Page 111 of Monarch
“What did you do?” Roos asks, her breath held.
“After I put the locks on my door, I went down to the living room where he was watching the horse racing, and I sat on the sofa next to his grotty old recliner chair. I had the sledgehammer on my lap. I knew he’d look at me because I’d not done this in years; I’d not sat in the same room as him when it was just us two there. I’d definitely not wanted to watch TV with him. So he looked over at me, and I just lifted the sledgehammer and dropped it again, tapping the head in the palm of my hand. He stared at it for a moment and then looked up at me. Without saying a word, he turned his attention back to the television, and I left just as silently.
“I didn’t expect it to work. I was still nearly a foot shorter than him, and I wasn’t particularly strong. But I had already proved myself as a bit unpredictable. I wasn’t meek and weak anymore. I was indetention most weeks. I stayed up too late, and my mum had found weed in my room more than once. I wasn’t a known quantity. And also, sickeningly, I wasn’t a child anymore. I think a combination of all of that finally stopped him. But I slept with that sledgehammer under my bed for years after that day. And I locked my bedroom door every damn night.”
Silence falls in the room like a blanket I can’t decide if I want or need. It feels warm and grounding but also stuffy and charged. I know there is so much more to say, to explain, but I’m suddenly at a loss for what to say next.
“So that’s why you left?” Mari asks eventually. “When we were nineteen?”
I sigh. I wish I could just say yes and leave it at that, but that wouldn’t be fair to them or me.
“Yes and no,” I finally say. “Yes, I wanted to be as far away from him as possible. But I was also running away from much more.”
I pause, trying to find a logical thread to help me tell this story. It’s a big mistake.
“Were you running away from me?” Mari asks in the quietest voice I think they’re capable of. I roll over in Roos’ embrace and face them, our heads sharing a pillow.
“No, Mari, no,” I say firmly. “I wasn’t running away from you.”
They stare at me, and I can tell they’re not convinced.
“But I was running away from how you made me feel.” I flinch as Mari blinks with clear hurt. “You cracked me open. You saw parts of me that I had kept hidden with tattoos and piercings and clothes that repelled people. You wanted to know and love me, all of me. And that was terrifying.”
“I was too much?” they ask, and their vulnerability is causing tectonic-like fractures through my body.
“No, never,” I say, holding their stare. “Iwasn’t enough.”
We both start crying at the same time, our tears silent and slow.
“I knew if I stayed with you, whether here or there or anywhere, I would have to tell you what happened to me. I would have to dive into that endless well of pain and grief and rage, and I didn’t want to do that. Selfishly, for myself, I didn’t want to feel that level of devastation, but also I didn’t want to inflict it on you.”
Mari’s lips part, and I can almost hear the gurgling of words bubbling to the surface from inside them, but they generously close their mouth and give me a simple nod of acknowledgement.
“Also, I knew you didn’t want to leave, which you confirmed when I asked you to come with me on New Year’s Eve.”
This time, the simmering words get the better of Mari. “But if I had known what you’d been through… If I had known why you were leaving… If I had known it wasn’t about me, about us,” they blurt, “I would have said yes.”
I narrow my eyes at them. “I don’t know if that’s true. And I don’t think it should have been.”
“What do you mean?” they ask, and I feel Roos’ arm tighten around my waist.
“I wasn’t a very good…partner back then. Or lover. I was selfish and self-obsessed and very closed off. I know we thought we were playing around with power dynamics in the safe confines of kink at that time, but we weren’t, not really. Or I wasn’t. I didn’tdesirethe power exchanges we had. Ineededthem. I used them to feel comfortable, not just with sex but with my own body and with my own fucked-up mind. I was cruel and inconsiderate. I didn’t know what I was doing, and I know I probably hurt you many times, mentally and emotionally, if not physically, and for that, I’m very sorry.”
Mari’s eyes fill with fresh tears. “We were so young,” they say, and it sounds like my apology is accepted, but I will keep on apologising anyway.
“The fact I begged you to come with me at the last minute, barely a week after splitting up with you, should show you how unhinged I was back then. I wasn’t just playing with your mind and your heart. I was fucking with my own. You did the right thing not coming with me. Although it killed me at the time, and made me say things to you I will forever regret, I’m so glad you didn’t come with me. I know if you had, I would have blown us up so spectacularly that there would have been no coming back from it.”
I roll onto my back so I can see Roos, too. “And I’m glad I didn’t meet you then either, in those early years here. I wasn’t a good person then.”
“What changed?”
“I sold a painting,” I say simply. “For a lot of money. Enough money to stop squatting. Enough money to buy nice food and good clothes. Enough money to live on my own. And when I did that, when I stopped surrounding myself with people, sex, drugs, parties, booze, and chaos, then I had to finally face myself.
“But of course that wasn’t my happy ending,” I sigh with impatience at a former version of myself. “Yes, I sobered up, and I threw myself into my work, but that became a whole new problem. I became obsessed. I started to have those days-long binge-making and painting and creating sessions. You both know what I’m talking about. I would literally drop off the planet. I’d eat next to nothing. I’d drink only a glass or two of water a day. I’d lose track of time and my phone, and God forbid I had any engagements to go to. When I’d emerge from it, I’d realise how selfish I’d been, how irresponsible, but I couldn’t stop myself. I could justify it all too easily. I wasn’t hurting anyone, not really; I was making art that would make me money, so I had to listen to the muse when she showed up.
“Until I met you, Roos, it was okay. I got away with it. I didn’t have lovers I cared about enough to apologise for following my artistic callings. I rescheduled appointments, and I didn’t care iffriends dropped me because I was too unreliable. They weren’t true friends anyway. But then I met this beautiful, grey-eyed girl who looked as sad as I sometimes felt. She did all the things I couldn’t do; she felt her feelings, she listened to her heart, she hoped for more, for better, for a joy-filled future. And not just for herself, but for others. She devoted her whole life to helping others. And what had I ever done for others? Smoked their weed? Fucked their partners in front of them? Ignored their calls for weeks on end?”
I find Roos’ hand and squeeze it.
