by Suzette Mayr
— Well, thanks, Grampa, said Ginger.
— What’s your name again? asked Grampa.
There was a third glass of milk. He cupped the glass in both hands. Took a sip.
— Who? Me? Petra asked. — Petra.
— Nice to meet ya, said Grampa.
— Hello, Mr. Dobrovolný.
She sipped her milk, her hair hot and gnarled around her ears.
— You’ve met Petra before, said Ginger. — Remember last Monday? Remember the Saturday before?
— Oh, said Grampa, — I thought she was the other one.
— Very funny, said Ginger, his face flowering into a red red rose.
— What? asked Grampa.
— Nothing! shouted Ginger, flexing his biceps, his jaw.
— Yeah, really funny, said Grampa. — I’m a regular jokester.
— Who’s the other one? she asked.
— Nobody, said Ginger. — Grampa’s drunk.
— A fine sweater, said Grampa, his movements stiff as he stooped to gather up the soft yarn in his hands. He stood, stretched the sweater out in front of him. — Now this is an old style, he said, thumb stroking the argyle pattern. — I was selling the same pattern back when I worked in the men’s department at the Hudson’s Bay Company. Before I met your grandmother, back when I was hanging out with the boys.
He folded the sweater to his chest, neatly folded the shoulders, the angles crisp, and set it on the dresser. He stroked the sweater as though it were a new mink coat. — Your other friend wore an argyle vest last time he was here. Brown and red. Now you’ll match your friend, huh? Like you’re both on a team or somethin’.
— Thanks, Grampa! shouted Ginger, the tendons breaking through his neck.
— Good-looking boy, that one, said Grampa.
Petra furiously wheeling the possibilities in her head of who Grampa could be talking about.
Grampa shouted on his way up the basement steps, — I know you’re legally an adult, but I’m not very happy with you down there with a girl and your bedroom door closed like that!
They listened to the graduated creaking as Grampa hobbled up the stairs. The sigh of the floor above them when he reached the top.
— I’m just sayin’! Grampa shouted, and then the kitchen door clapped shut.
— Maybe I should go home, said Petra.
— Okay, said Ginger. He ripped off the shirts he had on before, then poked his arms into a long-sleeved, navy blue shirt, and pulled it down over his head. Then a white T-shirt. Then a brown.
— Really? asked Petra. — I was joking.
Ginger crammed a whole cinnamon bun into his mouth, his back to her.
— Put on the sweater I gave you, she said.
He tugged at the neck of the sweater the whole drive to her house, running his finger along the inside stitching. When she gave him a final kiss goodbye in the car, she squeezed his crotch.
Ginger groaned, and she didn’t let go of him until she felt like it.
— Happy Anniversary, she said.
The best anniversary they’d ever had.
Then mid-anniversary week, in between periods one and two, her cello in her arms, Tamsin moaning in her ear about how she didn’t know where she’d find a dress to wear for grad, Tamsin’s boobs looking like ripe little mandarin oranges in anything she wore so what was the problem, a camera flashed right in her face because suddenly the room turned white and she saw spots— but there was no camera, just the sweater— her sweater— the dead boy wearing it, inside out.
— That’s not your sweater, you fag piece of shit, she said to the dead boy, she clutched her cello case, was this close to thumping his nose into the back of his head, but that would damage her hands and she couldn’t trust Tamsin not to drop her cello if she gave it to her to hold, Tamsin clumsy as a baby goose.
— Whatever you say, Condoleeza, he said. — I’ll try to pretend you’re not on crack.
— Who? My name’s not Condoleeza.
— Condoleeza Rice knew how to play the piano, stuff a broomstick up her ass and bomb a country all at the same time too. Talented.
He tossed a bag of Skittles into his locker.
— You stole that sweater, don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.
She poked her finger in the air. Spoke slowly, so he would never forget it, and the words spilled from someone else’s horrid mouth even though that someone else’s mouth belonged to her face, — You go near my boyfriend again and I’ll rip your dick off and then I’ll kill you. Now give me that sweater.
He had long, thick eyelashes, like an ostrich’s. She would have killed for those eyelashes. His eyes were iced-tea clear.
— I know you like girls, Condy, he said.
She spun to Tamsin, Tamsin sputtered.
Did Tamsin blab about their dozy little kiss two years ago? Petra’d been half asleep.
He clattered his skateboard out of his locker, slammed the metal door closed and swept on his coat as he sauntered away. The dead boy wearing her boyfriend’s sweater, inside out, skateboard under his arm, and she wanted to slam her fists, two axes, into his back, cello be damned.
He told her she liked girls. Announced she was a freak like him.
She wanted him decapitated, a cop stumbling then slipping in his broken brains; thrown from the back of a truck into a ditch, his body ripped in two; murdered and squished into a shoebox; ripped open by a stray bullet; mauled and half-eaten by a Rottweiler; paralyzed and dead from a rotten egg.
She was so angry, pus squirted from her eyes. She almost smashed her cello to the shiny tiled floor. She wanted to break glass; she wanted to poison Patrick Furey to death. She pulled a marker out of Tamsin’s pencil case and scrawled hatred on the soon-to-be-dead boy’s locker. She would get him.
She didn’t scream or start crying when she saw Ginger the afternoon she saw Patrick in his sweater— while they fucked in his car in a nearby back alley during their spare. She didn’t want to scare the bunny from the bean sprouts.
She unstraddled herself from his lap, her spine snubbing the ceiling of the car. Leaned her head back onto the passenger seat window. Stuffed Ginger’s jacket behind her head.
— He stole the sweater I gave you, she said. — You can’t deny it.
— He didn’t steal any sweater. I have the sweater, said Ginger. He poked at the car stereo, the music exploding.
— Where is it then? You haven’t worn it since Friday. I cannot tolerate this song.
— I can’t wear it every day. You shouldn’t have written that on his locker.
— You wear it nevery day! You only wore it when I asked you to. Wear it now. Who cares.
— We’re having sex. We’re busy, he said.
He leaned in, missing her mouth and tonguing her cheek.
— Drive to your house and get it.
— Kinda mean, writing that on his locker.
— Why don’t you just tell him to go away? If you just told him to go away he’d leave us alone. What do you care? Sweater. Let’s get it, bunny.
— Us? What does it have to do with you? You have no evidence.
She could feel forest fire blasting out of her ears.
She shifted her head. The ribcage of a lilac bush crowded the window on her side of the car. In less than a month it would be their fifth-month anniversary. If this was how he felt about her gifts, maybe she’d just wrap up an empty box with pages ripped from a gay porn magazine and give that to him.
How she loved Ginger’s thick hair under her hands when they kissed, his slick skin. His hurried weight when he was inside her. How he ate calzones, the strings of mozzarella cheese reaching from the calzone to his mouth.
She thumped him on the shoulder.
— You don’t have a crush on that boy, do you? she teased, looking into those tiny holes in his eyes, the burbling human machine behind them. She made sure her voice was teasing, teasing him. Teasing information out of him.
He blinked.
— Holy fuck. You fucking cocksucker, she said. — Did you kiss him? Did you let him fuck you?
— The sweater’s at home.
— You’re lying to me you’re lying to me you’re lying to me you’re lying to me, her body shaking the car, shaking the lilac bush.
— Don’t…
She kneaded a handful of his T-shirt, twisted, the hairs in the cotton flattening and shredding in her fingers, Ginger’s skin hot inside the fabric. She cried so hard the words shredded in her throat.
Knit one, purl two. Here bunny bunny. After school, Wednesday after the Monday the boy died, Petra scoots into a seat by the window on the bus to her piano teacher’s house. She chatters with Tamsin, Kate and Angela, reties her scarf when they talk about Patrick Furey and the grief circle and her absent boyfriend Ginger. Closes her mouth and looks at the pattern of the mud splatter on the window when Kate says Patrick was a waste of plasma. She dips her head down and down spills her hair all over her face, the reassuring pomegranate shampoo scent. Tamsin and Kate are in the string section of the orchestra, Angela plays French horn, but Petra’s going to be a famous classical pianist or cellist, she can’t make up her mind— she should have applied in December for an audition to get into Juilliard but she has settled for the University of Calgary here in town for now so she and Ginger can be together. The bus lurches and spins in the snow, the passengers thinning out as it grinds its way down the streets.
She’d written out loud that he was a fag, and all the fussing about the sweater — she didn’t do anything wrong, no one can blame her for anything, come here bunny bunny.
But her stomach is punching her because Ginger hasn’t texted her in two days. She needs the sweater back. She needs to pry open that locker with her bare hands, no matter how many witnesses mill about the hallways. She will have to get someone to get the sweater out of the locker. What if the sweater isn’t in the dead boy’s locker? Her fingers itch.
Ginger won’t do it, no matter how much she tugs on his fly with her teeth. If he ever wants her to tug on his fly with her teeth again.
She will sneak to Ginger’s house after piano. He can drive her home. Ginger belongs to her. The dead boy’s germs sizzling and infecting. Ginger is hers.
She wonders what the dead boy’s body is doing right at this moment. Is he bloated? Does he smell? Is he blue? Is he rotting underground? Is he burning? She remembers a black-and-white photo she once saw of the face of a hanged World War II Resistance fighter, the woman’s skin bloated and chapped-looking. Petra chews the end of a lock of her pomegranate-smelling hair. It tastes like hair.
Faraday
Faraday leans her thumb on the buzzer. Uncle Suzie’s voice crackles out an unintelligible gurgle, the loudspeaker ancient.
— Me! she calls.
The door buzzes and clicks itself unlocked. Because Uncle Suzie has always said that Faraday can stop by, no matter when, and talk about anything she wants. — That’s what Uncle Suzie is for, Faerie, says Uncle Suzie.
Uncle Suzie good for a laugh even though he has an apartment the colour of bat poo.
Faraday’s father says, — Are you sure, little brother, as in, That’s the worst idea her father’s ever heard, but Uncle Suzie pokes her father in the chest and repeats to Faraday, — Anytime.
— Don’t piss me off even more, Dave, he hisses to Faraday’s father. — My gorgeous niece needs someone to talk to about unicorns for christ’s sake. Non-believer.
— That’s right. Non-believer, says Faraday. — Thanks, Uncle Suze.
Uncle Suzie, stroking Faraday’s ponytail and flinging his brother a throwing-star look. His poor, fucked-up little niece and her unicorn fetish. And she’s seventeen years old. He blames his brother Dave and Dave’s kidney-shaped wife Shirley for screwing her up so royally. — I wonder if she isn’t a touch developmentally delayed, Dave once said and Shirley nodded.
— It’s called having an imagination, said Suzie, nearly thwacking their heads together.
Poor little fava bean. With parents like Dave and Shirley splitting up and getting back together all the time, never making up their minds, Suzie’s surprised it’s only unicorns Faraday believes in.
Faraday pushes open the door into the apartment when the door doesn’t open to her knock. She can smell the ghost of cigarette smoke, hear the bursts of hot air from the heating vents, the erratic bumping sounds of Uncle Suzie digging through a closet in the other room. She drops into the swivel chair in the living room, dying sunshine slipping through the blinds and spotlighting the floating dust motes, and spins.
Earlier, Uncle Suzie at the Walmart, fast as Wonder Woman, using all the power he possesses to swipe umptillion pairs of X-tall pantyhose into his Safeway bag. If the clerks don’t notice, well then that pantyhose was destined, right? Uncle Suzie in the spare room now, trying to find room in the closet to stash away his loot.
— You hungry, honey? he calls, dabbing sweat off his forehead, crumpling the Safeway bag with his other hand.
They chomp on nachos with melted Cheez Whiz and mild-level salsa, sip Chambord on ice from perfect crystal glasses with gold rims, click on the TV to Ellen DeGeneres, then watch the videotape of Uncle Suzie’s show last Saturday night.
— Oh my god, says Uncle Suzie, — I look like I have a fucking Easter basket on my head. What was I thinking? Oh my god. The rest of me, however, is looking gooooood, yessssssssssss, Uncle Suzette looks good. How are you doing, Faerie?
— I like the hat, says Faraday. She dips her nacho first into the Cheez Whiz, then into the salsa. Crunches. — That guy in the audience looks just like my principal, Mr. Applegate.
— So hoooow was your daaaay, sings Uncle Suzie. He lifts out a swath of gold lamé, folds of blood-red tulle, snow-white tulle, three spools of hunter-green ribbon and a spool of black lace from his sewing basket. — That’s a nice handbag you’ve got, he says. — From the Cluny Museum tapestries, I see. One day we’ll go to France and stand right next to the real thing. You phoned your folks and told them you’d be home late from school, right? I don’t want your dad losing his rag on me.
— Today and yesterday have been preternaturally awful, Faraday sighs. Pokes with her tongue at a fragment of chip wedged between her two front teeth.
— Do tell, do tell, says Uncle Suzie. He unfolds the gold lamé on the floor, unfolds a sheet of paper with a dress pattern printed on it and pins the paper down.
Faraday fingers the stray threads along the fabric’s edge, disguises the tears spurting out of her face with a burp.
— You can tell me about your today and yesterday, Suzie mumbles, his mouth bristling with pins. He spits the pins into his palm and pokes them back into the pincushion. The snick snick of purple sewing scissors biting through paper, through cloth, Suzie’s tongue sticking out the side of his mouth.
— A boy in my English class committed suicide day before yesterday, says Faraday. She dips another nacho in salsa and crams it into her mouth. She can feel the s in suicide slide greasy around her tongue and down her throat. The spice in the salsa pricking her palate, her cheeks.
— I don’t like Mondays either but that’s just over the top! says Uncle Suzie. He leans back on his heels. — How do you feel about that?
— He gave me back my eraser, says Faraday, and tears spurt from her face.
Uncle Suzie snicks the scissors closed while Faraday drops from the chair to the floor and crawls to Uncle Suzie on all fours, Suzie’s hands darting and grabbing spilled pins from out of Faraday’s path.
— He gave you back your eraser? Uncle Suzie octopus-hugs Faraday in his arms, he can hear his own blood cells rushing traffic jam in his ears.
Faraday starts to babble, — David’s too busy working on his marriage to Shirley. He’s too busy having intercourse with her so she won’t leave him and she’s too busy fellating him to pay attention to distractions such as me and my emotional well-being.
She puffs out her chest as she says these outrageous, scandalou
s things about her parents, she can feel the blood race to her face, and she knows if they knew of Uncle Suzie knowing their family secrets her mother would stop talking for months, for years, and her father would swoop into another asthma attack. But in the evenings while she tries to unravel her physics homework, puzzle out another ho-hum novel or play or poem for English, she can hear them working on their marriage, hear her father’s wet whimpers. Her parents make her want to bury herself like a wasp larva into the back of a dying caterpillar. Her parents make her ashamed to be human and needy in that ugly way. Her head was already boiling and now Patrick Furey in her English class has gone and done this.
Uncle Suzie’s skin puckers, bubbles and nearly bursts. And why isn’t he surprised when just at that moment the phone rings shrill, punches into his ear and of course it’s his brother screaming that Faraday is missing.
— Heeey, brother. Yes, she’s here, says Uncle Suzie, red-faced, snotty, teary niece under one arm, phone hooked into his ear.
Faraday curls up into Uncle Suzie’s armpit.
— Don’t— shut up— you!— you listen— Dave! says Suzie. — It’s called sensitivity—
— No! says Suzie into the phone. — I will not tell her that. Look, if you’re married to a crazy bitch that’s not my — I don’t think she’s a crazy bitch, you — Faraday’s having a hard — no, hard day at—
Uncle Suzie holds the phone away from his ear and shouts into the mouthpiece, — Why? Because I know how damaged you are, you fucking-asshole-who-must-have-been-adopted-because-there’s-no-way-in-hell-my-mother-could-have-given-birth-to-a-Reptiloid-like-you!
Faraday pulls herself away from Suzie, and smooths loose hairs away from her face. She slurps up the final drops of her Chambord and melted ice, licks the sweet off her lips, bites a nacho in half, secretly pleased that there’s at least one person on the planet who stands up to her parents. She imagines where her bed could be if she moved in, right next to the window in what’s now the furniture graveyard slash sewing room. She and Uncle Suzie could put up proper sets of shelves for her unicorn collection. She could catch a ride to school with Suzie in the mornings. She could study for her departmental exams, and then her university veterinary exams at the kitchen table, and they could play video games when she needed a break. She’s told Uncle Suzie over and over again that she would be a superb roommate. They could be Will and Grace, Bert and Ernie. Romeo and Mercutio if Romeo had never met Juliet.