So Much Love Read online

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  A castle must be guarded, so once you know you are being watched, take precautions. You put up the old thick white plastic venetian blinds you didn’t think you’d need living across from a cornfield, but there’s neighbours on either side, and they peer close as they slow-drive past. Absolutely you’ll need heavy blackout curtains in all the bedrooms at the front. The basement window is tiny and around back anyway, so you feel like you can let the rabbits have some sunlight. But before it’s even spring, you start to question that when a meter-reader winds up on your back lawn inspecting the brickwork, leaning low enough to see your private business, maybe even the rabbits, through that little window. So you plant hedges all along the side of the house, and that stops that.

  You can fortify your house—can and must make it impenetrable to all the prying eyes in the world. But that doesn’t extend beyond the property line.

  It’s around the first real heat of June that you meet Steve-O again, this time at the Shoppers Drug Mart, and he introduces you to Mrs. O, all yoga pants and overfull cart. She grins, thick soft lips.

  Just stand with your Arctic Air deodorant and pack of Gillette disposables like you’re looking at the insides of your own eyelids. That’s the trick, to act like your eyes are shut even when they’re open.

  “Hey there, Dex—nice to meet you. I’m Janet, I’m sure Steve-O has told you all the good stuff.” She slips into the line behind you while Steve-O ogles the gum display. She wants to talk, of course—about church, about sales at the drugstore, about your big flat lawn and the work of keeping it nice. The lawn has made you much more exposed in summer—you have to be out there at least once a week for a couple hours, put on a show for everyone to watch.

  “I got a ride-on I could lend you, Dex,” Steve-O says without glancing away from the gum. And yet, he’s clearly been listening to this silly woman prattle on. The things marriage makes men do.

  “Oh, don’t worry about me, I don’t mind,” is what you have to say. What else could you say?

  “No worries, I can get it in the back of the flatbed. Just a small favour among neighbours, really.” He turns and grins, exposing the over-red gums of a smoker, and gives his wife a little side-arm hug around the waist for no reason you can see.

  Honestly, favours are going to be trouble more often than not. At the end of an interaction, a man likes to think that the interaction is done, but with a favour something is always left hanging. Pay a man and you can walk away; a favour keeps you caught.

  But Steve-O is all right, and it’s already sweaty-warm out and so you can bend just a little. The first couple times, it’s all fine—you slip Steve $10 for the gas and the guilt of it, but he’s happy to haul the mower down the road to you—even though you could probably wedge the mower in the back of your van and spare him the trouble. Unfortunately, he says he likes stopping by your place and worse, his wife’s always “along for the ride” (scarcely a hundred and twenty seconds down the road is hardly a ride—it’s as if the man hates to be alone, which does not bear thinking about). She’s the one with the comments: “Oh, such a lovely forsythia hedge!” “You might want to check that crack in the asphalt by the garage before it gets deep.” Busybody. Steve-O just beams at her. The questions are worse than the comments because it’s ruder not to respond: “Now, Dex, are you coming to the church bazaar on Saturday? Or did you want me to save you some butter tarts and bring them by afterwards?”

  Of course that’s exactly the sort of prying nobody needs, which is why when the heat’s not too bad, you do the whole place with the push mower and that’s just that. It’s a small price to pay to keep her from demanding a tour of the house or god knows what else. It’s been just you and the rabbits all this time, you figure you can go a little longer without Janet Ossington’s company.

  ’Cept it’s a long slop, out there in the hot sun—and so it’s understandable that you might break down and ask to borrow that ride-on on the hottest days of the summer. The Ossingtons are fine, in their way, and generous too, so you try not to mind their prying chatter. But it’s tough—Janet always seems to be after some piece of information or another.

  One time when they were dropping off the ride-on, she told you some damn story about an overcooked lasagna. “I never know when Steve-O or the kids are gonna be showing up, asking for dinner. You, you got it easy, since you cook for just yourself and you would always know when you are gonna be there to eat or not.”

  This makes so little sense you wonder if she is hinting about the rabbits—judging you for being a single man with just a couple of pets, no woman to cook his dinner. Modern society doesn’t much value independence, wants to see everyone paired up and locked down. But who knows what she’s thinking, and you don’t want to guess. So just politely tell her you’ve got to be going and wait for Steve-O to shepherd her to the truck. There’s a lot of lawn to be mowed before sundown.

  —

  You’ve got to have a job—everybody does, or anybody worth anything does. What the job is doesn’t matter too much, as long as it keeps the mortgage and MasterCard people happy. And the warehouse is cool enough in summer, sometimes there’s pizza on a Friday. An order-picker—that’s what you do, but it’s not who you are. It doesn’t pay to dwell on it too much. Go in, do your eight, go home. It’s what a man’s got to do.

  Go on home, careful on the sharp bends on the way out from town. Heat shimmers in the air—it’s hard to see proper when it’s this hot. But you are almost there, and closest to home is where vigilance is most needed. Don’t be blinded; see what there is to see.

  Go up the driveway, black asphalt that you’ve patched and is now smooth and gleaming, like black ice in summer. Unlock the door and step into the cool of the air-conditioner—not central, just on this floor but still, something nice that makes your home feel that much different from the outside world. A literal temperate zone, away from the blazing craziness of everything.

  Shut that heavy wooden door and feel it seal behind you, sealing you in with the cold and your things and your own self, away from the neighbours and colleagues and all those outsiders.

  Look around—is it all as you left it? The stonework by the fireplace, dusted, ashless? You might, as winter rolls in, consider stacking some cordwood against the back wall—it is good to be self-sufficient. The slim, even black handles of the knives in their block—are they aligned? The sharp-cornered new bar of soap to the side of the bathroom sink—still powder dry, at right angles to the edge of the basin?

  Downstairs in the basement, feed the rabbits. Spend time with them, don’t just walk in, dump the food, and walk out. They have feelings too, aren’t just dumb animals. They need your leadership, your presence. Play some games with them, show them that you can be kind and caring, but that you are always the boss. That is what they respond to, what they long for. A little bit of fun, a little bit of petting, and everyone sleeps better.

  Once you’re cool and comfortable, it’s back out in the yard again—a man’s work is never done. Today’s only mid-twenties, so you’re using the push mower. You do a nice even strip up, then a nice even strip down, then back out toward the road again, then back toward the house. You don’t vary, you don’t waver, you keep your lines straight against the one before. Your father advocated for the boxes within boxes, but few lawns are without encumbrances all the way round, plus doing that is a good way to get dizzy. Plus your father is dead, so who do you listen to now?

  Up, down, alternating facing the glistening dark of your blocked windows or the blue expanse of the sky above the corn stubble. It’s the end of summer but still hot, and the grass is still growing, though limper now, floppy. Not much more to go before the cold comes.

  A fat maroon minivan pulls in the drive, and you don’t know what it’s doing there. Maybe they’re just turning around and way out here, where there’s no stoplights and no one looking, where everyone drives fast and listens to the radio and texts and throws trash out the window, they don’t
feel too comfortable turning in the road. You can get that—you’re a man who understands the need for safety. You’re a man who can offer the butt-end of his driveway for the occasional and brief use of a stranger, no doubt about it. You want the roads to stay safe and clear of accidents and the attendant scrutiny such things might bring.

  But the van pulls farther into the driveway, and then there’s the whirr-click of the engine shutting off. It’s her. That woman, Janet Ossington, in snug jeans that stop at the wide part of the calf, and a pink tank top with wide straps. No Steve-O, though.

  She walks round the van easy in her high-heeled sandals and comes right onto the lawn, her spike heels puncturing your sod. Doesn’t waver. She marches right on over to where you are draped on the push bar of the mower, sweat running down your eyebrows and between your shoulder blades.

  “Dex, Dex!” she calls as she approaches. The motor is loud—it’s hard to hear. “Dex!”

  She staggers in a hollow, probably dug by some damn rabbit or woodchuck. No, not a rabbit. But she keeps on toward you until she’s forced to stop or walk right over the mower. She stares at you, and because she’s not invited and basically is a trespasser it takes a moment to realize that she won’t shout anymore, that she’s waiting for you to shut off the mower and let her talk to you in a normal voice.

  So you do.

  She raises her eyebrows, squinches up her lips, and glances toward the van. “Dex, can Laura use your bathroom?”

  Now it’s your turn to squinch because not only who the fuck is Laura? but also what kind of strange demand is this to make of a neighbour while standing nearly in sight of her own house?

  Is this a subterfuge? Is this an attempt at…what? What could she possibly want in your home? All she’d do, she and this Laura, is mess up the rugs with grass clippings and scare the rabbits and look at things. If there even is a Laura.

  But there is a Laura—or at least someone is sliding the van door back and a fuchsia shoe touches the asphalt. The shoe is tiny and it’s a small small girl who steps out of the van.

  “Laura.” The word is out of your mouth, whispered, before you even realize it. She’s a lovely little child, soft flesh above her shoe, chubby pink calf and the tuck of knee, the dark navy ruffle of her shorts—

  Janet shrugs, flipping her hair on and off her shoulders. “There’s contractors working on the bathroom today, and they’ve got the water off. The toilet isn’t even over the hole right now.”

  The second foot follows the first, the girl now standing blinking on the blacktop. A teal barrette holds her long caramel bangs out of her sleepy eyes and her mouth hangs dully open.

  “They said they’d have it right by the end of the day, but Laura’s only four and little ones can’t wait. I was driving her to the truck stop at Stevens Corners, but when I saw you out mowing, I thought, Old Dex won’t mind a drop-in to use the facilities. We’ll be quick-quick.”

  And then, while you’re still gazing at the pink cherub with her yellow T-shirt and elastic bracelets, the woman in front of you seems to see something she interprets as an affirmative—a nod, a smile, some small indication that you don’t actually give. Janet pivots away and begins marching back to the blacktop.

  Clear your throat, speak up, speak up, as she takes the little one’s hand, because it’s clear where this is heading. It’s heading into the house. Your house. Your sanctum, your castle, your home. Imagine your glossy hardwood in the entry hall stained by the wet flecks of cut glass. You know Janet won’t take off her shoes, despite the mat by the door. Hell, she probably won’t even wipe them—she’ll have gotten what she wanted, the inner view, and she’ll be too busy looking, taking in your home and choices and rights and privacy and judging judging judging. Who knows what kind of trouble she could bring if she judges you lacking, inappropriate, wrong in some way. You imagine the rabbits in the basement, the startle and twitch as they realize that someone else is in the house, someone new. Their eyes widen even more and they open their tiny mouths—

  “Get the fuck away from my house.”

  Janet is halfway up the drive with her daughter’s soft hand tucked in her painted one. She takes a few more steps, slowing, twisting over her shoulder to meet your gaze.

  “I said, get away. Who are you, coming here? No one asked you here.” You’re hot, sweating, shaking with exhaustion and rage—probably saying too much. But you need to be clear, need to make sure there’s no doubt. “You take care of your own, I say—you take care of your household’s needs, I’ll take care of mine. Now get the fuck away from my house.”

  “Dex, I’m sorry, I didn’t—”

  You don’t even have to raise a hand. She must see in your eyes how wrong this all is. Or who knows what she sees there, but she backs up toward the van as you come closer, finally running the last few steps. You can just follow slowly, not even speaking, yet the message is clear. She doesn’t even open the side door, just scoops the child into the driver’s side and shoves her across into the passenger seat. You see her eyes, rabbit bright, in the windscreen as she twists the ignition. As soon as she’s got it in gear, you go back to your lawn.

  Obviously, you shouldn’t do things like that, can’t swear at the neighbours, especially those who’ve lent you an expensive piece of machinery in the past. It’s not classy, or neighbourly, or any of the things we’re supposedly striving to be out here. But what could you have done, really? There are some things a man just has to do.

  To Burn in a Bright Moon

  Even though it’s dark, Catherine closes her eyes. There’s nothing she wants to see here, even if she could. She tries to think of something else, anything other than here.

  A long time ago, before the worst thing happened, there was Donny Zimmerman’s picture in the newspaper. She would see it and think, Sad. She read all the articles, but now she doesn’t know which parts of the stories she remembers from what she read and what she heard later. She remembers his chocolate-frosting swoop of hair in his graduation photo, his high marks and loving parents who were both lawyers. He was on Secord High’s basketball team: a late-night practice, a walk to the car in an empty parking lot—that was how Dex got him. She knew even then, reading the news on her laptop, sitting on her pretty blue couch back in her real life, that he was the sort of boy she would’ve had a crush on in high school. He would’ve known about her crush but been polite and even friendly if they were assigned to the same group project, though he wouldn’t have ever asked her out. She knows Donny now, knows his fierce memory and love of cats and his jokes that are really just quotations from Monty Python sketches and not funny if you haven’t seen those sketches. She knows the quiet thump of his beating heart against her face when she’s resting against his chest so he can have the pillow, she knows his wide eyes straining to see out the tiny dirty window she cannot reach. She knows how he reacts to a pinch, a punch, a tender stroke along bruised ribs, the taste of apples. Catherine knows Donny Zimmerman in some ways better than she has ever known anyone.

  And now he’s going to die in her arms.

  She never thought of Donny Zimmerman as an obsession. Back in the past, among the jagged scraps of memory, Catherine used to watch the news reports about Donny’s disappearance—his parents’ faces tight and miserable, his teammates lighting candles for him in the parking lot before every game. She’d watch half brokenhearted, half distracted while she finished typing her tidy little literature reports, her neat school assignments. Watching the news, maybe too much news, innocent and warm in her pyjamas, with all the lights on while her husband played Mario World on mute in the living room, Catherine may have wondered what Donny was really like, not as a crush or a headline, but as a person. Maybe he liked coffee, hated the Ramones, wanted to go to Scotland someday. That sounded about right to her, from what she saw in the photos.

  There were so many photos—each poster and news report seemed to have a new one. He was a young man with a yellow button-up shirt, huge teeth, and a slightly crooked
nose beaming against the standard cloudy-blue-sky backdrop in a school picture-day photo. A second school portrait showed him with a slightly younger face, blue shirt, more muted smile. In another photo, Donny is crouched on a green carpet of grass, surrounded by soccer balls he is pulling out of a net bag—he looks up at the camera like he has been caught unawares. And there were many more—Donny in suits for dances, clipped out of basketball team photos, with thumbs up and tongue out by the pool. You could imagine an entire life in those photos—a tidy, perfect Facebook life, but still.

  No, she had never thought of Donny Zimmerman as an obsession until she met him and realized how much she already knew about him. He was startled too—both that he had been in the news so much and that she had remembered it all. Donny was always real to Catherine.

  She can’t keep the tenses straight—she was at home watching the news and she didn’t know him. And then she did. And now they are so close that even with her head full of another time, even though it is so dark in this room that she can barely see the outlines of his nose and ears when she opens her eyes, she knows how his face looks. She knows the firm pink curve of his lower lip and thinner double peak of his upper lip. She knows the crisp stubble that got fuzzier over time but never quite became a beard, though there are a few long patches on his chin and neck. He is so young, too young for a beard. She knows his bright eyes, the way they glitter in even the weakest light; though they are closed now, she can see them shine behind her own eyelids. She knows his breathing, the deep, shaky pattern of in and out these past few days. There are hiccups and pauses in the pattern now—more, she thinks, than before, though she has a hard time keeping track. She holds her breath until he starts again.