Atheists Who Kneel and Pray

by Tarryn Fisher

  “No,” I answered honestly. “I bore me.”

  “That can’t be possible,” he said.

  His tone was light but his expression was serious. In his love for me, he couldn’t fathom the idea of me being boring. He was obsessed with me as he often said.

  “I have the same thoughts over and over. I’m tired of it.”

  “So stop thinking them, think about me instead.” He leaned in for a kiss, but I turned my head so that all he had access to was my cheek.

  “Why didn’t you tell me that Petra came to your last show? That you sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to her?”

  It took him a minute to catch up. He was still talking about one thing and I’d moved on to another.

  He frowned. “I don’t know,” he said.

  I believed him but that wasn’t good enough. I needed him to know.

  “You do know and I need an answer.”

  “All right,” he said, slowly backing away from me.

  He went to sit on the couch and I stayed where I was at the window, facing him. As I watched him work through his thoughts, the strangest image came to mind. An elderly woman who’d come into the bar with her daughter. She’d been wearing a wig but it was crooked, a garish red/pink color. She’d worn a pinky ring, thick and chunky. It looked odd on her age-spotted hand, the skin thin and wrinkled around it. But I liked her right away, the brazenness of her.

  “What are you thinking about?” David asked me.

  “An old lady with a pinky ring,” I said.

  “See, how could you bore anyone, let alone yourself?”

  I tried not to smile. “Don’t change the subject,” I said.

  He nodded seriously.

  “She’s been coming to a lot of shows.”

  “A real-life groupie.” I rolled my eyes.

  “I knew it would make you uncomfortable.”

  “So you’re keeping things from me because you think they’ll make me uncomfortable?” I folded my arms across my chest. I was battle ready. I wanted to fight.

  “Yes,” he said. “I’m in the wrong. I’m sorry and I won’t do it again.”

  He was a natural diffuser. I wasn’t ready to stop. I felt things and I wanted to express them.

  “You sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to her, made her feel special…validated. It’s like you want her to fall in love with you.”

  “Come on, Yara…” He turned his face, dismissing me.

  “No, you come on,” I said. “That’s exactly what you did.”

  “I’m a performer!” he said. “I please the crowd. That’s something you signed on for being with me.”

  “No, I signed on to being with you, not your career.”

  “It’s a package deal,” he said that through his teeth.

  I could hear the ebbing anger and it excited me. David was rarely upset with me.

  “I think you have a thing for her,” I said, and David balked. “You have a savior complex, David! You’ve said so yourself.”

  He stood up, walked toward the kitchen, away from me, and then stopped.

  “Do you even believe what you’re saying?”

  “You knew what you were signing up for when you wanted to be with me.”

  He looked at me long and hard. “I did,” he said. “I don’t know how any man or woman could grow accustomed to unwarranted accusation. It’s not good for the heart.”

  “Why did you sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to her?”

  “Because it was her birthday,” he said simply before walking away.

  I started to feel the withdrawals right then and there. I’d replaced wanderlust with a human. That was a terrible mistake.

  New addiction, new problem.

  It was a little thing, like a pebble in your shoe. Sometimes you knew it was there and sometimes it moved out of the way of your toes and you forgot. That was Petra and her presence in our lives. A lingering uncertainty in my mind and possibly David’s.

  David got depressed. I called it the deep sleep. Not to him, but that’s how it was in my mind. It wasn’t often, but it was powerful, and during our year together I learned how to watch for signs of its approach. I didn’t know how to manage him when he was like that. There was no manual, no website that gave firm answers. Be supportive, they said. Depression is chemical, and you can’t just expect them to snap out of it. I felt inadequate, like anything I said or did wouldn’t be enough. I touched him so he knew I was there, and I fed him because I was afraid he would forget to eat. He wouldn’t talk to me when he was like that, but occasionally when I was walking by he’d grab onto my hips and bury his face in my stomach. I’d drop whatever I was holding, a laundry basket, a roll of paper towels, and hold onto his head. I tried to talk to him even if he didn’t return the words. Just nonsense about TV shows or customers that came into the bar. The more nonsense I spoke, the shallower I felt. I wasn’t saying anything to help him—I was just trying to fill the silence.

  I’d watch him from the kitchen, sitting in the chair by the window, knowing that I didn’t understand his depression. And maybe it wasn’t for me to understand; humans always want to fix things. Sure, I got the blues like everyone else, but this was something more. To David, depression was a tidal wave, not something that could be fixed with a new day and perspective.

  I was in the kitchen cleaning up after dinner when someone rang the doorbell. I peeked around the corner just as David opened the door. He was shirtless and in his sweats, a Seahawks hat backward on his head. I had a brief thought about how comical it would be if I opened the door that way, just as I dipped the last plate into the soapy water. I felt somewhat accomplished tonight. My risotto had made David feel something. He’d said it was the best he ever had. I dried my hands on a dishtowel and stepped into the living room. It was Ferdinand. I was glad he came. David did better when he was around. I stopped short as I rounded the corner. Ferdinand wasn’t alone…with him were Petra and a girl I didn’t recognize, though she seemed to recognize me. I watched her exchange a look with Petra and I had the feeling I’d been the topic of one of their conversations.

  “Yara,” David said. “Look who came to see us.”

  I glanced at Ferdinand who ducked his head, apologetic. He was one of the few people who knew how I felt about her.

  Petra waved sheepishly as her friend looked on stony-faced.

  “Drinks,” I said, clapping my hands. David winked at me, which caused a flurry of butterflies to erupt in my belly. Yes, yes, yes! I wanted to say. Come back to me.

  I went to the kitchen to fetch a bottle, the smile dropping from my face as soon as I was around the corner. I was wrong. I had no reason to dislike these people. My insecurities would push David away. I needed to put them away.

  When I came back in carrying a bottle of wine, they were all sitting around the living room talking. David was animated, his smile contagious as he took the bottle and wine opener from me and got to work opening it.

  “I’m not as good at this as Yara,” he joked, and I bent down to kiss his head.

  I went to get the glasses, glancing at Petra and her friend who were on the couch sitting in the place where David and I most often made love. It felt like sacrilege to seat them there. David and Ferdinand had pulled up chairs from the table we’d recently chosen together. When I walked back with the glasses, David jumped up to help me. He’d put on a shirt, but the damage was already done, an image engraved in their minds. I’d prefer they not know what’s under my boyfriend’s shirt. I’d prefer they wonder. Once you got the image of shirtless David in your head, it was hard to get it out.

  I watched the girls suspiciously, over the rim of my wineglass, looking for signs of adoration. Of course, they adored him, who didn’t? He was the type of person everyone wanted to be around. I got another bottle from the kitchen and poured more wine, smiled. David was smiling too. I wondered if it was genuine or if he was faking like me. Everyone smiling like we weren’t all dying of our loneliness. David and I were less lonely because we’d found e
ach other, but there were wolves like Petra who wanted to take.

  In university, there’d been a girl in my Psychology 101 class who’d given us a lecture on men versus women. “If a man introduces his male friend to his extraordinary new girlfriend, his friend will think—I want a girl like that. If a woman introduces her new boyfriend to her female friend, the friend will not think—I want a man like that, but rather, I want that very man.” I’d never put much stock into what she said, after all, I had never coveted a friend’s boyfriend, but here I was watching as Petra listened with rapt attention to every word that dripped from his mouth.

  Drip

  Drip

  Drip

  David was talking to her, as the rest of us sat and listened. She asked about his process. Such a cheap way to get an artist going. Everyone knew that if you asked an artist about their process, they’d oblige and quite happily. It’s like she knew without knowing. I watched them and my stomach rolled. Were they leaning toward each other or was it in my head?

  He sat in front of one of the large bay windows, a silhouette against the dying light, giving his expertise.

  “And when sudden inspiration comes does the depression lift?” Petra asked.

  “Not always, but sometimes it’s enough.”

  “Do you have a muse?” There was quiet in the room as he turned to look at me. And then all of my uncertainty dropped away. It was just David and me in the room when he looked at me like that.

  “I do,” he said, not taking his eyes from me. He smiled and despite the jealousy I was feeling, my lips curled upward. A sweet token of ownership on both our parts.

  “What is it about Yara that inspires you?” Petra asked.

  There was a genuine curiosity in her voice. That’s not what bothered me, what bothered me was her motive for asking the question.

  “Just look at her,” David said.

  All eyes turned to look at me, but it was David’s I focused on. Heat in my belly. He looked like my David, not the shell of a human he’d been these last weeks. We were okay. I felt like I could breathe.

  Petra moved onto something else seamlessly, steering the subject away from me and onto something new. That’s when I realized the type of woman she was. She tested for weak spots and took notes. She was unfazed, undeterred.

  We finished the second bottle and Petra’s friend, Kelsey, offered to run down to the store and grab another. The thought of having to spend more time with them, a fake smile plastered across my face, made me feel ill. David must have seen the panic in my eyes.

  “Maybe another time,” he said, looking at me. “Yara and I have plans to meet up with some friends for drinks.” He said each word meticulously. That’s how it was when he lied—like each syllable, each letter, was more convincing if spoken with perfect emphasis.

  A lie. I was grateful for it.

  I nodded at them apologetically and they all stood at once.

  I bid them farewell while David saw them to the door. It hadn’t even crossed my mind yet that Petra now knew where we lived.

  When they were gone, David pulled me against his chest and kissed the top of my head as I cried.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said, over and over. “Yara, I’m so sorry. I’m back.”

  I didn’t believe him. He left me without warning and with ease. It was like he was stuck in a soundproof room and no amount of effort on my part could free him. Even as he held me I was afraid it would come again. And what would I do next time if Petra wasn’t there to help me?

  “Tell me about your mother,” he asked.

  It had been a week since Ferdinand brought the girls over. A week of consistent, happy David. I was putting away laundry, small neat piles into drawers. I’d denied his request to meet his mother twice. I wasn’t ready for that yet, and now he was asking about mine. I’d rather meet his than talk about mine, but I didn’t tell him that. My back was to him so he didn’t see the look that crossed my face at the mention of my mother.

  David always wanted to know things. Who was your first kiss? Who was the first guy who gave you butterflies? Where were you when you found out Heath Ledger was dead? I answered his questions with a mixture of caution and thrill. No one had ever asked me these things before, but there was the lingering feeling that his questions were a trap, that he was trying to find something not to like about me.

  “Your mother,” he said again. “You have one, don’t you?”

  It was meant as a joke, his voice light, but it stung. Yes, I had one, but barely.

  I felt creaky and old when I thought about my mother, phantom hurts like an old chain from the past was tugging on my ankle. But David was asking and I’d found myself more and more unable to say no to David.

  “She had another baby,” I said. “When I was seven or eight. I can’t remember.” These details—the ones I thought he’d want to know. I was his muse after all; my brokenness could feed him. I wiped my hands on my jeans, they were sweating. I moved toward him, wanting reassurance. I didn’t come from what he came from. I had nothing to offer.

  He looked steadily on like this didn’t faze him at all, rubbing little circles on the skin of my arm with his thumb when I went to stand near him. I relaxed. Anything that had to do with my mother made me feel shame.

  “I remember her belly growing. At first, I thought she was getting fat, but I hardly saw her eat. Then one day she was in the kitchen and she grabbed her stomach with a yell and said it was kicking. I asked her what was kicking and she grabbed my hand and held it to her belly. She hardly ever let me touch her, she said my hands were always sticky.” I paused to watch his face, his eyes slightly narrowed now like he couldn’t imagine the world where a mother would think her child’s hands were too sticky.

  “Her stomach was so hard, that’s what I remember thinking, how fat people had such hard bellies.”

  He smiled, sort of, and nodded for me to keep going.

  “She didn’t come home one day, and the neighbor came to bring me food and check on me. I wasn’t even scared to be alone in the flat at night, I was so used to it. And then she came home and her belly was gone, her stomach was flat, flat, flat—like it used to be. When I asked her where the baby was she wouldn’t tell me.”

  “Do you think she gave it up for adoption?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “For all I know it could have been stillborn, or maybe the father took it, or maybe yeah—adoption.”

  “She could have been a surrogate,” he said.

  “Yeah, that’s not really my mum,” I said. “She’s never been into the selfless, giving lifestyle. But, your guess is as good as mine.”

  He rubbed my shoulders, kissed me behind the ear.

  “Are you asking about my mother so you can find out why I’m detached and avoidant of commitment?” I laughed.

  “Yes,” David said.

  My mum. She had almost no neck. That’s what I didn’t tell David. Those details felt like they were only mine. It perplexed me how her head was attached to the rest of her. I spent a lot of time trying to figure it out. Just a lobbing ball of blonde hair on a torso. Her hair was like mine, people stopped to admire it. But there was too much of it, thick and heavy. It diminished her necklessness further. She wasn’t abusive, though from a young age I knew she was disinterested. She liked men; they kept her interest. Her life was a quest to find the perfect mate—the one who wouldn’t leave her. And yet she left me. A cycle.

  I was a project gone wrong and now she had better things to do. I preferred it that way. My friend, Moira, had a mother who criticized everything she did: you should wear lipstick; you’re pale. You wear too much lipstick; you look like a whore. If you exercised more, you could have a lovely figure. Why do you spend so much time drawing? You should exercise or you won’t find a man. Moira was a lesbian, so lucky for her finding a man wasn’t a priority. She complained about her mother in great detail, which I found fascinating. A mother who cared too much about every little detail…tell me more.

  Mo
thers—bad mothers especially—made their children feel guilty for existing when they were under stress. “I gave you life” was a popular one, as well as, “I work hard to put food in your stomach!”

  You wanted to have a baby, or maybe you didn’t and just chose to keep your baby, it still wasn’t our choice to be here, so stop throwing it in our faces that you have to maintain us.

  My mother was shouting at me one day. It was after the man she’d been seeing suddenly broke up with her, and her mascara was streaked down her swollen face. I’d answered a question she’d asked me with a grunt and she lost her shit, lobbing a loaf of bread at my head.

  “Don’t you talk to me like that!” she screamed. “I gave you life. I put food in your belly!”

  I’d had enough. I’d been feeding myself for years, working the till at the local grocery mart. Half the time I was feeding her.

  “You brought me here,” I said to my mother. “You wanted a buddy, something to love you, right? Should have got a dog, Mum. Lot easier than a fucking human. Now feed your mistake without feeling like a savior.” I’d marched off to my room and left her standing in the kitchen, arms slumped at her sides, defeated.

  She’d not apologized and neither had I—neither of us was sorry. And that’s how we parted ways eventually, both a little relieved to be done with each other. Carrying on with our merry lives.

  It was all supposed to be a pit stop: Seattle, David, the relationship. I reminded myself of that on Mondays when I stumbled into work crashing hard from the weekend. But by Friday I was fully immersed in my life with David, my memo forgotten in the throes of the happiness I found with him. Perhaps this time is different, I’d tell myself. This was my artist, not just any artist—the one suited for me.

  Four days a week we went for a run around Lake Union. On Tuesdays I cooked, on Thursdays he did. I did the laundry, he cleaned the bathroom—we fought about the dishwasher. We made love every day, the newness of that hadn’t worn off yet. We brunched at Pike Place Market on Sundays and ordered late night takeout on weekends when David had a show. He bought me flowers every week. I’d come from my shift at The Jane and there’d be a bouquet from the Market on the small table where we ate our meals, and an open bag of Cheetos, staling out, as he called it. We watched Homeland and Game of Thrones, a bowl of kettle corn between us. We fought about money (he wouldn’t take any from me), and his late night bar trips with Ferdinand were a subject of contention (Ferdinand was an alcoholic). It was all so beautiful—my life with him—and unlike anything I’d had before. And then Monday would come again, and I’d remind myself that this would all have to end soon. I couldn’t live this life forever. Monday, Monday, Monday. I hated it for different reasons than everyone else.