by Darren Hynes
Your friend who feels like there’s no sense in anything,
Wayne Pumphrey
TEN
Marjorie finishes her monologue and turns to Les Faulkner, but Les can’t seem to remember what comes next. In the script he’s supposed to go to Marjorie’s character, Bonita, and kiss her cheek and wrap his arms around her, but it’s like he’s lost the capacity to move. Those sitting on the other side of the room look frozen, too. Wax figurines. Sharon’s got a Snickers in her mouth, but she’s not chewing; Paul Stool is actually sitting up with nothing over his crotch (cured at last); Julie Snow is on her knees about to apply a fresh coat of watermelon lipstick; and Shane and Jason have stopped drawing tits and vaginas and dicks on their scripts.
Mr. Rollie slides forward in his chair and wipes his eyes beneath his glasses and swallows and looks at the wall clock and tells everyone that that’s enough for today and we can go home.
The cast needs a moment more to remember how to blink, breathe, stand up and put one foot in front of the other, swing their arms, and finally exit through the double doors.
Mr. Rollie calls Marjorie back.
She comes over and takes her place in front of the long table. Odd socks and too-short jeans and electrical tape over the toe of one sneaker. Bangs in her eyes and she’s chewing on her cheek and her legs are crossed at the ankles like she needs to pee.
Mr. Rollie takes off his glasses and sets them on the table and looks at Marjorie. “Just wanted to say you were exceptional just now, Miss Pope.”
Marjorie doesn’t say anything.
“Mr. Faulkner was a little thrown, but at least now he’ll know he can’t coast along as usual.” Mr. Rollie pokes Wayne in the shoulder. “What did you think, Mr. Pumphrey?”
Wayne lays down his Razor Point extra-fine pen. “Awfully good.”
Mr. Rollie nods. “Wasn’t it?”
Wayne turns to Marjorie. “Better than the Hollywood crowd even.”
Mr. Rollie offers Marjorie a chair but Marjorie won’t sit. He twirls his pinky ring for ages and then says, “I don’t see how we couldn’t make the provincials now. They won’t know what to make of you in St. John’s.”
Marjorie slips her hands into her back pockets. Stares at something on the floor.
“All this time,” Mr. Rollie says, “passing you in the corridors, having you in my English classes. Last year you were so quiet I forgot you were even there. And now this.”
“Awfully good,” Wayne says again.
“Where does it come from, Miss Pope, your mother’s or your father’s side?”
Marjorie looks up and then down at the floor again and Wayne feels something seep from the room.
Mr. Rollie shifts in his chair and says, “I’m sorry, Miss Pope, I shouldn’t have asked—”
“Certainly not my mother’s,” Marjorie says. “She freezes up talking to the bank teller. So I guess my dad’s side. He was real into music, especially Radiohead, and he loved movies and even tried to write a screenplay.”
A long silence.
“Your guidance counsellor will hate me,” Mr. Rollie says at last, resting his chin on cupped hands, “but I think it’s your calling.”
Wayne writes “calling” down in his notebook.
“For me it’s to teach English and drama and direct school plays. Mr. Inkwell’s destiny is to be principal, and old Mr. Ricketts is there to make sure the heat works in winter and that we have lights to do our work without straining our eyes.” Mr. Rollie picks his glasses up and chews on one of the ears. “Some people have trouble finding their calling. Others not so much. What’s important is to never stop searching.” He sits back and stares at the ceiling and for a moment seems lost, but then he sits forward again and puts his glasses on and smiles with his teeth that are almost like baby ones and says, “You both ought to be going now, it’s nearly suppertime.”
Marjorie says goodbye and leaves while Wayne collects his things.
“The chivalrous thing would be to walk with her,” says Mr. Rollie, “it being dark and everything.”
“I would, except she walks so fast. Always a step ahead.”
Mr. Rollie rests a hand on Wayne’s shoulder and says, “Then you’d better catch up, hadn’t you?”
ELEVEN
Wayne bends over and offers his outstretched hand to Marjorie, but she doesn’t take it.
“I’m not an invalid, Wayne Pumphrey,” she says, getting back to her feet.
“It’s those sneakers,” Wayne says.
Marjorie brushes the snow off her backside.
“You need boots.”
“Gonna buy them for me, Wayne Pumphrey?”
He doesn’t say anything.
Marjorie starts walking again.
He tries to keep up. After a while he goes, “How can you walk so fast?”
Nothing for a moment, then her saying, “I pretend Mom’s behind me.”
“What?”
“Never mind.”
For a long time they walk and say nothing, their footsteps crunching beneath them. Clouds for breath.
Then Wayne says, “Five o’clock and it’s already dark.”
Marjorie mumbles something and Wayne doesn’t catch it so he asks her to say it again and she goes, “I said, it never gets warm here.”
“What do you expect for January.”
“January … April … every month. It snowed in July last year.”
“Did it?”
“It’s like living in the North Pole.”
They continue on, Wayne stealing glances at the northern lights and the millions of stars and the quarter moon.
The sound of a skidoo in the distance.
A dog barks.
“Mr. Rollie cried,” Wayne says finally. “During your monologue.”
Marjorie just keeps going.
“Sharon, too, I think. Or else she was choking on her Snickers.”
Marjorie puts her hands in her pockets and tucks her chin downwards and walks even faster.
“Paul Stool lost his hard-on—not that I was looking or anything, but sometimes it’s impossible not to.”
“No girl wants to hear that, Wayne Pumphrey … even if it is Paul Stool.”
“No, it was a compliment, you were so good you took his mind off it.”
She nearly slips again, but manages to stay upright.
“And I meant what I said too about you being better than the Hollywood crowd.”
She says nothing. Turns left onto Lakeside Drive. He follows and, after a while, says, “You’re better than Angelina Jolie.”
She stops and turns around.
He stops too.
“I know my own way home,” she says.
“The chivalrous thing would be to walk you.”
For a moment they stand staring at each other, then Marjorie says, “Saw you gawking the other night, by the way. Gawk, gawk, gawk, that’s all anyone around here is good for.”
“I didn’t mean to.” Wayne pauses. “She okay?”
Marjorie looks away. “She’ll know to cut the beef in smaller chunks from now on.”
“What?”
She stares back at him. Slips her hands into her back pockets again. “For the stew, I mean. Piece lodged in her throat. Did the Heimlich thingy, but it didn’t work. The hospital’s only five minutes away, but it still took the ambulance forever.”
“Oh.”
She heads off again and he follows again.
A man passes pulling a child on a toboggan.
Sometime later Wayne hears faraway laughter, so he turns and, through a front window, sees people gathered around a kitchen table playing cards and drinking from tumblers and pointing and holding their stomachs. Through another window in another house Wayne notices a woman sitting alone by firelight: long hair and her feet on an ottoman, her toes extended—like a ballerina—towards the flame. Up ahead, a cat scoots across the road, finding refuge beneath a parked SUV. Music somewhere: guitars and mandolins. A harmonica? A cloud
, or is it iron ore dust drifting in front of the moon?
At the intersection of Balsam and Oak, Marjorie stops.
Wayne comes up beside her.
No one talks for ages.
Marjorie fixes her gaze on the tiny bungalow with the closed drapes on the corner. At last she says, “Sometimes I hate going in.”
“Why?”
“None of your business why … I just do.”
He pauses. “I hate going home sometimes, too.”
“Pfft.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
Silence.
Wayne says, “Mom threatens to leave all the time.”
“Oh yeah? Does she sit in front of the curtains all day and night in her bathrobe and not eat and not brush her teeth?”
“No. But she does pack her suitcase a lot. Even goes sometimes.”
Marjorie looks at him.
“She comes back, though,” Wayne says.
Marjorie goes to speak, but stops herself. Walks towards her house and pauses at the lip of her driveway. “No need to walk me to the door, Wayne Pumphrey.”
Wayne peers towards the front window and sees fingers parting the drapes, then a sliver of forehead. Half an eye. He looks back at Marjorie. She shouts in the direction of the window. “You can let go of the drapes now, Mom! God!”
The fingers disappear and the curtains flutter, then go still.
“Wish she’d pack a suitcase,” Marjorie says.
Quiet for a while. Then the faint sound of a train’s whistle. After it’s gone, Marjorie says, “Ever wish you could hop on it?”
“Hmm?”
“The train? Ever wish you could hop on it and get the hell outta here?”
Wayne looks past her shoulder as if the train might be right behind her, then focuses back on Marjorie. “No, but I’ve imagined other ways.”
“Oh yeah?”
“A hang glider or a hot air balloon or something. Once I had a dream that I could fly, so I flew to a place with sand and a beach and palm trees and the bluest ocean I had ever seen. I was tanned and taller and said just the right things and everyone seemed happy spending time with me. Then I woke up and my sister, Wanda, was there and I thought I might claw her eyes out.”
Marjorie nods and goes to say something but decides not to. Her mother’s in the window again, except more of her: a shoulder, a whole eye, some nose, mouth … ear. Marjorie turns back to Wayne. “Go on home now.”
“Okay. See you tomorrow.” He starts to go, but her voice stops him.
“She used to take care of Dad but now she can’t take care of herself so what am I supposed to do?”
Wayne doesn’t know what to say.
It starts to snow.
“Never mind … just thinking out loud. Go home.”
Wayne stays where he is.
“Go home, I said.”
Wayne turns around and walks down the street and when he’s in his own driveway he looks back and Marjorie’s still standing where he left her and the streetlight’s making her glow but he doesn’t dare gawk because that’s all anyone around here is good for.
TWELVE
His father is sitting at the kitchen table holding a bag of frozen corn against his face when Wayne walks in. He points at the cast-iron frying pan near his feet and says, “Struck me with it, she did.”
Footsteps in the hall. A door opening and then slamming.
“She’s packing her bags,” his father says. “What’s new?”
Wayne notices the nearly seared-shut eyes and drooping brows and the way he’s listing, as if aboard a boat. His dad takes the corn away, exposing a huge welt. Moans while working his jaw. Puts the bag back. “Two Jesus beer and this is what I get.”
The sound of music, then Wanda appears, her iPod stuck in the waist of her track pants. Christina Aguilera sings something about being beautiful no matter what they say while Wanda goes to the fridge and grabs a Diet Coke and pulls back the tab and swigs. Scrunches up her face because the pop’s burning and then says, “She might actually get out the door this time.”
His dad grunts. “And go where?”
No one says anything.
“She’s got nowhere.”
A door suddenly opens, followed by: “Son of a bitch!” The same door slams.
“Am I?” his father shouts. “That what I am— ouch!” He holds his cheek for a moment and then says, “Who hit who, for Jesus’ sake?” He looks at Wayne and Wanda. “Could have blinded me.”
His mother’s voice again. Muffled. Must be in the closet yanking clothes from hangers, Wayne thinks. “Youngsters!” she says. “Come here so I can talk to you!”
“Go on,” his father says. “See what the loony wants.”
Wayne goes to his parents’ bedroom and opens the door and sticks his head in. His mother is sitting in the middle of the floor with her face in her hands. A filled suitcase lies open on the bed. She lifts her head. “Where is he?”
“Sitting at the table.”
“Should have hit him harder. Drunk bastard.”
She wipes her eyes. “Coming with me?”
Wayne steps into the room. “Where?”
“Anywhere that’s not here.”
Wanda comes in and sits down on the bed and says, “His cheek’s purple,” then takes a sip of her Coke.
“Hope he dies.”
“Mom.”
“Well what’s he good for, Wanda?”
Wanda doesn’t say.
“Always taking his side, you are.” Their mother gets up and goes over to the bed and zips up the suitcase and grips the handle and lifts and says, “You two coming?”
Silence.
“Or you can stay with Him and what kind of life will that be?”
Wanda looks over at Wayne, then back at their mother. “But you’ll come back.”
“No—”
“We’ll pack and then you’ll change your mind—”
“Not this time. This is for real.”
Silence.
The sound of something breaking, then his dad’s faraway voice: “Two Jesus beer!” and “Could have blinded me!”
“I oughtta stay,” Wanda says then. “So he doesn’t burn down the house.”
“Suit yourself,” his mother says. She looks at Wayne.
He thinks of his notebooks filled with letters underneath clothes in his dresser, beneath his mattress, stuffed in boxes on the top shelf of his closet. How long to pack them all? he wonders. What about his clothes and books and whatever else he might need? Besides, Wanda’s right: she’ll come back. She always does.
His mother turns and leaves the room and walks down the hall towards the kitchen and Wayne follows and considers the possibility that, this time, she won’t come back, so who’ll make the dumplings and molasses tarts and sweeten his tea just the way he likes it and make sure her husband brings home his cheque and that Wanda doesn’t listen to Nickelback at the table or drink more than three Diet Cokes a day and tell him he’s handsome and that, one day, he’ll have more friends than he’ll know what to do with?
Now his mother’s in the kitchen and Wanda and he are beside her and she stops in front of their dad and says, “I need a ride.”
His father takes the corn away, his cheek swollen to twice its normal size. “See what you did?” He squeezes his eyes from the pain and when he opens them they’re wet.
“Did you hear me?” she says.
“A ride? I can barely see out of my Jesus eye.”
“Just need a foot and a hand to drive,” their mother says. “Or I’ll call a cab—
“Wayne, call me a taxi.” She turns back to her husband. “What? What’s so goddamned funny?”
“Nothing. Wayne, put ‘Working Man’ on for your mom—”
“No, you drunk bastard.”
“Drunk?”
“Rita MacNeil is not going to fix it this time.”
“Two Jesus beer—”
“I’ll never set foot in this house
again—”
“I’m more sober than you are.”
“More sober than I am—just listen to him, youngsters—”
“No call to hit me in the face—”
“Shoulda aimed for the temple—”
“Why didn’t ya—”
“Don’t know—the frying pan is heavy.”
Silence all of a sudden.
His dad sets the corn on the table and then runs his fingers over his cheek as one would over a smooth stone while his mom goes into the foyer (followed by Wayne) and gets into her coat and boots. Wanda grabs another Diet Coke and then goes into the foyer, too.
Finally, his father says, “Come back in, Ruth.”
“Frig off, you. I’m heading to the train station now, aren’t I?”
“No trains tonight.”
“Then I’ll go to Dot’s and leave in the morning.”
His dad curses. “I’m sure that’s just what Dot and Frank want—you barging in with a packed suitcase and a snotty nose. They’ve got little ones, Ruth.”
“Dot and me are friends.”
“Not for long, if you go over there.”
His mother hesitates for a moment, then zips up her coat and says to Wayne, “Did you call a taxi?”
Wayne goes to do it, but his mother’s voice stops him. “No, never mind, I’ll walk. Walk’ll do me good.”
“It’s freezing,” says his father.
“No one’s talking to you,” his mom says. She ties her laces and picks up her suitcase and gives Wayne and Wanda a look and says, “I’m fed up,” then pushes open the door and leaves.
No one says anything.
Wayne goes over and stands on his tiptoes and watches her through the window in the door. She’s standing in the middle of the street looking up and then down the road. She starts off in one direction, but then changes course and goes the other way. Then she stops again and sets down her suitcase and puts her hands in her pockets.
“What’s she doing?” Wanda says.
“She coming back?” says his father.
Wayne doesn’t answer either question, just watches his mother take her hands out of her pockets and wipe her nose and pick her suitcase back up and then start walking again, except faster, the top of her leaning forward as if through a gale. After a moment there’s no sight of her, so Wayne turns away from the window and sees that Wanda has gone and his father is trying to light a cigarette.