talent, some might say the curse, of seeing things not as he’d like them to be, but as they really were. He knew that what was in his father’s mug was not coffee. He knew that his mother knew too. He knew that his father did not like his children, and when he got old enough, he told his mother so. She had slapped him once, hard, thinking it would make him cry, but he simply put his hand to his cheek and walked away with his suspicions confirmed. Soon after, he also grew to know that his father was staying away for greater stretches at a time and that he would not be their father much longer. He knew that his mother thought it was his fault. He knew that when she told him that she wished he’d been born “more like his brother,” she meant she wished he had not been born at all. When he was seven, he’d told her that, too. She’d slapped him again, for the last time.
She had been shocked to hear him say it and to know that it was true. Shocked to know that he was right. Her marriage was ending, and it was Graham’s fault.
He wasn’t a pleaser, this solemn boy. He knew that he was the cause of much unhappiness, but he did nothing to try to make them forget, to make up for it. He didn’t play along in this game that they’d so carefully orchestrated. He didn’t think he owed them for the trouble his presence had brought them.
It had taken the wind out of her, this moment of truth. But it had not knocked her down. It was something to file away in the deep, dark place we all pretend we don’t have, and she’d gone to find Graham sitting on his bed holding his cheek, and she’d sat beside him and hugged him tight and told him she could not believe he would think such a thing, and she’d held on, though he struggled to get away from her for a very, very long time.
That night she had made her family an elaborate dinner featuring some of what she believed were Graham’s favourite things, though he’d never stated a preference, so she couldn’t be sure. Then she had cleaned up the dishes and tucked him into bed reading him what she thought to be his favourite story, even though he told her he was tired and turned away from her when she sat on the bed. Once she finished the book, she made herself a cup of tea and sat with it at the table watching a salty drop hit the formica, then another. That was when Stuart had come up behind her, putting a hand upon her shoulder.
“Are you crying, Ma?”
“No. Honey, I’m just a little tired from making dinner,” she said, wiping her eyes and smiling at him.
“I’m sorry I didn’t help you with the dishes, Ma,” he said softly.
Glyniss looked at her sister and Aunt across the card table and thirty-odd years and said, “I don’t have favourites. But Stuart is special, and he needs me, and what I don’t need is a lecture.”
“What you need is a good slap up the side of the head, and so does your boy there,” said Helen, draining her cup.
“Helen, you are not helping Glyniss. And Glyniss, you are not helping Stuart. He needs to get his life going again, and if you are not the person to do it, then I know who is.”
“You?” said Glyniss hopefully.
“I think she means your other favourite sissy,” said Helen with a smirk.
“Helen! But yes, Glyniss, I think it’s time you had Graham stop by for a chat.”
November
In the weeks following the break-up, Stuart did little. He was frozen, paralyzed, but not for the reasons you’d think. Not the ones he’d thought, at least. He had always had the impression that if Emily ever left him he’d be ruined, he’d kill himself, since all life would stop for him anyway, wouldn’t it?
He’d been floored by her leaving him. That’s what he’d settled on calling it, although he’d been the one who had left. He’d been knocked down by the leaving, surely, but not out.
The morning after, he’d wanted to die, but that had more to do with the incredible hangover and the tongue-lashing he’d woken to when an irate Elizabeth, whose sympathy for him had vanished when she was forced to hand over forty dollars to pay a bar bill when she “wasn’t even friggin’ drinking, because I brought my friggin’ car.” That was before he’d asked his mother to screen his calls.
He didn’t like being without Em, of course. He did love her. The way she smelled and the way she came to his gallery openings when they were held in coffee shops and no one else showed. How she ironed the towels that no one but the two of them saw. He wished they were still together, that the whole break-up had never happened, but to be honest, he didn’t want her back. Not now. Every time he’d picked up the phone that day, he’d been forced to admit that you can’t go back to a woman who would end a four-year relationship by writing you a letter; who would then hide in the shadows and watch you read it. How could you even think of going back to a girl like that?
Without the pining, and with the absolute certainty that they were less broken up than entirely dissolved, he was focusing his attention on the fact that his life was going to have three chapters. Before Emily, Emily, and now, After Emily. This was Stuart’s problem.
A fairly even mix of romantic and doomsday prophet, once he and Emily had decided to form a unit, he’d naturally assumed that there was no alternative to it. It was them together or the end of the world. He believed in love. That it was that strong, that it could move mountains and work miracles and slay humble men where they stood. Why he believed this, considering the family in which he’d grown up, was a question he’d often been asked. The only answer he’d ever been able to offer in response was: he didn’t know why, he just did.
He had loved Emily, truly and with all his heart. She was his one Big Love. He had waited for her his whole life. That was why, in the wake of loss, he had expected to feel utterly miserable. He had not been prepared to feel hungry sometimes, and bored sometimes, sitting there in the dark. Or that he’d remember to tune in for the new episode of his favourite medical drama.
He certainly hadn’t expected to get an erection one evening while sitting on his mother’s couch watching a comely young singer on TV belting out a tepid rendition of some godawful pop sensation’s latest hit. Not the week after his life was supposed to have ended. All of this mundane reality, this normalcy, this survival, what the hell was that about?
This was supposed to be a time of glorious despair. Dirty, dank, liquor-fuelled Nick Cave-esque despair.
He’d tried to do his part. He’d been drinking to excess. In fact, the only time he’d left the apartment was to take a trip to the LCBO when he realized he couldn’t possibly live up to this ideal by drinking his mother’s assortment of candy-flavoured liquors: Crème de Menthe and Cranberry Cooler, and to his horror, a bottle of Sex on the Beach, a gag gift from Aunt Helen.
He’d gone and bought some bottles of gin, as many as his bank balance could carry. He’d wanted to pick up the tough stuff, a J.D. or Wild Turkey, something harsh and self-damaging, but he knew he didn’t have the stomach for it. One more indignity in this, his time of crisis.
So he’d been drinking and sitting and attempting to fall into stupor. But there was his mother to contend with, and her constant cleaning of the house and provision of fresh pajamas she’d picked up for him at The Bay, and the gifts of his favourite foods and magazines.
As much as he thought he should ride this out low and lonely, he liked the flannel bottoms and the smell of his crisp cotton pillowcase, and he did want “just a little nibble of brie” and the November issue of Spin magazine.
He realized that even though he woke each day with a physical pain in his head and an imaginary one somewhere in the middle of his chest, the world was not only continuing, but he was interested in it.
And he was afraid of it. How was he going to insert himself into a world he never thought he’d have to deign to look at again? One where he would have to find his own home, manage his own money and make his own plans, alone. If he didn’t have love in his life, what would he have?
That was what held him frozen. Not heartbreak, but fear; fear, then habit.