by Rose, M. J.
Gideon wrapped the sleeve around my hand once more.
“How dare you? Who do you think you are to come in here and do this to me?” Cole was only inches away from me, screaming.
Gideon pulled at both sleeves, using them to tie a tight knot.
“You think you ruined my show? You think I don’t have the negatives?” His words were like a crazy rain coming down on me but not bothering me at all. I was dry. Protected from him now. But still he yelled: “This will make everyone want to see them more.
Gideon finished making the knot. There was blood seeping through already. He had me by the arm, walking me quickly towards the door. I saw faces, astonished, frightened, fascinated. None I knew. Where was my mother? Gideon was on the phone, talking about an ambulance, saying yes, yes, we’re on 26th street.
“We are close enough to get there in cab. They said it would be faster,” he told me and my mother.
We approached the door. Behind me Cole was still screaming. At my back. I turned. Looked at him. Fought off Gideon’s pull. I had something to say. The blood was immaterial to me in the face of this confrontation. “If you don’t take the photographs of me out of the show. If you put one of them back up, I’ll tell everyone how old I was. I’ll tell everyone the truth.” I was hissing. A voice I didn’t recognize. Not mine. But a fearless voice. The voice of someone very brave who didn’t care who knew about her. Who knew that it didn’t really matter anymore.
I’d taken back whatever Cole had taken from me. It was all mine again. He hadn’t really ever touched me, had he? Hadn’t taken anything that was precious or real. It was all my perception. I’d allowed myself to be shamed by what I’d done.
He had stopped speaking and stood there staring at me. And, finally, he looked afraid.
I laughed. Gideon, his hand still on my arm, ushered me out and into the street where he hailed a taxi and rushed me the eight blocks to the hospital.
39.
The cut on the fleshy part of my forefinger was deep enough to require dozens of stitches, but I hadn’t done any nerve damage.
While the doctor worked on me, Gideon stood beside me and watched. I didn’t. I looked at Gideon. And then, while the doctor was still working on me, my mother arrived. She stood behind me with her hand on my right shoulder. I could hear her rapid breath.
When the doctor was done, he gave my mother instructions on how to take care of the wound. “I’d like your daughter to stay here for another half-hour. I’ll let the nurse know. And then you can take her home.” He focused on me. “I’m going to give you a scrip for pain killers. There’s an allnight drugstore about three blocks from here. You’re going to need them.” He wrote out a prescription and held it out toward me. Gideon took it.
After the doctor left, my mother introduced herself to Gideon and then she turned to me.
They’d given me something and I felt lightheaded and sleepy. I tried to concentrate and connect to her emotional words but couldn’t.
“I don’t understand,” her eyes were filled with tears. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Gideon stood up. He looked from her to me. “I’m going. You two need to talk.”
“I…Mom, I can’t…not now…” There was too much for me to figure out. Gideon getting ready to leave. I didn’t want him to go until I found out why he had been there. He had been at the gallery. It was astounding to me. I hadn’t seen him there until he was standing next to me taking the photograph out of my hands. Why had he been there?
My mother was watching me, waiting for me to answer her. I didn’t. Instead I asked Gideon: “I don’t understand, why were you there?”
“I’ll explain that to you when you’re feeling better. Call me, tomorrow, when you wake up. I’d like you too. Please?” He put his hand on my shoulder, bent down, and brushed the top of my head with his lips.
“I will.”
“Does it hurt much?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“It will. It will throb later. Don’t suffer with it. Take the meds.”
I nodded.
“The other pain, it’s gone now, isn’t it?”
I couldn’t answer but there was no question what he was talking about. The release I’d felt while I was smashing the photographs. I didn’t have to ask him how he knew. I was used to him knowing by now. But I didn’t understand what I was supposed to do about him. A man who wasn’t free was the one who’d gotten under my skin and opened me up. Where did that leave me?
40.
My mother took me home, tucked me into bed, and let me sleep.
I woke up at eleven and she was still there. Working at cleaning the piles of papers and magazines, and trying to bring some order to the mess. I watched her before I said anything. It was just so comforting to be there, my head resting on the pillow, the covers pulled around me, with her there, taking care of me.
“You don’t need to do that,” I finally said.
“No. But it was something to do. Are you hungry?”
“Thirsty.”
She came back with a glass of ginger ale for me and a glass of wine for herself, and then she climbed onto the bed and sat beside me and we finally talked to me about what had happened all those years ago that she hadn’t noticed.
“Don’t blame yourself. We were very good at sneaking off by ourselves,” I told her.
“But it never occurred to me to even worry about the two of you. He was such a wonderful older brother to you. Showing you how to do so many things you didn’t know how to do–” she broke off realizing what she’d said.
I laughed. She looked horrified. “Mom, it was so long ago.”
“But he took advantage of you. Terrible advantage of you. And I didn’t even know what you were going through.”
“I wasn’t going through anything until we broke up. For three years I thought I was in love with him.”
“He hurt you,” she said, her voice cracking now. My mother didn’t often cry. She was strong and always the reasonable, logical one. “Your father was the first person I was in love with. Did you know that? I was seventeen. I wish you could have had a first experience like that. One you’d look back on without regret.”
“I don’t regret it. Even now, knowing I wasn’t… that it wasn’t him at all… but who I was with him… I’m not sorry about it. Not anymore.” I looked down at the bandage on my hand. The Novocaine was starting to wear off and the throbbing was beginning.
My mother noticed the expression on my face. “Do you want some of your pills?”
I nodded and she got up, reached into her purse, pulled out the painkillers.
“When did you get those?” I asked. I didn’t remember us stopping at a drug store.
“Gideon picked them up for me and dropped them off on his way home. You were already asleep by then.”
I took the pills from her and then lay there quietly, waiting for them to start working. I didn’t want to talk about Cole anymore. But I also knew that my mother was still upset. She still needed more.
“I snuck around, Mom. There was no way you could have found out. There were so many places to go on the farm. Out past the orchards. Down by the lake. You couldn’t be in all those places at once.”
“I should have sensed something.”
“You couldn’t have. I lied, Mom. I was so good at lying. There’s no way you ever could have guessed.”
“Are you still?”
“Good at lying?”
She nodded.
“I think I have been. But I might be ready to try the truth for awhile. The lies haven’t done me much good.”
41.
In the morning, there was a note for me, from my mother, in the kitchen, propped up against the coffee maker.
Dear Marlowe,
You were sleeping so deeply, I didn’t want to wake you. I’ve gone back to the hotel to shower and change and can come back in a minute if you need me. Just call. Well, call either way when you wake up. I want to know that you’re all
right.
I spent some time with all your collages last night after you went back to sleep. And you’ve really found your art haven’t you? I can see you in each one. Clear and strong and so sure of your voice. I’m very proud of you! Your stepfather and I would love to take you out to dinner tonight – call.
Love,
Mom
P.S. Gideon called. He wanted to know how you were. And asked me to tell you that he’d like you to call him, too, when you get up. We had a nice conversation. He seemed very concerned about you. Why haven’t you mentioned him???
I smiled at the three question marks. My mother was a photographer, not a writer. She always overused punctuation.
My hand hurt, but it was a dull ache. Not bad enough for the painkillers that I knew would make me groggy. Instead, I took two extra strength ibruprophen while the coffee machine worked its magic. And then I poured myself a mug and sat down in the living room, with the sun pouring in through the windows, bathing the room in lemon light, and let my mind go over and over what had happened the night before.
I don’t know what was harder to believe.
That I had gone on such a violent rampage – so suddenly a victim of my own emotions, or that Gideon had been there to stop me, to take me to the hospital, to make sure I wasn’t alone?
I understood what had happened. How seeing those photographs up on the wall, on display, had triggered my fury. Like my mother’s overused question marks and exclamation points, the explosion had been my own punctuation to a long, unresolved conflict.
What, I wondered, had happened at the gallery after I’d left?
I turned on my computer and clicked on the New York Times web site and then went to the art section. It was there. A full column review of Cole’s show.
If I had worried about ruining his night, I could put that to rest. The exhibition had gotten raves and the “incident” as the reviewer had referred to it, would go far, she said, “to explain how incendiary Ballinger’s nakedly erotic photographs are.”
The day before, I might have gotten angry at the idea that Cole’s star had risen another notch. But I didn’t care that much anymore. The fragmented images of me that he’d recorded were only paper reflections a young girl who’d been in love, in her way, him. They were nothing but a record of the past.
Yes, I had lost that part of myself. But not because he’d stolen them. Because I’d given them up. I’d de-accessioned them. Divorced myself from that ripe and willing young woman who was more in love with the idea of love and more aroused by arousal itself than she’d realized.
I’d tried to be with other men since Cole. To find some depth of emotional connection with them. Of course, it hadn’t worked. Not even with Joshua. How could it have worked?
I’d kept part of myself on ice. Removed. Remote. Hidden. I’d disowned my sexual self.
I hadn’t wanted the passionate woman who Cole had known to show up with any of the men I dated afterwards. I didn’t want her to get me in any more trouble.
But it hadn’t worked. She’d scrunched down deep inside me and hidden inside my heart, like a poisoned seed. As long as I was unwilling to accept her, I wouldn’t be able to feel.
I even started to understand why I’d almost been able to come alive with Gideon. He had never been real to me. He was attached to another woman from the first moment I met him. I didn’t have to worry that ultimately he’d reject me if my succubus reared her wanton head.
I poured myself a second cup of coffee.
Gideon wanted me to call. But what would he say? What would I say?
How ironic that I’d finally met someone who really might be able to accept all the different parts of me, only to have him be in love with someone else.
The sob escaped despite how hard I tried to hold it in, and with it came a sense of longing that shocked me with its intensity.
No. I wouldn’t call him. It wasn’t fair to him.
Or me.
Damn.
That wasn’t the truth. And I had to start telling the truth. At least to myself.
I couldn’t call him because I was afraid that he’d hear what I was feeling in my voice. That he’d use that damn sixth sense of his and guess. And then I’d be chagrined. Because I didn’t want to be a soulful woman with longing in her voice, lusting after a man who was with someone else.
43.
I had dinner with my mother and Troy.
It was awkward at first, Troy didn’t know what to say, or how to act, until I told him that I didn’t expect him to apologize for his son. We worked at it through the meal and, by the time desert came, we were okay. I knew it would take more time to heal, but we were clearly going to be all right.
I was tired when I got home and didn’t even turn on the lights. I undressed in the semi-darkness and, as I got into bed, saw the blinking light of the answering machine.
There were three messages.
“Marlowe, it’s Gideon. I’d like you to call me. I need to come clean. I wasn’t fair to you and now I’m paying the price. I think that by trying to give you – give us a chance – oh, this is so ridiculous. Talking to your machine instead of you…”
There was a pause and the machine, which operated on a system that cut off after a certain amount of dead time, disconnected him.
The machine’s beep sounded again and the second message started.
“Marlowe, its me again. Listen, I hired you to write stories for a woman who was writing me – letters that were making me fall in love with her. And then I started working with you, I listened to you at the beach, spinning that story…” he had stopped talking again.
The machine shut off again and I couldn’t help myself, I laughed, thinking of how frustrated he must have been.
The third message started.
“I got it now. I can’t take any long pauses on this machine. Okay. Let me get this out - short and sweet - and fast. So I realized that you were writing the letters Vivienne was sending me. It wasn’t that much of a coincidence. I’d seen her photos of your work in that magazine. So I called her after that day at the beach and broke it off with her. I was going to tell you at the museum. I didn’t. I don’t know why. I think because I wanted to spend time with you, the letter writer, the woman behind those words. I wanted to tell you a dozen times, to stop the charade. But I sensed that you wouldn’t let me in if you knew the truth. I thought that the way I was doing it would give us a chance to get to know each other without the false expectations that relationships create.”
There was another pause. The machine cut off again.
Even though I was angry, no, furious at the lie he’d told and the game he’d played, I smiled in the dark, at how the machine had hung up on him a third time while he was trying so hard to explain what had happened.
I sipped at the now lukewarm coffee and thought about the deeper meaning of what I’d just heard.
Gideon hadn’t been unfaithful. He hadn’t cheated on anyone with me. And all the things I’d felt, he’d been feeling too.
Continuing to lie about there being a woman might have been dishonest. But… I remembered something I’d tried to explain to Joshua two years before, there is no glory in honesty if it is destructive. And no shame in dishonesty if its goal is to offer grace.
There was another beep on the machine and then Gideon’s voice returned.
“I’m clearly not having any luck with your damn machine. So I’m not going to try and explain the rest of it. Except to ask you to call me when you get in. Or come over to the loft. Either. Please. And oh, one other thing. I don’t know if this will make any more sense to you than anything else or any difference – but I know what the shells were saying on the beach: ‘I can love the darkness in you.’”
There was a click as Gideon hung up his phone.
I lay in bed, thinking through what I’d heard. Not understanding it all.
I hadn’t told him what it had sounded like the shells were saying when we’d stood by the ocean. In
the story I’d made up something else.
But he’d known.
I had to make a decision. To trust him – to trust someone who seemed to know me better than anyone else ever had, who didn’t seem to be afraid to know me and all the darkness that was part of me.
Or to stay away and protect myself from being hurt again.
I put my hand on the phone. I left it there for a minute. But I didn’t call.
I couldn’t.
Instead I got up and walked over to my desk.
I looked down at the array of pens. The antique glass stylus from Venice that Joshua had sent me so long ago. The curved black lacquer Waterman. The thick and sleek Mont Blanc pen.
I chose a simple fountain pen I’d had before I’d started to write for clients.
Then I began to rifle through the papers.
None of the vellum or rice paper or rare marbleized sheets was right.
I wanted white paper. Clean and pure and plain. This wasn’t for a client. Not for a husband or wife or lover. This wasn’t a story I was creating for someone else, trying to keep myself out it.
This was a letter I was writing.
For myself and for the man I was writing it to.
This was my heart, in words, on paper.
An invitation to a man who I’d met and who had gotten inside of my head and helped me get inside my soul.
And for that, I didn’t want artifice or artfulness or fancy colors.
I’d never written a love letter in my life. I’d never answered Joshua’s apology. I’d never written for my own pleasure or to satisfy my creativity. Every word I’d inscribed with ink on paper until that night had been for someone else.
I’d disappeared into an eroticism that didn’t belong to me while I tried to pretend that my own eroticism didn’t matter. That my own feelings were immaterial.
But I’d been lying. To myself.
And so I started to write my own letter.
