by Lily Zante
“That was a long time ago.”
“Like I said, ten years younger. How many pounds lighter?”
“Enough.” I run a hand over my arm, over the biceps and down. Am I pleased with the result? Hell, yeah. It got easier when I started to see progress, much like writing. When I could write for two minutes and it didn’t read back like word vomit, I’d write more. Soon, I got to a point where the story poured out of me. It’s the same with exercise. At first, I was driven because remembering Trevor’s jibes spurred me on. Then I didn’t want to give Jamie anything about me to laugh at with her.
Then I reached a stage where I could feel the difference in my body. Could feel it getting hard, not so pillowy. Could see the way Mari looked at me sometimes when I caught her staring.
It was enough to motivate me.
“I saw you fall apart once before, Ward. Saw you unable to write or function. Saw you reduced to a shadow of your former self. I didn’t want to see your brilliance wasted.”
“I managed to turn it around.”
“In time you did. You were also younger, more of an unknown, just starting out. There’s more pressure now.”
“I had a glitch.” I play with my food, not really in the mood to eat.
“You have a gift, Ward, and I don’t want you to waste it.”
“I don’t intend to.”
“I have to say, I didn’t expect such a dramatic transformation and so quickly. Mari said you were working out.”
“Yeah?” I’m curious to know what else she said.
“You look thinner. Fitter. Better. It’s a miracle that you’re on target with the book, but the exercise?” He cracks a grin. “I wasn’t expecting miracles, and yet, you’ve confounded everyone.”
“Everyone?”
“Mari said you’d been in the gym a few times on your own, before the second guy started.”
Those were the times that made me notice her. Hard not to notice her on her yoga mat in her various poses. “That was early on,” I reply. “When I was procrastinating. Sometimes, hitting the gym is easier than writing.”
“And lying around like a couch potato must have been even easier. She says you don’t do that anymore.”
“Have you been interrogating my housekeeper?” I cry out in exasperation.
“If anyone’s going to know what you’re up to, it’s her.”
What else did she tell you? I want to ask him, but I don’t. It’s better not to turn the conversation around to Mari because then I won’t be able to get her out of my head.
“What’s the holdup with the first draft?” he asks.
“I’m stuck on a plot point. I’ll figure it out. Don’t worry, I’m working on fixing it.”
“I’m not worried now. Not anymore.” We eat in silence before he asks, “Have you visited your old house?”
I’m about to take another bite of my burger, but I don’t. “No.”
“Any plans to?”
“No.”
“Fair enough. Maybe you don’t need to.”
“I never needed to.”
He drops me back home after coffee, but declines my invite to come in. Says he needs to get back, otherwise Sally will start to worry.
When I walk through the door, Mari is in the hallway about to drag the vacuum cleaner up the stairs.
“Here,” I stride towards her. “Let me help you.”
“I can manage,” she insists, one hand on the hose and the other grabbing the handle of the machine. Of course she can. She’s no wilting flower. And even if she struggled with it, she still wouldn’t want my help.
Our gazes lock and hold. An image flashes past of where we were before Rob showed up. She won’t look away, and neither do I. Will she speak first? Will she allude to what happened earlier?
Of course not.
And yet I want to talk about it. I can’t pretend that nothing happened when so much has already happened between us.
* * *
MARI
* * *
“How was your lunch?” I ask, not wanting his help, but not wanting him to walk away.
There’s something unspoken between us, something nebulous and intangible that we can’t grasp, even though the physicality was so real.
“Nice. It was a nice change to go out.”
In the silence that follows, I rack my brain for something to say but find no words. What words are there for what he did, for what I felt, for what he made me feel?
“I never knew that you were from around here,” I say, hoping to get him to elaborate.
“I was born in Chicago.”
“You were born here?”
He nods.
“I had no idea.”
“Why would you?” he asks.
Why would I indeed? This man is like a blank book with the writing in invisible ink. Impossible to determine by the naked eye, unless you have a means of decoding it.
Ward and I only talk about what he wants for lunch and dinner. Or we scribble notes to one another.
We make small talk. He seems anxious to get away, but I can’t pretend everything is normal when it isn’t. He has touched me, run his hands over my bare buttocks. Pressed himself against me and I loved it.
Seeing us now, no one would have any idea what we had been doing only hours earlier, and the eerie thing is that neither of us is talking about it.
“Aren’t you tempted to go have a look?” I press, now that I have a hook into some new piece of information about his past.
“Tempted to look at what?”
“The place you lived at before?”
He frowns. “I don’t ever want to.” There’s something nonnegotiable behind that sentence. Something I can’t get to the bottom of.
“Rob said that had been one of the things he’d hoped you would do.”
“You and Rob seem to have had a lot to say about me.”
I sense he doesn’t like that, and then I get worried when he says, “You didn’t tell him … did you?”
Tell him what?
From the look on his face, it quickly becomes apparent. He thinks I told Rob what happened between us. Surely, he wouldn’t think that? “No!” I cry. “I didn’t say anything about … about that. It’s none of his business.”
His mouth twitches, and I hold my breath, waiting for him to say something. Anything. Wishing he would acknowledge what happened.
“I’d better get back to my writing.”
“Are you sure?”
Are you sure? I want to slap my hand to my face in embarrassment. What a thing to say. He doesn’t reply. He doesn’t acknowledge it in any way. His expression offers no insight into what he’s thinking. I feel like a fool and hang my head in shame as he disappears out of sight.
I’m reminded of Jamie, and what he thinks of me and my reckless choices.
This need to keep Ward by my side comes from a desperate place somewhere inside me. I don’t even know who I am any more. It’s this place, and the company, or lack of, it’s me being so bored stupid, with my self-esteem in the gutter, that I can’t help myself.
Chapter Twenty-Four
MARI
* * *
Jamie asks me again if I want to go out on the weekend, but I brush him off again by saying that I need to spend time with my mom. Her fall, although minor, has given me a scare, and I want to spend as much time with her as I can.
On one particular day, it’s been raining the whole time and I feel as if a storm is brewing. After having my dinner, and noting that Ward hasn’t come out to have his, I finish everything and head up to bed. None of this is normal. None of this is ordinary, and yet he and I continue on as if nothing happened. Sometimes I have to think really hard because us getting so close and intimate feels like it could have been my imagination playing tricks on me.
I snuggle up on my bed reading a book, and checking for job vacancies on my laptop. The rain is relentless, and I stop reading and walk over to the window to stare. The rain comes down in sheets. I
love the sight and sound of it, especially being inside all snug and warm when it is soaking wet and miserable outside.
Watching the rain reminds me of how stuck I am. Of how nothing has moved on for me in my life. Dale has moved on. His girlfriend must have advanced in her pregnancy. I never did ask him how far along she was. I didn’t want to know about that. I haven’t heard from him, but I also gave him no reason to seek me out.
Against the background noise of the rain, I can’t help but think about Ward and how we went from sixty to zero and fizzled out. And then I try not to think about him, but it’s impossible not to, so I turn on the TV trying to keep my mind on other things. When my eyes get all heavy and I can barely keep them open, I go to sleep, even though the rain is lashing down outside.
But I can’t sleep. A flash of lightning zigzags through the night sky. Moments later a clap of thunder follows. I yawn, and notice that the TV is still on and a black and white movie is playing. I must have drifted in and out of sleep but now I can’t get back to sleep because of the noise outside.
Yawning again, I climb out of bed and tiptoe to the window. A flash of lightning slices across the sky. There’s no way I’m going to be able to fall asleep now, so I slip a sweatshirt over my nightshirt and head downstairs.
* * *
WARD
* * *
When the lightning flashes again, I sit upright on the couch. I have the fire burning, so it’s warm and cozy. I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight, so I didn’t bother going up to my room to go to bed. I knew sleep would be impossible on a night like this.
I wait it out in the study, but I have the blinds up so I can see the lightning when it comes. I’ve always needed to face my fears, and tonight is just another test of my fear.
I’ve tried to read through my work. It’s almost there. I’m at the last hurdle, I have an ending in mind but the ending I started with is not the ending I want. It doesn’t fit quite right.
The door opens, the sound of it startles me, making me turn. I’m on edge as it is. Mari is in the doorway holding a cup.
“The light was on,” she says. “I thought you might have left it on by mistake.” She hovers in the doorway, uncertain and unsure. What happened between us makes things difficult. I don’t know how to face her or be around her.
I can’t trust myself.
And for that reason, I have stayed away from her as much as I can. But she’s here now and I don’t want her to leave. “I can’t sleep,” I tell her. The sight of her on a night like this is comforting and very much welcome.
“You’re working.” It’s neither a question nor a statement. She seems hesitant to move. I want her to come in, come closer, but I’m scared she’ll walk away and leave if I suggest such a thing.
There is a push-pull in all our interactions and this is the reason I’ve hit a wall on my ending. It’s not just that the plot point stinks, it’s that the library of images and emotions and feelings that Mari evokes in me are getting in the way of my creativity. It leaves me unable to finish my story properly.
“Come in,” I say finally to plug the awkward silence. What better way is there to spend this gloomy night than with Mari?
Chapter Twenty-Five
MARI
* * *
“Are you sure? I don’t want to disturb you.”
“You’re not disturbing me.”
I can’t help noticing that Ward looks so sad in the dimly lit room. A reading lamp is switched on beside the couch, lending a warm glow. Elsewhere in the study, a few other amber-colored lamps are switched on. Ward usually only ever turns two lamps on. Tonight, most of them are on. There’s something else that’s unusual. The blinds are up. This is odd. Very odd. He never has his blinds up. Ever. This is the first time. He must like watching the rain as much as I do.
I walk in, still holding my cup of untouched hot chocolate. I’m tempted to ask him if he would like some, but he seems deep in his manuscript, with the papers balanced on his lap.
“You have your blinds up?” I ask.
“I like watching the rain fall.”
We have something in common. “You too?”
He looks at me, his brow creasing.
“I like watching the rain,” I confess. “I love the sound it makes. It’s soothing.”
“You like the rain?” he echoes.
I nod.
“I was waiting for the lightning,” he tells me, closing his notebook. A loose sheet of paper floats to the floor. I pick it up and hand it back to him. “Are you stuck again?”
He doesn’t talk to me about his writing, and I know better than to ask, but I feel that I can ask him anything. I feel we’ve reached a point where we can do that. I don’t sit down. There’s only one couch, and I’m wary of keeping my distance.
“I’m stuck, but I’ll figure it out.” He puts his work to the side. “Sit down.”
“Are you sure?”
“I could do with some company tonight.” His admission surprises me, but, like him, I’m glad for the company. I sit down, a small distance away from him and hold onto my cup as if it’s my small protective shield.
“I woke up because of the thunder,” I tell him.
He turns to face me. “I couldn’t sleep because of the thunder.”
“Too noisy?”
“Too many bad memories.”
“Bad memories? Did you get caught out in it once?” I take a sip of my hot chocolate. He exhales slowly and looks away from me. For the longest moment, he says nothing. “I didn’t get caught in it.”
I hold my cup with both hands, waiting for him to embellish his story, but I get silence instead. I can see that he wants to talk, but this man who surprisingly has a gift for writing doesn’t seem to have the same when it comes to talking. I’m going to have to pull it out of him, word by word. “Then what was it?” I ask softly.
“I hate it.”
“The rain?”
“The lightning.”
“I’ve never cared for lightning much,” I say. “It’s just a flash and then it’s gone before you really see it, but the rain.” I stare out of his windows. He has two large bay windows and the rain falls like crystal beads, illuminated by the lamps in the garden. “I just love the sound of the rain more, but thunder scares me. It makes me jump.”
“Lightning makes me jolt,” he says.
“I can see why. It’s unexpected.”
“It’s the fear of what it reveals.”
“Reveals?” I turn towards him slightly. “What does lightning reveal?”
He presses his lips together, and I know his moods and mannerisms so well that I sense his reluctance to tell me more. But I want to know more. This might be my only chance. “What does it reveal, Ward?” My voice is almost a whisper.
He coughs, and stares at the fire. “My stepdad used to lock me in the attic when I was a boy.”
I hold my breath at the thought of such cruelty. “He used to lock you in there?”
“For a day or two, as punishment.”
I almost choke. “For what?”
“Because I didn’t like him and he knew it. He was mean. Had an evil sadistic streak in him.”
“How old were you?”
“Six, almost seven.”
“Oh, Ward. I’m so sorry.” I wish he would look at me. I’m almost tempted to lay my hand against his face and make him turn to me. But I resist.
“He used to lock me in the attic when I was bad.”
“Were you a bad boy?” I can’t imagine Ward being bad, and then I remember the way he teased and aroused me with the pen. There are many facets to this man.
“When I didn’t call him ‘dad’, or say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ or do what he asked me to do. I wasn’t used to him, and I didn’t like him coming between us. I didn’t like him. It had always been me and my mom. It had just been the two of us until then. And my grandparents. My dad left before I was born. I never knew him.”
I blink in shock.
“Then he came along, but we didn’t need him.”
“How awful for you,” I murmur, and realize that I have never heard Ward speak so much in one sitting before.
“She left me with my grandparents and went away for a weekend. Then came back with him. Said they got married.”
This sudden insight into Ward’s life shocks me. It must have hurt, to suddenly have to deal with a new addition to the family. I sit quietly, and I no longer feel like drinking any more of my hot chocolate.
“What did your mom do when he did this?”
“She disappointed me.” He takes a breath in, pauses for a moment before answering. His quivering chin is the only sign that of his unease. “She went from being my world to making him her world. Her silence made her complicit.”
“Ward,” I say, my heart splits in two. “That’s awful.”
“She was probably so relieved to have someone take care of her. It wasn’t easy for her, being a single mom.”
“It can’t have been.”
“I went from being the apple of my mom’s eye to being a piece of shit on the bottom of her shoe.”
“No, Ward. Surely not.” I’m not a mother, and even I can’t believe a woman would be so callous to her child.
“She wanted me to be nice to him, but I couldn’t be. I was jealous that he was taking my mom from me. I couldn’t help myself.”
“You were only a child,” I point out.
“He’d grab me by my shirt and march me up the stairs and into the attic, and then he’d leave me there for hours, if not overnight.”
“Overnight?” I am horrified.
“Sometimes two nights.”
“Two nights? What about food? And going to the bathroom?”
“He’d leave me scraps of food, and give me toilet breaks now and then.”
I put my hand to my mouth. “Oh, Jesus.” I want to give him a hug. But the cup of chocolate in my hands prevents me. It will spill if I make a move. “That’s evil. Downright evil. Did nobody help you? Your grandparents?”
