We’re trying to make up our minds on that one. It’s Dave’s dream offer, to move back north and work with his cousin there, doing this building he took the course on. But then there’s Jenny to think of. And my job. And of course I wouldn’t say it, but there’s Josie herself too.
I says, “Are you eating?” She looks like a thread. She don’t answer.
“Josie?”
She looks at me. I can see she’s in there.
I says, “Want me to read you Sally’s letter that just come?”
Josie’s eyes brighten up.
Sally writes a good old-school actual letter. Sends us all the dirt on what’s new up north. I got her pink envelope out of my purse. Sally’s big round writing on it. I start reading.
Dave’s dad witches water. He told these Walmart people they were going to hit a big aquifer if they dug where they were planning on. So they don’t pay no attention, eh, and they dig this great big excavation. No water. Think the old man’s a crackpot. Well, the crew gets there the next morning to pour the footings and what they got is an Olympic size swimming pool. I told him it was the Lord’s doing, as He don’t hold with Walmart.
I look up from the letter and I says to Josie, “Sally figures she knows the exact opinions of God Almighty on any topic you can name.”
Josie says, “Hardware man?”
I looked at Josie severe.
I says, “Sally is buying more shelf brackets and sandpaper than what ten people need in their life. And it’s your fault, talking to her so wild about that hardware man. She gets dressed up to buy a bag of nails.”
Josie just sits and smiles. She looks out the window. I can see her watching the shapes of the clouds. They’re running through the air today, up in the wind.
“What do you see up there?”
Her eyes are bright.
“Do you see your hotel?”
Josie makes a little move with her hands. I think she wants me to keep on, so I try. This is not what I do easy, but I look up at the clouds with her and I says, “Wow, there’s your hotel up there! Look, it’s painted up a nice bright white. There’s the blue lake shining behind it! I see they got all the white sheets hung out flapping on the line. Won’t they smell nice! Oh, and there’s sailboats in the lake, having a brisk ride today, ain’t they?”
Josie sits there with her face to the sky. She says, “Pie lady.” We talk about which cloud is the lady and where’s this pie in the sky.
Josie’s different now. But on the other hand, she’s no different. The basic her is right there. And nothing else.
It’s like when they take and melt down ore for gold.
“God is like a refiner’s fire,” according to Sally. She’ll say that when things get rough.
Struck me, and I couldn’t help thinking about the fire in a refinery. Metal works, steam pouring out the stacks. Glory hole of the furnace, raging hot white-orange centre of it blazing like the sun. I could hear the way a roaring hot fire sounds. Smell the smoke. And the ore getting melted in that awful heat was our brains. We were going to come out solid gold because the hottest centre of that fire was God. Weird idea, but I remember it made a certain amount of sense, during the trial.
Me and Jenny seen a thing on TV, too. How the stars get formed, in almighty heat and commotion.
22.
I WAS THINKING ABOUT THAT, as a matter of fact. I was at my desk at work, staring into space. My mind had went to the fire and explosions up in the universe and how God must be in them, or whatever you like to call It that makes the stars. The heat that goes into making anything new, that’s what I was thinking about. Getting your niece or your friend or yourself a new chance, a new habit, a new way, a new thought—anything new at all—is hot work. You feel like you’ve fell into a vat and got smelted.
Dirk walked in.
“It’s part of your journey, Rose. It’s very common for people with your background of abuse. The key is to understand it and to learn from it, not to berate yourself.”
That’s what Meredith said, after everything had happened with Dirk.
Frances told me that she had struggled with the same problem herself in the past.
Marg just said, “Oh no!”
And Sally, she brought Dave’s dad all the way down from Strone in her T-Bird to set me straight.
I’m getting ahead here. Trying to skip over what happened with Dirk. Avoidance. I wish I didn’t have to out with that. I feel so bad about it. Wish I hadn’t went through that particular fire or dragged Dave through it.
Poor Dave, he didn’t deserve to get smelted.
I wound up kicking Dave out.
“What?” Yous are saying, “What for?”
Well, there’s two ways to look at that. The way I was looking at it at the time, I had my reasons. I said I was sick of his socks on the floor. I said the fizz was gone out of it.
Of course, the way I see it now, that’s all bull. You can step over a lot of socks, or even pick them up and wash them, and still be getting a good bargain, with a man as kind and close as what Dave had been to me. Wasn’t like he was getting no free ride. He was doing his share other ways. And what the hell is fizz anyways? Nothing but adrenaline.
And the guy I met.
Okay, here I go. I have to tell yous about Dirk. He was what Dirk rhymes with, as it didn’t take my friends long to tell me.
Dirk, he was good-looking if you like muscle. He had shiny black hair and big shoulders. He come into the office at McIlveen’s Plumbing and Heating and told me I was cute.
Now, take even that right there, eh? That should’ve told me something.
Dave, he said things like I’m a good aunt. But somebody that says I’m cute has got to be either hard up, blind, or else just lying to get some, quick.
Now, Dirk, he was never hard up, on account of all the women that like pipes. And he wasn’t carrying no white cane.
He starts coming into the office, paying attention to me that old way. Not the way I’d knew lately, where you pay attention to the actual person, see if they’re a good aunt or what they are. Nothing like that. Just the old shit I was used to before.
But that right there is my weak spot, eh. It’s the bent key that just fits right into my bent lock.
Dirk, he knows a bent lock a mile off.
I’m sitting there with somebody’s bill for their new drain pipe of their laundry tub in my hand, thinking about the almighty heat at the centre of things, and sort of calling it God the way Sally does.
“Behold, I make all things new.” That’s what God says, according to Sally.
I come back to planet earth, and there was a man with his shoulders pretty well filling up the door frame.
He asks me how old I am. Says I look a lot younger. He would have never guessed thirty-four.
And then he waits a day or two, eh. You can tell them operators because they’re not in a hurry. He just takes his work order form, gives me a look, and trots his firm ass out to van number three.
Then he strolls in another time and tells me I got a rich woman’s type of a nose. I’m so stupid listening to that baloney, but I can’t seem to help it.
Couple of days later, I’ve got pretty fingers. I look at them, after he walks out, holding an invoice for a shower installation. They ain’t pretty, but they sure are shaking.
The other fellows, when they come in, they all just say, “G’day, Rosie. How’s she going?” They hand me their paperwork, tell me about their last stupid customer.
“If this clay pots woman calls again, tell her we’ve went out of business.”
(That’s a pottery teacher and the kids she teaches. They keep getting clay down the sink. Can’t remember to wash their hands in a bucket, eh, and dump it in the garden. Stick their hands in the sink. Clay runs down and hardens up somewheres halfway to the sewer.)
; “I’m going to take and throw a stick of dynamite down there the next time,” Fred says.
I can laugh with these guys. I can feel what it is to talk normal friendly to a man. I tell myself that’s good and the other is bad. I try to hold on to the good way.
But I’m starting to watch out the window for van number three. I’m waiting for the way the air feels different soon as he walks in. There’s a charge to it. What Meredith calls “heightened intensity.”
It’s a shot of pure adrenaline, is what it is. And I’m the old junkie, back-sliding into loving that high.
“Everyone in this group was raised in a charged atmosphere. You must recognize that you will miss that heightened intensity. You will be tempted to get into situations of heightened intensity again.”
Meredith used to say that all the time, back when I was in my ripping magazines and throwing mouthwash phase, when I couldn’t stand peace and quiet.
I said to myself, “Dirk’s just looking for some, quick. He don’t give a shit about me. Dave, he really does.” But the way my gut seized whenever Dirk come through that door! I ate his stupid compliments.
I did try. It’s true. I went for long walks by myself, trying to get sorted out. I knew I was getting sucked in. I knew it was worse than stupid. I knew it was mean to Dave and wrong for myself and bad for Jenny. I knew.
But then Dirk would be back there, filling the door again.
Of course Dave didn’t make my heart pound like that. He never did. And anyway, your heart don’t keep doing that once you know somebody.
By the time Dirk’s up to telling me I’ve got the tits of a young teenager, I’m beat.
He asks me to meet him, secret, at his place. And I nod.
The old rush is right there. I listen to him tell me I’m the hottest little thing. Feeling special, feeling the buzz. There is something about a secret sex life. The way it pulls you in. It’s exciting. Once you’re creeping up the side stairs, there is no amount of good ideas or decent feeling that can stop you. It’s as bad as drinking. It’d been over a year for me, since I felt that high.
I’m going past all the beat-up doors in Dirk’s building. My knees are weak, the world’s lit up odd. It’s quite a feeling. It is. There’s no two ways about it. A secret date with somebody new, somebody good-looking who don’t care what he says, to the point where he calls me cute, that’s quite a feeling.
I thought back to when I first met Dave, how it was just good to get a hug. Now I convinced myself that that with Dave wasn’t the real thing. No fizz to it. This here with Dirk had the old buzz, all right.
Dirk was in there waiting for me in his boxers, with a beer in his hand. I will say for Dirk that he did have quite the chest and arms on him. He peeled my stuff off slow.
For about thirty minutes, I felt like a movie star.
Then, of course, I felt like a piece of shit. Crawling home, telling Dave I’d went to see Josie.
Then the whole week after. Not going near Josie for fear of them eyes of hers looking at me. Feeling like garbage in the can again. Not being able to stand what Dave would think of me if he knew. Doing it again anyways, like I’m an addict. It went on like that for a month.
I kicked Dave out so he wouldn’t find out. I couldn’t stand him to know what a piece of crap I really was. I told him to go ahead and take that job back north.
That was a sorry scene. Dave asking me what he could do different. Me telling him he should’ve picked his damn socks off the floor, knowing all the time that it ain’t socks-related.
It’s all about my twisted insides. I know that, even when I’m yelling he don’t like to go out enough. I know it’s all besides the point. I know I’m the point. I know and I say them things anyways, and I’m so ashamed I’m sick.
Last thing he says to me, standing in the door with his boots in his hand, he says, “What are you going to tell Jenny?”
Boy, was that the Question of the Week! How was I going to answer to them blonde question marks? I could see her running into my place expecting to find him.
I didn’t go to see her that week.
The one and only thing I done right that month was I went to Group.
I drag myself upstairs, the Tuesday after Dave left, and I’m feeling lower than slobber. Every stair step I climb is telling me: I’ve screwed up again. I’ve screwed up again. Just when it looked like I might’ve learned something and grew, I screwed up again.
Meredith, she said all that stuff about it’s not uncommon for people of my background.
Now, if you remember, I seen a sour look on her face a number of times, when you might’ve thought she’d be pleased. The opposite thing happened this night here. I told Meredith I screwed up my relationship. I’d made a mess of my life again. I’d lost everything that I thought I had gained. Forgot everything I thought I’d learned. I told her I felt like a piece of garbage stinking in the can. And this little bit of a smile went acrost her face!
She looked at me more that night than she ever done before. She smiled at me way more.
Marg had her mouth shut tight during break. Darlene had hers working. Tammy sat and looked at me like I’d just fell off a train and my head was missing.
I says, “What are you looking at?”
Tammy says, “Nothing.” Picks up a magazine. Keeps on looking at me.
Darlene, she’s saying Dave was such a nice man. Give her and Tammy and Marg and Sally a duck each last fall, all cleaned nice. Sat in the courtroom with us. Was good to Jenny, working steady, had a truck that wasn’t that old.
I says, “I don’t want to talk about it!”
Tammy finally says, “If I could find a man like Dave, I wouldn’t be going back to Peter.”
23.
I THOUGHT THAT PARTICULAR TUESDAY couldn’t be any worse than what it was until I heard that. “WHAT!”
Sitting in her wheelchair, Josie sometimes said, “There’s hope.” But you really had to wonder. When Tammy let out that she was going back to Asshole, I felt like there was zero hope for anything.
There’s no hope for an idiot who will turn around and walk right back into a mess like that, and there’s no hope for her boy or for her girl. That’s what I thought, sitting on the plastic chair there during break that night. There is no hope for stupid Tammy or for stupid me, or for Jenny or her children’s children until God Almighty gets fed up enough to end the frigging world.
“Ah, Tammy, you’re not!” Marg says.
And then you know what Darlene done? She says, “Tammy, don’t do it! I’ll give you the dog.”
Now, of course, Tammy can’t take the dog in the apartment she’s in. But she stopped and looked at Darlene.
“We’ll trade,” Darlene says. “You come and live in my place. You walk the dog regular, every day, morning, and night. Meghan and Matthew can hold the leash. You got to feed the cat up on the counter so the dog don’t eat his kibble. Or you can stay where you are and we’ll say he’s your dog and you and the kids got to look after him, only he sleeps at my place.”
Tammy sort of hesitated there a minute.
Marg seen her chance and jumped in. She said, “What if I come over and stay with you? I’m sleeping on the couch right now anyhow. There’d be no law against having a big fat pet like me in your building, would there?”
Tammy says, “They want me to fill out a tax form.”
Marg says, “You can do that, Tammy.”
Tammy says, “Peter always done it.”
“Assho—Peter ain’t the only person on earth can fill out a tax form.”
Tammy says, “I wouldn’t know where to start.”
Marg says, “Tammy,” she says, “we’ll take a look at her, together, at your kitchen table.”
Eventually Tammy said all right, she’d try.
I sat and looked at her. She’d said all right. All r
ight, she wasn’t going back to Asshole! She was willing to hold on and keep trying the new way, hard as it was.
I thought, if I’d have only told these guys what stupid thing I was planning on, and let them talk me out of it…! But no, I had to keep it secret. I had to walk right into it.
That’s when I started to think about what keeping secrets will do to you.
It was so lonesome and quiet to come home. No Dave there to ask me nothing about Group. No new progress on the dollhouse. Nobody dying of thirst in a desert to hear about. No big boots on the mat. No arms of nobody that loves me for having kind hands or being a good aunt.
I put the kitchen light on, hung my coat up on the giraffe coat hanger Dave put up for Jenny.
And I went and got out paper and scissors. I spent a while figuring out what colour I wanted.
Yellow. I picked yellow for to write No More Secrets on. A new stepping stone.
Wished to God I’d got to that step a few weeks sooner. Told them about Dirk instead of keeping it a frigging secret, keeping the big buzz in it to make me act foolish.
How I got to sleep that night was thinking about Josie.
Curled up in my bed in the dark, thinking of the way Josie is, a real nice comfort come over me. Josie looks up at the sky and feels us floating through space. Breathing in and breathing out. My own warm breath under the blanket. The pink air in the evening. Josie looking up at it. The dark blue night clouds, hanging in folds like the curtains of an angel’s house.
24.
IT WAS A GOOD THING Marg went to stay with Tammy right away. Marg was telling me on the phone the next day. I guess Asshole’s been after Tammy. Phoning.
But he picked the wrong night to try going any farther with it.
Poor Marg, she’s laying on Tammy’s couch looking at TV, last night, she says, along about eleven-thirty. She’s got the sound way down, and she’s just dozing off. She reaches for the remote and, Jesus, the door’s moving! Just jiggling a bit, moving in its frame, like somebody’s working at the lock.
Paper Stones Page 22
