Beckoners

by Carrie Mac

  “You would’ve said no.”

  “Exactly.” Heather pushed her away and scowled at Zoe.

  Zoe picked up a dishtowel and bent to clean up the mess. Beck pushed herself off the counter, staggered over and grabbed her shirt.

  “No, no, no. Slave boy will do that.” She snapped her fingers. A boy, maybe ten years old, dressed in a sheet draped like a toga leapt to attention from where he’d been washing wineglasses at the sink. “Clean it up, slave boy.”

  He curled his lip at Beck and turned back to the sink.

  “Move it, Malcolm!” Heather pointed a fake-nailed finger at him. “And I swear, you tell Mom, I’ll pull your teeth out with pliers. You got that?”

  Malcolm scurried towards the broken glass.

  “I’ll help him,” Zoe said.

  “Yeah,” Heather said, “You do that, sweetie.”

  “No, no, no you don’t,” Beck said. “He’s mine and I want him to do it all by himself and I want him to sing too. I want a singing slave boy. Sing something!”

  Malcolm muttered something nobody could hear over the music.

  “What?” Beck leaned forward, nearly toppling off the counter. “WHAT?”

  “I don’t know any songs.”

  “You do so.” Beck squinted at him. “You have Mrs. Allan, right?”

  He nodded.

  “Then you know ‘Michael Row Your Boat Ashore.’ Sing that.”

  He shook his head.

  “Sing it!” Heather chucked a plastic cup at his head. “Don’t piss her off, Malcolm. She owns you. Do what she says.”

  Malcolm started singing, his voice a tiny little warble under the bass thump from the dining room.

  Poor Malcolm. He kneeled in the pool of whiskey, ducking his head to hide the tears, his blue underwear peeking out from the folds of the sheet, singing his song over and over as he picked up the glass. He looked so pathetically embarrassed and wilted, Zoe wanted to steer him out of there and take him home and keep him until he was big enough to punch Heather in the face and do some real, lasting damage that would require reconstructive surgery that could be conveniently botched.

  Zoe swallowed back all the nasties she had to say.

  “Happy birthday, Beck,” she managed. If only she’d said no on the first day of school. No to the invitation to sit down. No to the cigarette. If only she’d left the smoke hole before that wide gulf had been bridged between her and the Beckoners.

  Zoe glumly handed Beck the card she and Cassy had made for her. She’d glued stars in the corners and framed it in baby blue fun fur. Beck held it in front of her face and peered at it. She fumbled to open it.

  “It doesn’t open,” Zoe said.

  Brady handed Zoe a drink. She assumed it was vodka, but she didn’t particularly care. She downed it in one go. Yup. Vodka. One thing she knew from booze was that it made moments like these slightly more bearable, and that’s what she wanted more than anything, for this moment to be even slightly more bearable.

  “Is this supposed to be abstract art or something?” Beck was still trying to open the card. “‘Cuz if it is, you kind of suck at it.”

  “My little sister—”

  “Yeah, that’s what they all say.” Beck gave up trying to open it. She tossed it across the room like a hockey card.

  “What’s it supposed to be?” Jazz picked it up. She turned it upside down and then on its side. “If you look at it this way it looks like two giraffes fucking.”

  “Let me see!” Lindsay held up her hand. Jazz sent it into the air, but it fell short, into the whiskey on the floor. Lindsay picked it up by the corner and studied it. The paint bled down the paper.

  “Now it looks like four giraffes fucking!” Lindsay howled. Everyone laughed harder, especially Beck, whose laugh grew shrill when she drank.

  Zoe stood there with a mouthwash-ad grin on her face like she was able to handle being the butt of the joke. Her smile ached, but she couldn’t make it go away, it was as if the alcohol had fixed it, like chemicals fix a photograph. She felt her cheek with the back of her hand; her face was on fire. She reached for another drink and downed it too, waiting for it all to be even just a little bit more bearable.

  “I’m going to show this to Trevor.” Brady grabbed the card as he headed out of the room. “He’ll piss himself.”

  “I know where he is.” Jazz pushed herself off the counter. “I’ll come with you.”

  Fresh air, please, somebody take me outside! Nobody came to her rescue. They just laughed and laughed, like some twisted mental warp scene from a Hitchcock movie. Hadn’t Zoe screamed those words out loud? Hadn’t she? Apparently not.

  Zoe backtracked through the sweaty dancers pretending they were at a rave and out the front door. She went around the back of the house, past a patio crammed with smokers, over a bridge spanning a little pond and along a sandy path lined with fairy lights. The property went way back, at least as long as a football field, but narrower. All along the outer edges of the lawn were little groups of people smoking whatever they were smoking and drinking whatever they were drinking.

  Zoe walked further, past a small circle of wannabe flower children swaying to some retro-hippie guy’s sad attempt at “Stairway to Heaven,” past the last of the lights and into a dark grove of trees at the very back of the property. She sat on a tire swing and looked back at the party. The night was punctuated by the glow of cigarette ends, like lazy fireflies hovering here and there. Heather’s house, more a mansion really, looked like a dollhouse from that distance, lavishly lit up, little dolls in their plastic party poses.

  This was all wrong. Zoe looked at her watch; it was only quarter after ten. There was no way Janika would be ready to go home yet. Zoe counted the money in her pockets, but there wasn’t enough to pay for a cab by herself. Through the trees, she heard a whimper, followed by a harsh whisper. She slipped the money back into her pocket and crept towards the voices.

  The first thing she saw was Beck’s birthday card, face down on the damp ground. Then she saw Brady, up against a tree, his pants loose at the waist, his wide back obscuring Heather, no doubt, whose leg he gripped against his waist. What a grimy slut.

  Zoe stepped behind a tree and held her breath, not sure if she was going to laugh or gag. Then she heard Heather try to say something, but it was muffled. She peeked around the tree, just as Brady twisted slightly to the side. It wasn’t Heather at all, but Jazz, her eyes squeezed shut, cheeks wet with tears. She shook her head, struggling to push his hand away from her mouth. He grabbed both her small wrists in his free hand and lifted them above her head. He took his other hand away from her mouth so he could grab hold of her leg again.

  “Brady, stop,” she whispered. “Stop, please!”

  “Shut up!” He shoved her harder, knocking her head against the tree. “You started this. You can’t just say no, not now.”

  Jazz kept her eyes shut and gulped back another sob.

  Zoe opened her mouth to say something, to scream at him to get off her, but no sound came out.

  She backed away, but then stopped. Was she supposed to stay? Where did she think she was going? Her head pounded. She lurched towards the house, waiting for her voice to come back.

  She knew what she was supposed to do. She was supposed to stop the first person she saw and get help. She was supposed to yank the guitar out of hippie-boy’s hands and smash Brady over the head with it. But she ran past without even slowing down. Where the hell did she think she was going?

  To throw up on the patio steps, apparently. The alcohol seared her throat even more on the way up. She heaved long after she threw up everything in her, then she stood and wiped her mouth with the sleeve of her shirt, while everyone on the patio laughed at her, ice clinking in their drinks, bass thumping from inside.

  Zoe ran. Along the side of the house, down the driveway, out the gate, a sharp right then flat out as if a slash horror villain was chasing her, she ran. She had never run so fast in all her life, but her legs unde
rstood what was at stake and her breath settled into a train-pace that matched her speed. She ran so fast that before she knew it she was at the bottom of the mountain, halfway home. She slowed at the crossroads. Which way was it? She bent over, hands on her knees, and gulped for breath. She tried to remember which way the taxi had turned. It was this road, wasn’t it? Or was it the last one?

  Who knows how long she was there like that. Long enough for the moon to shift higher in the sky. Long enough for Zoe to become very cold. The next time she looked up was when a car passed. It slowed, and then reversed towards her. It was Simon and Teo, in Blouise, Simon’s ancient blue Toyota. Teo always drove because Simon had failed his driver’s test twice now and had given up for a while.

  Simon rolled down his window. “You want a ride?”

  “No, I’m fine.” Zoe was surprised to find that her voice worked now. “I just need to know which way is back to town.”

  “Town? Aren’t you going to the party?”

  “No, I’m not.” She pointed down the road. “Which way do I go?”

  “Uh-uh, no way.” Simon shook his head. “I am not going to wake up tomorrow and find out that you were raped and left for dead at the side of the road. It would be all my fault.”

  The moment the word “raped” came out of his mouth, the image of Jazz shoved up against that tree came crashing back. Zoe started to cry, shoulders heaving as each sob welled up and gripped her by the throat.

  “Honey, you’re crying.” Simon got out. “Teo, she’s crying. Get into Blouise, honey.” He pulled her towards the car. “Tell me what happened.”

  “I was...I just...back there, I...”

  Teo leaned across the seat with a box of tissues. Simon pulled out a handful and dabbed her cheeks. “Let us give you a ride, okay?”

  “I haven’t had a thing to drink yet.” Teo held up two fingers. “Scout’s honor.”

  “Okay,” Zoe sobbed.

  Simon steered her into the back seat. “Where’s your jacket?” He scanned the ground at the side of the road as Teo put the car in gear. “Don’t you have a bag or anything? Hold on, Teo.” Simon climbed in and turned in his seat, taking both her hands in his. “Look at me, Zoe. Are you hurt? Did someone hurt you?”

  “No,” she sobbed. “I’m just lost. Just take me home.”

  As they pulled away, Zoe turned in her seat and watched another Zoe—Zoe the Beckoner, Zoe the weak, Zoe the bitch—standing at the side of the road, a terribly hurt look on her face, like why was she being left there, all alone in the middle of nowhere with no idea how to get home? Zoe hated her, that’s why.

  As they drove, Zoe leaned her head back and watched the streetlights flash by like stars strung in a tidy line. She felt heavy and desperate, panicky. This was what it felt like to fall, to hurtle towards the jumbled corpses of all the other losers at the bottom of the cliff. This must be what it felt like to be Dog. Zoe shook her head; no. Not Dog. April. April Donelly. This must be what it felt like to be April Donelly.

  good morning

  April was asleep on the couch when Zoe stumbled in, Shadow curled up in a ball behind her bent knees. The two of them were snoring. How could she sleep? Zoe wanted to shake her, scream at her, drag her up the mountain to that grove of trees and make her see what she saw. But she just sat there in the dark, wishing she was April, wishing she’d stayed home and watched some B-movie marathon on Channel Two.

  Zoe went upstairs and crawled under the covers. She squeezed her eyes shut. Her heart pounded, racing towards morning with the speed of a silk train. She turned the light on and reached for her diary and spent two hours writing it all out. All of it, from that first stupid cigarette and Beck’s eight ball matches right down to when she’d gotten home and watched April sleeping on the couch. She felt a little better. Her heartbeat had slowed, but still, she lay awake for hours. Every time her eyes drifted closed and she took a deep breath of sleep, she’d hear Jazz’s thin whispers again. No, Brady, stop, please.

  When she did finally fall asleep, it was after dawn. She fell fast into her favorite dream, of swimming in the ocean at night, on her back, staring up at the stars. But it morphed into a nightmare. The water vanished and she fell through a deep black nothingness towards the ocean floor, jolting awake just before she would’ve smashed head first into the jagged rocky bottom.

  The house was silent, except for the patter of rain on the roof. There was a note on Cassy’s pillow in her crib that said April had gone to babysit at number twenty-three and that Cassy was with Barb. Just above her signature she’d written, “Hope you had a great time at the party.” Zoe ripped up the note into tiny pieces and flushed them down the toilet.

  It was amazing, really. Her eyeballs had seen an awful thing, yet they kept on seeing everything else too, like walls and dressers, the clothes she was pulling on, the ground under her feet. Zoe had always thought that once she’d seen something awful, she’d keep seeing it, like those TVs with the little box in the corner with one image running while another one takes up the rest of the screen. But it wasn’t like that; already her eyes had begun to forget, so fast that by the time she knocked on April’s door, Zoe was losing details of the night before.

  Had Jazz really been struggling? Maybe she’d seen a slice of something that had been going on for a while, maybe Jazz and Brady were doing all kinds of things on the sly and what she’d seen was just a lovers’ spat? But if she’d seen a lovers’ spat, why did she feel so dirty? Why did her skin crawl when the images replayed themselves? The tree. Her hands. His legs. And their voices, ringing in her ears like an infection. Ice clinking against glass. The moon creeping over the mountain. “Stairway to Heaven” on that out-of-tune guitar, a twisted soundtrack to a fucked-up night.

  April’s father opened the door, dressed in his neatly pressed paramedic uniform. He smelled of spicy cologne, and after he shook her hand and introduced himself, she smelled it on her fingers.

  “My goodness, John, bring her inside.” Barb pushed past him and pulled Zoe inside. “Look at you, you’re soaked!” She handed Zoe a towel. Zoe hadn’t even noticed it was raining.

  She did notice the holographic Jesus portrait hanging in the dining room; look at it one way and he’s handing out loaves and fish, move a little and he has his head bowed, hands clasped in prayer.

  “You’re up bright and early. April said you might want to sleep in.” Barb ushered Zoe past a display of framed embroidered bible verses and into Lewis’s room, where he was entertaining Cassy with an elaborate racetrack set up and a tub of Matchbox cars. “So you had a good time?”

  “Not really.”

  Barb scooped Cassy off the floor and slipped her into her jacket and boots, carrying on as if Zoe had had announced that she’d had the time of her life.

  “I don’t know why April doesn’t go to parties. I never missed one when I was her age. I loved high school. I was a cheerleader in my senior year, if you can believe that.”

  “A cheerleader?” Why would anyone recall that as a good thing?

  “Well, I wasn’t always like this.” She fingered a gold cross below her double chin. “I used to be a size six. But when you have babies, your body changes and it doesn’t change back.”

  “Do you remember any cheers?” Zoe forced herself to be polite. None of this was Barb’s fault, after all.

  “Of course I do.” She set Cassy back on the floor in front of Lewis, then jumped into position, legs apart, thick fists gripping imaginary pom-poms, waving crazy-eights above her head. “C-E-N-T-R-aaaaaA-L!” Lewis dropped his cars and gawked at his mother. Barb bent at the waist and rose slowly, a look of grim victory on her face. “WE KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL!” She bent again, wheezing as she rose up for the last time, “CENTRAL GLADIATORS, GO! GO! GO!”

  “You’ve still got it,” Zoe managed to say. “Wow.”

  “Thank you.” Barb panted. “It’s a lot of fun. I tell April she should try out, but she just hides behind her hair and says, ‘Not a chance, Mom.’ But I
think she’d be good at it. Don’t you think? She’s so slim.”

  “Hmm.” Zoe tried to imagine Dog kicking up her scabby knees, belting out the chants with a sardonic grin. “I guess.”

  “Well, I think so.” Barb reached down and tousled Lewis’ red hair. “These are the best years of your life. I don’t think you kids realize that. Say good-bye, Lewis.”

  “Good-bye Lewis.” He stuck his tongue in the gap where his two front teeth had been and grinned.

  All the way to Fraser House, Zoe argued with herself. Should she tell Alice? Should she keep quiet? She went back and forth: tell her, don’t tell her, tell her, don’t tell her.

  If Zoe told Alice, what would Alice do anyway? It was so hard to tell with her, she could be so self-righteous about some things and so whatever-who-the-hell-cares about others. Would she call the cops? Would her face fall in defeat? Lips tighten? Would she say something like, “Aw, hon, did I raise you to stand by like that when someone’s being hurt? Is that what I taught you?” Or would she tell Zoe that teenagers will be teenagers and what she saw was just real life happening as it does, whether you want it to or not?

  Alice wouldn’t understand.

  Zoe let the last block decide; whatever foot took the last step would decide for her. Left foot: she’d tell Alice. Right foot: she wouldn’t tell Alice. Left, right, left, right, up the steps, left, right, the intercom was an arm’s length away, left, right...left. Could she fit one more step? Not honestly. Left foot it was. Tell her.

  If she turned around and went back a couple blocks would she end up on her right foot instead?

  Cassy stretched her arm towards the intercom buzzer. “My do it.”

  Zoe lifted her up. She knew Alice would see them on the little monitor intercom inside, so she tried to look normal. The intercom engaged, but all she could hear was Saturday morning cartoons blaring in the background, then a little kid’s voice.

  “Hi?”

  Then a woman’s voice, “Raleigh, get away from there!”

  Then Alice’s. “Off you go, Raleigh.” Zoe could already tell her mother was in hyper-efficiency mode. “Hey you two, I’ll come down and let you in. Hang on a sec.”