Old Flames, Burned Hands Read online

“Too corny?”

  “No. But I think there’s a better question to ask.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Would you die for me?”

  Tilda took the cigarette from him and mulled it over. “Hmm. Yes. I would. Would you die for me?”

  “In a heartbeat.”

  Her cheeks flushed hot and something flittered deep in her chest. “I love you.”

  “We should get hitched,” he said.

  Tilda reared back, as if burnt. “Easy, tiger. I said I’d die for you, I didn’t say I’d marry you.”

  “Such a bitch.”

  Tilda laughed then wiped the sweat from her brow. “I think we just made it hotter with all this fire. Let’s go somewhere to cool off.”

  “You want to go pool-hopping?”

  “No,” she said. “Let’s go down to the lake.”

  NEITHER of them were in any condition to drive but they were young and immortal. All those MADD warnings were meant for other people. Other drivers, other drinkers. Our parent’s generation, who drove shitfaced as routinely as they brushed their teeth.

  So off they went, bombing eastbound on Lakeshore Boulevard in Gil’s dented Rabbit. Swerving onto the Cherry Street ramp, the rusty VW almost catching air as it hit that godawful bump before the lift-bridge. The stereo blaring, that old Joy Division tune that everyone knew, the one everybody loved singing to their beloved. Half the street lights were dark on that scabbed scratch of road, the place deserted. Gil opened it up, pushing the diesel stroke harder than he should have. The damp breeze from the lake blew in through the open windows.

  Gil cursed, the brakes stomped. Tilda never knew what they hit or tried not to hit. One of the gaps in her memory of the accident. She remembered a thud, then the car spinning as it flipped. Driver and passenger tossed around like ballbearings in a can of spraypaint. Darkness.

  The next flash was the world upside down. The Rabbit on its back like a carcass. Safety glass sprinkled like ice over the dome light. The blood. Tilda slung head down in the seatbelt.

  Gil was gone. He hated seatbelts.

  She called his name but all that issued forth was a wet rattle, like those nightmares where you want to scream but can’t. Then a glimpse of him, there beyond the jagged teeth of the broken windshield. He must have been thrown clear. Staggering towards her like a wino and covered in so much blood that she thought he had dumped a can of candy apple red over his head.

  He yanked on the door but it was crimped tight so he got onto his belly and reached through the window. Unclasped the belt as she ran her hands over his face and scalp for the source of all that blood. They were speaking, urgent and hurried, but Tilda could never quite recall what they had said. Which was a shame, last words and all. The only thing she remembered clearly was Gil saying that they had hit someone.

  What happened next remained a fog of broken memory and conjecture. She had started to panic, screaming that she needed to get out of the car right away. There was something seriously wrong with her left hand. She couldn’t feel it. He told her to slow down, not knowing if he should move her or wait for an ambulance.

  Gil withdrew and Tilda remembered sensing someone was there. The person they had hit? Another driver who had stopped to help? When he turned back to her, his face was twisted up so bad it frightened her. Confusion via terror.

  He whispered her name once and then he was gone. Gone as if the hand of God yanked him away, it was that fast. She lay there on the ceiling, crumpled over the dome light. Useless. Screaming his name until her voice gave out and all she could hear were the waves against the pier.

  HOW terrifying is it to wake up in hospital? No memory, not a clue as to why you’re there. A million questions that no one in the room will answer. The cloying masks of sympathy as someone runs to get the doctor. The doctor finally giving up some answers but not the ones you need. He listed off the broken bones and torn ligaments. The shattered wrist. After that, a police officer but all he had were questions of his own. Tilda withheld everything until he gave up some answers.

  “Where is Gil?” she hissed. “Is he all right?”

  The police officer’s hands gripped the hat in his hand. “I’m sorry, Miss Parish. He’s gone.”

  Gone. Imagine that. Gil Dorsey was presumed dead because they never found him. His blood on the pavement, that was all. The best the police could put together was that Gil had staggered away from the wreck, injured and losing blood, and had fallen off the pier into the lake. Although the officer didn’t inform her of this, the police expected the remains to bob up further west along the breakers. Floaters always did, and once Mr. Dorsey made an appearance, they could pronounce him dead and close the file.

  It didn’t pan out that way. Obstinate in life, Gil remained so in death and the police never could close his file. He never bobbed up anywhere, remaining stubbornly on the muddy bottom of Lake Ontario.

  So what of her? Tilda Parish sank to the bottom too, like an oceanliner ripped open by icebergs. Spiralling down into a grief so bottomless, few of her friends expected her to come up for air ever again.

  CATCH UP.

  See Tilda? Same green irises but the edges of her eyes now hatched with a few crow’s feet, those little mileage markers that get etched in if you make it this far. Hair swept back in a ponytail as she cracks eggs into the frypan and eyeballs the toast that will burn if left untended. Whipping breakfast together and wishing the coffeemaker would hurry up and brew so she could pour herself a cup. As much as she hated the morning rush, it was manageable once she had that first potent hit from the pot. A glance at the wall clock had her padding out of the kitchen to the bottom of the stairs.

  “Shane! Molly! Time to hustle!”

  While the eggs sizzled, Tilda diced fruit and popped the toast. Molly was finicky about her breakfast. Tilda had to prepare it just right or the kid wouldn’t eat. A trait she got from her father. Tilda herself would eat anything, learning over the years to be satisfied with whatever she got onto a plate or the rejected dishes pushed aside by a fussy eater. With the eggs plated and Molly’s fruit on the table, Tilda groaned at the prospect of packing lunches. A chore she detested. Doubly so for particular eaters.

  Then the cat, a charcoal Russian Blue, brushed her leg as it padded to the center of the kitchen and threw up on the floor.

  Shane came down first, tucking his shirt in as she was wiping up the regurgitated mess.

  Thick and big-boned, Shane was built like a power lifter. All upper body strength but fighting the bulge in his gut that came with age. Sweeping in for a kiss, he scraped her cheek with stubble and made for the coffeemaker. “Morning, sweetheart.”

  “Are we not shaving today?”

  “Got kicked out of the bathroom. Again. Did you sleep okay?”

  “Best as I could.” Tilda rinsed her hands under the faucet. Truth was, she rarely slept well, waking out of a deep sleep every night. Sometimes it was stress or her wrist was acting up and sometimes for no reason at all. Routine, as was his inquiry into her sleep every morning. Same question, same answer. Shane himself slept like the dead and Tilda’s resentment of his narcosis could run hostile. But give him credit, he inquired about her rest every morning. Concerned, he just didn’t know how to help her. Neither did she.

  Tilda hunkered down to the task of sandwich-making. “Is Molly dressed?”

  “Yup, but tread lightly.” He raised the coffee to his lips and blew. “The monster has awoken.”

  Tilda blinked at the cup in his hand. How had he swiped the first hit off the pot like that? Grumbling, she poured herself sloppy seconds. May as well be the dregs.

  Molly descended, parlaying her mood with each stomp of her heel against the wooden step. It was hard to believe that thirteen years and ninety-three pounds could make that much racket. The cat, reclining on a chair, leapt down and scampered for cover. He knew the score and if the two people left standing had any sense, they would have followed his lead. The cliché of the angry, hormonal teen was
so tired and so played that even Molly was exhausted by it. But, like a genetic trait of hair colour or domestic lycanthropy, she was helpless before its curse.

  “Morning, honey.”

  Molly slumped into her chair at the kitchen table. Outwardly, she was seraphic. The green eyes and slight frame inherited from her mom. Her father had contributed the sandy hair and toothy smile, rare as it was seen these days. As to whom she had inherited this hateful scorn and hair-trigger rage from was anyone’s guess but each parent secretly blamed the other’s family tree. A grandmother on either side was a safe bet but Shane suspected that, if not Satan himself, then some lesser demon. Baalzebub maybe.

  Molly slumped forward, hair falling in a medusa’s trap of tangles and sniffed at the bowl before her. She straightened up and pushed it away.

  Tilda looked up, the big knife in her hand. “Eat up, honey.”

  “It has blueberries in it, “ Molly growled.

  “You love blueberries.”

  “When I was ten. God… “

  Shane pushed the bowl back under nose. “Then pick ’em out. They won’t poison the rest of it.”

  Wrong tactic, and everyone, cat included, knew it. “I’d sooner starve,” said the girl. If Les Mis was holding auditions, the kid would have been a lock.

  Her parents had neither the time nor the temperament for such accommodations so the kid got a pass. Press on, get on with the day. Shane wolfed down his eggs and Tilda scrambled to finish their lunches. She scooped down her own breakfast as she cut carrot sticks. It would be nice one day to eat at the table, seated and unhurried like any other adult. That was a weekend luxury.

  Molly plucked blueberries from her bowl with dainty fingers. “The laptop blew up again last night,” she said. “I think it finally gave up the ghost this time.”

  “I’ll take a look at it after work.” Shane mopped up the last of his eggs up with a wedge of toast.

  “Can’t we get a new one? That old thing is useless.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe I’ll swing by Larry’s. See if he’s got a refurbished one.”

  “Does everything have to be used?” Molly groused. “Just once, can’t we get something brand new?”

  “Brand new just isn’t in the budget this month, honey. Neither are used ones for that matter.” Tilda slid a plate of toast under her daughter’s nose. “Eat something.”

  “Sorry kiddo,” Shane said. Watching Tilda return to the counter, he studied his wife’s behind under the pajama bottoms and tried to remember the last time they had gotten friendly. Last Saturday? He straightened up and banged the table. “Hey, what day is it?”

  Tilda froze, dreading what was coming. She’d half hoped everyone would forget but knew she’d be crushed if they did. To say she was uneasy about this one was putting it mildly.

  Shane scooted down the hall for the closet. Came back with a poorly wrapped present. “Happy birthday, honey!”

  Her green eyes lit up. Who doesn’t like gifts? Even ones parceled up in Santa wrap in early June? “Shane, you didn’t have to.”

  “Oh hush,” he said. This back and forth was another part of the routine, had been since before they were married. Why upset the apple cart now? Shane looked at their daughter. “Did you make a birthday card for your mom?”

  Barely a shrug. “Whoops.”

  He scowled at the kid but Tilda dismissed it with a wave. “It’s okay.”

  “What’d you get?” said Molly, feigning interest to compensate.

  The paper tore away and inside was a handbag. Retro airline style with a funky monkey logo.

  “Do you like it?”

  “This is the one I saw.” Her face lit up, a quick kiss. She had mentioned it a few weeks ago after seeing it in a shop window. Shane must have been listening. “I love it. Thank you.”

  “Look inside,” he said.

  Opening the clasp, she saw black material. Lifting it out by the spaghetti straps revealed a silk teddy.

  “Va-va-voom,” Molly declared, eyeballing the garment dangling from her mother’s hands.

  “Shane!” Tilda blushed and stuffed it back into the bag.

  “What? You’ll look great in it.”

  Stealing another look at it now that it was safely inside the bag, she remembered a minor spat they had had last week. She reminded him that what was missing in their relationship was a little romance. He interpreted this to mean sex.

  “Thank you.”

  Molly munched her toast. “When you guys have your birthday bonk, can you do it when I’m not here? No one wants to hear that.”

  “Don’t be rude.” He thwapped her shoulder. “Get your stuff, we gotta run.”

  With that began the scramble for keys and shoes, the envelopes to be dropped in the mail on the way. Shane running back inside for his Aviators. Molly dragging her feet like she had all the time in the world.

  “Molly,” Tilda said. “Your lunch.”

  Molly looked at the bag on the counter. A mesh weave bag with a picture of the Virgin of Guadeloupe on it. Tilda had to ensure that it looked nothing like a bagged lunch. God forbid her daughter should be seen with one.

  “I don’t want to bring that.” Molly pushed it back across the counter. “I want to get pizza today.”

  “Honey, we’ve been through this. We’re all tightening our belts now, so that means bringing lunch.”

  “It’s embarrassing.” The disdain on the girl’s face was lethal.

  “No, it’s just food.” Tilda turned away to clear the table, refusing to discuss it anymore. The sound of the car horn honking from outside spurred Molly out the door. When Tilda turned back to holler up a goodbye, she saw the Guadeloupe bag left behind on the counter. She blew her bangs out of her eyes. “Fine. Starve for all I care.”

  With Shane and Molly out the door, the kitchen settled into the quiet of a dripping faucet. Even the cat had fled, presumably to upchuck somewhere else in the house. Tilda took her coffee and sat down at the table to eat. Her gifts sat on the table and she pondered them while polishing off her daughter’s breakfast. Birthdays, Tilda had discovered, become problematic the older one gets. Like a lot of things. Today she was forty-one and had, in fact, been dreading this all week. Contrary to cliché, turning 40 hadn’t been a soul-wringing crisis. She knew it was coming but hadn’t fretted it or broke down or tortured her loved ones with some mid-life crisis. No sudden trips to Tuscany or cut her hair drastically short. No reinvention brought on by the cold fact that your life was, if you were lucky, half over. Being forty wasn’t a problem.

  Being forty-one was. If she could somehow stay on the big four-oh, she’d be okay but adding the one to it? Different story. And no, she didn’t know why that was. Reaching forty had seemed like a goal, going beyond that number simply hadn’t occurred to her. She scolded herself with the same logic we all do: it was irrational and silly, it was vanity and nothing more. None of it worked. Nothing had fundamentally changed in her world. She sat at the same table, eating the same breakfast, alone as usual, looking at the same mess. But now she was a 41-year old woman contemplating the teddy her husband had given her for a birthday present. The last thing she felt like doing would be to slip it on. Like so many of Shane’s gifts, it was in fact, a gift for himself. The unthinking man’s attempt to light a match under the marital bed.

  The bag, at least, was practical. And kind of fun. She hooked it onto her arm and finished her breakfast, feeling coldly older than the forty-one years the calendar dictated.

  BY HALF PAST NINE Tilda was out the backdoor and across the footpath, unlocking the door to the garage. A flick of the lightswitch and her studio popped into view. The furniture was old and the floor covered in threadbare Persian rugs. Old Christmas lights strung along the ceiling provided ambient light. Three acoustic guitars stood like soldiers at attention on their stands, flanked by a Telecaster with a B-bar at the end of the line. Hung from pegs on the east wall was a Fender Jazzmaster with a broken pickup and a black Rickenbacker 330 she ra
rely played. The sole bass she owned, an imitation Fender, remained in its case on the rack shelving like old luggage. Two microphones were set up in the middle of the room before a battered but sturdy wooden chair that didn’t creak. The garage studio was cold in winter and stifling in summer but it was fairly soundproof and it was all hers. Most important of all it had a door, one that she could close, sealing off the outside world so she could concentrate on her work.

  If there was a consistent thread stitched through Tilda’s forty-one years, it was music. Where most floundered and squandered their youth over the impossible question of ‘what are you going to do with your life’, Tilda knew that answer from an early age. Where other people’s youthful dreams of playing in the NHL or joining Médecins Sans Frontières were stomped by reality or lack of talent, Tilda blazed a path using a guitar for a machete. At seventeen she had formed her first group, the Tralfamadorians, which had lasted six months and played only one show, and that a house party. After the Tralfamadorians broke up (it was a stupid name anyway, the drummer spat, packing up his kit and going home), there had been an endless run of bands that Tilda formed, broke up, joined and reformed over the years. A quick glance at the egg-carton walls of her studio revealed an illustrated history of her musical trajectory. Badly photocopied handbills and silk-screened prints for all the gigs and all the bands that she had played in. A history, not only of Tilda’s career but of the shifting landscape of Toronto’s music scene. Clubs and venues that sprang up like dandelions over the city only to bloom and die and blow away. The glorious and grimy histories of indie music cast aside or buried under what was now a trendy cafe or yet another godforsaken condo.

  Pinned over the soundboard hung a handbill for a Daisy Pukes gig at Sneaky Dees, Tilda’s cowpunk band. To the left of that, a screen poster for the Spitting Gibbons Halloween gig circa 1995. The Gibbons had evaporated after the accident and Tilda’s hospitalization, the downward spiral that followed. The blue years, as she looked back on it now. After her recuperation and the sham funeral for Gil (everyone knew the casket was empty but oh the looks his family cast her way, the blame) Tilda had collapsed inwards like a scarecrow with its stuffing ripped out and tried to drink it all away. Almost killed her. If it hadn’t been for Shane, they would have buried her too. Along with the scars and broken heart, Tilda had been gifted with a lasting reminder of the accident that took Gil’s life; a recurring ache in her left wrist that flared up in damp weather or when she was overly stressed.