Away From Everywhere Read online

  “So.” She pointed at the black mass in the unlit fireplace. “What book was so bad you had to burn it?”

  “It wasn’t a book. Long story. It was a journal, Hannah’s journal.”

  “My Hannah, the girl you think I look like? You didn’t like what she had to say?”

  “Yeah. Something like that. And you don’t look too much like Hannah, it’s just that something about you reminds me of her.”

  “So?”

  “So what?”

  “What did she have to say?”

  He laughed. The way she was asking was friendly, not nosy, not annoying or too forward.

  “And if you don’t mind me asking, why the limp? An injury?”

  “Well…how interested would you be if I told you the limp and the burnt journal were related?”

  “Very. I’d say pop the popcorn and tell me the story! Or, better yet, we can substitute that bottle of wine over there for the popcorn.”

  He laughed as he lit the fireplace. “And what do I get out of it, besides the pleasure of entertaining you?”

  “Well, let’s face it. We’re the new cats in town, just visitors, and we don’t feel like telling our stories to everyone else. So why don’t we have a lay-it-on-the-line, brutally honest relationship with each other?We’re perfect strangers, and that makes us perfect shrinks for each other. Consider me a pair of curious ears and nothing more. I won’t know all the people you’re talking about, so I won’t be biased, and I won’t know the other sides of the stories you tell me. It’s kind of perfect, isn’t it? Consider me a sponge, lay it all on me, try and shed some of that weight on your shoulders. Or is it guilt?What do you think?Want to abuse this situation, make the most of our acquaintance for the next week?”

  And he did. He told her everything. And she did too. All she left out was why she needed only a week, or maybe less, to deal with all her problems, whereas Owen was there “indefinitely” to deal with his. They never interrupted each other’s stories, not once, and sympathies were exchanged in looks that said more than words ever could have anyway. Their giant shadows shrouded the walls, dancing in concert with the fire’s flames, and accentuated their ample hand gestures. By the time they were done, the sun had come up and the same Sigur Ros album had replayed four times. The fire burned out around 4 a.m., and they’d polished off two bottles of wine. She preferred white, but drank his reds without complaining too much about the tannic snap of them.

  UNDONE

  OWEN AWOKE THE NEXT MORNING feeling like a lion was biting into his wounded knee. It felt like there was glass under his skin, and he scratched at it, helpless to do anything with all the pain but clutch it between two hands. For five long minutes he thought maybe it was glass, that they’d left some in there by accident during the surgery. He’d seen things on the news about doctors leaving just about everything in their patients: towels, tools, gloves. A shard of glass seemed entirely plausible. Stumbling back into consciousness, he accepted that there were screws in his bones now.

  He thought of the shard of glass in Alex’s back, the one that Hannah had written about, and he thought about all that glass in the car that night, the sound of it smashing and changing everything, as it spilled into the car between them. He thought of how it massacred her beautiful, angelic face. The disjointed eyebrow. Then he thought about Emily on his couch. How did that happen? Did it really happen?Was I that drunk?

  He dressed and checked his reflection in a mirror to make himself somewhat presentable. The more he contended with his bedhead, the worse it got. The hair on the left side of his head was as flat as a wall; the hair on the other side of his head spiked out at a ninety degree angle. He ventured out to offer her breakfast, knowing he’d first warn her that the B&B would likely have more to offer in the way of a decent meal. A quick little joke might be a good start to the day, considering the topics of their conversations the night before. He tugged his pajama pants around so his bulge was less noticeable, or maybe the lack of a bulge, then decided to change into a pair of jeans and pull on a respectable shirt.

  But when he got out to the living room, the pillow he’d given her was resting on top of a perfectly folded blanket, and she was gone. She was pretty vulnerable and laying it all out there, maybe she left upset? Maybe she was an early riser, and, sober, felt weird on a stranger’s couch. Maybe she left to get some food or had somewhere to be. He’d swing by her B&B later to check in on her. His pang of hunger demanded his immediate attention. He still hadn’t made that trip to Clarenville for groceries, so all he had was that same loaf of bread, and as he reached for it, he feared it would be spotted green with dots of mould.

  Her story had taken as long to tell as his.

  “My shrink always told me that’s just the way it is. We will spend our adult lives as we spent our childhood. And I’d say, ‘So what then? I’ll spend my adult life getting fucked? Feeling useless, used, and not in control?’‘Well, yes,’he said,‘unless you get a lot more receptive to this therapy …’”

  When she poured a glass of wine, she poured her glass as full as Owen did, and drank it just as fast.

  “As if that’s my problem. My being skeptical of my uptight shrink’s tactics. A man who seems like he’s barely lived a life but thinks he can understand everyone else’s. He acts like I’m a puzzle put together all wrong, and if I’d just let him, he could undo me and put me back together all right. It’s bullshit! Putting me back together would require cutting out half my memories, and he can’t do that. So I skipped my session this week, and came out here to Port Blandford with a new plan for myself.”

  She never did share that plan with him. They had agreed not to interrupt each other with contrived condolences, or fruitless words of wisdom.

  “The thing is, for me to feel better, I would need to go back in time to undo things, not just talk about things. It kind of makes psychotherapy a sham, at least in my case. I’m sure there are some people out there who doctors mentally rewire with cognitive therapy, but I’m not one of them. Not statistically.”

  There was a long pause, a hesitation. She looked at him to gauge his level of interest before moving on.

  “I may seem fine to you, Owen, but you only think you know me, and I can guarantee you I will wake up tonight crying and screaming and kicking my legs, as if my father was invisible and in this living room with me. That invisibility makes him, and my past, inescapable. Helplessly inescapable. The constant presence of the past in my life makes life a constant struggle.”

  Their stories were different, but it was like he was talking to himself.

  “I survived it all though. I escaped my childhood, at least physically, and I saw having my own child as a way to start again. A clean slate, all mine to fill out. I figured being a mother granted me a new identity, a new life, a new role, and the responsibilities would drone out the depression, the memories, the night terrors. It worked, to some degree, but ironically, I felt even more robbed of my own childhood every time I cradled Andrew, lovingly in my arms, because I knew I would give him everything. I could and would do anything to keep him safe, and as a kid I never had that. I had a mother, bedridden from gross obesity, and a vicious mule of a father. Don’t scream, don’t wake your mother or you won’t get your supper. Not that my mother would’ve cared if she knew. She was too embittered by her condition. Her rage-filled eyes,God! She just stared at people, no words, and watchedTV twenty-four seven, but not really even paying attention. Just gazing at the TV like a complete idiot. A completely apathetic idiot. At some point, I couldn’t even bring myself to look at her anymore. She looked at people as if it were all their fault. Like I deserved that cloak of unhappiness she saw me in, because she was in it too.”

  By now they were uncorking their second bottle of wine, and the fire was dimming. The intensity of the stories they were sharing made it okay for them to sit on opposite ends of the same couch, toes touching, because a little physical contact helped them unload those weighty memories.

 
“The contrast between how I raised my son, and how I was raised, made me realize how I was denied the purpose of childhood: to feel like the world is infinite and assembled just for your happiness. For at least a few short years, children should be allowed to think that they can take what they want from the world. As a kid, I was only ever trying to escape my life, trying so hard to ignore the perfect lives of all the other kids that it wore me out. I entered adulthood too exhausted to handle it.”

  Entering adulthood too exhausted too handle it. She was exactly what he was hoping she was when he saw her sitting all alone on that barstool. And so uncannily similar to Hannah that he felt he knew her. Knew things he couldn’t possibly know, like she probably brushed her teeth too hard and wore slippers around her house. Expensive, functional ones.

  “When Andrew was born, I was reborn with him. When they passed him to me in the hospital, he looked at me with an instant, unconditional love and need for me. I knew that I was going to be the door through which he walked into the world, and I promised us both that I was going to lead him into the best world possible. No matter what. Because Andrew was going to be how I found meaning in my life. He gave me exactly what the world had taken away from me. Love is amazing like that, maternal love anyway. Love creates something that never existed before, a new world to live in. It makes the past a little less present.”

  The smile left her face. Her tone changed. She curled up into a tighter ball.

  “Seven months ago, when Andrew was three weeks into the fourth year of his life, I was dying a scarf for a co-worker. I work in retail, but earn most of my money on the side making textile art, scarves and bags, whatever. I was just putting on a surgeon’s mask and opening a bottle of dye when the phone rang. I thought of letting it ring, but I never, and now that single decision, that one irrelevant phone call, cost me my life. Tragedies are so much harder to accept when we can pinpoint the exact moment where it all could have been avoided. Normally, I’d have just let it ring, but I was expecting a call from the girl I was making the scarf for. It wasn’t her on the phone though, it was another co-worker, Jocelyn. I hate Jocelyn, and I always have. She’s a desperate, lonely annoyance, and she calls me to talk because she has no one else in her life. It’s always boy trouble. She wonders why she can’t keep a man, why they all only use her for one-night stands, and then tells me all about her wild sexual escapades, as if I cared about her disgusting, elaborate details. I had music on, Brian Borcherdt, so I didn’t hear the first few rings, and had to make a mad dash to the phone. In doing so, I’d left the baby gate opened, and Andrew … he … wandered into my studio, so silently, as I talked on the phone. I’d left the bottle of dye on the floor, within his reach. It was MX 808 Crimson Red. I can see that label in my head: the tacky red-and-yellow butterfly cartoon and the comic sans font. I see it every day. I cry tears that feel more like fire than water. The dye was in a small bottle, about the size of pill bottle, and full of dried, concentrated, toxic dye crystals. He ingested the whole bottle. When I found him, his saliva was running red, like blood, all over his shirt. I knew exactly what went wrong. Indirectly, I’d killed my son. They pumped his little stomach. They stuck tubes down his nose and throat as I watched, but it was too late, his body had absorbed it. I read afterwards that what I should’ve done before rushing him to the hospital was make him throw it all up. It could have saved his life. Apparently, most poisons get thrown up before they are absorbed into the body. Most, but not this one. Not the one I was using that day, the one and only time I left that gate to my toxic studio open. Now, every day, it’s just too much without him. It’s just hour after hour of guilt and loneliness. I hear noises at night, and know it isn’t just Andrew stirring about. And losing a child, so young and so unexpectedly, is losing everything but your heartbeat and instinct to breathe.”

  Owen nodded, wanting to say something, but stuck with their pact of silence. He reached an arm out, but drew it back. Where would he lay a hand on a perfect stranger?What would his touch really change?

  “Andrew lifted me up and out of my dreary life, and when he died I was slammed back into it, and…just cannot readjust. I don’t even want to. Every day I drive myself crazy wondering: What if I never made bags and scarves? What if I never left that gate opened? What if Jocelyn hadn’t called? What if I never worked where I work, and had never met Jocelyn, or the girl I was making the scarf for?What if I never used chemical dyes in my studio?Why did he swallow all those crystals? How much did it hurt, did it burn like fire in his belly?Where is he now? Is he thinking of me? Can I really live without him? Is there even a one percent chance that heaven is real and we’ll meet again, so that I can say I’m sorry and see his beautiful face one more time, his cute buck teeth and freckly face? If I tried to make him throw it all up before I rushed off to the hospital, would his body still have absorbed the dye and made his blood toxic? Jesus, Owen, he was so beautiful, so innocent. And I killed him! I …killed him.”

  It was the most guttural, heart-stomping crying he’d ever witnessed.

  “If only some of this left me every time I cry! If only these tears shed something, cleansed me. Instead, they just remind me, make a mess of me, and I’m afraid, and I don’t know why. I’m afraid I can’t go on without him, and afraid I’ll forget all the little things if I do. He wore glasses, Owen, and hated them. He was always pushing and pulling at them. How long until I forget all the little things?”

  Owen hopped into his new truck to head over to Clarenville. He could’ve gone another few days without some substantial groceries, but he really needed a bottle of Drano for the kitchen sink.

  As he drove past the B&B Emily had pointed to and claimed she was sleeping in, he saw a huge black sign placed in front of it. Its oversized yellow words declared CLOSEDUNTIL JUNE. All in capital letters, and it was January twenty-eighth. There was no way Emily was staying there, unless she knew the owners, or they had made an exception for her. Maybe they needed some extra cash, and Emily seemed the type who could be pretty convincing.

  Or maybe she lied. He never wondered why, because he knew people like her – and him – had their reasons for lying. Maybe she made up the story about not being allowed back in after midnight so that Owen would invite her back to his place, so that she wouldn’t have to be alone. Maybe she just valued her privacy and didn’t want him knowing where to find her. Invisibility was half the reason they’d both come to Port Blandford.

  WITH ALL THE JEALOUSY OF A FLIGHTLESS BIRD

  AS OWEN WAS PULLING BACK into Port Blandford, he saw Clyde running frantically towards his truck, bootlaces untied, flailing his arms. He pulled over, ready for some bad news.

  Catching his breath.“Just wanted to warn you, there’s some weather coming. Twenty to thirty centimeters of snow, and some pretty high winds, then she’s gonna turn into freezing rain.”He peered into Owen’s truck. “Looks like you got some groceries, you’re good there. Got yourself a flashlight? I got an extra one if you needs ’er.”

  Laughing. “Okay, thanks for the heads-up, Clyde. I got some food and candles. I’ll survive it all, I’m sure.”

  Clyde, nodding and smiling, possibly drunk. “It’s not like in the city here, kid. If the power goes, she’s liable to be gone for a while. And it could be a while before the roads get cleared off.”

  He peered into Owen’s grocery bags and screwed up his face.

  “So, I had a good time the other night. Maybe you’ll want another pool lesson next week?”

  “I’ll schedule it in.”

  “Okay, well, I won’t keep ya.” He patted the truck as if it were an old pet. “You look good in that truck, boss.”

  Owen beeped the horn as he pulled way. He liked Clyde, but he was fascinated by Emily, and wanted to see her again. To be around her, and feel that radiant comfort she exuded so effortlessly. She made him feel something he couldn’t feel without her. Part of him suspected that Emily wouldn’t come around to visit if Clyde was around. She was shy like that, and would o
nly want to be around Owen, someone who could understand her. So he was avoiding Clyde in hopes she’d come back that day, and he felt bad for avoiding the poor old man.

  By 11 p.m. there was a full-on Newfoundland blizzard outside. Blowing snow hung like white blankets outside all of his windows: the town disappeared. Not even the lights of a neighbour’s house were visible. In the darkness of his living room, the sounds of the storm were amplified rather than muffled. A vicious wind repeatedly threw itself at the house, trying to break in. Wet snow beat off the windows, maliciously, as if it were trying to smash the glass and get inside.

  He sat to write a note, a letter to Callie and Lucia. He would give it to his Aunt Lillian for safekeeping. His idea was that she could give it to them when they started university, or graduated high school, or turned eighteen, or at some life-defining moment that indicated a stumbling into adulthood. They would be ready to understand what had happened between him and their mother then. The story needed to be told, and their mother needed to be absolved, and he would work on that note until they couldn’t blame her for it. But he kept losing focus. There was a splash of red wine on the bottom left-hand corner of the page.

  As he lapped up the wine with a paper towel he took out of a trash can under his desk, he heard a hurried, urgent knock on the back door. Clyde?

  It was Emily. He felt his cheeks rise, felt the dumb smile there on his face.

  “So, the storm made me feel like curling up next to a fireplace with some tea and chatting, but the thing is, the place I’m staying in doesn’t have a fireplace, and I have no one to chat with. Do you mind if I invite myself in?”

  She smiled, eased her way into his porch, and twirled her scarf off her neck. It was a red scarf, blood red. She took off her black peacoat and stuffed the scarf down into it.