Elliot shrugged again. “I’m wild about Scout, you know that, right? You know I love you, right?”
“Are you saying what it just occurred to me that you might be saying? Because, Ell, if you are, and you haven’t even got the guts to say it out loud, I swear to god I will kill you dead.”
Ell pressed her lips together—that obstreperous look of hers. The I won’t look. The You can’t make me look. “You are so hard to talk to. You scare me.”
“I scare you.”
“You’re scary.”
“Elliot, whatever this is, it isn’t about me. It sounds like it’s you being chicken. Use your words.”
Elliot swung her head from side to side. “You’re so patronizing.”
Joe felt a sweep of hurt and anger. “Are you breaking up with me?”
Elliot stood up, shoved her hands deep into her shorts’ pockets, mumbled, “Yes, Joe. I am, yes. That’s it. Yes! Thank you! Exactly! I’m breaking up with you.”
“You can’t do that.” Joe heard the shivery wave of fear in her voice. Her brain slid sideways, refusing the new information.
Ell picked up a peanut, bit into it, picked out shell. “I’m really sorry, is the thing.”
Now Joe’s voice went high-pitched and shrill. “What about Scout? What the hell will happen to Scout if she comes from a broken family?” Joe didn’t believe in the phrase “broken family,” because a one-parent household wasn’t “broken,” but where were her politics now? “We can’t do that to her. Tell me you don’t mean it, because, Ell, really, you can’t mean it. Right? You’re just—joking, I don’t know. Joking with me. Bullshitting. Putting me on. You definitely wouldn’t be this cruel. You wouldn’t throw sixteen years into the trash.” Joe didn’t know what to do with her body. She paced and rambled. Her right leg kicked out—not at anything, shadow-kicking air. “Here I was already coming up with ideas to celebrate our twentieth.”
Elliot pulled a finger along the porch wall. “I haven’t been happy for a long time—you know this—and I’m not getting any happier now with the baby. It’s like I want Scout, but I don’t want you. I’ve exhausted myself trying to see how we can make this any better. You won’t ever change.”
“What am I supposed to change?”
“See? This is the way it always is with you. You think it’s all me.”
“Elliot, it is all you. Believe you me, it is all you. I’ve never once thought of separation.”
“It’s because of who you are.”
“Stop dodging, Elliot. It’s because of who you are. Pinning your troubles on someone else makes them seem more palatable.”
“See? This is what I mean. This is exactly what I mean. I’ve had to live with this sanctimoniousness.”
“But you just told me you love me. You just told me when I was fucking you,” said Joe.
“That was mercy sex.”
“Mercy sex?” Now her voice was shrill. Truly shrill.
“I felt sorry for you.”
“You felt sorry for me,” said Joe flatly.
“I must love you, Joe. I mean, we’re married. You’re not horrible most of the time, but meh. And more meh. The only time I sort of feel like I love you is when I look at you sleeping.”
“Oww,” said Joe. And then: “Seriously? Why did you just come around my fingers? Why did you let me fuck you?”
“You know … I don’t know. A kiss-off. Like I said.”
A kiss-off … “Is there someone else?”
“Scotia is not my lover.”
“But someone? I would never—ever—do this to you.”
“And you’re not me, Joe—don’t you get that? I am not you. It makes sense to me. It hurts me, of course, but it also makes sense, and right now—”
“It hurts you, or telling me hurts you? I’m wise to your tricks, Elliot. You could have just texted. Or wait … texts don’t go through up here. You could have sent Scotia to tell me. Or just ghosted me.”
Prick, prick, thought Joe.
Elliot pushed at her hair again. “Right now, this minute, I admit it, I just feel relief, a great wash of relief. Look, I’ll make sure you never want for anything. You can have the house in the city and I’ll make sure it’s free and clear, no encumbrances. You can come up here whenever you like. I’ll support you and Scout, of course, in perpetuity. I promise never to leave you in the lurch. I am basically a good person.”
I am basically a good person. Joe sagged, folding forward on herself, feeling as if her guts were about to spill and she was, just barely, holding them inside, said, “But this is … Elliot, it’s not fair.”
“How could I be more fair? I’ve been talking to people who think—”
“You’ve been talking to people? I’m not the first person to know this?”
“And everyone thinks I am just too nice to you. You have a cushy life here.”
Joe sank to a chair. “Please, Ell, reconsider. We’re a team, a good team. We’re mates. We work well together. I just had our baby, for crying out loud. I’m not strong. I can barely walk.”
“See? You do this, this poor-me thing.” Elliot sighed frustration. “You act like I’ve just said I hate a hundred percent of this, and Joe, it’s just not like that. I see-saw back and forth. I have for years. Most of the time, though, I realize I just … don’t love you the way I should love you and it’s not fair to you but—”
“Years? All that time I could have spent with someone who respected me and wanted to be my partner, but instead I got stuck with someone—had a baby with someone—who didn’t give a damn? How is that fair? How is any of this fair?”
“I care. I care a lot. I love you, Joe. That’s why I’m still here. I love you. I’m just not in love with you.”
“You’re telling me that I wasted the best years of my life on a loser? You’re a loser, Elliot.”
Elliot wrung her hands. “I could do a balance sheet and it would be fifty-fifty. Stay. Get out. Stay. Get out. Half the day it’s one thing, and half the day it’s the other thing. But my friends say—”
“Damn you! Damn you! You don’t deserve me. You don’t deserve us. Tell me something honourable or get the hell out! This is bullcrap.”
“I just—You’re not giving me a chance.”
“You fuck other women! You have total freedom here as long as you talk to me about what’s going on, so pardon me if I don’t understand what I’m not giving you. What am I not giving you? What’s making you miserable, Ell? Tell me how I’m failing you. Was the love utter bullshit? Is anything you said worth the carbon dioxide you expelled to say it?”
“I’m not leaving the island, Joe, except, you know, for a couple nights or whatever, just over to the mainland for a break. I’m not abandoning you with Scout. I’m not a complete shithead.”
Joe laughed bitterly. “May I quote you? Wife leaves her spouse the week her daughter is born and, I quote, tells reporter, I am not a complete shithead.”
“I’m not leaving you in the lurch is what I mean. If you want to stay up here or in Toronto, either, I’ll make sure I’m there or someone comes in to help.”
“To help? What are we, Scout and me, a project to you? One of your fucking summer lists? Fix house siding, set up birthing pool, catch baby, live with family, make grilled cheese sandwiches, vacuum, let the wife I’m dumping fuck me?”
Elliot rubbed her face, her face that now seemed utterly transformed by her betrayal. “I’m just trying to have a reasonable conver—”
“I don’t believe this,” Joe said. “I’m in it, living it right now, and I don’t believe it. Not one bit.” The sun now seemed a menace. “And yet, yeah, okay, I do. I do believe this. Which is even scarier than not believing it. Because living with you these past years has not been a picnic. You’ve been evasive and private and paranoid and often not exactly loving, if you want to know the truth. And you live in the top two inches of life—”
“Top two inches of life!” Elliot repeated. “What’s that supposed to mean?�
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“I mean you’re a cover with no book. A fan with no blades. A TV without a screen. You’re a shallow person, Elliot.”
Elliot back-handed her upper lip. “I am not a monster here, Joe. Really. I am the same Elliot I always was.”
“If you were always a turd,” said Joe, “I’d accept that.”
“Joe, please stay rational,” said Elliot.
“Rational? Damn, Elliot. How long have we been married?”
“I don’t know. A long time. Years. Seven years.”
“And how long have we been together?”
“Sixteen years?”
“Sixteen years, for heaven’s sake. What’s so important out there in the world that you’ve been okay without it for sixteen years, but now, just when I need you the most, you suddenly have to get out so badly you’re willing to break my heart—and no doubt, your daughter’s heart, even if she can’t absorb that yet? Are we so unhappy together?”
“I am,” Elliot said softly.
“You’re not!”
“Don’t tell me how I feel!” said Elliot. “Fuck, Joe! You’re a bit insane, is the thing.”
“But I’ve lived with you all that time, and if you were unhappy, it would have showed. It would have showed!”
“You aren’t living in my mind.”
Joe thinned her lips. “You have one?”
“See? This is what I mean! You’re unspeakably cruel. People can’t believe the nasty things you say to me!” Elliot kicked the table leg so cutlery scraped across plates.
“For fuck’s sake, Elliot, we are not a struggling couple.”
“You’re not struggling, you mean. Don’t presume to speak for me. You always do that. Every time you told people we were smitten—every fucking time—did you know I was dying a thousand deaths of embarrassment inside?”
Oww. Joe didn’t even know where to put her hands. They migrated in circles around her head. You were embarrassed of me? Embarrassed?
“I was living with someone … someone I was ashamed to be with. I deserve someone, I don’t know, more educated. More on my level. Not a mechanic.”
“You didn’t just say that. You didn’t just say something so repulsive and shitty.”
Elliot sighed. “Living with you has been like living a quarter life.”
Now Joe burst into tears. “A what? What did you say? Repeat that.”
Elliot shook her head.
“A quarter life?”
Elliot ignored her.
“A quarter life?” How much had Elliot hated her? It had the sound of a comment she’d appropriated from someone else’s mouth. All through their marriage, Joe could identify which were Elliot’s self-generated thoughts, and the thoughts she had stolen from others. She usually could source who’d originally said them, too. But from whose brain had these particular bon mots issued? Not Elliot’s, was all she knew. A quarter life? What wit thought that up? “Not a half life?”
“No,” said Elliot firmly, squaring her shoulders. “A quarter life.”
“How long have you been thinking like this? You were thinking like this when you asked me to marry you? You married me anyhow? You let me think everything was okay between us? For sixteen years? While trying to have—while having—a baby? Sixteen years you’ve been lying to me?”
Elliot shook her head in disdain, a bleak look plastered to her face. “What could it possibly matter now?”
“Whatever you’ve known all these years, I didn’t know it because you didn’t choose to tell me? So I have, um, maybe more than a little catch-up to play here. You’ve already done all the work, the emotional work, of leaving me. But I haven’t done anything other than try to figure out ways we could get closer. The deck is stacked, and it’s not stacked for me.”
“Telling you things is terrifying, though,” said Elliot beseechingly.
“Because of my rifle? Because of the knife in my hand?” Now Joe lifted a butter knife and held it mock-threateningly.
“Fuck off, Joe. You know what I mean. You roll your eyes. You sneer.”
“I sneer and roll my eyes and that makes me terrifying, and consequently you thought it was perfectly legit to create and maintain a fake marriage? Your fear of confrontation makes what you did—what you’re doing—excusable?” The soft morning scent of blooms opening to insects wafted toward them.
“I’ll do right by you whether I want to or not, I promise. Other people won’t talk me out of it.”
“Uh-huh,” said Joe. She kept sneaking peeks at Scout, thinking Stay asleep. Be oblivious. Do not have this scene anywhere on your tiny retinas, in your tiny ear drums, transmitting to your infantile brain. “Apparently, you’re a seasoned pro at being a schmuck, Ell, but this crap is new for me. I promise I’ll try to catch up, though, now that I’m cottoning on to the rules.”
As if she had heard herself being thought of, Scout sent up a faint cry. Elliot snatched her out of the basket, bounced her. “Just don’t poison my daughter against me.”
“Don’t even say something so completely, utterly idiotic.” Joe shook her head. “I’m not the sociopath here. Are you sure it’s your home life that’s rotten? And not just you?”
“Stop railing! You’re just pain shopping.”
“Excuse me?” Joe thought she was going to wretch. Elliot was in therapy? Any therapeutic concept untempered by empathy meant precisely nothing.
“You just have an attachment disorder. That’s all this is, your florid reaction, in case you want to know.” Elliot said, “Who’s MaPa’s little strawberry?”
“You’ll give her shaken baby, for heaven’s sake, Elliot, don’t.” She dropped the butter knife.
Elliot didn’t stop.
“Ell, I mean it. You could hurt her doing that.” She added, “Scrambled brain.” Pain shopping. Attachment disorder. Florid reaction?
“Leave me be,” said Elliot. “It’s not your business. She’s my child.”
Scrape of chair, orange juice glasses shaking. “Don’t be a jerk.”
Elliot held the baby high over her head, a heavenly offering.
“Give Scout to me. Don’t mess around with a newborn.”
“Joe, back off.”
Joe grabbed the Quebec maple syrup in her hands and gave the plastic bottle an unholy squeeze so it came out in a sticky stream aimed at Elliot’s face. She dropped the bottle and grabbed Scout while Elliot sputtered and wiped at her eyes. “Get the fucking hell away from me and Scout, and I mean it.”
Elliot went inside. Joe heard slamming, the shower, the front door slam, the boat engine.
Joe undid her nursing bra (wide open mouth) and pulled sticky, messy Scout mid-cry onto her nipple, wincing. Joe shut her eyes. This is not happening, not happening, not happening.
AJAX
Ajax said yes.
Her simple silver band excited her on some still-vibrating level. At lunch, Ajax realized all their talk had now evolved (or devolved?) into wedding chat. What did they want? Who should be invited? Big or small? Where? Who would stand up for them?
Logan said, “My mother tells me I can’t get married until she’s dead. Toby here”—they dandled the big dog head—“says he gets to be my best man.”
Ajax had made egg salad sandwiches for lunch. “I would have expected more from your mom.”
“Not so much the supporter of queer rights. She has never been okay with me. To the extent that I hide myself—not binding when I’m around her—it’s because I don’t want her to comment.”
“I was once shunned at a women’s centre I worked at for being gay. Which was, and I quote, a ‘lifestyle more suitable for the city.’”
Logan sighed. “It’s probably the trans thing. If I was just a lezzie … She despises what I am. Every skirt I wore, I wore for her.”
“But won’t it please your mom to see you launched and happy with someone as she grows more frail? It’s very powerful, the act of witnessing love.”
Logan harrumphed.
“I’ve been a
t dozens of our weddings. Straights speak weddings. Love is love is love—people understand that when we show them.” She laughed and looked at her ring. “I’ve seen surly parents changed, although maybe it was just alcohol speaking.”
“She won’t come,” said Logan.
“Hets can destabilize our relationships by treating us like crap.” She didn’t quite grasp Logan’s relationship with their mother: highly entangled, both doting and acrimonious.
Logan picked up their sandwich, fooled with the lettuce, smiled. “Small or big wedding? Private or public? Toronto or Vancouver?”
“The Bahamas,” said Ajax, without hesitation. “Where I grew up.”
“Can we get married on the beach?”
“I scattered my mother’s ashes there. We’d have to take the kids, and the grandkids.”
“Expensive.”
“And your mom.”
Logan scoffed.
“Your mom,” said Ajax more insistently. “She’ll come, I’m sure, when push comes to love.”
Logan closed their eyes, said they doubted it.
Later, as they were prepping dinner, Logan joked about just calling their friend the lawyer and having her plug their numbers into DivorceMate software right away instead of waiting, and Ajax erupted into laughter. “Oh god,” she said, thinking of the painful divorce she herself had tucked in her past and how lower-income earners were inevitably fucked over, “are we completely insane?”
And then she thought, I’m the lower-income earner again.
Logan said, “Stats would insist we are.”
“Half of all marriages don’t work, but really, that means half do,” said Ajax.
“Thank you, Pollyanna,” said Logan. “Maybe they do, or maybe those are mostly lives of quiet desperation.”
“You’re such a cynic,” said Ajax. “And yet, I just did not for a second see that proposal coming. How the hell long have you been planning it? And why didn’t you propose when you had the flower petals scattered around the bedroom?”
“I planned it for years, baby. Since you were a mere chick of forty-nine.”
Logan uncorked champagne, the pop echoing across the lake. “To us.”
Ajax raised her glass. “I guess this, um, implies that we’re, um, considering a committed relationship?”
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