We Do What We Do in the Dark

by Michelle Hart

On paper, the woman said, everything could be safely contained.

“No one is thinking of you that way,” said the woman. “No one is sitting around waiting for you to be good.”

A lot of sophistication goes into making a book read so simply.”

The woman did not care whether the stories were read or what someone—what Mallory—thought of them. She had her own ideas about them, and anything else was noise.

She did not want to tax the woman, whose patience seemed thin and whose interest she had somehow captured, with her grief. She did not want to seem complicated. So she said nothing.

which made Mallory worry she was wasting the woman’s time and also that she herself was not special in hearing them. Another part of her, however, was glad the woman revealed anything to her at all.

“I want you to do well in life. You’re smart and you have a wonderful laugh. When you laugh, I want to laugh, too.”

To have her wants understood without articulating them herself, and to have those desires be accepted and even encouraged, made Mallory feel bold enough to place her lips on the woman’s.

What the woman liked most about teaching, it seemed, was that people paid to listen to her, to have her opinions pressed upon them. The woman wanted to be someone of whom others asked questions and from whom they sought answers.

She asked Mallory if she’d like to see. Mallory wanted to see anything the woman wanted to show her. She wanted to see the whole world the way the woman did.

Whenever she was with the woman, she felt inspired, filled with the desire to document and create.

Mallory wondered whether shame could become so outsized that it went away, like a balloon that swells until it pops.

You said you were a miserable child, and I was too, or that’s how I remember it. But I think I kind of liked being that way. My next-door neighbor had this dog, Wednesday, named after the daughter from the Addams family, and she thought I resembled her. The character, I mean, not the dog. All broody and dark. I thought that what made me unique was that I was sad. What made me most unhappy was other girls, so I guess I sort of thought that I liked them only because I liked the feeling of being sad.”

“I wish I could have been here with you,” Mallory said. “You would not have wanted to be with me then,” said the woman. “I was not a very lovable person.” “I don’t think I’m a very lovable person either.” She wanted the woman to tell her she was, to tell her she could be. But the woman said, “No one is lovable at your age.”

As the next semester started, she began to worry that her own life would not make sense without the woman in it, without the woman mirroring precisely how she—Mallory—felt.

That the woman appeared hurt was, for Mallory, a strange sort of mercy; in this brief look between them, she saw that she had made a mark on the woman’s life.

Mallory understood the woman, who’d felt helpless all her life, genuinely wanted to help someone else but also wanted that person, whoever they were, to see her as being significant and powerful enough to be of help.

She was a sad girl, a lonely girl, and, after a lifetime of practice, she had become so good at this that it had become the most appealing thing about her. This should depress her, she thought, but instead it brought her comfort; at least she was good at something.

“What is that saying about how when you get a chill it’s because someone has walked over your grave? Sometimes it seems like I can sense when you’re thinking of me.”

“You and I understand one another in a way that, you will learn, is very rare. These last few months have not been easy for me. I’ve missed the way you look at me.”

“You and I,” she said, “we do what we do in the dark and then we deal with it all alone.”

Because she saw herself as a girl only a mother could love, she often wanted to be alone, but if she couldn’t be alone, then she wanted to be the center of attention, which felt like a way to exert control over her aloneness.

to exchange stories with another girl had been a daydream of hers, though the fantasy had been to have other people read what Mallory told them to read, so that they would understand her more without her having to explicitly tell them.

Appearing knowledgeable about interesting things made her feel as though she was invaluable.

All summer she had felt Hannah fading from her life, as if each day a new part of Hannah peeled away and flew off to Georgia.

No one should use another person to get over their own loneliness.” “Isn’t that what we all do?”

She wanted the woman to be happy; her hopes for her own happiness seemed inextricably linked to the woman’s.

This was why it felt so comforting to be in the woman’s presence, like being the only two people at a party who don’t know anyone else there,

Recently, though, there were times when she wondered what her life would be like without the possibility of the woman in it, times when she wished the woman’s voice in her ear would quiet, when she wished she could look at herself without trying to see through the woman’s eyes, could take a step without wondering what the woman would do and how she would do it.

But there was another part of her that was very tired of all this privacy, this being alone. Something caged inside her had cried out to the woman, to Hannah and Mrs. Allard, I will keep your secrets, but the secrets she carried felt heavier and heavier every day, and she wasn’t sure she could handle any more weight.

She was, however, also annoyed at the way the girls called attention to themselves; so much of her experience with desire had been to hide it.

“Loneliness always seems so luxurious,” the woman slurred. “All the time I want to be by myself but then when I am, I desperately want someone else around.”

“You say these things about your life, and it’s like you’re talking about me. It’s like you’re reaching inside me and plucking out a thought or a feeling I didn’t even know I had. I know that probably sounds weird, but that’s why I used to write down everything you said. You made my life make sense.”

“I’m afraid of being alone and afraid that is the only way I know how to be.”

“I do feel as though I have always been forthcoming with you. I told you about my sister. I told you about the man I slept with when I was young. Not even my husband knows about him.” “He doesn’t?” “I never wanted anyone else’s thoughts about it. I was worried he would think I was fucked up.”