Heartache and Other Natural Shocks (4 page)

“Yeah.”

“So, what’s it like there?” she asks.

“It’s great,” I say.

“What’s so great about it?”

I shrug. “Beaver Lake, the restaurants, the old city …” I remember my uncle Seymour’s latest joke about Toronto:
What’s the difference between yogurt and Toronto
? Answer:
Yogurt has culture
. It’s not a joke Debbie would appreciate.

“Why did you move here?” Marlene asks.

“Because of the
FLQ
,” I say. Marlene stares blankly at me. “The separatists. The
FLQ
?” I repeat. Silence. Does she even know what I’m talking about? Are these girls living in the same country as me?

Marlene says, “Oh, right. They kidnapped that French guy last year.”

“They kidnapped two guys,” I say. “James Cross and Pierre Laporte.”

“And they shot the French one,” Carla says, like she knows.

“They didn’t shoot him,” I say. “They didn’t use a gun.” Carla gives me a cold stare; she obviously doesn’t like being contradicted. “They locked him up for a week and then strangled him with the chain he wore around his neck. After
that, they dumped his body in the trunk of a car and left it in an airport parking lot.”

“What happened to the other guy?” Marlene asks, interested now. There’s nothing like a few gory details to get people hooked.

“James Cross? He’s the one they kidnapped first,” I explain. “It was October 5th, his birthday. He was in his bathroom getting ready for work when three guys from the
FLQ
burst into his house. They had an M1 rifle, a .22 Beretta and a Luger pistol. They ripped out the phone wires, handcuffed him and took him to their hideout. Then they sent a list of demands to a radio station. Five days later, a different
FLQ
cell group kidnapped Pierre Laporte.”

The girls stare at me. I know I’m talking way too fast, but I can’t stop. I’m like a runaway train. I say, “Pierre Laporte was playing football with his nephew on his front lawn when four men with machine guns pulled up to his house. They dragged him into their car. He had a wife and children. They made him write a letter to Premier Bourassa begging for his life. They threatened to execute him. No one believed they’d do it, but they did. They killed him!” I screech to a halt. You can practically smell the burning rubber. The girls gawk at me like I’m some kind of weirdo.

Finally, Marlene says, “Uh … did you know him? Like, personally?”

“No,” I say.

There’s an awkward pause. Carla and Debbie exchange looks, eyebrows raised. Carla drawls, “O-kay, then. Sooo, are we playing cards or what?”

I feel my face flush. I’m being way too intense. This is supposed to be a “fun” night and I’m blowing it.

Carla plunks a game on the table and turns to me. “Do you know how to play Rummoli?” she asks. I shake my head. “It’s like poker on a board game. You
do
know how to play poker, don’t you?”

“Sort of,” I say.

“Well, you’ll pick it up. You must be smart if you’re skipping a grade.” The way she says it is like a challenge. Or an insult. My mother must have told her mother.

Marlene puts on a record: Tina Turner singing “Proud Mary.” Carla grins, and the girls instantly launch into a backup singer dance routine, rolling their arms and bobbing their heads as they sing along. I sit there while they roll on over to the table and take packs of cigarettes and bags of coins from their purses. Carla and Marlene smoke du Mauriers. Debbie smokes Player’s menthol.

Debbie looks at the empty table in front of me. “She doesn’t have money,” she says to Carla, talking about me like I’m not even here.

“We’ll have to lend her some,” Carla says.

“Well, I don’t have that much,” Debbie says.

“You’re so cheap,” Carla says.

“I can pay you back,” I say.

“But what if she wins?” Debbie says, still ignoring me.

“Sooo …,” Carla says, “she’ll pay us back and she’ll keep what she wins. Jeez. Never mind. I’ll lend her the money.”

Marlene stacks her nickels and dimes in neat piles, singing along with Tina. Debbie stuffs a piece of Juicy Fruit gum in her mouth and doesn’t offer any to the rest of us. Carla counts out three dollars in change and pushes it toward me. She tells me the rules, and we begin. I don’t care if I win or lose; the game is just something to do while the girls talk about people I don’t know. The name Steve comes up a lot.

“Carla was dating him at camp,” Marlene explains. “He’s a real stud, but he doesn’t understand about women’s clothes.” Marlene bursts out laughing.

“Shut up,” Carla says.

Marlene keeps laughing.

“What’s so funny?” Debbie asks, cracking her gum.

“The wedgie!” Marlene gasps. “Tell them about the wedgie.” Carla smirks. “Tell them!” Marlene insists.

“Okay, okay,” Carla says. “It was after a campfire. Steve was walking me back to my cabin, and we were necking in the woods, and he kept trying to pull up my shirt, which looks like a halter top, but really it’s a one-piece with snaps at the crotch. So there he is, yanking away, and there I am getting a goddamn wedgie!” Carla laughs. “I mean, all he can think about is his hard-on and how horny he is.”

“So, what happened?” Debbie asks.

“I told him to stop, obviously,” Carla says. She opens her du Mauriers and places a cigarette between her lips. “I am so tired of dating jerks,” she mutters, striking a match. “They spend all day yakking about sports and music, and then all night trying to get into your pants. It’s so predictable.”

“So, did he?” Debbie asks.

“What?” Carla says.

“Did he get into your pants?”

“Fuck off,” Carla says.

“I’m just joking,” Debbie says.

“Yeah, well, it’s none of your business,” Carla snaps.

I can’t tell if Carla is angry at Debbie for prying or if she just doesn’t want to talk about her personal life in front of me. We ante up and play the hand. Marlene pushes her cigarette box toward me. “You want a ciggie?” she asks.

“No, thanks,” I say, trying to make it sound like I don’t want to smoke at this particular moment, but I guess it’s obvious that I don’t smoke at all because suddenly the girls swivel their heads like sharks catching the scent of blood.

Carla props her elbow on the table and dangles her cigarette between her fingers. She says, “So, Julia, tell us about yourself. What do you do for fun? Do you have a boyfriend?” She smirks, like she already knows the answer.

“Not really,” I fumble. And then, for some stupid reason, I add, “Not now.”

“But did you in Montreal?” Carla persists.

I grope for something that might satisfy her curiosity without making me seem like a total loser. What can I say? That I had a crush on Jon Mendleson but the only thing we ever did together was dissect a frog in science class? I think my hand touched his when I passed him the scalpel. I’m desperate, so I lie. “I sort of had a thing going with a guy from my science class, but it didn’t really go anywhere.” Pathetic.

Carla looks at me with dark, alert eyes. “How long did you go out for?” she asks.

“Not long.”

“What does he look like?” Marlene asks.

“Tall. He plays basketball. He has curly hair.”

“An Afro?” Carla asks.

“No, just curly.”

“Is he hot?” Debbie asks.

I gulp.

“Debbie, you’re embarrassing her,” Marlene snickers.

“I’m just asking a question,” Debbie drawls. “Like is he a good kisser? Is he sexy? I’m not asking how
big
he is or anything.”

Carla grins and throws a handful of chips at Debbie. “Debbie, you’re such a slut!” she says. The girls laugh. Suddenly they’re all in a good mood again.

Marlene explains that the “big thing” is an inside joke because “In school, this girl, Sherrie Cumberland, told us
that her boyfriend’s dick is nine inches long, and she knows because he measured it with a ruler.” Marlene giggles.

Carla laughs and turns back to me. She takes a long drag on her cigarette and says, “I bet you’re the type who likes to have deep, meaningful conversations with guys.” She blows smoke in my direction. I stare at my cards and fold. Marlene raises a nickel. Debbie puts in. Carla calls it. She wins with a full house and scoops the change toward her. I look at my watch. It’s only 8:08. I wonder how long I’ll have to stay in the game.

We play for another hour. Debbie and I lose our money to Carla and Marlene. Finally, I say, “I have to go home. I still have things to unpack.” We all know I’m lying.

At the front door, Marlene says, “See you at school.”

Debbie says, “Yeah.”

Carla says, “Thanks for coming.”

The door slams behind me. As I walk across the dark lawn, crickets shriek in a piercing chorus, and I know that in the Cabriellis’ basement, the girls are already talking about me.

It’s too early to go back to the McDuff house—my mother will just interrogate me—so I cut along the hedge to the backyard and then down the hill into the ravine. Ravines are a strange feature of the Toronto landscape. It’s like the city is built on a grid of straight lines, but below street level, like giant cracks in the earth’s surface, are these ravines. Some are tame, little gorges with streams and parks, but others extend for miles, with cycle paths and walking trails. It’s like a
sub-city zone. Mom told me not to walk in the ravine at night, so that’s exactly where I go.

I stride down the cement path into the forest. I listen to the sounds of the night: the rustling of leaves, the scrabbling of small animals in the bush, the fast, angry clacking of my sandals on the cement. I like the hardness of the path hitting my heels. I even like the rush of fear I get when I imagine that I’m lost, or that someone’s following me, or that the trees are whispering warnings in an ancient druidic language that I cannot understand. I walk, and walk, and walk. I wonder how long it would take a person to walk all the way from Toronto to Montreal.

When my legs feel like lead pipes, I head back to the house, but I don’t go inside. Instead, I lie down on the back deck underneath the birch tree and stare up at the stars. The birch is the only nice thing about the McDuff house. It has white papery bark and long elegant branches like the smooth, bare arms of ballerinas. The leaves are heart-shaped, and some are turning canary yellow, but at night you can’t see color. Everything is shadow upon shadow.

As I lie there, the wind picks up and dark clouds scuttle across the sky, blocking out the stars. The air gets that heavy feeling that comes before a rain. Down in the ravine, the forest whooshes and rattles in a junglelike voodoo ritual.

It takes a long time for the rain to come, and when it does, it falls in fat, heavy droplets, one on my elbow, one on my
eyelid. It’s cold, but I don’t mind; in fact, I like it. Soon the rain is pelting down, and the wind is tossing twigs and leaves across the deck, against my body. My clothes stick to my wet skin. I shut my eyes, feeling the scratchy, tearing wildness of it all; I’m really grooving on it. And then the screen door squeaks open, and there’s my mother, looming over me, like some scowling giantess.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she asks, enunciating each word.

I don’t want to break my monk’s vow of silence, but mothers need answers. “Just lying here,” I say.

“It’s raining.”

“I know.”

“You’re lying in the rain.”

Obviously.

“Why would you want to lie outside, in the rain, in the dark?”

How can I explain it, especially now that she’s ruined it?

“I asked you a question,” she says.

“I just felt like it,” I reply.

“You just felt like it,” she repeats. She presses her fingertips to her forehead. “I don’t get it. You felt like lying in the rain?”

I jump up and lurch past her into the kitchen, but she grabs my arm and digs her fingers into my flesh. “Julia!” she says, spinning me around.

“Why are you always on my case?” I shout.

“Because this is not normal behavior!”

I want to scream
It’s rain, just rain. It’s not pot. It’s not speed. I’m not having sex with old weird men. I’m not selling my body on the street. It’s just plain, ordinary rain. And what the hell is normal anyway? Do you actually think I’m losing my mind? Do you always have to stare at me like I’m out of my mind?

But I can’t say that, because it would only make it worse, so I stand there and we glare at each other in a contest of contempt. Her blue eyes bore into mine, but she can’t break me. She can wait till hell freezes over before I’ll speak a word to her.

She says, “Julia, we are not moving back to Montreal. So cut the melodrama and get on with your life.” Then she swoops out of the room like a witch on a broomstick.

I continue my role as the Ice Queen. The ground chills beneath my feet, and everything I touch turns to frost and snaps off. I return to my ugly pink cell and throw myself on my ugly pink bed. I feel like I’m living in exile—which somehow reminds me of Alice, the live-in maid we used to have when I was little. She was from Jamaica. She used to tell me that she was always cold, even when she wore a sweater, and that people in Montreal didn’t share a laugh the way her folks did back home. She said that if it wasn’t for the money, she wouldn’t stay a day in this mean country. She used to drag herself around the house, and eventually my mother “let her go” and hired a French Canadian girl from a family of
thirteen kids who was lots of fun. I never liked Alice, but now I understand that she was homesick, which is a real kind of sickness, and that maybe in Jamaica she was a different, happier person.