How to Get Along with Women (2 page)

They come out into a little clearing where the bikers have patched together a few ramps by digging out the hollows around tree roots. Off to one side there's a pile of old liquor bottles lying under a tree and Max pulls to go over for a better smell. A thin path branches off the clearing near the bottles and Mary gives it a look to see if it's wide enough for them to follow without Max getting full of burrs. There's another, smaller pile of bottles and some other junk as well, a few old rags of clothing, some cracked plastic toys, a baby's cup. Mary lets her eyes follow the trunk into the branches, up to a mobile—forty or fifty pieces of dollar store ribbon, each dangling a fork or a knife or a spoon off the end, and set far enough apart so as not to get tangled in the wind. Every time the branches move, the cutlery ripples and Mary stands there awhile, watching this, and thinking how the stainless steel must have glinted back in the summer sun.

The beaver is gone. There's no sound, not even the wind or the rustle and clink of the mobile. She leads Max back out to the clearing and hooks his leash around a stump, then goes over to the first pile and crouches down and picks up a couple of Sauza bottles and throws them hard as she can into the woods. The leaves lift off the trees: there's a bunch of crows hiding out in the branches and they flap away, crying out. Mary's chest loosens a little and she picks up a few more bottles and throws them too. They explode over the other side of the clearing, all over the trail and the makeshift ramps, Max dancing on his tether and whining the whole time.

3.

They drive for about an hour and then Tim pulls over at a McDonald's and orders a Big Mac in the wrapper and he buys Zelda a Coke and an apple pie. They eat and he drives. Zelda sucks on her straw. It gets noisy against the crushed ice at the bottom of the cup and she tosses the whole thing down onto the truck floor—maybe this will get a rise out of him, but it doesn't. She kicks at the cup a little. Tim steers one-handed with a cd case flat and open between his knees. He pushes the disc into the player, snaps the case shut and tosses it down into the door pocket. Cranks up the volume. They're driving with the windows down.

It wouldn't be that much further just to take me where I'm going to, Zelda says, loud over the music. I'm going anyway. You got nothing else keeping you busy.

The road is clear and open ahead of them. 2:05 p.m. by the clock on the dash. Zelda adds an hour in her head, since a knob broke off back in the winter and Tim hasn't bothered to fix it forward after daylight savings. The air coming in the window doesn't do much to cool her. She might go to sleep.

Tim says, If you miss the six o'clock you'll be stuck overnight in Tobermory. That's as far as he'll take her. So he says.

She doesn't have a plan for after Manitoulin and Tim knows it. She doesn't say anything back. She leans out and looks to see if he's watching her, the tip of her sunglasses in the side mirror. He is. Her shoulders square and sharp. There's a line to her jaw that's like Mary. She rubs the plastic bracelet up and down her arm.

Empty road behind them and nobody in front either. She checks to make sure he's still looking. In the sky it's sun and no clouds, the scrub on the roadside burnt back flat.

Weather moves fast the further north you go, Tim says.

Someone laid an inukshuk out on the high median and it's the only thing there.

Zelda reaches down and unclips her seatbelt. The mechanism clicks and then she's up and over the gear shift and straddling him, her back against the steering wheel, his driving arm pinned under her body. The truck swings sharp across the median and then back toward the gravel shoulder.

Tim's foot hard on the brake.

Jesus Fuck Jesus!

His shoulder hits the door and Zelda goes out onto the road. He sits there a moment with his door wide open then kills the engine. Gets out and leans his hands on his knees.

He spits once.

Zelda pulls herself up, looks down hard at the painted yellow line, and walks toward him. She's got a sore shoulder and for a moment she stops and rubs it with one hand, but she can walk.

What the fuck! You threw me out in the ROAD!

The truck with two wheels on the shoulder. When Tim straightens up she draws back both arms and pushes hard against his chest and he takes a step or two backward.

What was that shit? What the fuck do you think you're doing?

If she was a boy he'd knock her down.

Zelda says, What if a fucking car had been behind us?

He looks behind them. Nothing on the road.

I don't need your help, she says.

When they get back in the truck Tim leans over and jams the tongue of Zelda's seatbelt hard into the buckle.

Ow, she says. She throws her leg up on the dash and taps with the toe of her boot on the windshield. He puts on the signal and pulls out. When they've gone fifteen miles or so, the Fifth Wheel comes up on the right and he puts the signal back on again.

I'm taking a piss, Tim says.

I'm coming, Zelda says. The two of them walk into the store to get the bathroom key. Zelda picks up a pack of Sesame Snaps.

I'm not buying you fucking candy.

You gotta buy something or they won't give you the key.

Tim smacks the package on the counter and digs around in his pocket for quarters. Zelda leans over and grabs the key to the men's. They go straight to the back of the store and Zelda opens up the door and holds it for Tim and then follows him through. He unzips. Zelda watches him peeing.

What'd you do that for? Tim says.

What.

Jump on me in the truck. He shakes off and zips up.

I love you Tim.

Fuck you Zelda.

Okay. I want to keep you. Maybe I can do something you like.

That's sick.

Tim. Zelda throws the taps on. Wash your hands, she says. Tim steps up to the sink and pushes her aside with one hand, not hard.

You got Ray.

He runs his hands under the water and turns the taps off.

Ray's doing fucking rails on the fucking kitchen table at night. Zelda steps sideways, clear of the paper towel dispenser, and hops up to sit on the sink.

And Tim, she says. He hits Max.

He hits the dog?

He beat him with a belt. We came home and he'd chewed up a patch cord and Ray went fucking nuts and took off his belt and beat him with it. He was screaming.

Tim turns away and rams the handle of the paper towel holder up and down a few times, then rips off a long sheet.

Ray was screaming?

Max was.

What did Mary do?

She was holding me back.

Jesus fucking Christ, Zelda.

I want to keep you, Tim.

The door handle rattles and from the outside a man yells Phyllis, you in there?!

Zelda jumps off the sink. She pulls her sweater over her head and throws her arms up around Tim's neck. She still has her t-shirt on and it lifts off the waistband of her jeans with her arms up high like that. She's not wearing a bra.

What do you weigh, Zelda, ninety pounds? Tim says. Her skinny legs and the ribs sticking out under her breasts. She tries kissing Tim's neck and he shakes her off a little.

Phyllis I said that you in there?!

It's not fucking Phyllis, fuckhead, Tim says and outside the man slumps off to try the next locked door.

Zelda pulls back and runs her hands under some water in the sink, then rubs them through Tim's beard. Her hands are warm and his wet beard feels good to her. She waits until she knows he's looking, pulls the front of her t-shirt up to the shoulder and holds it there.

4.

When Zelda gets home Mary is there, vacuuming in her purple slip. The slip is satin with black lace trim along the neckline and down at the hem, where it grazes Mary's thighs.

This place is a fuzz palace, she says. She has music on, and there's the noise of the vacuum and Mary singing along This here's a story of Billy Joe and Bobbie Sue... Zelda goes into the kitchen.

Slip is the wrong word. A slip is something you wear under clothes, under a suit, to prevent static cling. It goes with a blouse and a hat, gloves even. It goes under.

She goes to the fridge and pours herself a glass of half grape juice, half ginger ale and then gets out a spoon and adds a scoop of vanilla from the freezer. The ice cream has frost crystals over the top of it and Zelda has to dig down underneath to get to the part that's good. She takes her drink and sits down at the table.

It's really a nightie.

Mary comes into the kitchen and says, What am I, Susie Homemaker? and sits down too and Zelda lets her have a sip of her drink and then she gets up and makes Mary one, too, just the same except with more ice crystals in it. There's getting to be almost none of the good part left.

Zelda says, Ray coming over?

There's animal hair everywhere, Mary says. I could spend all day cleaning, and sit down for an hour and look at it all clean and by the end of the hour it would be like this again. Just like this.

If he comes, do you think he'll bring those steaks again? Because I might be vegetarian. I've been thinking about it. You know, because the only way to eat a steak is real rare, and that seems sacrificial. To me.

Do you think there's much point? Mary says.

To being vegetarian?

To cleaning up. To making the fake house.

Zelda brings her hands up to her face and combs her fingers through her hair. She gets the smell of the clove cigarette and Tim's truck and the McDonald's pie, his wet beard against her fingers.

I was thinking that if you change what goes in your body, then maybe you change what it does, Zelda says.

Think it can go backwards? Mary says.

Like how? Zelda says. There's a little foamy cream down in the bottom of her glass, a bit of white froth that hasn't totally sunk into grape-colour. Where's Max? she says suddenly.

I locked him outside in the back. He was attacking the vacuum cleaner. He's okay. I took him for a long walk.

He's okay, Mary says again.

Her long hair hanging loose over one shoulder. She draws her leg up onto the chair and hugs her knee and lets her chin rest on it. She looks at Zelda.

Zelda sees Mary's top lip is stained purple from the drink, the same colour as the slip. Nightie. Whatever.

We could just move more, Zelda says. You could throw away the vacuum and whenever it gets too hairy in a place, we just vacate.

Vamoose, Mary says.

Can I let Max back in now?

Vacate, Mary says. I wonder.

Kiss Me Like I'm The Last Man On Earth

I met Asher Katz in the spring of 1984, when I was ten years old and he was already eleven. He came loping over the parking lot at my grandmother's condo on Bathurst Street, a shiny black condom machine hoisted on one shoulder and a toolbox in the other hand. He was wearing a Run DMC t-shirt and a yarmulke and his jeans were hemmed up high so his bony ankles stuck out. His father was the Vending Machine King of Lawrence West.

What do all these alte Kakes need with condoms? my grandmother said. We had just come in from Open Window bakery and she had a shopping cart with a caraway rye and nothing else in it. I spent all my Saturdays with her, grocery shopping and sitting around at her place while she gave voice lessons to adults who had regular jobs during the week.

It's for the laundry room, Asher said, and I pictured all my grandmother's old Jewish neighbours standing around in their underwear and girdles, helpless with boredom in front of the dryers. Location location location, Asher said.

My grandmother was probably the only gentile in that building. She was married to a Viennese Jew thirty years her senior and nailed a Mezuzah to her threshold so that no one would ask questions. Outside the condo she had an aggressive anxiety about being mistaken for a Jew that was left over from her days as a Hungarian refugee. Once when she was sitting on the Bathurst bus an old man pushed up his shirt sleeve and flashed her his Auschwitz tattoo.

Where is your number? the man said. She took this for a come-on and called him an old cocksucker.

I couldn't see a lot of difference between my grandmother and the other old ladies in that building: she baked the same cookies and spoke the same Yiddish-inflected German. She played mah-jongg on Wednesday afternoons. Inside the apartment there were only a few religious icons. On the shelf she had a velvet-covered pocket bible that had belonged to her mother and there was a rosary in her jewellery drawer. In the bathroom she had an electrified portrait of the Virgin Mary. Mary was peeling the flesh back from her ribcage like a cardigan. Inside glowed a tiny red lamp: her bleeding heart.

Because we were both kids and that building was adults-only, Asher and I fell in together almost defensively. He'd been working the machines since he was seven and made his rounds every Saturday like other kids with their paper routes. I don't remember anyone introducing us. The day we met, we all stood outside the elevators with both arrows, up and down, shining orange. When the doors opened, my grandmother went upstairs with a red-haired woman named Marijke Smirins and I followed Asher down to the laundry room. I stood under the machine and braced it with my shoulder while he used a plug-in drill to screw it to the wall.

Asher was a Latvian Jew. I knew about Latvians because my public school downtown hosted Heritage Language. Every Saturday and all summer long, the teacher parking lot filled up with beaten-down old Volvos and VWs and Pontiacs bearing the SVEIKS bumper sticker. Latvians, my father said low in his throat whenever we saw one of these cars driving down Bayview Avenue, his voice a mix of disapproval and disbelief. He looked upon nationality as a matter of character. How could anyone could choose their heritage so poorly?

SVEIKS always looked to me like the kind of word that should be painted across the side of a Viking ship. It looks Swedish.

It means Latvia, my mother told me.

It means Hello, Asher said, tightening a bolt on the machine. Jesus. He was good at swearing in the way experience has shown me all Eastern Europeans are. He liked to bring the Messiah into it when he could. I thought it sounded dirty and ravenous coming from him. The way Asher smiled I could tell he would do it just to please me.