Losing It (8 page)

O
ne problem was colour. The home-decoration book Julia had borrowed from the library was full of Grecian blues and greens that looked fabulous in glossy print, but would they work in this kitchen? She gazed around forlornly. There was an open feeling – she liked having the landing to the basement right there, by the back door, and no divider shutting off the stairs going to the second floor – but everything was cramped. The floor looked terrible: ugly chipped beige linoleum tiles glued, sloppily, over buckled green linoleum tiles, so there were waves and holes. And the walls were a very dull, stained white, the minuscule counter a tacky fake chopping-board brown, the sagging cupboards false oak and falling apart.

She couldn’t manage a kitchen renovation. Julia knew this in her marrow. Yet rationally, logically, she felt she should have been able to get something else done in a given day besides looking after Matthew and dealing with her mother. She had a master’s degree, had held a research job, had submitted articles to some of the finest publications.

Matthew pulled open the bottom drawer of the oven, slammed the pots and pans, sent the lids rolling down the hall,
one of his favourite games. Julia flipped the pages of the library book. Gorgeous summer hues, rustic, artfully primitive. A turquoise chair, shimmering violet door, a window trim of ancient blue opening onto a summer meadow with a bottle of white wine in the foreground, some grapes and bread. Why not go to Greece in the spring break? Bob would love it. Bathe their bodies in olive oil and salt air. They hadn’t been anywhere since France. Since Matthew.

Everything was either Before or Since Matthew. Before Matthew was sleep, regular, ordinary, plentiful as water before the drought. It was so much sleep they took it for granted. It was staying up till two in the morning with red wine and
Hamlet
, Julia and Bob alternating parts. It was making love everywhere from this tiny kitchen counter (Julia sitting pretty, wrapping her legs around Bob’s shaggy torso) to the attic among Bob’s dissertation drafts and the bags of clothes that they’d pull out, wrapping one another in silks and old ties. Before Matthew was dining in dimly lit restaurants on rich little combinations of feta cheese and black olives, on tandoori chicken and satay and sushi with black bean sauce. It was talking about inconsequentials, about George Eliot and Franz Kafka and Bob’s obsession, Poe, about how a poem can change the balance of your life, one certain slide of words delivered at a particular time with the suddenness of love or the weight of received truth when there was no such thing any more for those too old for it, how odd and humbling and electrifying to read something and have it stiffen you or melt the cold feeling in your centre.

Before Matthew was Sunday mornings on the sofa with Bob rubbing her feet, books and magazines and newspapers spread all over the floor. It was going from one to the other with something rich on the stereo, an old, bluesy Ella Fitzgerald album found in vinyl at Ackerman’s second-hand downtown, with
Mozart and Brahms and Gershwin and Patsy Cline in the wings. It was long, lingering
New Yorker
articles on obscure cartoonists who died tragically, on forensic geology and charting fashion trends by obsessively reviewing store-security videotapes.

Since Matthew was the odd smell of stale milk on her breasts. It was dribbling from her front in the middle of the afternoon when he’d slept too long. It was staring down at him on the changing table through blurry, sleep-deprived eyes while he wiggled, gurgled, played with her hair, then fountained his pee straight into her downturned face as soon as she’d loosened his pins. It was phoning the diaper service in a panic when their delivery was an hour and a half late and she had no extras on hand. It was rubbing him with talcum powder and playing with his toes in the bathtub, then hauling him out after a sudden and hilarious shit. It was reading him “Jack and the Beanstalk” four hundred and seventeen thousand times, morning, noon, and night, bugging her eyes out whenever she said, “Fresh boys on toast!” just like the giant.

Since Matthew was making love mechanically, after the news and before collapse, once every few weeks if she could remember. It was feeling her body go cold as a milkbag. It was only wanting to wear the same tired sweatsuit, not wanting anyone but Matthew to touch her breasts, to make any physical demands. It was letting the hair grow on her legs and underarms, as if in permanent winter, and getting it cut on top that once quite short. It was lying on the couch with Matthew asleep, drooling on her shoulder, and floating on a sticky, warm, milky current of love that made her want to memorize every dimple of his fat elbows, caress him endlessly, fall into his eyes, closed or otherwise, they were utterly endearing either way. It was going on endlessly to bored friends about trivialities, the feel of his hair, a little wool sweater for sale at the
second-hand store, hand-knit by someone’s grandmother, with elephants and monkeys and teddy-bear buttons and what a little mister he looked like when he wore it. It was endless sodden wool in her brain so that she could stare for hours at a book of colours and not be able to make a decision one way or the other. To not
care
, really, except on a rudimentary level wanting to stop the physical nausea brought on by the ugliness and disrepair of the kitchen.

“Matthew!” she said, because he had somehow climbed on top of the end table in the living room and was poised to hurl a steel pot-lid at the antique cabinet of crystal figurines moved from her mother’s house. “
Matthew, get down!”
She moved towards him. The floor man was going to come at any moment and she’d accomplished nothing, had been unable to don a decent set of clothes, had failed to run a brush through her hair, which was growing out again now, needed attention she was unprepared to give it.

“
Get down now
!” she said to Matthew, “
or there’s no Dormy
!”

“Yes
, Dormy!” Matthew said. He had wonderful balance and a strong arm and he wanted everything exactly
when
he wanted it.

The lid left his hand, but Julia caught his arm before the follow-through, so the projectile merely dinked off the cabinet door then fell to the floor. Matthew laughed as he twisted.

“Bad!”
Julia said and shook him once before she regained control of herself. “Oh, Matthew!” she said, trembling with anger even as she hugged him. “Just for once,
please
obey me!”

Matthew patted her back gently. He really could be a gentle boy. He said, “There, there,” and put his hand inside her sweatshirt.

“Not now,” she said. The kitchen man was coming any minute.

“Yes now!” Matthew said. Fiddling with her bra, trying to pull her loose. “Nubbies now!” he said and tweaked her left nipple with his soft little fingers. He pulled up her sweatshirt and tried to bury his face in her front.

“All right. Quickly!” she said and hoisted him over to the sofa, cradled him. He was so heavy! She would hurt her back sometime if she continued to lift him like this.

The knock on the door came only a few minutes later. Julia’s first instinct was to sink down into the sofa, to try to hide. Maybe he’ll go away, she thought. Matthew usually hated being interrupted in his feeding. She thought, I could phone someone else. I’m not ready anyway. I look like shit and haven’t even chosen my colour.

The knock came again. Julia could see him on the porch through the side window. Then he looked and saw her and still something in her mind said, Maybe he’ll just go away.

But he wasn’t going to go away. Julia stood up and swiftly detached Matthew. There was no storm. He was asleep. She held up a single finger for the floor man through the window. “Just a minute!” she mouthed, and carried Matthew upstairs, laid him in his little bed. He was soft oblivion, like Bob after an orgasm, the same mouth-open, happily stupefied slumber.

While she was upstairs she changed into a pair of dark pants that were sharp-looking but comfortable – a combination rare enough to find since her pregnancy – put on a nice blue shirt and sweater, retouched her lips, fixed her hair quickly. Then she hurried down to open the front door. “Donny, is it? I’m
so
sorry to keep you waiting,” she said. “Won’t you come in? I’m Julia Sterling. Professor Ruddick highly recommended your work.”

He was not large but he had the strong, blunt hands of a workman. His face had strange marks on it, small welts and
pimples, his nose twisted. His hair was wiry and sparse and his eyebrows joined in the middle of his forehead. He looks like a toad, Julia thought. A kindly, gentle sort of toad.

She said, “Don’t bother about your boots,” which were mud-spattered, and he immediately kicked them off. His right big toe was sticking out of his black sock, which was inside out.

“No, really, the house is a mess,” she said.

“It’s a beautiful house,” he replied. “Just needs some attention.”

“Wait till you see the kitchen.”

They walked through to the back. He didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands, whether to clasp them in front or behind or shove them in his pockets. But when they got to the kitchen he squatted expertly and inspected the sorry tiles. He looked like an old-time woodsman reading tracks in the mud or a farmer touching the soil.

She explained what she wanted, as far as she knew, about pulling up the tiles to the pine floor below, about wanting it repaired and sanded and then painted and varnished. She even got as far as the Mediterranean colours, but the way he was looking at her was unsettling and she found her words faltering.

“It’s Carmichael, isn’t it?” he said finally, straightening up, only slightly taller than Julia’s five and a half feet. “Julia Carmichael.”

“Yes. That was my maiden name,” she said.

“From Brookfield.”

“High school. Yes,” she said. “Did you go there?”

He swallowed before answering and his face suddenly went red. “Donald Clatch,” he said, moving his head up and down as if coaxing her. “Donny.”

“I’m sorry. You
did
go there?” she said.

“I sat behind you in homeroom. Every year.”

“Ah,”
she said, her face brightening instinctively, but she couldn’t remember him at all.

“Mr. Wigs. He wore that brown suit every day, the same one, with either the brown tie or the green. Clatch. I was right behind Carmichael. Every day from 9:00 a.m. to 9:10.”

“Oh yes, of course,” she said, nodding now, but still uncertain.

“You don’t remember me,” he said.

“Yes, I do. Of course. Hi!” she said, and thrust out her hand again. “I was just – well, I was never a morning person,” she said. “Homeroom was a blur.
Mr. Wigs
. Yes, of course. I wonder whatever happened to Mr. Wigs?”

“He died of testicular cancer two years ago,” Donny said. “I kind of kept up with the family. I used to hang out with Bill until he went out west to work on the rigs. His son Bill.”

“Oh. Yes.”

“He didn’t go to Brookfield, he went to Hillcrest. He didn’t want to be in the same school where his dad taught. But I knew him through hockey. We played together from squirts to midgets.”

“Hmmmm,” said Julia.

“I remember you,” Donny said, his face very red now, eyes bright. “There was a scent you used to wear. I’d get to homeroom early and wait for you to sit down. It was … I don’t know what it was. But I just couldn’t wait. It was like, the start of my day.”

Now Julia was flushed.

“I smelled a touch of it just now when I walked in. I thought, shit, what’s that? Is that ever familiar! And then, you know, when I saw you.
Julia Carmichael
. You are still -”

He didn’t finish the thought. Julia didn’t want him to finish it.

“So you do – you do floors, is that it?” she said.

“I do everything,” he said, proudly. “I do walls, and bathrooms, I do landscaping and painting. I’ve done roofing, it’s not my favourite. Basements! I’m great on basements.” He paused. “You knew that Billy Marcello was killed?”

“Uh,” Julia said. “Was he?” She had a vague idea who Billy Marcello was. Perhaps.

“In prison,” Donny said. “He’d murdered a man seven years ago. It was a bar in Hull, he was drunk, it was predictable. And then in prison he got stabbed himself. I know his sister Ramone. She’s doing great now, she works for a lawyer, has four kids, and has this business on the side selling cosmetics. She really does well. She could come by, you know, if you like buying things out of catalogues. I’m sorry. I
never
got to talk to you in high school, I was too shy. So I guess it’s just pouring out! So what does your husband do?”

“That’s sweet, Donny,” Julia said softly. She thought maybe now she remembered him. He
had
tried to ask her out once. At least that’s what she thought he was trying to do. He’d ended up muttering something in the general direction of the floor until the bell rang for class change, at which point he’d fled. “He’s a university professor,” she said. “In English literature. That’s where I met him.”

“God,” he said, staring at her.

“Anyway,” she said, “I’m sorry I’m going to have to hurry us along but I need to see my mother very shortly. So what I want, really, is to get rid of this floor …”

“Julia Carmichael,” Donny said, shaking his head and whistling softly.

6