Trudy grabbed her jacket. The men stood to let them out of the booth. Mercy looked back at them and waved as Trudy dragged her to the front of the restaurant to pay.
And she knew it already. Trudy knew that even though it was indefensible, even though he had done nothing to distinguish himself, even though she knew nothing about him at all, she would think of him.
She would think of him and little else until she saw him again.
Because everything stopped making sense
Before he had shown up, bringing with him the tight green buds of springtime, things had been alright for Trudy. Boring, maybe. But alright. Mercy was hard work, especially when she was smaller. Pulling on Trudy’s pant leg. Tearing the house apart like a little animal. Trailing chewed-up food and snot wherever she went. Still — it had been just the three of them, and things were simple. Trudy’s mother, Claire, worked the early shift at the linen mill. Trudy worked the late one. They looked after Mercy in opposite shifts: Trudy on days, Claire on nights. At least, that’s what they had done since Trudy’s sister, Tammy, had fucked off into the ether and left her progeny behind.
Trudy spent hazy days on the couch, drifting in and out of sleep, TV on, one ear on alert for Mercy. Sometimes, out of nowhere, the little girl would bounce onto her, knocking the wind from her lungs, and then settle her warm little body behind Trudy’s knees or in the curved hollow of her belly.
The nights passed in a blurry clockwork dream. Seated at her machine, fluorescent lights humming above, she sewed pillowcase after pillowcase. A straight seam up the left side, crank the wheel, sink the needle into the fabric, lift the foot, rotate ninety degrees. Lower the foot onto the fabric — pink or blue or green or some pastel paisley print — and sew a straight seam across the top. Needle in fabric, rotate ninety degrees, straight seam down the right side. Lift foot. Cut thread. Slide the pillowcase across the table into the bin.
Next.
One foot in front of the other, day after day, night after night. A carton of cigarettes, purchased each payday. A stack of packs, each cellophane wrapper unwound and discarded. Silver foil removed from one side then the other. Ashtrays filled and then emptied. Until he came along.
Then everything got complicated.
Because never is a long time
In a town like Preston Mills, people would say that a girl had “a reputation.” There was only one kind. Trudy had known what this meant for as long as she could remember. Her mother had a reputation. And Trudy didn’t want one. She had developed a defense. When adults asked if she had a boyfriend, she told them that she didn’t like boys. They were disgusting. She almost believed it. By the time she was thirteen, adults stopped asking her about boys, and kids started calling her gay or a lez — Preston Mills–speak for lesbian. She let them believe it. Any boy permitted to touch her was usually from out of town (sports tournaments and visiting cousins provided the occasional make-out partner), sworn to secrecy, and threatened with death.
And she never, never went all the way.
This strategy had worked through most of her teens. Until Jimmy Munro finally wore her down.
Jimmy Munro’s face looked like it had been hit with the back of a shovel: dented brow, crushed nose, chipped teeth. His dark eyes glittered with bad intent and he wore his hair Elvis Presley style: slick with Brylcreem and combed back over his ears. Trudy had known Jimmy since kindergarten. (She had known everyone since kindergarten.) In their first year of high school, he started hounding her. Sitting next to her in every class, goading her relentlessly.
“Hey, Trudy. You gay?”
“Shut up, Jimmy.”
“What a waste. With that ass? Oh my God.”
Trudy would stare straight ahead, trying to focus on the teacher.
“You don’t know what you’re missing, Trudy. I could show you something. You wanna see something?”
“Gross. Not interested.”
He persisted.
Every class, every day, an endless stream of increasingly obscene banter. Until the words became meaningless. Until they stopped making her angry. Until there was something comforting about the tirelessness of his pursuit. It made her like him a little bit. Plus, he made her laugh. And hanging out with Jimmy — who was gigantic — deflected the advances of other boys.
Even when he was only fourteen or fifteen, Jimmy had been built like a bull. Thick broad shoulders and tiny ass. He was so top-heavy it seemed like you could tip him over with just a little nudge. But you couldn’t. Trudy knew it. Sometimes when they were goofing around, she would throw herself at him in a wild tackle, to no avail. She would just rebound off him. He was as immovable as a mountain.
Then one day, walking home from school, she caught him off guard. She saw him walking down the path behind the Catholic church, about fifty feet ahead. She took a running leap at him at a slight angle and knocked him to the ground. Whump! She rolled on top of him, laughing. “Victory is mine!”
“Jesus, Trudy! You scared the shit out of me.”
She leapt up, fist in the air. “The winner! Thank you. Thank you.” She swept low, taking a deep bow.
He stood up and lunged after her, grabbed her from behind. He pressed his shovel face into her neck and whispered in her ear. “Trudy Johnson, will you never fuck me? Really? How can that be?”
“Never.” Famous last words. “Now get off me.”
Because sometimes you can see things coming from a long way away
Trudy had quit school when she was sixteen to work at the mill. By the time Tammy was pregnant with Mercy, Trudy had already been working there for a year. One year that felt like forty. Every night that summer, she left early for work so she could go swimming. She would throw her bag over her arm and set out walking.
Ten at night and everything would be dead quiet. The sky was always black, the silver stars sparkling, the streets deserted. Almost all of the houses dark. The soft summer breeze smelled like the river.
She would walk right down the middle of the street, slowly, daring a car to come, daring the universe to break her perfect record: in the whole time she had been working at the factory, she had never once seen a car or a person on the street at this time of night. Straight ahead, up the hill, past the park, she could see the lights of the mill. But instead of going straight, she would turn left, cut through the school parking lot, across the baseball diamond, and down the gravel road to the beach. Each night of the summer, she would walk to the far end of the beach by the pier and the boathouses, place her folded towel on top of her bag, take off all her clothes, and walk into the water until it reached her neck. She would stand there, shivering a little in the black water, watching the moon’s reflection on the surface until her heart slowed down.
A moment of cool peace between the heat and noise of home and the drone and glare of work.
She could see the lights of the factories across the river on the American side, and she could see the towering shadow of the hydro dam to the west.
One night, she stood there, about twenty feet from shore, her toes pressed into the silky clay of the riverbed, when she felt the rumble of a ship engine coming up through the ground. A green light flashed at the top of a buoy straight ahead. She heard the ship’s horn and turned to the east to see the glimmer of it in the distance. She stood rooted as the ship took form, the vibration growing stronger, rattling her body. She was thinking about how long you can see things coming sometimes — sometimes for your whole life — when she turned and saw him standing on the shore.
Jimmy looked around, making sure nobody was nearby, and took off his shirt and then his pants. With the glow of the town behind him, he was just a shadow. But Trudy knew exactly who it was. She knew the shape of him. Looking at him standing there on the shore, she felt something brush against her ankle under the water. She kicked at it and took a few stumbling steps toward shore. She felt it again, slick and muscular. Higher on her le
g now. Was it an eel? She lurched forward again, her bare breasts now well above the water line. The ship was right behind her now, easing past, stretching across the horizon. The ground was shuddering. He ran into the water, splashing, tripping forward, until he fell at her feet.
And that was it. The end of reason. Three years of firm resistance overcome by his hand on her knee under the water. His breath. The bubbles fluttering up her bare legs.
Once, she told him. And never again. And she really did think that she meant it.
Because everyone makes mistakes
The Johnson house, rented from Trudy’s grandparents, was so small as to be comical. A tiny cube covered with fake-brick asphalt siding, topped with a pitched roof. The ground floor housed the kitchen and the front room that doubled as Claire’s bedroom. (Every morning, she removed the sheets and tucked them into the side table, folded the hide-a-bed mattress back into the couch.) Stacked on top were the bedroom shared by Trudy and Tammy — and later, Mercy — and the closet-sized bathroom. Shag carpet in every room. Wallpaper, too. Wood-grain wallpaper, floral wallpaper, even (in the bathroom) fairy wallpaper. A birch forest mural featuring a waterfall on the back wall of the front room.
Small, carpeted, wallpapered to death and stiflingly hot.
By the end of that summer, when sixteen-year-old Tammy was eight months pregnant, Trudy thought the house was feeling even smaller than usual. She also felt that her sister was using her condition as an excuse to take liberties. She had decided to draw a line.
“Why are you such a bitch, Trudy? Just get me some ginger ale. I’m thirsty.”
“I said, get it yourself. You’re pregnant, not crippled.” The smell of cabbage rolls was fumigating the house. Claire had been crying and furiously cooking for months. Ever since Tammy’s pregnancy had become undeniable. Claire had been a mother at seventeen and now she would be a grandmother at thirty-four. She was beside herself with shame and worry. Frenzied. The freezer was as packed with casseroles as Tammy was with child. Trudy felt like she was going to vomit. Why was this house always so disgustingly hot?
“You’ve always hated me. Always thought you were better than me. Some big sister you are.”
Trudy stood up, her body suddenly beyond her command, a machine carrying out its simple unstoppable function. She walked over and pushed the heel of her hand against Tammy’s chest, pinning her against the couch. She could feel Tammy’s heart beating, her clammy skin sweating under her hand. “What did you say to me?”
“Get off ! Mom! ”
“Girls?” Claire’s nervous voice from the kitchen.
Trudy straddled her sister, a knee on either side of her thighs on the couch, pushed her hand harder into Tammy’s chest, feeling the slight give of the sternum. Why was she doing this? Her breath was shaking. “Shut up, Tammy. Why don’t you ever think of anyone but yourself? God, you’re right. I do hate you sometimes.”
Trudy pushed herself off the couch and turned away. The thick funk of cooked cabbage filled her throat. She bolted up the stairs.
Retching into the toilet, the idea spread through her like a stain.
Biggest mistake of her life.
Fucking Jimmy Munro. Of course.
Because it would kill her mother
“Trudy, are you OK? Let me in.”
“Leave me alone, Tammy.”
Tammy sat in the hallway with her back against the bathroom door, her giant belly pressing the air out of her lungs, forcing her to sit up as straight as possible just so she could take a breath. “Oh my God. Are you pregnant, Trudy?”
The door opened suddenly, throwing Tammy off balance. She almost toppled over. “Get in here. Don’t say that. Do you want to kill our mother?”
“Well, are you?” Tammy sat on the edge of the tub. “It wouldn’t be the end of the world, you know. We could raise our kids together! Happy families.” She said this last part in a loopy singsong voice.
Psycho, thought Trudy. She put her toothbrush in the dirty mug by the sink and turned to her sister. “Tammy, you have to have sex to get pregnant. You know I don’t do that.”
“Yeah, right.”
“I’m just sick. I need to see the doctor.”
Because small towns are unbearable
Trudy’s hand was shaking so that the receiver of the telephone vibrated against her right ear. She had dragged the phone as far into the bedroom as the cord would allow. She sat on the carpet between the twin beds and spoke quietly with her hand cupped around the mouthpiece.
“And what is it concerning, Trudy?” Dr. Cameron’s nurse waited for a response. This nurse was named Janet McElroy. She used to babysit Trudy and Tammy when they were kids. She still lived right across the street. Small towns. Unbearable.
“It’s private.”
“You know we keep things confidential here, Trudy. I need to tell him something. That’s just how it works.” Trudy didn’t believe it for a minute. She had heard enough stories to know how it worked. So-and-so had cancer. And Mrs. So-and-so had warts on her behind. Baby So-and-so got dropped on his head. She knew who she was talking to: Radio Free Preston Mills.
“It’s about my period. It never stops.” This was in the right neighbourhood. But the opposite of the truth. She wrote her appointment time on the inside of her wrist with a blue ballpoint pen. Just numbers and symbols. Like a secret code: 3:00280873.
Three days, two hours, ten minutes into the future.
Because enough was enough
Trudy told Jimmy enough was enough, they were never supposed to have done it in the first place, and now it had to stop. Though, of course, she didn’t tell him why.
“No problem,” said Jimmy. A little too quickly, Trudy thought.
“Yeah, right.”
“No, really, it’s OK. I got a girlfriend now anyway.”
Trudy checked to see if she cared about this. She thought she didn’t, really. At least not very much. “Good.”
“Are you mad at me?”
“Nah.” And she wasn’t. She was mad at herself, the universe, her mother, her stupid sister. But not Jimmy. She just couldn’t see why she had risked so much for so little. Why her body had taken over her mind like that. Well, that was done with now. Brain back in the driver’s seat, please.
“Hey, Jimmy.”
“Yeah?”
“Go fuck yourself.”
“Yeah, yeah. You’re tough, Trudy.”
“Don’t you forget it.”
Tough. (Except there was a breach in the system, a leak, a pressure valve in the form of a small round bald spot at her crown. Trudy had been pulling out her hair. She would stare off into space, twist some strands around her index finger, then run the hair through her fingers, letting it fall away until a single strand remained pinched between thumb and forefinger. And then with a quick tug she would pull it out and brush it off her hand and onto the floor. By the time she went to see Dr. Cameron, there was a quarter-sized patch of soft scalp showing. Sometimes she wore a kerchief to cover it. Other times she carefully teased her hair, blasted it with hairspray, and patted it carefully into place over the spot. Nobody would ever know.)
Tough. (Except she had terrifying nightmares. Earthquakes bringing down the house around them. Or floods. Water rushing through the house, sweeping away hairbrushes, slippers, packs of cigarettes on the crest of a giant wave. Or snakes. Snakes oozing up out of the ground in the yard, slithering through open windows, under the doors, rippling through the carpet, wrapping around her ankles. She would wake up kicking and tearing at the sheets, Tammy staring at her in the dark from the other side of the room.)
Because some solutions can fix more than one kind of problem
Dr. Cameron told her to get dressed and he would be back in a minute. Miserable, Trudy swung her legs over the side of the examination table and hopped down, her bare ass hanging out of the gown, lubricant making her thighs
slippery. Oh, she felt low. She grabbed some tissues from the box on the desk and cleaned up and then she took a few more and blew her nose. Not sure what else to do, she put the used tissues on the crinkly paper on the table, covered them with her gown, and got dressed. She sat on the black vinyl chair in the corner, shivering in her jeans and T-shirt, dreading whatever would come next.
She was thinking about Tammy, about how wrong it seemed that she became prettier and happier with each week of pregnancy. Her face was rosy and full, her hair thick and glossy. Her breasts and belly were firm and round and perfect. Laughing and smiling all the time. As if she didn’t have a care in the world. As if she had no idea what could possibly be wrong with being sixteen years old, single, unemployed, and pregnant. Trudy, on the other hand, was feeling tired and ugly and hollowed out. Nauseated and conquered.
Dr. Cameron knocked once as he opened the door. He was already in the room by the time Trudy had even noticed the sound.
“Trudy, here’s what we’re going to do. There is a very easy way to address this problem. I’m assuming it’s a problem, Trudy?”
She stared at the doctor for a moment, not sure she understood.
“Trudy, there is an operation that we do sometimes, when girls’ periods are too heavy. I think it would be a good idea for you. Essentially, we just put you to sleep and scrape the lining of your uterus. It sort of just gives you a fresh start.”
“But, I haven’t had my period in months.”
Dr. Cameron sighed and looked down at his hands in his lap. “Trudy, this procedure works for all kinds of problems, and I think it might be the best thing for what’s bothering you. But you tell me. What do you want to do?”
Bad Ideas Page 2