A to Z Honesty - M is for Missing

"I miss him so much."


I hold the bartender's shaggy head in a loose embrace and stroke the back of his head. He acquiesces to my hollow need, the crook of his supplicant neck folded against the shelter of my breast.


I say the words as individuals, with revered emphasis, their meaning as rocky true as rip tides hissing on distant shores where my baby walks without me.


This funky seaside diner is the haunt of our glory days. Lime-freshed bottles of Corona froth these memories of passion-fuelled debates on politics, world hunger and the environment; we knew everything, we did everything, we loved everything. Mostly, though, I loved you.


How could I not.


I am here looking for something that no longer exists. The restaurant is full of university students and young workings, arguing about all the things we did. Nothing is new but everything is changed. Amongst their fevered energy my own self dissipates, like mist, like dust. The bartender, our old friend, as staid as truth, understands.


He bends his head, sorrow radiates from my fingertips; compassion becomes our ritual, the communion of lonely souls.

The Power and the Glory

CANADA WINS OLYMPIC GOLD! (Photo, CTV)

Not a #fridayflash but I had extra words so wrote two stories tonight.. Not braggin or anything, just saying...

This story is dedicated to all my family and friends who told me NOT to watch any more Olympic hockey. *Sigh* By the way, I wrote this while everyone else was watching the Canadian women win a gold medal. I hope you guys are happy.. the game SOUNDED awesome...

Canada is the favourite to win gold at this year’s Olympics.

And like every Canadian worth his or her salt, she makes popcorn and pours herself a Molson Canadian and she sits on the chesterfield, ready to watch her country’s team finally collect its due.

Almost immediately she sees things aren’t going according to plan. The Canadians look awkward, like their skates are dull and they’ve never set foot on an ice pad before. The Americans are all full of grit and gusto and they play like this is their game and they want it, they taste it.

She watches as the Americans score goal after goal and Canada flounders. The popcorn grows cold and so does her interest in the game. She flicks off the TV in the middle of the third period and, despondent, goes to bed. The score at that point is 5-0.

The next morning she wakes to stunning news on her clock radio: Canada has won the game 6-5 in the most amazing comeback ever seen in sports history.

“Cool,” she says.

That night Canada is back playing Russia in the semi-finals. She watches the entire game, even though Canada has obviously forgotten how to play. She wants to turn off the TV and go to bed but she can’t, thinking the Canadians will surely make a comeback. She doesn’t want to miss it this time. And she doesn’t. She watches all night long and the Canadians suck worse and worse and worse.

Russia wins 8-0.

She goes to bed thoroughly depressed, thinking, “I shouldn’t have watched. I shouldn’t have watched....” 

The next night Canada plays against Sweden. They have to win, or they’re out of medal contention.

She realizes what she has to do. 

She turns on the TV and flips around until she finds an old movie. She’s tempted to peek over at CTV, yearning to know how Canada is doing, but she doesn’t.

She knows she cannot watch. Not if she wants Team Canada to win. When the movie is over she crawls into bed, thinking how exciting it will be when she hears about Canada’s win in the morning.

“CANUCK COMEBACK,” screams the headline on the front of the Toronto Star.

She is happy to have made a contribution to the team. When she doesn’t watch the gold medal round, Canada wins.

She is content.

She decides to apply her newfound powers to other sporting events. Thanks to her not watching, Canadian Joannie Rochette wins gold at the World Figure Skating Championship. The Toronto Blue Jays win the World Series and even the long-suffering Maple Leafs finally win their first Stanley Cup since the 1960s.

Thrilled to see her non-participatory powers in action, she doesn’t vote in the federal election and doesn’t even watch the results on TV. Sure enough, an NDP candidate finally becomes Prime Minister. 

When the economy starts playing havoc with her company’s bottom line, she calls in sick and eventually quits. Her company’s fortunes suddenly rocket and she is happy for them.

Eventually she is afraid to become involved in anything, fearful she will cause ill fortune to anyone she casts her eyes on.

She sits at the kitchen table, staring down at her hands, for hours at a time.

She unplugs her phone. She cancels her cable. She throws her crackberry in the garbage.

Eventually she just lies on her bed, eyes closed, hands crossed over her chest.

The world forgets her but she never forgets the world.

She is God, lying on a mildewed coverlet.

Boogers in the Bathroom

Jodie sat on the toilet, her head resting heavily in her hands, peeing. 

There were two stalls in the women's washroom at work and she was in the left one, closest to the wall. She rarely took the one closest to the door and never gave her choice a moment's thought. Some people took the one on the right, some took the one on the left. That's just the kind of wonky world it was.

She heard the door whoosh open and someone walk in with clicking heels. The other stall door was opened, shut and locked. She heard a zipper unzip, the rustling of clothes, a soft thump as the derriere next to her settled onto the toilet seat and a gentle sigh as the woman next to her began to pee.

Jodie looked down to see if she could see the shoes under the stall next to her, but couldn't see anything.

"Is there any toilet paper over there?" the woman asked.

Jodie lifted her head abruptly and flushed full red from the roots of her hair straight down to her toes. It was her supervisor in the next stall. Kirsten. The lovely and talented and perfectly awful Kirsten. The same Kirsten who had just tore a strip off Jodie for her shoddy work, told her she would be taking a pay cut, then, in the next breath, asked her to fill in for her on the weekend because she had a hot date.

Kirsten, in Jodie's humble opinion, was a Grade A Bitch.

Wordlessly, Jodie passed a roll of toilet paper under the wall. She saw Kirsten's long, skinny fingers as they made the roll disappear.

"Thanks," Kirsten said. Jodie heard uravelling and then wiping noises. "You'd think the cleaners could stock the bathroom with toilet paper once in a while. I'm going to send a memo to Bob in HR. Maybe he can get these guys to do their jobs for a change. Don't you think?"

Jodie mumbled in reply. She heard Kirsten pull up her pantyhose and zip up her skirt. The toilet flushed, the stall door opened and Kirsten washed her hands.

"Oh SHIT!" said Kirsten. "There's no soap. Jesus H. Christ, this company is going to hell in a handbasket." 

Jodie listened as Kirsten's high heels clicked across the bathroom door. She sighed when the door snicked shut and the only thing that remained of her supervisor was a lingering trace of her expensive perfume.

Jodie sat there. Lumpish. Doing nothing. Just thinking about Kirsten and how everything seemed to go her way.

She was younger, thinner, more successful, had more money, was better looking, enjoyed a series of entanglements with studly looking men, drove a fancy car, wore better clothes, ate better food and, in short, just lived a better life. 

Not only that, she had great hair. Thick, red, shiny, beautiful, wavy, long hair.

Jodie pulled at a hank of hair on her own head so that she could get a look at it. Mousey brown with streaks of grey, thin, brittle, dull, flat, boring, boring, BORING.

As she sat there, comparing her own boring life with that of her supervisor, Jodie began to pick at a scab inside her nose.

She wasn't conscious of doing so. Jodie's index finger appeared to have a mind of its own, digging and burrowing, mining for a peculiar kind of gold. Finally she pulled out a crusty green nugget and held it up for inspection.

"Huh," said Jodie.

She reached for a piece of toilet paper to wipe her finger on and realized she had given the roll to Kirsten.

No matter, she just wiped it on the wall next to the empty toilet paper dispenser.

She lifted her butt slightly, waggled it back and forth a couple of times to shake off any excess piddle, then got dressed and went up to the sink to rinse her hands. As the warm water flowed over her fingers she glanced in the mirror and was so surprised she did a double-take.

Her hair looked ... better. It actually looked thicker, shinier, healthier.

Jodie did a slow spin in front of the tiny bathroom mirror, her neck stretching so her eyes could take in as many angles of her hair as possible.

There was no mistaking it. Her hair was ... better.

"Huh," said Jodie. She went back to her desk and, for the first time in months, she smiled.

***

The next day, in the bathroom stall on the left, there was still no toilet tissue.

When Jodie picked her nose she wiped it in the same place on the wall, leaving two smears of mucous, one fresh, one dry. 

When she was done she pulled up the jeans that were always too tight and was amazed when the zipper did up effortlessly. In fact, there were several spare inches of material around the waistband. She looked around, suspicious, and thought, "how could this be?"

She went up to the mirror and looked at herself. Not only did her jeans hang on her, but her sweatshirt was baggy. Even her shoes seemed too big. 

She looked at her face and saw cheekbones where there were none before.

And, suddenly, she had only one chin.

Jodie sucked in her breath and wondered if she had cancer.

"Huh!" she said. 

If cancer made her this thin this fast, she'd take it.

When she walked back to her desk, she was smiling ear-to-ear.

That night she went shopping, because none of her clothes fit anymore. She had gone from size 18 to size 8. 

***

The next day, everyone noticed Jodie.

People at work who had never talked to her before, suddenly were chatting her up.

When she picked her nose that afternoon, she was too busy thinking wonderful, happy thoughts to even realize she was wiping yet another booger on the wall.

When she looked in the mirror, she looked 20 years younger.

***

The next day, after she wiped yet another snot nugget on the bathroom wall, she got a promotion. Bob up in HR had finally noticed her and made her Kirsten's supervisor. She got a big raise. She got a company car. She got moved to a corner office next to Kirsten.

Bob asked her out that night, took her to an expensive restaurant and tried his best to take advantage of her.

She let him.

***

The next day someone was in the right hand stall when Kirsten needed to pee so she took the left stall, something she rarely did. While she was in there doing her business and wondering what was going on with Jodie, Kirsten noticed the pile of boogers accumulating next to the toilet paper dispenser.

"What the HELL?" she said, disgusted, and tried her best to scrub off the mess with an SOS pad from the office kitchenette.

When she finished scrubbing, she washed her hands and tried to fix her hair which was a little sweaty and askew from the physical labour she was so unaccustomed to.

As she brushed at it with her fingers, she noticed it seemed dull. Brittle, almost. 

She stared at herself in the mirror and, as she watched, her glorious mane began to fall out by the roots.

Kirsten screamed.

The Happy Couple

She obviously gave him the t-shirt. 

It is hot pink and it says, “Dipped in HANDSOME sauce.”

Not the kind of shirt he would have picked up of his own volition at The Gap.

“Oh-oh,  you’re halfway there,” he is singing.  If that’s how you desribe the wobbly noise burbling from between his puffy, chapped, teenaged lips. Probably chapped from too much kissing. Although, if asked, he would surely say there was no such thing as too much. 

Then, a key change: “oh-OH living on a pray-er...”

His girlfriend looks at him adoringly.

They are by far the cutest couple at Rock Ridge Tubing Park in Huntsville, Ontario on this snowy, Sunday afternoon.  The sign for the park proclaims GREAT FAMILY FUN and it is true. The hill is dotted with families, riding up the tube lift like snow-suited sausage slugs, then linking hands at the top and spinning down the greased ice track squealing at the tops of their lungs. But not a lot of young couples. And certainly none of them as full of romantic fever as these two.

They have just come into the snack chalet for some fries and hot chocolate after an hour or so on the slope. Their cheeks are pink, flushed. There is a sparkle in their eyes. They are 16, maybe 17, and sugary enough to give diabetes to the hardiest of blood flows.

She  is tall and slender and blonde. Her eyes are big and blue, framed in a plastic fringe of Maybelline. She is wearing a magenta ski jacket with white fake fur trim. He is not as well accessorized but his hunter’s orange toque looks strangely colour compatible with the day-glo Handsome shirt. His hair hasn’t seen scissors since they were invented but the curly dark locks suit him. Women pay big money for hair that great. It is no wonder she is playing with it.

He scarfs down the fries, which are mired in pools of ketchup. He licks his fingers and eats noisily. She watches his fingers move the chips from plate to mouth, plate to mouth. Is she wishing she had ordered something to eat (something young women never do while dating. They want guys to think they are ephemeral, that they live on air). Or is she staring at his long, strong fingers, thinking about how they touched her last night. Or daydreaming, wondering how his ring finger would look encased in gold.

They have been together for a while. He calls her “silly goose” several times. Obviously it is a “thing” between them. Her pet name. 

She calls him “honey.” They sit close on the cheap plastic chairs in the snack shack, touching, smiling, whispering, sipping hot chocolate, playing with their cell phones.

He sings to her, off-key. She encourages him.

When the fries are gone they start to get ready to go outside again, putting on their coats and pushing back from the table.

“You haven’t even finished your hot chocolate yet, you silly goose,” he admonishes her in a teasing voice.

“You can finish it if you want,” she says, smiling at him. He drains the cup in a fast gulp and wipes chocolate off his mouth with his coat sleeve. She grabs the sleeve and holds it up to him to show the brown stain.

“And you call me a silly goose,” she says.

He shrugs goofily and she smacks him with her pink mitt. He snatches her arm and pulls her close. She giggles and pushes him away and they make their way towards the door, wrassling and play-fighting and teasing. He holds the door for her. “After you, honey.”

They go out into the snowy afternoon, wrapped in a warm cocoon of romantic fantasies. They are as in love, at this moment, as they ever will be. From now on, each intimate entanglement they encounter will be fraught with disappointment as they try to recreate this day at Rock Ridge.

Twenty seconds later, a young family struggles in through the door.  Four kids between the ages of three and eight. Three whining. One crying outright. Two frazzled parents. 

They take the table recently vacated by the happy couple.

P.S. The photo of my son, Sam, was taken at Rock Ridge this afternoon. While my family was tubing, I was writing because tubing scares the crap outta me.

#fridayflash: The Bus Driver

Mr. Harper rolled the big yellow bus up to the stop sign, wheels sliding slightly on the icy road, tires crunching, smoke billowing into the frigid air.

He looked both ways at the intersection, then stole a quick glance into the back of the bus to see what was going on behind him. Shook his head when he realized the back windows were entirely encased in the snow that was kicking up behind him. Didn't matter anyway. The back windows were more for show; more for the kids to throw moons and fingers in the direction of unfortunate commuters following too closely. Like all professional drivers, Mr. Harper relied on his side mirrors for most of his backing up. 

Bus was quiet today, he thought as he turned onto Highway 118. Blessedly so. He was nursing a headache that the handful of aspirin he had tossed back with his coffee at 6 a.m. hadn't managed to touch. He'd had a headache a lot lately, probably because he was having trouble sleeping. He fell asleep with no problem, but found himself waking up in the dead hours between 2 and 4, when no one was stirring except truckers out on the main road a few miles away, a distant, lonely moan on a windless night.

He'd get up, heat some coffee sitting in the bottom of yesterday's pot, light a smoke and flip on the TV, trying to find something better than infomercials and the baby blues, but not having any luck. Eventually he'd fall asleep, the cigarette burning up to the filter in the ashtray, the half-empty coffee cup cooling, the TV people bright and chipper with their veggie choppers and their thigh-shapers and their 1-900 numbers. Mr. Harper would snooze that way for an hour or so,  drool puddling on the crochet-covered pillow his late wife had made too many years ago, until the alarm went off at 5:45 to the ratchety-yapping of the local radio jockey squawking about last night's hockey game and what the weather was doing outside.

Mr. Harper knew by the creaking of the roof joists that it was going to be bitter out there. He got dressed in his yellowed long underwear, worn-soft work pants, flannel shirt and hand-knit socks, also made by his wife. He kept them good by darning them regularly. They were the warmest socks he had and he looked after them a lot better than the crocheted, drool-stained pillowcase on the chesterfield. He threw on his coat, his boots and his work gloves, then stuffed his smokes in his pocket, grabbed the keys and headed out the back door. 

The snow crunched as he walked through the inky darkness across the empty yard towards the bus, hulking beast-like in the shadows, waiting for him. He pushed open the door and stepped up into the driver's seat, giving the gas pedal one quick pump before he inserted the key and gave it a confident turn. The old girl complained, bitterly, but she always came through for Mr. Harper, was always there for him, and this cold morning was no different. She started.

While the bus warmed up he went outside and did his daily circle check, tapping the tires with the emergency axe, checking fluids, testing lights, opening and closing the emergency door and sweeping snow off the back. He did the sweeping knowing full well that 10 minutes into his run the snow would cover the back again, but he did it anyway. It was just part of the deal.

He had one more smoke while the bus warmed up, checking his Timex periodically to make sure he wasn't going to be late. Not that he ever was. Young mothers along his route could set their own kitchen clocks by Mr. Harper. He had driven them to school when they were in their short-pants stage, through middle school and high school. Some of them ... well, some were the daughters of kids he had driven to school years before that. Things changed, the world grew older, baggy pants replaced skin-tight jeans, laptops replaced binders and books, but the bus still smelled like moldering orange peels and Mr. Harper was still the silent gray-haired man sitting in the front seat.

He pulled the visor down to block the rising sun and headed west into town.