The Spectacular

by Zoe Whittall

  “Don’t tell your father, don’t tell your cousins—this is our secret. Our shame.” Ah, shame. There it was. She pulled into our driveway.

  “But why should we be ashamed? None of those women on the hill seemed ashamed.”

  “Don’t ask stupid questions.”

  My father was painting the porch, a cigarette lolling in his mouth. He turned to wave, and my mother waved back brightly. I raised a limp hand, smiling but more to myself. I had this secret with my mother. It felt grown-up, like I was a part of something bigger.

  Then my mother put her hand on my knee, and I expected a wink or a meaningful look, but all she said was, “You should wear a little lipstick, you know—you’ll never find a man in those dungarees.” And then she leaned in closer to my ear and said, “And I know you’re not like your sister. You’ll be a good girl until you’re married.”

  She got out of the car before I could say anything back. I was the good girl. I was mostly quiet, got good grades, and knew from a young age that complaining yielded more things to complain about. But I was not always going to be a good girl.

  I watched my father climb down the ladder, unsteadily, and wished briefly he would fall. Then I felt terrible for that thought and made the sign of the cross.

  She kissed my father’s cheek on her way into the house.

  “How was lunch?”

  “Delightful,” she said.

  After a few more minutes of questions, of me being too honest about my conflicted feelings, I could tell I wasn’t giving the investigators what they were after.

  “So, you gave him all your money, but you don’t regret it?” said the one cop.

  “Well, it wasn’t much. And I don’t believe in currency or hoarding wealth to be more powerful.”

  “Even though you saw him accrue possessions that he preached against?”

  “I wouldn’t say he preached. I grew up Catholic. He was gentle in his teachings, and he could be reasoned with. He accepted that he had contradictions.”

  “Did he?” At this point, Miranda couldn’t hide her disdain. We had gotten to the point where every question she asked had a tinge of sarcasm or frustration.

  Finally, they told me I could leave.

  “Thank you for your time, Car— I mean, Juniper,” Miranda said, grasping my hand weakly.

  A strand of her greying hair was stuck to her glossed lips. I touched my own lip to try to get her attention, but she turned away.

  Outside the police station, the air was a wall of sponge, humid and unmoving, the hot centre of a July afternoon. I stuck my hands inside the pockets of my cotton shift dress, fingertips still sticky with ketchup. I was supposed to meet my friend Sarah for tea, our weekly sharing session, which was basically like agreeing to act as each other’s therapist. Lately I’d been talking all about my failure at motherhood. Sarah was gentle, my closest friend at the centre for over ten years now, but I could tell she didn’t have much patience with me when I brought up my daughter. “I don’t judge,” she said, but I felt it wasn’t true. I wasn’t up for it today.

  The police precinct was right in the middle of town. I walked a few yards down Main Street, but instead of ascending the gentle S of the curving dirt road that led back up the mountain to the centre, I turned up a residential avenue. Sticking to the shade of the overgrown trees, I continued through the neighbourhood until I reached the exit for the two-lane highway out of town. I stuck my thumb out and set my gaze on the road.

  Chapter 5

  missy

  when you’re away from friends and family for long stretches, you expect to miss them more than you actually do. By this point in the tour, my life at home seems almost theoretical. I’m beginning to understand why Cory would worry about Tom, because it doesn’t seem that we’re beholden to norms. It feels like we’re in a play: even when we’re offstage, we’re playing our parts. Everyone else is audience.

  But while the everyday people in my life back home have receded, my mother is beginning to feel more present. I’m thinking about her all the time, mistaking women on the street for her, the way I used to when she first left. It’s starting to trip me up. Of course, I’m mistaking her for women the age she was when she left. She’d look different now in middle age, but my mind can’t reconcile that.

  In fact, Cory is probably only a year or two younger than my mother was when she left. No wonder I can’t stop thinking about her—Cory. I’ve been obsessed with her since the run-in at the Baltimore hotel. I just can’t get over her unwillingness to be my friend.

  After Baltimore, she joins the tour for a week and as soon as she does both she and Tom avoid me. I get it—their kids are with Cory’s parents, and they need to rekindle things. But they don’t have to actively avoid me, and it seems quite apparent that they are. Tom didn’t even make eye contact during the last show, or crack any jokes or riff in any way. He played like he was recording a record. I’m beginning to have flashes from high school, that purposeful exclusion that can make you feel like a speck of dirt. And it’s beginning to hurt my feelings.

  Thus it has become my mission to be likable, fun, and perfectly relaxed, even though I am none of those things. Before sound check a few shows later in Charlotte, North Carolina, I duck out to a small health food store a few blocks away from the venue and buy Cory a soy milk smoothie and some vegan cookies. These are the kind of things that are hard to come by on tour. There were days when Alan, usually our only vegan, had been surviving on Taco Bell bean burritos and plain burger buns with a sloppy centre of lettuce, tomato, and ketchup.

  I see Cory at sound check, sitting with the band at a cluster of cabaret tables in the middle of the bar. I was right—she only has a sad-looking iceberg lettuce salad. I hand over the gifts, trying to make it seem like I didn’t go to the health food store just for her, though it’s clear I haven’t purchased anything for myself.

  “Oh,” she says, reluctantly reaching for the bag. “Thanks, Missy.” She looks pained to accept the gifts.

  “I know we’re going to dinner later but thought you might like a snack.”

  She sniffs at the smoothie. “Does it have honey? Honey isn’t vegan.” As if I don’t know that. But I keep smiling like an idiot. “No, no, of course no honey. All vegan. I made the woman at the store swear on her life. And I reserved you a good cabaret table on the side stage for the show,” I add.

  She sips her smoothie, makes an oh it’s delicious face with a half smile, and then looks away. My cheeks redden. She’s a hard nut to crack. Tom leans over and takes a sip of the shake and nods at me.

  “Thanks, Missy,” he says.

  Tom and I are called onstage to check our mics. I hover near him as he tightens his snare drum. He glances up at me, and then toward Cory in the empty venue, who is sitting at the table pretending to read a magazine while surreptitiously surveying us.

  “Look, Cory isn’t easily won over, once she’s decided you aren’t trustworthy. It’s her thing.”

  “You know I’m trustworthy!”

  “I know, I know. I just don’t think she wants to be your friend,” Tom says. “I know that’s hard since you want everyone to like you.”

  “What? I don’t care about being liked.” Why does it sound like a dig?

  “It’s important to you. To be cool. To be accepted.”

  “I really don’t care that much, and it’s so strange that you assume that. I mean, I care that you like me, and that we all get along. Sometimes I feel like the only person who cares that everyone in the band gets along. Also, isn’t that just how humans evolved, to need each other, to want to be around each other, for survival? You make it sound like I’m a fucking teenybopper when maybe I’m just a social human being.”

  Tom appears to think about that, but doesn’t respond. He taps his drum with his brushes, looks toward the sound guy at the boards. He clearly isn’t going to explain.

  “I don’t get girls sometimes,” I say, and walk off to get my cello.

  That isn�
�t really true. It’s just easier to say than to explain why a lot of girls don’t like me. Girls resent the ones who like to fuck and don’t have hang-ups about it. In high school I remember how Gabby, rumoured to be the sluttiest one in our grade, was treated so poorly. She had this gorgeous, long red curly hair and she could swear exquisitely at anyone who crossed her. I secretly admired her, despite my not having grown into my own sexuality until later in the game. Cory’s feminist sneers are just another flavour of the same shit.

  I sit down in my cello chair, set the mic up, and prepare to do my sound check following Tom. When he’s done, I reach out with my bow and tap his arm as he’s leaving. “She just thinks I’m a slut, even though she wrote an entire zine called Slut Bunny or whatever.”

  “She was reclaiming the word.” He says the word reclaiming like he might have to define it for me, even though I am wearing a T-shirt that says BITCH on it and obviously understand the reclaiming concept very well.

  “Exactly. So why not, you know, stick up for actual sluts? She should like me.”

  Tom sighs and I swear he almost rolls his eyes. “Cory is a lot older than you,” he says, fishing a granola bar out of his army bag and throwing it my way. “Eat some protein. The gig tonight is important.” Sometimes Tom is so very not punk rock. “Are you going to forget about Cory and be on your game tonight?”

  “Yes, Dad,” I say.

  We drive back to the Comfort Inn on the outskirts of town to get dressed and grab dinner, and on the way back to the venue we see a little midway set up in a parking lot. We’re in a riverside suburb called Gastonia. I slow down for a jaywalking group of children, faces obscured by cotton candy, bookended by tired-looking parents. The garish lights of the rides, the electronic pings and shouts from the midway games, they call to me. I pull up on the shoulder and order the band out.

  “We have time for one or two rides before call time!”

  Everyone piles out, except Tom, who checks his wristwatch. “I don’t know. We shouldn’t be late. The reps will be there.”

  Everyone stands awkwardly, arms crossed. Alan lights a cigarette. We all look at Gord, our manager, who is transfixed by the Ferris wheel. “All right, kids, let’s have a little fun. Half an hour, that’s it. Promise to rally back in plenty of time!”

  The county fair was my favourite weekend of the year as a kid. The wind in my hair on rides, the livestock in the show barns, playing impossible games to win stuffed animals. Taylor (the only kid my age at the commune) and I used to be allowed to run around all afternoon. This parking lot set-up was the urban version of a fair, but the blinking lights and the Ferris wheel high in the sky against the setting sun still worked a childlike magic on me.

  The band isn’t as transformed by it, clumped together and staring at the rides they think are too small and boring. Passersby stare at Billy’s blue hair. Everything about the fair reminds me of my childhood. I look at the band, all city kids, and realize maybe they’re all wearing thrift-store clothes but aren’t used to being around working-class people. This was the biggest culture shock when I moved to the city from Sunflower. None of the kids from my rural elementary school ever had any money. The fair was our biggest yearly event. Undeterred, I buy us a strip of tickets and convince Cory to ride the Ferris wheel with me. Shockingly, she agrees. It seems like a great idea until we get stuck at the top, when the carny pauses the ride to unload a sick kid. We swing back and forth to the loud, unnerving creaking of the carriage, our sneakers hanging in the air.

  “Are you afraid of heights?” I ask, glancing sideways at Cory’s hands gripping the safety bar.

  “I guess a little.” She grips and releases her fingers on the bar. She has a heart tattooed below the knuckle of her middle finger.

  “I love it. It feels like flying,” I say, swinging my legs a little to make the carriage move even more, but then I stop when Cory lets out an involuntary yelp.

  “Sorry,” I say.

  I look down and find the guys, Alan and Billy getting into a little cage to ride the Zipper, Jared and Tom playing a shooting game, Gord in line for a beer.

  “What is it like, being the only girl on tour?” Cory asks. “Like for real. The guys aren’t here, so be honest. Is it hard?”

  The question feels like a trap, or a test, but I also want to answer properly, to win the game of getting her to like me.

  “I guess?”

  “How do you deal with harassment? You must be hit on all the time.”

  I wish it didn’t make me so pleased to hear her say that. I hook my ankles together to keep from swinging my legs again.

  “I don’t know, I’m pretty tough. I can tell someone off pretty well. And also, I usually have to make the overtures. The guys rarely put in the effort.”

  “No doubt,” she says, in a way that is perhaps pejorative. “I just feel like I wouldn’t be able to handle it, worrying about my safety all the time. I hate going to shows now because I always get grabbed in the pit. It sucks.”

  The ride begins to move again, and we make a couple of full rotations without speaking. I enjoy the feel of the wind as we pick up speed. But soon enough, we halt when the attendant starts letting people off and on. We are paused again at the top and I look out at Charlotte.

  “Wow, I was just saying this city is such a trash heap, but it’s so beautiful from up here.”

  “It is. So, you don’t worry about your safety?”

  “I guess I’m always onstage so I don’t get it too bad.”

  That isn’t entirely true. I’d stopped stage-diving because I was groped too much. The last time it happened, I kicked a guy in the face and it turned into quite an ordeal for the venue. But how was I supposed to be honest in this conversation? I have quick reflexes. I broke a guy’s finger once for grabbing my ass. His grimace and girlish screams were so fucking satisfying. I usually tell this story as often as I can, as a brag. But I don’t think Cory will buy my bravado.

  “I think it’s important women stick together, you know,” she says.

  “I agree. That’s why I want to be your friend so badly.”

  “Right, right.”

  I glance at her, see her frown. Cory makes me feel like I should be worried, keep my guard up, and the guys make me feel like I’m just one of them. Carefree. Wild. Though that could never be true, either. The Guns N’ Roses ballad “Patience” starts to play as our carriage begins to move, then again jolts to a stop.

  “Now that I’m a mother, I just feel so much less able to put up with men’s bullshit,” she says. “It really makes you think about what’s important, putting in the work, you know? I don’t want my daughter to have to deal with the same shit we do, and that’s on us.”

  Cory’s number-one annoying quality is when she starts sentences with Now that I’m a mother, as though no one else can know or feel anything as profound as she does.

  “Is it, on us? Or is it also on men? There’s only so much we can do if they don’t hear us.”

  “Well, I’m not going to die waiting for that utopian fantasy to happen,” she says.

  “I feel like I want to be your friend, and you want me to agree with everything you say.”

  “Oh, Missy, Missy. Let me give you a little bit of advice,” she says, as our carriage jolts its way down to the loading platform. The GN’R guitar solo blankets the lit-up ground below us. “You want everyone to like you so much, all girls do at your age, desperate for approval all the time. But it’s such a relief to let go of that. Trust me. Do what you want to do, stop giving a fuck about guys.”

  “That’s literally my whole ethos.”

  “It’s what you say. It’s not how you act.”

  The attendant opens the safety bar, and we slide off the bench. Cory jumps down the rusting metal stairs like she’s escaping captivity, and into Tom’s arms. He’s holding a very flammable-looking hot-pink bunny. The night is cooling off. I feel itchy from Cory’s criticisms.

  I grab Billy from the beer lineup so we can leav
e.

  “What’s the matter? Did you realize Cory’s a class-A cunt while stuck on a ride with her?”

  “I guess. C’mon, let’s go.”

  Late that night, our post-show binge takes us through the rest of Kiki’s stash and every pore in my body feels filthy. I have no patience, no kindness for anyone. I’m feeling homesick. In the hotel all by myself, I pull out my journal and am writing the date when I realize I never called Granny back. I leave a back-door message on Granny’s voice mail. I say in a fake-sober voice, “Granny, yes, I can look after your place when you go on your trip. I can check in and stuff. Water plants. Let’s chat about it soon. I’ll call back tomorrow. I hope you’re okay.” I gave her Tom’s pager number for emergencies, but knew she probably wouldn’t understand how it worked.

  I flop back onto the bed, too tired to get up, too wired to sleep. I pull out the green notebook and begin to dial so we’ll have a hookup when we get to Nashville tomorrow. It’s Conrad, a white guy with dreads who only owns Fishbone T-shirts and talks too much. He’ll have to do.

  Chapter 6

  carola

  i used to hitchhike all the time. When we first started Sunflower, our car worked only half the time and so hitching was how we got around. One time Bryce and I even hitchhiked on boats, making our way down from Manitoba in the summertime. I had collections of names and faces in old journals, random people we met along the way.

  When I stuck my thumb out now, I felt the wind question my arm with its strength. It wasn’t a day for running away, a storm about to break. And I wasn’t sure what I was going to do if anyone actually stopped.