by Ian Williams
He had lived with her longer than any other woman in his life. Those months felt like amber was thickening orange around them, like the ash from Vesuvius was settling over them while they lay face to face in bed. She had stayed with him in the hospital. She came back even when she didn’t have to. She might be the only woman who ever bought him jockey shorts. Somehow she knew what size. What a fool he must have looked like with his old self in black socks and bare legs trying to seduce a young girl like her, who was shiny and didn’t know it.
177. ORDER
Felicia
She had a gift for order. Army pointed it out. He told her that when she put a mug down, the handle would be parallel to the wall so it looked, somehow, aligned. Without thinking, she turned all the hangers the same way in the closet. She did these things effortlessly.
Observe, he said as he removed a tray of hashbrowns from the oven.
And indeed, she had arranged the six hashbrowns in a grid.
Things should be neat, Felicia said, feeling accused rather than complimented.
You might have OCD, he said.
178. TAG
Edgar
She was family of a sort, because of the child. But then Army made it sound like he and Felicia lived in a sort of family and Edgar didn’t want to ask whom he would choose, this Mr. O or himself. Instead he asked about movies.
Have you seen Sophie’s Choice?
Boring.
You thought so?
I haven’t seen it.
Well, how do you know it’s—
I know she does an accent in it. She’s German.
Polish.
Tomaito, tomahto. My homeroom teacher had a nervous breakdown last year. Did I tell you? All we did was watch movies anyway. But one day, we were talking, whatever, and he snapped the metre stick, Hulk-Hogan style, across his thigh. Buh-bwap. Then he didn’t come back.
And that’s why you don’t know any history or geography.
I think he was sexually frustrated.
Anyhow, as I was saying, you need to watch—
We had this scrub for a supply teacher for all of June, which was why my report card didn’t accurately reflect my performance.
Felicia bought that?
179. LACES
Oliver
Army was trying to remove his size ten shoes by peeling the heel of one with the toe of the other while keeping both feet on Oliver’s lap. He did that from time to time after the cast came off. A remembrance of things past.
You think she’s dead? Army asked.
Dead? Oliver frowned deeply. Dead? Why would she—
Yeah, I don’t know. Mom’s been gone so long. Give a brother a hand, will you?
Without undoing the laces, Oliver tugged off one sneaker then folded his arms again. If she was dead there’d be some kind of alarm system. Code something or other.
Army held up the other foot. There was a standoff of looks.
My hamstrings. Army massaged the back of his thighs.
Oliver removed the other shoe. He did have a streak of Felicia in him, Army did. To raise death at a moment like this and just leave it on the table with such detachment was a classic Felicia move. Dead? Ridiculous. He would never hear the end of it from his ex-wife. He hadn’t called her yet. Imagine calling her and saying, Heather’s dead. The doctor said it was a genetic abnormality passed down on the mother’s side. Oliver shook his head. What was he thinking?
Army wiggled his toes. You want to hook me up with some Pringles?
180. TAG
Edgar
The last time they met, she wanted him to show her exactly what he did to deserve a “leave of absence.”
I tucked in her tag, Edgar said.
Felicia reached across the back of his couch and pulled Edgar’s neck forward, toward her face. Like this?
She was mocking him. He imagined that for years she had been mocking him, wherever she was, in her house getting railed by Mr. O while tomatoes grew on a trellis in the backyard. He twisted his head away.
She laughed a broad, acrid laugh. In that moment on his couch, what Edgar felt was a German feeling with no Canadian equivalent. Weltschmerz crossed by verschlimmbessern and a guillotine-like Torschlusspanik, a feeling that rose up sometimes when he was looking into the fridge or loading the washing machine and remembered Felicia. He had the hot sensation that she was watching him with satisfaction from an omnipresent tree, her clawed feet wrapped around a branch.
And how about all the other women? Felicia asked.
I made it clear last time that I wasn’t talking about this anymore.
What you do to them?
Nothing, Felicia. Words. Just words.
181. SEDUCTION
Edgar
He had one move.
182. SPECIFICALLY
Felicia
What were the words specifically?
I don’t remember.
Were you drinking?
It was just a bunch of compliments.
Specifically.
I don’t know.
Because there’s a difference between, You look nice today, and, You looking fine when you squat down in that tight skirt.
That’s not what I said.
Well, tell me. I waiting to hear your compliment.
183. TO BE COMPLETELY HONEST
Edgar
His mistake had not been in offending the women but the men.
Thinking the all-male board would understand, he’d said, This is my company.
Some of the men looked at each other. Others looked down at their expensive pens.
Edgar felt emboldened. Order was being re-established. You can’t fire me, if that’s what you’re thinking. You’re all here because of me.
And the chair of the board, an ancient man who still wore bowties and spoke his consonants with German crispness, the only one who had not looked away from Edgar, said, You’re mistaken, my dear boy. This is your father’s business. He crossed himself. And Heinrich’s. You both flatter and forget yourself.
184. TO SUGGEST MOTIVE OR ASPERSION
Edgar
The chair of the board had two daughters and four granddaughters, one of whom interned at Paperplane a few summers earlier when she was on break from reading economics at Cambridge, all of which facts, when taken into careful consideration, disclosed the chair’s leaning toward believing the chicks, the weakness of his sperm, his fetish for bowties, his unctuous devotion to Vater, his father’s disappearance during the Third Reich, and possibly also his prim attention to careful pronunciation.
185. PROVERBS 23:29–30
Felicia
29 Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? who hath contentions? who hath babbling? who hath wounds without cause? who hath redness of eyes?
30 They that tarry long at the wine; they that go to seek mixed wine.
186. ZUGZWANG
Edgar
The white was finished but the red wasn’t. He was saving a bottle of rosé to take back. With the lights off in his hotel, Edgar could see Lake Louise cupped between the mountains.
Such a pretty girl Felicia was. Lean body like an Olympic marathoner, the fibres of her thighs twitching. When she lifted her back off the bed, he could wrap both his arms around her waist or grip her shoulders from behind and she would turn into a slippery fish. And the little anterior tilt of her pelvis when she stood in the kitchen in a low-slung skirt. Not bad at all. But of course she was dishonest. She went and got herself pregnant and thought he would comply with her Jesus. Edgar disliked being compelled.
If she had just waited, she could have gone on cooking for him all the days of her life.
Man, do you hear yourself?
I’m not sexist. It’s what she wanted.
Apparently not.
It’s what she wanted. Maybe not now. Because her pride’s eating her. She would have been happier doing things my way.
And you?
187. PROVERBS 23:33–35
Felicia
; 33 Thine eyes shall behold strange women, and thine heart shall utter perverse things.
34 Yea, thou shalt be as he that lieth down in the midst of the sea, or as he that lieth upon the top of a mast.
35 They have stricken me, shalt thou say, and I was not sick; they have beaten me, and I felt it not: when shall I awake? I will seek it yet again.
188. REVERSE SEXISM
Oliver
Whoever said that women love their kids more than men do had never been inside the chest of Oliver Soares, had never seen him stand outside Heather’s bedroom door knowing she was in there, breathing and filling up the house with her mystery. When she was a little girl, she used to erupt in terror and laughter as he dropped her from above his head and caught her at his belly.
Again, she’d say when he set her on the ground. Again, and reach up her arms.
189. PERIOD
Edgar
Sometimes he used to walk into the bathroom and smell her blood.
190. INTERVAL
Edgar
Not all the time. It was something he noticed but not something he missed.
191. LUXURY
Oliver
Army’s feet did not smell like pine trees or little tree air fresheners. But you’d expect a boy who spent so much time in the shower to at least smell human.
What could he possibly be reading in Chatelaine? Where was Felicia with a report? How was his little Heather and her little Heather? Oliver had been stalling with the adoption process. The ex wanted a closed adoption—no contact whatsoever between future Heather and the family. He had resisted such a severe separation on various grounds—personal and moral mostly but also spiteful and punitive.
Heather was under two years old when the ex left him the first time.
He had settled his little family into 55 Newcourt, one of his father’s rental properties. His ex said, sarcastically, Look at me in the lap of luxury, which hurt Oliver because his father had been slaving ever since he was taken out of school at seven years old to work on a farm in Portugal. He had moved to Canada with holes in his shoes, sent for Oliver’s mother, and landscaped his way to a family home and multiple rental properties. Within a few months in the new house, Oliver discovered that his American wife had been writing letters to an American ex-boyfriend. When he confronted her about it, that he was working hard all day so she could write her ex-boyfriend, she took off with the child and went to stay with her parents in Massachusetts. He was ready to end the marriage, but his mother, from her hospital bed, made him go and retrieve his wife, his ex-wife.
What are you going to do at your age? she asked. Oliver was younger than Edgar was when he met Felicia.
What’s she going to do at her age? Oliver responded. His wife was twenty-two.
It’s disgraceful, his mother said in Portuguese.
You should have married Teresa in Portugal, his father said. She no leave you.
Teresa was his cousin.
192. A SOLUTION HENDRIX MIGHT SUGGEST
Oliver
Oh, he wished the ex-wife, that woman, would die. Just spontaneously combust, but comically, like combust into smoke and feathers, so he could have his children back.
193. FITNESS
Oliver
Army had taken a strong interest in the Chatelaine. The cover promised diet tips, fashion tips, home tips, and—for shame—50 Ways to Leave Your Lover.
Read something with nutritional value, Oliver said.
Army looked over the top of the magazine. You sure you don’t have any change?
Oliver could feel his eyes heat-scanning him for the location of his wallet.
We can share those Pringles, Army said. They’re healthy. I’ll even let you choose the flavour as long as it’s not Nature.
If you come up with half, I’ll come up with half, Oliver countered. Somebody needed to teach this kid responsibility.
The ex-wife did not contribute a dime to the household GDP, as Army would say, and she let herself grow to that size. He was not a shallow man, no siree, but have some pride, have some self-respect. Surely when she looked in the mirror, she had to feel some stirring of nostalgia.
How about I pay you back when we get home?
194. NOT TO HARP ON HER WEIGHT
Oliver
He could have stuck with her even when she posed for Rubens. Her weight was the one thing he could attack reliably because she was so sensitive about it. It bothered her far more than it bothered him. She was never thin-thin. Heather had a way of saying fat-fat. She always had hips. Nothing wrong with hips. They were the body part he initially wanted to grab most on her.
How many times and ways did she leave him before leaving for good, packing up all her stuff and going back to America with their kids? No real reason for the divorce, like all the others on the street. The woman was unhappy. Everything the man did was wrong. Every single thing.
Did Hendrix say she was dating a guy with hair like Bill Clinton? May the force be with that poor shmuck.
195. NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTION
Oliver
The ex-wife tried to lose weight every January but she had no resolution.
By Valentine’s Day, she got conveniently tired.
Whenever they went walking, she always wanted to rest after a few steps. He could keep going and going. But she wanted to rest. What was the point of dragging him out there if all she wanted to do was rest?
196. THE REST
Oliver
Frankly, she embarrassed him. There he would be in some public park, technically a division 3 athlete, with someone he wouldn’t look at if he had accepted the offer from the division 3 school and not stayed in Canada. She sat on a curb, ready to argue or cry while all the other men were passing them, jogging and biking. He marched on spot, picking up his knees, barely sweating, waiting on the ex to catch her breath.
197. TRAP
Oliver
Go ahead, she said. It was a bright, in-focus winter day. Go ahead without me if that’s what you want to do.
198. DON’T FALL FOR IT
Oliver
I’ll catch up, she said, but he knew she wouldn’t.
199. SHE’S TESTING YOU
Oliver
He knew he couldn’t go on without her. She was on the verge of tears. She was saying go ahead but she meant, Don’t leave me.
200. VOW
Oliver
She meant, Don’t leave me.
201. OW
Oliver
She meant, Don’t leave me behind on this trail
202. HOW
Oliver
to find my way back to the car alone. She meant, Don’t leave me, Oliver. For God’s sake, you can’t leave me in this condition. You’re the only man I know here. Don’t leave me.
203. BUS
Oliver
Listen to this, Mr. O. Army began reading aloud from 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover: Number 36. Buy a pair of sunglasses and a one-way ticket out of town.
Nonsense, Oliver said.
On his wife’s encouragement, Oliver became a bus driver for Brampton Transit before he got laid off. (He used to teach high school mathematics but was dismissed for upholding school policy.) He got bad shifts. He drove around suburbia late at night. Sometimes he was the only one on the bus. He thought, Why am I driving myself around Brampton?
Army said, Just think about how many women you helped leave their husbands by public transit.
204. ROUTE
Oliver
There were sections in Bramalea where all of the streets began with the same letter. He screwed up the turns: G-section, H-section, M-section, N-section. Later, when word arose of the G-spot, he thought how similar an ordeal it was to navigate the G-section of the city.
205. ROAD CLOSURE
Oliver
His wife wouldn’t let him sleep with her in any case. Before the divorce they hadn’t had sex in months, which was like dog years.
206. SIGNAL
Oliver
She used to touch his thigh late in the night when they were younger, before Heather.
207. USED OR UNKNOWN CAUSES
Oliver
Number 47. Burn the bridge, Army continued reading from Chatelaine. You can’t leave your lover if you keep going back to him. Destroy all traces. Army looked up. But what if you have children with him?
Would you stop reading that garbage, Oliver said.
Part of him believed that the ex only wanted a child and nothing else from him. A second child was a bonus.
He had wanted more than children from her. He’d wanted her before the thought of children. Oliver tried to remember why, what was the attraction, and could only come up with, She used to be nice and thin. Mostly nice. And she could be relied on for potato, pasta, vegetable, or bean salad at family picnics, even before the kids. And she used to sing with him spontaneously in the car. Oliver didn’t want to go down this road.
Number 50, Army read. Love the one you’re with. He fluttered his eyelashes at Oliver and said, Aw.
(It was a Portuguese kid, Army’s age, who got him fired. Could have been his own. D’Souza. Oliver had asked him to remove his gum and when he refused to comply Oliver led him to the garbage can by the back of the neck.)
208. POEM
Felicia
A student came into the office one day, holding a poem from her class. She said her professor, an Asian woman, was forcing them to read offensive and racist literature. Felicia could remember two lines of the poem: Oh fat white woman who nobody loves / Why do you walk through the fields in gloves.
209. THE BARD
Felicia
Edgar used to write her poems. One. He wrote her a poem. One poem once.
Clouds. For Felicia Shaw. He coughed then conducted his cigarette like a baton.