Melt

by Heidi Wicks

  “Did you shag around with the settings on this or something, Cait?”

  Her insides scorch. Things have gone beyond hate for Jake. He doesn’t listen to a word she says. He’s indifferent. The opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference, she remembers reading it in a Psychology Today article. “And the things you hated about yourself when you were a child, an adolescent, a young adult, even just the you of the recent past.”

  The sound pops on and it’s the end of the podcast Cait had been listening to yesterday.

  “This garbage, I can’t understand why you listen to it. The host’s voice drives me insane, it’s just droning on and on and on—”

  “And, you know, Jake, are you listening to me? Like, at all?”

  “What?”

  “Jesus Christ. We’re driving home from a very emotionally draining event, my second mother just died, and I’m trying to share my feelings with you, and you’re doing it again.”

  He tuts his tongue. “Yes. You’re talking about the afterlife or something. What is it, Cait? Go on.”

  “Oh yeah, I really feel like you’re into this conversation.”

  “Listen, Cait, stop being such a bit—”

  “Well, Jake,” she cuts him off, “you see…losing someone, it kind of makes you think about your relationship with your past, and which parts or past personalities we should leave behind, and which to bring along with us to the next phase of our lives, into the next chapter. It’s a reckoning. We’re in the afterdeath, Jake.”

  Silence.

  “Jake?”

  “Mmm?”

  “Riveted, are you?”

  “I’m thinking, Cait. Is that alright with you?”

  “I want a divorce, Jake.”

  prophecies through plastic trees and a plexiglas sky

  1997

  “Here we are, a province poor as anything, and here’s these youngsters, havin’ a prom,” Cait’s father uses air quotes, “at the hotel? Like they’re Hollywood stars! Jesus, sure when we were young, we never even got to walk in through the doors of The Hotel Newfoundland unless we were here to clean the toilets!” He storms through the sliding doors, his face crimson from the May sun and his own fury.

  Through the glass dome of the hotel’s courtyard, the night sky is a navy blanket, bedazzled with stars. An umbrella of artificial greenery sprouts from the tiled floor, the summer-green trees lit with soft white twinkle lights. A manmade oasis, safe from whatever fresh hell threatens from beyond the city’s harbour. The Class of 1997 have waited for this night, this rite of passage—so pivotal—since the first day of high school. Where do they go from here? Tonight, they’re in St. John’s, but they could pretend they’re anywhere—Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver, Bangkok, Beijing—that’s the thing about hotels.

  The girls wear sleeveless dresses made of satin back crepe and silk. Leg slits: some at the knee, others mid-thigh. That’s the trend this year.

  Cait and Jess have wanted to be grown-ups since they were eight years old. They’d spend hours on the phone, pretending to be their mothers.

  “Yes, maid,” Jess would twirl the spiral phone cord around her index finger, picking crud from bits of food and dish detergent residue from the holes in the rotary dial. “I looked over, and sure enough, here was Jonathan, having yanked the flour down off the counter.” She’d roll her eyes and tut tut her tongue, simultaneously agitated and amused over her fictional child’s shenanigans.

  “Don’t be talking,” Cait would reply. “The other day, Sarah got into the bathroom cupboard and dumped Q-Tips all over the floor. Well I just about died.” She’d shake her head, chuckling, “What’re we gonna do with ‘em?”

  Their mothers would observe this cosplay: adorable. How cute are they, what are they like? Cait and Jess knew their mothers found them adorable, and it miffed them. They wanted to be taken seriously.

  Back then, it never really occurred to them to pretend to be their mothers as career women. It was all about being housewives and mothers. That was the ultimate goal.

  Secretly, Cait was more interested in what happened before her mother whooshed back through the front door at the end of each day, her trench coat and hair windswept, her aura always with a flavour of frazzle, and Cait thought once, “Maybe she’s a spy.”

  Jess thought about her mother at work, sure—in the classroom, teaching young kids—but it was always a means to an end. Family and children were always in sharp focus. Career was just a blurred backdrop.

  Cait and Jess had done most things together since becoming neighbours in 1987. Even though they went to separate schools—Cait to Catholic, Jess to Protestant—they were always woven together. Every day when they got off their busses, they’d spend time together, their yin-yang personalities and opposite blonde-black hair colours complimentary yet opposing.

  They’d gone together to get their grad dresses made, to the home of Tilley Brophy, a seamstress who lived by the Village Mall in a house with half-wood-paneled, half-carpeted walls in her cigarette-scented basement-slash-sewing room.

  Delicately slicing her index finger across the middle of her right thigh, like a knife etching a line in butter, Cait looked tauntingly at Tilley, “About here. Red silk.”

  Tilley snarled at Cait plucking her cigarette from her lips, releasing a poof of smoke that curled into the shape of an anchor. She jabbed the butt into a heavy crystal ashtray and coughed so hard that Cait thought her lungs might vault from her body and splat gooey into the fibers of the brown carpet on the wall.

  “You think your father’s letting you get away with a leg slit that high?” Tilley’s eyebrows were raised halfway up her forehead, her eyes as wide as loonie dollars.

  “I don’t really care if my father doesn’t like it.”

  “Everyone is doing slits this year,” Jess told Tilley, her voice as soft as fresh churned butter, advocating for her friend, so loyal, even though Cait hurt her feelings sometimes. As a child, she sometimes wondered if she loved Cait more than a friend. I love Cait, Cait loves me—she’d written it in her diary once.

  “I suppose you wants a slit, too?” Watching Jess, Tilley rose from her crouched position where she was measuring the length of Cait’s legs, solid as the base of an oil rig. She accidentally scratched Cait’s leg thigh with a hangnail.

  “Ow, watch it!”

  “Oh give it up, princess.” Tilley scowled.

  “Yes, but I’d like mine from the knee down.” Jess always, desperately, craved safety. She was going to the grad with her love, Matt Bohmer, who went to Cait’s school. Matt would go with her to her own grad as well, and the dress would do fine for both events. Star-crossed lovers, Jess’s grandmother would joke. Nan liked Matt, even though he was Catholic. “And for colour, I’m thinking a clean cream, like the colour of Dream Whip with a drop of vanilla extract. Satin back crepe.” Jess smiled, sweet and pure as Dream Whip. On Matt’s grad night, Jess planned on relinquishing her virginity into the celestial night sky. A knee-height slit would be a hint of what was to come, but not give away too much, too early. Jess chewed her bottom lip, observing Tilley taking measurements, praying the dress will be perfect. The night has to be perfect.

  Of course she wants clean cream, Cait thought, sizing herself up in the mirror. She ran her hands over her hips, ass, thighs, thinking about how the red silk would feel against her skin. How it would feel against her date’s hands. She knew the red would be a sexy contrast to her cool blonde hair. Aries. Feisty. Red as the devil. Cait’s date for the grad is Chad. California Chad, her Literature teacher called him. On the swim team. Guitar player. Sexy as hell. Not Cait’s boyfriend, no way, no thanks. She didn’t want to be tied down. She wanted to go away after high school, somewhere more exciting than St. John’s, Newfoundland. Some place with more opportunities than here. Somewhere that’s a hell of a lot sexier and more exotic and exciting. The land of rain and drizzle and fog, or RDF as the locals affectionately and hatefully call it. The land of economic depression, stuck on a
loop, decade after decade of bad decisions and utter bullshittery.

  “Angel and devil’s food cake, that’s the two of you.” Tilley shook her head, filed their measurements in her book. “I’ll need your material back by the end of next week if you wants these done in time. Earlier with the silk,” she glared at Cait, her head tilted to the side in scolding severity. “That’s going to be harder to work with.”

  “Well just because you didn’t have a graduation, Dad—and by the way, we call it a grad not a prom—doesn’t mean it’s something we can’t do. Get with the times, for Christ sakes.” Caitlyn can’t help herself.

  He holds her elbow with his meaty paw and leans towards her ear. “Don’t. You. Dare. Start with that sauce.”

  She whips her arm away from his grip and swallows her smirk. She thrives on getting under her father’s skin. His heavy-handedness, pushing religion on her, wanting her to be status quo, makes her resent him. He doesn’t respect her individuality, she thinks.

  Cait’s English teacher, Mrs. Morris, is across the room, sloshing back a glass of red wine. Short. Stout. Sweaty. Tonight she’s wearing jangly brass bracelets and purple lipstick. A royal-blue, silk blouse with a powder-blue paisley pattern swirled into the fabric. Tiny pearl buttons lined in gold. She directs a curt nod in Cait’s direction. Waddles towards her.

  “Looking lovely, my dear.” She tosses a mini pepperoni stick through a hula-hoop purple lipstick mouth and yaps through her chomping. “Now. Lovely that you’re all here celebrating tonight in this opulence and grace.” Holding the pepperoni, she dramatically traces a rainbow shape through the air, “But have you finished Random Passage yet? Quiz on Monday. Don’t forget.”

  “Yes, I finished it. I loved it.” Mrs. Morris is the crookedest woman Cait has ever met. She feels an appreciation and affection for her and her passion for books. The other day in class, Mrs. Morris had spotted Teddy Noseworthy falling asleep and she’d crept up beside him and blew in his ear and he leapt up so fast, scared shitless, a line of drool sticking to the desk, and Cait thought Mrs. Morris was wicked. Her lectures on Random Passage inspired Cait, and infused her with a sense of strength and a love for the past and an appreciation for Newfoundlanders while, at the same time, making her hate the place even more because of the hardships the people in the book had to endure. What a shitty existence they had, Cait thought the whole way through, but at the same time, she admired their gutsiness. Despite all the shit, they persevered.

  Cait accepts a glass of punch from the bartender. He’s quite cute. Some might say, “He’s a pack.” Clark Kent to Superman, when night smothers day.

  “Good.” A drop of red wine plops onto Mrs. Morris’s blouse, on the swoop of her bountiful breast as she shillyshallies away. “May the quiz gods be in your favour.”

  Jess and Matt Bohmer seem to float through the sliding doors. Jess’s hair is shiny and smooth and black under the lights. She straightened it, which is reserved for special occasions. Matt’s sandy tousled locks look fluffy and freshly Head & Shoulder-ed.

  “Looking foxy there, lady.” Cait hugs Jess as she and Matt approach the bar area.

  Chad sidles up and props his chin on Cait’s shoulder.

  “‘Sup?” Chad delivers the word like melting peanut butter spread on warm homemade bread. Slow, soft, gooey. The absurd intonation of a California surfer dude. Cait remembers how he whispered in her ear on their way in, “There’s a doobie for us outside.”

  From the ballroom, a big screen with a slideshow flickers with snapshots from the past three years.

  Photos of the various high-school tribes:

  The yearbook committee.

  The cheerleaders.

  The basketball team.

  The hockey team.

  The cool kids at the 24-hour Famine Sleepover, where Brian Conway and Maggie Rocket spent way too long together in a sleeping bag.

  The theatre kids in a colourful school-board improv festival, which they won, in their high-school musical, Guys and Dolls.

  The band kids playing at the Rotary Music Festival.

  The nerds in chess club.

  Stirrup pants.

  Palazzo pants.

  Baby crop-top tees.

  Denim vests.

  International flags climbing the crotches of the boys’ jeans.

  Lock-ups—actual locks—clutching the button of the girls’ jeans (Cait’s father had no problem buying her a pair of lock-ups that Christmas).

  Eight-ball leather jackets.

  Flags-of-the-world jackets.

  Suede jackets with a fringe.

  Desert boots.

  The last of the Gen-Xers, their faces alight from the flickering slides of the projector. Faces with every expectation and with no expectation.

  “Jessica.” Here comes Cait’s father again, like a housefly who won’t stop buzzing in her ear. This time he’s holding a small plate of Ritz crackers and cheddar-cheese squares, munching away, crumbs lodged in his salt-and-pepper moustache. He leans in towards Jess. “How does your mother feel about the education reform? She knows it’s an atrocity, right?” Munch munch munch, cracker crumbs bouncing onto his belly, rolling onto the floor, crunching into the carpet when he shifts his weight.

  The amalgamated and Catholic school boards are at silent and somewhat-civilized war. Caitlyn’s father is the principal at Catholic St. Theresa’s Elementary. Jessica’s mother is the librarian at Protestant Vanier Elementary. The government is proclaiming that there is no need for two school boards, there is no money for two school boards.

  Jess inches away from Cait’s dad, fearful a saliva-laden wad of chewed cheddar might thwack onto her satin back crepe. “Actually, I think it makes sense to Mom.” She hates talking to Cait’s dad. It’s not Jess’s graduation, but she wishes her mother was here, yet she’s thankful she’s not. She’s protective of her mother, but at the same time, admires her strength and grace. She knows her mother would meet his confrontation with collected ease. As they’ve aged, Jess has become more aware that her mother is more than a mother. She has a career, individuality, while always keeping family first, and Jess strives to be just like her.

  Cait’s dad whips his furious face towards the slideshow. He’s obsessed. He’s on a crusade. “Twenty-five years,” he has mouthed off to the media more than once. “Now our children will have to go to over-crowded schools, only to get a worse education. The church provides spirituality. There’s nothing more important in life. No expense is too much when it comes to education. Family, love, respect—it’s the core of society. A fundamental and cultural foundation is being altered.” Munch. “Mark my words: the future is futile.”

  Cait notices her father going on to Jess. She knows what he’s talking about, and she steps over to save her friend. “Dad. Assuming you’re talking about the education reform again. Two schools right next to each other, in some tiny community where the school has, like, twenty kids. Yeah. Makes a shitload of sense to me. Let’s continue to separate us by our religion for another 500 years, shall we? It is only 1997, after all.” Newfoundland is behind the curve when it comes to this matter. Antiquated. The kids at Cait’s school don’t see the big deal about separating the schools. Religion was more of a pressure from their parents that didn’t resonate, but that they felt guilty ignoring.

  “Heyyyyy.” Chad spreads onto the scene. “How are you this evening, Mr. Critch? Lookin’ pret-ty handsome there,” Chad nods towards Cait’s dad. Chad. Mr. California. So smug.

  “Hmmmph.” Her father sneers at Chad, sidles away, towards his wife.

  “Okay, hey, well we’ll see ya later, Mr. Critch! Great talking to you!” Chad’s eyes are glassy. He has already smoked part of the joint, Cait can tell. He lays his arm over Cait’s shoulder, mutters into her ear, “What an asshole.”

  A surprise lurch of protectiveness hoists itself within Cait’s gut. She’s the only one entitled to call the old curmudgeon an asshole. “Did you smoke that joint without me?” she hisses. She can smell
his Axe body spray wafting into the atmosphere, and now there’s a hint of marijuana whirled into the swirly cacophony of smells.

  “Just one puff, babe.” He places his index finger on the dimple on her chin. Kisses her lips. “Saving the rest for you.”

  A photo of Jess and Matt blinks onto the slideshow screen. They’re cuddled together in front of a campfire, Matt’s plaid quilted jacket over Jess’s shoulders. She felt so safe with him that night. So protected. His gentle energy was, and is, soothing to her. She wants to marry him.

  Cait remembers that night around the fire. At The River, they call it, where they used to go to hang out, drink beer, sing Tragically Hip songs around the campfire. Go part of the way or all of the way with each other in tents set up in the woods.

  “You have condoms for tonight, right?” Jess whispers in Cait’s ear.

  “Yes, Mom.” Cait’s own mother, her actual biological mother, not her best friend-mother, made sure she had a condom sewn into the lining of her purse.

  “Sex doesn’t equal love, Caitlyn. Remember that,” her actual, biological mom had said, with her hand on Cait’s shoulder, her eyes boring into her daughter’s, passive aggressively scolding that she not forget the purpose and philosophy behind the purchase of the lock-up jeans. Oops, thinks Cait. Too late for that.

  Cait had told Jess the first time would be painful.

  “Chad couldn’t even find the hole,” she told Jess, leading up to grad night. “Then, when he finally found it, he couldn’t get it in. He just kept jabbing and ramming it against me. But then when he finally got it in, it hurt a lot. It burned, and it, like, didn’t want to go in. But then it got more fun the second time.”

  Jess knows her first time won’t be like that, because she and Matt are in love. She watches Cait and Chad, him whispering in her ear, caressing her face, Cait’s hourglass figure and shapely bottom and soft skin pressed against Chad’s wacky Hawaiian patterned suit. She does look good in red. Something stirs within Jess. Resentment? She wonders why Cait doesn’t want something more than Chad. She deserves more.