Meteorites

by Julie Paul

  Well, Cassie had an urban setting on her makeup mirror, and she had no trouble using it. She could carve a decent cheekbone into a face that lacked any and send that woman on her way to see a concert in Ottawa. In fact, she and Pete drove into the city at least four times a year, not including the Christmas shopping trips; it was only an hour away, after all. She knew the people there were made of the same flesh and blood as the townspeople. In truth, they were becoming one and the same, now that the town was filling up with them.

  She was surprised that Iain and Alicia had chosen this subdivision over an old house like theirs. Then, the wine made her say so, out loud.

  Alicia and Iain looked at each other. He nodded.

  Alicia said, “Iain has a sort of—aversion.” She paused. “To the colour of bricks. So we had to steer clear of the old ones.”

  Cassie looked at Iain. What was this man doing on earth? Where had he come from?

  “I feel ill, you see,” he said. “When I see rust-coloured things. I’ve tried to work it out with my therapist, but we just can’t seem to clear it from my brain.”

  “Someone clock you with a brick once?” Pete asked.

  Iain shook his delicate head. “Nothing like that. I just can’t explain it, but my body reacts.”

  Cassie looked around the high-ceilinged room. Not a trace of terra cotta, rust, maroon, or anything close to red—everything was blue, green, white, or blonde. It was like being inside an ice cube.

  Just then the girls pranced into the room, dressed like princesses, wielding sparkly wands.

  “We’re here to turn you into frogs!” June shouted.

  “And pumpkins!” Chloe added.

  “Okay!” Cassie said, smiling at the girls and their obvious delight.

  Alicia was not smiling at the girls, and neither was Iain.

  “Chloe,” Alicia said, harshly. “We asked you to stop this.”

  The girl aimed her wand tip squarely at Alicia’s lips. “Silence, pumpkin! A squash cannot speak.”

  “Well, a magical one can,” June said.

  “She’s not magical,” Chloe said. “She’s just an ordinary old pumpkin.”

  “Now, Chloe,” Iain said. “Your mother has asked you—”

  “Quiet, frog! You’re only allowed to croak.”

  Iain sighed, closed his mouth, and drooped against the back of the sofa, silent.

  Cassie sat forward in her chair and drained her glass. This occurred on a daily basis at home, and Cassie had gotten very good at ribbitting through meals in front of a satisfied young tyrant. Pete didn’t exactly play along, but he didn’t seem to mind. Usually he just said, “Is that right?” and carried on with his meal, his TV watching, his shop-cleaning.

  “Those are powerful wands, girls,” Cassie said.

  The girls both nodded. “Mommy,” June said. “You’re a . . . you’re a . . . ” Her round face tightened with concentration.

  “She looks like the queen,” Chloe said. “With her big hair.”

  “But she doesn’t have a crown,” June said. Then she brightened up. “You’re a queen bee!” she cried and brandished her wand around Cassie’s head. “Buzz, bee! Buzz!”

  And Cassie buzzed like a good little bee.

  That left Pete. He was holding a green silk pillow in front of his face, and Cassie hoped he wouldn’t leave fingerprints—or even worse, a faceprint—on its fragile surface.

  “You can’t hide from us,” Chloe said to him. She poked her wand right into the pillow, hard. “Princess June, should we make him something . . . evil?” At this she narrowed her eyes and swung her head around in perfect mimicry of Mr. Burns from The Simpsons. Were they really letting her watch that show?

  “Yes!” June said. “An evil cat.”

  “A cat?” Chloe asked. “That’s not very evil.”

  “My cat is. She scratches me all the time.” June held out her arm to display her wounds. Of course, she didn’t share that she regularly tormented the poor animal by playing dress-up and laundry basket circus.

  Chloe shrugged. “Okay. An evil cat, then. With wings!”

  She tapped the top of Pete’s head lightly with the wand, and it was done. They were all new creatures, stuck watching these glittering, puff-sleeved girls as they giggled and danced away.

  For some reason, Alicia looked close to tears, and Iain had his eyes closed. Pete meowed, faintly, which made Cassie snicker until she turned it into a buzz.

  Then, thirty awkward seconds later, as if he’d been plugged in to recharge, Iain came back to life. He raised his index finger in front of his mouth to keep them hushed, stood up, then whispered, “Come with me.”

  He walked to the vestibule where their coats and boots were waiting, and for a second Cassie thought they were all going to leave. Instead he opened a door to reveal a set of beige-carpeted stairs leading downward. Quietly, the four of them padded below.

  “That nonsense doesn’t work down here,” Iain said.

  “I’m sorry about that,” Alicia said. “Iain, will you please go up and talk to her?”

  He shook his head. “It’s okay, honey. I’ll chat with her when June isn’t here.”

  Alicia turned to Cassie and Pete. “We’ve been having trouble with Chloe’s, um, sense of reality. It’s a little—off—so we’re trying to get her to cut down on the imaginary play.”

  “Huh,” Pete said. “Isn’t that normal?”

  “Not twenty-four-seven,” Alicia said. “I can’t even speak in my own house anymore. She keeps muting me.”

  “I want to show you something,” Iain said from across the room, in front of a closed door. He was grinning, and Cassie’s imagination kicked into gear again: she saw herself and Pete being locked up down here, then eventually, after a vague period of torture, sexual or otherwise, hanging from their necks. Why had all her thoughts turned macabre here? She pushed the image down and followed Pete over to the door. What had those crushed bugs done to her?

  “This is my passion,” Iain said, and he opened the door to reveal a huge room, with a miniature 3-D world on the floor and a fleet of small, perfectly spaced plastic vehicles parked in a row.

  “Whoa,” Pete said. “RC HEAVEN.”

  “What does that mean?” Cassie asked.

  “Radio control, or remote,” Iain said. “These are radio. No wires. Kind of like . . . magic.” He grinned again. His teeth were long and slender, more like toes than teeth.

  Cassie looked around to see how Alicia felt about all of this, but she was still across the room, on her knees, cleaning up Popsicle sticks and pom-poms. Cassie left the guys to the RC room, Pete’s face more lit up than it had been all evening.

  And what the heck? Alicia was crying behind her stringy hair.

  “Kids are messy, aren’t they?” Cassie said. “June’s art corner is an absolute pigsty.”

  “All I do is clean up this goddamned place,” Alicia said. “She won’t even go outside, because she’s afraid of the ‘wilderness,’ as she calls it. She only wants to make believe and put me under spells.”

  Cassie had to turn her face away from Alicia. It was wrong to laugh. Alicia was trapped in the fake burbs with a stuck-up man who played with toys and a tiny princess who clearly had not been put in her place, ever. That was an old-fashioned notion, maybe, but had June suffered by understanding the rules of their family? Not a bit.

  “What about enrolling her in Brownies? They make nature fun.” God, she was going to bust a gut listening to herself. “And when they turn into Girl Guides, they get to do a lot of camping.”

  “Chloe, a Girl Guide?” Alicia laughed bitterly. “Not a chance.”

  “It’s less—military—than it used to be,” Cassie said. “Like when we were kids.”

  “I was never a Girl Guide. I was never
anything.”

  Odd, Cassie thought. Or maybe that explained some things. “Where’d you grow up?”

  “Ottawa, born and bred,” Alicia said. “My parents can hardly bring themselves to visit us out here. They never pictured me as a country girl, and to be honest, neither did I.” She lay down on the shaggy brown carpet and looked up, then pointed at the ceiling. Sparkles surrounded pot lights in a stucco whip. “I mean, we’ve literally gone back in time here. I never wanted to be a seventies housewife, I really didn’t.”

  Cassie sat down beside her.

  “Why are you really here, then?” She’d been bolder, more forthright than she usually was all night, so why stop now?

  Alicia looked up at her in the split-level silence, which wasn’t silent in the least. They could hear a collection of foot thumps above them, an electric whine from the man cave. She looked like a woman-costumed girl, with a pouty frown.

  “You’ll think it’s dumb.”

  “No.”

  “It is dumb.” She sat up again.

  “Try me.”

  Alicia started to stack the Popsicle sticks into piles of five. Her once-fancy nails were now chipped, hands red and chapped, as if she’d been doing dishes for weeks in scalding water.

  “It’s Iain,” she said. “He needed space for his hobby.” Alicia put air quotes around hobby.

  “Ah,” Cassie said. “And what is that?”

  “His fucking toys! That room is where he spends all his time, other than when he’s dashing off a little article.” She swept the sticks into messiness again. “I don’t know if I can last, Cassie. I’m not built for this.”

  The guys were hooting and cheering above the whining, high-pitched sound of racing cars. They moved for this?

  “Any leads on a job yet?” Cassie asked.

  Alicia laughed, mirthlessly. “Nope. No openings for nurses around here, or so they keep telling me, even at the care homes.” Then she sighed. “They told me to apply as a pharmacy assistant.”

  Cassie’s mother’s voice piped up in her head: Maybe it’s your attitude that’s holding you back, missy. You know that sugar catches more flies than vinegar. If Cassie herself gave Alicia an honest appraisal—a professional opinion—she’d say that it might be more about presentation. A bit of mascara, a little blush, lipstick: that would make her appear more likeable. Some people didn’t need much help, didn’t look raw and burnt out like Cassie did without makeup—and Alicia was one of the lucky ones—but then, just to be content with that, not even try to enhance the natural beauty? This was where the tragedy was. This was where Cassie could work her own magic.

  “Alicia,” Cassie said, leaning in closer to her. “I’ve got an idea. Something to cheer you up.”

  “More wine?”

  Cassie shook her head. “Better. Can we leave the girls here with the guys for a little while? There’s somewhere I want to take you.”

  “Hell, yes.” She yelled Iain’s name. When he didn’t answer, she ran over to his room and kicked on the door to knock. “Iain!” she called without opening it. “You’re in charge now. The ladies are going out.”

  Before they left the house, Cassie followed Alicia upstairs to check on the girls. Alicia put her ear against Chloe’s bedroom door and furrowed her untweezed brows before opening the door.

  The girls were under the purple satin bedspread, their princess dresses—and a bunch of other outfits—in piles all around the room.

  “What are you doing?” Alicia asked.

  “Snuggling,” Chloe said. “We’re playing married.”

  June’s face was pink as she moved to the edge of the bed, holding the quilt up against her chin. Caught, naked. Cassie didn’t know what to do.

  “Dear God,” Alicia said. “Put your clothes on, please, and go play downstairs in the rec room. Your father’s in charge now.”

  “Where are you going?” Chloe asked.

  “Out,” Alicia said. “Come on, now.”

  Cassie had to say something. “June, do what Alicia said, and listen to your father while we’re gone. And put your dress back on, this instant.”

  “But where are you going?” Chloe whined.

  “Just out for a drive,” Cassie offered. “We won’t be long.” She turned around quickly and bumped into the doorframe, then into Alicia, and giggled her apologies.

  Alicia suggested a coffee before they left. “Just to be on the safe side.”

  Cassie didn’t argue. She hadn’t downed the whole bottle of wine herself, had she? Either way, what she’d imbibed hadn’t had much food to temper it.

  “Sorry about that stuff in the bedroom,” Alicia said, when they reached the kitchen.

  “Oh, it’s harmless,” Cassie said. “Exploring . . . is part of growing up.”

  “You’re probably right. I tend to overthink these things. Sometimes it’s all just too much for me.”

  They began to tidy up the dinner dishes while the coffee brewed. “It’s no easy job, is it?” Cassie said. “This parenting gig.”

  “I’m just so embarrassed,” Alicia said. “I don’t know what’s going on with Chloe. I honestly don’t.”

  “It might have been June’s idea, you know. Don’t sweat it. And didn’t you ever, you know, mess around with friends like that?”

  Alicia stopped rummaging for containers to house the leftovers. “Did you?”

  Cassie felt a blush rising. “Just a bit. Nothing over the top.”

  “Tell me!” Alicia said. She’d begun loading the dishwasher. “This is supposed to be Iain’s job, but what the hell. We’re waiting for java. Now what happened?”

  “Well, the first time was on a sleepover, with two other girls, when I was twelve.”

  “No!”

  “It wasn’t a big deal, really. We, umm, felt each other up, and then it never happened again.”

  In truth she hadn’t even liked the girls, both named Amanda. She had not been able to say no to the sleepover, since her mother was friends with one of their mothers, and what excuse did she ever have, to not go? The truth was, Cassie had been asked by both Amandas—earlier in the year, when they’d been fighting fiercely—about joining their little gangs, and she had said no to both, that she couldn’t choose. But there she was, sandwiched on a pull-out couch, having her hands grabbed and moved to open upon one budding breast, then another, and her own chest—still barely rippled—felt up by four Amanda hands.

  “And the second?”

  Alicia seemed to be really getting into this. Or was it just the hot water making her face flushed?

  “Oh, well, I was at, umm, Guide camp.”

  “Aha! And you said that Girl Guides would be good for Chloe.”

  Cassie laughed. “It wasn’t a huge deal.”

  “Then why are you blushing, girlfriend?”

  Girlfriend. No one had ever called her that. “It’s warm in here.”

  Alicia leered. “Go on, then. Spill it.”

  “I just—” How much of this should she tell her? No one else in the world knew of it, except the other girl, Barbara, who’d been from Toronto. “I wasn’t a Girl Guide, I was the level after that. A Pathfinder.”

  “So how old?”

  “Thirteen, I think.” Barbara was a year older, and her breasts had fully settled in, along with pubic hair and a desire for exploring whatever Cassie would let her.

  “We were figuring out what made us feel good, that’s all. Late at night, we’d sneak out of our cabin and go swimming together, or crawl under the flipped-over canoes.”

  One of them pretended to be a boy, on top, and the other stayed beneath, both wriggling, rubbing and kissing until the pleasure came. It was all kinds of wrong, and dangerous, and astonishing.

  “Damn, Cassie,” Alicia said. “You’re full
of surprises, aren’t you?”

  She laughed. “Speaking of, we should get going soon, shouldn’t we?”

  “You’re not going to, you know, try something kinky on me, are you?”

  “God, no. I’m not—all of that was just kids’ stuff. I’m into men, one hundred percent.”

  And she was. But she could feel a faint throbbing in her crotch now, her pantyhose a little damp at the top of her thighs.

  |||||||||||||||||||||

  As soon as they were in the car, Cassie at the wheel, Alicia pulled out her phone. “I’m switching this to the ‘don’t give a shit’ setting.”

  “I don’t even have a phone,” Cassie said. “So I guess I’m always on that setting.”

  “Amen, sister! I don’t care where you’re taking me. I’m just happy to be out.”

  “It’s not far,” Cassie said. “We’re just gonna have a little fun.”

  Alicia turned up the radio, and Katy Perry sang to them about being young forever, and for a second it felt like a teenage dream, two friends out together, in the dark, going anywhere they wanted.

  Cassie remembered Alicia’s unhappy face in the basement, cleaning up. It was true: parenting was hard some days. Maybe they had more in common than she wanted to believe.

  Cassie had also hoped for escape. She’d been on the path to higher education and an unknown but predictable future, ready to leave Stevens Falls and never look back, about to extend her young life like a mechanical arm and grab onto whatever she could reach.

  Then, the winter before high school was over, her mother changed. Not a turn for the worse, but for the worst, in the form of a particularly aggressive form of MS, and like a character in an Alice Munro story, Cassie changed her plans.

  She could have chosen to attend school nearby, with two college towns an hour’s drive away, but that wasn’t going to work with her mother’s needs, and besides, what could compete with the practical education she was receiving at home? Within months, her mother’s body had transformed from a reliable machine that needed little maintenance into a rusting, unpredictable vehicle she just wanted to leave in a ditch. Or so it appeared to Cassie: apparently her mother had been ignoring symptoms for at least a year.