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But I don’t.
She says something into the phone and hangs up slowly, her eyes not leaving mine. She walks out of the room and the front door opens, throwing a triangle of light onto the porch.
“What are you doing here?” she says. It’s so rude, so devoid of any semblance of innocence that for a moment I am lost for words.
“I want you to stay away from my husband.”
Twenty-Seven
My pillow feels damp against my cheek, and it’s not just my pillow. The sheets around my chest also feel cold and wet, like I’ve sweated all the water from my body into the linen. I put a hand against my forehead. My hair is stuck against my skull. I’m so dehydrated I don’t think I could swallow right now without tearing my throat. I press the palms of my hands against my eyes. The pain is like needles inside my brain, like having shingles behind my eyeballs. It’s borderline unbearable.
This is a bad, bad hangover.
I open my eyes, squint at the daylight and feel as if I’ve rubbed salt into them. I pat the space next to me and find that Luis isn’t there; the day feels half gone already, like ten or eleven in the morning. I try to remember how I got myself in this state but can only catch shreds of images as they flash past.
I’m running down the street, getting rained on.
I’m soaked, sitting at a bus stop with my arms around my torso and I don’t think I’m waiting for a bus. My hands are cold and I don’t know where my gloves are.
I’m inside a bar because I don’t want to go home yet. The room is small and dark and on the walls are dim lights shaped like scallop shells and the mirrors behind the bar are etched and a man in a black suit plays jazz on the piano and is this what they call aspeakeasy?
I drink a Scotch cocktail that tastes like smoke and I love it so much I get another and another and another. The bartender says he’ll call me a taxi because I have to go home now. He hands me a paper napkin and I use it to blow my nose. I don’t want to go home because I’m angry with Luis. I’m so angry with Luis I want to punch him.
My head hurts so much I can’t think. I push the sheets off me and press my fingers against my temples. Something rattles in the kitchen, metal against metal. Luis must be down there. I’m trying to remember why I was so angry with him and when it comes to me it’s like I’ve been punched in the chest. It propels me upright, gasping, eyes wide open, heart thumping behind my ears.
Isabelle is pregnant.
I remember now. I went to see her after June and I left the bar. I walked all the way to her house. She looked surprised to see me but then her face slowly morphed into something else and she turned triumphant.
I was shaking, my teeth chattering. “Come on in,” she said. The house was warm. She was walking barefoot on the rug and I remember thinking,That’s a nice rug, gold and red and velvety, the kind of rug that would feel pleasant and soft under your toes. I must get one like that for the living room.Then I told her again to stay away from Luis, stay away from my husband, and it didn’t sound threatening at all. I sounded silly and hollow. Words that have been said so often they’ve become a joke. When did anyone ever stay away from the husband after being told to do so by a screeching fishwife?
She did what I might have done myself in her position.
She laughed at me. “You don’t deserve him,” she said. Then she too reverted to type by adding, “You don’t understand him.” And it was my turn to laugh.
I don’t know exactly what happened after that. I know that I yelled until my voice was hoarse. I know that I cried and begged, I think; yes, I’m pretty sure I begged. At one stage she left the room and I lifted the glass bubble vase of giant white daisies from the side table and dropped it on the floor. The flowers scattered at my feet and the water pooled onto the pretty rug, but the vase was still intact.
Then the memory melts, fragments go missing, like burn holes that start in the middle of a lit photograph and grow outward, leaving scorched misshaped rings in their wake until there’s nothing left.
I close my eyes, press my fingers between them. I do my best to concentrate, will myself to remember, and slowly a memory comes into focus. I see Isabelle put the flowers back in the vase, hear her voice right next to my ear, like she’s shouting at the side of my face.
He loves me, she’s saying.He adores me, he longs for me when he’s with you, did you know that? He can’t stand you. He says you’re boring and dull, that you have nothing in common. I can give him the life he deserves, the life he should have had a long time ago. You have no idea how talented he is. He is wasting his life with you. He loves me, and I’m carrying his child.
She put her hand on her belly then and stopped speaking, breathless.
Everything went still. Like there was no air left in the room.
“What did you say?” My voice was so soft, it was barely audible. I stared at her, my eyebrows knotted with shock, my mouth distorted in pain. I was begging her with my eyes.No. Please no, say it isn’t so.
“I’m pregnant. We’re happy. He’s so happy, or haven’t you noticed? Have you really not noticed howfuckinghappy he is?” Then she fiddled with the necklace at her throat and smirked.
And I lunged at her and yanked it off and she wasn’t smirking anymore.
I gulp cold water from the bathroom tap, gallons and gallons of it. Then I wipe my chin with the back of my hand and lean with both hands on the vanity, staring at myself in the reflection. My eyes are bloodshot and the skin below them is bruised and papery. I glance at my hands and I don’t understand why they look this way, why there are purple welts slashed across the soft pads of my palms. I open and close them into fists and wince with pain. My heart is hammering. I feel horribly sad, like someone has died.
I let the shower get as hot as possible and turn my face up to it, letting the water sting my skin. I stand there for a long time, crying, not crying, remembering, not remembering.
I see myself running, I’m bumping into people as I run past them. It’s late, it’s dark, it’s raining. I’m out of breath and that’s when I sit at the bus stop, breathless, and hug myself. I am standing in my kitchen in my wet clothes, in the dark. I look out to the backyard and the light is on in Luis’s shed and I think it’s late and he’s in there. But he’s not because I remember going into my bedroom and staring at Luis who was sleeping peacefully. I remember my whole body shaking and I couldn’t make it stop. I took my clothes off and left them on the floor. I slipped between the sheets and pressed myself against his back, every square inch of our bodies skin to skin. I could feel the beat of his heart and wondered if it matched mine. If our hearts were beating in unison. Then I felt like I’d dropped down an inky black abyss and suddenly I am dreaming, and in my dream he has his lips close to my cheek, just next to my ear, and I could feel his breath, like a feather. And he whispered,I would do anything to keep you.And I was wishing so hard that it wasn’t a dream, even though I knew it was.
