Thorns of Truth (27 page)

The memory, still fresh, resurfaced. Iris perched on the terrace ledge, the wedge of bare back exposed by her dress glowing in the darkness like a lighted windowpane between a pair of parted curtains. A window he could look into, but never get past.

Fear edged its way up his throat.

No, he wouldn’t think about that night. Or that other time … in high school. Things would never again get that bad, he told himself. Iris was in therapy, and took her medication twice a day, just as prescribed. Drew had kept an eye on her, to make sure. He hated having to check up on her like that, but what choice did he have? He couldn’t risk another of those episodes; the last one had scared the shit out of him.

Even so, her moods tended to strike without warning. She seemed to have no control over them. When she got like this, and worse, she wasn’t even
Iris,
for Chrissakes. Not the Iris who’d been so comforting and supportive when Dad died, and who’d taken charge that time an elderly woman had slipped on the subway steps in front of them—heading off rubber-neckers, then snagging a cell phone from a startled passerby to dial 911. When Iris got upset,
really
upset, something happened to her. Sort of like a car going into a skid on an icy road.

Drew felt a sudden urgent need to seize control of the situation, to find traction before it was too late.

Nice and easy,
he told himself. A favorite expression of his dad’s—one he’d found himself using more and more often lately.

“It’s been a weird summer,” he agreed, careful not to sound patronizing—she was way too smart to fall for that. “I guess it’s not helping, either, that our mothers aren’t speaking to one another.” They passed a packing plant, shuttered for the night. It reminded him of what he liked least about the Meat District—at night, this neighborhood was a frigging ghost town.

Iris forced a shaky laugh. “No kidding. After our party, when Dad got back from taking your mother home? Even with the door to my room closed, I could hear Mom light into him. She’s jealous, I think.”

“That’s stupid.” Drew laughed, not because the idea was so impossibly far-fetched—after all, his mother and Brian
had
been in love at one time, even if it was practically a lifetime ago—but because he sensed Iris needed reassuring. “Between you and me, I doubt your mom has anything to worry about.”

Iris stopped, and swung around, her face seeming to leap out at him, frighteningly, like headlights appearing suddenly on a dark road. “Don’t you see?
We’re
the reason they’re at each other’s throats. Your mom thinks our engagement is a huge mistake … and
my
mom sees it as the answer to her prayers.”

“You know what? They’re both wrong.” Drew cupped her anxious face in his hands, as if he could somehow anchor her. “This is for
us,
nobody else. Because we love each other.”

“Do you love me? Oh, Drew, I need to hear that you do.” She tipped her head up, as if to keep the tears in her eyes from spilling over.

“Of course I do, baby.” He wrapped his arms about her, pulling her close. He could feel her heart beating, and thought of a tiny bird he’d once scooped off the ground—it had weighed nothing, nothing at all, but its quivering terror had seemed almost more than he could contain. Iris was trembling like that now—so hard he thought at first she was crying. But she made no sound, only a small cry in the back of her throat as she buried her face against his shoulder.

As they stood with their arms wrapped around each other, Drew felt suddenly, acutely aware that the sidewalk was nearly deserted. If they didn’t get moving they’d be sitting ducks for—

Muggers?

He shook off the thought. But the vague sense of danger wouldn’t let go. He looked around at the corrugated security gates gleaming mutely along both sides of the dimly lit street. Even the cars bumping over the cobblestones, headed for the West Side Highway, were few and far between.

A cool, reasoning voice spoke up inside his head.
Man, don’t you get it? It’s not what’s OUT THERE.
This was like one of those horror flicks where the victim runs around locking doors and windows only to discover that, all along, the monster was INSIDE.

Only one thing stood clear: he loved her. There had never been anyone but Iris. Not really. As little kids, they’d slept side by side in their respective sleeping bags on the rug in front of the fireplace at his parents’ rented Lake George cabin. He had a clear picture in his mind of seven-year-old Iris in her footie pajamas, her hair trailing across her pillow and tickling his cheek. He’d even known something about her that
she
wasn’t aware of: ladylike Iris—who picked the crusts off her sandwiches and was squeamish about wading barefoot in the lake—snored like a longshoreman.

Drew remembered their first time, when he was fifteen. They’d been watching TV in her parents’ bedroom one evening when Brian and Rachel were both working late. They started tickling each other, and before he knew it Drew was on top of her, his breathing coming in ragged gusts, the zipper on his jeans about to pop. He’d felt embarrassed, disgusting; then there was Iris looking up at him with her Mona Lisa smile, calm and knowing—
womanly
somehow—her soft hair spread over the rumpled bedspread like a blanket over springy grass. Inviting him to lie with her. He’d kissed her, not like the few tentative pecks they’d exchanged on other occasions, but deeply, unashamedly. And she’d kissed him back, opening her mouth, folding her own tongue about his and pressing a hand to the nape of his neck. Offering herself to him with a trust that was both innocent and, yeah, a bit frightening.

He’d been so blown away by it all, so excited, he’d come before he was even inside her. But Iris hadn’t seemed upset, or disappointed. She merely stroked him until he was ready again. Then, clinging to him so tightly he seemed to bear the imprint of her body for days afterwards, she’d come, too.

If Iris was unpredictable, it was part of what made her so different from other girls, so impossible to pin down. Like static electricity, or a color too vivid to be captured on canvas. She was light, energy, motion, all at once.

At Bryn Mawr, at the art department’s end-of-year show, even her paintings had stood out—delicate washes that evoked a mood, an expression, a time of day with the merest suggestion of a line or stroke. Yet she seemed almost unaware of how talented she was. It was as if, for her, painting was no more a stretch than humming along with the music, or recounting a dream aloud.

Did she have any idea how truly exceptional she was? And how beautiful? Like in those paperback romances Iris made fun of but secretly liked to read, it made his heart ache just to look at her.

Holding her tightly. Drew vowed to keep Iris safe. To protect her as best he could. Whatever it took.

“I love you so much,” Iris murmured. He heard the words catch in her throat as her lips moved against his neck. “If you ever left me …”

“I’m not leaving.” Drew squeezed her, then stepped back. “Hey, I have an idea. Why don’t we go away Labor Day weekend? It’s our last one before school, and we’ll have three days. We could drive up to Vermont.”

He recognized the fleeting smile she gave him even before she answered, “I’d like that … except I was sort of hoping we could look at apartments. It’d be a good time, with everyone out of town. If we see something we like, there won’t be a dozen other people in line ahead of us.”

Drew felt unreasonably disappointed. No, more than that—shot down. But that was dumb. It wasn’t like they’d made any plans. Even so, he hesitated a moment before saying, “We could do that.”

Iris instantly withdrew, hunching her shoulders and folding her arms tightly across her stomach. “You don’t sound too excited.” She kept her head low as they continued along the sidewalk. “Really, Drew, if you’d rather not, it’s no big deal.”

“Can’t it wait?” he asked.

“I suppose.…”

“I mean, it’s not like my lease is up tomorrow or anything.”

At the entrance to his building, as Drew fumbled for his keys, he could see Iris out of the corner of his eye, her shadow knifing up against the graffiti-scrawled brick facade. She looked tense and angry. “I thought the whole idea was for us to have a place of our own,” she said in a low, hurt voice. “But I wouldn’t dream of
forcing
you to move. If you’d rather live here, be my guest.”

Drew sighed, struggling to control his impatience. “Iris, if I didn’t want to
be
with you, why in God’s name would I have asked you to marry me?”

“Honestly? Sometimes I don’t know.”

“Oh Christ, here we go again,” Drew swore. He rammed his key into the lock and elbowed the door open with such force that Iris flinched. This time, he didn’t stop to reassure her, or even to wait for her to catch up as he bounded up the stairs.

Four flights that, in his fed-up state, felt as steep as a mountainside, leaving him sweaty and winded by the time he reached his own floor. Letting himself into the apartment, Drew had a sudden, shocking impulse to slam the door, lock Iris out. When was the last time he’d been able to
breathe
without her jumping down his throat?

He caught himself, shaken by this unexpected fury. Leaning against the doorjamb, he forced himself to take slow breaths as he waited for her to round the last flight of stairs.

He watched Iris sweep past and throw herself onto his futon. The bed had been comfortable when it was just him sleeping on it, but now, with Iris staying over most nights, it felt cramped. The place was filthy, too, Drew noted, looking around him with disgust. Dirty plates were piled on the kitchen counter, newspapers and magazines strewn everywhere else. Wire hangers jammed the doorknobs—Iris’ clothes mostly—and he caught a distinct odor of rotting garbage. Why hadn’t he noticed before? Come to think of it, Iris spent more time here than at home—why hadn’t
she
?

“I’m sorry,” she said, seeming to wilt. “I guess I overreacted. I get scared sometimes, that’s all.” She picked at her thumbnail, looking childlike beneath the poster on the wall behind her—Pearl Jam at the Knitting Factory. Only three years since that concert, he recalled. Christ. What wouldn’t he give just to cut loose the way he had that night—yell, dance, throw himself into the wild meshing of limbs? An old man—that’s what he was becoming. Old and stuck. As if echoing his thoughts, Iris added plaintively, “I wouldn’t want you ever to feel … responsible for me.”

“Yeah? Well, even if that was the case, who elected
me
savior of the world?” He realized he was shouting. It wasn’t just Iris. Since Dad’s death he’d felt responsible for Mom, too. Not to mention his brother.

“Oh, Drew. I know it hasn’t been easy.” She sounded more like her sane, sensible self now—the Iris he loved best.

Drew felt the tension go out of him, and this time he spoke gently. “That doesn’t mean I see you as some kind of burden.” He walked over to the kitchen area, no bigger than a closet, with its two cupboards and a counter the size of a breadboard. He cranked on the tap, splashed water over his face.

“I just … I really
don’t
know what I’d do if you ever left me.” Her voice hovered just above the rushing water, so that mostly what he was aware of was its tone—high and anxious.

“Iris, I’m not going anywhere.”

“You left me once before.”

“Great—this is just
great.”
Drew spun around and slammed his fist down. Droplets of water sprayed out to form a damp radius on the chipped Formica. “You want to keep on until we
do
break up? Is that what you’re after?”

Iris’ head whipped up, her face screwed into something that made him think of an ancient baby, all sucking need and bright, shocked outrage. She sat there a moment, staring at him with those huge, injured eyes, as if he’d hit her. Then, without a word, she stood up and walked into the bathroom. The door clicked shut behind her.

A minute went by, then two. Drew listened for the flush of the toilet, or the sound of a running tap. Nothing. He waited a while longer before knocking.

“Iris? Are you okay?” He rapped gently on the heavy old door.

Silence.

He knocked again, harder this time. “Listen, Iris, I know you’re upset. Maybe dinner at my mom’s wasn’t such a good idea. You’re right, she
was
pretty uptight.” When she didn’t answer, he began to feel truly worried. It was a struggle to maintain an even tone. “You don’t have to come out—just let me know you’re okay. Iris?
Iris
?”

He pressed an ear to the door, but couldn’t hear a thing. Not even the click of the medicine cabinet. Jesus. What the hell was she
doing
in there? He found himself running down the mental list of what was in his medicine cabinet. Toothbrush. Right Guard. Shaving cream. Aspirin. An old prescription of Seldane for his hay fever. A packet of Gillette cartridges—

He stopped.
No, she wouldn’t. Not that. Not again.

Drew felt his worry slip over into panic.

“Iris!” he shouted. “Open up!”

The only sound was the faint creaking of footsteps overhead—the old lady in 6-F. Mrs. Casey, who’d recently confided to him that, last year, after she’d fallen and broken her hip, it had been a whole day—twenty-four hours and then some—before she was found and taken to the hospital.

A picture formed in Drew’s mind: Iris lying on the bathroom floor in a puddle of blood. Fear swelled in him, breaking in an icy wave that nearly brought him to his knees.

He hammered on the door. Hard enough to bruise his knuckles and send jabs of pain down through his wrists.

“Iris! If you don’t open up, I swear to God I’m going to kick this door in!”

He waited a moment, scowling down at the porcelain knob, willing it to turn. But it only seemed to taunt him with its fixed, sightless stare. Either she hadn’t heard him, or she didn’t care.

Drew stepped back, and with a low grunt drove the heel of his Timberland boot into the door’s raised center panel—an effort that succeeded only in jarring him to the bone and sending a flurry of paint chips spraying like misbegotten confetti.