BY THE SAME AUTHOR
The Chick at the Back of the Church
Going Down Swinging
Cease to Blush
For Sweet Timothy
CONTENTS
Before I Would Ever Hurt You
Make Yourself Feel Better
Candy From a Stranger’s Mouth
You’re Taking All the Fun Out of It
Clown Lessons
Did You Grow Up With Money?
Do Not Touch
Greedy Little Eyes
You Sound Tiny
Georgia, It’s Me
Acknowledgements
Publication History
Before I Would Ever Hurt You
GORD CAME BACK FROM THE BATHROOM and sat in the booth again. “I’m turning myself in.” His smile was lopsided. He scratched the back of his neck, and blinked rapidly as if trying to clear his head. “What’s the difference between locusts and grasshoppers?”
Rain fell hard behind me, battering the café’s front window. The place was more diner than café, one of East Vancouver’s kitschy attempts to recapture the ’50s.
A waitress fishtailed by, raising her coffee pot. I pushed my cup toward her and then waited until she moved on. When no words came, I shook my head.
“The brown ones. They’re locusts if they have the short antennas? Antenn-ae? It was bad. They were all over the kitchen, some jumped onto the stove and burned up right there. All over the curtains—in the dirty dishes even, floating in the water.”
I had been finding patterns in the table’s Formica, wondering again if I should have called someone. I looked him in the eyes now. “Am I the first person you phoned?”
“Everybody’s hiding, but you.”
“Nobody’s hiding.”
“You’ve got your own apartment now.” He gave me that crooked grin again. “First Bernam in the phone book: A for Amy.” He reached for my fingers.
I slipped my hands under the table.
Wincing, he flicked grey eyes at the ceiling fan and then back. “I know I haven’t been really there, um, lately. But you and me are pals, aren’t we? You understand even when I’m an asshole, taking off like that into the woods. No phone, no toilets, no nothin’.”
Looking at his face some more, I tried to picture his girlfriend, Ruth, in that wooden kitchen of theirs. No phone, no toilets, no nothin’. I wondered at my lack of fear.
In the space between my big and second toe, I have a tiny brown dot. Not a freckle, it’s too dark, almost black. Had it ever since I was born.
My father pointed it out. “Jesus, look at that, Peg, she’s got Gord’s dot. Same place and everything. If you two didn’t hold each other in such low regard, I’d wonder.”
Mom shook her head. “If she got his brains, we’re in for it.”
That dot though, it bonded Gord and me. My father said that for Gord, it was love at first sight on account of our shared peculiarity. When Gord saw the dot, he told my father that he would understand me when no one else could. And vice versa. He called us Dotters.
My mother talked to me about Gord once. It was a rare night in Vancouver, one too hot to lie in bed, and the two of us were at the kitchen table, drunk with sleeplessness.
Gord was not right, she told me. In the head. She and Gord had had another one of their verbal slap-fights earlier that night, over dinner. “It’s none of your business,” she had railed. “You sit there shovelling in my food and—and then shitting your opinions all over the house.”
My father choked on his laughter. “Christ, nearly lost that beer out my nose.”
Gord thumped his brother’s back, laughing along.
Later, sitting at the kitchen table with me, each of us clutching our glass of iced tea as if hoarding it, her tone was almost pleading. “Everyone laughs it off. But it’s not funny. He has his own family. He keeps shoving his nose into ours while his own wife and sons languish on the other side of town.”
“He was a year ahead of you in school, right? Did he ever hit on you?”
“Oh for god’s sake.” She looked away and sighed. “He liked me. He was—I mean I liked him too but he was needy—pathetically so. Your dad told him to bloody well get on with things, make his own fun.”
“So he was hitting on you.”
“I was always in love with your father. I’m just trying to explain to you that I don’t have the same sort of camaraderie with Gord that you do. He’s an irresponsible idiot.”
The first time I ever heard the phrase if he had a brain he’d be dangerous, it was my mother talking about Gord.
I was ten years old when the principal of the school called my mother in and laid out his concern before the both of us: “She waited until he was alone and then slammed the boy face-first into the schoolyard gravel. I would call that abnormally aggressive.”
My mother looked at me. “Is that what happened?”
“Sort of. But he asked for it.”
“Irregardless, young lady,” the principal said, “you don’t bloody another child because of words. Sticks and stones may break your bones but names will never hurt you.”
My mother turned to him. Her expression soured slightly. “Well, he must have done something for her to have bloodied him, as you put it.” She looked back at me.
“I was on the swing,” I explained, “like, a few days ago. I had on a skirt and that kid, Brian, was standing there watching me go back and forth. Then, all of a sudden, when I swung up, like, with my legs out, he put his hand up my skirt. Right on my underpants.”
“He touched your underpants?” My mother jabbed a look at the principal. “So you pushed him.”
“No, cuz he took off. So I waited. Then yesterday, I was late from recess and that Brian kid was still outside too, and so I ran up behind. And I got him.”
A brief satisfaction showed in my mother’s eyes. She faced the principal. “I think that shed some light on things.”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Bernam,” he said, shaking his head, “but you don’t actually believe that. Children, in my experience, do not wait to retaliate. They are simple creatures.”
“My child isn’t simple.”
“Irregardless, Mrs.—”
“There is no such word as irregardless.” She picked up her purse. “Looks like you’ve got a sexual harassment charge on your hands.”
When we got home Dad was at the kitchen table with his brother, having a beer. My mother scowled.
“Hello, fellow Dotter.” Gord noogied my head.
I giggled and squirmed and jumped in his lap, took a sip from his bottle.
Mom plucked the beer from my hands. “For god’s sake,” she said, glaring at Gord.
“Oh, Peg, calm down; she had a sip of beer—not like it’s Scotch.” My father grabbed her around the waist and winked at me. “Wait’ll we get you into the Scotch, Amy, then you can start coming to poker night.”
“Not funny,” my mother said and removed his hand. “This is exactly the problem, this lackadaisical—this!” She told me to go change out of my school clothes.
Soon as I’d rounded the corner, she started in. It never seemed to occur to them how close my room was, that I might as well have been sitting under the kitchen table. Truth be told, though, I was only half listening until Gord hollered, “She did it cuz I told her to do it that way. No little sonofabitch sticks his hand up my kid’s skirt.”
“She is not your kid!” my mother roared.
“She’s my godchild. She’s my niece, for chrissake.”
She told him that part of my problem was him and his idiocy, his need to gratify every stupid urge that came upon him, and that he encouraged the same in me.
Gord bellowed, “Chrissake, she’s defending herself ag
ainst a would-be rapist. What would you—?”
“You couldn’t suggest she tell a teacher. Or her parents!” she fumed. I could imagine her eyes bugging. “He needed stitches! He’s ten!”
“I’m teaching her to stand up for herself.” Gord’s chair legs rubbed the floor as he pushed his seat back and stood. “A man wrongs a woman—she should have his goddamn head on a platter.”
There was silence.
My mother whispered something.
“That’s enough,” my father said evenly.
“Why are you here? Why are you always here?” She sounded as though she might cry.
“Okay,” Dad said, his voice low and sturdy. “Take it easy.”
I heard Gord’s approaching footfalls over my mother’s strained whisper. “Me take it easy?”
My father’s voice lowered more, his tone easing into that hopeful lovey voice he used just before he wrapped his arms around her shoulders to keep her body from thrashing.
A moment later Gord was in my doorway. “Dotter.” He saluted.
I stared sombrely from my bed, threw a half-assed wave his way.
He pulled at the toe of my sock. “Is it true you beat a man within an inch of his life?”
My eyes rolled. “What a friggin’ baby that kid is.”
Gord sat and hoisted his back against the wall beside me. “Your mother’s just jealous. She wishes she had the guts you do.”
We each looked at our feet.
“Damn right,” he said. “Little bastard’ll think twice before he comes near you again.”
“You should try not to piss her off so much.”
Gord nodded.
Shortly before I graduated high school, my parents went to San Francisco for the long weekend. A second honeymoon, my father said. I drove them to the airport and my father attempted to get us all singing “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” in rounds. Too early in the morning for that, I was glad to dump them at Departures.
That night, I woke at 2:03 a.m., according to the neon of my clock, and saw dim light under the door. A little dazed, I wandered into the hall.
The house felt like its same old self, no strange breath in the air. I knew before I named it exactly who would be sitting in the kitchen.
He turned when he heard my shuffle, his eyes a little red and puffy. “Hey, Dotter, up already?” he slurred, and then shook his head, looking embarrassed. “Did I wake you, Amy? Sorry. I let myself in with the key outside there.”
I headed to the stove and put the kettle on. “So?”
He sipped his beer, stared into his hands. “Ah, you don’t want to hear this, all my shit.”
I leaned against the stove. “Your shit’s my shit.”
Smiling softly to his bottle, he wiped his forehead. He held his breath and let it go. “Lydia says she’s not happy.”
I took two mugs out, put tea bags into them. I couldn’t imagine what it might be like to be my aunt. He rarely spoke of her. He rarely spoke of my cousins either. It was as if he wanted to keep them separate from this part of his family. As if they were his job and he didn’t want to talk shop.
“And then this morn—well, yesterday morning—the company asked me if I wanted to transfer to Calgary. Promotion and another fifteen grand a year.”
Gord looked down, his head wobbling a little with each breath. “Lydia thinks it might be a new start. We might get to be a better … couple. I wouldn’t be distracted and my boys and me would bond. Christ, another couple years and those boys’ll be gone faster than you can …” His voice drifted off. “Swing a dead cat. Your dad says if I don’t give it my all, I’ll regret it.” He looked over at me for a few drawn-out seconds. “He would, wouldn’t he? I bet he wants me gone.”
“Don’t be stupid.”
“Stupid. They’re both pussies. He’s afraid … and she’s afraid to do anything about it.”
I looked at him. “You’re kinda looped there, Dotter.”
“You know. Damn well. Elephant in the room, eh? You know.”
I smirked as though I did know.
“Hey.” He shrugged, ducked his chin into his neck like a blasé Frenchman. “Peg’s beautiful. He knows it most of all. It’s old hat. She knows it. She should’ve kicked him in the balls like I taught you, but here she is. That’s who’s stupid.”
Heat rushed into my neck. I watched him another second. “Kicked him in the balls?”
“Lack of dedication. He forfeits. And she kicked me in the balls instead. I’m not impotent. This whole thing—” He raised his hands to his surroundings. “Mine. In a different plane: that’s mine, this is mine, you’re mine.”
Suddenly the room felt tight and heavy. As though, even in Calgary, Gord would be too loud and too close.
We still saw him two or three times a year but he seemed more distant each time, as though less and less of him were actually in the room. Then two years almost to the day that he had moved, Gord up and left Aunt Lydia and my cousins in Calgary. He was at work, in the middle of a board meeting with all the mucky-mucks of Gibraltar Insurance, when the feeling hit him. Apparently they were discussing different strategies to increase profit margins, batting around ideas of how they might feasibly make cuts to existing coverage without alienating the clientele. Someone had raised the issue of prescriptions: if PharmaCare could refuse to cover certain prescriptions, then why couldn’t they, as a secondary insurance provider, do likewise? In fact they should only cover what the government agencies would cover.
Gord’s rebuttal shot down the length of the table. “If we’re only going to cover what’s already covered then we’re providing fuck-all!”
When Gord told the story later, it took on biblical proportions. The men around him leaned in as they haggled, their gold rings and watches grazing the surface, teeth sharp, eyes craving. Gord slammed a fist down in the middle of the argument, and then rose from his chair and said, “From the days of John the Baptist until now, every time there’s something good or true or right, assholes like you gotta take it away.” Then he turned and left the building. He walked into the street, flagged a cab and headed to the airport.
He called my father once from Toronto and then there wasn’t another word until six months later, when he showed up for Sunday dinner with a girl named Ruth on his arm. She wasn’t much older than me; her hair was the same colour and texture as mine but it was centre-parted and hung down to her bum. She was an artist—an artisan, she corrected me from where she sat on the floor in our living room, leaning against the couch and Gord’s legs. Reaching into a tasselled suede purse, she pulled out two small white boxes, and passed one to Mom and one to me. Each contained a pair of earrings that she had made.
Sitting rigidly in her wingback chair, my mother held up a teardrop of silver wire threaded through three blue wood beads. Her eyes, though, were on Ruth’s smooth blank face. No eyeliner, no lipstick. Ruth’s thick hair draped to her lap.
“These are awesome,” I said. Seated on the ottoman near my father’s chair, I suddenly scooted onto the floor too, as though Ruth might look like less of an interloper if I were down there with her. “I love these.” Holding it by the shepherd’s hook, I dangled a slim slice of smooth wood, shark’s fin shaped and caged in silver wire.
“Right on,” she said. “They’re guitar picks. My old boyfriend loved wood picks. Most of them are plastic, eh.”
Earring still in hand, my mother appraised Ruth as if a one-way mirror separated them.
My father cleared his throat. “So how long are you two in town?”
“Just tonight and tomorrow,” Gord told him.
Mom put the earring back into its box but she didn’t take her gaze from Gord’s girlfriend. “You just look so much like my daughter. If your hair wasn’t so …”
“So damn long?” Ruth loosed a horse laugh on the room. “Me and my crazy-ass hair. Actually you and Amy, man, you two could be sisters.”
A rueful gurgle in my mother’s throat, then she looked down finally
and set the box on the arm of her chair. “But for a few decades … Thank you, Ruth. I’ll enjoy these.”
“We’re heading to the wilds of Vancouver Island,” Gord interjected. “We’ve had it with stuff. No more stuff. We want to live the good life: all natural, no artificial preservatives.”
Ruth smiled as she hugged her knees.
I looked at Gord but he didn’t look back. He had hardly addressed a word to me all evening. Itchy and restless, I chewed at the inside of my lip.
“People,” he announced later at the dinner table, “are getting brain cancer from telephones, you know.” He paused with the last of his pork chop on the end of his fork.
“You mean cellphones?” I asked him.
“Cellphones, cordless phones, all of it. And Christ knows what havoc the computers are wreaking on us.”
“Come on, babe,” Ruth coaxed him and then winked as she chewed.
Gord winked back and shut up.
My father’s eyebrows flicked from Gord to Ruth. He glanced at his empty plate, and then at my mother. He took a long drink of water, his Adam’s apple cranking up and down. As he set down his glass, I searched his eyes for signs of envy.
Three or four months later, Gord phoned us from a gas station about a forty-minute walk from his new place, wondering if the three of us could join him and Ruth for dinner.
My mother would not go. “He deserted his family and he’s running around with some underage hippie. He’s a pervert and jackass and I won’t support it.”
My father cajoled her. “You might have a point, but he left her the house, two cars … and all the phones and computers she could ever want.”
She peered at him. “Is that funny to you?”
Dad and I took the ferry to Nanaimo and, from there, drove an hour through the rain into the middle of nowhere. A muddy dirt road with a skunk stripe of green down the middle took us the last fifteen minutes to Gord and Ruth’s place.
It was quaint, I guess: a beat-up log cabin right in the thick of old-growth forest. Smoke floated out of the chimney through the drizzle.
Greedy Little Eyes Page 1