“You’ve worn me out on this,” she says, laughing. “I don’t think I want to hear it again for a long time. Here, take it home. If you’ll do a report on Mozart, I’ll give you extra marks.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Leonard.”
“And Tom, I’ve got this ticket to the opera in September. I can’t use it. I’ll give it to you for ten dollars if you want it.”
“I do, Mrs. Leonard. I’ll bring the money tomorrow.”
Tom takes the tape home.
He knows where Bruce keeps his change. Maybe he could take a few toonies without Bruce noticing. He stashes them in his pocket. He’d never done it before, but Bruce was always accusing him of stealing anyway. He goes into the living room to play the tape . . .
Mom’s boyfriend, Bruce. He’s home, slamming doors, swearing, and drunk. Where’s Mom?
“Turn that screeching thing off!” Bruce rages.
Drooling drunk. Danger.
“What the hell is that noise anyway?”
“Opera,” Tom says, getting up to turn it off. “I have to listen to it for school.”
That isn’t a no, but Bruce takes it as a no. He lands a kick into Tom’s back, and Tom goes sprawling into the sound of Papageno singing.
“I’m the one who decides what goes on in this house,” Bruce rages. Tom crawls to the tape recorder to remove the tape, but Bruce’s booted foot comes down on his buttocks, flattening him. “Right? Am I right?”
Tom screams in his own rage, turns, and tries to pull Bruce down. But the boot ends up in his face, and Tom feels his brain fogging up to the sound of flute music.
“You tell the police, and I’ll kill you. Hell, and your mother, too. Got that?”
Tom hears the money slip out of his pocket.
“Is that my money? Is that my . . .” Bruce goes crazy. He hits and hits and hits, and then gravity is making Tom choke, pressing him to sleep to the sound of the music of the flute.
Tom waking up, nothing familiar, including the tape that is all pulled out and lying in a tangled ribbon on the floor and Tom hurting all the way up to the pit of his stomach . . .
The curtain was closing.
Applause. Applause!
“Bravo!” Tom cried, clapping so hard that he thought he might fly. He was sobbing. “Bravo!”
He stood, still cheering and crying.
The man and the woman on either side of him stood, too. At first they only clapped, but then they, too, were calling, “Bravo!” One after another, all the patrons stood and clapped. The whole auditorium was cheering. The curtains opened again for the singers to bow. The man beside Tom smiled and clapped him on the shoulder. The woman looked down at him with loving, weeping eyes.
Then Tom turned and ran from the auditorium. He leaped down the stairs, three, four at a time.
He ran out onto the street.
He cried, still running. He hurt all the way up to the pit of his stomach . . .
Then he laughed, still crying and running.
Ha! What a zoid he’d been. Thinking his parents were like the McCulloughs on TV and he was like Trevor, smart and nice. He remembered now where he’d got that YOU’RE NICE candy. Carmen Jones had given to him. She’d given one to everyone in their science class with a smile that said, This is more about who I am than who you are. She’d given them out on Valentine’s Day and he’d saved it for months. She didn’t even know his name. What a zoid.
He stopped running, opened his backpack, got out the pen. He threw it hard. It skittered down the street and stopped against the curb.
Everything changed.
The world changed. He wanted to cry and cry until he threw up his heart.
Tom ran.
He ran to the police station. He knew his name now; he knew now why he’d been afraid to go in. Before he got there, he stopped. He didn’t need the police to tell him where he lived or what his name was. Tom Nader. Tomas no-middle-name Nader. He didn’t need them to tell him why there was no missing person file on him. He remembered running away three years before and staying at a friend’s house until the friend’s parents and even the friend got sick of him. He knew that he’d run away so often he didn’t have any friends to impose on anymore. He remembered the last time he ran away, he’d camped for a week in Fish Creek Park. He’d always gone home again.
He turned away from the police station and began running again. The pain in his side felt good. His breathing sounded like crying, but he wasn’t crying anymore. After a while he realized he was running in the direction of his mom’s apartment.
He remembered his mom. She wasn’t like Mrs. McCullough on TV. She didn’t cook much. She made coffee. She smoked. She brought home burgers sometimes. Tom ate cold cereal for breakfast and supper a lot. Tom remembered when he was little and his mom would look at him. Since Bruce moved in, she never looked at him except through the mirror when she was putting on her makeup. Bounced-off-glass eye contact.
He remembered his mom was a lucky alcoholic. Lucky because Boyfriend Bruce paid for her addiction. She watched TV with Bruce. It seemed that was all Bruce really wanted, a TVwatching partner. Mom would never ask if she could watch anything. They watched what Bruce wanted to watch, and during the commercials she listened to Bruce. Bruce had two emotions: angry and happy. If he was angry, Mom was angry too. If he was laughing, Mom laughed.
She was more like a pet, really. She laid around all day, was excited when Bruce came home, didn’t complain too much when she got kicked.
Tom remembered all this as he ran toward home.
Home. H–O–A–M. Was that how it was spelled? It started with a huh-huh-huh sound, like maybe you were going to cry. It started with an h. The rest sounded sad, like a groan. H–O–A–M. That must be it.
The closer he got, the more he remembered: that he did poorly in science, and that he almost drowned when he took swimming in phys ed. English was the only class he didn’t skip. He remembered that his mom only referred to God when she was mad, that Bruce chewed with his mouth open, and that he had no cousins and one uncle he hadn’t seen in eleven years. He remembered that his mom had borrowed his last three checks from his flyer money. He remembered that he was pathetic. P–A–T–H–E–T–A–C.
Tom’s memory of his real dad hadn’t returned yet, but a block away from his mom’s apartment building he knew it was because he’d never had any memories of his dad.
Everything was familiar now—that gas station, this seedy pizza place, the broken sidewalk, the beeping traffic light, this fence that had a growling dog behind it, and this alley where Tony Bienert had beat him up once.
This was home, but he didn’t belong. Wasn’t home supposed to be a place where you belonged? But as he ran, he realized the worst thing of all—he had belonged. When he was in that apartment, he had been his very own stupid, worthless, bad-speller, invisible self.
He quickened his pace as he came to the apartment building. Faster. He could see the window of the apartment and the flag for a curtain and the light was on and he could smell it even from out here—smell the smoke and the garbage and mostly Bruce, smell him on his skin.
And then the apartment was behind him. Behind him farther, farther, then gone, and he was on his orbit back to the Core.
Tom could see the ghosts now, walking the streets, sleeping on benches, standing on street corners.
He hadn’t been able to see them before. Gravity pulled him back, back to the Core. He wasn’t running anymore. He was walking. The sound of his feet echoed in the sewers. He wondered about sewers, if there were fumes down there that wouldn’t let a candle burn, if there were tunnels down there, mazes, where you could wander your days into years and maybe walk away a hundred times and never go anywhere.
He looked up when he heard someone cursing and kicking at a building. It was Jeans.
Tom stood watching, unable to speak until Jeans saw him.
“They gone, Tom. Took off, and didn’t pay us. Two weeks work, and didn’t pay us.” He scooped some rai
nwater from a gutter and smeared a few of the lower windows. “That money have been for Gina’s ring,” he said. He leaned against the building, scouring the skyline for any window-washing cages. He looked at Tom for the first time. “You don’t look that good. Somebody tell you we lost our jobs? Come on. Gina gonna have to forgive me the ring, but I saved enough money to buy me a plane ticket. I not waitin’ anymore. Time to go. You see me off, okay, friend?”
Tom followed, trapped in the orbit of any passing body.
He remembered everything. He remembered that his mom used to knit, before her hands got the shakes. He remembered that she had a pretend diamond tiara from when she was prom queen as a young girl. He remembered she used to read to him when he was small, and how silent and white she went when Bruce first called him a retard.
“Comin’ up?” Jeans asked, swinging into his tree.
Tom shook his head. He remembered that he couldn’t fight, not Bruce the boyfriend and not Tony Bienert at school. He remembered the feeling of getting punched, but there’d never been a time when he’d punched back. The last time Bruce punched him, he’d lost his memory.
“You can sleep in my nest when I gone,” Jeans called down to him. “You cannot set inside all day in the winter. Scare the washen. They call the cops. You not invisible indoors. Yeah, I know you think you invisible, the way you walk around like you not scared. Like nobody see you ’cause you not worth seein’. You should come with me to Jamaica. It so cold here in the winter, it freeze your invisible self into a big invisible icicle.”
Then there was silence.
Tom remembered that no one had ever taken him to church, but that he’d had a crush on Mother Teresa. Tom’s heart was talking to him, but he didn’t know body language anymore. It was tapping out a code in heartbeat, three short, three long, three . . . but he’d never been a boy scout, he remembered. He couldn’t speak.
There was more rummaging, more silence.
Above him Jeans moaned.
“What?” Tom said to the ground.
“It is gone,” Jeans said.
“What?”
“The money I been savin’. Gone.”
Coats began flying off the platform.
Tom defied gravity enough to look up. “Did you tell anyone . . . ?”
There was a thud as Jeans collapsed onto the bare platform. “I been braggin’,” he said. He pounded the platform with his fist.
Tom was loose. The notebook wasn’t true. He took it out of his pack and raised his arm to throw it.
He stopped.
He held it tightly for a moment, as if he would squeeze it to death, and then he opened it. He flipped through the pages, read a page, then two.
“Jeans . . .” He wasn’t sure if he’d said it or just thought it.
No answer.
“Jeans . . .” He spoke this time. “How do you spell Jamayca?”
Jeans didn’t answer. He was crying.“Jeans! How do you spell Jamaika?”
“J–,” Jeans said with a sob, “–A–M–A–I–C–A. Jamaica.”
Tom felt like if he opened his mouth, he’d count to the number blue or cry the color six. “I spelled it right, Jeans,” Tom said with awe. Jeans moaned.
Tom climbed the tree. “Gravity is the weakest force in the universe,” he said aloud. “Someone is making up antigravity at this very moment.”
Jeans was lying face down in the coats. He was a wounded bird: if he couldn’t fly, he had to die.
“Hey,” Tom said, poking at Jeans. “I spelled Jamaica right—in my book.”
Jeans didn’t move.
Tom flipped the book open again. “Jeans, how do you spell everything?”
Numbly, Jeans said, “E–V–E–R–Y–T–H–I–N–G. Everythin’.”
“See? I spelled everything right. As in, everything’s going to be okay.”
Jeans sighed deeply.
“Wake up, Jeans. I think—I think you’re going back to Jamaica.”
“You finally zoided right out,” Jeans said into the coats.
“No. I mean it. Sit up. You’re going to—”
“No, I amn’t,” Jeans said, rolling onto his back. His eyes were still closed. “I can’t move, see. Can’t work. I got this pain—”
“You’re going. Now,” Tom said. “I wrote it in my book, didn’t I?”
Jeans opened his eyes, but still he didn’t move.
“I wrote it in my book. You know what that means.” Tom was sure now. He smiled. “Remember what the poem said, Jeans? The one about you?”
Jeans slowly nodded his head. “Said, Jeans bought a plane ticket and went back to Jamaica. Guess you not a poet after all, my friend.”
“It said something else,” Tom said. “I never read it before because . . . because it was in the space, between the lines and inside the letters.”
Jeans said nothing. He looked like he might be falling asleep again.
“Listen. The book says, Tom, a nice guy, took the money out of his locker, got some extra cash, and bought Jeans a ticket to Jamaica.”
Jeans looked at Tom. “You steal this cash?”
Tom said, “No. I’ve been saving.”
Silence. Then, “You would do that?”
“It says right here,” Tom said. He laughed.
Jeans gripped Tom’s forearm. Tom gripped his and pulled him up. “Yes?” Jeans asked.
“Yes.”
“Yes?” Jeans asked, his eyes coming alive.
“Yes!” Tom said, grinning so big that his cheeks were cramping up.
Jeans made two fists and roared. He and Tom knocked knuckles. “Don’t you worry, Tom. The way you save, you have it all back by the time I marry Gina, which is as soon as her mama can plan the weddin’. And when I get rich, I pay you back, man. You know it for a fact.”
Together they went to Tom’s locker, and on to the airport.
Jeans flapped his arms around the airport as if he’d fly off without the plane. He smiled and spoke to anyone who caught his eye. At the ticket desk, he said, “Lovely ma’am, I would like a ticket to a seat on the next airplane to Jamaica.”
The middle-aged lady tucked a curl around her ear. “You don’t have a reservation?”
“No, ma’am. No reservations at all. Jamaica is my home. Got me a girl there name of Gina—”
“I’ll see what I can do,” she interrupted.
She typed things into her computer and said, “You’re in luck. There is a seat on flight Q78 this evening at seven p.m. It will cost you, though.”
“No fears,” Jeans said. “My friend here”—he gestured to Tom—“he is a poet and thereby is rich. We have cash.”
When she asked for his passport, Jeans took it out of his pocket. It was bent and dog-eared. He handed it to her with both hands. “I don’t stash this,” he said to the ticket clerk. “I keep it close to my Jamaican heart.”
She perused it closely. Jeans grinned at her until she blushed and handed it back. “Do you have luggage?”
“No, lovely ma’am.”
She handed him the ticket. Tom thought she was positively dewy-eyed when she wished Jeans a good flight.
They both slept in the waiting area until Jeans woke up in a panic, wanting to know what time it was.
“It’s okay,” Tom said. “You’ve got lots of time.” He bought some snacks, and they talked. He told Jeans what he had remembered about his family. Jeans listened without saying very much, then he said, “Read me that book of yours again.”
Tom read it aloud, including his last entry about the opera.
Jeans said, “Sounds familiar, that opera, like I heard it before.” He checked the time again, as he did every ten minutes. “Want to know my favorite part?”
Tom shrugged. “I know. It’s the part where Jeans goes home.”
“That part is good, but besides that, I like the part where he rescues the fair maiden. Fair maidens,” Jeans said dreamily. “You are good, man.”
Tom stared at his notebook. He stood up.
“Good-bye,” he said.
“You’re going? Now?” Jeans asked.
“Now.”
“But the flight doesn’t leave for hours.”
“There’s something I have to do,” Tom said.
Jeans stood up too. “You write yourself a poem like you did for me, okay Tom?”
Tom nodded.
“Do it.”
“Okay.”
“Do it, man.”
“Okay.”
Jeans gave Tom a hard, smacking kiss. “I will send you a wedding invitation,” Jeans said. “You just get yourself an address and see if I don’t.” Tom grinned and ran from the airport.
He got back on the shuttle bus and headed back to the Core. He paid the fare for the bus and an extra loonie. He figured if he did that every time, he’d have his fine paid off in a couple of years or so.
On the way back, he read his notebook. He reread his collection of words. A treasure. Right here in his hands, a treasure. Hadn’t the librarian called him a poet? Couldn’t he spell like a damn? Hadn’t he just sent Jeans back to Jamaica? He could spell decide. He could decide from now on what was true about himself, his good-speller, good-swimmer, gravity-defying self that had been there all along.
From the window Tom could see a plane taking off. It made his heart fly to watch that plane lift into the sky. What could gravity be if he could make a plane that big take his friend home? He felt like he’d just looked gravity in the face, made eye contact.
He read the notebook all the way back. Every word made his backside smile. He was getting that God feeling again, right there under his wishbone, and he wanted to kiss everyone on the bus.
But there was something else.
Something he had to do to make it true, to make it pure poetry. He had to rescue the fair maiden, of course.
Tom got off the bus and ran to the warehouse. Ran! He was fast! Why hadn’t he tried out for track before?
He ran into the warehouse and searched every fire for Pam. He found her talking with Jeffrey-Jones.
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