Thirteen Shells
Page 25
When she shuts the back door, Maček is still there, waiting, at the bottom step. He lifts his hand. Shell waves too.
The new people moving into the house are musicians: cello for her, violin for him.
Priscilla says the studio out back was the selling point — a perfect space for practising and teaching too. “And the new roof is really tremendous,” she says, smoothing the Sold sticker over the wooden sign with her giant name and smiling face.
Shell pretends to read The Second Sex on the front steps.
The spikes of Priscilla’s high heels sink into the front lawn. A robin, going for the shiny orange fruit of the mountain ash behind her, dive-bombs her head. Priscilla lets out a small cry and dashes like a deer to the sidewalk, where she shakes hands with Mum. Then her candy-apple car glides away.
“The change will be good for us, Shell,” Mum says, sitting down next to Shell, who can’t look up from the black words on the white page. Simone de Beauvoir swims behind eyes full of tears. “And anyway, you only have until September, when you go to university. You can’t live here forever.”
“Yup,” says Shell.
“You are going to university, Shell,” Mum says.
“Yup,” says Shell.
“You won’t make the mistake I did.”
“Nope,” says Shell.
The pile of books on the floor by the window is more like a wall and is as high as Shell’s waist. Her room in the condo Mum bought is barely big enough for a twin bed; she will have to sell at least two boxes of paperbacks at Rambler Books on Clayton, where Sorensen Sports used to be. All the studios above have been renovated into apartments. Bright pink petunias drip from the planter on the ledge of Dad and Kremski’s studio window.
Shell takes down the Bad Moon Rising poster she special-ordered from Mister Sound, and sneezes when she opens the horsehair button box under her bed. The dust is fine-ground, pink and grey: a baby and an old lady mixed into one soft silt. She hasn’t touched the box since moving up from the basement. The treasures inside are distant and familiar: a jagged slice of green glass, a necklace of pasta, a rusty roller skate key, the Polaroid of her naked self that no one else in the world will ever see. It is the whole of Shell’s heart, dissected: Dad, the pond, the cardinal bush, the smell of Mum’s warm jam, the taste of Dad’s beer, the scratch of his beard. She shuts the box.
Shell is still. She might stay this way forever, buried in the heavy soil of not wanting to grow anymore. In time she will calcify, fossilize, become another midden hunk for the cellist and violinist to unearth, polish up, set in the windowsill above the sink where Mum’s glass medicine bottles will never be again.
In the hallway, the telephone rings.
She wants it to be Maček calling — to say hi, how’s it going, to see if maybe Shell wants to meet up to shoot pool again. But what if it’s not Maček?
Somewhere, a bird’s wings are beating. A robin is feeding from the mountain ash Dad planted outside Shell’s window so long ago. And also the beating is blood in her ears, blood in her heart, pumping forth because that’s just what it does.
Shell counts the phone’s tenth ring.
Mum shouts from the bottom of the stairs. “Shell! That’ll be for you if anyone.”
Shell pushes away the button box. She rushes to the ringing before Maček — it has to be him — hangs up.
“Hello?” Shell says into the receiver, twisting the cord around her wrist.
Acknowledgements
Thank you:
The Canada Council, Ontario Arts Council, Kim Harrison, Maurice Carroll and the magical house in Sixmilebridge, County Clare, Ireland, where much of this book was written; Joanna Reid for excellent editorial feedback and ongoing interest in what I write; Sarah MacLachlan, Laura Meyer, Barbara Howson, Jenna Simpson, Alysia Shewchuk, and especially Janie Yoon, a true friend and most insightful, patient, and supportive editor; my agent, Martha Magor-Webb; my mom and brother; my dad and Sara; Linda and Michael Hutcheon for your kindness; my friends; my Carleton colleagues; my dearest darling Chedo; our daughter who teaches me how much my parents love me, the lesson of this book.
Permissions
Every reasonable effort has been made to trace ownership of copyright materials. The publisher will gladly rectify any inadvertent errors or omissions in credits in future editions.
The lines on page 63 are from Raffi’s “Brush Your Teeth.”
Jenny Holzer’s lines on page 164 are from her poster series Truisms, 1977–1979.
Quotations from Albert Camus on page 176 are from The Outsider, translated by Joseph Laredo (New York: Penguin, 2000), p. 117.
The nursery rhyme on page 184 is from I. Opie and P. Opie, The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1951, 2nd ed., 1997), pp. 65–67.
Quotations from William Blake on page 285 are from “The Tyger” in The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake, ed. David V. Erdman (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1965, 2nd ed., 1982), pp. 10–11; and on pages 286 and 296 from “The Chimney Sweeper,” pp. 24–25.
About the Author
NADIA BOZAK is the critically acclaimed author of the novels El Niño and Orphan Love. She is also the author of The Cinematic Footprint: Lights, Cameras, Natural Resources, a work of film theory. She is currently Assistant Professor of English at Carleton University in Ottawa.
About the Publisher
House of Anansi Press was founded in 1967 with a mandate to publish Canadian-authored books, a mandate that continues to this day even as the list has branched out to include internationally acclaimed thinkers and writers. The press immediately gained attention for significant titles by notable writers such as Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, George Grant, and Northrop Frye. Since then, Anansi's commitment to finding, publishing and promoting challenging, excellent writing has won it tremendous acclaim and solid staying power. Today Anansi is Canada's pre-eminent independent press, and home to nationally and internationally bestselling and acclaimed authors such as Gil Adamson, Margaret Atwood, Ken Babstock, Peter Behrens, Rawi Hage, Misha Glenny, Jim Harrison, A. L. Kennedy, Pasha Malla, Lisa Moore, A. F. Moritz, Eric Siblin, Karen Solie, and Ronald Wright. Anansi is also proud to publish the award-winning nonfiction series The CBC Massey Lectures. In 2007, 2009, 2010, and 2011 Anansi was honoured by the Canadian Booksellers Association as "Publisher of the Year."