Stay (28 page)

And under his bed, a rope, looped again and again into a figure

eight, fastened with twine. A
rope
?

“Hurting? Hurting? You have no idea. This is killing me.

You’re killing me. You come into my life, you change it. Change

it
forever
. You’re everything to me. And then you just leave?” He

started to cry. Sob. “You have no idea what you’re doing.” He

rocked back and forth.

“Christian . . .” I said. I meant,
Please don’t
. I meant,
Get

yourself together.

“I told you, I can change. Whatever you want. What
eve
r.” His

shoulders were shaking. He was sobbing so hard. Howling. I put

my arms around him. I was standing up as he sat. He clung to my

arms. I could actually feel the wet of his tears through my shirt.

“It’s going to be okay,” I said. “You’ll be okay.”

“I’ll be
okay
?” He suddenly shoved me back, away from him.

“You’re probably okay now, aren’t you? You probably have already

moved on to the next one. Fucking some other guy already.”

All right. That was enough now. I stepped back. This could

maybe get out of control. It was getting out of control. “Of course

not,” I said.

“Right.” His face looked hollow; that’s the only way I can

think to describe it. His eyes were wild, but there was nothing

behind them. Some blazing fire at the entrance to a dark, empty

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cave. “You said you loved me. I guess that word doesn’t mean the

same thing to me as it does to you.”

“Yes it does,” I said. My voice was hoarse.

“What about our house?” We’d picked one out, the one that

would be ours someday, right across from Greenlake. “What

about coming with me to Copenhagen?”

“Christian,” I said.

“It all meant nothing. Because you just want to fuck other

guys. That’s what you want.” His face was turning red.

“No,” I said.

He stood up. He paced to the window and turned to look at

me. “You want to
fuck other guys
.”

“Christian, stop it,” I said.

“Don’t you?”

I wanted out of there.
Out!
The voice inside shouted.
Out now!

“I’m just going to—”

“You’re going to leave?”

My hand was on the door knob. “No,” I said. “I’m not going to

leave. I’m just going to go out for a little bit. I’ll go out and come

right back.” My voice—the kind you’d use with a man holding a

gun to a hostage. “We’ll just take a little break and I’ll come right

back.”

The sound that came from him, then - the sound of an

animal. It unfurled from his throat, a roar. “
Goddamn you!
” He

brought his hands to his face. He dug his nails in, scratching long

red tracks down his face. Long, red, horrible scratches, the same

ones on his arms. His own fingers destroying his own flesh.

“I’m going to . . . I’m just going to . . .” I grabbed the handle

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Deb Caletti

of the door and flung it open. I started down the hall, but he was

screaming. I ran. Somehow he was down on the floor. I was at

the top of the stairs. His hand was around my ankle. He gripped

me for a moment, and I struggled for balance. My shoe pulled

off. I was going to go down, down, but I broke free or he let go,

I don’t know.

“Go ahead and leave, you bitch! Go ahead! Just go!”

My legs were shaking, my arms, all of me. I ran down those

stairs. I looked up for only a second. He stood above me at the

rail, his mouth open, shouting. I can tell you, I didn’t hear that

beautiful accent then, or see those beautiful eyes. He didn’t seem

human to me.

Keys. Motion. I looked up again, just long enough to see him

try to lift himself over the banister. He was heaving his body up

by his palms on the rail.

I flung open the front door and ran down the drive. My hand

was shaking so hard I could barely get the key in the ignition.

Every part of me was shaking. I was so, so cold and shaking and

trying to drive and lock the doors and it was dark out. I locked

the doors because I didn’t know if he’d gone over that rail or if

he was right now picking up his own set of keys, heading to that

car on the street.

A car honked at me. I didn’t understand, and then I realized

my headlights were still off. In my rearview mirror in the dark,

all the headlights looked the same. His could be there some-

where among them. I was shaking and my heart was pounding

and something strange was happening, like I wasn’t in my own

body anymore, just watching this person who was me and not

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me. I was scared, he was behind me in his car. I didn’t want to

drive home because he would know I had gone there. He would

be in my driveway. He would be anywhere I went. I just drove. I

took streets I didn’t know so I could lose him. I saw the freeway

entrance and got on, started driving on I-90 east. I was scared he

was behind me all the way, even when I turned off thirty miles

later in this town called North Bend. There were a lot of trees

there, a huge, looming mountain. I had no idea where I was.

I pulled over the first chance I got. I didn’t know what to do. I

saw his leg going over that rail. I kept seeing it. Those scratches.

Him scratching his face. And then I remembered that rope. He

had a rope curled under his bed. It had never been there before.

I could imagine him holding it—the
yes
, the
no
. I needed to call

someone. His parents. I didn’t have his parents’ number. If they

went to their cabin, they could be gone all weekend, no matter

what Christian had said. What
had
he said? I opened my phone.

No reception. I had no idea where I was, and it was so dark out

there and windy, more windy than it got at home, huge dark trees.

I drove in the direction I thought the town might be. I was

safe, wasn’t I? I was safe if even
I
didn’t know where I was? He

couldn’t know I was here. I still felt he might be behind me. He

would jump out when I didn’t expect it. I needed a phone. The

part of me that had been looking out for me before now told me

what I needed to do. A phone, and fast. Were there even pay

phones anymore?

The town was a small, old town. An old logging town. An

old theater with a long, lit-up sign. A shoe store, a drugstore, a

place that sold ammunition, yeah, I was way out of the city. I’d

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Deb Caletti

been driving for a while. All the lights were dimmed. The streets

were still. I saw an Arco station at the end of the block. Like a gift

from God, a phone booth sat in the very outer corner of the lot.

A streetlight lit it up.

I got a handful of change from my purse. Even the handful of

change looked unreal. I was in some town holding a handful of

change. I was so cold and still shaking and so the change danced

in my palm. The coins didn’t make sense. I couldn’t seem to fig-

ure out what quarters meant or what dimes meant.

I was in a phone booth, and the trees were blowing and

branches were coming down. One landed on the hood of the car.

I only had one shoe. I could feel the bumpy asphalt under my

sock as I walked. I’d never even used a pay phone before, and I

tried to read the directions, but the words didn’t mean anything,

and then I realized I probably didn’t even need money for the

number I was calling. I picked up the handle, which was red and

felt greasy. I pressed the square silver buttons, which were cold.

I remember that, how those silver buttons felt.

9-1-1. The numbers felt monumental. Like a decision.

Something huge I could never go back from and Christian would

never recover from because it meant that everyone would know

the secret places that were between us. He was always afraid of

having people know and see what he had done. And so was I; I

was just as ashamed. Now I was opening all doors and all win-

dows and shouting for help and everyone would hear. There is no

privacy in a crisis. I was revealing more with those numbers than

I would ever likely reveal again, about him, but about myself, too.

I don’t remember what I said, or the other voice on the

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phone, only the magnitude of what I was doing. He could be fine,

right? An ambulance could scream up to his house, and all the

neighbors would come outside, and he could be sitting on his liv-

ing room couch, and he would hate me for what I had told people

about him with that call. His behavior was his biggest secret. He

would never understand why I pushed those buttons. But, the

stairs. The scratches. That rope. The desperation.

I spoke. I guess I did. And then I hung up. I thought I might

vomit. The ambulance would come. There would be red lights

spinning on his street, in front of his house. They would pound

on the door. They would take him against his will to a hospi-

tal. He’d be scared and pissed and confused and he would not

know what to do. He would be all alone. They would find out

if he was crazy. He would ride in some ambulance and sit by

himself in some room where there were boxes of rubber gloves

and syringes, and they would take his blood pressure and ask

him questions and a psychiatrist would talk to him, and this was

because he had loved me and I had made him love me like that.

I called my father. I had our car. So he came to get me with

our neighbor, Russ Mathews, who was a college professor at the

university. His wife was one, too. They had a son somewhere in

California. Russ was usually friendly and talkative, but he was

quiet that night. He dropped my father off and nodded to me

and patted my father twice on the shoulder, and now I knew that

Russ Mathews and his wife and maybe even the son in California

would know this secret of Christian’s and mine and would know

what I had done.

My father didn’t say anything. He held my hand. We drove

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Deb Caletti

down the street and he said, “Ammunition?” when we passed

that store, as if he couldn’t believe there were whole stores for

stuff like that, as if he couldn’t believe we were in some town

right then with such stores.

He wrapped me in blankets when I got home and brought

warm socks, and then I had to shove the blankets off in a hurry

to throw up.

I came back and he wrapped the blankets up tight again. He

made tea, of course. I wanted the blankets over my face. I wanted

to stay in there and not come out ever.

“What will happen to him?” I was so afraid to know. I was

scared they would let Christian go and I was scared they would

keep him. I couldn’t imagine where he was or what was happen-

ing to him.
Him
was also still this guy that I had loved. The guy

who had brought me four bottles of ginger ale when I was sick

once because he didn’t know what else to do. The guy who loved

the way the air smelled when it was about to snow.

“I think they’ll take him to Harborview,” my father said. “I’ll

call over there and find out what’s going on.”

He got out the big phone book in the kitchen cupboard. It

seemed like it had all the answers and no answers, that thick book

with yellow pages. He went into his office and shut the door, and

that was fine. I tucked the blankets over my face. The shivering

had stopped but I was filled with the nausea of horror. I still

didn’t feel like me in my own body. I didn’t even know where
me

was. Those were my hands on that quilt. I thought of my shoe,

a brown ballet flat, sitting on the stairway landing of Christians’

house. I wished I could get it. I so much wanted it back with me,

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where it belonged. I felt bad for it there, anxious for it, as if it had

been taken prisoner.

My father reappeared. He looked tired. He ran his hands

through his hair and I saw the gray underneath. He held his

glasses in one hand.

“Don’t tell me,” I said. “Tell me.”

“Fucking idiots,” he said. “They let him go.”

I started to cry. “Why? Why did they let him go?”

“They said he wasn’t a danger to himself. Someone tries to

leap over a goddamn stairwell just wants to get down in a hurry?

Scratching himself? A person’s got to be holding a gun to their

head or someone else’s before something can be done? Christ.”

My father went into the kitchen. I could hear the water run-

ning, a pot being noisily freed from the others out of the cup-

board, a spoon against a cup.

He reappeared. “We need more than tea.” He handed me a

mug, and kept one for himself. Hot water, whiskey, honey. He’d