Away From Everywhere Page 16

  He took a steak knife out of the knife block and went at the cake. He diced it up into cubes and used the knife like a skewer, but on the third cube his drunken grip sank the knife deep into the roof of his mouth. So deep that the knife was stuck there after he flinched and let go of the handle. His eyes burst open wide enough to tear the skin surrounding them. The salty taste of warm blood rained down on his tongue and added to the shock and pain. In front of the hazy bathroom mirror, he could barely watch as he plucked the knife from the roof of his mouth. The knife did more damage coming out than it had going in. The cut was deep enough to turn his stomach, deep enough for stitches. The flesh splayed and hanging open. Blood pooling and dripping.

  He stumbled five blocks up to St. Clare’s hospital, and the lady behind the glass treated him like a drunk who deserved whatever injury he had. Like she was sick of his type always taking up half the waiting room. She didn’t even look up when she asked for his hospital card or what his problem was.

  He waited on a stiff bed behind a green curtain for what felt like an hour, bored, contemplating just leaving, hating that he was so obviously drunk. But then he heard something distinct, familiar. It took him a second to place it. She was drawing back the curtains as it came to him. It was the way she was clicking a pen against her nails, like she always did, absentmindedly, when she was studying. It was Abbie. He hadn’t seen her since they broke up and he moved out, yet he sensed her there, almost recognized her silent-but-deliberate footsteps, the dainty throat-clearing cough. He had forgotten that she worked there, and then he heard that clacking of pen against nail: two on the index, two on the middle, two on the ring, and two on the pinky. About a second-long pause between each two taps.

  What surprised him more than seeing her was how thrilled she was to see him. She tossed her clipboard onto the bed to free her arms and splayed them wide for a hug, her raised eyebrows an inch above her eyes. She seemed electrified and flirtatious; she was alive like she was on the day he first saw her, sitting by the window in his mother’s office. She was alive in a way that made him feel alive. There was energy there, he could feel it, like heat pouring out of a heater.

  In a seductive voice, with a Marilyn Monroe curtsy to drive it all home, “So? How do you like me in the nurse outfit, Owen?” She ran her hands down her body, showing it off for the trophy it was. The body he loved for so long, the body he’d mapped, and knew right where to lay his arms when they slept so that they’d both be comfortable. The body with a soft brown mole on the left ribcage. Her body was more toned now, a gym membership maybe. He heard her white sneaker squeak off the linoleum floor and thought about how he’d always tease her about her tiny toes, every time he saw them, the biggest one not even an inch long. So, do you ever just tip over when you lean forward too quickly?

  She leaned over him in a way that might have meant she still loved him. A warmth falling down onto him. Some natural, distinct, and calming smell taking him back to a better time. The power of scent, so undervalued until a moment like this when you are alive with it.

  “Oooh. You’ll need stitches there for sure, but it’s nothing serious. The only problem will be the awkwardness of stitching the roof of a mouth. They’ll probably have to use a few staples on this sucker,O.”A smile like Don’t worry, won’t hurt too much.

  Being in her presence, even for those five short minutes, made it clear why he’d fallen apart since they’d broken up years ago. It was the way her warmth dripped down on him as she hovered there above him. That buzz in the room that muted out everything but the sound of her voice, the mothering, the feeling connected to something more through her . Solely and entirely through her. He had to consciously keep his hands by his sides. It wasn’t love; it was necessity, needing one more chance with her. Or maybe not even her, just what he had with her. Something definite and meaningful in a world with no real meaning.

  Abbie was fiddling with paperwork and his bed sheets, seemingly lingering in his presence. The words were there, on the tip of his tongue, heavy as lead. He spat them out abruptly. “So …how did things work out with that Adam Fleisher guy, Abbie?”

  He wanted to hear a long, horrible story. Instead she didn’t even have to speak. She took his hand and laid it on her pregnant belly.“I’m due in seven months! I’m thinking it’s a boy, but Adam puts his ear to my belly and pretends he can hear a girl’s voice in there.”She laughed then, like How cute is that?

  She let his hand drop and it fell like a stone. “I hope it is a boy. We already have a girl, Kaylen. I’ve always wanted a boy and a girl.”She looked down on him like she was only now remembering why they’d broken up. “Well, as you know, I guess.”

  She was glowing. Her life was working out, just like she’d planned it, just like she’d wanted it to on all those nights she fought with Owen. With his hand on her belly, everything inside him had deflated. He felt pinned to the bed. He felt his lungs drag in each breath of solid, heavy air, and he knew that she was right to have left him. She reached into the pocket of her nurse’s outfit and plucked out the ring.

  “We got married two months ago. We honeymooned in Prague. You really would love it there!”

  He couldn’t swallow it; he couldn’t stop his face from contorting like that in front of her. He felt his jaw twist to the left and only then realized he’d been grinding his teeth. Maybe to pin his tongue down, or to divert his pain to something more physical and manageable.

  Her words trailed off as she saw that he still loved her, years later, or that he at least suddenly needed her in a way she couldn’t offer up. It was there in the twitchiness on his face. She eased off on exuding her happiness, for his sake, and he felt appalling for it: snuffing out a blushing bride’s happily-ever-after story with that unmanageable, tortured look on his face. Truthfully, he hadn’t loved her all this time, but the very second he felt her warmth, her arms around him, he felt like all those years between then and now, and all the reasons they didn’t work the first time, were gone. Irrelevant.

  Abbie took a step back, not rudely, just to put a little more space between them.

  Despite the news of her pregnancy – the finality, the she’s not yours of it – every minute they spent together that night helped to alleviate all of Owen’s repressed baggage that he seldom acknowledged he was carrying. The guilt, bitterness, shame, and piles of excuses that got in the way, in between him and who he could be. It was vague but it was there, in the glistening of her lips, the softspoken words, the warmth of her presence, and the meaning of their connection: the why of it all. The why of what had happened to him and the why of why we’re all here, any of us: to be connected to others in some meaningful way. And then the rest of it doesn’t matter. Is secondary. All of it. The past that shattered him and the world he rightfully or wrongfully despised, for being so full of men with Alex’s values and none of his own.

  “Want to hear the funniest thing, Owen? A while back now, I found myself at Claire’s…at your mother’s grave. It was the day of, you know.” An almost shy or nervous look spread across her face. “And then, that very night, I read a review of your book in the paper! I was so proud! What they said was exactly what would matter to you. I wanted to call, had the phone in my hand, but I didn’t have your number.”

  He’d been too busy getting drunk to follow up on Four Letter Words and make a name for himself, but she didn’t need to know that. And it seemed malicious, in that moment, to remind her that his dedication to writing infuriated her. Or had it?Was it the time he spent behind a closed door, or was it where he ranked writing on his priority list? The notch or two above her, above a “future”he only now saw meant their future.

  He was back at home by 2:30 a.m., stitched up and cast back out of Abbie’s life. When he walked into his suddenly smaller apartment it felt filled with thick, impenetrable silence, like he had to push his way through it. So much silence that there was almost a noise to it. An energy.

  He went straight for the cheap rum. He needed somet
hing to help wash down that run-in with Abbie. That baby in her belly that could’ve been his. All along she was only considering what was best for him too, and all along she was right. His being jobless and single in his thirties, living off a credit card, meant that his chance for a happy little family of his own was impossible. That window of opportunity grew smaller and smaller through every year of his twenties, and now, at thirty-five, it felt smashed.

  Truth was his whole life was shattered, useless, and he could trace it all back to watching his mother die on the day he put his hands on Jim Croaker and overestimated what he was capable of. Jim being a man not far off the man Owen had let himself become, because of those splinters of guilt that festered in the wounds he never dealt with. Never plucked out and let heal, because he was too busy hating the world for not being some Thoreauesque, idealistic utopia.

  Now he wanted that life he’d thrown away: a wife like Abbie, two kids, a boy and a girl, and a dog to chase them around the backyard. To be a father, he only now realized, would give him that sense of purpose he’d been looking for his whole life. Alone in that silence in his apartment, he couldn’t handle that realization blaring as loudly as it was. Against the starkly contrasting silence, it was like a casket closing over him. A quiet darkness.

  With no destination in mind, he wrestled a jacket on. It came to him as he felt a few bills there in his pocket: get a drink downtown. Get out of the house. Blair Harvey andMark Bragg were playing at The Ship. And then other intentions came to mind. At first a woman, some physical sensation for a mental distraction, and that release, that twenty seconds when you’re not on this earth. It wouldn’t be hard to find, especially not if he ventured onto George Street: every second girl pretty and willing. Normally he’d combThe Ship or CBTGs for that kind of company when he was desperate for it. Even in his lowest moments there was some uplifting salvation to be found in the right kind of beautiful woman. The way they hit him like a soft train. Finding something unique in each one, and letting her know about it. Letting her know how well she worked those boots or that scarf, or that charming laugh. To take one of them off-guard and make her laugh and acknowledge she is something worth noticing. When and if it led to sex, every one-night stand he proved a point to himself: we’re all literally fucking romance to death, wondering where it’s gone. Tonight he despised himself for that kind of decade-long pessimism about the world: hating himself, but thinking his values above everyone else’s.

  So that night he came up with different plan. He pulled the door shut behind him and held the knob in his hand for a second, hesitating on his resolve. It would have to be the right person he was looking for that night, in order to justify his actions.

  It had rained that day. The water in the slush-rimmed puddles looked blue, or purple. The glare of streetlights ran through them all like yellow streams. He wanted that clichéd life now. He wanted a cubicle and bad ties. He wanted to bring Tim Hortons to co-workers, and to get stuck in traffic twice a day. He wanted a son and a daughter full of defining idiosyncrasies, and a dog that ruined all his furniture, and a wife who knew he was having a bad day just by looking at him. And he missed his mother: her from-the-gut and contagious laugh, the way she hummed to herself as she baked or waited for the kettle to boil, the way she skimmed the newspaper every day even though he never once saw her stop and read a single article. Before this night he never missed her, just mourned her. There’s a difference, and he was feeling it for the first time. He let the guilt go and could finally cry for her the way he did for his father at first. The unfairness of it all. The potency and irrevocability. He held two palms to his eyes like he was keeping water from spilling through a hole in a dam. The same way he did in junior high, hiding it from his mother, who didn’t need to see just how bad he wanted a father back. His father. The man who watched snow fall, and propped his chin up with pen tips as he wrote. The man who made his mother who she was.

  All hope fell out of him in that one long, dark minute. That domestic life that he wanted now, the wife and kids, the dog and the bad ties, his one last shot at a meaningful life; it all seemed impossible, more out of reach than the sun. Less likely than a career in writing. And Abbie was right, there was nothing noble about what he’d done with his life. There was nothing dignified about a man drunk, with tears in his eyes and this kind of plan in mind, mourning the life he never had to mourn. And there was no point dwelling on a past at the cost of a future, but he’d been doing it for years now. It felt too long to undo. A knot untangleable. He needed someone to tear him apart.

  He rounded Water Street, heading to George Street, and saw exactly what he was looking for at a chip truck on Adelaide Street. The guy’s hair was too perfect, like a helmet laid flat on his head, and his black shirt looked painted on. A gold chain looped around his neck, his sleeves short enough to show notable biceps. His goatee obviously groomed daily. There was ketchup in it, and he shoved fries into his mouth ten at a time as he insulted the Asian kid serving the fries, too obviously as a way to get the attention of the girl behind him. He muttered something degrading in a fake Chinese accent, laughed at himself, and looked at her. The guy couldn’t tell she would smile only when he looked at her. She jerked away from his chip-greased hand both times he put in on her shoulder. Shuddered a little. He’d butted back in line. “Are you deaf? You speaky English? Me want more ketchup!” He turned again with that dumb laugh, and it was perfect.

  Owen stepped right up in his face before the kid could answer. “The bottle is right there, asshole. You blind? Dumb? Here!” This would work only if Owen was extreme about it. So he picked up the bottle and emptied half of it unto the guy’s fries, globs of red spilling over onto his hands. And then he squirt a line up the guy’s shirt sleeve and into his face. He threw the plastic ketchup bottle at him when he was done. A physical exclamation mark. “All good?”

  It was like a car slamming into his face, and his vision blurred. The second blow knocked him to the ground. Two of the guy’s friends helped pick Owen back up, and they all dragged him into an alley. He wasn’t defending himself, just provoking them. One blow and he was back on the filthy ground: pizza boxes, mustard packets, puddles of puke, a used condom. The street sludge smelled like wet newspaper. They all kicked him rapid-fire and the pain was unbearable. It was perfect. It winded him, his heart was an overworked motor. One kick just under his eye, and what felt like a bubble formed above his jawbone. Skin literally tore, and bruised. He was flat on his back now and they were stamping him. Padded hammers laying cold wet spots of street grime. When they stood to walk away he propped himself up and threw a half-empty bottle of beer at them. The guy in the green shirt turned, grabbed him by his jacket, slung him into the wall, his head cracking off it, his tongue nipped deep by his teeth. The blood warm, briny.

  He heard a girl’s voice screaming at them all, in between telling someone else on her phone where she was calling from and what was happening, blow by blow. “They’re going to kill him! And I think he wants them to! He’s …he’s just crazy!”

  One guy was behind Owen now, with Owen’s arms held back. His whole body jutted forward from the pressure at his shoulders, the blades arching off his back like wings. He saw flashing blue and white lights. The biggest of the three guys stepped back, lunged three steps forward, and his fist was a ball of steel. Owen fell to the ground, not breathing, not able to catch himself. Heard a car door slam, heard sirens, tasted salty slush, saw feet running down the other side of the alley. Blinking through it all, not sure if he was even breathing still, he saw policemen’s pants, then knees, and then a face. The other cop asking the girl what happened. Her telling the cop that Owen wanted to die. “He wouldn’t let them leave him alone! Gawd! It was … too sick. He’s sick. He wanted to die. He begged and taunted them, and spit at them, and cried and laughed and yelled …it was ... sick.”

  She must have thought he was asleep, not just ashamed and hiding behind shut eyes. When she wasn’t looking, he’d open the lids enough
to watch her. He saw her with a phone book, sitting in a chair, half the book on each thigh, a poor speller taking the extra minute to find the name. And then he watched her hesitating. Dialing three numbers then hanging up. All ten, then hanging up. Pacing now, no longer sitting down.

  Her voice was quivering. “Alex? It’s Abbie …Darenberg. Fleisher actually. Owen’s ex, your mother’s old assis–”

  She paced around the floor, running a hand through her hair, like she didn’t know where to start. Like she wished she had rehearsed a speech before calling him. Like she had no idea what Alex knew of Owen’s life these last few years.

  “Have you been talking to Owen lately?”

  Silence. He could just barely recognize his brother’s voice, tinny in the receiver, but not the words.

  Minutes later.“We don’t, that’s the thing. He’s in hospital… St. Clare’s luckily, and in my care. He’s in bad shape, but he’s okay overall. I–”

  Silence, just the sounds of her pacing the floor and listening to Alex and intermittently explaining, she herself confused.

  “The police are saying he started it, and there was a witness saying he wouldn’t even defend himself, or back down, so he… I dunno…did this to himself? He seems worse than ever, that’s why I asked if you’ve been talking to him lately. He seems so defeated here, Alex. It’s …sad.”

  Silence. A sigh, a shaking head.

  “It’s Saturday, Alex. Monday isn’t soon enough. He can’t be alone right now. This has to be his rock bottom and he has to get help and change now . Or it’s going to be too late. It’s that simple and that urgent.”