Authors: Eden Robinson
Look what you’ve done to us! Look! We’re living in terror and you don’t even care!
I’d lay odds on you, Mommy. Liquor you up and hide you in the basement with a kitchen knife. Wayne doesn’t stand a chance.
She couldn’t leave fast enough. She can dish it, but she can’t take it.
November 2, 1993
Dear Tom,
It’s late. I can’t sleep. My roommate snores. I would wake her but she outweighs me. She threw her pit bull against a wall and broke its back. She cried about it in group today. Her turn to share and boy, oh, boy, did she share. Mandatory rehab broke her and she surrendered. Holy roller born again sober. Either that or she’s working it to get visitation privileges with her boyfriend. We had a fake wake for Pepper the pit bull to help Roomie’s grieving process. You were. Just. Play-ing. Pepper! Pepper! Roomie in full-throttle howl. The facilitator made us write down our reactions on lavender paper. R.I.P., you bitey fucker.
Hey Jazz,
I met Jer at a house party a friend was throwing. Jer stuck out. He was the only guy who showed up wearing a suit. Not a stuffy old business suit – a sleek black Armani suit, his shirt casually unbuttoned at the top. Light tan on his face except for a faint outline of sunglasses. His dark brown hair had that just-stepped-off-my-yacht, didn’t spend a lot of time (yes, I did) on my hair look. He seemed familiar, and later, I’d remember his Jag driving around our school when he used to drop Tom off. Oh, those sweet lines. First Jag I ever drove.
We fucked in the bathroom against the wall because the floor was disgusting and the pedestal sink was too flimsy. My back was against the switch, and the light kept going on and off and we were too horned up to care. People pounded on the door.
He even looked good nose to nose. Some guys look fine until they’re on top of you, and then you notice the big, clogged pores, the stray nose hairs, and the start of a jowl. Jer had beautiful skin, the kind you want to lick when it glistens. Ripped
body, sinews moving as we moved. I couldn’t stop touching him. Wrapped my legs around his waist and he didn’t tell me to get down, you aren’t a butterfly, honey. Didn’t faze him. His hair, his muscles, his skin, the lights, the wet smack of the condom, the angry people yelling for us to get out of the bathroom – my reflection stared at us as Jer threw his head back, open-mouthed grunts.
Dinner with the folks. Jer brought a dozen roses each for me and for Mom. Cuban cigars for Dad. Everyone pretending they’d just met.
My parents loved him. I’ve never brought home anybody they loved. I think they loved the Jag. Mom apologized over and over for the dry roast and lumpy gravy.
Don’t screw this up, Mom said, catching my arm before Jer brought me out to a “movie.”
I’m sorry about that, Jer, I said as we left the house. Thanks for pretending you didn’t, you know, see them in high gear before.
He put his hand on the side of my face. Leaned in for a kiss.
Let’s shake it off, babe.
I got hooked on Dexies at fat camp, Jer said in the black-out curtain dark of a hotel room.
Fat camp? I leaned my head on one elbow, touching his hair with my other hand. Playing with it. He used something that smelled like smoky oranges.
I was a chunky monkey until fat camp. When I got home, Dad thought the Dexies were cheating, so he cut me off. Said
drugs would ruin my character. But Mom would sneak them to me in my lunch. It worked. Dad got off my back about being a porker. Mom got off his back about being on my back. Everyone was happy. And then Dad caught us. Poof. Chunky-monkey redux.
I never believed in soulmates until I met Jer. Long nights fucking, coking, and sharing war stories.
Dad brought me to his gym. He’d play drill instructor and I’d play new recruit. He’d be screaming in my face and I’d be thinking, if I hit him hard enough, right there, I could say he had a heart attack and hit his head on the weights when he fell. But the next summer, all the fat-camp kids were snorting Ritalin. They taught me how to get a prescription, how to grind the pills in a pill crusher. I was golden again.
Aren’t you proud of yourself, son? DI Dad said. I know I was hard on you, but wasn’t it worth it?
We’d go out to a club or restaurant where you had to know which fork to use and Jer would use the right one and I’d think, Man, if Mom saw that, she would cream. We could be doing the dirtiest, filthiest things in private, and she wouldn’t care. Jer knew how to act in public. He knew how to talk to waiters, how to pick a wine, and how to chat while we waited to get the Jag out of valet parking. We’d look deep into each other’s eyes over appetizers and he’d give me an if-they-only-knew smile and I’d smile back and we shared secrets and I thought that was love.
Tom has a crush on you.
Who?
Tom. My brother goes to your school.
Your brother’s in my school?
He sits right behind you in band. Small world, huh?
If I’d had my eyes open, I would have read the signs. But I’d found Prince Charming and a little thing like freaky-ass family dynamics wasn’t going to get past my blinders.
Mom likes these historical romances where the heroines never realize how beautiful they are. Hahahaha. Bullshit. If there are Nobel Stupid Prizes, women who don’t realize they are beautiful would win them. You have to be damned dense not to notice the little things like other people’s eyes, glazed, wandering all over you when you’re talking. You could be telling them the cure for cancer and it wouldn’t matter. You are beautiful. Your job is done.
I turned around in band practice and there was Tom, blushing like crazy because I caught him mooning. His eyes snapped down to his music sheet. He was wearing a suit, something Jer would have picked out, but on Tom, it looked like he’d gotten dressed in a hurry to go to church. Except for the fat lip, swollen and bruised. And his turtleneck, out of place for a warm spring day and not quite covering the bruises at the top of his neck.
Caught up to Tom in the hallway.
Hi, Tom.
Very faint answer, Hey.
Tell your bro he’d better be on time tonight or I’ll kill him.
Tom blinked very fast, frowning. My bro?
Jer. The brother who cares enough to check up on you.
He blinked faster. You’re seeing Jer?
If he’s lucky.
He’s not my brother.
Don’t be that way, Tom.
No, seriously. He’s my cousin.
I think it’s sweet, I said. You guys must be close if he’s calling you his brother.
Be careful, Tom said. He’s delusional. He –
Later, Tom! Thinking to myself poor, jealous Tom and his secret crush all envious of Jeremy! Strolled away carefree, la la la, as if the lies hadn’t registered, as if they weren’t important.
Hey, Jer?
Yeah, babe. Jer had his eyes on the road, one hand on the wheel, one hand holding a cigarette as we waited at a red light.
I saw Tom in band today. He said he’s not your brother. He said you guys’re cousins.
Huh.
Why would you say you were brothers?
We are. Actually, we’re half-brothers. He’s not Dad’s kid. Dad took a long tour after I was born, and Mom got mad and fooled around with an army buddy of his. The family kept it hush-hush. Poor kid. Did he really tell you he’s Chrissy’s? Well, whatever keeps you sane.
December 5, 1993
Dear Tom,
I don’t know where to send this letter. I don’t know what good it’ll do giving it to you. I don’t know what to say to you.
I went back to the hospital the day after they kicked me out. Your bed was empty and no one knew where you’d gone. Or they weren’t telling me. I sat in the
TV
room for a long time. And then I left.
Hey Jazz,
Mostly booze, until I found coke. Even then, I was pretty functional until Jer. Mom and Dad got all the boys a new car when they graduated. Nothing fancy. Toyota hatchbacks, Honda Civics. My brothers were holy hell, and they all got cars and a party and cake. The only thing keeping me in that house going to school like a good little girl was the promise of a new car to take off in. Instead, I got a purse and a set of granny underwear with the days of the week embroidered on the front. The kind of undies my grandmother sent my mother every year for Christmas.
Jer had coke everywhere. Never had to ask for it. Bowls and bowls of stuff. Before Jer, I had a level I was comfortable at. A weekend sniffer. I slipped past it faster than I thought I could. Found myself tearing through my room in the middle of doing homework. I had a little bit left somewhere. I knew I had something. A little something to clear my head.
Mom came in and asked what I was doing. I looked up and realized I’d turned my room upside down.
Jer gave me a pair of earrings, I lied. I lost one side.
She tsk-tsked and left me alone.
I’m tweaking, I thought, going cold. I’m tweaking. I can’t believe I’m tweaking.
I didn’t stop. Completely convinced I had some magical stash somewhere. I’d missed it and all I had to do was keep looking and it would appear because I needed it.
The restaurant bathroom was all white, all enamel and tile, scented with a woodsy air-freshener, cedar and pine. One of his whores sat on the counter, her back reflected in the mirror, the drape of the scooped dress revealing the small of her back, the bones of her spine. Her expression reminded me of a cat, neutral and interested. Jeremy knelt over me, his cock dark pink and bobbing in the chilly bathroom air. One of the urinals flushed continuously.
When the night started, I had no idea this was in the plan and part of my brain was shocked, and focused on the tiles, the air-freshener. My fingers wanted to sink themselves into his eyes and had tightened into fists. Jeremy held my wrists near my face. He rubbed the head of his cock along my jaw, leaving a sticky trail of pre-cum. His hands tightened on my wrists as he brushed the tip on my lips. Jeremy’s mouth opened jaw-cracking wide as if he was the one pinned to the floor.
After we kicked the crap out of Willy Baker, we left him at the side of a road and went for sushi. I fixed my makeup at the table, and Jer snapped my compact closed, saying that was crass.
Every punch, every hit, every spit I rained down on Willy was meant for my parents. I was worth a purse Mom probably got as a gift-with-purchase and re-gifted underwear.
I want you to get Tom to trust you, Jer said.
Why?
Payback’s a bitch and you are her stand-in.
Jer cut off my supply saying I’d get more after. Lame-ass plan. I hated it. So easy to get in with Tom. Saw him in the hallway at school. Tom, you got any weed? Man, I’m hard up.
Tom drove me around when I was sick and shaking. Always ten clicks under the speed limit. Seat belt, Paulie! Checked both ways two or three times before he turned. I had told him I felt better in my car, and he’d said, why don’t we go for a spin? Aretha Franklin on the radio. Freeway of Love. Bopped his head as he drove. His voice all high and out of tune. Waving out the window, deliberately cheerful to the people who’d been stuck behind us as they honked by. Nice day, isn’t it! Take care! Drive to stay alive! Na na na, freeee-way, na na –
You’re going to get us shot, I said.
Freeee-way. Huh?
Why are you signalling?
Don’t you want to watch the planes?
The exit’s a mile away.
I like to give people lots of warning.
I spent a few nights at his apartment, but nothing much happened. When we first got in, he filled the tub, made a bubble bath for me. Nothing sexier than a junk-sick chick. Shaking so hard the bubbles wobbled. Miserable and tired and trying to be seductive. He came back with a mug of Ovaltine and a stack of magazines –
People, True Story, High Times
.
I thought I’d ask first because I didn’t know if you wanted marshmallows or not, he said, handing me the mug.
Not, I said.
He sat on the toilet and held up the covers so I could see. What’d’ya think? Roseanne and Tom get hitched. Married to the Wrong Brother. Blueberry Bonanza Confiscated in B.C.
Why don’t you climb in with me? Said as I played with the bubbles around my breasts.
Lengthy, awkward pause where he dropped his eyes to the floor. You don’t have to do that, Paulie.
You fucking freak of nature, I said. I was trying to be nice.
I don’t need a pity fuck.
Normally, we’d fuck and that would be that. Instead, I thought, I’m stuck trying to make nice with this prissy little mama’s boy. If I wasn’t on the clock, I’d punch him and take off. Trying to calm myself down. Trying to think sexy thoughts when all I wanted to do was die.
When me and Mom moved to Vancouver, we didn’t know anybody, he said. We didn’t have anything. She hooked up with any guy that would give us a roof and regular grub. The guys that would take us in were always these assholes who treated her like a blow-up doll. I hated them so much it felt like I was breathing hate, like it was running through my veins. You’re hot, Paulie. You know you’re hot. But … I dunno. If all you need is a crash pad and company, then stay.
His bedroom looked like no one lived in it. No posters, no pictures, no mess of clothes on the floor. Even his socks were in order, folded together and lined up in their drawer. Fuck that bugged me. That’s what you do when you’re always getting farmed out. You try to be
invisible. You try not to cause any trouble or call attention to the fact that you exist. Because then you’re an inconvenience. When you depend on strangers for food and a place to stay, the last thing you can afford to be is an inconvenience.
Jeremy’s camera was near the ceiling in Tom’s bedroom. I knew Jer was going to watch this in a few days. No way was I giving him more of a show than I had to. I lay down on the couch. Tom fell asleep in the recliner. Jer wanted updates, and I couldn’t be bothered.
Early in the morning, I crawled into the recliner with him. He turned sideways to make room, facing me. Boner making him shy. He was about to get up when I reached over and pulled the elastic on his briefs and took a peek.
Hey! he said, slapping my hand away.
Just checking, I said.
His mom came home on the fourth morning I was there. She stood at the entrance of the living room, blinking like she didn’t believe what she was seeing. She perfumed the room with stale cigarette smoke and sweet, skunky body odour but mostly eye-watering booze fumes.