by Heidi Wicks
“Yes, that’s true. We’re a handful.” She looks towards Dan, whose glare hasn’t moved from the window. “Any marriage advice?”
“Always put each other first. Always.”
“I saw, by the way.” Dan still doesn’t look away from his window. “I saw the message from him pop up. And then seeing him there tonight…seeing how you two acted. I feel like such a fucking idiot.”
chains and mixed signals
2016
Jess parks the car in the Lower Battery, the same place she and Cait always park. It’s the first Signal Hill hike of the season. It’s icy, even though it’s June, but it’s Newfoundland June. Cait zips her coat. Tightens her laces. “I put those spike thingies on the bottoms of my hikers, did you?”
“I should’ve, but I didn’t. Catch me if I fall.”
“Just hook your daddy long legs around me if you start to stumble.” Cait used to think the name was daddy, not dandy, and she still calls them daddy long legs. When they had sleepovers as kids, Jess’s lanky limbs would flail all over the place: a hand smacked against Cait’s cheek, an elbow in a shoulder, a bony knee in a ribcage. Cait would yank back the covers twisted and snarled around Jess’s limbs, and huff. Jess would bolt awake and roll her eyes and flip over on her other side.
The sky over the hill is gray and big and taunts a downpour. Droplets of icy rain sporadically prick their cheeks like tiny sewing pins. Nature’s exfoliant. Refreshing on the face, a jolt on the system. Awake. Ready to take on the impish elements. They clunk across the section of trail with the chain rope hooked into the rock. It’s meant to be a rail, but it’s the most dangerous part. A cliff goes straight down to the right of them. Jess usually walks in front, on account of the daddy long legs. Her hand rests lightly on the chain grazing the top, when suddenly her pinky finger hooks into one of the chain links. She thinks it’ll just come out again, so she keeps striding, but it’s stuck there. In the speed of her walk, she can feel the joint pop out of the socket.
“Holy fucking Christ, my finger, Jesus Jesus Jesus tonight.” She turns hot, immediately, everywhere, her face, her arms, her fingers are spiked with needles, and a molten river swooshes up through her torso.
“What the hell happened?”
Jess is on the verge of tears. “I hooked my goddamned finger in the chain.” She shakes her hand and dances on her toes and her face is awash in pain. Below, the waves crash and dissolve on the rocks.
“Are you alright? Do you want to go back?”
“No. We’re finishing. Oh shit, I just pissed my pants a little bit.”
“Don’t be an idiot. If you need to go back, we can go back.”
“No, no, it’s fine.”
“It’s a long walk.”
“It’s fine!”
Cait raises her eyebrows and she knows Jess is going to cry on this walk, even more than she’s crying right now. Nervous energy, palpable in the atmosphere. Periodic pellets of ice, the throbbing threat of a full-on downpour, swelling the air.
Jess trudges forwards, her gut burning, her hand burning, hot, pulsing pain embedded in the damp, dank sky. Numb. Just go numb, for fuck sakes. Trudge onwards. Focus on the feet.
“So,” Cait treads lightly, “what’s up with Matt Bohmer?” She intends to be gentle with Jess. Wills herself to be gentle with Jess.
Jess is caught completely off guard. Her finger throbs and so do her ears. Her lips feel frostbitten. Numb. She can’t handle Cait’s tough love right now. There are times when Cait is so forgiving and gentle and it’s just what Jess needs, there are times when she’s a loving right bitch and it’s exactly what she needs, and there are times when that approach does not work whatsoever, not even a little tiny tweeny bit.
“It’s okay if you don’t wanna talk about it. I’m just worried about you.” Cait tries to be patient with Jess when it comes to Matt. He was her first. First love digs way down into the guts and stays there. Part of her regrets not having had high-school puppy love, which could’ve been first love. But mostly not. Heartbreak is horrendous, and she hopes Maisie doesn’t tarnish her carefree high-school years over a boy or a girl. Plenty of time for that. Jess’s need for companionship is something Cait has never fully understood. It’s a form of selflessness, but also of insecurity and dependency, as Cait sees it. For as long as Cait can remember, it has been Jess’s goal to care for someone else.
They’re at the top of the first section of stairs now, on the plateau overlooking The Narrows. Fort Amherst is across the water. Beyond the vast blue, Cape Spear marked by a teensy lighthouse in the distance. The ghosts over at Cape Spear. Cait’s class went on a field trip to the lighthouse in grade two, just days before Jess’s class made the same trip, and Cait had been fascinated with how self-sufficient the keeper’s family was with so little. It was like stepping back in time. Feather beds and pillows, chamber pots under each one. How cold it must’ve been, up there all by themselves. She pictured them doing their chores, darning their socks by the fire, watching for weather. But they did it. They did it all.
At the end of the day, after the bus ride back, Cait rushed to Jess’s house to tell her all about it.
Sharing fuzzy peach slices on the bed, Jess’s eyes glazed over. “I wonder if they got married up there too.” It was all Jess thought about. Getting married. Even in grade two.
“I’ve seen him a couple of times.” She feels so guilty admitting it to Cait. She feels judged.
Cait knew it, she fucking knew it. Jess is getting sucked back into that love and romance vortex that’s not even real. She’s so emotional. So nostalgic. The past belongs in the past. Over with the ghosts at Cape Spear. “And how are you with that?” Cait hates Matt for leaving such a scar.
“I…I’m not okay.” The tears trickle a little more now. They’re about to start another set of steps on the trail.
“What happened?”
“You’ll get mad at me if I tell you.”
“No I won’t.” Don’t get mad at her, don’t get mad at her, don’t get mad at her, she wills herself.
“You can’t judge me?”
“I won’t judge you. You’re my best friend, you idiot!” Like a seagull about to shit on her head, a swoop of regret thunks Cait’s chest. She already knows what Jess is going to say.
A man wearing a t-shirt that says, “I survived Corngate 2015” trots by, and Jess wonders what the hell is Corngate?
“Hello there,” Cait says, and thinks that’s one of the dumbest fucking shirts she’s ever seen, but it’s mandatory for locals to say hello to every other local when hiking on Signal Hill.
“Howdy,” the man replies, and tips his baseball cap.
Jess’s finger is fully numb now, from the cold, but she still feels it throb. It’s a pulse, unrelenting. She thinks back to the sound when she hooked her finger in, and the crunch of the little bones. It must be broken. It’ll never properly heal, probably. She’ll have a crooked finger, forever.
“Well…we went for a hike…”
“Right…”
“It started off just completely friendly, I never would’ve met up with him if I didn’t think it was just a friendly thing.”
“Jess, come on—”
“I know, I know what you think but we’d messaged each other for a while, for probably a few weeks, and I was really holding him off, not responding for days, and keeping him at bay, but then I really and honestly started to feel like things were in the past—which I still do now, by the way—and I felt like it’d just be going for a little hike with an old buddy from high school.”
Cait sighs. “Ok…so what ended up happening?”
“We met by Sugarloaf, and first we just talked about his daughter, and school, and he told me his marriage was in trouble—”
“Oh, of course he did. Piece of sh—”
“No, Jess, it wasn’t like that. He was just talking about stuff that so many people are dealing with at our age. I told him about you and Jake.”
“Why in th
e—”
“Well, it’s not a secret or anything, right? It’s been, like, six months.” Her finger, oh fucking hell, her finger. It throbs. She feels heaving within her body, lurching, nausea, and she worries she might puke again.
“Whatever. Okay, so back to Sugarloaf…,” Cait smiles at a woman in a pink Running Room jacket, “Hi.”
“Before I realized it, we were talking about Mom, and he was being so sympathetic, and I really felt like I had a piece of Mom back, you know? It was so weird. It was like I felt her spirit there with us. And then the next thing I knew, I just felt all this love, and then we were kissing.” Jess starts to sob. Gasping for breath as they pound up the third set of steps. One step at a time. She cries with each step. Her sneaker slips on the wet wood and she trips forwards. Catches herself on the hand with her bad pinky finger. “Fuuuuck.” She stops and sits on the step and drops her head on her knees, her wounded hand resting on her stomach, and weeps. Great, animalistic sobs. It is the sound of throbbing, drubbing, grief, just pummeling her right into the steps of Signal Hill.
“Oh, Jess.” Cait sits next to her and wraps an arm around her and squeezes. Rests her head on Jess’s shoulder. “Let’s go over here.” She leads Jess to the two red Adirondack chairs that are placed slightly off the trail. They were a bit more private than bawling on the steps of the North Head Trail, Cait thought.
“I fucked up so badly.”
“I hate Matt. If you want to know the truth, I always thought he was slimy. That shit-eating grin of his…,” Cait is spitting mad. She knows what Jess is feeling. She remembers cradling Jess on the floor of her bedroom, just like she is now, trying to pick her up, and her body was limp. Like it was half-dead. Now, twenty years after high school, she is just as heartbroken as she was the day they broke up. Cait knows that Jess feels like a part of her is gone. The rage she feels towards Matt is the same rage she feels towards Jake.
“He…I don’t think he meant it. It just kind of happened.”
“Oh, he fucking meant it. I bet every bit of it was planned.”
“And then, Dan and I were out for dinner at Adelaide, Dad had sent us out, saw the strain on our marriage, and guess who ended up sitting right next to us.”
Cait’s jaw drops. “No.”
“Yes. Fucking yes. Matt and his fucking Botox-injected wife. Right next to us. I can’t believe he married someone like her. I’m so disappointed in him. I thought he was more real.”
“Oh my fucking God, fucking St. John’s. Jess, that is horrible. And I could’ve told you he was a fake piece of garbage years ago. Sorry.”
“Anyway, Cait, would you listen to me? Yes. It is horrible. I drank, like, five El Caminos and I went to the bathroom and threw up all over the place.”
Cait starts to laugh, she can’t help it. Jess always did have a bit of a penchant for puking. Nearly every time they went out to bars during university, the night ended with Jess vomiting somewhere. In a BFI, on the road, in someone’s shoes. This pink shit, Cait remembers, from that shitty Boone’s she always drank.
“Oh, well I’m glad I entertained you.” She sniffs. Strokes her pinky.
“I’m sorry, I’m really sorry. Why did you do it though, Jess? Are things not good with Dan? Does he know it happened?”
Jess knew Cait would judge. She can feel her energy getting more orange, just sitting there. She knows Cait too well. “Things with Dan have been…just felt…flat. On my part anyway. I don’t know if it’s depression or what.”
“Should we walk for a bit? While we talk? It might help.”
Jess sniffs. Cradles her hand and pinky. “Yep.”
“Hi there! Rotten ol’ day, hey?” A woman in red skips past them, two steps at a time.
“Oh yes. Disgusting.” Cait answers, not even trying to smile.
A gelatinous chunk of seagull shit splats on the step right in front of them. “Jesus!” Jess jumps backwards and Cait catches her by the shoulders.
“It’s okay,” Cait says, “we just missed it. We just escaped the whooshing plop of shit.”
“So,” Cait encourages Jess to keep going forwards, “what’s going on?”
“I just…Dan does know. I didn’t tell him, but he saw the Facebook messages on my phone.”
Plop goes the metaphorical seagull shit, right on Cait’s heart. She understands now, on another level, why. Even though she and Jake were already split when he started seeing Stacey, she knows the feeling of rejection. “You’ve got to focus on Dan now.”
“Yeah, no shit, Caitlyn.” Her finger is sucking every bit of energy from her body. She beats, assaults the steps with her shoes, her breath as sharp as the pain in her chest. She hears Cait behind her, huffing to keep up. The air smells like thawing mud. Farmyard shit. Seagull shit.
At the top of the stairs, even Jess has to take a break, which allows Cait to catch up. “It’s just…,” huff, huff, “marriage is tough, yes, but divorce is even tougher.” She puts her hands on her knees. The first Signal Hill of the year is always a bit of a kick in the teeth. “I don’t want you to have to go through what I had to go through. It’s horrible. So, you’re done with Matt then? You’ve cut him off?”
“Well…not yet.”
“Jess.”
“I know.”
“Really now.”
“I know! Jesus! Stop treating me like a child! Fuck!”
“Well I’m just making sure,” she spits the words. “Text him. Right now, with me standing right here. Tell him you’re done and it was a mistake.” She dares Jess.
Jess’s throat seems to close off. The air suddenly becomes extra cold and extra warm all at once and she can’t breathe very well. “I will. Later. I promise. I just have to think about exactly what to say.”
Cait seethes. “You say just what I said you should say—that it was a mistake and you don’t want to talk to him again.”
“Cait, he is an important person in my life.”
“Was. Like twenty years ago. And now you’re married. To an amazing husband. How can you be so stupid?” The words just come out of her mouth and she feels relieved.
“Oh, that’s rich.”
“Excuse me?” Her hands are on her hips and her eyes are wide and she’s craned forwards, and she thinks about the time her father told her she looked like E.T. the extra-terrestrial and she pulls her neck back in line with her chest and stands up straight. “Look at your marriage! Talk about stupidity. Do you think it wasn’t stupid to try to win Jake back? After the decision had already been made? After he had clearly moved on? How lame is that? You’re the one who left and everything. You put him, you put both of you, through all that pain, moved out of the house, and then decided you wanted to try to get him back? That’s flaky as hell, Cait!”
“Are you saying I fucked up my marriage?”
“Well…I didn’t say that—”
“Well…what? Say it.”
“Well, you’re just…a strong personality is all. You’re flighty sometimes. You act impulsively.”
“I can’t believe you would even suggest that it’s my fault my marriage ended.”
“You’re completely jumping to conclusions. Fucking relax. You act so independent, so I-don’t-give-a-fuck-about-love, like you don’t want anyone, and it’s so hypocritical, Cait, I mean seriously.” All of the angst and pain and jealousy and hurt she has felt towards Cait throughout their decades as friends is searing and boiling within her body, landing in her broken pinky, and she’s spewing it all out, all over Signal Hill, with all of the plops of bird shit.
Cait is dumbfounded. Jess has never spoken to her this way before. “Well then. You’re the one who cheated on your husband, or you’re on your way there, ‘cause I know you won’t have the strength to end things with Matt, and I know you’ll end up seeing him again, and it’s going to get worse. You’re putting yourself in a bad situation because of your emotions. I can’t fucking watch it.”
“And you’re never ruled by your emotions, no way, not you.
”
“Well you think I ruined my marriage. You called me a hypocrite.” Hot tears rage, spill, drip all over her coat. “Fuck you, Jess.” Cait strides ahead. Bolts up the last set of steps.
“Fuck you, too!” Jess shrieks it back at her. The urge to slap Cait across the face as hard as she fucking can, and leave a hand-print on her cheek.
Jess reaches the Lower Battery. Gets in the car and slams the door shut behind her. Drives to the hospital, her finger burning, hot, red, throbbing the whole way.
At the hospital, her pinky finger is set in a brace. She goes home. Takes painkillers. Eats a marijuana cookie that’s hidden in the back of the freezer, leftover from her mother’s treatment. She doesn’t think she’ll ever speak to Cait again.
One hour later, the edible has kicked in. She remembers when she and her mother spent two nights together in Terra Nova, and they each ate one. Sitting with their heads tilted backwards, they gazed up at a jet black cloak, sprinkled with hundreds, thousands, billions of stars. Terra Nova National Park had some of the darkest skies in the province.
“Wow,” her mother had gasped. “Every time I see the stars out here, it’s like the first time.”
“It doesn’t even look real. I feel like I’m in a planetarium.”
They just sat there, for ages, Jess and her mother, holding hands, their faces illuminated with starlight, watching comets dart across the sky from the corner of their eyes, waiting there in silence, for ages, until the moon rose, adding a golden glow to the starry silver. On their drive home, traffic slowed about forty minutes outside Clarenville. A moose had been hit in the middle of the highway. As they finally drove past the great beast, it was the size of her car. Jess looked right into its bulging, glassy eye, still wide open, and the terrified yet peaceful essence in its eyes and stature, arrested there in one massive mound of snuffed life on the highway, made her insides freeze.
Years before she and her mother sat in those chairs in Terra Nova, she’d been there with Matt. Her family went every year, and this year, Matt had joined. They’d snuck away from the campsite, and sat on the swings in one of the kiddie parks in Newman’s Sound campground. Holding hands, they stared up at the sky in silence, the same way she and her mother would do years later. It was a different kind of love, of course, and without the added radiance of a medicinal marijuana shortbread cookie. It didn’t go as deep. But it was still love, and it was still a moment that was connected with her mother.