Heather Lewis - Notice

So I did leave, and she didn’t stop me.

I went home to find something I never could have expected. Inside my building, just outside my door, Ingrid was sitting on the stairs. The way she looked – so lonesome, so much like I felt – it took away any will I’d ever had with her. And with Beth at my back, the sight of Ingrid felt like relief.

We went inside and she stayed standing near the door. She sort of hovered there like she didn’t know any better than me why she’d come. I put down my keys. I took off my shoes without thinking because my feet hurt, unaccustomed to so much walking.

I sat on the couch and waited. Ingrid finally sat down, but on the edge, keeping her coat on. She acted confused – with me or herself, I couldn’t know. Something looked even more wrong than usual. This made me reach over and pull her coat from her shoulders and then pull her toward me. I held on to her while she cried. I kissed her hair and held her.

I didn’t think I wanted to know what had happened – what on earth could’ve put it in her head to come here. I knew we’d wind up in the bedroom but I hoped it would take a while because I was afraid of what I might find on her body.

It was bruises, all along her left side. The kind you get from someone getting you down on the floor and kicking. She never said how. She never explained it. But then I suppose that’s what I offered – someone she could go to without explanation. Someone who’d simply know and know exactly.

We didn’t really do anything more than lay around with each other. Finally I went to find some ice. Being only as far away as the kitchen gave me the distance to wonder what jeopardy she’d put me in by coming here. And if she began making a habit of it? This appealed to me even as it frightened me.

I went back to her. Lay a towel on her side and then the ice and then put some pillows around her. All of this began me thinking about the way it had been in their house. Her having done this kind of thing for me. And I began to feel I owed her this. That she would do the same for me. That she already had.

In the morning, I had trouble with Ingrid even being there. I got up, took the towel away, now soggy and cold. I did these things trying not to wake her and she went along with this. She seemed dead to anything I might do and I was glad for it.

I needed time by myself. I needed at least to figure out what day it was and where I should be. It felt like Sunday but knowing it wasn’t did nothing to put me in motion.

It was late enough that the phone began ringing and I knew it’d be someone from work trying to find me. That was about the last thing I could see dealing with, so I unplugged the phone. I decided right then I wouldn’t go back to that job.

This meant having the day with Ingrid. Maybe it did. After all I didn’t know her plans. How long she expected to stay. I’d remained in between not wanting her there and feeling closed in, but at the same time afraid of her leaving, not for her but for me. Afraid of being alone with myself in a way that might make me look at the things I was doing.

Ingrid did stay. She spent the day in bed, not really ever awake. I waited on the couch, realizing finally that what I was missing were my afternoon drinks, the ones that usually started at lunch. I pulled out a bottle and a glass and lay there drinking awhile, watching Ingrid through the bedroom door.

About when I was getting dressed to go see Beth, Ingrid got up and went into the bathroom. After a while I heard water running. I heard what sounded like her getting into the tub and I went in to brush my teeth.

“I have to go out for a little bit,” I told her. And though she looked stricken, she must’ve pulled herself back from this because her voice was steady when she said, “Would it be all right for me to stay here a few days?”

I considered this, knowing I would never refuse. But that alone couldn’t keep me from considering just where this would put me. Would she stay here while I went back to work for real in that parking lot? It would increase the chances of her husband showing up, looking for me. Or sending someone else to do it.

“You can stay as long as you need… As long as you want.” This was what I finally told her. And when I began my walk to Beth’s I noticed my car parked in the little lot by my building. I wondered if I should move it, put it somewhere else. Whether it would be something that would tip Ingrid’s husband all the faster to our whereabouts. But, of course, I knew he’d find us easily whenever he bothered to try.

I got to Beth’s office still edgy and distracted. I couldn’t tell how she was. It seemed for ever since I’d seen her, what with all that had come in between. She looked different to me, but then she did look different during the week. More distant and composed, if only on the surface.

“You didn’t go to work again.”

She said this as a statement of fact. I was still standing, running my fingers over a glass paperweight full of trapped, dead flowers. This object sat on her desk, which meant I stood right behind her. Something I’d never done before while walking around.

She didn’t turn to look at me when she talked. Instead she looked straight ahead and at the chair I should’ve been sitting in. Having Ingrid in my home gave me some kind of false something. I guess bravado because I felt less like I needed Beth. Though I suppose I needed her more. If only she’d ever been someone I could talk to.

I’d moved so quickly to the other side of what I’d just been feeling. Began feeling so swiftly small and afraid, so in need, that I did sit down and when I did I astonished myself. I said, “I think I’m in trouble.”

She looked at me. She said, “Tell me what’s happened.”

I had enough sense to know I couldn’t do that, not exactly. I said, “I can’t go back to that job. There’s some way I just can’t. There’s too much else…”

I expected a lecture. Something standard she’d shift into from habit. Instead she said, “Do you want to do the other thing more?”

“No, I don’t think so. I don’t know. I just know I can’t play store any longer. I don’t belong there. I don’t know who I am there because I’m never there, not really, not me.”

“You belong where?”

“I don’t know. Maybe the other thing suits me better. It’s all clearer.”

I didn’t know why I was saying these things to her and I believed I’d better stop because it seemed dangerous. She seemed dangerous if I let on what really happened inside me.

I waited for her to argue with me but she didn’t, she said, “Why do you think that?”

“Because I know what to do, what’s expected of me.” And then I thought of Burt and said, “Most of the time, anyway.”

I sat there unable to say anything more. I gazed at her, while longing seeped into every space in my body. It gave me a strange solid feel, but with a weight to it. A weight so heavy I couldn’t have gotten to my feet if I tried. But she was on hers, holding her hand out to me. And then I was standing and we were walking out to her car. She had her arm around my waist and I was leaning against her, and now the heaviness of my body felt pleasant.

She drove us to a park near her house. No one much was there, it being later than dusk and cold out. I pulled at the coat she’d given me, drew it close. It was odd to be among swings and slides, things children play on. The cold air felt good, though. And she felt good, still with her arm around me, still guiding me. The sweet sadness of this made me want to cry. And then before I’d registered wanting this I’d already begun it. Had begun to cry from that place so big and so old I didn’t know where it began or what it concerned.