Free Ellen in Pieces by Caroline Adderson

downtown tower high above all weather systems. She’d get rid of the car too, but in the meantime here she was, peering through the liquid smear, hoping vainly to merge onto the highway.
    She Morse-coded with the brake lights:
dot dot dash dot - dot dot dash.
F.U. Would no one let her in? Ever?
    Finally, one of those yacht-sized American guzzlers slowed. Ellen gunned it, merged, then waved broadly to communicate her thanks. All she could see of her rescuer in her rear-view mirror was white hair.
    He was old. Old and chivalrous.
    Y ES, Jack McGinty was on the mend. He was becoming himself again—brusque, taciturn, but not unloving, it turned out. Growingup, Ellen had misinterpreted his stiffness. She felt profoundly sorry for him now, for how do you express love when in a perpetual state of emotional incapacitation? Emoting for her was effortless. The opposite—holding her feelings inside—impossible. Even thinking of it made her curl up in a cramping ball.
    No laxative for that.
    He’d loved her mother, that was for sure, and on his fiftieth birthday he’d still looked young. Why didn’t he remarry, she’d wondered that summer when she took Mimi to see him in the Nose Hill house.
    Yet just a few days later, when Jack showed up for his party, Ellen barely glanced at the guest of honour. She’d just found out that Larry already had an L.A. mistress. She didn’t know yet that he’d also bedded half the female population of Cordova Island, including friends of hers. Larry would tell her that later, when she insisted their actions cancelled each other out—what Larry had done with that slut was equal to what Ellen had done with Charles—so they should just forgive and forget and get on with their marriage.
    Larry didn’t want to. He didn’t want to be married to Ellen anymore.
    When her father came through Moira’s door the day of the party, Ellen hugged him. Her belly, taut with life, pushed into his and he recoiled. Larry stepped forward and shook Jack’s hand, clasped it warmly, more warmly than he ever had before because he’d probably never see the man again.
    “Happy birthday, Jack,” he said.
    Moira touched Ellen’s shoulder, beckoned. In a trance, Ellen followed.
    “What’s wrong?” Moira asked.
    Instinctively, Ellen clutched her unborn child. “What do you mean?”
    “Charles thinks you’re mad at him.”
    The dream, forgotten in her shock, came back, the two cocks and their mysterious configuration. Side by side, or forked with a single shaft for the two heads?
    “I’m not mad,” said Ellen, who was just now thawing, feeling the first tingles of a stupendous rage.
    “Did he do something?” Moira asked.
    “No!”
    “So go talk to him.”
    “I don’t want to talk to him!”
    “You
are
mad!” Moira said. “You seem really mad. What did he do?”
    “Nothing!”
    Ellen left Moira in the living room and went to find Mimi, who was in the backyard on her faithless father’s lap, stroking his smooth face. All her life Mimi had had his long beard to tug and scratch; now he was a new, fascinating toy. Jack sat in the matching Muskoka chair, Charles on the swinging love seat with the awning because he sunburned easily, the three men with beers already in their clasp, failing at small talk. Ellen came across the grass in her bare feet, feeling exactly how Larry thought she ought to feel, like a cow that had broken through a dozen suburban fences to end up here.
    Jack and Charles stood. Charles said, “I’ll get you a chair, Ellen.” He sounded bashful and eager to set things right.
    “I’ll sit here beside you.” She smiled at him. It must have been an evil smile because he dropped his gaze in confusion. As the love seat set sail under them, a bit of urine gushed from her. Still no one spoke except Mimi, cooing, “Dada soft, Dada soft …”
    Ellen stared desperately at Larry, but he refused to meet her eye. Then, without really meaning to, she glanced at her brother-in-law’s crotch