Away From Everywhere Read online

  A PLASTIC SMILE

  August 19th, 2008,

  At the cabin, restless in bed.

  I think Owen resents me for it. When he sees me take money from Alex, when Alex opens his wallet and counts out some sum of cash or hands me a card, I feel like a bratty teenager getting her allowance. Not a wife. Not a woman. But only since Owen has come here.

  I chose it. I quit my job and I’m comfortable with it, but it’s an awkward place to be really. I resent the ditz stereotype of being the stay-at-home doctor’s wife, the girl who can buy the fancy shoes because of her husband’s job and not her own. It means everyone assumes I don’t have a brain in my skull, a university degree, any ambition. That I am a sex-toy, a maid, and a mother only. A living slap across the face of the hard-working professional woman. I resent myself for having given into it. For being guilty of it. For throwing away all my own personal and professional goals to be the woman who irons his shirts and makes everything secondary to him. But I chose this life, that’s what people neglect to consider, and ninedays out of ten, I regret nothing. But lately, and today, searingly, I hate that I have to question if every loving wife is so quick to pick up her husband’s dry cleaning or if there is a silent understanding at play here, the perks of my easy life come at the cost of a split role: wife and servant.

  Because of denial, uncertainty, the vagueness of memories, and the complexities of love, I’ll never know how differently I’d feel about my husband and our marriage if he was flipping burgers at McDonald’s and I was the doctor. I’ll never know if he looks down on me for my lack of professional integrity, or whatever you want to call it. I do know Alex finds it an attractive trait when a woman is ambitious and well-off through her own accord. What does that say about me, his wife? It is one definite thing he can’t find attractive about me.And can he really not resent me for having to pay the full bill on our vacations, mortgage payments, and nights out?

  I’ll never know if other people, like Owen, think about this as much as I do. I’ll never know how much it alters my sense of self and other people’s perception of me. I’ve heard Alex talk about the girl who left Owen because he was “going nowhere,”and I automatically assume the girl made a mistake and regrets it. Daily. I automatically assume she’s a shallow bitch.And I automatically can’t help think I am no better than she is. No more right or wrong. Whatever she turned out to be in leaving Owen. Sure, Owen has the capacity to be a great partner, a great husband and father. But the truth is, it’s there, in the back of your head, no matter what: he’d be a father to a kid whose friends have nicer clothes and the latest toys and technology. He’d be a great husband whose love would balance out the lack of luxury, but you’d still dream about seeing France and Italy as you lie in bed in your modest house.

  I am accepting of things I shouldn’t be so tolerant of: Alex’s lackof attention, his jokes about how easy the housewife life is, and an insecurity he is messing around on me. It’s probably nothing, but sometimes, when he is away, he calls less than he does other times, so I imagine another woman – a more professional woman – sharing his hotel room on those trips when he doesn’t call, or calls to say he probably won’t bother calling later. It’s probably nothing, but I find it hard to believe doctors have to work so many overnight shifts and overtime in general, and I’ve seen some of those woman, some of those ditzy girls, he works with. It’s probably nothing, but someone calls here all the time, and hangs up when I answer. It’s probably nothing, but that scarf haunts me, and he’d be naïve enough to think all women would like the same scarf.“Which of these scarves is the nicest?” I pointed, giddy, like this meant I was getting that scarf for Christmas, only I didn’t.So who did?

  It’s in the back of my head, the humiliation, that if he is cheating on me I might have to turn a blind eye to it. I am financially dependent on him, he is a living paycheque. It’s a weird trait to attribute to the man you love. To need him for the wrong reasons. Is it an occupational hazard of the housewife? Am I required to try extra hard to please him, sexually, domestically, and otherwise, and still keep my chin up and respect myself?

  And I’m trying so hard to love him like I used to, but I’m finding that consciously trying only makes things worse. This lifestyle of mine. People are envious of it, but those people aren’t me. People are envious of it, but it’s all an illusion, I guarantee it. Like how watching a magic show isn’t so exciting when you know the rabbit was in the hat in the first place. The supposed magic of my marriage is all illusion. Why do some people, who know no better, think that being a doctor makes a man the ideal husband? A doctor can neglect his wife as much as anyone, more really, when you consider all thehours they work. And a house this size, after the novelty wears off, really just boils down to having one more bathroom that needs cleaning. I am married to a kind and attractive doctor, but the perfect life and the perfect love are two different things. Owen’s right, it’s no wonder we’re all so goddamn unhappy.

  I am aware this isn’t real anymore. It’s a bad movie getting undue praise. Lately that thin line between housewife and wife is blurred, scrubbed clean off the floor. I am not sure how much we mean to each other anymore, how necessary we are to each other. I feel like his roommate most days. Not the woman he’s thinking about all day at work. When this started, I felt him thinking about me when we were apart. I wasn’t being naïve.

  And spare me the perks. The more I fill my life with shoes and bullshit, the less I feel I have. I get bored lately, I pace the halls, I feel like a fat waste of life, convincing myself a lot of daytime television is educational or somehow lifestyle enhancing: the gardening tips, the cooking shows. Since I realized I am lying to myself, since Alex stopped squeezing my shoulders when we passed each other in the hall, all I feel is emptiness, and nothing could feel worse or more persistent. There is no logical origin for this feeling, but it’s there like the oceans. Vast, obvious. A fact of my existence. Owen, he fills that emptiness.He fills it full and asks nothing in return. He gives meaning to the simplest of things. When I am with him, I am not just smiling, I know why I am smiling.

  I can’t say for sure that I am in love with Owen yet, those are big words, but I do think these feelings are something even more important than love. I feel reborn; rebirth is surely a bigger deal than love.

  I do love Alex, so I hate to say this, but lately I feel that he is simply the blanket hog who owns my house. The father of mychildren, the brother of the man I really want. Everything Alex says…it’s like I try to read the book, but all I see is the end. Everything he has to say is so boring and predictable.Halfway through every sentence he speaks, I lose my attention.Is that because Owen is here? Is that Owen’s fault? If Owen never came would I feel this way?

  Three nights ago, I asked Owen what he wants in his next relationship. He shrugged, he didn’t even think: “I want to love the way she looks in her underwear, just sitting there, reading, or looking for the right skirt in the closet on some rainy Monday morning. I want the couch to feel different because she is sitting on it with me.”

  Alex wouldn’t get that. The utter lack of physical descriptors.

  I want Alex to notice me, to comment on what I’m wearing.I want Alex to change how I feel lately, not provoke these feelings. I want our home to feel like it used to, just because we were in it, together. Wanting all this, and not having it, makes me feel like a whiny, pathetic, unloved mess. A pouty teenager who fell for every girl’s dream in marrying Alex, only to wake up in adulthood feeling out of touch with the world, because every day is the same. Saturdays no different than Mondays. I have to check the TV to see what day it is sometimes. But Alex’s shirts are always pressed just so. I resent the devotion being reciprocated financially only, like I’m a fucking maid, and not emotionally, romantically, lovingly, as if I were his wife.

  I can speculate until my mind is a swirling mess. But I am certain of one thing: the way he used to look at me, the way we used to talk and laugh together in bed at night, it’s
gone, like last year’s snow. Like it never was. We still have our moments, our good days, but it’s not enough if I gave up my life for this man. For the way he used to crave me in the shower, palms sliding across steam-lubricated walls, and for the way he usedto rub my back until I fell asleep. For the way he used to know just what to buy me for my birthday, instead of giving me his Mastercard, a pat on the back, and a loose limit on what to spend. I should’ve cut that fucking card in half, but how is it his fault if that made me feel like a whore?

  ALONE BESIDE YOU

  ALEX HAD A FIVE-DAY break during his first year of surgical residency in Nova Scotia, and flew home to visit Owen and help him get settled into his new apartment. He never made a comment about Owen’s new place – the cupboard doors askew and the worn-away carpet – other than “You should really make sure the landlord adresses that leak by the window there,” and nodded to it to be clear.“It could lead to structural damage for him, and potential health issues for you. Mould. You know? It’s in both of your interests. Stress that, okay?”

  “Ah, whatever. I won’t be here long enough to worry about it. I just needed out of Abbie’s for now, you know?”

  “You two seemed so good at the wedding last summer.”He looked down at his ring. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know. Sometimes nothing happens. People change. Things change …”

  Owen promised himself the place would be a temporary stopover as he collected himself, again. Other than his clothes and computer, he hesitated to unpack his boxes.

  His one ambition was writing, but he couldn’t concentrate in that house. He needed to fall into the story, forget about his surroundings. It took alcohol and nothing but the sound of his own music, but whoever lived in the apartment above his had bad dance music constantly blaring and thumping down through his ceiling. All too lively to write dark fiction to. Not that the distraction mattered. Whenever he sat at his computer to write now, every time,Abbie’s pragmatic reasoning echoed in his mind.

  “Statistically, Owen, getting published and winning the lottery are comparable. Read your last rejection letter. They explained that they get about a thousand submissions a year but only publish fifteen of those, and of those fifteen, four or five are typically books by current authors of theirs. So do the math: a publisher publishes less than one percent of the books submitted to them! And, I mean, even if you do get published, only one in a thousand published writers can make a living at it. And even for the greatest published writers, I dunno, it all depends too much on chance, and marketing. Literary integrity will get you published, sure, but once your story is a book, well, a book is a product, just like Pepsi and tennis shoes, dependent totally upon consumer behaviours and buzz. On whether or not bookstores decide to put your book on those special tables and discount them. It’s not practical,Owen, your little dream.”

  Living in that apartment changed the way he saw himself: his goals and plans for the future. It deflated quixotic into pathetic, idealistic into a living joke. He was a cliché, why everybody didn’t follow their heart . Comfortable, in Abbie’s brightly lit, well-decorated home, with their children named and their vacations all planned, his life was a great fantasy. Looking forward now, all alone in his dingy apartment, he saw a harsh reality, a wakeup call.

  Some days he’d consider finishing the geology degree. He’d look up the coming semester’s course offerings, see what was available, but years had past and he felt like he had forgotten it all: the differences between the chain and ring silicates, how to plot compositional changes in sedimentary rocks caused by weathering. He couldn’t even name all the minerals he kept in those plastic tubs in his closet anymore. He remembered that trip he and Abbie took to Gros Morne, how he filled his pockets with stones as they hiked, naming them as he went, showing them to Abbie as if they were nuggets of gold. They got to the top of the Tablelands and he explained the unique geological significance of the place, fervently, and with much hand gesturing. The way she looked and laughed at him, he could tell she respected and adored his passion. To her it was just a strange, breathtaking, yellow mound: Like a chunk of Arizona plopped down in Newfoundland somehow. That was only a few years ago, but the specifics of his little lecture that day were hazy now. It had something to do with two continents colliding, but that was all he could remember about it.

  He tried to reassure himself. He plucked an old textbook from a box, flipped it open to an end-of-chapter question and read it: List the reasons why a shale might have a higher content of Na 2 O than of K 2 O.

  He tried the next question: Consult figure 11-1. What would be the composition of the first melt if peridotite was partially melted to produce a water-saturated magma of 20 kb?

  He couldn’t even speak the language anymore. Years away from it all had clipped his tongue of it. Years of writing, striving for some recognition, made him turn his back on it all. And all along Abbie had been right: he could’ve done both at once if he wasn’t so obsessive over his writing. And only in hindsight was it obvious how much he had neglected her for his writing as well. All that time spent behind the closed door of his office, hearing her pacing around, trying to amuse herself after a long day at work.

  Whenever his apartment got too intolerable – ignoring the earwigs, the plops from the leaky kitchen sink, the music falling down on him from above – he’d go to sit with his lifeless father at the Waterford Hospital and be strangely calmed by the cool, silent air of the cement-walled room. The dimness of it muted his emotions. He could focus exclusively on the white sheets of the story he was revising. It was a great getaway except for the limited visiting hours.

  One day, frustrated, fed up, wanting a father back, he threw a pencil at him. A sharpened pencil, like a dart. He threw it at him, and it never occurred to him until that moment that he was entitled to feel resentment towards his father. It wasn’t warranted or right, but it was an option, and on that day it helped. It helped to hate his father for abandoning him. It helped to believe that if he had never lost his mind, his mother would not have starting working at that shelter. She never would have died. He never would have met Abbie. If his parents were still around he’d have their house to stay in for now . Until he got back on his feet, he’d have his old bedroom back. The room he discovered music in and grew up in and where he carved Nirvana and Owen loves Maggie into the closet wall.

  A nurse poked her head in the doorway, the pencil still rolling across the floor. “Visiting hours are over in a minute, as you know.”

  He nodded to her. It was the cold and bitter nurse he despised. She had a mannish face no man could love – patches of wiry hair on her blotchy chin and cheeks that would grow a beard if left alone, a large droopy mole on her forehead that hung down like a cocooning insect, and a witch’s crooked nose. Owen figured she held the world in contempt for the face she was born with. He thought maybe he held her in contempt for his father’s condition, even a little. It was inexplicable how much he hated her and that dusty pink cardigan she always wore that was three inches too short in the arms to make it to her wrists. Something about how haphazardly it fit her, how it flared out in the back and was missing buttons, said she didn’t care about herself, or anything, including some guy visiting his father, needing something familiar and physical. She was always too pleased to announce that visiting hours were over, five minutes before they technically were.

  He pulled his chair in front of his father’s. He squeezed one of his father’s fingernails as hard as he could, trying to startle him back into existence – the purple of the flesh beneath his nail cast out and replaced by a bone white. He let it go; the purple leaked back in. He looked his father in the eye and begged, spilling his words as quickly as he could, knowing that bitch of a nurse would be right back.

  “Dad, if there is some part of you left in there, I need you back. Now. More than ever. More than when I was a kid and they took you away. More than that. More than I needed you to teach me how to walk and talk and ride a bike, or make a fi
st or add and subtract, or shoot a basketball or hold a knife. I don’t know what I am anymore, Dad. If I am right or wrong. You’d understand. I can’t find any meaning in anything. I can’t force myself to try and–”

  The nurse opened the door and sighed. “You need to leave now, sir.”

  He hoped she hadn’t heard him. Saying the words out loud like that, hearing them, the core of his despair, he felt pathetic. Adolescent. The nurse pulled on a gaudy jacket and looked at her watch, and stood in the door until Owen left. She smelled like greasy takeout as he brushed past her. Like bacon fat.

  He left his father that day and went to his mother’s grave. Anywhere but back to his appartment. It was mid-February, and walking along that snow-covered sidewalk, he felt just as cold. He was practically skiing along the icy, unsalted pavement. He refused to go back to his apartment because he couldn’t stand acknowledging that he didn’t feel at home in his own home. And he knew the first thing he’d do when he got back that day was open that bottle of Johnny Walker Red, and he refused to drink alone while the sun was still spilling through his windows.

  It wasn’t Abbie he was missing at home, not anymore anyway. Not her specifically: her banana pancakes, or the way she tapped pens off her fingernails as she processed thoughts, or the smell of their bathroom after she showered. There wasn’t a word for what it was about her he missed, no matter how long he thought on it. It was needing that female presence in his life. Someone confident and motherly, with his best interests in mind. Without any plans now, any goals, he could feel the future dragging him towards something dark and vague.