The Man I Love (26 page)

Time was a formidable enemy.

Time was an infinite road into a barren wasteland. A rocky, potholed path comprised of increments Erik could not fathom: weeks, months, years—they only meant pain and loss to him. Together they made up a more ominous concept called a lifetime. His life was unfolding before him without Daisy.

Those first few weeks of late spring after he arrived home were lost to him. Nothing imprinted. His short-term memory was short-circuited. Later, he would look back on those months as if through the wrong end of a telescope, wondering how he had done it, just how he had survived. He had no active recollection of doing so.

Time frightened him. It made him physically ill. If he thought in any length of time longer than a day, he could not get out of bed in the morning. When he was in a good place, he could manage a twenty-four hour cycle. During the slumps, he had to hold his own hand through minutes.

And yet, time could be an insanely elastic and devious thing. First it stretched before him like a snake, hissing words like
forever, never, always
and
infinite.
Then one day Erik woke up and nine months had passed. He should have felt triumphant, instead he felt bewildered. Where had it all gone?

If he wasn’t grappling with time, he was dodging never-ending attacks of memory. The world was a war zone: recollections booby-trapped every corner. Free associations waited on rooftops to take pot shots at him. Everything reminded him of Daisy. Everything. For those first nine months, he didn’t go to movies, rarely read a book and avoided music as much as possible—music was the worst. He kept the radio in his car tuned to sports networks or NPR, and if ever he were subjected to songs, he imagined a filter in his head rendering the lyrics meaningless.

Given his way, he would destroy every known copy of Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer.”

Where once he’d been surprised to discover the depths of his passion, he was now equally astonished at how well he could shut down.
You will feel nothing
was his mantra whenever memory staged a sneak attack.
It was another time, another life, and it’s over now. They are gone, you are here, and you will feel nothing.

His most secret weapon was staging a re-enactment of the shooting in the theater. Only this time, everyone was gunned down and killed.

She died. Everything that happened after was a dream. She’s gone. She was gone a year ago. Will’s gone. Lucky, David, Neil and Opie—everyone who was in the theater is gone. They’re just outlines of graffiti backstage. You’ve been asleep. It was a dream.

It’s time to wake up now.

* * *

Daisy phoned regularly those nine months. Christine soon wearied of fielding the awkward calls, and Erik had his own phone line installed. He rarely answered it, screening every call by letting it go to the machine and picking up when it was warranted. He never picked up for Daisy and didn’t return any of her calls. He wouldn’t speak to her. Could not speak to her. A few times she managed to catch him live on the phone, and each time he froze into silence.

“Talk to me,” she would whisper. It was a stranger’s voice, a pathetic keen of agonized chagrin. “Erik, please talk to me. I’m so sorry.”

In his mind she was still on her knees in the kitchen at Jay Street. Kneeling in the bombed-out crater of their love, beseeching him. He gazed over the top of her bowed head and said nothing. Like an Easter Island statue he stared out to sea, stony and resolute, refusing to engage or acknowledge, until she hung up in tears. Then he would crumple on the floor, undone, and he’d have to start all over again, scrabbling to collect the bits and pieces of his life and glue them together.

She continued to call. He kept throwing fire at the bridge, and she kept putting the flames out and shoring up the timbers. He laid land mines, and she picked her way through them.

Figures,
Erik thought.
Her father’s a fucking sapper.

The last time she got through to him, she was pulling heavier artillery.

“I can’t believe you’re just going to give up,” she said. “One stupid mistake and you’re going to walk away from me. Walk away from us. Without even a word.”

It would be any man’s cue to whip around and bombard her with a million heated words. Unleash hell, give her a ripshit battle to decide the war.

Erik couldn’t do it. He had no fight left in him. His throat was sodered tight and the shaking anger in her voice merely made his heart shrink further and further into a corner.

“Say something,” she cried. “Yell at me, curse at me. Say you hate me.
Say
something, Erik…”

I can’t hate you,
he thought, almost startled she would demand it of him.
I could never hate you.

But now I can never love you.

The two nevers cancelled each other out. Leaving
nothing.

I can never love her. And I can never love anyone else. This is my life now. Everything is ruined.

“There’s nothing to say,” he whispered. “It’s done.”

“It’s not. Erik, please, you can’t—”

He hung up.

Will’s calls were harder. Will had done nothing wrong. Will was an innocent bystander. But Will was also a conduit to Daisy. If Erik wanted nothing more to do with her, then he couldn’t have anything to do with any of her.

Will phoned relentlessly, leaving messages. At first they were warm with sympathy.

“Fish, call me. Let’s talk about it. I feel terrible.”

Then they turned cool with jokes.

“Dude, when I said you should get out of Dodge a little while, I meant for like a
day?
We’re going on weeks here, this is crazy.”

Finally they were hot with hurt and anger.

“Fish. What the hell are you doing? This isn’t funny anymore. This isn’t about Daisy. This is you and me, all right? Fucking call me already.”

Erik made a stone of his heart and ignored the pleas which grew more emotional and angrier. Finally Will got through by calling at three in the morning.

“Hang up this phone and I will kill you.”

“Jesus,” Erik muttered, half-asleep, his heart pounding from the shock of the phone ringing. “What do you want?”

“What do I w— I want your fucking meatloaf recipe, that’s why I’m calling every day. Jesus Christ, Fish, it’s
me.”

Erik breathed in through a clenched jaw.

“Fish, what are you doing?” Will whispered. “Talk to me.”

“Did you know?”

“Did I know what?”

“Did you know she was fucking him?”

“Jesus, Fish, no. I’m as shocked as you are. Nobody saw it coming.”

“Including me.” Vulnerable from fatigue, tears stung his eyes. He bit down on his lip until he felt the plate armor of his stubborn resolve slide into place.
You will feel nothing.

“Fish, look,” Will said. “I don’t know all the details, but my gut tells me this wasn’t an ongoing thing. I think it was just something stupid and random.”

“It was David wanting what he couldn’t have.”

“And you beat the shit out of him. I would’ve done the same. But now what about Daisy?”

“What about her?”

A bubble of frustrated silence on the other end of the line. Will inhaled then exhaled roughly. Erik imagined him slumped in a chair, his face in a palm. The lines of his body etched with pain. Good. Life was shit and everyone should hurt.

“Let me get this straight,” Will said. “You’re leaving her. You’ve left her. This is it. You’re gone.”

“Yes.”

“Just like that. What you have with her means nothing.”

“Clearly it meant nothing to her,” Erik said.

“No discussion, no goodbye, no… You’re not even going to hear her side of it?”

“I have no desire to hear her side of it. She wants David, fine, she can have him. God bless. And when he chews her up and spits her out, I won’t even say I told you so. Because I’m such a good guy.”

“Dude,” Will said, his voice softening. “She did a shitty thing to you. Nobody will say otherwise. You gotta be dying a thousand deaths and I’m so fucking sorry…”

Erik’s eyes narrowed, his body tensing. He could handle an argument with Will. He welcomed a screaming match, but compassion would destroy him. Empathy would dissolve the pathetic, flimsy barrier he had worked so hard to jerry-rig out of nothing. “Well,” he said. “I’m glad we agree there.”

“Fish,” Will said. “She fucked up but she loves you.” His love was bright, firm and clear, slipping through the holes of the phone receiver and shining into Erik’s eyes. He flinched from it, a mole squinting into the sun.

“She didn’t fuck up,” he whispered, turning from the light. “She fucked David.”

“It was a mistake, she’ll be the first to stand up and say it. Won’t you even let her—”

“Let her what? Explain? Apologize? And then what? I just get back with her and pretend nothing happened? Forget it, Will. I’ll never be able to look at her again without seeing her in David’s bed. That’s my last memory of her. That’s my souvenir. That’s what I got. I don’t ever want to see her again. You can tell her to just leave me the hell alone.”

“All right. Fine. Your fight with Daisy is your fight with Daisy. What about me, Fish?”

“What about you? What the hell do we have left to talk about?”

“You’re done with me? Pardon me sounding like a jilted woman but I thought I meant something to you.”

He did. Will’s friendship had no price. But Will was the open door back to Daisy. Now he was a dangerous liability.

Both of them had to go.

Erik hardened every soft and compassionate thing in his heart. He erased the previous version of events. He rewound, took it back. Back to the beginning, where Will was no innocent bystander. And he rewrote the past into a story he could live with.

“I’m done,” he said. “I was done when you fucked James and brought all this shit down. It all goes back to you and him. None of th—”

“No,” Will said. “No, you are not saying this.”

“—would have happened if you picked a goddamn persuasion and stuck to it. If you hadn’t strung him along like a toy and then threw him aside. You’re no better than David.”

“Don’t you put this on me, Fish.”

“You brought it down, Will,” Erik said. “He came into the theater looking for you.”

“You are fucking unbelievable,” Will said.

“I’m done being one of your goddamn casualties. And no wonder you’re on Daisy’s side—you cheated on Lucky and got away with it. I’m telling you, I’m done. I’m through with her. I’m through with both of you.”

A long exhale in his ear. “Well. I won’t take up any more of your time.”

“Don’t. And don’t fucking call me anymore.”

“Believe me, you miserable bitch, I won’t,” Will said. “But let me say one last thing, Fish. Actually it’s something you said once, allow me to paraphrase.”

“What?”

“You can’t
breathe
without her.”

He hung up.

Watch me,
Erik thought. And he threw the phone across the room.

* * *

He had told his mother, in the most general of terms, what had happened at school—Daisy had left him for David. Christine was shocked and sympathetic. She took his side. Daisy’s endless phoning confused her. Undoubtedly she sensed she didn’t know the whole story. But she stayed supportive and tactful and gave her son his space. She worried. She was his mother. She couldn’t not be concerned about Erik’s shadowed eyes and the handsome face becoming more and more gaunt. He worked long, arduous hours at a handful of jobs, doing anything and everything to stay distracted and tired. And still she heard him pacing in the night, the jingle of Lena’s collar following wherever he went.

Christine worried, but she had never coddled him before. He was a man now. He didn’t need her to sort it out. He would take it apart and put it back together again. He had let down and cried to her only a few times. Most nights she merely stayed up with him and his inconsolable melancholy. He didn’t want to talk. He just wanted her presence. So she brewed a lot of tea and sat close by.

Yet Christine herself was heading into a new phase of her life. She had a man—Fred had been a constant companion for five years by then. Fred was getting ready to retire. Christine wanted to sell the house, downsize into a condo with Fred until Pete was out of school, then possibly move down to Key West.

“What’s your plan, honey,” she asked one December evening. “What do you want to do?”

Erik, whose plans went to D, minimum, had started to think about it himself. “I think I want to get into a community theater,” he said. “Working tech in a place like the Walnut Street down in Philly—it appeals to me.”

“Will you go back to Pennsylvania?”