by Suzette Mayr
— I’ll take out the mulligatawny from the freezer for lunch later, Walter calls from the dining room. — Plus, I think you should call Bozenna to fill in for you this morning. You’re not going to make it in time to Mass, Max.
Max yanks the cigar from his mouth. — Mulligatawny I cooked! he shouts, and kicks another box with a meowing cat stamped on the side. Inhaling cigar smoke. He stomps up the stairs to finish getting ready for church.
Sunday afternoon. Is Walter leaving because he’s met someone else? Sunday night creeps in and Walter’s sock drawer still contains three pairs of socks, plus one unmatched sock and Walter is still puttering with his growing stack of bogus boxes. Next week the crisis team will be gone from the school and that boy, that boy Furey. Well. Max has to laugh at all the boxes pyramided in the middle of the kitchen floor, Walter’s drafting table from when he was actually a teacher folded and on its side, propped against the stove. Like he thinks he’s actually moving.
— Is there someone else, Max says. — Is this some kind of mid-life affair?
Max opens the cutlery drawer, lifts out the tray and turns it upside down all over the floor, the brisk cascade of stainless steel, spoons bouncing and the can opener gouging, chopsticks splattering.
Walter kicks cutlery aside as he reaches up into a cupboard for a measuring cup.
Pizza arrives. Max runs to answer the doorbell, his slippers bumping, kicking forks and knives across the linoleum floor, zinging the baseboards. One pepperoni, bacon and mushroom and one veg, the pizza man says. The greasy kind with the dips; as if pizza weren’t fatty and greasy enough, pizza dip is Walter’s thing. Max thinks about eating something healthy— he opens the fridge door and scans the shelves. Grimaces at the sight of the old hunk of steak at the back of the fridge, glowing even more green, the circular piece now shrinking. Max wonders how Walter will remember to pay his utility and phone bills, will he remember to take his migraine pills or at least drink an espresso when he feels a migraine coming? Will he take the treadmill? Max bought it. Over his bloated, stinking body will Walter get the treadmill.
He clenches his fist, his jaws, every muscle in his body when he stands in the doorway to the kitchen empty of boxes and drafting table, cutlery still washed up against the walls. Max left to go buy cigarettes, and when he comes home the house is completely dark and he has to flick on the lights as he moves from room to room, lighting his own way instead of homing in on Walter’s light as he normally would. He dumps his boots by the door, walks straight into the bedroom and changes into his pyjamas, then marches to the spare room to see if Walter took the treadmill.
The treadmill handles glint in the same way and the machine stands in the same spot it has always stood since he brought it home. He can’t believe Walter’s left him burdened with the clunky thing.
Maybe Max is dead now and this house echoing like an abandoned warehouse is what hell looks like. He’s stuck in a horror-story television show.
If only.
Maybe now Walter will remove Max’s photo from his desk.
Maureen
At the Sunday afternoon yoga class, lying flat on her face, her body hot and sore. She starts to snivel; really, has she no control over her emotions anymore? What is happening to her, for Christ’s sake? She smears away a glob of tears with the back of her hand, tears blotting her yoga mat.
So young. He was just a little thing, his voice barely cracked probably, and she thinks about visiting that cemetery in Europe that one time with Alexey and seeing the names of the boys on the tombstones who died in World War I, the same age as the boys she teaches, but those other boys had guns in their hands and they were told to save the world. And all she’s been able to think about this week is her stupid divorce from that stupid man.
She wonders how she would feel if Jésus died. Is she evil because sometimes in the past she has wanted him dead? She doesn’t want him dead (she breathes in), she just wants him to go away on a long vacation (she breathes out). She loves Jésus, she loves them all, those kids, like baby animals with mouths like truckers and hormones playing pinball. Not their fault. Not his fault. That she is crying is a good sign because it means the anger management is happening.
— Are you all right? asks the flat-stomached little instructor, Deirdre. — Do you want help with your pose?
— No, no, sniffs Maureen. — I’m fine. She cranks her neck and shoulders up into an upward dog, her elbows jutting out to the sides like wings, her lower back crackling. She juts her hips into the air into downward dog, not bad, until Deirdre with her flat little abs and muscled little arms grabs Maureen’s hips and pulls her buttocks back and up, no this is good this is good it’s good to exercise she didn’t exercise enough when she was with Alexey, it’s good to think about things other than work, the principal, her ex-husband emptying their joint bank account and claiming it was his money after all, her cousin Lorraine breaking the front screen door on the house when she tried to force it closed during that one visit.
Maureen will concentrate on her chakras, her mula bandha. She clenches the band of flesh between her vagina and her anus, she will concentrate only on that band of flesh and how no man has even come close to that band of flesh for almost a year, that band of flesh a lovely trophy in her sexlessness. Arms up, come to standing, her arms were also up when she shouted at Jésus in the hallway, furious at him for pointing out that of course no man would want to be married to her. She raised her arms, wanting to crash down and crush him, just like she is raising her arms now. A ting in her rib cage suddenly paralyzes her, she can lower her arms, but she can’t bend over, can’t sit on the floor, can only shuffle to the door of the yoga studio, gather her purse and coat from the hook, and hobble out the door and down the street.
— Breathe it out! calls Deirdre after her, her mula bandha no doubt clenching perfectly.
Jésus
He whistles because whistling is part of the calm mystique, he wants to look casual, he’s the quantum of solace, like if anyone asks he’ll just say — Fuck, yeah, this magazine is mine, fucker, who the fuck you think you is, and he’s pleading the First Amendment they hassle him anymore. No one’s getting a piece of him. Carry the magazine in his left hand, walk around then slip the cherry gum into the magazine. He needs some cherry gum because his breath is rank today, like he ate something that died and then took a liquid shit, that rank. Then to the nail polish row, a bottle of blue nail polish for his mom he cups in his palm to hide from the camera, switch the mag with the gum to the hand with the polish. Blue like he imagines a bluebird’s feathers might look like. Or a dead bluebottle fly. Pretty. Saunter back to the magazine row, bend down like he’s looking at the bottom rack, slip the gum into the cuff of his jeans, the nail polish into his runner, tucked in the arch of his foot. Slip the mag into the back of his pants. He changes his mind: he’ll buy the gum. He makes his way to the cashier, gum in his hand.
— Yes I would like a bag for my purchase, he says to the clerk. — You have a nice day, ma’am.
The electronic doors slide closed behind him. The winter sun outside the drugstore envelopes him in a bright warm hug.
He saunters down the street, just one of many pedestrians out for a Sunday walk on this crisp, shiny day.
He notices her ass first, neat and round in its little black pants. He approves. The hair gathered up into a sloppy, tendrilly bunch at the back of the head, kind of goldy, kind of sexy the way it’s falling down. She has a rolled yoga mat flopped carelessly over one shoulder, and she walks along very slowly, stops at the crosswalk light. Her head turns to the side and he sees that she’s old. And not only old, but he knows her, it’s Mrs. Mochinski, Mrs. Mochinski his nemesis, out in the real world with real people, out of her Homeroom of Horrors. He halts his step, watches her from behind as she shifts from foot to foot in the cold, her ass cheeks subtly flexing with each step.
In profile, her cheeks shiny and red and pretty. And he remembers that she did let him walk across the classroom
on the desktops one day without bawling him out. Mrs. Mochinski’s secret identity: a yoga babe.
He follows her for two blocks, staying half a block behind as she walks, almost hobbles along. Then he aims for her back, lowers his head and starts to run, runs toward that spot on the back of her coat, bull’s eye. X marks the spot.
The soles of his runners slap the bare spots on the pavement. At the very last second he angles around and screeches to a halt right beside her at the red light.
— Hello, Mrs. Mochinski! he chirps, and laughs at the naked shock on her face. — You look nice today!
Then before she can start yelling, he jumps into the traffic, dodging cars, an intrepid winter cyclist, and runs out the other side of the street to freedom.
Petra
To show just how much she loves Ginger no matter what trials their relationship suffers, Petra begins writing him another song. She doesn’t need a special occasion to give Ginger a gift. Their relationship is not going through any kind of trial; they still love each other. Incredibly. — I’m telling you, Petra tells her mother, — no one has ever felt this way for another human being.
In her playpen, Petra’s little sister Odette sticks both her hands in her drooly mouth and slurps.
— I felt the same way with my first boyfriend in junior high, Leslie Dolecki, says her mother, which makes Petra want to punch her mother’s big, lumpy, soccer-mom ass. — Now clean up that bat’s nest rat’s nest room of yours, madam, her mother says, — before I throw all that crap out into the driveway for the neighbours to see. Odette, what a talented girl you are! What a genius yes you’re a genius who’s a genius!
Odette burbles, pulls both hands out of her mouth with a soggy pop.
Petra and Ginger’s love is as massive and rich as Beethoven’s Ode to Joy— as eternal, unique and holy as Romeo and Juliet’s. No. Petra doesn’t want any dead boys in her and Ginger’s love story. They’re basically betrothed, right? Ginger’s love for her is awful and awesome, as in inspiring awe, even though he hasn’t been at school since Tuesday, and she hasn’t been alone with him since last Saturday night, and he has stopped texting her — she hopes to fuck the reason Ginger missed practically a whole week of school isn’t what she thinks it might be. That boy dropping out isn’t her fault and no one can say it is — dumb, ugly girls with unicorn fetishes certainly can’t tell her it’s her fault, and she will beat the living shit out of her if she tries, and Ginger can’t blame her, he wouldn’t dare. But he never will, especially after he hears the new song she is composing. The first three bars play in her head over and over— how it resonates— that oomph of bells and timpani, jingle and boom, the most beautiful music anyone in the world has ever written. Valentine’s Day, Ginger told her he loved her he told her he loved her he told her he told her he loved her he loved her. She will believe him. Oh, the French horn.
Odette dangling from her hip, Petra’s grandmother says, — There’s no point worrying, you can’t stop a man from cheating, it’s like trying to stop him from sprinkling pee on a toilet seat. Her grandmother’s hair so fine and thin the sun reflects off her scalp as she stands beside the piano. You can’t stop a man from cheating from cheating from cheating, you can’t stop a man from you can’t stop a man stop a man stop that man now play.
Petra knows you can’t stop a man, but Ginger isn’t a cheater even with that sweater fuck-up. She’s written other songs for him without giving him the lyrics, like the song about how she wanted to kill Patrick Furey for trying to steal Ginger away from her, ‘November Crime.’ Ginger got hard to that one. The other one about how magical it was to give each other their virginities, ‘Moth to a Flame,’ not so well. He suggested they play a video game.
She’s going to the University of Calgary for their music program even though she would prefer Juilliard because Ginger can go to university in Calgary, but his grandfather won’t let him go to New York. He told her his grandfather said he didn’t have that kind of money. She asked Ginger, — Doesn’t your grandfather have a pension?
His grandfather doesn’t understand moving to a different city to go to university when Ginger can get a perfectly good education and free room and board here in town.
Petra told him he should point out to his grampa that Grampa’s not his mother or his father. Ginger reached for the radio and blasted it on.
— You know, says Petra’s mother, her sloppy bum waggling around the kitchen as she prepares Odette’s banana and sweet potato gloop, — when I was in junior high and my parents made your uncle Leonard and me move to the other side of the city, I really missed Leslie Dolecki because I couldn’t see him often. But it turned out all right. If you and Ginger really love each other, you’ll be able to manage being apart while you go to school in New York, Petra.
If there was some kind of guarantee she wouldn’t get caught and convicted, Petra would have stabbed her mother through the heart with a chopstick.
Petra plays the first three bars of the song for her grandmother. — It doesn’t sound good this way, just on a keyboard all by itself and it’s not done, she tells her grandmother. — But the rest will come. Ginger will ask me to marry him. I’ve figured out the parts. It’s the most beautiful song in the world. I’m going to ask Mr. Baker to have the orchestra play it for the end-of-year concert.
— Aren’t all your songs the most beautiful? her grandmother asks. Odette natters and bangs things in the kitchen. Petra hears Odette smack her lips as she eats her gloop.
Since late Monday night she’s been hearing the beginnings of this song, and she works on it between classes and after school, in bed just before she turns off the light to go to sleep, because it stops her, a little bit at least, from worrying too hard about the graffiti on the locker and Ginger pulling away from her. But she cannot pick it out properly on her piano. The ends of the lines all fall flat, too many echoes and repetition when she can’t predict them. She’s been practising Chopin’s The Revolutionary Etude (Op. 10, No. 12) for a month and when she tries to play it her grandmother finally says forget it and leaves to go wipe sweet potato out of Odette’s hair and drink coffee with her mother in the kitchen. — She’s going to turn into you, her grandmother tells Petra’s mother. — All that talent, all of it wasted for a man. My only hope left is Odette. Isn’t it Odette my sweetie? You’re not going to waste your life like these two, are you? she googoos to Odette.
Petra sits at the keyboard, her fingers itchy in the stretch of black and white keys.
She picks out more possible fragments on the piano, scribbles bits on music-staff paper. Piano and cello, vocals of course— she’ll need to figure out words but they can come later— but much more huge, more lush than just piano and voice. Just writing a few words can’t make someone kill himself— this part of the song, right here, it rings so clearly in her head but clumps out discordant when she plays it with her fingers. Her first true attempt at orchestration: she wants piccolo trumpet, timpani, triangle, glockenspiel, cymbals, cowbells, bells, bass drum, tambourine, vibes, piano, violin, viola, cello, bass, French horn, trumpet, flute, guitar, trombone, a shaker. She knows exactly how triumphant the piece will sound, how gigantic, and how it will wring the tears from the audience’s and Ginger’s tear ducts, and once she’s heard it properly, she’ll finally stop humming it, dreaming it, tapping it out with pencils, pens, forks, knives. Maybe the song came into her head the same second Patrick Furey died— no. He offed himself in the morning, that’s when he did it.
The song will spread its ointment over her flaming, heartbroken soul. She wishes she could cry but after crying so hard at the dead boy’s parents’ house, inside her skull feels scorched, Ginger cutting her off, she fought for Ginger, she really did— she is always fighting for him— she can’t bear him not loving her, and he hasn’t been hers, not really hers, since last Saturday, since, since. She will ask the school music teacher, Mr. Baker, and he will be so amazed by her initiative and creativity, of course he’ll let the school orchestra pla
y it. What a wonderful opportunity to put the school orchestra and the school choir together. It can be a song added to a concert for the parents. Ginger will hear it and come back to her. Perhaps she’ll finally record a CD the way her grandmother’s always telling her she should.
She’ll get Tamsin, Kate, Angela and the other orchestra students to meet with her and rehearse with her, that’s all she’ll need, to hear it once hear it again hear it three times then four times and she’ll be done.
Finally get this song out of her head. Into Ginger’s head. Can’t stop a man from.
Her hands clumping the keys, hunks of dead meat.
— What kind of song is that? asks her mother from the kitchen. — It makes me want to cut my wrists! Play something cheerful. It’s such a beautiful day. I don’t know what someone so young could have to be sad about.
— That song’s a dirge, says her grandmother.
For once correct, her grandmother. Petra’s writing a fucking dirge.
First Monday After Furey
Ginger
For the first time since last Monday, Ginger will go to school. His grandfather makes him put a thermometer in his mouth, the plastic hard and beeping against his teeth.