“Hello?” He asks once again when she doesn’t speak. “Margaret? Margaret, is that you?” He pauses and Amy hears what might be a heavy sigh. “You know you really should give it up, Margaret. This must be costing you a fortune,” Timothy says, his voice suddenly hard. He hangs up.
When she steps outside the air seems colder, and once again she feels the bite of dampness. She stamps her feet, waiting for the green light. She’s stunned by the revelation that Margaret calls Timothy. That her mother stands in the hall at the telephone listening to his voice and not speaking.
She waits on a bench in the bus depot, watching the clock and the patrons in the Salisbury Coffee Shop as they come and go. Pain shoots through her toes as they begin to warm up. The skinny ticket agent behind the Grey Goose wicket has been glancing at her off and on and she knows she looks bad, like a runaway, a drowned and decrepit rat. She smiles at him from time to time to try to convince him otherwise. For half an hour a young man in a U.S. Air Force uniform recounts the story of his life and what it’s like to live in the city of New York. When his bus leaves, an old man takes his place on the bench beside her. He sets several bulging bags onto the floor at his feet and begins telling Amy how lucky she is to be living in this time and country. His tongue is thick and slow with an accent. He’s fifteen minutes into his speech when Shirley, flushed with excitement, enters through the arrivals and departures gate. They go up to the washroom so she can show Amy the sweater, cosmetics, and jewellery she has stolen. “So, what’s with you?” she stops to ask. Amy shrugs and says nothing. Shoplifting has become boring, that’s all. Not her scene any more.
Margaret Barber looks at the clock and wonders why Amy isn’t home from school yet and whether she has gone downtown again. Whether she will even show up for supper. She dusts flour across the kitchen-table top and begins rolling flat a chunk of cookie dough. She works from the inside out, applying an even pressure to the rolling pin so that the dough doesn’t crinkle or crack. When she’s satisfied with the result, an almost perfectly shaped circle, she begins to hum to the music playing on the radio as she dips a Christmas tree cookie-cutter into flour and presses it into the circle of dough. “For unto us a child is born,” the choir sings on the radio. It’s the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, but still it’s quite beautiful, Margaret thinks. “And the government shall be upon His shoulder,” the choir sings. It doesn’t matter to Margaret that she’s not going to eat the cookies. Or that, because Mel and Amy are going to parties, she will pass Christmas Eve taking communion at the Alliance Gospel Church, and then the remainder of the evening alone, and that the following day, while Mel and Amy sleep off their party hangovers, she will walk down to her parents’ for a pinched, silent Christmas meal. The cookies are for others. For the Christmas boxes she and the other women at the Alliance Gospel Church will pack and deliver to the less fortunate. Secretly, when it’s dark outside, she’ll set the boxes down on the back steps or just inside a porch door; the recipient need never know the hand of the giver. “ ‘For unto us a child is born, unto us, a son is given. … And his name shall be called. …’ “ Margaret sings along with the choir. “ ‘Councillor! … The Everlasting Father! Prince of Peace!’ “ She sings loudly, feeling joyous, trembling with the beauty of the music and with the vision she has of the Prince of Peace standing white-robed and barefoot on a rim of clouds, eyes filled with the terrible white fire of his love, and at his side is Jill. Then suddenly she thinks of Amy and the picture falls apart, her joy vanishing. There’s a reason why she has just thought of Amy. She wipes her hands on her apron and goes out into the hallway and calls Mrs. Hardy.
“Edith? I’m worried about Amy. I’m not certain why, I just am.” She listens to Mrs. Hardy’s response with a slight bit of annoyance and she has an unloving thought. It is easy to say to trust in the Lord with all your heart and not to worry when you haven’t had a child of your own to worry over, when you have your man at your side. “Do you think we could take a minute and pray for Amy?” she asks.
The woman agrees and begins to pray, and Margaret closes her eyes and presses her forehead against the wall beside the telephone. “Oh yes, Jesus,” Margaret sighs. “Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes,” she breathes while the woman prays, believing, trusting with every single cell of her body that there is still time and God will yet save Amy.
10
nd then, when I was seventeen, I made a date with a rapist. His name was Dave. He was a six-feet-six, size-fifteen-boots man endowed, I discovered, with an enormous mouth and a rather small prick.
Dave was part of a rotating Hydro crew, a group of thirty or so men who lived in a trailer camp just beyond the agricultural grounds. They had arrived all at once to rewire the town of Carona and they made every night jump like a Saturday night. The rumour was the men from Hydro had been given strict instructions not to form relationships with the local girls, in other words not to risk dipping their wicks, but they did so anyway, and this was why the crew was changed every few months for the year and a half it took to get the job done. I met Dave when he stopped by Sullie’s Drive In and Take Out where I worked for part of that 1967 spring and summer.
Sullivan, a stocky, balding man, a World War Two vet, and the proprietor of Sullie’s, wanted to take his family on a vacation for the summer, he’d explained, and I was surprised and secretly pleased that he had sought me out. I was to have complete charge of his food establishment, located just outside of town, working full time for the whole summer and supervising a part-time evening staff, which was made up of students, some of whom were older than I was.
Shirley hinted that she’d be more than willing to hang out at Sullie’s and give me a hand. But I didn’t want Shirley Cutting around for many reasons, one of which was that I had begun to notice that she had an off-putting body odour, like mouldy apples, and that the little black flats she wore were always scuffed and chewed down at the heels and that the patches of skin at the back of her ankles were mottled with dirt. I was also concerned that the hand she’d offered to give me would likely end up in the cash box, and I couldn’t watch her and everything else at the same time. But Shirley did come by anyway, off and on, walking the mile and a half and pushing the stroller with Cheryl, her anaemic-looking stepsister, inside it. The first time, she came around through the back door carrying Cheryl in her arms, and I said I was sorry but the work space was too cramped and dangerous for a young child, what with the hot fat and grill. After that, Shirley would only stay long enough for Cheryl to eat an ice-cream cone while she leaned against the outside counter, smoking a cigarette and speaking to me through the order window. But in June, once summer really set in and we became busy, I couldn’t do any more than wave and say hi in passing, and Shirley got the message. She stopped coming all together and would wait down at Ken’s Chinese Food for my shift to end.
I had surprised myself, and no doubt Margaret too, with my enthusiasm and energy as I set off after school on the bicycle Mel had long ago abandoned, down the highway each afternoon to get to Sullie’s place around four o’clock to prepare to be open by six. I liked anticipating the evening’s trade and estimating what we would require to see us through the night without being caught short or left with too much thawed and seasoned meat.
I liked the people who came, too, especially the little kids. I got a kick out of how they had to stretch up onto their toes to reach the order window, and the way they lisped their requests. I adored these children, their shyness, and how they stared at me with obvious admiration. It was my new look, I reasoned. I was different. I hadn’t opted for the current fad and become the Big Bopper’s girl in “Chantilly Lace.” I didn’t wear my hair in a ponytail like most. The novelty of my friend Shirley had worn off, and I was no longer a redhead but a blonde, my hair cropped short, hugging my skull. I tugged feathery tufts of the stiff bleached hair down onto my forehead. I wore matte, almost-white pancake make-up, which covered any identifying moles or marks so that my face was blank and I could draw onto it the featu
res I wanted. I pencilled around my eyes in a way to make them appear larger, and I drew a small bright orange-red mouth. While their parents probably regarded me with a raised eyebrow behind my back, these kids, I could tell, thought I was terrific.
Dave had dropped by Sullie’s early in the season shortly after his arrival in town and had become a regular, always ordering a double cheeseburger, loaded, and a chocolate milkshake. Because his purple Ford had Hollywood mufflers I could hear it a mile away as it headed towards Sullie’s at least three or four times a week, and I’d have the patties on the grill before he pulled into the parking lot: two acres of gravel surrounding the drive-in booth. I’d begun to add an extra scoop of ice cream to Dave’s milkshake because the man was a giant, and because even though he was stunningly good-looking he didn’t appear to know it, which is more or less why I let my guard down one night and agreed to get into his car. Of all the men in the Hydro crew, Dave seemed to have some class. I never saw him with an open beer between his legs or laying on the horn at a girl and leering, or shoving his head through the order window and saying, “I’ve got the wiener and you’ve got the bun, honey, let’s hot dog.”
One night near the middle of June, the heat made everything sticky, and even though the exhaust fan above the grill roared at top speed my shirt was pasted to my back. Outside, the sky ballooned ominously, heavy purple clouds threatening a downpour, and so I let Patsy, one of the part-timers, take off early. Except for Dave’s car the parking lot was empty, and with only half an hour to closing I shut the deep-fryer down and began cleaning up. Patsy hadn’t been gone more then ten minutes when raindrops like heavy stones began pelting against the side of the booth. I peered out through the window at the solid sheet of rain slashing across the parking hit and decided I would have to wait this one out. The headlights of Dave’s car pressed through the rain towards the booth, to circle around the back of it and head out the other way to the highway, I thought, but the car stopped behind the booth. I rolled the day’s cash receipts into cheesecloth and then into a paper bag as I heard the car door slam, footsteps, and then Dave’s fist banging against the booth. I put the paper bag into the freezer and went to the door. Dave was so tall I had to step back in order to see all of him at once.
“You can’t bicycle home in this. Want a lift?” he asked. Rain streamed down his hair and across his face.
“Okay, thanks.” But not home, I said. He could drop me off at Ken’s where Shirley waited.
I sat inside Dave’s car listening to Marty Robbins singing about a white sports coat while Dave crammed Mel’s bicycle into the trunk. Then he slid in beside me, the shoulders of his denim shirt soaked, and rain dripped off the end of his perfectly shaped nose. The cleft in his chin deepened as he grinned. He was what was known as “rugged,” I guess, but twinkly-eyed too, like a young Robert Taylor. He hugged the steering wheel for a moment, staring through the sheet of rain, which, on the car’s roof, sounded like applause as Marty Robbins finished his song. Then he turned and looked at me, pulling a face, his mouth twisted and one eyebrow shooting up, a wicked cartoon villain. “Nee-ah, ha, ha. Nice night for a murder!” he said.
“Yeah, sure,” I said as we drove away, and I was relieved, then felt a bit stupid for having felt worried, when he pulled up at the curb on Main Street outside Ken’s.
I felt awkward having this giant dogging my heels as we entered the cafe. Several other men from the Hydro crew sat together in a centre booth and I felt their eyes follow us as we went to the back of the cafe where Cam, Gord, and Shirley waited. “Meet Dave,” I said.
“Yeah, we know Dave,” Cam said, without looking up. Gord, too, was acting a bit strange in the way he seemed to be preoccupied, fiddling with a pack of cigarettes. Just then, the waitress, an older married woman from another town, came over to the booth and began clearing away their dishes, and I felt the air between her and Dave become charged with tension. “Howdy,” Dave said, but the woman turned her back on him and loaded her tray swiftly. Then she hesitated, took a swipe at the table with a damp cloth, and looked me straight in the eye. “You’re not going out with him, are you?”
Later I realized how she had emphasized the word “him” and had attempted to telegraph a message with her eyes, but all I noticed then was the flush of blood in her cheek, and I thought, Well, imagine that. She’s jealous. Dave wrapped his arm around my neck, pinning me in a fake headlock, and rubbed my bristly hair. I saw Shirley’s face flare with undisguised envy. What a pain in the ass Shirley has become since I got the job, I thought.
“It’s your funeral,” the waitress sang under her breath as she walked away.
“Brenda’s working the night shift,” Cam said. “She said it’s okay to go up.”
Brenda was an affable, chunky farm girl who worked as a telephone operator and rented the suite above the old Miller’s Television and Radio shop. She invited people up to her apartment to see the life-size poster of Elvis Presley pinned to her bedroom door. When Brenda worked the night shift, we often went up there to play records and drink beer and watch Shirley’s nose turn red and her green eyes glitter with tears as she retold the story of how she’d found her father pitched forward at the breakfast table, face resting in a plate of toast she had just buttered for him moments earlier. When Shirley’s nose grew red, she’d slip off into Brenda’s bedroom with Cam or Gord, or sometimes with both of them.
When this happened, I told myself that it was none of my business. I’d watch midget wrestling to drown out the rustling and the muffled sounds coming from the bedroom and think about the foolish girl who went to bed with Elvis hoping that he’d give her a Cadillac when it was over and all she got from him was a water-melon. I knew how it worked in Carona. That there were only two kinds of girls, and even though I was a virgin, I was guilty by association. But I didn’t care. Even if Shirley was the town bicycle, as Mel so succinctly put it, there was a whole lot we had between us that never needed to be said. But that night, as I looked at the three of them sitting in the back booth of Ken’s Chinese Food, I thought, Misery loves company. They were a miserable lot with nothing better to do than use Brenda’s place for their group grope, and so I asked Dave if he would take me home.
Once we got back into the car, Dave changed. His face became serious and unreadable and he didn’t talk. He backed away from the curb too quickly and the tires squealed against the wet pavement as we took off. The rain was coming down so hard the wipers barely cleared the windshield. “Here.” I indicated the intersection and my street. He turned into the street, but as we approached the school, the car sped up, and through the rain I saw my house flash by, the light in the front hall shining through the screens of the veranda. “You passed it.”
He didn’t answer, just continued staring into the sheet of rain, clutching the steering wheel in his huge hands. I grew intensely alert, mind tumbling with scenarios and ways I might extract myself from each of them. I don’t remember what music played on the radio or what, if anything, I may have said between the time we passed my house and when the car stopped in front of the gates of the cemetery. But I do remember seeing framed for an instant in the beams of the headlights the wrought-iron angels on the gates, horns lifted to their mouths, angels forever frozen, forever calling forth the sleeping people lying in orderly rows beneath weeping birches and spruce beyond. Dave doused the lights, and the angels, the buff-coloured stone wall, vanished.
Up until this point no one had ever touched my body. Cam and Gord had learned early from my kicks and hard slaps not to even try. I liked my body. I liked its extreme slenderness. Margaret worried over this. “She eats like a horse,” she complained to the doctor, “so I don’t see what’s happening.” The doctor, to satisfy her, ordered me to go down to the lab in the basement of the clinic to have blood samples drawn off and sent to the city to confirm that my cell growth and formation were normal and that there was nothing poisonous robbing my body of nutrition.
I liked the way my body was made. Ev
ery aspect of it, from my small breasts to the deep, pink folds which turned inwards, into me. Myself. I had sat on a mirror in the bathroom once and examined every crack and crevice of myself, probing with my finger and declaring myself sound and pretty amazing actually, the way my muscles sucked my finger up high inside me as I brought myself to orgasm. I had begun to enjoy my body’s cycle, the rising and falling rhythm of menstruation, and took some satisfaction in squatting over the toilet and feeling huge clots slide out of me and land with a soft thick plopping sound in the water. And then in the ensuing decline of my slightly swollen breasts as my body, like a waning moon, became sliver thin, sharp once again. For this reason I was particular about who might touch it and, so far, I had not allowed anyone but myself.
Dave moved forward as he groped at the floor and then, slowly, the car seat slid backwards. I stared into total darkness. Think, I instructed myself through the sound of rain, drumming on the roof. Once, when in the city waiting for Shirley, who had gone into the Salisbury on Main Street to use the washroom, I had been surrounded by several young boys who became cocky and then menacing and I disarmed them by swearing more than they did. In the end they showed me their sharpened jackknife blades and the knuckle-dusters they’d made at school in shop, and invited me to attend their little gang-war skirmish, which was supposed to happen later that night in Vimy Ridge Park. But Dave wasn’t a scrawny street punk. I couldn’t read Dave.
“So, where you from?” I asked. I knew I sounded stupid.
“A small town in the northwest of the province near the Saskatchewan border.”
“And what do your parents do?”
“Farmers,” he answered in a monotone.
The Chrome Suite Page 21