by Heidi Wicks
“I can meet you in the park at the end of Eastmeadows Ave.” Jess’s voice is a hush into the phone receiver. They went there sometimes in high school, a group of them, with the beers they convinced strangers to buy them from the Red Circle convenience store close by. Jess and Matt also strolled there sometimes, just the two of them. Sitting in the swings, holding hands, swaying lightly on the warm nights, talking about the future, and on the colder nights, thrashing and bouncing against each other, laughing in the St. John’s wind.
She’s thankful she lives within walking distance of the park. It’s so late that the effects of the cookie have worn off about seventy percent, but not entirely, and she still wouldn’t drive. The foggy but humid navy night blurs like a Van Gogh painting. Her eyes heavy from crying and weed, she scuffs down the sidewalk, plods down the stairs towards the playground, which unlike the recently refurbished Bannerman Park playground, still has all of the vintage, not-up-to-code, rusty, jagged equipment. Not that there’s much of it—a steel slide, swings, teeter-totter. Sitting on a swing, she giggles at what a shitty park this is.
She spots Matt out of the corner of her eye, the same way they’d spot a comet zooming across the Terra Nova sky. He’s coming from the opposite direction. The Newfoundland Drive end. They’d usually exit the park that way, the group of them, after drinking, making a pit stop at McDonald’s before going home. A little grease to soak up the beer never went astray.
He sits on the swing next to her. “Hi.”
“Hey.” Her stomach churns and grumbles angrily.
“Are you okay?” He reaches for her hand, and she takes it, reluctantly, and it feels gross to her.
She struggles for what to say. Keeps swinging, hoping the words will come. Her stomach lurching, grinding, the cookie wearing off and her throbbing finger starting to return, thinking of the horrid fight with Cait, which is another huge loss she’s going to have to grieve. She wretches, struggling to regain control, but she needs to release and she throws up.
“Whoa.” Matt fishes through his pockets for tissues. Chiclets. “You are not okay.” He hands her some tissues and rubs her back. Tears spring to her eyes.
“I don’t know why I have such a hard time letting go of you.”
“Oh, Jess.” He rubs her back, so tenderly, widening the orbit of the circles he makes with his hand. Over her shoulder blades, down to the small of her back, brushing the top of her behind. “We loved each other. We were young, but you were so special to me and you meant so much. You still do.”
“Me, too.” She leans into him, from her swing. Holds her hand out because she sees he has Chiclets. He pops two from the package into her palm. “You’re such an important part of my past, and you really became a part of me and you haven’t left.” It feels so good and so right. “And being with you now, it’s reminding me of good times with Mom. When she was healthy.”
He squeezes her shoulder. Runs the other hand from her back down her arm, his fingers tickling the skin and sending light electric shocks into her heart. “She was so wonderful.”
“She really liked you.” She flashes back to the smiles her mother would send Matt’s way. She adored the boy who made her daughter so happy. What Jess never saw was the worry her mother carried internally, that this boy would someday break her little girl’s heart. High-school romances are rarely longstanding.
“Yeah. We got along well. She always made me pie for my birthday ‘cause she knew I liked it better than cake.” His eyes twinkle at the memory.
“Do you still?”
“You know it.”
“Blueberry?”
“Oh yeah.”
She chuckles and she can still taste the vomit. She feels disgusting, dirty, vile, but relieved to have purged some of the poison. They just sit there for a minute, swaying.
He looks down at her hand, a brace flanking her finger, gauze wrapped around it. “What happened to your hand?”
“Oh. I was on the trail on Signal and hooked my pinky in the chain rope.”
Matt sucks in air through his teeth, ssss. “Yikes. That sounds painful. Are you okay?” He leans closer to her face, and then they’re touching cheeks and it feels so nice and so familiar, yet so wrong at the same time.
“I’m okay.” She turns her head and they touch lips. He can taste Chiclets and vomit but he doesn’t care, not even one bit. Her eyes fill again, and something heaves in her gut. “I’m not okay.” She places a hand on his chest and pushes him away. “Matt we can’t talk anymore.” She urges and takes a deep, deep breath. “Like, ever.”
He stares at her, into her, and his eyes fill up too. His gaze drops towards the ground. Plunks his forehead into his palms, his elbows on his knees. He starts pushing himself on the swing with his toes on the ground, forwards, then swaying backwards. He pushes himself harder and harder.
“I’m sorry. It’s just too hard. It’s wrong. I’m sorry.” She wipes her nose in her plaid shirt.
“No.”
“What?”
“No. I don’t want to lose you again.”
She is wordless for a moment. “Matt, I—”
“I’m not just fucking around here. I’ve thought about you for years, Jess.”
“I…”
“I want you back.”
“Matt, I…I love Dan. And my boys. They’re my life.”
“Fuck!” He hoists his head from his hands and grasps the chains on the swing, and starts to push himself, increasingly furiously by the millisecond.
“Matt! Stop it!” She is alarmed by his reaction.
“Fuck you, Jess!” It’s so uncharacteristic of the Matt she used to know, who always seemed so even and controlled.
“Please. Stop.”
He skids his feet against the ground until the swinging stops. He stands, walks over to Jess, and takes her hands in his. “Please,” tears stream down his cheeks, “stay.” There’s a desperation in his blue eyes.
She pulls her hands out of his. “I’m shocked. I had no idea you felt this deeply.”
“I never stopped thinking about you.”
She feels like her heart has stopped beating and dropped down into her guts. She lifts her head to look at him, tears streaming down her own cheeks. “I can’t. You mean so much to me, but you’re in the past. We have to let each other go.”
“This just…feels like such an enormous and really deep loss.”
“I know.” She rubs his back this time. They wrap their arms around each other. They stand, swaying, holding onto each other. “We didn’t spend any time together, but it’s so hard to let go. It always is. Of anyone. It’s the most painful thing, the process of letting go.”
“I’ve loved you since high school, and I’ll love you until I die.” He whimpered it, his face buried in her neck, his tears soaking her scarf.
As he spoke the words, she realized she was finally over him. He’s not hers anymore, and she’s not his. She has been married for thirteen years, and is only just getting over her first love. She won’t love him until the day she dies. “You’ll always have a special place in my heart, too.”
He snorts back his tears. Swallows hard and pulls away from her. He wipes his eyes with the sleeve of his jacket. “Yeah.” An almost defiant air sweeps over him. “You’re definitely not in love with me anymore.”
She looks to the ground. “I’m going to go home now, Matt.” She kisses his cheek. “Please don’t write me anymore. I’m going to delete you from Facebook, too. I’m so sorry, but it’s the only way for me.”
“Wow. Cold.”
“Just know that I’ll always care about you, and wish you well.” The freeze in the air between them drops below zero. She’s astounded that years of pining could wash away so quickly. But it’s not quickly. Bit by bit, through the years, she has been letting go of Matt.
She turns and walks back towards Eastmeadows Avenue. Behind her, she hears Matt yell, “Fuck,” and kick his feet at the dirt and kick the swing. She looks back, and he’s sitt
ing in the swing again, with his head in his hands.
When she gets home, she walks up the stairs, peels off her clothes, steps in the shower and it’s so hot it nearly scalds her skin. She lets it burn and singe. Washing away all of the emotion, the weight of the day, the fuzz of the pain and substances. She gets out, dries off. Brushes her teeth for ten minutes. Rubs her tongue raw. Slips into bed, naked, next to Dan. Spoons him. Strokes the front of his chest, kisses his earlobe, gently. He stirs and turns, and they’re kissing, deeply, hungrily, planted firmly in their sheets that are caked with their children’s drool, tucked within the walls adorned with drawings in crayon.
rogue waves
From: “Melody Angel”
Date: August 21, 2016 at 2:59:31 PM NDT
To: Caitlyn Critch
Scott Taylor
Subject: Connection
Hi loves!
Just connecting you two. Scott, Caitlyn is our new second associate director! Please, use your magic to bring her into our community. I’ve invited her to our gathering tomorrow night, so you two can meet then, and make arrangements from there as appropriate.
Really looking forward to this experience, which I just know will be exquisite!
Bless,
M
Melody Angel
Director, filmmaker, member of the Illuminati of Life
Forest Avenue is like a movie set. American colonial-style houses, neatly aligned windows, an umbrella of technicolour-green trees arching over the street. The leaves drip with droplets of rain from earlier in the day and the street lights illuminate the fresh, wet, black pavement. The dark-purple twilight sky is a moody backdrop to the woodstove smoke floating from the backyard to Cait’s nostrils.
Melody’s parents’ house is all intricately patterned hardwood floors and white kitchen cabinets. The off-white walls are splashed with expensive, brightly coloured artwork—scenes of St. John’s in all forms and hues, abstract splashes and globs of red and yellow and bright blue and baby blue, green, orange. There’s a David Blackwood painting of a burning church in Wesleyville. The painting is black, foreboding, the church’s roof ablaze with hellish red, the people in the foreground ghostly, white faces, black cloaks, uncertain of what the future holds.
“Caitlyn!” Melody is wearing a form-fitting red spaghetti-strap dress with a kimono over it. She floats, her arm outstretched, a wine glass in one hand, to the front door to greet Cait. Wraps her arms around her and kisses her cheek, and the liquid in the glass sloshes and her lips are soft and pillowy and glossy. Her breath smells like sangria and mint. “Come in, come in. Enter the wonderful vibe, the spider’s web of love, the community of creativity.”
The house smells like taco dip; there’s a giant platter of it in the middle of the kitchen island. Sushi trays and a jug of sangria are on the counters and, through the French doors leading to the deck, there’s a keg.
“Sangria?” Melody is already pouring it, handing it to Cait.
“Sure, thanks.” She sips it and it’s frigid and boozy and ignites teensy shocks in her brain.
“Come,” Melody tops up her own glass and interlaces her fingers with Cait’s, “to the patio. Meet Scott.”
There’s a small circle of about ten people surrounding a fire table on the deck. Someone has just sparked a joint.
“Everyone, meet Caitlyn.”
Cait waves to the crowd, recognizing a couple of faces, including Scott’s. Scott’s face, boyish, bright, turns towards Cait and the firelight flickers.
“Caitlyn, hey!” He stands and hugs her. “Have a seat.” He pulls up a chair from the periphery of the circle.
“Excuse me all,” Melody glances through the kitchen, distracted, as a new guest arrives, “I must go host. I’ll see you anon.”
Scott sucks on the joint and passes it to Cait. “So,” he croaks, “I’m really looking forward to working with you. I loved you on The Morning Show and I was super pissed to hear you were let go.”
Cait inhales the joint, exhales the smoke, and laughs off her humiliation. “Well thanks for that. I, too, was super pissed.”
“Fuck them.”
“Yeah. Fuck you, CBC.”
They both crack up. It doesn’t take long for the stony haze to set in.
“And you know what?” Cait sips the sangria and it tastes even better now, extra frosty, extra flavourful, “Fuck the government, too.”
“Yah!” Scott hoists his beer and everyone cheers, “Fuck the government!” He helps himself to a slurp from Cait’s glass, “Good thing we’re working on this project now. There’s no better time.”
“Speaking of this project,” Cait leans in, “can you please tell me what it’s actually about?”
They lock eyes momentarily, a mirror—there’s a sense of mischief in his, a twinkle that crinkles the corner of one eye into a sparkling smile. An indication of a looming and intense attack of amusement that’s familiar to Cait: she’s been told her eyes smile before her mouth. They crumble, buckle over with laughter. Their laughs match, too. Loud and free, a beckon into the star-spangled sky, which looks like a photography experiment Cait and Jess did in school—black construction paper with pin pricks all over it, held up to a bright light. It’s rare for a city sky to have this many stars. For one second, Cait wonders how Jess is feeling, what she’s doing, under these stars. The others around the fire table look at the two of them, amused.
“Okay, well, see…,” Scott looks away, suddenly shy. Too much eye contact, too much connection, too intense and too fast and it’s a bit scary. Cait feels it in herself too, like the intensity floats from him to her and she looks down for a second too, but she decides she really likes sitting here with him. There’s an instant sense of familiarity between them, as if she has known him for years. The super-glue power of a robust laugh. It makes her feel like she’s a kid again and everything is totally fine, and for the first time in months, she feels normal again.
He meets her gaze again. “It’s a dig through Newfoundland’s hidden political history of power and corruption. Our repeated cycle of the rich helping the rich and the middle-class and poor being left to fend for themselves. A Game of Thrones-type show for the rich families here—and you know who they are, don’t you.” He holds her gaze again; that same impish taunt, and yup—she loves it and she wants more of it. A lot more of it. In different locations. And not just film locations, either.
“Oh my God, that is amazing. Which blueblood will lay claim to the iron throne, ruling our smiling, windswept land?” She drains the sangria and looks at how close the jug is because she does not want to depart this conversation. “Do people know about this? It’s controversial. I do love a great conspiracy theory.”
“I don’t think it’s a conspiracy theory. We’ve been combing through the archives. I’ve got microfiche burned into my retinas… and we’ve lined up interviews with some key players who’re borderline too old and senile and close to death to be too concerned about damaging their reputation. Love those guys.”
“Well. My theory is that as people age, they’re less inclined to bother with hiding the truth, too. It takes up too much energy. There’s so much intrigue around here, like that tunnel they discovered under Bannerman when they were renovating it….”
“The one Richard Squires escaped through when the people tried to murder him back in the ‘30s?” His eyes wide as loonies. One side of his mouth goes up a little more than the other. Sexy as hell. Cait can’t help but glance at his mouth and she wonders if he notices her looking.
She giggles. “Right? Imagine, him and Joey Smallwood, our great premier, realizing they can’t pull the wool over the eyes of the people anymore and that they’re totally shafted, with no choice but to dress as women and flee.”
“There’s rumours of tunnels between the Colonial Building and Government House, too.” He’s leaning forwards, towards her. “That they’re still there.”
&nbs
p; “It’s just one cycle after another, really. Corrupt government after corrupt government.”
“Well, yeah. Right up to the last government, who were suddenly like, ‘Oh yeah, we’re a have-province! Even Paul McCartney and the seal hunt can’t fuck with us Newfoundlanders! No way, not us. And I’m gonna donate my salary to the province. To new business endeavours, which I myself will run in secret, behind closed doors, under the guise of my cronies, and after I finish putting things in place and acting as a hero, I shall reassume my place as the pompous, saucy-faced weasel businessman and lawyer, so I may continue being rich and going to Florida, well into my sun-tanned future, until I crinkle away and disintegrate under the sun and dissolve into gold dust.’” Cait cracks up, mesmerized by him, wildly entertained. His passion, all riled up, tingles something deep inside her.
“Yeah really. ‘Have-not is no more.’ What a pile of steaming horseshit that was.”
His laugh is a quick hoot. “Maybe it’s conspiracy theories, maybe not. Rumours don’t exist for nothing.”
“And these yokels in there now…inept…liars. So much for diversification.” She finds it so freeing to speak frankly, without having to remain democratic and unbiased. “Once again, everything is in oil and now we’re deep in the red.” Speaking so frankly, knowing she’d be a part of releasing new information into the world, releases something pent up inside.
“They lie just to get in power. So much for building local enterprise.”
“They’re just fucking us.” I’d like you to be fucking me, the thought surprises and delights her. This is the first person since Jake she has wanted to fuck.
“Again.” His eyes, she thinks, are saying he wants to fuck her as well.
“Well,” she looks into her empty glass. “It’s time for me to re-whet my whistle. How’re you doing there?” She nods at his beer.
“I could use a top-up,” he nods towards the kitchen, “Shall we?”
“We shall.”
They float into the kitchen. They haven’t even spoken to anyone else around the fire table. They refill.
