
My Life with David Biedermann
Ted picked me up after an evening shift in his mother’s white Nissan Cube. Its compact dashboard was covered with bobbleheads of dogs with over-expressive eyes and figurines of Jesus striking poses—Jesus in floor-length robes, with long arms ending in open palms, his expression stern yet forgiving; or spray-tanned Jesus, bare-chested and winking, finger guns pointed at the driver’s chest. Ted and I had been arguing over text that night and the silence in the parked car was terrible.
“The last time I was on shrooms,” he began, “I had, like, a sexual revelation. I just accepted these desires that I have.” He said something about being 23, about his craving for nameless excitement with little consequence, and how he could never join me on what he called my “race to the suburbs.” As he spoke, he twisted the silver rings he wore around his index finger. Ted had a habit of doing this during arguments, which usually took place in his bedroom, which was his mother’s basement—scenes that featured me sitting on the edge of her pink and green patchwork sofa and him leaning against the radiator somewhat menacingly. When we’d reach for each other in the darkness, I’d be unable to shake the feeling that he was fumbling for something tender, some point of weakness such as a bruise on my body, and, given the chance, he wouldn’t hesitate to dig it in with his thumb.
Now, in the car, Ted twisted his rings in silence and I felt a stir of sadness.
“I could’ve cheated on you,” Ted said. “Would’ve been easy. But I didn’t.” He paused, thoughtful. “I didn’t.” I suddenly thought of my uncle’s obese Dachshund. He had no stamina and when we took him to the neighbourhood dog park wouldn’t run for balls I thought he could have easily got. He lay there, a dense brown log, staring straight ahead—smug, it seemed to me, about his own fatness. My eyes followed Ted’s square, bearded jaw up to the beanie he wore regularly to conceal his gently receding hairline and uneven head shape, slightly protruding on the left side and dented enough on the right to accommodate the heel of my hand. His point of weakness. I stared at his wire-rimmed glasses, his loose-knit sweater and subtly distressed jeans. I asked him if he’d mind giving me a ride home.
“I don’t think you get what I’m saying,” he said. “Do you get what I’m saying?”
“Yes,” I said, and this seemed to disappoint him. He said nothing.
When we arrived at my building, Ted broke the silence to tell me that I had been a positive influence in his life and that, if I were willing, we could remain as friends but nothing more. I noticed he was on the verge of tears. I decided not to see this and left his vehicle quietly.
Five weeks following the end of our relationship, Ted emailed me.
DEAR CAROLYN, he wrote, I DIDN’T MEAN ANY OF IT. I’M SO SO SO SORRY.
Ted sent another email every day for the following 23 days, until he died. The night we’d broken up, my roommate Gemma had advised me to delete his number and block him on all social media.
Gemma was a beautiful woman. Like all beautiful people she passed slightly above the rest of us. A hypnotist among the hypnotized. She wore powder blue wrap dresses and in the cooler summer evenings, long-legged silk jumpsuits. Naturally, her boyfriend was a beautiful man. He was pale and the crown of his head resembled a skull carved from ivory, smooth and perfectly round.
Gemma had met Ted on a handful of succinct occasions during which all parties were polite but not friendly to one other. In the aftermath of their first actual conversation, she decided he was “about as interesting as a picnic bench.”
I’d told Gemma about the first email. When, on the second of the 23, I received another email from Ted, I asked her to read what he’d sent.
Hi.
I went to see my grandpa today. His denture broke in half. He can’t eat or talk right now and I feel horrible about it. How are you?
Ted.
Gemma handed me back my phone. “What are you thinking?” I asked. She shrugged.
“He’s kind of like you.”
I squeezed his hand as if to say, YOU MEAN A LOT TO ME. What I really meant was, THE SHAPE OF YOUR HEAD HAS NO BEARING ON MY LOVE FOR YOU.
On a hot and windless summer afternoon two months into our relationship, while we were riding the Sky Ride at the CNE, Ted asked me if I could make him a promise.
We were way up high, and I could see the shadow of our chairlift 40 feet below as if we were a massive bird moving slowly, tiredly, through the sky.
“Actually forget it,” Ted said. I assured him I was listening.
“Okay,” Ted said. “Sure.” He waited again before saying, “My parents made this same promise to each other when they first started dating. I hope you can understand why it’s so important to me.” He took off his beanie. I found this touching, this sudden uncovering of his misshapen head. I placed my hand over his.
“I’m not sure you can do it,” he said. I squeezed his hand as if to say, YOU MEAN A LOT TO ME. What I really meant was, THE SHAPE OF YOUR HEAD HAS NO BEARING ON MY LOVE FOR YOU.
“Can you promise,” Ted said, “to be 100 percent honest with me?”
I said nothing. I removed my hand. His newly exposed head now seemed to me like the answer to some pointless riddle.
“See that’s why, like, I don’t even know if you can do it.”
“I’ve been honest with you.”
“Sure.”
“Your parents are divorced.”
“Why would you say that?”
I repeated what he’d said earlier. I pointed out that this was proof I’d been listening.
“Do you think I’m needy? Is that it?”
“No.”
“I saw the messages with your friends. You made fun of me.”
“That’s not exactly true.”
“Carolyn.”
“What?”
“I thought I could trust you.”
“I thought we agreed you wouldn’t go through my phone anymore.”
“Are you scared?”
“No.”
“Of what else I’ll find?”
“Are we doing this again? Right now?”
I became aware through my peripheral vision that Ted was closely monitoring my expression. I imagined his pupils pinning and dilating, then pinning again. Neither of us spoke. It seemed to me that the world below was coated in dust.
“Well, it’s decided then,” Ted said finally.
And so it happened that our first breakup took place 40 feet in the air.
Five days later, during a thunderstorm, there in the doorway stood Ted in a pair of men’s leggings with a matte geometric print and a soaked-through fleece pullover, its stand-up collar now relaxed, limp with liquid. He had his beanie in his hands, had been wringing it dry, so that Gemma was able to see the unguarded slopes of his rain-raked scalp. I loved him then, when he looked up at Gemma and the fact of her staring back with amusement did not seem to bother him. We got back together.
Our first winter together—a period of time during which Ted and I frequented all-you-can-eat sushi buffets on a twice-weekly basis and played late-night, back-to-back games of durak with his mother, the three of us crosslegged on the carpeted living room floor, Ted vaping and his mother chain-smoking cigarettes she’d rolled herself—Ted picked me up early on a Sunday morning in December and drove us to Scarborough Bluffs. We eventually gave up on searching for a path that led to the actual bluffs. There was nobody around that we could ask for directions besides a woman who was lying motionless on a bench and quite possibly was dead. We took a few pictures and skipped a few stones, but for the majority of the time we walked around holding hands and revelling in our plans for the future.
Ted shared with me his dreams of opening a boutique that specialized in high-end streetwear for men. In particular, he dreamed of low-hanging shop lights and an exposed ceiling, pipes and ductwork painted white, landscape photography projected onto interior brick walls—the sort of store whose long windows might exist along Queen Street West. In response, I shared with Ted my dreams of becoming an author. I was strangely anxious about how he’d react, but he could see it, he said, the letters of my name spelled out along paperback spines. So when he kissed me by the lip of the water, when he tucked me into his arms—into his oversized corduroy parka and against the wind—when he said he’d love me forever, it thrilled me.
On the drive home, Ted said he wanted to show me something and turned left on Lawrence instead of St Clair. The sun was setting as he took us along a winding residential street. “Check these out,” he said.
Suddenly I was struck by the feeling that Ted and I, with our dreams and our part-time titles, were sitting just beyond the outer rim of something beautiful and interesting and abundantly fenestrated.
Each house rose above us in well-lit angles, each its own domestic oasis: floating turrets erupting from white brick, wraparound balconies with burnt orange railings, scalloped archways in slightly varying shades of light blue. A stone path with an iron urn peeked out at us between looming hedges. I imagined Ted and I pulling into such a driveway at the end of our drive home, a driveway that might encircle a stone fountain adorned with three roaring lions. I imagined arguing back and forth beneath a vaulted ceiling and the shape of our imperfect bodies as we made love in a room flooded with golden light.
Suddenly I was struck by the feeling that Ted and I, with our dreams and our part-time titles, were sitting just beyond the outer rim of something beautiful and interesting and abundantly fenestrated. I imagined Gemma in a breezy chiffon gown stepping off an open staircase framed in polished chrome, the skin on her legs glowing beneath a circular skylight. We were, actually, in a vehicle that was tooth-like in both shape and colour.
“What’s wrong?” Ted asked. At the sound of his words, the image of Gemma shimmered and dissolved.
“I love you,” I said. It was true.
“I love you, too,” Ted replied, confused but smiling. The houses, in all their splendour, seemed like nothing more than faraway children’s fantasies.
Hey you.
I dreamt about you again yesterday night. We were arguing in my room this time, just tearing each other apart. I felt like we weren’t really looking at each other, but at each other’s reflections. So we could never strike bottom, if that makes sense. But then you noticed this butterfly on the wall. It was stupidly big, as big as a toilet lid, its wings blue and black. You said, “I like that.” In response I said, “That’s a butterfly.” You looked at me the way you do, like I’m a dog that’s slow to learn, and said, “That’s a rather obvious statement.” I loved you when you said that. I don’t know what my point is. It reminded me of a fairy tale my mom used to read to me when I was sick. I don’t remember what happened, really, just the last line: “When it was all over, the three beautiful daughters and their three beautiful dogs burst out laughing.” What do you think? Will you forgive me?
I miss you. Talk soon.
Ted.
Following the end of my relationship with Ted, I found myself mimicking his mother. On my days off work I laid in bed, letting soap operas lull me to sleep mid-afternoon, ducking beneath the sunlit waves of other people’s sentimentalities, their whispers and raised voices. When I ate, it was with grim purpose. Some nights I sobbed, though I took care not to wake Gemma. As with the end of all my relationships, I was unable to shake the feeling of something newly missing, of a vacancy in my head like the tender slot left behind by a freshly-pulled tooth.
On my way home from work on a Friday evening, I ran into Ted’s best friend, David Biedermann, on the subway. It had been raining, and the city outside the windows dripped and steamed.
David Biedermann invited me to sit down next to him. Immediately we spoke of Ted.
I thought of the nights I held him, moody and tearful, in the backseat of his car, his ill-proportioned head in my lap, and the potential I had to split it open like an apple.
In the grey light of the subway, I felt as if Ted and I were one. I understood him like I understood myself—how sensitive he was, how easily wounded. I thought of the nights I held him, moody and tearful, in the backseat of his car, his ill-proportioned head in my lap, and the potential I had to split it open like an apple. I thought, too, of his practiced faraway looks and of my own unhappiness always nestled, hidden, behind his.
I pulled out my phone and explained to David Biedermann the matter of Ted’s 23 emails. I asked him if he could do me a favour and pass along a message to Ted. David Biedermann replied that he’d been completely unaware that all this had been happening, that Ted had seemed to him preoccupied and somewhat crestfallen as of late, but he’d appeared to be of sound mind. He was shocked, but he agreed to pass along my message.
“Please tell him I’m no longer interested in hearing what he has to say,” I said.
“This’ll kill him,” said David Biedermann.
In the same instant as Ted’s death—even as David Biedermann said goodbye and adjusted a pair of rimless glasses further up his nose, even as he stood to leave at Osgoode station, his manner of walking awkward and lumbering—I found myself holding the rest of my life in my hands as if cupping a beautiful golden ball, its weight and the coldness of its surface directly proportional to how much I both loved and hated Ted, how much he’d hurt me and how much I, in turn, was inclined to hurt him, and in its immaculately polished surface I could see none other than David Biedermann himself and what appeared to be our very own blonde-haired twin boys, Ethan and Evan Biedermann, the four of us and our Bernese Mountain Dog lined up on the staircase of our single-family home with a fully-fenced backyard, each one of us smiling at the photographer’s request, each one of us proud to be a Biedermann.
Neither I nor David Biedermann were blonde, however, and so I allowed the ball to slip, gleaming, from my hands and instead of rolling across the floor of the train like an oversized marble, it shattered and burst and was lost forever.