THE NEIGHBOURHOOD CATS are in a throw-down, claws, teeth, everything. Usually no big deal but Ricky has to work in the morning and it was my idea to shack up here in the first place. The problem, Kent and Jillie’s over-preened Queen, in season for days. Moaning and crop-dusting her scent along the street, holding back her affections. I wish one of those toms would just hurry up and take her already, make a pronouncement. Do what Mother Nature intended.
Something tips over in the alley, crashing on the pavement. “Christ,” Ricky says, his voice husky from sleep and cigarettes. Hair buzzed short to beat the heat. Here in our bedroom he reminds me of a hundred different teddy bears.
“I’ll take care of it,” I tell him, fumbling for my housecoat.
Outside, the cats have separated. The small one, an orange tabby, sits balled up on the sidewalk like a little plastic pumpkin. There’s a scar across his back and his left ear is all mangled, in need of attention. The cat in front of him, a scrappy bobtail, hunkers down when he sees me coming; greasy dark fur, hair-trigger pounce, a stare that feels like a sucker punch to the chin. He’s the one I chase. “Go on. Bother someone else,” I shout as he skulks off down the street.
By the time I turn around, the orange cat is gone too, an oily spit of blood on the ground where he was sitting. I put my hand over the area. Warm and wet and gravelly between my fingers.
Queen, the instigator of the whole thing, is nowhere in sight, of course. But there’s a light across the street at her palace of feline temptation, Kent and Jillie’s house. They’re still up, and through the shears I see people dancing in their living room. I can’t make out the details but Marcus Frick’s Dakota, his precious baby, sits in the driveway. Ocean waves along the side, gaudy fog lamps, plastic bug screen that says Delivering The Goods. Marcus is Ricky’s boss and he’s supposed to be at work in the morning too, same early shift as Ricky.
I wipe my hand on the lawn and go back inside.
Ricky doesn’t move as I slip in beside him but I know he’s still awake, trying not to think about the morning. A man needs a decent sleep to do his job right. I watch him for a long time, lying there, breathing. Then I put my hand on his chest and count heartbeats because what else am I going to do? I’m certainly not falling asleep again tonight. Not with everything the way it is, not with a million questions. Not with that image of cat blood stuck there in my brain, clear as TV.
RICKY YAWNS AND POKES at his bacon and eggs. If nothing else, Momma taught me how to cook. “Hot food,” she said, “and a hot bedroom’ll keep your man happy.” Her one and only pearl and she says it even now, ten years after Dad left.
I put some fresh toast on the edge of Ricky’s plate. I want to rest my cheek on top of his head too, but instead, go off to pack his lunch.
Ricky’s been driving forklift these past six months. More money than EI and we’ve actually been able to save a little. He’s going to be a mechanic eventually, working on heavy equipment, tractor-trailers, buses. Already a whiz with engines, all he needs are some classes at one of those community colleges, the kind with the auto shop built right in. For now, he works for Marcus’s contracting company, Northern Recycling, cutting up plastic tailings pipe at the mine. The pipe’s huge, big enough to crawl through and long as that Great Chinese Wall. Ricky cuts ten-foot sections with a chainsaw, quarters them, and uses a forklift to stack the pieces on a flatbed. And Marcus, he just sits in the truck reading Hustlers till it’s loaded, then drives off to God knows where. Half the time he smokes up while he waits, offering the joint to Ricky who tells him, “Chainsaw, Marcus. Remember?”
Marcus’s truck is gone from across the street and I wonder if I should even mention it to Ricky. And what about Marcus’s wife, Doreen? It wasn’t her he was dancing with last night. That much is for sure.
I just don’t trust that guy. One time the four of us went drinking at the Pick In Time Pub after work. Doreen wore ass-tight jeans and a silk top that draped off her boobs like a show curtain. The boys smoked Colts and pounded pitchers of draft, an ashtray full of matches between them. After a while, Marcus smacked Ricky on the arm, scratched a business card across his goatee and said, “I’ll tell you something Ricky, the happiest people I know are all having affairs.”
Someone had just given Doreen a baseball cap and she was oblivious, trying to fit her ponytail through the hole. Then Ricky leaned over to respond and some joker at the pool table hollered, “Dick around!” at that exact moment. The whole episode doesn’t mean anything, people say stuff all the time. Still, from then on, my guard was up.
WELFARE CHEQUES MUST’VE COME late this week—there’s a lineup at the bank and there’s never a lineup in a two-poke town like this. Collette West is there, right in the middle with her daughter clinging to her like a burr. Her husband, Paul, has been gone a year now, no one knows where. Today Collette and her girl have smudges of dirt all over their clothes, unwashed hair, filthy runners. It looks like they’ve been camping but I know that isn’t the case. I nod to them on my way to pick up the mail.
The post office is a dark, bunker-style building with cement walls and long rows of numbered boxes. The place is empty except for Doreen—the last person I want to run into—dressed in a spandex bodysuit for her aerobics class, talking to the clerk at the far end of the room. I sneak down to our mailbox but she sees me anyway and comes over, focused and persistent as a yellow jacket.
“Liz,” she says.
“Hi Doreen.” She brushes against me as I look in the open slot. Empty, except for a copy of The Bare Bones, our local newsletter.
“Nothing bad in that thing about me is there?” she asks.
“No,” I say. Then realize it’s a question you’re not supposed to answer. Talking to Doreen always makes me nervous and it’s even worse after what I saw last night. If she asks anything about Marcus, I don’t know what I’ll tell her.
“Here’s a plan,” she goes on. “Have dinner with us tonight. The boys don’t have to work in the morning so, no excuses.”
My instinct is to say no way, no how, not a chance. But like it or not Marcus is Ricky’s boss. “Okay,” I say. “I’ll check with…”
“Great. Six-thirty. Don’t forget to bring your hunk.”
Doreen yawns at the door, covers her mouth with her mail. “Sorry. Didn’t sleep last night,” she says. She waves goodbye and starts speed walking towards the Rec Centre, her spandex suit shimmering in the sun like fool’s gold.
Thank God the pharmacy, the real reason I came downtown, is in the exact opposite direction.
OFFICIALLY NOW, I’M SIX DAYS LATE. I’ve always been irregular so nothing to worry about really. Still, a little confirmation would be nice. There’s a whole lot to read on the drugstore packaging but the gist of it is this: unwrap the stick, hold it between your legs, let loose. The hard part is the waiting—ten minutes, it says. It might as well say forever so I place it on the counter and make a call.
“Hello? Who’s there?” she answers after four rings.
“It’s me, Momma.”
“What’s wrong?” Her knitting needles click into the phone and in my mind I see her hair, almost fully grey now, tied back like a pretzel the way she does when she’s concentrating.
“Nothing’s wrong. I’m just calling, is all.”
“Ricky leave you?”
“Jeez Momma, no.”
“Relax girl. I’m just asking. Men do that, you know.”
“I know,” I say. “I know.”
I was twelve when Dad took off. He’d been out of work more than a year, caught in the first of the mine’s cutbacks. Momma always had a meal ready when he’d return from job hunting or drinking plastic-cup draft at the White Eagle Hall. And at nights, there’d be pawing and grunting going on behind the navy blue curtain that closed off their bedroom from the rest of the place. In the end, I guess that wasn’t enough.
“You want some advice?” she says.
“Okay.”
“Don’t fuck it up. That’s all I gotta say.”
“All right Momma. I love you.”
“Kiss on the head,” she says, and makes a popping sound with her lips.
I start to answer, to make a kissing sound of my own, but she’s already hung up. I used to think the hum of a dial tone was soothing if you held the phone away from your ear. Like a whale song or the rhythm of a lullaby. But now…
I put the phone down and take a breath; the test strip is bare. No line. No baby. Negative.
I toss it in the garbage beside me. My stomach’s in knots and I feel like throwing up but I can’t tell if that’s from being happy or not happy. Just to be sure, I grab the stick again. There is something, a faint blue stripe in the result box, hardly visible. But what the hell does it mean? What kind of answer is that?
I read the instructions once more but they don’t help. All they say is—in much fancier words—maybe you is and maybe you isn’t.
“I’VE GOT SOMETHING TO TELL YOU,” I say when Ricky gets home. He sits on the futon couch and plunks his lunchbox down by his feet. His hair’s glossy with sweat; his shirt, splattered with melted plastic flung up from the chainsaw. I hand him a beer and an ashtray and sit across in one of those folding aluminium lawn chairs, the only other furniture we have.
“Yeah, I’ve got something too.” He lights his smoke with a silver Zippo and snaps his wrist to close it. His dad’s lighter, Ricky stole it the night he left home on his sixteenth birthday. He slides it into his pocket and leans back.
“You go first,” I say.
“Marcus asked us to go for supper tonight. Insisted, actually. You know how he is.”
I get a sudden image of Collette West and her daughter standing all grubby at the bank. “That’s what I was going to tell you, too,” I say. “I ran into Doreen at the post office earlier. What a coincidence, hey?”
I try to smile but it’s hard to keep anything from Ricky. He once told me he can smell the sweetness in someone’s sweat when they lie, “like raspberry vinegar.” But me, I can’t read anyone, not even the person I’m supposed to be closest to.
“We better get cleaned up then,” he says, taking a swig of beer. “Don’t want to stink in front of the boss man’s wife.”
WE TAKE TURNS GETTING READY and although I don’t avoid Ricky, I do avoid looking into his eyes. He’s wearing the denim shirt I got him last Christmas that shows off his chest and arms; I settle on the same jeans from earlier and a light blue sweater. I put on some makeup for the evening too, first time in a long time. Eyes, lips, everything.
“Coming?” Ricky calls from the hallway. He’s been quiet since his shower and it makes me wonder what Marcus said to him at work. What he says to him in general, for that matter. Like I said, I don’t trust that guy.
“Hmm.” Ricky looks me over when I come out of the bedroom. He taps his hand on his leg, downs the rest of his beer, and pulls open the door.
The cats from last night are lurking on the step. The mean one jumps back and hisses, crouching into ambush-mode. He runs down the street while the orange one goes off the other way. Queen is there this time too, sitting on the wooden fence between houses. I feel her darty green eyes zeroing in on us as we walk past her. Right up until we get into the car, roll down the windows, and drive off down the road.
“RIGHT ON,” MARCUS SAYS at the entrance. He’s greased his goatee to a fine point and left the top two buttons of his shirt undone. He gestures for Ricky and me to enter but we hesitate. Already, it feels like there’s something in the air that could make a canary topple over.
“Don’t just stand there,” Marcus says. “Let’s rev this thing up.”
He guides us through the house to the living room, sunk down a couple steps into a carpeted lair. Doreen’s blowing on an incense stick, wearing a black mini-dress as tight as the spandex she had on earlier. When she sees us, she twists her hips, spilling some of her drink.
“First drip of the night!” Marcus calls out. He sits on the couch in front of a bottle of tequila and pours four shots right up to the top.
“No thanks,” I say. It comes out too quickly though, like a ginger ale burp. Stupid me, I didn’t even think about drinking. I don’t know what the rules are these days anyway. Or, in my situation, how those rules apply. Ricky twists his glass between his fingers. Then he downs it and shivers. Tequila’s not his thing.
Before I can think of a good teetotaller excuse for the evening, Doreen dances over and sits between Marcus and Ricky. “No shoptalk tonight, you two,” she says. “Orders.”
“If we disobey?” Marcus asks.
“Well, if you guys are naughty, I will be too.”
The room is spinning and the stink of incense, cigarettes, and tequila turns my stomach even more than Doreen. I have to keep it together though, for Ricky’s sake.
“Doreen,” I say.
“What is it Liz?” Her voice, fake as plastic sugar cubes.
“Where’s your washroom?”
Marcus jumps up. “I’ll show you,” he says. Doreen stays right next to Ricky, their legs pressed together despite all the room.
“C’mon, gorgeous.” Marcus puts his hand above my ass to guide me along. “To the powder room.”
Their bathroom—a bright, glittery olive colour—smells like a mix of cheap perfume and deodorant soap. Dozens of candles sit on the counter and right above the toilet, a framed picture of fat Elvis sweating into a microphone. None of this helps my stomach much. I lock the door and place a cold washcloth on the back of my neck. “Just get through it, Liz,” I whisper to my reflection. “That’s all you can do.”
By the time I get back, Marcus has brought out the pot. He wiggles a joint in my direction but I wave it off, casually. Ricky’s had some already, I can tell. His eyes look like he spent the afternoon in a hot tub. It’s been a while since he and I have been stoned together and I’ll actually miss it if we have to stop. Pot itself doesn’t do much for me but it makes Ricky extra affectionate, which I adore. Under normal circumstances, that is.
Doreen puts her arms along the rear of the couch behind Ricky and Marcus. She pats them both on the back. “Smoke up boys. Dinner’s almost ready.”
PAPER NAMETAGS ON THE PLATES tell us where to sit. “Boy, girl, boy, girl,” Doreen sings, bringing out a tray of lasagne. Marcus floats in behind her and pours wine for everyone, me included.
“Cheers,” Doreen says.
I take the tiniest sip I can possibly take, and we eat. When Doreen leans forward to reach for the salad, her ultra-tight dress almost disappears. Ricky glances at her but I guess I can’t blame him. With everything out on display like that, even my eyes wander.
“Not bad, huh?” Marcus says.
At first I think he’s talking about the food but he points his thumb at Doreen’s chest. I nearly choke on my garlic bread.
“Ah, sorry?” Ricky says.
“Oh, it’s okay. Feel free to look.” Marcus rubs his hand down Doreen’s back like he’s stroking a leopard. “Flirting’s okay as long as you remember who you’re going home with at the end of the night. You know, like that song, Save the Last Dance for Me.”
“Oh stop it.” Doreen looks away but she has a sneaky smile on her face and she’s pushing her boobs out farther. “He’s harmless.”
Ricky’s head turns so I can’t see the expression on his face. More importantly, I can’t see his eyes.
“Should’ve seen us last night at Kent and Jillie’s, right by your place,” Marcus continues. He winks at Doreen and both of them go back to eating like nothing just happened at all.
NO MORE COMMENTS ABOUT DOREEN’S BODY during the rest of dinner, thank God, but I think she tried some footsies thing with Ricky while she ate. Right now, she’s fixing dessert in the kitchen with the boys jostling around her like seagulls. I don’t want to leave them alone but I don’t want to bleed all over either and my entire midsection feels hot and swollen. I excuse myself and head back to the washroom.
“Fuck,” I say, seated beneath the disturbing Elvis picture. Still nothing.
I wish I’d read the instructions better on the pregnancy test. Like how long until you can try again, or how accurate the stick really is. I think about Momma and the stupid things she said on the phone earlier. Things I’d never say to a daughter under similar circumstances. Under any circumstances, really. But I can’t waste time on unrelated concerns. I have to get back before our hosts pull something else from their big bag of uncomfortable party tricks.
I open the door. Marcus is right there.
“Hey Liz,” he says, toying with his chest. After dinner, Ricky and him did a couple more shots and right now his eyes look like dirty little fishbowls.
“Where’s Ricky?” I ask.
“That’s a good man you’ve got there. I’m thinking about training him on some equipment. Maybe an apprenticeship. What do you think?”
It’s a lie, that’s what I think. But if he is telling the truth, what does that mean for Ricky and me?
There’s a crash from the other room followed by Doreen’s big fake laugh. Marcus takes a step towards me, his eyes crawling over my body.
“We better check,” I say. “See what’s going on.”
Marcus doesn’t move for a second or two, then nods and steps aside.
We find Ricky and Doreen on their knees in the kitchen, cleaning up a spill. From this angle, an all-inclusive look at Doreen’s cleavage. “Drip number two,” Marcus calls out.
“Hey, how about a pre-dessert smoke?” Doreen says when she sees us. “We’re not all out, are we?”
“Sorry, Babe,” Marcus answers.
I thank God for small favours. A little cake and we’ll excuse ourselves, go home, climb into bed. Forget about everything.
Then Marcus continues, “Well, there is my work stash, but I need a designated driver to get there. How about it, Liz?”
Ricky stops wiping but doesn’t raise his head. I wonder if he knows about the apprenticeship idea or not. Either way, he isn’t trying to stop what’s happening now. He isn’t sticking up for me. He isn’t anything.
“All right,” I blurt out. “I’ll drive. If that’s what everyone wants.”
Ricky still doesn’t budge. Not even when I walk past him to the door, with Marcus holding my arm. He just sits on the floor with Doreen, both of them silent, both of them fidgeting. A tiny space of air, the only buffer between them.
LIGHT POLES LINE THE ROAD to the mine, illuminating black circles of asphalt below. They’re fewer and fewer as we get closer to the worksite, the old pit they closed off last year. Marcus hasn’t said much during the drive but he’s been singing to the radio, a classic rock station featuring an all-night AC/DC special. When Have a Drink on Me ends, he takes a long drag from his cigarette, lighting up the truck cabin; I don’t have to look to know his eyes are scanning my body again in the pale orange glow.
We pull up in front of a small trailer with a plastic sign on the door that says, Northern Recycling. Marcus reaches over, turns off the engine and puts the keys in his pocket. “Headquarters,” he says. “C’mon.”
There’s an old flatbed stacked with pieces of pipe beside the trailer. Next to that, Ricky’s forklift, a garbage bin filled with scrap metal, and off to the left a long piece of uncut tailings pipe curving out between the trees. We go past everything, up the steps and into the building.
“The heart of Northern Recycling,” Marcus says. He spreads his arms and gestures around the place. “Not much to look at, huh?”
I shake my head. There’s a desk in the middle of the room where I picture Ricky eating the lunches I pack him. Then I notice a stack of dirty magazines and hope he eats outside. A tall bookshelf stands against the wall filled with plastic tubing and tools, a pile of twisted chainsaw blades. There’s another desk in the corner, some chairs, a mud-caked runner rug, the smell of old mushrooms. Everything about this place is unsettling but what I’m really thinking about is what’s going on at the house with Ricky and Doreen. Leaving him there feels like leaving a child in a store that sells only mousetraps.
“Better get the stuff,” I say. “Everyone’ll be wondering…”
“They’re fine. Doreen’s a born entertainer.” Marcus pushes a chair over to the bookshelf and looks up at a small piece of plumber’s pipe on the top ledge. “Give me a hand here Liz, I’m a bit tipsy. The pot’s inside that pipe.”
It’s hot in the trailer and I’m feeling a little dizzy myself. But the faster we do this, the faster we’ll get back to the house. So I climb up on the chair and hold the edge of the bookshelf for balance.
“Don’t worry,” Marcus says. He grabs my legs with both hands. “I got you.”
I find a plastic bag inside the tube but it’s stuck. “I can’t get it,” I say.
Marcus’s hands slide up my thighs. “C’mon baby.”
I tug harder. But nothing gives.
“You can do it,” he says. His fingers start to pinch, squeezing the flesh through my jeans. I can feel the heat of his breath on my ass. Then I feel his lips, his goatee…
In one quick motion, I grab the entire chunk of pipe and jump down, twisting my ankle as I land on the trailer floor. The pipe spins off under the desk.
“Jeez Liz. You all right?”
My ankle throbs and my hip feels bruised. Also, I want to cry but that’s stupid. “I’m fine.” I grab the chair and hoist myself up.
“Just let me get this stuff and we’ll go.” Marcus crawls under the desk and fishes for the pot.
While he’s down there, I limp for the door.
I’m halfway down the stairs, heading for the truck when it hits me—Marcus has the keys. There’s nowhere to go and it’s way too far to run back to town. Instead, I hobble over to the big tailings pipe, kneel down, and crawl inside. The floor’s covered in dust, cold as freezer meat. And the pipe goes on in total darkness, much farther than I can even imagine.
Marcus stumbles out of the trailer. “Liz,” he yells. “Come on, Lizzy-Liz!”
I don’t move or say anything. Frogs chirp somewhere near but the sound of Marcus’s boots drowns them out, crunching on the gravel, getting closer and closer, deliberately slow and heavy. Eventually the footsteps stop at the opening and I hear Marcus tap on the outer ridge of plastic with his fingers. He starts whistling like he’s calling a lost dog. But then I hear something else. The creaky sound of an old car door.
“Hey buddy!” Marcus says. “Didn’t see you there. What’s going on?”
My hands shake as I crawl over to take a look. Ricky! Walking towards Marcus, his car parked behind the trailer. I can’t believe he was crazy enough to drive after us. He looks drunk as a parrot, swaying in the dim light. Tequila’s really not his thing.
“There a problem?” Marcus asks.
Ricky wavers, but doesn’t back away. “I don’t like this,” he answers.
“Did Doreen try some weird shit on you? Because…”
“I said I don’t like it.”
Marcus shakes his head. “I knew you’d be like this. I fuckin’ knew it,” he says. Then he shoves Ricky’s shoulder, hard. He starts to say something else but Ricky launches a haymaker. He misses and nearly falls. In all the time we’ve been together, I’ve never seen him like this. He’s vibrating, physically vibrating, with jealousy. The good kind of jealousy.
“What the fuck, man.” Marcus ducks as Ricky takes another swing. This time he does fall. And Marcus hits him on the back of the head with the pot-tube as he goes down.
“Ricky!” I scream, crawling out of the tailings pipe and hobbling over.
Marcus drops the tube and backs away. “He came at me,” he says. “You saw it.”
Ricky’s hair is soft and warm. There’s a scuff across his cheek but otherwise he’s unscathed. “Are you okay?” he asks, like I’m the one who’s been scrapping. He wrinkles his forehead and says again, “You all right?”
For some reason I think about the used test stick in the bathroom at home, sitting in the trashcan between the toilet and shower. “Yeah Ricky,” I say. “I’m good.”
He gets up, goes over to Marcus and squares off again.
“Jesus Christ,” Marcus says. “You work for me, remember?”
Ricky just stands there, strong and brave as a grizzly bear. My grizzly bear. I give them some room and very carefully climb on top of the tailings pipe. My stomach’s much better in the fresh air and even though I should be scared, I’m not. In fact, this is the best I’ve felt all week.
“C’mon then,” Marcus says. “Let’s do it.” He thumps his chest and does a one-two punch in the air. Then the two of them circle each other, moving back and forth. Sizing things up as they shuffle in and out of the darkness.