1979

by Ray Robertson

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Hey.” Her water bottle was in her hand.

  “Going for a jog?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “In the cemetery?”

  “Yep.”

  She climbed on her bike. Her track-suit jacket wasn’t done all the way up and I could see a yellow tank top and white chest underneath.

  “Do you ever jog with anybody else?” I knew Sarah wasn’t a jogger; she didn’t play any sports at all, which was weird considering she was supposedly Allison’s best friend.

  “You mean like now? When I’m not training with the team?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Not really. Why?”

  “I figure I should probably start getting ready for football and I know you said the cemetery was a good place to jog—quiet, I mean, so nobody bugs you—so…” I pretended to be looking for something at the bottom of my newspaper bag.

  “What football?”

  “Junior football.”

  “You mean high-school football?”

  “Yeah. I mean, I know it’s not until next year, but I want to be in good shape when tryouts start. I hate jogging, but I thought if I did it with someone else it might not be so boring.”

  Allison climbed on her bike. “If it’s so boring you shouldn’t do it then.” Her brow furrowed as she squirted a drink from her water bottle into her mouth. It was as if I’d said she was boring.

  “No, I like jogging—I didn’t say I didn’t—it’s just that, you know, sometimes it can get—”

  “If you want to jog with me, fine.” Allison stuck her water bottle in place and zipped up her jacket. “I’ll help you get into shape”—she said it like it was her duty, that that was the only reason she was doing it—“but when I jog, I don’t chit-chat. I jog because I’m serious about it, okay?”

  “I know you are, that’s why I—”

  “And I’m doing it as a friend, right?”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “You’re a nice guy, but I haven’t got time for that kind of stuff right now. Next year is a big year for me—for you too—and I want to focus on my running. I want to win All-Ontario.”

  “I know it’s a big year. I’m not going to beg you, though. If you don’t want—”

  “Put a sock in it,” Allison said. “I’ll meet you here at four o’clock. Ride your bike and don’t be late.”

  Voice From Beyond the Grave Offers Otherworldly Counsel to the Living

  “I Know No One Is Likely to Listen, But I Feel as if It’s My Duty to Offer a Few Do’s and Don’t’s Anyway”

  ANYONE WHO’S DEAD can tell you what you were supposed to do when you were alive. _____ _________, for instance, born _____, died _____. Easy as pie, in fact.

  As an infant, exult in the indivisibility of mother and offspring. (All your life you’ll uselessly search for Oneness with the World, Authentic Connection with Another, Communion with All-Knowing God, and yet burrowing deep into warm mother-flesh is what you’re missing and looking for and will never know again.)

  As a child, bounce a ball against a wall, over and over again, expecting nothing more than that it bounce back to you. (Later, every dream you dream, every success you strive for, every achievement you actually attain will never be enough, will never be what you thought it would be, and only the thump catch throw thump of the ball will never disappoint, the doing of whatever you set out to do all that ever matters and mattered.)

  As a young adult, enjoy the gluey goodness of woman, the honesty of a hard cock, the stupid, corporeal strength of steaming youth that screams that you’re immortal and that the world only exists because you open your eyes in the morning and will it to be real. (Formaldehyde-breath and animal rot is your final reward; and the world never cared, hardly even knew you, has already forgotten you.)

  As an adult grown, love your spouse and love your children and love your dog and any other two-legged friends now—not later, when you’ll have more time and be better able to do it (sure you will) but now—and endure what needs to be endured to help them be happy and healthy and to lighten their load as they, loving you, will (hopefully) do too. (Dying in your sleep holding your dear one’s hand surrounded by all of your other dear dear ones is pretty to think so, but cold hospital sheets smelling of sweat and piss, and tubes and permanent pain and noise in the hallway are what await, here’s your nice little medal waiting for you at the finish line.)

  As an adult old, try to stay alive until you’re not. Keep: loving, hating, learning, wanting, doing, listening, looking, wondering, shouting, hoping, trying, and, yes, even fucking (or something like it). Make that sonofabitch in the black hood with the shiny scythe earn his belt notch when he takes you. (You’ve done nothing to earn anyone’s respect by simply growing old; no special wisdom or spiritual peace necessarily accompanies white hair and arthritic knuckles; there’s only one real retirement, and you don’t get a gold watch, just a stopped clock.)

  Of course, if you’re dead, you already know all of this. If you’re still alive, you’ll listen and agree and nod yes yes yes and not do it anyway, or only do it halfway. No matter. It makes no difference to me. It’s your funeral.

  ~

  We didn’t have a mailbox, only a cold, dead radiator at the bottom of the musty staircase where the mailman would leave us our letters, so one of us would grab that day’s delivery and bring it upstairs and put it on the kitchen table. Because Dad was right there at work all day and Julie got home from school first, it usually wasn’t me, but the day that the box addressed to Mrs. Walker was sitting on the radiator was one of the days that I got to the mail first.

  Even if it was sunny summertime the hallway would be dark, so all I could see was the box, not who it was addressed to. Ordinarily, all we ever got in the mail were bills and junk mail. Lately, there’d been university catalogs for Julie. She knew she wanted to go to UofT, but you needed to list two alternate schools on your application in case you didn’t get into your first choice, so every once in awhile, mixed up with a Bell Canada or a Union Gas bill and an offer from Lucky Dragon for one free egg roll with every ten dollars (before tax) spent, there would be a plump 8 ½ x 11-inch envelope postmarked Halifax or Kingston or British Columbia with the name Ms. Julie Buzby on the front. I never got any mail. There were birthday cards and Christmas cards from Mom, but you knew when they were coming and who they were from. I never got any real mail.

  I carried the box upstairs and placed it on the table. That’s when I saw Mrs. Walker’s name. We lived at 48 William Street South and Mr. and Mrs. Walker lived at 148 William Street South and we’d gotten their mail before by mistake just like they’d gotten ours. The Walkers lived in a tidy little blue house with white awnings near the funeral home and Mr. Walker sold State Farm insurance and had a moustache and was fat. Mrs. Walker didn’t do anything and must have been six inches shorter and a hundred pounds lighter.

  I usually dumped my books in my room and had a cold drink of something and a pee before grabbing my newspaper bag, which I kept on a hook by the door, and going back downstairs and opening the bundle of newspapers that were left for me outside our front door and starting on my route. I had the drink (Tang Orange Juice, One (1) Glass) and the pee and put my hands on the box, intent on bringing it to the Walkers’ house along with their copy of The Chatham Daily News, when I set it back down. I don’t know why. Maybe because all of the other times the mailman screwed up, it had always been mail addressed to both of them. Maybe it was because I was taught to always put your return address on anything you mailed, and the box only had Mrs. Walker’s name and address. Maybe it was because it was just a medium-sized brown cardboard box and when you shook it you couldn’t hear anything identifiable, just a swishing sound and a slight thud. All I know is that I set it back down and poured myself another glass of Tang and sat at the kitchen table and looked at the box. Until I couldn
’t just look at it anymore and had to open it. I took out the pocket knife I used to cut the black plastic binding that bound the newspapers and tried not to make too much of a mess.

  On top was an invoice from Lover’s Lullaby Clothing and Toys (Your Always-Discreet, One-Stop Adult Mail-Order Shop). I pulled away the delicate white packing tissue and removed the first item. It was a pair of red satin lady’s underwear but with a hole in the crotch where there should have been more red silk. Underneath another layer of tissue was a matching red bra with a similar lack of fabric at the tip of each cone about two inches in diameter. I poked my finger through the hole in each of the bra’s cups then placed it on top of the underwear, where I also laid the black garter belt, black silk stockings, and black blindfold. Underneath these must have been what thumped when I’d shaken the box. It looked like a red plastic banana, although not quite as curved. Then I noticed the banana-length embossed lines that looked like human veins and I knew what I was holding in my hand. I placed it on the table beside the clothes. At the bottom of the box was what appeared to be a baby soother, but it wasn’t for a baby. Whatever it was for, it was for the kinds of things the other things were for.

  I’d gone to the bathroom for another pee when I heard the key in the door. The bathroom was on the third floor, the front door on the second, so to attempt to beat whoever was there to the kitchen was a foregone failure that would only amplify my guilt. I washed my hands, something I rarely did, and stuck them in my pockets and started down the stairs. Julie and Angie’s shared shriek of laughter stopped me on the steps halfway down.

  “Hey, check this out,” Angie said.

  “What is it?”

  “You really don’t know?”

  “Not really,” Julie said.

  “Here. Take it.”

  “Is it, like, the world’s smallest dildo or something?”

  “Something like that. Imagine a little bit further south. And to the rear.”

  Silence. I started back down the stairs.

  “Ew!” Julie screamed, tossing the thing that wasn’t a baby soother into the air like it was a hot coal, just as I entered the kitchen. It bounced, landed, lay at my feet.

  Like one of those winter days when it hurts your lungs to breathe and your face feels like someone just slapped it and you’ve turned the corner and hit the open street and braced yourself for the wind’s razor-blade hello, I steadied myself for the smack of ridicule I knew I was due. Julie was who I should have been most upset to know what I did—she probably wouldn’t say anything to Dad, but now she’d have a bullet in her gun if she ever had reason to use it—but it was Angie’s eyes I couldn’t meet. I didn’t care that she knew I’d opened mail that I shouldn’t have opened; I couldn’t look at her because she knew I’d seen the same thing she’d seen—sex stuff.

  “I assume this is your handiwork, Mr. Buzby,” Angie said, hand on her hip, smirk on her face.

  Staring at the thing that wasn’t a baby soother on the floor in front of me, “I didn’t know whose box it was,” I said. “I didn’t know until—”

  “You saw the crotchless panties and the butt plug?” She and Julie laughed, but it didn’t hurt—was warm and easy, not hard and sharp—and I laughed too.

  “Yeah,” I said. “That’s when I thought it was Julie’s.”

  “Good one,” Angie said, bending over to pick up the thing that wasn’t a baby soother. Her top fell open and I could see the tops of her breasts. Her bra was lacy red like the one in the box. “Who knew you had such a shit disturber for a brother, Jule.”

  “Not me, that’s for sure,” Julie said. She was smiling as she said it.

  Shit disturber. Shit disturbing. So that was what I was doing.

  Chubby Hubby Drives Erotically Neglected Woman to Purchase Fancy Underwear

  “We Still Love Each Other—We Love Each Other More—It’s Just… Different Now”

  HE WAS TALL and strong and handsome, but that’s not why she fell in love with him. It wasn’t even because he was tall and strong and she was short and petite and when she was in his arms it felt as if he’d picked her up and placed her in his pocket and no one and nothing could ever harm her. She fell in love with him because he knew what he wanted.

  He wanted to sell insurance. He wanted to sell insurance, he said, because providing people with peace of mind was a wonderful thing to do with your life. She’d never known anyone who cared about doing something wonderful with their life. Just: get out of school, get a job, get married, have kids, get a house, go on vacation, get old, have grandkids, get ready to die, die. When they were first married and he’d leave the house in the morning for work—so handsome in his new Brooks Brothers suit, so obviously pleased to be doing what he was doing—she thought, Proud—I’m so proud of him. This is what it will be like when they had children of their own and she would see them off to school so healthy and happy and eager and she would be so proud of them too.

  They were already trying. But why did people use that silly expression—“trying”? As if letting a piece of dark chocolate melt in your mouth took effort. Like slowly sinking into a warm, enveloping bath was hard work. They made love. Not fucked, not screwed, not copulated—she and he made love. Constantly. At night when the darkness was an encouraging ally; in the daytime when, surprised by their own need, they didn’t bother to turn back the blankets and let the sunlight see; whenever and wherever a gesture, a look, a word, a touch sparked what was already always there.

  New trees grow too slow, old dogs age too fast, the future is always the day after tomorrow. Maybe. She never got pregnant. They made love less and less often. He was promoted again and again and got fat. It wasn’t as if yesterday he wasn’t overweight and today he was—he was still himself everyday, the same man she never stopped loving, that’s why she didn’t really notice it until one day, when he was in their bedroom in his underwear bending over to take off his socks before bed, she saw him in profile and thought, He’s fat. She was honestly surprised, like she suddenly realized he’d started to go grey. The next time she put her arms around him she panicked because she couldn’t find his waist. She pulled herself tighter to him, she dug her fingers into his back, she ran her hands over his chest and arms, but it was gone. She used to brush her fingertips back and forth across his ribs when they’d make love and he was on top. His ribs had disappeared too. Now when he was on top, sweat would drop onto her face and she’d have to use a pillow case to wipe herself dry. Once, they’d even had to stop because a drop of his sweat fell into her eye and it stung and she had to go into the bathroom and flush it clean. He wasn’t the man she married.

  It wasn’t even so much that she didn’t find him as attractive as she had before—love has a way of softening the focus, of blurring the bad and highlighting the good—it was more that he wasn’t as interested in her anymore. She knew he worked very hard, she understood that they were older now, she realized they were no longer honeymooners, but everyone needed to feel loved and not just to know it. She knew he still loved her; she wanted to feel it still. So she changed his Sunday morning bacon and eggs to Bran Flakes and a banana and switched from homogenized milk to two-percent and he griped at first but ate and drank what was put in front of him and eventually thanked her for looking out for his health. She instigated evening walks in Tecumseh Park that he initially said he was too tired to take but soon came to enjoy as much as she seemed to. He lost a few pounds and lowered his cholesterol, but a kiss on the cheek goodnight and a monthly perfunctory peck, stroke, and pump was all she got in return.

  She was getting her hair done when she saw the advertisement at the back of the magazine she was flipping through while waiting underneath the dryer. The company looked to be satisfactorily reputable, tactful, and sympathetic to the needs of married individuals and loving couples looking to revitalize the amatory aspect of their lives. What could have been, at best, uncomfortable, at worst, e
mbarrassing, was, under the admittedly awkward circumstances, a relatively simple and decorous process: you mailed away for their colour catalogue, you checked the boxes of the items you wished to purchase (they carried a variety of clothing items and adult accessories), you mailed the completed form with your cheque to the Montreal post-office box, and you waited four-to-six weeks for your package to arrive. Satisfaction was guaranteed, your money cheerfully refunded (minus the cost of shipping and handling) if you weren’t entirely satisfied. And, of course, it was all entirely discreet.

  She hoped and waited for the mailman.

  SPECIAL TO THE CHATHAM DAILY NEWS:

  ‘Chubby Hubby’ Responds to Charges

  of Erotic Anemia

  HARD TO HEAR, good to know, so it goes…

  It wasn’t as if he thought she was wrong. Not when tying his shoes in the morning was a daily challenge. Not when two flights of stairs was his own Mt. Everest. Not when his favourite pair of blue jeans didn’t button up anymore and there are only two possible explanations: either he was getting bigger or his pants were getting smaller. Her telling him—with her usual tact, compassion, and because she wanted him to be healthier and happier—was only putting into words what he didn’t need words to know.

  But this other thing—the thing between her and him and who they used to be and the things they used to do and what could be done to make it more like it was—wasn’t the same as cutting down on before-bedtime snacks and taking the stairs and not the elevator whenever possible. It would be easier if he didn’t love her anymore, but he did. Both of them knew they were among the fortunate few and that it was the extraordinarily lucky who were left alone as devastated elderly widows or widowers, a few years of stunned grief in exchange for half a century or more of having someone in your life worrying when you’re not home yet when you were supposed to be.