45. The Still-Point
Summer
The cops left, looking like they were glad to go. Somebody needed to go to the hospital and make sure Erica was OK, but first …
Wait. First, I needed to tell Delilah, “That’s not the way you talk to cops.”
“Why?” she asked. “What did I say that was wrong?”
“If you ever get arrested,” I said, “you’ll find out that it’s not smart to antagonize them. It’s a good thing they’re Kiwis, that’s all I’ll say.”
“Maybe for you,” she said, “but you were actually getting arrested. For a crime. I’m completely innocent.”
I tried to think of something to say, but I couldn’t. I grabbed the glass cleaner instead and sprayed down the mirror and tried not to get shaky. This night, and the whole day before it, had been too strange. Too eventful. Too emotional. That was the reason, because Delilah was right. I had been arrested for a crime.
Roman said, his voice calm and level as glass, “Take a minute and think about that one, Delilah. And then try again.”
“What?” Delilah asked, and then, after a few seconds, “All right, you didn’t do anything wrong. Obviously, because you were acquitted, even though you may have … well, you know. You probably got off partly because of how you look, that innocent thing. And that you don’t get smart with cops and are so hardworking and respectful and everything.”
I wanted to ask, “Is that really what you think?” But I couldn’t, because I was stuck. Roman said, “You owe your cousin an apology. Now.” His voice wasn’t Roman-amused anymore. It was cold, and his face looked … I wouldn’t have wanted him to look at me like that. He went on, “And you may want to think about how privileged you sound.”
“Who, me? Privileged?” Delilah’d been looking combative, possibly out of guilt over the whole wrecked-house thing. Now, she was downright bristling.
“Talking to a cop like that may work if you’re a pretty little white girl in a flash house,” Roman said. “Think about how it’d work for anybody else. You think it’s cute. It’s not.”
Delilah opened her mouth, then shut it. Opened it again, paused, and shut it. I said, “It’s late. I need to switch loads of laundry, then clean the floors. Roman …” I handed him back the car’s key fob, which I’d set on the benchtop. “Please just take Delilah to the hospital. We can talk later.”
“No,” he said.
“No?” I blinked at him. I’d felt so good, earlier. So pampered and almost … loved, just because a man had spent money on me, had said nice things to me.
Had made love to me and held me afterward like I was everything he wanted. Maybe even something he needed.
Stop it. Sex isn’t love. I took a deep breath and said, “OK. OK. I’ll get us an Uber. Delilah, however you feel about me right now, you must see that you need to go help Erica. That you can’t just leave her there alone.”
“I get that.” Her arms were folded, and she was scowling. I did not have the energy for this. “I’m not the one saying I won’t go. And you have a lot of gall, Roman, telling me I’m privileged. How many houses do you have again? How many people do what you say? I’m poor.”
Roman didn’t even answer her. He told me, “Take the keys and drive her.”
“But the duvet,” I said. “The mess. And I need to remember to iron your shirt. If I’m doing laundry anyway …”
“Bugger the duvet. And bugger the mess.” He stopped, breathed, and said, “I’ll wash the duvet. I’ll clean the floors. And I don’t care about my shirt. I told you that already. I liked that you wore it, and it was worth whatever inconvenience you imagine I’ll be facing. Here’s a thought. If I need another shirt sooner than I can get this one cleaned, I’ll buy one. I’ll be in Wellington. I have a wallet, and they have shops. It’s the capital.”
“You can’t want to clean the floors,” I said. “None of this was your fault.”
“And none of it was yours,” he said. Facing off to me in his most formidable fashion, but I hadn’t come this far to be pushed around.
“It’s my responsibility,” I said. “Delilah is my cousin.”
“Delilah,” he said, “is eighteen. If it were my choice, I’d have her wipe up the floors while I texted the property manager that somebody’d been sick and they needed to bring over another duvet before the next guests arrive, and I’d pay the damages and be done with it. But as that’s unacceptable to you, I’m doing this. Meanwhile, that girl is alone in hospital, drugged and sick and scared to death. Put aside your stupid pride, get out of my house, and go see to her.”
“You’re yelling.” It was a last-ditch effort.
“I’m not yelling,” he said. “I’m speaking forcefully, because I’m being forceful. It’s my job. You need to care for everybody in the world, and I need to get the things done that need to be done. Get out. Now. Go.”
I went. I honestly couldn’t think of what else to do.
Roman
I wiped things off floors that I didn’t want to wipe off floors. I chucked wet sheets into the dryer and chucked the duvet cover and towels into the washer. I cleaned another bathroom, the one the boys had used, and was glad I hadn’t given them that lift. I opened all the windows in the house, and when I didn’t find a mop, I grabbed tea towels and some dish soap and washed the offending floors on hands and knees. I had heaps of internal monologue to keep me company.
For example: Why was I doing this, besides general stubbornness? Why didn’t I just text that property manager? Because I’d seen Summer’s martyr act one too many times, and I was tired of it. Or maybe I couldn’t stand to be with a woman who thought that little of me. I wondered what Hemi Te Mana would think if he could see me now, and that one nearly made me laugh, even as I fumed. Hemi would’ve rung the property manager, I was sure. But then, Hemi was American now, and I was a Kiwi to my bones.
Right. Summer was too much work. That was what I needed to be thinking about. Too guarded, too prickly—even as she was so maddeningly sweet—too contradictory, and too confrontational, and I didn’t need anything like that. If I had to get involved with a woman, she was going to be unencumbered. Coolly independent. Beautiful but …
You get the gist.
I didn’t have the chance to get through my entire list of objections, because she came back.
She didn’t use the phone app to get in. She rang the doorbell, which was why I opened the door with a scowl on my face and had already started to say, “Piss off.” I’d assumed it was the two blokes, still hanging about looking for that lift instead of using their perfectly good feet.
“Oh.” She actually took a step backward before she firmed her shoulders, swallowed visibly, and said, “I realize you’re—” with her voice shaking all over the place.
Delilah was behind her. She said, “Erica’s parents came, that’s why I’m back. Lots of drama. Many tears. They’re so grateful, et cetera. I’m going back to bed, and I’m not getting up until at least noon. If you want to yell at me, Roman, you can do it then.” And went.
I barely noticed, and I didn’t say anything. I just pulled Summer in and held her. She stiffened for a minute, and then she started to cry. Not prettily, and not in any way you could mistake. Her hands were curled against my chest like birds, her face was buried in my neck, her shoulders were heaving, and she was sobbing like her heart would break. The approaching day was turning the blackness to gray, and a bloke walking a dog on a lead looked up at us, startled, but I didn’t care. I was stepping backward, pulling her with me into the house, letting the door slam shut, and wrapping her up tight.
“Don’t cry,” I said, like every man who holds a crying woman. Like that will work.
“S-s-sorry,” she gulped, and tried to pull away. “Sorry. I just— Oh, man. I’m such a mess. I’m so not ready for this. I dragged you into this, and I— I?—”
“Shhh.” Another non-helpful thing to say, probably. I pulled her closer and asked, “What is it? Delilah? The girl? What?”
She shook her head—still against my chest—and said, her voice muffled, “N-no. She’s going to be … OK. But her mum was so … so … so worried, and her dad was so angry and so protective, and they were there, holding her, which is great, but I … I just—” She pulled back for real, wiped her knuckles over her streaming face, and tried to steady her voice. “I don’t know why I’m c-crying. It’s so s-stupid. Just … I can’t do this. I can’t be normal anymore. It doesn’t … it doesn’t work. I’ll think it’s working, that I can have a … a normal life again, and then I’m … I’m annoying you, when I’m trying so hard not to annoy you, when none of this was your fault or your problem, and Delilah was so awful to that cop, so I’m probably not being a good influence, and she thinks I’m—that I …” She shoved herself back, staggered a couple of steps in her heels, hit the wall, put a hand against it, took a deep breath, and said, “I’m going to wash my face. I’m not making sense. I know I’m not. Then I’ll come help you. I know you don’t want to hear it, but I’m sorry this ruined your night. You tried so hard to give me a beautiful night, and you did. I can’t keep taking things from you. I have to be on my own. I wasn’t ready. I knew I wasn’t ready, and I did it anyway! I’m—” Her hand had been beating against the wall, and now it fell. “I need to wash my face. And then I’ll … I’ll stop acting like a lunatic and figure this out. I’ll clean up. I’ll … I’ll be right back.” And took off.
Summer
I stayed in my bathroom about ten minutes. Every time I thought I was done crying, I remembered what Delilah had said, and how thoroughly I’d messed things up with Roman, and how badly I’d failed to get my life back in order and myself back on an even keel and how I probably never would—I knew I was looking at it from the bottom of the pit, and the view was distorted from down there, but it somehow wasn’t helping—and how Erica’s parents had looked when they’d walked into the room and how they’d hugged her and she’d looked like she knew everything would be all right now, that she could let go and be scared, because they were there and she was safe, and I started crying again. I only stopped because there was a knock at the bathroom door.
I wiped my nose one more time—I’d used up the Kleenexes and was onto the TP now—and opened the door to find Roman. Holding a mug.
“Cup of tea,” he said. Looking … I wasn’t sure how. He didn’t have that hard face anymore, anyway. “Drink this, take a shower, and change into something more comfortable. Yoga pants, maybe. Like that.”
I stared at him, forgetting my blotchy face and drippiness and weeping and so forth. “You want me to wear yoga pants? That makes you the first man in the history of ever.”
“My wives did that,” he said. “Bad periods, fights with their mum. Yoga pants and tea and TV. Sometimes ice cream. It seemed to help.”
“I don’t have any yoga pants with me,” I said, feeling inexplicably better even as I sniffed and dabbed at my nose. “I wanted to be pretty for you.” An idea that made my eyes fill with tears again. How pathetic was I?
“Sweetheart,” he said, and now, his face was definitely softer, “you’re always that.”
I had to laugh. It was pretty watery, but it was a laugh. “Not so much at the moment. Ugh. I guess I could be coming across worse, but I’m not sure how. I seem deranged even to myself. All right. I’m going to take a shower and put on one of the other two outfits I brought, and then I’ll come out and help you finish cleaning up.”
“You do that,” he said, and I did my best to smile, closed the door, and took a very long, very hot shower, during which I did not cry. I also didn’t try to analyze my emotions, because I couldn’t. Tomorrow, I might attempt it, but right now? I was a hot mess, so I stood under a rainfall of near-scalding water, let it turn my skin pink, and didn’t think.
When I came out again with some strategic foundation hiding the worst of the blotchiness and reminding me not to start crying again—it seemed as good a preventative as any—Roman wasn’t anywhere downstairs. Also, the sheets were washed and dried, the towels and duvet cover were in the dryer, and the duvet was thump-thumping in the washing machine.
The bathrooms and floors were clean, too. All of them.
I went upstairs holding my empty tea mug with something welling up in my chest, something that felt a whole lot more complicated than gratitude, and found Roman on the couch, frowning at his laptop. When I came in, he shut the lid and asked, “Better?”
“Better,” I said, and smiled. “Thank you. So work is your go-to, not yoga pants? I’m going to have to get there again. When I have real work to do, that is.”
“Yeh,” he said, “because I’m a brilliant model for a happy life.” He looked me over. “It’s not yoga pants, but it’s how I’m used to seeing you.”
I sat down beside him on the leather couch and sighed, then put my own bare feet on the cold marble coffee table along with his. And felt myself relaxing like snuggling into a warm bed on a cold night. “I do need to buy some work clothes,” I said, “if I’m really going to try for that software engineer job, and I sure seem like I am. The skort and T-shirt are going to get old. They’re already old, counted in number of washings.”
“I like the skirt and T-shirt,” Roman said. “Always have. You look pretty in pale pink. Prettier. And I’m guessing I shouldn’t offer to buy those work clothes.”
“Ha,” I said. “You’re right about that. You cleaned downstairs.”
“I did,” he agreed. “Damage controlled, thanks to us.” He paused. “And Delilah. She does the right thing sometimes, I’ve noticed, but somehow always says the wrong one. Sorry she said that about you. Not fair. And don’t bristle at me and tell me what she said was fine. You know it wasn’t fine.”
I sighed for a different reason now. “I know. I’ll talk to her. Honestly, though, I’m wrung out. This is supposed to be your holiday. Relaxing. Ha.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “I’ll take it.” And smiled at me. My heart may have melted a little.
I said, “There must be a quote for this. This moment.”
“You’re taking the piss,” he said. “I should be offended.”
“No, I’m not. Remember? I need all the inspiration I can get. I’m feeling very … unmoored right now.”
He thought a minute, then said, ‘At the still-point in the center of the circle, one can see the infinite in all things.’ Zhouang Zhou.”
“The still-point in the center,” I said. “I like that. Like … having a quiet cup of tea and letting the emotion and upheaval settle. I’m not always very good at this serenity thing.”
“Nobody’s good at it,” Roman said, “except possibly the Dalai Lama. That’s why he got the job. And why it’s called practice.”
“Like yoga.”
“Another good one. Want to do some yoga, then?”
“You know?” I said. “That actually sounds great. I’m probably stiff as a board, and I don’t have the pants, but …”
“That’s judgment,” he said. “We don’t need judgment. It’s Mount Maunganui. If there isn’t yoga somewhere here on Sunday morning, I’ll be gobsmacked.” He was already typing, then cursing and backspacing. “Esther usually does this kind of thing for me,” he muttered. “Ah. Here you are.” He swiveled the laptop toward me on his knees. “A few streets away. Three kinds of yoga. Flow yoga, some yoga I can’t pronounce, and, uh, Bikram yoga. Whatever that is when it’s at home.”
“Oh, Bikram,” I said, feeling about twenty pounds lighter. “That sounds so good right now. Do you want to do it with me?”
“Who, me?”
“I thought this weekend was supposed to be a getaway,” I said. “Besides meeting your whanau. That’s what you said. A chance to relax. What’s more relaxing than yoga?”
He looked so horrified, I wanted to laugh. “I meant sex,” he said. “When a man says ‘relax’ and ‘getaway,’ he means sex.”
“How about this, then?” I said. “I leave a note and tell Delilah she’s free of us today. After all, she was pretty responsible, noticing Erica’s situation and arranging to get her back here, however lacking she was in the cleanup department.”
“Works for me,” Roman said, still cautious. “She can use the credit card. I already wrote that money off, so whatever horrifying thing she does next … But we’re still talking about Delilah. If this is meant to be convincing me of something, you haven’t got very far.”
“Mm,” I said. How about if we go get a coffee and whatever else you need so you don’t starve, and then we go to a yoga class, and then out for a nice, leisurely breakfast, and then bring our lovely relaxed selves home, take a very soapy, steamy shower together, and have some really nice, second-time sex? Sort of … slow, relaxed, yoga-type sex? The kissing kind. Now that we, ah, know each other better and can be sort of … freer. To, uh, try things.”
Was I horrified with myself? Quite possibly, but I kept remembering how focused he’d been on my pleasure last night. And how focused on my body. Not just the major parts. All the parts. It had seemed like he loved my back, and my thighs, and my shoulders, and my skin. You couldn’t touch and kiss them like that if you didn’t love them, could you? All that focus could have overwhelmed me, and it had, but it had made me feel weirdly safe, too. Like he had me.
In any case, his eyes definitely had a gleam in them now. “The kind that lasts,” he said. “And features you being flexible and bendy. Tantric sex. That’s yoga, right? Or adjacent. Focusing on you, but teasing. Going slow. Yeh, I could see my way to doing some of that. Where did this woman come from, and why am I just now seeing her?”
“You woke her up,” I said. “And yes. The kind where I’m very, very bendy and kind of … pliant. And then we fall asleep. During the day, like the people we never get to be anymore. While Delilah goes out and does her thing and tells her new friends how boring we are. And then we, ah …” Somehow, I was kissing his neck. It was right there, and it was so strong and brown. It was like I was drunk, or like the aftermath of a storm. An emotional storm. “Wake up again,” I murmured, here in my drunken haze. “And eventually get pizza and some very good wine for dinner and watch a movie on TV. And be lazy and touch each other as much as we want to. And I only wear my silky robe, and you don’t have to pretend you don’t see it.”
“And all this happens,” he said slowly, “if I go to yoga with you.”
“Yep.” For some reason, I was smiling goofily. “Because it’s physical, and we do it together. Kind of like going for a hike and taking off our clothes so we can kiss in a plunge pool, but even more so, because we’re getting the blood flowing all the way through our bodies and breathing in and breathing out and calming down and becoming so aware of every sensation. Doesn’t that sound better than sending me out clothes shopping, or buying more art, or whatever expensive thing you had in mind to impress me?”
He stood up. “Right. What does a man wear to do yoga?”