Cosmo (8 page)

‘Eddy,' I say, finally able to speak. I don't think he can hear me. He's gurgling now. Thinking quickly, I throw the end of Gorilla's leash beneath the trunk, Eddy screaming harder as I lift the edge. ‘Sorry, sorry,' I say, and then sprint up the stairs, careful to close the door on my way out.

I pass a man and woman standing close in the kitchen, their arms entwined, who instantly back away from each other as I rush past them. Then I'm through the screen door, bursting out into a circle of lawn chairs surrounding the kiddie pool. The stereo's blasting the Cars and I wheel around, trying to find a familiar face. Luckily, I spot Keith first, standing close to the door, smoke in hand, sipping a beer. Moths and other winged insects bash against the porch light over his head.

‘Inside,' I say, breathing hard. ‘You need to come down into the basement.'

‘Why?' he says, lips glistening from the bottle. Mike, his old work buddy, stands beside him, drunk as hell and clearly amused by my red cheeks and heaving chest.

‘Eddy's hurt himself downstairs and I need you
now
,' I say.

‘Fuck,' he says, shaking his head. ‘Go get your mother.'

The thought of telling Mom delivers another running boot to my gut.

‘No, no, you've gotta do it.'

‘What we ask you to do tonight?' he grunts.

‘I know it's just – '

‘Go. Get. Your.
Mo
ther.'

King Shit, I think. He smiles at me. And I lose it.

‘Eddy's locked in your
fuck
ing trunk, you turd!' I yell, really marking out. I can feel the eyes of party guests, but happily the music is so loud that the majority of the gathering hasn't heard. Mom's somewhere else, thank god, or else by now I'd have felt an open-hand slap on the back of my head.

Keith's shoulders drop. He stares at me, and I can tell: he hates me, hates everything about me. Then his look changes a little, like he's just the tiniest bit afraid.

‘Hold on,' he says casually to Mike, and walks toward the door. I lead him inside, passing the scarlet-faced couple in the kitchen (now standing a metre apart), and down the stairs. As soon as we're halfway to the bottom, Keith's heavy tread behind me, I can hear Eddy's garbled, muffled shrieks.

‘Je-
sus
,' he says. ‘What the fuck have you done to him?'

I stand by the trunk with my arms crossed, and finally feel the stinging threat of tears. I don't care to explain myself, or what we've done. I don't care how much Keith insults me. I just stand aside and expect him to do something about this, crack the lid, so I can calm Eddy down.

‘Go up and close the door,' Keith says, squatting down. It's quiet now, the party sounding a mile away, but Eddy's screams just ratchet up a notch and set my teeth on edge.

‘I'm gonna get this bitch open and you're not gonna say jack shit to your mother,' he says, and then looks at me. ‘Or we're both dead.' I moan. Keith fumbles around on his disorganized, paint-and-beer-stained tool bench. He knocks through tape measures and pencils and hammers until he finds a crowbar.

‘Don't you have a
key
?' I ask.

‘It's safe, somewhere else,' he says. ‘I'm not riskin' it. Your mother would sniff us out.'

I realize how drunk he is. Keith gets impatient and bull-headed when's he's hammered; likes the feel of heavy tools and taking direct, sloppy action.

First he pitches Gorilla Monsoon away from him, the leash skittering across the floor and the puppy yelping in protest. ‘Stupid dog,' Keith mutters. ‘What the hell's he doing out of the spare room?' Then he goes about tapping at the lid, trying to find a hold for the hooked end of the bar.

‘Eddy!' he bellows. ‘Make sure your hands are away from the lid!' Then, without listening for a response, he starts cranking on the crowbar, trying to snap the clasp. It's a slapdash performance, a stumbling act of bending, crouching and cursing. He's making a ridiculous racket, too – something he fails to notice in his hammered state. Eventually he throws the crowbar across the room, defeated.

‘Fuck it,' he says, walking back to his workbench and picking up his electric drill. He's got the thing plugged in and whirling in a few more minutes, lying on his side against the back of the trunk, shakily fitting the end of the drill bit into the various screws. It's easier to listen to the drill than to have to bear Eddy's muffled wails. Gold screws begin to fall from the back of the chest, landing around Keith's gut in a small pile. Finally, after that achingly slow process, he's removed everything attaching the rear side of the lid to the trunk. Then he stands and retrieves the crowbar, going back to work. He's able to wedge the bar right in, and after a few solid thrusts the locking mechanism snaps apart in a satisfying
crunch
. And there's Eddy, his pale skin and flabby arms, the Bic pen makeup completely smeared and running with his tears. The skull mask and jar of spiders have been kicked down to his feet.

‘It's okay,' I say, kneeling beside the box, offering him my hand. ‘It's gonna be –'

Eddy screams and sits up, eyes rolling around in his head, looking feral. And suddenly he's up, out of the box, still screaming, and running for the stairs.

By the time I'm at the base of the steps, he's whipped open the door to the basement and run screaming into the kitchen.
Oh, shit
, I'm thinking, just as Gorilla sprints between my legs in a blur of curly black fur, up the stairs and hot on Eddy's tail. Then they're gone, the boy and his dog, off toward the back door.

I turn to look back at Keith. He shrugs his shoulders, smiles.

‘Ring the bell,' he says, and finishes his beer.

 

A few hours later. It's about two in the morning, and Mom and Keith have been going at it for half an hour. Eddy's been sent to bed and I've tried to do some cleaning, but mostly just to eavesdrop on their argument. I keep twisting the dishcloth in my hands, forearms dunked into the sink and fingers already rubbery. Eddy pissed his Speedo in the backyard and Gorilla went apeshit.

‘Oh my god, your fucking privacy. You've got all day to have your privacy, sitting on your
ass
. Who the hell do you think you are?'

‘Suck my cock.'

‘
I can't take it anymore!
' Mom screams, and I cringe, ripping into the dishcloth. I want this to be over, want the heat between Keith and Mom to finally fizzle, break, and Mom to emerge victorious, kicking Keith's ass to the curb in the process.

‘Will you just listen to me for a second?' Keith howls.

‘No!' Mom says, crying now, hysterical.

‘Why?'

‘Because I hate you! I fucking hate you! You're a terrible man.'

‘Right, I'm so fucking terrible, looking after, cleaning up after these little shits.
Well, fuck you, too!
'

I stand perfectly still. Neither of them says a word, but Mom keeps crying. And then I hear the floorboards groaning over my head: Eddy's heavy stomp down the hallway from his bedroom. And I hear a loud thud as he drops to the ground.

‘
Listen
to me. You never
listen
to what I'm saying,' Keith says.

Mom keeps crying. Then, suddenly, ‘Do
not
touch me!'

‘I'm not doing anyth–'

‘Stop touching me oh god don't touch me.'

In the world of professional wrestling, if a wrestler accidentally lands a blow or delivers a move with full force behind it, and subsequently injures his or her opponent, then this is called a
potato
. I guess you could say that I potatoed Eddy. Sealing him inside the chest was too much of a high-spot move; I should have known better. But then again, it was all in the spirit of the game – in other words, it was an accident. A typical wrestling match follows a vague script, ending with an agreed-upon outcome. And thus a typical wrestling match is called a
work
because everyone involved is working toward the same resolution. Eddy and I were
working
today – I never meant to seal him up, make him piss his pants or drive him crazy. I'm confident that I'll be able to convince Eddy that we were only
working
, that it was all
supposed
to be fake. But the situation in the living room has surpassed the level of a work and entered into
shoot
territory: a scenario in which heat or animosity between two opponents is legitimate, unscripted. Real.

‘You've got no right to touch me!'

‘Oh my
GOD
!'

I lift my hands out of the sink, dry them with the towel and walk as quietly as possible to the living room entryway. From where I stand, peering around the corner, I see Mom and Keith standing beside the coffee table, Keith's meaty hands wrapped around Mom's wrists. She's staring up at him with her teeth clenched, her face red and mangled in anger. Keith stares back, jaw slack, eyes glassy with booze. Eddy sits cross-legged at the top of the stairs, shaking his head from side to side, making his blond mushroom cut flash clean and white in the amber glow of the hall light. He's shaking and nodding robotically, his palms clamped over his ears, his fingernails digging into the skin of his scalp. Whenever he gets like this, you've got to hold his head in your hands to make him stop; you've got to hold your hands over his and say
please, please
, in a near whisper – you can't be impatient because otherwise Eddy might be rocking for hours.

‘Just
go
!'

‘Where the fuck am I going to go?'

‘Find somewhere, anywhere, just get out.'

‘Would you just
listen
to yourself for once?'

I've got my fingers wrapped around the door jamb. Anything could happen, and each low blow or ripping yank they trade keeps me riveted in place. I wipe the tears from my eyes. I don't want to watch anymore, but I can't resist an ending, even a dark one, that's so close. There's no wrestling match that can forgive this. No bout to make sense of it. All the cartoon heroes flicker out, light to dark, the
TV
gone black.

They're in each other's faces, screaming nonsense, when Keith bangs his knees against the coffee table. In a split second he's off balance, and then falling, hands still wrapped around Mom's wrists. She follows, tripping against the sharp edge of the table, hands grasping at Keith's crotch. And they go down, Keith dragging Mom to the floor. Cups and plates and cans fly in the air as they hit the surface of the coffee table. The table – cheap, shoddy wood – snaps down the middle. It's an incredible noise, Keith splitting through the wood and Mom following after, sharp splinters and four table legs spiralling away across the room. Keith lies still, eyes fluttering, grip released on Mom's wrists, as she tries to scramble to her feet. From the doorway I can see a spot of blood forming on Keith's forehead, and from the way he lies there, groaning, I figure he's gotta be at least partway hurt. Mom's so drunk she can't find a handhold, can't get to her feet, so she lies there panting atop his hulking belly.

Please be over
, I think.
Please be finished. Let this be done
. But there's no logical end to this, no one to raise a victor's hand in the air.

But then there's Eddy, out of the corner of my eye, on all fours on the carpet. He must have crawled down the stairs while they were grappling each other. Mom looks up with tears in her eyes, spotting him, her face tormented and ugly. ‘Honey,' she's trying to say, but Eddy drops to one elbow, his legs splayed out behind him, and raises his right hand in the air.

No
, I think …

Eddy slaps his hand down on the floor. ‘ONE!' he screams, then raises it again.

And I close my eyes. I close my eyes and imagine Mom blowing the hair off her face and starting to laugh. She laughs so hard that she rouses Keith from his groaning daze, and he screws around his head to stare at what's so funny, and seeing Eddy there on the floor counting them out, well, it sends Keith into hysterics, too. And I laugh with them from the doorway, and when Eddy's finally finished pounding the floor he looks around, confused, but then that grin ripples over his lips as he sees real smiles and real laughs around him, and he leaps up and sprints over to Mom and raises her wrist in victory, points at her with his other hand, and this just kills everyone, and the joke gets bigger and fuller and richer because this was a work after all – that after the bloody performance we all find ourselves in the locker room slapping backs and swigging beers, giving respect and love for the broken bones and pulled muscles, for everything sacrificed and offered up in the middle of the ring, all the fake animosity and hatred for a common cause. And Mom kisses Keith, still on top of him, and they stand and Keith lifts up Eddy into his arms for the first time and swings him around the room while a big rock song plays for our victory.

And I keep my eyes shut, seeing it all work itself into happiness. Eddy goes to school in the fall and gets help from the counsellors and gets changed to a different school where he gets the kind of classes and therapy he needs, the kind of meds his fucked-up brain is thirsting for, and he grows up to be one of those kids who're popular even though they're challenged and the high school jocks defend him and give him rides and the girls kiss his cheeks in the halls and the teachers all love him because Eddy's heart is fucking pure and simple, and one day he goes to work for a local wrestling show maybe selling popcorn and sweeping up the aisles (even if it's just some borrowed gymnasium), but he's there every night, exactly where he wants to be, watching from the stands as the indie-show wrestlers tell their minor-league stories and mirror the big guys into the next century. And I visit Eddy in his own place every weekend, and we grab McDonald's fries and nuggets together and watch old
WWF
reruns on his crappy
TV
and laugh about how we were a tag team once, how we had so many cruel opponents and never had a chance at a title but we were the people's favourites, the underdogs everyone screamed for in the dark matches of our youth, and Eddy never worked for Tim Hortons until his forties mopping floors, living without assistance, and he never had his accident on the slick stairs and he never ended up where he did, worse than ever, and I never became this crater that lies awake thinking of him, I'm back there in the living room watching him pound the carpet, I'm back there watching him in his pyjamas before the show went off the air and the bad guys won.