You never thought you’d be a cheater.
“We have to stop,” you told Erik the last time. It’s been over for weeks now, but you will never be clear of him, of it.
And now you walk along Queen Street with Lucas, popping in and out of the tiny galleries that have been sprouting up there, places you both might get a start showing your work. The neighborhood is edgy, scruffy, and replete with homeless people of the mentally ill variety.
“Art and the mentally unstable,” Lucas says. He is holding your hand and smiling at the spring sunshine. “It’s an appropriate mix, don’t you think?”
You laugh and he leans in to kiss your cheek and you blink at the pain his sweetness causes.
You have to leave him. You don’t want to, but you are false. False, false, false—you don’t deserve him.
But you keep giving yourself one more week, one more day, another hour before you have to do it. You keep hoping to wake up to it all being okay.
You ought to know, just by looking at your parents, that it will never all be okay. Once you are damaged, once you are compromised, there is no way back to the way you were, no retrieval, no healing, nothing but a struggle to keep going.
But one more day cannot be too much to ask.
Especially a crisp, shiny, fresh spring day where you have love in one hand, a steaming latte in the other, and the dream of a bright future filling your eyes.
But evening comes, and dinner with Lucas’s parents comes, and the half-brother Lucas hates comes to dinner.
And he is...
he is...
ohfuckohfuckohfuck...
Erik.
Erik, the first son of Lucas’s mother. The one you’ve heard about, the kid whose father took him from his estranged wife when Erik was four and moved from state to state, eluding the authorities. The one who ran away from his dad, got arrested for breaking into a variety store and spent a year with abusive foster parents before coming to live, at age ten, with his mother, stepfather, and little brother, Lucas. Lucas, whose perfect life suburban life he undoubtedly resented. Lucas, who he bullied and tormented and who therefore has, even at twenty-one, no pity for Erik’s hardship and no patience for his repentance.
“Nice to meet you,” you say, and shake his hand, which is sweating. Erik’s hands don’t usually sweat. You try to banish your knowledge of him, pretend to yourself that he is new. Your face is hot. You order a Bloody Mary and drink it too fast.
Lucas and his parents are tense, but it has nothing to do with you. You hope. Somehow you survive the evening.
You survive the walk home with Lucas and his ranting and raging about his parents trying to force him to accept Erik, whom he does not consider a brother, into his life.
Despite your guilt, you can’t help feeling impatient with Lucas for his intractability, his judgment, his lack of forgiveness for someone who had a nightmare of a childhood.
“And then,” Lucas is saying as he stomps back and forth in front of your bed, “then he had the nerve to show up here six months ago and tell me he wanted to start fresh! To...what was it he said...to make amends and forge a new relationship, to be real brothers!”
“You never told me,” you say.
“This is a guy who made my life hell for years! He’s not worth our time, Mara.”
“But...”
“I told him where he could shove his fucking amends,” Lucas continues. “I said to him: you’ll never change, you’re the same loser you’ve always been, and you’re lucky anyone in our family lets you near us. But I don’t have to. I might have to help you get a job, but only because our mother begged me to. I don’t have to love you or like you or forgive you.”
“You helped him get a job?”
“Yeah, at school. I’m not even sure what he ended up doing.”
You retreat inwards, fighting horror.
Sex is worse than usual that night, but if you have to grit your teeth and fake orgasm and every touch feels like a violation, it’s your own fault.
***
5:55 a.m.: double espresso.
6 a.m.: painting.
I have five-hundred dollars left in my bank account, bills coming in, and no credit cards, lines of credit, or surprise inheritances coming in.
I’m fucked, but I must keep working or I will lose all sense of purpose. As it is, whether Hugo is here or not, I’m not sleeping well.
I feel like I’m painting with my eyes shut these days, because I disappear as I work. I have given up on geometrics and am painting whatever I feel like.
The face of Lucas appears in many places—in the shadow of an abstract door, in waves crashing onto a shore of purple sand—and when I sleep, I dream of him.
I sleep with Hugo, and dream of Lucas.
And in the waking light before dawn, sometimes I still want Erik.
Dad comes home from treatment and we have a talk during which he seems almost normal—balanced, practical, aware of his personal pitfalls. Shauna is never far, and I hope she’ll do as she promised and stay with him.
“And how are you?” Dad asks, holding both of my hands in his.
In the four seconds it takes me to breathe in and out, I’ve dismissed the thought of any answer but, “Fine.”
“Good,” he says, taking me at my word.
***