by Greg Kearney
“I totally don’t care. I guess you want me naked, though?”
“That would be very nice. Also, I must tell you that I’m positive.”
“Girl, who isn’t? I’ve had it since I was eleven.”
“Oh my goodness.”
“What do you mean, oh my goodness, like I should’ve known better or something?”
“Not at all. It’s just … That’s an awful lot for a child to cope with.”
“I told you, I come up hard. Hard times. Rape. For real realness. Oh well. I like you. You’re nice. At least we don’t need to bother with rubbers.”
Edmund hasn’t had anal sex in eight years.
“What about reinfection with a more virulent strain?” Edmund asks.
“What?”
Edmund shrugs. Sex without a condom has never crossed his mind, all these years. It still seems like such a brutally anarchic, stupid thing to do, regardless of serostatus, regardless of the new drugs. Even with Dean he didn’t fuck unprotected after they were both diagnosed. They stopped having sex instead. Edmund’s decision, mostly. Why did he insist that they stop having sex? Their sex was always good, nasty and tender. Edmund was afraid his own virus would further weaken Dean somehow. But if he hadn’t forsaken Dean sexually, if he’d adhered to his libido instead of getting all whipped up about viral etiquette, niceness, refashioning his lust into an antiseptic apology for past nastiness, would Dean have died faster with further viral onslaught from Edmund? Or would he have hung on longer, inspired by desire?
“I like it rough — nice ’n’ rough like Diva Tina, file it under Foreign Affair realness,” Binny says. “Majorly rough. I need to do a bump first though. Can I use your phone?”
Edmund points at the telephone by the bed. What constitutes “majorly rough”? He’s coming down now; he’s certain he doesn’t have the oomph for “majorly rough,” or even regular rough.
“It’s B, it’s your waterfall, I need some,” Binny says into the phone. “I’m, like, at — hold on — Hey, Edmund, where are we?”
“I really don’t want drug people knowing my address,” Edmund whispers. Binny covers the mouthpiece.
“Just the main intersection,” he says.
“Sackville and Dundas, roughly,” Edmund offers.
Binny arranges to meet the drug person outside a Coffee Time a few streets over in twenty-five minutes. Apparently the drug person lives close by.
“We’re going to have a killer time when I get back,” Binny says as he puts his shoes back on.
“I hope I won’t be too boring. I am fading a bit.”
“We’ll do a big bulbie when I get back and we’ll both be rocking in the free world!”
“I know that reference! Diva Neil Young, right?”
Binny lets the laces of his left shoe fall from his fingers. He sits up, all solemn.
“Men cannot be divas. Not ever.”
“Why not?”
“No. Not in my world. I roll old school. My divas all wear high heels. Even the chubby girls like Diva Linda, I hate all of my records except for the Mexican ones realness. And I don’t necessarily mean that my divas have to actually wear high heels — it’s more of a, like, a symbol. A metaphor? Yeah.”
“I understand now.”
“Wicked,” he says, returning to his shoe. “I like you. I like your house. I feel all cozy. I never feel that way.”
Edmund has never thought his house cozy, not even with Dean. But any safe shelter would seem cozy to a homeless person; what a cosseted dolt he is! Then again, he doesn’t know for a fact that Binny is homeless; not all addict sex workers are destitute. How presumptuous and reductive.
Binny leaves the front door wide open and sprints down the street. Edmund stands on the porch, arms folded like a suburban mother waiting for her kid to come in for dinner. Then he remembers that Velvet Underground song, about Lou Reed waiting for his drug dealer, and how you always have to wait for your drug dealer, who’s always late. So he goes back inside and closes the door. He leans against the door with his forehead. This is how he’ll wait for Binny to come back.
12
WOULDN’T IT JUST FIGURE THAT Jocelyn Walsh, the mayor’s wife, would be having her chemo at the same time as Teresa. Jocelyn, from what Teresa has heard, has — naturally! — breast cancer, but it was caught early: no lymph node involvement, tiny lumpectomy. Apparently she still insisted on reconstruction — God forbid fancy Jocelyn should have a slightly dented boob as she copes with the onset of menopause. Really, after a certain age, why bother with reconstruction, even if you are all hacked to pieces up top? Nobody wants to look at you anyway. It’s not like her Digger has given her a second glance in decades. Granted, Jocelyn was once a real beauty; she is tall and willowy, still nice-looking if maybe a bit more coarse, more horsey than in her heyday. Teresa went to high school with Jocelyn. More accurately, they were in the same high school at the same time; Jocelyn was in the advanced stream, while Teresa was in the general stream, the one for future auto mechanics, mill workers, car dealership receptionists and miserable housewives. Jocelyn went on to obtain an English degree at the University of Manitoba. Teresa went on to get pregnant in grade eleven and drop out before she started to show. The “Business Fundamentals” course she took at Confederation College five years ago doesn’t count.
Jocelyn hasn’t lost her hair. The nurse, a tiny, beaming Chinese woman in teddy bear scrubs, is running her hand through it and exclaiming at how thick and lustrous it is. Jocelyn’s secret, she says, is that she wears an ice cap every day for as long as she can stand it, and — touch wood, she says, touching the nurse’s head — so far she hasn’t lost a single strand. Teresa pretends to be engrossed by a Reader’s Digest from 1983.
Thing is, Teresa once liked Jocelyn. Jocelyn owns and runs the bookstore downtown, and she always went out of her way to say hello to Teresa and ask after Hugh and the boys and, if the store wasn’t busy, point out the newest murder mysteries she knew Teresa would enjoy. There was a time when Teresa — this was back when she had just started power walking and Joel told her that the sight of her flapping her arms down the road as he passed with his friends in the school bus was the most humiliating moment of his life; he was twelve so it would’ve been ’90 — went back and forth on calling up Jocelyn and asking her if she’d like to walk with her sometime, or even just grab a coffee. Teresa has never had many female friends. It was uncharacteristic that she would want to reach out to another woman.
And there was the monthly country and western dance night that Jocelyn and her two sisters, Brynn and Suzanne, founded, called “Swing Yer Partner!,” that coaxed elderly shut-ins to the legion hall, free transportation provided. Teresa’s own mother went once. Of course, to hear Teresa’s mother tell it, she was literally pulled, screaming, from her apartment by Brynn and Suzanne and hurled into a big van filled with other old, weeping people. But Teresa’s mom is hysterical at the best of times and a world-class liar.
Teresa didn’t mind Jocelyn at all, and she really liked Jocelyn’s husband, Digger, a hulking, huggy man, recovered alcoholic, mayor since forever, who cleaned up the waterfront, laid down lush sod and put in a small amphitheatre, turning Kenora back into the tourist attraction it once was. They have four kids, three boys all close together in age, and a much younger daughter. Teresa remembers the daughter as shy and awkward; she was retarded and probably still in high school. The boys were all fidgety but polite, heavy into hockey. One Halloween they came to the door all dressed as the guy from Nightmare on Elm Street; “Trick or treat or DIE!” they all yelped. Teresa thought nothing of it at the time. In fact, she recalls finding it endearing. She recalls pretending to be scared for her life, and laughing.
Then came Joel’s grade seven year. In his junior high home-room that year was the Walshes’ middle son, Craig. Halfway through September, Joel started weeping at the dinner table. Several
boys, led by Craig, had taken to calling Joel a “fat faggot,” a “bag of AIDS,” a “fatass fag face,” an “ugly faggy fag fat fag boy.” They called him these awful names every day, all day, quite often within earshot of a teacher, and no one took action. Telling a teacher would only make it worse, Joel cried. And because Joel was big for his age, and Craig small, he’d look even more like a crybaby. Joel spoke of Craig’s crazy, angry eyes, which never softened, even after all the other kids had gotten bored of the joke. Joel begged his parents to put him in St. Thomas Aquinas, the Catholic junior high school, even though they weren’t Catholic.
Teresa was outraged. Hugh was no help; such torture was simply “par for the course” and “the sand that makes the pearl.” After all, Hugh himself lost most of his teeth in high school fights, was tied to the back of Bud Koslowski’s truck and dragged for half a mile in grade ten, and now he and Bud were good buds. Joel just needed to toughen up a little. Teresa had never been more dismayed by her husband’s inadequacy as a father and husband as she was right then, but she filed that resentment away for the time being.
She met with Joel’s homeroom teacher, a bearded, lipless twit named Carnegie Kitson, new in town from Vancouver. He dismissed her concerns with nonsense about the rituals of boyhood, how crucial such tussles are for the firmament of healthy manhood — the same crap Hugh spewed, fancied up. What if it were his kid being harassed, she asked. He said that he planned to marry and have children only when he was very old, so that he could sit at length with the child and counsel him, like Socrates and Plato. She rolled her eyes. Carnegie Kitson died of a heroin overdose three years ago — the first heroin overdose in the history of the town, to the best of Teresa’s knowledge.
She tried to meet with the principal, Reg Cembal, but was repeatedly told by his secretary that he was experiencing a family crisis, and that he would not be available for conversation well into the foreseeable future. Turned out he was renovating his cottage.
Finally, Teresa called the Walshes. She calmly explained the situation to Jocelyn, who listened quietly, expressed her own concern, agreed that the situation was untenable, and then suggested they meet for coffee. Jocelyn proposed that they meet at the Husky on the edge of town. Now, no one ever meets for coffee at the Husky, unless you’re meeting up with a drug dealer or an adulterous lover. The message was clear: Jocelyn, for all her public nicey-nice and despite her cordial phone manner, considered Teresa trash. Teresa was duly offended, and chastised herself for once contemplating Jocelyn as a possible friend. But she filed away her hurt, as she did with her annoyance with Hugh, for the sake of dealing with the crisis at hand.
Teresa got there early. The waitress, a very old woman who moved slowly and arduously as though struggling through deep mud, greeted Teresa by her name. Teresa squinted at the woman, still not recognizing her. “It’s Mrs. Clemens,” she said. “I babysat you when you were just a little thing.” Teresa, finally seeing her beloved babysitter, jumped up and hugged her. She apologized for not catching on; she hadn’t seen Mrs. Clemens for years.
“I didn’t know you were working here.”
“My husband died in debt and didn’t tell me. I don’t want to be working, believe me. I’m eighty-eight next month. Oh well. Next week they’re starting in with an “olden days” theme here at the restaurant. So come Monday I’ll have to wear a big sunbonnet that ties with a ribbon, and tap shoes. I say, ‘but I’m eighty-eight, a bone came out of my nose last week.’ They didn’t care. It was ‘tap dance or get lost.’ Oh well. You make do. How is that mother of yours?”
“She’s … alive. Still mean and dumb. Just like you remember her, I’m sure.”
“I try not to keep bad feelings for anyone, but that woman takes the cake, she really does. To think that I would — I can’t even say it …”
“Get naked to babysit me. I know. It’s crazy. Crazy, crazy. I’ve tried to tell her, but she’s so deluded. I’m so sorry.”
Mrs. Clemens was visibly upset at the memory of it all. Customers came in, and she began to wade her way toward them, but not before giving Teresa’s shoulder a little squeeze. Teresa smiled. What a lovely lady Mrs. Clemens is. What a psycho Teresa’s mother is.
She’d had two cups of coffee by the time Jocelyn arrived, forty minutes late. Jocelyn was wearing a navy kerchief on her head. They nodded at each other. Jocelyn apologized for being late, then complimented Teresa on her perfume. Teresa tartly informed Jocelyn that she wasn’t wearing perfume. Oh, well maybe it’s coming from the kitchen, Jocelyn said.
“We have a real problem,” Teresa began. “My boy is coming home in tears. He can’t sleep. He’s got terrible, well, diarrhea. Explosive. It sounds like a tuba lesson all through the house when he goes to the bathroom. He’s having a breakdown is what it is. And it’s because a lot of the kids at school are giving him a hard time. And your boy in particular is giving him a real hard time. I think you know what I am referring to.”
“I do. I know exactly what you are referring to. Craig has told me all about it. About the inappropriate …”
“Yes, the inappropriate name calling. The ridicule all day long. The bullying.”
“Can I just stop you right there? Bullying is not what’s going on in this situation. My son was defending himself against inappropriate leering and innuendo coming from your son. Very chilling stuff. Your son is a predator, at thirteen. That’s my opinion. But I don’t even like talking about it. In our family we like to have conversations that are optimistic, and goal-oriented, and that have, wherever possible, a foundation in scripture. So for Craig to raise such a horrible topic, you know that he has to be in great distress. I would go so far as to say that Craig has been violated. So yes, indeed, we do have a real problem. No child should be subjected to homosexual sexuality.”
Teresa began to pant with anger. She didn’t know what to say to such breathtaking idiocy. Joel was so shy around boys, so uncertain of his own mind and body, he couldn’t even look his own father in the eye when he spoke. He was simply incapable of leering and innuendo, homosexual or otherwise.
“This is all what Craig told you?”
“Yes.”
“And you believed him?”
“Of course. We don’t lie to each other in the Walsh family. No one has ever lied to anyone in our family. I don’t know how you go about things, in yours.”
“You know how we go about things? If one of us is getting picked on for no good goddamn reason, the rest of us step in. And I am telling you to tell your son to keep his fucking mouth shut and be respectful.”
“And I am telling you to tell your son to stop trying to — indoctrinate my son. There is a reason why, past a certain point, the man should grab the reins in raising a boy into adulthood. If the woman doesn’t give up the reins to the man, with boys, if the woman is pushy, well,” Jocelyn said, gesturing at Teresa, “you see the end result. Joel is a case in point. Effeminacy and effeminate leering. A level of sexual maturity that is just frightening. You have a very sick child.”
“My son is not sick.”
“You’ve been warned.”
“You have been warned, fuckface!”
Mrs. Clemens waded her way back to Teresa’s table. By the time she got there Jocelyn had zipped up her parka and had purse in hand. Mrs. Clemens asked if she could be of any help. Jocelyn said she was leaving, and left. And Mrs. Clemens sat with Teresa for a few minutes, got her a third cup of coffee, and gave her the loveliest old lady hug when Teresa had steadied herself enough to stand.
In the years since this exchange they’ve had a few run-ins. They were both at the David Clayton-Thomas concert at the waterfront in ’96. Jocelyn was several rows ahead of Teresa and Hugh; Teresa whipped a gummy bear at Jocelyn’s head during “Spinning Wheel,” but it hit the man beside her instead. When he looked back at Teresa she quickly looked at Hugh. And then there was the time Teresa went into the bookstore Jocelyn
runs, Scott Books, to buy a murder mystery — One for the Money, by Janet Evanovich — and Jocelyn was behind the counter and offered a judgmental “huh” at the book, as if it were too trashy for her to ever consider reading, and Teresa wanted to choke Jocelyn to death but didn’t.
And then there was the biggie, Joel’s last year in high school, when Teresa was driving down Second Street and spotted Jocelyn power walking. Teresa drove up onto the sidewalk and spat in Jocelyn’s hair. The cops were called over that one, and they came to the house, but in the end it was just Jocelyn’s word against Teresa’s.
Teresa had no way of protecting Joel. She had no support. As close as she was with her son, she remained vague on the extent of her machinations to get justice for him. Who would it serve for him to know that his mother went apeshit on Jocelyn Walsh every time she saw her? Joel was gentle and reflective; he would’ve been ashamed of her — not just mortified like with the power walking but truly ashamed — and Teresa couldn’t cope with deep, silent disapproval from her beloved kid and closest friend.
So she tried to home-school him. For three days, they went through the motions, with various textbooks open between them. She can’t remember what they talked about, except for one exchange about an assigned book, The Story of My Life, by Helen Keller:
“As great and courageous as she was,” Teresa said, “there must have been times where all she wanted was a fucking beer and a cigarette.”
“I doubt it,” Joel said. “Your life is not every woman’s life.”
True, that. Her life is not every woman’s life. Smart kid. Anyway, after three days they ended up just watching the soaps. Eventually, Joel demanded that he go back to school. There was an easy out for Teresa, were she another kind of mother: with Joel insisting on an education, she could’ve said she’d tried her best, she was washing her hands of it, if that was his decision he’d have to live with the consequences with no further hand-holding from her. But she could never do that; she would always hold her son’s hand.