Paint My Body Red

by Heidi R. Kling

  I kiss him like there’s only this, and when he asks me with his eyes, when his hands wait to explore areas I’ve been dying for him to explore, and I answer with a tilt of my hips that yes, yes, please, I’ve been waiting for you, he pulls down my panties. After grabbing a condom out of his bedside table and rolling it on, he sinks gently into me. At first he’s cautious, kissing my face, my neck, not wanting to hurt me. I’m not hurt. I’m in love. And I want it all. We move in a rhythm so natural, so perfect, so beyond expectation it blows my mind, and as my insides explode, I realize this is how it’s supposed to be. This. And I don’t want it to ever end.

  After, he pulls me into his arms. I stroke his damp head as he lies on my heaving chest, both of us catching our breath.

  He gently rubs my cheek with his rough thumb. “Why are you crying?”

  “I don’t know.”

  With Ty it was all about me comforting him. Me letting Ty have what he wanted to avoid someone else hurting. With Jake, I want it to be the opposite.

  With us, I know it’s not a mind game. A battle to see who will give in, who will get pushed away. I don’t want sex to be a healing tool we’re using to erase the pain of seeing my dad like that. Sex isn’t a Band-Aid to cover other pain.

  With Jake, it’s just about the two of us. “I want it to be about the two of us,” I say.

  “Me, too,” Jake says so quietly it’s almost a whisper. Almost as softly, he pulls me in tighter. I press against his warmth and breathe in his comfort.

  With Jake, I hope it’s not about me being broken. I want it to be as real as it feels.

  I want it to be about love.

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  Then

  Ty jumped that first time.

  He jumped when I told him to.

  Maybe he was going to jump anyway, whether I was there or not, but of course I piled so much of it onto myself I didn’t know the answer anymore.

  The train still hit him.

  It knocked him in the legs as he was jumping off the tracks, which fractured his left leg in three places, and left him with a serious concussion. When he was stable enough medically, they checked him into the psychiatric unit.

  “I’m not suicidal,” Ty said when I visited him, standing a few feet back from his bed, limply holding a yellow round balloon with a painted black smile.

  “You were standing on the tracks, body full of pills and booze, a train hit you, and you wonder why they’d think you were suicidal?”

  “Ever the comedian,” he said with a wry smile, though his eyes were still that distant, zombie-green they were that night on the tracks that made me feel sick.

  “I have to tell you something.” I cleared my throat. “I need to go visit my dad. He’s sick and my mom says I need to go, so before I leave for college I’m going to go see him.”

  I avoided his zombie eyes.

  “Ty, did you hear me? I’m leaving.”

  “Oh,” he said, nonplussed.

  “Oh?” I was pissed. “That’s what you have to say? Never mind then. Maybe I shouldn’t have come.”

  “I don’t care either way. You don’t matter to me anymore.”

  “You know what? I hope you get help in here and you’re able to deal with your disappointment in me in a healthier way from now on.”

  A slow mocking smile appeared. “A healthy way? Jesus, they’ve gotten to you, too, huh, sis?”

  “Who?” I asked, irritated with his tone. His behavior was killing me, slaying his poor father, and my mom was a wreck. Yet he was smiling?

  “All the shrinks, of course. Listen to yourself. Listen to what you just said to me—how you said it to me—like you don’t know me. Like we’re strangers.”

  “I did not,” I said. The smell of this room was making me sick. “I’m just saying you tried to kill yourself, your behavior is psycho, and this is exactly where you should be. A psych ward.”

  “Boy, did you turn into a bitch.”

  “A bitch that saved your life,” I snapped. “Maybe I should’ve just left you to die on those tracks, you asshole.”

  My chest tightened in disgust. I was disgusted with myself. With my hateful words. But I was beyond disgusted with Ty. Did he not want to be saved?

  I wanted out of this room. Out of this stink of day-old sheets and drippy medicine.

  He saluted me. “Okay, Captain Ahab, school counselor.”

  “You know what, Ty? You were once a pretty cool guy. Somebody I was stupid enough to actually care about. I don’t know what happened to you, but this is all on you.”

  “Have a great life. Have fun in BFE or wherever the hell you’re going,” he said flippantly, picking up a skateboarding magazine and stuffing his face into it. “Don’t forget to write.”

  Oh, hell no. He wasn’t dismissing me. Not after everything we’d been through together. “You’re an asshole, you know that?”

  He didn’t bother looking up. “Yep.”

  “You could’ve died.”

  He shrugged. “You could get hit by a car in the parking lot.”

  I put my hands on my hips. “If you meant to kill yourself, you wouldn’t have called me. You would’ve just done it.”

  “So?”

  “You wanted me to come find you. Wanted me to beg you not to do something you weren’t ever going to do.”

  His silence was his confession. Even though I’d guessed it all along, it still pissed me off.

  “So what was that all about then?” I asked. “Was it a game? A manipulative stunt to make me stay? To make me sleep with you again? Do you know what this is doing to your dad? I heard him crying the other night in the den. You have no business being in this ward, tying up this bed when someone else out there, someone who really is suicidal, could be getting help.”

  I glanced at the call button dangling from his hospital bed, wondering if I should report him to the nurse, to his doctor. But they already knew how sick he was. The psychiatrist told mom that just because someone who makes a suicidal gesture doesn’t necessarily want to die, it doesn’t mean they won’t accidentally fuck it up and die anyway. We needed to take this seriously.

  But that didn’t mean I understood Ty.

  I didn’t understand if it was the pain of his mother leaving and his dad remarrying mine, if it was something about the present or the past. But I did know, in retrospect, that it wasn’t about me. I was just who he centered all of this pain on, dumping it all over me so he didn’t have to deal with it himself. Being in California, being in this hospital room, was probably just as bad for his recovery as it was for mine.

  I handed him the string of the balloon. He clutched it in his fist.

  I couldn’t be responsible for whether or not he was happy or sad. His mind games, making me feel like sex was keeping him on or off the tracks? I couldn’t fall for it anymore, or soon, I’d be as sick as he was.

  “See you, Ty.”

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  Now

  When I call mom to tell her about Dad’s accident, she gives me another week’s reprieve. Offers to come help, but I say, no, no it’s okay. What will she think about Jake and me? That I’ve moved on so easily?

  We interview a bunch of potential nurses while Anna clangs pots and pans around in the kitchen. I stand in the doorway watching her scrub the crap out of an egg-laden frying pan until the bottom shimmers in the morning sun streaming through the strawberry curtained window.

  Her face is flushed, and when she hears me pouring a mug of coffee for the most recent interviewee, her eyes are watery, not with sadness, but with indignation. “I don’t understand why you two feel you need to replace me.” She wipes sopping hands on her apron, leaving two handprints. “I made a mistake. It won’t happen again. It should be me caring for him. Me.”

  “Anna…we talked to Dad about it. He doesn’t want you to go through that again.”

  Huffing, she spins around on her bare feet and attacks another pan. As she battles the bacon grease, I set my hand o
n her shoulder. “You’ll get to be with him for what matters. You’ll still live with him, love him. You just don’t have to handle all the feeding, all the caretaking. Or the medical…” Choices. The life and death choices. You won’t have to decide if you let him die or force him to live a life he’s done with. “…stuff.”

  “I understand.”

  “Do you?”

  “I understand, but I hate it.”

  I understand my father. I understand his philosophy. But he should know by now that life isn’t black and white—it’s red. And in that color is where we spend the whole of what matters, the vibrancy of life, the bloody mess of death, and the pulsing heart of love. It was always red with Ty. My feelings for him were a twist of emotions, twining around and around, one never ruling the other, never taking over until the end. Relationships are always messy, but the ones that start wrong out of the gate are quicksand.

  “I hate it, too. It sucks. It all sucks. But it’s what we’ve got.”

  “When did you get so wise, kid?”

  I blink.

  “You think I’m wise?”

  “Wise and brave. I sure do.” She smiled. “But don’t make me say it twice. Now go on and get that lady in there a cup of my coffee so she can’t help but accept the job.” She hands me the mug. “Scoot,” she says with a playful grandma-ish swoosh of her arm.

  Anna thinks I’m brave, and she’s the bravest woman I know. Anna, like Jake, doesn’t say something she doesn’t mean.

  Now I need to do something even more frightening.

  The roar of a familiar oversized golden pick-up truck with gold-rimmed tires pulling a sparkly clean horse trailer climbs up the rocky driveway as if it doesn’t want a splash of dirt mucking up its shimmer.

  I hated this guy the first time I met him and I hate him now. Not because of him—Jake’s right, I don’t know him at all. I hate him for what he represents: power over the weak, power over me, Jake, Anna, Dad, and Scout, all because he has money and we’re desperate.

  Jake squeezes my hand as my nemesis steps out of the driver’s seat in his two-hundred-dollar cowboy hat and brand new poser boots. Everyone knows a real cowboy’s boots are never clean.

  I wipe the sweat off my brow and suck in a breath.

  “So I see you’ve changed your mind about that pretty little filly of yours, eh?”

  Every instinct in my body wants to look away: at the dirt, at the sky, at Jake, but I don’t. I hold strong and look right into his watery eyes.

  “I’ll sell her to you, but it’s not because I’ve changed my mind.”

  His chuckle is as faux as his cowboy look. The fact that this jerk gets to walk and talk while my daddy is lying down inside in the hospital bed we rented after his ICU visit—the fact that he will never sit up in his wheelchair again, will never type a funny Dad-ism, while this prick breathes the air of Dad’s ranch—makes me want to hand pluck the flaps of suede off his coat that he’s wearing (even though it’s 90 degrees out here) and light them on fire.

  He hands me a manila envelope of cash.

  I swallow when, peeking inside the flap, I see bundles of hundred dollar bills lined up and rubber banded together. I hand it to Jake who flips through it making sure it’s there—all two hundred grand of it. This exchange feels so western, so gangster.

  My legs shake, the result of never seeing this much cash in one place, or from what it all means. If it feels wrong, it is wrong—a Dad-ism.

  “It’s all there,” the man says.

  “I see it is,” Jake says.

  “Where’s my prize-wining filly?” He says it proudly, like he had anything to do with how awesome Scout is.

  “In the stable,” Jake says, a resigned tone in his voice. His jaw clenches. He hates this, too.

  The man takes a step toward her, toward Scout, and I jump in front of him.

  I can’t let him do this.

  I can’t let him take Scout. I know he’s probably not a bad guy, and even though I never got to meet his daughter because of Dad’s hospitalization, she’s probably a perfectly nice girl. But I hate him. I hate him for buying my horse. I vilify him like he’s a Disney character.

  It’s too much. My heart is pounding. Blood pulses in my head.

  “I change my mind. Jake, give the money back.” My voice wavers, and I’m seconds from a full-blown panic attack. Thoughts blur together. I’m thinking irrationally and I know it, but I can’t stop. Everything is thick with meaning. This was supposed to be my chance to start anew. This was my fresh start. And now it’s my fiery Scout who has to pay the price for my soul as I sell her to the devil? Unacceptable. No. No. Not Scout. Take me. Take me instead.

  “Paige, it’s fine. She’s going to be with that great girl, out on the rodeo circuit. Are you okay? You’re really pale. Do you need to sit down?” Jake’s hand is on my shoulder, but it’s not helping. I can’t breathe.

  “Paige.” I spin around and see Anna and hear the message in her voice. I remember what she said to me in the kitchen. About me being brave…and wise.

  Sucking in a shrill sound, the worst I’ve made since I screamed for Ty to get off the tracks, I head into the barn, take my girl by the lead, and prepare to hand her over to a man I can’t stand.

  “I’m so sorry, Scout. I’m so, so sorry.” I hold onto her head, and my tears wash over her face. “If we had any other choice, you know I would never sell you, but we don’t. It’s for Daddy and Anna and Jake. I have to.” And then I can’t speak anymore, not with decipherable words, anyway.

  Her nose presses into my shoulder and instead of fighting me, she lets me lead her to him. It’s like she knows. It’s like she understands everything, and the fact that she forgives me makes it so much worse.

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  Then

  Graduation day. Matching caps and gowns. Smiling for snapping cameras. Despite everything, I got caught up in the pomp and circumstance of it all.

  Ty was allowed to walk through ceremonies after the lengthy hospitalization plus completing a rehab stint for drugs and alcohol because, due to all his AP classes, he already had enough credits to graduate. He opted out. “There’s no fucking way I’m walking with those hypocritical tools,” was his exact response to our parents, who had been acting like skittish coyotes ever since he’d come home.

  I was glad he wasn’t there.

  But he was right about one thing: the ceremony itself was pretty awful.

  They did this PowerPoint of the Lives We’d Lost with this weirdly upbeat song playing, like we were supposed to find inspiration in the dead teenagers or something and then followed it with a keynote from an affluent tech company CEO—a nerdy young billionaire types everyone worshiped.

  When he finished, the crowd gave a rousing standing ovation, and we all released blue balloons into the air as a symbol of life moving on, moving ahead, moving forward, which was weird because our school colors were red and gold. Maybe red was too bloody and dark? Who the hell knew. Anyway, my peers clamored toward the CEO guy hoping for internships, and I took the appropriate photos with my smiling mom and stepdad, hugged my classmates. And went home to change. Ty’s door was shut. I didn’t bother knocking. He never came out.

  That night, I attended a couple graduation parties (avoiding white golf-shoes Matt, the polo player from the unfortunate night after that dance).

  The fact that I didn’t run into Ty at any of the various parties didn’t faze me. If he hadn’t walked through the ceremony, he wouldn’t want to come out to party.

  I also assumed our parents made him stay home so he wouldn’t be tempted to drink or do drugs.

  My phone rang twice while I was out. It was him, but I ignored both calls. He ruined my entire year. I wasn’t going to let him ruin grad night, too.

  Screw you, Ty.

  I powered down my phone, tucked it into my jeans pocket, and joined my classmates in a toast.

  Chapter Sixty-Eight

  Now

  Through blurry eyes, I wa
tch the bowl of soup Anna set on my nightstand lose its steam. When it’s cooled to an almost chill, I cry myself to sleep.

  The next day I don’t get out of bed. Everything aches.

  I can barely make it to the bathroom to dry heave in the toilet.

  I can’t stop thinking of her face—this terrible acceptance in her eyes.

  The slack was loose on the rope. When I led her toward his trailer, she could’ve jerked away from me and galloped up the mountain to find her herd, but she didn’t. She knew and she did it for me. What makes it so horrific—what makes it so unforgivable—is that in the end I did the very thing I fought so hard against. I made her trust me and then I let her go.

  Chapter Sixty-Nine

  Then

  The next morning, I had six “Missed Call – TY” notifications and a text.

  This is me running away. Game over. We both lose.

  My stomach sank, and I knew this wasn’t a joke. Wasn’t a warning. I knew there wasn’t anything I could do.

  Mom and Phil got the call from the police that Ty stood on the tracks as the last train of the evening roared by the stop closest to our high school. The one that took Cornell, Elena, Elliot, and the others.

  The train killed Ty, whether he meant for it to or not.

  The autopsy showed that he had both drugs and alcohol in his system. I don’t know where he got them.

  His body—identified by his hoodie and the cell phone that had flown off the tracks—was so mangled, they had to cremate him.

  I stayed in my room for two weeks. I was a murderer and a victim.

  Ty was right. The game was over and we both lost.

  Or had he won?

  Because he’d killed me, too.

  Chapter Seventy

  Now

  I’m completely despondent and depressed.

  The combination of my dad’s hospitalization and selling Scout cracked open everything I’d buried deep inside. As if almost losing him and then losing her wasn’t bad enough, I’m now having PTSD because of Ty. I get so bad I have to call my mom and talk to my therapist on the phone.