How Not to Let Go

Thus Charles becomes a part of my climbing group. After giving his arm and hand a month to heal, he begins belaying and climbing with great caution. He fits in easily, everyone likes him, and there’s a not insignificant amount of jockeying among the women climbers (following an inquiry to me about his sexual orientation and romantic status) to get his attention.

He doesn’t give anyone his attention—or rather, he gives everyone his attention, shining his radiance equally on everyone who comes in his path. Yes, he’d be glad to belay you. No, he hasn’t tried that bouldering route yet, he’s still supposed to go easy on his hand. Yes, he’d love to join everyone for a drink after. No, he’s afraid he can’t have dinner with you, he has work early the next day.

At the end of September, he shaves his beard and stops wearing the brace when he climbs. He spends more time doing finger exercises and strength training than actually climbing, but apart from that everything feels really normal—including the familiar moments when I look at him and all I can think is I want to lick your throat and bite your ropy forearms. But not once does he do anything to indicate the least bit of Thing. Still, I’ve lived with The Thing for so long that letting it go is second nature to me now. It fills my brain, I take a breath, it moves through me.

He becomes friends with Linton—I knew he would. While I’m practicing lead climbing, Charles teaches Linton to boulder—low climbing on very difficult, usually overhanging routes, without ropes and harnesses. If you fall, you free-fall, but you’re never more than ten feet off the ground. They lie on their backs on the mat, under the lower of the gym’s two overhanging walls, and Charles points out holds and describes moves. And he teaches him to do circular pull-ups and negative pull-ups and one-arm pull-ups, and by October their biceps, triceps, and deltoids are, frankly, mouthwatering. If we see Charles and Linton approaching the hangboard, the women in the gym will stop what we’re doing and watch them. Linton starts taking off his shirt and flexing for us, as we laugh and catcall.

Charles never flexes for us, never takes off his shirt, but he wolf-whistles at Linton.

At home, Linton talks about what a great guy Charles is, what a good teacher, what a good listener, what a good friend.

“I know,” I say. “I don’t know what I’d do without him.”

I don’t see Charles that often, compared to Indiana, where I saw him almost every day. We climb once a week, either Wednesday or Saturday. We work together every Monday at seven at a local coffee place. But the change these two days make in my life . . . I feel so much stronger, so much more competent with him here. I’m not doing any better in school—I was already doing fine—but my state of mind is vastly different.

He goes away periodically, flies all the time. If he’s climbing Rage Mountain or confronting his dragon, I don’t see it. Or rather, I don’t see it until I finally ask him if I can walk home with him from the rock gym one pretty October evening.

“I want to talk to you about something,” I say.

“Sure.”

It takes me about half the walk to make myself finally ask what I’ve been wanting to ask:

“Are you interviewing for jobs? Is that why you travel so much?”

“Hm? No, no.”

Okay, phew. So he’s not leaving instantly.

“Are you going to conferences?”

“No, nothing like that. It’s nothing.”

“Are you visiting your mom, since you’re a thousand miles closer than you were last year?”

“Annie, it’s nothing.”

“Nothing, as in you just like going on planes a lot so you fly places and then fly right back, just for the pleasure of drinking Bloody Marys at thirty-five thousand feet?”

“You’re a pest,” he says with a grin.

“I know,” I say. “So where do you go?”

“If I said I didn’t want to tell you, would you stop asking?”

I open my mouth to say, “Of course,” but instead what comes out is “You have a girlfriend somewhere but you don’t want to tell me because you think it might be awkward?”

He sighs mightily. “You’re a pain the arse, young Coffey.”

“It wouldn’t be awkward, you can tell me.”

“A virago,” he says. “A harridan.”

“I know.” We’ve arrived at his building. I follow him up his front steps, and as he opens his door I bargain, “Or, instead of telling me where you go, you could just tell me why you won’t tell me where you go.”

“Come inside,” he says, and what it sounds like is “Let’s get this over with.”

“No no, that’s okay.” After all, I don’t want to impose.

“I put that badly,” he says, holding the door open. “What I meant to say is, get your little monkey arse inside because you bloody asked for it.”

“You mad, bro?” I ask, climbing the last step to his front door.

“No.” Then he closes his eyes, leaning his head back against the door, and says as if it surprises him, “Yes, a bit. Now will you please go up, you curstest shrew.”

I do, meekly.

In his apartment, Charles dumps his climbing gear and jacket by the door and goes to the kitchen. “I’m making coffee. Do you want any?” he asks.

“Okay,” I say, and the grinder goes on. I drop my stuff next to his and sit myself on my end of the couch, where I watch Charles make coffee in silence. He’s finally unpacked, but he still doesn’t have any pictures on his walls, no art, no photos of family. Just lots of books.

He brings two cups, hands me one, and sits on his end of the couch.

I wait.

He drinks his coffee. I drink mine.

I wait some more.

“I fly to Indiana to see Clarissa,” he says at last.

I blink and have to remember who Clarissa is. Then I open my mouth to ask if she’s never heard of Skype or even the telephone, but he preempts the question.

“The relationship is the medicine, and she and I both find that technology interferes.”

“The relationship is the medicine,” I repeat.

“I’d fly to see a renowned specialist or receive treatment if I had any serious illness.” He’s trying to justify it. I don’t need him to justify it. I get it.

“Is our relationship medicine?”

He’s silent for so long, I think he’s not going to answer—but then he does, by asking me a question. “You know how you can watch someone climb a route once, and your body knows how to do it?”

“Yeah,” I say.

“Well, no one else does,” he says. “You think that’s normal, to watch someone and feel their movement in your body, so that you just know how to do it.”

“Don’t—”

“You think it’s normal that when I taught you to hustle in Simon’s kitchen, you just learned how to follow in a matter of minutes.”

“But—”

“You think it’s normal to be able to name your emotions, to speak your feelings aloud, to feel safe and alive in your body.”

I just stare at him, feeling scolded for doing the right thing.

“It’s a delight to watch, and it’s infuriating to see you take it for granted. So many gifts. You have so many gifts, termagant. When you’re pleased, your joy fills the room. When you’re frustrated or angry, it’s a pure, pristine thing, without shame or fear. Yes, domina,” he concludes grumpily. “Yes, our relationship is medicine.”

“Because I’m . . .”

“Because you’re you, termagant. Have you met you? And I’m angry—not at you, at me, because I don’t know where the boundaries ought to be. When I was your boss, the boundaries were clear. When we were lovers, the boundaries were clear. When you left, I knew where the boundary was. And now . . . I don’t know anymore. Should I tell you about seeing Clarissa? Should I tell you about the phone calls with Mum about how ill my father is? Should I tell you I’ve been thinking about getting a cat? I don’t know.

“And tonight you push me for more and I feel like I’m doing it wrong, but I also resent that you want more than I’m inclined to offer, and I’m frustrated because I don’t know which is right or wrong. I don’t even know if I should be telling you any of this.”

We sit in silence for a long time. I drink some coffee. Charles sits with his cup on the coffee table, his elbows on his knees, his fingers laced together, his mouth against the backs of his fingers.

He gets up and disappears into his room, but comes back with his brace. He sits on the edge of the couch and puts it on with a snap of elastic and a rip of Velcro. His right wrist is still noticeably smaller than his left.

“Your dad is sick?” I say, watching him adjust the brace.

“Yeah.” Charles throws himself back on the couch, takes off his glasses, and rubs his good hand over his face. “Serves him right, the tosser. And he’s making Mum’s life a misery.”

We sit in silence with this until I say, “I don’t know which is right or wrong, either. I don’t know where the boundaries are.”

“Well, I’m glad I’m not the only one,” he says.

More silence.

“Hey,” I say eventually.

“Mh,” he says back.

“Were you just mad while I was in the room?”

He looks at me. “I suppose I was.”

“That’s the first time you haven’t kicked me out when you were angry.”

“I suppose it was.”

“Well. I don’t want to be a know-it-all, but: boundaries schmoun-daries. It seems to me that letting me be around you when you’re annoyed is more important than any specific thing you tell me or don’t tell me.”

He half smiles at me from his end of the couch. “I’ll bear that in mind.”