Crossings (27 page)

I laugh. ‘I know it's me. But
look
at it, Ben.'

He says, in a wondering voice, ‘It does. It looks like you're dead.'

And, after a while, he says, ‘Well, I'd better be going. I don't have any more excuses to come here,' and he smiles, to show he's admitting it.

‘Yeah.'

‘That's the way you want it, isn't it? Me not to come around.'

‘Well, you'll be busy with school and … Yes. I'd rather you didn't, Ben. I'm sorry.'

‘All right. Just remember, I'm always there. Whenever you need me.'

Mik lumbers up the stairs and bursts into the front room.

‘I was just going,' says Ben.

‘Yah?' And to me: ‘Get dressed. We're going to the Old Lady's.'

Ben says, ‘How are you getting along, Mik?'

‘Okay.' And to me: ‘Wear that dress with the spots, like a giraffe.'

‘For your mother?'

‘Yeah.'

‘Any other instructions?'

‘Wear your hair up, you know, like you did Tuesday.'

‘What's the matter, you're huffing and puffing like a walrus.'

‘I humped it across the bridge,' Mik says. ‘Come
on,
for christ sake, she's expecting us for lunch. I phoned her.'

‘Lunch! It's eleven-thirty.'

‘Yah, so how come you're not dressed yet?'

‘God, what a bloody tyrant.'

Ben gives me a pitying look. ‘Well, I guess I better go.'

‘You're a slob,' Mik says to me. ‘Go
on,
for christ sake.'

So I run upstairs and have a quick bath and all the time I can hear from below, ‘Get your butt moving,' and Ben's murmurous voice, polite, interrogative.

I come down and he's still there. Ben. Mik holds the door open but I stand back, waiting. Ben has got to go. Ben moves edgily in front of Mik. ‘Can I drop you anywhere?' He has a car somehow, again.

‘Nah.' Mik is jiggling the door knob.

‘Well, if you need me, Vicky …' and he goes, smiling at me sadly.

Out on the street, Mik says, ‘Here,' and shoves a cellophane box at me. A corsage. He's been holding it behind his back all along. I forget what they are. If I don't think about it …

‘Mik, I can't wear a
corsage.
To go to
lunch.
To your
mother's.
'

‘You wear it.'

‘On the bus? A corsage on the bus?'

‘Here,' and he pins it to my dress.

‘No, well, at least, put it on the left side.'

‘Yah? It goes on the left side?'

‘Of course it goes on the left side.' Now he is taking my hand, walking very fast ahead of me down the street.

On Broadway there is a cab, and Mik opens the back door for me. The whole bit. ‘Get in, for christ sake.'

‘Oh, we're going in style.'

He gives the driver the address and we light cigarettes. I'm smoking now. I started one day with the Nut Lady. Took in a pack just to keep me company. After the big crying session. Thought if I smoked, maybe. One pack every time I saw her. Now I'm on two packs a day. Not now in the cab. Now. Now, in the cab, I do it because Mik does it. Not inhaling.

It's somewhere near Commercial, his mother's house. A neat white and green bungalow, with careful flower beds and a pocket handkerchief lawn. Inside, the front room is dominated by a massive TV, and the chesterfield is new and extremely red, with silver threads running through the upholstery. There are pillows all over this chesterfield. Elaborately tucked and gored and gusseted.

Mrs O'Brien has Mik's face. It's strange seeing it on a woman, the wide mouth and the long upper lip, with the indentations so marked. Her hair is very blonde and has a patina to it, as if it were ironed this morning. Lots of waves, but puffed up somehow at the same time. Her skin is red and flushed and the pores on her cheeks are huge. She is wearing a flowered crepe of some kind, and a frilly organdy apron that I bet hasn't come out of the bottom drawer since Christmas.

The table is laid in the kitchen. A linen tablecloth and paper napkins in a plastic holder. You take your own as you need it.

I am wet under the arms. I'm smiling so much I think my cheeks are going to cramp. We are all horribly polite. Mik doesn't speak to me the entire time. He refers to me in the third person, as if I were dead.

‘She's got all these cats,' and he laughs.

‘I like cats,' she says, ‘but they do destroy the furniture.'

‘She's a teacher,' Mik says.

‘Oh? What do you teach?'

‘English,' Mik says before I get a chance to deny anything.

‘Oh my,' she says, pouring out the tea into very new-looking porcelain cups, all different. ‘I'll have to watch my grammar!' And she laughs.

‘Or would you rather have a beer? Would she rather have a beer?' to Mik, as she hands me the cup of tea.

‘She doesn't drink.'

‘Oh my,' she says, ‘she doesn't have any vices, hey?' I'm dying for a smoke all of a sudden. The first time I ever felt it, that Jesus-give-me-a-fag feeling. But I know I'd better not.

‘Just the major ones,' Mik says and laughs. And his mother laughs and I smile.

‘Don't you let him teach you any bad habits,' she says.

‘I'll have one,' says Mik, getting up and going to the fridge. There are a lot of beer bottles in there.

She sees me looking and says, ‘My husband. He likes one when he gets home from work.' And, as Mik raises the bottle to his lips, ‘Oh Mik! We've got lots of glasses!'

‘I like it like this. She's not the Queen of England, for christ sake.'

She doesn't seem to be able to sit still. She keeps getting up and going back and forth. ‘Do you take cream?' And, ‘I'd have put the milk in first but it isn't done in the best circles.' She laughs.

‘My grandma always put milk in first.'

‘Yes, it's called Mif, isn't it?' And we laugh, common ground at last. ‘I guess it happens in the best of regulated families,' she says. And, to Mik, ‘Well, stranger! They done a good job on your back, looks like.'

‘Yah.'

‘It was terrible,' she says, really talking to me now, ‘the way they left it all that time. He was all hunched over. It broke my heart.'

‘Yah, well, it's okay now,' Mik says.

‘It's a wonder what they can do,' she says. And, ‘Your father'd like to see you sometime, Mik. You could give him a call.'

‘I bet he'd like to see me. So how's Dick.' The last very casual.

‘Oh he's fine. He's a first lieutenant now. In the Navy. My other son,' she adds to me. She says it ‘loo.'

‘Yah?'

‘And they've got a new baby. A boy. He's almost a year now, Mik. Can you imagine?'

‘So how many does that make it?'

‘Three now. Two girls and a boy.'

‘My brother the rabbit,' says Mik.

‘Oh he's so cute. They brought him over last Sunday and he's just such a little man. They're over to Victoria, they can't get over too often.'

‘My brother the first lieutenant,' says Mik. ‘Real book man.' And somewhere to my general direction, ‘Never saw action.'

‘Well, you
know
Dick was too young to see action.'

‘Not too young for Korea.'

‘Now, Mik, you
know
Dick …'

‘I know he got himself a cushy job, sat it out on his butt,' Mik says. ‘I seen his type.' And when she doesn't answer, ‘So how's the Old Man?'

‘He's fine. He has this lumbago, when it gets damp,' she says to me. ‘He's at work now.'

‘Same place?'

‘No. This is a new place, over to Millardville …'

‘Got bounced, eh? Old Man boozes,' to the air.

‘Mik!' And after pressing more fruit cake on me she says, brightly, ‘Why don't we all go over to see Millie? I told her you were coming and she said, Why not come over and see the house? They got a new house. It's real nice. Brand new.'

So Mik calls a cab and we go over to Millie's. It's one of these development houses, the ground all raw and torn from bulldozers, not a tree left in sight.

‘We haven't painted yet,' Millie explains, indicating the white walls. ‘You got to wait for the cracks first.'

There are four children of various sexes, and we play on the front room carpet. ‘Don't get the lady's dress dirty,' she says to them.

And, ‘We got this rec room but it's not finished yet. So how you doing, you big lug?' to Mik.

He laughs and then she laughs and then, abruptly, he picks her up and swings her around.

‘Mik! You stop that. You put me down! Oh.' And back on the floor, ‘I'm an old married lady now. You bugger. They didn't knock it out of you, hey?'

Her mother gives her a look and she says, ‘How about some tea?'

So they all go out to the kitchen and leave us alone in the front room. I can hear them laughing and snorting and beer bottles opening.

The floor is wall-to-wall beige, and there are orange and brown geometric designs on the drapes at the big picture window. The chesterfield is an exact replica of the mother's, only brown with silver threads. But the TV is even bigger, and above it is a painting of a green Chinese girl. Very sexy. I'd never seen one before, although I've seen it many times since. And on the TV proper is a studio photograph of a woman with a big smile, turned slightly sideways. The photograph has been tinted. It has pink cheeks and pink lips and there are highlights of some sort in the hair. After a while, I see that it is Millie.

About five o'clock the husband comes home. He is young and slim and doesn't look as though anything terrible has happened to him. He puts out his hand to me and then says, ‘Just a minute,' rubbing it on his trousers. ‘Got to wash first.' I am embarrassed to look at him, the Man with the Vasectomy.

‘So, you old cock-sucker!' he says to Mik, laughing and clapping him on the back, hitting him in the stomach. ‘So, long time no see!' Mik is laughing too, and punching him back. ‘So, give the man a beer, Millie. Hey, you kids, leave the lady alone.'

‘So, you're doing okay for yourself?' Mik says.

‘Hundred-year mortgage. Up to the ass in payments for everything. Your frigging sister, she keeps me hopping all night. And the damn basement's giving already. I phone the contractor? And he says he can't do a fucking thing about it, it's not his fucking business.' He glances at me. ‘They give you the run-around, these bastards.'

Then they all go into the kitchen again and I can hear them talking about the basement and how it's been leaking and the fucking shit the husband works for and the cocksucking bastards he works with and the whole frigging mess his life is in, except of course that's not what he's saying at all. ‘So what the hell you doing, you cocksucker?'

‘Rigging,' Mik says.

‘Yah? Rigging, hey? There's good money in rigging. I'd go up north only I couldn't leave babydoll alone for a minute. Can't trust her outa my sight.'

‘Oh you!' Millie says. ‘You keep a civil tongue or I'll tell a few home truths myself.' And they are all laughing and having a great old time, in there.

The kids and I aren't doing too badly. We've done most of the jigsaws, and now we're on the hockey game. Orchids. That's what they were. In the corsage. ‘Is them orchids?' one of the kids asks.

‘Yes.'

‘They're real pretty.'

I'd give them to her only I don't think Mik would appreciate that.

And then, all of sudden, Mik is standing by the door, giving me a nod. It's time to go. He hasn't said a word about leaving. I say thank you, and they say come again and it's too bad we couldn't stay for supper, and we're off.

About five blocks away, Mik breathes out a great gust of air. ‘Hoo,' he says. ‘Hoo hah!'

‘Were you mad at me?'

‘What now?' But I can see he isn't mad.

‘You didn't say anything to me. The whole time. You kept saying “she,” and then you all went into the kitchen. Did I do something wrong?'

‘Ah, sixty-five,' and he gives me a playful punch on the thigh. ‘Hey, driver, drop us off across the bridge.'

‘Oh Mik,' I say, ‘I'm hungry.'

‘So I'll get you a sandwich. Hoo!' And he laughs, a great Mik laugh. Throwing back his head and letting it all come out.

‘You're in a good mood,' says the driver.

‘You bet your ass,' says Mik.

‘You just go to a wedding?' says the driver.

‘No,' I say quickly.

‘I was just noticing, the corsage and everything,' the driver says.

‘Buddy,' says Mik. ‘You keep driving and don't look in the mirror and see what Santa brings you.' And he kisses me, right in the back seat.

We go to the Castle which, as Mik says, is ritzy enough for anyone. And he gives the driver a bill besides the fare. It looks suspiciously to my eye like a five. But I don't say anything.

‘I'm still hungry.'

‘Boy? Boy? You got something the little lady can wrap herself around? Something big and juicy and running with gravy, all the trimmings; don't let her fool you, she's got an appetite like a horse.'

‘Did it go all right?' I say when the waiter leaves.

‘Yah.'

‘Was I all right?'

‘Ha!'

‘No, was I?'

‘My dumb broad sister,' he says.

‘What? What did she say?'

‘Never you mind.'

‘What'd your mother say?'

‘You passed short arm inspection,' Mik says.

‘Short what?'

‘Short arm. It's an army term.'

‘Did you tell them I'm divorced?'

‘Nah.' The waiter brings Mik's whiskey and my sandwich and Mik takes a long drink and says, ‘Nah, you done all right.' And to the waiter, ‘A pink lady for the boozer here.'