Miriam Toews - Summer of My Amazing Luck

Joe and Pillar were going through a bad time. Joe had been unfaithful. He’d got drunk after one of their big fights and picked up a girl of no more than sixteen, in a bar. They’d had sex in Joe’s car and Joe ended up with a case of genital warts which, naturally, he’d passed on to Pillar. Pillar freaked out and told Joe they were history. She had her warts burned off, had an AIDS test and told the kids that their father was mentally ill. He had to leave. But, as so often before, he talked his way back into her heart and her home. He appealed to the kids, he showered her with affection and bought her flowers and said it would never ever happen again. He blamed his actions on booze and depression, on feeling unloved and unappreciated. He turned it around. If Pillar had been more attentive, Joe wouldn’t have been forced to sleep with the girl. Poor Joe. Pillar said there were certain things he’d have to do if he wanted to come back. One was get a job and support them. Lish and I thought he should have to get the name Pillar tattooed on his penis. As his penis grew, so would the letters of her name Pillar get stretched out, maybe in red or black, on his swollen member, forever reminding him where it belonged. Pillar told Joe that she was tired of living with a fuck-up. She told him the only way he could be a fuck-up in his personal life was if he was brilliant in a career. Then you can get away with it because you’re special. Look at Chaplin, or Picasso. But Joe wasn’t an artist and Pillar was nobody’s muse.

For a while Joe did lumpy labour. Every morning he went downtown to the job centre and sat around waiting to be told where to go. One day he had to sweep roads, one day he had to pick up garbage, one day he had to move pig parts from one warehouse to another. One day he had to clean the sludge from the porto-toilets on a construction site. One day he was sent to work in a glass factory. He had steel-toed boots, but no work gloves, and when he came home after twelve hours in the glass factory, his hands were all cut up. Pillar poured hydrogen peroxide into his open cuts and Joe’s screams could be heard throughout Half-a-Life. Pillar felt bad. She told Joe the next day he could wear a pair of the kids’ hockey mitts. He shouted, “OH I CAN, CAN I? WELL THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!! THIS IS FUCKING GREAT. I’M THIRTY-EIGHT YEARS OLD AND I HAVE A WIFE AND THREE KIDS AND I HAVE A CAREER PICKING UP GLASS OFF THE FUCKING FLOOR WEARING CHILDREN’S MITTENS!!” Then for two weeks he didn’t go to the job centre. He lay on the couch and drank gin and slept. Pillar told us he wore the same sweatpants every day on that couch.

Mercy heard about Joe and Pillar, as we all eventually did, and she said she would try to get him a job at the Disaster Board. Like I said, they were hiring anybody and everybody. When Pillar told Joe that Mercy might be able to get him a job with the disaster board, he yelled, “MY WHOLE FUCKING LIFE IS A DISASTER. I’M FUCKING WAY OVERQUALIFIED FOR THAT JOB I’LL TELL YOU. WHY THE FUCK WOULD I BE INTERESTED IN OTHER PEOPLE’S DISASTERS I CAN BARELY FUCKING KEEP UP WITH MY OWN. WHY DON’T you BECOME A FLOOD INSPECTOR IF YOU’RE SO EXCITED ABOUT IT?” And then he started laughing in a deranged way. Pillar told him she would, but she couldn’t count on him to look after the kids when he could barely look after himself. She told him inspecting flooded basements was a lot less work than looking after three kids, and if he had half a brain, he’d get out of those grimy sweatpants, and take the job. Pretty soon, the dole would force him to do more lumpy labour, or he’d have to move out so Pillar could get the dole herself as a single mother. And where would Joe go?

So Mercy got him the job as a flood inspector. He had to go into people’s basements with a clipboard and all sorts of forms. He had to get down all the information about every room. Like what the walls were made of, whether or not there was carpet or insulation, and how old everything was. He had to draw out the floor plan with windows and doors and everything colour-coded on graph paper with the square feet and the place where the water entered. He also had to make lists of everything damaged, how old it was, what it had cost, how much time had been spent cleaning up and on and on. It was complicated for Joe and he was one of the slowest inspectors. Mercy’s bosses were asking her, “What’s with this guy?”

Well, it turned out he was casing every house for his own purposes. He was taking note of which windows were unlocked, which doors had dead-bolts, and, more importantly, which ones didn’t. Where the VCRs were kept, and whether or not there were home alarms installed. The first house he broke into, the owners caught him red-handed and said, “Hey, you look familiar.” They figured it out and reported him to the cops and the Disaster Board. He was fired, naturally, fined, and put in jail. And Pillar was really alone with the kids, and Mercy was doing her best to make up for her error in judgement. So, she was in no position to get caught blackmailing Bunnie Hutchison, Minister of Families and Welfare, in a crazy scheme concocted by angry mothers on the dole.

With Joe on his way to jail for a couple of months, Pillar could focus on what she considered his good qualities. Instead of getting him out of her life, she seemed to resolve to make their relationship work upon his release. Lish and I were over there having coffee. The kids were colouring all over the back sides of Disaster Board inspector sheets, Pillar had a lot of them around for scrap paper. Dill was playing with Joe’s guitar, dropping bits of toast inside it and then trying to get them out.

Lish asked Pillar, “What do you like about Joe?”

“Well, he’s very loyal, you know …”

“Loyal? Yeah? But Pillar …”

“Yeah. And he’s independent. He doesn’t run with the pack.”

“Anything else?”

“Yeah.” Pillar hesitated and put her hair behind her ear. “He’s affectionate, you know, frisky.”

“My god, Pillar, what is he? A dog?”

“Lish, I’ll tell you something. He’s a man. And I’m damn happy to have one. You would be, too. I know it. When Joe and I wake up in the morning I’m so happy, really. Like, I tremble with happiness. My chest tightens, my eyes burn with tears of happiness. Sometimes. Like I can’t believe I’ve got Joe. This world is so fucked up and cold and mean it’s amazing Joe and I could ever even get close enough to each other to have kids. He’s got a problem with employment, sure, but …”

“Not to mention other women,” added Lish.

“That was not really his fault.”

“Oh god, Pillar. Honestly, you know what he wants? He’s got this perfect picture of domestic bliss: you wearing a red dress or something and no underwear and washing dishes, supper in the oven — and boning you from behind while the kids watch YTV in the other room. That’s his idea of happiness.”

“Well Lish, you don’t even know him. At least he didn’t knock me up and then disappear. At least I’m not chasing him around the countryside. At least I have more than a spoon to hold onto at night.”

“Yeah, well, Pillar, he’s not exactly going anywhere, is he? Even if he wasn’t going to jail, he wouldn’t leave here. He’s got it so good. You just keep forgiving him, blaming yourself for his mistakes, cooking his dinner, smiling at his stupid guitar songs and fooling yourself into thinking you’ve got something really fine. The guy’s a loser, Pillar.”

“Yeah, well, he’s my loser.”

I was confused. Maybe Pillar had a point. When you’re a mother on the dole you don’t get a lot of opportunities to meet men. And it’s damn lonely at times. Maybe Joe was better than nothing after all. Then again, is it stupid to want something better when you are on the dole? So maybe Lish was right. Why not roam around the countryside looking for the real thing? What have we got to lose? Pillar could probably do better than Joe, but could Lish ever find the busker? And make him stay put? And would she want him after she got him? And if you keep having kids with different guys? What does that mean?