Page 67 of The Care of Broken Things
“And you,” he croaked, because he was selfish enough to demand even more.
“And me,” Nathaniel agreed.
“I wish we were there now. I wish it could be real.”
“It is real. I promise.”
But when he tried to picture it, the image went all fuzzy in his head. He could only think of the prison, of fear and vigilance. “I need to see you,” he said, and he knewit was the whiny demand of a toddler. “Not just once a week, but every day. I need to see you every day.”
“I miss you too,” Nathaniel said.
But that wasn’t what he meant. It wasn’t as simple as missing him. He felt like he was coming apart, like his sanity was unraveling again, back like how it had been in the beginning. In the dark time, alone with predators. He should have been stronger by then, more secure. The desperation that clawed at his chest had no business being so strong. “No, I mean—”
“I know what you mean.”
And that should have been terror. That Nathaniel could know, but Eli had already taken up all his room for fear, so the words could do nothing to him except form a kind of rope in his head, one he wanted and one he reached for, but Nathaniel wasn’t done.
“I hated you. At first. I’ve always hated people like you. The ones who look good at Eli’s side—who match. And yes, the feeling has gotten less urgent with time, but it’s still there. It will always be there. And it was worse with you, and not just because you’re the most beautiful boy I’ve ever seen, but because you were good. You werebehaved.And Eli liked you so much. From the first day, from the first moment. And yes, it was a relief to have you protecting him, and yes, I preferred to have you there than to not have you, but that didn’t mean I didn’t bleed with it. Didn’t curse you with it. Didn’t want to rip the love out of your eyes with it. But how could I? When your anxiety over what you might do was so high—as high as mine, even. Maybe higher. When you looked like you’d splinter to shards to have him touch you. When the way you forbid yourself was stronger than even I had a right to demand. So controlled. So careful. And all the while it was growing. What he was to you. What you were to him. Growing and growing until I couldn’t think of you without him and him without you. Samuel, it hurts. It hurts me, but to the point where I no longer know whether keeping you orlosing you would hurt more. So help me take it. If it’s inevitable—if there’s no way you can help but feel it—then love him. Love more than you already do. Harder than you already do. Love him until you’re breaking with it and there’s no choice but to break everything for it. Make him first. Make him always. Because if you do, if he becomes everything and always, then you'll have become me. You’ll be me, Samuel, and it will stop hurting, because I can't be hurt by myself. Can't be jealous of myself. Love him, Sam, and I swear I'll make it so that neither of you has to cry anymore."
There was a clock up on the wall over the bank of phones. It was there so prisoners could keep track of the time and calculate how much their calls might be costing. But that wasn’t why Samuel was looking at it, each tick of the second hand another laceration. He was calculating not just the time of the call, but of everything. The stack of all the words. Of all the letters. The visits and the thoughts and all those many endless and necessary moments that this man had spent on him. Nathaniel, a man who could take an enemy, the secret fury of his soul, and craft it, that feeling, so well that Samuel only wanted to have it, to open his mouth and swallow it down, filling himself with a feeling so sweet he couldn’t help but demand more. Was the man a demon? A god? What other kind of being could turn resentment into redemption? Hate into Home?
“I need to go,” he told the receiver. It wasn't a dismissal, and Nathaniel knew it wasn't. They'd become the same person after all. And still, the words felt like rusty nails in his mouth. He wished it were different. He wished he could give the man words like what Nathaniel had just given him. But he wasn’t a man as Nathaniel was. Just a boy. A little murderer boy whose beloved was passed out on a bed he needed to return to.
“I love you,” Nathaniel told him, and he suddenly sounded just as desperate, just as worried, just as aware. Eli holding the same place in theirhearts. “Okay?”
And it was like Nathaniel had said, like breaking apart. He wanted to tell the man he couldn’t say things like that. Not in that voice. Like the words were real and not just a comfort. But he needed the lie. He needed it so much. So he grabbed hold of the words and pushed them deep inside of him, right next to all the others he’d been given, his beautiful lies, and hung up.
Eli looked even worse when he returned. He was covered in sweat, and he was breathing through his teeth. “Get me a basin of water,” Samuel said to Jabbers, forgetting to be anything but rude, but Jabbers listened to him, and Samuel tore a piece out of an undershirt and used it to sponge at Eli’s skin, the sudsy water taking the sweat even if it couldn’t take the pain. It felt like a mistake because Eli shuddered with cold when the blankets were pulled away, but he needed to change those anyway. He knew how much Eli loved to be clean, and he needed at least one thing to be the way he remembered it.
“Almost done,” he told the shivering man as he put him into new clothes. Eli usually slept in just a pair of sweats, but now he put him in two shirts and tucked him in with more blankets. When that was done, he eased himself around Eli, lending him all the warmth he could, but still Eli shivered. The man tried to clutch at him, but his grip was even weaker than it had been the night before.
The next time Eli needed to pee, Samuelwas the one to ease him up. Eli pushed weakly at his chest, but he said, “No, Eli,” and pressed his face into the man’s neck to give him a little privacy while Leslie held the basin for him.
Eli tried to say things to him sometimes, things like “eat something” or “call Jenny” but he wasn’t going to leave the man’s side again. Some things he couldn’t ignore, like drinking. Eli kept pushing him to drink. So he did, taking sips to stop the worrying, but it did nothing for the burning in his throat, in his chest, in his eyes. And Eli knew it, because he patted athis arm or his head, whatever he could reach, and would say, “couple of days, puppy,” or, “Be better soon.” Samuel tried to believe him, but Eli only seemed to grow weaker and weaker. He was forced to give him another bed bath by dinner time because he’d soaked the bed again, and the sweat made him shiver more than anything else. “Almost finished,” Samuel promised when Eli clung to him, his whole body shuddering, and tried to keep his voice steady even when his hands weren’t.
The second night was the worst of it. Tears ran freely down Eli’s face as he dreamed (or maybe hallucinated) and his voice was cracked as he called for Nathaniel, and even once for Marie, and Samuel couldn’t give them to him, though he would have if he could. He would have given anything to Eli if he thought it had a chance of helping. But there was nothing he could think of to do, except to rub at Eli’s back and say, “I’m here. I’m here.” Which was probably just reminding Eli of the nightmare he was in, but he couldn’t stop because the only other words in his head were “I love you,” and Eli probably wanted to hear that even less.
But by the next morning things had changed. Eli’s weakness was still debilitating, and his pain hadn’t gone anywhere, but his mind was back. He knew it as soon as Eli woke from his fitful sleep and said, “So puppy, changed your mind yet about wanting to fuck me?”
The man’s features were arranged in a weak smile, and Samuel was so relieved he fell on Eli before he could think to stop himself.
“Should I take that as ano?”
He would have burst into tears again if he weren’t so distracted with everything he needed to do. Nathaniel needed to be called, and a bath needed to be arranged, and he needed to find the letter Hailey had sent, and—
Eli tugged at his arm. “You need to eat something. When’s the last time you ate something?”
As if he could eat anything while Eli was like this. “It doesn’t matter. Listen. We found a big tub down in the laundry room, it was full of plaster, but we scrubbed it down, and I think—”
“You need to eat. What do you want to eat, Samuel?”
Eli’s voice sounded different. Like someone had taken a match to it and burned away all the edges. He wished the man would stop talking. “I’ll eat later,” he said vaguely, which wasn’t technically a lie. He’d eat when Eli could. “I got Cruces to pick up some Epsom salts yesterday and they can boil up water in the kitchen so that—”
“Not later. Now.”
He gaped, horrified, as Eli tried to shoulder himself up onto his elbows. He grabbed hold of him to stop him, but Eli froze him with a look. “Eat.”
“I can’t!” He gave Eli a tug, but the man had a grip on the bed frame. “Eli, stop it, I can’t.”
