by KT Morrison
“What if I want to go back to bed?” he shouted so she could hear him in there.
“Sorry,” her voice sang from behind the door. The shower hissed on. He leaned over and grabbed his boxers and T-shirt and slipped them on. The kettle boiled, and he poured it into the press and walked over to his drafting table. The windows of the old factory spilled perfect light onto his work area and the grey dawn gave it a ghostly shimmer. On his table, two of the final paintings for Laetitia Lily. She’d opted for non-digital. Not opted, encouraged him. Not in person, but with a visit to Toronto by Krista Falkenberg—a dinner meeting and some pep talk from his pretty editor. She’d told him what they wanted, where they wanted to go. He’d whined that they hired him for the way he drew not the way they wanted him to. He was in a bad place then. Still in the garage studio. Alone in the house. He looked bad, his thoughts were bad. Krista didn’t fire him. She could have, with the contract he signed. He was late. Late on all their milestones. Time and time again. The visit from Krista had turned him right around. His mind was so black then. The dark of winter, the cold, his devastated heart...
Krista saw Odie’s drawings on his studio wall and she’d fallen for it like others had. The little drawings struck her and she wanted to buy one. He was huddled, a rotten suppurating heap of a man, and he grunted that it was Odie’s. Krista said, “It would be terrible if we never got to see what you two could do together.” She flew home that night. Monday morning he got his act together.
Transformed, he hit paper with friskets and bottles of poster paint. Colours and shapes like he was at Hanna-Barbera in the sixties. Peaches and evergreen blues, speckling, frosting, spattering. For a while it consumed him. It was merely manufactured happiness. All those fun shapes, all that synthetic colouration, all of it was syrupy and sweet and it went on that paper like it went over his soul.
Krista was in love with the work. Laetitia was too. He felt his ship was righted. Navigation was clear. But the seas were still rough, the sky was angry and dark and the waters churned. He bought the island. He bought his island and on weekends he went there, away from worried Winslow, and when Nia had Odie. He went alone and at night he would scream at the top of his lungs and he would cry. Once til he burst a blood vessel, coming back to the city with one bright blood red eyeball. But during the day he would paint. Paint in oil, paint the landscape. His passionate parergon. Big pictures he called them. Nothing focused, everything grand and widescreen. Nature and the universe. The paintings got bigger. His pain got smaller. He got smaller. It was like he’d reached up to the stars and pulled back all that had exploded from him that day on the boat. Pulled it, clawed it til it was stuffed messily inside him and he could zip his coat over it.
Coffee was brewed and he poured himself a cup and returned to his table in his underwear. Winslow had the day off today, given Geoff’s schedule. Figured though, that he could spend the morning occupying his mind with finishing one of these pictures. They’d be done tomorrow, he and Winslow would have a party. There was a microbrew six-pack in the fridge that had their names on it, specifically purchased for their finale. He sorted through the friskets that Winslow had cut for him, looking for the shapes he liked. Jenny dried her hair, she had her phone playing music and she sang along, filling up the high ceiling space with her high voice. He caught himself smiling as he tipped his cup to his lips.
Jenny took her coffee with two cream, no sugar, and he poured her one at the counter, into her cup she brought from her apartment. It was a Mexican monstrosity, hand made, heavy with a brilliant emerald interior. Her mother bought it and even though it had a chip on the lip she wouldn’t drink out of any other. He had it ready as she emerged. Dirty blonde hair pulled back in a bun, blue wool V-neck, tattersall button down, and plaid skirt. His preppy little darling.
“Here, Jen,” he said, holding her mug to her by the rim, handle out.
“Thanks,” she said, took it and went to his work space, stood over his painting and all the friskets he’d spread out. “I don’t think I’m getting you back,” she said. “It’s brilliant, Geoff. Maybe I never pushed you hard enough.”
Both their faces slipped to blank, her kind words reminding them of the truth. He wasn’t pushed by an editor. He was pushed by tragedy. Jenny didn’t know the sordid story of Odie’s real father, only that Geoff had been devastated by his wife. She knew none of the details, only the wreckage that was left.
Pressing his lips to her silky pulled back hair changed the subject, and he kissed her long, breathing her in. Her arm hugged his waist and she left what she wanted to say unspoken in case it made it worse. She knew this was going to be hard enough.
“What’s your day look like?” he asked her.
“The uzhe,” she said, sipping her coffee. “We’ll do something fun tonight?”
“We will,” he said.
He made her a breakfast. Cooked an omelette while she sat on a stool on the other side of the counter and enjoyed the show. Performing for her, laughing and joking like a TV chef, he scurried the pot across the burner and flipped the eggs with flourish. The sun came up and filled the studio with warm light and they ate together on two stools side by side. They kissed before she left and she didn’t mention his day, didn’t wish him luck, and avoided showing condescending sympathy with her eyes as they parted.
Her polished penny loafers tapped down the narrow hall, a tall window at the end of it where the bank of stairs led to the road cast warbling light across its glossy surface. He watched her til she was gone.
The remainder of the morning was spent making a speckled mess with the friskets. Energy consumed his work now, and it pushed the thoughts away too. When it was eleven, and the studio was at its brightest, he reluctantly cleaned his things, put the supplies away. When he climbed into the shower with his trembling wooden legs, his stomach pressed in with dread.
NIA
Boisterous young boy voices broke into the darkened bedroom from the kitchen. There were sounds of dry, sugared cereal being poured into hard ceramic bowls, the fridge door opened and closed, chair legs scraped on ceramic tile. Arguments were whined, high testosterone boys being forced to share; there was shushes. Rocco farted and they laughed.
Odie’s back was curled against Nia’s front. Two girls in her boyfriend’s king-size bed, wearing their pyjamas and needing each other. Odie had trouble sleeping last night. She’d grown accustomed to the noises of the apartment but she got anxious when Rocco’s boys stayed with them. Nia traced her finger along her little girl’s thick hairline and ran her locks back from her face, watched her pouted mouth as she slept in the dim. Odie was a little toughie. She was tough but there had been challenges. Things she never would have believed a year ago that her little girl would ever face. Lies had done Nia in, and she’d been lying a long time. So long she thought it would never catch up to her.
Odie’s eyes fluttered open and her expression changed, listening to the noises. Two things excited her: the sound of cereal and the sound of her Papa Rocco.
“Morning, O,” she whispered.
Odie gave a smile and she wriggled against her mom. It was about three in the morning when Nia was woken by Odie’s little hand touching her cheek, her daughter at the side of the bed. She’d invited her in, let her slip under the covers next to her and they didn’t wake Rocco, who had to be up at four.
“I want some cereal,” she whispered back. Geoff had always kept her from the fake morning foods, always cooked for her, and since she’d been introduced to sugar-laden breakfast she’d become quite the addict.
“Me too,” Nia said.
O jumped out ahead of her and Nia stood and put her slippers on, straightened her pyjama pants, the one with the ducks. Odie trotted ahead and waited for her with her hand clasping the door handle.
Rocco was renting right now while he worked out the divorce with Maria. They were in a two-million dollar Kingsway apartment, just north of High Park. Here for proximity to Odie’s school. Maria was seeking sole
custody of Rocco’s boys and she was probably going to get it. Rocco had a few assaults on his record from his younger days. He wasn’t fighting her for it. The original plan was for the boys to stay at the mansion in Etobicoke and for him and Maria to move in and out on alternating weeks.
Since she found out that Nia was in the picture, Maria was staying in the house full-time and keeping the kids. She was livid. Only let the three oldest away for certain occasions and when they became too much for her. Then they’d come and stay with Rocco. Usually about three days max. Maria had her hands full with poor baby Peter.
Odie tip-toed across the marble floors ahead of her, wary of the boys, looking for Rocco. They crossed through the dining room and she heard “There she is!” Rocco booming from the kitchen. Odie trotted the rest of the way and they both entered the kitchen. Rocco squat down and she wrapped her arms around his massive neck and he stood up with her clinging to him. She hugged herself to him, kissed his cheek and then her eyes went to the kitchen counter.
Rocco’s big hand cupped her bottom and he walked her closer. His boys were eating at the counter that passed through to the dining room, sitting on high chairs with boosters, facing their father. He said, “What do you want, sweetie?” oscillating her slowly so she could see what flavours were available. The Dragonieri boys watched territorially. Paolo with his mouth agape, spoon held in check as milk spilled from it back to the bowl. Her finger was hooked in her mouth and she weighed her options. She poked it at the Corn Pops and she whispered, “That one,” to him.
He poured her a bowl with Odie still on his hip, her legs hooped around him. Marco pulled on the edge of the bowl, looking to see how much she got, and Rocco flicked him away with his hand on his forehead. “Hey!” he warned him. Milk was poured generously, a spoon plopped in then he held the bowl for her. She ate still clinging to him. He rocked her while she did.
Nia came to him and he dipped low so she could reach up and kiss his cheek, then he kissed her too.
“Didn’t wake you, did we?” he asked.
“No,” she said, “Odie was hungry.” The boys slurped and their spoons clinked aggressively.
Rocco said, “Hey, Philomena will be here at seven...sorry, they heard me get up...”
“I’m okay,” she said. Rocco hired a nanny to come and get the boys ready for school on the days that he had them. Same nanny that Maria used occasionally. One that was used to dealing with his little handfuls.
“Just put em in front of the Xbox til she gets here,” he said.
“Want me to make some eggs or something?”
“Don’t you dare,” he said. “You watch em? I gotta get in the shower.”
“Yeah,” she said, feeling anxious about it. He set Odie’s bowl down and he lifted her by her armpits right up to his face so he could kiss her lips, then he set her down. “Hey, take your cereal in, watch TV or something, sweetheart,” he said to her, patting her behind.
Paolo whined, “Aw, how come she can watch TV?”
Rocco said, “She doesn’t spill her fuckin cereal everywhere like a goddamn animal.”
Paolo’s face pinched and he kept eating. His eyes shifted to Marco in unified dissent.
Rocco said, “Go. Go watch TV if you look after your sister.”
Marco mumbled, “She’s not my sister.”
Rocco gripped his chubby arm hard, making his head whip on his shoulders. He thrust a finger in his face and he said, “I fuckin warned you, didn’t I?”
Marco nodded, but his face creased meaner. The corners of his mouth turned down like his father’s did when he didn’t like something.
Rocco ruffled his hair, said, “You watch out for her, all right?”
“All right,” he agreed. The boys gathered their bowls and slunk to join Odie in the family room.
“I’m getting in the shower,” he said, kissed her forehead and he headed to the bedroom.
It was early in the pool season and she wasn’t needed. He’d already said, though, that she wasn’t going to be coming back. I’m not having my fuckin girl work for me. I work, you have fun. Go hang out with your friends or whatever. He didn’t say who would do his books or ride with him in the truck, but she couldn’t help wondering if there was some truth to him only having hired her so he could stick his dick in her. With that in mind she was going to be very wary of who he hired to take her place.
She poured a cup of coffee from the pot, took a seat on the leather couch in the family room behind her Odie, sitting and watching what the boys had changed the channel to. She stroked her hair while her daughter finished her cereal. It would be great to go back to bed now, but the boys were up and she didn’t trust that if she sent them back to bed that she could sleep soundly without Rocco in the house. The nanny would be in at seven and she would take care of them. Til then, she hoped they’d just burn off their sugar, watching cartoons or playing games, maybe drift off on the couches here. Of course at seven she’d be getting Odie ready. Take her down to school then back to the apartment, twiddle her thumbs until it was time. She’d been dreading this day. It had weighed on her and now it was finally here. Since September she couldn’t bear to stay in that house and now, after today, she would never get a chance to again.
There was another painful farewell earlier this year and she hadn’t recovered from that one. Long legs were still a little wobbly. Dino quit his job in the city, packed his family up and moved to Alberta. He’d avoided her, never said good-bye, sought out Rocco alone one night. Rocco didn’t even stand up for her, make his brother come to terms with what had happened. Told her after the fact that Dino was gone. Said Dino got a job out in the oil industry, was Makin doctor money. Last month Dino sent Rocco a check for thirty-thousand dollars. Rocco said it was for her. Dino told Stacy it was for a down payment on the houseboat. The money, Rocco said, was for Dino’s daughter Odie. Nia ripped the check in six pieces and threw it in the trash right in front of Rocco. The second she took money from Dino she was admitting he was Odie’s father. She told him a million times it didn’t matter what anyone thought, she would always and for fuckin ever be Geoff’s daughter.
Nia got close to Odie’s ear so the boys wouldn’t hear and she whispered, “Daddy going to take you to the cottage this weekend?”
“Yeah, Jenny keeps bugging him.”
“Bugging him?”
“She really likes the cottage a lot.”
“He take her there?”
Odie nodded and put some Corn Pops in her mouth.
“You like her okay? Jenny?”
“Oh my God, yeah,” she said, milk spilling out and she got her face over her bowl. “She’s really, really nice. Like, crazy-nice. She moved in with Daddy.”
“That’s good,” she said. It was news to her. She sank into the couch. Her leaden bones dragging all her flesh with it, her muscle not strong enough to support her weight. She could picture them together. Their two happy faces, their white smiles. Like a couple you’d see in a picture frame when you bought it.
Heavy boots scuffed down the hall, loose, untied and echoing, sounds of laces skittering on the stone. Rocco was leaving. Seemed to forget what this day was, but she knew he had a lot on his own mind. Maria was coming after the business.
She met him at the front door, her rock solid swain. Sighed when she saw him. Looking so out of place in this opulent gleaming space, but man enough to afford it. Jacket slung over his shoulder, black T-shirt, muscular arms, big hand thumbing through his iPhone. He’d put on weight over the winter, his big gut straining over the top of his jeans. They ate like pigs in Italy. She gained ten pounds herself, solely, she claimed, from eating olives.
“When you coming home?” she said, padding over to him.
“Hm?” he said, flicking through screens.
Her arms went around him, pressed her cheek to his big chest. She couldn’t come close to reaching. He weighed himself the other day while she sat on the toilet and she swore the scale topped three-hundred-fifty pounds.<
br />
“Home? Tonight?”
“Yeah,” he grunted. “Don’t know. Hockey tonight. You wanna come watch? Bring Odie.” Whatever he was reading was finished and he tucked the phone in his jean pocket and he hugged her. He shook his face into her hair and bit her ear, his hands snuck behind her and he grabbed two fistfuls of her ass, squeezing too hard and making her jump.
“Ow, fuck, fuck, Rocco,” she laughed, beating her fists on his chest. “I’ll try—”
He kissed her while her mouth was open, and she kissed him back, fell against him. “I’ll see you when I see you,” he said. He grabbed his lunch box and then he was gone.
GEOFF
The 1975 white Cinelli Pista that he rode was his father’s. Old pop thought he was a racer back when he met young nursing student Connie McLeod, before he made her Connie Kane. They fell in love, eloped, made familial reconciliations in the following years, had successes, bore rosy-cheeked Geoff and capable Kelly. Racing was replaced with engineering, household matters, and, for a while, love. The bike gathered dust in the garage of the house he grew up in on Green Street in Agincourt til the day he discovered it looking for a place to hide his weed.
Geoff had used this bike since he was fifteen and his legs grew long enough. He powered through mild traffic on Queen, turned onto Roncesvalles, his satchel of Very Important Papers thrust to the small of his back. Did the bump-bump over the converging iron streetcar tracks that criss-crossed the jumbled streets in deep grooves. He swerved in front of a streetcar, encouraged a honk, shrugged because it was deserved. He snuck through the TTC yard now, whisking through idle streetcars, bunny hopping curbs, drawing whipped glances from Transit workers, acting like a teenager. Then he was out, rubber squeaking from a sharp right on to Sunnyside and he passed a sacred building. St. Jo’s, the hospital in which his Odie drew her first precious breath.
Then he was in residential land, weaving through the tree-lined streets until he came to Garden. Out on the west side of the village, past the house where they’d raised that girl. He was heading to High Park because he was thirty minutes early and because it was too nice a day to be this sad.