Chapter 25
The Things That Need Saying
With a fancy bottle of wine and charmingly profuse apologies, Charles makes it up to Margaret and Reshma. He takes me back to Bloomington on Sunday afternoon and treats me like a princess, with dinner and reading to me in the tub—he joins me in the tub this time—and a long, slow-burning massage with oil that smells of citrus and something woody.
“Is this part of the Monster Deal?” I ask, my face half-muffled in a pillow.
“Merely the convenient meeting place of bottomless guilt and slavering lust.”
“Well, gimme some monster, baby.”
“Haven’t you had enough to last you a while?”
I shift and snuggle deeper into the pillows. “I think you don’t get that I like the monster. Have you not noticed that I enjoy being challenged and pushed?”
“Maybe I’m the one who’s had enough for a few days, then. I’d rather be gentle,” he says, “if that’s all right with you.”
It is. But it’s heartbreaking. When he kisses me softly and slowly, as if kissing me is all he ever expects to do for the rest of his life, when he rests his hand on my forehead as he does it, when he moves inside me with the attentive, slow movements that notice every change in my arousal, every detail of my response, I feel more in love than I can contain. It brings tears to my eyes, and he kisses them away. And it feels like he loves me too, so that when I come, almost silently, his eyes watching mine and his lips touching mine, I whisper the words as low as I can, “I love you.” And then he closes his eyes, and my heart tears apart just a little.
He was right. I had no idea how hard it would be to accept him when he wasn’t facing the monster. Not because I don’t love him then, just as much. But because when it’s him and the monster, it’s like he’s slaying dragons for me, fighting for me, trying to get to me through the walls and the monsters and everything that stops him from keeping his eyes open and saying it back to me.
I’m crying a little after I come, and I wrap my arms around his neck, to hold him close. “This is hard,” I say. And he tightens his arms around me, and it gets a little more difficult still.
We climb on Tuesday, as usual. What’s great about climbing is that you forget everything else while you’re doing it. It’s like dancing that way.
Which is why it’s only in the car on the way home from climbing that it occurs to me: this was the last time we’ll climb together.
Climbing is our first “last time.”
I feel doors starting to close.
And so, on the drive home, I start crying.
Again.
I put my hand over my mouth. And then I can’t stop crying. When we get to his apartment, Charles parks and we sit there together.
He raises his eyebrows at me, empathetic but puzzled. “We have these few days. A week. I don’t understand—we have these few days, and you’re acting as if it’s already over.”
“I know,” I sniff. “I’d stop if I could. I’d forget if I could. If I could live the next six days unaware that—” I’m choked by tears, and I just sit there, crying for a minute, without access to language for what I’m experiencing. But then I consider: if I could live the next six days unaware that they were The Last Six Days, would I appreciate them? Would I notice the glory of his skin next to mine if I weren’t so acutely aware of how few times I would feel it? Would it, in fact, feel as glorious? And when I say, glorious, I mean tragic.
Charles’s thoughts seem to have mirrored mine uncannily. He says, “I wonder if it isn’t some kind of survival mechanism that people are almost completely oblivious to almost everything about their present experience, to the simultaneous profundity and meaninglessness. The way every moment is both a celebration and a lament.”
We sit for a moment in silence and then he gets out of the car and comes around to my side, opening my door.
“Come on,” he says gently. “Let’s have it then. Let’s go in and have an argument and get it behind us. Say all the things that need saying so we get past it.”
I follow him blankly into the building and up the elevator.
“I’m not wrong!” I burst as soon as he closes the apartment door.
“Not wrong about what?” he asks calmly.
“About The Love Thing. This Thing we have is A Love Thing.” I sniff and cross my arms, trying not to cry anymore.
He leans against the wall and says gently, “You’re not wrong. The Thing is A Love Thing. And it’s equally true that The Thing involves me, and I can’t. It’s not that I won’t, it’s that I can’t. It’s like . . . being able to touch your toes. For some people it comes automatically, some people can work up to it, and some people will never be able do it. Love Things come easily to you. There’s never been a day in your life when you haven’t been able to do it, spontaneously and without effort. But I haven’t, not once in my life. I am not built that way. My body does not know how, and it does not know how to learn it.”
“You won’t even try,” I say. I’m angry. I’m enraged. I’m actually trembling with rage. Because it’s not. Fucking. Fair.
He says, very softly, “This is me trying.”
“You did this on purpose,” I snarl.
“No”—he shakes his head—“Annie. No.”
“You fucking lied to me. You said—” But I can’t think of one lie. Why can’t I think of any lies? I feel like I’ve been led blindfolded into a room, with the expectation that a surprise party waits for me but actually it’s a room full of snakes. “You fucking lied to me.”
“You feel deceived,” he answers softly. “I know that. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry; just be honest.”
“Honest about what?”
“About how you feel! About what you want!”
“I want to be your friend. I want to give you pleasure,” he says. “And most of what I feel is self-contempt and regret.”
He’s not defending himself, and that only enrages me more, fuels my urge to lash out, to make him feel something, to make him react.
“Why can’t you just get angry and yell? Why can’t you fight back?”
“How would it help for me to yell?” he inquires.
“It would show me that you’re a human being, that you give some kind of shit about me.”
“My yelling is what will tell you I give a shit.”
“Yes,” I insist.
He sighs and rubs his forehead, then stuffs his hands into his pockets. “I forgot. You want me to lose control. Losing control is how I prove your worth to you.”
“Losing control is how you prove you care more about me than you do about being in control, you selfish asshole.”
He looks at me then like a deer in headlights. Terror. That’s what I see. He’s terrified, petrified. Of me.
“I do care more—” But he stops. And then—worst of all—he slides down the wall into a crumpled heap on the floor.
“Charles.” I approach him and put my hand on his shoulder—and he flinches away from me.
“I’m sorry,” he says in a painfully soft voice. “Annie. I’m sorry. Please,” He puts his hand over his eyes, and I feel a cold flood of shame that I’ve caused him such pain.
I should back off and leave him alone.
I should apologize.
I should let it go, stop pushing him.
But instead I lie on the floor in front of him, so I can see his face, see the pain he doesn’t want me to see, the tears he’s working so hard to hold back, and I say, “What if I weren’t leaving? I’m not staying—I’m definitely leaving—but hypothetically.”
Ironic, dark laugh. “Don’t think for one second that if you hadn’t been leaving, I would have gotten into this in the first place. It was safe because you were leaving.” Another quiet laugh and a shake of his head. “It was safe.”
Silence. I roll onto my back and look at the ceiling, wondering idly at the range of silences I’ve experienced in the last few weeks, from the warm, affectionate silence after we first had sex to this . . . this cold, acid silence.
“Is this what it was like with Melissa?” I ask, unable not to. “Both of you on the floor, crying?”
“No.” He sniffs. “I sulked, and she threw cushions at me.”
More silence. I stare at the ceiling.
“How’s that acceptance working out for you then?” he inquires. I turn my face toward him and find he’s resting his cheek on his fist, his elbow on his knee, watching me with a kind of exhausted, grim, red-eyed half smile.
“It’s easy when we’re climbing or having sex or eating,” I say. “It’s hard when . . .” I pause, struggling to explain. “It’s hard when my feelings get more intense and yours don’t. Any feeling. Love, anger, anything.”
He nods.
I ask, “How’s the monster thing?”
“It’s easy when we’re climbing or having sex or eating,” he agrees. “It’s hard when you cry.”
“Is that what I should be doing differently? Should I not cry?”
“There’s nothing you need to do differently—though I do have one request.”
“Yes. Anything.”
“The actual name-calling is not so helpful.”
I look at him aghast. “Did I call you names?”
He nods sadly, and his lower lip twitches as he says, “ ‘Selfish arsehole.’”
“I said that?”
He nods again.
“Oh my god, I don’t think that about you. You’re, like, the least selfish person I know. I was just mad. I didn’t mean it. I—”
“I know that, Annie. But when you say it, I believe you.”
“Don’t believe me! I’m a fucking idiot. I’m a mean, bullying bitch. I’m—”
He interrupts, “The name-calling rule applies as much to yourself as to me.”
“I suck so much at fighting!” I despair, and I flop my limbs melodramatically on the floor.
He laughs—a sweet, light, genuine laugh. “You haven’t had much practice. Apparently, I can help with that.”
I turn my face to him. “Is there a book I can read about how to fight?”
He shrugs. “It’s not that complicated. The main thing is to remember that you like the other person enough to care about what they’ve done or said.”