Emma Rathbone - Losing It

As this happened, I experienced a kind of slow-release shock at two things: first was how unexpected this whole turn of events was. I’d barely been able to motivate myself to look for the correct shoes under my bed that morning and was picturing a whole day of draining, obligatory, and sad-tinged small talk. The second was how easy this was, how seamless, and how it now didn’t seem that outlandish that you could just meet someone , at a funeral, for instance. I felt simultaneously exhilarated and frustrated — why couldn’t this have just happened before? — by the randomness of fate, and about how some people must just operate on these meridians of luck, going from one precipitous hinge to the next and they didn’t even know it, just thought that was life .

It was sturdy, by-the-numbers kissing, hot and without adornment. I heard people walking around upstairs. Something crashed to the floor above us.

The rest of the afternoon was like an Impressionist painting — our colors swirling together as we glided out of the basement and out onto the wooden swing, sitting together next to the scattered pink of the azalea bush in the backyard. His smeared red lips and the blush on my chest. Our jazzy flirting with golden, poking saxophone laughter coming through. A mess, a jumble, a crashing, satisfyingly hot afternoon and later we were in a dim, cool living room with carved wooden figures and sheer white curtains and soft shapes of light on the ground.

“You haven’t even told me your name,” I said, pivoting next to a tall purple vase. This is when I was starting, even though I was drunk, to net the glances people were giving us as they walked by, had, as a matter of fact, been giving us all afternoon, and decided not to care.

“Jack,” he said. “Picknell.”

It took me a second. That’s where I had seen him, in the face of Alice. The resemblance was now striking. He watched as whatever registered on my face registered on my face.

“Let me guess,” he said. “You’re sorry for my loss.”

“I am,” I said. “I am sorry for your loss.”

“I’m not one of those people,” he said, sitting on a footstool, his knees bent in front of him, he took the hem of my dress, “that cares what you say.”

I’m still not sure what he meant by this — if he meant that he didn’t care whatever awkward construction people attempting to console him used, or me, specifically, that he didn’t care what I had to say.

I just stared at him.

“She made it past my twenty-first birthday,” he said, “like she said she would.” He turned his head and looked out the window at a dry pine tree.

“I—”

“Let’s go upstairs,” he said, and he got up and took my hand.

It was serene up there. We found ourselves in a bright, renovated room that smelled like paint and polish. There was a red Persian carpet on the floor and a large telescope pointing out the window. I stared at a strange, expensive-looking painting of several bears crowded around a gaslight.

First we pretended to be interested in the telescope. It had felt forbidden to ascend the stairs — that weird feeling of exploring someone else’s house. There was no one else up there.

I sat on the windowsill and we made out. We had gotten the knack of each other and it was better, so much better, I thought, than I’d ever had. I flashed to kissing Gerald for a second and became aware of the range of these things, the terrible variegated scale, which means, doesn’t it, that it can always be a little better? Or a little worse. But I was having a good time. Not thinking, suspended in a roly-poly dark place, a liquid feeling in my limbs.

He was touching my neck and his other hand was on my belly, then it was under my skirt and in my underwear.

It all felt great — his hand between my legs, the hazy afternoon, the chattering of people downstairs, my chin lifting to kiss him from a better angle.

I’m thinking, It’s going to happen. It’s going to happen. It’s going to happen now, like this, and this is how it was always going to happen. I’m looking over his shoulder for places we could lie down. My mind is racing with logistics: Will I just bend over the computer table? Should we slowly start sliding to the floor? Yes, I’ve showered today, in case he wants to go down on me. For once, in a stroke of luck, I’m not wearing period-stained underwear. Condoms? Maybe he has one. But who cares? At this point, I’m willing to risk it. Pubic hair? Wild, but there’s nothing I can do about it right now. Plus he doesn’t seem like the type of weirdly fastidious guy who would care about that.

I wondered in an instant how it was going to be. Was it going to hurt? Would I bleed? Was it going to feel like I would imagine, or be completely different? What was my responsibility physically? How was I supposed to move my body? Were we going to look at each other the whole time, or would our eyes be closed? Were we going to be kissing the whole time, or would he just be surging on top of me? Or should I be on top? What if I gave myself away and he could tell I was a virgin and then wanted to stop? Luckily, something about the way we were together was inspiring enough authority in me that I wasn’t actually too afraid of this.

It was all going so fast and it seemed like such a rare window that this would actually happen. He was doing something with his legs, spreading them, with his other hand he was unzipping his pants and then Karen was in the doorway. In a purple dress. Her head was tilted up and her mouth was open.

I went stiff. I said, “Oh.” Jack looked over his shoulder and said, “Shit.” Karen averted her eyes and said with a forced lightness, “Your aunt is looking for you.” And then there was a deafening pause as we all just stood there. A second went by. A general scramble started. Jack crouched over and zipped up his pants. Karen slammed the door. I yanked my dress down and pulled up my shoulder strap and combed my hands through my hair.

“Sorry,” he said under his breath. We continued to straighten ourselves out, to recalibrate. I looked around. The air had gone out and now we were just two unkempt strangers in a room. “No, no,” I said.

It’s funny how the atmosphere between two people can change so quickly, how ground gets covered that can never be re-traversed. I tried to think of something to say, but the climate had changed. He looked worn out and sad.

What happened next is that we slowly walked out of the room together, in a daze, and down the stairs. We were lightly holding hands, but I couldn’t tell if we were holding hands , or if it was a leftover remnant of what was happening before. At the foot of the stairs I squeezed his, and he gave me an unsure smile. Then someone called to him, and the doorbell rang, and a woman with red wine spilled on her blouse hurried by, and that was enough to sort of wind us away from each other.

I wandered through the house, trying to find Aunt Viv, who ended up being in the kitchen, and it wasn’t long before I was about to leave, closing the car door, scanning the yard for Jack, and we were down the driveway and heading home.

Viv and I didn’t say anything to each other on the drive back. I didn’t know how much she knew, or if she knew everything; if she was angry at me, or if she was just exhausted and sad. I put my hand out the window and let it glide through the wind. I glided back and forth through my memory of the day as I lay in bed that night. Or it was like I was lying in a boat on a lapping shore, the gentleness and warmth of the world pouring into me.

There was a storm that summer in Durham that became legendary. It came out of nowhere, the sky darkening to a bruisy green the Wednesday afternoon after the funeral. I’d never seen completely sideways rain before, as if all the water was rushing to get somewhere else. Once the blasting wind had subsided, the downfall came in great reprimanding waves. It was so thick you could see ripples in it.