Carried Away

by Whitney Williams

  “I COULD’VE GONE WITH HER! YOU TOOK THAT FROM ME!”

  His words echoed. There is no punctuation adequate to the gravity he invested in every single word. There are a lot of ways you could read the emphasis in those statements: “you took that,” “you took that,” “you took that.” He somehow said it in every way at once, and every one of them burned.

  “I’m sorry.”

  I said it out of reflex more than anything else. I said I was sorry, one hand on the counter to steady myself, my torso cowering aside, my face turning back up toward him.

  I heard my mother’s voice. “I’m sorry.”

  I looked toward the bedroom, where he had gone, then back down at my hand. It looked blotchy, as if it couldn’t decide whether to pale or to blush. When I tried to lift it from the counter, it shook.

  “I’m sorry.” I said it again to hear the words. They sounded like my mother’s voice and also like my own. That was the moment I had seen as a child. That was when I made my decision. That was the moment I thought I had grown up. I whispered it—”I’m sorry”—but the words hit me just as hard.

  Henry hadn’t hit me. He was a better man by that score. What if he had? Would I feel any different? Would I say anything, do anything, different? A part of me wished he had. I wanted the luxury of punishment instead of the burden of guilt. What had I done wrong? I saved his life. I didn’t think that was wrong, but he was angry. “I’m sorry.” I checked, and I still was.

  I looked back down at my hand, at my mother’s hand, and I wondered. Was that what she had felt every time? I turned to look through the wall at the shadow of Yumiko-sensei telling me he would hurt me. He did. I wasn’t even sure how. I didn’t understand. When she told me I knew neither love nor pain I thought she was talking about two different things. Was that the feeling I had witnessed as a child, the one thing in the universe I most hated and feared?

  I remembered wanting freedom. It didn’t feel like it was time to run away. Did I have freedom?

  The sinews that held my heart in my chest clenched tightly around it. I personified terror and desperation. I was trapped. I watched scattered pieces of my soul locking into place around me, thought by thought, feeling by feeling, organized around the central axiom of my existence: I wanted him to be happy. I had no choice. Perhaps more to the point, I had a choice that I had already made.

  I loved him. It was done. I didn’t want to undo it in the same way I didn’t want to pull my fingernails out of my hands. Had I fled, had I run away, I would have left a part of myself behind, a part that never grows back. I didn’t know what I would be without that part. I didn’t even know what that part was.

  I looked around the room to try to remember where I was, not because I didn’t know but because I felt disoriented. I needed an anchor. The walls were still bracing themselves against the boom of Henry’s voice. So was I. I tried to remember how I got there, how it happened. I could play back my memory from when Gretchen fell, but everything disconnected there like film cut for editing. The months before became a dizzying montage. The editor had cut apart every individual frame and reordered them by some indiscernible sortation. I wound farther and farther back until things started to appear chronologically.

  The first frame of the montage lingered on my retina: “PUSH FOR ICE.”

  Before that the memories were faded, grainy, like a movie so old you can’t watch it without every detail hammering into your mind how dated it is. I didn’t even recognize myself in my memories. I was different. I looked so young and foolish, moving according to some reasoning that made no sense to me anymore.

  It was all less than a year ago. How could it feel so foreign? I struggled to figure it out. It’s much easier to remember what you did than how you felt.

  What I did was leave. Since my childhood, I had seen myself as an adult. I envisioned where I would go, who I would be, and I worked to make it so. I hadn’t really lived in the place and time where I actually was. I had lived in the future. When I finally became my future self, when I crossed the horizon and sailed off the edge of my map, everything fell apart. I had no more structure, no more goal. I wasn’t living for something specific anymore, and as a consequence, I had stopped ignoring everything else. I started living in the present.

  Lots of things happen in the present. As soon as I finished trying to change my life, my life had started changing me. That was how I ended up in love. I didn’t plan it. I didn’t choose it. I lost control. Love was a thing that had happened to me somewhere along the way.

  I took stock. The man I loved was brilliant, fun, handsome, wealthy, kind. But was he really? None of those virtues are black and white. They are all a matter of degrees. Would my mother have said the same of her husband, the man I saw as stupid, boring, ugly, poor, and mean?

  I tried to measure. Henry was a successful businessman who travelled around the world with me in luxurious accommodations. Those were things my mother’s love didn’t give her. He had never laid a hand on me in anger. That seemed like an objectively good thing. I thought I had made out pretty well, but then I realized it didn’t matter. All of it was luck. I didn’t choose to love him. I couldn’t choose not to.

  All in all, it seemed to me that my life, the life he had given me, was good. It felt good. I enjoyed it. I loved it. I noted that he had jerked away from me and left me alone, and I was struck by the realization that I was in danger of losing everything I loved. For the second time in my life, I made a decision. He had given me so much. I decided that I would give to him.

  Chapter Nine – The Present

  --Eurydice--

  I knelt next to the bed to be on eye-level with him, but his face was turned straight down into the pillow. I wanted to seem nonthreatening. I wanted him to see me as an agent of his own will, no more capable of hurting him than his own hands. I began softly, “May I speak?”

  He was silent. I waited.

  That was a bad move on my part. I hadn’t thought it through and found myself painted into a corner. I assumed he would say yes and anything other than that meant the end of my gambit. Either I could defy him and go on, or I could give up and leave him alone. I knew that if I left then, he would never let me come back, not really. I had asked him to give me what I wanted, I realized, not what he wanted. Maybe, I thought, I did have a cruel heart. Even my act of submission was selfish and demanding. I wanted to rewind and try again, not to ask for permission, not to give him a choice, to have my own way, not his.

  I trapped myself in a paradox, like being proud of humility or yelling at someone for talking in a theater. The harder I tried, the worse I failed. I had indeed surrendered to him in a way. Only his word could release me from the uncomfortable little prison I had built around myself.

  My mouth moved in the shape of “please,” but I breathed no voice into the word. It went nowhere, just like me.

  I closed my eyes and let my forehead fall forward to the edge of the bed. Catching myself just in time, I struggled to release my deep breath slowly, without sounding like I was sighing. I wanted to crawl into bed with him and hold him, but the last time I touched him, he had ripped away. I remembered Gretchen’s voice—start from inside. I was definitely outside.

  There had to be a way, something I could do. I tried to undress him, like I had when he had his migraine, but he didn’t roll over. He just lay there. I pulled a blanket over him and sat down on the floor, leaning back against the bed. I still felt like I was outside. Be patient, I remembered. Don’t let go until he relaxes.

  I was curled up in a chair when he woke, shortly after dawn. He went into the bathroom to brush his teeth and shave. At least he hadn’t told me to leave. He stood there looking down at a dollop of shaving cream in his hand for a full hour.

  Slowly and quietly, I walked into the bathroom behind him and sat up on the vanity. All of the ashes had brushed off his face during his restless night, but I knew he could still feel them there. I turned the water on, wet my hands and gently pushed what
was left of the shaving cream down into the drain. Then I washed his hand with mine while he held it there, looking down at his empty palm. I pulled together a tuft of my hair and used it to dab warm water onto his face, then with different locks, I patted him dry. He wore a beard after that. No razor touched his face for the rest of his life.

  He turned his hand down and rested it on the counter, then he whispered, “You may.” He had given me what I wanted, but it only made me feel embarrassed that I had asked. I stared down at my own hands, folded in my lap. I spoke slowly, haltingly.

  “There was a moment when I was a girl, when I was a child, that I decided who I would grow up to be. I realized sex was power. I learned and practiced everything I could to make myself more desirable because I wanted that power. I wanted to use it to get away. That’s where you found me. I was fleeing. I was trying to run away from something, from everything. I didn’t care where I was headed as long as it wasn’t where I had been.”

  I took a deep breath to steady myself before saying her name. “Gretchen told me what happened, when she decided who she would grow up to be. I don’t know if she ever told you, but I can see that you knew. I haven’t known her long, but I loved her from the day I did. I admired her. I still admire her. I wish I could grieve for her the way you do. I wish I could grow up to be the kind of woman she was. I didn’t understand my own life before I knew her, not really. She chased her life the way I fled from mine. She knew what she wanted, but I only knew what I didn’t want. I didn’t even understand that until she was gone and I realized I didn’t know what to do next.”

  I dug deep, like she showed me. “Well, I’ve made another decision. I’m through running away. I don’t want that power for myself anymore.” It took all the strength I had to look into his eyes long enough to say, “I want it for you.” Turning my face away, I continued. “You don’t have to believe me. You shouldn’t. I don’t deserve it.”

  I was afraid, but I heard her tell me not to be afraid, not to be afraid to push. I pushed.

  “But someday, I promise you, I will make myself into a woman for you. And someday, you will know that I have been yours all along. If you go back to the day we met and you let me win, if you give me that freedom, I will use it to follow you. I will never give up. Never.”

  I pushed as hard as I could. “If you damn me to live my whole life in a desperate and fruitless struggle to become something of worth to you, then for my whole life, I shall remain damned.” Not yet. “Whatever I am, whatever I can become”—I painfully hoisted my eyes back up to his—”I am yours, always and forever.”

  There.

  “Please, I beg you, and I have nothing to offer you that is not already yours. Please help me become the woman I want to be.” Finish with the outside, Gretchen reminded me. I reached up and started unbuttoning his rumpled shirt. He closed his eyes.

  I pushed his shirt out over his shoulders, caught it behind him as it fell to the floor, and laid it on the vanity next to me. Dragging my hand across his chest, I slid up onto my feet. I moved around behind him, holding him, then I unfastened his trousers to let them drop and slowly pulled his briefs down his legs. His shoulders and head slouched in reluctant relaxation. Ducking around to his side, I put myself under his arm and led him to the shower.

  I still wore the same simple black cocktail dress from the day before. I hadn’t packed a lot of wardrobe appropriate for mourning. With a gray shawl over it, the dress seemed decently respectful. My lacy hosiery and underwear on the other hand were, well, they were what I had. With one arm around Henry and the other adjusting the water, I wondered if getting soaked would ruin any of it. The shawl, at least, I had shrugged off earlier.

  While I stepped into the tub after him, I reached a hand behind my neck to try to find my dress’s zipper. One of my feet slipped a little, and I decided it best not to divide my attention. The dress was only a thing. Things can be replaced.

  I pressed my cheek to his back and wrapped my arms around him, gently pushing him toward the showerhead. He stopped before letting it spray his head, and I didn’t try to push harder. Instead, I slid my hands up his chest to push water over his shoulders, then took the little hotel soap in one hand and lathered it against him.

  Cupping my hands, I collected little pools of water between my palms and his skin, which I moved all around him, soaking him one inch at a time. With some patience, the soap softened. I worked from his neck down his back, letting the sudsy runoff soak the front of my dress. I continued lower, slowly and progressively crouching, with one hand wrapped around him to hold myself steady so I could smear the soap firmly against his hips, his buttocks, his thighs. When I had soaped down to his ankles, I rose, working back up, making a washcloth of my dress. The material was just absorbent enough that it worked.

  I embraced him with both arms, pulling myself against him and moving my body like the hand behind that washcloth. I had to put a foot up on the side of the tub to push myself higher on his back, scouring him with my breasts. He leaned forward into the shower’s spray to hold himself up with his hands against the wall, lowering his head and watching the water make its sloppy way down his face to fall to the drain. I was glad he had immersed his head, but I decided not to go there with the soap.

  Instead, I came back down and slid underneath him. My soggy dress was well lathered by then. I pressed my body to his and moved up and down his legs and in-between them until I was rolling my shoulder gently to wash his undercarriage. He breathed heavily through his mouth as the water sheeted ungracefully down his face, pouring onto my head. He breathed quietly and desperately as if he were weeping. Maybe he was.

  I continued up, sliding along his skin, boosting myself on the side of the tub to grind slow circles against his chest while my sleeveless arms slithered along his slippery back. He pulled one of his hands from the wall in front of him to find my zipper, which he moved slowly down while I undulated. Finally loose, my dress started to ride up, and I tried to encourage it with the movements of my torso. Eventually I got it high enough that his hand against my lower back prevented it from rising farther. He adjusted his grip, bringing his hand up under the dress and returning it to my back. His hand followed me as if we were dancing, tracking my motions and pulling me close.

  When I pulled it over my head, I was able to use it to wash his arms. I turned my back to him, sweeping my hair to hang in front of one shoulder. I pressed into him while he turned his face up toward heaven as if to ask why such sorrows should come. The shower pounded his chest, pooling above my shoulders and behind my neck. It stabbed through the slick surface of my wet hair. It slid fast down my chest, forcing its way into the cups of my brazier, which I pulled down from my shoulders to hang slack around my waist.

  I kept moving, slithering around him to rinse everything away. I continued down until I was enclosing each of his calves with my neck and hands. Then I started back up using just my face, neck and shoulders, using my free hands to push down my assorted lingerie, garter belt, panties, stockings and all, into a pile of wet lace around my ankles. That made it difficult to move around in front of him again. I stepped out of most of it with one foot, but that turned the stocking partly inside-out and left it still half clinging to my foot. I pinned it to the tub with my other foot so I could at least drag one of my feet free of the tangle.

  As I slid up in front of him, clutching his thighs tightly but fondling his scrotum only gently with my cheek, I felt his erection against my forehead. I kept moving slowly up, pressing his penis against his body with my tongue as I rose. The faint taste of soap tried to punish me for my dirty thoughts. As soon as my forehead came within reach of his lips, he kissed me. I had the presence of mind to close the valves behind my back before rising farther and getting lost in his embrace.

  Holding me tightly to himself, he carried me, soaking wet, dragging my drenched negligée from one foot, to the bed, pulling me up along with him as he moved forward to lie across it. My hair behind me against the bed pu
lled my head back and aside. As his lips and tongue moved from my ear down my neck, I encountered a strange thought. I wished he were a vampire so he could open my throat and drain my life away to heal himself. That felt like the essence of what I wanted. I wanted to heal him.

  I wrapped a leg around him and reached down to help him find his way into my vagina. I wanted him inside me—not just for sex. I wanted to envelop him whole into my womb. It felt like my birthright. As a woman, I carried a power within me so dangerously nourishing that the slightest careless spark could start the eternal fire of a human soul. For all the blood and tears I had shed for it, that was what I wanted in return. I didn’t want it to make a new life; I wanted it to rebuild the life I loved.

  He slid slowly in and out while I clutched him with all my limbs. Such a terrible tease, his movement never accelerated. He just continued smoothly, in such a regular pattern that I could have cried out with frustration of having to wait for inevitable satisfaction. It seemed like an eternity, but I managed just to hold him, firmly, gently, and silently. One stroke withdrew farther than the others, then he rammed in hard and ejaculated.

  His head fell to the bed behind mine, and the full weight of his body, a weight I had never felt before, descended onto me. I lay there for hours, crushed and laboring for breath, holding him as if he might float away into oblivion. Thus did I achieve the fantasy of falling in love in Paris, but with too much falling and maybe too much love.

  --Sally--

  We stayed in London for another full week. It was the longest I had spent in the same place since I left home. The most astonishing thing to me was how naturally I took to it. It certainly helped that I spoke the language and that I wasn’t obviously a foreigner until I opened my mouth.