Bottle Rocket Hearts

by Zoe Whittall

  A girl with red hair walks in, ringing the new wind chimes, overshadowed by her enormous hiking backpack. She wears an unfortunate socks-and-sandals combo, and a sweat line crosses her brow. She stands, staring at the new chalkboard menu behind our heads at the cash. She stands there for a few minutes, I nod, signalling I’m paying attention to her. She smiles, sings along with the Ani DiFranco the new automaton has taken to playing on repeat. None of us are pretty girls, indeed. I turn some of the nutritional supplements I’m sketching into bombs.

  Mel, who is restocking the coffee bean wall looks at me, rolling her beautifully and excessively made-up eyes, mouthing, She’s a nightmare.

  “Do you know what you want?”

  “Um, is the soup vegan?”

  The sign says Vegan Soup of the Day.

  “Yes.”

  Tap tap tap, red pen on the side of the counter. The more I smile, the more she smiles. Eventually one of us is going to be all tonsil and tiny eye sockets. She has sweet little red braids tied in rainbow ribbon. Political buttons on the overflowing backpack. Lower Tuition Fees. This is What a Bisexual Looks Like. Free East Timor. She bothers me.

  She puts a pencil in her mouth. The pencil scrapes against her teeth, a virile little pixie and beaver hybrid. She looks so innocent. She pushes her sleeve up and reveals a tattoo of a faerie. It’s pretty, but it makes me hate her. I’m too tired.

  My right calf erupts in tiny splints of pain. Like the faerie has jumped off her wrist and begun devilishly gnawing on my leg. I can hear it giggle. Ani DiFranco warbles and hiccups, breathless over the speakers, and the girl sings along, off tune.

  I haven’t come down from the drugs I took last night.

  That might make a difference here.

  All three of us went out dancing wearing tutus and crazy wigs. We were celebrating the success of Seven’s play. It felt like the times things were good, like we were remembering a time before Rachel died, even though things were never this good then, because they were just normal, and ordinary is never the kind of good you remember. I looked at Della and I didn’t feel any anger for cheating, any suspicion. I memorized their faces. It’s like we couldn’t have appreciated a night like this before. We drank red and purple cocktails and they did lines of coke off the insides of my wrists and we exclaimed our love for each other over loud beats of appreciation. I tried a little bump off a key in the bathroom and didn’t feel any different at all. Except I realized later how fast I was talking.

  I expected to feel intoxicated, but instead I felt more acutely sober than I ever had before. Nothing like pot or drinking, just this odd new angle. We kept picking up Seven’s cellphone pretending to be calling our stockbrokers. It was juvenile and glittery and much needed. Seven and Della dropped acid with our friend Hélène at last call and I decided to be good, go home, make sure I could make it to work at 10:00 a.m.

  We all hugged goodbye in a circle. It felt like the best part of high school, only happily, we were no longer in high school.

  After collecting my jacket from coat check I went back in to get my key from Seven’s pocket. I caught a glimpse of Della and Seven, dancing like fools. I smiled to myself goofily, aware that things felt okay again, even if just for a moment. Whatever happened in the future, there was now a permanence among Seven, Della and me that couldn’t be broken. Beyond Della and me as a couple, or the three of us as roommates, as individuals we felt linked.

  Leaving the bar, I noticed xxxx in the line for coat check with Isabelle. I walked right by them. It’s been long enough that we can pretend to be strangers.

  I ran my hands over my apron, a soothing lavender colour embroidered with a smiling cow, featuring sloppy embroidered text that reads A Burger Stops a Beating Heart. It’s covered in cranberry-spelt muffin mix. My shirt is half untucked. My hair is escaping a formerly tight ponytail.

  “Um, what exactly is in the tofu carrot mushroom miso stew?” “Tofu, carrots, mushrooms, in a miso sauce.”

  “Yeah, I mean, like, what are all the ingredients ...”

  I prattle off a list of words, half of which I make up for ease of interaction. She’s going to be allergic to something, I can tell.

  “Oh, red peppers make me sleepy. I’m allergic, I think.”

  My left thumb is making a distinct sweat print on the pad of paper. I feel really faint. I can’t remember when I last ate something. The door jingles with those godawful New Age charms that are supposed to fill the room with calm. My heart races. My nose feels raw from the coke and I feel the chemical drips down the back of my throat returning. I make a mental note to never do it again. I can’t believe I did it in the first place. So eighties.

  Seven is suddenly standing behind me, hands on my hips.

  “Eve, I need to talk to you ...”

  I half-turn my head, feel my chin against his chest. “Seven, I hafta take this order ... you’re not supposed to be behind the counter.” I look around for my boss. Melanie shouts, “She’s on lunch! Don’t worry.”

  “You’re not here to fuck with me ’cause you’re still cracked out are ya?” Did I say that out loud? Too loud? Volume is not on my side today. Girl in red braids smiles so hard her mouth cracks into the rest of her face. I see stars around her head. Melanie looks at me from across the room and mouths, Everything okay?

  Braid girl looks poised to speak, then turns back to scan the menu with a red nail. “I don’t know ... hmmm ...”

  “Eve ...”

  Ani DiFranco is going on about both hands.

  “Why not try the soup and sandwich combo?”

  “Eve!”

  “I can’t have wheat ...”

  “Eve hostie!!”

  “Excuse me ... Drama Queen needs me for a sec.” I try to give her a sympathetic eyebrow raise, like, you know how it is, when your crackhead best friend has a drug-induced breakdown at your job. She half-smiles.

  His lip is covered in blood. Chewing, I surmise. I reach up with my apron to dab his face and he backs away. “It’s okay, it’s okay. It’s just ...”

  He says okay five times or more, convincing me with each syllable how un-okay he is. I walk him behind the counter, sit him on a plastic bucket of coffee beans, put my hand against his pale face. “Do you need a sandwhich? Some water? Whatever it is, it’s okay.”

  Seven doesn’t look assured by my practised soothing voice. “It’s Della, she stayed at Hélène’s last night ...”

  “Yeah, I told them to crash there so they wouldn’t keep me up all night with their acid bullshit.”

  “So, like, this is hard to say, I’m just going to have to say it, um ...”

  “Why are you sounding so retarded? Did they fuck or something? It’s not a big deal if they did, you know. I’m cool about that kind of thing now, you know, no rules.”

  “Della, I can’t find her! No one can! Hélène’s apartment burned down this morning ... some wiring problem they think, the police think that she might have been in the building. Hélène escaped, and she thinks that Della might have gone out exploring after she fell asleep, but she was so high, she can’t really remember. And no one can find Della. Hélène’s looked everywhere!”

  “Lentil soup, excuse me, I’ll have the lentil soup.” Braid girl chimes in loudly from a few feet away.

  “That’s impossible! That would be too much of a big joke with the before-thirty curse. I mean, her birthday is this Sunday. That’s just too ridiculous.” I produce a sharp and gasping alien-like laugh.

  Seven stands up from the coffee pail and tries to hug me. “I don’t know what to do, like, where would she be? I went home. She’s not there. I went by the diner, the park, the café ... nothing!” He tells me that he even called xxxx.

  “She’s probably wandering around, still tripping out. You know, she’ll talk to anyone. Maybe she’s home by now.” I pick up the batter-stained phone and dial home. It rings and rings.

  “The police say the fire is totally out now and they haven’t found a body,” Seven says hop
efully.

  A body?

  “Excuse me ... why aren’t you answering me? I told you I would like the —”

  I turn around sharply and hurl the phone at the braid girl’s face. She blocks it with her hands but it still knocks her over.

  I walk towards the new, sparkling industrial fridge. Feel its cool metal face. A body?

  Black. Stars. Mercury tongue.

  19

  •••

  THE SIZE OF THIS PROVINCE

  I come to as the braid girl is screaming, “Why’d she do that, why?” Mel holds a can of Blue Sky cola to her face and tries to calm her. Seven is resting me in his arms in front of the freezer. “You haven’t been out for long, just like ten seconds.” He answers his phone.

  “Where are you????” He pauses for a second, listening, while I concentrate on not throwing up. He drops the phone. “Della’s okay, she’s okay, she’s in the mental hospital.” He picks it up again and asks her for details. “We’ll be right there ... don’t let them give you shock treatments or anything.”

  “The mental hospital?” I breathe. I’ve never been so happy to hear that someone I love is in the bin. Locked up. Safe. Weird.

  “She said she took off her shirt at the Quatres Sous grocery store as a political statement and now the doctors are afraid of women’s power and we have to go break her out.”

  What? Della was not one of those shirtless hippie lesbians. This sounded very weird.

  Once I can stand, my boss yells at me to get the hell out of the store before she calls the police. It seems so absurd when the cold air outside hits me that one laugh escapes my lips. Then another. Like a cough. Then it’s uncontrollable. I’m hiccup-laughing, guts aching, and Seven gives up trying to calm me, choosing instead to join in. We hail a cab and say, The Montreal General! The Psych Ward! Snot and tears drip down our faces, hysterical giggles escaping with each breath out.

  We aren’t allowed to see her. We remain out of hope. We’re not family. I laugh at that. Her dad leaves his hometown once a year, if that. Her mother is dead and I have no idea how to find her brother, who does not appear to be listed in any phone book in Quebec. We could also be barred because we are suspiciously crazy looking and Seven’s shirt says That’s Mr. Faggot to you. We sit in the waiting room for hours, exhausted, lips chewed like the edge of a worried paper coffee cup. We play I Spy, Truth or Dare, chewing insipid, stale corn chips; we press E9 instead of E8, the coveted licorice nibs. I have too much time to panic about losing my job. It’s retail, you’ll get another one in a second, Seven assures me.

  Pushing through the double doors to the waiting room, xxxx bursts in like that kind of gum with liquid in the middle, squirting her command all over the room. She’s breathless, long curly hair flipped dramatically. I hadn’t thought to call her — how did she know?

  “Cherie, where is she?! A doctor called me and told me she listed me as her next of kin?”

  I cast my eyes downward and see that my right hand is pointing her towards the nursing station like a tour guide, a polite airline stewardess. When xxxx tosses her hair towards the bitchy nurse at the counter, Mrs. Glare-at-the-punk-kids turns into a completely different person; her posture shifts. I can tell she thinks xxxx deserves respect. They speak in fast French. xxxx fills out some forms and gets led in right away.

  I exhale a sigh the size of this province.

  Seven’s eyes are so wide, his shoulders in a permanent shrug of, What the fuck?

  I pull my red and black notebook, the kind you find at Warsaw’s for two bucks, out of my backpack. I squeeze Seven’s hand, admire the chipped silver polish on his nails. His hands are shaking. I try to hold them still in mine.

  I start writing with, In this liminal space, we are marking the hospital chairs with dirt-filled, creased spiral marks from the pads of our fingers.

  I end with: I’m no longer keeping score.

  I cuddle up to Seven, click on my walkman. “Cold Cold Hearts” plays. I sleep so soundly even while waiting. I’m just really used to waiting. I feel Seven get up a few times, sit back down. Drape his jacket over my lap. I have a ridiculous dream with an obvious metaphor about Della being on a life raft unravelling and I’m made of fire but somehow still alive.

  I wake up to the click of my walkman and his persistent tapping on my shoulder. His eyes are wider than they have been all day, he no longer has any irises, just pupil.

  There’s a woman in a black dress, fur coat draped over one arm, standing at the desk yelling at the nurse, “I want to see my daughter! Where is my fucking daughter? Her name is Della Tremblay.” She speaks to the nurse like she’s a total idiot.

  Seven and I stare at each other and then at the woman, incredulous. I stand up, walk towards her, chest pumped out, hands palms up, curled like question marks.

  “That can’t be possible, Della’s mother is dead.”

  “Oh, I’m perfectly alive, who the hell are you?”

  “I’m Eve. I’m her girlfriend!”

  The woman snorts. “Sure. Sure you are.” She flits her hands around nervously like I’m a mosquito gunning for her drink.

  “Listen, a doctor called me. I’m here to see my daughter and I demand to be let in immediately!”

  As if on cue xxxx comes through the heavy locked doors that buzz when opened.

  “Oh thank God, Katherine! You’re here taking care of things,” says the woman. “She’s really done it to herself this time, eh?” As if Della had got herself an ugly tattoo or a bad haircut.

  Katherine embraces the woman. They hug like sisters. I’m still standing there, gutted. I feel my skin slipping away in careful fillets. Bottle rocket diffused. This is Della’s “dead” mother. Her reason for being sad, not keeping jobs, her reason to worry about dying before Sunday. This was her reason for cheating on me? This bitch in a fur coat ignoring me? The reality and scope of betrayal, the layers and layers of lies, feel almost too thick to even comprehend.

  I let out, “Ha. Huh. Fuck.”

  Katherine looks at me, confused. “What’s wrong, Eve? Haven’t you met Della’s mother before? Mrs. Tremblay, this is Eve. Eve, Mrs. Tremblay.”

  “It’s Ms. Johnson now, I’ve changed it back.”

  I don’t take her hand. They don’t seem to notice, just walk through the doors closed to me.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I hear Seven say from several miles away. “Let’s go get a drink.”

  “Yes, let’s.” I take his small clammy hand in mine and we walk outside. The cold air hits me like a punch of new ideas.

  Isabelle arrives breathless just as we get a few metres from the hospital doors.

  Seven takes my hand. I feel ridiculous.

  Isabelle opens the doors to the hospital as I am contemplating where to go. “Katherine told me that Della wants to see you, Eve. She’s asking for you. Where are you going?”

  “Yeah?” I say, inhaling. “Well, I’ve got to be somewhere.”

  She pauses, looks me in the eye, almost as if to say, Run run run.

  “Yeah, okay. I’ll tell her.”

  “Listen, I’m going to pack her shit and leave it in the front hall. Just have Katherine come pick it up some time, okay?”

  Katherine comes out just as Isabelle nods. Lights a cigarette. “Eve, you’re not leaving?” She sounds panicked.

  I feel an outer-body sense of peace, complete calm. “I’m getting out of here. I’ll see you later, Katherine.”

  I keep Seven’s hand in mine, lace my fingers through his like we’re grade-school pals. I hear Katherine saying, “What the fuck? She can’t leave. What the hell? Della asked for her! How can she just go?”

  “Let’s go split a pitcher at the Bifteque and stare at the straight boys,” I suggest.

  We walk down the paved incline, and with each icy step I’m decidedly changed, just like that day on the mountain where Della held my hand. Things are just as clear, clearer even. My heart beats strong and purposefully, no longer a panic-driven metronome. De
lla is a story I will tell to reference my last stretch of adolescence. Those years I dated a fiction. She’s locked up and I am anywhere I choose to be.

  Seven and I walk away like a duo in the last panel of a comic book, fading from bright colours to black and white. I fasten an invisible cape around my neck, lean into Seven’s shoulder. I feel soft and furious.

  •••

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Many thanks for Samantha Haywood at the Transatlantic Literary Agency for her endless support and enthusiasm for my work; Marc Côté and Angel Guerra and everyone at Cormorant Books, the Ontario Arts Council for financial support through the Works-in-Progress and Writers’ Reserve programs. Thank you to Sumach Press, Broken Pencil Magazine, Descant Quarterly and Cormorant Books for recommending the book for writers’ reserve grants. For reading the earliest drafts, I am indebted to Marnie Woodrow, Gavin Downie, Jess Carfagninni, Mariko Tamaki, Trish Salah, Tara-Michelle Ziniuk and Chloe Brushwood-Rose for their editorial insight and opinions. Thank you Liz Vanderkleyn for copy-editing the first draft, and Lisa Foad, Will Scott, and Jennifer Scott for reading the late drafts. Many thanks to Megan Richards for helping me with details around the referendum, setting the scene, for stealing some important memories. Thank you to Suzy Malik for feeding me both insight and dinner during three crucial years writing this book. Thanks to Joe Pert, Ange Holmes, Jenn Scott and Will Scott for allowing me to poach little lines from their lives and to listen to my endless drafts. I am forever grateful for all the metaphors and witticisms I plucked from conversations and inserted into the lives of my characters. Thank you Kristyn Dunnion and Emily Shultz.

  For research purposes I consulted Breaking Point — Quebec/ Canada, the 1995 Referendum (CBC/Bayard Books Canada, 2005) written by Mario Cardinal and translated by Ferdinanda Van Gennip, with Mark Stout.