Even Weirder Than Before

by Susie Taylor

  Wanda and I go to the afterparty. We’re welcomed into a suburban house smelling of smoke and hot teenagers. I drink beer sitting on the back deck, looking up at the skies trying to see the stars despite the security lights, which come on every time someone moves or opens the screen door. Damon comes out, and Wanda and I groan as we are, once again, temporarily blinded.

  “You changed your pants?” Wanda teases him.

  “I do not want to talk about my pants. And no, that was not a cucumber.”

  “A gherkin?” I ask.

  “Stop. Or I’m leaving,” he says.

  Damon lies on the deck between Wanda and me, looking up at the stars, obviously high on his final performance as much as anything else. “I’ve known you guys forever,” he says, and reaches up and grabs both of our hands.

  “Easy, tiger,” says Wanda and drops his hand. Damon waves his free hand around, gesticulating at the sky we’re all looking up at.

  “Where do you think we’ll all be in ten years?” he asks us.

  “New York,” says Wanda.

  “L.A., I’m going to go to L.A.,” says Damon. “What about you, Daisy?”

  I think about London or Paris, but they sound too cheesy.

  “I don’t know,” I eventually answer.

  “That’s your problem, Daisy. It’s like you’re afraid of wanting things in case you don’t get them,” Wanda says. “I’m going to get more beer for you, whether you want it or not.” She rises, and we are blinded by the light once more.

  Damon still holds my hand. “I always thought we’d end up together, but it just never happened,” he says to me.

  I am acutely aware of how this could go for me with Damon drunk and Jana inside.

  “Damon,” I say, “you have Jana.” I realize as I say this that, although I like Damon, I don’t want to be anything other than his friend.

  “Oh, Jana.” He sings it like “Oh, Donna.” “And you have Jimmy.”

  “Not for a long time,” I tell him.

  Damon pulls himself up and rests his head on the armrest of my chair. I think something momentous might happen.

  “I’m going to puke,” he announces matter-of-factly, and walks to the rail of the deck and vomits over it.

  That weekend someone makes an offer on the house, and Mum accepts.

  twenty-nine

  Kleinberg stops me in the hallway, “I hear you’re leaving us.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, good luck,” he tells me. I sense there’s more he wants to say, but a bell rings and I mumble an inadequate, “See ya,” before beetling away.

  Wanda leaves at lunchtime. “I’m just wasting studying time,” she says as she abandons me. It’s the end of the day, and I’m clearing out my locker. There’s no one left; it’s just me and the janitor pushing dust and paper down the hall. Outside, I walk past Jana and Damon standing in the school fountain, making out, as graduates whoop around them. I watch the festivities with jealous interest. At home I sit in the half-packed living room. Three boxes in one corner, with Donald written in thick black marker across their tops, wait for Dad to pick them up. I can’t imagine not living here anymore, but even more I can’t imagine staying.

  “I couldn’t say no to her,” Mum says, as the van backs up in front of the house on moving day. It is a large cube truck. It is painted black and has a graphic image of a coffin and Caufield’s Caskets painted in large gothic script on the side. Mum’s boss has sent the truck and two of her warehouse workers to help us with the move. The men joke around with Mum and call her Shell.

  “Why are they calling you Shell?” I ask her.

  “Everyone at work does. I like it. It’s less stuffy than Sheila. Less old fashioned.”

  Our new neighbours gawk as we arrive to unload. Mum and I stand beside the coffin van and wave over to them. Racoons fight in the backyard during the night. Mum and I lie in our separate rooms, listening to sirens and letting the ghosts of our new home get used to us.

  They have pet cats in Caufield’s offices, to keep down the mice, but also, according to Mum, because Audrey is a softy. I sit waiting for Mum, while rubbing the chin of Eartha Kitty. From inside one of the back rooms where Mum stands, I hear her laughing. She emerges smiling, and as we walk down the street towards the café where she takes me for lunch, she greets people. Over the summer evenings and weekends, she paints the house. Everything is clean and white. Clean-slate white, we joke. The foreman from the woodshop, Bill, comes over. He gives Mum advice on how to refinish our banister, then stays for a beer.

  I get to know our new neighbourhood, taking long aimless walks. I go further and further afield, and eventually I discover the sandy shores of the beaches and paddle my feet in the cool polluted water of Lake Ontario.

  At the end of the summer, two nights before her parents will drive her to her residence at McMaster, Wanda comes to see our new house for the first time. She admires Mom’s paint job and compliments our cute porch and tiny patio. We walk to Broadview Station, then take the streetcar west to the Ex. Wanda’s parents took her every year when she was younger, and she tells me about the fun-house mirrors where her dad would pull faces and how her mom would never let her go to see the world’s fattest man.

  We’re both wearing cut-off jeans and our legs stick to the red vinyl seats. Soon the streetcar is full of families with little kids looking excited as mothers put on sunscreen and young fathers heft folded-up push chairs up the streetcar stairs. By the time we get to the gates of the Ex, there’s standing room only, and I feel overwhelmed by the people around me. There are so many languages, so many different conversations. Women in saris and punk teenagers with purple hair, and an old, old man with one leg. Everyone is headed to the same place. Wanda can’t believe I’ve never been before.

  “It’s just what you do at the end of summer. I can’t believe your parents never took you.”

  “Mum says they went when Elizabeth was little, but when I was born it seemed too much bother to cart two kids down.”

  She also said it was tacky and dirty, and she can’t imagine why Wanda and I are going, but I don’t tell Wanda that part.

  When we get off the streetcar it is like a blast of everything—kids crying, people screaming on rides, laughter, yells of anger and excitement. The guys at the games of chance are calling customers in with loud banter, and there is fairground music and the grinding and mechanical screeches of the rides. The air smells of burning grease and meat. It’s so crowded at the entrance our naked arms brush against hairy male torsos and bump against the brims of toddler’s sunhats.

  On the merry-go-round, we find horses that are side by side. Mine is white with a wide-open pink painted mouth, and Wanda’s is a black stallion with big white teeth and a gold painted mane running down its head. The music starts, and we start to go round. The wind hits us, and my horse goes up as Wanda goes down. I grin as I look back at Wanda, and she reaches out her hand. I can’t quite reach her, but our fingertips touch as my horse goes down and hers goes up.

  We walk more slowly as it gets darker, sharing a stick of candy floss. It is so sweet it makes me cough as it melts down my throat. The crowds are gone, but couples walk with hands in the back pockets of each other’s jeans. There’s a lot of making out going on in the lineups for rides and at the games stalls where posturing men try and throw hoops over sticks or shoot wooden ducks with air guns. The wind picks up. The music plays and all around us the multi-coloured moving lights swirl. We overhear a conversation between two men standing in front of the teacup ride and talking into a radio.

  “Looks okay for now, but there’s a storm’s coming.”

  “We’ll close the rides in ten minutes, that’s what they’re saying.”

  “Quick!” Wanda grabs my hand and runs, and before I can think, because if I could think I would have refused, I am being ushered onto the Ferris wheel. They’re loading it and there is no lineup. I am being strapped into a rotating cage next to Wanda.

  “Oh m
y god.” The ride slowly moves up, so they can load another cage.

  “This is great. I’m glad we made it.”

  “Wanda, I don’t know if this is a good idea.” I have made the mistake of looking up and seeing how high the wheel will turn.

  “It will be great. You just have to relax into it. Relax your stomach, look around. Look at all the lights and the people.”

  It starts in earnest then. We are not doing the slow inch-by-inch turn anymore. We are spinning and gaining speed, and I feel momentarily terrified.

  “Look, look, Daisy!” And Wanda points out that we can see right into the concert grounds and I look.

  “And the gates over there, and you can see the lake.”

  I look around, and I can see the city spreading out further the higher we climb, and by the time the wheel plunges over the other side, I just feel a slight clenching of my gut, but Wanda lets out a “Whoo hoo!”

  “Just scream if you have to.”

  But I don’t scream. I laugh and feel the sticky undulating joy of it.

  “I feel high,” I tell Wanda.

  “Well, we are high.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I know, it’s great, isn’t it. I love this place.”

  We stagger from the ride, slowly getting our land legs, and the rain starts gently. It’s fat warm drops at first, and we watch as people start rushing for cover. The Ex workers are wearing black plastic garbage bags over their clothes. Not us. We walk through the rain until we hear the first rumble of thunder echo over Lake Ontario, and then we run. The rain comes hard now. There is one crack of sheet lightning while we are still out in the open, and when we hit the streetcar shelter a few seconds later, a crack of fork lightning comes through the sky.

  “Close,” someone in the shelter says. And everyone nods and gazes out. Most of us are wet with rain dripping down our noses. The rain has washed away the grease of the rides, the film of sugar that coated my hands, and the sweat clinging to my clothes. There are three more close cracks of lightning, and every time all of us in the shelter laugh a little and look around at each other, grateful to be here together rather than out there alone. The street is deserted, all the last-minute people running for shelter have found it. The storm moves off into the distance, and we see flashes of light and hear distant rumbles of thunder as we ride home. When we get to our station, the rain has stopped. Toronto smells clean, like it has had a bath after a week of wearing the same clothing. Walking down the street to the house, we look at men playing cards and smoking in café windows and women up late in laundromats.

  “You’ll like it here,” Wanda says.

  “I think I will. It’s a lot different.”

  “There’s more life. More distractions from your own head.”

  “I’m going to miss you.”

  “Daisy, don’t get sappy. I’ve had enough of that from Mom.”

  “Okay, but it’s true.”

  I wake up in the night. Wanda is standing at the window in her T-shirt and underwear. One starling is visible on the exposed part of her shoulder. She’s backlit by the streetlight, and I am struck again by how beautiful she’s become. I want to say something, but my mouth is too tired to form words, and I drift back to sleep.

  It’s early when she gets up to go. I get up and throw on some clothes, and I walk her to the subway. We are both quiet, and whenever I think of saying goodbye, I feel my eyes get all watery.

  There’s an alley leading to the station, and we stop before we get to the end of it. This is where I have to let Wanda go on alone. We stand, and I wait for her to hug me. She reaches forward and pulls me to her, her hand cupped around the back of my neck. Our foreheads touch.

  “Fuck it,” she says.

  Then she kisses me on the lips, open mouthed, and I kiss her back. She is soft and sweet-tasting. She lets me go, turns, and walks away. She looks back once, smiles, and then she’s gone.

  acknowledgments

  Thank you to James Langer, Rebecca Rose, Rhonda Molloy, Samantha Fitzpatrick, and everyone at Breakwater Books for the magic they perform turning manuscripts into books.

  Thank you to Kate Kennedy, my fabulous editor.

  Thank you to the Writers’ Alliance of Newfoundland and Labrador, the NLCU, and the Literary Arts Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador for the NLCU Fresh Fish Award. Winning this award in 2015 gave me the courage to keep writing. Thank you to Brian O’Dea for coming up with the idea for the award in the first place.

  Thank you to Alison Dyer for making me feel like I belonged. Thank you to Susan Rendell for editing an earlier version of this book with care, and to Michelle Bush and Dionne Powlenzuk, my first readers.

  Thank you to Carmella Gray-Cosgrove and Eva Crocker, two of the smartest and kindest people in the universe, for making me write harder and think wider.

  Thank you to Sharon Bala and Lisa Moore, heroes, for being generous with their time and advice. Thank you to Diane Carley, Terry Doyle, and Basma Kavanagh for encouragement, moral support, and friendship.

  Thank you to Stephanie Taylor, the best dog-sitter ever, for bringing me up in a house full of books.

  Thank you to family and friends, lost and found, for making life interesting.

  Most of all, thank you to Colleen for absolutely everything.

  PHOTO: Malin Enström

  SUSIE TAYLOR won the 2015 NLCU Fresh Fish Award for Emerging Writers. Her work has appeared in Geist, PULP literature, Riddle Fence, Room, The Impressment Gang, and untethered. She lives in Harbour Grace, NL.

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  “Susie Taylor’s even weirder than before

  is witty, tender, heartbreaking, and luminous.

  Daisy Radcliffe is so honestly rendered, so absolutely

  present, so full of life, she is unforgettable.

  This is the truest depiction of what it feels like to

  grow up that I’ve read in a very long time.”

  - LISA MOORE