I’ll Become the Sea

by Rebecca Rogers Maher

  They were deeper than she’d realized. The first shock of cold barely had time to register before they were caught in the crash of a wave that drenched them both. He took her by the waist, dragging her to her knees, hauling her against him. He kissed her as the undertow wrenched the sand out from under them. He kissed her like they were already drowning.

  It was too fast for her to think, to react; too intense for her to stop even if she wanted to. He rushed against her like waves breaking through a dam.

  He lifted her to his hips. She wrapped her legs around him. He was hard and she moaned into his mouth, clinging to him, pressing her body into his. He thrust his hands inside the back of her shirt, raking them over her skin.

  She tasted the salt and heat on his lips, drinking him in. Feeling his pulse racing under her fingertips. She tried to stop herself from shaking, but the scent of him, the flavor of his skin, devastated her. He lowered his mouth to her throat, licking her there, biting the curve of her neck. She arched her back, driving her hips against him.

  “David…”

  He brought his hand around to the front of her, under her shirt, pushing aside her bra to find her nipples, wet and taut under his fingers. The sound she made when he touched her was barely human.

  She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t think. She’d had no idea it would be like this.

  She pushed him away, harder than she’d meant to. She dropped down to the sand, stumbling in the water, tripping as she backed away. She almost fell, and he reached for her.

  “No!” Her voice was unnaturally loud in the still night. “I can’t do this.”

  She sounded like a child, and she knew it, but she couldn’t think clearly enough to fix it. She only knew she had to get away.

  He walked toward her as she backed out of the water, but she held up a hand to stop him.

  “No.” She clenched her fists to make her voice stop shaking. “I can’t do it.”

  “Jane!”

  She stopped, stunned. She didn’t think she’d ever heard him angry.

  “You can’t keep running away from this.”

  She shook away the tears that sprang to her eyes, the fear.

  “I’m sorry.”

  She slipped into the darkness.

  Part III

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  There is no undoing what I have just done.

  My jeans are still wet. The knees and shins scatter sand onto the floor. I hold my breath, hoping that the stillness will stop me from thinking.

  I take off my clothes. The skin on my throat is sore from the friction of David’s beard. I swallow, pulling back the covers on the bed, and lie down.

  I feel myself standing on the precipice of a great fissure. I feel its pull, like vertigo. The treacherous desire for total collapse. To fall and never get back up. To go where nothing else will ever be expected of me again.

  I watched my mother give in to this, staying in bed, not showering, turning the TV to talk shows and then soap operas and then infomercials, into the night and into the next day, and the next. I watched her let herself unravel. Meanwhile I continued to go to school, to clean, to cook the food that she would pick at, leaving her plates on the floor.

  I would climb into bed with her some nights, holding her hand, trying to pull her back into the world. But the smell—I remember the smell of that bedroom. The stale must of the air around her. It made me sick. It made me want to open every window in the house. It made me want to run.

  I hated her then. I hated every doily and trinket in our house. I hated the sickness, the inertia, the stupidity. I hated all of it.

  Waiting for the school bus in the morning, I plotted ways to leave. I had a little money saved. I could pay for a bus ticket somewhere. I could hitch a ride. I could sue for emancipation. I could go live with Sarah.

  But every day I would return home. I’d walk into the house and the guilt would hobble me. She would never be safe if I left. She would never survive.

  Lying at night in my bed beneath the window, I would stare up at the swaying trees, at the wind sifting through the dry leaves. I would feel the hollow heat begin to open inside my chest. And I would hold my breath until it passed. I would will myself to sleep. I couldn’t leave, but I couldn’t stay. So I did neither. And I did both. I thought I could go on that way forever, but I can’t.

  I get out of bed.

  * * *

  “Ben, I need to talk to you.”

  “I’m in the middle of editing. Can it wait?”

  “No. I’m sorry, it can’t wait.”

  He sighs. “All right. Give me a minute.”

  I listen to the shuffle of papers, the sound of footsteps walking across the floor. I picture him before my call has interrupted him, surrounded by monitors and machines, lost in the hum and flow of his work. I know he is rarely happier than at this point in a project. Watching all his footage, envisioning the final piece.

  He let me see him like this, once. He was finishing a film he’d been working on for a year. I didn’t know why he invited me to the studio. I hoped it meant he was letting me in, including me in this part of his life which he usually kept separate. He was buried deep in the last moments of the film and burning alive with it. I saw for the first time his intensity, his passion. He was at the height of who he was then.

  I understood something that day. Something I think he meant me to understand. He would never look at me that intently; in my presence he would never be engaged to that degree. I loved him desperately in that moment and my love felt desperately impotent, batting itself against a door I would never be invited into.

  I tell myself this gives me just cause for doing what I did. But I know that Ben would never have kissed another woman like I kissed David. No matter how unhappy he was with me.

  No. Instead, he would let our relationship cool and fade, little by little over the course of years, and do nothing. He would throw himself deeper into his work. He would put me aside like a troublesome child, ignoring my bad behavior in the full confidence of extinguishing it. He would make me gradually cease to exist.

  He comes back to the phone. “Everything okay?”

  “No.”

  I hear him pause. “What’s wrong?”

  “When are you coming home?”

  He blows out a breath. “Do we have to do this now? Another two months, probably. At least that.”

  I stare at the pale yellow wall across from my chair. Once, moving a heavy table on my own in a fit of rearranging, I hit a corner against that wall. A small circle of plaster chipped off, leaving an indentation like an old vaccine scar. My eyes trace its uneven circumference as I hold the phone in my hand. I want to speak, but I cannot. I’m afraid of what I might say. He doesn’t care when he is coming home, or if.

  “Is there something wrong?” he says. “Did something happen again?”

  Again.

  “Fuck you.” I stand up from the chair.

  “What?”

  I grab my keys from the kitchen counter and a jacket from the closet and head for the door. “I can’t do this. This is what I can’t do.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about you moving to Los Angeles. I’m talking about the fact that that is where you live now. That you have no intention of coming back. I’m talking about you putting a ring on my finger just to shut me up.”

  I am moving down the street now. I don’t know where. A dam has broken, a door has been knocked down. I can’t contain the words.

  “You don’t want me, Ben. You want a fraction of me. You want to build a fence around the rest. And I can’t even blame you for that because it’s exactly what I asked you to do. It’s what I wanted you to do. To keep me from feeling too much or wanting too much or being too much.”

  “Did something happen? What happened?”

  “You want to know what happened? I loved you. For six years I’ve loved you.”

  “I love you too.”

  “No, you do
n’t.”

  “What are you talking about? Of course I do. You sound like a lunatic.”

  “No, actually I feel quite sane for once in my life.”

  “Calm down. Take a breath and tell me what is going on.”

  “I’m breaking up with you. That’s what is going on. I’m putting a stop to this.”

  I have reached the boardwalk and climbed the stairs, stalking over the boards and down the path to the sand on the other side. When the ground shifts beneath my feet, I push forward to the edge of the water, to where the tide is coming in.

  “Ben.”

  He doesn’t answer.

  “Why aren’t you here?”

  A trio of seagulls separates and rises into the evening sky, crying. I watch them go. The sound of the water brings the feeling back to my body. I understand that soon the pain will come, that the numbness part of this is now over.

  “Look, Jane, I’m not going to do this with you. If you’re stupid enough to end this relationship, let’s just end it, okay? Let’s not drag each other through the mud first.”

  “What are you doing? Taking the high road?” I lie down in the sand, closing my eyes against the bright blue sky.

  “It’s not that hard finding a road higher than the one you’re on right now.”

  “How can you be so fucking…sensible?”

  “What is wrong with that?”

  “You’re about to lose your fiancée. The person who was supposed to be your wife. You could put up a fight.”

  “What for? For the drama?”

  Beside me, so close to my face that I can feel the spray, waves break and recede against the sand. I listen to them. I try to imagine my body aloft on them, away from the place where I lie, far from the sound of my own voice.

  “What for?” I say.

  “Don’t expect me to beg you and don’t expect me to make it easier on you by talking about it. You’re the one doing this. You live with it.”

  I hear the line go dead and let the phone fall.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  I watch Law and Order on television for three weeks straight. At night I let myself cry. After six years together, he let me go with a phone call. That is what I held on to all this time. That is what I thought I was worth. He hasn’t called again, and I don’t expect him to. I thought I had been shoring up loyalty against a future crisis, but no. There was no future Ben. Only the present, the real and obvious present, which everyone could see but me.

  If I had any integrity at all I would have ended it when he didn’t come home to help me, when he blamed me for the fall. Instead, like a child, I turned to David. I let him put me back together as if I didn’t know how to do it myself. I ruined it, whatever it could have been. I was everything Ben accused me of. Needy and irrational and totally out of control.

  David was angry when I left him at the beach. I hear his voice—his fury and frustration when he said my name—and all I want to do is cauterize my heart, to burn it closed and seal it off so I never have to feel again. He calls every day and I let the phone ring. He doesn’t leave a message.

  I write a letter to tell him I’m sorry, to thank him for helping me, to tell him I am going away. The hearing is next week. I don’t know when I am coming back.

  I walk out to town to find a postal box. I feel the breeze against my face, the rocky texture of the pavement under my feet, the brush of light clothes against my skin. The green of trees against blue sky.

  I reach the intersection at Main Street, pausing at the flow of traffic back and forth along the road. I am fumbling for the letter in my bag when I see David’s truck. He’s parked outside the book store. I stop. I can’t pass the store window and I don’t want to turn back, to go home. I can’t decide what to do, so I stand there, waiting. Watching for him.

  He comes out of the store carrying a small bag. His face is tan and unshaven, mottled by the cloudy light. I put my hand to my throat, taking a step backward.

  He walks around to the side of his truck, unlocking and opening the door. He climbs in and sits there, bringing his hands up to the back of his neck and holding them there for a long moment. He sees me in the rearview mirror and waits, watching me. He reaches for the door, and I turn away, almost running, disappearing around the corner before he can call my name.

  * * *

  “I can’t do it, Sarah.”

  “Yes, you can.”

  “He won’t want to see me.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “I fucked it up. I gave him a thousand mixed messages. I let him take care of me and then…”

  “And what? What is so bad about that?”

  “Why did I stay so long with Ben, Sarah?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What is wrong with me?”

  “Nothing is wrong with you.”

  “Why did I let myself love someone who didn’t even want to know me, who didn’t really want to be with me? It’s not normal. It’s not healthy. Why would David want to be with someone like me? I’m a wreck. If I had any sense at all I would have seen my relationship for what it was and ended it. I wouldn’t have needed David to come along and show me what I was missing. But I didn’t do that. I let it go on. And then I didn’t even have the decency to break up with him before I…”

  “Jane. You fell in love with someone.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “You fell in love and it turned out messy and for once in your life you did the wrong thing, and so what? Go to him and fix it.”

  “I can’t fix it. He’ll never respect me now.”

  “Try.”

  “Sarah. What if he…if he…”

  “He’s not going to turn you away.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I don’t know. I just believe it. That’s why it’s called a leap of faith. Look. You stayed with Ben because you were scared of exactly this. This risk. Go to David. Whether he takes you up on it or not, at least you can say you’re the kind of woman who goes for it.”

  “Oh, God.”

  “You can do this, Jane.”

  * * *

  I take the boardwalk along the ocean, walking by streetlight with the sound of waves alongside me. The sea wind blows my hair into my face, my mouth.

  He will wonder what I am doing at his door in the middle of the night. I am crying but it feels incidental; it comes from me in great long gasps. I reach his house and stand outside.

  The light in the living room is on. He sits by the window playing his guitar quietly without the amp, a low song, sad and calm and unbearably slow. I stand and listen, hearing him play in my mind long after he stops. I notice the window is empty only after I see him coming toward me, stepping over the grass to the driveway.

  “Jane?”

  “Hi…”

  “What are you doing here? Are you okay?”

  His beard makes his eyes a painful, searing blue. It is past midnight. I have been walking for hours.

  “Yes. I’m okay. I just—I went for a walk.”

  “Well. Do you want to come in?” He gestures toward the house.

  If I want to, I can turn back now. I nod and follow him in through the back door.

  He goes to the stove. “I’ll make you some tea.”

  “Thank you.”

  My throat is dry. I can barely speak. “Can I have some water actually?”

  He brings me a glass and I drink it, gulping it down. I sit down at the table.

  “You’re out of breath.”

  “I was walking fast.”

  “Where were you going?”

  “I don’t know. To see you.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “David…” I should leave. Right now. I can’t seem to get my breath and he is so close to me in the kitchen, the steam from the teakettle rising around him. “I heard you playing. It sounded…beautiful.”

  He is wearing an old T-shirt and dark jeans. He is barefoot.

  I know every contour of his face. I see
the struggle there, the warring impulses. I don’t know what to say.

  “You were listening to me play?”

  “Yes.”

  He takes the kettle off the stove, pouring steaming water over the tea. Ginger plum, fresh loose leaves. He brings the tea to me, setting down the delicate cup and saucer. He sits down on the opposite side of the table, watching as I blow against the steam to cool it, as I take a cautious sip.

  “I wrote that song for you.”

  The teacup in my fingers rattles against the plate. I release it, closing my eyes against a sudden flash of tears.

  I shouldn’t have come. I should have sent the letter like I’d planned and gone away while I still could. He must be able to read the need all over my face. It will overwhelm him, push him away from me.

  He smiles at me—a gentle, open smile. My eyes begin to spill over.

  Taking my hand across the table, he runs his thumb over the back of my wrist, down to my fingers, stopping at the place where the engagement ring used to be. “I’m sorry.”

  I shake my head. “It should have happened a long time ago.”

  “I’m still sorry.”

  “You’re not angry?”

  “Angry? No.”

  Staring at the table’s clean wood finish, at his hand in mine, I can’t meet his eyes.

  “At the beach. That night. You said…”

  “I was angry then. No, not that. Frustrated. Mad at myself. I shouldn’t have shouted at you.”

  “No, you had every right. I’ve done nothing but…”

  “Stop.” He squeezes my hands. “I messed this up too. If I were any kind of man, I would have let you be. Instead I just kept coming at you, confusing you, insinuating myself…”

  “All you did was try to be a friend to me.”

  “I don’t want to be your friend.”

  At this I do look up. I look at him like a child expecting to be hit.

  He pulls me closer across the table. He takes my forearms into his hands. I feel the heat of his body rush into me.

  “I want more.”

  I start to tremble. He tightens his hold on me.