SCENE 5:

The Resurrection
of Robbie Rabbit

Autumn 1967

“You could have broken your fingers or joined the priesthood like so many of the French guys did in World War II. Like, why do you think Quebec had so many priests in the forties and fifties?”

“Very funny, Loddy.”

“No Dewey, I’m serious. Like this girl I went to school with, told me her father told her, and he was French.”

“Did he break his fingers?”

“No, he was one of the ones that went and came back a mess.”

“What happened to him?”

“Brain damage. Like he’s in the Dougie or something as far as I know.”

Dewey bowed his head, clasped his hands as if in prayer. “My best friend shot himself in the head so he wouldn’t have to go.”

Loddy pressed his forearm in a speechless gesture of understanding.

They were finishing their meal at Ben’s when the red-haired, slightly distracted young waiter, ruddy with the rush of orders, interrupted them: “Finished?” His order pad poised for a final tally.

Dewey and Loddy shook their heads as if they had been transplanted into another world and weren’t ready to join the living yet. Ruddy-face flew back with attitude to his post near the kitchen. Loddy jabbed the straw into her almost empty glass and sucked on air, searching for the last dribble of Cherry Coke over chipped ice, residual droplets not to waste.

“Do you have to, hon?”

Diners at the next table turned their heads towards the sound of slurping, throwing Loddy a look that would freeze the Amazon jungle.

“I’m sorry. I mean about your friend.” She continued attacking the ice chips, stirring the meltwater at the bottom.

“I phoned my mom last night. Miss her, you know. It was her birthday.” Dewey stared off into the distance as if expecting his mother to walk out of the ladies room and join their table. Loddy twisted round to see if he had spotted someone he knew. Dewey seldom mentioned his family and avoided any political discussions that would draw him into debates about Vietnam or draft dodgers, so Loddy felt a kinship developing.

“She said she wouldn’t tell my dad I called. He still doesn’t want to have anything to do with me. Coming from a military family ... my granddad, my dad, my uncles, they all fought some war somewhere.” Dewey took a sip of water, an interruption to gather his thoughts. “He called me a coward, a disappointment.”

“He didn’t mean that.”

Dewey was adrift in his own invisible space. “Anyhow, she got a letter from my baby brother, Aaron, in ‘Nam. He’s only 19.”

“And? Like he okay?”

“She cried when she read his letter to me. She tried not to show it but I could hear it in her voice, the way she would catch herself, choke on his name. He was in a search and destroy mission. Ugly. Just ugly, she said. Two hundred and eighty-two American soldiers died that day. Could ... could have been him.” Dewey lowered his head again, a weight he could no longer carry, and began to play with his leftover French fries, dipping them into the ketchup, deploying them to the edge of the plate. “She said I did the right thing coming here.”

“She’s right, Dewey. Those who went to Vietnam believing it was wrong and still went are the cowards. You stood up for your beliefs and maybe one day, like, you’ll be able to go back home.”

“Doubt it. Not with that bastard Johnson at the helm. Guy’s nuts.” Dewey shook his head. “Don’t want to talk about it anymore, okay? We all do what we have to do.”

“I’m glad you told me. Means a lot to me.”

Dewey forced a grin. “Shall we go then?”

“Do you mind if I get the waiter really mad and, like, order a tiny bowl of fries to go?”

“What happened to the boiled egg and tomato diet?”

“Made me sick. Bad stomach cramps. I’m, like, starting this new Stillman diet on Monday ...”

“Oh, Loddy-Dah. Loddy-Dah.”

“Told you not to call me that Dewey. You don’t believe me, do you?”

“I didn’t say that. It’s just that you keep talking about going on a diet and you never do.”

“I want to but like, life gets in the way.”

She began to snivel, inaudible first, her mouth grimacing, teeth displayed. One couldn’t tell if she was laughing or crying, and then shoulders trembling, Mount Vesuvius about to erupt. Dewey grabbed her hands as though that would cap the lava of tears.

“You okay, hon?”

She burst into a full force of moans and groans while the exasperated couple at the next table removed themselves and their plates to another section of the restaurant. Loddy couldn’t help herself, hid her face behind a napkin then blew her nose.

“Is everything all right here?” Ruddy-face sprinted back to investigate the commotion.

“We’re just emotional tonight,” Dewey winked. “Hormonal, you know.”

Now everyone was watching.

Dewey grabbed Loddy’s elbow, paid the bill and was already on the sidewalk waiting when Loddy slipped and careened into the revolving door, wedging herself on one knee between the two glass partitions.

“Oy veh, a broch, (oh, hell) not again! Tomorrow we get a regular door,” Kravitz, the deli owner, shouted to no one in particular as a trio of waiters and a customer ran by to her aid. “She is a klutz, that fat one,” Kravitz continued, pointing towards the failed door and Loddy caught inside like a lobster in a trap.

They attempted to pry the door open by rocking the partition back and forth like a car stuck in a snow rut, but it wouldn’t budge. An audience of passersby grew around Dewey as he synchronized his movements with the waiters inside the deli. A fire truck pulled up with sirens blaring and Loddy endured twenty humiliating minutes as the fire brigade finally liberated the door. One of the rescuers, with a twisted sense of humour, let the door spin, full speed ahead like one of those playground merry-go-rounds, Loddy at the helm, on her toes, shouting — “Stop! Stop! I want to get out” — until the door’s velocity expelled her onto the sidewalk and into Dewey’s arms.

“My God, hon, you could have suffocated in there.”

“I’m never, ever, like ever going to show my face at Ben’s again.”

The fire brigade loaded up their trucks, turned on their blinking lights, and drove off with another tale to add to their repertoire of quirky firefighting stories.

“What was all that crying about?”

“I was just sad, Dewey, for you, for me, for the world. Can’t I just be sad without it turning into a three-act play?”

“Not with you, hon. I think you have this little black cloud dangling over your head.

“I’m such a failure, Dewey. Like maybe I should just hire my own personal rescue team to be on call.”

Dewey smiled sympathetically as they headed for The Garage Theatre.

xxx

The place was overrun with bubbly human rabbits in every shape, size and form — reclining on the stage, smooching in the alley, leaning against the wall in the lobby, curled up in the seats or on the spiral staircase, smoking on the mezzanine, and lounging in the dressing rooms. Samuel directed this chaotic scene as though he were Cecile B. de Mille presiding over The Greatest Show on Earth. The cast from The Resurrection of Robbie Rabbit almost outnumbered the seating capacity of The Garage Theatre, which on a good night accommodated an audience of a hundred.

Loddy submerged herself like a submarine in the back row among the stored props and sets, and absorbed the pandemonium: Aretha posed in various dance movements for the photographer who seduced her with his camera. “Give me more, doll. I want to feel you one with the floor, and more boobs,” he instructed; Stanley curled up like a Buddha statue in a garden of meditation; Samuel deep in an animated conversation with the playwright; Rita sitting on the stage apron reading her script; Marvel and Ulu warming their hip flexors, using each other’s arms for dance bars; Danny making love to a compact mirror until one of the rabbits hopped by and mucked up his hair; and Dewey, on the mezzanine, fiddling with the lighting board. Marcel and Percy were absent but no one noticed. The rest of the players were complete strangers to Loddy, friends of the playwright, a thespian professor who had promised each of his drama students a part in his avant-garde musical — the survival of hippie rabbits in the carrot patch called life. Samuel explained that the play was very existentialist. Loddy had to look up its meaning.

Existentialism: a philosophical theory emphasizing the existence of the individual person as a free and responsible agent determining his or her own development through acts of the will.

She surmised that, with a cast of thousands, it meant the performances would involve a great deal of improvisations.

Today Jacob, the pianist, a friend of Samuel’s, was downstage auditioning individual voices. Aretha, Percy and Stanley were lead solos. The other rabbits would serve as a Greek chorus line of noise moving the narrative along.

Jacob called her name and Loddy sunk further into her seat, lower and lower, until her knees smacked the floor, and she was nowhere in sight.

“Loddy. Where are you? Hello.” Jacob rose from the piano bench.

Hide-and-go-seek, a familiar childhood game, played out now in the magical world of theatre.

“Loddy, get your fat ass here! Jacob is being paid by the hour so let’s move it,” Samuel’s voice boomed.

She emerged. First the top of her head, then her eyes peered over the seat in front, a Beluga surfacing for air, spouting water, flapping fins, she struggled to liberate herself from the net of spectators.

Samuel rolled his eyes skyward. “We don’t have all day. Shit!”

The room plunged from a party-like atmosphere to the silence of a crypt where beatified popes laid buried. Loddy, aware of everyone’s scrutiny, approached the stand-up piano on stage with the timidity of a two-year-old.

“So what do you want to sing?” Jacob asked, already bored after a long day of auditions.

“I don’t know.”

“Didn’t you bring any music?”

“Like, I didn’t know I was supposed to.” Beads of sweat formed on her forehead, dampening her bangs.

“All right. Know any songs you like?”

“No.” Memory cells vanished in the anxiety of the audition.

“How about a Beatles’ song? Everyone knows a Beatles’ song. She Loves You, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah. Easy.”

Loddy had forgotten to swallow and choked on her saliva. “I like the Mamas and the Papas.”

“Okay, Mamas and the Papas, it is. Which song?”

She cleared her throat in two sharp notes and said, “California Dreamin”?

Jacob tinkled the melody but some intangible force paralyzed her to the spot, rendered her motionless like a wax figure in Madame Tussaud’s museum.

“Well?” He repeated the melody. “All the leaves are brown ... Come on Loddy, on the downbeat, follow me. All the leaves are brown and the sky is ...”

Jacob stopped playing. Loddy again cleared her throat, this time with determination, if not with assurance.

“Twinkle, twinkle little star ...”

Bewildered, Jacob chased her on the piano, twinkle, twinkle little star, while Loddy carried on, “how I wonder where you are. Up above the sky so high. Like a diamond in the sky ...”

Smothered guffaws, giggles overheard from the back of the house.

“Oh, my God!” Samuel’s voice in the front row. “She’s not even on pitch.”

Loddy persisted, ignoring the buffoonish audience of rabbits until she mercifully touched down with the finish line — “How. I. wonder. Who. You. are” — and took her bow.

Dead silence.

“Thank you, Loddy. Next.”

She bolted up the spiral staircase to Marvel’s Pad, the beaded curtain swinging, whipping her face. She hunkered down. Her boulder of a body slid along the wall like a slow avalanche until touchdown to the floor.

“What was that all about? I’ve heard you sing at parties and that wasn’t you.” Samuel had followed her, his arms folded like a teacher scolding a pupil.

Loddy, dirty blond hair veiling her face, raised her red-rimmed eyes, and blinked against a cataract of spots. Or were they just drops of tears? The black light caught Samuel from behind and illuminated his white t-shirt and teeth. Jesus Christ. Loddy thought she was hallucinating.

“All right. Listen up. Here’s what we’ll do. Can you keep time to a tambourine?”

She jerked her head into an ambiguous yes.

“Ok. So maybe you’re not ready for prime time. Get back in there and let’s try the tambourine.”

xxx

The Resurrection of Robbie Rabbit played to full houses for the first two weeks with family and friends once again filling the seats; however, towards the end of the run, they performed to an almost empty house.

“One person or one thousand, give them your all, kiddies.” Merde!

The reviews were merciless:

The show has its moments ... flawed ... shoddy performances ... The Garage is overrun by an amateur cast of bunnies who make up in enthusiasm what they lack in talent. The production reflects the revolution of the Sixties with a mind-blowing experience in group sex and youth culture. Not for your Aunt Mabel or maybe not for you either ...

— The Montreal Star

Or:

Not very impressive in spite of the excellent abstract sets, lighting and imaginative direction ... Rabbits frolic in the aisles and the audience is encouraged to join in their onstage antics. An eager cast tries with sincere efforts but some scenes are just beyond their skills in this badly-written play. If you miss the production this time, you can catch Robbie Rabbit in next year’s Dominion Drama Festival, and we can only hope the play­wright has come out of rehab by then.

— The Messenger

“Beyond their skills? Beyond their skills? What a bunch of horseradish! I better get a proper role in a proper play soon, or I’m gone.” Percy plugged his mouth with an unlit cigar and suckled it like a baby with a pacifier.

“Oh, don’t tell me you’re still crying over that. You know they were right, so drop it. Here, this will make you feel better.” Before he could respond, Stanley told him to “open wide” and blew puffs of magic marijuana into Percy’s mouth.

xxx

Closing night cast party, and the bunnies were intoxicated with ever-ready energy after their final performance. Smoke from too many cigarettes and reefers hovered long and low over the mezzanine like early morning mist on a river. The building trembled like a minor earthquake with the boom boom boom from the overheated amplifiers. The crush of partygoers, inebriated, liberated, bopped and hopped, cavorted and frolicked hip-to-hip. A trio of female bunnies, stripped naked to their cottontail underwear, paraded on stage, and, in a tribute to narcissism, challenged everyone to non-stop pelvic rolls. Bodies slammed into bodies, grinded, undulated, skin rubbing skin, a marinade of sensuality. Even Loddy whirled around the room, feet hugging the floor in increasingly faster and faster dervishes. Everyone cleared the floor as she wound down with a final glissade to the floor. Marvel would have been proud. A Fellini movie, La Dolce Vita, the good life, the sweet life, here and ever after, Loddy thought. Only the voluptuous blond Anita Ekberg wading through a pool of water in a Roman fountain was missing from the scene.

Aretha invited everyone to sample her famous brownies smothered in chocolate icing. Loddy had a hunger she hadn’t felt since Alma’s last Kukeli dinner. She wolfed down two substantial brownies, each the size of her palm, and justified this indulgence to anyone within earshot that she had lost fifteen pounds on the Stillman diet so a reward was in order. Just this one time, and tomorrow back to cottage cheese and tuna.

Marcel tossed her a tambourine. “Loddy, you know what is that you just eat?”

“Like, Aretha’s home-made brownies.”

“No, mon cherie, space cake or as they say, hash brownies.”

“Hash browns? Oh, don’t be silly, Marcel.”

“Stupide!” Marcel removed a joint from his shirt pocket and walked away, thrusting himself in the company of bunnies nearby.

“Toi aussi, like, what’s your problem? I was just pulling your leg.”

She licked her brownie fingers clean, picked up the tambourine and hit the hoop in a halfhearted jingle of discs, her voice meandering in a stream of notes until she was harmonizing to the Mamas and the Papas, all the leaves are brown, and the sky is grey ...

Jacob yelled across the room: “Hey, Loddy, how come you never sing for me like that?”

“Brownies.” She hoisted her paper plate high above her head. “Give me brownies.” Pause. “And booze.”

She stood up and smashed the tambourine hard against her hips; once, twice and then a steady drumming as though the repetitive pounding would cause a loss of inches. Bang! Bang! Faster and faster until she fell back on the bench, snorting with giggles. She slid onto the floor in a fetal position, stoned out of her mind, and there she lay counting her fingers.

“You might need this.”

She rolled over on her back and a tower of jeans with a distorted face floated over her. He set a cup of coffee by her side.

“Like, you are?”

“Friend of Dewey’s,” he said, helping her up. “He had to leave and asked me to make sure you got home okay. Name’s Fury.”

“Fury? Like in the Sound and the Fury?” She became hysterical again. Who could be serious when meeting the Eiffel Tower in jeans with part of a book title for a name?

“Furio in Italian, or furioso in music meaning wildly and furiously.”

“Oh! Bet you’re from St. Leonard.”

“Ville Emard.”

“Hey, like, we’re practically neighbours. I live in Verdun. Well, used to. Like, just over the aqueduct.”

xxx

Even in her paralytic state of mind, she would always remember the walk home: unhurried, wordless, surreal; he, grasping her callused elbow to cross streets; she, breaking into howls of unstoppable laughter; he, catching her when she lost her balance; she, avoiding his eyes in case he was an illusion. They made their way along McGill College Avenue, through the campus, and onto Milton Street until they reached her apartment. Loddy rested the back of her head against the door when his fingers traced her lips as though he was about to sketch them. He moved in for a close-up and kissed her with a prolonged tenderness she had never known.

“Let me come in.”

She spoke through a spirant of words, knees trembling, “No, like, it’s not a good idea.”

“I mean inside your place. I promise not to do anything. Just talk.”

“I don’t even know you, and it’s a real mess in there.”

“I know Dewey so it’s not like we’re strangers, and besides I like messes. Trust me.”

“Just a minute.” She slipped inside the door and switched on the lights. A platoon of cockroaches scampered to their usual hiding places. All clear.

“Okay, we can talk.”

Fury said nothing, but took in her environment — a clutter of clothes piled high on the red card table; a pile of unread magazines and newspapers on the divan; a scatter of albums on the floor; a tumble of books on an overloaded brick and wood bookshelf; and a line-up of several unopened cans of tuna displayed on the kitchen counter waiting to be put away.

“Sorry about the disaster scene but I’m never home. It’s, like, just a crash pad.”

“Wow! What does the landlord say about that red semi-circle on the wall?”

“He’s cool with it as long as I paint everything back to the original boring white when I leave or else, like, I lose my deposit.”

“I see you like red.” All her garments, the bean bag in the corner, and the cotton handmade drapes reflected various shades of red.

Loddy’s monologue: “Well, like, I thought the place needed some character. Being a basement and all, it doesn’t get much light.” They stared at each other. “I call it the Rising Sun.” They stared at each other. “Like, in the House of the Rising Sun?” They stared at each other. “Or, like, in the Rising House Blues.”

“I like that!” Fury advanced for the kill.

“How do you know Dewey, anyway? You never said.” Loddy distracted herself by storing the cans of tuna into the cupboard when she spotted a cockroach staggering around the bottom of the sink.

“I met him at a youth hostel in Quebec City. He was hitching around the province and so was I, and we just connected. I’m an industrial designer and painter.”

She turned on the tap and let the water pressure drive the cockroach down the drain, then spun around and said: “Oh, you do houses?”

“Not that kind of painter,” he said. “I’m a visual artist and have a studio not far from here. When Dewey told me he was a photographer and did some painting on the side, I told him to look me up if he ever made it to Montreal. We’ve been talking about maybe forming a partnership. Pool our resources together, you know.”

“Really? Dewey never mentioned.”

The fluorescent lights above them started to flutter. Fury drove forward, a tiger about to pounce, thrusting his body, goading her, pushing towards her. She stood in the flickering and neither spoke. A Tango ensued. She danced backwards with the awkward shyness of a novice until her butt touched the sharp edge of the card table. Back arched and arms upraised toward the ceiling, she was plummeting over Niagara Falls, floating over a mound of clothes. The flickering died and in the darkness she felt his thigh pressing hers, his fingers fumbling under her shirt.

“NO! Get off!”

“Loddy, I like you.”

“Bullshit! You lied! You’re just like all of them. You just want to know what it’s like to fuck a fat girl. Get out!”

“Loddy, that’s not true.”

“I’ve got feelings too.”

And so the tango resumed. She, driving him back, shoving his torso, and now his turn to dance backwards, doubling his steps until he was in the doorway, facing a poster of Mama Cass who seemed to be ogling him, warning: “Watch your step, bud.”

Loddy would always remember his puzzled expression as she slammed the door in his face. She keeled over as though someone had hit her in the stomach and she needed to adjust to the pain but, when she pulled herself up, her cheeks were damp from the crying. She truly needed to believe he was different, that he really liked her.

xxx

It was Sunday, October 29, the closing ceremonies of Expo 67 at Place des Nations. Flags were lowered in the reverse order that they had been raised, with Canada’s let down first, and Nigeria’s last. Dignitaries sputtered words from prepared scripts, and Prime Minister Pearson doused the Expo flame. The fairground locked its doors at 4:00 p.m. The houselights dimmed as Montreal took her final bow to thunderous applause and boisterous cheers. Bravo! Now she could remove her makeup and return to being just another city. The show was over.

Loddy never made it to the Exhibition. She had a standing dinner date with Alma and Bettina every Sunday. When she woke up that afternoon, she poked a candle into twenty-two opened cans of white tuna and sang happy birthday to herself, ending the day with a solitary stroll on Mount Royal. She scaled the low-lying mountain to its summit until she reached the unlit giant cross overlooking the city. Kicking a litter of fallen leaves into a thick mat, she curled up and dozed off to the lingering chatter of birds preparing for winter. A dazzle of light, the headlights from a car turning a bend, woke her, but it was the giant cross, now ablaze like a klieg light that caught her in its rays. Almost dusk, she used the remainder of the day to witness the drama unfold in the sky. A fan brush of red and cadmium yellow diffused into an orange sun. This mountain of serenity and beauty in the midst of concrete was her gift, and she accepted it with gratitude today, her birthday. It was just what she wanted and nothing more.

She hugged herself, retreating inside her poncho like a turtle seeking safety. Not a sound. Only the slight rustle of leaves carried an impending hint of change. And she was ready.