men who paid hookers to put them in diapers and offer them the breast. And then I imagined a jolt of pain in Gord’s arm as he raised the crutch to bash me to attention, a feeling like a caber to the chest, his mouth working to produce one final, soundless Piss on a plate! before collapsing in his chair as the freaks on Jerry Springer shook their rattles.
“You okay out here Gord?”
“Jesus! Yes! You pretty near scared the dick off me, son.”
I flung myself down onto the couch. “Anything good on?”
“I thought you were supposed to be hard at work in there.”
“I was but you’re so quiet out here.”
“Well I know you’re trying to work,” said Gord, reaching primly for the box of Kleenex he kept stationed by his chair and giving his nose an elaborate honk.
“You getting sick, Gord?”
He eyed me over the wad of tissue.
“Listen, you don’t have to worry about me. You get back in there and finish your book.”
I sat up on the couch and stared at him. All of a sudden I was twelve and there was homework to be done.
“I’m taking a break all right? You don’t even — look, it’s not even a real book.”
“Don’t give me that bullshit. All week you’ve been growling around here like a bear how you gotta finish that goddamn thing before you head on back to school. Well get in there and finish it. I won’t disturb you.”
“Well what about lunch?”
“I’ve had my lunch. Had some Chef Boyardee. Oh and thank you very much for the new toaster, by the way, I put it in the trash.”
“Oh for Christ’s sake,” I said, jumping to my feet, intending to head outside and upend the garbage cans.
“Leave it,” barked Gord, picking up his crutch and brandishing it at me. “I told you, we don’t waste money in this house. Now quit procrastinating and get back to work.”
I stood there speechless, my arms spread out, appealing silently to the universe to for the love of God get off its ass and do something about Gord, until I felt a hard poke in my thigh. I looked over and saw him leaning forward, crutch extended.
“Git!” my father ordered, raising it above his head.
So back I went. And here I am.
Kirsten told me that she returned to Alberta to see her father, the town engineer, a few years ago. It was just after she got divorced, and just before she left the church. Her marriage, she said — second marriage, that is — had been the penultimate nail in the coffin of her evangelical faith. Hubby number two had been a fresh-faced, hard-working, upstanding Christian male, active in the church, an inspired speaker who had his oratorical skills honed by many years of AA meetings, and often brought his religious community to tears with stories of his parents’ alcoholism and his own impious, dissolute youth. Also, he’d been “having an affair,” as he delicately described it (once he’d been found out), with a teenage goth-girl from the homeless youth group he volunteered with. They’d been engaged in this affair-having while Kirsten was in the hospital giving birth to her twins, she learned, hence him showing up well after the fact toting two huge bouquets. Oh and also a woman — not even someone who was saved — who taught the cardio pole-dancing class at his gym.
“One cliché after another,” Kirsten told me. “And I remember thinking, No more Christian guys.”
“But how was that gonna work as long as you were in the church?”
“Well exactly,” said Kirsten. “I tried not to think about that.”
But it got harder and harder not to think about that after a while because the husband was tearfully repentant, even fled to the fleshy arms of Beth for support in his contrition — when he wasn’t flying into rages at Kirsten over the telephone, that is, declaiming against her godless audacity in having initiated divorce proceedings against him.
Beth tried to act as intermediary.
Baby, she said to Kirsten (she referred to all female members of our community as “baby,” I recalled as Kirsten told the story). Baby, she said. Carl is sorry. He’s suffering.
But he’s not sorry. He’s actually furious at me. He can’t believe I won’t forgive him. The whole time it was happening, I’m convinced he told himself that if he ever got caught, I’d just forgive him and life would go on as it always has.
Men tell themselves a lot of things, baby, when they open