I can’t believe you did nothing. I can’t believe it.
But Damian can believe it. He is well aware of his capacity.
One time, in the beginning, long ago, when he first started doing all this, Damian cut lines on a framed family photo that had hung in his hallway. He was angry with his father for being his father and there was a sick twinge of satisfaction in his underbelly when he leaned over to see himself, straw in hand, snorting coke right from his dad’s smiling face. They had been on vacation in Ontario. Some theme park. His sister liked the rides. His mother, the games of chance. Indicative maybe of the future.
The photograph had been handed around so all might enjoy the morose satisfaction of hauling lines from these friendly family faces. While they did so, Damian recalled, in a chilly, drippy way, that his father had yelled at him for pulling the bottom of his T-shirt up through the neck to cup his chest like his older sister. His dad had yelled that boys don’t wear their fucking shirts like that. And mostly Damian wondered why no one seemed to mind Melanie’s slim bits on display.
Or why this was somehow worse than taking his shirt right off. Because didn’t his father also yell at him to swim shirtless when he tried to hide his soft middle under a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle T-shirt. Those nearly naked turtles were ripped and ate nothing but pizza. It was a dream. Fucking a Turtle: the sum total of pre-pubescent Damian’s ultimate fantasy. And everything became ninja. Bath ninja. Homework ninja. Breakfast ninja. He was totally aware of his inner ninja before that weak hip hop song ever became popular.
Jesus. You can’t even dance to the likes of it.
And Damian is a dance god. He can do things with a glow stick that would blow a straight and sober man’s mind, which was the whole point in the first place. Practising his moves along with the MuchMusic Video Countdown because he wasn’t allowed to go to parties. He wasn’t invited to parties but he wasn’t allowed to go to them, either. Melanie went on, though. Apparently the possibility of her sucking dick in a downstairs half bathroom did not present the same moral dilemmas, so she was allowed her small sexual freedoms on the weekend while Damian was confined to an upstairs bedroom across the hall from his parents. And then, from his mother.
Because, you know, his dad left. Because, you know, dads can leave.
Though most did not leave like Damian’s old man, who found a lawyer, got the papers signed and remarried in eighteen months.
Most men just went out west and got a secret girlfriend. Maybe a few secret kids.
But they maintained the facade. Iris’s dad, who had never fully fucked off, still sent the occasional late birthday card with a twenty stuffed into it. There had been a Tarantino box set another time, a used Tim Hortons gift card taped to the side of some chocolates just recently. Iris and Damian had howled over the pitifulness to subvert the sting. Though her dad’s partial fuck off seemed less appealing when Damian found himself caught rubbing the shoulders of a soft, weeping Iris after discovering her hiding behind the dumpsters.
Iris love, what’s wrong?
Nothing. It’s nothing.
You’re chain-smoking behind a garbage can.
Maybe I’m getting my period.
Iris, my dick doesn’t make me a moron. Or at least not all the time.
Damian —
Smile! That was a joke about me being a cock-hound. You love those!
I do.
You can tell me anything, you know? No matter what.
I just need a couple minutes to collect myself.
And Damian never has wise words to offer so he just checks on her tables during these collections.
Still, Damian thinks he would have preferred what her dad did. Gentle Jesus, ambiguity seemed kinder than his own dad, who was a definitive sort of man. Which is to say the only sort of man there could be that was deserving of respect. Any other way of being was childish. To be malleable was to be womanly. There was nothing worse than to be a woman or a child, be it girl or boy.
Damian was constantly negotiating being one or the other or both.
And his father, like fathers of the day, only took note when poor Damian stopped over onto some aspect of girlhood accidentally. Then it was all wuss and pansy and snot and bawling because Damian had no interest in bikes and skates and lakes and ponds. Eventually, he would cultivate an interest in these things, though no interest suitable for discussion with his father. Or any man in his family.
Moving to town where men studied sociology and were vegetarians without threats of violence was a great relief.
Eat that jesus Hamburger Helper and be thankful I don’t put my fist in your forehead.
But Damian tries not to think on this. Instead, he never stops talking. Talks about nothing. Nothing anyone will remember later. And staying out all night proves he is still young. Lighting another cigarette is evidence of immortality. Age and death are lurking in the dark alcove next to Damian’s mother’s current address and Tom.
Don’t stop on Tom. Think of anything else.
Melanie doe-eyed at the Miller Centre after getting vacuumed out the first time.
His mother sipping the same warm Pepsi on that same warm stool for six warm hours.
His father’s second wife confidently carrying his little brother’s cleats across the pitch in her small manicured hand.
His father’s new mistress quietly crying in the cereal aisle grasping a box of oatmeal chocolate chip granola bars.
Even his dad the day he debated the way people were born, even that was a better train of thought to board. Anything was better than Tom. That would bring him down. Every night is but a fetus. Any night could be a babe. Given the correct assistance.
So Damian routinely opens his mouth and releases steady streams of bullshit words into lamplit rooms. Rooms just like the one he woke up in today. He does so with sufficient amounts of flare, befitting his handsome face.
He can think of nothing else to do.
* * *
Iris is freezing now.
She should have put some food in her body before setting out for The Hazel. But she never wants to eat anymore. She can remember the feeling of being hungry. The insatiable awareness of wanting breakfast. Bacon. Toast. An egg. The preparation of feeding herself being a tiny ritual that gave her a sense of joyous capability.
Now she just stands with the door ajar wondering if she will ever feel so inclined to keep herself upright. It is a chore now as she has no interest in consuming anything. She makes attempts with her favourite things. Green curry. Fish cakes.
But the banana bread spoils in the breadbox having just the one slice carved off.
A piece force-fed herself over the sink while still warm to make the time spent baking mean something. Though it is little time at all. Iris can make a coffee cake in twenty minutes. It’s not much of a bother. John has taught her how to wash up as she goes, having just the mixer to wipe down when the loaves are in the oven. Her tiny apartment reeking of a happy home.
She will throw everyone off the scent.
Sometimes, on her days off, Iris sits on the kitchen floor and lets the sun set over her by allowing its shiny beams to move upon her face. On these days, nothing seems worth celebrating. Enjoy your time off, they say.
But this is when time feels the most on. She wonders how widows in rocking chairs gather the will to survive. Perhaps they cannot reach the light fixture. Perhaps they’ve no rope. Iris, though, comes from a long line of resourceful stock. She thinks an extension cord would do in a pinch.
Her ability to rodeo the most heinous thinking has always made Jo uncomfor
table.
They both pretend this kind of talk is a lark, but Jo confiscates the extension cords anyway.
Iris would certainly not off herself in any of the ways she has mentioned. That would be boring. Besides, she has lots of time to figure out something more original.
Iris used to fill whole days with tasks. Her life stretching out in front. So much to do. Clean the toilet. Hand wash her lace. Visit Jo. Call her mother. Endless was the potential for distraction. But there is nothing left now for that.
Fuck the toilet. No need for lace. Jo won’t speak to her.
She makes her mother cry.
She has started watching every show and turned it off. Books are bought and then forgotten. Projects lie about in half steps as a laundry mountain grows steady on the couch. She foresees an eruption onto the floor, which is covered in salt. Iris hardly takes her boots off in the porch anymore. She drops her coat. Finds the remote. Lies down. Iris negotiates with herself regularly.
She will waste this day but not the next.
She will do all the things to make up for this indulgent self-loathing. She will shower. Dress herself. Clean. Paint. She will paint all day. It will make her feel alive. Remind her of who she is. But she has no confidence in it. She paints hundreds of seagulls.
She asked her father once why everyone hated gulls. They looked fine enough. Tidy and fit. Their colour palette rather conservative compared to birds on TV. Wasn’t this something to be generally respected? Seagulls seemed to be birds who knew their place. Little flash. Few fancy feathers. They put on no airs. But her father and uncles did not appreciate these sensible outfits and used them for target practice when birding. Something to fire away at when turrs were elusive.
Seagulls were plentiful and therefore of little consequence.
A bit of sport in bouts of boredom. Hardly worth the bullet.
Her father said they were no good for nothing. Not fit to eat. Shoot one and another would appear. He felt plagued by them. Harassed by their constant screeching. He had made the mistake of feeding them scraps, but feeding gulls just attracts more gulls. Shooting them quietened his rage.
Iris paints their beaks spread wide. Eyes ravenous. Or at least she starts to. She can achieve the first step in her artistic process. And for a time, she thinks it will be all right. She can still do the thing she said she would do. The thing she did well once. Iris would do the thing her mother had sacrificed all her social currency to secure.
Iris almost did not get to do the thing because: they had no money.
She had laboured for months over her OCAD application in near secrecy for fear her cousins would laugh at her. Iris’s want for acceptance was equal parts determined and fragile. One wrong word uttered about her portfolio would see it tossed in the stove. So she didn’t speak of it to anyone. Her mother, though, took note of her quiet obsession, grateful her teenage daughter was scribbling away at the table.
She couldn’t get knocked up in the kitchen.
Cynthia knew the time spent on drawing the best saltbox house, the deliberations undergone on a horizon, she clocked the investment Iris had made in herself. And when the letter came, it was her hands Iris grabbed up, the sheet of paper crumpled in their joined fists as young Iris bounced up and down blurting words: Toronto, art, downtown, school, painter. Her mother knew nothing of these words but she knew want. She could easily identify desire in this young woman she had made. Made all by herself really. The pride she felt stung every part of her. It echoed through to her fingertips. It scratched her eyelids in the nicest way.
But the initial student loan assessment said no to Iris, it said you do not get to do the thing.
On the grounds that her father made far too much money. Never mind that in reality they lived in a rickety trailer on some windy point. Never mind her mother pumped gas in the freezing rain and blowing snow. Or that they never saw a cent of the hundred and fifty grand the government said Sid was meant to share. The student loan people said no, and there was not enough time to debate, and that meant she could not go and would have to reapply, and the grief Iris felt was a teenage girl grief so massive and incomprehensible her mother could not bear it. Iris would go to art school. He owed her that. It was Iris’s money after all.
And Cynthia, who had long since given up making demands on men, called her ex-husband and made some. And when he hung up on her, she called back and made some more. And when he hung up on her again, she made threats. When finally he refused to answer the phone, she called his sister next door. She said she would sue him for every red cent of back child support he owed if he did not pay for art school.
She did not give a rat’s ass about his truck payments or how much he owed on the fishing licence he bought and never used. Gentle Jesus, what did he even want with a fishing licence, there was no fish left!
She said she had contacted a lawyer even though she knew no lawyers. She said she would tell everyone he never took care of his own, though she would never give the women over the road the satisfaction of admitting she knew the extent of who he did not take care of.
She said she would ruin him, she said a lot of stuff, some of it was even true.
Iris’s mother made her full intentions known well and good, all the while aware that this display would result in social isolation. She would never again be invited over for Jiggs dinner or asked in to play cards on a Saturday night. Her former female in-laws would forget to tell her about ACW meetings over to the church basement. She would just see the cars parked there in the evening. They would not need another forward on the floor hockey team. She would go for walks by herself out the branch on full view of the cove. They would shun her right and proper for siphoning money out of their Sidney, who would boast that he was paying for Iris to learn painting in Toronto. After he filed for insolvency years later, he would give up the bragging for blaming. It was a tidy narrative that allowed the cove’s continued grudge. They would hold Cynthia responsible for Sid losing his truck until Newfoundland men ceased driving trucks.
So basically, forever.
Her mother’s ostracism was the cost of her big city education, and Cynthia was being poorly repaid for her investment. Iris was squandering her new start for a man who had told her he loved her on Christmas Day only to break her heart on New Year’s.
In a text.
Her phone told her he loved her while she was at her mother’s and pleaded she return.
I can’t wait to see you, I need you, come back to me, please, her phone said.
And this was enough. Sadly, more than enough. He knew that, of course. He knew she would accept even less actually. Iris would accept so little. And she left her mother waving in her nightgown from the porch step to crawl back to town through a blizzard at barely seventy kilometres an hour. No snow tires. Hazard lights flashing half the way. Sleet and slush pushing against the bottom of her little Golf. All those cars lining up behind her. Perhaps they thought her their fearless leader setting pace through the storm. Or perhaps they all hated her. She had angled the rear mirror to the car’s ceiling because she didn’t want to see what lay in her wake.
Iris only ever wanted someone to look forward to her.
On Boxing Day: he fucked her.
On New Year’s Day: he fucked his wife.
George had been out of town for the holidays.
Iris feels so guilty and ashamed. Embarrassed and angry. Worse still, she is another stupid woman chasing after a man. A shit human and horrible daughter who abandons her mother to a cold trailer at Christmas, the windows rattling against the frames, every view of the ocean raging towar
d the road, gale force winds pushing the sea right to her door, into her mouth, suffocating her.
Iris let her mother down. Keeps letting her down.
Iris let herself down. Keeps letting herself down.
There is so far down to go.
But if she could still paint everything would be okay. This act of redemption would prove that some things remain intact after the heart is damaged. Her hands still move as they did before, her wrists are still fluent. Iris worried this learned skill had been destroyed. She had struggled to even shave her legs. Nicking and breaking the skin like a twelve-year-old sneaking a razor. That one time she shaved her arms.
That had been a bad idea dressed up as good one. Iris has a lot of those.
She thinks, if I do this, I will feel that and that will feel good.
But Iris has a crippled ticker. It is not ticking along at optimum ticker speed. She constantly tries to figure out the exact moment it stopped keeping pace, but tired tickers wear down gradual. Iris has caught herself tapping her breastbone with her forefinger. She will rap on her sternum with a fully closed fist.
Sometimes she has sat naked on the tub’s edge with the moisturizer in her hand, staring down at the dryness of her sheared self.
She would think, everything is cracking apart.
But she could not summon the will to press on, she could provide herself zero relief.
Iris with not even the energy to masturbate.
But hey, at least she’s not day drinking.
Iris no longer feels feelings fully. She knew the red tulips inside the grocery store florist cage were her favourite. So she bought them, brought them home, trimmed and placed them in a clear glass vase atop the table and stared at them, knowing they held beauty but not feeling its presence. Cut flowers were a joy for her. She attempted to purchase this joy even though she could not afford it. But she had to have something to hold her in place.
Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club Page 6