Away From Everywhere Read online

  In high school the rumours were true: Owen and Alex had a “crazy father.”

  Owen resented his brother’s shame about their father. He saw through how Alex dove into the books and was crowned valedictorian. How Alex stayed hip and dressed head to toe in logo-visible clothes. It was all to compensate, to prove himself, to seem distinguished, flawless, and above all: normal.

  By grade twelve, the jokes about how two brothers could be so different got old fast. They must have different fathers. One of them must be the postman’s son. One must have been dropped on his head. Each a masked query as to why Owen wasn’t more like Alex. Especially since they were twins. Alex was always quick to point out that they were fraternal twins, not identical, so it was obvious why they weren’t more alike, why would they be? According to his biology textbook, page 501, fraternal twins were no more genetically alike than a normal set of brothers. But the jokes came anyway, and Owen watched as his infuriated brother recited genetic fact to family and friends of the family. The insinuation that he and Owen should be alike just because they were twins trivialized all the conscious effort he put into distinguishing himself from the likes of his brother.

  When Alex came home one afternoon, gloating about how he’d been declared valedictorian for their graduating class, Owen saw Alex’s elation deflate when their mother advised Alex, in a jovial and good-natured manner, that he better get crackin’ on that speech.

  Right away he turned to his brother. “This speech is how this school – the teachers and the students – will remember me!”

  By grade twelve, it was obvious that Owen had inherited their father’s way with words. But writing was the only thing Alex thought his brother could do better than him, so he wasn’t jealous of it.

  “C’mon, man, you gotta write it for me. It’s gotta be perfect, man. This is a big deal.”

  Laughing, Owen cut him off. “It’s high school, Alex. It’s probably the most irrelevant thing you’ll ever do in your life. Besides, a rock could graduate high school with honours.”

  “Owen! Stop that right now. You should be proud of your brother and–”

  “Oh shut up, Owen! We’ll see who’s where in ten years, okay? I’d say I’ll be a lawyer, and you’ll be a goddamn bum or criminal who’ll need my help, shitface. I bet you’ll at least need my money–”

  “Boys! Stop this right now!”

  “Calm down. I’ll write the goddamn speech. I’ll write it if you give me your allowance Friday.”

  “Owen, for God’s sakes, watch your language. At least in front of your mother. Surely that’s not too much to ask.”

  He smiled and nodded, Sorry. “It’s just that …it’s sad. He thinks finding some unknown angle in a triangle faster than the shit-for-brains next to him matters.”

  “Owen! ”

  Owen wrote Alex’s valedictory speech, and it inspired even the adults well past their “carving out a life”stage. He got a kick out of writing it so melodramatically. He thought it was corny, and that anyone even remotely cerebral would see the dark satire permeating the speech. So he was surprised at how well it was received – and the standing ovation. He also got a kick out of lacing the speech with words spelled differently than they’re pronounced, knowing his brother would be too proud to ask him how to pronounce them. During the speech, Alex said malevolent wrong. He said mal-vo-lant, and someone snickered. Owen did it to prove to himself that contemporary prestige is a sham, an illusion, and that the real geniuses of the world are the ones who don’t play the game of life: the Wordsworthian writers living in small cabins near nature, or the fiery-eyed, passion-infused city dwellers who were capable of more, but satisfied with less. Because, at that age, he felt that money and material things were just things that could be thrown into a fire and burned. They were that meaningless. So surrounding yourself with those things was like insulating yourself against the world.

  As Alex walked across the stage, shaking hands and bowing to the applause, their mother wiped a tear from her eye with her bumpy knuckle and leaned into Owen, her dress spilling over the side of the chair. “I know all this means nothing to you, but you should know how proud your father would be of you two. His little writer and his little valedictorian.” A whimper, a smile on her face, twitching lips. He knew if his eyes met hers she would tear up, so maybe he would have too. “You’ve got a way with words, honey. You’re just like him …your father.”

  He changed the topic to keep her from crying. All the while thinking of that silent understanding that had always existed between him and his father. Embracing it. Alex, and even their mother, was almost jealous of that inherent understanding. One night, Christmastime, after far too many drinks, and after the crowd of visitors had left,Owen’s father called him into the kitchen and made him promise that on his fiftieth birthday the two of them would take an Alaskan cruise together. His mother too obviously listened in on the conversation as she rinsed mugs and cutlery in the kitchen sink, scrubbing the forks extra long just to linger, because her husband never talked of vacationing. Not with her anyway.

  His father was sitting in a chair, but swaying like a man fresh off a merry-go-round. His teeth, and centres of each lip, were a reddish black from all the wine. “We’ll get away from everywhere,”he promised him.“We’ll hear the sound of silence. We’ll feel life .”

  Owen nodded, dismissing his drunken father.

  “I know you’re only in grade eight, but you understand me, don’t you, about feeling life? ”

  WELCOMING WANDERING EYES

  July 18th, 2008,

  At the cabin, restless in bed.

  I just woke from the same dream again. My insides are made of garbage and my bones are rusted metal. It hurts to move.My fingernails are cracked and stinging. I dream my heart is burning. I can see my heart burning inside my chest, but I can’t bend my arms to put out the flames. I’ve lost everything and I can’t find it. I am in the middle of nowhere and can’t find my way back to something familiar. And as soon as I realize I don’t even know what I’m looking for, I wake up.

  Today in the car I saw Owen pretending to read an old magazine while we drove. I wasn’t convinced. I know he can’t read while the TV or stereo is on, he says it’s too distracting, so how could he read while Alex’s audio CD was playing so loudly? And he was staring at the same page for fifteen minutes, and I know him well enough to know that nothing in that lame magazine could get his attention for any longer than a minute.

  I wanted to think that Owen was only pretending to be reading that magazine. That what he was really doing was staring atmy cleavage when I wasn’t looking. It really seemed that way.I didn’t notice how low my tank top was lying until I saw his eyes darting on and off my breasts in the rearview mirror, in bursts he thought were too quick for me to feel them there. I slugged the shoulder of that tank top down farther, to loosen the cling of it against me. It’s not my fault if the wind blew it open and Owen was watching. It’s not my fault that I felt good being noticed. I tell myself the diet is for me, and the exercise, and all the fashion magazines. And maybe I do do it all for myself, but maybe it’s because I’ve forgotten what it feels like to be noticed. To feel eyes on you like that – and know what they want – is empowering, enlivening. Reassuring.

  Alex is never home anymore, and when he is he has an endless list of excuses: too tired, too hot, too cold, too busy. Yet there is more porn on his laptop than on any college kid’s computer. He doesn’t even hide it. Does he think I don’t notice, or that I don’t care? Am I not beautiful anymore, or is he just too used to me? I guess it’s like eating the same sandwich every day for lunch. I guess he’s sick of me that same way. Him still being attracted to me after years of marriage would be like him eating the same sandwich every day for years and pretending to still like that ham-on-rye. I don’t know if I can really even blame him. Blah.

  But I refuse to be mustard on the tongue. To lack flavour.

  So I make no apologies for enjoying the desire in Ow
en’s eyes, because it was the way he was looking at me: not because they were breasts and he is male, but because they were my breasts. It made me feel beautiful and desirable, like someone worth secretly admiring. It made me feel like I’ve been dead for years now. His eyes wrapped themselves around me, whispered everything I needed to hear, and brought me back to life. All that in ten seconds.

  I felt his eyes on me like hands. Did he feel me feeling them there?

  Feeling his eyes on me felt as good as sex. Better even. Because nothing feels better than wanting. To want something, nine times out of ten, feels better than having it. There is more passion in a shared look between two potential lovers than there is in sex, in my experience. In my experience, we have the most lust, passion, and desire for someone before we start sleeping with them. In my experience, men fuck that passion into oblivion, and wind up attracted to someone else. Then they deny this: to themselves at first, and then to their loved ones.

  At least we can blame biology, the instincts seared into us by a billion years of evolution. It’s easier that way. “It’s only natural for the mind to wander.” And what is natural is beyond us, like God making marionettes of us. To fight desire is, by this logic, unnatural and exhausting. I keep coming back to Natalie’s bold statement last week: “Adultery is only immoral if it is others you are putting first and not yourself. Isn’t it wrong to deny yourself?” I disagree if she is referring to sex with a stranger, or a man who means nothing to you, for the cheap thrill of it. That is what cheating is: cheap sex for thrills. But what about when you feel an emotional connection to a man like you’ve never felt before. What about when you feel that emotional connection like a soft bearhug every day, and your heart and soul are encouraging it, finding reasons to cross paths with the man?What’s that called, if not love?What about when a man, who isn’t your husband, understands you more, makes your skin alive with a static tingling, makes you laugh more, flatters you and makes you feel distinct, desirable, one in a million? Notices you, the little things that make you you?What then?

  To be selfless but self-defeating is such a slow suicide.

  What about when you jump out of bed without hitting snooze even once, because you know you’ll be seeing that man today?

  Thing is, I’ve seen the way Owen looks at me, like Alex used to.I’ve seen how Owen assesses our marriage and feels bad for me.

  He even apologizes for his brother’s absenteeism, and takes the kids out for ice creams and walks along the river. The kids’ rooms are filled with bugs in jars Owen collected himself. They Google what to feed them, how to make sure a caterpillar will pupate. I know Alex would do all these things if he had the time, but I also know Owen would make the time if he was as busy as Alex.

  It’s the way that Owen treats me that made it okay for me to indulge today. Because I always thought the purpose of marriage was to be satiated, not hungry for desiring eyes. I am starved for attention, and that is not why I married. I married to spend every day loved and wanted and noticed and safe and happy and satisfied and jealous of myself. I should not feel selfish for wanting to be adored.

  Owen reads out back with me as I garden. He comes with me to the plant nurseries to weigh in on what I buy, and helps me lug it all back to the yard. He compliments my work in the garden, and I teach him stuff about gardening, and I know it sounds so stupid to say this, but that makes me feel useful and intelligent, and though my reasoning is vague, having someone to witness what I do with my time makes me feel relevant to someone.Owen is excited about the tomatoes in the greenhouse, whereas Alex still buys tomatoes at the grocery store even though I’ve told him they are growing out back. I’ve told him a thousand times, and that means he never listened to me a thousand times. He only cares to hear certain things, like supper is on the table, I picked up your dry cleaning today, and that yes, I am sure I am all right.

  I am needy, I need some attention, maybe I shouldn’t blame my husband for that. But I wasn’t always a hassle, I wasn’t always so invisible, so unnecessary. Where do I place the blame for that?The rolled eyes break my heart every time. I am married to a man who rolls his eyes at me. Then I feel silly for thinking he should adore me too much to roll his eyes at me. Childish really,idealistic. But it is how I feel, how he makes me feel, like I want a man who knows the shapes of my fingers, the shampoo I use, and how to never upset me enough to make him roll his eyes at me.

  Owen and I grocery shop together now, or go buy new books, or music, or clothes, or whatever. Last Tuesday we lay on the couch, the same couch, just on opposite ends, and listened to a Damien Jurado CD. It’s fantastic. “And NowThat I’m in Your Shadow”kills me! And the songs he does with Rosie Thomas are way too beautiful. He’s Owen’s favourite musician. If Alex has a favourite musician, I wouldn’t know who it was.

  Owen and I do things couples do together. The things Alex and I used to do before time slipped in between us and replaced closeness with this invisible distance. Alex and I do nothing together anymore. Not even sex. Not even meals. If he is even home for supper, and not at that goddamn hospital, he eats in front of the TV, not out back with the kids and Owen and me.I mean, what did he buy a house with a yard like ours for anyway? Definitely not for me, I know it was for show.Everything Alex does is for show, to prove himself to a bunch of people who really don’t give a damn. People are either jealous or indifferent to the material success of others, so why bother showing yourself off?

  I feel like a ghost in my own home. Sometimes I feel like I could fling a plate of food across the breakfast table and Alex wouldn’t even look up. It’s only since Owen came to stay here that I noticed that and admitted it to myself. Owen is an Omen: my marriage is dead. Yet I know in his own way that Alex does care deeply for me. And I tell myself that’s enough. So then why am I writing this?Why did I give Owen that eyeful today?Was it for him or me? Is there a difference?

  WAYS OUT

  OWEN ROSE FROM HIS BED slowly, hesitated, and climbed the rest of the way out. Bare feet on fresh new carpet, a cheap but noticed comfort. He walked over to the window to check the weather, because changes in the weather were now the only thing that made one day feel any different than the last. There were three yellowed blades of grass poking up through a blanket of white snow. The wind was beating them off the brown fence. A metaphoric mirror.

  It was noon when Owen woke up; it was later and later each day now, and Lillian had stopped setting aside half her breakfast for him. She never commented on his life but she didn’t have to. The notion spoke for itself. He felt a fool in her house, pathetic. He wanted to be alone, he wanted to be free from the eyes of others so he could fall apart and come back together without a witness seeing how he chose to do so. It would feel like rejuvenation then, not degeneration.

  He wanted to be back in Newfoundland. Owen was lost in Nova Scotia, his brother and aunt’s adopted place of residence. He was stranded there, financially. Halifax felt like a shaking bed, an itchy blanket. He needed only to secure a job and a place to sleep and he would return to St. John’s, maybe Rocky Harbour, but definitely somewhere back in Newfoundland.

  Three months before the accident, Owen had taken Hannah to see St. John’s. She had always wanted to see where Alex grew up, but Alex never made it happen. She wanted to honeymoon there; she felt it would be appropriate, but Alex bought two tickets to Cuba instead, and acted like she should be pleasantly surprised. She sat bored on a beach for five days while he read medical journals about breakthroughs in cardiology and oncology. The day before they left, she combed the beach for a handful of blue spiraled shells. She put them on the mantle back at home in a pottery bowl she had. Later, she told Owen that she couldn’t stand the idea of a souvenir from that trip. It was like trying to take a joke seriously.

  To rid her of curiosity about St. John’s, after months of overhearing her and Owen talking about the place,Alex bought her and Owen tickets. She was ecstatic about the weekend trip, and Owen was ecstatic to have her to himself for two full da
ys. Alex couldn’t go, he was on call Saturday night, but Lillian could watch the kids.

  She’d insisted on the window seat, and Owen remembered looking over her shoulder and noticing how slowly the clouds drifted past the window, like the plane was barely moving, like time was grinding to a halt. He looked up from his novel from time to time to watch her watching the clouds. When a mass of green appeared in a bigger mass of endless blue, her eyes widened. “Is that it,Owen? Is that Newfoundland?”

  She poked her finger at the window. When she took it away, her fingerprint was there: a series of perfect, un-smudged, concentric circles. There was something infinite about it, something so exclusively Hannah.

  “Is it? Is that Newfoundland?” She nodded this time, instead of poking at the glass.

  He leaned over her and felt her warmth, her body beneath him, and shrugged his shoulders. He was smiling. As always when she spoke, he was inexplicably smiling. This effortless effect on him was what he now missed the most: the soul-filling warmth of being next to her.

  It was only natural that a woman like Hannah would love St. John’s. Everything about the town was so charming to her, especially the people, and the fact that cars yielded to pedestrians, and that young men held doors. It was the bright colours of the rowhouses that struck her the most, and how vivid and alive the town was, despite the grey, fog-shrouded skies. They made her fill her camera on her first night there.