Fruit

by Brian Francis

  I figured it was safe. “I’ll give you a hand,” I said, pulling my newspaper bag from around my shoulder. My customers could wait a bit.

  “Check that pile of shit over there,” she said, pointing to a stack of boxes against the wall.

  “What does a pizella iron look like?” I asked her as I started opening boxes.

  “Like a pizella iron,” Daniela said.

  I knew I had to ask her about Phil, just to make sure my last phone call worked. But I had to ask it in just the right way or else I’d sound suspicious. I yawned and stretched. “Still going away for the weekend with what’s-his-name?” I asked.

  Daniela stopped for a second. Then she turned her back to me and opened up a shoebox.

  “Phil and I are through,” she said.

  I was glad she wasn’t facing me, because I almost smiled.

  “Really?” I asked. “What happened?”

  “It’s too complicated to explain,” Daniela said. “I don’t want to get into it. Let’s just say my brother is as good as fuckin’ dead. Where’s that fuckin’ pizella iron?” She picked up another box, looked inside, and then chucked it over her shoulder. Then she sat down on a stepladder and sighed. “I’m never gonna find it. Can you tell me why I’m even looking in the first place?”

  “Why don’t you ask your mother to look for herself?”

  “It’s not that,” Daniela said. “That’s not what I mean. I’m not . . . it’s just . . .” She shook her head. “Never mind.”

  I watched as she fingered one of her split ends. I got a weird feeling and I knew that if I didn’t do something fast, Daniela would start crying and that just couldn’t happen.

  “I bet I can figure it out,” I said.

  “Figure what out?” Daniela looked up at me.

  “About you and Phil.”

  “What?” Daniela put her hand on her hip.

  “You dumped him, didn’t you?”

  She paused. Then she narrowed her eyes. “What makes you say that?”

  “Because I know you,” I said. “And I know that it takes a lot more than a shark’s tooth pendant to impress you. Like you said yourself, you’re not like other girls, batting their eyelashes over some jerk who doesn’t give you the time of day. You’ve got too much self-respect for that.”

  “Self-respect,” Daniela repeated, but it came out sounding like a question.

  “And high standards. Did Phil cry when you broke it off?”

  “A little,” she said. Then she got up from the step-ladder and grabbed another box. “Actually, the fucker wouldn’t stop bawling. Talk about a fuckin’ baby! I tried to be easy on him, though.”

  I nodded slowly and then grabbed my newspaper bag. “My work here is done,” I thought to myself.

  “I have to get back to delivering these,” I said. “If Mr. Cornish doesn’t get his paper by five, he’ll bust a gut.”

  “Okay,” Daniela said. She was holding an empty box in each of her hands. “I guess I’ll finish looking for this fuckin’ iron.”

  “You’ll find it,” I said. “Sooner or later.”

  Then I went on to deliver the rest of my papers.

  ten

  No one can agree on what to get my parents for their anniversary. Christine thinks we should get them a bird-house. Nancy wants to get them electric toothbrushes. I want to get them sheers.

  “That’s the stupidest gift I’ve ever heard of,” Christine said. “Who buys someone curtains for a present?”

  “Sheers,” I said. “Not curtains. Mom’s always saying how she wants sheers. Like the kind Mrs. LaFlamme has.”

  “I still think it’s a stupid idea.”

  “It’s no stupider than a birdhouse. There’ll be bird poop all over the place. Mom and Dad don’t even like birds.”

  “How do you know? I don’t remember them ever shooting chickadees in our backyard.”

  “You’re both way off,” Nancy said. “Electric toothbrushes are the way to go. Bubbles bought a pair for her parents for Christmas and they love them.”

  “And what did her parents buy for her?” Christine asked. “A pair of pliers to help her zip up her jeans?”

  “Bubbles has never been anything but nice to you and you don’t even give her the time of day. Your attitude really sucks.”

  “My attitude? Look who’s talking!”

  I started to get a headache. Christine and Nancy fight all the time now. Christine says Bubbles has a single digit I.Q. Nancy says Christine is a snob. Christine says Nancy is acting immature. Nancy says that Christine is acting like a bitch. Christine says that Nancy thinks she’s better than everyone else. Nancy says that Christine thinks she’s better than everyone else. It gets pretty annoying after a while.

  “Do you realize that our mom wears dentures, Nancy?” Christine asked. “If you can explain to me the benefit of giving an electric toothbrush to someone with false teeth, please tell me.”

  “What? Like she can’t take them out and brush them?”

  “I still think sheers are the only way to go,” I said.

  “Shut up, Peter!” Nancy and Christine yelled.

  “Why don’t both of you just shut up!” I yelled back. It was like a bomb went off inside of me, I was so angry at them. “You’re both acting like complete losers!” I turned to Nancy. “If Bubbles is such a nice person, then why did she only talk to you after you broke up with André? And Christine, I don’t care how mean you are to everyone. I wouldn’t tell you to ‘go away’ if you were the one being chased by a bunch of Bangers in Lambton Mall. I’d still let you in the store, Peoples policy or no Peoples policy.”

  I turned around and stormed down the hall. I couldn’t even bear to look at them anymore.

  “What’s his problem?” I heard Nancy say to Christine.

  That just made me want to turn back and scream, “You’re the one with the problem, Nancy! You’re the one with the birth control pills in your dresser drawer!”

  But I didn’t because then Nancy would ask me what I was doing in her dresser drawer in the first place and how could I tell her that I was looking for her copy of Playgirl? So I closed my bedroom door and put my desk chair beneath the doorknob and tried to remember back to the way things were before — before Nancy turned into a sister who has sex before marriage and hangs out with people named Bubbles. Before Nancy dumped André.

  Before Nancy was thin.

  I guess things started to go wrong last fall, around the time I hung up on John DeLouza. Up until then, everything was the same as it had always been. Nancy would go off to work her weekend shift at Tim Horton’s and come back with a bag of day-olds. Suzanne’s flyers would come in the mail and Nancy would hide them. On Sunday afternoons, she and André would sit at the kitchen table with the Sears catalogue and pick out the things they’d need once they got married.

  It was pretty clear to me that André loved Nancy, even if he was a loser. I’d find cards from him in Nancy’s drawer. “To my little bunny,” one said. “I wuv you.” That made me want to puke. Did he really call her that? Another time, I found a card that said, “You rock me like a hurricane, babe,” which was pretty tacky, if you ask me.

  One time, though, I found a whole letter from André in Nancy’s bottom drawer. It was written on lined, three-hole paper and smelled like cologne. There were a lot of spelling mistakes, which proved that André was dumber than I thought.

  “Nancy, I was thinking about last nite and what you said,” it said. “I know there are certian people that think you could do better than me (i.e. your parents) but they don’t know how much we care abot each other. We’re good together, babe and I promise I’ll take care of you. I’ll get a good job, we can by a house and start a family. It’ll be like all our dreams came true. I promise you, it’ll hapen, so please don’t go! I don’t know what I’d do if you ever leave me. I love you so much. xoxo André.”

  What did Nancy say to him? Did she tell him she wanted to break up? Did she say that they came from differe
nt worlds? Did she tell him to walk away, André, just walk away and never look back, no matter how much it hurt? I folded the note up and put it back in Nancy’s drawer. Whatever she said to him, she must’ve changed her mind, because Nancy kept on ordering appliances and hand towels from Sears.

  “What on earth is going on here?” my mom asked one day after Sears called to tell Nancy that her new Kenmore six-speed blender was ready for pick-up. “Nancy, this has got to stop.”

  “What are you talking about?” Nancy asked. She was flipping through the Consumer’s Distributing catalogue.

  “Well I don’t see why an eighteen-year-old girl needs a blender. And besides, Nancy, don’t you think André should find a job before you start stocking the cupboard?”

  Nancy licked her thumb and flipped the page. “Give the guy a break, would you?”

  “Look, Nancy,” my mom said. “I understand that you care for André a great deal and I know it isn’t easy for a girl like you, but that doesn’t mean you should settle for the first . . .”

  “What do you mean ‘a girl like you?’” Nancy interrupted.

  “Pardon?” my mom asked. A phony smile spread across her face.

  Nancy stood up from her chair and crossed her arms. “You heard me. I asked you what you meant when you said ‘a girl like you?’”

  “What I meant was,” my mom said slowly. “What I meant was that I know how difficult it must be for someone special like you to find someone just as special.”

  “That’s not what you meant at all and you know it,” Nancy said. She was so angry, her face was turning purple. I thought I saw smoke coming out of her ears. “Why can’t you let other people be happy without trying to ruin it all the time?”

  “Nancy, I don’t know what you’re . . .”

  “Why can’t you just be normal and say, ‘That’s great, dear’ or ‘I’m glad for you’ or ‘I trust you?’ Why do you have to be so freaking miserable all the time? Why do you have to be such a bitch?”

  I gasped. No one had ever called my mom a bitch before. At least not to her face. I was waiting for my mom to start screaming, but before she could do anything, Nancy stormed out of the kitchen, went to her room, and locked the door.

  My mom stood there for a moment, looking like she was trying to catch her breath. She took her glasses off, held them up to the light, and squinted. “I don’t even have a blender,” she said to her glasses.

  The next day, Nancy came home with her new Kenmore blender. She made banana milkshakes for herself and André, but no one else was allowed to have one.

  Anyways, what happened last fall was this: The afternoon of my mother’s birthday dinner at the Conch Shell, Nancy and André decided they were going to have their picture taken in the park. The photographer was André’s cousin. His name was Jean-Paul. He had a studio in his basement, which I thought was kind of creepy and I wondered if he ever took perverted pictures.

  I don’t know why Nancy and André wanted to have their picture taken. Maybe they were planning to run one of those cheesy engagement notices in the Observer. Nancy was wearing a peach dress that she’d bought at Suzanne’s and André was wearing a white dress shirt with a pair of Orange Tab Levi’s. Jean-Paul was getting them to stand in different poses and then he said something about needing a wide angle lens to fit them both into the picture and Nancy started crying and made André drive her to the Conch Shell in his crappy car.

  That was six months ago. Now it’s the middle of April and Nancy has a best friend named Bubbles, dyes her hair blonde, and spends all evening in front of the mirror. She has lost 40 pounds. I thought going through The Change with my mom was hard enough.

  “What do you think of this new lipstick?”

  “Mo-ther! Please don’t tell me you put my new suede skirt in the dryer!”

  “Donuts should be illegal. I’m completely serious. Donuts and potato chips. Oh, and pepperoni.”

  I’ve never heard Nancy talk so much in my entire life. It’s like her volume switch has been turned on high. No one really knows what to think about the new Nancy. My mom thinks she’s been brainwashed.

  “You have to wonder, Henry,” she said to my father. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she starts going out to those cult meetings under the tent on Highway 7.”

  “I think you’re getting a little carried away.”

  “Henry, you can’t stick your head in the sand about this. The other day, she started crying because I put margarine in the broccoli without telling her. She told me she never felt so betrayed in her life.”

  “So she’s a little emotional. Hardly seems out of place in this house.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  My mother also thinks Nancy is on drugs. She pulled me aside the other day and asked me if I’d ever smelled anything “funny” on Nancy.

  “You know what I mean,” she said. “Funny. As in ‘drug-funny.’” She crinkled her nose.

  “What does ‘drug-funny’ smell like?” I asked.

  “A little like oregano,” she said.

  I shook my head.

  “I feel terrible about asking,” she said. “But it’s just that Nancy’s so, well different than she was before. And I don’t trust that Bubbles character. I think she’s a bad influence.”

  Even though I’d never admit it to her face, I had to agree with my mom about Bubbles. That’s because Bubbles isn’t very smart, uses Lee Press-On nails, and wears jeans so tight she has to lie on her bed every morning and pull up the zipper with a coat hanger.

  “I’ve got one pair I can’t even sit down in,” I heard her tell Nancy. She sounded proud. “I wear them for ‘standing room only’ events.”

  Bubbles has feathered blonde hair and freckles and is always chewing gum. I wonder if she ever goes to bed with gum in her mouth. You shouldn’t do that or else you’ll wake up with gum in your hair the next morning. I know.

  Nancy and Bubbles started hanging out together in November. They’re in the same homeroom class and talk on the phone for at least an hour every night.

  “She sits right behind me,” Nancy said. “I thought she didn’t like me. Just goes to show that first impressions can be wrong.”

  “That’s right,” Bubbles said, smacking her gum. “I used to think Nancy was a total loser.”

  “Shut up!” Nancy laughed and hit Bubbles on the arm. “You didn’t really think that, did you?”

  “Well what’d you expect? You never talked to anyone and were always glued to André’s side. Don’t even get me started about that loser. I totally don’t get what you saw in him.”

  “Neither do I,” Nancy sighed. “He was a complete jerk-off. I guess that’s what having zero self-esteem does to you. Right?”

  At that point, I had to leave the room because I thought I was going to puke. And I was angry about what Bubbles and Nancy had said about André. I mean, maybe he wasn’t the coolest guy and maybe he was a bit of a loser. But that didn’t give them any right to talk that way about him.

  I think Bubbles was the one who told Nancy to dump André. I found a card from him in Nancy’s drawer shortly after she started hanging out with Bubbles.

  “I don’t care what your friends think about me,” he wrote. “We’re good together, babe. Don’t let other people’s opinins matter! Remember all the good times we use to have? Don’t let the majic die.”

  But the truth was, Nancy and André had started fighting as soon as they left Jean-Paul standing in the park. I’d put my ear to the furnace vent and listen to them argue in the basement.

  “Why aren’t you supporting me?”

  “Because it’s time you dropped this dieting shit. You don’t need to lose weight.”

  “Yes I do. And stop thinking of yourself for a change.”

  “Hey, don’t start with me, Nancy. You’re the selfish one. You’re the one who went all weird just because of what Jean-Paul said. I told you — the guy’s an idiot.”

  “It wasn’t just what he said. It was eig
hteen years of stupid comments. And I’m tired of hearing them.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Never mind. You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Well maybe I would and maybe I wouldn’t. But I’m at the end of my rope. I mean, we can’t even go to McDonald’s anymore, Nancy. How fucked up is that?”

  But no matter what André said to her, Nancy didn’t stop. She kept eating grapefruit for breakfast and salads for dinner. She exercised to her Jane Fonda workout record. She called Suzanne’s and told them to take her off their mailing list.

  It wasn’t long before Nancy gave André the boot. He got pretty weird after that and would park his car outside of our house, waiting for her to come home from school or work.

  “Do you think we should call the police, Henry?” my mom asked.

  “I don’t know,” my dad said.

  But when they asked Nancy about it, she said not to. She told them that André never said or did anything. He just pulled away when her Chevette turned onto our street. He hasn’t been around for a couple of months now, so maybe he’s finally given up.

  We ended up agreeing to get my parents a brass mailbox for their anniversary. It wasn’t as exciting as sheers, but they needed a new one.

  “Pick one up at Canadian Tire next time you’re working,” Nancy said to Christine.

  “Nancy, I can’t go shopping if I’m working.”

  “You work in a mall! Go after your shift is done.”

  “I don’t work ‘shifts.’ There’s a difference between Peoples Jewellers and Tim Horton’s.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You’re the one with a car,” Christine said. “Why don’t you pick it up the next time you and Bubbles are out skipping around?”

  “Why don’t you?”

  “Why don’t you?”

  I rolled my eyes and plugged my ears with my fingers. In the end, Nancy and I drove to Canadian Tire the next night to get the mailbox.

  “What’s up Christine’s butt, lately?” Nancy asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. I wanted to ask Nancy what was up her butt, but I bit my tongue.