by Hall, Marie
By the end I’m shaking so hard I’m surprised I’m even still standing.
Licking his teeth, Jack snarls. “You know who the real piece of shit is, Ryan? You. Always were, always will be. Fucking wish I’d made her get that abortion.”
With those final words, Jack turns and walks away.
Faces, too many of them, are staring at us. But especially at Ryan, I hate them all. How dare they stand there and look? Gawk as if he’s some freak sent here to entertain them.
“What?” I snap, eyeing all of them until they hastily glance down and retreat.
Still shaking, I turn and grab his hand.
His fingers are ice cold and he’s still staring at the spot his father had last been.
“Baby?”
He doesn’t move, doesn’t even acknowledge me, as if he hasn’t heard any of what I’ve been saying. So I shake him. He flinches, but still won’t give me his eyes, so I shake harder.
“Honey, look at me.”
When he finally glances down I see the fire of his anger, it burns bright and cold in his eyes, but beating beneath that I see the small child. The one he’d told me about. The one who’d fed a stray rat, who’d wanted his father attention, his father’s approval…
“You’re none of those things, you hear me? He may have raised you, but I know you better. You’re not now, and never will be any of those things.”
Teeth grinding, he flicks his eyes at the fruit stand behind me.
“We need to get out of here,” he grinds out and I shiver at the intensity of it.
We’ve gotten everything we needed anyway. Nodding, I hurry to the register, pay and chew on my thumbnail as he loads the bags into the car.
He’s so silent.
Every once in a while he’ll spit, but he still won’t look at me. We get back inside the car in silence. A muscle in his jaw ticks and the silence in the car is deafening.
When we get back to my house, he calmly unloads and helps me carry it all inside. Nodding at Ade and Mama, he then turns to me, speaking the first words since leaving the store.
“I’ll be back, I need to take care of some things.”
Bile floods my throat. “Please don’t do anything stupid.” I grab his hand, not sure what he’s planned. He doesn’t own any guns, always saying his hands are the only weapons he needs in the house, but right now, all sorts of crazy thoughts are tumbling through my head.
Is he going to go find his dad and kill him?
His Uncle?
The name had instantly transformed him, whatever the demons were, they involved Uncle John.
He turns to go.
“Baby, please. Promise me.” I grab him and rub his knuckle.
His lashes flutter as he leans in to kiss me.
I want to hang on to him and never let go, if there were some way to crawl inside his head right now and force him to stay, I would. I don’t want him to leave this house.
“Please?” I whimper.
I watch him go without another word. The moment he’s out of sight I fling my jacket off and run to my bedroom.
Picking up the phone with shaking fingers I punch in Alex’s number.
He picks up on the second ring.
“Alex! I don’t know… I don’t…”
“Liliana?” His voice is clipped, terse. “What’s wrong? Where’s Ryan?”
I sob. “He left. I don’t know where he’s going, but he left. We were at the store and his dad was there…”
“Shit.” I hear the rustling movement of clothes. “Did they talk?”
“Yeah, and it was bad,” I scrub my arm across my face, “and Jack brought up John and…”
“Fuck!” There’s jostling, a female voice in the background, and an emphatic ‘ssh’ before Alex gets back on the phone. “Don’t worry, I’ll find him, okay.”
The line goes dead and I plop onto my bed, dropping the phone on the floor, I need my Ryan to come back.
“Please, God. Please,” I mutter incoherently for the next several hours.
***
Ryan
I’ve driven for hours, slamming my fist into the wheel over and over. Not knowing where I’m going, only that I have to get away from her. She can’t see me like this. Can’t see me lose my fucking mind, not again, not after the last time.
I’d promised her I’d keep it together.
But I don’t know how to survive this. Don’t know how to work through this.
Not like I haven’t known how my dad has always felt about me, but that he takes his side, that he’d said all that shit in front of her. Stirred everything up.
She knew.
She had to know.
I’m sick.
My gut’s cramping so bad I have to jerk the wheel to the right, barely crawling out the door in time.
I puke along the side of the road, hunched over on my hands and knees, looking like a baby, praying to God a car will swerve and put me out of my misery.
The sun is down, the stars are out and I don’t know what to do.
I don’t even know who I am anymore.
Here I am, in the gutter, throwing up and my dad is at his perfect fucking house, with my perfect fucking mom, drinking wine with his perfect fucking family.
I hate them all so much.
Hate that it still hurts.
Eyes tearing, I wipe my mouth and crawl back into the car. I need to hurt something, want to kill something.
Kill the memories of them.
Make it not hurt anymore
An inhuman howl rips from my throat. I’m not even sure where I’m headed, but muscle memory has driven me to the gym.
The perfect place to pound out my aggression.
When I walk in, there’s only one other guy in there. And he’s getting ready to wrap it up, putting things into his black gym bag, looking at me strangely.
I don’t want to know what I look like right now.
I’m not dressed for a work out, but it doesn’t matter. Nothing does other than forgetting.
Going up to him I ask to borrow his tapes.
“Sure.” He tosses me the roll. “But I’m not giving you my gloves.”
“Don’t want them.”
I turn back and walk to the bag, tossing my shirt over my head I quickly tape my hands and then let my fists fly.
Drowning out the words with a satisfying crack.
Over and over again.
At some point I know I’m all alone in the building.
My mind is a blank except for the mantra beating through my skull. Rotate hips, pivot, punch. Rotate hips, pivot, punch.
Sweat pours down my brow, my back.
Rotate hips, pivot, punch.
One.
Two.
Three.
Harder. Harder. Harder.
Panting so hard, lungs heaving, expanding air in and out.
My knuckles are swelling, they burn and are split. Blood mixes with my sweat. But I don’t stop, because the voices are too loud.
“Good. So fucking, good, Ryan. Yeah, just like that. You know you like it. So fucking good.”
The words are back and they’re grinding into me, ripping like a claw through my gut, tearing into the viscera, making a bloody mess and not giving a damn. Burrowing deeper and deeper and deeper, with no mercy.
Legs splayed apart, a zipper down, me on my knees.
Only ten years old.
Sobbing, my eyes throbbing where he’d punched me, told me never to talk about it. Told me no one would believe me anyway.
Valentine’s Day.
The day my whole world changed.
Became dark and ugly and terrifying and I’d learn what the word hate really meant.
Rotate hips, pivot, punch.
His fat, meaty face gazing into my tear streaked one as he ran a heavy hand through my hair. Moans falling from his lips.
“Ryan, fuck me, man. I’ve been looking all over for you.”
Growling, I backhand the bag. I’d never heard the
door open.
“Why didn’t you tell me!” I pant, trying to reason through the icy breath of panic coursing through my blood, filtering through my head, telling me I’m worthless, disgusting.
Alex holds his hands out, taking a step back, eyes wide as saucers. “What, dude?”
“Why the fuck didn’t you tell me you were still seeing them?”
Banging his head against the wall, he growls and closes his eyes. “I run into them every once in a while. What the hell do you expect me to do, Ryan? You don’t want anyone to know, you don’t want me to talk about it? So I pretend, just like you, I pretend I didn’t fucking see what I saw. I pretend I didn’t catch my goddamnned dad doing the shit he did. It fucking haunts me, man. Fuck!”
He slams his fist into the door.
“I can’t do this.” I grab my head. “I can’t do this anymore.”
“You shut the hell up.” Alex shakes his. “I’m not going to go through what I did with you in February. You’re going to handle this, you’re going to figure out a way, you hear me.”
“Why?” My throat hurts so bad, wants to burst wide open, all the years of holding it in… it’s tearing me apart.
“Because you’re stronger than this. Than him. You’re better.”
“No. No, I’m not. And I’m tired.” Saying it makes me feel it. It crashes into me. Suddenly all the fire’s gone, my shoulders slump, my knees go out and I land on my ass, hanging my head in my hands. “So damn tired.”
Alex is by my side in a second, wrapping his arm under mine and helping me to stand back up. I want to cry, want to curl into a ball and die. I just can’t live with this shit anymore.
I don’t protest when he gathers my things, then helps me to the car.
“Get in,” he orders.
I don’t agrue.
“You’ve got to tell her, man. She’s worried. She called me,” he says the moment he sits.
“Tell her what?”
“The truth. For starters.”
“No.”
“If she doesn’t already know, she will soon, and what will you do then?”
I can’t taint her with my truths. Don’t want to ever lay that on her. Lili’s watching her mom die, living with a son who never tells her he loves her, last thing she needs is me adding my shit to that.
“She can’t, dude. I can’t.”
“So then what’s going to happen between you two? You think she’s just going to marry you, that your freak outs aren’t going to happen again? That at some point she’s not going to realize she can’t deal with the lies, the secrets? I told you I had a breaking point, Ryan.”
Bristling, I snarl, “She’s with me, Alex, and I say no.”
“Why?!” Alex pounds his fist on the wheel. “Why, won’t you tell her? You can’t do this to her, man. If you love her, then…”
“It’s because I love her!” I yell, spit flies out my mouth. “Because she’s the last good thing I’ve got left in my life, because if she knows she’ll hate me and she’ll leave, Alex, and I’ll have nothing. Nothing. I can’t do this to her.”
Silence descends like a heavy fog as trees zoom by my periphery. Finally he says, “Then leave her.”
The thought of doing that has ice spreading through my gut. I ball my fists, pressing them tight to my stomach to ease the fiery rush. I’ve barely been hanging on by a thread, in fact, the thread had snapped the night I’d met Lily.
She’d saved me.
She held me and let me hold her.
She touched things in my heart, dirty things, and made me feel less ugly. But I also know that after a while, a person got tired of saving. After a while the look of understanding turned to one of disgust and scorn, they’d only save you so long before they knew they no longer could.
I never want her to reach that point. I need my Lily, I can handle this. I know I can. Today was just a surprise.
I hadn’t expected to see my dad, and he’d said what he’d said out of spite and hate and malice. I was the one letting him steal my joy.
Lily’s that joy and I’ll be damned if I let her walk away.
So long as she’ll have me-- this hollow shell-- I’m hers. And I’m not going any damn where.
“That’s not an option.” I shake my head.
Alex sighs as he turns onto our street. Parking the car in front of our house, he sits there for a while before finally saying, “Then you’re a selfish bastard.”
Getting out, he slams the door behind him.
It rings like gunshot in my ears.
“I know.”
Chapter 22
Liliana
He returns later that night, weariness etched into his every bone. I hold out my arms, and welcome him back, grateful to God he’s returned.
He smells clean, like he’s showered.
Ryan hasn’t said a word, just looks at me like he’s drowning and needs me to save him.
It’s past midnight, the house is quiet and everyone’s sleeping. Leading him to my room, I close and lock the door, then slowly, methodically undress him-- kissing his chest, his heart, his throat, his jaw, his lips, until he’s panting, sweating beneath me, and moaning my name.
Because it’s the only thing I know to do, the only way to show him how much I love him. And when it’s over I hold him, running my fingers through his hair.
The moment I’d think he’d start to fall asleep, he’d wake up and search my body. Strum his fingers across my belly, down my legs, fluttering them like wings around my nipples, and I let him.
And though I ache in so many places, I don’t complain, because I know what we’re doing… it’s bringing him back.
“I love you, Ryan.” I kiss his sweat slickened forehead.
It’s past four now.
Moaning, he turns and nuzzles my neck and finally, finally I feel him shudder with true sleep.
Staring at the ceiling, trying to count each piece of popcorn, I try to remember what I’d said, what I’d done.
If I’d done enough.
Could I have done more?
Continuing to play with his curls, I pray hard.
Pray and ask God to let me keep him. Show me how to love him right. I know he’s broken, but I still want him.
I know Ryan will never hurt me, know that in my heart, I’m not scared of him. But I am scared for him.
Scared of what he’ll do to himself.
He starts to moan-- quietly at first, then not so quiet. Loud rumbling sounds, haunting noises, and I shake him.
“Baby, wake up. You’re having a bad dream.”
I pat him harder.
“Wake up, Ryan. You’re asleep.”
Doing a weird sort of snoring sob, he wraps his arm tighter around my waist and settles back down.
The next morning, I feel like crap and he looks worse.
Walking to the cupboard, I reach in and pull out two mugs. I know how much he loves his chamomile tea and think maybe a cup might help. Setting a kettle to boil, I walk back to him and sit in his lap.
“Tea’ll be ready soon.” I kiss the tip of his nose.
Nodding, he strokes the outside of my thigh. “Lily.” His voice, still sleep roughened, makes me nod.
“Yeah?”
“Did you mean what you said yesterday in the store?”
“Which part?”
“All of it. What you said to my dad, to me, did you mean it?”
Taking his face in my hands, I rub noses with him. “As God is my witness.”
His fingers bunch tight in my shirt and a ragged breath feathers across my lips a second before he kisses me.
Two years ago I’d taken a literature class. At the time I hadn’t thought anything of the course, hadn’t thought that in the future I’d remember and realize how wrong and idealistic I’d been.
The topic had been Shakespearean tragedy.