Away From Everywhere Page 10

  “Yet your brother’s at work today, right?”

  “Yeah…but he’s back to work for show, because he’s afraid people might think all this makes his life look even more screwed up and–”

  “And there’ll be no mention of that father of yours in my house, are we clear on that? Stop rootin’ through all his stuff. I ought to burn all this is what …but your grandmother won’t allow it. That’s where the man got his weak heartedness, his mother, not me!”

  The way his grandfather stood there above him – Owen wanted to hit him the way he wanted to hit Jim Croaker. He wanted to transfer the undealt rage.

  “You think of him as you wish and I’ll do the same, but let’s not share those thoughts, because he’s brought me nothing but shame. Everything about the man is despicable. Never bringin’ his kids up to the church, because he was too busy writin’ them vigilante articles, I suppose. And now look at him, up in the friggin’ Mental!”

  He saw his son’s schizophrenia as divine punishment, not a neurological disorder. God was mad at his heathen son and had punished him. His ignorance infuriated Owen, as did Alex’s tolerating and defending their grandfather, because he was so clearly scared of having nowhere else to live.

  “We can stay at Abbie’s, man, she’s already said so. We don’t have to live here like two little fucken orph–”

  “Oh yeah, sure. And get full-time jobs to pay rent instead of going to university, right?”

  Owen stared at the ground.

  “Owen, I know it sucks here, but it’s temporary, and pissing the guy off isn’t going to help.”

  His name was Baron. He always wore a cheap cardigan over a white dress shirt he insisted his wife iron for him first thing every morning. Owen guessed he probably beat that loyalty into her. Baron smoked a pipe in the house and it stank like mould. It made the house dank and dreary. There was no cable, the radio was always tuned to AM, there was no CD player, and all the books were non-fiction. He was a man who would just as soon kick a troublesome kid to the curb. He was a man too militant to distinguish between grief and devilishness.

  The house itself reigned over Owen and his brother with its own unprecedented form of abuse. The walls bullied them in a way they could explain to no one but each other. Owen wrote a lot, and Alex checked the days off his calendar. In a few weeks he’d have a student loan and would be able to move into the campus residence up at Memorial University. It was already arranged: he’d be living in Bowater House on Elizabeth Avenue. Every morning Owen watched Alex roll out of bed, walk over to the calendar, and X off the day before. He said it was bad luck if he didn’t wait until the day was officially over. In the top, right-hand corner of each day, he’d write in the number of days left until he could move into Bowater House. Something about the countdown, about seeing the numbers, something about his not having a countdown to something for himself, made Owen anxious.

  Alex was equally concerned and contemptuous over his brother’s lack of plans. They shared a room at their grandfather’s, and one night before bed he confronted Owen. “So, like … what are you going to do …when I’m gone …like …in the fall? School-wise, or work-wise or whatever?”

  Owen had full intentions of going to university, but needed more time off to absorb his mother’s death before he could devote himself to carving out a new life. He didn’t want to rush this transition and come out of it stunted somehow. But he didn’t know how to share that.

  “I don’t know. I need to be more sure on a major before I start university, you know? Making the wrong choice, and locking yourself into a career you end up hating, that’s suicide really.”

  “Most people don’t know what they want until they’re in there taking courses,Owen.”

  “Yeah, well, most people are only there because they think they have to be. Most people are in there wasting their time and money and scraping by with 50s and 60s, and I am not one of those people. Besides, it’s not like I’m not doing anything. I’m writing, and writing is where my heart is, at least right now. And if I’m doing what feels right, how can that be wrong?”

  Alex rolled his eyes and didn’t respond. Owen changed the topic. “So what are you doing anyway? What courses are you registered for?”

  “Biology major with a biochem minor. It’s a good pre-med undergraduate route. And I start volunteering at that AIDS place in September too, so that when I apply to med school in a few years it will look like I’ve always been into volunteering. Most people are stupid and leave their volunteer experience until, like, a few months before they apply, and then it’s obvious to the interviewers that they were only volunteering to look all good and noble and doctor-like in order to get accepted.”

  Owen had no comment on his brother’s admittedly un-altruistic motivations. And he could tell that Alex was eager to move on and start a new life for himself and to forget all about his childhood, their childhood. Something about the disparity between their fall plans made Owen feel distant from his brother, but his reasons were convoluted and vague. He figured that Alex was going to be a doctor because nobody questions the past or character of a doctor, or if they do, any adversity they faced was admirable, not crippling or tainting in any way. Not like it would be for a struggling writer like Owen.

  Owen started packing that very night. If he was going to find himself , or reinvent himself , he’d have to do it in a more nurturing environment, like Abbie’s house. She’d already told him he was more than welcome, and at this point they couldn’t stand being away from each other. They were ripe with the passion of new love and fully content with the notion of never leaving her bed. It was everywhere on earth, the only place they needed to be. No lights, no TV, just soft music and intimate, probing conversation in between sex. The floor of her room was littered with condom wrappers and used tissues, but that didn’t look vulgar there in the flickering candlelight. When they had to be apart, they were talking on the phone until 3 a.m. about nothing and everything and feeling each other in their blood and guts and bones as they spoke. All the coincidences and me toos came up in those conversations, and the defining traits that bonded them. They made plans to turn her spare room into an office for him to write in. They had paint chips picked out, grey-browns that evoked poignant literary fiction.

  When he knew he was about to move out,Owen took the time, out of an allegiance to his father, to provoke his grandfather, to challenge his archaic views on the world, to prove some point, if only to himself. Night after night his grandfather would turn red, hit walls, and scream his tonsils dry at Owen as Owen deftly pointed out why gays should be able to marry, why the environmental movement wasn’t hogwash , why war was anything but noble and necessary, and how money spoke to everything but a man’s character.

  “You, Owen, you’re what a parent fears their child becoming. Nothing. Worse than nothing. Just like your damn father. And look at you there, smirking like that was a compliment. Smirk all you want, boy, because I seen that same smug look on your father’s face and I’ll promise you one thing: this world is going to bend you out of shape til it breaks you. I guarantee it. It’ll snap you like it snapped that father of yours. And then we’ll see who’s smiling, won’t we? People like you. People like your father. There’s just no place for you here in this world. This world is going to eat you alive, boy, and I pray I’m still here to say I told you so.”

  Baron wasn’t sad to see Owen go, just five weeks after he took him in. He verified Owen had a job at a record shop on Duckworth Street and somewhere else to sleep, and then let the door slam shut behind him.

  The brothers were ready to move on with their lives the day Owen left their grandparents’ house, but that meant moving apart from each other, something the two brothers had never thought of before Owen left that day. That first night at Abbie’s he tossed and turned in bed, ravaged by an ill-defined anxiety. Abbie turned on a lamp and sat up against her headboard.

  “You’re really going to miss Alex, aren’t you? Is that what’s wrong?�
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  “Not miss him, no, it’s not that. I don’t know. It’s just weird to think about him not being here…tomorrow, or ever. I don’t know. Does that make sense?”

  TURN AROUND, TURN EVERYTHING AROUND

  August 12th, 2008,

  At the cabin, just Owen and I.

  This is dangerous. This is exciting, liberating, terrifying. My sister is watching the girls again, and Alex is at some infectious diseases conference down in the States. In Atlanta.It is only the two of us up here for three full days.

  The obligate silence between us is unbearable now. I want to scream it and relieve myself: you feel this too, right? I almost hope not, almost.

  And the need for no space between us: he feels half a world away, sitting beside me on the couch. I want nothing between us. I want to hold him, just once, so close that there isn’t even any air between our clothes. I want us pressed together that tightly. I want his warmth to seep in through my pores. I want to feel his chest against me as he breathes.

  I can’t be still standing next to him now, whether we are in line buying snacks at a gas station, or at the kitchen countercutting vegetables for supper. I am alive with him and he is my blood, my skin and bone. Where gums meet teeth and the bend of my elbows. He is adrenaline coursing through me.

  And he is not my husband. He is not the man I married.He is the biggest complication in my life. He could destroy everything for me. He might not be worth it in the end. He is nothing, by title: brother-in-law. It even sounds so distant, and formal. He is a tidal wave and I am not running for cover.

  In fact I am diving in. Or wading at least. Dipping a toe in, a little deeper every day. And it is weird to think of Alex as the shark, not the warm sand coaxing me from the water, back to the safety of the beach.

  Today we swam. His body is somehow symbolic of his utter disregard for vanity. Alex pays fifty dollars a month to have his chest waxed, and more than that on a gym membership.Owen is moderately hairy and twenty pounds overweight, and wears it all like a shield, like one more reason a woman couldn’t, or shouldn’t love him. Although he laughs at himself, he talks like he’s not worth a woman’s time, and yet, in another life, he could have all of mine. He could have all of any woman’s, and he really doesn’t know it. It’s almost sweet, but the levity-laden self-deprecation pisses me off.

  I ran a finger along a C-shaped scar on his back and asked him how it got there. “Lost a fight,” he said. “There was broken glass on the ground, and three men stamping me into it.” Then he laughed a little. “Funny thing is, losing the fight sort of led to me ending up living with you and Alex.” And he told me the rest of the story. How he wouldn’t be here, on this wharf with me, if it wasn’t for that scar I’d just asked about and run my fingers over. How and why it got there lead to leading him here. To me. He didn’t say “to you,” but it was awkwardly apparent that’s what he meant.

  I could have changed behind the bushes today after our swim, or in the boat shed. Instead I asked him to turn around and close his eyes. I did this to be naked in front of him. Safely.No adultery. No throwing away an eight-year marriage, stability, a good man, daily visitation of my two children, half my belongings. I had a chance to be naked in front of him and I took it as a compromise. I asked him to turn and close his eyes while I got dressed. I took off my bathing suit, a new one bought just for this trip, and stood before him a good long thirty seconds before slipping on my clothes. I’d never felt more a woman in my life. Even the shadow I cast had a life to it.It made an object of me, something beautiful, desirable, useful, natural. It reduced the complications of this thing between Owen and me. We are only human after all, and love makes us weak. Weak, not wrong. Love makes us weak so we will succumb to it, give into it.

  My bra was filled with insects and spruce needles and dirt, so I left it. I left it there on the ground for him to see, maybe.My best bra. Why did I pack it for a trip to the cabin? I wore no bra so that later he’d notice how perky I am without that bra. So that later, if I felt like innocently bending over the salad bowl at supper, he’d see my breasts and I could feel his eyes on them. I could imagine what he’d do to them. I could imagine how he’d roll his tongue around my nipple, how it would grow hard in his warm mouth. I thought about all this, I planned all this as I stood naked in front of my husband’s fascinating brother. I didn’t even feel bad. Just noticed, appreciated, respected. Simple things no man in years has made me feel. Beautiful.

  I felt a little let down he could resist turning around.

  I am seducing him now, flirtatious rather, I am guilty of that, but I am not crossing any lines. No physical ones anyway. If we are to make love, give into this obvious mutual attraction,it will be at this cabin, maybe right on that wharf. We both feel liberated and alone here. We feel ourselves here. It’s another world, distinct and separate from the life we lead in the city. A world where the things you truly want, for all the right reasons, need no apologizing for. If there is one thing left stopping me from choosing Owen over Alex, it is having to explain myself to everyone. It’s not guilt that is stopping me.Guilt has no place where the intentions are all right.

  It wasn’t me who let this marriage die. I married to wade in the feelings Alex once gave me. The ones Owen now lathers me up in. There is a reason they call it falling in love. It always happens by accident, and it’s always too late once it happens.You’ve already fallen, you’re already stuck. Right or wrong.

  I want to be that ethereal, impossible girl he so desperately longs for in all of his stories. I want to be his non-fiction happily ever after.

  ONCE IS ALWAYS ENOUGH

  OWEN POURED TOO MUCH OLIVE oil in the pan and had the temperature too high. He flung two steaks onto the frying pan and a geyser of hissing steam and oil shot up off the stove and seared his forearm. It felt like a nail punctured his arm. He jumped back in pain, clutching the wound and cursing.

  Abbie didn’t even look up.

  He thought of how differently she would have reacted years ago, even months ago. How she would be in the bathroom right now, running cold water over a facecloth and calling out to him, worried that the burn would blister. He pictured how she’d scrunch up her face as she tended his wound – pursed lips and a long inhale would prove her sincere sympathy.

  Now he could set himself on fire and know that she wouldn’t look up from that goddamn textbook.

  She had just gotten off the phone with Alex. Owen heard her asking all about the complexities of muscle contraction. He could tell from his brother’s rapid-fire responses that Alex didn’t even have to pause to think about the answers. He explained the roles of actin and myosin and Z-lines and calcium pumps, and her pencil scratched and hurried across the page. His brother would get her through that physiology course, and something about that placed him and Abbie in two different worlds.

  Something about that made him feel like what he chose to do with his life was wrong.

  He tried again, with a playful kick in his voice, “Hey, Abbie, you’re pretty much a nurse now. C’mon, what do I do with a burn? Abbie?”He waved his arm in her face.

  She looked up at his slightly reddened arm.“I wouldn’t call that a burn.”

  He let it go. He ignored feeling like a fly on the wall she didn’t have the heart to swat. He went to get the cold facecloth himself, and when he took it away from his arm, he felt vindicated by the blister. He rushed out to the kitchen to prove her insensitive, or wrong, or something more vague and important than that.

  She was flipping the steaks. “You’ve got them charred, Owen!”

  “I burned my arm! What’s your problem?” He waved a forearm at her from across the room.

  “You! And don’t get snotty with me! I worked nine to five today, and I have a physiology midterm tomorrow. You were off all day and you can’t even make us supper? You forgot to go out and get garlic and mushrooms, then you char –”

  “I was busy today too, and I’m sorry I forgot.”

  “Busy what
, writing?” The way her eyes rolled and her head slumped substituted all the words she kept on the tip of her tongue: Writing doesn’t count as being busy. Wake the fuck up already.

  She slammed down the metal spatula. It jangled and flung steak juice across the counter and onto the sleeve of her white shirt. “I’m sorry, Owen …I… I’m sorry.”Trembling lips now, and glossy squinted eyes. “You’ve burned your arm and I’m yelling about the steaks, and I’m sorry for that …but we both know it’s not about the steaks. And. I’m sick of pretending … about us.”

  She was staring at the floor, not him. She folded her arms across her chest, and he thought of the J-shaped scar on her left breast, in the fold of her cleavage, there since the day Jim Croaker attacked her and killed his mother. Nine years into their relationship, that scar still took him back to that day. In the summer, if she wore a low-cut top, she’d smear some foundation on it to camouflage the pink. Her conscious effort to conceal the scar was what made Owen’s guilt and culpability no less potent as the years went by. He thought back to how their relationship had started: two people with nothing but each other, and no need for anything else. He shot forward to how this would end: two people needing something more than they could offer each other.

  He thought of the first time they made love, not even a month after his mother died. They were on Abbie’s couch, and the way she kissed him vibrated through his lips, rattled down through his ribcage, and massaged him from the inside out. He was shy and awkward and a little embarrassed by the hard lump now squat between their bodies, almost painfully pressed up against the denim of his jeans. She only giggled, scissored her hands, and slid her own pants down. She took her shirt off and asked him to do the same, but he never heard her – the sight of her body had deafened him. He was all eyes and hands now, and she was the only thing on earth. He was still taking it all in as she tugged at his pants: the delicate pink folds awaiting him, the way her breasts fell away from each other, the arch of her collarbones. Even the way her bones pressed against her skin and shaped her transfixed him; the out-jutting of her hipbones and her outstretched arms made a net of her, something to fall into. She pulled him into her herself, guiding him into the welcoming warmth and wetness that dropped and hollowed his jaw. The soft clench and tug of her against him now, her seemingly endless depth, relieved his every want and need. He exhaled his every sorrow and then filled himself with the sight, sound, and smell of her.