Fruit

by Brian Francis

  “She’s just being a total bitch, lately. Do you think she’s jealous?”

  “Of what?”

  “Of her not being the only skinny one now.”

  I shrugged and pretended to be interested in something we were passing.

  “Because if that’s what her problem is, she’s going to have to deal with it. There’s no way I’m going back to the way things were before.”

  After we picked up the brass mailbox, Nancy and I were walking through the Food Court on our way to the exit when we heard someone behind us say, “Nancy!”

  We turned around to see a good-looking guy wearing a tight blue T-shirt and coral necklace.

  “Oh, hi Rick,” Nancy said.

  “How’s it going?”

  “Not bad, not bad.”

  “Are you coming to the game this weekend?”

  Nancy flicked her head to one side. “I might.”

  Was this the guy she bought the birth control pills for?

  “Well, maybe I’ll see you there.”

  “Maybe.” Nancy giggled. I wanted to throw up.

  “See you.”

  “Bye.”

  “Who was that?” I asked. I didn’t like him at all.

  “Only the most popular guy in school,” Nancy said. “I can’t believe he talked to me! Bubbles is going to die when she hears about this!”

  I wondered what André would think of Rick.

  On our way home, we had to stop at a gas station so that Nancy could fill up. She got out of the car and I tilted her rearview mirror so that I could pop a couple of zits while I waited.

  The sun was just going down. The days were getting longer, which meant that summer was around the corner again. People would stop wearing jackets soon and start wearing shorts and T-shirts. Grade 9 was only a couple of months away and I still hadn’t started working on the new Peter Paddington. The year had gone by so quickly. Underneath the tape, my nipples twitched.

  I moved up closer to get a better look at a big zit on my forehead and caught Nancy’s reflection in the mirror. She was wearing dangly silver earrings that flashed in the sunlight and a new pair of jeans and a pink cashmere sweater that she’d bought at Suzy Shier. All this time, I pretended not to notice Nancy. In my head, she was still the same Nancy. But now, for the first time, I really saw how thin she was. I could see her collarbone sticking out from underneath her skin and I realized that I’d never seen Nancy’s collarbone before. Nancy’s pretty now. She’s thin and she’s a whole new Nancy Paddington. And I understood what André was waiting for those nights he parked in front of our house. He was waiting for the old, fat Nancy to come home. I was waiting for the same thing.

  eleven

  Every May, the trees along our street blossom with little pink flowers. They’re very pretty, even if they only last a couple of weeks. Mr. Mitchell told us the flowers are God’s gift to us and we should all sit underneath the trees and write poems. He’s been on this kick lately. It started with him reading us a Robert Frost poem about a cow. Then, for English period, he had us write haikus.

  “Remember: five syllables in your first line, then seven, and back to five again!”

  I wrote my haiku about a pencil:

  Long, slender, yellow

  Sharp, lead point writing things down.

  Mistake? Eraser.

  Mr. Mitchell only gave me a B+ on it, which shows you how much he knows about good poetry. I guess I got bitten by the poetry bug a bit, because I’ve started writing haikus about everything: newspapers, grass, grocery stores, TV shows, you name it. My best one so far is the one I dedicated to Mr. Hanlan:

  Strong man with brown eyes.

  Happy birds sing. Why not you?

  “Evil wife must die.”

  The last line Mr. Hanlan says, not me. I don’t think Mrs. Hanlan is evil enough to kill. But I do think she’s too evil to deserve someone as good and kind as Mr. Hanlan. But Mr. Hanlan doesn’t see that since he’s so good and kind in the first place. She’s got him trapped.

  But maybe there’s a way I can let him know. Maybe I can break the Hanlans up the same way I did Daniela and Phil, the Burger King Banger. I went to grab the telephone book.

  “Do you really think this is a good idea?” my nipples asked from underneath their bandage. I got smart recently and found the elastic bandage my mom had wrapped around her ankle after her Mary Kay fall. I figured it beat buying tape all the time. Every morning, I wrap it around my chest twice and fasten it in place with a safety pin.

  “I’m not asking for your opinion,” I said, opening the book to “H.”

  “Doing this isn’t going to change anything,” my nipples said. “Mr. Hanlan doesn’t like you. Not in the way you want him to, anyway. The only thing you are to him is the paperboy.”

  “That’s not true!” I said. “Besides, why should I listen to you in the first place? You’ve been nothing but liars since the day you popped out.”

  “We’re the only ones telling the truth,” they said.

  I couldn’t concentrate, so I closed the phone book before finding the Hanlans’ number. My nipples were jealous of me, plain and simple. They were afraid I wouldn’t need them anymore when things started to change — once I broke up the Hanlans, once I lost weight, once I got a boy friend, once I became the person I knew was inside of me, just waiting to get out.

  The next day at school, we were out in the field, playing soccer. Well, maybe I shouldn’t say “we.” It was Craig Brown and the other boys from the Athlete Group who were really playing. The rest of us were standing there, pretending to look ready if the ball came our way. I was talking to Margaret Stone about Mr. Archill, the organist at St. Paul’s United Church.

  “I always smell whiskey whenever he’s around,” I was saying. “I bet he’s an alcoholic.”

  “Well, I’m not sure about that,” Margaret said, but I could tell by the look on her face she thought the same thing, too. Since she’s a minister’s daughter, Margaret can’t say anything bad about anyone. It’s hard being a Christian.

  “People! Let’s move it!” Mr. Nunzio yelled, clapping his hands. He was staring over at Margaret and me. “You have to go to the ball, people. The ball will not come to you.”

  Mr. Nunzio is always calling us “people.”

  “People! It’s time to motivate yourselves!”

  “Sports are like life, people. You can stand on the sidelines or you can get in the game.”

  “The only exercise you people seem to get is by flapping your gums.”

  I had Mr. Nunzio for grade 7 last year. But this year, he teaches gym to my class while his class takes geography with Mr. Mitchell.

  Mr. Nunzio is short and always red in the face, especially when he’s yelling. He doesn’t yell because he’s angry. He’s just one of those people who does it without thinking, like when Daniela Bertoli uses the f-word. I asked Daniela if she knew Mr. Nunzio, since I thought he might be Italian. She says all Italian people know each other.

  “It’s the shits,” Daniela told me. “Everyone’s always sticking their noses into your business.”

  But Daniela said she’s never heard of Mr. Nunzio, so I guess he’s something else.

  Mr. Nunzio is balding, but he’s very hairy everywhere else. He has a bushy red moustache and the furriest arms I’ve ever seen. When Mr. Nunzio is teaching gym, he wears short-sleeved shirts, so I really notice just how big and hairy they are. He wears blue gym pants, too. Sometimes, I can see his dink poking out.

  Mr. Nunzio has a picture of his wife and two kids on his desk. His wife is all right looking, I guess, but she should get a perm. Her hair is long and straight and parted in the middle. I think Mr. Nunzio could do much better. Mrs. Nunzio is probably very demanding and tells Mr. Nunzio he isn’t making enough money.

  Mr. Nunzio’s first name is Al. I know this because I overheard Mr. Mitchell call him that once. It’s weird when you hear teachers call each other by their first names. It’s like they’re friends or some
thing.

  Anyways, Mr. Nunzio is always telling me that I should exercise more.

  “You’ve got to have confidence,” he says to me. “Confidence in everything you do. That includes sports, Peter.”

  I know that when Mr. Nunzio tells me to exercise, he isn’t being mean. It’s like he sees something in me that I don’t see myself. He cares about me, even though he doesn’t come right out and say it.

  Sometimes, though, I wish Mr. Nunzio would lay off, especially when other people are around. I mean, the Indian kids never do anything in gym class, but he never yells at them.

  Anyways, so Mr. Nunzio tells Margaret and me to “get in the game, people.” And part of me was kind of angry, because I wanted to talk to Margaret more about Mr. Archill, but another part of me said, “He’s only saying that because he cares about you, Peter.”

  So while I’m standing there, thinking about all this, something hits my foot. I look down and it’s the soccer ball. It takes me a few seconds to realize what it is, because I’ve never seen one that close up before. And the next thing I hear is Mr. Nunzio yelling, “Run, Peter, run! Take it to the net!”

  And I see Craig Brown and his goons heading towards me, so I start kicking the ball and running with it. And I hear Mr. Nunzio say, “The other way, Peter! Go towards the other net!” But I don’t care, because it feels kind of good and my heart is beating fast, and I’m thinking how proud Mr. Nunzio must be and he’ll go home tonight with a big smile on his face and tell his demanding wife how I came through for him today, just like he knew I always would. Maybe he’ll even start to cry.

  And just as I was getting to the part where I could see Mr. Nunzio’s tears, everything went black.

  When I woke up, I was in Mrs. Terribone’s office. She’s the nurse at Clarkedale and works on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Once a year, Mrs. Terribone goes around to all the classrooms, checking people’s hair for lice using toothpicks. It’s very embarrassing.

  Mrs. Terribone smokes, too. I’ve seen her pull out of the parking lot after school, sucking on a cigarette like it was the end of the world. That tells you what kind of nurse she is.

  “HOW MANY FINGERS AM I HOLDING UP?” she was yelling at me. I could smell the smoke on her breath. “WHAT YEAR WERE YOU BORN? WHAT IS YOUR ADDRESS?” She kept snapping her fingers in my face. It was very annoying.

  “I’m fine,” I told her, but I was still a little groggy. I couldn’t figure out how I got there with crazy Mrs. Terribone yelling at me. Then, I started to remember.

  Running in the field, kicking the soccer ball, Mr. Nunzio telling me to turn the other way, turn the other way. Then, nothing.

  “Did I faint?” I asked Mrs. Terribone. I was pretty excited. Fainting is very dramatic. I wondered how I looked when it happened. Did I put my hand to my forehead? Did my knees give out? Did Mr. Nunzio carry me off the field in his arms?

  “Oh, you passed out all right,” Mrs. Terribone said. “Hit the ground like a ton o’ bricks, Peter. The whole kit and caboodle.”

  I was kind of mad when Mrs. Terribone said that. It didn’t sound very graceful.

  “It must’ve been my heart,” I said. “It’s very weak.”

  Maybe I had a disease. I’d have to go to the hospital and Mr. Nunzio would come to visit me. He’d feel so guilty.

  “It’s all my fault, Peter,” he’d say. “If only I hadn’t pushed you so hard.”

  “It wasn’t your heart,” Mrs. Terribone said. She yawned and I could see all the fillings in her molars. “It was this.”

  And then Mrs. Terribone held up the elastic bandage that I had wrapped around myself that morning before school. I closed my eyes and thought I was going to die. I put my hands on my chest. My nipples were free under my sweatshirt. They’d start talking any minute and how was I going to explain that?

  “This came undone, Peter. You tripped on it. Now, do you want to tell me what this is about?”

  I couldn’t speak. All I kept thinking was what if my sweatshirt had gone up around my neck when I fainted? What if everyone had seen my stomach, or even worse, my nipples? What about Andrew Sinclair and Mr. Nunzio and everyone else?

  “It’s for my ribs,” I said quietly. “I sprained them a while ago. They’re very delicate.”

  “Peter, you didn’t sprain your ribs,” Mrs. Terribone sighed. “Now, why don’t you try telling me the truth?”

  I don’t hate many people because it’s not very Christian. But at that moment, I hated Mrs. Terribone more than I hated anyone ever. All I wanted was to be invisible and go back into unconsciousness where it was black and no one asked me questions I couldn’t answer.

  “My head hurts,” I said. “I think I need to rest some more.”

  Mrs. Terribone said that my mom was on her way and that she’d be back in a minute.

  “I gotta get something out of my car,” she said and grabbed her keys. I knew that meant she was going for a smoke.

  I lay there in the cot, staring at the holes in the ceiling. I thought about running away. There wasn’t a window in the nurse’s office, but if I could sneak down the hall and into the boy’s washroom, maybe I could climb up and out one of the windows. Then I remembered how small the windows were and the last thing I needed was for someone to find me stuck in a window frame.

  I wondered where my class was. Were they still out in the field, playing soccer? How much time had passed since I fainted in the field? Wherever they were, I’m sure everyone was laughing at me. How could I do something so stupid?

  “We were wondering the same thing,” my nipples said. “Serves you right for squishing us down with that stupid bandage.”

  “I wouldn’t be wearing that stupid bandage if you were normal nipples,” I said, “so it’s more your fault than mine.”

  “If that’s what you say. But you might as well get used to us because we’re not going anywhere.”

  “Why are you being so mean to me?” I asked them.

  “We know everything about you. You can keep chasing soccer balls all you want. But you can’t run away from us.”

  It wasn’t long before my mom came barging through the office door.

  “Oh my lord,” she said when she saw me lying on the cot. “What on earth?”

  “He’ll be all right, Mrs. Paddington,” Mrs. Terribone said. She smelled like smoke and Scope. “Just a little fainting spell, that’s all.”

  Mrs. Terribone told me to wait outside while she spoke to my mom.

  While I was standing in the hall, Brian Cinder came walking by. I pressed myself as far back as I could against the wall and prayed that just once, just this one time, he wouldn’t say anything.

  Brian stopped in front of me. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  I looked up at him and nodded. I couldn’t believe he asked me that.

  “You fell pretty hard.”

  “Did I?” I tried to smile. “I don’t really remember it.”

  “Oh yeah,” Brian said. “Really hard. So hard, there’s a big hole in the field in the shape of your ass. They’re bringing in a dump truck tomorrow to fill it in.” Then he started laughing and walked away.

  “We’re going to have to tell your father when he gets home,” my mom said. She put the elastic bandage on the coffee table and had just hung up the phone after making an appointment with Dr. Luka. She’d stopped crying by that point, but her eyes were still puffy and red. “You’re going to have to tell him about what happened this afternoon.”

  The good thing is that my mom doesn’t know about my nipples. When she asked me why I’d wrapped the bandage around myself, I told her that I did it to look thinner.

  “My stomach is too big,” I said. “I thought the bandage would be like a girdle. Like the kind Grandma Paddington wears.”

  I figured it was better to tell her that than tell her the truth.

  “But why would you do something like that?” my mom asked. “Why?”

  “Because,” I said. “I already told you. My stomach is too big.�
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  “Peter, you’re being ridiculous,” my mom said. She made a snorting sound. “You’re just a bit on the chubby side, that’s all.”

  “Chubby side? Mom . . .”

  “Is Nancy behind this?”

  “No.”

  “Then why would you do something like that? I don’t understand, Peter.”

  “You’re not listening—”

  “I don’t want to talk about this right now, Peter. We’ll have to wait until your father gets home.”

  I rolled my eyes and sat back into the sofa. I can’t understand how she could be so two-faced. She wants me to give her an answer. So I do — which isn’t the real answer, but it’s real enough. But then, that answer isn’t the right one for her, so I don’t know what she wants me to say.

  We sat in the living room, waiting for my dad. Neither of us said anything. The only sound was the ticking of the living room clock. My dad was out buying a new lawn mower. After a while, the car pulled into the driveway and then the back door opened and I heard my dad come up the stairs.

  “Henry, your son has something he needs to tell you,” my mom said as soon as my dad came into the living room.

  He turned from me to her and then back to me. “All right,” he sighed and sat down. The look on his face was the same as when he sat in the bleachers, watching me try to play softball. That was two years ago. I signed up because I thought it’d make my dad happy. I figured he could make friends with the other fathers while they watched the game from the bleachers and my dad could yell things like, “Go, go, go!” or “Did you see my son catch that ball? He’s heading straight to the majors, wait and see” instead of sitting in the den, listening to his country and western tapes while I practised calligraphy in my room.

  But it didn’t take long to figure out that my dad couldn’t yell things like “Go, go, go!” because I never went anywhere. I struck out most times. And as far as catching anything, that didn’t happen either. I got put in right field and I was afraid of the ball hitting me in the face, so I stood and watched the other boys run after it while the coach yelled at me. I couldn’t look at my dad, sitting there in the bleachers. He couldn’t look at me, either. After a few games, he stopped coming. And I stopped playing. And neither one of us talked about baseball after that.