Lynn Strong - Hold Still

She brings her face up close to his, hoping he’ll wake up and also grateful for his sleeping. She gets up quietly and pulls her pants back on. She puts on her bra and shirt and coat. She lets herself out of the apartment with one more glance at Charles naked, half of him under the covers, half of him twisted on top of them.

She goes straight down Amsterdam, block after block. At some point, she crosses through the park. She heads east, not thinking where she’s going. She has on boots, her too-big bag slung over her shoulder; her feet start to ache from the pounding, one foot, then the other, the whole right side of her body stiffening with the extra weight of all her books. She stands on Broadway and watches the rows of lights change from green to yellow to red, then back again. Around Twentieth Street she decides that she needs water, more air. She covers the last few avenues to get to the river and finds a bench. She watches the water move and the moon bounce off it in bright patches. She’s close to Caitlin’s, thinks of calling her, realizes she can’t.

“I don’t want to hurt anyone.”She winces as she says it. She sounds like a little girl.

He stops smiling. He turns his legs off the couch and reaches for his boxers. Her hand slips from his. The weight of the cushion shifts up on her side as he stands.

She stands up, but she’s not sure where to go. She pulls her clothes on. Her sweater reaches down to the middle of her thighs and she stands on tiptoes, wanting to seem larger than she is. She shakes her head and her hair’s a mess around her shoulders. She gathers it with her free hand and ties it on top of her head.

She looks at him once more before she escapes to her bedroom. There’s something cruel and a bit sad that she hasn’t seen before in the way his eyes are set. That’s where Jack is different: he has something better in him. That’s where Annie is.

“I got an apartment,” says Stephen. Maya’s been walking around all night. This is the second morning in a row that she’s come home after sunrise.

She wants to ask how long he’s been looking. Where else her husband’s been while she’s been with Charles. She feels comfortable and calm next to him for the first time since long before their daughter left.

He tried at first, right after, when she hardly spoke, when she took leave from work, only answered when Ben called. Stephen would come and bring her back to bed with him when she’d wandered into Ellie’s room; he’d wake her carefully, knowing that she startled easily, rubbing a foot or shoulder while whispering to her that it was him, that he’d just come to bring her back to bed. He would take her hand and lead her back under the covers. Sometimes he would even hold her briefly, staying silent as he did. Other times he sat and talked, his body very close to hers, about nothing, really, just to keep her from brooding. But in the weeks or maybe months that he kept trying, Maya simply refused to listen, to feel better, to feel anything at all.

He’d made her laugh once, too early. They’d just had sex. She hadn’t meant for it to happen. It was two months after Jack died. Stephen had reached for her and they’d both undressed. She’d felt him moving, slow and careful, the familiarity: his face, his hands, his mouth. She’d been relieved by how untouched she remained even as she felt herself start coming: her underwear still hanging on an ankle, her camisole still covering her chest. He’d slipped it up and kissed her stomach. She’d reached her hands up to his face and held it still. He came quickly. It had been so long. He’d dipped his forehead into her chest, still inside of her, “Like a fucking teenager,” he’d said.

And the way he’d said it: like he was sorry, embarrassed. Before she realized it, she’d laughed. And she’d been terrified by this, this moment. By feeling like all that had happened hadn’t happened after all. She’d been terrified by the implication that they might somehow have moments when they didn’t remember, that they might still get to live. She’d slipped out from underneath him, quickly, not willing to look at him. She’d pulled her clothes on, gone into Ellie’s room. It would be months before she allowed herself to lose control like that again, to laugh, to smile accidentally. She wouldn’t, in all the months that followed, let him reach for her like this again.

“Where?” she says now. They are New Yorkers. All that’s happened, and she’s curious about his choice of real estate.

“Broadway and 122nd.” Across the street from work.

She nods. “Easier commute.”

“I think it’s better, Maya.”

She holds her hand up to her mouth. “Yes.”

She reaches up and places her fingers softly on his cheek, just above his chin.

His chin is warm, clean-shaven.

He reaches up and takes her hand.

“We’ll be okay,” he says.

She purses her lips and then turns them up at the corners. “Stephen,” she says.

He pulls her close to him. They can do this now, she thinks, now that they don’t have to anymore.

They go in the evening when the beach is almost empty. It’s never too cold to swim. The water’s like a bathtub, it’s so warm. The sun sets behind them. The sky is pinks and blues and purples. Ellie wants to be inside it. She wants to climb up over the dunes and dive into the clouds. She’s taken all three of the oxys. There’s no point any longer in pretending: she’s fucked up now; this is who she is. Jack is with her, as he always is now. If anything, his presence makes her feel capable of more, not less. He’s smiling at her, all slightly crooked teeth and short round limbs. He’s excited to go swimming in the evening — his mom is at the restaurant; his dad is with clients until nine — laughing at the faces Ellie makes as they drive to the ocean. Both of them are barefoot. She has not put on a bathing suit and neither has he. It’s a thrill for him; he seems as high as she is. High on wearing his shorts into the ocean, on not being forced to put on sunscreen or a hat or the long-sleeved SpF 50 shirt. Ellie wears shorts too, an oversized T-shirt. She wishes briefly it were the four of them. She’s just stoned enough to fantasize about the family they would be: her, Annie, Jack, and Jeffrey, forgetting for a minute how she might not fit. They’ve also not brought towels. They walk barefoot over the hot asphalt of the parking lot. Jack squeals and Ellie lifts him up and twirls him in circles. An older couple sits at one of the picnic tables on the wooden platform that leads out to the beach. They have a small basket that folds open and they smile at Jack and El as they twirl past them. They wear sun hats — red for the man and yellow for the woman — Ellie stares a minute at the spots on both their hands. Such great colors. She tries to take a picture with her eyes so she can paint it later when she’s back alone inside her room. Swim swim swim, says Jack. There’s a sign up on the lifeguard stand that says NO LIFEGUARD ON DUTY: swim at your own risk. Swim swim swim, says Ellie back to Jack. She lifts him high up in the air and her mind is calm and clear and happy. The moment her feet touch the water she thinks, Yes, this. She puts Jack down so they can run out to where the shore drops and the water gets deep together. They race, and water splashes up over their ankles, then their calves, then up their knees, and then the sand drops down quick and both of them tread water, big drops splashing, Ellie wishing they could always always always stay like this. She dives down under, chasing Jack. He flails and gets free of her. She dives down deeper and he swims, quick and sure, outside her grasp. The waves are lolling in. Those big soft mounds that hardly break, just building into blue-green mountains, then sloughing back before they make it in to shore. It’s so warm under the water, but not the awful stifling hot that it is back on shore. Ellie only comes up because she remembers oxygen is necessary, because she hears Jack laughing and wants to have hold of him again. “Jack!” she calls. She has his ankle. He splashes hard in her face and he’s free again. Her eyes sting. She closes them and dives down deeper. Her mind clears. She doesn’t think of Annie or of Jeffrey. She doesn’t think of Ben or of her dad. She lets the water rush all through her. She feels warm and full inside. She reaches the bottom, runs her hands along the sand, and then burrows her face in. She plants her palms and pushes herself back up to the surface, kicking hard, in awe of her legs’ strength. When her head breaks up — she breathes in one full breath — she’s facing west and sees the pinks and oranges and purples. The clouds are thin strips through the colors and she calls to Jack to look.