Chapter 20

Now, what of Evan? You might ask. Well, Sheila and I had something of an unspoken agreement not to talk about Evan, but Sheila was his mother and once upon a time he'd been my best friend. I was living in the house he'd been raised in and the house was rife with evidence of this. Photos, framed art projects from his childhood, the dent in the hall from a tumble down the stairs during his clumsy mid teens, and his room was the same as it had ever been, although cleaner without him in it. There were memories, and the most seemingly unrelated event could bring them up. I remember Sheila cutting my bangs.

A pregnancy interrupts the normal pattern of shedding and regrowth of hair and usually at approximately four months postpartum the pattern resumes. With a vengeance. By the time Sulamith was eight months old I was over the shedding and my hair had started to regrow, thickening back up and coming in a half shade darker, but I had all these wispy tendrils around my face that had begun to drift into my eyes. I couldn't get them into my pony tail, they wouldn't stay in clips, and they were driving me crazy, so one morning Sheila looked at me swiping madly at my hair and said, “Why don't you let me cut bangs. It would keep your hair out of your eyes.”

I'd agreed without hesitation, and had been more than pleasantly surprised at the result. Sheila had looked at my face before hand and said, “What about bangs like Jane Birkin's in the 70's?”

“Jane Birkin?” I'd looked at her blankly.

Sheila typed the name into the search engine, pulled up images and then, careful not to let her laptop get too close to me, she turned it so that I could see. “Alright,” I nodded. “Those are nice bangs.”

“Okay go wash your hair and use lots of conditioner so that it's easy to comb,” she told me and when I was back in the kitchen with wet hair she carefully combed it this way and that and then slowly snipped and clipped until she was satisfied, then blow dried my hair for me. I'd looked in the mirror surprised, both at how well bangs suited me, and at the perfect job Sheila had done. “I didn't know you could cut hair. This is amazing,” I told her.

She smiled, pleased that I liked the job she had done and told me, “I shared a house with a group of girls when I was in university and one of them was attending beauty school. I got her to teach me to do hair and she said I had the knack for it. I always cut my own hair and even Evan lets me cut his, which is high praise indeed because I'm sure you remember how he is about his hair.”

It was one off hand comment but it plunged us both into a past when Evan would say to me, “Hey. There's a Labyrinth/Dark Crystal double feature playing at the Rio tomorrow night if you're interested?”

“I'm not doing anything,” I'd reply.

“Bring a change of clothes to work with you and we can eat dinner with my mum and I then get cleaned up and we can walk to the theatre from my house.”

I would go home after work with Sheila and Evan. We'd eat in Sheila's kitchen and laugh over dinner then take turns showering. Clean and in a decent outfit, I would end up hanging out with Evan in his room for a while before it was time to leave. Obviously, with the obsessively platonic nature of my friendship with Evan, nothing ever happened up there, but I would sit on his bed looking through his books. That particular night, as we were going to see movies with art direction by Brian Froud, I'd taken Evan's copy of Faeries down and turned the pages. Evan was standing in front of the mirror messing with his hair. That was typical. He'd turned to me and said with a glint in his eye, “So, Brian Froud? Or Allan Lee?”

“Evan, you can't choose between Brian Froud and Allan Lee. It would be like choosing between strawberries and blackberries.”

“That's easy, the obvious choice is strawberries. The seeds are smaller.” He looked at me for a moment then turned back to the mirror and scowled at his reflection while rearranging his auburn locks again.

“Well yeah strawberries are wonderful, and they smell good, and they're so pretty, but you know when it's hot out like today and you head out to a lake or go for a walk down an alley where a big wild bramble has had a chance to take over, and your not really expecting to, but you find handfuls of perfectly ripe, sweet, insanely juicy blackberries and you just stand there and eat them and they're hot from the sun.”

Evan had turned again and was leaning against the dresser now. “Okay, okay. I concede defeat,” he'd smiled. “In that context you can't choose between strawberries and blackberries. But since you've come up with this seriously over thought berry analogy, I have to ask you, would Brian Froud be the blackberries or the strawberries.”

I remember snorting laughter at him through my nose and smiling, “Come on let's just go to the theatre.”

Evan had turned back to the mirror and given one last desperate attempt to make his hair look right, then followed me down the stairs.

Sometimes the memories of those days would hit, and most of the time I cold shouldered them, but that Sunday afternoon, sitting with Sheila in the kitchen with my freshly cut bangs I'd asked, “So . . . How is Evan?” I'd felt weird asking, but then, I'd felt weird not asking too.

Sheila sighed a long resigned sigh and told me about Evan. “He's fine.” She didn't say it like she meant it. “He finished his PhD and got married just before you came back.” Then she sighed again, “But the thing about Evan is that he tries too hard to think with his head instead of listening to his heart. At times I think that he would be better off thinking with his cock because at least it would point him in the right direction sometimes,” she said dryly and rolled her eyes. (For the record, Sheila can be crass sometimes.) She looked at me for a moment as if undecided whether to say more before she continued, “He never got over you. The day of the fire he called and told me he'd booked a flight home to try to make everything up to you. He'd been a real shit all year. He barely called. I think he was avoiding me because I'd told him that he was being a shit. He'd called once or twice, drunk, and asked about you before that, and then out of the blue, I had to tell him that you were dead, just as he'd finally come to his senses. He came home for a few days just after the fire . . . but before I saw you, before I knew that you were alive. I'm sorry if it was the wrong decision, but I didn't know what to tell him, so he still believes that your dead. You were living in another world as the wife of another man. I couldn't be sure he'd believe me if I told him. I thought that he might be better off believing that you were dead.” She looked at me apologetically.

“It's alright.” I shrugged, then asked, “What's his wife like?”

“Oh, on the surface she seems nice enough. I only saw her for a few days.”

“But?” I prompted Sheila who grinned wickedly and said, “You knew I was holding that 'But' back didn't you?”

I smiled and she said, “But underneath the surface I think she's a real bitch. It won't last. I don't think he really loves her. He never got over you.”

Sheila didn't tell Evan that I was alive and that I'd come back, and I was careful not to answer the phone if the display showed his number. If he had broken my heart three years earlier, I hadn't let myself recognize it. In all honesty I'd been young, innocent, extremely confused, and my feelings had been so hurt at the time, that even if I could have fallen for him before what he'd done and said, I was so angry at him that I certainly wasn't going to let myself recognize those feelings after, when I thought he was disgusted by his feelings for me. But knowing that he'd been about to come home and make things right? I didn't let myself think about it. I put the thoughts in a box and buried them behind the compost heap like a dead bird that died of a clean window. I wasn't ready to cope with feelings and I certainly wasn't prepared to see him, or for the way seeing him would make me feel.

But Sheila was right, and after five short months of unhappy marriage and a thick stack of divorce papers Evan came back to Vancouver with a PhD in Literature and a job waiting for him at a community college teaching Literature, Mythology, and Mythology in Literature. He moved back without telling his mother. He found an apartment and got settled before deciding that it was time to go to her and make amends, and when Evan climbed the stairs to his mother's house that hot August Sunday afternoon, he hadn't expected me to answer the door. But I did. Barefoot in a pair of torn jeans and a tank top, standing there with a baby on my hip and vine patterns spiralling up to my shoulder. I remember looking at him for a long time, Sulamith clapping her plump little hands against my shoulder and pulling my hair. I looked into his face, at his chiselled features, the now collar length auburn hair, his sensitive green eyes and his perfect, almost feminine mouth. He stood there staring at me then dropped the chocolates he'd been holding and just stood there a while longer before he spun on his heel and hurried away from the house to the car that was parked out front. He sat there in the driver's seat with his forehead on the steering wheel. I could see his shoulders heaving.

I tried not to react. I popped the baby gate in the doorway leaving the door open and put Sulamith down on the kitchen floor so that I could finish washing the lunch dishes. Evan came back after about ten minutes. I was sitting in the rocker with Sulamith by then, nursing her down for a nap. She was blinking slowly, sleepily. I put my finger to my lips and Evan sat down quietly on the chesterfield trying not to stare at me while I breastfed my baby. Worlds were colliding. Once her eyes had closed I stood with her and whispered, “I'll be right back.” And I took her up to the room I shared with her and tucked her in, all the while wondering what I would say to Evan when I went back downstairs. Feeling the old hurt and anger pushing at me, I padded down the stairs. He was standing in the living room taking in the toys and the playpen and looking overwrought. I still didn't know what to say to him so I settled on, “Tea?”

“Uh . . . Sure?” he answered lamely, with a shrug.

I walked to the kitchen and put the kettle on to boil, but I was already boiling over inside. I turned and looked at Evan who was standing there looking from me to the highchair and then back at me, with such an overfull expression in his eyes that I knew how much he must be feeling, but at that particular moment I was so angry with him that I didn't care about his feelings.

“’Bloody hell’ Evan!?!” I yelled at him. “Those were the last words you ever spoke to me, ‘Bloody Hell’! And now, after three years ‘Uh . . . Sure’ is the best you can do!?” I was shaking and tears ran down my face. My lip quivered and I couldn't keep my hands still. The light bulb in the ceiling popped inside the globe and went out with a sound of glass tinkling within glass. Evan pulled out a chair, motioned for me to sit and then went about making the tea himself. He put the pot and the tea things on the table and then sat across from me.

“I was a fool Kristabell . . .” he started.

“Don't call me Kristabell!” I snapped.

Evan looked like he had been slapped and I knew that I was being cruel but I'd been hurt and I was hurting still. I didn't have the strength at that moment; I didn’t have it in me to be kind to him.

Evan swallowed then asked me softly, “What do you want me to call you?”

“Just Krista is fine. It's what you always used to call me.”

He nodded and fidgeted with his mug for a moment then sighed, “Can you ever forgive me?”

“Don't ask me for that!” I exploded again. “I've been through too much and I don't have room in me for that! I don't want to forgive you!”

“Then what do you want?!” he shouted at me, then whispered, as his tears spilled down his cheeks, “I would do anything for you.”

I fixed my eyes on his, “I want your friendship. I want you to make me feel normal again.” And then I quoted, knowing that he would recognize the quote and understand, “Drown out my dreams, keep me from remembering whatever wants me to remember it.”

He smiled then, the most profoundly sad smile, completely unable to keep further tears at bay or the emotion out of his voice, “Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn. Amalthea to Prince Lir. That line always . . . breaks my heart a little . . .” he swallowed. “What happened to you Krista? I thought that you were dead.” He pushed his hand through his hair and rubbed his face.

I gave him the heavily edited version, “I went away the day of the fire. Lets just say for now that,” I shrugged. “I was in Ireland. I met someone there. His name was Rowan. We fell hard for each other. He asked me to be his wife. I agreed . . . and then the past caught up with us. My natural parents played a dangerous game before I was born, and I got caught in the middle. Rowan . . . died protecting me . . . us. He died protecting us, the day our daughter was born,” I told him this, and my voice tore itself to pieces on the shards of my heart and I shook myself as if to shake off an unwanted touch. “It's all over now. It's all in the past somewhere . . . far away.” I closed my eyes tightly and tried to steady my breath. We sat at the table silent for a long time, mentally, emotionally, digesting everything.

“Your baby,” Evan eventually, tentatively ventured. “How old is she?”

“She's fourteen months old.” I gave him a watery smile.

Evan must have sensed that it was easier for me to talk about her so he asked again, “What's her name?”

“Sulamith,” I told him.

“Like the painter, Sulamith Wulfing,” he said.

“Yeah,” I nodded.

“She's walking and talking I guess?” he questioned further.

“Running and babbling is more like it,” I said with a wry smile.

“How long have you been back?”

“Since December.”

“And you live here?” He motioned to the house around us.

I nodded, “My parents are dead. I didn't have anywhere else to go.” I pressed my lips together and took a deep breath, “Your wife is here with you?” I started to ask as I didn't know then, but I didn't get more than the first two words out before he cut me off shaking his head emphatically.

“That's over. We're divorced.”

I nodded and we sat there in silence a while longer until Sheila came bustling in with the groceries looking completely shell shocked to see Evan and I sitting at the table together. “Oh my God! What are you doing here!” Sheila nearly screamed the words as Evan stood and hugged her.

“Elise asked for a divorce and I had a job offer from Langara so . . . I decided to come home. But don't worry. I have my own place,” he added casually, yet not casually.

*

Evan stayed for dinner that night and it was a difficult evening in a sense. Not awkward per se, and not bad, but I knew that he had some pretty massive issues around my death, and now suddenly I wasn't dead, but things could never be the same again either, and we couldn't pretend that they ever would. When Sulamith woke from her nap I brought her downstairs to meet Evan. At first she was shy and very cuddly, only wanting to sit with me and nurse, or cuddle with Sheila in the rocking chair, but once she had woken up all the way she became curious about this new person sitting in her house as if he belonged there. I watched with mixed feelings as he sat on the floor and began to build a tower with her blocks and then pushed it over and waited to see what she would do. She watched him suspiciously from Sheila's lap and gave a little, “Uh-oh.”

Evan smiled at her and did it again. She scowled at him. He started to build a third tower, starting with one block then another and another, but the fourth block he held out to her. I held my breath, wondering if she would go to him. She climbed out of Sheila's lap and walked over to him, taking the block away, clutching it in both hands and looking at Evan, considering the situation before squatting down and placing the block on the stack. She placed the block and then over balanced as she tried to straighten up and she plunked down on her little diapered butt and almost tumbled all the way back, but Evan put out a hand, stopping the progress of her tumble, then once she was firmly planted on her back side, he gave her another block. She placed that one too, scowling and concentrating on getting it lined up, but her co-ordination wasn't as accurate this time, so Evan reached out and guided her little fingers and the block was placed. By the end of dinner he had her taking his hand and dragging him to her toy box, or to her bean tee pees in the back garden and, yes, a one year old can drag a big six foot three, one-hundred-and-ninety pound man around, because he was helpless before her, and even though he'd had to do the coaxing, it was she who had him wrapped irrevocably around her little finger. But even that hurt in a way, for me to see her go to him and pull at his pant leg until he lifted her into his arms, to hold her there, and look at her as if she were the most incredible thing he had ever seen, and smile, because then he would turn to me, and our eyes would meet, and he would see how much it hurt me to see him hold her . . . because Rowan would never hold her. I would never see Rowan hold her again, and Evan could see that sadness in my eyes.

Over dinner we stuck to safe topics of conversation. Evan's new job, Sheila was thrilled for him. We talked about the garden centre. Sheila told him that I was a part owner and that seemed to please him. And of course we talked about Sulamith. It's hard not to. Babies do have a way of monopolizing your life. As the evening drew on and Sulamith got tired she returned to me, toddling to my feet wanting to be close. Sheila was clearing the table and loading the dishwasher. I lifted Sulamith into my lap and she burrowed her tired little curly head into my shoulder and rubbed her eyes with chubby fists as I held her close, and you could see that despite the walking and talking, that she was still very much a baby. Evan looked at us for several heartbeats then looked away for a moment and I saw his hand rise to his face before he looked back into my eyes. “Your daughter is adorable Krista,” he told me in earnest, and then as if he were handing me stones that he had been carefully holding in his hands for those three years, he told me. “Krista . . . I am still so ashamed of how I left things between us, and I've never stopped regretting it. You were my best friend and I know that I hurt you. I told you that I would do anything, and you said that you wanted my friendship. If that's what you want, you have it, irrevocably, but you were so angry . . . if you want me to stay away . . .”

I cut him off, “No Evan. I want your friendship. Irrevocably. Don't talk about going away again. It hurt badly enough the first time.” And I knew I was going to cry, because as much as I still wanted to yell and scream at him I also wanted him back.

“I won't go, I won't,” he said hurriedly, seeing my face. His green eyes met mine and he said again with utter conviction, “I won't go away again, I promise.”

“Good. I'm holding you to it,” I managed to say before rising with a droopy tired baby in my arms and saying, “I need to change Sulamith and put her to bed. I'll be back down in a while,” and I headed upstairs and went about the beautifully absorbing task of putting Sulamith to bed.

*

When I was sure she slept, when her eyelashes rested on her cheeks, and her little mouth was completely relaxed and just a little slack, when her balled up fists had come just a little undone, I flipped on the baby monitor, then closed the bedroom door softly behind me, and the baby gate at the top of the stairs after that, and crept downstairs. I could hear Sheila and Evan talking in the living room and I sat down on the stairs not really caring that I was eavesdropping. Sheila was telling Evan about Sulamith, “I love having her here Evan. She's the sweetest baby. So full of life and joy. She has me smiling everyday.”

“Did you ever meet her father?” Evan asked Sheila.

Sheila sighed a heavy sigh, “Yes. Once.”

“What was he like?” Evan asked.

“It's a little hard to say. His English wasn't good, and I only met him the once, but he was a handsome devil, I'll tell you that much. He was about your age, dark hair and eyes, like his daughter. He was a soldier which shocked me at first. I never figured Krista would go for a military type, but he was a bit of a renegade. He had a wildness to him that I think she liked. He was completely devoted to her. It hurts to think about the way they were together. They made a beautiful couple.”

There was a silence before I heard anyone speak again. It was Sheila.

“You still have feelings for her, don't you,” not asking. Confirming.

I didn't hear Evan's response but his answer was obvious from Sheila's reply.

“Well . . . He'll be a tough act to follow,” she said into the silence.

I leaned my head against the stairwell wall, feeling heavy, when Evan asked his mother, “How is she Mum, really? I don't dare ask her.”

“Knowing will only make having her back harder, not easier.”

“Tell me,” he insisted.

Sheila sighed again, “She's . . . Fragile, Evan. Very, extremely, fragile. Her life split into a million tiny little pieces and she's trying to pick them all back up again, she really is. Some days I think she's doing fine, but others . . . I don't know. I still hear her crying on the stairs at night. Maybe she'll never be whole again.” Sheila was silent for a moment before telling Evan, “She has family elsewhere that she could be with, but I think that they are . . . too much a part of what happened to her, and too much a reminder of everything she lost. She still has a long road ahead of her.”

There was another long silence then I heard Evan say, “Look, I think I'd better go. Tell Krista . . . tell her I'll be by later this week.”