Even Weirder Than Before

by Susie Taylor

  “I’d rather just be with you alone. My mom’s got a date; let’s just hang out here,” Jimmy says.

  It’s true, everyone is going to Carly’s party. Wanda keeps trying to get me to change my mind, but I keep telling her I have plans with Jimmy.

  “What plans? Rutting in his basement like you already do three times a week?”

  Jude and Wanda already have everything organized so they can stay out late and get a ride home with Wanda’s cousin Craig. Jude even made up a fake permission slip for a school trip to the planetarium.

  On Saturday night, I am not at Jimmy’s. I’m moping around the house. Jimmy applied for a job at Mr. Burger Giant, and they called him for a trial run. Grahame and Mum weren’t expecting my company. Mum has spent all day making tofu bourguignon. “Why don’t you go see Cora?” Mum firmly suggests as I come into the kitchen and prod it with a wooden spoon.

  “If he can hardly manage to make it to school on time, I don’t know how he’s going to manage to show up to work.” I tell this to Cora in confessional tones.

  “Maybe it will be different when he’s getting paid?”

  “Maybe. I just don’t know when I’m going to get to see him.”

  “Damon’s going to a party tonight.”

  “It’s at Carly’s.”

  “You didn’t want to go?”

  I shrug. Cora is sorting through her closet. “Here it is.” She hauls out a green silk dress. “Try it on. It doesn’t fit. My boobs got too big for it.”

  I turn away from Cora, pull my T-shirt off, and pull the green dress over my head. I pull my jeans down. They have no knees and a hole in the crotch that forces me to keep my legs together. I have a pair of grey wool tights underneath that Jimmy told me reminded him of his great aunt; she’s dead. I step out of my jeans and turn around to show Cora.

  “That looks great on you. It never fit me right. Take that one for sure. Now try the other one.”

  The dress is purple with puffed sleeves.

  “Seriously?”

  “Just try it on, then go show Millie.”

  The dress is ridiculous. Cora laughs from her bed when I have it on. She kisses the top of Sinead’s head and leaves a lipstick mark. I walk into the living room and curtsey in front of Millie.

  “You look so pretty!” Millie exclaims. “Just like Madonna.”

  “How do you put your arms down?” I call out to Cora, flapping my arms for Millie. The sleeves look like those inflatable arm bands little kids use for swimming.

  “You don’t,” Cora calls out to me. “You keep them up holding flowers in front of you, and during dinner you make loud rustling sounds every time you raise your fork to your mouth. It’s my bridesmaid dress from Joanie’s wedding.”

  Cora flings the red dress I saw her wear on Valentine’s Day at me. “Go on, humour me.”

  I put in on with my bra still on and Cora laughs at me. “You can’t wear a bra with it. It doesn’t work.” I turn around, take the dress and my bra off, and put the dress on again. Cora smiles. “That looks great,” she says. She stops me before I go to look in the mirror. “Wait, let me put your hair up first.”

  Cora sweeps my hair up and sticks in a bunch of bobby pins. Then she comes at me with a lipstick and makes me pout my lips as she applies it. “Finger,” she says, and I draw my finger out between my lips. She grabs a pair of black pumps from her closet and I put them on my feet.

  I hardly recognize my reflection. I look like a woman, not like a teenager. My boobs seem enormous and my cleavage is a deep valley. The dress holds me in, but lets my breasts swing slightly free, and I feel embarrassed by how sexy I feel. The only thing that doesn’t look quite right is the charm bracelet Jimmy gave me.

  “You look awesome. Go show Millie again.”

  I walk into the living room pretending to be a super model, and Millie laughs. Then I notice Damon standing in the kitchen doorway looking at me. Cora has followed me out and notices too. I catch her winking at him; Damon blushes and withdraws into the kitchen.

  “That dress I’m keeping, but the next time you and Jimmy have a big date, let me know and you can borrow it.”

  “Jimmy never wants to go anywhere,” I say.

  twenty

  “Jana, you are a deeply caring person.”

  “Damon, you have a fantastic sense of humour.”

  “Jude, your attention to detail is superb.”

  “Roseanne, the beauty of your soul shines through your eyes.”

  “Nathan, your dramatic spirit is strong like an ox.”

  “Daisy, I admire your loyalty to this production.”

  Gerry starts rehearsal with personal affirmations. We sit in a circle and meditate. I close my eyes and hope my stomach doesn’t make any noise. Gerry gives us breathing instructions, in through your nose, out through your mouth. Most of us are battling winter colds and can’t get air through our clogged nostrils. Sucking in dry lips, we sniff as we pat our noses with damp and disintegrating tissues.

  Jana and I are together at the back of the gym, far from the stage, running lines together. Jana keeps shooting glances at Gerry, who’s laughing with Roseanne on stage. The scene is at an anti-Vietnam rally, and Roseanne sticks a fake flower into a plastic pistol that Nathan holds.

  “That was great, Roseanne, really great. I get a real sense of Juliet’s free spirit in the way you dance around Romeo. It was perfect how you brushed his hair behind his ear. And Nathan, you were good too, but I need you to memorize those lines,” Gerry says.

  Jana ignores the prompt I read to her. “If that was anyone else, he’d be losing his shit because they forgot their lines. And as for Roseanne, she looks like she’s dancing at a ballet recital, not a protest.”

  I make a non-committal sound and shake my papers ready to keep going.

  “Her parents paid for the new stage curtains. That’s how she got the part; they bought it for her.”

  I look at the red velvet curtains hanging from the stage. They replaced brown ones that emanated an odor of dust and mildew.

  “Nathan is good. He’s just bad at memorizing his lines,” I say, watching him on stage.

  “Good looking, you mean.” Jana and I watch as he stands up stretching, confident and comfortable with all the parts of his body, up on the stage.

  They start up again, and Nathan fumbles and looks to Jude who is acting as prompt.

  Jana whispers, “This is why we should have had tryouts.”

  I notice Kleinberg. He’s sitting in a chair pushed against one of the long walls of the gym. A newspaper sits in his lap. He rustles it and looks up the third time Nathan can’t finish the same line.

  Elizabeth is coming home. Grahame stocks the fridge with vegetarian delicacies he unpacks from a paper bag with rope handles. Mum and I can’t stop smiling. Eric isn’t coming with her.

  Grahame drives Mum and me to meet Elizabeth’s plane. Donald is off rat catching and unable to do the airport run. Mum and I are bubbling with joy as we stand looking through the sliding security doors, hoping to catch a glimpse of Elizabeth at the baggage carousel. Grahame, nervous at meeting the prodigal daughter, stands to the side twiddling his thumbs. We see her and wave and smile madly, but she isn’t looking for us; she’s staring at the suitcases and backpacks going round and round. She’s even skinnier than when she came back from tree planting. She looks really tired. When she finally comes out to meet us, Mum and I both hug her ferociously; she just stands there and lets us, but keeps her arms by her sides. She doesn’t even put down her bag. When we let go of her, she kisses us both on the cheek in a weird European way and bestows an absent-minded smile on Grahame, to whom she relinquishes her enormous backpack. She’s wearing ripped jeans and a plain white T-shirt. She has on hiking boots and no jewellery, except a braided piece of dirty string around her wrist. When I turn to look at her as we pull from the airport parking garage, she is asleep.

  “Travelling can be exhausting,” Grahame says, placating Mum and I. He distracts us
from our disappointment, telling stories of his drunken youth spent hitchhiking in Germany. The car pulls into our drive, Elizabeth wakes up and staggers into the house straight to bed. Grahame leaves her bag just inside the front door, then drives away.

  For the past forty-eight hours, Elizabeth has hardly left her room. Mum stands outside Elizabeth’s door, listening to the silence. We know she’s alive; there’s evidence of a late night shower, and although the tofu remains intact, three pieces of cold Kentucky Fried Chicken have evaporated from the fridge.

  When she does finally emerge, it’s like a backwards butterfly. She left all winged and colourful, and now she is a strange Elizabeth caterpillar who moves slowly and follows us around rooms with her eyes. She is polite, but evasive.

  Dad is here for dinner. It’s strange sitting around the kitchen table with Mum, Dad, and Elizabeth. Just like old times. Dad looks confused sitting in his old place at the head of the table. He looks like he can’t figure out why he doesn’t belong here anymore. “Are those curtains new?” he asks.

  “No,” says Mum, “we bought those from Sears just after we moved to Canada.”

  “Oh, did we? This chicken is nice. I don’t remember having it before.”

  “I made it that time you had the beaver expert come to talk to your students.”

  “Ken Ferguson. I remember now.”

  I roll my eyes at Elizabeth, but she passively eats the veggie stir-fry Mum has made for her and ignores me.

  “Was there trouble with the boyfriend?” I overhear Dad saying to Mum before he leaves.

  “I think she’s just having trouble adjusting to regular life.”

  There is no regular life for Elizabeth. She gets up at strange times and eats strange meals. She rarely leaves her room. In the old days, she used to nag at me to help out around the house more. She hasn’t done a single dish since she’s gotten back. After watching her wear the same dirty jeans for a week, Mum does her laundry. She folds Elizabeth’s underwear on the kitchen table, worn cotton with the elastic starting to come through the seams at the waistband.

  “Can you try talking to her? See what happened? If she’s okay?” Mum whispers to me when I come into the kitchen to make tea.

  I make two mugs and knock on Elizabeth’s door.

  “Yes?”

  I gingerly use one hand to hold the two mugs by their handles and use my other hand to open the door.

  She is sitting on the bed writing in a thick notebook. “Do you want something?” She’s smiling, but I can sense irritation.

  “Tea?” I say, as all the things I want from her run through my head. The list is long.

  “Are you busy?” I persist, putting the mug beside her. I sit on the edge of the bed.

  She takes the tea and blows small waves meditatively across the surface, but remains coolly uncommunicative.

  “What happened with Eric?” I blurt it out. The words push out of my mouth before I can shape them into something that might inspire intimacy.

  “Oh, Eric, we split up ages ago. I didn’t want Mum to worry about me being alone, so I never said anything.”

  “Weren’t you lonely?”

  “Sometimes, but I travelled with lots of people.”

  “Boys?”

  “Men, sometimes with men. Did Mum put you up to this?” For a moment I see Elizabeth back there, somewhere beneath the Elizabeth-doppelganger’s eyes.

  Jimmy and Grahame are here for dinner. Mum’s vegetarian lasagna is soupy. Grahame, Jimmy, and I all manage to spoon it in, but Elizabeth only eats the layer of cheese that floats on top of red tomato sauce and overcooked noodles.

  Grahame is wearing his elbow-patched donkey jacket and is talking intently about a pottery shard he recently found in a field, the site of a proposed new baseball diamond. He is self-effacingly describing himself huffing and puffing and falling over in the mud. There is an endearing Eeyore-like quality to Grahame, but Elizabeth eyes him coolly. She laughs only when he describes dropping his car keys in the middle of a mud puddle.

  Grahame asks Jimmy about his job, and Jimmy tells him about finding a dead rat in the deep fryer. Elizabeth fixes Jimmy with studied concentration during his brief telling and shakes her head. “Sounds a lot like an urban myth to me.”

  Jimmy shrugs, and I hope he doesn’t tell the story of the friend of his dad who found an alligator in his hotel toilet in Florida.

  “So, Elizabeth,” Grahame says, “any plans now you’re back from Europe?” He is either naïve to the vitriolic mood bubbling inside Elizabeth or foolish enough to think he can diffuse it.

  “No,” Elizabeth says. Mum pours herself more wine, and I estimate how many more mouthfuls it will take to finish my lasagna.

  In the morning Grahame tapes plastic bags around the heavy woollen socks he is wearing before sticking his feet in rubber boots.

  “You’re welcome to come with us, Daisy,” Mum says, sounding mildly panicked, as Grahame tapes bags on her feet. They are going to visit Grahame’s site, in hopes of finding more bits of broken plate.

  “No thanks.”

  Elizabeth is in the kitchen and looks mildly irritated at my intrusion.

  “Do you want to come see Cora and the baby with me?” I ask out of politeness.

  “Okay,” she says.

  All the Jones women are home. Mrs. Jones goes on about how much we look alike, a conversation which leaves me adding up all the ways we look different. Mrs. Jones asks Elizabeth about her trip. We sit around the table listening to Mrs. Jones—“Call me Carm!” —and Elizabeth exchange stories about travelling through Europe. They talk about missing trains and sleeping on beaches, shopping in markets and beggar children in Istanbul. My ignorance about Istanbul’s presence in Europe, as well as Elizabeth’s trip there, feels like failing a test I thought I’d aced. Mrs. Jones makes us mint tea. I learn more about Elizabeth’s trip over a cup of tea at the Jones household than over days at home. Millie and Cora gaze at Elizabeth in adoration.

  “I’m so jealous you got to do all that travelling,” says Cora.

  “You’re taking a journey too,” Elizabeth says, stroking Sinead’s head.

  Millie is sitting next to Elizabeth, making her a friendship bracelet out of scratchy coloured plastic.

  “Come back anytime,” Mrs. Jones yells out as we leave.

  For the past three weeks, Elizabeth has gone to the Joneses’ almost every day. Millie gives her drawings. Twice Elizabeth babysits Sinead, something I have never been asked to do. Going to the Joneses’ seems to have reminded Elizabeth that a world exists outside of her bedroom, and she’s seeing an old friend tonight, spending the night in Teresa’s dorm room at U of T. Knowing Elizabeth won’t be at the Joneses’, I drop by to visit. I want to hear someone complain about Elizabeth’s weirdness. I long to hear how she gets on Cora’s nerves with her constant presence, and stories of Paris cafés and night trains to Portugal. “I’m going to miss your sister when she goes,” Cora muses to me.

  “If she ever goes.”

  “I thought it was all set.”

  “What was set?”

  “The tree planting in the spring.” Elizabeth’s impending absence hits me, a hard ball in my throat.

  She’s gone quickly, before we can fix our broken communication lines. Her flight is mid-day. I sit in class looking out the window and imagine Elizabeth up in the air above me. When I get home from school, I go snoop in her room. I walk in and look around. It feels good to be in here; I feel closer to her standing in amongst her remnants than I did when she was occupying the space. Her bed isn’t made, which is unlike Elizabeth. Everything else looks the same. She’s taken her backpack full of dirty jeans and her tree planting equipment, which has spent the winter like a shrouded corpse in a corner of her room. I don’t know what I am looking for, a crack pipe or bag of mysterious white powder, maybe pamphlets from the Jehovah’s Witnesses. I open the drawers in her dresser and nothing has changed. Clothes that both of us have rejected lie undisturbed. When I ope
n her desk drawer, I find a folded piece of scrap paper with my name on it and a folded-up tissue underneath.

  Daisy,

  I figured you’d be in here. XXX

  Elizabeth

  I pick up the tissue: inside it is something hard. I shake it and a silver ring falls into my hand. It’s a silver snake. The head curls up towards my knuckle and the tail points back at my hand. It fits me perfectly.

  twenty-one

  April rain courses down on the outside of the windows at the top of the high gymnasium walls.

  “Six weeks left, people!” Gerry reminds us.

  Friday after school, this is an extra rehearsal. All day long I have itched to burst from the doors of the school and become my weekend self. Grabbing a quick smoke after classes, Jana stays behind as I head in.

  “Are you coming?” I yell at her, holding open the door.

  “One minute.” She waves me on.

  We all wait for Jana; she’s in the first scene. She shows up twenty minutes after I left her with some cockamamie story about being held up by Ms. Chandra. I’m pretty sure she’s stoned.

  It’s the best scene in the play. Romeo and Juliet end up in the hospital after a bad acid trip. The Capulets and the Montagues are thrown together; one mother dressed in a twinset, the other still clutching an anti-war protest sign. Jana is the nurse who comes to tell them of their children’s fate. Jude has managed to find an actual nun’s veil and puts it on Jana now.

  Jana walks dramatically on stage and then stops. She looks eerie with her hair draped in black and her face outlined by a white frame of material. She doesn’t say anything. At first I think she’s trying out a dramatic pause, but then I realize she’s distracted by the swirling dust illuminated by her spotlight. She gazes at it, lifts her hand to fan the air and then smiles as the tiny particles move frenetically around her.

  “Jana,” Kleinberg says. He rarely attempts to intervene, but Gerry seems unsure what to do.

  “Mmmm,” she says, smiling beatifically down at us all.

  “Your line, Jana.” I hope the serious tone of Kleinberg’s voice will snap her out of her reverie.