A Tapless Shoulder

by Mark McCann

  It felt like everything could almost be normal between us, had she only put her shirt back on. The longer I looked at her, the more comfortable she seemed to be. I shut my eyes for a moment. The day was beginning to sit down on me, and was getting closer to lying out flat.

  She was talking away, to a good friend it seemed. I don’t really know why I thought that. I sat looking at her and became impressed, then a little uncomfortable, and then impressed again. There was no way around it: she seemed enduringly brave. She didn’t care, and never had; up to this point I had been frantic with fright when I was just in the same room with her. She could have been hostile toward me for my simply regarding her as being different from me. But she never was, and still wasn’t. Hell, she’d gotten half naked because I said, ‘Hey, what up with those?’ I found myself actually laughing because of that, and she caught me, and smiled curiously.

  I was suddenly almost comfortable and it didn’t even scare me, in fact, it remained rather true to what I thought comfort should feel like. Her smile was real and that had to count for something. If this was what it took for one to ‘grow,’ it was no wonder I was still practically a baby. I appreciated that there were still some gentlemen like qualities floating around in me, as I desperately wanted to give her my shirt if she wasn’t going to wear her own.

  She was done on the phone. I smiled and shook my head. The absurdity of the situation had hit me. “So, if I, say, taught myself how to knit right now, and made you a shirt, which, I guess a knitted shirt would be a sweater, maybe, anyway, it would be plain rude of you not to at least try it on, right?” I asked as though I had taken four large cardboard letters and placed them on the table before her: HITN, no, no, wait, not that way, what the hell does that mean? Great, now my imagination was dyslexic? Look, like this, H-I-N-T. Huh? Shirt? YOU? WEAR? WHAT?

  She laughed, and laughed, but not her big laugh, just daintily. She must have been humouring me. I took a drink and kept one eye on her. Why, I thought, why won’t you put your shirt on?

  “Why are you friends with Nate exactly? Seems…” she asked suddenly, like talking about wearing clothes bored her. I blinked. I shook my head to get things where they needed to be if we were going to just go straight from one conversation to another like that.

  I slightly laughed and shrugged one shoulder, “Because he’s got fists like the heads of sledge hammers and can swing them like… um, a much lighter normal hammer or something… you know, like something light… like his fists or like fists that aren’t holding hammers.” I said not without twitching some at the end.

  “Do you mean he’s forcing you to be friends with him?” she gasped but giggled right after.

  “Yes,” I whimpered with my eyes shut and my head nodding, before laughing. “No, no, Nate, well, Nate’s Nate. We’ve been friends since, I think, Grade Six. On his first day at school, his family had moved here in the middle of the year, this kid, Greg Downie, was picking on me. I can’t remember why. Don’t think it was ever anything specific; he would just bully someone every now and then, and that day it was me. Anyway, I’d say now it was because I had friends while he had issues, maybe, not sure anymore. Plus I was quiet, and I think that makes for an easy target to a kid that needs to boost their ego, whatever the reason. I’m teaching my kids discipline and how to box. But, anyway, sorry, I’m bad with tangents and side notes; I think the resulting abandoned stories are the story my life. I guess my thoughts don’t stop when they should and get in the way of my words, well, not really, I think I just – crap, I’m still doing it. Okay, so Nate hadn’t met anyone at our school yet besides the standard procedure the teacher forced upon him at the start of the day, you know: getting us all to look at him before giving him a desk to sit at,” I paused. My empty bottle was removed, and a full one took its place. “Thank you,” I said and gave her a smile.

  She smiled and said, “Oh, you’re quite welcome. Have much more and you’ll have to sleep over.” She giggled what sounded and felt like a threatening little laugh.

  I stared at the bottle like it and I were no longer friends, and she saw the unease it brought. “Honey, I’m teasing you, oh, and you were doing so well. I will call you a taxi myself if it gets to that.”

  “Okay, I know, I’m kidding too, I’ll, uh… last one for me, okay? What was, oh yeah, so anyway, it must have been first recess, and this kid, Greg, was giving me a hard time when, out of nowhere, the new kid, who happens to be Nate, gets in between Greg and me, pushes him away but just enough to get himself some space to haul off this huge swing. He totally punched him clear off his feet; Downie went up into the air and landed flat on his back. I’ve hit some people, but they were never as light as that kid seemed to be then. It was insane, I mean, it seemed like it took forever for him to hit the ground. Up until then our fights had just been, you’re getting a headlock, no, you’re getting a headlock, hey, could you get off me and stop squeezing my head. I really don’t know if Nate had planned it, like woke up that morning knowing he’d be a star if he picked his moment and punched someone in the face, but that’s exactly what he did, and, well, the bond between us was set... for life, for as long or short as it may be. He is definitely a character, that’s for sure. He’s just… not an answer man. He will ask himself, is this a good idea, should I do this? But then stops there, for some reason I will never understand, he doesn’t wait for the answer. Seriously: he just goes on right from the question. Will this kill me; here I go.” I laughed, “I’m the same way with our friendship. I’ll be like, why do I even hang out with you; you have got to see this. And really, Nate is a good guy, like, it’s just, sometimes I think, really Nate, that’s the choice you thought was best? He can be so… I was going to say, dumb, but that’s not it… abnormal, that might be a better word.” I held up my bottle as if to say cheers to that. I looked at her face, then down at her breasts and then her face again. “Yeah, abnormal,” I added again. She was either ignoring me or enjoying herself

  I sighed. “I have to cut him some slack because, honestly, I’m sure I’m just as bad. Half the time I don’t know where I am in my head, maybe even who I am in my head. It’s like I lack concentration and it’s literally a diminished version of myself that steps forward every time I go to do anything.” I laughed, “My consolation is I don’t think I actually know things: I just have ideas about them.” I looked at her like she knew what I was saying was true. She nodded like she preferred not to judge. “I’m very lucky to have Katie… I have a feeling I might be a hard person to know, and harder to have as someone to be known by.” I looked at Candy very seriously, “Did that make sense? I sometimes honestly don’t know.” She looked at me like I was the one with my boobs hanging out. “Really,” I said, “you’re going to look at me like I don’t make sense? I gave that very same look to Nate just this morning.”

  “Yes, honey, it made perfect sense,” she said firmly. I couldn’t tell if she was genuinely interested or simply entertained by my sudden outpouring. I also didn’t know why she insisted on saying ‘honey’ every time she spoke. She was smiling like we’d been the best of friends forever, and I realized tension and anxiety were no longer with me the way they usually were. It actually felt okay to be there with her, simply talking, which was a strange but welcome discovery. I even felt something like normal, and was making eye contact just with her eyes and not her nipples. Though, at that thought, I did have an incredible urge to point at them, but not say anything out of the ordinary; just point at them and carry on like I wasn’t just pointing at them. You no normal, me no normal.

  “Okay, let’s hear more, don’t stop there,” she said, bringing me back and waving me on.

  “I just – I need to just be. I think one of the worst things we can do is to have an idea of who we are: an idea of our selves. That’s like trapping yourself to one idea, your own idea at that, have you really that much faith in your imagination? There, that’s me, third jar, second shelf.” I looked at the ceiling, “Listen to me, a million blogs
I’ll never put online. Or actually it’s more like I think too much, and this is a part of the too much end of it,” I nodded with approval at the revision.

  I was suddenly struck by a sadness I couldn’t quite place. I looked at Candy; there was such softness in her eyes I could have fallen there unharmed. “I owe you an apology,” the words trembled so much I wondered if they made it to her.

  She tilted her head, laughed nervously and then asked, “How so?”

  “Your commitment, your conviction, your courage… seriously: only when I am no longer in awe of it; will I be able to begin to understand it,” I said slowly, only realizing it myself as well. “Candy – you know who you are enough to put yourself not only through this physically and emotionally, but at odd’s end with likely, what, most of society? Like, come on: I couldn’t pick where to eat last night. And, yeah, okay, I can go deeper than that: I have yet to admit I’m depressed to even myself. And I couldn’t kiss Becky Cobb when she leaned toward me with her eyes shut in Jerry Comb’s basement in grade seven. She felt sorry for me, said, it was okay, I was just a puppy. A puppy – how was I a puppy? A puppy would have licked her face all day if she let it.” I rubbed my temples. She grinned and shook her head. I smiled timidly and shrugged. It was true: sorry I wasn’t a whore, Becky.

  Candy leaned toward me ever so slightly, my eyes widened, “You are just too smart.” She nodded like I should simply believe her.

  “You’re too smart,” I replied quickly. She sat with a thoughtful expression while I laughed at myself; her, the moment, all of it.

  She ran her hand along her leg, and asked almost distractedly, “You think I’m Smart?”

  I smiled and nodded, “Of course, you’ve been nothing but kind to me, and you knew that this thing with you was my problem, not yours. So, yeah, I think you’re intelligent, Candy. I can tell that much.”

  She stopped mid-drink and leaned forward, “Maybe I’ll be brain Candy,” she said with a crazy little smile.

  “You just wrecked it,” I said with a smile. I laughed while she giggled.

  “Oh my, honey,” she shook her head slowly, while she stared at me, “you are a lot like your father and the other parts that shine I bet are from your mother.”

  I smiled politely. “That would have been so much better without the ‘honey.’ Makes you sound almost motherly, which might have made me cry if you weren’t sitting there with your boobs on display.”

  She laughed, and I joined in lightly. “You are beyond your years I think,” then added, “I can’t put my finger on it, but you must be an old soul, one of a medicine man or a famous astrologer.”

  I tilted my head as if examining her. “Funny you should say that. I sometimes feel like I have a strange sense of time, but not my time, but everything beyond me and only ever going forward; the past is exempt. I don’t know if it’s a depth I’m on the verge of… or a madness I’m a mental stumble away from.” I stared at the table as I spoke. “I feel like it’s with that notion at my edges that has me living in this world with a certain amount of detachment, like I have an idea of something bigger slowly forming, maybe that’s the madness part of it; waiting for that idea to fully develop because until then it just doesn’t make sense. Do you know what I mean? It’s like I have this idea that’s slowly building, and it’s clearly unfinished, but is completely in the way, and I just have to live with it and hope it gets completed in my lifetime. Maybe it’s a book in the making.” I straightened in my seat, my eyes wide, “Maybe that’s why I ask do you know what I mean all the time! Man, I wish Katie was here, that was the best explanation I’ve been able to make of it yet – it actually sounded like it made sense this time around.” My laugh ended in a smile with staying power. “I don’t know. There’s more going on here than meets the eye, isn’t there?”

  “Uh, you think?” She smirked and glanced down at herself. I nodded in agreement and laughed.

  We were quiet for a moment as our smiles again straightened at a noticeable rate. “I may just be coming undone, I’m afraid,” I said just to put some sound back into the room. “Did you hear? I punched this guy at the park, with my kids there and everything. I’d like to say my hands were tied, but that just was not the case.”

  Candy frowned and it seemed out of place, but it disappeared just as quickly as it had come. I shook my head, “Don’t worry, I’m not about to punch a naked man-woman,” I said with a big laugh, which Candy followed with an even bigger one.

  “What did I tell you about that?” She pretended to be angry.

  “Last time,” I said, timidly, and added, honestly wishing it to be true, “I swear.”

  “I’m not about to punch a man–woman,” I shook my head. “Sheesh, you would think that would be the weirdest thing I have ever said, but it’s actually not. That would be: ‘Sick kids count as foreplay.’ I’m not… it was, I always, um, how do I explain this? The boys were sick, and a thing we say, Katie and I, is that, whatever, counts as foreplay, well, I say it at least and I just, I guess, um… it’s a running joke. I love my wife.” I waited for a moment to let the words and sentences move together completely in my head before trying to get them out. “Okay, it really sounds horrible out of context, yeah, I don’t think I will say that out loud again, no, probably just keep that one to myself,” I nodded with my mouth firmly shut. “Yeah, I guess that was much more of a private joke and I kind of feel like I just threw it on the floor at the mall.”

  “I’m not here to judge,” she struggled to say from behind her hand that was now bobbing in front of her face. Her whole body shook as she giggled without sound. She pulled herself together until she was once again still and smiling.

  I shrugged, perplexed. “Is it boiling in here? Is that why you haven’t put your shirt back on?” I suddenly felt like I was a source of far too much heat.

  Candy put the back of her hand to my forehead, then said, quite concerned, “Oh, honey, you are burning up.”

  “It’s funny because a minute ago I was about to ask you if it was freezing in here. But, uh, your… there were no signs suggesting it was cold in here, so… I mean, you know, do they still do that? Perk?” I waited a second with my head turned, “Is it weird that I just said, perk, as a question, all on its own, just PERK? Sorry. You just… weird me. Weird me? Who talks this?” I exclaimed hastily, and laughed. She joined in.

  “Oh, what just happened, you were getting so much better.”

  “Yeah, until I ran backwards seven miles,” I shrugged. “So, this, us chatting it up is a little surprising. I think Katie would be quite impressed with me. Though, I don’t know if I should lie to her or call her over.”

  Candy sat up straight and then so did I. “Let’s get her over here,” she said, “I’m dying to have some girl time with her, I mean, your dad just speaks so highly of her. I really want to know if she likes me.”

  “You’re a girl all right,” I said, “I’m sure Katie will love you. It is insane how level-minded she is. She is way more balanced than me, don’t even worry about that. And all of what she is thinking in her head she can just say, and on her first try, she doesn’t… like, dart off in different directions with different starts and different finishes from different times and different places the way I do; it’s weird, it really, really is. I would love to get to there, like, to that place, the spot, thing with that ability. Yow, my head though, it’s like every day it’s trying to break the record it set yesterday: on and on and on. I mean, if I’m ever going to come up something worth writing I can’t exactly sit here being Nate.” I smiled at Candy. “I’m going to owe that guy an apology next time I see him.”

  “Oh, honey, I think you seem to be much more focused on what you’re saying. Yes, you have your moments, but, all in all, there has been such an improvement since you even got here. No yelling, no real falling apart, nothing you weren’t able to recover from anyway. And, come on, it’s not like I’m not a challenge sitting here. The most important part is today you said some very sign
ificant things that struck a chord in me. It really meant a lot to hear your thoughts about my personal journey, even if you kept trying to play off your serious side with jokes. Honestly though, it did, it really meant so, so much, especially with my… background.” She said ‘background’ like I may not have understood the foreground, and I smiled like I didn’t mean it, to which she smiled like it was okay. “So thank you.” There was a sparkle in her eye I wanted to blow on, as I thought for sure it would burst into flame. It felt good to hear her words, and I truly took them to heart. Her hand had been gripping her bottle which she tapped on the table, “You have to give yourself so much more credit, honey. How long do you think it’ll be before the rest of the world catches up to the changes you’ve made personally, never mind the ones you have yet to make?”

  I nodded at her. “Oh, Candy, so you can do it too, like Katie: this is what I’m thinking, so this is what I will say. I’m glad you had this chance to show off.” I took a swig of beer and began to laugh. I blew air out of me like I was trying to rid myself of the beer breath. “I’m sorry it took me this long to come around and not be so… me. It was just – I wasn’t ready for anybody to be here with my dad. And then, well, I don’t know.” I took a deep breath, maybe replacing the air I’d just lost, and thought about what I was trying to say. “Who am I to judge you for your differences? And that’s not accurately stated. Okay, here’s a glimpse into my mind; right, your differences are such only contrasted to mine, perhaps then they’re not your differences but rather my own. If I look at you and see you a certain way, that’s a flaw in my sight, a judgment I am not even entitled to, yet that’s what everyone does, don’t they?” I smiled like it hurt. The tension was gone, but there was a new truth that would take time to understand.