"EMILE"
by Emma Hooper

The drop of blood began by breaking free from the net of Emile’s bottom row of lashes (on the inside). Its journey down his uneven cheek was deliberate, unrushed, making its way between subtle stubble towards the comfortable dip of the corner of Emile’s mouth. Here it waited until Emile’s tongue, with an unconscious flick, would return it to within his warm body. This is how it worked when Emile was sitting. When he was laying or walking it was different.

In October, Emile had made potato soup. His pot was too small for the volume he had placed in it and a little of the soup spilled onto his already-not-so-clean stove every time his stirred it. Renata sat on a wooden chair with a criss-crossed back and read aloud from a magazine. She read about caring for Siamese Fighting Fish.

Emile knew about tears. At the age of seven he had watched a skinny uncle of his, on his mother’s side, driven to heartbreak by a field of corn that grew kernelless cobs year after year. He had watched this uncle at his grandmother’s house, through the cracks under doors and holes meant for keys, cry and cry and cry until he had no more salt-water for tears. Then he saw him cry through everything else, first bile, then urine, and finally blood. Of course the uncle died, (although Emile did not see this).

Renata and Emile both sat on wooden chairs, sopping up whatever soup they could from the bottom of their bowls with chunks of white wonderbread. Renata did this slowly, methodically, applying downward pressure on the crust of her bread chunk for a good two seconds or so until all the soup that could be got from a single location was thoroughly absorbed. Emile was more haphazard, sometimes scooping in large circles, sometimes dotting about. This is what they were doing when Emile found out that Renata had never flown before. Never? Never. But you’ve been places before! You’ve been to Trinidad. I took a boat. I always take a boat. Emile was amazed. He didn’t realize anyone took boats anymore. Except ferries and gondolas, maybe. Do you want to take a boat to Cuba then? No, no. Let’s fly. I’m excited to see what will happen to me if we fly.

Emile’s mother was the first to notice. Emile himself had stopped paying attention after the first few months. She was at Emile’s apartment, helping him do the household things he somehow never managed to learn how to do. They were sewing buttons when she noticed. They’re green now, she said, her hand and needle moving around and around the plastic button and cotton shirt. Greenish-yellow. Emile looked up from his sloppy thread towards a reflective window. His mother was right. His face was streaked with opaque greenish trails, the way he had once imagined snail’s slime to look. Bile, said his mother. Don’t forget to knot your thread at the end.

The most amazing thing was that after the first few months with Renata, the butterflies in Emile’s stomach had not gone away. In fact, they seemed to be multiplying. One day, in August, Renata got a very bad haircut. It was very bad. It was shaved up short in the back to about the middle of her neck, and had two chunks left longish in front, swaying freely like the ears of a bloodhound. There were also some random-looking bangs. One week later, in a moderately priced restaurant, Emile asked Renata to marry him.

Once, at his grandmother’s house, Emile had a whispered conversation with his uncle through the key-hole of a large oak door. They’ll tell you the first while is the hardest. The uncle’s voice was soft and light from so many weeks of silence; it made Emile think of tissue paper. They are wrong, of course. They are trying to be kind, to be good, but they are wrong, of course. The first while is the best. For the first while you can feel everything, you can taste it, smell it, feel it, hold it in your desperate fists. But as time falls away, so does the sharpness of the thing, fading, fading away until there is nothing left for the fists to grasp. Until there is just the heaviness in your stomach and the slow dull ache in the back of your skull…. As he spoke the uncle’s voice became lighter and lighter until it sounded like a small woman’s, and then like nothing at all. Upon returning to the dinner-table, Emile’s mother scolded him for taking so long in the bathroom.

Renata clutched her get-sick bag in one hand and Emile’s thigh in the other. There was turbulence. Do you? Do you? Do you? Do you? She asked him this with the same tone and urgency with which she asked the same question during their darkest, blanket-filled nights together. He answered the same way he always did. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Until the turbulence passed and she fell asleep, her head against his, his head against the window with the shade pulled down.

Renata left three days into Advent. You always knew I was made of salt, she said to Emile. Emile screamed until his voice turned to tissue paper. Renata took two suitcases, her good pots and the camera (together they agreed she would take this). This played out in vivid cartoon colour. Once she was gone, Emile looked for the scissors but discovered Renata had packed them in one of her suitcases. He sat on a criss-crossed chair as one by one his butterflies were replaced by stones.

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Emma Hooper is a freelance musician and writer living in Edmonton, Alberta. She holds a combined honours degree in Music and Writing from the University of Alberta. She is lucky enough to do what she loves most of the time, including performing as a core member of the popular modern string quartet The String Beans, and publishing written work of all genres

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