Weekend (11 page)

“I don't want you to be unhappy, Ajax, but I won't change the way I want to fuck. What gets me off gets me off.”

“Bend toward me,” said Ajax. “We'll both bend to the edges of our comfort zones. Maybe it's not a natural fit—I don't know. But it's what we have to work with.”

“I promise I'll bend toward you,” said Logan, “but I can't promise how often I'll bend toward you.”

“I will bend often,” said Ajax. She could feel pressure
building in her ears. “I'm comfortable bending. I'm not unhappy. My birthday has been perfect. I'm worried we won't be able to shut off kink outside the bedroom—'cause you know and I know that we are going to go further with it. I'm worried it will bleed over. As it were.” A small cough, a grin.

“We can make this relationship anything we want it to be, Ajax. In bed or out of bed.”

“Of course, but …” She was going to say,
It's not you getting fucking hit with the paddle. Lean over my lap and then tell me the same story
. But she thought about that paddle, and it just turned her on. Regrettably. How could she really convince Logan of what she meant when, truly, she loved being punished?

Logan said, “I wish you wouldn't worry. We can play any way we want to play. Safely.”

Ajax rolled closer. “That was hot, what you did last night, but that's never going to be all I want.”

“Nor me, either.” Logan laughed and said, “So why are we even having this discussion?”

They climbed from bed.

“Come outside,” said Logan. “The rain's stopped at least for right now.” They fetched canning jars with holes pounded through the lids. “Just sweep it through the air.” They showed her, capped their lid. In the dark there were five tiny lights, strong enough to read by: magic.

Ajax did the same thing with hers. “Did you know the artist Caravaggio spread the powder of dried fireflies on his canvases to get a photosensitive surface? Crepuscular bioluminescence.”

They swung their jars like lanterns until Logan poked Ajax, Ajax shrieked and tickled Logan, and the two of them ran, yelling and laughing. They stopped and hugged hard, Ajax's heart pounding.

“Smell the world, Logan. Petrichor.”

“The thing is, Ajax, you notice things about me. Things you weren't supposed to notice.”

“That you're gentle?”

“I am sometimes.”

“That you care for your mother even when she irritates the hell out of you?”

“She irritates the fuck out of me.”

“You're a great architect. I'm proud that you made that happen in your life, that you went back to school.”

“Hardly anyone notices. It was a lot of work.”

“That you're letting love build a world inside you.”

Logan didn't reply.

“No? Am I wrong?”

“Sugar,” said Logan.

They watched the bugs circle in their jars until finally Ajax took pity, released them, and watched them climb into the sky.

“Give me five minutes,” said Logan.

When Ajax went back in, Logan took her to the bedroom, where they'd scattered peony petals on the bedspread. Vases of peonies and poppies stood on the floor, the bureau, the TV stand, the bedside tables.

“Happy birthday, honey,” said Logan.

“Oh, god,” said Ajax, her hand on her chest, eyes welling, taking Logan's hand, leading them to the bed, curling up beside them in the silky petals, the fresh scent, the sudden sound of rain on the roof. “Logan, thank you. Thank you so much. When the hell did you do all this?” They must have had the vases already prepped somewhere, hidden. “This weekend is precious to me.”

Logan looked at her across the white pillows. “You open me.” The words were right, but Ajax noticed they were twisting a handkerchief.

Ajax said, “Me, analog can opener. You, can. You never know what'll come out.”

“And that, my dear,” said Logan, “would be why I love you.”

Ajax grinned drunkenly at them. “Maybe yellow wax beans, asparagus tips, maybe artichoke hearts. If I'm extremely lucky, balloons. Have you tried canned balloons?”

       
JOE

When she heard the shouts, Joe struggled up from the couch to see Elliot and Scotia stripping down on the dock, Scotia pushing Elliot into the lake, jumping in after, legs raised, back-flopping nearly on top of Ell. So much for Elliot having the flu …

Scout had taken maybe three minutes to ramp herself up and then hadn't been able to calm down; she'd been crying for half an hour. If Joe could hear shouts at the lake, certainly Ell and Scotia could hear Scout wailing in the house through open doors and windows. Joe had tried what she could, but still the baby's cries escalated, and Joe's helplessness and panic escalated with them. To have Elliot romping with some kid when she could be in here helping—no, it was beyond the pale. Joe stuck her crinked baby finger in Scout's mouth to give her something to suck, but now that Scout had been trained to expect nipple, the finger infuriated her. She was now too agitated to latch. Joe already knew trade tricks—how to encourage her to make a wide mouth, get her to press her small tongue down against the bottom of her mouth, how to try changing her, irate and exposed on the change table, so that nursing would seem like refuge.

Joe grew frantic. The baby's cries cut into her, buzz saw.

She'd assumed Scout would be an exceptional child, a child who could prove that even moms who'd had childhoods with difficult parents could be raised healthy and whole, but what hubris that had been—already Joe could see that that wasn't how parenting worked. Parental flaws were a fungus in the air
their kid breathed. Nobody had been raised by wolves, but instead by imperfect, angry, neurotic humans. And they were
passing it on
. Anger was a mist in the air of this house, a mist that Scout breathed. Joe didn't imagine that the child understood this, but assumed it would become part of her tapestry of the acceptable, the known, the familiar—what she, in later life, would turn toward. And now, this shrill inescapable cry from the face that Joe had fallen for, this face screwed up tight and red, not even aware of her mother's attempts to soothe her. Not even noticing her mother's desperation.

Not even noticing that, on the dock, her other mother was cavorting with some—kid. Joe didn't know if Elliot was likelier to come back up to the house or jump in Scotia's skiff and go off with her. Still, still, this child was Elliot's too, and she had to step up. Right the fuck up. Now.

Joe wept, the tears dripping off her chin, landing on Scout's onesie.

A little while later, as Joe was working up a head of steam to go outside screaming, she realized Elliot and Scotia were gone. Vanished. Had she missed the sound of boat engines?

If
she
bailed the way Ell felt free to do, guess what? Scout would die.

Joe panicked.

Walked and panicked.

Panicked and stumbled.

Scout wouldn't shut up and wouldn't shut up.

The entire cottage reverberated with her jackhammer screams.

“Be quiet, baby, be quiet, baby, be quiet, baby,” she repeated, but no way her voice was audible over the cries. She yelled it, “Be quiet, baby!”

Scout appeared to be completely unreceptive, her face accordioned with rage.

God, why won't she shut up?
thought Joe. For a filament of a second, Joe considered shaking sense into the baby, forcing her to listen, but it came to her:
That is how parents kill their kids.

She rushed to tuck Scout into the cradle. Better she cry it out than that Joe went anywhere near her again.

Joe realized just by having thought the thought, she had become, to some tiny degree, a threat to Scout's life.

Someone who could snap.

Full of shame, Joe considered other ways out. Rooftops—Logan's high rooftop in Toronto, the old Bloor Viaduct, pills—how many she had, what they could be used for—ceiling fixtures.

Postpartum depression?

Maybe it was.

The knock came so quietly, Joe wasn't sure at first that she'd actually heard one. She struggled up from her nest—clothes half on, sweaty, stinky, her stitches barbed wire across her clit. Ajax stood outside with a nodding bouquet of Shirley poppies, pinks and reds.

“Hi,” Joe said.

Ajax—still in bathing suit and flip flops, grinning lopsidedly.

Joe said, “Hi, um. I guess. Hello. Come in. I'm—” She wanted to say,
I'm crumbling.

“I heard the baby screaming,” said Ajax. “I know what it's like being stuck alone at home with a newborn and I wanted to see if you're okay, if you—you know, need anything. If I can help. At least let me get these poppies into water.”

Joe felt the burn behind the eyes, the heat around her eyeballs. “Scout's asleep. Wore herself out.”
As if it wasn't obvious.

Ajax swished past her, found the kitchen, a vase. “Is Elliot home?”

“I haven't seen her all day,” Joe said. “Ajax, I'm so scared!” Her hands shook; she looked at them like they didn't belong to her. Thinking about hurting her child had been the scariest moment of her life. “I wanted to … I don't know what I wanted to do when Scout wouldn't stop screaming!”

Ajax drew her in for a hug.

“I know exactly what you mean. Roseanne Barr once said something like, ‘If the kids are alive at the end of the day, I've done my job.'”

Joe laughed and pulled away.

Ajax said, “It's just lucky they make them cute.”

“These last years—oh, I don't know, since we started trying to have a baby, or before that, maybe, after Ell had breast cancer, did you know Elliot once had breast cancer? I don't know. She's just not herself. She's distant. She's uninvolved, like she's
detached herself, like she's left me without telling me.” Joe turned away, said in a strangled voice, “I'm sorry. I know that's maudlin. I don't even know you. I shouldn't be telling you this.”
Instead, should I tell you,
Joe thought,
that Logan and Elliot have sex sometimes? That Ell masturbates to images of the two of them from back when she still had titties?

She let Ajax take her into her arms again and lead her, still weeping, toward the sofa. “I'm sorry,” Joe said, “I'm just so sorry. I don't know why I'm—”

“Honey, it's
supposed
to be like this,” said Ajax. “Just because women don't talk much about the first three months of parenting, doesn't mean it's not a bloody disaster for all of us. You're a train wreck of hormones right now and you're supposed to bawl your head off because life just sucks and you're so fucking in love with this baby and also you wish you'd never given birth to her and you hate her guts and you're in love with your wife but she's an asshole and life sucks and nothing is okay no matter what anyone says about it.”

Joe looked at her in amazement. “How do you know all that?”

Ajax smiled. “You're not re-inventing the wheel. All mamas go through it; the vast majority of us live to tell about it.”

Joe wept while Ajax enveloped her, which felt to Joe like being held together. She didn't want Ajax to loosen her grip for fear pieces of herself would fly around the room.

“Let it out. It's okay to be upset. It's really hard. It's okay to cry.”

“Why is it all on me? I thought parenting was something Ell and I were going to do together!”

“I know,” said Ajax. “It's okay. Shhhh.”

“She's Ell's baby, I mean, her genetic material. Her egg and the sperm from our donor, and now, now, why isn't she here with us? Any excuse to get into the boat and away from me.”

It went like this, back and forth, with Ajax soothing and Joe sobbing and blowing her nose. “There's lots to be upset about,” said Ajax. “But you're strong, Joe, and you'll get through it, I promise. I know you will. That's what mamas fucking do. We get through shit. If we can't do it for ourselves, we do it for these little gumdrops we love at least while they're sleeping.”

“Can I clone you? Where are you when it's three a.m. and I'm pretty sure I'm the only queer mother on earth?”

Ajax held Joe out, two hands on her shoulders, then patted Joe's face with a tissue. “It's a really hard adjustment. It gets easier when they move out of infancy because you get more sleep and they get more entertaining.”

“I thought Ell and I would be so smitten with Scout that all we could do was walk around with smiles on our faces, beaming like idiots, but it's not like that at all, Ajax, it's anything but that.”

“No, it's not like that. It's not like that for freaking anyone. I mean, think of labour. How do you communicate just how bloody brutal that is? How would you communicate
any
of this?” She waved her arm at the mess and evidence of chaos—used diaper bin, clothes heaped from the dryer, clothes tossed toward a laundry basket, abandoned tea cups, Joe's pajamas. “I
have no ruddy idea. So of course people don't know. It's a lot of crying, diapers, spit-ups, vacant staring, mess, loneliness, and resentment, and, often, a quite unsteady love that only grows better with time.”

“I think I love her,” said Joe. She looked at Scout in the cradle and felt absolutely nothing.

“Love evolves. We expect it to be stable, but it's a spring plant, edging up slowly, exposing its stem first, finally sticking out tiny lime-green leaves. It checks out the temperature, stops growing if it's cold. It takes a while for it to be big.”

“But what about you and Logan? You seem big quickly,” Joe said.

Ajax said, “Maybe we're big with love, but maybe we're just madly infatuated. It's too early to know for sure yet.”

“Are you taking it slow, though?”

“I'm more than cautious. I'm pedalling in reverse, even. Pushing them away so they can't get really close.” Ajax rocked on her bum.

“They don't seem like they're letting you push them very far away,” said Joe. “They don't often bring women here to begin with.”

“No?”

“Some, sure. I mean, and obviously Elliot's here. One or two others through the years. And, you know, they're Logan. There are some parties. They've had a lot of women. I'm sure you realize that.”

“I know that. But I do too.”

“I just meant to say that Logan thinks the world of you if you're here. If you're here, they're probably pretty gone on you.” Joe sniffled, blew her nose.

“I hope we're both hopeful,” said Ajax. “I hope we do make it. I have impediments to love, though. Besides history, I mean. I'm not able-bodied.”

“Oh?”

“I guess I look okay, in my aging, decrepit way, but I have a bad heart.”

Joe put her hand on Ajax's knee. “I'm sorry. That's shitty.”

“For twenty years now. At least I'm aging into the disease. It isn't as embarrassing to admit at fifty as it was at thirty.”

“Embarrassing, why?”
Ell, Ell, Ell
, Joe thought.

“I don't know,” said Ajax, “I found it so goddamned humiliating. Because it made me stand out? Other dykes were leading these carefree lives, and here I was, black in a city where there are no blacks, alone with two kids and heart disease. I didn't fit in. My life was a different thing. Clubbing? No, not clubbing
.
”

“Wow,” said Joe.

Ajax shrugged. “You grow into yourself eventually. I got the chance. I got to see the kids mature, and in the end, they didn't have to manage without me.”

“I'm glad you're still here. I'm really, really glad that you guys are here this weekend.”

“Speaking of,” said Ajax looking at the clock. “I guess the boss awaits. With that cockamamie dog and his endless slobber.”

Joe wanly smiled. “Bossy hound dogs, the both of them.”

“'Kay, sweetness,” said Ajax, kissing Joe's forehead. “You'll be okay, you know. Sooner or later you won't be feeling this rotten even when Elliot's being a total cretin. Things will ease.”

“Voice of wisdom. Thank you. Really.”

“Call me anytime. We're just in the next cabin, you know, if you need something. Even if you just can't stand another minute alone.”