Eat Your Heart Out (5 page)

At first I figured, you know, give her a little time. She'll call. Then a little later, I thought, Just give her a little more time. She's just digesting what you said.

But no.

A fucking week passed and not one word from her mouth.

Then I thought, Enough of this bullshit. I was nice enough to call her and apologize, and she can't be bothered to call back.

So I called her again. Only this time, she picked up the phone.

“Yes?” she said, all entitledlike. Almost like a British person or something, with a little accent. She could be snooty when she wanted to.

“It's Rich.” I was shocked that she had picked up.

“I know.”

Then the phone went silent for a few seconds. I couldn't believe how she was acting.

“I called you.”

“Yes, I got the message.”

“And . . . ?”

“And I was thinking.”

“About what?”

Then she sighed into the phone.

“If I was going to call you back or not, dummy.”

“Oh.”

Then she went silent again.

“Well, were you?”

“I don't know. I hadn't decided yet.” She said that real casual.

“Oh, come on, Maggie. I know I fucked up.”

“Yes, you did.”

I didn't know what more to say.

“I'm sorry, kid.”

I could hear her breathing. I thought she might hang up. I sat there listening to her breathing for a good two minutes. I didn't want to say anything in case she hung up.

Then finally she said, “Okay.”

“Okay, what?”

“Okay, I forgive you.”

“Really?”

“Yes. You know why?”

“No, why?”

“Because I know you won't let me down again, Rich.”

Then she hung up the phone.

We never talked about what happened ever again after that conversation.

She came to the bar that night. Things weren't normal, but we pretended they were. That's how things get back to normal. You just got to pretend until you forget you are pretending, and then things are normal again. That's how it works.

She's twenty-two now.

Around six months ago, she moved. Met some guy when he was here visiting, and they fell in love real fast, and she moved her ass on up there to Vancouver as soon as he asked, typical Maggie fashion. I told her not to, warned her about getting serious, but she didn't listen. She never does.

I guess it's not all that bad. The guy is half decent. A little short but okay. Has a steady job at a bank and everything so they're all right for money. I guess I'm happy. Yeah, I'm happy for her. In some ways, I am definitely happy for her.

We still keep in touch. We talk on the phone sometimes, but the long distance is expensive for her, and I'm not good on the phone. So we usually stick to e-mails.

She's pregnant. Found out last week. I couldn't believe it. I was the first person she told, after her guy, of course. She is really just out of her damn mind.

Pregnant at her age! But she was so damn happy, I could tell in the e-mail. So I didn't tell her how crazy she was. I just keep thinking, Christ, Maggie and her own little baby.

It's due at the end of the year, so I figure I'll make a trip up there to meet the little thing. Maybe stick around for Christmas. She said that I can be the baby's granddaddy. I don't want to be, particularly, but it was nice of her to offer.

I know it's crazy of me, but I keep thinking I see her walking into the bar. I'll see someone with red hair out of the corner of my eye, and I'll think it's Maggie, come to surprise me, that she's back to visit. But it's never been her. I just go back to my book and my beer, and try to enjoy the quiet. A part of me thinks that maybe one day she will surprise me. It'd be a real Maggie thing to do.

So, yeah, some nights, I do get to missing her.

Some nights.

Sam sits alone in the
bar. Grace is twenty minutes late.

Looking out into the frosty dark, Sam sees John, a guy he used to play pickup baseball with. As he raises his arm to wave, he realizes it's not John, just a guy who looks almost the same. Why does everyone look the same here?

Earlier that evening, he went for dinner with his stepfather. It was their tradition to eat the first meal alone when he came home from school, “just the men.” In the middle of their burgers, his stepfather said, “In your life, people are going to give you every opportunity to be weak. All they'll ever want is for you to be strong.” He looked strange, childlike when he told Sam this. Now, the words swirl around Sam's mouth, like a piece of gum he doesn't know where to spit.

Drinking quickly, he feels the alcohol in his head.

Then, he sees her. Tall, dark, with an angled face. He feels his face transform for a short second and switches it back, not wanting her to know her effect but sure she sees the difference.

He stands to meet her.

“Shit, Sam! I'm
so sorry. I got caught up at home. I totally lost track of time. Have you been waiting forever?”

Sam lies, without thinking.

“No! No, I've been here for, like, a minute, don't worry about it.”

“I'm so sorry. I just get so crazy before I'm leaving the house. I can't remember a thing I need, and then I look at the clock—”

“Grace?”

“Yeah?”

“Shut the fuck up.”

Grace finds Sam's eyes and laughs, very truthful. She feels suddenly comfortable, at home for the first time in a while.

The history of Grace and Sam settles between them, tangible. She wants to touch it, so she holds his shoulder.

“It's so good to see you,” she says, finally breathing.

“Yeah, you look great,” he says, still smiling.

“Really? I don't look fatter?”

“Are you actually going to ask me that every time I see you for the rest of your life?”

Grace stares at Sam for a moment.

“Probably.”

Grace knows she doesn't look the same as she did the last time she saw Sam, eight months ago. With the weight, her face looks wholly different, bearing almost no resemblance to who she used to be. Now that she's thinking about it, she can't remember being who she used to be. There has been so much alcohol, so many lonely invaders between the two.

Sam is still smiling at her. She hugs him, tightly, and for a long moment.

“I missed you, Sam,” she says.

Grace is casual when she says things like “I missed you” or “I love you,” and Sam knows that about her. He's not casual like that, but her absence in his life was palpable. He missed her, so much, and in a way that hits him only now that they are together again. She lets go before he does.

Grace takes off her coat and sits down. Sam likes her dress, looking at it so discreetly she can't notice.

“Oh my God, it's exactly the same in here,” she says.

“I know, eh?”

“Coming home, I feel like nothing ever changes.”

“Yeah. I don't know. I like that about coming home, though. I like that it's always the same.”

She smiles at him.

“Oh my God, Sam! Do you remember that time when we came in here and Graham and I had just broken up, and I was so depressed and you wanted to cheer me up, and we did shot for shot, and I beat you? And it was, like, a Wednesday in Grade 11?”

“You didn't beat me! I quit!”

“Liar!”

“You're a liar! I carried your ass home that night. If you passed out, that means I won.”

“Oh, fine, by default.”

Sam remembers that Grace invited him in, drunk, heartbroken, and he could have had her if he wanted. But he didn't want it to be like that. He put her to bed, and without touching her, even though he could have, he left. He knows she does not remember that night. Not how he does, anyway.

“Sam, do you have to go to the bar to order?” she asks.

“Yeah, I think . . .”

She won't go to the bar to order. He wonders why she bothers asking him questions that she doesn't want answered.

She lifts her arm and waves it at the waitress. “Hi! Hi! Over here!”

“What can I get you?”

“Oh, uhm . . . Sam, what are you drinking?”

“Just beer.”

Grace looks up and around the bar, clicking her tongue, just so everyone knows she's thinking.

“I'll have a double vodka and soda?”

“Any type of vodka?” asks the waitress.

“The cheapest,” she says and smiles.

“Wow, that big city has made you so sophisticated.” Sam's never forgiven that she moved to Chicago to study philosophy and literature. He knows the move was motivated by a sense that she was close to some discovery about herself. It hasn't come.

“Fuck you. How are you? What's new? Tell me stuff!”

“I'm good. Things are, you know, the same really. School's going good—”

“I don't understand how you can do science in university. Isn't it, like, so hard?”

“Yeah, kind of. It's easy for me, though, so I like it. And Guelph is good, you know, it's Guelph, but the boys are good.”

“Really? How are they? How's Booty?”

Booty has been Sam's best friend forever. No one quite knows why he is called Booty, has been since middle school, and there's no changing it now.

“Failing. Drunk a lot. The same.”

“That warms my heart. And how's Lily?”

Hearing her name, Sam freezes.

“She's good, we're
good. We're, um . . . talking about maybe going to Europe this summer.”

“Really?” Grace smiles, trying to look happy. “So you and Lily are totally in love, huh?”

“Ah, well, I don't know. We don't really talk about that stuff, so . . .”

“But you love her.”

Sam might love Lily. He thinks. Sometimes.

“Yeah, I mean we've been together for . . . ever, so . . .”

Before Sam has to continue, the waitress brings Grace her drink. Sam's relieved. He hates talking about Lily with Grace. As the waitress walks away, he notices that she's not half bad. If Grace wasn't with him, he'd take a longer look.

Grace grabs her
drink in both hands, moving it from the table to her lips without pause.

“Oh, thank God, I've had such a day,” she says.

“What happened?”

“Oh, nothing really. Luke and I have just been fighting lately. He's driving me fucking nuts.”

Sam tries his hardest to act concerned. He knows they'd gotten serious quickly, as is often the case with Grace. She possesses an uncanny ability to commit to those who don't want to commit to her, never fully understanding that it isn't meant to be a one-sided bargain.

“What's going on?”

“It's just, like . . . I don't know, we're really different. He's so, he's one of those people who seems really interesting at first, because he's in a band and everything. I thought we had so much in common, and on the surface, we do but it's not the stuff that matters. Like, I don't think he understands me. Not really. I don't know. You met him that one time when you came to visit me. At his show, right? What'd you think?”

Sam thought he was a fucking idiot.

“He was cool.”

“Yeah, he is cool,” says Grace.

“Do you like his band?” Sam asks.

“Honestly?”

“Yes, honestly. Between us.”

“I hate them!”

They laugh so loudly that the couple next to them stares. Grace notices and starts laughing louder. They grin at each other like children who've agreed on something forbidden.

“But maybe I hate them because I'm not, like, really cool, in the way he's really cool. Maybe it's too advanced for me or something,” says Grace.

“You do like Coldplay.”

“Well, I did. I can't listen to them anymore.”

“Why?”

Grace looks down at her drink. She looks up at Sam again and smiles, but her lips, full and red, look stretched and uneven.

“I don't want to tell you,” she says.

“Why?”

“Because you'll make fun of me.”

Sam knows immediately, instinctively, where this conversation is going, and he doesn't like it.

“Oh no. Not because of—”

“Yes. Because of Graham. Because we listened to them together, because we liked them . . . together.”

“Okay, that just proves that I'm right. That guy was a douche.”

“Yeah, well, I don't know.”

“How is he not?” Sam asks her. He knows he's right and Grace does too, but she can't quite bring herself to really know it, in a lasting way. That it's that black and white; that he was all bad, no good, but she had always held her breath for too a hair long. Blind and suffocating, she could never call anything.

“Well, he loved me, Sam. Like he really loved me. Luke is the douche—he doesn't really love me, not at all. That's why we fight, even though he's home with me for Christmas. He can't even begin to touch the part of me that Graham touched. He doesn't even want to try. And it's embarrassing, but it makes me miss Graham. So there you are. I still miss Graham.”