Silence falls over the room. Stanley is still holding my hand, but he says nothing. There is no sound except his unsteady breathing.
“She kept saying she loved me. That whatever she did, it was because she loved me.” I stare straight ahead. I’m floating, still empty, because if I allow myself to feel anything now, I will shatter. “If that’s love, then how can love be good.”
He draws in a deep, slow breath. Then he touches my cheek, turning my face toward him. His eyes are vividly blue, wide and filled with tears. “That’s not what love is, Alvie.”
I stare back dully.
“Even if she did love you, what she did that night . . . that wasn’t an act of love.”
“Then what was it.”
His shoulders sag, and he suddenly looks very tired. “I don’t know. Fear, maybe? I can’t understand why she did it. But I can tell you this much. It was not your fault.”
“Yes. It was.” The numbness has started to fade. Inside me, something is awakening, and it hurts. “I made her miserable. If I had tried harder . . .” The breath rattles in my chest. “If I’d done things differently, if I’d been different, maybe she’d still be alive. And I’m afraid. I’m afraid that I’ll always be like this, no matter how I try to be better, that it’ll happen all over again, and I—and you—”
He seizes my hand in his, so hard I look up in surprise. “You can spend your life playing guessing games, trying to imagine some other world where you made different choices and everything turned out another way. But there’s no world where it’s okay to drug an eleven-year-old girl, strap her into the seat of a car, and drive into a lake.”
“Mama wasn’t a bad person.” My voice is weak. “She . . . she just couldn’t . . .” I trail off. I don’t even know what I want to say. “It was too much for anyone, taking care of me.”
“What about my parents’ divorce? Do you think that was my fault?”
I stiffen. “No. Of course not.”
“Then why do you blame yourself for this?”
“That’s just . . . different.”
“No. It’s the same thing. It took years for me to stop blaming myself for everything that happened. And sometimes, I still feel responsible.
“After the divorce, my mom fell apart. She’d always been protective—and once Dad was gone, I was all she had. I wasn’t allowed to play outside with other kids. If I tried to sneak out, she would lock me in my room for days. I missed so much school anyway, because of fractures and surgeries, no one really thought it was strange when I didn’t show up. Eventually she just pulled me out altogether.”
I listen, holding my breath.
“It wasn’t all bad. Most of the time, she was kind. Gentle. She gave me everything I needed—bought me books and computer games so I wouldn’t get bored, even though I was cooped up in the house all the time. But I felt like I was suffocating. When I told her I wanted to go away to college, she freaked out. Said I was breaking her heart, that I would kill her if I left. But I wouldn’t give up. It was the only argument I ever won. Then . . .” He stops. His eyes shine, wet and reflective with tears.
“She got sick, started passing out. She’d known for a while there was something wrong with her, but she didn’t go to a doctor, because all the money went to my medical bills. When she finally saw a neurologist, it was too late to do anything. After that, I had to come back. I couldn’t leave her. She got worse and worse. She started having these rages, these fits where she ranted at me and threw things. There was this one night . . .” His voice cracks. He stops and takes a breath. “I was taking a bath. She broke into the bathroom, this empty look in her eyes, like she wasn’t there, and started washing me. All over. Like—like I was a baby, or something. I kept telling her to stop, but it was like she couldn’t hear a word I was saying, and I was too scared to push her away. Scared I’d set her off.” He sits, shoulders hunched, hands balled into tight fists. “It wasn’t . . . I mean, she didn’t hurt me. But the next time I went to my doctor and she asked me to undress so she could see how the latest break was healing, I had a panic attack.”
Oh, Stanley, I think. Stanley. Stanley.
“I know she loved me,” he says. “And I loved her . . . and my dad, too. I still do. I think it’s easier, in a way, when someone hurts you out of hate. It’s less confusing. When the ones who hurt you are the people who love you most . . . no one ever tells you how you’re supposed to deal with that.”
There’s a hard, hot ball in my chest. Suddenly I want to go into his mother’s room and break all the ceramic figurines, rip apart the flowered coverlet and the rose-patterned curtains. Erase all the pain, all the memories.
“Listen to me.” He frames my face between his hands. His palms are warm on my cheeks. “What happened is not your fault. Not even a little. And I’ll say that as many times as it takes for you to believe it.”
It seems impossible, what he’s saying. It seems like a logical fallacy. My mind won’t accept it. “If I had never picked up your phone in the park, if I’d never sent you that email, you wouldn’t have gone through all this suffering.” My voice wavers. “You wouldn’t be sitting in this chair, now, with half your body in bandages.”
“You’re right,” he says. “I wouldn’t be here. I’d be lying next to my mother in the cemetery.”
At first, the words don’t sink in. Don’t register. Slowly I raise my head. “What.”
“After you sent me that email, I changed my mind.”
It takes me a moment to find my voice. “Why,” I whisper. “Why didn’t you tell me.”
“I didn’t want you here out of pity. I needed to know that this was real.”
I can’t help it. I kiss him. I feel his soft intake of breath—he tenses briefly, then relaxes into it.
He smiles, tears in his eyes. “I wouldn’t give up a single minute of the time I’ve spent with you. Not even the difficult parts.”
I close my eyes and exhale a shuddering breath. My face is still anchored between his hands. “I don’t deserve you.”
“Stop telling yourself that.” His voice is harsh, almost angry, but beneath that, there’s a husky throatiness, as if he’s close to tears. “I’m not a saint, whatever you think. You deserve to be loved. You deserve to be happy. So please . . .” His grip gentles, and his eyes soften. “Please stop punishing yourself.”
I can’t speak.
I was so sure that when I told him, he’d be horrified. He’d see me for the monster I was, a creature so detestable that my own mother tried to destroy me. Deep down, a part of me always believed that she was right—that I was better off dead. That my life could never be anything but a mistake. “I’ll always be like this, you know.”
“Good. Because I want you exactly the way you are.”
Two tears slip from my eyes and down my cheeks.
He holds his arms out to me, and I collapse. My hands fist in his shirt. My face presses against his neck, and the sobs pour out—ugly, raw, animal sounds. I can’t stop. It’s frightening. It hurts, like I’m splitting open and all my insides are pouring out.
He cradles my head against his shoulder and rocks me back and forth.
I cry for a long time. When it’s over, I am exhausted, weakened and empty. But it’s a clean sort of emptiness. I feel new, like a baby opening her eyes for the first time, looking upon the world in all its strangeness and beauty.
“We didn’t have the best luck with family, did we,” I say, my voice faint and hoarse.
He lets out a choked laugh. “No.”
“If we ever have children,” I say, “let’s do better.”
That night, we share his bed for the first time since I moved in. He clings to me in the darkness. “You’ll stay?”
I take his hand in mine and hold it against my cheek. “I’ll stay.”
His hair shines in the lamplight. On impulse, I touch it. It’s short, bristly yet soft, like fur; there’s something comforting about the texture. Slowly I slide my fingers through it. His breath catches.
“Is that bad,” I ask.
“No. It feels nice.”
I touch the back of his neck, where the skin is warm and velvety, and he shivers. When I start to slide my fingers under the collar of his shirt, he tenses, so I pull back and resume combing my fingers through his hair, a slow, steady movement.
I missed this. I missed touching him. His warmth, his scent. The sensation awakens something restless in me, and I want more.
I rest my hand on his thigh.
“Alvie . . .” He gulps
“What’s wrong.”
“It’s not that I don’t want to,” he says. “I do. Believe me. It’s just . . . my legs are still in braces. I can barely move my lower body. I mean . . .” He clears his throat. “That part of me is okay, but still. It’ll be a while before I’m in any shape for this kind of thing.”
“Even if we can’t do it the usual way, we can still do something. When I did my research—”
“Research?”
Oh, right. I never told him. “I watched a lot of pornography to prepare myself. For the first time, I mean.”
“Uh.” He won’t look directly at me.
“I saw a lot of different positions and methods,” I continue.
“Alvie.” His voice sounds a little strained.
“What.”
“I want our first time to be special.” He takes my hand in his. “I really want to do this right. I want to be prepared, and I don’t want to be stuck in braces when it happens.”
The words frustrate me.
When I first propositioned Stanley, I just wanted to prove to myself that I could do it. I didn’t even care if I enjoyed it; I just wanted to feel connected to another human being, if only for one night. But it’s not like that anymore. I want him. I want to touch him, to feel his skin against mine.
But I remember what he said about his mother—how afterward, he couldn’t even get undressed in front of a doctor.
“I just need a little more time,” he whispers.
Stanley has been patient with me. I can be patient, too.
I touch his chest and say, “When you’re ready.”
He relaxes, and I know I’ve made the right choice not to push. Still, the frustration remains. We’ve revealed so much to each other. This is the last barrier between us.