Push

chapter Twenty-Nine

Emma—Present Day

I take the letter and the piece of newspaper into my apartment and sit down on the sofa to read it. David lingers nearby for a while, then disappears into the kitchen. The article, dated from this past Thursday, describes how international businessman Michael Groff was attacked the previous day, during daylight hours, by an unknown assailant. He was beaten with a baseball bat and left for dead. Complicating the attack is the fact that apparently Michael’s business, which is among the world’s top three international lumber dealers, has been implicated in the unlawful harvest and importation of exotic hardwoods, and he is awaiting trial. TruTimber Imports buys and sells wood—teak, African mahogany, macassar, East Indian rosewood, bubinga—and after a thorough undercover investigation of their international harvesting practices and import permitting procedures, the U.S. Department of Agriculture is pursuing charges against the company for various illegal actions.
The attack on Michael took place in a parking garage, and there are no known witnesses. Police are unsure as to whether the attack is related to the criminal charges pending against him.
Damn. I stand up and walk into the kitchen. David is by the sink, looking lost. I hand the letter to him. He reads it and looks up at me in question. Then I pass him the newspaper article. He leans his back against the counter, crosses his ankles and reads the article from beginning to end. When he finishes, he puts both papers down on the counter and sighs.
“Wow,” he says softly. “That’s insane.”
“I know. I can’t believe it.” My head is churning. I’m not quite sure how I am supposed to feel about this. Should I be sad? He was my mother’s husband after all, my stepfather.
F*ck that. F*ck the way I am supposed to feel. F*ck him. I feel glad, that’s how I feel.
“I’m glad,” I say out loud. David’s brow raises and his mouth opens, but he doesn’t say anything. “I’m relieved,” I add. “I hope the f*cker dies a rotten death. Shit, let’s be honest, I’d like to shake the hand of the man that swung the bat.” My hand flies up to my mouth and covers it as soon as the words come out. As if I am holding in all the other things that want to come out. All the other words I’d like to say about Michael. And then I start to laugh hysterically. Belly-cramping, side-splitting laughter spills out of me until tears are rolling out of my eyes.
David is staring at me as if I am certifiable. It’s clear that he is choosing his words carefully. “Can I be glad, too?” he asks.
“F*ck, yeah,” I say emphatically, trying to rein in my psychotic laughter. “If he dies, I am free from everything. All the bullshit. All the doubt.” I am quiet for a moment because I’m not sure if I should say what is really on my mind. F*ck it. “Is it wrong that I want him to die, David?”
He shakes his head quietly and wraps his arms around my shoulders, hugging me tight.
“Are you going to call your brother?” he asks a minute later. The thought stops me in my tracks.
“I don’t know.” Truthfully, I hadn’t even considered it. I’m not sure talking with Ricky is going to be worth anything. I can probably get more information from the hospital. “I’m not going to do anything tonight but hang out with you,” I say, realizing that if Michael is out of the picture, I lose a little bit of protective David. “That is, if you still want to stay, now that I guess you don’t have to.”
David lets go of me and steps back. He cocks his head to the side and squints his eyes at me quizzically. “I want to stay. Shit, Emma, I always want to stay.”
“Good,” I say. “Let me make us some dinner.”
While we are eating, I tease David about what good timing all this is for him. About how lucky he is that he doesn’t have to take his girlfriend to poker with him again tomorrow night. He gets a rise out of my comment, and then tells me that I can still come if I want to. He liked having me there, he says, except for the “fall-down drunk” part—but even that was kind of entertaining. I give him my best sideways snivel and tell him emphatically to f*ck off. I know he likes it because the current is there. Again.
After a minute or two of weighted silence, I tell David that Ricky’s note was postmarked on Thursday which means that, by now, Michael could be dead. I tell David that I will call the hospital tomorrow morning to find out what is going on. To find out if Michael is still alive. David says he thinks that is a good idea. It would make him feel better, he says, knowing that there was no chance of Michael showing up while he is at poker.
When we finish eating, I wash the dishes, and David dries. I look at him with a secret sideways glance, watching his arms move, watching the birds bend and flex. I put down the dishrag and quickly swipe my wet hands against my jeans. I turn toward him and grasp his arm, the one holding the towel. My palms and fingers rub against his skin, up and down his arm, feeling the birds. Feeling David.
He remains still as I push his sleeve up over the top of his shoulder, exposing his bicep. On the round of his shoulder is a brilliant, parrot-like bird. Its head is turned to the side, and one dark eye is looking out over its outstretched wing. Nestled under the wing is a tiny, purple hummingbird with an iridescent green head. The hummingbird looks small and lost. It is resting on a crooked twig that the parrot is holding with its foot. I notice now that, unlike all the larger birds with their outstretched wings and confident posture, the hummingbird seems unsure of itself. Unsure of whether or not it will slide off the end of the twig and drop. Unsure if it is able to fly.
I put my index finger on the hummingbird, pressing myself into this tiny thing. This tiny, vulnerable thing. The one bird that seems like a glitch. An anomaly in David’s confidence.
“Who did this?” I ask, raising my eyes to his. “Who put these on you?”
“An artist. In New Orleans,” he says, looking down at me. I expect him to look surprised, but he doesn’t. He looks calm and light.
“What does this one mean? This tiny hummingbird.” My voice is so quiet. And yet I can hear my own awe. “What do all of them mean?”
I am awash with emotion, and I’m not sure if it is because of Ricky’s letter or because I told David I love him or because of the hummingbird. Maybe it is everything. All of it.
David is silent for a long time. My hands move to his other arm. They grasp him by the wrist, and my fingers trail up along the inside of his elbow to the crest of his arm. I move up to his neck, then to his chin. I am holding his face like a child’s, rubbing my thumbs against his jaw and looking at his open eyes.
“They’re for my mother,” he says quietly. “She called me her bright little bird.”
I know that David’s mother died when he was young. He told me the night I came home to find my new kitchen. He said he was eight.
My fingers move back to the hummingbird. Tracing it. “Is this one you?” I ask.
He grins at me and shakes his head. “No. It isn’t me.”
“Then who is it?” I ask. He looks as if he doesn’t want to answer.
“That one belongs to the artist.”
“Oh,” I say, rubbing my finger against its folded wings. “Did you ask him to put it there?”
“No,” he says cautiously. “She put it there on her own.” She. He said, “she.” Why would a woman put herself, in bird form, on a stranger’s arm? She wouldn’t. She would only put herself on the arm of a man she cared for.
“Did you love her?” I don’t know why I ask, but I do. I can’t take it back.
David pauses for a moment before he answers. “I didn’t love her, no. But she loved me. Or at least she said she did.” Oh. Another woman loved him. Another woman said those words and didn’t hear them back. David must sense that I am sinking inside because he keeps talking, trying to pull me back up. “She was messed up, Emma. She was a junkie. How could she have loved me when half the time she didn’t even know if it was Tuesday?” His hands are on my shoulders now, and I feel as if he is trying to hold me up. Trying to help me find my balance.
“Where is she now?”
“She died. Years ago.”
Anna Spaight’s obituary didn’t say that she was a tattoo artist, nor did any of the other articles about her death. But, in the picture, the one where David is standing behind her, his tattoos are there. Wrapped around her. Is he talking about Anna, or is he talking about someone else? Being on medication for depression and paranoid schizophrenia doesn’t make you a junkie, does it? I want to ask him if it is Anna—but I won’t, because my question will tell him that I know about her. To have two women in your life die would break a man—even a man like David. It must be Anna he is talking about.
“I’m sorry,” I say. I want to cry. I want to cry for Anna. And for David. And for me.
“It’s okay,” David says. “Really. She was messed up, and it was over between us long before she died. I only stayed for as long as I did because I was trying to help her.”
“Oh.” It must be Anna. In my mind, I am picturing David and Anna together, imagining him holding her up by the shoulders the same way he is holding me right now. Trying to help her find her balance.
“You already know that I am the raven, Emma. We both are.” He lets me go and lifts up his arm to show me the dark, thick bird. The one above his right underarm. The one I found the night he took me to the bridge. The clever and self-assured and peculiar raven. How could I have thought that he would see himself as a frail hummingbird? The ridiculousness of my earlier question tugs at me. Anna was the frail one. And David didn’t love her because ravens don’t love the weak.
With that thought, I straighten myself. I don’t need David to hold me up. I am centered now, and I put my lips against the raven. I kiss its beak and run my tongue across its body. David tastes of salt, of skin. His hands move to the back of my head, and he lifts my face up to his, kissing my mouth, lapping his tongue against mine. I can feel how much he wants this. How much he wants me. When we finally separate, it’s clear that David has something on his mind.
“I know Saz told you about Lucia the other night. I’m sorry you had to hear about that from him.” His voice sounds uncomfortable. As if he is embarrassed and ashamed.
“It’s okay,” I say, hoping to quell his feelings.
“I should have told you about her.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I guess because you never asked. You’re different than anyone else I have ever been with. You don’t ask a lot of questions about where I’ve been and who I’ve been with.”
“Oh. Well, it’s not that I’m not interested, because, trust me, I am. But I figure you’ll tell me what I need to know, whenever the time is right.” I shrug and add, “Your past is really none of my business.”
“But it is your business,” he says sharply. He is looking down at me, and I give him a what-the-f*ck-is-that-supposed-to-mean look. “It’s your business because the women I have been with are a part of who I am. They matter to me because they all became a small part of me in some way. A small part of who I am today.”
I’m not sure if this is my cue to start asking him questions, but right now, I am too f*cking tired to go there.
We walk down the hallway together and lie down on my bed. I shift down into the crook of his arm and close my eyes. What if he tells me a bunch of shit I don’t want to know? What if whatever he has to say about his past changes things between us? It won’t, I tell myself. Because whatever it is—when you love someone—it doesn’t matter.