Away From Everywhere (3 page)

A guy notices cat scratches in the headboard of his mistress' bed, from where the cat climbs up into the window. This bed is also his brother's bed. It took noticing the cat scratches, a detail, never to sleep with her in that bed again.

He knew this made her nervous, his tendency to spin his own life experiences into short fictitious stories, but she'd told him it was what she loved about his writing as well: the free glimpses into his otherwise secretive personality, guessing the real people he based his characters on, and wondering which passages were drawn from his own life and which he merely imagined into existence.

Owen was still kneeling by the fire when she approached him. She moved so silently across the room, she touched him with such grace and necessity, that he could love her guilt-free. He laid his head back, resting it on her breasts, and could smell her messy brown hair as it spilled over his face: like fresh rain on cement. She kissed his forehead.

Her voice, the calming sound of it, was how he knew he loved her. “I saw this coming, you know, me and you.”

Owen was comfortable with the affair by now, the awkwardness had passed, but he was still rendered uncomfortable by that label:
me and you, us
. It too blatantly disrespected Alex, it felt too insensitive, so he never responded to her, and she ran her hand through his hair, knowing how much he liked her fingers as a comb.

“I don't know, it's…it's dangerous and illogical that we can meet an absolute stranger and somehow relate to them before any words are shared, you know?”

She tugged at the collar of his black sweater, exposing the bright red t-shirt below it. He looked up at her and she nodded her head towards the couch.

They curled up to watch the fire burn, to watch shadows crawl along the walls and take each other in. He fumbled around on the couch, entangling himself in Hannah. They fit so well, so easily together, that it was hard to feel guilty.
Two pieces of a two-piece puzzle
was how she always described it. When Owen fell asleep on the couch that night, she threw a blanket over him and went off to her bedroom because Owen refused to sleep in Alex's bed.

Owen spent the rest of the day writing in bed, trying to convert some of the scribbles in his notepad into publishable short stories. Writing was his only chance at distraction now, his only means of actively forgetting. It was seven in the evening by the time he stopped to consider supper, and Hannah's memorial service, he'd heard, was at eight. He could have gone, but he had enough respect and compassion for his brother not to show his still-bruised and unwanted face. He stood by his window, holding the curtains back with his right hand, watching a herring gull search for something in the snow-covered grass along the fence beneath the streetlight. There was nothing there. He caught a glimpse of himself in the window and stared at the purple halo around his left eye, and the teeth prints still stamped into his lower lip.

In a way he was content to miss the service. He wanted to forget Hannah's face, the specifics: the wet glistening of her chocolate eyes, and the two lines that formed brackets around her mouth whenever she smiled. He wanted to forget what she looked like because maybe then that lingering image of her, so frail and lifeless in the back seat, covered in blood and guilt, might stop haunting him. He slept with the light on for days after the accident, because darkness only triggered it. He'd pull a sheet over his head to find a balance, a compromise between lightness and darkness. It was her face that stood out the most: the gash on her chin so deep bone was exposed, and the laceration above her left eye so wide that her eyebrow was disjointed. He didn't even have to close his eyes to see it. Her face superimposed itself on his mundane surroundings: a wall, or the kitchen table while he ate. The white ceiling above his bed, or his medicine cabinet mirror as he shaved. Sometimes she was screaming, her throat rattling or erupting blood. Her teeth dripping red.

Since the accident, he'd become a recluse. Leaving the house was too much of a hassle: the shower, shaving, trying to look presentable enough to be out in public, and he stayed in bed so much after the accident that he never got used to walking with his crutches. Inside, he could hide away from the world; he could pretend it wasn't out there. Any of it.

With the exception of his aunt, Lillian, no family members were bold enough to visit him during his stay in the hospital, and on the night Owen was released from hospital,Lillian took him out for supper before taking him home. It was a swank restaurant. The bright white tablecloth draped all the way down to the shiny hardwood floor so that Owen couldn't see his aunt's legs. He kept butting her shins by accident with his cast.

“It's okay, sweetie.” She pulled her chair back a little more each time he knocked her shins; the first kick hurt so much she had to massage the pain out of her leg, her taut face contorted into a temporary knot.

The waiter came to take their orders, and she told him that they were waiting for a third person to join them. Owen's head shot up from the menu like a jack-in-the-box, and the anxiety felt as solid as stone.

She laughed as if to apologize to the impatient waiter.“It's my daughter. She'll be late for her own funeral, that one.”

Owen hadn't heard laughter in days, it sounded so hollow and contrived.

“You'll have to give us a few more minutes.” She flashed another apologetic smile to the waiter.

She peeled back the sleeve of her black top to check her dainty watch. Lillian was a beautiful woman, the kind of fifty-nine-year-old who could wear that tattoo on her forearm with grace. It was a red Taoist symbol that meant nothing to anyone but her. She was a retired architect who looked, ate, and acted more like a typical art teacher, and the sound of her voice hinted remarkably at her kind disposition. She looked at you when she spoke, and punctuated her sentiments with emphatic facial expressions: soft smiles and stitched-together eyebrows.

He asked her, hoping that she would say no, hoping that he'd heard her wrong, “You've invited
Gail?
”

“She's still your cousin,Owen. That hasn't changed. She's in town for …the service. You two haven't seen each other in a year or more. It's been far too long.”

He propped a menu up to mask his anger. “I don't think that matters now, Lilly.”

“Don't be ridiculous!”

He shook his head but spoke calmly, to make his point seem more valid. “I'm not being ridiculous. And she knows I am here, right?”He slapped his menu down on the table.“Lilly, you told her I am here,
right?
”

Lillian kept on smearing goat cheese spread over her bun. She looked away from him as she chewed. He didn't force an answer. He was too timid. Instead, he sat there chewing his bun more forcefully than necessary. He knew Gail well, as well as a brother knows a sister. He knew that Gail never kept her opinions to herself, and she saw the world in black and white, in right and wrong. Owen wanted to leave. He wanted to be home, alone. When Lillian had asked him to go out for supper he said yes, but meant no.

Owen had his own motivations for this meal though, and with Gail on her way, he didn't have much time left to press Lillian for answers about how his brother and nieces were taking the loss. He wanted to know what their faces were filled with, their words: rage, melancholy, betrayal? But he didn't know how to word it, or when to ask it. Chewing the bun felt that much more laborious. Concentrating on his wording, and distracted by the weight of those words on the tip of his tongue, he never saw Gail approach the table.

“Are you fucken
kidding
me,Mom?”Her arms sprang from her body for emphasis. Twenty heads turned to face Owen's table and a sudden and pronounced silence enveloped the room. “I almost convinced Alex to take the kids and come join us. What if–”

“Sit down and lower your voice, Gail.” Lillian nudged a chair out with her knee. “These people didn't come here to watch you put on a show. And spare me the theatrics. He is still your cousin.”

Gail rose from the chair the second she sat down, as if it were spring-loaded. “I'd sit,
Mom
, if that piece of shit weren't here.”She pointed at Owen with a quick nod of her head. Arms folded now. She looked at him as if there had never been any love between them, and as her eyes wandered up and down his body, her face puckered up like she smelled sulfur, like she had a mouthful of it, thick and gritty on her tongue.

“He might still be your nephew, but I don't consider him family anymore.” Her head shook back and forth in short, quick gestures of incomprehension. “In
fact
, he seems to be destroying our family every chance he gets–”

“You can leave now, Gail.”

“My pleasure. Quite frankly, I have better things to do. I think while you dine this piece of shit, I'll go look in on his brother and the kids. I mean …
Goddamnit!
”

Owen couldn't look either of them in the eye. “Look, I'll go. I'm sorry I came anyway.” He slid his chair out from the table, but never stood up. “And you're right, Gail. No one is denying–”

“Shut up. You don't get to act all repentant or noble or whatever you're doing. You're a heartless bastard and you know it! If you care about your brother at all, if you have any dignity left, you'll get out of this city and go drink yourself to death, because that's all you are good for.” She bit her lip, hard, and shook her head even faster. “And you know it, right?”

She waited for his subtle nod. And then until he nodded more hardily.

It hurt all the more because, growing up,Gail had been like a sister to Alex and Owen. They had traditions, games they'd play together in the backyard. The way she shrieked joy as they chased her around the yard with the hose, worried they'd knock out her contacts with the spray. It was only a bittersweet memory now, of what was. Of who they had been.

It was a small, ten-table restaurant, booked to capacity. A waiter approached them to silence the scene, but Gail was out the door before he got to their table. Lillian apologized to the waiter and ordered for them both.

“I'm so sorry for that, sir. We'll both start with the featured blue-cheese beef medallions and theWaldorf salad.”

“Yes.” The waiter fumbled awkwardly, embarrassed by the scene. “Well.” He took out his notepad. “Can I get you anything else to drink?”

“Two glasses of the house shiraz.”

Owen shot her a quick look, surprised by the order.

“Sorry, one glass of shiraz, and some more water for my nephew. Thank you.”

The waiter walked away, and Owen felt every set of eyes in the room peeling themselves off of him, one by one, though they all shot back quick glances throughout their meals.

“Lillian, I love you, dearly. You've been a surrogate mother to Alex and me, but if this is about me being a charity case, if you are here because you feel bad or obligated to Mom…spare me. Spare yourself from scenes like that one.” He nodded in the direction of the door, as if Gail had left a trail of fire behind her. “I am fine on my own. I always have been, right? And I don't want you to be here with me for the wrong reasons.”

“Change the topic. You know me better than that.”She tore another bun in half, and the irritated tone in her voice verified her honesty. “I wouldn't be here if I didn't want to be here, and we both know it. And you're going to have to get used to being treated like this for a while, but don't worry. With time, things will get …I don't know, easier.” She bit into the bun.

“It's not like I accidently broke a vase in the guy's house, Lilly. I shattered his fucken life. And the kids'.” He stopped talking as his voice constricted. His throat filled with sand. He shut his eyes tight, tight enough to numb them.

Lillian acknowledged she might have just lied to him with a quick rise and fall of her face. He was that itchy, old, worn-out sweater that everyone was finally throwing away. The one they weren't sure why they'd ever kept around anyway.

Lillian could get away with an allegiance to both sides because she was a paradox in every way. She grew herbs and only ate vegetables from her own greenhouse, yet she smoked a pack of cigarettes a day. She stocked seven bird feeders with different feeds and photographed the array of birds that gathered in her backyard, but had no interest in their proper names. She was that ethereal person who walked around town with all the unofficial privileges a cop has: using the staff washroom in the public library or poking her nose where it didn't belong, and no one would question it. So, the night Owen was released from the hospital, Alex never resented her when she knocked on his door and matter-of-factly stated she was there for Owen's things, that she was on her way to the hospital to pick him up and take him back to her place. He swung the door open, let her in, helped her gather Owen's things and bag them in Sobeys bags. She stayed for coffee, drew horses with the girls, offered to help Alex in any way she could, and left no less loved and respected. Callie and Lucia were clinging to her right arm and begging her to stay as she pulled the door shut.