49 Ex-Boyfriend’s Dodge Challenger

Tamara and I drink rye and ginger at Don Cherry’s Sports Grill. Hockey highlights whirl across three large TVs. Out the enormous window is the Peace Bridge, the line of trucks about to head to Hamilton or Toronto or anywhere but here. In the parking lot, there’s half a dozen New York license plates. Ears perked, I listen to the muffled conversations of the business-casual dressed men for any New York City-sounding accents. All I hear is the flat short and hard long a’s of Buffalonians. “Think outside of the backs,” a man in a dated early ’80s skinny tie says to another man. (Think outside of the box.) The other man replies, “You’re rate, you’re rate.” (You’re right.)

Tamara puts her lipstick on at the table. With her other hand, she waives a black leather billfold at our server—a brunette wearing the wrong-sized bra. I stare at the lumpy place across her tight Maple Leafs T-shirt where her breasts spill over her bra cup. “Thanks, Jenny,’ Tamara says to her. “How’s the little guy? Growing fast?” Jenny says something about first words and not getting enough sleep before returning to the kitchen. I watch her walk—she’s also wearing the wrong kind of underwear for white jeans. Screw miracles. What local women need is my fashion advice.

“I have friends, you know,” Tamara says to me. “Like, friends we could be hanging out with if we didn’t spend all our time at The Point.”

I gesture at the restaurant around us. It was her idea to go out for dinner together before her shift at Pure Platinum. So here we are—hot wing and beer mug paradise. She pulls out her compact from her purse and holds it in front of her face. Maybe to hide that she’s annoyed? “It’s not as if I’ve refused to meet your friends,” I say. Tamara holds her compact closer to her face. “Okay. What are you thinking? Girls’ night? A double date or something?”

“Girls’ night would be fun. We could go across to The Continental in Buffalo. The Goo Goo Dolls and Gorilla Biscuits play there all the time.”

I nod in agreement. Girls’ night at the macho punk club—why not? Actually, I could stand to be smashed around in a mosh pit. She kisses my cheek goodbye, leaving a burgundy lip-print on me, I’m sure. I watch the men in the bar watch her as she leaves.

I flip my hair when I see the table of four young ball-cap-wearing studs seated beside the electric fireplace. Biceps and babyfaces. Newly nineteen, I bet. Crossed the border to drink legally at the first Canadian bar they could find. Nineteen-year-old Americans keep our local bars afloat. I’m glad at least the Canadian drinking age has allowed us to carry on our tradition as a party town. One boy tips his glass at me. It would be easy to get into their car, or into any one of the big rigs coming across the border. Rather, it would have been easy. Now I’m leashed in Etta’s backyard. A dog at the end of its chain. I can’t even imagine where I’d go. I summon images of New York City—gallery row, Chelsea, the stone steps outside the Met—my brain’s become nothing but the white noise of Etta’s absence.

Tamara is right. I do need more time away from The Point. And so, what now? I’ve successfully eaten a Caesar salad and half a basket of popcorn shrimp. I lean back in the pleather chair waiting for the nausea I wouldn’t allow myself to feel with Tamara here. My stomach gurgles a human gurgle, that’s all. No alien baby kicking. No Exorcist-like possession of my long intestine.

“Pornstar Martini,” one of the ball-cap-wearing boys interrupts my wallowing. He is not a boy. It’s Chris Sakokete, my high school boyfriend. Pornstar Martini was his nickname for me, not because Martini was my familial last name before it was anglicized, but because we were obsessed with Absolut Vodka ads in high school. His round cheeks are the same. Same set of perfect big square teeth. I wipe at my cheek, the lipstick from Tarmara’s goodbye kiss. Hopefully, he’s had enough beers to see me as pretty. My voice hiccups as I say his name.

“Been hearing weird stories about you, eh? Hell of a way to find out your ex is back in town.” I wonder if I should stand to hug him. In my periphery, his friends shuffle out the door, leaving him here with me. “Let me give you a lift. Where you headed next? Barbara’s? The Point?” He downs the last of his beer. His knuckles are puffy—the only sign that he’s aged a day. “Two pints with lunch. You know me, I’m fine to drive.”

I want to say, two beers is a drop in your bucket. An echo of the jokes we used to make about him being twice my size and able to drink twice as much. I don’t know if these jokes are funny anymore, to him or to me.

He owns the same brown Dodge Challenger as he did in high school. The car has a name—Collette, after Collette Miller, the woman in the punk metal band GWAR. Collette has an origin story—she was manufactured at the Dodge plant in Windsor by one of Chris’s uncles, who made a good-luck wish when it was just parts on the assembly line. The passenger-side still has a wrench clamped to the window crank where the handle fell off years ago. I start to tear up and it feels good, like squeezing a pus-filled sliver from under my skin.

“You that happy to see me?” Chris jokes. “Waterworks and everything.”

I am happy to see him. He may be the only person I’ve seen since coming back that isn’t connected to me by Etta. Chris and my mom.

I ask him to drive along the Niagara Parkway, in the opposite direction of Etta. He’s a quiet driver, no radio or conversation. The quiet gives me pause to doubt all of my relationships. Would I have read bedtime stories to Lucky if it wasn’t for Etta? Would Rose have practically adopted me as the daughter she never had? Would Dolores even talk to me? I’m tempted to ask Chris what he liked about me years ago—did I have any good qualities of my own? Instead, I silently gawk at the rich people’s houses, or what I used to consider rich people’s houses, before I moved to Toronto and saw the Bridle Path. Still, compared to The Point, the sprawling mowed front yards and two-car garages appear grandiose. Brick is ridiculous and white fences, overblown. Chris clears his throat a couple times. He wants to talk. We hold an awkward energy between us, like we’ve both just lifted a heavy old sofa before figuring out who will push and who will pull.

“You married?” I ask. He isn’t wearing a ring.

“No wife.” He changes his speaking pitch, lisps. “Never married, just like you.”

What is he up to with that voice? “Well, I couldn’t get married if I wanted to.”

“Sure. Plenty of guys would marry a lesbian.” He waits for my comeback. We used to tease each other endlessly. Two months ago, I might have giggled or blushed or feigned shock. Now, I can only muster a numb gape. “Dolores told me you and Tamara Matveev are a thing. She’s my cousin. Dolores is, not Tamara.” He pokes me in the side. “We’re all cousins, remember?” Another one of his jokes. I laugh, cautiously. “Yeah, I got the scoop. Lesbians and voices from beyond, eh? I know a pretty good tattoo guy.” Chris hikes up his T-shirt sleeve to show me a bat skeleton tattooed on his shoulder. He shimmies his shoulder up and down, making the bat fly. “I’m sure he could ink up a lesbian angel for you.”

Something about the awkward flying tattooed bat finally relaxes me. I want to sink into a bubble with him—the same bubble we spun when we were young. Collette, the car, always facilitated that; looking through the windshield is like watching the world on TV. We Sunday-drive past children running through a sprinkler. A few doors down, a similar bunch chases each other in circles with water guns. A man washes his car. Another mows grass. Chris parks in a viewpoint lot near Black Creek, and the two of us stare at the rushing Niagara River. The water is the colour of a Tiffany’s gift box, but dirty with silt chop and algae. In the winter, the river turns metallic black. Men in rubber waders rush in to fish for steelies before the ice forms. If a winter gets cold enough and lasts long enough, an ice bridge will form at Niagara Falls—seducing daredevil types to the brink. Niagara Falls seduces year round. Tightrope walkers and barrel jumpers and the suicidal.

I prefer the river to the lake. The river is always moving, always offering us stories. Lake Erie is famous for being so polluted it’s dead. Its story is trash. Crystal Beach banks on trash.

A pair of inner tubers bob past us—girls in bikinis. After wordlessly watching the water for so long, the tubers look superimposed. Caricatures hollering as the river carries them. I used to do that, spend all day in my swimsuit. Chris was a strong swimmer too. Maybe the strongest in our school. “You still able to swim to Grand Island?” I ask.

“Only if Lemmy is tailing me.” He reaches toward me, and I unwittingly lean into his hand. He pops open the glove compartment and pulls out two apple juice boxes. “Get your vitamin C,” he says, passing me one. “Cleanses the liver, eh.”

“Drinking boxes? What are you, a soccer mom now?” There’s my tease. I smile at myself. Chris smiles too. Big perfect teeth. We slurp our apple juice, return to our silence.

“Maybe I turned out like you,” he says so quietly I almost miss it.

“You grew boobs?” I whisper back. Memory fleshes out more of him, our whispered conversations of yesterday. If I could make the prattle absurd and light, if I spoke in just the right low tone, if I reacted with just the right amount of surprise and calm—then we’d really be talking. What I enjoyed most about him is that he dubbed me the keeper of his secrets. Is this why he was the only boy I ever really fell for? Do I have that right? Have I figured out love?

“Wrong,” he whispers.

“You’re a lesbian,” I guess again.

“No. Ahhh …” He slurps the last bit of his apple juice and tosses the empty drinking box in the back seat. “Getting warmer.”

“Oh my god. You’re gay?” He sharply turns away. I ruined our game, my voice way too loud, my reaction too big. “Does your mom know?”

“My mom has nothing to do with it, Star. God, neither. That’s a white dude question. Only white faggots ask about my mom.”

Gobsmacked, I don’t know what to say. He turns red around his ears, embarrassed or pissed off. I think about getting out of his car. Hitchhiking my white ass back to The Point. In my head, I spell “Niagara Falls.” N-I-A … Breathe.

“Barbara doesn’t know either,” I say. “Doesn’t know or more likely doesn’t care.”

“Big whoop. What does she care about? Barbara never was the Carol Brady type.”

“Try more like Morticia Addams.” Meno male! We’re back to teasing again. I tentatively ask, “So, what kinda guys do you like?”

“I’m not one to kiss and tell.”

“Oh yeah? Is that how come the entire Sakokete family knows I owned underwear that read ‘Sitting Pretty’ across the butt?”

“It was my brother with the big mouth. How many times you gonna blame me?” He pokes me again. “Shit. Still holding a grudge.” Then, back to a whisper, he says, “I don’t mind goatees. And, like, bad hair, I guess, like Billy Idol hair.” When he smiles widely, a familiar dimple appears on his right cheek.

“Like ‘Rebel Yell’ Billy Idol? Or ‘Cradle of Love’ Billy Idol?”

“What’s the diff?”

“He grew his hair a little long in the back for the ‘Cradle of Love’ video. Sort of punk rock mullet.”

“Mullet! No! Definitely ‘Rebel Yell.’” Our laughter becomes easier.

“The three gays in our rinky-dink school all ended up dating each other,” I say.

“There’s more than three of us, believe me. But, yeah, treat her right, Star. It’s slim pickings around here.” He starts the car and edges back onto the Parkway in the direction of Crystal Beach. “Plus, she’s a babe.”

“I think she’d going to dump me. I mean, we’re either going to move in together or break up.”

“Whatcha do? Sleep with her friends?”

I suppose I deserve that. I paw the wrench lever beside me. The passenger-side window is already rolled down all the way. The car’s not getting any airier. I tilt my head out for the breeze.

“She’s an awesome girl, eh? You’d better get to work with whatever charms you got. Fake it if you have to.”

“Mind dropping me off at The Point?” I ask. I’ve already laughed the few laughs I have left in me. My head pounds. Can I learn to like these headaches? Look forward to them like a pervert looks forward to a spanking, maybe?

Back in Crystal Beach, my nausea returns, three-fold. Bile fills my mouth before I can ask Chris to pull over. I lurch my head out the window and watch my vomit spray the back tire. Chris swears beside me, but curbs the car slow and gentle. I’ve created an emptiness for Etta to push her way inside. She stuffs my acrid mouth, claws her way down my throat. I yelp as she clamps down on my stomach, my cunt. She’s weak and upset, like a wounded animal. Non-verbal—she speaks to me in the language of pain. My legs spasm into violent kicks. The glove compartment door pops open and a juice box falls into the seat well. Chris swears and yells louder. He’s shaking me now, one hand on each of my shoulders. His perfect teeth move in slow motion. I will black out. I am cursed. I deserve this.

When my eyes return, I am staring at the funhouse mirror. My mouth is stretched like a ribbon, saying, “The angel may light the path, but we have to make an active choice to walk it,” and “Each day is an opportunity to understand ourselves better,” and “Pain is just like us, it’s always changing. Pain is just like us, it’s always changing. Pain is just like us.”

Am I ripping quotes from The Courage to Heal in a half-conscious state? I suppose I can finally say I read those survivor books for a reason. Who knew the reason would be an amassment of salvation seekers? Etta’s appalling light crowns my head. Amusement park souvenirs stockpile at my feet. Behind me, I don’t feel body heat or breathing, only desire. He wants a second child—a son. He wants to quit his job. She wants to have sex again. She wants see the place of her grandmother. He wants things to go back to how they used to be. She wants to reach whatever is next, and reach it at a fever pitch. He wants to be forgiven. She wants to be forgiven. They want to be forgiven. They want their apologies to be seen as clearly as a late-summer moon. They want atonement, to feel like a bottle shot off a wooden fence—each target shattering with a sure-fire bang.

Mostly, there’s the overpowering desire to know exactly what to desire. The desire for certainty. It is these very desires—to understand why and what they are—that I have the most compassion for. It is these desires that make me too hot like a panic attack. I want to turn and face this mountain of wanting. Not to conquer it, but to bow. To bow as low and small as I can. To disappear beneath it.

Etta’s version of a bow isn’t about humility, but rather adoration and encores. When I turn, there’s Bobby, Hal, and Lucky, Dolores and Leanne, Joe and Howie, Moustache, Leanne and Rose, Chris and Wendel, Rahn and my mother—fuck me, my mother, non lo credo, my mother—I can’t bow to them. Not to their pain or dignity or desire. I only tower and awe. Up, up I rise, over the horrified heads of onlookers, past the trampled lawn and gravel driveway. How far is she going to take me?

Etta sets me on the gazebo roof. She appears just for me, and I’m dazed. How could I forget how beautiful she is? Her right hand rests on my back. Her right hip meets my right hip. She steps forward and I step back. Together we twirl around and around on the rooftop, delirious. We’re gonna dance until our feet fall off, ‘til we’re not able to stand any longer. We’re gonna dance until our hair falls out. We’re gonna dance until our bones are ash.

Later I dream about Chris Sakokete, or maybe he is really standing above my slack body. It’s one of those dreams (or dissociative moments—same difference) where I can see both him and myself. He thrums his fingers against his jeans, thumbs tucked in his pockets. I lie like a cadaver in an anatomical theatre, which is apt as there are also onlookers crowding the cabin door and window. In the dream, or for real, Chris says, “Fuck you, Starla.”

He says, “None of it is right.”

He says, “If you can cut this shit out, then cut it. Because this shit is … is …”

He walks out, and I hope I’ll dream of him again—his nice teeth, his Billy Idol lyrics, the stories he must have collected while I’ve been away—but I bet I won’t. I hardly sleep these days anyway.

Onlookers push in through the cabin door. “Don’t crowd her,” someone shouts. This someone is Barbara. Mama mia. Did she come to save me? Mother protect me. I don’t want all these people in here. Why are there so many? Don’t let them touch me. Don’t let them touch me. Don’t let them.

Hands on my feet and legs. My hair. My stomach. My face. It’s one of those dreams where I feel too much. Or it’s for real, and I’m doing my best to be unconscious.