Something Rising by Laura Efron

Every week now Louisa awakens at least once or twice to the beating of her own heart. The thumping pulls her up, step by step, from the depths of dreamworld, opening her into the bright room, and returning her to the body in her bed. Usually, in these moments, Louisa squeezes her eyes shut, trying to hold an image before it dissolves into the kiss of cotton sheets, and watches it fade before she can name it. But this morning, Louisa catches one beneath her closed eyelids. She holds the darkness tightly around her vision, and there, faintly and for a few seconds, makes out two distinct pieces.

A woman’s thin body slouched against a wall.
The doorknob that will soon give way to his force.

They linger as snapshots, disconnected from action, but precise. With eyes still half closed, Louisa reaches for the notebook and pen lying on the bedside table, and scribbles down two descriptions. “Bare, white room. Girl slumped over. Looks broken. Doorknob shaking, about to open...” When she’s satisfied that these are the only words she can find, she lowers the paper and notices her chest still pounding. “Okay,” she whispers, opening her eyes completely. “It was just a dream.”

She hasn’t told anyone yet. Not her coworkers here in Nashville or Mara back at home. She started to, a week ago, to this woman she had begun eating lunch with at the office, but when she got to the actual telling part of it, her voice went high and scratchy. The woman had averted her eyes, obviously uncomfortable, and to cover it up, Louisa had to inspire a coughing fit. When she recovered, they both laughed self-consciously and made some joke about the stale bread, then spent the remaining half hour discussing the romance ensuing between Pete, the vice president, and Stacy, his personal assistant.

But it’s better that way—Louisa thinks, as she presses in through the building’s glass doors an hour later. She’d have smiled plastically, patted my shoulder, and then reported to the others that the young one was not, in fact, a dependable worker—but an attention seeking nut. Or worse—a slut.

Louisa smiles at the row of coworkers on the way to her desk. Even after a year here, most women still relate to her icily, and most men, with winks and the occasional come-on. For the first couple months, Louisa had tried, unsuccessfully, to warm the cold expressions of her female coworkers, asking them how long they’d been working here, offering them Kleenex if they sneezed. But soon she just resorted to smiling. She was not going to be anything other than the young, blonde thing to them. Come to turn their husbands unfaithful, break their sons’ hearts. She started keeping the Kleenex for herself, and found herself giggling when the winking men spoke to her. In the evenings, finally alone, she would scrawl long pages into her notebook trying to remind herself who she was. Sometimes she’d write to Mara—“I don’t know how to relate to people yet. I wonder if I should have come, even though the band is great.” But mostly she’d scrawl to herself. “I know I am more than ‘pretty, sweet girl’,” she’d write, watching her pen in a sort of trance. “Things always change in time, though. Soon I will show more.” By now, though, sliding into her pale, plastic cubicle for the hundredth, maybe two hundredth time, Louisa knows this nighttime mantra has grown hollow. When she settles down at her desk, smoothing the wrinkles in her skirt, she wonders, like with the words, if the smile is masking anything at all.

Louisa had planned to call Mara at five. It’s been over a month since they talked, which is her own doing, she realizes. But then, like the other days, she doesn’t have enough time before her rehearsal. When five finally arrives, Louisa goes straight from the glass doors to the guitar player’s house. They are practicing a new set for this weekend. Just another “Bruno’s Bar” gig, but with some new bluegrass tunes all the same. Jake is having a hard time learning his banjo part tonight, so Louisa spends most of the two hours listening to the same chord progression back and forth between banjo and guitar. Jake keeps hunching over, like the proximity of his face to the strings will make them play better. And Gabe is staring at Jake’s fingers, calling “No, C there,” or “Hold, Jake. Hold.” But they both look sweet, concentrating so hard on the instrument in Jake’s hands.

Even before she moved here, Louisa had known to be careful. Mara had tried to convince her not to come. Telling her she was being needlessly stoic. Stupid, even. And she, herself, had heard horror stories of how conservative Nashville was, despite its amazing music scene. But she came anyways. She couldn’t give up the opportunity to live in the finest bluegrass city of the country. To meet musicians like Gabe Weeto and Jake Grow who breathe music the way her hometown breathed gasoline fumes.

The day before she left, Mara warned her, over and over, that she had to be safe. “I know it sounds awful, Louisa, but I think you should keep our relationship quiet.” Mara’s beautiful blue eyes had darkened with concern, and she gripped Louisa’s hand in what felt like a command. “Stop worrying, honey,” Louisa had said. “I’ll feel it out. I’m intuitive.” She tried to tap her head in a gesture of mock emphasis, but Mara’s fingers had held firmly to her palm. Even the following day, as she boarded the plane, Louisa could feel Mara’s worry embedded in the skin there.

“Intuitive,” Louisa says out loud, letting out a dry chuckle. Gabe is still explaining the second chart to Jake, and neither seems to have heard. Louisa gets up and heads to the bathroom. “I really should call her soon.”

Rather than write to herself that night, Louisa lies in bed with her eyes closed. It has been months since she last touched herself. She hasn’t felt any inclination since the night he was here. But tonight, she tries. Maybe, she thinks to herself, she can rewrite that night with her own hands. She works her fingers into the dry body under the sheets. She calls his face, his draping black hair, into her mind. His expression had been so surprised, like even as he pushed her open, he couldn’t believe he was inside her. His eyebrows had lifted in upside down U’s. His mouth had opened in a little boy grin.

She stops. It wasn’t working, and that nauseas feeling had started again. She abandons her bed completely, and pours a shot of vodka at the kitchen table. There’s work again in the morning, but liquor might be her only hope for sleep. She stares at the glass, waiting for the burn to come. The rim is chipped in two spots. Two jagged breaks in its smooth, curving mouth.

When he first asked to see her perform, she had been so excited. People she met didn’t usually show interest in her music. It was like the Louisa here existed as shy, young thing in the office, and Louisa-the-bomb (that’s what Jake calls her) in the band. But Paul was interested in both. He told her he wanted to see her doing something she’d done before coming here. That he wanted to see her play.

Louisa knew then that she should explain the situation. “I have this situation,” she’d said, after a long pause. “You see,” she concentrated on her feet. “I’ve always been into women.” She held her breath, and waited for the explosive response. It was the first time she’d risked this on anyone here, but the words got out before she could censor. They sounded foreign to her, funny even. This soft, breathy voice trying to claim gayness.

“You?” was how he had responded. His eyes went wide, then narrow, then back to neutral. “But you like men, too.”

“No,” she said. “Not usually,” and waited to see what would happen.

But he still went to see her play. He sat at a back table, tapping his foot while the others in the bar danced, and afterwards, told her she played well, but without passion.

“Why do you say that?” she’d asked.

“Cause you don’t smile.”

“But I’m concentrating. I’m focused.”

“I don’t know,” was all he said.

After waving goodbye that night, there was no talk of romance for an entire two months. She took this to mean that he understood. He now knew that she was not interested, and yet still wanted to be friends. Finally things are changing, she’d thought to herself. With him I can finally show more, and act less. But she still wanted to go slowly, cause after all, it’s one thing to hear the words, and another to see someone in them.

The female figure is me. But I’m afraid of her, repelled. She slouches against the bare white wall. She almost hangs, as though suspended by some invisible thread. She’s pitiful, practically lifeless, and I’m trying to escape from her and the room. But just as I turn to leave, I see the doorknob rattle and turn, and it hits me that I’m trapped. He arrived before I could get out, and now I’m stuck. Fuck. That’s the sentiment. “Fuck” and “How did I let this happen?”

The nausea hangs on through the next night. By the end of work the next day, Louisa can still feel a trace lingering in her lower stomach. She decides it’s because she hasn’t called Mara in so long. It’s guilt. When five o’clock comes to release her from the big glass doors, Louisa walks the five blocks to the calling center where long distance is cheaper, first calling Gabe to say she’ll be late to rehearsal, (“You and Jake run the first set alone. I’ll be fine for Saturday”) then punching in the numbers that lead to Mara’s house, all those miles away.

She hasn’t called Mara since the night with Paul happened. She “got too busy” suddenly, and kept “forgetting.” But even after writing nightly in her journal, asking herself what this avoidance was about, she couldn’t exactly say why. Was she afraid that Mara would feel hurt? Like Louisa was reporting her new sex life to her? Or trying to confess she’d turned straight? A betrayal. Or maybe she thought Mara would say, “I told you so”—say, “See? You never should have left. Look at what you’ve done now.” But Mara wouldn’t say those things, Louisa thought. Mara would be nice. Tell her she was still her Strong Louisa.

But Mara had been skeptical of Paul all along. Even in the beginning, when Louisa reported the afternoons she spent with him in the mural district, talking about local politics, hearing stories about his childhood in the city, Mara had not been enthusiastic.

“So how much talking do you do on these walks?” Mara had asked, her tone flat.

“What do you mean? We have conversations.”

“Yeah. But ‘conversation’ means different things to different people.”

“Okay… so he probably talks more. But it’s just cause I tend to be quiet now. With him, it does feel like I’m showing more.”

“Well good. I’m glad it feels that way.”

“Come on Mara. You don’t even know this guy.”

“No. I just know you.”

After that, Louisa would tell her, once in a while, of an interaction when he listened especially well, or acted supportive in some way. But it usually just made her feel awkward. In the uncomfortable pauses that punctuated her stories Louisa would hear all the critical remarks Mara was probably thinking. She began to feel like she was trying to prove something. Like she was somehow being deceitful.

The phone rings a fifth time. Louisa could leave a message, but isn’t sure what she would say. It is nice to hear Mara’s voice, though—even if just recorded. There it is, with her throaty “r’s” and “s’s” sounding professional and concise. When the beep sounds, Louisa hangs up. She’ll just try again tomorrow. If she’s not there again tomorrow, Louisa tells herself, then she’ll leave a message.

But the next day, Louisa gets distracted by rehearsal again. “Come on,” Gabe says, when she tells him she might be late. “After Saturday we’ll have a week long break.” So at five o’clock Louisa heads straight to Gabe’s, and for another two hours, they pick at their strings, and work our final kinks. Gabe invites them both for a beer after they’re done. “I’m glad we’re going back to Bruno’s,” he says. “It’s been too long since we’ve played more down and dirty bluegrass.” Jake makes a toast to dirty bluegrass, and as their bottles clink, Louisa realizes she’d forgotten how happy this music made her. She laughs, and calls out another toast. “And to the pure joy that it sprouts.”

After that first performance, Paul occasionally went to see her play. He’d sit in back, just like the first time, and watch intensely as she plucked her bass. But Louisa began to prefer seeing him in other contexts. After they finished he always commented on her composure— “You seemed kind of bored today,” or “Why do you look at Gabe on your solos?”—so that playing began feeling like a whole new kind of performance—“one more reminiscent of daily life”—she noted in her journal. She began to avoid telling him about her gigs.

But Paul also took her to new places around the city, and this, she told herself, had felt wonderful. They walked through the downtown, and he told her about his political organization. They walked by the outdoor fruit stands, and he told her about the tastiest peaches. They sat in his living room, and he told her about his childhood. And she listened, smiling, and told him she was excited to learn. When she pushed herself, she would tell him about the woman who wrote at night. She talked of Mara a little bit, and the park where she used to walk, of music she wrote, and relationships she carried with her. She wanted to reveal this woman’s history, slowly, and give his gaze time to adjust. It’s a trade, she had thought. Of who we actually are. I almost forgot how relieving it is to feel real connection.

But she couldn’t ignore how wrong it felt, two months after their original conversation, when he told her he was falling in love.

“I don’t usually do this for women, Louisa,” he had said, sitting her down on a street bench. He paused, looking at her expectantly.

“You mean spend time with them?”

“I mean everything. Going to hear you play, taking you around the city, sharing so much of myself.”

Louisa couldn’t make herself respond. There was something, some feeling, rising in her stomach, but she was not going to dare voice it. She had to handle this smoothly.

“I’m sorry, Paul. I wasn’t kidding about what I said earlier.”

“You don’t know, Louisa,” he jumped in. “You’re not even dykey. Maybe you just haven’t found the right guy yet. I think you’re afraid. I think you’re afraid, and don’t want to take a risk.”

Louisa fidgeted on her end of the bench, and stared at her hands. She didn’t want to hurt his feelings. And the idea of “proving” her dykeyness to him was terrifying. Still, the something rising had spread out and was making her skin crawl. She could have started crying, but didn’t want to stay long enough to see.

“I’m sorry, Paul,” she said, standing up to go. “I guess I wasn’t clear before.”

“You’re going to just leave now?”

“I should get back.”

“Well, I’ll see you tomorrow at Bruno’s, then.”

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

During Friday’s lunch break, Louisa feels the urge to talk to her lunch friend again. They sit on the stone steps in the plaza below, and discuss the new lay-offs that might take place in the coming weeks. The woman talks in a flat, hopeless sort of tone, but Louisa has a hard time focusing on the topic. She keeps crossing and uncrossing her legs, and picks at her sandwich. She tells the woman that she shouldn’t worry so much. That if anyone is let off, it’ll be Louisa— and the younger, less experienced workers. But the woman’s face still looks concerned. After a while she stops talking, and stares into the fountain. Louisa decides against trying to talk to her today, but as they walk back inside, she offers an invitation. “You should come by Bruno’s tomorrow night,” she says. “We’re going to play some bluegrass. It might feel good to dance.” The woman looks at her and smiles. A warm, open smile. “That could be nice,” she says. “I’ll ask Richard if he wants to go.”

I come upon a room. A plain, boxlike room. And inside I know I will find myself. I open the door, excited that I will finally get to feel what I’m like sexually, and on the inside, see the slouching shape of a small, female figure. The room is bare and white-walled, and the woman leans against the opposite corner. I cross the floor slowly, and with my stomach tense, lift her chin and lean in to kiss her mouth. Just as our lips meet, though, the tightness erupts into nausea. I stagger back and watch her body crumple forward. It hangs, suspended by some invisible thread, and just as I turn to leave, to escape her presence, the knob on the door begins to shake and turn. I stop, paralyzed between girl and door, and watch, silently, as he wrestles his way in.

When they arrive at Bruno’s, 9 o’clock, to set up and do the sound check, Louisa’s hands won’t stop quivering. They run through one of the new tunes, their last chance to practice, and the major sevenths that had slid so easily off Louisa’s strings, now fumble and catch in her fingers. Gabe and Jake don’t let on that they notice. In the ten minutes before the official start, they go drink a beer with the bartender they haven’t seen in so long. It’s been over a month now since that last time they played here.

When they begin, though, and Louisa messes up two tunes in a row, Gabe pulls her aside. He looks annoyed, and asks her why she got the chords wrong in the second one. “I don’t know,” she says. “I’m feeling a little weird tonight.” “Maybe you should drink something,” he says, and calls the bartender to get her a beer. “Now remember we moved this next one up a half step.” He uncaps it in his shirt. “Yeah, yeah,” she says, taking a sip. “It’ll be fine.”

Louisa thinks she knows why she’s shaking. Whenever her eyes are turned away, either down at her bass, or at Gabe or Jake, she keeps thinking she sees Paul, sitting in back. Just as she’s climbing up that last crescendo, she sees his tapping foot. Right when she launches into her solo, she feels his gaze on her face. When she looks up, of course, there’s no one there. There are the dancing couples, the loud, laughing women, but no Paul. This is the first time, though, that they’ve played here since that night. Since the evening after their bench encounter, when he came, sat at his perch for all three hours, and then insisted on walking her home.

In retrospect, the sex went quick enough. He probably didn’t stay more than an hour and a half from when they arrived home. But time felt funny. Slower than usual. They sat for a while at the kitchen table, and when she stood to go to the bathroom, he stood, too. Close. He put his hand on her back, and kissed her a dry, hard kiss. She noticed how small her back felt under his palm, and distantly recognized that this pleased her. As he led her into the bedroom, she wondered how far this was going to go. “Paul,” she said. “I don’t think we should do this.” But he was already removing her shirt. Already pushing her on the bed. Already on top of her. She heard herself say it again: “Paul—You know we can’t do this,” but then his weight came down, hard. And somewhere, there was pain.

She watched them from the side then. The man, rocking up and down, his long hair swaying to the rhythm. The woman, lying still, her face mostly obscured by his arm. “Paul… Please,” the woman said, but it got lost in his breathing. “Paul. Paul.” But then again, maybe the voice was just in Louisa’s head.

The next few songs go a little better. After the beer, Louisa manages to relax more, and her hands settle into a more familiar rhythm. She has to continue telling herself that Paul isn’t there. That he won’t come back now, and that even if he did, she is in public. She’s at Bruno’s. But gradually her breathing, and the subtle shifts from inhale to exhale, exhale to inhale, bring Louisa back to the room and her bass.

Towards the end of the night, just as she and Jake begin their duo piece, she sees her work friend on the dance floor. The woman waves over at her, her smile big, before twirling back to the man at her side. She came! Louisa thinks, and watches their happy, spinning figures as she climbs up her bass. By the time they play the last song, Louisa’s fingers almost feel at home again. She nods over to Gabe for one last solo, and plays, partly aware of her friend’s wild clapping, partly dancing herself in the rise and fall of her bass clef melody.

When they all finally pack up and leave, Louisa asks Gabe to drop her off a couple of blocks north of her apartment. She’s pretty sure there’s another of those calling centers in her neighborhood, and soon asks Gabe to stop and let her out. The neon letters say that twenty-four hour long distance calling is available, and Louisa waves back at Gabe, heading into the brightly lit room. It’s time, she thinks, to make this phone call.

On the other end, Mara’s familiar voice sounds again, followed by the silence, and the beep. Louisa pauses for a moment, doubting whether she has anything to say, but then feels the words form and rise. Just tell her a story, she thinks. Tell her the story I’ve been trying to rewrite in my sleep. “Mara,” she says into the receiver. “I want to tell you about this dream.”

And when the knob finally clicks, and the door begins to open, something unexpected happens. The stillness turns to calm. I step forward, then step again, and then I’m standing in the doorway, my body huge and blocking its width. His eyes open wide at the sight of me, and his eyebrows lift in scared surprise. He mumbles some excuse or apology and begins to turn away, and I yell after him, laughing, hearing it ring through my ears, my body, the room. The laughter revives the crumpled figure behind me, and her words join my own. Like some old melody buried deep in our gut, our songs connect and rise. And standing like this, the two of us, together, our words leap out, and push him farther and farther away.