If Sylvie Had Nine Lives

by Leona Theis

  Sometimes, too, they sent the kids door to door selling spiced cashews, little Brycie rushing up front walks in her tiny yellow running shoes and using her wide smile and bouncing pigtails to sell bagloads. She wasn’t a swimmer, but she’d begged to help. Adam trotted along the other side of the street and never matched his baby sister in sales. Syl drove them block by block and waited with the motor running. She had to watch to make sure Adam didn’t skip every second house. “Maybe square your shoulders up.” She loosened the zipper of his jacket by an inch. “Here. Switch out your mitts for gloves.”

  You had to peddle a lot of nuts to pay the expenses involved with hosting a swim-meet. The vote for the pageant had been six in favour, two against.

  WITH A FORCEFUL EXHALE Syl wafted the sheet away from her face for a moment’s relief from the stifling polyester. She felt the insistent press of a tire tread against the soft flesh of her calf. This sort of discomfort hadn’t come to mind when she’d envisioned the event. What had come to mind was the fact she had killer legs and this was the youngest they’d be from here on in. Sell the people a six-ounce glass of Naked Bodega, red or white, offer them a slip of gouda on a Wheat Thin and let them bet on which pair of limbs would win, place or show. Do it for the children, their winking invocation at every planning meeting.

  “Help me understand,” Janet had said one evening, “how this will make money?”

  “Tickets,” said Syl. “Wine sales.”

  “Yeah, but the main thing,” said Leslie, “is the betting. Look at these parents: we’ve got a radiologist, two gynecologists, at least three dentists. There’s Hinton, just been made a judge. There’s your high-end kitchen builder,” she said, meaning Syl’s Erik. “People will bet big. They’d be embarrassed not to.”

  A high-end kitchen builder, Syl refrained from saying, does not necessarily make high-end profits, what with the homeowner (who’s just been made a judge) demanding the granite be recut and the range reinstalled one-point-five centimetres to the left; what with light fixtures shipped from Italy and broken before you open the box and two insurance companies facing off over which, if either, will pony up close to a thousand to cover the claim.

  “We’ll need three men for the jury.” By way of adjournment Leslie lifted the shoulder strap of her purse from where she’d slung it on the back of her chair. “None of our husbands, that goes without saying. How about Greg S., Chris M., who else?”

  “Tony?” said Syl. “Tony S.?”

  JANET AND HER LEGS were still in the bathroom. Stalled in the stall. Syl felt a shiver along her thighs. Was there an outside chance goosebumps would make her legs attractive in a vulnerable sort of way? Doubtful. Did the small blue vein that flowered inside her left calf offer a hint of the exotic? She’d meant to mask it with a dab of concealer.

  Hesitant stiletto steps telegraphed Janet’s approach across the battleship linoleum. A floof of fabric as a sheet a couple of spokes around from Syl rose and settled, then Janet’s whisper: “Brrr.”

  “You’ll be fine.” Syl’s sheet puffed as she spoke.

  DRIVING TO THE community centre she’d said to Erik, “Suppose next year we have the dads compete: best rear end.” He smiled, his face half-lit by the glow from the dash — his receding blond brush cut, the shine of his close-shaven cheek. “You guys,” said Syl, “can begin the same way we will — parade across the stage in running sweats so as not to reveal too much in advance, and the bettors can place their bets. Then you can retire to another room where you strip and stand in a circle shielded in sheets except for a cutaway to show the pertinent view.”

  “Better my ass than my legs, babe.”

  True. His turned-out knee, the way it shortened his left leg.

  “You know me: I’m just an ordinary gimp from Ripley, Saskatchewan.”

  “Stop it, Erik. And please don’t say that in public anymore.”

  “People like a little humour, babe. It’s good for business.”

  “No, honey, it isn’t.”

  “Disputable. My ass, though,” he said, turning in at the parking lot, “is some kind of all right.”

  “As firm as the very first time I saw it.” Stag night ten years ago, when Syl’s fiancé was out partying till tomorrow with assorted rascals and she’d led Erik to the bedroom, the press of his finger at the back of her knee had set off a current that melted her sense of who she was. She’d known him since she was four, and their fifteen years of friendship had flipped other-side-to in half an electric minute.

  UNDER THE MISMATCHED SHEETS, giddiness among the contestants surged, then ebbed. Erik went to call the judges. Tony and the other two would have a private viewing, the better to concentrate before the hoi polloi were let in. Syl suppressed the urge to scratch her nose. Do not disturb the tableau. So many had contributed so much, Leslie had reminded them as they strapped on their heels. The truck tire that supported their legs was courtesy of Wheels on 51st. Later it would remain on exhibit, in all its naked strength and beauty, to remind the people who owned the BMWS and station wagons and the dated Ram truck (Erik’s) in the parking lot to think of Wheels when their tires wore thin. Eight shoe stores, all with thumbnail ads in the program, took credit for the open-toed stilettos. Pedicures were courtesy of Marla School of Beauty, as announced on a placard near the platters of gouda.

  AT THE FINAL planning meeting Syl had said, “I like this whole idea, but —”

  “You better,” Janet said, “it’s yours.”

  “— but I don’t understand the betting.”

  “Have you ever been to the races?” Leslie said.

  Syl had not.

  “It’s the way the purse divides. You have to understand parimutuel.”

  “Ah,” said Syl, not understanding parimutuel. “It’s the wine sales I’m counting on. I’ll need half a bottle once it’s over with.”

  “Oh but Syl,” said Marilyn, “you have gorgeous legs. You’ll probably win.”

  Actually, no: Marilyn would probably win.

  SYL LIFTED ONE ANKLE a whisper away from the tread and flexed her foot to reawaken the nerves. The trouble with a truck tire is there’s no give. She wiggled her toes. Normally she avoided polish, not wanting to draw attention to the unbecoming trait her podiatrist called Morton’s toe: the second digit of her right foot was longer than the big toe. Would the oddity bump her to third place, even fourth?

  She’d been the parent on mornings this week, getting Adam to the pool for practice by 6:15 — “Go, Adam! Push!” — and both kids to school after that. Erik took care of evenings, supervising homework, supper, soccer tryouts. After Syl came in from her day at GetAway, heated her 6:30 leftovers, listened to one trouble from each child and played good cop or bad cop, whichever Erik said they needed, she was free to take long baths. Pamper the gams. Every second day she’d shaved her legs, lifted them out of the water by turns and admired the glisten as bubbles slid along a calf. One night she discovered she was singing in the tub — not a proper song but a tuneless meander, the sort of non-song Aunt Merry used to sing if she were the one to tuck her in.

  “That’s not a song, Auntie,” little Sylvie said one night.

  “I don’t know much about music, but I know a thing or two about mechanics: Sing any old way — it doesn’t matter — and the hum will spread through flesh and bone to soothe you. When soothing’s what you need.”

  Sitting in the tub, Syl watched a shiver spread across the surface of the water as she sent her voice low to deepen the vibration. For five minutes at the end she turned on the jets. By any reasonable reckoning it was a good life. Two weeks in Florida every winter — who knew citrus could taste so good? — the ranch-style house in River Heights, season tickets for three plays every winter and four symphony performances expensed to the company. She’d learned to dress in neutrals for the symphony, a simple frame for the music. She’d found Erik a charcoal suit from Elwood Flynn and a silk pocket square in a quiet shade of green. (“You’d never guess I’m just an ordinary
gimp from Ripley,” he said one evening to a client before the performance. Well you would now, Sylvie didn’t say.) Sidelong glances from people in neighbouring seats had taught them not to applaud at the end of a movement. The networking during intermission had landed Erik a contract or three, otherwise he wouldn’t have suited up to be there. Then again, he might have, for the concertmaster was a dark-haired beauty in a flowing black dress with a scoop neck that revealed a slim, rich shadow of cleavage. Syl didn’t so much mind where Erik’s glance went so long as other parts stayed home.

  One night as she sat in the tub, just as she’d paused in her quiet chant to lean forward and whisper to her knee, “Don’t ever get old,” Erik opened the bathroom door without knocking, his evening measure of rum in hand, and sang out in his rusty voice, “You’re so vain!” Her sudden sideways slide resulted in a bruised hip. “Am not,” she said to the door as it closed, and immediately wished she hadn’t taken the bait. Tonight she’d managed to cover the bruise with the short-shorts supplied courtesy of Sally Girl Sport, tugging the Spandex just so. She did this once more now, by feel. She was relieved, after all, that Aunt Merry hadn’t been able to come.

  She felt in her bones the tread of the judges as they approached. A male voice — it sounded like Tony’s — said, “Sh-boom, sh-boom!” and heat rushed her neck. She’d had more than one dream featuring Tony last winter when Erik was away in the mountains snowmobiling with the guys, taking chances for real, gunning it straight up snow-covered slopes. The risks Syl dared to take happened under the covers while she slept. Now she felt as if those dreams might be there to read on her naked flesh.

  When they’d paraded earlier, she and the others had been fully covered from espadrilles to shoulders in unrevealing togs courtesy of Running Threads. Tony’s eyes had passed over her as he tapped his pen on his adjudicator’s clipboard. Late-day stubble, shining black curls.

  The footfalls circled closer. She tried to picture how the sheets draped, whether they drew attention to her breasts: size, asymmetry, slump. One of the judges said, “Cross left,” and she crossed her left ankle over her right, imagining the look of her calves as they moved and then settled, the disarming curve of ankle, the liability of the small blue flower of vein. She pictured her teal patent shoes, her coppery toenails, her unfortunate Morton’s toe. A new pressure spot troubled her hip. She shifted her pelvis with the slightest movement she could manage, to relieve the pain and because the idea of Tony so close made her want the pleasure of movement. Between her legs she felt a sudden soft ring of ache.

  EVENTUALLY CAROL HAD REFUSED point-blank to be in the pageant. “This is not what I want to teach my boys.”

  “But the kids won’t even be there,” Leslie said. “We’re not billing this as family night.”

  “Exactly.”

  Syl had recruited her cousin Cynthia to fill the gap between three o’clock and six. “More than happy. An electrician doesn’t have so many opportunities to shed her Carhartts and show off her legs.”

  Small noises came intermittently from the spokes on the floor — laughter held back or sneezes stifled or the beginnings of asthma attacks. Listening to the judges’ campy Oh-la-las, crossing her ankles the other way now on command, Syl felt giggles fizz inside her, then fizzle. Leslie, who lay at three o’clock to Syl’s noon, said, “Hands off, buddy.” Her tone was four strands teacher and one strand tease. “You can look, but you can’t touch.”

  “This pair’s a winner.” Tony, his footfall close. A finger landed on Syl’s ankle and began to trace a tickle up her leg. She kicked it away — “You heard the lady” — but she wasn’t so good at getting the teacher into her voice to overrule the tease. Her cheeks burned; no doubt they shone right through the damn sheet.

  AFTER CAROL HAD walked out of the meeting in protest, Syl had retreated downstairs to her comfy red couch. The whiff of last night’s popcorn was a comfort. A person has to follow through, she’d learned that much. Back when she was stalled with the travel correspondence course, staring in despair at the costly binders every morning and searching herself on a failed quest for the will to open them and do the work, she’d been saved by a ringing phone and the price of a cappuccino. Margo, a woman she hadn’t spoken with in years, not since the days of her almost-marriage to Jack, and whose friendship had never seemed a solid thing, was on the line and desperate. She needed to connect, she said, with someone, anyone, from the days before her life went sliding sideways. Why the slide, Syl asked her. Because she’d failed at life — her words. Hadn’t finished secretarial school, couldn’t even apply herself for ten short months to make herself employable. Again, her words. Her husband’s question as he walked out: Where was her self-respect?

  “If I had any before he asked me that, I sure didn’t after.”

  “How long ago did all this happen, Margo?”

  “Eight years.”

  “What have you been doing since?”

  “So now guess who he’s with. He’s with a waitress he met at Smitty’s. I mean.”

  “Margo. What have you been doing since?”

  “I’m at my mom’s.”

  “Coffee’s on me,” Syl said. It took a week at least, but it happened. She looked at the Wellspring binders and told herself, You have to follow through.

  Which was what she would do now. She pulled the kidney-shaped footstool close to the couch. It was a 1950s original, from the same era as the pageant that had so charmed her that day in October. She’d bought it for its lines, but the shade of orange was, as Erik said, vomitous. By sewing a tan slipcover with red piping, she’d brought it forward into the eighties. An elastic run through the casing was meant to hold it in place like a fitted sheet, but the fit was slightly off, and when she rested her feet the fabric often shifted, as it did now, exposing the ugly original vinyl along the inner curve. Before settling to watch Family Ties, Syl tugged it into place, an effort that made her think of how she was forever adjusting the drape of her scarf when she dressed for a meeting with the swim parents. She hummed through the first commercial break, no particular tune, just a deep vibration in her chest.

  THE FLOOR TREMBLED as foot traffic multiplied. A chatter of voices. The riffraff were in the room, upper-middle, middle and some percentage plain middling. The bets had been laid earlier, and these few minutes of exhibition stood in for the drama of the horserace. Footsteps circled. Her earlier, unruly pump of arousal had vanished. A bright light flashed past her eyes. She heard Erik say, “Who called the TV people?”

  By now the judges were supposed to be saying, “Show’s over, folks.” They were supposed to herd the onlookers to the other room so the beauties could crawl out from under in privacy and chase their shivers with four complimentary ounces of Naked Bodega, choice of white or red. Instead, here were rolling cameras and her pale and naked legs as if they were all she amounted to, and a bruise at her hip like the end of a sentence.

  Air, she needed air. She took a deep inhale and the fabric plastered itself against her cheeks, her nostrils, her open mouth. She overcame a gag reflex and rolled her head to the side. The women to her left and right were restless, fidgeting. Maybe they should all stand up and wrap themselves in their sheets. How would they look, wrangling double-wide fabric, legs streaked with black from the tire, dizzy from lying down, trying not to fall off their stilettos?

  A small noise separated itself from among the stifled giggles and coughs, an edgy little laugh a couple of spokes counterclockwise from Syl. Janet? The laugh rose in volume, loosening as it grew, unlacing until it became a high-pitched sob. Janet for sure. She couldn’t just take herself in hand. The sobs subsided, but not so much they were easily ignored. To drown them out, Syl began to sing, la la la la, her voice meandering to no particular tune. One of the other women began to sing too, to her own tempo. More and more spokes of the wheel joined in, an aural maze of notes and rhythms, accompanied by gasps as the women sucked air through the sheets. The sobbing couldn’t be heard for the hilarity, or th
e sobbing became part of the hilarity. Giggles fizzed inside Syl again and took over briefly before she stifled them. A tear or two followed the giggles. Her thighs so chilly and her face so hot, how could they belong to the one body? La la la la, gasp, la.

  She heard the familiar voice of a local TV personality. “Is somebody crying?”

  She heard Leslie’s husband. “I’m sure you have all you need now.”

  She heard Erik. “Step this way and I’ll show you the space-age calculator we used for tallying bets. Some nifty features.”

  AN HOUR LATER they were at home on the couch. She’d pinned her second-place ribbon to the leg of her sweats, and Erik stroked it with half a mind while they waited for the news. The club had raised over fifteen hundred dollars. That should keep the kids out of the sales racket for a few months. After the spectators left the room, Janet had taken a long moment before bunching her sheet to the side and kicking off her shoes. She stood then, barefoot, hair shielding her face while she pulled on the sweatpants Syl handed her. Her husband put his arm around her and the two left quickly and quietly. She didn’t win, didn’t place, didn’t show. If there was a conversation anywhere in the room about the singing and the sobbing, Syl didn’t hear it. Marilyn, who had just the best legs and so it was no shame to come in second to her, gave Syl a hug.

  “Wasn’t that fun?”

  The pageant appeared in the soft slot at the end of the news. “We leave you with this.” The voice-over commended their novel approach. “Good sports, these women.” The screen showed the tire and the legs and the pretty shoes, a faint singsong in the background as the closing credits rolled. The camera zoomed in on coppery toenails before tracking along a pair of shins.

  “Your blue-ribbon legs!” Erik made a drama of kissing Syl’s hand. “Love them. Love you.”

  “Love you too.”