by Nadia Bozak
“Hey,” Maček growls when Shell opens the back door, his accent flat and voice fatigued. And his face is pale, chin and Adam’s apple cut from shaving. Maček takes his coffee black. Nothing to eat because, he says, it’s still too early.
“You sleep any?” Shell asks.
“A few hours, yeah.”
“Me too.”
They sit at the harvest table, talking about nothing at all really, until Mum comes down. “Shell? When’s your friend due —”
Shell stands up, then Maček. Mum is in a skirt and blouse, nylons, her hair combed and wet, glasses steamed. Her eyes fall on Maček. The muscles in her neck rope up.
“Hello,” she says.
Maček says good morning and offers his hand. They shake. They look each other in the eye for what seems like forever.
“Thanks for coming,” Mum says.
“You’re welcome, ma’am,” Maček says, coughing nicotine.
Shell follows Mum and Maček out to the back. Maček scans the yard, then the pile of new shingles. He ascends the extension ladder quickly, his sneakers barely touching the rungs. He walks the roof. Mum and Shell look up, wincing into the new-day sun.
“Two days’ work,” Maček says, coming down.
“But can you get the shingles up there? They’re real heavy.”
No problem.
Mum crosses her arms. “How much?”
“Five hundred. Flat. Work guaranteed.”
Mum shades her eyes with her hand and tries not to smile. “Okay. Come on Saturday. Early.”
Mum drives Maček and Shell to school, and Shell talks the whole way about what a jerk Soren Nutt is. “You know that guy?” she asks, turning to Maček, sitting in the back, looking out the window. Shell shivers to see Maček wearing a seat belt in Mum’s Datsun like it’s an everyday thing.
“No,” he says.
“Well, you’re lucky, because he’s always been a bully, though my mum doesn’t seem to think so.”
Then Maček nods off, chin to his chest, waking when they bump over the tracks. Mum lets them out at Dutchie’s Donuts. When the Datsun is gone, Maček pulls up his collar. He’s got to go. And Shell needs to get to class. “But see you Saturday. And thanks.”
Shell says, “It’s cool.” Her knees turn to fondue. She’s so slow getting to English class Mrs. Poole has already shut the door. But Shell is smiling so big she doesn’t get sent down for a late slip. The room is quiet; pens and pencils scratch. Instead of working on her analysis of leitmotifs in Hamlet, “Dear Carla, Guess what?!!!” is what Shell writes at the top of a fresh binder page. “Maček was at my house this, the most glorious of mornings!” She tells Carla about the black coffee and no breakfast and how polite Maček was, skipping over the reason why Maček is working for Mum, because what if there really are mail censors like Chomsky says and Maček gets traced and then deported? The important thing is that he’s going to fix the roof, right? “Isn’t that amazing?”
Maček doesn’t need much, just Dad’s tool belt, a hammer, and some water. Plenty of nails. Sunscreen? No. But he’ll wear the Expos cap. He takes off his jacket, one careful arm at a time, folds it in half, and lays it across a lawn chair. He is thin without it, a turtle denuded of its shell. But a turtle with shaggy hair and Dracula teeth. Maček wears his blue button-down undone; underneath, Dan’s faded Slayer T-shirt is tucked into beltless jeans. He nods at Mum and Shell then shimmies up the ladder with the roll of underlay on his shoulder, which he applies quickly, but only after patching all the rot with fresh plywood. Maček’s hammer echoes for hours.
When Mum and Shell come back from the co-op, Maček already has two packs of shingles nailed down.
“You used the chalk line?” Mum asks. “By yourself?”
Maček shrugs. “There’s a trick to it.”
Before lunch, Maček washes in the bathroom upstairs — Mum already cleaned the counter and closed the bedroom doors — and then he sits at the table only when and where he is told: in Dad’s old place. He has three bowls of Mum’s homemade minestrone soup and two sandwiches of cheddar on dark rye. Mum keeps jumping up whenever his bowl or plate needs filling. She bought Polish pickles at the co-op, without Shell even asking her, and a Cellophane bag of German gingerbread. Maček eats like Kremski, with no knife, napkin tucked into his shirt, and though he goes fast, he does so without slurping. His eyes water when he bites into the gingerbread. His mother made the same kind at Christmas. “For after midnight Mass.”
“You’re Catholic?”
Maček pulls the gold chain out from his shirt and shows Mum the charm: a crucifix delicately engraved with flowers and a word in Czech. His mother gave it to him when he left. “Three years ago now.”
Mum says he is brave. Is he here alone?
“There’s my cousin, Jakub.” Maček takes another cookie. “But he’s a vegetable with a broken neck.”
Maček works until three o’clock. When he unclips Dad’s tool belt, the whole eastern slope is covered. Mum and Shell climb up the ladder while Maček’s washing tar from his nails and brown sweat from his face and neck. “It’s great work, eh, Mum?”
Mum nods. “Just terrific,” she says of the new green shingles laid in perfectly straight rows, not a single gap or nail head showing. After strong tea and more gingerbread, Mum and Shell drive Maček downtown.
“See you tomorrow, ma’am,” Maček says, getting out in front of Mister Sound. He tucks his fifty-dollar advance into the back pocket of his jeans, slings his jacket over his shoulder.
“Now he better not go spend that on cigarettes,” Mum says into the rear-view mirror as Maček disappears up the block.
“Oh, come on, Mum!” Shell says. “He’s not like that.” But as she too watches him go, she hopes Maček does stop on the way back to Dan’s sister’s and get himself an extra-large king-size pack and, thinking about Shell, smoke one after another.
It smells sweet and smoky downstairs, like steamed pudding and strong coffee; like Sunday mornings used to be, with Dad around. Maček, flushed with yesterday’s sun, is at his new spot at the harvest table when Shell comes down. She’s showered and dressed in her least dirty jeans, crimped hair sticky with Alberto mousse. Shell smiles at Maček, not too big.
He stands up, napkin tucked into the neck of the same Slayer T-shirt. He nods, blushing through his sunburn. “Good morning, Shell.”
Mum’s got the waffle iron going: the first time since Dad left.
“Mum, hey, I thought you sold that thing at Barb’s.”
“Nope.” Mum lifts the iron’s heavy black lid. “And it’s a good thing, because we’ve got a real waffle fan here.”
Mum bustles around brewing coffee and chopping banana. Has Maček had real maple syrup? How about farm-fresh apple butter? Too bad there’s no bacon. “Next time,” she promises.
“Shouldn’t you be working?” Shell whispers, sitting down across from Maček. She eyes Mum, who is actually whistling as she takes a tray of warm waffles from the oven. Rushing over to the table, Mum forks a pair of steaming, perfectly brown waffles onto Maček’s plate.
“Shell? Honey, how about you?”
“Huh?” Shell hasn’t been a honey to Mum in ten years at least.
“One waffle or two?”
Shell glances at Maček, who has syrup on his whiskered chin. “One for now. They’re awfully big, eh?”
“Big and so good,” Maček says, steam rising as he cuts into a puffy waffle with the side of his fork.
It’s nine o’clock and two pots of coffee later when Maček clips on Dad’s tool belt. He has to set it to a bigger hole now, he jokes. Mum squeezes suntan lotion into his open palm.
“Really rub that in,” she says. “Especially on your face.”
While Mum and Shell clean up, Mum shakes her head and says, “He’s a smart guy, that one.”
Shell rinses what little remains on Maček’s plate into the sink. “That’s why he’s here, Mum. You know?”
Mum catches Shell’s eyes. They stand in the silent, sweet kitchen, separated by the open dishwasher, Shell holding Maček’s plate and Mum his coffee mug; Dad made them both out in the backyard studio. “I do know, Shell.”
It’s cool in Mum’s room. Shell lies in the pioneer bed, on top of the wrinkled sheets, oily with body lotion. The light is out and the box fan on low. Maček’s crouched figure is visible through the window if she props up against the pillows. It’s probably wrong to be watching without him knowing, and it’s probably wrong to likewise imagine he is her husband and they have children, and while Maček stays home to raise them and build airy wooden houses, Shell becomes a famous poet and travels the whole world. Click-clock goes the echo of Maček’s hammer. Click-clock. His blue button-down lies abandoned by the eastern eave and when he stands to reach into his tool belt, the gold cross around his neck glints in the sun. Shell’s face gets warm just seeing that. He lays a shingle then fixes it in place — one, two, three nails across; and when the angle of the roof cuts him off from view, she picks up A Sadder and a Wiser Man and reads about Coleridge’s life — his addiction, depression, constipation, hatred for his wife. She pencils down some notes for her final essay, comparing “Kubla Khan” and that movie Citizen Kane, which Shell has never seen, just read about, but they have the film strips at the public library. On Monday, tomorrow, she’ll call ahead to book a viewing room.
Click-clock, click-clock.
And when she’s bored with Coleridge and all the inset pictures of ladies in lace collars and men with muttonchops, she memorizes Blake. She has “The Tyger” and “The Sick Rose” down pat, but keeps messing up the one about the chimney sweep: “When my mother died I was very young…crap…and my father sold me while…um…yet my tongue / could scarcely cry ‘weep’ ‘weep’ ‘weep’ ‘weep’/ so your chimneys I sweep and in soot I sleep.”
“Weep, weep, weep, weep,” Shell whispers.
Click-clock, click-clock, goes Maček’s hammer.
Breeze cuts through the window screen, kissing Shell’s toes, the contours of her face. “Weep, weep, weep, weep.” Suddenly Shell’s eyes surge with tears. Because she loves Mum so much and Dad and even Valery, with her chocolate chicken and caramel eyes, and she loves Maček too — of course she does! — but with those words she knows she’ll have to leave here — the cool bed sheets that smell like Nivea and the rap of Maček’s sturdy, steady hammer. She’ll have to go someplace where the library has more books and the essays she writes can be longer and harder and so beautiful and in a way Somerset can’t ever understand. And she’ll have to go soon. A world lives out there. She’s already seventeen.
To celebrate the brand new roof, Mum’s going to treat them all to a takeout supper. Maček gets to pick the place. Swiss Chalet is his favourite. While Mum goes for the food, Maček showers and Shell sets the table, including wineglasses for the Chardonnay Mum tells her to bring up from the cold room. Maček comes down in the Neil Young T-shirt Dad gave her and because it fits him so well, she says he can have it. They have lemonade and cigarettes on the back porch. Maček smells of Pert Plus, his face rosy from scrubbing.
“I like your mother,” Maček says.
“Yeah, she’s okay.”
“She misses having a man around.”
Shell blushes. “You think?”
“Sure. But you guys are doing okay.”
“Yeah?”
“Sure. I mean, I wish my mother could be like yours. Tough but really nice and happy with that.”
They eat at the table and use real plates. While Mum and Shell have the quarter chicken dinners, Mum got Maček a half chicken. “I bet you’re hungry,” she says, “after all that hard work.” Then they eat, silently dipping succulent chunks of falling-apart chicken into the special sauce that comes on the side, spicy and a hint of sweet. The hand-cut fries get dipped too, along with the toasted buns.
“My cousin used to drink this sauce straight,” Maček says in his slow, flat accent. “He’d order extra, glug it back.”
Shell laughs, the wine flushing her with love and lightness. “Yeah. We have Swiss Chalet stories too, right Mum?”
“We do?” Mum says, sipping from her greasy wineglass.
“Yeah,” Shell scoffs. “From Kremski.”
Mum’s face clouds and she sets down her glass. She continues to eat, fry by fry, as Shell tells Maček about the Soviet artist and Swiss Chalet dishwasher who was Dad’s best bud all the time Shell was growing up. He can still be seen riding around on his old bike, picking garbage and cigarette butts. “Wait!” Shell cries, jumping up from the table. The paper Swiss Chalet hat is under her bed, tucked in the horsehair button box. She pulls it on her head and runs back downstairs. “Ta-da!” She digs into her cooling meal while, mouth full of food, telling Maček all about how she went as Kremski for Halloween and how he was such an inept camper when they went canoeing in Algonquin, he actually brought a suitcase. “Well, after all, the guy was Soviet.”
Maček wipes his mouth without untucking his greasy napkin; sauce smears across his cheek. “So?” His face is stone, like Mum’s, and his jaw is clenched. “How’s that funny?”
“It’s not funny,” Mum says. “It’s too bad.”
Shell feels her grin dissolve. She looks from Mum to Maček to her dirty plate and pulls Kremski’s hat gently from her head. Folding the yellowed paper neatly, she holds it in her lap.
Mum refills Shell’s wineglass, then Maček’s, emptying the bottle. She takes their empty plates into the kitchen, returning with a breadknife and a Sara Lee chocolate cake, the box sweating with thaw.
They stay up late drinking tea and looking at old photos — Sanibel Beach, the house right when they moved in, Mum’s mum out on the Prairies. Maček eats the last piece of cake while Shell puts on Bob Dylan. Then Mum says she’s going to bed early. Does Maček need a ride home?
“Don’t trouble yourself at all, please.” After all that food, Maček says he’ll walk.
“Well, don’t forget it’s Sunday. You both have school in the morning.”
Now they are alone. Now they can smoke. Stars are out, so are the bugs, and the night air is damp.
“How’s Dan’s sister?” Shell asks, taking one of Maček’s cigarettes and leaning up against the rail of the back porch. Carla’s care package from France will be here any day now. Along with Gauloises and Hariboo, there’s probably going to be something for Shell’s birthday too.
Maček touches the pocket of his jacket; the envelope with four hundred and fifty dollars is tucked safely away. “Things’ll be better now.” He says Dan’s going to be out in two months. As part of his probation, he’ll go back to Somerset Tech. “Autobody.”
And what will Maček do?
“Was thinking roofing, house repairs.” Maybe Shell’s mum can spread the word. “She’s got lots of single friends, eh?”
“You mean shingle friends?” Shell laughs. Sure, Maček could get a business going. “Like when we move, we’ll need help for sure, if you’re into that too.”
Maček says right on. Where they moving to?
Shell shrugs. “Maybe some condo. Got to get rid of this place first, though.”
Their teacups cool. Words dry up. Hey, the stars will be even better up on the roof. Shell gets her jean jacket from inside and climbs up the ladder first, Maček right behind. She can barely see her hand in front of her face, but she can see the Milky Way and, below, the next-door neighbour’s eating popcorn from a huge steel bowl, the TV flashing blue.
Shell and Maček sit on the peak, the soles of their sneakers braced against the rough texture of the new shingles, which smell like a gas station or the inside of Canadian Tire. Maček flexes his hands, hammer-stiff, and pulls out his cigarette pack. There’s a joint insid
e, which he invites Shell to light. She does — checking that Mum’s window is dark. The rich spice of hash infuses her lungs, warms her tongue. “Oh, how I missed that.”
Maček thought it would be so.
“And I missed you too,” Shell whispers, so quiet she might have been the only one to hear it.
They only need a few tokes, Maček’s hash is always that good. They laugh, remembering things about Carla that were so great, like how she’d always show up at parties with Harvey’s leftovers. Or the time they got high on the dock and Carla fell into the Somerset River. Splash. Her hair smelled like egg for weeks and she even had to throw out her coat. Then Shell gets worried because can’t the whole neighbourhood hear their voices? “Someone’ll call the cops.”
So Maček takes her hand — his palms warm and rough as an emery board — and they shimmy down to where the grade is less steep and stretch out on their backs. Eyes to the wide starry sky, Shell’s right hand in Maček’s left, night washes them, watches them. “We’re safe here, Shell.” And they are.
When Shell wakes up, the sky is violet. Maček’s jacket is tucked around her, keeping in her warmth. Maček is sitting up on his elbows, watching the coming of sun. Shell blinks rapidly, wetting her contact lenses.
“Hey.” She sits up. “Who knew a roof could be so cozy?”
“Only because I made it so.” Maček coughs. “Just for you.”
“Yeah?”
“And for your mother too.”
The sunrise is rose, is burgundy, is gold. Shell climbs down the ladder first, then Maček. At the back steps, he takes back his jacket. “Your mother won’t be happy to see me here.”
Shell yawns. “You’ll be okay?”
“Yup. Buses are probably running.”
“Got your cash?”
“I do.”
“And your hash?”
Maček laughs.
They stare at each other’s feet, noses running.
“Okay, so I’m going to call you,” Maček finally says.
Shell nods. “Any time.” Then she swallows, takes a breath, and, like diving into deep water — a lake, an ocean, the far end at Earl’s Park pool — she reaches out for Maček, pulling him into her, her into him. It’s kind of a hug at first, but then she kisses Maček, fast and messy and on the lips, then runs up the steps before Mum’s alarm goes off, because, look, the sky is nearly blue.