by Beth Goobie
“Wade Sullivan’s in love?” another voice asked dubiously.
“Blind love,” said the first voice. “We’re talking eyes-gouged-out-of-the-head blind. Take a look at it.”
Behind Shir, someone seemed to be pointing her out. Without glancing back, she could feel the sudden intensity of eyes focused on her back.
“What? That?” demanded a voice, disbelieving.
Shir didn’t wait to hear the rest of it. Practically launching herself through her homeroom doorway, she veered to the right and scurried down the wall aisle. Back corner desk—it was the seat she always headed for, and this year she had been lucky enough to snag it in homeroom. She was supposed to have a partner—all the desks in this room were two-seaters—but on the first day of classes, the other desks had filled up quickly, leaving her sitting alone. That was all right, she had eventually decided. She wasn’t the only one, and besides, it saved her having to make conversation. Conversations, especially in the morning, especially in homeroom, were a disease.
Sliding onto the stool at her desk, Shir opened her binder to the first empty page and sat staring at it. Years ago, she had discovered that empty pages were a good way to blank the mind and get rid of all the things she didn’t want to think about. Eyes narrowed, she concentrated on the page’s white areas, blurring out the blue and pink lines, and trying to turn her brain into nothing. But this morning, her gray cells refused to cooperate. Instead, a crowd of voices started up inside her head—mean, ugly, school-hall, power-trip kinds of voices.
Eyes-gouged-out-of-the-head blind. Take a look at it.
What, that?
It was happening the way she had figured it would—the blind-love joke was too good to let die after only one kick at the can. No, it was worth at least a week of cheap shots, and then there was the “love by Braille” line. That one had enough going to last another few weeks. With luck, they could keep tossing it around until mid-May.
A snicker sounded, and Shir heard the slide of jeans on varnished wood as the girls seated ahead of her turned around on their stools. “So, how was Dana’s party?” a voice asked casually.
Shir’s eyes narrowed. Jenny Shamayyim and Bev Mulholland were grade ten nobodies—heavy on the makeup, tight on the jeans, two very basic metalheads from the curbside smoking crowd. They certainly hadn’t been at Dana’s party Saturday night, and whatever they had heard, it was scraps.
“It was fine,” she said, forcing herself to meet their gaze. People’s faces did weird things when she looked them dead-on. It was the complete blankness in her eyes, she was sure of it—that pale, boundaryless blue that gave back nothing, nothing. Focusing on the sensation of pure nothingness in her eyes, Shir stared the two girls down. Whatever happened here, she reminded herself sternly, she had to make sure her nostrils didn’t flare.
The girls’ gaze flickered and their sneers wavered slightly. “Just fine?” giggled Jenny and rolled her eyes at Bev.
“Seen better,” Shir said coolly, zeroing in on Jenny’s left pupil. It was a trick she often used that allowed her to blur out the rest of a person’s face. Then it was like talking to a black smudge, or perhaps the period at the end of a sentence. Period, as in over, time’s up, see ya later, loser.
“So, did you see Wade?” asked Bev, leaning forward eagerly.
“Yeah,” Shir said tersely. Now it was her gaze that was wavering. Angrily, she forced it back to Bev’s face. “I saw him,” she added grimly.
The girls grinned at each other. “Oh, yeah,” said Jenny, “Well, did he—”
“Well, nothing,” snapped Shir, the blood beginning to pound in her cheeks. Goddam it, she could feel it—any second now, her nostrils were going to flare. If that happened, they would expand at least a centimeter. They would be titanic, gargantuan, a monstrosity. Screaming at her nostrils in her mind, willing them to remain calm, relaxed, and of reasonable human diameter, Shir refocused on a beauty spot Jenny had drawn above her upper lip.
“Just nothing,” she repeated, trying to keep her voice steady. “Nothing happened, all right? Nothing.”
For a long, stretched moment she stared at the girls and they stared back, the air between them taut as the skin over the pulse in a throat. “Okay,” Jenny said finally, glancing at Bev. “No need to freak about it. You look like a dork when you stare at people like that, you know.”
“I know,” Shir said evenly, keeping her gaze fixed on the beauty spot. Years of experience had taught her that a minimal response was safest. After all, it was difficult to maintain an all-out, no-holds-barred, aim-for-the-jugular assault on a void. And if anyone was an expert at transforming herself into an absolute void at whim, it was Shirley Jane Rutz. For several seconds longer, the two girls continued to stare at her. Then, with a sniff, Bev turned to face the front of the room, followed by Jenny. As soon as their backs were turned, Shir went into meltdown—her stomach, her spine, even her brain dissolving into a series of nauseating puddles. Letting her eyes drop, she focused on the blank page in front of her and just got rid of it.
With a quick breath, Shir stepped up onto the ramshackle stoop, knocked rapidly, and jumped back to the grass. Then, retreating several steps, she waited. As expected, it took Gareth almost a minute to come to the door, and when he finally arrived, the first thing he did was lift a slat in the window’s ancient venetian blind and peer out balefully. After ensuring that she wasn’t a cop or social worker, he opened the door, poked out his miserable seventy-proof head, and sniffed blearily at the air.
Shir rolled her eyes. They went through this routine every time. “Beer,” she said tersely. “How many d’you got?”
“It’ll cost you $3.50 a can,” said Gareth, scratching his unshaven jaw.
Shir’s mouth dropped. “Three-fifty!” she almost shouted. “Last week it was three bucks.”
“Price of oil’s gone up,” said Gareth, studying her through heavy-lidded eyes. “When oil goes up, everything goes up. Cost of transportation, you know.”
Speechless, Shir glared. The cost of oil had goddam nothing to do with it. Gareth had what she wanted, and on a Monday afternoon he was her only option. He knew it and she knew it.
“Three-fifty for the first and three even for the second,” she bargained, swallowing hard.
“Three-fifty for both,” he replied coolly. “That’s seven dollars for two. If you want them, that is.”
Sucking in her breath, Shir fought to keep calm. She had nine dollars on her, enough—at last week’s price—to buy three cans. Whenever she came knocking on Gareth’s door, she brought exact change. Hand him extra and you could count on it being a sure loss.
“Okay,” she said grudgingly. “I’ll take two.”
A smug smile came and went on Gareth’s whiskery face. It was a smile she had seen often, and had learned to be wary of. A terminal welfare case, Gareth Fenske was a forty-something, dead-end loner always looking to make a buck. She had met him about a year ago, collecting bottles outside the liquor store, and had offered him a toonie to go inside and buy her a six-pack. He had bargained for the toonie and two beers. It hadn’t taken them long to come to a thorough understanding of each other.
“Want to come in?” he asked, his voice carefully casual.
“I’ll wait here,” Shir replied gruffly. It was the response she gave every time he asked. And he asked every time she showed up at his door, even though she would have had to be certifiably crazy to take him up on the offer. Gareth’s apartment was at the back of a dilapidated house that had been subdivided into low-rent units. His was the only apartment that could be entered from the building’s rear, and the yard was surrounded by a high wood fence. From the alley, no one could see who went into this door, or if they ever came back out. Gareth might not be blind, but he didn’t look picky, either, especially about issues like consent.
“Suit yourself,” he shrugged and disappeared from the doorway. A moment later, he returned and set two cans of Budweiser on the stoop.
“
Here,” Shir said grimly, and placed a five and a toonie in his outstretched hand. Then, bending down quickly, she grabbed both cans. Just that brief second of vulnerability, with the back of her neck exposed, was so excruciating, she almost went into vertigo. Flushed, her heart pounding, Shir managed a strangled, “Thanks,” then turned and booted it toward the gate. Once in the alley, she leaned against the fence and simply breathed, her ears peeled for the quiet click that would tell her Gareth had closed his door and gone inside. As usual, he had stood on the stoop and watched her walk all the way out of the yard. The guy was weird, she thought heavily. There were sicko little ghosties fluttering all around him.
Well, at least she had two beers. With a sigh, she placed the cans carefully into her gym bag. Then, slinging the bag over her shoulder, she unlocked the Black from a nearby fence and took off down the alley. It was 4:10, the afternoon yet young, and there was more than enough time to guzzle two beers before heading home for supper and family time. At the end of the alley, she turned left and booted it down the street. A steady stream of children was flowing along the sidewalk, little kids from a nearby elementary school. Little kids’ schools, Shir thought as her eyes skimmed the laughing faces, shouldn’t be allowed near houses that had people like Gareth living in them. There should be signs posted all over this block, especially up and down the alley, warning kids to stay clear.
When she reached the corner, she turned right and headed toward the river. Since she had left Gareth’s place, the sun had come out, giving the air a dusky golden glow. Earlier in the day it had rained, but now the sidewalk ahead of her was clear and dry. Which meant that the arches running along the underside of the nearby walking bridge would also be dry, and she would be able to park her butt on one of them in utmost comfort while she partook of life’s greatest pleasure. Whooping loudly, Shir veered off the road, across the sidewalk, and onto the muddy, faintly green lawn of an old Anglican church. Here she dismounted, walked her bike down a short slope to the parking lot behind the church, and locked it to a Parking—Church Patrons Only sign. Then she headed over to the footbridge.
She had visited this bridge at all times of day, but late afternoon was her favorite, when the sun slanted down in heavier angles and colored the concrete a warm amber. In the fall, it was prettiest, the trees scattering their vivid yellows up and down the river. Now, in early April, was probably the ugliest of times, with the last of the snow melted and all the winter grunge showing. Still, it was pleasant, a quiet restful scene—somewhere she could come like a lost thought looking for a home.
Myplace was what she called it, and the bridge seemed to know its name, seemed to agree that it belonged to her. Hiking her gym bag more securely over her shoulder, Shir lodged a foot between the base of the bridge’s outer pillar and the beginning of the first western support arch, and started her climb. There were four support arches under the bridge, two on each side, and she usually climbed to the peak of the first western one to catch the warmth of the afternoon sun. The trick was working her way around the outside of the vertical pillars that kept the arches in place, especially in winter when the concrete was icy, but so far she had made it without a problem. Once, she had even traveled both western arches, ending up on the opposite bank and the bottom of someone’s backyard. Their German shepherd had convinced her never to try that again.
Between the first and second pillars, the incline was steepest, and still layered with grit left behind by the melted snow. Holding onto the arch with both hands, Shir climbed slowly. This wasn’t difficult, the surface of the arch about a meter wide, and just before the second pillar, she momentarily straightened and stood midair with the breeze, watching the river flow past. Back on the bank, or even walking across the top of the bridge, a person didn’t get a sense of what it was like here, with the breeze coming low and full-out across the water, and the sun so golden glowing, unobstructed by buildings or trees. Eyes tranced, Shir leaned her cheek against the pillar’s warm concrete and stood, riding the breeze with her mind. Then, swinging her left foot around the second pillar’s outer edge, she stepped onto the next section of the arch. The incline leading to the third pillar was easier, just a simple crawl, and finally she was easing around that pillar onto the peak of the arch, seven meters above the water, where the breeze ran freest and the sun laid itself heated and dense across her skin.
Paradise, thought Shir, sliding her back down the pillar until she was sitting comfortably. With a sigh, she took the first can of Budweiser out of her gym bag. Three-fifty, she thought disgustedly, popping the tab. The price of oil. Hissing softly, she raised the can and saluted the late-afternoon sun. Then, putting the can to her lips, she drank steadily. Almost immediately, a burn started up in her gut, and she pounded her stomach gently with a balled-up fist.
“Shut up, tummy,” she scolded. “Don’t you know what’s good for you? This is medicine, stupid. Happy medicine for when things get down.”
Raising the can again, she drank until she was sucking the dregs. There, that was better, she thought. One beer down the hatch, and the world felt quiet and steady again. She reached into her gym bag, pulled out a sandwich bag, dropped the empty can into it, and sealed the bag. Then she dropped the bagged can into her gym bag. One thing she had learned over the years was that her mother had a nose for beer fumes. Sandwich bags sealed in the odor until she could dump her empties into a back-alley garbage bin. What her mother didn’t smell wouldn’t hurt her.
Task completed, Shir reached for the second can, popped the tab, and lifted it to her mouth. From 9 AM on, today had been nothing but ugly. A sizable number of Collier High guys seemed to have fallen in love with her—blind love, of course—and they had all had propositions to make. With the number of toonies she had been offered, she could have been swimming in beer by now. Yeah, Shir thought bleakly, she could have built a swimming pool, filled it with beer, and then gone swimming in it. And after swimming in the damn thing, she would have drunk the entire pool dry. After a day like today, she needed it.
Instead, all she had were two lousy beers and the memory of all those jeers, taunts, and one starkly pornographic limerick:
My love is uglier than sin
Who knows where the hell she’s been
But since I’m so blind
It’s just a bump and a grind
Then I leave her for the next dog to find.
The guy who had written the limerick had read it to her in front of a tittering cafeteria audience, then apologized for the incorrect rhyme scheme. Poetic license, he had called it. As he was reading it, she had seen Brett at a nearby table—the guy who had put the brakes on Wade Sullivan Saturday night. Face in neutral, he had listened without comment, then abruptly gotten up and walked away. He hadn’t tittered like the others, hadn’t, in fact, shown the slightest sign of amusement, but neither had he demonstrated any inclination to intervene. She wasn’t about to be raped in a crowded cafeteria; nothing illegal was going on; as far as he was concerned, this wasn’t his problem. And that, Shir reflected bleakly, was as good as things got in her life.
A brief choking sensation came and went in her throat, and the sun blurred into a stinging mess along the top of the tree line. The second can jammed tight against her lips, she began to drink, sucking in the cold familiar taste, pulling it over her tongue, then forcing the fluid to the back of her throat and swallowing, swallowing hard, harder.
Yeah, this was good, she told herself grimly. Beer on a bridge, with the sun going down into the trees, and alone with the wind—this was what she wanted, this was good.
The dregs trickled over the back of her tongue and left her sucking air. With a grunt, Shir bagged the can and tossed it into her gym bag. Then she simply sat, eyes half closed, watching the sun work its way slowly into the trees. A noticeable chill had come into the air and she pulled her jacket tighter, waiting for the beer to warm her up. Yeah, there it was, she could feel it now—a gently heated blur oozing out of her gut and working its way up t
oward her brain. Yeah, this was good, she thought again. This was too good; she was laughing.
Pulling her jacket tighter, Shir watched the sun lose itself in the trees.
Four
Supper was Sloppy Joes and a bowl of carrot sticks, a bit on the dry side because Stella had cut them up yesterday and hadn’t thought to store them in water. The Sloppy Joes, however, were one of her better concoctions—at least Mom seemed to think so. “Delicious, Stella!” she had exclaimed after the first approving spoonful. “You’ve done something different this time. What’s your secret ingredient?”
Beaming, Stella had refused to tell. She liked to keep cooking secrets; they were important to her. Cooking secrets were not important to Shir. Neither were scrubbing-the-tub secrets or scouring-the-sink secrets, although if there were any, she had yet to discover them. Slouched in her chair, she stared blearily at the mass of steaming hamburger on her plate. Midway through her Budweiser high, she didn’t have the slightest interest in nibbling carrot sticks or chewing her way delicately through well-mannered spoonfuls like Stella, who at the moment was seated kitty-corner and talking eagerly to Mom. No, what Shir wanted to do was break into a full-out roar of the chorus to Queen’s “We Will Rock You” and whack her fist splat! into the middle of Stella’s carefully sculpted plateful of Sloppy Joes. Years ago, Stella had developed the annoying habit of sculpting her food into castles, cats, or what-have-you; just looking at the circle of peaks on her current masterpiece, Shir could guess what this one was supposed to be—Prince Charming’s palace. Either that, she mused, or the carriage he had sent to fetch Cinderella. Stella would never have admitted it, but Shir knew how her sister’s mind worked. Sloppy-Joes palace, that was what it was. Fifteen years old, and Stella was still waiting for Prince Charming and happy-ever-after. What she needed was a good splat! to get rid of that nonsense.
Suppressing a hiccupy giggle, Shir tightened a fist, then relaxed it. On second thought, she decided, reconsidering, Sloppy Joes all over the wall was not a good idea. And Mom at full blast, screaming into her face was another definite negative. Too bad, because the moment of the actual splat! and the resulting astonishment on Stella’s face was a memory Shir would have liked to relive time and time again while sipping a contemplative Myplace beer.