Betsy Wickwire's Dirty Secret

by Vicki Grant

  “This is why I like you, Murdoch. You think big. Okay, Betsy. What about you?”

  It felt like a challenge. I wanted to come up with a funny answer or at least a clever one. I said, “I’d …” I looked around. I looked at Murdoch and Dolores and the lake. I racked my brain. I could hear the clock ticking, everyone waiting.

  All I could think of was this: I don’t want to die.

  Chapter 31

  God, I was happy. Like, stupid happy, I mean. By Thursday afternoon—five days later — I knew I’d remember this week for the rest of my life. It was like the goal I’d accidentally kicked in at my very first soccer game when I was four-and-a-half. It was like the day I realized I had hips. It was—in a weird way—like the moment I knew Nick was going to kiss Carly. It was a turning point in my life. I didn’t know why my life was turning or where it was going, but that didn’t matter. It felt good just hitting the gas.

  The camera guy had just told me to slip the microphone cord up under my T-shirt and clip the mike to my collar. Frank was making rude remarks about how that Mike was a lucky guy. Dolores was telling him old farts should keep their mouths shut when it comes to stuff like that. I was laughing. I adjusted the tiny black mike and wondered if it would pick up the buzz I had running through me.

  It wasn’t the TV interview winding me up, despite the big deal Dolores was making out of it. Unbeknownst to me, she’d sent a blurb about our so-called business to a local TV station and we’d been chosen for a feature on “student entrepreneurs.” A week earlier even appearing in public would have killed me, let alone being on TV in all my janitorial glory, but things were different now.

  Heidi Wamboldt, the reporter, smiled and asked if I’d mind cleaning Frank’s toilet for the opening shot.

  I said, “No, not at all.”

  Weird thing was, I meant it.

  I squeezed some cleanser in the bowl and swished it around.

  Heidi said, “Wonderful!” then asked me to do it again — only this time would I try kneeling on the floor?

  The toilet was already clean and there was no way I’d normally kneel on Frank’s bathroom floor no matter how many times I’d disinfected it, but sure. Why not?

  Why not? That was like my new motto or something.

  My alarm would go off now in the morning and I’d still groan but I’d put my feet on the floor and throw myself into the shower and by the time I made it to Frank’s or Amy’s or Mrs. Burton’s or the Arsenaults’, I was excited about what the day had coming. I liked washing windows and polishing silver. I looked forward to finding out what Dolores would be wearing that day, and to breaking in a new mop. Even the gross stuff had a sort of sick appeal now. (I’m thinking specifically about those big Kleenex snot-chrysanthemums Frank planted around his La-Z-Boy.) I knew they would at least be good for a story.

  Dolores yelled, “Cut!” and hustled in front of the camera to adjust my T-shirt. “Would you mind shooting it from a slightly lower angle?” she said. “I’d like to get more of our logo in.”

  The camera guy gave this long drawn-out “Ahhhh …” and looked at Heidi.

  Dolores said, “Thanks ever so much!” and I found myself laughing again.

  Dolores made me laugh, and pissed me off too, of course, but she was always interesting. That struck me as a reasonable trade-off. My old life suddenly seemed so boring to me. Even fun used to be predictable.

  You could tell the camera guy wanted to kill Dolores but he crouched down to get the shot she asked for anyway. I had to smile.

  Heidi said, “Oh, sorry. Would you mind not smiling? In fact … Why don’t you clean the bowl again but this time, wipe your forehead with the back of your hand when you’re finished.” She demonstrated. “I want this to look like it’s a really tough job.”

  It was so corny you’d think she’d be embarrassed even suggesting it. I could hardly wait to tell Murdoch about it.

  The camera guy was having some problem with his equipment so I leaned back on my heels and waited for him to get ready. I thought about embarrassment. It struck me as a weird concept.

  M-Bare-Ass-Ment. That just came into my head. From the Latin, meaning to inadvertently expose your hind quarters. Funny.

  I thought of Murdoch again in the shower that day. I thought of Dolores and her general bare-assed approach to life. Then I thought of something that had happened a couple nights before.

  We’d gone to Quarry Lake after helping Amy get ready for a dinner party. We hung out on the rocks, just chilling, talking, eating some of the leftovers she’d given us.

  Dolores licked the olive oil off each of her fingers and said, “Let’s play Truth or Dare.”

  Murdoch and I both voted for Truth. (We knew her too well to choose Dare.)

  She said, “Excellent. What’s something you’ve never told anyone before?”

  Neither of us answered.

  Dolores said, “Oh, come on. You’ve already disclosed all your sordid little secrets, all your filthy personal habits? I don’t believe you.”

  I was lying on my stomach. My heart was beating fast, like an ADHD kid with a paddleball. I was sort of terrified and sort of—what? Excited? No. It was more like the feeling I had when I found Amy’s Prozac, only sped up.

  “Okay,” Murdoch said. “You asked.”

  I rolled over and looked at him. He was sitting cross-legged, shaking his head, biting his lip.

  “I …” he said, then squished his eyes closed.

  Dolores went, “Woo-hoo! This is going to be good.”

  My heart beat even faster. I couldn’t tell if I was nervous for him or for me.

  He opened his eyes and sat up straight. He cleared his throat. He said, “I was the one who e-mailed you about cleaning the house.”

  “So?” I didn’t get it.

  “Like, I mean, the second time,” he said. “From Mom’s e-mail. You know.”

  Dolores laughed. “Why? Just couldn’t stand the dust a second more? What?”

  He mouthed ha-ha and bounced some tiny pebbles off the rock.

  “Come on,” she said. “Why’d you do it?” He flicked one out over the lake. “You know why,” he said. You old dog, I thought. Murdoch was full of surprises. Some spider.

  Dolores wiggled her bare toes on his knee. “Yeah. I do. You weren’t man enough to call yourself.”

  “Nice,” he said. “I thought you’d be flattered I wanted to see you again, but no. It’s just another occasion to heap abuse on me.”

  “We are flattered.” Dolores batted her eyelashes. “Doesn’t mean we still can’t make the most of the situation.”

  He picked her foot up as if it were a dirty sock and dropped it on the ground.

  She turned to me. “Next! Your turn, Wickwire. Spill.”

  I tightened the towel around my shoulders. “I’m scared.” I tried to sound like I was exaggerating for comic effect. I wanted to say something but I didn’t want to say something too.

  Dolores fluffed up the frill on her bathing suit. “So? Scared is what makes it fun.”

  My brain had gone all staticky, useless. Too much to compute. Too much to expect. It dawned on me that giving someone your secret was like trading spit with them. You’re making a lifelong bond.

  “I wet my bed until I was ten.” I was actually twelve and I’d already told a bunch of my friends about that— but I couldn’t make myself go any further. People can hate you for secrets too.

  Dolores faked a yawn.

  “Oh yeah?” I said. I sounded okay but I was still a little shaky inside. “And you can do better?”

  She lifted her chin. “I don’t know how to swim.”

  Murdoch and I were both stunned into silence. How had Dolores hidden that from us? How had we never noticed her not going into the lake?

  She stood up and put on her bathing cap. “Time I learned.”

  She crossed herself, then jumped into the water. She clung to Murdoch. She clung to me. She sank. She gasped for air. She looked ridiculous. But
she never looked embarrassed.

  The camera guy signalled to Heidi that he was ready. I got up off my heels and back into position. I cleaned the toilet bowl for the third time, then wiped my poor furrowed brow. As I performed for the camera, I was fully aware that tons of people I knew were going to see me down on my knees, a cleaning lady scrubbing some old guy’s grotty toilet. That image hovered in the back of my head. I pictured Nick and Carly curled up together on the red leather couch in the Jamiesons’ family room, watching me in high-def, and I realized I wasn’t embarrassed either.

  And I hadn’t even done anything about my eyebrows yet.

  Chapter 32

  Friday was a big day for us. We had three jobs: our regular gig at the Oreskoviches’, a new house near the mall, and a one-off deal to clean the apartment of an old lady who’d either gone into a seniors’ home or died. (Even Dolores didn’t want to find out which.)

  We got back to my place just in time to make some lemonade and catch ourselves on Live at 5.

  The segment opened with me face down in Frank’s toilet bowl. “For the past three years, Betsy Wickwire has been a star on the high school basketball circuit. Now she’s swishing into a different type of hoop.”

  Dolores and I were howling so hard we sprayed lemonade all over the coffee table. It didn’t take me long to stop laughing, though.

  Heidi introduced Dolores and asked her a couple of questions, but it was pretty clear who she was really interested in. This was The Betsy Show. Betsy’s idea. Betsy’s basketball career. Betsy’s “shiny chestnut mane,” as if that had anything to do with the mould that grows under the rim of Frank’s toilet.

  I felt my insides go hollow. I was afraid to look at Dolores. I hit “off” and hurled the remote into the wastepaper basket.

  “What’s the matter with that idiot? What happened to all the footage of you?”

  “Who cares?” Dolores made it into about eight syllables. “Mind if I finish this?” She downed the last of my lemonade in one gulp. “Money, that’s what I care about—and that’s what this was good for. I mean, who wouldn’t hire us now? Frank made you sound like the love child of Mr. Clean and Mother Teresa. Heidi directed people to our website. And I loved—loved!—those little stars they pinged on the appliances to make them shine. C’mon. It’s all good. We’re going to be rolling in it.”

  I studied her face for some sign she was covering up, some hint of hurt feelings, but there was nothing. I could learn from this girl.

  She stuck her finger into the glass to get the sugar pooled at the bottom.

  “Quit that,” I said. “It’s gross.” I loved the fact that I never had to pussyfoot around her.

  Dolores mouthed Chill, but stopped licking her finger. She squinted at the time. “We got to get going. I want to check out the food stands before Murdoch gets off.”

  I changed into my Value Village dress, screamed goodbye, and left before Mom could ask Dolores for dinner.

  Murdoch was painting faces at the Waterfront Festival that night. He needed the extra cash because he’d taken $120 out of his savings to pay us to clean the house. I wanted to give him the money back but Dolores insisted that a man should always pay on the first date.

  The waterfront was packed. Some people were there for the food. Some were there for the musical acts. Most seemed to be there just because everyone else was.

  We were waiting in the fried clams lineup when someone said, “Betsy!”

  I turned around. It was Paige Chisholm. Nikita Pillai and Emily McCormick were there too, as well as a couple other girls I didn’t know. I was surprised how happy I was to see them. I didn’t feel embarrassed at all.

  Paige hugged me. “You look great,” she said. “Love the dress.”

  “Mary Quant,” Dolores said.

  “Oh, hi, Mary,” Paige said.

  I laughed. “No, the dress is Mary Quant. This is Dolores.” Dolores raised her hand.

  Paige said, “Oops. Hi.” She turned back to me and said, “I’ve left, like, a thousand messages on your cell. Why haven’t you called?”

  “I lost it.” Lying seemed easier than explaining.

  Nikita stopped texting long enough to say, “How do you survive?”

  “It’s not that bad. You just—”

  The guy at the counter said, “What’ll it be, ladies?”

  Dolores nudged me. I looked at the menu, looked at Paige, realized the people in back weren’t happy with me for slowing things down.

  “I better go …” I said to Paige. The other girls drifted away.

  “Let’s do something,” Paige said, walking backward into the crowd. “Let’s go somewhere.”

  I smiled. “Yeah, let’s. How ‘bout swimming? I know this great lake. I’ll call you.”

  I heard Dolores order a clam burger for me and had to stop her. I blew Paige a kiss, then said to the counter guy, “No, sorry. Make that a small clams and chips, please.”

  I felt so much like, I don’t know, Betsy right then. Happy to see my friends again, hungry again, practically lusting for all that grease and salt and lumpy yellow tartar sauce.

  We sat on a bench overlooking the harbour. We ate as much as we could, then threw the rest to the seagulls. We watched a couple of buskers juggling and this one guy playing hip hop music on the accordion. (Hilarious.) We laughed at what a rip-off the T-shirts were. We thought about splitting a Beaver Tail but, after all those calories, even Dolores couldn’t stomach it. We wended our way through the crowd and found Murdoch in the children’s area.

  He was sitting on a kid-sized stool, painting a little girl’s face. She was so tiny and he was so big. He must have been like something out of a fairy tale for her. The Gentle Giant.

  He dipped his brush in the paint, pushed her curls away, and drew two big swooping antennae on her forehead.

  “Oh-oh, Georgia,” he said, all worried. “There’s a butterfly on your face … Want me to take it off for you?”

  Georgia shook her head seriously. Her mother winked and slipped Murdoch a little wafer of bills. He thanked her and waved goodbye as they left.

  “Can you do a couple more, Mister?” Dolores made it sound like she was scoping out a drug deal.

  He smiled when he saw us but said, “Sorry. Eight o’clock. My shift’s done.”

  “Please?” we both said.

  “Well … O-kay.” The guy was such a pushover. “Who first?”

  Dolores was rooting around in her plastic bag. “Do Betsy. I just remembered I was supposed to call Frank to get his blow-by-blow on the big show tonight.”

  I sat down. I felt sort of giggly. I hadn’t had my face painted since I was little.

  Wrong. I’d had it painted red and gold when Nick’s hockey team made the finals. I realized that didn’t count and mentally went, Wow.

  “What would you like to be, little girl?” Murdoch stretched his legs out on either side of my stool.

  “A beautiful princess!” I said it with a lisp.

  “On you?” he said. “Too easy.”

  “Ha-ha. Save your breath. I’m not tipping you.”

  “Oh well. Worth a try. So what do you want to be, then?”

  “What can you do?”

  “I can make you into anything you want to be.”

  For some reason that made me blush.

  “Um. Well. I don’t know.” Relax. I was only getting my face painted. “What do you think I should be?”

  Murdoch pushed the hair off my forehead and looked at me, but not like I was Betsy, like I was something to be painted.

  Dolores said, “Stupid phone. Battery’s dead. Can I borrow yours, Murdo?”

  He reached into his pocket and handed it to her, without taking his eyes off my face. “Well. How about …?

  “No. Don’t tell me,” I said. “Just do it.”

  He wiggled his eyebrows. “You’re brave.”

  It struck me that he was brave too—at least here, he was.

  He loaded his brush with orange paint,
reached over and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. He put a finger under my chin and moved it up a notch.

  “Close your eyes,” he said.

  The brush was wet and cool and very, very soft. It circled my eyes and followed the shape of my cheeks. I tried to tell myself it felt just like getting a facial, but it didn’t. I was suddenly, awkwardly, aware of my breathing and my heart pumping. Murdoch whisked a little something off my lips with his finger. It made me jump.

  He said, “Sorry.”

  Then I said, “No. Sorry,” and sat up a little straighter.

  I tried to keep that level of alertness, that much, I don’t know, distance between us, but he turned my face to the side and made tiny brush strokes around my mouth and down the length of my nose and I felt myself slipping again.

  He stopped. I took a breath.

  He said, “You can open your eyes now.”

  I hoped it would make things easier but he pulled his stool up even closer. He took off his glasses.

  “Believe it or not,” he said, “this is the only way I can see to do the close-up stuff.”

  ‘That’s okay,” I said, then immediately felt ridiculous. Why wouldn’t it be okay?

  He started to do something to my forehead. A little flicking something. I hadn’t realized he had blue eyes. Not blue like navy or blue like a swimming pool. Blue like denim, with darker streaks and lighter streaks. In the right eye, there was one thick brown streak too.

  I sucked in my breath.

  “Sorry. Did I do something?” he said.

  “No,” I said. I can’t be staring into his eyes. I can’t be doing this.

  I dropped my eyelids. Not closed. That would look bad. I just looked down.

  He needed a shave. He had a big Adam’s apple. There was a smear of yellow paint on his throat. I tried to focus on stuff like that.

  He had a scar on his chin where no whiskers grew. His lips were dark red.

  Not red. Not, at least, a girly red. More a …

  What colour was that? He’d know the exact name of the colour.

  Maroon?

  No. Too purple. What colour was steak?

  My face didn’t move but my brain gasped. Oh my god. I shouldn’t be looking at the guy Dolores likes and thinking his lips are the colour of steak.