Losing It

by Alan Cumyn

  “I don’t believe you!”

  “Look at me.” And she held her mother’s shoulders. “Look at me!” But her mother’s eyes wouldn’t be still, they roamed constantly from one thing to the next. Julia took a deep breath, tried to calm down. “Look at me. Relax. Look at me.”

  “You must think I’m crazy!”

  “No, you’re sick, that’s all. But you have to trust me. I know what I’m doing. I trusted you when I was little. When you were taking care of me, I trusted you. Now you have to do the same with me.”

  “It’s all gone strange!”

  “Please, stop moving your head for just a moment. You have to look at me.” Julia tried to steady her but her mother fought it, grew even more panicky. “It’s all right. Shhhhh. Be still.”

  “Why won’t you let me out?”

  “Shhhh.”

  “I need to get out! I can’t just sit here for the rest of my life!”

  “Fine. It’s all right. We’ll get out.” Julia unbuckled her mother, unlocked the doors. Now her mother couldn’t figure out how to open the latch so Julia went around to her side and let her out. “We’ll just walk for a bit.”

  “Let’s not waste any more time!” Her mother put her head down and started to walk along the sidewalk. Julia closed the door and had to hurry to catch up with her, take her arm. They covered a block, then came to a red light, which her mother didn’t seem to recognize.

  “We have to wait a minute,” Julia said.

  “Well! What in God’s name for?”

  So they crossed at right angles with the green and continued along a back street. The houses were formidable age-darkened brown brick structures that pushed the boundaries of the small lots, with tiny huddling front lawns and gardens sombrely waiting for winter. Her mother didn’t look at any of it, was simply intent on walking with her head down in any direction. Julia steered them around a full block and back onto the main street. It was a grey, chilly afternoon and the coat she’d brought for her mother wasn’t going to keep her warm long.

  “Here’s the van,” Julia said. “Why don’t we get in?”

  “Oh! I thought we’d never get there!”

  Julia opened the door, helped her mother into her seat, buckled her securely and shut the door. Then she went around to the driver’s side and climbed in, hit the autolock, put her key in the ignition.

  “Where are we going now?” her mother asked.

  “Home to my house. We’re very close – five minutes. Can you last that long?”

  “But we’ve been driving for hours and hours! Endlessly! I think we should ask directions!” Her hand had started the rolling motion again, and she was looking out the window for someone to bother.

  Julia pulled into traffic again, was halted immediately at another red light.

  “Just hours and hours! Nobody listens to me! You never listened to me! You and your stupid poker nights! I told you not to go, but you lost hundreds, hundreds of dollars! And the stains on the rug! That was Mother’s rug, she got it in Belgium before the war. But you didn’t care. Anything to get out of the house. You said you weren’t going to bet. And you came back with holes in your pockets, the windows all broken. What was I supposed to think? In front of the children and everything. The drink is ruining us! And you know it!”

  The light turned green, but now there was the sound of a siren behind them. Julia looked in the mirror – fire trucks. She pulled over into a metered parking space. Her mother was rattling away, head down, talking just for the sake of it, it seemed, the same way she’d walked around the block.

  “You told me there’d be plenty of money for a vacation this year, but there wasn’t, was there? You gambled it away! Admit it! You gambled and you drank and now there’s nothing left but holes in the furniture. I asked you to fix the sewing table. You said that you knew someone. That was last month! Now I find holes and more holes, and what have you done? You went down the sewer just like your pals at the club. You’re all the same.”

  Julia turned off the engine. The fire trucks roared past.

  “I went down to the cleaners to pick it up and they said, ‘I’m sorry, madam.’ I looked and there were holes all through it. It was awful. I didn’t know what to say.”

  “Mom,” Julia said gently, but her mother didn’t seem to hear.

  “And then there was that other thing, you know what it is, that thing -”

  “Mother!” Julia barked, suddenly aware that it was her own mother’s voice she was using, the clarion call to lunch, to stop fighting with her brother, to pay attention this instant. Her mother looked up suddenly, her eyes wide, amazed.

  “Shhhh,” Julia said, and put her hand over her mother’s mouth, very gently, as if she were stilling a trembling limb. Her mother pulled back slightly but didn’t say anything. Julia started to tickle her down the side of her face. It was one of the things she always loved, light tickles. “I had a dream the other night,” Julia said softly, near tears, this was so difficult. But the tickling helped. Her mother stopped squirming somewhat, made pleasant, almost cooing noises in her throat. “Close your eyes, Mom.”

  “But there were holes everywhere -”

  “Lenore!” Julia said. “Close your eyes.”

  “Everywhere …,” her mother said again. But almost dreamily. She closed her eyes.

  “Do you remember the gentle place?” Julia asked. “I was a little girl in the gentle place, you were the mommy. Do you remember?”

  “This is lovely,” her mother said.

  “Whenever I had nightmares you’d come sit by me in bed. You’d tickle up and down my arms and hands, my neck and scalp and back. Just like this. Do you remember the gentle place?”

  “Mmmm.”

  “It’s a meadow on the edge of the woods. In a clearing. You used to tell me all about it. We’d walk through the woods and then emerge in the sunshine. The grass was so soft, we’d have to take off our shoes and walk barefoot down to the willow tree. Do you remember the weeping willow? So big. The leaves rustling in the wind, the sunlight dappling through. It had magnets, that tree, you just had to walk to it, lie down underneath it, the grass was so soft. There’d be the heat of the sun and the cool of the shadows, and the sounds, do you remember the sounds?”

  “Mmmm,” she said, rocking slightly, her head drooping. Just like Matthew. So suddenly running out of energy.

  Gentle fingertip tickles along her mother’s papery cheek and neck, along the edges of her ears, gone soft with age like vegetables slowly wilting in the fridge. In a few minutes she was asleep, her head slumped forward, jaw still absently working up and down as if worrying something out of constant habit and need.

  Julia stopped talking, continued to tickle so gently her mother’s face and neck. Just barely brushing.

  “Thank you,” Julia whispered. “Thank you for the gentle place. All those years ago. It’s wonderful to still have it.”

  Julia restarted the engine, turned slowly, eased back into traffic. “Huh!” Her mother said suddenly, startled awake. “Where are we?”

  “Oh no!”

  “I don’t recognize anything! For heaven’s sake! Where are we going?” And she started to fiddle with her seatbelt clasp again.

  “Home! My home! Oh, Mother,” Julia said.

  16

  Bob shoved the padded lace bra and panties, the corset, slip, pantyhose, and the latex vagina into a small black plastic Central Heights Hotel garbage bag, and stuffed the package in the wastebasket once and for all. Then he emptied his broken briefcase, put all his papers and books in his main luggage, and leaned the briefcase carcass against the wastebasket, since it wouldn’t fit in. He did a quick last tour of the room to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything: checked around the bed, behind the drapes, in the closet, in the bathroom. Then he returned to the bed, zipped up his bulging suitcase, and put on his coat. He glanced at his watch: 6:10. It was growing dark outside already. It would be good to get going, to put this horrible trip behind him. Julia
would be surprised, elated to see him home a day early. Saturday night! He’d pull up by taxi, it would be like that time he came back from Vancouver, after his flight had been delayed by a freak snowstorm. He’d had a cold for two weeks before that, she wouldn’t let him near her, but when he’d walked through the door that time she burst like a dam, they stood in the hallway and kissed and kissed, starving for one another.

  That’s how he felt now, starving for Julia. She was always more attentive when they’d been apart for a while; it was one great thing they could always count on. When she’d gone to Calgary to visit her brother’s family – he remembered it suddenly. She was seven months’ pregnant, had trouble walking to the baggage-claim area, her hip was so sore. He wanted to find a wheelchair for her but she refused. Then when he got her home she jumped him – her word for it – wouldn’t even let him get upstairs to the bedroom. It was right there on the living-room rug, the fat lady on top – again, her expression – and she climaxed in seconds, the only time it ever happened that way.

  Bob picked up his suitcase, walked to the door, opened it, looked behind him one last time to check the room, and nearly ran over Sienna, who was standing with her knuckles raised, ready to knock.

  “Jesus!” he said.

  “Oh, Bob. Oh, there you are!” she said, and stepped back slightly and then forward again, almost into his arms. He should have embraced her. Clearly she wanted him to, but he stopped himself, and she stiffened. “You’re leaving?” she asked.

  “It’s an, um, emergency,” he said.

  “What’s happened?”

  “It’s something with my mother-in-law. I have to get back, Julia needs me.” Julia. The first time he’d used her name in front of Sienna. It worked like a talisman. Julia. Now she was real and the sugar-castle world he’d constructed would be washed away, as it had to be.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry to hear that,” Sienna said. He stood with the door half opened, leaning against his back. “When does your flight leave?” she asked.

  “In an hour and a half,” he said. “But I have to go now. Who knows what the traffic will be like?”

  “Yes,” she said, and they looked at one another in silence. She seemed nearly in tears. Bob looked away. Just get down the hall, he thought.

  “I’m sorry to leave this way,” he said abruptly. “We’ll talk next week, all right?”

  “Next week?” she said, her voice brittle. She’d have to move for him to get by. Or he’d have to touch her.

  “Yes. Is that all right?” He looked at his watch again.

  She said, “Fine, sure,” but didn’t move.

  “Could I get my poems back at least?” she asked finally. Her eyes were puffy and the “at least” hurt.

  “Oh. Yes, of course!” Bob said. He started fiddling with his suitcase zipper, but was cramped for room. “Here,” he said finally, “come on in,” and he pulled the heavy bag back into the room and onto the bed. Then he unzipped it, found the folder with her poems, and handed it over. “They’re really wonderful, as I said. I’m sorry we didn’t get a chance to talk about them properly. Maybe next week. I’ll send you an e-mail.”

  She took the folder wordlessly, hesitated, then sat in the small stuffed chair by the telephone, pulled her knees to her chin and hugged them in a childlike motion. Even in her simple jeans and white turtleneck she was lovely. Bob zipped up his suitcase again, turned to go.

  “If you have two minutes, maybe –” she said.

  “No, actually,” he said quite sternly, and then she was crying.

  “Oh, Sienna. Listen.” He stepped towards her. She held her face in her hands now, was bent over, her long black hair curtaining her face. “Listen,” he said again, and touched her shoulder. Then he got on one knee and kissed the top of her head. Just the once, for comfort.

  She tried to say something but couldn’t mouth the words. He rose and went to the bathroom, returned with the tissue box. “Of course I have a couple of minutes,” he said, handing one to her. “Of course I do.”

  She took the tissue without looking, blew her nose, wiped her eyes, then picked up another and wiped her eyes again. “I’m okay,” she said, took a third tissue and blew her nose again. “Did my eyes run?” she asked.

  “No. Your eyes are perfect.”

  “It’s just –” she said, and then she broke down again. Bob looked at his watch.

  “I know. I know,” he said, and kneeled once more, took her in his arms, gave her a fatherly hug. She really was terribly young, he thought, and he was too old for this stuff. “We’ll talk about it in a couple of days,” he said.

  “Yes. Okay,” she said, and stood up so that she towered over him for just a moment. Then he regained his feet and she embraced him, in a daughterly way. He patted her back soothingly. He tried to let go, but she increased the pressure and so he hugged her some more. Then she did let go, turned for a moment, and rushed to him again, kissed him on the mouth. “I know I’m not going to get to do that in a couple of days,” she said.

  He couldn’t find his voice right away, but finally he said softly, “No, no you won’t,” so they kissed again.

  “Oh God. Oh,” he said weakly, when they broke apart.

  “I know. I know,” she whispered.

  “Sienna, I can’t do this,” he said.

  “I know. Shhhh,” she said, and put her finger on his lips. Then they kissed again. She slid her lips down to his neck, kissed him lightly. “I had this feeling,” she whispered, “that we would be different. That we would connect on a whole other level.”

  “Yes,” he said, closing his eyes.

  “I’m not … I’m not like a lot of women,” she said, and kissed his mouth again. His hands roamed up and down her body, he couldn’t help it. She was moving against him, was rubbing the inside of his thigh with her own. “I don’t like … straightforward men,” she whispered.

  “No,” he said.

  “I like … twists,” she murmured, dipping slightly so that the pressure of his leg increased for a moment between hers.

  “Mmmmm.”

  “I just had a feeling … that you were the same.”

  “Oh,” he said. She backed him against the telephone table and began rocking gently against his leg.

  “Do you?” she asked.

  “Oh. Yes,” he said. Then: “What?”

  She moved away slightly, looked at him with a flushed face, tiny smile. “Do you like things … a little different?”

  He probably weighed twice what she did but he had the feeling that she was far stronger, had him surrounded, could crush him if she wanted. He needed to look at his watch, get himself moving forward, out the door, into the taxi, back to his own world. One glance at his watch would set it all in motion, but he didn’t feel he could raise his hand.

  “A little offbeat,” she said, and rubbed him with her small, warm hand right down his front. “Unconventional. Just for private.”

  “Mmmm,” he said, his eyes closed. It felt too good to stop.

  “I like things that way,” she said. “There are a few … unconventional things I like a man to do with me. But you have to trust someone so much, don’t you? To let down your guard. Let them in.”

  She unzipped him gently and he let himself lean back. There are other flights, he thought.

  “If you had something,” she said, “something so private, would you tell me?”

  “Uh-huh,” he whispered.

  “Would you?” she asked again.

  “Yes!”

  She pressed her body fully against him and nibbled on his ear.

  “Tell me,” she sighed.

  “Oh.”

  “Tell me. You can. Just say it.”

  “Oh. Oh.”

  She pulled her hand away slowly and Bob felt himself caving.

  “I don’t like macho men,” she said, and bit gently the edge of his lip, kissed his closed eyes. “I like to be in charge, whatever it is.”

  “Yes.”

&nbs
p; She rubbed him once, swiftly, then stayed very still immediately after. “I bet you like to lose yourself,” she murmured.

  “I like –” he said, and the words caught in his throat. I need to leave, he thought. I need to get out of here.

  “Yes, what do you like?”

  He couldn’t say it. No, of course he couldn’t. But she wouldn’t let up. “It’s something, isn’t it?” she asked. He felt flushed, over-balanced, as if the glue were dripping from his seams. “Please, oh please!” she pleaded. But he wouldn’t say. No, of course he wouldn’t. It would’ve been beyond this life. So it wasn’t his voice, not his at all that he heard.

  “I like to be … slightly … feminine, sometimes,” the voice said, and she smiled, oh, what a smile, the relief and joy that seemed to sweep over her, it reverberated inside him as well. It was all right, it really was just fine.

  “I knew that,” she said. “Oh, I knew that about you!” and she kissed him so deeply then. “It’s clothes!” she said, almost too loud, he felt like putting his hand over her mouth, but really, it was safe, they were in private. “Lingerie,” she said, lingering over the word. “I bet you like lingerie!”

  “Oh,” he said, all resistance crumbling.

  “I can’t believe this. This is so wonderful,” she said. “I am so … turned on by this,” and she stepped back, looked at him from arm’s length with her eyes bright with tears. “Will you do this … will you do this with me?” she asked.

  I will lay down my life for you, he thought.

  “I couldn’t bear it if you won’t,” she said, her face suddenly uncertain, as if he could refuse.

  “No. No, of course!” he said, and stepped towards her again. But she kept him at arm’s length.

  “I want to do it right.” She beamed at him. “Oh, I want to do this so right. But not now. You’ve got your plane –”

  “I could take another one.”

  “No, no, there’s Julia, you have to get home to her,” she said. “This will be outside all that. Completely separate. It’ll be just for us. And we’ll have to prepare.”

  “Oh, Sienna,” he said, and had a hard time finding the words. “You can’t believe how long -”