by Heidi Wicks
“And so…what have you been reading?”
“Oh, Jane Austin, Joan Didion, Toni Morrison—mostly stuff about women moving through the pain of heartbreak, and then feeling powerful. Because people do—they become reborn after they have their heart broken. Sounds cheesy and cliché, but it’s like a butterfly emerging from a cocoon. It’s a metamorphosis. The cracks are where the light gets in, doesn’t Leonard Cohen say?”
“Indeed he does. So from literature to music to film—can you tell our listeners what got you interested in making films?”
“I always loved going to movies with my dad when I was little. E.T. was the first movie I saw in the theatre, and I just thought it was so…,” her eyes squint and she makes hand gestures, her large stone rings whirling colour into the air as she tries to summon words that are poetic enough to describe what she’s feeling, “ethereal yet real, grounded yet free, and it made me feel so inspired and in another world, yet it was reaffirming my place in this world…of course I didn’t think in those terms as a child, but obviously it really resonated, and I was just hooked. I wanted to make things that sounded as magical to others and made people feel like E.T. made me feel.”
“Wow, that’s gorgeous. E.T. was the first movie I saw in theatres too, and yeah, I think for people our age it was definitely a staple. So what other movies did you love as a younger person?”
“I loved The Goonies when I got a bit older, just the adventure, the early exploration of love with little Mikey having a crush on his older brother’s girlfriend, the friendship and kinship between the kids in the neighbourhood—community is big with me.”
“That was so fabulous, I loved The Goonies, too. I had a thing for that older brother. I also felt Martha Plimpton was kind of my kindred spirit.”
“Yes, I can see that—you and Martha have a similar sort of sass and attitude, for sure. And you know, I also loved Tootsie—that Dustin Hoffman movie where he’s an actor but he can’t get any roles, so he starts dressing up like a woman and auditioning for women’s roles. So ahead of its time.”
“Feminist, for sure. I haven’t seen that one actually, but I will now. Speaking of kindred spirits—was Anne of Green Gables an influence at all? I loved that Kevin Sullivan series as a child.” As a child, Cait wished she had red hair and green eyes. Just like Anne.
“Yes! Anne with an E. My god, who doesn’t love that series?”
“When she floated down the river reciting ‘The Lady of Shalott’?”
“Oh my goodness. Anne was and is my spirit guide. Her angst, her romance, her grit—she’s a role model.”
Cait feels like Melody could be her spirit animal. “So, do you have your next project in mind?”
“I do actually! Thank you for asking. I’m finishing a script about a guy who has just broken up with his girlfriend, and he has moved into a new apartment. He starts noticing the music that’s coming from the next apartment. He really gels with it, he’s a huge music lover, and he starts to get intrigued by who could be living on the other side of that wall, and the two people start to communicate with each other by responding to the songs they’re each playing.”
“How excellent!”
“And we don’t see who’s behind the other wall for a while. Maybe not even for the whole film, I haven’t quite decided yet. Of course, people are going to think it’s the girl of his dreams, and it could be! Go see the movie when it’s out.”
“Nice plug there, Melody. And your current film, Sheet Say, will be screening at the St. John’s International Women’s Film Festival later this week, correct?”
“For sure—I’m so lucky to be included in that festival. It’s such an amazing event and brings filmmakers here from around the world, and my little film is screening on Thursday night as a part of the local shorts.”
“Thank you so much, Melody, for joining me on my very first episode. I know we’re going to hear lots more about you in the coming years.”
“And thank you, Caitlyn, it was awesome to be here.”
Once off-air, Cait stands and motions Melody to the door to walk her out.
Melody stands, her bangle bracelets jangle, her tie-dyed pants move from side-to-side with her hips, and she straightens her hemp choker necklace. “That was so excellent, thanks so much, Cait, you’re cool,” she extends her hand, bangles jangling, and shakes Cait’s hand.
“You too, and thanks so much.” As they walk down the hallway, Melody picks up the campus paper, which has a close-up photo of David Usher, who’s playing at the Thompson Student Centre that Friday, making duck lips and sexy eyes. “Going to this on Friday?” she asks Cait.
“Oh yes. I’m not a big Moist fan, but I’m sure it’ll be a decent time.”
“Cool. Maybe I’ll see ya there. Thanks again, Cait,” Melody leans in to hug Cait.
“For sure.”
Later that evening, Cait and Jess are priming up in Jess’s bedroom.
Jess has her trademark Boone’s Strawberry Wine cracked open, sipping it as she does her eye makeup.
“I can’t believe you drink that shit,” Cait sips her beer.
“I can’t believe you drink that shit.” Jess sneers at Cait’s Dominion Ale. “That’s an old man’s beer.”
“And that’s a little girl’s drink.”
“What’s with your hair tonight?”
Cait has a braid set around her head and base of her skull. “Just trying something different.”
“You look like a hippie.”
“Uhh…thanks?”
“It suits you.”
“Well, thanks. I think.” Since she started university, she has felt herself start to form an identity beyond anger and rebellion. An increasing interest in sociology and English and filmmaking has made her feel softer. Deeper. She has developed a fascination with anything hippie counter-culture, warts and all, and devours artists like The Beatles, Tom Wolfe, Jack Kerouac and the beat poets. She wishes she was alive in the ‘60s, and gravitates towards anyone with similar interests.
“So I heard your show today! It was wicked! Are you excited?” Jess finishes off the eye shadow. Midnight blue. Her crowd of education students are much more yuppie than Cait’s hippie arts peers. The divergence worries her.
“Thanks! Relieved it’s done. The guest was excellent, she made it so easy and comfortable.”
“As long as she’s not cooler than me.” Jess winked at Cait from the mirror.
Cait hates Jess’s insecurity sometimes. She knows Jess meant the remark as a joke, but Cait knows she’s serious, and the juvenile digs drive her crazy.
At the TSC, Cait orders a $2 beer on tap. From down the crescent moon shaped bar, she spies Melody, chatting, making hand flares and dramatic sweeps of her hands, talking to a group of guys. Her eyes are half closed. She’s blissed out.
“Jess,” Cait taps Jess’s arm, “Melody is just down there, I’m gonna go say hi.”
Cait feels Jess’s body stiffen, and she ignores it. Weaves through the bodies and finds Melody. Once Melody sees her, she stops mid-conversation, holding a finger up to the person she’s talking to, and makes her way over to give Cait a generous, long, swaying hug. “Heyyyyy! Amazing to see you!” She’s wearing a silk cami, frayed jeans, and platform sandals with cork heels.
“You too!” Cait smells weed.
“Hey—you wanna…?” Melody holds her fingers up like she’s holding a joint.
Cait hesitates, looks towards Jess, who has found someone else to talk to. “Sure!” She keeps looking towards Jess, to let her know she’s ducking out, but Jess is chatting to another education student.
Once they’re outside, cradled by the crowded entrance to the TSC, Melody produces a joint and a light. Her dainty features glow fleetingly orange with the click click of the lighter. “So,” click click, it won’t light, “I’m wondering,” click click, illumination, “are you interested in being an AD on my second film? When the time comes?”
Cait is shocked. “Wow.” She plucks the joi
nt from Melody’s hand, “I mean, what would even make you ask me? I have zero background in this stuff.”
“I know,” Melody plucks it back from Cait’s fingers, “but I remember you in a film-studies class last winter semester, and you asked some really great questions, and so I thought maybe you’d be interested in trying something new on for size.” She winks at Cait, with her unbearably cool cat-eye eyeliner and glitter in the corners of her eyes.
“Well…sure! Why the fuck not?” Already, she feels blitzed. It doesn’t take her much to get stoned. A couple of hoots.
“There’s something effervescent about you, Cait. I can tell these things.” Melody points her index finger at Cait, coy, teasingly, and Cait bursts at the spritzy compliment.
“I feel the same about you, Melody Angel.” The girls hug, sideways, and when they snuff the joint to go back inside, Jess is standing at the doorway.
“Oh! Hey!” Cait wasn’t expecting to see her there. “Jess, this is Melody! Melody, this is Jess!”
Melody’s eyes are wide as she regards Jess, and Jess is not a fan. Immediately, she feels that Melody is judging her. “Hey. I heard you on Cait’s show earlier,” she forces a smile, “you were great. Your film sounds sexy.”
“Somewhat, I suppose. It’s sexy, I guess, but also kind of gross in a way.”
“It’s about processing stupid stuff you do when you’re drinking,” Cait tells Jess.
“Yeah, I heard the interview.” Jess looks back towards the door.
“Okay, I think we should head back in, ladies, let’s go.” Cait ushers the three of them back inside.
David Usher is onstage, his trademark black t-shirt as if it is painted onto his sleek, sculpted torso. He writhes and ooos and ahhhs and swivels his pelvis in the faces of the vastly undergrad crowd. The gym floor is sticky with spilled beer, the crowd moves together, stuck together, swaying back and forth, all of them globbed together in one pulsing, vibrating ball of next-day anxieties. Cait stands between Jess and Melody.
el camino
2016
Agastronomic cavalcade of cucumber mint cocktails, tuna tacos and a brash brigade of people, just happy that it’s June and summer is coming. There may be no other city on earth as obsessed with the weather as St. John’s. People visit Newfoundland from near and far, and are always fascinated that people talk about the weather so much. Starved for sunlight for ninety percent of the calendar year, the cusp of summer is always a time of hope and optimism and forgetting the toil of the rest of the year.
Adelaide Oyster House is part of the new, hip St. John’s. The host has a long, brown, pointy, gnome-y beard that shines with the devoted practice of applying beard wax. His plaid shirt hangs from his waif-y frame and black horn-rimmed glasses rest on his adorable twenty-something nose.
“Guys, it’s gonna be about a thirty-minute wait, how’s that sit with you?” His fingers are splayed, paused in front of him, like he’s about to start playing bongos, and his face freezes with expectant raised eyebrows.
Jess and Dan look at each other. “We could pop across the street to Blue for a drink first?” Dan has a spring in his step, he’s just so happy to be alive, and to be in this place, at this time, with this person.
“Sure,” shrugs Jess, her soul dirty with self-loathing.
The sweet host gives a thumbs up. “I’ll give you guys a call when your table’s free?” He holds one hand to his ear like it’s a phone, with just the pinky and index fingers up. “All good?” He flips both hands into thumbs up and looks hopefully between Jess and Dan. She can’t say no. She’ll come off like a supremely uncool old mom. So she turns the frown upside down and returns gnome-beard boy’s thumbs up. “Cool.”
“Sure!” Dan scans the place, a cozy party pit, as they turn to head outside. “I feel like I’m in Montreal when I’m in this place.” The walls and floors are barn wood, the walls glow purple with accent lighting—just what you’d expect to find in a hipster gastro establishment.
“It’s a fun vibe for sure.” Her chest hurts. The Sugarloaf memory stings. “Loud though.”
“I just love the small-plates concept. It’s just a more social dining experience. And their craft beer selection is deadly.” Dan links his arm into hers as they step onto the sidewalk and cross the street to Blue. Cozies into her. Dan adores Jess.
Her dad is home with the boys. Insisted they go out. “Marriage needs just as much care as kids do.” He’d been severe, scolding even.
“I don’t know, Dad. I appreciate the gesture but we need to watch money.”
“I’ll pay for it. Cab, booze, food, I’ll pay for it all.”
“No way. You’ve been so down since Mom—”
“Give it up, you’re going.” He looked at her wide-eyed. “This will help me, spending time with the boys.”
“But Dan—I don’t know if he’ll want to go—”
“I’d love to go!” Dan hopped down the steps, grin wide and goofy and that was it. Decision made.
At Blue on Water, they slide onto high bar stools around a two-person, pub-height table in the corner, right next to the glass garage door that opens up in the summertime. It’s too cold out for that yet, but the sky outside is melting into dusky blue, soon-to-be black, and there’s still some pink. They can pretend it’s summer.
A sprightly waitress drops two glasses of water on the table. She’s teensy and wears a lot of eye makeup—dramatic midnight blue swoops on the lids. Thick, black, cat-eye liner. “Hey guys!” She’s almost as chipper as Dan. “What can I get you today?”
“What’s on tap?” Dan folds his hands, propped on the table.
“We’ve…got…Shock Top, Guinness, Kilkenny, Stella, Rickard’s White—”
“Say no more,” he hoists a finger in the air, “I’ll have Shock Top.”
“I will too.” Jess Mona Lisa smiles at the girl.
“Did you guys want a food menu?”
“I think we’re good for now, thanks.”
“No prob! I’ll be back with your beers.”
Dan breathes in, satisfied, fulfilled, just happy to be where he is in this particular moment. “Isn’t St. John’s great?”
“Sometimes, yep.”
“On a nice day, it’s the greatest place on Earth. Everyone knows everyone, everyone’s nice on a sunny day…”
“Yes, we’re close-knit here, that’s for sure.” She feels like she’s sea sick.
The waitress drops their beers on the table. “Enjoy, you guys.”
Dan sips his with his eyes pleasantly closed. Opens them to observe the pleasing yellow-orange colour of the beer. “Remember when there were, like, no restaurants in St. John’s?” He’s as tickled pink as the sky to be having a night out.
“Yup. There was that Greek place that opened where the Masonic Temple is…I remember that being a pretty big deal.”
“And The Casbah…that was a pretty big deal.”
“That was the first place to be a restaurant AND a bar.”
Dan splays his fingers out behind his head as if his mind is blown. “That concept went away for a while…well there was The Vault.”
“That was too fancy for me. I never went there. It turned into a bar at a certain hour though.”
Dan’s phone rings to the tune of “Return of the Mack,” because he loves Apple products. “I bet that’s our table.” He dinks his index finger at the green answer button. “Hello!” He waits. “Yep, we sure do! Ok, we’ll be right over.” He dinks his finger at the red hang-up button. Nods at Jess and her glass. “Time to chug-a-lug, sister.” He picks up his own glass, “I’ll race you.”
They both chug the remaining suds, just like they did in university. The carbonation stings up through her nostrils and zaps her throat and esophagus and every vein and tendon around her collar bones. She slams the glass on the table and swallows. Hard.
Dan finishes just after she does. “Damn, girl! I’m impressed.” He tosses a twenty-dollar bill on the table and tries to make eye contact
with the server. He waves at her and points at the table, and she scurries over to collect the bill. “Thanks, you guys—have a great night!”
Dan looks both ways before they cross the street back over to Adelaide. “Even though I love all the new places, I still love all the ones that have been around for ages and ages.”
“What, like The Ship and The Duke?”
“I love those places. The Duke, especially.”
Inside Adelaide, it’s brash and ballsy and sizzling with frying pans and clanging with pots and a cowbell that sounds every time someone buys a round for the kitchen. A throbbing bass beat pulses the atmosphere. Twenty and thirty-somethings yak excitedly at each other, snap Instagram pics of their Port Rexton beers next to a candle.
“Over here, you guys!” It’s young gnome beard. Their best bud. He leads them to a table along the purple-lit wall. “Someone’ll be right with ya, ok?” He hands them menus and folds his hands, namaste. Gives a karate-style half-bow before bopping back to the front door.
Jess gawks and squints at the oyster menu, scrawled on a chalkboard behind the bar. “Oyster virgin. I know nothing about oysters.”
“Omigod, oysters are so amazing. Aphrodisiacs.” He winks at her.
“Okay, well you decide then.”
“So you’ll try them?” His eyes light up.
Thinking of the slimy texture, like one of Liam’s biggest boogers, makes her wretch. But Dan is a good man. “Yes. I’ll try an oyster.”
“You don’t have to.”
“You love them though.”
“I DO love them! It’s like a shock of freshness when you eat an oyster. You wake up. Oysters bewitch the mind!”
“Ok ok ok ok, just order them before I change my mind.” She scans the cocktail menu and decides tonight is not the night to scrimp.
A girl with a tight black Nirvana t-shirt, nose ring, acid-washed jeans and short, spiky purple hair appears at their table. Pours each of them a glass of cucumber water and leaves the carafe on the table. “Can I get you guys some drinks?”