Open (3 page)

Melody and I get tickets on the CN bus into St. John’s for the abortion. I wait for her outside a boardroom in the Health Sciences. I catch a glimpse of the psychiatrists, five men seated in a row behind a table. Melody comes out a half-hour later.

What did they say?

One of them commented on my hat, she says. He said I
must think myself pretty special with a fancy hat. He asked if I thought I was pretty special.

What did you say?

The same smile as when she kissed me. Learning to smile like that will take time. The rainbow must belong to some other story. Stretching over the hills behind the Irving station, barely there.

After the abortion I hold her hand. She’s lying on a stretcher and she reaches a hand out over the white sheet that is tucked so tightly around her shoulders that she has to squirm to get her arm free.

Not too bad, she says. She is ashen. Tears from the corners of her eyes to her ears.

Sometimes you have to do things, she says.

During the rest of the winter I spend a lot of time with Wavy Fagan. She’s marrying her high-school woodworking teacher; they have to keep the relationship secret. Wavy smokes, holding the cigarette out the window. I fan the fire alarm with her towel.

I don’t spend much time with Melody; time together is exhausting. Wavy smokes, and she taps the window with her hard fingernail and tells me to come look. Six floors below, Melody is crossing the dark parking lot. It’s snowing and a white circle of snow has gathered in the brim of her hat and it glows under the streetlight.

She’s the one had the abortion for Hank Mercer, Wavy says.

– 2 –

I am drunk and in profound pain, my tooth. I am a forty-year-old widow in someone else’s bed. Whose bed? Robert turns on the bedside light. Primrose Place is where I am. Robert’s new house with new everything. Big housewarming party. I can feel the throb of it through the floorboards. Wrought iron this and marble that. Where I’ve woken up for the last eleven months. He untangles his bifocals from the lace doily on the side table and comes over to my side and gets down on his knees. He takes my cheeks in his hands. I can smell the alcohol in his sweat, on his breath.

Open up, he says.

I say, You have to take care of it.

It’s five in the morning. He pays the taxi. I lean against the glass door of his office while he finds the keys. Everything behind the door leaps into its proper place just before the door swings open. The fluorescent lights flutter grey, then a bland spread of office light. The office simulates an office. A sterile environment for extracting a tooth. Robert passes down a hall of convincing office dividers. Turns on the X-ray machine.

That’s got to warm up, he says.

Just pull it out, I say.

Robert gets a small card from the receptionist’s desk and slings himself into a swivel chair. The chair rolls and tips and he is flung onto the floor. He grips the desk and drags himself up and sits in the chair. He puts a pen behind his ear and feels
around on the desk for it and remembers it behind his ear. The top of his head shines damply.

Any allergies, abnormal medical conditions, sexually transmitted diseases? He’s slurring. I don’t bother.

He leaves the room and I hear water running in a sink. The rip rip rip of paper towels from a dispenser. He comes back and pulls on a pair of latex gloves, letting them snap at his wrists, flexing his fingers.

Who was the man you were talking to, Robert says.

The gloves are the smell I’ve noticed on his hands, like the smell of freshly watered geraniums. He takes an X-ray and leads me to the chair.

Make yourself comfortable, he says. There’s a poster of rotting gums — enlarged, florid gums oozing pus, the roots of the blackened teeth exposed and bleeding. Photographs of everyone who works in the office, the other dentists, the dental hygienists, and receptionists. I look for the redhead. A brief, uncomplicated affair, he said, terrific sex. Long after it was over Robert tidied away her student loan and Visa. Braids and a lab coat covered in teddy bears and balloons. I sink into the chair and a moment later feel myself sink into the chair. Robert prepares a syringe. He drops it. He picks it up and looks at the tip. He scrutinizes the tip of the needle for some time.

That man was all over you, he says.

I’m allowed to have a conversation.

He tosses the syringe toward the garbage bucket; it hits the wall and bounces end over end across the room. Robert holds up one finger.

I’ll get another one.

You do that, Robert. I can hardly open my mouth. He puts his hands on my face and leans in to look, his entire weight rests on my sore cheek. He steadies himself and straightens up.

The infection is too severe, he says.

Coward, I say.

We should run a course of antibiotics first.

Robert, please.

This is unethical, he says, I love you. He begins to sob. He sobs silently with his mouth hanging open, his shoulders curled in, cradling himself. I don’t care what position I’ve put him in. His house with the new, leakless skylights and cedar sauna. The spacious greenhouse, pong of aggressive rose bushes, dill, peat. Asking his dinner guests to pull the pearl onions from the earth. Orchids in aquariums with timed sprinklers. Philip Glass on the sound system, building tense, cerebral crescendos. Density of pixels this, lightweight that, gigs of this, surround sound. Pull my fucking tooth, you drunken idiot.

You are so remote, he says, wiping his eyes.

If you’re crying about that guy.

Don’t you feel anything?

He sticks the needle into my infected gum and I dig my nails into his wrist and my heel kicks the chair. The numbing spreads up my face and partway across my upper lip. My cheek is cold and stupid and the pain is gone in less than a minute. My nails break his skin.

We’ll wait until you’re good and frozen, he says. He leaves the room. I hear him walk into the reception area. He crashes
into something. A coffee maker starts to grumble. The smell of coffee. He turns on a radio. A woman says, That’s the reality of the situation, then static and classical music. He returns with the X-ray. He seems to have sobered.

The bacteria think they died and went to heaven, he says. He has become reverent.

Robert, I need to know you’ll stop if I ask you to. He clips the X-ray to a light board. My teeth look blue and ghostly. The white jawbone. I think of my husband buried in the cemetery near Quidi Vidi Lake. Robert goes into the reception area, I hear him pour a coffee. He opens a filing cabinet drawer.

He shouts, Are you good and frozen?

The toothache had been mild for weeks. I think I’m awake but the bed is facing in the wrong direction. Or I’m in the wrong bed. A toilet bowl filling continuously. Wet leaves and earth, is there a window? Stenographers on squeaky keyboards wait for a breath of wind and resume. A car unzips a skim of water. Hard fingernails clicking glass, the leaves, the skylight, keying data. Data dripping from leaf tip to leaf tip. A religious cult in the sewer can be overheard whispering in the toilet bowl. A conspiracy and the stenographers ache to crack it. Wind sloshes through the trees and the typing subsides. The trees are just trees. I am my tooth, a monolithic grief. A man beside me. Please be Des; please. It is Des.

The beach to ourselves, the park closed, early September.
What heat, so late in the season. Each wave leaves a ribbon of glare in the sand as it withdraws. The sun is low and red, scissored by the long grass. Des strips to his underwear, trots toward the water. Stands at the edge of the ocean. High up, a white gull.

Des charges, arms raised over his head, yelling. The gull is silent. So high up it’s barely there. Wide circles. It dips closer. The wave’s crest tinged pink, fumbling forward. He dives through the falling crest. The soles of his feet. He passes through, bobs on the other side. Flicks water from his hair. His fist flies up, wing of water under his arm. The gull screeches. Metallic squawk, claws outstretched, reaching for the sand. The sun through the grass on the hill laserbeams the gull’s eye, a red holograph. The gull’s pupil is a long midnight corridor to some prehistoric crimson flash deep in the skull.

He calls, Water’s great. My shirt, jeans, one sock stretches long. I have to hop. The sock gives up. I run hard. The wave is building beneath the bed. Except how cold. My body seizes.

Look at the one coming, Des says. The wave comes with operatic silence. Such surety, self-knowledge, so cold and meaningless and full of blase might. I reach out my hand. Here it comes. A wave full of light, nearly transparent, lacy webbing on the underside. The ocean sucking hard on my spine. The sandy bottom drops away.

It smashes us. The bed plummets and thumps the floor. The room makes itself felt. Dresser, a housecoat on a hook. Des died four years ago of heart failure. Peanut butter jar on the floor, fridge open. Holding the knife. Smoking toast in the stuck
toaster. The red light of the ambulance on the walls of the hallway. Now I’m awake.

Tequila I drank, scotch. Elasticky top and sarong. Beer. Robert warned me, when he throws a party. Dancing. Slamming doors, laughter, the Stones. I have dated, since Des died, no one: an air traffic controller, a very young painter, no one, the reporter guy, absolutely no one, the carpenter. The tooth became unbearable two days ago. I didn’t tell Robert. Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name. You can’t leave. How can you leave? Bodies pressed close, smoky ceiling. Blow the speakers. We took a cab. Hope you guess my. Get a taxi. If we dance. In the fridge door. Mine are the cold ones. Pleased to meet you. Have one of mine. The cold ones. I got laid. Tell me. I’ll tell you after this. We need a toast. Our coats are where? Forget the coats. Don’t leave, it’s a party. Because the toilet. What happened to the tequila? Your own stupid fault. My wife took the traditional route. Does it have a worm in it? I’ll put one in if you like. There have been women, yes. There have been women, I’ll admit. We’ll call ourselves the Fleshettes. The people impressed me most. I’m not responsible. Hope you guess my. We haven’t talked. We’re talking now. This is talking? Name. I love you. Don’t say that. I love you, what do you think? I think more beer.