Because Iris is a soldier still.
Some maniac sergeant, a composite of more men than one, had been running drills inside Iris’s cortex. Land mines lay limp along the path, live wires from a previous onslaught swung and sparked overhead. Dangerous connections were being made in these instances of negligence. Iris’s safety network had been compromised and Jo could not stand adjacent waiting for all to collapse under the weight of such a reckless surge.
No one would ever fault Jo for giving up.
Trying to revive Iris was like breathing life into a half-mannequin. Jo was just winding herself as air blew out the missing bottom. There was nothing to catch it, there was nowhere for it to go but out. Jo had tried sentiment but the ass is well and truly out of her best friend. She had even tried to manipulate Iris’s own sense of loyalty, knowing well enough it was the same tactic the enemy was employing.
Dirty tricks left nothing for a person but more dirty tricks.
So Jo had powered through. Facebook posts. Text attachments. Emails with images imbedded. Iris pushing Harry in his stroller. Reading Robert Munsch on the couch. Baking cookies in their pyjamas. All of them, half asleep every which way across the sofa on a snow day. Iris convinced she was bleeding to death and watching The Princess Bride. Harry hanging over the side of the tub trying to fill a hot-water bottle for Aunt Iris’s bad belly. Each photo implored Iris to remember better.
Remember who we were before it was every day John says John says John says . . .
Remember yourself, Iris.
Jo had launched a re-education campaign running counter to the brainwashing onslaught of false memories and preferred realities chosen to suit John’s own manipulative purpose. She had been determined not to let him convince Iris that this was as good as she’d get and all she deserved. Jo was certain Iris deserved more. Just like she is certain that Iris is beautiful, even though her friend refuses to make eye contact in photographs because she is so positive now of her own hideousness. John is a very bad man. Jo thinks he is the worst kind of human.
Iris had said that Jo would not feel this way toward John if things had been different.
And Jo nearly passes out in rage each time this or some semblance of this is uttered because of course she would feel differently about him if he had been different. But he had not been different! This was John Fisher! How John Fisher is in the real world! Jo judges his actual behaviour. Not his bullshit bullshit bullshit theories.
A nervous breakdown is a real concern, Jo had thought, as she watched Iris shrink further out of view. Barely in the frame at all.
All pictures of her these days are of a woman searching for something more promising out of shot. Jo detests this sideways view of Iris while John peers out confidently from newspapers commending him for feeding the homeless as if this was of his own inclination. As if John ever had a good idea in his life that wasn’t in some manner executed by some smarter woman well pressed at the end of his thumb.
Pulse, pulse, pulse.
And this makes Jo crazy.
She yells at her laptop while surfing the interwebs during a Netflix marathon. A photo of them posed around the polished kitchen pops up in her newsfeed. Jo coughed and spat tea at the sight. It dribbled down her chin as she scrolled down to reveal Iris and George flanking John like unknowing sister wives. John with his hands on them both. Jo had called Iris, yelling.
Why are you in that fucking photo with them?
John will have Iris babysitting George’s kids just as he already has her walking George’s dogs. Jo is sure of it. He will have them all around the same table eating Sunday supper like some alternative family off the documentary channel.
It’s not fucking polyamorous if no one has agreed to it, Jo wants to scream every time she is forced to be nice to John’s face.
He will have Iris paired up with some meek fellow also in his employ who will be regularly sent out of town for every food festival and cooking show within reason. He will marry Iris off like a piece of cattle, for cover. He will discourage Iris’s own family. He will talk about her commitment to art and the toll of kids on women’s bodies.
Auntie Iris, sitting pretty at the back of the room for baptisms and graduations, would run a kind of concealed life so that John was never for a moment without a woman to tend to his every physical want and emotional need.
John needs a woman focused on him at all times for fear he will disappear. His loner status is a fake. A facade. Another unreal thing about him.
Jo can tell and so tried to tell Iris. But Iris could not hear her. And it only takes one call to Child, Youth and Family Services to ruin your life. Ruin their lives.
So Jo abdicated. Removed herself and Harry from the fucked up picture.
The last time Iris saw Harry was in a centre city grocery store. Not Jo’s preferred grocery store in the east end with the better liquor and finer deli meat selection but a Sobeys brimming with welfare attire. Jo’s carnivorous tendencies and preference for blended French wines did not typically bring her into the heart of town, where carts were well stocked with cases of Vienna sausages and canned pop.
Iris had spotted Harry at the other end of the bakery and so hovered amongst the proteins, staring blankly at a rack of ribs as if that were something she would conceivably eat.
He was so much taller. The last vestige of his baby fat was pulled tight along the lean and long limbs protruding through pants legs soaked through and salt stained on the bottom. One partially tucked into a boot, the other frayed and dragging along the floor. His coat was open because even as a child he despised the sticky feeling inherited from his mother, who could not wear certain colours or fabrics to a formal event due to nervous perspiration. But it was her Harry. Slightly dishevelled, cheeks flushed and sweating with his coat pulled back over his shoulders in that cool way kids do. He was wearing a hamburger backpack Iris despised for sheer ugliness though she knew Harry likely loved it because he would think it a great horrible joke to have a burger on his back. Such a funny kid.
And Iris had felt akin to a kidnapper without the courage to kidnap.
A man Iris had never seen before approached Harry, who did not look entirely sure or impressed with the interaction. And the man, mild enough looking, reached out and ruffled Harry’s hair in a far too intimate manner for a man Iris did not recognize.
Who the fuck was this man touching the child she loved so much?
Iris had never felt such panic or helplessness.
Here was this child who she felt a great kindness toward being touched by a stranger. And there was nothing she could do. The full gravity of what had been taken from her bore down on Iris as she stood there holding a large box of tampons. Paper applicator because Jo claimed the world did not need more plastic in it.
Besides, Jo had added with a sternly raised eyebrow, a bit of cardboard is not the worst thing Iris is after putting in there, now is it?
So Iris had tried to discern Harry’s relationship to the unknown person by body language alone until a woman approached them. The woman was familiar. Iris had searched her brain in earnest to place her. She was from Jo’s work. She was a work friend.
And just like that she felt entirely foolish.
Jo had replaced her already. Someone far more suitable than Iris. Really, they had not been a good match. Iris was unfit for polite company. She always said the wrong thing. A regular line breacher. Not like this new woman friend who looked capable of navigating with ease the situations that brought Iris down. What was worse still was how dumb she felt because she had believed she had also been important,
a special person in Jo and Harry’s lives. She had been missing them so hard and assumed they were missing her in return.
But of course they didn’t miss her.
Harry was just a little kid. Little kids don’t care for the whereabouts of grown women. Friends of their mothers. What foolishness Iris had agonized over. Worrying that he would feel betrayed. Or abandoned. Worrying that he might think he had done something wrong. Or that she didn’t like him. Had no time for him anymore. Because it was not true. Iris was not like that. She had always made time, found time, sorted it out. Before John had upended her life she had promised to never cause the same kind of harm her father had caused.
Iris breaks promises to herself.
Here she was, in and out of Harry’s life, an unreliable actor on stage spewing bits of dialogue to make herself feel better. These things kept her awake on the nights John stayed home. She had been in anguish over Harry. But here he was, fine now. No worse for wear at all. Happy-looking. Life goes on. He is at the grocery store with his mom’s new friend. Nothing to it. No big deal. How silly is Iris to concern herself with lost attachments.
And then Harry had seen her. And had run up to her calling her name. Wrapped his arms around her legs like it was any day and no time had passed.
Iris, Iris, you haven’t seen me in a long while!
And Iris thought she would wail in pain like someone struck in the stomach, or maybe say the wrong thing like a person incapacitated, so she put her hands on his head and said nothing at all until the new friend caught up, saying they had to leave immediately.
But this is my friend Iris.
The woman saying she knew, knows, exactly who Iris is, was, this information a warning to Iris, before stating that Iris also knows, knew, why they had to go. A warning and a threat. Like Iris was someone not to be trusted. And Iris wanted to yell back the fuck up, lady but it had been years since she’d used adult language in front of Harry.
The last time in Jo’s car, when he echoed traffic was a bitch from his car seat.
At first laughing, and then agreeing that his language acquisition had caught up with their dirty mouths. Not long after, Jo had stopped “taking out the garbage” during the day. And then taking it out at night. And then she only took out the garbage when she was loaded. And then not at all. She never drank on weeknights anymore or ate dirty food when she was hungover. She was rarely hungover because Harry had memory now. Harry will remember, Jo had told Iris, and she wanted what he remembered to be nice.
Iris still smokes.
Slowly. As if each inhale is an inadequate attempt to set a dumpster fire inside herself. This behaviour is most disturbing during times of high anxiety. Iris is convinced no one likes her anymore because of what she has done or allowed to happen. Women can be hard on each other and themselves. Jo’s inability to forgive her has pushed her paranoia clear off the cliff. Jo has always forgiven her. Jo is the forgiveness gauge.
Iris has blackened Jo’s freshly painted ceiling with a candle while having weird sex in her bed. Forgiven.
Iris has gotten them pulled over by the police for singing “The Sweater Song” out a moving car window. Forgiven.
She has thrown up lemon chicken in a bathtub and stolen children’s toys from a party. She has taken acid before a formal dinner and swiped the host’s nicer shoes from the front foyer after declaring she didn’t even eat fucking lamb. Iris has puked in houseplants, insulted family members, lost a pet frog, one time she got into a screaming match at a wedding rehearsal. Forgiven. Forgiven. Forgiven. She was crazy hungover, possibly residually high, at Harry’s birth. She maintained a safe distance from Jo’s mother who insisted that it didn’t matter if she stood on the other side of the jesus parkway.
You got eyes on you like a pair of dollar store snow globes, Iris Anne. I’m not stunned.
Iris was thinking of her long listed trespasses as Harry rambled at random over all the things that had happened since he had last seen her. The woman, Jo’s friend from work, then handed a baguette to the man holding Five Alive as Iris knelt to zip Harry’s coat. Harry knew not to inquire further as to what Iris knew that he did not. Children reared in conflict always know why someone has not been invited to their birthday party.
But he could not help but try another tactic so attempted sussing out promises. This was a decent strategy because Iris didn’t say she would do things she had no intention of doing, so he fired at her all the options he could think including a Minecraft marathon or watching Inside Out again or playing cars or, or, or, which soon turned to bribery when he started suggesting things that Iris liked to do.
This meant he was desperate because he did not all the time like reading rhyming books or looking at the planets. New woman friend was tugging at his coat a little by the time he reached painting, which was the last ditch to fall in. Harry was tumbling quick when he suggested painting. We could paint pictures, he had said, or walk in the woods, or practise guitar, which was the most heartbreaking because Harry hated guitar. He wanted a drum kit. But he needed to know when he would see her again. Because kids like to know these kinds of things. But Iris couldn’t say. She didn’t know herself. She worried maybe never.
Maybe Jo would never forgive her.
I am just sick of listening to you. I don’t fucking care if I ever hear John Fisher’s fucking name ever again in my fucking life, Iris. And don’t, don’t tell me you can’t get another job, you tried for what, like, three weeks. Any fucking job would be better than working with that manipulative dickhole every day. He is ruining everyone’s life. He is a fucking life ruiner. And don’t tell me you love him, or he loves you, or whatever bullshit excuse he has convinced you of this week because it is lies. You are lying. He has made a liar out of you. And that’s the great fun for him, the appeal, the fantastic fucking trick. He makes good people into liars because it makes him feel powerful or smart or important or less like a raging sociopath. I just cannot listen to you talk about it anymore, I’m done, done! It is fucking torture, it is worse than torture, it is boring. I know what you are going to say before you even say it, and no, I don’t want to read that jesus phone of yours full of riddles and nonsense, my good grief, he has made you fucking predictable. I mean, that’s a jesus crime unto itself! Worse than the wreckage! Worse than the hurt! Talking to you is fucking tedious. You never have anything interesting to say anymore. I hate that guy. Hate. Him.
And Iris knows she should probably hate him too.
* * *
Iris is so lost in her pitiful replay, she doesn’t see Major David flagging her like she’s the last illuminated cab at Mardi Gras.
The look of frustration on his face is not mayoral. The trifecta sitting with him seem thrilled. They are practically aroused at the thought of Iris receiving an earned tongue-lashing. She never came over to ask them if they needed anything else and they needed lots of things, including being asked regularly about their needs.
Iris had not thought to do so. She had not really thought at all. She just stood right there for everyone to witness her not serving them. Instead, they watched her quietly fold the same napkin repeatedly. Everything was taking forever. Not that they were in a big rush.
But still, they shouldn’t have to wait.
Purple fashion glasses supposes Iris is body stoned. It is like a kind of paralysis, she explains to the others with a lot of confidence for a woman who hasn’t smoked up in three decades.
The table seethes in anticipation. Maybe they would even get their lunch for free! Though the look of defeat spreading through Iris’s body as she walks toward their table is deflating.
And this makes them aggressive, too. She is ruining everything about their lunch. She is even ruining their desire to scold her.
Purple glasses thinks Iris is obviously fragile and probably has mental health issues. She should not be working with the public if she is so oversensitive. She should be doing something else away from people.
You shouldn’t be a server.
I’m not.
Well . . . but you are.
No. I’m not.
My dear girl, you are serving us right now.
I am.
Which means you are a server.
No, it doesn’t.
What do you mean no? What does she mean no?
Iris doesn’t even know how she has come to serve.
Was it John? Or George? Her father? The past? Was it something lacking in herself?
Major David is blistering now, shifting in his chair, making a lot of eye contact with his table mates while they discuss Iris’s behaviour as if she is not standing just alongside their table. They take turns firing off complaints as to how they have been personally let down. This is met with smiling now, totally out of context, which further aggrieves them. Major David’s volume ratchets due to acute embarrassment.
He demands to know what Iris is smiling at.
But Iris doesn’t answer because she can’t hear him.
Iris has gone underwater.
Like a person on the bottom of a pool, Iris is held down by some unknowable force, looking up through the shimmering blue crest at a surface just beyond her reach. She kicks and stretches and struggles. She tries to retain breath yet it escapes her. She watches the bubbles break.
Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club Page 19