"Don't get your girdle in a knot about it," Pam said. "But I think you should have a word with Bert, after Staff Lounge tonight. I've discussed this problem with him already."
She turned away from him and walked quickly off towards the main house. On the back of her Bermuda shorts there was a small patch of wet mud.
Rob buckled Jordan back into the chair. This problem. Why was it a problem? There wasn't much time, he would be assigned to other children, discouraged from seeing her, and she would think.... What could he say to her, how convince her? He knelt in front of her, resting his arms on the chair tray, and took hold of her left hand.
"I'm sorry if it frightened you, being on the ground," he said. "Did it?" Her hand did not move. "Don't pay any attention to what Pam just said. I'm going to write you letters after camp, lots of letters." Would he? "And someone at your house can read them to you." But of course they might forget, or lose the letters. In PreMeds, dissecting corpses, would he have time to remember her? Her eyes watched his face. She could see through him.
"I'm going to give you something special," he told her, casting around desperately for something to give. He searched his pocket with his free hand. "This is my button, and it's magic. I wore it on my shirt cuff like that just to keep it disguised." He placed it in her hand, folded the fingers around it. "I'm giving it to you, and whenever you see it...." No, that wouldn't do; someone was bound to find it in her pocket and throw it out, and she would have no way of explaining. "You don't even have to see it, because it's invisible sometimes. All you have to do is think about it. And every time you think about it, you'll know I'm thinking specially about you. Okay?" He'd tried to make it as convincing as possible, but she was probably too old and too bright, she probably knew he was just trying to reassure her. In any case, she moved her hand yes. Whether it was real belief or embarrassed kindness he could never know.
After OT Rob went back to his own cabin, to help with the predinner change into clean clothes that Bert felt was good for morale. The boys were unusually boisterous, but it was probably only his own anxiety and need for peace that made them seem that way. Or it might have been the show that was being put on that evening, by a number of the seniors. All of these boys were in it, even Pete, who was going to be the MC, with a mike strapped to his shoulder near his mouth. None of the ordinary counsellors were involved; they and the younger children were to be the audience, while Scott and Martina, Drama and Dance respectively, ran the show. Rob knew the boys had been practising for two weeks at least, but he had not been interested enough to ask them what the show was about.
"Lemme borrow your zit cream."
"Wouldn't do you any good, pusface."
"Yeah, he's got pimples on his pimples."
"You spaz!" A scuffle.
"Cut that out, prickhead!"
Rob wondered if he could be transferred to another cabin. He was helping Dave Snider into his clean shirt, a pink one with charcoal stripes ("Cheap," his mother's voice said), when Gordon strolled into the cabin, late. Rob suspected him of thumbing into town for a quick drink in the beer-parlour, which wasn't choosy about your age. He had been late a number of times recently, leaving Rob to attempt control of the cabin single-handed. He looked very smug; he didn't reply to the admiring mock cheers that always accompanied his entrances, but dug into his pocket and, very casual, very cool, draped something over his bedpost. A pair of black panties, with red lace edges.
"Hey! Wow! Hey, Gord, whose are they?"
Out with the comb, patting the blond pompadour into place. "That's for me to know and you to find out."
"Hey, come on, Gord, eh Gord?"
"Hey, no fair, Gord! Bet you stole 'em from the laundry!"
"Take a look, smart boy. They're not from any laundry."
Dave wheeled over and grabbed the panties. He stuck them on his head and circled the cabin floor. "Mickey Mouse, Mickey Mouse," he sang. "Forever let us hold our whammers high.... Hey Groaner, you wanna try em on? Bet they'd fit, you got a big head."
Other hands snatched at the panties. Rob left the room, went down the hall into the washroom. They must have been in the woods, near him, near Jordan. Her outrage, lecturing him like that with the twigs still in her hair, what gave her the right? Mud on her rump.
His face, his nice face, bland and freckled, framed in neatly trimmed sandy hair, watched him from the mirror. He would have preferred a scar, a patch over one eye, sunburned wrinkles, a fang. How untouched he looked, like the fat on uncooked bacon: nobody's fingerprints on him, no dirt, and he despised this purity. At the same time he could never be like the others, gloat over some woman's musky underpants. Maybe I'm not normal, he thought with gloomy pride.
After the chaos and mess of dinner had been endured, Rob went to the auditorium with the others. The stage, which was like a school stage except for the ramps at either side, had its red curtains closed. There were no chairs. Those in wheelchairs didn't need them, and the others sat on the floor, wherever they liked. Rob sought out Jordan and moved closer to her. He prepared to applaud, dutifully, whatever was set before him.
The lights in the room dimmed, there was some fumbling behind the curtains, and Pete in his chair was pushed out by several pairs of hands. The audience clapped, some cheered. Pete was quite popular.
"Don't push me off the edge, you spaz," he said into the mike, which got a laugh from some of the older boys. He was wearing a vaudeville straw hat with a red crepe-paper band, and someone had glued a false moustache unevenly to his upper lip.
"Ladies and gents," he said. He made his moustache wiggle at one side, then at the other, and the younger children giggled. At that moment Rob almost liked him. "This here is the Fair-Eden Follies, and you better believe it, anyways, we all did a lot of falling down practising it." His voice went serious. "We've all worked hard to make this a good show, and I want you to give a big hand to the first number, which is - a square dance, by the Fair-Eden Wheeler Dealers. Thank you."
Pete was jerked backwards, became briefly entangled, and disappeared. After a pause the curtains parted haltingly. In front of a brown-paper backdrop with a poster-painted apple tree and a cow, four boys and four girls faced each other in standard-square dance formation. They were all in wheelchairs, without the trays.
The girls were two polio cases and two paraplegic CPs. They were wearing lipstick and had red paper bows at the necks of their white blouses; their emaciated legs and braces were hidden by long printed cotton skirts, and one of them, the one without the glasses, was astonishingly pretty. Dave Snider was the front corner boy. Like the others, he had on a Western string tie and a cardboard cowboy hat. The dancers looked self-conscious, but proud. None of them was smiling.
Martina was off to the side, with the primitive record player. "Now," she prompted, and the scratchy fiddle music started up. She clapped her hands in time. "Honour your partners," she called, and the two lines bowed to each other from the waist. "Honour your corners!" Then the two opposite corners shot forward, met each other in the centre of the square, passed, and by quick hand-turnings of their wheels executed a perfect do-si-do.
Jesus, Rob thought. They must have practised for hours. He saw the concentration in Dave Snider's face and thought for a brief second, He cares about it, and, triumphantly, Now I've got something on him. Immediately he was ashamed of himself. The dancers whizzed out again, locked wheels and arms, and swung, careening dangerously. They seemed to have forgotten about the audience: their attention was held entirely by the rhythm and by the intricate manipulations of the wheels needed at such close quarters.
Rob looked over at Jordan. She was sitting almost still, her arms moving slightly, aimlessly, under the leather straps. He wanted her to turn her eyes so he could smile at her, but she was gazing straight at the dancers, her eyes shining with what he saw, with a quick jolt of his heart, were tears. She had never cried before: he hadn't known she could, he'd thought of her as a little changeling, not quite human. What was wrong? He tried
to see as she was seeing, and, of course, it wasn't anything he could give her that she wanted. She wanted something she could imagine, something almost possible for her, she wanted to do this! A square dance in a wheelchair. She longed to be able to do just this much, this particular dance, that would be wonderful. And it was wonderful. He had wasted himself, his body, why couldn't he have moved with such abandon, such joy in precision, during those interminable formal dances when his legs went stiff as wood, his feet compressed themselves to clumsy blocks inside his polished shoes....
But it was grotesque, he saw also, he couldn't help seeing. It was a mockery, of themselves and of the dance; who had ever allowed them to do it? All their effort, their perfection even, amounted to this: they were ludicrous in their cumbersome machines. They danced like comic robots. They danced like him.
Rob felt something inside him, coming up, bursting out. He doubled over, his hands clenched to his mouth. He was laughing. He tried to hold the laughter back, stifle it, turn it to coughing, but it was no use. He was red with shame and shaking all over; he couldn't stop. He crouched towards the door, hands across his face, stumbled through it, and collapsed onto the grass of the baseball field. He hoped they would think he was being sick to his stomach. That's what he would tell them afterwards. How could he, how could he have been so incredibly callous and rude? But he was still laughing so hard his stomach hurt. And she had seen him, she had turned her wet eyes and seen him just as it happened, she would think he had betrayed her.
Rob took off his glasses and wiped his eyes. Then he pressed his forehead into the grass, which was damp and cool with dew. From the open windows of the auditorium the tinny music ground on, to the rumble of wheels. I'll have to leave, I can't explain, I'll never be able to face them. But then he realized that nobody had really seen but her, and she couldn't tell. He was safe. And who was that, in the bright room at the back of his room, that man in the green gown and the mask, under the glass bubble, raising the knife?
Lives of the Poets
Lying on the bathroom floor of this anonymous hotel room, my feet up on the edge of the bathtub and a cold wet washcloth balled at the back of my neck. Bloody nosebleed. A good adjective, it works, as the students say in those creative writing classes that are sometimes part of the package. So colourful. Never had a nosebleed before, what are you supposed to do? An ice-cube would be nice. Image of the Coke-and-ice machine at the end of the hall, me streaking toward it, a white towel over my head, the bloodstain spreading through it. A hotel guest opens his room door. Horrors, an accident. Stabbed in the nose. Doesn't want to get involved, the room door shuts, my quarter jams the machine. I'll stick with the washcloth.
The air's too dry, that must be it, nothing to do with me or the protests of the soggy body. Osmosis. Blood to the outside because there's not enough water vapour; they keep the radiators going full blast and no switch to shut them off. Cheapskates, why couldn't I stay at the Holiday Inn? Instead it's this one, pseudo-Elizabethan motifs tacked to a mouse-eaten frame, somebody's last-ditch attempt to make something out of this comer of the woods. The outskirts of Sudbury, nickel-smelting capital of the world. Can we show you around, they said. I'd like to see the slagheaps, and the places where the vegetation has all been scorched off. Oh, ha ha, they said. It's growing back, they raised the stacks. It's turning into quite a, you know, civilized place. I used to like it, I said, it looked like the moon. There's something to be said for a place where absolutely nothing grows. Bald. Dead. Clean as a bone. Know what I mean? Furtive glances at one another, young beardy faces, one pipesmokes, they write footnotes, on their way up, why do we always get stuck with the visiting poet? Last one threw up on the car rug. Just wait till we get tenure.
Julia moved her head. The blood trickled gently down the back of her throat, thick and purple-tasting. She had been sitting there in front of the phone, trying to figure out the instructions for calling long distance through the hotel operator, when she'd sneezed and the page in front of her had been suddenly spattered with blood. Totally unprovoked. And Bernie would be hanging around at home, waiting for her to call. In two hours she had to give the reading. A gracious introduction, she would rise and move to the microphone, smiling, she would open her mouth and blood would start to drip from her nose. Would they clap? Would they pretend not to notice? Would they think it was part of the poem? She would have to start rooting around in her purse for a Kleenex, or, better still, she'd faint, and someone else would have to cope. (But everyone would think she was drunk.) How upsetting for the committee. Would they pay her anyway? She could imagine them discussing it.
She raised her head a little, to see if it had stopped. Something that felt like a warm slug crawled down towards her upper lip. She licked, tasting salt. How was she going to get to the phone? On her back, creeping supine across the floor, using her elbows and pushing with her feet, a swimming motion, like a giant aquatic insect. She shouldn't be calling Bernie, she should be calling a doctor. But it wasn't serious enough. Something like this always happened when she had to give a reading, something painful but too minor for a doctor. Besides, it was always out of town, she never knew any doctors. Once it was a bad cold; her voice had sounded as if it was coming through a layer of mud. Once her hands and ankles had swelled up. Headaches were standard: she never got headaches at home. It was as if something was against these readings and was trying to keep her from giving them. She was waiting for it to take a more drastic form, paralysis of the jaw muscles, temporary blindness, fits. This was what she thought about during the introductions, always: herself on a stretcher, the waiting ambulance, then waking up, safe and cured, with Bernie sitting beside the bed. He would smile at her, he would kiss her forehead, he would tell her - what? Some magical thing. They had won the Wintario Lottery. He'd been left a lot of money. The gallery was solvent. Something that would mean she didn't have to do this any more.
That was the problem: they needed the money. They had always needed the money, for the whole four years they had lived together, and they still needed it. At first it hadn't seemed so important. Bernie was on a grant then, painting, and after that he got a renewal. She had a part-time job, cataloguing in a library. Then she had a book published, by one of the medium-sized houses, and got a grant herself. Of course she quit her job, to make the best use of the time. But Bernie ran out of money, and he had trouble selling paintings. Even when he did sell one, the dealer got most of it. The dealer system was wrong, he told her, and he and two other painters opened a co-operative artists' gallery which, after a lot of talk, they decided to call The Notes From Underground. One of the other painters had money, but they didn't want to take advantage of him; they would go strict thirds. Bernie explained all this to her, and he was so enthusiastic it had seemed natural to lend him half of her grant money, just to get things going. As soon as they began to show a profit, he said, he would pay her back. He even gave her two shares in the gallery. They hadn't started to show a profit yet, though, and, as Bernie pointed out, she didn't really need the money back right at the moment. She could get some more. She now had a reputation; a small one, but still, she could earn money easier and faster than he could, travelling around and giving readings on college campuses. She was "promising," which meant that she was cheaper than those who were more than promising. She got enough invitations to keep them going, and though she debated the merits of each one with Bernie, hoping he would veto, he had never yet advised her to turn one down. But to be fair, she had never told him quite how much she hated it, the stares of the eyes, her own voice detached and floating, the one destructive question that was sure to lurk there among all the blank ones. I mean, do you really think you have anything to say?
Deep in February, deep in the snow, bleeding on the tiles of this bathroom floor. By turning her head she could see them, white hexagons linked like a honeycomb, with a single black tile at regular intervals.
For a measly hundred and twenty-five dollars - but it's half the rent, don't forg
et that - and twenty-five a day for expenses. Had to take the morning plane, no seats in the afternoon, who the hell goes to Sudbury in February? A bunch of engineers. Practical citizens, digging out the ore, making a bundle, two cars and a swimming pool. They don't stay at this place, anyway. Dining room at lunchtime almost empty. Just me and a very old man who talked to himself out loud. What's wrong with him? I said to the waitress. Is he crazy? In a whisper I said it. It's okay, he's deaf, she said. No, he's just lonely, he's been real lonely ever since his wife died. He lives here. I guess it's better than an old-age home, you know? There are more people here in the summertime. And we get a lot of men who're separating from their wives. You can always tell them, by what they order.
Didn't pursue that. Should have though, now I'll never know. What they order. Was looking as usual for the cheapest thing on the menu. Need that whole hundred and twenty-five, why waste it on food? This food. The menu a skewed effort to be Elizabethan, everything spelled with an "e" at the end. Got the Anne Boleyn Special, a hamburger with no bun, garnished with a square of red Jell-O and followed by "a glass of skime milke." Do they know that Anne Boleyn's head was cut off? Is that why the hamburger has no bun? What goes on in people's minds? Everyone thinks writers must know more about the inside of the human head, but that's wrong. They know less, that's why they write. Trying to find out what everyone else takes for granted. The symbolism of the menu, for god's sake, why am I even thinking about it? The menu has no symbolism, it's just some dimwit's ill-informed attempt to be cute. Isn't it?
You're too complicated, Bernie used to tell her, when they were still stroking and picking at each other's psyches. You should take it easy. Lie back. Eat an orange. Paint your toenails.
All very well for him.
Maybe he wasn't even up yet. He used to take naps in the afternoons, he'd be lying there under the heaped-up blankets of their Queen Street West apartment (over the store that had once sold hardware but was now a weaving boutique, and the rent was climbing), face down, arms flung out to either side, his socks on the floor where he'd discarded them, one after the other, like deflated feet or stiffened blue footprints leading to the bed. Even in the mornings he would wake up slowly and fumble his way to the kitchen for some coffee, which she would already have made. That was one of their few luxuries, real coffee. She'd have been up for hours, crouching at the kitchen table, worrying away at a piece of paper, gnawing words, shredding the language. He would place his mouth, still full of sleep, on hers, and perhaps pull her back into the bedroom and down into the bed with him, into that liquid pool of flesh, his mouth sliding over her, furry pleasure, the covers closing over them as they sank into weightlessness. But he hadn't done that for some time. He had been waking earlier and earlier; she, on the other hand, had been having trouble getting out of bed. She was losing that compulsion, that joy, whatever had nagged her out into the cold morning air, driven her to fill all those notebooks, all those printed pages. Instead she would roll herself up in the blankets after Bernie got up, tucking in all the corners, muffling herself in wool. She had begun to have the feeling that nothing was waiting for her outside the bed's edge. Not emptiness but nothing, the zero with legs in the arithmetic book.