by Mark Critch
Every pair of eyeballs was fixed on me, curious to see how long I’d last before I fell to my death. I tried to shoo them away; the teacher on duty would surely wonder what they were looking at. But it’s difficult to shoo with one hand on a thin ledge. My classmates thought I was trying to wave at them, and so began to wave back. This was even worse.
“What’s going on?” Mr. Dodd was in the classroom now, eyeing the children suspiciously. “Why are you crowd so quiet?” Intent on discovering why these students were behaving themselves, he’d failed to notice the kid on the ledge. Turning away, I focused on my goal. I pulled myself forward, resisting the temptation to look down. Then someone below called out to me.
“Hey!” he shouted. “What are doing out on the ledge?” I looked down to see one of the kids who went home for lunch running across the parking lot, his belly full of warm Alpha-Getti. I tried to wave him off, too, but like the other kids, that only encouraged him to wave back. I looked past him to the asphalt. Suddenly my world started to spin—the Earth was gently turning on its axis and I felt like a penny on a record. I ignored the boy and continued my walk, but now my feet felt like they were moving underwater. Maybe it was safer to knock on the glass.
I looked back into the classroom to see Mr. Dodd pacing between the rows, still oblivious to the biggest bust of his career. “All right,” he bellowed, “play it that way. I’m not leaving until you tell me why you’re all so well behaved. Something isn’t right.”
“Are you gonna kill yourself?” the kid below me shouted.
“No,” I thought to myself, “but if you don’t shut up I’m gonna kill you.” I grabbed the corner of the last window and pulled myself to (relative) safety. My nose pressed into red brick. I was invisible to anyone inside.
“I’m gonna go get a teacher to call the fire department,” the kid yelled up to me. “Don’t jump.”
“Frig off!” I yelled back, as quietly as possible. “I’m hiding from a teacher.”
“Oh,” he said. This answer seemed to satisfy him and he entered the school just as the bell rang. Great. Now I was trapped on a ledge and late for school. I stood gripping the exterior of the building like an acrophobic cat burglar weighing my options. I could turn back, bang on the glass, and live. That seemed preferable to my current situation, but I’d surely get the strap and probably a lifetime of detention. My only hope was to carry on and get someone in the next classroom to let me in before their teacher came back for first period. I overheard Mr. Dodd vow not to leave until he got to the bottom of things. Perfect! There wouldn’t be a teacher in the next classroom.
I continued my shuffle forward, alarming a seagull who took flight, which nearly caused me to add to the bird droppings below. I felt the now familiar sensation of fingers on glass as I reached the first of the windows that lined Mr. Noseworthy’s class. I peered in unnoticed as the kids milled about talking. Lunch was now over, but we were living in the sweet after-lunch-before-class limbo. For a moment I watched the crowd, feeling like the protagonist of the 1936 George Formby song “When I’m Cleaning Windows.”
Now I go cleanin’ windows to earn an honest bob
For a nosy parker it’s an interestin’ job
Now it’s a job that just suits me
A window cleaner you would be
If you can see what I can see
When I’m cleanin’ windows
Honeymoonin’ couples too
You should see them bill ’n coo
You’d be surprised at things they do
When I’m cleanin’ windows
Of course, none of them would know that song because they didn’t listen to 78s. My eyes settled on a pretty girl who was chatting with her seatmate. I’d seen her around the school but had never managed to talk with her or even catch her name. Now I noticed her mouth in a way I hadn’t noticed anyone’s mouth ever before. Her lips seemed to tie up into a perfect bow. I couldn’t hear her words but was content just to watch her lips part and softly join together again. I couldn’t tell if the queasy feeling in my stomach came from her or a fear of heights.
She looked up and caught my eye. I smiled, trying my best to give her a casual wave. She held my gaze and I mouthed the word “Hey” as if I were offering to buy her a cocktail from across a crowded bar. She screamed. The entire class looked to her, followed her eyes to me, and then they screamed, too. Puberty had induced me to forget for a moment that I was on a ledge peering into a strange classroom. I pounded on the glass and motioned for them to let me in, but this only made them recoil.
Then they started to call for the teacher on duty. “Sir! Sir!”
I shuffled back to my own classroom just as Mr. Dodd ran out of it. This time Gary came to the window and opened it barely long enough for me to slide back inside like an astronaut completing a space walk. Gary slammed the window shut and I hopped back into my seat seconds before Mr. Dodd reappeared in the doorway.
He headed straight for the window, shoving it open for the third time in fifteen minutes. “Did you see anyone out on that ledge?” he bellowed to the class, and every kid in the room shook their head as if that was the craziest question they’d ever heard. He strode back to the other classroom, assuming, as you would, that the kids had been playing a joke on him. I sometimes wonder if he was just happier believing that.
My agony on the ledge, coupled with my near-consumption of what adults at the time referred to as a “French safe,” seemed to make up for my time as a tattletale. I was welcomed back into the general population of St. Teresa’s students as an equal.
* * *
—
I feared some repercussion all afternoon, but soon forgot about the whole thing as our teacher bored us all with an explanation of how Canadians measure up. She was trying to explain the difference between Canadian and American units of measure. I’ve always found the topic confusing. Canadians went metric in the 70s, but here we are, a full Trudeau later, and we’re still having trouble losing the last few pounds, as it were.
When it comes to the weather, Canadians prefer Celsius, yet when we cook, we follow recipes in Fahrenheit. We drink both litres and quarts, unless it’s a beer, then it’s a pint. Ask a Canadian how tall he is and he’ll tell you in feet, not metres, but ask him how much he weighs and he’ll answer in pounds, not kilograms. Ask him how much land he owns and he’ll tell you in acres, not hectares, but ask him how far away it is and he’ll tell you in kilometres, not miles.
We’re the only country with two official languages and two units of measurement. And why? Because to be Canadian means to be eternally sitting on a fence—a fence that’s twelve metres long and six feet tall, apparently. To be Canadian means to be only two things: not a Brit and not an American. And so we’re stuck somewhere in between until our stubborn neighbour to the south does what the rest of the world did years ago and goes metric. Which will never happen.
Because if a Canadian tries to explain to an American that one millilitre of water occupies one cubic centimetre, weighs one gram, and requires one calorie of energy to heat up by one degree Celsius, which is one percent of the difference between its freezing point and its boiling point, the American will pause, contemplate, and then respond with “U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!”
We were in the middle of this confusing lesson when I was passed a note. It read “The girl you scared wants to go on a date: yes/no—circle one.” A date? Me? Well, I did now know what a condom was. Maybe this was the next natural step. It seems my display of forced bravado had impressed her and now she wanted to know more about the strange boy on the ledge. I circled “yes” and passed the note back. I had become a man.
That night after supper I lay on my bed, at once jubilant and terrified. What the hell would I do on a date? Where would we go? I assumed the mall. Perhaps we’d see a movie and split a bag of popcorn. Should I pay? How much allowance did I have? Would I need a condom? I might know what it was, but I did not yet know how it was used. I made a mental note to ask Fox for mor
e info.
The phone rang, and the usual flurry of excitement erupted. “Good God! Who’s calling the house at this hour?” Dad demanded to know. It was seven-thirty p.m.
My mom started to sound off like a car alarm. “MIKE! THE PHONE! MIKE! THEPHONE! THEPHONE! MIKE! THEPHONE!”
I’d assumed the call was for my older brother and so was shocked when Dad banged on my bedroom door. “There’s someone on the phone for you at this ungodly hour,” he announced. “Make it snappy, hey? I don’t want the line tied up in case someone calls with an emergency.” You’d think we shared the line with the fire department.
“MIKE! MIKE! WhoWasOnThePhone?” Mom shouted.
“Some girl for Mark,” he answered. A girl? What girl? Could it be? No. It must be a nun. The kid from the playground probably fingered me and now I was being expelled. This must be some kind of expulsion courtesy call to save me the bus ride back the next day. I approached the telephone table and looked down at the black receiver. The phone cord twisted and curled back in upon itself like a snake preparing to pounce.
“Hello?” I spoke into the receiver gingerly, not knowing who I’d hear on the other end of the line.
“Hi.” It was a young female voice, all right. Was it the girl with the perfect lips? It had to be. I waited for her to say something else, but nothing ever came.
“Hello,” I repeated.
“Hi” was her response. It didn’t seem conversation would be what kept us together. But that was okay. What we had went beyond words. It was a primal kind of connection. Who wanted to be talked to death anyway? I’d be happy if we never spoke again as long as I got to watch her perfect mouth, upper lip pressed against bottom lip, as she sat across from me in eternal Chaplinesque silence.
“I gotta go now,” she said. So soon? I guess there wasn’t much left to say. Not that I could say anything if I’d wanted to. My mother was about three feet away in the living room, straining her neck so far to the left that it looked like it would snap between the C1 and C2 vertebrae. My father was about a foot and a half to my right, so close that the blue rings of smoke from his cigarette stung my eyes and made them tear up slightly. I didn’t mind. My tears could only add to the poetry of the moment. I was in love.
“Okay,” I said. I carried the phone as far down the hall as I could without pulling it from the phone jack. Then I turned to the wall, nervously fidgeting with the kink in the cord, twisting it into tight little knots and then watching it unwind itself like a Slinky. Struggling to find the right romantic line, I finally blurted out my best attempt. “Good night.” I felt I’d said too much. I was acting as my own Cyrano and had found myself babbling like a brook.
“You’re my boyfriend now,” she told me. “Meet me at the swings at Bowring Park at four tomorrow. All right?”
“Yes. Yes, okay! Sure.” She’d spoken long enough for me to get a real sense of how her voice sounded. It wasn’t sing-songy or too emotional. It sounded like a prerecorded message you’d call to get the exact time. She had a matter-of-factness about her that was at once offputting and exhilarating.
“Bye,” she said, hanging up. I was left with the dial tone and a world of possibilities. I wondered what the future would bring. I wondered why she had chosen me. I wondered what her name was.
“Mark! WhoWasThatOnThePhone?” my mother asked.
“I don’t know,” I answered honestly.
* * *
—
The next day at school, the hands on the clock seemed to move slowly just to taunt me. When the bell finally rang I ran to my bus like it was the last lifeboat on the Titanic. Every song that played on the bus’s broken radio seemed to be about me. Madonna sang that she was “Crazy for You” and I knew what she meant. Mister Mister sang about their broken wings and, like them, I would never fly again. I wondered what Mrs. Mister had done to make Mister Mister so uncertain about their future. I hoped to God that my girlfriend, whatever her name was, wouldn’t do the same to me. U.S.A. for Africa sang that “We Are the World” and I felt guilty for having had such a big lunch.
When we finally made it to my house, I leapt from the bus and rushed up the long driveway to our humble bungalow. In our room I started to rifle through my brother’s drawers. By this time we’d been sharing a room for years. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, but I knew there must be something in there suitable for a date. I regretted throwing out the condom Fox had hidden in my sandwich. What if I needed one? And what did they do?
I shoved aside some cassette tapes, loose change, and a harmonica to find a tub of Dippity Do hair gel. My hair had always been frenetic at best. It wouldn’t grow long; it grew wide. If I tried to let it grow it would spread out at the sides, defying gravity like a frozen mushroom cloud that never collapsed. I’d never tried to tame it with a styling product before; I’d never even really thought about how it looked. I didn’t care. But there was something about this girl that had set in motion a series of chemical reactions that was making me care.
Lee Pearce was the handsomest guy in school, and he used gel to slick his hair into little wings on the sides of his head. The top of his hair went au naturel, parted in the middle in the Jack Tripper style. He wore black jeans instead of cords to school and got away with it, even though the rules clearly stated cords or dress pants. The teachers never said a word to him. He was handsome, and in grade school, as in every other place on earth, for the handsome there were no rules.
True to form, Lee had never been one for rules to begin with. Sometimes, during ten o’clock Mass on Sundays, a few of us would sneak out and take Lee’s uncle’s truck for a spin around the block. Lee’s uncle was an altar server who helped with the Communion and passed the basket when they shook down the congregation for change. He was God’s muscle. He was always too busy to notice what we kids were doing during the second half of the Mass, and so we’d wait until the appropriate time to sneak out the back door and into his truck.
This was pretty brazen for a group of twelve-year-olds, but it didn’t seem like such a big deal at the time. That is, until Lee was pulling out of the church parking lot and got sideswiped by a guy in a K-car. The truck spun around a couple of times as our lives flashed before us. In seconds, we relived day after repetitive day of nagging nuns and chip bags that were seventy percent air. Nobody was hurt, but we all wished we’d been killed. That would have been merciful compared to whatever Lee’s uncle would do when he came out to find his prize truck with a driver’s door that opened inward.
Luckily, on that Sunday morning the driver of the other car was still celebrating Saturday night and had more booze in him than the priest gave out for the whole congregation’s Communion. This guy had no qualms about helping Lee and the boys park his uncle’s truck back in the lot and then taking off, rather than explain to the cops why he had side-swiped a bunch of twelve-year-olds.
But now I’d guard against the dangers of the outside world with a protective helmet. I took the Dippity Do and did things that you Dippity Didn’t, putting enough gel in my hair to supply a dozen high school productions of Grease. When I looked in the mirror I could see my own reflection reflected back into the mirror in the dark sheen of my head. I didn’t look a thing like myself, and that was my goal. I thought I looked great. In hindsight, I looked more like the aftermath of the Exxon Valdez spill. There was a good chance that when I got to the park some well-meaning person would try to rescue an oil-soaked duck from my hair.
With my head shined, I now had to navigate my way to Bowring Park. This was about ten kilometres from my house and a twenty-minute drive, but there was no way I’d be asking Mom to take me. I’d rather drive with Lee. If I asked Mom for a ride I’d have to tell her where I was going, and this was a Top Secret mission. I walked the two miles to the Avalon Mall as fast as my chubby legs could carry me. (In our heads, we never measured distances in kilometres. My brother and I loved music, and musicians used miles. The Who could see for miles and miles. The Proclai
mers could walk five hundred miles to your door. The Byrds were Eight Miles High. There were no songs about kilometres.) Cars and transport trucks whipped past me as I trod along to find true love like a penguin marching to the South Pole. The wind whipped up by the speeding cars could shake neither my determination nor my slicked-down hair. I arrived at the mall just in time to miss the bus to the other mall where I could transfer to a Route 2—the carriage that would bring me to my princess. But now it would be almost four-thirty before I’d even get on my first bus. I was going to be late.
At the time, the Metrobus system in St. John’s was populated with lots of great characters. Old ladies in plastic rain hats were perpetual pilgrims. They travelled from shop to shop, hospital to funeral home, making their rounds like doctors with degrees in gossip. They always sat in the middle. Tough guys, and couples who rode for the sole purpose of having a place to make out that was cheaper than a hotel room, rode in the back. The front seats were the domain of the professional bus riders. These guys spent their days as unpaid porters, dazzling the passengers who sat nearby with their Rain Man–level route knowledge.
“Where you going? Bowring Park? From here? Oh my, oh my. Oh no. Got to get the four-fifteen Route 6, but the four-twenty-five Route 2 is faster if you transfer onto the five-ten Route 10. You could get the four-forty Route 8, but then you’d have to transfer onto the Route 2 at Parade Street and the driver has to wait to meet up with Route 9 cuz she’s running ten minutes behind and the drivers have to switch. Shifts, see? You got to get the four-twenty-five Route 2 and transfer. It’s the only way. Don’t miss it, though. The next one’s a half-hour wait.”