by Derek Hayes
Cam hasn’t come to Psychology class in two days. He’s consulted my notes absent-mindedly, not even complaining that they’re incomplete. In the cafeteria he has diva status due to his astrological prognostications. I think a little has rubbed off on me. The goateed tree-planters get out of their seats and escort us to their table, where he’s treated like a frat brother.
“We’ve got plans to raise money for cystic fibrosis,” says the chubbier twin, bloated from a month of Buck’s fried chicken.
“Yeah,” says the skinny twin. “You, Cam, will be stationed with the campus radio disc jockeys during homecoming. We’ve got football players, physics professors and even the university president all lined up to have their charts read.”
“I’m not really too much into astrology anymore, guys,” Cam says.
There are protestations — Cam’s got a gift. Anyone with his talent should take advantage of it. But he isn’t interested. “I’ve got to get more focused on school,” he says. He wraps up his salad and leaves the caf.
I put my arm on the thin twin’s shoulder and say, “He’s gonna do the radio show. Don’t worry. He’s a little busy, but I’ll persuade him to come on board.”
I sit down beside Julia but can’t think of anything to say.
It’s two o’clock on Wednesday afternoon. I’m lying on my bed. I’ve been sleeping for a few hours. I feel hung-over, though I haven’t had anything alcoholic for four days.
A faint scratching noise arouses me to consciousness. Cam is scraping the brownie mix from his chart. He went home for the weekend, and I haven’t seen him much since he got back. Jim, the redhead, is in our room, slumped on the floor.
Cold Play is blaring from his room, which we can easily hear since he’s left both doors open. He’s chatting on the Internet, on a site that caters to university students. They’ve created a hybrid personality, Johnny Aberdeen, a strange combination of Cam’s natural modesty and Jim’s brashness. Each takes a turn at the keyboard. Whoever isn’t typing usually tries to temper the other. Right now Cam’s pleading for a more muted response. He’s excited because a girl from Fanshawe College has asked Johnny when he was born. Uncharacteristically, Cam shoves Jim out of the way, hunches over the keyboard, and sticks out his elbows, a clear indication that he’s taken over. I engage my mind temporarily to imagine what he might be saying to this girl from Fanshawe.
Jim is laughing at what Cam has written. “You aren’t going to try to meet her, are you?”
“You better believe it,” says Cam.
I lean over so I’m facing them. “Hey, Cam. You haven’t consulted my horoscope in a while.”
“Just a sec.”
He turns his back to briefly examine his chart. When I ask him again what’s in store for me, he shrugs and goes back to the keyboard. I’m happy that he has friends, that he’s managed to pull himself out of the doldrums, but everything hasn’t been so easy for me. You see, Julia hasn’t called me back. I left three messages with her roommate last week. I can’t study. My body odor is pungent. My face has broken out in acne. I sleep two hours every night and when I’m awake I’m deeply anxious. Oh God, I can’t even . . . .
THE LOVER
I GET OUT OF MY ’98 PONTIAC and walk up the dusty driveway to the front porch, where three of the Riverdale Group Home members sit, smoking hand-rolled, unfiltered cigarettes around a tiny pot of sand and butt ends. When they see my six-foot-six-inch frame bending to greet them, their eyes brighten. “Can we have macaroni and cheese for lunch, Mark?” says Jeremy, rising from his plastic lawn chair.
“Anything you want.” What a picture — me with hyper-manic, sunken eyes and distended nose, against Jeremy’s sedated, bloated, ruddy face and still eyes, the result of years of chlorpromazine.
In the living room I reach under the flap at the bottom of the sofa and pick up the kitten, which squirms in my arms. I rub the kitten’s belly, and place my nose on its forehead. “Hey, little kitty. You like to be rubbed, right?” The kitten hisses, and swipes. Scratch marks, like miniature red train tracks, appear on my wrist. “That hurt, cat,” I say. The kitten falls, and scampers from the room. I dab the cut with a napkin.
In the bright, fly-infested kitchen Vivian, shaking her bangs out of her eyes, is swinging a wing-stained swatter, zombie like, at fat, intrepid flies. Jeremy is grating the cheese. He’s cleanly shaven, his hair greased back, and is wearing an ironed, pale-blue dress shirt with nice-fitting, beige slacks. He hovers over a block of cheddar, pressing the cheese against the grater, then scoops cheese into his hand and dumps it in the casserole dish.
“Maybe you should wash your hands,” I say.
He says, “Yeah, of course.”
Down the hall Sidney is grasping the belt of his trousers — if not they’d drop to his ankles. There’s a bulge in his back pocket I hope isn’t a turd. Sid walks up the inclining floor. Contractors have poured cement under the house to secure the unstable foundation, but the incline won’t be repaired. We use any extra money we have for our daily trip to Tim Horton’s.
Jeremy says, “Do you know what I liked about the last time we made macaroni, Mark? I liked the crackers that we mixed in. Do you think we can do that again?”
I stick my head into the common room, where Sidney is now on the soiled sofa, his legs tucked under him, eyes docilely intent on the wall beside the TV, undistracted by Alex Trebek and Jeopardy. He smiles a broad, Grinch-like smile that accentuates every wrinkle on his puckish face. “CJBK Mark, CJBK.”
“Any of you guys want to go to Shoppers with me to get some crackers?” I say. “Jeremy wants some in the macaroni and cheese.”
I push the small cart down the aisle. Jeremy, Sidney and Vivian, the only female member of the group home, trail me. Sidney’s shoelace tangles in the bottom of the cart. He kicks at the wheel with the back of his heel and falls to one knee. Jeremy huffs, pushes Sidney to the side and upends the cart. He kneels and tries to untangle Sid’s shoelace.
“Oh-oh, Mark. Can’t get out,” says Sid, curling up skittishly on the polished floor.
I focus on the lovely cashier behind the counter. She removes a napkin from her pocket and delicately pats her lips. Her friend from the other till joins her and the two of them sit on stools and chat in a breezy manner. The girl with the napkin pouts. She plays with the elastic band that holds her blonde hair in place. Her left calf rests gently on a third stool.
Jeremy rights the cart, which then tips unsteadily and almost crashes again. He grabs the cracker box that lies in the middle of the aisle and slams it into the cart.
God she looks lovely. Look at her fingers. They’re so tiny. She handles the cracker box so delicately. I love how her nose turns up. I’d love to stick my nose in her armpit. What does she do in her free time? Mmmm . . . She loves drinking coffee with her girlfriends. She loves movies. She is snotty to her mother but in a cute way. Oh no, she’s looking my way. I want to get away from her so I can think about her some more. Oh Jesus.
“That’ll be three dollars and fifty-five cents.”
I give her the money. “We had some problems with our cart.”
“They are kind of old,” she says. “Have a nice evening.”
The noodles and cheese from lunch have hardened on the unwashed plates that we’ve set to the side of the dining room table to make room for our card game. Vivian’s watermelon-sized head sways. She threatens to completely lose her balance, crash from her chair, writhe on the floor, and cry for her mother, the same person who callously left her at the home two years ago, never to visit, not even once. Vivian’s hands shake. Jeremy articulates what I’m thinking. “You’ve got to play some time, Vivian.” She lays down a queen of hearts. The card totters on the edge of the table. With his stubby middle finger, Jeremy drags the queen so that it’s beside the deck. “Always, always place your card in the middle of the table,” he says. He lays the ace on her queen. “That’s euchre last time I checked.” I look at the leftover bauer in my hand, which is useless
now that Viv and I have been euchred. Careless playing on my part, I think, but what time’s the cashier off work?
Jeremy sticks his hand into the box of crackers, gropes around, and then plucks out three, dropping them on the table. “These crackers have worms in them,” he says.
Sidney leans on the table. “They do? Oh-oh. Alex Trebek, Mark.”
I shove one in my mouth. “I don’t think they’d let worms get into the mix.”
“Who wouldn’t?” Jeremy says.
I turn the box so I can read the label. “I don’t know, but they don’t put worms in their crackers, Jeremy. You’ve got to take my word for it.”
Jeremy takes out his Swiss army knife, pulls out a blade and hacks at one of the crackers. He picks up a piece and examines it carefully. He says, “Looks just like the skin of a worm.”
“Tell you what, Jeremy,” I say. “If you want, we can go back to Shoppers and get our money back. It could be fun. What do you think?”
“I don’t know if we have to go back there, Mark.”
“No, no. It’s settled. Let’s get back our money. Get in the van, guys.”
I smile at the lovely cashier. “We’re back. I don’t mean to trouble you, but we opened the crackers back at the home and we — one of the members, Jeremy, here . . . ” I point at Jeremy, who looks justifiably upset, “claims that there are worms in the crackers we just bought.”
She takes a cracker from the box, gives it a cursory examination, and says, “It’s just the way they bake them. What do you want me to do? I can give you a refund on the product if you think it’s damaged.”
“I guess that would be okay, if you don’t mind.”
She prices the box again and then punches her till. She hands me three dollars and fifty-five cents and says, “Here you go.”
“No problem.” I pause and say, “I’m a worker at the group home, you know.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not a member.”
“I see.”
“Do you want to come to a Hallowe’en party at the house next Wednesday? Hallowe’en’s not until the following Saturday so it won’t disrupt any of your trick or treating, heh-heh.”
“I work until eight o’clock that night. I don’t know. We’ll see.”
“Perfect.” I give her my Riverdale Group Home card and say, “The party starts at eight o’clock.”
In the car ride back to the house I turn to Jeremy, who is sitting beside me in the front seat. “I love that cashier.”
Jeremy says, “Does she love you too, Mark?”
“I think she does. I’ve put in a lot of work. I’ve been going to that place for five months.”
Jeremy’s costume design skills are impressive. He cuts up an old, grey shirt. He paints a pattern on a bicycle helmet that cracked the year before. He scours the house for materials, finds an old tire rim and then throws it out because it won’t do.
I say, “You don’t have to spend so much time on my costume.”
Jeremy smiles. “It’s nothing,” he says. He’s lying on the carpet in his austere bedroom, tying together plastic milk containers painted black — so they’ll fit around me, I guess, as armour. His moist breath fogs his thick glasses. He grabs the tails of his Pierre Cardin dress shirt, his belly popping loose, takes off and licks the lenses, then wipes them. He pitches the glue bottle at his clothes hamper. His thick fingers nimbly smooth tinfoil over the cardboard shield. His thumb barely squeezing the scissors, he cuts Vivian’s stockings and then sews them to the chain mail. At last I see his genius. I’m going to be a medieval knight. How can Jeremy, a paranoid schizophrenic with patricidal fantasies, be so inept and yet so creative?
I avoid the main street and creep down the back alley. I drop the sword and some of the tinfoil scrapes off, exposing dull plastic. I curse and slide it back under my belt. There’s a run in my nylons and I curse again. Outside the store a homeless man with a sunburned face says, “Can you spare any change, Governor?”
“Sorry. I don’t have any pockets.”
I stick my head through the sliding glass doors and am relieved to see the cashier at her till. My grey helmet bobs up the aisle. Given my lanky frame I am, of course, visible to everyone as I emerge from behind a rack of potato chips and saunter up to her.
“Oh, hi,” she says. “Look, I have customers.”
“It’s okay.” I wave my hand to show her she has nothing to worry about. “I just came here to remind you about the party.”
“Thanks,” she says.
“I hope to see you later. You still have the card, right?”
She nods without looking at me. I pretend for a minute that the chain mail limits my freedom of movement and then I leave.
“I don’t know if the chicken wings are ready to come out of the oven,” Jeremy says.
I say, “What?”
“The chicken wings.”
It’s late in the evening and I’m tired. “Yes, let’s get them out of the oven.” I grab the pan and then jump back, swearing. I rinse my blistered fingers under cold water, then go to my office to rest for a while. When I come out Vivian is wiping the counter with a dishcloth.
“How could she not show up?” I ask her. “She said she’d come. I hate it when people don’t do what they say they’re going to do. Why couldn’t she come for, say, fifteen minutes? It was a good party.”
“Who didn’t come to the party?” Vivian says.
“The cashier at Shoppers.”
“Which one?” she says.
“The pretty one. Blonde hair.”
“She isn’t pretty!” Vivian whips her dirty apron off and throws it on the ground. She waves a bottle of Pledge dangerously close to my eyes.
“I don’t care. Blind me for all I care.”
Ten years pass. My hairline has receded, and I’ve shaved off my moustache. In the middle of a heat wave, a young woman volunteer, licking a cherry Popsicle, walks into our sloping hallway. She has a freckled face, narrow eyes, and long smooth legs which start at her tight Adidas shorts. She looks at Jeremy, who, with his trimmed sideburns, creaseless Khaki shorts and sports sandals, probably gives her the impression that he’s the staff member on duty. She looks confused when Jeremy says, “Mark told us you might take us to Tim Horton’s. They’ve got double-chocolate doughnuts for forty cents.”
“Maybe,” the volunteer says. “I’m only here for an hour today. If Mark wants me to go, I’ll go.”
“Mark Zile,” I say, and offer her my hand.
She turns to me and says, “Hi, I’m Shirley. Zile — that’s a Latvian name, isn’t it?”
I beam. “Yes it is. How did you know that?”
“My sister had a friend who was Latvian,” Shirley says, “and we went to the Latvian Community Centre with her as kids.”
“Is that right? I was probably there too. We went every week. At the time I didn’t like it but I look back fondly on that period.”
“I was always curious,” she says. “I grew up feeling like I didn’t have any ethnic identity and was always very curious about European culture.”
“Well, if you grew up with Latvians, you know what we’re like.” I take her hand, in a chivalrous gesture, and lift it gallantly to my lips and kiss it.
She giggles. “Can I have my hand back?” She then says, “Would you like me to take the guys to Tim Horton’s?”
I rummage through a cupboard. Cookies found, I arrange them in a pyramid on a plate, and then carry them into the dining room. There’s definitely an invigorated bounce in my step. “Here you go, miss,” I say, affecting a Latvian accent. Vivian looks up at me appreciatively. “Thanks Mark,” she says. Her anti-psychotic meds bloat her tongue and slacken the muscles in her throat so her speech is muffled.
Jeremy looks at Sidney and says, “What about us?”
I ignore him and hide behind the living room curtains, looking for Shirley’s car. She’s promised to help Vivian bake a rhubarb pie. I can assist them with that.
/> When Shirley arrives, I meet her in the hallway. “Glad you could come back to our home, miss. How do you say, ‘Welcome,’ in Latvian?”
“I’ve no idea,” she says, shaking her head, and bounds up the stairs to see Jeremy.
An hour later I shuffle sheepishly into Jeremy’s room with a mug of tea for her. “Nice to see you again, miss.” I reach to touch her hand but she withdraws it.
“I just had a fight with my housemate, Mark,” she says. “Jeremy’s been a great listener. Haven’t you, Jeremy?”
“Yeah, I suppose.” says Jeremy. “Always lay your card on the one played before it.” Jeremy takes the mug and sets it on the floor. “I don’t like it when anything else is on the table. Nothing but the cards.” He sucks in a breath through his teeth. “Mark and me beat Bob Coolidge and Dean at Tim Horton’s on Thursday.”
“I’m sorry to have unloaded all of my problems on you, Jeremy.” She looks at me. “I have to go.”
“It’s okay,” Jeremy says. “I know how you feel, Shirley.”
She puts on her sandals and steps into the hallway.
I say, “Miss. Miss.” I run after her into the hall. Out of anxiety I betray my Canadian accent and say, “Hold on a second. As you know, miss, when a beautiful lady leaves a house, a Latvian man must see her out the door. It’s my duty to wish you a fine week and for me to say . . . ”
“Yes, I’ll see you later, Mark. Have a nice weekend. See you Jeremy.”
“Call me later if you want, Shirley,” says Jeremy.
Weeks pass. I wait doggedly at the bay window. Isn’t persistence rewarded?
Then, a tug at my shirt. Jeremy’s face is animated. “Shirley called me, Mark. She said she didn’t feel like doing volunteer work anymore. She said that I could call her anytime if I wanted.”