Falling Under (25 page)

The couch, all the furniture, everything in the room, is yours—carefully chosen and bought with hard-earned bar- tending money, with the job you got at nineteen when you realized you had to pay your way through school.

Lucas has a trust fund. Lucas has never had to preserve things like clothes and furniture because he could always replace them. Without working for it. Lucas has never stood for hours in beer-soaked running shoes. Never had his butt pinched while carrying dishes of half-eaten chicken wings, never had smoke blown in his face by creepy, drunk men who he smiled at anyway because he needed the tip. If he had, he might have hesitated to ruin your furniture.

Not a lamp has been left unmolested. “I’m calling it
Life Inside
,” he says. “Hm.”

How about:
I Stole My Girlfriend’s Panties and Glued Them to the Living Room Floor
?

“You like it?” he says.

Do you like it?

Um, no. You’re fucking furious. And frozen. Because fury comes up against fear and neither wins. You can’t say anything because then you will fight and bad things will happen. Nothing good ever happens when people fight, only screaming, words as weapons, points for damage done. It doesn’t matter what he’s done, you can’t fight, you won’t. And yet you want to rip him into shreds for this.

Do you like it?

The answer is supposed to be yes.

“Very unique,” you say and hold your arms rigid at your sides. You will not fight, you will not fight.

“Cool, huh?”

Breathe. Cool air in, warm air out.

“Cool. Mmhmm. How is the committee going to see it?” you say, but you already know the answer.

“They have to come here!” Lucas says. “The whole faculty can just come here!”

Of course. Who needs privacy?

“So what else? I want your opinion,” he says.

“It’s... shocking.” You are under control, you are fine. He grins. “That’s what I was trying for.”

“I just hope we don’t get evicted.”

“Imagine the publicity if we did though,” he says.

Your eyes keep going back to your crumpled underwear, on the floor for everyone to see. Your urge to clean it up is going to get you exactly nowhere.

You can only hope he didn’t take it from the laundry bin. “What’s wrong?” he says.

“Nothing.” “No, really.”

“I, um,” carefully, gently. “No big deal, I just wish you’d asked me.”

“Oh, you mean about the clothes?” Duh.

“All of it. I mean, this is my furniture—
was
my furni- ture.”

He gets that look in his eyes, the wide-eyed wounded look.

“I no longer look at things as yours or mine,” he says. “We’re together.”

“Yes, but—”

“I thought you’d understand—this is art. Art is for every- one. Art is to be shared.”

“Does my underwear need to be shared though? Do we have to sacrifice my furniture?”You try to say it with a laugh, with a funny shrug and a touch of irony. No fight, nothing serious, just a little cajoling to make the point.

But Lucas looks incredulous, isn’t buying it.

“Do you hear yourself?” he says. “
My
this,
my
that—if we’re going to talk that way, then what about me? What about my chance to prove myself? We only have a few weeks left and then we’re out in the world. I need to have some- thing to show for my schooling—something big. You can replace the furniture, but my reputation? I have to
build
it. Why do you have to ruin this for me?”

“But did you have to—” He shakes his head.

“I never realized you were such a pedant,” he says, and then strides over to the couch and rips a tennis ball off, revealing the glue-encrusted fabric beneath.

“What are you doing?”

“Taking it apart. You win. You can have your couch back.

And your damned underwear.”

His rips off another one and looks at you. “Happy? Come on. Come and help!”

He reaches for a third.

“Stop!” you say. “Stop it. It’s fine.”

“Oh no, it’s no problem,” he says. “I’m sure I can whip up something else by the end of the week.”

He’ll fail. He’s neglected to hand in a lot of projects, done badly in his academic courses, and been warned that his the- sis project better be impressive. He’ll fail and he’ll blame you. He’ll leave you.

And you’ll prove to yourself, once again, that you are incapable of sustaining a relationship.

Besides, it’s not his fault that he hasn’t had to work as hard as you have, not his fault he doesn’t understand. You are the one who is damaged, who is freakish and possessive and unable to let things go.

“I’m sorry,” you say. “Please stop. Leave it.” He pauses, studies your face.

“Really?”

He’s not perfect, but he loves you. He loves you and he has stayed with you. No one else has stayed.

“Really. I think it’s brilliant. I was just...a little surprised, that’s all.”

His face, his entire demeanor changes and he is once again beautiful, sweet, warm.

He picks you up and twirls you in a circle.

“You are the absolute best,” he says, and kisses you. “I don’t know how you put up with me.”

After the big showing—
6
the tromping of half the school

through your apartment and into your living room—Lucas is ecstatic.

You have dinner at China Lily. His blond hair is shaggy and his dress shirt is wrinkled, but he still looks like an angel to you. A fallen angel perhaps, especially with the bags under his eyes.

Graduation looms, and so does the future.

Your classmates have lofty goals, but you are living with a dreamer, so you’ve been trying to create art people will actu- ally buy. Otherwise there is far too much waitressing in your future. Some of your professors are disappointed, but it’s not like they’re going to fail you.

Lucas nudges your knee with his under the table. “Thank you for your patience,” he says.

“With what?”

“My thesis project. I realize now I should have asked you, but I was so inspired, and I wanted to surprise you. I just didn’t think. I was a bit obsessed.”

“That’s okay.”

“I get carried away sometimes,” he says and then looks down at his hands. “And I know I can be selfish. I’m sorry.”

“Oh, Lucas, you’re passionate, you’re an artist. It’s part of what makes you talented.”

He grins at the compliment. “It’s nice of you to say that, but I want to be nice to live with too. And I’m not the only talent in the household.”

It’s your turn to grin.

“We have a wild future ahead of us. We should move to Prague,” he says. “We can live cheap and travel Europe, sell our work to boutique galleries until the big ones recog- nize us.”

“What about our families?” you ask. “They’ll still be here, sweetie.” “And my Dad?”

“We’ll come back every few months to visit.” You sigh. “I worry.”

“You worry too much. We’re going to make a life to- gether, Mara, I’ve known it since we met.”

You smile and tell yourself how lucky you are to have such a guy, such a talented, beautiful guy who loves you. If he’s a bit idealistic, acts like a spoiled child sometimes, well, you’re not exactly a prize yourself.

And most of the time you’re happy. At least, you think so. Maybe once you’re away from here, out of school, far from your families and your too-small apartment, you might

be able to feel your happiness.

Because though Lucas is right beside you, though he is holding your hand and staring into your eyes with love, there is always that part of you he cannot reach, a part of you he does not even know is there.

Someday he will, though. These things take time. Later, in bed, your skin wants to creep from his. You begin to have headaches and avoid bedtime. You wonder why your body has abandoned you.

But perhaps your body thinks you have abandoned it.

Lucas begins to notice. He asks if you still find him sexy and if you still love him. You start giving more blow jobs. You try to keep clothes on during sex so he can’t touch you. “If there’s something wrong, you can talk to me about it,”

he says one day when you won’t let him touch your stomach. “I’m your friend too.”

“I’m fine,” you say. “Just stressed.”

He gets a phone call from his mother one Sunday after- noon and afterward loses his customary sunny demeanor. When you ask him about it, he shakes his head and rolls his eyes but doesn’t tell you anything.

You wonder if you are frigid.

But if you were frigid, you don’t think you’d be fantasiz- ing about the new model in Life Drawing class.

On the day he appears, disrobes, and poses on the podium, you feel hot where you haven’t in months. It would be a relief, except it doesn’t go away. What is it about him?

It could be his body—he’s tall and lean and reminds you of Caleb. His hair is long, loose, and red, and freckles cover his torso and thighs.

It could be the scars on his arm. It could be the way his eyes hit yours and held that first time, and the way he shook his head as if to dismiss a strange thought when he finally looked away.

Day by day, you see more of his eyes.

You know him. You don’t
know
him, know him, but you understand something about him—you are the same inside.

Your drawing professor watches over your shoulder as you draw him and she says, “Yes, yes, that’s it exactly.”

On his last day, you take a long time packing up, and he takes his time getting dressed.

Chapter Thirty

I
hang up, put the receiver down and groan. “What’s going on?” Hugo says.

We’re chopping vegetables, a novel activity in my kitchen, and Pollock, now a frequent visitor, is standing by waiting for bits of food to drop from the counter.

I try to pin down a baby carrot in order to slice it. “You really want to know?”

Hugo “accidentally” drops a piece of sun-dried tomato on the floor, and Pollock dives for it.

“I love gossip,” he says. “So.. .?”

“Short version,” I say, “Bee wants Faith to come out to her parents, which will cause a major hoopla and possible schism in Faith’s family. Faith accuses Bernadette of being equally in the closet since the people at Bee’s work don’t know—”

“It’s not quite the same thing,” Hugo says.

“I know. So. Things got ugly and Faith has now accused Bee of being a hypocrite not only for the work thing, but also because she is working for a patriarchal, wasteful,

consumerist industry whose sole purpose is to make money off of women by making them feel shitty about themselves, while at the same time purporting to be a feminist, environ- mentalist and gay rights activist.”

“Wow,” Hugo says. “Hey, do you have oregano?” “No.”

“Basil?”

“Nope.”

“Chives?”

“Uh unh. Onion salt?” I suggest. He looks at me and shakes his head.

“Cheese?” he says, and gives me a hopeful smile. “Jackpot!” I open the fridge and pass him a block of La

Roche blue cheese.

He whistles.

“I may not have herbs, but expensive, stinky cheese is an- other matter,” I say.

“I like stinky cheese,” he says, taking a whiff. “So, back to Bernadette being a hypocrite in a patriarchal consumerist in- dustry.”

“Well, now she’s miserable and thinking about quitting her job.”

Hugo turns to me, offers me a hunk of cheese, and pops it in my mouth.

“Yum.”

As we work, I keep glancing over at him, like he might not be real. I have to keep checking.

We put our homemade pizza in the oven and turn on the timer. Pollock, presumably exhausted from begging, has passed out sideways on the floor.

“Twenty-five minutes,” Hugo says. And then he turns to me. “What are you doing for the next twenty-five minutes?” He’s got that look in his eyes. It’s the look all men get in their eyes, especially the ones that like you
and
want to fuck

you—warm and fuzzy with a hard-on. “Not much,” I say.

He smiles. Desire doesn’t even get a chance before I feel tightness descending on my stomach and fear chasing circles inside me.

What is wrong with me!

Nothing. Nothing whatsoever. I let him pull me toward him. Our lips meet. I kiss back. I
want
to want to. I think,
Hugo, Hugo, it’s Hugo.
I try to focus my senses, to smell him, to taste him, to recapture the desire I had for him just a few days ago.

Come back! Come back!

I press myself closer but my body is saying,
I’m not com- ing with you, you stupid bitch—exit! Exit!

I break away from the kiss. I hold him tightly and hide my face in the crook of his neck.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, um, can we just.. .” “Sure,” he says.

We stay wrapped around each other and I squeeze him hard.

I could do it. I could make myself do it and I could fake it so he wouldn’t know, as I did hundreds of times with Lucas.

But Lucas deserved better and so does Hugo.

Hugo does not deserve to make love to my fake, to my cringing double. And if I do it, someday he will see it’s not

me making love with him and by that time, as much as I love him, I will also hate him. I will hate him for taking my un- willing body and not seeing, for so long, that part of me that hides, crying, in the corner.

As we stand there, he begins to shift his weight from one foot to the other and soon we are swaying side to side. He has not asked me any questions. He has not tried to resume his seduction. He holds me and we execute a rocking, music-less dance.

I begin to relax and let the heat of his body transfer to mine. I am safe for now.

With every breath comes the knowledge that Hugo is precious to me.

But how can I keep him? How can I make his face the first I see in the morning and the last I see at night? How do I keep him alive and healthy and safe? How do I keep him faithful and sane? How do I keep him in love with me?

Because
this is the love I want
. This is a good love, a love that could be right. And if I accept it, if I give back to him what is in me to give, I will have purchased him with my soul. My soul, that has been broken and cobbled back to- gether, with some of the pieces not quite fitting right. And though I believe in time healing these things, still, I do not love with lightness, and I do not hope with confidence and though what I need is forever unconditional, I do not believe in it. I have no evidence to make me believe in it. Oh, how I wish I did.