“The Steel Toe. Have you heard of it?”
“It’s down at the other end of Commercial?”
“Near Hastings. This is my second day. I start at five. I don’t even feel like working now.”
“Well, you have had a terrible upset.”
“How could he do such a thing?”
“There could be any number of reasons. Best let it be.”
“It’s hard.”
“I know.” Sheila refilled Melissa’s cup.
“Just half, please. I’ll be flying out of here if I have any more.”
“Did you get any rest”, Sheila said sitting down with her.
“Some. I mostly just lay there and stared. “Oh Gawd—I don’t want to go into work today.”
“Then maybe you’d like to go home.”
“It’s only my second day. I don’t think it would look very good.”
“You sound like a very responsible person.”
“Well, I am really. Don’t let the green hair fool you. I have done some pretty stupid things but I’ve also tried to own up to them.”
“That’s what makes life interesting.”
“Don’t I know it.”
“How did you meet?”
“Stefan? On the street. We kinda rescued each other.”
“Do you think he’ll come back?”
“Probably. He’s done this before. Problem is he thinks he’s no good. For anyone. He really hates what he is?”
“Then there isn’t much you can really do for him.”
“No. There’s not. I try. I try to assure him that he’s attractive, that he’s a good person. That he’s worthwhile. Only he just doesn’t seem to believe it. And it’s not really my job anyway but I think it is because he’s been real good to me, and he’s just so pathetic and full of need—he needs a mom. But I can’t be his mom. I need mothering.”
“We all do. Even me.”
“But you’re a mother yourself.”
“Even mothers need mothering. And sometimes especially mothers.”
“One day I want to have kids. Not yet. I’m nowhere near being ready yet. I was pregnant last winter. I ended it.”
“Stefan’s?”
. “No, thank God. This couple I was living with in West Van wanted me to be surrogate mother for them. I refused. They were keeping me as their slave, or trying to. I escaped. It was that night downtown that I met Stefan. I had some money, so we got a room together. The next day I went to the Every Woman Clinic. Stefan came with me. Like I just said, he doesn’t know how good he is. But I also wish that it was a choice I didn’t have to make, and I think that’s why I’m so upset lately.”
“I think a lot of women feel the way you do about abortion.
“You’re not pro-life I hope.”
“Pro-choice, actually. But it still isn’t a perfect solution. There are no perfect solutions. To anything. There’s always going to be consequences. There will always be compromises to be made, there will always be a mess to clean up. No matter how hard we try to avoid making one.”
“Do you really believe that?”
“I KNOW it.”
“And it always has to be like that.”
“I don’t know if it has to. But that’s the way it is.”
“But you say it doesn’t have to.”
“All right—say it doesn’t.”
“Then what do we do?”
“I don’t know. Keep trying I suppose.”
“But what if we keep messing up?”
“But isn’t that how we learn? Through our mistakes? By messing up?”
“So what you’re saying then is we’re really here to learn. That it doesn’t matter if we fuck-up or not—excuse my language please.”
“I wouldn’t say it doesn’t matter. Of course it matters. That’s why we have to try not to.”
“But why does it matter?”
“I suppose it comes back to being responsible. To accepting responsibility.”
“But why bother if we’re going to keep messing up anyway?”
“Because this way we can say that at least we tried?”
“I dunno—that sounds pretty lame, if you ask me.”
“But does it?” Sheila said. “Because this way, by trying, by saying that we tried, it sets a whole different process in motion.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, okay, we try to do good. But we mess up for having tried. At least we’re more likely to see where we’ve messed up, and try to do something to rectify it, whereas, if we just don’t care anyway, we’re not going to recognize much of anything, and things will just keep getting worse before we all drown in the end results of our irresponsible behaviour.”
“But even if we try to make our mistakes better, aren’t we still going to screw up some more?”
“We likely will. I mean, look at Germany after the war. They were a nation destroyed by their own evil. So along came the Americans, the well-intentioned conquerors with their Marshall Plan. So they rebuilt Germany economically, politically. But they were never able to conquer Nazism, which especially since reunification has become an increasing menace. Things are still less than perfect, but what they have now is much better than nothing.”
“So there will never be such a thing as a solution.”
“There will never be such a thing as a perfect solution.”
“So we’re cursed with being imperfect.”
“No. Not cursed. Blessed.”
“Which makes imperfection our perfection.”
“I’ve never thought of it that way”, Sheila said. “You are a very wise young woman.”
“I’d say the same about you.”
“Well, I’d hardly call myself young. As for being wise—”
“Learning being wise?”
“Well, I suppose we’re all getting wisdom. Or we have that opportunity, that choice we can make.”
“So it’s all about the getting of wisdom, this mess-making and bad choices”, Melissa said.
“I suppose it is”, Sheila said, “I suppose that it is.”
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