‘All they eat is raw eggs, fruit and vegetables. Any money they’re given they spend on bags of marked-down produce. They’re emaciated.’
‘They would be wise to go back into the woods,’ Vaughn says, sliding open the glass doors. ‘Good night.’
I don’t think he likes me.
Our librarian’s alright. She’s got a wandering eye, which can be a little distracting, but she takes an interest if you’re a reader. She’s nuts about Austen, though, and the Georges. When I asked her if any of those women ever wrote a book that wasn’t about some woman pining for some guy, she looked about to cry for a second. That’s what I mean when I say it’s best not to mention stuff that’s obvious. ‘Have you read Catherine Cookson?’ she asks me. ‘You should, being such a history buff. She tells a good story. Very feisty heroines.’ I take the book from her. It’s called Tilly Trotter. I can’t see myself enduring a heroine called Tilly Trotter. However, I don’t want to make Mrs. Wartowski cry. She called The Great Gatsby a must-read classic. I don’t tell her how grossed out I was about Daisy riding into the sunset with her stinking rich husband, leaving her toddler and the roadkill behind. And old Gatsby lying around in his pool waiting to get arrested. I was glad the gas-pumper shot him. Put him out of his misery.
I return F. Scott’s masterpiece. Mrs. Wartowski smiles, which is a little unsettling because she has a couple of brown teeth. ‘Romantic, wasn’t it?’ she asks.
‘Absolutely,’ I say and take off with the Cookson.
I don’t know who came up with the idea that kids are safer in schools than on the street. You can escape on the streets, climb a tree or something. Here you’re trapped. Somehow Bonehead’s got hold of my email address and has been texting me ugly threats. Fortunately, I rarely check my mail because nobody I want to know has my address.
Anyway, my method for survival at school is to keep a low profile, but suddenly, thanks to Huff and Lund, I’m this impresario. Both crawlers cornered me outside the cafeteria. ‘How’s the dramatist?’ Lund inquired.
‘Can we have a read any time soon?’ Huff wheedled.
I can’t see them tolerating Lillian charging around in a thong, thwacking Mike with rolled-up newspapers. I thought newspapers was a nice touch because that’s how you hit your dog. Mike’s becoming an abuse junkie. He says he’s never felt so alive. And Lillian is getting off on beating him. She has power for once. She’s like those kids who shoot up the cafeteria. It’s not the bullies who commit mass murder. It’s the wussies who’ve been kicked around.
‘Can you give us a timeline on it?’ Lund asks, fondling his beard.
‘Not really.’
‘It’s doing wonders for the school community,’ Huff says. He had me reading Puck today. Talk about an ass-kisser. If I were Oberon I’d swat him. I guess old Will knew a thing or two about ass-kissing, otherwise he wouldn’t have survived all those rabid reformists.
One of Bonehead’s missives says he’s going to fuck me blind. It’s got me a little tense, I have to admit. I’m pretty sure he’s all talk, though, old Larry, just your regular loud-mouthed junkie.
Harry Houdini’s real name was Weiss. Ehrich Weiss. His mother never hugged him because she wanted him to be strong. Just before his dad kicked off, he told Ehrich – who was twelve or something – to be the man of the house. Ehrich worked his butt off in factories, taking all kinds of abuse. It was his brother, Theo, who got into the magic tricks. The hitch was there were a gazillion magicians in vaudeville. Nobody was too interested. It wasn’t until Ehrich started drowning himself in milk cans that people took notice. And pretty soon that wasn’t enough, he had to be tied up and thrown in rivers or jails, hung upside down in straitjackets. People were only interested if it looked like he was doomed. Meanwhile he was missing his dead mother and trying to contact her through mediums. When he figured out they were all fakes, he sued them till he went broke. His wife married the bottle because Harry was always nearly killing himself. One night some borderline cases came backstage and punched him in the gut when he wasn’t prepared for it. Usually he’d let people belt him to prove he was superhuman, it was part of his act. The punch ruptured his appendix but he didn’t know it and had a high tolerance for pain. The following night in the Chinese Water Torture Chamber he was too weak to climb out and started smashing his head into the glass. His wife broke the glass with an axe. All he talked about in the hospital was that the trick didn’t work out and nobody would respect him anymore. He was disgraced, he said, he would never again be able to make money as a magician. His last words were ‘I can’t fight this.’ So there you go, someone who fought everything, all his life, ends up dead at forty-two. I’d rather make soap.
David Weiss didn’t cry out when they were kicking him but you could hear the breath being forced out of him, and the puking. I should be nicer to him. I avoid freaks, being a freak myself. A posse of freaks is a serious target. When he comes back to school, I’m going to be nicer to him, maybe sit beside him in biology, copy his notes on the human genome.
Kadylak’s sucking on ice to cool the chemo sores in her mouth. The social worker just left. Kadylak doesn’t trust her. The social worker’s always nodding at her. She even nods at Kadylak’s parents when they try to speak English. I guess social-worker school taught her that nodding conveys empathy. Anyway, Kadylak hates it and goes mum when she’s around. I read her some of Tilly Trotter, which she enjoys because it’s all about a spirited orphan farm lass. Kadylak loves descriptions of countryside since she’s never seen any. She closes her eyes and you just know she’s skipping in the buttercups. A creepy guy called Hal wants to court Tilly and turns nasty when she tells him she’s not interested. He stalks her, which causes Kadlylak’s eyes to pop open and I’m not sure I should keep reading. ‘Keep going,’ Kadylak insists. Her mother’s sick with the flu, so sick she can’t get out of bed and go to her jobs, which is why Kadylak called me last night. Not only is the chemo killing her, she’s dying of loneliness.
‘She should stop going out,’ she says.
‘Who?’
‘Tilly. She shouldn’t go out with Hal around.’
‘She can’t stay in the cabin with the old folks the whole time, she’d go nuts. Besides, she has to chop wood and stuff, do chores.’
‘I wouldn’t go out,’ Kadylak says. ‘I’d hide.’
‘For your whole life?’ I immediately regret saying whole life to a child with cancer.
‘The farmer can do her chores.’
‘He’s got his own chores. Besides, she doesn’t want to be dependent on anyone.’
‘If she goes out, Hal will hurt her.’
‘Maybe the farmer will save her,’ I suggest. ‘It’s pretty obvious she’s nuts about him. Maybe they’ll get married and live happily ever after.’
‘The frog will turn into a prince.’ She’s on drugs and can’t keep her stories straight.
‘Something like that.’ I read until she dozes off. I hold her hand, which feels puffy and hot from the poison inside her. I think of all the kids I’ve seen who’ve gotten better. I decide I’ll save money so we can take a bus into the countryside. I’ll find a b&b on the net that’s a working farm. I’ll watch her eat two helpings of scrambled eggs. I’ll show her farm animals and fields, and at night we’ll lie in the grass and look up at the stars and sing ‘Will the Circle Be Unbroken.’
14
Damian had this idea that I should go out with him and his latest tomato to celebrate his birthday. This required that I procure a gift. I spent about four hours in a store that claims to do fair trade with Third World artisans. The salesgirl ignored me, yakked on her cell and checked herself out in the mirror about five hundred times. She was wearing high-heeled pointy boots over tight jeans. Looking sexy is the important thing, doesn’t matter if it cripples your feet. I pocketed a couple of hand-painted spinning tops. I don’t normally steal but I wanted to hurt this girl.
Damian unwraps the set of ebony elephants that I did, in fact, pay f
or. ‘They’re from India,’ I explain.
‘Very nice.’ Damian hands one to the tomato. She doesn’t look too interested, puts it down and starts picking at her fake red fingernails. I spin one of the tops on the table and watch it whiz around. The tomato and Damian feign amusement. ‘How do you like dem apples?’ he says.
‘It’s bad news for elephants these days,’ I say. ‘They’re acting like humans, raping and killing rhinocereses.’
‘Excuse me?’ the tomato says.
‘It’s called hyper-aggression, caused by humans poaching and culling them and taking over their habitat. Baby male elephants witness their mothers and sisters getting slaughtered and suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. So they run around raping and pillaging.’
‘I thought they were supposed to be gentle creatures,’ the tomato says.
‘They are, until they’re traumatized and starved. Humans get pretty savage when we’re traumatized and starved, not to mention overcrowded. We’re all vertebrates.’ The tomato attempts to look like she knows what vertebrate means. ‘You see,’ I continue, to demonstrate my superior intelligence, ‘normally mothers and sisters shape the brains and behaviours of infant males. Being orphaned compromises their neurobiological development.’
‘Since when did you become an expert on elephants?’ Damian asks.
I just stare at him because I make it a policy not to answer really stupid questions.
‘Anyway,’ he says, ‘they’re very nice.’ He means the ebony elephants. He’ll probably stash them behind his inflatable doll or something. I’msorry I gave themto him. He doesn’t deserve them.
‘Goldie wondered if you’d like to go shopping with her,’ he says, ‘find some new outfits.’
I grab the top and spin it again. It’s pretty fantastic, I have to admit, bright colours swirling. I have to remember to give them to Kadylak.
‘You’re developing a nice figure,’ Goldie says. ‘You should show it off.’
‘Why?’
They look at each other then back at me in a carnivorous manner. ‘Aren’t you interested in boys?’ she asks, wrapping her claws around her wineglass.
‘Should I be?’
Old Damian snorts. ‘Do you prefer girls?’
‘Hamsters.’
‘You’re something else,’ Damian says. ‘Isn’t she something else?’ The brain surgeon nods.
‘It never hurts to look attractive,’ Goldie says.
‘Marie Antoinette endured four-hour sessions with psychotic hairdressers and had to sleep with her head on a wooden block so the glued-on hair wouldn’t get mussed.’
‘Why?’ the simpleton inquires.
‘So she’d look attractive.’
‘Isn’t that the one who got her head cut off?’ Damian the history scholar asks.
‘If she’d stuck with being an ornament,’ I say, ‘she might have become popular. Let that be a lesson to us all.’ I wink at the tomato. ‘Stick with being an ornament.’
Damian gulps more vino. ‘“Let them eat cake.” Isn’t that what she said?’
The tomato starts fiddling with his hair.
‘Let them eat cake,’ he repeats with a flourish of his hand. He and the simpleton chuckle and snort together.
‘The poor people hated her because she did dumb-ass things like getting the heads of her dogs carved onto armchairs,’ I explain. ‘The reality is, she didn’t know any better, nobody’d educated her in anything except looking pretty, etiquette and horseback riding. After they chopped off Louis’s head they let her rot in the Bastille for months. She watched two of her children die there.’
‘That’s tragic,’ the tomato observes.
‘They say she was composed when she was carted to the guillotine, except she stepped on the executioner’s toe. “I’m sorry, sir,” she said, “I didn’t do it on purpose.”’
The tomato appears moved, even goes so far as to hold her painted claws over her mouth in shock.
‘One thing about you, Limone,’ Damian says, ‘you sure know how to kill a party.’
‘Is this a party?’ I ask. ‘Did we sing “Happy Birthday” yet?’ I start singing ‘Happy Birthday’ really loudly, causing heads to turn.
‘Cool it,’ Damian commands, reaching across the table and grabbing my wrist. He’s always grabbed my wrist when he’s pissed at me, dragging me to my room or the car, slamming the door on me.
‘Hands off, old sport,’ I say.
Possibly mildly embarrassed at having revealed his inner beast, he releases his grip. ‘Sorry. Let’s just try to have a nice dinner, can we do that?’ Goldie nods but I just stare at him wiping sweat off his forehead with his napkin.
‘How’s your mother?’ he asks.
‘Which one?’
‘Drew. Has she gone out yet?’
‘To chase cats. And squirrels. The squirrels keep going at the birdfeeder. She chases them with a broom. And barks at them. And the cats.’
‘A woman with a PhD,’ he says. ‘Whoever would have thunk it?’
What keeps him going? Banging demoiselles? How can he stand it? And what about her, what’s her raison d’être? Pleasuring her sahib a few times a week? ‘How’s it feel to be fifty-two?’ I ask.
‘Fifty-one,’ he says, ‘don’t rush me.’ Goldie starts fiddling with his hair again. ‘It feels terrific,’ he says, ‘never better.’
‘Why?’
‘What?’
‘What’s terrific about being fifty-one?’
‘Less responsibility,’ Damian says. ‘Here you are, almost grown up. Soon you’ll be off to university, making your own life.’
University. The great panacea.
‘It’s exciting,’ he says, even though it isn’t.
‘What are you going to study?’ the brain surgeon asks.
‘The human genome.’
‘Really? That’s fascinating.’
Damian wipes his snout. ‘Your real mother seems mighty keen to meet you. She even called me.’ He’s waiting for me to ask why but I don’t. ‘She sounds nice.’
‘That’s exciting,’ the tomato says, ‘finding your real mother.’ She says exciting exactly the way Damian does.
‘Where’s your mother?’ I ask her.
‘Hamilton.’
‘Do you ever see her?’
‘Sometimes, at Christmas.’
‘So your real mother lives an hour away but you only see her sometimes at Christmas. That’s exciting.’
‘Don’t get snarky,’ Damian says, which he always does when I state the obvious.
Rossi’s life purpose is to get a job at h&m. I go with her to fill out her one hundredth application. After she fills out the form she looks for something to spend her mother’s hard-earned cabbage on. ‘I need a top for the party,’ she says.
I’m so sick of hearing about the party – who is or isn’t going and with whom – I try to think of a compelling change of topic. ‘Too bad you can’t poison people these days,’ I say.
Rossi keeps flipping through racks at high speed.
‘Before autopsies,’ I continue, ‘everybody was getting poisoned. Royalty was always ordering servants to sample food to make sure it wasn’t poisoned. Imagine being the servant, getting a bite of a decent meal for a change then waiting to see if it’ll kill you.’
Maybe Lillian could slip something into the bank manager’s coffee while she stops by with Timbits for her former co-workers. They’ll act happy to see her even though they don’t want her around because she reminds them of what shit-eaters they are. She’ll personally deliver the poisoned coffee to the boss. Or maybe she’ll jet up to head office and chase after the ceo with an arsenic-laced Timbit. I like endings where everybody dies. Shakespeare had that right. The vengeful and the avengers, all toast.
All the tops look shrunken. Rossi tries one on anyway.
‘It looks too small,’ I say.
‘It’s supposed to look that way. I’m not sure about the colour, though. Do you like the pink better
?’
She always asks my advice before ignoring it.
‘It’s too small,’ I repeat. I don’t want her falling out of a toddler shirt at the party.
‘That’s the style, Lemon, get a grip.’
I try to remember her old body. The body that could do walking handstands. She tries on a toddler miniskirt and gets pissed when she can’t zip it up. Maybe Courtney, Lillian’s shopaholic friend, could try on toddler clothes. Courtney’s one of those pretty, skinny women everybody hates. Lillian spends way too much time envying her. Envy is the sorrow of fools. Some ancient Chinese guy said that.
Mr. Paluska is playing cards with Kadylak. With his free hand he’s massaging her feet. I don’t want to interfere so I take the book cart around to some other kids. They all have private rooms because infections can kill them. The conscious ones get pretty excited when they see me. It’s not like they’re all saints, some are just plain mean. But overall, potentially fatal illness seems to make people nicer. Too bad we can’t compute that we’re all going to expire sooner or later so we might as well behave decently. I was up a tree the other day and these two suits were arguing over a parking spot, actually screaming at each other. The suit who screamed the loudest got the parking spot. Which makes you wonder about world politics.
This girl called Molly, who was probably alright once but has been spoiled rotten and thinks I’m her servant, is trying to get me to go downstairs and buy her some fries. The steroids make these kids crave salt and therefore junk food. Of course the corporations are more than happy to comply. We’ve got Burger King, Pizza Hut, KFC, right here in the hospital, all providing excellent nourishment. ‘My mom would get me fries,’ Molly says. ‘You’re mean. I’m going to tell my dad.’ The room is packed with stuffed toys her parents and their associates have given her. It’s scary, actually, all those staring eyes. Just one stuffed animal would perk up Kadylak. I shove a penguin into the book cart while Molly’s sulking.
I see Mr. Paluska in the corridor in his paint-splattered T-shirt. He’s got young Marlon Brando shoulders from heaving paint cans around. I liked that movie. Of course I had to run around shouting ‘Steeeeelllllaaaaa!’ for a couple of days. Vivien was pretty convincing in it, probably because in real life she was finding out that Larry was a queer.
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