Crossings (19 page)

I laugh. ‘Well.'

‘Well what?'

‘I can't wear them, Mik.'

‘Why not?'

‘They're vulgar.'

He tears the money into pieces. And goes crashing about the front room, smashing things. There is glass all over the floor.

‘Two can play at that game!' I say, and take down the Renoir and put my foot through it. Wham bang crash, around we go, knocking everything down. I remember aiming at the television screen with my foot, but pulling back just in time. I am laughing crazily, but thinking to myself: Well, we can scotch tape the money.

Jocelyn comes in screaming and heads for the telephone. ‘I'm calling the police!' she says, but Mik is there before her and pulls it out of its socket.

Jocelyn is holding her head and saying, ‘I can't bear it! I can't stand it!'

Mik slams out of the front door. So hard that it comes right off its top hinge.

‘I can't, Vicky, I just can't!'

‘What?'

‘The violence!' She is crying. ‘I can't take it anymore.'

But I can't imagine what she is talking about. This hasn't happened before.

What violence?

The police arrive. Jocelyn had got out, somewhere in that time, after Mik pulled out the telephone wire; she has phoned them. I explain it was all a misunderstanding. I go to the telephone box at Safeway's and ask for a repairman for our phone: just an accident. I clean up the mess. The Renoir isn't damaged, it goes back into the frame. I gather up the pieces of money and put them back on the mantel. And I wait for Mik to come home.

But he doesn't. A day goes by, and then another.

I make an appointment with a gynecologist for a diaphragm fitting.

‘How long have you been married?' he says. I am wearing my grandmother's ring.

‘Nine years.'

‘And this is your first diaphragm?'

‘Yes.'

‘What made you decide to, uh, change your method?'

‘I've heard it's more pleasurable for the man.'

He gives me a look. ‘What method were you using?'

‘French safes.'

‘I see. Nine years,' he says. I can tell he thinks I'm up to no good.

He explains how to put the thing in. There is a long-handled plastic affair, and you snap on the rubber cup, here, on these knobs at the end, and you put the jelly in, here, and then all around the edge. And then you shove it up and give a flick of the wrist, and bob's your uncle. There was something about waiting for twelve hours before you took it out.

Mik didn't come home.

Finally, I get into my white and brown dress with no back and take a cab across the bridge. I start to make the rounds of the beer parlours.

I have never been in a beer parlour alone. There are separate entrances for men and women: Ladies and Escorts, the sign says. I stand at the entrance and wait until a waiter notices me.

‘Have you seen Mik O'Brien?'

‘Who?'

‘Mik O'Brien. He's a big guy.'

‘Big Mik? Yeah. I seen him. He was here yesterday.'

‘Could you look in the Men's and see if he's here now?'

‘You want I should look?'

‘Please.'

And off the waiter would go, into the men's section, and back he would come shaking his head. I would say thank you, not knowing enough to tip, and go on to the next one.

Finally, someone followed the waiter back. A cadaverous man with sores on his lips. ‘You looking for Big Mik?'

‘Yes. Have you seen him?'

‘I seen him this morning. With George. You know George? I think maybe they're down to the Chink's.'

‘Where's that?'

‘The Chink's. Down the street.'

‘Is it a restaurant?'

‘Yah.'

I find Mik in the last booth. George is with him. Mik looks most peculiar. His face is all puffed up. He is just sitting there, in front of a plate of bacon and eggs, moving slightly as if there is a breeze.

‘Well, you idiot!' I say.

George looks up. He too has a plate of bacon and eggs, but he is eating. ‘He ain't feeling so good.'

‘Come on,' I say. ‘I'm taking you home.'

George says, ‘I've been trying to get him to eat something.'

‘You stupid clot,' I say.

His head twitches. He lifts it, as if he is smelling the wind. ‘Is that you?' he says. His voice is like sandpaper.

‘Yes, it's me.'

He pushes at the table but its legs are bolted to the floor. It creaks ominously.

‘C'mon, Mik, none of that,' says George. And to me, ‘He ain't feeling so good.'

But Mik is out in the aisle now and swinging. His great fists go whizzing over the top of my head. Swoosh swish. Missing me by a foot. I start to laugh.

‘I'm gonna kill you,' Mik says. Swish swoosh. ‘Rotten bitch.'

‘Duck,' says George. ‘He's not kidding.'

‘Neither am I,' I say. ‘Don't be ludicrous.'

‘“Ludicrous,”' Mik says, tasting the word. Then he winds up and wham goes his fist, a mile off.

The Chinese is dancing up and down behind us, saying, ‘Not in here. Please. You get him out of my place. Please.'

‘Oh don't be ridiculous,' I say to Mik and put my shoulder under his arm pit. ‘Come on, now, I'll get a cab.'

He's still bashing away at mid air. George says, ‘Why'n't you go home, Vicky? I'll bring him along later.'

Swish swoosh.

‘You grab his other arm,' I say. And George does. We march him out to the front door, where I pause, and try to manoeuvre my purse so that I can pay for the breakfast.

‘No, no,' says the Chinese, ‘on the house. Please. Just get him out of my place. I don't want no trouble.'

We prop Mik up against the restaurant door and I go out to the curb and hail a cab.

When I come back for Mik, he tries it again. This time his fist comes quite close, so I slap his face. ‘You stop that, you big goof!'

George is saying something. I can't hear him. We get Mik into the cab and I give our address to the driver. I wave goodbye to George, who is standing there, still trying to say something. ‘Okay,' I mouth. ‘Thanks a lot.'

We are almost home and I start to laugh.

‘What?'

‘“Boiled,”' I say. ‘Your face, it looks boiled. I wonder if that's the etymology.'

I got him upstairs and took off his clothes. He kept swaying his head back and forth like a bull in the slaughter house. I ran a hot bath and tipped him into it. I shaved him. I got him to drink a cup of black coffee while he was still in the tub. Then I got him into bed.

He went right off to sleep. I felt rather tired myself, so I took off my clothes and crawled in beside him.

When I wake up, there he is, sitting up in bed, smoking.

He's looking at me.

‘What'd you do, scalp me?' he says, feeling his face.

‘I shaved you.'

‘What with? A dull knife?'

‘I don't feel the least bit of sympathy for you. You're a drunken sot.'

He looks at me.

‘An obstreperous drunken sot.'

‘“An obstreperous drunken sot,”' he says. And, like glory, the laugh comes, pure gold, a god's laugh.

We lie there a while. He takes a nipple in his fingers speculatively. ‘I couldn't get it up if I tried.'

‘We'll see.'

I go into the bathroom and put in the diaphragm and the goo, but he's right, it's impossible.

He had lost the job, of course.

His buddies came to see him the next day. They sat downstairs in the front room, drinking whiskey. They were quite noisy.

At one point, a buddy, on his way back from the bathroom, paused at my half-open bedroom door. ‘How're ya doing?'

‘Fine.'

‘What're ya doin'?'

‘Marking papers.' I waved at the pile on my desk.

‘Yah? Oh yah, that's right. Mik was saying you're a teacher.'

‘No. I'm a marker. It's just spare time work, like.'

‘Yah?' He came into the room to see, putting down his glass which, for some reason, he had carried up to the bathroom. On the top of the unmarked pile.

He peered down at the paper in front of me. “‘Non seq.'” he read out loud.

‘Well, it's just an abbreviation. Like, it's short for non sequit … it means he's made a dumb argument. It doesn't follow. What he's said.'

‘I guess he's gonna fail all right. All them red marks.'

‘No. No, he gets an A. Maybe an A minus.'

‘Yah?' The buddy looked at me suspiciously. ‘I'd hate to see what you do to the guy that fails.' He laughed.

‘Well, here's one,' I said, taking it out from the other pile.

‘But that ain't got nothing on it. Just a little squiggle. Can they read your writing?'

‘Not always.'

‘Jesus, and that one's gonna fail?'

‘Well, this one's not worth bothering with, you see.'

‘Yah?'

When he left, taking his glass, there was a great ruddy ring on the front of the top paper. ‘Well, that's the last straw!' I said out loud.

I went down the stairs like Aimee Semple Macpherson. ‘All right. That's enough. The party's over.'

They didn't seem to hear me. So I picked up the whiskey bottle from the floor and took it out to the kitchen.

I waited. After a while, the buddy who'd left the ring on the paper came wandering in, his glass still in his hand.

‘Sorry,' I said brightly. ‘It's all gone.' Waving at the empty bottle on the counter.

He wandered back toward the front room and then I heard Mik come clumping toward the door. He didn't come in, just stood there in the doorway.

‘Where's the booze?'

‘Somewhere on its way to the Pacific Ocean I should imagine.'

‘What?'

I waved my hand at the bottle. ‘I dumped it down the sink.'

He didn't say anything. Just stood there. Then he turned and went back to the front room. After a few minutes, the buddies all left.

I heard Mik coming back again. And again he didn't come into the kitchen, just stood very still in the doorway, well away from me.

‘That was a dangerous thing to do,' he said, very quietly.

‘I said it was time to go! Nobody paid the least bit of attention.'

‘I never knew anybody do that, my whole life,' Mik said.

‘I told them politely and they just went
right on
!
' I was indignant.

‘Pour a twenty-six down the sink. A whole twenty-six.'

‘It's my house and I don't care for a bunch of punks carousing about.'

‘Men've lost their lives for less,' Mik said.

I laughed.

He seemed more wondering than angry. ‘Poured it down the sink? You're not kidding?'

‘Well, it seemed to work.'

‘I got them out,' he corrected.

‘Well?'

Mik considered this. Perhaps he too thought it wasn't worth bothering about.

‘George told me. About the Chink's.'

‘I hope he did. Did he tell you what a proper idiot you looked?'

‘He told me what happened. What you did. How you just …' He seemed at a loss for words. ‘He said you were just standing there. In front of me.'

‘Well, I knew you wouldn't
hurt
me.'

Mik sighed.

‘I mean, you were missing by a mile.' I imitated him, swinging with my fist. ‘Over my head!' And I laughed again. ‘You were just trying to scare me.'

Mik shook his head. ‘I couldn't
see,
' he said. ‘I was blind drunk.'

‘Blind drunk.' So that was what it meant. Literally blind. From drink. But I didn't really believe him. I shook my head. ‘No, subconsciously, even so …' But he had turned on his heel and gone. I heard the front door close gently, and his feet going down the porch steps. Very quietly for Mik.

He didn't come back for hours. I was in bed when I heard him coming up the stairs. He came into the dark bedroom and took off his clothes, all but his shorts, and climbed in beside me. I loved the way he was, so warm and big.

‘Hi.'

‘Hi,' and he called me the name I can't remember. He had a pack of ready-mades and he lit one.

‘Where've you been?' because he didn't smell of beer.

‘Went over to the old lady's.'

‘Your mother's?'

‘Yah.'

‘I didn't know you had a mother.'

‘What'd ya think, I sprung full-growed from the dung heap?' But he wasn't angry.

‘You never said you had a mother.'

‘Well, I got one.'

‘Where does she live?'

‘Out past Commercial there.'

‘Is your father alive?'

‘Yah.'

‘Have you got sisters and brothers?' I was sitting up now. It was true in a way. Mik was to me a solitary phenomenon, without antecedents, without periphery.

‘One sister. A brother. The prick. My brother, the second lieutenant.'

‘Lieutenant,' I said, with the ‘f.'

‘Unh?'

‘Well, we don't have to give way to the Americans in everything.'

He snorts. ‘You know something?'

‘What?'

‘I've decided to marry you.'

‘Who says!'

‘I says.'

And later, ‘What's
that?
'

‘A diaphragm.'

He raises himself up on one elbow. I can see his face a little. It's dawn now.

‘I got one. The doctor gave me the smallest size.' I offered that, an excuse. I don't understand even now why that should have mollified Mik. But it did.

‘Yah?' And he puts his fingers in again, to feel. ‘I thought you smelled funny. Like a hospital.'

‘I think I use too much goo.'

‘I like the way you smell. Better.' But he made love to me again, only when I took it out, the next day, the cap was full of blood.