Eat Your Heart Out (19 page)

I stare at my big canvas. I can't see anything between it and my eyes, nothing, just darkness. I'm doubly blind.

I sit down in my old yellow chair. The frustration surrounding me is palpable. It's another person in the shed, only she won't talk to me or keep me company. She just makes her presence known.

“How did this all come undone?” I ask myself.

He took it when I left him.

I don't want to think anymore.

It's five o'clock
in the afternoon but that really doesn't matter. Once I'm out of the shed, I feel like I can breathe again. I know the relief is fleeting. If I don't get to the corner as quickly as I can, I will lose my breath, the rug will be pulled from under me, and I'll free-fall, deep and fast.

I am the youngest thing here this evening by decades, but that doesn't matter. I can breathe deeply, and soon with abandon. I sit next to blond Rita, who is always happy to see me, and tell myself that I should wait ten minutes before ordering. I will wait ten minutes before ordering.

Four days out of five, the regulars are the
AA
crowd, just trying to get sober. I see them some nights outside of local churches, smoking yellowed cigarettes together when their meetings end. I give them a quick wave and they just nod back. I don't want to talk to them so close to God. They know that they don't want to talk to me either. I would just remind them that they are still practising alcoholics.

This summer O'Malley's has become a place of worship for me too. There is no prayer, though, only confession.

My relationship with these people was a kind of ultimate closeness coupled with an infinite distance. And it's that distance that allows us to be so close.

But we don't spend time together sober. There are no shared interests or people. There is no history between us. What would we talk about? I've come to realize that there's little difference between a young drunk and an old drunk. As a young drunk, I'm so honest around them because I'm not constantly afraid I'm going to disappoint them. As old drunks, they are so honest around me because I'm one of the few people they haven't disappointed yet.

They're at those real churches, though, four days out of five. Walking away from them I always marvel at the kind of courage it must take to go to those meetings hungover. I wonder what kind of faith they must have in themselves to really believe that they can quit, one last time and for good. I don't think I could ever face my demons so naked four days out of five.

“How was your day, Gracey?” Rita asks me.

“It was good, Rita. It was good.”

I smile at her, and she smiles back. She has a kindness in her eyes.

“What do you want tonight, Grace?” Tom yells at me from behind the bar.

“My usual,” I holler back.

“It's been eight minutes,” I tell myself.

“Make that a double.”

I sit back in my chair. It'll be a few hours before my friends get here but that's fine. I like being here, alone, with these people.

There is no one watching.

“How's your summer
been?” Dylan asks me.

“It's great.” I smile at him. He's sitting close to me. His hand is on my leg, and it's moving up my thigh, which is strange because we don't talk in real life. His hand feels warm. I don't want him to move it.

“Ar-are you still at school?” I ask him.

I know the answer. He isn't still at school. But it's late, and the room is spinning, and I'm not able to remember conversations I've already had. I try to force myself to think about times I've talked to Dylan before but I can't. My thoughts are shallow right now. If I try to wade through them I'll just hit a glass wall that hides the past, and bounce off of it, back into the forefront of my mind. All I'm able to think about is right now, this minute, this second.

The music is loud. I can feel that restlessness in my legs, and I want to move.

“I love this song, Dylan.”

I can tell I'm still smiling at him, and I shift my body closer to his, filling what little space was left between us.

“Do you want another drink?” he asks me.

“I can't.”

His body feels hard pressed next to mine. Seconds slip past us and I don't know what is supposed to happen next.

“Do you want to get out of here?”

I sneak him
in through the back door. I tell him he has to leave before dawn. In my room he looks bigger than he was just moments ago at the bar.

Things are very quiet between us. I don't know why they are so quiet so quickly.

The silence between us is ripe.

Soon there is no pretense, and we aren't polite. He kisses me, and I kiss him back, harder. I want this. I really want this.

He pushes me into a corner, and the surrounding darkness follows. I can't see in front of me, I can just feel him against me. He touches me, without premeditation. Without permission. Without thought.

“You never used to be this beautiful,” he tells me.

I don't know what to say back.

“If you really should be doing this, you'd probably know what to say back,” the voice tells me.

I pretend I didn't hear it, but I still don't have anything to say.

Time is fragmented and lapses very quickly. I'm bare and he's bare and suddenly there is nothing actual between us.

It hurts at first, but I like the fullness inside me.

When we're finished, he holds me. In the darkness, he doesn't feel different than the one I was used to. His arms are wrapped around my waist just the same, we are sleeping close together just the same, our breathing is in sync. It's almost all just the same. I fall asleep believing it's the one I'm used to next to me. I'm too drunk to remind myself to notice the differences that separate the two.

I wake up hungover, alone, and next to the familiar ghost.

I held off
sleeping with Mike for a long time, until we were eighteen.

“I want to get dressed up,” I said. “You don't have to.”

When he opened his father's door, he was wearing a suit and tie.

“I bought us ice cream sandwiches,” he said.

We sat on his couch and watched
24
. When the show ended, he went to the kitchen and he took two shots. He was so nervous he was shaking. He offered me some.

“I'm fine,” I said. “I don't need it.”

After a while, it hurt too much and so we stopped. He held me and as he fell asleep, I named every shadow on his bedroom wall. They became my companions as he slept soundly and I lay awake dreaming.

The heat came
back this morning. It's suffocating. I went walking today with the girls, my friends from high school. They are all home for the summer, and although they indulge like I do, they have somewhere to go back to. Realizing this, slowly but constantly, even laughter felt like a chore. Before I left, the laughter with them was usually so natural. It came in floods, and like fireworks erupting it cascaded loudly above us, swayed and settled around us, eventually falling beneath us, disappearing. Today every inhale, every rise, every fall, every exhale was laboured. It made me tired.

The girls and I have taken to wearing the same skirt, cotton, fitted, black, cinched at the waist. Before I would have hated the thought of dressing like someone else. Now, I don't know how I cared.

Night falls quickly and looking up I don't see any stars. The sky is so dark that I wonder if it could absorb me.

“Do you have a light?” I ask Old Joe.

I used to be scared shitless of Old Joe. He has the gruffness of a man who has lived his life alone, unconcerned with pleasantries. When I was a kid, he used to tell my brother, John, and me that he was an astronaut. We believed him until I was about eight because of the
NASA
badge sewn to the hat he's worn every day for as long as I can remember. I've spent a lot of time with him this summer. We always seem to find each other outside the bar, looking for a cigarette or an escape. Without a doubt, he's my favourite.

He raises his hand with a gentleness that he saves for when we are alone and lights my cigarette.

“What d-do you want to drink, Miss Grace?”

“I'm taking tonight off, Joe. I'm fine, but thanks.”

“I used to take nights off too.”

His eyes are a piercing blue, framed by wild white eyebrows. No matter how much he's drunk or how slurred his speech is, there is always a frightening clarity in his gaze. I think that's what scared me when I was young. When he looks into my eyes he can see too much.

“What'd you do today, Joe?”

He clears his throat and rises to put out his smoke. He sways more than usual today. I get up, fast.

“Sit down, girl, I'm fine. I don't need help.” I've embarrassed him and I sit back down quicker than I got up. “I came here 'round two this afternoon, so that's what I did today.”

“Did I miss anything?”

“Days are changeless at this place, my girl. Nothing happens. What'd you d-do?”

“I saw the girls. We went walking.”

“Hot day for walking.”

“You're telling me, Joe.”

“Ta-take a look at Barbara in there.”

Barbara is dancing next to Daniel, who I went to high school with. She moves with a sexuality that is only becoming to a woman much younger than she is.

I laugh hard, and he wheezes and laughs also, pleased. Even though the sun is hiding, the laughter is still exhausting, still laboured.

“So wh-what'd you do today, Gracey?”

“I just told you, Joe.”

He looks at me still with clear eyes, but confusion clouds his blue irises.

“N-no you didn't. What'd you do today, Gracey?”

“I went walking with the girls. It was hot.”

“A hot day for a walk.”

“Yeah, you're telling me, Joe.”

I look at my feet. It's not my place to correct him. He gets up again, I'm not sure why. This time he does fall over. I get down next to him and give him my hand.

“Joe, are you okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, girl, I'm fine . . . I-I-I don't know how that happened there. Just lost my feet under me.”

He finds his feet again and steadies himself slowly. He is graceful, even in the most graceless situations.

“Did you hurt yourself?”

“Nah, nah. Don't worry about me, Melinda.”

“No, Joe, I'm Grace. I'm not Melinda.”

He looks at me, and after a few seconds of silent searching, he looks surprised to find out that I am not Melinda.

“Grace! Grace. I-I don't know why I said Melinda. I get mixed up some days. Forgive me.”

If he's bringing her up, it's time for him to go home.

“Joe, do you think you want me to walk you home maybe?”

“No! N-n-no! I don't want to go home, Gracey. I'm fine. I got my wits about me, I am just getting on and I f-forget things.”

“Okay, okay, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that.”

“You just remind me a' her, is s'all. She was your age last time I seen her. They're all so pretty when they're your age.”

From what I have been able to piece together Melinda was Joe's daughter. I don't know what happened to her, I just know she's not here anymore.

“I bet she was beautiful.”

“She was beautiful, just like y-you're beautiful.”

“That's really nice of you to say, Joe.”

“It's n-not nice, it's true, girl.”

The fluorescent light from inside is so bright that it spills out of the bar. It throws a soft light out front, where Joe and I are sitting. In this moment, I can see all the lines around his eyes, all the life he's lived. A peculiar stillness finds us, and it transforms his face. He looks away from me and there's a long moment before he finds words.

“Th-they say people don't recover from things like that. Th-that's not all true. You recover in some ways, you keep on recoverin'. You just don't ever get fixed. I'm n-not ever gonna get fixed.”

He takes a swig of his beer.

My voice and my face behave, or will themselves to behave, like this is a normal conversation.

“I'm sorry.”

The sight of Joe's face, the grief and the sadness in it, hurts to look at. I put my hand on his shoulder, and I look away.

I think I should go home.

I call Michael
without thinking. My fingers sail around the numbers instinctively and hold the phone to my ear without shaking. I watch myself and our conversation from outside of my body. It's someone else speaking to him, and I'm just listening in.

“I need to see you.”

“Okay,” he says.

I hang up after a few moments. The familiarity coupled with how long it's been since I spoke to him last act like a sinking rock in my stomach. I'm anchored.

I don't regret being so thoughtless.

My mouth feels
dry. Even though we've been looking at menus for over five minutes, there is nothing that I want to eat when the waitress comes to take our order.

“What are you having?” I ask him. My voice sounds like it's floating, lingering high above us.

“Western with cheese.”

“Yeah, okay, I'll have the same.”

He looks different than he used to. He's aged, and not how I thought he would. I only recognize him when he smiles, and even then it's only because I'm searching for what I used to see. I've spent so much time remembering. The little details that I was careful not to let fade away, that I held on to so tightly, don't exist in the flesh. Not how they're supposed to.

“I heard you came back earlier, in the spring.”

“Yeah, I just wanted to come home. How's work?”

“It's okay. I mean, I hate it, but the money is decent. Why is your hair straight?”

“Oh, I just thought you'd like it.”

I want to touch him how I used to. I can still feel his hands all over me, his breath on my face, his lips on mine. I can feel him inside me, but I can't reach out and touch him. I'm not allowed. There's a formality and stiffness between us. I don't like it.