Lesley Anne Cowan

by Something Wicked (v5)

  sad all of a sudden.

  “That’s a bad sign.”

  “Okay, let me try again.” I replace my hands a third time, close my eyes, and really, really concentrate. I tell myself that Michael isn’t like the men in my apartment building, and this time I like what I see. “You have a little less hair and a little bigger belly, but you’re still good-looking. You are in the big backyard of our house by a little swing set. Our two little girls are playing with you. I am walking toward you, bringing out some cheese sandwiches cut into fours without the crusts.”

  “Nice,” he says, and pulls me back down onto his chest. And I think it’s the happiest moment in my life.

  Seven

  I go to my job at the veterinary clinic almost every day I’m suspended. My mom thought I’d sit around and smoke pot all day, but I’m actually excited to get up every morning and go to work. It’s like I’m living my future adult life, and for once it’s easy to get out of bed and start my day.

  Rachel, the daytime co-op student from an uptown school, greets me right away. “Melissa!” She’s just inside the door, as if she was waiting hours for my arrival. “Oh my God! You’ll die! Penelope had her pups! They’re adorable.”

  “Hey!” I am so excited I push past her and rush toward the basement, where the cages are. I am practically skipping down the stairs. “I was hoping it was today!”

  “The black and white one is mine,” she claims, chasing after me.

  I suppose you could say Rachel and I are “friends.” I started to volunteer at Willow Animal Hospital almost two years ago now. My school guidance counsellor set it up, and it’s been the best thing that has ever happened to me. When I turned sixteen, they hired me on as part-time casual, and started me off on a higher wage because of all my previous help. Rachel has been there for only a month, so basically she’s my “student.”

  Rachel is a “normal” girl. She has two parents. She takes piano lessons. She’s on the swim team. She drives a Mini. She’s still a virgin. She seems a billion years younger than me. I think she’s a little afraid of me. She’s seen me not take crap from Tawyna, the dog groomer who thinks she can boss us around like slaves. But Rachel would never guess what I’m really like. The drugs. The parties. My mom. Because here at work, I am me. I don’t have a mythic name. At work, I am Melissa.

  The pups, all pink and squeaking, are intertwined in a writhing huddle in a blanket on the floor of the kennel. Their mother, Penelope, is in a separate cage, recovering from two broken legs.

  “Look at them! They’re soooo cute!” I open the kennel door and sit cross-legged on the concrete floor. I spend the next fifteen minutes holding each one, bringing their new-babysmell bodies up to my face and giving them a thousand kisses. Rachel sits in the pen with me, doing the same thing.

  I love my work. I want to be a veterinarian. This job will give me the experience I need to get into the university program. I work in the lab. I administer medication. I give animals needles. I assist in minor surgeries. If I stay on for a late shift, I even get to help with car accident victims or neutering.

  For the most part, though, I’m downstairs taking care of the cats and dogs. Some of them are boarders, some surgery, some sick. When I arrive each day, Rachel gives me a rundown on the animals: which ones to walk, which ones need meds, which ones bite. We go by each cage and pretend we’re interns giving medical summaries on each patient.

  I start my shifts with walking the dogs on a little square patch of grass surrounding a single tree out behind the parking lot. It’s not as easy as you’d think. Each dog has his own problem. Some have cones around their necks, or bandages around their legs, or even IV drips in their little doggy elbows. Some dogs, like the ones who have had hip surgery, I have to carry up and down the stairs. After walking, I clean the cat and dog cages and feed everyone. Then I bathe the ones who shit all over themselves. In between all this, I do loads and loads of laundry.

  Another reason I love my work is because it’s where I met Michael. He’s an animal technician, which for the most part he thinks makes him a failure. He wanted to be a vet too, but because of his depression, a few years ago he dropped out of university.

  I met him on a late shift. I was filling in for Christie, the overnight lady. Jetson, a terribly mangy cat, was brought in, its eyeball popping out of its head. Blood everywhere. Smashedup teeth. Michael was the only medical staff there. The oncall vet was nowhere to be found because he was having an affair with the convenience store owner’s daughter next door, so it was just the two of us, and we worked like a team from ER to bring this mess back to life. It was amazing. And at the end, after two hours, we were so damn proud of ourselves, we toasted apple juice to our brilliance. And to Jetson’s speedy recovery.

  The cat died the next day. But Michael and I became friends. I never even considered him a real guy at first, because I knew he was so much older. He was also too “plain” and conservative. Normally I would have never looked twice at him. He had boring short brown hair, boring clothes, and, with the exception of some faded freckles, a sort of nondescript face. He was average height, average build, and maybe even had a bit of a gut. But almost a year later, a bit before summer, it all just happened: Michael became sort of beautiful to me. And just over three months ago was the beginning and the end of me.

  “Michael is going to want to take them all home,” I say to Rachel, putting back one of the puppies. I try to say his name as much as I can at work, just to feel the shape of it in my mouth.

  “For sure,” she affirms, and I glance to see if there’s any suspicion about our secret relationship. None. It’s hard to keep love a secret. In some ways, I’m dying to tell someone about our relationship. For the longest time I’ve just been waiting for Rachel to ask that exact question—“Are you and Michael together?”— so that I don’t have to really answer, so that just my look will give it away.

  With the exception of Jess and Ally, no one knows about Michael. Why complicate the situation by involving judgment from those who can’t possibly understand? My mother will get protective. My guidance counsellor will get concerned. My other friends will get grossed out. And what’s worse is I’ll start to believe them. Yeah, maybe he did use me. Yeah, maybe I am seeking a father figure. Yeah, maybe he is a loser who can’t get girls his own age.

  And I’d start to put the fence back up around my heart and believe that I was taken advantage of. And what good would that do? It was Michael who took the fence down. Opened me raw. Made me feel … something. Anything. He gave me that gift. And even if our relationship is wrong, even if his love turns out to be a lie, I want to keep it. I don’t want to close up again.

  Eight

  I had a feeling something was wrong. Extra wrong. Michael had been acting strange the past few days. And tonight, he’s real cranky and distant. I get a feeling he’s about to break up with me or something. After about an hour of watching TV together on the couch, he finally says it.“I’ve been wanting to talk to you …”

  I know instantly what he’s going to say. During the entire three months we’ve been together, I’ve been a secret to Michael’s friends. He said they would kill him if they knew what he was up to. Sometimes our age difference really gets to him and he gets all distant with me for a couple of days, but then it’s like he can’t help his feelings and he gets close again. He told me once he was ashamed about the whole thing. It was just wrong for a twenty-eight-year-old man to be with a sixteen-year-old girl, even if he was young at heart. Even if we didn’t have sex. Even if we were mostly friends.

  “First, I want to say that …” he goes on, “it’s not you. It’s society. And that’s a whole lot bigger than two people in a room.” He raises his hand to push the hair off my face and kisses my forehead, like he is my father or something.

  “Fuck society.” I flick his hand and move away from him toward the corner of the couch.

  “I can’t. You can’t. We live in it. I made that decision a long time ago, probabl
y about your age. Either you live in it, or you complain about it your whole life, or you deceive yourself into believing you’re going against it.”

  “Then fuck me,” I whisper, moving back toward him and putting my hands firmly on his thighs.

  “Hah!” He pushes away my grip. “I can’t do that either.”

  I kick at the coffee table in front of us. “Then fuck this.”

  I am pissed off at his bullshit. He’s a man. He should do what he feels like, not what society tells him. But I can tell by the look on his face that it’s serious. That maybe he is really about to break up with me. And I just can’t believe it. I feel like I need to walk away, before he actually comes out and says it.

  I stand, pick up my jacket, and head down the narrow hallway toward the door. The departure is dramatic. I stomp my PUMA runners as hard as I can. My jacket zipper scratches against the wall.

  “Melissa …” Michael’s voice trails behind me. “Melissa …” His voice gets louder and more distressed, so I slow my grip on the apartment doorknob to give him a few seconds, that’s all, the way I’ve seen my mom do it when she’s fighting with a boyfriend and she’s trying to turn things around. She makes them come after her, and somehow, miraculously, has them apologize for nothing they’ve done wrong.

  I give Michael just a few seconds to reconsider, but there is a long silence and I know he’s forcing himself to try to say the right thing, do the right thing, be the right thing.

  “And fuck you!” I shout, open the door, and slam it behind me. I wait outside the door, listening for his footsteps coming down the hallway. I wait for a few minutes, my heart starting to race. I thought he would call me back in.

  He was supposed to call me back in.

  As soon as I get to the bus stop, I call Michael on my cell, but he doesn’t answer. Then I call him again when I get home, but he still doesn’t answer. I go to his apartment building early the next morning, but he doesn’t come to the door even after I pound for like twenty minutes. I go outside the building and throw rocks up to his windows. Still nothing. Then I call and call and call all day from school, at least one hundred times. Nothing. I hate myself for getting so mad at him. For swearing and being so mean. I apologize over and over again in every email and text. Nothing.

  Then, the next morning when I call his cell, it’s not in service. I leave school and go straight to his apartment, but when I knock, it sounds empty and hollow inside. I pound on all the neighbours’ doors until one old man opens his door just a crack, chain still on, and tells me that the man who lived in 7C moved today.

  “Today? You sure?” I stare in his direction, but the opening is so small I can barely even see his face.

  “Saw the boxes myself.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “Now, that I don’t know, little lady.” He starts to close his door. “I mind my own business.”

  I walk away, down the corridor toward the stairwell. My head spins. My mouth gets dry. I stop and lean a hand up against the wall, ’cause I feel like I’ll drop.

  It’s like my soul has left my body and I am a walking corpse. I just can’t believe he’s gone. Move? Just like that?

  I go home, change my clothes, drink four shots of vodka from the bottle stashed under my bed, and then go to Ally’s house, who’s there chilling with her friend Jasmyn, a skanky girl from Ally’s friend’s group home. I didn’t really like Jasmyn, but I trust Ally’s judgment and give her a chance.

  As soon as I walk into the basement, Ally knows there’s something wrong with me. “Watz up?” she asks.

  Even almost sober, I can barely hold back the tears, so I just say, “I don’t want to talk about it. Let’s just get fucked up.”

  She’s cool with that answer. Which is why she’s such a good friend. Good friends are there when you need them and there when you tell them to fuck off too.

  The night goes on forever. Actually, it goes on for three days. We go to Jasmyn’s friend’s apartment where these four guys in their twenties live, though I can’t figure out which ones because it’s a full-on party house and random people come and go the whole time. There are tons of drugs. Ally, Jasmyn, and I start out sitting close together on the ratty couch, feeling like we don’t really belong, but then one guy hooks us up and things get going. I’m so upset about Michael that I just want to have fun and forget what happened for a while, so I put everything I’m offered into my mouth or up my nose: two lines of coke, six E’s, five prescription Concertas, two vials of K, and God knows how much alcohol. I lose count. I’ll try anything once. Pills. K. Meth. Coke. Morphine. E. Acid. Whatever. But I won’t do some things twice. Like meth. That’s like suicide a second time. One taste of heaven has to be enough. I’ve seen too many people screw up their lives from that shit.

  Time passes. I don’t know if it’s day or night. The blinds are down the whole time and there’s cardboard up against the other bare windows. I don’t eat. All I do is sleep, wake up, do drugs, watch movies, sleep, make out, wake up, do drugs, stare at the TV screen. I’m so messed up I don’t know what’s happening. I open my eyes and find some guy kissing me, but I push him off ’cause his mouth is all wet and sloppy and stinky. Then I come to again and I’m in the washroom and a different guy has his hand up my top, but I’m too wasted to care. At some point, on the second night, Jasmyn disappears into the bedroom with two other guys for a few hours. Ally, who always seems sober no matter how much she takes, makes a scene and keeps knocking on the door to make sure she’s okay.

  “She keeps telling me to fuck off, but I’m not going to stop,” Ally reports back to me.“She’s totally messed up. She’s an idiot to be in there with them alone. You know what kind of shit can happen?” She’s going on and on about it and I nod my head to agree, though I don’t care so much because I don’t really know Jasmyn.

  Then, totally randomly, while I’m dozing off on this guy’s lap and Ally is watching TV, Jasmyn comes tearing out of the room. “Let’s go! Let’s go!”

  Her voice is so loud and terrified that we don’t hesitate to jump up and run out behind her. You don’t need a long explanation when you’ve hung out with people like this before. You know there’s bad shit. Guns. Drugs. Messed-up guys. So we just run, like it is our lives at stake.

  When we get to the road, Jasmyn buckles over, laughing hysterically. Her slutty miniskirt is hiked up so high, we can see her thong underwear.“Mother fucka! That goddamn shit.” She turns to us. “You know what he wanted? He wanted me to piss on him. You know? Like sit on his chest and piss. Golden shower? What da hell?”

  Ally reaches out and pushes Jasmyn backward. “Fuck you! You terrified me. I thought it was something bad.”

  “Fuck you,” Jasmyn retaliates, pushing back. “You don’t think piss is bad?”

  Ally kisses her teeth and continues walking down the road. She decides we should hide on the porch of a house because the guys might follow us since Jasmyn still has some of their weed. Ally’s smart like that. She chooses a dark house with no cars in the driveway and three newspapers sitting outside the door.

  “No one’s home here,” Ally concludes. “We’ll chill here for a bit.” She sits down on the battered-up couch on the front porch and we just follow her. I pop the last pill of whatever I have, that I found in my pocket. We smoke a few blunts and soon things are fine, we’re laughing about stupid shit, until Jasmyn decides that she has to go pee and insists she needs a toilet.

  “Just piss behind the bush,” Ally says, still annoyed at her.

  “Fuck that. I’m no dog. You calling me a bitch? That what you sayin’?”And it’s like Jasmyn gets all psycho and Allison and I exchange looks like this girl is really fucked up. I mean, way more fucked up than me. So we know not to argue. Jasmyn’s fake nails alone would scratch our eyes out. “I’m going inside,” Jasmyn announces.

  “What?” Ally asks.

  “How?” I ask.

  “I’m going through this motha-fuckin’ front door,” she declares, flick
ing off her high-heel shoe, hiking her miniskirt, and giving the door a big kick. “Shit!” she wails, buckling over in fake laughter. “Fuck this shit. I’m going around the back.”

  Ally and I keep talking, not too worried about what she’s up to. We figure she’ll have the same problem back there and will end up peeing in the yard anyway.

  “What’s her story?” I ask, even though I’m too high to truly care.

  “She’s cool. Really. She’s nuts. But she’s cool. I don’t know. I like her. She’ll watch your back. She’s been through some crazy shit.”

  “I don’t know …”

  The front door opens. “Ladies, welcome to my home,” Jasmyn announces in a bad British accent.

  We are so stunned and it’s all so crazy that we rush in and shut the door behind us.

  “This is insane,” Ally says as she turns on the hallway light.

  “Don’t turn on the light,” Jasmyn shouts, and Ally immediately turns it back off.

  It’s my first time breaking in. It’s creepy to be in a stranger’s house. There is a distinct homey smell that’s hard to describe, other than it just isn’t yours. It looks like the people left in a hurry. There are open letters sprawled out across the kitchen table. A man’s suit jacket is on the back of a chair. Some dirty dishes are in the kitchen sink.

  It makes me think of when Crystal, my mom’s friend, had her apartment broken into. She was all upset about the violation of her “spiritual refuge.” She spent months trying to reclaim the energy of her personal possessions that the person stole from her just by snooping around. But the thing is, I realize now that when you’re doing it, it’s like you don’t even think of the people as “people.” I remember telling Crystal that the robbers are just looking for stuff to take, they don’t stand there and contemplate the photographs or kids’ toys. But she still called it a “rape of her space,” which makes me feel now that maybe she was right in a way.