—Family comes first, Keith. Family comes first.
Family? Two and a half years and she still don’t think of me as family? Well what am I then? I was cryin’, sobbin’ out on the steps on a blistering hot day in June. The whole summer was comin’, but it didn’t matter shit to me. I just knew that when she went, she was gone for good. This was her big chance and she was jumpin’ at it.
She laughed at me too. Laughed ’cause I was weak and she was gettin’ stronger. That’s the way it always is I s’pose. The one who walks away first carries all the power. But she swore she wasn’t walkin’ away from me, that she’d be back, and that it was all good. Good for us. Time and space. Empty bullshit used to appease me so she wouldn’t have to deal with the Keith situation. All she wanted was to be happy and free and off to Toronto for the summer. I didn’t see it for the blessing it shoulda been.
We fucked like rabbits when we first met. Four, five times a day. Never did take any precautions, practised and well-timed withdrawal bein’ our only form of birth control. A thousand times I’m sure. Condoms were too clumsy, and the pill…well, the last thing we needed was more hormones floatin’ around. But, when I got the phone call two weeks after she’d arrived in the big T.O., tellin’ me she was pregnant, my first reaction was complete and utter disbelief. Not shock or anything like that. I just didn’t believe her. It seemed so fitting for her to go and make it all up so’s she could still have that grip on me, a grip which, as I’m sure she must have figured out by then, had been loosening up considerably.
See, I was well able to let her go once she’d gone, that was the funny thing. I wasn’t the volatile, blubbering, desperate mess we both expected me to be. I was movin’ on, makin’ a clean break from my last real connection with the Cove. Natasha. Now she was tryin’ to tell me we were gonna be bound to each other by blood for the rest of our lives? Like fuck.
But then I knew. I knew it was true ’cause I knew Natasha. It’s not in her nature to be that manipulative. She wanted a clean break just as bad as I did. I doubted very much she’d go to that length just to suck me back in.
We talked some more.
Pregnant.
I hung up the phone and went out for a walk.
How in the fuck did it happen? But I knew that too. In the back of my mind I knew that phone call was on the way. I was losin’ her, see? Or I thought I was losin’ her, and the prospect of it scared me. The night before she left she softened up a bit, for my sake I s’pose, and we managed a bit of routine, mindless and mechanical sex. But towards the end, some part of me wouldn’t, or couldn’t, pull out of her. Not right away, not before I’d left some part of myself in her. To keep her with me.
I walked for a long time. I hung my head in case maybe the heavens were watchin’ and might one day show me a recording of my reaction. The big camera in the sky. This is your life. But I never cried. I certainly never jumped for joy. I never felt a thing. I just roamed the streets for a while and tried to look the part.
When she called me up later that night and told me she wasn’t gonna have a baby, that she’d make an appointment in the morning and go alone to some clinic to have this new crisis sucked out of her, I never felt a thing. There was no question of morals where I was concerned. Not for a second did I even consider any other alternative. All I could think was that I was low on smokes.
We spent hours on the phone those few weeks before her appointment. Hours. She wouldn’t go see a counsellor for fear she might be guilted out of it. And I’m pretty sure she wanted to be guilted out of it. She was scared shitless while I managed a level of calm that surprised and impressed me. She’d call me up, bawlin’ with the panic, and I’d have her settled down in no time. You’d swear I was an old hand at it. But at the same time I wanted to throw it all in her face about how she’d tortured me, left me with nothing, talked down to me. Family comes first. But how cruel is that?
I knows she was struggling with it though. I knows she wanted me to say shag it, let’s have it, we’ll do the best we can. But I never once let on that there was any other option available to us.
Lyin’ in bed some nights, I must admit, I did entertain the notion of fatherhood. But bring a child into this dark and twisted world? Subject a child to Keith and Natasha? I don’t think so. I think relationships, like everything else in this life, are predetermined by fate. They’re fashioned around a particular time frame, allowed to blossom at a certain time, and are accompanied by a specific end-date, the end-date arrivin’ after sufficient notice has been given. Warning signs. Myself and ’Tash had gotten all the warning signs, received our notice in the mail long ago, balled it up and tossed it in the stove.
I slept with a girl named Monica on the last night before the big day, Natasha up in Toronto tossing and turning. Monica was the new bartender at the Hatchet and I’d only met her earlier that evening. We hit it off well enough and arranged for her to come to my place after she got off. I went home and slept for a few hours, not knowin’ whether she’d show. I was sober and I measured the consequences. I spent half an hour on the phone with Natasha, reassuring her that I loved her, that I couldn’t wait ’til she got home, that things were gonna be okay. The big appointment was 10:00 the next morning. Natasha. Curled up in her strange bed in the big city. A million miles away. I whispered things and told her little stories. I held the receiver to the cat’s chest and let her listen to him purr ’til she fell asleep. The dial tone woke her up five minutes later and she called me back to say she loved me and wanted things to be different from there on in.
Things were gonna to be different alright. That’s probably half the reason I asked Monica home to my place. Bang another nail into the coffin, have some other reason why I could never go back to Natasha. At 3:30 a.m. there was a quick tap on my door and I let Monica in. She handed me a joint and I lit it. She pulled a blanket out of her bag and spread it across the floor. That’s where we spent the night. I forced Toronto and abortions and all that shit down to the back of my mind.
The phone rang the next morning and it was Natasha, all anxious and neurotic. Only two more hours. The early morning sunlight was blinding and for a moment it stripped me bare. I saw what I’d done to her. Ruined her, darkened her. I wanted nothing more in the world than to be there with her, take her into my arms and hide her away. She’ll have to live with this now for the rest of her life and when she’s thirty, and finds herself with room for a child in her life, she’ll probably look in the mirror and spit. And all because I didn’t want her havin’ the upper hand.
I heard Monica runnin’ the shower. It’d be another couple of weeks before ’Tash came home from Toronto. I guess right then and there I decided that I’d leave her. For real. I’d be there verbally, say all the right things to help her through the aftermath. She deserved that much. But I’d never be with her again. It wasn’t gonna be easy, but it’d be a whole lot easier than tryin’ to make things work now.
I wished her the best, told her I loved her, put the phone down and slipped into the shower alongside Monica.
Natasha told me later that everything went smoothly as far as abortions go. They put her legs in stirrups, shoved a vacuumtype mechanism up in her, and sucked the fetus out into a bag. There was pain. She never saw what came out. The nurses were nice and gave her some Valium. They wouldn’t let her leave on her own, so she waited for the next couple to be finished and then they walked her to a cab. She stopped the cab outside some bar, stumbled into the street and went for a drink. She said she sat at the bar in a daze, not really able to get her head around what’d happened, took all the Valium and woke up at home some hours later, a nervous wreck.
No amount of sweet talk could calm her down that night. I would have walked to Toronto if I thought I’d get there in time. But over the next few days she settled into it all, started turnin’ on me, pointin’ the finger. She’d been talkin’ to a friend of a friend who said I’d been a bad boy in her absence. I denied it all. She hung up. I called her back
, couldn’t get hold of her. I left a hundred messages over the next few days, beggin’ her to call me back, to let me know if she was alright, tell me where it was I stood with her.
Another week went by and not a word out of her.
About two days before she was due home she left a message on my machine tellin’ me what flight she was on and the arrival time and not to be late. That’s all I heard from her ’til I saw her at the airport. She fell into my arms in an exaggerated state of exhaustion.
We never said much in the cab on the way home. I never bothered to ask her why she hadn’t answered my calls. I didn’t care. She was home. That’s all that mattered to me.
She slept ’til 2:00 the next day.
I nearly went mad waitin’ for her to wake up.
—They told me it might take up to six weeks before I gets my period again. So I don’t think we should have sex ’til I’m back on track.
There was something harder about her, like her anger was that much less of a front. I tried everything to get through to her, to bring out the old Natasha, but her walls were up and they weren’t comin’ down. She went home to the Cove that evening.
—I’m probably gonna be up home for about a week, Keith. I got a lot of thinkin’ to do and we got some serious shit to talk about.
Within ten minutes she’s out the door and gone. I spends the night pacin’ the floors, forcin’ myself not to pick up the phone. Jesus. How far out there do you have to put yourself before you gets a little humanity in return? How am I s’pose to handle the whole week without her?
She comes back the next day with a little bag of weed. We spends the day smokin’ it and rompin’ around in the bedroom. It’s like old times again. We’re like rabbits.
She smokes a cigarette beside me.
—I’m thinkin’ about goin’ to Halifax for a while this fall. Mom’s got a friend up there that’d probably let me stay. I wouldn’t have to pay rent or nothing.
Halifax. I knows it’s just a threat. Why would she take off again after she just got back? She’s just lookin’ for a reaction out of me. She’s still angry. It’ll pass.
—Halifax? That’d be nice. Maybe I could come visit?
—Maybe.
We lies there for a while, not sayin’ much. The cat comes by and nuzzles up between the two of us, purrin’ and kneadin’ Natasha’s chest with his paws. I takes a playful smack at him. Natasha turns to face me.
—Keith, what would you do if I told you I was never really pregnant in the first place?
She turns back towards the ceiling. I searches her face for signs of anything. Fuck. I could bring it all to an end right here and now. End all this sick, twisted shit. Maybe. But I don’t have the energy to come clean. I’m afraid she won’t get upset.
—Don’t say things like that, sweetheart. It’s all behind us now. I’m with you. It’s always been you.
We sleeps then, for what seems like days. I dreams that I cooks a fantastic big Sunday dinner. When ’Tash opens the pot to have a peek, she bawls and runs from the room. I looks in the pot and something small looks back at me.
SMASH!
Glass shattering on the bathroom floor.
I’m up out of bed in a flash.
I checks my bedside clock.
2:35 a.m.
11. The Devil You Don’t Know
Been tryin’ to get through to her for days. I don’t just mean through to her, like in the regular pick-up-the-goddamn-phone sorta sense. I means through to her. She was on the bloody phone alright, but she wasn’t really there. Always rushin’ off to some fuckin’ play, some big-shot nightclub with her new snort-mongrel, prancin’ and privileged suck-hole theatre friends. Mushroom season. Period cramps. Aunt Gertie waitin’ on an important phone call. Taxi’s here. All that shit. All that shit took its toll.
She was all so soft too. Make ya fuckin’ sick.
—Yes, Keith, for God’s sake. Will you listen to yourself? Come off it, sweetheart. Am I not allowed to make the best of this?
Sweetheart.
See, I wasn’t askin’ her to have a bad time of it. No I was not. I was only wantin’ to find some way to make the best of it myself, and she wasn’t much help. You should’ve heard her. Like I was delayed or something. She just didn’t get it.
—What do you expect me to do, Keith? Pack it all in, jump on the next flight, blow another few hundred dollars so you can sleep better? Lyin’ there with a knife, threatening to carve yourself up because you thinks I’m up to something? C’mon, Keith, sweetie. It’s always just you and me. I’m still here. Look, my cab’s here. I gotta go…I’ll call you tonight…Yes! For frig sakes, I promise. Now I have to go…Yes I loves you…Yes I knows how much you loves me…Look, I really have to go…I can’t do this right now. I’ll talk to you later. I’ll talk to you later—
Click.
Now what the fuck was that? See how cold? See how empty? Sweetie.
Leavin’ me to pace the floors and wait. Pacin’ the floors. Imagine a handsome fella like myself up pacin’ the floors over some young one. Cuttin’ myself up over some flimsy young one.
And she never called first nor last. She never called. Gone for the whole night. Out there somewhere. With someone. At something. She never called. You knows that hot, grindin’ sensation you gets in your gut? Like if something don’t soon give, like your bowels or your lungs or your goddamn head, then you’re just gonna fuckin’ explode? Splat. Coat the walls. That’s how I was feelin’. Like I had to break, smash, fuckin’ destroy something quick, before the whole situation destroyed me or I destroyed myself. That turned out to be my short-wave radio. Never did work right anyhow.
Some says that too much anger is a bad thing, that it cripples you and it eats you alive and all that shit. I says it’s the one feeling that makes me feel…whole. But enough about me.
During my long night of pacin’, one of the longest nights of my long, long life, I received a visitor. Andrew the Psychology Major. My old friend. Tryin’ to play me for a lab rat.
I pretty much lost Andy to the world a while back. I s’pose around the time I first started seein’ Natasha. But that happens to the best of us. We gets that first taste of new skin and everything else goes out the window.
I’ve known Andy since kindergarten. It’s always been a bit of a strange relationship, but never so strange as since he started on his psychology degree. Now he really understands me. Matter of fact, he understands just about everything under the goddamn sun these days. But there’re an awful lot of things in this fucked-up world that you can’t find no answer to in some grand and fabulous fifty-dollar textbook. Still, I lets him say his thing. I loves to be analyzed.
—Hates to bust your bubble, Keith, but there’s no camera rollin’. You’re not livin’ in one of them books on your shelf. So you gotta drop the romance for a second and hear me out. This is all about power and control, and lack thereof. Sometimes the very thing you’re good and used to, the very thing that keeps you goin’, gets taken for granted. When that thing is suddenly taken away from you, you finds out quick enough exactly who you are without it. From what I can see, you don’t like the new you very much at all. Natasha was like a warm and cozy security blanket that you could wrap around yourself anytime you needed to. Now you can’t find your blankie and you’re in panic mode. It’s very common. Irregardless, you’re a menace to yourself and I doubt you’re doin’ her much good either. Are you bleedin’?
Irregardless. Just fuckin’ gag me.
See how cold? My Christ, it’s a cold world we lives in. How do you respond to the likes of that? Really? What can you say? I’ve known him all my life. But I s’pose you can’t be too quick to lash out at people this day and age. The older you gets the less chance you got of makin’ new friends. Especially me. I knows I exhausts people. If only ’cause I have a desire to see things my own way. When I’m strong and happy, people tends to distance themselves. But when shit goes south, they comes out in droves to patronize and condescend. N
o one wants to see you up and on your feet. The world wants you on your knees ’cause the world is cold.
Anyhow, talkin’ to Andy is like talkin’ to the goddamn stove.
—I knows. Andy, I knows. But you don’t know how it feels. Try walkin’ around with a knot in your stomach the size of your goddamn head…Look, I knows something is up. I knows that girl. Something’s not right. What am I expected to do? Call her up, all nice and calm, la-de-fuckin’-da, ask about her new little friends? No rackets, no bullshit? Well that’s not gonna happen. I’m after puttin’ too much into this to simply walk away or roll the fuck over. Anyhow, she won’t let me be calm. She’s too slick. She plucks and meddles in that sweet little voice ’til I snaps. Then she tries to tell me I’m pushin’ her away. But I’m not pushin’ her away. She’s pullin’ herself away. Pushin’ me away. And you know why? Because she’s up there screwin’ some faggot! And I’ll get it out of her too. Supposing it’s five years down the road and she’s married to the star of the fuckin’ show, I’ll get it out of her. I don’t give a shit. I’ll get the truth—
I was barely underway before Andy mumbled some excuse to leave and did so in a hurry. Right. As long as he gets his five cents’ worth in. Why in the fuck do I even bother explaining myself? All my upheaval, all my pain, bouncin’ off his cold textbook point of view. I heard he’s gettin’ all Cs anyhow.
Pacin’ them floors again. Like the proper fool. Waitin’ for the phone to ring. Handsome fella like me. Imagine.
By daybreak I was after groovin’ a dirty path into the carpet. It was 8:00 in the morning before the phone started ringin’. I let the fucker ring. Ring, ring.
Then, watchin’ my arms reach out to the phone like I was lookin’ through the wrong end of a pair of binoculars. Answering a telephone in a little snot-box basement apartment, uptown St. John’s, mushroom season, on probation, and I would have been content to have died in the ditch playin’ G.I. Joe and never known any other life.
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