by Lisa Moore
I lift the lid on my pink and black velvet jewelry box with the pop-up ballerina balancing herself on her tiny wire spring. She turns in a jerky pirouette. Music tinkles out and the ballerina glances over her shoulder at the little square of mirror glued to the pink satin backing.
My own giant hazel-green eye is in the mirror. I wiggle my fingers through my beads and rings and the peacock feather earrings Amber gave me for my tenth birthday.
I pick up the jewelry box and shake it, and all the contents tumble onto the bureau.
Where is it? I scream.
I hear Felix fling open the front door, and it slams behind him.
I run out of my room screaming, Come back here, come back right now. I’m going to kill you, Felix Malone.
Miranda comes out of the living room.
What is going on here? she says.
I crumple on the staircase and I am sobbing a big wide opened-mouth sob that has no sound. I can’t even get any breath in my body. I rest my head against the banister.
Flannery, for goodness’ sake, Miranda says. What’s happened?
He stole my heart, I sob. My mother comes up the stairs and puts her arms around me. He stole my chocolate heart that my dad gave you.
Flannery, my mother says.
It was the only thing I had of my father, I say. It was all I had.
Okay, listen. I know it’s been hard on you, Flannery, without a dad. But I’m doing my best here, Miranda says. I have no regrets. I was eighteen when I met him.
Tell me the story again, I say. Tell me.
Okay. Okay I’ll tell you, Miranda says. But she doesn’t say anything, she’s just sort of gently rocking me. So I have to start her off.
My father had big brown eyes and long black lashes like a girl, I say, to make sure she starts at the beginning. My tears are running right down my cheeks and hanging off my chin before they fall on the ribbing of Miranda’s pale blue cotton sweater and add to a growing wet spot.
Or else they were green, Miranda says.
Were they green or brown, Miranda?
Hazel, sort of greenish-brown, Miranda says. Like yours. I don’t know, it was dark.
My father had hazel eyes and beautiful thick curly black eyelashes like a girl, I say.
That’s definitely where you got those eyelashes, Miranda says. We are practically eyelash-less on my side of the family.
He was tall and handsome.
I came to his shoulders, Miranda says.
And my father had a mysterious smile.
Well, he had very even, white teeth.
An even, white, mysterious smile.
I wouldn’t say mysterious. I’d say he had braces as a kid.
You first saw him climbing the mast of the eco-ship tied up in the harbor.
They were all worried, she says.
About the hole in the ozone layer, I say.
They were sailing a magnificent ship made of garbage across the sea.
Like something out of a fairy tale, I say. The mysterious visitor from away, rising out of the North Atlantic.
Well, we met on the dock of the harbor, yes. And I told him there was a party happening at a place out in Topsail Beach that night, and I gave him the address. I told him he should bring his friends.
And you were dancing with your girlfriends when he walked in, right? And there was shag carpeting and stucco on the ceiling. The Bee Gees were playing, right?
Yes, because it was a retro-disco party, Miranda says.
You were listening to the Bee Gees singing, Ah, ah, ah, ah, Staying alive, staying alive. The one with the life-saving rhythm, I say. (When I did my CPR course for my babysitting certificate, they told us the rhythm of that song is exactly the one you use for thumps to the chest of someone needing pulmonary resuscitation. I sing it when I’m scared.)
And we were both wearing identical mullets, Miranda says. Blue metallic tinfoil, with thick blue bangs cut very straight.
And the identical mullets were a sign that you were meant to be together, I say.
Well, actually several people at the party were wearing those wigs. They had a big load of them at the Zellers, Miranda says.
And before you even spoke, he held up his hands in front of him to show there was nothing in them and then he reached into the tinsel tendrils of your blue mullet and gave your ear a little tweak.
We were speaking, Miranda says, kind of shouting over the music. Where was he from and all that.
And then he opened his hand, and right there before your very eyes was the chocolate heart wrapped in red foil.
Big spender, Miranda says.
And later that night you decided to go for a swim together on the beach, and you ran over the beach rocks holding hands in the moonlight.
Well, actually there wasn’t any moon, it was kind of foggy.
And plunged into the icy water and foam and your hearts were pounding and in the house across the highway where the party was happening the music was pounding too, Staying alive, staying alive, and there amidst the creamy surf you kissed in the moonlight and your blue tinsel mullets floated away together like two lovelorn jellyfish on the waves.
We lost the mullets when we got smacked by a wave.
Never to be seen again.
Well, we didn’t really look for them.
And the very next morning my father returned to his eco-ship made of plastic barrels and Coke bottles and old bric-a-brac garbage to continue along with his fellow sailors to make a statement about how we are destroying the planet. (And the press came out to see them off and there was fanfare and camera flashes and the one picture that has survived in the Newfoundland archives shows just my father’s shoulder. He happened to have his back to the camera, but it’s a beautiful shoulder, all strong and round in an ordinary black T-shirt which doesn’t tell me much, except my shoulder looks sort of like his, more or less. Maybe? He’s out of focus so it’s hard to tell.)
Then they tugged out through The Narrows into the bright red dawn, I say.
I think it was actually still foggy that morning, says Miranda.
And he left the beautiful maiden he’d fallen in love with behind in order to take his message about saving the planet to the whole wide world.
Well, yes, says Miranda. But what he didn’t know, poor idiot, was that he’d left a little something behind.
And she grabs my chin in her thumb and finger and gives it a little waggle.
And I’m so glad he did, she says.
That heart was all I had, I say.
And then the doorbell rings. Miranda unwinds herself from my arms and stands to let Felix back in. It’s minus ten out there and his cheeks are blazing red and his nose is running.
I’m sorry, Flan, he says. I never meant to eat your heart.
We’ll get Flannery another chocolate, Miranda says.
I am suddenly furious.
“Another chocolate?” Can’t Miranda understand that this is hard on Felix and me? Going without the things other people take for granted, like paying the heat bill on time or at all? Worrying about the groceries, schoolbooks, fathers? I’ve had it! I want her to tell Felix who his father is. I want Felix to know. I want Hank to know.
Miranda thinks it’s her decision. It is not her decision.
Forget the chocolate heart, I say. Get me a biology book. And I stamp up the stairs and slam my bedroom door.
After a few minutes I hear Felix knocking.
Flannery, I’m sorry.
He waits.
Flannery, I said I’m sorry.
Go away, I say. I don’t ever want to talk to you again.
I am deep asleep when I hear Miranda yelling through the house, calling for Felix. Then she bursts into my room. She is yelling at me.
He’s gone, she says. Get up.
Who’s gone? I say, but I am already out of bed pulling my jeans on over my nightie. One leg of my jeans is twisted at the knee and I have them half hauled up already and can’t get my foot through the twis
ted leg. And I have to hop around with the jeans leg flapping like the broken wing of a Bowring Park duck.
Finally I get my leg through and I’m pulling on a sweater and my toque and one boot and the other boot is downstairs near the front door. The wind is making the window rattle and the snow is pinging against the glass. There are frost feathers all over it and the night beyond is as black as black can be.
Felix is gone, Miranda says. She’s slamming the drawers in the bathroom, looking for the keys to the truck.
He’s not in his bed, he’s not asleep under the dining-room table, his ski jacket is gone, and his boots. His mitts are gone off the heater in the front porch. There are footprints in the snow.
It’s because I didn’t forgive him.
It hurts my forehead, like an ice-cream headache.
We go out into the stormy night. Miranda hasn’t even done up her coat. His footprints are mixed up with the track of something smoother. It’s like he was dragging something heavy — a suitcase or a toboggan. But the prints disappear altogether at the end of the street.
I scrape the windshield of the truck and go to scrape the back but Miranda yells for me to get in. We go to Felix’s friend Lila’s house and Miranda rings the bell, but all the lights are off. Eventually they come on — a bedroom light upstairs, the lights over the front door. Miranda is talking to Lila’s mom. She steps inside and is in there for a while. She has left the truck running and I notice the gas is close to empty.
Then she comes out.
I’ve called the police, she says. And she drives down to Water Street. She is gripping the wheel and leaning forward.
It’s a Saturday night and there are lots of people out. She pulls onto George Street, where couples are walking in the middle of the road. Some kind of hockey game must have got out from Mile One.
Move, Miranda hisses to them under her breath. Get out of the way.
Something is blocking traffic at the other end of George Street. There is a giant crowd. Maybe a hundred people.
Is it an accident?
Then we both know what it is at the same instant, we jump out of the truck and run at the same time. Miranda leaves her door open. There’s a cop car behind us with the lights spinning around, and another one coming up the other side of George Street.
We push our way through the crowd. I hear bells. It sounds like bells. It sounds like “Hot Cross Buns” and some kind of crazy made-up jazz and “Au clair de la lune” all at once, and I break through the crowd, and there is Felix Malone, right in the center of a circle the crowd has made, blocked from the wind, playing the glockenspiel. In front of him is the velvet-lined glockenspiel box and it’s filled with loonies and toonies, like a pirate’s treasure chest brimming with gold and silver coins, some of them spilling over onto the snow. Farther down the circle I see Miranda break through the crowd, and she spots Felix too.
Felix does a little crescendo with the hammers and that’s when he sees us and there are police officers on both sides of him now, trying to clear the crowd away even while they’re all still applauding like mad.
Flannery, he says. Look! I have enough money for your biology book. It’s your Christmas present!
25
I’m walking Felix home from school with my new biology book in my knapsack and we’re talking about how Sensei Larry can karate chop a block of wood in two, and how one day Felix will be able to do the same. A motorcycle turns the corner onto Livingstone Street and, in a flash of chrome and snowflakes, there’s Tyrone O’Rourke. He flips up his tinted visor with a gloved hand. Tyrone O’Rourke’s brown eyes.
Hey, Flannery, Tyrone says. He tilts his chin in the direction of the back of his bike.
He’s wearing his black leather jacket and a black helmet, and the chrome on the engine is gleaming in the winter sun.
I take Felix over to the front door and tell him to go inside and play.
I’m telling on you, Felix says. He stamps his boot on the step. We both know Miranda would never allow me on that bike. Especially in winter. Even Felix knows it isn’t safe.
But I’m tired of safe. I want some fun.
Don’t be such a baby, Felix, I say. We’re only going for a little ride around the block. I’m already swinging my leg over the back. Tyrone hands me a helmet and I put it on.
I’m tired of listening to Miranda. I’m tired of taking care of my little brother.
All I care about in this moment is Tyrone. And besides, I’ve been worried sick about him. Miranda told me yesterday that his mother hadn’t heard from him for days. And that the last time he was home, he said he wasn’t coming back again until Marty was gone.
Tyrone makes the engine rev with a shift of his wrists, and the vibrations shoot through my legs and chest and I don’t know where to put my hands.
He drives to the end of Livingstone and roars up Long’s Hill. I grab two handfuls of his leather jacket and hold on tight. I lean against Tyrone’s back and it would not be a lie to say that I find myself brushing my lips against his leather jacket.
The sky is darkening, the deepest blue, the blue before black. The blue of blueberry jam, the blue of a frozen pond where the ice is thin.
The ice on the trees shoots out a gazillion sparks. The bike sways beneath me and I’m happier than I have ever been in my whole life. To hell with Amber Mackey. To hell with everything.
Tyrone drives past the mall and we are out on Thorburn Road and nearly in St. Philips when he comes to an overgrown laneway. It’s a dirt path with frozen puddles. A strip of dead yellow grass running down the middle, thistles pushing through the snow, ATV tire tracks hardened with ice, everything silver with frost.
The motorcycle flies over the ruts and the back tire skids sideways and straightens out. A few tree branches scrape against my arm. After a while Tyrone has to slow down and sometimes he has to put his foot down so we don’t tip over and he rocks the motorcycle gently out of the deepest potholes.
A few times I have to get off and walk, and I watch him working the motorcycle through the path, a cloud of smoke from the exhaust pipe.
Finally he comes to a stop at the edge of a clearing. He gets off the bike and removes his helmet, shakes out his hair. My legs feel watery, but Tyrone has set off down a path, whacking bushes out of his way with a stick that had been leaning against a tree trunk. I take off my helmet and hurry to catch up with him.
Where are we going? I say.
You’ll see, Tyrone says.
A few crows fly through the trees and call out and the air smells of fresh snow and fir trees.
Then we come to another path that goes down a steep bank to a river. Tyrone takes my hand to pull me onto the narrow ledge he’s standing on. There’s a waterfall frozen solid. Three tiers of black stone and frozen white foam.
I’m sure I’m blushing because he’s still holding my hand, but he isn’t looking at me. He’s pointing straight ahead.
Then I catch my breath. On the smooth rock face near the waterfall is one of Tyrone’s paintings.
A girl with black hair, washing a red dress in the river. The girl’s knee is painted on a protruding boulder, one that is itself shaped like a knee, and her shoulder sticks out on a nub of rock jutting from the face of the cliff. She’s glancing up, as though we have surprised her. But she looks happy.
I recognize her. It’s Tyrone’s mother when she was a young girl. Tyrone must have used one of the high-school photographs of her that I remember seeing on top of their TV when we used to hang out as kids. But she’s also the same girl in the Snow Queen graffiti. Except here she isn’t silver and muscled and powerful. I guess Tyrone O’Rourke wants his mom to be like a superhero.
I did it last summer, he says. I haven’t shown it to anyone else.
Tyrone sits down on a fallen log and pats it for me to sit down beside him. In that moment I forget all about the potion and the unanswered messages and even the girl with the parrot-colored hair who may or may not be his girlfriend.
It�
�s the way he offers me the seat. He does it like the kid-Tyrone, the one I went to Queen’s Road convenience with when we were both six. We’d pooled our money, a great fortune in pennies that weighed our pockets down so we had to keep hauling up our jeans, and we bought five dollars’ worth of rainbow gummy worms, waiting with anticipation as the man behind the counter slid each penny under his index finger from one pile to the other, moving his lips as he counted.
We ran back to my house and up the stairs to my room and under the covers to spend an afternoon dividing the worms into piles according to length and color like two biologists going through specimens.
That boy-Tyrone has all but disappeared.
The person sitting next to me on the log is a man. He’s changed. Not just physical changes, though believe me, I am quite aware of those.
He’s self-possessed. That’s the word.
He owns himself.
Tyrone takes out a baggie of weed from a pocket inside his jacket and he’s rolling a joint on his knee. He flicks a lighter.
The marijuana smells sharp and green and smoky in the cold air. It smells like camping and Christmas. His eyes squint up against the smoke, and he’s holding his breath in.
As he exhales, he says, What do you think?
I look back at the painting but don’t say anything.
Do you want some? Tyrone asks. He holds out the joint. But I don’t want any and I just say so and it isn’t a big deal.
I haven’t shown this painting to anybody, Tyrone says. But I wanted you to see it.
I’m starting to shiver. The tips of my ears are burning with the cold. I take out a little flashlight I have on a keychain and let it play over the painting. It has become dark without us noticing. The faint yellow spot from my flashlight falls on the young woman’s cheek. The painting has a thin skin of ice over it, like varnish on an antique oil painting, gleaming and crackled.
Tyrone tosses the end of the joint into the river and stands to leave. He puts his gloves back on and slaps them together to get the snow off them. I stumble forward a little and he catches my shoulder.
Then he kisses me.