The Dangers of Proximal Alphabets - By Kathleen Alcott Page 0,50

Paul was sitting on the bed—it felt wrong to see him sitting so casually on the physical space where I’d lost the last of Jackson and me—sorting through the pile of pamphlets and pill bottles I hadn’t bothered to move.

“Jesus, Ida,” he said. “Jesus Jesus Jesus.” He looked down at where he sat, at the deep brown-and-red stain, and adjusted himself so that no part of his body touched it. He saw my face and froze.

“Sorry,” he said. “It’s just—”

• • •

I don’t know how he managed to reach him, but he must have told Jackson, because shortly after the checks started coming; they bore no personal note, and absurd amounts of money. I called James, who confirmed that their grandfather, an oil-guy Texan they’d met twice who taught his dog to bark at the word “Democrat” and had never gotten along with his son and their father, had finally bit the old bullet and they’d both received enough money to last quite some time.

It’s too bad what I did to Paul. It’s also too bad this is the best way I have of expressing it, and funny because I imagine that this is the way Jackson describes the way he treated me, artfully deflecting any blame: “It’s too bad what happened with Ida.” Too bad refers to that which was unavoidable in the wake of something greater or more important. It’s too bad what I did to Paul, though in those months it grew to be a kind of playful diversion, testing the limits of manipulation possible through the arch of my back, the jut of my hipbones, a few words in the right places.

Paul clung even more heavily after the abortion and suggested in small ways how that particular expression of my vulnerability had begun to turn his feelings of friendship slowly into lust. He encouraged my every pathetic triumph and rewarded me with small tokens; whether I actively accepted them didn’t matter. He was pleased when I showered, tousled my wet hair and complimented my scent; he laughed loud and long when I made even the smallest, darkest joke; he praised the small herb garden on the fire escape (that I grew out of guilt for lying to James) and brought expensive fertilizers. It should also be said that he made his presence dependable when there were no small triumphs, when I began to revert to silence and starvation, and I began to rely on it. He was the only one who gave me permission. Instead of suffering alone, I let Paul come over and took pleasure in sending cruel words out of my mouth knowing there would be no consequences. Though I had, in a sense, grown to love them, these things I made, I forced him to watch while I hurled the potted plants off of the balcony and enjoyed his small moans.

He very nearly almost won. Somewhere in between the moments of the small triumphs and the fits, he nudged his way in. He made me smile. He showed up with Thai food and comforts and curiosities: an old cowboy belt buckle that concealed a fine silver lighter, sheets of luxuriously high thread counts, a bathrobe with deep pockets, etchings of various types of octopi.

And so, one night, while he happily supervised my consumption of too much whiskey and slowly placed his fingers on my back, I did not stiffen. And when he began kneading, it seemed, every single disk of my back into a singular and celebrated entity, I was grateful. And when he began to separate not just the muscles of my back but also my legs, I did not stop him. And when I couldn’t hear the sounds of the film we’d been watching over his desperate grunting, I didn’t complain, just kept staring and made up the characters’ words, wrapped my legs around the small of his back halfheartedly, and observed as the two people on the screen exchanged proclamations of love and humor I wanted to understand but couldn’t.

I am ashamed of the extravagant things I said and did in the weeks and months afterward, although I don’t feel I had much choice given the way he grinned after we had sex, how he told me he loved me during. We took a vacation to Mexico that was in all regards perfect besides it being a lie, but he must have known on some level the fallacy of the sparkling lemonade we drank on those beaches, must have suspected