Your Sad Eyes and Unforgettable Mouth (30 page)

“I know I’m weird,” I sighed. “Where’s your father now?”

You shrugged. “Who knows? He ran away, he could be anywhere. Vera wouldn’t let him in, she wouldn’t let anyone in. She drove him mad, in the end. Maybe that’s what Pat’s so angry about—that she hurt Dad so much. Even though he’d probably be lost regardless. That’s just the way he is.”

“My mother’s the exact opposite. She’s nothing but emotions,” I said. I, too, lay down, suddenly tired, but I didn’t slide in under the sheet. I didn’t want to touch your naked body.

“You know, not saying a word, like Vera, and going on and on like your mother—it comes down to the same thing. What I can’t figure out is why they decided to stay alive. What’s the point of living, if it gets bad enough? Why torture yourself? Maya, can I touch you? Would it freak you out?”

“I don’t know.”

“Can I try?”

“Yes.”

I shut my eyes and sank into waves of pleasure. With my serviceable scarf I’d only ever managed to quell the sensations brought on by dreary homework and imagined rescues. It turned out there was more to it.

You said, “I’ve never seen anything like this. You were born to come. Here, I’ll show you how to do it yourself.” And like someone outlining the features of a car, you gave me a lesson in anatomy.

“I didn’t know it was so easy,” I said.

“The things they don’t teach in school … Will you touch me too?”

I shook my head. “I can’t. I’m sorry. I had a boyfriend, Earl—it was such a disaster. We never even kissed.”

“It’s okay, Maya. Not all women like guys. Are you in love with Rosie?”

“Yes. Maybe we should try. Maybe I should try.”

“Be sure first.”

“I’m sure. I want to try.”

I didn’t mind kissing you, it didn’t feel like sex. It felt like saying hello, only more intimate. I didn’t mind your hand on my body either, or letting you see me naked. But when you tried to come closer to me, you were suddenly as alien and frightening as the reflection in a mirror of someone you know is not there.

I can’t change the plot. I can’t change that moment. The moment that could have saved you, saved everyone—maybe. When I felt your leg against mine, I moved away involuntarily and, covering my face, I began to cry.

“This is terrible, Maya,” you said, drawing the white bedspread around your body as if protecting me from contamination. “Don’t cry. Come on, don’t cry. Everything’s fine.”

“There’s something wrong with me.”

“No, there isn’t. There’s no plan, there aren’t any rules.”

“I’m a total misfit in every way! Starting with my height, my family, and now this. I can’t even have sex properly.”

“I promise one day you will. It just has to be the right person.”

“I’ll never find that person.”

“Of course you will. You’re just a kid.”

We were silent for a while, though it didn’t feel like silence. Then you said, “Let’s kiss again. You don’t seem to mind that.”

You were right, I liked how you kissed me.

“I’d be afraid to do drugs,” I said. “Aren’t you?”

“It doesn’t matter any more.”

“What do you mean?”

A strangled sob shook your body. I didn’t know what to say. You were suddenly very far away. You sat up, swung your legs over the bed, walked to the window.

“Dark night of the soul,” you said in a low voice.

“You’re too thin,” I said. “You should eat more.”

You didn’t answer. Then you said, still looking out the window, “I have something to tell you.”

“What?”

“I’m leaving tomorrow.”

“Where are you going?”

“To find out what Calley did in My Lai,” you said.

“Can’t you stay a while longer?”

“I don’t think so. I thought I could, maybe, but I can’t.”

“Don’t go too far. I think Gloria will be back.”

“Even if she came back, I have nothing to give her,” you said.

“That’s crazy,” I said. “That’s just not true.”

You turned around and said, “You want to connect to others on a deep level, Maya. Most people don’t want that—they’re too afraid.”

“Yes, I like to be close.”

You said, “You almost make me want to stick around, just to see what happens to you.”

I said, “Yes, you should stay. Didn’t you say you have three weeks off work?”

“Let’s get some sleep.”

“Okay.”

I don’t know when you fell asleep. I turned on my side and you draped your arm around my waist, as you did long ago in my room, and I dozed off instantly. I dreamed I was planting flower seeds that turned into paintings when they blossomed, and I was mixing them in interesting ways to create the effect I wanted. I was happy. I thought you loved me and that you’d always be my friend.

But if you’d really loved me, Anthony, if you’d cared about any of us, you wouldn’t have been so heartless.

. . .

I woke up to the sound of voices calling out to us. I dragged myself over to the window and squinted into the morning light. Two cars were parked on the road, a station wagon with imitation-wood side-panels and a small, two-door car—a Fiat, I think it was—that looked like a toy, with its white body and bright red crescents above each wheel. Jean-Pierre, the lead singer with the tanned midriff, was conferring with his friends next to the station wagon. I recognized most of them from the supermarket parking lot and the band at Cheri. They were holding towels and bags of pretzels and bottles of soda water and beer.

I dressed as quickly as I could and ran downstairs.

“Hi, there—we thought to visit,” Jean-Pierre greeted me with a shy, cajoling smile. Did he know the shyness was charming, and could only help his cause, or was he really unsure?

“Great,” I said. “We’re not all up, but why don’t you go down to the beach—we’ll join you there. You know, we saw you at the nightclub. You were really good.”

“Thanks, man.”

They dropped the drinks and bags of pretzels on the front steps and made their way down the grassy slope to the beach. I heard them whooping as they splashed into the water.

I was heading back inside when someone behind me chirped, “Let me give you a hand!” A girl holding two tall bottles against her chest trotted up to the porch. “We’d better put these in the fridge, if there’s room. We can go on tiptoe, so as not to wake anyone. I’m Karen—Glenn’s sister. We’re visiting from Toronto—Jean-Pierre’s our cousin. Glenn went down with the other guys. They’re such frisky puppies.”

Karen hadn’t been on the joyride with her brother Glenn and the rest of the gang. She distanced herself from hippie culture; she had no interest in it. She was sixteen or seventeen, square-jawed, practical. Even her bare, mosquito-bitten feet looked practical, with their long, ungainly toes. Her auburn hair was tied in a ponytail and she was wearing a denim wraparound skirt and a
canary-yellow blouse. Under the blouse her breasts seemed ready for reproduction and children without the complications of desire. Though I’d never met anyone like her, I knew she was the more common specimen, not me. Everything about her was designed to rise above obstacles; life was merely a series of tasks to be tackled with good humour. And I wondered, almost in awe: was it really that simple, after all?

“What’s your name?” she whispered, as we picked up the bottles and brought them inside.

“Maya. It’s okay, you don’t have to whisper. I’m sorry it’s such a mess here.”

“Oh, this is nothing compared to Glenn’s room,” she assured me. “I can help you clean up.”

“I’ll be right back,” I told her. I hurried upstairs to brush my teeth and wash up. I didn’t want to leave Karen by herself for too long—she was an energy conduit, and I was afraid of what she might do on her own.

She had already started collecting dirty dishes when I came down. “You don’t have to clean up,” I told her. “You should go swimming with everyone else.”

“It won’t take a minute. It’ll be fun. Is there a broom somewhere?”

Together we collected garbage, piled dishes in the sink, let them soak in hot, soapy water. Watching Karen I understood for the first time the satisfactions of efficiency. It was mesmerizing, the way she lifted rugs, shook them out, then swept thoroughly. Unlike my mother’s achronistic campaigns, Karen’s tidying had a beginning and an end.

“This house is great,” she said, emptying the dustpan into a plastic grocery bag. “Does it belong to Patrick?”

“It’s his mother’s. How long are you here for?”

“Oh, we always come for five weeks. We pack up as soon as school’s over and stay until the end of July. Our mom misses her sister and the family. We have five birthdays close together so we
celebrate them all together in a big party. You should come.” She began pulling plates out of the soapy water, wiping them with a wet cloth, and setting them on the rack. I wondered why she didn’t mind that the dishes on the rack were still dotted with soapy foam.

“Anything around here to dry with?” she asked.

I found a dish towel in one of the drawers and began drying the unrinsed dishes. Maybe the towel would absorb the soap along with the water.

“Thanks for the help,” I said.

“It’s nothing.”

“What’s Toronto like?”

“Well, it’s not as big and exciting as Montreal, of course. Glenn goes to Seed—that’s an experimental school. They have an amazing math teacher there, he’s teaching university math to a small group of kids. Glenn’s in that group. He’s really smart.”

“You know,” I said, “I’m really glad you guys came. We needed some distraction.”

“Are you and Patrick going out?” she asked. “Or is he going out with the other girl?”

“We’re all just friends. Patrick’s brother is here too, he came by unexpectedly. That reminds me.” I gathered the drugs on the counter and dropped them into a drawer.

“Someone here sick?” Karen asked.

“They belong to Anthony, Patrick’s brother.”

“My brother said Patrick is really nice.”

“A bit moody, though,” I said.

“I get that way too. Don’t I know it—especially at that time of month!”

“That’s what my mother says,
that time of month
.”

“She must be tall! Someone in your family must be tall.”

“No, she’s just about your height, and I don’t know anyone else in my family, apart from my grandmother. I don’t even have a photo of my father.”

“Oh, sorry.” Karen looked away, thinking she’d stumbled on an embarrassing family secret.

A rampant, mutinous urge came over me, an urge that seemed almost physical: I wanted to pull Karen into
there
. Because Karen took reality and shaped it as if it were clay; she made things commonplace, adjusted them so they fit into some preconceived notion of normality. She was the youngest brother who by dint of cleverness and resolve wins the princess, retrieves the ring from the ocean deeps, defeats the fire-breathing dragon. Maybe she’d be a prime moulder of
there
too, maybe she’d cast her ubiquitous aura of confidence and self-discipline on
there
. Let there be light. But what could I tell her? I’d spent so many years fending off my mother’s horror stories that I wasn’t sure what I actually knew.

“They were all murdered,” I explained. “They were tortured and killed—in the war, in Europe.”

“Oh, no! How horrible!” Karen’s eyes darted around the room. She wanted to change the subject. I was disappointed, but I couldn’t stop now. I was on a roll.

“You know those camps they had in Europe? During the war?”

“I’m not sure … I think I heard something.”

“They took people and stripped them and burnt them alive or buried them alive or gassed them to death and made them stir the bodies in like vats, that sort of thing.”

Karen had stopped listening. “But lookit, your mother came to Canada, she had you, she must be so proud of you.”

I felt repentant—she had tried to be nice to me, and I’d thrown her off-balance for a purpose of my own.

“Yes, she is. Even the bus driver knows about that,” I said.

Karen laughed gratefully. “You remind me of our English teacher, Miss Darlene. You’re a lot like her.”

“I wish I was like you, Karen,” I said.

“My goodness, you don’t want to be like me! Wait till you see me in a swimsuit.” She unclasped her denim skirt and unbuttoned her blouse; like the others, she’d arrived with a bathing suit under
her clothes. Hers was a dizzying whirl of pink and yellow and lime-green seahorses trapped in a black sea.

“That’s some bathing suit.”

She smiled. “My Aunt Célèste gave it to me, and we didn’t want to hurt her feelings. Mom says it looks like the devil sent it over from the other side. I don’t mind it, though. It distracts people from my figure.” But though Karen was not slim, her body was sturdy, and the extra weight suited her.

She opened the back door and stepped into the porch. “This house is really something,” she said. “Look, they’re playing Frisbee. And my brother has a girlfriend. Wouldn’t you just know it.”

“Your brother?”

“Yeah, Glenn. Isn’t he the limit? There, on the dock.”

I followed her gaze and saw this: Rosie in her creased white dress, lying next to a boy with a sweet raisin face. Her head was resting on his chest and she was stroking his arm.

“I thought she was asleep,” I said. “I didn’t know Rosie was on the beach.”

“Isn’t he the limit,” Karen repeated.

Such a sweet boy! Raisin eyes and dimples and everything wrinkling and crinkling into smiles.

He was lying on the dock in shorts, wet from his swim, and his hair was wet too but still curly because the curls were small and coiled. He was smiling happily as Rosie caressed his arm, softly and lovingly caressed his tanned arm.

Rosie must have woken before us, gone out for a swim. She must have been on the beach when the visitors arrived.

And already she was lying next to one of them. Yet something was different. I’d seen her with boys hundreds of times, but not like this. Her body, its curve, the yielding trust. That’s what was missing until now: the trust. Not just with the guys—also with me. She liked me, but I could see now that she held back. You may not know someone is holding back, Anthony, until you see them one
day, catch them off-guard maybe, staring at a kite or a sculpture or witty graffiti under a bridge. And then you understand that you have nothing at all, that everything you thought was genuine and generous and loving was a holding back, and at that moment the real possibility emerges and it floors you.