Next Year, for Sure Page 17

Decide what?

  I don’t know, make it official.

  Like we’d break up?

  I’m saying there’s nothing to break up. We’ve simply turned into something else.

  I’m not breaking up with you, Chris says.

  I’m not breaking up either. I’m saying maybe we’re not a couple.

  I don’t think we’d be in the shower together if we were just friends, Chris says.

  It goes on like this for days.

  —

  Finally a creature crawls out of Kathryn’s throat and says this has to stop. The creature pins Chris to the floor, sinks its talons into the carpet, and says, WE LOVE YOU, BUT WE CANNOT BE WITH YOU.

  Chris is brave and calm in the face of it. He says he doesn’t believe what the creature says, that he doesn’t believe in the creature at all.

  And the creature says, You’re not hearing me.

  Chris says all sorts of reasonable things. He is articulate and persuasive. He is impossible not to love.

  The creature says, Can you hear me, Chris? Please say you can hear me.

  And that’s when Chris starts to look scared. When the giant monster that is holding you down starts to beg, it is time to be afraid.

  —

  They break up on a Friday night and spend the weekend in bed. The first time they have sex, it’s to console Chris. The second time, it’s Kathryn. After that, it just happens.

  Their mouths kiss differently after these months with other people. It takes a while to find what works again, and when they do, Kathryn isn’t sure it’s the same thing that worked before. Maybe they can change; Kathryn doesn’t know. In any case, they don’t start using condoms now.

  —

  Chris doesn’t see why they can’t still live together.

  We could be roommates, he says. Roommates aren’t couples.

  All the ways that Kathryn tries to explain seem too dire. She talks about tar pits and great mammoths dying slowly in less than a foot of tar.

  But the mammoths in that pit, Chris says, they aren’t a couple. Pit-mates aren’t couples, he says.

  Kathryn knows he’s teasing, but she also knows that Chris honestly doesn’t understand why they can’t keep using the same nail clippers and laundry hamper. She wants him to get that. She talks to him about blood clots and prairie fires and standing water.

  Chris says, Do the mammoths still love each other? Do the mammoths get to talk on the phone every day?

  —

  The big things are surprisingly easy. Chris will keep the bed; Kathryn will take the nightstands. Keep and take are the words they use, and this is how they come to understand that it is Chris who stays and Kathryn who will leave.

  I guess you’ll go to Ahimsa, Chris says.

  I don’t know, Kathryn says. We can talk about it.

  The smaller things are harder. Patsy, the one oven mitt that doesn’t burn your hand. A blanket they watch TV under called Hughie, sometimes Hughie Louie. They’ve named so many of the objects in their life.

  We don’t have to figure it all out right now, Kathryn says.

  But they can’t stop figuring.

  What unsettles them both is how many things there are in their home that neither of them wants.

  How did they get all this stuff?

  It’s a tar pit, Chris says. Things collect.

  —

  Monday comes. Chris could call in sick, but why? He’d have to go in tomorrow, or the day after that. So he gets up, puts himself in the shower, makes breakfast.

  Kathryn follows him around in her pyjamas. Sits on the toilet while he brushes his teeth. Watches him tie his shoes that way he does.

  They spend a long time at the front door. Neither of them wants to say goodbye this morning, though they do say it several times. Chris keeps putting his hand on the doorknob, then letting it fall back to his side.

  I’ll still be here when you get home, Kathryn says.

  Right here?

  No, Kathryn says.

  MAY

  JUNE

  JULY

  AUGUST

  SEPTEMBER

  CHAPTER 21

  Small Craft

  6 a.m. is too early to go over. As a rule, Chris tries not to show up at Ahimsa unannounced, though Kathryn has said several times that it’s okay. She said at first she wasn’t sure how it would be, having Chris over there, but it’s been fine. She likes it when he comes over, she says. She always hugs him and sometimes takes his hand, which is interesting.

  Still, they said seven, so Chris will kill one more hour. Maybe he can finish another book. He has been rereading all his books and then releasing them into the wild. He left Emma Goldman on a bus. He dropped off a box of Alice Munro at what he thinks is a women’s shelter on his way to work. Really, most of these books he was only keeping in case he wanted to read them again someday. So why not read them now and get it over with.

  Chris Deming getting rid of books, Kathryn said when she was over last. Should I be worried? she said. She placed her hand inside the empty space of a shelf, like it was a magician’s trick.

  But it’s not like Chris is planning to jump off a bridge. He doesn’t know what he’ll do when all the books are gone. Maybe he’ll buy new books.

  —

  6:21. The clock is oppressing him. Chris thinks that if he walked his bike instead of rode, and if he walked slow, and if he stopped a couple times along the way, he could leave right now. He has been up and ready for hours. Has unloaded and reloaded his bike twice. Masturbated. He doesn’t know what to do with himself.

  Chris has been doing this thing of going to bed earlier and earlier. Sometimes he comes home from work and gets straight under the covers. He wakes up at two or three in the morning and figures he might as well get up and get on with it.

  You might be depressed, Kathryn said after this had been going on for a while.

  You might be depressed, Chris said, and Kathryn laughed.

  They say things like this to each other now, things they would not have said before. Not unkind things, never unkind, but lancing. It makes people nervous. Twice now, Chris and Kathryn have found themselves alone in the Ahimsa kitchen, Emily and Moss and the other housemates having slunk away. But it feels vital, grappling like this. It feels like they are getting at something.

  Still, Chris doesn’t think he’s depressed. He thinks he’s a morning person. Sometimes, when he wakes up at two in the morning, he goes and meets up with Emily wherever she is, and instead of falling asleep in a corner, he’s fun and funny and awake, until it’s Emily who crashes. Then Chris walks to work full of energy and does his job exceedingly well. Does that sound like depression?

  One time, Kathryn said. Emily told me that happened one time.

  —

  Chris dawdles along and manages to arrive at Ahimsa almost five minutes late. No one is ready. Well, Kathryn is ready. Chris spots her bike, tightly packed and leaned against a tree. But Kendra and Naveed are not even outside yet. Miriam is holding a cup of tea and an inner tube. Emily is waiting for someone who should be here any minute to drop off a bike for her. We won’t make it as far as the first ferry, Chris thinks.

  Moss, by his truck, nods once to Chris. The nod means: I admire your locomotion and the competence with which you have prepared your gear.

  Chris knows from talking to Kathryn that Moss is embarrassed about taking the truck, that Moss has strong ideas about what is and what isn’t camping. But bringing the truck was the only way to get everyone to come, and now it is filled with lawn chairs and god knows what. People keep loading more in.

  —

  They finally roll out around eight thirty, the mess of them strung out in a line. It’s Kathryn first, then Naveed+Zachary, Miriam, Yvonne the girlfriend, Emily, and last, Chris. Kendra is in the truck with Moss.

  Chris can hear Emily’s chain grinding and slipping. He can hear the grumble of traffic, already busier than he’d like. He can hear Zachary singing Yellow Submarine, just the chor
us, over and over. Chris might be able to do something about the chain, he thinks. He’ll take a look at the next rest stop.

  —

  The sun has burned off the morning. The uphills stretch out for miles.

  Chris keeps seeing the ugly blue tent on the back of Kathryn’s bike and thinking, Hey, there’s my tent. But Chris has a new tent now. It’s red and supposedly better.

  Chris had wanted to buy the same tent he had before—he got Kathryn to read him the model number over the phone—but apparently they don’t make that one anymore. The salesperson showed Chris the replacement model, and all the ways they had improved it. She seemed very keen, the salesperson. She climbed into the floor model with Chris and zipped up the hatch. They lay side by side, so he could get a feel for it with two people. It’s possible she was flirting with him. Chris just wanted to know if it came in any kind of blue.

  —

  They make slow progress, but everyone seems in good cheer. Chris decides to leave the chain alone, decides not to hear it. It doesn’t appear to be bothering Emily, who keeps turning around and smiling at Chris, encouragingly, like he’s the one who might be struggling.

  Still here, he says.

  Chris wonders if Emily will end up sleeping in his new tent with him, or if he will sleep in her borrowed one, or neither. They haven’t talked about it, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Things have been a little strange with Emily since the breakup, and Chris is trying not to make them stranger.

  What he can’t figure out is why he and Emily spend only two or three nights a week together. Yes, it’s more than before the breakup, but what’s strange to Chris is why not every night?

  —

  On the big ferry, they all go upstairs and eat lemon meringue pie. They take turns in a vibrating chair. They roam in a pack like a loud, happy family or bike gang. Chris spends five dollars introducing Zachary to Ms. Pac-Man. I like the part where I get to chase the ghosts, Zachary says. I don’t like the part where the ghosts chase me.

  —

  Later, on the small ferry, Chris breaks down and looks at Emily’s chain. Emily is over talking to some tourists from Australia. It’s fairly easy to fix the grinding. The slipping is a bigger problem. He’d have to break open the chain, pry off a link or two, reconnect the ends. If it was Kathryn’s bike, if it was Kathryn’s bike six months ago, his fingers would already be in there. But he isn’t sure that’s how he’s supposed to be with Emily. In any case, the grinding is gone.

  Chris goes over to stand with Kathryn and Moss, because they are not, at the moment, hugging. Moss nods. This nod means: I welcome your presence. You are no enemy here.

  Chris kind of likes Moss. Last month, Chris finished rereading Gabriel García Márquez and brought the whole stack to Moss. They had a moment, there in the kitchen. Moss went upstairs and came back with a worn paperback, Tbe Hour of the Star, and put it in Chris’s hand. Chris tried to explain he was in de-acquisition mode, but in the end he took the book. They haven’t spoken about it since, not out loud, but Chris feels they have an understanding.

  It occurs to Chris now that instead of trying so hard to convince Emily to move in with him, Chris should’ve asked Moss. They could circle around the apartment in companionable silence, like goldfish.

  —

  Emily didn’t want to move in. Chris really wanted it. It made so much sense to Chris. They both slept better the nights they spent at his place. They could eat whenever and whatever they wanted. They could take a bath without someone asking through the door how much longer they’d be. The first time Emily had come and spent the whole weekend at his place, she’d lain naked in a sunbeam moving across the living room floor and said she wished this weekend would never end. So why not move in? At the very least, it seemed like something they should consider. But Emily said, I don’t think we’re those people, Chris.

  Chris is still trying to figure out what people they are.

  You’re making her too mysterious, Kathryn said. Why do you do that? I know that’s not all she told you.

  It’s true. Emily also said that moving in with him wouldn’t be good for either of them. She said that she loves staying over at his apartment once in a while, having the whole place to themselves, the stillness and calm of it, the walking around in their underwear; but that day to day she wouldn’t thrive living with just one person, no matter how much she adored that one person. She said she needs the cross-pollination of bumping up against a bunch of people every day. She said she’d be thrilled for Chris to move into Ahimsa someday if Kathryn was comfortable with it, but that she, Emily, isn’t sure that’s what Chris needs. She said Chris might need something different, and it could take them a while to work out what that was. She said, no, she wasn’t breaking up with him. She said she loves him and that they should keep doing what they were doing and see what happens.

  So they’re seeing what happens.

  —

  They must be halfway across when the motor on the small ferry stops. A sudden silence rises up and washes over the deck. Everyone looks at the person beside them and says, with their eyes or their lips, What’s going on?

  The ferry slows and slows and slows to a dead drift.

  The idea of whales spreads through the crowd and soon everybody is at the railing squinting out at the possibility. Children run from starboard to port and back, because no one knows where to look. Video cameras film full minutes of unbreached ocean.

  You hear some people start to complain, as if the whales are a rock band who are taking too long to get on stage. Chris would like to say this to Kathryn, later, when they retell this story.

  Then the motor rumbles up again and the ferry turns around in a wide arc and heads back in the direction they came from. Now a different idea jolts through the crowd. The word you hear people whispering is bomb.

  Chris estimates there are 150 people on board. He isn’t sure why a body count is his first instinct, but having a number feels important. There isn’t much else to do. Just stand in a clump with the people you know and see what happens.

  The motor cuts out after only a minute and they drift again in silence.

  —

  The captain comes out of the loudspeaker. He says you might have noticed we’ve had a change of course. He says that a member of the crew spotted some gear in the water and that they’ve circled back to check on the situation, make sure no one is in need of assistance.

  Now everyone is back at the railing, looking out for anything, they don’t know what: a life jacket, a bobbing head, a waving arm, a first aid kit, a flashlight. No one is complaining anymore.

  After some minutes, there is shouting near the bow, and pointing, and then they all see it, a glimpse of safety orange disappearing and reappearing in the chop. The ferry creeps forward and people call out, We’re coming. Hold on.

  When they are closer, though, they can see it is only a paddle. Orange and collapsible. Two crew members fish it out of the water and hurry away with it.

  We should spread out, someone says. And people do. Birders fetch binoculars from their cars and pass them around. Someone spots a bottle of Dr Pepper in the water, and later a blue flip-flop.

  The ferry makes a slow circle, but mostly the motor is kept silent. Every few minutes, the ship’s horn lets out a long, sober blast, and then everyone listens together. It’s the only time they take their eyes off the water, to listen.

  After an hour or so, the Coast Guard arrives with boats and a helicopter. The ferry is sent on its way, though some believe they should stay and help. The captain thanks everyone for their patience and apologizes for the delay. It was probably nothing, the captain says. It’s usually nothing, but you’ve got to make sure. That water’s mighty cold.

  —

  Kathryn has booked four campsites, all in a cluster on the far edge of the park. The sites are a long way from everything—the bathrooms, the water spigot—but they’re secluded. The only people you see when you look around are the peopl
e you came with. Chris likes that.

  The tents go up easily. There are more than enough hands. Moss and Kathryn have signed up to cook the first night, so there’s nothing much to do.

  Zachary takes Chris out exploring. They find a rocky little cove nearby, too barnacled and kelpy to attract people from the good side of the park. This too, Chris likes.

  Chris sits on a large bleached-out log and watches Zachary try to skip stones in the water.

  I almost did it that time, Zachary says every time.

  —

  After dinner, there’s a fire to stare at. Stories come loose. Chocolate is passed around. Chris sits in the circle as long as he can, waiting for someone to make a move toward bed. He figures once one person stands and yawns and says they’d better be turning in, it will put something in motion. And Chris wants to be there when Emily starts thinking about bed. He doesn’t want to rush her—not that Emily can be rushed—but he does want to make himself available. He likes sleeping with her. He likes the way she falls asleep with her hand scrunching and unscrunching his shirt. He likes her breath in the morning. He likes hearing the first words out of her mouth.

  After a while, though, Chris slips away from the fire and zips himself into his tent. He can still hear them talking long after he’s asleep.

  —

  It must be three or four in the morning when Chris wakes up. His watch has lost its glow. He had thought maybe he would roll over in the night and find Emily curled alongside him, but no, Emily, it seems, is in her own tent, a few feet away.

  Maybe tomorrow night. It is a long weekend, after all.

  —

  It’s lonely in the tent. He’s lonely a lot of the time, Chris finds. For the first few months, he wasn’t sure what that feeling was. He didn’t recognize it. It wasn’t until Miriam said, You must get lonely over there, that Chris realized, Oh.

  Kathryn keeps saying Chris should date. She never says who, exactly, just that there are people out there. You shouldn’t expect one person to be your everything. Kathryn and Moss have separate bedrooms and sleep resolutely apart one night a week, so Kathryn gets to say things like this now.