The Opposite of Love (19 page)

She came to know it as the hollow, deep ache in her midsection. The ‘pit’ of her stomach was a term she would later hear and know exactly what it meant; she understood the profound, abyss-like emptiness that made her feel like she could fold in on herself and be sucked into nothing. She found a way to combat it as well, using the pain of hunger to mask the emptiness of loss. As a teenager, the emotional pain of losing a boyfriend or fighting with a friend would become a localized void in her stomach, excruciatingly intangible, and she would replace it with something real. It took time to build up a good hunger, but once it was there it would grow until it was bigger than the hole, and maintaining it required no effort at all.

She never considered herself anorexic, and this method wasn’t one she employed often enough to raise any red flags or even to lose much weight. Hovering between ‘fit’ and ‘athletic’ by the doctor’s measurements, Melanie had always had a comfortable relationship with the mirror as a teenager, even approaching indifference. It was her emotions that gave her trouble. So when these bouts of emptiness came about, a few days of fasting would invariably solve the problem. Then she would eat again, the hunger would be gone, and with it, the empty ache in her middle.

The wake ended with the last of the neighbors going home and her mother going up to her room to rest. Melanie sat alone in the dining room in her usual chair at her father’s right. She put an arm on the table as a pillow and rested her head on it, absently stroking the grain of the wood with a forefinger as she stared at the spot where her father used to sit. Would this chair just be empty from now on? Would Mom sit there? It came with a lot of expectations, that chair. Sort of a job description. Melanie wasn’t sure her mother could muster up that kind of lightheartedness and humor and outright unabashed affectionate love, even if she wanted to. There were things that happened at that table because of that chair and the person who belonged in it, things that would never happen again. She closed her eyes and willed herself to remember.

The next thought occurred to her as a forbidden act, but then she couldn’t imagine why. This was a new world with new rules and expectations, but she was navigating it blind. Rising from her seat, she went around and pulled out her father’s chair and stood with her back to it, her fingertips lightly resting on the arms. She bent until she was sitting, then leaned back and pulled her feet up to rest her heels on the seat. Letting her head fall back, she closed her eyes.

What kept coming back to her in quiet moments like this were the flashes, the images. She had let herself fall behind, then sped up to tag him, but he swerved. She flew past him so she never saw him fall. But the blood, bright red,
too
red. The way it pulsed through his fingers as he held the side of his neck. The rebar was covered in it. His shirt. The ground.

There was a blazing wildness in his eyes that she’d never seen before and it jolted her from her paralysis. “Go,” was all he’d said.

She opened her eyes and looked at the empty chairs where she and her sisters sat. She tried to see them all through his eyes.
Wow, three of them
, she thought. Through her own eyes, she could only see two, and the addition of the third made it seem like an almost unmanageable number. But he’d managed them all just fine. Loved them, cherished what made them each different and special.

She looked to where their mother sat at the opposite end of the table. Oh, how he loved her. His constant affection that she pretended was too much. The looks they gave each other when they thought the girls weren’t paying attention. This was his. All of this. And as she imagined it all from his place at the head of the table, she felt not just her own loss, but his too.

“I’m sorry, Daddy,” she whispered.

The pain seared through her stomach like buckshot and she wanted to let go, to wail like her little sister, to cry herself out of breath and consciousness. She listened for her mother, wondered if she was allowing herself the indulgence of a good cry up there in her room, but she heard nothing. The faces of the adults at the wake came to her, bated with expectation, and she knew that what she chose to do with this, how she chose to react to it, would define her. She had the choice to cry or not, to keep moving or not, to eat or not. The choice to accept or to suffer. To forgive herself or to hang on to her father.

At nine, she knew. And she wanted to unknow.

In the retelling, as she sat across from Derek and he stroked her hand, Melanie remembered the girl with the pram and the accident and the child, how she had guided the girl away from the baby to spare her the horrific image that would sear itself into her and torture her thoughts. But even in her protection of that girl, even in wanting to help her get through it whole—or somehow not completely destroyed—Melanie wouldn’t have been able to hide how she felt, what she knew. If the girl had looked at Melanie as they sat on the curb waiting for the ambulance, she would have seen that look on Melanie’s face. The look that said, “You’re one of us now.” The one that said, “Now you know.”

“You ok?” Derek asked.

Melanie nodded.

“I can’t imagine what that’s like, seeing something so horrible, especially at such a young age.”

Melanie shrugged. “It stays with you,” she said. “But kids are resilient. It’s the rest of it that I’m starting to wonder if I ever got over.”

“What do you mean?”

She struggled with the words, shook her head to clear it. “The part about it being my fault.”

Derek cocked his head to the side. “It was a game Mel. You were a kid. You can’t really believe you were responsible.”

“It’s not that.” The tears had stopped but were threatening again. They’d been talking for over an hour and the drinks were starting to wear off. Taking a sip of her water, Melanie considered sending Derek inside to the bar for something stronger—something anesthetic—but it was now or never, she knew that. She’d never gotten this far before, and it had to be said.

“I took him away,” she said. “I wanted him all to myself. I took him away from my sisters, from my mother. If someone else had been there we could’ve saved him. Someone could’ve stopped the bleeding while I got help. He wouldn’t have died.”

Derek stared at her, unblinking.

“Mel,” he said gently, “how long have you felt this way?”

“It’s not a
feeling
,” she said, irritated with his tone. “It’s what happened. This was my fault.”

“What did your Mom say to you about it?”

“What was there to say?”

“You never talked to her about how you felt?”

“She knew what happened. My dad and I left the house together. He died.”

“So you didn’t talk about it?”

Melanie shook her head.

“So who did you talk to?”

She looked at him blankly.

His forehead furrowed and he looked alarmed, as though her nose had started bleeding spontaneously.

“Mel, who did you talk to about this?”

His tone unsettled her, but she didn’t understand his escalating concern.

“No one. Why?”

Derek’s expression crumpled and he put his hands to his face.

“No no no…” he moaned quietly. “Poor, sweet girl.”

Melanie had never seen him this upset before and found it unsettling to say the least. He grabbed her wrist, startling her, and pulled her around the table and onto his lap where they were face to face.

“Melanie, listen to me. You were nine, and it was an accident. A freak accident. It was not your fault.”

“But it
was
. If I hadn’t—”

“Your father loved you. Your family loves you. No one thinks it’s your fault.”

“Of course they do.”

“Has anyone ever said that? Or anything remotely close to that?”

“They don’t have to.”

“They wouldn’t because it’s not true. You’re the only one who thinks this, Mel. And you’re wrong. You’ve been wrong about this for a very, very long time. I’m telling you the truth now. It’s not your fault.”

She studied his face, then looked down to her lap, pondering what he was saying to her, but because she’d never told anyone before, she didn’t know if he could be right nor not. She only had her opinion to balance against his. But something in her wanted to believe him, to latch onto any grain of truth to what he’d said and see if it would grow.

Tears had started up again and Derek pulled her head to his shoulder and stroked her hair.

“Sweet, silly Mel,” he whispered. “It’s ok.”

Sitting on Derek’s lap, she felt—not just remembered—the comfort of her father. The scrapes stung less, the bee stings burned less, the cuts stopped bleeding under their bandages, and kisses on foreheads were the analgesic. It wasn’t that all the bad things got completely better when he pulled you onto his lap, it was that they could no longer get any worse. “It’s ok now,” he would say. And she knew what he meant.
The bees won’t follow you here
.
There are no sharp things, no scrapes to be had, not even an insult from a mean sister would dare cross into this space. Here, you are safe. Here, you can heal.

Oh, she missed that. What extraordinary power he’d had that he could keep a child safe from such a massive and hazardous world. But then here it was again, a taste of it as she lay her head on Derek’s shoulder and he rocked her and whispered to her while her tears dried. But of course he would have that power too; he was, after all, someone’s father. So she let him comfort her, to take the pain away, to let her feel safe for the first time in thirty years. And perhaps, even a little bit, to help her heal.

She comes back to tell me she’s gone. As if I didn’t know that. As if I didn’t know my own bed.

— Paul Simon,
“Graceland”

Chapter Twelve

Melanie was showered and dressed in her bikini and sarong. “Aren’t you going to get ready? I thought we were gonna have breakfast by the pool.”

Derek was sitting on the side of the bed with his feet on the floor. He didn’t answer. He just ran his hands through his hair and stared at the wall next to the bed.

“Are you feeling ok?” she asked.

“There’s something you should know.”

“What?”

“That night you went to the Green Door with James and had sex with him blindfolded…”

“Yeah.”

“I was there.”

“Are you serious? Were you watching?”

“Sort of.”

“What do you mean ‘sort of’?”

He turned his head to look at her and winced when they made eye contact. He looked down. “It was me. I had sex with you that night.”

“What are you talking about?”

He stood up and started to come toward her but she backed away until she was standing at the other side of the bed.

“I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to think I was in on it.”

“In on it? What the hell was there to be in on?”

“Having sex with you. I mean—”

“But you
were
in on it, weren’t you?”

“I was trying to protect you.”

“Protect me? You fucked me in front of a room full of people and let me think it was him? How did James let that happen?”

“It was his idea.”

“Bullshit.”

“I swear it was.”

Melanie sat on the bed. Her head was swimming. She remembered it feeling different, but familiar. Remembered how James hadn’t come in his signature three thrusts the way he usually did, how he was still hard. Unfortunately, it all made sense.

She was breathing hard with the effort to remain calm. “Tell me what happened.”

“I saw you both and was following you to see if… you know… you were going to do anything… together. Then he left you and went back downstairs and I followed him. He went into the shop, so I went too. There was another guy there and he asked if we wanted to get laid. He said his girlfriend was upstairs and wanted to have sex with a stranger but never see his face.”

Melanie closed her eyes. Hadn’t it been enough that she agreed to have sex with James in front of people? Why would he want someone else to do it instead?

Derek went on. “He’d bought a blindfold and two pairs of leather gloves and he said we’d have to wear a pair of the gloves and we couldn’t talk or make any noise.”

“We? Who else?”

“Me and the other guy in the store. He asked the other guy how big his dick was, and he said seven inches. I said eight and he picked me.”

Melanie rolled her eyes.

“Look, I figured what he was saying wasn’t true. I was pretty sure you wouldn’t do that. So I went along with it. I figured you’d be less pissed off if you found out it was me than if you found out it was a complete stranger.”

“Then why didn’t you stop him? Or at least tell me before now? You’re supposed to be my friend. You’re supposed to be on
my
side. How could you keep this from me all this time?” She was on her feet again, yelling now, using anger as a barrier against tears. She felt betrayed by both her boyfriend and her lover in one fell fuck.

He took a step toward her but stopped when she put out her palm. “I didn’t say anything because if it
was
your fantasy, knowing it was me would ruin it. And I didn’t know for sure that he was lying until the other night. I knew I had to tell you, but we were having such a good time, and then last night talking about your dad… it just never seemed like the right time.”

“How did you even know we’d be there?”

“I didn’t,” he said. “I’d just started going again after you brought it up that one time at the Artisan. I had no idea you guys would be there that night.”

She took a step toward the door. “I need some air,” she said.

Derek moved in front of her to block her way. “Wait,” he said. He had his hands out as though he wanted to touch her but thought better of it. “Just tell me you understand why I did it.”

“I don’t understand anything. Just let me go get some air. This is a lot.”

She brushed by him and out the door.

Melanie went to the pool area and breathed deeply until her chest hurt. Then she went to the lobby bar and chased the air with a Bloody Mary, which went down much smoother.

She wanted to call James. To ask him. To confront him really, because she knew it was true. But that would mean going back to the room to get her phone, and she didn’t want to risk Derek cornering her in a conversation that would probably just turn into a fight. Besides, James would probably just lie to her. There was no proof, except the word of her lover with whom she was on a clandestine vacation in Mexico. James would only focus on the fact that she was with another man. Though the thought did occur to her that James might feel a little ripped off knowing that he’d only tricked her into having sex with someone she was already having sex with—and that was tempting.

The clouds turned low and thick, from blue to white to gray, and the wind swirled, indecisive and confused, changing direction and pushing back against itself. Sitting in her lounge chair by the pool, in the middle of all of this activity, she sat still and listened.

Control, or love?

And she knew.

And once she knew, the shift was total, as if the earth had spun and she had traveled back in time and she was the person she used to be. The person she recognized. Only with one more experience. And once she could define it clearly, could find her logical side and sift it through that sieve, the emotional turmoil ceased to cloud her view. The process itself had been gradual and subtle, so that she sometimes didn’t realize she was working. But the final realization was sudden, surprising even. As if she’d been absentmindedly knitting a sweater for weeks, and then, just like that, it was done.

She remained by the pool for a while and watched as the moods of the hotel guests changed, their faces reflecting the turmoil above them. They moved with an urgency that had existed nowhere in this town only hours before. There were still two days left in the trip, but they named the hurricane Michael, and Melanie knew it was time to go home.

Back in the room, she found Derek sitting in a lounge chair out on the balcony and she sat next to him. They stared out at the ocean, at the black water with its white froth.

“We have to pack and go home,” she said.

“The last thing I wanted was to hurt you,” said Derek.

“I know.”

He looked at her then. “Do you?”

“Yes.”

Melanie returned his gaze and could see in his eyes someone who had been her friend, truly on her side. She could also see that he was in pain.

“I wish I could take it back,” he said. “I should have trusted my instincts and known that wasn’t what you wanted. I should have stopped it. I could have just gone back upstairs and told you what he was planning. If I was wrong, the consequences would have been nothing compared to this. I wish I’d seen that.”

Melanie thought about this for a while. She had been focused on the lie, not the act—the complicity of what he and Derek had done and kept from her. But the truth hadn’t been his to tell; he hadn’t known until now it was a lie. And the repercussions he sought to erase were not his own. They were hers.

“How long have you been in love with me?” she asked.

He winced. Then he stood up and went inside.

The bellman loaded their bags into the cab, apologizing repeatedly for the weather—as if he alone was responsible for scheduling these things—and begged them to visit again.

On the plane, she felt sure, but still uneasy in her revelation about James, as if the emotions were seeping back in, despite what she knew for sure. There were things she felt she wanted, even deserved. She wanted answers to questions that she didn’t have, revenge for the things that had and had not been done. And she wanted to take back all the intangible, indefinable things that she gave when she didn’t know better. Her time, her thoughts, her efforts to understand him when he hadn’t even been himself—these were the things that meant something, that were valuable, the things for which she had received no reward and could receive no reparation. These things were a part of her
self
. And they were gone. There was no way to know if she was one of those people with an endless supply of such things or if she would someday run out, but it really didn’t matter.

She didn’t know how it would go, what she would say, how he would react. None of that seemed to matter. But she still felt that there was something to prepare for.

She would have liked to talk to Derek some more—about anything, really—but he had remained silent since they’d boarded the plane.

Derek dropped her off at her house just as the streetlights were coming on. She had to force the awareness of things outside of herself. Derek got her bag out of the trunk and offered to take it inside, but she assured him she could manage just fine. She gave him a hug, a kiss, and said she’d call him later.

She almost made it to the door without noticing the truck parked in the driveway. And it was only after she put down her bag inside and went back to close the front door that she noticed the other car parked on the street.

As she listened, someone turned on the upstairs shower. Melanie put her hand on the railing and a foot on the bottom stair and then waited. She took inventory of herself, realizing with fascination that she wasn’t upset. There was no gripping, aching hole in her stomach. No emptiness.

The door was open and she leaned against the frame, staring at the bed. The comforter was heaped on the floor to one side, a bit of it hanging onto a corner at the foot of the bed. The rumpled sheets were not ones she ever used because the striped pattern clashed with the block design of the comforter. The girl was on her stomach, her head turned away from the window and her blond hair covering her face, the top sheet lying across one of her darkly tanned legs up to the thigh. She was sleeping.

The door to the bathroom was closed and James was humming while he showered. She knew she had about thirty minutes, more if he had to change the bandage on his leg. She thought about him in there, oblivious, and it occurred to her for the first time that he might feel something. He might actually have a reaction to what happened next, and what’s more, Melanie could affect that reaction.

And there it was: the final piece, the thing that was left to decide. How did she want to make him feel?

The answer came immediately, but had it required her to feel something herself, she wouldn’t have been able to accomplish it. As it was, it only required her to act.

As quietly as she could, she stripped off her clothes and climbed into the bed next to the sleeping girl. The blond stirred and rolled onto her side with her back to Melanie, pushing her rear end out, looking for contact. Melanie lay on her side with her head propped up on her hand and tried to simulate what she perceived as a man’s touch, sliding a hand over the girl’s back and rear, then over her stomach and up to a breast. Either she was doing it wrong or her hands were too soft. The girl put her hand over Melanie’s and jolted. She turned her head toward Melanie and jumped almost out of the bed.

“Hey!”

Melanie smiled playfully and tried to comfort the girl. “It’s okay,” she said, motioning for the girl to come back. “I’m Melanie. James is a friend of mine. Didn’t he tell you this was my house?”

The girl stayed put on the edge of the bed, eyeing Melanie with suspicion. “He said it was his brother’s house.”

“Well I can understand that.” Melanie laughed softly. She glanced to the dresser where the photo of her and her parents had been removed. “He probably didn’t want to confuse you by telling you it was some woman’s house. But it’s okay, really. I prefer women anyway, so you don’t have to worry about me going after your man.”

Melanie laughed and lay back on the pillow. She tried to stay casual, light. The girl was still off guard, unsure, eyeing Melanie’s nakedness.

“Well, he’s not exactly my man or anything. We kinda just met a couple days ago.”

Melanie could hear the insecurity already casting itself on the girl’s voice, closing the throat just a bit, raising the pitch slightly.

“Oh, really?” Melanie rolled onto her side and tried to seem girlish and gossipy. “So how’s it going then? Is the sex good?” she asked, lowering her voice to a mischievous whisper.

Melanie’s tone had the desired effect, and the girl relaxed, even melted a bit. “Like you wouldn’t believe.” She lay back down facing Melanie and giggled, but kept some distance between their bodies. “He’s amazing,” she said, pulling the sheet up a little.

“That’s good,” Melanie said. Then added with a tone of thoughtfulness, “But he’s kind of a complicated guy.”