Bad Ideas

by Missy Marston

  “OK, even if the jump was happening, why in the hell would anyone buy tickets? If it was actually happening — which it isn’t — and I really wanted to see it, why wouldn’t I just drive over there, pull over to the side of the road, and watch it? For free?”

  “Suit yourself. Won’t be no refreshments, though. Me and the boys are gonna be selling beer, too.”

  This makes even less sense. Darren thinks about exploring this further — Why couldn’t he bring his own beer? — but decides against it. There is no point.

  “Thanks, anyway.” He takes a step backward, reaches for the door.

  “You sure? Last chance.”

  Darren is pretty sure. He raises a hand as if to wave and takes another step back, closes the door. Unbelievable. Darren might be new in town, but he has heard all about this Davis character. He is a known lunatic. Claire told him that Davis used to chase girls when she was a teenager. Just break out and chase them down the street with his dirty hair sticking out all over the place. He never caught Claire, but she heard from other girls that he would knock them to the ground, pin their arms down with his knees, and tickle them. Hard. Then he would just get up and walk away. Leaving them there on the ground.

  You might think this would diminish his popularity. But everyone just sort of takes Davis’s behaviour as a fact of life. Still wave at him at the gas station or the grocery store, still ask about his family. And they make damn sure they warn their daughters not to walk by his place, to take the long way home if they have to.

  Darren has seen some rough towns in his life with some strange people, but Preston Mills is something else.

  Because you made it this way

  That night over dinner, Darren tells the story of crazy Joe Davis and his homemade tickets. In the telling, Davis’s hair is crazier, his hands dirtier. The tickets are more ridiculous, written in pencil crayon, each the size of a placemat. Mercy laughs. Claire tells Joe Davis stories from her girlhood. Trudy doesn’t find any of it very funny. When she and Tammy were girls, they had been terrified of Joe Davis. His catcalls and lewd gestures. His crazy teeth.

  And the idea of the jump being real, something that could really happen, is chilling. The thought of Davis and a bunch of drunken fools sitting outside his ruin of a trailer watching it — as though it were entertainment — was sickening to her. But of course it is bullshit. It isn’t happening. Jules would have told her. He would.

  She will call him tonight anyway. Just to make sure.

  Trudy wants to enjoy dinner, to savour this harmony. She likes Darren, after all, and she is glad to see Claire and Mercy happy. Tammy and Fenton are eating take-out burgers in the truck, like the weirdos they are — determined to be on the wrong side of everything. Since the Frisbee incident, they have been keeping their distance, and to Darren’s irritation, Fenton has been showing up late for work or not at all. Good, thinks Trudy. Stay out there. Don’t show up.

  It is better without you.

  That’s the way you have made it and that’s the way it will be.

  Because some people are harder to love than others

  And the next morning, Tammy and Fenton are gone. Just like in Mercy’s dream, she wakes up and looks over at the bed across the room, and it is empty. No Tammy curled up in a ball under the blankets, no Fenton on the floor. Mercy is alone. Not sure if she is awake or not, she does what she did in her dream. She pulls the covers back and gets out of bed. She walks across the room to the window and looks out at the driveway. The sun is just rising. It is mostly dark but orange-pink light is beginning to spread across the ground. Claire’s car and Darren’s truck, the grass in the yard, the stones in the driveway, are all shining in the morning light.

  But Tammy’s truck is gone.

  Mercy puts on her slippers and goes downstairs. The house is quiet and still. There is light coming from the kitchen. Dee and Speckles are asleep on the hide-a-bed, so she creeps by quietly to join Claire who is already up, making toast. She doesn’t know if her grandmother knows yet that Tammy is gone and she doesn’t want to tell her.

  Mercy knows she will be sad. And mad.

  She walks over and stands beside her grandmother at the counter and leans against her. Claire reaches down and rests her hand on top of Mercy’s head, smooths down her tangled hair. Then she pops up the toast and scrapes some butter on it. “Oh, Mercy,” she says. “Just you and me this morning, I guess. Let’s make some hot chocolate.”

  Mercy can’t believe this. She never gets hot chocolate during the week. She feels a hundred confusing things at once. She thinks she might cry. “Grandma Claire, I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  “I’m not sure if I love my mom.” She feels terrible for saying it. It is a terrible thing to say, a terrible way to feel.

  “Maybe you do.”

  “I didn’t really have time.” And now Mercy is crying. She had her chance and she missed it. Her grandmother picks her up like she is a baby, like she weighs nothing at all. Mercy lays her head on Claire’s shoulder, lets her stroke her hair and kiss her cheek.

  Claire sighs. “She’s not easy to love, Mercy.”

  Because it has already happened without you

  Trudy rarely drinks on workdays, but on the way to pick up Mercy from school, she stops at the beer store and picks up a six-pack. Jules is not returning her calls, and Tammy’s sudden departure has shaken Mercy. She is either hyper and crazy or sad and clingy. Trudy’s nerves are shot.

  After feeding Mercy lunch, Trudy gets the shoebox full of Barbie dolls and clothes and puts it on the kitchen table, hoping she will play quietly for a while, but Mercy is wound up. She wants to play Jungle. Jungle, a game she plays at school with her new friends, is all she wants to play lately. It involves a lot of growling and running around on Mercy’s part and some hiding and dying on Trudy’s. But Trudy is not in the mood. She takes the lid off the shoebox and heads to the fridge to get a beer. Mercy, disappointed, flops down at the table and starts picking through the tiny dresses. Trudy quietly takes her leave, down the hall, around the corner into the living room. She sits just out of Mercy’s sightline.

  She has not even taken a sip when the phone rings.

  “Trudy?” Before she even says hello, someone is talking. “Trudy, it’s Darren. You better get down here.” Down where?

  Mercy jumps around the corner and raises her two hands high above her head, making claws with her fingers. “RAHR! GRRRR!”

  Trudy can’t hear what he is saying. Now Mercy is standing on the couch, roaring at the top of her lungs, and jumping on the cushions.

  “Mercy, for the love of God. Please shut up. Just for a minute.”

  “I will KILL you!”

  “Honey, you won’t. Now please be quiet.”

  “Yes I will. I will kill you and EAT YOU!” She leaps off the couch at Trudy and crash-lands in her lap, knocking the beer out of her hand. The bottle hits the wall. Beer sprays everywhere. Mercy takes off. Trudy leaps out of her chair, the phone still pressed against her ear, and glares after Mercy, who is racing up the stairs. She stops mid-flight, curls her hands into claws again, and growls in Trudy’s direction, “RAAHR! ”

  “Sorry, Darren. Just a sec.” Trudy drops the phone, leaves it dangling from its cord, and runs to the bottom of the stairs. Hopping on one foot, she removes a slipper and pitches it as hard as she can up the stairs at Mercy, who is peering down at her from the top. The slipper bounces off a step and flops end over end back down to the bottom. Trudy picks it up, puts it on, and walks back over to the phone.

  “Hi. Sorry. You were saying?”

  “You better get down here, Trudy. To the ramp. I was driving back from town and it had already happened. The car is in the water. You better come.”

  Because the wind makes your eyes water

  Mercy freezes at the top of the stairs. The air is strange. Something is wrong. Trudy makes
a noise Mercy has never heard before. Like a dog whining.

  It is quiet again for a minute and then, in a new, flat voice, Trudy says, “I’ll be there. I’m coming. OK.”

  Mercy hears the thud of Trudy’s footsteps down the hall, the jingle of keys, the back door slamming shut.

  “Hey!” She is frightened now. She can’t be in the house alone. “Trudy!”

  No response.

  “Trudy! You’re not allowed to leave me alone!”

  Mercy hears the car starting in the driveway and she runs as fast as she can down the stairs, down the hall, and out the door, into the laneway. The car is idling, Trudy at the wheel, the passenger door hanging open. Mercy stands and stares for a second, her heart pounding. Trudy leans on the horn and Mercy runs to the car, scrambling into the passenger seat. She can barely get the heavy door closed before Trudy is backing out of the driveway and onto the street.

  “Fuck!” Trudy says. She says it like she will never stop saying it. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.”

  Trudy’s hands are shaking as she lights a cigarette with the car lighter and pushes on the gas pedal until it is flat against the floor. Mercy sticks her head out the window into the cold wind. Her hair is flying everywhere, getting in her eyes. It makes them water. The wind on her face blows her tears back toward her ears.

  Trudy tells Mercy to get her head back in the car and sit down.

  Because you wouldn’t

  Darren hadn’t believed Joe Davis for a second. Why not? Because you wouldn’t, that’s why. The guy was nuts. A madman who chased young girls and tickled them. Who may have never had a bath in his entire life. But here it all was. The whole sad mess.

  Darren had spent the morning tearing down an old carport in Morrisburg, feeling every bit his age but enjoying the work. On his lunch break, he thought he would drive down to the locks in Iroquois. He could park the truck and, if his timing was good, watch a boat go through while he ate his lunch. A workman’s lunch in a steel lunch bucket: ham sandwiches, two apples, milky tea in a thermos.

  He had been heading down Lakeshore Drive, taking the corners nice and easy when he saw a tiny flash of yellow in the grey sky: the car. He was sure of it. Darren stopped the truck right there in the middle of the road and leaned forward, straining to see. It was over in a second. So high in the sky like a pale yellow kite, then a sharp descent, the hood angling sharply down, then dropping out of sight. Christ, thought Darren. From where he was sitting, it didn’t even look like the car had made it to the water’s edge. Just straight up, then straight down. Like an upside-down V.

  He put the truck back in gear and slowly made his way toward the site, about a half a mile away. The first thing he saw was a cop car parked across both lanes of the road. Then a crowd of about fifteen men standing around in Joe Davis’s yard, looking out over the water. He pulled over and walked across the street to the shore and looked out over the water. There was no car in sight. Just grey, rippling waves. The wind was strong now, blowing his pants against his legs, making him shiver in his sweaty work clothes. He looked back at the ramp. There was a piece of asphalt hanging off the front edge, dangling a hundred feet up. It detached and fell, sending up a spray of muddy gravel when it hit with a thud that shook the ground.

  Darren walked over to Joe Davis, that smelly, callous old bastard, and asked to use his phone. He didn’t look at any of the “ticket holders.” He didn’t want to know who they were.

  Because you don’t even know who to be mad at for what

  They had met Jules in the lobby when he arrived, three of them. At the Lord Elgin Hotel in Ottawa. The beautiful lobby. There he was in his old jeans and mackinaw, black grease under his fingernails, and the three of them came straight at him, all white shirts and suit jackets and striped ties. And identical curly hair. At least Jules had that part right.

  Where was Sammy? Wasn’t Sammy supposed to be here?

  They took away his gym bag and gave it to a porter. And they steered him straight into the bar where he drank beer and ate nuts until he thought he would explode, listening to their incomprehensible banter. Jules started to think that they didn’t seem very believable as American network types. So big and burly. Every time he asked about the jump, they deflected. It wasn’t their area, they didn’t really work for the network directly, they were contractors. There was no need to worry about that now, he should enjoy himself! A meeting would be set up sometime tomorrow with the lawyers, the programming people, the insurance people. Jules couldn’t keep track, the plan changed so many times even over the course of an hour.

  They shunted him off to his room and told him to order whatever he wanted from room service. Take it easy. They would be in touch.

  That was three days ago. He was supposed to be home yesterday. And for the third day in a row, one of those assholes knocked on his door and told him the meeting had been delayed. There was always a vague reason: scheduling conflicts, flight times, just the crazy ups and downs of the entertainment industry!

  Trudy would kill him.

  And he thought he would go crazy with boredom: no money to go out — it was pouring rain anyway — and the TV in his room got only a few channels. Out of desperation, he turned it on anyway.

  And he just caught it: the grainy footage of something pale yellow against a dark grey sky, and the announcer saying his name, Daredevil, Jules Tremblay. He jumped up to turn up the volume, but it was over. On to the next item. Frantically, he switched from channel to channel, hoping to find out more, but the news was over. He sat on the end of the bed and burst into tears.

  Fuckers! What had they done?

  Because it is just a body in the end

  Trudy sees the cars first. So many cars parked by the side of the road. There must be a dozen, all pulled over onto the gravel shoulder of the road. The ramp looks like it’s been hit by a meteor. A cop car is blocking traffic. Someone has put a sawhorse beside it. She can see Darren’s truck on the other side. “Close your eyes, Mercy.”

  “Why?”

  “Just close them until I tell you to open them.” Trudy slows down. There is an ambulance and a firetruck, and she can see Dr. Cameron’s car parked in Joe Davis’s yard. A white van with an Ottawa TV station logo on the side. She looks out across the water and sees the divers in wetsuits in the boat. A tiny boat with an outboard motor. Whose boat is it? Who are the divers? Trudy can’t think straight. She shouldn’t have brought Mercy here. She opens the door and gets out. “Stay here, Mercy. Lock the doors.”

  “Trudy, don’t leave me!”

  “I want you to lock the doors and lie down on the seat and close your eyes, Mercy.”

  Mercy is whimpering, whining, no, no, no, but even as she says it she does as she is told: she locks the doors one by one and lies down on the front seat. She hugs her knees to her chest and closes her eyes.

  Trudy starts to walk toward the shore but stops. She braces her hands against her knees and vomits onto the grass. She starts to cough and throws up again. That’s alright, she thinks. That’s fine. As if anything could possibly be fine. She straightens up and scans the crowd on the grass for Darren, but she can’t see him. Then she realizes he is in his truck. She can see him through the windshield, his head on his arms on the steering wheel. The small crowd of people is quiet as she walks by, staring after her. She doesn’t look at them. She opens the door of the truck and tells Darren to take Mercy home in her car. She will bring the truck home when she can.

  “Will you be alright?”

  “No. Never.” She says it with dead certainty. She will never be alright again. But she wants him to go and take Mercy with him. They trade keys and she walks back toward the shore. She sits on a cold rock and watches the divers tumble off the boat into the cold grey water.

  Darren unlocks the door and starts the engine. He tucks Mercy tight against his side and drives away.

  It is not a person. It is a body. />
  They lean down over the side of the boat and haul the body in. Trudy sees something bloody in the tangle of blond hair before she turns away. The sound carries across the water, the hollow sound of the weight hitting the side, the bottom of the aluminum boat. The splash and drip of water on the hull.

  The diver is breathing heavily when he says it. He has to stop and catch his breath. “I’m going back down. There’s another one down there. There’s someone else.”

  Because there are no diamonds

  The river didn’t look like diamonds on that day in November. The stone-grey sky hung above the tips of the white caps, a velvet curtain with lacy trim brushing against the stage. The water churned. Where it was dark it was almost black. And where it was light on the crests of the waves it was a foamy pale grey. Fronds of mossy weed surfaced here and there. Tentacles breaking the surface.

  Of course he had offered to drive, but as usual she wouldn’t let him. Maybe she didn’t believe that he would do it. Maybe she thought he didn’t have it in him. But he did. He would. He wasn’t afraid. So he would go with her. They were in it together.

  She started the car and it rumbled and trembled and sputtered. From the bottom of the ramp, they could only see sky past the end. The clouds rolled like smoke, like spirits. The air was heavy and damp and cold. The asphalt blackened in the shadows.

  She pushed the accelerator down to the floor and it roared like thunder. Roared like a lion. King of the jungle. She looked over at Fenton and grinned. They didn’t wear helmets. They wanted to see everything.

  Fenton had a cigarette dangling from his bottom lip. It almost fell into his lap when she stepped on the gas and hit the rocket booster button. One, two. No messing around. His head hit the headrest and his back was pushed into the seat. He could barely breathe. She was laughing. He was laughing. They held hands as the Lincoln sped up the ramp and the world dropped away. Up, up. The car tilted slightly starboard and the hood kept rising, butter yellow filling their vision.