Merritt Tierce - Love Me Back

Burns, I said. There were dots and dashes of scar tissue up and down the inside and outside of both of my arms. They were uniformly spaced and reminded me of a fretboard. And other things. The deepest ones took several years to heal. Or fully scar, or whatever the curing process is called. So some of them were still pink and bright.

I bought three waffle-knit thermal undershirts at Goodwill and kept working at the Dream Café.

What are all those marks? asked Zeke. At first I’d thought he was gay because of the way he walked but it turned out he was just a nerd. We started doing my crossword together and sharing food. Together we could do the Thursday and sometimes the Friday. I had been at the Dream for nine months then and of the servers he and Tanya were the only ones who’d been there longer. Eventually we went back to his place after a brunch shift. His place was disgusting. It was an efficiency at Lovers and Skillman and it was filthy and dark. Everything was black. I still take wide detours around that intersection because I don’t want to think about it. There was one window but he had covered it with a blackout curtain. He had two cats and it smelled like cat shit. His bed was gritty from litter that came off the cats’ paws. They’re burns, I said. So you’re one of those, he said. One of what? I said. His computer chimed and he got up off the bed where we had been making out. Hold on, he said. This girl in Japan died. We’re having an online wake for her. Someone you knew? I asked. Yes, he said. I mean, just online, but we in-game chatted all the time. He typed something and then he came back to the bed, which was only one step from the computer desk. We started kissing again and then we moved on. I went into my bathroom and shut the door and turned on the water. I changed the carpet to be fluffy and white and gave myself a big white robe and smooth legs. I erased all the rust marks from around the drain in the bathtub and erased all the dull gray that wasn’t anything but old calcified faded grime until the bathtub was spotless. Then I just got rid of that bathtub and started over with a brand-new claw-foot that no one had ever bathed in but me. I took out the toilet and put it in one of those tiny rooms that has its own door. I put in a couch next to the bathtub so I could lie on the couch and watch the water run. I made the bathtub deeper so the water could run longer. I upholstered the couch in the fluffy white carpet so it felt like I was still lying on the floor. Hey, said Zeke. Marie. Hey.

I opened my eyes. Did you come? he said. No, I said. Do you think these are too big? he asked. He held up a string of four plastic beads the size of large grapes. What are they? I asked. You’ve never tried anal beads before? he said. No, I said. What about just anal? he asked. Once or twice, I said.

It was really only once. When my husband and I went into the bayou between New Orleans and Baton Rouge for a week of intensive marriage counseling after I started burning myself. My parents paid for it and kept the baby. It didn’t work but we did have anal sex and the woman counselor gave me a recipe for oatmeal blueberry pancakes that I still make. When we went home no one wanted me to be alone with the baby anymore and my husband wanted to go to college. She was weaned by then so my mother started watching her at night while he was in class. We filed for divorce and he gave me half his first student loan check so I could move to Dallas, where I rented an apartment that had a $1 move-in special. I didn’t have a job and I didn’t know anyone.

You’ll like these better, said Zeke. Turn over. I remember his fingernails had those white marks on them that your grandmother says means how many lies you’ve told.

The third day in Mexico we follow our guide single file through a forest and up the side of a mountain. At the top is a trout farm, which means a beautiful clear shallow stream flowing in narrow rows lined with round stones. There is a thatched shelter with long wooden tables where we sit and rest. We are three hours up and we can see all of the DF shimmering below. We are high enough that it looks almost like it did from the plane.

Our guide skims trout from the stream with a net and carries them over to an old woman, who cooks them whole over an open flame while she makes tortillas. The fire is in the ground under a grate. The fish smoke on the grate and the tortillas cook in an iron skillet. She squats, turning the fish and shaping the tortillas and looking at nothing. At intervals she scoops fat out of a plastic Big Gulp cup and flicks it off her fingers onto the skillet. When the fish are cooked she places each one on a tin plate and motions for us to come get them, one by one. We say Gracias, and she says Dios te bendiga to each one of us, looking into our eyes. When it is my turn I see that she has not been looking at nothing but I see that she knows I thought that she was.

We sit at the tables and eat. The fish still have their heads and their tails. I have never tasted anything so good. There are no napkins so your dad takes his bandana out of his pocket and we share it to wipe the grease off our faces.

When everyone has eaten, they tell us to take our plates downstream from the fish and rinse them. I stand and take your dad’s plate and mine and step out from under the thatch, but as I move into the sun I look at the old woman and fall.

I don’t know that I fall. This is what your dad tells me later. The sun, the mountain, says the guide. It does that. One minute okay, then —pff , he says, making a motion with his hand like he’s letting go of an invisible dove. When I open my eyes the first thing I see is your dad’s face, and he looks so concerned I think If I could just stay here with him, looking at me like that.

You are strong. My father calls you Little Boot because when you fall you never cry. You can read when you are four and I ask you to help me memorize the parts of the cow. You have a lisp and I tell you to say brisket over and over just so I can hear it. But when you fall asleep I go into the bathroom and do lines off the map of the steer. I read about the difference between Kobe and Wagyu and I feel replete with the beauty of your small self. Just imagining it — the everything of you — my body tingles and quivers like the air inside a guitar. I am freezing. I get into bed with you. You like staying with me because you get to sleep with me. You are so warm but I can’t stop shivering. I feel a soaring bliss — I adore you — I feel a plummeting ugly resentment — I am a pile of shit falling endlessly down a dark shaft, I am the hate that hurled the shit and the fear inside the hurled shit. If you slip out one stitch in your brain high and low are the same. I don’t realize I’ve said that aloud until you turn over to face me. Mama, you say, what’s wrong? I see in your face the deepest empathy and your mouth pulls down. I realize nothing else is happening in your life at this moment. You are here with your mother who is crying, so you cry too.

Jimmy plays at The Restaurant three nights a week, from seven until eleven or until the last guest leaves, whichever comes first. When he sees the last guests cross the threshold of the door out of the dining room into the lobby he’ll stop in the middle of his chill Jobim or his John Williams show tune, right in the middle of an arpeggio, stand up, shut the lid, grab his bag, walk out. The effect is as abrupt as turning off a stereo except that sometimes the last note he played drifts there in the air, along with the smells of butter and salt.