Beyond Repair (8 page)

“No. No. You—okay. Stop, you have to stop. I’m going to wee
myself,” she said—and it was true too. She was almost bent double. Tears were
starting to leak out of her eyes. She couldn’t remember the last time tears
leaked out of her eyes, unless you counted terrible crying over horrible
things.

Happy crying seemed like something mythical that only ever
happened to other people, yet here she was doing just that. And she did it
harder when she realized he still had three feet of material dangling from the
end of his foot. He’d managed to pull the gusset up to his knee, but the rest
of the tights hadn’t followed.

Plus he just looked so baffled by them. She’d never seen
someone be so earnestly baffled over hosiery. He could have been on one of
those quiz shows that made you do complicated physical tasks, trying
desperately to earn her a million dollars. In fact—hadn’t she seen him make
that face once on something like that? Some charity game show before he became
really famous?

He hadn’t been able to get out of a big Perspex box, she
thought.

And that was what made her want to put him out of his
misery.

“You know, I think I have some sleepwear you could probably
put on—just give me a second, okay? I’ll go look while you…try to wipe this
nightmare from your mind.”

“Oh thank God. I think I’m getting PTSD.”

“That doesn’t surprise me.”

“How do women put these on?”

“I’ve done it before, but right now even I’m not sure.
You’ve made it look like a harrowing tale of one man’s struggle with a deadly
opponent.”

“That’s exactly how it feels. Dear God, that’s exactly it!
For the love of all that’s holy please find me some ill-fitting pajamas.”

She did better than that. She searched her bedside cabinets
and found an enormous t-shirt that would probably fit him. And granted, it had
a picture of David Hasselhoff on the front and a hole under the left armpit,
but it was definitely better than tights and the robe. Once she’d paired it
with sweatpants that would probably look more like shorts on him, they were in
business.

“You know, you probably could have told me about those
before I started putting on the green pantyhose,” he said, as she handed them
to him. But she had to be honest—he didn’t look as though he had any regrets.
He was still laughing in that half-sheepish way at himself, and when he took
the clothes he did a weird thing.

He kind of brushed her cheek with his knuckle. Not a big
move really and certainly nothing romantic, but the effect was rather
startling. Her insides seemed to drop around three feet. That ache came back to
her chest, only this time there was the oddest happy quality to it. A hopeful
quality to it, that didn’t seem to make any sense.

What did she have to be hopeful about?

He’d just done the equivalent of chucking her under the
chin. He could have been her big brother, or her physically impossible
twenty-seven-year-old father. He could have been anyone who felt any kind of
affection toward her…but that was the thing though, wasn’t it? When was the
last time anyone had touched her so gently?

Years, it had been years and years.

And certainly, none of those people had ever followed it
with the kinds of words he did. They had always said brotherly or fatherly
things. This was not brotherly or fatherly. She didn’t know what it was, but it
wasn’t that.

“You’re so lovely when you laugh. So lovely it breaks my
heart,” he said, while her insides abandoned the building altogether. Her whole
body flushed hot and then hotter, and it didn’t stop when he seemed to realize
he’d told her the wrong thing. If anything, the little wince that flickered
across his face only made it stronger.

It’s okay
, she wanted to say.
I feel the same way.

But of course she couldn’t. She couldn’t now.

She’d messed everything up with the almost-kiss.

She could see she had, before he spoke and made it worse.

“So I’ll just get changed then,” he said, in this awkward
I-better-change-the-subject sort of way. Then as she was leaving, she caught of
a glimpse of it all raw in his expression. He didn’t think she was looking
anymore, so he just let it out. He let his head go back, and cursed soundlessly
at the ceiling.

It was the single most amazing moment of her life.

And very nearly the most terrifying.

She knew beyond a shadow of doubt what had happened in the
closet. It was so obvious a virgin monkey could have worked it out—he had
romantic feelings toward her and now no longer understood how to express them.
He was possibly
frightened
of expressing them, in case she ran away
again. There was no denying it.

So why was she just sitting here at her computer, trying to
pick something for dinner tonight? This was everything she’d been waiting on
for the last two years. She could practically hear some unnamed deity telling
her,
Here, here, have this human connection to make up for all the horrible
things I just put you through
! Yet still she remained at her desk, afraid
in that exact same way he’d described. The one she’d agreed with at the time
but not fully appreciated until right now.

I’m so afraid of making the wrong choice that I just
don’t make any choice at all
, she thought, and suddenly it was so true it
was painful. She couldn’t even go up and ask him what he wanted to eat tonight,
for fuck’s sake. Something so small and it was too much—though she understood
why. She could see it clearly now.

Maybe this wasn’t a reward at all, but a curse. A terrible
curse filled with half-realized hopes and tentative dreams, just waiting to be
smashed to pieces the moment she started believing in them. After all, the
universe had never pretended to be fair. She knew it didn’t dole out gifts when
you’d been good, and comfort when you had suffered. Mostly it just seemed like
an indifferent lump, striped gray with mediocrity and empty of any real
meaning.

And if it wasn’t…then what had she been punished so severely
for? That penny sweet she’d stolen when she was seven? The lie she’d told at
ten?

She didn’t know, she didn’t know.

She only knew she was deathly afraid of going upstairs and
finding out the answer for certain. It took her a full forty minutes to make it
to the bottom step. And once she’d gotten there, she kind of wanted to pretend
she was doing something else. Maybe she’d just noticed some peeling paint on
the bannister and wanted to examine it. Or perhaps she really needed an item
from the bedroom and was simply trying to remember if she’d actually left it in
the living room.

She was pretty sure she could pass this off as both, if he
suddenly came to the top of the stairs and asked why she was standing there.

But the problem was—he didn’t do that. He was still in her
bedroom for some ungodly reason, and she was still stuck on what to do for a
dinner he probably wouldn’t want. There was no other choice aside from going up
and finding out, but by God it was painful to do it. She had to practically
drag herself, and once she’d finally made it to the bedroom door it didn’t get
any easier.

She’d planned a cheerful
just wanted to check you were
okay
, but it died on her lips the second she saw him through the half-open
door. He was standing by her bed, fully dressed in her clothes and looking
pretty comfortable—aside from his expression. His expression was so far from
comfortable it couldn’t have reached it with a barge pole, though it wasn’t
clear why.

He was only staring at his phone.

What on earth was his phone saying to make him look like
that?

His face seemed in danger of caving in. She had the urge to
get out some props and a few sandbags before the damage became irreparable. And
it wasn’t just the canyon-like frown and sagging sense of some terrible
despair. There was also the tension across his shoulders, so clear she could
see it through that awful t-shirt. She could have probably seen it through
twenty sweaters and a brick wall.

And then he turned too abruptly, and suddenly it was she who
was tense enough to see through a brick wall. Her spine practically snapped to
attention, and she knew her eyes had gone all big. She could feel them trying
to consume her face no matter how hard she worked on making them smaller—and
she did work hard.

She had to, if she wanted to convince him this was an
innocent non-intrusion. He was already staring at her in this accusatory way.
Looking relaxed was imperative, but somehow all she could manage was a
narrowing of her eyes and a weird slump. It probably made her seem more
suspicious, though if it did he didn’t say.

He was too busy trying to convince her of
his
innocence to do that.

“Phone’s dead,” he said, in a voice that aimed for cheery
and missed by a million miles. If she’d been asked to label it, she would have
gone with
wind whistling through a giant hole
—and that was before she’d
gotten to the lying part.

Oh he was lying so hard it pained her. He had to know she’d
seen. He clearly understood that his lie was meaningless. Yet he felt he had to
offer it anyway just to…just to what? Hide the fact that he wanted out of this
now? Suggest that his real life was calling, far sweeter than it had seemed
before the awkward moment in the closet?

That sounded pretty accurate to her, until she remembered
what he’d just said. He wasn’t telling her he’d gotten some important calls and
needed to run right out the door this very second. He was pretending he could
no longer receive them. That for all intents and purposes, all communication
with the people in his world had ceased. They were gone. They were dead.

He wanted to stay.

Even though she’d bungled things and reacted weirdly to
affection and thought of him as her dead husband, he wanted to stay. And now he
was just waiting for her to tell him that it was okay—as though it was possible
that she wouldn’t. He really thought she might question him about the lie, or
suggest he find out what people wanted. She could see it in every little guilty
glance he made in the phone’s direction, then even clearer in the desperate
look he gave her.

Don’t make me go back there
, that look said.

But that only made it easier to ask what she’d been afraid
to before.

“What do you want for dinner?” she tried.

And then reveled in every inch of his obvious relief.

* * * * *

It was clear that the next step was up to her. The only
problem was…she didn’t really know what that step should be. So far she’d
muddled her way through the first stages of friendship without accidentally
killing him, but who knew what would happen if she tried anything else? She
might make assumptions, terrible assumptions—like the one she’d almost made the
night before.

He’d followed her to her door when she had said she was
going to bed, and for one thrilling second she’d thought he intended to come
in. That he’d tired of the couch and didn’t think it a big deal to do things
this way instead. But then just as she’d gone to shyly offer, he’d kissed her
on the cheek and disappeared back down the stairs.

It was mortifying and maddening in equal measures—so much so
that she was thinking of just asking. She could make it sound matter-of-fact,
like the day before yesterday when she’d unwrapped him a spare toothbrush
instead of letting him carry on cleaning his teeth with his finger.
Yours is
blue because you’re a boy
, she’d said, and he’d laughed and she’d laughed
and both of them had pretended that he wasn’t taking a bigger step here than
most people did after five months of intensive dating.

It wasn’t like that.

Their relationship wasn’t like that.

Dear God, they had a
relationship
.

She
had
to try the asking thing.

“Bernie?”

“Yeah?”

She loved the way he said
yeah
. He always sounded so
super-interested in whatever she was about to say—though here it was something
of an issue. He glanced up from a book he was currently reading, locking every
bit of his attention on her, and suddenly she couldn’t say.

It seemed lame anyway.

Do you think we’re dating?

What kind of person said something like that? Only a person
who knew absolutely nothing about human interaction. Other normal people would
simply understand when dating was happening or otherwise, and the only reason
she didn’t was because she was a gigantic idiot.

“Never mind.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah…”

“Because it sounds like it might have been important.”

“It really wasn’t.”

“You’re making your important face.”

She put her hand up instinctively to see if she could feel
what that was like, but had to stop midway. He was looking, and sort of smiling
at the gesture. And though it wasn’t a bad smile—though it was filled with the
sort of familiarity she’d always wanted to have with another person—she was too
embarrassed to keep going.

Instead she settled for just asking, like a real person.

“I am? What does my important face look like?”

“It’s sort of the same as your
trying to make pasta
face. You get this line down the center of your forehead, and your eyes take on
a kind of haunted sheen.”

“In my defense, that pasta was evil. I’m convinced it was
evil.”

“I don’t disagree. Pretty sure most pasta does not explode
and then disintegrate.”

She wanted to protest here, but found she couldn’t. Her
memory of the previous night’s dinner was identical to his no matter how
ridiculous it sounded out loud. Her pasta had exploded, and then disintegrated.
They’d had to eat it with spoons.

There was nothing she could say.

She just had to steer him away from this whole topic.

“I’m really not feeling that way, though. The
exploding-pasta way, I mean. I was just… I was just…”

She wished she knew what came after
just
. Or at
least, she wished she knew it
faster
. That one maddening eyebrow of his
was already starting to rise. Pretty soon it would be all the way up to his
hairline, after which her entire lying house of cards would come tumbling down.

She needed a word. Any word. Any explanation.

“I was wondering if you wanted to watch a movie tonight,”
she managed finally, and came close to patting herself on the back.

It was premature though, of course. Her triumph was always
premature.

“You were making your important face over the potential
watching of a movie?”

Part of her really loved his incredulity. He never forced it
out the way some people did, in big guffawing waves. And it always came with
that dimple in his left cheek—the one she could just about see beneath stubble
that was close to turning into a beard. He was almost adorable when he was
being all skeptical.

But right now it was killing her.

“Well, no,” she said, and she was actually sweating as she
did so. Every ounce of effort was going toward a valid explanation, and when
one finally came to her it was like the heavens opening. “I was just worried what
you would think.”

“Of what?” he asked, clearly thinking there wasn’t an
answer.

But there was, ah sweet relief there
was
.

“Of my secret movie basement.”

“You have a secret movie basement?”

“I don’t know. It depends on what you think.”

“I think it’s weird that I’ve been here a week and you
didn’t tell me about it. We watched reruns of
Everybody Loves Raymond
yesterday. I came close to going out for rentals—and would have, if I wasn’t
deathly afraid of returning to find an old lady who tells me you’ve been dead
for ten years.”

She had the almighty urge to apologize here—not only for
subjecting him to unnecessary viewings of terrible sitcoms, but also for hiding
something from him for no good reason. Or at least, no reason that made any sense
to anyone but her. He was never going to be bothered by her weird stuff, quite
clearly. There was no need to keep it all compartmentalized, and he deserved a
sorry for the assumption.

Yet somehow a laugh came out instead.

God, he made the craziest things sound sane. He made them
light and fun and cool, instead of the dark mess she always found herself mired
in. She imagined dead husbands and stepping off her porch onto nothing, and he
turned it into a B movie from the eighties that she sort of wanted to watch.

More than sort of, in truth.

She wanted to live in it, with him.

“Yeah, you can giggle, but my fear is real. It’s not just
something from an old episode of
The Twilight Zone
that traumatized me
as a child,” he said.

“Are you sure? Because that’s kind of what it sounds like.”

“I’m totally sure. The other day you touched my arm and I
felt an unearthly chill.”

“I think that’s just my terrible circulation.”

“And what about that ghost sound you made?”

“I’ve never made a ghost sound.”

“You did. When the pasta exploded.”

“That was just terror and shame.”

“Well you’ve just got a rational explanation for everything,
don’t you?” he asked, but she could tell something else was coming. He’d
narrowed his eyes, and after a second he pointed a faux-accusatory finger.
“Apart from your bizarre fear of me seeing your secret movie basement. I still
don’t have a rational explanation for that.”

“Does there really need to be one?”

“There does if you have a well down there that you’re going
to throw me into, and that I then try to escape from by capturing the little
dog you don’t have.”

“I swear, I only do that if you don’t put the lotion on your
skin.” She paused, pretending to consider. “Or is that when you get the hose
again?”

“Seriously, we’re making obscure jokes about
Silence of
the Lambs
together and you didn’t think I’d want to see your movie
basement? Lead the goddamn way.”

Of course it was only after he’d expressed enormous
excitement that she realized—she actually was kind of nervous about showing
him. Not as nervous about asking him if they were dating, but certainly there
was something there. It hummed just below the surface of her more casual
thoughts, just lying in wait for the right moment. Then once they got to the
basement door, the moment sprung itself on her.