The Antagonist by Lynn Coady Read Free Book Online Page B

there’s nothing else to watch. Picture a sort of stationary glimmering — a small, steady radiance of sweetness and light. Oh, Gordie, the glimmer murmured to me one day after I’d finished kicking a hole in her bottom cupboard. Such cheap materials, in the house that Gord built.
    Gord himself had just finished calling the glimmer “goddamn useless” before sashaying off in the truck to Home Hardware to buy a couple of lamps for the living room which, he’d suddenly decided, was poorly lit and which Sylvie, if she’d been any kind of worthwhile human being, would have fixed before poor, busy, put-upon small-businessman Gord had to have his consciousness affronted by the experience of an inadequately lit room.
    “Useless idiot,” added Gord as he pulled on his boots. He wasn’t screaming anymore, but often with Gord, as in this instance, the post-screaming moments could be the worst. Just as Sylvie was likely starting to let herself feel relief that the screaming had finally come to an end, that she no longer had to hunker in the trenches as verbal machine-gun fire tore up the air around her, and just as she poked her head above ground hoping for the all-clear, Gord would lop it off with some quiet remark along the lines of useless idiot. And then go cheerfully on his way.
    “Fucking . . . assho— . . . fuck!” I was saying as I removed my foot from the cupboard once he was gone.
    Oh Gordie, the glimmer murmured then, wanting to make me feel better. Because that was what the glimmer was put on earth to do. Even in the daily exhaustion of dodging Gord’s machine-gun fire, she never gave any indication that anyone might deserve or require comfort other than her baby boy.
    It’s okay, the glimmer assured me. He really never talks to me like that . . . Dear, you made such a hole .
    “He always talks to you like that!” I sputtered — talking to the hole and not the glimmer. I often couldn’t look directly at the glimmer, she shone so pure and bright.
    No, no, the glimmer assured me in her voice that was like no other mother’s. Other mothers, it always seemed to me, either barked or shrieked. Their voices were either shrill and silly — a strained, desperate pitch deliberately tuned to convey: “I’m just a nice lady! Don’t concern yourself with me!” Or else sharp and harsh, a sort of debased version of the previous that announced: “I am so sick of trying to pull off this nice lady shit, now pick up your socks.”
    Not the glimmer. Her voice was always low and soothing, like the coo and flutter of overhead doves.
    No, no, she cooed and fluttered at me, wafting over to close the cupboard door as if that would hide the hole. He doesn’t. He really doesn’t.
    “When?” I yelled. This was the worst part — now I was yelling at the glimmer. I was yelling at her for having been yelled at. “ When doesn’t he talk to you like that? He always talks to you like that!”
    No, no, the glimmer cooed. He’s nice to me, Gordie. It’s just sometimes he wants to show off — you have to understand that.
    “Sometimes he wants to show off,” I repeated with complete incomprehension.
    He’s just trying to impress you, said the glimmer. You’re his boy.
    “Impress me,” I repeated.
    Otherwise he’s fine, said the glimmer. Don’t worry.
    Otherwise Gord was fine. He sneered and berated and called my mother “goddamn useless,” but only when I was around. Otherwise he was fine.
    That’s when the dread began to settle around me like ash.
    That was my first major hint from the universe.

5
    06/06/09, 9:16 a.m.
    HERE'S ADAM. LOOK, EVERYBODY!
    Lope-de-dope, gangly through the quad, awkward artsy four-eyes. His body doesn’t fit him somehow. He stoops, but in the strangest way. In a backwards kind of way. His hips jut a little forward, his hands dangle a little behind. A type of guy that other types of guys, hockey-team kinds of guys for example, want badly to scrape across the pavement. It is an