Basically, I just tried to keep out of everybody’s way. I read some of the books that were on the bookshelf: Catch-22, To Kill a Mockingbird, and The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes. I watched TV when everyone else did but I never got to pick the channel. Sometimes someone would switch it to Cheers, and I would be glad for it.
There was a girl who lived at Bright Light with long black hair who looked familiar, but I couldn’t figure out why. Her name was Meredith, and she was sixteen. She wore dark makeup around her eyes and baggy black hoodies and didn’t say too much to anyone. She had a nose ring, which was kind of gross, but kind of cool too. I knew she liked Cheers because she would laugh when it was on. I knew that she liked to read because I saw her staring at the bookshelf one day. She looked as if choosing her next book was the most important decision she would ever make. I wanted to wait and see which one she would pick, but it got awkward just standing behind her in the hallway while she stared at all the books so I went and watched Kyle and Shawn play foosball for a while. I asked if I could play, and they pretended not to hear me. I asked again, louder, and Kyle scored a point on Shawn. Then Shawn picked up the ball and looked at me and said, “If you ever talk to me again I’m going to shove this ball so far up your ass it’s going to pop out your eyeball.” Kyle laughed and said, “Beat it, anus-face,” and they kept playing. I went to my room and got into bed. I stared at the underside of the top bunk where someone had written FUCK THE WORLD ’CUZ THE WORLD IS FUCKED!!! in black Magic Marker. I closed my eyes. I wished that I didn’t have to be in here with all these mean-ass teenagers, and I wished that Gina wasn’t in the hospital so she could take me to Marineland. I thought about dolphins doing flips. I thought about seals barking. Then I thought about dogs barking. Then I remembered something Norm said on a recent episode of Cheers: “It’s a dog-eat-dog world, Sammy, and I’m wearing Milk-Bone underwear.”
Then I started feeling a little bit better, because everyone has to wear Milk-Bone underwear sometimes. I thought about Sam for awhile and wondered what kind of dog he would have. Probably a border collie since they’re the smartest. And even though people like Diane are always giving Sam a hard time about being stupid, he’s not actually stupid, not when it comes to people. He’s actually really smart. Plus, he stopped drinking and turned his life around. Stupid people wouldn’t be able to do that. Stupid people can’t see their way out of their own problems. But maybe Sam would have a mutt, because that would suit him too.
I knew that Sam didn’t know that Gina was pregnant with me or else he never would have left. But one day soon I would find him, and he’d feel so sad and sorry for leaving and missing out on my whole life that maybe he would even get me a dog of my own. Sam would let me work at the bar sometimes. I’d help him polish glasses and change the kegs, and he’d let me bring the dog to work. The dog would sleep behind the bar or else rest his head in Coach’s lap. Rebecca wouldn’t like my dog at first—she’d complain about him all the time and she and Sam would fight about it—but eventually, she’d grow to love him. I’d teach him to sit and roll over and jump up and give me a hug and he’d be the best dog in the whole entire world.
I thought about my dog for a good while and what I would name him, but I couldn’t decide without meeting him first. After a while I got out of my bunk and went downstairs.
Meredith was sitting on the stairs drinking a can of Coke and reading Watership Down. I knew which book she had finally chosen, and I knew I would read it next. Because even if you don’t really know a person, you can sort of figure them out a bit by reading the same books they’ve read. I’m not exactly sure what makes girls pretty or women beautiful, but I could see that Meredith had it, whatever it was. Her eyes were green as grass and her face was a nice shape, not square or pug-like, just round and smooth and nice to look at. She wasn’t fat, but she wasn’t like the girl in the Calvin Klein commercials, either. She was solid, like a tree trunk. I went back upstairs, not because I had to, but because I wanted to pass by her again. She didn’t glance up or move over or anything and I wondered if I had been blending into my surroundings so well for so long that I had actually become invisible.
My grade-six teacher at Niagara Elementary was Mr Zabriskie. He was old and had grey tufts of hair poking out the sides of his head like a koala bear. He wore brown cardigans and drank out of a coffee mug that smelled like Listerine. He was so boring that he even bored himself, and he yawned all the time. I think he was going deaf, too. Either that or he pretended not to hear us. Nobody in my class really talked to me, and I didn’t make too much of an effort to talk to anyone either. At recess I did pull-ups on the monkey bars or read my book or drew comics, and at lunchtime I went downtown and walked around. The truth was that no one in my class was even half as interesting as the kids in the group home.
One day, I was walking around downtown during lunch-hour, and I saw Meredith. She was leaning up against a brick wall in front of a cigar shop twirling her hair around her finger. She wore a short jean skirt with black pantyhose underneath. Her pantyhose had big holes all over them. Then I remembered where I had seen Meredith before. Standing on that same corner. Wearing a tight dress. Leaning into car windows. She looked bored, so I went up to her to say hi and see if she wanted to get a Slurpee or something.
“Get lost, kid,” she said.
“Your name’s Meredith, right?”
“Get out of here. I mean it.”
“I just wanted to say hi.”
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
“Hi, okay? Now scram. I’m trying to work here.”
“Oh.”
A brown station wagon pulled up to the curb and a guy wearing a Blue Jays hat rolled down the window. Meredith stood up, away from the wall. “Fuck off,” she said to me out of the side of her mouth.
I spun on my heel and fast-walked away. When I looked back, I saw Meredith sliding into the passenger seat of the station wagon.
I walked around the block twice but didn’t see the brown station wagon anywhere. I knew what Meredith was doing. Pretty sure. I went to the 7-Eleven and got two Coke Slurpees then walked back to the cigar shop. Meredith was back. She was leaning against the wall smoking a cigarette.
“I got this for you.” I held out the Slurpee to her.
“Really?”
“Yeah. I thought maybe you could use a refreshment.”
“Thanks, kid. That’s sweet.” Her nose ring glinted in the sunlight. She took the Slurpee from me.
“My name’s Tucker.” I stuck out my hand.
“Meredith.”
We shook hands.
“Are you hungry, Meredith?”
“Starving.”
“I was on my way to get something for lunch. There’s this hot dog stand down by the falls—”
“Sure.” She took another sip of her Slurpee and then started down the hill. Her legs were longer than mine, and she walked fast and I had to hurry to keep up. We passed a bunch of wide-eyed tourists, we passed a screaming baby whose mom looked like her head was about to explode, we passed a group of skater kids and one of them spit so close to Meredith his phlegm-wad nearly hit her leg. She gave him the finger but didn’t slow down.
We both put sauerkraut and mustard and ketchup and relish on our hot dogs. Meredith also put banana peppers on hers. Banana peppers make my stomach hurt so I don’t eat them anymore. And besides, they don’t even taste like bananas. We sat on a bench near the statue of Nikola Tesla and looked out over the falls as we ate. The sun was sharp in my eyes and I thought about buying Terminator sunglasses I had seen earlier in the 7-Eleven. Meredith finished her hot dog, wiped her chin with her napkin, and let out a gigantic burp. She didn’t say excuse me.
“How old are you anyways?” she squinted at me.
“Eleven.”
“Jesus.”
“Tucker.”
She laughed. “Why are you at Lite Brite?”
“My mom.”
“Crack fiend?”
“No.”
“Uh-uh.”
“Klepto!”
“What’s that?”
“When you have an irresistible compulsion to steal things.”
“No. She doesn’t have that. She has narcolepsy.”
Meredith snickered. “She has sex with dead people?”
“No! Ew!”
Meredith laughed.
“She has a condition. It makes her fall asleep when she shouldn’t. She falls asleep a lot. And she also gets these attacks where she’s not really asleep. She just can’t move or talk or anything. It’s called cataplexy. She can’t control it.”
“And they took you away for that?”
“No. Not for that. They took me away because she passed out in the middle of the road and got run over by a mini-van and now she’s in the hospital.”
“No shit.”
“It’s very serious. She has bruising on her heart.”
“That sucks.”
“She actually died for two minutes. But they brought her back.”
“No way.”
“Code Blue, it’s called.”
“Shit.”
We stared out at the thundering water. A seagull sailed over us and dropped a crap on Nikola Tesla’s head.
“What did your mom say about it?”
“About dying?”
“Yeah.”
“She said it was like there’s no chalkboard at all.”
“What is she, a teacher or something?”
“No.”
“What’s her job?”
“She’s sort of like you, I guess.”
Meredith looked at me for a too-long second. Then she picked at a hole in her pantyhose.
“Mostly she dances at clubs and stuff, but she also does … the other things. Sometimes.”
“So, you know what I do?”
“I guess.” I shrugged.
“And your mom does it too?”
“Sometimes. Mostly just dancing.”
“You mean stripping.”
“Exotic dancing.”
“Stripping. She’s a stripper.”
I shrugged.
Meredith took out a cigarette. She watched me out of the corner of her eye while she lit it. “You want one?”
I looked out to the falls, at all the white mist billowing up. It was like a giant cloud was trapped inside the waterfall and wanted nothing more than to get back up to the sky with its other cloud friends. “Sure.” I took the cigarette from her and stuck it between my lips. She flicked her lighter, and I leaned toward the flame. Her lighter was black and so were her fingernails. I blew out a mini-cloud of smoke and coughed. I had smoked before, once, in Prince George, behind the grade-six portable, after school with Bryce. It was a menthol cigarette he had stolen from his mom. I smoked half of it, then puked in a garbage can while Bryce laughed at me and smoked the rest. This time wasn’t so bad though, because Meredith didn’t smoke menthols. She smoked Export A Gold. And also because I wasn’t really inhaling, I was just trying to make little smoke clouds. Meredith blew a smoke ring like it was the easiest thing in the world.
“Take a picture, it lasts longer,” she said.
“Sorry.”
She blew another white o that floated above my head. “Where are you from, kid?”
“I don’t know.”
“Come on, you don’t know where you’re from?”
“Paris, I guess.” I tapped my cigarette and the ash drifted down and dissolved into the grass.
“Paris? You speak French, then?”
“Paris, Ontario.”
“Ah. But of course,” she said in a French accent.
“But I’ve lived a lot of different places. I’ve gone to sixteen different schools. That’s why I said I don’t know.”
“Where have you lived the longest?”
“I’m not sure. I’d have to ask Gina.”
“Gina’s your mom?”
“Yep.”
“What’s her stripper name?”
“Angel.”
“Angel,” Meredith smiled. “That’s a good one.”
“Do you use another name?”
She took a drag that lasted an age, then said, “Mary.”
“That’s a nice name.”
“You like it?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t really like it. I thought that it might make the johns be nicer to me. Even if it’s only subconsciously.”
“You mean because Jesus’s mom’s name was Mary?”
“Yep.”
We laughed. A kid rode by us on a shiny silver unicycle and Meredith whistled at him. I wished that I had a unicycle. If I had a unicycle, all of my problems would be solved.
“I like Angel, though. It’s pretty. People would be nice to an Angel.”
“Yeah, they probably would,” I said.
“Are people nice to your mom?”
“I think so,” I said.
“So,” Meredith said. “You’re from nowhere and everywhere, eh?”
“I guess.”
“Where was the last place you lived?”
“Prince George.”
“Never heard of it.” She blew smoke out the side of her mouth.
“It’s in northern British Columbia.”
“BC’s cool.”
“Yeah. Prince George isn’t, though.”
“Where else have you lived?”
“Um, Winnipeg, Regina, Medicine Hat, Calgary, Red Deer, Moose Jaw, Edmonton, Vancouver, Nanaimo, Thunder Bay, Sudbury… some other places. What about you?”
“I’m from Toronto.”
“Cool.”
Meredith took a hard drag off her cigarette.
“How come you came here?”
“Too many people there. I didn’t like feeling crowded all the time.”
“I don’t like crowds either,” I said.
“Plus, the waterfalls are supposed to be good for you.”
“Good how?”
“Apparently, if you’re around a lot of water, it gives off these negative ions, and it makes you feel better, it makes you feel happy.”
“Oh. So … are you?”
“What, happy?”
“Yeah.”
She took a puff, exhaled. “I don’t know. Is anyone?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess, sometimes, maybe.”
Meredith tapped her cigarette. The wind ruffled the ends of her hair against her shoulders. She didn’t look sad to me, she looked … thoughtful. She looked like maybe she’d had more of life than other kids her age, but she was wiser for it.
“Do you like being sixteen?” I asked.
Meredith exhaled a thin stream of smoke out toward the falls. She nodded slowly, her eyes glazed over as she stared into the green crush of water. “It’s okay.” She stood up and let her cigarette fall to the ground. “I have to get back to work,” she said. The cigarette rolled away and smoked itself from a crack in the sidewalk.
“Okay.” I stood up.
I felt dizzy, as if the mist-cloud trapped in the falls had landed on my head and gone inside my brain. Meredith began to walk. I dropped my cigarette on the sidewalk and wondered if the old man in the green rain hat would find it and put it into his soup can. I hurried to catch up with Meredith until she stopped to tie her shoelace. She had the same shoes as me, black and white Converse sneakers. But hers were high-tops and came up past her ankle. When we got close to the cigar shop she said, “See ya later, kid.” I knew that was my cue to leave although I didn’t want to. What I wanted to do was sit on that bench in front of the statue of Nikola Tesla and talk with Meredith all day. I wanted to ask her if she had ever felt happy. I wanted to ask her if her hair was really that black or if she got it out of a box of Nice ’n Easy. I wanted to ask her if she had poked all the holes in her pantyhose on purpose or if they just got that way over time. I wanted to ask her why she was at Bright Light and what her mom’s job was. I wanted to ask her to be my friend. But in
stead I said, “Okay,” shoved my hands in my pockets, and kept walking.
7
After school, I went to see Gina. She was lying on her back staring up at the ceiling, her sky-blue eyes all glassy and blank. For a second, I thought she was dead. A sinkhole in the floor opened up beneath me and started to swallow everything that ever was. The chairs and all the machines and the IV stand got sucked down into the hungry hole. Then Gina’s pinky finger moved, and I could breathe again and the floor closed up and everything went back to its place. She was sleeping with her eyes open, which she sometimes did, but I had forgotten. I wondered if she was sleeping like a normal person or if she’d had a sleep attack. I went to the vending machine and bought a pack of Skittles. Then I went to the nurse’s station and talked to Heather, the fat nurse with the black hairs growing out of her chin. Heather wore scrubs with hearts and teddy bears on them and she usually gave me a honey-dip donut on Saturdays if there were any left. She was the nicest nurse in there. I had thought that all nurses would be nice, but it’s not true. Most of them are too busy to even say hi, and some of them scowled at me if I came in after visiting hours. Heather said Gina had been like that for awhile and they knew she was narcoleptic so they just made sure that she was breathing and her heart was beating, and they let her sleep with her eyes open.
“Do you want to wake her up?” Heather asked.
I shrugged and offered Heather some Skittles.
“No thanks, hon. I’m trying a new diet.”
“The kind where you eat less and exercise more?”
She laughed. “Something like that.”
“Because that’s the only kind of diet that works.”
She smiled for a millisecond then held out her hand, and I poured a pile of Skittles into it.
“When is Dr Chopra going to let Gina out of here?”
“I don’t know, sweetie.”
“Can I talk to her?”
“To Dr Chopra?”
“Yeah.”
Heather looked down at her clipboard, then back up at me. “She’s not in today.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s her day off.”
“But she’s a doctor.”
“Everyone gets a day off once in awhile, kiddo.”
“Not me.”
Niagara Motel Page 4