by Nadia Bozak
Mum sighs. “Yes.”
Sunday evening in Somerset passes by the Dart windows: mums and dads pushing strollers, joggers with silky dogs, people struggling into sweatshirts as the sun disappears. The group of jelly-shoe girls lighting cigarettes in front of the doughnut shop used to go to Shell’s school but are at Somerset Central Tech now.
Mum and Shell don’t say anything. Shell’s trip to Toronto never happened. Shell doesn’t say she wants to move to Toronto just like Dad, that Dad’s thesis project is so smart and great, or how huevos rancheros is her new favourite breakfast and something you’d never get in boring old Somerset. Shell doesn’t show Mum her Ramones T-shirt, her new tapes, the poster from Jackie either.
Mum’s typewriter is clattering upstairs. When the fullness of the gnocchi wears off, Shell grills a cheese sandwich and finishes Camus, ketchup dripping on the pages she has worn thin with thinking and fingerprints and a few salt tears. Shell goes down to the basement without saying good night. By the light of the stars barely falling in the basement windows, Shell rereads the last page of The Outsider. Then, like Meursault, she opens her heart to those basement stars, and what for Meursault is “the benign indifference of the universe.” Shell finds that, like Meursault, despite all her sadness, she is happy and has been happy all along.
She Will Make Music Wherever She Goes
Shell reaches for another of Mum’s Women’s Studies flash cards then crams a digestive in her mouth.
“Patriarchy,” she says, reading Mum’s neat printing on the back of the card.
They are down to the twenty-five definitions sure to be on Mum’s summer school exam next week.
Mum closes her eyes and whispers, “Patriarchy. Patriarchy…A societal organization where men are taken as naturally having power and authority over women, property etc., and females are subordinate and men are always favoured.”
“Yup. Pretty much.” Shell reaches for another card. “Okay. How about gynocriticism?”
Fiddling with the crumbs gathered in the grooves of her placemat, Mum begins: “Gynocriticism…what the hell…” She looks up at the ceiling. “That’s the, um, study of books by women about women and the history of those books and writers as a tradition.”
“Good.” Shell passes Mum the cookies.
“See you got something in the mail?” Mum asks, nodding at the silver envelope propped against the pepper mill upon which Shell’s and Mum’s names are written out in someone’s neatest cursive.
Shell licks dark stickiness from her fingers. Inside the thick envelope, the embossed wedding invitation is also silver. Written out in fancy calligraphy — so curly it has a perm — are the names of Vicki’s mum and her mum’s boyfriend, Scott: first, last, middle. Their wedding, to which Mum and Shell are cordially invited, will take place on the twentieth of June, nineteen hundred and eighty-five at one p.m. at the Good Shepherd Chapel located at five thousand eight hundred and thirty-three Euston Avenue North.
Shell slides the card across to Mum.
There’s no map or directions — that far north on Euston seems a hell of a long way out — and “June! That’s only three weeks.”
Mum gets up for the calendar, brushing crumbs from her shirt.
“Don’t bother,” says Shell. “I’m not going.”
Mum frowns. “But Vicki’s your friend.”
“No.” Shell looks up. “She was a dumb little girl who lived down the street. Besides, I’m in high school now and she’s still in grade eight.”
“So?” Mum reminds Shell that Barb Nutt is younger than Mum and it makes no difference.
“Well, when’s the last time Vicki called me?” Shell wants to know.
“When’s the last time you called her?”
“That’s because all she talks about is satellite mtv crap. And what the hell would I wear?”
“Not that coat, for starters.” Mum sits down and opens The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory. “Or those revolting jeans.”
It’s been eight weeks since Shell washed the men’s Levi’s she wears every day to school. It’s like with her hair — now a month without shampoo: after a time the fabric will stop being oily and itchy and just sort of clean itself.
Whatever Mum just copied from textbook to loose-leaf gets underlined about five times.
“So do you think her mum will be thin now?” she says. It’s been a while since Vicki’s mum had her stomach stapled. Three years already?
“We won’t ever know, because of course we’re not going.”
“Well, then, you call Vicki’s mum and tell her that.”
Shell shuffles through the flash cards. “What’s next — ‘Other,’ Oedipal complex, or, your favourite, male gaze?”
“Oedipal,” says Mum.
Apart from creaky wooden floors and squeaky scissors and the expert ripping of fabric — zip! — right along the grain, Adelard Textiles is quiet. Mum licks the tip of her index finger and flips through thick plasticized pattern books from Butterick, Simplicity, McCall’s, and Vogue, pointing out high-waisted princess gowns, tunics with wide-legged trousers, and A-line jumpers.
Shell shakes her head. She pulls a photocopy from her pocket. “Like this. Like Patti Smith.” Shell smooths out the inky black-and-white image in which Patti Smith prances barefoot across an empty studio loft in what just has to be New York City. Rayed light falls through floor-to-ceiling windows, catching her from behind — an aura. Her overalls are of something black and very flowy that Mum says must be silk, and she’s not wearing a shirt underneath. Wide straps with big silver buckles hold up the bib, her chest caving in beneath. Arms, pale and so thin, twist upward towards a beam of light, her long fingers catching tendrils of her own messy hair.
Mum’s in a hurry. Her exam is at six. She flags down a lady in an Adelard smock and homemade blouse. Is there a pattern that looks anything like Shell’s photocopy?
“Let’s see.” The lady’s name tag reads Gladys. Long, unpolished nails filed into triangles pluck at Patti Smith. “Well, that’s a different look, isn’t it?”
At the opposite end of the pattern table, Gladys pulls out a McCall’s, and with a wave of her triangles flips to the overalls, a subsection of uniforms.
They settle on #9203. The overalls have a chunky zipper down the front and long sleeves, which means Shell doesn’t have to bother getting a blouse to go underneath. Gladys says to use crepe instead of the heavy cotton suggested in the book.
“It will achieve a similar look” — she points to Patti Smith — “but, I warn you, it’s not very breathable.”
There’s a table of crepes beyond the craft fabrics. Mum thinks the sky blue is nice and will go with Shell’s eyes, eyes which Shell then rolls. As everything else is pastel or patterned — tiny flowers, polka dots, sailboats — Shell grabs a bolt of bright grape. Mum says the price is right at $1.99 a yard.
“You’re sure?”
Shell nods.
The cutting tables are at the back. The warm, unwashed air is clouded with fine fibrous particles and glue from spray-on sizing. A team of smocked ladies with sharp, tooled fingernails like Gladys’s measures out lengths of fabric against the yardsticks embedded right in the tabletops. Rather than actually snipping, they just give the fabric an initial clip, put down their scissors, and rip it, perfectly straight, down the grain.
Gladys and her co-workers agree Shell’s purple is quite stunning. It is also a good value as it’s been sitting around since the Somerset Snow Owls hockey team switched their colours to emerald, and that was some three or four years ago. Shell doesn’t know her size, so she has to take off her army jacket while Gladys embraces her with a measuring tape, announcing for all of Adelard the size of Shell’s hips, waist, bust, and thighs. Maybe Gladys can’t smell Shell’s armpits or her stale jeans or see the ice cream spilled down the front of her oversized Shell Oil T-shir
t, but Mum can, because she looks away. Gladys cuts three yards of grape crepe and wishes Mum happy sewing.
“Promise you’ll eat something proper for dinner.” Mum unlocks the Dart’s passenger door because the driver’s side doesn’t open anymore. “There’s spaghetti sauce thawed out.”
The muffler chokes and growls as Mum pulls away. Shell leans up against the rough brick wall behind Adelard. In the crumpled photocopy in her hand, Patti Smith’s sooty eyes look right through the camera and into Shell’s soul, telling her to be brave, to be free of the chains of conformity and stop worrying all the time about what other people think. And standing there behind the fabric store watching Mum drive away, Shell shrinks up. Because she should have her own ideas about dressing and not just steal Patti’s. She’s doing what Patti never would: being a copycat, not thinking for herself.
The Dart has stopped at a light up ahead. Shell wants to run up through the intersection, grab the Adelard bag out of the back, and, though the cashier stamped the bill No Refund, make her take back all that purple crepe. She’s never going to look like Patti Smith and it’s not brave of her to even want to, and Mum spent all that money and Shell wants out of this wedding and to forget about the overalls and she’s tired of the effort of being her, Shell. Make it stop, even just for a minute —
“Mum!”
But now the light changes and the Dart trundles off and it is too late.
Mum’s gunning for an “A” in Women’s Studies while cooking full time at Memory Lane, so it takes forever to finish the overalls. Plus, when Shell finally tries them on for size, she closes her eyes and won’t look at her big fat purple reflection in the hall mirror.
“Who cares, Mum? Just make them fit.”
It was the same with the eyeglasses. She wouldn’t look in the mirror, so the optician picked them out and now she’s stuck with giant pink frames for another year until ohip chips in for a new prescription.
“They’ll be very comfortable,” Mum says of the overalls, pinning up the pant cuffs. It’s the night before the twentieth of June, nineteen hundred and eighty-five. “And if you want them to look slightly more tailored, just cinch the waist with a belt. You can borrow one of mine.”
Shell is already borrowing plenty from Mum: pointy black flats Mum bought for some event twenty years ago that might have been her and Dad’s wedding; saggy beaded handbag and black crocheted gloves; and a selection of silver jewellery, including eleven Navajo bangles, her turquoise ring from California, and the long silver earrings with ivory balls on the ends that her art school roommate made. Maybe with all the jewels and stuff no one will see the overalls.
“Come on, Shell, have a look.”
The purple crepe is brighter now that Mum has washed away the sizing and dust. It swathes Shell’s entire body, head and hands and feet excepted. The purple blob in the mirror looks a lot like that cartoon, Barbapapa. Clickety-click: Barba Trick. Or is it Mr. Grumpy she’s thinking of? Shell closes her eyes and turns away.
“That’s not too long? You don’t want them dragging.”
“And I don’t want to look like I’m from Bangladesh either.”
Mum’s brows cross, pins clamped between her lips.
“Floods,” Shell says. “You know?”
“How’re the shoes?”
“Too big.” Shell will stuff the toes with toilet paper.
Downstairs, the sewing machine whirs full blast. Shell falls asleep with the light on, Mum’s brittle copy of On the Road open on her chest.
Shell comes down from her room, dripping with accessories.
Mum starts clapping two fingers against a cupped palm, singing what was once Shell’s nursery rhyme:
Ride a cock-horse to Banbury Cross,
To see a fine lady upon a white horse,
Rings on her fingers and bells on her toes,
And she will make music wherever she goes.
“Mum, please shut up,” Shell snaps. Mum’s knee had made the best horse and until now she had thought nothing of the “cock” part.
“Don’t you dare speak to me like that.” Mum fixes her nylons. “Where’s the present?”
“I dunno.” Shell looks away as she passes the hall mirror. “I thought you were going to wrap it.”
“Jesus Murphy.” Mum kicks off her clogs, polished to gleaming, and heads upstairs for the wrapping paper. “Now we’re late.”
Shell signs the card while Mum conceals a set of heavy ceramic wine goblets that Dad made in white tissue and ties the bundle with silver ribbon.
Hurrying down the porch steps, Mum trips on the hem of her long, embroidered Mexican dress, which she got by sewing curtains for the owner of Siddhartha, the ethnic store downtown. The air is thick with humidity. Mum gropes for her prescription sunglasses — big black goggles like those for welders or blind men — and unlocks Shell’s door. The black vinyl seats inside the Dodge Dart are soft with heat. Mum raps on the driver’s window — her door is broken — and Shell leans over and lifts the button, recoiling from the burning seat.
“Shit, it’s an oven in here.” Mum unrolls her window. Does Shell have the map and the wedding invitation? “The last thing we need is to get lost.”
“Let’s just get this over with,” Shell says, looking away from her reflection in the side mirror. “Please” — a whisper now — “make this day end.”
Shell paints her mouth Rojo red. The mirror clipped to the pull-down visor is rusty at the edges.
“Shell, will you get your glasses on and help me look for that goddamn chapel?”
Shell has never been this far north on Euston. The speed limit climbs to seventy kilometres per hour and the lanes go from four wide to six. Truck traffic is heavy with freight heading south to the border, and also there’s plenty of rough-hewn pickups zipping up and down between the Build-All centre, Zellers, and the outlying farms that aren’t really farms anymore so much as feral fields used for breeding puppies and hosting auto swaps. The Canada Post sorting depot is out this way too — coming up on the left.
“What the hell is the address?” Mum slows to grab hold of the street numbers flying past. A pickup with three heads in the cab tailgates behind.
“Five thousand eight hundred and thirty-three.” Shell smooths damp red over her top lip.
As the Dart drifts over into the next lane, the pickup, now creeping up alongside, honks. Mum jerks the car back into its lane, and Shell gives herself a full-on Rojo moustache.
“Look, Shell, please!” Mum shouts above the bluster of wind resistance and the whir of engines.
“Oh, all right!” Shell screams. Then she goes on screaming. It feels really good — so, so, so good that she can’t stop — “all right, all right, all right!”
“Stop it!” Mum grabs Shell’s arm and pulls, hard, her nails digging into flesh.
“Ow!” Shell’s throat is ripped up from screaming. Her eyes tear. The pickup is within spitting distance now. Three guys in sunglasses shout through a lowered window that they’re crazy bitches.
“Assholes!” Shell screams back as Mum changes lanes.
Mum slows, pulling the Dart into the empty parking lot of a small-appliance repair centre — blenders, microwaves, hair dryers, and more! Her head falls forward onto the steering wheel and then she wipes her face with a Kleenex.
“So where’s this bloody Good Shepherd?” Mum says. “I mean, am I crazy?”
She wrenches her head around, wiping sweat from her upper lip. Between here and the T-intersection about a quarter kilometre ahead that marks the end of Euston, there’s no sign of a chapel or church. The only thing is a pristine green lawn ahead. It is edged in trees and bright pink petunia beds and it’s on the odd side of the road, like Good Shepherd should be.
“What’s that?”
Mum says no, “It’s the sph.”
“Somerset Psychiatr
ic Hospital? Really?”
Mum looks at her watch: twelve-fifty.
Shell’s back is wet, so are her pits, and her Rojo lips are melting.
As they pass the Somerset Psychiatric Hospital, Shell strains to see the street number. The lush lawn that flashes by twinkles with sprays of irrigated water while the driveway up the hill to a looming grey concrete edifice is lined with flowering trees and a bright patchwork of red and white bedding plants. But the sph’s sign itself is set back from the road, concealed by fronds of Japanese maples.
Mum turns left at the T. They curve back around, heading south. The Dart rattles, straining to keep up with the seventy-kilometre-per-hour limit.
“Look, look, look.” Mum squints into the sun despite her goggles.
The cashiers at Zellers don’t know where five thousand eight hundred and thirty-three Euston Avenue North is, but the guy selling hot dogs out front says to ask at the sph.
“You think that’s okay?” Mum says. “I mean, to drive up there?”
The man, chest hair showing through his damp white T-shirt, shrugs and reaches his bare hand into a giant jar of sliced olives.
“Why not?”
“This is crazy,” Mum says, turning in at the green lawn and bright petunias.
Maximum twenty. The Dart crawls up the sloping hill towards the main building. The lot is full of cars, but Mum finds a shady space near a set of sliding doors marked Receiving.
And they are received. The heat barrier breaks as they step inside. All is silence and cool, and the smell of hand soap permeates. Leaning against one of a cluster of puffy leather couches, they allow the air conditioning to solidify their melting bodies and cool their fizzy brains. Mum struggles to find her regular glasses in her purse, while Shell peels damp crepe from the backs of her legs.
The receptionist looks extra brown in her snow-white uniform. She’s got a fragile gold crucifix around her neck, which seems weird because she must be from India. She takes the invitation card from Mum and smiles, showing off how well her teeth match her uniform.
“We’ve been up and down and up and down,” Mum says. “I mean, what the hell?”