"-and all that week, all I could think about was these damned blood tests. Blood tests, blood tests, blood tests. Meanwhile, I'm so sick that I'm debating every
day
as to whether or not I should even go into work while I'm stressing about the results. So finally, the results are in and I'm at the Doctor's office, and before my butt even hits the chair, Maher goes, "You've got Diabetes." And I'm like, "What the hell?" and the next thing I know I've got a prescription for Metformin three times a day, I gotta go to a Diabetes awareness class and I got Mum, Darla and Owen all over me about it- The
Doctor's
all over me about it –like I don't already
know
about Diabetes for god's sake, and now I have to get one of those blood sugar meters and... Eddy, are you even
listening
to me?"
Edward R Roth was in fact not listening because he'd heard all about it twice before. In the nine years Ed had known Valerie, he'd become an expert at not listening, especially when it came to 'the health report', as he'd come to call it. The woman could go on forever.
The two had been living common law for the last ten years and he'd already decided that he'd never marry her, was even pretty sure he'd be gone before an eleventh could pass in their depressing basement apartment. At age thirty-nine, Ed could see forty coming fast and perspective on his own life had been changing at almost the same pace.
They sat across from one another in a booth at a small diner off the side of a rural Quebec secondary highway. Ed was quite relieved to see the tall, lit sign appear from the snowy cloud of blizzard conditions almost forty-five minutes earlier. It had been getting rapidly darker and his tension level dropped markedly as he managed to back the
Daytona
into a parking position that would require the least trouble in getting out again, whenever that would be and under whatever conditions. From the looks of the snowbound vehicles in the small parking area, mostly big old four wheel drives, they wouldn't be the only ones stranded at the diner. While between the car and the front door, he couldn't read the name of the establishment because of the snow stuck to the sign, figuring it was no loss since it was surely done in French, making it impossible for him to read or pronounce it in any case. In many ways, from an Anglophone's perspective, Ed found Quebec to be a different country whether the province was separated from the rest of Canada or not.
However, after they'd ordered and ate, had their coffee refilled by the rude waitress to settle in for however long it would take for the plow to come by, Ed soon began to see what an ordeal this would be once she started talking to pass the time. He'd often feel like a bastard for wanting to beg her to just please shut up when she did this, but the fact was that he couldn't imagine a way to care any less about the things she normally talked about. This isn't to say that the art of conversation was altogether lost to them at this point in their relationship, but more a statement of how they'd simply run out of things to talk about. It happened in the last few years while they were drifting apart without either of them noticing at first. Ed now often wondered if she was as sick of him as he was of her, at least during her sessions of constant prattle, the idea that sometimes a nice silence between two people is a good thing never having occurred to her. Tuning her out had become a lot easier and less stressing than silently begging God for someone to come along and shoot him in the head.
At the moment, however, he wasn't tuning her out in favour of thoughts about the things that normally mattered to him, rather watching an American family of five sitting in another booth across the dining room. He could tell they were American by their accents and how they obviously weren't aware of how Anglophones were viewed in some areas of Quebec. If they were, they'd also be aware that the ten or twelve or more locals at the dining counter, who acted as though they didn't understand English, understood it perfectly well.
"They don't realize..." Ed toned.
Irritated, the somewhat attractive, slightly overweight thirty-seven year old brunette looked around at where her common law husband's gaze was directed.
"-and I don't know what kind of cockamamie excuse for a country has people who can't speak American running around this day in age, but somebody better teach them because they can't make change!" Allan Conway charged a bit too loud. "If I wasn't the type to check my change, I'd have been ripped off the last two god-damned times we stopped to get gas, and ya know what? Ya know what? I think it was on purpose!"
Cheryl Conway, Allan's attractive, dirty blonde wife, regarded him from across the table with speculation and said, "Dear, I hardly think they'd stay in business if they were ripping people off. It was probably just a misunderstanding because of the language gap."
Cheryl, in fact one of the more attractive women in her book club, actually didn't notice any problem with the quaint Canadians she'd dealt with to that point. They all seemed very friendly, especially the men and especially the ones who couldn't speak English. In her dark purple, short sleeved pullover, white sweater over her shoulders and buttoned at her neck and a pleated gray skirt that went just past her knees, she assumed they were simply unused to women of American standards.
Even her husband was an extension of these standards which weren't just American, but personal. At forty-seven, three years her senior, he stood tall with a solid build at five foot, eleven inches. His features were almost ruggedly handsome and the iron gray that had begun to take over his hair in no way diminished the man he presented.
Nineteen year old Calvin, sitting to her right, took strongly after his father in appearance, lacked the blustery attitude, but understood the politics of standards as did his mother. Jeans and a bowling shirt were his usual attire and that evening was no different as he once again looked around the eating establishment and the other patrons with his nose wrinkled in light disdain. Unlike his mother, he didn't find the natives, as he'd been referring to them, to be especially friendly. However, both his sisters would have sided with Cheryl on that.
Jill, sitting on Cheryl's left and beside the aisle, was an eighteen year old confirmed habitual texter of things so important to young women her age, such as where her many friends were currently located and with who. She looked like her mother with slightly darker hair, the same height and soft curves except without the breast augmentation that Cheryl had had done in order that the swell of her chest could perfectly match her slightly rounded hips, if not a little more so. Her youngest daughter was currently looking bored stiff in the 'no service' zone they were travelling through, slumping in a black skirt that her mother considered a bit too short even in the summer, and a lightweight pink sweater.
The oldest of the three siblings was Deb at age twenty. Still living at home because of the horrible economy, she was the only one of Cheryl's children who'd gone at all astray, refusing college in favour of just getting out there and to hell with more classrooms. Darker hair fell down her shoulders than her sister's and, like Calvin, she took after her father in facial features, her grandmother on his side in the body. Her breasts were slightly bigger than her mother's large C-cups with the proportioned hips and the height of five foot nine to go with them. She sat beside her father on the inside, as unprepared for the subzero Quebec climate as the rest of her Floridian family was, in a pair of tight fitting, black pants that she knew made her ass look great and were also fit for her part time job at the local TV station. Her white blouse was buttoned up respectably, not because her mother preferred it, but because Deb didn't feel she had to show all that much skin to appear desirable. She was right.
Allan, the owner of
Conway Outfitters,
a chain of no less than three locations selling the latest and greatest hunting and camping equipment, knew better than to be mollified by his wife's doubts about the way the French did business.
"It's in the eyes, Cheryl. I've been doing business most my all life and I know a shyster by the look in his eyes.
Every
very time I open my mouth in this God forsaken, third world, arctic wasteland of the inbred, all I
get
is that look."
"Heh. Inbred," Calvin smirked.
"Those guys at the counter look like they live in the woods," Jill lazily remarked after a glance over her shoulder.
"Maybe, Deb spoke up, "that's just the way people are around here."
"Debbie," her father replied, "Where would you rather live? Here, or in Florida?"
" ... Well... in Florida, but-"
"I rest my case."
Deb rolled her eyes and looked across the dining room at a couple in their mid to late thirties. They were the only other people in the place aside from the rough locals and, as she looked, the pretty brunette in blue jeans and red sweater spoke to her friend, a regular looking guy with dark hair, jeans and gray flannel shirt. A look of irritation lay over her features and he looked sharply at her, a similar look in his, but more careful. He looked like he was going along to get along.
"Is it too much to ask that your attention be on me for once?" Valerie indignantly demanded.
Ed's lips compressed in frustration as he regarded her, but it seemed like there was wasn't any honest answer he could give that wouldn't clearly say that it
was
too much to ask of him. Her medium brown eyes filled with affront as he remained silent, only shaking his head and rolling his eyes in reply.
"Yeah. That's just... (sigh) Do you even care about me?"
"If I didn't, I wouldn't be with you now."
"That's what you always say, but it's come to the point where it doesn't mean much. Now it's almost like an insult."
"Val, would you just please not do this? I was distracted by what's going on over there, that's all," Ed told her in a voice lower than hers. "Why do you always have to make these negative assumptions that I don't care just because I get distracted or whatever?"
"Because you're always distracted. Haven't you noticed how I've been asking you lately what I'd just said when we talk?" You can never tell me, can you? Not
once
could you tell me. You never listen to me and you don't even seem to want to be with me anymore, so I'm asking... Do you love me?"
"Valerie..."
It suddenly seemed as though their relationship might not last the night and, in the space of a second, Ed imagined what the rest of their car trip would be like in that event, not to mention how things would go once they finally did reach her mother's house. Would he be expected to drive her back? Would he have to rent a motel room for a week while she stayed at her mother's place until then?
"Valerie, I'm sorry you take this as an insult, but it's true: If I didn't love you, I wouldn't be here. I know we've had our problems, especially in the last few years, but that doesn't mean I don't care and that I don't love you. You've got to stop assuming my feelings for you."
"I have to assume your feelings for me because you never
talk
to
me
," she almost plead.
