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

by Camilla Gibb

  “You can take your lousy money and buy yourself a hooker for all I care!” Elaine had screamed into the phone. Emma knew that much, because her mother had slurred it over the phone to her. She was back on the bottle and she was making it sound like she told him, she told him good.

  Emma didn’t know the most tragic part of it all. Elaine had called Richard up at work because she hadn’t heard from him in nearly two weeks. She’d just finished her first short story. She thought it was pretty good. She was really excited, wanted to fax it to him, but rather than enthusiasm she got the big kiss-off instead. She ended up slamming the phone down, shredding the story, and throwing it into the garbage disposal. “What’s wrong with me?” she screamed at the acoustic tiles of the ceiling. “Why does it have to be like this?” she sobbed into the sink now clogged with paper pulp.

  Amy calls Emma from Niagara Falls one Monday night. She sounds despondent when she tells Emma that Blue didn’t show up at work that day. “He’s never done anything like this before,” Amy sighs. “Do you think you’ll come down this weekend?” she asks. Emma would prefer to avoid it, prefer to keep some distance. “I think he’s really depressed,” Amy continues. “Maybe it’ll help to see you. You know how it feels to be depressed. And you feel better, right?”

  “I doubt it’ll help to see me,” Emma says. “He thinks I’m being preachy and moralistic. Last time I saw him, he punched a hole in my door.”

  “He promised me he was going to stop doing shit like that,” says Amy. “We’ve been through this over and over again. He’s fucking up,” she sighs. “It’s always like this—whenever things start to go well, he starts to lose it.”

  The next Saturday morning Emma heads back to Niagara Falls. She doesn’t really want to, she has made a pact with herself to wait for an apology from Blue, but because Amy sounds so flat, so uncharacteristically helpless, she has agreed to go.

  In their apartment, Emma changes into one of Blue’s sweatshirts and crawls into their bed. While Amy cleans the apartment, Emma looks around their bedroom, waiting for Blue to get home. His teddy bear—one he made in home economics in seventh grade—sits atop two books on a broken chair: Everything You Need to Know About Growing Mushrooms Hydroponically and some self-help guide on anger management. She doubts he bought the latter for himself.

  It’s late when Blue gets back and Emma is snapped out of sleep by the sound of his footsteps. Towering above her, he says, “Emma, I don’t want some heavy moral thing.”

  “What do you mean?” she asks him.

  “Like something about drugs or self-sabotage. That kind of crap.”

  “We’re just worried about you.”

  “Don’t waste your energy, Emma. Spend a little more time worrying about yourself so we don’t have to.”

  “You don’t have to worry about me,” she says defensively.

  He bites his tongue. I always have to worry about you, he thinks. I’ve spent my whole life worrying about you. I’m just waiting to see what you do next. “Just look after yourself,” he says. “Mind your own business and I’ll mind mine.”

  “Blue,” she pleads. “I’m not your enemy.”

  “Well, what are you then? Who are you?”

  The Art of Being Alarming

  Amy and Emma walk arm in arm down six rain-speckled blocks to an apartment in the north end of town. Amy has called her friend Nina to ask if they can stay the night because it’s too late for Emma to catch a bus back to Toronto. Blue had walked out after yelling at Emma, and Amy doesn’t really want to be there when he gets back. She needs a break.

  “But are you sure she won’t mind?” Emma asks again.

  “She’s not like other people. She’s sort of a hippy, she won’t mind a bit.”

  Emma’s not sure if Nina’s a hippy or what, but she’s definitely something else. She is a tall lean woman who seems to have gone the way of the cat people. She’s got four cats, long black wavy hair, a pierced nose, and an apartment full of rather alarming art.

  “Are these yours?” Emma asks Nina, pointing to the ceiling.

  “Nina’s an artist,” Amy says. “An amazing artist.”

  “And a student, and a waitress, and a mother of four—cats that is,” Nina says.

  “Jesus. That must keep you busy.”

  “I’m a Gemini,” she says, laughing. “And that boyfriend of yours,” she says, pointing at Amy, “has got to be a raging Scorpio.”

  “Well, he’s raging anyway,” says Amy. She sinks into the couch, pulls her knees up to her chest.

  “He’s certainly one angry young man,” Nina says.

  “It’s himself he wants to hurt. He keeps going out and provoking these fights with huge guys and then just letting them beat the shit out of him. He doesn’t even try to fight back.”

  “Did your father ever hit him?” Nina asks then, turning to Emma.

  “Not that I ever saw,” she answers.

  “There was this one time,” Amy offers hesitantly.

  “What’s that?”

  “He’d kill me if he knew I was telling you this.”

  “I won’t say anything,” Emma reassures her.

  “Well, it’s just this one time. It’s really weird, actually. He only mentioned it once, and when I brought it up again, he flipped out.”

  Emma nods in encouragement.

  “You know, your dad used to see prostitutes occasionally.”

  “See them?”

  “Well, you know, pay them.”

  Emma groans. “It wouldn’t surprise me. Not much would now.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m afraid it’s more common than you might think. At least where I come from. Are you sure you want me to tell you?”

  “I want you to tell me, but I don’t want it to be awful.”

  “Well, it is awful, Emma,” she says seriously. “And I think it really fucked him up.”

  Emma waves, go on.

  “Okay. Well, your dad was always borrowing money from Blue. And then this one time Blue walked in on him when he was living in that warehouse and he saw him there with this girl—Blue said she was just some kid full of crack—and he’s got her there on all fours and he’s like, well, you can imagine the rest.”

  Emma’s face was starting to collapse in on itself.

  “I know, it’s sick. Really sick. He was wearing this white shirt Blue had given him and he was behaving like a total animal. Then Blue says to your dad, ‘I thought I told you that the money was so that you could eat.’

  “And your dad says something like, ‘Don’t worry, this one’s only ten bucks.’ He didn’t have any money, right, so he was just taking what he could get, but this was a kid. A fucking kid. And Blue just flipped. He wanted to kill him. I mean—he saw him doing this to some kid. So he went straight up to your dad and pulled him off her. Then, of course, your dad went nuts and they ended up pounding the shit out of each other.”

  “Jesus,” Emma sighs, staring at Amy. “Blue came home with a black eye a couple of times. I just thought he was getting into drunken fights. I don’t mean just, but you know …” she trailed off.

  “Well, after that, Blue didn’t see him again.”

  “You mean, that was when he left?”

  “Seems to be. I don’t know if he was scared Blue would report him or something.”

  “It’s no wonder he’s so angry,” says Nina. “You know, he really should see somebody.”

  “We know,” Amy and Emma reply in unison.

  “I mean sooner rather than later,” says Nina. “Before he’s forced to, or behind bars.”

  “Remember that guy he threatened with a knife in Banff?” Amy asks.

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, you know what Blue said?”

  “What?”

  “He said the guy reminded him of your father. The way he kept his money—the way he folded the bills or something.”

  “Because of the way he kept his money?”

  “Yeah,” she nods. “So can you imagine if
he ever did see him? It’s why he came out to Banff in the first place, although he doesn’t really admit it. I think he was hoping to find him. Some guy had said he thought your dad had gone out west—to Calgary or Vancouver or somewhere.”

  “But he could have gone anywhere.”

  “That’s all Blue had to go on,” Amy says.

  Nina offers them her bed. Insists in fact. Emma is grateful although she’s unsettled. Their family secrets have just been revealed in the presence of a stranger. Things she had never even known. Poor Blue. How is it that she never knew? How is it he remained so quiet? Danced a strange fucking tango with their father and not said a word.

  Emma stares up at the ceiling. Some of Nina’s art is almost worrying and it’s all rather three dimensional. Bits of metal welded to frames nailed into the walls. Metal sculptures hanging from the ceiling and jutting out over the bed. “Watch this,” Nina says, turning out the lights. She flips another switch and the sculptures are alight with white Christmas lights. Amy and Emma laugh. For those few moments before sleep Nina offers them a view of an enchanted world. The right questions from a stranger have brought something critical to light. It is a twisted way to get to this small gift, but Emma is glad to be here of all places.

  Emma sleeps beside Amy with three cats between them and a fourth at their feet. Four snoring feline lumps. They are a comfort in this apartment which feels like a home. Not a residence room like hers, or a trash bin like Amy and Blue’s, or a depressing haunt like Elaine’s, but a home.

  Nina brings them cappuccino in bed the following morning. Two cups and a bowl with a marigold floating in it on a large silver-plated tray. She sits at the end of the bed and tells Emma the names of her cats: Mirabel Airport, Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head, Sweet Smell of Summer, and Somewhere Over the Rainbow.

  She tells Amy she is more than welcome to stay for a while. She insists, and after they talk it over, Amy decides that she will. She’ll only go back to Blue on the condition that he agrees to get some help. Nina recommends someone. A therapist a friend of hers sees. It seems like a sensible plan.

  Blue, of course, is livid. He tells Amy she is being manipulative and slams down the phone. At least the seed has been planted, Nina and Amy agree. Now they will just have to see how long Blue can hold out. “Don’t hold your breath,” says Nina. “He is a Scorpio.”

  There is a message from Blue waiting for Emma on her answering machine when she gets back to Toronto. “Stay out of my fucking life. You’re ruining everything. Now Amy has left me.”

  All she can do is leave a message on his answering machine: “Amy hasn’t left you, and neither have I.”

  Emma hears from Nina the following weekend. She’s in Toronto for a welding workshop and asks Emma if she would like to meet for a drink. They meet in the rooftop bar of the Park Plaza and spend six hours talking over a bottle of red wine. Emma is fascinated by her. Nina is slightly older than her and about a thousand times more together. She studies fine art, talks about it passionately, and applies the same artistic sensibility to her wardrobe. She’s perched on a bar stool, wearing big black boots that look like exclamation points at the end of her long skinny, striped legs. Amy’s right: she is a bit nuts, but she’s got a good heart. When it comes to Blue, though, she’s more of the tough-love school than either Amy or Emma. Says you can’t rely on the past as an excuse for the havoc you wreak in the present.

  With Emma’s family history out in the open, they share an intensity, an immediate intimacy. When there are no secrets, there is no need for omissions or lies. There is no script for this. There is no gradual, hesitant revelation of facts, no fear that someone’s not going to like you when they discover who you really are. It’s too late, and Nina still apparently likes her. Emma likes her back—likes the way her fingers run up and down the stem of her wineglass. Likes her chipped front tooth and her hearty laugh. Keeps inhaling her perfume, and each time she does, her stomach quivers as if it contains a school of fish.

  Nina is from P.E.I. “My dad was a draft dodger,” she tells Emma. “He met my mum in Atlantic City. He was on his way to Canada with only a hundred dollars in his pocket. He thought he’d try his luck in Atlantic City on the way and, God, well, he probably shouldn’t have bothered because not only did he lose all his money, he ended up with my mum. She had been in Atlantic City for a couple of years trying to get a job as a dancer. She still tells people she was a Rockette, even though it’s nowhere near true. Wrong city, wrong era, wrong legs. Anyway, she must have thought it was very romantic or something, running off to Canada with a draft dodger. But my dad had his own romantic notions. He had this idea about growing tobacco. He thought he was going to get rich. Can you imagine? In a province where all they farm is potatoes? Needless to say, he didn’t get rich and it wasn’t nearly as glamorous as my mother must have thought it was going to be, so she went and ran off with an antique dealer named Fred. Fred. Can you imagine?”

  “Do you still see them?”

  “Not a lot. My dad’s okay, although I don’t see him often. He lives in Halifax with his second wife and her kids. My mother’s a bit of a pain. I try to see her at least once a year. It’s a chore. The antique dealer’s a freak. And I have a brother and a sister too. Twins. Scott lives in Rochester and Paula lives in Thunder Bay with her kids. I’m the runt of the litter, and, I guess, the mutant.”

  Neither of them wants to end their conversation, but the waiters are stacking up chairs on the tables around them, vacuuming the carpet. They agree to meet over an early breakfast the next morning. In the elevator down to the sidewalk, Nina says, “It’s a strange set of circumstances, but I’m really glad I met you.”

  “So am I,” Emma blushes.

  The iceberg shows some sign of melting. It’s cold when you’re alone out there in a shark-infested ocean. “Okay,” he shrugs in response to Amy’s repeated suggestion of therapy. “So I’ll think about it.”

  “That’s a good start, Blue,” Amy says. “I really hope you do.”

  “Okay, okay. Don’t push me,” he snaps. But later he says, “Do you think maybe you could come with me?”

  “Of course,” she sighs with relief. “However you want to do it.”

  “I really miss you,” he says, beginning to cry.

  He’s still pretty resistant to the whole idea of therapy, but he does think the lady they go to see is nice. That’s the word he uses when Amy asks if he likes her: “Nice.” What he means is: I could hurt her. I’m big and abrasive and she’s little and soft-spoken. I don’t want to hurt her. I don’t want to hurt you.

  Amy accompanies him on that first visit, but after that, he goes alone.

  “And what does that voice say to you?” the nice lady asks.

  “It says I’m a loser and a fuck-up,” Blue replies. “It’s crazy, isn’t it? To hear voices in your head?”

  “Crazy’s not a word I use,” says the nice lady. “We all have voices in our heads to some degree. Internalized voices. Some of those are helpful, they help us to be good to others and ourselves. For instance, we know it’s wrong to steal. How do we know that? Well, usually our parents try and teach us right from wrong, and society reinforces that. So when you think about stealing, you hear those internalized voices saying, ‘It’s wrong to steal.’ But then there are the unhelpful voices, the voices that say, ‘You are a loser and a fuck-up.’ It doesn’t mean those voices are right, it just means they are loud, sometimes too loud to defend yourself against.”

  “So loud that you can’t hear yourself think?”

  The nice lady nods.

  As long as he can distinguish between himself and those voices, he’ll be okay.

  Solder

  It’s an uncharacteristically hot Saturday afternoon in fall and Nina is lying on her stomach on the kitchen floor, legs wide apart, propped up on her elbows. It’s an unusual posture for welding, but it seems to work for her. “Do you want to try?” she asks, sitting up and handing Emma a pair of goggles.

/>   Emma pulls the goggles down over her eyes and takes the iron. It’s not as easy as Nina makes it look. It’s fussy, particular, but undeniably sexy. She watches the solder melt. She massages it into place. It feels delicate and slightly illicit, like having your hair lightly brushed by the kid in the seat behind you in second grade.

  “Not bad,” Nina says, watching over Emma’s shoulder.

  Emma can feel Nina’s breath on the back of her neck. Feel it in her stomach. She can’t move. Nina, though, seems focused on the task at hand. “See,” she says, picking up the object in her hands once Emma finishes. “If you welded a hook onto the back here, you could hang it on the wall. So let’s get a hook for Emma’s first piece of sculpture. This is the best part,” she says excitedly. “Treasure hunting.” She pulls Emma to her feet. “The municipal dump,” she explains in response to the blank look on Emma’s face. “Why else would I live in this shitty part of town?”

  She doubles Emma down the street on her rickety old lime-green Schwinn. Emma on the seat, forced to wrap her arms around Nina’s waist, does so hesitantly, feels Nina’s stomach warm and flat and has to resist leaning her face into Nina’s back. It would be so easy. So easy despite everything it brings. Being called a lezzy by kids at school. Oliver would opt for harsher words like dyke: My daughter’s a goddamn dyke. A world of people shouting: she just needs a good fuck. But with her arms around Nina’s waist it doesn’t seem to matter. Nothing does in that moment except the thought of kissing the length of Nina’s spine. Filter out the world and suddenly all this becomes possible. Travelling without a passport. Navigating without a map. Trusting the instinct to run your tongue down the back of the woman in front of you. Emma thinks all this as they churn uphill and sway from side to side. Nina pushes the pedals up and down, brushing the insides of Emma’s thighs.