She doesn’t want to hear a word about what his life has been like without her, what he has been doing all this time. She doesn’t want to hear what Trudy thinks or what Tammy thinks. Not yet. She wants to make believe. She wants to make it believable: that he is here, that he has always been here.
Just for a few minutes.
Before everyone starts talking. And all the years come charging in to complicate the story.
Because love is weird
Mercy is standing on a kitchen chair at the stove, moving ground beef around a frying pan with a wooden spoon and explaining to Tammy how to make Hamburger Helper. Tammy can see she is warming to her role as hostess. It is as if she is pretending she is on a TV cooking show. Smiling into the camera. She flicks her hair over her shoulder and turns back to Tammy.
“You just keep stirring the hamburger until it is all brown and there is no pink left. Then you add the powder.”
“How do you know how to cook, Mercy?” Tammy is fidgeting nervously at the counter beside Mercy, wondering what her role is. She feels like she is failing a test of some kind. Is this right? Were she and Trudy allowed to use the stove when they were — what — five years old? Should she stop the child from cooking? It seems like it would hurt Mercy’s feelings if Tammy tried to stop her.
“Grandma Claire taught me. I can make scrambled eggs, too. And soup if it is the canned kind. You can help if you want. Just open that packet and sprinkle the powder around.”
Tammy does as she is told. She opens the packet and sprinkles the beige-orange powder over the very cooked hamburger. “Now some water!” Mercy gestures at the cupboard. “Just fill up one of the big coffee cups with warm water and pour it in. When it bubbles, we can add the macaroni. I love macaroni.” A salty mist rises off the pan as Tammy pours in the cup of water.
“Did you miss me, Mercy?” Tammy is trying to provoke something, to break into the steady stream of cheerful chatter. Why does her child seem like a stranger? She can’t find anything in her that seems familiar. Tammy doesn’t feel like a mother. She feels tough like gristle.
Mercy looks at the pan and stirs the beef around with the wooden spoon as Tammy pours in more water. “I think so. But it was hard to remember you. You were gone so fast.”
Tammy’s heart shrinks a little. She puts the coffee cup in the sink.
“I always wished you would come back, though.” Tammy can see Mercy is choosing her words. “I just didn’t know what it would be like.”
“So what’s it like?” Tammy regrets asking it. It is too soon. There is nothing good to say yet. Maybe there won’t ever be.
“I don’t know. Weird. Scary. Crowded.” Mercy blows her bangs off her forehead.
“Crowded?” Tammy thinks she knows what she means.
“Yeah. I didn’t think there would be so many people all at once.”
“Me neither.”
“Is Fenton your boyfriend?”
“Uh-huh,” says Tammy. “Can you believe it?”
“Not really.” Mercy starts giggling, and Tammy is laughing, too. Poor Fenton! They shouldn’t be laughing. “He seems nice, though.”
Tammy nods, still laughing. And crying a little bit now. “Oh, he is. Fenton is very, very nice. He’s just weird.”
Because sooner or later you have to make your move
Trudy, Tammy, Mercy, and Fenton are sitting at the table, eating Hamburger Helper. Speckles finishes licking her bowl in the corner of the kitchen and comes over to lay down under Mercy’s chair. Mercy puts her bare feet on the dog’s back, her toes digging into the soft, warm fur.
Trudy turns to her sister. “I think our mother is having sex in a truck in the driveway.”
“Disgusting,” says Tammy.
“Probably true, though.”
Fenton gets up and clears the plates, walks over to the sink, and runs some water. He froths up the soap with his hands and whistles a little tune.
Tammy shakes her head. “I can’t believe it. I sort of felt like he didn’t really exist.”
“I know.” Trudy is pretty sure she doesn’t want to be there when Claire and Darren come inside. She’s just not up to it. She doesn’t want to see their faces, all flushed and happy. And she doesn’t want to hear any explanations. Not yet. It always seems to her that the things that most need explaining (like why you left your children, for example) can’t really be explained. She hates explanations. They are never good enough.
She still has her mother’s car keys in her pocket. Maybe she will just go for a little drive before work.
Maybe she’ll drive by Jules’s place and see if he is back yet.
But just as she is about to make her move, there they are in the doorway: love’s not-so-young dream. Larger than life, standing arm-in-arm, radiating some kind of magic. Making the brown linoleum seem like the gleaming dance floor at the fairy-fucking-princess ball.
Claire walks up behind Tammy’s chair and puts her arms around her daughter and nuzzles into her hair, her neck. “My baby is home.” Tammy shrugs, closing the gap between jaw and shoulder, squeezing her mother out. Claire is undeterred. She kisses the top of Tammy’s head and squeezes her hard.
Tammy turns her face to the side, tears streaming down her face.
Mercy drops to the floor and lays her head down on the dog’s soft back.
Trudy gets up from the table, keys in hand. She passes Darren on the way out, gives him a brisk pat on the shoulder as if to say, You better get in there, pal. This is your moment.
Darren walks over and squats down beside Mercy and Speckles. “Come on, you two. Let’s go for a little walk.”
Because it will all end one way or another
Jules is driving back from Montreal with five hundred dollars in his pocket and the promise of a new investor. Or the ghost of a whisper of a promise. He pulls off the 401 onto winding Highway 2 at Cornwall, just to slow down and take in the sights. And to get his story straight. There will be some explaining to do when he gets back to Preston Mills. He has been gone for ten days. He was supposed to be back in three.
He will tell Trudy about his meetings with Guy, the film producer who might buy the rights to film the jump now that his TV deal is well and truly dead. Guy has mostly produced pornographic shorts for coin-operated peep-show film booths, but those are still films and he has still produced them.
He will not tell Trudy what he did to earn five hundred dollars in ten days. This included: a bare-knuckle fight (which he lost); a bet on a bare-knuckle fight (which he won); a minor drug deal (low-risk, with known participants); and a slightly distasteful sexual favour (better forgotten). Nor will he tell her where he slept (in his car in a parking lot by a warehouse by the river).
He looks like he has been dragged behind a tractor. And he doesn’t smell very good, either.
Gliding around curve after curve in the road, the sky soft over the river to his left, Jules is starting to feel just a little bit hopeful. He will go home, take a shower, and go see Trudy and tell her all about his plans.
Jules feels like maybe he is back in charge. He will get his own movie made about the jump — with Guy’s help — and he will do his own promotions. He will need new investors to get the ramp and the car into shape. It will take some time. Trudy will like that part, anyway. Surely, she will forgive him the rest. Maybe he will stop and buy her a present. Something for Mercy, too. A belated birthday present. He is thinking of the gift shop near Ingleside where they sell beaded moccasins and snow globes and little silver spoons with tiny ships on the handles. Or maybe that shop is closed for the season now. Never mind. He will come up with something. As he heads out of town past the paper mill, Jules sees the biggest ship he has ever seen. It is blue on the bottom and white on the top and the bow seems to be coming up onto the shore.
He pulls onto the gravel shoulder. There is a crowd of maybe thirty men standing around on the
shore, hands in pockets. As Jules approaches, he sees that the ship is still and has run completely aground. It is at a slight angle, almost parallel to the shore, its bow resting in the muddy riverbed. The shallow waves eddy around it gently, making it seem like it is rocking a little, side to side. He is astonished by the height of it, the length, the sheer mass. It towers ten stories high. All spectators are silenced by the strangeness of it. In the middle of the river, a ship looks reasonable, sensibly sized; here on the riverbank, it is as incomprehensible as a flying saucer touching down in the backyard. Nobody expects a ship to heave itself right up onto the muddy earth like that. It looks like it could have kept right on going, across the grassy park and onto the highway.
It looks like the weight of it could split the earth in two.
Jules walks along the grass, along the length of the boat to the stern. There is no sign of life aboard. Where are the men? Below deck? Have they been taken away somewhere already? It is like a ghost ship. Abandoned. He sees the keel, fully exposed, a tangle of seaweed hanging off the top. Something long and slick and black detaches from the knot of weeds, drops into the shallow grey water and slithers away.
And standing there on the shore, Jules lets himself think that one black thought he never allows himself to think. Just for a moment. Then he turns away. Back to the car. Back on track.
Like the man said: The stunt to end all stunts.
Because they’re only numbers
He is crazy. What the hell was he thinking? He had only meant to get something small, just a gesture. A humble apology. But here he is, stumbling into the bright light of the parking lot of the flea market off the highway with a giant teddy bear in his arms and a ring in his pocket and half his money gone already.
Jules had paid five bucks for the teddy bear. It is almost as big as he is and bright pink with a white belly and muzzle. With black glass eyes and a black plastic nose. He had hefted it onto his hip and started down the crowded corridor of the market, trying not to sweep goods off the tables as he passed. He had seen the stand from a long way off, the fat old biker behind the table, his shaggy beard, his hairy belly peeking out of the bottom of a faded black T-shirt. There was an old cracked aquarium sitting there, full of jewelry. Gold chains and plastic beads and silver bracelets and rhinestone earrings piled on top of each other in a tarnished, mouldering mass. Here, he thought, are some deals to be had. A necklace for Trudy, maybe a little trinket for Mercy.
But no.
That biker had seen him coming with his giant pink bear in his arms. He had seen that look in his eye. The look of the penitent, of a man in the doghouse. Easy prey.
The biker pulled a dark green velvet tray from a box at the back. Twenty, thirty rings in rows. All of them crappy. Dull, bent, pathetic. Stones missing. Except one. (Clever salesman!) One ring in the very middle of the tray. An opal surrounded by rubies set in gold. Gleaming, polished gold. Pink, blue, yellow sparks flashing in that milky stone. From Australia, the man said. Antique, he claimed. A real beauty. A bargain at twice the price.
Jules plucked the ring from the tray and slid it onto his left pinkie finger. He spread his fingers and held his hand out at arm’s length. Absurd, this beautiful, delicate thing on his nasty hand. Hairy, with crooked knuckles from bad breaks, and scarred. That first night Trudy had stayed over, she had held his hand in both of hers, running a finger over the perfectly round scars clustered in a pyramid on its back. A game from his youth. What was it? You and your opponent each held a five-dollar bill over the back of your hand, and if you could burn a hole through it with a lit cigarette, you could keep both bills. Or the first person to quit lost, and the other got to keep both bills. Either way, you came out of it scarred for life. He hadn’t cared. He had needed the money. And pain could be reassuring sometimes.
“Pretty stupid to do it once,” she had said.
“Yeah.”
“But three times.”
“I know.”
She had kissed him then, put his stupid hand on her soft breast.
Jules slipped the ring off his finger. He loved it. He had never seen anything like it. Trudy would love it! His money was there in a thick roll in his front pocket. Burning a hole, as the saying goes. The bristly old biker took the ring back, his fingernails filthy. With a flourish he polished the stone on his shirt and placed it into a ring box shaped like a silver bell and snapped the lid shut. Sold!
Easy come, easy go, thinks Jules as he drives down the highway toward Preston Mills. Money. What does it mean anyway? He swallows hard, thinking of the bills at home, the stalled construction at the ramp site. They’re only numbers, he tries to convince himself. Oh, well. It is going to take a lot more than five hundred bucks to get him out of the hole he was digging anyway. It really is a beautiful ring. He looks over at the pink bear in the passenger seat and starts laughing, shaking his head. He pushes his foot down hard on the accelerator just to feel the back of his head press against the headrest. The sun is starting to sink in the sky as he roars down the road, his heart on fire with love and his belly full of dread.
“Doesn’t matter! Never mind!” he says out loud.
DOESN’T-MATTER-NEVER-MIND!
Never mind, never mind, never mind.
Because there are two kinds of surprises
Trudy pulls off the gravel road, into Jules’s place. She pulls up right to the end of the yard, so the fronds of the weeping willow brush up over the hood. The tree bows in the wind and the branches billow in and out like curtains. Leaves spiral to the ground in a shower of gold and green. On the marshy bank of the bay, white fluff bursts out of the brown velvety cattails. Little brown birds hop from stalk to stalk, wings flickering in the dusky light, heads turning sharply to one side and then the other. In minutes, the sun will be down. Early to come and black as crow feathers, these autumn evenings.
She hears his car on the gravel road before he pulls in behind her. The headlights fill her car, and she tries to fight the lift she feels, the mix of relief and excitement. The craving to see his face, to touch him. She wants to stay angry so she can tell him how lonely she felt when he was gone, how terrible it was to face things without him, how very many things there have been to face. But all of this starts to sound like love, somehow. Like desperation. And she doesn’t like it one bit. She straightens up in her seat. Tries to reset her thoughts.
The car smells like her mother’s perfume. Which is both comforting and infuriating. Trudy gets out of the car and turns around to face him.
And there he is.
He is standing there holding a giant pink teddy bear. His hair is mashed in on one side and fanned out in a kind of spray on the other. He has a black eye and a fat lip, his shirt is torn, and he has the beginning of a very black beard. He looks like hell. He looks like a drunken pirate. For a second, she isn’t sure if it is actually him.
“What the hell happened to you?”
“Oh, Trudy. I really wanted to get cleaned up before I saw you.” Jules reaches up and touches his own face, runs his hand over his hair. He bows his head toward his left armpit and recoils. “I’m sorry. Give me a second. Just come in and sit down for a second. I have a surprise for you.”
I’ve had about all the surprises I can take today, thinks Trudy.
She sits at the Formica table, facing the bear seated across from her, and listens to the shower run. She pictures him in there, soaping up, the water streaming over him, and the tight knot that has been in her throat all evening loosens and she starts to weep. Her body shakes and heaves. She pushes her chair back from the table and the bear flops over onto the floor. She climbs the stairs, taking her clothes off as she goes.
Holding him tight, the hot water running over their bodies, she realizes that she doesn’t care if her father stays or leaves. She doesn’t care if her mother makes a fool of herself. But she does care about one thing. She says it out loud.
“If my siste
r upsets that child, I will kill her.”
Because sometimes it seems like there is only one kind of luck
Jules is driving Trudy to work, thinking about the ring in his pocket. Thinking maybe he really will make the jump. Maybe it will all work out after all. Then he’ll be rich. Then he could buy Trudy a great big diamond. A little house. Or whatever she wanted. He would just have to hang in there until then. Make his own deals. Secure the financing, fix the ramp, get the job done. Make the jump, let the cash rain down. He would have to hustle, though. In a month, a month and a half, there will be snow, and he can’t bear the thought of waiting until next year. But it won’t come to that. It will all come together. Jules can feel it.
“What do you think about getting married?” He just says it, throws it out there. Jules looks briefly over at Trudy, then back at the road.
“What do you mean, what do I think? About marriage in general?”
“Well, no. You and me. Do you ever think about us getting married?”
“Are you asking me to marry you?” Jules is not sure why this is making her angry, but he can tell it is making her quite angry indeed. His face feels hot.
Bad Ideas Page 14