Wait for Me (3 page)

Ben and Ester had the Sunday off, so I sat down in the window to drink my coffee and read the
New York Times
. After a few minutes, two men settled at the next table. They were talking loudly and I couldn't help listening.

“You're getting old Seth. I never thought I'd beat you. And by forty minutes? Unbelievable.”

“Oh give it a rest… it's fatherhood,” said the second man. “Jason makes damn sure that I never sleep. You're still living the damn single life.”

“I don't get that much sleep either, you know,” a boorish laugh followed this.

“Yeah, yeah, just wait until next week. Annabelle is taking the baby to her parents for the weekend, so I'll be pasting you as usual, mark my words.”

They made a toast.

“So Adam, tell me, what happened with the air hostess you met last week?”

At that point, I looked up from the newspaper and threw a disengaged glance towards their table.

“Good afternoon,” said Mr Adam Scott, catching my eye.

Stunned, I mumbled a ‘good afternoon' and immediately returned to the asphalt problem on Broadway.

“Didn't call her,” he answered.

“You didn't call? She gave you her number for nothing. There's no way I'd have missed out on that – she was a babe.”

“I didn't call her because she called me,” I heard him laugh. “Somehow she managed to get my number from the girl at check-in.”

“Aha!” laughed the friend. “So much for not doing her. By the way, Annabelle's friend Denise, you know the one with the incredible rack? She's always asking about you.”

I heard Adam Scott laugh. “Let her ask.”

Insufferable, I thought. Repelled by their arrogance, I decided to leave. I closed the newspaper and stood up.

“Goodbye,” said Mr Scott, as I tucked my chair under the table.

“Bye,” I said, listlessly.

As I made my way towards the exit, I heard Mr Scott's friend ask him who I was.

“She's from the garage where I keep my car,” he answered.

Pig, I thought. Asshole pig, I corrected.

Back in the street, I began to walk aimlessly. Walking was the thing I knew best – it was physical exercise and mental therapy. I discovered this in Nevada, the day that Paul beat me for the first time. I walked for twenty miles under the burning sun until I reached the next town, and then (feeling hopelessly guilty) I asked him to come and pick me up. This was when the cycle began. He would beat me and I would walk for hours. Then, without a word he would pick me up from the same fuel station, ask me to forgive him and drive me home. After a few tears and gifts, everything would go back to normal – at least for a few days.

I arrived on time at my brother's house and was greeted by a fifty-pound fur ball.

“This is Scrappy,” said Fred, holding him by the collar.

“Scrappy because he never leaves a scrap?” I mocked, stroking the manic dog, which had started to pee with excitement.

Miranda appeared in the doorway with a kitchen towel.

“Hey, I'm Miranda,” she said, leaning over the puddle.

“Sophie, the headache of a sister.”

“Oh my god you're a drag!” my brother croaked. “Get in here you moron.”

The house was completely different from what I remembered. For one thing it was much tidier, and it had a woman's touch now.

Miranda really was beautiful. She had long, flowing dark hair and voluptuous breasts. Yet, she was also slender, with a certain delicacy.

She worked in her family's grocery store. My brother had been looking for a bottle of Italian wine and asked her to help him choose. She recommended a 2008 Chianti. For fifteen days in a row, he went back to the store to buy another bottle of the same wine, at which point he declared his love. I sighed. There was something sweet about these hopelessly romantic stories. I always had the impression that couples like this would remember these moments, and in those memories their love for each other would be renewed again and again. The serenity of the evening was shattered when my brother asked the million-dollar question.

“Sophie, did he beat you?”

I looked at him, astonished. “What are you talking about Fred?”

“Sophie, you're not so good at hiding bruises.”

I bit my lip and stared down at the empty plate, holding my breath.

“For how long?” he asked.

Miranda stood up and went to occupy herself with the coffee machine, leaving me alone with him. I could feel his eyes but I couldn't bring myself to look up.

“For how long?” he demanded.

“A year”, I said, quietly.

“And why the hell didn't you tell me?”

I managed to look him in the eye. “Why do you think?”

He clenched his shaking hand into a fist.

“You need to make an appointment with Dr Richardson! You need to go back to therapy,” he demanded.

“Fred, no, I don't need it.”

“You do need it – you need to talk to someone. Don't keep it all inside like you always do.”

I looked at the ceiling and took another deep breath.

“Just give me time… I'm here now… and, I came back two days ago and—” I tried to speak but I was choking on my feelings. Eventually I told him:

“I'm not too well Fred… I'm never too well… I don't know what's wrong with me, and this whole thing has caught me off guard, and you can imagine what it's been like.”

A moment later the floodgates opened.

“Come over to the couch.” He lifted me up.

“Sorry, Miranda,” I sobbed.

“Don't worry Sophie,” she said, with a mixture of concern and embarrassment.

“What's wrong with me?” I croaked between sobs. “Why can't I find a normal one?”

“There's nothing wrong with you Sophie, you're just a magnet for assholes.”

“Fred!” Miranda shrieked.

“Sorry Sophie, I don't know how to fix it.” He put his hands on my cheeks. “But I promise you this – you're normal, and you're the sweetest person that I know.”

I sniffed and let out another cry.

“You can sleep here tonight, if you like,” Miranda said. “I'll prepare the couch for you.”

“Yes,” Fred said pre-emptively. “Sleep here and we'll call Dr Richardson first thing tomorrow morning.”

I nodded and inhaled deeply, trying to harness the emotion.

“You haven't called him yet?” Miranda asked.

I shook my head sadly, with a pang of shame and self-loathing.

“You want me to call Mark?” Fred asked. “Do you remember Mark Cameron, our old neighbor? He's working at Mount Sinai Hospital now.”

I shook my head again. “They'll heal. They just take a little time.”

“Have you put something on them?” Miranda asked. “I have some ointment if you like.”

“Come on Sophie, let us help you, please,” my brother said, through clenched teeth.

I silently followed Miranda to the bathroom.

I could not look at her as I removed my shirt. I didn't want to see her face when she recoiled.

I sat on the edge of the bathtub as she applied the cream, gently and silently.

I closed my eyes and found the nerve to speak. “Miranda,” I breathed, wincing with pain. “Tell him it's just a few bruises.”

“Of course,” she replied, brushing my cheek.

When I returned to the lounge, my brother was outside on the phone, and from the rage in his voice I knew who he was talking to. Frozen, I listened to him screaming the worst obscenities. As he came back inside he barely glanced at me. “Sorry, Sophie… had to,” he said, disappearing into his room.

Once the couch was set up, Miranda began to tidy the kitchen.

“Miranda, please, allow me. You check on my brother,” I requested. “Try to calm him down.”

Left alone, I cleared the table and loaded the dishwasher, before retreating under the blankets. Scrappy came to join me, to cuddle and console me.

I slept little and badly, but enough to re-energize and reflect on what had happened. Breaking my silence had lifted a tremendous burden. In the morning I got up, fixed the blankets and left a note to my brother explaining that I had gone to the parking lot to get the documents to re-enroll at college – and I did. By nine-thirty, I was officially a student again.

When I returned to my brother's office, he handed me a post-it note with an appointment time to go and visit Dr Richardson. It was at two-thirty. I had no desire to see this man, nor his chaise-longue, his bookshelves, or the painting behind his armchair. Nor did I want to face the therapy itself; a painful extraction of words.

With these images in my mind, I went back to sleep for a while. I was highly skilled at this – closing my eyes and letting it all melt away.

At two my brother dragged me out of bed and escorted me to Dr Richardson's office. Back again, and nothing had changed.

Fred insisted on talking to him first and I didn't argue. At such a moment, it was possible that his need was greater than mine. I listened to him recount the various events of my life, wondering if he had a notebook to monitor my misfortunes. Once he had finished, he asked whether I needed him to wait for me.

“No, if it's alright with you I'll make my own way back to the lot,” I replied, glancing towards Dr Richardson.

And at that, he left me to my dear old psychiatrist.

Thus began my treatment, which initially consisted of unintelligible sounds: ‘err', ‘well' and ‘dunno' were the favorites. But between college lectures and therapy sessions, I gradually rediscovered the parameters of a functioning human being. Faulty, yes, but functioning.

After a month, I was completely settled. Nevada was a distant memory and so were the bruises. My first exam was set for early December – sociology, the most expendable of the sciences.

Studying social phenomena turned out to be pretty boring. It consisted of reducing everything to some meaningless generalization, when I had always maintained that every individual was unique; that everyone lived according to different principles, underwritten by their own distinctive backstories.

Fred began to extend my freedom a little as well. Granted, only on Wednesday evenings and only for a few hours, then he would reel me back in around midnight to relieve him on the night shift.

I made another attempt to contact my old acquaintances, but they were too busy with work and family commitments to find time for a drink. The only one available was Steven, a gay guy who I had known for years. He was easy to get along with – he never passed judgment and he was consistently open and honest. But going out with him became boring after a while. He would drag me around gay clubs where I'd get propositioned by lesbians, or, at best, strange men who wanted threesomes.

One evening, I asked him if we could go somewhere more ‘traditional' and he reluctantly took me to a lounge bar where his brother Bob worked. He had barely taken a seat before finding himself a new acquaintance. Two cocktails later and they vanished together, kindly paying for my third cocktail as consolation. I sipped it and began to observe the local selection. They were all immersed in conversation, but their eyes were hopping from person to person, searching for something. Searching for what? A cheap fuck? A life partner? I thought about the words that Dr Richardson concluded with that morning: “Sophie, I believe you should try to avoid getting involved with anybody, at least until your feelings are a little more balanced.”

‘Balance,' I thought. ‘Common sense, rational decisions and sensible behavior.'

“Are you bored?” Bob asked, pouring a variety of spirits into a shaker.

“Nope,” I replied, smiling. “Just thinking.”

“About what?”

“About wise decisions,” I replied.

“Ah well, that settles it then,” he said, smirking. “No romance for a while.”

“Exactly.”

Between cocktails, we talked about music, films and nothing at all, until I returned to my hideaway, where I found Fred watching TV on the bed.

“Did you have fun?” he asked, as I passed through the door.

“Yeah,” I replied.

“Your face is telling me something different.”

“What would my ‘had-fun' face look like?” I asked, curious.

“Definitely not like that!”

I shrugged and smiled, a little coyly.

“There it is.”

The following days were as usual: college, followed by a session with Dr Richardson, followed by an early evening nap, and then CCTV monitoring overnight, where I would alternate between reading and watching television. The ritual became that Ben and Ester would call over at 10 p.m. and we would sit on the steps with a bottle of beer whilst they waited for their bus.

I had been studying hard for the following day's exam, so their evening visit was just what I needed. While I was chatting, I saw Mr Scott getting out of his car and leaving the parking lot, in the company of a beautiful woman in towering heels. I wondered whether this was the air hostess I'd overheard him talking about. I hadn't seen him, or should I say, spied on him through CCTV, since that day. He gave me a polite smile as he left. As soon they crossed the street, Ben announced, “He's always with gorgeous women.”

“Hmm,” Ester replied, in her thick Spanish accent. “I think gorgeous hookers would be more accurate.”

“Hookers?” I asked, puzzled.

“Sophie, what planet are you on? Women like that don't exist in real life. Those are high class prostitutes – very high class. You see it from a mile away, and they're always so different from one another.”

“They might be hookers, but they're hot as hell,” Ben said, raising his bottle.

Intrigued and also surprised by this possibility, I watched him enter his apartment building. I guess I'd never considered it, I had only seen the women on the monitors and the camera didn't pick up their features in detail.