After, we lie entangled. My head against the curve of his chest. My ear to his heart, so I can hear its frenzied thud slowing down. Our legs intertwined, so it feels like from below the waist we are one animal. These legs rising into two torsos, a many-limbed, one-bodied creature. He has come back to me. I want to get up and dance around the room. I want to jump up and sing, but I can’t bear to pull myself away from his skin. There’s so much to do. We have to make space for his things again. We have to hire a moving van. We have to go and pick up our girl. Even now she might be waiting for us to come for her. I force myself to breathe deeply. To savor this moment when all my dreams have again come true.
My lips warm with the heat of him, I whisper against his throat, “I love you so much.”
The silence thunders. I wait, and with every passing moment, my skin is flayed.
He sighs and shifts. “I have to tell you something.”
“What? It can’t be that important. Nothing is that important. Don’t tell me … shh.” I press myself against him. Willing him to be silent, to stay here with me.
He gets up, carefully disentangling himself from my limbs, so that I’m left in a slump on the floor.
He says, “I have to go.”
“What?”
He’s buttoning his shirt with trembling fingers, pulling on his jeans.
I grab his calf. “What’s happening? Why are you going? We’ll be together now right?”
He starts walking and I have to let go of him.
“I’ll call you,” he says as he walks out the door.
I lie on the floor and try to understand what has happened.
*
I call his cell phone over and over. He doesn’t pick up. I pace and smoke until the room is clouded. I listen to his voice telling me he isn’t available right now. But it’s okay, it’s going to be fine. We are back together. Even the thought of sleep is impossible. Outside, the slivered moon is high, glaring into the room like an intruder. I jerk the curtains shut. I can’t bear that searing light. My phone clicks, a message from him. “Can I come back? We have to talk.”
He walks in looking terrible. His hair is raised in stiff quills, his face pale as if he has been walking the cold streets since he left. I will time to reverse, taking us both back to that beautiful place a few hours ago.
He takes a deep breath and says, “I’m sorry. About what just happened. About everything. I shouldn’t have. But you know it doesn’t really change anything. We just aren’t suited. You must know that, right? We’re too different. Different worlds. It just isn’t working.”
Some terrible thing is happening inside me. Over the ruins of the world, the dark waterweed is unfurling, the minotaur is awakening. I feel its shadow; it has grown tenfold. It shudders along every passage in my body, crawls along the inside, so I am dark green rotted, bull faced.
And then I know. I say, “Is there anything else?”
He looks like he’s going to cry. He says, “No, what else could there be?”
“You’ve met someone, haven’t you? Another woman.”
“No. I knew you’d say that. I haven’t met someone. I just can’t be with you anymore. This isn’t working. You know that.”
“Liar!” I throw the word at him and turn to stagger blindly down the hall. He says, “Wait! Are you all right?” He comes after me. I slash at his face, drawing bloody streaks along his cheek. He grabs my wrists, pulls me hard against him, says, “Stop it. Calm down.” I wrench away from him and run into the bathroom, lock the door, turn on the scalding water. I plug up the tub, get in, lay against the curved bottom shivering, my arms clutched around my knees. Hot water pools around me, floods my clothes. The rush of water in my ears. Outside, he is calling my name, slamming his palm and then his fist against the wood. “Please, just talk to me … just come out for a minute, just … I didn’t mean it. Why do you always do this? I just want to talk to you. Please.”
I lie in the rushing, burning water. After a while, I hear him slump down to the floor, rest his back against the door. I roll in the water. Like returning to the womb. I am a fetus again, warm and safe inside my mother. No man has reached in yet to hurt me. Hours later, I hear him call out from very far away. “Okay, I’m going now. I’m sorry. I never ever meant to hurt you.” I stay silent and he says, “Okay, I’ll call you tomorrow. It’ll be fine. We’ll work something out.” And then he is gone.
I float, weightless, thinking of a different time. A time when I was the container and she swam inside me. When she was only a squirm of life, the bulge of eyes to be, the stubs of limbs, the entirety of her coming into being inside me. I had given him this. I had created her. The greatest gift I could give. And now he might deny it, but I know the truth: the siren-woman has come to steal everything. Screaming voices, rage, pain ripping through my whole body. I gasp and shudder and sink underwater, open my eyes, my mouth, scream into liquid.
*
It’s much later. The water has grown cold. I stand up in the tub, pull off my sodden clothes, and drop them into the water. I walk into the bedroom, dripping puddles. I open drawers and put on heavy clothes, a gray sweatshirt that he has forgotten, sweat pants. My hair is stuck to my face, water soaking through the fabric across my breasts like a new mother’s milk.