by Suzette Mayr
The father switches on the TV, yanks up the volume, the television’s electricity jolts him, the stabs of sound assault. He punches the remote control through commercials swirling with sparkling, plasticized hair, snowy teeth so big they could eat a child; reality shows set on beaches, grubby contestants pulling rickshaws, crying and hugging contestants with manly jaws and swelling breasts, reality-show stars punching their fists into the air in triumph; law shows starring rectangular grey suits, pearl earrings, posed behind polished wood desks and glass doors; lab coats, spilling ponytails and glistening lips, haggard handsome men frowning, stethoscopes looped around their necks on hospital dramas.
He pauses the flicking.
A tall, busty, black woman in a pointy-shouldered catsuit aims her space gun at a giant lizard in gold shorts. The lizard roars, the lizard lunges, the woman shoots. — I am Colonel Shakira! she shouts.
He presses the spongy button on the remote and grows the sound up and up and up.
The TV flicking across his face, and his wife rests beside him on the couch, her hand on her knee, her other covering her mouth, the unlined mouth of a much younger woman, a shiny, sweaty, weeping teenage girl, her profile their son’s profile, that gleaming ski-jump nose tip their son’s. They watch their son’s favourite television show, the one they always nagged him to turn down, could you please just turn it down a couple of notches because there are other people living in this house too who want to keep their hearing. Why don’t you watch it on your laptop in your room? Don’t sit so close to the TV. I don’t know why. Just don’t.
Colonel Shakira on the TV screen toasting a glass of green drink with the gold-eyed lizard to the closing credits. The boy’s father on his knees in front of the sofa, trying to trap her voice with his hands before it darts away.
Clem
The next night, Suzette has a shift at her day job at Emperor’s Steak House. She needs to pay for all that criminally expensive lipstick somehow. And her name is no longer Suzette, her name is Clem, and that’s what the chef calls her when he says, — There’s no more sole, Clem, and Clem rubs her hand across her bald head and pretends to shed big, just-about-to-be-clubbed baby-seal tears because sole is the very popular alternative to steak in this restaurant.
— The salmon any good tonight? Clem asks as she pulls on her waiter’s jacket, clips on her bowtie.
— Salmon’s always good, says Chef.
— But not as good as the sirloin.
— Never as good, says Chef.
Clem serves the customers plates of meat and potatoes in expensive drag. Scampi-in-herbs-and-butter drag, salmon-in-parsley-and-shrimp drag. Grapes stamped on by Spanish, French and Italian men and women, fermented then poured into bottles: grape juice also in drag.
She slides plates in front of businessmen who specialize in not saying thank you when she puts down the basket of bread, refills water glasses, fetches glasses of scotch or cognac that cost more than all her takings in one night at Galaxy Lounge. That’s all right— she knows that if she strutted in here one day all done up, wearing the pink cocktail frock she just finished sewing two nights ago, for example, all of them would be punching each other to go home with her hot tight ass. Or laughing and lapping it up at her show as she makes them drink shooters from her mouth, or mimes them sucking her cock (always later on, toward the end, after the fourth round or so of drinks). Once she has enough money in her purse, once she gets too old and fat for Galaxy, she might take up dressmaking full-time.
— I’d like the sole.
— I’m sorry, Clem says. — We’ve run out of sole, but the salmon is ambrosian.
— You know, says the woman, looking at her companion, — I don’t think I’ll have anything. I’ll just have a glass of water.
The woman covered in fine layer of sawdust. She wears a suit of coarsely woven silk, brown in one light, violet in another, the fabric swishes and whimpers around her as she shifts in her seat.
— That’s a beautiful suit, says Clement. — Is that raw silk? It is! Stunning, my dear, she says. — I sew myself. The salmon is really quite delicious.
The woman strokes her sleeves, strokes the silk across her lap. Is this waiter what her son would have become? This fey man with perfectly plucked eyebrows and little gold earrings? No. Maybe he would have. Yes! He would have been the best waiter ever. Her son a phoenix, a unicorn, rare and beautiful. He would have been perfect even if he’d decided to wear a frothy, sherbet-pink ballgown and sing ‘Some Day My Prince Will Come.’
— I’ll have the salmon, she says.
— Very good, says Clem.
After work Clem and the other waiters crowd a long table at the Ethiopian restaurant, the table scattered with menus and water glasses, the standing waiters clapping the backs of these sitting waiters. She’ll just have a couple handfuls of lentils because she’s trying to watch her figure, she throws her head back as she tips her lite beer into her mouth. Makeda, the waitress in the white head-scarf, kisses Clem on the very top of her bald head and the whole table laughs.
Maureen
Maureen still wobbly and sticky-mouthed from the wake at the pub, the perplexing waves and waves of tears, a bottomless Martian sea washing from her face, about what, she can’t remember, but she thinks it must have been about everything: the dead boy she can’t remember and couldn’t save; the thought of her husband sloppily sucking her cousin Lorraine’s toes the way he used to suck Maureen’s; how this unit on Romeo and Juliet never seems to end; how she’s never gotten around to just sitting down one summer and finally writing that novel she’s always wanted to write, basically she’s done nothing with her life; the run in the nylons she’s never worn before, she just pulled on the first leg and whammed her toe right through, the nylon laddering up from her big toe to her goddamn knee. She and Pam at the karaoke mic caterwauling ‘Take This Job and Shove It,’ then inhaling a mountainous plate of suicide salt-and-pepper chicken wings and BBQ short ribs; Maureen resuming an encore and singing ‘Get Over It,’ dedicated to all those whiny parents; Maureen creeping her car slowly slowly along all the dark back alleys and small side streets at two in the morning, gravel crunching under her tires, the occasional lurch and thump of a pothole under her car, until she finally pulls up and into the cold automatic light of her garage because she’s not drunk, she just wants to be safe.
But today will be a new day.
— I need to talk to you, she snaps at Max, not in his office trapped behind a desk, but standing up, face to face like adults. On the polished tiles of the main floor hallway, five minutes before the bell and chaos.
— Yes, frowns Max, stopping on his way to the main office. His thick white hair falls in his eyes.
— You, she points at him, at the knot in his navy-blue-and-red striped tie, — you told Patrick Furey that because his skateboard was stolen off school property, that you couldn’t help him. And now he’s dead.
— That is correct, says Max, smoothing his tie down his front. — I told the boy that I couldn’t help him with his skateboard, but it’s not a logical leap to suggest that because I did not help him with his skateboard, he then passed away.
— Well, sputters Maureen, — that’s just preposterous, it’s preposterous.
— It’s policy, says Max. — Will that be all?
— I’ve heard that Walter has a picture of you on his desk.
— So I’ve heard, says Max dryly, glancing down the hallway to the main office, then at the very tip of his pointy tie.
— Well?
— Well what?
Maureen’s head thumps with old Guinness, old suicide-flavoured short ribs, old songs about crappy jobs and bad love affairs.
The bell sounds, its low drone an annoying poke.
Max regards her in that supercilious way of his, his face all edges and angles, the straight nose, the broad, angular jaw and chin. The freakish, prematurely white hair.
— I would recommend you go see one of the crisis team counsellors, M
rs. Mochinski. Do you want me to set up a meeting for you?
— No.
— So you’ll do it yourself?
— Yes, Mr. Applegate.
— All right then, says Max. — Let me know what the outcome is.
Students asteroid around and between them, jostling and bumping, sweeping Maureen up and away to her room in their wake.
Walter and Max
Walter humming as he chops carrots and celery into neat, low-cal matchsticks on the cutting board, the knife thunking the vegetables, the plastic cutting board.
Max a wooden cutout on the floor in the condo’s living room.
— What are you going to do, Max? calls Walter from the tiny kitchen. — Fire me? Ha! Do us both a favour.
Walter chewing a juicy chunk of carrot, Walter chopping. He fishes a radish out from a plastic bag. Cuts slits into it, then plops it into a bowl of ice water.
Max hunched. An unsmoked cigarette rolling between his fingers, the neat, smooth roll of paper, the perfume of the tobacco. He’s been smoking more than ever since Walter left him. His lungs on fire. His life on fire. That word, fire, Max a butterball turkey spinning on a barbecue spit.
— Fire, says Max, sniffing the cigarette as Walter lumbers into the room. — I could. Max cross-legged on the condo floor, littering Walter’s turf. — You have only three years until you retire, Walter, says Max, looking up, his whole face, his head, one giant tired bloodshot eyeball. — It’s not so long. It doesn’t need to be difficult this way.
Walter pushes a plastic container over the carpet toward Max. — Carrot?
Walter bites into a radish. Crunches as though chewing radishes is an Olympic sport. — I never knew how awesome radishes could be, says Walter. — I’m learning how to make radish roses. Found out how on the internet.
— All I’m saying is the photo and my reputation…, says Max.
— All you’re saying is all you’re saying.
— There’s no need for rudeness. We can get you stress leave.
— I’m leaving the picture on my desk, says Walter, peeling open another container of chopped celery. — And I’ll get a T-shirt with our faces on it framed in a pink heart. I will spray-paint your car: Max Applegate is a Flaming Faggot. That’s what I’ll do. Walter pops another radish in his mouth. — Awesome! Radishes have basically zero calories.
— Marry me, Max, says Walter. He grins, a radish-rose smile unfolding petal by petal on his face.
Marriage a fountain of fire, a lake of fire, a towering inferno.
— There’s no need to attack me, Walter, says Max. He flips the filter end of the cigarette into his mouth, pushes open the balcony door. Fumbles his lighter out of his pocket. The reassuring smell and hiss of the flame.
Jésus
He’s chosen two colours. Black and red.
The joy that floods him as he shakes the spray paint cans up and down is the kind of joy he feels when he pops open a first can of beer, bites the head off an Easter bunny, the little metal balls inside the paint cans clicking ready, the cans’ weight easy in his hands for he has done this many times, he is an artiste, and this is what he was meant to do.
The terrific spray and sizzle as the paint follows his hands sweeping fast and smooth over the perfect grey concrete canvas of the north stairwell wall, the smell of success, the smell of completion as he announces his message to the world, for he is a fucking prophet:
THE UNICORNS ARE COMING
THE UNICORNS ARE COMING
Max
I confess to Almighty God, says Max, — and to you, my brothers and sisters, that I have sinned through my own fault, in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done, and in what I have failed to do.
The inside of the confessional dim and tight, but velvet warm. Unambiguous.
— Father, forgive me for I have sinned, says Max. — It’s been a week since my last confession.
— I was jealous of my neighbour, sighs Max. — For one moment I coveted his vehicle because my vehicle was so badly damaged in an accident I worry that it won’t operate as well as it used to. I shouldn’t be thinking such superficial thoughts.
— I was unnecessarily sharp with my assistant and made her cry. She’s still new. I should be more considerate.
— I had unkind thoughts about the mother of one of my students. I know she’s just trying to do her best with the lot she’s been given.
— Um. I watched far too much television this week. I watched television when I should have been doing work.
Max wipes his eyes.
— I am sorry for these sins and all the sins I can’t remember.
Max hears Father Tim rustle on the other side of the screen. Father Tim intones in his jolly baritone about impatience and envy, and some scripture he could recommend to help Max deal with these feelings, and Max thinks about going home to his empty house, grey and dense with the smell of single-man cigarette smoke, the lights out, the spirit gone. Nothing but a wooden structure holding some tired plants, stray cat hairs, one oversized television.
— Your sins are truly forgiven, finishes Father Tim. — Go in Peace.
— Thanks be to God, says Max, and his knees creak, the wooden kneeler creaks as he unwinds himself up to standing.
Walter
Pop, Walter tells his father. — I’m a fairy.
— No such thing as a black-man fairy, Wally, says his father.
— And I’ moving to Vancouver.
— No such thing as Vancouver, Wally, says his father.
Applegate, Max — Will you sleep with Crêpe Suzette on your date? asked Walter.
He sat on the edge of the bed, Max standing and holding up ties against his shirt, the jacket he wanted to wear. Jeans and polished cowboy boots because he wanted to show he knew how to relax. He whipped a tie around his neck, folding end over end, and pulled it tight. Straightened it while looking in the mirror.
Tightened. Tightened.
There’s such a thing as a tie being too tight, Walter said.
Max pulled the tie even tighter. I like it straight. Is it straight? he asked.
Let me fix it, said Walter. I just have to get something.
He rummaged in the bedside drawer and turned to Max, slicing the tie off with scissors, with a stainless-steel chew and chop.
That’s better, said Walter. He grinned, but he also tasted grit between his teeth, his whole body slumping into glum in this beige bedroom and in the company of this beige man who used to be his.
Max clapped both hands to his throat and turned to the mirror. In his stump of a tie, he looked like he was ten years old again, about to go on his first date with a girl, Madeleine from Sunday school. Holding hands with her on a park bench, their hands chilled and sticky, their mothers making cooing noises that sounded as though they were perched and fluttering in the trees.
I guess it is, said Max. He loosened the knot from around his neck.
Walter was going to retire early.
Walter hugged Max goodbye when he left their house, now Max’s house.
In the screaming silence of the condo, he zipped closed his suitcase, a suitcase the size of the house he was leaving behind, wrapped a towel around Lieutenant Fong and plopped her into her carrier. He loaded the bag, Lieutenant Fong and her litterbox into the rental car. He would drive west and keep going until he hit the ocean and the most homosexual neighbourhood in western Canada. Lieutenant Fong would finally know what a hydrangea was, what the sea smelled like. Walter would get a haircut, or maybe get a pedicure, and if anyone called him a sissy, his answer would be Yes.
Mochinski, Maureen (née Rule) — As Maureen dressed for work that Monday morning, poking her legs into a hot pink thong with a red heart embroidered on the pubic mound, then her nylons, a grey blouse and black jacket, she snagged the blouse on the sharp corner of the bathroom commode and pricked a tiny hole in the right front panel. She snaked her arms into the blouse, buttoned it closed, tucked it into her black slacks. Buttoned on her
blazer. She did a half-pirouette in front of the mirror to make sure the jacket draped evenly in the back, smoothing and tucking the blouse, the collar, pulling the jacket straight. She draped a towel over the mirror. She inserted her pinky finger into the tiny hole in the front of her blouse, thought of the boy, his face, his skateboard in the river, and she pulled with her finger, unzipping a larger tear in the fabric, her pink camisole shouting through the hole. She did a big yoga inhale, a big yoga exhale. She unhooked her purse from the closet door, her bag spilling with red-inked essays, and locked the door to the empty house behind her. The school website would need to be updated, the name taped to her mailbox redone. Today she would tell Joy in the main office that her last name was Rule. Only fifteen more years, then she could retire, could finally be free. Ms Rule.
Mai, Petra — Petra swept her hair out of her eye, swept away the sad smell of her pomegranate shampoo and hummed as she marched across the stage, shook hands with Mr. Applegate and collected her diploma. She adjusted the mortarboard on her head and walked down the steps, headed out the auditorium doors into the rest of her life. Her grandmother and parents clapping their hands, their faces smiling wrinkled and gooey, her mother runny-nosed and red-eyed. Petra had brand-new shoes on her feet, the heels clicking hard and firm as she walked to the beat of the song still yammering in her head. She would hear it properly once she started university in September. Her feet hammering, a fleshy metronome.
Tomorrow was Tuesday, and she still had to go to school even though she had graduated. The outside smell of buds on the trees washing out her nose. Going to school was what you did on Mondays, go to school, but she was bursting with being done, soon she would stop being controlled by her parents, her grandmother would stop giving her granny-style underwear decorated with bright green frogs, pigs with eyelashes and corkscrew tails. Ginger in another part of the alphabet, accepting his diploma, his grandfather Mr. Dobrovolný hugging him, clapping him on the back. Ginger strode past Petra. As if she were dead. One day the Mondays would stop, it would be Tuesday, and she could take a breath.