Night Town

by Cathi Bond

  “I’m going inside,” I replied.

  Ruth was gone and the office was empty. I sat down at the desk, watching Dad and Mr. Thom through the window. They were both getting soaked, probably sharing other secrets I knew nothing about. I picked up the phone books, smashing them down as hard as I could. Did the relatives know about the cancer? Maybe that’s why Granddad didn’t come to our house anymore. He had no time for sickly things. I didn’t care if I caught it. It would be better to be dead than live through this. I yanked open the drawer to toss the phone books inside. Random bottles of medicine rolled around. The mess was making me crazy. Everything was out of order. I picked up a bottle –one of Dad’s restricted substances. An engine turned over outside. I hastily put the pills back where they belonged as Dad walked in.

  “Mr. Thom says you gave that girl quite a push.”

  “What happened to Mom?”

  “She got sick.”

  “But how? How did she catch cancer?”

  “It’s not something you catch. It’s a disease of the body. The cells turn on themselves.”

  “But you don’t get it unless you do bad things.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Then why did Mom hide it?”

  “Because she didn’t want people to know.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they might be afraid.”

  “Why?”

  “Because cancer has a stigma.”

  A stigma. That’s what I got at school.

  “Was she ashamed?”

  He didn’t answer. He wasn’t telling the truth.

  “Was it because of me?”

  He gave me an odd look.

  “Because of that…that day on the hill. Did that escalate the disease?”

  Dad always told me how important it was to keep illness at bay, and that meant staying in bed and keeping warm.

  “I don’t think so.”

  If cancer didn’t follow the rules that meant it wasn’t my fault. I swallowed.

  “But it probably didn’t help either,” he said.

  So it was my fault. If I hadn’t gone out to the gully with Kenneth. If I’d only stayed home and been good. Dad rested his hands on my shoulders, fingers shaking.

  “Don’t worry, honeybunch. Eventually this will all blow over.”

  I wanted to believe him but I didn’t. He stood and then disappeared into the dispensary, followed by the rattle of pills.

  Dad’s body might have been in the house, but the father I’d known for my whole life was gone. He was in the dispensary gobbling up another handful of Valium. I knew at that moment everything had changed. Dad couldn’t take care of me, so I had to take care of myself. There was no room for being a stupid little kid anymore. I had to be tough and strong. I had to grow up.

  Pedaling down Main and up Station Street on my way to Wellington High I whizzed by a group of little kids trudging up the hill to Sterling Public. A yellow school bus honked hello as I rode up to the high school. My hand shot up, but I stopped myself. Only twerps waved. A line of buses were dropping off the farm kids. We hadn’t had a lot at Sterling Public, but Wellington High got all the teenagers from the surrounding countryside. I dumped my bike on the ground and straightened my dress. It was a stretchy blue mini. My hair had grown long, hanging well past my shoulders. I pulled a compact out of my purse and flipped it open, shaking my hair so the bangs tumbled into my eyes. The blue eyeshadow still looked good. Sandy and Betsy were talking to some other kid. I couldn’t see her face, but she had honey- blond hair that nearly touched her waist.

  Casually, I strolled over. I’d been working on my walk as well as my hair. The walk was a cross between an easy strut and a bounce. The strut made me look cool and not too anxious to please. The bounce showed I was a lot of fun.

  “Do you think high school is going be hard?” I asked.

  Sandy laughed. “Like you ever study anyway.”

  Betsy, Sandy and I had spent most of the summer together playing my new records and learning dance steps. Betsy asked me if I’d gotten the new Led Zeppelin yet.

  “At home,” I replied with a promising smile.

  “Can we come over?” Sandy asked.

  “Sure.”

  My basement was the new hangout because we could do pretty much anything we wanted. Brad and Betsy made out on the sofa, but when Kenneth tried to pull me down, I ran upstairs. Something inside me had changed and I didn’t want to be his girlfriend anymore.

  Betsy introduced me to the new girl. Her name was Ginnie Hall and her eyes were cornflower blue. She lived on a dairy farm way past the outskirts of town.

  I turned to her. “Do you want to come too?”

  “I can’t. I have to do chores.”

  The bell rang. It was time for class.

  The four of us were crammed into our booth at Frenchy’s. While Comfort’s Diner was clean and offered good home cooking at reasonable prices, Frenchy’s was dirty and dangerous. The red vinyl in the booths were cracked and the red lettering on the window was chipped and fading away. Frenchy’s was run by a short Quebecois woman who chain-smoked and looked like a Grape-Nut. Our gang always went there for lunch. Sandy and Betsy ordered a 7Up and two straws, I asked for a Coke and Ginnie wanted milk.

  “You sure you don’t want a Coke? My treat.” Since I’d started helping myself to the change on Dad’s dresser I didn’t have to worry about money.

  “No thanks.”

  I pulled a pack of Export A’s out of my jeans. It had taken a while to get used to the taste, but I was a fulltime smoker now. I waved the cigarette under Ginnie’s nose.

  “Want one?”

  “I don’t smoke.”

  Ginnie was so innocent. I took a long drag.

  “Do you have a date yet?” she asked.

  The big bonfire, the social event of the fall, was coming up and Aunt Anne was going to take me into Toronto to buy a new outfit. I was going to get brown Lee cords.

  “I’m going stag,” I said

  Betsy lit a cigarette. “You can’t go stag.”

  Ever since the day in the gully I’d sort of lost my interest in boys, but I couldn’t very well say that out loud.

  “Kenneth is dying to take you.”

  “I don’t know.” I blew another smoke ring. “What about you, Ginnie?”

  “Mom won’t let me and besides, I’ve got chores.”

  Ginnie always had work to do.

  I heard the familiar jangle of the bell as the door opened. It was Kenneth, Mark and Dale. Dale got bussed in for school with Ginnie, and Mark was Sandy’s new boyfriend. He and his sister lived with their father, a trucker who drank too much. Sometimes Mark came to school with a black eye.

  “He’s so cute,” Sandy whispered.

  Mark swaggered by, running a comb through his blond hair. Sandy looked like she was going to melt. Kenneth leaned against the counter, asked for a coffee and gave me his sly dog look. He shouldn’t drink coffee. It would stunt his growth and he was already runty. Betsy leaned towards Ginnie.

  “Do you have the hots for Dale?”

  “No,” Ginnie replied, turning to me. “Don’t you go out with Kenneth?” She had a milk moustache.

  “Sort of,” I replied, wiping the milk from Ginnie’s lip. She smiled.

  It was easier having Kenneth as a sort of boyfriend, but I didn’t want to go parking with him. It was all so complicated. Betsy glanced at Kenneth.

  “You don’t want to get a reputation as a cock tease.”

  “I never tease him.”

  “If you tease a boy then you’ll get raped and you’ll deserve it.”

  “It’s true,” Sandy added.

  “I’m saving myself for when I get married,” Ginnie said.

  Betsy said that if they got over excited it was better to jerk them off. What was jerking off? Was that touching it? I wanted to change the topic.

  “You guys want to come for a sleepover next weekend?” I asked. “I can show you my new outfit.”


  Sandy had a date, and as usual Ginnie couldn’t, but Betsy was game.

  The Toronto skyline appeared. Until recently, the Royal York had been the tallest building in the city, but now two sleek black skyscrapers had zoomed up beside it. Aunt Anne didn’t approve. She said that they had demolished perfectly good, solid banks to erect an eyesore.

  “But it’s modern,” I said. I liked anything that was new.

  “How’s school?” she asked, changing the conversation.

  “It’s okay.”

  The car was still. What was there to say? Why didn’t you tell me that my mother was dying? I glanced at my aunt’s profile. Jaw set, eyes focused on the road ahead. Aunt Anne always loved telling jokes, laughing her silly giggle, but not anymore. She came out for Sunday dinner, but after we ate, she and Dad generally went into the living room for “adult conversation,” while the boys watched TV and I talked on the phone.

  Nobody talked about Mom, and that was fine with me. Other than the occasional sniff from the bottle of Joy, I’d locked Mom up, and the only time she got out was in nightmares where I couldn’t control what she did. Sometimes she crawled out of the grave. Other times she didn’t remember who I was, and in the worst one, she left us for another family and refused to come home.

  Aunt Anne parked down the street from Eaton’s department store at Yonge and College. Shiny new cars lined the boulevard and families bustled by, holding parcels. A boy and girl hippy sat on the sidewalk. The boy had a straggly beard and played a guitar, and the girl had long brown hair parted down the middle. A beat-up guitar case was open in the hope that people would toss in coins. I took a quarter out of my pocket and watched it bounce on the red velvet amongst the pennies.

  Aunt Anne stopped walking.

  “That’s a lot of money to be throwing around.”

  “It’s my allowance.”

  The guitar player changed tunes and started singing “Hurdy Gurdy Man.” The girl was wearing a purple suede vest with fringes.

  “I want a top like that.”

  Aunt Anne gave the girl a Gillespie look.

  “I’m going to buy you a pretty new dress.”

  The dress flew across the room.

  “I’m not wearing it!”

  Rika was trying to get me into the new dress Aunt Anne had insisted on buying.

  “Leave me alone!” I screamed, threatening to cut the dress into a million pieces.

  Rika eventually retreated. She had a date that night and didn’t want to be late. Lying on my bed, I flipped through a fashion magazine. I’d been certain that Aunt Anne would buy me cords, but she’d insisted that proper young ladies wear dresses. There was no point arguing, so we both clammed up. Aunt Anne marched me into the house and handed the dress to Rika with instructions that I wear it. There was no way I was going to take orders from a housekeeper who barely spoke English. Betsy arrived in the doorway holding her overnight bag.

  “Rika told me to come up. What do you want to do?”

  “It’s back here,” I said, taking down a dusty bottle from the top shelf in the root cellar. Our family didn’t drink, but that didn’t stop some of Dad’s grateful patients from dropping off a bottle in thanks for a baby delivered or a wound stitched.

  “I thought your parents, um sorry, I mean your Dad,” Betsy said, stumbling. “I didn’t think your Dad drank.”

  “He doesn’t,” I replied, blowing the dust off the label. At least he said he didn’t. Who knew what the truth was? “I bet he doesn’t even know what’s down here.”

  Dad had stopped working late and started disappearing in the evenings and on weekends. He never told me where he went. After I made sure the boys had gone to sleep, Betsy set a bottle of Coke, the rye and two glasses in front of her.

  “Do you have a shot glass?”

  “No.”

  “Okay, well then you pour the rye in to the count of seven and then top it up with Coke.”

  About four inches of rye sloshed into each glass. I took a sip. It burned my throat.

  “That’s horrible!”

  “Then hold your nose and chug.”

  Betsy picked up her glass, pinched her nose and swallowed. I copied her. At first I felt as if I was going to barf, but then I started to feel warm and good. For the first time since Mom died the sadness drifted away.

  “Again!” Betsy called, pouring us each another drink.

  Arms out like an airplane, I flew around the room.

  “How do you know about drinking?”

  “Dave taught me.”

  Betsy was so lucky to have an older brother.

  “I just love Brad,” Betsy cooed, falling back on the sofa. “Don’t you still secretly love Kenneth?” she asked, wagging her finger at me, her eyes getting all googly. “He really wants to take you to the fish fry.”

  I turned on the record player.

  “Don’t you secretly want him back?” she asked.

  No, I didn’t. I put the needle on the record. “Let’s have another one.”

  Every time Betsy started to talk about boys I just filled up her glass, and before I knew it the whisky was gone and we were spinning around to “Mama Told Me Not To Come.” Turning the volume up full blast, we galloped up the stairs, whooping through the house.

  Frank came out rubbing his sleepy eyes, complaining that he’d tell Dad that we were making a racket.

  “Frankly, I wish you’d shut up!” I yelled, laughing at the top of my lungs.

  Betsy and I started singing, stumbling back down the stairs and into the living room, when suddenly she put her hand on the wall.

  “I don’t feel very good.”

  I didn’t either. The floor was spinning. I felt dizzy and sick. Betsy brought her other hand up to her mouth just as I looked at Mom’s sea green broadloom.

  “No!”

  We barfed all over the house. I threw up in the kitchen sink. Betsy hit the patients’ toilet. Then she barfed in the dispensary sink while I hurled into the garbage can. Betsy vomited in the laundry tub as I barfed up in the washing machine. Finally we crawled up the stairs and into Mom and Dad’s washroom, puking into the pink his and hers sinks, the pink toilet, plus the matching tub. The last thing I remembered was Betsy crying for her mother, her long black hair trailing with vomit.

  There was a knock at the door. Betsy and I looked at one another. We were tucked into my bed in clean nightgowns. I felt awful. Another hard rap.

  “Oh man, I’m going to be in so much trouble.”

  I stumbled across the room, remembering all the barfing and especially the empty bottle of booze. There would be no talking my way out of that. I opened the door. Dad stood there holding a tray with two glasses of pop and some dry toast.

  “The ginger ale’s flat. It should help settle your stomach.”

  He handed me the tray, and without another word he turned and walked down the hall. Betsy couldn’t believe it.

  “Your Dad’s so cool. My Mom would have pitched a fit.”

  I knew better. I could have set the house on fire and he wouldn’t notice. I could die and he wouldn’t give a shit.

  Not giving a shit was my new way of looking at the world. I didn’t give a shit what the neighbours thought. I didn’t give a shit when Rika threatened to quit because Dad asked her to clean up the vomit. I didn’t even care what Aunt Anne thought. The power of not giving a shit was amazing. Every time I turned down Kenneth’s invitation to the bonfire it made him all the more determined to take me. He made such a fuss at Frenchy’s that there wasn’t really a choice. Betsy gave me a look, stubbing out her cigarette.

  “You’re supposed to go with a boy.”

  Kenneth and Brad were talking by the jukebox. Kenneth kept looking over at me.

  “If you don’t that means you’re either an ugly douche bag or you’re weird.”

  After everything I’d done to make people like me, the last thing I wanted was for them to think I was weird.

  Betsy, Brad, Kenneth and I piled i
nto Dave’s Chevy and headed down to Lake Erie for the bonfire. I wasn’t interested in watching a fire. I wanted to know where the party was. I’d swiped the last bottle of Dad’s booze stash –some sweet homemade wine –and we all pinched our noses and chugged it in the car. The wine wasn’t nearly as strong as the rye, but it made me feel safe and I wanted more.

  Kenneth and I sat on a log watching Brad and Betsy dig a big hole in the sand for the cooler. Dave was helping the other guys pile driftwood while couples huddled under blankets along the beach. The chilly nip in the air said winter was getting close. One of the boys had a yellow car, and the car doors were open with music blasting out both sides. A girl in a denim jacket emblazoned with a peace sign danced in the sand. It should have been perfect but it wasn’t. Something was missing. Something always was. Kenneth put his arm around my shoulder.

  “Do you know where we can get more liquor?” I asked.

  “Follow me.”

  Kenneth took me around back of a dune.

  “It’s over here.”

  But there was no liquor –only Kenneth and his grabby fingers. The minute we were away from the rest of the group he started kissing me. I kissed him back because I didn’t want anyone thinking I was weird, but I didn’t like the way he tasted –like sour Juicy Fruit gum.

  “I thought you knew where to get some booze,” I said, trying to wriggle away.

  Kenneth squeezed me so tight in his arms that I could barely breathe. His breath was hot against my face.

  “You want to touch it?”

  His penis pushed against the inside of my thigh, and he tried to slip his hand under my jacket to grope my boobs. After Mom died I’d dumped the bras. I’d even ditched wearing underpants. I didn’t want anything holding me back or holding me in. The boys liked it. My breasts had grown and bounced when I walked. I could tell they had power. But now Kenneth was the one with the power, and he was starting to breathe harder and harder. Betsy had warned me not to be a “cock tease.” If you were going to tease a boy you’d better be ready to go all the way. Well I sure wasn’t going to go all the way with Kenneth. I had to get away. I reached out and touched his thigh.

  “You want me to?”

  Kenneth’s eyes flipped open and in a flash his hands dropped as he unzipped his jeans. Fumbling with his underpants, he pulled out what looked like a big, old ugly skin worm. I wanted to laugh, but didn’t dare, because Kenneth seemed so proud of it. There was a hole at the top. As he rubbed the skin the worm reacted and the whole thing started to seize up, tensing and getting bigger and bigger. Kenneth’s eyes flickered.