Elise, hey—his voice gay with the artificial lift of what he’d drunk. He’d pressed closer, naked, thrusting a lump at her back.
Eyes wide, Elise had stared at the opposite wall, moderating her breath to mimic sleep. She didn’t move as he’d fumbled with his weak erection between her thighs.
Elise, come on.
His hand suddenly up and into her. She’d kicked his leg as though she was dreaming.
Fuck this, he’d said, withdrawing and flipping over, pulling the blanket off her.
She’d stared at the wall, stung, silent, waiting for him to storm out with his pillow. But his breathing deepened, and the snores rolled in. Rhythmic enough, at least, after a while, to pull her under, too.
In the morning she slipped out from beneath the covers without sound, without catching the sheets, and took five long steps to the door, avoiding the creaks under the rug. She turned to look at him. His stillness roused an old sadness in her, a passing desire to retreat, to fit her body into his, to press her nose to his neck and inhale. But the impulse wasn’t strong and she was in the hall with the door shut behind her before he could sense that she’d gone. She had perfected her escape.
She didn’t know that he shifted his bulk to turn to the ghost she’d left behind, to put his hand in her absence carved into the sheets, warm and wrinkled in the place where she’d lain.
He didn’t know that she stood on the other side of the door in the hallway so she could feel the cold air on her skin. Hairs stand up, goosebumps rise, nipples stiffen. She breathed in slow and deep before getting her robe from the bathroom, shivering as she wrapped it around her on her way to the kitchen to start her day.
—
Mark liked his condo. Liked the way the key slid into the lock without having to be jiggled around. Liked the dim mirrored elevator that didn’t take too long, the quiet dishwasher, the firm grey couch and chairs that had come with the place. Liked stacking his black-spined magazines chronologically on his bookshelf, liked wiping the clean white block of a peninsula that separated the kitchen from the living room, liked sweeping the small triangular balcony with its view of the lake. You could only see it on clear days, and by looking through the gap between two other buildings, but still it was there. A lake view. Friends remarked on it before saying, “Nice pad, man. Awesome place for a transition.”
And when he reminded them that it’d been nearly two years, they’d just smile and grip his shoulder and say, “Give it time, bro, give it time,” mistaking his hollowness for something buried and heading to the fridge for a beer.
He wouldn’t tell the women he met about the lake view. The reality would never compare. Instead, he’d keep the blinds open when he expected to bring someone home and let her discover it herself while he casually opened a bottle of wine on the peninsula.
“Oh my gosh. Mark? Is that the lake over there?”
“Oh, yeah. It’s a little hard to see right now.”
“Wow, what a beautiful view,” she’d say while accepting her glass of wine and squinting into the dark.
—
Elise opened the cupboard and a bag of cookies fell out. The bag wasn’t sealed properly and before it even hit the ground, a cookie smashed against the countertop and crumbled to bits on the floor. She tried not to cry as she picked up the crumbs with a damp paper towel and wondered what would happen. She ground the beans and thought about how she could wait until he’d left the house, how she could drive away.
“Elise?” he called from behind the bathroom door. “Are there any clean towels?”
“Yes,” she yelled back, such relief in the sound of her own voice, the way it just carried on. “In the closet. I did a load yester—”
The hiss of the shower. He couldn’t hear her anymore.
She dumped four tablespoons into the filter and poured four cups of water into the back.
She decided to try something. With the shower running, with the coffee maker choking and burping, she turned toward the bathroom and said out loud, “I don’t love you anymore,” just to see what it felt like, before taking two mugs from the cupboard and a single spoon from the drawer. She tore a jagged triangle off the roll of paper towels to wipe her cheeks and nose, then clicked on the news to check the weather.
—
None of the women lasted more than a few dates, all of them pretty and just young enough to not be pricked by his indifference, to not sour at his state of impermanence. Only one ever mentioned the fire, and even then, it was only after they’d smoked a joint and got into the cognac following several bottles of wine.
“I remember your picture in the paper,” she’d said with a dull smile and smeared eyeliner, their clothes scattered around the living room. “I didn’t want to say before, but I remembered. Seems like forever ago now, kinda.”
“Yeah, I guess. I try not to think about it much.”
“What happened again? A barbecue or something?”
“Propane tank.” He sat up and lit the roach that was lying in the ashtray. Inhaled. “Faulty line. Whole cottage went up.”
“Right. Right. Shit.” She shook her head and took the roach from him with experienced pincer fingers. “Shit, eh?” she said, inhaling, a look of hazy contemplation passing over her face. She exhaled and passed it back. “Shit.”
“Don’t worry about it. Happened a long time ago.” He took a pull off what remained.
“Yeah. But still.”
When he was out with a widow, which happened once, she’d asked how his wife passed away; an absence she felt at liberty to probe, and did so with the compassionate tone of shared experience. But a fire wasn’t the same as cancer or a stroke, and he’d watched her eyes as he morphed into a character in some greater and more exquisite tragedy.
The how-you-holding-ups, long looks and arm squeezes dissipated with time, as did the phone calls from her sisters. And outside of the yearly invitation to a Christmas party thrown by her old roommate, Mark stopped hearing from her friends as well. As for the few people left in his life who had known them both, no one asked why there weren’t any pictures of her anywhere in his condo, why nothing remained to show she’d existed in his world at all. They all assumed that her wedding ring was tucked in a velvet box near the front of his sock drawer, or carefully placed in a hidden shrine they imagined he’d visit in his lowest hours, where he’d finger the cork of the champagne bottle popped on their engagement and look at photos of her kissing a statue in the lobby of a Paris hotel. They’d been so in love, after all.
No one imagined the nowhere into which he’d been flung, a grief-less place with no edges. Even when he burned everything that remained, still, there were no edges.
—
5.9
He’ll make it to six and that’s enough. That must be almost ten kilometres, though he isn’t sure of the exact conversion. The ache in his knees and the fire in his lungs won’t let him continue much longer. It’s not that he has anywhere to be. Everyone else on the row of treadmills is in between the pull of one place and another. Work and home, he guesses, or for the tougher guys, the reverse. He looks in the mirror at the bouncing faces lit by the glow of their televisions—faces suppressing smiles, laughter, grimaces. Emotion pulsing just below the surface, thoughts of elsewhere already sparking in their eyes.
6.0
He pushes harder. Further. Somewhere. Who cares about the knees, ankles, chest, heart, throat. He never watches the TV, afraid he won’t feel it when it all starts to break down. It’s why he comes here, to look at his own face in the mirror when the burn begins, to see himself feeling something like pain. He punches the button to crank up his speed, 7.9, 8.0. Hard to breathe. He lifts his head to watch his reflection, when a sudden movement outside catches his eye.
The window cleaner spins his mop, then stops dead, rigid, with the wooden handle by his side like a soldier with a rifle. He puffs out his bony chest and salutes hard at Mark, and then crumples, hacking, hands on his knees.
He look
s up long enough to spit a slick of brown phlegm at the window.
Mark trips, heart seizing, his arms flying up to grab hold of something, anything.
“Buddy—you okay?”
His elbows slung over the safety bars, tips of his runners dangling off the back of the belt, a stranger’s hand on his sweaty back.
“Yeah, yeah.” Dizzy, patches of black. “Yeah. I’m good, man.”
“I pulled the cord,” the tattooed runner says as he helps Mark back to his feet. “You need a licence for this thing.” An ink serpent coils around his neck, forked tongue flicking at his earlobe.
“I’m good, thanks,” Mark says, collecting his water bottle from the treadmill’s console and his iPod from where it fell. He glances back at the window. The man is gone, the spit wiped away. In the mirror, his eyes meet those of another runner, a ponytailed woman in her early twenties, the only face looking up from the televisions. The corner of her mouth creases in an almost-smile of empathy before she averts her gaze.
He doesn’t bother changing. Just gets his things from the locker and wipes down his red face with a bleach-smelling towel. He tosses it in a bin on his way out the door, fishes for his keys in his gym bag. He’s nearly at his car before he notices the window cleaner is there, leaning on the hood, waiting.
“Get out of here,” Mark says, sidestepping and stumbling off the curb. The man holds up his hands in surrender, in mock apology. “Seriously—leave me the fuck alone.”
Mark slides into his car and pulls a fast U-turn to get away. Something smashes though his windshield like a javelin, detonating an instant web of cracked glass. The end of the mop sticks through the hole. Mark loses control, his car careening toward the sidewalk, hurtling toward the man.
—
“Can you hear me?”
Elise?
“Look at me if you can hear me. Turn your eyes to me.”
She is there. She is beautiful, her hair aglow in coloured light. “Elise.” His mouth is smushed into a plastic pillow.
“Don’t try to talk, just look at me for now. Keep your eyes on me.”
Her eyes, such kindness. Such love. Where had it been? He lets his head flop to the side so she can hear him. “Don’t go.”
She smiles in that way she does when she doesn’t want to but can’t help it. He smiles back. It is going to be okay.
“I’m not going anywhere. We’re going to get you out of here.”
There are lights all around. He closes his eyes, just for a minute.
“Stay with me,” she says. “Stay with me.”
He wants to say he will. When he has the energy he’ll say he will, he’ll say he can already feel the thaw. He opens his eyes.
“You hit a pole. You were at the gym. We think you might have blacked out.”
“Elise…”
“Is that your wife, sir? Elise? Your girlfriend? Don’t worry—you’re alone. No one else is in the car. No one else was hurt.”
He smiles.
“Sir, stay with me. Can you feel anything?”
Yes. Everything.
“Anything?”
A tear runs off his airbag.
“Sir?”
Yes, officer. Yes. Every fucking thing.
MOMMYBLOGGER
“Katie?”
I stop digging through the mess in the stroller basket and look up. Hovering over me is the silhouette of a man, a business-looking man, haloed by the February sun.
“Jesus. It is you,” he says.
I stand, banging my head on the handle, and start to sweat even though it’s minus fifteen. Drops roll down the sides of my face from beneath my tuque. For a flash of time I consider looking stunned and saying Que? then running down the sidewalk as fast as I can go. But there’s no escape.
“Dev! Wow.” I can’t look him in the eye so I squint as if the sun is too bright and stare down at my mittens. They’re quivering. “It’s got to be what—ten years?”
“At least.” He takes a swig from his Venti Starbucks cup. “Hey! Is this your little one?” he says, crouching down to peer through the plastic wind cover. He’s tanned, like he just got back from three weeks in Maui. “Cutie. She’s three, four months?”
“He. Five. Almost six months now, I guess.” My heart pounding, words catching in my now dry throat. “Born in August.”
“Good for you getting out in this damn cold,” he says, standing up again. “My wife went bananas stuck inside with our first over the winter.”
“Yeah, it’s not hard to do,” I say too fast, too loud, while making my eyes go googlie and twirling my finger by my ear. It doesn’t work the same way with mittens, so I drop my hand to my side and say, “This—Felix, I mean—he’s our second. I guess I learned about the crazy part the first time.” I try to laugh casually but it sounds more like I’m about to hork something up.
“Nice, nice,” he says. “Yeah, we have three now. Youngest in preschool. It’s nuts. Just nuts.” He smiles at the baby, then glances up at me just as I’m trying to read his face for signs. I look away and roll the stroller back and forth as if Felix is crying inconsolably, even though he hasn’t made a sound.
Nov 29 | YOU ONCE SAID YOU WOULD MARRY ME
OR WAS IT COULD? YOU WERE LEANING AGAINST THE POOL TABLE AND I WAS STANDING BETWEEN YOUR LEGS.
It was still early. The bar was dead. The owner was playing against the bouncer, a $20 bill by the side pocket. You were saying how you were going to marry me/a girl like me. We couldn’t say more than that then because we were both with other people even though we were essentially in love with each other. I rolled my eyes, but really I wanted to drop my head against your chest and rest there for a while. Billiard balls clacked, Radiohead played over the speakers, and the DJ in the corner flipped through CDs with his back to us all. The owner and the bouncer pretended they didn’t see us, the same way they pretended not to see us at the end of each night when we slow-danced to Wild Horses.
“So, what do you do now?” Dev asks. “Besides this. Are you on mat leave from somewhere? Fancy lawyer or something?”
“No, no. Well, I mean, I was. I mean, not fancy but yeah.”
“You’re a lawyer?” His eyes widen and his head jerks back as if he were struck by a sudden strong wind.
“Oh. No. I didn’t hear that part. No, I worked, though. Marketing, mostly.”
He nods, loosening. “Nice. Nice.”
“I mean, after this one, after Felix, it was just like, you know, we thought…” I stopped, trying not to sound defensive or apologetic. “I mean, I write now. Mostly.”
Dec 2 | YOU CAN SAY NOW THAT YOU NEVER LOVED ME
BUT I KNOW YOU KNOW THAT’S NOT TRUE BECAUSE OF THESE TWO OCCASIONS:
1. When we were standing behind the bar and I turned around to grab a Keith’s for someone and my face in the beer fridge light made you say, nakedly, “You are so beautiful.” Even though my hair was in pigtails and your women were always so elegant. You were caught off guard.
2. That time after work when we were smoking in your car and I told you how lonely I was. I was looking out the windshield. You were looking at me. I had to tell someone and you were the only one I could. You drove me to the streetcar stop because it was raining and I didn’t have an umbrella. It was 3 a.m. You told me that no one had talked to you like that before. I took it to mean honestly. I think you were affected by what I said because when you walked into the bar a week later you looked at me with the same new eyes you’d had when you drove away.
“A writer! That’s awesome. Good for you! Living the dream, eh?” He nudges me on the shoulder with his coffee cup. No real contact, no touching skin, but still I swallow as some old sense memory squirms to life, the shadow of desire shaking off the dust.
“Like for magazines?” he asks. “Oh wait, I bet you’re a novelist! I could see that, I could see that.” He nods slowly, taking me in with another new perspective. “I’d love to do that one day, when I get some real time. Take a few months off when the ki
ds are a bit older, hole myself up at the cottage with a couple cases of Scotch.” He sips his coffee then nearly spits it out. “Yeah! Like my wife would have any part of that!”
His laugh is so easy. I smile and clear my throat as I wipe my dripping forehead with the back of my mitten, which isn’t absorbent and just smears sweat across my face.
“Yeah,” I pretend-laugh along. “No, not novels. More like, personal stuff. Mostly.”
Dec 5 | REMEMBER THAT NIGHT YOU DROVE ME ALL THE WAY HOME?
WHEN WE TALKED ABOUT THE SEX WE WERE HAVING WITH OTHER PEOPLE?
Whew! Even now when I think of it. Holy mother in heaven. Face-straddling, headboard-clinging, tongue-thrusting detail. One-upping each other the whole way along the highway as you drove. You let out a moan at one point, your hand over your mouth. Can’t believe you didn’t crash us into the guardrail, but it wasn’t like you to lose control.
We didn’t do a damn thing about it when you shifted your car into park in front of my apartment. You were quiet and I was dizzy. I said “Thanks for the ride” and then nearly fell down the steps to my front door. Couldn’t get my key to go in.
How long ago was that? 15 years? How did we not lunge at each other over your console? How did we not just say Fuck it and pull up behind the Food Basics? The guy I was with then was a total loser. I should have said Fuck it. I should have brought you inside.
That was the hottest drive of my life.
“Personal stuff? Oh! Like a blogger!” He’s smiling like it all makes sense now, like he should have known from the start. “My wife started writing—well, blogging—when she was off too. She loved it. Just getting all that stuff off her chest about being a new mom, you know?”
He sips his coffee, smirking. It must be frozen by now. I hope it’s frozen by now. I jerk the stroller back and forth until I realize I could be giving Felix brain damage.
“She even took a class. One of those, you know, ‘get out of the house and be creative’ things for moms? For her it was really…what’s the word?” He looks up at the sky as if it’s a giant dictionary. “Cathartic? Yeah, cathartic. Like she’d exorcised some evil spirits. I could see it in her eyes when I’d come home. She’d got it all out of her. All the shit you guys have to deal with.”
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