Weekend (2 page)

       
JOE

Elliot pulled back the curtain, grommets squeaking against the metal rod, and said, “Clear night.”

Joe looked up from the nursing baby. She felt Elliot's restlessness and said, “Still?” Beaming hot day, but rain was forecast. The infant in her arms was somnolent, droopy, barely awake, and, really, so was Joe. Maybe it was hormones, or maybe the effects of the bitterly long labour. She'd been staring so hard at their baby, at her wisps of red hair, her birth-blue eyes, the button of her ski-jump nose, and the vernix gummed between her fingers, she'd given herself double-vision. Maybe she was trying to uncover whispers of some kind of message about what the hell she was doing here, in Ontario cottage country, a mother for the first time at her advanced age, a mother with
qualms
.

Too casually, Elliot rubbed her stomach. “I'm nauseated. What did I have for breakfast?”

“I hope you're not getting sick,” said Joe. Without noticing, she pulled Scout closer so Elliot's germs wouldn't get on her.

“I hate my body,” said Elliot, throwing herself on the couch.

“I hate
my
body.” Joe's middle was distorted by birth, an unrecognizable heap. Why had she thought she'd shrink right after pushing Scout out?

“It can't
do
anything,” Elliot said.

“Your body does everything,” said Joe. Elliot cut a stunning muscled figure, but dissatisfaction plagued her. “Your body runs and eats and swims and fucks and, god,
everything.
”

“I wanted to be Scout's mother. I can't breastfeed and I couldn't get pregnant.”

“We can keep trying if you want. I wouldn't mind if Scout had a sibling, would you?”

“
Unlikely
, they said.
Heart-shaped uterus
. Doesn't that sound like somewhere a baby would
want
to be?”

“Unlikely is far from impossible.” Elliot had been so moody. “I conceived and there wasn't much chance of that, either. And as for breastfeeding, you still might be able to. You could go to La Leche League. They could—”

“So the baby drinks
your
milk from
my
faux nipples. No, thanks.”

“Yes,” said Joe, but she thought,
Don't be petulant
. “I'm sorry you got cancer. You were way too young.”

“Yes! Yes! I was!”

“… and it's not fair,” concluded Joe.

Ell said, “It's not fair! I shouldn't have had the mastectomies. Do you get how much I regret doing that now, with Scout? It's not fair only you get to be close to her like that.”

“I know,” said Joe. “It's not fair. It's not fair at all. Honey, I'm truly sorry.” She thought,
At least it never came back.
The choice back then had been lumpectomies and chemo and radiation, or mastectomies and chemo. A decade ago, but it was shocking how much something gone and done still ran their lives, how worrying about recurrence set them reeling. Whenever Elliot had a rogue pain, they ran through the chant
liver, lungs, bone, and brain
, the places breast cancer was likely
to metastasize. Joe had never gotten over the sight of Elliot waking up in the recovery room bandaged with drains, begging Joe to tell her if it had turned out to be cancer, in the end, and whispering,
Yes, it was,
and then, later, after surgical recovery, Elliot flopped in the chemo recliners at the cancer agency, all the toxic warnings of the drugs they pumped into her. How she bloated, how she lost her hair, how she lay on the couch, depressed and too fatigued to move.

Elliot shrugged. “I just wish the nausea would stop. Remember after chemo I couldn't even drink water? It's kind of like that. Plus I'm having trouble swallowing.”

“For god's sake then, Elliot. We should go back to Toronto; you need to see your doctor.”

Elliot coughed and said, “Logan's driving up.” Elliot was twitchy, a kid with ADHD; she couldn't stop herself from changing position every five seconds. Crossing her legs, scratching her head, flinging herself onto her back, sitting bolt upright.

Joe said, “I don't care. We can be in Toronto before midnight.” Pain on swallowing? This was not good.

“I want to see Logan.”

“With
that woman
?” Was she bringing girlfriend number 786? The current woman of the many auditioned was Ajax, a woman no doubt like all of Logan's other women, but, for all that, a woman about whom Logan had been uncharacteristically closed-mouthed. They were both used to Logan's conquests—the women who waterfalled over Logan's precipice on their plunge to the sharp rocks of reality.
Logan the Legend
, they
called them to their face.
Logain d'Amour
behind their back.
Anaconda d'amour.
Joe had been crushed out on Logan since the first time they'd met. Crushed out
bad
. Crushed out so she tingled at the thought of them. Crushed out
embarrassing
.

So crushed out she'd walked into a washroom Logan was using at a friend's party and let Logan press her up against a wall and slide their fingers down her pants. She still remembers Logan growling,
Don't flirt with me, lesbian. Don't flirt and expect me to stop.
Joe's arms above her head, wrists held. It was the only time in Joe's life she'd come fast and soundlessly, lips pulled inside her mouth, biting down so as not to scream.

She was partnered with Elliot, of course—poly Elliot, who maybe wouldn't have cared, but even so, Joe had never breathed a word. She wanted to keep Logan like an amulet, all to herself, so as far as Ell knew, Joe had been faithful since the day they'd said their first
Hey you's
, because poly wasn't Joe's thing. Her partner having other women—okay. The two of them in bed together with other women—also okay. But other partners for Joe, nope.

Her personal choice was fidelity.

Except for that sneaky time with the one person about whom Ell had said, “Go ahead and do whatever your heart desires, just as long as it's not with Logan.”
Not with Logan
. Because Logan was Ell's. She'd claimed that territory as her partner, way back, and they still fucked.

But for Joe, pregnant that last trimester, Logan splashed in her brain, doing a cannonball, over and over. Vivid anchor
drops of the time she went behind her partner's back with not a second of forethought or guilty afterthought and did the dirty with the sexiest person on the planet. Logan, all fifties Elvis, all charm and snarl, coal hair drooping across their forehead. Logan tall and pale as early sunshine. Logan with the heartthrob fingers. Just the mention of Logan, of Logan coming up here to the cottage,
here
, to their joint property, made Joe's clit jump, minnow leaping up out of
that much wet.

Now Scout, the baby, yawned, her delicate red mouth opening in a perfect O, and Joe yawned too. The birthing tub was still in the extra bedroom, drying, that deep blue hulk up on its side. The assemblings of a home birth—the Ina May Gaskin handbook, the nasal syringe, the stethoscope, the rope that descended from the second floor, a focussing tool she clutched in labour—those artifacts were still set up as if a second babe was on the way. Joe had dangled from that lanyard as if it was the rope ladder into the lake and relief from summer heat, while bouncing on a blue exercise ball she really had wanted to punt-kick across the room. Clutter was everywhere. Joe had her nest set up in the spare bedroom but also had gotten Elliot to drag a mattress onto the floor in front of the couch for a change of venue—she was not about to try stairs, not yet, and the couch was too deep. Change table, cradle, diapers, cornstarch, sleepers, socks, toques, bottles, nursing bras, nursing pads, soothers, teething rings, stacks of presents from friends, baby mobility playground at the ready.

Toys in their groomed adult cottage, garish moulded plastic
clashing with their taupe walls. The very brightness made Joe weary. The very plastic-ness of it exhausted her. Sometimes she'd think—
Are you kidding? Twenty years of this ugly crap? That's what we signed on for?

Elliot leaned down and Joe expected—hoped for—a kiss on the forehead. Elliot, the architect built like a brick shithouse, broad-shouldered, substantial, who should have been the manual labourer instead of Joe, who should have been the large-equipment mechanic instead of Joe. Kick-ass, take-no-prisoners Elliot. But it was just to clean up some of Joe's baby-tending debris—tea cups, balled tissues, thermometer, orange peels.

“Wait, Elliot, lovey,” said Joe, touching her arm to slow her. “Thank you for all you do for me. Just …
thank you.
Thank you for helping me through labour. In case I didn't say that. I appreciate it all so much.” She looked at the photographs on the walls which Ell had once taken of her, classic black and whites—how perfectly Ell had captured her curves, her mystery, and, more recently, her maternity. Elliot had already done a photo shoot of Scout in her backroom studio.
Preliminary photos,
she'd called these. Simple black-and-white images of Scout on a piece of driftwood. Scout hanging on the wall in a bathroom bag from IKEA. Scout in Joe's arms, smooshed in tight. Timed exposures of the two mothers nude from the waist up holding Scout.

Now Elliot surprised her. She stopped mid-gesture and smiled. “All in a day's work,” she said.

And it was enough, for a minute, to fill Joe, to make her
feel cherished. At the start of their relationship, they'd done what they called “appreciations” once a week. They sat down and, for five minutes, each had said what they appreciated, and then the other had repeated it back. Maybe they needed to go back to those—why on earth had they stopped them, anyhow? After appreciations, they'd walk around in a stunned glow for half the next week, Joe remembered, surprised to find the other had noticed so many unremarkable things.

That idea,
though, thought Joe—
Elliot and Logan in bed.
That thing between them that had never cooled. Joe never asked what they did, and Elliot never referenced it; Joe had never asked to join them. But Joe did use the fantasy of Logan to make herself come when she jerked off—her secret.
I've got the hots for your gf,
she could say, honestly.
I want to fuck Logan again
.

Again?
Elliot would say.
What the fuck do you mean,
again
?
And then holy hell on earth for the lie of omission.

Elliot would be pissed, and who could blame her? Elliot would be hurt because Joe had gone rogue. Rules, spoken and unspoken, were the foundation of their house. They were the front door and the front window and the poppies in the rocky landscape. They were the baby and the theoretical white picket fence. The lines were how, over long negotiation, the two of them learned how to live, love, and stay together.

Although maybe, Joe thought weepily, the whole thing was coming unravelled before her eyes. It wasn't information yet; it was just something half-sensed around the corner—the last few months, Elliot distancing herself in a new way, Joe wary and
prickly with fear, watchful. Worried that Elliot was leaving her without mentioning it, because she wanted what she couldn't have, a baby of her own. Scout was a baby of her own, from Elliot's egg, but it wasn't enough. Nothing was ever enough for Elliot—as maybe it never could be for someone who'd had cancer. Ever since Elliot had neared forty, things had gotten progressively worse; Joe was maybe just patiently waiting for her to bail. They planned to raise this baby up together and grow old and lose each other to death, however that arrived. It was a commitment they'd made and a commitment they kept making because their intimacy ran deep. Didn't their intimacy run deep? So it had seemed to Joe, until lately. Previously, troubles seemed only to bond them. Who knew? Maybe a midlife crisis trumped everything. The last few years of infertility treatments—Ell's womb, Joe's dusty eggs—had taken a toll. All the things that could go wrong between two women when daddies were plucked out of binders and IVF treatments cost $17K a pop and then often didn't work. Maybe they turned their backs to one another in bed more than they didn't.

They'd pretty much stopped having sex when Joe got pregnant and didn't miscarry. Twins, and then she lost one, so the docs said,
No sex
. Then that one remaining baby threatened to come ten weeks early, and the docs again said,
Bed rest. And whatever else you do, no sex
.

Somehow Elliot and Joe got used to the
No sex
.

How long had they tried before Scout successfully implanted in Joe's womb and stayed put? Through failed inseminations,
through miscarriages for both of them—yes, Elliot, butch Elliot, even though she could never breastfeed because of her mastectomies, had done that for them, gotten pregnant—and then through more failed inseminations. Years. They could cite chapter and verse for every attempt. That was just not stuff you forgot, that you went through without incurring wounds.

If you'd told Joe that trying for a baby would cost her the vibrancy of her relationship, what would she have done differently? She knew that she was Ms Obsessive to start with, and once she was locked into something, she didn't let it go. Back then, Elliot claimed she'd never wanted kids and didn't want them going forward, and it wasn't okay to just switch the game-plan mid-stream like they were made of money—which they weren't. Babies were loud. Babies were messy. Babies were expensive. Tell her one good thing about babies that they didn't already have.

“You just fall in love with them,” said Joe.

“Point for me,” said Elliot. “We're already in love.”

“But crazy love,” said Joe. “Some different kind of love. So they say.”

Elliot said, “If what we have isn't crazy love, I don't know what would be.”

Joe said, “It's something unimaginable for us. We won't understand until we're there.” She heaved a sigh. “What if I just long for one and don't even have a good reason? What if biology is destiny and my body knows I'm about to become
menopausal and it just wants, and wants, and wants, gluttonous and primal?”