by Susie Taylor
I don’t argue. There’s no way Mum would let me walk home alone, but the thought of her meeting Natasha, who’ll have been at a bar drinking Blow Jobs, worries me.
Thursday at eight forty-five in the evening the phone rings. This is too late for polite friends to call. I assume it’s Elizabeth, Grahame, or Dad. Mum answers and calls me to the phone. I pick it up, and when I hear Jimmy’s voice, my heart starts thudding. Mum lingers; I whoosh her away from me with both my hands as I cradle the phone against my shoulder. I hear when her footsteps stop on the stairs exactly where I eavesdrop on her.
The conversation is stilted; we don’t really know each other, but Jimmy asks me if I want to hang out tomorrow. “I have to babysit,” I say.
“Oh.”
I realize it sounds like I am blowing him off, and I find myself saying, “What about Saturday?”
I want to talk to Wanda about my impending date. I start letters that I don’t finish. I’d like to ask Elizabeth for her advice, but there is no way to get a hold of her. She calls every Sunday from a payphone in Chapleau and can never talk long. There’s always a line of quarter-laden tree planters behind her.
I promise Mum I’ll call her and let her know how things are going at Natasha’s. I’m nervous as I walk over. I’m stressed about finding the right apartment. I’ll have to get buzzed in, and I’ve never done this before. I don’t know Natasha’s kids that well. Dwayne is six and Sara is three.
The inside of the building fascinates me. There are framed pictures of mountainscapes in the hallways, and all the doors have signs that indicate something about the residents’ personalities. Someone has a Jamaican flag; someone else has a Beware of Cat sign with a picture of sleeping Garfield. Another door has an AC/DC bumper sticker. There’s a slightly off-putting smell of smoke, other people’s cooking, and air freshener.
Beside Natasha’s door is a burnt-wood plaque that says Jesus lives in this house. She catches me looking at it and laughs. “My dad made it for me,” she says, and ushers me in. The kids are happy to see me. Natasha has fed them dinner and got them in their PJs. They’re sitting down in front of a huge colour TV. I talk to Natasha as she gets ready; I tell her about my date with Jimmy tomorrow.
Natasha looks fantastic when she leaves. Her hair is curled and piled on her head, and she has on red cowboy boots. She kisses the kids and leaves me three cigarettes to smoke while I’m babysitting.
“Don’t tell your mom,” she says.
“Sorry about all that,” I say, feeling embarrassed again by my mother’s over-protectiveness.
“Don’t be sorry, she’s just looking out for you. She has such a cute accent. It was like talking to Lady Diana.”
I shrug.
I put Sara to bed; she is sweet and easy. I read her a few stories, and then I play a game of Snakes and Ladders with Dwayne, who takes it very seriously. I put him to bed in the same room as Sara. I call Mum and assure her all is well, and then I go immerse myself in the television.
Natasha comes home at eleven o’clock. Before I go, she pays me ten bucks and gives me an almost new lipstick she thinks will suit me, for good luck on my date. I call Mum and then go wait for her in the lobby. No need for her to meet Natasha this evening.
I’m meeting Jimmy at the bus stop at 5:30. This is, conveniently, between our two houses, and I have suggested it. Mum offered to drive us up to the mall, but I declined. I apply the lipstick Natasha gave me. It’s way too red. It has stained my lips and the skin around my mouth, and I have to use half a jar of face cream to get it off. There is still a red tinge underneath the burgundy colour I finally apply. I go heavy on the eye makeup and use pale powder. I settle on my usual jeans and black T-shirt; I wear a silver ring on each finger. I have the leather cord and half-heart pendant around my wrist; I always wear it. I “borrow” Elizabeth’s black, high-heeled boots. Despite all these preparations, I’m still way too early. I have to time my arrival so I don’t look overly anxious, but also so we don’t miss the 5:33 bus, which is sometimes running ahead of schedule.
I’m ten minutes early at the bus stop. I am relieved to see Jimmy walking towards me, only a block away, down the main street. Jimmy sits in the middle of the back seat and I take one of the window seats. He takes up the rest of the bench, putting his jacket beside him and sprawling. I can hear Mum’s voice saying, “How inconsiderate.” But there are only five people on the bus, and two of them are old and at the front.
When we get to the mall, we head to the theatre. Jimmy buys two tickets. I stand behind him in line, in case he only buys one ticket and I have to get my own. We get inside and he buys an enormous bag of popcorn and a huge Coke. I buy a regular-sized pack of M&Ms. Jimmy offers me the Coke and I take a sip. We’re sharing a straw.
In the theatre we choose seats away from the rest of the audience. The air conditioning is on and the theatre is freezing. Jimmy sees me shiver and puts his arm around my shoulders. I am on a date and a boy has his arm around my shoulders. I can’t wait to describe this moment to Wanda.
The lights go out and Jimmy has to remove his arm to offer me popcorn. I am torn between watching Bruce Willis and angling my hand on my thigh in a way that says “Hold me.” Then it happens: I feel Jimmy’s long fingers take my hand and hold on to it. I smile. I sneak a look over at him, and he turns and grins. I am filled with zinging joy to be sitting here holding hands in the tiny mall theatre.
After the movie we disengage our hands and leave the darkness in that weird post-movie haze that is like waking up from a dream. We have twenty minutes till the bus comes; Jimmy plays the pinball machine at the mall entrance. He makes me play a ball, which I lose almost immediately. When I tell him I’ve never played a pinball machine before he’s shocked.
“No way! That’s wild.”
When the bus comes, we sit side by side and more hand-holding ensues. When we get off at the bus stop, I make to say goodbye, but Jimmy smiles at me and says, “Don’t be crazy, D. I’m going to walk you home.”
We share basic facts: siblings, parents split up (Jimmy too), grade school, favourite bands, favourite food, classes we hate, and movies we love. When we get to my driveway I say, “Well, here it is.”
“I knew this was your house.” He leans in and kisses me once on the lips. Then I lean into him and we are kissing. I feel his tongue slip between my lips and gently slip mine inside his. Our teeth click together, and we pull apart.
“I should go.”
Jimmy waits till I’m in the house. Then I see him walk away. He does a little fist pump at the end of the drive. Mum has been waiting at the front window. I know she can’t see the end of the driveway, but she can see Jimmy as he walks down the street in front of the house.
“He sure has long hair. How did it go?” she asks me.
“It was good. I’m going to bed now,” I tell her in a rush. I am anxious to retell myself the events of the evening, shining the highlights and letting the memory of Jimmy sprawling at the back of the bus fade into the background.
It’s one of those summer Sundays when you can hear the buzz of the fridge and the click of the numbers turning on the stove clock.
Mum and I both wait in the heat and silence for the phone to ring. I’m hoping to hear from Jimmy, and Mum is hoping to hear from Grahame. He’s on a canoe trip with friends. Mum sits on the back deck with an open book. I can see her from my bedroom. She has not turned the page in a long time. I stare down at Mum for a while, then roam around listlessly. I look in the fridge, walk around the yard, and then walk down to the end of the driveway. All I can think is, “Call me, call me, call me.” In my head I replay our date round and round—everything Jimmy said, everything I said. I’m pretty sure he likes me, and yet he does not call. I crouch down at the end of the driveway and watch a line of ants carry a dead beetle. I hear a skateboard approaching.
Damon does the stop-and-flip-the-board-up thing.
“Hey, what’s up?” he says.
“Not much,” I reply.
He crouches down and looks at the ants.
“Cool.”
“I hate Sundays. They’re so damn boring.”
“Me too. Mom and Cora had another big fight, and Dad is trying to fix the kitchen sink. I had to get out of there.”
“What was the fight about?” I know it’s rude to ask, but the heat makes me petulant.
“You know, my parents want to know who the father is.”
“Cora hasn’t told your parents?”
“No, she keeps saying it doesn’t matter. She doesn’t want him involved.”
“She’s probably right. Millie keeps showing me how big the baby is on a ruler. She’s obsessed with the pictures in Cora’s baby books.”
The noise of a lawnmower starting up next door breaks into our conversation. Damon’s board goes down. “My mom thinks you’re great,” he says, and then he turns and pushes off the ground and rides down the street.
Jimmy finally calls me Sunday night. We talk for two hours on the phone, right up until Mum starts harrumphing around the kitchen in her dressing gown, making tea and turning off the lights in the living room.
Millie and I dance in the kitchen on Monday morning, and Cora eyes me with suspicion. “Beware of love,” she says, rubbing her belly and wiping sleep from her eyes.
fifteen
Elizabeth calls two weeks before Labour Day and announces she is not returning to finish her fourth year of university. She arrives home two days after the call. I can’t wait to tell her all about Jimmy.
Dad picks her up at the airport. He has been sent to try to get her to return to school. When Dad’s car pulls up outside the house, a skinny, tanned woman with a rat’s nest of hair gets out, along with a skinny guy who looks like he could do with a wash. Dad pulls out of the driveway and does not come inside for the family reunion Mum has been working herself up to all day.
Elizabeth puts both her and Eric, the boyfriend’s, bags in her room when they arrive and that’s where they stay. Eric speaks with a slow syncopation that makes him frustrating to listen to. I feel like yelling at him to get to the point. He has eyes that seem to look right through you while he holds you in his long gaze. He smells. After he showers, his scent still lingers. He uses strange sandalwood soap for both his hair and body, and judging from her hair, Elizabeth has been using it too.
We’ve never been skinny girls, but Elizabeth has morphed into a muscle-armed lean creature. Her cheek bones are pronounced, and she’s tanned the colour of cardboard. Mum has been trying to extricate her from Eric, but she simply doesn’t respond to Mum’s subtle hints of “Why don’t you help me in the kitchen?” She just ignores us both and gazes at Eric like the constellations are circling around his head. Even Mum’s pathetic sigh and sad voice don’t seem to rouse much empathy from Elizabeth. She just brusquely smiles and continues folding laundry or mixing up textured vegetable protein meatloaf.
They stay for two weeks and I never get to have an actual conversation with Elizabeth. When we spend time together, Eric is always there, and she is constantly performing for him. We don’t giggle like we would if he wasn’t in the room. She goes through her old clothes and gives them almost all to me. When I tell her I have been wearing her boots, she just laughs. When she does ask me about Jimmy and what I think of Grahame, Eric is in the room, so I can’t tell her anything that I really want to. Jimmy’s at his dad’s cottage for the end of the summer, and I’m almost relieved. Jimmy and Eric together would be an odd meeting, like watching a poodle and a bulldog sniffing each other on the sidewalk.
Eric and Elizabeth are vegans. Eric makes lentil soups; he burns the bottom of the pan and then inadequately scrubs it out. Mum is starting to develop a twitch in her eyebrow.
Mum orchestrates one big discussion about Elizabeth dropping out of university. Dad comes over and stands awkwardly by the window holding a glass of wine. Mum sits on a chair, and Elizabeth and Eric lounge on the couch. Eric’s legs are flopped open, and it’s almost impossible not to stare in between them. He doesn’t contribute to the conversation. He sits and watches the words go back and forth as if he is at a tennis match. He is unmoved by the proceedings and weirdly comfortable in the midst of our family’s domestic turmoil. I am not technically supposed to be here, but no one tells me to leave so I sit on the stairs and keep quiet.
My parents both express why they think Elizabeth should head back to school rather than travel around Europe with Eric. She keeps very calm and says, “I hear what you’re saying but I need to do this.” She says it over and over again like a mantra.
Dad doesn’t want to be here. He tells Elizabeth, “I have more important things to do than waste my time telling you not to waste your own. This is exactly why women should stay out of academics; they can’t stick to anything.”
“What about Pat?” Elizabeth asks, and Dad feigns deafness. He’s distracted and only half with us. You can almost see the rats running around in his brain.
Elizabeth and Eric pack big backpacks, and she converts her tree-planting money into traveller’s cheques. Then they go.
“It’s just us now,” says Mum, after they leave for the airport.
When the phone rings, the day after Elizabeth goes, I expect it to be Jimmy or Wanda or Jude. Grahame is over. There is a map on the kitchen table. Grahame is planning an afternoon of touring antique markets. He is trying to cheer Mum up, but she is distant and just keeps agreeing with everything he suggests.
Cora is on the phone. She needs me to look after Millie for an hour. Her mom’s out, and so is Damon. When I arrive, Cora is not in her usual pregnancy uniform of track-pant shorts, but in full-on Cora black. Her breasts have gotten enormous, and I find it hard not to stare at them stretching out a black undershirt. She puts on a thick layer of lipstick. She inserts her middle finger between her lips and draws it out of her mouth slowly while gently sucking on it. She makes her eyes wide and wiggles her eyebrows at me. “If you give your finger head, it stops you from getting lipstick on your teeth,” she explains.
“No one else knows, well except for Damon, but I know you saw Mark drop me off that time. You can’t tell anyone, okay, Daisy?”
“Mark?”
“Mr. Dean, he’s probably the father. He keeps calling and freaking out at me. He’s worried I’m going to tell his wife, but I never want to see him again. I don’t want him to have anything to do with my baby. I need to tell him in person.”
When she’s gone, I reapply my lipstick in the Joneses’ bathroom. I draw my finger out from my lips, and I wonder how Jimmy would react if I tried this trick in front of him.
Millie and I play in the backyard. The sun is hot, and I’m almost dozing when I hear the door open and Mrs. Jones and Damon walk into the house.
Millie runs inside. “Mom, Daisy’s here!”
Mrs. Jones flops into a deckchair looking pale. Damon’s arm is in a sling, and I see him flinch when Millie runs up and touches it.
“I fell off my board. It’s just a bad sprain, not broken.”
Mrs. Jones is looking at me intently. “Is Cora here?”
I can feel my palms get sweaty.
“She had to go out, so I said I’d watch Millie.”
“That girl! She shouldn’t have asked you to look after Millie without telling me first. Millie, do you know where Cora went?”
“Daisy’s here,” Millie replies unhelpfully.
“Daisy, did Cora say where she was going or if she was meeting anyone?” Mrs. Jones is giving me an authoritarian stare.
“No, she just asked me to look after Millie for a bit.”
I am trying to figure out how to leave politely when Cora comes home. I see her before anyone else, looking out at us all in the backyard from the kitchen window. She looks hot and tired, and like she cannot take another thing.
I head home. No one pays me for babysitting, and Mrs. Jones is cold with me. She doesn’t get angry; she just isn’t friendly when she sees Cora and says, “Daisy, you should go now.”<
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When Cora calls me later, we don’t mention my awkward departure.
“How did it go?” I ask her.
“He tried to give me money, like a hundred bucks was going to solve all my problems. I told Mom. At least she understands now why I don’t want to involve the father. Daisy, do you want to hang out here on Friday night? I need a break from my family.”
When Jimmy gets back from his dad’s on Friday, we have our first fight. “I haven’t seen you in two weeks. Can’t you just cancel on Cora?”
“I promised her, Jimmy, and she’s having a tough time.”
“I had a tough time at my dad’s.”
“I’m sorry. We can hang out Saturday.”
“I guess. I have to go, Daisy,” he says and hangs up the phone.
Natasha asks if I can babysit for her on Saturday. I tell her I have a date with Jimmy, and she tells me to bring him over. “Then you can have the place to yourselves once the kids are in bed.” I tell Natasha I’ll have to ask Jimmy first. I don’t want him to be disappointed in me again.
Jimmy likes the idea. “I’m sorry I was mad earlier. It’s just I missed you.”
My ears ring with excitement.
“I’m sorry too,” I say. We are generous with our apologies and our forgiveness.
“I wish you were here,” I whisper into the phone.
“I wish I were there too, babe.”
Wanda is less forgiving. “Jesus, Daisy, I’ve been away all summer and you’re ditching me to babysit.” I don’t tell her Jimmy is coming with me.
“There’s going be a big party in the parking lot behind the arena. My cousin picked up a bottle of Lambs for me and I snuck it home in my backpack. Jude’s coming too. You’re going to miss out big time.”
Cora’s is wearing an oversized Depeche Mode shirt with her usual shorts when I arrive at the Joneses’. Damon is playing video games in the living room. He keeps swearing in frustration. He can only use one hand and keeps losing lives. I hear bleeping sounds that signify his player’s repeated death. There’s no sign of Crystal. Cora ushers me past Damon and into her room. He gives me a two-fingered wave when we go past.