by Kris Bertin
For Coady, what I wanted to say to Christy was:
You shouldn’t have come back.
And I wish I would have.
***
Our falling out wasn’t gradual, but there was no real confrontation, either.
One day she just looked at me and felt it. That I had lost affection for her. She didn’t seem surprised by it, which was somehow hurtful to me. Like it was a foregone conclusion that I would one day take my kindness away, and she was just waiting around for it to happen. I think this was another thing she and people like her were naturally good at. Knowing when to give up.
By this time—four years after we first met—Gorman had full-blown emphysema, requiring an oxygen tank, steroid inhalers, and constant care. But enough had changed with Christy that I couldn’t help but notice her transformation. Dan was gone, their house on the hill was empty, and she was engaged to one of the Grangers.
She was going to marry one of their grandsons, the one with the motorbike and the hair that was just long enough to still be acceptable to his family, the one who was only twenty-nine but was already involved with real estate, and was working on starting a company selling small boats and watercraft. If the Grangers had bad feelings about this partnership (and I’m sure they did) they kept it to themselves. When they mentioned her, it was as if she were a perfectly suitable candidate for their son. Not only did they harbour no ill will towards her, it was as if they never had.
Connie Granger would look at me with conviction and say:
“Teanna and Barry are so in love. Like I’ve never seen.”
Christy was called Teanna now, I should add.
That happened sometime after Dan left, but before she cut her hair down to a black little bob, back when she was in the middle of shifting into her new self. When she first started experimenting with dresses and sweaters, pantsuits, but didn’t yet have the hang of it. When things were uneven; when she’d pair something too risqué with something a grandmother might wear, and ended up looking like she was fleeing a burning building in whatever she could throw on. From behind his breathing mask, Gorman had managed to call her style Laundry Day Chic.
I think, actually, that I found out about her metamorphosis earlier than I was supposed to, before she’d even officially begun to change. Before he was really sick, and when he had yet to disown her, Gorman once took her to the grocery store when her car was in the shop. He overheard a cashier call her “Tina.”
This was weeks before the spell was broken, when I was still hers, which meant that when he mentioned it I defended her, like I always did. I suggested that maybe she introduced herself once, and the clerk had forgotten her name.
“I don’t know,” Gorman said, “they seemed like old friends. I think maybe it’s an old name. Would you be surprised? Maybe she changed it.”
But it was the other way around.
It was a new name that she’d been trying out for a while, making new friends here and there, introducing herself as someone else when she was somewhere else. A couple towns over, or at a new bar. A new gym. Then, once it changed, the lie became true. One day I used her old name and she corrected me.
“The paperwork just went through. I’m Teanna now,” she said with a smile, then spelled it. She presented herself to me with her arms raised like a swimsuit model. “Christy’s gone.”
I imagined that this was something she’d done before, and I wondered how many names she had before she became Christy Belanger, and then Teanna Belanger, and now, Teanna Granger. She mentioned a first marriage once but failed to go into it, so there was even another name before that, I guess. I imagined what a government dossier on her might look like, with identities on top of identities, nicknames, and aliases. I wondered how many you’d have to go back through to get to the real her. I wonder what she would say about it. If she even knows.
But after I first heard about the exchange with the cashier, I felt strange. I spent the rest of the day thinking on it. I don’t know why it was any more upsetting than anything else I’d been asked to answer for. I was doing something in the garden when something made me stand up, drop my spade, and come in from the backyard. I went to the computer, then typed in Name That Mean Spirit. I had never thought to do it before. I don’t know why, but all of a sudden, I could. Immediately, I had an answer to a question I had asked myself for years.
Google asked:
Did you mean Names that mean spirit?
The first hit on the first page had a whole list of names that meant “spirit” that you might name a little girl.
Under “T” I found “Teanna”:
In English, the name Teanna means free spirit or beautiful mind. The name Teanna originated as an English name. The name Teanna is most often used as a girl name or female name. Teanna is increasing in popularity.
I started laughing when I read it. Not at her, I think, or even about the situation. I wasn’t laughing at myself, either. I didn’t know why I had that reaction at the time, but now I think I was laughing because I was relieved.
I went through a brief period of disbelief—an hour long—followed by a very profound contempt. I re-examined everything, and actually considered the Pietres’ theories. About how she had her eye on the Grangers from day one, how she plotted to get rid of Dan. How careful all of this seemed. I imagined, even, in my lowest moments, a conspiracy. That she had driven into the house on purpose. I had gone too far the other way at that point.
The most I could offer her now was my respect. She didn’t make me sad anymore, didn’t elicit emotion from me. She certainly didn’t make me worry. Now I thought of her like a retired secret agent, like someone who could do what the rest of us only dream of. Someone who could bend people, contort them, fold them into other shapes like origami. Someone capable of frightening things.
I also understand now that it’s an impossible task to worry about what was true and what wasn’t. Of course, I assumed some parts of her story actually happened, because that’s how the best lies work. You take something that’s almost what happened, or half of it, and put those familiar feelings inside or next to something you need to be true. I had done it before, in a small way, and I imagined that’s how it would be done for a much bigger lie too. I believed something vague about her now, a collection of soft facts. That she’d been involved in crime, and drugs, and violence, though to what degree was hard to guess.
After she became Teanna, when I thought about her I spent my time thinking about the crazy things she’d said, the ones that had struck me as absurd. I suspected that these might have been the truest things she’d said to me, the real shape of a secret life. I had lost a great many of these facts, but some stayed with me. I saw them vividly, like amped-up scenes from a movie, though other times I saw the slowed-down and boring real-world version too, where everything was heavy with realism and there were no close-ups.
Christy, running out of a trailer while gunshots pop from of the walls.
Christy, opening a suitcase filled with stacks of money on her tanned legs.
Christy, weeping, holding pieces of a pet snake, hacked apart by enemies.
Christy, floating underneath a dock, her face pressed up to cracks in the wet boards for air while her house is searched by police.
I would remember a new one every now and then, something that I ignored the moment she said it but which stayed with me, way down inside. I’d be drinking wine or making dinner, sitting with Gorman, and suddenly it would be there. From over my cards, with the crib board between us, I’d look up and say:
“She said she was in a helicopter crash. In Barbados.”
And he would laugh about it from behind his oxygen mask.
“Did she fly into someone’s house?” he asked.
The best explanation I could imagine now was that someone had harmed her, somewhere along the way, and that all of this was the result. Maybe
not Dan, maybe not the drug lord (if there even was such a person), but someone. Probably her mother’s boyfriend, like she said. I believed that, but I also came to believe it was none of my business, that thinking about it was wrong, just like knowing her, being with her was wrong.
I learned to stop myself from thinking about her when I shouldn’t be. When I did allow myself to, I thought of the way she looked with her open, toothless mouth gaping at me, the denture in her hand. What she looked like with part of her face missing. I told myself this was what she really looked like, the real her. This helped me stop love from flowing up from my stomach into my chest. When I saw the toothless face in my mind’s eye, I would often think:
I probably don’t even know her name.
***
She spent most of her time with her fiancé, and at the Granger’s main house, but every now and then she would go up to her old house, the one Dan built for her, and go inside. There wasn’t a stick of furniture left up there, no curtains or light, but you could see her silhouette sometimes, through the bay windows, striding through the dark or standing in a window, looking out. Sometimes the doors would be wide open and we’d know she was up there.
The Pietres would come over to point her out.
“Would you take a look at what she’s up to now.”
Sometimes she would know we were watching her, and she would do something totally crazy. She’d do a dance on the lawn, or clamber up on the roof from an attic hatch and crouch behind the chimney, popping out from behind it every few moments. One time, when the sun was setting, she went into the little tower, then managed to find a garbage bag. She shrouded herself in it, then came running out onto the lawn with it over her head, circling the house like a phantom.
“She’s losing her mind,” Wanda would say. “She’s cracking up.”
“Definitely,” I’d say. But I didn’t believe it.
Christy—or whatever she was really called—was mocking them. Making fun of them for caring about her, for watching her, for being nosy. She knew they’d never say anything to her, never confront her, never admit they were spying on her. And she was right. When I saw her after a truly spectacular display, the next day, or soon after, I certainly would never mention it, and neither would she. But I believed, at the time, that none of these things mattered. I believed I had exorcised her.
Then one day, during the worst of it with Gorman, when he and I were back and forth from the hospital and there was talk of surgery, rehabilitation, and horrible things like DNR orders, Coady came over. Coady was always over, reading books from our library, eating from our fridge, doing her homework at our kitchen table, and in fact had a key to the front door, but this time it was different. This time she arrived wearing the kind of seriousness a child can only have on their face when an adult impresses the gravity of a situation on them. She had with her a store-bought apple pie in a white cardboard box with a plastic window that she presented to me like a stone tablet.
Then, with emphasis, she looked me in the eye and said:
“I know you’re going through a lot, but I’m here for you. You can tell me what you need and I’ll do it for you.”
And I understood that these words had been programmed into her by her mother, and that her mother was still here, still affecting me, still in my house. That she was all around me, and still needed me. That while the neighbours were watching her, she was looking down from her high tower, watching me. That she had plans for me, a use for me, and I didn’t have a say in it.
When I bent down and took the pie and thanked Coady, when she hugged me tight with her skinny arms, her black head pressing into the middle of me, I felt something familiar. Something I had felt before, but stronger. A kind of love that I understood was inescapable, and which had been sent for me from another place, so big that it felt like it was hanging over us in the sky.
Greta Johnson, Chairwoman
Ontario Board of Parole,
Suite 605, 250 Dundas Street West
Toronto, ON
M7A 2T3
Dr. Pat Ryerson
622 Dunn Ave., Apt. 101
Toronto, ON
M6K 2S1
Dear Mrs. Johnson,
I am writing to you in support of the parole release of Eric Codder, #98G8653, ONID 792756K. I am familiar with the facts and circumstances of the crime for which Eric has now served more than nine years. In spending time with Eric as his Creative Writing instructor, it has become clear to me that he has reformed and is highly unlikely to reoffend. He is a very intelligent, thoughtful, and talented young man who deserves the opportunity to rebuild his life and become a contributing member of his society. He is humble, kind, and very open with his instructors. Paula Emery, who leads Eric’s group therapy (who I believe has also written a letter in support of Eric), has also said the same.
Attached is a sample of Eric’s writing, which I find particularly compelling. The work speaks for itself, though I think it important to justify, at a critical level, the use of vulgar language, violent imagery, and the focus on inhumane and unspeakable acts. Eric’s story is what is now referred to as creative nonfiction, or what would have been called a personal essay in years past. The role of art, in every instance, should not be to portray the world as it should be, but to portray it exactly as it is. This is obvious to most readers, but I cannot stress this enough. Insight is the engine that powers good writing and I have to say that Eric’s work displays plenty of it.
Though Eric broke the rules outlined by the classroom supervisor in his story, he also raised the calibre of the story tenfold by doing so. I understand that a written report by a corrections officer condemns Eric for his efforts in crafting this story, so I thought it prudent to write this letter in his defense, lest this report be presented as evidence against his parole during his hearing. When reading the aforementioned text, be sure to note his language choices, his careful self-evaluation, his empathy, and the deep sense of loneliness that pervades everything. I think, if you pay close attention, you will hear the voice of a man ready to amend his past, to take a step back into the world, and try again.
Thank you for taking the time to consider my letter.
Yours sincerely,
Dr. Pat Ryerson, Award-winning Author
(PS: It should be noted that, with Eric’s consent, I submitted a modified version of Eric’s story to the prestigious New York magazine Tin Roof, and have learned it is in the running for its annual Fall Harvest Contest. I have spoken to my own literary agent on his behalf and there is significant interest in his written work. Eric not only stands a chance to become an upstanding member of society, but also—with some work—a celebrated author.)
ATTACHMENT
***
All Halves Made Whole
By Eric Codder
Everything was the same for a very, very long time.
This, I want to stress, is a very difficult thing to endure. I am not saying it is worse than pain or violence or injustice, I am merely saying that it exists and that is very, very trying. As bad or as repetitive and dull as anything might get out in the real world, there is always the stupid, basic solution of running out the door, an option which was closed to us. We were stuck. We were incarcerated, and for all the drawbacks therein, it was the simple drudgery of it which was the very worst part.
Then, one day, in the first week of February when everything was melting and freezing over again, The Big Man met with everyone to say that things were changing.
The Big Man delivered an edict:
DJ is not to be fucked with anymore.
The Big Man had once been a high school gym teacher, and even though he was sovereign ruler of our floor, he still looked like one. He wore a red and white tracksuit with a maple leaf on the back and breast. Slept in it, worked in it, lifted weights in it, ran in it, intimidated people in it. It was always stretched to its limit and you could plainly see t
he man’s might, his muscle and nipples and engorged veins, throbbing away underneath the soft fabric. In the hierarchy of felonies, murderers were the ruling class, and someone like him couldn’t be on top without this badge of honour. He was generally well-liked.
The Big Man’s Bona Fides were as follows:
Dozens of Christmases ago, in a log cabin in Quebec, The Big Man killed his wife, his father-in-law, and his own father, all with his bare hands. They had been playing cribbage. He says they were humiliating him in some way, but at this point in his life he gets to say whatever he wants about them and their actions. One can imagine the real chain of events but it would be mere speculation. The final word is his.
Because The Big Man was also the de-facto head of the block, any doubts about his proclamation were to be kept to one’s self. He was our strongest, toughest neighbour, and even though he had a real name (Jean Levesque) he was only called The Big Man. He was the person the guards went to when new rules were being implemented, or if something needed to be sorted out, because he had more clout with inmates than anyone in uniform. A one-time Aryan Brother and friend to the Hells Angels, he’d renounced gang life but still was revered by all. He’d lost his voice to throat cancer years ago, so instead of a thundering god’s voice, it became a creaky whisper, but still we listened:
“We’re leaving DJ alone from now on,” he wheezed. “And he’s getting that darn podcast show.”
