Pretty Scars

by CD Reiss

  “Hello?” Peter said after he picked up.

  “Honey. It’s me.”

  “How’s New York?” he asked dryly.

  “Fine. Great. How was dinner?”

  “Finch asked about you. I said you were sick.”

  “Okay.” I looked at my sister, and she nodded as if she could hear both sides of the conversation and knew I needed encouragement. “Listen. Margie’s here.”

  “Tell her to go fuck herself, but say ‘hi’ instead.”

  He trusted her as far as he could throw a Chevy, and I couldn’t blame him.

  “She needs me to stay here another few days.”

  “For what?” he snapped.

  “She’s…” I’d never outright lied to him before, but if I was going to, it had to be a whopper. “She’s having surgery on… Monday. She’s got this thing. This…” Margie turned her hand in a circle, telling me to continue. “Tumor.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t tell Daddy! She doesn’t want anyone to know. Please. They have to take it out. When they see it, they’ll know if it’s malignant and then, well, then it’s a problem.”

  “Where is it?”

  “Where is it?” I repeated. Margie pointed at the space between her legs. “Cervix. And pushing into her uterus. She’s in a lot of pain.”

  Margie gave me the thumbs-up.

  “Well, if it keeps her from reproducing.” He laughed. “I’m in favor of them taking out the whole apparatus.”

  “Peter.”

  “Sorry, sorry.” He wasn’t sorry. “Joking.” He wasn’t joking either.

  “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  “Wait,” he said.

  “Yes?”

  “There are people in New York who’d love to fuck me over. And with you right there, and far away from me, where I can’t protect you… you need to be careful.”

  “Like how?”

  “Just don’t talk to anyone flashing a badge or ID. You call me right away. Don’t go anywhere with them. You got it?”

  “Okay.”

  “I love you, babe.”

  “Love you too.”

  We hung up. I tossed the phone on the couch between my sister and me.

  “Well done,” she said.

  “He’s going to tell Daddy.”

  “I’ll handle him. What was the last bit about?”

  “He thinks the SEC is going to question me if he’s not here.”

  “Paranoia’s a drug. Drink up. It’s a sin to waste good scotch.”

  I poured what was left down my throat. The burn was back. Margie refilled us. I was getting lightheaded already. Good. I’d lied to Peter. Gone behind his back to get a detective. Separated myself from him for more time than I ever had before.

  Something was changing.

  I gulped the scotch. If I could obliterate myself, ferment the woman I’d been a month ago, jar her and put her on the shelf, some other woman would emerge. A brave warrior who could make a decision about her life. Who could go forward instead of wandering around the present. Who was smart enough to know when she lacked direction.

  I pulled the limo driver’s coat over me, draping it like a blanket. “Margie?”

  “Carrie.”

  “I think this is Gabriel’s coat.”

  “You’re imagining things.”

  “Maybe.”

  “The past isn’t your future.”

  “I get so sad sometimes, when I think about it.”

  She brushed my hair off my face. “I know. I really do.”

  “I’m afraid to let him go.”

  She nodded as if she understood all too well what letting go took from a person. Paranoia was a drug, but so was hope.

  I woke up in the guest bedroom, feeling the upside of good liquor. No hangover.

  My bag was by the bathroom door. I showered, digging my fingertips into my scalp when I washed my hair, and dressed in a comfortable skirt and cable sweater. Sunday morning talking heads jabbered from the TV. At the table, Drew drank a cup of coffee and read the paper. The night before, he’d looked like a tattooed musician. Now he looked like a lawyer, even on his day off.

  “Morning,” he said. “How you feeling?”

  “Pretty good.” I poured myself coffee.

  “You guys put a dent in that bottle.” He flipped the page of the Times. “Made me a little jealous.”

  He wasn’t jealous the way Peter would be. Drew wanted to spend time with us. That was what a lover was supposed to be jealous about.

  “We can polish it off tonight.” I sat next to him and slid the style section out of the paper.

  “Deal.”

  “Where’s Margie?”

  “She didn’t say.” He looked at me over the edge of his cup and put it down. “I hear she’s having surgery.”

  “That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.”

  “Eventually,” he said as he pretended to read the business section, “it’s going to be easier to leave him. And when you do, we’re here for you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Nothing gives me greater pleasure than getting between your father and what he wants.”

  The front door deadbolt clacked and Margie came in.

  “You’re up,” she said, unwinding her scarf and shrugging out of her coat.

  “Yep.” I scanned photos in the style section. Denim and plaid. Jeans and flannel. All the same, but different enough.

  Margie kissed the top of Drew’s head and got herself coffee. “I had the most interesting meeting.”

  “On a Sunday?” Drew asked.

  “Orly Wicz from the New York Philharmonic was at church.” She sat across from me. “He was thanking me for the donation and—”

  Drew glanced up from his paper. “We donated to the Phil?”

  She put her hand on his. “The check’s in the mail. Anyway. He was telling me that he’s booking Adam Brate.”

  Him.

  More pages of jeans and flannel tripping down Italian runways. Same thing, over and over. I saw them, but I was blinded.

  “Apparently,” Margie continued casually, “he’s in New York at the moment.”

  The jacket I was looking at broke into blobs of ink.

  “He get a good look at him?” Drew asked.

  “Nope. No one does. He said he wears this piece of linen over his face.” When I looked up, Margie’s eyes were locked on mine.

  “That dude has a talent for gimmicks.” Drew folded up the business section and pulled out another. “Who even cares about a cellist except for the mask?”

  “He’s a composer,” I said, insulted that he’d call it all a gimmick. “Ballad of Blades is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard.”

  Drew shrugged.

  “Orly said something about that,” Margie agreed. “He’s got a meeting with him tomorrow about the lighting specs.”

  “Huh,” I breathed. “At Lincoln Center?”

  “Yup. Just before lunch.” Margie opened the business section. “The SEC’s closing another round of banks. They say it’s the last.”

  “All good things must come to an end,” Drew said.

  Margie turned the page. “So must the shitty things.”

  Chapter 16

  UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA - 1993

  For three months, Gabriel and I were happy. I met his friends and he met mine. We cuddled in bed and got to know each other’s bodies, pretending we didn’t have disapproving parents or that we’d be hundreds of miles apart by the end of summer.

  But as graduation approached, it was hard to ignore the blank slate of our future or stay blithe about an unbearable separation.

  “Hold the bow like this,” he whispered in my ear with a voice thick with sex. His chest pressed to my back and his hands were over mine. His violin was tucked between my chin and collarbone. “And don’t push into your neck so hard. You’re not trying to impale yourself with it.”

  I giggled and loosened up. We were alone in his apartment
. My books were piled on the coffee table, open to where I’d left off studying to take a lunch break. I didn’t know how I’d ever done schoolwork without his music lacing the background of my thoughts.

  “Ouch,” I said when he pressed the tips of my left-hand fingers against the strings. “Not so hard.”

  “It stops hurting after the first year. Now, draw the bow…” He moved my right arm so the bow vibrated the strings. They screeched. “Like that.”

  “That sounds terrible.”

  “Try again on your own.” He let go of my right hand but kept my left fingers pressed down.

  “Okay. Here goes.”

  “Go.” He kissed my neck, running his soft lips against my skin as I tortured the violin.

  “Ugh,” I said. “Why does it sound like that?”

  “Why do you taste so good?”

  I tried the bow again, but it was worse. Letting the bow drop, I surrendered to the feel of his mouth on my neck, leaning back into him. “I guess I don’t have talent.”

  Bending my head backward, I kissed him, letting my left arm drop so he could wrap himself around me.

  “You get good the same way you get to Carnegie Hall.”

  “That’s in New York? So… cab, I guess?”

  “You never heard the joke?”

  “What joke?”

  Turning me around to face him, he looped his arms around my waist. “Guy stops a New Yorker in the street and asks, ‘How do you get to Carnegie Hall?’ and the New Yorker answers, ‘Practice.’ You never heard that one? Practice?”

  “No. Is it supposed to be funny? Or just the Freudian humor of a universal truth?”

  “Kids today.”

  We kissed through smiles, dropping onto the living room chair with me on top, straddling him as he lifted his hips to grind the length of his erection against me. This could go on for hours. Delicious, wonderful, everything-but-sex hours of touching and tasting.

  “Gabriel,” I said, pulling back.

  “Little bird?”

  “I want to talk.”

  “Okay.” He reached under my shirt and unhooked my bra. “Talk.”

  “My graduation party is next week.”

  His fingers ran along my hard nipples, teasing them. “Everyone knows that.” He pulled my shirt up and kissed my breasts in a spiral that had its peak at the center.

  “Stop.”

  He looked up at me, one eyebrow arched high enough to make me wonder if the punctuation mark was designed to imitate that exact expression.

  “You can’t come,” I said. “I know you want to make a joke about coming but resist the urge.”

  “I’m resisting a lot of urges right now.”

  “If you’re there and my parents see us together, they’ll know.”

  “So? I mean, just tell them. What are they going to do? Kill me?”

  “I don’t want to fight them.”

  “What’s the difference? It’s not like we’re going to be together after we graduate.”

  I used to get annoyed when he brought it up, as if he’d dumped grapefruit in a perfectly sweet fruit salad. But he was right this time. We couldn’t pretend we weren’t going to separate.

  “I know.” I yanked my shirt down, suddenly feeling exposed. “No. I don’t know. I don’t know anything about anything anymore.”

  “How do you feel?”

  “Bummed out.” I reached behind my back and hooked my bra.

  “Carrie, I’m crazy about you. Insane. Every night I fall asleep thinking of ways for us to be together, and here you are, making sure we’re not.”

  “That’s not what I’m doing.”

  “Then what are you doing?”

  “Being a grown-up.”

  He scoffed as if I’d said the stupidest thing in the world. Maybe I had.

  I got off him, pulled my shirt down, and flopped on the couch, a million miles away. “I take that back. It’s not grown-up. I’m not a grown-up yet. I have no control over my life right now and pretending I do isn’t going to help.”

  “I’m ready to tell my mother who I love and she can deal with it or not.”

  “That’s not a fair comparison.”

  He spread his arms, elbows bent, palms up, as if in utter incredulity. “We’re the same age.”

  “It’s not about age. Look. You’re independent. You’ve been for a long time. Me? I’m reliant on them for everything and what that means is… there are tradeoffs. I have to keep a certain face on things. I have to go to a few events a year and stay in certain boundaries and—”

  “And go on a date with that guy.”

  “It wasn’t a date.”

  “Sure.” He shot up from the chair and paced. “Right.”

  Gabriel had been blithe about my dinner with Peter three months before. Obviously, that had been an ovation-worthy performance because he kept bringing it up.

  “It’s not forever,” I said, watching him as if he was a tennis ball and I had seats at center court.

  “But we are.” He plucked up the bow I’d dropped and stopped and faced me. “Carrie. That is a fact. You can put a bag over your head and pretend you can’t see the truth that’s right in front of you, but that doesn’t change it. We. Are. Forever.”

  He stood stock-still on the other side of the coffee table, fingering the bow for comfort, eyes a little wide as if he was shocked by his own words.

  “Aren’t we?” he asked.

  “You could have mentioned it to me before you decided.”

  His Adam’s apple jumped even as his face remained impassive. “I didn’t mean to do that.”

  “Right now, I’m dealing with my parents having too much control over me.”

  “I know.”

  “And I don’t need—”

  “I know.”

  “You trying to dictate stuff to me.”

  “Carrie, I get it.”

  “Because here it is. I’m going to just say it right here.” I took a deep breath, about to say things to him I hadn’t dared to articulate to myself. “I don’t think I’m qualified to manage my own life, and what’s going to happen is I’m going to go right from their power to yours. And when you say stuff like that, it makes it hard to trust that won’t happen. And, you know…” Everything was about to come out, like a dam bursting, and like a child who needed regulation and management, I had no control over it. “Letting you boss me is really, super appealing because I trust you and I love you and I—”

  Shit.

  I froze.

  “You love me?” he said, laying down the bow.

  “So?” I crossed my arms. “What do you think? I let every gorgeous musician I meet get his hands in my pants?”

  “Wow.”

  “Shut up.” I grabbed the corner of a couch pillow and flung it at him. It spun on a trajectory over his shoulder, but he caught it midair with one hand.

  “You.”

  Me… what? Did he not love me? Was my slip of the tongue cute? Like puppy-dog cute?

  Was “we are forever” about control and not about love?

  “No, really,” I said. “Let’s talk about something else.”

  “I’m going to that party.” He paced again, but with a smile. “You don’t have to invite me. And I’m not going to crash. No, no. I’m going to be there for you somehow.”

  “Why is this important to you? We’re going to Shelley’s thing so…” I shrugged as if he could insinuate the rest of the sentence by the position of my shoulders.

  “It’s important. It’s me reminding you that when you separate from your family, I’ll be there. When you can make your own decisions, I’ll be there.” He sat next to me, twisting around to face my profile. “I’ll be there, however long it takes. As long as you choose me, I’ll be there loving you, Carrie, just loving you.”

  I put my face in my hands, muffling my voice. “I’m going to cry.”

  He reached for my shoulders, tipping me into him. “Because I love you?”

  “Yes, you big
stupid.” I pushed him away and sat up with my hair all over my face. “Because you love me.”

  He laughed, and I smiled. “You’re a strange bird.”

  “I know. Now. I have to study. And you…” I pointed at the bow. “You have to get to Carnegie Hall.”

  Daddy had rented out the entire club grounds for a class graduation party. There was a photographer, a string quartet hired from the music school, a team of people on the grass to keep the kids occupied, and an open bar populated with the parents of the graduates, our professors, and Daddy’s business associates.

  “Would you look at her?” Lenny said, pointing across the room at Andrea. She was in a vintage lace dress and thick plastic glasses, laughing with a couple of our classmates. “She’s gorgeous.”

  “She is,” I said.

  “I’m going to propose.”

  “That’s amazing!”

  “Shh! Don’t tell her. It’s a surprise.”

  “I’m going to bust.” I was on my toes, ready to launch.

  Lenny put his hand on my shoulder as if he was calming a pogo stick. “Promise, Carrie.”

  “Okay, okay. Promise.”

  Andrea moved, and I saw Professor Gannon talking to my father. As far as I knew, they’d never met before, so they should have been shaking hands and exchanging shallow pleasantries. But they weren’t. They were serious, hushed, talking like two men with a common interest. I craned my neck to see Daddy put his hand on my teacher’s arm.

  “I’ll wait to let her show you the ring,” Lenny said from somewhere as far away as Montana.

  Daddy led Gannon through a door that led to a restricted hallway.

  “I can’t wait,” I said, already stepping toward them. “One second.”

  I headed toward the door the men had disappeared behind. I nodded to people I knew, looking rushed so they wouldn’t stop me, and backed into the hallway. Behind an office door, I heard my father’s voice.

  “Thank you for your help,” he said. “It gave me peace of mind knowing you had your eyes on her.”

  “She’s terrific. It’s the easiest twenty grand I ever made.”

  The door had a little window just above eye-level. I peeked in long enough to see Professor Gannon take a thick manila envelope.

  “There’s a bonus in there. For the nomination. The prize… what is it again?”