A Handbook for Beautiful People

by Jennifer Spruit

“Yep. That girl thinks she suddenly doesn’t need me. Or you.” Dani chews a hole in her slice, catching a piece of pepperoni that was sliding off.

  EASY TO TAKE EASY WAY. Gavin glances at Dani, then takes a big bite, allowing the cheese to string down and melt on his two-day beard. The pizza is greasy and thick, sitting heavy as a stone in his throat. Gavin eats angrily. He’s been a health nut for so long, GF, SF, CF, only buying organic, saying no every time people celebrate. Why shouldn’t he have what he wants?

  “You’re hungry,” Dani says, her head jigging in approval. She stretches her bare legs out on the coffee table so Gavin can see her crotch. E. grins and stuffs his pipe with weed.

  Gavin looks away and finishes the slice, then motions for the box. E. feeds some crusts to Zigzag and passes what’s left to Gavin. He brings the box close to his face, admiring the salami islands submerged in grease, the cherry tomatoes and stuffed crust. He eats it without looking up, just in case Dani was going to ruin this for him with her magnificent body.

  “Don’t offer me any, hey?” Dani snorts good-naturedly and pours him a pop in a plastic cup. Gavin eats and drinks but it only makes him feel emptier. Pizza spills on his pants, and he wipes it off distractedly.

  When he’s finally had enough, Gavin sits on the couch beside E. and gestures for the pipe. E. nudges Dani. “… see … he needs a job.”

  Dani explains. “Told him you’re looking.”

  Gavin rubs his thumb against his fingers in the universal sign for cash.

  “… really … talk?”

  Gavin does the “monkey no hear, monkey no speak” thing that everyone gets faster than they can read his cards.

  “I’ve heard him talk,” Dani says.

  E. says something to her that Gavin can’t see. She laughs.

  E. twists around to look right at him. “… birth … never … women squeal?”

  Gavin almost laughs. He mimes holding a woman, arches his back, opens his mouth in a not ugly come face. He catches Dani’s eye.

  E. punches his thighs in delight. “You’re a fucked up guy,” E. tells him.

  Here it’s okay to eat pizza and wear whatever you want, and no one thinks you’re a retard. Gavin feels like maybe he got it wrong with trying so hard. He thought all grownups had it together and didn’t get afraid, but that’s not true. At least these people don’t pretend.

  Dani throws Gavin a beer from the fridge. “E. knows a guy.”

  “Yeah. Carpet layer … looking … someone clean.”

  Gavin laughs at the irony of anyone in this basement being considered clean and thinks about riding the bus and bringing home a pay cheque to buy beer and pizza with. Hanging with guys like E. who would give him a hit after work and sleeping in the truck on the way to fancy houses. Gavin cracks the beer and nods. He’ll do it.

  E. uses his phone to set everything up while Dani sucks pop out of her 7-11 mug, crossing and uncrossing her legs. “You’re in. You start tomorrow.”

  Gavin starts to get hard, watching Dani’s mouth. He likes the inertia of this, letting things happen. Letting go. He has more time to feel like a failure this way.

  This time at Choices, Marla tells herself she is a chirpy bird. She’s worn bangles so she jingles, and her favourite jeans with a long shirt of Dani’s to cover the fact that her fly’s not done up and anyone looking could totally see her ugly granny panties. She tells herself this is just market research—she doesn’t have to commit to anything—but she’s nervous. She reaches for Liam’s hand, but he pulls it away, adjusting his perfectly straight glasses. Right. “This is just an idea, though, isn’t it? Because we haven’t even talked about shared custody.”

  “That’s an option. But it would be hard. Think about this baby, Marla,” he says, and she does. He would have Liam’s green eyes. In all her fantasies about the baby, Liam is there. But she has to admit to herself that it might not be like that. She’d be alone, but worse. She can see from his expression that they would fight about who would get him on his birthday and they’d have to sit at school performances and soccer games with this same awkwardness. The only time their son would see them together is in a mall parking lot every week when they shared him like a favourite sweater no one could cut down the middle.

  In her office, Cynthia sips from her blue teacup. “Okay. Let’s talk positives.”

  Marla pulls a list out of her pocket. She wrote it on the personalized post-it notes of a real estate agent that were left in her mailbox.

  Go to concerts.

  Do massage school.

  Marla reads it over. She’s not like Liam with a new job to love and all the glory of the world. “It’s a pretty lame list.”

  Liam clears his throat. “Her mom and I have been trying to get Marla to make some real goals. There’s this program—”

  Cynthia nods, her hands folded. “Marla has lots of time to make life plans.” She looks meaningfully at Marla. “We’re so glad you’ve started.”

  Cynthia explains the process, and it seems casual, one step after another. The way she breaks it down, anyone could do it. The first step is just some paperwork. Marla looks at Liam and thinks about Elise and hating her own mom and decides she could easily write her name and birthdate down on some forms. Adoption’s an option.

  Cynthia gives Marla and Liam envelopes of forms to fill out. Marla reads over them, fingering her bangles. The standard stuff—her age, ethnicity, does she smoke. There is a lot of health stuff about her and her family. But it gets personal fast. Do you or have you ever used intravenous drugs? Do you or have you ever received money in exchange for sexual favours?

  “Do I have to answer all of these?” She glances at Liam’s forms. He’s already halfway through the first page.

  Cynthia nods. “It’s important to be honest.”

  Marla knows what that means: there are people who won’t choose her child because of the things she’s done, the person she is. She sets her form on the glass coffee table. “No one will want the possibly deformed baby of an ex-hooker with FAS.”

  Marla said it for shock value, but Cynthia isn’t shocked. She sits beside Marla on the couch and hands her a tissue. “I can help you fill it out. You’re in control here: you choose the right family for your child.”

  Marla reaches for her stomach as if her baby might have disappeared, but he’s still there, moving and growing. He deserves her strength, so Marla wipes her eyes and writes her age on the form.

  When the forms are complete, Cynthia asks them to talk about the ideal parents for their child.

  Liam ticks items off on his fingers. “Financially secure, university educated, have other children.”

  Marla wasn’t thinking about any of those things. She searches for a moment, then decides she doesn’t care whether she gets the right answer. “Well, I’d want parents who weren’t too old and don’t just watch TV all night. A dad who remembers to change the smoke alarm batteries and can cook huge family breakfasts. And a mom who cheers loud at school assemblies, and for them to have a house with a garden. With sunflowers. And I want to be able to see him.”

  “I’d be more comfortable with closed adoption, if possible.” Liam sits primly with his hands folded.

  Cynthia sees the look on Marla’s face. “Tell me more about that, Liam.”

  He pulls on his earlobe. “I’m not ready to be a parent, and I don’t want to explain that to my child. He’s going to hate me, just like I hated my mom.”

  So, Liam does have thoughts about all this. All Marla had to do was come to a fancy office. She admires Cynthia’s sympathetic expression and sees an opportunity to look like she knows what she’s talking about. “We could learn to be good parents to him if we’re around and he has his own family too. It could be extra good, with lots of love coming at him from everywhere and …” Marla searches for the right words, but realizes it’s not what she actuall
y believes. When has that been true for her? How did having lots of foster families make up for not having a real relationship with a parent? They would be putting a burden on their child either way.

  “I’m glad you’re talking about these things,” Cynthia says. “Of course, your level of participation in this child’s life is completely up to you as individuals. It’s something you will have to work out with the adoptive parents if you choose adoption.”

  Liam’s phone buzzes but he doesn’t answer it. He’s looking at the table with the Kleenex box, his shoulders slumped. “Being forgiving is easy for you, Marla, but lots of other people find it hard. Like me.”

  Marla wants to tell him she’s making it all up, that she doesn’t know the first thing about stability and commitment and that’s why she’s here, because she’s afraid. That he’s right to want to go through with this and choose other parents for their child because Marla just faked a bunch of happy she doesn’t have, like she always does. His face looks so raw she gives his shoulder an awkward sideways pat.

  Cynthia offers Liam the tissue box. “It’s okay not to know,” she says. “Take each feeling as it comes and be confident you can make the decision that is right for you and your child.” Cynthia is looking at Liam like she’s saying this for the first time, not the hundredth, and in that moment, Marla loves her.

  After midnight, Gavin gets Marla out of bed. MOM’S HERE.

  Candace is outside swinging a tin can on a string, banging it into the screen door. She looks old, Marla thinks, the lines on her face deep under the glare of the porch light.

  “I pissed in your bucket, you know.” Candace indicates a five-gallon pail Marla was using to collect rainwater and starts giggling to herself, nervous. “I thought there was body parts in there, you know? Like the missing women? Voodoo shit that had to be stopped.” Then she sees Gavin. “My baby—” she says, and paws him like a slobbering dog. Marla thinks it’s supposed to be a hug.

  He stuffs his pad in his pocket and wraps his arms around her reluctantly. He mouths over her head at Marla: What’s going on?

  “She’s fucked up, Gavin. You told her where I live?”

  Sorry. I didn’t know—

  Candace spills all the way inside and spits on the floor. “What the hell are you saying?”

  Marla ignores her and rummages in the kitchen, piling up apples, leftover takeout, pop, beef jerky. She hollers down the stairs for Dani to bring some tampons. She can solve this problem in two seconds.

  “I’m not here for a goody bag.” Candace belches, then winces, and Gavin backs up a step. “I’m just here to see you, say hi.” She looks Marla up and down, wobbling. “You’re a house. When’s your baby coming?

  “Summer.”

  “Your arm—remember when you broke it before?”

  Marla remembers. “Next question.”

  “Whatever. My own kids think they’re better than me because he’s got some scholarship, and you’re living here with her. How’d the two of you get pregnant anyways? Always thought that was failsafe.” She scrunches her face and laughs like a hyena.

  “You have a scholarship?” Marla asks.

  Gavin looks down. HAD. MISSED START DATE.

  Dani comes up in her robe holding a box of tampons. “Hey, Mama.”

  Candace leans, misjudges the distance from her arm to the table, and falls. “Fuck.” She blinks, then throws up—pathetic globs of upchuck puddling under her chin.

  It’s at this moment that a tousled E. appears at the top of the stairs wearing nothing but boxers. “Hey sexy. How you doin’?” Candace says, getting up, fixing her hair. He lights his bowl and stumbles into the kitchen, then lots of things happen fast.

  Gavin’s voice rumbles. Marla can’t believe it, but he’s actually growling. He pushes past Candace to hold E. by the throat. “You fuck her?” Gavin says.

  “Yeah, man. Don’t you?”

  Gavin cocks his arm to punch E. in the face, which Marla knows would be so stupid, considering the kinds of people that E. knows, but Dani gets between them, wrapping her fingers around Gavin’s fist. “Don’t do it, tough guy. Not even a little bit.”

  Marla steps behind the table, watching them talk with their eyes, saying complicated stuff. Someone has to back down. It’s another moment she doesn’t know the mom response to.

  E. cracks his neck and dusts himself off. “Fuck. Take it easy. You are seriously melodramatic, man.” He takes a hit and then bumps down the stairs, smoke trailing behind him.

  Gavin’s voice is heavy with anger. “Why is he here?”

  Dani chews her lip. “Don’t worry about it. It’s nothing.” She waves to Candace. “Look after yourself, babe.”

  “Feels like something.” Gavin blocks Dani’s way downstairs, his arms on the doorframe, a monstrous look on his face.

  “Gavin, stop it!” Marla says. She swats at him so he’ll look at her. As if she needs this drama.

  Dani speaks softly. “You want the truth? I’m paying a debt. All right? You happy?”

  Gavin snarls and breathes wet through his teeth, staring Dani down. When she doesn’t blink, he turns on his heel and bangs out the door.

  Gavin stays out all night, running, then walking, then running again, knowing this city and feeling its air in his lungs. He runs past shabby mom-and-pop groceries in Bowness and Montgomery, concrete slab student apartments on the edge of University Heights, and through the winding tree-lined paths of Confederation Park. He cuts across the river at the pedestrian overpass and snarls at the miserable and foreboding grey wall of institutional buildings forming a phalanx around City Hall, two homeless kids fucking under a blanket by the river, and women waiting for tricks. They call to him, showing the curve of their hips. Well after they finish for the night, Gavin runs back along the river, from the zoo past the downtown that is both fortress and heart, past the skate park and leafy neighbourhoods where everyone is tucked in, past tall condos, and all the way to the forest angling up the ridge at Edworthy Park, panting, where he lies down on a giant rock to sleep.

  When the sun rises, Gavin awakens by the river. It seems constant, but it started small, carrying water from the Rockies through an enormous watershed. He imagines the water growing as it joins the Oldman and North Saskatchewan rivers and travels the country to drain into Lake Winnipeg. Looking at the river, Gavin feels he can go back.

  Candace is gone, but E.’s shoes are still at the back door. Marla must have cleaned the puke up.

  Slut, he thinks. Dani’s soft arms and her brown eyes. Lying. All those times the door was locked. There is so much to hate. He slams the cupboard doors in the kitchen, looking for one of Marla’s sugary granola bars. Nothing.

  Like all health nuts, Gavin goes to the grocery store to get high. He tells himself no one will see him, no one knows him. He can buy orange juice and chocolate bars and tuna and his own bag of those amazing crusty buns and eat it all on a park bench if he wants to.

  The old Gavin is used to being in charge in the grocery store, knowing everything he can about what he buys and secretly lording his immaculate basket of food over the plebs who eat extruded dry cereal and long beans from China. But today he’s not going to ask produce managers why they don’t stock the Alberta asparagus that is in season. Today he’s going to buy pepperoni sticks from the deli and a carton of chocolate milk. And chewing gum that is coated in flour and full of chemicals. He feels a giddy glee.

  Gavin has a full basket of fun, normal food and he’s just thinking about whether to get a can opener for the tuna when he feels it coming. He leaves the basket and runs for the double doors at the back, hoping there’s a public washroom there. Guys wheeling dollies give him sideways looks, unable to get out of the way fast enough.

  He pushes through to the bathroom. Full on liquid shit.

  He’s sweating, breathing fast. This is what it’s like, he tells hims
elf. This is who you are. He can’t eat food like regular people. All of it makes him sick, makes him angry. He punches his thighs. There’s a long future looming.

  He stays there for a long time, so long the handle jiggles because someone wants him out of there, probably asking if he’s okay. He’s not. Gavin can’t stop thinking about his basket full of pleasure. He sees himself carrying it right out the door and across the street, down the block to the park. He sees himself by the duck pond biting into a hunk of cheese and gulping pop. He flushes the toilet, then looks at himself in the streaked mirror. He’s going to buy all that food, even if it makes him sick. Maybe because it makes him sick. He grins at himself, a tight little smile that feels nasty and exciting. Gavin knows that if he allows a transgression, he might not be able to stop.

  After a slushy start, May brings a warmth that Marla needs. She spends her time in the backyard digging up grass to make a garden, planting potatoes, pulling dandelions—anything to keep out of the house. Marla is so sick of Dani and Gavin avoiding each other and not talking to her about it that it’s almost a relief to be back at the agency.

  Today, Cynthia has eight or ten books arranged artfully on the coffee table in her office. Some are fancy, with glitter-glue spelling and upholstered covers. Others are more like things Marla made for school: binders with sticky labels.

  “Are you ready to look at these?” Cynthia says it like you can’t go back after, and Marla hesitates.

  “I mean, isn’t that what we’re doing here?”

  “Yes,” Liam says. He’s making her nervous. It takes Marla a second to think about what’s different: he’s not hurrying or looking at his phone. His attention is unsettling.

  “I’ll leave you to it, then.” Cynthia takes her teacup and closes the door with a click.

  Marla shifts the binders around the table, feeling each one. She worries the people in these books won’t understand her, will judge her and shame her to her own child—which scares Marla, and, to forget about the fear, she thinks about how satisfying it would be to mock them. That’s exactly what she intends to do when she picks up a satiny binder with ribbons glued onto it. It’s stuffed like a quilt, and in the centre is a circular picture of a tidy couple with landscaped haircuts that probably get trimmed every three weeks. They’re wearing matching his and hers windbreakers. Marla opens to the first page, the letter.