Clare Marie Myers

Touch

After her boyfriend left for work, she spent the day fixing a scrape on her car. It happened a week before in the grocery store parking lot; the driver hadn’t left a note. When she first saw it, she thought she might faint, but now she was ready.

First, she sanded off the gold flecks that had embedded themselves in the exposed metal. Then she kneaded hardener into the epoxy and worked it until it matched the salmon color of the product’s proprietary spatula. She spread it across the wound like frosting; she felt like a painter, a sculptor, an ice skater, a lover, moving the putty around, smoothing it to mimic the curve of the thing it was replacing. When it had hardened, she sanded it again, first with two-hundred grit and then four-, working a small piece at a time until it was soft as slip under her finger. She primed it, sanded it, painted it, and sanded it a final time. She knew it wouldn’t be perfect, that even the paint made specially to match her car would never catch light in the same way. But she was tired of driving around town with a stripe announcing how she had been fucked over, and in the end, it didn’t look too bad.

Her boyfriend came home around seven. She asked him why he was late, and he told her he always got home at that time on Saturday. “Oh,” she said.

They ate dinner and watched a detective show on TV. She went into the bathroom to get ready for bed. She brushed her teeth and wet her face so she could wash it, squeezed a ribbon of cream onto her left hand and pressed it to her cheek, smoothing it up and then down under her jawbone.

Something was wrong. Her face was different; it felt numb. She ran her hands under the water, rinsing the cream off, then placed them both, timidly, on either side of her face. It was as though she was touching herself through a piece of cloth. When she put a finger to her lips, it felt like someone else was touching them.

“Honey? Can you come here?” she called.

“What is it?”

“Can you please come in here?”

“Just a sec,” he said.

She leaned closer to the mirror, her hands gripping the edge of the sink, pushing her up. She examined her skin, its landscape, its color. She didn’t know what she was looking for, what she was hoping to find, what she was hoping not to find.

“What is it?” Her boyfriend stood under the door frame, half his body in the room, the other half invisible.

“Will you touch my face?”

“What?”

“My face feels numb. I want you to touch it.”

He took two steps toward her, brought his palm to her chin and cupped it like a glass.

“Will you move it?” she asked, and he did.

“Well?” he asked.

“I don’t know. It feels the same as it always did.”

She lifted her own hand and touched his brow.

“Oh,” she said.

“What?”

“It’s like when I touched my own face. It feels different. It feels like it’s disappearing.”

“Do you want me to call someone?”

She slid her fingers to feel the stubble that had grown on his cheeks since that morning.

She dropped her head. “I know what it is,” she said. “When I was working on the car today, I folded the sandpaper in half, so it was against my hand. I must have sanded my fingertips down, and now -- I’m not sure. It’s like,” she paused, bowing her index finger along her thumb. “It’s like when you touch water and you can’t tell if it’s too hot or too cold. But it’s not that, exactly. It’s that I can’t tell whether I can feel more than I did before, or less. It’s strange. But at least I know why.”

Relieved, she lifted her hand to feel his beard again.

“Don’t touch me,” he said.

“What?”

“I don’t want you to touch me,” he said.

“Why?”

“You keep changing yourself. I don’t like it.”

“It’s just sandpaper,” she said. “It’ll grow back. It’s just skin.”

“No,” he said. “It’s not just that. I mean, it’s not that.”

“Well,” she said.

“I think I need to leave. I’m leaving.”

“Why?” she said, but he had already left the room.

He put on his jacket and went out the front door, closing it behind him.

She stared at the door until she was sure he was blocks away. Then she went outside, turned on the porch light, and sat, looking at her terrible car.

A native of Chicago, Clare Marie Myers is currently working on a Masters in Creative Writing at San Francisco State University, where she was awarded the 2007 William Dickey Fellowship in Poetry.