Authors: Tara Crescent
Lisa:
He had called that night, and the next morning, and that night, and the morning after. I let all the calls go into voicemail. He didn’t leave a message.
I wanted to talk to him. But fear kept me from picking up the phone. I was afraid, not of Patrick, but of myself.
My dream, in which I submitted sweetly to my Dominant? Well, I had lived the dark underbelly of that. I had seen how I had become an object to be used for sex, every element of my personality erased as part of my
training
. Nick had taught me that lesson well, and I feared that I would wander, unaware, into that slow storm, till I was stranded in the middle with no way out.
Worse than that. I was terrified that, lost in my love for Patrick, I wouldn’t want to find a way out.
Some tiny part of me had hoped that he would hammer at my door, demanding that I talk to him. But that wasn’t who Patrick was. He had no need to force himself on women. He would respect my desire to be left alone.
***
When the alarm rang Monday morning, all I wanted to do was turn it off and go back to bed. I’d dreamed of Patrick again. This time, we had been at a bar, drinking beer and sharing nachos, while watching a Leafs game. It had been a dream of aching normalcy, and the sense of happiness and warmth was seductive.
Call him, damn it, Lisa,
I scolded myself. But fear held me back.
Natalie was already at work when I got there. “How’s the wrist?” she asked me as soon as she saw me. I’d almost forgotten about my wrist, lost as I was in the other storms in my life.
“Not broken,” I said. “Just a bad sprain. I should be able to remove the brace in a week.” I made a face; mundane things like taking a shower and shampooing my hair had been a lot harder to do with one hand. My work crew did most of the heavy lifting, but I was still going to be fairly useless for the next couple of weeks.
“Good,” Natalie said. She seemed subdued somehow. She was usually filled with laughter, impossibly cheerful given her past, which included a violent and abusive ex-husband who was currently serving time for the last beating he’d given her. A beating that had sent her to the hospital with broken ribs, a broken arm, and gashes all through her legs. All when she was pregnant. She had told me her story one day, a few months after I’d hired her. She had been a young mother, twenty-one when she’d had her baby girl Emma, and she’d needed the work desperately when she’d knocked on my door three years ago. Hiring her had been one of the best decisions I’d ever made.
“How did your walkthrough with Charles go?” I asked her. I had meant to call her Friday afternoon. “Did he yell at you?”
“No,” she said. “It was fine.” There was something in her tone, something unidentifiable but important. I looked at her, trying to read what she wasn’t telling me. I’d worked with her for three years; we had bonded over tales of bad dates and inappropriate men.
“Okay,” I said. She’d tell me if she thought I should know.
We got to work. Deliveries needed to be arranged, furniture ordered and invoices paid. I had more clients at the moment than I had ever had. Business was booming. The office phone kept ringing all morning as well; referrals from satisfied clients leading to inquiries and more work. Every time the phone rang, I jumped a little hoping it was Patrick. It wasn’t.
At noon, there was the sound of someone walking up the stairs, then a knock on our office door. I got up to open it. Natalie had a bowl of soup in front of her, engrossed in a magazine.
“Delivery for Lisa Preston,” the UPS guy at the door announced.
Natalie looked up, amused. “Patrick again?” she asked. A pang went through me. Only three days ago, I was the woman getting gifts of sexy lingerie from a guy I liked very much. How quickly things had changed.
I signed for the box, which was much larger this time, and the UPS guy set it down at the edge of the table in the centre of the room. I waited till I heard the sound of his footsteps echoing back down the stairs before I turned back towards the parcel.
“Are we expecting any sample deliveries?” I asked Natalie. She kept track of these things better than I did. She shook her head. “Nothing,” she said.
The box was unmarked. I opened it, and there, nestled in its folds was a beautiful, state-of-the-art espresso machine. Next to it, a pound of coffee beans, and a coffee grinder. I opened the small envelope. Just one sentence.
“Answer your phone, Lisa.”
Damn it, but I missed him. Painfully so. I missed everything about him. The warmth of his body next to mine. The way he smiled at me as he handed me a cup of coffee. His quiet, focused attention on me. And he was observant - he’d only been to my office once, and he’d noticed we didn’t have a coffee machine. Buying one had been on my to-do list since the day I’d signed the lease, but I had never managed to get around to it.
“Patrick?” Natalie sounded amused. “I like Patrick.”
I was close to tears again. I just muttered something incomprehensible, and retreated into my office.
***
My phone rang that evening and once again, I was paralyzed by fear. Every rational part of me was screaming at me to pick up the phone. I reached towards it, but my hands were shaking, clammy, ice-cold.
The next day, a coffee mug arrived; a simple white mug, filled with chocolate. No note this time. And the phone rang again in the evening.
Wednesday, it was a morning delivery; croissants and pastries from a bakery in the neighborhood. Thursday, it was lunch; a sandwich and salad tray from the café next door.
“Okay,” Natalie announced, as she hovered over the sandwiches, trying to decide between egg salad and the hummus. “What did he do? Sleep with someone else?” The dark circles under my eyes hadn’t escaped her notice. Neither had she missed the way I flinched every time the phone rang, nor the way I looked in every delivery from another note from him.
“No,” I muttered. “Nothing like that.”
“Then?” Her voice was impatient. “Is there a reason the guy is being given the silent treatment?”
I shook my head and tried to hide the tears that sprang up in my eyes. “It’s complicated,” I muttered.
“Don’t I know complicated,” she said softly. There was that tone in her voice again. She’d been subdued all week. She handed me a tissue so I could dry my eyes, and as her wrists extended towards mine, I noticed the purpling bruises on them.
I drew a sharp inward breath. I knew how to recognize the bruises left by rope when I saw it. She saw my eyes on her wrists, and she flushed and self-consciously drew back.
“Is your ex out of jail?” I asked. My first thought was of that louse.
“What?” she asked, clearly startled. She shook her head. “No.”
“Natalie,” I prompted. “Is someone hurting you?” I felt like a terrible friend. She had been unlike her usual cheerful self all week, but I’d been too absorbed in my misery to notice.
She shook her head. “No,” she said softly. “Not in the way you think.” She paused, searching for words. “Lisa, have you ever been spanked by a guy? Sexually, I mean.”
Oh boy. If only she knew. “Yes,” I said carefully. “I take it this is new for you?”
She nodded. “It was really good,” she said softly. “And it’s left me so confused. I mean, when Roger beat me, it was horrible. But this was so incredibly sexy…” Her voice trailed off. “But now, I’m wondering, what kind of woman lets this happen to her? I mean, especially after being beaten by her ex-husband? Shouldn’t I be outraged, afraid, running far, far away?”
“Natalie, you don’t have to tell me who it was,” I started, “but I am dying of curiosity here.”
She blushed. “Charles Dobson,” she said. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have slept with a client.”
I shrugged that off. We were almost done with his condo; he wouldn’t be a client in fifteen days. Besides, I was more concerned about her.
“What else did he do? Those are rope marks on your wrists.”
She blushed again. “He tied me up,” she said. Her face was beet red.
I winced inwardly. My mind flashed back again to the twenty-three year old I’d been, pursued by a rich, dominant man who was older than me, pursued till I relented and submitted to him. The scars still remained, twelve years later. Scars that prevented me from picking up the phone and calling Patrick.
And now, Natalie was being pursued by Charles. The parallels were too obvious to ignore. She was worldlier than I had been. She was twenty-eight and she was far less naïve about men than me. Still, I felt compelled to warn her.
“Natalie,” I said, “I’m going to tell you a story.”
***
I told her the story that I’d never been able to fully tell Patrick. All about Nick O’Malley, and the submissive I had been.
I left nothing out. I told her all of the sordid story. How I had craved the feeling of submitting to Nick’s will. How I would have done anything to make him happy. How I had complied with all his demands, no matter how devalued and objectified I had felt. The shame I had felt as I let him damage me. How it had all blown up in my face in the end. There was silence in the room when I was done.
Finally, she looked at me. “This isn’t like that,” she said. Her voice was steady. “I mean, I have a hundred reservations about Charles. He’s a player. He’s ridiculously rich. I don’t want to bring someone like that into Emma’s life, someone for who I am a pleasant diversion and nothing more.”
She paused. “But, despite all of that, when he touched me, there was never a moment where I felt like an object. No, Lisa. All through the night, I felt more desired and more cherished than I’d ever felt in my entire life.”
Patrick had made me feel like that. Every time he touched me, right from the start. I had always felt cherished. There was a pang in my heart, and I resolved to put an end to my fear. I would call him tonight.
Patrick:
It was hard to hold back the impulse to knock on Lisa’s door and demand that she talk to me and explain what was wrong. We’d only been seeing each other for three weeks, really, and she didn’t technically owe me anything. But we’d gone further in three weeks along the road of intimacy than many people did in a lifetime.
I knew trauma. I was a doctor. In the course of my work, I saw physical trauma and I saw emotional trauma. She’d run for a reason. I trusted her. She was honest and straightforward. This was more than a moment of pique at Andrea’s words. Something Andrea had said had churned up deep emotions in Lisa. I had to wait for her to trust me enough to approach me.
Every morning, I woke up thinking of her. During the day, work pushed her to the back of my mind, but alone in the evenings, she roared back to the front of my thoughts again, like a fire that would not be contained. And I called her in the morning and in the evening, and got her voicemail every single time.
I should have left her alone entirely, but I couldn’t. But after that first day, I didn’t send a note with the gifts. That much space she deserved.
She was the woman I wanted. I was forty-two; experienced enough in the ways of the world to know that Lisa was special, that the chemistry and comfort between us was unique. For Lisa, I would be as patient as it took. And I’d never been accused of being a patient man.
Lisa:
My cell phone started beeping at me the instant I got off the subway. Not Patrick. He called at ten in the morning, and nine at night. No, I had five missed calls from my dad.
I wrinkled my forehead, a trickle of alarm running through me. My parents were not the kind that called me again and again. I’d had dinner with them Sunday, as usual, and they had spent time regaling me with stories of their shopping expeditions in the Grand Bazaar and their many trips to the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sophia. I had been a little envious of their trip to Turkey.
My dad picked up on the first ring. “Lisa, thank heavens,” he said. He sounded terrible, tired and weary and afraid. There was a trembling in his voice. Another frisson of alarm went through my body.
What had happened?
“What’s wrong?” I asked immediately. I crossed the fingers on my right hand as I spoke, and in my shoes, I crossed my toes as well. A childish habit; a futile attempt at warding off ill tidings.
“Your mother collapsed,” he said, and each word sent a shard of ice through my heart. “She’s in the ICU. Can you come? They won’t tell me anything.”
“Which hospital?” I asked, as I turned my head to and fro, looking for a cab.
“Toronto General,” he said. Of course.
“I’ll be there in twenty minutes,” I promised.
***
I fled into the shelter of my father’s arms as soon as the cab pulled up in front of the hospital. It was six in the evening. The emergency room was busy with people pacing to and fro, noisy with crying children, crowded with worried families huddling together as they tried to understand what couldn’t be understood.
He held me tight and his arms felt frail. All of a sudden, I could feel the passage of time. My dad, the person who encouraged me to pursue my dreams when I wanted to start my own business, at this moment, he looked old and tired. For the first time, I felt careworn. The safety net of my parents’ rock solid presence had a tiny tear in it.
“Tell me what happened,” I said, when I pulled away from his arms.
“I don’t know,” he said. “We were at home. I was reading, and Claire was knitting. She got up and went to the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea, and suddenly, I heard a crash. She’d collapsed. The guys in the ambulance wouldn’t tell me anything. And now, they’ve taken her god-knows-where, and no one knows what’s going on.”
I looked around. There was only one harried person at the desk. I approached her, trying to see if she knew anything. “I’ve already told your father,” she snapped at me. “When we have a status update,
someone will find you.” I retreated, frustrated, and we huddled in a corner, my dad white with concern, looking somewhat diminished. I was silent with fear.
My mom, she wasn’t just a parent. We were friends. That I had any self-esteem whatsoever, after the acne and the teasing, that was all due to my mother. There was never a time growing up when I didn’t feel safe and loved at home, and that went a long way towards stemming the horrors of middle school and high school. She was my rock.
I stared ahead with unseeing eyes. She had to be okay. She had to be. I shied away from any alternative.
The hours passed. Six came and went, then it was seven in the evening. I kept rising towards the harried nurse at the desk; she kept shaking her head at me.
I had thought of calling Patrick, of course, right from the start. I had held back, calling myself selfish and thoughtless. I couldn’t call him just because I had a problem he could help with. All week, I’d ignored him and his calls; my fear causing paralysis. And now I needed him desperately. But I was afraid to call him. I didn’t want to see the reproach in his eyes when he realized I needed something from him, help navigating this system.
My dad stirred besides me, his eyes haunted. The double-doors at the end of the hallway swung open, and he turned towards them eagerly, but with fear in his eyes as well. The doctors went towards a couple sitting in the far corner, and I could hear him exhale with shaky relief. I looked at him. The fingers on both his hands were crossed, and if I were a betting person, I would have bet that his toes were crossed as well. Mine were, concealed by my shoes. A desperate plea to the universe.
Please. Please let her be okay.
Eight in the evening. “Why won’t they tell us anything?” my dad muttered next to me. He sounded desperate. That was it. I was selfish and I was a horrible person for using Patrick, but I couldn’t let my dad suffer for my weakness. I picked up my phone and called him.