Just Pretending

by Lisa Bird-Wilson

  I think about that a lot – about when that old man said that to Jerry. I think of it now and I’m sorry for all the times I called Jerry an apple or a cracker. I butt my smoke on the step. I’ll just go find him so I can warn him about the diseases. Then maybe I’ll leave him alone.

  Her door’s unlocked. I move through the front room of the sleeping house toward the light in the back, where quiet voices shift about. I’m certain I’m going to find the two of them in bed together locked in an ugly naked embrace. In the back of my mind I start to play out how I’ll haul her by her bleached-out-rat’s-nest hair into the street and pound her face into the rough asphalt. I feel better just thinking about it, but I wish I didn’t.

  I’m surprised to find the two of them at the table in the bright glare of the kitchen, fully clothed, an innocent pile of used Kleenexes between them. The dark circles of makeup under her eyes tell me he’s been at it again; this is Jerry’s MO. He doesn’t just want to screw them – he wants to be their hero too.

  Sometime, sometime later, he’ll tell me what a hard life she’s had and his voice will be tinged with admiration and a slightly pious quality, as if to say Look at all she’s gone through and still, here she is. As if she’s some kind of living miracle.

  They both freeze, look at me like my presence has snapped them out of a trance. Jerry gives a nervous laugh.

  “What the hell?” I say, but my voice is tired. I don’t even sound convincing to myself. Part of me wishes I could walk away and stop taking part in this crazy dance. I want to let go, let my head flop like the auntie’s did earlier. Say Who the fuck cares? and mean it, for once. Who the fuck cares if you’re Saulteaux, Cree, apple, moonias, urban, wannabe, Métis, French, old, young, weak, strong – what fucking difference does any of it make? I look Jerry in the eye, questioning, hopeful – momentarily deluded that he might have an answer for me. But all he does is hold his hands up and shrug his shoulders like a kid who’s been caught doing something bad. I’d love to sit down and cry, but instead I take up my part in the dance, march into the room and grab Jerry’s arm to make him leave with me. For one unbearable instant there’s a hesitation, a tiny sense that he’s holding back, and panic starts to rise in my throat. I don’t know what I’ll do if Jerry leaves me. Where would I go then? I tug at his arm. “C’mon,” I say. He hesitates one more moment and then, to my relief, I feel his stiffness give way and he gets to his feet. As I pull him away from the table, he stumbles and I catch hold of him. I put my arm around his waist and walk him to the door, expecting with every step that she’ll say something – a remark, a challenge, like a stab in the back. But she doesn’t say a word.

  Back at the house, the party winds down. Just the die-hards left – the usuals. Later, Fred will pass out on the front lawn and maybe his wife will come by and scream at him and punch him until he gets up and follows her home. Jerry’s asleep on the blue couch. I lie on my back on the empty rug, where damp spots reek of beer and mould. I turn my face angelically toward the ceiling; arms spread wide, ankles daintily crossed, I’m another blotchy shadow staining the carpet. A sign, a stigma. Some kind of living miracle waiting to be disproved.

  deedee

  It was midweek, and the run-down strip-mall bar was quiet. A few regulars congregated in groups of two or three to nurse damp pints of beer between breaks to step outside and smoke, before they tripped home to cold dinners or no dinner at all. It was not quite eight o’clock, and the late spring light was just beginning to dim.

  He looked for a seat at a table, not wanting to sit at a bar stool for this important meeting. This would be the first time he would see his daughter in twenty years. A day for a table at least.

  He claimed a small table for two, pushed unobtrusively against the wall, close enough to the bar but far enough from prying ears. He’d suggested this place because it was within walking distance of his rented single room on the neglected side of downtown but far enough away that he hoped not to be seen by anyone familiar to him. Not that he had friends, exactly. Not friends; the word implied too much. But he did have acquaintances, other people in similar situations: a little down on their luck, waiting for a break. Trying not to think too hard. He would never have suggested a meeting at any of his usual watering holes. He at least had that much sense.

  For him, being a little down on his luck usually meant one of two things – either he was out of a job or between women. And each of those things also meant something else. Out of a job meant out of money and between women meant out of a place to live. At the moment, both of those unfortunate circumstances had converged to plague him at once. But he was nothing if not optimistic, and so he was confident his luck would turn.

  He positioned himself so he could see the door. He wanted to witness the moment when she walked in so he could always remember. He was vaguely aware that the moment hadn’t even arrived yet and already he’d pushed the furniture aside to make room for the new memory. He’d been fantasizing about the moment ever since her call. When she was a baby, he’d called her Deedee for no reason. Her real name was Sharon, but Deedee had been his pet name for her. Her mother had played along. But when Deedee phoned him, just two days ago, she’d introduced herself as Sharon. He’d caught an uncertainty in her voice that almost made her say Your daughter, or so he’d imagined. He’d known right away who it was.

  He ordered a pint. Not his usual drink. On the way over, he’d finished his mickey of vodka, tossed the light plastic bottle into the alleyway just before he went into the bar. When the waitress brought the pint, he paid with a twenty. He forced himself to casually leave the change, two bills and coins, to sit on the table, an announcement of how many more drinks he’d be able to afford. He took a long sip, almost gulping, slugging back nearly half the glass in one take before he caught himself and remembered that this was no ordinary night. He breathed deeply and set the glass down, determined to nurse the drink, trying to convince himself that such a thing was possible.

  His hands lay useless on the table in front of him. He found himself stroking the damp base of the pint glass with his thumb the way he might absently tease a nipple to attention. Before he realized it, the glass was empty and the waitress was beside him lifting the mug from its wet ring to ask if he’d like another. He looked guiltily at the bills and coins in front of him and gave a slight nod. He kept his eyes firmly on the door.

  While he waited, he thought about the last time he’d seen his only daughter. She was what, two? Two and a half? Still in diapers, anyway. His last image of her: She tottered around the furniture in a saggy pamper with a disintegrating biscuit in one balled-up fist and a ballpoint pen in the other. A baby bottle, heavy with milk, hung by its stretchy rubber nipple from her front teeth. Her expression, with the bottle like that and her lips pulled back, jaws clenched, was fierce and defiant. He watched as she took the ballpoint pen and ran it over the smooth, cream-coloured vinyl of the couch. The couch her mother picked out at the Rent-to-Own store, the couch he’d made weekly payments on for almost a year, paying more than twice, probably three times, what it was really worth. She looked over her shoulder, bottle swinging from her teeth by its nipple, disregarding him and turning back to capture what he imagined was a delightful feeling of the inked ball of the pen running over the smooth surface of the vinyl couch cushion. A wet blue line followed her every stroke.

  The second pint went down easier than the first and, annoyed with himself, he silently cursed the waitress for her efficiency. If only she’d give him a break, stop coming the very instant he set the empty glass on the scarred wood of the table with a hollow thunk. Give him a moment to think, for chrissake. But there she was, before he had scarcely lifted his hand from the cool, smooth body of the glass; she picked it up and he nodded that he’d take another. He eyed the dwindling coins and single bill, a ten, that remained on the table. He knew he had enough for the third pint for himself and one for his daughter when she arrived. After that, he’d be tapped out.

  He didn�
�t own a watch, and he wondered about the time. Their meeting was set for eight, and he was certain it must be at least that by now. He swivelled his head toward the bar to see if there might be a clock and caught the bartender staring at him. Just another chump, he wanted to reassure the barman, wishing he had the jaunty confidence to raise his hand and wave at the barkeep, offer him a friendly salute. Quite often in his life he wished he were that kind of guy. Instead, he gave the barman a scowl and hunched his neck down between his shoulder blades and turned away again to watch the door. He didn’t see if there was a clock.

  The waitress plunked the foamy pint in front of him and he resignedly handed her the bill, silently scrutinizing the foamy head on the beer while he waited for his change. He kept his head down and avoided her eye as he took his change and didn’t give a tip. He avoided fiddling with the one remaining bill, a fiver, and the despondent bits of scattered change. It was a habit he despised in other men, who appeared to be counting up their pennies, hopeful for one last drink. He hated the appearance of weakness.

  Again he wondered about the time. Panic surfaced in his chest as it occurred to him for the first time: What if she didn’t show? The irony of such an outcome was not lost on him. But she had sought him out, after all these years. He wondered if she would have done so only to give him a small taste of his own medicine. To set him up for disappointment.

  He caught himself fingering the corner of the five and snatched his hand away as if stung. He had gone there with full intentions of being able to buy his only daughter a drink, a pint of beer, a glass of wine, whatever it was that she drank. He didn’t know. The night he left, he’d gone for cigarettes and never come back. Later, when he thought about the way he’d left, he felt like a fucking cliché. But there was a reason why clichés worked, he told himself – they were true on some level.

  How she tracked him down was no great mystery. He’d never left the city, worked the same kinds of half-hearted seasonal construction jobs, between binges, for all these years. Sometimes he’d even had a phone listed in his name. He’d convinced himself that anyone could have found him any time. He’d never tried to hide. The real mystery, even to him, was how twenty years had gone by and still he felt like the same twenty-four-year-old kid who’d walked out that night on his burgeoning family. What was he doing all that time that he couldn’t pick up the phone, couldn’t make an effort? He heard this question, an accusation, before she ever had to speak it. In some ways, he’d been hearing the question all these years, a subconscious broken record – why did you leave me? It was a question for which he had no reasonable answer.

  That night, after he’d left for the cigarettes, he got drunk – some things go without saying – and he met a woman. In his state, he imagined there was something magic, something fortuitous about their meeting on that particular night, on the night he walked out with indecision in his heart and a final image of his kid burned into the back of his retina. On the jukebox, someone had put on Rod Stewart’s “Maggie May,” and they danced right there beside their table, him so drunk he had to be supported by her small sinewy body while they shuffled and clutched in a moment of tenderness and passion reserved for drunks. Between bashing his thigh into the table and tromping on her small toes, he’d whispered “Maggie” in her ear. So, that was what he called her, even though it wasn’t her name. He soon learned about her fierce temper, lack of manners, and vicious physical assaults, which left them both bruised and battered and often brought the cops. If she wasn’t throwing coffee cups and ashtrays at his head, yelling, “I hate you,” she was whining that he didn’t care about her.

  His persistence in calling her Maggie, even though it wasn’t her name, brought up some unwanted memories for her. One evening, as they sat together for a meal of tinny tomato soup, bread and stale margarine, she said, with affected indifference that he could tell had taken her a lifetime to master, “My stepfather called me ‘Dolly’ when he wanted to put his hand inside my pants.” And then she added dreamily, “My mother was in the other room making dinner.” He swallowed a hard lump of soup and suppressed a shiver despite the fact he was sweating. He pulled his terry bathrobe closed.

  When things got ugly with Maggie, as they did pretty quickly, he found himself looking back to the time he’d shared with Deedee’s mother. He’d forgotten quickly how he hated being counted on by Deedee’s mother, how he found the responsibility of being a husband and a father to be suffocating. Instead, he idealized his former life, imagining it as calm and pristine. Still, he didn’t go back. Since he had no real explanation to offer for what he’d done, leaving like that, he honestly felt there was no going back. Instead, he did a short stint in provincial jail for probation violations, and when he got out he found Maggie gone, their apartment already rented to strangers.

  Despite himself, he swivelled his head in the direction of the bar where, again, he caught the bartender watching him with an inscrutable eye. “Fuck,” he mumbled under his breath, half hoping to get a rise out of the bartender.

  Just then, a thought rose like a beer bubble in his brain. What if Deedee’d had a stepfather? Fuck, who was he kidding, she’d be lucky if she’d had only one. What if the guy messed around with her, like Maggie – Dolly? He couldn’t believe he’d never asked himself this question before – before just now. He thought of the time in his own childhood, when he’d gotten into a car with a white guy, a stranger. How that guy held him to the seat, pushed his face into the upholstery so he thought he might smother. He choked on the dust ingrained in the cushioning as he struggled to breathe, the air pushed from his chest. He’d tried to get away, shoving up against the wide chest of the man, and he was surprised when the man didn’t move at all – was surprised by how small his own body was next to the stranger’s. Afterwards, when the man pushed him out of the car and drove off, he wanted to run away but found he couldn’t move his legs. No one came to help him. All he could think about, as he lay in the gravel of an alleyway close to his house, was that he’d never been that close to any white person before. He hadn’t been to school yet.

  Sickness rose in his throat. He stood abruptly, smashed the fronts of his legs into the table edge, stumbled to get out of his seat. He rushed to the men’s room and into a stall to retch and snot. And when he was finished he felt abused, sorry for himself; he momentarily forgot about Deedee and Dolly.

  After a long time, he emerged from the men’s room, his jacket done up to cover his wet-stained t-shirt, the tremble nearly erased from his top lip. An older couple sat at his table. His pint was gone, money cleared away.

  “Hey,” he said, stumbling toward the table. The couple looked up as he reached a finger out and touched the table as if to steady himself like a circus performer balancing on one finger. He meant to point at the table, to lay claim to it. He looked at his own hand, resting on the table, saw his pinkie was raised like an antenna – a sure sign of intoxication – a dead giveaway, he knew. He looked around for the waitress, certain she was the key to clearing up this misunderstanding. But she was nowhere to be seen. “Hey,” he said again, louder.

  The bartender had already tossed down his towel and was headed toward the table. Deliberately, Deedee’s father removed his one finger from the table, took a step back. He turned toward the bartender and opened his mouth, intending to state his case. His arm was still swivelled behind him, pointing, laying claim. Before he had a chance to say a word, the bartender grabbed the back of his jacket, his arm.

  “Out,” the bartender said, low and sinister in his ear. “Out,” the bartender repeated.

  “Uhn uh,” he choked, twisting his body, trying to make space for himself, enough space to slow things down, to state his legitimate claim. But the bartender pulled harder, and the jacket came up over his head. He fought back, was pushed to all fours on the floor when the older man from the table grabbed his legs. They pinned him down; he smelled his own sweat, smelled stale beer. The jacket was tugged down off his head and his face was pushed to
the floor. He turned his head just in time to save his nose, his cheek mashed into the gritty floorboards. The stink of deep-ground grime and piss filled his nostrils.

  In the periphery, he sensed the door to the bar open and he imagined a single person entering with two light footsteps. He held his breath. A sharp pain shot through his calves as the older man knelt on them from behind. His calf muscles convulsed into two tight balls, and he struggled to shift the man’s weight off his legs. The bartender’s hand gave his head a sharp push.

  Don’t leave, he cried into the floor. Don’t leave.

  julia and joe

  Joe’s studio takes up the entire southwest corner of the house. It has large windows, lots of light and wide work surfaces covered in straightedge paint lines, spatters, brush strokes and smears. Paintbrushes stand at attention in jars, squeezed tubes of all colours litter the tables, tubs of gesso and gel medium inhabit seemingly random places throughout the workspace. At one end, a wide, full-length mirror, a red upholstered ‘60s divan, a white sheet, covered with starchy stains, for the models. A small coffee table is crammed with empty beer bottles and an overflowing ashtray. The smell of tobacco and stale beer mixes with the intoxicating scent of oil paint and turpentine.