by Ron Thompson
If I was so smart why did she watch me like a hawk? Why the roster of chores, the fixed schedule that did not apply to anyof my brothers?
“They’re older,” she said with finality. It left me thinking she did think me weird, not bookish after all.
Genny shifted in her seat and I reached around to draw her closer. She nestled into me, and I felt her warmth, inhaled her scent, the fragrance of a woman.
* * *
Women, girls, females in general: they had always baffled me, and I had no one to explain their enigma. Oh, I could ask my brothers—if I wanted to be humiliated and ridiculed. “Idiot! Retard!” they’d crow. “He wants to know about broads!” My father, normally patient with all the questions I posed, seemed distracted whenever I edged towards the topic. And my mother was one of them. I could hardly ask her.
The Poplar Lake library might have yielded answers, but at seven I did not have the nerve to pursue the subject there; and so I attempted to educate myself with the scant resources available to me at home. My first stop was the World Book Encyclopedia, which was vague on details and had no illustrations beyond those of various internal organs. Our bookshelf yielded little else, but around the house I found various glossy ladies magazines subscribed to by my mother. The pictures were fascinating, the ladies really did look nice, but the articles were useless. They were full of advice on wrinkles, blemishes, G spots, and zits—they were obsessed with skin care.
I was eleven when my closest brother, Victor, showed me some of his glossy magazines, and they featured a lot more skin than the summer issue of Chatelaine. By then I had bravely ventured into the library and witnessed bare breasts for myself in National Geographic, but I got my first look at what Victor calledvariously gazongas, bazookas, and knockers in the pages of Skank International.
And there was more.
I was full of questions, and Victor was fourteen, a man of the world. If anyone had answers it was him.
But instead of delivering the low down, his big grin faded into a frown, and I saw he was reluctant to say anything, what with (as he often reminded me) my big fat mouth. Confirming this, he grabbed the magazine from me and flung it into the box he’d taken it from. “You wouldn’t understand because you’re retarded,” he said, “Otherwise you’d be doing it by now.” He covered the box and turned to put it back in its place but stopped suddenly and stood without moving, lost in thought. Then he chortled to himself. He’d had a change of heart.
Everything he said next terrified me. For one thing, I could not imagine standing so close to a girl, let alone a naked woman with gazongas like that. I mean, where would I look? And then there were the, ah, technicalities. The how-to techniques.
According to him, everyone was doing what he’d just described—and all the time. So what was wrong with me? I was filled with resentment and shame. Was I retarded, as he maintained? I felt the injustice of the world, the weight of its unfairness upon my skinny shoulders. Why, why wasn’t I doing it? And why had no one told me before? Weren’t you supposed to learn important things in school? Now that I was so far behind, there’d be no catching up. Henceforth, I would have to live as a hermit in a cave, unable to show my retarded face to normal people.
No. NO! I could still make something of my life. I would join the Foreign Legion, and fight selflessly for the freedom of others back home to, well, to do it. I mean, that. I would sacrificemyself for them. Or, I would become a scientist and devote my life to something noble, like finding a cure for retardation. “He was one himself,” people would say someday, with admiration.
Oh, why, why was I mortal? If only I had superpowers, I could live like Bruce Wayne, aloof and above it all, but with a neat cape and mask.
You can see how upset I was. Everyone knows Batman has no superpowers—he’s the world’s greatest detective.
Victor was carelessly cavalier with his magazines. He kept them in virtual plain sight, in a box labelled “Simon’s Hockey Cards” on a shelf in our older brother Simon’s closet. My mother would never have found them if the box had not tumbled onto the floor a few weeks later while she was housecleaning. Simon, logically the one to ask, frantically denied ownership of the box, or any knowledge of its contents. It rang true to her. Simon had sketched a number of art, performance, and sports facilities, including arenas, meticulously laying out their interior areas (he was destined to be an interior designer), but he preferred figure skating to hockey, and had never collected hockey cards.
Victor, our oldest brother Andrew, and I gathered out in the hallway to see what the commotion was. Mom came out of Simon’s room and Victor saw what she was carrying. Confronted with irrefutable physical evidence, he did not hesitate for second. “Those are his!” he said, pointing at me.
Mom blinked in disbelief. Her eyes narrowed. She looked closely at Victor, then studied each of our faces in turn. While her eyes were on Andrew, I stole a look at Victor. He was staring at me. His expression, behind her back, conveyed distinct menace.
Her gaze eventually returned to me, because I radiated guilt like a fresh sunburn. The box would never have tumbled had I not left it on an angle on Simon’s shelf. I had been doing some research.
I forced myself now to meet her eye, and in that instant I decided to take the fall. I nodded.
“Just wait until your father gets home,” she said quietly, the disappointment in her voice stinging like a lash.
I was exiled to my room, where I waited in uncertain terror. When Dad arrived home my brothers lay low and pretended to do homework in their rooms—close enough to hear everything if there was a show. Downstairs, I heard a murmured conversation. Silence. More murmuring. Then I heard footfalls on the steps, the floor in the hall creaked, and there was a knock on my door. It swung open slowly and Dad looked in and saw me sitting on the edge of the bed. He stepped in and shut the door and sat down next to me. “Well, Jake,” he said, leaning forward, elbows on knees.
I kept my eyes on the quarter round strip at the foot of the wall.
His hands were clasped together. They were strong hands, farm boy hands, scarred from the war—he’d clambered from a burning tank, the sole survivor of his crew, according to Victor. For the first time, I wondered if he had killed Germans withthose strong hands of his. Just last fall, he’d gutted a deer out in the back yard, and made quick work of it. “Your mother thinks we should have a talk.”
My chin began to quiver. I tried to freeze it by flexing the muscles in my neck and face. We sat in silence. Finally he took a deep breath and straightened. He seemed to be looking out the window.
“Women . . .” he said, and cleared his throat. My eyes welled with tears. “Well, women are a bit of a mystery.”
I kept my eyes open as wide as possible.
“More than a bit. And you know what? They always will be.” I blinked and felt the trickle of a tear.
“A good mystery, for sure. You’ll learn that when you’re older.” This got me sobbing hard and shaking my head. Couldn’t he tell me NOW? Couldn’t he have told me before now? Before it was too late?
“You’ll never learn everything, of course.” I thought there was a smile in his voice but dared not look his way. My eyes remained fixed on the quarter round. The house was quiet, though I could hear my mother in the kitchen, the usual sounds of meal preparation. We sat in silence.
“So,” he said. “The main thing is.” But rather than explain what the main thing was he stopped to study the scar tissue that covered his palms. A pan clanged in the kitchen downstairs.
“Respect,” he said at last, nodding in agreement with the concept.
My chin was quivering again, my face had crumpled, and tears rolled freely down my cheeks. I tried to suppress another sob.
“Any questions?”
“No,” I sobbed.
“Well,” he said, getting to his feet. He patted me lightly on the shoulder fro
m an arm’s length away. “Think about it.” He paced the floor a couple of times, looked at his watch, andcocked an ear to the house. He stood in the window for a few more seconds then went for the door. “Must be time for supper. Get washed up and come on down to eat.”
“Dad?” He turned.
“I don’t want to join the Foreign Legion. Or be a scientist either. I’d hate working in a lab.”
He gave this comment serious consideration. “No, son,” he said at last, “I don’t think that’ll be necessary.”
* * *
In hindsight, I think that was my birds and bees talk, which in the circumstances could have gone worse. Yet I was no farther ahead on what I soon learned was sex, and I had a lot of questions. A lot of questions.
It was Victor who clarified the matter for me. He did it gratis, too, for I had earned some cred with him by not snitching. “I knew you’d get off easy,” he said, explaining away his own treachery. “You’re the littlest. You always get away with stuff. If it’d been me . . .” He left off on what might have happened to him and promised me a reward for not being a stool pigeon.
I was well satisfied that someone as cool and worldly asVictor thought I was no stool pigeon; his words were reward enough for me. But he intended more. A few weeks later, on a Saturday afternoon, he quietly suggested we take a walk out beyond the edge of town to a patch of woods we called Ortona Forest. It was webbed with deer paths and trails and bisected by an old gravel road that crossed a nearby railway track. The neighbourhood kids staged battles there with toy swords and guns, the road and the tracks delimiting rival territories. Sometimes we played Romans versus Greeks; other times it was North and South or cowboys and Indians. Mostly we fought modern wars, and World War II was our favourite, because with Korea and Vietnam someone had to be an Asian communist—even Danny Wong objected to that. Besides, we were confused about Vietnam. When we were younger we’d all seen protests by hippies and draft dodgers on TV. We couldn’t understand their problem. Why didn’t they want to kill commies?
Victor had not played with us for a couple of years, so I took his invitation to take a walk out to Ortona as a promising sign. Maybe we’d have a game, just the two of us.
It was spring, and the buds were out, but the ground was still damp, the air cool. When we were deep within the woods, the sun streaming through the poplars, Victor glanced around to check that we were alone. “I promised you something,” he said. He reached under the tail of his jacket and pulled a magazine from the waistband of his pants. He flipped through it once, deep in thought. Then he handed it to me.
At first I took it for one of the girly magazines he’d shownme before. But this one contained actual depictions of what I realized immediately was The Act itself, in fact several Acts, all featuring a very hairy man and a plump, big-haired woman.
Victor found a new hiding place for his stash but I never found it—although I looked everywhere.
CHAPTER 3
“Announcing the arrival, at Gate 1, of the nine-forty bus from Winnipeg. Gate 1, from Winnipeg, Mmmmanitoba.” When my mother finally let me go I said, “Mom, this is Genny.”
Genny stepped forward with her most winning smile, her hand outstretched. “It’s very nice to meet you, Mrs—”
“Call me Edie, Genny! Don’t stand by formality!” She beamed broadly and gripped Genny by the shoulders to stare at the zit on her cheek. “So you’re Genny! I’ve heard so much about you.”
Dad was all courtly manners. So courtly, that while he shook Genny’s hand, he stared at her other cheek.
Over the course of the day Genny’s spirits had rebounded admirably, all her early morning insecurity conquered; yet I could tell she was rattled now by all this attention.
My brother Simon had arranged a trip home from Calgary for a few days to coincide with ours. He shook Genny’s hand then we play-sparred for a few moments to greet each other.
“Victor couldn’t make it tonight,” Mom said, watching. “He’ll be over for supper tomorrow.”
“Good to have you home, Jake,” Dad said, shaking my hand and patting me lightly on the shoulder.
Around us, in the gathering dark, other passengers were milling and collecting suitcases. Above our heads, the tinny speaker blared again: “The nine-forty bus from Winnipeg is now at Gate 1. Gate 1, from Winnipeg, Mmmmanitoba.”
For as long as I could remember, there had been only one gate at the Poplar Lake bus depot.
* * *
We entered the house, and everything was just as it had ever been. Yet my mother was acting like a tour guide for frosh on the first day of orientation. “Come in, come in, dear. Just leaveyour things right there. We’ll get you both a snack and a cup of tea and get you settled away later. Genny’s going to be in Andrew’s room.”
Genny froze and looked at me. I looked at her. She opened her mouth to speak. “Mom . . .” It was Simon.
“Dear?” Eyebrows high.
Simon looked at me. I glanced at Genny who was still look ing at me. “Rufus.”
Genny’s eyes shifted to Simon. His eyes were still on me. She followed his gaze.
“I’ll fix that garage door after golf in the morning,” Dad said, coming in behind us. He stopped, seeing us all still in the hall. “What’re you all standing around for?”
“Stanley . . .”
“Rufe!”
Genny’s eyes swung back from Dad to Simon, who was still looking at me. Now everyone was looking at me. In the sudden silence I distinctly heard the clock in the hall go Tick Tick Tick.
“Genny, um, might as well stay in my room.”
“Oh, fine, fine,” Mom said gaily. “I wasn’t quite sure whatthe arrangements would be. I didn’t want it to be, you know, awkward. We’ll get you both settled later. Right now, let’s get you something to eat. Come right through to the kitchen. You must be starved. It’s taken you, what, a week, ten days, to get here?”
I felt sick with relief. I hadn’t wanted any awkwardness either.
* * *
Genny was gone when I woke up in the morning. I got up to go to the bathroom and found Simon in the hall with his head out the window. There was a pat-pat-pat-pat sound coming from below. I squeezed in beside him and craned down to see Genny on the front steps. She was in leotard and tights, her arms pumping, intent on her rhythm, huffing. Step up, step back, step up, step back.
Plates clattered in the kitchen below. “She’s been craving a workout,” I said at last.
Simon nodded. “You know that thing Mom does, how she gets a name just a little wrong on purpose?”
“Janey?”
“Jezzy.”
“Jezzy?”
“I think it’s for Jezebel.” He grinned and pulled his head inside and patted me on the back. “Nature calls.”
It was early, but old Mr Byrtnyky, our next door neighbour, was already out washing his car. His head tilted up towards our place, then back to his work. As I watched he looked up again and pulled his ball cap low over his eyes against the glare of the sun. Saskatchewan on a summer morning is a bright white light.
* * *
While I waited for the bathroom I looked out at the street, which was a mix of older two- and three-storey brick houses, like ours, and frame bungalows built in the sixties and seventies. The neighbours on either side of us, the Jansens and the Byrtnykys, had been on Fifth Avenue for years before Stan and Edie and their three boys arrived in 1962, two years ahead of me. The Joneses still lived on the other side of the Jansens, but when I was seven a new family, the Martins, moved into the Braddock place next door to them, and Danny Braddock, my closest friend, disappeared from my life forever. His departure left a gap that would not be filled until 1978, when Clinton Sturgis and his mother moved into the bungalow on the far side of the Braddock place. Word circulated about the New People in advance of their arrival. They had moved a lot
. They had lived in Medicine Hat, Red Deer, Brandon, Moose Jaw. Claire Sturgis sold beauty products and travelled for her work. There was no sign of a husband.
It was early summer, and the day after they arrived my mother went over to introduce herself and leave some baking. She forced me to come along, having heard there was a boy my age. I stood behind her on the front step, trying to stay out of the line of sight, knowing that in a big city like Red Deer or Moose Jaw people didn’t knock on the door with a cake, that this would forever mark me as a rube in the eyes of the new kid. But on the doorstep, Mrs Sturgis was grace incarnate. “Call me Claire, Edie! This is so nice of you. Clinton, come meet the neighbours.”
A sullen looking boy, long haired and lanky, appeared behind her. He was my height and just as spotty. We exchanged unsmiling dead-eyed hellos. But Mrs Sturgis seemed in the mood to make friends. “Come in for a coffee, Edie. Both of you—please, come in.” She held up the loaf that my mother had just given her. “I’ve got cake!” She sang cake in two descending syllables. She wore jeans and a blouse, and her hair was flipped back like Mary Tyler Moore’s. She looked much younger than my mother, who never wore jeans, but who smiled now and said that would be nice.
My hopes for a quick escape collapsed; I was caught now, committed. We followed Mrs Sturgis through a living room lined with cardboard boxes. There was little furniture. “Don’t mind the mess,” she said, ushering us into the kitchen where she filled the kettle and lit a cigarette then, noticing me standing awkwardly, suggested Clinton show me his room.
I followed him down the hall where there were more boxes against the walls. Behind us, cups clattered on the counter and my mother asked. “How did your move go? Did everything arrive?”