The phone rang and jerked us out of our lazing. It was Jim calling. He was stuck in a Safeway parking lot on the north side of town. He needed a boost. He’d spent too long shopping and it was too cold for an old car not to be plugged in. He could have called a cab to come and give him a boost, but he knew Sullivan would do it because Sully was everybody’s helper guy.
He left the house just as the music stopped. Alone, I could sense uneasiness creeping up on me. I couldn’t concentrate on choosing more music to play. I flipped through his vinyl collection. I couldn’t find the right tunes for my mood. I went to the bathroom and brushed my hair. I dabbed on some peppermint lip balm and put more eyeliner on my glazed eyes. My hands weren’t so steady from the dope. I smudged it three times in a row and had to take a break so I wouldn’t get overly compulsive about it.
Dope paranoia had kicked in. I thought about Sullivan saying two weeks ago how he’d kept a journal. If I just read it, I could put my doubts away for real, once and for all. Peace of mind might be worth a minor sleazy transgression. I stared hard at myself in the mirror. I wiped off the eyeliner; it wasn’t helping. I knew the doubt would only get uglier and infect everything. But I thought of my own journal and how if anyone read it I would be gutted.
I went back to the couch and sat down. I lit a cigarette and contemplated the sleaze factor. I was no longer stoned; I had scared myself straight. Sullivan would be gone for at least forty minutes. The chicken was cooking in the oven, the basmati was simmering. Reading his journal would be for a greater good—safeguarding the purity of our love. But I didn’t want to. It was wrong. My stomach hurt.
But maybe he actually wanted me to read it, why else mention it? I went around in a loop.
The phone rang. Sullivan said, “Listen, honey, it shouldn’t take too long, we’ve got the car started finally. He’s out of gas too, so I gotta go get some, but I should be back by nine. Can you check on the chicken?”
“No worries.”
I got up off the couch and went to his bedroom. I scanned the room. I saw his navy blue backpack lying on the floor. I was drawn to it. Everything felt pre-scripted. I could anticipate my own melodrama unfolding as I just followed along the obvious path.
I reached my hand into the backpack and pulled out a binder, a mixed tape, a little baggie of dope, a mottled banana, and a recycled paper notebook with a purple cover. I peeked inside and saw several pages of pencilled words.
It was so easy to find, must’ve been fated that I read it. I paused and took a breath.
December 26
Annie left today for Mexico. I was sad. But kinda glad. Could use a little time alone. Didn’t tell her that, she’s a great girl. Had a good going away party with a fantastic hut. I don’t know, guess sometimes I worry she just loves me too much. I love her a lot too, I do . . . But it almost feels like she wants my soul, she wants to climb right in. I don’t know. We connect well though . . . Am excited about seeing the old crew from Avola. Tree planting that summer was crazy. Have to admit it’ll be nice to see Alicia again too. I’ve been thinking about her a lot lately, since she sent that letter I guess—
I paused and reread the name Alicia. My brain felt foggy. I reread the word. It started with an A, but no matter how many times my eyes shuffled the letters they never spelled Annie. I closed the journal.
My guts ached. I exhaled.
December 27
Christmas was fun. Annie called. She’s having a blast in Mexico with Isobel, drinking margaritas, having mariachis play for them.
Heading over to see Alicia now at her cousin’s place.
December 30
Holy Shit!!!
I gotta write this stuff down. My head hurts. I went over to Alicia’s on Thursday. Her cousin had left for Calgary for a couple of days, so it was just her there with an apartment to herself. It was so easy to be with her. She looked great. She’s got this gorgeous long red hair and sexy, slightly bucked front teeth and those different coloured eyes of hers . . . She made a pot of peach tea. We smoked a little cone. She played me Tom Waits’ new album. We took a shower.
I stomped on my emotional brakes and stared hard at this line and reread it like it was my biggest enemy and I could outwit it by scrutinizing it to death. Then we took a shower. We took a shower, we, shower, took. We took a shower. We. WE? I wondered if there was any possible way he meant they took one after another. I jumbled the word order in my mind, trying to translate all possible meanings of an obvious phrase. I could feel adrenalin gaining momentum in my veins, bypassing the roadblock of denial I was trying to cauterize myself with.
It just happened.
I knew what had happened. I felt a sick thrill. The excitement of something important happening. Like an accident scene. My own personal accident scene. I kept reading, to get the facts, like a vicarious witness; I read on as my heart fell to the floor, leaving me hollow inside.
We soaped each other and made love in the shower with the steam all around us. Like water animals. I love Alicia. It was seriously hot being with her like that.
Had to leave her to pick up little Jack at his hockey practice for his mom, but as soon as I dropped him off, I went back to her house. Rolled around all night. I was in a fog. A good fog for three whole days. She’s got this hard to describe angel-like quality. I don’t know what it is. Think I’ll always love her. No matter what.
Said goodbye this morning. She was headed back to Ontario, back to her boyfriend I guess. And Annie comes back in two days. Don’t know what I’m gonna tell her. Probably nothing. I mean, I can’t explain it, I just, I don’t know. It’s that old thing, what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her. I hope . . .
I examined the little doodle sketch he had done of Alicia. She looked like a Venus de fucking Milo with long curly princess hair. I put the journal back in the bag by his desk. Sitting on the desk was a framed picture of me and him in Jasper. Smiling ear to ear, both of us. Blue sky above and noble Mount Edith Cavell shouldering us in the distance.
I walked to the kitchen on wobbly legs. My eyes blurred and twitched. I remembered to stop holding my breath. I gripped the counter, determined to stay standing. I poured myself two-thirds of a glass of vodka and then topped it up with orange juice. I could almost laugh at the melodrama but not quite. I just knew I somehow had to stop myself from falling to the bottom of a well.
I turned the TV on, volume low, got the phone and called Isobel, and before she could say hello, I said calmly: “Listen, Isobel, don’t worry, I’m fine. I am fine. I just need to stay on the phone with you and not cry. Okay. I don’t want to cry. That’s the thing: not to cry.”
“What’s wrong, sweetheart? Do you want me to come over?”
“No, no. I’m not at home. I can’t tell you right now. Sullivan will be here any minute. It’s just really important that I don’t cry. Talk to me. I just need you to talk to me. Tell me anything. Tell me about your day.”
“Let’s see . . . I was dog sitting today for Frank, t’sais. So I went to Whyte Avenue with Cona and walked around. She tried to mount some poor woman on her lunch break. Got her paws all over her silk trench coat. Very bad. Though what she was doing wearing a silk trench coat on a cold-ass January day I don’t know!”
As she talked, I thought about the water sex thing and how I had assumed it was something Sullivan and I had invented. “So then, Cona took an obnoxiously large dump right in front of Army & Navy and I didn’t have any plastic bags, so I seriously had to hightail down an alley and run a few blocks so I wouldn’t get chased by a cop on a mountain bike and get a fine!”
I heard the kitchen back door close, and Sullivan saying, “Shit. Shit. Shit.” Then there was a cacophonic clanging of pots. The basmati must have been annihilated. The chicken probably nuked as well. For the first time I noticed the burnt smell and smoke filling the living room.
“Look, Isobel, I gotta go. I’ll talk to you later.”
“Sweetie, I’ll come see you tomorrow. It’s gonna be okay, ya?�
��
“See ya.”
Sullivan walked into the living room where he found me smoking a cigarette and drinking my orange juice, oblivious to the kitchen crisis. I looked up from Brian Dennehy on TV and smiled. “Mind if we go to my house and pick up something to eat on the way there?”
Sullivan looked at me and must have seen something like quiet hysteria in my unblinking eyes. I could tell my smile was twisted. He didn’t ask about why I had let the food get wrecked, or why I wanted to go home. “Sure,” he said.
He must have known I knew, that I read it. Or he would’ve asked why I let everything burn.
Outside it was pitch-black except for the white snowbanks and the lit road ahead of us. We drove past the neon sign by the funeral parlour that always had the temperature listed. Minus 26 in big digital orange letters. The truck’s vinyl seats had rigor mortis. But I wasn’t tensed up from the cold. I was sitting comfortably as we drove across town, crossing the frozen river on the High Level Bridge. I chatted aimlessly, oddly determined not to let any of the horror out. “Brian Dennehy, you know he’s not a bad actor, but he’s always playing these overworked cops . . . except for that movie about his belly, you know in The Belly of an Architect, he was awesome in that. But that’s it, I mean, otherwise it’s these bullshit movies of the week. I wonder if he minds . . . It’s like . . .”
Sullivan kept taking his eyes off the snowy road; I could feel him looking at me, no doubt trying to gauge the damage. I knew he was anxious; he was scratching his chin. He knew I knew. Had to. But he was keeping a lid on it for some reason. I could hear him scratching, couldn’t stop himself. I took a peek at his profile. He looked seedy to me then, like a squirming rat. But he had such beautiful eyelashes. I jerked forward as the car swerved on the black ice under the snow. The truck was shimmying up the street. I didn’t care. Sullivan gripped the wheel, his arms rigid. I wasn’t wearing my seatbelt.
All that was important to me was that I hold it together until after dinner. I was divvying up the future in increments: dinner, home, eat, reveal, break up. Only once I was on my home turf could I act.
When he got to a snow-cleared street he fiddled with the radio tuner until he got the university station. It was angry music hour. He went to turn it off.
“No, leave it on, please.”
It was jolting, loud, screeching heavy metal full of primal screams and lots of Satan references. I’d never been a metal fan, but I found it suited me—it was animal enough for my mood.
We went through a drive-through A&W. He got a bacon double cheeseburger and fries, I got a cheeseburger and a Root Beer. “You sure you don’t want some kind of sundae? Like the kind with broken cookies that you like?” he yelled to me over the music.
“No, thanks. I’m FINE.” I lit my third cigarette of the truck ride off the end of my second. Chain-smoking was my only solace. I pledged myself to cigarettes for the rest of my life. They were my mercy. And now heavy metal too, apparently. I could relate to the headbanging urge. Nihilism was the clear way forward.
I didn’t know how to look at him. I was so used to looking at him with love, with lust, with curiosity. What now? Loathing? It was all disbelief and confusion because, somehow, somehow I could still feel his love. It just didn’t make sense. I focused on the sweetgrass hanging from his rear-view mirror.
We pulled up in front of my five-storey brick walk-up apartment building on 105th Street, one of Edmonton’s only truly steep hills. Once inside, I put Peter Gabriel on the stereo, turned on the string of Christmas chili pepper lights. Together we arranged the food on the coffee table. I pulled out my duty-free vodka from Mexico and made us both a cocktail.
There was no way I could eat my meal. Smoking and drinking were possible, but not eating, no way. The burger was repulsive. The bun looked like processed paper pulp, the meat was plasticky, the condiments gelatinous and leering. I let it sit there untouched, wasted. I ate one soggy fry and regretted it. He slowly, stupidly chewed on his burger. I could see that each mouthful was harder to chew. Mayonnaise seeped out of the corner of his mouth. I smiled tightly at him. I felt that stale fry sit in my stomach by itself, squirming.
I thought I was bluffing successfully but wasn’t sure anymore why this was important. Now all I wanted was for him to eat all of his food. It was important to me that he had his dinner, I didn’t know why.
Finally he was done. “Aren’t you going to finish yours? Or start it even?” We both knew I wasn’t going to, but he mustn’t have been able to stop himself asking and going through the motions. I didn’t say anything. He cleared the table and went to the kitchen. I listened to him scrape the plates, my burger made a thud as it hit the bottom of the garbage bag. He gulped down a glass of water and the leaky tap dripped.
When he finally came back in the room and sat down opposite me, I looked at him and said firmly, “Let me just start by saying: I know.”
“What?”
The tap dripped.
“I’m fully aware that I shouldn’t have, but I did. I read it.”
“I read it,” I said a bit louder.
It was amazing how instant his reaction was. He clamped his hand over his mouth, gagging, and then got up and ran to the bathroom. I could hear him vomiting. It felt appropriate somehow, that deep retching noise, the appropriate soundtrack for this hell. It took him a while, and I went over and over the thing that stumped me, that I couldn’t wrap my head around. I lit a cigarette and topped up my drink with more vodka. We weren’t some stodgy couple with no romance left—we were still honeymooning. My guts ached. My insides felt like they’d been mugged and beaten to a tender pile of bleeding pulp.
Finally, he came out of the bathroom and sat down. After a few minutes of silence, he cried. I watched the candle on the table. I didn’t say anything. He was howling. I wasn’t. He leaned his head against the wall and then pulled away so he could bang it, trying to head-butt some redemption.
“Stop it. Please don’t.”
“I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry—” He banged his head against the wall again in a horrible refrain.
I was glad to see a tangible sign of his regret, but I didn’t like to see him hurt himself. And also I was angry, he was stealing my stupid thunder. This was, after all, my primetime victim slot. I could feel a horrible sarcasm rise up over the ashes of my broken soul. It beckoned me to feel the perverse kind of power that comes with being the hurt. I knew the hurter would have to go to Herculean extremes to win forgiveness. Was he entitled any pain of his own? I guess if he hadn’t any, he’d just be an asshole.
Any of my other boyfriends would have been out the door over this: Bob, Joe, Clayton. But this was Sullivan, my wonderful Sullivan. That night of revelation, I drank more vodka, he smoked and cried. I don’t know why, but we went to bed that night and fucked like strangers. I couldn’t believe he’d done this with someone else. Me, who put chili in his cocoa, lavender on his pillow, and peppermint cream on his feet.
After sex, I got up off him and saw blood running down my thighs.
My period. I went to the bathroom and washed myself off. Then I went to the living room and grabbed my cigarettes before climbing into the bath in the dark and letting the water fill around me.
After soaking for ages, I let myself pee in the water. I was about to get up when Sullivan called from the bedroom, “Can I get into the bath?”
“Sure,” I said and got out.
We were diseased after Alicia. There was no cure. Like my friend Randy rudely put it: “You know, you try to get over these things, but there’s no getting around the fact that when you go to bed that other girl’s pussy is going to be there in the bed with you both. And when you wake up in the morning, guess what . . . her pussy still going to be there! And like they say: three’s a crowd, baby.”
We’d almost crossed Saskatchewan and Blue Rodeo were long finished their B side so I hit stop on the tape deck and sat up. I would never be able to figure out why it had gone that
way with Sullivan, why I hadn’t been enough for him. But now that I’d lost him, I had nothing else to lose. The little guy in my heart bouncing on a trampoline—hoping, jumping, leaping, trying—had been in a hammock ever since it all ended, taking one long timeout until now.
“C’mon, Isobel, you should take a break, let me drive, I swear I won’t pull over for any more hitchhikers.” It was then that Finn yelled, “Hills! Girls, girls, we’re headed for hills.”
“It’s a mirage, Finski, une mirage. It’s time to camp for the night, on est tous un peu zinzin.”
It was dark by the time we parked in a field somewhere near the Manitoba border who knows where. We had a trusty pack of wet wipes for cleaning ourselves, a bottle of water, and some caramel popcorn and more delicious beef jerky for nourishment. We were practically pioneers. Finn slept diagonally in the car and we slept on my trusty air mattress, just beside the car. It was hot enough to sleep without the tent and not too many mosquitoes. I spotted my lucky Orion above.
side a, track 5
“so fuck you and your untouchable face”
“Untouchable Face,” Ani DiFranco
Kiss of Life
Day 3
1,567 klicks
800-ish to Ontario
The big green highway sign said MANITOBA 50KM in white letters. My lips were sore from shelling too many salty Spitz sunflower seeds. I was twitching for a cigarette. Licorice wasn’t really cutting it. The road ahead was blurry with heat haze. It looked like we’d soon be driving through a giant vacuum bubble that might transport us up up and away to another dimension. If I could choose, I wouldn’t have minded going back to Jane Austen’s time, when a kiss was a major big deal, when love brewed slowly over singular moments exchanged in ballrooms and on the moors. Good conversations over infinite cups of tea discussing species of flowers in the garden. Wit and decency reigned in Austen stories. And I detected some good lust too, even though she never quite described it explicitly. All those brooding, swaggering horsey men though . . . Maybe I needed to move to England. Henry James said the English were the most romantic of all people. And you can really see that, with guys like Morrissey and D.H. Lawrence and E.M. Forster and Oscar Wilde, or actually wasn’t he Irish, and Morrissey too—maybe it’s the Irish I need. At least there were actual people over there, unlike here in this prairie void.
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