Under My Skin

by Lisa Unger

  Again, I tried to do a disappearing act.

  “You were never here,” he said easily as I pulled on my clothes. “Where were you?”

  He lay on the bed, arms crossed behind his head. He watched with a smile as I shimmied into my skirt.

  “Come back to bed for a while,” he said, sitting up and putting out a hand. “You don’t have to stay but you don’t have to rush out, either.”

  I don’t know why, but I sat back down on the edge of his bed and told him about Jack.

  “I’m sorry,” he said when I was done. “I’m so sorry.”

  He told me how his girlfriend died in college, killed by a drunk driver when she was home visiting her parents.

  “Maybe I never got over it,” he said. “Maybe she was the one, and that was it. That’s why I can’t make anything else work.”

  I lay beside him for a while, our fingers laced together, watching the shadows of his sculptures move across the wall with the headlights of each passing car. Finally, I told him I had to go, and he didn’t stop me. Just pulled on his jeans and walked me to the door, kissed me softly on the lips and didn’t say anything.

  He called a couple of times, left a message:

  “I don’t want to seem weird. But I—feel a connection. Don’t you?”

  I thought about it, calling him back. I almost did. Finally, I just took the coward’s way and sent a text: I’m just not ready for anything more than we already shared.

  I understand, came his reply. You know how to find me.

  “No one aggressive, calling and calling? Showing up places he shouldn’t be?”

  I think about mentioning the text I got from Noah yesterday, but don’t.

  “Nothing like that,” I say. “Just professional people like me—like you—looking for someone.”

  “What about you?” he asks. “What were you looking for?”

  I shrug, don’t answer.

  “It’s not safe, you know. Meeting up with strange men, going back to their apartments.”

  “Nothing’s safe,” I say. “Not really.”

  He offers an assenting dip of his chin. “But in my line of work there are people who live high-risk lives and those who live low-risk lives. High-risk people drink too much maybe, then get in a car and drive, or get belligerent and start fights in bars. Low-risk people, if they drink too much, call a cab. They wear their seat belts, stand back from the tracks, wait for the light to turn before crossing, come in from the rain.”

  “And those people are safe?” I say. There’s a bite to my tone that I didn’t intend. “Nothing bad ever happens to them?”

  “They’re safer. Bad things can happen to anyone.”

  “And Jack? Was he a high-risk or a low-risk person?”

  “You tell me.”

  I guess we both knew the answer to that—adventure traveler, someone who runs alone at five in the morning.

  “Sounds like victim blaming to me,” I say, this time less sharply than I intended.

  He gives me that look he has, a thoughtful squint, nod thing.

  “Are we not at least partially responsible for keeping ourselves safe, for lowering the risks in our lives?” he asks. “Locking doors, staying vigilant on the street? No one has a right to hurt us, even in a careless moment. But we have some—some—control over our level of risk.”

  “What are we talking about here?”

  “We’ve known each other for a while. Maybe I’m out of line here. But humor me,” he says.

  I wait.

  “Sometimes when we’re grieving, depressed, we don’t take care of ourselves,” he says. “In fact, sometimes we invite darkness.”

  Invite darkness? It would almost be poetic if it weren’t so insulting. I think about the dates, the pills, the alcohol, how last night I drank, took three sleeping pills and fell asleep—okay, passed out—in the tub. Insulting and maybe a little too close to the bone.

  Grayson scratches at his head, then takes a sip of coffee. He doesn’t look at me even though I’m staring at him.

  “Is that what you think I’m doing?” I say. “By dating again. By trying to move on. I’m inviting darkness.”

  I wonder: Would we be having this conversation if I were a man?

  “Yesterday you told me someone was following you.” He drains his cup. “I found you banging on a door, yelling your head off on Fifth. You thought someone was in your place. Now we think maybe not. Some kid just delivered a flower from an unknown sender and the building delivery guy brought it in.”

  The way he says it makes the heat come up in my cheeks again. Yelling your head off. Thought someone was in your place. It reminds me of how everyone looked at me after my breakdown, as if I were a china cup tumbling, eternally in midflight from hand to floor. Something about to shatter.

  My mother brought me home from the hospital after those strange days. I didn’t want her there; she was not the person I called in a crisis. It was snowing, a light flurry, the first of the year. The sky was ash and the air bit at my cheeks as I sat in a wheelchair with the nurse behind me. My mother, slim and ever stylish in a long black wool coat, hailed a cab.

  “We’ll put this behind you,” she said, coming back, offering me her hand. “This too shall pass.”

  This too shall pass. It’s what she always said. Yes, this too shall pass. All of it. Every goddamn thing.

  I took the hand she offered and let her tug me up, wrap her arm tight around me, usher me to the taxi. I was wearing thin gray sweatpants and a pair of Uggs, a thick black parka, a red stocking cap. A patient, unable even to get myself home. The reflection staring back at me from the cab window was not recognizable, someone hollowed out, haunted. I was still fighting for those lost days then, pressing hard into the black space of my memory until my head throbbed. How could there be nothing there? Meanwhile, my body ached with grief, every muscle clenched and painful.

  “I was somewhere,” I told my mother in the cab. “There was music playing.”

  “That’s all right,” my mother said. “Don’t think about it, Poppy, any of it. Just forget it. That’s what I did when your father died. You’ll see. We’ll get you well. You’ll go back to work. You’ll put one foot in front of the other, and one day soon, you’ll be okay. You’ll find someone else. You’re still young and attractive.”

  Oh, Mom. Really?

  Back at my apartment, everything was clean. The mess from the funeral gathering all cleared away. I didn’t have to wonder. I could tell from the smell of lemons that Layla had sent her service over. There were fresh flowers, lilies on the table in the kitchen, poppies by my bed. Beside my pillow was, touchingly, Beans, Layla’s stuffed tiger ragged and limp with his sewed-on mouth turned up into a smile. A note: Beans will take care of you. Hold on to him as tight as you need to—and to me. Love you.

  Mom tucked me into my bed, turned the dimmer lights down low.

  “I’m going to make some soup.” She lay a hand on my forehead, her palm icy, her blue eyes searching my face. Then she left quietly.

  I lay in the dim amber light, too destroyed even for tears, listening to my mother clang about the kitchen. Finally, I drifted off.

  Later I heard her talking. She was never strong. Such a fragile girl. After her father died, I thought she’d never recover.

  Layla’s voice came terse over the speakerphone: she’s stronger than you think, Sybil.

  * * *

  “Poppy.” Detective Grayson has his eyes on me, that look again. “Where did you go?”

  How often this happens, where I drift so deep into my thoughts, memory, that I lose the present.

  “I’ve been thinking a lot about those lost days. My breakdown.”

  “What about them?”

  I go out on a limb with the detective and tell him about my dreams—about the name, the phone number, the club.
As I talk, his brow goes heavier with concern.

  “I don’t get it,” he says after a moment. “Is this something you dreamed or something you remember?”

  My head aches and now it’s my turn to rub at the pain in my temples. “I guess I don’t know the answer to that right now.”

  “Spell it.”

  I do and he taps it into his phone, looks up at me. He’s probably scrolling through all the same listings I did earlier. “It’s a real place. A nightclub on the Lower East Side. A hot ticket, on the New York Magazine top clubs list.”

  Just thinking about the throbbing music, the flashing lights, the cold filthy tile of that floor ratchets up the pain in my head. Did I go there? Why did I go there? When?

  “Did I—?” I start, then stop.

  “What?”

  “Did we ever—talk about this before? Did you come here or to my other place? Did I tell you about the matchbook with the name and number on it?”

  I don’t say: Did you ever call me a fucking liar, grab my arm and drag me down the hallway?

  He shakes his head slowly. “No,” he says. “This is the first I’m hearing any of this.”

  But is there something off about the way he says it? There’s a similar tension to everyone—to Layla, to my mother, when I ask about that time. Now I see it in the detective. A kind of breath held, a slight stiffening of the shoulders, an averting of the eyes. Was it that bad? I’ve wondered. A rush of shame keeps me from pressing him further.

  Another thought crowds in but I push it away as paranoia. Are they—all of them—keeping something from me?

  “What about the name—Elena?” I press. “Could it mean something?”

  “Last name?”

  I shake my head.

  “I don’t remember anyone with that name in his phone records or email. I’ll take another look but—” He pauses a second, watches me with a stern frown. “We are talking about dreams here, right? This is not a real person, someone you remember.”

  Heat comes up to my cheeks again. Yes, we’re talking about the dreams of a woman scattered by grief and pills. I think about my journal, filled with the scribbling and drawings of a crazy person, the jagged shards of my psyche in a manic black scrawl. Sleeping and waking, dream and memory; what’s the difference? I used to know the answer. Now I’m not so sure.

  “They’re dreams,” I say. “But—what if they’re not? Some of them have felt—real.”

  “I don’t dream.”

  “Everybody does.”

  “Yeah, that’s what they say, but not me. Anyway, I can’t work with that, Poppy, you know. The real, the concrete, that’s what I need to find justice for Jack.”

  A pragmatist, like Jack. Solid, dealing in the now. I get it. He rises, rinses his cup in the sink, dries it with the cloth there and puts it away.

  “Can I get those names?” he asks. “Of the men you’ve met?”

  I hesitate, then give them to the detective. I scroll through my contacts, providing all the information I have on each of them. What choice do I have?

  “I’ll check this place out, okay?” he says, looking up from his notebook where he’s been writing down the information. “And I’ll keep looking for footage of that kid. If we find him, maybe he knows something. I’ll look through Jack’s phone and email records for anyone with the first name Elena.”

  I’ll look here. I’ll follow up this lead. I’ll try to find this person who may know something. All these winding roads to nowhere and nothing. The victim waits and waits and waits some more for answers that never seem to come. My hands ache and I realize that I’m clenching them into hard fists. What would Jack do? Would he just wait around, hoping that someone figured out what happened to me? I know better.

  “Can I go with you?” I ask. “When you go to Morpheus?”

  “Uh,” Grayson says, moving toward the door. “That’s not a good idea. Let me focus on this. You just keep yourself safe. Go to work. Go back to the Van Santens. Be low risk for a couple of days, okay? No dating. Just not right now.”

  I don’t even bother to suppress my eye roll. “Here—I’ll come closer so that you can give me a little pat and tell me not to worry my pretty head over dangerous things.”

  The corners of his mouth turn up in a patient nonsmile.

  “Poppy.” He releases a long, slow sigh, glances down at his phone. “Just let me do my job, okay?”

  When he’s gone, I’m alone with the boxes of Jack’s life, the vague, disconnected images of my dreams and nothing but questions.

  11

  At the office, a tide of phone calls and email carry me away from the chaos of my dreams, my life, the impossible tangle they’ve become; even the dread of what might be happening in my waking world recedes. I swim in the blissful mundane, so underrated. The slog of the day-to-day can bury you—until the worst thing happens. Then you’d get down on your knees and pray for it if you thought it would do any good. The pill I took is helping, too. That sense of dread I’ve had since my chat with Grayson has receded all but completely.

  My mother calls a couple of times, no doubt alerted to my recent troubles by Layla. Ben knows better than to put her through.

  Mrs. Jackson, so sorry, she’s in a meeting. Yes—still.

  But when she starts texting—Poppy. I’m your mother. You can’t avoid me forever—I have no choice but to call her back.

  “Everything’s fine, Mom,” I say by way of greeting. As I get up and close my door, Ben casts me a knowing eye roll.

  “That’s what you always say,” she says. “Just like your father always said. Everything’s fine.”

  Her ancient cat mewls in the background, no doubt making furry figure eights around her legs. I can see the kitchen, sunlight streaming in the back window, the tall oak trees that dominate the yard. The house where I grew up, and where she still lives, is her personal art project, always some part of it under construction, being painted, wallpapered, renovated. It’s a symptom of her chronic dissatisfaction; she can never just let anything be.

  “Tell me.”

  I give her an abridged version since I have no choice.

  “Anyway, it’s fine,” I conclude. “There was no one in the apartment after all. And I haven’t been sleeping well. So.”

  “So.”

  “So. It’s probably just that. Sleep deprivation.”

  It sounds like the lie that it is. There’s a noise she makes, a kind of disbelieving grunt, followed by a pregnant silence. I have learned not to rush to fill this empty place, to clamor in with more words of explanation. So, I wait. Then:

  “Do you want me to come—?”

  “No,” I interrupt, way too quickly, too adamantly.

  “Okay, okay,” she says, sounding injured.

  I soften. “Mom. I’m okay. I’ll tell you if I need you. I promise.”

  A sniff, then: “I suppose if Layla’s hiring someone, there’s not much point anyway.”

  Layla and my mother have a relationship of sorts, one forged during our childhood when Layla’s own mother was absent in many ways—a broken and abused woman who never could rally herself, even for her children. Layla spent a significant amount of time with us. She’s there, you know. Sybil’s a piece of work, but she’s been there, even for me. It was true—rides to the mall, concert chaperone, in the audience at all sporting events, plays and dance recitals. My mother—vain, passive-aggressive, almost Machiavellian in her manipulations—was always there.

  “Layla’s not hiring anyone,” I say.

  “Okay, well,” she says, knowing she hit her mark. “What do I know? I’m just the mother.”

  “Mom.”

  “I just can’t handle another one of those—” she pauses dramatically, searching for the right word “—episodes. It was so frightening for me, Poppy.”

  Guilt and shame duke it
out in my chest. Luckily, I don’t have to answer because it sends her off on a tangent about a friend of hers whose daughter also had a nervous breakdown. I pull the phone away from my ear and go back to the slew of unanswered email. Mom goes on, her voice falling and rising. I pick up on stray words—mental hospital, medication, suicide watch—make intermittent I’m listening noises.

  I delete a bunch of junk mail, click, click, click. There’s an email from my pharmacy, saying that the refill I’ve already picked up is ready. It reminds me that I wanted to do some research on sleeping medication side effects, and what to expect when lowering the dosage, which I’ve promised myself I’m going to do. Starting tonight. So, I enter the name of my meds into the search engine bar and start scrolling through listings.

  Vivid nightmares. Sleepwalking. Sleep-driving. Sleep-eating—really? Withdrawal. Anxiety. Depression. There is a slew of Reddit confessionals. Blogs. Newspaper articles from around the world, extolling the dangers of sleeping pill use, and the difficulties people have getting off.

  “That’s terrible, Mom,” I say.

  It’s a fair bet that whatever she’s saying is terrible—some perceived wrong, or gossip about her neighbors, some maudlin memory of my father. From an article on my screen, an exhausted middle-aged woman looks back at me, her caption: “Better to never go on them at all than try to get off. It’s been a nightmare.”

  The tired, haggard face floats. She looks so exhausted, so cored out—exactly how I feel. I type in: mixing prescription pills, and start scrolling through the articles there. Addiction. Confusion. Unusual behavior. Overdose. Coma. Brain damage. Death.

  I wind up on a rehab site, clicking through pictures of a tree-shaded building, nature trails, smiling faces. Are you ready to start your new sober life today? We can help.