The Onion Girl (63 page)

Authors: Charles de Lint

BOOK: The Onion Girl

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OCTOBER

Geordie came by to see me as soon as he got into town. I think he only stopped long enough to drop his luggage off at Christy's apartment before coming over to the professor's house. Since he'd given up his own apartment when he'd moved to L.A. to be with Tanya, I told him he could stay at my studio until I could use it again. Neither of us brought up the fact that as things stood, he might well have the place permanently.

Actually Geordie's been pretty good about my convalescence. Those Riddell brothers have never handled anything to do with illness very
wellâthe whole thing just freaks them out. I mean, Christy's only been by twice since I got out of the rehab, though his girlfriend Saskia comes by at least once a week.

I know Geordie felt really uncomfortable at first, finding me in this wheelchair of mine that first afternoon. Or maybe I'm being unfair. Maybe it had nothing to do with me being the Broken Girl and everything to do with me being with Daniel now. I can see he's trying to be happy for me, but I look at him with Sophie's and Wendy's eyes and see what they've been trying to tell me all along: he's unhappy for himself; not just because of breaking up with Tanya, but because he does carry a torch for me.

When I think of all the years we could have been more than pals, it makes me want to cry. But I try not to let any of that show: that I know how he feels, that we screwed up and now our chance is gone. Because this is still Geordie, my best friend. I can't let anything change that.

“So, Geordie, me lad,” I say to him. “What're you going to do now?”

He shrugs. “I don't know. A little of this, a little of thatâjust like always. I'll get some busking in before the weather gets too desperate, then see if I can get some gigs, maybe put together another band.”

“We missed your music,” I tell him. “We missed you.”

“I missed you, too.”

“You had to try. You had to see if it could work.”

He nods. “But it's weird having your failure spelled out in the tabloids for everybody to see. Before I left, one of the papers was already running a story on Tanya and her new boyfriendâyou know, with the photo spread and all.”

“You know how the tabloids are,” I say. “They just like to blow everything out of proportion.”

“They had pictures of them necking in some restaurant.”

“That sucks.”

“Tell me about it.”

We used to be able to sit together for hours, not having to say anything; other times we'd talk until our voices actually got hoarse. That's not happening right now. We don't have words, but the silence between us seems to require them anyway. I hate this.

“It's funny,” Geordie says suddenly. He turns to look at me. “Ever since you had your accident I've had this weird feeling that it was all my fault. That if I hadn't gone away, none of it would have happened. I
know,” he adds before I can protest. “You don't have to tell me. I know how stupid that sounds. But I still catch myself feeling guilty all the same.”

I look at him for a long moment. The thing is, I understand just what he's getting at. I'm not saying it's true, or real. But I've felt it before myself.

Then something horrible occurs to me.

“That's not the reason you and Tanyaâ”

“No, no,” Geordie says, breaking in. “Tanya and I just live in different worlds. I don't know why we pretended we didn't. If she hadn't been slumming in mine, I don't think things would ever have gotten to where they did.”

“But you loved each other.”

“I think we still do. But we don't suit each otherâand that's the bottom line. Believe me, we've had a lot of long nights talking it out.”

“I'm sorry,” I tell him. And it's true. I am. I mean it.

“Yeah, me, too,” he says, then he leans back on the sofa and sighs. “I was just so â¦ displaced out there. I thought I'd feel different when I got back home, but I don't. Everything's changed. You, me â¦”

“Except we're still best friends.”

He doesn't say anything for a long moment. Then he sits up and looks at me, a small smile on his lips, a sadness in his eyes.

“We are, aren't we?” he says.

“Even when you're an idiot,” I tell him. “Maybe especially when you're an idiot, because it makes me seem so smart.”

“I'd give you a whack if you weren't already in a wheelchair.”

“Now you can see one of the side benefits of recuperation.”

This time the smile almost reaches his eyes.

“I really did miss you,” he says.

It takes me a moment to school my features, to not let my own sadness show.

“I know,” I tell him.

So Wendy's gone picture crazy. Every time she and Sophie cross over into the dreamlands, Wendy comes back with her pockets full of rolls of film that need developing. Most of them are of those canyons near
Cody's camp on the mesa. Breathtaking vistas with cliffs that drop forever or rise to heights that rival the trees in the Greatwood. With towering firs and pine trees, their dark greens vibrating brilliantly against the red rock. With those curious hoodoos, the rock formations that seem to have a hundred faces hiding in them when they don't look like castle spires and towers.

But occasionally she comes back with portraits or candid shots of some of the people they meet over there. Puma girls and strutting eagle boys. Spirits of the juniper and pinyon pines. And of course canids.

I particularly like this shot she's got of Whiskey Jack, lighting a cigarette, his head cocked to one side as he looks into the camera. She's captured that elusive blend of wisdom, tomfoolery, and sex drive perfectly.

“What is it with that guy?” she said the first time she came back from having met him over here. “He's got a libido as big as those canyons.”

But she's not the only one to be taken by those magical views. Sophie's gotten back into landscape painting in a big way, working
en plein air
with my
pochade
box and small canvases, then using those paintings to develop larger, more finished pieces back in the Grumbling Greenhouse Studio.

“I think I've got a show here,” she said one morning while she was taking a break and we sat in the studio looking at the half-dozen new canvases that were propped up along one of the worktables.

“And when people ask you where those canyons are?” I asked.

She shrugged. “I'll just say southern Utah.”

At first they were both worried at how I'd take their being able to cross over. It took me a long time to get them to stop waiting for me to get better before they went themselves and even longer to convince them that I really was okay with it.

And I am.

They just don't understand how much this means to me, how it gives me something so tangible to shoot forâI mean, beyond being completely mobile again, which is the first priority, of course. I thought I might never get back there. I certainly can't cross over in my dreams. But now I know that all I have to do is keep working at getting better and I will be able to be there again.

I won't deny that I get jealous twitches. But I get jealous twitches just seeing people walk around, taking their mobility so for granted.

Tonight I have the professor's house to myself. Daniel's got a late shift, the professor is at a lecture, Wendy and Sophie have gone out to a club, Goon has the night off, and Geordie's got a gig. I've managed to convince them all that I'll be fine on my own for the few hours I'll be alone. And I am, though I'm a little at loose ends.

I try watching some TV, but it's just boring. I flip through some magazines, ditto. I'm reading
Owls Aren't Wise & Bats Aren't Blind;
a book debunking fallacies about animals that I got out of the professor's library. I've been really enjoying it, but it's a hardcover and I have trouble holding a book its size for a long time. And anyway, tonight it doesn't hold my interest either.

I perk up when the doorbell sounds. It's too late for a delivery, so it must be a visitor. I wheel down the hallway, wondering who it is. Angel, maybe. Or Mona. It doesn't matterâI'm just happy to know that I won't be alone. So much for resiliently hanging out on my own.

But when I get the door open, I find the last person in the world I expect to see standing there on the stoop. I have a momentary flare of nervousness that I quickly and firmly put aside.

“Hey, Raylene,” I say.

She nods, looks down at my wheelchair. “Hey, yourself. I see you're still in the wheeling around stage.”

“I'm improving.”

“That's good to hear.”

“What are you doing here?” I ask. “Not that I'm unhappy to see you, but the last time we â¦”

She waves a hand. “Yeah, I know. But things change. I'm turning over a new leaf and all that.”

“Really?”

She shrugs. “I'm giving it a shot, anyways. Just thought I'd drop by and say how-do before I hit the road.”

“Where are you going?”

I can't believe this. She leaves the dreamlands and comes to visit, and now she's already going again?

“Back out west,” she says. “I got me a little business out there that I been neglecting. I ever tell you 'bout that software I been designing?”

“A little.”

“Well, I figure I'd give it a shotâget serious 'bout something for a change. See if I can walk the straight and narrow, you know? And maybe even be happy 'bout it.”

“Can you come in?”

She looks over her shoulder to where a pink Cadillac convertible is idling by the curb with its roof up.

“I got somebody waiting,” she says.

“They're welcome to come in, too.”

She gives me a long look.

“You really are some piece of work, aren't you?” she says. “You got all this crap in your life, but you're still cheerful, still being the good hostess and all.”

“You'll have to get your own drinks,” I tell her.

“I can do that. You sure it's no trouble?”

“Not even close.”

She gives a slow nod. “I'll go get my friend Lizzie. We won't stay long.”

“You can stay as long as you like.”

“Damn,” she says. “You really mean that, don't you?”

“Of course I do.”

She steps closer to me and I think she's going to give me a hug, but she just rests her hand on my shoulder for a moment, then turns to get her friend.

We talk for so long that she and Lizzie have to stay in one of the guest rooms overnight and put off their trip until the morning.

Interview

Extract from an interview with Jilly Coppercorn, conducted by Torrane Dunbar-Burns for The
Crowsea Arts Review
, at her Yoors Street studio, on Wednesday, April 17, 1991.

What do you think it is that makes you different from other artists? That makes you so welcome among so many disparate disciplines, untouched by maliciousness or gossip?

[Laughs.] Well, I think there's plenty of gossip.

But it's not mean-spirited. Whenever I hear you talked about, it's as though you're a mischievous little sisterâeven to artists many years your junior.

I don't know. Maybe it's because I don't want to rule or serve, only to be allowed to go my own way.

Isn't that the ambition of all artists? To make their oum mark?

Is it? It seems to me that people make art for all sorts of different reasons. I'm not interested in leaving a body of work behind. But I am interested in promoting communication between everybodyâand not only through the arts. And I'm determined to show through my art that there are alternatives to the way the world is these days.

You mean by showing us that there are faerie and magic?

The magical beings in my paintings aren't the point. The point is that we're not alone. That we're surrounded by spirit and spirits. I truly believe that if we do our best to live a good life, to treat each
other with kindness and respect, we can make the world a better place. The faerie are a representation of that betternessâis that even a word?

It is now, if you want it to be
.

The faerie represent the beauty we don't see, or even choose to ignore. That's why I'll paint them in junkyards, or fluttering around a sleeping wino. No place or person is immune to spirit. Look hard enough, and everything has a story. Everybody is important.

“Death makes equal the high and low.”

What's that from?

John Heywood, I believe.

Too bad we have to wait for death to make a balance.

Isn't that the truth. But to get back to the faerie and the other magical beings in your paintings â¦

They're just how I tell the story.

So the faerie aren't real?

[Smiles.] I never said that.