She made a list of things she’d couldn’t do with Charlie. Things she longed to do, rendered impossible by their situation. Things that she dreamed of doing daily, things she fantasized about while twisting her engagement ring around the finger of her left hand, hoping secretly for a random tragedy to make things hard, to make things easier.
1. Read the Sunday paper with you
2. Kiss you in a bar populated by our friends
3. Have you take care of me when I’m sick
4. Take care of you when you’re sick
5. Listen to you tell someone you love me
6. Tell someone I love you
7. Slow dance
8. Make breakfast together
9. Do laundry together
10. Hold hands walking down the street
11. Bring you as my date to a wedding
12. Kiss you at midnight on New Year’s
13. Try to figure out what to watch on TV
14. Fight with you about domestic duties
15. Have you walk my dog
16. Put new sheets on a bed together
17. Nap in the afternoon while it’s raining
18. Celebrate your birthday with you
19. Meet your parents
20. Wake up together on Christmas morning
After scrawling out the list, she rewrote it with careful penmanship on a piece of crisp stationary. One day she worked up the courage to give him this list at another Bay Street bar.
He read it thoughtfully, in silence.
When the empties of their first round were collected, Charlie told the bartender he loved Ronnie.
( CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT )
In the bathtub one evening, submerged beneath bubbles and feeling all too tired, her hair floating like a halo around her, Ronnie finally realized what was wrong with her and Aaron. Why she felt the urge to fill her voids, to lie, to hide away, to hide from him. She plunged forcefully upright, through the surface of the water, the force of the realization like a sudden fist.
Aaron didn’t need her.
She sat up in the bathtub, realizing Aaron of course loved her, but he would never, ever need her. He was together and practical and naturally took care of everyone around him.
Aaron was the type of person who would clearly never need anyone.
Charlie needed Ronnie. She knew that when his head was resting in her lap, when she smoothed her fingers through his hair, searching for greys, finding and examining them, and never telling him. She would touch him and he would close his eyes and sigh noisily, groping for her hand and squeezing it tightly when he found it. The force of his hand on hers, the desperate clutch of a man in need, was enough to convince her. Ronnie knew Charlie needed her because he would answer her call in the middle of the night. He would come when she called.
She knew Charlie needed her because his face twisted into a look of pain when she pulled away. Like he was personally wounded that she had somewhere else she needed to be, someone else she needed to be with. When the guilt of what they were doing rose in her throat, Charlie would do everything to convince her to stay, that there was nothing wrong, regardless of how untrue that was. He would press her tightly to him like a vice and tell her how he longed to see her happy, that she deserved to be happy. That he could make her happy. He would fight to prevent her from putting her clothes back on, his hands slowly traversing the map of her back, that closed-eye sigh returning.
She knew Charlie needed her because he would tell her any lie to get her to stay. She could see the lies in his face, the way he chose to make up reasons why what they did was not wrong, if only to see her slip the clothes from her body and have her curl up next to him. Charlie needed her because when she curled up naked beside him in whatever hotel bed they were in that week, he would make promises he couldn’t and wouldn’t ever keep.
She knew Charlie needed her because he would do everything in his power to pretend that the real world failed to exist when they were alone together. And she knew she needed him back because she would allow herself to believe him.
That was need.
So, in the name of need, Ronnie stepped out of the bathtub and ran out of the bathroom—naked, dripping wet—and into the bedroom, her feet leaving wet footprints down the hall. The dog looked up at her from a snug, tightly curled ball on the bed, sensing her sudden urgency as Ronnie quickly pulled her clothes on, still soaking, soaking through her blue jeans and T-shirt, her hair matted against her face in damp webs. The dog, assuming a walk, followed her, watched as she rummaged in the hall closet to grab a coat, and stared as she escaped out the front door and into the street.
It was raining.
Every fantasy she had about Charlie and her finally being safe together involved the rain. It was always raining in her head when she decided to leave Aaron.
Aaron didn’t need her. Ronnie wanted only to be needed.
Through the rain Ronnie ran to catch the streetcar, paid with quarters, and walked to the back of the car, soaked through. The other passengers stared, the rain dripping from her lashes, her forehead, her fingers onto the floor. She suffered the endless ride down Queen West, to Spadina, onto another car heading north. She pushed through the doors before they were fully open, and peeled off the car into the street.
Maybe Ronnie was bad and maybe that was enough. Maybe she needed Aaron to take care of her, fix her, fight her battles for her, make her better.
All of these things that I have done.
But maybe she needed Charlie to need her. Maybe she needed Charlie to mark up menus and lament cancer and say inappropriate things to waiters. Maybe she didn’t need someone to be strong for her, to fix the pieces of her that were supposedly broken, to help her pull through. Maybe she could try to do that for herself. Maybe instead she simply needed someone like Charlie to fall apart at the mere thought of losing her, to mindlessly finger the graffiti on the table at the thought of biopsies, to outline aimlessly the bursting arrowed hearts of other people’s love carved into tabletops, to misguidedly correct the typos in the menu, to tell the bartender he loved her, to bring her back from the brink, to vice grip her into believing she’d done nothing wrong, to touch her in every moment they were together, incapable of not being connected to her when she was in sight, afraid of the excruciating possibility that they would be parted, wounded by the table between them when the were in public, kissing her in empty elevators, in the back of a bookstore, in a deserted restaurant . . .
Turning a corner, running through the rain. Still decidedly aimless. Careless.
Reckless.
Maybe she needed Charlie to tell her that her bad was enough for her.
More than enough for her.
Always enough for her.
Nothing to fix and nothing to mend.
That her brokenness was something beloved.
That it was enough. To be needed. That being needed was more than enough.
She ran down Charlie’s street. The rain blinded her, made her temporarily unsure of where his house was. After he finally told her where he lived, she would sometimes request that cab drivers take her on a route past his house if only to get a glimpse of it. She remembered the red door with the brass knocker. The crooked mailbox and the maple in the front yard. Up to the front path and to the door. She eyed a few of Noah’s toys strewn across the front lawn: a red wagon, a soccer ball, a basketball hoop. Ronnie lifted her fist to knock and froze.
She felt so old. She felt that she had missed everything, that as she got older she had tried so hard to be good that she had forgotten herself. She longed for her youth, the sweet misery of being young and misguided, the sweet taste of blood in her mouth in the morning after she had destroyed everything, not knowing where the blood had come from, not knowing the source of the wound, the bile of the mistake, the guilt and regret of all those flawed c
hoices. And never caring. She missed never caring.
With her fist raised; she knew that this moment would obliterate everything. That the earth would be burned and the building would collapse and the world as they knew it would shift into an orbit unknown. The fire around her was about to spread to the house, and with her fist raised she knew she would ignite the failure of ten years, twenty years of work. That when her fist hit his front door, on his charming Annex house that he lived in with his wife and his “special needs” child, where he wrote his books and wondered about his reviews and admirers, where he jerked off in the shower over thoughts of her, where he kept her photo in the bottom of a desk drawer, where he called her quietly from his cellphone in the middle of the night.
The fire was destined to spread, and as she knocked she felt the ignition.
She heard feet in the hall, light and quick, too light and quick to be Charlie’s, and the fear of Tamara opening the door rocked through her immediately. The doorknob turned and the door swung open.
Noah.
“Pretty,” he said, blinking up at her, his small, thick finger pointed upward.
( CHAPTER FORTY-NINE )
“I’m leaving him. I left him.”
But how did you actually leave?
Did you pack a small bag and leave a small note? Or did he watch you pack every last item, right down to a box of condoms and your best pair of underwear?
Did you argue about that Stone Roses record? About whose copy of Ulysses that was, a copy of Ulysses that neither of you had ever read? Did you divide up the cutlery drawer evenly and fairly? A ladle for you and a spatula for him?
Did you open the conversation by saying “we have to talk”? And when you did, did his face drop and his smile fade?
Was there crying?
Did you hold him?
Did you fuck him a final time, in a rabid, hateful way that sealed your fate? Knowing that being alone was better than being crowded and smothered by pervasive apathy?
Or did you cut and run and start again in an empty room? How did you find that empty room? Did you covertly search the want ads for hours while he was sleeping? One bedrooms and studios all over the city, waiting for your small bag and semi-broken heart? Did you tell a trusted friend who loaned a couch, handed over a phone number for furnished rentals or recommended a sublet?
You’ve really planned this out, haven’t you?
(You’ll say your heart is broken, but it won’t be true. But that will be the acceptable thing to say. That you are broken-hearted about the whole thing. If you were a poet, like Charlie, you would write a poem about how very sad you are. People will want to know you’re in pain, not that you finally feel a happiness that he managed to steal from you for years. All you will really feel is relief. Not happiness, but relief.)
And while you were in that empty room, trying to find a single bowl and a single mug, did you actually think Charlie was going to leave his wife?
Did you actually believe that he would leave the warmth and affection of the mediocre?
Of dinner on the table at seven and sex at ten?
Did you actually think that winning that war for Ulysses would mean that you were free?
That you would be happy?
Nothing more than a sigh of relief.
( CHAPTER FIFTY )
“Noah.” Ronnie stared down at the child she’d never met, the one she’d heard Charlie talk about occasionally. The child Charlie had avoided talking about. “Noah.” It was as if she was naming him to make him real.
“Noah,” he repeated at her, rocking back and forth gently, his hand contorting and tapping an imaginary object in the air. “Noah, Noah, Noah, Noah. Pretty.”
The child pointed again. “Pretty.”
And in that moment at Charlie’s door Ronnie realized she had made a monumental mistake. She heard Charlie call out for Noah from within the house and heard him make his way toward the front door. When he locked eyes with Ronnie the panic was palpable. The anxiety she had managed to assuage returned in a suffocating wave.
Wordless, Charlie stared at her angrily, an astonished fury filling his face.
“Who is it, Charles?” Tamara called from inside the house.
Ronnie looked down at Noah one last time and, soaking wet and smiling at him, began to speak. “I’m sorry, sir. I think I have the wrong house.”
“Yes, I’m quite sure you do,” Charlie replied. He pulled a squirming, protesting Noah back into the house and shut the door.
( CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE )
The afternoon the final test results were due back from the hospital, Ronnie went for a walk through the university campus. She was told on the phone to expect them in the late afternoon, and if necessary they would schedule the surgery immediately. The idea of spending that day at home, staring at the phone and the television and the phone and the wall was intolerable.
Ronnie put on her iPod and headed toward the Annex on her bike. She decided to leave her bike helmet behind, imagining the likelihood of a tragic bike accident and news of a hysterectomy on the same afternoon was slim.
By going to the university, Ronnie’s aim was not really to be near Charlie, but rather to be in his world, a world that for a short time, less than a year ago, when they first met, was free of disease, a complete escape from the concerned looks and plans and procedures. Charlie was one of those people who constantly worried, yet nothing would ever go wrong for him. For some reason he was protected from harm, one of those blessed people that beauty somehow followed, that happiness hounded, and yet he never saw it. His wife, his child, his Annex home with its yard strewn with toys. He was protected from disaster because it failed to follow him, and yet here was Ronnie, on a slow walk through his world, waiting for disaster to be announced.
Ronnie hadn’t seen or spoken to Charlie since she came to his front door that evening. He’d left a handful of messages on her voicemail, the first enraged and the last apologetic, but Ronnie had decided not to respond. The look of terror on his face when he came down that hallway had stuck with her. She wanted him to be relieved that they were finally free from their lies, but instead he was terrified, his hand on the door and on Noah in frantic, protective panic.
“Daddy, pretty,” Noah had said, pointing at Ronnie with fervour.
It occurred to her that she had never really expected Charlie would leave his wife. From the beginning it was apparent that Charlie was the kind of person who desperately needed to feel safe, and hotel rooms and clandestine steaks and cigarettes didn’t qualify. He was an anxious man, and anxious men couldn’t leave the realm of the familiar. They would pretend and talk and dream, but at the end of it all the face of failure was too much to bear.
Ronnie headed into a dive bar near campus and sat down on a stool to order whisky, neat. It was just after Labour Day and school had begun again. There were smiling, laughing girls everywhere, a disproportionate number really, too early in the afternoon for them to be drunk but late enough for them to be jovial. It was too soon for them to have term papers due and it was still warm enough for them to be dressed in summer clothes, their skin golden-brown and pink with the sun, surrounded by open books they were strategically ignoring. A small group of girls in horn-rimmed glasses and shaggy haircuts were knitting together in focused, blissful silence, while bleached blonde girls in painted-on U of T T-shirts gossiped about last night’s conquests. Everyone seemed to be drinking cheap domestic beer.
The girls collectively made Ronnie feel so old. It was true that Charlie had an ability to make Ronnie feel suddenly young, but the reality was in the bar.
Beautiful young things did not border on the wrong side of thirty-five, nor did they wait to find out if they needed hysterectomies while drinking whisky neat.
Her cellphone rang.
( CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO )
Ronnie wasn’t returning his messages.
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br /> Charlie no longer knew whose fault that was.
Charlie had been in breakups before. It had been decades ago, but he remembered how they worked.
His male writer friends would get together and discuss their innumerable conquests and breakups over pints and cigars, talking about disposed women with mocking laughter. Their bravado generally appalled him, small men destroying with words the women who had destroyed them, but it was all so transparent; they were wounded like teenagers, aging like relics.
Breakups meant that a woman you used to think you knew would come to your house in the middle of the night, while you were sleeping, and steal all of your patio furniture from your backyard.
Breakups meant that the charred remains of your belongings would be stuffed in a black plastic garbage bag and left on the front porch to greet you when you got home from work.
Breakups meant an excruciating conversation in the produce section of the supermarket. It meant long, awkward waits for a teller at the bank while the object of your burning affection was three people in front of you, and the whole time you were standing there you repeatedly prayed she wouldn’t turn around and see you.
It meant dividing bank accounts, vinyl collections, and friends. It meant vitriol. It meant the vilest elements of the human condition condensed into a progression of failing to freedom.
Charlie didn’t want that to happen with Tamara, and he certainly didn’t want that to happen with Ronnie. Instead he preferred to suspend himself in stasis, inaction, paralysis—retreating to the quiet of his at-home office, locking the door behind him, and staying there deep into the night. Only Amanda would ever come to the door, usually before she left for the night, her exceedingly cheerful voice offering a cup of cocoa or a plate of warmed leftovers when her worry prompted her to do so. He would pour another whisky and call through the door that he was fine and she should go.
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