Crossings (23 page)

‘Are you all right now?'

‘Yes. I'm all right.'

‘Who was that?' Mik says.

‘A girl I used to work with. She said I filled her with moral horror.'

‘Yeah? “Moral horror.”' Rolling it over the way he does. And he laughs. ‘We sit here much longer I'm gonna melt the Formica.'

And we creep back to the sleeping house, my mother upstairs with Jocelyn, Mom's boyfriend sleeping chastely on the sofa. We come in the cellar door.

Yes. Mom had a boyfriend. He'd driven her out, to see what could be done with me. But they were very proper.

And in the cellar:

‘Jesus, I like it when you say “Oh boy!'”

‘I don't say “Oh boy!'”

‘You do. You say it every time, “Oh boy!” like some kid. You said it the first time. “Oh boy!'”

‘I never.'

He turns over and growls into my stomach. ‘I could eat you. I want to get inside you and never get out. I want to wrap you around me.'

‘Like an overcoat.'

‘Like an overcoat.'

‘That's what
you
said, the first time.'

‘What?'

‘That you'd like to pull me on like an overcoat.'

‘Yeah?'

‘I don't know why I love you. You're so damn ugly.'

‘You're no great shakes yourself. You got calluses on your feet. And a pot belly. And your hips look like moon craters.'

It was he who told me that then. Yes. Now I remember.

‘We're gonna go up to that island. I'm gonna get you alone and fuck you to death. And we won't have to be quiet. We can holler our hearts out.'

‘Mmm.'

‘No Paul and no Ben and no mother and no damn sister.'

‘Nobody.'

‘Nobody in the whole fucking world.'

‘I used to think you were having a heart attack, the way you carried on.'

‘I
carry on? How about you? “OOoo Eeee.” Like a stuck pig.'

‘Sh. My mom.'

‘You didn't think about her ten minutes ago. “OOoo Eeee!”'

‘Shhhh!'

‘Up on the island, I'm gonna yell. I'm gonna bring the moon down. “OOooo Eeee!'”

‘Shhhh.'

 

I COME TO this now, like a lover. Guiltily, as if it were sinful. The book.

Last night I had a dream. Aunt Carrington. She said to me, ‘Isn't it strange, how we never call and yet we're not angry with each other.'

‘I need your advice,' I said. ‘I have all these houses, and I don't know what to do.' It's the house dream again. So many houses and where are we to live, Anna and I. And what am I to do about the others.

‘I can't concern myself with your problem,' Aunt Carrington said. ‘I'm dying.'

‘Oh you mustn't die,' I said. ‘I couldn't bear it if you died. I'm selfish, I know, but I couldn't bear it.'

And we hold each other and cry, like children, the spasms wracking our diaphragms, helplessly, like children.

Her sun room is all different. There are pages printed, up on ribbons, rather like a show room. ‘Yes, I've taken up the printing press,' Aunt Carrington says. ‘It's something to do till I die.'

Then she looks at me. ‘One thing I've learned. It's foolish to cry over spilt houses. What house do you want to live in?'

‘The one on the hill.'

‘Yes, well, live in it then. Forget the others. So you've lost money. Forget it.'

And she looks at Anna and says, ‘Yes, me all over.' And, ‘So am I in the book or not?'

‘No. How could I? It would take another. A whole book. To tell, I mean,' and I try to placate her, as of old, ‘you tried so hard, you went all the way, and life did it to you. Over and over. But of course, it's wrong to anthropomorphize, isn't it?'

She is climbing a ladder up to the kitchen sill. ‘
I
never said life did it to me. It was you who said that. It was what happened. I never said It did anything to me.'

‘Yes, but you suffered so.'

‘Right now, I just don't want to die.' And she goes away, mingling with all the guests, it is a cocktail party of some kind.

And there is a fight, somehow. A pimp. And an Indian girl I've brought home. Yes. And the pimp is a Negro and he has a knife. My kitchen knife. And we fight and I break off his knife and I push him out the door. I say, ‘You rotten bigot.'

And I wake up. And I cry for Aunt Carrington, who didn't want to die, and who did anyway, saying, ‘I think there's something wrong.'

And Anna wakes up too. She has been counting numbers in her dream. I tell her about Aunt Carrington. ‘Do you think there is a heaven?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Susie says when I die, I'll have to go on the cross.'

‘I don't think so. Susie's got it mixed up.'

‘No. Susie said when I die, I'll have to go to heaven. And I said, No way. So she said then I have to go on the cross.'

‘I don't believe that.'

‘No. I don't either. Do you think there's a God?'

‘I don't know.'

‘I don't know either. I've never seen a god. Except in the Parthenon. There're an awful lot of gods, aren't there?'

‘Yes. People have always thought about gods, and they've taken different forms. I mean, people have seen them differently.'

Anna sighs. ‘But it would be nice.'

‘Yes. It would be nice.'

 

BEFORE I LEFT for the first island, Momma said to me, ‘It's just sex, you know.'

‘Oh Mom, sex is never “just.”'

Bert, her boyfriend, said to her, ‘Your daughter's not ashamed. If
she
loves a man, she comes right out with it.' Bert's wife was mental and he couldn't get a divorce.

‘Maybe I'm too concerned with social opinion,' Momma said.

And so, after we left, she drove back home with Bert and let him move in. ‘I decided,' she told me later, ‘what with your divorce and everything, what was the use? I'd been good all those years and what was the use?'

‘That's ridiculous,' said the Nut Lady when I told her. ‘As if you were supposed to set the example.'

But I was. And I did. My mother entered what she called a life of sin because I led the way. She still says it, and I believe it. ‘But I couldn't brazen it out,' she said last summer. ‘I was too ashamed.'

My mother. My mother. When I brought the Indian girls home from church camp, she put them up. Saying to me, ‘But how am I supposed to afford it?' But doing it anyway. My mother, who stopped the car last summer because she thought she saw a gopher twitching in the road allowance. Backing up the car, she said grimly, ‘It's got to be put out of its misery.' But it was only a piece of tumbleweed. My mother, who took me to see the badgers at sunset, and the Indian rings, 100,000 years old. My mother. Who said, ‘All my girls are failures.'

‘But Jocelyn isn't.' I know what she means about Francie and me. I don't debate that.

‘Well …'

‘But she's married and happy and David's certainly a success in the world's eyes. And Joss isn't doing too bad either.' Joss is the director of a clinic now.

‘We were no better than anyone else.'

‘And I know Francie's divorced, but, again, in terms of just achievement, it's pretty good, at her age. A church newspaper.' And we laugh a bit about that. Francie putting out a church newspaper. Francie?

‘But Joss has a nice home and a good husband.'

‘All the university degrees in the world don't make a person happy. All I wanted was for you all just to have good husbands and a good family life.'

‘But what would you have liked us to
do
?
'

‘Wouldn't that be enough? Just to be wives and mothers?'

‘I guess not. I guess we had to do something too.'

‘It's my father all over again,' Mom says. ‘What good was Latin and Greek when he couldn't put a decent meal on the table.'

‘But we all make
money
,' I say.

‘Oh yes, that's you all over. You never really loved anyone, you just gave them money.'

I say, ‘Do you remember the time I poured the whiskey down the sink?'

‘I never bought that bottle. Grandpop brought it over.'

‘But you must have wanted to kill me. Pouring it down the sink!'

‘No. I'm glad you did it. I might have become a solitary drinker.'

‘Oh Mom! You? I was a pompous prig.'

‘I never bought that bottle. It was Grandpop.'

‘I know.'

‘Your Aunt Carrington, she took you away from me. I could never get close to you. They all took you away from me. The family.'

And, ‘I'm glad to see
your
house gets messy sometimes. I'm glad to see you aren't all that organized either.'

‘I know. I was awful.'

‘You used to say if I'd only get a system. A system. I used to think, Wait till
you
have kids.'

My mother. Who read me the stories of Theseus and the dragon's teeth when I was three. I never knew what book it came from till last summer, when she found it: Hawthorne's
Tanglewood Tales.
Persephone and Demeter. Only she was called Ceres then, when I was three. Circe's Palace. The Golden Fleece.

My mother. Who made me a red riding hood coat and a sailor's dress and who said I was never never to call Sam-at-the-store a dirty Jew. It didn't matter
what
my father said.

 

WE CAUGHT THE ferry to Vancouver Island. And stayed in a Nanaimo hotel. And Mik stole the towels.

But there was something else before the towels. I'm trying to avoid it.

Before we left for the island, Mik bought himself a hat and me a ring.

It was a smart hat, with a small brim. It made him look silly, like a dancing bear.

The ring was gold and set with chip diamonds. It fit my finger perfectly. He'd got it from People's Credit Jewellers, and before two hours were up, one of the chips had fallen out. He went back down town with blood in his eye. He'd never been cheated on anything before: I suppose he'd never paid for anything before. They gave him another but he was annoyed about it all day. ‘You pay good money,' he would say, ‘and they try to Jew you.'

And, later, still muttering, ‘I told him, I said if anything goes wrong with this one I'll shove it up his ass.'

And we went across the strait, the water blue and gold and white, furrowing behind the ferry. And booked into the hotel. And Mik stole the towels.

I must have known with some part of my responsible self that Mik couldn't have a week off from work. I must have known it would cost him his job.

He'd worked three weeks and he had some money and now he was going to spend it on me. I can't remember even asking about the job.

And the next morning, waking up in the hotel room, I saw him packing the towels in the suitcase.

They were fluffy and white and they had the name of the hotel written in red cotton. I won't say the name, for I still have one.