“Seth was. And Seth was after you and afraid to tell you because he’s your friend. He understood. He knows what it’s like to... have a stain. He knows and you don’t. You don’t.”
She sat on the ground under the pine tree, in the litter of twigs and brown needles, her shoulders heaving.
Addison stood over her thinking: I don’t know why the fuck I came.
There was a tap at the door, and Sully got up to answer it.
“Could we talk?” said Chris.
Sully opened his mouth, but as happened in so many important occasions, nothing came out, and he just gestured for Chris to come in.”
“It’s good to see you, Sully,” said Chris.
Sully just nodded. Why couldn’t he speak?
“I don’t really have anything to say either,” Chris agreed. “Just, I’ve been thinking about you and.... Did you know that Matt won’t stop bringing you up?”
“No,” Sully said.
“He says you’re the best thing that ever happened to me. He’s right of course. But... did you know that? Well,” he said before Sully opened his mouth. “You already said no.”
“Bailey says it too,” Sully told him.
“Yeah, I know. Matt told me that bit, but thought I wouldn’t say that. So, all sorts of people say it. You knew it. I destroyed it. I... I guess I can’t say I’m sorry again.”
Sully looked confused, his eyes in their myopic slits, and finally he said, “Chris, it’s good to see you. But...”
“Why am I here?”
“Sort of? I don’t mean to be rude.”
“I’m here cause I missed you.”
“Well,” Sully said, walking around his living room. “I missed you too. But, I don’t know if I can go back to what... I don’t know that I can just jump back into things again. I’d like to, but I don’t know that I can. It just hurt me a lot. When it was over. I’m not ready for that again.” Sully shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe we even jumped the gun too fast. Maybe we can start again.”
“I’d like to start again. Sullivan.”
“I miss the way you always call me Sullivan.”
“It’s a nice name.”
“When do you go off to school?”
“Friday after next.”
“Then I really don’t want to start anything up.”
“Is going to the mall starting things up?”
“No, but going to the mall is something I’m sick of. All we do is go to the mall. And we never buy anything. And don’t you work at the mall?”
“Yeah, you got a point. There’s got to be another hangout.”
Sully’s eyes lit up and he snapped his fingers.
“What?”
“Saint Vitus’s.”
“School.”
“Yeah,” Sully said walking upstairs. Chris turned and followed him slowly.
Sully shouted down: “Can you swim?”
“No, Sully. Not well. It’s not my strong suit.”
He came into Sully’s room. Sully was digging around in his dresser.
He handed Chris a pair of trunks and told him: “You need a new strong suit.”
He is home now.
I’ve been thinking. They say history is a set of lies agreed upon. I don’t think that’s true. At least, not with private histories. Generally I find that it is a set of truths agreed upon, often exaggerated to keep us going. And there is also a set of uncomfortable realities that we simply choose to ignore. For the time.
Maybe those things will come up again and maybe they won’t. There is such a thing as too much information. What about the information that isn’t necessary or the information that hurts too much? What about information you can’t take right now?
There is so much we hide from each other. For the time being. There is so much we don’t say, even though everybody knows.
My mother loves my father. She wasn’t rich when they married, but she wasn’t poor either. When she was in her early twenties they would hand her ten thousand dollars just to walk down a runway, and she walked down a lot of runways. At that time, my father was already widowed twice with gray hair. When I was born he was closer to fifty than forty.
My mother isn’t even forty.
So she should have known, or suspected that even without the intervention of four cigarette packs a day for thirty years, nature would take her husband away before her. It’s something I try not to think about when I see how gray he is. Gray all over, and hyped up on the drugs.
I believe in the drugs because I believe in holding on to even the smallest chance that he’ll live. He is sixty-six years old with advanced cancer. I tell that to myself over and over again. I am trying to steel myself.
But there is a part of me that won’t accept it. Can’t.
I can’t believe myself. I hate crying because it’s such a waste of time and it just makes you look so stupid. I feel so defeated. I go in to look at him, hold mother’s hand, kiss her on the head, talk to Swain awhile then I have to go and close myself up in bathroom. And I cry and cry. I have dreams where I’m at his funeral and some dreams where I’m in the coffin. I should tell this to someone. I should tell my friends, but for some reason there are some things we do that we just never tell.
In late summer even the darkness has gold in it. The curtains drawn are blue and through an indigo yellow cast the two bodies swim in and out of each other like fish in water, clinging, reaching, kissing holding, clinging. She turns her head to moan slightly as he buries his face in her shoulder and sets to, quicker and quicker. She, stroking his hair, tears coming down her eyes, needing to be healed in this deep place where something was taken so long ago, turning him over, taking him. They are both so quiet and silent. The plains of their bodies, the soft and rougher places, the damp places are all secret, they all need to be touched. Why wasn’t it ever like this before? Right now it is like a symphony. Right now it is sublime. Perfectly holy.
In the end it is quick and shuttling. It is basic and necessary. Everything stripped away. Him, over her like an arch, pushing over and over again. She, taking it all in, both of them fighting not to make a noise, not to give anyone any reason to tap on this door. It is a violent explosion, a staggering thing that they both reel back from and cling to each other against as they push each other away. Climax together and slowly, like a kite falling, they collapse and lay side by side.
Sighing, his chest heaving, Addison breathes, but says nothing as he reaches out of touch her hand and Becky closes her fingers in his.