Todd and I are in tenth grade and on our first date when Sam, the new kid in town, is curb-stomped near the wharf. We\u2019ve just left the movie theatre when it happens, and we cut through the crowd to see him lying there lifeless. The cops roll up minutes later and we run in different directions. Running is a learned behaviour: tag, kick the can, red rover, red rover. We aren\u2019t old enough to know we should stay.<\/p>\n
We meet up with friends at the beach. We\u2019re out of weed but have a few cigarettes, and we lean against a log inhaling and exhaling, trying to forget what we saw. We stare at the waves, at the gulls, at the islands that dot the horizon. We talk about death, what it means to lose, but we don\u2019t know how deep a loss can cut yet.<\/p>\n
We sit on the sand until dark, until we\u2019re out of smokes, until the tide brushes against our feet and the sky bleeds red. Then we file home and sleep like puppies, not wanting to let one another go.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
We move cities in our twenties. Todd gets a job as a surveyor and I move with him because I don\u2019t want to be swallowed by the small town we grew up in. We find an apartment, find a grocery store, find a laundromat\u2014then he\u2019s away in the bush for weeks at a time.<\/p>\n
Being alone in an unfamiliar town is a different sort of lonely.<\/p>\n
After an extended absence, Todd takes me to the pub up the hill. He writes his name on the chalkboard by the pool table, orders us chicken wings. Orders us one beer, two beers, three beers, four. He is surprised when I suggest we play doubles, when I suggest we play for cash\u2014twenty bucks, maybe, forty bucks, better. He is surprised when one ball drops, when two balls drop, when I run the table and the eight ball drops.<\/p>\n
When did you learn to play?<\/em> he asks.<\/p>\n I shrug. I\u2019ve kept busy<\/em>.<\/p>\n He looks at me like he doesn\u2019t know me anymore.<\/p>\n The guy we schooled calls Todd a hustler, calls me a bitch. He punches Todd in the face and the place erupts. There is a crack when Todd\u2019s jaw breaks, when his back hits the rack of pool cues.<\/p>\n We sit outside on a curb once the commotion quietens. I try to weave my fingers through Todd\u2019s, try to lean into the curve of his torso so he absorbs me. It\u2019s how I\u2019ve learned to connect\u2014through tactile absorption.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t<\/em>, he mumbles through his busted jaw. Don\u2019t touch me<\/em>.<\/p>\n My dad dies in his sleep. It is lightning fast, a complication of an undiagnosed illness. It is the opposite of what I\u2019ve known death to be, the opposite of force.<\/p>\n Todd accompanies me to the funeral. Sits next to me at the wake. Handles the condolence onslaught, acts as a barricade to the responsibility that comes with grief. He poaches me eggs every morning, cuts my toast into strips. Tries to piece me back together.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Todd and I marry in his parents’ backyard. We erect tents in case it rains, string patio lanterns across the yard, arrange wooden tables to gather around. We recite vows we\u2019ve written and mean every word; we\u2019ve been together longer than we\u2019ve been apart and we know these things about ourselves, about each other.<\/p>\n One of Todd\u2019s groomsmen, a friend of ours from high school, has a flask full of whiskey. By the time the lanterns light up, the flask is empty and he\u2019s ricocheting off everything. He takes a swing at another groomsmen and misses, the momentum carrying him through a sliding glass door. The safety glass shatters, landing like hail across the deck.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n We have a daughter and name her Piper. She is stuck tight, not wanting to come out. She takes eighteen hours to birth. There is nitrous oxide, an epidural, a vacuum.<\/p>\n I pull into myself once she arrives. I spent so much time wanting her and now I want nothing to do with her. I cringe every time she latches on, every time she cries in the middle of the night.<\/p>\n Isn\u2019t she gorgeous<\/em>, Todd coos. She looks just like you<\/em>.<\/p>\n I stare at her unfamiliar face, her huge, blue eyes.<\/p>\n She looks like somebody else\u2019s baby.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I am sick of maternity leave, sick of being at home. Piper has taken to screaming whenever she wants something, and I don\u2019t understand her babbling or gesturing.<\/p>\n Todd sleeps on the couch with earplugs, rises well-slept and bright-eyed, offers me coffee, offers to take time off to help.<\/p>\n We need the money<\/em>, I say.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t know how to make this better<\/em>, I think.<\/p>\n One afternoon, on the way home from the grocery store, Piper screams at me from the backseat, her nine-month-old voice piercing what\u2019s left of my sanity.<\/p>\n I swerve off the road, narrowly missing a woman running with her stroller, and careen into a fire hydrant.<\/p>\n What\u2019s wrong with you<\/em>? Todd asks when I tell him what happened. Why are you acting like this?<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n We go to marriage counseling. Todd and I sit on a couch, talk about how I don\u2019t want to talk anymore. Last week, he punched a hole in the bathroom wall. A fist-sized hole he covered with a picture before Piper woke up. But we both know the hole is there and that is why we\u2019re here.<\/p>\n That is what I say when the counselor probes for answers: We\u2019re here because Todd punched a hole in the bathroom wall<\/em>.<\/p>\n It is easier than explaining the way grief guts you. The difficulty in holding onto someone you don\u2019t want to lose. Tonight, I\u2019ll try explaining this to Todd. I\u2019ll ask, which one of us do you want to die first?<\/em> And for the first time in a long time, Todd will be the one with nothing to say, the weight of our silence finally strangling us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We talk about death, what it means to lose, but we don\u2019t know how deep a loss can cut yet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15227,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[316,719,12],"class_list":["post-15213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","tag-grief","tag-marriage","tag-violence","writer-jennifer-todhunter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15213"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15213\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15229,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15213\/revisions\/15229"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}