So Much It Hurts

by Monique Polak

  Ms. Odette hands me a brochure from her purse. There’s a girl with two bruised eyes on the cover. When I push the brochure away, Ms. Odette leaves it on the coffee table, right in front of me. I turn my head so I won’t have to look at the girl on the brochure. Her black eyes make me want to cry. “Iris, I want you to read this pamphlet. Then I want you to make an appointment to see me. I don’t just do career counseling, you know. I have a private counseling practice too.”

  Mom is the only one who seems to have forgotten her lines. She’s wringing her hands and making sighing noises. She’s obviously working her way up to telling me something important. “Iris,” she says at last, “you told me you remembered hiding in a closet when you were a little girl. I didn’t want to tell you more, but now I think I have to.” Mom looks over at Ms. Odette as if she needs confirmation that she is doing the right thing.

  When Ms. Odette nods, Mom swallows, then goes on. “Your father and I were having a terrible fight. Our worst fight ever. I told him he had to leave. That I’d had it with his gambling. That I couldn’t give him any more second chances.” Mom is speaking very quietly, and I understand now that she still feels ashamed of what my dad did so many years ago. “I went to the closet for his suitcase. I didn’t realize you were in there. That you’d gone to hide in the closet. And then…and then…oh, Iris!”

  Everyone in the room is watching my mom’s face, then my face. They are waiting for the end of her story. Only I’m the one who tells the rest, because as Mom was speaking, more of the memory came back to me. “You were shouting, and then you slammed the closet door— really hard,” I say. The memory is so powerful that for a moment, I can’t speak. “On my finger.” Without planning to, I touch my dragon ring, twirling it slowly round my ring finger.

  “Oh honey,” my mom says, shutting her eyes, “I’m so sorry.” When she picks up the story, her voice is barely a whisper. “We went straight to the hospital. The three of us. Your finger was badly broken.” She looks at my finger, shaking her head at the memory. “It was when we were waiting in Emergency that I knew for sure it was over between your father and me. It killed me that you were hurt—and that it was my fault.

  “And now”—Mom’s voice breaks—“it’s happened again. This man, this Mick, he’s hurt you…and I wasn’t there to prevent it. Honestly, Iris, I don’t know what I did wrong. I just don’t know. I always did my best with you.”

  It’s Mrs. Karpman who finally tells Mom to cut it out. “Has it occurred to you, dear,” she says, “that this…this situation…isn’t about you? It’s about Iris.”

  No one lets me get a word in. Maybe that’s how interventions are supposed to work. Though I’m beginning to suspect this isn’t exactly a textbook intervention.

  I haven’t always been good at standing up for myself. I realize I need to stand up for myself now. “All right then, listen up,” I say to all of them, and the determination in my voice seems to catch everyone by surprise. “I need you to leave. Now. All of you.”

  Tommy is the first to get up from the couch.

  Katie does not budge. “What about our intervention?” she asks. “Did it work?”

  Mrs. Karpman pokes Katie in the elbow. “Give her time,” Mrs. Karpman tries to whisper, but we can all hear her.

  Mom won’t stop hugging me. “I love you so much, Iris. I’m so sorry for everything. I’m sorry I wasn’t there to protect you. I’m sorry I wasn’t more honest. Will you at least think about what we said?”

  Ms. Odette moves the brochure closer to the edge of the coffee table.

  Ms. Cameron sighs dramatically when she passes the hole Mick punched in the wall.

  I agree to think about what they’ve said.

  If I didn’t, they might never have left.

  CHAPTER 32

  “And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain

  To tell my story.” —HAMLET, ACT 5, SCENE 2

  I toss Ms. Odette’s brochure into the recycling box, careful not to look at the battered girl on the cover. Now all that’s left from the intervention are two empty pizza cartons and the smell of Ms. Cameron’s patchouli perfume. Just as I’m thinking how relieved I am to be alone, someone buzzes from the lobby. I decide not to answer, but whoever it is keeps buzzing.

  I drag myself to the intercom.

  “Yes,” I say.

  “Iris, I need to come back upstairs.” It’s my mom. What can she want from me now?

  I sigh into the intercom, then buzz her in.

  “I was halfway home when I realized I had to come back,” she says when we’re sitting on opposite ends of Mick’s leather couch. William Shakespeare has come out from under the couch, and now he leaps up onto it, settling himself on one of the zebra pillows.

  “That’s William Shakespeare,” I tell her. “He’s mine.”

  “He’s beautiful,” Mom says.

  William Shakespeare purrs at the compliment.

  Mom starts to reach out for my hand, then folds her hands back in her lap. “I’m sorry about tonight, Iris. I know it must have been overwhelming with all of us barging in here the way we did.” She looks around the loft as if she can still see the others. I watch as her eyes linger for a moment on the print of the Bonsecours Market, which I hung back on the wall after everyone left.

  “It was pretty bad.”

  Mom looks down at her hands. “My parents tried to talk me out of marrying your father.”

  “I take it you didn’t listen.” I don’t say what I’m thinking: that if she hadn’t married him, I might never have been born.

  “There’s something you need to understand, Iris. I was crazy in love with him.” The words sound strange coming from my mom. Crazy in love? My mom is the least crazy person I know. She might as well have told me she is fluent in Swahili or moonlights as a belly dancer. When she looks up at me, her eyes are misty. “When we were together, the world changed for me. Things came alive in a way they never had before.” Mom smiles a little at the memory. “He wasn’t a bad man, Iris, but he was bad for me. That’s why I had to make him leave. And why I insisted that there be no contact between the two of you. He understood.”

  Because I don’t know what to say, I don’t say anything. My father did not abandon me. He wanted to stay in my life, but that would have been too hard for my mom. He respected her wishes. Could that have been his gift to me?

  Mom gets up from the couch. “I’m going to get out of your way now,” she says, tucking her purse under her arm. Before she goes, she kisses my forehead.

  When I’m alone again, I go to stand by the window. I’m afraid that if I keep sitting on the couch, I’ll hear the voices from the intervention in my head. From up here, the yellow lights from the streetlamps along Cavendish Boulevard make a golden chain.

  I think about my mom and my dad. I try to picture them when they were my age. Crazy in love. Not a bad man. But bad for me. I had to make him leave.

  What kind of man is Mick? I walk over to the table and pick up my cellphone. It’s after 9:00 PM. Why hasn’t he phoned or texted? He knows I’m waiting for news from him. Maybe the Australian cell-phone network is down. No, that’s a crazy idea. He’ll phone soon. I know he will.

  I love him. I always will, even if we’ve had some rough patches. No one can ever talk me out of that. Mick has so many qualities I love and admire—he’s playful, he’s confident, he’s creative. I want to be all those things too. Maybe those traits are somewhere in me too, waiting to come out. Why else would they matter so much to me?

  But maybe Mom, Mrs. Karpman, Ms. Cameron, Ms. Odette, Katie and Tommy are on to something. Mick’s not good for me. It’s not good for me that he can’t control his temper. It’s not good for me that he sometimes gets violent. I do worry that even if he wants to change, he won’t be able to. When Mick gets in a dark mood, well, the mood is bigger than he is.

  This doesn’t mean I’m going to break off with him forever.

  But something’s changed. Something inside me feels
as if it’s moved, made room for something else.

  For the first time, it feels like I have a choice.

  If Shakespeare was right and all the world’s a stage, I should be able to write my own play, shouldn’t I? I should be able to come up with my own ending—and I don’t want to end up like Ophelia.

  Ms. Cameron had an affair with Mick, and he hit her too. Just like he must have hit Millicent.

  I wish I could talk to Millicent.

  Maybe I can.

  I do the math in my head. It’s almost 12:30 PM on Monday in Melbourne. What if I email the Victorian College of the Arts at the University of Melbourne and tell them I am trying to get in touch with someone named Millicent Temple? I compose the email message in my head before I key it in.

  My name is Iris Wagner. I am trying to reach someone named Millicent Temple. I saw her in one of the promotional videos posted on your site. It is a personal matter, but please tell her it’s urgent. My email is iriswagneractor@ gmail.com; my phone number is 514-207-1212

  I press Send before I can change my mind. There, it’s done.

  I go to bed before ten. I don’t dream of dark forests or airports. I don’t dream at all.

  The vibration of the cell phone on my pillow wakes me. The first four numbers on the display are 613. Melbourne. “Mick!” I say.

  “Mick?” a woman’s voice asks. “Is that what this is about? Mick Horton?”

  “Millicent?” My hands are shaking. I can’t believe I’m talking to Millicent.

  “Is this Iris?” she asks. “I got a message from you. You said it was urgent.”

  “Have you seen Mick? Is he okay?”

  “I don’t ever want to see Mick Horton again. How do you know him?”

  “I—I’m his girlfriend.”

  I can hear Millicent suck in her breath.

  “What did he do to you?” I ask. Part of me already knows.

  But instead of answering, Millicent asks me a question. “Does he hit you?”

  I try to say yes, but I can’t.

  “He must have, right? That’s why you’re calling me, isn’t it? You need to keep away from him, Iris. I wish someone had told me that. But there was no one to tell me.”

  “What did he do to you?” I ask again.

  I think I hear Millicent lighting up a cigarette. “He hit me—a lot. Always in my face. The last time was the worst.” Millicent pauses. I hear her take a drag on her cigarette. “I’m blind in one eye.”

  I’m crying. But I don’t know if Millicent can hear me, because she is crying too.

  When I hang up, it’s four in the morning, and I know I won’t be able to fall back asleep. So I get out of bed, and I start packing up the stolen clothes. After school, I’ll take them back to Forever 21. I’ll leave them on a counter when no one’s looking.

  Or maybe I can find a way to tell someone what really happened—how I stole the clothes because I was afraid to stand up to my boyfriend. Because I lost myself, but now I am beginning to find myself again. If this is my story, telling the truth would make a better ending.

  When the clothes are packed, I rescue Ms. Odette’s brochure from the recycling box. It isn’t easy, but I force my eyes to meet the girl’s on the cover of the brochure. It’s as if I can feel her pain. And yet she agreed to be photographed. She must have thought it was important to let other girls know what she went through.

  I am connected to that girl, and the two of us are connected to Millicent and Ms. Cameron.

  I lay the brochure on the table, facing down. I’m not ready to read it yet. Maybe tomorrow I will be.

  When my phone vibrates again, I can tell from the 613 number that it’s another call from Melbourne. This time, it has to be Mick. For a moment, my heart leaps, but then it’s as if I can feel it flutter back down in my chest.

  I watch as the phone continues to vibrate on the coffee table.

  Tender yourself more dearly.

  Sometimes a person has to be tough on herself; other times she’s got to be gentle, cut herself some slack. It depends on the situation. Sometimes being tough is the only way to tender yourself more dearly. After you’ve been tough, then you need to be gentle with yourself again.

  I don’t answer Mick’s call. When the phone stops vibrating, I turn it off.

  Tomorrow, I’ll pack up the rest of my stuff. And I’ll phone Mick and tell him what I’ve decided—that part of me will always love him, that I’ll always be grateful for what he taught me, but that I have to let him go.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I am grateful to author Sheree Fitch, who, in a writing workshop, asked us to write the blurb for the book we most wanted to read. The blurb I wrote was very close to a synopsis of this book. Thanks also to Montreal psychotherapist Louise Dessertine and Marianopolis College counseling psychologist Lesley Lacate for helping me understand why some young women end up in abusive relationships and why it can be so difficult for them to leave. Thanks to the terrific team at Orca Book Publishers. Thanks to art director, Teresa Bubela, for the gift of a perfect cover. Deepest thanks to my editor, Sarah N. Harvey, who is both gentle and tough, for understanding how much this story means to me and for her wise guidance. Thanks to my friends: author Rina Singh, for being there for me in dark days and whose friendship has never wavered, and Viva Singer, for listening, reading and making me laugh. And thanks, as always, to the two big loves of my life: Alicia Melamed, for being my sunshine and heart’s delight, and Michael Shenker, for making everything better.

  SO MUCH IT HURTS is Monique Polak’s fourteenth novel for young adults. Her historical novel, What World Is Left, won the 2009 Quebec Writers’ Federation Prize for Children’s and Young Adult Literature. In addition to writing fiction, Monique teaches English and Humanities at Marianopolis College in Montreal. She is also an active freelance journalist whose work appears in the Montreal Gazette and in Postmedia publications across Canada.