Night Town

by Cathi Bond

  I might have to go to the wedding, but at least Ginnie and I could be together. I sat at my desk, spraying good cologne on a sheet of fancy writing paper, while Ginnie lay on the bed.

  “They’ll never know,” I said, waving the paper around.

  Ginnie didn’t look so sure. “I don’t know. My Mom always figures everything out.”

  The plan was for Aunt Anne to think I was staying at the Halls and for Mrs. Hall to think that Ginnie was staying at our house under Aunt Anne’s supervision. Everybody approved of Aunt Anne because she was so strict.

  I turned to Ginnie. “Don’t you want to spend one last summer together?”

  “Yes…”

  “This way we can. And nobody will know.”

  Using Dad’s special fountain pen, I began to write:

  Dear Miss Gillespie,

  Mr. Hall and I would be most pleased if Madeline could stay with us while Dr. Barnes and his new bride will be away in Europe. This will give the girls a chance to enjoy the summer and perhaps help ease the transition for Madeline. Rest assured we’ll keep her busy gathering eggs, milking cows and helping out with the housework.

  Sincerely,

  Mrs. Roger Hall

  I handed Aunt Anne the letter later that week.

  “You seem awfully preoccupied with that girl,” Aunt Anne said, carefully examining the note. There was something about it that intrigued her. She sniffed the edges for cologne.

  “She’s my best friend. Didn’t you ever have a best friend?” I asked.

  Aunt Anne looked up over the top of the note. “It’s important that we have a lot of friends in life. Not just one.”

  “Betsy and Sandy will come out for hay rides and stuff.”

  “Will there be boys?”

  “There won’t be any stupid boys!” I said, starting to get agitated.

  “Maybe I should call Ginnie’s mother.” Aunt Anne’s nurse’s instincts were kicking in. I had to calm down.

  “I just want to have my last summer with my friends.”

  She looked at me, then down at the note. Nothing had been the same between us since she brought that rat into our family.

  “Please.”

  “As long as you call me and check in regularly.”

  The wedding happened on a hot day in downtown Toronto. Frank, Tedder and I sat beside Aunt Anne in the front pew of an enormous church that was as big and fancy as a castle. The floors were made out of white marble, and the pews were long and dark. Voices echoed as people talked. Giant stained glass windows loomed, featuring Jesus at all the different stages of His life. Frank was staring at a man with white hair playing the organ.

  “Where’s Granddad?” he asked.

  “He had to stay home and take care of the cattle,” Aunt Anne replied.

  I coughed. We hadn’t seen Granddad since Mom’s funeral. When I told Dad that the freezer was getting low, he said he’d get the butcher to fill it up. When I told Aunt Anne that the meat was nearly gone, she said that it would be one less thing to move, and when I called Granddad to tell him we were low, he said he couldn’t talk. None of the other relatives had come either. The white-haired organist began another song. The classical music was beautiful and Mom would have loved it. I pictured her listening and laughing as Dad covered his ears, claiming he could do a much better job on his ukulele.

  The bride’s side of the church was loaded with professional women like Aunt Anne and Miss McAllister. Lines of light wool suits and brightly coloured summer dresses filled the pews, every head displaying a grand hat. They bobbed as the women chatted and then turned to see who was arriving next. The men were scarce. Frank kept glancing at them until Aunt Anne told him to stop.

  “I’m not staring,” Frank replied.

  Aunt Anne fanned her face with the program. “Gad, it’s heavy in here.”

  The organ paused.

  “There’s your father,” Aunt Anne whispered, jabbing me in the ribs. “Sit up straight.”

  Everyone looked up. Dad and his best man, who was a friend of Miss McAllister’s, entered from beneath a wide marble archway. The wedding march began and everyone looked down the aisle, everyone except me. I was watching my father.

  “He looks terrible,” Aunt Anne whispered.

  She was right. The wedding suit that had fit a month earlier now hung on him like a sack. It was the first time I’d really looked at him since Mom died. He’d aged years, had gone from being a solid guy with a great big grin, to a skinny stick with hollow, desperate eyes. I tried to catch his attention, to smile at him, but he wasn’t looking at me. He was smiling at Miss McAllister, who was crossing the threshold to take his arm. He was trying so hard to please. His legs wobbled, but the shaking stopped when she touched him. She held him up. Dad needed her and he didn’t need me.

  Aunt Anne drove me and Tedder back to the house. The streets were motionless, as if everyone in Sterling had vanished. Our driveway was empty. The practice closed, the patients gone and Rika had taken a position with another family. The movers would come at the end of the month. Even Ruth had moved her stuff, but she’d sworn she’d be back to say goodbye.

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to take you out to Ginnie’s house?” Aunt Anne asked. “I don’t like leaving you here all alone.”

  “I’ve still got to pack. Mrs. Hall will pick me up before dinner,” I replied. “Besides, you’ve still got to take Tedder.”

  Tedder was going to stay with relatives and Frank was already on his way to camp. I turned to give Tedder a quick hug goodbye but he grabbed me, holding me tight.

  “Come with me,” he said, his little brown suitcase resting on the seat beside him.

  “I can’t.”

  “Please.”

  “You be a good boy,” I said, pulling away. “I’ll see you soon.”

  I stood in the driveway waving goodbye until the car disappeared over the hill. Walking up the sidewalk, I went over all the details for my romantic evening. I’d hidden fresh flowers in my room, was going to put candles in the candelabra and lay out Mom’s good china and silver flatware. There would be a roast of beef, potatoes and peas for dinner and then we’d go up to my room.

  When I opened the front door and stepped in Ginnie was already there. My Ginnie was sitting on the bottom step of the staircase. She couldn’t wait to see me either, because she’d forgotten her suitcase.

  “Where’s your bag?”

  She stood up. Nervous. “Mom changed her mind.”

  No no no. I walked towards her. “Maybe you can come tomorrow?”

  “I can’t come over at all.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I told her.”

  Ginnie told her mother about our secret plan to spend the summer at my house. That meant we’d never be alone again. I’d move away and never hold her. Never again, for the rest of my life. Everything was ruined. When she opened the door I started to cry.

  “But I love you.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  And the door shut and my Ginnie was gone.

  I was all alone. No patients ringing the doorbell saying how sorry they were to be calling so late but the baby was really sick. No Frank flying down the stairs with his baseball mitt. No Tedder racing his Hot Wheels around the living room floor. No Mom, beautiful Mom, kissing me on the end of the nose, saying how proud she was of my straight A’s. No Dad holding me tight, telling me I was his Maddikins. Nobody left in that great big house where our family used to live. I ran down the hall and into the dispensary.

  The Compendium recommended 50 mgs of Demerol for extreme pain. I’d seen Dad inject enough patients to know how to fill a syringe. I drew back the liquid, tapping the glass lightly whenever an air bubble appeared. They could stop your heart or make your brain explode. Next I scrubbed the inside of my arm with an alcohol swab and picked up the syringe. The needle pricked the skin. I shoved the steel into my arm and drove the plunger down and everything tasted of metal.

  “You’re nuts!” San
dy squealed.

  I waggled the syringe at them. “Do you want to shoot up?”

  Betsy shook her head. “I’m scared of needles.”

  “How does it make you feel?” Sandy asked.

  “Like heaven.”

  It was true. I’d spent three hours adrift in the Demerol, but when I came down I wanted to go back up. I didn’t want to be alone, so I’d called my friends.

  “I think I’d rather take pills,” Sandy said.

  “Me too,” Betsy replied.

  I poured a handful of Dad’s blue tablets into the palm of my hand.

  “These are Valium.”

  “Mother’s little helper,” Betsy said.

  “That’s right.”

  I dropped two tablets into Betsy’s hand. Sandy was looking at a bottle of yellow capsules.

  “What do these do?”

  “They make you bounce off the walls.”

  “The yellow reminds me of Mark’s hair. How many do I take?”

  “Two.”

  I dropped them into her hand, shoving the bottle in my pocket.

  “Why didn’t you tell us about this before?” Betsy asked.

  “Because I’m telling you now.”

  I showed them the Demerol bottle. 50 mg didn’t kill me, so why not 100? The girls sat on the counter, eyes like searchlights, watching me fill the syringe.

  I stood up. “Let’s go downstairs and party.”

  Sandy took a swig from a bottle of whiskey she’d stolen from her father.

  “When are the pills going to hit?”

  “About ten minutes.”

  A clear drop of Demerol clung to the end of the needle and then slowly fell onto my skin.

  Betsy closed her eyes but Sandy couldn’t look away. Down went the needle –in came relief. The syringe slipped between the cushions as the Demerol rolled over me. My heart slowed and my vision flickered like a television set losing reception. It was hard to breathe.

  “Are you alright?” Sandy asked. “What does it feel like?”

  I sunk into the sofa as all the bad feelings disappeared. “Fantabulous.”

  “You’re crazy,” Betsy mumbled, lighting a cigarette. The smoke hung like a thundercloud.

  There was a bang upstairs. I ignored it. My neck muscles went slack and my head fell back. Out into the calm I sailed, bobbing far, far away. Ginnie…My head lolled. Ginnie…I tried to sit up. What was Ginnie doing standing at the bottom of the stairs? Was she real? Betsy offered her a drink and Ginnie yelled something, turned and ran up the stairs. I called for her to stop.

  “Let her go,” Betsy giggled.

  I staggered after Ginnie, yanked open the door and out onto the veranda. She was halfway down the drive.

  “Come back!” I yelled, tumbling down the stairs, landing on the asphalt, cutting my hand. Ginnie spun around.

  “My mother was right. You’re damaged!”

  I got back up.

  “Is this what you do when you’re not with me?”

  Her lower lip quivered. Was she going to cry? Did she care somewhere in there?

  “Stay away from me. Just stay away. I never want to see you again!”

  With all of her strength she shoved me, so hard that I fell back on the sidewalk, striking my head on the concrete. She didn’t even stop to see if I’d cracked my skull.

  The water woke me up. Sharp, cold and stinging it slapped my face. Betsy was passed out on the floor. Sandy was sprawled across a chair. I was on the sofa. There were two empty liquor bottles on the table and an ashtray loaded with a mountain of butts. The sofa was drenched and squishy. I swiped my hand through my hair. Aunt Anne was standing there with an empty bucket wearing the worst nurse’s face I’d ever seen. How much did she know? I had no idea. How did I get down here? Did she find me on the sidewalk? No. I remembered crawling through the dewy grass.

  “Get dressed,” she said evenly. Way too evenly for this kind of mess. Betsy moaned. Sandy growled for us to be quiet.

  “What time is it?” I asked.

  The doorbell rang.

  “That will be their parents,” Aunt Anne said, turning and going back up the stairs.

  Oh no. I gave Betsy a kick. Where was the syringe? I stuck my hand between the cushions. Thank God. The barbiturates were in my pocket.

  “Get up!”

  The doorbell rang again –three quick angry blasts.

  “Get lost,” Betsy replied, putting a pillow over her head.

  “Your Mom’s here.”

  “What?”

  “So is Sandy’s.”

  “Oh shit,” Betsy said, as their mothers followed Aunt Anne into the rec room.

  “Get your shoes,” Betsy’s mother said, grabbing Betsy by the arm.

  Sandy’s mother saw the empty liquor bottle and gave her daughter a cuff across the back of the head. “You won’t be coming here anymore.”

  Up the stairs the girls went, rank and file, heads bowed, followed by their furious mothers. Aunt Anne stood at the bottom of the stairs, arms crossed, still wearing the impenetrable nurse’s face.

  “Change your blouse,” she said.

  Aunt Anne gripped the wheel as the Ford bore down on the asphalt. It was like travelling in an ambulance without the sirens. Hard rain battered the cornfields. The windshield wipers threw off the water, only to have it gather again. A horn blared. A well-dressed woman in a hat stared at me as the Ford tore by. Water streamed down the window. Aunt Anne’s head turned. The nurse’s face was gone. The blood drained out of it, pure fury, Granddad rage.

  “I go out to the Hall house to get you, and Mrs. Hall tells me that you’re not there. No, it was some kind of ruse you and your friends cooked up so you could drink all summer.”

  So Ginnie hadn’t told her mother about the drugs. Aunt Anne didn’t know.

  “I’m sorry.”

  She picked up speed as the rest of the traffic slowed.

  “What’s wrong with you?” she asked, her palm striking the wheel. “I do everything I can and you just throw it back in my face. And Isabel, I told Isabel that you were a fine girl.”

  “But Aunt Anne –”

  “No buts. You’ve gone too far this time. You’ve disgraced yourself. You’ve disgraced your mother’s memory. She’d be so ashamed of you.”

  I wanted to yell, but I bit down on my tongue instead. How dare she say that? She was the one who disgraced Mom’s memory by bringing that woman into our lives.

  “Don’t you have anything to say for yourself?”

  I didn’t reply. If I told her what I really thought I would be the one disgracing Mom’s memory. Mom tried to live life like Granny Gillespie. “With grace and a quiet dignity.” The more I thought about it, the madder I got. But I wasn’t going to yell. I stared out the window, watching the trees change to truck stops and then to power towers and then houses until finally we were in the city. At the hospital. The same hospital Mom died in. Toronto General. Aunt Anne pulled into the lot. The parking attendant gave her a ticket and she set it on the dash.

  “Your father’s been in an accident.”

  I followed Aunt Anne through the glass doors of the Emergency Department, pushing past the gurneys, jostling through the sick and crying, the bloody and the broken, up to the nurse’s station. A pretty nurse not much older than me sat doing paperwork, her uniform neatly pressed. She had long blond hair like Ginnie’s pinned neatly under a bright white cap. My jeans had green grass stains from crawling across the lawn the night before. When we reached the desk the nurse looked up.

  “Anne,” she said, rising to her feet and hurrying out from behind the counter. She took Aunt Anne’s elbow and began to steer. “He’s this way.”

  The two nurses walked down the hall in front of me, heads together, softly exchanging information. I couldn’t hear a thing. The din of the emergency room faded away as we passed through scratched steel doors into a different area of the hospital. It was all so sterile and white. My heart started to thump. I wondered if it was th
e morgue.

  “Can I see him?” I asked and the fear jumped.

  “Not right now,” Aunt Anne said, pointing me towards a metal chair. “Just sit over there and wait.”

  The nurse and Aunt Anne went into a room, closing the door behind them. I looked around. There weren’t any magazines. The hallway was too quiet. I tapped my jean pocket. At least I still had the barbiturates. I got up and started to pace. What was this place? My gut pumped up fear and spit. Aunt Anne had told me to wait. Where was Dad? I walked over to the door Aunt Anne had disappeared behind and placed my hands on the cold steel. I could hear voices. Softly, oh so gently, I pushed it open and heard a man’s voice.

  “His wife told me that Ted disappeared into the bathroom of their hotel room.”

  I pushed open the door a crack more. A man sat on the edge of a desk. I didn’t recognize him, but he was obviously a doctor and he knew Dad. Aunt Anne and the nurse sat in chairs.

  “He’d been gone a long time so Isabel knocked at the door. No answer. Then she opened it. Ted had rigged his belt to the light fixture and stepped off the edge of the tub.”

  Aunt Anne’s hands went up to her mouth. I closed my eyes and swallowed.

  “Is he dead?” Aunt Anne asked.

  The doctor shook his head. “Isabel grabbed him by the waist and held him up. I don’t know how she did it for so long. Security heard her screaming all the way down the hall. If she’d let go, he’d be gone.”

  “How is he now?” Aunt Anne asked.

  “He was extremely agitated when they first brought him in, but I’ve got him sedated. Ted’s concerned about the prospect of losing his new wife. If there’s anything you can do…”

  Aunt Anne nodded.

  “Can I see him?”

  “Of course, but let’s keep things positive,” the doctor replied. “And we’ll need to keep him here for a while.”

  Hearing the chairs shift, I backed up, and right into somebody standing behind me.

  “What are you doing here?” Miss McAllister asked.

  She was still wearing her blue going-away outfit. She looked exhausted, and I couldn’t tell if she’d been crying, but if she had, she was over it. She looked…firm. Yes, that was the word, firm. My back was against the door. Miss McAllister wasn’t moving, so neither was I.