chapter Thirty-Five
Emma—Present Day
When I wake up Sunday morning David is not in my bed. I sit up and listen for movement in the bathroom, but it is quiet. I roll a T-shirt down over my head, being careful not to brush it against the raw skin of my back, and walk down the hallway to look for him. The bathroom is empty, the sofa is vacant, and there is nothing in the kitchen, save for dirty dishes in the sink. There is no note on the table either. I pick up my cell phone to send David a message. When I flip it open, I see that there is one waiting for me from about an hour ago.
Hi.
Hi back.
Did u sleep well?
Yes. Where r u?
I had to go out. B back by lunchtime.
Everything ok?
Yes. Wait for me to shower. I can do your back.
Ok. Should I b worried?
About what?
IDK, u tell me.
No worries. Just had some shit to do.
R u at church or something?
Very, very funny. My sins r too big for that place.
So r your secrets, apparently.
One and the same.
Okaaaay then...b safe.
Will do.
I grumble to myself, flip the phone closed, and walk out to the kitchen to make some coffee.
* * *
David opens the door to my apartment at precisely 12:25. I am in the kitchen making us a couple of sandwiches when I hear his car keys hit the surface of the table. He walks around the corner into the kitchen just as I am about to walk out with the sandwich plates in my hands. His hair is a mess, and he is wearing the same clothes he had on yesterday. Wherever he went, it sure as hell couldn’t have been that important. He looks like he just rolled out of bed.
“Hey,” he says, stopping just short of walking into me. “How’s your back?”
“A little sore, but pretty good, all things considered,” I say. I put the plates down on the table and turn to face him. “Lunch is ready. I made us some sandwiches. Hope that’s all right.”
“It’s perfect,” he says, walking toward me. His arms stretch around my neck and rest on the top of my shoulders as his lips graze my forehead in a small kiss. “And so are you.” I have the sudden feeling that he was up to no good this morning, and he’s trying to cover his ass.
“That I am not,” I say with a small smile. “But you can say it again if you want. Especially if it makes you feel better about whatever you were doing this morning.”
He chuckles a little, and I feel his head moving from side to side as his chin rests on the top of my head. “I didn’t say it because of what I was doing this morning. I said it because I meant it.”
“Yeah, well, you’re the only one that’s ever considered me perfect, that’s for sure.”
“I better be,” he says, dropping his arms and looking at my face. He is wearing a small smirk, and when I see it, I know for certain that he was up to no good this morning. I sit down, biting into my sandwich with a smirk of my own.
“So, you aren’t going to tell me what you were doing, then?” I ask.
“No,” he says, still grinning. “But I will tell you that I won’t be doing it again. That’s for sure.”
“Okay, now that’s just mean. Don’t say shit like that if you aren’t going to finish the story.”
“Someday I will,” he says. “But not today.” He takes a bite of his sandwich and keeps his eyes down on his plate.
“That’s not fair,” I fire back. I’m starting to feel a little peeved about his secrecy, and my voice is exposing me. It sounds stiff and dramatic.
Oh, he is looking really smug now, and I’m frustrated as hell. Fine. If he wants to keep a secret, then I’m playing him for all he’s worth.
“So, David, how did it feel to beat a man to within an inch of his life?” As soon as the words come out of my mouth, David’s eyes pop up to meet mine. I raise my eyebrows and purse my lips, exuding as much sass as I can muster. He looks surprised at the forwardness of my question.
“Why do you ask?” he says, sounding a little bemused.
“Because if you won’t tell me about your present sins, I’m going to ask about your past ones.” His face changes when he recognizes my game. His expression reeks of revelry and sarcasm. He is mocking me.
“I think I can handle that,” he says tartly.
“Well, then, how did it feel?” I ask again; the bitterness in my tone hangs between us. He pauses for a second before he answers.
“It felt incredibly shitty.” Oh. That isn’t the answer I was expecting. I thought he would have felt happy kicking the pants off the man who was f*cking his girlfriend. Damn it. “It felt absolutely terrifying to be so out of control. The day after I found them together, I lost it. I came in here and let loose on the apartment. I wrecked the damn kitchen, and then later that night, I wrecked him. Lucia was so f*cking scared of me. I haven’t seen her since. Afterwards, I peeled Robbie up off the damn pavement and took him to the hospital. I dropped him off there, and the day after they let him out, I put his shit on the sidewalk and Carl evicted him. He was not a good guy, but still, it felt like a f*cking nightmare.” Jesus H. Christ. That is crazy.
“No one lived here after him? Until me, I mean,” I say, feeling slightly chastised.
“Right. I wanted to fix that freggin’ kitchen for over a year, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Then I saw you hauling boxes in here, and you were so f*cking cute. I felt so damn guilty about you moving in here with a ruined kitchen that I had to fix it. I had to make it better.” He lifts his sandwich to his mouth, and just before he takes another bite, he adds, “Turned out to be the best decision I’ve ever made.” David gives me a suggestive wink, and I know that the conversation hasn’t pissed him off. I am jumping in.
“Carl has no idea you fixed my kitchen, does he?”
“I ended up telling him about it the night you got sloshed at the poker game. But I just told him I fixed your cupboards. I didn’t tell him about anything else. He wanted to know how we hooked up.”
“Oh.” I finish my sandwich and roll over the long list of questions that are now in my head. When I talk again, I am thankful that the bitterness is gone from my voice. “So, was Lucia the one that bought you the gun and taught you how to shoot?” I ask, hoping to hell he won’t say that it was Anna instead.
“Yes,” he says briskly. I don’t think he wants me to ask any more questions, but I can’t stop myself.
“And was she one of the women that you were referencing the other night? One of the women that became a big part of who you are?”
“Of course,” he says wryly. “You can’t almost kill a man over a woman and walk away from it without your life changing somehow. I told you that’s what all that so-called ape shit stuff was about. I temporarily lost it.” He doesn’t sound angry or even perturbed. He is calm and composed—and somehow dazzling.
“Was the tattoo artist one of them, too? Who was she?”
He hesitates for a few seconds before he offers an answer. “Her name was Jenny, and you already know that she was a junkie.” Wait. It wasn’t Anna who created David’s birds? There was another woman. David lost two different women to death. Even if he doesn’t feel it himself, I feel sad for all three of them.
“How did she die?” I ask quietly, nervous about waking the dead.
“Her dealer went psycho.” David is so straightforward about it. So matter-of-fact. “But, like I said, as a couple, we were over months before it happened.”
“And how is she a part of you now? I mean aside from the obvious. Aside from that little hummingbird on your arm.” I brush the small bird with my fingertips. David stills. The space between us crackles.
“I will never lose myself like she did.” He says it with resignation. And an incredible amount of confidence.
“Oh,” I say. Right then, I make the decision to never bring up Anna Spaight. I will never ask him about her. I don’t want to listen to him tell me about her suicide. I don’t want to know about how she influenced his life. I don’t want to know about all the ways that she shaped him. And I don’t want to know if David loved her. I want to stay ignorant about the whole damn thing. Even though it is too late for that.
“Okay,” I add, dropping my chin to my chest. “I want to take a shower now.”
“Are you freaked out?” he asks as he stands up and picks up our plates.
“A little,” I say, looking up at him. “I didn’t mean to make you feel like I was judging you in some way by bringing up the whole Lucia thing like I did. I didn’t mean to make a game out of something so serious.” Those are the words I say out loud, but inside I am choking on my own thoughts. On thoughts of David having to witness the deaths of two women who were such important parts of his life.
“I know,” he says as I stand and follow him into the kitchen, “and I don’t ever feel like you are judging me. That’s one of my favorite things about you. You never make me feel different.” His words stop me in my tracks. That’s it. I haven’t really been able to figure out why I am in love with David, but he just said the precise words that my mind has been searching for. I love him because he never makes me feel different.
I turn him around to face me. He touches my face and plants a knowing kiss on my lips. Once again we are two of the same.
In the shower David washes my back with a soapy washcloth. He rubs it around carefully, and I watch the small flecks of excess ink and skin spin around in the eddy and then drop down into the drain. He washes my hair and my body, and before I know it, I am pinned against the shower wall with my legs wrapped around his waist, my mind and body simmering with adulation. With love. His lips grind into mine, and my fingers scatter through his wet hair. His mouth feels cool compared to the hot water, and when his lips leave mine and sink into my neck, I roll my head back against the shower wall. David reaches down to turn off the water and then he sets me down on the mat outside the tub. He dries us both with a towel, peppering me with soft kisses between swipes of the terry cloth.
When I am dry, David stands sweet and motionless in front of me, brushing my cheek softly. He looks tired. But I think I see something else, too. Confusion. And maybe worry. I wonder why.
* * *
An hour or so after our shower, I reach into my closet to drag out the boxes from Michael. After a brief chat with David, I decide that I need to get them the hell out of here so I have no trace of Michael left in my life. David says that he thinks it’s a great idea, and he’s happy to toss them straight into the Dumpster without a second glance. But I tell him that I need to check them out first. I need to know if there is anything important packed inside. If Michael kept my father’s dog tags, who knows what else he held on to?
David puts his iPhone into the dock, and the loose and melodic sounds of The Kooks fill the room. He sits down cross-legged on my bed and fiddles with the scissors he just used to cut the tape from the cardboard.
The first box I delve into is the one that contained the picture of my mother and me at the family reunion. As I open the flaps, I can’t help but glance over at the photograph sitting on my bedside table and remember how I felt that day. How my mother and father looked and how proud I was to call that man my daddy. David is sitting there, watching me carefully, no doubt ready to scoop me up off the floor if that motherf*cker Michael messes with my emotions again. I know, though, that there is not a single thing in these boxes that is going to rocket me off an emotional cliff. I know that I won’t wind up sobbing on the floor. And I know this because now that Michael is gone, the only emotions these boxes can hold are good ones. The only memories they can dredge up now are the ones that I want to remember. The things that I decide to feel and recount. Not the thoughts and ideas that Michael forces on me.
As I dig through the box, I find that it is indeed filled with positive memories. Books I read in high school—To Kill a Mockingbird, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, The Count of Monte Cristo. CDs I left behind when I went to college. Dried-up bottles of nail polish. I lay them all out on my bed next to David. He laughs at the obnoxious colors. Once again, I tell him to “f*ck off” and remind him that I was a hot number in high school. He smirks at me and tells me that I still am. I kiss him on the cheek, and I think I see him blush.
The second box is filled with volleyball ribbons and trophies. When I put them on the bed, David picks a few of them up, rolling them around in his hands and smirking. He is suddenly filled with questions about what position I played, if I played any other sports, why I didn’t play in college. It is a great conversation, filled with a delightful energy and rife with hints of David’s appreciation for “sporty girls.” One of my old balls is tucked into the bottom of the box, and even though it is half deflated, we spend a bit of time playfully hitting the ball back and forth over the bed. David is on his feet now, obviously feeling more comfortable with what is in the boxes. He helps me empty the third one.
Amongst a few more books and knickknacks, I find two photo albums. One is of my family when I was young. I show David the pictures of my mother and brothers first. They were taken before I was even born. He says my brothers look like a couple of little nerds. I smile and tell him again that they were sweet kids when they were young. My father is in a few of the photographs as well, though he was probably behind the camera for most of them. He is sinewy with light hair, and in my favorite photograph, his arm is draped around my mother’s shoulders and I am standing at his feet. I must only be about two years old. My hair is pulled back in a barrette, and my smile is as wide as the ocean. It fills up my entire face. David picks up the photo album and holds it close to his face, examining me carefully and noting how much I looked like my mother even then. He says that my mother was beautiful, and he can see how bad my father had it for her by the way they are touching in some of the pictures. He winks at me when he says it, and it makes my insides smile.
The other photo album is smaller and consists of pictures that were taken after my father died. It is filled with images of my brothers playing high school football. I know that our babysitter, Carol, took most of these pictures because Michael and my mother seldom made it to the games. There are images of both Ricky’s and Evan’s college graduations; in them Michael is smiling like a motherf*cker, no doubt happy that tuition payments were over for a few years. Come to think of it, Michael only ended up paying for one semester of my college tuition, so, by all rights, he should have looked even happier than he did. There are also a handful of pictures of me in the album. A few from volleyball games, a team photograph from the eleventh grade, and a half-dozen pictures taken before my senior prom. When David asks me about it, I tell him all about Peter Beckman, about how he was the only non-shitty-ass boyfriend I ever had. Until now, anyway. And then I tell him how Michael ended it. David does not look a bit surprised when I tell him about prom night.
The last box contains some stuff from the desk I had in my bedroom. A mug I used to keep my pencils in, a Mickey Mouse stapler, a pink desk lamp, a flowered plastic desk set. There is a framed photograph of me and my friend Susan on a summer vacation at the beach. Her family invited me to come with them the summer before our junior year, and it was one of the few times that Michael didn’t interfere. There are also a couple of items from the corkboard that used to hang in my room. Ticket stubs, one or two postcards from my mother, and the Simpsons badges I collected in middle school. In the bottom of the box, in a small silk bag, is a gold bracelet that Peter gave me at our high school graduation. He told me he had planned to give it to me on prom night, but he never had the chance. I never wore the bracelet because it was inscribed with “E.S. + P.B. = <3.” It freaked me out to see the sideways heart and know that Peter might have loved me. Especially because I didn’t love him back.
David thoughtfully watches me sort through everything, asking an occasional question and offering a supportive comment whenever he thinks it’s necessary. I toss what I don’t want into a box and pack the items I do want into another. I tuck the “keeper” box back into the closet as David leaves the room and comes back holding the last two beers from the kitchen. I joke that I wish it was whisky instead. He grins and tells me to call in an order for Chinese. He’ll stop at the liquor store down the street on his way back from picking up the food.
“Now that is an exceptional idea,” I say with a smile, and he is out the apartment door before I can say thanks.
The Kooks were followed by the Crash Kings long ago, and when that album ended, David’s iPhone started playing a band that I never heard before. I pick up his phone to call in the food order. I’m about to dial when I see that the last number David called is still listed on the call screen. 241-375-2229. My stomach drops. It was dialed last night at 11:36, when I was already asleep. And it ended at 11:42. A six-minute phone call.
I stare at the number. It is the number that I had to memorize halfway through the second grade. It is the number that Peter Beckman and Bobby Sarson dialed over and over again. It is the number that I wrote on all of my college applications. It is the number that the police dialed to tell Michael about my mom’s car accident.
What the f*ck.