SOMEWHERE INSIDE JESS, THERE is a Supermum trying desperately to break free. Mum never liked to bake chocolate chip cookies or banana bread like other mothers, It’s so messy, As if I have time for that, so Jess took it upon herself to wash the dust off the rolling pin and put on the floral print apron. The first time she made cookies she got flour all up her sleeves, so when she took a break to go to the bathroom she left a skiff of fine white powder trailing behind her. The cookies turned out okay — they were a little too crunchy — but we pretended they were delicious. Squid was too young to know how to pretend to like them, or even to understand why he should try to pretend. He told her they tasted like dry Ichiban noodles, but at that time everything tasted like Ichiban to him ’cause that’s all he was eating. Jess really took it to heart though. You could tell because she got all quiet and then reread the recipe in Mum’s Best of Bridge book a zillion times over.
The problem is that Squid just doesn’t have a sweet tooth like most kids. For some reason Jess didn’t figure that out for a long time. She got on this crazy baking kick, and kept trying to make Squid be her Oompa-Loompa. I think she thought that if Squid had a hand in actually making the treats, he’d get all revved up for eating them.
Wanna stir the brownie batter? she’d ask him, and Squid would reply, Um, I’d rather not. Squid figured out early on that he could get away with a lot if he spoke like a grown-up, so he was always saying things like I’d rather not. It made us all laugh and coo, Isn’t that precious, and nobody would care that he wasn’t doing what he was asked. So it went on like that for ages, Jess making cakes and tarts and crème de menthe pie and tiramisu and Squid saying he’d rather not help, and the rest of us feeling like we’d puke if we saw another peanut butter cookie but feeling bad when they sat on the counter for two weeks and went stale. But then one day Jess accidentally dribbled some melted butter across the cookbook page and the drip-spots turned see-through. When Squid saw that he decided he wanted to help, but then it was way more fun to draw with the butter than to stir it into the dough. Invisible drawing, he called it.
It’s not hurting anybody, Mum said when Jess scowled at Squid’s buttery fingers. Mum got him a pad of printer paper and oh boy, he went nuts. At first he was just dunking his fingers in the bowl of butter and making squiggles and dots on the paper, but eventually he started drawing circles. Circle after circle, and then he was getting careful, drawing separate circles and making sure he didn’t overlap them. In the end he was dipping only his pointer finger in the butter and watching the tip touch the paper and slowly draw out each line. It was creepy, like being in the Twilight Zone watching six-year-old Squid concentrate on those circles. He drew one of the circles big enough to take up half the page, and he practically had his face on the paper he was concentrating so hard. Then he drew criss-crossing lines like a snowflake inside the circle.
Nice cookies, Squid, I said.
They’re not cookies, he said, keeping his eyes on his paper. They’re crop circles. That’s why they’ve gotta be perfect.
Oh really? I said. But didn’t you know that nobody, not even Picasso himself, can possibly draw a perfect circle?
Squid lifted his finger, looked up at me.
Not freehand, I said. It’s impossible.
Mum gave me the not-so-fast eyebrows. That doesn’t mean he can’t try, she said.
Squid drew four more crop circles before Mum said he had to stop now, butter costs more money than crayons. She ended up putting Squid’s drawings on the fridge. He hadn’t bothered to tear the perforations between pages, so there was just one long trail of paper that Mum folded back up and pinned under a super-strength magnet. I thought maybe the butter would dry up and the paper would turn white again, but it stayed see-through and shiny, so you could see bits of the drawings underneath the top page, a few ghosted lines. For a while every time I looked at the fridge I thought of the oil-splotched takeout baggies filled with greasy samosas that Da likes to buy.
Squid’s drawings didn’t stop Jess’s baking spree, though. Granted, her baking did get better. In my book, Jess is the reigning queen of pineapple upside-down cake. But it got to the point where I was thinking in desserts. One of her greatest successes was this ginormous triple-layer chocolate Oreo cake, and we got to eat our slices sitting in front of the TV because a National Geographic show on space nebulas was on and Mum didn’t want to miss it. All that talk about the vastness of the universe got me feeling really philosophical. If life on earth were a chocolate Oreo cake, I thought, then human existence would be the thin layer of gross vanilla pudding in the middle. The best parts of the cake — the creamy icing on top and the Oreo crust on the bottom — are above and below us, and it’s a mystery why we’re sandwiched between all that spongy filler ’cause we don’t taste like anything anyway. It’s no wonder we think we’re so great when we’re stuck in the middle, so far from the deep oceans on one end and outer space on the other that we can’t even fathom the kinds of things that live there. I thought Mum would totally agree with me when I told her this, but she just gave me the weird-eye and said I was very imaginative.
My friend Rose once tried to explain to me what purgatory was. She’s supposed to be Catholic, but in grade seven Greg Pearson convinced her that the Virgin Mary was actually a prostitute and now she says it’s all a load of hooey. Even if she did believe in it, she always skips Sunday school and tells lies in confession, which I’m pretty sure makes her a sinner in the Pope’s eyes.
Purgatory is like this place between heaven and earth, she said, and nothing is really good or bad. It’s just kind of — blah.
But earth is pretty blah too, I said. So what’s the difference?
Well it’s better than earth, she said. It’s where you go before you can get into heaven. I think you have to get whipped and burned and stuff.
That sounds worse than earth to me, I said. Sounds like hell.
’Kay, forget it, Rose said. I think she could tell I knew she was just B.S.-ing it.
I asked Wiley about it when we were having dinner that night. This was before we found out about Mum’s plan to go to England. Squid was over at the neighbours’ house eating hot dogs, which was good ’cause he would have gotten all scared hearing us talking about hell and dying. Wiley’s parents are Catholic and whenever we went to their house they had to drape a tea towel over their painting of Jesus on the cross so that Squid wouldn’t start crying. The first time Wiley explained to him that Jesus was hanging up there by nails hammered through his hands, Squid put on his mittens and refused to take them off. He told us it hurt to look at his hands, and when Mum made him take the mittens off to eat dinner, he kept holding them in fists and tucking the fists under his armpits.
Anyway, I thought Wiley would know about Catholic stuff from his parents, but he was in one of his hyper moods that day, which meant nobody could get a straight answer out of him about anything. Mum asked him how his lessons went and he blabbed on for fifteen minutes about how he was going to create the next piano prodigy.
I can feel it, he kept saying. This Raymond kid, he blows my mind! I swear to God, under my instruction, he’s going to be playing with the Philharmonic by age thirteen. Mark my words!
Mum listened while she prepared dinner, told him she was glad it was going well, but the whole time she had this slight smile, lingering just beneath her plain-faced surface. After Wiley finished his rant he kept pacing around the kitchen like he was juiced up on Pixy Stix, opening the oven every few minutes to check on the potatoes as if they were about to explode. At one point Mum had to take him by the shoulders and say, Relax — you’re so intense! His whole face dropped into a scowl in one snap motion.
I told you not to call me that, he said. For FUCK’S sake, can’t a guy be hungry?
We all froze, stared at him. The sound of sizzling ham filled the silence.
Sorry, sorry, Wiley said, holding his hands up in the air. Just forget I said that, okay?
Jess gave me a scared look, but I pretended not to see it. I just helped Mum take the dishes of ham and peas and potatoes out to the table. Her face was red, but she wasn’t saying anything. She wouldn’t even look at me or Jess until we’d all sat down at the table and started eating. Wiley bit into a piece of ham and said it was succulent, and that made everyone breathe a big sigh of relief. I felt like someone needed to start a conversation then, so that’s when I brought up the subject of purgatory.
So, I said, Rose and I were talking today about purgatory.
All right, Mum said. Not the topic I would expect from two fifteen-year-old girls. She smiled.
Yeah, well, I said. I was just curious. But Rose didn’t explain it very well.
Wiley was busy cutting up his meat, not even looking at me.
Wiley, I said.
He looked up.
You know about this kinda stuff, right? I said.
Wiley jumped out of his seat, rushed into the kitchen saying, One sec, just getting the pepper! I rolled my eyes at Mum and she shook her head back, just let it go. Wiley sat back down, sprinkled pepper all over his plate like he was playing a maraca.
I’ve discovered I love pepper, he said, watching his plate fill up with black flecks.
Hello? I said.
He set the pepper down, picked up his fork. Sorry, what? he said.
Purgatory! I said.
Oh right, Wiley said, tapping his baked potato with the back of his fork. Isn’t that the place where you get tortured?
Not exactly, Mum said. It’s more of a . . . state of being than a place.
So like something you make up in your head? I asked.
You might say that, Mum said.
It’s those goddamn priests, Wiley said with his mouth full. The ones who diddle with the choirboys. They want to convince themselves they’re still gonna get into heaven.
I laughed, and Wiley seemed to like that ’cause he smiled.
What are you talking about? Jess said.
Mum cut in. Well, she said, the way I understand it, it’s taking into account that things aren’t always so black and white.
Rose said it’s a place between heaven and earth, I said.
Yes! Wiley said, slamming his hand on the table. That’s what I learned. Sunday school — I took six years of it. He wagged his finger at Mum.
Yes, okay, Mum said, some people see it as a place. But that’s a bit — simplistic.
Wiley put down his fork. He propped his elbows on the table, folded his hands and pressed them to his lips.
Mum glanced at him, then continued.
Catholics, she said, believe that some people — the ones who were good but did their share of bad things — have to be purified before they can go to heaven. She cut into her potato carefully and mashed up the inside, watching Wiley out of the corner of her eye. He was chewing slowly, staring at her like she had a target on her forehead.
Sounds creepy to me, Jess said.
So what, I said, their ghosts just kind of float around in their dead bodies waiting to get into heaven?
I guess so, Mum shrugged. I don’t really know. I guess they believe you don’t need to go to a special place to prove you’re a good person.
Wiley snickered at that. What a scam, he said. His knee started jiggling under the table. I guarantee you, he said, the guys who came up with that crap are the jerks who disobeyed all the rules behind everyone’s backs. They’ve gotta convince themselves they’re still good people. He made air quotes when he said good people.
Well, what’s wrong with that? Mum said, laying her knife across her plate even though she still hadn’t taken a bite of her food. She looked Wiley right in the eye and his knee stopped jiggling. His smile quickly faded away.
For a few seconds everyone was silent. Jess was holding her fork in midair, balancing three peas on the prongs. Neither of us knew who was going to say something next so we just stared at our food.
People make mistakes, Mum said, but they can change. Does that mean they’re not good people? Mum’s face was blank, her hands folded. Jess lowered her fork back to her plate.
Then Wiley started breathing really loud through his nose. His breathing got louder and louder and faster and faster until he was practically wheezing and his face started to go pink as the ham on his plate. He looked at me, then at Mum. And then he gave her this look I’d never seen before. A sneer. It was like something straight out of a Grimm’s fairytale. It was the same face that evil witches make when they’re stirring poisonous concoctions and plotting their evil schemes. I’d never seen someone try to make that face seriously, so I almost started laughing out loud at the table.
There are no good people, Wiley said.
Mum’s cheeks turned bright red. She got up from the table and took her plate with her towards the kitchen.
Cunt, Wiley said. He didn’t whisper it or yell it. He said it like it was just a regular everyday thing to say like tennis or orange juice.
When Mum’s head whipped around I expected her to look really angry. But instead she looked like a scared puppy. She looked at me and Jess and not even Wiley, didn’t say anything. No Excuuuuse me? or Watch your mouth! or even What the fuck is wrong with you, you fucking bastard? Just that ridiculous puppy face that made me want to curl up in a little ball under the table. It only lasted a split second, but that was all we saw before she left the room.
And then Wiley stood up, and I could feel all my muscles hardening and my shoulders shooting up to my ears. He picked up his plate and tossed it clear across the room. Potato and peas and shards of stoneware and ham pieces went spewing everywhere.
See? he said to us, spreading his hands. No good people. He didn’t follow Mum to their bedroom, left the house by the front door.
Of course Jess was crying by this point and I really didn’t blame her. We’d never heard our parents swear at each other like that, call each other names, break things. That was something people did in movies — the criminals and the psychopaths. I think I probably would’ve cried too if I wasn’t so shocked that I could hardly wrap my head around how chunks of potato got on the ceiling. The Wiley I knew made jokes whenever people talked about anything serious, and used insults like dingleberry and numbskull. That Wiley, the one who marched right out the front door and left it swinging open on its hinges, was totally different. It was as if someone else had climbed into his skin and taken control of his body. But the scariest part about it was that the whole thing made me believe that what Wiley said might be true.
I guess in the end I never really figured out what purgatory was. But I got to thinking. What if this is purgatory, what we’re all living, right now as we speak? That might explain why nobody’s happy and everyone always wants to be someplace else, and why we always want to be better than everyone else. It would explain why people want to believe in perfect and wonderful things without having any proof. It’s like somewhere deep down, they know this can’t be all there is.
A lot of people don’t realize that the first deep-sea oceanographers were considered total kooks. Even the smartest and most famous scientists told them that nothing could live down there, it was just a bunch of ooze and dead matter. There’s this great line from “In the Abyss” by H.G. Wells that goes, You thought I should find nothing but ooze. You laughed at my explorations, and I’ve discovered a new world! The neat thing about that story is that it was written in 1896, almost forty years before the first deep-sea submersibles were even invented. In the story, Elstead the explorer journeys to the bottom of the sea in a homemade bathysphere and he finds an underwater city inhabited by these weird reptilian fish that have two legs and faces like humans. My favourite part of the story is when the fish people start worshipping Elstead as some kind of God because they’ve never seen anything like him, and after all, he did float down out of the dark sky in a shiny metal ball.
I like the idea that in the ocean world, the earth is actually the sky and the sky is the unknown universe beyond. It makes me wonder how many layers there really are to this cake.