Eat Your Heart Out (20 page)

I look at him and smile. I've rehearsed this so many times, but every word I practised just spins around my head and can't find its way out of my mouth. Thoughts and words get caught in my throat, stuck between my tongue and my teeth.

“When did you get glasses, Mike? I didn't know that you had glasses.”

“Yeah, the doctor told me I needed them.”

“I like them.”

“Thanks.”

I can tell he's waiting for me to start. He keeps looking away from me and fixing his hat. He's nervous. He doesn't know why I've asked him here.

He's finished eating and I haven't touched my food.

“Just say it, Grace,” I tell myself.

He looks up at me, and I can tell he's trying hard not to see me. He doesn't want to see me. Not the way he used to see me, as the girl that he loved. I don't want to tell him everything anymore. Not if he's not really looking at me.

“Why did you need to talk to me, Grace?” There's anger in him. It's subtle but it burns under the surface.

“You just have to tell him, that's all you have to do,” I tell myself.

There's a pause, and he's still looking at me, but his face is so genuine now. Looking at him I see his primordial cells, everything I've lost.

“I miss you. Every second. I think about you all the time, and I don't want to, and I ignore it but I can't stop myself. It just gets worse and worse, Michael. Everywhere I look I see you. I see us, and for the tiniest moments it's not true, and everything didn't get all fucked up, and we still are the way we were, the way we're supposed to be. And it wasn't this bad at first. I was okay, at first. But it gets worse, and I feel . . . everything feels so wrong without you. I don't know what to do without you. I'm so fucked without you. I'm so angry at myself because I should be in New York and I should be painting . . . but I couldn't be there and I can't do anything that I used to without you. There is such a space everywhere and it follows me, and it's what you used to fill.”

I've said it. The words leapt out of my mouth, across the table, and they sink on him. He doesn't say anything back.

“I don't know what you want me to say here, Grace.”

“I don't want you to say anything.”

I ruined it all. I didn't say that right. I should have said that differently.

“You broke up with me, Grace.”

“I know. I know I did. I felt like I had to . . . I don't think I wanted to. I made mistakes. I know I make it hard. I know that I did things wrong.”

“I wanted to work it out. I tried so many times to make it better. You didn't want to make it better. You didn't want . . .”

There's a vulnerability now, though, and he's letting himself look at me, and really see me for the first time this afternoon. In this moment, I know that everything that was once between us still exists. It feels real between us, we're connected again. Like we're just Grace and Mike again.

“I still love you, Mike.”

“Why are you doing this now? When I knew things were ending, when I knew things were going to end, even before everything happened . . . it's been so long now. I had to work so hard.”

“I know it was hard. It was for me too. But it's not getting easier, and maybe if it's not getting easier then it wasn't supposed to have happened in the first place.”

“I don't know.”

“What don't you know?”

We sit across from each other just a few feet apart, but I feel like there's an ocean between us. I'm looking at him and he's looking at me, but neither one of us speaks.

He looks down and away from me for a very long time. He's struggling.

“There's someone else, Grace.”

“What?” I ask, and everything blurs around me. I want to double over. I can't see anything. I just burn. Burn, under the white hot heat.

Does he love her?

“Do you love her?”

“I don't know. I think so . . . I want to. Grace, don't cry.”

“I'm not crying.”

“Please don't cry, Grace.”

“But what about us? We were so happy, Mike.”

“That's the way we were.”

“What does that mean? What about now?”

He won't say anything.

“So, for you, this is just . . . done?”

“I can't do it all again.”

All I can see is white light. Blunt, burning, blistering, white light.

“I'm sorry.”

But it's too late.

That light is searing.

My dad is
in the front room.

One afternoon, not long ago, I saw a man I thought might be him, sitting on a patio. I couldn't be certain because I could only see his back. He was balder than I thought. He looked smaller and older. This man in a red sweater, sitting all alone, he seemed so kind. Only as I walked closer did I realize that it was my dad. The differences between the new man I saw and my dad disappeared, and I could just see my father.

For the briefest of moments, I had seen him with new eyes, as someone who didn't know him would see him. To look at someone you are so familiar with as a stranger is a moving experience. Especially when the first things you notice are good things. Since that day, I have felt closer to my father than ever before.

He's been a silent observer this summer. I don't see him very often, but he never makes me feel stupid for being different. Maybe I'm not different to him.

Today I can tell he knows there is something very wrong, but he doesn't ask me anything.

I collapse in his arms, and I cry in a way that I haven't before, and probably will never again.

“Don't tell anyone,” I say.

He won't.

My brush touches
the canvas. Grey glides up and down the white surface.

At first the darkness looks mysterious and beautiful, in silhouette. Filling it in, layering the darkness, is more complicated.

It is sharp and unforgiving, but I can still see a gentle kindness in the shadows.

Cheryl lies naked and cold
in her bed.

She has just turned twenty-six and is still drunk from her birthday party. She didn't think she would be sleeping alone tonight.

Her phone rings. She picks up at 4:45
AM
, even though she shouldn't, because how would she know who was calling? “Caller
ID
takes the fun out of phone calls,” that's what she always said. But really, she likes thinking it's him calling, and not being reminded that he rarely does.

Hoping it's him now, the man who left her alone tonight, she answered the phone.

“Hi.”

“Cheryl-Lee?”

“Yes?”

A woman. She doesn't recognize the voice.

“It's Aunt Lori.”

Cheryl-Lee sits up. Why is Aunt Lori calling so late? Why is Aunt Lori calling at all?

“Aunt Lori. Hi.”

Cheryl-Lee slurs her words. She focuses on sounding sober.

“Sweetheart, I'm sorry for calling so late. I'm sorry it's so late.”

“What's . . . what is it?”

“Your mama's dead.”

Nothing moves in Cheryl-Lee's body.

“What?”

“Your mama . . . she's dead.”

Cheryl-Lee says nothing.

“Heaven took her, took her we think yesterday.”

Cheryl-Lee still says nothing.

“Earl found her in the apartment just past midnight. We kept calling her and she wasn't picking up, so I made Earl go. He found her . . . and I'm sorry, Cheryl-Lee.”

Aunt Lori starts crying.

Cheryl-Lee doesn't.

“Was she drinking?” Cheryl-Lee asks.

Aunt Lori says nothing for a moment.

“I don't know.”

“Okay.”

Cheryl-Lee turns her head and looks around her apartment. It's dark and she can only see shadows. I have no idea what to do, she thinks. What am I supposed to do?

“Sweetheart, I am so sorry,” Aunt Lori says between soft cries.

Ask about the funeral.

“When is the funeral?”

“Monday, we think Monday.”

“Okay. I'll take a train out Sunday morning.”

“I was hoping, I was hoping . . .”

“What?”

“You can stay with me, okay? Me and Earl, we have that extra bedroom, so you can stay here. But you need to stay for a few days, I'd think. Your mama had a lot of stuff we'll need to look through. So I was hoping you'd come earlier. Probably stay for a week, but don't worry about getting a hotel. You'll stay here.”

Fuck, a week?

“Uh, I don't know, I'd need to get off work and . . .”

“I'd think they'd understand, Cheryl-Lee. They would at a time like this.”

Cheryl-Lee is too drunk to think of another way to get out of going home for a week.

“Okay. When do you want me to come?”

“Tomorrow.”

Fuck, thinks Cheryl again, only this time the word vibrates through her whole body. Tomorrow. I have to go home tomorrow.

“I'll call you when I'm on the way to the station.”

“I'm so sorry, sweetheart.”

Aunt Lori cries a little harder. Cheryl still doesn't know what to do.

“Okay,” she says.

Aunt Lori says goodbye and that she loves her and apologizes once more for calling so late.

She lies down. She's naked and cold and drunk.

“Mama's dead,” she says out loud.

They haven't spoken in ten years.

At dawn, Cheryl-Lee
is still naked, cold, alone.

She had called him right after she found out, two hours ago. “I'll be there right away,” he said.

When the birds started, she got up, made coffee, got dressed, and started packing. She threw whatever wasn't dirty into a small suitcase she had bought for a vacation to the West Coast that she and Ben would take. They never did.

After she filled it with the few conservative clothes she owned, but never wore, she undressed and went back to bed.

There was no way she could face leaving until he showed up. No way in hell.

And that was the difficult part. He would show up. She knew he would; he always did.

He was there, but just barely, and so Cheryl was never forced to let him go. And yet, she couldn't let him in either because he wasn't really hers. He was a greying apparition, made only of wispy smoke.

But she held him with her teeth, clinging to him as he drifted away, clinging to the hope that he might change, chewing on what was never there to begin with. Every time she was about to let go, he could tell. He dragged her back, kicking and screaming.

It was violent, their love.

Finally, when the sun peeked through the sheers on her window and light fell onto her bed, making her warm, he showed up.

“I'm sorry.”

“Where were you?”

He looks at her. His clothes are wrinkled. He looks guilty.

He was with his wife.

“I'm sorry,” he says again.

“There is no reason to be sorry.” Some things are too far gone to be sorry about.

She rolls over on her worn sheets and turns her back to him. He moves past her suitcase and the mess, lying with her on her bed. He smells like a perfume she'd never wear. Cheryl feels tired on the inside.

“Are you okay?” he whispers.

“Yeah . . . I don't know.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Yeah.”

“What happened?”

“I don't know yet. She was probably drunk.”

He holds her.

“I don't want to go home,” she says after a while.

“I know.”

“I just can't . . . I don't know if I can do it.”

“I know.”

“Will you come with me?” she asks.

He doesn't say anything. He just breathes next to her.

“I'm serious, Ben. Please come with me.”

He shakes his head.

“Why not?”

“Because you know I can't. I can't do that.”

“Right.”

She says nothing. He says nothing. They lie together.

“Can you do me a favour?” she asks.

She feels him nod against her, his stubble on her bare shoulder.

“Tell me that you don't love me.”

“What?”

“Just say it, Ben. Just tell me.”

“You know I can't say that.”

It's been two years. Two fucking years, thinks Cheryl, and he won't even be my date for my mother's funeral.

“Don't laugh, Cheryl.”

“Why?” He is under her skin, crawling around. “Please come with me,” she whispers.

He looks at her. He's more wrinkled than he was when they first met. He's older, fatter, in some places different but unchanged. This will never change, she thinks.

He will always let her down, and she will always set herself up for the fall.

“I can't,” he says.

“Then kiss me like you missed me.”

Cheryl knows that these are the moments, after your mother has died and your relationship is ending, when you should cry. But she doesn't feel like crying. She doesn't feel anything at all.