Losing It (44 page)

38

I
t was past midnight. Julia was on the bed clutching Matthew, who was asleep now at her breast. Brenda and Doug’s house was cold and dark, the bed small and strange. She heard every creak. The first wintry winds were whipping through the branches, practising their howls. Everything had changed. Matthew’s milky breath, that was the only familiar thing.

Where was Bob? She’d heard nothing. Julia couldn’t help it, awful images were invading her brain. Bob and Sienna Chu were fucking in a sleazy, rat-trap motel just off the highway. There were sixty rooms and five guests and the baseboard heaters rattled, the bed squeaked with rust, when they turned on the light the cockroaches scattered with revolting little clicks. The wallpaper was mouldy beige, curling at the seams, the carpet was full of cigarette holes, the sheets smelled of traces of other people’s body fluids. He was humping her, they were sweating like pigs in the desperate, electric heat. Julia could picture her, this Sienna Chu, eighteen years old, a nearly prepubescent body, almost titless, tiny hips, a belly like a boy’s.

She opened her eyes. The wind toyed with the little house.
Brenda and Doug couldn’t afford proper insulation, were still dealing with Brenda’s student loans. Julia got out of bed, left Matthew asleep under the covers, walked to the window that was shivering in the breeze. It really was cold. Cold enough to snow. This early? It happened sometimes in Ottawa. October snow.

She looked out the window at the black-grey clouds – they looked like snow clouds – and even with her eyes wide open those ugly images were there still, haunting her thoughts. Damn him! Why was he so cock-driven, so impatient to throw away everything that they’d built? For what, younger flesh? How young does it have to be? How kinked-up and bizarre? How humiliating for them all?

For him too, she thought, despite herself. He was a proud man, would be mortified with this kind of exposure and attention. He might have simply fled on his own in disarray, in need of help.

Julia went to the bathroom down the hall and tried to not look at herself in the mirror. But she had to flick the switch to find the sink and the light was flat, awful, her face ghastly pale with black circles under her eyes.

Now that she’d found the sink she snapped off the light, splashed water over her face in the dark. She sat on the toilet and peed and mentally saw herself walking down the hallway, knocking gently on Brenda and Doug’s door, whispering, “Brenda, it’s me. I’m going out for a walk. I’m sorry. Matthew won’t wake up. He’s deeply asleep.”

Deeply asleep. Something she would never be able to manage, not this night, impossible. It might be months, years before she could sleep soundly again.

She wiped herself and didn’t flush, walked out of the bathroom. She meant to go down the hall to Brenda and Doug’s door. She took one step and then stopped. They were so quiet
but she heard the rocking, the murmur of their breath, a little moan that sounded like Brenda far away, in some other state. They were trying to be silent. Julia turned around, her heart breaking.

In the guest bedroom she dressed quickly and watched her child sleeping in such peace. He was exhausted, poor thing. He’d been so good in spite of all the disruptions. She couldn’t hear Brenda and Doug now. Her own breathing sounded harsh and unpleasant. As she pulled on her things she had the unreal feeling that she might never be back. She might never see her child again. She didn’t plan on leaving, but the whole universe was off its moorings. Nothing could be counted on, houses burned down, people lost their minds. Husbands changed their skin and absconded with sexual anthropologists.

Julia was walking quickly, grinding her teeth, trying not to think. The frigid wind blasted her face, cut through the flimsy defences of her borrowed coat, sought out her fingers, which were plunged deep in her pockets. She wanted every step to hurt just a little, to stab
this is real, this is real
. Because she’d been living in a haze for years, she knew it now and wanted nothing more of it.

She approached the house with trepidation. She hadn’t meant to walk this way, but wasn’t surprised in the end when her legs took her there. The sky was cloudy in patches, the wind pushed the clouds along at a terrific rate. They weren’t keeping their shapes, either, but were rolling and changing like an avalanche in the sky, burying one another, reappearing, hurtling past. Some stars poked through the empty spaces: she could see Orion’s belt, and the bottom of the Big Dipper, but not the handle.

The house looked dark as a tomb, sombre, desolate, a black shadow compared to most of the other houses on the street, whose porch lights were still burning even though it was past midnight. New boards were up on the remaining broken windows – Donny had come; she’d forgotten completely that she’d asked him. The wood was bright and new, a contrast to the dark, soulless eyes of the undamaged windows. Ironically, the house now looked as if it were undergoing a renovation, as if it would be transformed into something fine and beautiful in just a short time.

As if the family inside hadn’t fallen in upon itself.

She walked closer and was so preoccupied with the house that she didn’t notice the black car until she was just about next to it. It was nearly lost in the gloom cast by the neighbours’ Manitoba maple, but when she saw it the cold wind faltered a moment and a surge of heat and anger – and strange relief – ran through her. Bob! But he’d taken the van. What was his car doing here?

She approached the house, listened intently. Was he in there? What was he doing? Was Sienna with him? It didn’t seem possible, yet all kinds of unbelievable things had happened. She stood still on the front porch, strained to hear anything unusual. Then she tried the front door – still locked. She took the key from her pocket and opened the door, peered into the darkness.

“Bob?” she called out. “Bob, are you there?” Her voice sounded strange in the altered house, larger than usual though edged with fright.

No reply, just the complaint of charred rafters, the dripping of water somewhere. She reached to pull the door closed again – her house was scaring her like this. But she heard a noise that made her pause.

“Bob?”

“Julia. It’s me!”

Oh, thank God, she thought. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. Really, I’m all right,” he said, but he sounded far away, she could barely hear him. “I’ve had a bit of a fall.”

“Where are you?”

“Down in the basement, almost directly under the back door. The landing collapsed. I’m going to need a little help.”

“Stay there,” she said. “I’ll go around.”

And she closed the door, her mind storming as she walked to the rear of the house. She took the key from her pocket, slotted it in the back-door lock, opened the door, and, standing on the sill, tried to see him.

“What the hell have you been doing?” she demanded. It was all blackness.

“I’m all right,” he said again, sounding much closer now. “It’s nothing major. But you’re going to have to get help. Someone’s going to have to lift me out.”

She waited for further explanation and to gather her own thoughts, to let her heart stop galloping, trampling her brain. But he didn’t say anything else. He was a long silence somewhere down there in the black.

“How bad are you really? Are you bleeding?”

“No,” he said after a time. “A bit maybe, it’s hard to tell. My leg is twisted. I can’t get up.”

“Why in God’s name are you here in the middle of the night? Didn’t you get my messages? Where did you go?”

“I was too long at the university, I’m sorry. When I got back you weren’t here. So I just wandered in and then -”

“What do you take me for? How stupid do you think I am? I know all about it.”

That stopped him. She could hear the panicked intake of breath.

“What do you know?” he asked flatly.

“What I know half the fucking world knows,” she said. “But perhaps you can start by telling me about Sienna Chu.”

“It was a prank!” he blurted. “There’s going to be a retraction. Sienna has a jealous boyfriend, he did the whole thing. He went on the Internet and found all these photographs and then he substituted my face. But they confessed to the dean -”

“Bob
. Stop it!” she said. “You know you’re lying to me. I won’t have it any more. You’re living another life I know nothing about. How do you expect me to trust anything you say? You took her to New York, for Christ’s sakes!”

She knelt down on the door sill. Her body felt tired and heavy and part of her was yearning to just step over the edge, follow him to wherever he’d plunged. Another part wanted to close the door, abandon him to his fate.

“This is awful,” he said. When she started to tell him how bloody awful it really was, he said, “Just be quiet, please, and I’ll tell you. Please.”

So she stayed quiet. She sighed, shifted so that she was sitting now, most of her body huddled out of the direct wind, the backs of her thighs resting against the ragged ends of what used to be the landing, her calves and feet dangling in mid-air.

“I was smitten by Sienna,” he said. “I will tell you freely, I was dazzled and confused. But nothing happened, not really. She did come to New York, but she stayed in her own room. There were a few … embraces, it was heady and stupid, but I’m now over her, irrevocably. Apparently she’s telling people she’s overdosed – she’s in the hospital, but is all right. God knows what the truth is with her. But I will not be seeing her again.
And what I said about the dean was no lie. There is a retraction coming, if it hasn’t been sent already. The Web site has been shut down. So the only wound left, I suspect, is with you and me. It’s a terrible one, I know. I regret everything that happened.” He was silent for a time, and she was about to tear into his pitiful excuse of a story when he said, “I need to tell you something else, I’m sorry. I came back here this afternoon in a panic to try and retrieve some things I’d left. Some … incriminating things, which I was trying to hide from you. No one was here. I have a … kind of a … fantasy. It’s a … private thing.”

“Oh my God!” she wailed.

“Shhh. I need to say this.”

She went rigid, trying to stay quiet.

“It was something that I’ve held inside and kept all to myself. It should have stayed that way. I was perfectly happy. Except someone stumbled on it -”

“What do you mean
private?”
she asked. “How about me? How could you keep something like that from me? You think you can just go around trying on ladies’ underwear and -”

“Shhhh! Shhh!”
he said
.

“What, you don’t like me saying it out loud? Who’s going to find out who doesn’t already know? It’s been broadcast across the fucking planet!” She tried to calm down but she couldn’t. It was outrageous. He was down there still trying to hush everything up, to prevaricate like a bloody politician caught with his cock up his secretary’s skirt.

“Shhhh
,” he said. “This is very difficult for me.”

“What do you think it is for me?” she said. “This was no prank really, was it? How could you let this happen?”

“It was meant to be private,” he said again. “And I was weak, vain, stupid, I have no excuses. I was in a daze, I let her lead me around. I don’t know what I was thinking of to trust her and not
you with my secret, if I was going to trust anyone. But I was afraid of how you’d react … needless to say.”

He sounded subdued, defeated. He said, “I am so sorry. I would give anything –
anything –
to be able to rewind this week. Just wipe it out, try it again.”

“Do you really want to go around wearing women’s clothing?” Julia asked. She felt sad, low, still.

“I don’t want to go around at all,” he said, almost dispassionately. This flat voice in the darkness. “It’s just a quirk of my wiring. I don’t like to think about it even, it’s not for public consumption. I know, I know, it is public now, but I never gave permission. I don’t know why I let her take the pictures. I was in a state of … temporary insanity.”

“So they weren’t fakes?”

“No.”

“Oh, Bob,” she said.

He was quiet for a time. The wind now was worsening and Julia could feel on the back of her neck the first wet, miserable flakes of snow coming down. She didn’t want to be there. She felt disoriented. It was some sort of answer to have everything out in the open. But what was she supposed to do with it?