Creeps

by Darren Hynes

  Wayne stays where he is.

  “Come over, I said.”

  “I should go.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Go then.”

  But he doesn’t. Then he looks up and her eyes are wet, so he tries to think of something to say knowing somehow that not everything needs to be thought out and that sometimes one should just say what one needs to before the time to say it slips away.

  It’s Marjorie, though, who, after pressing a palm heel into each eye, speaks first. “It wasn’t an accident.”

  Wayne stares at her for a long time. “What?”

  Marjorie lies down and turns on her side and hugs her knees and says, “Come and get me on your way to school tomorrow. If you want.”

  He doesn’t say anything. Then he gets up and goes over and lies beside her. She turns around and faces him and her breath heats his nose and eyelids and her eyes are glossy and huge and something’s behind them that Wayne doesn’t have words for.

  She presses against him, her body a warm quilt. She puts an arm around him. “You’re shaking. Are you cold?”

  “I’m not sure. Maybe.”

  “Come closer.”

  “What?”

  “Put your arm around me too.”

  For a long time he doesn’t, then he does, feeling ribs and the pumping of her heart and he thinks that, other than his mother and sister, he’s never been this close to a girl before. He struggles to hold her gaze.

  Ages pass. Then she says, “I keep waiting for him to blast the music and drag me into the living room.” She laughs. “He was the worst dancer.”

  They stay facing each other for the longest time. Then Wayne says, “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Radiohead shortening the distances, filling the silences, somehow patching the cracks.

  They sleep.

  Wayne opens his eyes to see his mother standing there: long coat and matching scarf and a purse clutched against her chest. She’s saying something but he can’t make sense of it, so he tells her to say it again.

  “I said: just what do you think you’re doing, mister?”

  It dawns on him that he isn’t in his own bed and that the woman hovering over him is not his mother after all, but Marjorie’s. “Mrs. Pope?”

  “That’s right, mister, and you still haven’t answered my question.”

  He sits up and gives Marjorie a shake and says, “We weren’t at anything, Mrs. Pope.”

  “Doesn’t look like nothing.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Nearly nine.”

  “We must have fallen asleep.”

  “Can’t sleep at your own place?”

  “Mom’ll be wondering where I am.”

  “No beds?”

  Wayne goes to stand up, but Mrs. Pope holds out the hand with the purse and says, “Not so fast, mister,” so Wayne stays where he is.

  Marjorie’s voice then: “Mom?”

  Mrs. Pope looks right at her. “Now I know what you get up to when I’m away—”

  “What are you doing in my room?”

  “I came in to warm up, Mrs. Pope—”

  “You aren’t supposed to be in my room—”

  “You live down the street,” Marjorie’s mom says.

  “And listen to Thom Yorke—”

  “Not gonna freeze to death walking down the street!” Then, “Does your mother know what you’re up to?”

  Marjorie crawls to the foot of the bed and gets to her feet.

  “No,” Wayne says, “but she wouldn’t mind. She encourages me to make friends.”

  “Lie down with all your friends, mister?”

  “Mom!” Marjorie picks up her jacket and sneakers then runs over and takes Wayne’s wrist, and as he grabs his jacket she drags him towards the door, but Mrs. Pope gets there first and blocks their way and says, “At least one of us still misses him!”

  The hand holding him falls away and the room goes silent and Mrs. Pope clutches her purse against her like it’s the only thing keeping her guts in and she tries to speak, but can’t, so she swallows and tries again and says, “I didn’t mean it. You know me: speak before I think.”

  “Move,” Marjorie says.

  Her mother doesn’t. “Someone new came tonight. A woman. Not a word out of her.”

  “Move, I said.”

  “Stared at the floor and played with her necklace and holes in the knees of her jeans, then the meeting was done and she was still sitting there.”

  “Behind the curtains is the proper place for you,” Marjorie says.

  Silence.

  Mrs. Pope is all whites of eyes and no pupils and lower jaw on her chest. “What a thing to say … your own mother.”

  Marjorie turns to Wayne. “Now you know why I never invite you in.” Then back to her mother, “One day I’ll leave—”

  “Don’t say that—”

  “And never come back—”

  “I’d be lost—”

  “Then you’ll really be alone—”

  “Am without your father, but without you I’d be worse.”

  Marjorie’s got his wrist again and she pushes past Mrs. Pope and leads him into the hallway and towards the stairs and her mother says, “Didn’t have to take my arm off!” Marjorie’s taking the steps two at a time and telling Wayne to hurry up because there’s somewhere she needs to go and does he want to go with her?

  Mrs. Pope is right behind them and she’s telling Marjorie that Wayne doesn’t have to rush home because, yes: it is cold, especially with the wind.

  In the kitchen now and Marjorie takes something from the cupboard above the fridge and slides it in her back pocket and it looks like a flask or a bottle of something and Mrs. Pope tells her to put it back but Marjorie won’t.

  “Where are you going?” Mrs. Pope wants to know.

  “Wherever you’re not” is Marjorie’s reply. “You’ll perish!”

  “Then I’ll perish!”

  Into the foyer and Mrs. Pope is holding on to the coat rack because she’d fall down otherwise, Wayne thinks, and she’s saying sorry, but Marjorie’s ignoring her and tying double knots in her sneaker laces. Then she’s at full height again and she’s pushing open the door and letting the wind in and it’s sharp like needles and Mrs. Pope comes forward and drops her purse and says again that she didn’t mean it, that of course Marjorie misses her father, but Wayne and Marjorie are on the porch, then on the stairs and the door’s flapping in the wind and Mrs. Pope is standing there and she looks like the last person in the world and Wayne imagines the wind taking her somewhere that’s closer to where her husband might be, or at least somewhere where everyone sits in bathrobes and peeks through curtains and holds tightly on to purses and speaks before thinking.

  Along the driveway and left on Balsam Street and right on Willow and running faster than the cars on Lakeside even, and past the shopping centre, police station, hospital, hockey arena, and curling club, towards the outskirts of town and if Marjorie’s not careful she’s going to pull Wayne’s shoulder from its socket.

  They stop and she points at a path through the woods and Wayne says he needs a minute to catch his breath and asks if she was planning on running forever and she says maybe and would he come with her if she were, but he doesn’t say.

  Sweat running down his back despite the cold. His breath in front of him is thicker than the cloud from the mine.

  Jutting his chin towards the woods, he says, “It’s dark.”

  “I know the way, Wayne Pumphrey. Come on.” The snow’s deeper on the trail and slivers of moonlight illuminate emaciated spruce trees and ptarmigan prints and maybe fox or wolf, and skidoo and ATV tracks and discarded beer and liquor bottles and cigarette butts.

  Upwards now, and it’s hard going and Wayne’s thighs are burning and there’s snow in one of his boots and his toes will freeze before too long and he wonders if she’ll ever stop.
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  The tingle of an earache from where the wind’s getting in. Penis retracted so far inside it’s somewhere near his ribs or underneath his liver or pressed against a kidney.

  A clearing. A water tower in the centre and it must go up four storeys or more.

  “Come on,” she says.

  Snow up past his knees, hips, waist. He’ll drown.

  Marjorie’s already got her foot on the first rung of the ladder that’s attached to the water tower.

  “You’re climbing it?” Wayne shouts.

  “What does it look like, Wayne Pumphrey?”

  “What if you fall?”

  “I don’t know. What if you slip in front of a bus tomorrow?” says Marjorie, heading to the top.

  Wayne manages to make it over and he grips the ladder and he can feel the cold through his mittens and he wonders how Marjorie—seeing as she’s not wearing any—can bear it. He hoists himself up onto the first rung, then the second, the third, then he looks up and she’s kicking her feet and dangling and Wayne shouts for her to hold on, not to let go, that he’s coming. Not even thinking about the receding earth now, all his focus on reaching her before she falls. His turn to do the saving, he thinks, but before he can she finds her footing and laughs and says, “You should have seen your face, Wayne Pumphrey!” and he says, “It’s not funny!” but she laughs even louder and Wayne continues to follow her to the top and takes her hand when she offers it.

  Windier and colder at the top and she sits down on the edge and her feet are hanging out over it and he sits beside her and she reaches back and pulls out what she’d taken from her kitchen and it is a flask: Canadian whisky.

  Marjorie’s hands are shaking from the cold, but she manages to get the cap off and she takes a sip and spits most of it out and tries again and spits that out, too. Then she wipes her mouth and hands the flask over, but Wayne won’t take it, so she says, “Suit yourself,” and she takes some more and manages to keep it in and even swallow it and it makes her eyes water. She covers her lips with her palm.

  “Are you running away?” Wayne says.

  She shakes her head. “Escaping for a bit.”

  He looks down. “We’re a long ways up. Shouldn’t we move away from the edge?”

  “My God, Wayne Pumphrey, is there anything you’re not scared of?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She takes another sip. Scrunches up her face like it hurts.

  “You shouldn’t drink.”

  “Who says?”

  Wayne looks away.

  Neither speaks for a long time. Then Wayne says, “Take my jacket.”

  “No.”

  “You’re freezing, and I’m wearing a sweater.” Wayne unzips and drapes his jacket across Marjorie’s shoulders and she says “Thanks” and then shimmies closer so that Wayne’s underneath it a little, too.

  They look out at Canning’s lights.

  “I can see our street,” Wayne says. Then, after a while, “It’s strange.”

  “What?”

  “To think life’s going on down there.”

  Marjorie sips and coughs and drops the flask and it falls over the edge and she shouts and curses and then shouts some more and kicks her heels against the water tower and Wayne holds her until she stops.

  Just the sound of her breathing then, the feel of it against his neck, and he wonders how it could be that yesterday he felt so young but now feels like a man and it occurs to him that something begins at the same time something ends, so he’ll always be in motion, moving towards and away from things.

  Finally she speaks. “You think it runs in families?”

  “What?”

  “The bad stuff?”

  He doesn’t answer.

  They look skyward, at the millions of flecks of light, the shaving of moon.

  Wayne points and says, “Orion’s Belt.”

  Forever they stare at it.

  Marjorie says, “Can you feel old at fifteen?”

  “Maybe.”

  “I hate this town.”

  “You won’t be here forever.”

  “You heard her: ‘Lost without your father, but without you I’d be worse.’ How can I go?”

  “She’ll get better.”

  “It’s been over a year and she’s not better yet.” Wayne says nothing.

  “Sometimes I imagine it’s her that’s dead.” Quiet for a long time.

  Marjorie says, “Do you think I’m terrible?”

  “No.”

  “You can say if you do.”

  “I don’t.”

  “I’d think you were terrible.”

  “I’m not you.”

  “Lucky.”

  No feeling in his bum or ears and the ankles of his pants are frozen and he can feel her shivering, so he says “Let’s go” but she ignores him and says, “Each day when the train passes through, I see myself hopping on and it never stops and I never need it to.”

  Wayne doesn’t know what to say.

  Then a skidoo emerges from the same path Marjorie and Wayne took. Open throttle and a blur of yellow and red and high beams and swirling snow and the driver’s holding on for his life, and then it’s gone, just like that. Something lost.

  The cloud from the mine drifts beside the moon.

  All of him is shaking, so he holds her tighter and feels all of her shaking too, then he suggests again that they go and she says it’s funny to be shivering and not feel the cold, but yes, she’s ready to leave because sometimes the cold has a way of tricking you and it wouldn’t be fun to have all your fingers and toes amputated like Jason Saunders who passed out in the snow a few years ago and almost died and who now lives on Fallow Crescent and is on welfare.

  Marjorie goes to give Wayne back his jacket, but he tells her to keep it, but she insists, so he takes it back, although she does accept his mittens and scarf.

  They climb down the ladder and retrace their steps through the woods to the outskirts of town, past the curling club, hockey arena, hospital, police station, and shopping centre, past the bungalows with the smoking chimneys on Lakeside Drive, and left on Willow Avenue where snowy lawns sport anorexic balsam firs, and finally right onto their street and to Marjorie’s house.

  A light goes on in the living room. Fingers part the drapes. An eye.

  “Sorry about tonight,” Marjorie says.

  “It’s okay.”

  “She wasn’t always like this. I shouldn’t have invited you in.”

  “I liked being there.”

  “You don’t have to say that.”

  “It’s true.”

  “Okay … whatever.”

  Marjorie turns to go.

  “Thanks,” Wayne says.

  She looks back at him. “For what?”

  “For showing me the view. You can see everything from the water tower.”

  She stays quiet.

  “I could always see it in the distance,” Wayne says, “but it never dawned on me to walk there, let alone climb it.”

  Marjorie looks at Wayne for a long time, then she comes forward and gives him back his scarf and mittens and walks to her front door and goes in.

  The eye disappears and the curtains flutter and Wayne makes his way down the road towards home.

  Dear Water Tower,

  You’re a hard place to get to, but well worth the effort. Thanks for the great view and for being colder at your top so that Marjorie had no choice but to snuggle close to me to keep warm. Thank you for bringing us closer to the stars and the moon and Orion’s Belt and thank you for being far away and safe and above things and it’s just occurred to me that if I can just hang on to this feeling everything will be okay.

  You’re a long way up, Water Tower, and I had a dream once that I was falling and just before I hit the ground I woke and I heard someone say once that if you didn’t wake up you’d die of a heart attack but I doubt it. How can dreams, other than not coming true, kill you?
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br />   I told Marjorie earlier that I could always see you but it never occurred to me to climb you and I guess sometimes you can miss what’s right in front of you, so maybe I should open my mind instead of just my eyes.

  Do you mind if I come back sometime? To think and see things from another perspective and to look out at Canning’s lights to remind myself I’m not alone?

  Your climber who needs Canning’s lights to remind himself he’s not alone,

  Wayne Pumphrey

  Dear Marjorie’s mom,

  We weren’t at anything. Promise. Marjorie was upset so I went over to give her a hug and then the next thing I knew I was waking up and you were there. Nice to meet you by the way.

  Listen, Marjorie told me the truth and I’m so sorry and I was wondering if it’s worse to lose someone by accident or by the way your husband died, or are both equal? Does one way make you madder? And how sad do you have to be to do something like that do you think?

  It’s great that you go to that group on Tuesdays. Hope it’s helping. Here’s the thing, though: I think Marjorie could use some help too ’cause she’s still really upset and you’ve got that meeting but Marjorie’s got nothing. And you’re wrong about Marjorie forgetting, ’cause I know she’s got him in her head all the time even when she says she doesn’t ’cause she gets this look. No, if you ask me, she thinks about him TOO much. Is that possible, to miss someone like that? Oh, I was meaning to tell you, I saw his picture and he looks just like Marjorie or rather Marjorie looks just like him, so do you see his face when you look at hers?

  How are your nerves now? How come you always sit behind the curtains? It’s kind of creepy when you peer out and all I see is this one eye and a few fingers. You looked nice this evening all done up and wearing that coat, is it tweed? Although your hairstyle might be a bit outdated, but my sister could help you since she’s opening up her own salon in Toronto. Do you want me to ask?

  I don’t know if you know but how could you not since you brought her up, but Marjorie’s the best actor in the drama club. Our ticket to St. John’s Mr. Rollie says. Better than the Hollywood crowd! It’s like she’s not acting when she acts, does that make sense? She could prbobaly probably be in movies or in SPIDER-MAN on Broadway. Would you like having a famous daughter?

  The friend of your daughter who’s better than the