Perfect Little World(98)
“Izzy?” he said.
“I need to tell you something,” she said, walking past him into his tiny living room. It was the first time she had ever seen the inside of his apartment. The walls were entirely bare, no TV or stereo, the entire room empty except for a sofa and a coffee table, which was covered with folders and files. The carpet was so properly vacuumed, the lines so precisely military, that it seemed as if no one walked on it, as if Dr. Grind hovered an inch above the ground, and suddenly Izzy was afraid to move.
“What’s going on?” Dr. Grind said, folding his arms across his chest, his head slightly tilted as if he was hard of hearing. “Now is not the best time, perhaps, Izzy.”
Izzy stared at the rigid tension of his jawline, his eyes darting back and forth from her to his bedroom, the door closed. She looked at his arms, which were crossed over his chest, and then she noticed his right hand, twitching slightly. It was streaked with blood, staining the cuticles of his fingers.
“You’re bleeding,” she said, reaching for him.
He shrugged and then took a step back. “It’s nothing,” he said, wiping his hand on his pants, leaving the slightest stain, his hand not actively bleeding, which made Izzy even more uncomfortable, having walked into something private, when she had all but assumed that there was nothing in Dr. Grind’s life that required secrecy. It unnerved her in such a way that she blurted out, “I knew about Jeremy and Ellen.”
“What?” Dr. Grind asked, his face impassive.
“I knew that they were having an affair and that Ellen wanted to leave the complex with the kids.”
“Oh, Izzy,” he said, nodding as if he understood her own worries.
“I didn’t tell you because I was afraid of what would happen,” she continued, feeling a weird lump forming in her throat, that hated sensation of impending tears, the way she had to screw up her face to make the words coherent. “I didn’t want the family to fall apart, so I just didn’t say anything. I hoped it would all resolve itself and things would stay the same. And now Ellen is in the hospital and the kids won’t talk to us and I feel like it’s my fault. I did something terrible.” She barely finished speaking before she started tearing up, which angered her because she wanted to be clear and straightforward with Dr. Grind, and she pushed the edges of her palms roughly against her eyes, pressing her hands against her face so hard that it felt like sandpaper, as if she could strip away her own emotions if she simply applied enough pressure. Just when she thought Dr. Grind might walk over to her, to comfort her, she heard him shout, loud enough that it temporarily stopped her tears.
“Fuck! Goddamn it, Izzy,” he said, louder than she’d ever heard him speak. “Fuck!”
He held out his hands, as if to apologize, but then he kept speaking. “I do so much to keep this thing going, to keep this fucking family together, millions of little parts that have to be attended to. I do it all. And then you people actively try to ruin it. It’s like you can’t keep yourselves from ruining something perfect.”
“I’m sorry,” Izzy said, but Dr. Grind didn’t seem to hear her.
“Fuck!” Dr. Grind again shouted, as if he was performing a magic trick and this was the word that was supposed to unlock the spell. Then, as if the gravity in the room was temporarily haywire, his body seemed to fold in on itself and he bent at the waist, and then returned to his standing position, his face now calm, slack.
“Of course, it’s not your fault at all, Izzy,” Dr. Grind said, still standing apart from her. “It’s a big family. It’s impossible to control it. We hope for the best. We do our best. Sometimes things fall apart. You and I probably know this better than anyone else, right?”
Izzy removed her hands from her face and looked at him. It was as if he did not remember having yelled at her. Could unkindness be so foreign to him that he imagined it to only be a dream? He now smiled at her and she, against her own instincts, smiled back.
“I remember when I got the news about my own family,” he continued. “There was that realization that I had not done enough. That I had not been able to keep what I loved safe. It was such a deep existential unhappiness. I am feeling that right now, that same frustration.”
“Me, too,” Izzy said.
“I’m so sorry for how I just acted. Of course, you had nothing to do with what happened to Ellen. This is the business of Ellen and Jeremy and Callie and Harris. It affects us, because we share this space, but we can’t control other people, no matter how much we want to.”
“I just don’t want this to end,” she said. “I don’t want it to fall apart. I need this place. I need the family. I need you.”
Dr. Grind finally stepped closer to Izzy, placing his right hand on her shoulder, and Izzy shrugged out of his grip, and pulled him close to her and kissed him. He immediately disengaged, and she noticed something in his expression that had not been there the first time she kissed him, his emotions cracked open for a brief moment. Dr. Grind, a lifetime of training, absorbed conflict and uncertainty and unhappiness and burned it off immediately within his body, the surface never changing. Even when he learned of Ellen’s suicide attempt, whatever shock waves had pulsed within him did not change his demeanor. And now, having kissed Dr. Grind, a man she knew with great certainty that she loved, she saw genuine desire. She saw him running through the events that marked their time in this family, and she saw him come to terms with how this had come to pass, her in his room, her mouth on his.