“Hey. Shall we?” he asked.
“Sure. You go ahead. I’ll be down in a sec.”
But they didn’t go anywhere. At first, this surprised him, until he connected it with other endings and leave-takings. She’d say, Time to go, and then ten minutes later, fifteen minutes later, still canoodling, OK, really now you need to leave. Mom’ll be home any minute. In fact, some of their most advanced intimacy had occurred between the time when she’d told him he needed to go and his actual leaving. It was like a weird kind of procrastinating, which somehow opened a breach in time, changing the way time itself passed and allowing in new urgency, new permissiveness and feelings, until all boundaries might break. It almost made sense: If she said one thing, he should probably expect more or less the opposite. For now, she seemed positively rooted to him.
“Let’s just stay like this forever,” she said.
“Sure. Let’s.”
“Screw everything else.”
“Absolutely.”
And sure enough, as soon as he’d said that, she was leaning away from him, breaking her hold, separating and backing up a few steps. Then, hands on her cheeks: “Oh my fucking God! Our hot chocolate! You didn’t say anything. Thomas! Look.” Burned brown milk oozed from the front of the microwave down the counter and dripped in streaks from the cabinets to the floor. “I hate that stupid thing, I swear. I’m going to throw it in the garbage right now.”
“Come on,” he said, “it’s not your fault—we’ll clean up later . . . come on!” and led her by the hand back out and down the hall to the basement family room.
HE WAS ALONE IN HIS BOOTH at the Pearle’s in Okotoks long enough to lose some steam and reconsider the wisdom of what he seemed embarked upon. Long enough to finish a cursory reading of all the Sinclair Ross quizzes and to revisit a familiar set of observations relating to the young person serving him (common verbiage, he knew from the boys, was no longer waitress as in his era but the more egalitarian server), and Canadian youth culture generally: a kind of 1950s mid-America attitude of small-town vanity or self-importance too easily confusing itself with freshness, but with all new pierced and semipunk costuming. That the cut of her top invited in the eyes (glitter-sprinkled expanse of very muscular and suspiciously suntanned orangey bosom) and that she carried out her job with seeming and ostentatious indifference to this, not as invitation or provocation but as simple display, did not convince him, as he suspected most of the props at the restaurant were designed to do, that he was part of the place’s over-the-top hipness and style, part of some cutting-edge global culinary/social experiment featuring fragrant seared meats, cinematic lighting, and twelve-dollar drinks. Nor did it make him feel completely excluded. Invited to spectate. Like a visitor from another planet. Time and again, he caught himself looking up from his stack of papers and staring idly, foot tapping to the scratchy sound track of the night—I don’t want to be your ghost, I don’t want to be your ghost—and not just in hopes of seeing Moira there (fifteen minutes late now, and counting) speaking to the handsome young greeter at the door. This was still Okotoks, after all. Not quite nowheresville, but awfully damn close. Who was anyone here fooling?
“Appies while you’re waiting?” she asked.
He shook his head and slid his empty beer mug toward her, smiling. Noted the stud in her left nostril—glint of blue-green glass or stone to echo the blue-green glitter in her cleavage—and thought of Devon. All Devon’s first requests for nose and lip and eyebrow piercings. No, and no, and no again. But what was it Thomas had hinted at recently regarding Devon? Something to do with a surprise concerning Devon’s longtime girlfriend, Charmaine. That they’d broken up? Hardly surprising. That they were engaged to be married? Well, equally, not surprising. He had no idea how that one would turn out. Only knew it made him cringe and feel as if someone was standing on his chest when he heard her name, heard anything about them as a couple, really, almost in the same way Devon’s prolonged, addictive dedication to wrestling and track had at times made him wish with all his heart that he could just find the cure—the way to break in, reorganize Devon’s brain—anything to make him set his priorities straight. But that had all worked its way out in the end, hadn’t it? So Franklin had learned and had, for the most part, in fact, butted out and tried to quit caring so much what became of Charmaine, the scatterbrained high school girlfriend, or of Devon and Charmaine together. She was all right. So they’d get married and kill each other, or split up and kill themselves in grief. Either way, they’d get over it. Not really his problem anymore. He just hoped whatever it was went down well before kids and before any kind of alimony settlement that might permanently sap Devon’s future prospects.
“Another Moose Drool?”
He nodded. “You from around here?”
She shook her head. “Yellowknife.”
“Well, never mind, then. Thought you might know my kid.”
“I did do a year at Douglas High, though. Grade twelve. Ran out of courses up there at Frankl—”
“Really! I know some Douglas teachers quite well.” What was he trying to do? Flirt with a girl his son’s age? “Excellent school! Buddy of mine I used to run with . . .”
Moira had slid around the server and seated herself across from him in the booth without his having seen her coming. Faint scent of cold emanating from her as she removed her coat and gloves and, with a rattling of jewelry, the Russian-style white fur hat perched on her head. She leaned toward him over the table, bracelets knocking together. “It’s so cold. Warm me up, John! What are you drinking?” Raked aside hair, glancing sideways at the drink list and back at the server. She had applied lipstick for the occasion and looked generally more dolled up or polished than the day before. Eye shadow? He was not actually a good judge of these things, but he sensed more preparation than usual had gone into her appearance, and though it might not mean sex positively, he was at least pretty sure it indicated some kind of heightened festive mood into which sex might be incorporated. “Oh, I’ll just have whatever he’s having. No, I won’t, either. Make mine an Irish coffee. No-no-no, what’s that other, that wonderful, superlative drink you have here? I’m so sorry. I can never remember.” She flew through pages of the drink menu while the server tipped her order form on a hip and named some favorite specialty martinis, until suddenly Moira stopped her, pointing. “Yes! That’s the one.”
“So,” he said, leaning toward her over the table as soon as the server had gone.
“And so, and so,” she replied.
MAYBE IT WAS THE PILLS—an ensuing numbness and dizziness mixed with heart-racing sleepiness—or maybe it was just as she said: It was his turn now. She’d shared something that terrified her, a secret of sorts, and also let him put his hand in her shirt. Now it was his turn. He needed to bare something too, share a secret. So he did. He told her everything. Spilled it all—about the diet and making himself throw up and eating antacids to block or neutralize stray traces of ascorbic acid, the whole deal; what he hoped for and why he kept failing, breaking down, eating fruit leathers and puking them up again—hemorrhagic sores, teeth falling out, blackened skin, old scars reopening, long-healed broken bones unmending. Didn’t go as far as to share with her the thing he’d discovered only the night before, that it was purest self-hatred motivating him and making him wish he’d disintegrate from the inside out. That was too new, and anyway he was not entirely sure of it.
Afterward, she was silent for so long beside him in the thickening shadows, he wondered if the pills had kicked in, knocked her out or sent her off to a similar state somewhere between sleep and waking. He lay on his side, facing her, a hand on her rib cage moving up and down with her breaths, and trying to discern whether her eyes were open or shut. Beyond her, in the corner of the basement beside the exercise bike and NordicTrack machine, her father’s upright golf bag had transformed into one of the sailors. He was sure of it. Maybe more than one. Their eyes blinking at him where the club handles would have been, bodies bent a
nd bulky as overstuffed bags, blackened, bearded faces indistinguishable from the shadows. He heard them whispering back and forth, a sibilant, senseless stream of sound. See-see-shoe-shoe . . .
“See, sea, C,” he said.
Jill raised herself on an elbow, pulling hair from one side of her face. “What? See what?”
“Nothing. I was just saying. I was thinking. They’re all the same thing . . . sound the same. C, sea, see. See? Isn’t that cool?”
“What in the world?”
“Never mind.”
“You are very strange,” she said, and again lay down. “And I am . . . very tired. Is it affecting you that way? Just so sleepy and maybe a little light-headed, and actually like . . . I feel pretty good, actually.”
“Can I?” he asked, and again slid his hand back inside her shirt, where it had been most of the time since they’d come downstairs.
“OK, but the weird thing is . . .” she began.
He waited, but nothing more followed. He squeezed lightly. Her flesh felt warm and clammy under his, still weirdly pliant and unskinlike, nothing he was accustomed to, but now behaving more like actual skin in response to his own skin and getting hot and kind of annoying. “Yes,” he prompted finally. Removed his hand. “The weird thing . . .” Still no answer.
He rolled onto his back, sat up, and looked around.
The men had detached from the shadows and come forward, not shimmering and holographic like cheesy Spielberg specters, nothing Disney or CGI about them at all. Completely real. He waved a hand at them. No reaction. Guys, he wanted to say. Hey guys! You found me! They were more like paintings of the old Flemish masters he remembered from his mother’s art books—a onetime favorite of hers—grim and sorrowful, big-nosed and terribly detailed, with heavy greens showing through the underpainting. One younger, one older. Hoar and Work. Had to be, though mostly unlike his drawings of them. Both bearded and wearing clothes that seemed assembled from canvas or burlap sacking, maybe sailcloth, combined with wool and fur and felt. Boots torn and nobbed with brass nails, completely wet, and wrapped all around with more wool and canvas or burlap cloth, fur, mummified, so it looked as if they’d tried putting on motley shredded socks over the top of their boots in order to hold them together. No, it would be because of the swelling. Of course. Feet would swell from cold and frostbite and infection to the point where boots no longer fit except by brute force or by having seams relieved or cut away, so why not put the socks on top for additional insulation? How else could you do it? Just beside the enormous TV, they stopped and leaned against each other, breathing hard, and toppled together into a seated position. Again he waved at them. Guys! he mouthed. No response.
“The weirdest thing is . . .” Jill began again. He scooted halfway around to face her. “Well, what I was going to show you before, when I said There’s more, you know—” Again she broke off.
“Yes?”
Work removed something from his pocket. Looked like a golf ball. So they had come out of Jill’s father’s golf bag! They passed the ball back and forth, holding it up, scrutinizing it, sniffing and licking it, rolling it between their blackened, broken-seeming fingers, and shaking their heads at each other until Work produced a pocket watch and something else—looked like the remains of a pipe bowl—and began juggling the three things together, to Hoar’s apparent delight. Thomas’s, too. He grabbed his knees and leaned toward them. So real! They couldn’t be mere projections of his own imagination, bits of too-intense dreams left floating around the room when he awakened, as usual, though he was sure, too, they must still have some connection with his dreams and imagination. So he needed to be careful. Play dead and stay to the side; don’t stare too long at them. He’d been wrong to hail them, but never mind that. They were here for now. Soon enough, they’d evaporate back to wherever they’d come from; no need to hasten it. Meanwhile, this fantastically fun show. Juggling! He’d had no idea.
“OK,” she said. “Thomas?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but . . .” She rolled upright, stood, and removed her pants. Stepped out of them and snapped the elastic of her underwear higher.
“Jill!”
“What. It’s not an invitation, I said. All right?”
“But you just took off your pants!”
“Very observant.” She nodded and again lay beside him, belly down, feet kicking. “OK, now look. On my butt,” she said, gesturing with her chin. “Go ahead.” Thomas didn’t move. “Look!”
And finally, sliding closer and leaning right over her, he understood. At first, he wasn’t sure, thought it must be a shadow or some other trick of the light, but no. From the outer fringe of her underwear’s waistband to the top of her left thigh seeped another blue-purple patch of skin.
“See?” she asked, lifting and pulling aside her underwear, lowering them until the mutant shoreline shape of the stain was mostly in view.
He nodded. “Yes. But what . . .”
She snapped the underwear back. Rolled to a seated position, facing him. “Birthmark. Same as my face. Covers like the whole left side of my butt. Nothing anyone can do about it and nothing to feel bad about. Doesn’t hurt or handicap me or whatever. It’s just there. And it’s not that uncommon, either—not an uncommon place for them, I mean, on your butt. Lots of Korean girls get them.”
“Korean girls get . . . what? Where did you hear that?”
She shrugged. “But don’t you think it’s weird? Like, here you are trying to give yourself scurvy and I already have it.”
“What are you talking about. Scurvy. You don’t have scurvy.... It’s nothing like—”
“Not all of it. Just the one thing. Look.” She slid an arm from inside her shirt and bent, hugging herself to present a view of her bare shoulder and, as she snaked her arm back through the armhole of her sleeve to face him again, a half glimpse of bare breast, all so fast, he almost didn’t catch what she’d evidently meant to show: another inlet of purple-blue, smaller and backward C-shaped, ending just below where her bra strap would have connected. “See?”
He nodded. Reached a hand toward her and let it drop. “Wow. So it’s like . . . all over?”
She shook her head. “Not all over. Jerk. Just those places. So what if I never get to wear a bathing suit or an evening gown, or even most tank tops, for that matter . . . or get to sunbathe with my friends or sit on the beach or go on a real date. It’s not like it anyone cares, right?”
“Jill, I . . . That’s not necessarily . . .” Again he lifted a hand toward her.
“I’m not a freak show! Just get, get—” She slapped at his hand, and then, realizing what she’d done, covered her mouth. “Oh no,” she said, and began to cry. “I’m so sorry. Oh my god, Thomas, I’m sorry.”
That fast, when only moments earlier she’d seemed fine, ready to take off her clothes and say crazy things about scurvy. Crying. What was he supposed to do about this? He had no experience. Sometimes, when they were younger, Devon would erupt into terrifying fits of rage against him or one of their parents, and these had nearly always ended in tears. Not the kind you’d dare get close to (angry, face torn open, snot everywhere, teeth bared), though generally one or the other of their parents had eventually had to wade in, wrap arms around him, to put a stop to it. Aside from that, the only person in his family to cry openly was himself. Less violently than Devon, to be sure, and requiring much less in the way of provocation. There was also the one time, more recently, weeks after his mother had left for good, when he’d walked in on his father alone in the study, lights out, and found him sobbing and making a crazy, repetitive hiccupping wa-wa-wa-wa noise so much like a windup toy, that at first Thomas had thought it must be a joke. But it was not a joke—in fact, there was nothing funny about it—and he’d slipped back out of the room, unnoticed.
None of which prepared him. Jill didn’t sob or gasp, or crumple her mouth and wave her fists around like Devon. No theatrics or hiccupping. She just stared and
let the tears slide down her face with strings of mucus until the front of her shirt was soaked.
“It’s OK,” he said. Rubbed his hands together. “Didn’t even hurt. See? Those pills . . . I’m totally numbed up now anyway. Didn’t feel a thing.” Flicked a finger at the back of his hand to prove it. “Really, didn’t hurt. No worries.”
She scrubbed knuckles into her eyes and smiled at him. Laughed once. Lifted the bottom of her shirt to wipe her nose and cheeks and said, “Relax, OK? It’s no biggie. Girls cry, all right?”
“If you say.”
She leaned her elbows on her knees and hunched toward him but made no move to put her clothes back on. Like she’d forgotten. “Are you really stoned, Thomas?”
“A little, yeah. I guess. Mostly numb. You?”
“My mouth feels all, like, rubbery. Does it look weird?” She stuck out her lower lip at him.
“Like that it does, sure.”
“And I’m just supertired,” she said. She yawned, stretched her arms over her head, and abruptly fell onto her back. Closed her eyes. Said, “I hope you don’t mind. Nightie-night.”
“Really?”
For a few moments, he watched her. Wondered if this was some kind of joke or test. Was he supposed to leave? Keep her awake? Go to sleep himself? He didn’t get it.
“Jill. For real?”
Her eyes stayed shut, hands folded over her solar plexus, feet tucked one against the other. The picture of tranquillity. He started thinking maybe she truly was asleep, or even in a coma.
Devon: Dude, she took her pants off for you and pretended to go to sleep and you did nothing about it? Let me get this straight. Are you on crack or are you just some fairy who lost his balls in his art project?
Thomas: It wasn’t like that. She was crying. There was other stuff.
Devon: Other stuff! Dude, Thomas. I’ve got news. A girl takes her pants off for you, you can bet it means one thing: She wants you to jump her, harelip or not.
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