soul on the one condition that you like me. That you do your best to love me.

  This is what a modern marriage is. That’s the deal we made. Mutual privileges, the right to wound, the right to welcome. With Daniel, though, it was also a question of welcoming wounds.

  Before we were married, in the early days, I lay on his bed, on my belly, while he outlined the tattoo on my back with a razorblade. Tracing paper-fine cuts. His tongue, his saliva, the balm to my sting. Saying, “Tell me again.”

  Tell me again.

  The story unfolding in my mind and through my words in a sleek stream of images, cool and clear, ivory and gold, like antique photographs projected on a screen. Bloodless. In spite of their blood.

  “Tell me again.”

  Razor bite.

  “I was walking home from school. He walked with me sometimes.”

  “Tell me.”

  Deeper in.

  Trying not to flinch, I said, “He was taller than me. I couldn’t see his face. I was trapped under him—my head was turned to the side and I was lucky for that. Because that way I could still breathe. Because otherwise he might’ve broken my nose. But I couldn’t move. I tried to scream, I think. But I bit my tongue.”

  “Tell me. Faster. Tell me.”

  The blade moving, sliding.

  “I couldn’t see his face. I wanted to know what he was thinking. Was he even aware of me? But of course
he was. Still, I needed to see, to know. And I couldn’t. The pain, it was like a rusted pipe being shoved up me. It hurt. You can’t imagine how much. I was kicking my legs. I heard that—the sound of grass tearing under my heels. Brown school shoes, with buckles. No, laces. Why do I always think they had buckles? He was breathing hard. Hard and quick, like he couldn’t get enough air. Panting, that’s the word. He was panting. On every inhale, his chest expanded and pressed down harder on my skull. I thought it might crack. That he might kill me just by breathing. I didn’t think anything. I couldn’t think. Not like that. The flesh inside me, ripping. I heard that too. I think.”

  “Tell me more. Tell me faster.”

  My blood turning cold as it slid down my spine.

  “He left me like that. I lay there for hours. I don’t know how long. There was metal in my mouth. Sweet, but foul. My back was covered in thorns. They’d dug into my skin where he’d stripped me. Torn my underwear off. I was angry about that. Not just about my clothes, but that nature had hurt me, too.”

  “Tell me again.”

  “It’s like I was just flesh. All that talking, all those walks. And all the time, to him, I wasn’t a person at all. I was just flesh. Flesh for him to take.”

  “Tell me again.”

  “I wanted to like him. I felt sorry for him. I couldn’t like him. Is that why he did it? Is that why I let him get so close?”

  “Don’t think about his side. Tell me your side. Tell me again.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I can’t.”

  But I did. I told Daniel this story again and again, until the words became a lyric of our own. Deadening the nerves I’d tied to the memory, making the words rote and their power impotent. Almost.

  Later we made love. He was fucking me from behind. He grabbed a fistful of my hair and wrenched my head back. I wasn’t expecting it. I screamed. The sound made him cum, the force of it so powerful it took the strength out of his legs. Collapsed against me, he caught his breath. He brushed my hair away from my ear. He said, “We are all just flesh. Every man and every woman. Flesh to take. But from now on what we take, we take together.” Smiled against my ear and said, “I’m the only one who will hurt you now.”