I’ll Become the Sea (12 page)

I watch
Law and Order
on television for three weeks straight. At night I let myself cry. After six years together, he let me go with a phone call. That is what I held on to all this time. That is what I thought I was worth. He hasn’t called again, and I don’t expect him to. I thought I had been shoring up loyalty against a future crisis, but no. There was no future Ben. Only the present, the real and obvious present, which everyone could see but me.

If I had any integrity at all I would have ended it when he didn’t come home to help me, when he blamed me for the fall. Instead, like a child, I turned to David. I let him put me back together as if I didn’t know how to do it myself. I ruined it, whatever it could have been. I was everything Ben accused me of. Needy and irrational and totally out of control.

David was angry when I left him at the beach. I hear his voice—his fury and frustration when he said my name—and all I want to do is cauterize my heart, to burn it closed and seal it off so I never have to feel again. He calls every day and I let the phone ring. He doesn’t leave a message.

I write a letter to tell him I’m sorry, to thank him for helping me, to tell him I am going away. The hearing is next week. I don’t know when I am coming back.

I walk out to town to find a postal box. I feel the breeze against my face, the rocky texture of the pavement under my feet, the brush of light clothes against my skin. The green of trees against blue sky.

I reach the intersection at Main Street, pausing at the flow of traffic back and forth along the road. I am fumbling for the letter in my bag when I see David’s truck. He’s parked outside the book store. I stop. I can’t pass the store window and I don’t want to turn back, to go home. I can’t decide what to do, so I stand there, waiting. Watching for him.

He comes out of the store carrying a small bag. His face is tan and unshaven, mottled by the cloudy light. I put my hand to my throat, taking a step backward.

He walks around to the side of his truck, unlocking and opening the door. He climbs in and sits there, bringing his hands up to the back of his neck and holding them there for a long moment. He sees me in the rearview mirror and waits, watching me. He reaches for the door, and I turn away, almost running, disappearing around the corner before he can call my name.

*  *  *

“I can’t do it, Sarah.”

“Yes, you can.”

“He won’t want to see me.”

“Are you serious?”

“I fucked it up. I gave him a thousand mixed messages. I let him take care of me and then…”

“And what? What is so bad about that?”

“Why did I stay so long with Ben, Sarah?”

“I don’t know.”

“What is wrong with me?”

“Nothing is wrong with you.”

“Why did I let myself love someone who didn’t even want to know me, who didn’t really want to be with me? It’s not normal. It’s not healthy. Why would David want to be with someone like me? I’m a wreck. If I had any sense at all I would have seen my relationship for what it was and ended it. I wouldn’t have needed David to come along and show me what I was missing. But I didn’t do that. I let it go on. And then I didn’t even have the decency to break up with him before I…”

“Jane. You fell in love with someone.”

“Don’t say that.”

“You fell in love and it turned out messy and for once in your life you did the wrong thing, and so what? Go to him and fix it.”

“I can’t fix it. He’ll never respect me now.”

“Try.”

“Sarah. What if he…if he…”

“He’s not going to turn you away.”

“How do you know?”

“I don’t know. I just believe it. That’s why it’s called a leap of faith. Look. You stayed with Ben because you were scared of exactly this. This risk. Go to David. Whether he takes you up on it or not, at least you can say you’re the kind of woman who goes for it.”

“Oh, God.”

“You can do this, Jane.”

*  *  *

I take the boardwalk along the ocean, walking by streetlight with the sound of waves alongside me. The sea wind blows my hair into my face, my mouth.

He will wonder what I am doing at his door in the middle of the night. I am crying but it feels incidental; it comes from me in great long gasps. I reach his house and stand outside.

The light in the living room is on. He sits by the window playing his guitar quietly without the amp, a low song, sad and calm and unbearably slow. I stand and listen, hearing him play in my mind long after he stops. I notice the window is empty only after I see him coming toward me, stepping over the grass to the driveway.

“Jane?”

“Hi…”

“What are you doing here? Are you okay?”

His beard makes his eyes a painful, searing blue. It is past midnight. I have been walking for hours.

“Yes. I’m okay. I just—I went for a walk.”

“Well. Do you want to come in?” He gestures toward the house.

If I want to, I can turn back now. I nod and follow him in through the back door.

He goes to the stove. “I’ll make you some tea.”

“Thank you.”

My throat is dry. I can barely speak. “Can I have some water actually?”

He brings me a glass and I drink it, gulping it down. I sit down at the table.

“You’re out of breath.”

“I was walking fast.”

“Where were you going?”

“I don’t know. To see you.”

“You don’t know?”

“David…” I should leave. Right now. I can’t seem to get my breath and he is so close to me in the kitchen, the steam from the teakettle rising around him. “I heard you playing. It sounded…beautiful.”

He is wearing an old T-shirt and dark jeans. He is barefoot.

I know every contour of his face. I see the struggle there, the warring impulses. I don’t know what to say.

“You were listening to me play?”

“Yes.”

He takes the kettle off the stove, pouring steaming water over the tea. Ginger plum, fresh loose leaves. He brings the tea to me, setting down the delicate cup and saucer. He sits down on the opposite side of the table, watching as I blow against the steam to cool it, as I take a cautious sip.

“I wrote that song for you.”

The teacup in my fingers rattles against the plate. I release it, closing my eyes against a sudden flash of tears.

I shouldn’t have come. I should have sent the letter like I’d planned and gone away while I still could. He must be able to read the need all over my face. It will overwhelm him, push him away from me.

He smiles at me—a gentle, open smile. My eyes begin to spill over.

Taking my hand across the table, he runs his thumb over the back of my wrist, down to my fingers, stopping at the place where the engagement ring used to be. “I’m sorry.”

I shake my head. “It should have happened a long time ago.”

“I’m still sorry.”

“You’re not angry?”

“Angry? No.”

Staring at the table’s clean wood finish, at his hand in mine, I can’t meet his eyes.

“At the beach. That night. You said…”

“I was angry then. No, not that. Frustrated. Mad at myself. I shouldn’t have shouted at you.”

“No, you had every right. I’ve done nothing but…”

“Stop.” He squeezes my hands. “I messed this up too. If I were any kind of man, I would have let you be. Instead I just kept coming at you, confusing you, insinuating myself…”

“All you did was try to be a friend to me.”

“I don’t want to be your friend.”

At this I do look up. I look at him like a child expecting to be hit.

He pulls me closer across the table. He takes my forearms into his hands. I feel the heat of his body rush into me.

“I want more.”

I start to tremble. He tightens his hold on me.

“Jane.”

He rises and edges around the table, keeping his hand on me. I can’t move. He comes up behind me, wrapping his arms around my chest. He bends down over me. I can smell him. The sweet, rich scent of him.

He lowers his mouth to my bare shoulder, breathing me in.

“God,” he says.

I feel him running his lips against me, the soft brush of his beard. I keep still, holding my breath. Something hot and fluid courses through my chest and belly, my thighs. I feel his teeth, grazing the curve of my neck. He bites me there, quick, hard, and I breathe in sharply, gripping the sides of the chair.

I rise, turning to him, pushing the chair backward, knocking it over. He drives his hands into my hair.

His heat shoots through me, the force and taste of his tongue. He kisses me like he is starving. He pushes me into the shadows of the room, up against the wall.

It happens fast. There is no time to think. It is as it was before, on the beach. The frenzy. The frantic need.

He begins to undo the buttons of my blouse, stumbling, breathing against my throat. “Is it okay?”

“Yes.” I take his face in my hands. I kiss him, pouring into him everything I feel and can’t say.

He opens my shirt, pushing it aside, peeling it down my arms and letting it fall to the floor. His knuckles trail down the front of my body, from my collarbone, between my breasts, down the curve of my belly. He loops a thumb down the top of my bra, releasing one hard brown nipple.

He lowers his head. With a sure, slow stroke he licks me there and I gasp, pressed against the wall. He reaches behind my back, unclasping my bra, yanking it down. He pulls off my loose skirt with one quick movement.

A moment ago I sat across a table from him drinking tea. Now I stand before him, naked, shaking. He lifts me. I wrap my legs around his hips, feeling the rough denim against my bare thighs.

He carries me to the bedroom, to his bed. I sink down to its edge, my hands already unbuttoning his jeans, pulling them down, just enough so I can reach for him. I want him in my mouth, my lips around the hard, hot length of him.

I can’t think, and I don’t want to. I am for once without doubt, without hesitation.

He grips my shoulders for support. I take him in my hands, over his partly pulled down jeans, forcing him deeper into my mouth. Winding my hair in his fist, he shudders, struggling to stand.

He pulls me up on the bed beneath him, dragging his mouth down my body, licking the salt from my skin. He opens my legs. His breath fans against me. He finds me with his tongue.

The sound I make is something I don’t recognize. His lips move over me. He is relentless, spreading my legs apart, taking me apart until nothing in me is defended. And when he feels me yield to him, all of me, he breathes into me, holding me in his arms, pressing his tongue against me until I come for him, my hands in his hair, my thighs against his face, my body wet and throbbing beneath him. I reach for him, hauling him to me, up between my legs.

“David. Please. David.”

He finds a condom in the bedside drawer and rips it open. I help him roll it on, taking him in my hand. Sliding my hands into his jeans, I tear them down the coarse muscular length of his legs.

He pushes me back onto the bed. His hand clasps the underside of my knee, pulling my leg open and up along the outer plane of his thigh. His eyes are soft, on fire. He enters me. Slow, and deep, the vibration of the moan I can’t contain running down my belly and into his body.

I can’t breathe. I dig my fingernails into his back, arching against him. He fucks me, hard, his face against my throat, his arms gripped tight around me. I taste the salt and tang of his body in my mouth, the scent and heat of him enveloping me, pulling me upward.

I am rising—my body, my voice, my breathing all building—pushing up against him. I start to come again around him, shuddering, raw, open, and the wave breaks over him too, taking him apart as it took me apart.

David gathers me against him, against the fierce, strong pressure of his heart. “Jane.” He holds my face to his, breathing into my hair. “I love you.”

I wake just after dawn. David is behind me, holding me, his arm thrown over my waist, his breathing quiet and even against the nape of my neck. A dark blue comforter drapes our bodies. An acoustic guitar stands upright in the corner. The window shades are open, pouring morning light into the room. David’s stomach cups my spine; his thighs line the back of my legs. I turn into his arms and he shifts, onto his back, pulling me in his sleep against him.

Gently, I untangle myself, easing out of the bed. A worn flannel robe hangs on a hook at the door. I slip it on and go to the kitchen to make coffee.

Grinding the beans, hoping the sound won’t wake him, I set the machine to drip. Our teacups are still on the table. I run my fingers over the porcelain, thinking of his lips against my neck. Blood rushes to my face.

In the bathroom under the sink I find an unopened toothbrush and brush my teeth, catching my face in the mirror. My cheeks are flushed, abraded, my lips swollen. I run my fingers over my mouth. Where David’s mouth has been. I look away, shut off the light. Coming out the door, I feel a presence before I see him and jump back, reaching for the door frame.

“Good morning.” His chest is bare. His voice is gravelly with sleep, his hair disheveled. “You found my robe.”

“Yes. I hope it’s okay that I borrowed it.”

“It was my dad’s.”

“Oh. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…”

“Come here.” He reaches out his hand. I take it, and he pulls me in. He wraps me in his arms.

“Hi.” He smiles against my hair. “You smell good.”

“I smell like you.”

“You smell like Jane.”

He takes the lapels of the robe in his hands, running his fingers down the edges to where the belt ties together at my waist.

“Is it okay? That I borrowed it?”

“No.”

My eyes flash up to his face, to his gleaming eyes.

He yanks the belt loose. “Take it off.”

He slides his hands inside the flannel, his warm hands, over my hips, opening the robe, exposing me. He pulls me against him.

I react out of instinct, from a place in myself I am only beginning to know. I kiss him with an urgency and heedlessness that stuns me.

He groans, dragging me down to the floor, pulling me on top of him. His heat is vicious, scorching. My fingers spread open over his chest. He holds my hips in hands.

He sits up, to face me, to embrace me. He moves in rough surges inside me, his arms around me, running his hands over my face, into my hair. I think of all the moments in the past months I have longed for this, for him. To be held by him like this, filled with him. I wrap myself around him, holding him tight against me.

“David,” I say, into his neck. “David.”

*  *  *

In the stillness of the room I hear the whirring of a fan, the steady beating of his heart, his even breathing. My hand is on his face. “I like your beard.”

“Yeah?”

“It’s very sexy.”

“You think so? Thank you. Everything about you is sexy.”

“No it isn’t. You’re blinded by…something.”

“No, Jane.”

I lie draped along his side, tucked under his arm, between the back cushions of the couch and the length of his warm body.

He turns his face to mine, sliding his hand along the curve of my neck to my cheek. He runs his fingers over my skin. “I see with complete clarity.”

“Oh, yeah? That’s quite a claim.”

“It’s true.”

I trail my hand down his arm, to his belly, his hip. I hitch my leg over his, burying my face in his chest. “What else do you see?”

He pauses, clearing his throat. “You seem ill at ease.”

I push up onto my elbow. “Really? I’ve never felt more relaxed in my life.”

“Well, good. You definitely look more relaxed than I’ve ever seen you.”

“Three days of sex will do that to you.”

He smiles, studying me. I don’t like the way he looks at me. “You’re worrying about something, though. What is it?”

Hanging my legs over his knees, I sit up. “Nothing. I’m fine.”

“You can tell me.”

“I know I can. I just…I don’t know what it is.”

“Is it your dad?”

“Why do you ask that?”

“The hearing. You told me it was in July. I assume it’s coming up pretty soon.”

“It’s next week.”

“Oh, God.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Why do you keep asking me why I’m saying things? I’m just asking about it. I’m concerned for you.”

I stand, pulling the T-shirt he’s loaned me down over my legs.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah. I’m fine. I just…I don’t really want to talk about it, okay?” Crossing my arms over my chest, I lean against the wall beside the couch.

“Why not?”

“David.”

“Why? I’m just trying to help. I’m trying to see how you’re feeling.”

“I’m not feeling anything. I wrote the statement he asked for. I’m going to the hearing next week. I’ll call the family of the man he…There’s nothing to feel.”

“You wrote the statement? What statement?”

“The statement. That he asked me for. That says he’s done well in prison, he goes to meetings, he doesn’t drink anymore. That I think they should release him.”

“Do you think that?”

“Do I think what?”

“Do you think they should release him?”

Sighing, I sit down on the floor. I don’t want to look at him.

“Jane.” David swings his legs off the couch and sits forward, facing me. “Do you think he should be released?”

“It’s been twelve years.”

“So?”

“He’s been in that place for twelve years.”

His voice is gentle. “He killed someone, Jane.”

“Do you think I don’t know that?”

“No. I think you know that better than anyone. Which is why I don’t understand why you’d try to convince them to let him out. You’ve been through enough. You shouldn’t have to be your father’s defender.”

“Have you ever been to a prison?”

“No.”

“Do you know they strip search the inmates after every visit? Just in case you’ve passed them something. Strip search. Twice a week. For twelve years. That’s not even talking about the other inmates. About the guards. Who control everything you do, who are nice to you or shit all over you depending on whether or not they’re having a bad day. There is no dignity there. There’s no rest. He’s going crazy.”

“He killed someone.”

“I said I know that. Do you think I’m not thinking about that man’s family every single fucking day?” I cover my face with my hands. “I’m sorry.”

He comes to sit beside me. “No, don’t be sorry. I should back off.”

“No. It’s okay. You’re right. I don’t want you to think I don’t believe he should be punished. It’s just that…”

“What?”

“He’s not the only one at fault. You know that. He wouldn’t have gone out that night if I…”

“Jane, shut up.”

“What?”

“Don’t even tell me he wouldn’t have gone out that night if it hadn’t been for you.”

“He wouldn’t have. I sent him out. I told him to go.”

“Because he was about to kill your mother!”

“He wouldn’t have killed her. He loves her.”

“Jane.”

“He wouldn’t have. I could have stopped him. I could have sent him to another room for God’s sake, instead of out of the house.”

“To another room? Like he’d been a bad boy and you’re putting him in time-out?”

“You don’t understand what it was like.”

“You think you were the grown-up in that house. I understand that better than anyone.”

I shift to face him, bringing my knees up to my chest, locking my arms around them. “Maybe you think you understand, because of your mom.”

“No, I don’t think I do. I do. You believe this was your fault. It wasn’t. He pulled a knife on a man in a bar, he looked him in the eye, and he shoved the knife into his chest. He brought that knife with him. He used it. While you were cleaning your mother up and waiting for him to come home.”

“David.”

“Don’t do this.”

“I have to do it.”

“You don’t.”

“You don’t know my mother. You don’t know what she’ll do.”

“She’s safer without him.”

“How do you know that?”

“I…I read about it. About him. I looked up the articles.”

“You what?”

“I looked up the articles. I wanted to know what happened to you.”

“You had no right to do that.”

“They were public records.”

“Yes. Maybe. But you should have asked me. Maybe I…maybe I didn’t want you to know those things. Maybe I wanted to tell you myself.”

“You weren’t telling me.”

“So that means you can go looking into my private business?”

“It was available online. It took five minutes to find.”

“You had no right.” I stand, moving as fast as I can to the bedroom. I find my purse, my clothes. Before he can stop me I go to the bathroom and dress. I come out, brushing past him, heading for the door.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m leaving.”

“Wait. I’m sorry. Please don’t go like this.”

I turn to face him. “You’re not sorry. You’re not sorry at all. You think you have a right to dig into my family’s past, to tell me what to do. You have no idea what you’re talking about. You weren’t there. Nobody was there. It was just them and me. I’m doing what I have to do!”

He grabs my arm. I wrench it free.

“Let me go!”

I open the door.

“Jane!”

I run down the driveway to the street.