Monsters (3 page)

Alan leans forward and tries to do this calming motion with his hand, but it hardly seems to work. “Whoa, let's not get carried away. It's a rocky start is all.”

Joe looks at me and shakes his head. “She doesn't get it. Controlling bitch if you ask me.” He sort of sneers drunkenly. “How do you even
keep a husband anyway? Seriously, how does he even put up with you?” Because, of course, it's right there, at the back of the book, my whole life boiled down to a paragraph. It reads,
Omaha
 . . .
husband
 . . .
two sons,
and I don't even know how to start correcting him. I don't even know which parts are still true.

Tommy laughs. “Joe, you're a handful, man.” He stands up from the table. “Brandy?” He points to Joe, then Alan, then me.

“Please, yes, I'd love some.” I get up and follow him to the bar.

Tommy lines up four snifters and pours two fingers in each.

“Let's talk outside.” He hands me a glass and gestures toward the terrace. He points me to the couch and then sits across from me. “Don't worry about Joe,” he says. “He's an asshole and a drunk, but he's really, really good. No one would put up with him if he wasn't. I think he hasn't quite figured out your vision yet, but he'll get there. We'll make him get there. Promise.” He rests his hand on my knee and smiles. I think it's supposed to be a reassuring gesture, but I just feel hyperaware of his fingers and maybe a little flushed, which is ridiculous because I'm not the sort of woman who gets flushed. “Just don't let him push you around.”

“Do I look pushed around?”
God, I hope not.
I take a sip of the brandy and try really hard not to look rattled. Or look at his hand, which is still just resting there on my leg.

Tommy laughs and leans back in his chair, taking his hand with him. “I don't know, honestly. You're hard to read.”

•   •   •

In the morning, I walk out to the kitchen and find a full pot of coffee and a tray of sliced fruit. I pop a piece of pineapple in my mouth and
take a cup of coffee out to the terrace. Tommy is already there. He's sitting with his feet propped up on the table. My book is in his lap, and he's writing in the margins. I feel strange standing there, out of place.

He looks up. “Coffee's good today,” he says. “Daniel took care of it. There should also be some breakfast in there if you're hungry.”

“No,” I say. “Just coffee's good.”

“So I'm making notes. I think if we look at these poems in terms of scenes, and then work from there. Who else is present for this scene and what will those characters say and do? Your monster is so fleshed out, so real, the rest of them need to come to life, give her some balance.”

“Right.” I nod my head a little and stare at my coffee. The steam rises in a slow, looping swirl. “You know, I don't know if I can do this,” I say finally.

“Sure you can.”

I set the coffee on the table and sit on the couch, cross-legged, holding both feet next to my hips, my fingers tight around my ankles. I look out over the water to the point where it merges with the horizon. When I finally turn back, Tommy is looking at me. He must have shaved this morning. They like to picture him with stubble, maybe to scuff up the pretty. That's really the word for it. Aside from the hard line of his jaw, he has the face of a pretty girl—high cheekbones, wide green eyes. He lets the book fall closed in his lap. I just shake my head.

“I know that you can.” He puts this emphasis on the word
know
. Like it makes a difference. Like a person can know anything. Like knowing helps.

“I don't have room in my head for the others. Hers is the only voice I hear.”

“That's bullshit.” He stands up and grabs his cup. “I need a refill. You?”

“No,” I say. “Thanks.”

He turns toward the house and then turns back. “I can hear them in there. Right in the book. There are snippets of them, moments. You just keep them on too tight a leash. You've got to let them loose. You've got to give in to the chaos.”

I try to laugh. “I don't like chaos.”

“No shit?” He steps closer and leans down until we're face-to-face. I feel myself shifting backwards, trying to make space. “Jesus. You are wound so tight you're gonna break something. But you are not”—he raises his hand to point in the direction of the book where it sits on the table—“you are not gonna break this.” He stands up and walks into the kitchen, and I turn my head back out to face the ocean and close my eyes as tight as I can and hold my breath.

•   •   •

It's getting later, and the sky is slowly darkening. It doesn't gray like back in Nebraska, it just turns a deeper blue. It's been a long day, with not much progress to show for it.
See,
I thought about saying to Tommy at one point,
I can't do it.

Alan and Joe took off half an hour ago, headed out for burgers.

“Thanks, no, I'm a vegetarian,” I said when Alan asked, and Joe just looked relieved.

I snap my laptop closed and lean back into the couch.

Tommy comes out to the terrace with a bottle and two short glasses. “Scotch,” he says, setting the bottle on the table. I wrinkle my nose, but he says, “You'll like it.” He sits down on the couch next to me and pours a little in each glass, hands one to me. “To finding chaos.”

I roll my eyes, but I take a sip. “Jesus. This tastes like lighter fluid.”

He laughs. “That's a four-hundred-dollar bottle of scotch.”

“It's awful.”

“Keep drinking. It'll grow on you.”

It does. By the time the sky's completely dark, I feel like I could melt right into the couch. Tommy's telling me a story about his favorite uncle. He's telling it like there's a lesson in it somewhere, but I'm having trouble concentrating.

“Where'd you grow up?” I ask.

“Texas. Didn't I say that?”

“Maybe.” I shrug. “Did you like it?”

“No.” He shakes his head and takes a sip of the scotch. “No one likes their childhood. At least, no one likes their childhood and then ends up here.”

“Really?” I turn to face him, adjusting my body so I'm sitting sideways. “Why not?”

“Isn't that what drives us? Getting away?”

“Not me,” I say. “I loved my childhood.”

“Tell me about it,” he says.

“It was great.” I pull my right leg up and hug it into me, resting my chin on my knee. “My parents both taught at USF.”

He makes a face because he's obviously never heard of it.

“University of San Francisco. I did my undergrad there. Free tuition.” I shrug. “Anyway, we lived a few blocks away. We didn't really have a yard, so my dad would take us down to the campus on the weekends, and my sister and I would roller-skate. My dad would say, ‘Sunny, don't dig up the grass with those skates.'”

“Your dad called you Sonny? Like Sonny and Cher?”

“Sunny, like sunshine.”

“Right. Because of your sunny disposition,” he says.

“My older sister was Boo. Pale. White-blond hair.”

“Like a ghost?”

“Like Boo Radley,” I say, and Tommy laughs.

I'm smiling now. Just smiling. Then Tommy smiles, and then he leans forward and kisses me. It's this soft, slow kiss, just his lips on my lips, and he's got one finger under my chin tugging me closer and then his hands are on either side of my jaw, and he's pulling me toward him. I scoot my left leg across his lap, and then I'm kneeling over him, and his head's tipped all the way back. I've got his bottom lip in my teeth. He runs his hands up under my shirt and along my back all the way to my neck, and he presses his fingers into my hair and pulls his mouth away from mine, brushing his lips against my chin, and it feels like an electric shock, and I suck in my breath and scramble backwards as fast as I can and walk in the house.

In the kitchen, I brace my hands on the counter, but I can't keep myself up. I drop down into a squat, curling over my knees, my arms up over my hair. “Oh god. Oh my god. Fuck.”

I can hear his footsteps coming closer. “Look, I get it,” he says. “Some girls are married, and some girls are fucking married. Whatever. Let's not make a scene.”

I'm rocking from my heels to my toes. I'm trying to breathe.

“Jesus. You're a disaster. You need to get your shit straight.”

I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine.
I stand up in one fluid motion and push my hair out of my face. “I'm fine,” I say.

“You call this fine?” He's got a glass of scotch in his hand, and he's pointing it at me. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

I take a really slow breath. I can do this. I can handle it. I'm fine. I press my lips together. It might look like I'm smiling. I try looking him in the eye. “My husband is dead.”

“What?” He shakes his head like I've said something impossible. It's not impossible.

“My husband.” I say it slower this time. “He's dead.”

“Like . . . recently?”

I nod. I think I look like I'm smiling again. I might be trying to smile. “Mm-hmm.”

“Oh Jesus, honey, I'm sorry.” His jaw relaxes, and he takes two steps toward me and pulls me into him. He's cradling my head in the crook of his elbow, holding the glass of scotch next to my ear, and he's making this rocking motion like he's shushing a baby. He brushes my hair back off of my face with his other hand.

•   •   •

Tommy sits me down in the living room and goes out to retrieve the scotch. “We're gonna need more of this,” he says, handing me my glass. He sits on the floor in front of me, one leg stretched out. He leans back into the couch and closes his eyes. “All right, let's hear it.”

“There's nothing to hear,” I say. “He just died.” I take a drink of the scotch. I'm not so much sipping it anymore as sucking it in. “In March. He was in a car accident. Dead on the scene. Thank god. I mean, that it was fast. Not that it happened, just that it wasn't some lingering thing. You know?”

“How long were you married?”

“Ten years.”

“And your kids?”

“They're six and nine.”

He reaches one arm back over his head and squeezes my knee.

Then I'm crying, and I haven't cried in months. I cried a lot in the beginning, but it made the boys so sad, and now I don't cry anymore,
and I'm telling him this too, like he'll believe me when I tell him I'm not crying, even though I'm sobbing and my hands are covered in snot. Through it all, he just sits there, shaking his head occasionally and pouring me more scotch.

•   •   •

I remember waking in Michael's room in his apartment in Boston, watching him dress. He was still so young then, his face like a baby's, but he had the body of a man. He stood at the dresser, buttoning his shirt, buckling his belt, fastening his watch around his wrist, and I thought,
This is how a man moves in the world
,
how he fills the space around him.

I hadn't intended to go home with him. I'd just been tagging along with a friend. She wanted to go home with him, and he was really more her type. Clean-cut, businessy, athletic. We left the bar in a group. I hadn't been angling to be the one riding back to their place on his lap. I was just the last one in the car, and it was a small car, and then he patted his legs. I was wearing this short skirt, so when he draped his arm around me, his hand was resting on my bare thigh. My flight home for the summer was three days away, so it wasn't like we were starting anything. It was just for fun, just a fling.

I didn't plan to think about him through the summer, but I did. I thought about his hands. He had these big, strong hands and this sweet boyish face. He looked like a Boy Scout. He looked like the kind of guy you'd want with you if you were lost in the woods, worried about bears. I remember feeling lost that summer, and very much alone. Jenny had moved in with Todd by then, and my parents spent most of it traveling.

I had an assistantship, so I was teaching that fall when I got back to Boston. The second week of class, I walked out of the building, and there he was, sitting on the wall by the front steps.

“I would have found you sooner if you'd told me your last name,” he said.

“Would you?” I said.

He jumped off the wall, and I walked toward him, and I dropped my bag at his feet.

“You know my friend tried to set me up with this girl, and I said, ‘I'm seeing someone. Or I will be once I find her again.'”

I probably would have married him right then. Michael always made me feel found.

•   •   •

I feel like someone is hammering nails into my temple. I turn my head to get away from it, and it feels like my skull is cracking open. I have to stay still. Everything is broken. Everything hurts.

“Hey.” There's a voice in my ear, and someone is touching my head. “You've got to get up now. You're gonna have to move.”

Hurts,
I try to say, but it doesn't come out.

“Jesus, Tommy. What did you do to her? Just get out of my way,” I hear another voice say. “Sweetie? It's Daniel. I'm gonna help you, okay?”

I try to nod.

“Here's the thing, honey. You've been poisoned.”

“She's not poisoned,” Tommy says.

I just whimper. I have been poisoned. I think I might die.

“I'm gonna need you to drink something for me. Can you do that?”

“Uh-uh.” I can't open my mouth at all. I think if I do, all my organs will come rushing out.

“We've got to sit her up,” Tommy says. He pushes past Daniel and slides onto the couch next to me. “Help me pull her up.”

“No, no, no, no, no,” I mumble as they pull me into a sitting position.