Falling Under (7 page)
“I’m fine. Touch me all you want.”
He reaches out and draws a line up from my throat, under my chin with his index finger. The still, dark look in his eyes and the delicacy of his touch send shock waves through me. I swallow and somehow hold his gaze.
“I don’t think you’re here for the usual, Mara,” he says in a whisper. “Though, of course, I’m all for it, if you are.”
“Yes, I am,” I say, but my voice sounds strangled.
He lowers his head and brushes his lips across the skin of my neck. The shaking starts again and quickly spreads to my legs. I lock my knees to keep them still.
“Liar.”
I reach for his shirt, but my fingers can’t manage the but- tons. He takes my hands in his and presses them against his chest. I feel his heart thumping. His eyes search my face.
“Ah,” he says.
“What?”
“Not running fast enough, are you,” he says. It’s not a question, he just knows. He knows because he has his own past to run from, his own ghosts to flee. And of course, there’s always Lucas. We both know more than enough about that.
As always, he sees right through me, right into me. It makes me feel obscenely naked.
I try to pull away, but he’s got my hands trapped. “Let me go,” I say and jerk backward.
“I don’t think so,” he says. “Did something happen?”
I shake my head. If I don’t get out of here I’m going to turn to mush. I’m going to fall apart and blubber like a fool and I really, really don’t want to do that here.
“Please. I have to go.”
He lets go of my hands, but only to wrap his arms around my waist, pick me up and carry me to the couch. He puts me down and kneels on the floor in front of me, between my legs, effectively blocking me in.
“
You
came to
me
,” he says. “And I get it, all right? I fucking get it.”
I can’t hide the shaking anymore. I’m gasping for breath, holding my arms crossed in front of my chest.
“Okay,” he says, his voice warm and calming. “Okay.” He climbs onto me, straddles me so his legs brace mine. “Hold on,” he says. “Just hold on.”
Erik presses his forehead to mine and puts his hands over my cold fists, slowly opens them and twines our fingers to- gether. I grip his hands and his body absorbs some of the shaking.
He holds me and murmurs soothing words. When the tension starts to ease, I reach under his arms and wrap mine around his back. He pulls my head to his chest and presses me closer. A few tears fall, but I don’t turn to mush. Eventu- ally my breathing slows to match his and I feel the heat returning to my limbs. I should really pull away, but I can hear his heartbeat and he is so warm...
“Better?” he whispers. “Mm-hm.”
“I’m not crushing you?” “Mm-mm.”
In another few minutes we shift so that we’re lying side by side. The couch isn’t quite wide enough, but we squeeze to- gether anyway. We close our eyes and listen to the hum of the computers and the sounds of the city.
It should feel weirder than it does.
It should feel much weirder when he leans over and kisses the corners of my eyes, my cheeks and then my lips. It doesn’t feel nearly weird enough.
“Erik,” I say.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean.. .” “No, it’s not that.”
Our faces are inches apart. His breath is on my face and his eyes look huge.
“What then?”
“You’re just... not supposed to kiss like that.” “You don’t like it?”
“Um.. .”
He does it again.
“You can stop me anytime,” he says.
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” I slide underneath him and bring my lips back to his.
He moves slowly, watches my face and parts of me un- ravel with every touch.
“Jesus,” I say, even as I slide a hand into his pants. “You’re scaring me.”
“Don’t worry,” he says and moans as my fingers close around him. “I’m still the same old Erik.”
He is and he isn’t. We’re both too far gone to care. Just for now, just for this night, I close my eyes and arch against him, letting the tender mix with the fierce... and pretend it doesn’t matter.
Y
ou are fourteen and nobody fucks with you anymore. Your best friend is awesome, you can drink without puking your guts out, and your mother has a Master’s degree.
Never mind that she’s become a feminist and stopped wear- ing a bra to the grocery store, which is seriously embarrassing.
You say “fuck” these days and sound like you mean it. You wish your dad were more like Bernadette’s, though.
Bernadette’s dad takes care of the yard, helps with meals, plays tennis and golf, and discusses the Political Situation at the dinner table. Bernadette’s dad would never go a week without changing his clothes or cry to Bernadette about how his life stinks.
Your dad does.
You never know, when you arrive on a Friday night, if you’re going to get Hyper-Fun Dad or My-Life-Is-Over Dad, and nothing you do seems to make a difference.
At first with Bernadette, you try to pretend nothing is wrong, but she goes to his place with you, and it gets hard not to notice.
“It could be his apartment,” she says one sticky Friday afternoon when you’re on the subway toward Dad’s.
“What d’you mean?” “Well, no offense, but.. .”
“Yeah ... ?”
“The place is ugly.”
“Ha. True. You think it—” “Bums him out, yeah.”
“I don’t think he can afford to move, Bee.”
“Hello, budding artist? I’m not talking about moving.”
6
Dad is totally agreeable and even lets you paint your bed- room walls purple with silver moons and stars, in honor of Prince.
On Saturday morning, while Bernadette covers the kitchen walls in Sunlight Yellow, you prepare to begin your first mural. Dad is hanging out watching you while he waits for the first coat of Romanov Red in his bedroom to dry.
“So you’re big in art class,” he says. “I didn’t know that.” “I don’t know about big.” You shrug. “I just like it.” “Well, Bernadette says you’re big. Talented.”
“I just look good compared to everyone else because they all took it to have an easy pass, Bee included.”
You pick up a medium-size brush and step back from the wall. What kind of scene would cheer Dad up when he’s here by himself?
“Does your mother know?” “About art class?”
Would a baseball field look good? Hm. No.
“No. About me being, uh, a little bummed out some- times.”
“What? No. No, I don’t talk to her about you.” “Oh. Okay, good.”
“Besides,” you say, “you’re okay. Managing a bar is tough. You just get tired, stressed out. Right? I mean, every- body gets stressed out.”
“Does she?”
“Who?” you say, like you don’t know he means Mom.
If you say Mom is having a hard time, then you’d be lying. If you say she’s doing well, it makes him jealous, bit- ter, sends him down. Because the battle rages on still. Under the thin crust of civility is all kinds of bad shit. Mom baits Dad with her vocabulary, her education, and her success. Somehow everything she achieves takes something from Dad—she knows it, he knows it, she rubs it in.
Dad strikes back with his puppy-dog eyes, his handsome smile, the carefree pose. And he hurts her with you—with the fact that you love him. Why he uses this, how he knows it works, is a mystery, but it makes her crazy. As if your love is a possession, a weapon, a reproach.
Your mom doesn’t want you to love your dad. He rubs it in that you do. Their war continues past the marriage, past the divorce, past any logic that you can see. And you hang out in no-man’s-land, your white flag tattered and shot through.
You ignore Dad’s question and decide to paint a beach.
By Sunday morning, there is blue sky, the sun, waves lapping at the shoreline and pale, pale sand. It’s not bad, but you decide to add Dad, or a hint of him, to the scene.
“Dad?” you call out.
“Yeah?” he replies from the kitchen where he’s helping Bernadette with the trim.
“Come in here, I need you to model your legs.”
He laughs as he comes in. “If I had a dime for every woman who—”
“Ew, don’t say it.” “Kidding, kidding.”
You add Dad’s legs and feet, plus the bottom of a lounge chair, low on the wall, so it looks like he’s there on the beach. As an afterthought, you add your own legs, in the chair next to his. And then... maybe some girls in bikinis? He’d love that, but no, too gross.
You’ll call it
On the Beach with Dad
.
You take a few steps back to get perspective.
Uh oh. The beach and water look fine, but the legs on the chairs... They look like stumps in striped boxes growing out of the sand.
Yikes.
On the Beach with Severed Legs
is more like it. You could add Mom’s legs in there too and call it
Family of Legs
.
And then there could be the corresponding mural:
The Legless
.
Family Without Legs
. Ha.
Walking on Stumps While Your Feet Relax at the Beach.
Shiver.
You’re getting creepy in your old age.
“Let me see it,” Bernadette says, and comes to stand beside you.
She tries not to, but she starts to giggle, and then it becomes a roar, and then Dad runs in and looks and laughs until he has to sit down on the floor.
“I’m going to paint over it!” you shout over the cackles, snorts and slapping of legs.
“Don’t you dare,” Dad says. “That thing’ll crack me up every time I look at it.”
And that’s as good a reason to paint as any.
6
Bernadette comes back with you two weeks later. On the subway, you lug a large duffel bag containing the fabulous curtains you sewed together in Home Ick. They have palm trees on them.
Dad’s not home yet, so you let yourselves in, put the cur- tains up, and admire your work.
Then there’s a knock at the door.
“Dad? You forget your keys?” you call out as you walk to the door.
It’s not Dad on the other side of the door, but his landlord, Chuck.
“Hi, Chuck, what’s up?”
“Sorry, kid, but I saw ya comin’ in and I gotta tell ya, yer dad’s not gonna be home tonight, likely.”
“Why not?”
“He’s, uh . . .” He shuffles his feet and rubs a hand across his comb-over.
“He’s what?” “He’s in jail, kid.”
The doorframe spins, but you grab on to it.
“Hey, nothin’ serious,” Chuck says, “just another drunken disorderly. He was causin’ a disruption.”
Bernadette comes to stand beside you and puts a hand on your arm.
“Where is he?” she asks.
“I told ya, in the slammer. Since this afternoon. Look, he tried to take a p—to urinate in the damned lobby. Can’t have that kinda behavior, so I called the cops.”
“Oh my God. Where... We have to.. .”
“What. Station. Did they. Take. Him. To!” Bernadette says.
Chuck tells her. She closes the door in his face. “You okay?” she says.
“Shit.”
Not okay, not okay, NOT OKAY! “My dad can’t be in jail.”
“I know. Let’s go get him.” “Bee, you don’t have to come.”
“Shut the fuck up,” she says. “Let’s go.”
6
I collapse into a chair in a downtown coffee shop and wait for my head to stop spinning.
Bernadette slides in across from me. “Thanks for playing hooky,” she says. “Sorry things got out of hand.”
I let Bernadette convince me to attend a gay rights rally this afternoon. When she called, I was in my studio staring into space, disturbed by memories of my encounter with Erik and more disturbed that it happened on the heels of an evening with Hugo. A few hundred screaming people
suddenly seemed a paltry challenge compared to sorting out my personal life.
But it was a bad idea. Bernadette and I got separated and I was nearly trampled to death by the right-wing zealots who were all hot to equate homosexuals with pedophiles, polyga- mists and people who fuck sheep. Bernadette found me, grabbed me by the arm and hauled me out, but by then I was so freaked I thought my head would burst open.
“Hey, no problem,” I say and take a sip of my steamed milk. No more caffeine for me today. Maybe a lobotomy. “I like a near-death experience every few days. Keeps me sharp.”
“Ha,” she says. “Seriously, thanks. I know you get a little wiggy in crowds.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“So... how are you?” she asks. “What’s new?”
This is usually a ridiculous question and we both know it, but she keeps asking. Today though, I wouldn’t know where to start. Erik is an impossible subject and I’m not ready to talk about Hugo.
“Same old,” I say. “Changing the world one rectangle at a time. You? What about that woman you met?”
Bernadette is about to reply when something or someone behind me catches her eye.
“Holy cow,” she whispers. “What?”
“Turn around slowly, and tell me who that is, standing in front of the biscotti.”
I try to act casual, and do as she says. Oh my God. I turn back.
“Is it who I think it is?” Bernadette says. “Is it Faith En- glish?”
“I think so,” I say, and slide down lower in my chair. “How do I look?” she asks, and starts putting on lipstick. “What? You’re not going to.. .”
“Are you kidding? I’ve been hoping to run into Faith En- glish since, well, since high school. How’s my hair?”
“Fine, but Bee—”
She gets up, yanks her sweater down. “I’m going in,” she says. “Wish me luck.” I don’t.
T
he subway makes that awful screeching sound and you don’t even cover your ears.
“Have you ever seen a jail?” you ask Bernadette. “Only on TV,” she says.
“Same here.”
At the station, after sending you from one person to an- other, they finally say you can see Dad, but that he can’t get out unless you post bail.
Bail!
It seems like a lot of money just for getting drunk and try- ing to take a pee. You and Bernadette empty your wallets, but between you, you’ve only got fifteen dollars.
“Well, here’s my case for a bigger allowance,” you say, and Bernadette covers her mouth to hide her laughter.
“You’re nuts,” she says. “Can you blame me?”
She says she’ll wait, and soon you are walking in. Doors are opened before you, then locked behind you as you pass.