China Blues

by David Donnell

  “I don’t mean ideas,” she said.

  “Oh.” He was very fond of ideas, and language, and books. He couldn’t play a note of music. Well, not much, just a bit of harmonica.

  “I love you,” she said. She wasn’t sure if she had ever said this before. She flexed her strong ankles against the outside of his hip, brought the big toe of one delicate foot over and tickled his stomach, just above the wide elasticized band where it said HOM. “So, it’s important,” she said. “What do you really believe.”

  “Like that guy the old man we saw outside of The Bay on Yonge Street,” she said, “grizzled.” She shook her head. The corn braids moved like dark butterflies. “The guy was on a little wooden platform, he didn’t have any legs, and he was selling pencils.” She had seen things like that before, and much worse things, but obviously she was disturbed by it. “What do you believe about things like that?” she said.

  “Not much,” he said. The bulge in his cotton briefs, the ones that said HOM, had diminished slightly. Legless, on a wooden platform, with leather glove pushers, it was a bad thought.

  “I believe in art,” he said. That was all he could say. “I believe in you.” There was a pause and he stroked her foot. “You always want something simple to put like a label on my shirt.” He became aware of the fact that he didn’t have a shirt. On. He tossed another piece of the tangerine peel to her and she caught it deftly with her free hand. “Tangerines,” he said, “you can put down, that I really believe in tangerines, like it’s an example, an essence, it’s challenging.”

  She lifted one dark eyebrow. “That’s pretty general.”

  “They are challenging,” he said. He held out the last perfect pale orange tangerine section with its fine white threads almost like a suspension for exact storage.

  “No, I’m not hungry yet. My mouth’s fine, we can have supper afterwards.”

  He tossed the handful of tangerine peel casually on the bed, put his free hand back on her foot, and looked at the last faintly glistening tangerine section in the afternoon light.

  “No, it is challenging,” he said seriously. “Most people just don’t appreciate it. Gord Robertson over at Coach House Press understands it a bit. Matisse, you like Matisse, sure, Matisse felt the challenge but he didn’t respond to it. Maybe he would have had to turn to photography or something, but he didn’t respond to it.”

  There was that moment in the afternoon air, they seemed to have talked about it. It didn’t seem to make any difference if he ate the last section of tangerine or not. His mouth felt rich, full of tart and sweetness at the same time. He swallowed. She had her long feet, one above the other, like dark birds climbing a tree in the early morning, some fancy northern residential backyard north of the Annex, resting comfortably on his stomach.

  “Sure you don’t want this?” he said, shifting his weight and looking around for a clean piece of paper or something on the bedside table to set it down. After all, you don’t want to pick up a fresh tangerine section after making love and put it in your mouth with a little dust on it, or a speck of ash. They were both smokers, she just a few cigarettes, he quite a bit more.

  “No,” she said, “let’s make love.” She snapped the large dome fastener at the top of her Klein fly.

  “I was just a little sleepy,” she said, “I was just waking up after our nap. Don’t get ideas,” she said. “I always want you in me.”

  THE SKATE

  IN APRIL 1969, MY FATHER GIACOMO DIED. That’s my middle name, Giacomo, pronounced Jackamo, my first name is Tom. They phoned me at Harvard – the 3rd floor phone at Coolley Residence – and told me he had fallen from the 34th storey of a bank building that was under construction in downtown Toronto. He hated banks all his life; it seems to figure that it would be a bank that destroyed the tall beautiful slab-shouldered mass of my father.

  I was back from Boston for about 2 weeks for this reason. It was earlier than spring break, I can’t remember how much earlier; when spring break came I went to Virginia with my friend Sam, and we picked up long-legged Virginian girls all of whom seemed to have long sandy brown hair that looked as if it had been washed fresh in the ocean. And we went to off-highway late hours places. So Toronto seemed an emphatic contrast, not to Boston so much, or to Harvard Yard, but for sure, overcast and low-pressure zone fluctuant Toronto in early February, as if all the Toronto millionaires were worried about losing their steel and lumber money, it seemed different, different from the last time I’d been home, it seemed gloomy.

  But this story isn’t about me, it just starts with me because I’m sitting here in a pair of chinos rolled ½way up my calves because I spilled water on the cuffs and 2 pints of warm beer.

  This piece is really about this funny kid I met on Queen Street West the 3rd or 4th night I was home. The kid’s name is The Skate. He’s about 19 years old, maybe a year younger than myself, not very preppy. I’m from a working class background, maybe a few hundred years, Tuscany, Calabria, on each side for all I know. Maybe a bishop or a cardinal tossed in to the Jackson Pollock dripalama. But, according to my old high school friends, when I see them, which isn’t much these days, I’m preppy. They think I’m preppy with a capital P. I talk differently than I used to. I dress differently than I used to. I’m at Harvard. I wear corduroys and desert boots in the winter. I don’t wear galoshes. I wore workboots, Kaufman’s, from Ontario, to my classes in 1st year, true, but that was just the one year. I open doors for girls, if they’re not already throwing themselves through the door in the first place. And I quite often wear a pullover tossed over my shoulders. In the spring. Which, actually, is something Italians, working class or otherwise, do a lot, in Rome, in Milan. This month in Toronto it was not spring, it was overcast, and there was no freshness.

  O yeah. City of death.

  Anyway I bumped into this guy in a bar called Madcaps. It was very crowded. We got talking and then we sat together. Blew smoke in people’s faces, talked about Queen Street, about new bars, places I hadn’t been on any of my trips home, 3, I think, in 3 years, and argued a bit about philosophers. He said Nietszche was something else, and I said O yeah, I’d taken Nietszche in 1st year, at Harvard, and it was nice, I said he wrote very well, but I didn’t think it was a complete way of looking at the world. Then I was down on Queen Street again to buy some tapes to take back with me, and I ran into him again, and he said, Okay, you’re buying some tapes, well, that’s where I work, Atlas Records, you should have come over and bought them at the place where I work.

  Now he says, I’m going to have a hamburger, you want to come?

  “I’ve got a date.”

  The Skate is a real Toronto street kid, he’s hip, he has a certain kind of manners, he’s into culture in a sense, but he doesn’t have any more education when you come right down to it, than one of the Dead End Kids. He himself probably perceives the idea that his life may indeed be a Dead End by the time he’s 30, but he probably doesn’t believe his own perception.

  He’s tall, about 5′11″, a bit shorter than I am, with a very sleek wedge-shaped face, black hair cut in a flat-top, he’s very exuberant, I’m not sure if that’s why they call him The Skate, he seems to like the nickname. “You going to the opera?” he says with a big grin and an arch smile.

  “No.” His simple gesture makes me conscious of the striped shirt, the tweed jacket under my overcoat. I’m only 20, for Christ’s sake, Albertini, save me.

  I feel like spending some time with him, hanging out, and this could be the solution to my not wanting to get stuck up at Fran’s Rosedale friend’s for dinner where there will be remarks and comments, condolences, about my father. I have no desire at this time to talk to anyone about my father. Maybe one of the Queen streetcar drivers on a late run to east end Neville Park. I felt at home getting up for breakfast at Grace Street. I felt out of place at the uncle’s. I feel out of place on Queen Street West.

  I have 2 great desires at this moment. I would like to lean over and kiss him on
the mouth, this other boy, this guy with a funny nickname, I don’t even know. And I would like to get on a plane and fly back to Harvard, toss my battered overnite bag on the bed, and go out to the library for the evening.

  I say, “Why don’t you come to this place I’m going for dinner, it’s a friend’s, and then we’ll check out a couple of these clubs you were talking about.”

  The Skate is a very enthusiastic guy. He says, “Sure, okay.” He thinks. “We can go eat, and then we can go to RPM. That’s a good spot. It’s a bit trendy,” he says, “but it’s a good spot, and Red Ryder’s at RPM this week.”

  “So that’s cool?”

  “Sure. I’m easy. Where do we eat?”

  I haven’t seen that much of my sister and my brother over the last 2½ years or so. This friend of Fran’s who lives up in Rosedale is somebody I haven’t met. Fran is still single but she’s engaged, and she seems to be hanging around with a fairly crisp, respectable financial bunch of people, these days, which is what her fiancé Ned does, he’s a bond salesman of some kind.

  We get a black&orange Diamond cab outside Zaidy’s. Getting into the cab, I can’t help thinking how the soft stream of flickering lights, looking west, is like an inviting picture. Some girls come past with their coats open, office women, late 20s, probably suburban.

  “Where to, guys?”

  The driver is a laconic dude in his early 60s maybe. He has wispy grey hair tucked under a tweed cap. I give him the address on South Drive and tell him we want to go along Queen up Yonge Street and along College to Jarvis, so I can go past Maple Leaf Gardens where I heard Eric Clapton play, Neil Young, other heroes, when I was 16, 17. And then up Jarvis.

  “It’s somewhere in Rosedale,” I say to The Skate.

  He says, “That’s okay, I don’t mind. Is this your sister, or a friend?” I tell him about Fran, and that it’s a girlfriend of her’s. I don’t mention anything about my father.

  “Okay,” the driver says as we go along College, “I’ll go up Jarvis.”

  “Yeah,” says The Skate, who at one point apparently thought I wasn’t from Toronto originally, “then you’re up Mount Pleasant and you can go in from the east side.” He can’t remember the street to turn in off, but he seems pleased.

  “Great,” says The Skate, “I love Jarvis. It used to be even better, before they cleaned it up so much, CBC, dainty little French restaurants.”

  “Yeah,” I say as we sweep through Bloor Street and onto northbound Mount Pleasant, “it’s cool.”

  It’s a trim 2½-storey brick&cement-front renovation on South Drive. I think Fran’s friend and her husband have just bought it, or just done it over, one of the two. I pay the driver and give him a dollar, and we walk up to the front door, snow shovel leaning against black iron railing, and knock.

  The young woman who comes to the door, extraordinarily lustrous bouncy bobbed ash-blonde hair, looks as cool and beautiful as a perfect lemon sherbet bombe. She looks at me enquiringly, taking in The Skate with the far corner of one entrancing light blue eye. “Yes,” she says.

  “You’re Fran’s girlfriend.” She purses her lips. I’m smiling, I’m fairly good-looking, this is an expensive overcoat. She runs that beautiful pulpy tip of the middle upperlip over her bottom teeth. “Noooo,” she says. “I’m sorry,” I say, “I’m Fran Garrone’s brother, I’m up from Boston, she gave me the address and said to come here for dinner.”

  “Oh, God, yes, Fran. Fran,” she says, “of course. You’re her brother?”

  “Right,” I say, “this is a friend of mine, his name’s Gene, you know, like Gene Autry.” I’m probably thinking of the club we’re going to go to after we have dinner, RPM, south Toronto after dark, Red Ryder and all that jazz.

  “Sure,” she says, “come in. We’re just having some drinks.”

  Fran was in the living room, sitting with some other people on one of two white sofas, looking a shade tired. She introduced me to her friend, Beverly, the husband was in the kitchen talking stocks&bonds, and we sat around and drank some fairly polite sherry. The Skate was interesting to watch in this context. He seemed very pleased with it. He was careful as he sat down in what looked like an antique Windsor armchair, he crossed his legs nicely, smoothed his somewhat skunky blue jeans, leaned back and laughed at appropriate jokes. Several people asked him what he did, and he told them he was in records and looking for a position with RCA or one of the smaller labels. It all went very smoothly, and it sure took a lot of attention away from me. Several people asked me, When do you graduate? And I said Oh, a little more than a year from now.

  I talked quite a lot over dinner, nice long dining room, refectory table they said they bought in Bracebridge, Ont., with the woman who had answered the door. Her name is Enid. I’d always thought that was a wildly old-fashioned name, Enid, Edna, Edith, like Winnifred sort of, or like Harriet. Now the name has a warm quiet flush for me, like somebody blowing the dust off a really attractive pink pale green & peach lithograph so to speak.

  I didn’t talk to Fran at all over dinner, maybe a few words at one point; but The Skate, after some of the wine Bev’s husband was passing around and extolling, he’d bought a case of it in New York through some big jobber up in the Bronx, became passionately animated.

  He did imitations of TV stars, really droll stuff, he did Geraldo, he was good at that, he did Jay Leno and made a couple of remarks about Italians, forgot himself I guess but so what, I don’t regard any guy with an Italian last name as being Italian, Bobby De Niro is Italian, Frank Sinatra’s Italian, Liza Minnelli is Italian, they’re symbols of passion and excellence, he didn’t do Rocky Balboa but he did Johnny Rotten and he did him to a blister, as they say, used lots of 4-letter words, talked about Johnny Rotten, the lead singer for a group called the Sex Pistols, cutting off his hemorrhoids with a razor blade and so on. Fran’s mouth fell open, I think she was shocked that I would arrive with somebody like this, he’s a nice guy, actually, during a period of mourning. That’s what Fran thinks she’s in, an official period of official mourning. Bev’s husband looked a bit perplexed but he seemed to think The Skate was funny, like a comedian on television, and Beverly seemed very amused.

  “Your friend, ah, drinks a bit?”

  I turn to Enid and shake my head. “No, I don’t think he’s drunk, I think he’s a bit gone in the hopper.” I tapped my head by way of explanation.

  “Oh,” she says, nodding, playing with her dessert spoon. It was quite a well-set table. She smelled of grass and flowers. I felt like leaning over and kissing her shoulders. It’s winter but she has a wide neck dress that almost comes down over whichever shoulder she lowers. Handy kind of dress to have I expect.

  I began to feel drunk myself around 9 o’clock. They were all talking at once, up and down the table, I’m not sure if The Skate was still in full swing or not. I felt drowsy, just one of those passing hits, and then you blink your eyes for a minute and you feel fresh, more or less, again.

  I excused myself to this lush flower of Toronto bourgeois womanhood, Enid, and went upstairs to the washroom. There was a study or TV room, I think, it was a TV room, with its door open, on my way down the hall to the can.

  In the john I look at myself in the mirror and shake my head. Poor Tom, you look glom. A friend of mine in high school used to say that if I had a really serious look on my face. Glom for glum, joke, okay? I was going to wash my face, cold water, nice big basin, fancy taps, but I thought it might make me feel like throwing up, hitting the wild beets, making a phone call on the big white porcelain telephone. So I had my slash, watered my gator, as they say, and just drank a handful of the water. It tasted good, very clear and cold, after all the warm red wine and smoky conversation downstairs around the table. “So that’s cool,” I said to the mirror, thinking of Enid downstairs. She had said, sure, that would be nice, when I asked her if she’d like to see a film tomorrow night.

  Walking back along the big red hall carpet, I stand in the doorway of the TV room/study l
ooking at things, prints on the wall, that stuff. There is a yellow&blue jersey, sporty, just a cheap jersey in coloured sections, lying on a small leather couch. I can’t imagine whose it is. Too big for the husband, sometimes women wear deliberately oversize jerseys or shirts or t-s. I walk over and pick it up, throw it up in the air, let it fall like a pizza chef in the big front window of Massimo’s on College Street, near the Diplomatico and the Sicilian Ice-cream Parlour. Yellow and blue, rah rah rah. Those were the colours at my high school, where when I was really hot in Grade 12 and OAC, I would go into games in the evening and they couldn’t stop me, I would be up in the air, one foot way out moving around somebody without touching the ground, I would go around, I would fake, pass over my head without looking, don’t look back don’t look back, I would go right over them if I couldn’t fake and weave around, up up up and hit that basket, I can still feel the slight change of air, fresh, hot at the same time, as you come down bouncing on the hardwood and break back into the game.

  And over there in the bank of spectator seats, when I glanced over after making a spectacular play or sinking the ball, perhaps, would be my father. Giacomo. Always sitting hunched is not quite the right word, splayed perhaps, forward, elbows on his knees, but easily the tallest man sitting there among the other, mostly Anglo, parents. His lank greying hair would be pushed back from his forehead and ears, a bit sloppy around the collar, and he would have his work clothes on, those dark green workpants, or those pale tan pants he wore a lot. And he would have a windbreaker. Sometimes there would even be, and I swear that even with sweat in my eyes and a sore rib and my heart pounding, I could see it from where I was on the floor, a splash of cement, or grease maybe, or paint, on his pants. He would have that big soulful but tough fleshy expression on his face, thick eyebrows jutting out a bit over his eyes. And he would have a dead half-smoked cigar in one hand dangling beside his knee.