This Is Not My Life

by Diane Schoemperlen

  “Are you okay?” he asked afterwards.

  This was what he always asked after one of our go-rounds. That was how I thought of them. They weren’t exactly arguments, at least not in any way I had ever experienced before. He called them “bumps.”

  “Are you okay? Are you going to be okay?”

  There was no right answer. Obviously I wasn’t okay and didn’t know yet if I was going to be okay or when. If I said, “Yes, I’m fine,” then I was lying and letting him think I didn’t mind being treated badly. If I said, “No, I’m not okay,” then he was angry all over again.

  We have all asked this question when we didn’t know what else to say, just the way I’d asked it of the woman crying in the Frontenac parking lot after she’d visited her son for the first time. We have all asked this question as a way of offering comfort, empathy, a friendly ear in a difficult situation. But Shane wasn’t attempting to comfort me. It was his signal that the argument was over, that he was feeling better and was now asking me to comfort him. It was never his fault for having upset me. It was only ever my fault for getting upset.

  Now he said all this upset was making his already too-high blood pressure skyrocket. He pointed to his eyes, which were bulging and glassy, and to the vein in his forehead, which was protruding and throbbing like a mutant heart—two things that always happened when his blood pressure was spiking. The implication seemed to be that if he had a stroke, that would be my fault too. I backed down. I knew if he could figure out how to cause himself to have a stroke and blame it on me,he would.

  The problem was never what he’d said or done. The problem was always that I had objected. He was innocent. I was a bitch. I don’t think Shane ever blamed himself for anything, whereas I tend to take the blame for pretty much everything. We were a perfect match.

  “Here we go.”

  And we were off.

  “Are you okay?”

  And we were done.

  WE WERE DRIVING. I don’t remember where we were going. It was morning. The roads were bad. There’d been some freezing rain in the night. We weren’t talking. I wasn’t thinking about anything. I was just trying to drive.

  Suddenly Shane said, “I took your light.”

  He’d always said I had a special light. Maybe now he could see that it was gone. Maybe now he could see me after all. At least that morning in the car on the slippery roads, at least for that moment he could see me.

  “Yes,” I said. “Yes, you did.”

  TWO OF MY NEIGHBOURS BOUGHT him a ticket to attend a hockey game with them. He was excited about this, but when the day came, he said maybe he shouldn’t go after all, maybe I was upset about him leaving me at home alone for the evening. I wondered why he couldn’t see how much I was looking forward to an evening by myself. I assured him that it was fine, I would be fine, I wanted him to go and enjoy himself. I knew his sudden reluctance had nothing to do with me. He was about to go out for the evening with two men he hardly knew, to do something he hadn’t done in more than thirty years. I knew he was afraid. But he went. And came home happier than I’d seen him since he moved in.

  HE ALMOST GOT A JOB AT A SMALL DINER close to both the house and the LifeLine office. In fact, the LifeLine workers and their clients were all regulars there, and Stuart had arranged his interview with the owner. It went well, Shane said. He felt sure they were going to hire him. When he hadn’t heard anything for a couple of days, he started walking over there two or three times a day to pester the owner. Both Stuart and I suggested this might not be a good idea. He should just be patient. He could not be patient. When he still hadn’t received a definite job offer after a week, he once again marched over to the diner. He was back home in less than ten minutes, grinning.

  “You look so happy,” I said. “Did you get the job?”

  “No,” he said proudly. “I just told the bastard to go fuck himself.”

  Whether we care to admit it or not, most of us tend to act in our own best interest. Not so for Shane. Not only was he a master at cutting off his nose to spite his face, but he was equally adept at shooting himself in the foot. Sometimes, by way of a double-jointed acrobatic exercise, he even managed to do both these things at once. I often thought it was no wonder he limped and couldn’t breathe at night.

  IN LIEU OF AN ACTUAL PAYING JOB, going back to Vinnie’s seemed like the next best thing. It would keep Shane occupied and out of the house for several hours a day. Instead of working in the kitchen, this time he’d be helping out in the warehouse, keeping the parking lot shovelled and the walkway salted, and riding in the van with Russell to pick up donations.

  He still had only his G1 licence and could not drive the car alone, so for the first few days, I drove him there in the morning and picked him up again later. This seemed like the natural and reasonable thing to do. It was a half-hour walk, it was so cold, often snowing, his leg was always more painful in the cold, and besides, driving him back and forth to Vinnie’s was a familiar habit.

  But then he said I was treating him like a child, that he was quite capable of getting himself there and back; he didn’t want or need a ride. I said fine, I was just trying to be helpful. He said he didn’t need my help. He said he would walk, and he did.

  Each day he called me three or four times from Vinnie’s to see what I was doing, once to complain that they weren’t doing the Christmas decorating right. Each day when he got home, he complained bitterly about the cold, the snow, the pain in his leg. I said nothing. He stopped going.

  IT WAS SHANE’S FIFTY-NINTH BIRTHDAY. We went out for dinner to the restaurant where Alex worked. He was off that night, had gone out for the evening with his new girlfriend. Between his job and his girlfriend, he was now home even less than he used to be. He was seldom there to see how badly things were going between Shane and me. When he was there, we did a good job of pretending everything was fine—just as we did the two or three times we went to Sunday mass at the convent and the Wednesday evening AA meeting.

  That night I had the steak sandwich medium-rare, and Shane had the bison burger, which he didn’t like very much. We had deep-fried cheesecake for dessert. Who on earth ever thought of deep-frying a cheesecake, we wondered, and how could they possibly have known it would be so delicious? We didn’t linger long afterwards, because Shane was worried about his parole condition that said he must not frequent places that made the majority of their income from alcohol. We had no way of knowing, of course, how much money this restaurant made from food and how much from alcohol. When he’d once asked Janice Mackie about this ambiguity, she said that to be sure, we should eat only at places that didn’t have a liquor licence, like KFC or McDonald’s.

  We’d been here for dinner before with no problems, and there was no problem this time either. But after we got home, he said he wondered if I’d taken him there hoping someone from CSC or the Parole Board would see him and he’d get into trouble. No, I had not.

  SHANE WAS SICK AGAIN, COUGHING, CHOKING, GAGGING. He was sleeping on the couch so he wouldn’t keep me awake. He got up often in the night. I could hear him wandering around the house. Then he would throw open the bedroom door, flick on the ceiling light, and stand in the doorway asking me questions.

  “Are you sleeping?”

  “Do you find me repulsive?”

  “Why are you sleeping?”

  “Why do you hate me?”

  “Why aren’t you sleeping?”

  I was beginning to wonder about the state of his mental health.

  Later he said, “I bet you were listening to me choking on the couch and wishing I would die.” Later still, I admitted that yes, the thought had crossed my mind.

  He went to see his new doctor. Not only had he been lucky enough to find a family physician when they were in short supply, but Dr. Chapman’s office was within walking distance of the house. Given that Shane had Barrett’s Esophagus, Dr. Chapman was very concerned. He said Shane needed to have some tests. Shane said he was sure he had cancer. Was that t
he day he drank twelve cans of Coke one right after the other, saying this was as good a way to get high as any?

  HE SAID, “WE CAN’T GO ON LIKE THIS. I’m going to get my own apartment.”

  I said, “I’ll help you look.”

  DR. QUINN WAS HERE AGAIN. He said he could make arrangements for Shane to return to the Peterborough house, where he could live temporarily while he made another plan. Shane said no, he’d already found an apartment. And he had—a basement bachelor in a building only four blocks from my house. I had some doubts about the apartment. The first and only place we’d looked at, it was a filthy disgusting mess featuring a backed-up toilet and a fridge full of rotten food. I had doubts about the building too, it having a reputation as the residence of miscellaneous criminals, drug dealers, and escorts. But Shane was determined, and the Parole Office had already approved it. I still cannot imagine why they approved it.

  Shane would take possession of the apartment on December 1. I did not point out that this was the second anniversary of the day I gave him the I-love-you card, the day we had deemed to be the official beginning of our relationship.

  The plan, as we explained it to Dr. Quinn, was that while living separately, we would continue our relationship on a “dating” basis, just as he had once suggested. I started to cry when telling him that Shane didn’t trust me. When he was still in Peterborough, there was sometimes an undercurrent of jealousy, but he had managed to keep it under control. Now he was accusing me of being with another man every time I left the house. Why had his jealousy become so extreme now that we were living together? What had I ever done to make him distrust me? Later Shane said he was acting that way because he was so afraid of losing me. If he was afraid of losing me, why didn’t he treat me better instead of worse?

  Dr. Quinn sternly told me to stop crying. “Let it go,” he said. “You’re hanging onto the past. Stop talking about it. Just let it go. It doesn’t matter now.”

  THE NIGHT BEFORE SHANE MOVED OUT, there was me saying, “I never meant to hurt you. I never tried to hurt you on purpose.”

  There was him saying, “Me neither.”

  I couldn’t for the life of me see how this was true. Maybe it wasn’t true when I said it either.

  We were sitting on the couch in our pyjamas holding hands. There had been some crying on both our parts. That morning we’d been to the first meeting of the healing circle Valerie had arranged. But it was too late. In the morning, Stuart from LifeLine would arrive with the small moving van he’d borrowed for the day.

  STUART HAD TAKEN SHANE BACK to Ontario Works, and this time he came away with a start-up cheque and the full monthly benefit. As a welfare recipient, he would now have to pay only two dollars for each prescription he needed.

  With some of the start-up money, he bought a new mattress and box spring from the Salvation Army Thrift Store. I contributed what I could to furnishing the apartment: a loveseat and a large armchair we no longer used, a wooden folding table, bedding, towels, curtains, a set of dishes. His relatives contributed an old TV set and a VCR, a box of videos, a small bookcase, coffee mugs, cutlery, pots and pans. I helped him arrange everything, and then we went to Canadian Tire to buy the items he was missing: shower curtain, toaster, bath mat, plunger, two Rubbermaid tubs in which he’d keep his clothes until he got a dresser.

  We were both more relaxed than we’d been in weeks, months maybe. I went home feeling hopeful. Maybe this new arrangement was going to work.

  TWO DAYS LATER, I TOOK HIM THE PUPPY, MAGGIE. This was the plan: she would live with him, while Nelly, Max, and Sammy would stay with me and Alex. I packed up her toys, her bed, her leash, her dishes, some food, a bag of treats. I felt some sadness leaving her there, and when I arrived back home without her, the others, even Max and especially Nelly, were confused and distressed. But Maggie had been with us for only a month and a half—I figured we’d adjust to this change soon enough.

  Getting them all settled in at bedtime that night was difficult—they were taking turns wandering around the house looking for her. This was repeated when I got up in the morning. But before I could figure out what to do about it, the phone rang. Shane said he couldn’t keep Maggie; I’d have to come and get her. He said she cried all night and peed on the brand-new bath mat four times. I did not point out that she was just a puppy and did that here too—the peeing, not the crying. So I got dressed and went over, bringing her and all her belongings back in the car. At home the reunion with the others was joyful and exuberant, and she was not the only one of them who peed on the floor in all the excitement.

  FOR THE FIRST TWO WEEKS OF DECEMBER, almost every day Shane needed a ride somewhere. How was it that when we lived together, he resented me trying to help him with anything, but now he wanted my help with something every day? And how was it that he couldn’t just knock on the door like anybody else would? Why did he have to pound on it as if it were an emergency or perhaps the Gestapo?

  He needed a ride to the food bank. He needed a ride to the welfare office. He needed a ride to the Salvation Army Thrift Store, because he was cold at night and wanted more blankets. He needed a ride to Canadian Tire, because there was a rat in his apartment, and he wanted to buy poison and a trap. He needed a ride to the police station to do his monthly check-in. He needed a ride to the cell phone store, because his phone was stolen when he left it on the table at the downtown Tim Hortons when he went to the washroom.

  I could have said no to any or all of these requests, but I didn’t. Although I was no longer clear about our relationship status, whether we were living together or not, I still cared about him, and as far as I knew, he still had no one else to help him. On many levels, I felt responsible for him. I didn’t want to see him fail and end up back in jail.

  IN THE BUNDLE OF TOWELS I’D GIVEN HIM, I had accidentally included Nelly’s towel, the large white one I’d wrapped her in when I had to put her in a kennel for a week when my father died in Thunder Bay. With a permanent marker, I’d printed her name in large letters on the towel. Shane was enraged when he discovered I’d given him the dog’s towel. He called and demanded to know what was I trying to say—that he was no better than a dog?

  There was the matter of perceived slights. He was always ready to be provoked, seeing insult, offence, disrespect when there was none intended. He would fasten on the smallest thing—an offhand remark, a sideways glance, an inadvertent sigh—then chew on it, stew on it, nurse it, feed it, foster it until it grew into a full-blown rage. There was never much chance of convincing him that what he’d perceived as a slight was not. As far as the towel went, I didn’t even try. Considering how much I loved and doted on my Nelly, he should have been flattered. Considering how often he’d complained that I treated the pets better than I treated him, he should have been pleased.

  HE STARTED TALKING ABOUT A WOMAN named Linda Porter, whom he’d met at the downtown Tim Hortons. With some pride, he said she’d come over to his apartment and taken all her clothes off. But he said nothing happened. He said he never touched her. He said he missed me so much, he wasn’t interested. I found this hard to believe. I did not point out that this wasn’t the “dating” arrangement we had talked about with Dr. Quinn. I was upset but did not say so. Maybe it was for the best if he found someone else. Or maybe he was just making it up to see how I would react, testing me as he often did. Maybe there was no such person as Linda Porter at all, with or without her clothes on.

  WHEN WE LIVED TOGETHER, he never once took a book off the shelf. It was as if the wall of books in the living room that had once moved him to tears was now nothing more than wallpaper. But after he moved out, suddenly his interest in reading was revived. He started going to the library several times a week. He talked about all the books he was reading. When I asked him later why he didn’t read when he lived with me, he said it was because he knew I wanted him to. He said he would read when he wanted to, not because I wanted him to.

  HE SAID HE WENT DOWNTOWN TO THE ROYAL, a seedy t
avern he’d frequented when he was young. He said he went there to “talk to his ghosts.” He said he had one beer and left. He said no, he had a Coke and left. He said no, he never went there at all. He said he was just testing me to see what I’d say about him breaking his parole conditions. He was twisted about his conditions, even though they were the same as they’d always been. Why did he always have to answer to them? I pointed out that we all have someone to whom we must answer, that we all have conditions by which we must abide. Out here we call them “laws.”

  EVERY DAY THERE WERE MANY PHONE CALLS. His moods were erratic and unpredictable. Sometimes he wasn’t making sense. I had no idea: Was he drinking? Was he doing drugs? Was he having some kind of mental breakdown? Was he trying to scare me? He could tell that sometimes I was afraid. He said he would never hurt me. He reminded me that his violent episodes were long in the past. By way of reassurance, he said that even then, they hadn’t taken place after a long slow buildup of anger but because he’d snapped. I did not find this reassuring.

  CHRISTMAS. AGAIN. Alex and I put up the small tree in the living room. I’d hoped one of Shane’s relatives would invite him for dinner, but they didn’t. I was worried about him being alone at Christmas, so I suggested he join us for turkey. He had already admitted that he’d considered killing himself after he moved out. I was afraid spending Christmas alone might well push him over the edge.

  Alex and I opened our presents in the morning. Shane came over in the early afternoon. He was cheerful and relaxed. Alex went to meet his friends at the only downtown bar open on Christmas afternoon. It was their tradition to gather there each year to celebrate the birthday of one of the girls, who was born on Christmas Day. His new girlfriend had gone home for the holidays. He’d be back in time for dinner.

  After he left, Shane and I prepared the turkey and put it in the oven, peeled the carrots and potatoes. Then I got out the Scrabble game and set it up on the coffee table, thinking this would be a pleasant way to pass the rest of the afternoon. Shane sat on the couch beside me, but he wasn’t interested in Scrabble. He tried to get romantic. He thought we should spend the afternoon in bed. I refused. He put on his coat and left.