Shelby

by McCormack, Pete;

  “Course.”

  “Do you like sex?”

  His face scrunched. “What kind o’ question is that?”

  “Do you think about it very much?”

  “Sure.”

  “How much?”

  “All the time.”

  “Me, too.”

  “So?”

  “Answer me this: If you could have relations with every women here without repercussions, would you?”

  Eric turned back and surveyed the front room. “Like no AIDS and shit?”

  “Disease free.”

  “Look at the onion on her, man,” he said pointing. “No pregnancy, no bullshit?”

  “Nothing.”

  He sniffed. “Maybe.”

  “If you were a world dictator and could have sex with anyone you wanted, would you?”

  “Against their will?”

  “Whatever you wanted.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “It wouldn’t be a kick like that.” We looked at each other. Eric glanced at the tray of treats in his hands. “Although I wouldn’t mind access to a few more babes. Power is a big time turn-on, man. That’s why Presidents don’t get dick done. Brownie?”

  I felt clothed in despair. “I fear nothing is sacred. Does love truly exist?”

  “Course it does, you dick. Drink your beer.”

  “Why do regiments of seemingly normal young men rape and massacre innocent villagers during wartime?”

  “What’s gotten into you, man?”

  “There are men in this world, Eric—men like you and me—who eat other people for sexual gratification.”

  Eric splurted out a laugh and shrugged. “Go figure.”

  “I’m scared, Eric. What if I suddenly slit your throat with a kitchen utensil?”

  “The spatula killings. Pictures at eleven. Ease up.”

  “How can you jest? How can I be sure the women in this room are safe from my kind?”

  Eric put his arm around me. “Because three quarters of them could kick your ass,” he said. “Have a brownie and keep on your toes …”

  The phone woke me up at twenty after six the following morning. I lay crumpled on the pull-out couch, clothes still on, eyes burning.

  “Hello,” I said groggily.

  “Meet me at 3883 Imperial.”

  “Lucy?”

  “3883 Imperial. Quarter to seven. At the pro shop.”

  “Pro shop?”

  Lucy was standing beneath a clubhouse awning when I arrived. It was pouring. I got out of the car and ran for shelter.

  “A golf course!” I yelled.

  Lucy smiled, reached out and kissed me softly on the cheek. Her breath was warm. She turned my face to hers and looked into my eyes as the rain crashed down behind us. She smiled a soft smile, and then caused my body to shiver with the placement of her hand on my lower back.

  “Come on!” she said, clasping my hand and yanking me towards the pro shop.

  “I think we should discuss last night.”

  “I’m sorry about that,” she said.

  “What are we doing?”

  “Guess?”

  “Golfing?”

  “Bingo.”

  Lucy’s first swing dug up a divet so immense we could have strung a net across it and called it Wimbledon. The club sprang from her hands, cartwheeled across the face of a monsoon while the ball, without getting touched, toppled off the tee.

  “First time?” I asked.

  “Yeah. You?”

  “Yeah.”

  By the time we reached the green I was well over what enthusiasts call par and Lucy was prostrate and using the back end of her putter as a pool cue.

  “About last night,” she said on her belly, knocking the ball a few feet short of the hole. She stood up, soaked. “How can I put this? Last night’s geyser—which I’m sorry about—was an example of what happens whenever I get repeatedly laid over an extended period of time. I don’t know if it’s biochemical or what, but I get … I get these streaks of darkness … these bullets on my tongue … I guess … confined. I feel like a concubine.”

  “I definitely don’t think of you like that.”

  “I lash out. And I know it affects the rest of my life, too. See, anybody can figure out their options when they’re left to rot in a damn cage. What else are you going to do? Push-ups? Rot? Shit? But the real test is to do it when you’re free, when you have choices.” Lucy scratched her cheek. “I gotta feel free.”

  I paused. “Lucy?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you ever feel too free?”

  “Too free?”

  “Like there’s a myriad of potential opportunites; good and bad. So many you’re paralysed by the onslaught.”

  “You gotta be kiddin’,” she said.

  We walked up the next fairway, silent save the rain and an almost vocal ambush of greenery. Lucy picked up her ball and walked with it.

  “I want you to know, Shel, that when you showed up on Thanksgiving, I swear to god I felt like I could come on the spot … It was unbelievable. I felt loved, you know? I thought, ‘This guy is A-okay’—which I still figure.”

  “I … I try to be kind.”

  She stopped walking. “But I was wrong in thinking I was ready to have sex without feeling like a douche bag afterwards—it’s the whore thing, maybe. Whatever, I thought I could, with an open mind, you know, make it loving, mystical—do the tantric sex thing, that’s what I wanted—to use the tantra and transfer sexual energy to a higher level instead of crushing it.”

  “And …?”

  “It didn’t flow.”

  “Lucy, before you say anything more I’d like to first apologise for my own actions and admit that there were some bonafide truths to last night’s accusations. As far as being a lover goes, I have been intercourse-oriented, and for what it’s worth, I’m committed to change.”

  “I should have finished what I was saying,” she said. “I’m taking a vow of celibacy.”

  “Celibacy?”

  “Sex for me is still power. Control. There’s nothing loving about that. So until I figure it out, I need to commit to my needs … and I can’t feel guilty about it.”

  “You shouldn’t.”

  “I just can’t.”

  “What about you and me?”

  She seemed suddenly sad. “It’s too wet for golf,” she said.

  XIII

  Be not hasty in thy spirit to be angry:

  for anger resteth in the lap of fools.

  —Ecclesiastes 7:9

  A burst gasket in Sicamous caused me to arrive in Revelstoke at two-thirty in the morning. The kitchen light was left on but all was still. A sense of emptiness coupled with sadness sat like sludge in my heart. There was a note on the table.

  SON

  There’s meat loaf in the fridge.

  Ed.

  Just as I put the note down both Mom and Dad staggered into the kitchen, matching blue polyester pajamas, shading their eyes from the light, staring at me as though I might be contagious. Both squinting, dad rubbed an eye.

  “What the hell have you done?”

  “I just arrived.”

  “Three years. Flush.”

  I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out Lucy’s crumpled check. “I have the two thousand dollars you sent me at the onset of summer,” I said, placing it on the table.

  “One question, Shelby. Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why?”

  “We had an agreement,” Mother said, jumping in. “We agreed to pay for your schooling. We have. You quit.”

  “I have quit, yes, but from only a portion of the whole. To the remainder I remain committed to excellence. Surely, life does not end with the dropping out of school.”

  Dad walked by me gruffly and put on water for coffee.

  I stretched. “I’m about ready for bed,” I said. “We’ll have a good chat come the new day.”

  Startling me, Dad
grabbed the shoulder of my Gortex jacket and twisted me towards him.

  “Don’t get uppity with us, you yellow son of a bitch,” he said. “We are not the one’s that don’t get it. Don’t slough off your mother with poetry. You’ve been a real bastard. Start explaining …”

  And so, over the next two hours, as exhaustion set in and the general mood wobbled from bitter to frustrated to caustically sarcastic, I tried.

  “… well I’ll be whoopity damned,” Dad said. “Hear that Peg? Shelby’s working in a library … So what do you do there, son?”

  “I shelve books.”

  “He’s a book shelver! Great, great. How’s the pay?”

  “Quite reasonable,” I said. “It’s union.”

  “Fifteen an hour?”

  “Nine, actually.”

  “That ain’t bad,” he said, the timbre of his voice becoming more strained. “Hear that Peg? Fifteen an hour.”

  “I can hear him, Ed. I’m right here. He said nine.”

  “Nine?” Dad said. “Lucky nines. Guess you like it, though, eh?”

  “For now it’s enough.”

  “For now? Sounds like a lifer to me, Shelby.”

  “Dad … I … Please understand. I couldn’t continue in a situation I didn’t enjoy.”

  “Enjoy?” he said. His grin—which never really was—flipped to a snarl. “You son of a bitch,” he said. “I do not enjoy what I do. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t the right thing to do.” He stood up and over me. “Think I enjoyed busting my balls to pay for your three years of university?” He slammed his fist down on the table.

  “I appreciate all you’ve done,” I said, “From moment zero to now. And Lord knows I never meant to let you down—either of you.”

  “If I told you one damn thing it was school, school, school!”

  “I still have plans for social contribution.”

  “You know what it cost to pay for the last few years?”

  “I could reimburse you.”

  He stopped in midstep and turned around, leaning his face to my level. “At nine bucks an hour it’ll take you fifty goddamn years to pay back thirty-five grand.”

  “I’ll do it.”

  “In fifty years we’ll all be dead.”

  “Too far, Ed,” Mom said.

  “Too far nothin’!”

  “It’s five in the mornin,’” she said. “We should get some sleep.”

  “Oh I see now,” he said, “it’s all very clear: The power base has split.” He turned and walked out of the kitchen, presumably towards the front door. It slammed.

  Mom sat down. “What’s happened, Shel?”

  “A change of priorities, Mom, that’s all.”

  “Come on, talk to me.”

  “That’s it, end of story.”

  “Don’t snap at me, you little snot!”

  I was startled by the attack. Staggering backwards, I mumbled out: “If you don’t mind, I’d like to go for a fresh walk—I mean air.”

  She waved me away without looking up.

  Outside I ambled into a sky dappled in cloud highlighted by a low flying moon. “Embrace me restless night,” I cried, “for I am momentarily lonely.” I ran towards the woods. How could I worry about school with such splendour before me? After all, it was my life, and I was far more concerned with the incessant ache that had managed to lodge itself in my gut like a national landmark for as long as I could recall. As for Dad, I was sorry he was so upset, but there was little I could do for his position—nor he for mine. And Mom? It was so unlike her to bellow at me as she had. Nonetheless, there were more important matters at hand, like moving out from the cosmological void I had for so long claimed as me. “O what awaits? What awaits?” I cried. “I am open to bigger things.”

  The light of the new day was rapidly ascending and I could just make out the fall leaves, the wondrous surprise of a dark blue dawn. I closed my eyes and smiled. In a neurotic sort of way it was comforting being home. I looked forward to seeing Gran. A sudden sharp pain in my ribs had me clutching my side and I tumbled to the dank ground. It passed. Morning was upon us all, good and bad, under one moon, one sun. “Without you we are not!” That is what I heard. Sweet Mother of Nature I suck from your ample breast. Every divine second of existence is innately mine—and yet I see not. Why must I be a turd? Why must everybody yell? What have I been thinking? What a fool I have been! I sat on the floor of the woods as precious, tiny gasps of light peeked through her sheltering cover. Moss hung to bark which hung to trees whose roots plunged into the soil like a lover, and the rich ground offered the same in return. I stood up, danced for a moment and then stopped. My heart told me the moment is eternally dancing and all I need is the guts to cut in. So, feeling only slightly self-conscious, I danced some more.

  After spending the morning with Gran, she suggested we borrow Mom’s car and disappear on what she’d always called a road picnic—essentially a packed lunch eaten while driving. I readily agreed. Nowhere did I feel so comfortable as I did with Gran. She held for me unabashed love, and I loved her for it. In an hour she could be amazed by a wisp of wind, tearful at the state of the world, hilarious in describing Ed’s morning habits, and then suddenly silent, for, to quote her, “The only way to have a true conversation with God is to shut your face.”

  A series of spontaneous dares had us zooming out of the townsite heading towards the sand flats just north of the city dump, Gran convinced to try driving for the first time in her life.

  Within minutes of parking, Gran was strapped into the driver’s seat and I was explaining the whereabouts and functions of the gas and brake. Her feet barely reached the pedals. I moved the seat forward and stuck my jacket under her to give more height. She said not a word, her hands gripped tightly to the steering wheel, a dark blue scarf wrapped round her neck, her shoulders hunched and her expression one of focussed determination. She leaned way forward, the entire world suddenly an acre or two of sand flats. All she needed, I figured, was a pair of goggles and a WWI flying cap.

  “We’re not moving,” she said.

  I went on to explain the operandus mundi of the brake and gas pedals in an automatic transmission. “Okay?” I asked.

  Gran offered an affirmative harumph.

  I continued: “… and if you want to stop after you start, just remove your foot from that pedal and transfer it to the left and push it down on the other pedal again … okay?” She didn’t answer, nor did she question anything I said. She pulled her foot slowly off the brake. The car edged a few inches forward. She put her foot down. She did it again. And again. Then she put her foot lightly on the right pedal and pushed. The car lurched forward. By reflex Gran pushed the pedal down even farther. The acceleration caused momentary panic and she slammed her foot onto the brake pedal. We sprang forward before being roughly braced by our respective seat-belts.

  “This thing runs like your life,” she muttered.

  “Are you okay, Gran?” I asked. She didn’t respond. “You want to keep doing it?” Her expression remained on the flats ahead. Over and over she repeated the manoeuvre, her confidence increasing with each attempt. The general tension began to dissipate and some fifteen minutes later she was hurtling around the entire area at twenty miles an hour with a wide, smug smile on her face, dust tumbling all around us, her pleasure unbridled.

  “Candy from a toddler!” she yelled a couple of times. It was a sight to behold.

  Dinner that evening, to my surprise, passed without upheaval. Having Gran there was the key; if she wasn’t the family mediator per se, she was the one that could shoot down an inane argument at fifty paces just by the look on her face—not to mention the fact that, right or wrong, she’d always been one to champion the underdog.

  The night was bittersweet, full of quiet reminiscing over a childhood that no longer existed. I rummaged through belongings stuffed into the far recesses of a once magic closet—a closet that had travelled to the moon, sailed round the globe and been the laboratory of
a thousand world shaking discoveries. And what did I find on this night? A Grade Four scholastic ribbon, a set of Dinosaur Cards from Red Rose Tea with drawings and descriptive analyses of certain dinosaurs, my collection of Tintin books and old model airplanes. The fact was I could pour what remained into a shoe box and maybe sell it for a dollar and a half. And the room itself? Its surreality was haunting and yet miraculous; through Vietnam to AIDS, and my own battles with masturbation, graduation, family wars and on and on, it had steadfastly opposed the marching of time.

  Just after dinner the following evening I phoned Lucy. She was packing to go on a two day trip to Seattle to visit her friend Marj, Leonard and their dog Peppermint. I was soothed hearing her voice, and yet pained in knowing the state of our ill-defined separation. Hanging up, I picked a Winnie-the-Pooh book from the bookcase downstairs, sauntered upstairs into the front room, sat down and read.

  Two or three pages from finishing and thoroughly enjoying the final chapter, In which Christopher Robin gives a Pooh Party, and we say good-bye, Dad walked in, flicked on a baseball game and sat in a chair on the opposite side of the room.

  “You watching the series?” he asked.

  I glanced up. “No.” I looked back down but I could tell he was staring at me.

  “They’re a helluva team.”

  “Hm.”

  “They won’t repeat, though, not a chance.”

  “No chance,” I mumbled.

  “Do you know what I’m talking about?”

  I looked up and shrugged.

  “The World Series,” he said. “The Blue Jays.”

  I returned to my reading.

  “Baseball,” he said firmly.

  I glanced up. “I know.”

  “What the hell are you reading?”

  “Early Milne.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  I returned to the book.

  “What’s it about?”

  “A bear.”

  “What kind o’ bear?”

  “It’s Winnie-the-Pooh,” I said.

  Dad reacted as a dog does to getting air blown in its face. He shook his head and turned back to the T.V.

  I should have ignored him. “Why’d you shake your head?” I asked.

  “Huh?” he mumbled, half watching the T.V.

  “I’m wondering why you shook your head.”