by Anne Simpson
No, I don’t think so.
I want to.
No, Elvis.
He opened his mouth so Damian could see his tongue and throat, dark red. A strangled cry came out. He looked so strange with his mouth open, his molars showing, his face all twisted up in agony. Then he fled, vanishing out the door and into the night.
Elvis!
Damian stood for a moment at the doorway of the carriage house and then stepped out on the back lawn, not knowing which way Elvis had gone. If anything happened, it was Damian’s doing. He shut the door and went across the lawn to the big house. He opened the kitchen door quietly, but Elvis wasn’t in the kitchen and he wasn’t in the hall. Damian could hear the low voices of his mother and Roger through the screened door as they sat on the porch, but he wasn’t about to tell them that Elvis had run away. He hesitated. The ghostly coil of the snake’s skeleton turned gently as it hung from the light fixture. Moonlight came through the window halfway up the stairs, slanting down the steps and across his sandalled feet, turning them into softly tinted fish. Damian walked through the foyer of the funeral parlour, made to look like someone’s home, past the photos of Lisa on the gilt-framed bulletin board on an easel: the photo of Lisa with her paddle raised in the air as she sat in her kayak; the photo of Lisa waving, with her best friend Alicia, just before the school trip to Atlanta; the photo of Lisa with Damian; the photo of Lisa at Christmas in front of the tree, with her hair in braids; the photo of Lisa as a little girl, wearing a yellow-and-white-striped dress that she held out on either side as if she were going to curtsy; the photo of Lisa as a baby in Ingrid’s arms.
He returned to the viewing salon for Lisa Felicity MacKenzie, where a few people were still gathered in a corner, whispering respectfully. His mother was sitting in front of Lisa’s casket; she had taken off her high heels and closed her eyes. Damian was about to turn away when Trevor approached and said something quietly to her. She opened her eyes and made an effort to greet him.
Hello, she said. You are –?
Trevor.
Oh yes, Trevor. I remember now. You went to a dance with Lisa.
I have something for her – for Lisa, he said, uncrumpling a piece of paper. I wrote it. Would you mind if I read it?
Damian could see he was going to read it to her whether she wanted him to or not.
It’s something you’ve written? she asked.
Yes. It’s a poem.
Lisa would have liked that.
Trevor looked at Ingrid bashfully. I don’t know if it’s all that good.
Don’t worry, said Ingrid.
For one ridiculous moment, Damian felt the urge to laugh.
Trevor composed himself. For Lisa.
Why don’t you sit down? said Ingrid.
All right. He sat beside her. For Lisa, he began again. Lisa, you were my heaven and earth, though you were here just ten years and seven –
The paper trembled in his hands.
It was too short a time, he went on. Sun and moon can’t – Sun and moon can’t rhyme, now you’re gone.
That’s it, he said. That’s my poem.
Ingrid put a hand on his sleeve. Damian could see that she wanted Trevor to be quiet, but he took it for encouragement.
I’m really going to miss her, he said.
Ingrid put her hand quickly to her mouth and got up from her chair. She went to kneel next to the casket. It wasn’t her custom to kneel, or even to pray, Damian thought, but now she clutched the edge of the casket with both hands.
Trevor hovered nearby, folding the paper and slipping it into the casket.
I need to be alone with her now, Ingrid said, her voice quietly firm.
Thank you for listening to it.
It was – courageous of you, she told him.
Trevor brushed his hand over his eyes. He left the room and walked through the foyer without seeing Damian.
There were two beefy security guards at the entrance to the casino when Damian got there. One was chewing gum. He blew it out of his mouth in a transparent pinkish bubble, smacked it so the bubble collapsed, and drew it back into his mouth.
She really gets off on it when I do that, the other man was saying. You wouldn’t think a feather would do it, but it does.
Damian asked if they’d seen Elvis.
Nope.
In the lobby, the lights were duplicated in mirrors, fractured and reflected, making them seem larger. A wide stream of water ran down a glass wall and cascaded into an illuminated pool fringed with palms. When Damian reached the top of the escalator and stepped off, he felt the luxuriously soft carpet under his sandals. A woman spun around on her stool with one leg in the air, so her shoe dropped from her foot, and Damian noticed that each of her toenails was painted a different colour.
My Lord, Mike, she said to the man next to her. I’m all jazzed up.
She picked up a little bucket and fed the machine some quarters. Damian heard the clinking sounds as the coins went into it.
Sir, said a girl. Her waistcoat had a satiny sheen. Her shiny mouth transfixed him, as if it were perfectly glued on. Sir, can I help you?
Did you see a man – a large man wearing pyjamas?
No, she said blankly. No one like that.
Damian looked around wildly at the people by the slot machines. A woman was laughing. A man was swinging his wife’s purse just out of her reach, grinning as he did so. There was someone with slicked hair and a wide smile on his face as he bent to fill up his container with coins.
Damian went down the wide marble staircase into the lobby, past the potted plants and security guards, out into the summer night. When he looked up at the moon, it seemed smaller and more transparent than it had been before, as if it had been cut from gauze. There was a smell of diesel in the air, and a girl calling for someone named Justin.
Justin, where the fuck are you? Justin?
Through the sidelight by the funeral home’s front door, Damian could see Trevor sitting in his truck in the parking lot, sobbing. The sight of him weeping like that – his head down, shoulders shaking – made Damian furious, so his throat burned. He went outside. As he walked toward the truck, Trevor raised his head. The window was half open, and Damian could see how pale he was. Damian didn’t reach for the door handle; he banged the hood instead. He banged it over and over, spoiling for a fight.
What are you doing? yelled Trevor.
Get out of the truck, cried Damian.
Why?
You know why. You know what you did to Lisa.
Damian –
Christ, said Damian. Get out of the truck.
I don’t know what you think, Damian. Trevor didn’t move from the driver’s seat. I swear to God it wasn’t what you think.
Get the fuck out of there.
Trevor got out and closed the door. He loosened his tie, which looked like something a clown might wear. He took it off, balled it up, and put it in his pocket. He took off his jacket too and tossed it in the half-opened window. His shirt was very white in the twilight.
I loved her, Damian.
No, you took advantage of her.
I did not. I would have done anything for her.
She told me that the two of you – anyway, she was too young. I told her she was too young.
Damian, you can’t blame me for what happened.
Damian gave the hood another bang.
It was an accident, said Trevor. What happened to Lisa was an accident. He wiped a white sleeve across his face. Shit, he went on. I can’t stop crying. Okay, if you’re going to hit me, watch out for my left shoulder. I’ve got a rotator cuff thing going on – it’s from hockey.
I could beat you to a pulp, said Damian, bending over the hood and stretching his arms out flat on it. But I have to go back in there. His voice was muffled. Fucking shit.
Fucking shit, agreed Trevor.
No, you’re the fucking shit.
I thought you were.
Damian stepped back from the truck, la
ughing. You’re the fucking shit. Got that? You’re the fucking shit. He drew himself up and stopped laughing abruptly. I have to go.
See you, said Trevor. Fucking shit.
Damian went inside. He walked down the hall, past the funeral director, who nodded solemnly at him, but he stopped at the threshold of the viewing salon where his mother was now sitting on the floor with her head in his father’s lap. Her feet, without shoes, were twisted underneath her, and they seemed all the more vulnerable because they weren’t naked, but clad in stockings, which were reinforced over the toes. There was a little hole by her baby toe, ringed with nail polish so it wouldn’t run. Her face was turned away from Damian, but he could see she was crying helplessly. There was no sound. His father was touching her, soothing her.
It was possible that he’d never seen his parents together like this – his father had left when Damian was young. He thought briefly of the morning his father had gone away: that grey day with the wet snow falling. The colour of the taxi in that whiteness. It didn’t matter how many times he’d seen him after that, there was always the finality of that morning. His father loved him, but that didn’t make up for it.
Now he could see that his father loved his mother too, but it was all wrong. His mother was sprawled on the floor, in her black dress and jacket, and her stocking-clad feet, with one arm clutching her ex-husband’s leg, as if she were trying to hold on to wreckage from a boat. The two of them had been brought back together, but not for long, and Damian knew this as well as anyone. He watched as his father lifted his hand to make the same gesture over and over, putting his hand down slowly, tenderly, on his mother’s head to stroke her hair. She’d had it done that morning at the hairdresser’s, but it was all disarranged across his father’s lap, shimmering under the light.
It was a private moment between his parents, one that Damian should not have witnessed. Beside them was the casket, and in it was their daughter, cold as winter. Cold as January after a storm, when there was a glaze of ice over each stone on the beach. Cold as the white, frothy tide coming in and going out, restlessly.
Damian had kissed Lisa’s forehead earlier and he knew.
Over to one side, beneath a chair, were two black patent leather shoes. One was upright, and the other had fallen over. It was his mother’s shoes that made Damian lean against the wall and cry.
Damian went up Clifton Hill, under the bright lights of Ripley’s Believe It or Not! He passed Rock Stars of the Ages Wax Museum, and Don’t Pay More Souvenirs, where T-shirts were ghosts in the window. Tits Up For Jesus. Cry When You Bite My Onion. Great Balls of Fire – Got ’Em, Flaunt ’Em. Just beyond the souvenir shop was a 3-D creature with antennae and large lime-green eyes, glaring above the sign for Alien Terrors: A Close Encounter with Creatures from Mars.
He saw Elvis, then, just past Alien Terrors. There he was, all alone. He looked like someone who’d just got out of bed for a glass of milk, except that he was standing on the sidewalk in bare feet, in the greenish glow from the sign. When a car went by, the driver honked at him, but Elvis didn’t move. His pyjama top rippled out in the wind.
Hey, retard! someone yelled.
No harm had come to him. The sheep and ducks emblazoned on his pyjamas had protected him, as if they were magical symbols to ward off evil.
Elvis, said Damian softly.
Elvis looked around at him and turned back to the tattoo parlour window across the street from where he stood. The window was filled with light, and a young woman stood inside. She was slender, with glossy dark hair, and one brown shoulder showing where her wide-necked T-shirt had slipped a little. Her hair was caught up on top of her head with what might have been a large clothespin. She had silvery bangles on her wrists, and the bangles moved as she worked on something, but whatever she was doing displeased her, because she frowned and tightened her mouth. She was drawing. Then she stopped, stepping back. She moved the pencil back and forth between her lips as she looked at the drawing.
Around her, on the walls, were hundreds of small pictures arranged in rows. Kittens, cats, puppies, dogs, guitars, mushrooms, hearts and arrows, motorcycles. Roses budding and roses blooming and roses in tiny wreaths. Smiling lips, pursed lips, open lips with the tip of a tongue showing. Angels. Devils. I love you. A cross, a flaming cross, three small crosses. Waves. A little boat. Noah and the ark. A wall of lions, tigers, zebras, Panda bears.
She flung the pencil on the table, but it jumped and rolled to the floor. Taking off her apron, she put it on the back of a chair and slung a drawstring bag over her shoulder. It was as though she were on a stage, Damian thought, and now she was going to speak to the audience. She looked out the window, though the glass must have been a square of darkness to her, and it seemed to Damian that he could predict how she would walk through the beaded curtain and part it exactly as she did, with one hand, going to the invisible back door where she would flick off the lights, as if she knew people were watching. Damian and Elvis both stood staring into the darkness, until Damian realized they were waiting for something. They were waiting for her to come back onstage.
Damian put his hand on Elvis’s arm. Let’s go, he said.
When Elvis didn’t move, he took his hand. His skin was soft and pliant, unexpectedly pliant. And it was larger than Damian’s own hand. If Elvis wanted to, he could crush it. It made him think of how Elvis had held the gun, as if he’d meant it.
Okay, said Elvis, allowing himself to be led away. Okay.
It was on the back streets that Damian noticed the moonlight again. It fell on parked cars, on street signs, on a Dumpster, on a small plaster boy fishing on someone’s front lawn, flickering in and out of the pachysandra that grew thickly around the base of a group of birches.
They wouldn’t let me in, said Elvis.
Who? asked Damian.
They asked me how old I was. Then they asked me if I had any money. You’re supposed to have money if you go to the casino. I looked inside, though.
Damian imagined Elvis at the casino, looking in at the potted plants and marble floor, his breath making plumes on the glass.
You wouldn’t have liked it, Elvis.
They told me it was past my bedtime. The men said it was past my bedtime and they said things about my pyjamas. Elvis turned to Damian, his eyes glistening. They laughed about my pyjamas.
EVERY NIGHT BEFORE ELVIS went to sleep he kissed Shania Twain, who smiled on his pillowcase. Once he’d said goodnight to Shania, he pulled a photograph out from under the pillow. There was a white crease across it, but the woman in it, though faded, could still be seen. Her long red hair fell over her shoulders. She wore a man’s black leather jacket, and she was leaning against a motorcycle. In her arms was a baby, snugly wrapped in a blanket. There was a doll-sized knitted cap on its head. The woman wasn’t looking down at the baby; she was looking directly at the camera, or she seemed to be looking directly at the camera, but she wore sunglasses so it was hard to tell. Elvis kissed the photograph twice. He kissed the woman on her sunglasses and he kissed the baby on its knitted cap. Then he slid it back under the pillow. On the back of the photograph, in a small, rounded script, were the words:
Elvis Graceland Hockridge
November 2, 1987
Toronto, Ontario
TO HELL WITH IT, Jasmine thought, tossing the pencil. She took off her apron and picked up her bag. When she looked out the window all she could see was her own reflection, a girl who was a bit on the skinny side, except for her hips, which she’d never liked. Hair in need of washing, twisted up on top of her head and held with a clip. Her grandmother’s bangles on her wrist. But she looked like a nine-year-old, with or without bangles. Jasmine, who had been Sandra Blakeney, from Lanigan, Saskatchewan, on her way to Somewhere Else, preferably New York City, in the United States of America, before she went on to France, Italy, and Spain, was stranded for the moment in a tattoo parlour in Niagara Falls, Ontario, until she could make enough money to go Somewhere Else.
As
for the drawing, she could tell herself it was fine, but it wasn’t; she couldn’t do foreshortening worth beans. The dragon was all right, but she couldn’t do the motorcycle. A drawing for a tattoo, the guy had said. His name was Jordan, he told Tarah, and what he wanted was a dragon sitting on a Kawasaki motorcycle, with the bike shown from the front, not the side.
Jasmine had said she’d try to help Tarah out, because the drawing had to be done by the following morning. But it wasn’t working. Why couldn’t Jordan get a flash of a Panda bear? Why did it have to be a dragon on a Kawasaki?
In grade three, Jasmine’s teacher had said that her trees looked like sponges. The teacher had been a jolly woman with red hair and large hands; she’d said the trees looked like sponges, and then she’d smiled. She didn’t have to say anything about the sky or the clouds. After the teacher went up the row, Sandra-not-yet-Jasmine looked at her trees. She liked them. She didn’t care what Mrs. Jewett said.
She’d gone home after school and yanked out all the hair from the head of her hand-me-down doll. It had been her sister Shirl’s doll.
What kind of a girl are you? asked her mother when she found Sandra and the doll and the yanked-out hair.
What kind of a girl was she?
One who’d left Lanigan before it was really spring, on a bus that went down the highway past fields that were not yet green, not even close, because it was always cold in Lanigan, and the cold went deep into the sky and the fields and the trees and the driveways and the cars and the houses and the people in the houses. Of course, that wasn’t entirely fair, because the heat of summer went deep into everything too, later on, but it was early spring when she left, and the world was grey-green. It was as flat as if someone had taken an iron to it and pressed it down.
One who’d saved a fortune cookie (from the Full Moon Chinese Restaurant in Saskatoon, while waiting for the bus that went via Winnipeg to Toronto) that read, in small green lettering: Good fortune and great happiness will come your way very soon.
One who had phoned home to tell her parents she’d left for a year and to wish her luck: a wish that went unwished. Her mother told her there’d be hell to pay and to come right home, what was she thinking, going off like that at the age of eighteen to live on the streets like some hussy, like some tramp?