Chapter 11
That’s what Henry muttered to himself, from behind the door, after he stripped me of everything that identified me as an ostentatious twat living east of the 405 in Los Angeles.
I’m trying to save your stupid fucking life.
Has Henry undergone a religious conversion? Is he participating in some sort of twelve-step program for whatever it is we used to engage in? We weren’t even that hardcore. It wasn’t like we had leather masks and ball gags and electromagnetic wands and safe words and consent. No. Ew. Would you look at us? We didn’t need all the bells and whistles.
There is a flash in my peripheral vision, and I sit up to see Henry has left the main house, that he’s walking down the dock and freeing the side of the boat from the spring line. He hops in, twists open the ventilation cap, and submerges the motor. Yes, I remember this now. I watch him closely as he loops the lanyard attached to the kill switch over his wrist, squeezes the primer bulb to get gas into the motor, and shifts the gearshift into neutral. He drifts through the water with the choke on, then starts the ignition. He is wearing a salt-stained denim hat and a fleece vest over a light-gray crewneck sweatshirt, and I know his huge dick is snug against his leg. I would still let him annihilate me if he tried, like a feminist fucking scab.
I limp around the room and study the walls, the places where all the fish paintings have been removed so that I cannot take out Henry’s eye with the corner of a frame. I’m checking to see if I can find an impression of a cross somewhere. His wife has that Catholic look about her. Maybe she got to him.
I brush my hair again for something to do. I hit a bad tangle and I’m working at it, gingerly, when the little plastic bristles separate from the brush pad and go tinkling all over the bathroom floor. I roar in a way that matches my angry sea monster hair.
Henry leaves me overnight, with no water and no food. I can handle hunger, and toxic diet culture is, by nature, toxic, an absorption of nasty chemical solvents with chronic effects, so I can find the upside to the hollowness between my hip bones. But I really start to panic when I turn the bathroom faucet on and manage only a mouthful before the stream slows to a drip. Henry turned the water off. He turned the fucking water off.
It rains that night, in a nice, soothing way, the branches of the trees caressing the windowpanes, a steady pattering on the gable roof. I am certain Henry has left me to die, that if he really wanted to punish me, this is exactly how he’d do it. Anything else would feel too passionate. Thumbs in the soft tissues of my neck, a knife splitting my flesh. He wouldn’t give me the satisfaction of liking it a little.
I am approaching twenty-four hours without water. My ankle is throbbing with hammy effect, and my head is on a wild ride through the failures of titration. I am heartened to find that the most comfortable position is the one I favor anyway: lying flat on my stomach, head turned to the side, leg pulled up along my torso. It’s called the crabposition, and my husband has used it to justify his behavior.You sleep all pointy, he says,like you don’t even want me to touch you.
I have a tortured, broken sleep, and when the door opens in the morning, Henry on the other side holding a liter of Smartwater, I openly sob. He comes over and stands above me, the water bottle perspiring lavishly, and I already know before I reach for it that he will jerk it away.
“Beg,” he says.
“Please,” I beg.
“You know what I mean.”
“Henry,please—”
He turns to go.
“Okay!” I shout. I peel back the covers, scooch to the edge. I flatten my palms on the bed, push myself to a flamingo’s stand. From here, I have to think about it a moment. My ankle is swollen and unstable. I grip the quilt behind me, lower myself into a deep, left-legged lunge until I am on one knee, then the other. Tentatively, I look up at him. He’s waiting with affected nonchalance, a few steps over by the door.
I crawl on all fours, fitting my hands and kneecaps into all my old grooves in the red plaid carpet, feeling and seeing and hearing everything in Technicolor. The way Henry holds his chin high, watching me with lowered eyes until I arrive at his feet, his face glassed over with imperial claim. The cushion of the carpet beneath my knees, the little involuntary muscle twitches of Henry’s long toes, the rooted heaviness of his calves and thighs. I am thinking about the story of Mary Magdalene washing Jesus’s feet with her hair. I went to Catholic grade school, and when we got to this story in the Bible, I had to excuse myself to the restroom, where I silently masturbated. I assumed all the girls in my class found the imagery erotic, the way we all agreed Justin Timberlakewas the hot one. But I was socially ostracized after admitting to it at a sleepover. Since the fifth grade, I’ve known I was different enough to start masking who I was. It was only ever in these moments, bowing before Henry, that I knew I found my congregation, my faith.
I rise up on my knees, wrap my arms around him, press my cheek to his thighs. “Please, Henry.” I make myself cry for a little bit, until he feels my tears on his skin, through his jeans.
“Look at me,” he says, oh so gently.
I lift my chin until my neck is exposed, open my mouth. Henry unscrews the cap, traces my dry mouth with the wet mouth of the bottle. I lick my lips, whimper.
“What do I get for this?”
My pulse is pounding between my legs. What.Is. This. “Anything you want.”
Henry is looking down at me with a warm and doting expression. He has crow’s-feet now, freckles in the same pattern over the bridge of his nose. When I knew him, he looked like a rich kid you wanted to punch in the mouth. If he came to LA, if he left the boat shoes behind, twenty-five-year-old Instagram models with big shiny lips would throw themselves at him. I might not stand a chance.
He says, “I want you to have dinner with me and be normal. Drink wine. Talk to me.”
I nod desperately. “Yes. Okay. I’d like that.”
“Don’t fucking do that either.”That, patronize him.
I sit back on my heels and admit, “I think about this room more than I should.”
Henry holds my eye a long moment, finds me sincere, though he has no idea how much. He nods. Okay. He motions—chin up again. Then he tips water into my mouth, a capful at a time, until the bottle is empty.
He brings me clean clothes—a worn linen button-down, a six-pack of underwear, a cozy old fleece zip-up. I get moisturizer too, lip balm, Kiehl’s shampoo and conditioner, which I just know he believes is the height of nouveau riche luxury, plus a hair tie. He has always liked me with my hair up.