Between

by Angie Abdou

  fast he forgot to breathe.” Eliot stops, wide-eyed in the wake of his

  offering. He looks like he expects applause. “He probably came out so

  fast because he missed me in there.”

  “Eliot,” Vero says with an embarrassed smile at LiLi. “I don’t have

  a penis.”

  “Oh, yeah!” Eliot lets out a hot huff of laughter. “Your vagina. Sorry,

  I forgot.”

  Oblivious to his big brother’s story, Jamal lays stomach down

  pulling petals off daisies. Vero thinks to stop him. The spring flow-

  ers are so pretty, his movements quick and cruel. But Vero remem-

  bers Cheryl’s hatred of daisies. An invasive species. She’s passionate

  about gardening now, and Vero wonders if she turned to plants to

  fill the space created when the final man packed up his suitcase and

  left her bedroom. Cheryl’s front yard is thickly overgrown with local

  vegetation bearing Latin names— Sempervivum, Sedum, Stachys—and

  with violets, pansies, and petunias thrown in to provide colour. “A

  lovely hobby, I suppose,” Heather Schoeman had said when she saw

  Vero send gardening books to Cheryl for Christmas. “I wouldn’t have

  minded taking it up myself. I never did, mind you. People did that

  work for us in South Africa, you see.”

  Cheryl spends her days in the garden on her knees, weeding,

  planting, and pruning. In her dirty overalls and oversized Tilley hat

  strapped under her chin, she’s androgynous, nearly impossible to rec-

  oncile with the Cheryl of Vero’s teen years, the Cheryl who played

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  Vero’s big sister on “family holidays” where the resort staff encouraged

  this delusion. “Mother—no! Sister, yes, I believe that. Same beauti-

  ful eyes. But mother and daughter? Too impossible!” The young men

  would sit skin-to-skin with Cheryl for the rest of the night, while

  she paid for their Cuba Libres. This is the Cheryl who still domi-

  nates Vero’s recollections, but if she squints hard enough to hold her

  memories at bay, she can see what she otherwise misses: Cheryl is an

  old woman now. A relic. A curious remnant of a time that has come

  and gone.

  The sun has roasted Eliot’s nose and cheeks. They’re the colour

  of steak, medium-well. But he runs off before Vero can accost him

  with sunscreen. Without his rambling sentences, the silence between

  LiLi and Vero grows. Vero should be working. She’s supposed to be

  working. This is the sole justification for LiLi’s presence in their life:

  Vero’s work. But Vero stretches her legs out on the grass and decides

  she deserves more time in the sun. Five more minutes.

  “I put some sunscreen on Eliot, Vero. I be right back.”

  Vero lies back in the grass, raising her arm against the sun, listening

  to JJ’s nonsensical rhymes above her. “Bah hay koo boh…munti…sari”

  and other gibberish. Vero focuses so intently on making sense out of

  Jamal’s sounds that she doesn’t realize LiLi has returned until she

  hears her voice.

  “Maybe I say that too,” LiLi says, quietly.

  Vero rolls her head to see LiLi sitting on the grass next to her and

  looking up the hill, where Jamal still pulls at the flower petals while

  Eliot recites, “I-love-mommy, I-love-her-not.”

  “If you ask me that question in the winter, if I miss my home, I

  say same. Every single day.” She glances at Vero then, and Vero rolls

  toward her, nearly slides an arm around her waist, pulling her close,

  warm in the sun. She imagines whispering near LiLi’s ear, I know,

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  LiLi, I know. They could talk about loneliness, not like sisters, maybe, but like friends. Even good friends. LiLi would admit, Yes, yes, I am

  lonely. Vero imagines them having this conversation cross-legged on

  LiLi’s single bed, under the posters that LiLi has never taken down

  (though she has removed the photos of her family). I understand, LiLi,

  Vero will say with her hands cupped around a pottery mug warmed

  by tea, I really do.

  But LiLi’s face lifts. They are there, on the damp lawn with the

  lawn-mower roaring next door, and Eliot and Jamal squabbling over

  deflowered daisies. “Now summer comes,” LiLi pushes her small

  hands into the ground, bounces to her size-five feet. “Things get

  better.” Playfully she throws herself into the middle of the boys’ feud,

  distracting Eliot and Jamal easily. Rolling on the grass with the two

  of them, LiLi looks like a teenager.

  Why does Vero want to share a portion of LiLi’s pain?

  She does not know.

  ◊◊◊

  Shane has introduced weekly childcare meetings. Left to chance, too

  many things go wrong, and there are too many miscommunications. That’s

  the concern. Vero can’t even think these words without feeling that

  Shane is the ventriloquist, she the sock puppet. These are his words.

  But, it’s true, there have been “issues.” One spring day, LiLi opened

  all the windows, forgetting how quickly it cooled in the evening.

  Shane and Vero got home after dinner to find the windows open and

  the thermostats cranked. A disregard for energy use, a certain oblivious-

  ness to household finances, a lack of restraint.

  More of Shane’s words.

  On Fridays, Shane comes home from the pharmacy early and he

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  and LiLi sit up in his office. For the first meeting, he invited Vero.

  She argued, though, that her relationship with LiLi worked better

  when it stayed less professional and more friendly. “I work at home

  sometimes. We share a space throughout the day. I don’t want to be

  the big boss lady and have her cowering around me. I’m trying to

  make friends with her.”

  But when the office door closes, LiLi and Shane on the other side,

  Vero’s exclusion feels wrong to her too. She imagines Shane sitting

  tall in the big leather chair behind his desk and LiLi like a kid in the

  wooden chair on the other side. “Just a few things to talk about,” he’ll

  say, “some logistics to keep things flowing smoothly.”

  LiLi will not like it. Men intimidate her. Plus, she wants so badly

  to be very good at her job. She does not take criticism well, does

  not understand the fine distinction between constructive criticism

  and unconstructive criticism. She will get teary. She will shake. Vero

  stands on the wrong side of the door picturing LiLi’s caved, submis-

  sive posture. She vows to tell LiLi not to take the meeting too seri-

  ously. Shane is Shane, she’ll say. This is just Shane playing at grown-up.

  But LiLi won’t get “playing at grown-up.” Language gets in the way.

  ◊◊◊

  Later that night, Shane plays at patient. He has hurt his back. Vero

  warned him to ease his way into the new biking season. “You have all

  spring and summer to bike,” she says. “No need to kill yourself at the

  first snow melt.”

  Now he lies face down on their mattress, and Ve
ro digs her thumbs

  into the base of his spine, just above his buttocks. The doctor says it’s

  a simple lower-back strain. There’s nothing for it but time. Time and

  Percocet.

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  Vero has taken two Percocet as well, to keep him company, she

  says. Now neither of them will be able to sleep, not fully, but they’ll

  have the most tranquil and dreamy of non-sleeps. Percocet blocks

  pain receptors to the brain, Shane has explained, creating a feeling of

  euphoria. Vero wonders if physical pain and emotional pain register

  as the same thing in the brain.

  Shane has already fallen into Percocet’s downy embrace, his mus-

  cles loose, eyes closed. She rarely has him like this, vulnerable. It puts

  her in mind of their early years, when they swapped secret stories

  in a kind of willful exposure of weakness, a way of showing, I know

  you won’t hurt me, I trust you. Shane told her a story about when he

  was nine, and the Schoemans spent spring break at the timeshare in

  Mexico. His dad played catch with Vince all afternoon while Shane

  ran toy cars around a sand racetrack. Near the end of their stay, Vince

  missed an easy lob, and his dad reprimanded him for closing his

  eyes like a girl. Irked—and careening toward his teen years—Vince

  snarled, “Whatever you say, fat man.”

  Gregory turned, without a word, from Vince and reached out his

  hand to Shane. “Let’s go for a walk, son.”

  He’d never asked Shane to go for a walk—or to do anything

  really—without Vince. But “fat” is the cruellest insult to any ex-ath-

  lete. Shane followed his father into the single track trail along the

  rocky shore. They must have walked for over an hour. Shane talked

  about his teacher who had a smiling owl statue that he and his class-

  mates could turn to face the back wall on days they were sad and the

  basketball coach who promised Shane that he’d grow into his looks

  and girls would be crazy about him when he hit high school and the

  girl with long braids and freckles across her nose who could run faster

  than any of the boys and how Shane hoped that girl was still in his

  class when he got to high school and grew into his looks, and if she

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  was maybe they could get married or at least go to the prom together

  but he should be sure to get his braces early in high school so they’d

  be off his teeth before the prom but if not, you know, maybe he could

  just smile with his lips closed, for the pictures at least, and he heard

  you could kiss with braces as long as the girl kept her tongue out of

  your mouth, and he thought the idea of someone else’s tongue in his

  mouth was kind of gross anyway, wasn’t it?

  Decades later, telling the story to Vero, Shane smiled as he remem-

  bered the giddy rush. He’d skipped over to his mother, feeling, See

  that? I’m worthy! He knows now too, just like you. Shane expected his

  mother to share his excitement, but instead, her face twisted in rage.

  “How could you do that to your brother? You know your father only

  invited you with him to get back at Vince! You hurt your brother.

  How could you be so selfish?”

  In adulthood, Shane reminded his father of this incident, hoping

  for a sign of remorse, an apology. You should have paid more attention

  to me. “I wasn’t even forty then,” Gregory Schoeman responded. “I

  wouldn’t have been fat. Not then.”

  When Vero first heard this story, she held Shane and stroked his

  hair as if that nine-year-old boy still lived in his skin.

  But on less sympathetic days, Vero grabs him by the shoulders,

  faces him square to her. “We’ve all got an excuse to be broken, Shane.

  I had no daddy at all.” She hates the way she presents him with this

  assertion as if it’s a contest: Who has suffered more? But once started,

  she can’t stop. “You have to make yourself strong, Shane. Nobody can

  do that for you.”

  As she massages, she leans forward, brushing her breasts across

  his mid-back, pushing her hands hard down into the solid cycling

  muscles of his ass.

  “That holiday you wanted?” He grunts the words into his pillow.

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  Vero is wary of this opening, recognizes a trace of the strategic in his

  inflection.

  “Mmm-hmm.” She’s found a string of pea-sized knots along his

  sacrum and thumbs it in small even circles.

  “I’ve been looking on the ’net,” he says. She picks the biggest of

  his knots and places the point of her elbow right into its heart, repo-

  sitioning herself until all her weight drives into his spine. He groans

  loudly but not without pleasure. “How about you and I take a real

  adult holiday?” The particular way he emphasizes adult worries her.

  “A little spice. Ramp things up a bit.” She wishes he emphasized little

  and bit, but Shane’s force falls clearly on spice and ramp. He wiggles as if he might roll on his back to face her, but she holds him tight with

  her thighs, grown strong from the Bikram yoga. She’s not done with

  him yet.

  Bikram has turned out to be Vero’s answer to Cheryl’s flake-fest

  yoga. Bikram instructors never chant. “Lift your foot! Lift your foot!”

  Roger bellows instructions out like a deranged drill sergeant. “Make

  your legs an upside-down L. Lock knee! Leg on the floor must be

  straight. The pose hasn’t started yet until you lock your knee. That’s

  your two-word mantra: Lock knee! Lock knee! Lock knee!”

  But Vero has her own two-word mantra: fucking hurts, fucking hurts,

  fucking hurts. The grounded leg aches deep in her kneecap, which

  seems ill-equipped to hold her full body weight and unwilling to

  do so without loud protest. Her leg in the air refuses to straighten,

  her hamstrings inflexible as dried concrete. After a class, her sweat-

  soaked clothes fall with a heavy wet slap at the bottom of the laundry

  chute. When she sees them again, LiLi has cleaned them and folded

  them neatly, ready for the next class.

  Vero is admiring the sharp rise of her new quad muscles clenched

  against Shane’s torso when she hears Jamal cry out from his room.

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  A single shrill complaint and then nothing. Vero’s skin still prickles

  when her babies cry at night. That pins-and-needles sensation alerts

  her one fraction of a second before the sound waves register with her

  eardrum, but she no longer goes to them. Most often, they can work it

  out on their own. That is better, she knows, in the long run. Last night,

  she’d made a rare exception because Jamal cried just as she passed his

  door. “It’s okay, sweetie,” she murmured, smoothing the sweaty hair at

  his temples. “Just a dream.”

  “Mahal kita, nanay,” he cooed back.

  Gibberish. Still.

  “He’s only two,” Shane said, annoyed by the quick furrowing of

&
nbsp; Vero’s brow. “Kids develop at their own pace.” It was the same empty

  platitude she herself would offer any other mother. She probably gave

  Shane the words in the first place. “You love to worry, Vee. If you had

  nothing at all to worry about, you’d worry about that.”

  Maybe he’s right. It’s his X-rated holiday scheme that has her wor-

  ried now. She tries to guess what he might mean by ‘adult’ holiday.

  Las Vegas? That’s something they’ve never done. Sin City. Gambling.

  Strippers. Hookers. She’s never even been tempted.

  “This line of muscle is nothing but knots.” Vero pulls herself onto

  his buttocks, crouching like a cat, presses a kneecap hard into each

  side of his spine. “It runs straight up the left side of your spine. Hard

  as a pipe.”

  After a month of Bikram, Vero’s muscles are pipes too. She watches

  them flex in her forearms as she kneads Shane’s back. The tyranny has

  paid off.

  “I found this place,” Shane’s voice is tight, as if she’s gripping his

  testicles rather than massaging his back. “Sort of like Fantasy Island.

  X-rated version. In Jamaica. One week.” The phrases come out pained

  in short, shallow breaths. “What happens there. Stays there. A break.

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  From real life. A little. Trip. To the. Wild side.” Vero forces as much

  pressure as she can through her legs and knees into the muscle spasms

  in his back. Shane’s hand grips the side of the mattress, arm rigid,

  face contorted. “Totally safe. Respectable clientele. All controlled.”

  He talks fast now, as if he’s afraid that if he leaves any space she’ll

  jump into it and pour cold water all over his plan. “Pretty affordable.

  If we go in summer. No pressure to do anything you don’t want to do.

  People do. Only what they’re comfortable with.”

  Vero picks through her memories of their life together for clues

  to what exactly he might be suggesting, and what she has done that

  would lead him to believe she might be open to such a suggestion.

  They once watched a movie set in the 1970s in which married couples

  at a party dropped their keys in a pail at the door. Wives picked a

  key and got the corresponding husband. Then something bad hap-

  pened—somebody’s child died, something like that—all the fault

  of the swinging. “Weird,” had been Shane’s lone pronouncement on