The Checkout Girl (16 page)

They don't talk about important stuff, like the fact that some days being a mother is so stifling or so difficult, that having a little car accident with a short stay in hospital can seem better than one more day of sitting on the floor building a fort with wooden alphabet blocks, or reading the same gaw-damned book over and over, or trying to make a perpetually unhappy child happy. They don't say that coming home to a needy, angry woman — a woman who won't or can't or doesn't know how to say she's needy or angry, and who thinks that having a car accident would be relief from being a mother — no, they don't say that it's a bit frightening walking in the door after work into a house where that woman waits for them.

They don't talk about those kinds of things. Instead, married people pick away at petty things like wet towels on the floor or the rotting lettuce in the crisper or how best to cook eggs — hard yolks or soft yolks — and they hope the other stuff, the real reason for the anger or the sadness, or the neediness will just blow over. And maybe, in a few weeks or months or years, it does blow over. But it doesn't go away. It stays in the marriage forever.

And young women are way too naïve and too hopeful about love and marriage, Connie said. Being in love is a sickness; it's madness, pure and simple. It's ups and downs and not eating or sleeping; it's waiting for someone to call or notice them. There's jealousy and distrust, or too much trust. Girls marry men who are dumb as posts and they still think romance will go on forever. They think their marriage will be perfect and completely different from their parents' marriage, which they consider sordid or disgusting.

Connie said she'd had years to think about her own marriage with no husband to distract her, no reason to lie about it anymore. And she'd been watching other married people and she'd rather have a marriage like Al and Margaret have right now, as confused and scary as it is, than the marriage they'd had for years where they were both like the walking dead. Now Margaret is coming alive and saying she's unhappy. And even if she's being a bit loopy spouting all those feminist ideas — that, by the way, have some merit, Connie added — at least Margaret's trying to be honest with Al.

So they're fighting now. Al's stopped accepting everything Margaret says, and they're having great big fights that Connie can hear through her windows. That's passion. That's trying at least, and not some g-d aren't-we-nice-people-living-together-in-this-nice-house façade. Connie can see the fear and anger in Margaret and Al, and it's exciting. It's like they've been underwater too long and they've come up for air, gasping. They'll either make a better marriage or they'll have no marriage, because there's no going back under for them. But either way, they won't have a dead marriage. Or a dead husband, Connie added, but that's as far as she'd go even when Kathy asked what she meant by that.

So according to Connie's rant, Barry, or someone like him — like Charlie, for instance, a safe man with nice clothes and good manners and a union job — is the last person Kathy should be thinking about marrying, which is good. Because a safe man is the absolute last man in the world Kathy thinks about these days, when she lets herself think about men at all.

Barry's standing above her, hair slicked back, a towel wrapped around his waist, sweat already beading along the curve of his backbone. He sits on the bed and Kathy runs her finger along his spine connecting the drops so they stream down the crack in his bum. He shivers and stands.

“Don't you have an interview?” he asks.

She closes her eyes and murmurs, “Too hot to move.”

Barry leans over her and shakes his head. Droplets spray from his wet hair across Kathy's body, pinpricks of coolness. They last only a second. She laughs.

“Penny left for strike duty,” Barry says. “Pete's taking Rhettbutler to Regent Park wading pool. You can get up now.”

“Yes, Mom,” Kathy says, smirking at Barry, but feeling a blush make her hotter than she already is.

Barry's too smart for his own good. Last night he mentioned Kathy seemed to be avoiding Pete and Penny, but mostly Pete. Kathy didn't say anything. And she isn't going to admit to herself, certainly not to her mother, that when she does think about a man, it's usually Pete Lehman who comes to mind.

Pete ran off signs for Kathy on the Gestetner at the university. Kathy tacked them to utility poles in the neighbourhood, and posted one on the bulletin board at the Ground Inn.

Strong Reliable Honest
A Hard Worker at Good Rates
Indoors and Out
Call Kathy

There were a few calls, one from a heavy breather. “Kathy. Strong Kathy,” the voice moaned, but after listening to a few grunts she hung up. It might have been Donny and Darlyn. Or Teach. He's been around a lot lately. Pete hosts an LSD-laced gin-and-tonic croquet tournament every Labour Day weekend — The Annual Stakes and Wicket Match — for friends and clients at the university. He sends out printed, embossed invitations. Dress code: pastel crimpolene for the women and polyester leisure suits for the men.

Teach helped Pete plan and mark various hazards on the course. Crib-notes, he called the drawings he made of their design, so he could set the course in his yard and practise every day. Isn't that cheating, Kathy asked him? I like to win, he told her. The prize was a specially wrapped grab bag of all the premium drugs Pete dealt.

Pete hired Kathy to reseed the backyard, layering measured amounts of grasses and fertilizers in the marked areas, and regularly watering and cutting them. Some sections are left long, the grass coarse and stringy so it snags croquet balls. Some areas are seeded to produce a dense, spongy surface, like moss, that slows the ball down and makes it harder to whack your opponent's ball. The centre wickets will be placed on a long oval strip of pale, thick grass seeded in sand and buzz-cut, on which balls move like lightning. Pete reads greenskeepers manuals, so he knows about grasses and how they function to speed up or slow down a ball. He said that seeded and maintained properly, the grass will grow toward the sun, and that the direction the blades of grass face will affect how a ball moves.

Kathy will string patio lanterns so players will be able to see after dark. She's setting up two rest stations, one near the house, and one in amongst Pete's three remaining leggy dope plants that are tucked in a sunny, pungent grotto along the back fence between the lilacs and the mock orange. There were a dozen plants, but the rest have mysteriously disappeared. Pete thinks Penny's pulling them out one by one, hoping he won't notice.

Penny says it's too overt, growing weed in the backyard. Selling it is one thing; it doesn't make her happy, but it pays the mortgage. And then some. Pete's buyers are well-off profs and stable PhD students at the university, who won't blow the whistle on him and jeopardize their own careers. But growing it in the backyard, that's dangerous, Penny says, that's asking for it. If Penny's not pulling the plants out, Pete doesn't want to know who it is. Paranoia's a no-no in this business, he told Kathy. It'll kill you if you let it. And life's already far too short.

Teach said he'd pay Kathy to serve the drinks at the match if she'd wear her see-through top and the little skirt with the high boots she wore to the Liberace concert.

“They're holy relics on the altar of Liberace,” Kathy told him. “Only the chosen get to see them.” Kathy didn't tell him the altar was a garbage bag in the corner of her room, stuffed with vomit-stiffened clothes and semen-encrusted bed sheets.

“Holy priestess, choose me,” Teach said. He put his hands together and bowed.

Kathy gave him the finger. He grinned and said it didn't matter what she did or said, or even what she wore, it turned him on, every single thing about her made him hard. He grabbed his crotch and moved his hips back and forth and Kathy wondered if he did this in his classes, to his female students, or to the women who worked in his department. She wondered what his wife thought of him, if he really did have a wife.

“I'll wear the outfit if you bring your wife,” Kathy told him. She made her voice sweet. Teach stopped smiling.

“You can't take a joke?” he asked.

“Hardy-ha-ha,” Kathy cawed as she walked away from him. “You're a card, the funniest man alive. I should be paying to be in your hilarious presence. But hey, I'm broke, so I guess I'll leave because you're so funny and smart I can't afford you right now.”

“Lippy Kathy,” she heard Teach say as she walked away. “Come back.”

Kathy is waiting for a call from the Tribal Liberation Store, a co-op that sells trinkets and crafts, where she'll work as a volunteer at first, then get a percentage of the profits. And she did get a couple of odd jobs, or not-so-odd jobs, with slightly odd people. She took down, re-puttied, washed and stored storm windows for a grateful old couple, Helen and Willie Szasz, wizened him-and-her apple dolls. They called her “dear” and said that for the first time in fifty-eight years, they thought they were going to have to leave the storm windows up all summer. Then they saw Kathy's ad on the utility pole. She was a lifesaver.

They made strong tea and put Carnation milk and two teaspoons of sugar in it without asking if that's what she wanted. They fed her sandwiches with a pink and green filling they called bologna salad. Willie wrote out the recipe while Helen dictated, so Kathy could try it at home: 1 coil ring bologna (skin off), minced, 1 heaping tablespoon Miracle Whip, 1 heaping tablespoon green relish. Mix together and spread on white bread. (A pretty contrast, the white and pink and green, Helen said.) Remove crusts, cut into triangles, and serve. (You can use butter, dear, but we don't; we're watching our waistlines, Helen said.) They took the bread from their freezer slice by slice, they told Kathy, so it was always fresh.

They served the bologna salad with very cold, wreath-shaped sugar cookies covered in damp red and green sprinkles. Leftovers, they said, from Christmas two years ago, when their son, Clarence, and his wife, Eleanor, came with their children. They'd stored the cookies in the freezer, too. Taste fresh-baked, they'd said. They didn't taste fresh-baked, they tasted freezer-burned.

“These are the best cookies I've had in ages,” Kathy told them. She said how smart they were to keep them frozen. Not only fresh, but frugal, she added. Pensioners have to be frugal, they said.

They paid her extra. And they asked her to come back in the fall to put the windows back up. She said she would. They asked her to come for a visit anytime she wanted, to have more cookies, or maybe a piece of the birthday cake they'd saved from last summer when their daughter, Ginny, and her children came to visit. Yum, Kathy said, and she promised she would.

She had also been doing laundry for Mr. Vanderbergen, an elderly shut-in two doors down from Pete and Penny. He paid her more than the work was worth and fished for information about the Lehmans. You Hippies, he called Kathy, as if that was her name. You Hippies never have real jobs, he said, though Kathy had explained that her situation was temporary. He watched from his recliner as Kathy ironed his colourless dishcloths and worn tea towels, his old-man boxer shorts, faded shirts with fraying collars and yellowed cotton handkerchiefs. He'd nod off, then revive to ask,
How many people live in that house?

His skin was taut, and his thick, white hair was clean, but when he breathed, one very long, very black hair moved in and out of his left nostril, and it was all Kathy could do not to watch. So she never looked at him unless she had to, and then only in glances that she realized must seem furtive, raising his suspicions that all You Hippies had something to hide and couldn't meet a fellow eye to eye.

Did Pete and Penny run a commune?
he wanted to know. Kathy shook out then folded clean bath towels and facecloths, and stacked them in the wicker basket.
You Hippies always live in communes
, he said.
God knows what you get up to in them.
She paired socks and tucked the tops over the toes.
Who owns the Corvette? Why was it only there on weekends?
(The nose hair moved faster and faster as he got wound up.)
What did Pete do at the university? Why was he home so much? What did he do with his spare time?
Kathy set the ironed handkerchiefs and underwear in the basket with the towels and socks.
Did the Lehmans have a poisonous snake that roamed around the house? He'd heard a rumour, was it true?
She took the tea towels and dishcloths into the kitchen and slipped them in a drawer.
You Hippies never have ordinary pets,
he said,
like cats and dogs. Always has to be something exotic, something to scare the neighbours.
He was breathless.

He wouldn't change his mind no matter what she said, so Kathy told Mr. Vanderbergen that she was getting a full-time job and wouldn't be available any longer. You Hippies, he said, are unreliable. I should have known better than to let you in my house. Kathy wrapped the cord around the base of the cooled iron and stood it on the table. She folded the ironing board and hung it in the broom closet. She said goodbye and closed the door gently. She would miss the money.

She's also helping Pete and Penny in exchange for rent. Mowing the lawn, babysitting Rhettbutler, housecleaning, whatever they find for her. She doesn't declare any of the money on her UIC. Especially the drug money. That's the other thing she's doing: helping Pete with drug deals — deliveries and pickups, mostly grass, but some hashish and LSD now and then. She's not supposed to tell Penny, but Penny knows. Penny knows everything, just like Connie, something Kathy thinks must happen when you become a mother. You get pregnant and your hormones go crazy and suddenly you know everything there is to know in the world. Kathy figures she never got far enough along to experience the full effect.

When Pete pays her in kind, which he does on occasion, she prefers hashish. Then she carves off nickels and dimes to sell on her own, to Donny and Darlyn, to friends at the Rue, to kids at concerts, but only if she knows them. The proceeds (she loves that word, it sounds so hopeful, like she's moving in the right direction) go into a mason jar she's labeled: The Future. Under the words she pasted a picture she found in a magazine, a raggedy old hockey skate.

She's saved $275 already, most of it from selling grass at a Regent Park rock concert organized by the May Fourth Movement.
The Recorder
called the Movement “radical” because, as Connie pointed out the last time Kathy stopped by, the Movement urged kids to gate-crash Festival Express 1970 at the CNE. Connie also showed Kathy a photo in which Kathy, Donny, Darlyn and some friends sat on the grass in front of the stage where Copperpenny sang, “Stop (Wait a Minute).” Island Concert —
Hundreds of young people lounge on the grass in Regent Park
… the caption began. Kathy had no idea the photo had been taken, and was only grateful it hadn't caught her selling drugs.

Today, she and Pete are on their way to Toronto — to the airport, to be exact. Kathy only knows what Pete tells her, which is very little. Only what's necessary for business, that's the rule. Then yesterday he asked her to come along for company. If she wanted, he added. If she didn't have anything better to do, he said. This morning, he asked if they could take her car. He hated to ask, he said, hated to compromise her, but there was no way to call off the deal at the last minute and he had to get to Toronto. Penny needed their car, he said. She had picket duty, and she wasn't listening to reason.

Employees at the cookie factory went on strike at the end of May with a 100% vote to go out. Penny doesn't miss her picket shift and is consumed by the details of the strike; it's all she talks about. They want 80 cents an hour on a two-year contract. The company's offering 40 cents to men and 25 cents to women and women make up more than 70% of the strike vote. “If they think they're going to pit the men against the women,” Penny had said, “they've got another thing coming. We're standing firm.”

Police were brought in to escort non-union workers, who were roundly jeered, across the picket line. Penny read them
The Recorder
article while they were eating breakfast. “Roundly jeered,” she repeated and laughed. “Those little shits! We'll show them. They're not getting in there without a fight.”

“There were 350 of us yelling,” she said. “A huge turnout, and a bigger racket. Most of the strike-breakers are university students. They'll be making twice as much as us in a year or two anyway.”

“Little shits,” Penny repeated as she closed the paper, “Who do they think they are, taking jobs away from working people?”

Car windows open, Kathy and Pete head down the 401, cut hay perfuming the humid air. Pete knows where they're going, so he's driving, and Kathy gets to be a passenger in her own car. They pass the escarpment, the swimming hole beneath it and soon the Schneiders sign looms on the other side of the highway. Kathy turns to see it.
Famous for Quality Meats
it says, and tells them it's 79° at — wait for it — 10:37.

When she was young, on summer days like this, her father took them for drives on Sundays after Mass, quests for locally made ice cream in villages off the beaten track. Mission accomplished, they'd speed home along the 401 because they'd dawdled an entire day away. When they passed the Schneiders sign, her father always said — every single time — that it should have
Welcome to Varnum
on it. It was the city sign, as far as he was concerned, and he figured there were lots of Varnumites who felt the same way.

Then Connie — every single time — said the airline pilots who landed at Malton called the sign the Wiener Beacon because it stood along one of their approach paths. It didn't bore Kathy that her parents said the same thing every time; she couldn't wait to hear their voices. And if they forgot, she'd remind them and they'd look at each other and laugh, then say the words she wanted to hear. Next to skating on their backyard rink, Kathy's best memories were family car rides, her mother and father in the front seat while she roamed the back.

After Shelly, the excursions ended. Her father said a car was too small a space for a baby who never stopped crying. Instead, Charlie drove by himself on Sundays, bringing home a generic tub of runny ice cream, if he remembered at all. Kathy begged him to take her along, but he told her to stay with her mother, who needed her.