“You going out?” I asked nervously.
“Yeah.” He stood up. “Don’t wait up for me. You think you can figure out dinner, or you need me to make you something before I go?”
I wanted to ask him why he was dressed that way. Or rather, who he had dressed that way for. But I was scared because I didn’t want to hear the answer. I couldn’t.
I watched him leave a few minutes later.
I stayed there in the middle of the room looking around the house as though I hadn’t been there four months. I stared at the oldish furniture, the records Axel had left on top of the trunk the night before, the plants growing almost wild without anyone pruning them or pulling off the dead leaves…
When I could react, I decided not to have dinner.
My stomach was upset, and my feelings were pounding in my head and telling me to let them out. I took a deep breath. Over and over. Finally, from inertia, I looked for the one thing I knew how to do. I grabbed a blank canvas, put it in the middle of the room, and let myself go.
I painted. And felt. And thought. And went on painting.
In my head, I had the image I was trying to represent. I could see every line and every shadow before the brush touched the canvas. I didn’t know another way to do it. I felt something. I felt it intensely until that feeling overflowed and I had to release it.
My mother told me one time that all the women in the family were like that. She told me my grandmother fell in love with a rebellious guy that her father wouldn’t let her hang out with. Apparently she ran into him one day, looked into his eyes, and that was it; she knew he was her soul mate. When they forbid her to see him, she ran away from home one morning, took off with him, and returned three days later with a ring on her finger. Fortunately, it was a long and happy marriage.
She was like that. So was my mother, Rose.
She was always running off at the mouth. Saying the first thing that came into her head, whether it was good or bad. Dad used to laugh at how transparent she was and watched her tenderly while she ranted and raved walking from one side of the kitchen to the other, opening and closing cabinets with her wild hair in a bun and that energy that seemed to never give out. When he thought it had gone on long enough, he would go over and hug her from behind. Then she’d calm down. Then…Mom would close her eyes and let herself sway in his arms.
Remembering that, I grabbed another shade of gray.
The lines started coming together and gathering meaning bit by bit while the night grew darker and the clock crept toward one in the morning. I could hear nothing. I was alone, accompanied by those tangled feelings.
Then I heard the door creak…
Axel entered. I looked at him. And I hated him. Hated him…
“You’re still up?” he grunted.
“Do I need to answer?”
He stumbled forward and tripped over a flowerpot, holding himself up on the sideboard. I noticed his strange smile as he came over. All I wanted was to take off running for my room. Axel’s eyes were glassy from drinking, a cloudy blue, a blue that wasn’t his. And his lips were red from someone else’s kisses.
I was breathless, asking myself who she might be, why her and not me. I looked down at the marks on his neck.
Maybe I wanted to hurt myself. Maybe I wanted to punish myself for being unable to control my feelings. Maybe I wanted to hear it from his lips.
“What is that?” I pointed.
He rubbed his neck with that same idiotic smile. “Ah, Madison. She’s wild about me.”
“Did you sleep with her?”
“No, we played Parcheesi.”
“Fuck you,” I said, exhausted.
He came up behind me, pressing his chest into my back. One of his hands descended to my waist and pulled me into him while he bent over to whisper in my ear. “Maybe you think I’m a fucking pig, but one day you’ll realize I did this for you, babe. A little favor. You don’t have to thank me for it. If you thought you knew me…well, this is me; this is what I am.”
“Let me go.” I pushed him.
“See? Now you don’t like me touching you so much. You know what your problem is, Leah? You’re stuck on the surface. You look at a present, and all you see is the shiny wrapping paper, and you don’t think about how there might be something rotten inside.”
I couldn’t even look at him as I walked past him and slammed the door to my room so hard it reverberated through the house. I fell into the bed, sank my face into the pillow, and clenched my teeth to keep from crying. I heard that babe again, and ironically, for the first time, it didn’t sound paternalistic on his lips. It was different, dirty. I grabbed the sheets, feeling…feeling hate and love and frustration all at once.
52
_________
Axel
My head was going to explode.
It had been hours since the sun had come out when I got out of bed and left my room for a coffee as if I needed it to survive. I rifled through the drawers in the small kitchen looking for an aspirin or something that would quiet the fucking drum pounding in my head that kept me from thinking clearly.
Although perhaps better…
I took a pill and sucked in a breath, remembering slightly disjointed events from the night before. I had gone to Cavvanbah, had drunk with some friends until I’d forgotten my worries, then had fucked Madison between the bar and the back room. I think she asked me if I wanted her to take me home, and I said no, I preferred to go walking.
Then, well, the whole thing got out of hand.
I gathered my courage later and knocked at her door.
Leah jerked it open and looked at me as if I were a stranger and she was waiting for me to introduce myself. When she realized I wasn’t going to say anything, she turned around and went on packing her suitcase, the way she did every Sunday at the end of the month. When she finished, she zipped it up.
“Can you move? I need to go.”
I stepped aside, a little confused, and Leah dragged her wheeled suitcase over to the front door. “About last night…”
“You don’t need to explain it to me.” She cut me off.
“I wasn’t going to.” Shit. Shit shit shit. “I just…”
“You know what? Sometimes it’s better if you don’t say anything.”
There was a knock at the door, and before I could respond, Leah opened up anxiously, as if she wanted to get away. That irritated me, but I covered it up, smiling at Oliver, who hugged his sister before saying hi to me.
“How’s it going, dude?” He clapped me on the back.
“Same as always. Want a beer?”
“Sure. You got a Victoria Bitter?”
“No. Will a Carlton Draught work?”
“Sure. How’s work?”
“Wait, Oliver,” Leah called to her brother, not meeting my eyes. “I told Blair I’d try to stop by her house soon…”
“Sure, we can go now.” He grabbed Leah’s suitcase. “Axel, I’ll take a rain check on that beer. Tomorrow?”
“I’ll be here.” I held the door while they walked out.
Leah was wearing a dress with a blue floral print. Very short. I looked away from her legs and shut the door quickly before going out the back and grabbing my surfboard.