More in Anger

by J. Jill Robinson

  She had thought she’d be with Amy today, that Amy would take her allergy pill and catch the horses with her, that the two of them would ride bareback out of the field and down the driveway, through the gardens and past their low blue house. They would follow the path through the trees and down into the ravine to the creek near the woods. While the horses stood up to their knees in the cool running water and yanked tall, lush grass from the banks, green slobber drooling from their mouths, she and Amy would have lain back along the horses’ spines and watched the sky and the clouds and talked about movie stars and singers and measured to see whether Amy’s hair was long enough yet to touch her bra strap if she tilted her head way back. Or maybe they would have stayed up in the orchard, and while they sat on the corral fence rails eating golden plums the horses would pull apples from the trees. But instead she was by herself, because Amy had gone shopping for slingbacks with Jeanette.

  Dolly, fifteen hands high, stood perfectly still except for the occasional quiver to rid herself of a fly. Her head was held low, her eyes were half closed as she dozed. Viv sat up, felt tall. She liked the view of the world from here, she liked being on Dolly bareback; liked the pleasant discomfort of the horse’s spine hard against her coccyx.

  This morning in the corral, Dolly’s colt had come up behind Viv, breathed his warm horse breath on her neck, waggled his big ears, nibbled her ear with his big fleshy lips. She had been mean to him. “No,” she had said, and shoved his head away. “Go away. I don’t want you.” When he didn’t move, she pushed on his chest, trying to force him to move back. Stubbornly, he set his hooves and wouldn’t budge. “Get out of here, I said!” She had turned her back on him and moved several feet away. He followed her. Lightly pushed her in the back with his head. She smiled, turned, murmured love words, called him her dear one, and kissed the place where his shoulder met his neck, kissed the sides of his velvet muzzle, his soft reddish-brown and white nose, put her arms around his strong, smooth neck.

  Sometimes she thought about her mother when she was alone like this. In some vague sort of way she still hoped that she might start to like her. That maybe when Pearl got back from Ireland she would be happier, and nicer, and stay that way this time. And that by some magic she, Viv herself, would have changed too, and that her mother would finally be able to love her. Viv closed her eyes and felt them fill with tears. Before she had left for the airport, Pearl had screamed at her. It was nothing new, but Viv wasn’t ready for the attack, hadn’t had a chance to brace herself. As Pearl approached her, she had thought she was maybe going to kiss her goodbye, maybe say something nice because she was going away for so long. When her mother had come towards her, Viv had even offered a little smile. She hadn’t really looked at her mother; if she had, she would have known. Pearl told her to shut her trap and listen even though she hadn’t said a word. Then she’d said she couldn’t stand the sight of Viv one second longer and would be glad to be rid of her. And then she had left. Just left, and Vivien had stood there for a long time and then she had gone down to the woods, to her own little nook in the trees, and curled up against the thick, deep roots.

  Now, lost in memory, she lost her balance, slipped off the horse’s back and fell to the ground with a thump. She didn’t move; she lay on her back on the stony earth and looked up at Dolly beside her. At Dolly’s brown and white legs, and furry belly. The old mare slowly swung her head around. She met Viv’s gaze with her big brown eyes. She reached over and breathed her warm breath on the girl’s face. Viv looked at Dolly’s soft brown muzzle and the yellow and green slobber and smelled her grassy breath. The mare gently nuzzled her, and Viv looked into the horse’s kind eyes, and beyond, up at the sky, and felt the world, the earth, hard under her.

  Around Easter the following spring, Amy confided to Viv as they smoked out her bedroom window that she liked Rusty, the oldest cousin of the Gagliardi kids across the street. She liked his red hair, she said; she liked how he was always laughing and being a smartass and getting into trouble; she liked how he didn’t care about anything, and she didn’t care that he wasn’t that smart. Her private-school friends wouldn’t think much of him, but she didn’t really care, she said. So what?

  Rusty had dropped out of high school. He was sixteen now, working nights catching chickens and turkeys and loading them onto trucks. He had deep, ugly scratches on his arms from the birds as they tried to escape the blinding lights and cruel hands that grabbed them. When he got paid, Rusty hung around outside the beer parlour of the Beresford Arms or outside the liquor store by the Dairy Queen looking for someone to buy him a bottle, or a case of beer. If he wasn’t there, he’d succeeded, and was off partying with Barry, his best friend, if he’d talked him into skipping school.

  Sometimes Rusty brought Barry over to the Gagliardis’ and Viv, sitting concealed in the hawthorn tree at the end of her driveway, looked over and watched him longingly, living her lovesick cowboy songs as Barry put his cigarette in his mouth while he combed his straight, strawberry blond hair forward and then flicked it back out of his small blue eyes with a toss of his head. That toss was so cool she thought she’d die each time he reached into the back pocket of his skin-tight jeans for the broken rat-tail comb.

  That summer she turned fourteen, after Pearl had flown to England to visit the Lake District. Ruby was still in California, finished college, working at the Sierra Club. Laurel was a clerk at the Bay in Victoria and dating a guy who had picked her up hitchhiking. Amethyst was on the French Riviera for the summer practising her French. Tom was in Ontario with his sisters. So Viv was left at home with the two dogs, a freezer full of frozen pizzas, a cupboard full of canned lasagna, spaghetti, wieners and beans, and a standing order with the milkman.

  Viv threw herself a birthday party the day after the last of her family left. Deep Purple and the Stones blasted out from Tom’s big Heathkit speakers; so did Jethro Tull, Alice Cooper, Janis Joplin, Canned Heat, Uriah Heep and The Doors. Hour after hour, day and night, the music pounded, vibrating the windows and making the dogs howl to go outside. The fridge was jammed with beer and Coke and Tang; bottles of rye and vodka stood beside empty ice-cube trays in sticky puddles on the counters. The floors were dirty and sticky, the ashtrays and garbage overflowing, while up and down the driveway Viv’s guests—Rusty and Barry and their friends—came and went. As they partied into the morning, Viv told them to crash in any of the bedrooms, cover themselves with the Hudson’s Bay blankets and the green and yellow, and blue and pink satin duvets that had come from her grandparents’ house. They drank from the Frenchwoman’s crystal glasses, they wiped up spills with embroidered tea towels and hand-tatted doilies.

  It took a lot of standing near him, smiling at him, asking him for lights for her smokes, for a sip of his drink, but finally Barry offered to get Viv a beer, which she didn’t want but drank because she would have drunk anything he brought her, and an hour or two later he offered her one of his smokes and lit it in his mouth before he handed it over. Their fingers touched. She was transported. Later that night, alone, almost overcome with joy, she stood in front of Pearl’s dressing table mirror and lifted her shirt to see the little breasts budding on her chest. Their timing was perfect.

  Things were different when Pearl got back from England. She didn’t comment anymore on where Viv was or what she did, whereas before she had been at her constantly. Viv, too, was different. She had a boyfriend. She’d had sex. So she didn’t ask permission for anything, either; she did whatever she wanted, and nothing happened. She went out on school nights, and Barry picked her up after school if she hadn’t already skipped. Her mother never spoke to her directly, just maintained this hostile silence, glared at her, or through her, if she caught her eye, left her notes on the blackboard she installed next to the back door. Take out the garbage. Make your bed. She was only slightly nicer if Amy came home for the weekend. She was like walking anger, Viv thought. Walking, talking, breathing, and Viv, alone with her more than anyone else, was afraid of her,
and uneasy, especially at night.

  Pearl had moved into Laurel’s old bedroom when she returned from overseas, next door to Viv’s, and the wall was thin, plywood, and Viv lay in her own bed listening to her mother’s sobs and wailing, hating her, wishing she would shut up, would go away again, this time forever, if she didn’t like them so much, would just leave them alone. If they all made her so goddam miserable, then why the hell didn’t she just go? It seemed like every night she was crying and yelling, Viv told Barry. Her father didn’t hear, or he didn’t say anything, and why should he either if she had moved out of their bedroom and treated him like shit. No wonder he was never home. How many calls could there be? How many operations to perform? How many rounds to do? It was like she wanted Viv to hear her, she said, so that someone—Viv herself, she supposed, since she was the only one around—would take pity on her and do something. Why would she, though, even if she could? They hated each other. And her mother smelled, too, though she didn’t tell Barry that. She smelled all strange and bloody. There were gross sanitary pads in the bathroom garbage, and big bags of Kotex in the cupboards. Everything about her mother was repulsive, disgusting.

  She and Barry—her darling Bear—spent their days driving around in his car until they ran out of money for gas and went back to his place to bum off his mother. Player’s Filter on the dash and a beer or a paper cup of rye and Coke between his legs, and a magnum bottle of sparkling wine between hers, Viv told Bear that she liked how his crotch looked when he drove; when he took the beer from between his legs with his hangnailed fingers; when he put it back between his legs. She liked how his crotch looked with the hard-on she gave him by stroking him through his jeans.

  A dozen times a night they joined the parade of other cool Beresford people in their cool cars, their Super Bees, jacked-up ’57 Chevs, Challengers, Novas, Mustangs, driving the main street from one end of Beresford to the other between the A&W and the Dog ’N Suds. And like the other cool people, they reversed into the back of the lot, turned on their lights and waited for the carhop. Hi-Boy burgers with cheese, Coney fries, root beer. When she was with Barry, she felt good: finally she was loved. He’d promised it’d be forever. And now she had stuff to tell Amy when she came home on weekends, instead of the other way around. She rested her hand lightly on the inside of Barry’s thigh.

  “I love you, Bear,” she said.

  “I love you, Baby Round Eyes,” he said.

  Viv lit two smokes. “Here,” she said, passing him one. Moved her hand back to his crotch and stroked him. Then she removed her hand and made smoke rings. “Suffer, baby, suffer,” she said, laughing at his pleading eyes. “That’s all you get today.” Later, though, she might change her mind. Sex was okay, though not as good as what she had thought it would be. She liked the thump-thump of their hearts as they lay naked against one another, their bodies joined. The feel of his chest and belly against hers. His surrender as he came. So after he had pleaded enough, she usually let him in. Why not? She burrowed her head under his arm; she wanted to be close, close to him, to climb right inside him.

  Over at Barry’s in front of the colour TV, or at the parties his parents threw in their rec room, and in the Legion halls and community halls during dances where his brother’s band played—Barry played the drums—Viv learned to chain-smoke, and to guzzle, puke and pass out on rye and Coke, and vodka and Tang, and Andrés Pink Perle. She wore a curly dark brown wig and piled on the makeup so she looked old enough to drink, and she sat at the band table smoking and drinking with the other wives and girlfriends. When the dance was over and the band was packing up, she went around to the long tables with their newsprint tablecloths and picked up drinks people had left and drank them. Barry, who never picked a fight, told her it was a stupid thing to do, told her to stop, but by then she was too drunk to care. She loved being drunk—she loved not giving a fuck and then passing out, she loved being gone. The world stopped, and someone who loved her looked after her. And if he was really hammered, Barry would even carry her, his drunken Juliet, all the way into her house and her bedroom. He’d lay her down on her bed and cover her up with her quilt before he ran back down the driveway to his car.

  October passed and neither of her parents had said a word about anything she did. Maybe they didn’t even notice when she stopped coming home at all because she had moved in with Barry and his parents. So fuck it, she said.

  Life at Barry’s was simple and close and exactly what it appeared to be. No charged silences, no poison darts, no having to guess what everything meant beneath its surface the times when it wasn’t smack in your face. No angry words that stayed hovering like pollution in anger-filled air. No one yelled. They ate borscht made by his father, and Kraft Dinner, and cabbage rolls, and toast. Viv slept in Barry’s bedroom and he slept on the couch until his parents went to bed and then he came in and sometimes they had sex and talked about what they’d do when they were married.

  Viv went to school some days and some days she just lay around the house watching TV and smoking cigarettes until Barry, who had quit school, got home from working at his dad’s gas station. His parents spent nights in the beer parlour of the Beresford Arms or the Legion. Before paydays, when they were broke, they holed up in the TV room with Barry and Viv, sipping beer or instant coffee. Now this was a family, she thought, safe and warm between Barry and his mother, bumming smokes off his dad, watching TV movies. This was a family who did stuff together.

  Still, just before Christmas she wanted to go home, and lying in her own bed listening to the heavy silence in the house, she noticed how particularly hostile it was this year. And how empty the house was, except for the dogs. Ruby was staying in California with her fiancé, a fellow who owned a car wash. Laurel was banned for setting a bad example because she was now living in sin with the hitchhiking guy. But at least Amy came home, and the two sisters hung out their bedroom windows like old times.

  As Christmas Day approached, the tension ratcheted up in a familiar, almost reassuring way, with Pearl’s usual complaints about having to do everything herself and how she was going to leave and then see how they all liked that. But no one cared about her anymore. “The family tradition,” said Amy under her breath. “Right on track.”

  If he was home, Tom practised playing Christmas carols for a choral concert and the joyful tunes clashed with the atmosphere of doom. Doors in the house were closed. The newest sign on Pearl’s study door read: Man can will nothing unless he first understands that he must count on no one but himself; that he is alone, abandoned on earth in the midst of his infinite responsibilities, without help, with no other aim than the one he sets himself, with no other destiny than that one he forges for himself on this earth.

  Two days before Christmas, Amy and Vivien watched their mother as she called the dogs and they jumped happily into her car. They watched as she lugged her suitcases out of the house, put the largest piece in the trunk at the front of the car and dropped the hood. They watched as she pulled on her gloves and climbed into the car, closed the door firmly, checked her lipstick in the rear-view mirror. She ignored them completely. She started the car, put it in reverse, backed into the turnaround, drove down the driveway and disappeared into her future. She didn’t wave goodbye and neither did they. When the car turned out of the driveway, Amy looked at Viv. They lifted their eyebrows and gave each other a tentative smile. Viv took the deck of smokes out of the front of her jeans and they lit cigarettes out in the open.

  “The taste of freedom,” said Viv.

  “Tastes good,” said Amy.

  They expected that she would call within a few hours, and she did. Other times Amy had said what she was supposed to say and their mother had come back. But this time it was Viv who answered the phone. She held out the receiver to Amy, but Amy wouldn’t take it. Viv hung the phone back up and that was the end of that.

  Viv hopped in and took her place beside Barry on the console between the bucket seats and took the smoke he had lit for he
r. “Thanks, Bear,” she said. Then, along with six cases of beer and three magnums of Pink Perle, bags of chips and a few tabs of organic mescaline, Barry, Gary, Colleen, Larry, Marlene, John and Viv all took off in Gary’s Mustang and Barry’s Dodge. Larry opened beer bottles with his teeth and passed the bottles between the cars as they pulled alongside each other. Bear popped the plastic cork from a bottle of Pink Perle against the roof of the car while Viv held the steering wheel, and Marlene lit a joint. Yahoo! No, Viv had told her father, she couldn’t go to Banff for the May long weekend because she was going camping with Brenda and Laurie from CGIT. Amy had told him she had to study for her finals.

  They got off on the mescaline just as they arrived at their campsite, a meadow near a stream at the end of a grassy lane. They started laughing as they put the tents up in grass that had become unbelievably green and lush, in wildflowers that were unbelievably abundant, and beautiful beyond description. Everything in the world was now vibrant, enhanced, lovely. How mind-blowing fucking fantastic it was to be alive! They ripped open bags of ripple chips and boxes of Bugles. Barry blew up the empty chip bags and popped them and they laughed and drank and smoked some more. Finally everyone else wandered off down the trails and into the woods, and Barry and Viv stripped naked and lay down in the sun together on their sleeping bags.

  Amy came right out of the house when Viv got home. “You aren’t going to believe this,” she said. On Saturday morning a moving van had backed slowly up their driveway. The men in coveralls presented a long list written in Pearl’s careful, controlled hand. Amy hadn’t known whether to help them find the things Pearl had listed or not. She knew she’d get in trouble if she did, and anyway she didn’t want to help her mother steal things from their home. But she’d get into worse trouble from Pearl if she didn’t. She wouldn’t get to wear the red velvet opera cape with the ermine collar that Pearl had worn to parties and balls at McGill to her own high school graduation. And Pearl had bought her the most beautiful graduation dress, with chiffon sleeves, an empire waist and tiny roses running beneath the bust. And she had bought her a car. And Amy had been promised a trip to the hairdresser’s where her long, thick, wavy hair would be done in big looped curls with pale yellow satin ribbons running through them. Amy had helped the moving men, and the house echoed when they went in the front door.