Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club Read online

  We could smoke cigarettes together in the snow.

  She should have said no. She had drunk a bottle of red on a half-empty stomach and she should have said no. That night and every night that followed. Last night, too. But Iris didn’t want to seem shy or shitty or a silly girl. And he was so tall. Handsome. Smart. She had been, what was it, hopeful.

  Though that hope is waning now.

  She pulls herself from the sofa and lugs herself to the bathroom sink. The mirror. Soft pods of flesh hang from her sockets. Sobbing accelerates signs of ageing. Yesterday ticked off brutal behind her capillaries. She splashes cold water from the tap on her face and reads last night’s opus while brushing her teeth. The insides of her thighs hurt and she vaguely remembers having sex. He had kept his shirt on. They had not gotten in the blankets. She had quiet cried after lying on top of the duvet. Before his phone sounded from his inside breast coat pocket. That muffled urgent notification signalling the night would turn sour. Even more sour. For Iris anyway.

  And then there was yelling. She remembers clearly the yelling. Hands clenching the back of his coat from the floor after falling over wet footwear in the doorway. The deep shame of begging mixed with savage determination. Slapping her palms against the double pane as she watched him plough himself out of her driveway, rocking back and forth with the urgency of a caught animal in a shakeable cage.

  In and out of her in less than an hour.

  That’s fucking shocking even for you, she messaged in an attempt to maim him.

  The messages she sent in the throes of her bender are actually quite impressive given her level of intoxication. Anger trumps everything. Even alcohol poisoning. Anger and desperation are twin crutches holding Iris up, and she is half grateful for even this unsustainable support.

  Iris has seen grown women brought to their knees.

  She too has been grounded in a slow miserable stagger. Suddenly scared and embarrassed when upright women attempt to assist her by pulling at her armpits, tugging at her damp hood, wiping back mangy fur-trim slick with puke against her wet face, to help her, they say. The erect urging a crumbling Iris to place her weight on them. The upstanding, having not a clue about the heft of their request, will email each other about the great horrible heaviness of her months later.

  Their hurt for having borne her weight momentarily has been determined far greater than her hurt for having carried it nearly three decades.

  They don’t have a clue.

  They’ve degrees in Earth Science and black-and-white photos of ancestors ages passed. They’ve been, for the most part, happy in a vertical world and hardly ever worried about accidental death. When they drink to drunkenness, it is in celebration; there is liveliness and bear-hugging and smoked salmon and chips.

  Their faces hurt for very different reasons.

  It would take them by great surprise to discover another quality of living. Their sweet brows, a deep furrow of concern and disbelief, as Iris labours to right herself so as to unburden them.

  And like all buckled women, Iris is keenly aware that the shiny women are making themselves feel better for a time by helping her sickly self up when they’ve no real intention to give up their happy access to address the sleek slope that harms her.

  Iris knows well enough.

  She straddles shiny and sickly every day. Her mother is both, though never at the same time and never believably. Not like our Iris. It boggles Joanne’s fucking mind how fluidly her best friend transitions from one to the other. The light and dark meat of her constantly on offer for those who aim to feast at the buffet.

  Men. Men mostly. Mind you, straight men rarely slow to help her up.

  The occasional homosexual will have sympathy enough to stop and steady Iris, but rarely straight men. Her stooped nature is a temptation that offends them when forced to face the conditions they’ve created in the wide open. Collateral damage consisting of women and children and dogs. The elderly. The ill.

  Iris has overheard scientists discussing intergenerational trauma over lunch.

  Shared memory, a kind of genetic recall of shame and hurt.

  ACEs, they called them. Adverse Childhood Experiences.

  Iris has a pocket full of ACEs.

  Teachers always spoke to her in pitiful tones and never called home when a lunch was mislaid, assuming there was no food or no one awake to pack it. Doctors offered birth control to her while she was still in a training bra to curb what was expected of her scrawny body, claiming blemishes were of concern while facing a clear complexion. Meanwhile, dentists with rum on their twisted tongues urged older folk for full clearance, implying Iris’s kin could not afford even the teeth in their heads.

  There had never been an expectation of forefathers and there remains no expectation now.

  Iris was meant to want nothing, demand less, not more. Her father’s absence laying well the groundwork for the first one and then the next one and then John.

  He had told her in honest afterglow that they were not even half a thing.

  Not even half a thing, ringing on repeat in her head. One foot in front of the other through the slush on the downgrade toward The Hazel.

  Not even half of something.

  She has learned to abuse herself in a misguided attempt at thwarting expectation.

  You don’t deserve any better.

  But very deep inside her body a tiny voice whispers into soft cupped hands . . .

  . . . but you do.

  Iris needs to get her paycheque and pay her phone bill before they disconnect her. She is determined to stay the course. She hauls the snarl of tangled dark hair from her eyes as she passes houses where she once attended parties. Iris used to be invited and beloved. But she can’t bear to make eye contact with anyone anymore. Every party ends in tears. They will hate her for what she has done. What he has convinced her to do. She harshly counts and recounts her sins. Iris feels poorly.

  Though riches, emotional and otherwise, have always made her uneasy.

  Sure, even when she has money in her wallet a pervasive impoverishment runs through her. She can’t get rid of it fast enough. It feels stolen. Not meant for her. She thinks someone will take it back. Or worse yet, call her out for being so bold as to expect to ever have money on her person. Who does she think she is? The Queen? No sir. Not Iris.

  She played pretend-poorer as a child to lessen the bleakness by comparison. Her Fisher-Price dolls lived on farms far away from any ocean, this being the bleakest thing she could think up as a child. Feeding pigs. Harvesting grain. The thought of such dry vastness made the baygirl scratch an imaginary itch. She has always feared the great plains. She wouldn’t make much of a farmer. Nothing fit to eat would grow. Gnarly vegetables. Self-disgust. And failure.

  But baygirls make great waitresses.

  They’ve the ideal upbringing for the whole undertaking. Efficiency bred out of necessity centuries ago, refined by capital and industry. Taking too long resulting in sickness and/or death.

  Iris had better manage this time, it’s the only time she’ll get. Before she dies dead. Sure, she won’t mind doing all of this. What with all her free time.

  Young ones got a lot of time on their hands. That one over there. No youngsters or nothing. Still don’t know how to relax.

  Relax! What a waste of time, which is money Iris needs for food to live. Because she’s hungry. So fucking hungry. But she’s not to eat. Don’t dare drop an extra drop in.

  That is not for you, girl.

  Let the men sit down first. Give your father the biggest pork chop if he’s home.
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  Eat potato if you’re starved. There are crackers in the cupboard. Iris will have the garden salad. No. A water. No. A steak. No. Nothing for her, thanks.

  Because she’s been so bad lately. Iris had been so bad. Is. So. Bad.

  Her bread is mixed with molasses and guilt. Good women never eat more than a sliver.

  Even if they’ve had so little. Nothin this whole time. Empty sure.

  Iris has had to suck a peppermint knob and contempt to sustain herself.

  Look’ve her, luh. Tits on that. Useless, useless as tits on a bull.

  Hey misses! Hey girl! Hey Iris! Smile sure while you’re at it.

  Would it kill Iris to smile while she hands them their food?

  Put on a dress, look pretty, eat nothing, have no feelings, never complain. What else can Iris do? Mississauga is calling. Welcome to the National Student Loan Service Centre —

  Ring! Ring! When her phone is actually connected.

  The government wants their money back now!

  Newfoundland has run out of fish/wood/oil and patience, again. Where did it all go?

  Spent on coke and hookers no doubt.

  Iris robs light bulbs from the living room to brighten the bathroom. It’s that or pissing in the dark.

  Men yell at her from their massive trucks to get out of the jesus road.

  Are you stupid, girl? Are you? Stupid!

  She could talk back but has been socialized against it.

  Instead, Iris sneezes into her sleeve as she sidesteps snow boulders pushed into her way. Sidewalks are for better people, she thinks, as she once again steps onto the slushy street to speed along the journey. Her gratitude for proper winter footwear swells despite her boots being purchased as an act of penance.

  Not that boots could ever make up for ruining her life.

  Iris dodges a side-view mirror which lies dormant after being snapped from a parked car by a snow-clearing crew full of contempt. Gashes of green municipal vehicle paint tag the driver’s side of a dozen cars clinging to the crusty curb. But Iris cannot be dissuaded.

  Her hangover has legs.

  There’s a clarity of purpose in its stride. A well-directed hangover, when gainfully rehearsed, will put the fear of god into those who have undone you. Iris can feel her filter falling away with each step. Sliding right off the back of her. What is left is a kind of self-preservation that would shock evolution into sitting up straight. Every man who has ever loved her has attempted to acclimatize themselves to this morning state of her, but no good will come of that.

  She won’t have it.

  Iris, like every lady drinker before her, steels herself against it. It would be better, gentle man, to not have behaved like a manipulative prick from go. Iris will not feign innocence or blame the universe. The universe does not care for her atrocious decisions.

  Iris Young is twenty-nine years old and that is old enough to know better.

  She did what she did and will get what has always been coming to her. And then she will give it back.

  Because some men deserve to be brought to their knees.

  * * *

  John could have lived fine never knowing how Iris moved through the world.

  He felt confident he could have been okay had any one thing changed their impending course. All things could have remained the same had just one thing gone differently. Had she gotten the position at the gallery. Been accepted to graduate school. Received the residency in London or won that prize. Their lives would not have gotten smashed together had John not been lonely and her student loans overwhelming. Had they both been raised right maybe. Any other version would have cleared them of each other.

  There was no reason for them ever meeting.

  John would not have been tempted to tear into this fantasy world full of conceit. He would have resisted all romantic comedies and songs on the radio. He had prided himself on leaving those kinds of daydreams and melodramas to softer faces with disposable incomes and reliable parents. The privately schooled, near grown, pseudo-adult were at liberty to peacock through the concrete nature of their depression, but not John.

  He secretly delighted in charging them great sums from their trust funds for a fish taco. They lacked the wherewithal to poach an egg and were incapable of providing themselves with basic sustenance. A nineteen-dollar hotdog was the cost of their privilege.

  John’s culinary comfort food was the equivalent of rich people stomach-slumming it.

  Though this was not the macaroni and cheese some fisherman’s kid would have ever eaten between skipping tides and copying pans. No Aunt Gert had ever poured this pasta from a box into a dipper on the stovetop while the wieners split themselves open on the boil alongside. This was not birthday party food served in the church basement where moms with stern looks half bragged that they could do nothing with their youngsters.

  Hard ticket John is, can’t do a thing with him.

  The common pride of having the worst youngster in the pass-the-parcel circle.

  Watch now he don’t bite her, he been biting girls lately.

  No. The macaroni and cheese John served in artisanal ceramics was covered in cod and laid atop wooden plates with logos of The Hazel burnt through. This was not food for children. There was gluten-free pasta and back bacon. Five locally produced and aged cheeses with names that referenced something other than their colour. Well beyond orange and white. This was real, dear holiday cheese you put out with toothpicks. Cocktail onions. Sausage discs. Food for guests.

  Food John was never allowed.

  The best of everything was saved for distant cousins visiting from the mainland, to prove they weren’t poor. These same relations were allowed to sit in rooms of the house that John rarely entered. Virtual strangers fingered pillows that had not been touched since their delivery from Sears to prove that his father was a good man.

  No Name spread and oily slices were the regular cheese impersonators in John’s kid sandwich. These frauds were shoved in the side of the fridge door, where the butter would be if they ate real butter.

  So John learned to make miracles out of lies for lunch.

  This culinary intuition bred out of necessity and a latchkey. John was often left unguarded. His only company the empty fridge and an undeniable sense that this was not how other children lived. His suspicions confirmed by television programs where women wore aprons to cut crusts and peel apples laid pretty on the plate. John’s own mother would shriek that peels and crusts were good for you. That’s where all the nutrients lived.

  Stop talking big and eat your potato skins, we don’t waste food around here.

  So he learned early on he would have to make anything worth eating from his mother’s mangy stores himself. And like all great magicians, John refused to reveal the tricks of it when asked the secret of his gnocchi by the well-heeled ladies. Their concentrated looks suggesting a belief they could recreate it at home.

  It can’t be that hard if you can do it, their newly lasered eyeballs declared.

  These women wearing glittering watches with no care for time seemed not to like anyone or each other. They vied for every measure. They ordered steaks and salads but competed to eat the least, the winner being the thinnest, most hungry woman at the table who could afford to throw out the most food. John could always identify the newly rich by their cleared plates and compliments. They still appreciated taste.

  Everything was delicious.

  They are John’s favourite guests. They married money, and these husbands often try to talk to John when he performs the required dining room appearan
ce. The long-inherited well-off behave as though they are owed interaction. Some pretend that they are all friends going way back. Sometimes they ask John about his golf game.

  John doesn’t golf.

  John thinks golf is the most fucking repugnant of all leisure sports. And these golfers are too informal in their banter. John lets their attempted endearments fall to the polished floor.

  I am not your b’y, John wants very badly to say.

  But doesn’t.

  He knows well enough there is an expectation of gratitude. They want him to be grateful they have chosen his kitchen to gorge themselves on tonight. But John cannot feel grateful.

  Instead, he permits a sly smile. They assume something has landed and beam up at him with satisfaction. They will explain in exaggerated detail to everyone in the high towers tomorrow that John Fisher from the television laughed at their joke.

  They don’t know the truth behind John’s smirk. Only a few people do.

  Though he still believes, had things been marginally contrary, that there would have been no need for this degree of deceit. Or, at least, a lesser need for lesser deceit. He could have come to know Iris in the casual, roundabout sense. They could have respected one another as onlookers from the sidelines of their separate, yet parallel, lives.

  They might have been introduced randomly at some New Year’s Eve party neither had wanted to attend. John imagines her simmering in annual hatred of an event attempting to dictate her mood. The holiday calendar cannot even force her will. John envisions admiring her brash consumption from across the cheese table. Delighting in watching her drink wine from mislaid bottles while swiping cigarettes from unsuspecting lips.

  He could have learned to like her later as a person, over time, if she had been married.

  He could have hung her artwork in the dining room, praised her use of evening light. He could have done so had he never seen the black sheen such light cast off her hair at dusk. John could have commented on the intensity of her lines, having never known the small, angled arch where her back met her upturned bum.