by Zoe Whittall
They start to tell each other what they remember about that night and the nights that followed.
“Eve, you’d never believe what happened that summer. People went fucking nuts. Everyone was like, oh, you don’t want us to be queer? You’re going to beat us up for being queer? We’ll show you queer!”
“Yeah, girls were just fucking everywhere! And fags would check their pants at the coat check and were just blowing each other right out in the open at the bar. It was unreal.”
Seven gets out of bed, putting the rest of a joint out in the stand-up ashtray beside my bed, exhaling. “I want Cracker Jacks. I’m going to go find them.”
“Be careful,” I say. I turn to Della and kiss her hard, dissolve into her embrace. Afterwards we lie spooning, naked crescent moons.
“Hey Della. Have you ever been tested?”
“No, I never shot any dope, only fucked two guys in high school, both virgins.”
“Oh.”
“You?”
“Once in grade ten. The free clinic insisted. Negative. The last time I went the counsellor said the rate of transmission for lesbian sex was so low it didn’t make sense to test me.”
“Seven’s positive right?”
“I never asked. I assume so, just by things he says, you know, infers, the way he alludes to it.”
“Gerard told me he definitely is ... I just wondered if you knew.”
“I thought you’re not really supposed to talk about someone else’s status like that.”
“Ideally.”
“It’s weird how he doesn’t, like, take lots of vitamins and he drinks and does so many drugs, like he doesn’t care.”
“Well, you have to keep living and having fun, right?”
“I suppose. I think I might try to up my chances.”
“You want to be like those ladies who shop at Santé!?”
“Never!” I picture the parade of pale, lifeless hypochondriacs who stock up weekly on whatever the newest cure for everything is, shark fins, wheatgrass, whatever. But they never look happy or well, no matter how much they fork over.
“I wish you could only get aids from giving money to Jerry Falwell,” mumbles Della. “I read that somewhere and I totally agree.” Her eyes close involuntarily and she snaps into a deep snore. I sit in the window seat watching the shadows in the park, waiting for two hours until Seven comes home. I jump into bed before he comes in, in case he wants to join us. Walking out into the living room I see a new pair of shoes at the door and realize he is not alone.
I fall asleep happy we are all safe in the house, for now. It’s the only time of day I stop panicking.
The phone rings. I don’t answer it. It rings again. “Allo?”
Silence. Breath.
I hang up and my heart goes crazy, certain, absolutely, that it was Rachel trying to talk to us from beyond. I wake up Della and show her the number I wrote down from the call display. Her face is blank. She calls the number. No one picks up.
“What? Who is it?”
“Nothing. No one.”
“No, you know who it was.”
Silence.
“Whose number is it?”
She buries her head under the covers mumbling xxxx’s name.
Oh. I feel somewhat relieved that it’s not Rachel’s ghost, though the thought was somewhat comforting depending on how you looked at it.
I poke Della’s back, whisper, “Are you guys talking a lot lately?”
“No. I don’t know why she’d call this late. I don’t even know how she’d get this number.”
“Seven’s listed.”
“Oh.”
“It’s 3:00 a.m., maybe something’s wrong. Maybe you should call her back.”
Della lifts the covers off dramatically. “Eve, c’mon. You’d really be okay with that?”
“No rules, remember? If she’s your friend, you might want to check in with her?” Stop the burning, I tell myself. Be an adult.
“Nah, she’s fine. She’s got Isabelle.”
“They got back together?”
“They never broke up.”
“Oh.” Suddenly I felt like a horrible dramatic person who overreacted. Then it switched to anger and betrayal. Then to wondering if Della was telling me the truth. Something in my gut said she wasn’t.
“Does Isabelle know that you guys slept together?”
“I don’t know. I never asked.”
As if they never discussed it. This was thoroughly unsatisfying. But in the grand scheme of things, which is the only way I’d been able to think of things since Rachel’s death, monogamy didn’t matter. If I had any inclination to, I could do whatever I wanted. It seemed that just now Della and I didn’t feel like acting on anything outside of us, however undefined.
I wake up in the morning, Della still dreaming, Seven asleep on the couch and his guest’s shoes gone. I make a pot of coffee and do the dishes, stopping only a few times to cry, and the tears come like sighs or sneezes, moments of wonder, and pass just as quickly. I watch little chubby birds on the railing of the balcony off the kitchen. The morning light is soft and perfect. Montreal seems at peace. Slipping on my sneakers, toque and hoodie over my sleepy shirt and pj bottoms, I scuffle down the stairs counting change in my open palm, enough to get cream at the dep. As I reach the middle of the stairway I am jolted from my peaceful solitude by the doorbell. Persistent. It reminds me of the night Rachel died and the sound makes me want to throw up.
I open the door expecting Jehovah’s Witnesses but instead it’s my parents. My mom in a red fleece jacket with an overcompensating-for-my-dead-friend smile, my dad in his sturdy leather motorcycle jacket, both holding out empty wicker baskets. My dad has combed his greying curly red hair from receding hairline down into a slight ponytail, one Seven has taken to calling the “oldmanytail.” He wears his favourite faded Rolling Stones tour shirt.
“Wow, hi. You surprised me!” I rub my eyes hoping to smudge last night’s makeup away.
“We’re driving to the country to pick apples and you’re coming with us!”
“What? Why didn’t you call? It’s so early. I don’t understand.”
“We tried Eve. We left four messages last night.” Oh, yeah, I’d skipped them all in anticipation of a message from Rachel’s ghost or xxxx.
“Oh, oh, okay. Come on in. You closed the store?”
“Nope, Alex is taking over for the day. It’s quiet these days.” They follow me up, I motion towards the couch and put my finger against my lips in a shh.
I do not want to go, I feel confused and still dreaming.
“When we get home, we’ll make pies, freeze them and then eat them for Thanksgiving,” my mom whispers, straightening a photo frame in the hallway where they wait for me to get dressed.
Thanksgiving was in a few weeks. How did it get so late in the season? Thanksgiving was always a fairly fun day at our household, but this year everything looked different. I wasn’t finding comfort in pies and place settings, familiar after-lunch walks, conversations about cousins’ weddings. I’d been dreading the impending dinner.
I pull on some jeans and a sweater, kiss sleeping Della and Seven goodbye. When I get to their car, I see there’s a bed frame tied to the car roof and Jenny in the backseat. “Surprise! We brought Jenny.”
I haven’t seen Jenny in months. She smiles at me, in sunglasses, holding an oversized takeout cup of coffee. I wonder how they convinced her to come along. I felt suddenly awkward, even though I was sitting in a car with three people I’d known my whole life, who knew me the best, but it didn’t feel that way anymore. They felt like strangers, the quantity of time they spent with me versus the quality of time with my newest friends.
The car ride towards Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue was awkward and quiet, the occasional burst of small talk. The topics Jenny and I could broach with my parents were limited.
“Jenny told us she can give you her old bedroom set so you can finally move up off that futon on the ground. That’s why
it’s tied to the roof. Isn’t that great?”
My mom leans back from the front seat, pausing briefly from berating my father for driving too fast or too slow. She asks about school, student loan applications, about working at the health-food store. My dad tells me about a new guitar he got in the store, asks again when I’ll come pick up some shifts. I say soon, he says great and we both know this isn’t the case.
At a roadside washroom Jenny, fixing herself in the mirror while I pee, says, “I told a regular at work that I really wanted a new bed frame, one of the metal ones from IKEA, and he had one delivered to the club. Can you believe it? Anyway, my mom bought me that wood one last year, so you can have it. I mentioned it to your mom, because when she picked me up it was just sitting in our hallway ready for Goodwill. Thought they could drive it over for you later.”
“Yeah, sounds good.”
I exit the stall, straighten my skirt. “He just delivered it to the bar?”
“Yeah. Strange eh? One time a guy brought me a rice cooker, ’cause I’d mentioned I wanted one, but a bed frame, that’s a real coup. All the other girls were jealous.”
She hands me her tube of chapstick. It smells like butterscotch mints. I run it over my lips. I look pale.
“I’m sorry about Rachel, Eve. I didn’t even know until I read about it in the paper, and then I felt weird calling you and stuff.”
“That’s okay. It’s been crazy at the apartment, trying to keep Seven’s spirits up.”
“Yeah, I bet.”
“And Della and I, we’re sort of back on again.”
“Really? But she cheated.”
“I know, I know.” I shrug. For some reason I couldn’t relay the complexities involved to Jenny in a truck stop bathroom on a three-minute break from the pleasant silence with my parents.
“How is work, anyway?”
Jenny shrugged. “It’s a job. I took some shifts at a massage parlour, too.”
“I wrote a pro-sex-work paper for my women’s studies class this semester about how sex work and feminism are not mutually exclusive.”
“Oh yeah?” Jenny made a face.
“What?”
“Well, let me tell you. Stripping is not feminist. Everyone will rip you off if they can, other girls, men, everyone. It’s like going back in time to when feminism didn’t exist, except you can make good money sometimes. I read that book you lent me about that girl in San Francisco at the peep show and I hated it. I threw it against the wall. It’s not therapeutic. It’s hard work. It’s boring.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“But touch my thigh,” she said, putting my hand on her right leg. “Rock hard, baby! Plus, these boots cost $300.” She smiled.
At the apple orchard, Jenny climbs to the top of one of the trees, even in her heeled boots. My mom takes a photo of her hanging upside down, while I stand on the ground beside her. We fill plastic bags with tart, perfect fruit.
On the ride home Jenny tells my parents all about Jack, her boyfriend, the jock. They are more interested than I’ve ever heard them be about almost anything. By the time we drive back into Montreal, they knew more about the jock who once called me that weird lesbian witch girl than Della, Seven or anyone else in my life I’d put down as an emergency contact number. I stop listening. I watch the fields turn into subdivisions, into factories, Montreal West, NDG, winding up the hill by the hospitals, into the plateau.
My mom and dad both hug me close to say goodbye. They feel warm and safe in one moment and like complete strangers the next. I was itching to be back at the apartment with Della and Seven.
With two plastic bags of apples in my arms, I helped my dad struggle with the wooden headboard of Jenny’s old bed frame up the stairs.
Della and Seven are curled up on the couch watching an afternoon TV movie, Footloose, like siblings. My dad nods polite hellos in their direction, as though they were amicable strangers on a street corner.
My dad helps put together the wooden bed frame while my mother drives Jenny home. I showed him some artwork from school, some paintings inspired by Rachel’s poems. I feel embarrassed of them all of a sudden, and put them away quickly.
He gives me an extra-long goodbye hug. He smells like smoke and woodsy soap and coziness.
I sink between Seven and Della on the couch and watch a young Sarah Jessica Parker dance her heart out. I cry heavy sobs while Kevin Bacon kicks out the jams. Della and Seven are silent. Sobbing had become so commonplace, it no longer startles.
We smoke a joint and I fall asleep, waking to the smell of apple pies from an industrious Della. She and Seven are singing Dolly Parton’s greatest hits.
The apartment smells like home.
I walk into the kitchen, accepting a plate of warm apples and pastry. “Della, you should move in.”
Seven looked up from his plate. “Yeah, sure. You totally should.”
Della leaves a few hours later, returning with Tomato in a cat carrier and a duffle bag of important objects. We decide she will sleep in my room, store her things in Rachel’s old room, a door we haven’t opened since the funeral.
Seven sits at the kitchen table with the typewriter and a stack of papers. “I’m writing a play.”
“That’s so gay.”
“It would be gayer to write an AIDS memoir.” He laughs, before jumping back to the keys pounding out words.
In the bathroom medicine cabinet I notice an empire of pill bottles. New ones. I ask Seven about it.
“Well,” he says, opening the balcony door and selecting a cigarette from his pack, “I’m not a sudden fan of western medicine or the pharmaceutical companies, but I don’t know. I’m not ready to go.”
“I’m not ready for you to go.”
He smiles, opens the door. Della walks up behind me, putting her muscled arms around my torso.
15
•••
LITTLE SPLEENS OF TRUTH
DECEMBER 1996
December is like cutting your tongue. The strongest muscle month, clenched, expecting impact on frozen sidewalks. The air smells like the sharp reality of what’s to come. Beads of cold blood and soft skin imprinted with the wrist of my too-tight winter jacket worn begrudgingly. I buy an ice blue bra with pink roses and lace trim. Matching panties. Try to cheer myself up. The roses poke through my T-shirt and make my chest look lumpy. I take it off. I’ve been dreaming about Holly Hobbie, my favourite bedsheets as a kid. I had a vision or a premonition last night of a woman in a fur coat. It wasn’t a good vision. I was almost asleep. It could have been nothing. But it felt like something.
The problem with true stories is they always end in loss. Sometimes the difference between fiction and non is almost arbitrary. They both ask: who are we? Sometimes I can’t tell where Della telling the truth begins and Della telling the truth ends. I get these instinctual punches in the gut.
Lately she’s too depressed to lie, or instill suspicion. Della doesn’t do anything. She is fading into the fabric of her trademark black hoodie. It’s beginning to feel like I have a human pet instead of a girlfriend. I’m questioning my urge to fill that role in my life. I try to think of myself as my own girlfriend. Her ability to speak breaks down into guttural mumbles and pre-verbal sounds. That I’m in love with her is a memory, a postcard on the fridge. I almost wish she’d go flirt with other girls just so I can wash the sheets, and see a glimpse of that girl from the art opening at school.
Once she said to me that her biggest fear was that she’d never succeed at anything. Just a legacy of unfinished plans, half-stitched projects, broken-hearted bitter girls in her wake. It’s a few weeks before her thirtieth birthday when she’s supposedly going to kick it. She seems to be trying to stop her heart with boredom. What would I do if all my life, my family said I’d die before I was thirty, like my mother, grandmother and aunts?
Our conversation this morning:
“I don’t mean to pry, but you are making everything worse by sleeping all the time. You need to
get up.”
Silence.
Eventually she says, “Hmhmhmm I don’t wannuh.”
We’ve had the same ephemeral back and forth every morning for three weeks. She is living up to her own expectation of ruin and she smells like hopelessness. Her skin used to intoxicate me, her face would bring to mind warm vanilla and almond tea. Now she emanates this eggshell tang, a little off.
A few weeks after Rachel’s funeral, she and Seven suddenly grew towards each other and I watched it happen, the way they were so similar, like they were plants growing towards sunlight, only less healthy. Both attracted to drugs and manic moments, hyper and outrageous, like they only had two versions of themselves: very awake and very asleep. Seven started saying things like, “I’m so glad for Della being around. I still don’t trust her,” he’d warn me, “but she’s good to us. She’s not bad, she’s just damaged, like me.”
When he said that, I was taken aback. Seven didn’t seem damaged at all. In fact, he seemed the definition of someone who thrived despite uncertainty.
When we started getting back on our feet, Della took notice, stopped taking care of us and began to sleep a lot longer in the mornings. Seven got her a job at the bar as a bar-back. They spread drugs out on the green coffee table and I felt like the disapproving mother, making big pots of soup and asking them patiently to eat. Doing my homework in the bathroom with earplugs in while they danced around to Pansy Division’s “Breaking the Sodomy Law.”
They dyed their hair the same shade of green. I shaved my head, vowing to let it grow in natural. Running my hand over my stubbled skull is comforting.
We still have no rules, except that xxxx can’t call her here, can’t visit. Not in my space. When I see xxxx out I say, Hello, how are you? I keep my answers short. I smile politely. I do not look distressed. I give her kisses on both cheeks. She’s stopped looking at me like I’m a useless child.
These days Della’s eyes are NyQuil pinholes and she moves around the apartment as though it has padded walls. Her journals read like self-help delusions or suicide notes abandoned for sleep. She leaves them open on the coffee table. Seven rolls joints on pages that read Why can’t I change? Sketches of open skulls and numbered patterns.
