The tall, thin town house had four floors. A den and half bath in the basement. Living room, kitchen, and dining area on the second floor. On the third, my bedroom squeezed next to Scott’s, a bathroom in the middle of the hall, with Dennis and Linda at the front of the house, their windows looking out to what the Mi’kmaq named Waygwalteech, meaning “salt water all the way up.” A narrow section of Halifax Harbour, it outlines the west side of the Halifax Peninsula. Or, as it was renamed, the Northwest Arm.
My stepsister, Ashley, being the oldest, got the coolest room. The one on the top floor, a small attic space with a low, slanted ceiling. It would become my room when I returned from Toronto in my late teens, after grade eleven, to take an entire year off acting so that I could complete my final year of school in Halifax.
Directly across the street is Melville Cove, a small body of water that jets off the Arm and separates Regatta Point Walkway from the Armdale Yacht Club, which incidentally is also on an island with a centuries-old, supposedly haunted brick-and-iron prison where hundreds of people died, predominantly prisoners of war. Adjacent to the prison, on the sliver of a peninsula, Deadman’s Island, there are almost two hundred unmarked graves of Americans who died in captivity during the War of 1812. A plaque reads:
Go view the graves which prisoners fill
Go count them on the rising hill
No monumental marble shows
Whose silent dust does there repose
I was obsessed with my new room. I was the first to leave a mark, a tiny stain on the wall waiting to be washed off. The color was my choice, and thankfully I was at an age where I could say what I actually wanted, versus putting on the dress for my birthday but not quite knowing why, like it was Halloween or something. I chose a dark blue, close to the deep shade of my stepbrother’s. I tacked posters of Patrick Roy, Michael Jordan, and Joey McIntyre from New Kids on the Block up on the wall. The bunk bed from Linda’s old place, mine now. With both options available to me, I would switch. Sometimes top, sometimes bottom.
When Dennis and Linda moved in together, my time was split between households. Two weeks with my father, the first to the sixteenth of every month, and two weeks with my mother from the sixteenth to the first. Scott and Ashley did the same with their dad. At my dad’s, my stepbrother and I played street hockey or “floor hockey” virtually every day after school, a game we invented in the small upstairs hallway where doors were goals, our hands the hockey sticks, the perfect snap of the wrist torpedoing the ball, jetting out a shin to make a sweet save.
I was into having an older brother. Scott was a jock, an excellent athlete, who went on to play Junior A hockey for years. A lot of my youth was spent in hockey rinks. I’d eat french fries and watch the brawls, transfixed by the bizarre, sanctioned fighting. When his friends came over I stayed close, that annoying kid brother who tags along. I loved how they dressed, how they smelled. The way they removed their T-shirts, reaching back over their shoulders, grabbing the fabric and pulling it up over their heads, revealing a torso, a dangling chain. I’d slink into Scott’s room and dig out his cologne, not understanding the difference between a dab and a dollop. Is this a magic potion? I wondered. Perhaps this would do it. I snuck back out of his bedroom, the stench of a horny teenager trailing, as if I had plunged into an ocean of Old Spice.
Scott was very physical with me, as a lot of older brothers are. We both were obsessed with wrestling, formally known as the WWF (World Wrestling Federation). Power slams and clotheslines took up an abundance of our television time. We’d wrestle, he would try moves on me, mostly with my consent. He’d perform “power bombs,” which were relatively safe and fun; he’d thrust me up into the air, flipping me, and I would land hard on my back, slamming into Dennis and Linda’s bed. Once, however, there was no soft landing, he did it on the floor between the bed and the dresser. I didn’t rotate the necessary degrees and landed headfirst, the top of my skull smashing into the floor, my neck wrenching. I lay on the floor stiff, I could not move, I could not talk, and I could barely breathe. Staring at the ceiling, Scott panicked above me, kept hushed and whispering, petrified he’d get in trouble. He got me to my room and I waited until the pain lessened.
Like any sibling, he could get too rough, whether wrenching my arm until I screamed or putting me in a sleeper hold, making me slip under for a moment, blurred stars dancing in front of a black backdrop. Or hurting me emotionally, throwing my stuffed animals around the room, punching them, beating them, my pleas only hyping him up more. Whether emotional or physical, when it was all too much I would cry, begging him to stop, to leave.
As a kid it was complicated, looking up to him as much as I did, while also experiencing another side, which felt harsh and remorseless. But none of this was Scott’s fault, he was a kid, too. Kids can be mean, kids can be rough. It was his mother’s encouragement that stung.
“You’re such a brat, shut up, you brat,” Linda shouted at me from the hall. She looked satisfied, as if having unearthed another perfectly discreet way to induce pain, shrouded in the guise of sibling tension.
Linda’s snicker came out when Scott and she would tease me, sometimes evolving into a full cackle. It seemed she’d dig to find anything to pick at, whatever helped her feel better. In retrospect, I think it was compulsive. I am sure Linda didn’t want to be cruel, but I believe she held an impulse in her depths to habitually come for me.
Private play in my bedroom offered solace. A different bunk bed challenged my architectural capabilities. Sometimes I’d include the desk adjacent to the bed, a tiny nook where one could hide. I adored Playmobil. I craved narrative, drama, relationships, and otherworldly challenges. At my mom’s I had a pirate ship and at my father’s a Playmobil gas station.
I escaped to my room, eager to go on a journey, an adventure of the imagination, which I found no less thrilling than a “real” adventure, if not more so. I had put on my blue Adidas tracksuit, a prized possession. It was zipped up to the very top that day, ready to go to a space where I could be exactly who I was. Nothing between me and the moment, no expectations, no performing, no eviscerating self-doubt. I slipped my arms into the loops of my backpack, which I’d stuffed full of the objects I might require on my adventure—a small wallet with a couple loonies and Canadian Tire money, a plastic sword. I knelt on the bed, making final adjustments to my pack, lost in my imaginary world. I was mentally preparing for my expedition when the door opened and in walked Linda.
She burst into laughter and called for Scott to come see. I heard him scramble out of his room, and he appeared in the doorway next to her. They stood there, looming, just staring in and mocking me, speaking of me as if I was not there. What looked like delight spread across their faces as they teased me. The three of us, alone in the house. Though I’m not sure that my father would have done much had he been there.
He was different when it was just the two of us versus when it was the whole family.
“If Linda and you were drowning, I would save you,” he would say in private. “Linda is not the love of my life, you are the love of my life.” This was a secret. I knew it was one without him directly saying so, because around Linda the energy was not the same. We had a song, Ruth Brown’s “Ain’t Nobody’s Business.” Dennis would blare it, singing along, while driving me to school.
Around Linda that “love” evaporated. A transformation in the tone, the body, the face. A coldness, as if they’d conspired and teamed up, a frigid demeanor that made my eyes fall to the floor. She could be mean to me around the others but was worse to me when we were alone. I’ve kept these stories close; it’s hard even to share fragments of them here. My father did nothing, no protection.
I yearned for time with my father, away from Linda. “You’re manipulating your father,” she spat once. The words, searing and sharp, they singed, a flash fry leaving a mark. Linda did not like us spending time alone together, every time, without fail, it created friction.
They married when I was ten in our living room in front of the fireplace. I wore a little dress and I sobbed. Linda hugged me as if I was crying tears of joy. As if she loved me. As if we loved each other. I wept more and more. I put on an act, just like I did in all those cards I wrote expressing appreciation and adoration. As if it was a duty. I was an emotional, messy jumble of never wanting to see her again and desperately needing her to love me, the autopilot taking over—stuck on a moving sidewalk.