by Karina Halle
I wish things ended differently. I wish I hadn’t called her names. I wish I hadn’t run off. I could have stayed and talked to her and tried to make the best of those last days. I wish I hadn’t pushed and pushed, put that pressure on us, and especially, her.
But I can’t do anything about it. It happened. It’s over. And three months later, it still hurts. It’s not so bad—the comic book I’m illustrating is helping me funnel those feelings and fears into something worthwhile. I’m trying to date. I’m at least trying to get laid.
I’ve moved out, too. In February, Toby, the guy who threw the Halloween party where I met Gemma, needed a new roommate. Though my new job at the art supply store on Granville Island is only part-time in order to fit with my school schedule, I jumped at the chance. I’m barely scraping by but the rent is cheap and it’s a share house. I figured why not dive into the cliché and become a starving artist?
At that thought, I close the dessert menu. I’m only buying lemon meringue pie for someone special.
When dinner is over, I drop Katy off at her apartment in North Vancouver. She asks me in. I let her down gently.
“Who is she?” she asks. Her features sharpen. She can tell.
Still, I play dumb. “Huh?”
She sighs. “The girl you’re hung up on. Gemma, is it?”
I frown, bewildered. How could she know her name?
Katy smiles stiffly. “You called me her name the other night. In bed.”
Oh shit. I had no idea. I give her a pleading look. “I did? I’m sorry.”
She shakes her head. “Don’t worry about it. God knows I’ve been there. Take care, Josh. It was fun.” She gets out of the car and gives me a little wave. No hard feelings, thank god.
I watch her walk inside and then lay my head against the steering wheel. Jesus. Now I can’t even date without having Gemma invade me somehow. What did Amber call love when we were talking on the shores of Lake Wanaka? A fungus?
It was fitting. Love is a fungus. It’s hard to kill. Apparently this strain is lingering on, living in my pores and cracks and crevices.
I can’t tell if I’m grossing myself out or making myself sad.
I sigh and drive back into Vancouver. The city looks cold and lonely in the dark. Spring is on its way but feels so far off that it’s no more real than a ghost ship in the night. I go home and straight up to my room. Someone is in the kitchen, eating late, but I don’t stop to say hi.
It’s weird, ironic maybe, that my room is the very same room where Gemma and I had sat on the couch and watched people play Rock Band. I had wanted so badly to devour her.
She had bewitched me back then, and she still bewitched me now.
Only then, I welcomed it. Now, I wish it away.
But the feeling stays.
It’s April and I’m about to take a giant leap.
I have to call my dad to ask to borrow money. We’re not so close but it’s necessary; there are a few classes I want to take that start outside of the range of my student loan. I’d ask my mom but I always feel like a burden to her, even though she’s been texting me often, inviting me over for dinner. I just can’t. Art has taken over, and I’m glad.
“Dad,” I say when I hear him answer the phone. I’m sitting on the roof deck on the shoddy furniture, watching the city in the background and the budding maple trees that line the streets.
“Hey Josh,” he says, sounding warm and surprised. I hate that I’m not really calling to talk.
“Hi, listen, Dad, I have a big favor to ask you,” I say, just launching into it.
He sighs. “What is it?”
“Well, there are a few extra classes I would like to take at school but my loan doesn’t cover them and I’m just not making enough at the supply store to cover it. I was wondering . . .”
“How much is it?” He also gets straight to the point.
“In total, six seventy-five,” I tell him, wincing. “That is, six hundred and seventy-five dollars.”
The line goes silent. I can almost hear him thinking, stroking his mustache. Finally he says, “Fine. But if I do this for you, you have to do me a favor.”
I frown. What could he want from me? “Okay.”
“Why not come to Alberta when school is up and stay a week with me and your stepmom? We’d love to have you.”
This is a first for me. “Really?”
“Yeah. We miss you. We’re not getting any younger, and neither are you. I think it would be good for you to get away for a bit, out of the city.”
He’s right about that. I love Vancouver but it’s starting to make me feel both boxed in and lonely. “Okay, sure. That would be great. If I take these courses I won’t be free till the summer but I can come then. Oh, maybe we can go to the Stampede!”
He chuckles. “Anything you like. All right, I’ll get the money into your account. How is your mother?”
He rarely asks about her, and I can tell he doesn’t really want to know. “She’s fine. I don’t talk to her much, though. School keeps me busy.”
He coughs. “Right. Well, she’s still your mother. You should spend some time with her.”
I sigh. “Yes, fine, I will. Hey, thanks, Dad.”
“You’re welcome.”
When we hang up, I look at all the texts my mom has sent to me over the last month. She’s asked me over for dinner. Asked me to pick up my mail. Asked to come to my apartment to say hello. Asked me to come out with her and Mercy. She’s been asking and asking, and I keep answering her with I’m busy or Later or Sorry, can’t. Or I just don’t answer her at all.
I don’t know why I’ve been pushing her away. It’s like I’m punishing her for something she didn’t do. It’s like I’m punishing her for just being my mom.
Feeling guilty, I decide to answer her last text, sent a week ago: Come stop by and say hi. And pick up your mail.
I text back, Okay, I’ll stop by today, I don’t have school until the evening.
I head on over, thinking she won’t be home but at least she’ll know I made somewhat of an effort. When I get there I see she’s home and the door is open. On the kitchen counter is a pile of mail, probably all junk, for me.
The shower is running but I still yell, “I’m here!” so she doesn’t come out and think I’m a robber and attack me with her pointy nails. I know those things hurt.
I grab a can of Diet Coke from the fridge and crack it open as I stare at the mail on the kitchen counter, expecting to see a mound of letters.
It’s not a mound of letters at all. There are two envelopes and a postcard from Amber in Bali, but the rest are packages. Some are a square foot, others half that size, and they’re all wrapped in plain brown paper.
I pick up the one on the top. It has my address but the return address is Henare Wines in Bay View, New Zealand. I feel the blood drain out of me.
My heart is waterlogged.
With shaking hands, I pull back the paper and reveal a pastel-painted canvas. A seascape at sunset. Blues and corals and tangerine. It’s so gorgeous I want to cry. I blink a few times, turning it over. It doesn’t have Gemma’s name on it or a note but it’s from her. It’s her soul.
And she’s showing it to me.
I put it down and open another. And another. There are about fifteen of them, all gorgeous horizon lines, sunsets, sunrises—dark and stormy, happy and light. I’m surrounded by her.
“Josh?” I hear my mother say, and I whirl around to see her tucking her wet hair up into a towel, her face bare, her glasses off.
I point to the paintings. “What the hell is this?”
Her brows furrow as she comes closer. “Oh, they’re paintings. Quite nice. What do they mean?”
I’m incredulous. “I don’t know what they mean,” though I do. “How long have you been getting these?”
She shru
gs, picking up one of a red sunset on a black sand beach. “For weeks now. A new one comes almost every day.”
“Why the hell didn’t you tell me?!”
She gives me a sharp look. “I did tell you. I kept telling you to pick up your mail. It’s not my fault you don’t have a second to spare for me.”
Oh, I see. She’s using the mail as leverage.
I sigh, rubbing my hand vigorously across my face, trying to force some sense into my fried brain. “Okay, I’m sorry that I haven’t been around.”
“It hurts, Joshua,” she says. “Everyone is gone. Everyone has someone except for me.”
I wince, my heart sinking even more. It’s hard to hear my mom be vulnerable. I don’t know how to deal with it. I don’t know if she’ll just go back to being the cold stone that she usually is.
“I don’t have anyone, Mom,” I tell her, though now, looking at the paintings—Gemma’s soul, her love, her passion spread out on the table—I think she might have me. “I’m sorry I haven’t been around. Things are . . . tough sometimes. You know how it is.”
She sighs and nods. “I do. Just say you’ll try.”
“I will, Mom,” and I mean it. “I just can’t believe these are all here. How did she even know where to send them?”
“Who is sending you these? Seems like promotion from a winery.”
“It’s a girl, Mom. One I . . . she’s in New Zealand.”
She studies the art. “Did she make these?”
“Yes,” I say proudly, as if I had something to do with it. “She’s very talented.”
“Very,” she says. Her eyes flash. “Oh, I forgot, someone came this morning with something for you. But there’s no return address on it.”
She disappears around the corner and comes out with a thick package in her hands. She places it on the counter, and just from the shape and the weight I know what it is.
“When you say someone . . .” I say, my eyes glued to it.
“I don’t know. A girl dropped it off. Not the regular postman. Must be a courier.”
I feel my face growing cold. I can barely speak. “What did she look like?”
“Like a girl,” she says. “Pretty. Long hair, tanned. Healthy looking. She looked a bit mixed.”
That would be my mother’s way of saying “not totally white.”
“Didn’t you ask her questions, like where this came from?”
She taps her long nails on the package and nods. “I did. But the girl just turned and ran down the steps. For a second, I thought maybe it was a bomb.”
“It’s no bomb,” I say.
I start unwrapping, slowly at first, then fast.
Mom pats my shoulder. “Well, I’ll leave you to it.”
When I rip all the paper off, my sketchbook is in my hands. I marvel at it, turning it over, and I start flipping through it. I see the inscription, If you lose this, please return to Josh Miles, and my address on the inside cover. I flip through, hoping to see something new, but all it does is bombard me with a million memories.
Each page is a trip back to New Zealand—every beautiful day, every moment captured. The clear, pale water and golden sand of Abel Tasman. The cold, dramatic ice of Franz Josef Glacier. Dawn at Key Summit. Foxgloves and milk-blue Lake Tekapo. Dolphins. Gemma’s attempt to paint in Kaikoura. Christmastime. The sunrise at East Cape.
This is where I pause. Her painting is glowing brilliantly off the page, like I’m seeing that sunrise all over again in her saturated, waxy lines. I feel just how messy life was at that moment.
But the painting is a bit different now.
Across the horizon she has written, in orange, This where I first loved you.
My throat closes up, my nose growing hot. I blink my eyes fast, trying to move through the love and pain competing for space in my heart.
She loved me.
I don’t even want to look at the rest. But I do. It’s more of my work, reflections of a journey and love that were slowly winding down.
I get to the last page. It’s the picture of a cold, cold sea.
She has written, I’m sorry.
I close my eyes and hold the book to my chest.
I’m sorry, too.
I stand there for a few minutes, in my mother’s kitchen, trying to absorb it all. The courier has to have been Gemma. It just has to be.
I whip out my phone and start Googling Vancouver backpackers. She has to be here; I can feel it. I know it. She delivered it this morning in person, she just had to. She wants me to see this, to have this. She wants me to know she’s here.
Yeah, I’m probably thinking like a lunatic, but at least when you’re nuts you take chances. I remember her saying she stayed at the Hostelling International on Thurlow Street when she was last here, so I call them up.
They don’t have anyone called Gemma there.
I call another backpackers nearby. They can’t give out info.
I call another and another and another. No leads, no answers.
No Gemma.
I log on to Facebook and search for her, hoping I can unblock her. She’s there and her picture is of one of her paintings, which thrills me in a weird way, but her privacy settings are high and I can only send her a friend request.
After all the paintings have been carefully stacked, I put them in my car and drive them back to my place. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with all of them, but while I wait to get her to accept my friend request, I end up placing them all over my room.
Toby steps in and tells me it’s like living in an art gallery. He knows all about Gemma and doesn’t bug me about her. Apparently the same thing happened to him and some girl he met at his parents’ place in Shanghai. We’ve become quite good at commiserating.
My evening class on illustration starts soon and I have no choice but to go. I’m tempted to leave my cell at home, just so I’m not checking Facebook every five minutes in class, though let’s face it, that’s what everyone does anyway.
Class drags on. My palms itch to take out my phone. I can’t concentrate and I need to. My computer is slow and Adobe keeps fucking up.
A war wages inside me. I’m all kinds of messed up.
But I feel alive for the first time in a while.
I feel a sense of hope I didn’t even know was missing.
When class is over, I stay a bit later, just to finish up what I should have. I take my time, giving the drawing the concentration it deserves. I have nowhere to be, no one to see. A beer sounds good, though.
I grab my stuff and make my way down the hall toward the back doors, where I parked.
There’s a familiar melody filling the air the closer I get to the end.
Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here.”
It unravels me.
It’s coming from a classroom at the end of the hall, and I slow as I pass by the open door. I peer inside. It’s empty and filled with canvases of all shapes and sizes. I can hear a tap running in the background.
I wouldn’t normally stay and linger but there’s a painting in the middle of the room, staring me in the eye.
Actually, it’s me staring me in the eye.
It’s a black and white pastel drawing of me with a wild teal background, painted with blue watercolor.
My mouth gapes. Thoughts dislodge. My heart shrinks and swells.
What the actual fuck?
What kind of dimension did I just wander into?
I walk into the room, quietly, as if I’m going to scare the painting, scare the me staring back at me, with its lip ring and asshole smile.
Suddenly the water turns off and I hear the tap tap tap of a paintbrush against a sink. There’s movement behind one of the canvases.
I hold my breath.
Gemma emerges into the open.
She’s wearing a
white tank top, black jeans, tall boots. Her hair is piled onto her head. She has teal paint everywhere, on her chest, her arms, her face, her hands.
She doesn’t seem surprised to see me, not like I am to see her. She just smiles and stands still and gestures to the painting.
“Do you like it?”
I can’t even look at it. I can only look at her. And that’s when I see the line of fear across her brow, the uncertainty in her eyes. She wants me to like it, she needs me to like it.
But I don’t care about the painting.
My mouth feels full of sawdust. I’m surprised I’m still standing on my own two feet. “Gemma,” I manage to say. I can’t say any more.
She swallows and nods, perhaps expecting a different reaction. “Surprise, right?” She sighs and walks over to the painting, standing in front of it. I can’t believe her ass is within touching distance again, her hair, her skin.
“I moved into the vineyard, worked there part-time, saved up money. Then I took a leap of faith and enrolled in school, here,” she says as the questions linger on my lips, her back turned toward me. She touches up something on the painting. “I followed my passion. And my passion led me here. To you. I’ve only been here for a few days. I’ve been wanting to find you, say hello but . . . I’ve been shy.”
She shoots me a look over her shoulder, slightly embarrassed, her cheeks flushed beautifully. “I don’t expect anything from you, just so you know. I’m here to find out what I want from life.” She licks her lips before turning her face away. “I just wanted to give you my art. I owed you at least that much.”
I reach out for her and touch her gently on the shoulder, just to make sure she’s real.
She is. Her skin feels soft enough to sink into, though she’s still got her muscle. She’s still got everything I love about her.
And now she has art.
And now she has me.
I grin to myself and spin her around so I’m staring down at her beautiful face, those deep dark eyes that look up at me with a need I’ve never seen before.