In a wide country, p.26
In a Wide Country, page 26
“Jasper, you’re just a kid.” She put her hand to her face again, and I realized she was crying.
It was too late to pretend I was older than I was, but not to prove I had the right to kiss like that. I had recently learned a word for the other thing Ginette had done with me, from Dwayne of all people, who heard it from a cousin who knew the names for everything. It had trickled down from the secret adult world to me, who had already done that thing; and so, under the intimate canopy of stars, I used my new word for the first time. I even felt a sad glimmer of pride, as I told Marsha: “I am not. I got a blow job from a girl once.”
She stood up. “Okay, everything’s ruined now. Don’t say another word. Just go.”
The sleeping bag’s zipper scraped my hand as I scrambled up. The screen door opened, and Dr. Suan came out.
“Is it finished?” he said.
“Yes, it’s over,” Marsha said. He approached the camera, and the shutter closed with a faint click. The colour had gone out of the sky, and we were back to the dim reality of the Suans’ backyard, from which I was being expelled, probably forever.
“I’ll run you home,” said Dr. Suan.
“Thanks, I can walk.”
“I promised your mother.”
“I’d rather go by myself.”
I turned on my heel without saying thanks or goodbye, thinking that this would be a punishing gesture. The yard light flashed on, and in spite of myself I looked back. Marsha was stooping for our lemonade glasses, clearing up the same way she had at the end of Dr. Suan’s miserable garden party. In her weary movement I caught a reproach sharper than the ones she had spoken.
CHAPTER
44
for days after the meteor shower, I didn’t see Marsha anywhere, not even in the library. She didn’t stray past the door of my school, though I looked every day, and sometimes rushed to the door for fear of missing her.
I ran everywhere to tire myself out and went to bed as early as I could. The ceiling of my room still glowed with the last orange rays of the sun when Corinne came to smooth the covers over my shoulders.
“Are you sure you’re not ill?”
“Just tired.”
“You go to bed so early, and then I hear you rustling around for hours. Why don’t you stay up longer?”
“What for?”
Each morning I woke up exhausted from some cloudy struggle that tangled the sheet around me. I lay there grasping for some shred of what it was about, until the hopeless feeling of the previous day returned.
One day Corinne told me we were going to have Nick and Jackie over for dinner.
“Why?”
“I know, it wasn’t much fun last time. But they’ve been good to us. I feel like I should do something.”
She counted our motley kitchenware and decided we had enough dishes, with only a little washing before dessert. She made macaroni salad and boiled spareribs and got me to daub them with barbecue sauce using a balled-up paper napkin.
I was folding other napkins into pyramids when our guests arrived. Jackie was as dolled up as if she had stepped off a runway. Nick looked haggard, smelled more strongly of smoke than usual, and had a drink in his hand.
“Nick couldn’t wait,” Jackie said dryly.
“Better to be safe than sober,” he said. They sat on our cottage sofa, and again the room seemed more barren with people in it than without. Corinne got Jackie a drink in the nicest glass we had.
“Wanna hear the news of the day?” said Nick, pressing his shoulders into the thin upholstery. “Angelo’s selling his window business.”
“I’m sorry,” Corinne said. “What does that mean for you?”
“He says he’ll find me something else.”
“Like what?”
“Like who knows.” He fished out his lighter and flipped the cap a few times before lighting up.
“I think this could be good,” Jackie said. “This could be the break he needs.”
“Yeah, I’m really catching a break here. You’d have to be out of your skull not to see that. Think of all the things I could do for Ange. He could make me a rodeo rider, or a trapeze artist. That could be kind of reassuring, to be snatched from the air by a pair of strong arms every night.” He rubbed his elbows. Beads of sweat stood on his forehead.
“What’ll become of Rodney Medwood?” Corinne said.
“Oh, this really is Rodney’s big chance,” said Nick. “He’s gonna be a star.”
“In movies?”
“Old movies. He’ll be what they used to call a romantic juvenile.”
Corinne lifted her glass. “To Rodney Medwood, child star.”
“No, the romantic juvenile wasn’t a kid. He was the nice young guy who marries the sweet, innocent girl. But off-screen, he gets in deep with the bookies. He becomes a dope fiend. He loses his swank house and swimming pool, and ends up selling storm windows.”
“At least he gets the girl,” Corinne said. “To Rodney and his girl.” They drank, and Corinne went to put the ribs under the broiler while Nick and Jackie sat on the sofa like strangers waiting for the same bus. I slid out of there and hung around the kitchen till a light haze of sweet-smelling smoke issued from the oven. Everyone crowded around our little table, and Corinne dished out the food on our mismatched plates.
“I have news too,” Corinne said. “I’m leaving town for a few days. A salesman I know wants to do a little tour with his new collection. Five places in four days.”
“That’s great,” Jackie said.
For me, it was more than great. We would soon be skimming along the highway in the Corvair again, with all pains left behind. I hugged Corinne’s arm.
“The thing is,” she said, “I need someone to look after Jasper while I’m gone. I was hoping he could stay with you, Nick.”
I flung away her arm. “No!”
“With me?” said Nick, gnawing a rib. “I’m no babysitter.”
Corinne took my hand, but I yanked it away. “He practically looks after himself,” she said. “He’ll mostly be at school, or running around with his friends.”
“Does he cook for himself too?” Nick said.
“He can serve things out the way you do.”
“I don’t need someone to do things the way I do. I’ve got too much of that already.”
“Well, boo hoo,” said Jackie. “Who’s the salesman?”
“A guy named Jack Summers,” Corinne said. “He works out of Montreal.”
“He’s a jerk!” I said. A fierce, sudden rage boiled up in me, against Jack and his stinky pipes and the rotten deal Corinne was preparing.
“Ah, but he can pay,” Nick said. “Here’s to jerks who can pay.” He raised his glass, but no one joined his toast. He hadn’t shaved, he looked a mess, and his life was falling apart. It was ridiculous that Corinne thought he could look after me.
“Is there something for Jackie in this?” he said.
“Not this time.”
“She’s swung a lot of things your way, you know. You’ve had it pretty good here.”
“You’ve all been very kind.”
“Everyone’s bent over backwards for you,” Nick said with a sneer. “My brother doesn’t know you, for Chrissake, and you’re eating off his table.”
“Shut up, Nick,” Jackie said. But he leaned in for more, and for once I was completely on his side.
“You’ve had favours from all of us,” he growled, “and now you want more, and when we ask back, you say ‘Not this time.’” He groped for the bottle, but Jackie snatched it away and got up with Corinne to clear the plates from the table. This dinner party was turning out worse than the last, but I didn’t care, because Nick wasn’t going to play along.
The women returned, and Corinne served cubes of red Jell-O with whipped cream. Nick took one mouthful, and said, “You know they make this stuff from horses.”
“What are you talking about?” Jackie said.
“Gelatin. They boil it out of horses’ hoofs.”
“What the hell’s wrong with you?” Jackie said. “You’re acting like a goddamn louse!” She left the room and flung herself on the sofa. Corinne took one more bite of her Jell-O, then went into the kitchen and tossed the rest in the garbage.
“Okay, you know what?” Nick said. “Forget it. I can take Jasper. We can bach it together for a few days. Right, Buddy Boy?”
“I’m not staying!” I yelled. I jumped up and my chair went over, and I was out of the apartment and down the stairs before Corinne could call me back. I ran through the dandelions and over the street, past the scarred trunk of the big oak and onto Dwayne’s porch, which I hadn’t visited since the Wild Mouse.
I rang the bell, and Dwayne came to the door. He had stitches across his cheek, and a purple bruise on his nose.
“I can’t see you anymore,” he said through the Xy-specked screen.
“Why not?”
“My dad said.”
“The Wild Mouse was your idea.”
“You did it too wild.” In the way he spoke, I recognized something of how I had felt since the night of the meteors. I felt a twinge of pity for him, and for myself, who had done everything too wild and too mean, with no time left to do anything differently.
But then another feeling came, of being dismissed again, this time by a little twerp I had befriended practically as a favour. I stood, choking on words I couldn’t sort out, until I found something I could say with real conviction.
“Your dad’s a jerk.”
“You’re the jerk,” he said quickly, but with more sorrow than anger, and swung the door shut. I kicked at it hard enough to hurt my toe.
I wandered down the road to the Sahara, where they had a pay phone in the foyer, and dialled Dean’s number, shovelling in coins I had taken from Corinne’s bag. The phone rang a long time before anyone answered.
“Hello?” It was a man’s voice, but not Dean’s. I thought with a sudden panic that he might have moved somewhere where he couldn’t be found; but when I asked for him, the man said to hang on. There was a pause, during which I could hear him shouting for Dean across a hubbub of other voices. He was having a party. I couldn’t believe he had resumed his social life, and was not sitting alone in his house waiting for Corinne and me to return.
Finally he came to the phone. “Yeah?”
“It’s Jasper.”
“What a nice surprise. Where are you?”
“In Edmonton.”
“Is everything okay?”
“Sort of.” My chest contracted. I couldn’t say any of the things bursting to come out. Someone laughed close to the receiver at the other end, a woman.
“Listen, I’ve got a lot of people here right now, can we talk another time?”
“Okay. I miss you.”
“Me too, Jasper. Bye.”
I went outside and stood for a long time at the bus stop and got on the first one that arrived, without any thought of where it was going. When we reached the end of the line, the driver shambled the length of the empty vehicle to ask where I was headed, and whether I was lost.
CHAPTER
45
an apricot summer dress lay on Corinne’s bed. I never liked the dress, or the colour.
“Why are you so mad about this little trip?” she said.
She was making herself up to suit the dress, with lipstick one shade darker, blush a little warmer than usual, eyeshadow a cool grey-green to counter the warmth of everything else. It was very well balanced and pretty in its way, but still I hated the colour and the dress.
“Jack’s no good with kids. You know that.”
Her hair was pinned back while she did her face. In a minute she would brush it out and look very fancy-free with that hair, those lips and that outfit. But still I despised the dress and the colour.
“We’ll be rushing around, driving and showing every day. It won’t be much fun.”
Her shoes lay on the carpet next to the bed, a pair of white lattice-tops with medium heels. She wore those shoes the day Dean gave her the Corvair. In those shoes she danced for him on his patio, with a big present on the drive that from his point of view turned out to be worth exactly nothing.
“You’ve got school. I don’t think other kids skip every time a parent goes out of town.”
“School’s a waste of time,” I said. “I’ve learned more from Marsha.” The name popped out before I could stop it. Hearing it in my own voice made me realize how long it had been since I had any reason to say it aloud.
“I bet you have.”
In the mirror she gave me a knowing look. I refused it with a scowl that even to my eyes looked ridiculous.
“Listen, would you rather I ask if you can stay over there? At the Suans’?”
Here was a beautiful offer that would have seemed like a dozen Christmases if she had suggested it a week earlier. I wanted to cry, but my face was numb.
“No.”
“I don’t mind asking.” She brushed out her hair.
“Where are you going?” I said.
“Red Deer, Calgary, Lethbridge, Medicine Hat. Some other place I don’t remember.”
“No, I mean tonight. Right now.”
“To see a friend.”
“Who?”
“Just a friend. I won’t be late. We’ll sit together before you sleep. Jack will be here tomorrow first thing.”
*
her hand on my back the next morning conveyed a feeling of hurry and departure that woke me more abruptly than if she had shaken me. She was already dressed and made up. It seemed a long time since she sat in the same spot in the apricot dress, telling me she would be back before I knew it, promising we would do something special together soon. Now she was saying the same things in other words, with a bloom of fresh perfume and her bag by the door, with a fall coat draped over it.
“Jack’s waiting, I’ve got to run,” she said, crushing my neck in an uncomfortable hug. She walked out of the room with a rustle of skirts, the apartment door boomed shut, and I nestled into my pillow, almost believing this could all be sorted out with a little more sleep.
When I woke again, half the morning had slid by, lost hours that seemed like a gift or head start. Corinne and Jack were probably in Red Deer already, setting up in a hotel room as usual. It was really happening, and here I was, alone.
I crawled out of bed and dug in my suitcase for Jack’s brass hammer, the one I kept after smashing his cocktail shaker. I banged a few dents into the windowsill with it, then tossed it into the Drawer of Shame. My clipping about the Monza crash was still in there, and I read it again, trying not to skip ahead to the line about cars racing on for hours past the bodies of the dead. The scarf from Kesterman’s Modern Miss was there too, and though I knew why, it was harsh to find that my calling it a gift had made no difference.
A blouse was sprawled over the foot of Corinne’s bed. On the Xoor of her open closet, a dress lay crumpled around a wooden hanger. I went through all the drawers in her vanity, looking for clues to mysteries I couldn’t name, but found nothing aside from the usual tiny bottles and brushes.
I dressed and went outside, and since it was nearly lunchtime, walked over to Woodward’s and stood before the cabinet of cakes. I meant to ask for an egg salad sandwich, but some defensive instinct at the last moment made me choose roast beef. The bench opposite the shoe store was empty, but I went back outside and ate sitting on the curb, my knees drawn up under my chin, my eyes blinking against the grit thrown up by cars wheeling past to park. I arrived at school after classes had resumed for the afternoon, and told the teacher my mother was ill.
When I got to Nick’s, he was on the phone, making a Medwood call. He sounded smooth as always, but he was unshaven and his shirt looked slept-in.
“You’re early,” he said.
“School’s been over for an hour.”
“I meant for the movie. I’ve got a few more calls. Keep quiet or make yourself scarce. And stay out of my room.”
I sat on his sofa, where I was supposed to spend the night and two more, and listened to Rodney make his pitch against Old Man Winter. Only one call kept him talking long enough to punch the twin holes that marked an interested prospect, but that was enough to rouse him to shave and change his shirt for the film.
The Sahara was nearly full when we arrived. I found seats near the front as usual, then went back up the aisle. Marsha stood at the refreshment counter with Noreen and another girl — the same trio from our first encounter in that very spot. Marsha’s glance slid away from mine, and she walked with the other girl towards the ladies’ room.
“Here you are, back from the dead,” said Noreen. “Look, I bought those shoes.” She pointed down at her white summer pumps, the ones with the bows on top, from the store at the shoppers park. “Remember the time we looked in the window?”
“Yes.”
“Remember the time you kicked Jerry? Like this?” She gave me a brisk, hard kick with the point of her new shoe. Nick’s dime slipped from my fingers onto the carpet. She stooped quickly and picked it up.
“Finders keepers,” she said, her scorn drifting over me like snow. “Now get lost so Marsha can come out of the ladies’.”
It hadn’t occurred to me that she would know, that Marsha would tell, that my kiss would no longer be a secret blunder in the darkness of her yard. The whole lobby seemed to fill up with the news, even as people dwindled away and into the theatre.
The cartoon had a bitter taste. Nick noticed through the noise of Elmer Fudd’s shotgun that I wasn’t ripping open a chocolate bar.
“You better eat that thing,” he growled. “I don’t want you messing with it during the movie.”
I groped under my feet till I found a thrown-away wrapper, and crinkled the sticky paper in my hands so Nick could hear. A furious sequence of things I should have done or said in the lobby coursed through my mind.
