Fire & Water

by Betsy Graziani Fasbinder

  At the deli down the street, Mary K ordered a plate of meatballs, a salad, and a club sandwich for Irene. The deli owner threw in a beef bone for Welby.

  We sat at our usual outdoor table and the homeless woman began circling with her shopping cart. Welby, tethered to Mary K’s chair under the table, gnawed happily on his bone.

  “Hey, Irene,” Mary K shouted. “I’m setting your sandwich on this next table, but to get it you have to say hello to me and my friend here.” She turned toward me. “Irene and I are working on greetings and salutations.” She turned back to the frightened woman. “Murphy here sprang for the grub, so a thank-you would be in order. That’s a few words in exchange for a triple-decker sandwich with bacon.”

  The dirt-crusted woman muttered her disgust.

  “That’s the deal. Six words. Hello Mary K. Hello Murphy. Thank you. Then lunch is yours. If you squeeze in a nice-to-meetcha, there’s a lemon bar in it for you as a bonus.”

  We began eating. Irene paced.

  “Come on,” I said. “I don’t want her go hungry just because she can’t say a few words.”

  “She will not miss out on bacon. Trust me, Murphy. She can do this. She talks with me now and then. Bums my cigs. Real conversations on her good days. Used to be a legal secretary before she lost her marbles. Has an adult son and a sister who try to take her home, but she ends up back here talking to the cast of thousands in her head. I talked to a social worker at the shelter. If she learns to have remotely normal exchanges with people and takes her meds they could place her in a group home.”

  I studied Irene as she struggled between the lure of the sandwich and her revulsion for human interaction. I tried to imagine the legal secretary walking in the financial district wearing a suit, stockings, and clean hair, but all I could see were the tattered clothes and the filth, the missing teeth and the matted hair. I thought of Jake, before dining with diplomats and celebrities, now in a facility with bandaged forearms.

  “I’ve decided it’s time to buy a house,” Mary K said. “Welby needs a yard, and it seems stupid to pay more rent. There’s a fixer down the street from me at a good price.”

  “You and Andra are moving up in the world, huh? Buying a house together, that’s big.”

  Mary K looked across the street, following Irene with her eyes. “Nope. Going solo. Littleton’s getting a place of her own.”

  I examined her face for any signal of what had happened, but saw nothing. “But you two are so good together.”

  “It’s good until it’s not, right?” Mary K picked a carrot slice out of her salad and tossed it up, catching it in her mouth. “You know what a dyke brings to a second date, right?” She paused. “A U-Haul.” She picked more items from her salad. “Things were just a little too intense, you know? I’m not really the relationship type.”

  “You okay?”

  She reached down and petted Welby’s head. “We’re good.”

  “So a house, huh?”

  “Welby pisses on the stairs in the morning on the way down for a walk. Three stories is a lot to ask of a puppy bladder.”

  “Ryan’s going to flip when she sees him.”

  “When I see how cool that kid is, I think maybe you made the right choice about Bloom after all. Kills me to admit it, but he’s a pretty smokin’ dad. I know he’s struggling now. But you two seem to be handling it all. My hat’s off. For better, for worse, right?” Mary K pulled a pack of cigarettes from her pocket, shook one free of the pack, and lit it up. With a satisfied sigh, she blew a stream of smoke away from Welby and out into the street.

  I didn’t know what to say. I’d spent six years defending Jake against Mary K’s blistering assaults. I’d come to confess that she’d been right about him, and that I was leaving him. Now Mary K, of all people, was reminding me of what I loved most about Jake.

  “What did you want to talk about? You came all the way down here to the you-stab-em, we-slab-em department for something.”

  I took a drink of my iced tea. “Soccer,” I said. “Ryan’s league has an opening for a one-footed, chain-smoking soccer coach. I thought you might be interested.”

  “You’re on. I rule at soccer.”

  Irene sauntered over, pushing her cart with a regal air. She lifted her chin as she grew closer, looking down her nose at us. In a singsongy voice she said, “Hello Mary K. Hello Murphy. Thank you.” Then she snatched the sandwich and began to scurry away. Suddenly she turned and looked at me with wild animal eyes. “Nice to meet you,” she growled.

  Mary K slapped her hand on the table, making Welby jump. “Good night, Irene! That lemon bar will be waiting for you right here, baby. Right here.” Mary K looked at me with a look of triumph and raised her eyebrow. “Was I right, Murphy? Or was I right?”

  “What can I say, Kowalski? You were right.”

  * * *

  Once the levels on his medication began to reach efficacy, I could see Jake returning to his normal self.

  “Take a walk with me?” he asked one day after he’d been there nearly two months.

  Fear must have splashed across my face, because I could read the hurt on his. The thought of being alone with Jake gave me an unexpected sense of panic.

  “It’s okay, Kat. I’m good today.”

  We walked through downtown Napa and got gelato, each taking tastes of the other’s treat as we walked. He hung on every detail about Ryan. We laughed some. Out of the blue he stopped walking and asked, “We haven’t talked about Burt. How’s he doing?”

  “His mother got really ill. He went to Australia right before you—” Silence crackled between us as I searched for the words to finish my sentence.

  “Before I tried to kill myself, Kat.”

  “He left me a number if I needed to reach him. He called a few weeks ago to let me know his mother died. He’s been helping his dad.”

  “You didn’t tell him, did you?”

  “No.”

  “Good. He should take care of his family,” Jake sighed. “He’s taken care of me long enough.” Jake stopped walking and looked into my eyes. “And you have, too.”

  The topic of what would come next could no longer be avoided, but I lacked the courage to bring it up alone. I had requested a shared session with Dr. Malmstrom. After we’d finished our ice creams and our walk, we headed back to meet with her.

  Jake talked to me without regard to the therapist in the room, while I was constantly aware of her presence. “I want to come home. I’ve got this thing, this fucked up thing. I know that, but I need to know if you can love me again.”

  I looked at Dr. Malmstrom, feeling oddly unclothed baring this intimate moment as she watched. I gnawed at my fingernails, feeling a sudden sting of new flesh being torn. “I didn’t stop loving you.”

  “What then? What’s keeping you from letting us start over? I’m better, right? It’s good between us again.”

  Silence hung, a damp and heavy curtain in the small room. Thoughts of my father swirled around in my mind. How had he done it? How had he preserved Elyse Ryan’s image so lovingly? Hadn’t he been furious with her? Had he thought of leaving her?

  “Go ahead, Kate,” Dr. Malmstrom said. “If Jake’s transition back to life outside of Serenity Glen is to be successful, you have to be candid about your concerns.”

  “I—” Words wilted in my mouth.

  “Go on, Kat.”

  I looked for flaws in the nubby fabric that covered the arm of the couch we sat on. My voice was a whisper. “I can’t believe you did that to me. Set me up like that.”

  “Set you up? I don’t understand.”

  “The flowers. The music. Like it was a romantic evening. I had been missing you. I’d been so alone. You set me up for the—” I closed my eyes and swallowed hard. “For the scene that you created upstairs. With the blood matching the wine and the orchids. It was like a seduction to get me upstairs. It made a mockery of—” I looked up to see Dr. Malmstrom’s eyes fixed on the two of us. She glanced away, honorin
g the small privacy I needed to continue. “It was humiliating.”

  Jake slid from the couch down onto the floor, putting himself into the line my gaze. “Oh, Kat.” His face melted as though it were made of wax, melted by the heat of my disclosure. “Is that what you’ve been thinking? That I did all of that to humiliate you? That I planned it?”

  “Not what you did, Jake. How you did it. You damaged your body, but your plan cut me up, too.”

  With his eyes looking straight into mine, he shook his head. “No. No. No, my darling. No.”

  For the next half-hour, Jake explained to me that he had awakened that morning feeling a little energy for the first time in weeks. After I’d gotten the page about Allison Bennett, he’d sat there, looking at the Golden Gate through the arch of our kitchen window. He’d thought about how stupid it had all been. He’d risked everything he loved for some obsessive idea about an installation. As he walked around the house, he’d seen the signs of my sleeping on the chaise and eating takeout. Filled with remorse, he’d decided to make it up to me.

  He’d wanted to make the house beautiful again. An act of repentance. He’d cleaned everything until he was exhausted, then he’d gone to the flower market and bought orchids. He’d uncorked the wine and poured a glass, pleased with how it looked next to the flowers. He’d loaded a stack of my favorite CDs into the player, turned on the music, and gone upstairs to take a shower.

  “That was my plan. Honest to God. But when I got upstairs I was so tired. I started remembering how I’d screamed at Ryan, crumbled her branches, terrified her while your dad held her. Hurt you by telling you about Alice. The look on Ryan’s face that night. Jesus. The look on yours. I remembered it all. Ryan’s tears. Your pleading with me. Burt holding me back. You all looked at me like I was a monster.” He continued to shake his head. “I knew I could never allow myself to do anything to cause those faces to look that way again. I went into my studio and got that scalpel you gave me for cutting leaves.”

  Jake had pressed the blade to his throat first, intending a single but effective slash, but found he was unable to press it in. He’d undressed and put his clothes away. He’d already showered, but something in him wanted to be even cleaner, so he’d begun shaving the hair on his chest, his legs, his genitals. “I wanted to change myself. Purify myself, maybe.” He’d lain down in the tub, trying to summon the courage to plunge the blade into his throat.

  “I started with a shallow cut across my right thigh,” he explained. “The blood trickled and ran off to the right, and somehow it seemed that I had to cut the left to create a balance. The pattern of it began to… fascinate me.”

  The hundreds of cuts and the sting of the blade had made him feel more human, more alive than he had felt for a long time. “I felt so guilty for everything,” he said. “I couldn’t put you and Ryan through anything more.” That’s when he’d held his breath and gouged his right forearm as deeply as the strength of his dominant left hand would allow. He’d watched the rhythmic gushing for a few minutes and marveled at how quickly the pool of blood grew beneath him. With what strength was left, he’d sliced his left forearm to satisfy his disturbed sense of symmetry.

  “I swear,” he sighed, “the thought of you coming up the stairs never entered my mind. I was too far gone. You’ve got to believe me.” I lifted the cuffs of Jake’s sleeves, revealing the purple scars that disappeared beneath the fabric. With the tips of my fingers, I pressed the tender new skin there. His pulse, strong and even, throbbed beneath my fingertips. Surgeons had pulled his shorn flesh and stitched it together. The cells had found a way to reunite that which had seemed irreparably parted.

  “I believe you,” I said. And I did.

  Jake’s body went limp and he closed his eyes. “I know you have to leave me. You have to. It’s the right thing for Ryan… and for you.”

  Knowing that Jake’s violent acts were directed only at himself only managed to change my anger into sadness. I still had to leave him. But even with his volatility, his unpredictable behavior and mood, my biggest fear was that Ryan was losing the far better parent in the exchange.

  * * *

  “Daddy!” Ryan squealed as she ran through our front door. I set my keys on the entryway table, along with the folder of drawings that she had made for him. Jake lifted her and spun around in a slow circle, burying his face in her neck. His chestnut curls blended with hers, making it impossible to tell where she stopped and he began.

  “I missed you so much. Wait until you see how great I can read now. Miss Debbie says I’m the best reader in my class. I’m reading Little House in the Big Woods, and when I’m done there are six more books about Mary and Laura Ingalls. I can read them to you.”

  “Slow down, honey,” I said. “Let Daddy catch his breath. You haven’t even let him say hello.”

  “Sorry, Daddy.” She placed one small hand on each side of Jake’s clean-shaven face. He’d put on weight since the last time he’d been home, the deep lines in his face softened with the added flesh. “Your turn to talk.” She pressed her forehead to his.

  “It’s okay,” Jake whispered. “I could listen to you talk for a hundred years.”

  * * *

  We slept in our own house that night, though there was a canyon between Jake and me in our bed. We acted like strangers with one another: me being cautious, and him respecting my inability to relax and be close. Medication plunged Jake into an undisturbed sleep, but I lay there with my eyes wide open, listening to his breathing.

  Why couldn’t I just tell the people who loved me what was going on? Pride. Stubbornness. Shame. But part of me also knew that none of them could understand the whole picture of Jake and why I loved him the way I did. They’d support me, I knew that. But only one other person on the planet knew and loved Jake the way that I did—knew his genius and his goodness, but also his capacity for destruction.

  I wandered into the kitchen and found my handbag. From my wallet I pulled the scrap of paper Burt had given me before he left for Australia. In the stillness of the night, in the blue glow of the moon, I dialed the number of Burt’s sister’s home in Sydney.

  Slippery Slope

  For the first time, on the phone with Burt, I told the whole truth.

  While Jake and Ryan slept, I poured out every detail of all that had happened. I wasn’t managing my words to protect Ryan or sculpting my image in front of another medical professional. My story was not altered by wanting to cocoon Jake’s image to my family or to keep Mary K from judging him. Every time my story slowed or I got afraid of telling it, Burt would sigh reassuringly, or ask me how I was coping with it all. After over an hour, I felt I’d excised the last of all I’d been holding in for so long.

  “I love him, Burty, I do,” I said through salty tears. “And I feel like the most disloyal person in the world. He’s ill. Who leaves their husband because he’s ill? For better, for worse, right?”

  Though he was a hemisphere away, it felt like Burt was at the kitchen table beside me. “It’s not like that. We’re not meant to wreck ourselves out of loyalty. That’s not love, that’s masochism. And you’ve got Ryan to consider.”

  I thought I’d choke on my next words. “But Jake is better with Ryan than I am. I don’t know how to be a good mother by myself.” I closed my eyes, shielding myself from the shame of my confession. I told the ugly truths about how I’d all but abandoned her and sat drinking at the bar until I passed out each night.

  “Oh Kate. You didn’t abandon Ryan. You took her home to the folks that love her best. You’ve been suffering too. This drinking and avoiding Ryan, that’s not who you are. This secrecy is killing you. Jake loves Ryan. He’s a wonderful daddy when he’s not having one of his—well, his episodes. But he can’t be that daddy anymore. You’ve got good mothering instincts. Jake’s just upstaged you, that’s all. He does that. His light is so bright it’s easy to forget who you are around him.”

  I knew Burt’s words were as true for himself as they were for me
.

  “Ryan knows who her mum is. She gives you her fits because she knows you’ll be strong enough to handle her. She never acts up for Jake because he’s too fragile.”

  His words were a balm. As he spoke, the muscles in my shoulders relaxed. As I listened, I watched the sun break, casting a tangerine glow over the Golden Gate. “You forgot who you are, too, didn’t you?” I asked.

  “I did. But you helped me to remember. That’s the friend you are. That’s the mother you can be for Ryan.”

  Unfamiliar hope was a butterfly within me. “Thanks, Burty.”

  “I’ll book my flight home straight away,” he said.

  I wiped my tears and felt myself smile for the first time in a very long time.

  * * *

  After spending that first night with Jake at Sea Cliff, Ryan and I went back to Murphy’s. It was early morning, and the pub was empty. I was surprised when Ryan seemed happy to be going back to the flat upstairs from the pub, and further surprised when she said she needed more sleep and wanted to go back to bed. I tucked her safely into bed, then went downstairs.

  The bar was empty. I made a pot of coffee, poured myself a cup, and sat on Dr. Schwartz’s stool. I heard my dad’s footfalls on the stairs behind me. Saying nothing, he poured himself a cup and refilled mine, pulling a stool up beside me. Andy Williams crooned from the jukebox.

  Buoyed by my conversation with Burt the night before, I told my dad everything. They veil of my silence had been pierced. He listened, nodding as I spoke. When I told him about the night Jake tried to kill himself, silent tears streamed down his face.

  “I should have let him die, Daddy. And sometimes, I wish I had. That sounds pretty selfish to you, I bet.”

  “No, Kitten. It just sounds human. Watching someone you love suffer, and suffering yourself, is no way to live.”