The Trouble with Women

Breakwater

ON THE WAY to my second home visit with Charmaine, my head feels too tight. There's a pulsing behind my left eye that's causing me to walk gingerly; my face is made of bone china—a living porcelain doll. It's only what I deserve for mixing alcohol with sleeping pills.

As I move carefully along the long residential street toward Charmaine's house, night floods the wealthy neighbourhood. The dark streets offer me occasional glimpses through well-lit windows into domestic tableaus. Families doing family things. Preparing for supper. Checking homework.

Eventually, my destination creeps into view. My eye pulses a little harder, so I stop to take a sip of water from a tin bottle and swish down some headache pills. I take a long, slow breath before I turn onto the walkway that leads to the immaculately kept home where I suppose Charmaine and, I hope, her uncle are waiting to meet with me.

Halfway up the path, cloaked in darkness since nobody's thought to turn the porch light on in advance of my arrival, my attention is drawn to the warm, lamp-lit front room window. I see Charmaine, sitting in the same chair as our last visit, curled into the same tight ball of shame. Something in the way her hair falls in front of her face, the hunched set of her bird-like shoulders, reminds me of myself as a kid. Scared of everything but angry too. In possession of a rage that has nowhere to go.

A man enters the window-framed scene. He's tall, puff-chested, Brooks Brothers clad, looking like he just stepped away from a Bay Street office. I stop and watch intently, grateful for this chance to observe him before I go inside. People are more themselves when they don't know they're being watched.

Charmaine looks up as he approaches her chair, then back down at her lap. He sits awkwardly on the arm of her chair. Looming over her. Possessively in her space.

He must say something to her because she shrugs. His demeanour shifts to one of impatience. He lifts his hand and lets it come to rest on the back of her hair.

My blood rises to my head, increasing the thump behind my eye. He's touching her. Everything around me — the lawn, the house, the bright yellow leaves that are scattered under my feet — has a hyper-real quality. I can feel the individual particles of nitrogen and oxygen that make up the chill night air. My skin is electric, flushed and cold at the same time.

Charmaine's uncle is caressing her hair. Charmaine looks uncomfortable.

Without warning, I break from my body. I am outside myself, looking in.

***

The man from the mall is waiting at the bottom of the field that runs between your school and home. He is blocking the narrow shortcut you always take; the one that runs behind the houses, next to the ravine. On one side, a chain-link fence. On the other, a steep, bramble-covered slope.

At first, you are confused. You recognize him but not in this context. Your lizard brain lights up with warning, but you keep walking, some part of you ready to believe this is just a coincidence or that he might be a different man. Maybe he's lost and can't find his way back to the mall where he belongs.

At least this time, you don't smile. You don't invite anything at all.

He takes hold of your small shoulders, moves you up against the chain link fence, out of sight.

It won't take long, he says, as if time is your chief concern. As if you have somewhere to be and can't afford to be delayed. When he reaches for your hand, you look away. You imagine this is happening to someone else—some other girl.

He hasn't lied. It doesn't take long.

He releases you, and you scuttle away like the frightened, now dirty, rabbit you are.

"See you soon," he calls after you.

***

I SLAM BACK into my own body to find it slick with sweat as though a tsunami has crashed over the island of me. Pre-existing structures have been knocked flat. I am standing stock-still on the walkway, just feet from the front door. Blood thumps angrily behind my eyes.

The ugly feelings are swelling like a storm surge; I feel them rising up through my legs, past my knees, lapping at my thighs. If I keep standing here, they'll carry me away. They'll push me toward the door of Charmaine's house. If I go in, I won't be able to stop the waves from swallowing everyone whole.

What did I really see? An affectionate gesture. Whatever my raging impulses say, I know I can't go in there until I've regained my composure. I need to think this through. I force myself to take a difficult step back down the path, then another. My forefinger flicks my left palm like a distress signal. SOS.

BY THE TIME I've waded back to the main street, a safe distance from Charmaine and her household, I have just about got my breathing under control. I wake MYA with voice shaking and say, 'call Sasha.'

It's after-hours, Dolly. Sasha has her communications snoozed. Would you like to notify her anyway?

This is MYA's polite way of saying, is this an emergency?

"Yes." I squeeze the word out of my throat. Then I listen to the digital beeps as MYA rings through.

"Dolly?" comes Sasha's warm, motherly voice. "I've been worrying about you all day. Where are you? Why didn't you come in today?"

I swallow. Involuntary tears flood my eyes. The slightest show of kindness always produces this effect.

"I had an evening home visit scheduled with the new file. I'm there now. But I saw..." What did you see? You don't know what you saw.

"You sound strange, Dolly. What's happened? What have you..." she stops whatever she was about to ask next and gives me time to respond.

"I... I'm not going to go in. I can't. I can't go in. I'm feeling..."

"Come to me, honey," she says in her caring, maternal voice. "We'll fix it. Whatever it is, we'll fix it."

Sasha shares her home address with MYA, and I make my way there on leaden feet.