Whenever I could, I travelled with her. The Citizen was pretty understanding as long as I sent them copy every week. I, we – I think we – fell in love. Yeah, like some bastard said, she had the face to shrink a thousand dicks. Even now, once in a while, I’d be shocked by something like her hand in the air, her skeletal fingers pressed together, but so painfully thin that light shone through the gaps in her fingers. But I loved her. I was willing to try and show her that her body wasn’t just something to starve, or to carry her around so she could spread the word.
I kissed her. She kissed me back, just for a second, long enough for me to bring my hand up to touch her cheek. Then she turned away, like she always did.
I let her go. “Jenny, why are you so scared?”
She shook her head. Finally, she burst out, “I don’t want you to see me!”
“Why?”
“Because I’m ugly!” She hid her face in the pillow. I stroked her wisps of hair.
“You’re not ugly to me. I love you. To me, you look…”
She jerked up and watched me with glittering eyes.
“Like you,” I finished weakly.
She smiled bitterly. “Like a skeleton, Josh.”
“Yes. But—”
“But what? I’m an ugly skeleton. I can hardly feel it you when you touch me. That’s never going to change. I’ll be an anorexic zombie forever! So why bother!”
“Because I love you. And I’ll love you no matter how you look, because you’re – you.” God, that sounded cheesy. No response. She burrowed under the blanket. She was shaking, but she yelled, “Don’t touch me!”
“Jenny, for God’s sake…”
“No, it’s not for God’s sake, it’s for your sake. If you loved me, you wouldn’t need sex. Just loving me would be enough.”
I stared at her. “You’ve got it backwards. If I didn’t love you, I’d just get sex somewhere else.”
“So go, then. Get out.”
I paused. “Jenny, we’re not even talking about sex, just let me hold you.”
Silence.
“Jenny, you spend so much time telling women they should love their bodies. Why can’t you? “
“Get OUT!”
∆ ∆ ∆
Except for those fights, the weeks were pretty wonderful. I loved her drive, her sass, and funny little streaks of innocence. And she could be coaxed into walks, and we would read to each other, and we had a great time painting a mural together as part of a fundraiser for anorexia. I decided that I had been pushing too fast. I was nine years older than her, and I had to ease up. Everything would come, eventually. I just had to win her trust.
Then one day, she was unusually quiet. She rushed right home after her speaking engagement, and asked me to call the newspaper for breaking stories. It was busy. “That’s fine,” she said absently. “Thanks.” She went and sat by the television, curling her legs beside her, intent. At 3 p.m., the story broke. It looked like there was a new zombie. He was wasted but slightly paunchy, with a moustache, deeply etched wrinkles, and pale skin. He swayed a little as he spoke. “My former name was Franklin Miller,” he said, looking into the camera earnestly, “but I’d like to forget about that life. I just want to tell people that smoking kills, and I want to help them quit or, better yet, don’t even start.”
I groaned. Jenny glanced at me. “Bad?”
“Yep. A weird-looking guy with message we hear all the time. Not a good combo. You knew about this?”
“No. I just had a…feeling. Maybe you could help him market himself?”
“I thought you didn’t believe in marketing.”
“I don’t. But if you’re right, and people don’t like him, soon they won’t listen to him. Or to me.”
∆ ∆ ∆
When we spoke to Frank, he said, “I have a vision. I have to save people from tobacco. Once you can’t breathe, you’ll never forget it.”
“I’m sure,” I said. “But—”
“I started coughing up blood…I lost thirty pounds…My chest X-ray was so bad…” Blah, blah blah. “So I want to tell young people, don’t start. Smoking kills.”
“Right, Frank, but—”
“My name’s not Frank. Not anymore. Frank is dead. I want a name that will convey my message, like Mr. Butt-Out or something.”
I stifled a laugh. “Well, maybe you’d want something a little less obvious.”
“Mr. Kleinedler, I want to go the whole hog. Unlike some people, I have no attachment to my living name, and no desire for romance. This crusade will rule my life. After all, that’s why Jesus returned me to this earth.”
“Jesus sent you?” Jenny stared at him. “How do you know that?”
“I was a good Christian all my life and I know that He must have had His reasons.”
“Oh.” She was very quiet.
∆ ∆ ∆
ZOMBIE II SAYS BUTT OUT
JESUS SENT SECOND ZOMBIE TO STOP SMOKING
ZOMBIE PART DEUX: NO SMOKING, PLEASE
These headlines were shortly followed by editorials and letters to the editor alternating between “Right on, Frank!” and “It’s my body and I’ll smoke if I want to.” Jenny Rex was not amused. “People aren’t so interested in anorexia anymore.”
“Honey, it was happening already. Can’t you see how funny Frank is? He’s like the Zombie Ned Flanders!”
“No, I don’t think it’s funny at all, Josh. And neither would you if you took eating disorders as seriously as I do. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a speech to write.”
“Jenny, everyone has heard your message,” I called after her. “Now you have to let them do what they want with it.” She didn’t answer.
∆ ∆ ∆
So she kept touring and fundraising, but her agenda had more and more blank spots. Of course, Frank was even less popular, unless he was preaching to the converted (whether they were non-smokers, ex-smokers, Christians, or all of the above). Maybe it was the dip in zombie demand, but in any case, less than a week after Frank arrived in New York, Heart Disease (a.k.a. Ruby Smythe) showed up in Toronto. She was a scrappy woman, grey-haired, sixty years old when she died, and she was fighting mad that there wasn’t more heart disease research money devoted to women over fifty. She was well-received by seniors and feminists, and most people seemed willing to listen to her, if not rave over her, as they had for Jenny Rex. Ruby called and suggested that they “band together for a panel discussion. After all, three zombies are better than one.” The threesome negotiated a time and place and a network.
I flew to New York with Jenny Rex. She was edgy in the studio. I tried to distract her. “Hey, did you see the hate mail I got today? A woman called me a zombie lover and said I should save myself for the living, and the picture she sent was—”
“Glad you enjoyed it.” Her teeth worried the edge of her lip.
“Hey, stop biting, Jen, or we’ll have to get a doctor to sew it up.” She shrugged. I pretended to leer at her. “Darling, don’t. You must look beautiful for the camera.”
She whipped around to glare at me. “Shut up!”
“It was a joke.”
“The beauty myth is not a joke.” She settled back morosely and started tapping her fingers.
“I love you,” I whispered.
Her eyes were sad. “I know.”
She went on the show a few minutes later. They each made a speech, then opened it up to questions. The first few were like, What do you guys think about each other? Then a young Asian woman spoke at the microphone. “I think you three are doing a good job of raising awareness about the diseases that you died from, but it’s become such a fad that the non-zombie causes aren’t getting any money.” A few people booed, a few applauded, but most of them waited.
“I don’t consider ourselves a fad,” Ruby objected. “We’re educating people.”
The young woman was unrepentant. “What’s the bottom line? Donations to eating disorders have gone up 700 percent, and I’m sure the Lung Associat
ion and Heart and Stroke Foundation will be happy, too. But I work for the environment, and our donations have dropped like a stone.”
“Well,” Frank began, “I’m sorry about the other problems out there, but I can’t do everything. Smoking is such an evil that I have my hands full helping people quit.”
Jenny just watched.
The moderator spoke up. “Here’s an email from Seattle. ‘I am a forty-year-old smoker. I know the health risks, but I’m not going to stop smoking. After all, my car is dangerous and causes air pollution, but I don’t see anyone taking away my right to drive it. I will quit smoking if I want to, not because you tell me to. And so I say to the zombie formerly known as Frank Miller, you butt out.”
Frank blustered on. The moderator asked if Jenny Rex had anything to say about the smoking issue.
“Not really. Well, I think it’s wrong, but we have to make people want to stop, not shame them into it.”
“Are you suggesting that’s what I’m doing?” Frank demanded.
Ruby stepped in. Jenny hardly glanced at them.
Another studio audience member said, “I’d like to add to the point that the other woman was making. All of you are white, middle class North Americans promoting your own problems. I’m not saying you shouldn’t, but anorexia doesn’t even exist in developing countries. What about malaria and diarrhoea? We don’t have zombies for those, but worldwide, those are the real killers!”
While the other two took her on, Jenny started to shake. I ached to comfort her. I started towards her during the commercial break, but some television aide was already there, whispering. She started. Her eyes met mine, briefly. Then she tore off.
Her taxi beat mine back to the hotel, her door was chained, and she let the phone ring. Finally, she ripped off the chain and opened the door, and went right back to folding her robe without meeting my eyes.
“What are you doing?” I yelled at her.
“I’m packing.”
“I know that. Why?”
“Because I don’t know what I’m doing here anymore. I don’t know why I came back. Taking food out of the mouths of starving children—”
“She didn’t say that!”
“She didn’t have to.”
“You know you did the right thing.”
“Do I? I just woke up and it felt right to tell everyone about anorexia. But look at Frank. He thinks he was heaven sent. Maybe he was, but maybe it’s just because of what he believed before. Maybe anorexia was just my personal demon, and I made everyone else live through it.”
“Jenny, there was nothing wrong with what you did—”
“No? It wasn’t wrong to turn eating disorders into the disease of the month, so that people jumped on that bandwagon and forgot everything else?”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“And what about my parents…” Her voice faltered and broke. “They called today, during the show. They’re back. I have to talk to them. I complained about them in front of the whole world! It wasn’t enough that their daughter died, and that she came back from the dead. No, I had to tell the world that they killed me.”
I grabbed her and shook her. “Jenny, they hurt you, too! So, okay, now they have to deal with that. Would you quit feeling guilty about everyone else on the planet and start thinking about yourself?”
“I already did! That’s the problem!” she screamed in my face.
I was stunned.
She pushed me away and steadied her breathing. Then she started packing again. “I’m leaving, Josh. That’s final.”
“Jenny…” Then I saw that she had packed everything except the gifts I’d given her: a little owl “piggy” bank, books, a picture of us, and a huge stuffed panda bear that she lugged around even though she pretended to hate it.
She half turned. “I thought I’d leave you your stuff.”
“It’s yours.” My throat closed up.
“No, that’s okay. I’ll have a hard time carrying everything by myself.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“No.”
My voice was hoarse. “I’ll send it to you.”
Silence. “All right. If you want to.”
She added the picture of us and the owl bank to her luggage and zipped it. I drove her to the airport. I waited with her, holding her hand so tight even she could feel it. And I said goodbye, choking. “I love you, Jenny Rex. Forever.”
“Oh, you’d better watch out, Josh. The way I’m going, forever could be a very long time.” She touched her hand to my cheek. “I’ll call you someday. I promise. I just need to work things out with my family, and think about what I’ve done, and…maybe decide what to do with the rest of my life. I’ll let you know when I decide.” She paused and kissed me. A sound broke from my throat. She looked at me and whispered, “I wish I could cry.” Then she stepped away, clutching her handbag, and looked back once before boarding the plane.
∆ ∆ ∆
It’s been a year. Ruby has become a lobbyist for heart disease and other women’s health issues. Frank pops up here and there at anti-smoking rallies and hogs the microphone until someone cuts him off. Jenny has all but disappeared. Once in a while, she writes a piece for one of the eating disorders newsletters or websites, but she no longer makes public appearances. In the little bio at the end of one of her articles, she said she is looking for peace. I guess she hasn’t found it yet. I haven’t contacted her. She’s had enough of other people telling her what to do.
The other day, I overheard my co-workers joking about what kind of zombie’s causes they’d come back as: Marsha said she’d be “equal funding for women’s sports” zombie, and someone said Jason Delaney would be “find a cure for baldness” zombie. They shut up when I came in, but in my head, I had my answer: heartbroken zombie. So I wait. And I smoke. I eat too much, or too little, and I laugh at the irony. I write my crappy little columns. And I remember. And I wait. For Jenny Rex.
STEMMING THE TIDE
Simon Strantzas
Marie and I sit on the wooden bench overlooking the Hopewell Rocks. In front of us, a hundred feet below, the zombies walk on broken, rocky ground. Clad in their sunhats and plastic sunglasses, carrying cameras around their necks and tripping over open-toed sandals, they gibber and jabber among themselves in a language I don’t understand. Or, more accurately, a language I don’t want to understand. It’s the language of mindlessness. I detest it.
Marie begged me for weeks to take her to the Rocks. It’s a natural wonder, she said. The tide comes in every six hours and thirteen minutes and covers everything. All the rock formations, all the little arches and passages. It’s supposed to be amazing. Amazing, I repeat, curious if she’ll hear the slight scoff in my voice, detect how much I loathe the idea. There is only one reason I might want to go to such a needlessly crowded place, and I’m not sure if I’m ready to face it. If she senses my mood, she feigns obliviousness. She pleads with me again to take her. Tries to convince me it can only help her after her loss. Eventually, the crying gets to be too much, and I agree.
But I regret it as soon as I pick her up. She’s dressed in a pair of shorts that do nothing to flatter her pale, lumpy body. Her hair is parted down the middle and tied to the side in pigtails, as though she believes somehow appropriating the trappings of a child will make her young again. All it does is reveal the greying roots of her dyed hair. Her blouse…I cannot even begin to explain her blouse. This is going to be great! she assures me as soon as she’s seated in the car, and I nod and try not to look at her. Instead, I look at the sun-bleached road ahead of us. It’s going to take an hour to drive from Moncton to the Bay of Fundy. An hour where I have to listen to her awkwardly try and fill the air with words because she cannot bear silence for anything longer than a minute. I, on the other hand, want nothing more than for the world to keep quiet and keep out.
The hour trip lengthens to over two in traffic, and when we arrive the sun is already bearing down as though it has focused all its
attention on the vast asphalt parking lot. We pass through the admission gate and, after having our hands stamped, onto the park grounds. Immediately, I see the entire area is lousy with people moving in a daze – children eating dripping ice cream or soggy hot dogs, adults wiping balding brows and adjusting colourful shorts that are already tucked under rolls of fat. I can smell these people. I can smell their sweat and their stink in the humid air. It’s suffocating, and I want to retch. My face must betray me; Marie asks me if I’m okay. Of course, I say. Why wouldn’t I be? Why wouldn’t I be okay in this pigpen of heaving bodies and grunting animals? Why wouldn’t I enjoy spending every waking moment in the proximity of people that barely deserve to live, who can barely see more than a few minutes into the future? Why wouldn’t I enjoy it? It’s like I’m walking through an abattoir, and none of the fattened sows know what’s to come. Instead they keep moving forward in their piggy queues, one by one meeting their end. This is what the line of people descending into the dried cove look like to me. Animals on the way to slaughter. Who wouldn’t be okay surrounded by that, Marie? Only I don’t say any of that. I want to with all my being, but instead I say I’m fine, dear. Just a little tired is all. Speaking the words only makes me sicker.
The water remains receded throughout the day, keeping a safe distance from the Hopewell Rocks, yet Marie wants to sit and watch the entire six hour span, as though she worries what will happen if we are not there to witness the tide rush in. Nothing will happen, I want to tell her. The waters will still rise. There is nothing we do that helps or hinders inevitability. That is why it is inevitable. There is nothing we can do to stem the tides that come. All we can do is wait and watch and hope that things will be different. But the tides of the future never bring anything to shore we haven’t already seen. Nothing washes in but rot. No matter where you sit, you can smell its clamminess in the air.
The sun has moved over us and still the rocky bottom of the cove and the tall weirdly sculpted mushroom rocks are dry. Some of the tourists still will not climb back up the metal grated steps, eager to spend as much of the dying light as possible wandering along the ocean’s floor. A few walk out as far as they can, sinking to their knees in the silt, yet none seem to wonder what might be buried beneath the sand. The teenager who acts as the lifeguard maintains his practiced, affected look of disinterest, hair covering the left half of his brow, watching the daughters and mothers walking past. He ignores everyone until the laughter of those in the silt grows too loud, the giggles caused by sand fleas nibbling their flesh unmistakable. He yells at them to get to the stairs. Warns them of how quickly the tide will rush in, the immediate undertow that has sucked even the heaviest of men out into the Atlantic, but even he doesn’t seem to believe it. Nevertheless, the pigs climb out one at a time, still laughing. I look around to see if anyone else notices the blood that trickles down their legs.
Dead North: Canadian Zombie Fiction Page 9