Cluck

by Lenore Rowntree

  Sure, he says. Thanks.

  You can invite Tom over again. I promise I won’t bring my hyper self next time.

  He takes the mirror and puts it in his pocket. He watches her select a lip colour and feels sad about Tom. To distract himself, he thinks instead about looking up the word “hyper” in his dictionary. His mother rolls the lipstick tubes up one by one. Scarlet, crimson, ruby. He wonders if the word might mean over-excited. Plum, misty-rose, purple. Maybe it will mean unhappy. Eventually she settles on a bubblegum pink. She lets her lower lip go slack, then tightens it, and runs the tube back and forth, back and forth, so many times lipstick threatens to spill over the edges of her lips. Just when the lips can take no more, she purses them and touches a tissue to the edge of her mouth, fixing everything.

  How do I look? she asks.

  Like a raven-haired beauty, Henry says.

  This makes her smile. It’s something Tom’s father, Mr. Lawson, used to say whenever he saw her sitting on the porch. How’s the raven-haired beauty next door? he’d ask.

  But he stopped saying it after Mrs. Lawson overheard him one day and smacked him on the back of the head. The houses on the street are nice wood homes painted pleasing colours, but the lots are narrow and the front porches practically touch. The incident left Henry thinking about his own father, who he might be, what he might be like. If everything hadn’t felt so uncomfortable he might even have asked his mother then, or if not about his father about his only other relative, his mother’s sister in England. He’s thinking again about asking, but now is not the time either.

  His mother surveys herself in the mirror and, satisfied with the result, squirts her favourite Shalimar perfume at her throat. Then she looks one last time before slapping cold cream across her lips and all over her face. Once the lipstick has mixed in and turned the cream a pale pink, she invites Henry to play. He sticks his finger in the goop and draws faces with it. First he makes her a happy sort, then a sad sort. And on down the yellow brick road, they sing together. It’s a routine they know by heart.

  When they’re finished taking the cream off her face, she leans into him for a goodnight kiss. She smells warm and sweet, like a flower in the sun. Then she reaches under her vanity and pulls out a turquoise transistor radio.

  I got this for you at the drugstore, she says. I know you like music.

  She turns the wheel on the side of the radio and the jingle for a radio station plays.

  CKLG radio 73, and we love you.

  She rolls the wheel again to silence the radio and hands it to him. Should we finish our other song? she asks.

  Okay, he says. Together they sing.

  And on that farm there was a chicken. Ee-i-ee-i-o. With a cluck cluck here. And a cluck cluck there. Here a cluck there a cluck. Everywhere a cluck cluck.

  Later, when Henry is alone in his bed, he sings softly to himself.

  Ee-i-ee-i-o.

  He wonders what it means, but knows it won’t be in his dictionary. So he picks up the tiny radio and turns the wheel. It vibrates gently in his hand with the voice of a disc jockey on the other end.

  It’s the Midnight Spinner here, playing all-night requests. Bringing you some psychedelic funk from San Francisco’s Sly and the Family Stone “Hot Fun in the Summertime” — hit bound 1970 after their blowout in Woodstock last year!

  He shoves the radio under his pillow and falls asleep feeling connected to the world.

  TWO

  High School Radio Junkie

  GOOD MORNING. GOod Morning. HOW the devil are you? H-E-double-N-E-double-S-Y. Hennessy we love you. That’s not bad gang, but next time can you sing it on key. Roy Hennessy here, CKLG Vancouver and 7:03 in the morning. I’m coming to you live or as close as I can get and reminding you a week Friday we’ll be giving you a chance to rip us off for the new Stones album Black and Blue just released for their European Tour ’76. The hit line is open! CKLG — the station with the happy difference — Boss Radio. 7:04 on a beautiful sunny morning with Hennessy. And here comes the chart topper from 1975, KC and the Sunshine Band, “That’s the Way (I Like It)” — a-huh a-huh, I like it!

  Henry lies in bed listening to KC fading in and out under his pillow while he pulls at a couple of scraggly hairs on his chin. He’s going to have to buy new batteries soon and maybe a razor. He doesn’t like the thought of starting to shave, he’s only in grade eleven, but it’s that or have fuzz hanging from his face at school. And new batteries are a must. For him, falling asleep and waking up to the radio is the greatest pleasure. Ever since he figured out he can buy four packs for cheap at Woolworth’s and extend a battery’s life by putting it in the oven when it starts to fade, he can get lost in the radio all day long.

  Fridays, he has a routine. After school, he takes the bus to Woolworth’s on Hastings Street to pick up the Top-30 list for the week and batteries if he needs them. This year, now that he’s almost a senior, he doesn’t have last period on Friday so he has time to stop and look at the budgies on the way to the record counter, then to sit at the lunch counter and pore over the brightly coloured hit list while he eats an ice cream. On a week when he has enough left from his earnings cutting lawns, he’ll pick out a new 45 and every few months he’ll splurge and buy a whole album. He keeps the Top-30 lists in a shoebox in his cupboard, and the records arranged along the wall of his bedroom in alphabetical order.

  As KC finishes up, he gets out of bed and puts in the white ear speaker button from his transistor. He doesn’t want to disturb his mother while he listens for details on how to get the new Stones album. More and more his mother sleeps in. She says it helps with her blues, but he isn’t so sure it’s working. She looks puffy and tired all the time. He stands at the mirror in the bathroom and thinks he looks puffy and tired too, but he feels better after he uses the nail scissors to snip his chin hairs and remembers today is A-V day. The audio-visual club is about the only thing he really looks forward to in a school week. Every Wednesday at the end of class, he and two other guys meet in Mr. Bromley’s homeroom mostly to trade record lists and look at each other’s blurry photos — Mr. Bromley lets them use the lab to develop their black and white film — and occasionally to discuss more serious things like Betamax versus VHS, or who will get the hall pass to cart the projector to the next school assembly.

  Henry eats a banana and a bowl of Special K while his battery burbles in the oven. When he walks out the front door toward Kits High School, he has the radio in his pants pocket and the speaker in his ear. Once he’s at school, one of the surly grade nine boys comes up to him in the hall and begins mouthing words. It’s a joke they started after somebody mistook him for deaf because of his speaker wire. He just keeps walking. The halls are a nightmare for him and the radio is all that really matters. He carries a touch of California and a touch of Britain when he’s plugged in, and he feels naked as a rat when he’s not.

  Class time is a serious drag because he’s not a good student and he has to take the ear speaker out or risk having the radio confiscated. Mostly he just waits the day through.

  At 3:15, Mr. Bromley greets the A-V club members at the door.

  Hey guys. Got news for you.

  Henry is not really listening, he has his speaker in, and Donny, the skinny Chinese kid, is hitting two rulers on a table like he’s drumming to “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida”.

  Okay guys, listen up. Henry, speaker out. And Gene Krupa, drumsticks down.

  Not Gene Krupa, Donny replies, Ginger Baker.

  Not Ginger Baker either, Henry corrects, Ron Bushy — Iron Butterfly.

  Okay, whatever, Mr. Bromley says. Now that I have your attention, good news. A week Friday, the A-V club is sponsoring the dance here at the school.

  What’s that mean? Donny asks.

  It means you all get to be disc jockeys. Spin your records.

  Cool, Nathaniel says as he wipes cracker crumbs from his face. I can help set up, but I don’t think my mom will let me come.

  Donny jerks his thumb a
t Henry. He’s got the best collection anyway.

  Henry says nothing. He watches Nathaniel open another pack of crackers and worries about not being able to catch the bus to CKLG’s Richards Street station that Friday to get in on the Stones album giveaway. Besides he’s not sure his mother will let him go to a dance either.

  Come on, Donny persists. I’ll help you.

  Okay, Henry finally says. I’ll bring some records if you guys get the equipment together.

  All right! Donny leaps out of his seat and starts drumming with his fingers on the tops of Nathaniel and Henry’s heads. We’ll have two turntables just like the pros, he shouts.

  On the way home from school, Henry decides the best way to deal with it is not to tell his mother about the dance. She works most Friday nights until 9:00 anyway, so he can take the records to school and get everything set up to spin a few and be back home before she is. Donny can spin from 9:00 until 10:00, when the dance ends, and no one will be the wiser.

  But word gets out at the school that Henry is going to be the main DJ for the dance, and for the first time his classmates begin to come up to him in the hall and talk to him like he’s a regular guy. He doesn’t know how to be with them exactly, but he listens seriously to their requests and he starts a list on a pad of paper that he keeps in his breast pocket. On Tuesday afternoon on his way to French class, a pretty blonde named Debi bounces up to him.

  Do you have “Sister Golden Hair” by America? she asks.

  No.

  Oh it’s so good. Can you get it?

  I’ll try.

  Thanks! She giggles and walks past.

  He is breathless. Debi makes him feel anxious but also deeply warm. He doesn’t have the vocabulary to describe how the sight of her thick ponytail and her adorable rear-end turns him on, but there it is. He’s turned on.

  Next day at A-V Club he asks Donny, Do you have “Sister Golden Hair” by America?

  Yeah, it’s on Hearts.

  Can you bring it Friday night?

  Sure.

  During Thursday’s French class, he works on the final set lists. He’s decided to go with a mix of Canadian content and other. He can tell some of the Boss Jocks at CKLG don’t really like having to play CanCon, but he loves a lot of the Canadian bands, and even though most of the kids don’t ask for them either, he figures it’s the right thing to do. While the teacher does dictation — bleu, gris, rouge — he writes out the first set:

  1. “Spinning Wheel” Blood Sweat & Tears

  2. “Misty Mountain Hop” Led Zeppelin

  3. “One Way Ticket” McKenna Mendelson Mainline

  4. “Shining Star” Earth Wind & Fire

  5. “American Woman” Guess Who

  6. “Maggie Mae” Rod Stewart

  7. “For What It’s Worth” Buffalo Springfield

  8. “Takin’ It to the Streets” Doobie Brothers

  9. “Sunny Days” Lighthouse

  10. “Crocodile Rock” Elton John

  11. “Up on Cripple Creek” The Band

  He purposely puts one extra quasi-Canadian song in, as he’s going to have to slip in “Sister Golden Hair” whenever Debi shows up at the dance. He knows Buffalo Springfield is no more than a quarter Canadian, what with Neil Young being only part of the band, and more and more an American, but he can’t help himself, “For What It’s Worth” is just such a good song. Still it’s important to keep the list balanced.

  The night of the dance he is in a pretty good mood considering he’s at school. He’s wearing his best ultrasuede shirt and a new pair of corduroy jeans. For the first set, he is going to spin the Canadian tunes, and Donny, the American and British ones. Donny designed a sign that Nathaniel helped paint — CanCon Dance: be there or be square. The sign hung all week in the cafeteria advertising the dance, and now it hangs over the door to the gym. Henry protested at first — No one will come if they know it’s CanCon — but standing at the record table in front of a packed gym, he realizes most of the students don’t know what it means and the sign looks good. Mr. Bromley helped them put up the lights that spiral and pinwheel as the students begin to dance, and soon shafts of purple and red zigzag across a mass of gyrating teenagers.

  Henry keeps his eye on the door to the gym so he can spot Debi and cue up “Sister Golden Hair”. But by three-quarters of the way through the first set he’s starting to worry she will not show before he has to leave. Then, as Lighthouse is finishing “Sunny Days”, instead of Debi, he sees a horrifying sight — the mad frizz of his mother’s permed hair is unmistakably backlit at the door. Someone at the drugstore must have told her about the dance. She stands for a time under the blue and pink squares of Donny’s sign before she starts to move through the gym toward him. Without saying anything, he slips under the table to hide while Donny spins “Crocodile Rock”. But like some relentless swamp reptile, his mother keeps coming, so he begins to pretend there’s a one-way glass wall between them, and against all odds his mother seems to respect the wall when she leans down to look at him and makes no further move forward.

  He stares right at her and she at him. Then out of the corner of his eye he sees Mr. Bromley move in from behind. Mr. Bromley taps his mother on the shoulder, and when she jumps up to take his hand and makes a Lindy Hop step all in one quick motion, Henry thinks, Oh no, she’s mistaken this as Mr. Bromley asking her to dance. Hmphf hmphf hmphf. He feels his stupid laugh snort out from under the table while his mother grabs Mr. Bromley’s arm and begins to jive rock with him. Mr. Bromley looks confused, but being a good sport follows along. Henry, frozen by the sight, is afraid to move until the unmistakably cute bum of Debi goes bouncing by and he hears Elton singing — Laaaaa, lalalala laaaaa, lalalala laaaaa, lalalala la-a, lalalala la — signalling the end of “Crocodile Rock”.

  He needs to get up and organize for “Sister Golden Hair”. Fearful as he is, he emerges on the final la and pulls America from its sleeve. Holding the album carefully by the edges, he puts it on the turntable, but he’s so nervous he miscues and sets the needle to the end of the previous song. As the last bit of “The Story of a Teenager” plays, he can see everyone in the crowd looking confused, except for Debi. She knows what’s coming next. Then when the opening chords sound, she swoons into the arms of the boy she’s dancing with and Henry realizes this must be their song. He’s so relieved he can no longer see his mother’s permed hair when he scans the gym, his disappointment that Debi has a boyfriend barely registers.

  At the end of the set, Mr. Bromley comes up.

  Was that kooky lady your mother?

  Yes.

  She can dance, he says.

  At least Mr. Bromley is smiling.

  When Henry gets home, his mother is asleep. He’s expecting a temper the next morning, but instead she’s in a good space and asks, Is that man one of your teachers?

  Yes.

  Did he say anything afterward?

  Not really. He said you can dance.

  I know that, but did he say anything else?

  He does not have the heart to tell her Mr. Bromley called her a kook. He decides to embellish because he knows it will make her feel better, but he wants to pour cold water on it at the same time so she won’t get carried away like she can when she gets too excited about things.

  I think he’s married, Mom. But he said he had fun dancing with you.

  She smiles and the conversation ends.

  For a long time nobody except for Henry, and maybe Tom and his parents next door, really know anything is seriously wrong with his mother. But soon after he starts grade twelve, the whole neighbourhood learns how odd she can be. Nothing is good about grade twelve. Mr. Bromley is gone so there’s no more A-V Club, Debi transferred to the mini-school for the arts, Donny hardly talks to him, and even Tom mostly ignores him. So the last thing he needs is for his mother to have a very public meltdown.

  It happens the night the house up the street burns down. In front of everyone, she runs out onto the road and holds up a
branch, several dried leaves still attached, to catch it on fire from the flames of the house. Then with the crown alight, she leaps along the street chanting, I am the Fire Mistress. Henry is the only one who understands she thinks she’s doing an interpretive dance. Everybody else judges her crazy and wonders if she has had something to do with the fire. The neighbours talk so much about it afterward, the fire chief himself comes by to investigate.

  His mother holds the door open a crack until she understands the imposing man on her front porch is with the fire department. Then in her unbridled off-kilter way, she throws the door wide and urges him in.

  Don’t mind the mess, she trills. Please call me Alice.

  The fire chief steps into the hallway. It’s crowded with boots and running shoes, some so tiny they go back to when Henry was a child — a smelly stew of footwear mixed with old newspapers, a broken umbrella and empty milk cartons. From where he’s standing in the hall, Henry can see his mother is embarrassed. For some reason, she quickly ushers the chief into Henry’s bedroom where she busies herself straightening the quilt and pulling the rocket chair out from under the desk for the chief to sit on. She sits on the bed, crossing and uncrossing her legs while they speak. Each time she moves her leg, her bathrobe falls more precariously open. Henry is transfixed by what he can see going on through the French door. It has been a few years since a man has been in their house and his mother is behaving badly. Finally the chief calls Henry to join them.

  Have you got anything you can add, young man?

  Henry remembers flames shooting from the house, and sparks flying from the rooftop, he remembers a whoosh as the fire moved up toward the roof, and the popping sound of windows as they blew out. Then there was the roar of people, though honestly he didn’t know whether they were roaring at the fire or at his mother — she cut quite a sight with embers from the branch dropping into her hair, and her white nightgown so close to the flames the hem got singed. And he remembers praying their house would not catch fire because he couldn’t imagine how he and his mother would carry on if it did, but at the same time he recalls thinking it might not be so bad if she caught herself on fire because she looked so miserable that night. But the thing he remembers most is that nobody, himself included, tried to stop her.