by Amy Spurway
Still, this isn’t ordinary toilet-scrubbing, bed-making fatigue on her face. This is different. The confusing clouds that have been hovering over her have finally started to break up, but not into anything like the brightly coloured fiesta of feelings I got used to seeing around her. Gradient, grainy charcoal lines scribble and scramble around her head in a shifting, static-filled silhouette. She pours herself a shot, heaves her tired, goofily dressed bones into the rocking chair, closes her eyes, knocks back the contents of the shot glass, and then minces no words.
“She’s coming after the house,” Mama says.
“Who? What house?” I say.
“The split level Cape Cod in Martha’s Vineyard, ya dolt. Whaddaya think? This one.” She pours herself another dose of gin. “Saint Sarah. Fallen on hard times, I guess. She needs the money.”
Unbeknownst to me until just now, Mama never actually owned the scruffy little trailer and the swath of land that she and I have called home since I was four days old. All this time, we’ve lived here by the grand good graces of my father’s people, the Spensers, who were known to buy up any scrap of land they could get their hands on, just in case. In case of what, God only knows. In this case, it was to keep Effie Fortune and an illegitimate grandchild out of their neatly combed hair.
“Not like they ever gave us a goddamn thing otherwise,” Mama says, bitterly tossing out the familiar refrain. “This was literally the least they could do for their only grandchild.”
But with Rosalind dead and Spenser Mining Inc. losing money hand over fist with some overseas mineral extraction company, Sarah can’t afford to finish renovating the monstrous old family home and spend the rest of her winters at the condo in Florida and get her cheeks and chin pumped full of baby seal eyelash stem-cell extract, or whatever it is that makes her face look like plastic. The property went on the market on Christmas Day. We can stay until it sells. But as soon as the deed is done, we’re out on our arses.
“What did I always say about them people? Never trusted them as far as I could throw them,” Mama says. “Selling for a song, too. Thirty grand for the trailer and the land. Some goddamn American tourist will be all over that like ugly on a codfish.”
“Hey, maybe not. Maybe it’ll —”
“Oh smarten up, Crow,” Mama groans. “It’s land. They ain’t making any more. Somebody’ll take ’er if she’s up for grabs. Wouldn’t be surprised if one of their sleazy business buddies already has designs on it.”
The mere thought of some rich old American duffer buying this place to build a summer cottage that puts every house on the road to shame, or it getting snapped up by some finger-tenting tree-chopper keen to gut the land for a buck makes me intensely nauseous. Then again, everything makes me intensely nauseous these days.
Mama pours herself another shot of gin and tips it down her throat before heading over to the record player to rifle through her stack of moods and memories. “But see Sarah Spenser, eh?” Mama says, eyes narrowing, “That old tit-headed cow won’t get rid of us that easy. Over my dead body.”
Mine too, Mama. Mine too.
[…]
Once upon a time, New Year’s Eve was magical. A time to reflect on the past while setting intentions and imagining the potential of the coming year. A time brimming with hope, and hors d’oeuvres, and opportunities for drunk sex in random rooms of other people’s houses. Dave proposed to me on New Year’s Eve two years ago. After I said yes, we did it in the Martha Stewart craft room at Ami’s house. I left ass-cheek prints on the marble countertop of her glitter application table. Funny how all the lofty plans and aspirations that were born on the night Dave placed that ginormous rock on my finger and asked me to be his wife went straight down the toilet exactly one year later. That’s when I stumbled into the bathroom at the New Year’s Eve party hosted by Dave’s nasty old cougar of a boss, and found her giving him a New Year’s Eve blow job.
To my credit, I did not cause a scene. At least, not there. Not right there, in the bathroom. Instead, I calmly gave Dave a smile and a death stare, and walked away, closing the bathroom door behind me. Then I teetered out into the crowd of revellers in the spacious main room of the uptown mansion, perched myself halfway up the spiral staircase and smiled a gracious smile as I said, “Attention, everyone! Attention! I’d like to make a toast.”
It was just enough time for Dave and the other one to make their way into the room. I smiled even bigger at them as they stood, paralyzed by their own stupidity.
“To our lovely hostess, Nicolette, who has opened her beautiful home so that we could all celebrate and ring in the New Year here.” A round of applause and glass clinking. I beamed graciously and went on, “Who has opened her heart — not to mention her wallet — to start up Toronto’s premier interior design magazine.” More clapping. A few laughs and hoots and whistles. I smiled, nodded in agreement. “And, who — as I just discovered — has opened her mouth and let my fiancée, ad-man David Salyszyn, put his penis in it. That is, indeed, how you get ‘ahead’ at Sweet Home Magazine!” The room got a little quiet after that. Jesus, don’t these people have a sense of humour? “Happy New Year. Don’t drink and drive. And go fuck yourselves! Or each other!” I bellowed. Then I slugged back my champagne, smashed the empty glass on the floor, and walked out the door to hail a cab.
Dave followed me. When he tried to get in the cab with me, I yelled “Get away from me, creep! I don’t know you!” and the cab driver threatened to call the cops. I went back to our condo, gathered up a shitload of Dave’s stuff — books, clothes, his laptop — and hucked it out the eighth-storey window into the alley.
By the time he showed up, I had already packed my bags, booked a hotel room, pissed on the memory foam king-sized mattress, threw up on the white suede couch, and jammed his Italian leather shoes in the garburator. Within days, I’d sold my engagement ring, found my own place, and slammed that chapter of my life shut.
But it must be Mercury retrograde or upside down Uranus or some other cosmic clap going around these days, because even the things I think I’ve slammed shut have a way of creaking back open. On the afternoon of New Year’s Eve, my phone sings Green Day’s “Basket Case.” In the headspace I’m in, I shouldn’t answer it, but I do. Because I’m a glutton for punishment.
“Hey, stranger. It’s me, Dave. It’s so good to hear your voice.”
All I said was hello.
“How’s the Motherland treating you? How are you? Everyone here really misses you.”
It starts off cordial and small talky. A little annoying, but comfortable, which is how I’d characterize our relationship at its finest. Then it veers off into the douchebag ditch, our relationship at its core.
“I have news,” he says, his voice soft and cautious, like he’s tiptoeing. “I wanted you to hear it from me. I’m getting married.”
“That’s nice. I’m sure you and Nicolette will be very amused.” I gaze at the snowdrift which has crept up to molest the bottom edge of my bedroom window.
“No,” he says. “Look, Stacey, Ami and I, we’re —”
And then I just start roaring.
“It was all very organic,” Dave sputters. “It’s like the Universe just —”
“That wacky fuckin’ Universe! It has such a knack for this kind of thing,” I say, still half-cackling. “And talk about timing! Man, that universe of yours just nails the timing. Ami must be some proud of her manifesting powers these days. Betcha she stuck a picture of you up on her vision board, right there next to the big honkin’ princess-cut diamond ring she’s been trying to attract for six years.”
“Look, I swear, nothing was going on between Ami and me while we were together, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“Know what, Dave? I don’t actually give a flying fiddler’s fuck either way. Thanks for the call. I wish the two of you all the happiness you deserve.” Which I roughly calculate to be not one goddamn iota.
“Stacey, I —”
“My name
is Crow,” I coo. “Give my sincere disregards to your fiancée. Good luck with all that.”
It is deeply unsatisfying to hang up on somebody with a tap of the end call icon. Cranking out a thunderous, maniacal “Caaaaaaaaaaaaw!” right into the other person’s ear before biffing the phone into the back of the closet, on the other hand, is not without its pleasures. And I’ll take whatever I can get right now. The friendless, homeless, hairless, end-of-life trajectory taking shape here is not the swan song I expected. And the only thing I have at my disposal for misery reduction is the chipped-off two-thirds of a joint stashed in my purse from my birthday.
In sheer spite of the weather, I go for a walk to The Wharf. Mama got me all new winter gear for Christmas because she didn’t think my black leather pointy-toed high-heeled Gucci boots and my white three-quarter-length shearling coat — among the only pieces of clothing from my former life that I couldn’t bear to sell before I left — were gonna cut it out here.
“You’ll look some cute when they find you a week later, camouflaged in the snow like a friggin’ polar bear, frozen dead in a ditch after snapping your ankle on a walk down The Wharf!” she said, when I told her I didn’t need any new winter clothes. “And those flimsy little glitter gloves? What were you thinking?” I can’t bring myself to tell her the story of how I stole those gloves from the bin at the mall after my birthday, even though we could both use a laugh. I throw them in the garbage instead.
Now I am the reticent owner of a gargantuan lime-green parka, a pair of silver moon boots, and bright blue snow pants. To top the ensemble off, Mama went to her friend, Betty Who Knits, and got me a red-and-white striped wool hat, a yellow and orange zigzagged wool scarf, and a “pair” of wool mitts, the left one pink with purple polka dots and the right one purple with pink hearts. She didn’t need to spend money on me like that. I’ll likely only get one winter out of the stuff.
“Shut up,” she said, “or I’ll have you buried in it.”
So, here I am trekking to The Wharf looking like something Picasso threw up. But I’m warm and comfortable enough to not curse at every snowflake in sight. Warm and comfortable enough to stop for a little rest in a snowbank on the side of the road, where I spark up my doobie. It’s not long before I’m deep in the throes of some wide-eyed stoner wonder. Enthralled by the way the piles of whiteness contrast with the tough, tenacious greenery. Mesmerized with how the blue shadows on the ground are edged with the sharp sparkle of sunlit diamonds in the snow. I notice the space. The silence. Until a big black crow comes flailing out of the woods and lands on the telephone wire that stretches overhead as he lets out a wicked string of clicks and caws. I click and caw right back at him.
They’re not just noisy, beady-eyed scavengers with a penchant for anything shiny. They’re better problem solvers than the average snot-nosed human kid. They learn the tweety dialects of other birds so that they know what they’re saying to each other, and they mimic those sounds just to fuck with the neighbours sometimes. When one of their own dies, they have funerals. They gather together in the same tree, and holler in unison, and if the dead bird was important, other murders will come from all over to pay respects. And wild crows don’t actually even steal and stash shiny things. They are too busy just trying to survive to be bothered with stealing anything they can’t eat or make a nest with. They are practical creatures. It’s only the young, foolish, spoiled ones that are thieves.
When I start thinking I can communicate with the woodland creatures, I am baked enough. Two spit-dabbed fingers pinch out the cherry on the joint. I awkwardly push and pull myself to my feet, stash the stubbed out spliff in the pocket of my new coat, and stroll down the road to The Wharf, as I consider my options for how to spend what might be my final New Year’s Eve. I could go be depressed with Allie at the General Hospital in Town. Or go be nuts with Char and Horatio at the Regional, in Town, Town. I could join Mama for a meeting with Jacinta, the lawyer down the road, about how to screw Sarah Spenser’s plans, before she heads off to scrub toilets. I could sit alone in my closet, wrapped in an old flannel shirt, eating one of the dozen pans of broc-o-glop that Mama hyper-efficiently assembled and froze on Christmas Day, before I even got out of bed.
Or I could try and hitch a ride into the KoC dance that everybody and their dog will be at tonight. I could go there and hang out with Willy and Chrissy. Probably run into Duke the Puke and Becky Chickenshit. Maybe even Weasel Tobin, or one of his kids, all named Weasel Tobin Jr. by their different mamas. I could go there and pretend to try to not make a scene, and then end up making the most scenic scene all these yahoos have ever seen.
Remember Crow Fortune and how she showed up, all bald and dolled up at the New Year’s dance before she died? How she commandeered the DJ booth and got on the mic to give some toasts. A toast to Willy Gimp and Chrissy Parsons for her raging addictions and his man-whore martyr complex. A toast to Duke the Puke for keeping his secret identity as a clap-spreading creepazoid so well concealed for twenty years. A toast to Becky Chickenshit for marrying that guy, and playing a supporting role in wrecking her in public for no good reason. And a toast to Peggy Fortune, for being a conniving old bulldozer who managed to bury whatever it is she knows about the disappearance of Smart Alec Spenser good and goddamn deep. Then, good ol’ Crow smiled and told everybody to drive safe and go fuck themselves, and let out a wicked Caaaaaw as she swooped out the back door. That Crow Fortune. She sure was a riot, wasn’t she?
But I’m too sick for swooping and scene-making. I’m lucky to get out of bed, let alone out of the house. Since Christmas, my guts can’t handle so much as the smell of booze, which is a most unfortunate turn of events because my whole plan of living out the rest of my days in a blaze of impulsive, outrageous, scandalicious, truth-bombing glory relied very heavily on considerable doses of liquid courage. That plan also failed to take into account how much energy Parry and Ziggy and Fuzzy would sap out of me. And I didn’t think I’d be so alone.
My big silver moon boots plod through the foot and a half of snow piled up on the road down to The Wharf. Old Betty may have the gaudiest taste in colours known to man, but she knits some cozy mitts. And if I do happen to fall in a ditch, they’ll find me pretty quick, in all my riotous rainbow glory. Mama, ever the pragmatist.
[…]
There is not a breath of wind, even down near the water. The brightly shining sun is almost enough to trick you into believing that it might not be cracking cold out. The wharf itself looks too snowy and slippery to be worth the risk of walking my stoned ass up on it today, so I walk my stoned ass down the beach a bit farther and settle for the lower view, closer to the shore. Long, salty spindles of ice cling to the concrete sides of the wharf, pleasantly distorting the graffiti letters beneath them, as the dark blue water gently sloshes around the swaths of opaque slush on its surface. Too early for any nice glacial clampers to have formed, or for any of the big bergs from the ocean to be visible out where the mouth of the Great Bras d’Or calls to the frigid ocean. Up on top of the wharf, out near the edge, a movement catches my eye, a bit of a burgundy blur. Then, a little splash. And another. And another. Snow and ice and stoned ass be damned. I’m nosy.
The man on the wharf is wearing a burgundy dress and chucking rocks into the water. Technically, it’s a robe he’s wearing. And those aren’t rocks. They’re live lobsters, which he quickly and precariously un-bands before launching them into the cold, sloshing water.
I didn’t even know there was a Buddhist monastery tucked away on the edge of Cape Breton Island until I moved to Toronto and started hanging around with the Viva Rica super juice hawkers, who were always on a perpetual quest for the latest, greatest path to peace, love, and new trinkets to prove just how enlightened they were. Naturally, Ami knew all about it because some New Age shiny happy guru-type was on Oprah pushing a book about how she overcame all the negative vibes around her, and apparently, a key part of the process that fixed her entire life was spending a week in retreat with a
Buddhist teacher at a monastery on some magical, healing, hallowed little Canadian island called Cape Breton. And bam! That monastery was besieged by throngs of flakes on a mad mission to find the bright white light of bliss up in the woods Down North.
Ami actually went to the monastery nestled deep in the hills of my homeland last year, but her retreat only lasted three days because they didn’t have Wi-Fi. Or lattes. Or any hot young monks. And because the great Buddhist teacher that the Oprah chick gushed about wasn’t in the habit of giving personal teachings to every random grinning ditz who showed up at the monastery. And, as it turns out, Buddhism is a bit of a downer, what with all the suffering and sitting and silence and such.
“You crusty little cocksucker!” The man grunts as he jerks his left hand back with a shake, and hucks a sprawling-clawed lobster over the edge of the wharf with his right. He bows a mechanical bow, mumbling something about merit and being of benefit and freeing all beings from the ocean of Samsara as he watches the crusty little cocksucker sink. He stands there for a minute rubbing his pinched thumb, hesitating to pluck another from the bucket.
I stand there, debating whether to engage him in some perfunctory chit-chat, like a good little rural busybody, or pretend he’s invisible, like a good little urban sophisticate.
“You’re welcome to help me. This gesture is meant to benefit all sentient beings,” he says over his shoulder, as he gingerly plucks another lobster from the bucket, whips off the claw bands, and tosses it off the wharf. “But these guys aren’t particularly appreciative of the liberation process. Not yet anyway.”
Not appreciative of going from the balmy tank at the grocery store to the cold as a witch’s tit Bras d’Or? Imagine that.
