by Nora Decter
I’m sure of it now. Maggie is playing some kind of trick on me. On all of us.
Generally speaking, every morning my mother wakes up a monster. She can’t form words, so she communicates in groans and growls. She can’t hold her head up—it lists onto her shoulder, or she holds it in her hands. In those first few minutes of morning I don’t think she knows who she is or who I am or how she wound up in our cluttered-ass house in this flaming Dumpster of a neighborhood we call home.
That much, at least, I can relate to.
The process of making Maggie human takes an hour, maybe two. It all hinges on what sort of shape she’s in when her alarm starts blaring and she drags herself out of bed and down the hall to stand for several minutes under painfully hot water before beginning to wash.
When she emerges from the bathroom she’s not quite a functional human being, but then, functionality isn’t chief among Maggie’s talents. She’s as pretty as she ever is, though, all washed and half-awake. Not yet spackled in product from head to toe. Bathrobe wrapped around her body and a towel holding back her hair. My mother has a misled beauty. It’s there, but she does everything in her power to obscure it. She’s not cute, but she’d be regal if she left well enough alone. Too bad she tends toward clothes that make her look like a drag queen on a budget—short flared skirts and shirts bedazzled in the chest region.
That’s how it’s always been, since the dawn of time. So you can understand my confusion when I walk into the kitchen in the morning and find Maggie at the stove, barefaced and barely herself, wearing an apron, making eggs.
“Morning, hon,” she says. “Omelet?”
I’m trying to wrap my head around the apron and don’t notice Louie. I jump when he waves hello with the knife he’s using to chop peppers.
“Do you want cheese in yours?” he asks. His English is fine. Did I imagine the accent? Or maybe he was putting it on? Also, where are the drunks?
“Louie-baby, could you help me roll this?” Maggie asks, doing her little-girl giggle. That’s a bit better I suppose.
“Come on, Howl,” I say, slapping my thigh for her to come.
“Louie took her out already.”
“Pardon?”
“Louie took her out. He’s an early riser.”
Louie is an early riser. What’s next? Louie pays his child support on time?
“Hey!” says Maggie. “How’s the job going? Benny says you’re a great worker.”
I don’t buy this bullshit show. I grab my jacket and take off. Walk to school because I have the time and I’m too mad. Have I mentioned that every time I leave, I leave like it’s the last time? I make sure my room is tidy, no unmentionables about, all my records safely in their sleeves. It’s part of my practice.
“Fancy meeting you here,” Groves says, and I jump for the second time today. I’m smoking by the Dumpsters, and she’s just popped her head around.
“Hey,” I say, stubbing the cigarette out against the wall and tucking it back in the pack for later. I can tell I’m in trouble, but I’m not sure what kind.
“Looks like you’re done there. Come inside. I’ve got something I want to run past you.”
I shrug.
“Let me rephrase that. As your teacher, I hereby order you to come inside and join me in my classroom. Come on now! Let’s go!”
I follow her in, but I mutter things you shouldn’t say to a teacher under my breath as I’m doing it.
“Sit,” she says when we’re in her classroom. “What’s on your mind?”
I’m thinking about Maggie’s men. The guys she’d bring around, all casual at first, both sides acting like nothing was going on. This is my friend Mike or Fred or John. No matter how nonchalant she was about it, the time spent poring over herself in the mirror was one way we would know. I’m sure the guys knew too, but everyone pretended not to. Why is it you’re supposed to do that? Act like you aren’t after what you actually are. Love or sex or whatever. Anyway, at first all the dudes made nice, going, Hey kid, whatcha reading, what grade are you in, here’s ten bucks to go to the Sev, go out and play for a while. And then a couple of weeks later he’d be in deep. When Matt was around it was almost fun, having new dads all the time. We’d call them that to make them squirm, extract all the guilt money we could out of them and enjoy the days or weeks or months they’d buy in good moods for Maggie before it went sour. Falling in love starts to look debasing after a while. I think it did something to me, watching the pattern repeat. It might have made me immune.
I think these things, and I know Groves is waiting on my answer, but my mind’s so full I can’t. I have to say something, though, so I say, “Nothing,” briefly raising my eyes from the paper clip I’m bending back and forth. Eye contact helps make people less afraid of you. Or more. Depends on the kind.
Groves starts talking, the kind of talk where I just have to nod my head and say yeah every once in a while. Yes, I will be good. Yes, I see the error of my ways. From now on I’ll be a different way. I nod and I smile, and the whole time I’m running it in my head. How the Louie thing will go. Just like they always do.
The first-period bell rings, and I get up. “I have bio.”
“Hold on,” she says. “I need a student to help me move some boxes at lunch. Do you have plans?”
This is thinly veiled. We both know I don’t.
I shrug. “Not really.”
“Good,” she says. “Meet me in the parking lot?”
This is not the first time Groves has tried to take me to a secondary location. Never let them take you to a secondary location. That’s what the murder experts say on the cop shows Maggie watches. Not that I think she’s going to murder me. But it is one thing to hang out with a teacher at school, quite another to take it off school property.
I daydream through bio and sleep through math. I have gym before lunch, but I never go to that, so I go to the library to see if they have the book I need for the English course at the university. They do. I start in on it.
She insists on taking me to the Olive Garden after a brief stop at the public library, where we pick up four boxes of books left over from a recent charity book sale.
“You know,” she says, “my dad died when I was thirteen.”
I am turning a napkin into confetti, and it requires all my concentration.
“He had a heart condition. We had no idea. The worst thing was that we didn’t have any warning. Endings shouldn’t come out of nowhere like that. You should get a chance to brace yourself.”
I look at her hard until she stops.
TWELVE
After school I walk home the long way. Fat flakes of snow are coming down in globs, clinging to my face and everything. It’s the sort of snow that smooths out all the edges of our homes. It makes everything look like a picture book, like a winter-in-the-hood snow globe. The streets and yards aren’t littered with cigarette butts and Slurpee cups, the rooftops aren’t in need of repair, and no car windows are broken.
Maggie and Louie are already home. Maybe they never left. Who knows. They’re in the basement, in Matt’s room, my room, where no one ever goes but me. There’s a cardboard box at the top of the stairs. She’s probably rooting around for a costume for her next karaoke number. She’s got all kinds of things down there. Old Halloween stuff and stripper gear and other family heirlooms.
I go to my upstairs bedroom instead and doze off. The math nap wasn’t enough. I drift in and out as noises infiltrate my blanket hideout. Char relaying the tale of her latest Internet dating escapade. Baby’s shrill little yap. Louie banging pots and pans. Maggie singing “Fever in the morning, fever all through the night.” The muffled people sounds are breaking my heart, but don’t let that impress you. These days everything breaks my heart. The way the sun goes down at four in the afternoon, the way there’s hardly any day and so much night. The way the old guy in front of me at the corner store counts out change for his Scratch & Win, quarter by quarter, nickel by dime. That fucking space he
ater in the basement and the way it lulls me with its warm whirl and then cuts out. The teamwork of the garbagemen and their truck working down our back lane, yelling Go! at every empty dumpster. These things catch me off guard and wind me. I don’t think I’m breathing right these days. I forget to.
I stand by my statement. I don’t want to hear Groves’s sob story. Or anyone’s. There’s nothing alluring to me about comparing my pain to someone else’s. If you’ve ever felt it on a regular basis, you’ll know sometimes nothing feels worse than the concern of others. But she was right about one thing: the hardest part is when something ends and you’re not expecting it.
I can hear the tacky plastic sound of the cheapo karaoke machine from here, but I throw back the blankets and go downstairs anyway. The living room lights are turned low, and the canned karaoke track plays, finger snaps and a smooth, climbing bass line as Maggie croons, “You give me fever…” In her hands, Peggy Lee is pure drag-queen camp. I look in just long enough to catch her treating the poor standing lamp like a stripper pole, red feather boa around her shoulders, and then continue on to the kitchen. I wonder what Earl would give me for the karaoke machine. It’s technically mine, a gift from an old boyfriend of Maggie’s, the one we called Married Bill. (And we did call him that, all the time, to his face. Hey, Married Bill, Matt would say when he’d join us for dinner. Want more potatoes?)
Louie has laid out a spread of taco fixings on the table. I fix myself a plate and make to slip back upstairs, since it looks like she’s still working on her wardrobe—the basement door is still open, boxes still in the hall. The song ends to polite applause as I pass by the doorway.
“When did you get home?” she says into the microphone.
I shrug.
“There’s a message for you on the machine.”
I go back to the kitchen and press Play on the answering machine as I eat my tacos, expecting to hear Benny’s voice giving me my shifts for the week and getting something else instead.
“Hey! This is Ivy, calling for Jolene. I’m going to this party later and was wondering if you might want to come. Scratch that, I’m begging you. I know it’s last-minute, but please come. It’s an art show thing at a gallery on Ross. I hate the art crowd, but my friend’s band is playing, and I promised I’d go to his last three shows but didn’t because I’m almost positive his band sucks, and I absolutely hate standing around doing the I’m-so-cool head bob and pretending to enjoy the music but not too much because of course that wouldn’t be cool. Seriously, these people are a drag. So, wanna come? We can stand at the back and make fun of everyone! Please? If you don’t say yes I’ll be forced to drink copious amounts of wine from a box, wind up making fun of someone’s stupid statement haircut or their stupid statement art and eventually I’ll be politely asked to leave by the self-important shmucks who organized the whole lame-ass fandango, and everyone will stand around watching me be ejected from the party while pretending not to watch me be ejected from the party. That’s a true story, by the way. Seriously, Jolene, only you can save me from the pitying gaze of the Winnipeg art crowd, all fifteen of them. Call me.”
Before the machine clicks off she leaves the name of the gallery and the address. I erase the message in hopes Maggie hasn’t heard it the whole way through (it’s not the underage drinking she’d disapprove of, but the fact that she wasn’t invited along) and take my dinner back up to my room.
Howl’s stare bores into my head. She thinks I need to get out more.
I’m not a party person, I tell her. I prefer solitary pursuits.
I eat, and when I’m done I pick up my book and try to read, but Howl keeps sighing and being all sometimes it’s important to do things we’re afraid of.
I can hear laughter downstairs and the sound of furniture being moved around. I push it out of my head.
Then I get a bad feeling. A very bad feeling.
“Hey, Jo! Come here for a sec,” Char calls from the couch when I reach the front hall, but I ignore her, push aside the boxes and beat Howl to the bottom of the basement stairs.
All the posters have been taken down from the walls. Milk crates full of records are piled on top of the dresser, and there’s a neat stack of cardboard boxes in the corner. I pull open drawers, one after the other, and they’re empty. Only the guitars and amps haven’t been touched. Maggie comes up behind me like she’s bracing for a fight.
“You packed up his shit?” I say.
“Could you spare us the scene?” she snaps, but she can’t look at me. I look at her instead. Maybe if I stare hard enough, I can make her head explode. I give it a try.
“That’s right.” She heaves a long-suffering sigh. “I’m such a bad fucking mother.”
I don’t say anything, and she still looks everywhere but at me. Maybe I did inherit her death stare.
“Go ahead and hate me. You spend too much time down here. It’s not good for you. There’s not enough light.”
“Right,” I say. “My issue is not enough daylight. I just need more vitamin D.”
She goes upstairs, and I grab the mattress money and follow her, intending to shove it in her face and say, Here you go—now I don’t owe you anything, but I can hear her in the kitchen, ranting to Louie already, and I need to be outside right now. I grab my jacket and go.
“Hey!” She comes into the hall and yells after me. “We need to talk about that phone bill. Who were you calling?”
I walk out, and the universe is right there above me. Not a cloud, not a building overhead.
“Who were you calling, Jolene??”
I pull my hood up. There’s no wind, but it’s these still, clear nights that are the real cold ones.
THIRTEEN
The door girl takes my five bucks and marks the inside of my wrist with a Sharpie. She wears her hair all in her eyes, like she’s so cool she doesn’t need to see where she’s going. I’d like to take notes on how she pulls this off, but Ivy is saying my name.
“Jolene! You came!” She goes for the hug. I don’t hug easily, but I manage to submit to it without doing anything too alienating. “The band’s about to go on,” she says as we enter the room. “We’re gonna have to elbow our way to the front.”
The gallery has high tin ceilings that amplify the music pounding out of the speakers not far from where we stand. I’m not going to get away with mumbling tonight. I yell okay and she shouts that she’ll be back in two shakes and then she’s gone, fighting her way over to the folding-table bar, where a tall fellow who seems to be going for a Jesus look immediately engages her in conversation. Tonight her pastel hair is swept up in a bird’s-nest knot at the back of her head like some kind of haphazard confection. She’s wearing jeans and a denim jacket lined with thick fake fur. Denim on denim, and it works.
I shift from one foot to the other. I try to rearrange my face to mask my discomfort, but in the end I give up and walk over to the wall, which is hung with oversized photographs of sad cityscapes. No one else seems to be here to consider the art, but I circle the room, recognizing buildings, graffitied train cars and boarded-up storefronts. I study each photo in turn, and when I’m done Ivy still isn’t back, and I can’t see her anywhere.
At a bit of a distance and to an untrained eye, these people could be homeless, with their anti-hairstyles and laundry-hamper-looking clothes. They don’t appear to be paying attention to me, but I feel observed anyway. I could just leave. The door is right there. But I stormed out of the house not an hour ago, and the thing about storms is, no one remembers the ones that just blow over. They have to rage on for a while.
“There you are!” Ivy appears and puts a beer in my hand. “Shall we do this thing?” She starts toward the stage without waiting for an answer. “I’m sorry in advance if this offends your sensibilities,” she calls over her shoulder. “I haven’t heard Drew’s music in a while. It could be bad.”
In front of me Ivy slips through the crowd, squeezing her slight frame in between the bodies of people talking in
twos and threes. I struggle to fit myself through the gaps she’s leaving in her wake. It turns out there’s no stage, just a red-and-gold Persian rug on which the boys in the band are organizing themselves. A rough semicircle has formed around them, leaving space in front that suggests a dance floor.
Of course, that’s where Ivy takes me, into the hole in the crowd at the feet of the band, where I am taller than everyone. I can feel their resentment burning at the back of my head as the house music cuts out and the drummer counts off.
They launch into it, and immediately the music is so arresting I forget to worry about how I’m obstructing sight-lines. The band is a two-piece, the drummer and another guy on guitar, who hovers over a table spread with panels of dials and knobs I don’t understand. Tattooed and spry, he hangs back from the microphone while his hands move between his guitar and these other strange instruments. I recognize a loop pedal under the table, which he steps on at intervals, building layers of spooky guitar sound and then tweaking them with a turn of a dial or by bending a string. When he opens his mouth, it’s an ugly-beautiful thing. His voice is filtered through so many effects that I can’t make out any words and don’t need to.
The drummer plays with a messy intricacy, with all kinds of abandon. The kit looks makeshift—a kick drum, a snare and a cymbal. He has the sort of thick, floppy hair girls like to touch and then declare themselves jealous of, and, unlike his comrade, he appears to be uninked. I watch him watch the lead guy, waiting for the changes. The sound is quiet but large, and it stills the room, commands it, makes me want to give up making music because I could never play like this and go home and write a song.
Ivy is trying to talk to me, but she’s so much shorter than I am that I have to do a sort of half-squat maneuver to get low enough for my ear to be anywhere near her mouth.
“What do you think?”
“They’re interesting.”