The Atomic Weight of Love (29 page)

Halfway across the yard, someone grabbed my arm, and I spun, ready to strike.

“Where’re you going?” Clay asked.

“Home.”

“But you should be with us.”

“No, I shouldn’t.”

“Don’t be so uptight, Meridian. Let me roll you a number,” he said, tugging at my arm.

I shook myself free. “You let people—several people from what I could tell—have sex in
our
bed, on
our
sheets?”

“I have another set of sheets.”

“Not the point.” I opened the car door, threw my purse onto the passenger seat, and climbed inside.

“Stay,” he begged now, a softer, less demanding tone to his voice. “I want you here, with me.”

“I don’t participate in orgies. This is hardly the way I enjoy myself.”

“You could. You could learn. Open up.” He looked back at his lawn, and then he winced, seemed to see it all differently. “Baby, I’m sorry. They just showed up. Don’t be this way.”

“There’s no dignity,” I said. “It should be private. What I have with you is intimate.” I started the car. He stepped back from the car door so that I could back out. I glanced in the rearview mirror as I drove off, saw him standing there, separate from his friends, separate from me.

Would he go back in, climb onto the mattress with Sunset or Sunrise or High Noon or one of the other beautiful girls with questionable hygiene? It made me heartsick. And it frightened me—that I needed him, that I cared, that I couldn’t be in his world. That his boundaries were so permeable and that mine were so stridently defined.

THE NEXT MORNING, I
went to my crows for solace. I both hoped Clay would be there, and hoped he would stay away. When my crows told me he’d arrived, I steadied myself.

He circled around in front of me, looked up at me where I perched on my boulder. He shoved his hands into his jeans pockets. “I don’t really know what to say.”

“Me either.”

“They’re gone.”

“I knew this wouldn’t work, Clay. I told you.”

“Don’t give up on us.”

I shook my head. “What’s the point?”

“The
point
, Meridian? Really? You don’t know what the
point
is?”

“We’re too different.”

“No, we’re not.” He took a deep breath, let it out. “You saw the old me last night. That’s not who I am now.”

“That did not look like ancient history.”

“It’s what we do. We welcome people. We don’t plan every fucking second of every fucking day.”

“Neither do I.”

“You—” he said, a false start. “How can you experience life if you don’t let it happen? Break a few rules?”

“But there’s a limit. And I can make choices—I don’t have to tolerate behavior that’s personally offensive.”

“Wow. Personally offensive. What’s that?”

“Sitting on a toilet with two men watching while I urinate. Carelessly burning someone’s home and not caring about it.”

“It’s just a different way of being.”

“Precisely. And it’s not my way. Those people have no boundaries.”

“And they’d tell you that’s exactly what they’re after—total freedom.”

This was it. Our worlds could rub shoulders, but we couldn’t meld.

“What if I tell you they won’t be back? What if I tell you that I told them they can no longer crash at my pad. Off limits.”

“One of them called me
mother
.”

“Then he’s an asshole.”

The writhing bodies were in my head, again. “Clay?”

“Yeah?”

“Did you . . . Did you sleep with those girls last night?”

“No.”

“And I can believe you?”

“You can choose to believe me.”

“It’s just that . . .”

“The sheets are hanging on the line as we speak. And I’ll finish cleaning this afternoon.”

“Good. Open a few windows, too.”

He laughed. “Already done. So this evening? A fresh start?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Think about it.” He stepped up onto the boulder, bent and kissed the top of my head. “Don’t kill this. Don’t run away.”

I watched him as he climbed out of the canyon, and I knew I’d go back.

HUMBLY, I COUNTED AND
kissed each scar. I measured their spans with my fingertips and let my index finger ride up and over the bumps. Some had shattered, starry outlines; they gathered to form galaxies of remembrance. I drew dot-to-dot lines between them, tried to see what images the combination of wounds revealed. I rubbed them with my thumb, thought to erase them.

I could not see his face, buried in a pillow. I licked the salty sweat in the crack of his ass, trailed my tongue down the backs of his thighs and counted a second territory of wounds. He lifted his head and cushioned it on his forearms, his face still hidden. He took several deep breaths, one of which caught in his throat.

In the corner, Jasper licked his paws, relaxing into his nighttime ablutions.

“I’ll be back,” I said and padded into the kitchen. I wrestled with the ice cube tray until I had a bowl of ice, and then I returned, touched an ice cube to the sides of his neck, beneath his ears.

“Cool,” he sighed with pleasure.

I began to illustrate his body with lines of meltwater. I drew his wings. I followed the striations of his muscles, the lines of his tan. I used the cubes as erasers, worked once more at trying to remove the scars.

“Turn over,” I said, choosing a new ice cube. I began with his face, his resolute cheekbones, the wells of his closed eyes, and I moved down to the twin caverns of his clavicles. I crisscrossed his chest, toured his dark red nipples, detoured into the darkness of his armpits. I left what remained of the ice cube to melt in the bowl of his navel.

“I want to make them disappear,” I said softly. “I want to make it as though none of that happened to you.”

He opened his eyes and shook his head.

“I can try,” I said. “I can try.” I pressed my palm to his forehead, wanting to siphon off the memories that lodged in his brain. I wanted to take them into myself. I wanted to free him.

“Roger’s inside of me, too,” he said, taking my wrist and removing my hand. “And if you’re thinking of trying a lobotomy, don’t.” He turned his head to look out the window at the stars.

“I think I understand.”

“No, you can’t.”

“I know I can’t, not really, but I think I can.”

“Meridian, I’m not speaking in poetic terms. Not about Roger.”

I straddled him, held his face in my hands. “Then tell me,” I said. “Help me understand.”

“Take my word for it. You do not want to know. Once I tell you, you won’t be able to forget. It will sicken you.” He used a rougher voice than I’d ever heard from him. “
I
will sicken you.” He rubbed his face with both hands and then sat up, holding my hips to keep me in place.

“I swear to you,” he said looking into my face, “you will be sorry.”

“Let me be the judge of that.”

He kissed my scarred palm. “Shrapnel.” He took a deep breath, looked down at our hands and then back at my face. I felt my head tip to the right, knew my eyes had opened wider, that tears were already pooling in my lower lids. “It can be metal or wood, Meridian.”

I began to cry. He hadn’t even said it yet, and I was crying. “Please,” I said and waited.

“It can be human, too. Human bone.”

“Oh, God,” I said. “Oh, God.”

“Shards of Roger’s bones were shot into me, buried inside of me.”

I felt a shudder go through my body. I wasn’t helping him at all—not like this.

“Oh, for FUCK’S SAKE!” he yelled and moved me off of him, got out of bed. The bowl of ice tipped over, spilling a pool of water onto the sheets. I set it upright, tried to decide if I should follow him.

He was standing at the bathroom sink, staring into the mirror. I stayed in the doorway, uncertain as to how far to push him, fearing I’d already gone too far.

“So much for lowering your inhibitions,” he joked half-heartedly. “No more grass for you.”

But he wasn’t smiling, and he wasn’t looking at me. He was staring at himself, still.

I pressed my hands against the sides of the door jamb, isometric exercises in self-restraint. “I’m sorry,” I said.

“Nothin’ to be sorry for.”

“Oh, I think there’s a lot to be sorry for.”

“It’s not a war you had anything to do with.” He leaned his weight on his arms, his hands on the sides of the sink, and I could not help but admire the bulk of his triceps muscles, the way the muscles of his back moved, tensed.

“You’re so beautiful,” I breathed. “So beautiful.”

He turned and looked at me. “I’m not ugly to you? Now that you know?”

I shook my head. And then, while I looked at that still-boy, I felt bile rise in my throat. It was anger. Pure, visceral, acidic anger. How could anyone have taken such beauty, such faith, and sent it half a world away to be so irrevocably damaged? How many lives were we damaging, destroying? And why? What could possibly justify what I beheld in the dull yellow light of that tiny bathroom with its fractured linoleum floor?

“So,” I said, locking eyes with him. “I’m fucking pissed off.”

He laughed—a big lungful of a laugh. “Fuckin’ A! Meridian gets righteous,” he said, letting go of the sink and enfolding me in his arms.

And then, in the softest whisper possible, he wove these words into the strands of my hair, tattooed my scalp with them: “Bless you, baby.”

OTHER THAN LETTING JASPER
out periodically, we stayed in bed the entirety of the next day. We showered together—something I’d never before shared with anyone. We smoked pot, the ashtray balanced on the flat of Clay’s belly. Talked. We ate leftover spaghetti, cherry popsicles for dessert.

I rode him, and when I climaxed, my entire body shuddered repeatedly.

“Nine point seven on the Richter Scale,” he said. “I’d like to feel that time and time again. Forever.” He smoothed my hair back off of my forehead, out of my eyes.

“Me too,” I said, breathless. “Me too.”

“HOW COME
YOU’VE NEVER
been to the Gorge Bridge?” It was the last day of Liberation Week, and we were headed north, toward Clay’s old stomping grounds. He’d given me my choice, and I’d picked the new bridge that spanned the Rio Grande, northwest of Taos. Except it wasn’t that new—it had been completed five years earlier.

“Alone?”

“Why not? If Alden won’t go with you, why not go alone?”

“I used to,” I said, thinking.

“Why’d you stop?”

“I don’t know.” This conversation was making me sad. “Today’s for fun, Clay, so let’s drop it.”

“OK.”

“I’m not mad.”

“I didn’t think you were.”

“Good.”

We rode in companionable silence, and eventually Jasper grew bored with the scenery and curled up to sleep between us. I rested my hand on the top of his head, feeling the wonderful solidity of his skull beneath my palm. Tom Jones came on the radio singing “Daughter of Darkness,” and I turned up the volume, sang along. I slapped my hands against my thighs, pinched Clay’s thigh.

He reached over and switched off the radio. “You have got to be fucking kidding me.”

“What?”

“Tom Jones?”

“I listen to your music!”

“I have taste.”

“A matter of perspective,” I said. “You could use a more open attitude, you know.” I switched the radio back on. “Don’t be so
uptight
.” I grinned. “He has a fine voice, better than Dylan.”

“Everyone has a better voice than Dylan. It’s what Dylan says, man.”

“Well, I get a kick out of Tom Jones.”

“Please tell me you don’t watch his show. Those pants! The guy’s ridiculous.”

“Those pants are one of the major reasons women watch his show. We pretend it’s about his voice, but where else are we going to see something like that? Men have their magazines and strip clubs.”

“He stuffs. I guarantee it.”

I giggled. “Tube socks?”

“Probably.” He glanced over at me, a sly grin on his face. “The striped variety.”

I dissolved in laughter, picturing Tom Jones backstage, trying to get the zipper closed over a wad of socks. I put my feet up on the dashboard.

“Tom fucking Jones.” Clay shook his head, smiling and checking his rearview mirror.

“I should give you money for gas,” I said, suddenly remembering that I’d meant to make the offer a few days ago. I’d used up all of the cash Alden had left for me under the salt and pepper shakers. Fortunately, I had a cache of bills I’d hoarded in the toes of some heels I no longer wore.

“What is it with you and money, anyway? Alden has to make a good salary.”

“I don’t know. Well, I know he makes a good salary . . .”

“You don’t know how much money your husband makes? How old are you, Meridian?”

“It’s the way we’ve always done it.”

“And it doesn’t piss you off?”

“A little.”

“A lot?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where’s your anger? Haven’t you heard of the women’s movement? Women’s lib?”

“I’ve heard of burning bras, which seems incredibly wasteful to me.” I took my hand from Jasper’s head; it had grown uncomfortably hot.

“You have a right to the money, too—it’s your money, both of yours.”

I laughed. “Tell that to Alden.”

“I might.”

“Don’t you dare.” I gave him a light slug in the arm.

“Tom fucking Jones,” he said, shaking his head. “The woman has no taste. None whatsoever,” he grinned.

WHEN CARS PASSED US,
the suspension bridge vibrated, sending delicious shivers up my spine. I stopped about a third of the way across the bridge and leaned out to look down at the ribbon of river over six hundred feet below. The Taos Gorge is relatively narrow, darkly shadowed basalt, and so completely impassable that a 1950s-era car remains stranded amidst the boulders. A breeze cooled us as we stood there, only our upper arms touching. Jasper put his nose in the air, sniffed.

I contemplated the last thoughts of those who hoisted themselves up and over the railing and then leapt from the bridge to their deaths. Then I thought that in a way I was getting some of what I’d wanted from Niagara Falls—the edge of oblivion, the proximity to easy, dramatic destruction. Freefall.