How Not To Fall by Emily Foster (24)

Margaret and Reshma are sitting in front of the television when Charles and I let ourselves into the apartment on Saturday morning.

“Did you hear about what happened?” Margaret says without looking up.

“Huh?”

“In California? Some fucked-up college kid killed six people because no one would have sex with him.”

“What the hell are you talking about? When?” I say.

“Last night. It just happened. Some boy killed all these people, and he left a video on the Internet saying he was going to kill a bunch of women because none of them would sleep with him. It’s on the news right now.”

We sit and watch the news.

“Dude,” is all I can say.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Charles adds.

But it gets worse.

Reshma is reading something on her phone and finally says, “Huh. The douchebag’s ‘manifesto’ insanity says his family is some kind of prestigious English family that lost all their money. He doesn’t sound English in the video.”

“I’ll get the boxes from the car,” Charles says.

I follow him as far as the door, then watch him go out to his car and pause, head lowered, his hand on the car door before he opens it and pulls out the flattened boxes we’ve brought for the move. When he comes back, his face is pale and stiff, and he sighs heavily. “Let’s get this done and have a fucking drink, eh?”

“Hear, hear,” Margaret calls from the living room.

We get it done. With four of us, it takes less than an hour to get all Margaret’s stuff into the rented truck, and then we drive an hour up to Indianapolis and load all the stuff into Reshma’s apartment.

We’re done, it’s noon, and the whole world is going to hell.

You bet your ass we have a fucking drink.

Maybe an hour later, Margaret and Reshma start making out in a pretty heavy-duty way, and Charles tosses his keys at me and says, “Let’s get out of their way. You’ll have to drive.”

“Okay, let me say bye to Margaret.”

“Sure.”

I clear my throat at Margaret. “Hey, lady, I gotta take Momma Duck home.”

She pulls her mouth away from her fiancée’s and turns to look at me, frowning. “Oh my god, this is it!” she says.

“I know,” I say, and my eyebrows get all worried.

She comes over and hugs me. “What am I going to do without you?”

I hug her back hard. “The same thing I’m going to do without you,” I say.

We both start crying a little.

“I’ll miss you so much,” she says.

“Me too!”

“You’ll call me. You’ll e-mail. You’ll text, you bitch, or I’ll come to New York and fuck your shit up.”

“And you’ll invite me to your wedding, whether it’s a legal one or not, or I’ll come to Indianapolis and fuck your shit up.”

Reshma has stood up too, and she gives me a hug.

“You take good care of this lady,” I tell her.

“I will.”

“Good luck in Montreal!” Margaret says, hugging me again. “You’ll be awesome.”

“Good luck at Pfizer,” I tell her. “They’re lucky to have you.”

And then we hug just one more time.

“Okay, I really am going now,” I say with a sniff. I turn to Charles. “Ready?”

“Yep. Bye, Margaret, Reshma.” He turns away without meeting my eye and without waiting for Margaret’s, “Bye Momma Duck, and thanks!” and I follow him out the door. Only when he stumbles on the steps do I realize how drunk he’s gotten.

I drive us home, through Charles’s gloomy silence.

When we get back to his apartment, I unlock the door for him and he lays himself onto the sofa, moaning, “God, drunk in the middle of the day. Prince bloody Charming, me.”

I scoot onto the couch under his ankles. I take off his shoes for him, as I’ve done a dozen times for Margaret.

“How now, Ophelia, what’s the matter?” I ask, and he giggles morosely.

With his hands rubbing his forehead, he says, “This is what entitlement leads to. Bloody evil viciousness and remorseless cruelty.”

“Are you identifying with creepo?”

“Yes, look—you don’t have to hang around for this. I’m in a dark hole. I’ll find my way out, but I’m pretty unpleasant to be around at the moment, and I don’t want to inflict this on you.”

“Okay,” I sigh at his feet. I’m sad and mad and frustrated and trying to be accepting, but I think maybe it comes out passive-aggressive. I say, “I guess I was sort of hoping I wouldn’t have to spend the night alone in my empty apartment, but if you’d rather . . . um . . . wallow in a drunken stupor, that’s cool too. I mean, you seem kinda wrapped up in your thing, and I have to admit I’m kinda wrapped up in my thing of saying good-bye to my best friend, so . . . I mean. That’s cool. I’ll go home.”

“Ah, young Coffey. I’m sorry. Come here.” He raises an arm off the couch and beckons.

I tuck myself in next to him, and he wraps his arms around me and kisses my neck in small, precisely placed kisses.

“I think our difficulty,” he says between kisses, “is that you’re a hoper.”

“A hoper?”

He pronounces:

He sighs heavily, his breath boozy, and turns my face to his. With his palm on my cheek and his forehead against mine, he blinks heavily and says, “’S a poem.”

“What is the secret medicine?”

“Can’t tell you,” he mumbles. “Secret.”

“Is it shots of vodka?”

He shakes his head. “’S the opposite.” He wraps his arms around me and holds me against him. “Oh, Annie. What are we going to do with you?”

I shrug and sniff and cuddle myself deeper into his arms.

“My father’s brand of insanity,” he says suddenly. “I’ve watched it turn from darkly charming to murderous in the blink of an eye. I’ve felt that kind of rage inside me. I know it lives inside me. There but for the grace of . . . I don’t know what . . . nothing at all. There is no grace between me and that. There’s only my own disgust. Oh, for fuck’s sake, listen to me. I’d forgotten what a maudlin drunk I am. Ignore me.

“What?”

“Nothing. Let’s take a shower.”

We do, standing under the streaming water, kissing with our tongues. He’s kissing me deeply, hard, but his hand is stroking my wet hair so gently. I wrap my arms around him and let the water fall over us.

We don’t have sex, though. Charles isn’t that steady on his feet. And after the shower, he drops into bed and falls asleep. Passes out.

I wander into the living room and look at his book titles. I putter around the kitchen, not finding anything I want to eat. I clean the bathroom. I wish I had work to do.

I decide to go home.

I ride back to my apartment and wander around, listening to the emptiness of the spaces. Only the TV and coffee table are left in the living room—the futon was Margaret’s. The kitchen table and chairs are gone too. Her bedroom is empty. Her half of the bathroom cabinet.

I sit on the living room floor and text Margaret.

 

 

She texts back after a few minutes,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She calls me.

I answer the phone with, “Don’t come down. I’m fine.”

“What do you mean, you’re in love with him?”

“Yeah, I’m an idiot. I fell in love with him.”

“You are leaving in, like, ten days! Why did you fall in love with him?”

“I didn’t do it on purpose!”

“And what the hell is wrong with him that he’s not in love with you?”

I try to explain about the monster and our agreement about The Acceptance Deal and The Monster Deal without telling too much about his family—those are not my secrets.

“He’s all broken and stuff,” I conclude. “And my job is to, like, be cool with that, while his job is to try to not be broken.”

She says, “That is a fucking nightmare.”

“Got a better plan?”

“Can’t you just not see him?”

“We’re going to Montreal, remember? We leave on Thursday. We’re there until Sunday. I can’t not see him.”

“Dude, that is . . . dude.”

“Anyway, I don’t want to not see him. Just thinking about leaving—” I stop, choking on tears. “I mean, I’m definitely leaving, I’m going home, I’m going to med school, I’m leaving fucking Indiana. But it’s like I’m going to have to chew off my own arm to do it, like that hiker guy. Only it’s not my arm, it’s my heart.”

“Ugh,” she moans.

“I know.” I cry into the phone for a minute, before I say, “And he wants me to be able to just, like, enjoy the moment, right, like, to experience the pleasure without thinking about the impending doom. And he’s right, right? Like, when we’re together, in that moment it’s amazing, it’s maybe the happiest I’ve ever been in my life. It’s when I step back from that and realize the larger situation that I’m just filled with this . . . big . . . gaping . . .”

“Annie, do you want to come up here? Come sleep on the futon, and we can go out for breakfast tomorrow and have pancakes and diner coffee.”

Yes, I want to go up there. That sounds like exactly what I need.

“How’m I supposed to get to Indianapolis?” I snivel.

“We’ll come and pick you up.”

“I don’t want you to have to drive all that way—”

“Dude. Shut the hell up. We’re coming to get you.”

I smile and take a deep breath. “Okay. Let me just call Charles and let him know.”

“Okay.”

“You’re the best.”

“I know.”

I call Charles.

He picks up on the fourth ring, sounding like I’ve woken him up. “Yah.”

“Hey, it’s me.”

“Annie. Hey.”

“Uh, how are you feeling? Sober yet?”

“Er. Feeling pretty ashamed of myself, mostly. Not quite sober, but on an upward trajectory. May I know where you are?”

“I went home.”

“Ah, fuck. I’m sorry, Annie.”

“It’s okay. You had a thing. Hey, listen, so Margaret invited me up to her place to spend the night.”

“Right. Okay. So you’re going up there?”

“Is that okay?”

“Of course. Choose whatever gives you the most pleasure.”

“I want to choose you,” I say. “But you’re slightly busy accidentally being kind of a jerk. Which I realize is not the accepting thing to say, but I’m currently failing at The Acceptance Deal.”

“Acceptance and forgiveness are not the same things, my harpy. Nor tolerance, nor approval. A night without you seems a just punishment for my behavior.”

“So this is the accepting thing to do? Because I’m, like, working really hard on being accepting right now, and I gotta say it hurts like a motherfucker and I don’t even know what’s the right thing to do or feel or . . . anything.”

I hear him sigh into the phone—or groan. I’m not sure. He says, “Do you believe that I feel terrible about today?”

“Yeah,” I pout. “But you don’t have to feel terrible, you just . . .” I stop. What does he have to do? He doesn’t have to do anything.

“Yes?” he prompts.

“Nothing,” I say. “You feel like shit and you also feel like shit about feeling like shit. I feel like shit too, but for different reasons, and I also feel frustrated that you’re too busy feeling like shit to be nice to me while I feel like shit, but I also understand why you feel like shit, and I’m mad at myself for not being totally fine with you feeling however you need to feel, and I know that probably you feel this shitty in part because you’ve been trying to do the Monster Deal, which has torn down your defenses, so it’s kind of my fault that you feel this shitty. Basically, this is a lot of mutually contradictory feelings all at the same time and I’m confused.” I huff.

“You, Miss Annabelle Coffey, are remarkable,” he says. “No one could process today better than you are currently doing.”

“This is me doing it right?” I say. “I feel like a fuckup.”

“You are a marvel. I am so . . . Look, go and spend the night at Margaret’s, and I’ll come up there tomorrow afternoon to bring you home, okay?”

“Okay,” I say, pressing the phone close to my ear, my eyes closed. “I’ll text you in the morning?”

“Okay.”

“I love you.” It just slips right out. I was trying not to say it, but the words are like a puppy squirming under a fence.

He’s silent for a few long seconds. At last he says, “What would you prefer for me to say when you say that?”

“Um, anything that’s true?”

“Even though the truth isn’t your ideal?”

“The truth is my ideal. A shitty truth is better than a comfortable lie any day.”

“And that, my harpy, my dear termagant, is what makes you remarkable. Okay, let’s try it. Say it again.”

“Say what again?”

“That you love me.”

“Um, I love you.”

I hear him inhale, and he says, “I know, Annie.” And then he adds, “How was that for you?”

“It kind of sucked.”

And he laughs. Real laughter, not bitter, not ironic. It’s just funny to him that I both prefer the truth and feel like the truth sucks. I find I have a half smile on my face, listening to him. He says, “Better than a comfortable lie, though?”

I take a deep breath. “Should we try the comfortable lie?”

“You want to do that?”

“No.” In fact, my entire body is contracting with dread at the idea. “But it seems like the only way to test the hypothesis that an uncomfortable truth is better than a comfortable lie.”

“Okay. Go for it.”

“Okay.” I take another deep breath and say, “I love you.”

“I love you too,” he answers blankly.

I feel a hard, sharp, stabbing pain in my chest that makes me gasp. I press my hand against my forehead. “Oh god, that sucks so much worse. Fuck. Ow.” I slip sideways down the wall and curl up on the floor.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers urgently. “Annie, I’m sorry. I wish it were true. I do. I wish I could. I think it must be one of the great failures of my life that I can’t.”

“Don’t ever do that again, not even if I ask you to,” I say.

“I won’t. I won’t ever lie to you, sweetheart, not even if you want me to. I’m sorry.”