Scott watched the girl turn around, a moving Monet of white hair, pink cheeks, and pastel flowers. She had blueberry eyes and hair so clean you could smell it.
“Would you like an ice cream?” asked her mother at the Athena counter.
“Can Barney have one too?” the girl inquired coyly.
“Dinosaurs don’t like ice cream.” The fat mother shared a manic smile with Scott, convinced he was as enchanted as she was. The mother was wearing a grease-stained anorak and sweats. She belonged to a sect of middle-aged women who had sacrificed themselves on the altar of Motherhood, laid down their youth and sex in a heap, hacked off their hair, stuffed their flaccid thighs into Northern Nights sweatsuits, and grown unplucked whiskers. Why? Scott wondered. So the gods would be good to their children?
A three-foot urchin with Billy Ray Cyrus hair approached the girl, bouncing in rubber boots, keeping time to something in his head. Behind him, a big man had ordered takeout fries with gravy.
“Say hi to the little boy.” The mother’s eyes were commas, typed deep into the pages of her swollen face. Bounce. Bounce. “Her name is Logan.” The mother beamed. “She is named after the highest mountain in Canada, fifty-seven hundred metres, in Kluane National Park.”
As Logan opened her rosebud mouth, the boy kicked a rubber boot into the air in a modified martial arts manoeuvre copied from TV. “Ohhh Ohhh Poweeer Raaangers,” he chanted, spinning in a circle, leg extended. “Do do do do Mighty Morphin . . .” head bobbing trancelike, arm reaching for Barney.
“Waaah,” Logan yelped as he snatched the dinosaur from her hand. “Waaaaah.”
“Jordan!” A bored voice drifted across the Athena past an ancient wooden highchair. “Give it back.” A woman wearing eyeliner and a Mixed Dart League jacket had one hand on her hip. Jordan ignored her. “Hey, bud.” She smiled a what-can-you-do smile. “I said, give it back.” Then she cackled to Scott, “He’s tough as nails,” as a regular named Bert took a counter seat and ordered the Big Breakfast. “He’s only four, but he ain’t afraid of nothin’.”
DON’T LET SOMEONE YOU LOVE FALL OFF THEIR CHAIR AND CRUSH THEMSELVES. BUY THIS MINT CONDITION GERIATRIC CHAIR. $30 OBO. PHONE GAVIN.
“Kids are under so much pressure today,” Sasha decided after the two families left. “I was in a school and the walls were plastered with warnings against the evils of the Earth: Halloween, fur, perfume, rap music, chocolate, bicycles, unwashed fruit, Barbie, and pogs. It’s as though the yuppies, the peace-love-and-pot generation, had their fun and now they want to put their kids in a sensory deprivation tank, to never smell, feel, or touch, to never challenge what they had.”
Scott nodded, wondering what a pog was.
He watched a squat man trudge down the street pigeon-toed. He had a blue duffel bag on one shoulder and a purposeful look on his bearded face. He was heading somewhere — a place that must have been worth walking to — in full goalie gear.
“My friend Pru worked as a nanny for a couple with four kids. The mother was a doctor who ran marathons, the father a stockbroker. Do you know the type of people I’m talking about, the ones who mail in updates of themselves to Alumni News to make sure they’re real?”
Patrick Roy. Scott read the signature on the guy’s hockey helmet. The man had an orange metal net slung on his shoulder, and Scott, to his own surprise, felt an urge to follow him wherever he was going. The hockey net made him think of Smithers, whom he rarely saw, since he was spending most of his time out of the office. Scott had a laptop in his apartment and a list of stories to complete.
Last week, Ownie had let him spar two rounds with Johnny. It had been going well, Scott recalled, until Turmoil stormed into the gym and changed the mood by demanding to know why Ownie had not phoned him about something inconsequential, something he didn’t even care about. There were days when the giant could invigorate the gym, Scott noticed, days when the other fighters could feed off his size and booming laugh. On those days, he raised the collective bar. And then there were days when Turmoil was menacing and sullen, and everyone felt small.
“The whole neighbourhood was creepy,” Sasha continued. “All of the adults were working and the kids were in daycare, so when you went outside, it was like you were in the Nevada desert during nuclear testing.”
Scott nodded. He wasn’t a part of it now any more than he had been twenty-five years ago. Pre-schools, time-shares, and rotating gourmet dinner parties. Montessori. Jerry Garcia neckties and Fender Stratocasters. Scott was on the outside looking in, a time traveller, stumbling over the footprints of his generation, numb to the culture that bound them, deaf to their music, blind to their signposts. He was a man who had never dropped acid or attended a drive-in movie.
Scott was never going to be part of his own self-worshipping generation, but he could, he decided, talking to Sasha at a chipped booth in the Athena Restaurant, be part of society.
“Do you ever read Runners World?” Scott asked. “They had a story recently on Bill Clinton . . . ah . . . he’s a yuppie.” He struggled to justify his segue.
“All right.”
“The man weighs well over two hundred pounds, and he lumbers along like a big, goofy dog. I give him credit for being active but don’t go writing about him like he’s a real runner.”
Scott hoped he could get to his point, the one that haunted him for reasons he was trying to explain. “He ran with Edwin Moses a while ago. You know who Edwin Moses is, don’t you, the greatest hurdler ever, one of those genetically gifted people? He had over one hundred consecutive wins and two Olympic medals.”
She nodded vaguely.
“And then Clinton ran with the winners of the Boston Marathon. The Boston Marathon! I don’t know.” Scott thought about it as Bert shuffled to the cash. “There’s something indecent about that, something disrespectful.”
Sasha looked at him seriously, weighing the point.
“I don’t think it should be allowed. I mean, the Americans have laws protecting the flag, you can’t desecrate it.” Sasha nodded in understanding. “Laws against betting on your sport. Look what they did to Pete Rose, banned from the Hall of Fame. Laws protecting historic buildings, eagle feathers, and endangered frogs.”
“That’s true.”
“Why not a law protecting the dignity of people like Edwin Moses? How do we know he wasn’t coerced into running? That maybe the CIA or some nefarious government agency wasn’t involved? I’m sorry.” Scott felt embarrassed by his uncharacteristic outburst. “Is it really beyond the realm of possibility?”
Scott located his sandwich in the lunchroom fridge of the Standard behind a tub of three-bean salad. He moved a block of old cheddar bound with shipping tape and labelled PROPERTY OF MARCIA G. SMITH, proof that the coveted Cheese Club orders had arrived, a highly anticipated event in the newsroom.
He returned to his desk, where Smithers was searching for news on a top draft pick, a centre from the Peterborough Petes. The hockey reporter was in a foul mood. After he had been dumped by the dancer, the junior hockey team had given Francis its Most Devoted Fan Award, ensuring months of continued torment.
“You know what I heard about the centre?” asked Warshick, sensing that Smithers was down, vulnerable to attack. “From a buddy of mine who covered the training camp?”
“What?” Smithers snapped.
“I heard that when little kids come up and ask for an autograph, he takes the card with his picture and signs it. Then he deliberately crumples it in his hand before he hands it back. That way it’s worth less.”
“Bullshit!”
“It’s true, and he smiles when he does it.”
Smithers saw Carla heading toward Sports, cause for alarm. The Standard had always been a place of closed doors and whispers, of drastic decisions that no one ever saw coming. A call to the ME’s office could be trouble. For a short while, Cullen, whose desk was outside MacKenzie’s office, had been able to predict some of the layoffs, transfers, and management coups by eavesdropping but then Maintenance installed a soundproof door, and everyone went back to guessing.
Carla hadn’t been looking for Smithers, he was lucky this time. Her target was Scott, who had made the mistake of visiting the Standard during daylight.
Now sitting in MacKenzie’s office, Scott looked at the walls, which were covered with photos of biplanes, triplanes, and supersonic jets, some in flight, some with labels in the margin of the shot.
“I see that you’ve been doing a few stories on this Davies fighter, the big heavy,” MacKenzie said.
“Uh-huh.” Scott nodded from a chair. “That’s right. I went to Montreal.”
The same consultant who had ordered the newsroom dipped in green had advised Gem to increase its coverage of visible minorities, and MacKenzie, seeking approbation, had thought about Turmoil.
“He reminds me of a slugger named School Boy Langille, who was built along the same lines. Langille fought out of Glace Bay for most of his career, but he had some super bouts down in New England. A real corker.”
Scott wondered when he had last heard “super” and “corker” in the same sentence.
“The best fight I ever saw was between Langille and a southpaw named Gunboat Callaghan. They packed the Halifax Forum tighter than a sardine can. Gunboat knocked School Boy to the canvas three times.” MacKenzie had slipped into storyteller mode, mental gears greased by the memory of School Boy, a Cape Breton brawler with twenty-two wins, twelve losses, and a draw with obscurity. When he shot Scott a glance, white hairs bristled under his chin like the hairs on a pig’s belly.
A week ago, a big story had broken and the newsroom was mobilized. Reporters were dispatched, photographers summoned, phones manned, and Garth had stood in the centre of the storm, unable, it seemed, to remember what to do. The ME looked stricken, Scott had noticed, as though he knew he was lost.
“Hey diddle diddle,” MacKenzie muttered incongruously, and then stared at Scott through glasses smeared with grease and dandruff. Scott froze, pretending he hadn’t heard, determined not to speak. Phobic about interruptions, MacKenzie had once fired a features editor, a woman named Sally, who had dared to finish his sentence.
There were no female editors in Sports. Scott doubted that any woman could stand being that close to Smithers and Warshick, who took up too much real estate. Scott thought about the new city editor, Katherine. She must be six feet tall. With her height, he decided, she could have been a rower. Didn’t Silken Laumann, the iron Viking with battle scars, call rowing a haven for big, awkward girls? Size counted, especially in a headwind.
Scott thought about the summer when two girls had started rowing on his lake, leaving a parallel wharf at six each morning like a train with a schedule to keep. Some days, it was just him and them on the water, and Scott felt a kinship, a bond.
They were part of the ecosystem, like the lilies, the errant eels, and the white sand dumped on a beach each spring, where it languished until the first good storm. The girls had appeared with the crocuses, swinging their oars like long-legged bugs so awkward they seemed wounded, catching, crabbing. By summer’s end, they were muscular seabirds that had learned to fly.
One morning, the sky was hidden by a slate ceiling streaked with danger, and Scott felt special, removed from the sleeping masses. By the time Scott had paddled to an overhead bridge, hungry waves were lapping the sides of his boat. The wind shifted to a crafty cross, nudging like someone gradually taking over a bed. Hit properly, keep your paddle down where the wind can’t grab it. And then, without warning, a gust attacked, twisting the paddle in his grip. Wind flooded his mouth, flapping his cheeks like a jib, freeze-drying his teeth. It felt cleansing, the harsh air sucking grease and spent cells from his body. An icy wave goosed him, and then it started: sheets of hysterical rain that felt like BBs, bouncing off the lake, blinding, driving so hard that the world vanished and the waters stilled. Monsoonlike rain.“Oh my God!” the girls shrieked, the most uncensored laughter he had ever heard. Whooping, they turned to shore, water filling their fragile boat. They shouted something as they passed him, but he couldn’t make it out.
The managing editor tilted back in his chair. And then abruptly, as though he had been hit by School Boy, MacKenzie pulled out a notepad and said, “I think it’s time for a . . .” In his head, Scott finished the sentence before MacKenzie could spit out the dreaded words: Where Are They Now?
What had started as a simple experiment, a look at old newsmakers who had vanished from the public eye, had spread like an outbreak of chinch bugs. MacKenzie’s problem was supply. After four months, he had used up his store of worthy subjects from the past and what remained were the School Boys, the Gunboats, the woman who may or may not have met the Duke of Windsor in the Bahamas, the man whose great-uncle had perished on the Titanic, the perfectly ordinary people whose perfectly ordinary lives were drawing to a close.
Scott stared at MacKenzie’s shamrock cardigan.
“I don’t know where he is, but I’ll tell you how you can get a lead. Call Wimpy MacPherson down in Glace Bay; he used to manage School Boy. He was an outstanding senior hockey player and could skate like hell. Super guy to talk to.”
MacKenzie stood up and turned toward his door, giving Scott a clear look at the back of his cardigan. Hunt Club. XL. Yes, he realized, it was inside out.