Overcoming Morning Version 2

We were sitting in the faded seats of his Chevy pickup overlooking a small tree lined lake. We had come up the back way, overshooting the marked road and flying off into the underbrush. From this side, the lights of the city were hidden and in the morning light everything except the red and orange trees looked like a charcoal drawing. Even the sounds seemed dialed down, as if the forest around us had been drowned. I blew on my black coffee wishing I had asked him to add cream. A blister was forming on the roof of my mouth. The rest of my body was raw too from lack of sleep and the wild tumble under the orange and brown afghan on his creaky mattress.
Scott lit a cigarette and blew the smoke out the thin crack between the window and the frame. “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?” he asked. I examined the scuffed toes of my Dayton’s which were pressed against his dashboard. With my legs in that position I could smell my own muskiness. I searched for the best worst, something that would make me seem sexy and brave, a Bonnie to his Clyde, rather than boring, vindictive and petty.
-I robbed a bank once.
-Really, which one?
-Ok, you got me.
I put my hand on his thigh. It was warm and slightly damp. With my other hand I rubbed a clear circle in the fogged-up passenger window. I searched for inspiration in the landscape. The orange trees remained silent. I thought of my many sins. Three servings of Thanksgiving dinner: gluttony. Sleeping in until two: sloth. Glaring at the perfect girls in their summer dresses: envy. My sins: uninteresting.
-What about you?
-I asked first.
Against the backdrop of the window his jaw was squarer than I remembered. He hadn’t shaved and his chin was silvery in the soft morning light. Against his pale skin, his lashes looked like black feathers on fresh snow. He reminded me of every boy I’d ever lusted after in high school.
- So, why did you chat me up last night? Just so I know for next time.
- Are you hoping for a compliment? Because you were beautiful. Fierce. Engaging.
I grimaced and touched my coppery hair, feeling where it had matted and snarled. I picked at a knot near my brow line.
- I guess you seemed approachable.
I sensed approachable was a kind synonym for alone. I focused my attention back out the window.
- I guess I’m pretty boring.
- We all have secrets.
I thought about holding Leah’s hand as she left the clinic in tears, but that was her secret, not mine. I thought about teasing Angelo in grade six. He was big for his age. He smelled funny and spoke slowly and we called him Retardo Angelo. I saw him cry once. That night I cried too, soaking my My Little Pony pillow. I never called him Retardo Angelo again but he still refused to dance with me at the Grade Seven graduation party.
- I made fun of this one kid a lot when I was in elementary school. We made him cry. It was pretty awful.
He smiled a shallow smile and touched my chin and then my breast.
-That can’t be the worst thing you’ve ever done.
I poked my tongue into the coffee blister. It caved, filling my mouth with bitter liquid. I thought of his tongue in my mouth and of the dark stain on the stalactite ceiling above his bed.
-I want something recent. We all have stories of petty theft and truancy from our childhoods. Those don’t interest me.
A loon cried outside the truck. I wondered if my roommate was worried about me. We didn’t talk much. Taking the place had been a snap decision made more out of necessity than any mutual affinity but as far as she knew, it wasn’t like me to stay out all night. I pictured her anxiously rifling through my stuff, searching for a contact number. Had I left anything embarrassing out in the open? I doubted it. I hadn’t really even unpacked yet, never mind settled in.
- I should probably get going soon.
-You haven’t properly answered my question, princess.
- Why is it so important to you?
He flicked the cigarette butt out the window and began to clean under his nails with the zipper of his coat. In the darkness of the bar and later his room I hadn’t noticed how dirty his hands were. Now I could see that the ridges were lined with grime. A shower was really starting to sound appealing.
- Intimacy.
- Right.
I thought of the new orange and cinnamon shower gel I had recently bought, of the sea foam green tiles in the bathroom and of the always backwards toilet paper roll. I thought of the almost expired milk in our avocado green fridge and of my favourite misshapen purple mug.
-I’m sorry, I really can’t think of anything. I’m tired. I think I just need a breakfast and a shower.
- We’re not leaving until you can come up with a better answer.
He smiled but his eyes remained flat like dull nickels. He rolled the window up the rest of the way. The smell of trapped smoke chafed the inside of my nostrils. It was too warm in the truck now. I felt like I was sitting under piles of damp wool blankets. I really did want to unearth something horrible about myself, really. And then, in a horrible combination of joy and horror, like winning the lottery but suffering a heart attack from the shock, I thought of Max.
-I killed a dog once.
I had buried Max in my subconscious, which was more than I did for his body. Max was a jovial slobbering golden retriever that lived next to me in the first place I lived after leaving home. The place was a rambling, drafty house shared with a gaggle of students. Max’s owners were a newlywed couple who were busy looking after their new baby, so Max was usually left to his own devices in the front yard. The students in our house kind of adopted Max. We always had pockets full of treats for him, which were always showing up in the most unusual places, once even in the toilet tank, a mystery we never quite solved. We also had an agreement with Max’s owners that we could take him for walks whenever we pleased. I took advantage of this situation quite a bit because I secretly hoped Max would be a good way to meet the man of my dreams.
I was usually the first one up in the morning. I had a job at the local IHOP and had to set up before the breakfast rush. My roommates had no such obligation and were usually still sleeping off hangovers at this hour. Even regular working stiffs were still a few hours away from hitting the snooze button. I liked to complain about the early start but I also relished the quiet time before the rest of the city started waking up. Often, if I was feeling energetic, I would even wake up an extra half hour early to take Max for a walk before hopping in the communal station wagon and driving off.
This particular morning I had a late start. I had allowed myself to stay up late with a few of the other girls the night before. We’d drunk cheap red wine out of mason jars and danced around to a bad ‘80s compilation CD someone had dug out. I had been the first to call it quits but still I half-regretted the night. My head was throbbing and I was running late. I’d only had time to throw on some clothes before running down to the car. I couldn’t wait to help myself to a free cup of coffee no matter how gross it was. I didn’t even bother adjusting the seat or mirrors before throwing the car into reverse and backing down the driveway.
Even before the thump, even before I spotted the open gate to the neighbours’ yard, I knew. My stomach did this weird amusement park jump and it wasn’t the wine. Then, there was a gentle bump and a faint hissing squeal as if I’d run over an inner tube that was now slowly deflating, only before looking I knew the inner tube was Max. I sat holding my head for what seemed like hours before I found the courage to open the car door and slide out. I was sure that at any moments lights would start coming on and people would emerge from their houses. Still blinking from sleep they would stand on their porches and point accusing fingers, but the neighbourhood remained dark and silent. I swallowed my fear, dry heaved and opened the driver’s door.
I couldn’t see Max’s face. He was half under the car between the front and back wheels. If I moved the car I would either forward or back I would crush him again. I crouched down to get a closer look, the cold of the cement biting into my knees, and placed a hand on his rear haunch. He whined softly. I gagged again and considered my options. I could go inside and wake the roommates, wake the newlyweds, call a vet. It was an accident. It could have happened to anyone. But it didn’t. It happened to me. I would always be the girl who killed Max.
I tried to pull Max from under the car. He whined again. It was so faint I almost didn’t hear it but it felt like I’d swallowed shards of glass. Max was heavier than I had imagined. He didn’t just slide out from under the car; he dragged along the ground like a wet bag of flour. I felt the rough concrete scrape against his belly but he wasn’t whining anymore. The only sound was my own half choked sobbing and the litany of sorries I kept whispering. When I finally managed to pull him all the way out, half lying across my lap, body twisted and head lolling below my knee, he was utterly silent and I could no longer see or feel the rise and fall of his breathing. I took his head in my hands and looked into his cloudy eyes. There was a bubble of blood and snot on his muzzle. I wiped it with my sleeve and held him. And held him. We stayed in that embrace for a while. My collar and his were both soaked with my tears. Nobody interrupted our goodbye.
I found an old tarp in the back of the station wagon. It wasn’t mine. I didn’t care. I used it to wrap Max’s body, stopping only to remove his tags and shove them in my pocket. He was cumbersome and I couldn’t handle his body with the grace I would have liked. I rolled him like I was folding an unruly tent and its pegs, trying hard not to picture his head bumping on the ground with each roll of the tarp, and shoved him in the back seat. By the time I closed the rear door I had stopped crying.
I drove. The traffic lights were only decoration. The car was a ride on tracks that I could not change. A few hours later and I would have collided with oncoming traffic but somehow I arrived at an industrial dumpster behind an office complex. If you had asked me about this building any other day I’m not sure I could have told you where it was, but here we were. By now Max the jovial golden retriever and Max the lump in my back seat had become two separate things. They say that in moments of stress humans sometimes develop unnatural strength. I believe it. The dumpster was high and I had to hoist Max’s tarp-wrapped body up and over my head, propping him on my shoulder as I slid him over the bins lip. It should have been far more difficult, if not impossible on my own but soon I heard the soft thump as Max’s body hit whatever was in the bottom of the dumpster. I was only 45 minutes late for work.
-Max’ owners and all my roommates searched for weeks. Of course I had to help. It would have been strange if I didn’t. We put up black and white posters on every pole in a fifty mile radius. Max’s sad puppy eyes stared at me every time I stapled up a poster or walked past a pole but I never told anyone. It’s strange how soon, it stopped feeing like an omission.
I choked on the words and the memory. I turned my head to the foggy window again. I could feel snot and tears mingling on my upper lip. He reached over and stroked my hair slowly turning my head to him.
- See, we all have our secrets, he whispered.
He kissed me with more tenderness than he’d shown me since we’d met.
- Don’t you want to know my secret?
I tried to wipe my face discreetly.
-I guess.
Scot smiled.
-Tell me, how did it feel when you killed Max? It was amazing wasn’t it? The power I mean, the knowing you were responsible.
He leaned even closer, pinning me to my seat with the weight of his body, his forearm across my throat. I felt the cold button on his cuffs digging in to my neck. I tried to push him off but his knees were now on hands. “You’ve guessed my secret, haven’t you?” he whispered into my ear. I tried to scream but all that came out was a strangled hiss. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll be quick. It gets easier every time.” He kissed me again. “I’m so glad we could share.”
As my vision dimmed, I saw a tiny reflection of my face in his eyes. I was so very small.