by Tom Ryan
The night after I talked to Jay, I directed Lisa to a dark dirt road outside of town and got her to park at the end of an old lane. We fought our way through tangles of wild rose bushes to a little grassy meadow at the top of a hill. There was a full view of the ocean and, off in the distance, the lights of Deep Cove seemed to blend seamlessly into the starlit sky above. It was the most romantic place I could think of, and I knew we wouldn’t be bothered there. In my back pocket was one of the condoms Jay had given me.
“Wow,” said Lisa when we got to the top, “this place is beautiful!”
“Yeah. My parents used to take me here to pick berries when I was a kid.”
“No way. You really had a Tom Sawyer childhood, didn’t you?” She walked over to the edge of the tall grass and sat down. I followed, and we sat side by side, gazing out at the night in front of us. She lit a cigarette, and for a long time neither of us said anything.
“I never told you about my mom, did I?” Lisa was almost whispering when she broke the silence.
“No. Well, you said she had some issues, or something like that.”
She laughed. Not a happy laugh. “Yeah, well I guess you could say that. Basically, she’s fucking crazy.”
I didn’t know how to respond to that, so I didn’t say anything.
“When I was a kid, she was always normal, or at least I thought she was. She loved to take my brother and me to museums or to the zoo in Central Park, that kind of thing. When she was in a good mood, she laughed all the time, and she and my dad were always kissing and joking around and stuff. Every year we’d go on a big family vacation. France, Japan, all kinds of places. Anyway, as long as she was happy, we were all happy…”
She stubbed out her cigarette and was quiet for a bit before continuing.
“But once in a while, my mom would just kind of—disappear. She wouldn’t leave our apartment. She’d just get really distant, and sometimes she’d go into her room and close the door, and we wouldn’t see her for a while. My dad never said much about it. He’d be like, ‘Your mom has a headache.’ Stuff like that. Usually it would only last a few days, then we’d wake up and she’d be in the kitchen, smiling and making breakfast like nothing had happened. Will—that’s my brother—he and I just thought…I guess we thought it was normal.
“So then, one day when I was about eight and Will was almost twelve, my dad went away on a business trip to Chicago. For a day or so she seemed fine, but then she locked herself in her room and wouldn’t come out when we were there. Thank god my brother was there. We had no idea how to get in touch with my dad, but Will found her purse and took money out to order us pizza.”
“She didn’t come out of her room? Did you try to talk to her?” The whole thing sounded almost unbelievable to me. My parents could be super annoying, but I knew they would never deliberately neglect us.
“Oh, yeah. We’d call through the door. We must have tried the doorknob a hundred times. Nothing. We knew she wasn’t dead, or whatever. We’d hear her moving around, and the water would run in her bathroom every so often. But she wouldn’t say anything. It was really scary.”
“How long was she in there?”
“A week.”
“Oh my god! Wow. So what happened?”
“Well, we went to school every day because Will was worried that if we didn’t show up, our parents would get in trouble or something. Finally our dad came home. He could tell as soon as he walked into the apartment that something wasn’t right, and he went straight to the bedroom and banged on the door. She let him in, and he was in there for a long time. The next day, we came home from school and she was gone. Off to a mental hospital. For two months.”
“Wow,” I said again.
“So anyway, eventually she came home, and she seemed a lot better, and there were lots of apologies. She explained to us that she had been sick, but now she had medicine that was making her better, and that was it. She was fine for a long time, and then last year she started to act weird again. Will had already moved away to university, and I was out with my friends all the time, and nobody really noticed. I guess she stopped taking her meds. Who knows why.”
“What about your dad?”
“Dad was away on business a lot, and then when she started to act weird again, he said he’d had enough and he just kind of picked up and left for good. Pretty weak, I guess, but hard to blame him. Anyway, that’s when she really went off the deep end.”
She looked at me, almost apologetically. “Am I boring you with this?”
“No! Not at all, seriously!”
“A couple of months ago, she od’d on sleeping pills. We’d had a big fight, and I’d gone to stay at Naomi’s place, but Will happened to come home for the weekend and found her, and got her to the hospital in time.”
She gave me a crooked smile, but I could see that her eyes were wet. She wiped the back of her hand across her face and took a deep breath.
“Long story short, that’s why I’m here for the summer. My Aunt Cheryl flew in and helped Will arrange everything, and my mom went off to the loony bin again. Then I came here for the summer. I didn’t want to,” she said. “Especially so soon after she got out of the hospital. I felt guilty. I thought I should stay with her. But Will and Cheryl insisted. They said I deserved to get away for a while and have some time to myself, and that it wasn’t up to me to look after her.”
“Yeah. For sure.” I was finding it hard to think of anything appropriate to say. Sorry your mom’s nuts didn’t seem like the right response.
“I know it makes me sound like such a bitch,” she said, “but the whole thing just pisses me off. It’s like, did she even think about me at all?”
I nodded. I knew it must have been really hard on her, but it didn’t sound to me as if her mom had done any of it deliberately. She obviously had some real mental issues, and Lisa seemed to be going easy on her dad. But what did I know? My parents were pretty normal, all things considered. My own problems paled in comparison to this stuff. It was like something out of a movie. Central Park? Mental hospitals?
She threw her arms out in front of her with mock enthusiasm. “So here I am! Stuck in the middle of nowhere! I’m sorry for unloading my shit on you. It’s just tough to talk to Cheryl about it. She’s been so awesome already, I don’t want her to feel that she has to be my shrink or something.”
She jumped up, then reached down to grab my hands and pull me up.
“Thanks so much for listening to me, Danny. It means a lot.”
She pulled me into a hug and held on for a long time, with her head on my shoulder. I turned and buried my face in her hair, and the world stopped moving for a few moments. Everything became quiet and still. The stars were thick in the sky, the air was warm and sweet, her hair smelled incredible. I knew that if I was going to kiss her, this was the perfect opportunity. I pulled my head back slowly to look at her, and she looked up at me, smiling.
I thought about what Jay had said—just do it. But it was no use. Her voice was soft, her breath smelled like cherry lip gloss, and her breasts were pressed up against my chest. This wasn’t what I wanted.
“Do you know what I like about you?” she asked, pulling away and looking at me with a crooked smile.
“What?” I asked, my head spinning.
“You’re not always trying to get into my pants like every other pervert dude I’ve ever met.” She laughed. “That is an excellent trait in a guy.”
What would she think if I told her I was another kind of pervert altogether?
She smiled brightly and reached up to mess with my bangs. “We should probably hit the road; it’s getting late,” she said. Then she turned and ran back down the hill in big flying leaps, laughing the whole way.
I followed her at a distance, battling two emotions: relief that nothing had happened, and disgust with myself for feeling relieved.
ELEVEN
I was a failure. A fraud. A homo. A queer. A fag. Gay.
I knew that in oth
er parts of the world, being gay wasn’t such a big deal. There were gay bars, gay businesses, even whole gay neighborhoods. There were gay doctors and gay lawyers and gay actors and gay musicians. In big cities like New York and Toronto and San Francisco, there were gay pride parades, full of gay people covered with gay glitter and gay feathers dancing to gay music. Those people looked happy, like they could afford to have fun and be themselves.
But none of that mattered, because none of those people lived in Deep Cove.
Was I supposed to throw myself a one-man pride parade? I pictured myself zooming down Main Street on a pink bicycle wearing a feather boa, dodging rotten tomatoes and the jeers of everyone I’d ever known. I imagined Kierce and Ferris and their hockey buddies beating the shit out of me. I saw Jay looking at me with disgust and never speaking to me again. I wondered how my family would react if they ever found out. Would my parents disown me? Would Alma be so embarrassed that she’d pretend she didn’t even have a brother?
I was an island of gayness in an ocean of straightness.
The way I saw it, I had two options. I could try to be somebody other than myself for the rest of my life, or I could pick up and move far away. It was obvious that Plan A had failed miserably. If Lisa couldn’t turn me on, there wasn’t a girl on earth who could change me. It wasn’t going to happen. Period. Full stop.
That left me with Plan B. I had to get out of Deep Cove, move as far away as I could, because there was no way I could tell anyone here who I really was. To hell with figuring out a career plan for after high school. What I needed was an escape route.
To make matters worse, things at the restaurant were getting shittier by the day. I couldn’t seem to get any faster at washing dishes. Every time I felt like I was getting somewhere, a huge load of dishes would come in from the dining room, or the dishwasher would malfunction, leaving me soaked and the dishes still dirty.
When I fell behind, JP always kept his cool, but I knew I was holding him up. Luckily, the customers didn’t seem to mind waiting for their food. We were packed every night, and the Sandbar was getting rave reviews. It was great that the restaurant was doing well, but it didn’t make me feel any better about being the weak link.
A couple of evenings after my night on the hill with Lisa, I was crossing the kitchen with a stack of plates, fresh out of the dishwasher. JP turned around quickly with a hot pan of food, and when I moved to get out of his way, I tripped, and the plates flew out of my hands. I watched in horror as they landed on the service counter and smashed into a million pieces. Shards of broken pottery sprinkled a row of freshly plated entrees that JP had just put up for one of Ken’s tables. I froze as Denise came rushing into the kitchen, followed closely by Ken.
“What was that?” she asked. Then she saw the mess I’d made. She covered her face with her hands. “Danny, Danny, Danny. What the…No, I can’t deal with this right now.” She turned around and walked out of the kitchen. I looked at JP, who had quickly turned back to the stove to remake the orders.
“Okay, guy,” he said. “Scrape those plates into the garbage, and then sweep it up. Pronto.”
“Way to go, guy,” Ken sneered. “Now I get to explain to the customers why their food isn’t ready yet.” He gave the swinging door a heavy smack on his way back out to the dining room. I lifted my middle finger at his back, and was momentarily pleased to hear JP chuckle.
I felt like shit, but there was no time to stop and feel sorry for myself. I did as he told me and got the mess cleaned up, then dove back into the dish pit and tried my best to get things under control. JP managed to pull everything together in short order, and soon enough, things were back on track.
“Don’t worry, guy,” he said. “Everyone has accidents. That’s the business for you.”
Somehow that didn’t make me feel any better. The rest of the shift seemed to drag on forever, and Denise didn’t look at me for the rest of the evening.
The next day, when I got to work, I found her giving a tour of the kitchen to Parker, a sullen younger kid I recognized from school. She was explaining how to use the dishwasher.
“Hey, Dan,” she said. “Why don’t you go wait in the dining room for me.” I went out and sat at one of the tables, my chin in my hands. I figured I was lucky to have lasted this long. I couldn’t blame Denise if she fired me; I was a total disaster as a dishwasher. After a few minutes, she came out and sat across the table from me.
“So, this probably won’t surprise you,” she said, “but the whole dishwashing thing just isn’t working out. I hate to say it, buddy, but you are definitely not cut out for the dish pit.”
“It’s okay,” I said, trying not to sound as miserable as I felt. I moved to stand up from the table. “Thanks a lot for giving me a chance. It was really cool working for you.”
“Hang on,” she said, “where are you going? I didn’t say you were fired, I said you were a terrible dishwasher.”
I didn’t understand. “Do you want me to wait tables?”
“Hell, no. If you were even half as bad at that as you were at washing dishes, this place wouldn’t last a week. No, I was thinking that I’d put you to work with JP.”
“Really?”
“He’s really been slammed, and I can tell that he’s only barely keeping his shit together. I’m pretty sure if I don’t get him some help soon, he’s going to quit, and then we’re all screwed.”
“Do you think JP will be okay working with me?”
“Actually, it was his idea. He thinks part of the reason that you are such a shitty dishwasher is that you spend half your time watching him cook, so we might as well put you where you might actually learn something.”
I felt as if I’d won the lottery. Big-time.
The next morning, I came to work an hour early so JP could give me a rundown of some basics.
“Okay,” he said, “first things first. You don’t touch my knives. You touch my knives, I cut your thumbs off, I go to jail, Denise has to close the restaurant, you have no thumbs, and nobody wins.”
JP’s knives were his babies. He’d transported them from Montreal in a metal briefcase that looked like it held a nuclear detonator, and he kept them next to the stove in a wooden block.
He reached up to a shelf and pulled down a stained, tied-up bundle of cloth. “Go ahead,” he said, dropping it in front of me, “unroll it.”
It was a set of five knives, much older and more beat up than the ones he used. The handles were mismatched, and there were spots of rust on some of them.
“This is my backup set. I used these way back when I was a young kitchen slave, like you. You can use them for the summer. They don’t look like much, but they’re good knives. These are real steel; none of that stainless bullshit. That’s why they’re kind of rusty. You have to keep them clean and dry, and you rub oil onto them every night before you leave the kitchen.”
“Cool,” I said. They were pretty shitty-looking knives, but I wasn’t about to complain. Anything to keep me out of the dish pit.
JP grabbed a ten-pound bag of potatoes from the corner and dropped it on the counter in front of me.
“First lesson.” He picked up the smallest knife in the bundle. “This is your paring knife. Small, but very important. This little guy will do delicate work, like making garnishes, and it can do stuff that bigger knives can’t, like getting the seeds out of a pepper. But first things first.” He sliced open the bag of potatoes, grabbed one and peeled it perfectly in about ten seconds. He did another one, slower, showing me how to hold the knife and move the potato, and then he got me to try. I was slow and choppy, and cut several chunks out of the potato in the process.
“Wouldn’t it be a lot easier to use a peeler?” I asked.
“Oh yes, much easier. But what would you learn?” He patted me on the back. “You do this whole bag, and then we’ll see what’s next.”
I looked at the gigantic bag of potatoes, took a deep breath and started peeling.
JP was right; by
the time I’d peeled twenty pounds of potatoes, I felt as if I’d actually learned something. Over the next couple of days, I peeled what felt like hundreds of carrots and thousands of potatoes. It was boring and repetitive, but I kind of enjoyed the rhythm of it, and by the end of a few days of nonstop peeling, I felt as if I really knew how to use that paring knife.
Over the next week, I slowly graduated to doing more complicated prep work. I wasn’t actually learning to cook yet, but I knew the difference between a slice, a dice and a julienne. Depending on what JP needed for a particular dish, I did plenty of all three.
JP showed me how to pull the hairy little beards out of mussels, and how to devein a shrimp. I used my hands to break apart endless heads of romaine lettuce, wash out all the dirt, and rip them into little pieces for Caesar salad. I learned to crush cloves of garlic with the palm of my hand so that they would slide right out of their skin, and to mince them into tiny piles of fragrant mush that went into almost everything JP cooked.
The kitchen had become fun again. Now that I was helping him, JP was able to relax a bit. When he was relaxed, he listened to music. Lots of music. When we had a rush, and things in the kitchen were really intense, he’d listen to the Clash or the Stones. When things were calmer and running smoothly, he listened to hippie music, like Van Morrison or Joni Mitchell. But his standby was definitely Stevie Wonder, who quickly became my favorite too. When Stevie’s happy seventies beats rolled out of le boom box, I found it impossible not to tap my feet.
Parker tuned out JP’s music with giant headphones, plugged into a Walkman that was turned up so high that we could hear the muffled sounds of Green Day or NOFX buzzing around his head. He only communicated when he absolutely had to, and then only with grunts and shrugs. That didn’t bother anyone though, because he turned out to be a much better dishwasher than I’d ever be. He stood scowling at the sink, attacking the dish pit with gusto and angrily nodding his head along to his music.
Out in the dining room, things were also going well. Lisa told me that they were making pretty good tips, and Maisie was her usual cheerful self. Denise didn’t say much; she had a lot on her plate. But she always had a slight smile on her face, so I assumed that she was happy with the way things were going.
