No Fury Like That

by Lisa de Nikolits

“Party time! Don’t say I don’t know how to treat the ladies! Yeah man! Look, sodas, French fries, hot dogs. Only thing missing is the BEER!”

  Of course Purgatory knows we are coming and our shoes are already laid out.

  “I wish I’d worn something more glamorous than this,” Isabelle says looking down at her white micro shorts, with her purple Flashdance top sliding off one shoulder.

  “You look fine,” I say. “So, who do you fancy, Jaimie or the junkie?”

  “Jaimie! For god’s sake, Julia! I do have taste you know!”

  “Well, he’s all yours, for whatever good it will do, since sex is an activity non grata, here.”

  “I know but it will be nice to have some conversation that isn’t about murder or husbands making their wives into Barbie dolls or stuff like that. Me, I could do with some FUN!” she imitates Eno’s drawl and I laugh.

  “Point taken,” I say. “Point taken.”

  “How does this work again?” I ask when we rejoin the guys. “I don’t think I’ve been bowling since I was about ten.”

  “You aim for those things there at the end of the runway,” Eno says pointing. “It’s not like it’s complicated. Okay, here goes.” He gets in position, fires a ball, and scores a perfect strike.

  “I guess we can figure out what you did when you weren’t smoking meth,” Jaimie comments and he gets up. Jaimie fares less well, his ball dribbles into the gutter, as does mine.

  Isabelle, however, scores a beautiful strike and she dances around Eno, pointing fingers and giggling.

  “Yeah, little girl, bring it ON!” Eno stands and he hitches up his pants. “You wanna have a friendly BET or something?”

  “What you got?” Isabelle says and it seems like she has lost interest in Jaimie, and maybe there is something more to Eno.

  “I got THIS, little girl, I got THIS,” Eno grabs his crotch and makes thrusting actions.

  “Yeah, like that works here,” I comment and Eno turns to me. “Hey, NAMASTE bitch, lighten up, okay?”

  He takes the measure of his ball and fires another strike and he turns to Isabelle. “Your turn, little girl, you show Daddy what you GOT!”

  Pretty soon, it is just Eno and Isabelle playing, while Jaimie and I watch.

  “What’s your story, Princess Julia?” Jaimie asks. “Let’s you and me get up close and personal.”

  “Why? Nothing to see here, move along, cover boy.”

  “Aw, now, be nice.”

  “Nice? Well, for starters nice is the furthermost thing from me. Eno is right, I’m a bitch and there ain’t no NAMASTE happening here.” I mimic Eno’s way of speaking and I expect Jaimie to smile but he does not.

  “For example?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Give me one example of this so-called bitchiness.”

  I am quiet for a moment. “Why, don’t you believe me?”

  “I don’t. You don’t strike me as a nasty person. Hurt yes, damaged by life maybe, but not nasty.”

  “When my sister and her husband died in a car accident, I put my four-year-old niece into a foster home, rather than have her come and live with me. She had no one except for me and that’s what I did. How’s that for a good example, Jaimie? That’ll do?”

  “Fuck, yeah,” he says and he looks away. “Why? You didn’t have the money to take care of her?”

  “I had lots of money. Well, correction, I would have had lots of money if I didn’t spend it on couture dresses I found online. No, I just couldn’t be bothered. I was happy working all hours of the day and half the night and I liked spending my money on myself. I couldn’t be bothered to talk to a child, or bring up a child or listen to her chatter or take care of her homework or meet with her teachers or buy her a dog or any of that. The only person I was interested in was me, me, me.”

  “And how did that work out for you?”

  “I’m here, aren’t I? Am I sorry about what I did? Yeah, I am. Now. Only now. I was never sorry before. What’s weird is that I never even thought about it until you asked me. Give me one example you said, and that came to mind. I had pushed it so far away that I never even thought about it, until now.”

  “You never visited her?”

  “I never thought about her. Seriously, I never did. My sister and I were largely estranged. Jan wasn’t like me. She didn’t have the blessing or the curse of being beautiful. Funny thing was, she was the pretty one growing up, not me. All the boys came to see her. She had shiny blonde hair and big green eyes and this perfect, turned-up nose, but somewhere around twenty, it all dulled out and she became ordinary. Very ordinary. She was a hardworking accountant and she married a hardworking bald accountant and they had Emma. And he had no family either so they left the kid to me, never figuring they would actually die. But they did, and I walked away, and yeah, I’m sorry. Listen, Jaimie, I’m going for a walk okay? I’ll leave you guys to party. Tell Isabelle I’ll see her tomorrow.”

  I walk out, still wearing my bowling shoes with my Chanel cocktail dress and I head straight for Cedar’s. His office is the one place that Purgatory doesn’t keep me guessing to find. I silently thank it for being helpful that way.

  22. EMMA, JAN, AND AUNT GWEN

  FREEDOM IS NEVER FREE, said the sign. “No shit, Sherlock,” I tell the sign and I knock on Cedar’s door.

  “Julia! What a lovely surprise! Come on in! I just lit a fresh stick of mulberry incense, come on in and breathe!”

  “Why aren’t I in Hell?” I ask, still standing at the door, with my fists clenched at my sides. “Why am I here and not in Hell? I should be in Hell. I’m getting a good look at myself, Cedar and it’s not exactly pretty.”

  He nods and waves me to a chair and I sit down. “It’s easy to get caught up in the greed of life,” he says gently. “What’s on your mind today, Julia?”

  “Emma. My niece. I gave her away like a purse I didn’t want. I dropped a four-year-old child off like she was a sack of used-clothing and I haven’t even thought about her in six years. How could I have done that? What kind of rabid animal am I?”

  I can’t sit. I jump up and pace, getting more and more worked up and Cedar watches me. “This realization came to you today?”

  “Yes. I was in a bowling alley with Jaimie and Isabelle and that meth-head guy, and Jaimie asked me to give him one example of a bad thing I had done and before I could even think about what I was saying, it popped out of my mouth. I am a sick fucker, Cedar, that’s all there is to it.”

  Wham. I am outside his door.

  I knock. “Cedar, listen, I am very sorry. Please, let me back in, I’ll be more careful, I promise. Please, let me back in. I need to see you. Please, I’m sorry.”

  The door swings open slowly and Cedar looks at me. “Generally, there are no second chances,” he tells me, “but you are in a lot of pain today.”

  “I really am sorry. How can I make up for what I did to Emma? I want a Viewing. I want to see how she is. I need to see if she’s okay. I arranged to meet Beatrice with the others tomorrow to get Grace a Viewing but I need it. I need it more than she does.”

  Cedar studies his hands. “Why do you think it’s necessary for you to View her before Grace Views her children? You seemed to think it was vitally important for her but now, your needs trump that?”

  “Don’t give me a hard time, Cedar. I hadn’t realized until now, what I’ve done. What if Emma’s in danger? What if she’s dead?”

  “What if she is? There’s nothing you can do to help her anymore. The only thing you can do is watch from a distance.”

  I raise my hand before I can stop to consider what I am doing and I swing with all my might, wanting to strike this kindly hippie across the face as hard as I can. But he catches my hand in mid air. “You don’t want to do that,” he says. “And we’ll both forget that the idea ever occurred to you. Now, sit d
own.”

  Shocked by my actions, I sit down and clasp my hands between my knees, as if imprisoning them will help keep them in check.

  “You’re not in Hell for reasons that will be revealed to you later, during your stay here. Your niece is fine. You will get a Viewing but not tomorrow. Tomorrow belongs to Grace and you will be supportive and kind to her.”

  I am humiliated. I look down at my hands.

  “I want to ask you something,” Cedar says “and I encourage you to open your mind, okay? Put today’s incident out of your thoughts and see our meeting with a clear slate. Can you do that?”

  I nod.

  “What do you remember about your life after your parents died?”

  I am startled and I look up at him. “Um, I don’t really know.”

  “You were how old? Eight?”

  “Yes, I guess.”

  “And what happened to you and Jan?”

  This is like unlocking Pandora’s box and I don’t like it one bit. “We went to live with Aunt Gwen.”

  “And how old was Jan?”

  “She was six.”

  “Did you like living with Aunt Gwen?”

  “Not really. Well, that’s unfair; she did her best. She was a career woman, so she didn’t have much time for us. We had a lot of nannies. Aunt Gwen seemed to find fault with the nannies just when we were getting used to them.” I give a small laugh.

  “What did she do, for a living?”

  “It’s more like what she did for a passion. She was a banker, high finance and she loved it. She worked even when she was at home and we weren’t allowed to disturb her. And she was very particular about her house. It was a huge mansion of a place, all polished and sparse. She didn’t care for knick-knacks; she was a minimalist. She said that space encouraged clarity of mind and gave you freedom to think. The house was dark—there was a lot of brown with the wood-paneled walls, the shiny parquet floors, teak tables, and dark leather chairs. It looked like a private men’s club. Aunt Gwen’s only concession to femininity was flowers. She loved enormous vases filled with lilies and pink roses. The flowers were delivered weekly and she had the old ones thrown out even if they were still good.”

  “Did Jan like living there?”

  I shrug. “Jan was adorable as a baby and pretty as a picture when she was a little girl. Everybody loved her, even Aunt Gwen. Aunt Gwen was always buying Jan presents, girly things, fluffy toys, clothes.”

  “But not you.”

  “Not me. I was this little dark stork, you see, bony and unattractive and beaky. I had a nose out to here,” I wave my hand to show him a big nose. “And I was all limbs that didn’t know how to fold gracefully and I was not, in any way, adorable. I tried to make up for it by being clever. I worked really hard, trying to win Aunt Gwen’s approval that way. I wanted to show her that I was the one who mattered, I was the clever one and that was more important.”

  “And did she see?”

  “She told me I was like the son she never had. Sometimes she’d buy me books on economics and marketing.”

  “When you were a child?”

  “When I was a child. But don’t get me wrong, she was generous. She paid for me to go to university and she paid for Jan too. When Jan went from pretty to plain, Aunt Gwen lost interest in her and started ignoring her, but it didn’t bother Jan. She never really cared for Aunt Gwen. Jan lived in her own head, she was so sure of who she was that she never even seemed to mind when her looks faded early. She had a kind of inner contentment. And then she met her husband and she was happy.”

  “Did you have any friends at school?”

  I laugh again. “Nope. Why would I? I didn’t have much going for me. I wasn’t funny or personable. I wasn’t pretty. Later, when I grew into my body, and my face became quite lovely, except for my nose, which I got fixed, people treated me differently and it made me angry. I wanted to shout at them that I was the same person I’d been when I was ugly, that I hadn’t become any more interesting or loveable, but they assumed I had. Or maybe they didn’t care. I tell you, Cedar, looks are currency in this world and you have to maximize your returns before you’re left with nothing.”

  “And love?”

  “Love is a myth. I thought for a moment that I had love with Junior. I did, how stupid was that? There was this one morning, he and I had stayed up all night at a ball and then we went down to the lake to watch the sunrise. We sat there, holding hands, looking out at the water and the world was filled with golden light. I thought I had finally found the meaning of life. I thought that he was my meaning and then he threw me out like a piece of garbage.”

  “What happened to Aunt Gwen?” Cedar asks, not too interested in my love for Junior.

  “She got cancer. She died shortly after Jan and I finished university. Turned out she didn’t have any money after all. She invested badly and lost everything. If she hadn’t died, she would have been kicked out of her house.”

  “I would like to ask you this,” Cedar says. “Perhaps you didn’t offer your niece a home because you were afraid you would become like Aunt Gwen? That you would hurt her, like Aunt Gwen hurt you.”

  I thought about it. “Maybe, but that doesn’t make it right. It was still better that Aunt Gwen took us in, rather than handing us off to strangers, so, no matter what, it was disgusting, what I did.”

  “You didn’t feel in a position to offer love,” Cedar argues. “You’ve felt unlovable your whole life.”

  I shake my head. “But still. I should have tried harder. It’s like when people say ‘I tried my best.’ You know what I say to that? I say, well, clearly your best isn’t good enough. Try harder, be better.”

  “Very harsh,” Cedar observes.

  “Being a bitch is all I know.” I smile at him.

  “It’s all you think you know,” Cedar says. “I would encourage you to practice not being a bitch, in small increments. For example, you will now go back to the bowling alley and you will show your friend Isabelle that you can be a good sport and that you can play a game that you hate, and you can lose at it and you can let her have some fun. That’s what you can do, and I will see you tomorrow.”

  Before I have the chance to nod, I find myself back in the bowling alley, with Jaimie and Eno and Isabelle.

  23. CONVINCING GRACE

  “WHAT DID I MISS?” I ask brightly.

  “Me, man, being MAGNIFICENT!” Eno crows happily and I force a smile.

  “Are you losing?” I ask Isabelle and she shakes her head and grins.

  “I am WINNING!” she says mimicking Eno and he swats at her.

  Jaimie is looking at me curiously.

  “Come on, Jaimie, I challenge you. Rack ’em up,” I say.

  “I think that’s what you say when you’re playing pool,” he says, but he gets up. “I propose we start again. Fresh. Isabelle is queen of that round and Eno, you get to try again? What do you say?”

  “Sure thing BOSS man,” Eno grins. “But first, I’m gonna get me some French fries and a BURGER! Man, privileges ROCK!”

  Once I get going, the whole thing isn’t so bad and I am even grateful to Cedar for suggesting it because it stops me from thinking about my unloved, ugly duckling childhood.

  And the next day, I smile, watching Isabelle tell our coffee klatch about the party we had. “And then, I won again, and it was such fun,” Isabelle tells Agnes and Tracey while Samia whips up lattes and we wait for Grace.

  “Eno is so cool and—”

  “He’s COOL?” I ask it Eno-style and Isabelle blushes. “I thought Jaimie boy would be more up your alley,” I say.

  “Jaimie’s boring,” Isabelle says. “I was wrong about Eno. He’s funny. And he’s kind. He was a cop, you know, a narc, and he got hooked on meth because of his job. He’s got a huge Italian family and lots of nieces and nephews and he loves them all. He fe
els terrible about having disappointed them.”

  “Isabelle’s got a boyfriend,” Tracey grins. “Isabelle’s got herself a ghost for a boyfriend, a ghost relationship in a ghost town called Purgatory.”

  “I’ll take it,” Isabelle says fervently. “I like him. He makes me happy. More than you lot, anyway.”

  “Nice,” Agnes says lighting a cigarette. “Knows a guy for two seconds and dumps her homegirls. Nice one, IzzyBella.”

  “I haven’t dumped any of you. I’m just saying that I had fun.”

  “And you, Julia, did you enjoy your bowling adventure? I wouldn’t have thought you’d be a keen bowler?”

  “It was great,” I lie and before I have to continue with my fabrications, the door opens and Grace glides in.

  “Hello, all,” she says. “I am sorry I was such a downer yesterday. I’m not sure why I was so dismal. None of that today!”

  “Beatrice said we should go and see her after coffee,” I say. “We might, and I do emphasize the might bit, be able to get you a Viewing today.”

  She looks flabbergasted. “Oh. Now I’m not sure. I might not be ready. I don’t think I can. Thank you, Julia, thank you very much but I can’t.”

  She gets up to leave but Tracey pulls her down and Grace flinches and shakes Tracey’s hand off her arm. But she does sit.

  “Stay for some java,” Tracey is conversational. “Okay, no Viewing, but stay anyway.”

  Grace sits down and nods at Samia who brews her chamomile tea.

  “Isabelle and Julia went bowling yesterday, and now Izzy’s got a new boyfriend,” Tracey tells Grace.

  “What? What do you mean?” Grace turns to Isabelle who eagerly blurts out the whole story, elaborating what a nice guy Eno is, how funny and cool.

  “A boyfriend, you are so lucky,” Samia sighs. “He sounds very nice.”

  “He does sound lovely, dear,” Grace says. “When will you see him again?”

  I stop listening to them and Tracey looks at me and we both nod. We are determined to get Grace to her Viewing.

  “Look, if you don’t want it, fine, we’ll ask Beatrice if I can take it,” Tracey interrupts Isabelle’s litany of Eno’s many favourable qualities. “But we can’t miss out on the opportunity of a Viewing.”