Between

by Angie Abdou

  those antics.

  Parties in the old sweet suite were wild in their own way. Once, on

  Ecstasy, Vero got a little flirty with Vince’s date. She and Vince both

  kissed her midriff, competitively, Vince raising her shirt, daring Vero

  to go higher.

  “Which of us does it better? Tell us!”

  “Keep going,” the date giggled, squirming under their lips. “I can’t

  decide yet.” When Vince wasn’t looking, his date put her mouth close

  to Vero’s ear. “Girls always know what feels best. You’re the winner,”

  she said, a flick of her tongue at Vero’s earlobe.

  Shane watched quietly the whole time, but he only mentioned the

  incident once. “Not with Vince’s girls.” That’s all he said. Those parties

  were tame compared to what went on today. Just last month, Shane

  clamped down at the pharmacy in response to rumoured “rainbow

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  parities.” Any dosage or frequency that hinted at suspicious behaviour,

  and he called the prescribing physician. Kids were allegedly robbing

  their parents’ medicine cabinets, mixing together the most colourful

  tablets, and popping handfuls of them just to see what would happen.

  “That’s not a rainbow party,” Adele had said.

  “It’s not?”

  “No, a rainbow party is when each girl puts on a different colour

  lipstick, and they all give the same boy a blowjob.”

  “How would you know that? Your daughter is nine.”

  “But my son is eleven.”

  “Eleven?”

  “Yep.”

  Shane dismissed these rainbow parties with one word too: “Sick.”

  Now it sounds as if he has his own “sick” ideas. “What exactly do

  you have in mind?” Vero rolls off him, spreading herself thin at his

  side. She wants to see his face when he answers this question.

  “I don’t know,” Shane says with a smile that tells her he does know.

  “An adventure. Something sexy. Fun. A little daring. You know, hot-

  ttt.” The phrases pile onto each other, teetering like one of Jamal’s

  block towers. Shane runs his index finger up her torso on the “t” and

  then puts his hands on her face, palms flat against her cheeks. Vero

  doesn’t recognize this gesture. He’s never done it before. It turns him

  into a stranger. “I worry about us getting bored. That maybe you’re

  bored. This trip would fix that.”

  “Is this about LiLi?” Vero doesn’t know where her question has

  come from, but suddenly it’s between them, breaking some hovering

  possibility. Maybe that was her intent.

  “What?! No.” Vero expects him to pull his hands away, but he holds

  her cheeks tight. “No.” His fingertips press hard against her back

  molars. “Why would you say that?”

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  “Just—” She yanks his hands from her face, but then holds them

  gently between hers, pulled into her chest. “Well, having a young pretty

  woman in the house…maybe it’s made you all—” Partway through a

  Bikram class, a moon glows in the mirror where Vero’s face should be.

  The whole room fuzzes around her. She has the same sensation now.

  She looks out of the window to steady herself. When the blinds are

  up, they have a view down into the valley to the lights of town, but she

  and Shane never leave the blinds up anymore. Instead, the streetlamp

  sends tiny beams of light through the shutters, spreading lines across

  the comforter over their feet. “What’s that word Vince uses?” Vero

  has her own words, but Shane wouldn’t like them. “Randy.” Maybe

  LiLi makes you randy. What a thing to suggest.

  “It’s only you who makes me randy.” Shane pushes her hands down

  his flat, taut stomach to the proof. “You always have.”

  She lets her hand be led.

  “The resort,” he says, “it’s called Hedonism. That name made me

  think of us, hedonism. Remember when we used to call ourselves

  hedonists? ‘If it feels good, we’re in.’ That was our motto. I mean, I

  was the Candy Man. We didn’t hurt anyone. We didn’t care if anyone

  judged us. Prudes. Bores. Let them judge.”

  She does remember, but only as if she’s recalling an old movie she

  saw just once. She remembers the mornings after more vividly, sex-

  sore and hung over, a toxic sweat that clung to her even after her

  shower. She remembers an inability to meet and hold Shane’s eyes, a

  twisting echo in her abdomen that she could only describe as shame.

  “We could go in August. You used to talk about girls,” he says.

  “About you and girls. I’d like to see that just once.”

  She tries to remember talking about her and girls. Maybe once

  when they were drunk or high or both. There’s something in her

  memory, just a hint—Shane’s face floating in front of her, his lips

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  moving not quite in time with his words. The kisses felt good, didn’t

  they? Do you think you’d like more? I wouldn’t be jealous. Not with a girl.

  I’d just watch. His eyes so sharp and serious, his hand so heavy and

  warm against her waist, she couldn’t laugh. She might have nodded,

  might have bit her lip, rolled on top of him, might have done a variety

  of things that could have been interpreted as encouragement. Not

  with Vince’s girls, but with another girl? Yes, she might have nodded.

  But that Vero was twenty-one. Not even the same person.

  Shane is as hard as he gets, the tip of his penis jutting out through

  the fly of his boxers. Vero circles her thumb and forefinger around its

  smooth head, wants to crawl under the covers and put her lips to it,

  only the way she’d kiss a crying child. There. All better.

  She senses fear. Shane is scared. That’s what this is about. One crazy

  week at a sex resort won’t make you young again. That’s what she wants

  to say.

  “How much does it cost?” That’s what she hears herself ask.

  “Not too much. Not in August.”

  “Who’ll take care of the kids?”

  “LiLi. My parents. We’ll piece it together.”

  That night, Vero dreams of Jamal at her right breast. He meets her

  eyes, sucking with a ferocity that borders on cruelty. His face shifts

  from desperate to fierce to angry, but it’s an adult’s expression of

  anger, radiating right from his pupils’ cores. When she turns her head

  away from the meanness in his eyes, she finds Vince, suckling on the

  left side, with matched ferocity.

  Vero tells Shane of the dream, but she substitutes his name for

  Vince’s.

  “It’s the Percocet,” he tells her. “Don’t worry.”

  ◊◊◊

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  “Don’t beat yourself up. Many couples believe they are doing the

  nannies a favour. Go with that. Think of how much your nanny makes

  here. One month’s salary is more than most women earn in an entire

  year back in their impoverished home countries.” Bern
ie often sounds

  like she’s quoting someone, but never more so than when she’s reas-

  suring Vero about her discomfort around LiLi’s seeming unhappiness.

  There’s a distance in Bernie’s voice as if she’s standing a solid metre

  back from her words. “You’re following all labour laws. LiLi chose to

  come here. She has a contract. She makes a legal wage. There’s noth-

  ing exploitive about it. So says the book.” Bernie pours Vero a cup of

  jasmine tea from her Teaopia pot and motions for Vero to sit in the

  black leather chair at the front of the nanny office.

  Yesterday, Vero saw Lito’s face on the national news. He has charged

  his employer with exploitation. Dennis, the owner of the coffee shop,

  has been paying Lito and the other Filipino workers overtime, but

  then he drives them to the bank, has them cash their cheques, and

  return the overtime cash to him. Everyone in Sprucedale knows

  Dennis. He swims laps at the Y every noon hour. He is a Shriner. You

  can see him on weekends wearing a silly cap and driving a little car

  to raise money for sick children. He seems like a nice Sprucedale guy.

  Vero wants assurances that she is not at all like this man. She needs

  Bernie to convince her that this blatant abuse of vulnerable foreign

  workers has nothing to do with the Sprucedale Nanton-Schoemans.

  Nothing to do with LiLi.

  Noon sun streams in the large windows. Vero’s skin grows sticky,

  her sundress damp at the back of her legs. She tries to nudge the heavy

  chair into the shade.

  “And do yourself a favour. Quit trying to be her friend. She can’t be

  your equal.” Bernie wears shorts. Vero has never seen her legs before.

  Her hard calf muscles, the shape and size of baseballs, bulge as she

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  stretches onto her toes to reach for another cup. Vero wonders if she

  rock climbs. They’ve never discussed how Bernie spends her weekends.

  “Here’s what you need to accept: You pay her. She’s an employee.”

  Three hard lines of muscle flex in Bernie’s forearms as she pours her-

  self some tea. “She’s not your family. She’s not your friend. When you

  accept the basic employee-employer contract, life will be easy.”

  Vero wants to tell Bernie that her menstrual cycle has synched

  with LiLi’s. Last week, the boys followed Vero into the bathroom.

  When Jamal saw blood on the toilet paper, his face crumpled into the

  exaggerated expression of sorrow tolerated only in toddlers. “Dugo

  dugo dugo,” he mumbled nonsensically, tears rolling down his chubby

  cheeks.

  “That’s okay, JJ.” Eliot patted the back of his head like a puppy,

  while Vero tried to deal with her situation without causing further

  alarm.

  “Poor, poor Mommy,” Eliot cooed at his little brother’s ear. “Just

  like poor, poor LiLi. When LiLi has blood, poor Mommy has blood

  too.”

  “The live-in situation is a bit intimate for that kind of detachment,”

  she says to Bernie. “Not everything falls neatly into the employee-em-

  ployer categories, not when you’re all trying to make a home under

  the same roof.” Vero speaks to Bernie but addresses her comments

  to a large poster by the entrance. “Making the Right Connections” it

  reads in big pink letters across the top. In one corner, a blonde mother

  hugs her blonde daughter. In the opposite corner, a beautiful Filipina

  woman wears a tank top that shows a hint of cleavage. She reads to the

  same girl, both of them smiling widely into the open pages. With the

  mother, the girl is tucked into her armpit, both arms wound tightly

  around her. With the nanny (and there is no question which is which),

  the girl sits at a distance, framed by the arms but separated from them.

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  Lower-case details on services provided fill the rest of the space.

  Bernie sells these services, but she’s never lived them. Vero decides

  it’s best to change the topic. “What’re you doing this weekend?” She

  turns away from the poster and tries to remember if Bernie has ever

  mentioned a husband or a boyfriend. Their meetings have all been

  here in the office over paperwork and tea. There has been drama and

  even tears, but all of it belonged to Vero. Heat rises up Vero’s neck

  as she thinks of how she’s exposed herself but seen nothing, taken

  but never given. Or is it the reverse? Given but never taken?

  Bernie’s small hands bear no wedding ring. Her nails, though

  painted a bright orange, are trimmed short but not bitten. These

  could be the hands of a climber. “You’re closed Saturday and Sunday,

  right? Any fun plans?” Bernie has the same cute pixie cut that Vero

  noticed the first time they met, but she has new red highlights, and

  Vero wants to ask where she gets her hair done.

  “I gotta get the hell out of this place, that’s all I know.” The

  curse startles Vero. It took just one personal question and suddenly,

  Bernie’s not quoting anybody. Her voice drops an octave, and she’s

  right in it, as if she’s been waiting for the invitation to rest there.

  Vero has never heard Bernie swear before, but it suits her. “This cow

  employer calls me up today and—” Bernie interrupts herself, smil-

  ing apologetically. “You whine a lot, but you’re not a cow.”

  “Should I be embarrassed to admit that I’ll take that as a com-

  pliment?” Vero asks with her lips touching the warm rim of her

  teacup.

  “Seriously. This woman, she calls me up screaming. Her nanny—

  that’s what she always calls her too, ‘my nanny.’ Never a name.”

  Vero’s drawn to the new gruffness in Bernie’s voice, feels she

  should be at the pub, slugging pints of Guinness with this Bernie.

  “‘My nanny has rubbed raw chicken on our plates. I just know it.

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  Diarrhea—the whole family! You explain that!’ As if I’m a gastrol-

  ogist. As if this woman’s intestines are any of my business. As if I

  really want to know about their diarrhea.” Bernie throws her head

  back and exhales loudly at the ceiling.

  “Do you think she did?”

  “Did what?”

  “Rub raw chicken on the plates?”

  “How the hell do I know?” Bernie aims all her hostility straight at

  Vero.

  Vero holds up both hands, palms facing Bernie as if she can push

  the anger back at her, or at least send it forking around her.

  “Look. It’s one of two things. Either the nanny did no such thing,

  and the woman is paranoid—likely—or maybe the nanny did give

  the whole family salmonella poisoning, which begs the question: how

  badly did they have to treat her to inspire that revenge?”

  “Right,” Vero says quietly into her lap.

  “Right?”

  Vero admires how much aggression Bernie can pack into the one

  word. “I just meant, yes, sure, that makes sense.” Vero hates the weak-

  ness in her voice. She sounds like S
hane’s mother: ‘I wouldn’t mind

  going to the market today, I wouldn’t mind having seafood for dinner,

  I wouldn’t mind getting in a round of golf.’ As if she can’t imagine any

  greater way to assert herself than not minding.

  But Vero’s conciliatory tone seems to calm Bernie. She pours Vero

  another cup of jasmine tea, gesturing for her to relax into her chair

  and stay. The flex of her forearm matches the tension in her jaw, and

  Vero doesn’t dare object.

  “I tell you, by the end of it all, I wanted to rub raw chicken on the

  woman’s plate.” She lets out a mirthless laugh, a single huff of air

  through her nose.

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  Vero studies the poster, tries to imagine the beautiful woman in the

  tank top rubbing raw chicken on the blonde mother’s plate.

  “This same employer—and don’t get me wrong, she’s not the only

  head case around here—but when her nanny first got here, this lady

  calls me up to discuss what she calls ‘the personal hygiene issue.’ ‘Her

  body odour is not a pleasant one,’ she says. ‘Well, Mrs Mc—’ I mean,

  I say, ‘Well , Mrs So-and-So, she’s has been travelling for thirty-six

  straight hours. I can’t think of anyone who would smell too great. Give

  her a chance to settle in, get some sleep, take a shower.’ I hoped ‘the

  hygiene issue’ would pass, but no. Mrs So-and-So stayed completely

  hung up on smell. She left the nanny ‘gifts’ of deodorant. A douche

  spray too. The nanny didn’t even know what that was. You should’ve

  seen the colour she blushed when I had to tell her. I wouldn’t be sur-

  prised to hear the bag Febreezed the poor nanny. Welcome to North

  America: You stink.”

  Bernie leans forward again, putting her elbows on her knees and

  letting her head fall between her hands. “Argh.” She shakes her head.

  “So this weekend: No nannies, no nanny employers, no nanny smells,

  no nanny chicken.” Bernie collects the cups and saucers. Vero watches

  her impressive calves strain against her skin as she makes her way to the

  sink behind the front counter. Maybe she’s a body builder.

  “This woman, yesterday,” Bernie shouts as if one last story has forced

  its way up and out of her throat, “asks me, ‘Do the nannies have sex in

  our country?’ I swear to god.” Bernie pushes her sleeves up and dips

  her arm into the soapy water. She waves her head when Vero pushes