Mortal Fear

you!”

“And you said we should take a year to be sure.”

“That was for your benefit. I was sure! I thought you might not be, and obviously I was right.”

“I was sure, Drewe.”

“You were sleeping with other women too, weren’t you?”

“No.”

She walks back a little way, her arms folded protectively across her chest. “I hate this,” she says softly. “I hate it.”

“I hate it too.”

“I try to trust people, I want to, but everything is always so-so ugly at the bottom.”

“That’s not true.”

“It is!”

“It’s not true with you. I mean, you’re the exception. And I’m glad you are. It actually gives me hope for the world.”

She pulls off her sunglasses and looks into my eyes. “I’m no exception, Harper.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just what I said. No one’s completely pure. Everyone has a past.”

“What are you talking about?”

She hesitates, then pushes on. “What could you learn about me that would shock you the most? That would hurt you the most?”

There is a strange buzzing in my head which prevents my thinking clearly. “I’m not sure I-”

“You’re not the only man I’ve slept with, Harper.”

She takes a quick step back, as though the bald statement has shocked even her. “You don’t believe me?”

“But you said….”

“I let you think that because you wanted to believe it so badly, and because it was almost true.”

“Almost true?”

She folds and unfolds the earpieces of the sunglasses in her hands. “When I was in college, the last year before medical school, I hadn’t seen you for almost two years. You called maybe twice that whole time. I’d spent four years doing nothing but studying. I’d just taken the MCAT, and I was sure I’d blown it completely.”

“But you scored in the ninety-eighth percentile.”

“I didn’t know that then, okay? I just hit this down place in my life. I felt like everything had been a mistake. I’d been in love with you for years, was practically living like a nun, yet I was being faithful to a man who was sleeping with women all over the country. It seemed insane. It was insane.”

“Drewe-”

“One night I accepted a date with this boy. We went for pizza and a movie, nothing special, but I liked him. He was in some of my classes, and he made me laugh a lot. Anyway, when he took me home, I asked him to come in.”

“Drewe, you don’t-”

“And while we were kissing,” she says forcefully, “I realized how good it felt simply to be held by another person. And I just… didn’t resist anything he was doing. Almost my whole dating life had been spent pushing away hands and saying ‘Please don’t’ or ‘I’m sorry.’ And I was just tired of it. I couldn’t do it anymore. He was kissing me and I realized with sort of a shock that I was wet. And I was wearing a dress and I just-I just did it.”

I have a childish urge to cover my ears with my hands. Drewe watches me with an almost defiant look, her green eyes flashing, as if daring me to criticize her.

“What do you want me to say?” I ask. “It hurts.”

“That I did it? Or that I didn’t tell you about it?”

“I understand why you did it. I’m surprised you didn’t do more of it. But why couldn’t you tell me?”

She shakes her head as though she can’t believe what she’s heard. “I did exactly what you’ve done to me! Tried to spare your feelings.”

“I know that. I get it, okay? I don’t know why it hurts so much. I guess it’s because I always put you on such a pedestal, as if you were more than human. Hell, Drewe, you let people think that.”

“ What? When I was young I acted wild so people wouldn’t think I was a prude! When I finally tried to be myself, everyone made me into a saint. I can’t help what people think!”

“Was that the only time?”

She glances at the ground, then back up at me, still defiant.

“God, Drewe-”

“I didn’t sleep with any other men, but I slept with him again. For a couple of days after, I wouldn’t talk to him. But then I did. I slept with him every night for a week. Then I stopped.”

The whole scenario is impossible to comprehend, like someone telling me my mother was secretly married to some stranger. “Why did you stop?”

“I was terrified I’d get pregnant, for one thing. I knew I didn’t love him, for another. I liked him, but I didn’t love him. I loved you. And I knew the things I was doing with him were things I should wait to do with you. Even though you weren’t showing any signs of commitment to me.”

“The things you were doing?” I hesitate, trying to control my imagination. “What were you doing with him?”

She shakes her head and takes a step toward me. “Just sex. It doesn’t matter.”

“Then tell me. Just intercourse? Or everything?”

“ Just intercourse? Isn’t that the worst offense in the scale of guilty behavior?”

“No. I don’t know. Did you-”

“Stop it, Harper! This is wrong. It’s dangerous.”

“I guess it is. Was he-”

“What? Better than you? Bigger than you? Tell me you’re not that juvenile, Harper. Tell me you’re more mature than a seventh grader.”

I whirl away from her and start packing the Martin into its case. As stupid as it is, all I can see is Drewe debasing herself for some faceless guy and loving every minute of it, all at a time when she wouldn’t sleep with me, the man she claimed she loved.

She circles around until she is facing me again. “You know something, Harper? The biggest penis I ever saw was on a cadaver in medical school. You think it was doing that man any good?”

“Just shut up.”

“I won’t! I thought you were different from other men. All this obsession with how many conquests they can make and who has the biggest prick and who can piss the farthest… I see it every day, in hospital staff meetings, in politics. Men are like three-year-olds trying to snatch all the toys from each other. Life isn’t about that. You think it hurts to hear I had sex with a man for one week in my life? How do you think I would feel if every girl you ever slept with was lined up in a row? I know half a dozen personally, and the rest would probably fill a school bus! I’m sure they did things for you I couldn’t even imagine. But I don’t want to imagine them. You slept with my sister, for God’s sake. You have a child by her. So don’t stand there looking like a kid who just found out there’s no Santa Claus. I’m the one who’s been wronged. I’m the one who should be apologized to.”

“I tried to apologize!”

“Try again.”

With an idiot’s numb elation, I realize that Drewe isn’t telling me all this because she hates me, but because she loves me. And because she must hurt me a little to make it possible for us to live together again. The truth is, I feel almost relieved. I think I always wished for some little chink in her moral armor, if only to mitigate my own sins against her trust. It’s difficult trying to measure up to someone who not only has impossibly high ideals but also