Heather Lewis - Notice

I went to the coffee table because I couldn’t not anymore. I didn’t have the energy required for trying to hide things. I picked up the envelope. It wasn’t sealed, it was too bulky. There inside – one twenty after another, some fifties, even hundreds near the back. No note, which I realized was what I was looking for, what I needed more than the money, or at least in addition to it.

I felt something go wrong inside me, so wrong it was physical. A nausea of sadness, making me need to get rid of the envelope because it seemed to have caused this. I went into the bedroom as if Beth weren’t there. I didn’t know right away if she’d followed or not, then knew she had.

I opened a drawer in a bedside table, tossed the envelope inside and slammed it. The noise of this echoed as I fell back on the bed. I leaned against the wall, pulled a pillow to my chest and held on. Beth stood in the doorway. She looked odd – framed there with the light from the other room creeping in, and this room so dark, always so dark.

“That’s a lot of money,” she said, very matter of fact, like she wasn’t thinking what did you do for all that. Except I knew it was what she was thinking. And more than that, who did you do it for? This brought some new kind of fullness into my chest until I couldn’t breathe with all the anger there. And somewhere underneath this anger was fear. The fear that Beth knew exactly who’d been in my bed.

What happened then rearranged things. She came into the room and sat beside me. I didn’t know what I wanted from her anymore, or why she was here. I didn’t know why wanting her had made me send Ingrid away. Especially I didn’t know because in some big unformed way Ingrid was who I longed for right now. Though whether this came from guilt or desire I couldn’t be sure.

Or maybe I did want Beth if only she’d behave the way Ingrid did. If only she’d just once make things clear and keep them that way. Not pretend they weren’t happening. Not carve us up one day to the next. Not fuck my body one night and the next day make believe she only picked at my brain.

Beth took my hand, uncurled it from the pillow and held it in hers. She did nothing else for a long time. We just sat there with all these unspoken things pushing us first one way, then the other. Always winding up pushing us closer, except I didn’t want to be there. I wouldn’t go there this time. Not with this stuff simmering in my chest and then roiling.

I would’ve gotten up if I could’ve, but to do what? Calling Ingrid was on my mind, but there were so many things in the way of this. So many ways I could never do this, and these things making me want to. Letting me know I would. That it was only a matter of time.

Beth stayed very still. She still had her coat on and I realized I was still wearing mine. Realized how hot all this had made me – her coat on my body and my fury inside.

I pulled my hand from hers and took off the coat. Began unbuttoning my shirt only because I felt so heated, so closed in. I didn’t see what this would say to her.

She saw. She put her hand on my chest, went to start that stroking game again. But her hand there only made me feel the thing underneath it more fully. The smoldering, festering thing in my chest, burning hotter and sore, blistering. And her fingers trying to cool it. Trying to draw me into that marshland of hers. That place that pretended to be an ocean or pool but was really a swamp. Thick and slippery with quick-mud.

I wouldn’t let her. This time I would have none of it. Not her way. I grabbed her wrist and twisted until she cried out. I gave way a little and she regained herself.

She said, “Sweetheart, you’re hurting me.” Said this as if I’d made a mistake, as if I didn’t know what I was doing.

I twisted harder again. I wanted her to know precisely what I was doing and why. I wanted her to see exactly what she was doing. I said, “Ask your fucking questions. Ask the thing you need to know.”

I saw her face harden and sharpen. Watched her working a way out, an evasion. And I saw pain there. I twisted harder. I wanted to hear her cry out again, needed to, because it was the only place in her I’d believe.

I was yelling now, yelling, “Go on. Ask it. Or say it. I don’t care which.”

And when she did, it was both at once. And she was yelling when she said, “She was here. Wasn’t she? It’s been her the whole time. This whole time it’s been Ingrid. So who’ve I been? Tell me that. Just another trick?”

“You’re the one can’t decide. The one playing tricks all the time.”

“Goddamn you,” she said, and she pummeled my chest now. Loosening things there, breaking them up and apart. “You’re the whore,” she said, “not me.”

And then she really went at me. Went after me with her fists. And her words still spilling everywhere. “You fucking little whore,” she said half crying, half yelling. And so finally I was getting what I thought I wanted. I was getting the truth out of her. The truth I’d believed all along.

She was on top of me now, still in her coat. I scrambled to get some command, but she was too far ahead of me. Already she kissed me hard, in a bruising way that tore at my lips and my mouth. I wanted to hit her. I tried to hit her back, but she was too much in charge. And before long this felt good. It felt close to relief because right now I wanted someone beating me, and this seemed right – her being the one.

She got her hand into my jeans and then into me. She still yelled things. Was yelling, “Is this all you want? All you think I want?”

And she fucked hard and I gave way because the answer was yes. If I could’ve spoken, it would’ve been, and then I did. I said, “Yes,” but I said it in that other way that means fuck me, keep fucking me.

She did. She kept on and kept on. And she kept saying things, angry things I had no trouble hearing. She said, “I’ll fuck you senseless, you… Goddamn you.”

She’d gotten me out of my clothes, and she’d taken off some of hers. And she’d gone out of her head, but I was still in mine and registering everything going on – in my head and my body and the place in between them. That place being nearest my chest, where I wanted to feel deadness or at least hatred but instead could only feel loved.

I felt this the way I knew it. It wasn’t that place she’d brought me before – the one I needed so badly, and then right away needed out of. It wasn’t that tangled up thing, so gentle and soft and unbearable. The one I’d tried to turn into this so many times, every time.

And her words weren’t those ones, the ones she’d used all along. She wasn’t saying, “You don’t know how I love you. How I want you. How long I’ve wanted you. You don’t know what you mean.” But I kept hearing this anyway, echoing back at me. I could hear this so clearly, so much clearer than all the times she’d actually said it.

And she’d been right to tell me I didn’t know these things, couldn’t possibly know. I knew the things she said this time. She was the one who didn’t know what she was saying, or what she was doing. Her words had garbled with the strength of her hand. I couldn’t tell them apart, she’d so thoroughly glommed me.

My eyes closed and her hand hit me deeper and harder. And the words hit this way too, each time getting further inside me. Now just three or four, over and over. Now just “Goddamn you,” and “You fucking whore.” Again and again.

I let her do what she needed. I let her wear herself out on me, and wear me out. Liking too much how it felt, how it hurt me. How it made it all clear. That, always, this had been where we were headed. Where I’d push us. The place I was supposed to take her. The way I was supposed to make her take me.