Lunch (21 page)

“How did you know I was there?” she asks, not expecting an answer. “You saved me.”

I am glad there is so little light. I didn't save her at all, not when I could have, not through all the watching, not—­

I wipe her eyes with a roll of paper towels until the tears stop, and she sighs deeply.

“Better?” I ask, determined to keep my voice benign even though I want to cry out to the heavens. “How's your leg?”

“Throbbing, but not too bad.” She fingers the bandage through her jeans. “I deserve it.”

She said that to me once before, ages ago, or was it only a day or two, when I said, Don't be ridiculous.

“How can you say that?” I tell her. “No one does. You don't mean it.”

“Sure,” she says ruefully. “But I still think this is what paying for your sins means.”

I had not heard bitterness in her voice before, or regret.

“It wasn't sinful,” I say, finally.

“Wasn't it?” Her voice is hard. “I mean, look at me! Look at what he's done to me! Just look at what I let him!” The hysteria is creeping back as she pulls away, turning around to look at me in the dim light. “How can you stand it, how can you live with him, or be with him, or be with yourself, how can you take it, how? Just tell me that, I have to know, tell me how I can look at myself and not want to
scream.
”

I reach up to try and calm her, and she jerks back, then buries her head in her hands and sobs.

“Olivia, don't,” I say, my heart breaking. “You can't blame yourself. You couldn't have known this would happen, not this way. He's never been with a woman like you before, he's never—­”

“And what kind of woman am I?” she cries out. “What have I done?”

“You're you,” I say. “Olivia.”

She looks up at me, at my face, she is looking at me, the tears stop and her anguish clears, and for a terrible minute I think she sees me truly, and I want to get up and run away, but I am frozen here, I cannot move.

“Why do you stay together?” she asks, wiping the tears away.

I am staring at my shoes. There is blood spattered on them like drops of paint, alizarin crimson.

“There is nowhere else to go.” My voice is a whisper. “It's all we know.”

“But what do you owe him?” How can she ask me that, how can she be so understanding? “I should think he owes you.”

“It doesn't matter anymore.”

“Of course it does.” She wipes her nose again, calming. “At least it does to me. I don't think I'll ever understand it.”

“It's not you,” I say again. “He can't help it.”

“Is that what you were afraid of, when you said you wouldn't let him hurt me?”

“I'm sorry,” I say, babbling, incoherent. “I tried, I promised you, I know I did, I didn't think he would—­he never told me, what he—­I couldn't—­”

She puts a finger to my lips, and I hear myself starting to choke.

“Oh, M,” she says, “I believe you. I know you did. Now hush.”

She moves back, close to me, and we sit, locked together.

“I need to know where the pain comes from,” she says, finally.

I shake my head no.

“Please, M, I have to know. You must tell me. I won't ask you anything else.”

Her eyes fill with tears again. I cannot stand to see her cry anymore, not tonight, not ever.

“It comes from fear.” My voice is so low I can hardly hear it. “If all you know is how to live without love, who can teach you how to live with it?”

I can't believe I said that.

“It's always been worse for you, hasn't it?” she says.

I close my eyes.

“You know too much, don't you?”

I try to pull away but her arms are wound tightly around me.

“You are so sad, M, I never met anyone so sad in all my life,” she says. “Who hurt you?”

“Don't ask me,” I say. “Please don't ask me.”

“M,” she says. “M.” Her voice is calmer, detached, she is regaining control. She is looking at me once more as no one has ever looked at me, as she always has, without fear or repulsion. I don't want her to see me like this, not Olivia, not the woman I have watched so avidly in secret for all the hours she could give us.

I am unworthy of her sympathy, but I feel her fingers in my hair, gently caressing, and I haven't the strength to make her stop.

“You are full of secrets,” she says, “many more secrets than anyone I've ever known.” She can't say Nick's name, not yet. “I would have painted you as the Sphinx, you know, if you'd let me, sitting on your haunches in the desert. Forever impenetrable. That enigmatic expression on your face—­it's almost impossible to paint. I wonder if I could have done it.”

“What expression?” I ask, bewildered.

She scrambles up, pushing back her hair and blowing her nose. “Just a minute. Stay there. Don't move.”

I'd just said that to her, hadn't I, not so very long ago. I sit frozen on her kitchen floor, wondering, until she comes back a moment later with a heavy drawing pad and pencils and a large square flashlight, the kind meant for camping trips and restful nights in a tent in a forest. She props the lantern on the floor beside her, shining it up toward the ceiling.

“You belong to the shadows,” she says, “and I'm going to draw you in them.”

“No,” I say. The impossible wonder I'd dreamed of, watching her watching me, please don't, I don't want to see myself as she must see me, nakedly revealed; I can't. It will be the ultimate betrayal.

“Please, M, let me,” she says, her voice pleading, and I am afraid she is going to cry again. “I need to hold on to something. I need to
do
something. Concentrate. Think about anything but . . .” Her hands hover near the bruises on her neck, but she can't bear to touch them. “Don't let me think. Please.”

I could never say no to her.

The slight rasp of her pencil, the hunch of her body, the furrowed concentration, all so familiar. I can feel her relaxing, if only imperceptibly, into the work.

“If you don't like it you can do what you want with it,” she says conversationally. I had forgotten how she usually liked to talk when she drew.

“Okay,” I say.

“M, will you do something for me?” she asks several minutes later. She sounds almost like herself again, pacified by the ingrained habits of what she does best.

“Anything,” I say.

“Tell me a story,” she says. “Tell me a story of when you were little.”

“I don't think you want to know.”

She looks up at me, at my face. “Ah,” she says, “the inscrutable one speaks. Don't move a muscle. That's just the face I was looking for.” She smiles, a little sadly. “Sorry. I didn't mean to upset you. So tell me another one, a nice story. About anything you like.”

“There aren't any.”

“I see.” The scrutiny of her gaze, probing. She bites her lip, deeply engrossed. “Never mind.”

Her fingers always moving, dancing over the paper, the grace of her body as she works, even seated here, on the kitchen floor, the square brightness of the flashlight shining up onto the ceiling, bouncing back down to her face, a glowing madonna. Time slows, along with my breathing, and I almost start to feel better.

“Done,” she says, moments later, or it could have been hours. I suddenly realize my legs are aching with cramp. “Well, it's kind of raggedy, and rough, but it'll do for now. Take a look.”

I don't want her to be finished, I don't want her to stop, I don't want to leave this place, I cannot look.

“Go on,” she says, smiling. “If you don't like it I'll be crushed.”

She holds the pad out to me, and I take it, my hands trembling as if it were a newborn I might not know how to hold, and will drop, and then I look. I see the body of a sphinx, its haunches curved and powerful, its tail a fat whip in the sand, and I see a face, mine and yet not mine, powerful and proud, a nearly imperceptible hint of a smile curving the edge of my lips, guarding some mysterious knowledge. It seems to be shimmering in the dazzling white light of the desert, but I realize I am staring through a hazy film of tears at this image of my features, handsome and whole as I might have been, no scars disfiguring my face.

“Does this mean you like it?” she asks.

I nod, unable to speak, afraid that words of mine might break the mirage of this enchantment.

“I'm glad,” she says, taking it back. “Let me sign it for you.” Her pencil, hovering over the drawing. “ ‘To M.' No, wait, I don't like that. What's your real name?”

She couldn't be asking me that. Not now, not here, not after—­

“Oh, M,” she says, putting down the pad. “After all this, you can trust me.”

“No,” I say, and I feel myself starting to shake. It is too much, all too much, holding it back, me, watching, all that time, everything I've seen, everything, my whole life, Nick, kissing her, pinning her down, her squirms irresistible, tying her wrists to the bed, making her body his slave, moaning her pleasure while I watch, while the tapes whirl, oblivious. Nick, jagged glass in his hand, making her scream, his hands around her throat, wanting to squeeze the life out of her. Nick, handcuffed to the bed, blood trickling down his forehead, dripping onto the sheets.

“Baby,” she says, her arms around me, kneeling at my side, her hands on my shoulder, gently kneading the stiffening muscles. Don't stop, I beg her, a silent imploring, don't let go of me, I'll tell you anything, any pain is worth the sweet touch of your hands, your head so close to mine, the perfume of your hair, the scent of you, the essence of Olivia, so close, your voice a whisper, “Baby,” you called me, that word so strange from your lips, please don't go, don't leave me.

“His name isn't Nick,” I say suddenly.

“What?” Her fingers stop, only for a second, then begin again, deeper as she moves closer, because my voice is no louder than a whisper.

“Nick. It's not his name.”

“What is his name?”

“Ralph.”

“Ralph?” I think I hear her laughing, but there is a sharp buzz in my ears, and I am still trembling at her touch. “Ralph?”

“Ralph Polachek. From Pittsburgh.”

“He doesn't look like a Ralph.”

“That's the name he was born with. It's not who he is.”

“Something horrible must've happened, yes? His parents? What?” Her hands on my shoulders, massaging in calm rhythmic strokes. I can't tell her, I will never tell anybody, we swore it to ourselves, Nick and I, brothers in blood. “It has to come from some hideous place, that anger,” she murmurs, almost to herself. “To be that afraid. No wonder you . . . no wonder he couldn't . . .”

I try to pull away. She won't let me.

“You were orphans, weren't you?” she says, cool and clinically detached, she has broken our code, deciphering our language of pain. “How many homes did he live in? Is that how you met him?”

The shadowy air, hanging, I could see the air, thick, murky, I will not breathe, not think, it hurts too much.

“That explains ‘Who Am I?' ” she says softly, remembering with a sigh. “How many ­people must have hurt him.”

She has forgiven me, forgiven us all, I can hear it in her voice, so tranquil, soothing me, I can't bear it, there is no judgment there, only kindness and trust undeserving, and her hands, sweet, don't stop, please, if you stop I will go mad. “How many ­people hurt you, M?”

Don't go, don't leave me.

“Who is the real Nick Muncie?”

I will tell you, tell you this, tell you anything, anything but my name, as long as you don't leave me.

“Nobody,” I whisper. “A nobody, like me.”

“Go on.”

“He was a boy we knew, a kid. Nick. We never knew his last name. But he said he came from Muncie, Indiana.”

“What happened to him?”

“He died.”

“Died how?”

“In a fight. On the street.”

“How old was he when he died?”

“Eleven, I think.”

“Is that where you lived, on the streets?”

I nod. Her fingers, comforting, stroking my neck, pulling my head down into her lap as if I were her child, “Baby,” she called me, her voice an embrace, lulling my fears away, had her voice not been such a lullaby I could not have spoken.

I have quite forgotten that I am meant to be comforting her. It is such a relief to be able to say what has never been said, after all this time, her ears meant for my burden, listening to it calm and serene, taking it away and setting it free.

Please, take it away. Make it go away.

“How old were you when you met that Nick?” she says.

“Twelve.”

“Is that when you got the scars?”

“No.”

“How old were you when you got the scars?”

“Fifteen.”

She is silent for a moment, thinking. “Three years. On the streets, together. No one came looking for you.”

My head buried in her lap, I cannot stop my trembling.

“M,” she says, bending down to hold me tight, her hair falling over my cheeks, “forgive me. I'm sorry I asked, but I needed to know. I'm so, so sorry.”

I am trying to pull away, I cannot bear her holding me so close, the perfume of her so close to me, smothering, I cannot breathe, I am choking, let me be.

“Don't leave me, M,” she says. “Please, please don't leave me.” Her hands on me, she won't let me go.

I shake my head, dumbly, like a dog.

“Look at me.”

I can't.

Her hands on my cheeks, her thumbs on my scars. “Look at me.”

I meet her eyes, the gray in them dark with emotion, polished pewter, full of tears.

“Stay,” she says, her voice so gentle I think I will go mad. “I want you to stay.” There is no duplicity in her eyes, only an unbearable shining tenderness. “Just for a moment.” My lips move silently in sheer disbelief. “Please. Don't leave me yet.” Her voice more frantic, remembering. “I need you, M. You. I need you.” Her arms around me, her face buried in my shoulder, and I am desperate, disbelieving, terrified she will dissolve into mist and melt away, that I will wake up from the unimaginable before my futile longing for her touch becomes the reality that is Olivia, here, now, sweet in my arms, asking me not to leave her.