Wreck and Order (27 page)

“Protect this vow, even at the risk of your life.”

I am lying at the coincidence of two infinitudes—black air above, black water below. I had to swim far out, past the lines where the huge waves break, to be able to float on my back. I take refuge in the Buddha, I take refuge in his teachings, I take refuge in the people who abide them. That is the vow the Tibetan saying asks me to protect with my life. The water is wide awake and warm. I am terrified of sharks and sea snakes, one of which crawled out of the water and hissed at a group of drunken tourists the other day. I take refuge in the Bu— Stop.

I rise and fall along the crest of waves about to break. One sucks me under, tumbles me, releases me. There is no hope of refuge, no chance of being saved.

This man saved me. This job saved me. This exercise routine saved me. This religion saved me. This house saved me. This child saved me. This book saved me. This vitamin saved me. This parakeet saved me. This country saved me. Enough.

It takes a long time to swim back to shore. Afraid, okay, afraid, okay.

Afraid? Okay.

My English teacher in high school used to tell us that suicide was never an option in fiction. So this is what he meant. Of course people kill themselves in novels. But first the plot must be entrenched in such an eensy-weensy, immovable, rock-hard crevice that suicide becomes the only inevitability. In real life, suicide is always just one of infinite options, as avid and useless as any other fantasy.

Loudspeakers crackle to life before blasting recorded pirith. The smell of the ocean is spicy and proud, not yet overpowered by frying rotis and burning trash. The bus stop is in front of a fancy hotel enclosed by a tall brick wall, which I lean against to relieve the weight of my pack. I don't have to wait long before the bus barrels toward me, the loud complaints of its engine stirring up a gust of butterflies from a patch of grass on the other side of the road. Their bright, motile mass disappears into a palmyra grove, and I climb up the back steps of the bus, shouting “Kandy? Kandy?” to no one in particular.

An elderly man nods. “Kandy, yes. Long trip.”

I push through thickets of flesh in search of a place to stow my bag. The bus is packed with children in white school uniforms, businessmen in suits, businesswomen in saris. I tighten my abdomen and widen my stance to keep from falling when my sweaty hand loses its grip on the seat back.

Relief. We're all just a person on a bus.

When I called 911 soon after Brian and I broke up, I knew, the instant the police filed in—guns drawn, backs to the wall—that there was no intruder. It was just me in a towel and two police officers whose jaws were set against the terror of being surprised by an armed lunatic. After they left, I walked over to the antique mirror Brian and I had carried home from a flea market one late-summer day, fallen leaves cartwheeling at our feet as the sun turned our noses pink. It was the only piece of furniture I'd taken when I moved out of his apartment. I sat down cross-legged in front of the mirror and met my own eyes. For the first time, I was glad Brian was gone. He would have been horrified that I'd mistakenly called the police, would have made me promise not to mention the incident to his parents, so ashamed he often was of my odd transgressions against decorum.

But this is also what drew him to me. He loved to watch me devour ice cream or tear up at the first threat of sadness in a movie. “You're so susceptible,” he said once. “To everything.” And he laughed in a way that relieved me of the obligation to respond.

That first morning in our newly shared apartment: drinking mimosas, singing along to Neil Young, making pancakes filled with strawberries. We were so hopeful. He insisted we not get dressed. I sat on his lap and ate pancakes with my hands. At first, I kept my feet on the ground to take some of my weight off his lap. But as we both kept eating and drinking, I forgot to hold myself up and I let his thighs support me. An overly explicit metaphor. It was always like that with him, crystal clear, no surprises—like even our best times were part of a script that had been written long before we met. The bus hits a pothole and I'm jostled into an older woman. I almost grab her hand. Brian's arm around my waist as we walked down an icy sidewalk: This is what I imagined love was, when I was a child. But they were only moments. We did not share the world that surrounded them.

At the other end of the bus, a pimply middle-aged man is waving at me and pointing to the empty seat in front of him. “Ne, ne,” I say. But the people in the aisle all stare at me while he gestures, so I make my way to the front. Best just to accept the kindness. The driver hands me a plantain. “Sthoo-thiy,” I say. Thank you, Brian, I think. For making me leave. The driver beams at the road before him. It's not so difficult, really, to share moments of love with others.

As we near downtown Kandy, I hop off the bus at a storefront advertising international calls. A skinny boy in a Yankees shirt leads me to a curtained phone booth in the back. I start dialing before he pulls the curtain closed. The space between each muted ring is too long. On the other side of the curtain, the boy shifts in his squeaky chair. My chin curls toward my chest. No one home. Click. A man clears his throat.

“Bueno. Dime
.
”

“Jared? Why are you speaking Spanish?”

“520 Clark.”

“What? Jared, it's me.”

“I know, come over. It's not a party 'til you're here, doll.”

“Jared. It's Elsie. I am in Sri Lanka.” The words are slow and heavy, trying to stave off panic.

“Elsie? Oh, hey baby. I didn't recognize you.”

No, no, not this voice—sloppy, affectedly deep, unchanging in tone and quality no matter what I do or say. He cannot be in that state now. He cannot be unreachable now.

“I really need to talk to you.” I clutch the curtain in my free hand, twisting it round and round my fist.

“Now's not great. I'm having this thing.” Girls cackle near him. A stereo blasts anthemic rock. Talking to Jared is impossible right now. I should not try. I should hang up.

“What thing?” I say.

“We're starting an S&M club. Come over, baby.” These words are not Jared's. They are spoken in a woman's high-pitched bravado, the voice of a sexual aggressor who never gets her needs met. I smell her sticky red lipstick as she leans against Jared's cheek, stealing our conversation with his consent.

“Jared,” I say, “if you don't leave that room right now and find a quiet place to talk to me—”

“Jesus Christ. You are always mad at me. I'm hanging up. Good luck out there, Elsie.”

“Please, Jared, please, please.” I'm whining, digging my fingers into my cheeks, about to lose myself. I see it happening, cannot stop it.

“Jesus H. What is it now?” He sounds like an overworked CEO who has just been screwed out of millions of dollars. Alcohol, parties: This is his confidence.

“I need you right now. Please leave the party and talk to me.”

“I will be back imminently,” he announces to everyone but me. “Apparently I am needed.”

“I need you here, Jared!” the S&M woman trills.

“Get away from that bitch,” I say. “I need to talk to you.”

He sighs grandly, but I feel him walking outside. Silence overcomes the background hum. I can breathe again.

“Hi, love.” My voice is desperately sweet. “Thanks for leaving so we can talk. I hope you're not sleeping with that awful woman.”

“Look. Just stop it. I am not going to waste another night hacking out your insecurities. It is so goddamn boring it makes me want to cut off my dick. You are always mad at me. Stop being mad at me. Just don't ever call me again if you're gonna pull this shit, judging me for every goddamn thing. I can't take it anymore. Just don't call me again. Leave me alone. Déjame en paz.” He laughs at his lisping Spanish.

My organs are losing their contours, melting, dripping, laughing at me as they ooze to the floor. Hard to hold the phone. “Oh no. Dear God.” I'm in a small, black room, cold, no windows, no doorknobs. “Please, God.”

“Are you praying?”

“Please, God.”

“Jesus Christ, what are you praying for?”

Someone to talk to, someone to say something that could change, even just barely, even imperceptibly, the landscape inside my head. “I cannot believe you're speaking to me like this right now.” My voice is a stale whisper. “This can't be happening. I can't—I got raped.”

The lie is a relief for as long as it takes the three words to leave my lips. Then it is evil, the hopelessness of connection given language.

“Hey man,” Jared is saying. “Yeah, go in, I'll be right there. Are you shitting me, Elsie?”

“Not really.”

“Not really. Jesus Christ. Did you or did you not get raped?”

“Not. I did not. I mean I did. I did get raped. I raped myself.”

“Okay, that's it. You think you can say whatever the fuck you feel whenever you feel like it. I'm hanging up, Elsie. I told you this was not a good time and then you went ahead—”

“I wanted to talk to you about what happened!”

“—and say all this intense shit and I am really needed inside right now. You are not going to ruin my night. It's not exactly easy to get this many cool people together in the same room. I'm finally feeling good and then you call me and say whatever the fuck you feel like saying and I'm hanging up now, good night, goodbye, I love you, be safe.” Click.

I am too weak to be involved. That is what I know, lying in this bed below the window with the wooden bars, two missing, a space large enough to admit clever monkeys and feral cats. But no life comes through. The lace curtain is yellow and frayed at the edges, sticking to the hot breeze. How many days has it been since I even imagined a human noise? The crying—treacherous, jagged icicles cutting my throat. Sucking my thumb again, even. I would be ashamed to recall that, except it was my only comfort. How did I think I could calmly withstand this pain, see it as just a temporary combination of thoughts, feelings, sensations—notice them, accept them, this too shall pass? The shock every time—of being hurt, turning to Jared (who else to turn to?) to soothe me, finding only more pain. How could he do this to me. God, I mean. Questions like that—old and dumb—barreling me down. Clutching my chest, hyperventilating on purpose in the hope that I might faint, hearing the dry heaves of my sobs as if they were coming from someone else, a child stuck on a movie screen, someone I cannot help. For days I have been reduced to that noise. There is no one else at this guesthouse, which is just a house with a sign in the yard that says
ROOM FOR RENT
. The owner thinks I'm very sick, brings me plain white rice and tea, which I eat lying on my side, grabbing handfuls from the bowl on the floor below me, dumping tea into my open mouth, catching some of the liquid on my tongue before it spills out the other side and soaks the pillow. The smell is nice. Sugar and plants.

Once there is nothing else to do, no other hope of ever leaving this room, I fold my stained pillow in half and jam it under my ass. My fingers are in my mouth, my spine curved, my head lolling and heavy, waste fluids pouring over my fist and chest and stomach. I rock, rock, rock until it is no longer I but my body that moves—the space between my breasts, the soft tissue inside the shell, pulling me forward and back. The movement releases me. I sit still until I can't stand it any longer. Jump up, beat the pillow with my fists, toss the pillow on the floor, sit on the edge of the bed with my head in my hands. My best effort is not enough.

Show him that you care just for him. Do the things that he likes to do.
Some popular girls performed “Wishin' and Hopin' ” for the talent show in tenth grade. It was supposed to be ironic: postfeminist girls with nose rings and perfect GPAs wearing ribbons around their ponytails and blue eye shadow and huge smiles, pretending they were making fun of their mothers and grandmothers, mocking the idea that “true love” is a woman who knows how to please her man. But the fantasy hasn't much changed. The girls are more violent in speech and dress and behavior, but they are only exposing their ugly, rebellious complexity to get to the same old place: a relationship that works because the girl makes it work. That is her power. Once I've given my life over to helping him stay sober, once I make my relationship my full-time job, then he will be good to me. He just needs to be accepted exactly as he is. Only then can he stop being so angry. Once I fully commit, he will be good to me. Isn't that what I'm hoping for, just like the dumb bitches in high school singing a lady's love song they probably didn't even know was written by men?

How gross it is that I am still thinking about this stuff. Men and women, how a penis erect transforms a man, how a woman is made to receive this transformation, what parts of herself take him in, what parts she withholds, what she has the power to withhold. How to protect herself without cutting herself off, how to be generous without being self-deprecating, how to be detached without being cold, how to be attached without being obsessed, how to get her own needs met without being demanding, how to meet his needs without being sacrificial, how to be gentle without being a pushover, how to be firm without being bitchy, how to be calm without being lifeless, how to be passionate without being enraged, how to be independent without feeling alone, how to be dependent without feeling alone, how sick I am of it all.

I would lose anything to be free.

What I need is food. I need to consume all the spices and grains and vegetables and oils in the world.

I march into town, order five curries, have three large bites, let the fourth fall out of my mouth. Gasp. Pay for my meal. Am walking slowly now, noticing every sight and sound and smell around me, but I won't be bothered to put them into words.

I cannot see him again. I will not.

There is no possible way to imagine myself into the small house we were going to share by the beach. His breath on my neck as he bikes us home from a bar. The sweet pudginess of his large arm muscles going slack as we fall into bed. My lips against his neck in the morning, puckering against his loose skin until he says, “Cut it out, that tickles,” and rolls on top of me, his belly warm and sticky against mine. The relief of his body beside me, after the nights when I won't know where he is or what he's doing: all the dumb, tiny soldiers inside me dropping their guns and drifting off to sleep.

If I went through my life in a meditative state—observing instead of reacting—I could live that way. Or if I were normal, more desensitized to the vagaries of sex and connection. Some people feel the pain of love's disappointment, and then do something else with their time. I cannot move, cannot think, can barely breathe. Passion. What a lie. The way I love gives up everything.

I'm sitting in front of a computer at an Internet café. I'm not sure why I brought myself here. Seven emails from Jared. I guess that's what my brain was hoping for. He thinks I called him last night, he hopes he wasn't out of line, he'd had a little to drink, please can I call him again, he misses me so much, he's so sorry if he was out of line, he's gonna stop as soon as I get home, he can't wait for me to get home. Of course. He always asks for my forgiveness in a way that allows me, effortlessly, to grant it. The morning he came to my apartment with a bouquet of handpicked flowers in a handblown vase his mother made for him before she fell in love with a woman and moved to Europe, how the flesh softened around his bones when I opened the door, our foreheads touching and our snot and tears all mixed up.