Текст книги "Deeper"

Автор книги: Robin York

Соавторы: Robin York,Robin York
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Текущая страница: 19 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

He takes a sip of his coffee.

I grip the back of a kitchen chair and wonder about my mother. If she would have taken my side, if she hadn’t died.

I think of my sister Alison in the Peace Corps. She’s got email where she is, and the Internet. I wonder if she knows yet.

I wonder about my sister Janelle, too, who does know. She wrote me this email—this long, long email that I had to close and not look at, because the first paragraph contained the words I forgive you, and I don’t want anyone’s forgiveness.

I’m not the one who has to be forgiven.

“Tell me what happened,” my dad says.

“With the drugs?”

“The whole thing.”

So I try.

I try in a way that I didn’t try the other day because I was too angry.

I try even though I feel like there’s no time for this and I wish I were with West right now, and I’m not sure how much of what I tell my dad can even reach him through the filter of his pain and disappointment.

I try because I know him, and I know that he’s fair, and I know that he loves me.

I start at the beginning. I work through to this moment, this kitchen. I tell him everything I think he really needs to know. What Nate did to me. What West has given me. Everything that’s happened, everything that’s pertinent, and more.

I use the word love. I tell him I love West. Because that, too, is pertinent.

And because, now that I’ve said it to West, I could say it to anyone.

I love West. I love him, I love him, I love him.

When I’m done, my father walks out of the room, but I don’t go after him. I take his coffee cup to the sink and rinse it out. I take the beans from the freezer and grind them and make another pot, and I collect some dishes from the countertop and the table to load the dishwasher.

I give him some time.

I think, if I were him, I would need time.

I’m his youngest daughter, his girl who lost her mother earliest, when I was still too little to remember her. He was the one who rocked me to sleep against his chest when I had bad dreams. He was the one who came to every awards ceremony, every debate tournament, every graduation.

He has a picture of me in his chambers with a gap-toothed smile, my hair in pigtails.

I think maybe when your last baby, your motherless daughter with her hair in pigtails, grows up and leaves, you console yourself with the knowledge that she’s smart, and she’ll be safe, and she knows how to make good choices.

It must be so difficult for him now, to deal with the fallout of the choices I’ve made.

I’m not a white dress. My future is not a thing I can dirty, tear holes in, or ruin. Not in any way that’s real. But for him, I guess that dress … it’s a dress that he laundered, a hope that he cherished, and he’s got to find a way to adjust to what I’ve done to it.

His daughter is naked on the Internet.

His baby girl is in love with a drug dealer.

I give him time.

It only takes him ten minutes to come back to the kitchen.

He accepts the cup of coffee I offer him. He stares down into the black brew. He meets my eyes and says, “I’ll make a few calls.”

“Thank you.”

He sighs.

He puts the coffee mug down.

“Don’t thank me yet. There’s probably not a lot I can do. And I have to tell you, Caroline, I’m not certain I’d do even this much if this boy—”

“West.”

“If this … West didn’t have one foot out the door.”

“Okay. Thank you.” It’s a big concession on his part. If he’s going to make some calls, it means he’s putting his own reputation on the line for West—and that means he does trust me. At least a little.

I put my arms around him. His neck smells like aftershave. Like my dad.

“I love you,” I tell him. Because I do. I always have. He’s the world I was born into, and he gave me so much. Safety and strength, intelligence and courage, the knowledge I arm myself with.

He’s a great dad, and I love him.

When I squeeze, his arms come up, and he squeezes back.

“After this, can we be done for a while with the bombshells?” he asks. “You’re going to give me a heart attack.”

“I hope so. Although maybe now is when I should tell you I’m not going to be around for break. Once you get West out, I’m staying with him until he flies home.”

Another sigh.

A long minute, with the snow hitting the glass, and my dad not letting go, and me not letting go, either. His shirt collar is stiff, his body warm, the size of him surprisingly wrong since I’ve spent so much time snuggled up to West.

My dad isn’t very tall. I’ve always thought of him as taller than me, but he’s not, after all.

He’s just ordinary.

We’re both doing the best we can.

“I talked to Dick,” he says. “We have some strategies to consider.”

“Okay. Why don’t you set up a meeting for the three of us, and I’ll take anything he has to share under consideration.”

My dad backs up a step and looks down at me with his eyebrows steepled. “You’ll take it under consideration?”

“Right.” I touch his arm. “This is my fight, Dad. I’ll take your help, if it’s help I think I need. But don’t get confused about who’s in charge.”

And it’s funny—he laughs. Not a big laugh. Kind of a snort with half a smile attached to it, and a slight shake of his head. “You always were a ballbuster,” he says.

But he says it like he’s proud.

SPRING BREAK
West

I wish I had a picture of what she looked like that day.

I’d told her not to come, not to get involved, but I didn’t really expect her to listen. It’s like she said to me—we’re a team, and she’s the leader.

There are guys who’d have a problem with that, her asshole ex among them. And, sure, even I threw out a token protest when she said it, but that was mostly to make her smile.

Caroline’s being the leader—it doesn’t mean I’m her flunky. It doesn’t diminish me. It’s just who she is.

I always liked that about her. How she could walk into a classroom with her books, her binder, her pens, and you could see by the way she raised her hand, the questions she asked, the straight column of her spine: She’s the leader.

It’s what makes her so awesome.

So I wish I had a picture of Caroline on the steps of the police station, and it’s not because I’ve forgotten.

Her perfect posture. The way her hair bumped over the collar of her jacket, shiny and smooth.

The look on her face, serious one second and radiant the next.

The light that came into those big brown eyes of hers when she saw me walk through the station door.

I won’t forget. I could never forget what Caroline looked like the first time I saw her after she told me she loved me.

She’s the only person who ever said that to me, other than my mom or Frankie. The only girl to give me her heart, and I hate that she handed it to me right when I was leaving. When I fucked up everything—school, my home situation, the weed, my job. I got fired from the bakery. I missed my midterm, nearly got her arrested, and that’s when she decided it was time to say the words.

I didn’t know what to say back to her. I still don’t.

I love you, too.

She knows it, I think. If she doesn’t, I was doing something wrong all those weeks we had together.

She knows it, but it wouldn’t do either of us any good to have it out in the open. If I’d said it, it would’ve been just another loss for us to carry around.

I thought about saying, You shouldn’t, but I couldn’t bring myself to say that, either.

She shouldn’t. She does. I’m glad.

More than glad, I’m greedy over it. I can’t find any piece of me—a finger bone, a molecule, a single atom—that wants her to feel different.

She’s in love with me.

Thank fucking Christ.

So I wanted that picture. Caroline, standing in the sun with our friends gathered around her. Bridget and Quinn on the steps, listening as she told them something. I’d asked Bridge to take care of her, but seeing Caroline there, I realized she doesn’t need to be taken care of anymore, if she ever did. She had those two arrayed around her and her dad in a car by the curb, awaiting her commands.

She was the leader.

Her dad pulled a few strings, got me out on probation with permission to leave the state as long as I complete some kind of drug program back home. There’s still hoops to jump through, but the public defender said the misdemeanor’s going to drop off my record once I’ve hopped on through them. The PD said I was getting a sweet deal—maybe sweeter than I deserved.

Her dad said he’d be glad to see the back of me.

I get where they’re both coming from. If I were them, I’d feel the same.

Sweeter than I deserved—that was Caroline. Head to toe, beginning to end, every day I had her.

I ought to be sorry I slept with her, sorry we got to be friends, sorry I ever walked out to where she was sitting by the curb in the dark and pulled her into my life.

There’s things I am sorry for. That I left Frankie. That I thought I might have a place in the world somewhere other than home, thought I could put down the responsibility I picked up ten years ago and trust somebody else to carry it.

I’m sorry I ever came here, because if I’d stayed in Oregon, maybe I could have kept this from happening. Kept Mom away from my dad. Kept her together with Bo, and kept Frankie tucked away safe with stuffed animals in her bed and glitter on her fingernails. I should have been there, telling her bedtime stories. Telling her she can be anyone, anything she wants to be.

That’s what’s in my power—to give Frankie that. Not to take it for myself.

I’m sorry I tried.

But I’m not sorry about Caroline. Not even a little.

I wish I had that picture, though.

Her smile.

Her eyes in the first instant when she looked up and saw me walking out, a free man.

I wish I had it, just to have something of Caroline to keep.

APRIL
Caroline

I had him for one more week while they got some legal stuff sorted out.

Seven days.

He tried to pull away from me, but no way was I letting that happen. I slept in his bed. I kissed him and licked him, bit him and scratched him, put my tongue on every single spot on his body it wanted to be.

He was mine. Mine, and I knew I had to give him back, but I didn’t have to do it yet. I refused to cry over losing him when he wasn’t gone.

I helped him pack. I helped him sell his car to Quinn.

I took him to bed.

I walked him to Student Affairs and forced him to formally withdraw. Not because I thought he might come back, but because that was the right way to leave. With deliberation. With care.

I deliberately, carefully, slowly drew his cock into my mouth and sucked it until he stopped saying my name and started bucking off the mattress, his heels catching the fitted sheet so it rucked up underneath him and he came with his hands tangled in my hair, his fingertips gentle behind my ears.

I held him.

I touched him.

That last night, I stroked his back and his shoulders, his hips and his ass, his arms, his neck, his face.

For as long as he was still mine to love, I loved him.

Then I let him go.

At the airport, I don’t know what to say.

We hold hands on the walk from the parking lot to the check-in counter.

We hold hands on the walk from the check-in counter to the security line.

We hold hands until the moment is finally here when he has to go and I have to stay and we can’t hold hands anymore.

He drops his backpack on the ground and pulls me into his arms.

I can’t think of words to tell him that mean anything. It’s easy, with my body, to press up against him. To rub my damp eyelashes against his shirt, feel his lips on the crown of my head, his arms so tight around me.

I won’t tell him I wish he didn’t have to go. There’s a little girl on the other side of the country who needs him. There’s a place he fits into, a life that’s not this life, and I can’t question the claim it has on him. I don’t have the right.

I can wish things were different. I’ve wished it a thousand times. But as long as they’re not different, this is the way it is, and I won’t tell him I wish he would stay.

“Hey,” he says.

I look up at his face. I push my hands up his neck, cover his ears where they stick out because he’s wearing his black baseball cap. He’ll get on a plane next to some lady who thinks he’s an anonymous college dude, nobody important. She won’t know that he’s everything.

“I’ll miss your ears,” I tell him.

“I’ll miss that gap in your teeth.”

“I never did show you how I could spit through it.”

“That’s all right. We found some other stuff to do with our time.”

That makes me smile, which makes him smile, and we just look at each other. I study how his eyes crinkle at the corners, how deep the lines sink in around his lips, how nice his teeth are. His slightly crooked nose. The smile fades away, leaves his mouth so serious, as serious as his eyes.

I pet his ears. Pinch his earlobes.

“I don’t know how to do this,” I tell him.

“There isn’t a way. We just do it.”

I reach for the brim of his cap, pivot it all the way around on his head, and go up on my tiptoes to kiss him.

Goodbye. I’m kissing West goodbye.

His hand clamps down on the back of my neck. His tongue moves into my mouth and the kiss goes deep, deeper, until we reach the place where there’s no boundary between us. The place where I’ve given him a piece of my heart, my soul, a prayer flag with soft, fraying edges that flaps in the wind, claims him as my own, forever.

I tell him, with this kiss, that I want him to be well. That I want him to thrive. I want him to use his mind and his hands, his curious restless energy, his creativity—to put them in service of something that feeds his soul.

I tell him I want him to remember to eat, to make good bread, to pay attention to what he does with his days, what he puts into his body, what feeds him.

I tell him I love him, and my love means I want him to be happy, I want him to be whole.

My love means I have to let him go.

When he moves his lips away, pushes the tip of his nose along my cheek, I’m crying, messy and wet, and he says, “Caroline. God, Caroline. Don’t.”

“It’s okay,” I say. “It’s just the way it is.”

His hands. His hands are on my shoulders, my neck, his thumbs smoothing over my mouth, and I’m stroking his forearms, the muscles firm and tight, following the grooves, ruffling his arm hair, wishing we had more time.

I don’t think it’s fair that we don’t have more time.

There isn’t anyone to complain to.

My fingers catch on the leather bracelet at his wrist, the letters of his name. I find the snap and work my thumb beneath it, flicking it off. The cuff falls to the floor, and when I reach to pick it up, our heads knock together, because he bent down to get it for me. Just one more thing he would do for me if he could. One more way he wants to help me with the work of being alive.

“I need to keep it.”

He smiles and says, “Okay.”

He puts it on my wrist, and then he kisses my arm, right by the snap, right over my pulse.

There are flags inside me, too, with his prayers on them. I’ll carry him everywhere, for the rest of my days.

“Take care of yourself,” he says. “Don’t let anybody get away with any bullshit.”

“I won’t.”

“Bridget and Quinn will look out for you. And try to keep Krish from self-destructing, if you can.”

Krishna.

Krishna is a mess.

He let West take the fall for him, walked out of jail and straight into a bar. He hasn’t come back to the apartment, and he won’t answer West’s calls.

Only Bridget seems to know what he’s up to. She’s talked to him a few times. She’s worried about him, but none of us knows what to do.

I can’t really concentrate on Krishna right now.

“I’ll do my best.”

My voice is full of tears. My heart is so full of cuts, nicks—every second this goes on makes the blood flow more freely. Cleans me out. Empties me.

He rests his head against my neck, kisses me at the nook where neck becomes shoulder. “Don’t cry because of me. You’re going to be fine. Great. Better than great. You’ll get a whole lot more sleep, too, which is good. You’ll live longer.”

Come back to me.

The words are shouting inside me, bouncing around like manic ghosts, but I clamp my mouth shut and rest my hands on his body, just to feel his warmth and the way his back rises and falls with every breath. The ridges of his spine.

I don’t know if I’ll ever see him again.

“Promise me,” I say, even though I wasn’t going to. Even though I swore to myself I wouldn’t make a single demand. “Promise me you’ll be my friend. Promise me you’ll call me, text me, tell me what’s going on with you. Promise if you’re awake in the middle of the night, if you’re alone, if you need somebody—”

He lifts his head and wipes my tears away again, this time with his thumbs. “I promise.”

“You’re going to need a friend.”

“Yeah.”

“I want to be your friend, West.”

He kisses the tip of my nose. “You’re already my friend, Caroline Piasecki.”

I just close my eyes. I close my eyes and open my hands and let go of the tail of his shirt. “You should get in line.”

“Yeah.”

“Text me when you land.”

“I will.”

“Tell your sister I said hi.”

“She’ll like that.”

This time, when he kisses me, I don’t let myself touch him. Not anywhere but at the mouth.

His lips are so soft.

They tell me all the things I told him and more.

Live. Breathe. Fight.

Be who you are. Be better.

Be fierce.

“Don’t wait for me,” he whispers, and he kisses me again. “I don’t want you to wait.”

When he picks up his backpack and walks away, I think of the day we met.

How he drove his car almost right into my feet. How he teased me, made me smile, made me faint.

How he looked with that dumb rubber chicken dangling from his fingers, grinning, asking me, Want to play?

I think maybe I’ve always been waiting for him.

Always.

I don’t know how I’m ever going to be able to stop.

AFTER

The thing about being a good girl is, you spend your whole life developing a finely honed radar for detecting anything that could potentially cause people to love you less.

Girls like the one I was last August—we eat approval. We live for it.

So when we’re attacked viciously by a guy who goes out of his way to make us feel dirty and disgusting, our first reaction is always to take all the blame on ourselves.

My fault, we say. My fault, my fault, my fault.

It takes a special kind of person to pull our hands off our eyes and show us what it is we’re really looking at. Whose fault it is. What a useless exercise blame can be.

West taught me to make bread. He hoisted me up on a roof and kissed me until I saw stars.

He taught me that deeper is worth going after.

Because one text message can crack the solid ground of your life wide open. One bad decision, one flash of the camera, and the sunny, perfect part of your youth is over.

Then you get to decide. You look around, sift through the rubble, make your choices.

You arm yourself with love, friends, knowledge.

You figure out who you are. What you want.

You figure it out, and you go after it with everything you’ve got.

And that means sometimes you have to let yourself be scared. You have to turn left and take risks and make mistakes, because, otherwise, how do you find friends who will teach you how to tackle, to drink butterscotch schnapps for no reason at all, to strip down to your bra and dance?

When you’ve got a shot at deeper, you have to fist your hands in its T-shirt and pull it closer. Tug until fabric rips. Yank at it, reel it in until it’s naked up against your belly and you’re starving and full, desperate and satiated, dizzy and grounded.

You have to, because ugliness is everywhere.

Because life’s not fair.

Because the world is a seriously fucked-up place.

You have to, because beauty is out there, and it’s worth every sacrifice we make to seize it.

It’s worth it even if we don’t get to keep it.

Note from the Author

Dear readers,

What happened to Caroline is called “revenge porn” or “nonconsensual pornography,” and it sucks. It’s also perfectly legal everywhere in the United States with the exception of New Jersey.

Revenge porn is a form of abuse that uses sexual imagery without the consent of the women (or men) pictured as a way of shaming, hurting, and denigrating its victims. It happens all the time, right out in the open, with the consent of our legal system.

It needs to stop.

If you’d like to learn more about revenge porn or lend your voice to support its criminalization, I’d urge you to visit End Revenge Porn (www.endrevengeporn.org), a campaign that is working to raise the public profile of this issue, support victims, and lobby legislators to change the law.

All best wishes,

Robin York