Читать книгу The Year She Left - Kerry Kelly - Страница 6

In the weeks following the break-up, Stuart did little. He was frozen, paralyzed, but not for the reasons you’d think. Not the ones he’d thought, at least. He had always had the impression that if Emily ever left him he’d be ruined, he’d kill himself, since all life would stop for him anyway, wouldn’t it?

He’d been floored by her leaving him. That’s what he’d settled on calling it, although he’d been the one who had left. He’d been knocked down by the leaving, surely, but not out.

The morning after, he’d wanted to die, but that had more to do with the incredible hangover and the tongue-lashing he’d woken to when an irate Elizabeth, whose sympathy for him had vanished when she was forced to hand over forty dollars to pay a bar bill when she “wasn’t even friggin’ drinking, because I brought my friggin’ car.” That was before he’d asked his mother to screen his calls.

He didn’t like being without Em, of course. He did love her. The way she smelled and the way she came to his gallery openings when they were held in coffee shops and no one else showed. How she ironed the towels that no one but the two of them saw. He wished they were still together, that the whole break-up had never happened, but to be honest, he didn’t want her back. Not now. Every time he’d picked up the phone that day, he’d been forced to admit that you can’t go back to a woman who would end a four-year relationship by writing you a letter; who would then hide in the shadows and watch you read it. How could you even think of going back to a girl like that?

Without the pining, and with the absolute certainty that they were less broken up than entirely dissolved, he was focusing his attention on the fact that his life was going to have three chapters. Before Emily, Emily, and now, After Emily. This was Stuart’s problem.

A fairly even mix of romantic and doomsday prophet, once he and Emily had decided to form a unit, he’d naturally assumed that there was no alternative to it. It was them together or the end of the world. He believed in love. That it was that strong, that it could move mountains and work miracles and slay humble men where they stood. Why he believed this, considering the family in which he’d grown up, was a question he’d often been asked. The only answer he’d ever been able to offer in response was: he didn’t know why, he just did.

He had loved Emily, truly and with all his heart. She was his one Big Love. He had waited for her his whole life. That was why, in the wake of loss, he had expected to feel utterly miserable. He had not been prepared to feel hungry sometimes, and bored sometimes, sitting there in the dark. Or that he’d remember to tune in for the new episode of his favourite medical drama.

He certainly hadn’t expected to get an erection one evening while sitting on his mother’s couch watching a comely young singer on TV belting out a tepid rendition of some godawful pop sensation’s latest hit. Not the week after his life was supposed to have ended. All of this mundane reality, this normalcy, this survival, what the hell was that about?

This was supposed to be a time of glorious despair. Dirty, dank, liquor-fuelled Nick Cave-esque despair.

He’d tried to do his part. He’d been drinking to excess. In fact, the only time he’d left the apartment was to take a trip to the LCBO when he realized he couldn’t possibly live up to this ideal by drinking his mother’s assortment of candy-flavoured liquors: Crème de Menthe and Cranberry Cooler, and to his horror, a bottle of Sex on the Beach, a gag gift from Aunt Helen.

He’d gone and bought some bottles of gin, as many as his bank balance could carry. He’d wanted to pick up the tough stuff, a J.D. or Wild Turkey, something harsh and self-damaging, but he knew he didn’t have the stomach for it. One more indignity in this, his time of crisis.

So he’d been drinking and sitting and attempting to fall into stupor. But there was his mother to contend with, and her constant cleaning of the house and provision of fresh pajamas she’d picked up for him at The Bay, and the gifts of his favourite foods and magazines.

As much as he thought he should ride this out low and lonely, he liked the flannel bottoms and the smell of his crisp cotton pillowcase, and he did want “just a little nibble of brie” and the November issue of Spin magazine.

He realized that even though he woke each day with a physical pain in his head and an imaginary one somewhere in the middle of his chest, the world was not only continuing, but he was interested in it.

And he was afraid of it. How was he going to insert himself into a world he never thought he’d have to deign to look at again? One where he would have to find his own home, manage his own money and make his own plans, alone. If he didn’t have love in his life, what would he have?

That was what held him frozen. Not heartbreak, but fear; fear, then habit. He watched himself become a shining example of the law that a body at rest tends to stay at rest. He saw his mother’s looks turn from concern to pity to tedium at his presence. He told himself every day that the next morning he’d stand up and shave and go grab a coffee in the morning, bring her back one too.

He made plans, lists. Stuart loved lists. He filled an entire notepad he’d pulled from his mother’s bill-paying desk, first with things he loved about Emily, then things he hated. Then things he wanted to accomplish in life. These lists were supposed to calm him and make him feel in charge. Motivated people make lists. But even as he wrote them, he knew he couldn’t fulfill them. He’d feel his pulse rise as the list got longer, one task, two tasks, three…too many. Even writing something as simple as a grocery list could make his heart pound in his ears. What did he want to eat? What of all the possible choices did he want for himself for dinner? What did he want?

So he started writing other lists, nonsense lists, like the list of words so pleasing to the ear, it’s a wonder that you don’t hear them more often:

Demitasse

Melodious

Conundrum

Auspicious

Spectacular

Cantankerous

Extraordinary

Felicity

Doldrums

Forgiven

He was busting to get out and incapable of moving. He was frozen. He was a mess, and he needed something to get his life started. Stuart took a sip from the glass at the foot of the couch and listened to a young, wigless Elton John telling him that it was “lonely out in space”.

No lonelier than anywhere else, he thought. Yes, he needed something, but he didn’t know what it was.

He heard the doorbell and watched the colour drain from his mother’s face as she stammered, “Oh, I wonder who that could be.”

Stuart wondered if it was going to be an intervention. He knew his aunts had been calling, knew his mother had seen them on Sunday, coming back red-eyed and tired and saying cattily that she’d like to light a few candles, so he’d best not sigh so much, or the place might go up in flames.

He heard a familiar voice, very unfamiliar to this apartment. It seemed what his mother thought he needed was Graham. He must really be in bad shape.

“Hello, Mother.”

“Graham. Nice to see you.”

“Likewise, Mother.”

Graham had always called Glyniss “Mother”. She was sure he did it to irritate her, to embarrass her in front of the world. Happy children didn’t call their mothers Mother. It was Mom or Mammy or Mum. Mother was reserved for distant, imperious women, those who ordered, not reared. No one wanted to be called Mother. Mother was a big “Fuck You”. Stuart always called her Ma.

They stood another moment in the door, Glyniss unconsciously blocking entry with an arm on the doorframe. She took a breath as if to speak but released it in a sigh.

“May I come in?” Graham asked so politely that Stuart flinched.

“Oh, yes… What a question! You can always come in. It’s your home too,” his mother replied, jumping out of the way and looking at the floor as she said it.

Excruciating, thought Stuart. But Graham said nothing and walked passed her into the living room, taking a seat across from Stuart.

“I hear your life’s in the toilet, Stu.”

“Now, I never said that, Graham,” Glyniss said primly. “We just, that is Aunt Agathe and I just, well, Auntie Helen too, well, I just said I was worried to see Stuart so unhappy.”

“I’m here to talk to you about getting yourself together a little here, bud,” Graham said, seemingly ignoring his mother’s stammering, but softening his approach just a little. He did like his older brother, even though he had a world of reasons not too.

“Well, I guess you are Mr. Fixit, aren’t you,” replied Stuart. He regretted it instantly.

Graham was a carpenter. “Handyman” Glyniss called him. He hadn’t gone to school for it, just had the natural ability and lucked into working with a good craftsman. He’d done very well for himself, but it wasn’t the expected career path for a Lewis man. He had eschewed bland offices and button-down shirts and delusions of greater things to come, instead spending his time making beautiful things with his strong, hardened hands, things that left Stuart feeling fey and inadequate. Cheap shots were his only counter.

Graham just smiled. “Well, your tongue ain’t busted,” he said, falling into the stereotype, feeling no shame. He would do it to drive his mother crazy. He did it because he didn’t care what they thought of him. His had been a childhood more endured than embraced. He’d had to get through it, and working with his hands was how he’d done it, hiding away in the shed in the back garden, until Glyniss had sold the house. It was the reason he hadn’t run away at sixteen or ended up in jail or wrapped himself around a tree seeping oil and blood on its roots. His work had saved his life, and he was good at it and proud of it and didn’t need anybody to tell him he should be.

Glyniss responded to the exchange with a smile so tight, it threatened to crack her face. “Oh, you boys. Well I think I might just head out for a while and let you two talk,” she said through the grin. It was a little grotesque, but Stuart had to give her credit for trying.

Once she had left, the brothers looked at each other across what felt like miles before Graham shook his head, repeating, “Oh, you boys,” and started to laugh. Stuart joined in, and in a minute, they were roaring. A laugh full of wheezing and hooting and tears rolling down their cheeks. It was one of two ways of cutting the stress in the Lewis house, howls of rage or laughter.

“I can’t believe you’re here. They must be on suicide watch or something,” Stuart said finally.

“Yeah, kind of. I can’t believe you’re here. God, what are you doing?”

“She threw me out.”

“I heard. What’d you do?”

What had he done? No one had asked him that yet. Elizabeth and his mom had both taken the stance that the action was Emily’s, so the blame was Emily’s. Stuart quite liked that stance and had no intention of probing into what possible sins he might have committed to bring about his lover’s change of heart.

“I didn’t know where else to go.”

“Elizabeth’s? Agathe’s? Hell, I would have thought you’d call me and Jane first.”

“Yeah, but…”

“But?

“She doesn’t, you know, expect anything from me.” He realized it as he said it. There was no time to pretty it up.

“The hell she doesn’t.”

“She lets me be.”

“She lets you be, all right. Be sad and pathetic and drunk. That’s the way she likes us best. Listen, Stu, I’m sure you’re upset about Emily, but this isn’t doing you any good.”

“You’re not being fair. You’d damn Mom for nothing. I don’t have the same problems with her that you do. It’s not my fault that she worries about me. She’s supporting me.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Stuart, supporting you? In lethargy and self-pity and drinking in the morning. Doesn’t that strike you as a little bit familiar?”

“It was the easiest place to catch my breath.”

“And are you catching it?”

“I’m…surviving.”

Graham stood up from his seat, almost propelled from it. He wasn’t a big talker and didn’t have much patience for the gentle excuses his brother and mother made for themselves.

“Oh, come off it. Surviving? You’re subsisting at best. You’re not pulling yourself together here. You’re just killing time.”

That was how Graham worked. He never took offence at a comment about himself or his trade. A flip remark about his wife would get your nose bloodied, but aside from that, he didn’t care what you said about him. He preferred you think him stupid. It only served to make you feel more like an asshole when he’d let loose a string of words so eloquent and insightful you were shamed to have to speak next. Graham was fucking brilliant.

Stuart watched, awed, as his brother paced the living room and continued to strip him of all excuses and feelings of entitlement.

“Do you think your life’s over, Stuart? It’s not. It’s not on hold either. It’s not waiting for you to come around here. It’s happening as we speak.”

“I just don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing now. You know? I thought I was supposed to be marrying Em, living downtown, working on websites and making my art. If that’s not it, I’ve got to take the time now to figure out what it is I’m supposed to do. We don’t all know at seventeen, Graham. We’re not all like you.”

Graham sighed and sat back down, rubbing his hand down his face as he did so and looking like the older brother he’d always had to be.

“Yeah, well, you’re a little older than seventeen now, aren’t you, buddy? So maybe it’s not about what you’re supposed to do any more, it’s what you are going to do. At some point you’re going to have to make a choice or give up entirely. Nothing will be perfect, but I guarantee you anything would be a step up from this. Dude, you are a thirty-three-year-old living at your mother’s.”

“Lots of people my age still live with their mothers. It’s a new trend. I read about it in the paper.”

“Yeah, well, maybe their mothers are fine, but we are talking about our mother. You don’t even see what’s happening here, do you? Have you looked at yourself lately? Have you seen what you’re wearing?” Graham said, pointing at the pajamas and robe Stuart was wearing. “She got those for you, didn’t she?”

“Yeah, so?”

“Doesn’t your ensemble look a little familiar to you?”