Gavin wanders Bowness Park in the rain, looking by the dock and the boat sheds, but Dani is not there. Just graffiti and ugly florescent lights.
He rides the bus downtown, shaking. No one will sit with him, and he prefers it that way. He gets off at Centre Street and walks by the river where the hobo camps are. He calls her name. Kids whip past him on bicycles in the wet dark, and he stumbles.
She’s not here. He won’t find her. He rubs dirt between his fingers, looking over the river. It carries all the rain and snow from the mountains, impossible faraway places. The high water gives him a plan that’s garbled and ugly.
In the cold wet, Gavin conjures Marla and casts about for a safe place to put himself, for her sake. She’s probably riding the train or walking with Liam. He’ll look after her.
Maybe Liam is at the restaurant. Gavin scrambles up and runs. He doesn’t look when he crosses the street. His shoe comes untied and he kicks it off, not stopping.
The Thai place is busy, with people still waiting for tables. Gavin edges in the door and around groups sipping tall drinks. He brushes hair off his sweaty face.
The hostess is saying something. “… many, Sir?”
“I’m looking for Liam.” As soon as he says it he wishes he brought his notepad.
The hostess widens her eyes like Gavin he might eat her. He glances at his wet, muddy jeans, his missing shoe. She’s still talking. “… going to have to speak up.”
“Liam,” he says, slow and clear. Pointing.
The hostess is now in conference with a male server, who looks Gavin up and down. He says it again, standing up straight, trying not to pant. “I’m looking for Liam.”
She’s shaking her head. Maybe the music is loud, but that doesn’t occur to Gavin. The concerned look on the hostess’s face is one Gavin can’t stand.
He kicks over a decorative planter, feeling the vibration of it hitting the floor. “Liam!” he bellows. The waiting patrons have backed away and are staring. Gavin shakes his hair and snarls.
The male server puts his body in front of Gavin’s. “Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
Gavin turns in half-circle, feeling cornered. People have stopped eating. The kitchen door swings open and shut, open and shut. None of the curious wait staff are Liam, because Liam would have come running. There is nothing in the room but disdain.
He runs, his one shoe hitting the pavement hard. Gavin knows only one thing: he is the worst version of himself that he could be.
14. MICROWAVE POPCORN
A HORN’S HONKING outside at six-thirty in the morning. Marla rolls over, trying to ignore the noise, but it’s incessant: Gavin’s ride to work.
She hauls herself up, barging into his room. He’s not there. It looks like hell, with pieces of wood all broken on the floor: the crib he was building. Marla feels sorry for a second, then just annoyed at more of Gavin’s useless anger. He’s here, makes a huge mess, then takes off without leaving a note?
She leans out the front door, still in her pyjamas, and hollers to the guys in the truck. “Gavin’s not here!”
They mutter to themselves, then a skinny guy in a backwards hat yells back. “He’s done then.” They roar off.
It’s like having a kid, but worse, because he’s old enough to know better.
Marla’s cell phone alarm rings with a reminder about Dani’s meeting with Kamon. She twists the doorknob to go downstairs, but it’s locked. She picks the lock with a hairpin she keeps in the drawer for that purpose, but the door still won’t budge. “Dani!” she yells. Must be something against the door. Like having two kids. She walks out the front door barefoot, around the side of the house where the bucket is. She sniffs at it, curious. Yep. There’s piss in there. She leans it over carefully so the pee runs into the flowerbed.
Marla bangs on Dani’s window, then slides it open to peer inside. Dani is wrapped in a quilt on the floor holding her bat, her head back against the wall. Passed out.
Marla backs herself into the window, something she’s done many times, but not at her present girth. She can feel Dani’s dresser with her feet, but her bump’s not budging. She kicks around, banging her feet into the wall. “Dani—get up and help me.”
“Why?”
Marla stops wiggling. “What do you mean, why?” She sucks it in, and yes, she can feel herself sliding through the window frame. She crouches awkwardly on Dani’s dresser.
Dani’s rolling her bat on the floor. “You look like Pooh Bear.” She licks her lips. Her cheeks are really red.
“You’re fucked up.”
“Yeah. You want some?”
“You’re supposed to see Kamon today.”
Dani slams her head against the wall. She punches herself in the jaw. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
Marla grabs Dani’s hand to stop her from hitting herself. Close up Marla can see a bruise on her chin and Dani’s split lip. “Listen, I’ll call and reschedule, okay? I’ll tell her you’re sick.” Dani slumps down, clenching her fists. “Dani—”
Marla’s phone’s ringing. “Yeah?” She pats Dani’s arm, squishing her phone against her chest. “I’ll get rid of them.”
The voice on the phone is authoritative. “Can I speak to Marla Parker?”
“Yeah. I mean, speaking.”
“Are you aware that you are the emergency contact for Gavin Parker?”
Marla’s hand falls away from Dani. “Gavin?” Her voice feels small, like it’s coming from far away. “Um. Yes.”
“I’m calling from the Foothills Hospital to inform you Mr. Parker has been admitted and you should probably come in.”
Gavin. Marla drops the phone and presses her hands to her eyes. She’s let him down, and now something is wrong. “Dani, we gotta go.”
meet me at foothills
baby?
no. gavin.
what happened?
don’t know. please come.
When Gavin opens his eyes, Liam is there, pacing the room in a suit. Gavin sits up, blinking. Liam puts a hand on Gavin’s shoulder. “Hey, you broke your ankle and bashed your head. Marla’s on her way.”
Gavin feels down his body, hating that it all still seems to be there. He should be underwater. He hops to the bathroom, staying longer than he needs, sweating with the pain. He deserves it.
When Gavin gets back to bed, Liam hands him a clipboard with old dot matrix paper clamped into it. Institutional paper. “What happened?”
JUMPED OFF CENTRE ST BRIDGE.
Liam is frowning so hard he tears up. “Why?”
Gavin remembers her shaking beneath him. DID BAD THING.
“The nurses say you were belligerent.”
THEY THINK I WAS DRUNK BUT I WASN’T.
Liam holds a glass of water to Gavin’s lips. “I’m going to get you something from downstairs. A salad? Fruit?”
Gavin closes his eyes and nods. Stupid. Tired. Don’t want to care and can’t help it. And all the cold water rushing up around his bones and heart.
He feels the room change and snaps his eyes open. Dani. Through Marla’s weepy babble and officious patting, he watches Dani in the doorway, staring him down. She’s wearing Marla’s jacket over sweatpants. She taps her foot, her face red, her neck long and her arms braced on the frame.
“What’d you do, fucker?” She drums her fingers on the wall.
Gavin wishes he could pull something beautiful out of his pocket, like a stalactite or a tiny teapot, but he has nothing. He can see his marks on her face. “Jumped into the river.” His voice feels wobbly but he stops it. He doesn’t deserve sympathy.
“That wouldn’t kill anyone.”
“No. Guess not.”
Marla flaps in his line of sight. “Gavin, that’s horrible.” She’s crying. “You need help.”
Gavin doesn’t agree or disagre
e. He holds his eyes on Dani.
Liam returns with a bag of food that he presents with two hands. “Eat,” he says. He embraces Marla, saying something or other. Dani sits in a chair by the window. She hasn’t taken her eyes off Gavin.
He stands, hopping on one foot and pushing his IV pole out of the way, but it catches on a leg of the bed and tips over. He rips the IV out of his arm. “Dani, I’m sorry.” He gets down on one knee in front of her, sticking his broken ankle out to the side. “So sorry.”
She raises a hand to examine her nails. “They all are, you know.” She looks beyond him. Marla must be saying something, but Gavin doesn’t turn around.
“I want you to press charges.” He should be in jail, pissing in a stainless-steel toilet, sleeping on a plank. Now he craves her anger, thirsts for it. He juts his chin out at her in an invitation to flare off. Dani bites off a fingernail and spits it on the floor. She doesn’t move. The expression on her face doesn’t change, and the love Gavin feels for her, his admiration, eats him alive.
Liam is beside Dani now. “… he talking about?”
Dani looks at Gavin. “He got a little carried away.” Marla opens her mouth and closes it like she has a lot more to say. She holds his hand with the hospital admissions bracelet on it, squeezing him. He stays kneeling in front of Dani.
“You never have to see me again,” Gavin says to Dani.
“Perfect.” Dani bites her lip at him, suggestive, angry, and before he can say anything else, she leaves.
Marla tries to pull Gavin back to his bed, but his body feels heavy, like dead weight. He yanks his hand to go on his own, and Marla feels she will never understand.
“Did you hit her?” she asks, tentative. It’s the only thing that’s coming to mind, yet it feels ridiculous when she says it. “Did Dani hit you?”
Gavin curls into a ball with his arm over his eyes. “It’s my fault. I did this, all of this.”
“Right, but—” Marla trails off when she notices Gavin isn’t looking at her. She picks his arm up off his face. “Look at me, Gavin. You owe me that much.”
“I’m seeing you.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t notice the signs or whatever, but now I’m freaking out. You jumped off a bridge? You and Dani won’t tell me what’s going on—something’s really wrong with you.” Marla knows as soon as she says it that it’s bigger than just Gavin. It’s all of them, something to do with pretending and perfection and not really knowing anything at all about what to really do. “With all of us.”
“I don’t believe in me anymore.”
“But you can. I’m learning too.”
Liam has his mouth open, but he’s almost frowning too, like Marla read his mind. “Marla,” he says, but then Gavin’s crying, turned away. The emotion is gone now, floating in the room unclaimed.
Liam opens the bag of food Gavin left lying on the bed. “Maybe you should eat something, Gavin. I brought you a chicken Caesar—no dressing, no croutons.”
Gavin picks at the cheese on his salad and looks like he’s going to burp or throw up or both. He pushes it away and folds his arms over his chest.
What if he won’t eat the whole time he’s here? Marla tries to squish down the panic inside her into little boxes—the adoption, Dani’s chaos, the sort-of relationship she has with Liam, and now her easygoing, perfect brother crossing his arms in a backless gown because he’s in the hospital for throwing himself into the river—and she can’t do it. There’s a tingling sensation in her breasts, a heavy feeling she doesn’t understand, and she squeezes her arms around herself to make it stop.
Liam touches her back, leading her to a chair, as if this was a perfectly normal thing to do, sit and watch Gavin cry and stare at his sheets. She sits, reluctantly. The room is stifling with the sun blasting through the windows. “Aren’t any of you hot?” She fans herself with her hand, flapping it faster and faster. “I can’t do this.”
Gavin looks away. “Marla, you’re good. You’re going to be fine.” He closes his eyes and rolls over.
Marla lays beside him on the bed and whispers to his back. “I’m not fine, Gavin. Nothing about this is fine. I’m having a baby in a month and you’re in here, and I lost my jobs. You lost yours, too.” He can’t hear any of it. She squeezes her arms around him, and he allows her to, which feels good until she realizes the bed’s shaking because she’s crying, not him. He’s just lying there like a rock.
She shakes Gavin’s shoulder until he looks at her. “Why’d you do this?”
Gavin shrugs, his face empty.
“You apologized to Dani twelve times and you’re not going to talk to me?” She holds his face in her hands like she used to when he was little. “I need you, Gavin. I love you.”
He brings his arms up, and she thinks he’s going to hug her, but he uses them to nudge her off the bed.
“Maybe it’s not a good time,” Liam says.
Marla feels awkward here, too big and mostly useless. She backs up into the doorway, but Gavin doesn’t notice. “I’ll go, then,” she says, but he doesn’t turn to look.
Dani’s sitting in the hallway, mouth breathing. “Can we leave now?”
“Yeah. I can’t fucking believe this. Should I leave him? Did you know about this?”
Dani looks at Marla like she’s an eight-year-old. “He’s a big boy now. He can manage.” Marla helps Dani up, noticing the sweat stains under her arms.
The nurse at the desk calls to them. “Are you the family?”
Dani snorts. “I’ll be downstairs.”
Marla nods. “I’m his sister. He’s staying with me.”
“What about other family?”
Marla thinks about Candace, Gavin’s dad who doesn’t have a last name. “We don’t have other family.”
“Very well. You should know he will likely be evaluated. We strongly recommend he voluntarily transfer to the Psychiatric Unit.”
Liam emerges to shake the nurse’s hand and nod like a dad. “We’ll talk to him. Thank you very much,” he tells her.
“My brother’s not crazy!” she yells after the nurse. “Being sad doesn’t mean you’re crazy—he gets mugged because he’s deaf and his mom’s a junkie and he’s lived on his own forever. He’s building me a baby crib!” The nurse doesn’t turn around. “He was.” Liam wraps his arm around her to shush her, but Marla pushes past him to pull Gavin’s file out of the plastic holder outside the door and read it. It’s a record of vital signs and medications administered for the pain in his ankle. “It doesn’t say crazy in here!” she shouts, but people here must be used to that kind of thing. It says attempted suicide.
Marla is flipping the page when Liam takes the file out of her hands and replaces it in the plastic holder. He pats her on the back. “Shhh.”
Marla edges against the wall to let a stretcher wheel past, then a boxy meal cart. A nurse gives her one of those grandma grins when she sees Marla’s big belly. The next time Marla comes here will be to have her baby. And give him away. She rolls her head back on the tile wall, listening to the nurse’s shoes swish and squeak on the floor. “What should we do?”
“I’m going to ask Gavin if he’ll come home with me,” Liam says.
“What? Why?” Despite herself, Marla feels a ton of relief.
“There’s something really wrong with him and Dani. I think she might have gotten him involved with drugs.”
“Oh shit.” Dani was a good doctor for Marla too, drawing up syringes and making everything okay. “He’s supposed to be in school.”
“I know. I’ll talk to the admissions office. Just worry about you. Go to your prenatal class.”
Marla nods, pushing it down. This is what she hates, this acquaintance talk. Liam re-enters Gavin’s room, and Marla takes the elevator alone to collect Dani, who’d better tell her what the hell is going on.
When Gavin
next opens his eyes, the sun’s gone down and he can see the streetlights shining in the window. Liam’s typing on his phone.
YOU SHOULDN’T BE HERE. Gavin’s head feels like it’s full of mice.
“Why not?”
SHOULD BE PRACTISING. WORKING. Gavin looks around at the shit hooked up to him and kicks his foot around in the bed until the sheets come untucked. He hates that he’s here, that he’s anywhere at all.
“I want you to stay with me.”
That means Marla’s kicking him out. Dani told her, and Liam probably, out in the hall. The nurses probably know too. Gavin feels that crawling sense of panic in his throat, and he bites his tongue hard to feel something else.
“Gavin, are you okay? Do you want me to get a nurse?”
Gavin’s mouth fills with blood, and he swallows it. Shakes his head. He deserves for everyone to know what he is, what he does. He’s not fit to live in Liam’s house with its arched doorways and crown moulding.
Liam holds up a finger before answering his phone. “Hello?” He talks fast, nodding. Explaining something. Probably Marla.
The thing is, Gavin would love to live at Liam’s place: chatting on the couch, drinking expensive wine. Watching movies and cooking together, but that’s all fantasy.
SO YOU KNOW ABOUT THE RAPE.
Liam glances over, still on the phone. He reads it. Reads it again. “I’m going to have to let you go.” He slips his phone into his breast pocket and sits on the bed. Concerned.
DIDN’T WANT SAY TO MARLA.
Liam nods, his eyes full of pity. “Tell me anything.”
No. This is going all wrong. Gavin speaks so loudly he can feel the words vibrating in his chest. “I raped Dani.”
Liam leans close, glancing at the open door. He taps Gavin’s clipboard. “What do you mean?”
Gavin speaks slowly, deliberately. “I mean, I held her down and raped her.” The words were angry in his head, but he feels his voice break and has to look away.
Liam shakes his head. Confused. Looks at the bed sideways like he’s thinking hard. “But you guys have been—”
A Handbook for Beautiful People Page 20