by Susie Taylor
“Whatever, Daisy.” He turns and walks away from me.
“It’s just tonight. Tomorrow we can hang out,” I call after him.
“Maybe,” he says, but he doesn’t stop walking or turn around.
I don’t get any studying done. I lie in bed and worry that he doesn’t like me anymore. When I get to my locker the next day, Jimmy is there closing it. He grabs me and pulls me in. “The best part of fighting is making up,” he whispers in my ear. He leaves me to get to class, but when I open the locker I find flowers and a note folded up like a fortune teller. At the bottom of the note it says I LOVE YOU, DAISY RADCLIFFE. When I read this, in my English homeroom, I feel a little sick with excitement. Damon tries to grab the note from me.
“Fuck off, Damon.” It comes out louder than I intend.
“First warning, Daisy. Another word and you are out of here,” Mr. Kleinberg says, almost yelling. I never get in trouble, so the class snickers. Damon sticks his tongue out at me. I pretend not to notice.
At the next Drama meeting, Jude, Damon, and I sit together. We’re the only grade tens to show up, and Kleinberg tells us he’s glad to see us all again. Gerry comes in and sits on a desk at the front of the class. Outside the wind has picked up, and wet leaves keep hitting the window. The school takes on new sounds as the other students empty out of it. The last of the locker doors shutting echo in the hollow hallways.
“I have some good news and some bad news.” Gerry looks at us seriously. “The play you have chosen is Hair. The play you will be performing is Romeo and Juliet.” He sighs. “The oppressive hierarchy has ruled that Hair is not appropriate for a school production. I argued that students of your maturity could handle it, but I was shot down.” He looks around, making eye contact with each of us. “We are going to stand up to this oppression.”
No one says anything.
“This is what we’re going to do. We are going to make our version of Romeo and Juliet a Hair for your generation. We are going to take this play and tailor it to tell the story of being young now. This is going to be about the Berlin Wall, AIDS, and growing up in the cultural shadow of the sixties. This is going to be your story.”
A few of the grade thirteens applaud this.
“My senior classes have already been workshopping the play so it reflects our times. This is your chance to stick it to the Man.”
He announces that Roseanne will play Juliet and Nathan will play Romeo. He reads a list of the Capulets and the Montagues, both lists are made up entirely of his senior Drama classes.
“Don’t worry if you don’t have a part,” he says, smiling out at us all. “There is a place for everyone in this play.”
Jana raises her hand.
“No need to raise your hand.” Gerry smiles, and the front row titters.
“All the good parts are gone and the rest of us”—Jana waves in the direction of a few grade elevens and then me, Jude, and Damon— “didn’t get a chance to try out.”
“I think what you will find, what’s your name again?”
“Jana.”
“Well, Janis, the thing to remember is that there are no small parts, only small actors.”
“Is he high?” Damon whispers to me.
“High on himself,” I whisper back.
seventeen
Our P.A. beeps, and for a moment everyone is still. Often direct class messages mean trouble, a death in the family, or that a student is being picked up by the police or social services.
“Mr. Kleinberg, can you please send Damon Jones down here to the office and ask him to collect his books?” the secretary’s disembodied voice says. I know this means Cora must have gone into labour. Damon fist bumps me as he heads out.
We have a test, and I’m trying to concentrate when we hear a whoop outside the room. I look up and Damon has shoved a piece of paper against the small square of glass at the top of the door. IT’S A GIRL is scrawled across it. Even Mr. Kleinberg smiles and shakes his head. Cora liked his classes.
Mum and I arrive at the hospital to visit the day-old baby. To get to the entrance, we walk through a cloud of smoke. Patients stand outside the hospital holding onto metal posts on wheels with IV bags hanging off them. Inside the hospital there is the smell of disinfectant and sick bodies.
I am nervous and feel like crying for no particular reason. We’re waiting for the elevator, and two porters wheel a gurney with someone lying on it beside us. The patient is heavily bandaged and unmoving. The porters wheel the gurney silently into the staff elevator, and Mum and I politely avert our gaze.
“Okay, Daisy?” Mum says, as we get into the visitors’ elevator. I nod. “Babies make everyone emotional,” she reassures me. The maternity ward is less desolate than the first floor of the hospital. There are balloons on the front desk, and you can hear people laughing. Mrs. Jones is standing outside a door chatting with a nurse; she waves us over.
“Go in, Daisy. Go on.”
Cora is propped up in bed, her face clean of makeup. She is holding a tiny white bundle in her arms. She looks up, sees me, and starts crying.
“Sorry, sorry, it’s the hormones, they say. I’m so happy. Come see. She’s amazing.” I gaze down at the baby in Cora’s arms. Her face is red and squished up. She has little whiteheads all over her skin, but still asleep, she reaches out a tiny arm towards Cora, and I am taken with the miniature fingers.
“Look at her hands,” I say.
“I know.”
“How are you?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” says Cora, crying again. “But look at her.” I look up and see Mum hugging Mrs. Jones. She squeezes Mrs. Jones’s arm, and a look passes between them. They both come in, Mrs. Jones wiping away tears.
“Babies make everyone cry,” Mum says. The baby, Sinead we learn her name is, opens her eyes and appears to look around at us before starting to wail.
Grahame comes for dinner that night. He brings a book to show me. The cover is a green-moss colour and made of very soft paper, almost like construction paper, but stronger and velvety. There’s no picture on the front, only the title Standing Still in the River, but down the thin spine is the author’s name, Carl Kleinberg. “Isn’t this your English teacher? Your mum mentioned you liked him, and the name sounded familiar. I bought this a few years ago after hearing him read.”
I flip open the book; it is all poetry. At the back is a black- and-white photo of Mr. Kleinberg, the picture is ten years old, and he is younger but unmistakeable.
“It is my teacher. He never told us he was a poet.”
“Maybe best keep that to yourself, Daisy?” Mum says. “He might not want everyone to know.”
“You can borrow it if you like,” Grahame says.
The poems are beautiful. There is poem about a boy who drowns on a canoe trip and a poem about a night spent contemplating suicide.
I call Wanda and describe Sinead to her. I read Wanda one of Kleinberg’s poems. It’s about a swallow stuck in a house searching for an open window.
“Read it again,” she says, and by the end of the second time, we are both crying.
The classrooms are decorated with tinsel, and the teachers are all laid back. In French we play French charades. In Math we work out the total area of a reindeer made up of triangles, rectangles and a perfectly round red nose. In English we watch a crackling black-and-white version of A Christmas Carol. By the time I get to the gym for rehearsal, I’m looking forward to the holiday.
Kleinberg’s wearing a Santa hat and is handing out candy canes to all the kids as they come in the door of the gym.
“In five you have to flash, 1, 2, 3, 4, now.” I give Damon the cue. Damon flickers the lights up and down. This represents the bad trip Romeo and Juliet have after taking acid. Damon and I are lighting crew, although this is secondary to my role as understudy to Jana, who Gerry gave the nurse’s role.
“Cora’s boobs are huge. And it cries the whole time. How can something so small make such disgusting smells?” Damo
n tells me.
“Come on, it can’t be that bad. And don’t talk about your sister’s breasts. That’s just wrong.”
“I can’t help it. They’re everywhere I go, popping out in the living room and the kitchen. And when it’s not boobs, it’s nursing pads lying around on the coffee table or on the bathroom counter.”
Jude comes in to join us. She’s sewing one of the costumes.
“Hey, Jude!” Gerry yells. He’s been barking instructions since the start of rehearsal.
“Gerry!” Jude yells back from the lighting booth.
“Black pants and a flowing white shirt for Mercutio. I see him in three-hole Docs. No, scratch that, Converse.”
“Got it!” Jude jots down these notes.
Jude gets me to hold a hem in place. She has run out of pins. I follow her down the stairs, holding one end of a dress as she holds the other. We cut across the back of the stage into the equipment room where baseball bats and pylons are stored. Jude is the costume and prop mistress. Carefully labelled garment bags hang above the sacks of balls. Jude is supplying most of the character Romeo, the child of a military family, with bits of discarded Cadet uniforms she gathers from her troop. Juliet’s wardrobe comes from students pillaging the backs of their mother’s closets for castoffs from the sixties.
Jana joins us in the cupboard and shakes her fist at Gerry when he isn’t looking in our direction. Gerry keeps changing her lines and making her nurse outfit less and less attractive. Jude is trying to source a nun’s habit, but in the meantime is experimenting with an old pillow case slit down one side. Jana sits with her face shrouded like a druid as Jude tries different methods of securing the pillow case.
“I can’t stand Gerry. It’s like he thinks he’s so cool, but he’s just a loser.”
“No, no, no, not like that!” Gerry shouts at Mercutio. “Off the stage.”
Gerry is not in a festive mood. Jude, Jana, and I watch him staring at the empty stage, muttering inaudibly to himself.
“I want you all out here. Everyone in front of the stage now.”
Damon sprawls on the floor next to Jude, Jana, and me, as we sit at centre court in the gym and wait for Gerry to start talking. Kleinberg places a chair behind the students seated on the ground.
Gerry turns from the stage and stares out at us. There are dark shadows under his eyes. He walks in a circle around all of us seated on the ground, and as he passes by us, I catch a whiff of whiskey on top of his usual cigarette smell.
“Is he drunk?” Jude whispers to me.
“He can’t be, it’s only 4:30 in the afternoon,” I say.
“It’s five o’clock somewhere,” says Damon.
“His girlfriend left him for a guy she’s in the chorus of Phantom with. He told us in class today,” I overhear a girl behind me saying.
Gerry has completed his tour and stands in front of us again. Everyone is silent.
“The play is the thing!” he shouts. I don’t know if we’re supposed to laugh or not. Jana, foolishly, grins.
“Funny? You think this is funny? We have only a few months before this theatre,” he gestures around the empty gym, “is going to be full.”
“Do you know what it’s going to be full of?” He takes a long dramatic pause. “It’s going to be full of shit!”
I have an awful urge to giggle; it’s nerves. I’m working on being inconspicuous, lips neither smiling nor frowning. My hands are clasped together like they are posed for a formal photograph that is meant to look unstaged.
“Here you all are thinking because of some overly commercialized holiday you can sit back and have a laidback little read through. Well, you are wrong. Theatre is work. Art is work. You need to be eating, drinking, and shitting this play. I need you to believe in this play the same way that the Pope believes in Jesus.”
Gerry stops. He pauses for breath, and Kleinberg walks past us holding his Santa hat in his hands and seizes the moment.
“What Gerry is saying is that just because you are on holiday doesn’t mean you shouldn’t still be working your lines and thinking about your characters. Now go. Practice hard and enjoy your vacation. Get out of here.”
We grab our stuff and leave.
“What the fuck?” Damon says, when we get outside.
“He must be having a really hard time,” says Jude.
“He’s right, you know. I haven’t been putting my soul into my part,” Roseanne says, and Damon smirks at me. Damon, Jude, and I dawdle outside the gym doors. I can hear Kleinberg raise his voice. But his words are undecipherable. When footsteps start heading towards the door, the three of us get out of the school fast.
Jude heads off to the bus stop. “You going to the arcade to meet Jimmy?” Damon asks me.
“Actually, I’m going to your house. I’m visiting Cora.”
He jerks his head in the direction of his house, and we start walking together.
“Do you think Gerry really was drunk?” Damon asks me.
“I don’t know. People go crazy when they break up. He could be drunk or just depressed or maybe both.”
Damon nods and we walk in silence for a while.
“When Cora got pregnant, I caught Mom smoking. She was out where Dad hides his butts, smoking and crying all alone.”
“What did you say to her?”
“Nothing. I just backed up slowly and went around to the front of the house. You’re the only person I’ve told.”
“Mum does crazy stuff. She gets drunk sometimes, then she pretends like it never happened. She’s more fun now, though, not always so worried about what other people are going to think.”
“It’s cool you’re coming to see Cora. She gets kind of down sometimes. I think it’s pretty boring being stuck at home all day with Sinead.”
“This town is boring, even if you get to leave the house.”
“Jimmy not exciting enough for you?”
I give Damon a look. “I’m just kidding,” he says.
When we arrive at the house, Millie and Mrs. Jones are making cookies in the kitchen. Millie is icing the cookies and then adding sprinkles. She is incapable of keeping her hands dry, and the rainbow sprinkles are running in the white icing making all the sugar cookies appear as if someone has licked the top.
“Can you give me a hand? Girls? Damon?” Mrs. Jones asks when I arrive, and Cora comes to meet me.
There are six dozen cookies; we form an assembly line. Two hours later Mrs. Jones goes to pick up pizza for us. Cora takes Sinead to change her, and Damon, Millie, and I remain in the kitchen.
Damon starts chasing Millie around with the icing tube. He draws a blue moustache on her. Then he turns towards me. Millie is shrieking around us, and Damon grabs me from behind and pulls me close to him. It feels strange. He leaves his arm around me for what must only be five seconds, but it feels like time has stopped. Mrs. Jones comes in holding pizza, and Damon lets go.
When I get home, Mum is wrapping up presents. “Jimmy called. Actually, he called three times. Daisy, you know this thing with Jimmy? It’s just…”
“Just what?”
“Nothing, nothing. It’s just you’re both so young.” She leans down and kisses the top of my head.
eighteen
I am going to Wanda’s for her family’s big Christmas party, and Grahame is coming over to our house to spend the night.
“You know I was with your father for a long time, but I have very strong feelings for Grahame, and I miss the physical side of being married.” Images of Mum and Grahame performing aerobics form in my mind. Grahame wears a Richard Simmons headband, and Mum is in leggings and one of those weird high-cut swimsuit things that Jane Fonda wears. A smile forms on my lips.
“Daisy, this is serious. I need to know you are okay with this. Having Grahame stay in the house is important to me. It’s not something I’ve decided lightly. Since your father left…” she trails off.
“I know, Mum,” I say.
Jude and I show up at Wanda’s, an
d her parents are already a bit drunk and being all kissy-kissy in the kitchen. Wanda drags us into her room where we change into our festive outfits and abandon our sleeping bags. We all wear sparkly eye shadow. I wear my hair down, and let Wanda go at it with her mom’s ancient crimper.
Her parents are blasting Steve Miller and Lynyrd Skynyrd. Her mom has said we can each have three glasses of her Pepsi punch, but no more. “I don’t want to have to deal with a bunch of puking teenagers tonight, okay, girls?”
Wanda smokes in front of her parents; it feels weird to be standing in the kitchen sharing an ashtray with them. I can hardly taste any booze in the first glass of Wanda’s mom’s punch. Wanda waits until her mom is greeting guests, then pours us a second glass with an extra glug of rum from the bottle her dad has been mixing his drinks with. I’m sitting on the couch between Wanda’s mom and her friend Wanita. Wanita hands me her smoke and I take a drag.
“Men,” Wanita says, leaning in close. “The thing is, the most important thing to remember…” She points her finger and the burning cigarette at me. Then she stops mid-sentence and bounces up off the couch, patting my knee. She rushes over and throws her arms around a couple of women who have just walked into the room. The house is shaking with music and full of smoke. A couple of men have guitars and are competing with the songs Wanda’s dad is playing on the stereo. Wanda, Jude, and I escape the heat of the house and head out into the backyard for a smoke. Wanda’s cousins Bill and Craig are already outside smoking a joint.
“Little cousin Wanda!” Bill pulls her in for a hug. “Who are these lovely ladies? Your babysitters?” he says, teasing her.
“Give us a hit, Craig.” Wanda pouts at him.
“Too late,” Craig says, and pinches out the end of the joint and sticks the remnant in a small tin he takes from his pocket.
“Here, kid,” says Bill, when Craig heads inside first. Bill’s not that much older than Wanda. He hands Wanda a thin white joint. “Merry Christmas!”
Wanda ceremoniously wets the joint. She puts it in her mouth, then gently draws it out between pursed lips. “So it doesn’t canoe,” she tells us sagely.