Practical Jean (9 page)

Chapter 8

Y
oung Jeff Birdy's orange Barracuda throbbed and gurgled at the corner of Calendar and Main while he waited for the light to change, and Jean could see him pointed across her path as she slowed to a stop. When the light turned she got the full spectacle of that boy easing his car into the intersection and curling left just in front of her. He took it nice and slow, like he was riding a show horse around an arena full of people who'd come to watch only him, letting the sunlight flash off his chrome and not seeming to care that there were cars behind him with drivers impatient to get somewhere, not seeming to care about anything at all in the world. Jean watched him in his dark T-shirt and Labatt's baseball cap, one arm dangling limp out the window as if it viewed disdainfully the task of gripping the wheel, and she wondered at the influences that must have led to such a display of . . .
arrogance
was the word. Ash had never been like that, had he? Jean didn't think he had. So how could this boy of twenty-two, who had accomplished no more than a clean car—a car that, as it made that clotted, back-of-the-throat noise sounded bronchially infected to Jean's ears—how could he smile with such enormous self-assurance at people he hardly knew? It was a paradox.

The paradox of Jeff Birdy's smile.

But he rounded the corner and he was gone, and Jean pushed the image out of her mind, because on this bright day she had before her a bit of a challenge. She needed to convince Dorothy to leave Roy at home for an evening and come out to dinner with her. They hadn't really had a heart-to-heart in a long time, just the two of them, and as Jean set herself the task of making a lasting experience for her—or, not lasting, but exquisite—she was feeling a little under-equipped.

Over the past few years she had lost track of what made Dorothy deeply happy. Her friend had become someone who personified resilience and endurance, someone you admired for facing a hardship you were grateful to have avoided yourself. It had made her a little severe, though. There were walls around Dorothy, and whatever sense Jean had of who was inside, the woman of secret joys and wishes, came from her memories of the Dorothy she'd known in high school so many years before.

That Dorothy, the regal seventeen-year-old with a fall of chestnut hair, had loved track and field, and swimming in cold, cold water at the lake. November wasn't too late for Dorothy Perks to dive in, so it was said; and one October 31st, after a Hallowe'en dance, Jean had actually seen her splashing away from that showoff Frank Rennick (and who's to say they weren't still in the water when people lost track of them long after midnight?). Dancing, of course, that was another thing she loved to do. Jean used to envy Dorothy for having her choice of tall, covetable partners for the “Stairway to Heaven” finale of every event, and the way she so smoothly managed the song's awkward transitions from slow to fast to completely rhythmless. During those last fifteen seconds, when everyone else stood around motionless like a closetful of poorly hung clothing, Dorothy zeroed in on the eyes of whatever boy she was with, draped her long arms behind his head, and pulled him forward so that their lips touched for the first and only time the instant Robert Plant eased out the word “Heaven.” For Jean, who was usually standing against the wall with Cheryl, it was like watching the end of a famous romantic movie you'd seen over and over and over, predictable and unavoidable but still a little enthralling.

Swimming and running and toying with boys: there were surely now more depths of joy to survey in Dorothy Perks than that. But when Jean had called last night, Dorothy had insisted that she couldn't come out for dinner, or that if she did she needed to bring Roy along because she said there wasn't anyone left willing to sit with him. And Jean knew that if Dorothy brought Roy, then she'd be forced to invite Milt, because he was acting so needy lately it wasn't worth the aggravation and pouting to leave him behind. So she pulled the car to the curb and tried again.

“Dorothy,” she said when her friend answered the phone, “I know you've said no already but I want to insist on you coming out with me this evening. We deserve a girls' night out, just the two of us.”

There were some strange sounds that Jean couldn't quite place coming through the earpiece, and when Dorothy spoke she seemed distracted. “I'm sorry, Jean,” she said. “I'd love to, but I can't. Do you want to know what I'm doing right now?”

Jean was fairly convinced she didn't want to know, but Dorothy was a friend, so the word “yes” came out of her mouth.

“I'm watching my husband tear the stuffing out of his favorite chair in big handfuls.”

“Why is he doing that?”

“He says the chair is against him. It's making his ass sore, because he's been sitting in it all day, so now he's teaching it a lesson.”

“I see,” said Jean, and she waited while she heard Dorothy yell at Roy to clean up the mess he was making because she was sure as hell not going to do it. “Well, then—Dorothy, are you there?—I guess we could have a couples' night out.” In the background, Roy was shouting something unintelligible. Jean tried to make her voice bright. “And we'll go someplace casual.”

They went to Ted's Big Catch, which was a fish and chips place way up on Main at the corner of Primrose that was nicer than it sounded, with wood paneling and heavy varnished tables and those big captain's chairs that gave a big man lots of support and had only a little vinyl padding for the back.

The two couples arrived at almost the same time, and they settled around a table in the big dining room where there were lots of hurricane lamps and seashells and fish netting, and it was a lovely picture, Jean thought, reassuring herself. She said, “I wish I'd thought to bring a camera!” probably a little too enthusiastically. Dorothy looked much less frazzled than she had a few nights before at Jean's house. She had on black slacks, and a thin black cardigan over a peach jersey top, and she had her hair tied back to show off her long neck. She looked very slim, almost pert, and not at all her age, and Jean made sure to compliment her.

Roy had on a sports jacket, which he filled out with an impressiveness bordering on the grotesque, and his thinning hair was gelled and combed back in silvery strands, like a wire grille. When he spoke, his words came out slow and ponderous, and he seemed very calm, if a little confused, not knowing quite why they were there, or who Jean and Milt were, even though they had met many times before. Dorothy had encouraged him to wear a tie, she said, by which Jean felt she meant to explain the jumbled knot bunched against his thick neck. And Milt was Milt, wearing his usual checkered shirt and khaki pants with the black running shoes that Jean absolutely hated. “They're comfortable, and they look just like dress shoes,” he insisted, even though that last part was not even close to true.

When the waitress came and asked for drink orders, Roy said, “Beer.” Dorothy tried to whisper to him that he could only have milk or juice (she caught Jean's eye and mouthed the word “med-i-ca-tion”), but he bunched up the heavy features of his face until they looked like folds of pork and seemed about to cry or make a scene and it was a relief when Dorothy relented.

“Are you having a Mojito?” Jean said to Milt.

“No, I thought a beer.”

“Fine, and I'll have a Chardonnay. Dorothy, are you joining me?”

“Well I'm driving, so . . .”

“Oh, just have one.”

“Don't worry,” said Milt. “The fried batter will absorb the alcohol.”

They got their drinks and ordered their food, and then Jean raised her glass to toast Dorothy, saying, “Here's to my friend who has shown such grace and endurance in the face of everything.” Jean knew it wasn't the best toast ever, but as she brought the glass to her mouth it seemed a little odd to her that Dorothy didn't seem pleased, and that she had looked immediately at Roy. But then Jean turned and saw Roy looking back at her with a suspicious glower and put her glass down.

“‘Everything,'” Roy said. His eyes were squinty and he seemed to be chewing agitatedly on his lower lip. “What you mean, ‘everything'?”

“Just everything,” Jean said, trying for a chuckle. “Everything life throws at us.”

“So why you didn't say to the whole table, ‘everything'?”

Dorothy put her hand on Roy's forearm. “It's okay, hon. Jean was just being nice.”

Jean felt the blood rushing to her face. “I was just being nice,” she said, her voice reduced to a little girl's chirp. She looked at Milt, who was looking at Roy and seemed just as confused as she was.

“Roy doesn't like to feel like a burden,” said Dorothy, focusing on Jean now with a great intensity.

“‘Everything,' you mean me,” said Roy, still glaring at Jean, still chewing his lower lip. “For what she needs ‘endurance.' It's me.”

“No, hon,” said Dorothy gently.

“Oh, no,” said Jean. “No, I wasn't talking about you.”

“No,” Milt contributed, shaking his head.

Roy's eyes squinted menacingly at Milt and back at Jean, and for a moment it felt to Jean as if the whole table, in fact the whole evening, were being dangled over the side of a cliff. And then she had a sudden inspiration.

“I meant growing old!” she exclaimed. “Because Dorothy looks so good! She's the same age as me, but I could be her older sister!”

Roy's eyes compressed even more, and the dark irises rattled back and forth like marbles in a matchbox between Dorothy and Jean. For a second or two he appeared uncertain, wavering, and it seemed that anything might still happen. And then a grin broke across his face like splitting skin. “Her mother!” The corners of his eyes crinkled and his grin widened until he showed pink gums and the brown ridges of teeth. He slammed the table, clattering the cutlery and plates. “You look like her mother!”

Dorothy's eyes were on her and Jean thought she noticed a flicker of pity in her face, pity stirred up with gratitude, like a sour-sweet Mojito. She chuckled. “That's right.” She lifted her glass. “Here's to you, Dorothy!”

Roy slammed the table again and lifted his beer high. “To Dorothy!”

And Jean smiled at Milt, because after the poor man raised his glass he seemed unsure whether he should take a sip.

For a good hour or so, everyone seemed to enjoy themselves well enough. Milt munched happily on his burger and salad. Dorothy ate one of her fish pieces with the batter and one without, and the batter that she left on the plate looked like a little brown snowsuit for a tiny baby. She lit up a cigarette, too, even though smoking wasn't allowed, because she seemed to be aware that, with Roy sitting there so massively, no one would come to the table and ask her to put it out. And for his part, “Big Boy” ordered two plates of fish and chips, and piled them into his mouth, sometimes with his fork and sometimes with his fingers. Every once in a while if he started to pick up a big piece of fish—or his coleslaw, he tried that also—Dorothy would give him a sharp little smack on the wrist so that he would drop it. It seemed to Jean that Roy didn't like that very much, being smacked like a child, but otherwise he seemed to be quite content, laughing sometimes when he thought someone had made a joke, wiping his greasy mouth with his napkin or his sleeve, burping with deep satisfaction after his third beer. A couple of times, Jean tried to address a question to him, just to be friendly, such as, “How are you enjoying living in the country?” and “Do you ever watch boxing on TV?” But he would only look at her the way a toddler might, as if she were talking nonsense and just interrupting his fun. In fact, after the blow-up over the toast to Dorothy, the only words he said to anybody were, “I want the ketchup.” And he didn't have to say that twice.

But despite the fact that the evening was proceeding as well as anyone might have reasonably hoped, Jean felt herself getting more and more frustrated. Because this wasn't supposed to be just a friendly get-together, this was supposed to be a fact-finding mission. And it turned out, as Jean had expected, that a dinner for four in a busy fish and chips restaurant was a terrible time and place to find out anything about a person that was of any value whatsoever. Every time she tried to open up the subject—“So, Dorothy . . .”—of what made her friend really, truly happy these days, Dorothy would get distracted by something Roy was doing, like pretending to eat the end of his tie, or she'd shrug and give some meaningless answer such as, “I just like to veg in front of the TV with Roy.”

After more than an hour of this it was starting to occur to Jean, and frankly it was a surprise given that she had been friends with the woman for nearly forty years, that maybe Dorothy was not a very deep or thoughtful person at all. That was the sort of thing you'd think one person might have discovered about another person at some point, she thought, but apparently all their conversations for years and years had only skirted the surface like water beetles, not even trying to reveal any deep, dark, inner truths. She tried to put it down to the situation, which really was not ideal, but even so, by the end of her second glass of wine, Jean was feeling a little sad about her friendship and starting to lose some of the fire for her cause, at least where Dorothy was concerned.

And then something happened that put everything back on the right track.

Milt was doing the talking, going on as he liked to do about the differences between Grade 9 students and Grade 10 students, the two grades he tended to teach—in their maturity levels and tendencies toward aggression or insolence or overt sexuality, that sort of thing. Because he was a substitute teacher and wasn't able to form relationships with the kids in the classrooms, he believed he had a unique and “scientifically useful” perspective. He was like a “test rat” being dropped into different cages, he said. And of course all of this was going completely over the head of Roy, and Dorothy as well, and Jean was a little annoyed at Milt for discussing a topic that held so little interest for half the people at the table (three-quarters of the people, if the truth were known). But when Milt mentioned the part about being a “test rat,” Roy thought that was hilarious and began to laugh so that his shoulders shook. And then, possibly because his mind was caught on the image of Milt as a small furry creature, he went to grab a handful of food from the wrong plate. It was Dorothy's little suit of batter. And when he picked it up with his fingers, laughing, Dorothy slapped his wrist, and that's when Roy hit Dorothy in the mouth.