“Nice save, Dad.”
“Will Eric be driving?”
“No, we’ll probably walk.”
“But it’s pissing rain out there!”
“Okay, we’ll drive then.”
“And how old is Eric?”
“Um, twenty?”
“And still in high school? He must be a real dummy. I don’t want my daughter going out with some dummy.”
“Arrrgh! Okay, he’s eighteen, but you have to let me ride in his car to prom! It’s only a few blocks away.”
“I’ll think about it.” He crossed his arms over his chest.
“Whatever. I have to go get ready.” I ran upstairs and showered and scrubbed my head with the loofah. Tonight would be my head’s big debut, and I wanted it to be clean and shiny. I smoothed lotion over my scalp and face. I put on some black eyeliner and then carefully drew the two dark arches of my eyebrows. I glued on my eyelashes. I actually saved a lot of time not having to shave, wax, trim, tweeze, shampoo, condition, blow-dry or style. Being bald was probably going to save me thousands of hours a year. I slipped into Mom’s black dress and fastened the glittery necklace, then looked at myself in the parents’ full-length mirror. Something was missing.
Lipstick.
I went into Abby’s room and found a tube of brilliant red lipstick called Bleeding Heart. I put it on.
“Perfect,” I heard Abby say.
I smiled into the mirror. She was right: red lipstick really pulled it all together. I tucked the lipstick into my purse in case I needed a touch-up during the night. It didn’t creep me out this time that Abby had been the last person to wear it. It was kind of special, in a way, kind of nice.
I stood in front of the mirror again. The naked head was a shock even to me, but I couldn’t wait to see the looks on everyone’s faces when I waltzed in with it exposed. It was going to make for a memorable evening, that’s for sure.
I went downstairs to sit with Dad while I waited for Eric to arrive.
He reached for his crutches and stood up when I came into the room. “Tamar! You look…stunning.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
“So, you’re not wearing your…”
“Nope.”
“Wow.”
“Well, you know what they say: hair today, gone tomorrow.”
He smiled. “That’s a bold move, T.”
“Don’t you mean a bald move?”
“You’re, like, the bald and the beautiful!”
“I could have my own show!”
“To baldly go where no one has gone before!”
“Yeah!”
“Fortune favors the bald!”
“That’s right!”
“Bald as love!”
“B-A-L-D! Tell me what you’ll give to me!”
“B-A-L-D! Super beauty you can see!”
“Bald and courageous!” I threw up my arms and we both collapsed onto the couch in a fit of laughter.
Eight o’clock came, and I caught myself tapping my foot and looking at the front door every two seconds.
Then it was eight ten.
Eight fifteen.
Eight twenty.
I could feel my dad staring at me during a commercial break.
“He probably just wants to be fashionably late,” I said.
Dad nodded and turned back to the TV.
I went to the bathroom. I figured by the time I came out, Eric would be there, standing on the front doormat, introducing himself to my dad, apologizing for being late. Maybe he would even have a corsage for me. I put on my best smile to greet him and went out.
He wasn’t there.
At eight thirty my dad said, “Do you have his phone number?”
“No.”
“Maybe you should call directory assistance.”
“He’s probably just running late, Dad. Relax.”
He shrugged and turned back to Xena: Warrior Princess.
I went to the kitchen and drank a glass of water. Then I had another one. Then I made some tea. It was eight forty-five.
“You had better call him, T. Something could have happened. He could have crashed his car on his way over here.”
I rolled my eyes. “If he’s not here by nine, I’ll call.”
“Up to you.”
I went to check the answering machine to see if there was a message from Eric. There was a flashing red light on the display. I held my breath and pressed Play. The person had hung up without saying anything. I dialed *-6-9 to find out who had called. I didn’t recognize the number but called it anyway. There was no answer. I let it ring about a thousand times. Then I hung up and dialed 4-1-1. The operator gave me three numbers for Gaines. None of the numbers matched the one *69 had given me. I tried the first one, but there was no one there named Eric. I tried the second one and there was no answer. I tried the third one and it was busy. I didn’t know what to do. I went back into the living room and sat on the couch and watched the clock on the wall while my dad tried to find a good movie on TV. After five minutes I went back to the phone and tried the third number again. Still busy. I tried the second number. I let it ring a thousand times. It was nine twenty-eight. I went back to the living room and slumped against the couch.
“I’m sorry, sweetie,” Dad said. “But I’m glad I get to hang out with you.”
I closed my eyes. That didn’t make me feel any better. It made me feel worse. I had been stood up. Stood up! And I could have gone with Roy or Scott, but no, I had to say yes to Eric “Bubblehead” Gaines and wait around all night for him to show, and now it was too late. I couldn’t go with Roy or Scott, and Eric wasn’t coming. I wasn’t going to the prom. I could do nothing but sit on the couch in absolute misery with my sallow father and watch a kooky movie about boys who get leeches stuck to their dicks and then find a dead body in the woods.
I had been duped! He had done it to make me look stupid. To make me feel shitty. So he and his rugby friends could have a laugh at my expense. I was a pathetic loser who people pulled mean tricks on. Either that or he was killed in a terrible car crash on his way over here. Which is the only excuse he would have for not calling and not showing up, and the only way I could possibly save face in this whole sordid situation. I was, to say the least, crushed. I felt like one of the beer cans that guys like Eric Gaines put on the pavement and then stomp into a flat disk. I should have known that someone like him would never actually want to go to prom with someone like me.
“His loss,” my dad said.
Yeah, right. I brushed away a tear that had escaped without warning.
“All right. I’m going to show you something,” Dad said. “It’s time.” He reached for his crutches and got to his feet with some effort. I stayed seated, hanging my head in disgrace.
“Come on.” He reached over and gave me a few light slaps on the arm. “No use feeling sorry for yourself.”
I closed my eyes. Another hot tear slipped out.
“Let’s go.”
I pulled myself off the couch as if I weighed a thousand pounds and followed my dad through the laundry room and into the garage. He flicked on the light.
Two little airplanes and a helicopter hung from the ceiling; they were made entirely out of beer cans. Their shiny aluminum bodies glimmered in the brightness of the bare lightbulb. The top shelf held four beer-can model cars. Dad reached to pick up the one closest to him.
“I thought I’d start with what I know, so I made a Honda.” He glanced at me, a boyish grin curling his mouth. “This here is a replica of the first car Honda ever made. The S500. It debuted in 1962.” He handed me the car. “It had a five hundred thirty-one cc engine with forty-four horsepower at eighty-five hundred rpms, weighing in at fifteen hundred pounds. This one weighs about two.”<
br />
“A sports car.” I opened and closed one of its tiny doors. “Cool.”
“But then I thought, why should I just stick to Honda?” He grabbed the next can-car on the shelf and handed it to me.
“A Lambo?”
“Yep! And check this out.” He slid the car door up to open it.
“Just like the real ones!”
“Yeah! You know, I’ve always said I wanted a Lamborghini. Now I actually have one.” He laughed and so did I. “Then I made this.” He pointed to the next vehicle on the shelf, a Hummer. “Just for fun, you know.”
I smiled. I couldn’t picture my dad driving around in a Hummer. He was more of a wood-paneled-station wagon type of guy.
“And this one I just finished today.” He gingerly picked up a Model-T Ford.
I put the other cars back on the shelf so I could hold it. I turned it over in my hands, examining all the tiny details and miniature pieces.
“Kind of gives a whole new meaning to the name Tin Lizzie, doesn’t it?”
“Tin Lizzie!” Dad laughed. “I never thought of that. That’s perfect!”
“These are really good, Dad.”
“Nah.”
“Yes!” It was true. I was amazed at what he had made in the weeks since he’d broken his leg. “You could sell them.” I handed the Tin Lizzie back to him.
“You think so?”
“Sure, why not?”
“I don’t know. It’s just junk, really.”
“No way. They’re awesome.” I touched the propeller of the helicopter. Its blades spun multicolored beer logos around and around, until they all blurred together.
“Well, I’m glad you like them.”
“I do.”
“You can have one, if you want.”
“Really?”
“Sure, any one you like. Or I could make another one, just for you.”
“Cool.” I let my eyes slide over the cars and aircraft. I kept coming back to the Model-T. It was so classic. I picked it up off the shelf. “Can I have this one?”
“It’s yours.”
“Wow, thanks, Dad.”
He put his arm around me and gave me a sideways hug. I let myself be squished into his rib cage and caught his crutch before it toppled over.
fourteen
That weekend I started working at Mik’s Milk and Gas. I had to wear a uniform, but at least I didn’t have to pay for it. It was a blue-and-white-striped shirt with that stupid thumbs-up cat on the breast pocket, blue polyester pants and a baseball cap that also had the cat on it. I had to learn how to work the till, check lotto tickets, make coffee, pump gas and diesel, check oil, wash windshields, fill fluids and pump propane. I hated pumping propane because it smelled disgusting, like being trapped inside a crate full of rotten eggs. I was terrified that a tank would explode on me. If Scott was around, I would get him to do the propane, but he was usually out pumping gas and yakking with truckers. Scott trained me and it was only the two of us working, so that was good.
“This is your emergency button. Wear it around your neck at all times.” He handed me what looked like a green plastic doorbell on a chain.
“What does this do?”
“If you press it, the security company will call the store. If you don’t answer, they’ll wait five minutes and call again. If you don’t answer the second time, they’ll recommend that the police send someone by to check on you.”
“I could be dead by then.”
“Exactly.”
And that’s pretty much how things worked at Mik’s. I still made five forty an hour, even though I was risking my life every time I filled a propane tank or pumped gas for someone who refused to put out a cigarette. Once in a blue moon I made a dollar or two in tips, but it was usually from some scuzzwart in a pimped-out Honda or a little shiny truck with a lift kit, desperate for a date. A lot of kids from school came in and sucked up to me to try to get me to sell them smokes.
“Hi, Tamar. I really like your, uh, hat.”
“Tamar! You look so great today! I just love your new look. You’re so gutsy.” Etcetera, etcetera. Sometimes I’d sell them the ciggies, sometimes I wouldn’t. It depended on my mood that day and if I thought they deserved to die of lung cancer or not.
Mik’s Milk was okay. Instead of smelling like a grease trap, I smelled like gasoline, diesel and propane. Delightful.
Roy had ended up going to prom with Marcy Mavis, aka Glinda, the Good Witch of the North. I could just see her on Roy’s arm, wearing a pink ball gown, lighting up the room with her sunshine-yellow hair. I tried not to picture Marcy and Roy kissing in the limo, at the hotel after-party, in the indigo light of dawn, but I knew they probably had. And that knowledge sat heavy in the pit of my stomach, like rotten fruit. I guessed I should just be glad that he hadn’t gone with Beth. She had asked him, of course. But he’d said no. Obviously. After what she’d done to me, his friend, he was morally obligated to say no. Big Boobs Dewitt sure didn’t play her cards right on that one. Scott went with Andrea, for old times’ sake, I guess. I heard he wore a pink tuxedo. He was really coming all the way out of the proverbial closet.
I didn’t see Eric Gaines at school for a while, and I secretly hoped he had died. Okay, okay, I didn’t really hope he was dead, but I hoped he was seriously injured. Then one day, not long after the heart-crushing prom stand-up, I saw him hunched over a water fountain. My heart plummeted into my belly, then bounced back up to my throat. Should I confront him? Or should I avoid him?
I had to know, so while he noisily slurped up water, I went and stood behind him, preparing to call him a shitfaced asshole. When he turned around and saw me, he looked right through me as if I were invisible and started to walk away. I moved to block his path.
“Hey, Eric. What the hell happened to you on prom night?”
“Oh.” He shrugged. “I changed my mind.”
“Pff, what an assmunch,” I heard Alia say in the back of my head.
“You could have called me. I thought maybe something terrible had happened to you.”
He shrugged again, as if it was no big deal, as if he hadn’t done anything wrong, as if he hadn’t left me totally and utterly devastated.
I rolled my eyes and speed-walked away, holding my head up high. I vowed never to speak to him again as long as we both shall live. Jerkass.
I caught up with Roy at his locker.
“Guess what I got this weekend?” he said, grinning.
“Uh, venereal disease?”
“No…” He frowned at me.
“Oh. What?”
“I got my full license.”
“Really? That’s great. Congratulations.”
“Thanks. Want to go for a drive sometime?”
“Um…yeah, sure.”
“How about today after school?”
“Okay, I guess that could work.” My dad would assume I was at rehearsal, so I wouldn’t bother asking his permission. He would never let me drive with Roy because he was only eighteen.
“Cool, I’ll meet you here at last bell.”
“Great.” The valves in my heart fluttered as he sauntered away.
We got Coke slushies and then climbed into Roy’s mom’s red Toyota Tercel and cruised south. I switched the radio to CJSW, the University of Calgary’s student-run indie station. It was playing “Walk on the Wild Side,” and we sang along with Lou Reed:
Went to the Apollo, you should have seen him go, go, go.
They said, “Hey, Sugar, take a walk on the wild side.”
I said, “Hey, babe, take a walk on the wild side.”
All right. Huh!
We laughed, and I stuck my hand out the window, letting the warm spring air rush past my fingertips.
Roy never went over the
speed limit. His driving was smooth and calculated. He seemed pretty comfortable at the wheel, as if he had been driving his entire life instead of only a year. I knew he was nothing like the boys who had played Chicken with my sisters in the backseat. He drove us out to The Big Rock in Okotoks.
The Big Rock is a massive chunk of mountain that hitched a ride with a glacier sixteen thousand years ago. In its original form it weighed nearly seventeen thousand tonnes. According to Blackfoot legend, it split down the middle when bats attacked it to make it stop rolling.
Roy and I scaled the larger piece of rock and sat down when we made it to the summit. We looked out over the pale yellow fields that lay in all directions. The sky above us was flaming orange and pink and gold.
“I have some other news.” Roy scratched a piece of shale into the rusted rock face beneath us.
“What’s that?”
“I’ve been accepted to the engineering program at UBC.”
“Really?”
He nodded.
“Roy! Congratulations!”
“Thanks.”
“That’s great!”
“Yeah.”
“So, are you going to go?” I tried to swallow the stone that had lodged itself in my throat.
“Well, yeah. UBC was my first choice.”
I looked down. “That’s so great.”
“You could come with me, Tamar. We could rent an apartment together. We could eat sushi, we could go to Science World—that big silver dome, you know?”
“That would be amazing,” I said. “But I have to finish high school.”
“There are millions of high schools in Vancouver!”
“Millions?”
“Okay, hundreds.”
I flicked a mosquito off my arm.
“Promise me you’ll at least think about it. I would love to have you there,” he said, staring into my eyes.
“Okay.” I tried to smile. “I’ll think about it.”
“You’re my best friend.”
“And you’re mine.”
Roy put his arm around me then, and I leaned into him, resting my head on his shoulder. He tilted my face toward his and ever so gently kissed my lips. It was sublime and pure and perfect. I wished it could go on forever.
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