by Daniel Perry
“So ...”
“So you’re already choosing,” he said. “It’s not too late for you.”
His mouth was slightly open in a pained expression, and the outer corners of his eyes looked heavy. I’d wake up in the morning and Mom would drive me into Currie for work again. By the time I got home, he’d be gone. He butted out his cigarette and offered his hand. That was it, a handshake. I gripped it — firmly without squeezing, like he’d taught me.
“You neither,” I said. He got up and went into the house, and once all the lights were out, so did I.
IV.
ONE OF THOSE afternoons when I was riding home with Mom, a tornado crossed Seventeen between Currie and Waubnakee. At the end of a long laneway it tore the roof off a giant pig barn and left pink insulation clouds in the trees behind and scrap metal in the corn stubble all the way to the road. Mom stopped the car on the shoulder and we gawked at the pickup trucks convening near the gate. Overweight, suspender-wearing farmers formed a circle and whistled and swore, arriving one after another until eventually Mom put the car back into gear and we drove on saying nothing as the sky thundered and rain pummelled the windshield. We stopped where Seventeen met Highway 2 and the red sign was four feet in diameter. It had been replaced with a bigger one every time someone had been T-boned there, and now a red light blinked atop it day and night as did others in a box on wires above the intersection, red for Seventeen, amber for Two. We looked left and right and then we drove through, officially into Waubnakee.
On the front lawns along Main Street, whole soaked families lined the cracked sidewalks, surveying the clouds. Mom slowed as someone approached the car — Ernestine, my eighty-year-old great-great-aunt. We stopped and I rolled down my window as she hobbled up, losing her perm in the weather.
“Didn’t you hear?” she asked, creaky voice straining over rain and wind.
“No,” Mom said.
“Tornado warning: Waubnakee and Western Currie Township.”
I laughed and said, “Gee, thanks,” then cranked my window closed. Mom flashed me a dirty look as she stepped off the brake. The car resumed its slow roll home, and I knew: no matter how big the sign, these people would never stop.
The Expiry Dates
20 AL 97
MY EYES FLIT from Ron to the corkboard on his wall, just long enough to think: What has to go wrong in a man’s life? When does he decide that moving to Currie Township and opening a Giant Tiger store is a good idea?
And he says: “I should hire you.”
My eyes flit back.
“Uh, pardon?”
“Why should I hire you?” he repeats. Tiny beads of sweat form under my shirt. Did I just hear what I wanted to hear? Is that what I wanted to hear?
“My experience,” I say.
Oh, good one. You’re a seventeen-year-old kid.
In person, Ron must see how young I am. That I couldn’t have been sixteen when I started at Bevan Eggs. That there’s no way my résumé should also list a gas station or the Price-Mart, soon to be Currie’s lesser grocery store, where all I had to know was how to rotate by expiry date.
1.Take the old eggs off the shelf.
2.Put the new eggs on.
3.Bury the new with the old.
I started at Price-Mart in September, so now I’ve learned to rotate yogurt. And cheese. And milk. But I’ve also learned the really important stuff about working. Show up on time, don’t call in sick if you’re not dead and most importantly, don’t talk about people behind their backs. They always find out. Or at least the Tremblay twins on cash did, that time the butcher counter guys asked me who I thought was hotter, leaving aside that they’re my third cousins, of course — everyone in Currie Township probably is. I said Aurore, someone told Angèle, and now here I am applying at Giant Tiger, impressing Ron somehow by shutting up at “experience”.
The silence hangs a moment, until he says “Well, all right,” and moves on to the next question.
“Why is it important to pull the older stock forward on the shelf?”
This is too easy.
22 AL 97
THE PHONE RINGS in the afternoon, and when I pick up, Ron hires me. Mom drives me to the first meeting, where Ron welcomes me and the other fifty-three employees to Giant Tiger Two-Forty-Two, Currie, Ontario.
Ron talks through his moustache about goal-setting then points out the section bosses. The last is a shaggy young redhead named Ivan, who will supervise me in the Grocery Department. They needed introduction, but almost everyone else is from Currie High School. I even recognize someone like Sharon Foster, who’s a year older than me and repeating Grade Twelve math, because even the most unremarkable girl in school can’t be invisible here. Everyone from Currie goes to CHS, and so do all the farm kids from Currie Township. The only ones who don’t are the Catholic kids, who lived beside us in grade school then went missing around puberty.
I can see them again tonight, though. I can prove they’re real.
Currie has Catholic School Girls.
I met Katrina first, the dark-haired, dark-eyed Polishborn figure skater; then, Catrina, the dark-haired, dark-eyed Portuguese-born figure skater; and after her, Megan Cavanagh, who spent half of Grade Nine at CHS before changing to the Catholic system and the infamous six a.m. bus to London. Who has tiny blonde curls that fall over the arms of her glasses. Who has miniscule, notquite-separated fingers from being born premature. (And who clearly figure skates, though she doesn’t mention it.) All three work in Ladies’ Wear with den mother Tonja, the curvy immigrant who taught me the first night (while pointing to another new hire) that, “In Hungary, you never see woman in just T-shirt and sweat pant.”
Sadly for Tonja, in Currie you do.
20 MA 97
THE FIRST FEW weeks have been easy work:
1.Wait for a shelf to be built.
2.Find out which unsellable GT Brand product it holds.
3.Stock it.
4.Resume waiting. Or flirting. Or whatever it is you’re doing to pass the time.
At ten this morning, a Saturday, Currie’s first security guard stands aside. Its first automatic doors slide open and let half the town in, led by a blur of curly grey hair. The woman’s features come into focus when she stops at the till, making history by grabbing at a cellophane bag of powdery strawberry candies.
“It’s Marlene Simmons,” she snarls, hoisting her trophy for the Seed-Tribune photographer. “I bought the first thing from this store.” She tosses the sweets on the counter and adds: “Gimme a pack of Craven A’s, too.”
Marlene leaves with the first signature yellow shopping bag and smokes her cigarette outside the sliding doors. Moments later she re-enters pushing a cart, nerves calmed, her shopping bag nestled where a baby could have sat.
30 NO 97
VAUGHAN’S BAKERY CLOSED last year, but not before Nancy and I had spent countless Saturdays there, reading on the hard wooden chairs while Dad worked overtime at the plant. When Mom had to leave the counter for the backroom, I’d play shopkeeper and greet her best customers, all grandmothers, until she returned to rescue them.
I must have absorbed something. At the first-ever Giant Tiger Christmas Party, Ron presents three Customer Service Awards. Greg Watkins called an ambulance for an old lady who had a heart attack in Housewares. In Menswear, Maria, a squat lifer in the making, is already the Portuguese community’s woman on the inside. And when Ron cites two comment cards saying Mike’s so kind, I win the third one. I don’t recall trying to be kind but I take it.
05 JA 98
MY LAST SEMESTER of OAC starts Monday. I’ve been going out with Brandy Crawford for a year but there’s no way I’m taking her to prom. She doesn’t have a job, for one, and she keeps failing her driver’s test. And since Dad left in his roaring Cutlass and abandoned a shitbox Pontiac 6000 that was such a good deal, it’s been me who’s had to take Brandy to the mall in London all the time to go shopping. She always says she’ll pay me back but I’ve lost track of how much she owes
me.
Like Megan, Catrina and Katrina, Brandy’s a year behind me in school. She tells me every day that she hates Megan, despite having never met her, and it doesn’t help that Brian fooled around with Katrina-with-a-K on New Year’s.
Brian works at the store now, too; when Greg went off to college, I put the good word in. Other than spending more time chatting up Catrina-with-a-C than Ron would like, Brian does all right, and Tonja, who’s married, has even extended him the same, increasingly serious “Be my boy toy” offers she’s always given me.
Sometimes Brian and I have coffee and smokes at Don’s after work and then follow each other around the county roads in the dark. When he has his mom’s Mercury, he drops his window to remind me about its four-pointsix litre V8 before he peels out and vanishes in the night. I caught him once, but I jumped the CN tracks going one-eighty to do it.
23 MA 98
ALL MONTH OUR grade’s been raving about how drunk we’re getting Two-Four Weekend. Most of us are still underage, but we’ve all spent five years in the same classes. Kyle Hall’s next bush bash is all that’s left to talk about.
Kyle’s a bassist in two bands. One begs to perform at every school assembly, and the other incants clarinet scholarship and makes lonely, kind-of-pretty girls disappear from Currie Township forever. Megan’s his date, but when Brandy and I rumble up with Brian — in the decrepit van, this time — she’s already by herself, leaning on an oak and drinking a cooler. From the backseat, before Brian even turns off the key, Brandy starts going on about what a skank Megan is and says to me, “You’ve become a flirt,” when she gets a glimpse of what goes on at work, as she calls it. She spends our half-hour at the party glaring over my shoulder, making faces and repeatedly flipping Megan off, and when Megan laughs too hard at something I say, Brandy punches her in the face and snaps the bridge of her glasses. She runs straight to the van after, giving Brian and me no choice but to follow; he sprays gravel and we leave Megan’s girlfriends in the laneway shrieking at our tail lights. I nearly fall out as I heave the sliding door. When it closes with a thud I know Giant Tiger will never be the same.
07 JL 98
BRANDY AND I broke up a month ago, but it had nothing to do with Megan. I just outgrew the relationship. Besides, Megan’s with Stephen now, this blond wiener who transferred to the Currie store when his parents moved here from London. He’s younger and he’s looking to replace me. Seriously. He runs around the store stocking shelves — sometimes actually running — and his mop and bucket find accidents faster than an ambulance. I caught him making siren sounds once, but otherwise, he’s good: he never gets busted with Megan. Not that I mind. He can have her, and for all I care he can have Giant Tiger, too. I got into university and I start in the fall.
Inventory in June pushed back our one-year reviews, so today is my first crack at a good, but not too good, selfevaluation. I complete my form in the break room and make my way downstairs.
Instead of the usual power-figure-behind-a-desk look, the manager’s office is laid out with a bank of three computers at the back. Ron shuts the door. He pushes a chair into the centre of the room — an island for me — and then he sits at his work station. He scans the page and chortles.
“First things first,” he says. “I don’t give five out of five.”
I set my jaw.
“Read the questions.”
“All right.” He sighs and sets the paper on the desk. “We’ll go through them one by one.”
I wheel in beside him and look over his shoulder. He reads the first checkbox.
“Presentation. Clean uniform. Hair, and, if applicable, facial hair well-groomed.” He pauses. “You gave yourself five.”
I meet his eye and dare him to look. My hair is cut short and gelled in place. I shave redundantly before every shift. Today my black Giant Tiger golf shirt is fresh from the wash.
Ron takes the bait. He puts pen to paper.
“That’s a five,” I say.
He glowers through his puny glasses. His forehead wrinkles but his face softens.
“Well, I suppose I can give you one five,” he says. “Uniform. Always worn, complete with name tag.”
“That’s a five too, Ron.” He doesn’t argue. I take four out of five in the rest of the categories — only fair since I’ve started coming in late every day — and I return to the floor. Just my luck, I meet Stephen in the doorway. Of course he started just in time for evaluations. Of course he’s being lumped into this round. Of course Ron will give him the one-year raise early.
21 SE 98
BEYOND TONJA AND Maria, and the figure skaters, and me, two originals remain. Ivan is still running Grocery, and Sharon’s made a home of cash six. Since leaving high school, Ivan’s smoked so much pot that he likes this job, and since last winter, he’s been dating Sharon, who’s in her second year at Western. She and I crossed paths on campus yesterday, and she invited me to a mixer tonight.
Before pulling into my laneway, she straightened her light brown hair and put concealer over her too many freckles. As she shifts into drive her slender collarbone crests the V-neck of her sweater. She smiles when I ask to switch from Hitz Radio to the campus station. When we finally have to say something else, she tells me she and Ivan had a fight.
At the Drips, London’s oldest dive bar, Sharon and I dance, and we drink, and we introduce ourselves as just friends. Neither one of us should drive after last call, but I’m in better shape so I offer. When she refuses I collapse on the passenger seat.
There are never any cops on Old 22, but to be extra safe, Sharon says, we turn down a dirt road just outside the city. The farm fields grow longer, and darker, and emptier. Each is more desolate than the last. We ride quietly until the only sound, the motor’s gentle hum, gives way to crunching gravel.
Sharon stops the car. She looks down at her lap.
“You’re right,” she says. “You should drive.”
We step out in front of the headlights to switch seats. We fall onto the hood together.
25 SE 98
I ASK SHARON out for the coming weekend. She says Friday was fun, but ...
28 SE 98
IVAN QUIT GIANT Tiger yesterday. Ron doesn’t talk to me anymore. And everyone seems to have forgotten that Stephen and Megan got caught making out behind the box-baler last month: Golden Boy’s already the new Grocery Manager, and a shoo-in for one of the Customer Service Awards. The other two will go to employees who catch people shoplifting. The award’s name won’t reflect the change.
Brian and Katrina are off-again, for good. In August he took a job installing carpets, and he’s been talking about going army ever since. A buzz-cut tenth-grader named Will took his place, and on his first shift I noticed him already chafing under Stephen’s micro-management. Immediately I took Will under my wing and taught him who he could tease, who to stay away from, and of course, a wide range of deniable misdeeds that make Golden Boy crazy. Mostly we just slit open expired cold cut packs and bury them in the tallest, fullest skids of new stock. Will works Mondays before school and gets the payoff, watching Stephen smell the rot and check side-to-side for Ron before he mutters, “Fucking weekend guys,” and sets to work off-loading the pallet. Every Friday night, when I come in, I head straight for the expired stock again with my box cutter.
01 NO 98
I DRIVE TO London for class every day, and I’m down to four hours a week, so today I hand Ron the letter. He coaxes lame applause from my last pre-shift meeting and makes a show of thanking me, for two years’ service. It’s barely eighteen months but I don’t correct him. He goes on to air-quote the bigger and better things I’m moving onto but doesn’t name them, which implies I actually said this. I didn’t. Only Will asks what the things are. He has two years left at CHS, but last week, when Stephen transferred back to London — he and Megan are engaged now —Ron promoted Will to Grocery Manager. On a life total of six weeks’ experience.
I spend my final night expressly not working,
and for my big exit I turn a cartwheel past Ron and run out the sliding doors. The air is cold, the season’s changing. I don’t look back at the strip mall. As I walk to the 6000 I hear Will’s voice.
“Hey, Mike!”
He’s the last person I’ll speak to at Giant Tiger. So be it.
“I got a date with Catrina Friday,” he says as he approaches the car. “In case I don’t see you beforehand,” Will continues, as though I’m coming back tomorrow. “You’ve known her a while ...”
I get in and shut the door hard. Turn the key. Click the shifter into drive. Behind me, the sign’s stupid grin goes dark, and in the rear-view Will’s invisible now. I toe the brake and wash him in red light. He approaches and I can’t decide whether I’m proud or embarrassed for him. I lower the glass and he offers his hand. My eyes stay glued to the console. Campus radio crackles in faintly. I twist the volume to MAX so he leans in and shouts.
“Can’t you give me any advice?”
I close my eyes and wish for power windows. Then I punch the gas.
Precision
EVERYTHING CAME DOWN to the jacket: blue nylon, white stitching, CFSC across the back for Currie Figure Skating Club and my name, Jessie, in script on the arm. In high school it separated me from the pack, and around town, it sometimes got me mistaken for a popular girl, one who skated solo and who the club sent to London for development camp every August — the one who spent the rest of the season quoting Kurt and Liz and Elvis like her one-day guest teachers had been close friends.
That girl was Megan Cavanagh, and in our last season she still hadn’t grown past five feet. She had precious blonde curls and when she skated, she traded eyeglasses for contacts. Every program she turned three perfect double axels. She fell every time she practiced the triple, but regardless she ditched us for the Forest City Diamonds that October. We knew they’d never let her skate singles in London, but as part of their Precision team she’d skate circles around us.