Friday
We are parked in the driveway of my house. She has turned off the motor and the only sound is that of raindrops colliding with roof and windshield and then of their broken descent onto cold pavement. My ears register the soft flick of a cigarette lighter and I turn my head in time to catch the brief flame connecting with the cigarette that dangles omnipresently from her lips. The window is open a crack on her side. As I watch rain penetrate the warm dry cocoon of the car I wish she hadn't felt the need to accommodate me in such a way -- I don't mind the smoke -- but I tell myself she probably likes the rain anyway, and when I stop to consider her, I start to believe it. I wonder if I should ask her for a cigarette, but am perpetually afraid of looking like a kid trying to act grown-up, and decide not asking would be much safer; but still, if she offers, I won't refuse. I admonish myself for the millionth time in my life that it's stupid to worry about looking young, but I know that I will never stop feeling like I am twelve years old. Maybe that's what I'm doing here -- trying to impress myself with a peculiarly adult brand of immaturity. Or maybe I'm just trying to have a little fun for a change and forget about having to make everything be perfect all the time.
I wonder how her smoky breath will taste on my lips.
The silence begins to bother me; I try to remember what we were talking about before the silenced car stole conversation from our mouths. I think she was obsessing over her ex. If she's going to be depressed, I'm not going to pass up the opportunity. I tell her that I want to die.
"You don't want to do that," she tells me, head cocked to one side and the corner of her lip creeping up her pale sculpted cheek. The way she eyes me is protective, like I am a younger sibling. I get angry. She has been talking about offing her damned self all night, but it's her privilege and not mine because she is obviously old enough to know what she wants, and I am obviously not. I briefly stop to consider that maybe she values my life over hers or something, maybe she actually cares about me, but I dismiss it as wishful thinking. I turn my head back to the window, back to the blackness and bleakness of the night out there, and I hope the grunt of defiance I hear myself give actually escapes my lips and makes its way to her ear rather than ricocheting off the insides of my skull all night. Before, I could have pictured us making love under the weeping sky till we were drunk on each other and then leaping off a bridge with hands twined like Thelma and Louise or something.
I guess I can still catch a glimpse of that first part.
Maybe she doesn't think of me as a child. She wouldn't do with a child what she claims to want to do with me. And if it was all supposed to be just careless fun, what does it matter anyway? A couple of tortured souls like us ought to be escaping our suffering in each other, not making it worse.
My eyes once again caress her silken curls as they spill onto her shoulder, the color and texture of sunlight and moonlight all melting into one. Electricity radiates from her like there's too much to be kept inside; it touches me and wraps itself around me and seeps in through my pores. It is everything spontaneous and untamable and magical, everything I have never let myself be for fear it would screw up my perfectly planned-out life. But I have no fear now, watching this creature of the sun and stars turn her blue eyes to search mine. I have no fear of what she will find there.
I reach for the door and open it and my hand is instantly damp. The rain has become a gently welcoming mist. I step out into it, summon everything I have, and invite her inside.
©2000 Elizabeth Hebert
back to fiction
|
