Hugo is staring at me.
He’s been staring for many long minutes, while the only sound has been of my retching into the bedroom garbage can.
I’ve done it.
I shoved him so hard he went flying off the bed and landed on the floor, cracking his elbow on the bedside table on his way down. There’ll be a bruise.
He had no warning, but I did. I should have known.
My skin, all at once, is like an open wound, my insides a battlefield. There is no thought to trace it to, no moment of warning before it happens, and yet I should have known I would not be able do this.
No matter that my heart begs, my body will not let me love.
Hugo assures me he’s okay. But I know he is reconfiguring me, taking me apart and reassembling me with a new fact, a new facet. What does he see?
If I were a painting me, I’d paint a half-person, a woman chased by monsters. They catch at her legs, tear at her clothing, lurk in alleyways and jump out to grab her as she passes, taking chunks of her and swallowing them whole. She reaches for love, runs towards it, grasps and holds it for a beautiful moment before it turns ugly and drags her down.
But I am prone to the melodramatic in my visions. Hugo probably just sees me as a neurotic, a case of damaged goods.
I find my clothes and put them on.
He does the same.
We make our way by silent consent to the family room, away from the bed and the bedroom and all that is contained there. We sit on opposite ends of the couch.
I swallow. “I’m so sorry.”
He stares at me with narrowed eyes and eventually nods.
“Mara,” he says. “I don’t know what the hell is going on here, but I don’t like being thrown out of bed.”
“Of course not.”
“So...?”
This is it, I tell myself, No more hiding, no more lies, no self-pity,
“I have trouble sometimes,” I say. “In bed. Actually I have trouble out of bed too.”
“Okay, let’s try some specifics,” he says.
“There are days when I can’t leave the house,” I say. “And days when I can’t get out of bed, can’t function at all, really. Other times I’m fine. Since I met you I’ve been better—I’ve been working on it.”
“So you’re, what’s it called...”
“Agoraphobic? Not exactly.”
I try to explain that it’s not so simple as a diagnosis, that I don’t fit the “profile,” that I’m just frightened and lacking in faith, with an overactive and morbid imagination.
“And let me guess,” he says. “You’ve had no professional help for this.”
“Well...”
“And you didn’t tell me because you didn’t trust me.”
“No, it’s not like that, I just...”
“Don’t trust anyone,” he says, finishing my thought. “Except maybe Bernadette.”
“You don’t understand,” I say. “It’s myself I don’t trust. And did you really want to know about me standing for an hour at a stoplight because I can’t make myself cross the street? Did you want to hang out and watch me plaster myself against the wall in the subway station because I’m looking for terrorists and scared that someone is going to push me in front of the train? You think you would have stuck around this long?”
“We’ll never know, will we?” he says.
I notice he doesn’t say ‘yes.’
“Were you ever going to tell me?”
I look down at my hands, ashamed at the answer.
“I see,” he says. “Nice.”
I swallow hard. The silence lengthens.
The sex issue is hard to tackle. I try to figure out how to start, but Hugo speaks first.
“What about that,” he says and jerks his head towards the bedroom. “What’s the deal?”
I bite my lip.
“I’ve never done that before,” I say. “I mean, I’ve never actually shoved someone like that.”
“What an honor,” he says with a bitter laugh.
“But I’ve had trouble before. I turn into this horrible ball of tension and suddenly I feel so exposed, almost violated. It just hits me. I try to get through it and I can usually, you know, push through, so to speak, but it gets to the point where it all just...hurts.”
“You’ve been feeling like this while we were having sex and you kept going? And didn’t tell me?”
I feel my face flush, but I meet his eyes and nod.
He stares at me, eyes wounded and angry, his fists clenching and unclenching.
“Damn it, Mara,” he says. “What kind of an asshole do you think I am? You think I’d want to make love with someone who feels like I’m raping her?”
“I didn’t say it felt like--”
“Violated was the word,” he says. “But let’s not split hairs.”
“It’s not you,” I say. “I mean, it’s not about you, it’s me.”
“But guess what?” he says, his voice getting louder. “It’s me you’re in bed with! Which means there are two of us. But that seems to have escaped you.”
“I just mean that the issue is mine. It’s happened before.”
“What, with the dead guy?” Hugo asks.
My memory flashes back to Lucas sweating on top of me, eyes closed and grunting, pushing, pushing, not seeing, never seeing...
I shudder and wrench myself back to the present.
“Yes, it happened with Lucas.”
“Well, it still comes back to trust and the fact that apparently we don’t have any.”
“I know,” I say. “I have some things to sort out.”
He is silent.
“Hugo,” I try to steel myself, by my voice shakes. “It’s probably best if...”
He waits, almost glaring at me.
“I’m going to need some time. Time apart, I mean, from us.”
“You want to break up.”
I gulp.
“I thought you were in love with me. Did I imagine that? And is it too much to ask for you to give me some credit? Of course it is, because you have to do everything alone.” He has stood up and is pacing the front room.
“Hugo...”
“How much of this has even been real, Mara? I mean, what is there to break up? I thought I loved you too, but apparently I’ve been in love with an illusion. You lied to me. You let me fuck you and all the while you were hating it. I’m the biggest chump.”
I jump up from the couch and grab hold of his arms. “Hugo, no, I—”
“And now you want to end it.” He jerks away and goes to the door. “It never even started.”
“I only meant I wanted to take a break. Some time.”
Hugo yanks his jacket on and shoves his feet into his boots.
“Please,” I say.
He takes a long look at me. I look back, my heart in my eyes.
“It wasn’t fake,” I say. “Please believe me. The most important things were real. Are real.”
“I wish I could believe that.” His hand is on the doorknob. “I gotta go.”
***
When he’s gone, I stand with my back to the door, leaning on it for support.
I thought I’d been brave enough, with my cute little self-improvement program, cutting things off with Erik, all of it. I thought I was making progress, becoming whole. So how is it that my love life and my career are in the shit and I feel worse than ever?
Not running fast enough...
Erik. The bastard. I see his eyes; laughing, cruel and far too wise.
I never stopped running, I just fooled myself into thinking I had.
So here I am, fucked up as ever and stuck with everything I’ve been trying to escape. Mom, Dad, Lucas, Erik. I am consumed, haunted by the angry words, by love twisted to hate, by the way people disappoint and betray one another and never recover. I am plagued by my failure, with such cautionary examples, to live better, to be better.
Most of all I am tormented that my failure killed Lucas.
The thought, once allowed in, causes stabbing pains in my belly. I lurch forward and stumble to the dark kitchen.
How could I have thought anything like love could co-exist with this pain? If running doesn’t work, what am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to live with this every single day? The alternative to running is to stand and fight, but how? With what?
Horrible sounds pour from me, worse than sobs, worse than anything. I don’t want the memories, but they are inexorable and if the final ones come, I’ll die, I know I will.
Help. Oh God, I need help.
I open the cupboard with the grappa and take the bottle down. I know it won’t bring Hugo back, or Lucas for that matter, but I need it. I need something right now to fill the holes, to slow the onslaught of memory, to buffer me, to save me from the truth.
I put the mouth of the bottle to my lips, tip my head back and pour the hot, bitter liquid down my throat. It tastes terrible. I cough, sputter and then take another swig.
Fuck it. What’s the point of being sober? What’s the point of any of it? I am doomed and crippled. I am weak and neurotic and a fucking chicken.
A fucking chicken who can’t cross the road.
Ha ha ha.
As I laugh at my sad joke, as tears course down my face and the alcohol starts to hit, I realize even my house is not safe. The safety of the house is an illusion, has always been an illusion because the memories are still coming.
Fine. Fuck the house.
I put the stopper in the grappa and half-run, half limp out my front door, down the steps and onto the sidewalk. It’s December and I’m in my socks with no coat, but who cares? I’ve lost Hugo. Never had him. Doesn’t matter. Memory comes, my throat burns, pain twists in my gut.
I go south to Gerrard Street and the nearest streetcar line. It takes a few minutes and as I walk, people’s eyes slide past me—I am someone they wish didn’t exist; drunk, crying and half dressed on the streets of Toronto.
I start to run. I see the face of Lucas, hear his voice and race him, race the memories, all the way to the streetcar, to the tracks, to the middle of the road, with my feet slushy and frozen, my body on fire and the bottle gripped in my hand.
I stand in the center of the tracks and hold my arms out.
“I’m here!” I shout. “Come and get me you fucker!”
I see it coming—the streetcar—its red and white colors bright against the night and the hum and whine of it so distinct.
I stay where I am.
Maybe this is what it is to stop running, to be brave. To stand swaying under the sky and let it come. Let it all come and roll over me and then see if I’m alive when it’s over.
Everything starts to slow. The red and white comes closer.
“Where are you Lucas?” I whisper, and then shout: “Come get me! Come and fucking get me!”
I hold myself still and wait for a sign.
I have a choice: to let it hit me...or to step in front of it at the last second when it the driver can’t see, can’t slow down...
As Lucas did.
I look down at the tracks and there he is, where he has been waiting for me all along, with his eyes open and fixed on me, his skull cracked open and his beautiful body bent in unnatural ways.
And again, there he is moments before, knowing the truth, wrecked, furious, screaming and then, so fast, stepping out in front of it.
And I am shouting, screaming a warning, not fast enough and he’s not listening to me anyway...
And standing, watching it happen in sickening slow motion.
I have been standing watching this happen for years, every second an effort of denial, a fight against this guilt, this grief.
Part of me will be here forever.
Unless I let it come for me. The street where I stand is dark and the driver might not see me in time...
I watch it approach.
I unscrew the cap on the grappa and its smell, pure alcohol, wafts up.
It’s still coming. He didn’t have time to think like I do. Did he mean to do it? Does it matter? I lift the bottle to my lips, take a burning swig, watch the lights get bigger. Any second now...
It comes. It comes and I am not afraid. My body has become part of the night, part of the air. I am standing with Lucas who looks up at me with his childish eyes and dares me.
I return his gaze and then slowly shake my head.
“I’m sorry,” I say, and I step off the tracks...and walk away.
***
On the way home, I nearly get hit by a car.
Inside my house, as I’m peeling off my socks, I realize how funny that is and laugh until I’m sick. Then I sit in the dark and finish the entire, disgusting bottle of grappa, talk to God and eventually pass out on the bathroom floor.
What else is there to do?