Even Weirder Than Before

by Susie Taylor

  I claim a headache and refuse to go to Roseanne’s. Jana insists that she and Damon walk me home. It’s not far, but it is painfully awkward, and I can’t help but think of the last time Damon walked me home at night. This time I’m the third wheel.

  “Merry Christmas!” Jana calls to me, as she and Damon depart. “We should do something soon.”

  “Yeah, sounds great,” I say, without much enthusiasm.

  I retreat into the shelter of my house and watch Jana and Damon walk away hand in hand.

  When she arrives for the holiday, Elizabeth seems more normal. She’s been working at a ski resort out west. Her hair is brushed and clean, and she’s wearing sporty clothes. She speaks with a strange BC inflection, and is alarmingly optimistic for a Radcliffe female. She refers to “the slopes” and goes out most nights with “friends” from high school that Mum and I have no recollection of her being friends with. I hardly see her, and when we are alone, there is still this strange disconnect. I feel too shy to tell her any of the things I’ve been saving up to say to her.

  Elizabeth takes charge Christmas Day. She insists we play Monopoly in the afternoon and makes sure there is a hubbub of conversation going on, which drowns out the silence of Donald and Grahame and Jimmy’s absence. All this cheerfulness is exhausting.

  After the Christmas break, I become Jana’s project. Cora thinks it’s hilarious. Jana finds me sitting alone. She sits beside me and interrupts the book I’m reading. Jana comes looking for me in the library. The only thing that keeps her at bay is Wanda. She has a look she gives Jana, the same look she previously used on Jimmy.

  “You just need to tell her to fuck off,” Wanda says when she sees Jana peering in through the library door.

  “She means well.”

  “Does she? You know what they say about keeping your enemies closer. I think she wants to keep an eye on you.”

  Jana invites me to go see movies with her and Damon. I decline. She invites me to her house. She stops her car beside me and offers me drives home. She is full of advice. I remind her of her younger self—she means last year. Lost and lashing out—she means smoking. A part of me likes the attention Jana gives me; it reminds me of Elizabeth, or Cora when she had less baby and more time, but with Jana there’s always a weird edge.

  “Damon told me all about what happened with your parents.”

  “Oh.”

  “His mom is so sweet having you over to babysit.”

  Nothing like learning you’re a charity case.

  “I know you feel sad, but you don’t know what it’s like to be clinical. My therapist says I need to be more open.” Jana digs in her purse and just happens to flash her antidepressants at me as she looks for a tissue. “This is why I’m telling you I used to be jealous of how close you were with Damon, but now I understand you’re more like a sister or maybe a cousin to him. Carm is such a great lady. I’m sure she will make an awesome mother-in-law.”

  The winter is a brutal one. Snow mounds in the yard, and ice paintings cover all the windows. Mum and I rush quickly home after work and school. We walk around the house padded in slippers and sweaters. We are gentle with each other, offering cups of tea and sitting in silence on Saturday nights watching Masterpiece Theatre. We get used to being alone together and remember the pleasure of small comforts—tea, toast, and lying warm in bed listening to the cold wind howl. When the weather starts to get warmer, it is like we are emerging from hibernation, both of us sleepily coming out of our shared den.

  A soft April breeze is blowing my curtains in and out. Mum bawls at me to answer the phone. I can’t figure out who is calling me on a Sunday morning.

  “Daisy, where are you?” It’s Cora.

  “I’m here.”

  “You know what I mean. Are you still moping over Jimmy Hill, or are you mad at me?”

  “Yes and no.”

  “Jana and Damon can babysit. Dad got my car working. Let’s go for a drive.”

  Cora’s car pulls up, the muffler making almost as much noise as the stereo. Mum looks askance when I head for the front door. “Her dad says it’s fine,” I shrug. We drive listening to the stereo and not talking. Cora takes a new pack of cigarettes from the glove compartment and hands me one. We drive north. It’s surprising how quickly we get out of the suburbs and into open country, with cows in fields and strange modern farmhouses. Mostly it’s hydro wires and sky.

  Cora pulls into a gas station. I offer her money for gas, but she waves it away. I lean against the car watching the early cottage-goers heading home. Some of them are taking disgruntled kids to the questionable-looking gas station restroom. Cora hands me a Coke and a Slim Jim. I have never had a Slim Jim before, and when I curl my lip she says, “You’ll like it.” And she’s right, there is great pleasure in chewing down on the salty fatty meat.

  We drive for two and a half hours. Eventually, we turn off the highway and roar down a dirt road, kicking up dust. We pull up at a makeshift boat launch looking out over a lake at the end of the road, and get out of the car. Like all lakes close to city, this one is dotted with cottages; some are old and ramshackle, others are new with pink brickwork and multi-storied decks. Across the water is a clearing; Cora points to it. “I used to go to camp there.”

  “Did you like it?”

  “I hated going, I never wanted to and loved it by the time I left. I love the lake.”

  It’s quiet: all we can hear is the lake lapping against the shore. I stick my hand in the water; it is the temperature of recently melted ice. The fact that we have made it here of our own volition, or at least Cora’s, on a Sunday afternoon seems miraculous.

  “So, why haven’t you been over?” Cora asks me.

  “I’ve been busy.”

  “Bullshit. Damon says you never go out and that you disappear at school.”

  “I feel stupid around Jana. She makes me feel like a kid with terminal cancer. She told me your mom was only nice to me because she felt bad for me when my parents split up. And it makes sense, why did she need me to babysit when Damon was around?”

  “Fuck Jana, she is so full of shit. Mom doesn’t trust Damon with anything. Jana’s just jealous because we all like you more than her.”

  Cora bends down and starts untying her shoelaces.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Living.”

  Cora takes her clothes off, fast and with determination. She pulls off her pants and underwear in one determined tug and steps out of them. She turns to me. “Come on, hurry up.”

  I take off my boots and then kick off my socks. Cora pulls her sweater and T-shirt off, then takes off her bra. I can see her back, the shape of her like a cello, curved and round. I hesitate, then quickly get out of my own clothes.

  Cora is standing in the water hopping from foot to foot, saying, “Cold, cold, cold.”

  My need to be covered up and hide my nakedness overwhelms me, and I run in fast, splashing past Cora, and plunging my body in as soon as the water is up to my thighs. The air gets sucked from my lungs. I take a stroke and another, my arms stiff, my skin hurting. I turn back and look at Cora with her arms crossed across her breasts, still only ankle deep, hopping from foot to foot.

  “It’s as warm as a bath,” I say through chattering teeth.

  I can hear the sound of a car approaching and Cora must hear it too, because she looks back towards the road, then she hurtles in and is beside me spluttering unintelligibly with a look of horror on her face. “So cold,” she manages to articulate. The car drives past, and with the dust it kicked up still in the air, we both rush from the freezing water to the shore and clumsily pull our clothes over our bright red skin.

  twenty-seven

  Mum is not happy this summer. She walks around with a distant look in her eyes and sighs at odd moments. Her doctor has prescribed her pills, and these just seem to have pulled a fish tank over her head; when she looks at me, I think I must be blurry.

  “You should go out more, Mum. Let’s go see a
movie.”

  “Not tonight.”

  “Well, I’m heading over to Wanda’s. Do you want to go see any houses tomorrow? I can see if Wanda wants to come?”

  “I don’t think so. You go on.”

  I don’t know what to do. I head out the door.

  When I come home, the real-estate section of the newspaper is open on the table, a small black-and-white picture of a house circled. I peer at the tiny image and imagine us living in it. The next day I walk to my summer job, thinking of different streets with streetcar tracks and fresh vegetables and flowers tumbling out of store fronts and filling the sidewalk.

  Ice cream makes perfectly normal-looking people behave like sociopaths. The man before me is smiling, but I can tell a complaint is coming: there are not enough marshmallows in the rocky road so he wants a refund, he’s going to accuse me of short-changing him, or insist that he ordered strawberry and now that his kid has eaten half a container of orange sherbet he wants us to fix the order. I dip my metal scoop in milky water.

  “Is this really maple walnut? It doesn’t taste right to me,” he says.

  An older couple comes up and wants to try a few flavours. I give them a taste of tiger tail and then chocolate ripple on plastic pink spoons. I offer them a taste of white chocolate raspberry, and Victor, the owner, comes and stands close beside me.

  “Not so many tastes. This is not a charity. And go easy on the napkins too. One. Per. Cone.”

  I’m closing with Ingrid, who never talks to me unless to say “Do this” or “You’re doing that wrong,” and Alice, who is sweet but talks endlessly about her cats and doesn’t smell quite right. I’m hoping no last-minute customers come after 5:45 p.m. No one ever finishes cleaning by 6:15 p.m., but we don’t get paid if it takes us longer than that to mop the floor and cash out.

  I wipe out a refrigerated unit that stinks of soured milk. I haven’t wanted to eat ice cream since my first week, despite my twenty-five percent discount. The phone rings, and I expect it to be Victor, with instructions to hose down the dumpster or a reminder to count the float twice.

  “Daisy! Personal call!” Ingrid yells at me. “Quickly please.”

  I panic for a moment. Why would Mum call me unless there’s an emergency? It’s Wanda from a payphone at Wonderland where she is working this summer. All day she walks around with a flotilla of bobbing balloons trying to sell them to the parents of over-excited children.

  “Come out with me. Just for an hour,” she says.

  “I don’t know, Wanda.” My feet ache.

  “You don’t get paid to talk on the phone,” Ingrid says to me. Alice looks at me with mournful, sympathetic eyes.

  “I’ll come. Gotta go.”

  “Daisy, this floor isn’t clean. Get new water and do it again,” Ingrid tells me with spite.

  I hum to annoy her as I lug the heavy industrial mop bucket to the bathroom. I heave it up and over to tip it down the toilet. Water slops out of the bucket too fast and comes out of the toilet in a wave, soaking my shoes and socks with dirty water. A brown puddle forms on the bathroom floor. “Clean that too!” Ingrid snaps at me.

  Alice leaves, patting me on the shoulder. Ingrid has let her go with just enough time that, if she runs, she’ll catch her bus. Ingrid waits by the door shaking her keys in impatience as I put the mop away.

  Wanda’s sitting with Mum, in the living room, with a glass of white wine in her hand. The two of them observe me in a way that indicates I have very recently been the subject of conversation.

  “What?” I say.

  “This house is great,” Wanda says holding up the newspaper.

  “It’s okay, but did you see the one next to it with the balcony?”

  “That house is beautiful, but the location is all wrong.”

  “Location is everything,” Wanda says, and takes a sip of the wine Mum has provided her with.

  I fortify myself with a glass of wine in the bathroom as I clean up and change out of my polyester uniform into jeans and a T-shirt.

  “Where is this party?” I presume it’s in our neighbourhood.

  “It’s on Oak Street, in the new development.”

  “Wanda, that’s miles.”

  “We’ll take the rec trail.”

  We walk by houses like ours, houses the same age as our parents, and a Victorian that has somehow escaped demolition or fire.

  “That place. Mum should buy something like that place.” Wanda and I stop and admire a white painted house with a wraparound porch and a tower running up the side. The paint is peeling, but it remains regal.

  As we enter the trail, there is still dusky light. This section cuts between groomed back gardens and industrial yards. The gravel path follows alongside a stream full of reeds, plastic bags, and the occasional shopping cart. Patches of pink foaming stuff float along the surface like toxic bubble bath. A dog walker comes towards us; her dog is small, old, and disinterested in our enthusiastic praise of his cuteness. It’s getting darker, and Wanda starts talking about nothing, and I know this is because it’s getting creepy in here and we need a distraction. Something makes a noise close to us, a rushing sound like unearthly breathing, and we both stop still. A racoon ambles into the path in front of us. It turns and stares at us with wide yellow eyes, then disappears into the undergrowth.

  Both of us start to speed walk. I trip on a root, stumble, and grab Wanda’s arm. I look up from steadying myself, and I see an opening ahead of us. We pop out of an arch of trees into the large groomed expanse of park that edges Forest Village, the housing development we’re headed to. Out in the open, away from the shadow tricks of the trees, we are braver. Lounging on a picnic table, I hold the flame to the end of Wanda’s cigarette and the light from my Bic glows.

  “How far is it now?”

  “Not that much further.” Wanda gestures across to the far side of the park. I see a row of square grey houses. They are all oversize, with tiny strips of dead grass and tall anti-social fences separating them from their identical neighbours.

  The night crept down when we weren’t looking. Walking down the path through the centre of the park, we hear moths buzz around the fake old-timey lamps that appear at regular intervals along the way. We pass two large baseball fields, a playground, and a parking lot. In the middle of the park, we stop and stand on a little foot bridge, meeting the stream we followed earlier once more.

  “So much space,” Wanda says, spinning her arms out. This place is empty, except for us. The sky seems huge tonight. There is a bright full moon, and one or two stars starting to appear.

  “You can see why people pray to it,” I say, throwing my head back to stare.

  Wanda lets out a sound, slow at first, then low and loud. She howls at the moon. My voice cracks the first time, but I open my throat wider and let out a matching sound. Our howls vibrate against each other, and in the distance, a dog howls back at us from one of the small fenced yards.

  All the streets of the subdivision are named after trees—Tamarack, Elm, Birch, Palm. There are no oaks on Oak Street, only small ornamental shrubs planted in decorative gravel. They look thirsty. Most of the houses have the blue light of the television coming out of their windows. We can tell where the party is at by the bunch of cars lining the curb outside.

  “Whose house is it again?”

  “Karen’s boyfriend, Matthew. I work with Karen. Matthew works in rides. I’ve only met him a couple of times.”

  I have my hand clasped around the greasy brass of the door handle, and I’m pulling it shut behind me. I look at Wanda, and I know she feels it too. We don’t belong here. Something in the way the lights and the music and the laughter lurch in this house isn’t right.

  We start by looking in the living room. A bunch of teenage boys are taking hits off a bong. One sits with his eyes closed. A Clockwork Orange plays on a large TV screen. The sound is turned up loud, and there is masculine laughter in the room. We back out, not speaking, and look in another room. The kitchen. Two gi
rls are in there. One of them lights a cigarette from the burner heated red on the stove.

  They look us over.

  “You want something?” one of them says. She’s wearing a bomber jacket and Docs. I look at her shoelaces. There’s something in her, something hard.

  “Karen?” Wanda asks.

  “Matthew’s girlfriend,” the other girls says. She is too skinny, with a band of acne across her cheeks. “I think she’s in the garage.” She gestures back out into the hall from where we have come.

  Laughter comes up from a set of stairs leading to the basement. Hard music comes up from there. Something I don’t know. It’s jarringly loud and aggressive. My throat hurts in empathy with the guttural words the singer shouts. I can’t make out the meaning of the lyrics, only the feeling of them, and it sickens me with the force of its violence.

  “Jesus, sorry, Daisy. I’ll just find Karen, then we’ll go.”

  We find another door, and it opens into the garage. Light blazes. I blink, adjusting my eyes. The sounds from the other rooms irritatingly clash, neither loud enough to drown out the other and both menacing.

  Wanda puts her hand on my shoulder.

  There is a man in his late twenties standing against the wall across from us. Shaved head, Docs, a swastika on the arm of his bomber, just like I’ve seen on the news, but never in real life. He is too old to be at this party. I taste danger. He looks us up and down; it is clear we have interrupted something. Then I see her. Jude is standing with her back to the metal door of the garage. She doesn’t see our arrival. Another girl with short, shaved hair is up in her face. “Cadet! You’ll do as I say. I think you need to show me more respect. If I say lick my boots, you lick my boots.”