The Desperates

by Greg Kearney

  “Okay. Maybe I’ll make her something. A ‘get well’ thing or something.”

  “That’s a lovely idea. Why don’t you write her a song?”

  “I’ve never written a song.”

  Edmund suddenly has a vision of Binny in the basement, singing into a microphone, amplified by an amplifier. Binny will learn to sing as himself, drop the crutch of some amorphous female alter ego, hone his skill, write a plaintive song for Lila, and everyone will feel a whole lot better.

  “If I buy you a state-of-the-art microphone and amplifier, will you come?”

  “Really?”

  “If you make use of them. Will you commit once and for all to your music?”

  “I don’t have any music, but yeah, totally. I think I need like a keyboard, though, too.”

  “Do you play keyboards?”

  “No. But I want to be able to look over at the keyboard while I’m singing and think ‘oh hey, there’s the keyboard,’ know what I’m saying?”

  “I think so.”

  EDMUND REMEMBERS DEAN mentioning a store called Gunn Music; he had a funny experience there but Edmund can’t recall the particulars. He knows it’s on Bloor.

  They cab it over. The store is big and well-stocked, but oddly empty of shoppers. Binny picks out a microphone, a stand, and a keyboard. He mouths the words to something histrionic into the microphone, running his hands salaciously up and down the mic stand. The salesman looks uncomfortable. It would appear that he has not yet had to deal with a tweaking, gay, fake soul-singing star before. Edmund smiles empathetically at the salesman, who quickly looks away. Edmund is wearing terry cloth slippers and a yellow silk shawl wrapped several times around his neck. A couple times recently he’s caught a glimpse of himself through other people’s eyes — this salesman, the Filipino housekeeper who interrupted a lazy orgy at some guy’s house one morning, exclaiming, “Good morning. I can’t see anything! I’m a blind lady!” and, almost every day, the old man at the corner store, who still smiles but no longer says hello — and has desperately wanted to leave this brisk, blazing madness, call the whole thing off, bundle up his current state as one big, strained practical joke, go home, vacuum, reside in silence. It’s too late for that.

  “Eddie,” Binny beckons. “Come and hold this guitar. I thought I hated guitars, but now I think I love them. I really feel this one. So amazing. Come and hold it.”

  “I’ll be right back,” Edmund says, walks to the other end of the store and stands behind a stack of drums. Sometimes he stops liking Binny. Sometimes Binny is too loud, too upper case. There is no breeze to Binny. Edmund wants the best for him, wants to help him as he has helped previous lovers. He would happily bankroll a course of study, even a small business, for him, but this dingy, day-to-day friendship has got to stop. Binny is less and less endearing. Edmund decides, behind the drums, that affairs with turbulent boys are not what he needs, not after Joel, the moony pest, and Binny, the kid twanging an unplugged electric guitar.

  He reluctantly returns to the scene.

  “This is the one. I’m in love. I need this one. I need this one so bad. I need it like Diva Annie, ‘I Need a Man’ realness.”

  “I see the connection between you and that piece,” says the salesman. “I should let you know, this guitar, without the amp, is $2,600.” He sounds sincerely cautionary, not like a salesman, more like a guidance counsellor.

  “That’s a deal, probably, eh? That’s probably a deal. I don’t know the first thing when it comes to what’s hot and what’s not in guitars. Anyway, it’s only money, eh, Eddie? I sing for the things money can’t buy me like Diva Stevie, Klonopin Street Angel realness. Let’s ring it up with all the other stuff.”

  “Binny, I would like to be the one who announces ‘let’s ring it up,’ if you don’t mind.”

  “Well, sore-eee. Sorry for enjoying myself and having a nice time shopping with you. I thought we knew each other. I thought there was love and trust going down. I see now that I was wrong. I was so, so, so, so wrong.”

  “Binny, don’t be melodramatic. You can have the guitar, I’d just like to be acknowledged in the transaction.”

  Binny gently sets the guitar back on its rest.

  “I don’t want it anymore. I hate it. It’s gross.”

  The salesman briskly begins unplugging things.

  “Hold on,” says Edmund. “I want to buy the guitar. It’s a nice guitar. You can have it.”

  “I don’t want it. You hurt my feelings, and now the guitar has bad vibes.”

  FOR TWO HOURS Binny has made good on his promise to carry his gear, or at least his microphone, wherever he goes. The kitchen, the bathroom, the den. He’s trying hard to improvise songs; so far his best work is the word “you,” spread across several short, discordant notes that sound like a cat scampering across piano keys.

  Now it is time for Edmund and Binny to get ready to go comfort Lila. Edmund picks out a set of black silk Chinese pyjamas that Dean sometimes wore. He doesn’t know how to dress anymore. He doesn’t know his body. He has lost some weight in the last few weeks. Twenty-five, thirty pounds, maybe. He puts on the pyjamas. He is swimming in them. His face is gaunt — but not scarily so. His face has definitely been gaunter — is that a word? Really, were it not for his ashen complexion he could almost pass for an endurance athlete.

  Binny wants to bring the microphone and amplifier to Lila’s. Edmund points out that Lila and Marci are grieving the loss of a child and probably wouldn’t appreciate a house guest setting up electric musical equipment in their living room.

  “But I was going to sing a comforting song to her, remember? It was your idea.”

  “Was it? Oh. Well, I’m having second thoughts.” Edmund changes the subject softly. “Wait — I’ve just had a flash of inspiration. Why don’t we both wear Chinese pyjamas to Lila’s? It’ll be charming. You can leave the mic and amplifier at home, and we’ll both be charming and delightful in our pyjamas.”

  “I’m not going to wear silk pyjamas. That’s too ‘show tune’ for me. Props to Diva Liza, Pet Shop Boys Don’t Drop Bombs 12 inch remix, hip replacement realness, but I don’t go there person-ally. And I’m not going to abandon my mic, no way. You know that. I don’t want to hurt its feelings.”

  “Please?”

  “No. Nope. Sorry.”

  Edmund ponders what would make for the ultimate bribe. “If I promise to arrange the ultimate dom top sexcapade, the ass-kicking of a lifetime, will you go to Lila’s without your microphone?”

  Binny makes a big, campy show of thinking it over, searching the ceiling, pulling at a phantom beard. “Who did you have in mind for this ass-kicking of a lifetime?”

  “Leave it to me. You won’t be disappointed.”

  “Cool. Yeah, okay. But he better be psycho.”

  “Let’s do a bit of you-know-what,” Edmund says, reaching for the little square of tinfoil on his night table. Binny hands him a lighter; Edmund runs the flame back and forth beneath the foil.

  21

  “SIX O’CLOCK. FIVE-THIRTY IF you know what’s good for you,” Teresa calls after Hugh, who’s out the door on his way to the legion. He goes to the legion every day now. Teresa doesn’t care one way or the other; in fact, she always encouraged him to drink: he was borderline fun when drunk. Today, though, she wants him home in time for dinner. Monty and Anita are coming over, and however much she may have disparaged her husband during prayer sessions, she still wants him to make a good first impression. She’s excited to show Hugh that she can make new, wonderful friends, even this late in the game. Monty and Anita have their quirks, certainly, but she thinks Hugh will like them both. He likes characters and go-getters and people who like to talk, because he is none of those things.

  She gives the living room the once-over, then the dining room, the bathroom, other conspicuous nooks Anita might see. She’s always been
house-proud; even when the boys were little and she was working, the house was immaculate, dustless, smelling of pine and maybe of makeup after she’d done herself up for the day, but never, ever of excitable boy or damp man: you’d never know the place housed three males from the sight or smell of it, and if that has maybe caused Hugh to sometimes feel like he’s been erased from his own home — oh well. He’ll have the run of it soon enough.

  It’s time to get dressed. She’ll leave her nightgown, first time in days. Lifting her arms above her head is a long, tough task. She said she’d make a lasagna. Why did she say she’d do that? There’s no way in hell she can make a lasagna, the shape she’s in. Anita will understand. Their friendship already goes deeper than any lasagna. Anita certainly has no bones about making her husband do all the housework, with her bad knee; that said, she hopes Anita won’t take Hugh to task for not preparing the lasagna, because he would have, had she not shooed him out of the kitchen. Maybe she should call Anita and explain that there isn’t going to be lasagna, but that Hugh isn’t lazy and is actually a really good cook when it involves things he’s just shot. She’s getting carried away. They’ll get nice takeout, chicken balls and wings from the Ho Ho. Anita will like Ho Ho takeout. Hugh’s eyes glaze over with pleasure whenever he eats a Ho Ho chicken ball.

  She sits at the kitchen table. Turns off the radio. Joel’s been gone four days. Hugh went to the museum the day after she made him leave; Joel’s staying with Donald Tait at his house downtown. When Hugh told her this, she screamed that she didn’t want to know of Joel’s whereabouts, but she was relieved to know he was safe and not caught in the talons of his monster grandmother. All she wants is her boy back home with her. She needs his wide, flat feet padding around (what a hard time she had when he was small, finding shoes to fit those feet, as wide as they were long!) and his smell — not the piss smell he came back from Toronto with, the mint and wood smoke smell that he was born with, a smell she never had to spray away like she did with anything Dallas or anything Hugh. What a huggy kid he was — he is! It’s rare to come across such an affectionate kid, boy or girl. She hopes he won’t lose that, after this reformation; hopefully he will become a strong man who is still capable of affection. What if she’d had two boys like Dallas, who swatted her arms away almost as soon as he could walk? She couldn’t imagine. She wouldn’t have lasted, all these years. She would’ve fled in the night with a stranger, any stranger.

  She wants Joel home with her. She wants what is best. Her bones pulse with pain. The pain remains, even with morphine; the drugs make it so it doesn’t consume her, she can walk past the pain in its cage but she knows it’s there, panting, all claws. She turns on the radio. She’ll feel better in a bit. Anita will come over, and she’ll be grand and wacky, and Teresa will be bolstered by her, diverted.

  She lies down in the living room. She turns on the TV. The TV and radio together create a soft, gabby hum that pacifies her. She nods off.

  Someone’s at the door. Nobody ever comes to the door. She’ll ignore it. But what if it’s Joel? Or Hugh, with Joel lying dead in his arms? She’s able to sit up by the second ring, stand by the third. She can see a purple kerchief on a grey head through the window. She hates that purple kerchief. That head.

  “What do you want?” She cracks the door open as she would for a stranger.

  Hazel’s face starts to scrinch into its default setting — resentful raisin — but she tries her best to tame it.

  “I took a taxi all the way from Keewatin to see yous, which cost a small fortune, so yous sure as hell better be nice to me. Oh, Teresa Beryl, look at you. I don’t think I can hack this. The skin is just hanging off you. Don’t you look like particular shit. My God. Surely — Can’t they fill you up with air or something?”

  “I’m sorry to scare you. I’m between visits to the air-filler guy. Would you be able to stomach me if I put on my fucking Little Orphan Annie wig?”

  “Oh, now. I’m here now. Mom is here. I brung some popcorn I didn’t eat last night. Oh, and I brung you this book I got — this magazine, I should say — has some nice pictures of Princess Margaret in it. They have a before-and-after type thing. Gosh, she was so pretty, and now she’s so bloated and red in the face, eyes all slitty, looks like a real end-stage alcoholic. The article says all she does is drink and have enemas. So sad. But the queen wouldn’t let her marry that guy she liked, and she was never the same. That’s what you get when you take away a woman’s dreams, though, eh? Let me in the goddamn house!”

  Teresa doesn’t move. Hazel shivers showily. Teresa winces, lets her pass into the house. Still that smell of her mother, of mould covered up with cheap perfume. Hazel mounts the front stairs, Teresa gasping after her.

  Hazel looks around the kitchen, with particular notice to the new fridge, the newish table, the matching cans for the flour and sugar and coffee. Hazel, when she’s over, always looks around for new objects acquired since her previous visit.

  “New fridge, I see,” she says. “Must be nice. My fridge doesn’t work at all. You put a fresh bag of carrots in the crisper and they’re rotten and black by morning. What did you do with the old fridge?”

  “I don’t know. Hugh got rid of it.”

  “Oh. Would’ve been nice if I knew about the hand-me-down fridge; I would’ve taken it. All the food in my fridge is rancid. Everything I eat is rancid.”

  “Sorry.”

  Hazel gripes quietly about the lost chance of a better refrigerator, until it’s out of her system.

  “So?” she says.

  “Yeah? What?”

  “What’ve you been up to lately?”

  “A lot has been happening. But I honestly don’t have the energy to get you up to speed. We haven’t spoken in months.”

  “Whose fault is that? I called you — I think I did, anyway. And I sent you that nice birthday card.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “Yes, I — Oh wait, I sent a birthday card to Mister Charlton Heston. Was it the one with the parakeet on the cover?”

  “How should I know? You sent it to Charlton Heston.”

  “I’ll find a nice one for you. I’ll do that first thing tomorrow.”

  “It’s okay. My birthday was four months ago. Let’s leave it, okay? I don’t have time to chat. I’ve got guests coming over for dinner.”

  Hazel laughs, all scorn and phlegm. “Guests coming over. Since when do you have guests over? You don’t do that. Unless — Is this a dinner for all the men you’ve been with?”

  “Yes, that’s it exactly. A sit-down dinner for twelve, followed by one last gangbang. Nothing gets the motor running like chemotherapy.”

  “Well … what the hell are you going to make for this dinner?”

  Teresa so begrudges civil, neutral conversation with her mother — really any conversation that isn’t recriminatory; she has a limited supply of conversational niceties and doesn’t want to waste them on Hazel.

  “I was going to make a lasagna.”

  “No. I’ve had your lasagna. It was gritty, like you put sand in it. Don’t make lasagna.”

  “I’m not. I don’t have the energy to cook. I thought we’d order in from the Ho Ho. I don’t think my friends have had Ho Ho yet, so it’ll be a treat for them.”

  “The Ho Ho! Oh, no. You know you can’t know what you’re eating from that place. Oh sure, they’ve put up new wallpaper and that new sign out front, and they’ve hidden away that old Chinaman woman who used to squat in the corner and peel things. It looks fancier now, but they still use cats and dogs in all their meat dishes. What, don’t make that face, it’s true. Helga out on Second Street there, she saw the Ho Ho people break into the house next door to steal the poodle. Yes. Garbage cans full of little collars and noses out back. And they’ve been using the same vat of fat for twenty-five years. The old, squatting woman and her daughter are always at bingo. The Ho Ho! No No! I
’ll make something. What have you got in the fridge? Nothing, I bet. Let’s take a look.”

  Hazel roots around in the fridge. Teresa stares at her bony ass in red polyester. “I just want to say …” says the bony ass, which then becomes impossible to hear.

  “I can’t hear you with your face in the fridge, Mom.”

  Hazel slowly withdraws from the fridge, straightens up, but won’t look her daughter in the eye when she says, “I just wanted to say that I think it’s real horrible that you have this sickness. I feel real useless because there’s not a damn thing I can do for you. If I could take away your sickness and bring it on myself to suffer and die, I would.”

  Teresa thinks on it. Her mother has made this kind of generous, heartfelt statement before: once, right after Teresa’s brother died, Hazel pulled her aside to say that, while she did love Teresa’s brother more than Teresa, that didn’t mean that there was no love at all for her daughter. And then Hazel hugged her, and said that they would just have to try harder to get along and love each other. But they didn’t try harder. A few days later Teresa caught her mother stealing all the bills and coins from Teresa’s wallet, and they didn’t talk for many months after that. “It’s nice of you to say that, Mom. Means the world.” Hazel hauls out an onion, a saran-wrapped package of ground beef. Slams around, in the hunt for pots and pans. “There’s not a lot to work with here,” she says. “But it’ll be better than dog meat.”

  Anne Murray on the radio, the song where they don’t have any money but she’s so in love with you, honey. Joel was a baby when “You Needed Me” was big; Teresa was always so exhausted that she’d burst into tears whenever that song came on the radio, and when Joel saw Teresa burst into tears he’d also burst into tears. She had to be super careful around little Joel that way. He was such a sponge, emotionally.

  “What are you going to make?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know. It’ll be a surprise.”

  “Oh God. That’s what you used to call that fried glop that you always fed us on Fridays. Remember when Daddy got food poisoning from it and he had to go to the hospital?”