From the time of her conception until today, thirty-three years later, I’ve been drunk on Caroline. Tried to kick the habit, but she stuck in my blood like a lost lover and the truth is I liked her being there. And I think that’s where my problems with Abie began. See, there’s a cunt-full of difference between life before and after children. Abie always figured his inflated cock would fill my heart and soul. Even though I soon grew to love and hate him, he was all I had. But when I lay eyes on Caroline, I was gone. No good-byes. I zipped up my heart, brought my luggage to the front door, and joined the wild snowflakes celebrating outside and pulling an all-nighter.
“What the hell are you doing? It’s freezing in here. Are you out of your fucking mind?” Abie screamed and turned up the TV. But I was ready for even the foulest weather and I laughed─with my baby wrapped inside my coat under my dress and strapped against the sweet-as-goat’s-milk warmth of my belly, I let out a long low belly laugh and left. Abie never knew what hit him.
[Decades later he emailed me from Moscow. “You never understood me”─capitalizing the adverb in the most annoying way. Had he bent over to contemplate the pin-point opening at the tip of his cock, he could have more introspective (with Abie there was no other way─his cock has always been his white cane).]
“You kept me awake all night,” he says.
“I was the one jumping up,” I say.
“You’re the one with tits,” he says.
I lean forward. "Yeah, well what do you think of this?" I say, pulling at the discoloured skin under my eyes. When I was a kid spending summers in Lake Alverna, I smeared my mother’s steel blue and purple eye shadow on the skin beneath my eyes and paraded up to Robbie Dainow, “See what you did,” I said. “Make-up!” he scoffed and held my hands behind my back while Allen Herscovici wet his hands in the lake and knuckle-rubbed my skin. “Is not!” I said as the make-up morphed from my skin to his.
I look back on this life with a mixture of longing, humour, and regret. This morning Abie told me he’s closing his deal in Russia. He’s shacked up with his girlfriend Anya, who was living with him in Toronto until she got fed up and returned to her tiny Moscow walk-up. Abie was out of rent for his drab apartment hotel so he drummed up a ticket and now he’s in Russia wheedling and dealing.
“It’s going to be a nice Chanukah,” he said.
“Well, you just better enjoy your life” I said. “Because you’re in the last act.”
“The way I think of it, I have one-third of my life left and that’s a good chunk.”
"Yeah, but with what quality of life?” I said, looking out my kitchen window at the stark winter trees and cold grey sky.
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Abie bundles Caroline into the royal blue baby backpack he bought through the Mountain Co-Op Catalogue. He’s efficient getting us out of the house. We visit his cousin Claire, her husband Henry and their baby Joshua who’s the same age as Caroline. Henry and Claire’s Bathurst apartment is stuffed with Amway products and sometimes they take Joshua to Amway revival meetings. They used to be Buddhists and they’re still vegetarians though Claire sneaks chicken when Henry’s not around. She says the abrupt change in her diet makes her face break out and I think of Utrillo.
Even in excess snow which can never equal the mountainous stashes of my Quebec childhood, we go to the Farmer’s Market in Kitchener and the Elora Gorge. In early June, we head for Clearwater. This is one of the good things about Abie. He’s up for just about anything. We were driving on Highway 6 and picked up a long-haired hitchhiker. “Who’s gonna stop for a hippie around here?” I said, so Abie pulled over, the pavement crackling under the tires. (There are certain sounds that make me happy and sound of pebbles under a car’s tires is one of them─memories of my father driving up the path to our country house─headlights and stars and my mother with her skirt swirling, half walking, half running through the gap in the cedar hedge to greet him.)
“Hey you guys up for a swim in the cleanest water you’ll ever find?” the hitchhiker said.
“We’re just going into town to pick up books for school.” Abie said and I turned around and smiled.
“Thanks,” I said, “That’s nice of you to offer.” And I smiled again. There’s a warm rush following gentle words or gestures, a soulful swelling up that fills my heart and settles in my cunt.
And that’s when we started going to Clearwater.
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