Ways In

Love, I think. I mean, I’m ready for it, for sure. I haven’t had a kiss like that since—I hate to bring it up—since before I was married. Sorry.

Nice of you to say, and thank you, but I am sorry.

Well, it’s just that new love—I guess that’s what we’re calling it—doesn’t need this heaviness dragging along behind it.

That’s it. Baggage was the word I was looking for.

Well, truth be told, I didn’t want to throw some cliché at this, this thing we’re building, this relationship.

That’s right, building slowly. Whatever moments I can steal. My fault. I’m sorry.

Okay, I’m not sorry, then. It’s nice of you to understand. Kids take up almost all of your time, that’s just what kids are like.

I can’t wait for you to meet them, either, I guess. 

Hey, that’s not what I’m saying.

Did you have— Are your parents together?

Lucky you. The thing about my girls is that it’s going to be hard for them, right?

That isn’t a reflection on you, not at all, but the life they have now, with their mom and me, that’s the only life they’ve got and they’re not unhappy with it, maybe they don’t even think of life in those terms, like to be happy or unhappy with something that just is. I guess it’s just that it’s, that it would be, change. Who likes change?

No, I like change and— Yeah, yeah, it’ll happen. It should happen.

Will. Has to. Needs to.

Mmm, that kiss, though. What a gift. Body of work. Working body maybe.

What I mean is that I’ve been experiencing my body as a working body, not as a body of or for or even capable of pleasure. Come here again.

Yes. Wet, fleshy pleasure.

Don’t tease. I can’t wait.

I know I don’t have to wait, but I do, for me.

Of course it’s a generous offer. Irresistible.

Okay, nearly irresistible then.

Do I think about it? I barely think about anything else.

No, I don’t. Not because I wouldn’t, but my wife and I, we almost never do it anymore.

No one talks about it. Warns you. Having babies, having a baby, well, for obvious reasons it makes it unattractive—for the person who gave birth—to want to do it.

It wasn’t horrifying, actually. Birth was, birth is amazing. Like the most incredible thing a person can do. A miracle that’s way too common to be called a miracle. It’s just like all this pain and work and then, whoosh, with this squelch there is suddenly a new human who needs to be dried off and fed and kept warm, this little person who you love overwhelmingly.

I like to imagine what your apartment’s like.

I picture lots of plants. Lots of natural light. Books. A bowl of fruit. Order. I mostly picture order. That’s another thing that disappears when you have kids. This order that you’ve tried to maintain, feels like you’ve just learned to maintain.

No! C’mon! I can’t go back to your place.

Hey, don’t touch!

Okay, okay, okay. Stop. Seriously.

No. I should go. People will start wondering where I am. I feel like a teenager. I think I like it.

Sure, I like it.

’Kay, I have to go.

Yeah, I love you too.

God, that feels— Feels good, I guess. Overwhelming.

No, don’t. ’Kay, I’ll see you.

We’ll talk soon.

Trees, near to dropping their lovely leaves, and two houses’ windowless shoulders shelter the parkette from the hundreds of eyes that might watch us, you and I, from the aging apartment buildings that huddle just off the main routes around this neighbourhood. It is always shocking to me to see just how many people there are so near this place so private to us. One of the nannies we’ve seen watching us behave like teenagers is urging her blonde charges towards the parkette and I smile at her and I’m not sure she recognizes me. For some reason this makes me giggle. I check my phone. There is a text from my wife reminding me to buy wipes on my way home. A balloon strikes me in the face, its brightness, its pinkness and gentle, but undeniable smack make me laugh. It is one of a cluster tied to a fence post at the edge of someone’s walk. The wind is twisting their coloured tethers together. I snap a picture and text it to you with a little description of what just happened.

I’m going to have to fix my idiot grin before I get back to work or people are going to wonder what could be making me so happy. I search my mental library for sad songs, but they must all be on loan. I start to whistle “The Only Living Boy In New York,” that being the saddest song I can think of, and no, I don’t think it’s that sad at all, I think it’s just lovely. Maybe lovely is a type of sadness, I think. I text you the phrase. You text me back two emojis: a red heart and a lipstick print. “I love it when you talk like that,” you text.

The convenience store people must know I’ve got something going on. “So happy,” the woman says, smiling at me. Her husband doesn’t look up from the television. I grab a Coke from the fridge. As I’m paying, I notice that they aren’t watching a Korean soap opera, like usual, but some sort of news program. A long line of people is walking through a field. “Missing Girl’s Body Found,” it says across the bottom of the screen. I swallow, but I don’t know what I’m swallowing. Must have been saliva, but it’s gone. I hold my money out to the woman standing by the register, but she is distracted by the TV. “So sad,” she says, then turns to me. “Very bad.”

“Where is that?” I ask.

“Up-uh nawth,” the man tells me, his English much worse than his wife’s. “Barrie.”

I shake my head.

The entrance sings a tinny song as two large black youth walk through it. Boys in baseball caps with unbent brims and baggy clothes. My heart, already jumpy, does this little somersault and feels all caught up in its wiring and one of them looks at me and I am genuinely scared for a second. I look down. Scared of what? I imagine a gun concealed somewhere under all the cloth they dress themselves in.

“Hello,” the woman at the cash says.

“What up Eun?” the one who looked at me says as he disappears behind a rack of cereal.

“Not much,” she says. She’s smiling. She nods at me.

I leave.

Without thinking about it, I pull my phone out as I walk. I call up your last text and I am staring at my screen. I stop walking. I am filled with anxiety and guilt and fear, fear above all else. I go back to my list of texts. I click on my wife’s name.

“I love you,” I text. And I mean it.

I go back to the list of text messages. I slide the box with “Betty”—my code name for you—to the left. A red box with DELETE written in white appears on the right hand side. I look at it for a while. I look at it until someone brushes past me and brings me back to Bloor Street and I barely recognize it, or rather I see it again as I once saw it, a familiar place that I haven’t been in a long time and I am flooded with this warm calm and peace. For the first time in a long time, I know what I need to do and what I need to do is stop whatever you and I are doing, but I don’t know how to do it yet. I put my phone back in my pocket and walk and start thinking about the right way to end things with us, but my heart starts to climb, pounding, up my chest and into my neck and so I picture my daughters, safe in daycare and classroom. I picture going to lunch with my coworkers again. I picture reading a book on the subway and not thinking about you or checking my phone for messages from you. And I’m sorry and I’m a little sad, but I’m not confused. Not at all. 

Toronto, Oct 2015

Emoji Sequence: Teacher and writer, Renata Catenacci

Story: Lee Sheppard

Step Back

George immediately ordered a second pint. Before it arrived, the groom and his brother—standing behind George—hemmed and hawed about ordering shots, so George just waved the bartender over and got all three of them tequila. They toasted to the beautiful bride. The drink made the groom’s eyes water. Almost at the moment the second pint arrived, one of the wait-staff showed up at George’s elbow with champagne turned pink with watermelon.

So George sat in front of drinks three and four and watched his mother dance. He imagined blasting that tight silver bun off the back of her head. Moving back home had been hard. The bun had come to represent certain things he disliked about her: general tightness, yes; ability to obey rules, particularly the twelve steps, but even things like her sanctimonious observance of all traffic laws; mostly, though, her previous life as a dancer—a prima ballerina—and the beautiful series of photos of her in a leotard that haunted George from the walls of their home, had haunted George from the time of his earliest wet dreams. When she danced, the bun seemed like severe counterpoint to the organic, troubling beauty of her movements.

The MC asked the DJ to turn down the music. George’s mother looked around as if to find where in the corners of the room the song was hiding. It was time for a toast followed by the first dance. George’s mother looked around for George so that she could stand beside him while she waited for the appropriate moment to return to the dance floor.

One of the groomsmen was looking her up and down. She grabbed and started to roll down George’s sleeve. He pulled his arm away. “Keep it covered,” she said of his tattoo.

“Dragons are auspicious. And a symbol of fertility,” he said, looking at the bride’s generous hips, the groom’s fists resting chastely in the small of her back. What is this song, anyway? It was mushy shit. He started humming Dr. John’s “Such a Night”: “If I don’t do it, you know somebody else will.”

His mother lifted his hand and was buttoning his sleeve. “Oh, come on.”

“It makes you look cheap.”

George shook his head.

“You must need a drink after that beautiful dancing.” The groomsman who’d been eyeing Mom up was standing in front of George, his shoulder inches from George’s chin. George stood up straight and the groomsman turned his head to briefly acknowledge George, then smiled at Mom.

“She doesn’t drink,” George said. He tried to drain his champagne, but was struck by a watermelon ball. Some of the pink drink splashed his cheeks and shirt.

“Oh, Busby,” Mom said, laughing and looking for her clutch so she could fetch a tissue.

George grabbed a napkin off the bar. “I’ve got it, Mom.”

“Nice to meet you Busby,” the groomsman said.

“George,” George said.

“Busby George. He prefers George.”

“I got this, Mom.”

“I’m David,” the groomsman said, holding his hand out.

“Nice to meet you,” George said.

“Likewise, Busby George,” David said. George was dying to knock David’s teeth in.

“And your name?” he asked Mom.

“Natasha,” she said. “Tash.”

“Can I buy you a drink, Natasha?”

“I’d love a soda,” she said, girlish.

“Got it, Tash. Can I get something for you George?”

“Another pint of—” George turned around. He swayed a little in his seat while he tried to steady his pointing finger. Closing one eye helped. “—that one.”

“Sure thing.”

Of course David and “Tash” danced together. George watched from his barstool until he had to find a seat that was sturdier and lower-to-the-ground. At one point, the bride walked by on her way to the washroom and he reached out his hand to touch her. He brushed her dress. She felt it and looked back at him like she was considering being angry about it. He had trouble focusing, but he saw her shake her head. Shit, he thought, how many had he even had? No more than six or seven.

People were leaving when Mom woke him up. David was beside her. George stood and lurched. “Whoa,” David said, catching him.

Like a boxer using his opponent to hold himself off the mat, George wrapped his arms around David.

“Okay, Busby,” Mom said. “David is just going to help you to the car.”

“I don’t need his help,” George breathed into David’s jacket.

“Put your arm around my shoulder,” David said.

Mom lifted George’s arm for him. David wrapped a hand around George’s torso, his fingers digging into a ticklish spot under George’s armpit. George’s body jerked away from David’s touch and right towards David’s body. “Hey, watch it,” George said.

Mom found George’s jacket and draped it over her shoulder.

The walk to the car felt long because George just couldn’t make himself throw up. Of course, he probably could have if he’d stuck his fingers in his mouth, but he decided that when he puked on David it should look like an accident.

As David helped George into Mom’s car he pressed his hand tenderly against George’s crown to keep George from banging his head.

For a few seconds George waved his hand in the vicinity of the seatbelt. David handed George the buckle.

“Are you going to be able to get him into bed?” David asked.

“Yes. Thank you,” Mom said.

“It was a pleasure to meet you,” David said.

“Yes,” Mom said. “We’ll talk soon.”

“I look forward to it.”

“Good night, Tash.”

“Good night, David. Thank you.”

The latch’s curved sides helped George direct the latch plate into the slot. George slapped the side of the seat searching for the lever to help him recline.

“Watch your hand,” David said.

George put his hand in his lap and scowled. David closed the door.

“We’ll talk to you soon,” Mom said before ducking into her seat.

David bent at the waist to stick his head through George’s window and wave goodbye to Tash.

The real reward for George during his drinking days was that the nights were a blackout. Since he’d been on the twelve steps, nightmares of terrifying intensity had again overwhelmed his sleeping life. Despite being drunker than he had been in ages, that night he still dreamed. He was on a beach and in the distance he saw a wall of water moving towards him. Before the tsunami arrived, George had time to dump a sandwich from a Ziplock and put his book into it. As the water struck him, George noticed a blot of mustard on the open page. George panicked that he couldn’t breathe, though he knew that if he could just calm down and read one page he would be brought back to the surface. His book was gone and he was on a beach with something in his throat. George’s tongue lifted a hair to his fingers. He pulled. The grey hair, which must have escaped his mother’s bun, was too long to pull out with one full extension of his arm. He found a grip lower down and pulled again. In the dream, he vomited.

In reality, too. All over his pillow and mattress. Some even dripped onto his bed skirt. It smelled of beer and bile and while he was taking his bundle of heavy, sagging bedclothes to the laundry, he got a whiff of champagne, which already smelled sickening to him. George started hating himself a little bit.

“You’re up early,” Mom said as he passed through the kitchen.

George grunted.

Mom’s hair was down.

The bedclothes landed in the washing machine with a splat. It took George a minute to spot the detergent on top of the dryer.

Back in the kitchen, Mom’s coffee smelled warm and good. George washed his hands at the sink.

“Were you sick?”

“Yeah.”

“Would you like to hear your horoscope?”

“Sure.”

“‘Before you even can make a suggestion, others will come forward with theirs. You might be overwhelmed when weighing the choices that are presented. You will see a personal matter differently from how a loved one sees it. Tonight: Juggle your needs with someone else’s.’”

George looked at the clock. It was seven thirty. There was no need to stay up, but he didn’t have the energy to put the sheets back on his bed.

“Coffee?” Mom asked.

“Sure.”

“Water?”

“Sure.”

“So sweetie.”

“Mm-hm?”

“I’m meeting David tonight at six.”

George nodded.

“We’re going for dinner and to dance afterwards. David says he knows a place.”

“Great,” George said.

Whatever.

(Toronto, July, 2015)

Emoji Sequence: Abbey Jackson,  contributor to The West Enders, Vol. 1, Issues 1 and 2

Story: Lee Sheppard

Horoscope: http://www.thestar.com/diversions/horoscope/2015/07/31/horoscope-for-friday-july-31-2015.html