by Dawn Dumont
Julie wasn’t home the next morning. It was Shaylene that noticed. “Julie’s not home,” she said to Nellie who stood in front of the fridge trying to figure out what to make for breakfast.
Nellie felt that familiar twinge of envy when someone else was having an exciting life — even though Everett, the love of her life, was in her bedroom lying spread-eagled across her star quilt. From the kitchen, she could even hear him farting. Envy was just her knee-jerk response to all things Julie.
“She’s a big girl.” Nellie pulled out the frying pan. She was going to make the perfect breakfast. Bacon and eggs for her man. She made a face at that phrase — it sounded so archaic, so rez. She shrugged. It was true.
“I wanted to pay her the money I owe her,” Shaylene said.
“She lent you money?” Nobody ever lent Nellie money; not that she ever asked.
“I’m going to leave it here,” Shaylene tucked it under the couch.
“Why don’t you wait? She’ll be home soon I’m sure.”
“I might forget.”
Nellie rolled her eyes at that, how many things could Shaylene have on her plate? She never went anywhere. “Want some breakfast?”
Shaylene nodded but walked back to her bedroom.
Nellie had wanted to chitchat. She felt like stuff was starting to happen between her and Everett. Like when she was describing a paper she was writing, it seemed like he was listening and that night he had kept one arm around her, most of the night
Now, when she talked to her mom on Sunday, she could tell her that “her boyfriend” might be coming down for Christmas and that they should make sure to get some beer because her “boyfriend” liked to drink. Or maybe they didn’t have to get any beer at all because maybe he wouldn’t want to drink when his friends weren’t around?
Her mom had already told Nellie that she thought Everett drank too much.
Nellie tried to explain the way she saw it in her head. “It’s not a big deal because I like to drink too. We’re a couple that likes to drink like Liz Taylor and what’s-his-name. Once he gets a good job and I graduate, we’ll slow down, like how people do.”
Her mom dropped it but Nellie knew it was being discussed around the dinner table. “Nellie’s got a guy but he’s trouble.” Her mom would suggest a visit and her dad would say he was too busy. Her sister would gossip and Nellie would get teased about it when she went home.
As long she kept bringing in good marks, she didn’t see how her life was anyone’s business.
“Eggs are burning,” Everett walked past her directly to the living room. He fell on the couch with a dull thud and clicked on the TV.
If she tried, she could probably get him to take her to a movie in the afternoon. She was pretty sure he had money, he’d only gotten paid on Wednesday and even though he went out that night, not even Everett could spend his whole paycheque in one night. Could he? Nellie felt tired suddenly.
“Serve yourself,” she called to the living room. “I feel sick.”
“What?”
Nellie turned off the stove and walked back towards her bedroom like a dog on the scent of rotting meat.
Nellie was lying in bed when Julie got in. She heard the door shut and the sound of voices. She recognized Everett’s joking tones and Julie’s laugh ring out. He was probably teasing her about staying out all night. Then Nellie heard another voice. Deeper than Julie’s and loud. Very loud.
Nellie popped out of the room. She saw Taz and he turned and saw her. “Hi!” He called down the hallway. Nellie closed her bedroom door. She looked in her mirror. Her hair was crazy. She pulled it back in a ponytail and replaced her baggy pajama pants with jeans.
She curled herself around the corner of the living room. Everett was sitting on the couch. Julie leaned against the wall and Taz sat in the easy-chair looking like he belonged there.
Nellie couldn’t take her eyes off of Julie’s smile. Happy and lopsided. Her eyes were tired but shiny. Nellie looked at Taz, he was talking, of course. Practically yelling some story about a fight he almost got into the night before. He talked fast too, leaping over multiple ideas in a single bound. He had a dozen voices as he acted out characters; he was a one-man conversation band.
Not him, Nellie thought. Why did it have to be him?
“We’re going out for breakfast!” Julie told Nellie. “Grab your jacket.”
“And comb your hair,” Taz added.
“It’s the afternoon.”
“It is?” Julie giggled.
“So what? Denny’s serves breakfast all day.”
Nellie glanced at the guy she slept with otherwise known as her boyfriend. “Everett?”
Everett shrugged.
Nellie brightened a bit. He wouldn’t have said yes if he didn’t have a little bit of money.
“We should bring Shay,” Nellie said, mostly because Shaylene would say something if she wasn’t at least asked even though she wouldn’t go anyway.
Nellie hurried down the hallway and knocked on her door. Sometimes Shaylene wore headphones and listened to music while she studied even though Nellie had explained to her that it took extra energy for the brain to drown out the music to focus on her work. Nellie pushed the door open.
Later she said that the room felt thick and silent.
Nellie headed towards the bed and laid her hand on the blanketed body there. Shaylene’s eyes were closed. Nellie shook her and said her name. Nellie shook harder and there was a heaviness to her body that was wrong.
She called her name this time.
Nellie picked up Shaylene’s wrist for a pulse. She’d always been good at that in first aid classes, somebody would say that they couldn’t find a pulse and Nellie would grab their wrist and find it in under ten seconds. Every time. She was pretty sure it was some kind of gift. Nellie dropped her hand and hesitated: 911 or compressions — which which which . . .
Her eyes spotted the phone next to the mattress. Much later this would be a detail that would make Nellie hold a pillow to her mouth and scream. She dialled quickly. Words tumbled out. Then Nellie began to push on her chest, one hand over the other, like she’d been taught. Julie was the first to find her; she called the guys to help. One of them took over. Nellie waited patiently for her turn.
Later the girls sat on the couch together. The paramedics had wrapped them in these metal looking blankets. Nellie always remembered how kind they were.
When she could speak, she told Julie that Shaylene had left some money for her under the couch. Julie nodded but Nellie could tell she hadn’t heard her. Nellie reached for it, wanting to know for sure that it was gone.
Taz and Everett walked in together, they’d followed the paramedics to the ambulance.
“Where’s the money?” Nellie stared at Everett.
“What money?”
“The money she left for Julie. She put it under the couch.”
“I didn’t know.” He rummaged through his pockets and put it in Julie’s lap. Julie didn’t seem to notice.
Everett went to sit next to Nellie and put his arm around her. She pushed his arm away.
Nellie felt her mind making lists, then un-making them. She could feel sentences floating through her mind, out of order. She had nothing to grab on to.
“You aren’t making any sense,” Everett told her. He called her mom.
“We’re coming to get you,” her mom’s voice was warm and solid.
“Julie too.”
“Of course.”
Nellie held the phone in her hand after she hung up. She ran through her lists and came up empty. Nothing can make me happy.
Taz gave them tea. Nellie would always remember that.
New Year’s Eve
1996
TAZ BLACKED OUT A lot. So much that he even had an after-blackout routine. He would wake up the next morning and tell everyone that he got fucked up, make some jokes about what an idiot he was and then buy everyone breakfast.
Things he did not remember:
2. Eating dog food like it was cereal. It wasn’t the worst thing someone could do but it felt weird to stare at the bag on the table the next afternoon and the bowl of milky pink substance next to it and realize that someone had done that and that his swollen gut said it was him.
3. Puking all over his bed and waking up with his face in it. During the shower and laundry day that followed, he had a long time to think about how close he had come to death.
4. Driving himself home. Too many times to count. Waking up in bed and not knowing how he got there. Like at all. His jacket and shoes pooled beside his bed, his keys on the bedside table. He always felt a frisson of pride, his blackout self rocked.
5. Passing out in strange places: a closet, under a bed, in a chicken coop, behind the high school dumpster, near the train tracks, half in and half out of a pond.
No matter what he did, other than teasing him, nobody ever sat him down and said, “Taz, you have a problem.”
He found out after he started drinking that people let things slide when you were drunk. Live and let live, that was the code. He might yell at his friends and call them dumb fucks or tell his girlfriend that she was a slut or stand toe to toe with his dad and call him a fucking loser to his face but not a single one of them ever confronted him afterwards.
His friends might be a bit crusty for a few days after, his girlfriend might not kiss him the same way and his dad might not meet his eyes anymore, but those were tiny consequences like a single bruise after falling down a set of stairs.
Most of this stuff happened up north in Crow’s Nest where he grew up and he figured that once he got to the city, he would leave it all behind.
In the city, he wouldn’t drink like that anymore because he would be busy with school and work and making connections; he would be building things, not tearing them apart. Crow’s Nest was behind him along with all of his sad eyed friends and their growing guts and whining that the chief and council sucked but never doing anything about it.
The day before he left, he went moose hunting with his best friend Travis. Travis had a girlfriend who was pregnant and Travis, dumb fuck, was hoping for twins. All the way into the woods, he kept talking about how lucky twins were and how they ran in both his and his girlfriend’s families. Every word out of his mouth drove home why Taz needed to get the fuck out of there.
They got into a good spot and made a few moose calls. Travis could do a cow so good that if he closed his eyes, he’d think she was standing right next to him. With a guy like that you weren’t wasting your time.
“How you gonna live without all this?” Travis asked as they lay on their sides splitting a smoke. Taz had a tree root right under his hip but at least the ground wasn’t wet. He inhaled the scent of the fir tree and felt it move down into the bottom of his lungs.
“Can’t stay here forever.”
“You could run for chief. I’d support you.”
“Not yet.” And probably, not ever. Being chief of Crow’s Nest might be something to most people on the rez but not Taz.
He’d been a few times to the city and came home feeling something. That was enough for him.
“Lots of girls gonna be disappointed. Falen for sure.”
“She’s got future Marineland written all over her.”
“Aw, c’mon she’s fucking hot.”
“Give her two years. Only place she ever wanted me to take her was KFC.”
“You’re really gonna leave all of this?”
“Like I’m Ben Johnson on steroids.”
“Run Forrest, run.”
They shot a bull and butchered it in the woods. It took longer than Taz expected. They thought about hanging out in the woods overnight but Travis decided that his girlfriend might get worried and call the cops or something. So they wrapped up the meat and hiked out.
“It’s not gonna be the same without you Taz.”
Taz grunted. The cold was moving in on them, creeping in through the cracks in their clothing. Taz liked how it felt, how it made him feel awake.
He figured once he got away from Crow’s Nest, he would be all business. Let the fuckers up there barbecue and social their life away, he was going to do something with his life.
But the people in the city turned out to be exactly like the people on the rez. There was always another party, another reason to turn it up.
The first one to five drinks, he was grinning and all of his worries drifted away. Sometimes that feeling was still there when he woke up, lingering on the edges of his consciousness. Then bam, regrets hit him. Best thing to do in that situation was to go for a run and tell himself all over again, that he was done. No more drinking.
That’s what he did his first New Year’s Day in Saskatoon. After his First New Year’s Eve, with Julie.
That morning started slow. Nellie had spent it nagging Julie to try on dresses. Nellie wanted them to go all out, all dressed up, but even though Julie was nodding her head, Taz knew she wouldn’t do it. Julie hated dresses. She thought they were too cold, too girlie and too dumb.
Plus Taz wasn’t going out with her looking like that. He already had to deal with all the sharks circling her. No need to throw chum in the water. He only had two fists.
Nellie told Everett he had to get the tickets for the social at the bar.
“It’s the only thing you have to do today.” She said it with a tight, sad smile that reminded Taz of his mother. Why did they always set themselves up for disappointment?
Taz knew getting the tickets was his job. Julie sat at the table with her head in her hands. She had a headache from doing shots the night before. Taz had goaded her into them, saying he wanted to see her drunk. So she got drunk, turned out she was exactly the same: quiet.
He didn’t get her at all. But at least nobody else could either.
Sometimes he got glimpses of who she was. They would be arguing and suddenly she’d start crying and Taz would realize he’d hit something. Then he’d backtrack and try to figure out what it was. Because you could yell at her and call her a dozen names and she wouldn’t show any reaction.
She never cried very long and she liked to do it in private. She’d run away from him, as far and as long as it would take to make sure he couldn’t see her do it. And if he held her down she would cry silently with her eyes closed.
It wasn’t like he wanted to see her cry, he just liked knowing that she felt things.
If she’s with you, then she wants to be there. That’s what he told himself. For whatever reason, she had chosen the short guy over the tall guys, the poor student over the rich dudes, the Indian guy over the white guys that were always sniffing around.
He wasn’t going to second guess it even though the doubts crawled all over him at night. Sometimes when they had sex no matter how deep inside of her he was he felt like it wasn’t enough. He wanted her so much and he knew she would never want him that much. Nobody could.
He still remembered the first time he saw her, leaning against the bar. The douchebag bartender was trying to talk to her but her eyes were on the crowd. She seemed to be staring at something but that was a trick she did. She was rarely looking at anything.
He thought she had to be someone’s girlfriend until he saw her tray.
She was a shitty waitress but nobody seemed to mind. She went to tables when she felt like it and the guys tried to hold her there as long as possible. The girls at the table tried to chase her away with quick drink orders or else they wanted her to stay and talk her ear off, wanted to know her secrets for being so pretty. She looked tired.
Taz wasn’t someone who asked out women. They sort of came to him around 2:00 AM when they realized that he was the guy who bought the shots and chos
e the party.
He knew she would never come to him as soon as he saw her. So he walked across the dance floor. He started walking before he even decided to do it. Like time travelling backwards.
And then she said yes to whatever he asked her and after her shift they went drinking together. Her hand felt smooth and cold in his. She was fucking tall though and if he was straight with himself, she was as tall as he was.
“You’re a goddamn giraffe,” he told her.
She laughed and punched him in the kidney.
They ran into a bunch of people he knew and they drank and bullshitted for hours. His eyes kept going to her. Usually she was staring at something else but once in a while his eyes would meet her and he would feel a jolt and feel scared for a second. Then he’d push that away because he wasn’t a chickenshit. She was just a girl.
They were always together after that except that time she had gone away to her rez for a week and he followed her a few days into it. He had classes but he didn’t care. He had this feeling that if he wasn’t there something would happen. She wasn’t the cheater type but he knew guys, they would do anything. Or, what if she was in a car with an idiot driving too fast? Car accidents happened all the time. And none of those rez houses had carbon monoxide detectors or too many of them had wood stoves and who knew what could happen? So he went and she was happy to see him.
He could see into the future with her. He saw their kids, their house, her getting older but still staying pretty. He told her about it one time when he was drunk and she laughed and looked away which made him crazy. But she stayed with him so he figured he had a chance. He tried not to say stupid things like that again.
Taz gave her a kiss as he and Everett left the apartment that afternoon. First they went to wash Taz’s car. Then, Everett took him to his dealer’s house and they bought some weed and Taz splurged on some coke.
Even though he was a poor student, his dad sent him money every once in a while and his band asked him to do stuff for them. Just paperwork and running around the city. He wasn’t a bum like Everett. Not that Everett had to be a bum, the dude knew enough about construction that he could get his journeyman and make lots of money but he wasn’t interested. Taz told him all the time how stupid and lazy he was. Everett laughed it off.
