Heather Lewis: Notice

After this he got off me. Zipped himself up. He still had his shoes on and his socks, and when he ran his fingers through his hair, smoothing it back, the glint from one of his cufflinks stayed caught in my eye.

He hadn’t even had to roll up his sleeves, and from this I thought about Ingrid the other night in the bathtub and how I couldn’t quite understand her. Him still in his cufflinks persuaded me that’d been a lie. That I knew exactly and had known it then. Only I hadn’t wanted to admit it and I was beginning to see how this sort of refusal on my part – this unwillingness to admit to things stronger than me – didn’t keep me from trouble but kept leading me to it.

I lay there and waited. He’d left the room, left me tied, and I couldn’t undo the knot so I waited.

I didn’t sleep. The pull to close my eyes wasn’t there anymore now that I needed it. The belt was thin so it cut into my neck and my wrists. Now and then I tried halfheartedly to untie myself, knowing I couldn’t and that it hurt to try.

I wanted Ingrid to come get me and at the same time the last thing I wanted was for her to see me this way – laying here still naked and still tied, and with his come all over my face and my neck and my chest. I don’t know what I thought it said about me. I think I was more concerned with what it said about her. Not wanting to show her herself, which maybe was also part of his game. Making her be the one to clean up after him.

I heard nothing from downstairs. Nothing at all. I could’ve gotten up. It’s not like he’d tied my legs. But they still wouldn’t move. Like that part of me slept while the rest of me stayed wide awake.

My chest heaved as if still carrying his weight. My shoulders ached. But my wrists and neck hurt more and different. I traded them off. Rested my shoulders until I couldn’t stand it and had to rest my neck instead.

Ingrid did come in. She turned the light out as soon as she saw me, and which of us she was sparing, I couldn’t know. For a moment when she sat down near me I feared her terribly. Feared her more than him. And when she touched my hands, moving them to get at his knot, I jerked away. I made a sound I didn’t recognize. A whimpering I didn’t believe could come from my body.

She quieted me. She stroked my arms until they rested, making some slack for her to work with. Once she had the knot undone, she slipped the shank through the buckle. Then she lifted my head a little to slide the belt away.

“Don’t,” I said when she started to get up.

“I’ll just be a minute. You’ll see.”

I watched her move across the room to the bathroom. She didn’t turn on the light in there either. I heard water running for a while and then she came back. Brought two towels, one of them wet.

She cleaned him off me, then she got more towels, some of these were wet too. She slipped one under my neck. The dampness took some sting from the cuts there. She wrapped another towel around my wrists. I rested my hands in my lap, liking how the coolness felt there, opening my legs to it, and she lay another towel across my thighs. She did all of this like she’d done it before – something I couldn’t let myself think about.

When she finished all this, I faded in and out. Woke once to her smoking a cigarette. When she saw I was awake she held it for me so I could have some. After that I slept the night.

I woke up achy. She’d taken away the towels but the pillow behind me was damp. I put my arms up to try and flip it over but they wouldn’t move in that way. Instead I slid over to her side. I wanted more blankets because I couldn’t get warm.

I was glad she wasn’t there but didn’t want her to have left entirely. I didn’t want to be thinking about him, but I was. I was trying to figure out what made last night any different. Whether the difference was in him or in me because this seemed to matter. It was something I wanted to ask her but I knew we’d never talk this way.

Later she brought coffee just like she had those other mornings, though it all seemed wrong in this room. She helped me sit up because I couldn’t do this alone and I began worrying what else I couldn’t do.

“He won’t be back for a while,” she said, handing me a cup. “What do you take in it? I can’t remember.”

This hurt my feelings and so I didn’t answer her. She poured some cream. Left off the sugar as if she remembered after all but didn’t want to admit it.

“You should leave while he’s gone.”

“I should,” I said. And that’s how it started.

She looked at me funny. Like no one had suggested this to her before or like she’d never thought it herself. Like she thought it all the time.

“Yes, you should,” she said, like that would be the end of it. She started to get up. I grabbed her wrist and pulled her back hard. Everything on the tray beside us spilled.

“Leave it,” I said when she started fussing. And when she didn’t stop I grabbed it from her hands. Just barely kept myself from throwing it across the room.

The trouble was, it would’ve gotten through to her. It would’ve worked. And it troubled me too that my strength and clarity came from my anger at her, while I couldn’t find any toward him. And realizing this made my body hurt again, or made me notice it still did.

I put the tray down on the floor and asked her, “Haven’t you ever planned it?”

“Once,” she said. “After our daughter…” She stopped herself and then started again. “After she left. Don’t you see he’d never let me?”

“I know.”

“He’d find me.”

“Maybe.”

“You, though, you’d better get out.”

I lit a cigarette. And then seeing her face, I gave it to her and lit another one. I said, “He still owes me money.” I said this just to stall. I didn’t want to leave. I couldn’t imagine leaving.

“I’ll pay you. I’ll pay you right now if that’s what matters.”

She started to get up again. I didn’t grab her this time. I said, “No, please stay with me.”

We didn’t talk about it anymore that day and I made no move to leave. We puttered around, not doing anything. She still hadn’t taken care of the screens or the pool. We wandered around out there but she said nothing about these things. Late in the afternoon we took a drive together.

It seemed we hadn’t been out in such a long time. I was surprised at how easy it was. I kept half-expecting someone to stop us, a cop to pull us over and send us home, or maybe men wearing overcoats and hats, driving a sedan.

“We could just drive away,” I said because it had occurred to me.

She looked at me like she wished this were true and knew it wasn’t. Like this was the fanciful idea of a child. I felt like one, then acted like one by pouting.

“You’re very sweet,” she said.

I liked that she said this, but when she reached her hand toward me I cowered, huddled against the door and stayed that way a long time.

I couldn’t understand how I’d gotten to this place. We drove and drove, never once stopping anywhere. Finally she turned the car around and we went back.

We ate what we could find in the refrigerator and then went up to her bed. When it was dark I said, “Is that what the others did? Left the first chance they got?”

She didn’t answer me but I could see her nodding.

“Your daughter, too?”

She began to cry when I asked this, but what she said was, “Don’t you see, you have to leave? That this only makes it worse?’

“How?”

“He’ll expect you to be gone. He’ll get someone else.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“What am I doing? I’m living my life. You’re the one who wants to die.”