“I know,” I tell her. “I know.”
And then a moment later, “don’t move. I’ll come to you.”
I cross the room and sweep her carefully up into my arms. Her face is still wet with tears against my cheek as I carry her into our bedroom. I lay her down on the bed and have a look at the cut on her foot. It’s not too bad. I go to the bathroom for sterile pads and peroxide, bandages and bacitracin. I tend to the wound.
The night’s warm. She makes no move for the covers.
I lie down beside her and look into her eyes and she looks into mine. I don’t know what she sees there but she holds my gaze and doesn’t turn away. I’m not sure what I see in her eyes either. I think of Sam and I think of Lily. But in a little while I reach over.
It’s perhaps a blessing, this thing I have, and perhaps a curse. I’ve always thought blessing but now I’m not so sure.
I know exactly how to touch her.
I know how to touch.
WHO’S LILY?
I don’t know what in hell is going on but I’m scared. My body is telling me something frightening and my body doesn’t lie.
As soon as I’m awake I can feel the wetness inside me — Patrick last night — so I roll away from him still asleep beside me, and as I stand his semen starts to ooze and slide along the inside of my left thigh. It’s just barely dawn. It’s still dark inside the house but I’d know my way to the bathroom blind. I use some toilet paper on my leg and labia and then a warm wet facecloth for your basic whore’s bath, thinking I really need to depilate or wax down there, wondering how I’ve let it go this long, and that’s when I notice my legs.
My legs are unshaven.
I run the palms of my hands up and down over them and that’s stubble all right. I’d say about two-or- three-weeks’ growth of stubble.
What the hell?
I stare at my face in the mirror. My face looks the same. But something about my hair’s wrong. I had it cut and styled just last week but you wouldn’t know it now. It needs a good brushing and it might be my imagination but I could swear it’s longer than it ought to be— longer than it was just last night.
I reach up into it to shake it out and stop midway.
There are light thin tufts of hair growing out of my armpits.
This is not possible.
What my eyes are reporting my brain can’t process.
I feel something drop in the pit of my stomach and it isn’t hunger pangs, it’s nausea.
I need to talk to Patrick right away.
But in the hall I glance to my right, and what I see in the living room stops me in my tracks.
My first thought is that we’ve been vandalized while we were sleeping, but I doubt that even a morphine drip would allow us to sleep this soundly. I step down the hall but not too far. There’s glass all over the living room floor, presumably from Patrick’s shattered poster art lying there, among other things, and I’m barefoot.
That’s when I realize the bottom of my foot’s bandaged.
I don’t remember doing that.
From where I stand I can see the overturned coffee table, the fireplace screen leaning over against the far wall by the television — mercifully intact — Patrick’s mystery books scattered everywhere, a broken Corona bottle, our vintage ’40s standing lamp lying in the middle of the floor, its bulb down to filaments and its painted glass shade in pieces. And beside it lies a pale white dress.
I inch a little closer, mindful of all the glass, just to make sure that I’m seeing what I think I’m seeing.
It’s my wedding dress, veil and all, crumpled up and torn and stained with what looks like dried blood.
I’m a medical examiner. I see a good deal of dried blood. And even at this distance I’m pretty sure that’s what it is.
And while all this is spinning around in my head, while I’m trying to take in and make sense of all this violence to our lives and property not to mention what’s happened to my body, I realize that I’ve missed something so incongruous as to be almost surreal. Lying propped up on the couch, looking undismayed and undisturbed, is a big stuffed dog I’ve never seen before, bright red, a life-sized baby doll, also unfamiliar to me, and Teddy, my very first stuffed animal.
If this is Oz, I want no goddamn part of it.
I run shuddering back into the bedroom, sit down beside Patrick on the bed, place my hand on his shoulder and shake him gently. I don’t want to startle him but I need to have him awake. He needs to help me. I need to have someone explain all this.
“Patrick. Wake up.”
He squints at me and runs his tongue over dry lips.
“Lily?”
“
His eyes are open wide now. He rises up on one elbow.
“Sam? Is that you?”
“God, Patrick. Of course it’s me. Look at me. I mean really
It seems at first he can’t say anything. Then he shakes his head. He looks puzzled. Then he smiles. Then he laughs. Then he reaches for me and takes me in his arms, hugs me tight.
“Oh, jesus, Sam. You’re back! Thank god!”
I feel like somebody’s taken my head and shaken it, hard. I’ve never been so confused and so scared in my life. I never thought it was possible. Something is so terribly, terribly wrong here.
“What do you mean, back? Back from where?”
What I really want to ask him is,
I feel his body go rigid suddenly. It’s as though he, too, is scared of something now. And then I feel him start to cry.
Patrick never cries.
It starts off slow but soon this is big, deep, whooping crying, like he can’t even get his breath.
“Patrick, what…?”
For some reason just the sound of my voice seems to hurt him even more. He’s bawling, unrestrained as a hungry baby. I hold him tight. I notice Zoey, our old arthritic tuxedo cat, watching us wide-eyed from the windowsill.
“What? What’s the matter? What’s going on?”
His body’s wracked with sobs. He’s scaring me further.
“Patrick, you have to talk to me!”
He won’t.
We must be fifteen, twenty minutes like this. He clutches at me like he’s drowning, like the sea is beating at him and I’m the only rock around. His fingers are digging into my shoulders. His tears are rolling down my collarbone, cooling over my breast. He wipes away snot with the back of his hand. He’ll go quiet and then start all over again. I’ve never seen him like this. I don’t say another thing. I hold him, rock him. I’m calmer somehow. Maybe it’s simple exigencies — I need to take care of this first. I need to take care of him.
But he can’t seem to stop. He’s mumbling something into my shoulder, the same thing over and over.
Finally I make it out.
“What do you mean? What are you talking about, Patrick?”
