Ill look for you everywh.., p.31
I'll Look for You, Everywhere, page 31
‘But as the years went on, there were times when it felt like I had lost you. Moments that this beautiful face – it was still you, still my too-tall Magdalen, but you became empty.’
My chest hurts, pain and embarrassment striking my body when I think about my father watching me grow up. You’re so concerned with becoming an adult on your own that you forget others are also concerned. That papas will always worry. Here I was thinking I was the unproblematic child. The one who braided her own hair, remembered to turn the lights off when leaving a room.
‘I’m sorry,’ I croak. ‘I never wanted you to worry about me.’
He shakes his head. ‘You could be swaddled in bubble wrap and I’d still find a way to worry. But this summer, watching you glow, it’s like you’re not afraid to laugh any more. Not afraid to snort!’
I smile broadly, untucking my hand from my lap to reach out and hold his hand.
‘Should I tell you who it is?’ He raises his eyebrow, shaking my hands playfully.
‘Shouldn’t I be the one telling you who it is?’ I ask, feeling lighter after talking to him. Who cares if Theo doesn’t like me any more? At least I had him for a weekend.
‘Ah, but you know I am a good guesser.’
‘Fine, guess away, il dottore.’
He smiles, the lines around his eyes branching out towards his temple as he does so. ‘I think it’s a boy I once knew.’
‘Interesting assumption.’
‘I think he’s trying to be a man but cannot even face his reflection without wincing.’
‘Are you defending him? How do you know he even messed up in the first place?’
‘Magdalen, do you forget that you are half of me? Half of all your pain is felt by my whole heart. I know when you’re upset, angry, scared, in love. I get a tug right here.’ He points to his heart, rubbing his chest in a circle like he can feel my pain as we speak. ‘And I know that you love him, so don’t try to deny it. I am a doctor, remember! But I also know that Theo will fight to avoid feeling anything at all, in case those feelings turn him into Dexter.’
I lean forward, pressing my palms into my eyes until the urge to cry mellows.
‘And if I get hurt in the process of this fight with himself? Is that fair, Papa?’
‘Well, that’s for you to decide. You can teach him there are other ways to patch up his pain. Tell him it’s okay to ache. To hurt and sob, to stomp around, and kiss, yes! Kiss it better! But you tell him that you do it together. Sit knee by knee and you hurt with his heart and stomp with your foot and kiss together, equally. You show him it’s okay to ache with you. And, in turn, you can share your hopes with him.’
‘That sounds lovely. But I think it’s too late for us. I . . .’ The words struggle to come to the surface.
My father looks at me, love pouring out of him so that I instantly feel better, because I know I’ve done something right if Claudio Savoy loves me. He adjusts himself in the big leather chair, clearing his throat and stroking his beard one final time before answering.
‘Theo Sinclair is scared by how much you consume him.’
I thought I’d spent this summer learning everything I could about Theo. The pattern that his curls form when touched by salt water. The sweetness of the skin across his chest, painted with the ankh symbol. That Sir Gawain and the Green Knight comforted the child in him.
But what I hadn’t known was that he’d been confiding in my father. Sneaking to the museum early in the mornings, telling him about us. About his confusion. His pain. His desire to learn just a little bit more about me. Should I be angry? Embarrassed? Upset that he spent hours with my papa, the man who saw through gap teeth and teenage posters on the wall, talking about me?
Ever loyal, my father refused to confess any secrets. But I sat on the train back to Chivasso with his voice in my head.
Theo Sinclair is scared by how much you consume him.
My father’s use of the word consume makes Theo’s feelings seem archaic, like loving me is rooted in an ancient and immovable tradition, like it’s beyond him. I watch the blur of deep green rolling hills through the window, thinking about that night in Alassio. The faint trace of salt water still left on his skin, the taste of him in my mouth, how he sighs right before he falls asleep. How perfect a moment can be until you notice a loose thread and soon its unravelling is the only thing you can focus on. My stop is announced, and the memories of Theo fade away with the faint sound of the train horn. Rubbing my eyes tiredly, I drag my feet as I exit the station, something my mother would scold me for, but I have no energy to care. Right as I’m about to begin my ascent of the hill, I freeze.
Theo leans against the wooden fence of a house near the station. He doesn’t see me, so I take a few selfish moments to just stare. To forget about Lucia, about confronting him and hating myself for loving him. I love him. Denying it is so exhausting. But admitting it is piteous! Because he hurt me and I still pine for him. Desperately.
Wearing a white T-shirt again, and those light blue jeans that are torn near the ankle. Red Adidas sneakers. He is the type of beautiful that people write songs about. His beauty could start wars, I think.
A dog barks from a backyard behind me and Theo turns his head towards the noise, to find me instead. His eyes widen and immediately, he hops off the fence and runs his hands over the front of his jeans and then waves. Waves! My hand betrays me. I wave back. He then shoves his hands in his pockets and gestures with his head for me to walk to him. So I do.
‘I haven’t seen you,’ he says when I’m close enough.
‘Why are you here?’ I try walking up the hill but he immediately reaches for my arm, stopping me. Even this, his fingers around my wrist, is enough to make me want to close my eyes and bathe in his touch.
‘What’s going on?’
‘Really?’ My voice comes out surprisingly angry. Good! I should be yelling. ‘Nothing you want to tell me?’
Theo searches my eyes, confusion clear in his gaze. ‘If there’s something I did, just tell me, Magdalen,’ he says roughly, letting go of my hand. How dare he be angry with me? When it’s been him throwing darts at me the entire game.
‘Fine, if you want to play it that way,’ I breathe out. ‘Lucia?’
He stills, and it’s enough of a reaction to know my suspicion was right. I blink away the tears and take another deep breath, my father’s voice giving me strength.
‘You were with Lucia in the middle of the night, drinking wine on the stairs.’ It’s all I can say without feeling the familiar lump in my throat. Unable to look at him, I begin walking again, leaving him standing there behind me. ‘And you’ve been talking to my father,’ I add. Might as well get everything out in the open.
‘Magdalen,’ he calls out, and I walk faster, his footsteps chasing after me. ‘Maggie, I promise you, I wasn’t trying to do anything behind your back.’
The audacity of men! Hands all over my engaged sister and he has the nerve to speak. I whirl around. ‘So, when you were touching my sister just after we fucked, you were thinking of me?’
‘I was not touching your sister.’ He rolls his eyes as he says the last words, like I made it all up.
I start walking again. ‘I watched.’
‘Well, you watched wrong.’
‘Don’t tell me how I watched!’
‘We were talking about you, Magdalen!’ Theo appears in front of me, his chest moving rapidly as he blocks my path. ‘Don’t you realize that I only ever want to talk about you? With Lucia and your father, it’s always just you.’
‘I’m supposed to believe you were talking about me with my ethereal-looking sister at four a.m. with a bottle of wine in hand?’
‘Yes, because it’s fucking true. I couldn’t sleep, but you looked so fucking peaceful that I just stepped outside instead to get your scarf from the garden.’ He looks at me like I’m the dumbest person alive. ‘And then I found your sister on the steps, with the wine.’
‘With the wine,’ I repeat.
‘She was upset because of how your conversation ended.’
‘Oh.’ A pang of regret for how I acted. Another person I have given a sleepless night.
‘She kept saying she was scared for you.’
‘Oh,’ I repeat, unable to process Lucia speaking to Theo about me, about my secrets. My skin prickles and that compulsion, the one that screams to divert the conversation, rings violently in my head.
‘Why is she scared for you, Magdalen?’
‘What was the crashing noise?’ I ask, needing time to think of a response. Accepting that I’m in love with this stupid boy makes it so much harder to keep things from him. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to be weak with someone, to ache together.
‘My big foot knocked over the bottle.’ Theo taps his sneaker against my sandal and I stare at our feet touching, still unable to look at him.
‘Why couldn’t you sleep?’
‘Come with me.’ He holds my hand, bringing it to his lips, and kisses me before tucking it into his elbow. ‘I need to tell you something.’
53
MAGDALEN
We walk in silence as we approach my garden. The back of my hand still hums with the impression of his lips.
‘What do you need to tell me?’
Theo inhales deeply and stops walking, letting go of me. He guides us underneath the veranda, the smell of hydrangeas and rosemary enveloping us as he sits on top of the table. I stand in front of him, unsure of what’s going on and suddenly, Theo turns to me. Grabbing my face in both his hands, he brings me to him and kisses me, devouring my lips, licking, sucking, massaging his tongue against mine until I think my head is going to fall off. He breaks off the kiss and presses his forehead against mine, catching his breath.
‘It’s like lightning,’ he murmurs, running his lips against the bridge of my nose. ‘Every time I kiss you, it’s like swallowing lightning.’
And then he’s gone, stepping back, running his hands through his hair. It’s only when he looks at me that my heart sinks. Preoccupied with my own anger, I didn’t realize how upset he looked before. How dark the circles under his eyes are, having nothing to do with the healing bruise from Dante. His tiredness is potent and he sits further onto the table, beckoning me to join him.
‘You know, I saw you around eleven o’clock at night once; I heard the back door open because of that creaking sound it always makes.’ It’s like I can see his body cave inward the more he talks, so I sit down quietly, afraid that if I make any noise, he’ll spook. ‘I would get so excited when I heard that sound, because it meant that wherever that person was going, I could go with them. No one ever said no. Anyone in your family, I would run out the back door and go with them. And it was late, and I heard the door, and I thought that it was odd because Dante would have told me if he was going out. So I was in the shower, and I looked through the little window above the soap shelf to see who it was, and it was you.’ He looks at me, eyes wide and so vulnerable, but his gaze never wavers. Brushing a piece of hair from my forehead, he continues.
‘It was you, and your hand was covering your mouth like you were trying to be quiet, and I thought, Isn’t that weird? You rarely used that door. And here was the quietest girl I’d ever known, trying to be even more quiet. But I kept watching. I remember absentmindedly washing the shampoo out of my hair long after it was gone because it made that squeaky noise against my palm, you know? And my fingers were all pruned, but I didn’t . . . I didn’t realize, I didn’t feel anything, so I was still scrubbing because the streetlamp across from us had a spotlight on your face and I could see that you were crying.’ He turns his shoulder away from me, so absorbed in the memory it’s almost as if he forgets I’m here.
‘You were crying. And it was so awful to watch. When I think back, I still don’t remember ever getting out of the shower. But one second, I was under running water and the next, my hand was on the front doorknob, so ready to turn it, to run out and see if you were okay. Even though we never talked, that you think I never noticed you, it hurt me to see you so upset. It felt like a razor burn across my chest. So I was about to unlock the door when I looked down and . . . and I was, I was naked.’
He laughs, and I flinch. His voice is hoarse, and the sound is painful against the quiet of his story.
‘I forgot to put clothes on or even a fucking towel because when I saw you were upset, I forgot everything. Nothing mattered. You, you were family.’ He breathes deeply, facing me now.
‘And now, you’re my lightning, my summer.’ His eyes are red, and slowly he walks towards me, hands cupping each side of my face, fingers tangled in the knotted waves of my hair.
Exhaling harshly, he searches my eyes and whispers, ‘I’m going to tell you something that I know will end whatever the fuck is happening between us.’
I blink, confused by the shift. ‘You want to end this?’ I try to remove my head from his hold, but he doesn’t let me. His fingers cradle my head, and his thumb glides against my cheekbone in absentminded strokes.
‘Why I left.’ He squeezes my face between his hands so tightly that for a moment I can’t hear anything but the rough pressure of his palms against my temples. Tears rim the edges of his eyes, his breathing becoming sporadic, yet he looks at me with a wildness I’ve never seen before. The words rush out.
‘I’m sorry, mi dispiace. I’m so sorry.’ He releases me and stands up, stumbling against the corner of the bench.
‘Theo, you’re scaring me.’ His back faces me, strong shoulders slumped in defeat. I want to reach out and touch him, but I’m scared to disrupt his thoughts. I can tell he’s pinching the bridge of his nose with his fingers, steadying himself even now.
‘I went back upstairs, to put jeans on.’ It takes me a moment to remember his story, to recall my own tears from that night.
‘To find you and see what was wrong.’ The memory begins to creep back and for some reason, I begin to feel sick. Knowing he never found me, knowing I slept in the grass of his backyard that night because Anika wasn’t home.
‘But when I came back outside you were gone. I looked everywhere and even called Anika to see if you were with her.’
‘I wasn’t,’ I whisper.
He turns around to look at me, sighing before agreeing. ‘No, you weren’t.’ Slowly, he walks towards me again, tilting my head to look at him. ‘So I went into your house.’
The finality of his words causes a cold sweat to break across my back. How close we were to finding each other that night. Who knows if I could have turned out different if Theo had found me that night?
‘Okay.’
‘So I went into your house because I thought maybe you went back in there. But, obviously, you weren’t there. And for some fucking reason I went upstairs.’ He squeezes his eyes shut as if to escape the memory. ‘Your mamma was there.’
‘Of course she was; she’s the one who—’ Suddenly, the memory floods my mind so intensely it feels like my skull expands to accommodate the details I’d forgotten. I remember the red plastic chair. The unopened tomato jar sitting on the island. The smell of oil. But even now, after everything I have shared with Theo, I cannot make myself say it.
‘She what?’ His voice is cold and, when I don’t answer, he bends down, opening my legs to fit himself between them. My cheeks burn, embarrassed, still, by the intensity in his eyes.
‘I can’t. Please,’ I whisper, looking only at his lips. My limbs feel like lead, not a part of my body any more. With a heavy breath, I try to block the unwanted images from resurfacing, but it’s too late. I’m there, in the kitchen.
‘What did she do, Magdalen?’ His elbows rest on my thighs, fingers brushing my chin to get me to look at him. Humiliating. I shouldn’t have to tell him anything. I should be able to have this secret, to bury it beneath the veranda where only I can watch it die. But he presses on, keeping my chin locked, so I must look at him. And then I see the anger fade, melting into pure concern, into overwhelming worry, and the desire to ease his comfort surpasses the need to keep my secret. The words bubble out before I realize I have ever wanted to tell someone.
‘I have a few burns,’ I begin, unsure where to start. ‘Underneath my ribs and across my back, on my right side. There’s about six or seven—’
‘Eight,’ Theo interrupts, his voice rough. ‘There are eight.’
‘Right. There are eight,’ I blush, forgetting that Theo has seen every inch of my body. ‘Well, I was in the kitchen reading – I . . . I can’t remember what I was reading.’ I try to recall the cover of the book. A name of a character. But my mind draws a blank. For some reason, this makes me more upset than remembering just what happened. If I can’t remember the book, then it surely wasn’t worth shattering the fragile bond between mother and daughter.
‘And my mother asked me to watch the garlic to stop it from burning and I swear I don’t even remember saying yes, I was that obsessed with the book – whatever it was. And I guess I didn’t end up watching it at all and, when she came back into the kitchen with the jars of tomato, the garlic was burnt in the oil. Completely charred. Like ashes.’ Theo’s fingers flex against my legs, pulling me closer to him and settling his hands on my thighs. Anchoring me to reality, maybe knowing I don’t want to enter into the folds of this memory alone.
‘Well, of course she wouldn’t stop screaming. Telling me I’m selfish and stuck in la la land, which she says so often that I don’t even hear it any more. And the book was so good, that I just took it off the island and started walking to the dining room table while she was yelling. Obviously, that was rude. I should have apologized, but I just got so sick of being the one she yells at that my head went silent. But I guess I tuned everything out too well, because then all of a sudden I just fell over.’
The memory doesn’t make me sad, but replaying the scene in my head – the absence of time, and the darkness from those few moments of staring at words in a book to the grout in the tile – my stomach drops. A sick feeling crawls up my throat.
