Mercy

Why? God, how to explain it.

I tortured her because I hated her, and I hated her because I loved her. And because I loved her, I needed her to go away. I needed to send her running from me, for her own good and probably mine too. If she hadn’t left that night, I would have punished her the next morning until she did. I would have hurt her until she left, for lying, for not being who I thought she was, for keeping so many secrets from me. Which was ironic, because the biggest lie, the biggest secret, the biggest betrayal, of course, was my own.

Chapter Fourteen: Mercy

I fled from Matthew’s to Georges and Grégoire’s place, and they took me in without demanding any explanations. I stayed in bed for two days straight. I wanted to die, but instead all I did was sleep. Grégoire came and went, looking guilty and remorseful. I knew that he was the one who had told him about the rape, because, besides me, he was the only one who knew.

“I’m so sorry, Lucy. I’m so sorry that I told him. It just came up in conversation. It slipped.”

“It slipped? What the hell were you talking about to say something like that?”

“We were talking

about you and why you’re so screwed up.” I scowled at him. “Now he thinks the only reason I like him is because I got raped. Like I got imprinted on violence or something.”

Grégoire looked at me. “Well, didn’t you?”

I didn’t have anything to say to that. I turned my back on him and ignored him until he left.

Later that day, Kevin brought all of my things. Two small suitcases and a box of items, including the framed poem Matthew had given me. My entire life. I wanted to beg him to take me back to Matthew’s, but I didn’t because I was too afraid.

I understood why Matthew had been so angry with me. He had told me enough times about his obsession with truth. He had wanted truth and beauty, but gotten deep and encompassing lies.

But to me it seemed the broad lies we told to one another were the only thing that kept our relationship alive. For him, it was the lie that he didn’t love me that protected him. For me, it was the lie that I’d always wanted what he gave. Taken together, those lies made up the foundation of our relationship, and now, without them, it had totally collapsed. Those lies we lived by kept our relationship on kilter, kept us frozen in a tableau like that of the Grecian Urn, beautiful and timeless and unable to be ruined. But everything was ruined now. The beautiful, unchanging urn had been broken by the ugliness of truth.

I had felt lost the last time we’d been apart, but this time, when it seemed a permanent break, I was so much more lost than before. I missed him horribly, thought of him obsessively. I wondered hourly if he could possibly forgive my lies, if I stopped taking pain pills, which I did; if I explained to him why I hadn’t told him about the rape. Surely if I just explained it all and said I was sorry, he would forgive me and we could go on again as before. But I was terrified of approaching him because if he sent me away, if he wouldn’t listen, then we would really be through. So instead, I waited in hope that he would come to me. But no, he didn’t, and days stretched into weeks.

My darling Grégoire was as true a friend to me as ever. I forgave him for ratting me out to Matthew because I know he hadn’t meant any harm. He weaned me off the pain pills and went with me to the gym and to a physical therapist to try to salvage my joints. And slowly, day by day, the pain did get better. My flexibility returned in part, and without the pills masking the pain, I knew when I pushed too far and could stop before it escalated.

He urged me to eat well too, and take vitamins and supplements, folic acid, and calcium, and protein. He kept me out of clubs where I’d breathe in smoke and be tempted to drink, and strong armed me to bed each night at a reasonable hour. I did as he prompted because I thought it might help me heal faster and stay strong, but all that good nutrition and healthy living after many years of half-assed habits actually made me feel more nauseous and tired, ironically enough.

But I danced through all of it as we entered the summer season because I thought, as always, that this season could be my last. And as it turned out, it was my last season, because the first week in June, my Achilles tendon snapped.

I had thought I’d known pain as a dancer. In fact, I had known pain of all kinds. But the pain of that tendon giving way was more excruciating, more debilitating and terrifying than any pain I’d ever known. The only mercy was that it gave out during practice. The indignity of collapsing onstage would have made it that much worse. I was carted off to the hospital, sobbing and pleading for someone to help me, but there was no one, nothing at all, that could fix this pain.

Grégoire stayed beside me through the trip there and my admittance, and wouldn’t leave my side even as they took me back to be examined. I was so far gone, so hopeless and mindless, that I was glad to have him there to answer all the questions they asked. They weren’t hard questions, but there were so many of them, stupid questions that annoyed me in my pain. I was confused though, when they asked before the x-rays if there was a chance I could be pregnant, and Grégoire answered quietly, “yes.”

“No,” I corrected him. “There’s no chance.”

“There is a chance, Lucy,” and his face seemed suddenly pale. The way he looked at me made my skin go cold, then prickle into goosebumps from the back of my neck all the way down my arms.

“How is there a chance, G?” I asked in a voice that was shaking on the edge of hysteria.

He swallowed hard. “Did you ever get your period last month?” My breath caught in my throat as I thought back. No, I hadn’t. But...but...that could be due to stress. It could be due to all the new vitamins and nutritious food...the vitamins and food that Grégoire had practically forced on me. Bitter tears, the tears of a friend betrayed, pooled in my eyes.

“Lucy...” he said, watching my face darken. “I can explain. I can explain what happened.

It’s not all his fault. It’s my fault too.”

I shook my head, trying to put it together. I didn’t understand. I couldn’t get it clear. His fault. Matthew’s. It’s not all his fault.

“Am I pregnant?” I asked him. I thought of the nausea, the exhaustion that dragged me towards the earth. All this time the x-ray tech just stood there. Just a gay dancer and his partner sorting some things out about a pregnancy, a pregnancy that had happened though some unholy alliance from hell.

“Talk to me, Grégoire!” I shouted.

“I’ll go order a test,” muttered the tech, excusing himself.

“Lucy, listen, just, please calm down. I’ll tell you what happened but you can’t freak out.” I burst into hysterical tears. “It’s too late for that, it’s too late to freak out now, isn’t it?

When? What? The night I was sick?”

“The night you took the pills, and you...wouldn’t wake up.”

“He fucked me? Matthew? Without a condom?” I don’t know why I phrased it as a question, otherwise I’d immaculately conceived.

“He asked how to make you stop dancing, so you wouldn’t hurt yourself, and I told him...”

“You told him what?”

“I told him there were only two ways. For you to injure yourself, or get pregnant.” My mouth fell open.

“I didn’t think he would, Lucy! He said he couldn’t do that to you. I don’t know what changed his mind after I left.”

My brain was reeling, the pain in my leg forgotten. I couldn’t say whose betrayal was worse, Grégoire’s or his. I think Matthew’s was worse, because he’d broken up with me over a lie. My lie, when he had perpetuated the most gargantuan lie of all. He’d been upset that I’d kept my rape from him, and yet he raped my very life, raped my very being by impregnating me with a child without my knowledge, without my permission, against my will.

I was angry enough with Grégoire, but Matthew...if he had been in the room then and someone had handed me a gun, I would have turned it on him, and I really do believe I would have pulled the trigger. I was so stunned by the audacity, the depravity of what he’d done, that I could barely draw breath.

The tech returned, and I could tell by the look on his face that they’d run a test with the blood they’d drawn, and what the result of it had been. He silently laid the lead apron over my middle and arranged my injured calf under the machine.

* * *

By the time I got to surgery I knew Grégoire had called Matthew, because it was Dr. Rob who smiled down at me from above.

“We’re going to take good care of you, Lucy. By the time you wake up, you’ll already be starting to heal.”

But to tell the truth, I wasn’t sure I wanted to wake up. When they put me under, there was the one liquid second of floating away. How wonderful it would be to bottle that fleeting second, to live forever in that second of drowsiness when the whole world faded away. All the confusion, the fear and betrayal. All the anger and sadness and pain. To live forever in that moment of losing it, that moment that only Matthew had ever helped me find.

But I did wake up, and yes, the pain was better, at least the physical pain. My leg was elevated and immobilized by a splint. Before my eyes even opened, I felt a hand stroki

ng my hair and I knew, just from the pressure, that the hand was his.

“Don’t touch me.” I intended to yell it, but it came out a weak, raspy moan.

“Don’t try to talk, just rest.” His hand stopped moving but he left it there, heavy against my head. “The surgery went fine. You’re going to heal completely. But you won’t be able to dance.

At least not the way you did. But it’s going to be okay. Everything will be okay.” Everything will be okay. I hated him. I hated his soothing voice and his hand in my hair. I hated his arrogant assumption that everything was going to be fine just because he said so.

“What are you even doing here?” I still wouldn’t look at him. I couldn’t. “How can you even show your face to me after what you did?”

“I did it to stop you from hurting yourself. You wouldn’t have stopped dancing any other way.”

“Why didn’t you just ask me to stop?” I asked, jerking my head away from his hand.

“I did ask you to stop. You didn’t listen to me. You snuck off and got yourself hooked on pain pills to keep dancing, and started buying drugs off the street!”

“You don’t understand! You have no idea what it’s like to be me, to walk in my shoes.”

“No, I don’t,” he shot back, “because you wouldn’t confide in me. I would have done anything in my power to help you. Anything, if I could have, if I had only known. You lied! By keeping quiet about all these things that were hurting you, you lied to me, you didn’t give me truth.”

“I didn’t give you truth?” I turned on him and started to hit him as hard as I could. Of course, I was pathetically weak, and he quickly had my hands pinned.

“Enough. You need to relax. You need to be regaining your strength. You have a baby to care for now, our baby. You need to rest.”

“What I need is for you to go far away from me, because you’re an awful, horrible, dishonest person, and the biggest liar and hypocrite I’ve ever met, and the last thing I want is your fucking baby, because I never want to fucking look at you again.” My voice broke off after that long diatribe. I was exhausted but he still stood there beside me, his own face tired and drawn.