They stayed.
What happened to me is a part of who I am. I know this. At the end of my last relationship, what happened feels like all that I am—that all I had to offer was pain. Though I now know this isn’t true, I still have to work so very hard to hold on to his voice telling me that I was so much more than the pain. That I was Beauty for him too. When I look over at my parents sometimes and feel yes, I want to live in answer to a question I didn’t even know I was asking, I know it doesn’t go away. When I’m in a Black—the kind where I can’t get out of bed for days—and my little stepdaughter wants me to sing to her and I can, I know why that is a remarkable thing. I know it when my brother laughs out loud and I feel more grateful than I should.
No, it doesn’t go away. But it changes. The Blacks still come, but now I recognize when they’re coming and sometimes I even know what to do to stop them. Sometimes I can’t stop them, sometimes I have to make a cut—a cut that I can see, that articulates, that calms the silent screaming. But I haven’t had to for a long time.
And when after a day filled with life and love I get into bed and my legs start to shake unstoppably—looking for reassurance that they are not being held at the ankles, that they are free—my heart breaks a little at my husband’s voice speaking to me ever so quietly, breaks at my need to hear him, so that even as that part of me shakes, the other parts of me fall to sleep to the sound of his voice.
And that’s okay.
A woman I call my sister, Tina, still believes in her Creator. She believes that God was raped with me that night; that he couldn’t answer. I want to believe that, but I don’t. But I want to. I still feel Hiding’s rage, but I’m almost sure she hates me less. Maybe she’s beginning to trust me—trust that I do remember her; that I won’t deny her, alone in that bed. I hope she can believe that her voice—though buried under those covers—will continue to be heard and honoured by all of us who know her.
I know why I’m writing this now.
This story no longer belongs only to me. It is yours now, too.
If you’ll take it.
A Marriage in
Seven Parts
Dana McNairn
I
On my wedding day, as I entered the banquet hall on the arm of my new husband, I realized with a jolt that the room was clearly divided into two camps. On the left-hand side of the hall, my husband—let’s call him Andrew—had guests from all over the globe. His relatives and friends were seemingly cut from the same cloth, striking in their wholesome good looks, pearly white teeth, tuxedos and flowing gowns. Their appearance bore the stamp of stability and easy acceptance of their rightful place in the world. Most had celebrated double-digit wedding anniversaries. They sipped fruit punch or expertly cradled champagne flutes, chatting quietly in well-behaved groups.
On the right—my side—the throng was tattooed, boisterous and roaring drunk. I saw my tiny grandmother reach up and swipe a drink from a huge man in an open-necked shirt with a giant ship tattooed across his chest. Men tugged uncomfortably at unaccustomed ties and ill-fitting dress shirts. Since most of the men’s shirts were short-sleeved, rolling up the thin fabric was a cinch and afforded a better view of the snakes, daggers and screaming eagles that coloured their arms. The women on this side of the room preferred jewel-toned pantsuits and took comfort—even in the daunting presence of so many strangers on the other side—in the assumption “the bigger the hair, the closer to God.” Most were on second or third marriages. An uncle, affectionately nicknamed “Lurchin’ Larry,” held court, an unlit cigarette dangling from his mouth as a beer bottle occasionally punctuated the air when he wanted to make a point. His sister—my mother—wobbled beside him, one hand gripping his arm. Her other hand alternated between smacking him and wiping tears of laughter from her eyes, without spilling her drink. Children ran howling and screeching, stabbing one another with chicken wings and carrot sticks.
I looked back to the tranquility of the left-hand side of the room and again to the din of the right. And sighed.
The bride also had a tattoo and was panting for a drink.
II
My husband was tall, dark and handsome. And a virgin. I, ahem, was not. He had just turned twenty, and I, just twenty-two. He married me because, among other things, premarital sex was not an option, given his traditional upbringing and young man’s idealized values. We loved each other, so why not make a vow before God and do it up right? Not only did I worship his strength of character and hope some would rub off on me, but I also craved the respectability of a formal union, a partnership.
When we announced our sudden engagement with the marriage date not far behind, Andrew’s mother burst into tears and fled the room. She assumed I was pregnant. How little she knew. To show our commitment—or, rather, to be taken seriously because of our age—we paid for everything and only after much tussling allowed Drew’s father to pay for the liquor. Later, he commented on the prodigious amount of booze my family and friends had consumed. “See?” he said. “You should have eloped.”
Our wedding night was awkward, clumsy and comical. In our tender and steamy fumbling, we banged teeth, cracked heads, blushed profusely and toppled right out of the giant hotel bed smack onto the carpet. Evidently, we had both seen too many movies. It was mercifully brief. Afterwards, we laughed ourselves asleep.
III
We settled quickly into our new life. I took Drew’s surname and practiced writing my new name. For months my signature looked awkward and scrawled—it felt like forging my mother’s on a note for school. When I heard the words “Mrs. Smith,” I never knew who was being addressed—there were a handful of us—so I tended to ignore the salutation initially because I kept forgetting that was my name now. “It gets easier,” an aunt commented dryly. “Eventually you’ll have a hard time remembering your old one.”
Drew practiced wearing jewellery for the first time in his life, donning his wedding band with shy pride. We both worked—Drew in television, me at an ad agency—and scratched our heads at the piling bills. So we worked longer hours, sought out increasingly prestigious and better-paying jobs and fended off the pointed questions about when we were going to have kids. We moved a couple of times, each place bigger than the last, until we were in a huge, beautiful house Drew’s parents once lived in. The two mothers-in-law competed for our time, but Drew’s mom won hands down. She was more persistent, and my mother just assumed we’d feel the love she sent from wherever she was roaming at the time.
Drew cooked and cleaned and folded laundry, accommodating my late nights at work. He overlooked my many failings: a lack of housekeeping skills, an inability to keep my mouth shut at family dinners or to remember anyone’s birthday (including his) and, above all, my uncanny talent for disgracing myself in public by using bawdy language and forgetting to wear underwear. I overlooked his abruptness, his sometimes hard-to-live-up-to ambition and those awful pasta-in-a-bag concoctions he was so fond of.
I learned many things during my marriage. Including how to lie.
I lied about liking his grandmother’s casserole, about enjoying the semi-annual Smith family reunions and about wanting to have Drew’s cousin stay with us. I—the one who had swaggered through high school in square-toed motorcycle boots—had mastered the art of pretense to such an extent that I eventually succumbed to wearing pouffy Laura Ashley dresses and little gold lamé slip-ons while hosting all those damn dinner parties. I did it because I wanted to fit in with this strange, wondrous family who never raised their voices, never swore and never threw things at one another.
I was hungry to be a good wife—albeit with a comforting bottle of Talisker Scotch in the closet and cigarettes outside on the back steps—who regularly shopped with all the tidy Smith womenfolk, made darling apple wreaths and learned how to coo at stuffed animals.
Yet what I really wanted was to pace wolfishly around the house, half-naked in tattered jeans, spouting Dylan Thomas or my own bad poetry. Or go to a séance. Or cover a war
for the New York Times. Or eat fudge for breakfast. Or have sex on the kitchen table. Or not make the bed every morning. Or, better yet, sell everything in that big beautiful house, pack up some underwear and my bewildered husband and hightail it overseas for a while. I would have settled for an annual two-week car vacation to some dull, dusty town, if it meant I could actually drag Drew away from work. I would have been happy stealing a midday nap with him every once in a while—but enterprising young executives don’t permit themselves such indulgences.
Instead, I mastered gift-wrapping for the endless celebrations of family birthdays, anniversaries, retirements, baby showers, graduations and Groundhog Days. Instead, I reluctantly climbed the corporate ladder into an airless office, amassing clients and doing power lunches—and tried to remember to wear underwear. Instead, I attended the mandatory Smith Sunday dinners, quietly chewed my roast beef and nodded sympathetically at conversations I had heard before. I was proud of myself for keeping my mouth shut.
And besides, I had a gold card with no spending limit to anesthetize the empty feelings in my life.
IV
I decided to go back to school to study journalism—and to shake my growing irritability and impatience. If my current career was unsatisfactory, I could hide out in academia and find another one. Even though Drew agreed to this increased financial burden, I wanted to be fair, so I also worked part-time. Juggling jobs, family get-togethers, school assignments, housework, yard work and just trying to get some dinner on the table every night took its toll. Now I was the one never home. And when I was, Drew’s abruptness and impatience became harder to ignore. I failed to see what could possibly be bothering him. We had money, a roof over our heads and were pursuing our almighty careers. Yet his biting temper persisted and flourished, so I ignored him. Withdrawing emotionally was the only way I knew to handle the problem. That way, there’d be no shouting—I had had enough of that growing up.
During my last year of school, while I glided on the euphoria of my approaching graduation, Drew admitted he was lonely and had been for a while. He said he had never really experienced loneliness until he got married. I felt sick with guilt and shame. Part of me agreed with him, but part of me wanted to kick over chairs. He was being unfair, unreasonable and unaccommodating! Another layer of love eroded by neglect and selfishness.
V
No one tells you about the arguments and bitter silences that can seep into the marriage bedroom. It was year four, and the wheels were off the wagon. Blinded by our ever-lurking self-pity, we lost sight of fairness and decency. Neither of us was able to shake off the hurts and slights we thought the other intended. Drew became more vocal about wanting kids—he felt it would help us—but I told him I was pretty sure I wasn’t ready, pointedly eyeing the limp or dying houseplants, the wine bottles on the counters and the stack of parking tickets on the desk.
He aspired to corporate grandeur—too rigid and structured, I whined. I wanted the freedom of the bohemian—too unstable and unrealistic, he huffed. I responded with increasingly antagonistic and appalling behaviour—staying out late, keeping company with other men and coming home drunk—masking my unhappiness by punishing a man who didn’t deserve it.
We both had a decision to make. I had to put as much passion and enthusiasm back into my marriage as I had into my education. Drew had to put as much passion and enthusiasm back into his marriage as he had into his career. We still loved each other—although the intimacy had faltered a bit. Drew, to his everlasting credit, did his best to remain fair and patient. I, on the other hand, did not have the wisdom or emotional maturity to see past my own arrogance.
I went away, far away, to Australia to think. As I was leaving, he whispered in my ear that he would agree to whatever decision I made.
When he picked me up from the airport six weeks later, he knew by the resigned look on my face what the decision was. I managed a weak smile; he bowed his head and exhaled deeply, like a man who had been holding his breath for too long. A couple of weeks later we marched hand in hand, making the rounds to tell the relatives. They listened in stunned disbelief. There had been no fever-pitch battles, no scandal, no abuse, no thrilling financial crash, no plate throwing. They hadn’t seen us fighting, nor had either one of us ever spent a night or two on their couches. The families didn’t get it; faces crumpled in bewilderment and shock. I had come full circle—my mother-in-law burst into tears and fled the room. Girlfriends wailed I was “throwing away a perfect marriage” and shook their heads. Drew and I soldiered on with our earnest explanations. What mattered was that we could see a future of misery, choking on trying to do the right thing. To our families, the separation was cowardly—pure selfishness on my part and a loss of control on Drew’s, for failing to rein in his wife.
A grandfather, who had remained silent during our unexpected visit, finally grunted, “Well, what did you expect, all those bridesmaids dressed in black?”
VI
But it wasn’t a control issue—it never was—nor was it titanic ego clashes, religious issues, lack of sex or money, or even nightly wrestling with the toilet seat. Subsumed by being Mrs. Smith, I allowed someone else to define who or what I was, and destroyed a marriage by not being able to discover it for myself. Drew, in moulding himself after his parents, echoed my mistakes: we were both trying to please others rather than ourselves. His family wanted him to succeed and prosper, as they had. I did not want to fail at marriage, as the others in my family had.
He once said, “Truth is love.” Now I know what he meant. It is regretful I didn’t understand that better in my marriage, but I am honoured that this man was such a big part of my life. He always stood up for truth. I shied away from it because it meant I would probably have to change some aspect of my personality. I wasn’t ready to have my weaknesses highlighted—it was arrogance that held my head aloft, not authenticity. The marriage was bittersweet—we were gathering experiences before we knew what to do with them.
VII
A couple of years later, Drew called me one morning in a panic. He had lost his decree nisi and needed my copy—pronto—or he couldn’t get married that afternoon. Howling with laughter, I teased him about being a polygamist and blackmailed him for a dinner in exchange. I’m pleased that he finally has what he had wanted all along—a wife who wants what he does and three beautiful children. Probably they all like pasta-in-a-bag, too.
I lead a highly nomadic life now, taking perverse pride in the sheer number of addresses I’ve accumulated. I eat vegetarian, wear boxer shorts, write really bad poetry and haven’t seen the inside of an office in years. I haven’t covered any wars yet, but I’ve been in war zones. While my ex-husband jogs, plays golf and has a platinum credit card, I am perennially broke and worry about lung cancer. But I’ve never been happier. I’m a writer now, passionate about travel, food and honesty. I still don’t have any kids and I haven’t picked up another mother-in-law—yet. Drew and I manage to get together once in a while for lunch. We’re usually laughing too much to eat anything. The best thing I ever did was marry Drew Smith. The second best thing I ever did was divorce him.
Northern Lights
and Darkness
Lisa Gregoire
The word “dickie” always makes me laugh.
When I was a kid, my mom would buy them for me. She was obsessed with being cozy—it’s what happens to people who grow up poor in a family of eleven. They can’t understand why you don’t take comfort when you can afford it.
A dickie is a knitted bib you wear beneath a sweater so it looks as if you’re wearing a full turtleneck when you’re not. I always feared schoolmates would mock me if they noticed the bib dangling below my collarbone.
I was twenty-seven and an Iqaluit newspaper reporter of two years when I found myself in the Northern Store thinking about Mom. I no longer cared if people saw my dickie. I bought three in different colours and wore one every day for the next two weeks. It wasn’t for the cold, though it was jaw rattling on Baf
fin Island in February. It was to hide the purple fingerprints on my neck.
I almost died once. Few knew it had gotten that bad with David. One of them was a friend from CBC who agreed to share a bottle of liquor with me the night after it happened. He listened as I dropped parts of the story, like puzzle pieces on the floor, unable to put them together in any sensible order. How it happened where I’d been house-sitting and how, only months before, a teenager had committed suicide in the same bedroom by removing his head with a rifle blast. I know. I saw the gruesome police pictures. David choked me unconscious there. I locked myself in the bathroom after I came to, watching the bruises turn from red to blue. He left in silence at daybreak, and I abandoned my tiled refuge for the couch and a cigarette.
I came to Iqaluit on a lark. I was tired of my weekly newspaper job in Ottawa and eager for real experience. I planned to stay only a year, but I found in Nunavut an enchanting wilderness I could not abandon. The longer I stayed, the more I discovered. I felt tough and privileged among the few living in this barren place.
Carol Shields Page 7