Life has a way of kicking you in the balls and watching you struggle to catch your breath, only to wind her foot right back and do it all over again.
Inevitable that I get to my old house, and stare at it like a stranger would. The stone steps that I have no trouble walking up, but Matty needs his whole body weight on one leg to heave himself up with. Those awful stone lions on either side of the door that are more pretentious than the gold-leaf plated door knocker resting on the dark green polished wood of the door. Large windows covered by gauzy curtains that always reminded me of hospitals when I was younger until I turned eighteen and learned the truth of what hospitals really taste and smell like.
I walk my way up the steps and refuse to make eye contact with the far window in the upper east corner. Her room, as it’s been for the past three years, preserved and embalmed like the room is a living thing and the rest of Jules hasn’t just floated away.
I knock, wait for ten seconds and ignore the cold flush in my body that might mean something’s wrong. Blood sugar levels can either go up or down, my body lacking the hormone insulin to get it into my cells, where it needs to be. Both a high or low feels like getting donkey-kicked, makes your brain fuzzy, and makes me so fucking tired that I need to nap to recover.
I hate that my survival is dictated by a vial of hormone in my fridge at home, and another one I carry in my pouch that I need to use right after I eat. I hate that I could die if my sugar drops too low, and I’m too nauseous to eat to save my own ass.
What I hate most of all? That my sister’s kid is diabetic, too. And there’s nothing I can do about it.
The door opens and it feels like the temperature hikes up ten degrees. Mom hates the cold, and I don’t know why she sticks around Montreal when she has enough money to move anywhere she wants to. I think it’s just to screw with me.
Yeah, most likely just to screw with me.
“Hunter? Is that you?” she asks. Like she gets any other visitors to the house. The woman hardly lives here anymore, but keeps the brick monstrosity for bragging rights only.
“Yeah, it’s me,” I say, looking around the foyer for Matty to come around the corner any minute. I stare straight ahead and will myself not to let my eyes travel up, up, up the grand staircase. I will myself deaf to the imagined sounds of Jules running down the stairs to ask me for a ride somewhere, all that time ago, when we were still in high school, and I got my license before she did.
I wonder what the Elevator Babe would say when she saw this place. Aly’s already seen it and I hate the way she looks at the furniture, the paintings, even the floor. Like it’s all going to be hers one day. Which is true, but still, keep that smug look off your face, I don’t care how nice you can suck my cock.
“Where have you been?!” Mom asks, and the edge of shrill she adds to her voice has my eardrums popping.
“I had a date.” If a date constitutes Aly fucking my brains out, then yeah, that’s exactly what I had. In the morning light, I know what I am – I’m a transaction; instead of money, I pay in orgasms.
“You can’t just leave him here! What would the neighbours think?”
I snicker. “That you’re his grandmother, yeah? Which you are, just to remind you.”
She’s wearing those big sunglasses that Hollywood seems to be wearing, and she’s nursing a glass of something that tinkles with ice every time her hand shakes. It’s not even ten-thirty in the morning.
“No need to get smart. You could have called, Hunter. I raised you better than that.”
I want to tell her that she didn’t raise me at all, but I’m not in the mood for her crocodile tears, not when I have to gear up for Matty’s antics in the next five minutes.
“How was the kid?”
Mom’s mouth twists, and she takes a noisy slurp of her drink. “As if I would know. Edouard? Edouard?! The man is like a ghost, I have no idea how he moves around so silent- oh! There you are! My son has come to collect my grandson, Edouard, would you kindly collect him from his room?”
Eddie materializes to my left, nods, and I hear his soft footfalls climb up the stairs. I thought Matty would be ready by now, shoes on, dressed and all that shit. Now I’m going to have to do it, and the little guy is going to fight me every single step of the way.
“Who was your date with last night? Someone I know?”
I bare my teeth. “You don’t know her.” A picture of the Elevator Babe comes to mind, her walking in these pristine halls, maybe awed at what she finds in this house. I’d tell her that looks can be deceiving, that we’re really in Hell.
“What about Alysha? How has she been doing? Why, I saw her mother just last night, and she was asking about you. When you two are going to set a date for the wedding?”