The Spacious T

Sea air is entering your nostrils and mouth as you glide your fingers along the bow of a 200-year-old boat. The paint on the wood is warm to the touch from the winter sun. You like the feeling of being in a new place even if you thought you would be visiting Halifax with your boyfriend. After seeing the tall ships, you wander into a shop that sells T-shirts, hand-knit sweaters, socks and other locally made goods.

“Where ya from,” says the man behind the counter in his seesaw accent. He’s short and bent as a cigarette somebody put out.

“Seattle.” You tower over him like Gulliver on the island of Lilliput.

“Well, yer in for a treat. Visit the museum next door. The Halifax Explosion was our earthquake…leveled this area. Houses, shops and factories smashed to smithereens.”

You half-listen while fingering T-shirts piled on a shelf along one wall. The shop owner doesn’t seem to care that you might have a question about his merchandise or want to buy something, and continues to talk about the 1917 disaster.

“The French captain evacuated his ship, the Mont Blanc, which saved his crew.”

It’s a maritime moment you think as you pay for your gift and exit the shop. One month before, you and your boyfriend decided to get away. It was years since the two of you had a proper vacation. Then you noticed an off-season deal for Nova Scotia, Canada. He began to research historic spots of interest and planned a couple of day trips to heritage towns outside the city. Yet a week before the trip, after the flight was booked and your suitcase was sitting half-filled with clothes on your bedroom floor, he told you he couldn’t go. His work had thrown him a deadline and he couldn’t afford the time. He said the package was reimbursable for a fee and suggested you both go when the timing was better.

You lost it, began shouting at him that the two of you never did things together anymore, that he always worked and never took time to be with you. Then you accused him of not loving you. He reminded you of the mortgage payment, the unpaid bills, suggesting you couldn’t afford a trip—even a package deal. You knew those things would still be there when you got back. You told him you’d take the trip without him. After all, who was he to run your life and change the plans when it suited him? You weren’t happy to go alone, yet were tired of being manipulated.

You are at a café like one you frequent in your own city. It’s the same hipster crowd, the same sense of being scrutinized for how cool (or not) you are. You pick up your coffee, take a table by the window, and then open your shopping bag to view a gift you just purchased for your boyfriend. A souvenir T-shirt, which reads, Beatings will continue until morale improves. You think he’ll appreciate the slogan for its irony and dark humor. Yet as you take a closer look, it suddenly hits you that he will hate the gift and hate you for giving it to him. Not only because of the tourist kitsch factor—you typically buy more thoughtful presents—but because it might just be the biggest fucking T-shirt in the whole of Halifax. Although you’ve been away from him only five days, you can’t recall his proportions. You tell yourself you bought an XXL because you were afraid to buy something that wouldn’t fit him as he’s put on weight. Or, maybe the XX reminded you of crossbones. After all, on the T-shirt is a pirate skull sporting a pirate hat.

You are struggling to picture your boyfriend’s overall size and girth. You hold your hands up, surreptitiously embracing the air in front of you. There are a few people in the café, though nobody takes notice as you hold your invisible lover in your arms. You remember that when you stride him during lovemaking your knees are about two feet apart, and so you take the T-shirt by the middle, putting it between your open legs as you perch on the swivel stool. With an imaginary ruler, and measuring the distance from knee to knee, you realize the worst: a sumo wrestler would fit it perfectly, as would the Sasquatch should one exist. You consider returning the gift but find yourself taken by a growing sense that you need to go through with it.

On the plane home, you stare out the window. The aircraft is flying over the Rocky Mountains—a 3,000-mile sculpture of ancient rock and ice. A stillness happens inside you that might compare to how you feel during an interlude between TV shows, in which there is no sound, only nature scenes. You imagine sheep down there, a mountain goat tucked into a stone crevice, as wind thunders past. You’re happy that the seat beside you is empty. You wouldn’t want to share the moment with anybody else.

You are thinking back to your trip. How you rented a car and saw the little towns your boyfriend planned for the two of you to visit. It was cold, though you dressed warmly and carried your camera to capture the late afternoon light on the ice floats by the shore. Time had nudged the old houses closer together. Windows were eyes; roofs squeezed at the top like the foreheads of old men and women still laughing at life in spite of loss. Houses were painted bright blue or buttercup yellow and seemed, you thought, to replicate colors of the sky or sunlight on a cold day. You listened to locals at a café sharing stories about fishing, chopping wood, repairing a barn. You thought of your boyfriend, especially in the evenings when you ate and drank by yourself in a pub that was attached to your hotel.

When you arrive back home, the first thing you do is take the T-shirt out of your suitcase. He sits on the couch in your living room while you perch on the arm. When you hand him the gift, at first he smiles, shooting you a look like a mischievous child. You are remembering how he used to look at you that way before sex.

Then it comes.

“Do you really think I’m that fat?” He holds the oversized piece of clothing against him.
The gift seems like a cruel joke. Three of him could fill the T-shirt.

“Sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking. Maybe you can wear it to bed.”

“I know I gained weight, haven’t had time to go to the gym, haven’t even renewed my membership. So this is what you think of me? A fat fuck?”

“Please don’t.”

“Unbelievable. You go away for a week and come back with this.”

His face is red and his eyes are watering yet he doesn’t cry. He waves his hands in the air and then holds his head as if the whole thing has given him a big headache.

As he rants, you wonder to yourself, What was I thinking? The words blink on and off in your mind yet the answer doesn’t come. You close your eyes as your boyfriend continues to pummel you with accusations. Or at least it feels that way to you. You hear the words, unkind and insensitive.

“I said I was sorry.” Your voice is feeble, unconvincing. You leave the room and then go to bed.

The next morning you wake up and find that your boyfriend isn’t beside you. He didn’t come to bed the night before. You notice him asleep on the chaise longue in your shared office. He snores and you figure he pulled an all-nighter. Your eyes skim his body and notice the bulky middle that many men of his age start to get, especially those who sit at computers all day. With a tinge of sadness, you think about the space between the two of you as a fissure between mountain ridges, ever widening without either of you realizing its impact.

You are thinking about the T-shirt you bought him. To the distance he keeps from you, the impenetrable shield that surrounds him and makes it impossible for you to get close. His gift sits in a clump on the office floor. You pick it up, staring at the skull of the pirate, a ghastly grin on his toothless mouth. And the words underneath that read, Beatings will continue until morale improves.