If there are really sixty words for snow among the Inuit, why aren’t there at least twenty words for tired? As in, god-when-will-this-end tired, why-is-life-so-hard-yet-so-meaningless tired and there’s-nothing-to-wear-nothing-for-lunch-and-where’s-my-bus-pass tired. Then there’s wide asleepness when you’re so tired your head keeps drooping, so alert that everything is too loud, bright and sharply de fined. Oh. And then there’s extreme sleep deprivation because your sister beat you up in the middle of the night. That’s about ten types, and as I try to shield myself from Paige beside me and Ms. Riddell in front of me, I am all of them.
Riddell smacks a yardstick against the blackboard. The entire class jumps. ‘So, are we slaves to our genes, or do they work for us?’ Riddell says. ‘Can Dree choose to finish her mitochondria project? Or is she genetically programmed to ignore biology assignments?’
The entire class swivels around, as in, whatever, except I turn bright red. Paige closes her eyes and says, ‘Oh my god,’ as per usual.
‘The colour of your eyes, the curliness of your hair, your penchant for black, maybe it’s all encoded in your DNA. Another hundredth of a second and you would have been an entirely different person.’ Riddell smiles at me. ‘Be glad you’re you.’
‘Oh, exactly,’ I say. A titter undulates through the class.
I try to look slightly quizzical but mostly blank. Same look I gave Trenchey when he said what did I think I was pulling with the Death of a Salesman bowl, literature was no joke. Same look I gave Santini when he asked did I work things out with Rita/Mrs. Johnson, did I plan to go to the Jojo Bunting seminar, group energy can be a powerful thing.
Exponential tiredness means a weird but comfy underworld fog. Real life is softer and out of focus. The wall between live people and spirits feels thinner than usual, or maybe jiggled out of position a little, like the cheap room dividers at the Timbley Times. It’s a friendly fog, as if Dad and his spirit buds are a buffer zone between me and living humans. Look, Dree, they’re saying, all these people with hopeful lives? With all their achievements and goals? We’re going to be between you and them sort of like foam rubber, so it won’t hurt as much when they bounce against you. Actually, even the walk to school this morning across sad and futile Churchill Square wasn’t as lethal as usual. A guy picked up cigarette butts under the Epcor sign, and someone in brown ran by with a bulging laptop case. I saw my future – scrounging or working or both then death. But fine, nothing new. Of course when everything’s fine, you know you’re done. But I was too tired to consider that.
Riddell is passionate about cell death. ‘Dree and Paige, you are listening smartly, I presume, as you will be enlightening us further on the subject?’
‘We’re on it,’ I say. ‘Apoptosis.’
‘Mercy. Could you say that word again for the class?’
‘Apoptosis.’ Wow. Wherever that came from, thank you. I smile at Paige.
Except for bumping into everything, this would be the state of mind to stay in for life. Random flashes of intelligence. Strangely unbothered by everything. Immune to sibling hatred.
Paige is maybe a molecule less killer than this morning at the bus stop but hatred still shoots from her eyes. This morning she stood inside the bus shelter, encased in navy, and I stood just outside the door waiting for a car to drive through the puddle and cover me in freezing slush. I figured it would have been painful plus baptismal, and Paige was all about both.
I apologized again.
She squeezed her biology textbook to her chest so tightly I expected paramecia to fall out. She had many many words for how evil I am and how this affects the planet, as if I am personally responsible for global warming and every civil war in Africa. What do you want, I’d ask after every couple of sentences. So, what do you want? No response until, finally, she said her last pathologically selfish. Then she ripped a page from her coiled scribbler, handed it to me, pushed me aside and got on the bus. As per usual, she sat in front to talk to old people and I sat three seats behind. We both knew she wasn’t telling Joan anything since Joan was already boiling over. Still, I was in no position to negotiate.
1. Make Paige new shirt, Vogue pattern #1293, out of blue fabric with yellow checks no later than this Friday.
2. Make Paige three items on demand according to her specifications within three days of each request.
3. Give Paige a) crocheted belt (brown); b) beaded bracelet (blue and yellow).
4. Surrender all craft supplies not needed to make 1 or 2 to Paige as collateral until 1–3 are complete.
5. Paige has total access to Dree clothing and accessories until 1–3 complete.
6. Mitochondria presentation gets no less than A.
7. Failure to meet any of the above will result in full disclosure of theft to authorities.
‘This is totally unchristian,’ I say when we got off the bus.
‘Correction,’ she says, pointing her finger like Moses and quoting something biblical and damning.
Basically she owns me.
Riddell talks to us in the last few minutes of class. ‘So, apoptosis. Well, well, Ms, Dree. What are you planning for next week’s presentation?’ She’s hoping I’ve got more than one word. It does have four syllables. I smile the weak smile of the damned and wait for time to pass. It doesn’t, so I say, ‘I want to dramatize the turning point of our evolution. To show how mitochondria invented sex.’ The room pops with oh gods, yeahs and the raucous laughter of adolescents trying to sound experienced. ‘Excellent!’ says Ms. Riddell. ‘Excellent! Good work, you two.’
As it turns out, that was the best day of the week. By Friday I have accumulated many lifetimes’ worth of fear and resentment. Vogue 1293 has a sadistic collar and front yoke. No one’s said anything about Leonard except Bethany on our first day back, and all she said was, ‘Wow, that was so weird, how your father died just like that.’ How can death be such a non-deal when everyone’s afraid to die? Couldn’t the school or at least one of my classes wear black armbands even for a day? Shouldn’t every school have a big box of them for parental deaths? Today there’s a story in the paper Leonard would have loved. A woman in Texas pulled a gun on her hairdresser because he cut her bangs too short. Also, another ped got run over on Jasper Avenue. Dadness but no Dad. No one who says, ‘Dreebee, you’re a marvel.’ And it’s like nothing happened. I once made cookies for Jennifer when her budgie died FGS.
The week lurches by like one zombie after another, each one uglier and nastier than the last. The bags under Joan’s eyes get darker, Paige’s braids get tighter. I get more tired, which should be impossible.
A million times a day I check for Jessie messages but by Thursday it’s obvious. Not a single person on the planet likes me. I stand in the girls’ can looking in the mirror and see that my mouth has become exactly like Joan’s. Permanently downturned. There I stand being bitter about being alone but still being alone, probably for life because I’ve become bitter. Sophie and Erin come out of stalls, wash their hands and leave without saying hey. So now I’m repellent. From invisible to actively repulsive. Excellent. Like the guy in the bushes but I didn’t even have to grow a beard and blow my nose into it.
Friday is the one-month death anniversary. I can’t get out of bed. I can only think in big foggy letters and it takes the whole morning for them to spell out Leonard, where are you. I have to see him, can’t see him, have to get up, can’t. The Marcels look anxious. There are seven now, the baby socks having escaped capture by Paige. They’re lined up on my dresser like a tiny, pudgy construction crew watching with button-eyed concern. What, I say. Do you want to go to school? Do you want to try belonging?
More snow, overcast sky. The world feels like a basement apartment with teeny windows and a low ceiling. Maybe I can get a job and move out, try to finish school at night or something. I stare at the ceiling, wonder about the stain in the corner and remember the nightmare of hooded faces and Jessie’s drawing. And as my eyes move away from the stain and follow a crack, I remember why those faces seemed familiar – Leonard’s creepy little picture had the same creepy face, and I’d been staring at it my entire life. I’m sure of it. The picture I left on his bookshelf was a sketch, not painted, with more face less hood, kind of horrorlite. I’ve got to get it. I could email Jessie now, tell her I have something of her father’s. No. I don’t know for sure. But if it is Tim’s and I do get it, maybe Jessie will like me again. I take Marcel 6 for good luck. There’s something especially plucky about him.
Taking the bus to Millwoods and back takes roughly the same amount of time as flying to Toronto. On the way there, I crochet half a panel of Paige’s shoulder bag – number one of penance two. Rita isn’t home. The guy next door is shovelling and watches me walk around to the back. ‘Hi,’ I say. ‘She’s not home,’ he says. He waits to see what I’ll do next. I lean on the doorbell and sit on the steps. I’ll wait him out.
He wins.
School hours are way over by the time I head back so I can’t use my school bus pass. ‘What do you think this is,’ says the bus driver, ‘a limo?’ He and the woman in the front seat exchange sardonic-all-knowing smiles and he points at the door. The #81 guy is better, doesn’t kick me off, but won’t give me a transfer either, so I have another mile to walk once I get downtown, at which point I would have been on the shuttle out of the Toronto airport.
The only thing that makes me want to live a long long time is the new convention centre because when I’m old no one will care about teaching me consequences when I blow it up. You’d think it would be bad enough to walk by a concrete wall instead of the river valley. But, no. In front of the concrete death-box, big plastic letters in primary colours spell DREAM. As in, Are you serious? Dream of what? The river I used to see? Last year, Leonard stuck a clue on the M. Forgive the spelling, marvellous Drea; the word’s been urdered perversely. He taped a Second Cup coupon at the side of the M with the next clue. I got a mochaccino the next day and complained it wasn’t hot enough so got another coupon for any drink, any size, which is so golden even I have managed to save it.
A couple of guys are smoking at the picnic table in the remand centre yard but none of the street guys are drinking at their bench like they usually are because damn it’s cold. I’m frozen and compressed as a fish stick when I get home but because I’m me, no one cares except in relation to the supper I was supposed to cook. ‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘Nice of you to drop by,’ says Joan. ‘She was worried sick,’ says Paige. ‘Sorry! If I had a cell I could have called.’
‘Mom, it’s 6:30,’ says Paige.
‘I’ll make spaghetti tomorrow,’ I say.
Things go way too fast. Paige says, ‘Mom, do you want me to stay?’ Joan says, ‘No honey, you go-go.’ She blows her nose and tells me that someone at work gave her two movie passes, but they didn’t know where I was so Paige asked her friend. Whereupon Paige says, ‘Dree couldn’t go anyway, she has sewing to do,’ and lifts a foot to take off a Leonard slipper, now stretched all to hell. Somewhere between me telling her the slippers are not, will never be, part of my regular wardrobe and are exempt from #5, and both of us telling Joan nothing is going on, nothing at all, and Paige telling me to take off my crocheted beaded belt, she’ll wear it until I make her one which will be #1c – somewhere in there, one of us pushes the other and the other pushes back. Don’t ask me how, but Paige hits the wall face first, which actually means nose first. Which means a crunchy pop. Softer than a balloon being pricked, louder than plastic beads being pulled apart. Avec blood. Lots of blood.
Violent and abusive is not what I had hoped for in terms of personality type, and in the first hour in emergency I stare at the wall while Paige bleeds onto my favourite belt and I think, Violent and abusive. That’s me. You don’t think you can ever be like that, then bam. Literally. Alcoholism must be next.
For ninety minutes, I sit there hating myself the way you’re supposed to when you break your sister’s face. The Marcel bag is on the floor beside me, but I hate myself too much for crafts. ‘Sorry,’ I say again.
‘Oh, girls,’ says Joan, on her tenth disease brochure, this one about breast cancer.
Paige covers her nose with both hands.
There are eleven people scattered in the waiting room, and except for the really really old person, we are all watching paramedics push a stretcher through, oxygen mask and lots of nurse action, but I can’t see the patient. That’s how Leonard came through, I bet, maybe with Emergency full and a crowd watching.
‘Well, that’s quite the out fit,’ Joan says and the group stare clicks in again. A woman totters on stilettos, sparkly white four-inchers, and carries a guitar. She takes off her coat, arranges her complicated blue out fit, gets the guitar out and settles into a bench to strum away. When the nurse comes over, the woman says, ‘Oh hello, I’m Lakshmi,’ and gives her a paper. Then she sings ‘Puff the Magic Dragon’ all soft and breathy, followed by ‘This Land is Your Land’ and something in French. Most people turn back to their magazines halfway through ‘Puff,’ but OMG. It’s after midnight by now and so weirdly excellent that I’m describing the whole thing to Leonard in my head. We’re closest to her and she smiles at me every few lines. After her third song, she comes right over to us. ‘Oh no,’ Joan says.
‘It’s my offering,’ she says. ‘Music lifts everyone’s hearts.’ She comes whenever her throat tingles, she says. She wasn’t going to come tonight, but tingle tingle, so she had to.
W.O.W. ‘And the hospital’s okay with that?’ I ask.
‘I have a letter,’ she says with a big smile. ‘When you’re heart is open, others have to follow.’ Joan goes to the bathroom, and Paige is essentially fetal and possibly asleep. Lakshmi’s eyes fix on my bag of Marcel supplies and she pulls out Marcel 7’s torso. ‘So, you’re gifted, too.’
‘Correction,’ says Paige. ‘She broke my nose.’
I am about to put my hand on Paige’s back and say sorry again, but Lakshmi is between us and she gasps, ‘Poor you!’ She pats my hand. ‘You must feel terrible. When I was sixteen, I pushed my sister down the stairs and broke her arm. I’m still healing.’ Paige swears for possibly the first time in her life. Lakshmi goes off to sing ‘Puff’ again and I turn to covertly sew Marcel 8’s head into a point. Maybe Paige really is sleeping now. Joan comes back and dozes. A security guard talks to Lakshmi and she leaves, waving and smiling at me, and I hold up the beginning of Marcel 9. Eight of the eleven people have gone in, four new people have arrived, then another stretcher, then Paige’s name is called and I wake her up.
‘Yup, it’s broken,’ the doctor says, ‘nice and clean. No brain damage probably.’ We laugh because we are too tired not to, and because that’s what you do at three in the morning when your emergency doctor makes a joke. Laughing is laughing, though, and while the doctor talks about ice for Paige’s swelling, Paige hates me a little less. I take off my coat and work on Marcel 10’s eyes.
Dr. Belinsky explains what Paige’s face will do over the next two weeks. ‘Yup, black and blue then blue then yellow. That’s when you go to your doc, get it checked.’ Paige keeps saying oh no. Joan goes to leave a voicemail for Alex the boss about coming in late that day. Marcel’s eyes and Paige’s nose are done at the same time, and the doctor looks at Marcel sitting in my palm then snatches him and says, ‘She’s wonderful!’
‘Marcella,’ I say.
‘Marcella!’ shouts the doctor, a little too happily. ‘Marcella! I’ll be right back.’
‘Time to switch to decaf,’ I say. Paige doesn’t smile and I apologize for the millionth time. ‘I am so so sorry, Paige. Does it still hurt?’
‘No, not at all, it’s great,’ Paige says. Sarcasm will never be her thing. She sits while I discreetly commit a small crime re: new craft supplies. From the hall, the doctor exclaims ‘Marcella!’ again and we grimace. That much energy this late hurts. Paige pats her cheeks again and winces. ‘Too bad you and Dad can’t have a great big laugh at this.’
‘Paige, never –’
‘As if. I heard you.’
‘No way.’
‘Sainty Paige.’
‘He never said that.’
‘So, where’s my special account?’
‘With mine.’
‘As if. Dree’s so creative, Dree’s so – ’
‘Paige, I’ll get a job, I’ll pay you back, I promise.’
Out in the hall, someone shrieks with maybe laughter. ‘Belinsky, what is that?’
‘That, darling, is going to get us through the night,’ says Paige’s doctor.
‘Another gastro in D,’ says someone else.
‘Exactly, my beloveds. Her name’s Marcella.’
The doctor pops back holding out a ten-dollar bill. ‘It’s all I’ve got and we need her.’
‘Just keep her,’ I say. ‘No, really.’
‘Aren’t you just a dolly,’ she says. ‘But here.’ She puts the ten bucks on my lap and turns to Paige. ‘And you, my beauty. The schnozz: ice it, don’t pick it, see your own doc in two weeks. You’re still gorgeous.’
Joan comes back and asks again about Paige’s breathing. We’re done. The doctor leaves, Paige puts out her hand for the ten, and we walk by the counter where Marcel 8 is squished between a pencil holder and the wall. He looks happy.
For the first time since forever, my path is clear. Joan drops onto her bed without taking off her shoes and Paige says oh no over and over in front of the bathroom mirror. I wash the blood off the wall. I wait for Paige to go to bed then book a Greyhound ticket to Timbley for the day after tomorrow which makes me queasy, being really wrong. My heart’s guidance cannot be argued with even if my heart is basically trampled into hamburger. I’ll go to Jojo Bunting and I’ll see Rita and I’ll get the Tim picture and I’ll bring it to Jessie and Jessie will understand everything. It’s so obvious.
I take the seven remaining Marcels and head downtown. It’s still dark which means the possibility of being murdered especially at the top of the hill. But maybe it’s been a long night for psychopaths too. Things feel universally sleepy.
After a couple of hours, I’m coming back down the hill with one leftover because I remember the man on the bus and the Dante statue. The other six are perched in phone booths downtown.
Desperation makes people do questionable things and mine made me take five ear thingies and a latex glove out of an emergency room. Of course, if the doctor actually checks your ears, you don’t have to commit a sin to get one. My ears were not checked but I did have to medicate my stress levels somehow. Anyway, I hereby vow to use this cake decoration device in service to humanity.
The excellent thing about the ear things is they come in different sizes for kids and adult ears so you can squirt different thicknesses of icing at the same time. You don’t have to use all five fingers. It depends on your personal ratio re: control/fun.
Materials:
1 latex glove
1–5 ear thingies
1. Make a tiny hole in finger tip/s, and stretch glove over big cup to stabilize.
2. Pour boiling water into glove to wash away latex nastiness.
3. Leave to dry for a few minutes, then put ear thing inside finger and poke tip through.
4. Fill glove with icing or any other substance with decorative possibilities.