Love and Other Words
Page 58
Or calling Elliot.
I was numb, but beneath it was a blistering anger, too. Even at the time, I knew it wasn’t quite right, I couldn’t quite connect the dots, but the tiny kernel of hurt over Elliot with Emma got all wrapped up in Dad and why he came to get me in the first place. I needed Elliot, wanted him there. I saw the first few of his frantic texts, his insistence that it was a mistake. But then I vacillated between wanting him to know that I’d been shattered, and wanting him to know that he’d been the one to lift the mallet. And then it felt better to think he wouldn’t know. He could have every other bit of my heart, but not this.
Like I said, I remember how it felt, and it felt like insanity.
Kennet and Britt took me back with them to Minnesota for four months. I picked at my cuticles until they bled. I cut off my hair with kitchen shears. I woke up at noon and counted the minutes until I could go back to bed. I didn’t argue when Kennet sent me to therapy, or when he and Britt sat at the dining room table, sifting through my college acceptance letters and weighing whether to send me to Tufts or Brown.
I remember everything up to Britt’s decisive tapping of the papers, her double take when she saw me standing at the foot of the stairs, and her satisfied “We’ve got it all figured out, Macy.”
After that, there is nothing. I don’t remember how they managed to secure my diploma. I don’t remember sleeping my way through the summer. I don’t remember packing for college.
I have to believe the administration prepped Sabrina in some way, though she insists they didn’t. For sure they handpicked her: she’d lost her brother in a car accident two summers before.
I also have to believe that leaving Berkeley saved me. By December, I could go minutes without thinking about Dad. And then an hour. And then long enough to take an exam. My coping mechanism was to wrap my thoughts – when they came – into a scrap of paper, then discard them like a piece of gum. Sabrina would let the ache tear through her. I would curl up and sleep until I was sure the thought could be wrapped up tight.
Time. I knew well enough that time numbed certain things – even death.
now
monday, january 1
E
lliot sits back, eyes glassy, and stares out my bedroom window.
I watch it all pass over him: the horror, the guilt, the confusion, the dawning realization that my dad died the day after Elliot cheated, that Dad was coming to get me because I’d been so upset and hadn’t called, that the last day I saw my dad was eleven years ago today… and for many years, I’ve blamed Elliot for it.
His nostrils flare, and he blinks away, jaw tight. “Oh, my God.”
“I know.”
“This… explains.” Elliot shakes his head, digging a hand into the front of his hair. “Why you didn’t call me back.”
Quietly, I tell him, “I wasn’t thinking very clearly – after – I wasn’t able to separate – you. And it.”
I’m so bad at words.
“Holy shit, Macy.” Catching himself, he turns and pulls me back into his arms, but it’s different.
Stiffer.
I’ve had more than a decade to deal with this; Elliot has had two minutes.
“When you stopped me outside Saul’s,” I say into his shirt, “and asked how Duncan was?”
He nods against me. “I had no idea.”
“I thought you knew,” I told him. “I thought you would have heard… somehow.”
“We didn’t have anyone else in common,” he says quietly. “It was like you disappeared.”
I nod, and he tightens. Something seems to occur to him. “All this time you weren’t out there thinking that I intentionally slept with Emma, knew your dad died, and was fine with it, were you?”
I try my best to explain the fogginess of my logic at the time. “I don’t think I really thought about it like that – that you were fine with it. I knew you were trying to call me. I knew, rationally, that you did love me. But I thought that maybe you and Emma had more of a thing going on than you ever told me. I was embarrassed and heartbroken…”
“We didn’t have a thing,” he says urgently.
“I think it was Christian who said you two hooked up sometimes —”
“Macy,” Elliot says quietly, cupping my face so I’ll look at him. “Christian is an idiot. You knew everything that happened with me and Emma. There wasn’t some other secret layer to it.”
I want to tell him that, in truth, this is all moot now, but I can see that to him, it isn’t. His intent means everything.
He squints, still struggling to put this all together. “Andreas said he saw you, the next summer. Coming in here with your dad.”
I shake my head, until I realize what he means. “That was my uncle Kennet.” I sniff, wiping my nose again. “We drove up to pack our things and put them away.” I look around us, at the familiar, now-drab paint on the walls, remembering how I didn’t actually want to move a single thing. I wanted it left exactly the way it was, a museum. “That was the last time I was here.”
“I was home that summer,” he whispers. “All summer. I spent every day looking for you. I wondered how I could have possibly missed the moment you came by.”
“We went in late. We kept the lights off.” Even now, it sounds utterly ridiculous how we snuck in like burglars, using flashlights to get what we needed. Kennet thought I’d lost it again. “I was worried I would see you.”
Elliot pulls back, mouth turned down. I hate that this is opening old wounds, but I hate even more that it’s making fresh ones.
“Maybe ‘worried’ is the wrong word,” I correct, though I know even in hindsight it isn’t – I had a panic attack the night before Kennet and I got in the car to drive here, and I couldn’t stand the thought of Elliot seeing me that way. “In the first year after Dad died, at Tufts, I had found this sort of quiet, calm place.” Humming, I say, “Maybe I would have run into your arms. But I worried I would be angry, or sad. It was just so much easier to feel nothing instead.”
He bends, resting his elbows on his thighs, head in his hands. Reaching up, I rub his back, small circles between his shoulder blades.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“No.” He turns and looks over his shoulder at me, giving me a wan smile to take the bite out of his answer, and then his face pales as he stares at me. I can see the realization wash over him again.
“Mace.” His face falls. “How do I say I’m sorry? How do I ever —”
“Elliot, no —”
In a flash, he bolts up, sprinting out of the room. I stand to follow, but the bathroom door slams and it’s quickly followed by the sound of Elliot’s knees landing on the floor and him vomiting.
I press my forehead to the door, hearing the flush, the tap running, his quiet groan.
“Elliot?” My heart feels like it’s been squeezed inside a fist.
“I just need a minute, Mace, I’m sorry, just give me a minute?”
I slide down the wall, setting up vigil outside the bathroom, listening to him throwing up again.
I wake up under the covers, on my bed, without any memory of how I got here. The only answer is that I fell asleep on the floor in the hall, and Elliot carried me to the bedroom, but the other side of the bed looks untouched, and he’s nowhere to be seen.
I was numb, but beneath it was a blistering anger, too. Even at the time, I knew it wasn’t quite right, I couldn’t quite connect the dots, but the tiny kernel of hurt over Elliot with Emma got all wrapped up in Dad and why he came to get me in the first place. I needed Elliot, wanted him there. I saw the first few of his frantic texts, his insistence that it was a mistake. But then I vacillated between wanting him to know that I’d been shattered, and wanting him to know that he’d been the one to lift the mallet. And then it felt better to think he wouldn’t know. He could have every other bit of my heart, but not this.
Like I said, I remember how it felt, and it felt like insanity.
Kennet and Britt took me back with them to Minnesota for four months. I picked at my cuticles until they bled. I cut off my hair with kitchen shears. I woke up at noon and counted the minutes until I could go back to bed. I didn’t argue when Kennet sent me to therapy, or when he and Britt sat at the dining room table, sifting through my college acceptance letters and weighing whether to send me to Tufts or Brown.
I remember everything up to Britt’s decisive tapping of the papers, her double take when she saw me standing at the foot of the stairs, and her satisfied “We’ve got it all figured out, Macy.”
After that, there is nothing. I don’t remember how they managed to secure my diploma. I don’t remember sleeping my way through the summer. I don’t remember packing for college.
I have to believe the administration prepped Sabrina in some way, though she insists they didn’t. For sure they handpicked her: she’d lost her brother in a car accident two summers before.
I also have to believe that leaving Berkeley saved me. By December, I could go minutes without thinking about Dad. And then an hour. And then long enough to take an exam. My coping mechanism was to wrap my thoughts – when they came – into a scrap of paper, then discard them like a piece of gum. Sabrina would let the ache tear through her. I would curl up and sleep until I was sure the thought could be wrapped up tight.
Time. I knew well enough that time numbed certain things – even death.
now
monday, january 1
E
lliot sits back, eyes glassy, and stares out my bedroom window.
I watch it all pass over him: the horror, the guilt, the confusion, the dawning realization that my dad died the day after Elliot cheated, that Dad was coming to get me because I’d been so upset and hadn’t called, that the last day I saw my dad was eleven years ago today… and for many years, I’ve blamed Elliot for it.
His nostrils flare, and he blinks away, jaw tight. “Oh, my God.”
“I know.”
“This… explains.” Elliot shakes his head, digging a hand into the front of his hair. “Why you didn’t call me back.”
Quietly, I tell him, “I wasn’t thinking very clearly – after – I wasn’t able to separate – you. And it.”
I’m so bad at words.
“Holy shit, Macy.” Catching himself, he turns and pulls me back into his arms, but it’s different.
Stiffer.
I’ve had more than a decade to deal with this; Elliot has had two minutes.
“When you stopped me outside Saul’s,” I say into his shirt, “and asked how Duncan was?”
He nods against me. “I had no idea.”
“I thought you knew,” I told him. “I thought you would have heard… somehow.”
“We didn’t have anyone else in common,” he says quietly. “It was like you disappeared.”
I nod, and he tightens. Something seems to occur to him. “All this time you weren’t out there thinking that I intentionally slept with Emma, knew your dad died, and was fine with it, were you?”
I try my best to explain the fogginess of my logic at the time. “I don’t think I really thought about it like that – that you were fine with it. I knew you were trying to call me. I knew, rationally, that you did love me. But I thought that maybe you and Emma had more of a thing going on than you ever told me. I was embarrassed and heartbroken…”
“We didn’t have a thing,” he says urgently.
“I think it was Christian who said you two hooked up sometimes —”
“Macy,” Elliot says quietly, cupping my face so I’ll look at him. “Christian is an idiot. You knew everything that happened with me and Emma. There wasn’t some other secret layer to it.”
I want to tell him that, in truth, this is all moot now, but I can see that to him, it isn’t. His intent means everything.
He squints, still struggling to put this all together. “Andreas said he saw you, the next summer. Coming in here with your dad.”
I shake my head, until I realize what he means. “That was my uncle Kennet.” I sniff, wiping my nose again. “We drove up to pack our things and put them away.” I look around us, at the familiar, now-drab paint on the walls, remembering how I didn’t actually want to move a single thing. I wanted it left exactly the way it was, a museum. “That was the last time I was here.”
“I was home that summer,” he whispers. “All summer. I spent every day looking for you. I wondered how I could have possibly missed the moment you came by.”
“We went in late. We kept the lights off.” Even now, it sounds utterly ridiculous how we snuck in like burglars, using flashlights to get what we needed. Kennet thought I’d lost it again. “I was worried I would see you.”
Elliot pulls back, mouth turned down. I hate that this is opening old wounds, but I hate even more that it’s making fresh ones.
“Maybe ‘worried’ is the wrong word,” I correct, though I know even in hindsight it isn’t – I had a panic attack the night before Kennet and I got in the car to drive here, and I couldn’t stand the thought of Elliot seeing me that way. “In the first year after Dad died, at Tufts, I had found this sort of quiet, calm place.” Humming, I say, “Maybe I would have run into your arms. But I worried I would be angry, or sad. It was just so much easier to feel nothing instead.”
He bends, resting his elbows on his thighs, head in his hands. Reaching up, I rub his back, small circles between his shoulder blades.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“No.” He turns and looks over his shoulder at me, giving me a wan smile to take the bite out of his answer, and then his face pales as he stares at me. I can see the realization wash over him again.
“Mace.” His face falls. “How do I say I’m sorry? How do I ever —”
“Elliot, no —”
In a flash, he bolts up, sprinting out of the room. I stand to follow, but the bathroom door slams and it’s quickly followed by the sound of Elliot’s knees landing on the floor and him vomiting.
I press my forehead to the door, hearing the flush, the tap running, his quiet groan.
“Elliot?” My heart feels like it’s been squeezed inside a fist.
“I just need a minute, Mace, I’m sorry, just give me a minute?”
I slide down the wall, setting up vigil outside the bathroom, listening to him throwing up again.
I wake up under the covers, on my bed, without any memory of how I got here. The only answer is that I fell asleep on the floor in the hall, and Elliot carried me to the bedroom, but the other side of the bed looks untouched, and he’s nowhere to be seen.
