by Jamie Zeppa
“That was a nice morning,” Jimmy said on the way to school. But Dawn thought it was more than that, and by the end of the day, she had proof. First, Dean announced he wouldn’t be going away on business anymore because he was opening his own business, right here in town, and if they would give him their full and undivided attention for a moment, he would tell them all about it.
They were eating a double supper: the Kentucky Fried Chicken and fries that Dean had brought home and the pork chops, peas and mashed potatoes that Geraldine had already cooked because apparently Dean had never heard of this new invention called The Phone. Dean said it was great that she had cooked, because now they could have an all-you-can-eat buffet feast, and he even set it up like a buffet, using all the bowls and serving platters they had. He loaded their plates: a mashed potato volcano spilling peas, with chicken and pork chops like houses at the base and a forest of fries climbing the slopes.
“Dig in, kids,” he said, “and I’ll let you in on The Plan.”
The Plan was this: downtown, a few doors from the Sunset Café, Dean was opening a club the likes of which this town had never seen. “Club” meant nightclub, where grown-ups went at night to talk and listen to music.
Jimmy said, “You mean a barroom?”
Dean laughed. “No, Uncle Frank. Not a barroom.” It didn’t look like anything now, because the carpenters were ripping it up and stripping it down, but in a few weeks, when the lights were installed and the round mahogany bar had been built, oh man, the bar was going to be the centrepiece, the showpiece of the whole place, right in the middle of the main room.
“Who’s paying for this?” Geraldine asked.
“The investors,” Dean said. “They’re really excited—”
Geraldine snorted. “The investors? Dean, you’re getting in over your head with this guy.”
“This is nothing for Del. Peanuts. With all the deals he’s got going, this is small change.”
Geraldine sighed.
Dean said, “Don’t worry, Ger, I’ve got him just where I want him.”
Dean hadn’t come up with a name yet, but he was open to suggestions. He leapt up and played a drum roll on the table with his index fingers. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “guys and dolls, cats and chicks, Turner Enterprises is pleased to present, all the way from Toronto—”
“Donny Osmond!” Dawn said.
“The Jackson 5!” Jimmy said.
Dean sighed. “Well, that’s not quite the calibre I had in mind, but who knows, maybe we’ll bring them up to do a special concert and you two can emcee.” He drew the room for Dawn and Jimmy with some cutlery, the salt shaker and a straw. “The whole place goes completely black. Then a single ray of light cuts through the darkness. It hits the edge of a guitar …” He stopped and shook his head. “All I can say is, minds are going to be blown.”
Dean put his arm around Geraldine, and she leaned against him, and that’s when Dawn saw that things really were going to be different. Because Dean wouldn’t be away on business now, so Geraldine wouldn’t have to do everything by herself—work all day and then come home and look after the kids, make dinner, wash the clothes, do the shopping—and the club would be a smashing success and make bushels of money so Geraldine wouldn’t have to worry about the bills on top of the fridge (and Dawn wouldn’t have to stand on a chair to count them), and things would finally get back to normal and start to come true.
And then, more luck: at school Dawn made a new friend. Brenda Nolan (Big Brenda or Beluga Brenda) had watery eyes and white-blond hair. Her father owned a grocery store and they had a swimming pool in the backyard. Brenda said she and Dawn would have pool parties in the summer while Marlene from their class and all her stupid friends sat around on their front steps with nothing to do except fan themselves with their hands and bore themselves to death.
Aside from the promise of pool parties, the main advantage to being friends with Brenda was that Dawn had someone to eat lunch with. Plus, it was nice to be able to say things like, “I’m going over to my friend Brenda’s” or “My friend Brenda has a pool.” Normal things that normal kids said. The main disadvantage was that anyone who was friends with Brenda could never be friends with Marlene or anyone Marlene was friends with, and Mike Harrison called them Laurel and Hardy and sang whenever he saw them: “Fatty and Skinny went to bed, Skinny blew a fart and Fatty fell dead.”
“How can Fatty fall dead if she’s already lying in bed?” Brenda yelled.
“She was sitting in bed, cutting her big fat toenails and eating her toe jam,” Mike yelled back, and Marlene laughed so hard she cried. Or pretended to.
Still, Dawn felt fortunate to have a friend, especially considering that the change in luck had stalled at home. Now when Geraldine came home from work, she took her swollen hands and feet straight to bed. She got up and drank water straight from the tap, then went back to bed, one hand on the wall to steady herself. Her eyes, slits in her moon face, looked the same whether she was awake or asleep. Too sick to get up and yell, she threw things against the bedroom door if Dawn and Jimmy made too much noise. Mostly they were things that thudded, but once, something shattered. Dawn only hoped it wasn’t a mirror. So she took Jimmy to Brenda’s after school almost every day, and Brenda didn’t mind that she couldn’t come to their house. That was the other advantage to Brenda: she hardly ever minded anything.
On Saturdays, they went to help Dean with the club. He often needed skilled assistants for special missions. “Yep,” he said, inspecting Jimmy’s eyes with an imaginary magnifying glass. “Eagle eyes. Perfect for the flea market.”
“We’re going to look for fleas?” Jimmy asked.
“Not fleas. Funk. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to find little pieces of funk. There’s a fine line between junk and funk, but I believe you two will be able to discern it.”
The flea market was row upon row of wooden tables inside a big barn-like building. Dean showed them funk: a handful of old-fashioned keys, a fan made out of feathers, a tiny green bottle with a rubber stopper. Then he showed them junk: an ashtray with an Algoma Steel logo, a book called Teach Yourself Typing. Jimmy found a pair of sparkly red shoes with bows, and Dawn found a framed photo of someone’s great-grandmother, looking stern and stiff in a long black dress with a white lace collar. Dean said they had the knack, the eye, and they would be amply rewarded.
The club, which was going to be called Tangerine—or maybe Pipe Dreams in honour of Vera, who said Dean was full of them—was a series of interconnected rooms on the main floor, with bathrooms and an office in the basement. In the main room, Antoine was doing the mural. Short and bald, Antoine had apple cheeks, wire-rimmed glasses and a tangle of feather and leather pendants dangling from his neck. He reached into the basket at his feet and pulled out an earring and a silver spoon. With his other hand, he dipped a paintbrush into a can of glue. He worked fast, painting and sticking and then drying the glue with a hair dryer. A path of doll shoes led to a lake of blue glass surrounded by paper umbrella trees. An eye painted on a saucer cried a pearl. A sunburst brooch rose out of a teacup.
Antoine shrieked when he saw the shoes. He dropped his brush and grabbed Dean by the shoulder. “Yellow,” he said. “I need yellow. I need a lot.”
Dean said sure, he would keep an eye out for yellow pieces.
“No, no,” Antoine said. “I need yellow now. Right now.” He was clutching the shoes to his chest, and his round blue eyes were huge and blinking frantically. “You won’t be sorry.” He began prying pieces of his mural off the wall. “Go! Yellow!”
So they went back out, and at the Sally Ann they found a white scarf with yellow flowers, a gold belt and a plastic banana. “Not enough,” Dean said. Jimmy had to pee, so Dean drove them home. He took a dollar out of his pocket. “Whoever collects the most yellow gets this.” They kicked each other getting out of the car. “And whoever wakes up Geraldine gets a spanking,” Dean called as they raced inside. “I’ll be back in
an hour.”
Dawn found a bottle of Sunlight dish detergent, a plastic lemon in the fridge and a bar of yellow soap. Jimmy found some pencils, several pieces of plastic race track and a picture of a yellow dress in Geraldine’s box of photos.
They both spotted the phone book at the same time, but Jimmy reached it first. They were ripping out the yellow pages and hissing when Geraldine came into the kitchen. Her stomach was a basketball under her purple bathrobe. “What is this?” she asked, looking at the mess on the floor—snips of paper and a slick of dish soap. “We need yellow things for the mural,” Dawn told her. “Look at all the stuff we got.”
Geraldine pretended to look in the bag before opening the fridge. Then she turned back to them. “Let me see that bag again,” she said slowly.
When Dean came back, they were waiting outside with their hats and boots on. He said, “There is a surprising shortage of yellow in the world, kids … What happened?” Jimmy was still sniffling.
“He cut up a picture of Geraldine’s sister in a yellow dress, the only picture she had—”
“She made a mess with dish soap—”
“Get in the car,” Dean sighed.
Jimmy won the dollar for the pieces of race track but kept sniffling because Dean wouldn’t go back to let them get Professor Pollo. They spent the rest of the afternoon eating butter tarts from Mike’s Lunch and watching Antoine stick pieces of yellow on the wall.
The following Monday, Dawn’s luck at school improved even more dramatically. Brenda was home sick, and Marlene invited Dawn to sit at her table in the lunchroom. “I wanted to ask you something,” Marlene said. She had a heart-shaped face and pierced ears and shiny brown hair in a bouncy ponytail. Dawn thought, Maybe Brenda and I were wrong; maybe she’s not stuck-up at all.
“Who’s that lady who came to pick you up last week? I think you called her Geraldine?”
“That’s my stepmother,” Dawn said, swallowing.
“Oh,” Marlene smiled sweetly. “You have a stepmother?”
“Yeah,” Dawn said. “My dad got married this summer. Last summer. I mean just this past summer.”
Marlene nodded. “Dawn … I hope you don’t mind if I ask, but … where’s your real mother?”
“My real mother,” Dawn said, and her voice sounded strange in her ears, dusty and withered, like something that had fallen behind a dresser. She swallowed to lubricate her throat. When she looked up, she saw that they were all leaning towards her—Marlene, Charlotte, Jessica, Lisa. Their eyes were soft and shining with sorrow, their brows furrowed with tender concern. She was so touched that her own eyes filled up with tears. “She was beautiful and kind. I hardly remember what she looked like. She had long blond hair and blue eyes. She looked like a movie star.” She swallowed hard. “She died when I was five.”
The others murmured in alarm and sympathy, and Charlotte offered Dawn a napkin. Dawn wiped her eyes and cleared her throat.
“How did she die?” Marlene asked softly.
A series of deaths flashed before her eyes. A last-minute trip to the store to buy medicine for the sick baby, the car spinning out of control across an icy bridge on a dark night. A woman in a long white nightgown breaking free from a fireman’s grip: “My children! My children are in there!” The nightgown disappears into the roaring flames, appears a moment later at a window to drop two tiny bundles into the firemen’s net below, then disappears as the house collapses.
Dawn blinked hard, sending more tears down her cheeks. The other girls pressed closer, trying to outdo one another in consolation and wisdom. “It’s too hard for her to talk about it.” “Oh my god, poor thing.” “What are you crying for, Charlotte, your mother’s not dead.” “She’s got a mental block; she probably can’t remember. Can you remember, Dawn?”
That’s how she became part of Marlene’s group. Even girls from grade eight knew her name now. They whispered when she went by, and she straightened her shoulders and bowed her head, putting on one of the various sad and stricken looks she practised in the mirror at home. Dawn still went over to Brenda’s after school, because she wasn’t two-faced. She wasn’t going to stop being Brenda’s friend just because she was Marlene’s. Also, she had to bring Jimmy wherever she went, and she couldn’t bring him to Marlene’s. But she ate lunch with Marlene, and when the teacher said, “Find someone to work with,” Charlotte and Lisa both turned in their seats to catch her eye. Brenda said nothing. I can’t help it, Dawn thought. I can’t make Marlene and everyone like her. There was nothing she could do, and nothing Brenda could say.
But it turned out there was something Brenda could say, after all. One day she approached Marlene’s table at lunch. “Did you want something, Brenda?” Marlene asked smoothly.
Brenda stuck her chin out at Dawn. “Her mom’s not dead. That’s a big fat lie.”
Everyone looked at Dawn. “I think,” Dawn said, as loudly as she could, although her heart was flapping and fluttering like a trapped bird against her breastbone, “I think I should know what happened to my own mother.”
The others agreed, “Yeah, Brenda, she should know,” but Dawn could feel their belief cracking and splitting, and the story she had been rehearsing in her head about her memory breakthrough slipped through a crevice and disappeared.
Brenda said, “My mother worked with her mother. She knows the whole story. Her mother’s not dead. She ran off with another man.”
THE LIGHT BULB TRICK
Wharton said if Dean didn’t bring the money a week Friday, he’d pound the living daylights out of him. He’d do it, too. With his tree-trunk neck and hams for hands, he’d thump Dean into the ground, next Friday and every Friday until he had the money. Nothing, no talk or walk or turn of phrase would change that, no slide or glide into a new place where suddenly Dean’s arm was around your shoulders and everyone was laughing, including you. Wharton came from the same distant place as Dean’s parents, the City of No, whose inhabitants rarely laughed, and suffered a perplexing imperviousness to Dean and his talk. (Town Motto: We Don’t Want Any.)
At home, Dean rifled through pockets, groped under the chesterfield cushions and emptied out his mother’s change purse. Funds found: $0.82. Funds outstanding: $9.18. Likelihood of a pounding: very likely.
All because of a light bulb. “Horseshit and bullshit!” Dean shouted into the stillness of the house. Outside, in the four o’clock gloom, it began to snow. His father wouldn’t be home from work for a couple of hours, but his mother, having her hair set by Mrs. May down the road, could interrupt his search at any time. He stood in the doorway of his room, his mind a whirl. Pointless to look in here. He carried his money in his pocket, when he had it, which wasn’t often, because his parents confiscated any cash that found its way into his hands. It had to go straight to the bank, they said, so he wouldn’t spend it. “Money doesn’t grow on trees, Dean.” Well, obviously. “You can’t have your cake and eat it too.” What’s the point of cake you can’t eat?
The whole point of money was to spend it. It was its own trick and story. Without money, you were sitting by yourself outside the corner store on a flat, grey day in the kingdom of tedium; with money, six kids you’d never met before were sprawled around you on the steps, sipping happily from their individual bottles of Coke, freed by an unexpected act of generosity and talking like they’d known each other all their lives.
He threw himself onto his bed. A fourteen-year-old in another family might be able to ask. Some other kid might be able to explain to some other father, who would say, “Betting’s a foolish thing to do, son,” and this other kid would agree, “I know, I know,” and he would know, too, and the father would say, “Well, it’s a lesson learned” and open his wallet. Dean’s father would not open his wallet for a bet, even if Wharton came over with a signed IOU, a priest and a pistol. He would have to say he needed it for sports equipment or something, and then, inevitably, a week or a month later, they would discover the truth and all hell would break lose. Hell and rh
etorical questions: Did he think they wouldn’t find out? Did he think money grew on trees? Did he think he was too old for a strapping?
Then the exchanged glances and a week of sighs and forecasts of doom: What would become of him if he kept this up? They didn’t know. They. Just. Didn’t. Know.
Might be better to just take the pounding from Wharton. It would be over quicker.
The light bulb trick was a recent addition to his repertoire: the toilet paper blizzard, a midget in the closet, pennies from heaven, Magillicutty’s ghost. His parents called them antics and acting up. He called them pieces and tricks, although that made them sound like common magic, of the now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t variety, which he despised. There was actually no word for what he did. Someday, though, he would record the details in a black leather book with only his last name in raised script on the cover; he would make sure just enough people saw it to establish its existence so that when it went missing, they would tell their kids, and their kids would tell their kids, and people would look for the Turner Black Book forever.
Rumours would circle him and reporters would follow him out to his limousine, clamouring to know what he had planned next and was he was the one behind the Christmas baskets hung in the trees outside the orphanage, and where did he get his ideas. His parents wanted to know the same thing, only they phrased it differently.
“What is putting this nonsense into your head?” his mother demanded when he was sent home from school for climbing out the detention closet window, sliding down the drainpipe, sprinting back into the school and slipping into his seat before Mr. Harrison had finished writing quadratic equations on the board.
“It was about a thousand degrees in there,” he began, “so I opened the window to get some air, and—”