Sick
by Marissa Higgins
We played the game only four months before D died. Telling my family was fine, cold; I called my mother, who put me on speaker phone so my father could hear, and explained I couldn’t give them money for winter oil in person on account of going to a funeral. They gasped appropriately, asked no questions, and waited until we were just about off the phone to remind me of the address of the carriage house they’d recently moved into, so I would know where to mail the check. At twenty I was young enough to feel bitter people were not more interested in my secrets. But still, March in Massachusetts meant I mailed the check the day before I did not go to the funeral, nor the wake, nor the bar to publicly mourn with D’s parents and three siblings.
I told B, D’s mother, I couldn’t shake my unease. I can’t see your husband, I whispered, cowardly, the last time she asked me to please come to even one part; just the wake, she repeated, where she and I could creep off to a dark room on a separate floor. I understood her loneliness and still I told her: I don’t know how you bear it. I was self-involved enough to be mean as well as biting, to use her marriage against her. She might have said the same to me, might have said: Well I don’t know how you saw D, how you went to the mall and drank your beer and sat side by side in lectures all the while denying what was really going on between us.
Her father is my concern, she said on the phone instead. You don’t need to think about him. I was thinking, of course, about precisely him. I got into these spins, you see. Obsessive images of one of us filled with terror. What I didn’t tell B—what I didn’t tell anyone—was that in these fantasies, the other of us was smiling, triumphant. No, I believed. That is social conditioning—no person sitting so close to grief could be a villain. If anyone hurt me, it would be a big man with his big anger and his big hands and his big entitlement. Understand I could not allow myself to see him, too, as a person in grief.
The Monday following the services I missed my afternoon classes to raise my sense of internal stakes when seeing B. I could have made class and made her break, sure. But I didn’t want a reminder that I had obligations outside of B, that I had needs and wants to balance and massage. She sensed me, I still believe, because she stepped outside of the bank a few minutes early, no bagged meal. I was sitting on the trunk of my car, legs folded up like a kid. We waved at one another.
Hi, she said, small.
Hi, I said, smaller.
I was surprised I didn’t see you at the funeral, she said, and I told her I was surprised I didn’t make it, either. Neither of us took our threats seriously; we were that sick, then, enough to joke about it in bed or the backseat of her car. I complimented her, reassured her about her mastectomy scars, that nothing changed except that I’d grown up, didn’t see her as just my classmate’s mom anymore. I used words like that in my head, then: classmate. If she noticed the lack of words like friend, she didn’t mention it; assuming, I figured, that I wanted to avoid intimate language because I was uncomfortable. Accurate, certainly, though I avoided friend because I did not want to use a word that shared all too many letters, too much closeness in sound and shape. There was no good time, I knew, to tell B I had been sleeping with D, that I was playing more than one game at a time. Then, D died.
I looked for you, she said. At the wake and the funeral and the party after. I had my cheek to the toilet, she told me. And I was still telling myself you wouldn’t miss it. I told her I spent the weekend looking for her, too, and she leaned back on her heels, as though my immaturity had struck her right in the gut.
You need money, B said. Or what?
My parents don’t want to ask the landlord to refill their oil tank, I said. They’re hoping to get cash from him instead.
Isn’t that illegal, she said.
Yeah, I said. It is.
Okay, she said. And are you staying there when the semester ends, or what?
I don’t know, I said.
You can take the train up, she said. Can’t you?
I could, I said.
Come, she said, and I followed her around the side of her car, squatted beside her, our bodies facing thick trees. The day had lost most of its light by then and anyone pulling up to the bank after hours might assume we were mother and daughter trying to find a dropped earring against cement. I took her hand first and she pulled me in.
I could use you, she said, soft. I asked her in which way and she gave me a look. I’m being serious, she said. I want to know things.
Okay, I said. I don’t know anything.
I found some of her writing, she said. When we were packing up her dorm room. I thought you would be able to fill in the gaps. Make sense of it.
Okay, I said. Okay. I wanted to know things too.
There are a few notebooks, she said. Journals. Poetry, I don’t know. I want to know everything, but I don’t think I do. I asked her to describe the items, and she did, though I would have accused her of making up descriptions if I didn’t know she was correct; lots of yellow legal paper, gel pens, unrubbed erasers. Trinkets. A red notebook, she said. With gold lettering on the front.
More poems, I asked, hoping I could camouflage my anxiety. That red one, I hadn’t seen, not ever. The poetry notebooks I knew; nothing would reveal us, though her mother might want to know about the relationship references. There would be Polaroids, us at parties, mostly with other girls. Nothing terrible or suspicious.
There’s a little lock, she said. Gold, or gold-painted, at least.
And you don’t have a key, I said.
Well, she said. I think that’s you. We looked around at bright emptiness and she kissed me down there, squatting beside her car, concealed in the open. I told her I would do my best.
You should have come, she said, and I told her I was sorry. You don’t mean it, she said.
I do, I said, and I did. You can’t understand the way I miss her, I said, a bold remark to make to the mother of a dead girl. Even through the layers of my coat and sweatshirt, I felt her hands squeeze, her nails dig.
Tell me, she said. No one will tell me.
People don’t want to upset you, I said. Your loss is the biggest. You and the kids, I mean. Her husband’s name was in my head, sure, but I wasn’t going to say it.
We’ve all been quiet, she said. The house is empty.
I said, Empty? I was chewing my fingernails and she told me to stop. Her eyes, I noticed, weren’t even on me.
The boys are with their girlfriends, she said. He’s been staying at his mother’s, she added, and named the town, a coastal spot I knew only from the stops on the train. I imagined her dropping him off and picking me up with only minutes between. She said, Empty.
I said, I didn’t know you’d been alone. I whispered that I would have come, had I known, I would have stayed with her and I wouldn’t have left, not even to get the good bagels from the espresso cart down the street. Her mouth was against my hair and I could have sworn she told me to prove it but when I asked her what she meant she told me I was hearing only the wind.
By the end of the week, I was on the train to see her. I had missed all of my classes, though I would never tell her that. Our generational difference was precise enough that when I simply told her I was doing work on the computer, she believed me. But I had been drifting from my twin bed in the dorms to the dining hall. I showered and brushed most thoroughly before I saw her, and if she smelled dust on or in me, she never mentioned it.
Their home was empty, as promised. Her home, but I couldn’t shake the thought of D. It wasn’t my first night since she died that I’d been there; I’d been in her mother’s bed within hours of the news, when her father had sped off immediately, angry enough not to know where to drink it, and her mother ordered me a car, paid, I saw, more than two hundred dollars to have me spoon her, our feet stacked like wishes. But this night was different, I knew, though my rationale was wrong; I thought it was because other people who had known and loved D had been in the space; the party was held at home, and people brought food and drinks and recyclable cutlery. Cousins cried on the couch, bereft at their inability to remember exactly what D said at the beach that time, causing them all to laugh so hard they dropped their popsicles. The real reason the space felt different I would come to know only briefly, but soon.
B was at the sink, readying to move dishes into the washer when I reached around her middle and rubbed her nipples through her sweater. She let out a long sigh and I smiled into her back. Let’s go, then, she said, and I led us up the stairs, past D’s room, into the bedroom B shared with her husband.
What’s all that, I said. On the bed.
Oh, she said, as though the keys had been left by a fairy or a ghost. I ordered some little tools to open that locket.
Oh, I said, wondering if the room was bright enough to see my face color red. Unable to resist, I asked her what was so interesting about that one notebook. The rest are open for you, I said.
Open for us, she said, and I leaned backward, confident and correct that she would be there to support me with her chest and stomach. I tilted my head back and she took to my neck with her nails, comforting me. My jugular, I imagined, looked proud at that angle. Pulsing.
Privacy can be good, I said, hoping she’d catch me. She did, but too well, because she simply told me there were no secrets her daughter could have that she wouldn’t understand. I was thinking of D’s vulva on my face, mind you, of my tongue trying to find its way into her as she put her palms flat against the white wall of my dark dorm room. I imagined telling her mother that she and her daughter shared the same weight, the same depth to them, with their knees on either side of my head. I pushed the thought away and told B I loved her.
She breathed in quick, which I understood, as we’d never said that to one another before. I wasn’t sure if I meant it but I was happy to have the distraction, happy to have quiet moments to think about how to get rid of D’s diary. The pages were a fixation of B’s, evidently, and I knew she’d look for it, so I had to make the loss total. The dead bog fields, I decided. Paper buried to regrow red when the months turned to a different kind of cold.
You love me, B said.
I do, I said.
You really, really love me, she said, small. Small enough for me to forget her fingers still on my bent throat.
I do, I said, smaller.
So you’ll do it, she said. You’ll let me do it? She must have felt me tense, must have realized I was realizing I had walked into a room and had my blindfold removed just to realize the lights were off. I’ve done it before, she said. And had it done to me, too. I won’t hurt you.
Of course, B and I didn’t talk about the strangeness of our roleplay. D’s death was expected but not; a complication in the aftermath of a surgery conducted as part of treatment for a chronic illness diagnosed at birth. We’d initially celebrated the results of the procedure; I was going to come the following morning to see the two of them at the hospital after her husband left to get a shower and change his underwear. But I got the call instead. Something burst, she said. Something bled. What I heard but didn’t say: someone’s dead. What I’m saying is we thought we could get away with pretending to be mother and daughter in bed, that we believed we could live second selves real close to our firsts. We didn’t think we’d yet have a reason to change ourselves in grief.
I bet my throat will ache after, I said. That’s what I read online.
Mm, she said. But I won’t do it that hard.
I stepped forward and she let me. I was thinking about D and the last time we’d done neck play; it hadn’t killed her, of course, hadn’t had anything to do with it, but I had a queer difficulty in replicating the play with B. Other acts didn’t bother me, but something about B made me uncertain; was it because I had placed my hand on her daughter’s neck, and now B wanted to give and not receive? I suggested it to her more than once, if she was so interested, she could be the weak one, but she was decided. It would be me.
I made a show of clearing the bed delicately, hoping to look like I cared about the items being preserved, but when I moved to slide the handful of keys beneath the bed—out of sight, out of mind, I was thinking—B dropped beside me and watched my hands. Good job, she said, and I remembered she was a mother.
I’m ready, I said, and she offered me a squeal. She instructed me to sit on the edge of the bed with my clothes on and I said alright. I was worrying about the diary more as the room grew darker. I was thinking D hadn’t written about us, had she? She hadn’t. I was thinking about D’s neck again, the realer reason I didn’t want to play this game, didn’t want to be obedient enough for a prize—a manicure at the salon, including the add-on for a hand massage; all my books for next semester, if I wasn’t kicked out; an unlimited monthly subway card. A kiss. D said words when my hand was at her neck, and I might have passed it off as the wind at the time, but we both heard them all the same.
Stand, B said. I resisted, wondering if standing made it all the more dangerous; I could fall and hit my head, after all, and she snapped her fingers. Come on, she said. I knew to run then but I wanted to know what a woman looked like when she got what she wanted.
You’re beautiful, I said, and she smiled.
Tell me more, she said.
You make me feel good, I said.
More, she said.
You inspire me, I said, shy, surprising myself at my own sincerity. I didn’t think I could say the same words a second time and mean them, and yet.
More, she said, giggling.
We were thinking of the same thing, weren’t we? Playing out the same scene. I was afraid to test it and discover I was wrong. At my silence, she repeated herself: more.
You’re my best friend, I said, and she smiled.
More, she said.
You’re more special than the other girl, I said.
More special than the older one, she said, and I knew she had read D’s red diary already, had read where D must have recorded our mantra; even before we started to fuck, we prioritized reassuring one another, repeating comfort and desire like a sort of faith. I imagined D writing this out—she told me I inspired her, she might have penned, and then she told me I’m her very best friend!—after we spent a happy afternoon tightening and loosening my hand at her throat. D’d been feeling insecure; she realized through context clues, I guessed, that I was seeing someone else. An older woman, I told her. I reassured her perhaps too many times that it was no one she knew, but if she suspected, she died with it. Or wrote it in that little red book.
Yes, I said. Promise.
Tell me what needs to be said, she told me. I wondered if she forgot, if I recognized some frailty in the way she was holding herself. Doubt? Second thoughts? Perhaps she was rewriting D’s diary entries in her head, massaging them into what fit for her sense of reality. I thought about D’s ability to find the bright side, even if the light was all artifice.
But B only repeated herself.
I love you too, I said.
She made room for a long pause and said, Who? Her hand was on my neck again; she’d cleared the room real slow, I could have darted but didn’t, and when she reached for me, she didn’t grab or pull or bare her teeth. She only acted as she had before, but with more love in her eyes.
I said her daughter’s name and she did not choke me, did not firm up to strangle me. She told me to say it again and again, and I did, and I was crying then, of course; this was the most intimately we’d discussed D ever, even before she died. B’s grip on me loosened and I wiped my face with my sleeves, thinking maybe she would blow her nose and ask me to go down on her.
Go, she said.
No, I said.
Go, she said.
Come on, I said, thinking of the dark train station where I would have to stay until morning if she actually kicked me out. I couldn’t afford a car all the way home and was too frightened to ask her to order one. If she loves me, I thought, she’ll offer to cover the cost. No, I thought. She’ll just let me stay. Come on, I said, gentler. I love you.
If you love me, she said. Go.
I closed my eyes and leaned my head back so it rested on the top of my back. My neck an open secret. Go, she said. And come back.
Come back, I repeated, my throat still a curvature.
If you really love me, she said. If you really want it, leave me and come back so I know you know you had the chance to say no.
Okay, I said. Right. I kept saying that, okay, alright, when I straightened and turned and circled, the indignity of letting her watch my indecision; I looked at her and she didn’t look away, didn’t even pretend to look at her phone or her socked feet, and I walked out of the room and down the hall and outside onto her porch without putting on my shoes. I stood in the cold for less than a minute before I came inside, saw she hadn’t come to the door or the window, and put my feet half into my boots, unwilling to slow down and untie and retie my laces. Back on her porch alone, I thought about D in a way I hadn’t since she died or even since before. I thought about B, too, the three of us. D on the operating table and B in a surgeon cap and gloves, me chewing on the sides of my fingers. B wouldn’t scold me but she’d tell me when D was ready and I wouldn’t have to ask, I’d just stick my fingers right in and when D was done with me—her body would know what to do, understand, this would all be beyond me—I’d remove my fingers and B would stitch her back up, all gentle.
I kept this scene in my mind, understand, when I walked back through the front door, ready to tell B what she already knew. This time B didn’t tell me to come; she didn’t have to, because I walked into her open hand, the warm cup of it, and when I opened my mouth to tell her I loved her, she said, Thank you, and suspended by the stiff heat of her, I began to drop—expansive, bright.
ABOUT THE CREATOR
Marissa Higgins is a lesbian journalist. Her work appears in the Best American Food Writing 2018, Florida Review, NPR, Washington Post, Hayden's Ferry Review, and elsewhere. Catapult Books is publishing her debut novel in 2024. @marissahiggins_ on Twitter.