What They Wanted

by Donna Morrissey

  “Waarm evening,” he drawled in the broad, flat brogue of the old-timers around the bay, flattening out “warm” to rhyme with “arm.”

  “Yeah, sure, waarm day,” I said irritably, and caught what might’ve been another real smile abort itself on Trapp’s mouth.

  For days I burrowed into my room, hurrying through campus so’s not to encounter Ben, eating in the smaller, more obscure cafeterias. I became a slob, and wondered how Mother would react to the humps of clothing mounding my floors, bed, chairs. Myrah, my skinny, outport roomie, who’d become my first bosom pal and who was going through a real breakup, became equally a slob, and rather quickly our tiny room descended into beer haven squalor, with rows of empties lining our windowsills and coffee table like abandoned, beheaded soldiers. Shredded beer labels fell like confetti onto our laps, our beds, into our boots, our morning cereal. I took up smoking, fighting my way through nausea till I could finally hold a cigarette with grace, and bags of pot started taking up residence in a concealed portion of the junk drawer.

  “Holy christ, Sylvie,” said Myrah after she found me painfully twisted around a wooden chair one morning, staring at a cold cup of tea, “is it still that bad?”

  “Worse,” I whimpered.

  “Ahh, come on, let’s get out, go for a beer—what time’s it— almost noon, come on, they’re not worth all this.” And for the tenth or twelfth time that week I trailed a step behind Myrah as we traversed the university grounds, listening to her tirade about men’s stupidity. I hung on to her every word, hoping to find a salve for my hurting, fool heart. If I’d just kept my mouth shut I’d at least still be hanging with him and sharing laughs. Most times I was content with simply his company, anyway— ohh, I cringed a thousand times rethinking that wretched moment of Ben’s rejection, his discomfort, his gentleness.

  It was during one of Myrah’s rants, marching beside her through a crowded corridor, that I literally crashed into Ben. Too late I saw him and Trapp pushing against the flow of bodies and coming towards us. Deliberately Ben sidestepped in front of me, offering an unconvincing apology as I collided against him, my books bruising my ribs.

  Muttering something unintelligible, I flushed hard and bent down as much to hide my face as to gather the papers that had slipped from my binder and scattered at my feet. He bent beside me, his leather jacket buckling upward, exposing an airline ticket in his inside pocket. “Where you going?”I asked, so’s to divert his attention.

  Instantly he was on his feet, zipping his jacket. “Going home for the weekend,” he said with a wry look at Trapp. He clapped Trapp’s shoulder, nodding. “Yuh—weekend off.”

  Trapp was rapidly chewing the corners of his mouth, his eyes squirrelling from me to Myrah as though we were about to discover his secret stash of acorns.

  “Soo,” said Ben, bringing his attention back to me, “how you been doing—haven’t see you around.”

  I stood beside him, fitting my papers back inside the binder. “Fine. Just fine. And you?”I looked him boldly in the eyes. He was smiling. I smelt his whisky coffee breath. Myrah clicked her tongue.

  “Me?” He drew a look of concern. “Geesh, I’ve been studying, actually.” He lifted a finger to his throat, feeling for a pulse. “Must be something going around.” He gave an affectionate smile, and I thought for a moment he was gonna chuck me beneath the chin in some fatherlike gesture for having said something cute. I made to dart around him and he caught my arm, pulling me sideways against a row of lockers. “Where you running off to? Why did you run off the other night?”

  “I, uh, I have a class, I have to go—”

  “Settle down, you’re like a dog with burr—what’s the matter with you anyhow, cripes, you’re like a dog with burr.”

  “You just said that.”

  “So I did, you got me circling like a dog.” He fell silent, then gave a self-conscious laugh. “What’re you doing Monday night—I’ll take you to dinner, would you like to go to dinner?”

  “Where?” I asked.

  “Where—I don’t know where, we’ll find a where. Whatsa matter now,” he asked as I hesitated, “you gotta think about it?”

  “Yeah, I gotta think about it. I have a class on Monday night.”

  “After class then. I’ll meet you in the cafeteria. Around nine—half-past nine?”

  Myrah clicked her tongue, more sharply this time.

  Ben shot her a crude look.

  “Half-past nine,” I said.

  He gave a quick nod, a tentative smile, and then, with a curious look at the stone-faced Myrah, followed after Trapp who had since lost himself amidst the river of bodies flowing through the corridor.

  Monday evening I was sitting in the cafeteria, waiting. I was wearing a crinkly-textured T-shirt I’d bought for the occasion and a new pair of skin-tight jeans. My hair was loosely curled and heavily hair-sprayed so’s to hold the curls in place. I was wearing an underwire bra that penned me in like a whalebone corset yet pushed my breasts upward in an alluring manner. I was wearing blush and gloss and eye shadow. And huge hoop earrings that stroked coolly across my cheek each time I bent my head to look at my watch.

  An hour passed. No Ben. The cafeteria started emptying. Janitors scraped aside chairs and tables, sweeping the floors, slopping them with heavy, wet mops. The last few bodies left. I’d never heard the cafeteria so quiet. Gathering my books, heart weighted more with disappointment than anger, I left.

  Next evening I was back again, wearing the same earrings and jeans and crinkly-textured T-shirt, thinking I might’ve gotten the time wrong. On the third day I forced my step away from the cafeteria, away from the campus bar or any of those places where I might run into Ben. Keeping my thoughts from obsessively returning to him, however, was like trying to forget the rock in one’s shoe.

  It was Mother who told me. Ben had dropped out of university with Trapp and gone to Alberta to work in the oilfields. Poor Suze was crazed with worry, Mother said, and couldn’t figure it because he’d only a semester left before graduating with his engineering degree, and his marks—while low—were passable, and he had money in the bank. And Trapp, too, had just a semester left towards an engineering degree. Why in the name of gawd would either of them quit now, the distraught Suze beseeched me each time I came home after that.

  “Because that’s what lots of students do,” I lied to her that first time she came to Mother’s house to see me. “They suddenly get tired and take time out, works for a bit, then goes back to school and finishes. Not a thing to worry about.”

  It was not an answer that comforted Suze. She wheezed for breath, her padded cheeks exuding a rashlike redness as she flapped her arms and wrung her hands and paced the small confines of the kitchen, worrying for her boy.

  “He’s not a boy, Suze,” Mother said consolingly, but still she carried on with her flapping and wringing and pacing. I kept my comments to myself, relieved the poor woman knew nothing of her “boy’s” wasted eyes and whisky breath.

  For the longest time university life without Ben felt about as exciting as a Sunday sermon. But time smoothes the sharpest of stones, and thankfully, after a few months of ardent study and good grades, I was once more traipsing lightheartedly through campus, this time with Myrah and a keen group of philosophy students I’d taken to studying with.

  IT WAS DARK when the plane rattled down the runway outside Grande Prairie, the sky racked with thunder and lightning. I found my car in the parking lot and drove us through the night, straining to see through the sheets of rain and shushing Chris, who kept swearing at the rutted road and exclaiming over the lightning forking across the uninterrupted sky.

  SIX

  IDROVE for fifteen, twenty minutes through the worsening storm, then pulled onto a side road, lurching through potholes, the high beams funnelling a faint yellow through the woods pressing in on each side. “

  Where the hell you taking us? Where’s the city?” “

  Something I been meaning to tell you,” I rep
lied, slowing to a crawl through a washed-out section of road. “Well, easier to simply show you now.” I cut sharply to the side and braked, the headlights striking a row of darkened tents huddling near a river, some lit from the inside with candles and flashlights, others with the whiter, brighter light of lanterns.

  “Welcome home. Ninth one down is ours.”

  “What—?”

  “It’s a boom town, brother. No room at the inn. Don’t worry,” I said to his shocked look, “it’s a nice, big tent—can sleep eight men, long as they stretches out nice and straight.”

  “You’re living in a tent—smothering jeezes, wait till Mother hears this.”

  “Mother won’t,” I said hotly, reaching around to the back seat. “You don’t tattle from school. Now, help me get my bag. Chris!” He was staring aghast at the huddle of tents, the river sloughing blackly beside them. “Look, there’s no place to rent, is all. People sleeping in cars, everywhere. We’re lucky. And beside, it’s just for the summer; why waste money on high rent? Cripes, a thousand bucks for a porch is what they’re charging.”

  “What about winter—you never slept outside all winter.”

  “’Course not, stayed with a girl from work. She got married and I got the boot. Will you stop looking like that? You got it good—there’s four to six people sleeping in most of them tents. And really, it’s kinda cool,” I added lightly. “All kinds of people, mostly French, and they’re all great. If it wouldn’t pissing right now, they’d be sitting around campfires, playing guitars and stuff.”

  “My sister’s a freaking hippie.”

  “I’m not a freaking hippie—ohh, christ, the look on his face—”

  “You do acid?”

  “Yes, I sees everything green. Now, will you help me get my bag?”

  Minutes later we were running and slipping on the wet grass, the rain zinging cold on our faces, and then crawling inside the tent, dragging our bags. Chris sat back on his ankles in the dark.

  “It’s flapping like hell—who pitched this?”

  “I did. Works good when it’s slack—more give to the wind.”

  “And more take, you nit! We’ll be in the river by morning.”

  “Ohh, take off your boots, roll out your bag. I can’t find the matches—you got matches?”

  He flared a match. My sleeping bag was neatly laid out to one side of the tent, duffle bags lining the walls of the other, a little plastic table with candles and a lantern sitting near my bedding. “We’ll save the oil,” I said, lighting the candle. “Shove all that stuff aside and spread out your bag. What’re you sitting like a dummy for? You slept in tents before.”

  “Not how I pictured city living, Sis. Cripes, if Gran knew this—”

  “Yeah, well, she don’t.” Pulling off my boots, I dove into my sleeping bag with a loud chattering of teeth and skimmed out of my wet jeans and sweater. Then I zipped up the bag and burrowed deep inside, muffling through my pillow, “Blow out the candle when you’re ready. You tired?”

  He grunted, pulling off his boots, his jeans, muttering something about ventilation. Puffing out the candle, he zipped himself inside his bag and lay quietly.

  “Well, good night, then,” I said. “It’ll be nice in the morning, you’ll see.”

  “Hum mmmm.”

  “Sorry you came?”

  “And miss this? Gawd, no.”

  I grinned. “You’ll be fine. Really, it’s a lovely park.”

  The wind thumped louder on the tent and the sound of the river grew nearer. Within a minute I heard him shuffling in his sleeping bag till he was lodged against my back.

  “Sis,” he whispered. “I’m skeered of hippies.”

  “Oh, please don’t go saying hippie—we’re punk, now— hardcore punk.”

  “They’re French, Sis. Suppose they does acid and eats us for french fries?”

  I kicked at his feet. “Get away—will you get away?”

  He let out a moan and dug his head deeper into my back. I yelled, and the brunt of my elbow found his cheekbone. He yelled back and we both laughed, the tension from the past few days dissolving like salt in hot water.

  “You nervous?” I asked.

  “Who’s not—freaking river’s getting closer.”

  “I mean of being here—away from home. Still having them wild dreams? Well, then?”

  “I’m thinking—let’s see, there was the three-legged horse one. And the two-headed snake. And the bush of fire—”

  “Burning bush? That’s God, Chrissy—lord, you dreams about God?”

  “And the other one, too. He was laid out on an altar, his body was all bunched out. Like, with food. And I was eating one of his ribs.”

  “You were eating the ribs of Christ? Jeezes, Chris—so what did he taste like?”

  “Like that. Jesus. Tell me one of yours.”

  “I don’t dream no more.”

  “You always dream.”

  “I just stopped—there’s one I had—oh, gawd, it was stun.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I was in the jungle getting attacked by a tiger and was screaming ‘Tarzan, Tarzan, come get me!’ and he yodels back, ‘Not now, Jane, I’m on the phone.’ Yeah. There he was—Tarzan, with his spotted thingy around his waist, and talking on a tree phone. And then the tiger jumped me.”

  We broke into laughter. “So, tell me last night’s,” I coaxed, “what did you dream last night?”

  “Gross.”

  “Tell it.”

  “I’m tired.” He yawned.

  “The dream.”

  “It was about lice.”

  “Head lice?”

  “On my hand.”

  “And—?”

  “There were three of them. And they were white. And big. And bloated with blood.”

  “Grandfather lice,” I exclaimed. “Remember Gran talking about them? On the fishing schooners, and places like that, they’d be in your head for so long they grew big, fat, and old. But there was something else—something else she used to say about them—”

  “Ugh, can we sleep now?”

  “Least you weren’t eating them. Wonder what the psychology books would say to that. Mmmm, the number three. The colour white. Yeah, I know what they’d say—they’d say you were either carting the holy trinity about on your palm—or,” I added to his groan, “that you, me—we’re all parasites, feeding off the face of the earth.”

  “Nice.”

  “Well then, what do you think it means?”

  “Never thinks about it.”

  “Right. Forgot. Tell me then, what do you think about? When you’re off in your dazes, are you thinking?” I nudged him as he faked a snore. “Come on, Chris. Is there nothing you ponder?”

  “Once I asked the science teacher a question. Learned not to ask no more.”

  “What did you ask?”

  “Can’t remember.”

  “What did you ask?”

  He shuffled onto his back. “Jeezes, once you gets onto a thing—”

  “The question!”

  “The question was,” he said through another yawn, “how come there’s so much order out there in space—you know, how the sun and moon and stars all have their own paths, never interfering with the others—and here on Earth we have the same thing with the trees and water and animals—everything with their own path, and everything sticking to it. And then we—the smart ones—people—we’re the ones running amok?”

  “Good question. What did the teacher say?”

  “Same thing. Good question. Would I like to write an essay on the answer.”

  “Good answer. Did you write the essay?”

  “Not yet. Tell me what you’d write. Talk quiet now—take your time,” and he evened his breathing as we used to do as youngsters, trying to fool the other into believing we were sleeping.

  “I’ll tell you what I think,” I said. “I think God’s too huge to create small things. Like feelings. So, when we’re all running amok, we’re creating feel
ings—you know, love, joy, sadness and all else—and those feelings makes us think. Like, why. Or why not. Which makes us, little brother, makers of consciousness, the Earth’s consciousness. As long as we continue to think, we continue to create. How’s that for feeling a mite important. Eh?” I elbowed him.

  “Yeah, mmm.”

  “Yeah, mmm, that’s what I wonder about too—yeah, mmm. Tomorrow,” I said abruptly, “I’m talking to this foreman about getting you work. There’s this hotel going up—actually, there’s three—but this one’s just down the road from the bar. Be a good place for you to work. Good bunch of men there. You listening? Chris?”I kicked him. “Tell me something, you don’t really go off in trances, do you? I mean, really, tell me. You can’t be climbing scaffolds if you—well, got this thing.”

  “Thing?” He stirred awake.

  “Well, then, I’m only checking. Mother got me half convinced there’s something wrong with you.”

  “Mother,” he groaned.

  “What happens, then, when you goes off like that?”

  “Happens? Nothing happens. For jeeze sakes, Sis, can’t we just sleep. I wanna get clear of that fuckin’ river out there.”

  “Do you lose time—when you’re in your trances?”

  “Who knows, hell!” he said in irritation, and carried on in loud, whiny tone, “One minute I’m up on a ladder, putting putty along a windowsill. And then a leaf floats by and I’m seeing its little veins, and the little veins become tiny bones, and the tiny bones turn into webbed duck feet, that then becomes the wings of a bat—and there you have it—next thing I knows I’m upside down in a tree. Whaddya think—am I still part maker of the Earth’s brain? Tell me, Sis, what’s all with you and Ben? Huh?”

  “Go to sleep,” I muttered.

  “Perfect,” he muttered back.

  I fluffed up my pillow and kept trying for sleep, but was thwarted each time by fuzzy images of curly black hair and sooty eyes.