Every Little Thing (22 page)

He put his phone back on the cradle, doubting he'd go to her show now. The drunken dial. The forty-five minute drive and all that awkward silence that would linger after the, “Hi, how are you, how have you been? Congrats on the show.”

And yet, before that phone call, he'd even thought about what he'd wear and had conjured up some ideas for small talk. Jokes about Lee, mainly. About the bird rescue missions and if he was still up to that sort of thing.

Maybe you shouldn't come tomorrow night.
He wondered why she'd even called in the first place.

His phone rang again a little later that night. But just once. There was no one on the line when he answered it. But the call display had been the same number she'd called from earlier.

The next morning he read the email she'd sent him, drunk, at three a.m. :

Hi there!Where to start. I'm sorry, maybe? Keith came in and I buried the phone under my pillow, without thinking. I don't know why really. I'm drunk, maybe that's why? I don't know why I'm sorry. I don't know why about a lot, you know?
Remember when I took this job? I didn't think I'd be in it forever. I like the job still. That's notmy point. I don't know what my point is. Or why I am typing. I just mean, I'm not far off forty, and that happened too fast. Do you know what I mean?
What I mean, really, is that I can recap the last few years of my life in a paragraph. That's what I mean. I don't mean I can, I mean anyone can. That's sad. Life goes too slow and then too fast.

D'you know what I've noticed? I've noticed that time doesn't always feel like it moves forward only. I mean, it's like it can just orbit around certain moments for years. It's hard to explain. I'm doing hand motions that would help, if you were here to see them.

Anyway, I should go. I'm feeling nauseous. Nauseated.
Whatever. (There's a difference right?)
I just wanted to try and explain a little. You know me, with the over-explanations. I think that's why we got along.
Everything was always on the table with us. Everything was always off our chests. Oh, except for that one thing. Yeah.
Except for that.

A couple of new things about me: I have discovered this:
buttering toast and sprinkling cinnamon on it. I'm gone back to using bars of soap in the shower, over body washes. There's something thicker and more purifying about it. The smell lasts longer.

Did you know we never had any pets? Me and you. Weird, right? Keith's allergic to cats and dogs. So he and I don't have a dog. A Boston terrier, I'll never have a Boston terrier. Can you really be allergic to both? I looked into it. Fun fact: it's cat's saliva people are allergic to. Not the fur. The saliva in the licked fur.

I'm really just drunkenly rambling now. Like a kid or something. The dam is busted and the words are flowing.
I should go. Goodnight. But it's okay to be a kid sometimes.
When it feels right.

By theway,Lee is doing good. He says you two talk still. Sweet.
Both of you, sweet as hell. I always liked you two together.
It was like a comedy skit. The Bird Rescuers. And what an unlikely duo. He probably shot and maimed those birds as an excuse to get you out to Grayton! (Kidding.)

It's great you two keep in touch. We should. You and me. I guess that's what I am saying. Good friends are few and far between.
Lee's okay but lately in some ways he isn't. He talks about the war a lot now, and it scares me because it's not something he ever used to talk about. So why now? He's getting a little slow and repetitive lately. A little nasty, even.
I'minto yoga now. “Wheel Pose” and “The Side Crow” and shit.
I've got all the moves. Or I will. I'd like you to say something back to me. Maybe you've had cinnamon on toast too, who knows?

I'm working on the ultimate yoga move now. “Little Thunderbolt.” You should Google it. Keith makes lame jokes about taking the bendy yoga moves into the bedroom. Keith sort of ruins everything. In that high-school jock sort of way.
Like, unintentionally, I mean—thinking he's being funny.
What I mean is: I think yoga poses are beautiful. Women contorting into those impossible shapes. It's what got me back into photography, weird as it sounds. I wanted to do self-portraits of me in my poses. Is that weird? Black and whites.
As I master each pose. I've done a series of other women. There's something so primitive or empowering or elegant about a woman in a yoga pose. I've framed my friend Melanie doing the “One-legged King Pigeon” and “Scorpion” poses. She's amazing, graceful. (Why am I putting the poses in quotation marks?) I asked Keith to photograph me, from above, while I was in the Bow Pose. He laughed and rocked me like I was a rocking horse. He didn't even take the photo before slapping my ass and walking away.

I did something, years ago. Four, five? I kept a secret from you.
I'm very sorry about it. I have less of an excuse than you had.
About Dad. We're even now. It's that big of a deal. Or it might be, I am not sure, and that's how I justified keeping it a secret.
It may or may not have been relevant to you. About you, involve you, whatever. I tell myself it likely isn't, but someday I'll tell you all about it. But not now, in some drunken email, about yoga and cinnamon toast. I'm babbling. I should go.

I dream of your dad a lot. What's that all about? Never you, never your mom, just your dad and me (or your dad and I, which is it?), and we talk about you. But indirectly. I Googled it, of course, and it's a phenomenon. People commonly dream of their ex's parents, but seldom the ex. What's up with that, right?

I wanted you to come to my art show and see my work and catch up and put the past behind us. Be friends, you know?
We got each other. If nothing else, I miss that. Two people
shouldn't throw away a kinship that took years to build. True friends are hard to find and all that. You can't force time to pass and bond you and your new friends, do you know what I mean?The past friends are the ones you have a history with— the more significant life moments the merrier. And being known like you know me was nice. We were best friends as much as anything. You're fun stuff, pal.

I saw you at Dad's grave once, by the way. I sort of watched you, standing there. You looked like you didn't know how to interact with a headstone. It was windy and your unzipped jacket was a blue cape because of the wind. Like you were super-sorry-man. It was sort of beautifully sad. You there listless and biting fingernails. And I forgave you, that day. You had him to think about, too. I sort of understood that, that day.
Watching you there. It wasn't all about me, and you were caught in the middle. But I should have mattered more. And my father shouldn't have left me so suddenly. You did things wrong, but unintentionally wrong. Here's my forgiveness. Eons later.
Via email.

Look. Me and you, let's talk more regularly. Okay? But, after that phone call and me hiding the phone, and this email—and how embarrassed I'll be about it tomorrow morning—scrap the photo show tomorrow. Don't come. It'll be boring as hell anyway. They even made me write an artist's statement. That's not me, as you know. But call me sometime, okay? Let's catch up. For all I know, you've got three kids and a wife by now.
And it seems like I should know their names.

I mean, I know you're not married. But you know what I mean?
It's been fun acting like a drunk schoolgirl and typing non-censored blabbering, but it'd be even more fun to catch up over a coffee. And hear you talk back.

Best, really, all of it, Allie. Allie Crosbie. Remember her? That cute little thing who followed you up to the rooftop that night?
Hey Birdman?

P. S—I met someone with your heart disorder recently. A woman. ARVC. There's herds of you out there now, apparently, going around with robot hearts! Got me thinking of you. That and the show.

HE RESPONDED RIGHT away, but if he had his time back, he would have thought out his response a little more. He would have asked more questions. Flirted a little. Pried, subtly, to see if she was okay, happy. All he typed back was,“Allie,Allie Crosbie. Yeah. The name rings a bell. The coffee sounds nice, or a drink. I'll even buy the round. P. S. —You made Keith sound like a real catch in that email. I think you chose the right man after all. You?”

And she'd typed back “A drink sounds great, moneybags.”

But the drinks never happened. The passing of time and all that. Hectic schedules, things to do, a fear of awkward silences. Because what would they say, really?

Not long after that email, he got up out of bed one night, half-asleep, half-awake, and sat on the edge of his mattress with his hands holding each other in his lap. His shadow on the wall looked like a toppling building. The light coming through the window was a shade of purple he read as four, maybe five in the morning. Minutes later, only slightly more awake, he wandered into his spare bedroom, to the computer desk, and opened the top drawer. There was a tin can full of things he didn't know what to do with: a copy of the first article he'd published in a scientific journal and a photo of him and David Suzuki shaking hands at a benefit that the Avian-Dome had hosted in 2004. There were some old photographs, his birth certificate, and the engagement ring Matt had given him and made him promise Allie would get.

He took the ring out of the tin and laid it on his desk. The ring cast a shadow beneath itself like a donut until a car drove by his window and its headlights hit that shadow, dragging the top of the donut down to make a temporary heart-shaped shadow beneath the ring. He Googled where the tradition of proposing with an engagement ring had come from and couldn't get a clear answer.

He put the ring in an envelope, with a note, and sent it to Lee.
Make sure Keith gets this? It was her mother's, and I promised Matt that she'd get it one day. Feel Keith out about whether or not he's ever going to propose to her and, if need be, give him this ring? (But only if you know for sure the moron is going to propose. )

Thanks, best, stay in touch,

- Cohen.

OFF AND ON, Julie Reid would stumble back into his life, between relationships of her own. They were friends, but sometimes she'd spend the night. She had a thing for sex in the shower and unbearably hot water, even in the summer. She liked the steam and slippery stall walls and the way he pressed her against the wall. She'd tuck her head into his neck, and her wet hair would cling to his chest. Her hands like hawk claws in the backs of his arms, and her heels squeak-sliding along the basin's edge. And then always, after they were done,
Take a bath with me
? All that steam and heat and passion had his heart flickering like a wasp trapped in a jar. But only ever with her, in the shower, did sex shock his heart like that. It was the heat and steam or it was Julie Reid or it was both.

She'd pour the bath, turn off the light, get in first, and ask him to lay back-on into her. She'd drape her hands over his shoulders and slide a finger over the glossy scar on his chest. She'd run her fingers over the hard chunk of metal below the scar, pressing hard enough to feel it there. She'd ask him to explain what ARVC was all over again because she could never remember what was wrong with his heart, and then she'd joke as she re-remembered. “So, you got poor rhythm? Can't keep a beat?
Hah hah
.”

Julie would meet someone online, or she'd give in to a neighbour's forward advances, or a customer buying a hatchback would pick her up, the way he had, and he wouldn't hear from her for months. And then one night she'd knock on his door. A distinct knock.
Tap, tap…tap. Tap, tap...tap.
She'd spend a night telling him that all men are inane or insane. It didn't count as a relationship, and yet their periodic flings—three times after they'd broken up and never longer than a few weeks—were enough for Cohen. Whatever that meant about him.

She'd comment on that, with an arm around him, lying in his bed, skating fingers around his chest.
Don't you want something permanent and meaningful? A wife to take to staff Christmas parties?
A kid to throw baseballs at?

She got knocked up by a high-school physics teacher named Pete. He met her baby once, in a coffee shop.
My little Charlie Man
, she'd called him, reaching down into the stroller to pinch his cheeks. And then he never saw her again.

SEEING AND
NOT KNOWING

IT STARTED WITH a casual conversation at the staff coffee pot. “You like kids, right, Davies?”

“Depends where you're going with this. But yes, as a rule, more than adults.”

“And they like you. You have a way with relaying information and making learning fun.”He tapped his skull twice, “Learning only sticks when it's fun. Or at least, interesting.”

“It's not hard to make plants and animals exciting to kids.”

Clarence laughed as he poured then handed Cohen a cup of coffee. “Tell that to any other adult who takes thirty kids on a hike in the woods. Your patience is a virtue.”

Cohen took the mug from Clarence and took a slow, temperature-gauging sip of coffee,wondering where Clarence was going with this because the man never spoke a sentence without reason. He started every conversation like a persuasive essay.

“I have a proposition,” he said, “not that you can say no, really.”

Clarence grinned and pointed to his office door, but he'd pointed with the hand his mug was in, and hot coffee sloshed out of the mug, down across his fingers, and onto his shoes. “
Shit!
” He shimmied his mug to his other hand and shook the burning fingers like he was strumming a banjo. “Go on, take a seat in my office.” He took a handful of napkins and soaked up the brown puddle of coffee on his black shoes. “I'll be right in.”