Circling the Drain (5 page)

1.

Where Ellen stood on the Williamsburg Bridge it was calm and serene. She had strolled past bridge workers, past cement barriers and, balancing on a naked girder, she was protected from traffic by the J train hurtling past. All the cars and trucks were on the other side. She could hear them rumbling behind her but it was peaceful right there, where, like a ghost, she stood unnoticed.

Under the water it looked cool, uninterruptible, safe. Ellen imagined floating down there in a fetal tuck, drifting with the will of the river this way or that way, eyes closed, a warm ball.

Today Ellen had woken to the sounds of fighting and the smell of curry sweeping into her dreams. The difference had been obvious and inescapable from the moment she opened her eyes. After so many days that wiped each other away, each day erasing the last with the same stroke, the same tone, this day was sharp. This day was clear and light, its meaning unavoidable, like a ringing in her ears that she couldn't silence.

She made toast. She drank tea clouded with the last of the milk and she watched the sky. She scrawled a note for Billy:
Gone for a walk
. Then she tore it up. She tried again:
Gone off. Love, Ellen
. Then she tore that up and finally just put on her coat and walked out of the apartment and headed for Delancey.

She stood looking down at the water, cloudy like her tea, and the wind moved her hair around. How much would it take to jump? Would there be a moment of regret when she clutched at air while she fell, tumbling, spilling into the murky dark brown river? Or, perhaps she would dive cleanly, arcing through air to enter with a splash, leaving just a ripple behind, choosing to disappear.
What do I want?
Ellen thought.
What in this world do I want?

2.

Billy had said, Don't be such a prude, and Ellen wanted to die right then. The boy in his bed giggled and ducked his head into Billy's chest and Ellen felt the air smash out of her. She stood frozen for what seemed like a long time, halfway in the bathroom and halfway out. The blond boy looked up again and Ellen thought he was young and panicking. Then he giggled.

She'd come from another long day of job hunting and headed straight for the bathroom without even taking off her coat, talking all the while. As she charged through the door, she saw, out of the corner of her eye, Billy in bed.

I feel really good about this place on Second Avenue. They asked me to come back on Saturday to talk to the owner, so I think that's a good sign, and after all the places…I must have been to thirty places, she called to him, splashing water on her face. My feet are killing me.

And then she started out of the bathroom and into the
crowded room that was Billy's studio, and now was
their
studio, now that she'd moved all this way to be with him. Had sliced the country in half to be with him. And there in his bed, in
their
bed, was another body under the covers, was a skinny boy who'd been fucking Billy.

She stared at them, her heart shriveling, her stomach a fist, and Billy said, Baby, I didn't think you'd be home so soon.

All she could choke out was a raspy, It's almost seven, that would have to mean
fuck you
since those words clogged her throat.

Don't be such a tight ass, Ellen, you know this doesn't mean anything.

But he was still in bed, lying all cuddled up with a hand in the boy's silvery hair and Ellen's eyes floated out the window, past the sugar plant to the East River and the bridges standing with their legs apart.

3.

Later it is the air she will remember. The sharpness of it as she inhaled: crisp like paper. She could have been breathing paper. There was a rush of sound, like a train passing, or maybe like she was the train. Thick colors swirled and time became molasses as her legs slowly tumbled around behind her and then over her head. She thought that it was like being inside a spin-art toy. She was the blob of paint spreading thinly every which way, spindling in all directions, pulled flat, slow and hard. That was how she tumbled and then time caught up with itself and she dropped.

4.

In the hospital she cannot speak. There are wires in her arm and the whole room seems to be made of steel or aluminum. Everything looks metallic. Even the water she is given could be mercury, it tastes silvery and thick, but she swallows it silently. Her doctor has a huge head and seems to appear close to her face, which makes no sense to Ellen, but she knows she is fading in and out of consciousness, not able to stay in one place for very long.

She doesn't know his name and thinks of him as Ben:
a nice name, a nice doctor's name
. She stares at the dotted squares in the ceiling and watches the dots slide around, dancing, cheerleading. Sometimes she thinks they are trying to spell something. The ceiling is a Ouija board. She cannot move but her eyes are channeling answers and the ceiling struggles to help out: the dots continually sliding, slipping, oozing around above her.

Dr. Ben's face looms. She opens her eyes and finds it swimming close, his eyes inches from hers. Then he stands at the foot of her bed talking to a group of people whom she can not see, except for the tops of their heads.

Ellen can't understand him. She knows he is talking but his sounds are not connected to words or to the movements of his lips. She can almost feel the noise of his speech underneath her head but there is no meaning, even as she strains to connect it all to language. Then she feels her eyelids pull themselves down.

5.

Ellen defrosted when the boy lunged for the door. Without warning she reached for something, anything. Her fingers curled around an unwashed plate and she flung it in Billy's direction. It smashed on the wall behind him; he jumped but she was already reaching for something else: a book, which she sent hurtling towards him. Then she screamed and threw whatever was nearby and Billy yelled: Hey! and Fuck! and Ellen! Cut that out!
Bam
. Quit it!
Smash
. Ow!
Thud
. And then there was nothing left in her with which to throw.

All at once everything emptied out. A wail rushed up from deep inside and Billy wound his arms around her and tried to rock her. And the wail was enormous, it came up, unpiling from her gut, until she had no more sound and it was just air blown out.

Days and weeks followed where something in her rattled out of place. Where Ellen had once felt like a puzzle piece that fit to Billy, now she felt misshapen: broken or bent. Now she stiffened to his touch, was unsure of her surroundings. She began to believe that at any moment the very ground that held her could dissolve and she would be sucked down into empty space. Yet she couldn't leave him; she was unable to walk away, as though she, herself, might disappear without him.

There had been others, Ellen realized now, piecing together the stray stockings, not hers, that she had thrown away, the foreign toothbrush, the long straight black hair on the dresser top. Red lights that Ellen had gone speeding through. And now there was nowhere to go.

6.

One clear day, months before she found Billy with the boy, Ellen crossed the Williamsburg Bridge for the first time with an apple balanced on the flat palm of one hand. Her arms were outstretched: she imagined herself on a tightrope. She balanced the apple, believing at that moment that she would be able to heal all wounds, patch the cracks in her life, both seen and unseen, if she was able to make it from shore to shore immaculately. If she just walked perfectly across, her vision would clear and her life would rewind to a place where things made sense.

She placed heel to toe and held herself erect, chin up.
I can go from here to there. I will reach the other side and find perfection. Something will spill from the sky, erasing all this bleak, empty gray. I'll step off the end of the bridge and when I reach land I'll eat my apple, exhale, and rejoin the world already in progress
. Heel to toe, palm flat as paper. Heel to toe, palm flat as Montana. Heel to toe, palm flat as a cracker.

She could hear the messenger approaching, feel the grind of his wheels into the swaying bridge. As he rushed past her, his handlebar caught her wrist, sending the apple soaring up into the air where it hung and then plummeted to the lower deck of the bridge. It splattered and stayed, a smear of red and white. She stood, arms down, game forgotten, and watched it for a moment, then kept walking, arms by her side now, chin still up.

7.

It is dark and quiet when the angel comes. He has the horrible face of a gargoyle with silver eyes and huge luminous
feathered pale blue wings that twitch and stretch independent of his sparkly body. He stands still and his wings make quiet raspy noises that seep from under Ellen's head. She tries to open her mouth but her muscles rebel and instead her nose twitches. She tries to lift her right arm but her right eye blinks and then he is gone.

Ellen stares through the space he held and down a long dark hallway toward the nurse's station. All the lights are out and only candles, hundreds and hundreds of candles on the linoleum floor, along the walls, illuminate the hospital and then her eyes close.

8.

Ellen wants to speak. It is tiresome to lie still and float around on the sea of consciousness, immobile except for occasional prodding or turning or poking. She wants very much to say something, to ask a question or two of Dr. Ben. If not about her condition, then about the candles and the hospital, but she can't remember how. A nurse comes in and stands writing on a clipboard near the foot of the bed, then moves closer and fiddles with the bag of liquid suspended just out of sight to Ellen's left. Behind the nurse, the walls erupt into a grassy plain. A vine explodes with drunken purple flowers and snakes slowly towards her. Ellen tries to signal with her eyes, to raise her eyebrows, but she can already feel her lids slipping, her mind turning soupy. She fights it and pushes, squeezes deep inside at something to move, move, shake, wiggle, dance! And just as the nurse walks out, Ellen's left foot jumps! The sheets twitch but the grassy door clicks shut.

9.

How did it all begin? It began before New York. It began with Billy.

After sorting the mail, watering the plants, answering the phone, making travel reservations, tracking a package and typing the last of her boss's dictation, Ellen had gone to a bar. She'd walked out of the office and headed straight there. It was stale and empty, the perfect place to collect her thoughts after a long, dreary day. She didn't notice the place begin to fill until she saw the film crew come in, all in black jackets and baseball caps, sticking out in the bar crowd as overtly as if the jackets had read
Not From Around Here
, in their fancy stitching, instead of the names of production companies.

She had seen them shooting that morning when she got off the bus by the office, a street corner illuminated by white light and populated by scruffy people with walkie-talkies. She'd turned around to look, joined the crowd watching the crew wait around until she realized what time it was and had to run the last two blocks so she wouldn't be late.

She recognized a man down the bar to her left as the subject of all the hubbub. When she'd walked by he was surrounded by lights, his blond hair coiffed, his smile sparkling. He saw her glance and she looked away quickly.

Then he sent her a drink but she still wouldn't look at him. What could this beautiful man, this movie star, want with her? That he picked her, out of the whole bar full of music and bodies, seemed impossible, and so she didn't look up, just took the paper off the end of the straw and began to suck on her third Tom Collins. As she was moving the straw around to get the fizz from the bottom of the glass, he sat down on the stool next to her and stared. The band
took a break and the sudden decibel drop made Ellen's head feel like it was floating.

Thanks for the drink, she whispered, looking down at the glass.

Well…He drew the word out and Ellen felt herself hang on his pause. You're a fragile one, huh?

(Mouth dry. Heart banging loudly.) I guess.

Can we get another round here? He leaned toward the bartender who raised his eyebrows at Ellen. Or maybe he didn't. Things were oozing slightly on the edge of her vision.

I don't know Lairmont at all, he shouted over the dull roar of the band's new set. I'm just in town on a shoot. Maybe you could show me around?

At eleven o'clock at night?
Ellen thought, alcohol buzzing in time with the band.

Yeah. Okay. She reached for her coat.

 

In the morning her head hurt terribly and the movie star was in her bed.

I'm Billy, he said. And for a moment she couldn't quite place him.

10.

Billy stayed five days after the shoot wrapped and Ellen quit her job to follow him across the country. Oh to be fucked like that, to be loved and held and caressed and complemented. She drifted off at work. When her boss called her on the intercom, Ellen responded from deep inside a bubble. She was dreamy and languid, but she was leaving everything and couldn't think of what one was supposed to do in such a situation.

Billy helped her to sell her things, to stand at the Greyhound ticket counter and say One-way to New York City, please. She felt as though she stood differently, walked differently, sat differently, all in preparation.

Mina and the other girls in the office seemed surprised when she gave notice. But, during lunch on her last day, they gathered in the break room: a small, awkward group of secretaries and assistants, looking gaudy and tired in the fluorescent light. Linda had made a cake, and there was a bottle of champagne from someone else that was opened with great ceremony and then dribbled into plastic cups so that everyone might have a taste.

Toast! Toast! some of the women exclaimed and Ellen felt as though she were on a soap opera and about to do or say something dramatic, and then she realized she was leaving for New York City and none of it seemed real.