Tease (Songs of Submission #2)(24)

I remembered a conversation over that tube. He’d questioned me about that and everything else, because he assumed I was too incompetent to manage my skin.

“How much do you spend on this stuff?” Kevin had asked, putting a blob of Kiehl’s into his palm.

“This bottle will last me a year if you don’t take that much.”

Then he’d rubbed it on my thighs, and we did it on the bathroom floor. The bottle was 75% empty because that wasn’t the last time.

I felt Jonathan behind me. “What is it?” he asked, just as the canary came back on.

“This is the stuff I left at his place.”

Someone moved to my right, and I saw a pile of clothes. The pockets of my jeans and the T-shirt I slept in were folded neatly under a pair of simple cotton underpants. I didn’t read the little menu. I knew what those jeans were worth. Any normal person who wasn’t terrified of getting sucked back into their ex-boyfriend’s life would have gone back for them.

To my left, a pile of hair accessories: a brush and a scrunchy. And a disk of birth control pills. Open. Half-used.

“Are you sure you’re taking these right?” he’d said one month when I was a day late.

“It’s easy enough.”

“Not if you’re knocked up.”

The lights changed and illuminated the walls, making the little piles of my things disappear in the darkness. The scribbles became legible, and more than my things on display, more than the exact value of what I’d left behind, those words, written as one long, run-on sentence, brought months of sidelined emotion to the back of my throat.

I didn’t say she was more important why do you have to make everything about you she needs me she tried to kill herself, Kevin, what the f**k do you think is going on in your life that’s more important right now how can you tell me I can’t practice how can you try to silence me again I’ve put everything on hold for you I can’t do this I can’t take care of everyone I can’t be there for everyone I need to go I need to go I need to go I need to go.

“Bullshit in a box?” Jonathan asked from a safe distance, as if he knew coming closer would be inappropriate.

“These are the last things I said to him.”

I walked to the other side of the room. More scrawled words on the wall.

I’m not telling you not to work I’m telling you to stay with me when I’m with those guys they make me feel inadequate and stupid and you’re the only one I trust you’re the only one I know who doesn’t make me feel small without you I’m not a man you don’t understand I need you I need you I need you I need you I need you.

I walked out as fast as the low-hanging entrance would let me.

CHAPTER 14

Having been inside the relationship described in the Faulkner Coal Mine, I knew how brave Kevin was to create and display it. We had been impeccable together. We looked good. We never fought in public. No one heard a word from him or me that anything between us was less than perfect. He dragged his confidence around like a skin he seemed to own. That installation fearlessly let his friends and admirers know that not only was our relationship imperfect, but he himself lacked confidence and swagger.

But that was Kevin. Mister one hundred percent. When he’d loved me, it was with all of his heart and soul. I never worried about his commitment or his fidelity. I never found a leak in his passion. I was his everything, and as suffocating as that was, I never wondered where I stood. That in itself was liberating.

But now all our friends would know our last straw. Tuesdays had been his poker night. All the guys would sit in Jack’s loft smoking cigars and talking about didactics in postmodernism, or definitions of folk art from the twentieth century’s cultural diaspora. The girlfriends would sit in the kitchen talking about sex and drinking wine. It was like the fifties.

Gabby and I had finally put together a band because playing music made her feel better. That burned his ass. Because ever since Gabby had tried to kill herself, I got less available. Harry got us free studio time on Tuesday nights, for rehearsals. Perfect. He could go play poker so I could rehearse. But he threw a fit. He needed my support. He needed me there. Why was I abandoning him for Gabby? And you know what? I felt bad. My first reaction was that he was right. Because that was the whole relationship. His needs, and they were plenty.

In the sculpture garden, behind a little pagoda, was a spot the lights didn’t reach. I knew about it because I’d given Kevin a blowjob back there the night he helped his mentor hang his retrospective.

I was headed there when Jonathan grabbed my arm on the patio. “Monica?”

I took his hand and pulled him along with me until I caught a glimpse of Jessica. She smiled at us. I was trying not to burst out crying, so I nodded and let Jonathan do all the smiling.

He let go of my hand.

I glanced back. He and Jessica were talking. He half-faced her, one foot still pointing in my direction, like he wasn’t committed to either one of us. I had no time for that. I didn’t need him anyway. I ran down the stairs.

I was halfway to the courtyard when I heard his shoes tapping behind me. “Monica, wait up.”

I slowed, and he took my hand again without another word.

When we got to the ground floor, I turned into the sculpture garden. It was empty, mostly, so I slowed down. I wasn’t breathing well. That was how I cried: breathing badly. Then fat tears would come. I was a ladylike bawler, more or less, which was why I let Jonathan put his arm around me and slow me down. If I was a messy blubberer, I would have run away and gotten the bus home. He sat me on a quiet bench, slowly, as if remembering the damage he’d done to me.