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The adjective of the day is: livid.
I don’t write back. What is there to say? The world has ended. Everything is over. He’s not coming.
I am safe. I cannot transgress.
I can’t breathe.
Day 6 Obsession (#ulink_36f77eca-9fea-5905-800f-9b0afce40a6f)
Saturday, December 8
I can’t breathe. Or sleep. At 5.30 in the morning I give up. Get up. Go downstairs to pretend to work. And I write…
—oh lover i miss you already, and four days ago i didn’t even know there was anything to miss
And I go offline, and turn off the phone, because I don’t want to suffer.
I channel the insomnia into a mad explosion of work, then surprise Alex with pancakes for breakfast.
‘Is it wrong if I like the effects of your insomnia?’ he asks.
‘No.’ I shake my head. ‘Enjoy without guilt.’
Ha.
I try to get in touch with the guilt within me, but there is only heat and desire. And regret. Such woeful regret when I let myself feel it, I again lose my breath. I do not need to be any more in touch with those.
Because it’s Saturday and they can sleep in, the kids are of course up early. I feed them pancakes when they come down, then wrestle the younger two into snowsuits and chase everyone outside. The snow is fresh and clean. We make snow angels. Try to make snowballs. Run.
I run, throw. Breathe. Try not to think.
Alex is pulling out of the driveway as we come back. He stops, gets out. Kisses all around. ‘I hate working on Saturdays,’ he murmurs into my ear. ‘You know that, right?’ I shrug. Brush my lips against his neck. ‘Every December,’ I whisper. He helps me load the kids into the van, then gets back into the hatchback. Drives away.
I rest my head against the frame of the van. Cold. So cold.
‘Mom?’ Cassandra, ten years old and so tall and allowed to ride in the front seat when the roads are good, leans over. ‘You getting in?’
‘Yes. Let’s roll.’
We get to my parents’ house with enough time for Mom and me to share a coffee before I take off for the gym. There are cardboard boxes everywhere. ‘We’re going to decorate all-out today, sweeties – we’re in the second week of December already, really, and I’m so behind!’ she tells the kids. And suddenly, I realise, yes, she is behind, my Christmas-crazy mother who starts the process of Christmastifying her house on November 1, and is ‘finished’ by December 1. The tree is up – but it’s undecorated. The Christmas village: still in boxes. Cassandra and Henry start taking things out.
‘Wait for Gran!’ my mom trills.
‘Is something wrong?’ I ask. Look at the clock. Got to be in the car in two minutes. Gulp the coffee.
‘Why would anything be wrong?’ my mother says in an unnaturally pitched voice. Fuck. Something’s wrong. I look at the clock again. She catches my eyes straying.
‘Go,’ she says. ‘We are going to have a great time decorating the entire house. Don’t hurry back.’
Fine.
I make it to the gym without rear-ending or side-swiping anyone again, a miracle. Nicola’s not there, and I think I might be relieved she’s not. Or I might just be horny. Jesus-fucking-Christ. I’m absolutely soaking. What the fuck is wrong with me?
I mop. Change. Ponder having a shower before the session…walk out. The gym looks fuzzy.
‘Jane!’ Jesse’s voice. My head snaps. ‘You looked like you couldn’t find me,’ he says. ‘So. Any requests for today?’
He seems very, very far away. ‘Yes,’ I say finally. ‘Make me lift heavy shit and not think. Exhaust me.’
‘I can do that,’ he laughs. I hope he’s as dense as I think he is. Sweet and dumb, right? He cannot pick up on the unleashed storm that is me right now.
‘Jane!’
‘What?’
‘Stop now. Rest.’
‘OK. What next?’
‘On the bench.’
‘What?’ I fucking jump up two feet.
‘On the bench,’ he says. ‘Chest flies. You hate chest flies. And I’ll give you a heavier weight than normal to boot. You asked to be exhausted, remember?’
I sit at the edge of the bench and watch while he goes to get the weights. ‘Hey, Jesse,’ I say. ‘How long have you known me now? More than a year, right?’
‘Almost two, actually,’ he says.
‘Right,’ I say. ‘So – well, you don’t really know me very well, because it’s always just here, and we have limited conversation. Lift this. Rest. Et cetera. But – well, tell me this. Give me some adjectives that describe me.’
‘What?’ Jesse looks uncomfortable, and for a brief moment I wonder if perhaps he does not know what an adjective is.
I am unfair. Because he’s so pretty.
‘Well—’ He crouches down beside me. ‘Lie down so I can give you the weights.’ I lie down. On the bench. Fucking hell. ‘You’re very…disciplined. Committed. Dedicated.’ He places the weights in my hands.
‘Jeezus fucking Christ, how heavy are these?’ I yowl. Heave the weights upwards.
‘You’re a really, really good mother,’ Jesse continues. ‘The left arm is going too deep – pull it up sooner. The way you talk about your kids – it always makes me smile. Inspires me, really. Well – and it’s part of that dedicated thing. How many clients do I have who, at any excuse, don’t come? Too busy, too sick. No babysitter. When your babysitter falls through, you come with the kids. And they’re great kids. And you’re so patient with them.’
‘Fucking hell, Jesse, I am going to die here.’
‘Although you do swear too much. One more – you’ve got it.’
‘Ugh.’
He takes the weights from me and I curl into the fetal position on the bench.
‘You swear too much,’ he repeats.
‘Not an adjective,’ I mutter.
‘Was I only supposed to use adjectives? Well – yeah. Disciplined. Dedicated. Patient. Outspoken…but kind of reserved at the same time, which is an interesting combination. And…’ I stop listening. Other adjectives are going through my head.
Hard.
‘…one of the strongest women I know, actually, physically and mentally,’ Jesse says. And flashes me a lovely smile. I have no idea what he just said. My thoughts are in a hotel room in which I would have been a week from now – and in which I will now no longer be. And…feeling no relief. Just regret. Such overpowering, crippling regret. And lust and desire and…Oh, fuck. If I were ruler supreme of the universe, I would be in that hotel room right now.
‘Jane?’ Jesse asks. ‘Are you going to get off that bench?’
Eventually.
Fuck. One night. I wanted that one night. So very, very badly.
I finish the workout. Drive back to my parents’ house.
My mom can’t wait to get us out of the house, which happens sometimes, so I gather up the kids – Eddie doesn’t want to leave, of course – and drive straight home. The kids want to chill, so I let them find books, movies and computers. Throw in laundry. Ponder supper. Avoid work and the computer for a while. Scrub the bathroom. Promise to read books in a few minutes.
Check Facebook.
5.30 in the morning? Could you not sleep, my lover?
In the span of six days, I’ve become one of those people who check their Facebook mobile every 11 seconds. Obsessed.
Today’s obsession, made worse by the fact that I won’t get to feel it: the sensation of your hair between my gripping fingers.
Freshly shorn to serve me better. I’m developing a preparation fetish.
Instantly wet. Or, rather, wetter.
I am losing my mind.
Why is he writing me? Tormenting me? It doesn’t matter. None of it matters. He’s not coming.
Read books to kids. Do stuff. Then it’s time for Cassandra and Henry’s piano lessons. I think, as I do every Saturday – what was I thinking? Piano lessons on Saturday? Why? But it’s the last one before Christmas break. Fine. Distraction. Good to have things to do, places to go. I won’t write back.
Load kids into car. Think about leaving the phone behind. Except that would be irresponsible. Winter. Icy roads. I could have an accident. I need the phone with me. Right.
‘Jane!’ Lacey dances out of her front door and around her Mini. Clayton is with her, smiling shyly at Cassandra. ‘Jane, look!’ and she thrusts a hand, huge flickering diamond on her finger, into my face.
Oh, my fucking God. A diamond. A ring. He did it. She did it.
‘Oh, Lacey!’ I hug her.
‘It’s not exactly me, is it?’ Lacey says, extending her hand in front of her and looking at the ring and finger critically. ‘A little too…white.’ She laughs. ‘But Clint insisted this was the one.’
‘It’s stunning,’ I say. ‘And the date?’
‘The day I nail that man down to a date,’ Lacey says. ‘How many years did it take me to get him to propose? And how many months to get the engagement ring?’ She’s not frustrated or bitter. She’s, if anything, ecstatic.
But that’s Lacey. Perfection. Happiness. No matter what.
And to her, in some way, Clint must be perfection too. I can see it, sometimes, physically anyway. He is built like a linebacker or a hockey enforcer. He fills doorways. Casts a large shadow. ‘I’m big, and so I need big men,’ Lacey likes to say. ‘You know, I don’t want to think they’re gonna break when I wrap my legs around them.’ The visual of Lacey with her legs wrapped around Clint, and him carrying her up the stairs to her bedroom, makes me smile; the one time I heard Lacey say this right in front of Clint, it made him hard. Instantly.
He moves like an athlete, dresses like a businessman. And, for whatever reason, is a retail store manager, of a Target-like big box store. And seems perfectly content with his lot in life. The work doesn’t go home with him, except in the form of an employee-discounted wardrobe. Lacey says that the guest bedroom in his two-bedroom condo is essentially a walk-in closet. ‘With beds for the boys in the middle.’
‘The boys’ are Lacey and Clint’s son Clayton, just a few months younger than my Cassandra, and Clint and Sofia’s five-year-old son Marcello. When Lacey’s happy with Clint, she calls Sofia ‘the other wife’. When she’s despairing of him, she calls her ‘that woman’. Clint has both boys every weekend, Friday night to Sunday evening, and the occasional weeknight as needed by the moms. He’s the most conscientious, involved part-time dad I know.
He’s also a star employee. His store has the lowest staff turnover in the chain, and consistently the highest sales, despite its less than stellar location in northeast Calgary. The low staff turnover is a no-brainer: all the adolescent girls, single moms and part-timer retired grandmothers stay to dream of being seduced by him; all the pubescent boys and plotting men stay to reap the benefits of working with so many horny females.
I don’t know that any of this is true. But that’s what Lacey says and it seems plausible.
‘Of course, he doesn’t sleep with any of the employees,’ Lacey tells me. With what I think is touching faith and innocence, given what she knows about and has gone through with Clint. Until she adds, ‘He just sleeps with the customers.’
Well. Yes.
That’s how Lacey and Clint met, at his store. Lacey was there with a girlfriend, sorting through dresses on the clearance rack, she says. ‘And then this incredible hottie, in the sexiest three-piece suit I’ve ever seen – and I’m allergic to suits, honey, never liked them before, not a bit – this hottie strolls by and looks at the dress I’m holding and says, “That would look absolutely wonderful on you.” And I press it against me, and I say, “Not too skimpy?” And he says, “No such thing as too skimpy for you.”’
The girlfriend considerately melts into the background. Jealous? Or resigned? Lacey doesn’t recall; the girlfriend disappears from her story the moment Clint enters. Lacey takes her haul, including the too skimpy dress, to the changing room. With the promise to show it to Clint. He suggests she use the wheelchair-accessible family changing room that’s just beside his office. He sees her in the dress. They disappear into the office.
Nine months later, Clayton is born.
‘You always get what you want,’ I tell her, the ring still in my face. Lacey smiles.
‘Eventually,’ she agrees. ‘I am a long-term player.’
‘Eventually.’ I smile. ‘But that’s all that matters, right? Endgame.’
‘Everything OK with you?’ she says. She looks at me carefully. ‘You’re losing weight,’ she pronounces. ‘But not in that “I work out with a hot trainer to melt the baby fat” way. In a sickly, peakish, “not eating enough” way.’
She stares at me some more. Disconcerts me.
‘Um, no, I don’t think so,’ I protest. ‘Probably just tired today. And not at my best.’
I drive away a little faster than necessary.
I will not cyberfuck on a Saturday afternoon during my kids’ piano lessons. Even though there will be nothing else to do in the waiting room but fiddle with my phone…
Fuck.
I have no self-control or will. Annie sucks on markers and colours, and Eddie fiddles with his Gameboy.
I take out the phone.
—Sleep was elusive.
what have you done today
