by Terry Griggs
Our journey was a long one, and to fill the time we knocked back a bottle or two, counted out-of-province licence plates, woolgathered, and shot the shit. (Me, literally, which occasioned a roadside stop or two.) For some reason, Viv got to reminiscing about her old boyfriends—the lunch bucket, the meal ticket, the sweetie pie. You might think that the objects of her affection belonged in a cafeteria rather than in her heart, but in her heart they were firmly lodged, especially the sweetie pie.
“Mmm, what a hunk, one good-looking guy… and nice, Hero, real nice. He had this kooky name, Boniface, but we all called him Boner. Or Bony Part. He’d laugh. Great sense of humour. There’s times, you know, I think to myself, Viv, Viv, why did you ever leave that boy? Why?”
Heck, everyone in town knew the answer to that. She’d had a fling with Uncle Clyde, got knocked up, married… and miscarried. Poor Viv, poor baby. She had me, at least, and I loved her like a mother, and my mother loved someone else, not like a child. Right this minute was my guess.
“So where is he now, I got to thinking? Lately, I’ve been kinda… I dunno, wondering.” Viv pulled out and began passing a whole line of cars that were meekly trailing behind a logging truck poking along the twisty road. “What’s he doing? I know he worked in the mines for awhile. Might have settled in the city. Did he get married, have kids?” She’d almost made it, when a car whipped around a curve on the other side, heading straight for us at top speed. “Did he ever get over losing me? It hurt him bad, what happened, ya know. Swore up and down he’d never forget me. Think of that.” She jerked the wheel abruptly and forced the car into the slimmest of openings in the line of traffic, causing the guy behind us to brake and swerve dangerously, while leaning furiously on his horn. Viv, unruffled, casually gave him the finger. “So, you see, honey, I. . . .”
All very exciting, too exciting, for at this point, overcome with weariness, I fell into a troubled sleep, dream-stitching together the disparate images and impressions of the brimming day with uneasiness the only thread.
When I awoke, the car had stopped moving and Viv was no longer in it. Gone. GONE. Before I could work up a windshield-shattering scream, my attention was drawn by a tap tapping sound. Viv! Standing in a telephone booth directly outside and gabbing away to someone on the phone, she rapped on the glass, while at the same time waggling her eyebrows at me. I replied by waving my arms joyfully and kicking my feet like crazy, until one of my fucking booties flew off.
“Uck!” I said. “Bork!”
“Hey, kiddo! We’re on.” Viv slid back into the car, twitchy with excitement. “Easy peasy, who woulda thought.” She peeled away from the curb without looking behind to check for traffic, causing more brake-squealing and horn-blatting, to which she seemed completely oblivious.
More houses than I had ever seen before flashed past—houses and stores and more houses and throngs of people and traffic and fast food joints and lights and signs. The enormity of it all left me speechless. While no more than a grungy, down-on-its-luck mining town, it was no less an eye-opener (and lip-zipper) to me than a tour of New York would have been. Auntie Viv had gone quiet, too, and her colour was high. She drove on at a clip and smoothly navigated a maze of streets as if pulled along by some otherworldly force. And truly, I had the discomfiting sensation that the reality of the day had sprung a few leaks.
Viv pulled into the driveway of a poky, stuccoed, heart-sinker of a bungalow and parked behind a battered, hearse-black station wagon. The house, as I say, had a dispiriting air, in that it was too determinedly neat and tidy. A battle against entropy had been waged here with limited resources. Fortunately, I didn’t have to look at the place as Viv strode toward it. She held me snug against her chest and I could feel her heartbeat quickening. With her past slam-dunking into her present, it was one active organ in there trying to keep time with her expectations.
A white plastic deck chair sat on the front stoop awaiting an arse to fill it. As Auntie Viv always needed lots of room to manoeuver, she nudged the chair off the stoop with her knee and it toppled over onto the buzz-cut lawn, legs in the air—an easy victory. The very second she rapped on the door, it jerked open and we were greeted (hardly the right word) by a woman of some heft and no evident charm. She blocked the threshold, adopted an arms-folded, combat stance, and aimed her small eyes at us as though her face were some sort of weapon. Craning my neck around to stare at her, I knew for certain that if there were any children at all in this household they were simmering in pots on the back stove.
“Yah?” she said. “You the one who called?”
“That’s me,” said Viv brightly. She tried peering around the woman to see inside, as did I. I could hear pot lids rattling in the kitchen, the kids escaping as steam. “Boniface in? You said he was home.”
The woman glared at her. And then—at me.
“Boner?” Viv tried again. “I’m an old friend of his, like I said.”
“Boner, is it? Nah, he’s not in. He’s in somewheres else. Ya know, you gotta nerve callin’ up like that. I wanted to see what one of his gals looked like. And I’ll tell you somethin’, you’re not so hot. You’re an old friend all right, real old.”
Viv now gave this woman a closer and more discerning inspection, as though examining fecal matter for undigested roughage. “Pardon me,” she said.
“You heard me.” Then indicating me with her chin, “Don’t try to tell me that’s his brat, neither. I know what you’re after and you’re not gonna get away with it. Good Lord , look at it, look at it. It’s got rouge on. Nuthin’ but a little whore… just like its mother.”
This may have been true about my mother, but having been reduced to an “it” and an it-of-the-night at that, I personally wasn’t feeling overly well-nourished by the milk of human kindness, and dearly hoping—and expecting—that Auntie Viv would punch this witch flat as a carpet. Instead, Viv shoved the woman aside and breezed into the living room. She headed straight to a monster sideboard that had an oppressive bank of family photos arrayed on top.
“Hey,” the woman shouted. “Where d’you think you’re goin’? You can’t come in here.”
Viv plucked a heavy, gaudily framed photograph out of the very heart of this morbid assembly, all mop-topped, shiny-faced hag spawn. She studied the picture with an utterly neutral expression. You had to admire her control, for the object in hand was a wedding photo, the wedding photo.
“Got an eyeful? Satisfied? He loves me, see. Always will. Not that it’s any of yer business.” The woman gave her housedress a fastidious tug. “So go stick your big nose somewhere else.”
The cow. This news must have pained Auntie Viv something awful, but gazing up at her I saw the tiniest flicker of amusement cross her face. She stepped back quickly and in so doing snagged a dustball from underneath the sideboard on the pointy toe of her shoe. Slut’s wool, as Aunt Faith calls the stuff, a domestic and poor-woman’s version of the golden fleece, although this one was distinctly penile in shape and remarkably long. More hare than bunny. We both gaped at it.
“Holy,” Viv snorted. “A big one.”
Our hostess, patchily red in the face and moist of upper lip, responded to this compliment in an oddly compressed tone, as though she were cooking her tongue in her mouth. “Get out,” she said. “Get out of my house or I’m callin’ the police.”
“You do that, honey,” said Viv, and holding out the picture frame in her hand like a plow, she cleared the sideboard of family members, wiped it clean. Away they went—briefly taking flight before smashing onto the floor, picture glass cracking and shards spraying up. “That’s better.” And for good measure, she next cleared the coffee table of knickknacks: a souvenir ashtray from Niagara Falls (where else?), a fussy maroon candy dish covered in a rash of glass bumps, two Blue Mountain pottery swans, a ceramic bulldog with mad, mismatched eyes (which I kind of liked), and a duo of cheapo figurines. “Can’t stand this tacky gar
bage, can you Hero?”
It did look much better in motion, a flurry of fragments, beaks, arms, and tiny heads on the roll. Action kitsch.
By this time, the lady of the house had found her voice again and was screaming her own head off, auditioning for a heart attack. Viv tossed the wedding photo onto the wreckage and we were out of there. She skedaddled to the car as fast as one can in high heels, but before hopping in, stopped behind the station wagon and kicked out its back lights. Ha!
In a jiff, we were roaring down city streets, squealing around corners, laying rubber like outlaw girl stars in a car chase scene. Only no one was chasing us. Viv appeared flushed and animated, so alive there seemed to be sparks flying out of her golden helmet of hair. After a bit, she slowed down, saying, “No cops? Huh, maybe the old douchebag passed out, cut her head on the glass and bled to death.”
I chortled.
Then she shrugged and said, “Heh. Wrong guy.”
“Waaaa?!”
“How was I supposed to know? Name’s in the phone book. Boner’s name, his first and last, how common is that? Smith, sure, there’s a bunch of those around, but his first name, eh. Boniface, eh. That’s real different.” Viv cracked a smile. “Man, her hubby’s gonna catch it when he gets home. The cheat. Can’t say as I blame him… hey wait, did you hear that? Listen.”
Auntie Viv slowed almost to a stop while we attended to a thin whine, a needle of a sound that quickly grew louder, more piercing, closer.
“Uh-oh,” she said, picking up speed again. She skimmed along for a stretch, looking left and right, assessing side streets for potential hideouts. Sundry exhilarating zigzags later, she took a sharp turn, restraining me with her arm so that I wouldn’t fly like a putto out of my apple basket, and passed through a pillared gate with a wrought-iron sign arching overtop that read (for those who can do it): Laurel Grove Cemetery (with not a laurel in sight). We drove some distance down a lane until we came to a squat stone house that looked like a Palladian home for midgets. Viv pulled in beside it, which concealed the car from view. While the old bomb sputtered and eased into silence, she sniffed once, twice, and then turned to me, saying, “Something stinks.”
Too right. I’d been engaged in my own dirty business back at the scene of the crime, and was gratified to be finally receiving some credit for it. Efficient in this as in all else, Viv soon had me stretched out on a bench, making small talk while she worked (saving me face and rear), pausing to listen as the siren passed by the cemetery and then diminished in the distance. This made her chuckle again—I loved the low rumble of it—and she gave me a quick wink. Job done, she hoisted me up into her arms and we started to stroll along the grassy pathways, surveying the headstones in a mildly curious way, occasionally stopping to read an inscription. Her mood was light, her interest in these terse biographies detached and scant. We sauntered past low hillocks and humps, wandering through this decorous and orderly gathering of final selves as if it were a normal and pleasant place to take a constitutional.
But there was danger here, and it found us.
One minute Viv stood at a safe enough distance, completely untouched, and the next that distance had slammed up against her, a fist to the chest. I felt her flinch, then stagger slightly. She whirled around—I saw no one, no deliverer of shocks, no stinging wasp—and she retraced her steps hurriedly, almost at a run. Her heart again, and again, her feet, faster, faster.
“God,” she said. “My God.” We arrived back at the bench and she sank down, gingerly, as though she had grown suddenly frail. It was so unlike her that I let go a whimper, and she gripped me tighter. “Don’t mind me, Hero. It’s nothing. Nothing,” she repeated. But this nothing was not empty—it had cold contents. I shivered. She held me so close that her pores aligned with mine and I began to feel her alarm filter into me, filling me up like an urn. I had hardly enough body to contain it, this adult overflow of grief. “I never knew,” she said. “All these years… and no one told me?” I began to wail, and so did she. We wept noisily like this for some time, until we were interrupted.
Rudely interrupted, in my view, although Viv seemed to welcome it.
A man in a dark suit stood over us, an expression of sympathy and concern on his face. A striking face, a dissembling face. How did I know this? Well, I wasn’t born yesterday, was I?
“I’m so sorry,” he said. “Is it a loved one? Can I help?”
Auntie Viv shook her head and wiped her eyes, smearing the sleeve of her blouse with streaks of Maybelline. “Thanks, no, I’m okay,” she said, followed by a loud sniff.
He smiled. Her age I’d say, and yes, very handsome, debonair streaks of white in his dark hair. Tentatively, she smiled back, and then set me down beside her. Mistake!
“Boy or girl?” he asked pleasantly, nodding at me, the indeterminate it.
“Girl. Isn’t she gorgeous?” Nice complement, but Viv’s tone was off, kind of flirty. She liked this guy?
“She’s very pretty,” he said. “Like her mother.”
Oh, come on!
Viv tittered.
No, no, no!
He reached out to scrumble the fuzz on the top of my head and I shrieked. Get squashed, troglodyte!
“Ignore her,” Viv said, treacherously. “She doesn’t know you is all.”
The man opened his hands, Jesus-style, and made his pitch. “We could remedy that. I’d love to buy you two ladies a refreshment. There’s a café not far from here, a great spot. They serve spirits, too, if that’s your fancy. What do you say?”
Say no. Please.
“Hmm, gee, I dunno. We should be getting back. I suppose one drink wouldn’t hurt.… I could use a stiff one, if you wanna know the truth.”
Ha, ha. Christ, Viv.
The man clapped his hands together, producing a final, bargain-with-the-devil crack that made me wince. “Wonderful. Might as well take my car.”
“Sure, yeah. I’ll grab my purse.”
As Viv hustled over to our car, the man bent down and stared at me, his gaze entirely altered. I was petrified.
“Stupid little bitch,” he said quietly.
Viv returned pronto, digging deep in her purse. Her medicine pouch, her bag of tricks. “Want a smoke?”
The man stood up, quickly resuming a kindly expression. “Thanks, but no, not for me. Gave it up years ago.”
“How about this then?”
Viv whipped out her spare can of hairspray, got her trigger finger on the nozzle, and gave him a full blast in the face. She sprayed him like a bug and he crumpled like one, groaning, hands over his eyes, too shocked and pained for immediate outrage. Quickly, quickly, she snatched me up from the bench and took off, her nails digging into me. Once again we were on the run, in the car, roaring through those black, woeful gates, and gone.
“Viviviviviviv.” You hear what I’m saying? My name may have been Hero, but she, Viv, was mine once again.
And to seal it, she said, “Aw, hell, sweetheart. Let’s forget that slimeball and go for some ice cream.”
On the outskirts of the city, she pulled in at a fast food stand. After she got out of the car and retrieved me from the other side, we waited in line behind a party of nuns who were all dressed in white and speaking French. They were incredibly lovely, I thought. Unhurried and serene. I was entranced by their exotic language and by how the wind moved among them, fluttering their white habits and veils. Every single one of them ordered vanilla ice cream cones and we did, too, to be companionable, although I’m more of a Bubblegum person myself, and Viv’s a Tiger Tail. We stood around smiling and nodding at the nuns, and they smiled and nodded back, and we all sucked contentedly on those sweet, pure, melting scoops of ice cream. I tell you, it did our hearts and souls a wondrous amount of good.
The only downer? We were late in getting home. But then, Mother was late, too.
Very. “My lat
e mother,” I might have said if I could have, only it wasn’t death that took her.
Bigmouth
1
There was a time in my extreme youth when I stopped speaking. I’d had my say. Enough, enough. One day I paused in mid-sentence to take a breath and a great tide of air rushed into my mouth and bore my words back up into my brain. Keep them, I thought. Burnish them to a higher sheen and hoard them. Mark this (I also thought): the time will come when my detractors will crawl to me on hands and knees, their heads empty as beggars’ bowls, pleading for one wordy crumb, that’s all!, some paltry token from my vast—and by then compounded—investment.
But, my spendthrift days were over. For years my silver tongue had tolled almost unstoppably. I could be absolutely relied upon to deliver commentary on failings of family life, along with critiques and crisp assessments of anyone who lived within shooting range. Besides this, I tossed off clever asides on more general themes, likewise aphorisms, puns, and bon mots that were sheathed in the luminous and crackling golden foil of my wit. Mine was a richness of expression known around the house, otherwise and regrettably, as Hero’s “prattle” or “gibberish.” To say that I was underappreciated does not even begin to say enough. My mother had taken to stuffing cotton balls in her ears and wearing earmuffs, or breaking out into spontaneous acts of vacuuming whenever I cleared my throat. Father was more receptive and attentive, although after listening to me for an extended period, his face would take on a worn and exhausted expression, as if what I had to say made no more sense than what the wind had been saying forever to the eroded brow of the shore.
So, I paused. I paused and silence fell among us. Like a benediction, I gather. At first my parents looked around inquisitively, blinking like Sleeping Beauties newly awakened, faint, puzzled smiles forming on their lips, for they couldn’t quite identify what was happening. Then simultaneously—and guardedly—they looked at me. I went about my business, pulling the head off my doll and snapping it back on with a gratifying pop. (Perhaps I’ll become a doctor instead of a lawyer, I mused, considering how my communicative skills will no longer be exercised.) I knew what they were thinking. Not that I might be unwell, or sick at heart, or conducting a protest, or suffering an artistic crisis—speaker’s block—but, that carried along by some unheralded developmental surge, I had passed through my yakkety-yak phase, my prolonged and painful bout of verbal colic. They were thinking—now that they could hear themselves do it—that I had finally become a bonafide member not only of our family, but of the whole human community. I had become normal, that is. Which is to say, repressed and fumbling and ever proving the lamentable inadequacy of language as it is usually deployed.