I stayed there about fifteen minutes, and then my stomach started rumbling, and I left to find a vending machine. I had a bag of Cheetos and a Coke for dinner.
When I got back to the waiting room, Mom was sitting there, bouncing her knees up and down, clutching her purse in her hands. Her knuckles were white, and so was her face. She stood up when she saw me.
“Tamar! What happened? Is he okay?”
“I don’t know. I think he fell off the roof.”
“Oh for Christ’s sake. What the hell was he doing on the roof?”
“Don’t know.”
“The hail,” she said after a few seconds. “He was probably checking to see if it damaged the roof.” She put her hand on her forehead, shook her head and rolled her eyes.
We waited together on the hard orange plastic chairs. I flipped through an old National Geographic, and my mom bounced her knees and clenched and unclenched her hands. Occasionally, she looked up at a TV that was playing the news. It was the same old: floods, fire and famine, pedophiles, perverts and freaks. Please, spare me.
Finally, the doctor came to get us.
“Mrs. Robinson?”
“Yes!” My mom jumped up and shook his hand.
“I’m Doctor Zwicky.”
Doctor Zwicky was young and handsome, with jet-black hair that fell in a slant across his eyebrows. He looked like he belonged in an underwear commercial, not a hospital.
“How is he?” Mom asked.
“Well, he has a badly fractured tibia, a sprained ankle and a bruised tailbone. He also has a mild concussion, and he was severely dehydrated and in shock. But we’re getting his fluids back up, and he seems to be through the worst of it. We’ve run some tests, and there is no sign of a fractured skull or brain damage. But we will need to keep him here for a few days.”
My mom grabbed my hand and squeezed.
“Would you like to see him now?”
“Yes.”
I hesitated, and my mom yanked me up by the arm.
“You can come too.” Doctor Zwicky flashed me a smile that could save lives.
We followed his glowing white coat down the hall and into the elevator, up two floors and into room 308.
“Dad!”
“Hey T,” he whispered. “Sheila.” He smiled at Mom. His lips were cracked and white.
“David, what happened?” My mom reached for his hand.
“The hail completely destroyed our roof. We’ll need to reshingle.” His voice was scratchy, like he had laryngitis. His leg was in a cast already and was elevated by some kind of hook-and-pulley system. There were plastic tubes running from a bag of liquid into his arm.
He looked down at the mint-green sheet. “I don’t know what happened. I’m sorry.”
“Oh, honey. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Yes, I did. I fell.”
We all laughed, even Doctor Zwicky.
“In six to eight weeks you’ll be good as new, Mr. Robinson. But I’m afraid you’ll have to get someone else to repair your roof.”
Dad nodded, defeated.
“I’ll give you a few minutes alone, and then I’ll have to ask you to let our patient rest. He’s had a very long day.” Doctor Zwicky disappeared through the curtain.
I sat on the edge of the high hospital bed beside my Dad’s good leg. I flipped some of my new hair behind my shoulder. “So, what do you think?”
“About what?”
I pointed to my head.
“Oh.”
“Oh?”
“Glossy.”
I smiled.
Mom told him she loved him and was glad he was okay. She kissed him on the forehead. “Get some rest. We’ll see you tomorrow.” She smoothed his face with the back of her hand, and his eyes fluttered closed.
We didn’t say anything on the drive home. Maybe we were both too relieved to talk. I had a bath and went to bed, and my mom did the same.
From then on, I wore my wig all the time—except at night, when I kept it on its wig stand so it would keep its shape. If properly taken care of, a human-hair wig can last around twenty-five years. But I’m hoping (and praying) that my real hair will grow back way before then.
Dad came home after three days in the hospital. On Friday I got to stay home from school and help him, because Mom was at an all-day meditation intensive. Dad just watched TV and asked me to bring him his lunch and a few beers, and then he said it was a beautiful day and I had two good legs, so I should go for a bike ride. So I did. I found a sweet new single track in Fish Creek that was really challenging, and for a little while, I forgot all about being bald.
The next day, I wore my wig to go job hunting. I pulled it back into a ponytail because Mom said that looked more professional.
The first place I tried was Mik’s Milk and Gas. I thought they were a good bet because the giant sign out front that posts the price of gas said Now Hring. I guess they ran out of i’s. I went inside, and the door beeped.
“Hi,” I said to the lady behind the counter. Her marshmallow-colored hair was cut as if someone had placed a bowl on her head.
“Hi.”
“I’d like to work here.”
She pursed her pale lips and then ducked behind the counter. “Fill out this application form.” She threw a clipboard down on the counter. Her puffy skin was the color of ashes.
“Thanks.” I went to the back of the store by the slushie machine, sat down at a round orange table and read the first line: Thank you for your interest in Mik’s Milk and Gas!
I looked around. There was no one in the store, and terrible soft rock was crackling out of the speakers. It smelled like burnt coffee and wet mop. A man came in and the door beeped. Another person came in and it beeped again; it seemed to be getting louder. A bell chimed because someone had pulled in for gas. Another bell. Another beep. I got up and went back to the counter. Miss Marshmallow was arranging cigarette packs on the shelf. Her back was as wide as a doorway.
“Excuse me?”
She turned around.
“Do you have a pen?”
She rolled her eyes and unclipped the pen from her shirt pocket, threw it onto the counter and turned back to the wall of cigarettes.
“Thanks.” I picked up the pen. It was yellow and said Mik’s Milk and Gas in red writing, and there was a stupid-looking cat on it giving the thumbs-up. I took it back to the table and filled out the application as best as I could. But I had no Previous Work Experience, Previous Employer or Reason for Leaving Last Place of Employment, so I had to leave those parts blank. It was a bit of a catch-22: you can’t get a job without work experience, and you can’t get work experience without a job.
As I handed Miss Marshmallow my application, I smiled and said, “Hope to hear from you soon,” just like I was supposed to.
She grunted and scratched her doughy face. I left then and wondered, If I did get a job there, would the chime on the door drive me insane?
The same day I also filled out applications at these places:
a video store
a coffee shop
a drugstore
a fast-food restaurant
a sit-down restaurant
a movie theater
a bookstore
a car wash
a shoe store
a clothing store
a gift shop
a grocery store
a florist
a bakery
a jewelry store
a record shop
a thrift store
It was a long day. But I figured the more applications I filled out, the better chance I had of getting something. Cast a wide net. I was hoping for either the movie theater or the record shop, but everybody wants thos
e jobs, and their application piles were probably four feet tall.
Around five thirty, I walked into a cute little pie shop down a side street in Avenida. It was full of old fogeys drinking coffee and eating butter tarts. The man behind the counter was probably a hundred years old. He had a crown of wispy gray hair. I asked him if he needed any workers, and his milky-blue eyes twinkled.
“Can you start right now?” he croaked.
“Sure, I guess.”
“Fantastic.” He swung the counter door open for me to enter the kitchen and tossed me a crisp white apron.
I have a job. I have a job! I work in a pie shop!
He pointed me in the direction of the sink, where a towering stack of dishes teetered precariously on the countertop.
“You can start with those, and then, when you’re finished, we can make some pies.” He winked. Then he ambled back to the front to finish his coffee and gossip with the other blue-hairs.
The dirty dishes were not just cups, saucers, spoons and forks, although they were there too. There were baking pans, muffin pans, pie plates and soup pots. It looked as if a giant blackberry had exploded all over these dishes and hardened on. The sign above the sinks gave directions on what to do: one sink was for washing and rinsing, and one was for sanitizing with bleach. I began to fill the sinks, the bleach stinging my nostrils. I poked around, looking for gloves, but couldn’t see any. The old man came back into the kitchen and set a timer.
“Um, do you have any gloves?”
“What?”
“Gloves?” I mimed putting on a pair of gloves.
“No, no, I never use gloves. You don’t need them.” He scooted back out to the front.
I sighed, rolled up my sleeves, plunged my arms into the sink and began to scrub my way through the mess of lava-encrusted dishes. The dishwater was super hot, and I began to sweat. Sweat rolled from my armpits down into the crooks of my elbows. I guess this is why they call it elbow grease, I thought. Sweat ran between my breasts and dripped from my forehead. The sink was beside the massive oven, and I kept getting hotter and hotter. My skin reddened and began to burn and prickle from the bleach and the heat. After about twenty minutes, I thought I was going to pass out from heatstroke and went to look for a washroom, to splash my face with cold water.
The first door I tried led me into a walk-in freezer. I turned to leave but then decided that it would be okay to stay in there for a minute and cool off. The metal door sucked shut behind me. I breathed in the icy air and watched the steam rise off my body. Almost instantly, I was chilled. I pushed on the door, but it wouldn’t open. There was a big circular metal handle, and I threw my weight into it. It depressed and then sprang back against my ribs, but the door didn’t budge. I stepped back and stared at the door. There must be some kind of trick to opening it that I didn’t know. There were actually three handles: the circular one, a small rectangular one that pulled up, and a horizontal bar. I tried them all in different combinations. The door still wouldn’t open. I started to shiver. It was cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey, as they say. I kicked the circular handle hard, and it sprang back. Well, this is humiliating, I thought. I would have to bang on the door until old Milky-Eyes came to rescue me. I began pounding my fists against the freezer door. “HEY!” I yelled. “I’M LOCKED IN THE FREEZER!” I felt like an idiot, but I kept at it for a few minutes. “HELLO?”
No one came.
Goose bumps had popped out all over my body. I wrapped my arms around myself and blew into my hands to warm up, then tried the handles again. Nothing. I looked around the freezer for a tool to pry the door open with, or a fire alarm to pull, or something to get me the hell out of that cryonic chamber.
What I found were six dozen boxes of frozen cookie dough. I started with chocolate chip, then moved on to white chocolate–macadamia nut. After I’d eaten as much cookie dough as I could, I tried the steel door again. It didn’t open. I tried kicking it again. It didn’t open. My fingernails were blue, and my knees and thighs trembled with cold. I took a frozen bag of tomato soup and thwacked it against the door again and again, until the brick of soup was shattered into slushy red flakes. “HELP!” I yelled as loud as I could before I realized that the old man was probably deaf. I tried smashing a bucket of ice cream against the handles, against the door itself. It wouldn’t fucking open. Then the single lightbulb above me flickered once, twice…and went out. I was locked inside a freezer in total darkness. No one knew where I was. Tears slid down my face and froze on my cheeks. A pathetic whimper escaped from my shivering lips, and I curled up under a shelf of frozen pie shells to die.
six
The next thing I remembered was old Milky-Eyes shaking me by the shoulders.
“Hey, what the hell are you doing in here, kid?”
“I got l-l-locked in. I c-c-couldn’t get out,” I said through chattering teeth.
“Well, come on, get up.” He dragged me up and out of the freezer, put a winter coat over me and handed me a steaming cup of coffee. “Drink that.” He was eyeing me suspiciously. “What were you doing in there?”
“I-I was l-l-looking for the w-w-washroom.”
He pointed to a stool beside the oven. “Sit down there until you warm up. Then you can go.”
I sidled up to the oven and curled my icy hands around the white coffee mug, absorbing the heat. After about ten or fifteen minutes, I was sufficiently thawed.
Milky-Eyes came back into the kitchen. “All right, go on, get outta here, kid.”
“What about…”
“What?”
“Tomorrow.”
His blue eyes spit out icy sparks. “You didn’t even finish the dishes! You think I’m going to hire you? Forget it! Get out of here! And don’t come back!”
Under my breath I damned him to suffer in eternal hell. Then I threw my coffee cup in the sink. I ripped off the puffy jacket and tossed it on the stool, grabbed my backpack and headed for the front door. He scurried after me, shaking his fist. “Don’t ever set foot in here again, you little thief!”
I flipped him off as I stomped out the door.
When I got home, Mom was sitting at the kitchen table, hunched over a stack of bills.
“Hey, how did it go today?”
“Fine.”
“Did you get a job?”
“Yes and no.”
“You want to talk about it?”
“Nope.”
“Okay. Are you hungry?”
“No. Where’s Dad?”
“He’s in the garage.”
“Right.”
“Where else would he be?” She rolled her eyes. “He practically lives in there.”
“I guess he can’t get too far with a broken leg.”
“He can’t even drive, T.”
“Maybe that’s for the best.”
“Shh!” She winked at me. I let a little snicker slip out, and so did Mom.
“Tamar, honey, would you do me a favor?”
“What?”
“Would you rub my neck a little bit? I was practicing shoulder stand today and I think I cricked my neck. It’s really sore. Just right here.” She grabbed the knobby part at the base of her neck.
“All right.”
“Ooh! Your hands are like ice! Is it cold out?”
“No.”
“Well, you know what your grandma used to say: cold hands, warm heart.”
“What if you have warm hands?”
“What? Oh, I don’t know. That feels really good. Yes, that’s the spot. Right there. Ooh. Ow. I should’ve used a bolster, I guess.”
“Yoga is the new plague.”
“I just did something I shouldn’t have.”
“Yeah, yoga twenty-four/seven.”
“It’s what I need ri
ght now, Tamar. I wish you would try it.”
I switched on my documentary-announcer voice. “Sheila Robinson, yoga victim, reveals all in tonight’s exposé, ‘A Downward Dog Spiral.’”
She giggled. “Aw, T. I can always count on you for a laugh.”
“You’re welcome.” I stopped rubbing her neck and put some water on to boil.
“Maybe you could be a massage therapist.”
“I don’t think so, Mom.”
I made myself a big cup of hot chocolate, then went to bed and piled six blankets on top of me. I was still shivering as I fell asleep.
Monday came early, as it always does. I was nervous as hell about going to school with the wig on. What if people could tell? What if it fell off? How was I going to style it? I wished, and not for the last time, that Abby and Alia were around to help me. They were actually very stylish individuals. Very chic. Fashionistas, they would say. I decided to wear the wig loose with a dark-purple toque over top, so it would look pretty natural, pretty real. I used extra adhesive to make sure it would stay put. The parents assured me that it looked terrific, so I had to take their word for it.
Nobody at school said anything. Probably no one even noticed—except one person: Roy.
“Is that real?” he said when I met him at his locker at lunchtime.
“Shh, keep it down, will ya?”
“Sorry. But…is it?” he whispered.
“What do you think?”
He reached out as if he wanted to touch it but changed his mind and adjusted the strap on his backpack instead. “I think acupuncture is very powerful,” he said.
“Definitely.” I nodded.
The New Normal Page 5