The Petty Details of So-And-So's Life

by Camilla Gibb

  He could hear Oliver mocking him: You actually believe someone loves you enough to want to marry you? And what about when you fuck it all up? What happens then? You’ll be forced to go into hiding. There’ll be an army out there. An army too big to defend yourself against.

  Rather than think about it, he found it easier to take the edge off the night by having beer for breakfast. When Amy went to work, he drank even harder stuff. The nights when he accompanied Amy were no different, just three times as expensive. As a consequence, he wasn’t saving nearly as much money as he’d hoped. And that scared him even more. So he drank even more in order to assuage the fear that he would drink his way through money that was meant to take care of them. If he couldn’t take care of them, he’d lose Amy, he knew that.

  In the bruised circle of his reasoning, Blue become withdrawn and sullen. Whenever he accompanied Amy to the club these days, he just sat by himself at a table downing beer after beer. He would exchange a few words with one or two of Amy’s friends and sometimes buy Larry, the manager, a beer. He generally ignored the customers, which was the safest thing to do because it could make you a little sick when they started to drool out of the corners of their mouths, but one night, after a week of bad dreams where men in gas masks were killing babies, someone caught his eye.

  A balding middle-aged guy sat in the corner staring at Amy, and Blue watched his buggy eyes follow her everywhere around the room. “Creep,” Blue muttered to himself. He had the look of the kind of pervert who would pay a kid to bend over. He motioned for her to come over, and held out his money—a couple of bills stapled together at one end—for a dance. After exchanging a few words, she started to move her hips in time to the music and peeled the straps of her dress off her shoulders and down the little length of her body. She spread his legs with her knees and danced her way down between them, her cleavage under his nose, her hair sweeping over his head and his shoulders. He kept his hands in his lap the whole time, like he was protecting himself. His bug eyes protruded further and further. Drool trickled out of the corner of his mouth.

  It took all Blue’s resolve not to walk over and punch the guy in the middle of his perverted face. Most men looked at strippers like they were unreal, you could see it in their faces—they knew at some level that it was the women controlling them, not the other way around, and that it was over when the song ended. A live porn video—without the possibility of pressing rewind. Then there was the occasional fuck like this who couldn’t separate the fantasy from the reality—would creep around outside the club at the end of the night, tell a woman she’d been asking for it all night long, wouldn’t give it up until he erupted in violence, and left her small and broken.

  Blue stared at the bastard. He saw the possession in his ballooning eyes. He could see him imagining Amy fractured, split, splayed on concrete. He bit his tongue. Drew the bitter metallic taste of blood into his mouth. Held it there like it was venom.

  When the song faded into a finish, Amy climbed back into her dress. But bug eyes held out another stapled wad of money for a repeat performance. She peeled off her dress and started to perform for him again. Blue was getting really angry now. “Fucking pervert,” he spat, drops of blood cascading down his chin. When the second song ended and she had climbed back into her dress, the bug-eyed bastard held out yet another wad. “Oh, no fucking way,” said Blue. As soon as Amy started to dance again he slammed his beer down and stood up. Amy looked over and glared at him. Blue puffed up his chest, pulled up his slouching jeans, and walked over to them. He pushed Amy aside and said, “Time’s up, buddy.”

  Amy stood there awkwardly with her arms folded over her breasts. “I can handle this, Blue,” she said quietly.

  The guy looked smugly up at Blue and said, “I’ve paid for this. It doesn’t stop until I say so.”

  “You don’t fucking own her!” Blue shouted.

  “Well, for as long as I pay her, I do,” he sneered.

  “Blue, it’s okay, I can handle this,” Amy interjected.

  “As long as you pay her, she owns your dick, asshole!” Blue shouted. “And if she doesn’t cut it off, I will.”

  The man had stood up by this time, and he was doing that “oh yeah” tough-guy stuff, when Larry came over and told Blue not to interfere. “Business is business,” he said to Blue. “I’ll bar you from this place if you keep interfering.” Blue backed down then and Larry gave the man his money back and said, “Maybe some other night.”

  “She can keep it,” the man said, pulling on his coat.

  “I don’t want it,” said Amy, walking off in disgust.

  After a day and a half of silence between them, Blue finally said he was sorry. But she was still mad. “You just can’t do that, Blue,” she said. “I don’t want you around me when I’m working if you’re going to act like a jealous asshole.”

  “It’s not that. I wasn’t jealous. It’s just that guy. That guy is a fucking creep. I swear, he looks like some kind of child molester or something to me. Bit of reality problem, you know?”

  “Blue, so the guy looks a little weird. He didn’t try and touch me or anything.”

  “What’s with those bills he passes to you? It’s creepy the way he has them all stapled together.”

  “How should I know, Blue? Everyone’s got strange habits. Even you. Sandwiching your girlfriend’s head between your knees while you’re asleep?” she shouted. “It’s not exactly normal!”

  “But I don’t have any control over that!” he shouted. “You know that,” he said, his face falling.

  “Well, that scares me more than anything! Certainly more than a bunch of bills stapled together.”

  After one more night of anger between them, Blue started making an effort to draw Amy close again. He apologized over and over, said he would never interfere when she was working, asked her if she still wanted to marry him.

  “Of course I do, you goof. I’m mad at you, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to marry you. What about when we’re married and I get mad at you? Or you get mad at me? Doesn’t mean the whole thing’s over.”

  He was amazed by the things that came out of her mouth. Are we even the same species? he wondered. We might both be from Niagara Falls but we’re certainly not from the same world.

  Just when things seemed to be getting back to normal, though, Amy realized they were nowhere near normal at all. She picked Blue’s jeans up off the floor and a knife fell out of his pocket.

  “What are you carrying this around for?” she demanded.

  “Just in case.”

  “Just in case what?”

  “We need protection.”

  “I don’t think this is the way to handle things,” she said. She couldn’t imagine him ever using the knife. But she didn’t understand why he’d even want to give himself the option.

  Blue got really angry then, yelled that she didn’t understand him, that some things he just had to sort out on his own, that she didn’t know what was going on his head.

  “Well, I’m all ears,” she said, hands on hips.

  He completely clammed up then.

  “I give up, Blue. You don’t want to talk to me? Don’t talk, then. You sort whatever it is out yourself,” she said, slamming the door.

  Dirty Hands

  Emma held a cup of coffee in her hand and knocked on Ruthie’s door. Ruthie looked like she’d been sleepwalking through a minefield, and listlessly gestured for Emma to come in.

  “I came to tell you that I’m going home for a while—just till the beginning of next term,” Emma said, sitting down on the end of Ruthie’s bed. She knew she had to drop the course and forgo the credit, go home and get her guts back.

  “What happened?” Ruthie asked with concern.

  Emma didn’t really know how to explain it. “Apparently I got a little carried away,” she sighed. “Thought I was on to something—still think I was on to something—but managed to piss everyone off in the process.”

  “That doesn’t
sound irreparable,” Ruthie said.

  “It was a bit more dramatic than that. I really can’t go back,” she said, shaking her head, her eyes welling up with tears.

  “It’ll be okay,” said Ruthie, putting her hand on Emma’s forearm. “I’m sorry. I thought it was all going so well.” Ruthie looked down and picked at a thread on the quilt on her bed. “It won’t be the same without you here.”

  “I’ll be back in the fall.”

  “Well, I’ll still miss you.”

  “I’ll miss you, too,” Emma nodded. Ruthie clambered out of bed and started rummaging through her dresser drawer. “What are you looking for?”

  “I want to give you something.”

  “What for?”

  “So you’ll remember me.”

  “I’m not going to forget you,” Emma laughed.

  “So you’ll keep me with you then,” Ruthie continued, throwing receipts and hair clips and dreadlocks on the floor.

  “Hey, I thought your hair was real!” Emma said, startled.

  “Extensions,” said Ruthie. “Here,” she said, holding out a brass turtle.

  Emma smiled.

  “My ma gave it to me when I came to Canada.”

  “Ruthie, I can’t accept this. Not if your mother gave it to you.”

  “Well, I don’t have a hell of a lot else that matters,” Ruthie said. “I want you to have it.”

  Emma rubbed the turtle’s back. Rolled the cool, smooth brass between her fingers. “Does it have any special meaning?”

  “We had a big tortoise in the garden when I was growing up in Guyana. My ma loved that thing. Told us it was almost eighty years old. She could tell by the rings on its back. My uncle said that was crap, but I still believed she could tell its age.”

  Emma told Ruthie to hang on a second. She was going to give her something too—something she’d carried with her for most of her life—the only thing she possessed that was as significant as Ruthie’s gift. But it wasn’t where she remembered leaving it. It wasn’t inside her winter boots. It must be in the pocket of one of her pairs of pants, she thought. She started with the clothes on the floor, and then moved through the pants in her closet, flinging them off hangers and into the pile of clothes on the floor. Twenty pockets turned inside out and still nothing.

  “It must be here somewhere,” she mumbled to herself, collapsing onto the bed to think. And then she remembered having taken the dinosaur tooth to the dig one day with the intention of showing Professor Rocker. He’d been surly and uninviting that day, something about a rejected grant application, so she’d kept the tooth to herself. But in keeping it to herself it seems she might have lost it. She wasn’t ready to give up hope entirely, but she wondered if the last of the dinosaurs had become extinct.

  The only other meaningful thing she possessed was the scrapbook of wild imaginings. She was a little reticent to part with it, but the words were indelibly etched in her brain—she didn’t need a hard copy any more. She worried that it wasn’t entirely hers to give, though Blue had gone without any mention of it. Wherever he had gone, he didn’t seem to need it.

  “But this is such a big part of your history,” Ruthie said.

  “I’m not interested in imagining any more lives for myself,” Emma sighed.

  It wasn’t the easiest journey she’d ever made. It was humiliating to have to go back home—to have to return to the place she’d spent so much energy on trying to escape. It didn’t begin at all well with Elaine saying, “Emma, you look ill. Have you started going grey?”

  Emma’s back arched immediately, and she was sure her hair was standing on end. “It wasn’t exactly Club Med, Mum!” she threw back.

  “Have you been irresponsible?” Elaine asked.

  “What kind of question is that?” Emma barked. And then it occurred to her that Elaine might be attributing her ashen pallor to morning sickness. What could be further from the truth? She wasn’t sure anything could grow inside her. It was barren ground for the miles you could stretch her intestines. “I had to come home, Mum, and it’s not what you’re thinking. I needed a break. It’s like I told you. I had a big fight with my professor and he suggested I’d better drop the course.” That wasn’t exactly the truth, but it was a hell of a lot less humiliating.

  “But that doesn’t sound fair,” Elaine remarked.

  “It’s not a question of fair, Mum. Listen—can we just forget it?”

  Despite the rocky beginning, Elaine put an arm around Emma’s shoulder and said, “Well, whatever happened, I’m sure you made the right decision. It’ll be all right.” Elaine’s words hit Emma in some soft spot, despite herself.

  That night, Emma stared at the plate of lasagna in amazement. “What happened, Mum? Did you discover your mothering instinct while I was away?”

  Elaine had never been a good cook, never even remotely interested. It was all sardines and fish fingers and mashed potatoes when they were growing up, and occasionally Elaine’s most experimental dish, her guess-what’s-in-it meatloaf, which contained one tinned item from the cupboard—it could have been tuna, or cranberry sauce, or cream of mushroom soup—it really was anyone’s guess.

  “Don’t be mean,” Elaine called from the kitchen. “I’ve always tried my best. It hasn’t been easy.”

  “I know, Mum.”

  “And besides,” she said, entering with the Parmesan cheese, “I’ve missed you two.”

  “You’re kidding,” Emma couldn’t help saying.

  “No, I’m not kidding. What kind of mother would I be if I didn’t miss you?”

  Emma looked at her mother as if for the first time. Something was different. Elaine had had her ears pierced, but that was only part of it. And then she identified the change: her mother looked happy.

  Emma’s room really hadn’t altered much since she was a child. It had only been painted that once long ago and it was looking more like a flat soufflé now than the perky custard it once resembled. The closet was full of unfashionable shoes that Elaine obviously hadn’t had the heart to part with. Fond memories? wondered Emma. Dancing shoes?

  Emma spent much of the first night dreaming about Elaine’s lasagna—diving through the rich, alternating layers of comfort, devouring them as if she hadn’t eaten in months. Comfort like the feeling of chocolate melting in your mouth in a warm river of hot tea.

  She awoke sweating under a woollen blanket on the hottest day on record. Elaine came in without knocking and sat down on the end of her bed. “How did you sleep?” she asked her.

  “Good,” Emma nodded. “What time is it? Don’t you have to go to work?”

  “I quit,” her mother said, smiling.

  “You quit?” Emma asked, aghast. “But, Mum—how the hell are you going to support yourself?”

  “I have other means.”

  “Like what? Lottery winnings? Did Dad suddenly start sending alimony or something?”

  Elaine smiled, but mostly to herself, Cheshire catlike.

  “What’s going on, Mum?”

  “There’s a man in my life,” she said with a shy smile.

  “A what?”

  “You heard me, Emma. Don’t act so shocked.”

  “But what kind of man?”

  “A very attractive intelligent man.”

  “And he’s supporting you or something?”

  “He’s very kindly offered to help me while I try my hand at writing,” she replied coyly.

  “You’re going to be a writer?”

  “It’s what I always wanted to be.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “I know it might surprise you to hear this, Emma, but before I was a mother, before I was a wife, I was a person with dreams of my own.”

  “And you gave them all up for this?”

  “I hadn’t intended to.”

  “So why did you then?”

  “Because somebody needed to make money, Emma. Your father couldn’t hold a job.”

  “But why did you marry him in the fi
rst place?”

  “I was in love.”

  “But why?”

  “Because he was different. Because he was a dreamer.”

  “But I thought that’s what you hated about him.”

  “Yes and no. It was exhilarating at first, particularly when our dreams were shared. But you know, you need a balance. You can’t just keep floating on air. His dreams never amounted to anything, they were totally unrealistic, but for some reason he couldn’t see that. In the end I felt like he’d manipulated me into supporting his flaky, far-fetched endeavours and given me very little but broken promises in return.”

  “So you felt cheated.”

  She nodded. “But ironically, he was the one who acted as if he’d been. He was always telling me I had no imagination, no vision.”

  Emma just about choked on her saliva.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s just those words. I thought I had found something on the dig this summer, something of real importance, but my professor didn’t even want to pursue it. He wasn’t curious at all. And so we had this fight—and I said exactly those words to him.” Emma felt sick and put her head to her knees.

  “You must have heard your father say them before.”

  “But I wasn’t copying him. I believed it.”

  “It’s okay, Emma.”

  “But it’s not! I don’t want to turn out like him.”

  “You’re not going to turn out like him.”

  “But I already sound just like him.”

  “The words maybe, Emma, but not necessarily what they mean. You’re imaginative and you’re passionate, but you’re doing something with your life. Your father was all talk and no action.”