Savage (13 page)

7 )
In a Lonely Place

Sunday, April 19th, 1992

A
fter my paper route, I took a shower and ate the two pastries (one apple fritter, one dutchie) I had bought with some hot tea. The house was beginning to wake up. I cleaned up the scattered remains of plastic from the newspaper bundles and went outside. Mom began her floating housecoat routine in the kitchen and hallways. She poked her head out the side door, eyes soft with a tired glaze.

"Nate! Did you want some breakfast?"

"No, thanks, I ate stuff."

I shot the tennis ball into the empty net for about an hour. With its subtle motor purring, the video camera witnessed my repetitive driveway pantomime. We were live.

At noon, Holly made her way downstairs, groggy, her eyes barely open. She was holding my story for English class, eyeing me in the den, my hand clutching the VCR remote, a glass of milk in the other. The story I had composed, all four pages of it, consisted of an early evening alien invasion and its effect on some neighbourhood children.

"Morning," she said in a tiny chirp. "Can you make me some tea?"

"Yeah," I said. "Want a waffle? I was gonna have one."

With her hair a tangled web, Holly didn't seem to care, the faint stink of booze still emanating from her.

"I heard you puking this morning."

"Do we have any Tylenol?"

I shrugged, as Holly began scrambling for the antidote. Gulps ensued. She punched the air triumphantly as she chugged a final cup of tap water. "Holy shit."

She plunked down beside me. I passed her a pillow and lowered the volume on the television.

"You drink a ton last night?"

"Shhhh."

After a few sips of tea and a big bite of waffle, Holly shook my story up in the air.

"Your story makes no sense. The alien thing? A bunch of kids on the street see a light in the sky, and then a man comes out of his house and says to the kids, ‘YOU MUST NOT TELL ANYONE WHAT YOU SAW!'"

"Makes perfect sense to me."

"Weird. Is it supposed to be Dad?"

"No, just, like, some dad."

"Are you going to hand it in like that?"

"Dunno. Why?"

"How much is it worth? Do you have Fertuck?"

"You make it sound like a disease. Yeah, she's my teacher. She's always my teacher for English, like, every year."

"And it's for how much?"

"Like five percent or something."

"Well, fuck, then—who cares!"

"Not me!"

"Did Fertuck ever tell you that the gymnasium is described in the opening of
The Handmaid's Tale
?"

"No."

"It's true. It's the gym, that's what the teachers at Leaside say. I'm sure they'll tell you all about it. She went there."

"Who?"

"Atwood."

"To Leaside?"

"Yeah," Holly began to nod in a trance, her mouth now half full of a syrupy waffle clump.

"Freddie Mercury tribute concert is on MuchMusic today."

"George is in it too."

"Really?"

"And Guns N' Roses and Elton John. Pretty weird combo."

*

The afternoon passed in a blitz of television signals, the grazing of homework and assorted personal VHS inventory. I lulled in my room. I watched the footage I'd shot six months earlier up at Andrew's cottage, where we played Frisbee on the beach, the wind blowing the res disc back to him every time he attempted to throw it to me. Another segment showed Andrew telling his brother the story of how I got black-flagged go-karting because of my bad driving.

My hands were crushing my cheeks. I stared at my feet lumps under my fading blue comforter. I gulped water and wiped a premature tear. I put on music, looking at the back cover of a tired hand-me-down
Playboy
. I slid it under my bed. I felt sick, like a cold had colonized in my throat. I had just heard half a garbled answering machine message from an accountant and feared the worst. My gut reaction was the house would be sold and that we were broke. Holly poked her head into my room as a thousand unknowns pinballed around inside.

"Just doing some more laundry."

I didn't look up.

"What's wrong?"

"You think Dad's OK? I mean, do you think we're going to be OK?"

"What do you mean?"

I drew my knees into my chest. "Like, are we going to have to sell the house?"

"I don't think we're going to sell the house anytime soon," Holly said, shaking out a pillowcase.

"Sometimes I want to live in the park."

Holly spun around on my bare bedroom floor, hands full of balled socks.

She sat on my bed. She put her feet in the freshly dried laundry.

"Remember when we ran away?"

"Yeah. Those were the days. I think of that, about sleeping in the park and having lots of blankets. Not having to spend money."

"Come on, park boy; let's go watch something upstairs. Get out of your dungeon for a bit."

I heard the electric tingle of the heater that ran along the southern wall of my room and the churning dryer. Grabbing an empty mug, I headed to the surface. The kitchen sink had the remnants of someone's chicken pot pie, all soggy flakes with floating peas in a gross sink swamp. I turned on the tap and unclogged the drain, running my hands under the clean current. A half-empty glass of fruit punch also sat in the sink's bog. As the stream poured through and I loosened the obstructions near the plug, I watched the runs of blood red trickle weak and pink in the glass, becoming near invisible in the stream.

"Shit!"

"What happened?"

"Just the water; it's hot." I shook my hands, noticing Holly take something from the refrigerator. "I'll be right there," I said.

I joined Holly on the couch. She was flipping through the channels.

"Hol, it's so weird, Dad working for Andrew's dad's company, the funeral parlour."

"Yeah, I guess."

"Like how many funeral homes are there in this city anyway?"

"Dunno, not that many, I guess," Holly said, folding a faded yellow T-shirt and placing it gently in the pink laundry basket. "Why?"

"Never mind."

"Speaking of that, you, ah, seen my Nirvana yellow happy-face tee?"

"Huh? No idea where your shirt is. I haven't seen it, but Mom might have put it in my drawer."

The house smelled like a hostile chemical warzone; a dense sick-cat smell that hung like invisible fungus. The musk of death perfumes, elixirs, and an invisible powder that I imagined the funeral men swallowed in Styrofoam cups each morning instead of staff room coffee—a disgusting drink that would keep them solemn, calm and respectful around the continuous barrage of stiffs they had to carry, drain, manicure, deliver and hoist.

"Oh, Dad's dentist called this afternoon, can you tell him, in case I'm not here? I think he's sleeping upstairs," Holly said.

"Just write it down.
Hey, Deadman, call your teeth master. Love, Repo Man
," I said.

"Dad bought all these new undertaker clothes like special pants and a jacket and ties," Holly said. "He did a fashion show for me last night."

"Rigor Mortis Man fashion show. Maybe he takes the teeth of the dead and has them..."

"Nate, that's so gross!"

Digging in the couch, I found half a cherry-bomb dud under a cushion. Once, playing with Andrew, one had gone off in my hand and felt like a knife had been jammed in and out of my palm for several minutes.

I poked Holly's toes.

"Quit it."

For the last few weekends, Saturdays were the same predictable scene: me calling Andrew, and his brother or father being polite as they informed me he was out playing squash or driving around the city in his new car.

"My roommate drives me nuts; she is so fucking loud when she eats apples. Sounds like bones breaking in her mouth."

"Gross."

"I love her, but just didn't know she ate food like a prehistoric monster."

When she wasn't looking I had hit PLAY on the remote. The VCR began to cue up an image in a netherworld of previously recorded and recorded-over material. As it cleared up completely, it revealed four tanned men inside a ring, ricocheting into one another. The announcer's starchy voice explained the action: "Once again, here, the pendulum has shifted and is now in favour of the champions..."

"Let's watch
Die Hard
," Holly said. "Not this, please."

I hit EJECT.

*

The phone rang. It was Andrew.

The night's detour took the form of an early evening drive to the parking lot of the CNIB, where we fumbled in the cold. We didn't discuss the hockey game, our family's grim activities or school assignments. We took turns in the dark, pumping and sucking like we had done dozens of times like we were on a nature program like this was how it all went. My eyes were half-cocked and watching the dark road for any passers-by or cars or cyclists, elderly couples strolling towards the crest of Bayview Avenue and the cemetery that lined the long stretch like ancient gray teeth hidden under the cold Leaside moonlight.

"I'm freezing."

"Hold on," Andrew said, cranking the heat, his fly lowered, shirt dangling over his public hair and shadowed girth. After the low-lit fondling, he dropped me off at home.

*

The ham was carved, served and the dishwasher digested the memory with a long wet hum. A dry apple crumble was lapped up with vanilla ice cream. Mom and I toiled in the aftermath.

Holly had her backpack at the door; she was all ready and waiting to be driven to the subway.

"I wish Grammy coulda come. So stupid she has to be in that place, eating toothpaste for dinner," Holly snapped. Mom turned to me, eyeing the open dishwasher.

"Did you get all the dishes from your room?"

"Yes. There were twenty-five different cups and plates."

"I'm going to bring Grammy some ham tomorrow," Mom said. "And some dessert, so don't eat it all."

Holly was all agitated, hand tapping out a treble on the dinning-room table.

"Why don't you just have the guard bring it to Grammy's cell instead? They stopped feeding her or something? Do they make her do the dishes in between her gerbil-wheel exercises? It's like a sweatshop for the undead there. I feel horrible every time I go. It's so gross, I—"

"Don't play woe-is-me all the time," Mom snapped.

"I just don't like that place; it's depressing as hell!" Holly shouted.

"Quit feeling sorry for yourself. It's important to visit. To remember—"

"I'm just glad we didn't run into any of Grammy's gang members."

"What are you talking about?"

"Those toughs who roughed up your donut the last time," Holly said.

"Oh, be quiet."

"Yeah, we don't want to get mugged in the elevator," I said, shaking my head in melodramatic nuisance.

Last week, Mom had returned from visiting Grammy visibly upset. I consoled her as best I could, unable to comprehend the showdown she claimed had taken place. While visiting in the dining room area, a resident who was sitting at their table had put her cigarette out in Mom's éclair, causing Mom to weep when relaying the incident to me with all the emotion of a grieving astronaut's wife.

I thought it was the funniest thing I'd ever heard: a skeletal hand stubbing out a lit cigarette in Mom's unsuspecting dessert, on instant replay, like a crime re-enactment or anti-smoking ad created just for the immediate family.

Dad was on the couch reading the newspaper. I decided to do my homework at the living-room table, a few feet from his traditional couch spot. The discussion about Grammy had ended, and now an independent study was on the agenda as Sadie walked by demanding a catnip fix.

"WOULD YOU JUST TELL ME, FOR GOD'S SAKE?" Mom bellowed, tea towel in hand.

"I TOLD YOU: 8:40!" Holly shouted from upstairs.

In Technicolor brilliance, history was about to be made. As I read my history text, I noticed the house's slowed-down vibe growing into this pink afterglow. How it began: Mom slapped some raw beef into patties, a monthly or weekly ritual depending on the price of beef. She started slapping them together from a big mixing bowl, adding eggs and breadcrumbs. The meat's noise created a loud rhythmic spank.

Sipping his coffee, shuffling newsprint and clearing his throat in boorish symphony, Dad gauged the living room's turbulence. He started making disapproving sounds with his teeth and tongue. At first I thought it was something he was reading, but I could tell he was staring towards the kitchen. The slapping continued.

Dad put down his newspaper blinders and, waiting now for a good series of meat slaps, he pounced, as if on cue, on the seventh or eighth consistent meat slap, from his sofa spot, said with surround-sound: "DIANE PUT YOUR PANTS BACK ON!" then laughed maniacally, proud of his zinger. Newspaper rustle, silence from the kitchen. Dad kept laughing.

I felt a jolt of disgust. Mom answered, half choking on something, water perhaps, "What?"

The air was still in the house; my stomach tightened as I looked over at Dad, the living room now turning into a gauze of orange.