Falls (Pt. 15): An Anchor

35.

It was still a little light out when I laid on the bed for the night. Bev had disappeared somewhere but I could smell pot and I figured she was in the attic. Marie was in the kitchen and I thought I could hear dishes and I didn't know if she was cooking or cleaning and in my drunken fog I assumed cooking and hoped it was sloppy joe's or maybe a meatloaf, or a boston creme pie, but I was asleep before any of those would have finished.

I slept heavy and dreamless and when I woke in the morning I felt the weight of two of me, pressed into the mattress and fighting for unconsciousness. I pressed my eyes shut and tried to force sleep but for the first time in a few weeks I felt no one next to me. No sweat that wasn't mine. No hair in my eyes or mouth. No tangle of arms or legs, only a distant sense of loneliness, like a pinhole of light.

I crawled from bed. I was wearing the clothes from the day before and as I stood I peeled them off. Shirt first, then socks, then shorts and I walked to the bathroom nude, dropped into the tub and kicked the water on hot and the drain down. The water burned my feet at first and I rolled onto my side and let the water scald me in layers, rising and burning, rising and burning. When the tub was full I kicked the water off and laid on my back and exhaled into the water.

An anchor in my chest.

36.

"I'm sorry about before," Bev said. We were in the attic. I had been trying to write and Bev had pulled down the ladder and climbed up with a bottle of wine and a joint and kissed my forehead, and I knew what it meant. 

She was sitting in front of me and looking at the typewriter, and around the room, and at me when there was nothing else to look at. "I don't know what my problem is. I'm jealous, I guess."

"Of what?"

"I don't know, you and Marie. Maybe I'm just, I don't know. Tom kind of fucked me up, I think, and then I thought maybe you guys were the answer. Like, maybe Tom had to leave. Maybe it was supposed to be the three of us, you know?"

I watched her. 

"Here's the thing..." She took a hit and a swallow and continued. "I should leave."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, the summer's almost up anyway, and I think maybe I've made things weird. I know it's you and Marie, and I know that we're friends. I know that we all had a good time and, it's probably just my time to leave. Before anything fucking stupid happens."

She passed the joint to me. 

The things I wanted to say boiled up my throat and filled my mouth and had I opened it they all would have come pouring out in waves and nothing could have been taken back. Instead, I said; "When?"

"I haven't decided. Soon."

I nodded. "I'm going to miss you."

She smiled only a little. 

We finished the joint and wine.

37.

"Bev's leaving," I told Marie later, as she painted and I sat on the floor watching. 

"Yeah, I know. She told me."

"Oh, I guess, I just expected you'd be bothered."

"No, not really. Why? Are you?"

"I don't know, a little maybe."

"You sure it's just a little?"

"I don't know, maybe more than that. I don't know. It's probably for the best."

"Yes. It probably is." She wiped a long band of red across a sea of purples and oranges.

I chewed on it. There was a strange detachment in the way she said it and I wondered if it was because the painting had her then and maybe it was a conversation for another time. "You okay?"

"Fine," she said, smearing the brush across the canvas, blending. "I'm just fine."

"I feel like you aren't. Like I'm missing something."

She set her brush down and looked at me. "You aren't. I'm fine. Yes, Bev's leaving. We get to be alone. Is that so fucking bad?" She looked back at the painting. "Christ. God forbid you only have your wife now. I'll try not to fucking bore you to death."

"Marie, what are you talking about?"

"Nothing. Forget it. Go see if Bev needs help packing."

"You don't bore me. And time with only us is going to be great and really good for us to come back to some sort of normalcy. I don't know where all of this is coming from."

"Nowhere. It's nothing." She dropped her brushes in a small cup filled with water next to her, stood up and looked at me. "I'll go help Bev, you just stay here and do nothing, I guess."

"Marie what...? Bev's not even..." 

It didn't matter. Marie was already out of the room. 

I drank the last of whatever was in her glass and I thought it was Saki and I didn't know if that explained anything, but still, an anchor in my chest.