‘Oh, nothing. Never mind. It’s probably just as well.’
‘Alex.’ She sat down on the couch beside him, and he edged away.
‘I said it’s okay. Look, I was convenient. I’m aware of that, and if you’ve got some other guy to take over, that’s fine. I can’t really do this any longer anyway.’
Susie lifted one hand to her mouth and began to chew on the edge of her thumb. ‘Okay, I don’t get this. Where is this coming from all of a sudden?’
‘Oh, come on.’ He stretched out his legs and crossed one ankle over the other. ‘We both know where I stand. I mean, you never bothered to call me for thirteen years, did you? You called Adrian and not me, for God’s sake.’
‘This is bullshit.’ She twisted her thumb between her teeth. ‘In case your memory doesn’t extend back a full three weeks, I did call you, how the hell else would you even be here?’
‘Yeah. Eventually. You did.’ He didn’t know why he didn’t stop, but he couldn’t, the rush of it, high and reckless. ‘Your brother was missing and you wanted somebody to be your, your good luck charm or whatever. And apparently you didn’t happen to have any other admirers around at that point, or, or your husband, whoever the hell he was – ’
‘His name’s Nick McCawley,’ said Susie fiercely, biting off a strip of nail. ‘He works at Legal Aid. Why don’t you give him a call, collect a few more stories you can throw in my face?’
‘That’s not my fucking point!’ He didn’t mean to shout, but it happened, a stab of pain in his head. ‘I’m trying to tell you, I can’t do it again, Susie-Paul, I can’t go through this again.’ He put his hands up to his eyes and rubbed them. ‘For God’s sake. Of course I want you. You’re smart, you’re beautiful, probably everybody wants you. But it costs me too much. It costs me too fucking much to hold your hand until you feel like going away. I can’t give up everything else just to be a marginal player in the dramatic life of Suzanne Rae.’
She stood up then, without saying a word, picked up her coat and walked past him to the stairs and left, closing the door hard behind her, and suddenly he was alone in her apartment, half-panicked by what he had just accomplished. He couldn’t stay here without her, that was ridiculous, he had to – oh Christ, he had to follow her again. He ran down the stairs and out into the street.
She was far ahead of him, a distant little figure under the street-lights. He had to keep running, his camera bag thudding awkwardly against his hip, to catch up with her, and for a minute he thought that he wouldn’t, that he’d have to stop and lose sight of her. In the darkness she kept receding, a small shadow in the shadows, and by the time he reached her he felt such relief that he almost didn’t expect her to be angry.
‘Get lost,’ she snapped. He tried to touch her shoulder, but she shook him off, still walking.
‘Susie, cut it out,’ said Alex, struggling for breath. ‘I wasn’t making fun of your life. I’ve seen what you go through with Derek, I know it’s real, and I know the breakup with Chris must have hurt you in its own way, but Jesus, it nearly killed me, and you never even noticed.’
‘That is not true.’
‘Okay. You did. You noticed that I was someone who would just hang around and be in love with you forever and never ask too much of you. But I,’ he tried to catch his breath; she was so much smaller than him but she was moving fast, ‘I have a chronic illness, okay? I don’t like to say that, but it’s true. The first night we went down into the ravine, I nearly had a hypo episode, and then my sugar went up way too high, and I had something close to a hemorrhage from the stress, I had serious damage to the blood vessels in my eyes, I’m, I’m, I’m losing my sight for fuck’s sake, you can’t do this to me!’
She didn’t stop walking, but she slowed down a bit. ‘You didn’t tell me.’
‘Well, what was I going to say?’
‘I’m sorry, then. About that, I’m sorry. But about everything else, you’re just wrong.’
‘I am not.’
‘Do you really believe – God, Alex, do you think I could ever…’ she moved her hands in the air as if she were trying to shape a sentence. ‘Alex, I’m sorry about what happened back then. I fucked up. I treated you badly, I know I did. But you have no idea. You have no idea what it took to call you, what it – Alex, you, you are not, you have never been marginal. You can’t believe that. You can’t really believe that.’
‘It’s actually not very hard, all things considered.’
‘No. No, you just want to think that.’
‘Fuck that, Susie-Paul.’
‘You do. You don’t want to think that I was confused too. You don’t want to think that you mattered. That’s too hard. You just want to live in this pretend world where you aren’t responsible for anything.’
‘I’m not responsible? You left. You just left. You never even sent me a fucking postcard.’
‘Go home, Alex,’ she said quietly. They were nearing the intersection with Broadview now. ‘I don’t need you.’
‘No kidding,’ said Alex sourly.
‘God, you like that idea, don’t you? Poor Alex, out in the cold, all fragile and powerless. As if you… as if it never hurt, knowing you were always there – wanting things I couldn’t give you or, or anyone…’ She turned her head sharply, scanning the road for a break in the traffic. ‘As if you never hurt me. Jesus.’
‘It’s not the same at all. ‘
‘Okay, then.’ She turned to him. Her face was cold and very still. ‘I had an abortion in Vancouver. Will that do?’
He wasn’t immediately aware of any emotion. The first thing he thought was that he needed to sit down, and his legs folded up onto someone’s front lawn. He saw the outline of Susie standing in front of him in the darkness, a faint red wash from the Christmas lights of the house beside them, her arms crossed.
‘Good enough, Alex? Happy now? You think maybe you did enough harm after all?’
‘Oh God. Stop. I don’t… I don’t… ’
‘What I really hate,’ she went on, her voice tight and controlled, ‘is that I can’t tell you for sure if it was yours. Because I don’t know. You have no idea how much I hate saying that, but I don’t know.’ He pressed his fingers against his temples. ‘Not that there are a million candidates. It was either you or Chris. I just can’t be sure who.’
‘It’s not…’ he said, and the words came out too high-pitched, ‘… surely it’s not very likely it was me. I mean, it was only… ’
‘No. But it’s not very likely it was Chris either. One way or another, something unlikely happened, all right? It’s true I was sleeping with Chris on and off until I actually left town, which in retrospect seems pretty sick, but on the other hand,’ she took a breath, ‘when I slept with Chris, we used birth control.’
He dug his hands into his hair. ‘Oh Jesus.’
‘Yeah, well.’ ‘I’m sorry. God, I’m sorry. I thought… I assumed you would have said something if… oh, hell. I guess it doesn’t help to say I wouldn’t do the same thing now.’
She sat down on the grass beside him, and he put his head on his knees.
‘I shouldn’t have told you.’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know. Yes, you should’ve.’
‘I don’t blame you. Not really. I’m sorry I brought it up this way.’
‘No. I had to know.’
‘Chris doesn’t know. I don’t plan to tell him.’
A car drove by, lights passing over them. His eyes were throbbing. ‘Suppose,’ he said hesitantly, ‘suppose you had known… say you knew for sure it was Chris’s… would you have… ’
‘Please. Don’t. It’s not worth going that way. I was by myself in Vancouver, and honest to God, neither one of you was looking like fantastic father material.’ She swallowed once, and he thought she was trying not to cry. ‘I nearly did tell you. I had my hand on the phone once. But how the hell can you say to somebody, I’m pregnant and it could be yours, but then again maybe not?’