by H. B. Hogan
“Boy!”
Corey tensed at the edge in Cornchips’ voice. He placed his feet on his pedals and squeezed his tasseled handgrips.
Their eyes locked. They stared at each other in silence. They both knew what was coming.
Corey took a slow, deep breath.
“Don’t you try it, boy,” Cornchips warned. He rolled up his right sleeve without taking his eyes off Corey, revealing a pale green smudge that had been, in his youth, a bold tattoo on his once-muscular forearm. “I’m warning you…”
Corey licked his lips.
“So help me god…” said Cornchips. His right hand slowly disappeared into his right pocket.
It was now or never—the old man’s reflexes were slow, and Corey knew it.
“Letfreedomreign!” he blurted and then peeled away from the fountain in a spray of pebbles and pigeon poop, his eyes wild, his legs pumping like pistons.
The water splashed up over the sides of the fountain’s basin as Cornchips lurched in Corey’s direction.
“What business is that of yours!” Cornchips screamed, and hurled a peach pit at Corey’s helmet. THOCK! A direct hit. Corey’s front wheel wobbled slightly, and then corrected itself.
Cornchips crowed with pleasure. “Take that, you little shit!”
“Let freedom reign!” Corey yelled once more over his shoulder. He glimpsed Cornchips struggling to climb out of the fountain and knew he’d go root around in the grass for his peach pit.
After about a block of flat-out pedaling, the wind whistling past his helmet vents and the squirrels running for cover, Corey let out the breath he’d been holding. Elated, he threw back his head and howled. He could do anything and go anywhere, and he would do it all with his head held high. He would look people in the eye. He’d gone up against the whole stinking Axis of Evil and not a single one of them had flung the usual insult at him. The word that the school kids yelled at him through the chain-link fence where he and the other kids like him had their separate recesses, the word that made his mother cry till his Nana snapped, “Cry alls you want, Belinda, but it ain’t gonna make him right.”
Today there’d be no lonely skulking on his driveway, watching the other kids play. Today was a day for sidewalks and shopping malls and schoolyards and all the other places in which he ordinarily hung his head. Today he’d shown them all. He was six guns wide and fit to kill. Corey was a Danger Cat.
ESTEEM
On Saturday, the day of her daughter’s Grade 1 ballet exam, Susan woke up early, sick with nerves. She slipped out of bed without disturbing Dan and went downstairs to fix breakfast for the kids. At the kitchen counter, her hands darted through their tasks by rote, leaving her mind free to tally the various chores she had to tend to before the exam. Lay out clothes for the kids. Get Dan to dress Trevor. Feed them all lunch. Bathe Alison. Get Alison dressed and ready. Pack Alison’s gym bag with her leotard, ballet slippers, and snacks for the car. Get herself dressed and ready. She sighed and called the kids to the table, mindful of Dan still sleeping above them. While Alison lobbed Cheerios at her captivated little brother, Susan worked in silence, polishing the kitchen sink to a blinding shine, which helped—a little—to quell her nausea.
She kept an eye on Alison as she chattered away to her brother, seemingly oblivious to the challenge that lay ahead of her. Susan felt a warm swell of pride. Alison was only seven—too young to fully appreciate the pressure of a ballet exam—so Susan had accepted the burden of anxiety on her daughter’s behalf.
Susan had met Dan seven years ago. She’d been a night student at a hair school. She planned to rent a chair as soon as she graduated, and to save so that in a few years she’d be able to open her own salon. But as it turned out, doing hair was not as glamourous as she’d imagined when she was a kid watching CityLine makeovers. She was forever scratching away other people’s hair clippings, which somehow showed up in her socks, the waistband of her underwear, and her bra. Her hands were dry and cracked from the constant washing, and her nails discoloured from the dyes. And when she wasn’t working or taking classes, she was standing around the hallways of the community college with handmade flyers offering free practice haircuts.
That’s how she’d met Dan. He was in auto mechanics. She’d done his hair back when she was trying to learn fades. He hadn’t said a word through the whole ordeal, not even when Susan’s teacher had slapped Susan’s hands away while she tried to fix Susan’s mistakes. At the end of the cut, Dan had leaned forward in his chair, scrutinized each side of his head in the mirror, said “good enough,” and asked for her phone number. Ecstatic, Susan thought he wanted to book another appointment. When she realized he just wanted a date, she was still pleased. He’d been nice, after all, when most customers wouldn’t have missed an opportunity to be self-righteously critical.
In Susan’s mind, Dan was basically rich. Had he not been so introverted, his dating prospects might have been better, in which case Susan might have been out of luck. But Susan later learned that by the time Dan asked for her number, he’d already struck out with everyone else. One of the women he’d dated was in her hair school and confided that he didn’t like going out and wasn’t particularly fun to hang out with or interesting to talk to. Susan figured she could handle that—she couldn’t afford to go anywhere, and could never think of anything interesting to say, anyway.
Susan always thought they’d made an awkward couple. She was three inches taller than Dan, with broad shoulders and dark, lank hair; he was fair and petite. They had little in common, but she knew that getting married to someone in the city was her best shot at staying there—and then she got pregnant with Alison. At first, she hadn’t wanted to keep the baby, but having a kid with Dan, and accepting the help from his parents, seemed like the safe bet. Dan had shrugged when she asked if he wanted this, the baby, and by extension, her.
“Will you stay, though?” she’d asked him. “Even if you later you regret it?”
“I will if you want me to,” he’d said.
Susan pulled a box of Jell-O from the pantry to make dessert after lunch. Green. Alison’s favourite. She was very careful about Alison’s diet. As she plugged the kettle in, she reflected on all that she and Dan had accomplished. Two kids, a new house in a new subdivision courtesy of the mortgage they’d qualified for when Dan was hired at the plant. His parents agreed to co-sign and help with the down payment. Her own parents had never helped her like that. They weren’t mean about it, they just had no money. They only visited once, when she and Dan first brought Alison home from the hospital. Her father had bought Dan a bottle of Crown Royal. Susan still had the velveteen bag tucked away in a box with Alison’s baby clothes. Nowadays Susan called her mother on Sunday afternoon and they’d talk about Coronation Street. The new machinist at Underworld, Karen McDonald, was stirring things up.
“I like her,” Susan said. “She’s tall.”
“Doesn’t hide the extra weight.”
“Alison’s exam is in a few weeks. You should come down.”
“We’ll see.”
Susan’s mother always hung up first.
Dan was watching WWE the living room. The ballet exam was at four. As if the very premise of an exam wasn’t daunting enough, the exam was in Toronto. Susan was afraid to drive in the city. She hadn’t even had a driver’s license until she met Dan, but he’d taught her how to drive out on the concessions north of Oshawa. Traffic and narrow streets were not her strong suit. Besides, without Dan’s presence in Toronto, Susan would have felt vulnerable to the muttering homeless people sprawled across the sewer grates who sometimes yelled at passersby. Or the squeegee-ers under the Gardiner Expressway. Or the beggars who approached the car at stoplights asking for change, their grubby faces and handwritten pleas for help looming in her peripheral vision as she pretended not to see them. She had eventually convinced Dan to drive, which was worth all the arguing because it killed two birds with one stone: she wouldn’t have to navigate the streets that teemed with tr
affic and impatient people, and Alison would never know that Dan didn’t actually want to go to her exam.
Dan seemed to tolerate the kids well enough, even if he wasn’t particularly engaged with them. He’d stuck around, like he said he would. He paid the bills. Susan had thought that with time, they would grow closer, be more like how she imagined a married couple might be if they weren’t messed up. It could have been better. Susan buried her disappointment by imagining that everything she did for Alison, from the ballet classes to the green Jell-O, would cement their mother-daughter bond, make it something she’d never had. Her and Alison would be different. Better.
It seemed like Susan had only just finished cleaning up from breakfast and lunch when it was time to get ready. Alison hadn’t wanted any of the Jell-O, so Susan gulped it down before dashing upstairs. She ran a bath for Alison, making sure that Alison’s favourite toys lined the tub and the pink bubble bath was foaming appropriately. She then removed her own dress from its plastic dry-cleaning shell, hung it from the top of her bathroom door, and stepped back to admire it. Susan smiled, imagining the look of surprised appreciation in Dan’s eyes as he watched her float down the staircase in the wispy cloud of fabric. Susan had stopped at The Bay yesterday and splurged on expensive control-top pantyhose and a new pair of shoes. Shoes with a hint of a heel—a departure from her usual flats, but ultimately necessary. No one need judge her daughter by the sensible flats of her suburban mother. Dan would be proud to walk into the ballet school with her on his arm, and Alison would be proud to have a pretty mother.
Susan’s own mother had been darker, moodier, than all of the other mothers she’d met. She knew that her mother spent time in foster care, but that was about all she knew. It wasn’t something they talked about. In the weeks leading up to Susan’s wedding, while she hunted for a wedding dress that camouflaged her baby bump, she’d sent suggestions to her mother for a suitable mother-of-the-bride outfit. Susan wasn’t surprised when her mother showed up at Toronto’s City Hall in a Kmart special, carrying her usual purse like it was just another day.
They spent their one-night honeymoon at the Westin Harbour Castle in Toronto. She’d imagined a lake view, but their room faced a condo. They’d looked up the prices of the food in the hotel and decided instead to order in their usual from Pizza Pizza. They were eating in bed. Dan had brought a cooler of beer from home. Occasionally, from the hallway, Susan could hear people laughing as they headed out for the evening. Susan wondered where they were going, and how they could afford it.
“Our kid will be better than us, Dan,” she’d said.
Dan was peeling the corner of the label off of his bottle of Budweiser. “I’m doing fine, thanks.”
“Don’t you want more than this?” she said, waving one hand in an arc above the empty pizza box and the Doritos bag on the bedspread.
“I don’t know what you’re on about, but look around—no one’s stopping you.”
“Well I can’t do much else if I’m having your child, can I?”
Dan shrugged and kept his eyes on the TV. “Suit yourself,” he said.
Susan tended to Alison’s hair. They were already running behind schedule, and the Jell-O taste in Susan’s throat was acrid. Alison had grown quiet, and sat perfectly still on the toilet lid while Susan, dressed only in her underwear, bra, and pantyhose, brushed out Alison’s long, blond hair. She had a special hairspray for Alison’s hair, one that gave the surface of the hair follicle a shimmery, brightening effect. She’d seen an ad for it in one of the trade magazines that she still subscribed to.
“Do you see this pretty lady’s hair, sweetheart?” she’d asked Alison, pushing the magazine across the dinner table a few weeks ago during dinner. Alison shrugged. She was picking up Dan’s annoying habits.
“Would you like Mommy to give you pretty hair like that for your ballet exam?” Alison shrugged again and turned her attention back to dinner plate. “Wouldn’t you like your hair to be prettier than all the other little girls?” Susan asked. Alison had smiled and said sure.
“Do you see what I got for you, sweetheart? Just like you wanted.”
She showed Alison the hairspray bottle, which was covered in glittering starbursts. “Remember how you said you wanted Mommy to get you this?”
Alison studied the bottle but said nothing.
“That’s okay. Mommy doesn’t mind doing extra things for her special girl.”
Alison smiled up at her. “Thank you, Mommy.”
“You’re welcome.”
Susan gestured at her dress on the back of the door. “Do you see Mommy’s dress? Isn’t it pretty?”
“Vewy pwetty.” said Alison.
Susan bristled at the Alison’s pronunciation. It was something she’d begged Dan to help fix by paying for the speech therapy lessons Alison’s school had recommended. Dan had refused because his mother insisted Alison would grow out of it on her own.
“Very pretty, Alison. Pay attention to your R sounds. You have lots of pretty dresses, don’t you? Can you tell Mommy about your pretty dresses?”
Alison nodded.
“Don’t move your head, honey, Mommy’s doing your hair.”
Susan adored brushing and braiding Alison’s hair. So blond it was almost white, Susan could lose herself entirely in its cool waves of refracted light. Susan had made a little look book for Alison’s ballet hairstyles. This was something she’d learned in school—stylists kept scrapbooks of their inspirations and accomplishments. She would take a picture of Alison’s hair when she was done and add it to the book. If she ever returned to hairstyling, she would have a look book ready to go—provided she could fill the pages with decent work.
Susan contemplated Alison’s silence. Gone was the precocious little girl who had babbled away at breakfast. She tried to soothe Alison’s nerves while she braided her hair.
“You’re lucky to be so petite and blond,” Susan murmured. “You make such a beautiful ballerina. And look at your tiny little feet.”
Susan’s shoes were a size eleven, bigger than Dan’s. Alison clearly took after him. Dan reminded her of that—the shoes and the genes—on a regular basis.
“I was so big when I was growing up,” Susan continued, “that I always felt like a moose compared to the other little girls.”
Alison wrinkled her nose and said, “Mummy, will I be big?”
Stung, Susan sucked in her breath and reflexively yanked Alison’s braid tighter, pulling at the hair she’d brushed back from Alison’s temples until the tender flesh there was raised like goose pimples. Alison’s eyes watered and her brow wrinkled, but she didn’t protest. Instead, she closed her eyes. Susan felt a pang of guilt and told Alison how beautiful she was. Alison didn’t respond.
When Susan was satisfied with arranging Alison’s hair on top of her head in an elaborate knot of tiny individual braids, her arms and hands ached and her feet were sore from standing on the linoleum. Alison seemed glum and withdrawn.
“Go get yourself dressed, Alison.” She steered Alison out into the hall towards her room. “Your dress and shoes are laid on your bed. Be careful with your hair. Hurry up, okay?”
Susan took the dress from the back of the bathroom door and hurried to get dressed. She’d spent too much time on Alison’s hair and had fallen even further behind. She could hear Dan downstairs, making a big production of opening the front hall closet and pulling out his shoes. She could hear Trevor downstairs, too. She hoped that Dan had at least gotten Trevor dressed. Susan was always running late, and Dan was always making a point of being punctual. The later Susan was, the angrier Dan got. This had become a ritual, and because they never left the house without it, they now rarely left the house together.
Susan struggled to close the clasp on her dress, and this set off a series of hateful observations about her appearance. Her pores were huge, her eyelids drooped, and she hated the dress, too. It barely fit her. She had put on weight since she’d last had an excuse to wear it. It had been ove
r a year—she should have known better. She should have bought a new dress. She had no backup plan.
Dan yelled up the stairs at her to pick up the pace. Exasperated, Susan grabbed her makeup and her jewellery, and tossed it all loose into her purse. She would have to put on the finishing touches in the car. The front door slammed as she ran a brush through her hair one last time. Downstairs, she found the house empty. She peered through the curtains and saw that Dan had backed the car down the driveway and was idling at the curb in front of the house.
Susan got in the car and laughingly commented on how cold it was, hoping to cut the tension with small talk instead of inviting Dan’s usual tirade by apologizing. He ignored her and pulled away from the curb. Susan turned in her seat to check on Alison.
“Don’t rest you head against the seat, honey. You’ll muss your hair.”
Alison wordlessly tilted her head forward to stare at her hands in her lap.
“Thatta girl. We won’t be too long in the car.”
The four of them sat in silence for the one-hour drive into the city.
It was January and bitterly cold downtown. Columns of steam slanted up from the manhole covers and the asphalt was white with salt stains. Wind whipped Susan’s face and her eyes watered as they walked towards the ballet school. She felt guilty about exposing Alison’s little head to the cold, but a hat or hood would ruin her hair. It really was only a short walk. Susan dabbed her eyes with a tissue, worried about her makeup, and tried her best to avoid the patches of ice on the sidewalks. She’d made sure Dan had put the children in their snowsuits, even though she knew Alison would have whined about it, but Susan had worn only her faux-leather dress coat. It wasn’t lined, and was therefore quite slimming, but it had frozen stiff in the wind and seemed to amplify the cold. Her pantyhose did nothing to keep the sting from her legs, and she could feel the blisters forming from her new shoes.
