You're Not You

by Michelle Wildgen

  “It’s not terrible,” I said. “Really.” I wasn’t saying anything about the spot for a few minutes, though I would tell Hillary to look. I touched the red spot with my fingertip. It felt as cool and soft as the rest of her skin. It blanched white when I pressed lightly.

  “Stop it,” Kate said. Then she closed her eyes for a moment. “I’m sorry. I know it was an accident.”

  “I know it hurts,” I said. “I don’t know how I let you slip.”

  It had happened as I was getting her from her wheelchair to her bath chair—one moment I was lowering her right in place, and the next her skin was terribly slippery, and I felt a sickening lurch as I lost hold of her. Her buttock had hit the arm of her chair, hard enough to bruise, especially since she had no extra fat to cushion the blow. Now it hurt her to sit, and I had to keep her on her belly, in bed, for at least a day, and when I’d checked her bruise I’d seen the red spot for the first time. It was mortifying, all the attention we had to pay to a bruised ass, a bruised ass I’d caused. She was angry at me and trying not to be, humiliated and trying not to show it.

  “It could’ve been worse,” she said now as I pulled her panties back up and her nightgown down from where it had been bunched around her waist. I set a frozen gel-pack on the curve of her butt and excused myself to go to the bathroom.

  I washed and dried my hands, staring at myself in the mirror. I needed a shower and a few pounds of makeup if I was going on this stupid blind date tonight. Kate had called for me at four that morning, I’d dropped her in the shower at six, and nothing had gone well since. She hated being on her stomach or her side the whole day, stuck in bed, and it was making her irritable and me guilt-ridden. I splashed water on my face and went back in.

  “You want the window cracked or anything?” It was still chilly outside, but the room smelled musty and close. I’d meant to change the sheets today.

  She shook her head. “I told you, I’m really too cold for that. Open a window out front, if you need to, but close my door. Please.”

  She was facing the television, one hand crooked up toward her shoulder with the remote beneath it. “What do you need?” I asked. I settled another blanket over her. “Can I move you, or give you a back rub, or put on some music? I can read to you, if you’re bored with TV.”

  She shook her head. “Nothing, thanks. No, wait. Maybe a hit of the sleeping stuff.”

  This meant grinding up a sleeping pill, dissolving it in water, and running it through the feeding tube. It was such a production that I wished we had a liquid form, maybe dispensed with an eye dropper. Moreover, I hated the pills because she looked waxen and unreachable hours after taking them, her eyes unfocused, white strings of saliva clinging to the corners of her mouth. It frightened me how ruthlessly the medication knocked her out, the way she could barely speak as she came out of it, much less crack a joke. But it was the wrong day to suggest anything else, so I went back to the kitchen to get it ready.

  I got out two of her sleeping pills and set about crushing them in a little mortar and pestle designated for this alone. Then I scraped the powder into a glass of water and stirred, watching till I didn’t see any particles. I could have used some rest too. I needed to get out of the bedroom that smelled of old laundry and the heavy coconut moisturizer I anointed her with each day, away from the endless strobe and blather of the television set. I needed to get out of the house, go somewhere I wasn’t a liability. How had I lost my grip on her? I kept imagining the moment, but worse: What if I’d really dropped her on that ceramic tile? I looked at the floor of the shower, its gleaming white squares. I could have knocked her out, or maybe even killed her. Her eyes had flicked open and the exclamation that flew from her mouth was made unintelligible by surprise.

  I went back to her with the water glass and the feeding tube tucked under my elbow. “Ready?” I asked. She nodded, and I put another layer of foam beneath her hips, where I had to roll her over to get to the valve.

  I tipped her over, careful to keep from touching the bruise directly. A muscle strained across one side of my back. I must have pulled it when I tried to catch her. Kate watched me while I pushed up the nightgown and opened the valve, fitting in the feeding tube and pouring in the medicated water. We stayed silent while the water drained into her. When it was done I removed everything, patted her belly with a towel where a bit of water had dripped off the tube, and resituated her on her side.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  I turned off the television but left the remote beneath her hand. She closed her eyes, though I knew it hadn’t put her to sleep that fast, and I turned out the light and closed the door quietly behind me.

  There was still a ton of stuff to do—she had needed me so much today that I hadn’t had a chance to straighten the front room, do the laundry, or eat a better lunch than a carton of yogurt. I felt filthy, my hair unwashed and my face shiny. God, maybe the bedroom smelled stale because of me.

  It was five o’clock. Hillary would be here soon. I’d start the laundry; she could finish it and probably even change the sheets without waking Kate. I couldn’t ask her to straighten the front room because it was all my stuff, but maybe she’d hate it so much she’d be compelled to clean. I should clean it up before I got in the shower. I had the time, and I was in the doghouse whether Kate would admit it or not. But I just couldn’t face it right then, any of it. I felt like a housewife with a kid who hated me, and the kid was right.

  I started to stack some magazines, but stopped. I wouldn’t touch any of it, not the library books and magazines scattered over the table, the pairs of shoes beneath the couch, or the coffee mugs on the end table. I was going to shower, slap on some makeup, and go out for a drink before I met this guy, Mark, who Jill thought I’d like so much. I couldn’t even recall why she thought we’d hit it off. She was probably dead wrong, just trying to steer me away from anyone with any remotely Liam-like qualities solely to make the point. As I ran the shower and dropped my dirty clothes in a limp pile on the floor, I decided I didn’t care who this guy was. I was going to blow off some steam whether I liked him or not—if he was a fun, nice guy, so much the better. If not, I’d get drunk and ignore him till he went away.

  AS IT HAPPENED, I didn’t wait for him to go away. I followed him home instead. Mark lived in an apartment on the second floor of a house on Spaight Street. The hallway outside his door smelled of cedar.

  “I think I only have beer,” he said. He was struggling with the lock.

  “Beer’s fine.” Actually I didn’t think I would drink a beer. I wanted water, or better yet, caffeine, something to keep me awake and alert. Once I had known, back at the bar, that I was coming here with him, I’d switched to Coke. Who knew when I’d get this chance again? I wasn’t going to waste it by ending up hazy and frustrated, my nerves dulled from drinking.

  Mark got the lock open and held the door open for me. I went ahead of him into a small front room. There was a brown couch, the kind you inherit from your parents, a little television, and a fish tank that glowed in the corner. I went over to it and peered in. I could smell the odor of the water, the faintly sulfurous, fishy smell of the jar of food. Inside the tank a couple fish swam serenely in and out of fake coral, all graceful fins and bulging eyes and lips.

  “They look like socialites,” I said.

  “Huh?”

  “Nothing. Just—the facelift look.” I wanted to stop talking, I had been talking all night. It wasn’t doing me any favors. He came over next to me and looked into the tank, grinning.

  “I see what you mean,” he said. “I’ve been thinking of them as Goldie Hawn, but now I know why.”

  I felt his hands on the collar of my coat, one cold finger brushing against my neck.

  I let him slide it off my shoulders. As he turned to put it in the closet, Mark said over his shoulder, “Their names are Silvio and Annette, by the way.”

  “Are you Italian? Or are the fish?”

  He came back over, handing me a
green bottle of beer. “My great-grandparents,” he said. “Their names were Silvio and Annette.”

  “Oh. Well, that’s . . . that’s really odd.”

  Mark looked pleased. “Well, I didn’t know them,” he said. “Not that this exactly makes me close to them. I just liked the names.”

  I sprinkled a little food on the surface of the water. “I’m glad they’re not those fighting fish,” I said, for something to say. “I hate guys who have those.”

  He took a sip of his beer. I watched his fingers curl around the bottle. “No Soldier of Fortune subscription either,” he said. He sat down on the armrest of the couch and watched me. I was only a few feet away, and it seemed to be the time to go stand between his legs and lean down to kiss him, so I did. I was nervous and brittle, trying not to be jumpy. At the bar we’d been dancing, and now I wished for that sweaty heat, the bass beat coming up through my shoes and thumping through my lungs, and the excuse to speak into each other’s ears.

  It was dead quiet in his apartment, and when I kissed him the only real sound in the room was a faint murmur at the back of his throat, an intake of breath when I kissed his neck. He smelled of sweat and something green and herbal, maybe pine. How lovely to touch someone who didn’t smell of blossoms or fruit, whose limbs were thick and whose hands dwarfed mine. His skin scraped me if I rubbed it in the wrong direction, like a shark’s. I felt his teeth against my tongue. Even his hair was coarse.

  I had been in the bar a half hour before they arrived, nursing a glass of wine and flipping through a magazine. By the time I saw the three of them come in the front door the light in the place seemed to have softened, the murmur of the other patrons a cozy swell around me. They headed straight to a table, Jill glancing around as she seated herself. I finished off the glass of wine and left the magazine and its soothing vapidity on my chair for someone else. I was too relaxed even to regret the brusqueness with which I’d given Hillary a rundown of the day—though I’d made sure to tell her to check the red spot—before jogging out of the house at six.

  This guy was so polite that he actually stood up to shake my hand when I walked up to the table. As he did, Jill had raised her eyebrows behind his back, as if to say, None of our friends are this nice. He was pleasant looking in a pale-skinned way. He had a mole on his left cheek, which is something I have always hated in a man. I seated myself on his right side.

  The four of us drank and listened to the band until I ran out of polite chatter. Mark let me sit quietly for a moment, then asked me to dance. At first, sweaty and knocked together by the swaying hips of the surrounding dancers, I wasn’t sure how much I really wanted to be there at all. I had glanced back at the table, where Jill and her boyfriend were kissing. Mark took my hands and raised them up, twirled me around. We didn’t really have a clue what we were doing, but he didn’t care, he was laughing, and it made me like him more.

  We had danced awhile longer, stopped trying to talk above the music. He drew me to him, just slightly, a question. Not the presumptuous arms around the waist, the shove to your pelvis that some guys tried to bring off. His sideburns were dark with sweat, and he lifted my hair off my neck and twisted it against my head to cool me off. I looked him over and saw that his face was shadowed and his mouth serious. It was this concentration in a man that I had missed so much, this attention, and I thought, I remember this.

  In bed he got confident, silent but for an occasional murmur of my name, and I pushed myself up with my palms against his shoulders. I was moving faster and faster, concentrating so hard that each thrust was like striking flint. I was thinking, Oh thank God he’s not a whisperer, I just want to do this, and he gripped me around my hips and pressed his head back into the pillows, and kept quiet, as though he understood.

  AT THREE I JERKED awake. I was sure I’d heard something—a scrape, a thud. I sat up on my elbows, heart pounding, and looked around, trying to orient myself. After a moment the bedroom, my clothes on the floor, and the dark shape snoring lightly next to me ordered themselves again. I breathed deeply, trying to calm my pulse. I’d been waking up like this lately, ever since I moved to Kate’s. Once or twice a week I tore through a layer of sleep as though I were coming up through the surface of an ocean. The sounds that woke me never turned out to be anything. Just a murmur from the intercom that revealed itself to be a dream, a car driving past.

  I got up and brushed my teeth with his toothbrush, then combed my hair into a ponytail and wiped off stray mascara. I felt tired, hard-used, soreness starting to flare through me, but it felt good. I felt clear and tranquil, ready to sleep. Thank god I’d stopped drinking. I would remember everything.

  He was awake when I went back into his bedroom, lying on his side and watching me.

  “You’re leaving?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. He gave me a look of mild skepticism. “I actually am. But I work for this woman and I told her I wouldn’t stay out all night.”

  “Oh, right,” he said. “Jill said you were a caregiver.”

  “Some caregiver,” I muttered.

  “Sorry?”

  “Nothing.” I zipped up my jeans.

  “What do you do for her at night?” he asked. “Or are you there just in case?”

  I zipped up my boots. “Sometimes she has trouble breathing,” I said. I stared at the pointy brown toe of my boot. I’d gone off for a one-night stand right after hurting her and drugging her. She’d asked for the drug, but still. It frightened me to think of Kate alone. Since I had moved in I had realized how quiet the house and neighborhood became after ten, which was probably why I jerked from sleep with every creak. It terrified me to think how vulnerable I had left her, only the button beneath her finger if someone broke in. A burglar, a rapist, could come in the window and she’d be as helpless as in a nightmare.

  I stood up and put on my jacket, casting about for my purse. I just wanted to get home.

  Mark ran his hands through his hair and sat up, reaching for his pants. “I’ll walk you to your car.”

  “You don’t have to,” I said. “This is my old neighborhood.”

  A smile flashed up at me in the darkness. “I know.”

  Outside the temperature had dipped again. Here it was nearly May, and the forecasters were still assuring us this was to be the last cold spell (“I’d eat rat poison if I thought it would bring on spring,” Kate had said that morning). A few snowflakes drifted by the light of the streetlamps. I could hear distant music from someone’s house, laughter from the direction of the Jamaican joint I used to go to for brightly colored mixed drinks that might kill you if you had more than two. I could have walked awhile longer in this neighborhood. I wanted to go to the biker bar and play Patsy Cline on the jukebox, or take a walk and see who was on their porches sneaking in one last joint before bed. Mark held my hand, swinging it between us, and I thought about coming back sometime when I knew Kate wasn’t alone, asking him to walk with me, showing him where I’d lived. I dismissed the thought a moment later. No one else was ever that interested in your old neighborhood. Especially since he still lived there.

  We paused at the trunk of my car. I jingled my keys. He smoothed his straight dark hair with both hands.

  “I don’t suppose you want to be called,” he said.

  I looked at him, trying to discern if he meant it or just didn’t know what else to say.

  “I do like a good phone call,” I said.

  Then I kissed him and got into my car. I sat there a moment, watching him in the rearview mirror as he waved and headed back up the empty street, hands stuffed in the pockets of a gray flannel jacket. I couldn’t have handled a trendy guy right then. No one in a bowling shirt, no one with facial hair. He was like a steak when you craved the iron. I started the engine, which rumbled ominously, and turned the heat to high. The seat was stiff and cold. It wasn’t any warmer in the car than on the street. I looked around to see if I’d left a window open, and it was then I caught the scattering of hardware and glitterin
g window glass in the seat and on the floor, the glint of a few nuts and screws in the streetlight, the empty mouth in the dashboard. Someone had stolen the stereo.

  seventeen

  THE NEXT MORNING KATE said she could sit again with some extra padding. She gave me a smile and said, “It’s not as bad as I thought it’d be.” I’d turned away, even more relieved than I’d have guessed, to get the extra sheepskin and some foam. The red mark was gone, but I’d told her about it in case she had any pain. I’d only felt guiltier since I woke up at Mark’s and made my way home. It wasn’t fair that I could hurt her, accidentally or not, and then debate whether to tell her what I saw on her own body. It wasn’t right that I hadn’t brought it up, and it wasn’t right that I’d passed it off to Hillary and then dashed out to have a good night. I was so relieved to see her look at me again that I decided I wouldn’t mention how late I’d gotten back. It wasn’t an issue of a curfew, of course. But I didn’t want to remind her of what I got to do.

  I bundled her up against the lingering chill and we went to the first farmers’ market of the season. We bought what we could: spikes of rhubarb and hard blocks of white butter; potatoes that had been cellared all winter; tiny, stunted greens.

  We toured the capitol square slowly, me sipping on a cup of coffee and swinging a mesh bag that was disappointingly empty. The light had that fragile chalkiness mornings have in winter and early spring. I saw now that I had been too excited for the opening of the market, which, Kate had warned me, was more of a stage-setting than a true market for the first few weeks. But I had always missed out on the spring markets before, and I insisted on seeing them this year. Against all logic I had thought some sly farmer would have managed something glorious and deep green, or pried a few morels from the frosty ground. The farmers had coaxed what they could out of the mud, and it wasn’t much.