“You know that we are liv-ing in a ma-ter-i-al world and I am a ma-ter-i-al girl…” I caught myself singing in the shower and instantly felt guilty because the parents were home and could probably hear me. But what’s so terrible about singing in the shower, really? Still, I stopped singing and rubbed soap over my hairless head.
I scrubbed my scalp every morning with a loofah, hoping the exfoliation would open up the hair follicles and increase circulation, thus encouraging the hair to grow back. So far, there had been no new growth. Anywhere. I hummed quietly. Somehow, singing was no longer appropriate in our house. I wondered if the three of us would ever get over the death of the twins, or if we were condemned to be sad and un-singing for the rest of our lives.
I left for school earlier than I needed to, just to get out of the house. The sun was rising over the city, and when I looked up, my breath caught in my throat. It looked like the sky was on fire. The entire sky was blood red, leaking out fuchsia at the edges. A pale orange line scored the horizon. A chinook was coming.
The school day went by in a blur, and I retained nothing. Ms. Jane let me leave rehearsal early because I told her I had an interview. I had called ahead to make sure Don was going to be at Cruisy Chicken. I sat on a white plastic lawn chair in his office. He had mud-brown hair and the onset of male-pattern baldness. His forehead was sweaty, and he looked like he ate a lot of chicken. He hardly looked at my face; his gaze was concentrated on my chest. I don’t know why. There’s nothing to see there.
“What would you say are your three best qualities, Tamara?”
“It’s Tamar.”
“Tamar-ah?”
“No ah. Just Tamar.”
He looked down at my application, confusion knotting his brow. “T-a-m-a-r. Tamar. Ah, okay, Tamar. Mind if I call you Tammy?”
“Uhhh…” I detested the name.
He ran a meaty palm over his face and through his thinning hair. “So, Tam, what would you say are your three greatest strengths?”
“Um, honesty. Integrity. And…stick-to-itiveness.”
“Okay, great. And what about weaknesses?”
“Weaknesses?”
“Areas for improvement.”
“I guess I can be too blunt, too direct, and sometimes that hurts people’s feelings.”
“Okay, anything else?”
“Um…”
“Areas for improvement.”
“Yeah, I’m thinking.”
He rapped his pen against his desk while I scraped my brain for something that wouldn’t make me sound pathetic and unemployable.
“I’m not very…sociable.”
“Oh.” He squinted. “How do you feel about working as part of a team?”
“Fine.”
“And you can work weekends only?”
“Right.”
“Do you have reliable transportation?”
“The bus.”
“Right. Well, do you want to try a shift Saturday and see how it goes?”
“As in tomorrow?”
“Yes. Saturday. Tomorrow. You want to work tomorrow?”
“Sure.”
“Super.” We shook hands and he squeezed my hand hard, finally looking me in the eye. He turned to the shelf behind him. “Here’s your uniform. It will come off your first paycheck.” He handed me a horrid red visor with a yellow cartoon chicken on it, giving the thumbs-up. I also got a red-and-yellow-striped golf shirt and a nametag that said TRAINEE.
I could barely hide my disgust. “And what did you say the starting wage was?”
“How old are you?”
“Sixteen.”
“And this is your first job?”
“Yes.”
“Five forty an hour. Welcome to the workforce.” He pawed my shoulder as I turned to leave.
“Thanks.” I looked at the other workers as I walked out. Everyone was running around, wrapping up chicken, shoveling fries into bags, yelling into headsets, shaking out fryer baskets. No one looked happy. And the place reeked. When I was out on the street, I brought a piece of wig hair to my nose and smelled it. It smelled like a grease trap already, and I had only been in there for twenty minutes. This was going to be a problem. I was only supposed to wash the wig once a week, max.
I got on the bus and hoped there would be a message for me on the answering machine from the manager of the video store.
But there wasn’t. Just my dad propped up on the couch, cutting up beer cans with an X-Acto knife and listening to Maury Povich admonish gangster mothers.
“Dad, guess what?”
“Chicken butt?”
“Well, yeah. Sort of.”
“What?”
“I got a job! I start tomorrow!”
“Where?”
“Cruisy Chicken!”
“Do you get free chicken?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, you should work that into your contract.”
“Okay…”
“So, that’s good. This is your first job, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, don’t make it your last.” And then he turned back to his mountain of mutilated beer cans.
I was too tired to ask what the hell he was doing with the cans. I went upstairs and studied my lines for the play. I wished that my sisters had been there to read for the other parts. The three of us could have acted out all the characters. That would have been a riot.
“TAMAR! PHONE!” My mom was home from yoga.
I went to the parents’ room and picked it up. “Got it. Hello?”
Mom listened in for a minute and then hung up.
“Hey, Tamar, it’s Roy.”
“Oh, hey. What’s going on?”
“My cousin and his girlfriend are coming in tomorrow from Lethbridge.”
“Okay…”
“Yeah. So anyway, we’re going glow bowling.”
I said nothing. I saw the horrible note again in my mind.
“You know that one on the Deerfoot?”
“Um…”
“Well, would you like to come with us?”
“Bowling?”
“Glow bowling, yeah.”
“Uh…”
“My cousin will drive.”
“Ah, what the hell,” I said. “Sure, I’ll come.”
“Cool. We’ll pick you up around eight.”
I hung up and went downstairs. Mom was making broccoli salad, and Dad was getting a beer from the fridge.
“Is it okay if I go to the Glow Bowl tomorrow night?”
“With who?” she said.
“What’s that?” he said.
“Roy and his cousins. Glow-in-the-dark bowling.”
“Is Roy your boyfriend?” Mom asked.
“No! Ew!”
“I’m just asking. It’s okay if he is.”
“We’re not. He’s not. He’s just a friend who happens to be a boy, okay?”
“Okay.”
“So, can I?”
“I don’t see why not. David?”
“Who’s driving?”
“Roy’s cousin.”
“How old is he?”
“I don’t know. Twenty!”
My dad grunted.
“As long as you make sure to call us when you get there and let us know you’re okay, and call before you leave and let us know when you’ll be home,” Mom said.
“And be home before ten!” Dad said. He hobbled back to the living room, waving a crutch for emphasis.
“Fine,” I sighed.
This is what I will have to deal with for the rest of my life: paranoid parents, crazy early curfews, no driving with anyone under twenty years old and
constant interrogation. All because my stupid sisters had to go and die. Frigging idiots.
Don’t think that. Don’t think that. God. I took a deep breath and held it in. Then, right before my lungs exploded, I slowly, slowly let it out. I went into the living room and gingerly readjusted Dad’s leg so that I could sit on the couch with him while he watched the news and cut up cans.
“Dad, what are you doing?”
“Dr. Zwicky said I needed a project.”
“So you’re cutting up beer cans?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s…interesting.”
“It keeps my mind off the pain.”
“In more than one way…”
He chuckled. It was a rare sound from him lately.
“Two birds with one can, eh?” I said, kicking a can over to his side of the couch.
“Shh!”
“What?”
“What’s that noise?”
“What noise?”
“Shh, listen.”
“I don’t hear anything.”
He clicked the TV off.
A humming sound was coming from upstairs, directly above us. It would stop, then repeat, stop, then repeat, again and again. I closed my eyes and listened for a moment. It was strangely soothing. I opened my eyes and looked at my dad.
“It’s your mother. She’s doing that yoga chanting thing again.” He reached into the cooler he kept beside the couch, cracked another beer and switched the TV back on.
That night I prayed. I prayed that all of my hair would grow back. I prayed that working at Cruisy Chicken would be okay. I prayed that my mom and dad would be okay. It took a long, long time for me to fall asleep. The sky had already begun to lighten when I finally drifted off, and I worried that I would sleep through my alarm and be late for my first real day of work.
Mom dropped me off at Cruisy Chicken the next morning.
“Good luck, Tamar. It’s a proud day.” She smoothed some of the hairs of my wig. She was getting all gushy over the fact that I had my “first real job.”
“Don’t get too excited, Mom. Besides, it’s not a real job. It’s a McJob.”
“Well, you’re going to do great.” She leaned over and gave me a kiss on the cheek.
“Thanks.” I hopped out, slammed the car door and hoped she wouldn’t honk as she pulled out of the parking lot.
She honked.
I worked from 11:00 AM to 7:00 PM. I bagged fries and chicken and buns for eight hours. My skin was radiating chicken grease by noon. Only one person was nice to me. A guy named Mike, who said he was in grade ten at my school. I had never seen him before. He showed me how to close the tinfoil dishes faster by running a plastic knife along the edges. He told me we got free soft drinks during our shifts.
Don didn’t work on weekends, and I was glad he wasn’t there. The assistant manager’s name was Karen. She had bleached-blond hair that she wore in a high ponytail. Her roots were coming in and had formed a dark crown around her hairline. On my fifteen-minute break I walked across the plaza to get some fresh air. I felt like throwing up. All I could smell was grease. A thick film of grease sat heavily on my skin, and I tried to scrape it off my face with my fingernails.
I could see the lights from the movie theater flashing around in the sky above me like the Bat-signal, and I wished I was working there instead. At the end of my shift, Karen asked if I could work the same hours the next day.
“Sure,” I said. But I’d rather stab myself in the eye with a fork, I thought.
Mom was waiting in the car for me when I came out. “How was it?”
“Fine,” I said.
“Did you bring any chicken home for dinner?”
“No. I never want to eat chicken again.”
She laughed. “Your dad likes chicken.”
“I’ll bring him some tomorrow then.”
When I got home, I threw my wig in the sink to soak the grease out of it. Then I realized I wouldn’t have time to comb and dry it before Roy came to pick me up. I would have to wear a bandana. I had a shower and tried to erase the static blare of a hundred thousand orders for different Cruisy Combos rattling around in my head.
The doorbell chimed around quarter after eight. All three of us froze. No one had rung our doorbell in a long time, and it sounded hollow, eerie.
I slid across the hardwood floor and flung open the door.
“Hi,” Roy said.
“Hi.” I grabbed my coat and purse as the parents crept toward the doorway. “Mom, Dad, this is Roy.”
“Hi, Mr. and Mrs. Robinson.”
“Pleased to meet you, Roy,” Mom said, smiling like he’d told her he’d discovered the cure for cancer.
Dad nodded, narrowing his eyes.
“What about your dinner, Tamar?” Mom said as I turned to go.
“I’ll grab something at the bowling alley.”
“All right. Take good care of her, okay, Roy?” Then my mom enveloped me in a huge hug, as if I would be gone for a year or something. She never failed to embarrass me.
“Sure thing,” Roy said.
“Let’s go. Bye!” We ran through the falling snow out to his cousin’s car, a black Volkswagen bug. Roy and I were crammed in the back, and Roy’s cousin, Lenny, and his girlfriend, Miranda, were sitting pretty up front. Lenny wore a gray toque; Miranda had black hair with bright red streaks that cascaded over her shoulders. I was exceedingly, wildly jealous of her hair. She looked like she belonged in a music video. Just looking at her hair made my innards ache with longing.
Miranda was a hairdresser at one of the upscale salons downtown, and Lenny was studying biochemistry at the University of Lethbridge.
“What are you gonna do after high school, Tamar?” Lenny asked as he merged onto the Deerfoot Trail.
“I’m not really sure. I mean, I don’t…I haven’t put much thought into it.”
“Oh.”
An awkward silence filled the little car.
“A paramedic, maybe.” I was surprised as shit to hear myself say that. I hadn’t even thought about it before that very moment. “Helping people through their emergencies, you know.”
“That’s brave work.” He studied me in the rearview mirror.
“I could never do that,” Miranda said. “Too much blood.” She squirmed in her seat. “Oh, can we go to Peter’s Drive-In? I love the food there! Can we, Len? Please? Please?”
“No sweat, my pet,” he said. They made me want to barf.
The three of them ordered burgers and fries. I got a chocolate shake. The smell of the fries made me want to barf too, because I had been swimming in fry grease all day.
When we got to the bowling alley, we got lane number seven—my lucky number. It was really cool under the black light. Glowing stars and planets and aliens and spaceships floated on the walls and ceiling around us. Everything white looked ultraviolet. Especially people’s teeth. Miranda ordered a Mike’s Hard Lemonade and Lenny ordered a Heineken. Roy got a gin and tonic.
“For yourself?” the short blond server asked me.
“Um, I’ll have a lemonade too, I guess.” What the hell, I thought. You only live once, and they never ask for ID at bowling alleys. I excused myself and went to the pay phone to call the parents.
“Hello?”
“I’m here. Everything’s fine.”
“Tamar! Thank God.” I heard her cover the mouthpiece and yell, “SHE’S OKAY!” before saying, “Your father was having a panic attack because you took so long to call. He thought—”
“We went to Peter’s Drive-In first for burgers.”
“Well, you should have told us.”
“Mom!”
“What?”
“You gotta relax.”
She breath
ed into the phone.
“I have to go. It’s my turn to bowl.”
“Okay, have fun, sweetheart. Have fun. Call before you leave. And be safe.”
“Bye.”
I went back to lane seven and took a big gulp of my hard lemonade. It was good.
“That’s pretty awesome.” I pointed to Roy’s gin and tonic. It glowed bright purple under the black light.
“I know. It makes it taste better too.” He laughed. “Want a sip?”
“Sure.”
I didn’t totally suck at bowling—I even got a few strikes. I enjoyed the feeling of getting a strike, the sound of the ball hurtling down the lane and the pins smashing into each other. I liked the weight of the smooth glowing ball in my hand, and the way the machine gently placed the pins back in perfect order each time they fell. Lenny and Miranda were actually pretty funny, in a cheesy sort of way. He would pat her bum encouragingly when she got a gutter ball and say, “Next time, peaches.” And when she got a strike, which only happened once, she got so excited that she leapt into his arms and wrapped her legs around him, and they both howled with joy. Roy gave me high fives every time either of us got a strike.
I caught myself laughing a lot, even though I was trying not to smile with my mouth open because the black light made everyone’s teeth look freaky and gross. It was fun. It was good to be out with people. To not think about my hair, my sisters, the parents, that awful note. To just pretend to be normal for a night.
When Lenny pulled into my driveway, Roy jumped out of the car. “I’ll walk you to your door,” he said.
I saw Lenny shoot him the thumbs-up.
We stood facing each other on my doorstep; bits of snow sparkled under the beam of the porch light. “Thanks for inviting me tonight,” I said. “I had a lot of fun.”
“Me too.”
I stared down at Roy’s checkered sneakers. My heart was squirming in my chest. Then he pulled me into him. We hugged for a long time, my face pressed against his collarbone. He smelled like snowflakes. Then he stepped back and moved his face in toward mine, but I turned my head quick and ducked inside. “Bye!” I said as I closed the door.
“Goodni—”
The parents were waiting up for me. Mom pretended to be watering a plant by the door, like she hadn’t just been peeking out the front window. Dad was propped on the couch, drinking beer and cracking nuts open with a nutcracker.
The New Normal Page 7