Few Kinds of Wrong (29 page)

I need to see clearly to do this. A strange sensation of dread and exhilaration comes over me as I stand in the centre of the garage, eyes focused. Mind focused. Body refusing to move.

I know I've been here a while before my body kicks in. I've been talking to myself, out loud, the whole time.

“Just like a band-aid. Do it quick. Tear it off and then you can't go back.”

I know I can't do it all fast. It will take time. But the first step can be done with three movements. Three, easy, swift movements I've done so many times I know that if I had Nan's memory loss, in the last stages, I could still do it. As automatic and easy as breathing. Yet all three seem so difficult now.

The breathing. I'm trying not to be aware of it, but I can't stop speeding it up, slowing it down, trying to make it normal but not knowing what normal is.

“Just do it. You'll do it and then you'll sit on the floor and cry and it will be easier. It's not that big a deal. Stop making such a big deal about it. Just step ahead and do it.”

This is like the pivotal part in a movie, I think. The heroine stands and is about to make the big move and then everything will be fine. All the wrongs will go away. But this is not a movie. This is my life and, even if I can do this, it will change one thing, it won't change them all. It won't make me look at Bryce and Mom together and not feel a little sick to my stomach. It won't stop this trembling inside of me that makes me want to go back home, stopping to get a bottle along the way. Ripping this band-aid won't see Joan Craig for me and bear my soul at my first appointment with her next week. It will close one door and allow me to stand in front of another, waiting to step into something new. If I thought it would make everything better, make everything bad go away, just like in a Hollywood movie, I wonder if I'd even want to do it.

In my mind, the camera pulls back on the scene. It watches me step forward and walk the few steps to the toolbox. I close the top drawer, close the middle drawer, then pull down the door cover and snap it into place.

Band-aid off. But I don't slump to the floor and cry. I don't lean against the toolbox. I just stand there and nothing feels different.

“Big whoop. You closed a box,” I whisper.

I unfasten the cover again then slowly open the small drawer on the bottom right corner. A Kit-Kat bar sits there, looking deflated. I pick it up and feel that it has been melted and hardened so many times that, without the wrapper, it would be unrecognizable as a Kit-Kat bar.

I open another drawer. Dad's chain stares at me. I lay the bar down and pick up the chain. It feels so light in my hand yet so heavy.

“Your father would want to be buried with it,” I remember Mom saying in the days after Dad died. “You should go get it.”

“Then he should have died with it on,” I snapped. “He left it in the box, so it stays in the box.” My angry words were not meant for her. They were, I know now, directed at him, at his leaving me.

I slip the chain around my neck and try to close the clasp but can't. I pull it off and try to turn it around so I can see the clasp and close it.

“Need some help with that?”

I freeze. I'm torn between wanting to tell him to get out, to get angry at him for interrupting the moment, and running to him.

“Yes.”

I don't turn around. I put the chain around my neck again and feel the slight weight taken away from me. I lift my hair up and out of his way. I don't feel his hands, only the sensation of the chain and pendant as they hang on my chest, settling there in their rightful place. Connected.

He turns me around. “It looks right there.”

“Feels right too.” I intend to speak in a regular voice but it comes out as a whisper.

“The drawers are closed,” he says.

“The whole box was closed for a minute. But I knew I had to take some things out first.”

He just stares at me, looking down at the pendant from time to time.

“We have a new tech … mechanic starting soon,” I say. “I figured it's about time to make room.”

“Making room sounds like a good idea.”

Jamie smiles. His warm hand finds mine, folds around it. As I grasp his hand back, I notice something for the first time. Something that almost makes me pull my hand away. But I don't. I let it stay. How could I not have noticed? It makes me feel a new certainty that this hand is supposed to be in mine.

Through days and nights of lovemaking, of him holding me, touching me gently at times, fiercely at others, of his gripping me in the shower that night. Of all the times he has touched me in the past days and weeks, it's the first time I feel the roughness of his now calloused hand.

Many thanks to the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council for their support of this book in the form of two Professional Project Grants; the Newfoundland Writers' Guild for critique and encouragement, especially to Helen Fogwill Porter — every writer should have a mentor like Helen; the 2007 Winterset In Summer Literary Festival Committee for their generous New Writer's Grant which helped with the writing of this book; to everyone at Breakwater Books for encouraging me and believing in this book, especially Rebecca Rose and Kim O'Keefe-Pelley, as well as Annamarie Beckel who is a kind, supportive, and thorough editor, and Rhonda Molloy who always makes things look so good; to Father John for advice and a sharp eye; to all my friends but especially Kim Wiseman — no one could have a more thoughtful friend — Kathy Skinner, Pam Hollett, and the Strident Women—this book would not be this book without you; and to all my family, especially the ones who have to put up with me every day: Sam, Ben, and my first and most important reader, Vince.

Tina Chaulk lives in Conception Bay South, Newfoundland and Labrador, with her husband and two sons, while writing and working in a variety of freelance technical roles.
a few kinds of
wrong
is her second novel.

ALSO BY TINA CHAULK

THIS MUCH IS TRUE

Is it okay to tell a lie? Lisa Simms thinks so.
this much is true
is a romp through the 1980s, about a fish out of water struggling to find her place in the world, all while sheltering her parents from the truth.

FICTION

ISBN-13: 978-1-894377-18-8
FORMAT: Softcover, 296 PP,
                  5.25 x 7.25, $19.95