Agassiz Stories

by Sandra Birdsell

“There’s a pretty girl,” she hears someone say in passing and she flushes. Everyone is staring at her. How was Barbara Eden discovered? she wonders. “I’ll have the full look,” she says through the tight knot in her throat. His hand is cool as he spreads cream across her forehead.

  Is her skin comparable to movie stars’ skin? Is he thinking what a surprise it is to find someone like her in Winnipeg? She can’t tell anything from his hands. He shows her how to find the line of her cheekbones which are high and prominent, he says. Delicate bone structure, Dresden complexion, he explains to the women as he works. Dresden is in Germany, she has learned from selling Avon and counselling her customers on what colours suit certain complexions. Germany, where her father came from after the war. Only her father is not a delicate person, but a hard slaughterhouse man. With her face tilted up she can see the curve of her nose in the mirror. Broken nose, he doesn’t say. Notice the chipped eye tooth and the false front teeth, he doesn’t say that either. His fingers are cool as he spreads colour across her cheeks, down her nose, and she imagines the curved bone straightening beneath his touch while his breath, orange scented, falls around her face like petals of a flower and she will lick them up and swallow them one after another and a tree will spring up inside her.

  Too soon, he’s finished. She wants to protest. He tilts the mirror so she can see. “Do you like it?”

  God. She doesn’t know. The person who stares back looks stricken, like she has all the problems of the world squatting on her head. A refugee.

  “You see the effect I’ve created with white? It makes your eyes seem twice as large,” he explains. “I have enhanced what you already have, that’s all.”

  He has brushed on three different colours of eye shadow and painted eyelashes beneath her eyes almost half-way down her cheeks. But it’s the false eyelashes that make her look weird. Two pairs, layered with mascara, and each time she blinks they tickle the hairs in her eyebrows. “I like it,” she says.

  He smiles and it makes the lie worthwhile. She folds her right hand overtop the left to hide her rings. What will she do if he asks her to meet him afterwards?

  He bends near to unfasten the clip at her neck and she wants to push her face into his thick blond hair. “How old are you?” he asks.

  “Twenty-three.”

  “You really should be using moisturizer,” he says. “So many people think that face creams are for older women. But in this climate, everyone needs protection.” He holds up a bottle of pink lotion. “This is very light. Your face doesn’t feel greasy, does it?”

  She shakes her head. No.

  He removes the cape. “You’re a beautiful woman,” he says. “Your greatest asset is your skin.”

  Everything she wants to say stops in her throat. A woman. A beautiful woman. “Let me help you, Miss,” the sales clerk comes into focus and hands Bobbie her purse. She collects her coat from the back of the stool. She takes her time. She longs for him to say more.

  “Over here, dear.” The clerk motions towards the counter and Bobbie, vaguely aware of the admiring glances of the people who part to let her through, hears the gentle, low voice of Clint Eastwood telling a woman that this Twiggy look is definitely her.

  Sixty frigging dollars’ worth of creams in frosted bottles with statues of naked women for caps. On her charge card.

  “And so he wanted someone to model this Twiggy thing for him,” Bobbie says to Lana while she waits to cash out her tabs, “and so I said, what the hell, it’s free.”

  She pulls off her boots and puts her aching feet up on a chair. Every last bit of the light-hearted atmosphere of the lounge has been crushed out and the room is like one huge smouldering ashtray. The final show begins in the cabaret upstairs and rock music blares through the plate glass wall above them.

  “Sodom and Gomorrah up there.” Lana works during the day at an exclusive golf club and met Billy Graham there. He gave her a special invitation to attend his Crusade. She acts as though she met a real star and keeps the invitation on her mirror in the change room. As she sets the machine down, her skirt moves up, revealing a button clipped into her fishnet stocking. Stamp Out Reality, the button says.

  “Some guy gave it to me if I’d let him pin it on,” Lana says when she asks. “I thought my kids would like it.”

  Jesus is Coming Again, Stamp Out Reality, Zap Them All With Love, Peace, Follow the River Inside Yourself and Then Out Again. Everywhere she turns there are signs and buttons and scrawlings on buildings written by people who seem to be moving to some urge that she doesn’t understand. What is reality that it needs stamping out? We are worm food, she tells Lana who spouts the life after death thing all the time since she’s been to the Crusade for Christ. Bobbie has been to the nuisance grounds enough times to know that we are worm food and that’s all.

  Except for one hippy-type at the bar, the room is empty. Bobbie watches the bartender wipe the counter in front of the lone drinker for the third time. It’s all linger and relax, she thinks, but once the last call is in the kitty, bingo. Lana finishes with the adding machine and Bobbie begins to add up her tabs. Music crashes down on them as the cabaret door opens. “Look who you see when you haven’t got a gun,” Bobbie says. Ronnie, Wayne’s brother, comes down the stairs followed by another man. He squints in the light, sees her and waves.

  “My favourite sister-in-law,” Ronnie says as he lurches over, bends and kisses her on the neck. “Looking good,” he says and stares at the front of her blouse. Two fried eggs, Ronnie says about his wife’s boobs. Poor Carol, she is almost six feet tall and has nothing in the top storey at all. Bobbie always makes a point of dressing up whenever they go to Ronnie and Carol’s. “Looking real good,” he says.

  “I’ll drink to that,” his drunk friend says.

  “What are you doing here?” she asks, meaning without Carol. She mixes the right amount of friendliness and business in her voice. She knows from working in this place when somebody is coming on. As far as she’s concerned, the smart-ass university types are the worst kind. Like the guy who was studying Political Science who smoked a pipe and spent a week staring at her and then asked if she’d go home with him. He wanted to study her great organizational abilities. Hah. She was blonde but not dumb. She’s sure as hell glad Wayne doesn’t go out drinking with his brother.

  “I’m celebrating,” Ronnie says and leans against the table. He slings his checkered sports jacket over his shoulder. He’s smaller than Wayne and not as good looking.

  “What this time?” she asks.

  “I’ve chosen my orifice,” he says. “I’ve been accepted into dental college.”

  Bobbie thinks of Wayne sitting at the breakfast nook, pretending to read the Physics book, and what this will do to him. Then she remembers that she didn’t have a chance to look at the toilet seat and tank covers in Eaton’s. She is about to say something when Ronnie lurches off, his friend trailing behind.

  She slouches into a plush high-back chair as she waits downstairs in the main foyer for the taxi to come. The dining-room waitresses also sit there in silence, a row of white shoes, sensible crěpe-soled oxfords and her own black patent boots with the three-inch heels. The door opens. Wayne stands beneath the crystal chandelier, nervous and looking out of place in his rolled-up jeans. But she notices he’s shined his shoes.

  “Where’s Jason?” she asks. When he comes unexpectedly like this, she thinks he’s checking up on her.

  “In bed,” he says. Even his voice seems out of place. “It’s only a ten-minute drive.”

  “‘Night, Bobbie, straight home now,” Teddy, the bouncer-doorman, smiles as they pass beneath the canopy.

  “You seem quite friendly with him,” Wayne says as they get into the car.

  “I’m friendly with lots of people at work,” Bobbie says. “They like me.”

  Wayne is silent as he backs from the parking spot. “Friendly to a point,” she says. “I know how far to go.” The headlights of their car sweep across the parking lot,
capturing Ronnie for an instant as he walks across their path.

  “Well, well, well,” Wayne says and grins. “What have we here?” He flicks off the headlights. They watch as Ronnie walks over to a dark-haired woman who leans against a silver Barracuda. He slides his arm around her waist and steers her inside the car.

  “It’s none of our business,” Bobbie says and feels strangely let down. Wayne should have been a cop, the way he delights in finding someone doing something wrong.

  “Well, well,” Wayne says. “Get that. A classy broad with a new car.” He smiles as they begin the drive home.

  His whiskers are prickly against her fingers as she makes him look at her. “What do you think of my eyes?” she asks. You are a beautiful woman, Clint Eastwood said, his crinkly blue eyes staring straight into her own.

  Wayne squeezes her kneecap, making her jump. “Your eyes are like two pools,” he says. “Cess pools.”

  She pushes his hand away. When he parks the car, she jumps from it before it’s completely stopped and hurries into the house. Jason’s door is closed. Wayne forgot to leave a light on for him. She bends over Jason and arranges his blankets. She smoothes hair from his forehead and smells the sharp dusty odour of it. She frowns. That damned Wayne. He hasn’t bathed Jason again. When she goes out into the kitchen he doesn’t even look up, but chews his pencil and stares blankly at the Physics book in front of him.

  “Yes, master,” Jeannie says in living colour and blinks her eyes. Bobbie has tried all afternoon to do her eyes slanted like Jeannie’s. She wishes she could find Harem pants. Even though Wayne is late and she’s keeping supper hot, she laughs as Major Nelson winds up on the ceiling. Jeannie has a good sense of humour. Jason curls on the couch beside her, sucking his thumb. She’s glad she happened to go past the Radio Shack and saw the TV sale. She only had to put ten per cent down. She would really like to get a stereo, too. The living room has got a long way to go before she will be satisfied. Jeannie disappears into her bottle and Major Nelson falls to the floor. Next is The Brady Bunch which she hates. She gets up and goes to the kitchen to look at the clock. The Physics test has been finished for two hours now. Wayne’s being late means either it went okay or it didn’t. All day she wondered how he would do. She leans against the refrigerator and tries to stretch the tension from her shoulder blades. The kitchen is stuffy and smells of burnt eggs. A good soaking before she goes to work will ease some of the tension or she will never last the night.

  She sprinkles rose-scented bath crystals into the bathtub and watches the water turn deep red. She thinks of the slaughterhouse, cement basins and maroon pools buzzing with flies. She swishes the red water and sees the flash of a knife, pigs hanging upside down, blood splashing to the floor. A calf raises its head, eyes bulging as the wind escapes from the hole in its neck. In the nuisance grounds outside, a rock sends the rats running.

  She lays back in the warm water and tries to enjoy her bathroom. It’s almost perfect. On top of the fluffy pink tank cover is a rose bowl with plastic pink and white roses inside. A white poodle conceals the spare roll of toilet paper. What if Wayne is with Ronnie? she wonders. Another woman? She sinks down into the water so that just her face is above the surface, surrounded by the popping sound of pink bubbles. Get real, she tells herself as she pictures Wayne with his blue jeans rolled up past his ankles, his size thirteen feet looking like duck feet. The only man in the room with a brush cut. The popping bubbles irritate her. As she sits up, the tension between her shoulder blades increases.

  She slams cupboard doors when she takes dishes down from the shelves and smacks them into place on the breakfast nook. “Supper’s ready,” Bobbie calls. “Come and get it.”

  “Aww, I’m watching The Brady Bunch,” Jason says even though the program is over and she knows he’s just watching commercials.

  “I’m warning you. Come now, or it’s no supper at all.”

  He leans with his elbows on the table and scowls as she dishes up his supper. “Where’s Dad?” he asks.

  “Who knows? Eat.”

  “I hate scrambled eggs,” he says. “Boa constrictors don’t eat eggs.” He shoves them to one side of his plate, stabs a piece of egg with his fork and dips it in ketchup. He draws a Happy Face on the bottom of his plate.

  Very creative, she tells herself. Like the loonies on TV, painting one another’s bodies. He’ll get on well in this world, she thinks as she dials Ronnie’s number. It’s several minutes before she can bring herself to ask Carol if she’s seen or heard from Wayne. “It’s just that I have to go to work,” she says, “or I wouldn’t care. Some of the Blue Bombers have been coming in since spring training started and I hate to miss, because they’re always good for a laugh.”

  “Really,” Carol says with such undisguised envy that Bobbie feels sorry for her, because she is so tall and boobless and clued-out about Ronnie going around with other women.

  That damned Wayne, Bobbie thinks as she hangs up. Not to call or anything. She telephones the Town and Country to let them know she won’t be in. Jason laughs as she enters the kitchen. He has drawn Happy Faces all over the table with ketchup.

  “You think that’s funny?” Bobbie asks. “Let me show you what’s funny.” She sets his plate down on the floor. “You act like a pig, I treat you like one. Get down there and eat.”

  Jason stares at her and then at the dish.

  “Now.”

  “Where’s Dad?” he asks.

  “Now.”

  He slides out from behind the breakfast nook and edges past her. He stands in front of the dish. “I don’t got a fork,” he says.

  “Pigs don’t need forks. Eat.”

  His pulse jumps in his neck like a mouse caught in a glass jar. “I’m not hungry.”

  “Eat,” she screams.

  Bobbie sits on the couch in her housecoat, eating popcorn and drinking strawberry Kool-Aid, waiting for Wayne to come home. It’s still too early to call Lana and ask her how things went at work. There is nothing but news on TV. She tries to read her book, How To Win Friends and Influence People. Learn to appreciate, the book says, and be interested in the other person. This is going to be hard, she tells herself, because Wayne is a boring person. But she wants him to be interested in her. And so first she has to be interested in him, the book says.

  She hears the metallic rattle of keys and then his key turns in the lock. Her heart jumps. She sets the book aside and arranges herself on the couch so it will look as though she has been curled up watching TV and not waiting. She hears a thump as something is dropped heavily on the kitchen table. The Physics book. He walks past the couch, not looking at her. The smell of smoke and beer lingers. “How did it go?” she asks.

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?” he says. The toilet seat thuds against the tank. From the sounds of his stream he has had to go for a long time. Tomorrow, she will have to wash it off the floor and the wall behind the toilet. He flushes the toilet and goes into the bedroom. She hears the bed springs squeak, his shoes clunk to the floor. She waits several minutes and then turns off the TV before climbing into bed beside him in the dark to find his back turned to her. She slips her hands inside his shorts and rubs the gooseflesh from his skin. He’s icy cold. He moves close to her.

  “How did it go?”

  He rolls over onto his back. She strokes the inside of his hairy thigh up into his moist crevice, across his flat, hard abdomen. She squeezes his spongy penis.

  “It didn’t,” he says.

  She puts her head on his shoulder, touches the cords in his neck with her lips and tastes bitter salt. The cords tighten and jerk. Oh shit, she thinks, he’s crying. The bed moves with the convulsing of his stomach muscles. She boosts herself up onto an elbow and touches his face. He’s laughing.

  “What?” she asks and pulls his hair. “What, what?”

  “Woo,” he says and wipes his eyes. “Just like old times.”

  She holds the creases of his grin between her hands as she shakes his hea
d. “Tell me, for pete’s sake.”

  “The exam. They caught me cheating.”

  “Wayne,” she says in mock horror and jumps on him. She straddles him and sweeps her nightgown over her head and flings it over the side of the bed. “I think that’s terrible.” His penis climbs up his belly.

  “I knew the answers,” he says as his mouth finds her breast. “Honest, I did. I don’t know what got into me.” He stops laughing, rolls onto her. She feels the pebbly surface of his pimply back beneath her fingers.

  “Great,” she says. “Some example you are for a father.”

  “How was Jason today?” he asks.

  “Okay, okay,” she whispers. “Don’t wake him.”

  He giggles. “They caught me looking at the answers of the guy beside me.” His beer-tinged breath is in her hair. She opens her legs to him. It’s on the tip of her tongue to ask him, what do you think of my Jeannie eyes?

  “Wayne,” she says instead. “Forget Physics. You don’t need it anyway. As far as I’m concerned, I’ve got the pick of the litter.”

  “Well what can I say,” he says.

  SPRING CLEANING

  hey were sitting in the kitchen, Lureen Cooper and Marlene Paquet, waiting for their friend, Bobbie, to arrive with a bottle of rum. Marlene had chased the kids out into the chilly spring to play beneath the heavy clouds and telephone wires slung low from rugged cross-bars and glass condensers. They were enclosed in the kitchen which smelled of pine disinfectant, chlorine bleach. Their wash rags lay in a heap in the sink, shredded and torn. Around them on the gleaming enamelled walls were dull rectangles of oxidized paint where pictures once hung. Just hang the pictures back up in the same place, Lureen had advised. But Marlene thought she would paint over the spots tomorrow.

  Lureen watched as Marlene rolled cigarettes for them with prunish-wrinkled fingers. “What do you think, should I invite Bernice and her old man to the party?” Marlene asked as she handed Lureen a too-thick cigarette which would split its seams.

  “It’s your party,” Lureen said. What she really wanted to talk about with Marlene, while they waited for Bobbie to return with the bottle of rum, was what she would cook for Easter.