Push (29 page)

David pulls his hands out of his pockets and steps forward. He holds my cheeks and leans his forehead against mine. His palms feel cool against my warm skin, and a moment later, when his mouth covers mine, I feel as if I am wrapped in a cyclone. Everything is whirling around me, drawing the air out of my lungs and filling me with the best kind of turmoil. Sweet, unpredictable, endorphin-releasing turmoil. Every time his tongue slides against mine, a prickle in my gut tells me how right we are together. How much I need David. How much I need us.

I hope the cyclone never stops.

He picks me up and carries me back to the bedroom, kissing my neck and shoulders as he walks and then dropping me down on to the bed. I watch as he tugs off my clothes, and all I can think about is how his actions have served to tether my heart to his, to fasten me to him with a braided rope of protection and covetousness and insanity. Everything he did was for me. To keep a secure grip on what we have. To keep the bottom intact.

I unbutton his jeans and slide them down over his hips and then lie back on to the bed. David climbs up over me so that we are face-to-face, and the length of his body is pressing down over mine. His mouth is on me again, our lips full of promises.

David moves slowly down my torso, spreading kisses across my breasts and my stomach, heating me. He slides off me and sits on the edge of the bed, turned in my direction. His hands move over my skin, inciting a ticklish giggle when he streaks them up my inner thighs. But I stop laughing when his fingers hit their mark, when they start their skillful torture, when they move into me. A melody of emotions sweep over me. It’s a heady mix of lust and appreciation and elation and love. It makes me want to reach into myself and hand him my heart, beating with devotion and tethered to his.

I take him into my hand, pushing and pulling his hardness. We are there together, each of us using our hands to lift the other closer. Each of us with coarse breath and singing blood. A few moments later, my body bows up with gratification, curling into itself as I grunt and fold with pleasure. His fingers don’t stop until my body stills.

David gets up and pulls me up off the bed. My muscles are still reverberating as I stand next to him. I’m afraid that I might fall, but David wraps himself around me, holding me steady. We kiss again, and I stroke him, feeling the warmth of his skin. His breath is weighted, and he turns me around, lifting my leg on to the edge of the bed. He presses on the middle of my back until I bend forward and brace myself on the bed. David grips my waist and then I feel the delightful pressure of him entering me. He pulls me on to him over and over, my rear smacking into him with each pull and my arms pushing down on the mattress. His hand dips down between my legs, rubbing me in all the right ways. I force my behind out against him until once again, I topple over the edge. My loud, rough groan hits the air, and David pulls out of me.

“Goddamn, I love to hear that,” he says, his voice dredged in desire. “One more, Emma. Let’s go.”

I turn over and lie down on my back, the melody of emotions still singeing my skin. He lifts my legs up on to his shoulders, raising my rear up off the bed and sliding himself into me. I look at his face and see the power rising there, burning behind his eyes. His eyes meet mine, and a wisp of a smirk touches the corners of his mouth. He wants to watch this time, and the idea of it chokes me with desire. I reach down and touch myself, sliding my fingers across my own wetness, closing my eyes, feeling him move in and out of me. It feels really fucking good.
We
feel really fucking good. I can’t stop myself, and I come again, shouting a loud string of happy obscenities. Making my mind shimmer.

David runs his hands across my flesh. My skin is burning, and when I open my eyes, he is looking right at me and smiling a beautiful smile. I smile back at him. He drops my legs off his shoulders and pulls out of me. And then he is touching himself, his hand slipping tightly up and down as he leans over me. The smile is now gone from his face. It is replaced by heavy breaths and small sighs. I see David’s eyes close and his body stiffen, and then I feel the warmth of his satisfaction fall on to my stomach.

I am still smiling, and when David’s eyes open, his lips part and his teeth shine down on me. He looks absolutely vibrant. I wish I could read his mind. I wish I knew what he was thinking and feeling and seeing. Is my face awash with the same kind of happiness I see in his? The same light? I hope so. I hope he sees it, too.

He kisses my forehead and lies down on the bed next to me for a moment or two before he moves to get up.

“Wanna go get some Indian food?” he says, sitting up and looking down at me. His face is still beaming with energy. It is not what I was expecting him to say.

“What?” I say, shaking my head in surprise. “No.” My answer causes his face to lose a bit of its glow. “I mean, I’d love to, but I have to go to work in the morning. Plus, I already ate dinner.”

“Okay,” he says quietly.

“But, if you’re hungry, I can make you a sandwich or something,” I say, trying to salvage what’s left of his glow.

“No. I’m not really hungry either,” he says. His eyes are still bright, but now he looks a little embarrassed.

“Then, why did you ask?”

“Because I don’t want you to make me leave again. I was just trying to come up with an excuse to be with you.” He looks both adorable and electric when he says it. He dresses and heads toward the bathroom. Once his back is to me, he adds, “Come to think of it, ever since the day I saw you carrying boxes into the front door,
everything
I’ve done has been an excuse to be with you.” A flurry of cyclonic wind is filling me again.

“I won’t make you leave, David,” I say when he returns with a washcloth for me, “and you don’t need an excuse to be with me. You need to realize that the bottom is solid on this one—it is not going to drop out.”

“Promise?”

“Of course,” I answer. As I dress, it occurs to me that David may have heard these words before. That maybe Lucia or Jenny or Anna once said the same thing to him—but then another man, or drugs, or schizophrenia, changed everything and caused their relationship to spin out of control. How do I make him see that I am not them? “It’s pretty clear to me now what you meant when you said that your ex-girlfriends have played a huge role in who you are. Lucia and Jenny—and whoever else there was—failed you, David. They
let
the bottom drop out. Or maybe they even caused it. But I am not them. I said it before and I’ll say it again, the only way we fail is if you lie. I’m not going to fuck it up like they did, and I trust that you won’t fuck it up either.”

He gives me a small smile, reaching for me and rubbing his hand up and down my spine, being careful to avoid the still-sore skin around the tree branch. But a moment later, his smile fades, and a look of sadness spreads across his face. “It happened six times, Emma.”

“What happened six times?” I ask in a state of genuine confusion caused by both his statement and his expression.

“The bottom dropped out.”

“Oh.” I want to ask him about all of them. To find out what they did to make David feel so lost. To find out how things ended with each of them. But I don’t ask. Because I don’t want to hear about Anna Spaight. I don’t want to hear what I already know.

“I told you before about Lucia and Jenny and Elizabeth, but there were three other women.”

“Elizabeth?” I ask. Who is Elizabeth?

“My dad’s secretary.” Ah, yes. Elizabeth was his first lover. “We were together for a couple of months,” he says, his voice trailing off to a near whisper, “but then I found out that she was fucking my father, too.”

“Jesus,” I say as we both sit down on the edge of the bed. “That’s horrible.”

“Yes. It was.” I wonder if he’s going to continue. My heart is in my throat, and I am begging his mouth to keep quiet about Anna. “But Kelsey was worse than her,” he says. Worse?

“Who was Kelsey?” I ask gently, trying to keep my voice steady and calm.

“She was from my hometown, and we were together for a long time. My dad used to tell me I wasn’t good enough for Kelsey, but that just pissed me off and made me want to be with her even more.”

“Determination is one of your best traits,” I say, trying to force a small smile and lighten the mood. Please, don’t mention Anna. Please. Please. Please.

“And Sarah—she was my girlfriend in high school,” he continues. He doesn’t offer me any more information about Sarah, but from the look on his face, I can see that the end of that relationship hurt, too.

He wraps his arms around his middle. He is protecting himself again, from another imaginary shot to the gut. I feel Anna’s story in the air between us, and I know he is going to tell me about her now. I know the words are about to come out.

“And the sixth bottom to drop out was named Anna. She sent me into utter ruin, and after I moved here and was finally beginning to piece myself back together, I met Lucia.” The words rush out of him, making my head feel dizzy and thick. He looks away from me but keeps talking. “Anna was...Anna. She was good and kind and beautiful. But she was also a paranoid schizophrenic. We lived together for a while, and I tried to help her. I really tried. But I couldn’t.” He moves his eyes back to mine, and he raises his shoulders in a small shrug. His arms are still wrapped around his waist, and he is regarding me very carefully. Waiting to see if I will ask him what happened. But he must see that I don’t want him to continue, I’m going to pretend I don’t want to know any more about her. I’m going to pretend that it doesn’t matter. I let my face tell him as much because I am afraid that if I open my mouth, it will say all the wrong things, and I will start to cry.

I drop off the edge of the bed and down on to my knees in front of him, working my way in between his legs. He releases his waist as I lean in against his chest. My arms slide around him, squeezing his rib cage, and I feel his hands move through my hair and brush against my scalp. My face is pressed into him so that he can’t see me cry. I can’t help it. The tears pour from my eyes, and I have to try hard to keep the sobs from shaking through me. I sniff and his body tenses. He lifts my head away from his body and looks down at me, his brow wrinkling at the sight of my tears.

“Why are you crying?” he asks. He looks so confused.

“Because I’m sad for you, David. I’m sad that you were hurt so many times.” The amount of surprise on his face startles me.

“You shouldn’t be sad, Emma,” he says, wiping his thumbs across my cheeks. “All those things that happened—they shaped me. If those women hadn’t
failed
me, as you put it, I would not be here with you. I wouldn’t be strong enough to be with you. I wouldn’t be able to recognize how different you are. How different you make me feel. How different I am when I’m with you. I am not the same person I was when I was with Anna or Kelsey or even Lucia. And that is because of you, Emma. You.”

David holds my face and looks down at me for a long time. My mind is cluttered with thoughts of these women and David’s words. As I collect myself, I realize that the tears falling down my cheeks are no longer out of sadness. They are out of pride and happiness and love. Love for this man who has put my very own emotions into words.

“I know what you mean,” I say with a small smile, “because that’s exactly how I feel.”

His lips press into a small grin, and I can see both hope and uncertainty on his face. He is still unsure of us. Somehow, I’m going to have to prove to David that I am never going to fail him. That I am more sure of my love for him than I have ever been of anything else.

“It’s late,” he says. As he stands, he pulls me up and hugs me.

“Are you leaving?” I ask.

“You need to sleep—but I’m not tired,” he says quietly. “As long as it’s okay with you, I’ll stay until you fall asleep and then I’ll go back and help the guys clean up and count. But I’ll be here when you wake up tomorrow morning.”

“Good,” I say. “I like to wake up with you sleeping in my bed. You look like a little boy when you’re asleep.”

“Is that so?” he says, pulling away from me and tilting his head to the side.

“Yes. A sweet little sleepy boy—all covered in birds,” I say to him with a coy smile. “
My
bright little bird,” I add, recalling his mother’s nickname for him when he was small. His eyes immediately leave mine and sink to the floor. I regret my comment instantly. What a stupid fucking thing to say.

David lets go of me and steps away. I think he is going to say something, but his lips remain closed. He lies down, puts his hands behind his head, and crosses one straight leg over the other. I don’t want to say anything else, so I get ready for bed, set my alarm, and switch off the lamp. I snuggle my head on to his chest and wrap my arms and legs around him. His arm drops down from his head and cradles my shoulders as he pulls me into his chest.

“I should tell you about my mom someday,” he says very quietly. “Maybe tomorrow.” I hear a twinge of eagerness in his voice, and I think that maybe my comment wasn’t so fucking stupid after all. “I’ll pick you up from work. We can go somewhere fun.”

“Okay,” I say, planting a small kiss on his chest through the fabric of his hoodie.

“Good night, Emma.”

“Good night.”

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Maggie

I am standing on this bridge thinking about my life and wondering how things got so far off track. I wasn’t supposed to stay in this hellhole of a town, married to a man who will never amount to anything more than what he already is. I was supposed to be in Rome or London or New York City long ago, leading a life filled with excitement and meaning and brilliance. But instead, I am here. In the same town I grew up in, where everything is dull and achingly mundane and colorless. Where every day is filled with the same old crap. The same old loneliness. Even my bright little bird can’t change that.

Shep and I met twelve years ago when I was working at the diner, hoping to make enough tips for a bus ticket out of this place. From that day on, we spent every second we could together, talking about all the places we were going to go. All the places we were going to live. Paris, Johannesburg, Moscow—our plan was to go somewhere, anywhere, and find a job that would earn us just enough to buy a ticket to our next destination. We were going to travel the world together. But first, Shep said he had to go to trade school. He had to learn a universal trade that he could use in any of the places we wanted to go, that would make him money wherever we went. So he dropped out of community college and enrolled in a technical school. He needed two years to become a carpenter. Two years and we would be out of here; on our own and living the adventurous life we both desired. I worked at the diner while he went to school, and we moved in together to save on rent. We lived over McMillan’s Grocery, and we cooked our meals on a hot plate and made love every night. We were happy knowing that the life we were living was not going to be forever. Shep asked me to marry him a year after we met, and my mother’s minister performed the ceremony in her living room a few weeks later. We declared our eternal love for each other on my mother’s green shag carpet. I was wearing a blue dress, and Shep was in his only suit. He had to borrow a tie from my brother.

Two years turned into three, then into four. Shep had to get a night job stocking shelves at the grocery store and cut down on his classes so we could pay for both our rent and his schooling. We ate a lot of dented cans of soup to make ends meet, but we always did it. There was a map of the world tacked up on our kitchen wall to remind us that it would all be worth it someday. Because someday, we would get on that airplane and get the hell out of here.

By the time Shep finished trade school, we had quite a bit of money in the bank. We almost had enough to buy a pair of tickets to Frankfurt and cover the first few months’ rent on a little farmhouse we found through a housing cooperative. But then my mother died. She didn’t have any life insurance, and my brother was broke. We had to use well over half of the money we’d saved to pay for her burial service. Shep was not happy about it, and neither was I. My mother had taken out a reverse mortgage on her house a few years before, so when she died, the bank owned the house, and my brother and I were left on our own. He moved to Arizona, and Shep and I stayed above the grocery store. Working and saving and making love.

Shep started drinking a few months after I found out I was pregnant. He wanted me to get rid of it. But I told him that a baby didn’t have to stop us. That we could still go to Beijing and Barcelona and Milan; we could go as a family. There was still time. But he didn’t believe me, and he started going to Peyton’s every day after working his carpentry job. He started coming home later and later every night. By the time David came into the world, Shep was well on his way to becoming an alcoholic. I missed the old Shep, but my bright little bird kept me busy.

David was a beautiful toddler with the temperament of a cool, quiet ocean. He seldom cried or asked for anything beyond the bare necessities. He liked to carry things around with him, and then drop them wherever he pleased. He would fill his arms with books or crayons or kitchen utensils or stuffed toys, and then systematically spread them around the apartment. When I would scold him for making a mess, he would look at me with his big eyes, and then he would set about picking everything up and doing it all over again. His kindergarten teacher later said that he was the most well-behaved child in the room. He followed all the rules, raising his hand before speaking and helping the other children when they needed it. But the teacher was worried about him. About our family, actually, because David would come to school and tell her about how his daddy was good at yelling and screaming and making his mommy cry. I told her not to worry about it, that David had quite an imagination. She smiled and told me to let her know if I ever needed anything. That night, I spanked David and told him to never talk about his daddy like that. Your daddy works hard, I told him, and it’s nobody’s business what happens in our house. At the next parent-teacher conference, David’s teacher said that he had stopped talking completely. He stopped raising his hand and offering to help the other children. She wanted us to get him help, but I told her that David was just shy. He would be fine.

By the time David went to first grade, he was talking again, and he knew how to stay out of his father’s way. He knew that when Shep came home from Peyton’s, he needed to be asleep in his bed—or at least pretending to be. Shep liked to come home at night and make drunken love to me. He liked to look at the map still hanging on our kitchen wall and yell at me about why I had to have that child. Ever since David was born, I have tried my best to appease Shep, telling him that someday we’ll still go to all those places. We’ll still see it all. I’m sure David has heard every word we’ve said in that kitchen over the years. I’m sure he knows his arrival has caused nothing but chaos for me and Shep.

I started calling David my bright little bird the night I caught him trying to fly out of his bedroom window with a pair of ingenious homemade wings. He had made them out of cardboard and colored turkey feathers and butcher’s string. They were clever, but they certainly weren’t clever enough to work. I pulled him back into the room just before he jumped and told him that if he tried to fly he would just end up breaking his leg and pissing off his father. He tore off the wings and threw them into the garbage. That was the first time I saw him cry since he was a baby. It was a week after his seventh birthday.

I’d been short-circuiting for a long time before David’s flying attempt, always lamenting over the pile of dashed dreams that had become my life, but somehow, I always managed to function. I always managed to keep myself together. I never allowed the depression sink all the way in. But over time, the sadness seeped into my bones and ate away at my brain. I stopped getting out of bed in the morning. I stopped doing the laundry and the dishes and the housework. I stopped letting Shep make love to me. I stopped caring about anything. I felt myself slipping into a place plagued by doubt and regret and loneliness. I felt myself starting to sputter out. Shep saw it. He had to see it. But he didn’t do anything about it. He just ignored me and our life together, choosing instead to sleep on the couch and drink with his friends.

And my bright little bird has been watching me the whole time. Watching me fall. He’s seen me crying, alone in my room in the middle of the day. He’s watched me stumble around the house, unwashed and unkempt. He’s seen me lock myself into the basement for days just so I wouldn’t have to face the sunlight. My bright little bird has stared at me while I ate rotten food simply because I could not bring myself to go to the grocery store. He has gone hungry because of me. And the thought of it all makes me sink deeper. The thought of him suffering because of me makes my insides hurt. It makes my brain and my muscles and my bones and my heart ache for the life I have forced on to him. And for the life I was supposed to lead.

And now I am trapped in this acidic life from which I see no escape. Only sameness and hurt and guilt. Guilt for bringing this little boy into a world where he wasn’t welcome. For my own inability to make it a better place for him. For my ineptitude at motherhood. I am ashamed of myself and I hate myself for not being able to love my bright little bird the way that I should.

I walk back over to the car and look inside the window. David is asleep in the back seat. Curled into himself, his chest rising and falling softly. Sometimes he looks so grown up, and yet here he is looking so very small. He is growing into a very self-sufficient boy. Now that he is eight, he gets himself off to school every day. He’s does his own laundry—and mine, too. He keeps the apartment neat and tidy so that when Shep comes home, there is not a single thing out of place. David does all of this while I sit in my room listening to my mind splinter into pieces.

But because he is already capable of so much, I know that my bright little bird will be fine, despite the incompetence of his mother. Of that I am sure. He is old enough now to look after himself, and as long as he keeps staying out of Shep’s way, they’ll be fine together. David will be happier not having to think about me, and maybe, just maybe, Shep will find someone else. Someone who makes him breakfast in the morning and makes love to him at night. Someone who can take care of him. Maybe, if they’re lucky, it will be someone who can love David the way I never could. She’ll love them both, and they’ll forget all about me. Everything left inside me hopes that it comes true.

I pop open the trunk of the car and lift out a pair of sandbags, setting them on the ground beside me. It is a quiet night, and I haven’t seen a single car cross the bridge since we got here. I will do this quickly, and when David wakes up in the morning, he will see the note I pinned to his shirt. When he reads it, he will believe that I loved him, and he will want to love me back, even though I don’t deserve it. I
need
him to live the rest of his life believing that I loved him and that all those things Shep and I said in the kitchen weren’t true. If he believes these things, then maybe, for just one moment, I was a good mother. Maybe I didn’t fail him entirely. Maybe I did something right.

I drag the sandbags to the edge of the bridge and slide them under the guardrail. I climb over the top and begin to tie them to my ankles with two pieces of rope. I tie the knots as tightly and as quickly as I can. When I stand back up, I hear the car door close. The sound of it causes me to still, and after I take a breath, I turn my head around and see David standing right next to me. He is looking down at the bags, and the envelope pinned to his shirt is flapping in the wind. One of his hands is on top of the guardrail and the other is reaching for my arm, but I pull away before he can touch me. His hand drops to his side. When he asks me what I am doing, I tell him to get back into the car and go back to sleep. But he doesn’t move. He just stands there, watching me. I put my hand on his cheek and smile at him.

He shouldn’t be here.

But he is.

I crouch down and slide the sandbags off the bridge. Their weight pulls my feet over the edge, and I lean my body forward. As I drop through the air, I hear David’s voice. I hear him yelling, but I can’t hear what he is saying. And then I hit the water.

As the sandbags pull me down through the darkness, I look up to the surface. At the center of a circle of white cast by one of the bridge lights, I see the bottom of David’s shoes. He is kicking in the water above me. I see his hands swirling around, probing the water, feeling for a part of me. And then, as I sink, I see his face. I see the face of my bright little bird. His cheeks are puffed with a breath of air, and his eyes are searching the water. He is swimming down, toward me, with his hands out and his eyes wide open. I feel a rush of air leave my lungs and see the bubbles rise toward him. And then I am gone.