by Donna Bishop
Mo nods in agreement. “Yes, come to think of it, the last time I saw him was right at that time. He tried to get me to renew his painkiller prescription, but I could see he’d recently filled it. He was so angry that I wouldn’t give him more. And I haven’t seen him as a patient or at any community events since.”
“Yeah, he switched doctors pretty fast when he couldn’t get the pills from you. I figured you were onto him but I didn’t think it was my place to say anything at the time. He always says he could stop the alcohol and the pills if he wanted to. He just doesn’t want to.”
“Do you believe that, Liv?”
“No, just the part about him not wanting to,” she smiles sadly. “I don’t even know if I believe myself. If I’m really honest, I think there have been signs of this since I first knew Ross. My Grandma used to say, ‘believe only half of what people say but everything they do.’ Ross’ actions have not matched his words for a long time. He says he loves me and the kids but he only shows it after he’s had his fill of alcohol, tobacco, or whatever else he’s using. Throw in a mental illness and does that mean even his actions aren’t true?”
“It’s pretty impossible to sort it all out yourself. My best advice for you would be try and get him to go to the hospital for a psychiatric assessment. At the very least, he needs to go to a treatment centre to deal with his drinking and his prescription drug abuse. He’s out of control. You shouldn’t go back there until he’s rational. You understand that, don’t you, Liv? You can stay here as long as you need to.”
“I know Mo, thank you so much for all of this. I know I have to try to convince him to get help. I just want our old life back. I think.”
Then Mo gives her an empathetic hug and heads off to her office.
Liv slows and pulls over onto the shoulder as she approaches her driveway, craning her neck to see whether Ross’ car is in the yard.
No. He’s gone. She’s thankful today will not be the day they have “The Talk.” Although she feels much more confident, she’s still gathering the courage.
As she enters she can hear the finches chirping, so she deals with them first — she cleans their cage, gives them fresh food and water and has a little chat with them. She washes up the few dirty dishes in the sink — it looks like Ross found the left-over chili. He must have taken Ruby with him, which is a bit worrying with the mood he’s in. She hopes he looks after her.
Heading outside to see whether the cows are all accounted for and the sheep haven’t gotten into the wrong field again, Liv has a sudden revelation. Everything she can see, they built together. Ross was as good with his hands as he was with his brains. He had boundless energy and had done much of the building himself over two years, hiring local guys and contractors to help when needed. She recalls standing, with Ross hugging her from behind, laughing and celebrating their final decision on the spot they had decided to build their home, a gentle slope with a beautiful view of the river and the mountains. “Perfect,” they had both exclaimed at the same time. She had loved designing their home, filling it with colour and practical touches. They had been so proud of what they had accomplished.
And now it’s all in jeopardy, falling apart.
All this time, she’s been thinking he betrayed her, but really, his mind has betrayed them both. She feels some forgiveness for him, now that she’s able to attribute the affair and the harshness he has shown towards her and the kids to the illness, over which he has no control.
She grabs a tub of garden compost and two slop buckets from beside the barn. She fills the pails half full with powdered grain and adds water from the hose to make a mush. The three half-grown pigs snort from their pen in eager anticipation of food. The buckets are heavy and Liv groans as she lifts them one at a time over the fence. She doesn’t feel like joining them in the pen today — although it’s fun to play, she ends up smelling like a pig pen!
Now to her favourite farm creature. Majic has been watching her from the paddock. He pines for the apples, but can’t access the tree from his field, so she picks a few for him. He comes right up to her, even though she has grabbed a curry comb and he knows he’s in for some unwanted attention as well.
As she brushes the horse’s tangled silver mane, Liv scolds him, “How did you get so tangled up? You walked through burrs, didn’t you?” He flinches a little as she pulls a burr from his forelock. “That’s okay, Majic. So did I, so did I,” she reassures him.
She needs to untangle her feelings, both bad and good, before she can consider whether to even try to weave her marriage back together.
For all their recent troubles, there have been wonderful times with Ross. I miss how it used to be. A nostalgic home movie begins to play in her mind. Newly in love, walking the wild beaches on Maui. Dipping little Leah’s toddler body into the warm sea for the first time, each holding one of her hands and loving the sound of her happy squeals. Family camping trips and boisterous gourmet feasts with their friends — Ross would cook and preside front and centre, instigating political rants, entertaining all and making everyone laugh. It’s been about a year since Ross cooked one of his famous meals. They have so many friends — college profs, students, draft dodgers, cowboys, farmers, musicians, artists and First Nations chiefs. Never a weekend would go by where there wasn’t some amazing social event happening.
Liv laughs to herself as she runs her fingers through Majic’s now tangle-free mane and moves on to his tattered tail.
There was a time when Ross would do anything to please her. The lobster incident comes to mind. The previous summer, she and her friends had worked for months to organize The Octopus’ Garden Children’s Festival in Little Mountain. They fundraised and got the schools and everyone in the community involved and pulled together a wonderful day full of artistic activities and professional entertainers. It went beautifully. When she arrived home with the kids, she found the whole crew there, in her yard.
Ross had been working on a little project of his own, a surprise for Liv and everyone who had created this monumental children’s day. He had secretly ordered a hundred live lobsters from Prince Edward Island and prepared a feast at their farm after the festival. It was all great until Liv realized the lobsters were to be dropped live into pots of boiling water. “That’s horrible, Ross. I’m not eating tortured animals!” With a mischievous smile, he ran into the house and brought back half a dozen bottles of Chardonnay, which he poured over the frantic, clattering lobsters in the salt water tank. Friends gathered around and watched as the lobsters took in the white wine. It was not until their movements slowed to more of a slow dance, and they seemed drunk, that Ross dropped them into the steaming pot. “See Liv, they’re happy!” Ross exclaimed as he took her by the waist and swung her around, “I’d do anything for you, Liv. Anything.” The ill-fated lobsters emitted only the smallest whistling wheezes and by the time they were served up with fresh butter and lemon, Liv had to admit they were delicious. His was a brilliant gesture, for show but also just for her and typical of Ross — until recently.
Liv summons more images — like she’s trying to soften her heart against its will when all it really wants to do is harden. In a rollercoaster of memories, she sees Molly riding on Ross’ shoulders, giggling and happy.
Casting back to their sixth anniversary, she recalls she and Ross paddling effortlessly downstream in their forest green canoe, toasting their happy lives with chilled champagne, laughing, passing the bottle back and forth, nearly tipping the canoe. Liv realizes she had kept the good part of that memory and forgotten the rest. Until now. When they got home and sent the babysitter off, Ross decided he had to go to town to buy more alcohol. He never did come home that night and she can’t recall why. How many times have I suppressed the bad memories? My eyes are open now and I won’t close them again.
The hazy memory disappears, making room for a miserable flashback of the last time she had tried to initiate sex with Ross, a few months earlier. It’s now been nearly a year since they’ve had se
x. Reaching over to his side of the bed, she had massaged his thigh and he seemed receptive so she reached up and touched his face and kissed his lips. He rolled away from her. Ignoring the sting of that, reaching over his back, taking his penis in her hand, thinking a blow job might bring her the intimacy she was craving, Liv was shocked to discover his penis covered in ointment of some sort. She hadn’t let herself suspect for a moment that his penis had been busy elsewhere.
“I have some kind of rash,” he lamely explained, and she rolled as far as she could, to the far side of the bed and didn’t sleep. I knew. I knew then our marriage was in trouble but I just couldn’t bring it to the surface.
Day-dreaming and “day-maring” over, animals and home looked after, Liv is finally ready to head over to Celeste’s. Passing through the mud room, she remembers to take the clean clothes out of the dryer and throw them into a basket to bring to Mo’s house. Then she hears a car pull in and a door slam. From the half window in the utility room door she sees Ruby scrambling up the stairs and Liv’s heart thuds and her face flushes at the realization that Ross is home.
She’s used to having some pretty intense feelings about Ross, but fear has never been one of them, until now.
Liv reflects on yesterday’s event on the porch. I can handle this. She opens the door to the scruffy, unshaven, red-eyed version of her husband.
“Hi Ross.”
He steps inside and she takes a step backwards but they remain facing each other.
“Liv, I don’t know what’s going on, but I feel like my head is going to explode.”
“Oh Ross, I’m so sorry this is happening to you, to us.”
“What are you talking about? It’s what’s happening to the world.” His eyes flash with rage. He bellows, “Look at the big picture, Liv! Not our insignificant little lives. We mean nothing.”
Liv fights back tears, fights the feeling that his words are about her not being good enough, smart enough, important enough. She instinctively backs away from him, gathering the courage to speak.
“Ross, you aren’t well. Can you hear me out? You need to see a doctor and find out what it is. You seem to have some kind of illness,” she says carefully, knowing this will be treading on thin ice. “I don’t know what to expect from you next. You’ve been staying away from home for days on end, you had an affair, you think people are out to get you. You get drunk and high every single day. You haven’t been acting like you.”
“Haven’t I, Liv? Maybe I have. Maybe this is the real me.” Ross reaches into his pocket and pulls out a joint and lights it up.
“Mo thinks the highs and lows you’re experiencing might even be bipolar disorder. It might be why your headaches are worse too.”
“Oh, you would see it as a disease, something wrong with me, something that can’t be fixed. Maybe a lobotomy is the answer,” Ross sneers at the idea and laughs hollowly. “Wouldn’t they love that, destroying my Commie brain, all in the name of medicine? Turn me into a zombie with no thoughts at all.”
“Ross…,” Liv attempts to interject, but he goes on.
“You’re either with me or against me, Liv. I know you’re angry because I screwed around, but if you’re in on this, you better tell me now.”
“I’m not your enemy. Yes, I’m angry, but I love you and the kids love you. You need to get help for yourself, for our marriage, for the kids. We’re all scared right now.”
Ross comes even closer and says, incredulously, “Scared of me?”
She can’t back up any further into the utility room because the clothes dryer is in the way, so she freezes as Ross flings the remainder of the burning joint out the door and grabs her by the shoulders, squeezing hard, his narrowed, bloodshot grey eyes only inches from hers.
“And I think you’ve signed on with them. Don’t even pretend you haven’t. I’m outta here. You don’t have to be scared of big bad Ross anymore. I won’t be back.”
“If you do come back and you’re like this, I’ll have to call the police. I don’t feel safe with you.”
He tears off, leaving Ruby at home and Liv to contemplate what just happened.
Did he just leave me? Did I send him away?
She closes the door, and, with a shaky hand, locks it.
9
~ Disorder ~
Feeling anxious in her own home, Liv starts off early to Celeste’s for her ten o’clock appointment. The birch and willow leaves, yellow now as October quickly approaches, stir in the breeze and the odd red maple leaf flutters to the ground. It seems too sudden for all this change.
Celeste listens to her friend’s account of the bizarre target-shooting incident on the porch the previous day with expressions of surprise and horror, occasionally interjecting to ask a question and reassuring her that she handled it all really well.
“Yeah, I think I did. There was a moment there where I was freaking out, just about to panic. And then my mind cleared — I think it was Hannah’s influence, the way she handles Ingaborg’s father. I just knew what I had to do — humour him, make him feel secure, and then get me and the kids out of there.”
“Then he showed up again this morning, when you were about to leave?”
“Yes, I don’t think I handled that quite as well. He got pretty angry when I suggested he might have bipolar disorder. For the first time ever, he was rough with me. It wasn’t really painful but he squeezed my shoulders and said he thought I was against him. He had no right to lay a hand on me.”
“Are you worried about your safety, and about the kids? Do we need to call the police?”
“No, when I ran over here I was feeling a little scared but I’m calmer now and he’s gone into town to stay for a while. His friend Mel called me yesterday and he even admitted he is worried about Ross. At least it’s out in the open now. Mel and his wife Sandy are going to encourage Ross to stay with them for a few days, get him to stay off the booze and see a doctor if they can.”
“Maybe he’ll listen to a friend.”
They sit for a few moments, absorbing the implications of this new chapter in Liv’s marriage. Her troubles churn in her mind as though they're in a Mixmaster.
“It feels like all the compartments in my mind that I’ve been keeping neatly shut have opened up and I’m having a terrible time sorting them. Part of me wants to run.”
Celeste nods to encourage Liv to keep talking.
“You know, Celeste, when I was five or six I ran away from home. It was after one of the nights my dad had been in my bedroom. The sun was barely up, but I was an early riser. I was wearing a light grey velvet dress with fabric-covered buttons up the back — I’d worn it so much that it was torn at the waistline. I went into my brother’s bedroom to ask if someone could help do up my buttons. They told me to piss off. It wasn't even light yet.
“Brothers,” Celeste interjects with a smile.
“Angry and rejected, I decided to run away from home and gathered a few belongings in an old kerchief and tied it on the end of a stick, like I’d seen Pebbles do in an episode of The Flintstones. As I walked down the highway, my tears had dried, my anger had dissolved and I had faith that I was going towards something safe and better. I remember the feeling so well. I wasn’t afraid at all, in fact I was excited.
“My brothers realized I had gone and caught up with me on their bikes after about half an hour — no doubt terrified I was going to be hit by a car. I told them I was going to White Rock beach. Gord apologized for not doing my buttons up and Arty let me ride on his handlebars all the way home. I was mad they’d shown up and interrupted my plan.
“You were an incredibly strong little girl, Liv. It must have felt like you had nobody on your side,” Celeste says. “I can see you gathering up your internal and external resources now, rather than staying in a bad situation or running blindly towards the unknown. Do you think we should we slow down on our sessions for a while, Liv? You’re going through so much right now.”
“No, I want to keep going. It feels like
my past lives are leading me places I need to go to sort out my heart and mind. They’re all part of my resource team, so to speak.”
Celeste nods in agreement as she passes Liv a piece of paper etched with Twin Rivers Sexual Assault Centre, 604 472 3141 in her tidy, flowing script.
“You’ve begun some important work here Liv. You can always talk to me about anything under the sun, moon and stars, but sexual abuse isn’t my area of expertise. These people will be able to help you. Promise me you’ll go?”
“I will. The world didn’t end when I told you and I realize I haven’t even begun to deal with the abuse. God, I was just a wee girl! Saying those things out loud to you and visiting little me in that last session really made me realize I need to give a voice to her. Thanks, Celeste. You know, I think looking back at my childhood and allowing myself to feel some anger actually helped me when I was confronting Ross yesterday on the porch. My need to protect myself and my kids was far stronger than my need to be ‘the perfect wife.’ I stood up for little Liv, as well as Leah, Molly and Micah. It was new for me but it felt good. I’m looking forward to today’s session.”
“Where would you like to go now?”
“Oh, I’d love to go back in time and see if there is another person in my past who can teach me a thing or two.”
“Well, let’s see if we can make that happen.”
10
~ Spirit Friend ~
Session No. 5 transcript, Sept. 24, 1987
Moragh of Pine Glen, 1745
The luminous blue line that seems to guide me to my past lives leads me across a tumultuous sea, up a craggy cliff to a green mountaintop meadow and into a cottage made of stones and bark. With a powerful whoosh, I catch up with my astral body and my senses clarify. I’m overwhelmed by the distinct scents of eucalyptus, lemon and lavender.