The Checkout Girl (18 page)

From the basement, she can hear Penny tell Pete about the strike. It's over, Penny says. They had a vote. They're getting a 19.7% annual wage hike. And she laughs. She says she's working for two weeks and then she's taking her summer holidays. She's going to Sauble Beach with her parents and she'll take Rhettbutler with her. Pete can come if he wants, if he can get the time. Kathy can bring in the mail and the newspaper. Or he can come up on weekends.

Kathy flushes the toilet and washes her hands. She fills a glass with water, downs it and walks to her room. Freddy's coiled in the back of his cage. He's been quiet lately. Kathy wonders if he's sick and reminds herself to ask Pete to check him.

The bag in the corner doesn't smell any more, but she knows she has to deal with it. Have a bonfire and burn the damn things. She resolves to call Darlyn and Donny and ask them to come, somewhere, she'll think of a place. Blue Springs, maybe. Or Varnum Park. They could have a swim, roast some wienies, burn some clothes.

Kathy strips to her underwear and lies on the bed. If she burns the clothes, Doug will go up in flames too, symbolically, of course. Another reason to deal with them. She wishes she didn't know that Penny was going away. It's too complicated. Maybe she should move.

She closes her eyes. She can almost feel Pete's hand on hers. Freddy moves in his cage, a slur of snake flesh over newspaper and sawdust. She's glad he's alive. A lawn mower buzzes, clanks a protest when the blade strikes something solid. It roars alive again and becomes a steady drone. Kathy turns on her side, tucks her hands between her thighs and soon hears nothing at all.

Al's birthday is today and Connie's having a barbeque for him. Since she's hosting, she told Al, she wanted Margaret to be invited. Margaret's been living with her feminist friends in a co-op house downtown for the last month and Al and Connie have noticed the co-op gals have helped loosen her up. She's no less prickly, but she's happier. Gals. Al has to stop using words like gals and girls. I'm a woman, Margaret says. Call us women.

Al told Connie the women versus gals story, and Connie said she agreed with Margaret semantically, but she didn't care what she was called as long as no one called her late for supper. And she laughed and said that's what Charlie used to say when they had arguments and Connie called him a bugger or an asshole. “‘Well, Connie,' he'd say, ‘I agree with you semantically, but just don't call me late for supper.'”

Sometimes a joke was needed to make them see the silliness of their fight. But when Connie felt justified in her argument, she wanted to win and not be diverted by laughter, which she felt trivialized what she was saying. And this is the irony, she told Al, “I never got to use that punch line, because I did all the cooking, and all of the calling to supper, too.”

At this point in the conversation, Al wondered how they got to the gender division of domestic chores. To change the subject, he asked Connie what kind of cake she was going to make him. He told her that his favourite was spice cake with penuche icing. But that a chocolate cake with boiled icing would be fine too.

With that, Connie said, “See? Here we are, right back to who's serving, and who's being served.”

Al said, “Don't have the party then.”

And Connie said, “Maybe I won't.”

And Al said, “I'll bring my own cake if it makes you feel better.”

And Connie said, “Oh, for Christ's sake, Al, don't be a child, I'm having the party and I'll bake the cake. But you better bake me a cake on my birthday or this will be the last one you ever get.”

Then Connie told Al, “Since Margaret moved in with the feminists, you can have a real rip-roaring conversation with her. Just like we're having now. Margaret's new life has spilled over into ours. Makes you think, doesn't it, Al? All your life you live a certain way and then one person changes and every blessed little thing that used to be a habit or a truth changes right along with them. Or that's the way it seems.

“Happened after Charlie died. I had to rethink my life. Just like that.” And Connie snapped her fingers.

“I wasn't a wife; I was a widow. I still had two kids, and one of them was never going to be able live on her own. I had the same house to look after, with furniture that likely wouldn't change for decades. I had the same bills to pay, and suppers to make and floors to scrub and toilets to clean and PTA to attend. It all looked the same from the outside, every single gaw-damned detail exactly as it was, but everything had changed. It was so confusing. And it made me feel trapped. The house in the suburbs I never wanted. The second child he desperately wanted. Skating on hockey skates and rules for making rinks and looking for ice cream, it was all Charlie.

“As soon as I got over being sad, or even before,” Connie said, “I was pissed off. There's energy to anger, Al. It fuels you; it keeps you going. It's the fire that makes you burn with life when you feel like you're dead, it keeps your heart beating when you think it's too broken to tick or tock, it forces you to make decisions when you think your brain has turned to mush. It keeps your muscles moving when you're sure you couldn't lift a finger, much less get your whole body up and out of bed to tend to a baby who never takes comfort from you. Being pissed off helped me get a job and pay the bills and find help for Shelly.

“I wish Kathy could have been a little pissed off back then. Or even now,” Connie mused. “She still misses her father; she always was a serious child, but she became more serious after he died and I had a hand in that, I suppose. I needed her too much. Charlie was nicer to her than I was; he loved her without reserve. And with Shelly to look after, I didn't have time for Kathy, hardly a minute to say anything to her except to set the table or ask did she have her homework done. But that's another story.

“Every day I read the paper, Al, and every day there were stories of people whose lives had changed in a second. Like mine did. Those stories kept me going. They kept the fires stoked and reminded me to never, ever to let my guard down again.”

Connie snorted then and said, “But here I am planning a party for the husband of my next-door neighbour because she left him and moved into a women's commune. And because she left, everything has changed. Your life, and now my life. We have to be careful, Al. We have to take our time and think about what we're doing.”

Al has to agree, Margaret's changed. She's a bit frightening when she launches one of her radical feminist rants about men (read Al) oppressing women (read Margaret) and how the personal (which she says includes their married life) is political (to be used for public — and publication, Al fears — fodder). But she's happier, and for the most part nicer, too. Now she and Connie are becoming friends, so Connie's happy. And because they're happy, Al's happiest of all. At least he thinks he is.

The birthday will be the first time Al will be in the same place with both Connie and Margaret since Margaret and Al turned into Al and Connie. He's a little uncomfortable. More than a little, really. He tries not to, tries to be modern, but he worries about what people think: The neighbours and people at church, but mostly he worries about Darlyn.

When he told her a minute ago that he was in love with Connie, she said she knew and she didn't mind. They — Al and Darlyn and Donny — are sitting in the kitchen where the walls are painted eggshell, the colour Margaret chose when they changed their newly married carnival of primaries — yellows and blues and greens — into a single, tasteful middle-aged off-white. We can't afford new furniture, Margaret said, but we can make our walls look classy. The fresh paint made their old furniture look tawdry. Even Al, who never noticed décor, as Margaret used to call it, noticed that. Now Margaret's décor includes concrete-block-and-salvaged-board bookcases, and a mattress on the floor.

Horizontal shafts of sunlight stream through windows set high on the wall. Bungalow windows. Someday Al will ask Connie why she thinks they build windows so high up on bungalow walls. Windows you have to stand up to see out of. No doubt she'll have a theory. A breeze pushes Margaret's gauzy curtains out and sucks them back against the screen again. Al and Darlyn sit on chrome chairs with turquoise vinyl covers, bum prints worn into them, their pleated corners cracked.

It's an ordinary summer morning, in an ordinary kitchen, the kind Al sits in every day selling his wares to housewives. It's so ordinary he can't believe he's talking to his mostly grown-up daughter about her now-absent mother, and the next-door neighbour he's dating. They lean their elbows on the speckled, turquoise Arborite. Al stirs sugar into his coffee and Darlyn butters her toast. Donny lies on the floor and rubs Darlyn's foot.

Donny. Yes, well, Donny isn't ordinary. He's shirtless, sockless, shoeless, in fact all he's wearing are very short, very tight cut-off blue jeans with legs so wildly uneven and frayed the threads dangle and catch on the hairs on his thighs. There are holes under the seams of the back pockets. Donny's underwearless, so when he moves, hairy pink bum flesh peaks through the shredded denim. At least while Donny's lying on his back, Al doesn't have to try
not
to look at the small amount of shredded material covering his rear end.

Donny's pulled an all-nighter. He won the Gyproc contract in the new subdivision past Bridge Street, and as fast as he and his crew finish a house, a contracted painting crew moves in to lay down undercoating, then paint the walls and ceilings. It's the new way, Donny says. Like line work in a factory, each house has a plan and a timetable. Subcontracted crews come in, perform their magic and move on the next house. The next crew moves into the house, and so on and so on. If one crew gets behind, it affects the whole line. When the electricians staged a one-day labour walkout in solidarity with the striking workers at the cookie factory a couple of weeks ago, they blew the timetable. To catch up, Donny's crew has been working nights, and this morning they finished sanding their catch-up house.

Donny arrived while Al and Darlyn were making breakfast. He gave Darlyn a dusty kiss and offered Al one, too. Al declined. Donny went down to his room — he's been renting from Al since Margaret moved out — washed up in the laundry tub and changed into his shorts. He had a quick toke off the roach he keeps with his cigarettes, and blew the smoke out the open basement window. Then he came up and lay down under the table — cooler there, he said — by Darlyn's feet.

Donny's long frizzy hair is almost white with dust. He'd washed his face and hands, but not his ears and neck and wrists. He looks like a made-up cadaver, Al realizes, and shivers.

“It's not just a foot rub, Al,” Donny's telling him. “It's reflexology. You massage a certain part of the foot and it affects a specific part of the body. It's all mapped out like a star chart. Really. I heard about it on the radio, so I got a book out of the library. Oh, shit, Darlyn, remind me I have to take it back. I think it's overdue. So, Al, let's say you massage part of the big toe. If you hit the right spot, it will help clear up your sinuses, or something like that. It's not sex, or getting into some chick's pants — no offence intended, Al — it's therapeutic. Want me to do yours when I'm finished Darlyn's?”

“No, that's all right,” Al says. “But thanks, anyway.”

“It's not like it hasn't been obvious for years,” Darlyn's saying. Al just told her he was going to take Connie out on a date. “It's all right, Dad. Don't worry about it. Kathy and I figured it out ages ago.”

“Groovy. I like Connie,” Donny says. “How does that feel, my darlin' Darlyn? I'm working on your heart. Are you falling even more in love with me?”

“No, but my right arm is going to sleep,” Darlyn says and she shakes out her lifeless arm. To Al she says, “Since she moved out, Mom's happier than I've seen her in years. No offence, Dad. So you're happy. Mom's happy. Mrs. Rausch is happy. Kathy and I are happy. Even Shelly seems to like you, so we think she's happy. It's always hard to tell with Shelly. So everything's cool.”

“Yeah, man, cool,” Donny says, and giggles. “Happy, happy, happy.” Darlyn pulls her bare foot out of Donny's hand and rubs it on his stomach. Donny groans.

Al forgets and glances down. He looks away. His daughter's rubbing her foot on a man's stomach under his kitchen table. He's trying to keep an open mind about Donny. He likes him for the most part, but Darlyn's old boyfriend George was an easier go. A little more…ah…normal.

“And if you marry Connie, then Kathy and I will be stepsisters,” Darlyn says.

“Far out,” Donny says. He takes Darlyn's foot and nibbles the insole. She laughs out loud.

“On second thought,” he mumbles, his mouth still on Darlyn's foot, “that's heavy.” He closes his eyes and rocks his head back and forth, his lips brushing the bottom of Darlyn's foot. He whispers “heavy” until it becomes a hum. Darlyn gently withdraws her foot and tucks it up under her bum. Donny rolls over on his belly, puts his dusty head on his folded arms, and falls asleep.

“I never mentioned marriage, Darlyn,” Al says. He walks to the door. As he opens it to leave, he turns to Darlyn and says, “Don't get your hopes up. No one ever talked about marriage.”

But they have talked about it, he and Connie. And in his heart of hearts, that's exactly what he wants. To be married to Connie. Connie said she isn't sure she wants to be married again. Men leave; they up and die, she told Al. She's been alone for a long time and she's doing just fine, thank you very much. She doesn't think she's a feminist, she told Al, but she knows what she knows, and marriage hasn't been a sure deal for her. And look at Margaret, she said, and her voice trailed off.

Al isn't getting used to the women in his life telling him how he's an oppressor, but he's no longer surprised by it. He says what he needs to, knowing he's going to have to take his licks. But he knows better than to try to argue too much, because there is some truth to what they're saying, even he can see that. But he doesn't know how to change something like marriage. How do you change an institution that's been around for thousands of years? That's what he wants to know.

Once Connie even flapped a magazine in his face and told him to listen up. Then she read: “Radical feminists say, ‘marriage is the primary instrument of women's psychological and economic subjugation. Women are naïve signatories to a bad deal, enslaving themselves in perpetuity for a man's pledge of protection and support in a cozy, cloistered, soul-destroying security.'

“Unquote,” Connie said.

“I don't want to subjugate you.” It was the only word he understood.

What he wanted was to wake up in the morning in a house that Connie lived in too, to lay his head on a pillow that carried her scent. He wanted to make breakfast for her when she got home from her shift, and to help get Shelly ready for her school. To lie down with Connie before she fell asleep, to talk about her night at work and his coming day on the road. To sit the way they were sitting, two easy chairs before a picture window, magazines and newspapers scattered about, two cups of coffee steaming on the end table.

“It's too early for us to talk about marriage, Al. Margaret's only been gone a month. And no one's said anything about divorce yet, not to mention annulment.” Connie had smoothed the pages of the magazine.

“We could live together,” Al suggested. “Like kids do these days.”