Small_Talk

My father’s philosophical musings were often hybrid affairs—a marriage of pseudo-Confucian sayings, popular proverbs, and original material—that required a sharp instrument, a kind of analytical nutpick, to extract from them their meaty flecks of wisdom. My mother and I, enjoying at his expense a rare phase of solidarity, referred to these utterances as “according to Confusion” or “what Confusion say.”

“Pithy,” she’d observe.

“Pithy,” I’d agree.

And then we’d laugh.

The ‘He-who’s’ didn’t always lead to ‘hee-haws,’ however, and when trouble began to brew I headed out the door.

“Can’t you get anything right, Morrie?” Arms crossed, toe tapping, classic signs. “He who hesitates is lost. Not ‘laughing.’ Lost. You know, like HE WHO hesitated to apply for that job at the dairy, or HE WHO didn’t quite get around to. . . .”

As Ovid says, “Love is a kind of warfare.” Or conversely, Molière: “Tranquility in love is a disagreeable calm.” Whatever Confusion had to say on the subject would not, I feared, resolve the issue, so when battle lines were drawn I left them to it.

On one such auspicious day, far more thunder within than without, I set off to make my rounds. First, this involved a minor detour. In need of sustenance (“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well”—trust Virginia Woolf to nail it), and having secured an unofficial loan from the parents’ modest savings ill-concealed in a locked strong box hidden beneath a floorboard upon which sat a hefty chest of drawers, I set out for Park’s Variety. Mrs. Park’s son, Rodney, a contemporary of mine, stood behind the cash, inert despite the surge of testosterone coursing through his male byways on seeing me enter.

I mooched around in the store poking at cellophane wrappers and sliding open the freezer’s glass panel, liberating the frost spirits trapped within. At some future date I’d have to sue the Park’s for extreme dental distress, but at present was mightily pleased with the sugary wares on offer: jawbreakers, sponge toffee, Lucky Elephant Pink Candy Popcorn, Dixie cups, Licorice Cigars… et cetera was never so sweet. I settled on a cherry popsicle and dug in my pocket for a nickel. When I held it out to Rodney, he didn’t budge. He stood motionless, staring at me, jeopardizing our commercial transaction.

“Five cents, right?” Sometimes one had to give Rodney a wee prompt, get the show on the road.

He continued to stare, utterly immobile.

I knew he was alive, knocking around in there somewhere. “Yoo-hoo, Rodney. Anyone home?”

“Your lips,” he said.

Were they scaly, or something? Had I inadvertently broken out in melanotic maculae, cankers, Kawasaki syndrome? I hadn’t checked when I got up that morning. (Indeed, I don’t believe I’d washed.) I prided myself on not wearing makeup, letting my natural charms do all the work required. In error, perhaps? No one had ever mentioned my lips before, except to comment that I “flapped” them too much.

“What about them?”

“They’re the same as your cousin’s.”

“Amy’s?” Big-hipped, thin-lipped Amy? The suggestion brought my own bottom lip perilously close to quivering.

“No. Nile’s. Same upper lip, same lower, same commissure, same vermilion border, same philtrum even. Don’t you know that?”

Who else but Rodney would know the parts of the mouth? But crap, I realized it was true. If Nile ever uncurled his kisser from that Elvis sneer, it’d be a perfect match with mine. All our parts probably matched! (To wit, in the appropriate gendered arrangement, inappropriately paired.)

He shrugged, then stuck out his hand for payment.

I slapped the popsicle into his palm. “Break this, will you.”

Rodney smacked it on the edge of the counter, handed it back, and rang in the sale.

“See ya.” I pushed through the door.

Well, that was diverting. I slid the first half of the popsicle out of the package, stuck it in my mouth, and, with a vampiric focus, began to drain it of red dye # 40 as I took yet another slight detour. This one enabled me to start at the top of Ballentine, our one affluent street, as I made my way downtown, savouring my breakfast while enjoying a round of homegrown tourism. (Most of us lived on the other side of the tracks. In my family’s case, we lived so far on the other side we couldn’t even see the tracks.) The houses here were all larger than the ones on the other streets—fancier, impeccably maintained, heartache-free. You understood that their interiors would be as tastefully appointed and immaculate as their weedless and selectively treed yards. (Ah, the gingko, the tulip tree.) Somehow I couldn’t envision tangled tumbleweeds of dust and hair rolling down the residents’ long hardwood-floored hallways (waxed to a high shine), nor picture anonymous pets skittering (slithering or hopping) terrified and squealing into holes gnawed in the wall (no holes!) should a confused child step on one at night in the unrelenting dark due to a misunderstanding over the hydro bill. Wandering down Ballentine, soothed by the street’s funeral calm, and barely resisting the invitation to deposit my licked-clean popsicle stick on the outstretched, albeit, lamp-holding hand of a lawn jockey, I considered Corbusier’s assertion that, “A house is a machine for living in.” I have to admit that this was not entirely comforting, as it sounded more like a device that might mill you into sawdust. Nevertheless, Hero, one of these days, one of these days…

On arriving in the business section, I finished off the second half of my popsicle, tucked both sticks in my shirtfront pocket, and stepped smartly into Pock’s, which sold knickknacks, souvenirs, jewellery, and, for my purposes, comics. Judy, the Pock’s oldest daughter, armed with nothing more welcoming than a worn-out feather duster and an exhausted expression, stood by a glass case filled with knockoff Royal Doulton figurines, the ladies within, despite their inferior porcelain pedigree, all demanding attention.

She gave me a ‘look,’ but I didn’t take it personally. The look was composed of many querulous ingredients: Why don’t you have a job? (good question) Who do you think you are? (absurd question) Have you seen Nile around? (no) You’re here to swipe something, aren’t you? (who, moi?)

Did she voice aloud any of these questions to which she knew the answers? Her answers? No, instead we have—

“What’s wrong with your mouth?”

Seemed to me people had been asking me that all my life, but it still caught me off guard. What was it with my mouth today? Had I fallen out of bed this morning transformed into Miss Potato Head, all my features scrambled?

She stepped closer, nostrils twitching, eyes narrowing. “Is it lipstick? Better get a few lessons on how to apply it.”

Right, got it. I’d not only criminally breached my ‘vermilion border,’ but had jazzed up its youthful healthy hue with cherry popsicle. Not worth the effort of responding, I moved over to the rack of comics and gave it a dust-dispelling spin. Some of my favourites whirled by: Caspar the Friendly Ghost, Richie Rich, Archie.

“Don’t do that, you’ll break it.”

Gave’er another spin, and this time it’s, “Aren’t you too old for comics?”

“Yeah, yeah. Talking big again, Hero?”

Thinking big the appropriate response, but instead of continuing our cordial chat, I decided to put a plug in it. Conversation-wise, you couldn’t find a better sink-stopper than the guy currently romancing Judy—one who’d already made the rounds with all the other older girls in town.

“So,” I said. “How’s Douggie doing?”

(Hark, did I hear the last lamenting gurgle of a drain?)

“That piece of shit? Who cares.”

And off she went to the back of the store, blown by the self-generating winds of ill-will and frustration, leaving me to flip through the newest issues. I was doing research, too. In order to restore the family fortunes, I’d come up with the idea of writing a comic series of my own: Molly Colossus, Adventures of a BIG Girl. Picture it, Molly gets into some majorly tight spots, no end of thrills and chills, lots with physiological action sequences involving curled lips, crawling skin, and rolling eyes. I had considered calling the first issue ‘Tight Spots,’ but changed my mind in case it sounded too dermatologically painful. No want of material anyway, all I had to do was learn how to draw. In aid of this I’d sent away for a Jon Gnagy artist’s kit that I’d seen advertised on TV before the tube burned out. This, the reason that my next destination was the post office, while seriously tempted to drop into the Red & White to take inventory, as it were, in a less well-travelled aisle.

No time to waste, I cast a farewell glance at Judy—as Confusion says, “arse longa, vita brevis”—and headed out.

Because my family moved so often, in town or out, or because my family was simply what it was (don’t ask), we picked up our mail at the general delivery counter. Every day as I passed by the wall of postal boxes in the P.O.’s foyer, I paused momentarily, ardently wishing for a little silver key that would unlock our very own box. I knew that those boxes contained communications of a superior quality, unexpected bequests, news like no other, high-octane secrets unavailable anywhere else. And yet, if that were so, if that’s where our mail nested, I’d miss out on talking with Mrs. Percy, the postmistress, who for some reason seemed concerned about my welfare.

“More bills today, Hero.” She arrayed a stack of them on the counter, regretfully, as if having dealt out a particularly ruinous poker hand.

Bills, bills, bills. No matter, we had a special place for those at home. It’s called a garbage can.

“Anything else, Mrs. Percy?” I swept up the bills and filed them in various pockets.

“Postcard from your Aunt Faith. Picture of kittens on the front. Heavens, I didn’t know there was such a thing as an ugly kitten, but my these ones are real humdingers. Your aunt’s away, is she?”

“She’s not.” Aunt Faith lived within spitting distance of us, stuck to her house like wallpaper. Although we did spot her yesterday coming up the drive, at which point we all hit the dirt—not necessarily a figurative expression at our place. “What’s it say?”

Mrs. Percy made a show of turning the card over, but naturally she’d already read it. No point in working for the post office if you didn’t keep your eye on community concerns. “A fool’s mouth is his destruction. Proverbs 18:9.”

Here we go again! Geez. “Can you send it back? You know, like in the song… ‘Return to senderrrr, address unknooown—’”

“‘No such numberrrr, no such zooone’… Sure can. Your parents on the move again, dear?”

“No, no. A good spot, we’re pretty settled. I love my room.” The less said, the better. To resort to an old chestnut.

“There’s no place like home.”

I’m afraid this particular chestnut can be interpreted less positively, but I smiled and nodded, fashioning an agreeable expression that would also serve to hide my disappointment about the Learn to Draw Set. Jon Gnagy seemed like a very nice man and I had confidence that he wouldn’t bilk my parents of their as yet unknown investment. Fair enough, no big deal, there’s always tomorrow and tomorrow for the execution of those cubes and cones, their smudgy shadows falling every which way, defying the laws of art and nature. But then—

“Hero, wait!” I heard from the back of the P.O. where the sorting happens. Bertie, Mrs. Percy’s assistant ran up to the front with a delivery in hand. “Found this in the bottom of the mailbag. Gosh, don’t know how long it’s been there.” They both knew I’d been waiting for a special dispatch, although I hadn’t specified what, wanting to keep my project under wraps and the town’s mockery to a bearable minimum. Not that either Mrs. Percy or Bertie would indulge, but word gets out.

Bertie handed it to me and we three gazed at it with…??? As Mark Twain once said, “A thing long expected takes the form of the unexpected when at last it comes.” Mr. Twain, old pal, you can say that again.

Not long ago I’d received an equally perplexing missive from Nile. Another postcard, but unlike his mother’s this one depicted a night view of Sudbury’s slag heaps, and on the back contained no message whatsoever.

“Why didn’t he write anything?” Mrs. Percy had asked. Clearly, this was an offense to someone who’d dedicated her life to putting correspondence into people’s hands. “Why bother?”

“Yeah, waste of space.”

“The strong silent type, is he?”

More the pungent illiterate type. He did get my name right, more or less, and while pleased to hear from him, felt somewhat troubled about the molten gushing slag, however scenic, in case this represented some sort of sly commentary on me. (At least he hadn’t written, “Wish you were here.”)

So I greeted this new oddball communication warily. I didn’t recognize the hand, the script wobbly and faint, as if it had received a fright. But then, I don’t suppose it’s easy to write on birchbark, which is what the envelope was made of. The bark was brownish like the kind used for those overpriced, ersatz birchbark canoes and tipis for sale at Pock’s, plump as a French pastry, and, presumably, packed with some sort of communicative filling. I could tell that both Bertie and Mrs. Percy were dying for me to open it, but, in case it was someone’s idea of a practical joke, and not requiring a homeopathic dose of humiliation at the moment, said airily, “Ahh, finally.” Clutching the thing with enough force to make it crack, I then sauntered out of the P.O. as nonchalantly as possible.

Retreating with my ‘treasure’ to the town docks, I settled on a bench much scored and scarred with lovers’ initials. Kind of like sitting on a wooden quilt. I couldn’t help but notice Douggie’s name gouged here and there, often accompanied with primitive and surprisingly rude pictographs.

I didn’t rip into my own arboreal billet-doux right away, if that’s what I had in hand, wanting to sniff it out first. Entirely possible that I had an admirer and I took a moment to consider the candidates: Wes, who sat behind me in Science class (your basic anthropoid); Norm, who worked at the gas station (Spam with teeth and hair); Ned, the minister’s son (sex appeal of a lamp); Gord, farmer’s progeny (the original green man); Atholl, preening tiddlywinks champion (name sums him up). Would any of these prospective suitors sheath their desires, however tepid, in birchbark? To be sure, none of the Ojibway guys I knew would be caught dead making something as uncool and cornball as this.

Studying the handwriting on the envelope, it occurred to me that my correspondent might be quite young—given the calligraphy, about nine years old. How long had the letter been stuck in the bottom of the mailbag? This thought I found moderately disturbing, for as a recent exile from childhood myself, I was simply too young to be a pedophile. While aware of everyone in town over a certain age, I didn’t keep track of all of the younger kids, who tended to travel in an undifferentiated swarm. Unbeknownst to me, some sweet boy might be swooning, heart beating wildly, every time we crossed paths. If I discovered his identity, perhaps I could raise him—you know, like livestock—for enjoyment when mature.

Time to delve deeper.

Fingers spidering as sensitively as a safecracker over the fiercely glued back flap, I managed to jimmy open the envelope without entirely destroying it. After winkling out a thick wodge of lined three-ring paper, I set the envelope aside and immersed myself in a chronicle sent to me from an unidentified ‘Camp.’ At this point in my life, I did not know that such places existed, nor that children were sent to these woodsy venues in the summer to engage in all manner of ridiculously fun things: hiking, canoeing, swimming, archery, eating s’mores and practising mouth to mouth resuscitation (not necessarily in that order), and making crafts. Evidently, I was in possession of one such craft, plus a charmingly uncrafty letter, which, introduced by the simple salutation, “Hi!”, went into considerable detail about the above activities, while radiating so much innocence the paper appeared to be lit by some internal source.

The margins of the letter were as richly illustrated as the Book of Kells, and while technically challenged (not a great advert for Jon Gnagy if he’d been involved), I admired their documentary nature nonetheless. Here was something I could relate to: a skunk the size of a moose gassing fellow campers, swimmers fleeing from bloody shark-infested northern waters, and a camp counsellor flat-out with a bottle of poisoned hooch in hand. Uncertain as to whether this was intended as comedy or a cry for help, I decided to settle on the former. The letter drew to a close with, “Luv, Em,” and the drawing of a half-eaten hotdog with legs.

A girl-crush, then. Emma? Emily? Some astute, unknown miss who idealized me to the degree that I’d become her imaginary friend? I didn’t half-mind the thought of being imaginary. It made me feel light and sort of tingly. As I looked out across the water, letting Lips, a fellow-imaginary being, twiddle delicately with my hair (Lips, wind god, southwest) (note: the wind is not called Mariah), I thought about this young girl at Camp Wapawopawipiskwat (just a guess), who might easily have been a younger me (if the parents had ever gotten it together): gut-wrenchingly homesick and lonely, sure, but living on the feral and liberated side of weird.

Deciding to give the letter pride of place in my room, between the snow globe and the dried worm on my dresser, I wedged it back into the envelope, wondering what ingenious object Em might manufacture with my two leftover popsicle sticks, and carried it home, rough and warm in my hand. The feeling of lightness stuck with me, and perhaps for that reason I began to fantasize about that half-eaten hotdog, an annoyingly mobile snack.

No car in the driveway, so either it had been reclaimed, or the folks were at Neath’s bar, healing their rift with some liquid first aid. Good, another loan might be in order, especially if the cupboards were bare. I’d have to be quick, though. Guaranteed they’d be back soon—they were like cats, out, in, out, in, never having gotten the hang of what a home is for.

This strategy ran into a snag all too soon on my discovery that I didn’t have the place to myself. A woman sat lounging in my father’s ratty, hand-me-down La-Z-Boy, gazing into a hand mirror that looked suspiciously like my mother’s, while plucking her chin hairs with over-large tweezers, also familiar. This stranger was done up in a style that might best be described as parodic cleaning lady, a smidge too frumpy to be authentic.

“Hello, dear,” she said, not looking up.

“Excuse me, who—?”

“Gotcha!” She held up a wiry black hair for assessment before dropping it on the floor. Returning again to the mirror, she angled her chin, thick as an elbow, this way and that, inspecting the cosmetic work site.

I could almost feel my brain moving in my head like a disturbed animal, shifting and resettling, renegotiating its comfy spot. Was she some unknown relative, a member from the dark and distant reaches of the family? You never knew what sort of creature, long-entangled in our genetic coils, might tumble out and land at your feet. (As Auntie Viv says, “The trouble with family, eh, is that they’re not the kind of people you’d normally invite into your home.”)

“I’m your boarder.” Big smile.

Boarder? All the stuff from my room, including my comics and my useless hair dryer in its vinyl zip case and my dried worm, had been dumped in a corner of the living room. Here I’d assumed that an unprecedented round of housework had occurred in my absence, but no. My room had been rented out? Surely the parents weren’t that desperate! (This aggrieved plaint, despite the many bills bookmarking my person.)

Tightening my grip on the birchbark letter, my sole unsullied possession, I gave the encroacher, her with overgrown cuticles, my most searing look, a sort of indignation-radiation combo. (Works for Molly Colossus.)

“You must change your life,” she said.

What? Bullshit. But because I had been properly brought up, I didn’t say that. I said rather, as Molly herself would say, “That’s !@&!#%! bullshit.”

The woman studied me for a tick, then, tossing the mirror and tweezers aside, reached down to the floor and seized a chubby leather purse, black and knobbled as a diseased liver. Settling it on her lap, she unclasped it and began rummaging around inside. I got the impression that she was going to try pacifying me with some laughable token, a candy or a trinket. Or… a gun? Or worse, more unwanted advice. Another gem, say, involving my much maligned oral apparatus, facial feature of the day. (The closed mouth swallows no flies.)

And damned if she didn’t pluck out of her purse a fortune-cookie-sized slip of paper. After quickly and frowningly perusing it, however, she did not then intone, as you might expect, “Your dearest wish will come true.” Nor, “When hungry, order more Chinese food.”

Instead, she enquired, “This is Ballentine Street, isn’t it?”

“No.” Ballentine? You kidding?

“Hmn.” She hauled herself out of the chair and patted herself down, rearranging her brown dress, and, dipping her fingers into a pocket of her equally brown, muskrat-collared jacket, extracted a small silver key. “Here,” she said, handing it to me.

As you may imagine, I accepted this key in great surprise and with a surge of wonder. Was it? Could it really be? Did I finally have in my possession the instrument I needed to give me total access?

And yet… how fragile wonder is. Mine lasted only as long as it took for our unexpected guest to hustle out, heels clacking as she passed my parents on the stairs.

“Who was that?” Mother examined the surroundings, puzzled, as though she’d never seen the place before.

“Don’t know.” Downmarket fairy godmother?

“What did she want?”

“She gave me this.” I showed her the key.

“My God.” Mother snatched it out of my hand and roared into the folks’ bedroom, where she began to make a remarkable amount of racket shoving aside the chest of drawers and yanking up the floorboards.

“Behind every great man stands a large woman,” observed Father, proudly.

Molly C might have appreciated the intended compliment, but luckily mother was out of earshot. We, on the other hand, could hear her clearly.

“That bitch,” she howled. “Robbed! We’ve been robbed… ripped off.” A pause followed this assertion, broken shortly after by some accounting, “She stole three dollars. And, and… five cents! Five!”

Sounded about right, no further commentary required. After all, hadn’t silence been urged upon me all day?

The upshot of this inconvenient trespass? Another move, and this to a hovel about as far away from Ballentine Street as it’s possible to get. The starvation-diet reasoning that nourished our exodus? My stuff, positioned closer to the front door than to my room, the parents viewed as a kind of readiness-is-all portent. Plainly, greener pastures beckoned. Even those, as it turned out, splatted with cow pies. As Confusion say, “Home is the thing with legs.”