Coconut Dreams

by Derek Mascarenhas

  Once inside the apartment, Sammy immediately went to the windows. He was eating an apple he’d brought, and had to grip it between his teeth while he opened the blinds. By the time he got them up, enough saliva had pooled in his mouth that he had to bite off a chunk of apple before returning it to his hand. From his bag, Sammy took out the Stones’ Emotional Rescue, put it into Olivia’s CD player, and plopped onto the brown sofa.

  There was something about Olivia’s apartment that Sammy loved. More than just the great light and acoustics and the comfy couch, it had a lived-in feeling. Maybe it was the smell—like something had just been baked—or the plants in every room. The thought of getting a couple of ferns for his place briefly entered Sammy’s mind, but every plant he’d ever owned had died of thirst.

  Sammy closed his eyes and listened to the funky bass lines he knew so well. For five years, he’d come to Olivia’s apartment on his day off, taken a nap, and waited for her to come home. Of course, now he didn’t stick around long enough to greet her when she came in, but not much else had changed. Olivia wouldn’t be home for another five hours, so Sammy had plenty of time. She went to visit her mother in the old folks’ home every Thursday after work. Sammy had only accompanied her a handful of times when they were together—he’d told Olivia that being around that many “coffin dodgers” made him nervous.

  Sammy was awoken by a slight squeaking sound in the apartment. The album had finished and his apple core was browning on the floor. In the corner of the apartment was a small cage on the floor, where the squeaking was coming from. Olivia’s gerbil, Fredrick, was running on his wheel. He must have misstepped because he went tumbling over on himself. Sammy couldn’t think of a more useless pet. Groggy from his nap, he walked over to the cage and gave it a tap with his foot. Fredrick scurried into an empty toilet-paper roll.

  One night when they were dating, Olivia had called Sammy in hysterics. Attracted to Fredrick’s food, a mouse had squeezed right through a gap in his cage. “He’s in the cage with Fredrick!” Olivia screamed down the line. “And he’s not coming out.” When Sammy arrived, he found the mouse huddled in one corner of the cage, Fredrick in the other, and Olivia on the far side of the apartment. She’d stacked history textbooks around the cage but left a corridor for the mouse to escape through a hole in the baseboards. Sammy rattled the cage, and the mouse zoomed right out and back into the hole, which Sammy filled with steel wool.

  He went back to the couch but couldn’t fall asleep again. On the side table was a framed picture of him and Olivia at Niagara Falls, taken a half-hour before midnight on New Year’s Eve. They both wore puffy winter coats, pointed hats, and toothy smiles. The falls and mist in the background were lit red, green, and blue, like painted clouds.

  Sammy was surprised the picture was still out. Three weeks had passed since he and Olivia had last seen each other, and a month since the fight that ended it all. Olivia had returned from visiting her mother in the nursing home—a bad visit; her mother hadn’t remembered her at all—and asked him, “Who will visit me if I ever end up like that?” Sammy didn’t have an answer. She looked him in the eyes and said, “Sammy, I will love you forever,” and waited. When he didn’t reciprocate, she repeated more slowly, “I will love you, forever.” Sammy felt trapped and said what came to him: “I love you, too, now.”

  He picked up the apple core from the floor and walked into the kitchen to throw it away. On the stovetop lay a crust-lined baking pan. Olivia must have made her banana bread to take for her mother. When they’d been together she used to leave a couple slices for him, and staring at the empty pan saddened him.

  Sammy had met Olivia on her way back from visiting her mother, when her little red Civic got a flat tire. On his way to dinner, Sammy had noticed her pulled over on the side of the road. He told her that with all the construction it was easy for some small thing to puncture a tire. “It’s my day off, but I’ll help you out,” he added. “You’d be my hero,” she said, and when Olivia told him her name, he said olives were his favourite. After the bolts had been tightened back on and the car lowered back down, he asked if he could buy her a bite to eat. She followed him to a fish-and-chips place, and later told him that the way he’d splashed vinegar on his hands to get them clean before eating intrigued her. Later still, with their clothes scattered all over the bedroom floor, she told him he tasted salty, like an olive.

  As Sammy opened the cabinet under the sink to throw out his apple core, he felt his cell phone vibrating in his front pocket.

  “Sammy, it’s George. Listen, the highway’s a mess. A milk truck started a pileup. Nothing to cry over.” Sammy heard George pause for a second to see if he was in the mood to appreciate his joke. When Sammy didn’t laugh, George continued, “I’m gonna need you to take a call.”

  “It’s my day off.”

  “One call—keys locked in the car. I’ve got all the other guys out on the highway.”

  George gave him the address, thanked him, and hung up. Sammy was left standing there with his apple core pinched between his thumb and index finger. George had a habit of thanking Sammy for doing something before he had a chance to refuse to do it.

  Sammy opened the metal dustbin to toss in the apple core, but something caught his attention. Sitting on top of an empty bag of nacho chips was a white plastic tube shaped like a Popsicle stick, but longer and thicker. He picked it out of the can and noticed it had a display with two lines. He dug deeper into the can and found an empty box; the words Home Pregnancy Test took some time to process. Sammy read the instructions on the side of the box that explained what the two lines meant. Apparently, Olivia was pregnant.

  Ally half-sat, half-leaned on the front bumper of the still-idling car. “We should just climb onto the garage roof and go through the window,” she said.

  “No thank you,” said Clara. “I don’t have time to wait in the emergency room.” She glanced at her watch again, and then at the end of the street, simultaneously praying for the tow truck and cursing Felix. Every car that passed got her hopes up and then disappointed her. She eyed the drivers and envied how it was just a normal day for them.

  “This guy is taking forever,” Ally said. “If Aiden hadn’t taken my CD player, I could have at least used it while we wait.”

  Clara gave Ally a look. But she was jumping down off the bumper.

  “Look, there’s a truck!”

  A tow truck pulled up and a man stepped out. He walked toward them and introduced himself.

  As Clara and Sammy shook hands, Ally blurted out, “You’re late.”

  Clara put an arm around Ally and hugged her against her body.

  Sammy paused and looked at Ally. He said, “I’m sorry for the delay, the highway’s backed up.”

  “Perfect,” Clara said, and pressed her lips together.

  “Where you headed?”

  “Mississauga.”

  “You could take Dundas all the way.”

  “I think I’ll have to. If you can get this door open, you’ll be our hero.”

  Sammy turned to the locked car, peeked inside, and felt the weather stripping along the bottom of the window. He walked back to his truck. Clara thought for a moment he might drive away, but he came back with a metal tool shaped like a paint stir stick, except longer and with a slender hook at one end.

  “What is that?” Ally asked.

  “It’s a tool. They call it a Slim Jim.”

  “A Slim Jim?”

  Sammy nodded, and Clara and Ally watched as he slid the hooked end between the window and the car door. He felt around cautiously, as if he had slid his hand down there. When he wiggled the Slim Jim, the chubby golf tee of the door lock moved a little; he slowly pulled the tool up, but the lock didn’t come with it. He tried twice more with the same result. He pulled the contraption out. The Toyota kept chugging exhaust into the air.

  “Is it stuck?” Clara as
ked. She let Ally go and leaned in. She felt like taking the tool from him and trying herself.

  “Just different for different cars.” He slid the tool back down and tried again.

  Clara wanted to take the Slim Jim and just smash the window.

  Sammy wiggled the tool again but this time moved it toward the rear of the car. The lock moved up a touch at the same time.

  “It’s moving!” Ally shouted.

  Sammy dragged it farther. The lock popped up with a gorgeous click. He slid the Slim Jim out and opened the car door.

  “Yes!” Clara raised her arm in the air.

  Ally clapped and said, “Hurray!” She hugged her mom, and in the excitement she turned and hugged Sammy’s leg as well. Sammy leaned against the car, straightening and bending his leg like he was trying to shake off an animal. Ally let go and ran back to her mom.

  Clara crouched down and asked her if she was okay.

  “I’m sorry,” Sammy said, stepping away from the car.

  Clara told Ally to go wait on the front porch. She opened the car door all the way, reached in, and took the keys out.

  She then walked past Sammy, who called out, “I don’t hang around with kids much.”

  Clara kept going to the front door and opened it. She brought Ally inside and closed the door behind her. She locked it.

  “Why did that guy do that?” Ally asked.

  “I’m not sure, sweetie.” She ran her fingers through her hair. “Some people don’t like to be hugged, so it’s important to ask first. I think something else was going on, too.” She asked Ally if she could grab her bag from the table. When the thought came to her that she still had to go write Sammy a cheque, she heard an engine start. She peeked outside and saw the truck driving away.

  Sammy sat in his truck outside Olivia’s apartment, right next to her parking spot. When he’d arrived, he got out of his car and walked a few steps before realizing if he wanted to talk to her, he couldn’t wait in her apartment.

  There were a few teenagers in the corner of the parking lot, gathered around two cars with blue lights underneath and blaring bad dance music.

  Sammy honked his horn twice and stuck his arm out the window, pointing to the ground, telling them to turn down the volume. The teenagers ignored him. One of them in a tight black T-shirt and a gold chain said something to the others and they laughed.

  Sammy wanted to get out of his car and teach them a lesson, but he watched the entrance, waiting to see Olivia’s red Civic turn in from the street. He wasn’t sure what he was going to say when she arrived. His leg still felt weird from where the kid had hugged it.

  Sammy rolled up his window, but the pounding bass still infiltrated the car. The Slim Jim lay across his legs, and he pressed his thumb against the hooked end.

  Sammy turned on his radio, but the clatter of a sports talk show didn’t help. He shut it off. The music thumped on. He tried to watch the entrance, but the bass from the kids’ music was pounding his brain.

  Sammy cursed and laid on his horn.

  The teenagers looked at him. The one with the chain leaned into the car and turned the music even louder. Sammy’s rear-view mirror was trembling. He clenched his teeth and grabbed hold of the Slim Jim, but it wasn’t until the same kid gave him the finger that he fully lost it, opened his door, and jumped out.

  “Will you make it in time?” Ally asked, from the back seat.

  “I should just make it,” Clara said, relieved to finally be on her way. She drove faster than she normally would, but not enough to get pulled over.

  As they crossed the bridge above the ravine, Ally lifted her feet up off the floor of the car. Clara didn’t know where she’d picked up this superstition. She and Aiden had probably heard it was good luck. They did the same thing when driving over railway tracks; when passing graveyards, they held their breath.

  When they’d cleared the bridge, Ally put her feet down, and Clara saw a red Civic swerve from the opposite lane and head diagonally into their path. Ally let out a nervous “Mom.” Before Clara could even think, she was pressing the brakes to the floor. She clenched the steering wheel as hard as she could.

  The Civic moved in slow motion in front of Clara. The woman inside stared straight ahead. For a long, horrifying moment it looked like they’d collide, but the rear of the red car cleared the front of Clara’s car by inches. She felt her seat belt tighten across her lap and chest as they came to a screeching stop, and Clara turned in time to see a flash of red launch straight through the guardrail and out of sight. Her eyes remained fixed on that point for a few seconds, as if her mind had kept travelling forward and had to circle back to find her. When it did, she glanced back at Ally. “Honey, are you okay?”

  Ally nodded, wide-eyed and clutching her seat belt.

  Clara pulled the car over to the side of the road. She didn’t want to get out. She didn’t want to leave Ally alone in the car. She was terrified of what she might find beyond the guardrail. And yet she went. It was only many hours later, in a hospital waiting room, hearing the patient’s status, that Clara was thankful she did.

  So Far Away

  My aunt Delilah was afraid of men. She had only arrived in Canada at the start of the summer, but it seemed longer than that. My sister and I each had our own rooms before Delilah came to live with us—Ally had to move in and share my room so Delilah could take hers. Ally’s dolls and stuffed animals seemed out of place under my hockey posters and Grade 6 honour-roll plaque. We had to get bunk beds so everything could fit; I took the top bunk at first, but Ally was too scared the bed would break and she’d be crushed, so we switched.

  At night, Ally and I could hear Delilah snoring through the drywall. But snoring was better than her staying awake the whole night, as she had when she first arrived. At two in the morning one night she woke up everyone in the house, shouting, “Clara! There’s a man outside! Hurry, bring a stick.” Everyone stumbled downstairs, half-asleep. Mom and Dad crept into the kitchen to look out into the backyard, but they saw nothing. Delilah pointed at her own reflection in the glass sliding doors. “There! Right there.” Mom told Ally and me they don’t have glass doors like that in Goa, and sent us back to bed. The next night Delilah thought there was a man inside our house. She said she had heard a noise coming from the laundry room. Our dryer was old, and the sound probably came from the vent, but Delilah thought a man was hiding in the dryer. She pressed the start button and ran. “If he’s in there, let him spin.”

  Eventually, Delilah adjusted to our schedule. Mom helped her get a job at the pharmacy near our house. She was late for her second shift and told the pharmacist that his clock was wrong.

  Mom tried to reason with her when she got back. “How can your employer’s clock be wrong? That’s the time you have to go by.”

  “The kids must have fiddled with my watch, then. It’s always correct.”

  “I have my own watch,” said Ally, and held up her arm. “A Bugs Bunny one.”

  “These kids have too much. Do you remember what we had back home? Spoiled rotten.”

  Delilah’s Indian accent was much stronger than my parents’, and this sounded like rut-tin. Ally and I thought Delilah was from another planet—we tried to avoid her after she called us that. We hoped she wouldn’t get the time off work to come on vacation with us, but we were out of luck.

  “Does Delilah have to come with us?” I asked Mom.

  “Auntie Delilah. And of course she does.” Delilah was the only aunt we called by her first name—I’m not sure why. She was only one year younger than my mom, who was thirty-three then, I think.

  “But she’ll ruin our vacation,” said Ally.

  Every year we rented a cottage in Sauble Beach for the August long weekend. We packed everything into the car and always left later in the morning than we’d originally planned. We laid our comforters on the seats so that only the s
eat-belt clasps stuck out, put pillows behind our backs and our feet on top of coolers and suitcases packed tight with clothes. Dad drove, saying the name of every town we entered along the way—“Fergus…Arthur…Mount Forest…Durham…Dornoch”—while Mom looked at the map and passed around a Tupperware container of cut fruit. Delilah sat between Ally and me, taking up part of both our seats, and talked for most of the ride.

  “I was bending down to stock the shelf, and both my knees cracked.” Delilah started laughing; she always laughed before completing her stories. “And a customer said, ‘Sounds like you need some WD-40.’” She tilted her head back and laughed again: a loud, knee-slapping howl. “So I asked the pharmacist if he had any WD-40 for my bones. He went searching the whole store. Until he finally asked me where I heard of it.” Delilah wiped away a few tears before she continued, “That’s when he told me WD-40 was mechanical oil!”

  Mom laughed along with her, while Ally and I rolled our eyes and looked out the windows.

  Dad slowed down the car and pointed at a big sign on the roadside. “Look, my friend Cassius owns that place. He’s meeting us at the beach later today.”

  The sign read, Fisherman’s Paradise—40 km West of Sauble Beach, with a giant fish leaping in the air. The fish was hooked on a line, yet still looked happy.

  Jenny Wren was a small cottage tucked in among the trees on a quiet street not far from the beach. On either side were similar-sized cottages, one named Lucky Strike and the other In Debt Forever. The air smelled of pine needles and people said hello to one another walking down the street. Inside Jenny Wren, the furniture was made from logs, and you could hear chipmunks running on the roof. The two rooms were separated by wooden walls that didn’t go all the way to the A-shaped ceiling: when Ally and I were younger we used to throw rolled-up socks and underwear over the walls. My parents took one bedroom and Ally and I shared the other, though the bunk beds didn’t seem so special now that we had them at home. Delilah took the pullout in the living room. We unloaded the car as quickly as we could and headed to the beach. Dad stayed behind to nap, but said he’d join us soon.