Since You Ask

by Louise Wareham

  He filled my glass. ‘I am your friend, Betsy. You can talk to me.’

  I smiled. ‘ There is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.’

  ‘Are you doing cocaine? Is that it?’

  ‘You won’t tell my parents?’

  ‘I swear.’ He held up his hand, as if vowing. ‘Not heroin, though?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Can’t you stop? For me?’

  He wasn’t my boyfriend. He wasn’t my father or my keeper. ‘Wayne,’ I said, as if this was absurd,

  ‘just try. lust cut down.’

  Dr. Keats thinks that Wayne’s fixating on me was a way of compensating for not working on his marriage. He was trying to alleviate his guilt, Keats says, by helping me. I didn’t care. All I cared about was that Wayne noticed me, Wayne cared for me, Wayne walked me across the white plaza after work, all the way to meet Raymond.

  At dawn, smoke hung near the mottled ceiling. Smoke was killing the plants, I told Ray. One day they were green and the next they had dried up and blackened. ‘Did you know that Wayne has a new house?’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘He does.’

  ‘You’ve seen it?’

  ‘Briefly.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Scarsdale.’

  ‘Why did he take you there?’

  ‘We went for a drive.’

  ‘To Scarsdale?’

  ‘Yes. Is that okay?’

  ‘If you think so.’

  ‘It’s odd,’ Wayne said, on the plaza waiting for Raymond, when it started to rain.

  ‘What’s odd?’

  ‘It’s like you’re in thrall to him.’

  ‘To who?’

  ‘To Raymond. As if he has some power over you.’

  His white shirt was showing the rain. The marble slab was shiny and slick. ‘What do you care?’

  ‘Betsy—’

  ‘You shouldn’t bother yourself.’ I said that, but at least he asked. At least he wanted to know.

  Ray was late. The air felt balmy heavy and hot.

  ‘Can’t you stop?’

  I took his hand, half holding and half patting it. ‘You’re so nice.’

  ‘Bullshit. You’re not seeing him tonight.’

  ‘Wayne—’

  ‘Get in the car.’

  I didn’t want to. If I didn’t see Ray I’d have to rely on about one quarter gram of cocaine. ‘I don’t want to.’

  ‘Get in.’

  I got in.

  The windshield swept the water aside. The roads were drenched and the trees dark. Wayne swung into his driveway and the house was cold inside, a house hardly lived in. I did the last of my cocaine in the guestroom, sitting on the single bed with its white bedspread. When I came out, he had made us an omelet. He poured me a white wine and we sat on the floor, on his thick blue carpet, our white china plates on the glass coffee table.

  Afterwards, he smoked a cigarette. I sat cross-legged in front of him, holding my wineglass.

  ‘I wish you were my boyfriend.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘You’re nice.’

  ‘You’re nice, too.’

  ‘Not always.’

  ‘When were you not?’

  ‘I wasn’t so nice to Beck.’

  ‘He wasn’t right for you. Everyone knew that.’

  ‘Is Ida right for you?’

  ‘She’s my wife.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘There’s Marcus, too. He’s a great kid.’ He trimmed the ashes on his cigarette, spinning it gently in an ashtray.

  ‘If Frank drove up outside, right now, I’d probably go with him.’

  ‘You don’t know that.’

  Yes, I did.

  ‘You have to stop this business with Ray.’

  ‘Okay, Wayne.’

  I was depressing him. His shoulders were down.

  He got up, suddenly picking up his plate and his glass. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘Time for bed.’

  In the guestroom, I could hear the wind in the trees. The slats of the blinds were open and outside was a great darkness. I got up and knocked on his door and sat on the end of his bed, crying, so he sat up, his knees raised and the sheets and covers pulled up. He was wearing a T-shirt.

  ‘You have to help me.’

  The cool even light of the suburban moon came through the windows. ‘How?’

  ‘I don’t know. I just—‘

  ‘You just what?’

  ‘Things are out of hand.’

  ‘I can see that.’

  ‘Although that is what I want.’

  ‘Maybe it isn’t.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  I wanted to lie beside him. I wanted to stay in his room, room of blue walls and a blue duvet and black halogen lamps on the end tables. I wanted to start something new.

  ‘I can talk to you.’

  ‘So talk.’ I lay back beside him.

  ‘Be careful,’ he warned as my body touched his.

  Be careful? I almost laughed.

  He pulled me beside him, his knees touching the back of mine, and we slept, we slept all night. We slept until six-thirty, birds singing in the blue trees, and then I stretched my back, the way I knew I shouldn’t. I moved Wayne’s hand to my hip and then turned to him, lay my chest on his and kissed his mouth.

  ‘No,’ he said, but he was erect. I felt my eyelids tremble, like my hands sometimes, a kind of quivering.

  He looked shy afterwards. He brought me orange juice and a fresh towel and later, driving to work, he worried he had taken advantage of me.

  ‘Oh, Wayne,’ I said. ‘You did not.’

  ‘You were upset.’

  ‘You helped me.’

  ‘But I can’t help you. Not that way.’

  Later I came to understand that nothing was ever final with Wayne; everything was changeable. Then I took him seriously though, and I cried.

  I cried in the car and I cried in his office. I cried on the phone talking to him from my apartment. Then I had Ray meet me where Wayne would see us. Wayne didn’t like that, of course. ‘Meet me upstairs?’ he wrote in the note he dropped on my desk.

  We drove to Westchester after work and the sun set on the thin young trees, girls stood on the sidewalk in their Dr. Scholl’s sandals and tight shorts. We stopped at a market and Wayne cooked for me, Wayne fed me bread rolls with butter, ravioli with tomato sauce. ‘You will eat,’ he said, ‘won’t you? You will eat for me?’

  Raymond started asking where I had gotten to, but of course I didn’t tell him. I told him I needed a break for a while, so he shrugged, pretending he didn’t care. At Wayne’s one morning, I found his wedding album: Ida with straight chin-length brown hair, an ivory dress with a square neckline. My mother was standing beside her and Ida was no threat at all to her that I could see.

  In the fall, red leaves coated the roads. Wayne drove to work early, and I walked to the train, along the quiet leafy well-painted homes, among American flags and SUVs that had nothing to do with me. Henry showed up at World Sight. It was my birthday, and he called from the lobby. He came up in his motorcycle jacket and cargo pants and boots, his hair pressed flat from his helmet, a silver cross around his neck. He had taken a year off college to research Christian evangelism on his motorcycle.

  ‘Can you go to lunch?’

  ‘Sure.’

  I looked up and Wayne was at the door, hands in his trousers, slouching. ‘Hey,’ he said, raising his eyebrows, so I wanted to kiss him.

  ‘Henry,’ I said, ‘Wayne Carter.’

  Wayne stood up, stepping across the black linoleum floor to shake Henry’s hand. ‘The famous Henry.’

  Henry grinned. He had just ridden all the way from a March for Jesus in Texas. I did some cocaine in the bathroom and we took sandwiches over to the East River.

  ‘Your dad must really love what you’re doing,’ I said.

  ‘He hates it,’ Henry laughed.

  ‘Is that why you’re
doing it?’

  ‘Partly.’

  ‘Do you even believe in all that stuff?’

  ‘I like the phenomena. Like in Delaware—you drive down this highway and all of a sudden there’s this statue of the Virgin Mary above you. Or you’ll just see a cross suddenly, thrown up against a hillside. People have all this faith.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘I have faith that others have faith.’

  Before he left that night, Henry brought four bags of groceries to my apartment. I felt bad watching him unpack—bread and pasta and eggs and cheese. I wouldn’t eat any of that food.

  Have you spoken to Sylvia?’ Henry asked.

  ‘Not in a year or so.’

  ‘She was asking me about you.’

  He put a whole roasted chicken into my refrigerator, grease shining on the paper bag.

  The phone rang. Raymond was in a bar on Ninth Avenue and wanted to come over. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ll meet you.’

  ‘A date?’ Henry asked when I hung up.

  ‘My brother.’

  ‘Eric?’

  ‘Raymond.’

  ‘Raymond? He’s living here?’

  ‘A few months now.’

  ‘How is he?’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Is he still on drugs?’

  I waved my hand. ‘Let’s not talk about it.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I just—I’d rather not right now. I have to meet him.’

  ‘Okay,’ he said, but he was annoyed. I couldn’t blame him.

  ‘I’ll walk you out,’ I said, and Henry got on his bike, an old Triumph, in his helmet and his cargo pants.

  ‘Call me?’ he asked, and I nodded.

  I felt bad then—not because he was leaving but because I wanted him to.

  Wayne called me at home. ‘Let me come see you.’

  ‘Now?’

  I didn’t want him in my apartment. It felt the way Ray’s place had in Antigua, the one he and his girlfriend Alison had shared, all stuffy and smoky.

  ‘So that was Henry?’ Wayne asked, sitting at the table.

  I had lit a candle. It was only a tea-light candle but I thought it might brighten the room.

  ‘He seems like a bright guy.’

  ‘He is.’

  ‘Good-looking. Educated. What’s wrong with him?’

  ‘Nothing’s wrong with him.’

  ‘Here,’ he said, pulling out a box from his raincoat. ‘Happy birthday.’ It was a gold bangle. ‘It’s not enough,’ he added, slipping it over my wrist.

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Maybe by Christmas.’

  ‘By Christmas what?’

  ‘I want to help you.’ ‘I know.’

  ‘I’m not helping you much this way.’

  ‘You are.’

  ‘I might have to leave Ida. I might have to face that.’

  I never thought Wayne would leave Ida—not when he said he wanted to, not when he said I needed him to, not even when he said we would start our own life, somewhere new.

  November passed, and most of December, and he listened to me; he bathed me and cooked for me and helped me to sleep. But he didn’t leave Ida. He put his head in hands, right in front of me.

  ‘You’re ashamed,’ I said.

  ‘Well, Jesus, for Christ’s sake, Betsy.’

  ‘I don’t want you to be ashamed of me.’

  ‘I’m not ashamed of you. It’s me.’

  ‘Because you’re with me.’

  ‘Yes.’ He looked tired.

  I didn’t want him to look tired. If he was tired he might stop seeing me. ‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry.’

  He did worry though. I could feel it. I went from him to Ray Ray to him.

  He didn’t belong with Ida. Even my mother said that. The way he smiled when he saw me coming, the way he straightened up, against a wall in the hallway, at his desk on the sixth floor. He hadn’t seen it coming. Not when I stretched out on his couch, not when he walked me across the plaza. But now it had come. Now, when he held me in his bed in Scarsdale, in the early morning, lying behind me, it had come and I could feel it, he could feel it, like something dark inside me.

  Instead of leaving Ida by Christmas, he flew to see her. This is the way of an adulteress: She eats, and wipes her mouth, and says, I have done no wrong.’ Ray came out of my bathroom and sat next to me on the bed.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asked, thickly.

  ‘I want to do it the way you do it.’

  ‘No, you don’t.’

  ‘I do.’

  He shook his head. ‘I can’t do that.’

  ‘Why not?’

  He sat with his eyes closed. His eyelids were dark.

  ‘I want to, Ray.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re not making me. I’m asking you.’

  He prepared the needle, the spoon, the brown powder turning liquid. He took the belt from my corduroys and wrapped it around my arm, a tourniquet. The syringe was orange and clear plastic. Once he got the needle in position, his hand shook.

  ‘Oh, no,’ he said. ‘I can’t.’

  He missed my vein, a drop of blood bubbling to the surface of my skin. Sweat broke out on his forehead. Then he hit. I threw up into the toilet, the way he said I would. Then I sat back, my head against the bathroom tiles.

  On Christmas Day we were in Ray’s old room at the top of the house, the same threadbare blue carpet, his blinds drawn and both of us sitting by the bed.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Eric asked, on the landing when we came out.

  He could tell. He could tell right away. We had come out of the room too early and I wavered before him. I thought I might fall.

  ‘Betsy?’

  He saw what I had done and I saw this settle into him—the way my own image had once settled into Beck.

  He looked sick.

  ‘What were you doing?’ he asked again, and his voice was not natural.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Ray?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing.’

  He always saw: here and in Antigua, in the bay and the ocean.

  He took me by my arm. ‘Come on.’ His voice was so certain. I loved certainty. ‘You’re going home.’

  ‘Eric.’

  He led me down the stairs, Ray following from behind. ‘Is this your coat?’ he asked in the foyer, picking it up and handing it to me.

  ‘Yes.’

  He put it on.

  ‘She’s fine,’ Ray said.

  Outside, 64th Street was dark, ice sticking in sheets to the car windows. A woman was walking a sheepdog. Ray had forgotten his coat and lit a cigarette, smoke and steam making a white cloud.

  Eric hailed a cab, holding Ray back from me with one hand and putting me inside with another. He gave me money for the ride. ‘Go home,’ he said, ‘Go home.’

  Ray nodded to me over his shoulder, and I knew what the nod meant. It meant he was coming after, he would follow me.

  ‘Don’t come back, Betsy,’ Eric said, and the pain of looking at him, the pain of what he did and didn’t know, was itself a needle, long and thin into the chest.

  In January, when Wayne came home, I told him it was no good. Nothing was going to change and I should face it; he should face it.

  Ray and I stayed up all night, so late that I didn’t make it to work the next day but slept until three and called Ray again. Outside, the sky was blue like a child’s sweater, the air cool and clean. People were carrying coffees and grocery bags full of food.

  ‘Raymond,’ I said when I reached him. ‘You have to help me.’

  ‘Do I?’

  Then silence fell between us, silence like the old silence between our old bedrooms: the silence that went on until one of us gave in.

  Two days later, I went to Wayne’s office and closed the door and he put his arms around me, he took me back.

  In February, it snowed. Wayne’s blue spruce trees were frozen, the snow icy. Inside there was only me, the hissin
g of the radiator, steam from the shower. Then came March, ice cracking in the trees, glittering in the sun. I went to the park and watched it disappear for a whole morning once, trickling down the blackened plane trees, into the sodden earth.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ Wayne asked.

  I was wearing longsleeves now, the way Raymond did, to cover my track marks. Wayne’s indecision had begun to wear on me—the way he called from Belgium, saying he was trying to talk to Ida, the way he came home and told me I could not rely on him.

  I took his car and swung out onto the street. I called Raymond from the car phone and met him at my apartment.

  ‘Things not going so well?’

  We went out for heroin and coke. I lit a cigarette and drank some vodka. We sat in the dark, mostly. He ran a bath and I sat beside him on the tiles, his head back and his eyes closed, his chest thin, his collarbone and ribs showing, faint hair on his chest, under his arms.

  Late in the afternoon, at the window looking at the river, I pushed up my shirtsleeve. ‘Look,’ I said to Wayne, and he turned in his chair, smiling his bemused affectionate smile at me. Then his affection drained away, like color.

  ‘Did you hurt yourself?’ he asked. ‘Is that a bruise?’ I let him look until he knew what it was, until he felt it. Then I pulled down my sleeve.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I pulled back, as if I really meant this, and maybe I did, nerves suddenly rising in me, hair tingling on my arms. Then I left the room, smiling at Julep, who didn’t smile back, making my way down to the lab heady with fear, my heart beating and halls smelling of heat, of ammonia and the dark river. I took my bag and headed into the elevator, outside onto the white marble plaza, where I heard footsteps behind me and Wayne’s voice, suddenly, calling my name.

  ‘Come here.’ His voice was angry. His voice was almost bitter. ‘I want to talk to you.’

  We walked to the garage.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. Though I wasn’t sorry so much as afraid—of myself and of the past, of what I had done and of him leaving me.

  ‘You’re sorry?’

  He pulled me to a pillar, pushing up my shirtsleeve and looking again at the skin in the crook of my arm.

  ‘God. I am such a fool.’

  I fastened my shirtsleeve button. Without him, there was nothing good.

  ‘You could have AIDS. Ida could have AIDS.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you a child? Are you out of your mind?’