Between Here and Gone

by Barbara Ferrer

  But what I treasured most during the endless hours and minutes of that day, were the quiet moments of after. Nonsensical murmurs and fleeting touches giving way to quiet and stillness broken only by the sound of our breathing slowly falling into synchronized rhythm, deep and even and perfectly matched.

  Twenty-three

  “You promised you’d tell me.”

  I wanted to pretend I didn’t understand what Jack was asking. But we were past those kinds of ruses, he and I. We’d come too far and fought too hard for this one stolen day and the price was that we now knew each other almost too well. But I had no desire to revisit the past hurts and injustices, regardless of how instrumental they’d been in bringing us to this place. All I wanted was to enjoy lying in his arms and believe for just a while longer that this day out of time was real.

  “Jack, do we have to—”

  “Yes. Because I promised, too. And I don’t want us reneging on promises—not to each other.”

  How I wanted to believe this was real.

  “You were drunk,” I began, hoping to defer some of the guilt or anger or whatever it was that drove him to know exactly what he’d said that night.

  “Yes, and I was a complete bastard.” The finely etched curve of his mouth thinned into a straight line as he stared up at the ceiling. “That much I remember. I just can’t remember the specifics.”

  “And I don’t want to remember this. I just … I don’t.”

  Except I couldn’t forget either.

  I hadn’t realized I’d closed my eyes against the memories of that night until I felt Jack’s touch, cupping my cheek in his hand as his thumb traced the curve of my lashes. I opened my eyes, but after so many hours spent fearlessly lost within the depths of those changeable faun’s eyes, learning so much of him, I was terrified at what I might find now. Looking past him, I focused on the Tiffany blue and gold scrolls of the rococo-inspired wallpaper, the frosted wall sconces glowing softly and casting odd, disjointed shadows across the room.

  “You were so angry that I was trying to help …” I released a shaky breath. “You lashed out.” The soft light reflected off the glass doorknobs, undulating in crystalline waves across the thick, pale blue carpet. If I listened very hard, I could almost hear the pounding of the surf, the relentless chorus that had underscored those bitter words.

  “You told me I lost a piece of my soul every time they … they—” The words remained trapped in my chest, a hard, painful knot as I twisted the sheet in my fists, unable to continue, though it ultimately proved unnecessary as his sharply indrawn breath attested.

  “Every time they spread your legs and threw another dollar at you. And then I wondered what it would take for you to—Jesus.” His voice faltered, each word emerging more slowly than the one before as he clearly recalled both what was said and what remained unsaid. But we both knew what had been implied. “I wanted you so badly that night. Needed you. And I was so goddamned angry about it, because—”

  A heavy breath escaped as he buried his hands in his hair. “What does it matter why I was so angry? I took it out on you in the worst possible way. And here I am, insisting I’m nothing like them. Fuck.”

  I stiffened, resisting his attempts to pull me close, to comfort, to assuage the guilt deepening the fine lines at the corners of his eyes. Rolling from the bed, I pulled the sheet around myself. “I told you—you’re nothing like them. And I meant it. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t. But that night …” I stared at his haunted expression, feeling more naked and exposed than ever before. “It’s the only time I ever actually felt like a whore, Jack.”

  I retreated to the bathroom just shy of a full run, barely managing to close the door behind myself before I sank to the floor—and proceeded to break. All the slights and insults, the bodies invading mine—the terror and sheer aloneness of the past five years. All the restraints I’d so carefully constructed—shattered into jagged pieces.

  Rocking back and forth, soundless, choking sobs clawed at the inside of my chest, leaving huge, burning gashes in their wake, my luxurious surroundings surrendering to that other reality, the individual horrors crowding together and overlapping. Repeating, over and over, like a broken record.

  Wood, cool at first, then growing warmer beneath palms and cheek as I was bent over and used, time and again, their voices, filthy with privilege and entitlement, reducing me to nothing more than a cheap commodity—there to satisfy a momentary urge—assuaging the darkness just enough for them to present a smooth, unblemished face to society. Until the next time.

  Harsh laughter echoing as Nico’s disbelieving eyes widened, dark red blooming across his chest—pinpoints of light in the distance as cold water closed over my head, even colder winds buffeting my body as I gazed out over the city where I lived but where I could never make a life.

  I tasted salt, felt black nothingness closing over my head as I rocked and fought against the current threatening to pull me under, against the winds attempting to lure me out into an endless void, heard the splash as my shoe fell and was swallowed by the water, disappearing like the dreams it had once represented. Dreams blown away by harsh winter winds and a shotgun’s blast.

  I felt myself lifted and cradled, pressed against warmth and solidity, soothed and molded into something limp and boneless.

  “Let go, Natalia. Just let it go. I’ll be here.”

  And with those words, the sobs took substance, transforming into keening cries accompanied by the tears I’d battled and defeated so many times before. But I was so tired of fighting. I just … I couldn’t any longer … no more … no más, no puedo más … Dios, no puedo soportar este dolor … no puedo … no puedo …

  I beat my fists, whipped my head back and forth, ignoring the sudden sharp pain spearing the back of my skull. But no matter how much I hit and scratched and cried, he remained true to his word, never letting go, never fighting back. He simply cradled me close, catching each piece as I fell apart, putting me back together with gentle strokes and even gentler words filling in the fractures and smoothing over the cracks.

  Tucking the sheet more securely about me, he left me curled on the floor with a fleeting kiss and quiet assurances that he wasn’t leaving—that he would take care of me. Through watery, blurred vision, I watched as he spun the taps, testing the water. Only when the tub was nearly filled, wisps of steam rising from the water’s surface, the lights dimmed to something that wouldn’t aggravate swollen, sensitive eyes, did he return, unwrapping the sheet and lifting me easily.

  In the tub, he sat behind me, pouring water from a crystal pitcher over my hair before massaging in a handful of shampoo. Fragrant suds spilled over my shoulders and the slopes of my breasts as his fingers massaged my scalp and neck, taking care to avoid the tender spot that elicited a sharp hiss after his fingers glanced over it with a bit too much pressure.

  After rinsing my hair, he soaped a washcloth, taking his time running it over every inch of my body he could easily reach, my arms, beneath each breast, along my thighs and even a careful foray between my legs. There was nothing sexual or seductive in what he was doing, yet it was an unabashedly, wholly intimate task. One requiring complete trust.

  Finally, he released the washcloth, waiting for it to bubble up with air and sink to the bottom of the tub before drawing me back against his chest, his arms wrapped loosely around my waist. Exhausted, I lay against him and waited.

  “Once upon a time,” he began, his voice raspy and uneven, “there was a very young boy and a very young girl. Cousins, born less than a year apart, which fostered a natural closeness, but beyond the bonds of family, they were also best friends.”

  “Jack—” My voice emerged hoarse and nearly as raw as his. “You don’t have to do this.”

  His response was a single damp finger against my lips, held there for a moment before he leaned down and replaced that finger with his mouth, a brief, almost chaste kiss. His eyes, as he drew back, pleaded with me to not say anything more. Exposed in
the amber and green depths, more fully than before, his quiet desperation. He needed to do this and I might be his sole opportunity.

  With a nod, I resettled myself, shifting to my side so I could rest my head against his shoulder, my hand over the steady beat that sped up as he took a deep breath.

  “To the world, these cousins were blessed with immense good fortune. Because the war raged during a large part of their early childhood, the European vacations their parents preferred were limited, but still, there were the homes in New York and Palm Beach and the Cape with endless parties and gatherings where they could run free, associating with other children from families of similar, exalted means. The best of everything because for this family, nothing less than the best was to be expected. Even so, it was a lonely childhood. Nannies and governesses when they were young, boarding schools as they grew older. The boy was shy, preferring books to most people and the girl—” His chest rose again.

  “As a very young girl, she was viewed by the family as precocious—perhaps a bit too precocious. She certainly knew more than any child her age should and never hesitated to let others know. The adults, they would have preferred if she took on some of the boy’s reticence, while he would have been well-served to adopt a measure of her exuberance. I don’t know,” he said quietly, breaking the storytelling spell, “maybe that’s why we were thrown together more often than we might have been otherwise.”

  One corner of his mouth twitched—from my perspective I couldn’t quite tell if it was meant as grimace or smile. “Honestly, the more likely explanation is that it was convenient. Our parents were occupied with their civic duty in the form of social engagements, political strategy meetings, and of course, the all-important philanthropic war efforts. Fashion shows for war bonds, teas for military hospital support, of course, the endless cocktail parties to celebrate sending our boys overseas to become heroes and protect the American Way before more often than not returning in plain wooden coffins. Much easier to let nannies and governesses take care of our social lives. Except Ava couldn’t stand the children deemed suitable as playmates and developed a nasty habit of running off, dragging me along, with some outrageous adventure in mind. And I usually didn’t mind. Everything Ava cooked up—it was like the adventures in my books coming to life. Worth every grounding and punishment we endured.”

  One hand rose to play along the water’s surface, light touches expanding into small ripples that grew and broke against our bodies and lapped against the sides of the tub in hypnotic splashes. “It couldn’t last, of course. In keeping with family tradition, Ava was sent to Miss Porter’s, I was packed off to Farraday. Childhood’s end and the beginning of separate lives as was right and proper.”

  He reached past me to release the drain then stood, water sluicing from his body in a warm fall against my back. Stepping from the tub, he briskly dried himself off, then held a fresh towel open, enveloping me in its thick folds. Sensing that what he’d told me was merely prologue to the main story, that he needed these moments to gather himself for the next round, I submitted to his ministrations—standing quietly as he ran the towel over my body, blotted my hair dry, and even brushed a generous dusting of fragrant jasmine powder across my skin. Then, rather than simply lead me back to the bedroom, he took me in his arms, carrying me to the bed, his lips brushing kisses against my hair, my cheeks, my lips. Lying there, wrapped in the sheets and blankets and twilight shadows that carried our combined scent, his lips moved against my skin—words I couldn’t quite make out, that I didn’t strain to understand or ask to be repeated because I understood that the words themselves weren’t what mattered.

  With a shuddering breath, Jack drew away and propped himself up against the headboard, while I once again curled myself against him, head on his shoulder. Somewhere in the distance, a saxophone wailed, a trumpet offering an answering call that cut off abruptly, leaving an echoing silence in its wake.

  “I loved Farraday,” he finally said. “Loved my teachers, my classes, loved that my interests and opinions were encouraged and valued. They even called me by my given name rather than my nickname which allowed me to feel like a completely different person. No expectations, no baggage—I was permitted to simply … be.”

  Without warning, his initial self-introduction poked through layers of memory and time.

  John Roemer. Although most people just call me Jack.

  A second memory, chasing the first—the odd, irrational thought that had occurred to me in that moment of introduction that the more classic and elegant John really suited him better. And that he then became the first person in nearly four years to use my given name. How ironic. Exposing my true self that night, but also in a manner of speaking, his own.

  “I’d finally found somewhere I belonged,” he continued. “Ava, on the other hand, hated Porter’s. To her, it was like a prison. And for someone like her—it was. Even then, she had her own way of doing things—rituals, I guess you could call them, but they didn’t fall in line with the way things were done at Porter’s. The more they tried to make her adhere, the more she rebelled. By that first Christmas break, she’d been expelled.”

  I could feel the tension gathering in the clenched muscles beneath my hand, in the subtle tremors that ran through his legs and made the covers twitch. He took my hand in his, gripping it lightly, his fingers restlessly playing along mine. “The expulsion was somewhat humiliating but hardly a tragedy—plenty of schools would be more than happy to take a Roemer, especially accompanied by a generous endowment—so after a lecture on expectations, both our families traveled to Palm Beach for the holidays, everything as usual, which suited Ava just fine.”

  Beneath my cheek, his chest rose and fell in rapid, shallow breaths, the low light in the room reflecting off the thin sheen of sweat glazing his skin.

  “She loves the ocean, you know. Anywhere she can swim, actually—pool, lake, but the ocean … there’s something about it that’s always called to her. It wasn’t unusual for her to sneak over to my house and talk me into going for a midnight swim. Just another adventure—we’d pretend to look for pirate ships or mermaids. But one night, she came over and … she didn’t want to swim—”

  As his breathing grew faster and more erratic, mine ceased, a sick feeling settling deep in the pit of my stomach.

  “She’d been so damned lonely,” he said, his normally patrician tones stripped down to bare clipped syllables. “I’d missed her too, but not like that. I’d never thought of her like that. She was just Ava. My cousin. My best friend. But never that. But I didn’t know how to say no.”

  “Madre de Dios.” Not shock. I was beyond shock. More … invocation—a prayer for that confused long-ago boy who’d cared so much. “How old were you?”

  “I’d just turned fourteen. She was almost fifteen.” His fingers tightened around mine, his nails digging arcs into my skin. “I knew it was wrong. But I couldn’t say no. Every night she’d come to me and no matter how sick and guilty I felt, I was fascinated by the things she did—what she did to me. And as the weeks went on, it went from every night to even during the day. It was like she was tempting fate, waiting to be caught and the longer we went undiscovered, the more reckless she got. Day after day … and I could never say no.”

  His eyes closed and his hold relaxed, as if he was giving me permission to leave, now that I knew. Not just permission, I realized, studying the slumped lines of his shoulders and bowed curve to his neck. Resignation. Expecting that I would recoil in horror or revulsion. But this story was far from over. He had still more to tell. I stroked his cheek, waiting for him to open his eyes.

  “You should know me well enough by now to know I don’t frighten so easily.”

  Amazingly, a smile crossed his face, softening the tense, austere lines into the younger features—the real features—of the man I’d grown to like very much.

  “Might’ve been better if you did.”

  “For who?” I asked gently.

  Pulling me close
against him, he pressed his lips to my hair. “There you go again, holding me accountable.”

  The rest of the story unfolded like the plot of a gothic novel. How they’d finally been discovered on the deck of the family sailboat by friends of their parents, out on their own sailing excursion. The hushed, icy confrontation that followed. Ava’s cool defiance in the face of their shock and disgust, pointing out both of her parents’ many dalliances and indiscretions, including the affair her father had had with his sister-in-law—Jack’s mother.

  “The next day, I was sent back to New York to finish out the break before returning to Farraday. Thank God. I’m not sure what I would’ve done if they’d taken that away from me.”

  “And Ava?”

  “Sent away.” He studied our joined hands, his thumb restlessly playing across the tops of my knuckles. “They didn’t tell me where, of course, but eventually I found out she’d been sent to a Swiss clinic to … be fixed. Electroshock therapy. After the operation.”

  “Operation?”

  For the first time, his voice trembled, verged on breaking as he said, “They had her sterilized. The family didn’t want to risk any potential … mistakes if the electroshock didn’t ‘settle her down.’”

  True horror finally caught up, winding its way through stomach and chest and up into my throat. “Madre santisima, Jack, was she—”

  “I don’t know. I don’t want to know.”

  I thought he was done then. I hoped he was, for his sake, because this was something no one should ever have to revisit. Why he’d felt it so important—

  “When I turned fifteen, my father procured a companion for me. A … girlfriend of sorts. Had to make certain I hadn’t been permanently damaged by my youthful transgression, after all.” A bark of laughter echoed throughout the room—as if on cue, the distant saxophone and trumpet resumed their point and counterpoint, mournful dissonance painting the melodic wails with anger and a sharp edge of black humor.