Various Positions

by Martha Schabas

  “Won’t he just stay here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Her answer strikes me as strange, or maybe it’s the way she’s said it, each word spoken so slowly that it splits from the one beside it.

  “Why wouldn’t he stay here?”

  She turns to me. Her eyes are still but there’s so much happening inside them that they look extra dark now, black. “I don’t know anything about this woman. I don’t know what she wants.”

  “Who are you talking about?”

  “I think you know, Georgia.”

  She goes back to packing books again and I just stand there and watch the way her sleeves fall over her hands as she bends down.

  “No, I don’t,” I say. “I have no idea.”

  I think it’s my quietness that catches her. If I’d raised my voice, I don’t think she’d be turning to me the way she is now. She stares into my eyes, first like she’s trying to gauge my sincerity and then with something else. It’s a merciful look, softening down her neck.

  “Your dad has met someone. A woman. He’s having a relationship with this woman.”

  “Oh.”

  “I kind of thought you had figured that out.”

  I nod as though I might have figured it out, then turn to the bookshelf so that she can’t see my face. I wonder if this is what it feels like to get beat up, when all your bruises bleed into one bruise, and that combo of pain takes over your whole body. I bring my fingers to the corners of my eyes to push back tears.

  “Is it Pilar?” I ask.

  “What?” My mom sniggers. “Of course not. Where on earth did you get that idea?”

  I can’t answer. I’m not sure where I got any of my ideas anymore. Wherever it is, it’s the wrong place, like someone gave me bad directions ages ago, maybe when I was just a baby, and never bothered to correct the mistake.

  “So you’re getting a divorce because Dad’s screwing around with some slut?”

  She comes over to me and wraps her arms around me from behind. The tears flow freely now, like the hug has squeezed them out of me.

  “Well, it definitely hasn’t helped things,” she says.

  “So it has nothing to do with what happened before?”

  “Before what?”

  But I have no idea how to put my question into words, how to ask about bad things that happened years ago when she was only Isabel’s age.

  “It has to do with a hundred things, George,” she says while she hugs me tighter. “I think that’s generally the way these things work.”

  We go back to packing the books, and when we’ve finished, she goes to the kitchen and pours us both glasses of juice. We sit at the dining room table, drink.

  “We’ll leave in an hour, okay? You should get a bag together.”

  I feel like I can’t move. I drill my elbow into an eye in the wood, fight the urge to climb onto the table and lie down, become a body on a stretcher. But I find my feet and drag them through the alcove. The living room looks undressed without books. Light slings over the mantel and my eyes are pulled to a border of reflective chrome, a knickknack picture frame that must have been a gift. The photo wasn’t taken all that long ago and I wonder who stuck it up there—my dad, who looks like he barely tolerated the moment, or my mom, who stares at the lens like she’s begging it for help.

  I go up to my room, where I take an overnight bag from my closet and start to fill it with the obvious things: socks, pajamas, T-shirts. Inside the top drawer of my dresser is a neon garden of dots and stripes, all the things my mom bought me. I bundle the underwear into my arms and go to drop it in the bag, but my eyes latch on to another photo, my mom with a bundle of her own, a baby’s head resting in her elbow. It was always her expression that struck me as embarrassing in this shot, her laugh-aloud smile and lolling summertime head, like a kid stuck in a grown-up’s body. But now I think about the photographer, the much older man with the camera pointed at his new life. What had my dad been thinking? What was it like to step out of one life and move straight into another, as though the steps didn’t go up or down but wound so snug to his body that they barely displaced him at all? I open the next drawer and pack a bunch of tights and the only two black leotards that aren’t in the laundry. Maybe this is the true difference between my dad and me, the fact that a dancer’s steps are constant, heartfelt, while he sits stiff in the front row, shadows of wives and daughters doing the moving instead. I place my ballet slippers on the pile, zip up my bag and pull my door shut tight, hear the latch click in its hollow.

  “You ready?” My mom faces me from the bottom of the stairs, her expression squeezed into a happiness that neither of us believes.

  I take my parka from where I left it on the banister and she points at my wrist.

  “What’s that?”

  Scribbled, vein side up, is Kareem’s smudged printing.

  “Nothing.” I ram my arm through my sleeve. “Is it okay if I go to a party tomorrow?”

  “Oh, Georgia.” She shakes her head and pouts. “Of course it is. Things will go on as they normally do. I promise you they will.”

  “Okay.” I stuff my other arm into its sleeve. “Just checking.”

  We drive through the city without saying much, the grays and whites of winter dragging what’s left of themselves beneath the car.

  EIGHTEEN

  The next night, my mom drops me off at the academy residence and as I get out of the car she hands me a sealed envelope. I turn it around in my hand, press the pad of one finger into the needle prick of its corner.

  “What’s this?”

  “I’ve written down all the information you might need, the hotel address and phone number and my cell … I know, I know, you have it memorized. I’ve put a little money in there too. Just in case. Call me when you get up in the morning. I’ll come pick you up.”

  I’ve told my mom that I’m sleeping here tonight, in Chantal’s empty bed, even though I haven’t asked Sixty. I say thanks and try not to slam the car door.

  The supervisor buzzes me into the building and I tear a zigzag into the envelope as I climb the stairs. A note ripped from my mom’s day planner folds over five stiff twenties fresh from the bank machine. I tuck it all back in and knock on Sixty’s door. She doesn’t seem surprised to see me and still has that guilty look smudged into her features, every gesture a tiny apology. It only makes me madder. A door closes down the hallway and Veronica moves toward us in her bathrobe, two shampoo-type bottles balanced in the crook of one arm while she juggles a towel and toiletry bag with the other one.

  “You guys going to this thing?”

  “What thing?” Sixty asks her.

  “That party.”

  “I don’t think so,” Sixty says.

  “Definitely!” I say, and when Veronica looks at me strangely, I add, “For sure!”

  Veronica goes into the bathroom and Sixty tells me she’s off to the cafeteria for dinner, says I can eat there as her guest. I tell her I’m not hungry and drop my overnight bag on Chantal’s bed, lay the envelope on top of it. Then I go after Veronica to make sure it’s okay if I go to the party with her. The water is already rushing full blast in the first shower stall, so I move to the mirror and pretend to fix my hair. Veronica screams that she’s nicked her ankle and in a second she’s pushed back the plastic curtain and hobbles to the counter. A crimson rivulet trails behind her on the tiles, thin as unraveled yarn. We fix our hair side by side in the mirror, her towel at her armpits and me still in my parka, the furry lining going steamy on the back of my neck. She pulls a mesh of blond from the purple plastic teeth of her comb, leaves it balled beside the sink. I ask her if I can use her gel. She raises her eyebrows instead of saying yes and the goop is chilly on my fingers.

  “Kareem says he went to school with you.”

  I shrug to say, So what?

  “What are you wearing tonight?” she asks.

  I’m in jeans and an ordinary sweater and haven’t brought anything better. She twis
ts the cap back on her gel and makes sure her towel is tucked tightly.

  “You can borrow something. I have a million things.”

  I follow Veronica back to her dorm room. She reaches into the top drawer of the dresser and tosses a bundle of things onto the lower bunk. I’m struck by fabrics like stained glass, see-through clothes that suck at the light and make blinding colors on the mattress sheet. She starts rifling through them and I pick at the things she discards.

  “Here.”

  She pushes something at me. It’s electric blue and I can’t tell whether it’s a top or a bottom until I hold it out in front of me. Sparkles are scattered through the material, but the mechanics of how they stick are invisible, as though sewn with transparent thread. It’s a halter dress that ties around the neck. I take off everything but my underwear and Veronica pulls it over my head. She moves behind me and ties it tight at the big vertebra at the top of my spine. I feel sandpaper crystals on my stomach. Veronica shoves me in front of the mirror so that she can analyze my whole reflection. Her hands clamp the crown of my head, like the teeth of a clip from the hairdresser’s.

  “You look older with your hair up. If you had your hair like this and I didn’t know you, I’d think you were sixteen.”

  She opens a cosmetic bag with a design of cartoon flowers pressed inside rings of lattice and hands me an uncapped lipstick. I put it on. Nobody has lips this color. The dress is cut low enough to show the tops of my boobs. I stare at my reflection and think I look better than I ever have.

  I have to go back to Sixty’s room to get my purse, and as I leave, Veronica tells me the dress is mine forever.

  “There might be more occasions, now that there’s no ballet.”

  “It will start again soon,” I say.

  “You know Roderick resigned, right? He put in his letter yesterday.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Mary in grade twelve.”

  I shut the door and walk down the hall. It could just be a stupid rumor but I can’t control my panic. I try to remember the exact things I said to Isabel on the phone. Were they enough to get him in trouble? The possibility does something new to me. It fills me with a heaviness that twists and heaves, something I want to grab hold of and wring out.

  Sixty is sitting on the lower bunk, already back from the cafeteria. Her back is pin straight, regal even. No one sits like that when they’re alone and I know she must be waiting for me. I pull a pair of tights from my overnight bag and step into them, grip the waistband to hoist them up. I wish I had high heels but I can’t ask Sixty if I can wear hers, so I just shove my feet into my snow boots. I bring a tiny purse with just enough room for the flyer, take just one of the twenties my mom gave me, because the money will be safer here.

  “I’ve made a big decision,” Sixty says, and it’s not even clear she’s talking to me, because she’s staring at her slippers.

  Ignore her, I think, act like you haven’t heard. I take the list of information my mom scribbled and fold it into rectangles over and over until it’s the size of a gum wrapper and then I put it in the purse too.

  “I’m leaving,” she says.

  “Leaving where?”

  “The academy. My dad got me into a private school.”

  We look at each other and I just say, “Are you stupid?”

  She shakes her head at me and sighs like she’s suddenly a decade older, and it makes me mad enough to kick things. I send my boot into the closet door and even the handle rattles.

  “What about ballet?” I demand.

  “I don’t know. I’m not sure I want to do it anymore.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I might quit.”

  It catches in my throat, her answer, and my whole body wants to hiccup or shake or scream. I should say a thousand things but they all judder in my head and my lips become useless. Veronica and Anushka knock on the door and ask if I’m ready. I zip up my parka and just leave.

  It’s past eight and the night hangs limply from the sky, too lazy to rain or snow. I won’t think about Sixty now. I’ll follow these other girls and forget things. Veronica has put on high boots with heels like big fangs. She has to leap over puddles of slush and after a few minutes her toes are capped with triangles of salt. Still, I wish I were wearing them. The party is in Cabbagetown, which means we have to walk east to Parliament Street, then jog a little north. The cold will eat through my gloves soon, so I ball my hands up inside of them and stick my fists in my pockets.

  “If it’s lame we should go to a club,” says Anushka.

  “It won’t be,” Veronica says. “Trust me, it will not be lame.”

  I see the party and hear it at the same time. There are kids clustered out front of the house, and we hear talk and shouts and laughter. We walk down the sidewalk toward it. No one notices us approach, but I still feel like everyone’s watching. I try to seem busy and aloof. My parka covers my whole dress so I’m just ballet tights and boots, and I hate myself for how stupid it must look. I open my purse and rifle for an imaginary cell phone. We move up the path to the front door, and Veronica waves at someone and calls out “What’s going on” like it’s a lyric from a song, and then we’re pushing past the murk of cigarette smoke into the hallway.

  Veronica and Anushka take their jackets off and drop them on the landing where a hundred others have been left. I take mine off too, try to put it neatly in the corner by the wall so I’ll be able to find it later. It feels like rush hour in the subway. People clog the hallway in tight clumps, leaning against walls with bottles in hand. There is music coming from the room on the right. When I turn my head, I see a few girls dancing in a group, four or five of them in the center of the room making a kind of lopsided circle. A sofa’s been pushed beneath the window so that it’s out of the way and under it is a carpet rolled into a tight coil. The girls raise their arms above their heads, letting their bodies dangle and drift below. One begins to sing along with extra feeling, the way people sing national anthems in old movies, and then another girl does too, placing her head on the first girl’s shoulder. Her eyes are closed and she moves her hips slowly from side to side. It’s weird watching nondancers dance. Their bodies have no purpose and they don’t care, let them hang soft and shameless and lazy. I wonder what these girls do in the evenings, what they think about when they go to bed, because this will be Sixty now, just a boring person.

  Anushka tugs on my arm to pull me through the hallway. It’s jammed with people but I outtalk my nerves. This is what I want, to dive into everything and think only about things that are in front of me, things I can actually see, the boys and girls who lean against the wall, their brown-glass bottles and plaid shirts and easy swearwords and all the things that are just so hilarious right this second that their heads whiplash back. In the kitchen, someone says hi to Veronica, and she and Anushka are absorbed into the crowd, leaving me with a fridge to lean against or maybe the counter, the knobs of drawers to rest my hands on. There’s a gap between two girls I don’t know, an entry point, and I edge my way toward it because maybe then I’ll be sucked in too.

  Then I hear my name. I turn in the direction of the voice. Kareem has stepped in from the backyard and he’s standing on the doormat, kicking his sneakers into a bit of thatched rug. There’s another guy with him too, as tall as Kareem and probably as broad. They move toward me, heavy in the arms, and it looks funny to me, this carelessness in both of their bodies, as though I’m being approached by two animals from the same herd.

  “Where’s your beer?” Kareem asks.

  I shrug and laugh like I think this is a pretty crazy oversight too. The laughter comes easily and it actually feels good. The other guy ogles Veronica’s back and I turn so I can see what he’s seeing. Her blond hair hooks eyes. Veronica must hear something behind her, or maybe she can even feel the guy’s stare, because she looks over her shoulder. The guy waves—I guess he knows her—and in a moment they’re talking, Veronica tracing the thi
n skin inside her elbow with her finger while she presses one hip out.

  “Georgia?” Kareem’s looking at me like I’ve missed something. “Do you wanna go grab a beer?”

  “Sure.”

  I expect Kareem to move in toward the fridge, but he gestures with his head to the back door.

  “Let’s go downstairs. There’s another fridge there.”

  I don’t get what the difference is, but I won’t ask. I worry about getting separated from the other girls, but if I stay here, I’ll have no one to talk to. We leave the kitchen and go down some carpeted stairs. The music down here is different. It’s boy music with heavy bass and angry lyrics. The lights are dimmed and the ceilings are low. I follow him from one room into another. I can feel the air between my thighs as I move, and I press my hands down the sides of my dress. There’s a couch where a girl and guy are sitting together. Her legs are stretched over his lap and I can’t see his face because it’s stuck between her neck and her long hair. I feel a hand in mine and Kareem pulls me toward a corner. The suddenness of us touching, the private fleshiness of his palm, makes me nervous. But I tell my brain to screw off. This is what I want, all this normal stuff.

  He goes to get us beer and I stand by myself, look at the people scattered around the periphery of the room. Some are leaning against the walls and others sit on the carpet with their backs curved and their legs crossed. I’m standing in the middle of everything, like a buoy popping high in a harbor. Kareem pushes a beer into my hand. Its coldness is surprising and reverberates all the way down my spine to its root. He brings the neck of his bottle to his lips and drinks. His Adam’s apple bobs with each gulp and I see it like a shadow, something bulging in the dark. I bring my bottle to my lips and force back a sip. The beer tastes flat and sharp at the same time. I take a second sip and try to brace myself for the flavor with the muscles around my mouth. The effort aches at the base of my jaw but I gulp it back for as long as I can. This is just the thing that will help me. I want to be drunk now, badly. I have no idea how much I’ll need to drink.