Lost Between Houses (14 page)

Mother went in to see the old man first,
comme fucking d’habitude,
and then Harper. Meanwhile I wandered around the halls, getting extremely uptight, imagining all sorts of things. I saw that daffy old broad again; she was clanking around the halls, smoking a cigarette, talking to everybody. Finally I went in, he was lying there on his bed, looking pretty fucking feeble I’ve got to tell you. Soon as I saw him I was sort of relieved. He was a lot scarier in my imagination.

“How are you?” I said.

“I’m fine. Hope it wasn’t too much damned trouble, coming on a Sunday.”

“No,” I said. “How’s it going up here?”

“Getting bloody tired of it.”

He looked over toward the window. “Have you given any thought to what we talked about?”

“Which part?”

“Don’t be facetious,” he said.

“Mother said it wasn’t for sure. She said you were just putting the house on the market to see what you could get for it.”

“Did she?” he said, like everybody was fucking up on him and it didn’t even surprise him any more.

“I was sort of hoping that held some water.”

“Yes, well we want to see if
you
hold any water.”

For a second I felt it, like everything was happening very close to my face. Like all I had to do was push it away. Fuck him, I thought, I don’t have to listen to this prick any more. What’s he going to do? Get out of bed and chase me down the hall? I was getting ready to walk out. I just needed one more provocation.

“What do you mean by that?” I said.

But it was like the old man could hear me thinking, like he could feel the moment build up and up and up, like those cicadas in the fields just before they go dead quiet.

“Nothing,” he said, like he was letting go of a rope. He looked out the window and I suddenly had the mind-blowing idea that that I was
stronger
than he was now. I mean, physically.

“I’m not going into boarding,” I said.

But the second I said it, it seemed like I’d taken one step too far. Now I was just being a prick and I felt weirdly unprotected. Like somebody was going to cuff me back into my place.

The way he looked at me, you could tell he hated me. Like if he could have pushed a button and exterminated me, he would
have. A million times I remembered him giving me that look and me just shitting in my pants.
Oh-oh, I’m in trouble now.
But now it just set me off.

“You know,” I said, “if I thought we were just going to get up to our usual bullshit, I wouldn’t have bothered coming.”

He made that face again, like he had a piece of rotting fish in his mouth. “You’re a real gent, Simon,” he said. I was just about to answer when suddenly I saw his eyes water up. I’d never seen that before.

“Damn treatment,” he said, wiping them quickly. “Get your mother for me, will you?”

I stood there for a second, not sure what the hell to do.

“Go get her, please, Simon.”

That
please, Simon
went right through me. I mean I could feel it. It was like a fucking dagger right in my heart.

I went out in the hall.

The old lady went in.

“What’s with the old man?” I said to Harper, who was standing with his arms crossed, leaning against the wall.

“They zapped him,” he said, putting an index finger to each temple. “Maybe it’ll make him less of an asshole.”

I looked at him blankly.

“They put electrodes on the side of your head and then they plug you into the wall.”

“What do they do that for?”

A nurse in a green smock passed. He watched her walk down the hall. “Makes you less depressed.”

I squinted at him.

“No shit,” he said.

“They plug you into the wall?”

“Yeah. Just like a vacuum cleaner. Or a toaster.”

“Sure thing.”

He shook his head. “It’s true. Like dropping a bag of marbles on the floor.”

“What is?”

“Your brains.”

W
E WENT BACK TO THE COTTAGE
but it was starting to get boring up there. I was lying around the house and getting in quarrels with my brother; even school was starting to look good. Finally the old lady had had enough.

“God’s teeth!” she declared one afternoon, “what’s
gives?
Why don’t you go down to the city for awhile?”

So I went to stay at my Aunt Jean’s house. She was the wife of my drunk, dead uncle who croaked on the living room couch, six in the morning. A sad story that but anyway. She lived in a big brownstone house on Poplar Plains, this narrow, windey street that runs from downtown up to my neighbourhood. Her son was sort of weird, a gun nut, a hunter and a member of some religious cult. After he hit puberty, we never really got along. He scared me a bit, not that there was anything hostile about him. He was just sort of long and pale and creepy. Anyway, they’d shipped him off for the summer to work on a shrimp boat on the west coast and his room was empty. So that’s where I went.

I liked my aunt, she was nice, and I liked staying at her house. I’d get up late, just before noon (it was the middle of August now), and perch my chin on the windowsill while I was
waking up, peer out onto the street and watch the cars climb slowly up the hill. She left me lunch in the kitchen, a tuna sandwich and a cookie and a glass of milk, all laid out nicely, like I was still a kid. But that was fine. We didn’t know each other very well. She worked as a volunteer somewhere over by Eglinton with the St John Ambulance people. Organized book sales and auctions, things like that. She was a little lonely I think.

Anyway, I’d go downstairs and eat my sandwich and watch TV and just hang around the house. Sometimes I’d listen to the Beatles on her stereo. I could turn it up real loud. There was a song I liked, “It’s Only Love,” a slow, mushy one and it had this part in it when the guy’s voice goes way up and it gave me goosebumps.

I used to play that part over and over again in that big empty house. There wasn’t much else to do, most of my friends were still away at their cottages.

Some evenings, when it was just getting dark, I’d go to the front door and open it and just stand there, this soft sad summer street, no one around, all the colours kind of muted. There’d be these lights twinkling in the windows, I could smell the lake, the stars winking over top, the wind in the trees, the leaves making that funny swishing sound and some nights it made me very sentimental.

Sometimes I’d go for a walk barefoot around the neighbourhood just so I could feel the stones under my feet, the hot pavement. The grass. I was hungry to feel the sensation of things touching me. Sometimes it was just so
much
that I felt like having a cigarette. Something to bring it down a little.

Near eleven at night I’d head down to the fairgrounds to the Exhibition. That’s where Scarlet worked. It was down by the lake and I’d walk to the foot of Poplar Plains and then go over
to Bathurst and catch a streetcar. I’d sit near the back, looking at my reflection in the glass and we’d rattle on downtown. Off in the distance you could see the rides, the ferris wheel whirring backwards. And I’d know Scarlet was down there and that soon I was going to see her. And one night sitting in that streetcar, I tried to imagine not having her to go to, I thought to myself, one night you’re going to be sitting in a streetcar and you won’t have Scarlet to go to. And really, I couldn’t imagine anything more terrible. What would I do? Where would I go? How would I spend my time? What would be worth doing? I’d be like a little grey man walking around in a circle.

And then the streetcar’d get down to the lake shore and rattle around a corner and head along the shore, the bell clanging and we’d get out, a whole crowd of us, everyone all Saturday-night excited and pass under the great big gates with the angel on top, thousands of people on a summer night. And I’d push my way through them, head over through the midway. You could hear the balloons banging and the whistles whistling and the bumpity cars crashing into each other and pretty girls screaming on the roller-coaster, air rifles going pop, pop, man, it was like the whole world was down there, it was like the centre of the universe, all lit up and everyone there. I’d pass through the midway and nip up the stairs of this great big mausoleum, the Food Building. Inside there was free food and people looking at cars and boats and guys with their dates and I’d hurry down the aisles and over near the back of this huge, wide open floor, there’d be Scarlet. She’d be standing on a little round stage, still as a statue. All dressed up in fancy clothes, people standing around watching her. She’d stand like that for a half hour, not moving, nothing, just her eyes closing every so often. And then suddenly, like magic, her arms’d come to life, all graceful, they’d rise up and
hang there for a second, and then settle on her hips, and then her face’d come to life, she’d smile, there’d be a little round of applause. And she’d go to the side of the stage and down a little set of stairs and come over to me. And people would look at her and then at me and then we’d leave together. And you felt like everyone in the place thought what a lucky fellow I was.

We usually walked back through the midway, played a dart game or got some ice cream at a stand. One night we got our picture taken, the two of us squeezed into a booth. That picture makes me a little queasy now.

And then we’d catch the streetcar back to her apartment. Her parents were always asleep and we went into her room and shut the door and fooled around. We went a little farther than before but she still kept grabbing my hand and pulling it out of her pants.

“Don’t,” she said.

“Why not?”

“Because.”

“Because why?”

“It’s not right, right now.”

One night, I got quite pissed off and sat up.

“You’ve done it before,” I said. “Why won’t you do it with me?”

“Well, I haven’t really.”

“You said you did.”

“Well not all the way.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, he got it in just a bit.”

“Well, why can’t I get it in just a bit?”

It went on like this for a couple more nights. Finally she gave in. “All right,” she said. “But not tonight.”

“Well when then?”

She thought for a minute.

“Next Monday. That’s my day off.”

“It’s not going to take all day.”

“Look,” she said, getting pissed off, “do you want to do it or not?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Then it’s next Monday. I don’t want to be rushed.”

So we set it up like a dentist appointment. That’s how it seemed to me. Except I didn’t argue. I didn’t want her to change her mind.

“And don’t forget to bring a rubber,” she said, which didn’t sound very romantic. I just nodded.

And then I went back to my place, up the stairs through my aunt’s house. There was a note reminding me I was supposed to go shopping for school clothes with my dad some time. I got into bed, I lay there with my hands behind my head. The ceiling was very low in my cousin’s room, it being on the third floor. On the other side was a cupboard with a brown wooden door. I had opened it earlier, the first day I was there, but there was something about it I didn’t like, something sinister. It might have been the smell of someone else’s clothes, I didn’t know. But I figured I owed myself a peek in there, just to make it less spooky. I wondered if there was a light in the cupboard. I could have got up and checked but it was easier to see if I could remember. I moved around inside the cupboard until I got sleepy. Then it didn’t matter if there was a light; I’d wait till tomorrow or the next day to have a look. There was plenty of time.

On Monday, near two o’clock in the afternoon, I was sitting in the window on the third floor, looking down on the street when I saw Scarlet making her way toward me. She was
wearing a yellow dress. I yelled out her name. She stood looking around.

“Up here,” I said. She came and stood under the window.

“Hi,” I said.

She made a face.

“Nice day eh?”

“So far,” she said.

She disappeared under the windowsill. The doorbell rang. It was one of those old-fashioned ones, made this irritating buzz. I heard my aunt’s voice way downstairs. I always liked the way Scarlet talked to grown-ups. She was so sure of herself, sunny and all. Some kids are good at sports, some kids are good at math; Scarlet was good with parents. She stayed down there awhile shooting the breeze, being charming and knowing it. Basking in my aunt’s approval like a cat in the sunshine.

Finally she made her way up the stairs, holding onto the bannister. I stood at the top, sort of posed. Somewhere in the house there was a radio playing, it was always on, it kept my aunt company and at this particular moment the newscaster was rhyming off the traffic accidents over the weekend. Nine dead and four injured.

“Here’s one more,” Scarlet said deadpan as she went into the bedroom. She looked around. Went over and sat on the edge of the bed. I sat down beside her and put my arm around her and gave her a little pat on the back, like something you’d do to a kid whose cat had just been run over by a car. Not very sexy. Not really a mood setter, if you know what I mean. And then gradually I moved my face around until I found her lips. But it was all a bit mechanical.

“Can I have a cigarette?” she said. I pulled back.

“Don’t be mad. I’ve just got to relax. I’m nervous.”

She fumbled around in her purse and brought out a gold pack. Very chic, the cigarettes long and thin with a black filter. She lit it with a man’s lighter.

“Where’d you get the lighter?” I said.

“My dad. He gives them out to all the film execs.”

“You’d think they could afford their own lighters.”

“Can I have an ashtray?”

I went downstairs and got her one. I ran into my aunt in the kitchen. She was flapping around down there, making something.

“Scarlet is so nice,” she said in a whisper. “Really, you should marry her.”

When I came back, my future wife was sitting on the windowsill, as far from the bed as she could get. I was trying not to let it all piss me off because, truth is, I wasn’t really in the mood either. But I sure wanted to get it over with so that down the road, when anyone ever asked me, had I done it, I could say yes and not feel all fluttery-stomached like you do when you’re telling a whopper. I could just look him right in the eye and say, casual as dropping a penny in your pocket, sure. Besides which I’d spent so many nights daydreaming about just this moment that now that it was here and nothing was happening it seemed like an extra piss-off.