Ellen in Pieces (14 page)

Two months later Nicole went up north, leaving Matt in Vancouver following strange women around. Why not? He’d followed
Nicole here. He would pick a woman at random and tail her until he was in danger of being noticed, picturing himself and her in an alternative life. In bed, yes, but other things too. Carrying her shopping basket, lifting the fallen chain back on her bike. It seemed conceivable then, that he could be with anyone, and if he could—be
with
anyone—he could
be
anyone.

That October day the game had ended almost immediately. Ellen lived a block from the café in an old triplex of artist studios. He followed Ellen home like a lost dog and when he got there, what was in the window? A pot.

And a different game began.

A
FTER
present opening, the lacuna of waiting for dinner, the life sentence of every Christmas afternoon. Matt tried not to watch his sister nursing the baby, but there she sat, letting it all hang out. Ellen had large dark aureolae while Nicole’s were pale pink, almost flesh-toned. Patty’s were somewhere in between, nipples elongated from the sucking. When Ellen lay on her back, her breasts tumbled into her armpits. When she knelt with her elbows on the bed, her nipples brushed the sheet. He’d never, of course, get Nicole in that position. She often found intercourse painful. And Ellen’s bush was so extravagant; he’d been startled at first.

Carl was playing Wii with the sound off. He nudged Matt with his foot. “That’s your sister, buddy.”

Matt blushed, but Patty said, “I don’t care. I’m just a dairy producer now. Hey, who wants to hold the Hickey Machine while I pee?”

“Me,” Nicole said.

She had disappeared upstairs right after the presents were opened. Now she’d returned with a book under her arm. She must
have slipped away to read, except her eyes looked puffy and her brief glance in Matt’s direction seemed freighted with reproach. He couldn’t think what he’d done.

Patty made like she hadn’t heard Nicole’s offer, or maybe she hadn’t. She heaved herself off the couch and deposited the baby into Matt’s unready arms. With wide, surprised eyes, the baby regarded him.

“Hi,” Matt said.

Cody Matthias pitched forward in a swoon and proceeded to nuzzle Matt’s neck. “Help,” he said to Nicole.

“He sucks,” Carl said. “Sucks, poops, cries. It’s quite the life.”

Nicole seemed happy to take the baby, but she also frowned at Matt during the transfer. Because Patty hadn’t given her the baby in the first place? Matt shrugged and got up.

In the kitchen his mother was patting down the uncooked turkey. “There’s Froot Loops,” she said the second he stepped in the room.

Shaking his head, Matt poured himself a bowl, then watched as Anne performed a cavity search on the bird.

“What is
that
?” he asked.

She had extracted something penile and flayed. The neck, she claimed.

“How did it get up its arse?”

On the phone, Alden was saying, “Not possible. Tomorrow would work, first thing. In the meantime, salt. Sifto or what-have-you.”

He was wearing Anne’s apron, Matt noticed. He’d never seen his father in an apron before.

“What next, Mother?” he asked when he hung up.

“I can help,” Matt said.

Then Patty came in cupping both breasts.

“And what is that about?” Matt asked her.

“I’m trying to figure out which one is fuller.”

“Where’s the bread?” Anne asked.

“Right in front of you, Mom.” Patty snatched up the Wonder Bread and bopped Anne on the head with it.

“Get out of here, you two,” Anne snapped. “You’re just in the way.”

Matt dropped his dirty bowl in the sink and followed Patty out. “That’s a bit harsh,” he said. “Hitting Mom.”

Patty swung around. “Matt, she wants you to treat her the same.”

“Did she say that?”

“She said it to Dad. She can take a joke. She just can’t see.”

“Not at all?” Matt asked, pained, but Patty was already waddling away. So fat! Was she going to stay like that? he wondered.

In the living room the Hickey Machine was grousing, Nicole pacing with him, trying to forestall full-blown wails. Every time she passed in front of the TV, Carl leaned sideways in his chair so he wouldn’t total his Ferrari. Patty plopped down on the couch, horseshoed herself with the nursing pillow, held out her arms for the baby. The way she whipped out the breast and plugged it in made Matt grimace. Carl saw and guffawed.

Nicole sat beside Patty again and, ignoring her book on the coffee table, picked up the
Cosmopolitan
beside it. She indulged in these kinds of magazines herself, mostly when she was depressed. She would curl up in bed with
People
and a carton of Häagen-Dazs.

“‘Your Sexual Horoscope for 2009!’” Matt read off the cover. “Hmm. I wonder what’s in store for Gemini.”

Nicole ignored him. So. Definitely mad. To Patty, she said, “This is great. I don’t have time to read trash anymore.”

Patty’s thought-balloon broke off and hovered above her. Apparently, only Matt could see it:
Trash?
She asked, “How come you don’t have time?”

“A PhD is so gruelling. I had no idea.”

Patty’s thought-balloon:
Ha! Try having a baby!

And it seemed to Matt, not for the first time, that Nicole couldn’t possibly be smart enough for a PhD.

“F
IRST
Matty. Then Matt-a-tat-tat. Which became Machine-Gun Matt. Machine-Gun Mutt. Doggy. Dogbone. Boner. Erection Man, or just E.M. Then, for some reason, Dr. Dog. Dr. Love. Loverboy.”

“Loverboy?” Nicole said, still staring straight ahead. “Really?”

He had made her come for this drive. “Clay Franks lived here.” Slowing, he stared at the house. Snow-blown driveway, its banks waist-high. Two-car garage. Vinyl siding. Amber glass on either side of the front door. Same as every other house.

“A.k.a. Frankster. Frankenfurter. Weiner. Weenie. Teenie-Weenie. Then just Teenie, though the guy was, and probably still is, huge.”

Nicole finally broke her silence. “It’s so sad about your mom. She’s much worse than last summer. She seems completely blind now.”

“We got mad at him and put a bag of dog shit in his mailbox.”

“Charming.”

“Next door there? That was Tommy Gerken’s place. He tried to make Blake Wineman grab Teenie’s balls. ‘Grab them! Grab them!’ I guess he was gay, but we didn’t think of that. He was unbelievable on defence. Later he got called up from Juniors. Played two games for the Flyers. We all went over to Winey’s to watch.”

He glanced over. Nicole seemed to be pouting now. She was wearing a tweed newsboy cap that left the tips of her ears exposed and a long muffler wrapped twice around her neck. She lifted her chin so he could see her mouth better.

“What?” Matt said.

“I don’t find this particularly interesting.”

“I went shopping with you.”

“When? You mean with my parents?”

“The craft fair.”

“Oh, the
craft fair
!” She crossed her arms over her chest and stared out the passenger window, right at Penny Barber’s house. Penny Barber—Barbie, Barbell, Barbarella—was the first girl Matt ever asked out. She said no.

“What?” Matt said.

“You’re just so weird around your family.”

“Weird?”

“I get the feeling you’re embarrassed by me.”

“What?” He accelerated at the same time he slapped the wheel, like the car was a horse. “You’re embarrassed by me!”

“I am not!”

“‘Matt prefers Tim Hortons,’” he mocked.

“What was I supposed to say? You stormed out of Starbucks.”

“There was a huge line. I just went across the street where there wasn’t one. What’s the matter with that?”

“Can you look at the road when you drive? This car belongs to my parents.”

“Starbucks is overrated. And I hate”—he took his hands off the wheel to scratch air-quotes—”‘French-press’ coffee. It tastes like sludge. Your parents’ French press?” Hands up again for the quotes. “It’s made in China.”

They drove in complete silence for several blocks, along the winter-locked streets of his banal childhood, the stomping ground of his appalling ordinariness, the inspiration for everything he would eventually not become. Not even come close to becoming. Nicole wouldn’t look at him, but finally she said, “I know you must be sad about your mom. I know because you gave her such a nice present.”

T
HAT
was what she was upset about. He didn’t realize it until the end of the day, not even when he found her crouching by the artificial tree peering inside the little wooden box.

She said, “You bought this at the craft fair.”

But before that there was Christmas dinner, Patty and Carl spelling each other off, treading a circle around the table with the bawling Hickey Machine. Matt had seen the kid’s face but once the whole day. Other than that, his strange tonsure was always turned toward them.

Anne wouldn’t address Nicole directly, which Matt was beginning to wonder about. She must be mad, too, like Patty. She stabbed at her plate, hit china. A few times she actually pushed pieces of food onto the tines of her fork with her fingers, hunkering down, trying to be surreptitious. But everyone noticed. Everyone stared, it was so sad and bizarre. Nicole must be grossed out, Matt thought.

Nicole was telling them about Hazelton, where she had researched her thesis. “Eagles everywhere. I got to interview the elders. I felt so privileged.”

She wasn’t grossed out. Matt was grossed out.

“What exactly are you studying again, dear?” Alden asked.

“Case and agreement in Gitxsan. Gitxsan is the language they
speak up there. I’m trying to figure out why there are these two very different sentence types with different agreement patterns.”

“I have an agreement pattern,” Carl said. “I agree with everything Patty says.”

“You had to go all that way? Why not pick up the phone?” Alden asked.

“They can’t tell you. They don’t know. Just like you probably can’t explain why we say ‘thieves’ instead of ‘thiefs,’ for example.”

“Do we?” Carl asked. “Thiefs. Thieves. Thiefs. Thieves.”

Matt dreaded someone would use the word
Indian.
When they’d had this same conversation the night before, everyone said “First Nations.” Nicole’s parents had praised her to the skies for working to preserve a dying language, while Matt sat with the paper crown from the Christmas cracker on his head, a linguistic imperialist with a TESL certificate.

Also, at Nicole’s they’d had trifle.

N
ICOLE
filled the hydration system while they were in the bathroom getting ready for bed. She squirted Matt and more water came out than expected and soaked his shirt.

“What did you do that for?”

He only had two shirts with him. The rest were back at Nicole’s parents’ place. He peeled off the wet one and, shoving the towels aside to make room, hung it over the rack.

Nicole said, “It was just a joke. Lighten up. You’re the one who gave me a crappy present.”

Ah, he thought, welling with tenderness. So that was it? She was jealous. Jealous of his mother, thank God. But how to explain? He couldn’t have given Nicole the pot. He wasn’t a complete cad.

He folded her against his bare chest. She was taller than Ellen, but much slighter. There didn’t seem to be enough of her, while he could grab pieces of Ellen in his hands. These kisses were so different as well: tentative, regretful.

“I wish we could sleep together,” Nicole said when they separated.

“We’ll sleep together tomorrow night at your folks’ place.”

“But I want to sleep with you tonight. I miss you. We sleep together in Vancouver. They know that. Why can’t we sleep together here?”

“It’s just the way they are,” Matt said, digging out the toothpaste from her makeup bag.

“Well, it’s silly.”

“Sorry they’re so silly.”

“Me too,” Nicole said, and something in Matt twisted.

“Sorry my family isn’t hip, like yours,” he said. “Sorry they’re low-class.”

“I didn’t mean that.”

“You thought it.”

“I never once thought it!”

“Sorry you had to buy the plane tickets. Sorry I’m such a lousy boyfriend. Sorry I don’t feel like sleeping with you tonight.”

She was behind him in the mirror, her eyes filling with tears. Then she wasn’t.

T
HE
basement bedroom was cold even in the Walmart sweater and Matt couldn’t sleep. He lay there thinking about his conversation after supper with Carl, the two of them on the back deck sharing a cigar, the double cloud of smoke and breath, while Patty and Nicole cleaned up.

Matt had been fully accoutred: parka, hat, gloves. He stomped his boots as he smoked. He-man Carl wore a hoodie.

“There’s this glut of ESL teachers in Vancouver. Half the schools shut down after 9/11. I’m on all the sub lists but, so far, nobody’s calling.”

“So what’re you doing with yourself every day?” Carl asked, manipulating his jaw to expel the smoke in perfect rings of diminishing size.

Matt, who had consumed a lot of beer by then, was going to tell him. About the following game and how, surprise surprise, it had brought him to Ellen. He and Carl didn’t normally exchange intimacies, but Matt remembered that he’d married Patty in a Catholic church. Carl might understand about guilt and the warped things it made you say and do. But in that long pause, while Matt’s dulled brain sorted the pros and cons of a confession, Carl changed the subject.

“I’m first in my hockey pool,” he said.

Nicole was in Matt’s old room upstairs. He should go to her and apologize, slip into bed with her, sneak down in the morning.

He considered phoning Winey or Teenie, but according to the clock it was two in the morning. “Hey, it’s me, Loverboy. Dr. Dog. E.M. What’s happening, man? Long time no see. Yeah, I’m living in Vancouver now. Yeah. Fuckin’ ay, man.”

He could have looked them up any of the hundred times he’d been home during university, but he never had.

When he finally got out of bed, it was because he remembered the
Cosmo
on the coffee table and the tantalizing information it contained. To know his sexual destiny, or even get a hint about where this business with Ellen was heading, would help him sleep. If not, there were the models, all of them super stacked.