Matt hated feeling this way and
wanted very much to blame it on Emily but he had to admit it wasn't her fault.
She was the kind of woman that Matt had never been able to deny himself:
beautiful, powerful, older (Emily, at thirty-five, was eight years older than
Matt). And, best of all, she was married. By virtue of these facts and also
some unique to Emily, she rarely disappointed him and was all the things that
he needed—a person to order him around and take charge, a person requiring little
emotional effort on his part, someone to need him but only on the fringes of
her life.. Today he had traveled on the subway seven stops to meet Emily for
coffee, at her request, and now he was making his way back to his apartment,
alone. He racked his mind to think up something condemn her for besides having
not come back to sleep with him, but there really wasn't anything. If she
needed to talk about her husband then he guessed he owed her at least an ear,
even if a domestic dispute carried little interest for him unless there was
violence involved. Not to be morose—Matt was the kind of man who did his best
to shed away all that sentimentality and personal dishonesty, which
incidentally had came full circle as a cynicism that he rather enjoyed
if it was not the kind of thing to share with people at large.
Usually when Matt rode the subway,
he made a point of giving up his seat to anyone to any elderly person or
pregnant woman who looked to need it more than he did, but today, as an
indulgence of his pissy mood, Matt decided to sit in the subway car in an
exaggerated manner that was meant to show that he was irritable but then was
immediately disappointed with himself. Ordinarily he might deal with his woes
by opening up to a total stranger, nonchalantly and with a sly smile. “I wonder
what my therapist would have to say about this,” he might say, or “I keep my
phone off after five because I'm afraid my father will call.” These were not
inherently inappropriate tidbits about life but New York was full of people
poised to make something out of nothing at any moment, to be embarrassed for
him as if the curse of these declarations was that someone might know about
them, not that they happened to be true.
Across from him, a young lady read
an article from her Cosmo and Matt wondered how old she was. One of the issues he had with younger girls was
that they had no reverence for their own attractiveness yet, offering it up
with a low cut shirt or a skirt that had traveled too far from the knee. This
particular girl struck him as different, pretty but reserved like a shy
secretary or a modest clerk of organic coffee and bran muffins. Perhaps she was
older then she looked—she wore unfaded blue jeans and a sky blue t-shirt that
wrapped around her stomach and chest snuggly, creating stretched lines between
her breasts and over the dip of her belly button. Her throat was encircled with
three or four worn leathers necklaces, one of them holding up a small, archaic
looking medallion of silver. He couldn't held but delve into a fantasy where
she would look up from her magazine to find him looking at her, and she would
smile (not in a way that would indicate she was a flirt, but instead in a
bashful way) and he would smile too and then work up the nerve to switch seats and
speak to her and then they would arrive at her stop and he would get off with
her and they'd go to her messy apartment where she kept a mild mannered cat and
a mammoth-sized down comforter and they would undress and it would be
effortless, and afterwards she would smoke a cigarette and not talk and maybe
she'd pad on her bare feet to the bathroom and then return as naked as she'd
left and just lay there letting her pale skin be the story of the day. And then
maybe her boyfriend would show up, a hypermasculinized, paper-pusher kind of
boyfriend who would be furious but stunned enough so that Matt could escape
with just an apology and then he could never have any responsibility for
anyone, ever.
As the train headed underground, the
fading sunlight was eaten up and replaced with tacky, shimmering florescent
bulbs on the tin can roof and white lights speeding past the windows.
“Excuse me, would you like to sit,
Ma’am?” he asked an elderly woman who stooped so that the top of her head sat
below her shoulders, a small metal cart in front of her containing God knows
what.
“Yes, that would be nice, thank
you.”
-
By the time he had turned six, Matt
had become a popular mascot of his father’s bar and grew close to several of
the patrons and employees. The star of the show was Liz, of course, but the
whole cast of characters was always vivid in Matt’s mind, unlike contemporary
events which faded quickly from memory and never seemed as potent as the
smallest thing was back then. For example, there was Rufus, the extra barkeep
that his father had been forced to employ when business had picked up. Rufus
looked to be about sixty, though he was probably much younger. He bore a full
beard and buzz cut, all a spotless white and all cut the same length, which
amounted to a continuous sea of pale whiskers that grew out at all angles from
his leathery, tanned head. Somehow he had come into possession of a black eye
patch of which the only purpose was to take advantage of his exotic look on the
rare occasion that he wanted to make a show of himself, and coupled with a
seafaring accent he was, at least to Matt, the nameless pirate extra incarnate.
Not
to be outdone, there was Henry, the janitor, a skinny, elderly black man who
was pitifully eager for as many hours as he could get. Everyday he washed
dishes while the bar was open and then cleaned and closed up at night, by
himself. He had an interesting habit of falling asleep on his feet and often
this was while he was doing the dishes, resulting in the bright crash of pots
and pans that filled the small bar from the other side of the kitchen door.
When I asked my father whether this was because he was overworked, my father
told me that it was because he had some kind of illness which also meant he
couldn't find work anywhere else.
There
were only two waitresses who worked at the bar. During the week it was the older lady named Ruth, a stout woman with an
orb for a torso and a point where her belly button should have been, a tight
bun of thick, gray hair, and a propensity for wearing close fitting sweatpants
on the job when she had no business wearing close fitting sweatpants anywhere.
She was the kind of woman who thought it was okay to pinch Matt's cheek even
though they were of no relation and weren't really that close, especially since
Matt went out of his way to avoid her.
And
the one who served drinks on the weekend was Liz. It was said she had another
job that was more respectable during the week—teaching or social work or
something like that—and just needed some extra cash on the weekend. Matt
realized now that it was unlikely that anyone believed that she was working
seven days a week, but as it turned out he was one the few who found out first
hand that she mostly did nothing, as her parents were both dead and had left
her enough money to more or less get by on just what she made at the bar.
When they first met she was twenty-five—a full nineteen
years older than Matt—and immediately she was his favorite. His father flirted
with her often and Matt was anxious whenever this happened, though it had never
bothered him when it was other women (which wasn't uncommon). He would have
said then that he was not jealous; he just felt that somehow it was
inappropriate. Matt, being motherless, perhaps had a weakness for mother
figures, and Liz obliged this need, mothering him and nurturing him in ways
that his father could not, and surely she knew the whole while that he had a
rather unusual attachment to her. And despite the fact that what developed
between them was far from healthy (and despite the odd resentment that Matt
eventually grew towards her) it was impossible for him to let her go.
The
circumstances of their impropriety arose when Matt turned fourteen and his
father decided that the best way to continue to grow the business was to keep
the bar open later. Selflessly, Liz agreed to pick him up from school until he
earned his driver’s license. By this point Matt had begun to come into his own.
Liz called him a “pretty boy;” he was blond, trim, and with a pair of shocking
blue eyes. Liz, in contrast, was busty and dark, thick in the hips and sharp
and foreign in her features. She always wore her black hair down, even when she
was working. She was shameless and willful and had captivated many of the bar’s
customers. But where she rejected them all and reveled in it, she had chosen
the fourteen-year-old son of her boss. What could that mean? Did she have some
weakness for his innocence? Did she hope that a boy such as him would never
impede her freedom, would never snuff out her fire with commandments and dinner
dates and all that? Was she seduced by her own depraved sexuality, and had
taken advantage where she saw no ability to punish? Did she love him?
After
spending a great deal of time reflecting on this, Matt had no choice but to conclude,
somewhat endearingly, that she had simply been a little crazy. As unsatisfying
as this might be, he had little else to go on, and he wasn’t twenty before he
often wondered if there was anyone whose most deplorable moments couldn't be
written off as their penchant for the irrational. While he could only speculate
on what had caused her to pick him out, Matt could clearly remember the
circumstances of the first night down the path that destroyed his childhood:
“So,
do you have a girlfriend, Matty?”
“No.”
“Are
you a virgin, then?”
“I...well,
yes, I guess.”
…and then she had pulled off the
road and that was that.
-
When he had returned, Matt unlocked
the glass door of his building, paused at the bottom of the stairs to check his
mailbox, and then climbed two flights to his apartment. The floors in the halls
and stairwells of his building were decorated with white and black tiles in
small triangles which were embedded in chipped wood flooring which, under the
right conditions, would burn and burn and nothing could save it.
At his door, Matt turned his
tarnished key twice around and entered his darkening apartment. He rarely had
visitors besides his lovers, and so he had little interest in keeping things in
order; there were stacks of books that had overflowed from the already ample
bookshelf space and made their way onto the coffee table, the corners of his
Persian rug, and his bleeding tan love seat.
As soon as Matt looked into the
refrigerator, he regretted not having picked up some takeout on his way home.
He vowed to go back out but was too lazy at the moment, so he turned on his
stereo system and lay face down on his bed, hoping for either sleep or
revelation. When neither occurred he sat up and composed a sultry text message
to Emily which, once arranged in a way that he was content with, he decided to
delete. He could almost hear what her response would be: “Is sex all you ever
think about?” So self-righteous. True, she had come to him with a serious
matter (her husband wanted a divorce), and she probably wasn't looking for low
brow text messages, but he was only trying to make her feel better.
A knocking came from the apartment
below and Matt lowered the volume. He sighed, crossed the room to stare into
his fridge and, unsurprisingly, found this unfruitful. “Fuck it,” he said out
loud and instead of going back out he picked up his cell to order.
After dinner he called Emily and
broke things off. “You’re an asshole,” she said. He was taken aback—it hadn't
occurred to him that she might care.
“I know,” was all he said.
-
Matt
lay undressed in the backseat of Liz's car when she decided to bring up his
mother. He grimaced, not that that would stop her.
“I can’t imagine what it must feel
like,” she said and took a drag from her long white cigarette.
Matt considered using one of the
lines he normally would to brush off the issue but instead said nothing.
“It’s really sad. Do you know why
she did it?”
“Catholic. They have to save the
baby. She knew months beforehand that there would be complications and didn’t
do anything.”
“Your dad’s not religious, though.
Right?”
“Not anymore, that's for sure. He
wasn’t too happy about it. He told me he tried everything he could think of to
talk her out of it but she wouldn’t be convinced.”
“That’s not a nice thing for him to
say. That he wanted you to be aborted.”
Matt
winced. Liz and her bluntness. However, the truth—the real blessing—was that he
knew his father had never blamed him for what had happened. After all, Matt was
fucked up enough as it was. Instead it was Jesus that was to blame; Jesus that
had robbed him of his wife and robbed Matt of his mother. Paradoxically, his
father held that his mother could see them (“What do you think your mother
thinks about that?” or “Keep in mind that your mother is watching”) which
suggested that he never gave up that God existed, he just had decided that He
was the enemy.
“He
doesn’t mean it that way,” Matt said finally.
“No,
no, I’m sure you’re right. Deep down he knows she made the right choice. Your
father loves you more than life itself, Matty. We all do.”
Matt considered this for a moment,
feeling deep pity for the father that he adored but who was tragically
ill-equipped to rear his son all alone and simply said, “He just wanted us
both. Most people don’t ever have to think, ‘I’m glad I have you and not your
mother.’ Or, ‘I’m glad I have you and not our son.’”
“You’re right. I’m sorry.”
Her thick plaid shirt was unbuttoned
and her soft stomach and left breast were visible in the faded light. He felt
pleasantly helpless. “That’s alright,” he said.
-
After breaking up with Emily, Matt
decided to see a movie to get his mind off things but the movie was terrible
and he ended up sleeping through the second half. He awoke to shuffling and
muffled speaking and was a little embarrassed that people had seen him like
that, alone and dozing off. He rubbed his eyes and began walking back and
realized that his plan had backfired because now he was left with nothing but
his thoughts to sort through. So, as a change of pace, he tried to picture the
future instead of the mess he was in now.
One day he would probably get
married and have kids of his own, that is, if he ever found a single woman his
age. He couldn't help wanting this for himself, or at least his self in the untouchable
future, even though he knew this was the worst thing he could do. Just as he
couldn’t help wanting overpriced clothes or going to melodramatic movies or
meeting his college friends for burnt coffee. It seemed to him that the things
he did and the things he thought would make him feel fulfilled, or worthwhile,
were never the same thing, and he couldn't really explain why that was.
His
father had been busy his whole life, with purposeful things, with worthwhile
things. He had always been a strong man, broader than Matt, with a heavy jaw
and dusty blond hair instead of the clear gold of Matt's. He had fought off
aging stubbornly but time is one enemy you can't beat, regardless of how much
“purpose” or “worth” you throw into it. He was not the type of man to accept
pity or assistance, but when he could no longer care for himself Matt had him
confined to a nursing home and now his father did nothing that meant anything.
Well, it was called an “Assisted Living Center,” but they both knew what it
was. And now, one day soon, Matt would probably have to deal with his father
dying, would have to be the one who arranged the funeral, even make a speech or
something for a dozen or so (maybe less) who gathered to see his father's body
covered in dirt. Maybe he’d have a wife by then or a kid even and while he
spoke of the things that had defined his father she would cry for Matt and his
father both because that was what you did when your father-in-law died.
Could
he really love anyone enough to marry them? He felt fairly certain that
he had been in love before but the life of it, the heart, was that it was
fleeting and fragile. A long time ago he had asked his father if he had ever
loved anyone besides Matt's mother and he had said that he had, but it had
never been the same. Matt couldn't make heads or tails of this. Maybe if he had
known his mother it would make more sense. So how would he, Matt the “boy toy,”
Matt the guy that women cheated with when they cheated on their husbands—how
would he find someone to love forever? He would just do what he always did when
it came to a big decision; he would just let it all happen without thinking
about it too much. He’d meet just anyone and if he ignored the instincts that
always told him to run and let the girl's own enthusiasm create all the
inertia, then they could have a little wedding in a church with a few people
they knew to be in the pictures and throw rice around. And then one day he
might be arranging her funeral, too.
Suddenly, the strongest and most
foreign feeling, one he had not had since Liz moved away: Matt found that he
missed Emily, and that feeling changed everything.
-
After a few months of being educated
by Liz in the back of her Taurus, Matt found himself a girlfriend. She was a
year younger with cool, dirty blond hair and freckles and very skinny,
especially compared to Liz, with bony shoulders and hips and hands. The fact
that he had found a girlfriend came as no surprise to anyone else because, as
he was told, Matt took after his father. “Lady-killers, both of you,” Liz would
say, though people who had known his mother said that he looked more like her.
The result was a very handsome face that was also kind of...pretty. Boys his
age were not completely comfortable with this but girls liked it.
He dated Ariel for three weeks and
brought her around his house and the bar to show her off. He was thrilled about
it and for a brief time felt normal. The relationship ended like this: one day
after school they sneaked into a deserted bathroom and things went too far.
They were both terrified, but Ariel would have followed Matt to the ends of the
earth and Matt, with all the training that Liz had given him, had never showed
him the procedure for stopping when it wasn't right, so they went ahead with it
anyway.
“Can I keep on my shirt?” she asked
him. It was not her shirt but her undershirt. She wore no bra and through it he
could see her nipples but no breasts. Too young.
“Yes.”
“Thank you,” she said and it broke
his heart. In the flickering florescent light she possessed beauty but only in
a fragile teenage way, like a fawn still getting accustomed to its thin legs.
He was moved by her and her fragility and her dutifulness to him but couldn't
hold onto that as he took her into his hands. Instead he felt dirty and
callous. He looked as if—and he knew this because he was oddly detached,
feeling as though he were watching this unfold from above—he looked as if he
cared nothing for her at all. He did, and would have told her so if he could
have found the words. Instead he put more weight into her and pressed her
further into the tiled wall.
“Matt,” she barely dared to say,
scared out of her mind, her lips trembling in apprehension. “I love you, Matt,”
she finished, and of course this wasn’t true, but they were both too young to
know it. Then she jerked away a little as he slipped off her panties, little
pink ones for someone’s little girl. The jerk was instinctive, not a conscious
attempt at escape, and she bravely bit her lip.
For the first time Matt had to do all
the leading, and while he felt adequate strength in his developing body as he
inched himself inside her, saw power and authority in his neck and shoulders
and chest, he was sorely unprepared to use it. He found himself wishing that she would take control, or at least
hold him or look at him, but she didn’t. He willed himself to feel like a man,
to feel like her protector or something like that but but all he really wanted
was to be the innocent, dominated one. What he wanted was Liz.
“When are you going to get some from
her?” she had asked him when she had been told about Ariel.
Ariel winced as he started, and Matt
could see this betrayed every fiber of willpower she had. She was trying to be
a soldier for him.
“She’s a cutie, Matt. Kind of
skinny, though,” she had said, jealous, sowing the seeds of sickness that she
herself could not escape. “She’s just jerking you around, she’ll never give you
what you want.” This was all her fault. She refused to respect them and
now it was all falling down around their ears in a sterile, middle school
bathroom.
He
didn’t want to continue but he was a prisoner. All he could do was watch as her
tears fell on his chest while she whispered encouragements; all, that is, until
she bled and he was cruelly snapped back to earth, fated now to deal with the
scene that had been playing out in front of him. It was not very much, just a
tiny trickle that ran down and into his pubic hair, but, back in his body, the
sight of it turned his stomach and caused his skin to feel sick.
“Oh my God,” he said, and pulled
out. “Oh my God.” And, as he pulled up his pants, he said two words that would
have made no sense to anyone but Matt. “Not again.”
“It’s…,” she said, weeping, eyes
wide in horror, “It’s normal, I think. It’s okay.”
“No it’s not!” he said, too loudly.
He meant that it wasn't okay that he had done this, it wasn't okay that she had
been hurt. But she misunderstood—she thought he meant that it wasn't normal.
She thought the blood had offended him, that he was mad at her for it when
really he was disgusted with himself for causing it. He had finally mustered
the decency to take control of his insurgent body but, by stopping, he had
wounded her more deeply than his prick ever could.
“I’m sorry,” she pleaded, trembling,
feeling that somehow she had failed him and her duties as the woman she hadn't
yet become. “Wait a second and I’ll get it to stop. I didn’t… I didn’t know it
would do that. I can get it to stop.”
He couldn’t speak. He wanted so
badly to tell her that it was not her fault but he felt as though he was
choking on his own throat. He needed to get out or else he would suffocate. He
desperately made for the door.
“I’m sorry!” she said and wilted to
the floor. She pleaded for him to come back and finish what she’d never wanted,
what she never would have given to him if—he gagged as he remembered, coughed
audibly to keep back the sick—if he hadn’t first threatened to leave her, to
stop talking to her. “I’m sorry!” she screamed out between her sobs and
Matt burst out into the hallway and heard the door close behind him. And it was
then that Matt was terrified that his father was right, that his mom was
watching him up in the clouds somewhere, watching him make someone else hurt
and bleed again just for his sake. “Not again,” he said and tears flowed as he
ran down the hall.
-
“So
what, do you love her now?”
“No.”
“Oh, you don’t fool me. That little
slut has got her claws in you now, doesn’t she.” Liz hadn’t ever acted like
this until Ariel came into the picture.
“We haven’t talked.”
“You were that bad?”
“No,” he lied.
“Then what? She didn’t like it?”
“She seemed to.”
“Then why don’t you talk to her?
Don’t you want to do it again? Have some more baby sex with the little tramp?”
“I don’t know. No. Anyway, this was
all your stupid idea.”
“Whoa there. Be careful where you
throw that blame around,” she said condescendingly. Matt was furious but said
nothing, so she rustled his hair. “Aw, Matty. That’s okay. She’s the first of
many.” Matt felt a little nauseated at the thought of this.
After a while he summoned the
courage to ask her, “Does it hurt? You know, when you do it?”
“Did it hurt her?”
Matt hesitated and then said, “Never
mind. No.”
Liz smiled a smug smile. “It hurts
the first time. Just the first time.”
“Really?” Then he said, “I don’t
want anyone to hurt for me.”
-
Two days after he had broken up with
Emily, Matt had no trouble climbing out of bed. He showered and put on his best
suit and, as he toted his briefcase down the creaking staircase and into the
street, he felt fresh and clean and new. He walked two blocks to the nearest
subway stop and got on the green line. The subway was crowded in the mornings,
and he was crammed into the train car with people pressing into him all around,
wrinkling his suit and wrangling his body when the train started and stopped,
but he was not annoyed. They rocked back and forth in unison as the train
lurched through the dark tunnels that carried them beneath the streets of the
city.
He walked up out of the subway stop
and stood in the morning light and began trying to convince himself to call in
sick and then he could spend a free day with Emily and it would be like it was
last night when, in the abyss of his memories and the prison of his mind and,
most of all, the perpetual and permeated self-hate from which he had never
found solace, he had finally found some peace. And it was all because of Emily.
He
considered this and, even though he was finally happy, that hadn't erased the
debt that had to be paid. It was, above all, a feeling of inspiration that
caused him to walk into an oncoming truck.
-
The day after they had broken things
off, Matt arranged a meeting. He entered the chosen diner, and was pleased with
his choice—it was the perfect place to meet someone when the location must be
as innocuous as possible. No period aesthetics like tile floors or red leather
booths, just hastened sweeping and disinfected tables and lazy servers.
She was already there, in a soft
purple dress that was stressed by her full hips and thighs. She had cut her
black hair short in the time since he had seen her and she looked very young,
younger than him even. He sat in front of her, trying to look comfortable and
at ease. If only you could actually be all the things you pretended to be.
Neither of them said anything for a
long time, making brief but unsustained eye contact. No one came to wait on
them. It felt good to have a moment that was unmanipulated by whatever it was
that usually came out of his mouth. And anyway, he didn't really know what he
wanted to say, he just knew that he wanted her back. She pulled out a cigarette
and lit it carefully, took a drag, and then put it out with a little too much
force before finally speaking.
“I have just one question,” she said
with a subdued irritation that hinted at fury that was waning into resignation.
“Why do you date just one person? Why don't you just find a lot of women at
once? At the time it was flattering but now, it's just confusing.”
And he didn't know the answer. He
had always stuck to one at a time, as if it was the rules. It felt silly, now.
He blinked as he tried to think of something to say.
“…So, what's the story, Matt? What
do you want? What are we doing here, huh?
You have a lot of nerve, calling me after all of this. Expecting me to
jump at the chance to see you again? And you got lucky. Not just that it wasn’t
Daniel that answered that call, but that I didn’t just hang up the fucking
phone as soon as I heard your fucking voice. Like I should have.” The
resignation was leaving her voice. The fury had a chance to seize its moment
and seize it did. “So now I’m here, with
you, in this diner. In the same diner we met in not nine hours ago when I
needed you for something besides fucking and you decided you'd rather make for
the hill, like a, like a....” This thought she either couldn't or wouldn't
finish. “So you’d better start talking, or I’m going to do just what I should
and walk right out of here and never speak to you again. Go on with my life,
the way it was before you screwed it up. Hell, maybe even rebuild my marriage.
But instead of that, for reasons I can’t even begin to fathom, I’m here, and
you’re there, so you’d better say something. I think you owe me that much.
“I
just,” she said and smiled cruelly,” I just can’t help guessing what it’s going
to be. Are you going to try and cheer me up, patronize me with some cliché? Say
that I’m too good for you anyway and that I’ll find someone else? That you were
doing me a favor? Or maybe that it’s not my fault and I shouldn’t take it
personally? No, you won’t say that. That’s too much bullshit even for you. So
what? Do you feel the need to justify yourself? Maybe you think that if I
forgive you or you can explain it away and then, just maybe, you won’t feel
like such piece of shit? Or, best of all, have you come to say you’re sorry and
that you want me back? Cause I’ve seen your balls and frankly they just aren’t
that big.”
She was a deeply passionate woman
who brought her whole soul to the table and had paid for it many times. He understood
her anger and he could hardly deny her the pleasure of this rant. He tried to
allow it to soak in, not dismiss it as he would have yesterday or any day
before this. He tightened his jaw and took it, penance for what it was that he
had stopped being. And, in some way, he couldn’t help but enjoy it.
The
sharp angles and lines that age had given her did not make her seem spent or
used up. For the first time Matt saw these marks instead as an expression of
all the times she had loved, all the heartbreaks she had conquered. They were a
testament to what she had endured to earn such…potency. Finally he could see
her as passing the same red blood through her veins as he, because now he saw
her strength as a place to finally build his own.
He
held eye contact as he said, “That last one. I’m sorry, and I want you back.”
“Ah,”
she said, her face still brimming with contempt. “You’re sorry. And I can’t
wait to here what you are sorry for.”
“I’m sorry that I left you when you
needed me. But more than that, I'm sorry that I never thought about you in the
way that you deserved, or anyone else for that matter. That I expected empty
things from you and never anything at all from myself and that I was in too
deep to realize just how awful I was. How's that?”
“I wouldn’t say that I needed you…” She was softening.
“I need you to know that I wanted to
be there for you. I thought about it a lot and I just didn’t think I could do
anything. I began to think, 'I’m just making this worse and we won’t be able to
continue anyway.' Maybe I convinced myself I was just being realistic or that I
was doing what was best for you. But I know that I was just running away.”
“I don’t know why I should expect
more from you now.”
Emily touched a nerve and tears came
to Matt’s eyes. After all, from the time of his birth, his mother's sacrifice
had saved him from any and all expectations. “Maybe you should. Maybe everyone
should.”
“So now you’re the victim?”
“No.” Matt wiped his eyes and said,
“No, I’m definitely not. So, how bout it?”
“What? You expect me to go to your
flat and fuck for a while? I’m getting a divorce, Matt. I don’t know if you
remember. I’m not ‘no strings attached’ anymore. Maybe you should move on to
another floozy who has her life put together with Scotch tape and is just
waiting for you to tear it all down.”
“So it’s final, then? The divorce I
mean?”
She looked out the window. “Yes.”
“Well, then I imagine you need a
place to stay.”
Catalina
pulled her boyfriend Alex by the arm as they pushed their way through the
crowded streets of downtown. Alex seemed to be anxious about the whole idea but
was more comfortable with being dragged along than with speaking up. He knew
that Cat was too stubborn to admit how dumb this whole thing was. They were
only sixteen; even if they were able to avoid getting caught and taken back to
their parents—what then? Get jobs and pay rent? Get married? He proceeded to
grow more and more doubtful as they passed by pizza joints with cracked plaster
and manholes with steam rising from the subway below. Frequently they would
reach the end of the block and Cat would plow on ahead as if there was no
traffic and this caused Alex’s heart to jump more than once.
What had pushed Cat over the edge
was a fight she'd had with her mother. Cat’s mom was very young when she had
gotten pregnant and Cat had never met her father. Before she was born her
mother moved to the US and decided to raise Cat on her own. So it was no
surprise she reacted the way she did when they had been discovered mid-coitus. As
she said, she just didn’t want her daughter to “make the same mistakes.” Cat,
deep down in a part of her that wasn’t all teenage rebelliousness, knew that
her mother was just looking out for her, but she loved Alex, really did in a
way that wasn't all teenage melodrama, and she wasn’t going to stop seeing him.
Running away wasn’t her choice, she was convinced. She had been forced into it.
She saw a subway stop across the
street and brashly changed direction at the crosswalk without waiting. Alex,
suddenly jerked to the right, stumbled on the curb and lost his grip on her
hand. When Cat noticed, she turned towards him. She didn’t see the box truck
that was bearing down on her.
Alex
watched in horror as the driver panicked and the breaks screamed. Cat turned
her head to face the truck, her eyes wide, her long dark hair lifting into the
air and swirling behind her. But she connected with something else before the
truck reached her. She fell back towards the curb and in her place was a
handsome, young man in a business suit who’d come rushing from the opposite
side of the road. His brow was furrowed and he had long blond hair. His brief
case had come unlatched and a flood of white papers billowed out behind him in
the early sunlight like pure, gleaming feathers.
