by Emma Young
But I’m not sure any of that quite reaches the same low as the deception I practiced with Joe.
When I phoned him, I was slumped on that pine chair in the kitchen of the woman who helped me. My head was a mess. But I had to let him know I was okay.
“. . . Hello?”
He sounded as though I’d woken him.
“Joe?”
"Rosa?”
There was a pause. Maybe he was trying to make sense of my voice on the line. The last time he saw me, I was beside him in bed.
“Where are you?” he said.
“I just called Elliot. My brother. I’m in this house.”
“What house? Where?”
I was sobbing again. I pressed at my eyes with the towel. “Joe, I’m sorry, I—”
"What house? Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I called Elliot. He’s coming to get me.”
Silence.
“Joe—”
“Look, Rosa, if you think you made a mistake . . .”
“I’ve made a lot of mistakes.” I lowered the phone a little while I tried to regain control of my breathing. I was about to say, But not you.
I didn’t get a chance to, though, because I paused too long, and he said, his voice very low: “I’m sorry you feel that way. What house? Are you safe?”
“Yeah, but—”
“It’s okay, Rosa,” he said, though he didn’t sound like it was. “Will your brother look after you?”
“. . . Yes.”
“If you decide you want to talk to me sometime, you know where to find me.”
And the line went dead.
I called back. He didn’t answer.
Why didn’t I have his cell phone number?
I slept with him. And then I walked out. That’s what I did. I might have had my reasons. But he doesn’t know what they are.
I was focusing not on him, but on me.
And I thought I was strong.
But the girl who inspected herself in the window of her pre-op room that snowy late afternoon last spring has changed so much, in ways that go deep below the flesh.
I check the time on my phone. Ten minutes to go till Joe’s due. The park is empty. The colors have faded; winter is on its way. I can’t even see any tourist boats out today. Or nurses with noodle boxes. Or orderlies on break. Or Joe.
But there are nine minutes yet until he agreed to meet.
I sit on the bench inscribed in memory of Denise, and check my phone. I have a signal. I must be far enough away from the ER to be clear of the blockers.
I’m not thinking about what I’ll say to Joe, because I’ve already decided that whatever I think I’ll say will probably change in the moment. My only rule for myself is heartfelt truth.
After that, if there is an “after that” for us, I’ll ask for his help with what I have to do next.
My phone vibrates. I’m in such a scramble to check it that I almost drop it.
A text message from Elliot: Eating a Greggs vanilla slice. What you up to?
I reply: Wishing I was eating one.
He texts: Their custardy goodness isn’t as good as you remember. Which might make me wish for one even more . . . but doesn’t.
Again, my phone vibrates. This time, when I look at the screen, my heart seizes.
It’s not from Elliot.
Caught up at office. Can’t make it. Sorry.
Worst-case scenario?
I’m not going there.
I think, Joe is thoughtful, determined, vulnerable . . . hurt.
Back inside the gym, I find Vinnie and ask to borrow forty dollars. Raising an eyebrow, he says, “You’ve got a hospital account, right?”
I nod. “But this is for something I can’t put on it. Please. Just this once. I won’t tell anyone you lent me the money.”
“It’s not for anyone to buy alcohol or anything illegal, right?”
“It’s not for anything illegal. I promise.”
“I guess I shouldn’t,” he says. But he takes his wallet from a zip pocket in his track pants and hands over two twenties.
I look up the address for Bostonstream on my phone while hurrying to the cab stand by the main entrance. I don’t know if anyone sees me, but I don’t really care. After jumping in the back of the first cab in line, I read the address out, twice, to be sure the driver’s got it, and the car pulls away.
I’m aware of—but I don’t focus on—the fact that I’m out in the world, alone.
At this time of day, the traffic’s light. We speed past the old naval yard buildings and on into the city. Just over fifteen minutes after leaving the hospital, we pull up outside a narrow office building only a few doors down from the burger place I went to with Joe.
There’s nothing on the wall to advertise that Bostonstream’s based here. I double-check my phone. This is the street number on the website.
As I walk in, I realize I have only ever once before felt more nervous.
The entrance area is decorated in faded tones of gray. There’s a slightly musty smell. No desk. But on the wall by the front window, I spot a plastic sign listing the occupants of the six floors. A2 ACCOUNTANCY . . . JOHN L. BURROUGHS, ATTORNEY-AT-LAW . . . BOSTONSTREAM.
I take one of the two elevators to the third floor. As I walk out into a corridor, I’m confronted by poster-size screen grabs from the site. Headlines scream out at me: BOSTON’S SEXIEST
BACHELORS! RED SOX TOP ODDS AT WINNING WORLD SERIES!
Over to the right is a frosted glass door with a buzzer and BOSTONSTREAM on a red plaque. Before I can move from my position in the corridor, the display by the second elevator shaft pings. A woman in her twenties—thin, very pretty, purple sweater with black skinny jeans, stiletto ankle boots, bright lipstick—walks out . . . with Joe.
She looks at me looking at Joe. And at Joe looking at me. Says to him, “I’ll see you in the meeting.” Then she strides off, leaving us together.
The last time I saw Joe, we were naked in bed. I knew this was bound to be awkward. I just really didn’t want it to be.
He’s in a dark gray shirt with sleeves rolled to the elbows and jeans, his satchel slung over his shoulder. He looks paler. Slightly less charged with energy, maybe. But still absolutely capable of freezing me in space and time. I take in the curve of his body, the pulse in his neck, the star tattoo.
“Hi,” I say.
He sighs. “Look, Rosa—”
“I know, you’re caught up at work. But I really need to talk to you.”
Eyes on a spot on the wall beside me, he nods. “And you think I will reliably drop everything to do what you need.”
This hurts. I want to say: That’s not true. He offered to take me to Lexington.
“That’s not—” I stop myself. How do I get past all of this?
At last, he looks me in the eyes. His gaze is so intense I have to force myself to hold it.
“You told me you’d made a lot of mistakes,” he says. “Fair enough.”
“But I was finding it hard to explain,” I say, taking a step toward him. “And you didn’t answer when I rang back. So I didn’t get to say, but not to do with you.”
“You left while I was asleep.”
I take another step so that I’m close enough to touch him. “You remember that conversation outside O’Neill’s, when I said I feel right around you?”
“You think I’d forget that conversation? I told you something about me I’ve never told anyone. Except the police.” He shakes his head.
“I said everything was complicated. I want to explain. Please.”
“I told you: You don’t need to explain anything.”
“But I do. Please. You did everything for me. And it’s really important to me I tell you the truth.”
The elevator pings again.
Two men in jeans and hoodies step into the corridor. They nod at Joe. At the very last moment, he reaches back and slips a hand between the closing elevator doors.
He walks in, turns, looks
at me. Holds out his hand to keep the doors where they are. “We can’t talk in the corridor,” he says.
While the elevator descends, we don’t speak. He focuses on the numbers on the electronic display. It takes forever to reach two. A lifetime to one.
He’s first out of the elevator and first outside. The sidewalk is crowded, just as it was when he brought me here for burgers. We weave between people with briefcases and take-out coffee, in suits, in tights and sneakers, in Lycra shorts and bicycle helmets.
It’s starting to rain. English-style drizzle.
Across the street, by Boston Common, I notice a couple of benches. They’re separated from a baseball diamond by black iron railings. Joe must see them, too. Without exchanging a word, we slip between slow-moving cars and sit down, me at one end of the bench . . . him at the other.
The world moves around us, subdued in the rain. Women stop to fit plastic covers onto strollers. A man opening a golf umbrella almost takes out an old lady hobbling past with a terrier and a cane.
There’s nothing I can do but sit here and get wet. It doesn’t really matter. There is so much I want to tell Joe. But I didn’t plan what to say, and I’m not sure where to start.
From behind us—from the baseball diamond, I guess—come yells from a bunch of kids.
I think of what Elliot told me back in that hotel in Lexington about who I am. If I want Joe to know the truth about me, I have to start somewhere.
“When I was a kid,” I say, interlocking my fingers, holding my own hands, “I had this hamster called Cheeseball. I used to sew him outfits from my old clothes. When I was nine, I entered a picture of him wearing this cape decorated with sequins into a pet photo competition, and I won. I got a year’s supply of this brand of crisps. Elliot said the cape was the lamest thing he’d ever seen. But I didn’t care. One of the single happiest moments of my childhood was finding out that I’d won two hundred bags of crisps . . .” I sigh. “I’m sorry. I wanted to tell you the truth. About everything. Just, there were some things I had to do first.”
At last, he looks at me. The rain’s sticking his hair to his face. He pushes back the lock that falls over his eye. Oh, I want to touch him.
“When I said outside O’Neill’s that I feel right with you, I meant it,” I tell him. “And I haven’t felt right for a really long time. And the problem is, you have no idea what I am.”
His eyes narrow. No going back now. Just tell him. Tell him.
My voice wavering, I say, “You remember saying you could tell us apart—me and Sylvia Johnson?”
He’s watching me very closely now. He nods.
This has the potential to go very badly. But I have no choice. And I don’t mean because when the hospital breaks the news of the surgery, he’ll realize—because if I follow through with my plan, that announcement won’t happen—but because I have no choice but to come clean with him, if I’m the person I want to be.
My hands are clenched so tightly in my lap it almost hurts to separate them. I say, “You heard about that paralyzed man in China—the first human head transplant?”
He nods again, very slowly.
Deep breath. I can’t say this if I’m looking at him. So I focus on the solid oak trees ahead of us, almost bare now, and dripping.
“I had a terminal nerve disease. The only way to save my life was to try either a head transplant or—” Tell him. Tell him. “So, my doctor had developed this procedure. Instead of transplanting the whole head, you transplant the brain. The recovery period is longer, but if it works, you have something that looks like it’s normal.”
The drizzle still falls. It’s soaking my face, my hands, my hair.
Spell it out, I tell myself. Don’t leave him in any doubt.
“I have her body. She was in an irreversible coma. Her parents donated it. What you are looking at—who you were with, what you slept with—is Sylvia Johnson’s body.”
Silence. It stretches. Then, from a thousand miles away, I hear shouts from the baseball diamond. The muffled roar of traffic on the street.
Joe still says nothing.
I glance at him. His expression is blank. Unreadable.
I twist away from him, so I’m sitting with my back flat against the bench. Everything slows. My heart. Time. I wonder if this heart was ever broken before. But it’s almost okay. I hoped . . . Whatever I hoped, I also knew, deep down, it wasn’t going to happen. Sylvia’s dad might think I owe him nothing, but with something as monumental as this, of course there’s a price to pay.
There was a time, I realize, when I was used to this feeling: the sinking weight of worst-case expectations confirmed. I guess I allowed myself to hope that time was past.
At last, with effort, I force myself up off the bench.
Joe asks quietly, “Where are you going?”
I swallow, hoping my voice won’t break. “Back to the hospital.”
Because if he can’t accept this, I can’t ask for his help.
I take a step away from the bench. A tear rolls down one cheek. Another step. A lot more tears.
Beneath the tears and the disappointment, I search for, and I do find, relief. I wanted to be the kind of person who would tell him. And I’ve told him.
A year ago, I thought no one could ever find out, or what would be the advantage of looking “normal”? Now I know better.
Besides, I think: What did you expect him to say?
If you lie and lie and lie, someone will catch you in the end, even if that someone is you.
My vision slipping out of focus, I start back across the road. To the sound of screaming horns, I reconnect with the sidewalk. I find myself among all these people heading home from work, or going to meet a friend for coffee, or searching for something nice for dinner. Whatever normal people do. I’m still crying, but it’s raining. Everyone has an umbrella up or is hurrying along, neck bent. No one is looking at me.
I walk away from Joe’s office, past the burger bar, with a huddle of people lining up outside, until I’m at the corner, and
I’m confronted with the statue of Poe. What would he have made of my life? The Reincarnation of Rosa M.? I don’t want him. What I really want now is a cab.
I face the traffic, which is blurred by the rain. Taxis streak past, throwing up spray, occupied.
I should have brought an umbrella. The rain really is heavy now, and I’m soaked. I might want Joe but perhaps I don’t need him. And he certainly doesn’t need me.
That’s what I’m telling myself—that we don’t need each other—as I turn my back on Poe, thinking I’ll walk along the streets in search of a taxi stand. But then someone is in my path, forcing me to look up, mouth open in surprise, but also perfectly ready, it turns out, to be kissed.
Joe’s arm is around my back. His mouth is on mine. And it feels so much more intense, so much more vital, than it ever did in Lexington. Maybe because I know he, fully and truly, is kissing no one but me.
42.
I kiss Joe back.
My arms are around him. My body is pressed against his. Every place he’s touching lights up.
He holds me tighter. I let my hand move to the back of his shoulder. Kissing him here on the street feels less like a way of merging identities than of losing identity; and for the moment, that is more than okay.
“You’re shaking,” he whispers.
“I’m shivering,” I tell him. “I’m soaking wet.”
He lets one hand drop to mine. Holds it.
He’s so close. His shirt is drenched. Beneath the fabric, I can trace the cut-marble curves of his chest, of his shoulders.
I guess I don’t need to tell him that I’m surprised he’s here. And that happiness is pulsing through me with every beat of my heart.
I say, “If you’d stayed away, I wouldn’t have thought you were a bad person.”
“That’s not why I came after you.”
He’s left the way open. And I’m going there. I have nothing to lose now. “So why did you?�
��
“A lot of reasons.”
His mouth is so close. His body is right here. I want to kiss him again. But I search his face. “Like?”
“Like I didn’t want you to think I thought badly about you. You’ve got more courage than probably anyone I know . . . except maybe me.”
There’s a trace of a smile in his eyes, but if he’s trying to loosen this conversation with a drop of levity, I won’t let him—not yet. “I wasn’t brave. If I wanted to live, I had no choice.”
He squeezes my right hand and it’s like he’s palpitating my heart. Like resuscitation.
“Partly, I mean, in telling me,” he says. “I took a life for what I think was the right reason. But you didn’t take a life. You took something that would have gone to waste. You did it for the right reasons.”
I grip his hand as tightly as I can. “And I didn’t tell you. And I slept with you.”
His smile cracks open. “Yes, you did.”
“So it must seem horrible and really weird to you, because you have no idea what I actually look like?”
“You don’t actually look like anything other than this.”
“I wasn’t pretty,” I tell him. “I wasn’t pretty at all.”
He frowns. “There’s nothing I can say to that that’s sensible. Anyway, I told you: I don’t think pretty is the right word. And I remember saying I could tell you and Sylvia apart.” He shakes his head. “The only sensible thing is to take you completely as you are. I can’t divide you into parts. I have met some very pretty girls. Some have even been interested in me. I didn’t feel anything about them like I feel about you.”
He smiles again—at my expression, I guess. Sunlight on sea. It warms me right through.
“So you are not completely freaked out?” Because I have to be sure.
“I don’t think so.”
“A lot of people would be completely freaked out.”
“Maybe.”
“A lot of people would think it’s completely immoral and it’s playing God, and—”
“I don’t care what they’d think. A lot of people would think that about me.”
For a few moments, we just stand there together, by Poe, under a sagging awning. Just two enamored kids taking shelter from the rain. Which shows what other people know. I think: Perhaps he’ll change his mind, but for now, absolutely, I will take this.