Lesley Anne Cowan

by Something Wicked (v5)

  The pills don’t make me feel high, just cozy. And it means I don’t have to worry about my mom, hungover in the next room with whoever she’s with. Or about my neighbour screaming. Or about my friend Sid knocking on the front door with a pocketful of weed and a hard-on in his pants.

  I watch a cockroach creep across the table. This place is a dump. I should clean it. Michael’s apartment was a dump too, but he’s a bachelor, so that’s different. His place looked just like the guys’ places where I hang out on the weekends: messy, clothes on the floor, old pizza boxes stacked under the kitchen table, empty beer bottle boxes by the back door. Except he had books. Lots and lots of books, everywhere.

  I liked picking up his shirts and folding them in a pile, even though I hate doing the same thing in my own house. My mother and I have fought endlessly about my laziness. At home, with my own stuff, I just don’t care. But at Michael’s, it’s like I wanted to clean the bathroom and take out the garbage and remove the bins from the fridge and rinse them down. It’s insane. I became a cleaning lady when I was at his place. Not because it disgusted me or because I wanted him to be impressed, but I think because I just wanted to take care of him. And that’s such a weird feeling, I can’t explain it.

  I hear Scott’s voice inside my mom’s bedroom. They’re fighting. Their voices are somewhat muffled, but I can hear enough to know that Scott is pissed off about something my mother did, probably something stupid. Scott puts my mom straight. He doesn’t let her dick him around. She needs that. Someone strong and reasonable.

  “I’m not your prisoner!” she yells, storming out of the room. She’s wearing a tight pink tank top and my blue boy short underwear that hangs loose on her.

  “Hey, I’ve been looking for those!” I shout from under the covers, only to be drowned out by Scott’s bellowing voice.

  “Then don’t have strange numbers on your phone! If there are no strange numbers, then you wouldn’t have to look!”

  My mother storms back to the bedroom doorway. “I have friends, you know! I’m allowed to have friends.”

  “Not if you’re fucking them, you’re not!”

  Oooooo! I pull up the blanket to hide my smile. He’s totally right. Smart man. My mom does have fuck-friends. Everyone knows this. She’s a classic hustler, only she’s a woman. She tells men what they want to hear, gets what she wants out of them, and plays them off against each other. Even she calls herself a

  cougar.

  “Go to hell!” she shouts.

  “Do you mind?” I shout, because I don’t like her being such a bitch to Scott. “I’m trying to watch a movie!”

  My mom turns her head to the mound of blankets on the couch and sees my blazed eyes looking out. “Sorry, I didn’t see you.” She pauses a moment and does a double take, like she knows I’m in a medicated daze, but then she heads back into the room and closes the door behind her. The shouting continues. I turn up the volume so loud the TV vibrates and tickles my ears, and I start to laugh.

  That night, I make a point of saying something to my mom about Scott, because, despite my sleepy fog, I actually worried about them all day. It seems I’m always worrying about my mom, and I’m getting real tired of it. Worrying when she’ll break. Fall apart. Fuck up. Get drunk. Get depressed. Crawl into her cave to hibernate because things are getting rough, leaving me to take care of everything.

  “Don’t screw this up, Mom,” I say to her after she gets off the phone from talking to him, seemingly like everything is fine again.

  “What does that mean?” she asks defensively, ready for a fight.

  “Nothing. Just don’t go all crazy or get him jealous.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence,” she snaps.

  “Well … it’s not like I don’t talk from experience.”

  She doesn’t say anything back. Probably ’cause she knows I’ve got a lot on her, and that there’s no way she could win this argument. She starts to tidy up the kitchen a bit and then finishes a half-eaten orange that’s been lying on the counter since yesterday.

  “Anyway …” I let her off the hook. “I like him.”

  My mom steps into the kitchen doorway, wipes her mouth with a napkin, and smiles. It was a rare confession of approval on my part. “You do?”

  I smile. Suddenly the mood is lighter. I like that about me and my mom: we can say shit to each other one minute, then be nice the next. “Yeah. So like I said, don’t screw it up.”

  She walks past me and tosses her crumpled napkin at my head. “Shut up,” she says playfully, and continues on to her room.

  Twenty-Nine

  He’s never going to call.

  I can’t eat.

  I’m always on the verge of tears.

  He never said it for certain. Michael never came out and said, “We’re finished.”

  Is it because he didn’t want to completely leave me?

  I’m beginning to think that limbo is worse than heaven or hell.

  The in-between.

  I’m somewhere in between being in love and having my heart destroyed. I’m trapped in a waiting room, not permitted to feel bliss or misery. It’s like knowing you won the lottery but not having the ticket in your hand. Or being given a death sentence by a doctor but forgetting to ask just how long you have left.

  I lie on my bed and smoke joint after joint after joint. My mom is in the living room, but she doesn’t mind me smoking ganja anymore, as long as I do it at home where she knows I’m safe. My mind drifts, soars, wafts, and squeezes through dark, pulsing tunnels, until I find myself in my no man’s land, where every day I pace the muddied grass like a prisoner, back and forth. Caging me in are two rusty wire fences on either side. There are no trees. The sky is grey. It’s chilly but not uncomfortable.

  I stand still for a while, in the middle, waiting. I hear birds.

  Then I walk over to one of the side fences. This is the side where Michael loves me still. When I’m here, I feel our love so strongly. I feel like I know what he’s doing. He’s giving us time, because if he stayed with me, we wouldn’t last. He’s waiting for me to grow up, and then he’ll come back for me.

  Next I wander over to the other side, where the grass is less worn. This is the side where misery lives. I can feel Michael’s ghost here. He’s gone. Beyond this fence is winter: hard, icy, windswept snow that blends into an indistinguishable white sky. I can bear it only for a few seconds before I panic, my chest constricts, and I can’t breathe. I feel I’ll collapse. I’d rather kill myself than disappear into that hopelessness.

  Fuck you, Michael.

  I need to know if I should wait for you or if you broke up with me.

  I need an answer.

  Now.

  Thirty

  The thought isn’t in my mind when I enter Dr. Williams’s office. At least, I don’t think it is. But while I’m here looking for some gauze, the file cabinet catches my eye. I know from being in the office before that our employee records are kept in there. I had to fill out an employee information sheet when I was hired. On the sheet, I had to write down emergency contact information. It occurs to me that if Michael wrote down his parents’ number, I could call them to get his new number and put an end to this waiting game.

  The cabinet is locked, but a guy from school once showed me how to pick them, so I get a sharp knife from the kitchen and start jamming it in. It works.

  Michael’s file is near the front. I simply write his mom Mavis Butler’s phone number down on a sticky note. But then I see the other stuff: his address, his resumé, his allergies. I want it all. Just to have it. So I take all the papers, fold them up, and put the whole bunch in my pocket. He isn’t there anymore, so no one would be looking for any of it.

  Everything is good until I try to lock the file cabinet back up and it won’t go. A rush of panic spreads over me. I try to ram and jam the drawer in, wiggle and push the lock, but it still doesn’t catch. I go back to the hallway to see if anyone is around, and then I give the drawer a f
ew hard kicks.

  “Hey!” A voice startles me. “What are you doing?” Rachel asks, appearing in the doorway.

  I am relieved it’s only her. “Here, help me. The lock is jammed.”

  She walks in, taking note of the knife on top of the cabinet. “What did you do, break it open?” She moves in, pushes my hand away, and tries to jimmy the lock.

  “I already did that.”

  She starts ramming the drawer the way I was when she walked in.

  I push her out of the way. Useless girl. I should never have asked her in the first place. “Shut up! Move!” I command, getting mad at myself for thinking she’d be any better at this than me.

  “What were you doing?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You jam a knife in a lock and it’s nothing? What are you stealing?”

  “Fuck!” I remark, frustrated with the drawer. “Nothing that concerns you.”

  She tries to help me again, but in the end we have to give up because it’s too risky with staff around.

  “Don’t tell anyone,” I warn her. It comes out as a threat.

  “Obviously,” Rachel snaps back.

  We head back downstairs.

  “What did you take?” she asks, following close behind me. “The petty cash?”

  “No. A piece of paper.”

  “Paper? What kind of paper? Why would you steal a piece of paper?”

  I want to tell her about Michael. If she knew I only wanted a telephone number, I wouldn’t look like such a criminal. But I’ve been a little wary of Rachel lately. In fact, I’ve been suspicious of a lot of people at work. I know people can tell I smoke weed sometimes on my breaks. I can tell by the whispers. And they’re not talking to me so much anymore. Even one of the veterinarians hinted I should get some perfume when I walked by her after smoking a blunt on a break.

  “Just forget it. And don’t tell anyone,” I warn her.

  Thirty-One

  I sit on my bed and look at the script I’ve written out. I don’t think I’ve ever been more nervous.

  I cut class this morning so I could call Michael’s mom from my room. My idea is to tell her I’m calling from the clinic. I’ll say Accounting realized they owe him one more cheque and they have some questions to ask him before they process it. Then I’ll get his number.

  A woman answers the phone. “Hello?” It’s strange to hear her voice. She sounds old. I imagine this anorexic lady with long brownish hair framing Michael’s face.

  I try to make my voice professional.“Yes. Hello. This is Becky Jarvis? I’m calling from Willow Animal Clinic, where Michael was employed? Accounting has noticed that they might owe him one more cheque? We are wondering if you could give us his number, so we could ask him some questions?”

  “Oh,” she says, pausing a moment. “Well. Michael isn’t in town. He’s away for a bit. I don’t really have a number for him. But if I take your number, I can have him call you.”

  “Where is he?” I blurt out.

  “He’s in Chicago.”

  “Why is he there?” I ask.

  “Pardon me?”

  “I mean, he left so quickly. No one expected it …”

  “I’m sorry, what was your name again?”

  Breathe. “Becky. From Accounting.”

  Her tone changes. “Becky. Let me take your number and he’ll call you.”

  “Forget it,” I say abruptly, and hang up.

  Thoughts race through my mind. I was hoping he was in a coma somewhere. Or locked up in a mental institution. In jail, or maybe even dead. But Chicago is just a phone call away. Chicago is so close.

  A thought occurs to me. They call it an epiphany, “a sudden intuitive leap of understanding.” And just like the definition says, my epiphany truly is sudden. It’s stark and sharp and takes my breath away. It is a leap, a plunge into a black reality ending with a skull-breaking smack against hard concrete when I land.

  He’s not coming back to me.

  I sit on the floor, my back against the bed, cradle the phone in my lap, and curl over to bury my head in my arms. I feel my face contort and pull and squeeze. I don’t know what I’m doing, something between a scream and a cry. My mouth is open, there are tears, but it’s silent. And then … a huge gasp of air and I let it all go. It seems impossible to shed so much water from a seemingly dry body.

  I feel like I’ve broken more than my heart. A rib? A lung? A muscle in my jaw? A tear duct?

  I’m more sad than I was the day I found out Michael left me. Because that day there was uncertainty. And that meant there was hope. A possibility of misunderstanding or misinterpretation or misinformation.

  But now there is a clear answer.

  After some time, I get up off my bedroom floor and wander aimlessly around the room. I don’t know what to do. I walk over to my bed, then turn and walk over to my desk, then turn and walk over to my closet and then over to the window. I’m in a daze. My face feels numb and puffy.

  Even though it’s a crappy, grey, cold day, I decide to go outside for a walk. I just need to move, feel the cold on my face. I end up wandering down behind our building to sit by the play park and smoke a cigarette. I wish I had some weed.

  It’s an ugly time of year. The grass is brown. The trees are nearly all bare. There’s practically no colour anywhere. Some young boys are standing at the top of the plastic cylinder slides taking turns pissing down the orange tubes. An old Indian lady, all gracious and sparkling in her sari that swells from underneath a thick ski jacket, sits on another bench with what I guess is her grandchild. There’s pumping, vibrating music pulsing from a black car in the corner of the parking lot, windows tinted, motor running.

  And then there’s me, sitting in the middle of this scene, feeling scattered and so very small. I bring my feet up to rest on the bench and hold my knees tight.

  I sit here for the longest time. People come and go. The sari lady eventually gets up and strolls the kid away. The black car tears off around the building. And I keep sitting here, not really thinking about much, other than how sorry I feel for myself.

  Then, after the self-pity and my fifth cigarette, I finally get to the truth. I’m surprised about what is really making me upset. Because I realize that what kills me, what absolutely rips my soul apart, is not actually that I’ll never see Michael again. It’s the realization that Michael, even the mere thought of him, was what was helping me get by in this pathetic life.

  And without Michael, without the dream of him, I have nothing.

  Michael saved me.

  He was like this unexpected gasp of breath above water before I submerged again. A second chance. But I’m beginning to think it wasn’t a good thing. I’m beginning to think he just prolonged the slow dying. It would have been better to just let me drown.

  I go sit on a swing beside some little girl who’s swinging high, kicking her legs up and up, trying to fly like a bird. I think of Bradley and how I’d push him on a swing set just like that for hours. “Higher! Higher! Higher!” he’d shout. How I wish I was that young again.

  It’s hard to explain the presence of an absence. I wasn’t aware that the idea of Michael was colouring everything for me, making life richer and more beautiful. It’s only now that he’s gone from my mind and I’m left to face the stark, bare, chilling reality that I see it for real …

  My fucking ugly life.

  I don’t go home until after eleven ’cause I know I just end up fighting with my mom when I’m so upset. So I sit in the park and then go walking around the streets, thinking about stuff. At some point I feel calm enough to go to sleep, because I’ve made a decision about my life: I’m not giving up. I’m giving in. There’s a difference. I give in to the destiny I’m being pushed toward. There’s no point in changing. I give in to my shitty life with my shitty friends and my shitty future. But it’s not a surrender; it’s more like I’m stopping the resistance. Why fight it if you always lose in the end? Why believe in that little bit of hope? There are on
ly so many times you can get knocked down before lying on the ground becomes more enticing than the fight.

  Why was the Lady of Shalott cursed, anyway? They don’t say what she did to deserve it. It’s just a given that she’s doomed to this life of solitude, and the story goes on from there. No one questions why. Sisyphus’s mistake was clear: he didn’t obey the gods. But it seems the Lady was just born into it. Like me.

  Thirty-Two

  Jasmyn arranges it so that I bump into Fortune again at one of her friends’ parties. We see each other the moment I walk in the door. He’s sitting on the couch, his arm up around some fat blond girl whose tits are hanging out of her shirt. He nods coolly in my direction, like I’m almost a stranger, and then turns back to the boobs.

  I’m so pissed off and tell Jasmyn I’m not staying.

  “Take it easy,” she coaches. “He’ll come to you. He likes you. Markus told me so. Just chill. Here.” She passes me a beer from out of her backpack.

  The whole night goes by and I talk to losers while Fortune hits on every girl in the room but me. I tell myself I don’t care, but the more drunk I get, the more upset I am about it. At three o’clock, now thoroughly drunk, I tell Jasmyn I’m going to the washroom and then I’ll be leaving.

  After I’m done in the bathroom, I open the door and find Fortune’s face right up in the crack. He smiles, all chilled. “Hey.”

  “Hey,” I say coldly, and try to push the door open to leave, but he’s holding it still. “You gonna let me out?”

  “You gonna let me in?” He smiles so damn sexy I want to kill him.

  “No. You fucking kidding me? Where is your girlfriend?”

  He laughs. “Which one?”

  “Yeah, exactly,” I say, pushing harder on the door.

  “I’m coming in,” he warns, and pushes through, starts kissing me, and locks the door behind him. I’m so weakwilled, I don’t even fight him off. “Oh, babe. I wanted to kiss you all night,” he whispers.