Even Weirder Than Before

by Susie Taylor

  Wanda falls asleep. I sit up with her head on my lap and try to control my thoughts. Despite the vodka and the dancing, I am awake. I can’t tell what sounds I’m hearing and what sounds I’m imagining. I stay awake listening. I cover Wanda up as best as I can with the blanket of burlap and her jacket. I stroke her hair and feel her relax. I worry about the morning and trying to explain my state of dress and early arrival to Mum. I push this out of my mind; the main thing now is getting through this night. We should have called someone, I think. Wanda’s parents, Mum, Cora—even Donald—would have had to make an attempt to collect us. It’s too late now. I have no idea where a phone booth is and Wanda’s out, too asleep to be afraid.

  The sky lightens, and through the small high window in the shed, the night turns from inky black to a bruised mauve. Wanda is still sleeping. I gently move her, untie the twine, and step out of the shed in my nylons onto the dewy cemetery grass. I look around. A crow caws behind me, and I jump a little.

  I wake Wanda, anxious to get out of here. My feet are a mess. When I put my boots back on, I can hardly walk. Blood has congealed through my nylons and formed a scab that sticks the fabric to me; each step is like a flame being held to my flesh. As we exit the cemetery, an early jogger comes by and stares at us. I’m thankful when I see we’re not completely alone with this man. A homeless guy with a long friendly beard is sleeping on a stone bench nearby. There are condoms by the side of the entrance, but neither of us mentions them as we stagger to the nearest bus stop. The few people on the bus with us are early shift workers who survey our last night’s clothes with speculation. It’s Wanda’s turn to be vigilant, and she wakes me and gets off at my stop with me. It’s still so early that our voices seem sacrilegious cutting through the air.

  My house is closer. We sneak in quietly, but Mum hears us anyway.

  “Daisy?” she calls down.

  “It’s just me,” I yell in my brightest I-have-not-been-drinking-or-smoking-or-sleeping-in-a-cemetery voice.

  “Is everything all right? Why are you home so early?”

  I usher Wanda into my room, throw a sweater over my dress, and poke my head round Mum’s bedroom door.

  “We stayed up all night watching movies and decided to come here and make breakfast, but now we’re both tired. Wanda and I are going to take a nap for a while.”

  Mum raises her head to survey me, and I yawn and rub my eyes, the picture of post-sleepover innocence.

  Wanda’s in my bed, and her jeans and bra are on the floor. I take off my dress and painfully detach my nylons from my feet. I put on a T-shirt and snuggle up next to Wanda. I’m too tired to make up a bed on the floor, and want to be close to her.

  I wake up hours later, too hot, and I think I’m in bed with Jimmy. When I open my eyes, I realize I’m on my side, and it is Wanda’s hair, not Jimmy’s, that is tangled with mine. She’s spooning me, and in her sleep, nuzzling my shoulder.

  I feel a little breathless, and I remove myself slowly so Wanda doesn’t wake up. I can hear Mum downstairs. When I look at the clock, I see it’s two in the afternoon. I’m supposed to meet Jimmy at four, and I know Wanda has to be home for dinner.

  “You guys have certainly wasted the day,” Mum says, in one of those crushing tones.

  “I’m meeting Jimmy in a couple of hours.”

  “Another night alone for me, I guess.” Her voice quivers.

  “You should call Olivia.” I can’t help suggesting practical responses to her misery, even though I know how irritating these helpful ideas are.

  “She gets tired of me, Daisy. Everyone gets tired of me. No one loves a woman over forty.”

  “Mum,” I say, and hug her.

  “I need a change, Daisy. I need something to change.”

  Wanda is bright-eyed when I wake her up.

  “Last night was so cool,” she says.

  It becomes even better as we retell each other the story of how we slept with the dead.

  twenty-five

  Jimmy saunters up to me at the end of the day. It’s Friday, and he hasn’t been at school all week. One of the guidance counsellors catches sight of him, and he is swept along to the principal. I wait for a long time. I’m sitting with my back against the wall in the hallway just outside of the main office. When Jimmy reappears, he can’t look me in the eye and covers up all his other emotions with rage. “That guy is a fucking dickwad.” He doesn’t wait for me to stand, and instead marches towards the closest exit. I catch up just in time to see him kick the brick wall of the school. I attempt comforting words, and Jimmy snaps at me.

  “Don’t say anything. You can’t fix this.”

  We walk in sombre silence, and I hope Jimmy will eventually start talking. His mom is watching TV and smoking in the kitchen when we come into the house.

  “Jimmy, the school phoned,” she calls out to him.

  “Can we talk about it later?”

  Up in his room, Jimmy packs beer in a backpack for Steve’s house. I don’t want to go to Steve’s, but Jimmy isn’t in the mood for discussing other options.

  “That boy is useless. You should get yourself a real boyfriend,” Mrs. Hill says to me as I come back downstairs. As I head out the door, she yells after me, “You should dump him, Daisy. He’s just going to bring you down in this world.”

  “Fuck you, Mom,” Jimmy says, shutting the door with a thud.

  I am perched on the arm of the couch next to where Jimmy is sitting. He is playing a new fighting game. I sip a warm beer and observe the screen filled with blood, swords, and women with tiny waists and huge breasts. The only other girl is Alicia Cole who is dating Trevor, one of Steve’s friends. Alicia sits on Trevor’s knee, and when it’s not his turn to play, they make out.

  “Grab me another beer.” This is the first thing Jimmy has said to me in half an hour.

  I fetch his beer and return. I’m bored and drunk. The arm of the chair is uncomfortable, and my buzz is less prominent than the sense of swilling liquid in my gut.

  “Jimmy?”

  “What!”

  He is absorbed by screen and controller. His player is decapitated. Her head bounces gorily across the TV screen. For a moment she remains standing, her neck bleeding, the top of her white spinal cord visible.

  “Fuck, Daisy, look what you made me do.”

  Everyone, even lip-locked Alicia and Trevor, look at him and then me.

  “I’m leaving,” I say.

  Jimmy says nothing and continues to stare at the screen. I get up and go up from the gloom of the basement to the lit front entrance and put on my shoes. I turn, hearing someone follow. It’s Steve.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Uh huh. Thanks for having me.” Politeness during this interaction fills my mouth, so no embarrassing display of emotion can.

  I focus my gaze on the corner at the end of Steve’s street. I will go that far before looking back. I listen for Jimmy’s feet coming after me. I get to the corner and turn around, but there is nothing, only the dark and empty street, illuminated by the occasional puddle of light from a streetlamp. The dark and quiet are different than usual. A car goes by, and I feel the eyes of the driver on me, a teenage girl, out late, alone. I hear something behind me and expect my name to be called through the night or the sound of sneaker on pavement. It’s just a voice coming from one of the houses; a moment of conversation slipping out from a cracked-open window as I walk by.

  “Daisy, you’re home early.” At the sound of Mum’s voice, tears come.

  “What happened?”

  I shake my head. I walk through the house and lie down on my bed. Mum stands looking at me from my still open bedroom door. “Oh, Daisy.”

  I roll over and stare at the ceiling; tears fall down my cheeks, and I let them trickle.

  I wait for the phone to ring all through Saturday. Through the evening and the night, I watch each hour on the clock roll over: 6:00, 7:00, 8:00, 9:00, 10:00, 11:00, 12:00, 1:00, 2:00, 3:00, 4:00, and 5:00. No phone call.
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br />   I fall asleep at some point, and when I open my eyes again, I’m okay for a moment; then I remember the waiting and the absence of Jimmy, and I want to go back to the blissful ignorance of sleep. I lie in bed wondering how I’ll get through this day and the next. I make up excuses for Jimmy in my head. The phone rings, and the spring of hope that has been coiled inside of me bursts open.

  “Wanda’s on the phone,” Mum yells up to me, and I think for a moment she is mistaken and really it’s Jimmy.

  I pick up the phone from the floor beside my bed.

  “Why didn’t you call me? I ran into Alicia, and she said Jimmy was being an asshole to you and you walked out on him.”

  “It wasn’t like that,” I tell Wanda.

  “Did you break up?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’m coming over.”

  I hear Wanda and Mum conferring downstairs. After a while, I hear their footsteps on the stairs; they come into my bedroom carrying cups of tea. Mum leans in the door, and Wanda sits on the end of the bed.

  “What happened?” they ask in unison.

  I close my eyes and pull the covers over my head. Mum and Wanda talk about how shitty men are.

  “Okay, Daisy. Time to get up. Wanda and I have made arrangements. You need to be downstairs in half an hour,” Mum says.

  “I’m not getting up.”

  “Yes, you are,” says Wanda.

  I don’t know where we are going, and I don’t ask. I get in the back of the car and curl into the corner. I rest my head against the glass, bits of music from the radio and snatches of the conversation between Mum and Wanda float back to me. Wanda’s university plans, the residences at Queens, and how nice a city Ottawa is, but far away. I seethe at them for making me leave the phone. I imagine Jimmy sitting at our front door. I picture it like a music video, in brief melodramatic snatches, with pouring rain, fist shaking, and snaking tears.

  I don’t know where Mum is taking us. We’re down in the Don Valley; its treed sides are like autumn in a calendar. The colours are sharp and threaten to break through my ugly mood. Mum drives west and down a series of side streets. Wanda is map reading and peering at numbers on a street. Mum stops the car outside a house. Two storeys, covered in cedar shingles, and attached to a mirror image in drooping beige vinyl siding. There is a square real-estate sign on the small lawn with an open house notice hanging down from it on short chains. Mum and Wanda stare at the house. Mum cranes forward, her hand still on the keys in the ignition.

  “It’s a bit…” Mum says.

  “Woodsy,” I say. My first word since the journey started. Mum turns to look at me.

  “Do you want to look? I’ve been thinking you and I need a change.”

  I don’t say anything, just stare out the window.

  “We’re here. It doesn’t hurt to look. My mom loves open houses; she’s always dragging Dad to them on the weekends.” Wanda fills in my unkind silence.

  We get out. Mum goes first. Wanda loops her arm through my elbow, like I’m infirm and need supporting, and we follow behind.

  The real-estate agent hands us flyers. “Call me Trent. Any questions just ask. Real character this one has.” There is so much paneling, cheap basement paneling, through the entire house, made of laminate with scratchy black stuff in between. Walking across wall-to-wall shag carpeting in beige, brown, and something in between, I can smell damp dog. Up in one of the bedrooms there is relief from the compressed wood—one wall is taken up with a full-size wallpaper mural of a canoe pulled into the edge of a lake. There are curtains with geese flying across them.

  “At least the curtains would be easy to change?” says Wanda. And Mum stifles a laugh.

  “I think we’ve seen enough,” Mum says.

  In the car, Mum exhales. Across the city, we park in front of another house, detached. In its tiny front garden we follow a winding path to the front door. Instead of grass, the little bit of green on either side of the path is lush clover. There is a porch on this house with tasteful vases of dried grasses on display on the stairs. It feels hopeful, until we enter and everything is pink. The walls are pink, the carpets are pink; the swags across the windows, the couch, the chairs, the toilet, and bath are all pink. You can see the house is old, but the ceilings have been lowered and no original woodwork remains. In the master bedroom, there is a mirrored ceiling. The three of us stand staring up at our reflection. Wanda waves and I watch a reluctant smile break across my face.

  Mum drops Wanda off first. Jimmy is not waiting for me at our house.

  “Ready?” Mum asks before unlocking the front door, and I nod. Mum checks the answering machine.

  “Well,” I say.

  “I’m sorry, no messages.”

  I walk over and look at the red zero flashing on the display of the machine.

  “You will be okay,” she tells me, as my tears start again.

  My eyes are too sore from crying to put on makeup. I have not finished my homework. I don’t care. I want to stay home, but Mum quickly puts the kibosh on that.

  “It’s Monday and you have to go to school. Trust me, Daisy, it’s better just to get on with things.”

  I’m running late, and as I rush towards my locker, I notice a guy is standing by it. I’m irritated. I want to grab my books and go, and he’s in my way. When he turns around, I see that it’s Jimmy. He’s cut off all his hair.

  He looks older and tougher with short hair. He’s dressed in a dress shirt instead of a T-shirt, but he has retained his black jeans. I stop in front of him and raise my hand to his head, then I remember I don’t know if I’m on hair-touching terms with him and let it fall back. The theme from Jeopardy! rings through the halls, the last-minute warning to get to class. Jimmy grabs my hand and pulls me down the hall and out the front doors of the school. We run, although no one is going to chase after us, and stop when we’re safely round the corner. He holds me for a long time, and we don’t say anything.

  Jimmy takes me to the diner. It is not the kind of place high-school kids hang out. I order coffee and Jimmy has a $2.99 breakfast. The waitress calls him honey.

  He tells me he’s dropping out of school, and then he breaks up with me.

  twenty-six

  Fall passes slowly, slowly, slowly. I miss Jimmy. I drag myself to school. My mourning clothes are an oversized black hooded sweatshirt, unbrushed hair and extra eye makeup. The first weekends are really hard. For one thing, Mum has become much more vigilant about how and when I’m coming home since I no longer have a “man” to protect me. I resent this sudden interest in parenting. Every weekend she expects me to come with her and look at houses. I trudge behind her, black clad, sullen faced; a caricature of the difficult teenage daughter.

  I miss the sex. I wake up frustrated, clutching my polyester teddy bear and feeling like no one will ever want to touch me again.

  I never see Jimmy. He never calls. Steve tells me that Jimmy’s quit the restaurant and is working for his dad doing construction. I have a hard time imagining him getting up and making it to the site with a metal lunchbox and a hard hat, but this is apparently the case. He no longer goes to the arcade, and although I look, I never see him at the mall or on the bus.

  Jude and Cathy have started honing in on me as a potential suicide or Christian. I enter the cafeteria, and they wave me over. They invite me to preposterous events, the United Church youth group’s performance of Godspell and a fake accident put on by MADD. I hide in the library with Wanda. I wallow in Daphne du Maurier. Wanda finds a copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover and reads anything vaguely titillating out loud, making me blush and the librarian cough to remind us she can hear us.

  The school is doing the musical Annie this year, and I can’t face it. The music department is running it, not Gerry and Kleinberg. Damon is doing AV and Jude volunteers as wardrobe mistress. I can’t take the singing and the general optimism of Miss Parker, the head of music. I am not hanging around the stage, so I don’t get to witness love bloss
oming between Jana and Damon. Jana is playing Miss Hannigan and has reinstated her commitment to the theatre. Cora forewarns me, so when I arrive at the Joneses’ for Christmas cookie decorating and find Damon with his arm around Jana on the Jones family couch, I’m not blindsided.

  “Daisy, how are you?” Jana asks me. She is full of concern.

  I am clutching presents for Millie and Sinead and a box of homemade fudge that Mum and I made in a rare moment of mutual domesticity. Festive feeling has been flowing through me, but the sight of Damon and Jana ends this brief euphoria abruptly.

  “Oh my god, Daisy, you should come carolling with us!” Jana pronounces.

  “Carolling?” I am still unwinding my scarf as she pounces.

  “A bunch of us are going tonight. Miss Parker is coming, and we’re going to hit a bunch of the teachers’ houses. Then, after, a bunch of us are headed over to Roseanne’s. You’ll know everyone—it should be really fun!”

  “That sounds great. You should go, Daisy,” Mrs. Jones chimes in, and I hear the concerned encouragement in her voice.

  Cora watches me and Damon and Jana with a small smirk on her face, but does not comment.

  I try to say no. But Jana will not take no for an answer. I can’t maneuver out of this. The three of us leave the house. Two blocks from the Joneses’, I pull out a cigarette and light up.

  “Are you still smoking?” Jana asks disapprovingly.

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “It’s terrible for your voice,” Jana—not so long ago a chain-smoker herself—declares. I notice Damon declines the proffered packet as well.

  When we meet the other kids outside the school, they all turn out to be dutiful do-gooders. I don’t want to be the kind of teenager who participates in school events on the holidays. Miss Parker hands out lyric sheets and points out that, although we are on vacation, we are still representing the school and must behave accordingly. There must be no smoking (she looks pointedly at me as she says this) and no swearing, and we must sing the proper lyrics to all the songs. She’s talking to us like we’re a bunch of five year olds. We traipse from house to house. Miss Parker has not warned the other teachers that we’re coming. Some are full of bonhomie and get their kids to look at us in their pajamas and hand out candy canes. Others look ambushed. At one teacher’s house, I am sure I see the curtain twitch, and although the lights are on, no one comes to the door. I stand at the back and mouth the words to “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.” Miss Parker gets Jana to sing a solo of “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.” Jana has obviously been practicing. I shuffle along with the group—with them but apart. I have no one to whisper little barbed asides to and no one’s hand to hold and give little squeezes.