Ellen in Pieces (7 page)

She Morse-coded with the brake lights:
dot dot dash dot - dot dot dash.
F.U. Would no one let her in? Ever?

Finally, one of those yacht-sized American guzzlers slowed. Ellen gunned it, merged, then waved broadly to communicate her thanks. All she could see of her rescuer in her rear-view mirror was white hair.

He was old. Old and chivalrous.

Y
ES,
Jack McGinty was on the mend. He was becoming himself again—brusque, taciturn, but not unloving, it turned out. Growing
up, Ellen had misinterpreted his stiffness. She felt profoundly sorry for him now, for how do you express love when in a perpetual state of emotional incapacitation? Emoting for her was effortless. The opposite—holding her feelings inside—impossible. Even thinking of it made her curl up in a cramping ball.

No laxative for that.

He’d loved her mother, that was for sure, and on his fiftieth birthday he’d still looked young. Why didn’t he remarry, she’d wondered that summer when she took Mimi to see him in the Nose Hill house.

Yet just a few days later, when Jack showed up for his party, Ellen barely glanced at the guest of honour. She’d just found out that Larry already had an L.A. mistress. She didn’t know yet that he’d also bedded half the female population of Cordova Island, including friends of hers. Larry would tell her that later, when she insisted their actions cancelled each other out—what Larry had done with that slut was equal to what Ellen had done with Charles—so they should just forgive and forget and get on with their marriage.

Larry didn’t want to. He didn’t want to be married to Ellen anymore.

When her father came through Moira’s door the day of the party, Ellen hugged him. Her belly, taut with life, pushed into his and he recoiled. Larry stepped forward and shook Jack’s hand, clasped it warmly, more warmly than he ever had before because he’d probably never see the man again.

“Happy birthday, Jack,” he said.

Moira touched Ellen’s shoulder, beckoned. In a trance, Ellen followed.

“What’s wrong?” Moira asked.

Instinctively, Ellen clutched her unborn child. “What do you mean?”

“Charles thinks you’re mad at him.”

The dream, forgotten in her shock, came back, the two cocks and their mysterious configuration. Side by side, or forked with a single shaft for the two heads?

“I’m not mad,” said Ellen, who was just now thawing, feeling the first tingles of a stupendous rage.

“Did he do something?” Moira asked.

“No!”

“So go talk to him.”

“I don’t want to talk to him!”

“You
are
mad!” Moira said. “You seem really mad. What did he do?”

“Nothing!”

Ellen left Moira in the living room and went to find Mimi, who was in the backyard on her faithless father’s lap, stroking his smooth face. All her life Mimi had had his long beard to tug and scratch; now he was a new, fascinating toy. Jack sat in the matching Muskoka chair, Charles on the swinging love seat with the awning because he sunburned easily, the three men with beers already in their clasp, failing at small talk. Ellen came across the grass in her bare feet, feeling exactly how Larry thought she ought to feel, like a cow that had broken through a dozen suburban fences to end up here.

Jack and Charles stood. Charles said, “I’ll get you a chair, Ellen.” He sounded bashful and eager to set things right.

“I’ll sit here beside you.” She smiled at him. It must have been an evil smile because he dropped his gaze in confusion. As the love seat set sail under them, a bit of urine gushed from her. Still no one spoke except Mimi, cooing, “Dada soft, Dada soft …”

Ellen stared desperately at Larry, but he refused to meet her eye. Then, without really meaning to, she glanced at her brother-in-law’s crotch where the khaki fabric was bunched up. Another gush. She was turning to liquid, the milk collecting in her readying breasts, the crotch of her panties dampening even more.

“Oh God!” she cried, and finally, Larry looked at her. Coldly. A warning. She struggled to get up, but couldn’t with the love seat swaying.

Charles sprang to his feet and offered his hand.

Ellen passed Moira as she stumbled through the kitchen. “Charles, did you light the briquettes?” Moira asked.

In the bedroom, Ellen shut the door and, leaning against it, tried not to scream.

On the other side, Moira said, “Go in and talk to her. Go. Are the briquettes lit?”

Charles knocked. Ellen felt it in her back, his timid tapping sending out ripples of lust, and this combination—lust and fury—propelled her to the middle of the room. “Yes?”

Pink with embarrassment, or sunburn, Charles entered.

“Close the door,” Ellen said, and he closed the door.

“Come here.”

He came over. Why didn’t I fall for this kind of man, Ellen thought, the kind who does everything you ask?

“I dreamed about you,” she said.

“You did?”

She seized his ears and drew him angrily to her mouth. Naughty, naughty tongue. And Charles, in his astonishment, kissed her back.

Ellen snatched his hand, like she would snatch Mimi’s away from something dangerous. But Charles was allowed and she
employed him, used his hand the way she’d been forced these last months to use her own. He let her, then took over, kneading her breasts, stroking her round belly, a fortune teller fondling the future. He touched her wet cunt through her clothes and said her name.

She unbuttoned his shorts.

“Ellen?”

“Shh.” She yanked the shorts down hard, like she did with Mimi when trying to get at a soggy diaper. An erection bulged in the briefs, singularly, and as Ellen freed it from the elastic waistband, she used her other hand to wriggle out of her shorts, urgently, like in the dream. Like she was in the grip of a furious maenadic ritual, Charles backing away, she moving forward until she trapped him against the dresser.

“I can’t, Ellen, I can’t.”

She ground against him. He was panting, she was panting, Ellen naked below the waist except for her underwear ringing one ankle, pulling on his ordinary cock like it was an elastic she was stretching out long, long, and bringing back. Between them, Yolanda floated upside down.

“I can’t,” Charles groaned. “Your stomach. You’re too big.”

Ellen sank to all fours, tugged his leg. He whimpered as he knelt. “I want to. But we shouldn’t.”

Ellen shoved him onto his back and, straddling him, pushed down once, hard, hating Larry.

“Oh, Ellen,” Charles whispered. “
Vroom. Vroom
.”

On the third or fourth push, Ellen realized he had withered and was already out of gas. He scrambled out from under her, sat there glistening and limp in his remorse. Ellen had not experienced a release of any kind, but Charles was crying.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. You’re pregnant and everything.”

“Don’t tell Moira,” she said, though she had every intention of telling Larry.

W
HILE
Jack McGinty was still in hospital, Ellen called Brad Wheeler-Dealer. December wasn’t the best month to put a house on the market, what could they do?

Ellen hadn’t actually met Brad in person, had only seen him smiling boyishly out of bus shelters. (She’d picked him for his name, because he sounded like he would rake in the biggest bucks.)

He showed up the next day to do the walk-through. “This lino, Ellen? If you replace it with cork or ceramic, you’ll recoup the expense tenfold, I guarantee it. Same for the cabinets.”

“I should redo my kitchen for a stranger? I don’t know, Brad.”

He’d already fixed sticky notes to half the furniture, little yellow flags that meant
get rid of it.

She felt angry. Why? If, over the years, she’d learned a thing or two about herself, one of them was just to stop. Stop and try to figure out the real source of the rage. If she did that, it would usually dissipate.

“I feel like you’re judging me, Brad.”

“Judging you? Never. It’s just a house.”

Ellen sighed. Because, of course, if she didn’t do so many stupid, impulsive things, no one would have any reason to judge her.

“At the very least, Ellen? Paint. And this sort of thing”—he gestured to the fridge papered over with recipes and photographs—”it will cost you thousands. I’m not kidding.”

She ripped it all down. Baked Alaska. The list of fruits and vegetables most likely to be pesticide-tainted. Here, under several layers, was a three-year-old mammogram reminder. Brad was chuckling.

“What?” she asked.

“Nothing. Who’s this?” He pointed at the picture of Mimi in front of the CN Tower, toothful smile, nose ring. She told him. “Really?” he said. “I thought she was your sister.”

“Come on.”

“For sure. We could have a drink sometime after all this is over. To celebrate.”

Ellen tapped the broad gold band on his finger. “I don’t think so.”

“No hard feelings,” said Brad Wheeler, who evidently didn’t feel things very solidly. He left a stack of papers—the contract, stat sheets on houses in the area and what they’d sold for.

So here was Ellen, chucking again. Chucking crap so the house would show well. On all fours in the downstairs crawl space, pushing more boxes out into the light. Mildewy cardboard boxes all over the rec room. Opening the softened flaps of one, she discovered school-work. Such comical spellings! In the drawings, no one had a neck. How could she discard this precious record, proof that no matter how she beat herself up about it now, her girls had been happy?

At the bottom, a smaller box. She lifted the lid, shrieked, and dropped it. The disgusting contents spilled out onto the floor. Something had chewed its way into the box and expired. A very hairy sort of rodent. She bent to inspect it then, gingerly, picked it up. By the blunt end, not the flowing end.

Larry’s ponytail.

Oh, she was evil. Wicked. She put it in a padded envelope addressed to
Larry Silver. General Delivery. Cordova Island.

She knew the address by heart.

O
N
the first of December Jack McGinty was released from hospital. He stayed with Ellen for a week, enjoying her cooking now,
taking short walks in the neighbourhood with her. Ellen kept him company during the evening news, which she normally didn’t watch because she interacted too much with the television. Jack coached her through several minor repairs, such as replacing a broken switch plate in the hall; he couldn’t do the work himself because his hands still shook, though not half as much.

Brad Wheeler-Dealer’s stat sheets scandalized Jack. He couldn’t believe the price of real estate.

“The more expensive, the better. I’ve got plans.”

What plans? her father wanted to know.

“I’m tired of publicity. It’s all self-promotion now anyway. Social media. Do you remember I used to make pots?”

Jack didn’t. He’d probably never seen one of her pots.

“Back when I was married to Larry. When we were living on Cordova Island. I’d like to take it up again. I’m going to sell the house and live off the proceeds. Sign up for some classes. Maybe rent a studio.”

“You’ll have more than enough money,” her father said.

Every night Moira phoned to talk to him and exchange with Ellen a few civil, then gradually warm, words. That day twenty-three years ago, when Charles ran straight to Moira and foolishly confessed because he couldn’t wait until the party was over like everyone else—it seemed to evaporate. The fact that there was no party in the end, only confrontation, screaming, Jack McGinty leaning back in the Muskoka chair gripping the armrests like he was travelling too fast in it. The flurry of confused packing, Ellen fleeing with Larry and Mimi and not even saying goodbye to her father. It had all happened so long ago—did it even matter?

“How are you holding up with him?” Moira asked. “Is he driving you crazy?”

“Does he drive you crazy?” Ellen asked.

“Of course! He never talks. You never know what he’s thinking. Mom did all the talking. Remember?”

“Yes,” Ellen said, suddenly tearing up. “I do.”

The night before Jack was supposed to fly back to Calgary, Moira said over the phone, “Ellen? I always thought Larry was a jerk. You did everything for him, but what did he ever do for you? We watched that program of his. It wasn’t even funny. We didn’t get it at all.”

“Thank you,” Ellen said.

The next morning, since Ellen and her father were both up anyway and it was unexpectedly clear and sunny, she suggested that they leave for the airport early and take a walk on the jetty. Jack attended fully to the drive, seeing the city for the first time in his seven-week stay, the city herself finally showing all her coloured feathers. The mountains were two-toned with snow, the fields around the runways a shimmery green. When Ellen asked him what he thought of it, he said, “It’s fine.”

They parked. For five kilometres the jetty stretched out into the ocean, an elevated road to nowhere, banked with boulders. Under it a pipe led from the sewage treatment plant. Jack had sure put that pipe to the test.

High above them a plane traced a U before landing. Jack watched, then did the same, took Ellen’s arm and turned back toward the beach. At the water’s reedy edge the sand was flecked with broken shells and glass and plastic. He managed an unsteady squat then, placing both hands in the icy water, waved them, like he was Moses trying to coax the sea apart.

“There,” he said, once she got him standing again. “Now let’s go.”

His bags were half stuffed with Poppycock. She helped check
them in, then he insisted that she leave. He was fine. He would get a cup of coffee. He would have his seashore-besmirched shoes shined.

“What was the name of the place you just took me to?”

“The Iona Jetty,” Ellen said.

She was meeting Brad Wheeler-Dealer back at the house, so she said goodbye. She hugged her father and he actually told her, maybe for the first time in her life, “I love you, Ellen.”

When she looked back, he was still standing in front of the taxi stand, watching her walk toward the parkade. Like in that poem, not drowning, but waving. She smiled and waved back.

But during the long drive home, as she strained to remember the name of the poet, the lines came back to her.