I’ll Become the Sea

by Rebecca Rogers Maher

  “Jane.”

  He rises and edges around the table, keeping his hand on me. I can’t move. He comes up behind me, wrapping his arms around my chest. He bends down over me. I can smell him. The sweet, rich scent of him.

  He lowers his mouth to my bare shoulder, breathing me in.

  “God,” he says.

  I feel him running his lips against me, the soft brush of his beard. I keep still, holding my breath. Something hot and fluid courses through my chest and belly, my thighs. I feel his teeth, grazing the curve of my neck. He bites me there, quick, hard, and I breathe in sharply, gripping the sides of the chair.

  I rise, turning to him, pushing the chair backward, knocking it over. He drives his hands into my hair.

  His heat shoots through me, the force and taste of his tongue. He kisses me like he is starving. He pushes me into the shadows of the room, up against the wall.

  It happens fast. There is no time to think. It is as it was before, on the beach. The frenzy. The frantic need.

  He begins to undo the buttons of my blouse, stumbling, breathing against my throat. “Is it okay?”

  “Yes.” I take his face in my hands. I kiss him, pouring into him everything I feel and can’t say.

  He opens my shirt, pushing it aside, peeling it down my arms and letting it fall to the floor. His knuckles trail down the front of my body, from my collarbone, between my breasts, down the curve of my belly. He loops a thumb down the top of my bra, releasing one hard brown nipple.

  He lowers his head. With a sure, slow stroke he licks me there and I gasp, pressed against the wall. He reaches behind my back, unclasping my bra, yanking it down. He pulls off my loose skirt with one quick movement.

  A moment ago I sat across a table from him drinking tea. Now I stand before him, naked, shaking. He lifts me. I wrap my legs around his hips, feeling the rough denim against my bare thighs.

  He carries me to the bedroom, to his bed. I sink down to its edge, my hands already unbuttoning his jeans, pulling them down, just enough so I can reach for him. I want him in my mouth, my lips around the hard, hot length of him.

  I can’t think, and I don’t want to. I am for once without doubt, without hesitation.

  He grips my shoulders for support. I take him in my hands, over his partly pulled down jeans, forcing him deeper into my mouth. Winding my hair in his fist, he shudders, struggling to stand.

  He pulls me up on the bed beneath him, dragging his mouth down my body, licking the salt from my skin. He opens my legs. His breath fans against me. He finds me with his tongue.

  The sound I make is something I don’t recognize. His lips move over me. He is relentless, spreading my legs apart, taking me apart until nothing in me is defended. And when he feels me yield to him, all of me, he breathes into me, holding me in his arms, pressing his tongue against me until I come for him, my hands in his hair, my thighs against his face, my body wet and throbbing beneath him. I reach for him, hauling him to me, up between my legs.

  “David. Please. David.”

  He finds a condom in the bedside drawer and rips it open. I help him roll it on, taking him in my hand. Sliding my hands into his jeans, I tear them down the coarse muscular length of his legs.

  He pushes me back onto the bed. His hand clasps the underside of my knee, pulling my leg open and up along the outer plane of his thigh. His eyes are soft, on fire. He enters me. Slow, and deep, the vibration of the moan I can’t contain running down my belly and into his body.

  I can’t breathe. I dig my fingernails into his back, arching against him. He fucks me, hard, his face against my throat, his arms gripped tight around me. I taste the salt and tang of his body in my mouth, the scent and heat of him enveloping me, pulling me upward.

  I am rising—my body, my voice, my breathing all building—pushing up against him. I start to come again around him, shuddering, raw, open, and the wave breaks over him too, taking him apart as it took me apart.

  David gathers me against him, against the fierce, strong pressure of his heart. “Jane.” He holds my face to his, breathing into my hair. “I love you.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  I wake just after dawn. David is behind me, holding me, his arm thrown over my waist, his breathing quiet and even against the nape of my neck. A dark blue comforter drapes our bodies. An acoustic guitar stands upright in the corner. The window shades are open, pouring morning light into the room. David’s stomach cups my spine; his thighs line the back of my legs. I turn into his arms and he shifts, onto his back, pulling me in his sleep against him.

  Gently, I untangle myself, easing out of the bed. A worn flannel robe hangs on a hook at the door. I slip it on and go to the kitchen to make coffee.

  Grinding the beans, hoping the sound won’t wake him, I set the machine to drip. Our teacups are still on the table. I run my fingers over the porcelain, thinking of his lips against my neck. Blood rushes to my face.

  In the bathroom under the sink I find an unopened toothbrush and brush my teeth, catching my face in the mirror. My cheeks are flushed, abraded, my lips swollen. I run my fingers over my mouth. Where David’s mouth has been. I look away, shut off the light. Coming out the door, I feel a presence before I see him and jump back, reaching for the door frame.

  “Good morning.” His chest is bare. His voice is gravelly with sleep, his hair disheveled. “You found my robe.”

  “Yes. I hope it’s okay that I borrowed it.”

  “It was my dad’s.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…”

  “Come here.” He reaches out his hand. I take it, and he pulls me in. He wraps me in his arms.

  “Hi.” He smiles against my hair. “You smell good.”

  “I smell like you.”

  “You smell like Jane.”

  He takes the lapels of the robe in his hands, running his fingers down the edges to where the belt ties together at my waist.

  “Is it okay? That I borrowed it?”

  “No.”

  My eyes flash up to his face, to his gleaming eyes.

  He yanks the belt loose. “Take it off.”

  He slides his hands inside the flannel, his warm hands, over my hips, opening the robe, exposing me. He pulls me against him.

  I react out of instinct, from a place in myself I am only beginning to know. I kiss him with an urgency and heedlessness that stuns me.

  He groans, dragging me down to the floor, pulling me on top of him. His heat is vicious, scorching. My fingers spread open over his chest. He holds my hips in hands.

  He sits up, to face me, to embrace me. He moves in rough surges inside me, his arms around me, running his hands over my face, into my hair. I think of all the moments in the past months I have longed for this, for him. To be held by him like this, filled with him. I wrap myself around him, holding him tight against me.

  “David,” I say, into his neck. “David.”

  * * *

  In the stillness of the room I hear the whirring of a fan, the steady beating of his heart, his even breathing. My hand is on his face. “I like your beard.”

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s very sexy.”

  “You think so? Thank you. Everything about you is sexy.”

  “No it isn’t. You’re blinded by…something.”

  “No, Jane.”

  I lie draped along his side, tucked under his arm, between the back cushions of the couch and the length of his warm body.

  He turns his face to mine, sliding his hand along the curve of my neck to my cheek. He runs his fingers over my skin. “I see with complete clarity.”

  “Oh, yeah? That’s quite a claim.”

  “It’s true.”

  I trail my hand down his arm, to his belly, his hip. I hitch my leg over his, burying my face in his chest. “What else do you see?”

  He pauses, clearing his throat. “You seem ill at ease.”

  I push up onto my elbow. “Really? I’ve never felt more relaxed in my life.”


  “Well, good. You definitely look more relaxed than I’ve ever seen you.”

  “Three days of sex will do that to you.”

  He smiles, studying me. I don’t like the way he looks at me. “You’re worrying about something, though. What is it?”

  Hanging my legs over his knees, I sit up. “Nothing. I’m fine.”

  “You can tell me.”

  “I know I can. I just…I don’t know what it is.”

  “Is it your dad?”

  “Why do you ask that?”

  “The hearing. You told me it was in July. I assume it’s coming up pretty soon.”

  “It’s next week.”

  “Oh, God.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Why do you keep asking me why I’m saying things? I’m just asking about it. I’m concerned for you.”

  I stand, pulling the T-shirt he’s loaned me down over my legs.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. I’m fine. I just…I don’t really want to talk about it, okay?” Crossing my arms over my chest, I lean against the wall beside the couch.

  “Why not?”

  “David.”

  “Why? I’m just trying to help. I’m trying to see how you’re feeling.”

  “I’m not feeling anything. I wrote the statement he asked for. I’m going to the hearing next week. I’ll call the family of the man he…There’s nothing to feel.”

  “You wrote the statement? What statement?”

  “The statement. That he asked me for. That says he’s done well in prison, he goes to meetings, he doesn’t drink anymore. That I think they should release him.”

  “Do you think that?”

  “Do I think what?”

  “Do you think they should release him?”

  Sighing, I sit down on the floor. I don’t want to look at him.

  “Jane.” David swings his legs off the couch and sits forward, facing me. “Do you think he should be released?”

  “It’s been twelve years.”

  “So?”

  “He’s been in that place for twelve years.”

  His voice is gentle. “He killed someone, Jane.”

  “Do you think I don’t know that?”

  “No. I think you know that better than anyone. Which is why I don’t understand why you’d try to convince them to let him out. You’ve been through enough. You shouldn’t have to be your father’s defender.”

  “Have you ever been to a prison?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know they strip search the inmates after every visit? Just in case you’ve passed them something. Strip search. Twice a week. For twelve years. That’s not even talking about the other inmates. About the guards. Who control everything you do, who are nice to you or shit all over you depending on whether or not they’re having a bad day. There is no dignity there. There’s no rest. He’s going crazy.”

  “He killed someone.”

  “I said I know that. Do you think I’m not thinking about that man’s family every single fucking day?” I cover my face with my hands. “I’m sorry.”

  He comes to sit beside me. “No, don’t be sorry. I should back off.”

  “No. It’s okay. You’re right. I don’t want you to think I don’t believe he should be punished. It’s just that…”

  “What?”

  “He’s not the only one at fault. You know that. He wouldn’t have gone out that night if I…”

  “Jane, shut up.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t even tell me he wouldn’t have gone out that night if it hadn’t been for you.”

  “He wouldn’t have. I sent him out. I told him to go.”

  “Because he was about to kill your mother!”

  “He wouldn’t have killed her. He loves her.”

  “Jane.”

  “He wouldn’t have. I could have stopped him. I could have sent him to another room for God’s sake, instead of out of the house.”

  “To another room? Like he’d been a bad boy and you’re putting him in time-out?”

  “You don’t understand what it was like.”

  “You think you were the grown-up in that house. I understand that better than anyone.”

  I shift to face him, bringing my knees up to my chest, locking my arms around them. “Maybe you think you understand, because of your mom.”

  “No, I don’t think I do. I do. You believe this was your fault. It wasn’t. He pulled a knife on a man in a bar, he looked him in the eye, and he shoved the knife into his chest. He brought that knife with him. He used it. While you were cleaning your mother up and waiting for him to come home.”

  “David.”

  “Don’t do this.”

  “I have to do it.”

  “You don’t.”

  “You don’t know my mother. You don’t know what she’ll do.”

  “She’s safer without him.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I…I read about it. About him. I looked up the articles.”

  “You what?”

  “I looked up the articles. I wanted to know what happened to you.”

  “You had no right to do that.”

  “They were public records.”

  “Yes. Maybe. But you should have asked me. Maybe I…maybe I didn’t want you to know those things. Maybe I wanted to tell you myself.”

  “You weren’t telling me.”

  “So that means you can go looking into my private business?”

  “It was available online. It took five minutes to find.”

  “You had no right.” I stand, moving as fast as I can to the bedroom. I find my purse, my clothes. Before he can stop me I go to the bathroom and dress. I come out, brushing past him, heading for the door.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m leaving.”

  “Wait. I’m sorry. Please don’t go like this.”

  I turn to face him. “You’re not sorry. You’re not sorry at all. You think you have a right to dig into my family’s past, to tell me what to do. You have no idea what you’re talking about. You weren’t there. Nobody was there. It was just them and me. I’m doing what I have to do!”

  He grabs my arm. I wrench it free.

  “Let me go!”

  I open the door.

  “Jane!”

  I run down the driveway to the street.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  I take the long way down to Maryland, driving all afternoon on back roads. I keep the windows open and the music loud, hoping the wind and sound will force the thoughts from my mind. All it does is make my head ache.

  My headlights illuminate the long gravel driveway of Sarah’s old house. Beyond an overgrown yard, a sagging porch fronts a blue clapboard colonial. Underneath the steps a spare key is hidden inside a fake rock.

  This is the place I escaped to, with Sarah. Where breakfast was served every Sunday morning at eight by a mother who took care of her children. Vegetable omelets, homemade muffins. Cloth napkins, because she said Sundays were special and even children needed to feel fancy once in a while. In the guest room, a bed is still made up for me, left eternally for my use during visits to the prison. If Sarah’s mother were not in Cape Cod for the summer, I might feel tempted to lean on her as I sometimes do. But it’s for the best. What I have to do, I need to do alone.

  I turn the key and step in, reaching for the light switch. Every inch of the house is known to me. The lights sputter on the tattered couch, the dusty rugs, the large stone fireplace. I drop my bag and sit down in a chair by the window.

  The day of my father’s sentencing, my mother and I drove to the courthouse together. We did not expect good news. We had been fighting. In her mind, I had taken her husband, leaving her to fend for herself, something she had never been good at doing. She’d been forced to take a job she hated at the mall, working double shifts. At night she came home to me. A sullen teenager who wanted too much from her, who expected too much.

&nbs
p; I don’t know what I thought was going to happen. I waited with her in the courtroom, thinking that once it was over we could find a way to be happy without him. That we were safe. That we could make a new life.

  They read his sentence while beside me she gripped her purse against her chest. Afterward, I stopped in the bathroom and she slipped out of the courthouse without me. When I found my way home, the doors to the house were locked. She had taken my key.

  I stayed with Sarah for the rest of the summer.

  Five years later I met Ben. I loved him instantly. And he loved the person I most wanted to become: intellectual, confident, above it all. The fact that he had little use for the person I actually was did not occur to me then.

  I can’t blame him for keeping me at a distance. I wanted him to. I was safe that way. He helped me make sure I would never feel anything again so deeply, that I would never again be caught off guard. And it worked, until I met David. Until David blew all my defenses wide open. Until I gave him the power to hurt me, and he used it.

  I sit in the chair at Sarah’s house and look out the window.

  What I have to face tomorrow, I will face by myself. I will meet my father. We will agree to a plan for the parole hearing. I will call the man’s family as he has asked me to do and I will move on with my life.

  I will put the past behind me.

  The whole past.

  The beatings. The murder. The prison. Ben. David.

  All of it.

  * * *

  He sits with his hands clasped, waiting for me. I walk in and take a seat across the table.

  “Hi, Dad.”

  He tries for a smile. “Hello, Janie.”

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Good. I’m good. How about you?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Must have been a long drive.”

  “Yeah. I stopped last night at Sarah’s old house. Her mom’s out of town. Remember Sarah?”

  “Skinny girl, talks a lot?”

  “Yes, that’s her.”

  “Not staying with your mom then?”

  “No.”

  “She coming today?”

  “I don’t know, Dad.”

  “I told her to bring me some more books. I ran out of things to read.”

  “Still reading a lot?”