Melusine

Samantha Bell

Ask for Nothing

As I sat in front of the television on a Monday night, I leaned against the bed and pressed the on-button with my toe, thinking that on the only channel we get, Wife Swap would appear, where two mothers and wives swap lives and houses. A feud might have been in progress, one of the husbands caught breaking a plate on the davenport. Instead, in crystal-clear reds and blues was David Blaine, the street magician and stunt-man from Brooklyn, completely submerged in a bubble filled with water. His hands wore thick rubber gloves, and he breathed through an oxygen tube. The commentator quietly noted that there was a team of one-hundred-and-twenty-seven doctors and trainers to help him deal with liver failure, skin peels, lung collapses: he had been living like this for a week.

I recalled David Blaine as the man who stood on a pole in New York City for thirty-six hours, buried himself alive, encased himself in ice, and lived in a glass box over London that people threw eggs at and tried to knock off its platform as he fasted. I felt like an egg-thrower. “Is this really how he makes his living?” I asked my husband Dan. David was giving one of his personal trainers a hand signal; the crowd stood completely riveted.

Dan nodded. David was planning on trying to break a world record by holding his breath for nine minutes: at the time, the record was eight minutes, fifty-eight seconds. His liver was failing, I thought to myself. Who in his right mind does this to himself? I neglected to think about the reckless things I had done.

Years ago, I lived with a manic-depressive from London who beat down coffee tables when he didn’t get his way, shards of wood and glass splattering across the hardwood floors of our rented lake house, one of the many that we were thrown out of. I had lived with J. in the last lake house completely isolated, and no one could hear me scream as he pulled at my hair until I bled, or when he threw hot food at my face. The difference was that he was not pulling a stunt, not something for the attention of an audience besides myself. If anything, I tried hard to shield my friends and family from this man, masking his mean comments, or his drugged eyes, when we all got together, which was rare. By the end of this relationship, I found myself buried in a mess of a life, and the problem was how to open the coffin and let myself out.

J.’s father lived in a London neighborhood called Notting Hill. We visited as often as we could, which was not much, given that J. spent all our money on drugs. During a winter visit, he started the trip with a risky maneuver of getting drunk on the plane, and, to get revenge on a stewardess who had refused to serve him more alcohol, he threw a lit cigarette at the woman, and another at the engine on the tarmac as the passengers exited. J. had also arranged for people to ship him drugs from the States directly to his father’s house – a new recklessness. His father eyed the Fed-Ex packaging suspiciously as J. bounded to the third-floor guest room, urging me to follow. I did.

In London, J. took me to his old haunts in the ghetto, waving hello to corner dealers who were “old friends.” He took me to Rosmead Gardens, an exclusive park that allowed only specific residents entry. Each neighboring residence applied for one household key, which was given out by the Park Services as a prized possession. J.’s father had gotten one. J. stole it from its particular silver hook one afternoon. We were approached, but not arrested, when a police officer noted J. smoking pot on an antique bench in the rain. It was the only time I was given celebrity treatment, and we were graciously released. I shook in the rain with a new sort of fright; J.’s mania was untreated, and knew no bounds.

In the Portobello Market region, we met up with his old friend Oliver, and the two of them went trolling for mushrooms in the crowded streets. I stayed in a club and watched people walk in moon boots. On our last night, J.’s father recommended that we try a posh, upscale bar/restaurant that he and his wife liked very much. Not wanting to seem unwilling, we went, though almost penniless. All week, J. had been pouring money into pubs. But rumor had it that Madonna frequented this place when she was in town; J.’s stepmother was in her yoga class. So, I found myself sitting on the red-velvet couches, the table up to my ears. I am a small girl, and felt so much smaller than J., than the wealthy, than the leering men at the bar. I gulped down an expensive glass of pinot grigio and observed to J. that we could afford only one drink in the place.

J. turned from me, and we moved to a back booth. I followed because I did not know what else to do. On the way, he ordered another Scotch on a tab he had apparently started. At the back table, he spat out, “We’re not paying for this, Sam.” He hissed, “We duck and run; you see, they trust people in these places, and they think we’ll go for a smoke and be right back.”

I stared at him, completely lost. This arrogance and the risks he was taking were a new form of treachery. Not only were we in another country, but we were down the road from his father’s new life, new house, new family. The risk was too much. His father frequented this place; in fact he probably made his recommendation to try to civilize his manic, sick son.

“J., no,” I said, shaking. I knew what would come next if I disagreed with him. “We have to pay, and we have only about a hundred dollars in our account, and we need it for the trip home, the cab, you know. J., we have to go, now. Do not order one of those cigars. J., J. –” I whispered under my breath.

“What are you doing?” I hissed again. “J..” I said his name as a statement of rage. The barista returned with another Scotch, even though J.’s eyes were already bloodshot.

J. removed a cigar from his pocket and opened it with the dexterity of a drunk. I grabbed it. “No, J., you have to return it, and we have to go.” I started adding up our bar tab, and it was likely larger than our entire bank account. J. took a sip of his drink, put it down, and lunged directly at me. I was wearing a bulky jacket, and he took hold of my collar, shaking me, choking me until I could not breathe. He spat in my face, making his point, before a neighboring man walking to the loo made a beeline for us.

“Whoa, there, everything okay?”

I searched the stranger’s face for a moment. J. would not let me go. He grabbed my arm and dug in with all his force, slurring, “Just fine, leave us alone, thanks.” I rose and tried to gather my purse as fast as I could. I ran through the narrow corridor, past the bar, into the street. It was winter, and icy, but bright as only London can be amid white streetlights. I had no idea which way to go. I was submerged in wine and fear.

J. followed me out, raging, knocking into the brick wall on the sidewalk. “You bitch,” he swore. He came at me, running into cars’ sides. Finally, I made my way to the end of a side street and to the corner of a street I knew, turning around quickly to see if J. was coming for me. He pointed at me, swung his arm back, and punched a long crack into the window of a parked BMW. No alarm sounded. Incredible. He moved onto the next car, kicking the side with his LL Bean reinforced boots, a Christmas present, kicking out the front headlight, denting the hood with his fist.

I had nowhere to go in a city where I knew only J. and his family. He had our cell phone. I resolved to get on the next flight home, back to upstate New York, away from him.

Somewhere, I derailed. I got lost again. Finally, I found a street I recognized, and made it to his father’s front stoop. I sat on it in the cold for almost an hour, wondering why I had returned. I reasoned that I would tell his father everything in the morning, that I was not taking care of J. as everyone had hoped, and that J. was running, and ruining, my life. I was working out my speech when J. came sluggishly around the corner, dangling the key in his broken hand. There was blood down both of his arms.

He unlocked the front door, laughing. “Some night, huh?” I said nothing. At least we were inside where people could help me. As we lay in bed, side by side, in the upstairs guest room, J. joked, “Well, we didn’t have to pay. Ha!”

I rolled over, safe for the moment. I stayed that night because I didn’t know how to leave. I watched J. slide from severe mania into suicidal depression; I had watched my father do the same with the same helplessness in my own household. Any move away from J. that I made was accompanied with suicidal threats. He threatened to kill himself if I left him, and I knew this time would be no different. It usually got worse. Once, before this trip, he had put a knife to his neck.

In the morning, he would do the same, pleading with me to stay. He lurked in a deep, familiar suicidal darkness that I had simply come to regard as a prison of my own.

I watched as David Blaine neared the final moments of breathing before he had to submerge himself and hold his breath. The commentator noted that his skin was peeling off. David took huge, gulping breaths that looked a lot like fear to me. His breathing coach soothed him with breath techniques and positive feedback. “You’re doing great, David, you’re doing great.” I became incensed at David, at ABC, for airing this, for publicizing the potential drowning of a thirty-two-year-old man for everyone to see. “Okay,” the breathing coach said, “get ready, ten seconds until your final breath, you’re doing fine, doing fine.” David’s mouth opened like a struggling fish’s and took in air. He dropped back into the water, and the clock started.

From the crowds at the event, one face shone with concern. “This,” the commentator’s voice said, “is David’s brother. He just graduated, actually, from NYU today.” Today? I was floored; of all the weeks for David to try his hand with death on national television, why should it be when his brother graduated from college? I would have rather watched the ceremony. Nice job, Aaron, I could hear David saying later, but you know, I broke the record for holding my breath. It reminded me of J., all these years later, when he sensed that I was growing apart from him, moving on with my life. Every time I tried to leave, he would immediately threaten suicide, and I would stay or sit on the phone, listening to his intoxicated breathing for hours.

The trainer stood outside the orb of water talking to David even though David didn’t move. At seven minutes, David started convulsing rapidly, bubbles rushing out his nose. The trainer got worried and sent in divers, who pushed him to the surface. His mouth went agape, his skin was ashen, and I had to look away. He was, at least, alive.

In the late afternoon, J. made an omelet. I thought about approaching his father as he read the dailies, but he made his separate way out of the flat. We were to leave the following morning, and when we checked flights, I thought briefly about an escape, but neglected it. How would I get to the airport? Who would help me out of this? I believed in this sick situation that I was tethered, J.’s only salvation, so I let go of the dream. On the way out the following morning, J.’s father handed him one thousand American dollars silently. J. must have asked him for it, but he certainly did not share it with me.

Back home, J.’s behavior worsened. Soon, he wasn’t coming home at all, and when he did, he was breaking more furniture, and turning over our bed, braced only by his own madness. He was using considerable amounts of drugs, though I didn’t exactly know the full extent then. I only sniffed the insides of plastic baggies that had been emptied after he left in the mornings to go into Rochester and wait tables and use all the cash he made in tips at the bars on the way home.

Years later, David Blaine decided to pull the same stunt; he wanted to hold his breath for the World Record, which had been reset at sixteen minutes, thirty-two seconds. I decided to watch it. It would be aired on Oprah. David’s huge tub was brought in from New York, and a special set was made for the event. Unlike the last time, David would not live submerged in the water for a week, but would hold his breath for over seventeen minutes. I watched, wincing, as his body started to shake a bit underwater. Halfway through, David’s heart rate, which should have been dropping, stagnated. Many, including a doctor from his own medical team, were worried that he was very close to death. Audience members, myself included, sat in silence, paralyzed by abject fear. Finally, after seventeen minutes and four seconds, he emerged with the world record. And, I noted alone in my apartment, nothing to show for it but a gasp.

My parents had been my own audience members, and in pictures from that time of my life I spent with J., their faces are mutually full of anger and worry. The looks are confusing but permanent reminders of the fear that J. instilled in them, especially in my mother. In one photo, my father looks as if he’s lunging at J., my mother is wide-eyed and holding a tissue to her runny nose, and I am in the center of it all with my hands up, moderating. I remember the day: sunny, warm, like spring. We were on our way to lunch; my parents wanted to be beside me as much as possible before J. uprooted me to Europe again, or out of the state.

On a fateful October night, J. finally pushed too far. He was performing for his own audience of women at a party we were throwing. It was a last hurrah before I moved out; we had broken up but, stupidly, I was still living with him until I could find my own place. In less than seventeen seconds, J. threw a wooden, high-backed chair from our dining room through a second-story window, strewing glass onto the heads of people outside, and ran at me, fully lost in his own drug-worsened mania. A friend took me away in his car, and J. followed in mine. He found us driving on the main dirt road that led into town; J. ran the stop sign, hit a pickup truck, and tried to hit the passenger side of the van in which I sat. He narrowly missed me.

We pulled to the side of the road in the pre-dawn darkness. J. appeared at the passenger side door, bleeding from his face and side. In shock, I stared at him, unaware that he had just attempted to kill me. He spoke, “What do I do now?” Just as I opened my mouth to speak, my friend came around the car and pulled J. away, shoving him toward the wreckage of the car in the ditch. The pickup truck had fled; maybe it had been a college student drunk on the road. I watched as J. got into my car. My car. Months earlier, in a last-ditch effort to make our relationship work, J. had devised a plan to buy a new car, one that didn’t often break down. Except that when his credit check came back, he had failed miserably. Instead of feeling worried, I let him bully me into signing my name over with my good credit, and the car loan was accepted.

Now, as he tried to start it, it revved. He drove it down a steep hill before I could wonder that he was capable of next.

My friend and I arrived at his home with me shaking uncontrollably. An hour later, drunk to the point of being poisoned, J. burst through the doors, wielding a hammer he found in the open garage on the way in, coming for me. My friend and his family called the police and barred the door of the master bedroom, where I was cowering. J. barged in, and I ran out past him. He was unsteady on his feet. In the hallway, police were running to catch him, and one took my arm and led me to the back of the police car sitting in the drive. Once I was settled in the locked, safe backseat, he turned to me. “You can never go back to him,” he said. He handed me forms to sign, and asked if I wanted a restraining order. I started to cry; this terrible relationship was finally public. I didn’t know what to do. I cried and nodded yes. I signed it, and the charges against J.; he had ditched the ruined car in the lake and reported it missing. As I signed the forms, J. was escorted to the police car behind mine. He was handcuffed, but that didn’t stop him from spitting at the window in front of me as he passed. The officer in my car turned to me as I winced. “You’re my daughter’s age,” he said. “You must never, ever go back to him. You have to get out of this. You are better than this and you do not deserve this. Use your support system now, and let them help you. You cannot do this alone, and they already know, by my guess, that he’s dangerous. Let us take care of him for you; don’t ever try to reach him again.”

J. was released that morning, in part because his father hired a lawyer. However, I had my life. Nothing was more important. No grade, no graduate school seminar paper I had been writing, no public facade. Just my life, handed back to me.

Dan and I watched with loose attention as David Blaine re-emerged on ABC for his latest stunt; he hung upside down for sixty hours and would now complete a “Dive of Death” in front of the nocturnal audience. I watched as they raised him right-side up from his upside-down contraption; apparently he could have gone blind. “He already has!” I quipped to Dan, who didn’t laugh. David seemed agitated and confused. There were too many commercial breaks for suspense. I lost interest and started reading, until they lifted David above the crowd, up to a forty-four-foot-high platform in the dark. Up on his ledge, he waved to the crowd and tried, unsuccessfully, to toss his hat casually to a woman below him. He was shaky on his feet, and his face looked swollen. “There’s no way he’s going to do this,” I said to Dan, who shook his head.

“Nope,” he said, and went back to his own book. Finally, the crowd and David prepared for the leap. David looked down fast, then leapt from the solid platform, and floated on a bungee cord like Peter Pan. His feet barely touched the ground, and people booed. Suddenly, David’s cord raised him up, and the cameras panned to the thick, black sky above and surrounding him Quickly, he was absorbed into the night, loosed to the darkness. He had gone invisible. The New York City crowd booed and hissed. Dan looked up, and I clapped.

“There he goes,” I said to Dan, smiling. “He’s finally gone.”

The last night I saw J., he showed up at my friend’s house. I was encased in a sharp fear that I had nowhere to turn, so I stayed the night and had resolved to travel to my parents’ house in the morning to tell them everything: the car, the money J. took from me, the misery. We were watching television when J. came through the garage door; one of us had forgotten to lock it. J. was stumbling; someone who had been unknowingly trying to pay me a nice visit at the lake house had come upon J. instead and had been convinced to bring him here. J. swung from side to side, coming for me. It was late evening. The driver paled and whispered, “I knew something was wrong.”

When I escorted J. back out through the garage, he turned to me a final time, muddling through his drunken stupor. I stared hard at his back and the steel-toed boots that clunked over the cement in the tidy garage. As he swayed into the black night, he disappeared. He was swallowed first by the gaining distance when the car drove down the long drive and signaled one last left-hand turn, the right way to get him away from me. It was the last time I would see J., and I felt it. I watched the red lights fade as he went, a magical sight. Finally, there was simply blackness, a dark invisibility and the faint but secure promise of no return.

Samantha Bell is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Kansas studying creative writing. She is a contributing editor for Emprise Review, and has had work appear in various journals and magazines. She is originally from upstate New York.