XV

Walking back from the bar that night I felt a strange calm. I wasn’t really think about the mess that I’d be making of Adam and Eric, just about how much sense it all made. That was how I thought. This makes sense. That was the important part: I was doing it right this time. No screaming and fighting and hurting each other: I was going to have the kind of relationship that girl ooh and ah over on TV shows and in movies. I was back in my musical world, crickets, streetlights and the moon serenading my steps this time, in the late dark city night.
My mood was shattered when I opened my front door. There was broken glass on the floor next to the couch, and a small patch of blood on the living room floor. I threw my bag off and ran frantically through the house looking for Carrie. I found her on her bedroom floor, slumped against the wall. She was bleeding, with a large piece of glass near the floor at her feet. The bleeding had clearly almost stopped, and it was obvious that she had not cut herself deep enough to do a lot of damage.
“Don’t call the police,” she said. “I tried to kill myself.” As though I couldn’t gather that from the blood and the sharp instrument nearby.
“Where’s James? What happened?”
“He tried to leave. He did leave. He wanted to sleep with me, and I told him I couldn’t do that without knowing that he was going to stay. I told him he had to get help. He told me okay, and I believed him. J, I fucking believed him. Then he fucked me and he was out the fucking door before the condom came off. So I threw that fucking horse he gave me… You know, that tacky fucking glass horse? I threw it against the wall. Then I picked up some of it, and told him that if he left I would kill myself.”
“And he left?”
“I think I scared him really bad. He fucking freaked out and ran out the door. He called me a crazy bitch.”
“Honey, are you okay?” I looked around at the blood trail on her wood floor. “I have to call someone.”
“No, don’t. It doesn’t matter anymore.”
“What doesn’t matter?”
“Everything? Nothing matters. Everything I touch turns to shit. Everyone around me, all I do is fuck up their lives. James was fine until he met me. He’s right, I am a crazy bitch.”
“That is not true and you know it.”
“Whatever.” She pushed me aside, not hard but enough so that I fell from the crouched position I’d been in and onto my ass. This was just enough of a pause for her to get up and close herself in the bathroom. Quickly, I was back up on my feet and outside the door. The bath was running. I banged on the door.
“Carrie, let me in. Carrie!”
“Wait a second.” When I opened the door she was sitting on the edge of the tub, soaking her stained legs in a half full bath. She was turned part way away from me, but I could see that she was still crying. She had her terry cloth robe wrapped tightly around her, and there was so much extra material that she looked like she was drowning in it.
I felt more helpless than I’ve ever felt in my life in that moment. For the next three hours, actually, I felt completely incapacitated. I wanted more than anything to help her, to tell her that everything was going to be okay. Every little petty argument we’d had in our six years as friends didn’t exist, I just wanted to know that I could still see her tomorrow, and there was nothing I knew I to do to assure that.
“Carrie. If you want to talk about anything, I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere, ok?” I was exhausted. I wanted to go to sleep. But I was terrified to leave her alone, afraid of what might happen if I did. She seemed to have calmed down, but there was no way of predicting what she would do. I certainly hadn’t seen any of this coming. I looked at her, silent on the edge of the tub, bent forward with her tiny legs dipped in the pink colored water, dried blood still peeling off of her kneecaps and her arms. She looked so fragile and broken, and there was nothing I could do. I wanted to give her a hug or just rest my hand on her shoulder, something, anything to let her know it would be okay, but I was frozen in my seat, across from her on the closed toilet seat. I was two feet away but it could have been a million miles.
We sat silently for about a half hour. I didn’t want to start the conversation; afraid I’d say the wrong thing, so I waited until she was ready to talk. Then it all came out, like a waterfall, a choked broken waterfall, fragments coming out rapidly, to be pieced together at the bottom of the rocks. Everything was a mess, everyone would be better of without her, she didn’t matter, if she was gone tomorrow we’d all be sad for a day or two but we’d move on. I’d get a new best friend, and this night would be a fragmented memory like the short, stuttered sob-ridden sentences that she was speaking in.
I told her that it wasn’t true, that her brother and mother and father would all miss her very much, our friends from high school, I wouldn’t know what to do without her. It all went back to James, and he’s a mess, don’t listen to him. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about, what right does he have to call you crazy, blah blah blah. In my head, though, I was wondering if he wasn’t right. Had she snapped? If I left her alone tomorrow, would I come back to find the pink color of the bathwater a dark brownish red? Should I call someone now or wait until it was too late?
The first lights were in the sky when she’d calmed down a bit, and we retired to the large bed that Adam and I had shared. It seemed obvious that Carrie should sleep in my room. We stayed up at least another hour talking in the earl morning twilight that was casting shadows across my hardwood floors, and when I woke at noon she was still sleeping soundlessly in the bed beside me.
I let her sleep, and set out on the task of cleaning up the mess from the night before. In the daylight of our open apartment, the scene was grotesque. It was like there was a permanent flashbulb on the broken pieces of glass with scattered specks of blood all over our dark red carpet. The way that the colors blended, it was like an artist had planned it all out, maybe Scorsese in his red period. I picked up the glass carefully and wrapped it in a paper bag before throwing it in the trash. I drained the tub, and mopped Carrie’s bedroom floor and the dripping trail that she’d left on the kitchen linoleum. As I was scrubbing at the bloodstain on the like-colored carpet, there was a knock at the door. I looked up at the door and realized that I had forgotten to lock it the night before.
“Who is it?”
“Eric.” I heaved a huge sigh of relief.
“Hey, come on in.” As he opened the door, I leaned back onto my feet, which were folded underneath me, and let the brownish red stained washcloth fall out of my hands, wiping my sweaty forehead with my damp hand.
“Jesus Janie, what happened?” He shut the door behind him and crouched down next to me on the floor. As soon as he was close enough, he put his arms around me, and I let go of my body weight, allowing my head and shoulders to sink into his chest and breathed in his not-yet-showered scent, still a mix of smoke, beer, and deodorant. I pulled away and looked back down at the floor.
“I have to finish cleaning this.”
“What happened?” His blue eyes were burning with concern. They reminded me of Adam. I squeezed my eyes shut tight and took in a deep breath.
“Carrie and James had a fight last night.”
“Did he hurt her? Where are they now?”
“No, he didn’t hurt her. I mean, not physically. She did this.”
“Did you call anyone?”
“No, she wouldn’t let me. She’s okay now. I mean, the bleeding stopped. She’s asleep in my room.”
“Jesus. Well, I was going to ask if you wanted to get some breakfast… er… lunch. But…”
“I shouldn’t leave here right now.”
“No, you shouldn’t. You take a shower, and I’ll finish cleaning this up.”
“Are you sure?” He stood up and helped me to my feet.
“I’m sure. Relax, okay?” I smiled weakly, and leaned my head on his shoulder again. We stood in the middle of the living room like that for at least ten minutes. I didn’t want to let go, I felt so safe, so warm. I closed my eyes again. He kissed me on the forehead, and ran his hand through my sweaty rumpled hair.
A half an hour later, I was cool, calm and collected. At least, I was showered and didn’t smell like stale beer and blood. When I got out of the bath, the living room was clean and Eric was reading the paper on the couch. Still in my towel, I sat down next to him. He pulled me close to him and squeezed me tight. I don’t know if we were happy together, but that moment summed us up pretty well. We were resigned to each other. We were comfortable. He put the paper down and kissed me, but pulled away quickly. He put his finger on my nose and looked me straight in the eyes; close enough to kiss again without really moving.
“I’m going to go to the grocery. What do you want for lunch?”
“I don’t care. I’m not even that hungry.”
“Alright, It will be up to me then.”
“Alright.”
“You get dressed and call my cell phone if you think of anything, or if…” He looked in the direction of my room. “If you need anything at all.”
Eric got back with exactly what I was in the mood for: peanut butter and jelly. In one hand he had a brown paper bag filled with fresh peanut butter, raspberry preserves, three bottles of water, and a loaf of French bread sticking out of the top. In the other hand he had two small bunches of flowers. He handed one to me, a purple colored bouquet with sterling roses, white carnations and lots of baby’s breath. The other, a pink and yellow cheery bouquet with white daisies, lilies, pink carnations and a big sunflower in the middle, he handed to Carrie, who was sitting next to met at the table, quietly sipping a hot cup of tea.
“Thank you,” she said quietly. I put the flowers in water while Eric made “gourmet” peanut butter and jelly and Carrie showered. The three of us ate quietly, but Carrie was much brighter, and seemed to be pretty much back to her old self. I wondered if the night before was just a fluke. I thought about the week I’d spent off of my medication and the nights that Adam and I had bashed and brutalized each other, wondering whether everyone was this crazy. Was it a phase? Would we hit twenty-two, graduate from college, and be cured, become productive members of society, real grownups? Was everyone like this, cleverly disguising manic-depressive tendencies with a bank job, two kids, and a dog? Maybe us crazies were just drawn to each other to feel a sense of camaraderie, to pretend that everything was okay. How else could we think it was normal to hurt the people we loved this way, to hurt ourselves?
I didn’t feel like hurting Eric though, not that I’d felt like hurting Adam, but I didn’t think it would happen. I felt like I was older, more mature. I didn’t need the gratification that I’d needed when I’d been with Adam. Eric understood me better, I felt, was in tune with my needs and wants, and maybe we lacked passion, but maybe, I thought, that was overrated: a myth created to make a society of cheaters, sluts, and one night stands feel better about their infidelities. I couldn’t see any reason that I would have to be unfaithful, or even unhappy with Eric. He had proved himself, and I thought for a brief moment that this is what I had been waiting for, no trying, no pushing, no hurting. Then Adam came home.