This Is Not My Life Page 13

  After the brief ceremony, we all dispersed to our respective cars and then reconvened in the common room at Vera’s apartment building. As Shane introduced me around to everyone, I wondered why they had all travelled to the funeral of this woman they clearly didn’t like and hadn’t bothered with when she was alive. But I knew I had no right to be judgmental. Shane and I were the same, only there for form’s sake, only there out of a sense of obligation rather than any true measure of love or sadness. We would not miss her and neither would they.

  Most of the relatives were surprised to see Shane, because they thought he was still in prison. His aunt Winnie was especially happy to see him and kept hugging him around the waist. She told him how much she loved him, how she’d prayed for him every night for thirty years, how she’d never given up on him, how she’d always been there for him. I didn’t see how this could be true. Shane had never even mentioned her, and she certainly had never found her way to the prison visiting room.

  Darlene was steering clear of Marsha, and the rest of us were keeping a close eye on her as she mingled around the room, moving from one cluster of people to another, chatting pleasantly, occasionally bursting into only slightly maniacal laughter. Not for the first time in my life, I thought that families, especially other people’s families, must surely be the greatest unsolved mystery on earth. Also not for the first time, I noted that Shane seemed to be one of the better-adjusted members of his.

  After everyone else had said their goodbyes and headed back to wherever they came from, Shane, Roy, Darlene, and I emptied the coffee urn, washed the cups and glasses, tidied up the room. Marsha was friendly enough, giving Darlene a wide berth, helping to clean up a bit too, but then she disappeared. We thought (hoped) she’d gone home. Shane and Roy had wandered off too—to have a smoke, Darlene and I assumed.

  We found the three of them in Vera’s now-empty apartment. Marsha was crying, clinging first to Roy, then to Shane. Darlene and I went out to the patio and fed the squirrels. Soon the three of them came outside together. Marsha seemed calmer. We all went to our cars. Roy left alone because he wanted to stop downtown to buy a case of beer. Darlene was eager to get home, so she came in my car with us.

  Shane said Marsha was upset because she felt left out, said we didn’t like her anymore, were ignoring her, having fun without her. I said it wasn’t fun, it was a funeral. As we headed down the street, me driving, Shane in the front seat, Darlene in the back, we were congratulating ourselves on having made it through the day without incident. In the rear-view mirror, I could see a large white car coming up fast behind us. Before I could say anything, it swerved wildly to the left, cut back in front of us, and came to a screeching halt in the middle of the street.

  Shane said, “Here we go.”

  Marsha leapt out of the car and ran towards us screaming, “I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!” She was kicking the grille and pounding on the hood of my little car. I was terrified and fumbling for my phone. Shane and Darlene were stunned into silence. Marsha darted to the passenger side and peered in at Shane. Still screaming, she began to pound on his window with both fists. With her fury focused on him now, she seemed to have forgotten all about Darlene, who was shrieking in the back seat. Shane remained utterly silent, staring straight ahead. By now, with shaking hands, I’d managed to dial 911. As I tried to explain to the dispatcher where we were and what was happening, Marsha ran back to her car and began gunning it in reverse. I handed the phone to Shane and started backing up. Marsha kept gunning it, slamming on the brakes, then gunning it some more. I was soon half up on the sidewalk, trying to get away from her. Fortunately there was no one behind us. After one final lunge that brought the back of her car to within an inch of the front of mine, she squealed away, making an out-of-control left turn onto the intersecting street, and then she was gone.

  Shane was still speaking calmly to the dispatcher, who said we should now go directly to the OPP station. He then called Roy, who said he would meet us there.

  Two officers were waiting in the parking lot when we arrived. Roy pulled in right behind us. We all started talking at once. One officer asked the questions, and the other took notes. Shane handed his paperwork to the questioning officer, who studied it closely, then handed it back without comment.

  In the end, they said they could take no action against Marsha. Shane asked what he should do if she came after us again.

  The officer said, “Sir, you have the right to defend yourself.”

  Shane held up his paperwork and said, “No, sir, I do not.”

  WE’D BEEN SEEING DR. QUINN once a month as planned. I was still complaining about the phone calls. Every day was disrupted, often six or seven times. If I answered and reminded him that I was working, he was angry, not at himself for having called but at me for having complained. If I didn’t answer, he kept calling until I did. If I unplugged the phone, there was hell to pay when I plugged it back in.

  I also tried to talk about the sexual problems. Dr. Quinn looked surprised when I said that the more it became a battlefield, the less I wanted to. He didn’t seem to understand when I said I wasn’t in the habit of having sex with someone who was nasty to me.

  At our July session, Dr. Quinn had two suggestions. First, he said perhaps it would be better if Shane didn’t come home every weekend, if maybe occasionally we took a break so I’d have time to relax and recharge. Second, he suggested that perhaps I was too engrossed in my work and just didn’t have room in my life for Shane. I said this wasn’t true. I did have room in my life for him, but no matter how much room I made for him, it was never enough. He seemed to want all of my life to be all about him all of the time.

  Shane said angrily, “What am I supposed to do when you’re working then? Sit in the corner and be quiet?”

  I said, “Yes.”

  WE TOOK A BREAK IN AUGUST. Shane wasn’t happy about it, but I insisted. I felt much better for it, and he said he could see that. I hoped that in the long run, he would realize that if I wasn’t feeling so frazzled and pressured all the time, things would be better for him too, including the sex. He never came to this conclusion.

  For the first ten minutes of our next session, Shane was playing with his new cell phone and didn’t appear to be listening. Finally, I said, “Shane, please put your phone away. We’re here to talk to Dr. Quinn.” Then Dr. Quinn scolded me for scolding him as if he were a child.

  This time Dr. Quinn had three suggestions for how we might improve our relationship. We already knew that Shane’s hearing for full parole would take place in mid-October. Dr. Quinn said that if he did get full parole, instead of moving in with me, he should rent his own apartment and we could “date.” He had no suggestions as to how Shane might pay for this apartment. In fact, we discussed this idea later with the halfway house supervisor, who said the Parole Board wouldn’t be keen on Shane setting up what he referred to as “his own little fuck shack.”

  Dr. Quinn’s next suggestion was that I should buy a bigger house. He didn’t seem to consider that I might be having enough money trouble as it was, never mind trying to buy a bigger house.

  Dr. Quinn said that instead of working “unstructured hours” at home, I should rent an office elsewhere, and thus I would be better able to separate my business and my personal lives. I resisted pointing out that if my working hours were unstructured, it was because Shane wouldn’t stop calling when I was working.

  SHANE OFTEN SAID BEING IN JAIL was like being on stage. Not only were the guards always watching you, but so were the other guys, checking you out, sizing you up, taking your number. Were you solid, or were you a rat? Were you a tough guy or a wimp? Could they trust you? Could they muscle you? Could they get under your skin? Could they kill you if they had to? Should they respect you? Should they be afraid of you? Should they watch their backs or make sure you were watching yours? Should they just ignore you, and stay out of your way?

  When Shane was in it, my home too began to feel like a stage. I beca
me more and more self-conscious with his eyes always on me. For thirty years he’d had no privacy and I’d had plenty, so it was hardly surprising that this was an issue. Personal habits and behaviours I had never thought about before, including closing the bathroom door, suddenly became peculiar, eccentric, possibly suspicious. He didn’t seem to grasp the difference between privacy and secrecy. And now I fell prey to another interpretation of Sartre’s saying “Hell is other people” and his ideas about “The Look”—that the presence of another person with their eyes upon you causes you to see yourself as an object, to judge both yourself and your world as they might.

  Fastidious as Shane was in some ways—I’d often called him “Mr. Clean” when he went on about how he washed down his room at Frontenac with bleach every week—in others he was anything but. I know the same is true of me. I am particular about some things, careless or downright slovenly about others. He was always watching me, commenting on what I was doing and suggesting a better way. His way. He said he was just trying to help. I’ve had a few too many people in my life eager to tell me what I should do and how I should do it, all in the name of “trying to help.” Now he was doing it too. Was this because he’d had people telling him what he could and couldn’t, should and shouldn’t, do for so long that now he figured it was his turn? Was this because he’d been made to feel helpless for so long that now he had to flex his control muscles in any way he could?

  There was room for improvement, it seemed, in pretty much everything I did. I should put the coffee together before I went to bed rather than in the morning. I should wash the dishes immediately after using them, even if it was only a coffee mug or one small plate. I should not be so fussy about hanging the towels and washcloths evenly in the bathroom, and I should wash them after each use. I should put out the garbage right before bed rather than at suppertime. I should not be so fussy about how and when the laundry was done. I should clean the bathtub with bleach after every use. I should not be so fussy about turning off the lights in unoccupied rooms. I should clean the kitty litter box more often (he definitely had a point there). I should not nap with my clothes on because it was unsanitary (perhaps he had an ulterior motive here). I should not be so fussy about the recycling (you’d think someone who worked at a recycling plant would have appreciated my efforts).

  In summary, as far as household matters went, I should be less fussy about the things I was fussy about and more fussy about the things I wasn’t fussy about. It seemed that as far as my fussiness went, there was either too much of it or not enough. In any event, it needed to be redistributed. We could not seem to coordinate our respective fussinesses. We weren’t either one of us easy to live with. Clearly we both had a lot to unlearn.

  I’d been running this particular household for twenty years. I’d run other households of my own for another ten years before that. In my opinion, generally speaking, the household ran smoothly enough. Why did a man who’d been in prison for the same number of years as I’d been running households think he knew how to do it better than I did? Was I being a churlish bitch when I pointed this out to him? Was I trying to provoke him when, paraphrasing something I’d read somewhere once, I said one of the best things about living alone is that all your bad habits miraculously disappear? No, I was not. Was I surprised when he did not find this funny? No, I was not.

  Whenever I tried to tell him how I felt, he would cut me off and tell me how he felt. When I said, “You make me feel like I can’t do anything right,” he said I made him feel exactly the same way. When I said, “You don’t listen to me when I talk,” he said I was the one who didn’t listen. When I said I felt like I had no voice in this relationship, he said he was the one who had no voice. Impasse reached in record time. Deadlock.

  I had seriously misjudged how hard it was going to be to adjust to sharing my space with another adult. Now twenty-three years old, Alex was technically an adult too, but still he was my child, and we’d had all those years to grow into it together. And although he still lived at home because he couldn’t yet afford to get his own place, he was hardly ever there. When he was home, he was usually sleeping, because he worked nights.

  Of course I had known making this adjustment would be a serious, perhaps even formidable, challenge, but I hadn’t considered that it might be all the way to impossible. Of course I’d known it would be a time of great change, but I didn’t imagine that how I made the coffee, hung the towels, or cleaned the bathtub would also be subject to revision. I didn’t expect it would be so hard for me to relinquish control over the garbage, the recycling, or the laundry.

  When I finally lightened up about the laundry, showed him how the washing machine worked and cautioned him to please use the Medium setting on the dryer, I didn’t imagine he would then dry everything on High anyway, thus shrinking my best hundred-dollar jeans so much that I could never wear them again. Nor did I imagine this would be my fault—because how was he supposed to remember everything I told him to do when I was always telling him what to do?

  Perhaps I should have taken more seriously the fridge magnet I’d bought some years before I met him: a cartoon woman is talking on the phone, and in the speech bubble it says, I WANT A MAN IN MY LIFE . . . I JUST DON’T WANT HIM IN MY HOUSE! Next to it now was the magnet Shane had given me, discovered at the Vinnie’s warehouse in a donated box of odds and ends: an elegant woman in a purple satin gown and silver high heels lounges on an ornate pink bed, and below her it says, QUEEN OF FUCKING EVERYTHING. Donated at the same time, surely by the same woman, was a black T-shirt on which it said in large white capital letters, DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM? I desperately wanted this shirt but had to concede when the director claimed it for herself. Instead I settled for one with the movie title MISS CONGENIALITY in pink block letters and below it, in pink script, ARMED AND FABULOUS.

  SHANE WAS NEVER HAPPY WITH MY SHOWERHEAD. An old metal standard style, not more than three inches in diameter, it was probably installed when the house was built in 1950. It didn’t do anything fancy like the new multifunction ones—it just sprayed water out of the holes. I’d never replaced it, because I prefer baths anyway and Alex had never complained. Shane had been coveting one of the new space-age ones ever since his first pass home.

  One day at Canadian Tire, I finally bought a new one. Not one of the four-hundred-dollar chrome models that can do everything but wash the car and water the garden, but a simpler one, a discontinued model on sale for fifty dollars. As soon as we got home, Shane wanted to begin the installation. I said I’d call a plumber and have it done next week. He said plumbers were too expensive. He was sure he could do it himself, no problem. He reminded me that Dr. Quinn had said he should do more things around the house—this would make him feel it was his house too, not just mine. I went downstairs and turned off the water.

  The first problem was the removal of the old showerhead. After several liberal applications of WD-40 and many unsuccessful attempts to unscrew it, first with his bare hands, then with a pair of pliers, then with a number of different-sized wrenches, all accompanied by much grunting and cursing, Shane got out the hammer. I said I didn’t think this was a good idea. He ignored me. I couldn’t bear to watch, went and sat in the kitchen with my hands over my ears. He bashed away at it for a good ten minutes, then emerged triumphant with the showerhead in his hand.

  The second problem was that the size and threads of the new showerhead didn’t match those of the pipe now sticking naked out of the wall. We went back to Canadian Tire and bought an adapter that looked like it would fit. It didn’t. We went back to Canadian Tire and bought a different adapter. It didn’t fit either. We went back to Canadian Tire and consulted a salesperson, who, after much discussion of male and female ends, said that if neither of those adapters worked, we’d have to call a plumber. Shane still refused to call a plumber. He said he’d just put the old showerhead back up and leave it at that.

  The third problem was that once he’d screwed the old showerhead in place and turned t
he water back on, it was squirting out in all directions at the connection. I’ve often been glad I live so close to Canadian Tire. This time we bought plumber’s tape and pipe joint compound.

  The fourth problem was that once he’d applied both the tape and the compound, there was still more water coming out of the connection than out of the showerhead itself. He finished the job with a complicated construction of duct tape and plastic bags.

  On Monday I called a plumber, who charged me a hundred dollars to come over and tell me there was no way a new showerhead of any kind could ever be attached to that old pipe. It and all the other pipes connected to it would have to be ripped out and replaced. Needless to say, I could not afford to have this done.

  We never spoke of it again. Shane used the maimed shower without further complaint. I began keeping the shower curtain closed so I didn’t have to look at the duct tape and plastic bag sculpture now sticking out of the wall.

  I kept telling myself to let it go. I kept telling myself that life is too short to be fussing about a damn showerhead. I kept telling myself it didn’t matter. But it did. It mattered to me. How was it that a man who’d been in prison for thirty years had come out with such a sense of entitlement that my old showerhead couldn’t possibly be good enough for him? As time went on, he also expressed dissatisfaction with the stove, the fridge, the couch, the reading chair, the kitchen table, the cutlery, the drapes and curtains in every room that I’d sewn myself and was very proud of. How was it that the house he had so loved and admired in the beginning had become so unsatisfactory? Shouldn’t a man who’d been in prison for thirty years be a bit more thankful finally to have a nice place to live? A nice, free place to live?