Nothing but Life

by Brent van Staalduinen

  “Got obsessed.”

  “Totally.”

  She smiles. I try to smile. I don’t really know whether I’m still embarrassed or not. Caught talking to myself again. Ethan used to make fun of me for it, but in a best-friend way, where you hassle each other for the least important things. He knew about Jesse, how he wasn’t my dad but I treated him like he was. How I wanted him to be. When I was a kid, sometimes I’d call Jesse “Dad” to see if it would stick. He didn’t like it, though. “Just Jesse, little man,” he once said. “One, you know that your dad left your mom when he found out you were on the way. But two, even though you don’t like to think of him that way, he’s still your dad. I’m not. Clear as mud?” I’d try to argue and say that he was my real dad, but he’d smile and say something like he was lucky to be in my life and he’d take whatever he could get. Though I’m clearly the lucky one. Was, maybe.

  “Who’s Ethan?” Mia asks.

  First, mortal embarrassment. As in Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god. Second, I discover another shard of what happened. Right in my middle. And it slices in. Again.

  I take a deep breath. “He was my friend. From before.”

  “From Windsor?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sorry. I was supposed to forget about that, but I can’t. I kind of want to know your story, Wendell Sims, a.k.a. Dills Sims.”

  The nicest feeling in the universe happens when you realize that someone else really wants to know you. I almost miss this one. If her words had arrived at any other time than right now, I’d tell her. Maybe not everything, but enough. Enough to return the interest, at least. My guts, though, are currently focused on stitching themselves up, so I have to let the moment pass.

  “Dills Sims …” She lets her statement trail away, like a question that needs an answer.

  “Yes?”

  “Sounds awkward, am I right?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Your mom seems nice, too.”

  “Huh?”

  “She said to call her Vicky, but I think I’d like to call her Victoria. Do you think she’d mind?”

  I smile. If there’s anything I do know, even amid my confusion, is that my mother hates it when people use her proper name. “That woman named me after a silly Englishwoman,” she’ll say, sometimes right in front of Gramma Jan. I also know that Gramma Jan reacts as strongly to being called “that woman” as my mom does to being called Victoria. They argue about it sometimes. Which is funny to watch because it’s such a small thing to get worked up about, I think. Mia, by asking an innocent question, has landed right in the middle of it, creating a nanosecond of escape for me. My smile becomes a grin, which cracks open my face and releases a laugh so sudden it steals a little of my breath.

  “I do think she’d mind, yes,” I manage to gasp at the end of it.

  Not what Mia is expecting. Her eyebrows pinch, perplexed. She’s unprepared for my bluntness to her earnest question. Which is even funnier, and I can’t stop myself from laughing more. I have to put down my spike and my bag. I take my helmet off because it seems too small, unable to contain the swell of unexpected funniness.

  Mia watches me for a few moments. But there comes a point when even the most well-meant laughter begins to cut those who aren’t sharing it. She frowns and pulls out her phone and swipes through something or other. Those familiar movements are like a heavy curtain falling. You worry whether you’ll be able to lift it back up again. My laughter fades, leaving the everyday sounds of a park in motion and leaving me with that tight, crinkled feeling you get in your face when you’ve laughed too long.

  I notice the tiniest shimmer in Mia’s dark eyes. Harsher stabbing and swiping across her touchscreen. The slight turn of her body away from me. I feel as small as the point of my trash spike. And as sharp.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Whatever.”

  She blinks and continues to manipulate her phone. I wait for her eyes to reclaim their normal mystery. But they stay hard.

  “It’s just that my mom is so stubborn about some things,” I say. “Like her name. It’s a perfectly fine name, but she hates it.”

  “She could change it, if it bugged her enough.”

  That’s a thought I’d never had before. Huh. I hear myself saying “sorry” again, telling Mia that my reaction surprised me, too, that I didn’t mean to be so harsh. That the laughter came out so quickly I couldn’t hold it back. What I didn’t say is that it was the first out-loud laughter I could remember having in a long time. Maybe since before Windsor. Through half a school year at a new school. The cutting incident. Court and sentencing and a daily grind of prying and digging and plucking discarded things from where they’d lain too long. And truthfully, although I was sorry for cutting into her, it felt good, too. Which of course feels horribly wrong. And yet.

  Finally, Mia smiles and tells me that it’s okay. But I worry that it’s not. That I’ve carved too deep, and maybe the scars won’t heal right.

  Mia seems to sense my worry. She holds out a hand. “Give me your phone. I’ll put my number in there for you.”

  “I don’t have one.”

  “Oh. Right. The judge doesn’t want you to —”

  “No, I actually don’t own one.”

  “Really?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Why would you say sorry?”

  I don’t know. Before Windsor, me having a phone was an “End of Discussion, Young Man” topic. Mom has this thing about cellphones and kids and how rotten their brains are becoming. She can be empowering and progressive about a whole whack-load of other things: religion is misdirection for ignorant people, social justice is everyone’s battle, talk to me about anything, there are no stupid questions, you’re twelve but here’s a box of condoms just in case, et cetera. But on the issue of me having a phone, it’s the early 1990s and the web hasn’t taken hold yet. She and Jesse are in lockstep about it, too. “No way, kiddo. One, this is your mom’s call, but my job is to have her back, so don’t triangle me against her. Two, I happen to agree with her. No one knows how to look each other in the eye anymore. Read a book. Get outside. Build something. Get a job.” I tried a thousand angles and pitches, but Mom’s resolve on this one issue was plate armour. Sixteen for my first phone, and the words “Don’t ask again” delivered with a real edge to her voice. I haven’t tested it in a while, of course.

  “My mom hates cellphones,” I say. “She jokes about them being a sign of the end times. I’m not allowed to have one.”

  “That’s —”

  “Shitty. I get it.”

  But I really mean embarrassing. Mortifying. Frustrating. Life-alteringly backwards. And yet I don’t mean those things, either. I haven’t had the urge to use social media since before the shooting, haven’t wanted a phone. But here I am, trying to make some offering to the girl in front of me, that obviously it’s Mom’s issue, right? I know it isn’t, yet I can’t stop myself.

  “No, I was going to say that it’s cool,” she says. “Sometimes I wish I didn’t have to carry one around.”

  I breathe again. Mia has managed to surprise me and put me out of my misery all at once. “But don’t you use all the apps and stuff?”

  “Some. Mostly to stay in touch with my wrestling peeps. The rest of it is” — she glances down at her phone — “complicated.”

  “How?”

  “Me being Muslim. Immigrant family. Wrestling body shape. All that. Let’s say that social media isn’t a safe space.”

  “I get that.”

  “Yeah, but boys don’t have nearly the —”

  “I like how you look.”

  Her eyes narrow. Ugh. My mouth took over. One silly heart short-circuiting the rest of the system, contacting my lungs, throat muscles, vocal cords, and tongue without first consulting my brain. I’m struck by a sense that it was the wrong thing to say. Nice one, boss. That was unexpected. Foot in mouth much? Women are more than a sum of their looks, you know. But right as I’m about t
o assemble another crack team of apologies — there are some things a guy can never unsay to a girl — Mia smiles. Big and bold and all for me. And beautiful. I hope I can say that.

  “Thanks,” she says.

  And that is how a single word can pull a person back. Give him back his breath. “You’re welcome.”

  “That is literally the first time anyone has ever said that to me.”

  “No way. That’s —”

  She holds up a hand. “It’s okay, Dills. I’ve seen the movies and magazines. I know what everyone seems to want.”

  “I like how you look.”

  Another smile. “Yeah, you said that already.”

  “I wanted you to hear it from me for the second time, too.”

  She rolls her eyes. “Yeah, yeah, that’s enough. Now, if you don’t have a phone, how —”

  “Landline. And email on my iPod. Mom has an iPhone, but I’m not allowed to use it.”

  “You don’t use social media, either?”

  I shake my head but don’t say anything. The school therapist assigned to me after the shooting advised me to stay away from all things online. “There’s too much ugliness there right now,” she said. “Too much hate and misinformation. Focus on your real-life relationships and try to lean on them, okay?” It sounded like something she’d gotten used to telling other survivors. I did look at the news reports at first, but I wasn’t that big on the online web of social intrigue before, so it wasn’t hard to break up with it. I haven’t had the desire to go back.

  But Mia doesn’t question my reasons. She nods and asks for my contact info, tapping it into her phone. Maybe she saw a shadow cross my eyes as I remembered my therapy, another one of a million small but jagged things that feel like they’ll be hooked into my insides from now on.

  “All right, you, now back to work,” she says.

  I throw up a salute. “Yes, ma’am. Right away, ma’am.”

  Parade-worthy, Jesse would call it. Tip of the right middle finger brushing the right eyebrow, hand straight, upper arm parallel to the ground.

  Mia giggles and salutes me back. Sloppy and wrong, but that’s fine.

  “Later, Dills.”

  “Bye, Mia.”

  She walks away, and I put on my helmet and adjust my vest on my shoulders. My scratchy, sweaty armour against the rest of the summer. I jab my spike down on a piece of garbage on the ground. No more digging wrong things out of ancient fence posts for me today. I resume my usual rhythm. Look, stick, lift, slide whatever crud I’ve picked up into the garbage bag. And repeat. This time, though, I let myself include a few extra looks. To anyone observing me, it’ll look like I’m scanning for more trash, but I’ll actually be watching Mia cross the park as she heads back toward her place. Which I do. Maybe more than a few times.

  I’m here. Come see me.

  “I know, Jesse. I hear you,” I say low, under my breath. “I’m working on it.”

  But that’s not quite the truth, is it? I want to go, but there’s a lot of my present life happening around me. Keeping me busy. And keeping me strangely interested in the right now.

  SURPLUS

  Midmorning snack break is my new thing. When hunger strikes, pretty much wherever I am, I’ll drop my bag and stick my spike in the ground and eat. Today I’m close enough to the park chapel to take a couple of steps over and eat in its shadow. Before leaving home, I stuff my pockets. Some days it’s cookies or raisins or apples or nuts — whatever I can get, however much — but today it’s granola bars. I dig out one of the four I grabbed from the cupboard. Mushy from my body heat, the dark chocolate almost liquid. Gone in two bites. Hunger hits so quick these days, it’s almost painful. All the walking and sun and fresh air, I suppose.

  The chapel is in the main part of the park, where you’ll find the sports fields, the play structures, and the splash pad. The small white cross at the top of the chapel’s steeple is visible from almost anywhere in the park. You look there first and next your eyes are drawn down to the white walls and doors. Right now the sun is late-morning high and hitting the place with full force. Blinding against the greens of trees and grass. The chapel sits between four ball diamonds, one at each corner. If you stood at home plate on any of them, the miniature church beyond the home-run fence would be a tempting target. An iceberg to smack a ball at.

  I’m not here very often. There’s nothing to clean. Everywhere else, the garbage seems to defy physics, wedged tight into impossible places by the smallest breeze. I’ll clean another corner of the park until it sparkles, only to find it the next day looking like a rogue garbage truck dumped its load overnight. To spite me. The chapel, though, never seems to get dirty, and trash never collects along its angles.

  I wonder how on earth the place stays so white. How anything does. I can’t own anything lighter than beige. You can’t tell if beige things get dingy because they start that way. Shoes, especially. I gave up on asking for white ones a long time ago. They look great in the store, but on my feet they’re scuffed in seconds. By the end of the first day, they look like I’ve run ten kilometres in them. On a mix of gravel and new asphalt. While kicking old tires. Tagged by rival gangs as I ran.

  As I stand and chew, I catch the faintest whiff of burning weed. I wipe the chocolate from my hands and circle the building but see no one. Has to be from inside. I imagine some neighbourhood kid sneaking into the chapel, lighting up, filling the interior with greasy smoke, and dropping the roach on the floor. Grinding the residue into a cross pattern. Giggling at God to do something about it.

  And it pisses me off. I have no idea why. We’re not a religious family. Maybe I don’t like the idea of some kid mocking the chapel’s wide-open, welcoming doors by messing the place up. Maybe it’s a tiny bit of loyalty because the chapel is cared for by the same local church where Jesse and Mom did their thing and I wore that tiny tuxedo. Maybe it’s because it’s a clean, cool spot where anyone can escape the sun, sit on polished wood pews, and stare at stained glass.

  I step inside and squint against the startling contrast between the light outside and the colourful dimness inside. As my eyes adjust, I see a dim figure sitting in one of the pews. Gal. Leaning forward with his scarred forearms on the pew in front of him. A smouldering joint lightly pinched between forefinger and thumb.

  “Mr. Sims,” he says.

  He brings the joint to his lips and tokes long and hard on it. Exhales. A strange offering. But he looks comfortable here, at peace, like this is routine. I can only see the right side of his face. Almost normal, if you tune out the twisted flesh on his arm.

  “You look angry,” he says.

  “No, I’m not … it’s just that …” I fall silent.

  “Nice canteen.”

  He’s still looking straight ahead, and I’ve only just arrived, but he’s already taken everything in with his peripheral vision, right down to my accessories. Unsettling.

  “Uh, thanks,” I say. “Mom’s idea.”

  “Hydration is important.”

  We’re speaking in our normal voices. It’s so quiet in here Gal doesn’t have to turn his good ear to hear me.

  “You sound like her,” I say.

  “This is a compliment, I am sure.”

  He tokes again and pinches out the joint with his fingers. No hesitation. No smoke at all. Wow.

  “How’d you do that?” I ask.

  “Long practice.”

  “But it was so quick.”

  He holds up the extinguished end. “If it is small, it is possible. You must do it quickly. Take all the oxygen. No chance to burn.”

  “That sounds like something Jesse would’ve —”

  That was out before I could stop it. Gal’s action like an army thing. Tactical, Jesse would call it. Where you act in ways that make you difficult to be seen or heard or found.

  “Jesse?”

  “Nothing,” I say. “He’s no one.”

  Gal looks at me and grunts. Doesn’t look convinced. Hard to convince a pers
on if I’m not convinced myself.

  “Where did you learn it?” I ask, testing my theory.

  “The army.”

  His voice clipped and final. He doesn’t say more. He drops the half-burnt joint into his chest pocket, rises from the pew, stretches, and slides over to the aisle, where he goes down on one knee and crosses himself.

  “You’re a Chr— uh, a churchgoing type?”

  Oh, that was smooth. Nice terminology. Say Christian, for crying out loud. Mom fought against the paperwork and rigidity of marriage and she doesn’t believe in organized religion anymore, but she still thought it was important to exchange the vows in church. Jesse never had religion and only went along with it because he loved her. Mom grew up attending services twice every Sunday because Grampa Vern was a dyed-in-the-wool church person. Bible studies. Prayer before and after every meal. Church school and catechism every week until he died when she was fifteen. Strict. “Too strict. And no place for women,” she told me. “That’s why I don’t do church.” Gramma Jan stopped going after Grampa Vern died. Mom thinks watching him decline wore Gramma Jan’s faith away.

  Gal tilts his head. “Why would I not be?”

  “Mia says you’re from Israel, so —”

  “You assume I am Jewish.”

  “Don’t you have to be?”

  “I was, then. But not now.”

  “Why not now?”

  A long pause. “You might say what happened to me, and what I saw, has complicated my relationship with my heritage.”

  It almost feels like an opening to ask him about the scars. I want to. But something keeps me from the question. Maybe it’s the violence of the past. It complicates everything for me now, too.

  Gal doesn’t seem to mind my hesitation. He points at the canteen slung across my chest like a satchel. “May I?”

  I remove it from its carrier and hand it to him. He smiles a bit when he flips open a miniature cap embedded in the middle of the main lid and points at a small doughnut of faded black rubber resting inside. Tells me it’s a hydration port. A straw can be passed through the seal in the canteen and another through an identical seal in a military gas mask. Soldiers can drink in a chemical weapons environment.