Once, We Were Stolen

by Courtney Symons

  “Good idea,” he said and reached over, across my leg, into the glove compartment. It felt like static shock, the brush of his sleeve on my jeans. He pulled out a napkin and pen and scrawled his number and name, drawing the A like an arrowhead with no bar crossing it. I liked that.

  “Perfect,” I said. “I’ll call you, then.” I knew I should probably throw in a dude or a bro, but didn’t feel up to it.

  “I hope you do,” he said as he flashed those eyes at me again, which had to mean something. And it did. He told me later that he’d seen me out walking before and always wanted an excuse to talk to me. I think that’s bullshit, to be honest. There’s nothing so striking about me that would have alerted his interest from afar, without hearing a word come out of my mouth. But I liked when he fed me the story anyways. I prompt him sometimes, Tell me the story of how we met, just so I can hear him say it.

  I did call Arthur, soon after he dropped me off. I waited three days. Maybe it was four. Playing hard to get seemed silly, but I didn’t know the code. When I got out of his car that day, I stood stock-still and watched him drive away. I had no idea what to do; I felt frozen to the spot. What I wanted right then, in that moment, was Vi. She wouldn’t be hard to find; she would be in one of three places. On our front porch, where I could see she was not, at work, or somewhere inside the house.

  She was in the kitchen baking cookies. I walked in and slumped down on a chair. “Hi,” I said in what was supposed to be a neutral tone.

  “Hi,” she said suspiciously. Rightly so, I suppose. I hadn’t been the most communicative. I wasn’t around the house much and looked for ways to avoid talking to her or Mom. It wasn’t anything personal, just one of those things teens do.

  “When did you know you liked boys?” I blurted.

  “Oh,” she said, surprised. “I don’t know, I guess I always sort of knew. I used to chase the boys around the classroom in kindergarten trying to kiss them. But I think it was about Grade 3 that I had my first real crush.” She paused. “If you’re hinting that I should go out and find myself a boyfriend, I’m not interested.”

  “No,” I said quickly, not wanting to offend her before I got to the heart of it. “That’s not what I meant. It’s just that… I don’t think I like girls.”

  She responded in a way that told me she didn’t understand. “Well, some people are late bloomers,” she said, trying to make me feel better. “Maybe you need to get out of high school first.”

  I started to get nervous. “That’s not it. I’ve tried to feel that way about girls, I’ve gone on dates and brought flowers and kissed them goodnight. I’ve fooled around.”

  Vi wrinkled her nose. I’m sure it was uncomfortable for her, but I couldn’t stop. I barged on.

  “I think the problem is that it’s not girls I’m interested in. I think I might like boys instead. Like you do.”

  She put down the wooden spoon in her hand and looked at me hard. It wasn’t a mad look, or even judgmental. Just serious.

  “What makes you think that?” she asked.

  “I just got a ride home from a guy named Arthur,” I said honestly, “He made my stomach feel something that I’ve never felt with a girl.”

  As if everything inside of me was spinning around very quickly, gaining momentum and throwing off my centre of gravity. As if it could start to spin so fast that I might explode and it would rise up and out of me like a cyclone.

  “Wow,” she said. “So how did you leave it, what did you say when you got out of the car?”

  “I got his phone number,” I said with a smile.

  “Jesus, you don’t waste time. Do you know if he was interested in men?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know anything really, except that he kept smiling at me and offered me a yoga lesson. I really want to see him again. Should I call?”

  “Okay, we’ll get to that in a bit,” Vi said. “First of all, do you think there’s a possibility this is just a man crush? I mean, your sexuality doesn’t have to be decided based on the way your tummy felt when a random dude picked you up on the street.”

  She sounded more like the sister I used to know than she had for months. I knew I’d made the right decision talking to her.

  “There’s a possibility,” I admitted. “I have nothing to go on besides this one moment. But there’s something about it, about him, that makes me think it’s not just a fluke.”

  Vi nodded her head once.

  “You don’t think that’s weird?” I asked her. I braced my body as if she might strike me.

  “Ben, are you kidding? Look what generation we’re part of. There’s nothing wrong or strange about loving someone the same gender as you. No one has the right to judge you for how you feel and who you love. Because you can’t help who you love, Ben.”

  Her eyes were so big when she said this. I couldn’t help but feel that she wasn’t only talking about me. I wondered what I could say to help her, but I realized she hadn’t admitted anything to me, not really. Those words were supposed to be comfort for me, and they were, I suppose.

  I stood up and gave her a big hug. It was meant to be a thank you, an apology, an act to show my love. My arms went around her but she was slow to respond. When she was ready though, she leaned right in. The weight of her whole body pressed against my chest. Her legs went slack. She started to sob. I always say sob in reference to her crying, because that’s what Vi does. They aren’t silent, small tears that trickle down her cheeks. Her eyes flow with the force of her whole body behind them. It makes you physically ache to hear her cry. I wasn’t sure where her tears were coming from, or who they were for, but I just held on to her tight. One thing I have learned is that if someone lets you hug them, you just keep hugging until they’re ready to let go.

  Vi and I stood that way for a long time. It was her who finally pulled back, smearing her eyes with the back of her hand, rubbing flour along her eyebrows.

  I laughed, wiped it away and she let out a giggle – a timid one I knew wasn’t genuine. They weren’t tears of disappointment in my decision to pursue a man. That’s not her style. Part of me thinks she cried because she lost the little brother she used to watch over; that I didn’t need her in the way I used to anymore. Another part, a bigger one, knew that wasn’t the reason.

  Arthur answered his phone when I called him three or four days later. I told him I’d seen a new coffee shop in town and was wondering if he wanted to try it with me so he could tell me more about yoga. It’s funny, the safety scripts we develop to conceal the ways we feel. They never really work. It was obvious that I simply wanted to see him. I’ve always wished I said that instead. I just want to see you.

  But he said yes, and he sounded excited, and we met the next day and that’s how it all began. We’ve been together ever since. That was ten years ago. A long time, isn’t it? People don’t really have a problem with it. A couple of raised eyebrows, some whispering behind our backs, but people will always find something to whisper about.

  Mom was the hardest. Not because she wasn’t accepting, but because she seemed to view it as a consequence of something, a punishment for some action. It never felt that way to me, and I tried to describe that to her. She told me it wasn’t that she didn’t support my decision, but that she didn’t want everything in my life to be hard. Things aren’t much harder for me than anyone else, they’re just hard for different reasons.

  I think that’s how I survived it. The knowledge that the first person I walk by on the street, and the second, and the third, are all going through something. They have each been bent and broken and on the floor, and here we all are, still walking around and smiling at each other. For the most part, anyways.

  3

  The year after I met Arthur, Mom got really sick. There was a day, a really awful day, when I came home to find her lying on the floor, a pool of blood around her head. Vi was at work and I wasn’t sure how long she’d been lying there. I shook her. I know I should have been gentler, but she wasn’t re
sponding and I needed a response. Her eyes fluttered, and when they finally focused she didn’t recognize me.

  “Frank?” she had said, confusing me for her latest flame. Flowers from Frank sat on the very table she had banged her head against as she fainted and fell to the floor. I asked why she might have fainted and she got very quiet.

  I lifted her. It’s a strange feeling when your own mother feels small in your arms. She didn’t want to leave the house.

  “I’m fine,” she told me, “I don’t think I drank enough water today. Just get me a glass please, and I’ll be just fine.”

  Just fine. It was breast cancer. She had been growing cancerous cells in her body for months, and had ignored the signs. No mammograms were on her doctor’s records; she ignored the aches and swells. For months. That sort of denial is something I will never understand.

  When we got to the hospital, because that’s where I dragged her, they told her she should have come months ago. The doctor got as close to scolding her, and me, as I think he was professionally permitted to. Maybe more so. By then, it was too late. The cancer had spread to her bones. As if it had knocked on the door, stayed for a visit, enjoyed the hospitality and made the decision to move in permanently and invite all its friends.

  Mom only lived for two months after that. By the end, she was a shrivelled ball in a hospital bed. Her breasts had been removed, but from what the doctor told us they didn’t much resemble breasts anymore.

  Vi and I sat by the bed that wasn’t her own through it all. A selfish part of me wondered when it was going to be over with. We knew she was dying and had to, every day, watch her writhing in pain or completely incoherent (really, which is better?). The awful voice inside my head that brings out the very worst in me just wouldn’t shut up. I didn’t want her to die. I wanted her to be healthy, to live, to have admitted to her illness months ago. But since none of those things could happen, I wanted her suffering to be over. Soon it was.

  She didn’t leave a will. There was no money set aside for a funeral, no plans for the way her body would be dealt with. Vi spent her savings on Mom’s funeral. Our grandparent’s protested and said they would help cover some of it, but Vi refused. Her logic was that they still had their own funerals to save for, their own expenses to be covered by their pensions. So Vi paid for it all. It’s incredible how expensive those things are. You don’t want to cut corners when burying someone you love.

  Feeling a bit like the black sheep of the family, I offered to pay for some of it. I didn’t have much money since I was paying tuition for architecture school. She pointed this out to me. I’ll never forget what she said to convince me she should pay.

  “Ben, you’re going places,” she said. “You have potential and a future. You’re still young. But it’s too late for me. I missed out. I’m almost thirty, I live at home, I work at a diner. I have a high school education and that’s it.” She sliced her hand through the air in front of her. “I don’t have a partner. I don’t have friends. What is there for me to spend my money on? It’ll collect dust in the bank. I want to pay for this so I can feel good about something I have done in my life. Mom is going to have the most beautiful funeral anyone has ever seen, and that will be something I did for her. It’s the last thing I can offer her. Please Ben,” she pleaded. “Let me do this?”

  It was a beautiful ceremony. I didn’t cry. Vi did. The ratio of men to women was three to one. I chuckled to myself about this, about how even in death she could attract hordes of men. It wasn’t really all that funny, and I didn’t share my dark humour with anyone but Arthur who smacked me on the arm for thinking such a thing at my own mother’s funeral.

  After Mom died, Vi stayed in the house. When the legalities were all sorted out, the property went to her. I didn’t mind. She seemed to think I would be upset about it and told me that I could live with her if I chose. But I was happy to leave. If I stayed, each day I would walk with the ghost of my mother. Every ounce of me wanted to tell Vi she should get out too; sell the place and take a trip, take a class, do something different. She was so alone, and I know why it happened but I don’t think it was inevitable.

  Vi is beautiful, and all her features individually are striking. They used to come together so well. Now, she looks like a slightly distorted picture of herself. The pieces don’t fit the way they’re supposed to. Her smile doesn’t glow the way it once did. Her eyes don’t sparkle. But she still wears that necklace every day. I’ve never seen her neck without it since we left Jeremy. She’s always touching it, rubbing it between her fingers, as if it’s a rune that will give her the answers. I’m not even sure what her questions are.

  Vi stayed in that house when I moved out to live with Arthur. Every time I saw her, even when weeks passed between visits, I had the feeling I was the last person she’d seen. And each time, she was a little further out of my reach. A little harder to talk to, to draw out. I should’ve tried harder to get her out of that house. She withered in there.

  Arthur had begun training to become a yoga instructor when I moved in. I had never been so in love. Well, more accurately, I’d never been in love, but I liked the way it felt. I loved waking up to the warmth of someone beside me. The nicest feeling in the world is needing a hug and being able to turn around and get one, and a really good one, anytime you want.

  Arthur has a tattoo covering his back of giant wings. One on each shoulder, stretching down to his lower back. Amongst it are the words, Love means never having to say you’re sorry.

  The first time I saw him without a shirt on, I asked him about it. He told me he’d gotten it a long time ago. I asked if he believed those words and he tilted his head a bit, as if he’d never thought about it. “I’m not sure,” he finally responded. “I don’t think I really want them to be true. They just sound beautiful.”

  I was glad he responded that way. I’ve learned a couple of things about love. One is that there is always some love buried inside you, dying to be given out. Even when you think you’re exhausted of it, completely drained dry of it, there’s a backup resource deep within you somewhere.

  Another is that love is having to say you’re sorry. Probably at least once a day. I don’t think it ever hurts to apologize. Arthur tells me I say sorry too often. He says I’m The Boy Who Cried Sorry. But I mean it, or at least I usually do.

  I suppose my love life isn’t exactly what someone would have in mind when searching for the dirty details of how fucked up I became after Jeremy. I’m sorry. But Arthur is a huge part of my life, and I think he’s the reason I’m still sane today. So he has to be included. My story cannot be told without him now, just as it couldn’t be told without Jeremy.

  After graduating from university, I was in massive debt. I worked hard, for years, to pay it off. As a dishwasher in Vi’s diner for awhile, random repair jobs here and there, until I finally got my heels dug in deep enough to start applying for real jobs. I don’t mean that the others were fake. But I viewed them as a path I was paving to become an architect, and I finally got there. I was hired by a firm in town and I started to bring in more money than I ever had in my life. It wasn’t a lot, but it was more than minimum wage. It astounds me how many people are willing to pay their human counterparts so poorly.

  You’re probably curious about Jeremy. Whether I hate him. The answer is that I don’t. I’m fairly sure I even love him in a way. Is that crazy? I don’t know. I spent a significant amount of time with him, and he took care of me. People shake their heads when I say this. Their eyes are so pitying, like I’ve gotten it so wrong and someone needs to help me see straight. The thing is, I’d rather not be a victim. I don’t want to be someone seen as trampled on. What’s the use in that? It’s over, I’m alright and I’ve moved on. No one else seems to be able to.

  He was wrong to have taken us. With the things he suffered through in his life, how could he possibly have a rational view of what was wrong and right? I can see his logic. It’s hard for most people, but I’ve gotten there. He bel
ieved all his life that love and family were all you truly needed to be happy, and he’d never had either, not fully. How was he to know it was wrong to create that for himself? To scavenge some scraps he could glue together and declare as happiness? Maybe I wish it wasn’t us that he scavenged. But I’m not even sure about that, and it was us, so there’s no use thinking about the way things might have been otherwise.

  Now, I know more about Jeremy than I ever did. Countless reporters and admirers have assembled facts about his past and put them on display for the world. Jeremy never told me about his childhood. I think Vi knew some of it; they confided in each other quite a bit. I was too young to understand, or at least I think that’s why he didn’t share his past with me.

  Jeremy has a bit of a following, the way people who have done wrong always seem to. Young psychology students visit him and ask to write their dissertation on him. He never says no, but he also never offers up information willingly. They have to squeeze the details out of him, ask questions in just the right way. There’s honour in the way he does it. He’s not looking for handouts. He doesn’t try to say he’s been unfairly accused. The day he showed up at the police station with his hands on his head marked the end of the denial of anything he’d done wrong.

  I remember reading the first exposé about Jeremy, written by a young female reporter for the local paper. The writer was very careful not to condemn or condone; she merely laid out the facts in chronological order. By the time you got to the bit where he kidnapped two human beings, it almost seemed like an inevitability instead of a crime. I suppose I’ve said enough on the subject, though. I don’t think he’s guiltless. What he did was wrong, and I wish he’d figured that out sooner than he did. Maybe it took Vi and I leaving to give him perspective.

  4

  Since Jeremy’s incarceration, I have visited him four times. That’s not a lot over twenty years, but most people think it’s four times too many. The first time, Vi and I had to go to the station to identify Jeremy as our captor. We both nodded our heads and then hung them. It was Jeremy who was contained then, and we the ones keeping him there. Just as he had caged us, we had locked him up like an animal. But for decades instead of months. Doesn’t that make us the guilty ones? Probably not, I know, but I can’t help but think about it sometimes. We stole his freedom, too.