Lynn met me at the airport, and we took a yellow taxi into Boston and pulled up in front of this dilapidated building on Boylston Street and walked up five flights of stairs. She put a key in the lock and opened the door. “How do you like it?” I put my hands in my pockets so she couldn’t see them trembling and gazed into the tiny room. She’d put up shabby purple curtains, and there was a small fan, a chair, a bed and a radio. When we sat down on the bed, the springs creaked. There was a cramped bathroom with a shower stall and an old-fashioned toilet with a crack on the seat. Just before we’d stepped inside, I’d noticed a run-down communal kitchen in the hallway with no refrigerator. A garbage smell was coming from somewhere. “Oh my God, where did you get the money to buy all this stuff and pay the rent.” She let out a weird laugh. “It was nothing, really. I had to spend all my savings, but it was worth it, just for you.”
Right at that moment, I got this queasy feeling, like maybe coming back hadn’t been such a hot idea after all, but she’d written me two, three, sometimes five letters a day, and I’d kept gazing at the pictures we’d had someone take at the airport when I’d left, her arm around my shoulder, and I couldn’t get the feel of her flesh off of me, and I’d felt this terrible broken longing all the time. Also, I had to get away from my mother, because being around her too much reminded me of that thing she’d done to me in the bathroom when I was little. I’d sold my drum set that I’d sweated blood to acquire to have enough money to pay for the plane ticket from Mississippi back to Boston, where I met Lynn earlier in the summer. But, within a few minutes, Lynn had wrapped her naked body around me, and all my misgivings floated away.
Over the next few days, we took long walks, holding hands, sitting on benches, watching squirrels and birds. The wind was cool and wet and salty, and I thought about pilgrims and Thanksgiving and Hiawatha and our forefathers and maize corn, and wondered if we could see some historical sites, like the Freedom Trail and the Old North Church. One day, we took a subway to some beach and sat there for around twenty minutes, observing a mother in a see-through bathing suit holding hands with this kid who was licking an ice cream cone. Another evening, we went to the movies and watched A Clockwork Orange, and when Alex said, “Don’t have time for the old in-and-out, just came to check your meter,” I could feel her smiling at me through the cool darkness.
I felt happy and healthy and terrific. See, life wasn’t nearly as bad as I usually made it out to be. For once I had a real girlfriend, or should I say, lover, and she adored me. She showed me all these little considerations, like adjusting my shirt collar or asking me every morning if I’d had good dreams. The future looked bright. I’d finally left my past by the side of the road. The only trouble in paradise was that all I was eating were roast beef submarine sandwiches with mustard, and I knew that this wasn’t entirely healthy. But there were compensations. Every time we clambered back up the five flights of stairs, she’d immediately pull down my pants.
But, somewhere in the back of my mind, there was this inexplicable ticking, like a time bomb was about to detonate, like something was rotten in the state of Denmark – was it the darkness that flickered for a moment inside her eyeballs or the faint hint of broken glass that crept into her voice – but I told myself to stop being paranoid, because I was about to ruin everything, like I always did. She kept asking me over and over, “Are you glad to be here? Are you glad to be here? I don’t think you are. Are you sure? Are you sure?” and let out this strange titter; and I tried to reassure her, because, after all, she’d been nicer to me than anybody, and she’d gone to a lot of expense, maybe even bankrupting herself, for this outcast college freshman whom she hardly knew; when I recalled her extended stay on the psychiatric ward my friend David had told me about, I told myself that nobody’s perfect, and for me to be brooding over somebody else’s mental problems was like the pot calling the kettle black.
One night around 2 AM, she shook me awake and asked, “You’re afraid of me, aren’t you?” At first, I didn’t quite understand. But then I did. Making out this scary glint in her eye, I said, “Of course not.” “You think I’m going to kill you or something, don’t you?” “Of course I don’t, what in God’s name made you say that?” “Don’t worry, I wasn’t planning on it, but I know you hate me.” She fell back asleep curled up on her side, her foot twitching, and I was shocked and horrified. She’d said some weird stuff before, but nothing like that. Maybe I’d been acting nervous, yes, that was true, giving her the whole wrong impression, but that was a long way from being actually scared of her. I watched her slow breathing, her flickering eyelids. Where had she gotten the crazy idea that I hated her. Nothing could be further from the truth. But maybe there were things buried in my unconscious. But the last thing I could ever imagine her doing was killing me, that was nutso, after all, she’d burst out in tears that time she’d stepped on my toe, and she’d kept asking, “Did I hurt you? I’m sure I did. Should we call a doctor? Tell me the truth, does it hurt really bad?” and she’d brought it up again that evening while I chowed down yet another roast beef sandwich, telling me over and over that she was such a klutz.
The next morning, the sun shining through the shades, I figured she must have been having a bad dream, because I certainly had plenty of those, you know, but, when I was trying to read the Boston Globe she’d brought up the Boston Globe she bought me with a cup of coffee, she said, “I had this boyfriend who served in Vietnam. He’d tell me how they’d make prisoners talk. They’d take two of them up in a helicopter and push one out.” She started laughing. “It’s terrible isn’t it. I bet the other one would really start gibbering, don’t you think?”
I felt rattled, because she was just the nicest person, and she couldn’t possibly have thought that was funny, no, that was a nervous laugh, because she’d definitely said, ‘It’s terrible isn’t it,’ but I couldn’t help thinking again of her stay on the psychiatric ward. After a few days, I felt reassured that I’d just been having my usual spooky thoughts, because she got really lovey-dovey, and we laughed together, remembering that first night in David’s parents’ room, and how I couldn’t believe that this lovely 26-year-old woman had actually done it with me, this long-haired fringe character from Mississippi. I admitted that I’d told David – who, after all, was my best friend from Oberlin College – all about it, and that, even though she was only a friend of the family, staying there to cook for him while his parents were on vacation, the idea of us doing it in his parents’ bed had really upset him. I told her that I had actually only done it once before, on the last day of college, with this hippie girl named Judy who’d gone back to her boyfriend in Pittsburgh, and that I’d been heartbroken, and so that Lynn, in a way, was my first real time.
She smiled dreamily. “When you did that to me with your mouth, it felt so, so good.” But that afternoon, while we were listening to Hey Jude crackling out of the radio she’d brought, she said, “I read in a magazine how this woman suspected her husband of cheating on her. She waited till he was asleep and took a straight razor and cut his penis right off,” and waves of fear rolled over me. What had gotten into her? Was she starting to have another nervous breakdown? But no, here I went again, being hypervigilant, reading crazy stuff into everything anybody said.
Soon everything seemed cheerful again, and the next day blossomed like a dozen red roses. She said, “You know, you’re the best friend I’ve ever had, even better than a cocker spaniel I had as a little girl.” But that evening, while we were sitting on a bench in a park watching some kids play with a rainbow-colored ball, she asked, “Did you read my letters? Did you like my cartoons? I bet you didn’t read a single one.” “Of course I did.” “Okay then, tell me what the caption said for the picture of the clown I drew.” “Oh my God, it’s on the tip of my tongue.” She laughed, but there was an edge in her voice. She followed up with, “You’re a liar, but that’s okay. By the way, did you like the picture I sent you of me and my friend on that motorcycle? She committed suicide.”
A couple of days drifted past, and I got worried all over again, but she hugged me all the time, smiling and laughing, and told me, while I was finally eating something healthy, a banana and a salad at a shop down the street, “Whenever I suck you, I get this really good feeling in my stomach, like I’ve done something really good.”
That night, while we sat in the shower, steamy water pouring onto our heads like Chinese water torture, after soaping me up between the legs, she started laughing. “What’s so funny?” “Oh, it’s nothing, you know, I like it, I really do, but it’s so – I’m sorry I can’t stop giggling – it’s just so little.” It was hard to shake this one off, but she was always kidding with me, and maybe she was, in a backhanded way, trying to give me confidence.
After we got out, while I was trying to dry off and get my pants back on, she asked, “Do you want to screw me up the ass? I’ve heard it’s better that way,” and this really jolted me. I mean, it wasn’t like she hadn’t talked dirty before, but this was different, a funny look in her eye, a more aggressive tone in her voice. I made an attempt, but was too rattled, and my arms got weak and shaky. She wouldn’t let me put my pants back on and kept sucking me and sucking me and insisted I do it to her right then and there, and her head thrashed back and forth while she screamed like a banshee. Afterwards, she climbed onto my face and grabbed my hair, and, terrified, I licked her until her breathing finally quieted. She fell into a trance-like sleep, and I drifted off, but, around 3 AM, I woke on my stomach, my cheeks spread, and she was penetrating me with her tongue.
During the following nights, she didn’t seem to need sleep, and I’d beg her, “Please, please, Lynn, try to get some rest,” and she’d start in with, “Why? Do you want to slit my throat or something?” For a few days she seemed happy, and I thought the storm clouds had finally lifted, but then everything started up again. The days and nights blurred together, and, subsisting only on roast beef sandwiches with mustard and Coca-Cola, sleep deprived and getting exhausted going up and down so many flights of stairs, I started feeling horribly sick. The room was stifling, and the tiny fan she brought wasn’t enough, and I was always bathed in sweat. Once upon a time, Franklin Delano Roosevelt had said, the only thing you have to fear is fear itself, something like that, but I couldn’t seem to make this concept work for me, at least in this particular situation.
I thought again about how she’d been committed to the mental institution for six months, and that seemed like a really long time, and maybe they’d given her medication, and maybe she’d stopped taking it, and I desperately wanted to get the hell out of there. A doctor in the hospital had told her, “It’s always darkest right before dawn,” but maybe five minutes after I left she’d kill herself anyway, and they’d find the decomposing body after a week or so and somehow ascertain that I’d been living with her and trace me back to Oberlin and accuse me of murder. Or maybe she would just disappear, with the same consequences. Or maybe she wasn’t telling the truth about taking birth control pills, and she’d end up pregnant, and they’d do a DNA test, and I’d be forced to drop out of college and work in a gas station to pay child support, or maybe her brother would come out from under some rock and there’d be a shotgun wedding. I thought about making some excuse to go on some errand, maybe to the hardware store to buy some new curtain rods, and call one of her friends and beg her to surprise us, and then I could depart in safety, but I didn’t know any of her friends, much less their telephone numbers. I saw demons chasing me out of the sky and couldn’t remember whether I’d dreamed them up or not. Trees loomed up, their branches crashing on my head, and lightning flashed and thunder rumbled, and I fled across a desolate landscape. My father, sweating like a pig, his stomach bulging from under his dirty white T-shirt, kept coming at me, cornering me behind the toilet, saying to my mother, “Did you leave any marks? Did you leave any marks?” and my mother was snarling, pushing up her bifocals, her crooked yellow teeth snapping like disembodied castanets. When I kept seeing things out of the corner of my eyes, it occurred to me that I was really cracking up.
But then it was like Lynn could read my mind. She suddenly frowned. “Don’t you dare leave me, not ever, I’m warning you,” and I was afraid to mention that I was still a college student. She kept on eyeing me suspiciously and wouldn’t let me out of her sight, insisting that I leave the bathroom door open. I said, “That really embarrasses me.” “I don’t care. I know what you’re up to in there.” “What in God’s name are you talking about?” “Just keep it open, okay?” For a second, she started shrieking, and then she laughed, tears oozing out of her eyes. “You aren’t still scared of me, are you?
The next day, I gathered up all my nerve, trying to keep my voice from shaking, trying not to let her see my trembling hands. “I’ve got to get back to Oberlin in two days, I’m really sorry about that.” Then it was like she had some kind of perfect memory. “You’re lying. You don’t have to go back for another week, that’s what you told me in a letter before you came up here, in case you’ve forgotten.” “No, I was mistaken, call the Oberlin registrar’s office if you don’t believe me,” and I was terrified that she would call my bluff and the guillotine blade would fall. For the next several hours, she demanded nonstop sex. That night, she seemed to need no sleep at all, jabbering on and on about how I hated her and wanted her dead. Suddenly, she hissed, “Are you going back to that bitch Judy? Was she better than I was?” She got me by the throat and screamed, “Fuck me, you monster,” and I couldn’t, and she kept on grabbing and grabbing at me.
The next morning, shell-shocked, trying to make no eye contact, I mumbled, “Don’t worry, I’ll call you as soon as I get there. I’ll really miss you,” and hurried down the stairs, not looking back. I’d just about run out of money and couldn’t afford another plane ticket, so I took a subway to the bus station, purchased a ticket, waited for hours, and finally got on an overnight bus back to Oberlin. I couldn’t sleep and got motion-sick and threw up in the bathroom. When I stumbled off in the morning, I dragged my suitcase to Tappan Square, lay down on the grass, stared up at the toxic sky, shuddered, and started sobbing, missing Judy so badly. Why had she gone back to her boyfriend, and what was wrong with me, and could only a truly crazy person ever love me, and maybe I wasn’t worth the gunpowder it would take to blow my brains out, and what was I going to do, what was I going to do? But I just went on like I always did, and over the years the scenario repeated itself endlessly like I was a magnet for crazies, like I had composed this symphony entitled Variations on a Theme of my own Neediness, and, for me at least, there was never anything new under the sun.
The End
Marshall Howell grew up in Columbus, Mississippi. He was an undergraduate at Oberlin College and later received an MFA in creative writing from The New School and a JD from Harvard Law School. His fiction has appeared in Fabula Argentea, Northwest Review, The G.W. Review, The Licking River Review, Xavier Review, and Parting Gifts.
Photo by Oleg Kr on Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND