Losing Carter

Elisha Emerson

I was lonely, until Mom said Jesus could ride beside me on the bus. Eight years old and failing to lure friends with my illustrated King James Bible, though it lay open in my lap to the most scintillating pages--Abraham quivering a knife over his son or Goliath huge, sprawled, and bleeding out.  

Jesus, Mom claimed, was beside me all along. Then I saw him, too, upright and calm, robes spilled like blue Kool-Aid over the torn vinyl seats. 

Now, he’s an anecdote I describe to new friends and Tinder Dates. I was a Jesus Freak. Isn’t that funny? Now, I’m making up for lost time. 

Tonight, my date looks a little like Jesus with his doe eyes and beard. I don’t want to sleep with him, although I teeter in his living room tipsy, well after midnight, with no safe way to get home. He suggested the motorcycle ride after dinner. It was my first time on a bike; now he claims he’s had too much to drink.

I’d like to wake up in my own apartment. Carter arrives early at the airport tomorrow, and I want to look well-rested, put together; thriving, even. Last time I saw him, he and Cally farewelled me at the gate. He flapped a hat. She waved a scarf. They shouted in clumsy unison, “Don’t go! Don’t go! We’ll eat you up, we love you so!” Like maniacs, they waved.

I had to go or else Huntersville would eat me up. I chose Portland for its wild reputation and the fact that I had to cross the country to get there.

“Lay with me, Lily,” Tinder Chad taps my collar bone. “Since you’re here, we might as well have fun.” His breath smells like the tartar sauce he ate with his fries. “I want to see your hair down,” he says. Another tap to the collarbone. I haven’t cut my hair in fourteen years. It piles on my head, but tugging it loose while he watches feels gross.

Carter’s flight gets in early, but I don’t want a fight, and, at this point, I’ve rubbed against this city enough to divest sex of meaning. Basically, I’ve made my bed. My mother’s voice sharp in my ear.

Later, for Carter, I change the story. I flee. I tell Carter I sprint into the night, arms akimbo, slinging frantically up and down sidewalks, turning this way and that. I try to make it funny. “I’m wearing this denim skirt and heels, shouting, Taxi! Taxi!.” In the story, I stop a group of furries for directions. “I’m talking rabbits in bikinis. A wolf in a corset.” I’m mixing stories, now. A real encounter weeks ago. 

“Gosh, Lily. You’ve got to be careful. You could’ve been hurt.” We sit in the sunshine and consume omelets and Bloody Marys. When Carter ordered his drink, his North Carolina accent struck me as exaggerated, his plaid shirt way cooler than he intends. 

“It was a long night,” I say truthfully, because it was. I didn’t sleep, but lay ramrod, eyes on Chad’s popcorned ceiling and wished I was home. “Remember Mr. Brad?” 

Carter laughs, “As in your old Youth Pastor?”

“Of course. Remember how he had that guitar? I was thinking about him last night and how he’d sing all those songs about abstinence, meanwhile us girls just wanted to fuck him.” 

“Jeez, Lily,” Carter hates crassness. He laughs it off. “He seemed nice enough.”

“Sure,” I say. “Awkward with us, girls, though.” It was hard to imagine him voting for Trump, but that’s what I did as I lay beside Tinder Chad. I imagined my old youth pastor hearing Trump say Grab her by the pussy! then crosshatching the circle, anyway.  

Up until I received an actual education, I would have called Jesus my best friend. We spoke all the time, as in my thoughts maintained a near constant dialogue with this unconditionally gentle and all-wise invisible friend. Not only did Jesus sit beside me on the school bus, he perched on the edge of my tween bed. He smiled supportively through the windows of my high school classroom. When I gossiped, he crossed his arms and looked sad. If I lied, he whispered, Lily, tell the truth. If, while making out with Jeffry Plutos, I got a little horny and moved his hand to my breast, Jesus looked on with such a forlorn and haunted expression, I told Jeffry Plutos to stop. 

The server delivers a second Bloody Mary to Carter, and he transfers the pickled asparagus to my glass.

“I don’t mind laying low today,” Carter says. “No offense, but you look kind of rough.” It’s true. I barely had time to untangle my hair. Though I left as soon as the busses started running, I had to rush-brush my teeth and overdose on leave-in conditioner and deodorant.

“I’ll rally. We’ve only got two days.” My eyes radiate heat, but the salt helps my stomach. “Let’s make them count. We’ve got an itinerary to accomplish.” Powells, Jackpot, Voodoo, Stumptown. “The city’s not what it used to be, but we’re gritty. We’ll make it.” It feels good to lump myself with the city as Carter looks on. I’m not sure what he thinks, and my reasoning is slow to buffer. 

When Chad removed his condom, it dripped as if broken. No Jesus to talk to, I talked to myself. Why didn’t you just leave? A broken condom meant exposure to who knows what?

“Thank you for that,” Tinder Chad said. I didn’t ask about the condom. Instead, I comforted myself with my existential eraser.  Alone in my head, I’ve got Sartre, Camus, and one giant eraser, Nothing Matters, which can be hashed back and forth over anything. Everything’s absurd. Pain in my neck. Condom broke. I had sex when I didn’t want to.

The late morning sun helps my morale, and Carter tells me about his new stand-up routine. “The other day, someone accused me of ripping off Nate Bertgatze.” He makes a bah swoosh with his hand. “It’s just because of my accent.”

“That and you’re pretty nice.”

An elderly couple passes along the sidewalk. They wear matching chains and leather jackets, and the man walks the woman like a dog. The metal studs along her collar shine, concussive with light. She’s got to be at least eighty, blue hair, eye shadow, and glitter. She catches us looking and winks. 

“So, Portland Core,” he says. “Really, it’s not as bad as I thought.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You know, the warzone on tv, needles in the street.”

“That was years ago. I mean, you’ll see needles, but the magic’s coming back, at least according to locals. We’re recovering.” 

“Good. That’s good,” he said, although his eyes flicked to the unhoused man sleeping in some mulch across the street. Carter was trying not to look, a continuation of what we’d done since we sat down.

“Honestly, I love it here. Just last week, at least a hundred naked people rode their bikes down Hawthorn. I’m talking completely naked. Old people, young people. I think it’s a thing.” I massage my right shoulder where it stings. “And my boss at the coffee shop? She’s in this loving relationship with a married couple. They share a giant bed made up of two queen-sized mattresses. They’re collectively raising two kids.” 

He makes a face. “Wacky.”

I thought the arrangement was sexy. A pancake pile of fucking, a pillowy confusion of limbs. Jill, with her khakis and fleece didn’t exactly turn me on. Still, I invited her for a drink in hopes that she might invite me to the orgy. As she described her home life, however, it became clear that hers was a family unit, solid as stool legs.

“How’s Cally?” I ask Carter. 

“She’s super jealous. She misses you a lot.”

I play hurt that she didn’t come. “That’s alright. I get it.” But it’s nice to have Carter to myself. Like the old days, before Cally triangulated our duet.

“She really did try, but classes started--” His voice trails. 

Besides a mound of green peppers he’s picked from his eggs, Carter’s plate sits empty and I remove a wad of tips from my purse. “I’ll get this,” I say with even more force than usual, although, it’s, like always, a bluff. 

“You’re putting me up” He signals the server.

Ever since we were kids and meeting up at the mall, then the movie theater, then Denny’s; all those places we met. My single mom never had any cash, so if he wanted my company, he had to pay, or his parents, paid, anyway, but they never seemed to mind. They weren’t exactly rich, but they had one of those houses with a stately front porch and well-maintained garden. My mom pulled sneakers and jackets out of the donation bin from our fire-and-brimstone Baptist church. I was sixteen when my mom finally let me join Carter at his youth group at St. Luke’s. With its female minister, mom was afraid I’d be corrupted. I reassured her that while I loved Carter, I could see his faith wasn’t “living” like mine. The Bible was clear—women shouldn’t be leaders in the church. Jesus agreed. That sad smile. Sweet Lily, there are plenty of ways women lead. 

Carter and I use the bus to get around, and every time we sit, I feel as though I might float away. I try to anchor myself to that crooked front tooth, a heartbreak of familiarity and new distance. But mostly, I squander the afternoon tugging my head around like a helium balloon. If we laugh together, it’s only because I know so well the tone of his voice when he’s funny.

We don’t get back to my apartment until after six. Ever thoughtful, my roommate’s left a spray of fresh daisies on the table. The furniture’s hers, the black velvet couch, three bookshelves, a peacock lamp. I watch Carter take it in.

“Nice place,” he says. 

“Not bad, right? I’m figuring things out.” 

“Of course you are.”

In reality, I’m lucky Aroon took me in. Her younger sister Amy and I were both full-riders at Chapel Hill. We met at orientation and took a bunch of Philosophy courses together. Although I’d yet to land a job when I zoomed Aroon from Huntersville, Amy’s good word won the day.

Compared to the rest of the house, my bedroom is stark, a mattress and duffle, a pair of suede shoes. Carter hesitates at the door, but it’s not the emptiness that stops him. He stares, instead, at the walls. That first week, Aroon gave me a tour of the neighborhood. Stoned, we wandered into a paint shop where I spent a preposterous fifty dollars on a bucket of Bermuda Breeze. At the time, the glowing turquois emanated power. Now, the effect is obnoxious, but there’s no chance I’m going to drop another fifty.

I tell Carter this much and he makes his mirthful way across the room. He squints out the window and the graffiti scrawled wall. Nodding as if at a gallery, he peers into my closet. 

“Woah.” I follow his gaze to the painted canvas on its side. 

“Long story,” I say, scrambling. I forgot it was there. Another stoned enterprise: A crudely painted woman, naked and hung on a cross.  A self-portrait, of course, shrill, flat beneath Carter’s well-meaning gaze.

I turn the painting toward the wall. 

“Was that you? Did you paint that?” He glances behind him, as if for a chair, but the only place to sit is the unmade mattress. “When did you take up painting?” There’s no mockery in his voice, but I don’t answer. He sits on the bed, looking too big for the space, his loafers planted, his knees stuck at odd angles. “Wait, how long have you lived here? Four months?” he asks.

“Three,” I say. “I’m still settling in.”

“Clearly,” he says. 

“I’m making it, though. It’s hard to move across the country.” He nods with silent agreement. “And you know my mom’s not helping.”

“Lily, I got to tell you something.” He pats the mattress and I panic, because it seems, in an instant, that this is why he came. To deliver this bit of bad news. I sit, and my hair catches beneath me and tugs. 

“We’re pregnant,” he says.

“What?” I blink, get control of my face. “You’re pregnant? Cally’s pregnant?”

“She is.” He smiles. “A month ago, but I wanted to tell you in person. She’s so mad she’s not here, but she’s under all this stress to finish school with the baby coming and changing her major—“ “Baby,” I repeat. “Oh my god. A baby!” Blurred turquois. I should be happy, and I insist it into my voice. “Congratulations. Holy cow!”

“Holy something.” He runs a hand over his face. “Of course we want you to be the godmother.”

“But I’m not a Christian.” 

“It doesn’t matter, Lily. We love you.”

It was easy to love Cally with her dyed gray hair, tattoos rejoicing along her arms. The two met in college. Wingate University, a softly religious school outside of Huntersville. Summer between junior and senior year, the three of us sublet a Charlotte apartment. Save for our respective jobs—Carter made the drive to Wingate and gave campus tours, Cally and I worked in food service—we did nearly everything together. We grocery shopped the same list, went to parties and bars. Back then, losing Jesus caused a reverberating ache as he glitched in and out of service, going dark for long stretches. Then, just as suddenly, His ghost would grip me by the throat. Cally, an Episcopalian, expressed understanding. She believed sex was beautiful and often scolded Carter for his outdated views on gay and lesbian relationships and what and wasn’t a sin. She and I held an amicable space for each other into which Carter wasn’t allowed, but when we returned to our respective colleges, their love matured into something more insular. 

We met back in Charlotte after graduation, but I only stuck around for six months. I was bored tagging along with them, but I didn’t know what to do with myself. I couldn’t return to Huntersville, to church services and curfews. By then, Jesus was a figment of my neurotic, educated imagination. So, on impulse, I gave away my books, rugs, and futon and moved out west.

In my Portland bedroom, Carter says, “We’re moving back to Huntersville. I’m going to work at my dad’s store. Not my top choice, but good enough for now.”

“So many changes,” I say. 

“Right?” he says. “I guess we’re in it. You know? That time of our lives.” The creases deepen around his mouth and he reaches for my hand. “Lily, you look so tired. Let’s stay in tonight. We’ll order take out, watch Netflix.” 

I’m so tired, I give in.

I’m three beers in when Aroon gets home. She wears gallery clothes, a glitzy pants suit and heels. I introduce her to Carter, and she apologizes for missing my calls the night before. The night before. I called her three times in rapid succession when Tinder Chad informed me that he wouldn’t bring me home. No money for Uber. The busses were down.

She asks how my date went, and I tell her the same story I told Carter. I exaggerate my flailing arms as I sprinted down the road. I put everything into making it funny.

“My god,” she laughs with me. “That’s so scary. You need to report his ass.” She hangs her blazer in the closet.

“Yeah,” I say. “I mean, I don’t know what I would say.”

“Uh, that he almost raped you.” 

She microwaves herself some leftover pizza, and I switch to whisky. In the time it takes me to hack a chunk of ice from the mess in our broken freezer, she and Carter have settled on the couch in front of Rocket League. 

“Leah’s picking me up in a minute,” she calls form the couch. “You might have to take over.”

I explain that that Leah is Aroon’s new girlfriend. “Her first girlfriend,” I emphasize.

“Before Leah, I dated boys,” Aroon explains.

“She’s very enthusiastic about the change.” I clink the ice in my now empty glass. I am forever stepping over their gropey make out sessions, joking, not joking, “Get a room.”

“Ya’ll, I think I want to cut my hair.” The idea occurs to me as I say it. “I think I want to shave it,” I say.

“I bet you could sell it for good money,” Aroon says, eyes on the screen. “It’s so long.”

“I didn’t think of that.” I examine the split ends and wait for Carter to add his piece, but he frowns straight ahead as if concentrating. 

I want him to say something, so I press, ““Let’s do it. Like right now.”

“I think you’re drunk,” he says to the screen.

“I’m tired,” I say. “There’s a difference.”

“Go to bed, Lily. We’ll start fresh in the morning. I wanted to see the Japanese Gardens.” He tries to sound cheerful, but I can tell he’s irritated.

“I’m not drunk. And, anyway, I’m strapped for cash, and my hair’s such a pain.”

“And you’ve got that virgin hair,” Aroon says. “You don’t dye it, right?” 

“No,” I say. “Does that mean it’s worth more?”

“That makes a huge difference.” She turns to Carter, “Her body, her choice,” and pops off the couch. “I’ll grab the scissors.”

I wait for him to respond, to insist, like he always does, that I take care of myself, that I do the right thing. But he remains silent, pressing buttons that move his car around the screen. Aroon returns with clippers and backs away, hands raised.

“I’m not doing it, though. If you regret it, I have to live with you.”

“Carter?” I say.

“This is your thing,” he says.

“Please?” I return to Aroon, but she reaches into the closet for her coat. “Got to go.” She kisses my cheek. “It’s going to look great.” 

“Fine,” I say. I stumble into the bathroom. The razors whir to life, and before I can chicken out, I shove the clippers against my skull. Immediately, strands tangle in the blades. “Jesus!” I holler, as a chunk of hair falls into the sink. 

I shove through the bathroom cabinet, past pills and shaving cream and mouthwash after a pair of baby scissors I use to hack at my hair, relieved when Carter appears in the door. 

“Lily,” he says. “Honey.” He takes the clippers and I sit on the toilet. For a moment, there’s nothing but the sensation of his fingers brushing past the nape of my neck. He untangles the hair down my shoulders and back. “What a mess.”

On impulse, I grab his empty hand and twist it to my lips. Wanting burns a hole through my middle. I kiss his wrist, and he recoils. 

“Lily, what the hell?” 

“You’re right. I’m drunk.” I try to laugh it off. All these years we’ve never had sex.

He sets the clippers down. “I’m going to take a minute.” He closes the door behind him, and I’m alone.

At around three in the morning, I wake in pain. I need to pee, but when I sit on the toilet, nothing comes out. I lean forward, woozy, and stare at the dirty tile between my knees. There’s a long clump of hair, and I recall the evening, touching the irregular fuzz along the front of my scalp. The urge to pee distracts me, and I quietly moan. Sweat beads my thighs and wrists. It dampens the creases along my eyelids. 

Worried I might die from the pain, I half-crawl to the kitchen past Carter, who sleeps on the couch, and fill a glass with tap water, drinking until water leaks from the corners of my mouth and my stomach distends. 

I return to bed and curl on my side, but the urge is too much, and I stagger back to the toilet, careful to avoid looking in the mirror as I pass. I use my phone to diagnose myself with a UTI. Tinder Chad, of course. That dirty hipster cock. 

I hunch, cheekbones to knees, melted over the toilet for another forty minutes and will the glass of water to force its way through me and out, but no such luck. On my way back to bed, there’s Carter, propped by the elbow, a concerned silhouette.

“Lily, are you alright?” 

“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “It’s fine. Go back to sleep.”

“What’s going on?” 

I’m too embarrassed to look him full in the face. “I’m fine,” I whisper. “Just a UTI.” 

“A UTI?” he says. “Come here.” He kicks the blankets aside and sits up, but the pain is exquisite, a Shepard Tone of pitch, and I remain crouched on the floor.

“Can you stand up?” He fumbles under the blankets after his phone. “I think we should go to the ER.”

“I can’t,” I say. “I don’t have insurance. I missed a bunch of payments.”

He hesitates. “Look at you. You can barely speak. You need to go. Seriously. Where’s the hospital?”

I shake my head. I can see him better now that my eyes have adjusted. The solidity of his concern. 

“I can’t afford it.” 

“Lily, it doesn’t matter.” He tugs hard on his shoelace. “Who knows what’s wrong?”

“I do, and I can’t afford to go,” I say, “I’m going back to bed.” I begin my half-crawl, but he stops me.

“We’re going.” His voice softens. “Please. Please, let’s just go. I’ll help you pay for it, alright? We’ll work it out.”

I know this can’t be true, but I let him persuade me, although I insist we walk the twelve blocks rather than call an Uber. We make slow progress past blinking street lamps and dim storefronts, the dull luster of barbed wire, the dark slash of paint. Every few steps, I have to stop, crouch, bend. We pass at least a dozen unhoused, mostly men, mostly pressed up beneath eaves, a tangle of dirty sleeping bags and sleep.

“I’m sorry about last night,” I say during one of our breaks, clenched forward in the grass, eyes fast on the curb. 

“Forget about it,” he says. “You were drunk.”

“I adore Cally,” I say.

“And she adores you.” She told me this often, in earnest. She had an unself-conscious way of touching me, grabbing my hand, snuggling my shoulders that made it easier to accept.  

That summer in Charlotte, she once prayed with me. We’d just left the bars, and I wretched in the lot. It was hard to get up, so she crouched beside me, said, “Dear Jesus, please tell Lily she’s great.” And there he was, Jesus Christ, with his sad, loving eyes established before me, cut through by headlights, the laugh-chatter of strangers. Carter and Cally wedged their shoulders beneath my arms. 

“On three,” Carter said. 

Meanwhile, Jesus moved his mouth, but by that point in my life, he was too glitchy. Going in and out of focus. I couldn’t hear him and never did.

“Carter, I love you,” I say. “I’m in love with you.” 

In the distance, the hospital is a spread of bricky pink. My mouth has gone dry. 

“Cut it out,” he says, “We’re almost there.”

I crouch and pant and repeat, “I love you. I don’t want to lose you.”

“Lily.” His hand on my shoulder.

“I just didn’t realize. Please, I didn’t know until now.” I’m desperate to hold onto him, to not let him go.

“Goddammit.” His hand withdraws. “What the hell, Lily? Why are you doing this? I mean, you had all these years. And, seriously, why now? With Cally? The baby? I just don’t--It’s so selfish. I’m sorry, but you have to get up. The hospital’s right there. They’re going to give you some tests and help you feel better.”

“No. They can’t.” I’m crying now. “They don’t know how.”

“Let’s go.”

“I love you, Carter.” 

He sighs heavily and stands. His mouth, a hard line, he scans the street, as if looking for help, and I become aware of the spittle at my mouth, the drool. I use the back of my hand to catch it. Meanwhile, he takes two steps toward the hospital, his hands behind his head as if adrift at sea. 

Something about this gesture sobers me. The irritated glitter in his eyes. My pain mutes, and I stand.

“You’re right,” I say. “I’m sorry. I’m a little crazy right now. Let’s go.”

He relaxes and at once, so much of what has spilled dries up. In an instant, the sog of pain and confusion evaporates, as if erased. I walk calmly, now, still bent, still uncomfortable, but intent to make it past the row of ambulances, the large, sliding glass doors. Nothing matters, I think. This is my city, I think.

“You’ll feel so much better,” Carter says, and it startles me, because, for a second, I forgot he was there.