“Gavin … necessary … you have …”
MONEY? NO WORRY ME.
“I’m sorry, you know … dump this … you I need …” Marla hangs her head and he lifts her chin with one finger, kisses her cheek. Gavin is needed here, much more than he expected. He feels a rush of opportunity, a moment for pride: he can help Marla, his only real family, and he’ll see more of Dani. He must call work tomorrow. STAY AWHILE.
She hugs him tight. “Come … celebrate with me.”
He points to the bathroom to indicate he’ll be with her in a minute. The bathroom door lacks a knob and hinges. He leans it against the frame but he can still see the living room: Dani on the couch, the TV. He sits on the toilet and can still see her, so Gavin pulls a red bathrobe off the armchair (Marla’s house!), and hangs it over the corner of the door. It almost covers everything.
He gives himself a pep talk in the mirror, signing, you can do this. Gavin pees looking over his shoulder. No one comes in.
Marla’s waiting in the kitchen eating cookies. Dani puts them in her mouth whole while Marla offers the box to him. NO THANKS, he writes. He sits on patio furniture, staring at his legs through the slats in the plastic tabletop before he realizes Marla’s talking to him.
“… not hungry? … used to … your …”
DON’T EAT SUGAR NOW.
Dani reads lots of the last page over Gavin’s shoulder as he writes, saying something to Marla. “… gorgeous …” Gavin reviews the whole page just in case: baby, money, car. She would know that, right? He flips over a new sheet anyway.
Dani taps him on the arm. “Why don’t you eat sugar?”
MAKES FREAK OUT.
She licks her fingers. “I’d love to see that.”
NOT. HEART RACE, OVERWHELMED.
“Honey, that’s anxiety. Not sugar.” Dani cracks a beer.
Gavin shrugs, not wanting to get into rules and research. Marla offers him a beer, but he declines.
He points to himself. GLUTEN FREE. Marla shoves the bottle back in the fridge.
“… how … not starve?” Dani looks like she wants to laugh but feels it might be rude.
Gavin raises an eyebrow. EAT UNLIMITED RHUBARB.
Dani laughs so hard beer sprays out of her nose, which makes Marla stamp her feet under the table. For a heartbeat, Gavin wonders why he’s wasted so much time if it’s this easy. Then Dani leans forward and grins, her nostrils flaring. “What are you really here for?”
She’s figured him out, knows he’s a fake. Gavin nods at Marla, but Dani shakes her head. She holds his eyes steady, reaching for his hands from across the table, anchoring him with her touch, waiting patiently. Gavin sees in her the desire to understand that so few people have, and he tells her the truth. WANT FIND MY MOM.
“… you …” Marla’s frowning at him, looking disappointed. “… how she is.”
Gavin used to pretend all his friends at deaf school were just like him until their moms and dads arrived on weekends to pick them up. The day program kids had parents too, ones that took signing classes while Gavin stared at a computer screen doing speech drills: dee da deh do du tee ta teh to tu bee ba beh bo bu pee pa peh po pu. SOMETHING NEED DO.
Marla rolls her eyes, about to say more, but Dani cuts her off. “No, I totally get that. I know exactly what you mean.”
“… your funeral,” Marla says.
Gavin squeezes Dani’s hands, feeling both awakened and undone. He watches her fingers as she shuffles cards, deals. The way her hands move is precise but elegant, like a magician. Gavin is suddenly sure she can dance, capture a room with only movement. She glances at him, smiles, shows her teeth.
They play Hearts. Dani gets the queen of spades four times and hurls it at the table. Shooting for the moon.
Before he goes to sleep in Marla’s spare room, Gavin opens the scrapbook his sister made him years ago. It’s full of pictures she cut out of newspapers and magazines she took from the dumpster behind Safeway. Pictures of clothes: hats, socks, and a cowboy costume. Spaghetti, cereal, raspberries, bread. Bath toys, toilet paper, a swing set. It was a dictionary he pointed to every day, before they made up their own signs. All the things he couldn’t say. He puts it on his nightstand.
Marla always listened.
Marla gets up early and opens the door to Gavin’s room a crack, excited at how easy everything feels now that he’s here. She wishes she’d invited him sooner because he’s clearly missed her loads. He’s asleep, a hairy foot outside the blankets. Marla should leave, walk out before he wakes up, but she doesn’t.
The few pictures he’s sent haven’t done him justice: first, he’s huge, and his face has broadened since she saw him years ago, with a wide, low-slung mouth. His loose hair is long, past his shoulders. She can see glimpses of his six-pack in the mashed-up blankets, the way his waist tapers below his ribs. Gavin’s body is that of a track star, she thinks, all muscles and precision power. He has giant quads.
She opens the door further to find Dani reading the scrapbook Marla made Gavin when he was a little boy. The spine is duct-taped, and the pages are falling out. She hisses at Dani. “Are you snooping? Get out!”
Dani thinks about it. She speaks in her regular voice. “Nope. I got here first.”
Marla giggles. “We shouldn’t be here.”
Dani shrugs and points at Gavin. He sleeps with his mouth slightly open.
So, Marla looks around. Gavin’s clothes are folded at the foot of his bed like he’s in the army or something. Discount jeans that aren’t terribly flattering and an oversized plain T-shirt. Marla digs in his bag to see what else he brought: notepads, running clothes, more silly jeans, and super tight underwear. And a fabric-covered book with “A Handbook for Beautiful People” on the cover in someone else’s writing. She opens it and reads: “Today bohemian waxwings at park. Bobbing plump bodies, peck rotten apple on snow. Yellow tail feathers, black curve around eyes—terribly fem, old women with fur coats. Noticed me—jerked heads. One open beak for sing.
Want hear my voice. Practise mirror, mouth open, sounds fall, splash in sink. No one hear.”
Gavin farts in his sleep and wakes himself. Marla drops the handbook, but he has seen her reading it.
He rises, alarmed, holding the blanket around his bare torso with one hand. On his notepad, he writes, SOMETHING WRONG? I LATE?
Marla scrambles to give Gavin his handbook. “Sorry, I didn’t realize it was your journal.”
He holds it to his chest and combs his hair with his fingers, his eyes darting to Dani. WHAT U THINK IT BE?
Marla didn’t want to make him embarrassed. She hates herself, but just a bit, because she refuses to think she’s like all those other people who have taken advantage of his disability. How else will she ever know if there’s stuff he’s not telling her? She wants to apologize, but Dani interrupts.
“Let me see that.” Dani slips the handbook out of Gavin’s fingers and skims a few pages. The softness in Dani’s voice is unexpected. That’s the voice she reserves for Marla.
Gavin shifts his weight from one foot to the other, glancing down at his plaid pyjama pants. NOT ALL DARK, he writes.
Dani nods. “I really like the idea. Romantic.” She’s over-enunciating her words, making these huge mouth shapes.
“Dani, he’s not stupid, he’s just deaf,” Marla says, but Dani ignores her. She’s pressing her hand over a page of writing, drawing an outline, watching Gavin’s face.
Marla grabs the handbook away from Dani and points to the cover. “This isn’t your writing,” Marla says, not sure when Dani and Gavin became so close.
FOUND IT BUS.
“What is it?”
Gavin smiles. WAITED WEEK TO OPEN. PUT POSTERS: FOUND, HANDBOOK. NO RESPONSE.
“And?”
He shrugs. EMPTY.
Marla flips through. “Re
ally? Even with that title?” The covers are worn and soft. Someone must have carried it for a long time. All that time without writing anything.
I USE NOW.
“What do you write?” Dani asks.
MY LIFE. USE AS ALMANAC. HOW TO CHANGE WHEN MOST RELATABLE TO SEASON.
“Wow,” Marla says, trying not to be sarcastic, because he is her brother even though he uses words like almanac. “How does it work?”
OBSERVE NATURAL. RELATE TO SELF. TRY BE BETTER, MORE IN HARMONY.
“You’re sensitive, hey?” Dani doesn’t laugh, which Marla can’t quite figure out.
YEAH. Gavin hesitates. YOU CAN USE IT TOO, IF YOU WANT.
Marla imagines Dani crushing pills on it, or using it as a pizza plate while she digs for the remote. Dani and Gavin are staring at each other, and Marla feels weird about it. He’s Marla’s little brother, a boy she has always looked after, not some man with hairy legs and huge farts.
She waves her hand in front of her brother’s face, a plan materializing as she speaks. “Get dressed. We have all day before you get to meet Liam for Christmas dinner. We’re going out.”
“Come back after so we can party.” Dani smiles at Gavin. “You too. It’s my birthday tomorrow.”
ON XMAS?
“Yep. Just like J.C.”
Marla pushes Dani out the door so Gavin can get dressed, but not before she catches them sharing something she didn’t know either was capable of unless it was about her. A feeling, she thinks: a big one.
Marla and Gavin each buy a day pass so they can spend the day on a C-train tour of the city. Gavin tries to memorize everything, the way snow is ground into the concrete of the train platforms, how many grocery stores are on the train line, the university with its confident buildings and trails of footprints in the snow, mentally drawing maps so he can make rules and running routes. He’s going to need to fill his time here, be productive, and keep busy. Marla shows him the tunnels where the suicides crouch and the backs of supermarkets and furniture stores, the cranes parked everywhere. The river rushes over plates of ice that shift and overlap at the edges, blue and bitter. Downtown is a procession of empty buildings with the lights on, reflections in glass. Homeless kids pass the time in front of the pregnancy care centre, doing drugs. Then the Stampede grounds, naked parking lots and blowing snow, dissolving into miles of residential neighbourhoods: endless sound walls protecting endless communities. Chinook. Anderton. Fish Creek. Half-finished construction resolute throughout.
People crush on with their bags, and the heaters work full blast. The train smells like wet wool. Women glance around as if seeking affirmation, texting and dialling, older men sit with their eyes closed. Here, people are obvious, self-involved: head up, strutting, or head down. More American, as if this city is tied more to Houston by pipeline than the rest of this country. He studies his sister, who is calm like she’s outside of the economic machine grinding night and day in this place. Her clothes don’t even draw attention to her. Marla draws on the frosty windows with her fingertips, smushed beside him like they’ve never been apart.
Later, she falls asleep on his shoulder, and his phone buzzes. It’s Dani. He doesn’t know how she got his number.
Liked your book. Look forward to seeing more of you tonight.
Gavin wants to do some wandering, so Marla drops him off downtown with a map she drew on a napkin before she heads to Liam’s. She made lots of labels, and it’s not like he’s never been in a city. He’ll probably be fine.
When Marla arrives, Liam is practising, music spread over the floor as if everything Marla said worked a hundred percent. She’s really on a roll, so she pre-warns him about Gavin in case he needs to mentally prepare. “You know how my brother’s here now? I invited him to dinner if that’s okay.” Marla stands on tiptoe to kiss Liam hello.
“You say that like I would tell you not to.” He steps around her to lean his cello back onto its stand. “Marla, may I take your coat?”
“Okay.” He manipulates it onto a hanger, folding the sleeves over so they don’t stick out like a dead person’s arms, all akimbo and uncivilized in the closet. Marla steps out of her shoes, and he fits them together like two halves of a broken toy before he slips them into the right-sized shoe cubby.
She doesn’t say anything about his crotchety obsessions and how old they make him look. They’re all going to have a crazy madhouse time celebrating anyway as soon as she makes her announcement. “Merry Christmas, you.”
“Ditto. Come into the bedroom,” Liam says, but she knows he doesn’t mean sex.
He irons his clothes in silence, tucking the iron into folds and corners and sweeping it out and across his pants like it is a weight he must lift with perfect form. “I’m going to do the audition,” he says, but like he’s talking himself into it. “The fish oil’s really helping.”
She clears her throat, feeling like she’s interrupting something private. “That’s great!” She watches how his body moves, listening to the clock tick. “I like to iron them flat, with the creases on the seams.”
He pauses, the iron steaming in midair. “The things you love. They always surprise me.” Liam squeezes past her to hang his pants on the top of the door, then again to lay his shirt on the ironing board.
Marla hops out of the way, perching like a bird. “Listen, Gavin’s not like me,” she announces, thinking she’s definitely put him off balance by adding her brother to dinner.
Liam looks up. “Tell me about him.”
Okay then. “Well, he can’t hear. And lately he doesn’t talk either.”
“Really,” Liam says. Marla can’t tell if he’s being serious or hilarious. “Does he sign?”
“Yes, but I only know made-up signs, so he writes to talk. I think he feels signing makes him look too deaf.”
“Ah.” Liam thinks about this, stands the iron up. She sees Liam’s jawline relax a bit. “Must have been hard having him away at school. Lonely.”
Marla wants to say that everything is so easy for Gavin, and she’s not sure how to talk to him now that everyone likes him and he can take buses by himself. But that’s off-topic. “I haven’t told him this, but it’s actually good he went to school. I understood him before, but not many other people tried that hard.”
Liam raises his eyebrows as he flips his shirt. That’s good. Marla wants him to like Gavin.
She sidles up to Liam and puts her hands around his waist, but he doesn’t stop ironing.
“Marla, not now.” He finishes his shirt and turns off the iron. He collapses the ironing board with one hand, then unbuttons his shirt to change.
“We have time.” She pulls at his sleeves, and the shirt drops to the floor.
“I need to pick up my dry cleaning.”
“Do it tomorrow,” she suggests, running a finger along his forearm, sucking it in a bit in case he reaches for her.
“I have to get ready.”
“You look ready to me.” Marla hushes him with her mouth, something he didn’t see coming.
He doesn’t kiss her at first, his lips hesitating. “I’ll have to drop you off to meet Gavin in fifteen minutes.”
“You don’t have to be worried. Or jealous,” she tells him. He confirms the accuracy of this statement, holding her chin in his hand, keeping her perfectly still. Then he relents, his body yielding and yet in charge, swallowing her, baby and all.
5. LEMON
GAVIN GETS OFF at the wrong stop and has to run along the icy river pathway to meet Marla at the Chinese restaurant. The skyscrapers shine black under the soft tones of Christmas lights, sturdy and tall like they’ve always belonged here. At ground level, downtown is mostly dead, except for prostitutes who puff cigarettes in the cold. They don’t wear gloves.
Gavin’s late, but he knows he’s getting close when he sees the bridge with the lions on it. Marla is getting out
of a car, waving. He checks to make sure he didn’t get his pants salty, and, when he looks up, the car has pulled away.
“Gavin, hey,” Marla says. “Don’t … baby tonight … haven’t told …”
It’s been two weeks since she told Gavin, and Dani definitely knows. Marla should have told Liam by now. Gavin’s eyes spell concern, surprise.
She shakes her head, flipping hair off her face. “… wasn’t the right … he … job …”
Write: TONIGHT, YES?
“Yeah … Christmas present …”
WHERE HE?
Marla’s face very serious. “Picking … dry cleaning … meet us there.”
The Bow River is soft and dark, blanketed in ice: nothing like the roaring animal of daytime. Behind it there seems to be nothing at all, just night and wind. Maybe a hill or a park, he thinks. An island. They cross the street into Chinatown, which is electric red with a gold fringe. Even these businesses are mostly closed—just a few restaurants open on the corners. Gavin pictures Liam: nervous, kind of poor, anemic, perhaps.
“… going to … super.” Marla has a lot of colour in her cheeks. “Unless … don’t think …”
Gavin shrugs. Does Liam need special handling? No one meeting Gavin would be nervous. Unless they’re crazy.
The restaurant is real Chinese, with ducks hanging in the window and that fried dough smell. Gavin scans for a pasty musician while Marla asks the waitress. He’s not here.
They sit by the window. Gavin watches flashy Chinese TV, but is trying not to. It’s the movement that gets him, and the streamers blowing back and forth on the ceiling. Concentrate. He pours tea for two, keeping his elbows in to let the waitress by. Marla holds her teacup, warming her hands.
Write: YOU LOVE HIM? Watch her face. The answer is yes, but with reservations.
Marla is explaining, as if he might not understand. “…would be fabulous … could be happy.” Who is happy? She is rationalizing. A dangerous, confining thing to do.
HE WANT BABY? People at the next table are having their food delivered, waitresses crowding around. Watch close.
A Handbook for Beautiful People Page 6