Surface Rights

by Melissa Hardy

  “No!” Romy protested, grabbing Paisley by the hand. “Don’t, Paisley, please. It’s just my electrolytes. It’s happened before. It happens all the time. Really! Don’t call 911. I’m just shaky.”

  “You’re having heart palpitations,” Verna said. “That’s not the same thing as ‘shaky.’”

  “You don’t understand!” Romy pleaded. “All I need is a Diet Coke and a banana. It’ll fix me right up.”

  Verna and Paisley stared at her.

  “Trust me!” Romy insisted. “Diet Cokes and bananas are high in potassium. If I get some potassium, I’ll be all right. Please, Auntie Verna, if you call 911, they’re going to take me to a hospital and weigh me and put me on a drip and run all these tests and call in a psychiatrist and I’ll have to stay in a ward with crazy people and …” She looked terrified. Stricken.

  Suddenly it became clear to Verna. “You’ve been admitted before for this, haven’t you?”

  “For what?” asked Paisley.

  “She’s an anorexic,” Verna explained. “Romy! Come on now. You’ve been admitted before for this.”

  “Anorexic?” Paisley repeated. “Shit! Really? Roo? Well, she always was a fussy eater.”

  “This is beyond fussy. Romy!”

  Romy cast her eyes down. She nodded.

  “How many times?”

  Romy shrugged, not meeting Verna’s gaze.

  “How many?”

  Romy muttered something.

  “Speak up!”

  “Four times,” Romy said. “All right? Four times before I went to the Birches.”

  Paisley turned to Verna. “What’s the Birches?”

  “A rehab centre,” replied Verna. “In Guelph. She’s supposed to be there right now, but she checked herself out.”

  “Roo!”

  “Well, it was boring.” Romy defended herself. “Snacks every five minutes and you have to finish them or else. And they watch you like a hawk. You’re never alone. Not even in the bathroom. Always some gargantuan, sour-faced nurse watching, watching.”

  Verna stood and walked to the end of the bed. She took Romy’s hand in hers — it felt like a dead fish. “Romy, you’re sick,” she said. “You look like hell.”

  “Yeah, well,” said Romy glumly. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  “I’m worried about you,” said Verna. “And I don’t know what to do. My mother died in childbirth. I don’t know how to be a mother.”

  Romy snorted. “You’ve got that right!”

  “Are you sure that it’s your potassium levels are causing this?” Paisley asked.

  “Of course I’m sure. Like I said, it happens all the time.”

  Paisley turned to Verna. “Because a Diet Coke and a banana would fix that,” she said. “I played basketball in high school and that was what the coach would give us if we got shaky.”

  “So you’re absolutely, positively sure it’s your potassium levels?” Verna asked Romy.

  “One hundred percent. Scout’s honor. So help me, God,” Romy swore.

  “And are you absolutely, positively sure that will fix it?” Verna asked Paisley.

  “If it’s her potassium levels, yeah, it will,” replied Paisley.

  “Well, okay,” conceded Verna reluctantly. “But, if it doesn’t work right away, we’re calling 911. Deal?”

  “Deal! Thanks, Sis! Thanks, Auntie Verna.” Romy slumped back in the chair and closed her eyes. She looked both profoundly relieved and near to death, waxen.

  “Damn!” Verna realized.

  “What?” Paisley asked.

  “We don’t have Diet Cokes or bananas. And I just went to the bloody store.”

  “I’ve got to run out for cigarettes anyway,” Paisley offered. “I can pick up a case of Diet Coke and some bananas while I’m at it. There was some convenience store I passed coming out of Greater Gammage …”

  “The Pump and Munch,” said Verna. “That would be the closest place.”

  “Pump and Munch?”

  “Cigarettes!” Romy remembered. “Did you get me any cigarettes at the store, Auntie Verna?”

  “What do you think?” Verna asked. “Of course I didn’t.”

  “Could you get me a pack, Paisley? Please! Please!”

  “Sure,” said Paisley. “What brand?”

  “Mom’s brand,” said Romy. “Ultra-Light SuperSlim 100.”

  “Hey!” Paisley cried. “Mine, too!”

  And the girls burst into a somewhat pitch-challenged rendition of the sixties jingle: “You’ve come a long way baby, to get where you’ve got to today; you’ve got your own cigarette now, baby, you’ve come a long long way.”

  “You remembered!” Paisley cried, rapturous.

  “Of course!” said Romy. “How could I forget?” She turned to Verna. “Mom used to sing it to us at bedtime,” she told her. “It was … like … her own personal lullaby.”

  “Good times,” said Paisley.

  “Good times,” Romy agreed.

  Half an hour later, Paisley returned from the Pump and Munch with a twelve-can case of Diet Coke, a bunch of bananas, and a carton of Ultra-Light SuperSlim 100s.

  “Thanks for doing this,” Verna said.

  “She is my sister,” Paisley pointed out.

  Together they walked up the steps, across the lawn, and onto the screened-in porch. Opening the front door, Verna called up the steps to Romy, “The cavalry has arrived!” She turned to Paisley. “What are electrolytes, anyway? Are they related to phosphates?”

  “Beats me,” said Paisley.

  “Better get some ice for that Coke,” said Verna. “And a straw.”

  From deep within the study, the old English drop-dial clock told the approximate time — cottage time — in bongs; it was going on nine. Verna and Paisley sat on the porch, watching in stunned silence as darkness gathered over the lake, deepening its hue to sombre navy. To the west a band of orange edged the treeline — vibrant at first and pulsating, before fading to umber, then draining away entirely. Then colour began to desert the lake, like a crowd slowly dispersing now that the spectacle that was day had ended.

  It was Paisley who broke the silence. “Who would have ever thought eating a banana was such a big deal?”

  Verna shook her head. “It boggles the mind.”

  First there had been the lead-up: when presented with an actual banana, Romy revealed that it might not be possible for her to do such a thing as eat it. Yes, she knew she had said she would. She had thought she could. Honestly! But now … now, she wasn’t so sure. There were many reasons for this. Bananas had a lot of calories for a piece of fruit — one hundred and five for a medium! And this was a freakishly large banana. It was the biggest banana she had ever seen. To make matters worse she didn’t like bananas. Never had. It was something about their texture. And what about those stringy things, the one between the banana and its peel?

  “Phloem bundles?” Verna had asked.

  “Yeah, those,” said Romy. “They are really disgusting. They make me want to barf.”

  Then came the bargaining phase. Romy would eat a half the banana; surely half the banana was enough. It was after all a HUGE banana. No, Romy must eat the entire banana. What about a third of the banana? Romy! A deal was a deal. The whole banana.

  Once Romy had, at last, accepted the necessity of eating the whole banana, she had to psyche herself up for it. This involved eying the banana as though it were an explosive device that might detonate at any moment — as though she were an unwilling, coerced suicide bomber. It entailed shuddering, gasping as though she were hyperventilating, and one ten-minute-long freak-out complete with sobbing, shrieking, and something resembling convulsions.

  When that had run its course, Paisley tried another tack. “I know,” she said. “We’ll all of us eat a banana together. You, me, and Auntie Verna.”

  She and Verna each unpeeled a banana. Ate it.

  “Ummm, good!” said Paisley.

  “I’m not two!” Romy objec
ted, sullenly.

  “Well, you’re acting like you are,” Paisley shot back.

  Finally Romy, having played all her various cards, began to eat the banana. Actually, she began to gum, suck, and nibble the banana. Very, very slowly. Every few moments, she would stop, moan, and slump to one side, eyes squeezed shut, as though overcome by the great effort she was expending.

  In the end they had tussled over the last quarter of the banana, which Romy declared had a brown spot, rendering it inedible.

  “Only because you squeezed it!” Paisley told her.

  “Did not!”

  “Did, too!”

  “But I can’t eat it,” Romy wailed. “It’s all mushy!”

  It was when she began to make gulping, retching noises — “Ba-lug! Ba-lug!” — that Verna gave in and let her feed the rest of the banana to an enthusiastic Jude.

  “Was that ever weird!” Paisley said now.

  “Oh, yes,” Verna agreed.

  By the time the banana-eating exercise had been accomplished, it was nearly eight o’clock. The ordeal, start to finish, had taken upwards of an hour. Paisley had risen then, saying that she needed to make some phone calls, and gone downstairs. Verna had stayed with Romy until the girl had slid into a noisy doze, her breath rattling around in her boney carcass like an animal in a trap. It was only then, when Verna was relatively sure that Romy was down for the count, that she had gone rummaging in the girl’s discarded clothes for the bottle of OxyContin. After tunnelling down through several sedimentary layers of clothing — first Fern’s, then Romy’s — piled onto the floor beside the bed, Verna had surfaced with the orange prescription bottle, which she had tucked into the front pocket of her overalls. Followed by the attentive Jude, she had tiptoed from Fern’s room, leaving the door to the hall slightly ajar.

  Verna roused herself. “Are you hungry?”

  “Yes, no, maybe. Maybe a little something. You?”

  “Not really. All those bananas.” They had each eaten three to Romy’s almost one. “But maybe we should.”

  “After what we just witnessed, I’d say so. Never before have I been so convinced that eating is a good thing.”

  “A very good thing,” Verna agreed, thinking that drinking was also a very good thing — she was desperate for a cocktail. “Let’s go inside and I’ll heat something up. I’d light a fire, but I don’t remember how.”

  “Oh, I can light a fire,” said Paisley, brightening.

  While Verna poured herself a hefty vodka and tonic in the kitchen (making up for lost time), Paisley crumpled up old newspaper that Donald kept in a twig basket beside the river-stone fireplace for the purpose and placed it under the grate. She selected kindling from a galvanized tin tub to one side of the basket, arranged it on the grate, and added some more newspaper. Then she picked up the canvas log tote and walked to the kitchen. “Where’s the woodpile?” she asked.

  “On the back porch,” said Verna. “Just outside the door. Want a drink?”

  “Got any beer?”

  Beer? Verna thought. “I’m afraid not.”

  “Got some Coors in the truck,” said Paisley. “I’ll get one once I’ve got this baby going.” Suddenly she exuded an air of breezy competence. Clearly things like starting fires fell squarely within her area of expertise, her comfort zone.

  Verna opened a can of beef stew, held it upside down over a saucepan, and gave it a shake. A tube of congealed stew slid wetly into the pan. Paisley reappeared with the tote full of logs and headed back to the living room.

  As Verna broke up, then stirred the gelatinous goo into something resembling stew, Paisley stacked the wood horizontally on the grate, leaving gaps for air to pass, and alternating the stacks so that the wood formed a mesh. She checked to see if the damper was open and the draft was moving up the chimney. Then she lit the kindling and the newspaper with her lighter, and, crouching in front of the fireplace with the poker, prodded the first small licks of flame into a bona fide fire.

  She appeared once more in the kitchen door. “We’re in business!” she announced. Crossing to the sink, she rinsed her sooty hands under the tap. “I’ll get that beer from the truck. A cold one would go down good right about now.” She left by the back door. Verna poured herself another vodka and tonic — a double this time — and slopped the stew into bowls. She put the bowls on a tray, together with her drink, a pile of paper napkins, and two big spoons, and headed for the living room. Setting the tray down on the coffee table, she stood for a moment, looking at the fire Paisley had built, marvelling at how it gave sudden life to the cavernous room, lit up its dark corners and made it a place you wanted to be. Paisley wandered in with her beer. “There’s nothing like a fire,” she observed.

  Verna looked at her with surprise. “That was what your grandfather always said.”

  “Well, it’s hardly profound.”

  “I guess not.” Verna sat down on the sofa. “Who were you calling earlier?”

  A little hesitation. “My partner,” Paisley finally replied stiffly. She sat down in one of the armchairs. “To let her know I got here safely. You know.”

  “Her?” The pronoun just slipped out.

  Paisley cleared her throat nervously. She leaned forward and picked up her soup bowl. She looked uncomfortable, anxious. “Yes, her,” she said tensely. “Jill.”

  “Jill?” repeated Verna.

  “Jill. That’s her name.”

  “I see,” said Verna carefully, not sure she did. She poked around in her stew in search of vegetables and dredged up the remains of a carrot and a drab hunk of potato. Then she got it. “You’re a lesbian!”

  Stew sprayed from Paisley’s mouth.

  Verna wadded up some napkins and handed them to her. “Here you go.”

  Then, as Paisley started mopping up the chunks.

  “Why didn’t you say so?” Verna asked. “Although I guess you just can’t go up to someone and say, ‘Hi, my name’s Paisley and I’m a lesbian.’ Except maybe in a bar. A gay bar.” The real question was why Verna hadn’t put two and two together earlier? The clothing. The mannerisms. Beer. On the other hand, it wasn’t as if she had proven particularly intuitive over the years. “Still, I’m your aunt.”

  “Yeah, the aunt who yelled at me for walking on the furniture,” Paisley pointed out glumly.

  “Well, that’s hardly the same thing, is it?” Verna said. “Sexual orientation and bad manners.”

  Paisley took a swig of beer. “I guess not. Still, I didn’t know how you’d react. People can be pretty bloody narrow-minded.”

  “The way I see it, heterosexuality is no picnic. It’s not like my marriage was anything to write home about.”

  “Was? So you and Uncle Bob are divorced?”

  “Better than that,” replied Verna with a blitheness that surprised her. “He’s dead. And then some.”

  “Dead!” Paisley was awkwardly solicitous. “I’m so sorry, Auntie Verna!”

  “Don’t be,” Verna told her. “The world is a better place for him not being in it.”

  “Well, he was sort of a prick.”

  “He was a HUGE prick.”

  “Yeah, he was,” said Paisley. “Was he always that way?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “If that was the case, why did you marry him?”

  Verna laughed. “To get my M.R.S.”

  Paisley looked blank.

  “My M.R.S.” Verna repeated. “It’s a joke. Men went to university to get a B.A. Women got their M.R.S.” Then, when Paisley still looked blank. “You know. The honorific. The title. Missus. When I was a girl, you were expected to marry. Or, at least, I expected me to marry. So I did. The first person who asked me. To tell you the truth, I didn’t have a lot of choice as to whom. I was hardly the belle of the ball. Not like your mother.” This triggered a memory that yawned open like a sinkhole and into which Verna tumbled headlong: “The Boys of Summer.” Boys on foot, on bicycles and motorcycles or in the family car. Boys from all over — f
rom Beverley, Greater Gammage, Val Gagne, and Iroquois Falls, from Timmins and Cochrane, or on vacation with families from down south. And every one of them came for Fern. Not Verna. Fern.

  “So how did Uncle Bob die?” Paisley asked. “When?”

  “What?” asked Verna, distracted. “Oh. Bob. His SUV was hit by a train. Two years ago.”

  Paisley gasped. “Jesus! Really?”

  Verna nodded.

  “That’s rough!”

  “It was more surprising than anything,” reflected Verna. “I wasn’t prepared for such a thing to happen. I hadn’t seen it coming because … well, because there was no seeing it coming. Although I must admit: I had thought about it. Not the train-hitting-the-car-POW-he’s-dead thing. Just what would happen if he suddenly up and died. I sometimes find myself wondering whether my thinking about it might have caused it to happen or contributed to it happening.” She considered this for a moment, then shook her head. “No,” she concluded. “I’m not that powerful. I was, however, lucky. Lucky in this one respect, that is. Not lucky in most respects. But lucky in this.” She hesitated, then, “You know what I did with his ashes?”

  “What?”

  “I put them in a garbage bag and gave it to Winonah to put in the Dempsy Dumpster on the way to town.”

  “You didn’t!”

  “I did.”

  “Jeez, Auntie Verna,” said Paisley. “That’s pretty harsh. I wouldn’t want to get on your bad side.”

  They sat for a moment in silence, poking around in their stew.

  Then, “I asked Jill to marry me,” Paisley told her. “A civil union. Now that we can do that in Ontario.”

  “Oh? And she said yes?”

  Paisley sighed. It was a heavy sigh, phlegmatic. “Not exactly. She says I’m too conflicted. That I have to deal with my issues and get some closure before she’ll marry me. She doesn’t want somebody with so much baggage.”