by H. B. Hogan
The three girls were sitting in the dark living room, their faces pinched in the TV’s flickering blue light, when they heard a car door slam out front. Kerri and Paula started and glanced towards the window, but the nicotine-stained curtains were drawn. Jo jumped up and disappeared down the hall. They heard her open the front door and yell, “Hey, baby!” and then a bunch of guys were talking and laughing and filling the hall with heavy footfalls and the clink of beer bottles. Kerri glanced at Paula, but Paula was glaring at the TV.
“Look what the cat dragged in!” Jo came around the corner with Dean in tow. He was followed by Jo’s brother, Chris, and his friend Jerry, who were each carrying a case of beer.
“Why you sittin’ in the dark?” said Jerry, as he smacked on the overhead lights. Only one of the light fixtures worked, and it was over by the dining table. A gaunt man with wiry red hair and a sallow complexion lingered by the door. Kerri hadn’t seen him before. He looked old. The other guys were all around nineteen, but the new guy looked like he could have been in his thirties.
Dean extracted himself from Jo’s embrace.
“This here,” said Dean, putting his arm around the man’s bony shoulders and jerking him side to side, “this here’s my good buddy Paul. A friend of the family.”
Kerri smiled at him. Jo said, “Howdy, Paul!”
Paula didn’t say anything, and neither did Paul.
“Paul just got in from Vancouver this morning, so we thought we should celebrate. I haven’t seen Paul in years, ain’t that the truth, Paul?” said Dean.
Paul said, “Yup.”
“Hitchhiked all the way,” said Chris.
“No way,” said Kerri, in awe. Paul smiled and nodded.
In a goofy voice, Dean said, “Paul-a, meet Paul! Paul, this is Paul-a!” Jo giggled but Paula kept staring at the TV, scrutinizing the Wheel of Fortune credits that were flying up the screen. Jo and Dean exchanged a look.
Dean staggered over to the couch and sat down beside Paula. Her arms were crossed and she raised her shoulders up around her ears when Dean tried to rub them. “Paula. Wassa matter, darlin’?” asked Dean in a syrupy voice.
“Fuck off,” she said. But her edges were clearly softening, so he kept it up.
“Paula, tell Dean wassa matter. Don’t you wanna drink the nice beer I bought special for you?” He held out his hand. Chris pulled a bottle from his case and smacked it into Dean’s waiting palm. Everyone was smiling now except for Jo, who stood in the doorway beside Paul, glowering at Dean.
Dean kept his eyes on Paula, cracked the cap off the beer, put his arm around her shoulders, and held the bottle up to her grinning lips. His mouth was almost touching her ear. “Paula,” murmured Dean. “Why don’t you have a nice cold beer and tell Dean all about your daddy’s visit.”
Jo piped up from the doorway. “She said he’s calling the cops on us.”
“What?” Dean slammed the beer on the coffee table and stood up. He stared at Paula like he was about to hit her. Paula shied away from him. Dean was on parole. He’d only been out of jail for a month. Theft Under, and assault.
It was Paula’s turn to try and smooth things over. She grabbed the foaming beer from the table, shook her head, and said, “No, no, no, it ain’t like that at all!” She took a sip of foam.
“Why don’t you tell us how it is, then?” said Jo.
“Well, you shouldn’t go twisting my words like that, Jo!” Paula snapped. Paul had backed all the way up into the hallway and was trying to catch Jerry’s eye.
“Listen,” Paula said. She held up her hands and kept smiling at Dean. “I can handle my old man. All’s I’m tryna say is that you’s should help out more around the house. I ain’t yer fuckin’ maid.”
Kerri looked at the guys. Chris was the only one who’d made an attempt to help Kerri and Jo clean earlier. The rest of them had taken off as soon as Kerri had yelled up the stairs through a mouth full of ground beef that Paula’s dad was coming. None of them looked chastened now.
Dean looked at Jo with disbelief. “Jo, didn’t I tell you to help Paula clean this morning? She can’t do it all on her own!” Paula raised her head and closed her eyes, savouring the victory.
“Dean!” Jo stamped her foot and opened her mouth to let loose, but Jerry cut in.
“Look, man, if there is any chance at all of pigs I’m fucking outta here.” He chugged his beer, slammed the empty back in his case, and began pulling his coat back on. Jerry was the only one in the group with a job and a car and money. His co-op placement had hired him the summer after grade eleven, and he’d never gone back to school. He cleaned air ducts for a living and had a company van. They all relied on him.
Paul’s voice floated in from the hallway. “I don’t need no heat, man. Fuck this.”
Dean sighed. “All right, that’s it!” Paula flinched. Dean flipped his long hair back over each shoulder and pulled back the bandana he wore over his head.
Paula tried to melt into the corner of the couch.
“Can everybody just chill the fuck out for a second?” Dean stormed over to the doorway. “Paul!” he yelled. “Get the fuck back in here and sit down!” They all heard the front door shut, and Paul reluctantly reappeared. Dean spun around to face Paula. The tassels on his leather jacket slapped against his back.
“Paula, is yer dad callin’ the cops or isn’t he?”
Paula was on the verge of tears. “No.”
“You’re absolutely fucking sure?”
“Yes!”
“All right!” said Dean. “So can everyone just relax?”
Chris caught Kerri’s eye. He rolled his eyes and then winked at her. She lowered her head and smiled at her hi-cuts.
Dean sighed and flopped back down on the couch next to Paula. He shook his head slowly and looked at the TV. “Fucking Jeopardy!,” he said. Chris handed him a beer. Dean gestured to Jo and she scrambled over to the couch to curl up beside him. Paul sat down near the hallway where he could keep an eye on the front door, and Jerry opened a beer for him.
Dean elbowed Paula and said, “Check out this fucking goof, eh?” He pointed at a Jeopardy! contestant who was licking his lips and rubbing the side of his nose. Paula laughed her loud laugh, and the conversation began to flow. Kerri told Jerry about the dog she’d seen in the park. It had reminded her of his.
Paul said, “What is Uzbekistan?” The Jeopardy! contestant echoed him and won the lightning round. Dean laughed, shook his head, and said, “You edumacated fuck.” Paul grinned and held up his beer for cheers.
As the evening wore on, the conversation deteriorated into the usual drunken shouting match. According to Dean, the real problem with people today was that no one had any respect. The guys all agreed with him on this point, and there was a moment of quiet, until Jerry broke the silence with an underhanded remark about the Leafs, and then everyone started shouting again.
Paula had fallen asleep in front of the TV, despite all the noise. Kerri was lying on the floor smoking a cigarette and staring off into space. Jo stood up and said she was going for a walk. Kerri got up and followed her out into the backyard.
They wandered over to the picnic table and sat down.
“Too bad we don’t have a tent,” said Kerri. “I’d totally sleep out here again.”
“Yeah,” said Jo, wistfully. “Those shit-for-brains’ll be shoutin’ all night about who can take who, and blah fuckin’ blah.”
Kerri laughed.
“Swear to God,” Jo continued. “They think they’re such hot shit.” She stood up and began sweeping her right foot through the long grass, looking for something.
Kerri said, “Yeah. When’s the last time me and you sat around talkin’ about how we’re better than everybody else?”
“Exactly. Fucking blowhards.”
Kerri heard a metallic clink in the grass under Jo’s foot. Jo heard it too, and bent down to pick up a beer cap. She put it in her pocket and continued her search.
Jo said, “So, like
, seriously though, Chris is pissed at me for dropping out.”
“Sounds about right,” said Kerri. “Big brother and all.”
“Oh, as if!” Jo rolled her eyes. “He’s a drop-out too, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“I know, I know, I’m just saying. Big brother. He’s just, like, looking out for you or whatever.”
“You think it was stupid to drop out?” Jo asked.
Kerri shrugged. “So they say.”
“But you don’t think so?” Jo watched Kerri, her head tilted to one side.
Kerri leaned back and looked up at the sky. There were no stars. Just a dull, dark pink dome of trapped light from the car plant down the street. She said, “I don’t know. I just kinda wanna figure it out for myself.” She looked over at Jo. Jo stood there, waiting. Kerri frowned. “Its just like, people don’t really know what the fuck they’re talking about. They just repeat the same old crap. Like what’s been told to them. You know?” She waited for Jo to nod in agreement, but Jo only tilted her head.
“So I’m like, what if everyone is full of shit? What if it’s all downhill from here? Because seriously, Jo, if I get all old and sad and shit? And I find out then, when it’s too late that, like, everyone was blowin’ smoke up my ass about what really matters? Like with school and parents and whatever? And I wasted all my fucking life tiptoeing around and being scared to breathe and doing whatever I’m told to do? I swear, I’ll fucking lose it.” She kept her voice strong, but quiet. “I swear to God I will.” She looked at Jo.
Jo stared back at her.
“Seriously!” Kerri was agitated. “Think about it!”
Jo looked down and fiddled with the beer caps in her pocket.
Kerri sighed. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m young. I’ll fix things if I’m wrong. But I don’t think I am.”
Jo walked back to the picnic table and dumped a pile of bottle caps on the table beside Kerri.
“You sound like a lunatic,” she said.
Kerri let out a long, strained sigh. “You should totally be a therapist. You’d be really good at it. Real helpful, like.”
Jo picked one of her caps and turned to face the yard. At the back of the lot, a build-it-yourself shed had been abandoned halfway through the build-it-yourself process. It leaned dejectedly against the fence. Lying face down in the grass between Jo and the shed were the flattened shards of a broken Mr. Turtle pool. The sun had bleached them out to the colour of pistachio ice cream. In the dark, partially hidden in the overgrown lawn, they resembled the picked-clean rib cage of a large animal.
“One drink for the pool, two for the shed,” said Jo. She held her hand up beside her ear, pointed her elbow at the shed, and snapped a beer cap from between her thumb and middle finger. It disappeared without a sound into the grass beside the pool.
“Looks like you’ll be sober in no time,” said Kerri, as she stood up and grabbed a handful of caps. She snapped one and it sailed into the neighbour’s yard.
Jo threw her head back and crowed, “That’s what you get, smartass!”
Kerri grinned and readied her next shot.
They stood there for a while, pinging the occasional cap off of the shed or the pool, hollering when they got a hit, swearing under their breath when they missed. They were both laughing hysterically at nothing in particular when the perpetually shirtless man who lived next door shouted over the fence at them to shut up. Kerri looked back over her shoulder at the house to see if Dean had heard, while Jo bent double, gasping and giggling helplessly into her hands.
Kerri shushed her, not wanting to provoke the neighbour. They’d only been staying with Paula for a few days but they already knew the guy was a yeller.
“Maybe we should go inside,” Jo said when she’d caught her breath. “We’re outta caps anyway.”
“You go. I’m gonna hang out here for a while.”
“And do what?”
“I don’t know.” Kerri shrugged.
Jo paused, her feet in the long yellow rectangle of light from the screen door that stretched out across the grass, and watched Kerri lie down on her back on the picnic table.
“You’re not seriously gonna sleep out here again?” asked Jo. She glanced at the clear plastic tarp, still strewn across the broken chaise lounge, and hugged herself. “Last night sucked.”
“I dunno,” said Kerri. Her voice was flat. “Maybe.”
Jo eyed Kerri with suspicion. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
“Come inside.”
“I said no!” Kerri snapped.
“Well, what’s your fucking problem?”
“Nothing!” Kerri shouted. She didn’t know why she was shouting. She glanced over and saw that Jo looked hurt.
Kerri sighed and said, “Nothing. I’m just bored, is all.” She was embarrassed at how her voice trembled when she spoke, even though she had no intention of crying. She turned her face away from Jo. Jo hesitated for a moment longer, and then walked quietly into the house.
Kerri listened to the sounds coming from inside. Jo was talking and laughing with the guys. The reggae theme from COPS was playing on the TV, and Paula was awake and singing along half-heartedly in her low, off-key voice. In the next yard over, the hiss of the neighbour’s hose was steady as he watered his lawn. The more Kerri was aware of all that went on outside her, without her, the smaller she felt. She stretched out her arms, gripped the edges of the table, and tried to focus on the rise and fall of her chest.
Hours had passed, and all the other sounds from the house and everywhere else were quiet, when Dean appeared at the side of the picnic table. He didn’t say anything. Kerri knew that Jo was probably sleeping on the couch inside, and that Dean was bored, and that he would try to take Kerri’s hand and lead her up the back staircase to one of the spare bedrooms like he’d done before. Kerri remembered how she’d felt in the Beer Store parking lot when she’d thought the whole day was hers. She’d felt full and strong. The opposite of how she felt when she was at home with her parents. The opposite of how she felt now. Kerri stood up and walked over to the broken chaise lounge. She scrunched up the tarp that Jo had slept under.
“What’re you doing with that thing?” asked Dean.
“Nothing,” said Kerri, as she tucked the tarp under her arm. She headed towards the street.
“Where are you going?”
“Nowhere.”
Kerri knew that sounded like no answer, but she’d come to realize that nothing and nowhere was better than here and now. She’d make the rest up with time.
LOUIS REMEMBERS
“Okay, folks!” said Marge. “Now it’s time to put all those skills you’ve learned to work!” She clapped her hands together. “I’m going to count you off into groups of four and we’re going to do some role playing!”
We watched Marge gesture toward each audience member as she counted to eight, over and over again, until she had designated numbers to all of us. Those of us at the back watched her closely, trying to count ahead to discern our group members. Would we end up with losers? I was a five. Someone across the room gave me a “Now we’re friends!” smile.
“Now, before you all head off into your new groups, let me tell you how we’re going to do this,” Marge said. “Two of you will be the disputants. You will argue. Of course, it’s a pretend argument…” she paused here, so we could laugh. No one did. “And the other two will decide who will be the mediator and who will be the observer. The mediator will try to move the couple’s argument through the triggers and into processing, using the techniques we’ve been learning over the past few weeks. Remember—no value judgments here, and use your active listening skills. The observer and the disputants will give the mediator constructive feedback at the end of the exercise. Does anyone have any questions?” The room was silent. “Alright, folks, let’s process!” She clapped her hands again. I think we were supposed to be invigorated by her clapping, but for a moment no one moved, and then all at once t
here was the murmuring of numbers and the scraping of chairs across linoleum.
I was at the Learning Circle to attend this dispute resolution course with my friend Angela. She thought she could save her doomed relationship by springing the patented “Processing Pain, Garnishing Gain” techniques we were learning on her surly, unemployed boyfriend. He had refused to participate in anything offered through the Learning Circle, claiming it was a magnet for needy people with too much money. After a couple of classes, I could see he wasn’t far off the mark, but Angela had begged me to come with her, no doubt so we could be united in self-righteousness when her partner failed to respond to the “powerful, proven techniques to release the healing power of mutual respect and understanding.” She had offered to pay my course fee, and she knew I had nothing better to do on Thursday nights—or any other night, really. So here I was, learning how to facilitate meaningful communication with a room full of enablers.
The woman I’d caught smiling, Susan, had made a beeline for me at the clapping of Marge’s hands. “I’m Susan,” she said, touching the corner of her name tag with her fingertips, “and you look like a friend.”
“I’m a five,” I said.
“Oh, look!” she chirped, fluttering her fingers towards the front of the room.
I turned and saw a young woman, about my age, standing awkwardly beside a middle-aged man. The man was immaculately dressed and sweating profusely. He grinned and waved us over to them. Fives.
“Alright,” I said to Susan. “Let’s get busy.”
“Hee hee!” giggled Susan.
We introduced ourselves, even though we were wearing name tags. Louis was there with his wife, and he pointed her out to us with pride. She held a notebook and a pen. She saw him pointing and gave us a cheerful wave. We all waved back. Anne was also there with her partner, a shy-looking man who blushed and shrugged when he saw us looking at him. Susan was one of the few people who was there without a significant other. No surprise there, I thought. I was also single, which I imagined didn’t strike any of them as a surprise, either.
