Holding Still for as Long as Possible (20 page)

Inside, I checked the pilot light on the gas stove. I opened the fridge and inhaled. Bloated tofu, batteries, egg tray full of nail polish. Joan Nestle chased a piece of dust across the kitchen floor. I glimpsed the sink, full of dirty dishes. I was still drunk. I'd been asleep for maybe an hour.

The sink definitely smelled of rotting something, and I felt briefly thankful there was no gas leak. I walked around the corner to the bathroom, knelt on the floor tiles, and violently threw up chicken wings ( honey garlic! ), beer ( two at last call! ), six shots of Jäger ( one more can't hurt! It's medicinal! ). There was a delay between my thoughts and actions, as if a little man in my brain was sleeping on the job. And there was a new tic under my eye. It spasmed every few seconds.

After rinsing my mouth in a clumsy waterfall of blue Listerine, I walked down the hall, bracing myself with a fluttering right arm against the wall. The obsessive voices in my head started up. What if I screamed bloody murder? Started kicking everyone in sight? What if I jumped out the window? I needed to be alone. I had to be sure I wouldn't hurt anyone. Hurting myself was less important, but I wanted to make sure no one else was involved. I knew it was irrational, but in the middle of an attack, rational thought didn't matter. I had to be careful. Check the stove. Count my steps. Make sure I didn't lose it. Get anyone I loved out of the way.

I turned on my bedroom light with an emphatic slap. “Baby, you should probably get going.”

Josh moaned. “What?”

“I was just saying that you should leave. Amy is probably super pissed.” I wished I could tell him the truth, that a panic attack was about to eat my normal brain. I was about to be zombified, I could feel it.

His eyes adjusted. He picked up a roach from the side table and sparked it. “Let's get pizza!”

“Josh. Did you hear what I said?”

“Amy and I broke up.” Josh looked at me and shrugged.

“Until you move out, I don't think words like
together
or
apart
really mean anything.”

I was trying hard to sound like I actually gave a shit about his breakup. Perhaps I should tell him what was really going on, but I didn't want to fuck things up. It would happen eventually, but for now he still thought I was alluring. I liked that. My stomach lurched. I scratched at my elbow.

Josh was hunched over, wrapped in my bright pink quilt.

“Okay, no problem, Billy. You're probably right.” He got up and started putting on his clothes, slowly.

As I watched him, I heard the click and chime of the front door swinging open downstairs. Then came Roxy's trademark heavy thumps, followed by the click tap of several pairs of high heels up the cluttered staircase. I was still standing in the bedroom doorway. I leaned back and peered over the banister to see if I could identify Roxy's early-morning crew.

Tina and Amy came into focus behind Roxy, tearing off their pretty pumps triumphantly and pitching them up to the landing as if they were part of a deranged carnival shoe-throw. Tina followed her shoes and slumped at the top of the stairs in a cloud of expensive perfume.

Roxy set glasses on the kitchen table and unscrewed a bottle of whiskey.

Wanting to be alone and having Tina show up at your house instead means you have to either go dig a hole in the backyard and stuff your ears with rocks so you can get some peace, or just give up and join the party. I stood uncertainly in the hallway beside my open bedroom door, a few tiny specks of vomit drying on the bare paunch between my red push-up bra and the little black shorts riding up my ass.

“Hey!” Roxy looked up from the kitchen table. Then she sprinted down the hall to grab me in a bear hug. “Billy, my favourite girl! My favourite poet.”

I winced. Roxy was tall and strong enough to pick me up.

Meanwhile, Amy had ducked into the bathroom with Tina, giggling. Josh slipped past me, vaulted over the banister, and ran down the steps and out the front door. I imagined him walking home shirtless.

As if nothing weird had happened, I settled into a drunken game of Scrabble with Roxy and the girls at the kitchen table. Amy was too drunk to notice Josh's jacket slung over the back of her chair.

Twice she asked me, “How was your night?”

I shrugged both times, and answered, “Drunken.”

I am the master of two-letter Scrabble wins. I drank coffee while everyone else got sloppier.

Sometime near dawn, when both visitors were lying on the pullout couch in the living room, I Googled Josh on my computer. Nothing much came up: a doctor in Idaho and a kindergarten teacher in B.C. The only substantial entry was the short film Amy had made about his transition, called
Becoming Man.
I decided to write up a list of questions for him. But after I'd done that, I tore up the paper.

I Googled “hate Hilary Stevenson” and got a few blogs complaining about the state of women in rock. I Googled “love Hilary Stevenson” and came up with an online profile of one of the contestants on
Canadian Idol
. “I loved Hilary Stevenson. I listened to her in Grade Seven and that's when I knew who I wanted to be. I wanted to be just like her. I wonder where she is now.”

I wrapped myself in my quilt and sat out on the deck to smoke and watch Joan Nestle go wild chasing early-morning shadows on the snow. I left the patio door open so the cat wouldn't get upset by her inability to decide which side of the glass to be on.

Amy appeared, her hair pressed up against the inside. “Can I have a light?” She stood on her tiptoes, stretching her arm out in an arc.

I handed her my lighter. She stepped fully outside, closed the door behind her and leaned down to pet Joan Nestle. Her blue sweater rode up. I saw a tattoo of the word
Hope
on her lower back. Josh had the same tattoo.

Amy lit her cigarette, fingers shaking. “Thanks.” She gazed up at the sky behind my head, exhaling. “I love being up when the sun rises,” she said.

“Me too.”

She looked at me, daring me to make more significant conversation. I stared back.

“I saw your old video on MuchMoreMusic the other day.”

I kept staring at her. I wanted to tell her to stop it.
I get it. I'm not fucking cool
.

“It must have been strange, to have all those birds in your hair like that.”

“It was uncomfortable, yeah. You know, awkward.”

“Like now?”

I laughed. Drunk girl was a smart-ass. “Yeah, kind of like now.”

Amy smiled unconvincingly. “Well, Billy. I'm sorry to have invaded your house tonight. We've been on a bit of a tear.”

“It's a good place for benders. We thought about calling it the Bender House at one point.”

Amy dropped her half-smoked cigarette into the oversized restaurant ashtray Roxy and I had stolen from outside the Gladstone one night. “Benders are good sometimes, I guess. Good night, Billy.” She turned, forgetting she'd slid the door closed, and bumped her head on the glass, then stumbled backwards and fell on her ass. She giggled for a long time with both hands on her face. “I'm not going to remember this tomorrow.”

Helping her up, I said, “Probably not. Do you want some water? Or for me to call you a cab?”

“Tina's gonna walk with me. We're going to lie in the snow in Trinity Bellwoods Park.”

We stood face to face in front of the patio door. Inside, Tina was rooting around in the kitchen cupboards. Joan Nestle pawed the glass.

“You know what, Billy,” Amy said suddenly. “Josh wasn't always so remote. He used to be really present. He used to be, I dunno, like this sparkplug.”

“Yeah, weren't we all like that once?” Actually, I thought, to me Josh was all lit up. I had no idea what Amy was trying to say.

She continued to stare at me, almost through me, and slurred, “Like, he used to be full of hope, you know, like our tattoos? Now he's so cynical.”

“Well, it's not hard to be cynical these days, especially in his line of work, right?”

Amy shrugged and fell into the patio door. Tina opened it, and helped her inside. Under the harsh kitchen light, Tina poured more whiskey into a water bottle she held over the sink.

“You're hard core,” I remarked.

“It's my vacation week,” Tina explained, as if time off meant you should drink yourself into a comatose state.

I walked her and Amy downstairs and closed the door behind them after two awkward hugs. With Roxy passed out, I was finally alone.

I texted Josh:
I thought things r cool. I thought Amy knew everything
.

It took him until the morning to text back. On the streetcar I took to work at the call centre, I read,
She does know. It's just not . . . comfortable
.

[ 20 ]

Amy

More than two months after our breakup, Josh and I were still living together and things didn't feel all that different. He still worked long hours, and I spent a lot of time with Tina, and when we did speak it was pretty friendly. It was as if breaking up had taken the pressure off and we remembered what we liked about each other.

In March, Josh and I decided to have dinner together once a week. We would spend one evening a week checking in, to keep communicating about the breakup and remain close.

I finally got up the nerve to ask if he and Billy were officially dating.

“I suppose so,” he said slowly. “I would like to, I guess, if I'm being totally honest.”

I managed to ask what he saw in Billy — hopefully in a way that seemed non-accusatory and friend-like, despite the fact that I knew his answer would make me feel as if I was bleeding out of my ears. Billy seemed so frantic one minute, so sad the next, I told him. We were at Juice For Life, the veggie joint at the end of our street.

When our dosa appetizers arrived, I asked, “What is so intriguing about her? Is it the celebrity thing?”

He looked at me, running his hand through his almost faux-hawk. “I'm not sure. She just seems so alive or something, so much more honest than anyone I've ever met. It totally seems like she's having an identity crisis, but you know what? I think that's brave. She keeps it together, but I just think there's something really commendable about allowing yourself the freedom to unravel and question yourself.”

I nodded at Josh, dipping spongy crepe into coconut sauce with my index finger and stuffing it in my mouth so I wouldn't have to speak. Josh never described people as brave. Last week he had said his job made him think the majority of human beings were freeloading dirtbags. He took a long sip from his mug of cider, a blush creeping across his cheeks. He placed the mug down before closing his eyes in a blink.

“Plus, she's beautiful.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “She is.”

I got up, taking extra time to smooth my skirt down as if nothing were at all wrong, trying not to trip on my heels en route to the downstairs bathroom. Whenever someone suggests they wish they were tall and thin like I am, I say,
Well
,
try tripping over yourself for ten years and see how much you like it.

I turned the hot water on full blast and sobbed into the rising steam, picking leaves off the plant sitting atop the long white counter. Josh's admission of what he liked about Billy came across to me so clearly: I'm not honest. I have no depth of character. I'm not brave enough to break myself down and ask important questions. I'm just Amy, pretty Amy, with the easy life and tons of options. Obviously, I knew that Josh's feelings about Billy had nothing to do with me. But I couldn't help turning everything inward.

I don't feel so sure
!
I felt like screaming. In the face of losing Josh I'd never felt so unsure of anything. And . . .
beautiful
?
I guess I couldn't argue with that. I looked like a boy compared to her — no ass, string-bean arms.

I wished it could be as easy to remake yourself at twenty-five as it seems at fifteen. I imagined how I would shave my head again and perfect a brooding stare. I would look at things from a different angle. Instead, I reapplied my mascara, dabbed my forehead with a tiny square of scented blotting-paper, and walked back up the steep stairway. Josh had a sprout lodged between his front teeth. I didn't tell him.

I suggested espressos in to-go cups, a bike ride by the lake. It was one of those rare dry days, and it felt good to exercise outside again, even if we were still in scarves and wool hats. Everything was normal. We didn't talk much, and after riding for a while, just parked our bikes and sat on the beach at the same spot where we always ended up. I lay back on a picnic table, face to the sky, smoking a bummed cigarette. Occasionally I turned to watch Josh throw stones into the bloated water of Lake Ontario. I felt sorry for myself. I felt ashamed for feeling sorry for myself. I got out my BlackBerry and made a list of things to do in the morning. The list anchored me.