The Chrome Suite

by Sandra Birdsell

  We passed through Carona and gained speed. We approached the golf course and then sped past the cemetery and its wrought-iron gates. Behind them, dark spruce, white birch, and the slender willow trees screened from view the place where the dead people were lined up, waiting. I wondered about the camera. If it was still there, whether Alf had found it. Alf was always riding the mower. He wore coveralls that were too large and which sagged beneath his armpits and his behind. Alf had a freckle-faced mentally retarded son, Harry, who was Mel’s age but really only about three years old.

  “So, how’s your daddy’s old jalopy coming along?” Josh inquired. Mel squirmed and muttered his reply, but I knew Mel was petrified that Timothy might finish restoring it one day and actually drive it down the street or worse still, insist that Mel join him. The tires thumped rhythmically over the cracks in the concrete, the highway cutting straight and clean through the prairie where the sky reached down to touch the rim of green fields. The stream of air had grown stronger and I gasped to breathe through it, feeling that my skin might pull away from my bones and slide off and then Josh turned and told Jill and Elsa that it was time to roll the windows up. The sound of the car’s radio leapt forward in the silence. “It is with deep personal satisfaction, my fellow Canadians, that I am able. … The clouds are beginning to disappear … that we are on the verge of a turn in the tide of gloom and fear which was the legacy we inherited. …” The voice of John Diefenbaker droned on and on, following me into the city.

  “What is ‘legacy’?” Adele Miller asked Josh and listened carefully to his explanation. “What does he mean, legacy of fear and gloom?” she said with scorn and laughed sharply. “This must be a joke.” Then she swivelled her green-turbaned head towards Elsa and spoke rapidly in German. Elsa tensed as though she’d just swallowed an ice cube. Adele turned back and fumbled in her beaded drawstring bag and came up with a cigarette. The match flared and I smelled the same acrid odour that had stung my nostrils in the cemetery. Jill leaned across me and whispered to Elsa. “What did she say?”

  “Nothing.” Elsa’s mouth went crooked as she spoke from one side of it. “The usual thing. Stay in the shade. It’s easy for me to sunburn.”

  I studied the translucent flecks of dried skin where Elsa’s gold hoop pierced her lobe. Did it hurt to have a hole in your ear? Elsa must have sensed my scrutiny because she turned to me then. Her pouty mouth stretched in a wide smile across wet teeth. She was cute in the soft, puffy way often preferred by adolescent boys. Even though she was a full year older than Jill, she’d chosen my sister for her closest friend, and Jill took on the responsibility of guiding her through her first year in a strange country with some pride. “You will have a good time at the picnic, yes?” Elsa said to me, her voice going several pitches higher than normal. For a moment I thought she might tweak my nose or chuck me beneath the chin.

  “Adele is really your mother, isn’t she? And not your sister?” I said, and felt Jill’s elbow jab into my side. The corner of Elsa’s eye crinkled into a white line and I saw the sudden squirt of moisture there. She turned her moon face to the window and didn’t speak for the remainder of the drive to the city.

  Mel’s school bag thumped heavily against his leg as he walked on ahead of us in the park. Jill, solicitous of the withdrawn and weepy-eyed Elsa, stayed close to her side, as she had ever since we’d arrived at the picnic grounds, and held her hand now as we struggled to keep pace with Mel’s single-minded march. Josh had dropped Adele off downtown at a hairdressing shop and us at the park with instructions as to where and when we should meet him later. It was easy to slip away in the confusion of activity: the bustle of families gathering at the picnic site, the setting of tables, and fires spitting to life in the brick pits in the cookhouse. We hadn’t been noticed as one by one we bundled our sweaters and hats into our picnic blanket and stashed it among the bushes beside an overgrown path that led through trees and then out into a clearing and the remainder of the park.

  We followed Mel as he passed by a sun-dappled pond where self-possessed swans ignored the offerings of bread in people’s hands. Then we dutifully walked through the zoo, pausing only once to look at the cages where raw-bottomed baboons shrieked their discontent. “From the family of Cercopithecidae,” Mel read from a plaque. “So you can tell Margaret what you learned today. But don’t tell her that,” he said when the animal squatted in front of us and pulled its penis, stretching it like a rubber band until it looked like it might tear loose.

  In deference to Elsa’s pale skin, we waited in the deep shade of a vine arbour while Mel went inside the pavilion to the concession and bought a bottle of cola. The haunting melody of piano music floated out from the top floor of the recital hall in the pavilion, seducing us into silence and turning our thoughts inward. Elsa’s eyes grew redder and the tears that had threatened to erupt during the ride into the city spilled over and ran down her cheeks. “What?” Mel’s face dropped in dismay as he walked towards us. I saw the wet stain in his school bag where he’d jammed the bottle of cola down inside. I heard the hard clink of glass against glass.

  “Amy’s got a big mouth, as usual,” Jill said.

  “What now?”

  Elsa dabbed at her face with the back of her hand and laughed, a breathy bit of laughter that was meant to convey to us that it was over now, she was sorry for having been such a cry-baby. “Is that what you think?” she asked them. “That Adele is my mother?”

  “Does it matter?” Mel frowned to cover his uneasiness with this delicate topic.

  “Yes, it does.” Elsa’s temper flared suddenly. “It does!” Her shoulders dropped then and her arms fell to her side as the anger subsided as quickly as it had risen. She slung her shoulder bag around against her stomach and unzipped it. She took out a bottle of white pills. We watched as she unscrewed the top. “It matters to me because I don’t know who my mother was. I was born in a bomb shelter and left there. They never found her. I’m adopted and so is Adele, and so you see she really is my sister.” The tiny pills spilled into the palm of her hand. She ducked her head, and one of the pills disappeared into her mouth on the tip of her tongue. “Esther Miller adopted both of us.” She dropped the remaining pills into the bottle and screwed the top on tightly and put the bottle hack into her purse.

  Jill wound her arm around Elsa’s waist and glared at me. “You always try and spoil things, don’t you? Jerk.”

  The three of them turned then and began heading out across an open field in the park. The piano music grew softer and then ended. Scattered applause rose up in the recital hall. I watched as Mel’s blue shirt, Jill’s pink shorts and top, and Elsa’s yellow sundress became spots of colour moving across a green carpet. When they reached the centre of the broad field, I followed. Head down, I watched my feet glide swiftly across the damp grass. The crimped buckle looked like an oddly shaped black bug on the side of my foot. The rhythm of my feet pulled me forward while I floated across the harbour on top of the book, heading towards my future. I looked into a yellow and turquoise sky and saw against it a pagoda, a Gothic cathedral, a rocket. I noted something different in the future then: a volcanic mountain, its cone trailing smoke and at its base a city whose buildings were pink and pyramid-shaped. The flutter of yellow moths billowed up around my ankles.

  When I looked up, searching for Mel, Jill, and Elsa, I realized that they were gone. Vanished. In their place, riding against the dark backdrop of trees, were three boys on bicycles. They rode in a circle, swerving now and then to cut across one another’s path. Their raw-sounding voices were like the screeching baboons as they exclaimed loudly over near collisions, daring them to happen. I slowed down instantly and searched beyond them for a path, one Mel and Jill and Elsa may have taken to enter the belt of trees. One of the cyclists – dark-haired and I thought him to be the oldest and the leader – looked up and saw me. Immediately he veered from the circle and headed towards me across the grass. I stood still as he wheeled about me slowly in a wide circle.
I turned with him, wanting him to speak. I couldn’t guess at his intention if he didn’t speak. A thick hank of hair lay across his forehead almost obscuring his eyes. The other two followed and joined the first boy, circling around me again and again. Then, as if on signal, they stood up, straddling the crossbars of their bicycles and, legs pumping in short spurts, they tightened the circle and began making clucking noises like chickens. I looked for an opening to dash through and escape. “Chick, chick, chick,” they called without humour, taunting. Their faces became a blur and their bodies exuded something I had not met before. Not anger or revenge, but an intense maliciousness. I became rigid inside with panic. Where was Mel? Stay together, Margaret had instructed.

  “Here chick, chick, chick,” they called. “Pock, pock, pock.” I cautioned myself not to cry. They passed so close now that I could feel the heat radiating from their bodies and smell their unwashed hair. An arm flashed in the air and I felt my head snap back as one of them yanked at my hair. Another arm flashed and my rump stung with the blow. Their mouths, mean thin slits, sneered as I yelped. And then the circle loosened, widened, and I thought that they had grown tired and were deciding to leave me alone. Beyond them I saw the arch of a footbridge and beyond that cars moving steadily on a street just outside the gates of the park. I held my breath and waited for the opportunity. I leaned towards a space between their bicycles, but it was what they’d been counting on, I realized, as they whooped loudly and circled in more closely. Mel, Mel, I cried silently. I sensed that something was about to happen. Something dangerous. Mel, I thought, and heard myself say, “You assholes!” And then I began yelling in desperation all the swear words I knew. “You bitches!” I yelled and stamped my feet, making them thunder against the ground. “Pigs! Fart-faces!”

  The leader’s mouth flew open in astonishment and he slammed on his brakes. The others, caught off guard, crashed into him, and instantly all three toppled to the ground. I began to run. I headed towards the footbridge and the street on the other side of it. “Shit-faces! Hoors! Flake-heads!” As I ran across the bridge I heard the sound of water rushing beneath it. The sound matched the rush of exhilaration in my chest. Their raw voices rose up in shouted oaths and then an explosion of laughter. “Hey! Hey you kid! We’re not bitches. We’re sons of bitches!”

  I looked back and saw them rising slowly and untangling the mess of bicycles. They had no intention of following me and so I slowed down to a fast walk, swinging my arms, trying to appear as though I had a definite destination. I was furious, filled with righteous indignation. Margaret had said we were supposed to stay together, and Mel had deserted me. He was going to pay for it. I wanted to plot my revenge but the boys’ taunts echoed inside my head and I saw myself in their circle, heard myself speak, and saw again their bicycles fall to the ground. I made thunder with my feet. They fell. I said “Pigs” and they fell. I became infused with energy and confidence, and as I felt my new weightlessness return, the colours, sound, and movement in the busy street began to emerge. I hadn’t needed Mel after all.

  I watched cars idling at an intersection, waiting for the traffic light to give them permission to go. Music rose up from a white convertible. A Cadillac. A woman with platinum hair and red sunglasses that matched the convertible’s leather interior smiled and nodded at me. Jayne Mansfield, I thought. The light changed and the car sped away. I was standing in front of a cafe. Through its windows I saw people sitting in bright vinyl booths, and the sound of rock and roll music vibrated against the windowpanes. Across the street a bearded hobo painted on the side of a building pointed out the way to the next town. A man and a woman approached me, parted, and passed by on either side. I watched as they joined hands and crossed the intersection. I decided to follow them. I walked by a row of new cars, the sun reflecting in spotless chrome bumpers. Overhead, red and blue plastic banners swayed limply in the heat. The couple swung their arms as they walked. Ahead of them an amplified voice rose up and echoed between the buildings. A man’s voice, twangy, nasal, and then I heard the thrum of a guitar. I looked back. I could still see the entrance to the park and down from it the tall hobo. It would be easy to find my way back. Walk in a straight line and don’t go down any side streets no matter how interesting they might look, I told myself. I would find my way back easily. In the meantime I thought it only fair that Mel chew his fingernails over where I had got to, so I continued to follow the couple who headed towards the sound of applause and then laughter crackling in a PA system. “You all get in a little closer now, you hear?” cajoled a man whom I would come to know as Stu Farmer. “You all gotta get in close if you want to hear this musical genius.” I followed the voice and hurried towards meeting a player in his country and western band: Hank. The man I would some day marry.

  Mel whistles softly as he stands, hands on hips, looking up at a maple tree. “Holy Toledo,” he says, and then, “Wow!” because Elsa and Jill are ignoring him. The rye whisky he’s drunk buzzes in his limbs and he feels inches taller, that his movements are athletic and fluid. “You girls should come and see this.”

  Elsa’s pale moon face seems to glow out at him from the deep shadows where she sits halfway up a gentle embankment. She leans against a tree and Jill sprawls on her back beside her. It has only taken several timid sips of Mel’s spiked cola and they’ve become stupid, bird-brainy, Mel thinks. “Du bist ein kleines Schwein.” Jill has been chanting the sentence Elsa taught her, over and over.

  The maple tree has been blasted open by lightning. Its trunk looks as though giant hands have grabbed hold, wrung it dry until the trunk split open with the force. Reduced to a pile of toothpicks, Mel thinks. Its wood is streaked the colour red, veins that glisten with wet sap. Mel’s imagination fails him when he examines the destroyed tree. He can’t imagine the power, can only be awed by it and admit silently that he lies when he tells himself that he accompanies Margaret downstairs during thunderstorms because he has promised Timothy to be the man of the house when he is away.

  They had waited several minutes for Amy to follow them into the trees, and when she didn’t, they reasoned that she knew she wasn’t wanted and her nose was out of joint as usual, the spoiled brat that she was. They reasoned that Amy went back to the picnic. So they skirted the border of the park, walking through a narrow band of trees growing beside the Assiniboine River, picking their way among the sinewy tree roots, dragon tails writhing up through thin soil, until the sound of the Lutheran Sunday School picnic, the cheering on of participants in the sack races, three-legged races, grew fainter. They agreed to rest where the trees grew wilder and thicker and the earth smelled musty, of mushroom spores and wild fern. They smeared their bodies with insect repellent and Mel revealed the contents of his schoolbag. Then they sat beneath the umbrella of shade, felt insects light against their arms and legs or attempting to crawl inside their noses and ears and then bounce off at the scent of repellent. They watched a fat beaver waddle along the river bank on the opposite shore, sipped at the spiked cola, and felt themselves take on the veneer of sophistication.

  But while the girls are now languid and content to loll in the shade, Mel becomes energetic. Behind him the land drops away sharply to the rain-swollen river that flows swiftly on through the city. Its water, coloured by the yellow clay of the region, grows muddy-looking where sewer conduits empty out storm water and the refuse of the city. Mel finds a path and climbs down its bank to scout for wildlife. Otters, he explains later to Elsa, hoping to impress upon her the other side of him, his outdoorsy spirit of adventure. But Mel is always just a step behind. He hears the slap of a tail or the soft plop! of an animal’s body meeting water, turns quickly, only to see the ripple of its wake. He sees the river’s course, how it passes beneath the arch of a stone bridge at the park’s entrance and on into the centre of the city. At the horizon, a crane’s boom swings in an arc and hovers above the skeleton of a building. Mel imagines that he enjoys the shushing of traffic, its steady sound muffled slightly by the row of newl
y constructed apartment blocks. In his altered state he believes that he would like to sit out on a balcony and smoke a cigarette and watch traffic stream by below. The rye whisky causes him to forget how city people make him feel so out of place in his own skin. They seem noisier, almost hostile in their indifference to his presence. Margaret often embarrasses him when she goes shopping in the way she engages clerks in long conversations, not noticing how the clerks’ faces look pained with the expression of boredom or disinterest or, worse, how their faces turn smug and seem to say “hicks.” He climbs back up along the path until he gets to the shattered maple tree.