by Audrey Braun
Benicio puts his hands on top of mine and slowly pries my fingers from the bars. He draws me against him, pressing my cheek to his chest and closing me inside his arms.
I realize just how different truth sounds from lies. It isn’t the words that are used. It’s the sound of them, a frequency, a vibration, chords striking deep within the chest. I imagine trying to explain such a thing to Jonathon: “But the frequency of your words is all wrong when you tell me you want to make everything better.”
I start to snicker. I haven’t been crazy after all. All along my intuition has been gnawing a tunnel inside my head to let the truth in, and until this moment I’ve tried blocking it with everything I have, including my own sanity.
How long has it been since I’ve cried like this while someone held me? How long have I needed this? I sob until the front of Benicio’s shirt is soaked in tears and snot. It’s ridiculous. Embarrassing. I don’t even know this man, and yet he feels more familiar to me than my own husband. “I’m sorry,” I croak, wiping my face with my hand.
“What do you have to be sorry for?” he asks.
“Your shirt, for starters.”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s warm in here. Nothing like a pool of tears to cool you off,” he says, stroking my back.
I let go a small laugh and look up into his eyes. “I need to know about Oliver,” I say. “Have you heard them say anything at all?”
He shakes his head. “I wish I had something to tell you.”
I close my eyes. The room closes in again. It’s hard to breathe. I wrap my arms tightly at Benicio’s back and hold on to the solid feel of him, the ropey muscles beneath my fists. His heart beats inside my ear.
I’m well aware that novel experiences bring people together in ways nothing else can. Trauma bonds the hearts of those who experience its suffering together. I also understand that shock and pain make people do and believe things they otherwise aren’t capable of. I don’t know if this is what’s happening to me. But as Benicio strokes my hair, the sandy smell of his skin, the strength of his arms, the touch of his breath down my neck make me feel safer than I’ve felt in years. Safer than living in my own house where the biggest challenge I might face in a day is what to make for dinner. I’m not foolish enough to believe I’m out of harm’s way, and yet the thought crosses my mind that as long as he’s here with me everything will be all right.
The rhythm of his heart lulls me into a warm, stunned, daze. “You should finish your Danish,” he whispers into my hair.
I stay where I am for as long as he lets me.
10
Hours go by and no one comes for us. During that time Benicio and I move apart and barely speak. He chews his nails at the window and gazes back and forth between the outside and his shoes. I flop across the blanket and stare at the ceiling, my hands linked across my middle as if I’m dead.
The truth doesn’t necessarily equal relief.
Fourteen years ago I couldn’t bear to lie anymore to Jonathon. I had set my wineglass down on the dinner table and confessed that I was having an affair. Jonathon lowered his fork next to his plate. He squeezed his linen napkin in his fist. I braced to be hit with the piece of cloth, not that it would have landed a heavy blow, but still, I blinked in anticipation. It seemed a whole minute passed with nothing but the gloppy sound of Oliver creaming his peas in his highchair, while Jonathon’s shaky hands let go the napkin, brushed crumbs from the table, and lined the silverware next to his plate.
Seth Reilly had been the neighborhood bookseller. His smile coy, ironic, lopsided as if everything he said was a double entendre. There was something familiar about his Celtic good looks from the beginning, and one day it dawned on me how much he resembled a young Robert Redford. Very young. Younger than the Redford of Barefoot in the Park with Jane Fonda, but with the same sexy, sardonic wit. You couldn’t live in our little enclave of historic homes and local restaurants and antique shops and not know Seth with his strawberry hair messing in the wind as he rode by on his Dutch bike with the red panniers. Not if you were a woman. Seth was a page-turner himself. Always leaving you wanting for more.
Jonathon was East Coast prep school, blond hair and square jawline, broad shoulders and tie. He was smart, a deep thinker, you could see it in his eyes, but he was never one to share too many thoughts. He was adequate in bed, knowing where to go and, more or less, how long to stay. He was quiet and kind, and there was a time when this sort of personal space bubble appealed to me. There was a time when I liked to say I was married to the president of a bank, especially when I thought of my mother. Then there was all the time after.
Jonathon never did throw his napkin at me. He got up and used it to clean Oliver’s hands. He lifted our son from his highchair and set him on the floor where the symphony of squeaky plush toys had scattered.
He returned to his chair in what appeared to be measured steps. He took a deep breath, cleared his voice, and said, “I suppose I haven’t been a very good husband.”
I couldn’t speak. His words felt like a lightning rod to the chest, jolting me back to my husband and little boy who was now giggling in the most charming way on the floor of our Irvington Avenue home.
“Crap,” Oliver said. His new favorite word. “Crap, crap, crap,” with a monkey grin until I raised an eyebrow and gave him the look of mock discipline he was waiting for. He laughed and moved on to the animal nesting blocks.
I turned to Jonathon, flushed with shame. “I’m sorry,” I said, and at the time, I meant it.
“How?” Jonathon asked me.
“How?”
“How did you manage it?”
I fumbled for an answer. “Tara, the high school girl down the street.” Was that what he was after? The logistics of how and where the affair took place? “She babysat while I was…out.”
I hated myself then. The shame was unbearable. It scratched and burned my insides like shards of broken glass.
Jonathon took his wallet from his rear pocket and set it on the table. He picked it back up and returned it to his pocket, a gesture that has always struck me as odd. “Don’t leave me,” he said.
Don’t leave me.
Oliver must have sensed the standing hairs on my arms and neck. He looked up from the floor as if waiting to hear my reply. And what was it going to be? The course of Oliver’s childhood, the course of his entire life, of all of our lives, was about to be handed down like a sentence.
“I won’t,” I said, turning my watery gaze from Oliver to Jonathon.
I would cross town to purchase books. I would never see Seth again.
That was fourteen years ago. It’s far too late for me to be asking why Jonathon wanted me to stay, why I myself promised not to leave.
Now I lie here thinking how everything I convinced myself was one way has turned out to be another, and I feel an almost physical sensation of coming apart at the seams.
Things I never questioned seem so obvious now. I’ve conveniently taken no interest in the phone bills. It doesn’t seem necessary. Jonathon handles all the bills. He’s a banker. He likes that sort of thing. But when I have taken an interest in Jonathon’s flurry of texts and e-mails, sometimes during the middle of a meal, times when Oliver isn’t allowed to have his phone at the table, Jonathon shuts me down with that smile of his. I’ve dismissed everything, chalked it all off to my stress and the importance of Jonathon’s work. His ever-important work. Because it is important, isn’t it? People’s lives are at stake, their life savings, investments, direct deposits, and bill pays, all happening on Jonathon’s watch. But that smile. I can see it as clear as if he’s standing in front of me now. It’s menacing. How have I not seen that? Oliver saw it. He once commented after Jonathon got up from the table with his BlackBerry that if he ever gave me a look like that he’d be grounded for a month.
There are other things. The way he eagerly puts away his luggage and washes his clothes after every “business” trip. I’ve always thought he’s just being neat
and organized, and I’m grateful he’s so considerate. It never occurred to me that he’s hiding something. But he also keeps his passport, all our passports, locked inside a home safe, the combination of which I’ve never even asked about. I’ve thought the safe was silly, a bank toy, small enough to carry out of the house if someone really wants it. And besides, if I were leaving the country, it wouldn’t be without Jonathon. Let him open the thing and get the passports out. Which is exactly what he did. But that isn’t the point, is it? The point is to keep me out of the safe. What else does he keep in there? I’ve never even thought to ask.
I lie there bearing the brunt of the fact that all of this could have been avoided. In this very moment Oliver and I might be at home, going about our day, completely unaware of an alternate life where something so terrible could happen to us. If only I’d opened my eyes and not been so afraid to feel around in that vapor of nothingness that had become my marriage.
I think about what I gave up years ago. The breathless chases up the stairs to Seth’s apartment. I felt so alive then, so happy—falling onto his unmade bed, having sex in the daylight, curtains wide open, long wispy shadows from the giant willowlike fingers stroking the walls, the bed. Seth’s smooth body suspended above me, inside me. Just days before I left him, he’d put his mouth to my ear and whispered that he loved me. And even though it was right before he came, I didn’t doubt it was true. I’d pulled his mouth onto mine to keep from hearing it again. But now I wondered if it wasn’t to stop myself from uttering the same.
I suppose I haven’t been a very good husband. That single sentence had managed to reach inside and tear away my heart. Tear away everything that made up who I was or might have been. That single sentence allowed Jonathon to have control, to lead the way, to somehow convince me we needed to stay together. All I had to do was glide through the days and years without questioning, without feeling, without wanting for a single thing outside of what I had. And if I did all that, the world, Oliver’s world, would remain intact.
But Jonathon never said any of those things. He didn’t even suggest them. All he said was that he hadn’t been a very good husband, and he asked me to stay. How is it then, that I’ve devised all the rest?
I gaze at the beams and caress the dried blood on the inside of my wrist, a place once marked by perfume, by cold rain, and by Seth’s warm lips. I nearly laugh at what I sacrificed in order to keep the world intact, a world that in the end has abandoned me and Oliver down a well so dark and dangerous that before today it could have only existed outside the realm of my imagination.
I glance at Benicio as if he might be reading my thoughts. He appears lost in a world of his own, making a fist and flipping open a finger at a time, counting something out.
Forces of chaos beyond my understanding or control swirl beyond this room. But here, closed up inside, my mind is becoming a stream of icy calm clarity.
Isabel opens the door and slides in a tray of food. Benicio turns from the window and calls out to her, but she closes the door and locks it without looking his way.
My mind feels open and clear, observant, sensitive to tricks, turning over every little thing for clues to get out of there. I consider the objects on the tray, a chunk of soft cheese and dense bread. Four unopened bottles of water. I observe Benicio cutting across the room, an actor on a stage, lifting the tray stage right, moving to stage center, throwing a soft—and, yes, call it what it is—sexy glance my way.
He sits on the floor in the center of the room. He motions me to join him with a gentle toss of his head.
I’m operating on a different level. I’m above it all, observing, calculating moves. I join him as if it’s a picnic.
He twists open a bottle of water and hands it to me. He opens one for himself and drinks it down without stopping. We take turns tearing into the bread and cheese. Somewhere the baby cries. The iron gate clangs closed.
It occurs to me that I’ve never fully grown up. Jonathon has taken care of me in so many ways, ways a parent takes care of a child. I don’t have to give any thought to the mortgage or utility bills or investing my earnings, nor have I ever given much thought to saving for Oliver’s college. These are all grown-up responsibilities, all taken care of behind the scenes. When Jonathon asked me to stay instead of threatening to leave the way another man would have, I somehow interpreted this as if he were the one seeking forgiveness. I haven’t been a very good husband. Don’t leave me, like begging me to keep the man who’d done me wrong. How could I let him disappear from my life? Vanish suddenly, and forever, like my father? Like my mother?
My leap in understanding causes me to draw an extra breath. The only part I don’t understand was why Jonathon wanted me to stay after what I did. This question has woven in and out of my thoughts for years. I wonder if it has something to do with all of this.
“There’s something else,” Benicio says.
His voice startles me.
“I think the reason they had you shower and change was because you were supposed to get on a plane. Something must have happened.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think your husband brought them your passport. At least that’s what it sounded like.”
“What what sounded like?”
“I didn’t hear the whole thing clearly. And your husband has an accent when he speaks Spanish. But what I thought I heard was him saying that he wanted them to keep your passport here with you, just in case.”
I wait for him to finish.
“That’s the part I didn’t quite hear.”
Doubt trickles down my throat like spoonfuls of cloudy soup pooling in my stomach. What if I have this all wrong? What if Jonathon has become involved with these people by mistake, and by the time he realized what was happening it was too late? What if he’s just going along with them as a means to get me out of here?
“Maybe you’re meeting him in Switzerland.”
“What would make them think I would agree to get on a plane without screaming for help?”
Benicio stares at me. He’s too kind to say the words.
I suddenly lose my distance, my vantage point from on high. I slide back down to the level of participation, the place where everything hurts. I turn to the window. “Let me guess. Threaten to kill someone I love more than anything in this world.”
Benicio rests his hand on my shoulder. I turn to meet his eyes. Someone this attractive usually has it easier in life than most. Beautiful women probably throw themselves at him. Men probably offer him jobs. It occurs to me that he could have children, a wife somewhere, worrying herself sick.
“Are you married?”
Benicio drops his hand and shakes his head. “I was engaged once. To a woman in Los Angeles.”
“Is that where you lived?”
“L.A., New York, Chicago, Miami.”
“That’s why your English is so good.” I assume crop or factory work. I almost don’t ask. “What were you doing there?”
Benicio is the one who looks out the window now. I sense the memories spinning behind his eyes. “Making people laugh.”
“Making people laugh.”
“Yes. I was a comedian.”
“You’re joking.”
“Good one,” he says.
“Wait. You mean, like a stand-up comedian?”
Benicio nods.
“That’s hilarious. I mean.” I give a slight laugh. “You know what I mean.” I think of how playful he was at the pool with the dog. You cheat, Pepe. How agile and smooth his body cut through the air. I can easily picture him on a stage. “I’ve never met anyone who entertained people for a living. Everyone I know is pretty serious when it comes to work.”
“Yeah, well, apparently you’ve never heard how comedy is serious business.”
“Guess not.”
A quiet sadness fills the air. We drift off in silence. I don’t doubt we’re both feeling the sway of loss, the bottomless dangling that never quite solidifies under the feet.
We finish off the bread and cheese. The water is nearly gone.
Then Benicio suddenly picks up where he left off. “The whole point is to make it look easy. There’s an art to it. You have to build up tension and make it pay off. Timing is everything, as they say. And the surprise twists. Not easy at all.”
“Is that why you quit?”
He shakes his head. “Now there’s the funny part. If you’re in a country illegally, you probably shouldn’t be doing something that draws attention to yourself.”
“You got deported?”
“Live. On the six o’clock news.”
Countless newsreels flash in my head of immigrants in handcuffs marching past a chain-link fence, the wide-open doors of a paddy wagon waiting to swallow them up. I now know what it is to be locked inside a small, confined space, waiting to be handed one’s fate.
“I’m sorry.”
“It was my own fault. I made a name for myself by poking fun at the stereotypes. The tattooed gang stuff, migrant worker, taco maker, guy in cuffs getting deported.”
“No.”
“Oh, yes. And someone found out that I was busted in a raid, and there it was, the six o’clock satire. Life imitating art. The last laugh on me.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Actually, I’d say this is the last laugh. Caught in a prescription drug ring.” He shakes his head as if to say how ridiculous it all is.
We both give a gentle laugh. I drop my hand on his knee without thinking. The mood shifts. There’s a moment when I know I should take it back, withdraw it quickly as if I haven’t done it at all, but I allow the moment pass.
He stares down at my hand, and after a moment he places his own on top of it.
Clouds roll in and obscure the evening sun. A dull pressure fills the air. A thick breeze carries the far-off smell of rain.
Our eyes remain glued to our hands, one on top of the other, a tacky wedding photo pose.
