Dance, Gladys, Dance

by Cassie Stocks

  Girl turned to me. “Shit, your friend there is totally over-clocked. So you know Mr. Haus, hey? That’s one cool dude.” She smiled.

  “You’re Girl, aren’t you?”

  “How’d you know?”

  “I live with Mr. H.”

  She looked me up and down and smirked.

  “We’re friends,” I said. “He showed me some of your work. He thinks you’re talented. A friend of mine bought one of your photos.”

  “No shit, hey?”

  “No shit. Do you live here?”

  “No. I just crash here sometimes when I’m too wasted to make it home.”

  “What about your parents?”

  “I don’t have any. They scooped me from the hospital when I was born and put me in care right away. My brother was already in the system. Mom was a heroin freak, a whore, and who knows what else. A total fuck-up, anyway.” She leaned over, picked up the covers from the cement, and placed them on top of the box. “The last thing she did was make a deal with the social workers to let her name me. Girl. Cool, huh?” She dug into a pocket in the side of her dress and brought out a long cigarette butt and lighter. “I’m with a foster family now. They’re okay. They don’t raise any fuss and I don’t cause them any hassles.” She lit the butt and blew out the smoke.

  “Oh.” I didn’t know what to say. She rattled the facts off like she was telling me what she’d had for lunch. “Do you see your brother?”

  “He’s dead, car crash, pissed. Mom too. OD’d in the bathroom of a downtown bar.”

  “Your dad?”

  “Never knew him. I don’t think my mom knew who he was — occupational hazard.”

  Okay. No more personal questions. I felt a little weak in the knees. “What if we peeled the address labels off Ginny’s magazines before you put them on your box? Or maybe blacked them out?”

  “Could do. I’m going to sell the box at the art show anyhow. Start a new one.”

  “Okay.” I hesitated. “Are you hungry? Could I buy you lunch?”

  “No. I’ve got some people to go see. If you could lend me five bucks though. . .”

  “Sure,” I dug through all my pockets. I had exactly $3.29. “Here.” I handed it to her.

  She smiled. “Some lunch that was gonna be. See ya.” She tousled out her hair and wandered off down the alley, her velvet gown dragging behind her in the gravel like some sort of delinquent fairy princess. I imagined her in her long wrinkled gown in a Pre-Raphaelite painting, only instead of columns, drapery, and flowers behind her, a background of graffiti-painted cement. I stood and watched her go. Now back to Ginny.

  Ginny gave me a ride back to Mr. H.’s. She parked in front of the house and turned off the engine.

  “What’re you doing?” I asked.

  “I thought I’d come in and visit.”

  Norman was kneeling outside beside the front porch. The bottom step was partially dismantled, and Mr. H.’s red toolbox lay open beside him. While we stood and Ginny asked Norman inane tool questions, the limo pulled up. Whitman got out and spoke to the driver for a moment, then came up the walk.

  “Hi,” said Ginny. “Sorry for freaking out on you this morning.”

  Whitman shrugged. “What’re you doing?”

  “Trying to fix the step,” said Norman. “The wood is too far gone though. I need some new lumber.”

  “Did Dad ask you to do that?”

  “No. I don’t get much of a chance to do this kind of thing. The caretakers do it all at home. I got a new battery for the Valiant too. It started right up.”

  “Aren’t you the perfect son type,” said Whitman. He stepped over the dismantled bottom step and proceeded into the house.

  “Did you want to do something tonight?” Ginny called after him, smiling too widely.

  “Possibly,” he said.

  “Well, I’d better go,” Ginny said, but she didn’t move. She jangled her keys and stared at the closed door.

  A few moments later, the door opened and Mr. H. came out on the front porch. He invited Ginny to the shindig at the Art Centre on Saturday, and she said she’d be delighted to come. Now I was in trouble. I’d probably spend the whole evening trying to keep Girl and Ginny from brawling. After a final glance at the front door, Ginny left.

  Norman looked up at Mr. H. “I’m going to have to get a bit of lumber for this. Is there a place close?”

  “There’s a hardware store about fifteen blocks east,” said Mr. H., staring off into the distance as though he wasn’t seeing or talking to us at all. “I just had a very bad phone call,” he said. “The government is going to sell the Art Centre building. They’ve given the art society the first right of refusal, but we have to hold raffles to buy toilet paper, never mind a building.” His usually smiling face was sombre.

  “That’s outrageous,” said Norman, “you’ve made that place a success.”

  “Well, we have a month. Maybe a miracle will occur. However, that’s not the issue right now, is it? Let’s get going to the hardware store.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said as Mr. H. walked past me. “Damn government.”

  The two of them walked around back. I went inside. Whitman sat in the living room reading the paper.

  “Did you and Ginny get rid of the girl in the box?” he asked.

  “Problem’s solved, no thanks to you.”

  “I thought it was hilarious,” he said, chuckling.

  “Actually, so did I,” I said. Whitman and I shared our first real smile. “Did you hear about the Art Centre building? What a bunch of schmucks.”

  “There must be some way to stop them,” he said. “Lawyers, maybe, but I suppose by giving the society first right of refusal, they’ve covered their asses.” He frowned and then turned back to his paper.

  I was halfway upstairs when I remembered Miss Kesstle. I turned around and walked back down. I yelled at Whitman from the front door, “If anyone calls, I’m over at Miss Kesstle’s.”

  Miss Kesstle answered the door in her pink flowered housecoat and led me into the living room. I gasped. The room looked shocking: the furniture was naked, the dining room table legs exposed without the large crocheted tablecloth draped over them.

  “Different, isn’t it?” she said sitting down in her chair.

  I nodded. “Are you doing okay?”

  “Not so bad. I keep expecting him to come around the corner at any minute. I put out his Friskies this morning before I remembered.”

  I picked up a pill bottle with something in it from the coffee table. “What’s this?”

  “The string they found inside him. They gave it to me so I could see that there was really something wrong with him.”

  Sure enough, a long piece of white crochet cotton wound around in the bottle. Eughhh. I quickly put it back down.

  “I’d like to ask you a favour,” said Miss Kesstle.

  What now? I hoped she hadn’t been listening to any more sex-help call-in shows.

  “Uh huh?”

  “They didn’t give me Beethoven’s body. Just that.” She gestured toward the pill bottle. “I’d like to bury it in the backyard, but I’m not feeling strong enough to dig.”

  I didn’t mention it would only take about two tablespoons of digging to make a hole big enough. “Sure. Did you want to get dressed first?”

  “Hmmm? Oh.” She looked down at her dressing gown. “I suppose I shouldn’t go. . .”

  “Never mind. No one’s going to see us.”

  Miss Kesstle wrapped the pill bottle in a checked tea towel and we went out back. I took a hand trowel down from the wall of the back porch where Miss Kesstle kept her gardening tools hung in neat rows and walked into the backyard. Miss Kesstle stood beside me as I dug a small hole near her rose bushes. She placed the pill bottle in the hole and I began to cover it up. I heard something behind me. I turned; it was Whitman.

  “I thought maybe you’d want to put this in. It was over in Dad’s yard.” He handed Miss Kesstle one of the furry fake mi
ce she’d bought in hopes of dissuading Beethoven from eating the real ones. The mouse was pretty much decimated and disgusting, but Miss Kesstle took it. “Thank you, Whitman.” She put the mouse in the hole with the pill bottle and then I covered it up. We stood in silence for a moment and then Miss Kesstle said she was going to go back in to watch Coronation Street. Whitman and I walked back over to Mr. H.’s together.

  “That was nice of you,” I said.

  “Surprised?”

  “Frankly, yes.”

  “I suppose there is some of my good-fellow father in me.”

  We went in the back door and Whitman went through into the living room. I was thinking vaguely about dinner and opened the fridge. Nothing jumped out at me, which was good considering the state of some of the leftovers. The yams were still in there, looking like a museum exhibit of mummified vegetables.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Like An Angel

  Whitman stood at the living room window watching Mr. H. and Norman work on the step together outside. He held the curtain back with one hand.

  “You could go out and join them,” I said.

  He dropped the curtain like a child caught peeking out into the audience before the school Christmas concert.

  “Just what is it between you and your dad?” I went and stood by the other side of the window.

  Whitman shrugged. “I hardly remember him being around when I was growing up. He worked all day, then he was either in the basement darkroom or romancing Mom. I remember walking in on them snuggling all the time. He’d look at me as if I was interrupting. Did you know he wanted me to be an engineer?”

  “Really?”

  “Surprising, huh? When I was born, he gave up his dream of being a professional photographer for his photo-geologist job and he was determined I’d do the same. Be practical, be realistic. Maybe he resented me. He wasn’t so easygoing when I was young.”

  “But he is now.”

  “I try to tell myself that, but whenever I get around him. . .” He paused. “I feel like that seven-year-old boy in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “It’s not too late, you know.”

  “Yeah, I could go outside and the two of us could throw a baseball around for a couple of years. That might do it. Besides, I don’t think he’s ever forgiven me for not coming home when Mom was sick.” He turned towards me. “So, what about you? What’s this I hear about you being an art martyr?”

  “A what?”

  “An art martyr. Ginny said you gave up painting.”

  Thanks, Ginny. What a pal. “It has nothing to do with being a martyr. I wasn’t good enough.”

  “Fat chance of getting good enough if you don’t keep at it though, hey?” He crossed the room and sat in Mr. H.’s chair.

  “Who asked you?” I said indignantly.

  “Who asked you for family counseling? Ginny also told me that she heard that you and my father have decided to take your relationship to an advanced level of eroticism.”

  I closed my eyes. I’d kill Ginny the next time I saw her.

  “It was a joke,” I said and walked out of the room, through the kitchen, and out the back door. So much for my fifteen minutes of friendship with Whitman.

  I walked to the back corner of the yard and around the huge oak tree near the fence. I leaned back against it, grateful for its solid strength. For once, I could understand the tree hugging impulse. It would be nice to hold onto something strong and well-rooted. Then again, does your average tree hugger ever wonder if the trees want to be embraced? Maybe they’re invading the trees’ personal space. I turned to look at the oak, and before I knew it, I had one leg up on the bottom branch and one arm grasping a higher limb. Next branch, foot wedged between two smaller branches, left foot searching blindly like an inchworm for the next support. Okay, a large knothole, shimmy my arms closer together, hoist, up one more. I looked up, there it was, about three branches higher, the perfect sitting branch. The bark under my foot slipped off the branch, my left hand lost its grip, I yelped and grabbed wildly, envisioning ambulances, fractures, head injuries, brain damage. I grasped another branch, but I was frozen. If I moved an inch, death was certain.

  “What’re you doing?” My eyes were closed but I could hear Gladys’ voice from higher up the tree. She was likely sitting on the perfect branch. Not fair. If I died when I fell, the first thing I’d do as a spirit was bump her off that branch.

  “Falling, dying, having a panic attack, I think.”

  “Oh. You look like you’re just resting there.”

  I opened my eyes but couldn’t look up. “No, I’m pining for the fjords.”

  This was ridiculous. However, it would be poetic justice if I had to call for Miss Kesstle to come and rescue me from the tree. Even Beethoven had the sense not to climb this high.

  “Come on. You can make it.”

  Okay, I moved my right foot a few centimetres, found a bump in the trunk. One hold, I ventured a look up, another small branch just to the left. I tried to grab it, but my hand had devolved into some primordial state and refused to let go of the puny grip it had. Couldn’t really say I blamed it. Okay, got it, now the right arm. If I just stretched a little more, right, one more push, ha. I sat on the branch and shimmied over a little, my heart still pounding. I was surrounded by leaves, in a bower of green. Gladys sat in the middle of the branch, her legs dangling down. She appeared to have gotten over her reception problem and seemed quite solid. Spectrally solid.

  “Wow,” I said, “that was fun.”

  “Really?”

  “Not a bit.”

  “I planted this tree,” she said, patting the branch. “It was just a little sapling, no taller than me. I had no plans on being here as it grew, but I needed to somehow celebrate my baby. I loved to climb trees when I was little. I was much better at it than you, if you don’t mind me saying.”

  I shrugged. “Go right ahead.” We sat in silence for a few moments, swinging our feet and listening to the leaves rustle. A sparrow landed on a branch just in front of us. It hopped back and forth tilting its head and then suddenly flew off. I imagined Gladys opening her arms and sailing off into the sky along with it.

  “What happened after Jack brought you back?” I asked. “I mean, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

  “Yes,” she said, “I do.” Gladys looked down and crossed her feet at the ankles. “Things were awkward between us, but I’d learned to keep my mouth shut and Jack just ignored me. I was a little over three months along when Jack began to sell everything. And I mean everything. He sold our cows, our good dishes, half our furniture, and even his Sunday suit. I thought he’d gone mad. He started buying up every little piece of land he could get his hands on, even scruffy little vacant lots between buildings in town. I didn’t question him, but I was afraid of the speculating look in his eyes. Every time he came in the house, he’d look around, wondering if he’d missed anything, something he could turn into land. I sat there in this half-empty house, not caring. I never was house-proud. I imagined he might sell everything and I could just walk away unburdened from an empty piece of land, the house taken apart, timbers and nails sold, and all my clothing and trinkets. I would walk away with nothing but the baby still safely inside me.”

  “Winnipeg’s one and only boom,” I said. “I learned about it in Civic History class.”

  “Four months later he was rich,” Gladys continued. “He sold all the land to speculators coming into town for sometimes a thousand times what he paid for it. A thousand times! Can you imagine? The only piece he held onto was a bit of our original land with the house on it, and right away he hired an architect and began building a new house, right over top of the old house.”

  “That’s what the Historical Society was looking for,” I said, “a log wall in this house.”

  “I was as big as a house myself by then,” said Gladys, “and I just sat in a rocker in the yard and watched it happen. The town overflowed with people; the
y camped out in the woods, slept on the wooden sidewalks. It was crazy. Jack never lost that cunning look in his eyes; everything became measured in dollars and cents. I was worth about two wooden nickels. I could see it. His eyes would flick over me and then go blank — nothing of value there. He went to fancy parties and started smoking cigars. I heard he had fancy women too. I didn’t care. I just wanted out. I whispered to that baby in my tummy. We’ll go sweetie, as soon as you come out. We’ll get a train to Toronto. Momma will dance and you’ll have soft toast and eggs for breakfast in fancy restaurants every morning. Thousands of people lost everything after that, but Jack was one of the few smart ones. He bought the land for nothing, sold it for thousands, and stopped there. He held onto his money except for building his new house and replacing all our old farm belongings with fancy city ones. Others continued to buy, even at the outrageous prices, then it suddenly went bust, and the land they’d paid eight hundred dollars for was now worth two dollars. If you could get anyone to purchase it, which wasn’t likely.

  “We were in the city by then; it had sprung up all around us. Most of the houses weren’t as nice as this one though. I never felt comfortable in it, it was too fancy and new, but I do now. It’s nice, probably because the man who designed it was a nice person. He was the only one who’d talk to me. The others just walked by and tipped their hats without stopping. I’m feeling a little dizzy.”

  “Back then or now?”

  “Now,” she said.

  “Don’t look down,” I said.

  “I think I’d better go. . .” She started to fizzle again.

  “Gladys,” I said, before she faded completely away, “thank you for the tree.” Like the Cheshire cat, her smile disappeared last.

  I sat in the tree until it started to get dark. Eventually, through the leaves, I could see the light from the kitchen window come on. I leaned forward and moved the branches in front of me. Norman and Mr. H. stood in the kitchen, the scene bright against the dusk darkness of the outside of the house. I watched for signs of them preparing dinner and tried to send them psychic messages — spaghetti, spaghetti, spaghetti — but after a few moments, they both disappeared. I was getting hungry. If no one was going to cook anything, I’d order pizza. I waited for a few more minutes, then I turned and ventured down the tree. Slowly, slowly, if I made it up, I can make it down. When my feet touched the grass at the bottom, I let go, then turned and patted the trunk. I thought of Jack, his money paying for the library and his place in Winnipeg’s history as a founding businessman. Someone should put a historic marker in front of the tree: