Spin Dry

by Greg Hollingshead

  Rachel worked both sides of the produce aisle at once, for maximum activity. Move fast. Keep your mind occupied, in this womanly pursuit. Decided paying three bucks for a block of tofu would force her to find some way, this time, to make the stuff edible. Bean sprouts looked a little yellow on the bottom. Later, guys. Broccoli fights cancer: Inta da cart wit’ yuh. They used to inject tomatoes with red dye. Still do? Parsnip, yuck, though didn’t she once have it baked, and it was terrific? Or was that only in a dream? Why did every apple have a little gouge in it? They pick them with litter sticks? Hmm. Oranges poorly dyed this week, except these mini, green, incredibly coarse, seedy, sour ones from Swaziland, not dyed at all, should be.

  She moved on to pickles. The little devils were looking terrific, especially the sweet baby gherkins. Grabbed a litre. Next fell in love all over again with that plastic Ketchup bottle, life imitating art and doing it so well! Mayonnaise, mmm-mm. Could chugalug a whole jar right now.

  Down by the cheese section a tired woman in calico and bonnet under a patio umbrella was staring out over a dozen toothpicks stuck into small cubes of mottled white and orange, some kind of ‘cheese product.’ On her face was a smile like an arrested tic. A sign at the front of the table said New Product! Rennettes! “Thanks,” Rachel taking one as she passed.

  “Cows’ assholes,” she thought the woman replied. Chewing more slowly, Rachel glanced back. The woman was inserting one into that smile. Must be all right then … couldn’t have heard right….

  In the meat section a kid in a white apron was transferring packaged cuts from a metal trolley to the display cooler. He had spotty skin, a thickness between the eyes. His hands were bloody. He was whistling Harry’s Theme.

  Rachel accosted him. “What’s that tune?”

  He listened. “Moon River?”

  “Moon River!?”

  “Sure. Listen.” But he meant the Muzak.

  “No, I mean, what were you whistling?”

  “Me? Gee, Ma’m, I don’t know. Just some tune.”

  “Do it again!”

  He looked around, embarrassed, as if she had asked for a feel. “I don’t even remember what it—”

  “This is important! Try!”

  But it was hopeless.

  “What’s your name?”

  A possibly hostile question, however. His face assumed an expression of mingled alarm and defiance.

  “I’m not going to report you!” Rachel cried, exasperated. “It’s just, I’ve got a bad memory for—” She paused, observing his face. “Never mind. Yours I’ll probably—”

  “Rick,” he said, blushing.

  Rachel told Rick to be sure and come find her if he happened to remember the tune before she left the store. Heading down the soap aisle she thought, so it’s come to aural hallucinations now, has it. A little test: What was that on the Muzak at this moment? Could she tell? Harry’s Theme, or Bei Mir Bist Du Schön?

  Rachel had made her way through the checkout jam at the top end of Soap and was just heading into Women’s Needs, moving at quite a clip actually, looking back over her shoulder wondering if that guy with the big nose in the horn-rims and bushy moustache reading a National Enquirer with the headline “Bride Gives Birth at Altar: Lost Ring Found Under Baby’s Tongue” could be Harry, in disguise, when she broadsided another cart into interlocking pyramids of Shake ‘n Bake and Light Days. “Excuse me. I—”

  Rachel opened her eyes to see the man opening his. It was Dick, saying cheerfully, “All hands safe and accounted for,” as he reached into his cart to remove boxes of Shake ‘n Bake and Light Days. “How are things on your side?” He was exactly as Rachel remembered him from in front of the Café Smile, except that his arm was out of its cast. Her wore an identical brown suit and hat.

  “I’m really sorry—”

  Here Rachel noticed four white knuckles against the arm of his suit jacket. He noticed them too, turned, and Rachel saw that it was Jane, standing amidst fallen boxes, hissing. “It’s her,” as,

  “Hi, Jane!” Rachel cried, too late. “How’s Cam?”

  “You ought to know the answer to that one, Mrs. Boseman.”

  “Who’d you say, Jane?” asked Dick, peering into Rachel’s face.

  “Oh really?” said Rachel to Jane. “Why?”

  Here the three of them had to squeeze over to let other carts by and to make room for the assistant shelf manager, a lean, haunted fellow, to get at his fallen display.

  Receiving no reply from Jane, Rachel extended her hand to Dick. “Rachel Boseman. We met outside the Café Smile last—”

  “Sure, I remember,” with the amiable nod of the total amnesiac. “Café Smile, eh? You don’t by any chance know Sally—”

  “De-eck,” from Jane through clenched jaws.

  “Yes, I—” Rachel began.

  “Whups. Nearly forgot. This is my sister—”

  “De-eck—”

  “Yes, dear?”

  Jane was pointing down the aisle with her chin. Her eyes were circles of pale blue hatred.

  “Right, then,” Dick said. “I think sis would like to get on with, ah—” He tipped his hat. “Nice to have ‘bumped into you,’ Rachel. Must do it again—”

  Rachel watched them go. What was that about? In the next aisle she encountered them again. Jane would not meet her eyes, so to Dick she said, “Where’s Cam Wilkes?”

  Jane’s face came round from the Coco Puffs slowly, an expression upon it of terror and disbelief. “You haven’t seen him?” Rachel shook her head.

  “This Wilkes character is best forgotten,” observed Dick, examining a box of Froot Loops. “Nothing but a hairbrain and a Romeo.”

  In installments from Jane as they met in subsequent aisles, by the freezers, and finally in adjacent checkout lines, Dick leafing through a Reader’s Digest with a feature article entitled, “How to Get the Maximum out of Your Stress,” Rachel learned that Jane had not seen Wilkes in five days, not since two after hehad proposed. With downcast eyes Jane apologized for assuming that Rachel had stolen him back.

  Back?

  Rachel asked Jane if Wilkes had said anything about Mortprop Investments.

  “If Cam’s in trouble,” Jane said. “Just tell me. Please!”

  “M’am? Excuse me?” It was Rick from Meats.

  “I don’t know what it’s called. But—” He held up his hands. On each, the tips of two fingers were pressed against the thumb. “I just went to my level, and right away I remembered where I heard it. At The Buhrstone. They use a different Muzak channel than SuperSpend.”

  “Can you whistle it now?”

  Eyes closed, fingers and thumbs together, Rick tried, faltered. Hung his head. “I can hear it but I can’t—”

  “I know what you mean. The Buhrstone, eh?”

  Rick nodded. “I’m pretty positive—”

  When Rick went back to Meats, Jane told Rachel that the night Cam proposed he had asked the rhetorical question, What did he need with a bus yard now? “Do you think his price could have been too high?” Jane asked Rachel.

  “What price is that?” Dick wondered, looking up from his Reader’s Digest.

  They left the store followed by two checkout kids pushing carts filled with groceries. When Dick realized that Rachel who, feeling too crazy to drive the Civic, was watching for a cab, he offered her a lift. With Dick and Jane! Who could refuse? They came to a luster-lesssoup green ‘49 Dodge in immaculate condition. There Dick discovered that Spot, left to guard the car, had locked himself in.

  “Darn mutt’s always doing this!” Dick cried proudly, above the clamour of barking.

  Fortunately, one of the checkout kids carried a shim. Jaw clenched, his big moment, he went into a crouch at the car door. It yielded in seconds. Relieved applause all around. Big uncontrollable grin from the kid. Spot bounded out, yapping.

  Rachel sat between Dick and Jane in the front seat, Spot in the back, all the groceries in the trunk. Spacious trunks in these old buggies. “What a great
car,” Rachel said as they pulled out of the Mortprop Mall onto Mortprop Boulevard, the hot wet sound of spaniel panting in her ear.

  “This was Father’s last car,” Dick replied. “Remember those fun outings, Jane? Me up front with Father? Spot on the running board? Mother, you, Sally, Puff and the toys in the back? We’d visit that farm, those sweet, white-haired old folks—”

  “Sometimes Dick confuses our childhood with the books,” Jane whispered. “Our real grandparents lived in Trenton. They were alcoholics. It’s like he’s always talking about the community here in the Millpond, how it’s so nice to be a part of it. But it’s a big lie. We’re strangers here. Everybody’s strangers.”

  “Or we’d go to that green lake, where Father would row us kids around in the ‘big blue boat,’ and then we’d all have a picnic on the grass and watch the planes fly over—Remember what Sally used to call planes, Jane?”

  “No Dick. I don’t.”

  “‘Red and yellow somethings.’ Or ‘blue and silver somethings.’ Sally’s always been wild. Always wanting to ‘go up and away.’ Jane, remember that time we were all standing by the steam shovel hole and the little minx dropped Tim? She was always dropping that bear! Pushing everybody to the limit. Remember what happened? ‘Oh, Sally,’ Father said. ‘I can not jump down. I can not help you’ I always think of those as the ten words that shook my life. I still wake up sweating—”

  “Didn’t Tim fall into the steam shovel scoop?” Rachel said.

  “How did you know that!” Dick cried. “Out of sheer respect to Father the operator raised that scoop on its big rivetted brown arm and swung it over to the fence where we were all standing, and Father just reached over and plucked Tim—It was one of those moments you never, ever forget.”

  Jane’s hands were twisting in her lap. No one said anything for a minute or more. Rachel was thinking about Cam Wilkes. In the back seat Spot seemed torn between licking Rachel’s ear and circling to lie down.

  “A backdoor Johnny like this Wilkes,” said Dick, gearing for a turn, “can’t compare with a man like that. He’s best forgotten. By now he’ll be long gone. A shifty look about him, up to no good.”

  Jane’s hands twisted more violently in her lap.

  “I don’t think Cam’s shifty at all—” said Rachel, fingering her water gun.

  “You know, girls, the problem with the world today,” Dicksaid after a short pause, “is women don’t understand men. Don’t understand the first darn thing about them.”

  “And men understand women, I suppose?” Rachel said.

  “Of course. Most of us knew our mothers. But how many girls get so close to their fathers?”

  “And boys do get close to their fathers?” Rachel said.

  This question surprised Dick. “Close! You bet! Father was always right there for us—”

  “Dick,” Jane said. “Father worked. He was away more than ten hours a day. He left at eight and got home after six. Sometimes seven. He was a goddamn stranger.”

  “Jane! Of course he worked. To support his family. But he always made time for us. Every weekend we did things together, Dad and I. Planting potatoes, polishing up the car, juggling. I’d hang around his shop. Oh he was quite a guy all right, quite a guy …” Dick fell into glazed reminiscence. It was something like the look Leon once had for Harry.

  Rachel took the opportunity to say, “I’ll do what I can to find Cam, Jane. Promise.”

  Jane’s small, red-knuckled hands continued to twist in her lap. She seemed to address the glove compartment when she said, “You’ve never really believed that I was the Girl on His Bus, have you, Rachel.”

  “Well, I—”

  “But I was! I remember it all, every minute of those years I could ride a bus by myself, every giddy, terrifying minute. And yes, I remember the wonderful man with the trumpet case whoused to stare at me every day. How could I not notice? I loved being stared at by him. I lived for the day, and yes I dreaded the day, that he would speak to me and I would have to reply. What if he found out how empty I was? What if he wanted someone with courage and self-esteem and a mind of her own? What if he noticed right away what a nothing I was inside and became appalled and sickened and walked away in disgust? Could I blame him? And where would I be then? Cast down from the slopes of the only love I had ever dared to live for, back down into the valley of the shadow—” Jane buried her face in her hands and sobbed.

  “You remember him playing for you—?” Rachel asked.

  In reply Jane closed her eyes and sank into her seat, humming, quietly at first but with increasing passion and volume, until her voice filled the car and Spot began a muted howl of respectful accompaniment. It was the Melody for the Girl on My Bus, a.k.a. Harry’s Theme. Tears rose in Rachel’s eyes.

  When Jane had finished there was nothing but the hum of the engine. Then, in a quiet voice, she said, “Yes, he played for me, and I was too terrified even to look at him. I kept walking. I walked away. I knew as I did it I was walking straight back into the darkness of my own fear and inadequacy, but at that moment I believed I had no choice. How could I be worthy of one who made such music? He would find out about me, what I was really like, and he would despise me, and that would be worse, much worse, than his fairy tale courting, this tremendous hope—”

  “Wow, Jane,” Rachel said, wiping away tears. “Your side of the story is as sad as Cam’s. We’ve just got to find him—” Here Dick came out of his reverie. “You know the reason I never married, Rachel? I always knew in my hear I could never have a family as wonderful as ours. I could never be to a son of my own what Father was to me. I knew I just didn’t have that kind of authenticity. It got diluted in me, somehow. Mother’s influence, I guess, her genes—”

  “Dick!” Jane cried. “How can you say something like that?” “Oh, she was virtuous enough, I suppose, but how much trouble can you get into when your whole life is routine maintenance? Mother was the kind of woman, Rachel, when you entered a room she’d either be vacuuming or you’d sit on her. Why, I remember one time—”

  “Dick, would you, please, shut, up.” As Jane said these words, her brother was pulling into the driveway of 201 Dell.

  Depositing the last of Rachel’s groceries on her kitchen counter, Dick apologized for Jane’s behaviour. “It’s Wilkes,” he explained. “Before she met up with that Lothario she was such a soft-spoken, giving little thing. Now she’s like her sister. Wild. He’s been a bad influence. Even tried to interfere with her medical treatment.”

  “I just hope he’s alive,” Rachel replied darkly. This struck Dick, who shuddered. “He is the type, isn’t he? Two of a kind, that pair.”

  A few minutes later, back fingering her water gun, Rachel watched from the window the immaculate old Dodge back down the driveway. In the front seat she could see Dick and Jane arguing. The Dodge stopped and Jane ran toward the house. Rachelgot the door open just in time. Jane threw herself into the hall and turned to slam the door with both hands. She crouched before Rachel wild-eyed and breathless. “If Dick asks, I went to the bathroom. Rachel, it’s not just Cam who’s missing! So’s my cat!”

  “You think Cam took your cat!?”

  “No, no! Puff’s been gone for—what’s the matter?”

  “Puff!?” Of course. Puff.

  “The Sixth. What’s wrong?”

  “How long has Puff been gone, Jane?”

  “Fifty-five days. Forty-eight more than Cam. Why are you nodding your head? What do you know? Tell me!” Jane’s crouch had become one of supplication, with a wringing of hands. “You’ve got to tell me!”

  “Jane, it’s OK. Try to be calm.” Rachel made pacifying gestures. “Do you have any clues?”

  “I know it was Dick. I saw him on the phone, with the Classifieds under his arm. Later I found where he’d torn out an ad under Wanted. Rachel, he’s given Puff away! That’s why I ended up at Flume Fields again. I couldn’t handle it. Our whole lives he’s hated Puff. Our whole lives it’s been Spot this, Spot
that. Dick cared about as much for Puff as he cared for Tim or Raggedy—”

  “Jane, I’ll do everything I can to get Puff back—”

  Jane seized Rachel’s arms in strong thin fingers. “I’m begging you, Rachel. Don’t go to Dick. He won’t admit to a damn thing. And he’ll make me pay, for years and years—”

  “I won’t go to Dick,” Rachel said in a soothing voice while trying to loosen Jane’s grip.”Then you do know she’s still alive?”

  “Ginger and white? Heart face?”

  “Oh yes! That’s her! Thank God! Did he give her to somebody you—”

  “Lent her. I’ll need a couple of days—” Except, this would mean going back to the Dream Centre, wouldn’t it, not quitting the study— “But right now you’d better get back to Dick. He’ll be wondering what you’re up to.”

  “You’re right,” Jane said, wiping her eyes. “I’ll have to tell him I had a Number 2, but he’ll know it’s the third today, and he won’t let me forget it.”

  “I’ll do my best to get Puff and Cam back to you, Jane. Honest. You go now.”

  “I will, Rachel. Thanks.” Jane pecked Rachel on the cheek and slipped out the door.

  Weird, Rachel thought as she watched the immaculate soup green Dodge pull away down Dell drive. Inside, both Dick’s hands were on the wheel, his eyes straight ahead, his face immobile, while Jane sat shrunken on the seat beside him, her head turned aside. In the back seat Spot had thrust his muzzle out the window to pant into the wind. “Cam Wilkes,” Rachel said. “Where are you? You’re needed here.”