Robert Wilson - The Divide

“I have to talk to you.”

“Well, I—the thing is—I have a plane to catch. I’m leaving tonight.”

“Oh, shit. Oh! Well—listen—if you could just tell me, you know, where he is —just give me a number or something—just so I could talk to him—”

Susan said desperately, “I don’t know!”

“You don’t know? I thought that was why you came here—to take him away!”

“He left! John, I mean. He got scared and he just, uh, left.” Should she be saying this? “What is it, Amelie, is there a problem?”

“It’s my fucking brother! I think he wants to kill me.”

Susan could not frame a response to this.

“I just thought if I could talk to somebody,” Amelie said. Then she added, “But you mean it, don’t you? You lost him, too.”

“Yes. Well, I—If you could get here soon, maybe we could talk. I have some time before I absolutely need to leave. Is this connected with John?”

“Partly. Look, I don’t want to make a problem for you—”

“No, no!—I mean, I want to talk.”

“Well, if there’s time—”

“Can you get here inside the hour?”

Pause. “Sure. It’s not that far.”

“I’ll wait for you,” Susan said.

They met in the lobby and then found a booth at the back of the coffee shop.

Amelie’s eyes were puffy and bloodshot; her hair was down in matted bangs across her forehead. She wore jeans and a T-shirt under an oversized red plaid lumberjack shirt. Susan, sitting across from her, felt instantly helpless.

“It’s Roch,” Amelie said. “He’s my brother.”

The girl seemed anxious to talk; Susan listened carefully. She was not accustomed to having people come to her with their problems. It wasn’t the sort of thing that happened to her. She paid close, somber attention as Amelie spoke.

Amelie had a brother named Roch who had followed her to Toronto from Montreal. “A real son-of-a-bitch. I mean, he has trouble dealing with people. I don’t think he registers people at all, they just don’t exist for him, unless they get in his way or humiliate him—and then his instinct is just to crush them, grind them under his foot. He can be pretty single-minded about it. I learned how to deal with it, you know, how to keep from making him mad. But it isn’t always easy. When we came here—”

When they came to Toronto they had lived in the streets and Roch had encouraged Amelie into occasional prostitution.

“But that sounds like—I mean, you have to understand, it was the kind of thing a runaway kid might do. It happened maybe four or five times and it was a question of having money for food, a place to stay. It was a long time ago.”

Susan nodded.

Eventually Amelie had found a job and a cheap apartment. Roch had taken a whole string of jobs, mostly lifting and carrying. He was strong, Amelie said, but he didn’t get along with people. He’d been working for the last six months at the Bus Parcel Express depot down at Front Street, but he lost that when he put a choke-hold on his supervisor and almost killed him. Roch was outraged when they fired him. His life, Amelie seemed to imply, was a continuous series of these outrages: he would be provoked, he would respond, he would be punished for it… “Christ knows what the guy said to him. Some kind of insult. So Roch practically breaks the man’s neck, and he’s fired, and it’s business as usual, right? Except that, for Roch, every time this happens it’s like brand-new. Like he’s filing it away on some index card in his head: fucked over again.”

Amelie had avoided Roch fairly effectively for a few years. But the BPX firing had been a point-of-no-return … now Roch was back, and he had changed, Amelie said; he was closer to the edge than he had ever been before.

“Like this thing with Benjamin. Suddenly Roch is jealous. For three years he ignores me altogether, then suddenly he resents this guy I’m living with. What makes it worse is that Benjamin—or I guess it was John—did this humiliation thing on him, the fight they had. No real physical damage, but the contempt —you could feel it shooting out of him. And Roch just soaked it up. Charging his battery—you know what I mean? You could say Roch is at a very high voltage right now.”

Amelie stopped long enough to finish the beer she’d ordered. Susan waited.

Amelie drained the glass. “Maybe it’s better Benjamin left. I don’t think he could stand up to Roch right now. I don’t think—I’m not sure I can, either.”

Susan said, “He’s staying with you?”

“I can’t make him leave.”

“Is he hurting you?”

Amelie looked across the table, then reached up and pulled her hair away from her forehead. There was an angry blue bruise underneath.

Susan drew in her breath. “My God!”

Amelie shrugged. “I’m just worried he’ll get worse.”

“You should call the police!”

She laughed derisively. “Have you ever seen a domestic dispute call? I have. You know what happens? Fuck-all, is what happens. And it would make Roch really mad.”

“You can leave, though, can’t you?”

“It’s my apartment!”

“ I mean temporarily,” Susan said. “There must be a women’s shelter in the city. You could have a restraining order put on him—”

“A restraining order,” Amelie said: the idea was comic. But she added, “Are there really shelters?”

“Well—we can find out. Let me make a couple of calls.” Susan looked at her watch. “Oh, lord—my plane!”

“That’s right,” Amelie said. “You gotta go.” She stood up; Susan fumbled out money for the check. Amelie added, “You expect to hear from him again?” Meaning John.

“I don’t know,” Susan admitted. “Maybe. Maybe you’ll hear from him first. We have to keep in touch. Listen, there are phones in the lobby … let me make a couple of calls for you?”

Amelie shrugged.

Susan stopped at the front desk, hunting in her purse for the room key. Check out, locate a shelter in case Amelie needed it, then take a cab to the airport—there was still time for everything, but only just. She tapped the bell and the desk clerk hurried over. “Ms. Christopher—”

“Yes,” she began. “I—”

“That call came through,” the clerk said. “I suppose the one you’ve been waiting for? Long distance collect.”

Susan just gaped.

“No message,” the clerk said. “Except that he would try again in an hour or so.”

Susan checked her watch a second time.

“When was this?”

“About twenty-five minutes ago.”

“Thank you,” Susan said. “I’ll wait up in my room.”

“Yes, ma’am. Was there anything else—?”

“No—not just now.” She turned to Amelie. “You can wait with me if you like.”

Amelie said, “Won’t you miss your plane?”

“Yes,” Susan said. “I will.”

John said he would meet her Wednesday morning at the ferry docks at Tsawassen.

Dr. Kyriakides wired the money for her flight to B.C. and two tickets back. Susan helped Amelie check into a YWCA, spent a sleepless night at the hotel, then caught a taxi to the airport and a westbound plane.

It was windy and cold at the docks. Susan bought a cup of bitter coin-machine coffee and huddled in the waiting room. She was excited but terribly tired. She slept for a few minutes with her back against the wall, woke up stiff and uncomfortable—and saw John standing a few feet away.

He looked thin and worn, a duffel bag in one hand and a grey visor cap pulled down over his eyes. He was sun-brown and his hair was longer than she remembered. But it was John, not Benjamin … there was something in the way he stood … she knew at once.