We drive quietly to Bruce’s apartment, which is on a side street not far from WLHS. The apartment is sparsely furnished—a well-worn sofa and chair, low bookshelves made from wooden boards and bricks, and a number of empty wine bottles serving as candle holders. The place smells of the pipe tobacco Bruce smokes. The apartment is orderly and neat, and has a warm, homey feeling.
“Sit down. What can I get you to drink?”
“Oh, I’ve drank more than enough,” I say
“Ahh, we have to celebrate Halloween. I have a bottle of Italian sparkling wine someone gave me that you might like.”
He comes back from the kitchenette with a bottle of Asti Spumante. He uncorks it, pours the wine into tall glasses.
“Happy Halloween,” he says.
I slip the turban off my head and giggle. “I can’t believe I’ve kept this on all day.
“Oh, I think it’s been longer than that,” Bruce says.
We sip our drinks, and then Bruce gets up from the sofa to look through his record collection.
He puts on a Buffy Ste-Marie record, then pulls out a copybook from a pile on the desk, and opens it to Angie’s assignment. “Read on and tell me what you think,”
COMPOSITION FOR MR. BRUCE MCLAUGHIN
ON HALLOWEEN TERRORS
by Angie Tonnelli
Lost in a Cemetery
I’m walking happily towards my grandmother’s house with my pet on a leash, a little black sheep that is the envy of all my friends. She has short curly hair that I style every day. I call her Curly. I take good care of my pet and take her to dancing classes and dress her in the girly clothes that I have in my closet and refuse to wear. I’d want to look like Curly, but only if I were a sheep.
We walk slowly with jugs under our arms to fetch water for Grandma, admiring the fall foliage. A tall man with soft eyes says hi and he takes Curly by the hand. “Let’s go for a walk,” he says. I follow them and watch.
He takes her to the lookout on the mountain to explore the forest. He hugs her and kisses her face, her neck, and her breasts. They stop in a clearing. He embraces her and his lips touch hers. He kisses her face, and then his tongue moves up and down, past her opened blouse to her neck and her breasts, before returning to her lips, and to the inside of her mouth, until she completely lets go and falls on the leaves.
“Let’s go,” I yell. I hear wolves closing in on us, sharpening their teeth against the tall trees all around us. In the distance I hear my grandmother singing a lullaby and we run towards the farmhouse. Then Curly starts doing a dance number, showing off her small round breasts. Out of nowhere, a wolf with black teeth throws himself at the sheep.
“You look like a slut,” he says. “You should be ashamed of yourself.” I run out back where it’s dark and quiet, until the vroom vroom of a car breaks the silence and fills the air with a crescendo of doom.
The car swerves close to the farmhouse, and drops a man off. I turn my face away in fear. The man has a small forehead with the hair growing in a point and a large hooked nose. He looks like a hawk and carries a bat.
From the back door a hunter swoops in with a rifle and scares the wolf off. “I’ll smash your head like this,” the hawk yells, then smashes my water jug against the jutting rocks. The cold water splatters all over me and I jump up from the jolt.
The hunter holds Curly up by the legs, while the hawk hits her water jug with the bat until the jug smashes into pieces and blood splurts out all over Curly. The hawk speeds off and the cemetery turns dead quiet again, until the hunter takes off his coat and turns into a wolf. I scream and wake up next to the tall man, and we look for the way back but we walk and walk in circles and can’t find our way. We’re lost in a cemetery.
I scream and scream in terror until my grandmother wakes me.
The weird part of this night terror is that cemeteries are still my favourite places to visit.
Bruce keeps his eyes on me as I read the composition. I wish now I had kept my costume veil over my face, to hide the sense of astonishment, fear, and anger I feel as I read. Is Angie trying to reveal something more sinister than what we had suspected about Lucia’s beating or did she plagiarize my writing and use it for her own twisted version of Little Red Riding Hood because it was there for the taking? The most bizarre element in all this is the use of my prose poem that she had brought to Antonio. Did she confess anything more to him? He has ways of making people confide in him. He never mentioned anything to me. I put the notebook down, and shake my head.
“What do you think? Should we read something in between the lines?” Bruce asks.
“I don’t know. I just don’t know.”
I’m as distraught reading my words used by someone else as I am devastated by the mention of the lullaby—a plaintive song my mother used to sing, about a wolf and a sheep, a Calabrian version of the story, Little Red Riding Hood. Did Angie hear it from her grandmother or from Antonio?
“Maybe she has more resources and imagination than we give her credit for,” I say. “Or maybe she has a good teaching coach. This Eddie—he must be really good. I’d like to meet him; maybe he can help me with my writing too,” I add bitterly.
“She never asked for your help?” Bruce asks.
“I told you I never even saw her writing it.”
“Should I show it to the police? Besides the violence, the sex scene is inappropriate for a high school composition and it smacks of sexual abuse of a minor.”
“I don’t know … vivid imagination, or maybe, a dream?”
“Dreams aren’t that coherent. Is the hawk recognizable to you?”
“No,” I lie.
In fact the hawk is the most unsettling metaphor of the story for me, because it is indeed the most recognizable. I used the same image in my voyage story. It’s how Armando, the ship’s steward, referred to Nicodemo. Antonio never returned that manuscript I gave him, and he admitted to browsing through it. Did he help Angie in her composition and plant the hawk? If yes, how reliable is the composition and her recollection? It’s all so bizarre! It could also be that reading my stories caused Angie to have nightmares. Can anyone make accusations based on a dream—a night terror at that?
“You did ask her to make something up—to be creative—didn’t you? For now, I’d judge the composition on its merit as fiction,” I say.
“I still have an eerie feeling about this, though, as if she’s trying to say something that she doesn’t want to admit to herself or others.”
“Before using this to point fingers, we should try to find out who really helped her write this; whoever did might have his own agenda.”
“I don’t follow you,” Bruce says.
I sip my wine, and hope its warmth will quickly move through my body and relax the tension that has kept me on edge all evening. Angie’s story has turned the tension to pain. The lullaby is all about a mother’s grief in seeing her little sheep being eaten alive by a bad wolf. Mothers sang it to both lull their babies to sleep and to warn them about the evil out there in the world. That the evil could be found in one’s own home is the ugliest terror of all.
“I don’t know what to think. I’m just tired, but for sure she must have cheated on her assignment.”
“Let’s discuss this on Monday at school, when we’re both sober,” he says.
I’m happy to change the subject of conversation with Bruce, but an awkward silence follows. I’m terrible at small talk.
“Tell me about the gold mines you worked at,” I say to break the silence.
“What do you want to know?” He seems surprised by my sudden question.
“What do they do with the empty mines once the gold is extracted from them?’
“They grow mushrooms in them,” he says, his face almost touching mine.
“Are you serious?” I smile.
“You find it amusing?
”
“I find it funny. I can picture a bunch of men with headlights, tapping at walls in the dark looking for yellow veins, but picking mushrooms?”
“I’m serious,” he says in a low voice. “Mushrooms don’t need light. They grow in dark, damp places, just like mould.”
“Too bad they can’t grow gold the same way,” I say.
“There are still plenty of unexplored gold mines in the north. Canada is a big country.”
Bruce removes his glasses and I notice for the first time that his eyes, which in daylight had appeared light hazel with specks of green, have turned a shade of blue-green. He brushes his lips on mine, and I feel the impulse to hug him.
“Time to get rid of this,” he says. I get up so he can help me slip off the caftan over my head.
We instinctively walk to his bed. We lie quietly, side by side, for a few minutes, his arms around my shoulder. I feel like wrapping my legs around his, but I wait for him to make the next move. He’s still in a talking mood. “I’m discovering a new person every day I speak to you,” Bruce says, pulling me closer to him. You’re always so quiet. Why don’t you talk more about the things that matter to you?”
“I can’t seem to string the right words together to do justice to the things I want to say. What comes out of my mouth never sounds anything like the images I carry in my head. The two never match.”
“Tons of muck gets unearthed for a few ounces of gold. It’s hard work. It’s fucking hard work for everybody. But if you have the images, at least you have something worth digging for. Sooner or later they’ll find their way to the surface, don’t worry.”
“Do you write?” I ask.
“I try…. I wrote some poetry in college, but I dried out after a few not so successful attempts. Words are not enough, you know. The terrain I come from is pretty barren.”
“I thought it was full of gold.”
“Ah, maybe I’m jaded and weary, or just fucking lazy. Writing is just … too … fucking … hard.” He seems to drift into sleep.
After a few minutes he adds, half-slurring, as if he were talking in his sleep. “I have to give it to you. You’ve got a lot of guts wanting to be a writer.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t consider myself a writer. All I want to do…”
“Whatever your aim,” he interrupts. “I hope you realize what you’re getting yourself into. You’ve begun another journey.”
“But I feel as if I haven’t reached any destination yet.”
“Writers are the eternal nomads. They are exiles from another planet. You may be destined to be a traveller all your life.”
He turns to kiss me, but I raise my head off the pillow and look at the alarm clock next to his bed. It’s close to three a.m. It’s November first already—All Saint’s Day.
“Bruce I can’t stay here the night. I need to go home. I’m sorry. I have too much on my mind. I should have called the house earlier, to check that Angie had been picked up at school, that she’s okay. Maybe some other time….”
“Another rain check? I was kind of afraid you’d say that,” he says, slowly climbing out of bed.
56. LOOKING FOR ANGIE
THE LIGHTS INSIDE MY APARTMENT are all on. As Bruce turns the corner onto Cartier Street, I also notice my brother’s car in the driveway. “What’s Luigi doing here?” I ask. “It’s three in the morning.”
“I’ll wait at the corner for a while. Wave if you want me to come in,” Bruce says.
The door opens before I have a chance to put my key in the lock. Sean is standing on the porch, glaring at me. My mother is shifting nervously behind him.
“Isn’t Angelina with you?” my mother asks immediately.
“No, why would she be with me? Can someone please tell me what’s going on?” Luigi is sitting on the sofa, his face drawn.
“Where’s Angelina?” Mother asks in a shrill voice. “She hasn’t come home yet. Alfonso has been calling every fifteen minutes.”
“How am I supposed to know? I left Angie at school. Alfonso was supposed to pick her up.”
“And where have you been?” Mother asks.
“I went to the country for a school party. I had left Sean a message.” I point at Sean, standing quietly.
“Oh, I’m not the one who got alarmed,” he answers.
Luigi explains why they’re all there. He and Mother had let themselves into the apartment with their spare key after a series of phone calls from Alfonso and Comare Rosaria. Alfonso had gone to the apartment to pick up Angie as usual, and found no one there. Neither he nor his wife had received a call from Angie the night before, but he wasn’t alarmed. Knowing that we were all attending the ball, he figured that he would pick up Angie on his way home from the ball.
At the Ritz, Sean explained my absence by saying I had a bad case of the flu. He told Alfonso that I had most likely decided to spend the evening at my mother’s and that Angie was at an after-school party with friends. This is when the phone calls between Comare Rosaria and Mother started. Mother, alarmed, called another friend with a daughter in the school. This friend told her that she had noticed my car still parked in the school garage, but had not seen me at the school dance. When, after midnight, I didn’t respond to calls at the apartment, Mother and Luigi drove there in case I had fallen asleep and not heard the phone. Alfonso had had the same thought and asked Sean to accompany him to the apartment after the ball. It was past two in the morning and everyone was panicking when neither I, nor Angie, were found at home. Sean reassured them that, being Halloween night, we may have both decided at the last minute to attend a party somewhere, but they couldn’t explain my car in the garage. Alfonso then made some phone calls and drove home with his wife.
I tried to explain to everyone that, as far as I was concerned, Angie had spoken to Alfonso’s wife the evening before. “Maybe Angie played a trick on you,” Sean says. “You should have been more alert.”
“I guess she did!” I shout. “The little bitch lied to me.”
“Call Alfonso to tell him you’re home,” Mother says.
“You call him. I can’t believe I have to tell everyone where I’ve been.” I throw my stuff on the floor.
“If it wasn’t for the other one, I wouldn’t worry,” Mother says, as she dials, then hands me the phone. “He wants to speak to you.”
Alfonso insists that no one had called the house the evening before, and, even if there was a misunderstanding, where was the girl, now, at three in the morning?
“Have you tried calling the Bar à Go-Go?” I ask hesitantly. “She may have gone there with her friends.”
“Of course!” Alfonso says. “I know your students go there. It’s the first place I called. But no one saw her there. I even called the police.”
“I’ll try calling her friends. I’m sure they know where she is.” After I hang up, I exclaim, “Oh my God! Has he called the goon squad too? It’s Halloween and parties are still going on. We go out one night and they have the police after us.”
“I don’t know why you’re so angry,” Luigi says. “He called the police for his niece, not you. Do you think he cares where you go at night?”
“And what did the police say?” I ask.
“They won’t do anything unless a teenager is missing for twenty-four hours.”
“She’s not missing. She’s with her friends at some party. All he would have had to do was speak to her friends, if he’d known who they were.”
I search for Linda’s and Gina’s phone numbers in my school papers. I speak to someone at Linda’s house, who sounds very hung over and irritated by the call, and who tells me that Linda won’t be home for the night. Then I call Gina’s house, and this time apologize profusely for the late call. I’m told that Gina is sleeping over at Linda’s house. I don’t tell them that their daughter has lied to them too. “Well, everyone is useless. I’l
l go and look for her myself,” I say, looking for my coat in the hallway wardrobe.
“Are you crazy?” Mother shouts. “Where do you start looking for someone at this time of night?”
“I know where she wanted to go. She may still be there. If not, one of her friends might be there and will tell me where I can find her.”
“Why don’t you just phone the place and ask if she is there?” Luigi says.
“They won’t tell me the truth on the phone. Those girls are very sneaky,” I say angrily. “You two go home and stop worrying.”
“How can we not worry with all that has happened lately?” Mother replies. “Look at all the enemies Pasquale has made. They can’t take it out on him, so they take it out on his daughter.” She raises her two hands and shrieks, in a panic, “Madonna mia, why did we have to get mixed up with these people again?”
“There’s a full moon tonight,” I yell back. “You’re all going mad.”
“There are some people you just don’t fool around with,” Mother says.
“The girl wanted to go to a party tonight, and she tricked all of us. I’ll find her in no time at all.” Then I remember I don’t have my car and ask Luigi for a lift to school so I can go to Charlie’s club.
“You’re not going to that place alone,” he says.
In the car, Mother calms down. “I don’t understand. Why didn’t you go with your boyfriend tonight?”
“It was a big fancy event. I didn’t feel comfortable going,” I yell.
“Okay, okay. Don’t get all upset now,” Mother says. “As long as you’re all right. If only we could find the other one now.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll find her.”
The Danseuses Nues sign at the Bar à Go-Go is well lit, but from the outside, the club shows no sign of life. The windows are covered with blown-up pictures of half-clad dancers in suggestive poses.
“Nice place for a teenager,” Luigi says, “but it looks closed.”
“It’s too early to be closed. They had announced a special Halloween party,” I say. “Wait for me here.”
“I’ll come in with you,” Luigi says.
The Women of Saturn Page 30
