“It’s all a joke!” I can’t get the thought out of my mind. “Just kidding!” I laugh. I can feel the cruelty set my mouth in a grin. “How does it feel? Just kidding!”
“Yeah, it’s all a ruse.” James’s eyes go dead as he condescends. “That’s exactly what I was trying to say. So glad you understand me so fully.” He turns as if he’s going to leave the room, but comes back. “Thanks so much for your undying support, Julie. You’ve been so understanding. But, yes, the joke’s on you! Everything I do, I’m just trying to mess with you.” He steps back, throws his hands up, provoking some kind of response. “The jig is up! You’re on Candid Camera! JK! April Fools’! April Fools’ your fucking cervix and April Fools’ this house opening itself to us and April Fools’ whatever it is that’s growing here. April-fucking-Fools’, Julie! Yep, that’s what I meant.”
I sob, terrified now of this man, convinced of his complicity. I’m backed into a corner of the counter while he rails inches from my face. I’m not even fighting back, just taking the verbal punches this moment throws at me, but my body fatigues. I push him away and turn to lean against the counter and quake.
“Just kidding,” James chokes out, and I hear him walk away, hear the basement door open, his steps down the stairs.
“Just kidding!” I scream, and bang my sore fists on the granite countertop.
68
I GO TO bed alone and sleep quickly with vivid dreams of soured lilies and the sick, brown smell of turned hydrangeas, transformed from petals to litter.
I hear steps on the stairs and our bedroom door swings wide and then James slides one foot and then another into bed, but it’s not James, it’s both him and not him. It’s the true him that’s been hidden from me all this time, not the fake him that is familiar to me, and I waste no time in rolling onto him and pushing my face into his. I let his tongue meet mine and I let his mouth find my neck and suck and bite and I drag his hand to where I’m wet. I grasp at the hairs on his head and make promises with the way I press him and I reach a hand down and shove him inside me and I should know it’s too much, but I don’t care. I grind into him recklessly and hear the breaths that I know mean he’s had his fill, but I continue, and his fingers work more quickly to help me make the same decision, because once he’s come, he is sensitive, and he doesn’t need me seeking some arrival on top of him, and knowing that this is for me alone is enough to send my head back and I roll off and remember what happened earlier and who blames whom. I turn from him and snarl and he growls back.
The bed is hotter when he’s in it, and I hate that, but it’s a hate I’d rather not do without. In other words, I love hating his presence when it means a few degrees under a blanket. Even if I don’t recognize him right now, I can recognize the heat coming off his body. Even though I don’t recognize him, I am growing to recognize myself. I say, “Tell me how you’ll hurt me and I’ll tell you how I’ll respond,” but he has gone quiet.
I shut my eyes for a long time without sleep, and when I open them, I see the murky outline of someone, more the deep shade of a figure on the darkness than the lightness of a human form. “James.” I feel for him beside me, but can’t find him in the bed, so I allow my mind to confirm the figure must be him, but still I ask, “James, is that you?” The figure retreats and then I hear a rolling slide and a bump, like a pocket door closing itself and I can’t see the dim cloud anymore and I remember when I was caught in the wall, and I stand and flip the light on, but the wall is as it was after I emerged: solid, unseamed. On the nightstand, though, the journal has been returned, but without the loose pages packed into the front. I open it to find the rolling text, illegible like James’s handwriting on the wall, or could it be that James’s handwriting is like what I’d seen in the book? I hear questions in my mind but have the strange sensation that they are not mine. Could I be tripping on a single burn scar? Skipping around the same groove? A record needle tracing an error? I’m making my way through the same paths of the maze repeatedly. I feel my mind rush in and then disperse. I climb into bed and pull myself back together, like metal filings to a magnet, and by the time I fall asleep, light already sneaks through the windows.
When I wake, I’m sure I’ll be late for work, so I lug myself to the bathroom and splash water on my face and blink the water from my eyes and I see it: the glowing purple of a bruise on my neck. I touch the mirror and remember the night before and remember James’s mouth there and my shoulders sink with relief because a hickey is nothing to worry about. It can’t tell me stories I don’t want to hear, and I return to the bedroom and hunt for a scarf that I can pass off as a choice even in the warm weather.
I feel the sun through the windows, the room already starting to stink with the sneaking spores. I slide a dress down my body and pause, looking at James’s side of the bed, and sit down and run my hand over the sheets and try to imagine the warmth of him still there, a clue about when he left, but no matter how assuredly my hand tries to divine the heat, it turns up nothing, and I worry for only a moment more and head out.
At work, Connie recognizes the scarf for what it is immediately. “Show me.”
“It’s not what you think.” I realize how I sound and lower my voice. “This one’s a hickey.”
“Seriously?” She tries to connect the dots of how the night could end that way.
I bow my head, and when I move, I feel a heavy ache rooting itself in my spine. “We fought. He was saying things that made me think I didn’t even know him, blaming himself, and I just can’t accept that. He stalked down to the basement and I fell asleep, but I woke up when he came to bed and he still seemed like some other person, but I felt this”—I pause and just say it—“this desire, this impulse to seize the chance to sleep with someone new, even though it was still James, and I acted. Hence…” I fan my fingers beside my neck.
“Jesus. If he’s so set on taking the blame, maybe he is to blame? He was the last one in my house before that drawing showed up. I don’t want to call your husband a liar, but something is going on with him. And that is one hell of a hickey, Jules.” She moves in closer to inspect.
My hand involuntarily travels to it, and even that gentle, absentminded touch sends the dull throb spiking higher, but despite this surprising hurt, I say, “It’s a regular old hickey. No big deal. It’s embarrassing, but my dignity has survived worse. How was the rest of your night? I feel like no matter what James’s deal is, we’re to blame somehow. When will you be able to stay at home again?”
Connie keeps her eyes on the hickey. “It’s fine. My cousin’s going to help me paint over the vandalism tonight and then she’s going to stay with me for a night or two until I feel better.”