You've Changed, page 22
You did not respond.
Pamplemousse lay around like a buzzsaw of complex emotions. Puffy white face. Squinted eyes. Disapproving accent mouth. It stayed near the front door, meowing in mourning, as if Gluten might come by and reclaim it. It glared and flattened its ears when I tried to pick it up. When I tried again, it raised its paw to swipe at me. Gluten had held Pamplemousse’s paws and made it jab like a boxer. Eventually, while I cuddled a pillow on the sectional, blanketed in the blue light of the TV, it sat under the couch on one of your slippers. I sent you a photo of this.
I kept my phone close. I looked everywhere for you, even in the far recesses of my email. I didn’t find you, only lots of sex junk in my spam. The algorithm had searched my heart and found me wanting.
I left you a fifth voice message: I’m going to sleep but just call and I’ll pick you up. Don’t spend another night out there. I meant to say, I need you too. I am a failure. I am not a man. I’m a kid playing with Legos. I am nothing.
On Sunday evening, you showed up with your hiking backpack. A good sign. You’d be back in the house to start the work week. Pamplemousse trotted toward you with its tail up and purred.
You went to the base cabinet where we kept the wet food and scooped it into Pamplemousse’s bowl.
I already fed her, I said.
You sat on the floor of the kitchen and watched Pamplemousse eat, knowing better than to touch it while it was eating, then went upstairs. I locked the front door and thought about what we, the humans, could eat.
You came back down. Still not a word.
The silent retreat is over, I joked.
You knelt to put on your shoes to leave.
You have to teach? I positioned myself in front of the door.
Nope.
Then stay.
You pulled on the other shoe.
I have quiche in the fridge, I offered.
You stood up. I held on to the door handle behind my back. Whatever physical challenge I presented was minor compared to your determination to get out of the house. I tried to make myself look big as if tricking a bear.
Move, you said.
I held your eye. I was not going to let you go back to a sleeping bag on the street.
You took a step toward me. I tried to predict what your plan of attack would be. You had regaled an Argentinian couple and demonstrated basic self-defence to the woman. Palm strike, elbow strike. Show no fear, I told myself.
You made a sudden move as if you would grab my neck and I flinched and then you grabbed me by the balls. Trump, a tour bus, Grab them by the—Misdirection. Pamplemousse stopped washing its face to watch me get what I deserved. I was wearing running shorts so you got a good grip. I could feel the pain in my kidneys.
Okay, I said, okay, okay.
Therapy, you said.
I shook my head.
Therapy, you said again.
I shook my head, smaller. You tightened your grip. You weren’t just trying to hurt me. Your hand was a defibrillator, a frustrated final resort, trying to shock my parts back to life. I squeezed my eyes shut and doubled over.
Okay! I conceded.
You loosened your grip a little.
I’ll ask Viv, I offered. I still hadn’t told her about the declined permit.
She’s a guidance counsellor! You squeezed again, tighter than before.
I bit my lips.
A therapist of my choosing. I get to choose.
Fine.
You’re going to pay for it, you said.
I nodded.
You twisted to get a verbal response.
Yes, fine, I said.
We tried your thing and now we’re doing it my way.
Fine, okay, okay. I grabbed your wrist, and then you let go completely.
I stood up straight. I opened one eye then both. You had never dropped eye contact.
And stop shaving your face like that. You’re not a Brazilian pussy.
* * *
I’m not sure what your part of the deal was. You didn’t really move back in. You got your tent from the basement and pitched it in the backyard. You refused my help, so I watched you for a while through the porch door, then set the table for us to eat, keeping the quiche warm until you came in. You served yourself more than half the quiche, then took the plate to your tent, with Pamplemousse following behind. I ate alone at the table.
I had composed a message to Viv about the permit but instead of sending it, I drove to her house and explained that it had been denied on a technicality. Not a zoning issue, not a structural issue.
So six months and thousands of dollars later, I’m exactly where I started? she said.
I hung my head. We have thirty days to appeal. I’ll make the changes and resubmit.
And how long before we get an answer?
Soon, I said.
What’s soon? Six weeks? Six months?
I don’t know, I said. Should be quick.
Let’s just get started then.
We can’t.
Why not?
We’re waiting for the permit.
When I got home, your plate was outside the tent flap, waiting for room service to collect it. For a week, you lived in the tent. You came inside to charge your phone and use the bathroom. I’d look down from the guest suite and you’d be picking berries from along the fence or scraping the barbecue. More and more of your belongings migrated outside.
You look homeless, I said, but I still preferred you homeless at home than on the street.
You opened your mouth to—
And that was not racist, I went on. You’re living in a tent.
Homeless, stateless, you said.
What are you going to do when it rains? I asked, ignoring the dramatic lie.
What do the squirrels do? What do the birds do?
I tried not to let my exasperation show.
I’m good out here. You pay the mortgage, Beckett. Which is just as well since you didn’t lock in when I told you to and now God knows how much money you’ve wasted in interest. You do you. I’ll do me.
One chilly evening, I saw you entering your tent with a blanket for a coat, and I went out and gave you an ultimatum.
Either come inside, Princess, or I’m staying out here with you.
I sat in your tent, staring you down, with Pamplemousse folded into a box and half sleeping. You tied the blanket around your neck like a cape, got on your bike, and left. I stayed in the tent, shifting my position to get comfortable. When you came back, I was shivering and half asleep in your sleeping bag.
You said, It’s time for you to go home, and held open the flap of the tent. Courteous. I slept on the couch. Through the rear glass wall, we could see each other.
It was almost July. Even when it rained overnight, you slept outside. I want to truthfully be able to truthfully say that we never slept together. And yet. Things were getting back to normal. To normal? To shaking cereal boxes, tying shoelaces, taking out the recycling on Wednesdays, soaking the frying pan. Slower than I would have liked, but. We ate dinner together inside and you watched America’s Got Talent. Sometimes we overlapped at breakfast. I collected your Princess mugs and half-drunk glasses of water throughout the house. We went shopping for compression garments and shapewear. Things were trending upward. I thought you had forgotten about
* * *
The therapist’s office was painted navy like Casper’s room and dimly lit by lamps that cast moons on the walls. She wore large jewellery and a full-length dress that she had to hold up so it wouldn’t drag as she walked to her throne. A sleek black Doberman at her feet kept a critical gaze over the proceedings. Everything felt like ancient Egypt. She had no eyebrows or lips; she must have worn them down from years of talking to people like us. Five minutes into our session, I hadn’t said anything apart from hello.
She had introduced herself as if she was reading off a business card: Clara Simmons, registered psychologist, communist, political activist, social agitator. I didn’t ask where you had found this therapist. Dr. Simmons said she was used to having one partner eager to be in therapy and the other reluctant, so she’d like to check in with us about our feelings.
I most certainly was not going to respond, not first at least. Later, I stood behind you as you removed a plastic bag from your bike seat and noticed the fullness in your curvature, but still nothing like Keza. Without looking at me, you said that I had rolled my eyes at the question. I denied it. You said that I rolled my eyes internally. You could see it.
It was my idea, you said to the therapist. He doesn’t want to be here.
Why are you here, Beckett?
I scratched my neck and said nothing.
Later you said that it was effeminate to use my pinky to point at things. You were disgusted by how I, quote unquote, stuck my finger into everything, every hole in my face.
The therapist waited. She turned to you, the way one might turn to the parent of a quiet child.
You said, This is not going to work
I could’ve told you that, I said.
if you just sit there, you finished, and slapped my knee.
You asked me to come, I’m here.
Please, Princess, no violence, said Clara Simmons, registered psychologist, communist, political activist, social agitator.
She’s speaking to you, you said, but you meant, Don’t ignore a Black woman when she speaks to you. Don’t pull that white supremacist act like we’re below your consideration.
I addressed the therapist for the first time. I’m sorry. What was the question?
Why are you here? she asked.
Princess thinks I need fixing.
I never said that. You straightened your back and held up your hands innocently.
It’s okay, she said to you. What do you mean by that?
I didn’t reply. I was tired of the questions already, the upward lilt of her voice, like a slam poet.
I understand that you don’t want to be here, Clara Simmons said. You’re not going to be here forever. Sometimes in two or three sessions, we can get everything out on the table and think about how to move forward with honesty and transparency. I like to tell my clients that we can take an hour and have a difficult conversation now or you can go home and spend a lifetime fighting. How does that sound to you?
I opened my palm, a go-ahead gesture, to signal that the entire floor was yours to air your grievances against me for the next hour.
Do you want to start by telling me about your own parents?
Dead.
I’m sorry.
My mother.
What about your father?
My what?
Your father.
They’re estranged, you said, gossiping to the therapist.
I’m not here to talk about my parents, I said.
You opened your mouth, scoffed a few times, then leaned back and folded your arms, trying to outsilence me. You can’t outsilence a Quaker. My whole childhood was silence, girl. After a few moments of the therapist looking between us, you pulled out your phone and started scrolling.
I thought that you were being childish, beyond childish, extremely rude to the therapist, but she did not look offended. She reached down and stroked the head of her Doberman then got up and went to her desk. I thought this was how the hour would go, the three of us engaged in our inner matters. Viv now had a stone walkway that curved around the house. Her front porch was stone. She had plant beds of varying heights made out of cedar posts. I had wanted to extend her deck and stain it before Canada Day, so maybe we could go over. The week before Canada Day, you went to Stephanie’s bachelorette party. And on Canada Day itself, you went out somewhere without me. Now on July 4, we were sitting in a therapist’s office. It was berry season. Didn’t you want to go berry picking with me anymore?
You broke the silence. You told Dr. Communist about the silent retreat and your dream, but you omitted the dramatic fashion in which you first shared the dream.
Do you want to hear my dreams? I said, simply to prevent you from monologuing.
If you’d like to share them.
I told the therapist about a dream I had that I was with a crew of Scooby-Doo-type friends on a cattle farm, trying to figure out why all the cows had vanished. We were snooping around. Then we discovered something about ether and an alarm sounded and as we tried to run out of a barn, metal gates closed ahead of us. The barn melted and we were in a field. We approached the fence, but one area was electrified and another had a magnetic blocking device, like carts in Costco parking lots. Finally we turned around from the fence and we were in a larger field, like Squid Game, with the animals in front of us. A gas was released and the animals died in a wave, died a death deeper than death, they dissolved into the earth, and we humans in the back knew we were dying, knew our fate was the same as the animals’, and somehow clung to a hope that someone would rescue us.
So pretty much, you said, you dreamt that you were trapped and gassed in our marriage.
I dreamt this years before I met you. Between Cindy and you.
You rolled your eyes.
The therapist said, That’s a critical detail, Beckett.
So, you said, the dream has nothing to do with me?
I shook my head. It’s about climate change, I said, but I could tell that you still thought it was about you, that to my unconscious, the prospect of marriage was like being euthanized.
Silence. The longest of the session. You crossed one arm across your chest and stretched your shoulder then repeated on the other side.
The Doberman looked up. The therapist went to her desk again and returned with cue cards and Sharpies.
Here. She offered each of us a card. I want you to write down your preferred relationship status. Do you see a future together? Do you want to stay married?
Again, for the record, I did not recall rolling my eyes, but later you said, You rolled your eyes every time she opened her mouth.
Let’s find someone else.
No, Beckett, I chose her.
Honestly, in that moment, I was simply thinking about Viv’s deck, until you turned your card around. The motion felt like you were voting me off an island.
I twisted in my chair to read your card. To my surprise, it simply said, married.
The therapist asked you to elaborate.
I want to be married, you said. I don’t care if it’s to him or not.
You gave me the card as one would give someone a contract to read and sign.
What do you mean by that last part? I asked.
The therapist smiled.
I want to be married, you said again.
But the to whom is irrelevant to you.
You looked at me as if you could not identify the source of my objection. You had told the Woods that you liked my walk.
I held up my clasped hands like a prizefighter. Lucky me.
I can’t get married a third time, you said to the therapist. I’m not a—My life is not a soap opera.
Does being alone frighten you?
No.
Liar, I thought. Everyone in your family was married, your parents, every aunt and uncle, every cousin of age.
Does dating frighten you? the therapist asked.
I’m good at it, you said.
As recently as the waiting room, Princess was on her phone exploring her options.
He’s not. I rescued him from the pool because he was drowning. We didn’t actually date. We did stuff together. I don’t actually think he knew how to go on a proper date. You paused to reflect. Once, he showed up at my place with two milkshakes in those cardboard cupholders. He was all like—You thrust out your chest and swaggered in your chair. You didn’t finish the sentence, how I was trembling internally that you would reject the milkshake, would laugh at the adult man whose idea of a date was milkshakes and a walk. You had asked me then, Have you ever been on a date? I didn’t meet a lot of women in my line of work. But I had been on a date, dates, before, thank you very much. Just a couple months ago, my last girlfriend (a stretch), the sister of a guy I worked with, asked if I wanted to go to Folk Fest with her. And, well, that was the highlight of the story.
The therapist continued her line of questioning: Did you end your first marriage?
It was mutual, you said, but you broke eye contact with her. I thought this one was going to be a step up from the previous one.
You can’t possibly compare me to that sociopath, I said. I was annoyed that the therapist was pushing you out of the marriage. She was disregarding your card. I tapped it on my knee.
You said, I haven’t made the best choices. Clearly. You pointed your head in my direction. But I’m not twenty-five anymore. I’m aging. No, it’s not aging. I’m decaying.
I widened my eyes at the therapist, like Jim from The Office. She had a bomb in her lap to deal with. When I realized that the therapist was not going to do anything, I wanted to tell you that you’re aging better than me. But you’d snap at me. I was a man. I didn’t count.
Then a lifetime came pouring out of you: Not even my parents asked me whether I wanted to stay in Spain or live in England. I mean, it was all hell, but still. The year in Detroit. I want other people around. He never wants to have people over or talk to the neighbours. We used to host people. Lots of work, but I liked that.
You said, His idea of a vacation was a silent retreat on Bowen Island so he could shut me up for a few days. You wanted to take a real vacation every year, off the continent. You ended your speech with, I had to go on vacation alone.
You weren’t alone, I corrected.
With my friend.
