The Chronology of Water - Lidia Yuknavitch [16]
So I went in for the kill. I mean I snatched it out of the cold dark air as easily as he pulled songs from the sky and wrapped it in displaced rage and vodka breath and hurled it down at the top of his unsuspecting head until his neck nearly snapped. The way women in their twenties who are working out their ouch on everyone they meet do. Open wound girls. Swinging fist girls.
And we argued - or I did anyway - Phillip sort of ducked and growled - all the way to the car, a puke yellow beater mobile Pinto station wagon with faux wood paneling, and I kept it up inside the car, and he was having to drive with the window rolled down because we were too broke to get the windshield wipers fixed and it was snowing. In between trying to defend himself he had his head in and out of the window to see the road, but that didn’t stop me, did it, I just got louder and bigger and hornier and more horribly chaotically blond. My father’s rage and trespass in my voice and hands, in my very skin.
Phillip. Which means lover of horses. Or brotherhood. His voice was never meant for yelling.
That’s when it happened.
At the crescendo of my rage opera. In the dumb ass Pinto. Near my anger orgasm.
He fell asleep.
The car sort of slowed and made a limp arc toward the curb, until it stopped, and his head fell gently forward onto the steering wheel.
I remember staring at him for a minute, dumbfounded by the moment, seeing - really seeing - how goddamn beautiful his face, his mouth, his long fingered mesmerizing hands … knowing I could never, ever keep a boy like that because the shear velocity of my anger and confusion would eat him alive … and feeling as sad as a girl who will never have a boy like that could feel… crying… a long mile of greenyellowred streetlights blinking us down … and then snapping out of it and yelling at the top of my lungs “WAKE UP MOTHERFUCKER ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! YOU FUCKING FELL ASLEEP YOU COULD HAVE KILLED US!”
Then I leapt out of the car and slammed the Pinto door and ran down a snow alley behind a stranger’s snow house in my Doc combat boots. Running and running thud-footed how you do in snow and kind of crying so that my Kohl melted down my cheeks and kind of laughing and reaching inside my black leather jacket for my vodka flask and never looking back at him in his beater mobile wood paneled Pinto station wagon, sleeping, or was he singing...
That’s a great line, isn’t it.
That’s a great ending.
But lives aren’t James Taylor songs, and girls like me don’t just run off into the snow and go away.
I didn’t break up with him that night.
When we really broke up, well, let’s just say it wasn’t a James Taylor song. And what we made between rage and love and falling asleep - what lived and died between us - haunts me still.
That dramatic ending was just the beginning.
In the end, I made that boy marry me.
The Other Lubbock
ONE OF THE RED RAIDER SWIMMER GUYS WAS A DEALER. I don’t think I ever saw Monty not high. His skin looked ashen - even stretched as it was over athlete muscles. His eyes always had rings around them. His face had little holes in it. He did not live in the dorms. He lived with two other non swimmer guys in a house. In his house, there was a basement. The basement door had a marijuana leaf on it with a smiley face in the center. And it was locked. To enter, you needed to know the knock.
Two.
Three.
One.
The first time I went down into Monty’s basement I was with Amy. When he opened up, we went in - we were the only women that night. We were fishing for a little danger. Briefly I felt weird. Then weirdly, I didn’t. There were maybe four guys in there besides us. One of those four was also a swimmer. When I looked at him, I couldn’t tell if his eyes were open or closed, but he smiled and nodded and waved.
The room was dark- and not just because the walls were painted black with all kinds of glow in