A Tapless Shoulder (28 page)

I was
suddenly almost comfortable and it didn’t even scare me, in fact,
it remained rather true to what I thought comfort should feel like.
Her smile was
real
and that had to count for
something. If this was what it took
for one to ‘grow,’ it was no wonder I was still practically a baby.
I appreciated that there were still some gentlemen like qualities
floating around in me, as I desperately wanted to give her my shirt
if she wasn’t going to wear her own.

She was done
on the phone. I smiled and shook my head. The absurdity of the
situation had hit me. “So, if I, say, taught myself how to knit
right now, and made you a shirt, which, I guess a knitted shirt
would be a sweater, maybe, anyway, it would be plain rude of you
not to at least try it on, right?” I asked as though I had taken
four large cardboard letters and placed them on the table before
her:
HITN
,
no, no,
wait, not that way
,
what the hell does that mean? Great,
now my imagination was dyslexic? Look, like this,
H-I-N-T
.
Huh? Shirt?
YOU? WEAR? WHAT?

She laughed,
and laughed, but not her big laugh, just daintily. She must have
been humouring me. I took a drink and kept one eye on her.
Why
, I thought,
why
won’t you put your shirt on?

“
Why are you
friends with Nate exactly? Seems…” she asked suddenly, like talking
about wearing clothes bored her. I blinked. I shook my head to get
things where they needed to be if we were going to just go straight
from one conversation to another like that.

I slightly
laughed and shrugged one shoulder, “Because he’s got fists like the
heads of sledge hammers and can swing them like… um, a much lighter
normal hammer or something… you know, like something
light
… like his fists or like fists that aren’t holding
hammers.” I said not without twitching some at the end.

“
Do you mean
he’s forcing you to be friends with him?” she gasped but giggled
right after.

“
Yes,” I whimpered with my eyes shut and my head nodding,
before laughing. “No, no, Nate, well, Nate’s Nate. We’ve been
friends since, I think, Grade Six. On his first day at school, his
family had moved here in the middle of the year, this kid, Greg
Downie, was picking on me. I can’t remember why. Don’t think it was
ever anything specific; he would just bully
someone
every now and then, and that day it was me. Anyway, I’d say
now it was because I had friends while he had issues, maybe, not
sure anymore. Plus I was quiet, and I think that makes for an easy
target to a kid that needs to boost their ego, whatever the reason.
I’m teaching my kids discipline
and
how to box.
But,
anyway
, sorry, I’m
bad with tangents and side notes; I think the resulting abandoned
stories
are
the story my life. I guess my
thoughts don’t stop when they should and get in the way of my
words, well, not really, I think I just –
crap
, I’m still
doing it. Okay, so Nate hadn’t met anyone at our school yet besides
the standard procedure the teacher forced upon him at the start of
the day, you know: getting us all to look at him before giving him
a desk to sit at,” I paused. My empty bottle was removed, and a
full one took its place. “Thank you,” I said and gave her a
smile.

She smiled
and said, “Oh, you’re quite welcome. Have much more and you’ll have
to sleep over.” She giggled what sounded and felt like a
threatening little laugh.

I stared at
the bottle like it and I were no longer friends, and she saw the
unease it brought. “Honey, I’m teasing you, oh, and you were doing
so well. I will call you a taxi myself if it gets to
that.”

“
Okay, I know, I’m kidding too, I’ll, uh… last one for me,
okay? What was, oh yeah, so anyway, it must have been first recess,
and this kid, Greg, was giving me a hard time when, out of nowhere,
the new kid, who happens to be Nate, gets in between Greg and me,
pushes him away but just enough to get himself some space to haul
off this huge swing. He totally punched him clear off his feet;
Downie went up into the air and landed flat on his back. I’ve hit
some people, but they were never as light as that kid seemed to be
then. It was insane, I mean, it seemed like it took forever for him
to hit the ground. Up until then our fights had just been, you’re
getting a headlock, no, you’re getting a headlock, hey, could you
get off me
and stop squeezing
my head
. I really don’t know
if Nate had planned it, like woke up that morning knowing he’d be a
star if he picked his moment and punched someone in the face, but
that’s exactly what he did, and, well, the bond between us was
set... for life, for as long or short as it may be. He is
definitely a character, that’s for sure. He’s just… not an answer
man. He will ask himself, is this a good idea, should I do this?
But then
stops
there, for some reason I will never
understand, he doesn’t wait for the answer. Seriously: he just goes
on right from the question.
Will this kill me; here I go.
” I laughed, “I’m the same way with our friendship. I’ll be
like,
why do I even hang out
with you
;
you have got to see this
. And really, Nate is a good guy, like, it’s just,
sometimes I think,
really
Nate
, that’s the choice you
thought was best? He can be so… I was going to say, dumb, but
that’s not it…
abnormal
, that might
be a better word.” I held up my bottle as if to say
cheers to that
. I looked at her face, then down at her breasts
and then her face again. “Yeah,
abnormal
,” I added
again. She was either ignoring me or enjoying
herself

I sighed. “I
have to cut him some slack because, honestly, I’m sure I’m just as
bad. Half the time I don’t know where I am in my head, maybe
even
who I am
in my head. It’s like I lack
concentration and it’s literally a diminished version of myself
that steps forward every time I go to do anything.” I laughed, “My
consolation is I don’t think I actually know things: I just have
ideas about them.” I looked at her like she knew what I was saying
was true. She nodded like she preferred not to judge. “I’m very
lucky to have Katie… I have a feeling I might be a hard person to
know, and harder to have as someone to be known by.” I looked at
Candy very seriously, “Did that make sense? I sometimes honestly
don’t know.” She looked at me like I was the one with my boobs
hanging out. “Really,” I said, “you’re going to look at me
like
I
don’t make sense
? I gave that very same look to Nate just this
morning.”

“
Yes, honey, it made perfect sense,” she said firmly. I
couldn’t tell if she was genuinely interested or simply entertained
by my sudden outpouring. I also didn’t know
why she insisted on saying
‘honey’ every time she spoke. She was smiling
like we’d been the best of friends forever, and I realized tension
and anxiety were no longer with me the way they usually were. It
actually felt okay to be there with her, simply talking, which was
a strange but welcome discovery. I even felt something like normal,
and was making eye contact just with her eyes and not her nipples.
Though, at that thought, I did have an incredible urge to point at
them, but not say anything out of the ordinary; just point at them
and carry on like I wasn’t just pointing at them.
You no normal, me no
normal
.

“
Okay, let’s
hear more, don’t stop there,” she said, bringing me back and waving
me on.

“
I just – I need to just
be
. I think one of
the worst things we can do is to have an idea of who we are: an
idea of our selves. That’s like trapping yourself to one idea, your
own idea at that, have you really that much faith in your
imagination?
There, that’s
me, third jar, second shelf
.”
I looked at the ceiling, “Listen to me, a million blogs I’ll never
put online. Or actually it’s more like I think too much, and this
is a part of the
too
much
end of it,” I nodded
with approval at the revision.

I was
suddenly struck by a sadness I couldn’t quite place. I looked at
Candy; there was such softness in her eyes I could have fallen
there unharmed. “I owe you an apology,” the words trembled so much
I wondered if they made it to her.

She tilted
her head, laughed nervously and then asked, “How so?”

“
Your commitment, your conviction, your courage… seriously:
only when I am no longer in awe of it; will I be able to begin to
understand it,” I said slowly, only realizing it myself as well.
“Candy – you know who you are enough to put yourself not only
through this physically and emotionally, but at odd’s end with
likely,
what
, most of
society? Like, come on: I couldn’t pick where to eat last night.
And, yeah, okay, I can go deeper than that: I have yet to admit I’m
depressed to even myself. And I couldn’t kiss Becky Cobb when she
leaned toward me with her eyes shut in Jerry Comb’s basement in
grade seven. She felt sorry for me, said, it was okay, I was just a
puppy. A puppy – how was I a puppy? A puppy would have licked her
face all day if she let it.” I rubbed my temples. She grinned and
shook her head. I smiled timidly and shrugged. It was true:
sorry I wasn’t a whore,
Becky.

Candy leaned
toward me ever so slightly, my eyes widened, “You are just too
smart.” She nodded like I should simply believe her.

“
You’re too smart,” I replied quickly. She sat with a
thoughtful expression while I laughed at myself; her, the
moment,
all of
it
.

She ran her
hand along her leg, and asked almost distractedly, “You think I’m
Smart?”

I smiled and
nodded, “Of course, you’ve been nothing but kind to me, and you
knew that this thing with you was my problem, not yours. So,
yeah,
I think
you’re intelligent, Candy. I can
tell that much.”

She stopped
mid-drink and leaned forward, “Maybe I’ll be
brain Candy
,” she said with a crazy little smile.

“
You just
wrecked it,” I said with a smile. I laughed while she
giggled.

“
Oh my,
honey,” she shook her head slowly, while she stared at me, “you are
a lot like your father and the other parts that shine I bet are
from your mother.”

I smiled
politely. “That would have been so much better without the ‘honey.’
Makes you sound almost motherly, which might have made me cry if
you weren’t sitting there with your boobs on display.”

She laughed,
and I joined in lightly. “You are beyond your years I think,” then
added, “I can’t put my finger on it, but you must be an old soul,
one of a medicine man or a famous astrologer.”

I tilted my
head as if examining her. “Funny you should say that. I sometimes
feel like I have a strange sense of time, but not my time, but
everything beyond me and only ever going forward; the past is
exempt. I don’t know if it’s a depth I’m on the verge of… or a
madness I’m a mental stumble away from.” I stared at the table as I
spoke. “I feel like it’s with that notion at my edges that has me
living in this world with a certain amount of detachment, like I
have an idea of something bigger slowly forming, maybe that’s
the
madness
part of it; waiting for that idea to
fully develop because until then it just doesn’t make sense. Do you
know what I mean? It’s like I have this idea that’s slowly
building, and it’s clearly unfinished, but is completely in the
way, and I just have to live with it and hope it gets completed in
my lifetime. Maybe it’s a book in the making.” I straightened in my
seat, my eyes wide, “
Maybe
that’s
why
I ask
do you know what I mean
all the time
!
Man, I wish Katie was here, that was the best explanation I’ve been
able to make of it yet – it actually sounded like it made sense
this time around.” My laugh ended in a smile with staying power. “I
don’t know. There’s more going on here than meets the eye, isn’t
there?”

“
Uh, you
think?” She smirked and glanced down at herself. I nodded in
agreement and laughed.

We were quiet
for a moment as our smiles again straightened at a noticeable rate.
“I may just be coming undone, I’m afraid,” I said just to put some
sound back into the room. “Did you hear? I punched this guy at the
park, with my kids there and everything. I’d like to say my hands
were tied, but that just was not the case.”

Candy frowned
and it seemed out of place, but it disappeared just as quickly as
it had come. I shook my head, “Don’t worry, I’m not about to punch
a naked
man-woman
,” I said
with a big laugh, which Candy followed with an even bigger
one.