Creeps (14 page)

Marjorie says, “Go on.”

“I don't know. It's like he's waiting for just the right moment or something.” Wayne goes to reach for his glass but changes his mind. “Whatever it is, it's going to be a lot worse than what came before.”

They're quiet for a long time.

The fat man licks his fingers.

The intercom voice again: “Never mind, Blanche. Went and did it myself, didn't I?”

Wayne says, “Why does he hate me?”

Marjorie swivels in his direction and stares for ages and then says, “Same reason he hates me: because we don't fit.”

Wayne looks past her shoulder at the fat man now picking his teeth with the prongs of his fork and whose plate looks like it's just been put through the dishwasher, then focuses back on Marjorie in time for her to say,

“Because you're odd and small and your eyes are too far apart and you like to write and I'm skinny and I keep the meat department at Dominion in business.”

Getting a few crumpled bills from his wallet and setting them beside his plate and getting into his jacket and standing up exhausts the fat man. He leans against the counter for support.

Wayne's mother comes out and collects the money and starts clearing his section and tells him to come again and the man wonders if he's mentioned the weather that's moving in and Wayne's mom says yes, he has, so the man wishes her good evening and waddles away.

Then his mother is standing in front of them, her arms full of the man's plates and cup and utensils and used napkins. “Odd for you to leave so many fries, Wayne,” she says before going back into the kitchen.

After a while Marjorie says, “Mom's actually going to be out tonight if you can believe it, so you can come over.”

“Really?”

She nods. Then, after a long time, she adds, “I've got something I think you should hear.”

THREE

They're standing in Marjorie's driveway. She's wearing Wayne's toque, hands jammed in her pockets and red cheeks beneath the glow of the streetlight. Purple lips. Icicles for eyelids.

Wayne's hood is up. His fingers—to keep frostbite at bay—are fists inside his mittens. Breathing's like swallowing shards of glass.

So quiet—not a car or skidoo or barking dog; no bus full of tired miners, their heads slumped against windows in sleep; no street hockey or children in snowsuits and neck warmers, sucking the tips of frozen mittens and building snow forts; no people shovelling their driveways or the walkways to their front doors—nothing … just the silence that's like being forgotten. Left behind.

Marjorie says, “I can't feel my nose.”

“Me neither. Or my ears.”

“How long to die from hypothermia?”

“Don't know.” He looks up and thinks that the northern lights are cold, too. Why else would they be dancing like that? The stars, it seems, are huddling the moon for warmth.

She says, “Come inside.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.” She turns and walks to her front door, then says over her shoulder, “Jesus, Wayne Pumphrey, you testing to see how long it
does
take?”

“What?”

“To die of hypothermia?”

He runs over and they go in and it's so dark there's not even an outline of things. A smell like meat left out too long. She tells him to come on and not to bother with his boots.

Taking his hand, she guides him into the dark, through another door and down a staircase and the air's musty like things unwashed and she makes sure he holds on to the rail. The stairs creak and he can feel the cold coming off her and, at the bottom, she tightens her grip and turns right and says, “This way.” Along another hallway and a sharp left, then she stops and he nearly bangs into her. She lets go of his hand and he hears her unzipping a jacket pocket and then a key inside a lock and a twisting of a door handle and it being pushed open and then her voice: “Mom says I'd be better off in the sunshine. Like
she's
got room to talk. No one glares at me in here, or whispers behind my back, or calls me slut. And who cares if I am anyway. Probably having more fun than the rest of them.”

She guides him in and sits him on a wooden chair and tells him to stay put while she gets the light. He hears straining bedsprings and then a chain being pulled and suddenly the room's awash in red and it's like being in a dream. There are posters of bands he's never heard of on her walls and who's Thom Yorke? A dresser's in the corner with its drawers hauled open and a disc player's on top and CDs are scattered everywhere. The bedspread's red too, as is the carpet and the colour of her walls. Her desk's strewn with magazines and a biography of Dakota Fanning and
The Outsiders
and there's a picture in a frame too and it's of a smiling, unshaven man in a sweater and a tweed cap leaning against a fence with crossed arms.

Marjorie shrugs off her jacket and kicks articles of clothing underneath her bed, saying, “I'm far from a clean freak.” She goes over to the CD player and puts in a CD and presses play, and then sits on the edge of her bed with her hands on her knees and her face towards the wall with closed eyes.

Wayne listens and the song's sort of haunting-sounding and lonely and he looks over at Marjorie and she's bobbing her head and stomping her foot
and mouthing the words and it's like nothing he's ever heard before and he thinks he likes it, but he isn't sure. Then she's turning up the volume and telling him that her favourite part is coming up, and then she's on her feet and pointing towards the music, saying, “Here it comes! Listen! Just listen!” Eyes closed again and now she's bouncing at the knees and swaying her head, and if her hair were longer, Wayne thinks, it would be flying.

He doesn't catch all the words, but the ones he does hear talk about being a weirdo and not belonging anywhere and then he lifts his head and Marjorie's staring right at him and she's nodding and her eyes are glistening and she says, “Well?”

He pauses. “Well what?”

“Whaddya think?”

He shrugs. “It's good.”

She lowers the volume. “
Good!
That's all you can say? It's better than good, Wayne Pumphrey, it's
great
is what it is. It's everything—it's you and me and being creeps and wondering what the fuck we're doing here and how there must be somewhere else. It's like Thom Yorke is singing just for me.”

Marjorie points to one of the wall posters. “Thom Yorke: the lead singer.”

“Oh.”

Marjorie sits back down and lets the rest of the song play out before turning down the volume a
bit more and saying, “Whole album is amazing, but ‘Creep' is the best.”

Wayne looks again at the picture on Marjorie's desk.

“Dad,” she says. “Radiohead was his favourite and this CD is the most important thing he left me.”

Wayne slides forward in his chair to get a better look.

“He was young when it was taken. Not that he ever got old.”

“He looks like you.”

“I look like
him
, you mean?”

“Yeah—that.”

“He smiled all the time. But he wasn't happy.”

Wayne looks at her.

Marjorie turns her face away then makes herself more comfortable by resting her back against the headboard and taking off her sneakers and crossing her feet at the ankles. “You can take your jacket off, you know.”

Wayne does, draping it on the back of his chair, then says, “Where did you say your mom was?”

“Group.”

“Group?”

“Yep.”

“What's that?”

“People get together and talk about their dead loved ones, but mostly they cry and blow into
tissues and I went once, but it only made me feel worse.”

“Oh.”

“At least it gets her out of the house.” Then, “Tuesdays never come fast enough.”

Quiet save for Thom Yorke.

Marjorie shimmies over and pats the spot left vacant beside her. “Why don't you come over, Wayne Pumphrey.”

Wayne stays where he is.

“Come over, I said.”

“I should go.”

“Why?”

“I don't know.”

“Go then.”

But he doesn't. Then he looks up and her eyes are wet, so he tries to think of something to say knowing somehow that not everything needs to be thought out and that sometimes one should just say what one needs to before the time to say it slips away.

It's Marjorie, though, who, after pressing a palm heel into each eye, speaks first. “It wasn't an accident.”

Wayne stares at her for a long time. “What?”

Marjorie lies down and turns on her side and hugs her knees and says, “Come and get me on your way to school tomorrow. If you want.”

He doesn't say anything. Then he gets up and goes over and lies beside her. She turns around and faces him and her breath heats his nose and eyelids and her eyes are glossy and huge and something's behind them that Wayne doesn't have words for.

She presses against him, her body a warm quilt. She puts an arm around him. “You're shaking. Are you cold?”

“I'm not sure. Maybe.”

“Come closer.”

“What?”

“Put
your
arm around me too.”

For a long time he doesn't, then he does, feeling ribs and the pumping of her heart and he thinks that, other than his mother and sister, he's never been this close to a girl before. He struggles to hold her gaze.

Ages pass. Then she says, “I keep waiting for him to blast the music and drag me into the living room.” She laughs. “He was the worst dancer.”

They stay facing each other for the longest time. Then Wayne says, “I'm sorry.”

“For what?”

“I don't know.”

Radiohead shortening the distances, filling the silences, somehow patching the cracks.

They sleep.

Wayne opens his eyes to see his mother standing there: long coat and matching scarf and a purse clutched against her chest. She's saying something but he can't make sense of it, so he tells her to say it again.

“I said: just what do you think you're doing, mister?”

It dawns on him that he isn't in his own bed and that the woman hovering over him is not his mother after all, but Marjorie's. “Mrs. Pope?”

“That's right, mister, and you still haven't answered my question.”

He sits up and gives Marjorie a shake and says, “We weren't at anything, Mrs. Pope.”

“Doesn't look like nothing.”

“What time is it?”

“Nearly nine.”

“We must have fallen asleep.”

“Can't sleep at your own place?”

“Mom'll be wondering where I am.”

“No
beds
?”

Wayne goes to stand up, but Mrs. Pope holds out the hand with the purse and says, “Not so fast, mister,” so Wayne stays where he is.

Marjorie's voice then: “Mom?”

Mrs. Pope looks right at her. “Now I know what you get up to when I'm away—”

“What are you doing in my room?”

“I came in to warm up, Mrs. Pope—”

“You aren't supposed to be in my room—”

“You live down the street,” Marjorie's mom says.

“And listen to Thom Yorke—”

“Not gonna freeze to death walking down the street!” Then, “Does your mother know what you're up to?”

Marjorie crawls to the foot of the bed and gets to her feet.

“No,” Wayne says, “but she wouldn't mind. She encourages me to make friends.”

“Lie down with all your friends, mister?”

“Mom!” Marjorie picks up her jacket and sneakers then runs over and takes Wayne's wrist, and as he grabs his jacket she drags him towards the door, but Mrs. Pope gets there first and blocks their way and says, “At least one of us still misses him!”

The hand holding him falls away and the room goes silent and Mrs. Pope clutches her purse against her like it's the only thing keeping her guts in and she tries to speak, but can't, so she swallows and tries again and says, “I didn't mean it. You know me: speak before I think.”

“Move,” Marjorie says.

Her mother doesn't. “Someone new came tonight. A woman. Not a word out of her.”

“
Move,
I said.”

“Stared at the floor and played with her necklace and holes in the knees of her jeans, then the meeting was done and she was still sitting there.”

“Behind the curtains is the proper place for you,” Marjorie says.

Silence.

Mrs. Pope is all whites of eyes and no pupils and lower jaw on her chest. “What a thing to say … your own mother.”

Marjorie turns to Wayne. “Now you know why I never invite you in.” Then back to her mother, “One day I'll leave—”

“Don't say that—”

“And never come back—”

“I'd be lost—”

“Then you'll
really
be alone—”