She left hurriedly. I didn’t know what I felt or how I felt but most of all I had this sense that whatever was inside me no longer mattered. That I’d forfeited all of that, forfeited mattering to her. I believed there’d be no point in ever going near her again.
And then I was sleeping some more. And the place I slept was endlessly black. Blank and empty before it gained substance. Before it consoled me in a way I remembered from somewhere as old as the place I’d gone in those times she’d loved me.
Then I was waking up again. And not wanting this, wanting so much to stay encompassed in darkness, this darkness, belonging only to me. But right away thinking at least I had that money. That it would buy me the time to work these things out – work out who I was now, or who I’d been all along.
I nearly expected Beth to have left money, feared maybe she had. That I’d find bills crumpled somewhere near me. But she hadn’t done this so I could slip back to that darkness. And it pulled me back, encircled and held on. And I was clinging to it, not wanting ever to leave it because it felt so much like I’d finally come home.
Twenty-Six
When I woke again it was late the next day. I got myself into the bathtub, turned on the water and let it fill in around me. I stayed there a long time, because it felt safe. Finally the phone ringing got me up and out because it kept ringing. It wouldn’t stop.
It was Beth. Her voice sounded tired and shaky, and she asked, “Where are you?” She said this like the pleading child I thought I’d become.
“What?” I asked, still confused it was her.
“Why aren’t you here?”
The question seemed foolish, too foolish to answer but hanging up would only start the ringing again and that would hurt my head. It seemed best to try and wade through this now, so I said, “I didn’t think you’d want to see me anymore.”
She didn’t say anything to this, not right off. When she did, she said, “Look, I’m coming over.” And then she hung up.
I was sitting on the bed now still dripping wet. I curled up under the covers and stayed there damp and shivery.
In not so much longer I heard her knocking, a tentative sound I could almost ignore. But then it got like the ringing had, louder and more insistent until I could no longer pretend it away.
I got up and found a towel, pulled it around my waist, and opened the door.
She stood there fully dressed. She looked put together, and I wondered at my thinking she’d look like me – wet and disheveled and terribly in need. She came inside quickly, put her arms around me, and I heard her murmuring in my ear, over and over, “I’m sorry. Sweetheart, I’m so sorry.”
I didn’t know what I felt from this. I thought I should be the one apologizing. My body began to feel weak, even weaker, my knees giving in, my arms heavy around her. We went into the bedroom, or she took me there is really what happened. It started out like the night before – with me in the bed and her sitting beside me – except the feelings were all so completely reordered.
I felt nothing like anger, nothing close to it. In its place was a kind of fear and a stronger desire but not for where I knew we’d wind up. Still, that felt like the one way I could get close to what I needed – fucking her did. Or having her fuck me, but not like last night. Letting her have me her way.
She seemed in no hurry to get us there. She sat with me, calmly. Again just holding my hand. The bed began feeling soft and warm and maybe she felt warm, too, because she took off her coat first and then her shoes.
She curled up next to me. She still had her clothes on, and this left me feeling smaller somehow. To be the one already undressed, but then I found I liked feeling this way in relation to her. I felt something like trust.
She’d stopped saying she was sorry and I was glad for it because, more than anything else, that had confused me. That she believed she’d wronged me, didn’t see it the other way around. I felt unsettled in a way I still couldn’t shake.
Little bits of it lingered, making me flinch when she touched me. Making me want to get up and get a drink or a cigarette. Making me want to do these things except for being the naked one, and this still feeling good but also leaving me someway trapped. And her having so much control again? It worried me. I couldn’t stop it from worrying me.
But then she stopped it. Her hands on me did. Soothing and steady, they were smoothing me out. Pulling me under something as dark as an ocean. Something resembling that black sleep I’d just found, and so I went to it ardently. Went to her. Let her take me under.
She’d put her hands on my shoulders. She was pushing me back, and in this way I realized I’d stayed taut. Parts of my body had, bearing no resemblance to all the swimming softness inside me. She got under the covers with me, still in her clothes. I nestled against her. I wanted to undress her but this seemed beyond me, her clothes too intricate. I guess what I wanted was her undressed.
She just kept holding on to me, stroking me. I did finally manage to unbutton her blouse because her staying this way, her doing what I somewhere most wanted, I still couldn’t allow it. It still made me need to do something else. I unfastened her bra, but once I had, I didn’t go any further and so finally she was the one who took off her clothes.
Once she’d done this and we were still simply lying there, in the same way with no direction, she began saying things. The things I’d heard in my head the night before. I’d heard them so clearly then. But despite my wanting to, I could only half-hear them now. Bits and pieces, reaching into me before fading. Then coming at me again.
This happening over and over, until I found them, somewhere, taking hold. And, for the first time, I saw all the questions inside these words. Could see how badly they needed answers. How badly she did. How much she needed me to answer the things she said with things of my own.
I didn’t know how to do this without going back to last night. I knew she didn’t want to and I didn’t either, but I couldn’t see another way. I said, “Ingrid’s not who you think she is.”
And I felt Beth immediately pull back from my having uttered this name, so I pressed on quickly. “To me, I mean. She’s not who you’ve made her out to be. Can’t you see this? And you’re not who I thought you were either.”
And I’d said this badly, too. Struggling on, I said, “That wasn’t you last night, that was me. That’s who I’ve always been. Can you understand I know this now? Can you understand I don’t know who I am when I’m with you? When we’re together? That you’re no one I’ve known? Do you know what this means? What this means you mean?”
I’d become bogged down in my own swampy earth. Unable to explain something I’d only just happened on to. Unable to understand it myself, and now asking her to.
But, however ineptly, I must’ve given her some piece she needed. She came back to me in her comforting way. Hushing me. Saying, “Shush, shush now, sweetheart. I do know. I’ve always known. It’s all right, now. Just be still.”
She began to kiss me instead of just holding me and I kissed her back. And things began to dissolve then – my thoughts did, the stiffness left in my body. And with everything about me more fluid it was so much easier to become absorbed in her – my body going first and then taking my mind there. My feelings seemed to have been there all along.
She was partway on top of me, but I couldn’t feel her weight. I had to shift in order to, and by doing this I realized she’d been holding off me. In this physical way, she protected me. Everything about her tonight seemed to treat me as fragile. And my typical aversion to this gave way to its sweetness, to a larger thing of being cared for. Of letting her care for me. Believing she cared for me.