Something for Everyone

by Lisa Moore

  I’m pretty sure I want to be a nurse, Chelsea said.

  Before I come in here I never knew so much as how to turn on the stove. I made frozen fries. Few hot dogs. But the stuff I’m after cooking. Sea urchins. Seaweed. Eels for fuck sake. Capelin, back home we throws on the garden. Here they’re serving them with sugared almonds, heads still on, eyes looking up at you.

  People are demanding three-quarters of the rent up front, Chelsea said.

  I think someone was after posting online a standardized form where it asks three-quarters security deposit and then all the landlords was after downloading it, Trina said.

  The apartment, once they were inside, smelled of wet Gyproc. There was an industrial dehumidifier going in the bedroom. Someone had stencilled in cursive writing on the wall in the living area: Take Time to Breathe.

  It’s fifty bucks a month extra, washer and dryer, Trina said. But I knows a Mercy Sister can get a set second-hand, fifty bucks each, you owns it outright.

  In the biggest bedroom there was only a below-ground window built in a well of cinderblocks that was half-full of dead leaves. A square of daylight fell on the wood panelling of the opposite wall.

  This is the master bedroom, Trina said.

  That’s a small window, Chelsea said.

  At least nobody can get in at you, Trina said. The girl went to the little window and tried to look outside, standing on her tiptoes. Then she turned from the window and told Chelsea to come and have a look at the kitchen.

  In some ways, the kitchen is the selling point of this whole place, Trina said, leading her in. Where it’s nice and big. You could have a crowd, few beers. I does puzzles in order to let off steam. I got a big table up there with a water mill I’m working on. Lot of browns in that puzzle. Somewhere in the States.

  Chelsea opened the door of the new fridge and inside was a paint roller in a rolling pan, wrapped in a drop sheet of opaque plastic. The bright light bulb made the stiff, crumpled plastic flash like a multi-faceted diamond. She turned to face Trina, who had lowered her hood and taken off the toque. Her hair tumbled down to her shoulders, curly and dyed silver.

  Now Chelsea would probably be waiting in the dark for the bus. The buses didn’t run on schedule. Who knew if those boys in the car would be back?

  Seeing the cold white interior of the fridge with the incongruous paint roller, along with the sudden reveal of the girl’s luminous, alien hair, felt as though the focus dial that controlled reality had been nudged a millimetre in the wrong direction. The boy’s naked arse with her face floating over it. Serafina would be getting off after dark, standing at the bus stop across from the Shoppers, near the gas station where the last rape had happened, the big soccer field behind her, not knowing if someone was walking across it, talk of the fucking rapist on the news and all over Facebook, day after day, the apartment with the sawdust / new carpet / mouldy smell, the dehumidifier growling like a monster, the girl’s puffed metal mouth making her look perpetually punished — it felt ominous. Chelsea thought of her father walking into the woods with his shotgun. Her younger brother had found him the same afternoon. The doctors estimated an hour after he’d pulled the trigger.

  Suddenly it occurred to her: Trina had been in the house the whole time. If Trina had answered the door at 4:45 when Chelsea had first rung the bell, there wouldn’t have been the boy mooning her, the brief, potent surge of terror and rage.

  Her phone dinged in her hand. It was Frank, the coast guard, saying he would need three-quarters of the rent for the security deposit. Another ding.

  A woman in her nursing program had texted there was a room in a house on Merrymeeting. They needed one more roommate. The room would be available at the end of September.

  Chelsea texted she would take the room.

  The woman said: Don’t you want to know how much?

  Chelsea texted: I don’t care how much. Then she looked up and found Trina staring at her.

  Why didn’t you answer the door? Chelsea said. I rang the bell and you were in there the whole time. It’s raining out.

  It’s not raining now, Trina said.

  You could pop the locks on this house with a credit card, Chelsea said.

  It’s not my job to be showing the apartment, Trina said, taking a few steps backwards. Frank thinks I’m supposed to make myself available. I’m not getting nothing out of it. I don’t see I have to hurry myself. I was told you’d be here at five. And five is when I answered the door. If you want to know, I had my headphones on. I never heard no fucking bell.

  The bus doesn’t come at five, though, does it, Chelsea said. I was out there in the fog with a fucking rapist on the loose.

  She had caught the same bus Serafina would get later in the night, outside the gas station, after her shift, and a man had taken the seat beside Chelsea and had fumbled so aggressively with the top button of his raglan that she believed he might be choking. He turned toward her and said he’d had his lunch, a nice lunch, it was a lunch, a nice lunch, with some sandwiches, and the ladies. A nice lunch, a nice lunch, a nice lunch. He asked her what her name was, over and over, and every time he asked, she answered her name was Chelsea. Each time she spoke more softly until she was just moving her lips. He’d worked himself up. His breathing fast and shallow.

  She’d met the eyes of the bus driver in the rear-view mirror. The next bus stop was very close. She could see it already. Maybe a minute, or two minutes, but they’d been stopped by a red light. The driver wanted to know if Chelsea could hold on; he questioned her telepathically, without even raising his eyebrows. She let him know she could, simply by lifting her chin toward the bus stop in the distance. She was thinking of the new Instant Pot her mother had bought for herself, a month after they had buried her father. Her mother said it could tenderize meat much faster and save a lot of cooking time. That way she could come home and put her feet up. She had to streamline things, now that she was the only one to do the chores.

  The first time she used it, the cooker had rattled on the counter, and steam shot out from beneath a knob on the top. Her mother was standing close to it, reading the instruction booklet, her glasses at the very tip of her nose. Boiling cranberry sauce spattered walls. Her mother had covered her face with her forearm, screaming in a weird high note that seemed to harmonize with the shrill squealing of the pot. A blister had appeared on the back of Chelsea’s hand, even before she realized she had been burned, and she touched the splat of cranberry sauce with her tongue, and then her tongue was burnt too. She had walked into the spray of boiling sauce to get to the electrical cord and torn it out of the wall.

  The bus pulled over as soon as they reached the stop, though there had been no one getting on or off. The driver rose from his seat and stood in the aisle facing all the passengers like a priest at the altar. He patted himself all over. Then he took out a pack of smokes from the breast pocket of his uniform.

  Who wants a smoke, he’d said. He was addressing the whole bus. The man beside her was huffing through his nose and a glaucous rope of snot had flown out of one of his nostrils, landing in his moustache, stretching over his lips to his chin. He’d put a hand on Chelsea’s knee and squeezed hard, in an effort to hold off what was coming. She could not tell if he was shifting toward violence or ecstasy. His face was bright red and he’d begun to sweat with the effort of taking hold of his emotions.

  Chelsea realized they had been working together — she and the man who was really hurting her knee — to keep him from exploding; she by repeating her name, without making any sound at all, by just moving her lips, but also summoning a force of tenderness that would leave her emptied afterward. She thought she might be capable of loving anyone, without diminishing who she was, without submitting or giving in; this might be something she could offer. This might be what she meant when she said she wanted to be a nurse.

  Maybe something had been transferred to her the
day her father shot himself in the woods, she thought. Maybe something had lifted from his blown-apart skull like a cloud of sparrows, and dive-bombed her breastbone. Entered her and spread through.

  She reached into her pocket and pulled out a used Kleenex and handed it to the man.

  Wipe your nose, she said. Spittle hissed through the man’s brown and chipped teeth. But he let go her knee and took the tissue. He hesitated before touching it to his face. The tissue was streaked with gold that flashed in the streetlight pouring over the top of the bus stop. Chelsea had taken the tissue from the woman in the store and had put it in her pocket by accident.

  The talk of the rapist, the chip bag wrenched back and forth by the wind, the fierce longing for her father which could come up at odd times, the noise of the river when it was fast and high, stretched taut over the boulders like Saran Wrap.

  She believed that the silk blouse she got from that old house, the blouse that belonged to the woman in the plain wooden coffin, whose mouth was pursed as though to hold back a rash truth, with delicate shell buttons, a pearl-grey blouse, the radiating underarm odour, the blouse was an armour or charm; it was not quite right on her, the big pointy collar, but it had certain properties, she thought. It could repulse danger, and contain this burgeoning fear; the very real terror of this monster who kept attacking women, making them all afraid, three violent rapes.

  The man wiped his nose with the gold tissue and she watched closely.

  Do you want me to do that? You’re not getting it all, she said. Nothing about the body disgusted her. He rubbed the tissue over his beard and moustache with vigour.

  Is it okay now? he asked.

  You got it, she said. Her knee throbbed, a pelt of shimmering heat had formed over it.

  I don’t want to be out there smoking by myself, the bus driver said. I need a buddy.

  I want a smoke, the man shouted.

  After you, the driver said. Then they both stood out in the rain, smoking, shoulder to shoulder. Nobody on the bus spoke but they were sunken down in their hoodies and raglans. Finally a lady in the front announced that her granddaughter was in full-day kindergarten. This was followed by silence. She cleared her throat and spoke louder, orating with a climbing cadence, by turns hitched with swagger and wheedling.

  The parents aren’t happy, the woman said. Fought tooth and nail against the bloody thing. But they got it now, and it’s not as bad as everyone thought.

  A woman in a pink windbreaker across the aisle from Chelsea picked up her purse and clutched it to her chest.

  I’ve got a little one, this woman said. My son’s little one. Also in the full-time kindergarten. For them it’s a blessing. Both working parents, see. But they couldn’t afford the daycare. Working parents, it’s a blessing. It’s not everyone can stay home out of it.

  Someone in the front seat turned all the way around to survey the whole bus before addressing them. He said they were witnessing a turn in the weather. There had never been a summer such as they had witnessed this year, not in fifty years or more. He had heard on the news that they’d hit a record. An all-time high.

  The heat, another woman said.

  But now there’s a turn in the air, the man said, and he raised a hand, swaying it feebly back and forth, as if to hurry the change along.

  Through the window Chelsea watched the bus driver toss his half-smoked cigarette onto the sidewalk; the man who had crushed her knee did the same, and they both came back on the bus.

  Up here with me, buddy, the driver said. I want you up in the front.

  What’s your name? the man asked the driver, and repeated the question until he arrived at his stop. The driver answered him every time. The entire incident had taken less than eleven minutes including the smoke break. And though Chelsea felt the imprint, the fierce pressure of the man’s hand on her knee, she was already thinking about the promise of the coast guard’s basement apartment.

  * * *

  You tell Frank the place is too squatty, Chelsea said. And I didn’t appreciate him asking me how I was going to pay for it. None of his goddamn business how I’m going to pay for it.

  They’re allowed to ask tenants whatever they like, Trina said. You better get used to it.

  2.

  You just talk to me on your phone while I cross through the skywalk and past the dark parts of the campus until I get to Elizabeth Avenue where I don’t mind because there’s streetlights.

  Okay, David said.

  Because of the rapist, Chelsea said. I just want someone on the phone.

  I’ll walk you over, David said.

  Just be on the phone, she said.

  He tried to pretend he wasn’t stunned by the request. He glanced with naked longing at the door of the bar. And then at the skywalk in the distance, stretching over Prince Philip Drive from one side of the campus to the other.

  David knew he was being called upon to escort her. But he believed the guy with the phone for sale would burst out of Bitters onto the parking lot any minute.

  He was trying to will this guy Clancy, douche bag of the highest fucking order, out of the bar. If he had to talk to the girl or listen to her on the cell, her breathing as she climbed the stairs to the shadowy, piss-soaked skywalk, his powers would be diluted. His powers to will into existence anything he wished.

  David had always believed that if he wanted something enough he would get it. Desire was the only requirement, ever, for anything. Nothing in his eighteen years had led him to believe otherwise. He wanted the second-hand iPhone 5, a significant upgrade from the one he had in his hand, as much as he had ever wanted anything in his life.

  You don’t have to walk over with me, Chelsea said. Just stay on the phone until I get to the other side of the skywalk. She said her number and her name.

  I can walk you, he said. He was desolate because of the inconvenience. He was being asked for a show of common decency; he considered the very idea defunct, and full of, basically, shit.

  Earlier in the day he’d gone to the bank machine to find he was eight dollars short of the asking price for the phone. He could have talked the guy down, this guy, maybe a lot more than eight dollars, if he’d shown up. But Douche was a no-show.

  Instead, David had been called to account by a girl who had materialized in the dark. She was there instead of the phone. She was the phone’s dark twin. Everything he didn’t want. This could happen without warning. Everything upended and brought down. There were times, he now saw, when it didn’t matter what he wanted or how much he wanted it. Even as she spoke his face was turned toward the door of the bar, begging it to open, begging it to disgorge this Clancy, this supreme fuck-up.

  She was suddenly recalcitrant and fierce.

  What I need is, you stay on the phone. Do you think you’re capable of that?

  Wow, he said.

  Yeah, wow, she said.

  I’m sorry, he said.

  What are you sorry for? she said. Are you the fucking rapist?

  No, he said. This Clancy’s not coming, he said. By pronouncing it, he made it true. All the passion for the second-hand phone evaporated.

  His angular face looked angelic without the scabrous want, suddenly sexy. Boys Chelsea’s age could easily morph. The man in them fell away and you could see the adolescent they’d been half a year ago. But this boy had matured in front of her eyes. Betrayed and resigned.

  She’d shifted her weight and pumped her knee a few times, an impatient jiggling. For a brief instant, two realities banged together like thunderclouds above David’s head: it was dangerous for a girl to be walking around in the dark by herself; it wasn’t dangerous.

  The girl was being histrionic — a word David’s mother used about her own sister, his Aunt Josephine, who went through a lot of men but wanted to marry them all. Would get engaged and dumped and come out of it broken hearted with a fine collection of
diamond rings, and, once, the airplane ticket to a honeymoon she went on by herself. Sent them texts from the Sistine Chapel. She’d met someone else there.

  He told the girl his name was David.

  Which direction do you live, she asked.

  Downtown, he said.

  David and his mother, Rochelle, lived alone and his mother didn’t date. She was the deputy minister of Transportation and Works. She oversaw budgets for the repair of highways across the province. They were experimenting with new formulas, introducing polymers to asphalt, weighing factors like sudden frost, heavier traffic flow.

  But it was the reconstruction of the Colonial Building, for which Rochelle oversaw budgets and work schedules, that she spoke about most frequently during their meals together. She had arranged for the sandblasting of the exterior, the scaffolds and tarps that snapped like pistol shots in the wind; hired craftsmen for refinishing inside, repairs of wood panelling, the roof, the fountains out front.

  He was six: the grip of her hand. It must have been after her work for the day because it was already getting dark. She was picking him up from daycare. The wind rushed across Bannerman Park and a swell of orange leaves roiled around the big tree trunks. He stood with Rochelle near the ledge of the fountain trough, the odour of algae in the stagnant water.

  He sees himself, a little boy, taking it all in — what lay beneath the surface, potted lights, pink and green and blue, pipes, pennies, and silver on the small blue Chiclet-like tiles, and the giant spigots, concave dishes with pinholes that were arranged in spiralling patterns.

  Then the world exploded and he stumbled back. Geysers blasting. Creamy pillars so fat he could not have circled them with his arms, high as the trees, pummelling the sky, shedding veils of mist that held faint rainbow prisms under the streetlights. The roar of it. The joy was instant and too much; he was stamping his feet to discharge it, his fists raised, he was squealing, as though the fountains were inside him.