Tara Ison - Ball - Stories

c) sat by herself front row at his comeback coffeehouse concert, twirling a thin lock of hair (and tears welling to those heart-beating, heart-breaking lyrics of his, admiring the chivalric warble in his voice, his

troubadour’s promise of courtly love and eternal-though-tortured devotion in all those unironic, yearning songs of her yearning adolescence),

and so he had to seize the rare and precious moment, he tells her. He had no choice. He could not allow this recognized her to just slip by and away. So that is why he sent, could not help sending

a) his personal assistant

b) an intern

c) a roadie

to approach her, proffer the invitation to this dinner, something he is still apologizing for over a purple gash of tenderloin. I didn’t mean to be disrespectful, he swears. I didn’t mean to have you summoned . You are not some random

a) fan

b) constituent

c) groupie

to me, not at all. I was intimidated by you, he confides. I am just so out of practice at being back in the world these days. Forgive me?

But there is no need for apology; she understands, is sure of his assessment. It confirms her most secret, or hoped-for, sense of her true value, her rarified self. She knows she is not some incidental happy-hour appetizer, the careless newsstand grab of a free weekly. She suspects she is superiorly intelligent, despite a lack of obvious results, a showy CV or lucrative job that would finally unburden her of those student loans. Her beauty is subtle but evident to the discerning eye, an eye her thirteen past lovers/boyfriends/FWBs had never quite honed. Her potential is simmering — there will be a top-tier graduate school down the road, she assures herself, or a wildly creative flowering, perhaps a dedicated career with an environmental nonprofit — gaining its strength and unique bouquet, and look, here at last is a man who has recognized her incipient exceptionality, an older, wiser, ways-of-the-world man, with a parfumier ’s sophisticated nose and an appreciation of quiet style. She forgives him his clumsy gaffe. But, emboldened, she encourages his unease. She puts him graciously in his place; of course she does not trust him, she tells him, given his reputation. Of course she is suspicious, given his timing, this sudden return-splash to the public eye of his. Are you now truly

a) sober?

b) legally divorced?

c) drug-free?

she queries. Is his act really together now, is he sincere? She evaluates his responses with stern professorial squints. She offers insightful critique of his faults. He is eager, flustered, little-boyish, cannot finish his steak, urges her to doggy-bag it and the remaining asparagus spear home. He would think less of her were she not so wary of him, he tells her, and he is grateful for both her spirit and her open mind. He is delighted by her integrity. She does not even know how powerful she is. He will prove himself, if she will just give him a chance. They agree he is worthy, or at least potentially so, and she agrees to bestow upon him more of her precious, rarified time.

ON THEIR SECONDdate — rare, unsustainable sushi — he reveals his deepest-pain story, what once triggered and drove his legendary self-destructiveness but has also and since been the fueling, bolstering heartthrob of his life’s work. She has heard the story before — she once viewed long, channel-surfing seconds of a cable documentary on him, his struggle to overcome the distressful childhood to Make Something of Himself — but that is just superficial, salivating press, he tells her, media mumbo jumbo, the Journalism 101 exercise unable to penetrate mere persona. No, he must share his most intimate self with her, alone; he cannot hide from her his private pain, not if he wishes her to understand, or — far more important — to reveal her own pain, the pain he sees in her soul-bruised eyes, the pain he does so fervently wish her to share, to trust him with, and so he cannot help telling her himself about

a) his sister, older, adored, and the ripening scent of womanhood he went boyhood sniffing for, her female bathroom smell, black soapy hairs in the tub drain and sticky panties in the hamper, how she stumbled past his bedroom door late that one night, a yell to the sleepy, unwatchful parents that she was home safe from her date, how he lay silent and listening and heard her enter her room, heard the door close and the click of the lock, heard her window creak open slowly, deliberately slow, heard her stumble-crawl through and out to disappear again and the slow, disappearing roll of tires on pavement and then she was disappeared forever, stolen taken abducted, an abandoned car found with a mere smear of her blood but they never found her, more of her or her body, and he is tormented to this day forever by her absence and absent scent, for his silence that fateful night, for not watching over her, keeping her at home, safe,

b) his mother, so unmoored after his

good-riddance godless dog of a

father was gone for good this time,

and he was five years old, six, the

Man of the House

, she’d whisper,

Sleep with me tonight, honey

,

you’ll protect me, won’t you?

and he grew yearning and used to her moist nylon nightie heat and oniony whiff, seven years old, eight, but how he came home that one day to the sound of urgent naked flesh-struggle inside, how he burst in and hurled himself brave at her naked hairy attacker, but then she screamed at him — at him! — to

Stop it

,

goddamn it

,

stop

,

get out

, grabbing and holding

him

down, pulling down his pants and her angry hand smacks, slamming on his naked buttocks, her damp, naked white breasts shuttling across his back and being banished to his little-boy room to listen listen listen to her with that pumping swarthy man, then to her with all the other come-and-go scumbag men, those animals, while he’d sweat and grope and pump at himself and could not protect her from her own degradation, the descent into slattern filth and booze and drugs and final vein-burned fate and he was truly left all alone for good,

c) the woman he found, he was innocent childhood backwoods exploring that day, was all, branches for a fort or Y-stick to fashion a slingshot, when

he stumbled, tripped, was tripped up by the thick twig of a blue-veined marble arm beneath brown leaves, the nest of dark clotted hair, what he had to describe and relive over and over, how he fell onto and thus found the chilling torn body, his screaming screaming for someone to come, till his hoarse cries were heard and he was found, curled on top of her naked sweet rot, fingers gripping her hair, her cold face, her icy breasts. An unknown, unidentified woman, they told him afterward, some random no-name Jane Doe, some fated whore, just a body a body a body used and broken and discarded by bad, brutal men.

And she takes his trembling hand, I am here, she tells him tenderly, I am here , and he clutches, grips, weeps over his fatty toro.

I was right about you, he says. But how can I earn you? You could have any man in the world. How can I deserve so much grace?

EXPANSIVE, CRYSTAL–VASED FLOWERarrangements are delivered, overwhelm her studio apartment with their cloying lily gasp. Parchment and ink missives arrive each day, for he eschews the digital chilliness of social media or text. He buys her a several-months’-rent dress she reluctantly accepts but cannot imagine wearing anywhere but some grand event he might escort her to, someday. He offers to get her transmission fixed, to pay her rent, pay off her debts, then delightedly begs her forgiveness when she refuses with huffy pride, is giddy when she sends back the pearl-and-platinum choker in its iconic robin’s-egg-blue box. He takes her to