I sink into silence. He’s right. Maybe it’s the belief that our enemies are out to get us that makes us feel united, like a family, that makes strangers risk their safety to break up a fight, offer you money when you’re short for the bus, share their food with you on a train ride simply because you’re sitting next to them. I once broke up a brawl myself, in the beach restaurant where I was working, pulled one man off the other and stood between them with my tray as a shield. Walking back to my section, I was pleased with myself for saving the day. In fact, I think that’s what compelled me to speak up when I did. Those teens terrorized the bus and I wanted to be the one to put an end to it.
Later that evening, I share this insight with Sean. We sit on the couch, take-out containers perched in our laps. “How arrogant is that?” I wave my fork. “I need to learn to shut up.”
Sean shakes his head. “It sounds to me like you called an asshole an asshole,” he says. “Don’t ever stop doing that. That’s why we all love you.”
I note the royal “we.” The use of the word “love.” I stare down at my curry.
* * *
—
TRAUMA IS A bit like falling in love: as sneaky, astounding, and unstoppable. And I should know, because in my case, these two are sliding in parallel streams under my door. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened between us if Sean hadn’t shown up on the bus, if he weren’t there to catch me. I’m trying to hold on to my act, stay cool, but it’s like Sean can see past my armor. Sometimes I get so shy around him I can hardly look him in the eye. Everything in my body is telling me to make a run for it. This love business is trouble. It’s like a huge revolving siren is flashing red above his head.
Under the Crime Victim Assistance Act, the victim is awarded 24 one-hour counseling sessions to assist her recovery from the psychological injury resulting from the offense.
* * *
—
AFTER A MONTH I convince myself that all it takes is a conscious decision to stop feeling sorry for myself and join the world. I don’t even bother using the government-funded counseling I’ve been awarded, just pluck my eyebrows, put on some dangly earrings, and go out for drinks.
I manage to fool myself for about a week, until my favorite clothing store asks me to model in their upcoming show. I’ve never done anything like that before, so I’m flattered and excited. When the show is over, I’m high on adrenaline and hairspray, drinking with new friends: models, makeup artists, and designers. I drink a little too much.
Somebody talks about buses. Everybody has a story about a bus.
“I was assaulted on a bus,” I say.
“What?” Everybody turns to look at me. “When?”
“Six weeks ago,” I calculate. “Damn, it doesn’t seem that long.” I plaster a thin smile on my lips; it’s the same smile I have when I talk about my dead father, a smile that is meant to make people feel more at ease. It says: Don’t be afraid of me. I’m just like you. Bad things happen to everyone. Let’s have another drink!
“What happened?” asks Pat, one of the models and my new best friend. Her face is crumpled with concern. I didn’t plan on talking about it, but now everyone is staring. I sip my beer. “Oh, I just opened my big mouth and some teenagers beat me up.”
Pat puts a hand on her mouth. “You poor thing! That’s awful! I’m so sorry that happened to you. Are you okay?”
“Well, yes,” I say. I try to laugh but it comes out as a wheeze. “I mean, it’s been six weeks.” And then it happens. A dam collapses and I fold over crying, sobbing in my smart flapper dress and fake pearls, my high heels, my big hair, my makeup. I realize I don’t know any of these people but I can’t stop. I’m crying so hard that Pat hands me one napkin after another. Streams of mascara and glitter slide down my cheeks. Six weeks. What the hell is wrong with me? Shouldn’t I be over it by now? I grab my stuff and run.
On January 29 2005 Constable Louie attended the victim’s residence. He presented the VPD photographic lineup to the victim. The victim chose suspect 1 in 49 seconds.
* * *
—
I SIT ACROSS from Constable Louie in Sean’s softly lit kitchen. We ran out of small talk by the time we made it to the hall. Christmas was fine. The weather is cold. I stare at him as he opens his briefcase, my foot tapping on the leg of the table. He places a glossy sheet lined with photos in front of me and sets his timer. It’s like a page ripped out of a yearbook, except none of the girls are smiling. Some of these photos are actual mug shots. I can feel Constable Louie watching me, and I’m aware that the seconds on his timer are adding up, quantifying my indecision. I chew on the inside of my lip, close my eyes and open them for a fresh look. I will look and suddenly see her. I will point and declare: That’s her! I’ve been telling everyone I could recognize them anywhere, but it’s been three months. I’m trying so hard that my shoulders are clenched into a knot.
“Maybe this one,” I say, pointing at a girl who looks vaguely familiar, and immediately feel like I’ve failed. It’s the wrong answer.
“This one?” He points at number one.
I nod with tight lips. I search for some recognition on his face. I want him to give me the right answer. But I’m the only one who knows.
“How sure are you?”
I stare at the sheet without blinking.
“In percentage,” he says softly. “Don’t rush.”
“Sixty-five percent?” Hesitation tints my reply, curves it into a question. Then I think: What if it’s not her after all? What if I’m responsible for getting an innocent girl into trouble? I hastily add, “Maybe sixty,” and crush any credibility I had left, together with my hope for closure.
Constable Louie leaves the sheet in front of me a little longer, just in case I change my mind again.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I thought it would be easier.”
“That’s okay,” he says, straight-faced, and collects his papers. My eyes follow the sheet until it’s tucked in his briefcase. I want to stop him, ask for one more look. But I say nothing, slump in my chair and watch him zip his bag. He stands up to leave and suddenly I know: it’s all over. This was my chance, and now it’s gone. They’ll never find them. They’ll forget all about this and move on to bigger cases. I’ll never see Constable Louie again. And as I walk him to the door, I feel a familiar sense of loss, a dull ache in my chest. He smiles when he says goodbye, says he’ll call. It’s like the end of a bad date. I close the door and lean against it, fight the itch in my nose that precedes tears.
Sean appears from the living room, a mix of question and concern in his eyes. I wave my hand in front of my face, as if to dry the tears before they come. “I’m okay,” I say, not looking at him. “It’s fine, really. I’m fine.” But then I let him hold me anyway, allowing my body to soften into his. Maybe I don’t need to win this fight. We stand there for a long time without saying a word.
HORNETS
I’VE NEVER SEEN HORNETS BEFORE, so when I call Sean at his job on the tugboat, I say, “There are weird wasps in our bedroom, with long legs. They’re freaky-looking.”
“Those aren’t wasps,” Sean says. “They’re hornets.”
“Whatever. Hornets,” I say.
By the next time we speak, I’ve forgotten what they’re called. “These wasps are scary,” I say. “I have to dodge them when I walk into our bedroom. Sometimes I run upstairs to grab something and flee.”
Our East Vancouver bedroom is a large wooden loft shaped like the bow of a boat and perched on the exposed beams that once supported the living room’s ceiling. It’s a bitch to clean—when we moved in two years ago, I spent hours vacuuming up cobwebs and hammering in exposed nails—and when it rains heavily, it sometimes leaks, but it has a rustic and romantic feel, and two skylights with a view of the mountains, the sea, and the city.
* * *
—
&
nbsp; OVER THE NEXT week, I wake up to loud buzzing every day. The August heat wave makes sleeping impossible unless I leave the skylights open overnight. I cover my head with the sheet, create a hole from the folds, and peer out. Two hornets—a couple, perhaps—hover around the peak of our ceiling. I wait until they fly off through the skylight, and then make a run for the bathroom.
* * *
—
WHEN SEAN COMES home for an unexpected afternoon’s leave, we lie in bed and I spot a hornet sneaking in through the skylight. “There!” I point. “See? Wasps!”
Sean laughs. “I’ve told you a million times they’re called hornets, and you keep calling them wasps.”
“Hornets,” I say, almost spitting it out. For some reason, I don’t like the word. The r and t and s roll funny in my mouth, bumping against my tongue and teeth like grit that snuck into my greens. Some words in the English language just rub me the wrong way.
“Look.” I point at the peak of our ceiling, where the boards angle up into a dark corner. “Do you think they’re building a nest?” And I suddenly know: they are building a nest. Of course. Why didn’t I think of it sooner? We’re both quiet for a moment. We can hear the hornets buzzing madly.
“They’re probably doing it in there,” Sean says.
“What are we going to do?” I panic. We go downstairs and google hornets. The site we find recommends going in with a bottle of Raid, wearing hornet protective clothing and running shoes. We both find the thought unappealing. Besides, Sean is leaving in two hours, going back on the boat for another week, so that leaves me to deal with it.
“I wish I didn’t have to go,” he says as he stands by the door.
I scowl, but then quickly rearrange my face into a smile, say, “I’ll be fine,” and kiss him goodbye. No point in making him feel shitty about his work. I stand barefoot on the front steps and wave until the taxi turns a corner and I can’t see him anymore.
* * *
—
THIS IS OFTEN how it goes. This is what it means to be a sailor’s girlfriend. A day after we moved into this place—our first place together—he went back to work for two weeks, leaving me to unpack an entire house. He was gone when I had to scrape the decomposed corpse of a mouse off the dining-room floor, when our toilet flooded, when our cat didn’t come home all night and I had to walk the streets calling his name and tapping a spoon against a can of Fancy Feast. He wasn’t there the next morning, when I found out that our cat had been run over in a nearby alley, and when I sat crying at my desk.
“It’s not so bad,” I say when people ask. I tell them that I had asked the universe for a part-time boyfriend. I tell them that Sean’s work schedule is a healthy arrangement, that the distance keeps the relationship fresh. I say, “I like my space,” and, “It sure makes for exciting reunions!” Most times I mean it too. Other times, I talk out loud, just to hear my voice, and a faint echo bounces up against the rafters before wafting out of the skylight like smoke. Then the house falls quiet again, the fridge hums, the floorboards creak under my heavy feet.
My mother calls after Sean leaves. It’s late in Israel. I can hear the night in her voice—the tugging of sleep. “Is he home?” she asks.
“He just left.”
My mother sighs. “How will you ever get pregnant with that schedule?”
“Ima.”
“You’re thirty-five.”
“I know.”
“You do want kids, right?” It’s the first time she asks me flat out. Now that my older sister has finally given birth, the pressure is on.
“I have to go,” I say.
* * *
∙ ∙ ∙
IN THE WEEKS leading up to my thirty-fifth birthday, I began having death dreams. The scenarios were varied and vivid, but in all of them I died. The loss felt so real that I’d wake up in tears. For days, I roamed the streets of my neighborhood burdened with grief, blind to the West Coast spring and its dazzling display of cherry blossoms. Never before had my fear of death presented itself in a manner that was so on point, so elementary. I turned inward, trying to unlock the meaning of the dreams. Maybe it was because I was getting close to my father’s age when he passed away, or maybe I was just like everyone else, afraid of getting old.
Or maybe the dreams were a premonition. Maybe I was going to die.
“It’s not such a bad thing, being aware of our mortality,” my friend Gurjinder said. “It makes us live with more urgency.”
Yes, I wanted to tell her with a dismissive hand gesture. I know. I invented that. Except it didn’t feel like a good thing.
At the time, it didn’t occur to me that the dreams might have nothing to do with death and everything to do with babies. Despite the pressing matter of my age, I still wasn’t sure how I felt about procreating. My early thirties had seemed like an extension of my twenties: I was still a waitress, still broke, still working nights and sleeping in, still partying and smoking too much. There was no yearning in my guts, no visceral hankering. I hadn’t cooed at babies on the street and at times was impatient and unkind to parents for taking over the sidewalk with their massive strollers, for asking for special treatment at the bank lineup. I didn’t know what to do with babies—how to hold them, change them—and I was a terrible, absent aunt to my nephews and nieces, all born after I left for Canada. I barely managed to take care of cats and was an infamous plant killer (including, astoundingly, cacti). Obviously, I lacked a maternal instinct; it was an admission I shared with Sean early on in our relationship. We were in my kitchen, standing on two sides of a wooden counter. He stared at me for a while without speaking.
“What?” I said. “Not everyone has to have children.”
“No,” he said. “But I think it would be a shame if you didn’t. You’d make a great mom.”
I changed the subject, looking away, cheeks flushed.
I had spent years teaching myself to be self-sufficient, not committing to anything—homes, jobs, men, furniture—trapped inside my incessant pursuit of freedom, taking risks in anything but love. “A great relationship is only a little bit better than being alone,” I had announced to anyone who’d listen. In our first few months together, I kept telling everyone Sean and I were casual; we were just having fun. Except sometimes it wasn’t fun at all. Sometimes, I was waiting by the phone while feigning disinterest, walking by his favorite cafés and bars as if by chance (we lived in the same neighborhood, after all). Pretending not to care was exhausting; I was holding on to my façade so tight that my muscles ached. Sean, on his part, had not pursued me assertively, had given me all the space in the world, which is what I claimed I wanted, yes, but it also meant that the risk of heartbreak was greater, that he might not like me as much as I liked him.
After I was assaulted on that Vancouver bus, something changed between us; we softened toward each other, guards lowered, and began reevaluating the terms of our relationship. By then, we had been seeing each other for six months, a mark at which most casual relationships are bound to evolve or end, or so my friend Carlin had professed. A few weeks after the assault, he invited me to join him in Victoria, his hometown, for Christmas. I stammered when he asked, said I’d think about it, both pleased by the invitation and terrified by the gravity of it. “What is there to think about?” my sister—my go-to person for reality checks—asked on the phone from Israel. “I thought you liked this guy.”
My friend Marie, less diplomatic, sighed loudly and blurted in her charming Québécois accent, “Come on, admit it. You’re in love with him. And I hate to tell you, but everyone knows.”
I snorted a laugh. “That’s crazy. Why would I be in love with him?”
“No reason. Why is anybody in love with anybody?”
I called Carlin immediately. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I thought you knew,” she said.
The reali
zation that I had been lying to myself for weeks began to sink in rapidly. After the initial stab of panic, lightness enveloped me, the relief of surrender.
In his parents’ home in Victoria, surrounded by his family, plucked away from our familiar setting of Commercial Drive with its trendy cafés and flirty waitresses, I saw a new side to Sean. I saw a man who helped his mother in the kitchen when she got overwhelmed with dinner, who loved spending time with his elderly grandmother, who chased his nieces around the house, made them laugh, and carried them on his shoulders. A man who would make a great father one day.
* * *
—
IT TOOK US a while, but eventually, we both conceded. This was love—the glorious, loopy-making, full-of-clichés kind. When we were together, I felt beautiful and reckless and radiant and ready to take on the world. We couldn’t keep our hands off each other, eliciting sighs and eye rolls from friends at parties and disgruntled strangers on the street. We barhopped on downtown streets glittering with rain and neon, crashed parties, and jumped into private pools at night. We got in our car and drove until we were suddenly at the Rockies or Seattle or California. Once, we upped and bought tickets to Mexico for the following day.
Sean introduced me to the rewards of stability, to perks I had previously perceived as luxury, and to the revolutionary notion that money could be used for something other than your basic needs while you save most of it for traveling. Before him I had never been to a spa, had never dolled up and gone to a posh restaurant, had never owned stilettos or a fancy cocktail dress. I was the kind of person who trimmed her own hair. My idea of splurging was a shopping spree at Value Village or buying the next round at the bar. My idea of a savings account was an envelope in my underwear drawer, where I stuffed my tips every night until they added up to my next plane ticket.
The Art of Leaving Page 20
