Marianne

by Elizabeth Hammer

  She never said it back, and that was just another thing that made her a selfish, cowardly wretch. She laid her head back in the chair, staring at the ceiling. I love you, Patrick. They were just words. Truthful, beautiful words. Yesterday, she’d been frustrated with herself for not being able to say them. But would it really make any difference? She fought against herself all the time—all the time—and got nowhere. She never changed. This binge just proved it. She was so done with hoping and being disappointed.

  What was she fighting for, anyway? She wanted to be special. To be great. The best she could imagine for herself would be okay. Why the hell would anyone fight for that? Marianne opened her eyes as wide as they could go and focused on the TV while her tears evaporated. If she wiped them away, Patrick would see. “Um...” whispered Marianne. “Are you tired? Maybe I should go home and let you rest for tomorrow.”

  “Can’t wait to get away from me, huh?”

  Marianne sat up. “No.”

  He smiled at her. “I was just kidding.” Patrick tugged her hair. “But I’m fine to watch the baby if you need to go.”

  “Yeah, I probably should. My parents...” Marianne had to trail off into silence because she couldn’t think of a reason her parents might need her.

  “Okay.” Patrick sat up and took her hand again and pulled her down to sit on the edge of the bed. “Thanks for taking care of me, today.”

  “Of course.”

  He looked at her and frowned. “I’m going to miss you so much.”

  Marianne nodded and tried to swallow through the lump of food in her throat.

  Patrick kissed her on the forehead and whispered, “I love you.”

  Marianne put her hands behind his neck so he couldn’t pull away and see her face. “Why?” she said. Wow, that came out of nowhere.

  “Why?” Patrick ran his hand through her hair. He took a few moments before he answered. “Because I want to.”

  He didn’t get it. “No,” she said. Marianne put her forehead on his cheek. “I mean, why do you love me?” Please make it good.

  “I told you,” he said gently. “Because I want to.”

  There was no way that he misunderstood her the second time. That was really his answer. Marianne opened her eyes and stared down at his t-shirt. “I don’t... know what you mean by that.”

  He sighed. “I mean that I decided to love you. And so I do.”

  Marianne slowly lifted her head to look at him. Nothing as awful as that had ever crossed the lips of any human being before. Patrick couldn’t have meant what he just said. “That...” Marianne swallowed. “Is a horrible answer.”

  “It’s the best answer I can give you.”

  His best answer was rotten and just plain rude. It was unnatural. False. He loved her because he’d decided to? Gee, thanks a lot. “Okay.” Marianne pulled away from him and started to get off the bed. She had to get away now. She had to think.

  Patrick pulled her down by the back of her sweater. She sat down facing him, but he didn’t look at her or speak. He was just staring pensively down at his knees.

  Why had she done this? Why had she forced him into this? Stupid. “I’m sorry,” said Marianne. “That was a totally unfair question to ask you. You so don’t need to answer it... I didn’t mean to call you horrible. I just meant—”

  “Listen,” he interrupted.

  “Okay.” He could explain this away. She knew he could.

  Patrick crossed his legs Indian style and reached over to hold her hands. “You were right... I didn’t answer the question you asked. It was a horrible answer in that way. It’s just that I didn’t like your question...”

  Marianne looked down and nodded. He was right. She had forced him into a corner. She was mean for doing it.

  “Because...” He lifted her chin with his hand. “Listen.”

  She nodded.

  “Because... I tell you the answer to that question all the time, and it doesn’t mean anything to you.”

  Okay. She could deal with that. Marianne felt like she’d just been pulled up from drowning. Patrick did tell her good things about herself—and often—but she never really believed him. Marianne looked down again. She was ungrateful. A constant frustration.

  “Ah, see,” said Patrick. “Now you feel bad for even asking.”

  She glanced up at him with just her eyes. “Why do I even bother talking? You should just tell me what I’m thinking and save us both a lot of trouble.”

  “You are not frustrating to me.”

  Marianne drew back in shock. He’d just recited her own thoughts verbatim.

  “Yup.” He pointed at her. “I knew that one, too.”

  Marianne tried to talk, but all that came out was a kind of choked moan. Like when you move a corpse.

  He smiled at her. “You’re attentive, and funny, and clever, and pure. So shy and so blunt. I love you for all of that.” Patrick bent down his head and boxed her in with his dark eyes. “But you know that already.”

  “Well, I—”

  “What you don’t know, what you need to know, is that I would love you anyway.” Patrick nodded at her look of confusion. “Even if you stopped being those things, I would still love you. Because I want to. Because I decided to.”

  All her previous horror came right back to her. Maybe she’d understood perfectly the first time around, after all. Marianne wasn’t super comfortable with her next words, but she said them anyway. She was feeling almost angry. “I don’t want that kind of love. That kind of love doesn’t mean anything.”

  “You’re wrong. It’s better.”

  “No.” Marianne took her hands out of his. She didn’t care about looking pathetic anymore. She felt like he’d been lying to her for two days. “If it doesn’t have anything to do with me, then why don’t you just go love a rock?”

  “A rock can’t love me back.”

  “You know what I meant.”

  “You’re right. I know what you meant.” He took her hands again. “But I think you’re the one not understanding me.”

  “No. I get it.” Marianne got up off the bed. He didn’t stop her this time. “You love me, and it doesn’t have a fricking thing to do with me. I get it.”

  “Stop it, Marianne.”

  “You stop it.” She was throwing a tantrum, and she didn’t even care.

  Patrick stood up in his wrinkled pajamas and crossed his arms. “This isn’t fair.”

  “I thought it didn’t matter to you what I did.”

  He just stared at her through the dim light. Patrick loved her out of obligation. Because he was a good guy and thought it would be really noble to throw his love away on poor, besotted Marianne. That bastard. How could he do that to her? Better not to be loved at all, than loved because of some decision.

  Marianne wanted to rage at him, but for what? She couldn’t just demand that he love her in the real way. She didn’t want him to love her for one more second than he wanted to. How could she ever trust his words again after this? She stomped her foot in frustration and tried to leave the room, but Patrick stepped in front of her.

  “Move,” she said.

  “No way.”

  “Please let me go home.” She tried unsuccessfully to step around him again. “This isn’t right.”

  “What isn’t right?”

  “This whole thing!” Marianne wiped her wet cheek on her shoulder. “You telling me all this, and me yelling at you for it. Please... just let me go home.”

  “You only think that because you’re not listening.”

  “Knock it off.” Marianne’s whole body jerked forward with the intention of pushing him, but she stopped herself.

  Patrick ran his hand through his hair and stared at her. “Baby...” he whispered.

  Marianne turned her back to him and covered her face with her hand.

  “I do love you, Marianne.” His voice sounded dead.

  She shook her head. He couldn’t say that. Not while he was saying the other thing, too. They c
anceled each other out. He touched her shoulder lightly, and she shook it off.

  She heard him walk over and sit back down on the bed. She was free to go now, but she didn’t want to leave anymore. She had nothing more at home than she had here. What did she have here? She had no idea, anymore. Marianne opened her eyes and stared at her hand that was only an inch off her face. “I don’t know what to do.” She said it so softly that she wasn’t sure whether he could have heard her.

  “Talk.”

  Marianne dropped her hand and crossed her arms.

  “Do you want me to talk?”

  “If you want.” Marianne waited for him to start, but he didn’t. “Please,” she whispered.

  His voice was gentle, pleading. “I love you, Marianne, because of everything I know about you. That’s huge. That’s wonderful. But it’s out of my control. It’s changeable. Do you see that?”

  No. She didn’t understand.

  He continued. “But I also love you just because I’ve chosen to. And that’s better.”

  How was that better? That just meant that Marianne could never really know if he’d changed his mind about her or not.

  Patrick took a deep breath. “I know it’s not very romantic, but... Wait, let me turn this around so it doesn’t sound so bad to you... Marianne, I want you to love me for who I am. But I would also want you to choose to love me, even if I disappointed you. Even if I messed up. There’s the feelings kind of love and the choice kind.

  “If I only have your feelings, then I’m screwed. I am. Because sooner or later, you’d find someone better than me. And your feelings would change. But if I have your mind, too—if you choose to love me, even when your feelings change for a while—then I have you forever.”

  Patrick stopped talking, but she still didn’t respond at all. How could she? How did someone respond to that kind of Jesus-level devotion? Men like him weren’t supposed to exist. And his depiction of love clashed against every natural inclination she had. She wanted to be loved because she was oh-so-rad. So much for that.

  But, seeing as she wasn’t oh-so-rad, anyway, maybe this was better. Maybe Marianne, at the unlikely age of eighteen, had stumbled upon the one freak of nature capable of loving her and not stopping. He loved her both ways. And she needed him to love her both ways, no matter how much that sucked.

  Patrick spoke softly from the bed. “Does that make sense?”

  She nodded and turned slightly so she could see him. He was leaning back against the headboard, arms around his knees, watching her.

  Marianne kept her eyes on the ground and walked over to the bed. She crawled onto it and wedged herself in between him and the wall. She pulled the blanket up around her and curled into a little ball facing him. “Can I stay for a while?”

  Patrick laid down facing her and rested his hand on her waist. “I thought you didn’t like me tonight.”

  “I don’t. But those are just feelings, right?”

  “Right.”

  “And if I’m not here...”

  Patrick took his arm off her waist and put Marianne’s hair behind her ear. “Then you’re screwed.”

  “Right.”

  18

  Bloody Mary

  Dad dropped Marianne at school on Wednesday morning. “I’ll pick you up at three.”

  “I’ll just get a ride with Sally’s mom.” She grabbed her bag and opened the car door, but paused when Dad didn’t answer. “Okay?”

  Dad smiled a little. “Okay.”

  It didn’t seem okay with him. Marianne just stared down at the car floor.

  “You gonna be home tonight?” asked Dad.

  “No.” Marianne felt rebellious just saying that. It made her shoulders hunch. She just couldn’t get comfortable telling Dad things instead of asking him about them. “Danielle needs me to stay at her house until next Sunday.”

  Dad nodded and drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “I was going to make soy sauce chicken for dinner.”

  Marianne’s favorite. He only made it for her. “Well, I can still eat with you guys. I’m only next door.”

  “Great.” Dad was beaming. “I’ll go to the grocery store around seven, and we can eat...” He tapped absentmindedly on his watch while he calculated. “Around nine?”

  “Great.” Marianne studied his expression for something to explain this bizarre behavior. Danielle’s house was only eight feet away from their own. Why all the careful planning? Patrick had said that Dad missed her. Marianne didn’t like the feeling that gave her; it made her feel unsafe or something. She opened the door all the way and got out.

  “Bye, Mary. I love you.”

  “I love you, too. Bye.”

  Marianne didn’t get a ride with Sally that day. Right after class ended, Sally slipped in the bathroom to glue sterling silver vampire fangs to her incisors. Yeah, no. Marianne decided to walk, even though it was three miles. She needed to exercise, anyway.

  After the first block, she decided that the exercise was good, but the scenery sucked. She could watch the cars, or the cheesy strip mall stores, or the lines in the sidewalk—they were all equally boring. She shuffled along in her tennis shoes down the busy street, across the big arch it made over the freeway, and down again into more boringness and litter. She had the idea to make a game out of how many “Office Space for Lease” signs she could find. Gee, that would be so fun.

  But she had to do something. Her brain was in one of those unstoppable reminiscing modes. Hey Marianne, remember the time you peed your pants in Sunday School?

  They weren’t pants, actually. She’d been wearing a short, out of style denim skirt. The pee ran right down her legs and into the scuffed up patent leather shoes her grandma had bought for her. The shoes that kids would tease her for because they were too dressy for playground time.

  And then, there was that sweet phase she went through in the fifth grade where she would wear Mom’s old Grateful Dead shirts on all the field trips with the homeschool group because she thought they made her look cool. It was embarrassing to remember, even though no one had ever made fun of her for it. They were probably too scared of the skeletons. Mom was so overprotective in some areas and yet had let Marianne fall on her face in others.

  Marianne stopped at the crosswalk and pulled out her cell phone to call Patrick. No answer. Just her own stupid voice on the greeting. “Hey. Change your voice mail message. This one’s lame.” Click. Yeah, it was rude. She’d still been talking to him all week, and she’d still been nice. Except for right then, of course, but she was still feeling hurt. Well, not hurt. Patrick’s lecture about true love made sense to her. She could still value the words when he said them to her, but they’d lost something. She didn’t feel hurt; she felt deflated.

  By the time she made it to her street, Marianne was tired, crankier than usual, and sweating in her jacket. She went straight to Danielle’s house, fed the dog, and hopped in the shower. Hey, Marianne? You wanna go over all those good times with the tetherball?

  Sure. Why not? When the kindergarten teacher had taken all the kids out to teach them how to play the game, Mrs. Wade had picked Marianne to go first. Marianne had walked slowly into the court and realized that she wouldn’t be able to do it before she even tried. She proceeded to cross her arms and weep at the pavement until the teacher sent her back.

  Fast forward to second grade. There she was, whiling away her recess time by gently hitting the tetherball back and forth with her friend Laura. Marianne would hit it softly. Laura would catch it and hit it back just as softly. Two pleasant, quiet little girls trying desperately to make it through recess without having to talk to anyone but each other. Until a little group of bastards came and got in line to wait for the court. Little Marianne decided then that she wasn’t too lame at this game. She was better than Laura, for sure. She’d just beat her real quick, and then they could get out of the spotlight. Maybe she’d even look good doing it. Hey, if it went well enough, she’d play the next kid, too. Marianne hit the ba
ll as hard as she could. It whipped around the pole and smacked her right in the face. No one even had the grace to laugh at her. She spent the whole next hour sobbing outside her classroom until the teacher finally just called Mom to come pick her up. That’s when Mom had pulled her out of school and started teaching her at home. Marianne was a real crybaby when she was little. Hell, she was still a crybaby.

  The static hissing sound of the shower startled her again. She kept getting lost in thought and then getting surprised that the surrounding sounds hadn’t changed. Marianne finished shaving her legs and got out. She got dressed in her pajamas because she was feeling exceptionally lazy. She sat down on the couch with a pop tart and watched a recorded episode of Law & Order.

  There was something about that pop tart she just didn’t like. She was in an especially crappy mood, so she decided to vent by punishing the pop tart. She drank a bunch of water and puked up the contents of her stomach in the bathroom by the kitchen.

  That was stupid. Hell, her whole existence was stupid; maybe she was just acting out in response to that knowledge. Acting out self-destruction like a little child. Oh frick, that made her even stupider.

  Her thoughts were full of drama today, yes. But that didn’t mean they were untrue. It was a constant cycle in her life—feeling stupid, not feeling stupid, feeling stupid. She used to think that she was a total idiot, but she’d gotten over it. She’d thought that since Patrick liked her, she must not be that bad. She thought that she could be better, even. She’d lose weight, wear perfect makeup, and look better for him. She’d try doubly hard to be attentive and helpful. She’d make sure he didn’t feel unwanted. She’d be affectionate and show him how much she liked him. That’s what he’d wanted, and she thought if she gave it to him, then he would like her more. And he did. He loved her. Marianne had done well, and he loved her for it.

  Wrong. All the struggling and fearing had been in vain. All her thoughts still orbited around Patrick and his opinion of her—and she still loved him—but the fight that had been there was gone now. Now, she knew that she hadn’t accomplished anything. He would have loved her and stayed with her, anyway. Like God. Like Dad. Nothing she did made any difference at all. That should have been comforting. If you couldn’t lose something, then you didn’t have to worry. But, at the same time, you could never know if you had deserved it in the first place.