Over Our Heads

by Andrea Thompson

  Jack was over by the counter. He said he wasn’t her boyfriend, but he had looked after her for years. Wanda was a lot of work. Every night, after dinner, he put her in his van and took her here, sat her down in a plastic chair, bought her a coffee and spiked it with crushed up meds and four packs of Sweet ’N Low. Before this ritual, she was unmanageable.

  While she was waiting for Jack, Wanda turned around in her chair to face an old man eating a bran muffin at the table behind her. “Mrs. Dalloway is shaking me again,” Wanda told him. The man stared at her for a moment then went back to his muffin. “A girl can’t even have a cup of coffee in peace, you know what I mean? She doesn’t ever leave me alone these days. I never used to have to deal with this bullshit, but she follows me around everywhere now. Whenever she’s inside me, she shakes my hand when I try to light a smoke. If she does it when I’m drinking, I get soaked.”

  The man looked up and around the room, at Wanda, then back at his muffin. He stopped eating.

  “Jack says she’s not real,” Wanda continued, her volume rising. “He says that Mrs. Dalloway is just someone I made up in my head, but Jack doesn’t know everything. He just acts like he does.” Jack looked over from the counter. He was waiting for his change, frowning.

  “Like now,” Wanda went on. “He’s telling me that I have to go back to Toronto. Toronto. I don’t want to go there. It’s all bad memories and bad mothers back there. I was one of those bad mothers, but that was another life. In this life, I’m good, except for that one time with the brick. Other than that, I just smoke and shake a lot. Jack says the shaking is because of the medication and Mrs. Dalloway is because of what my dad did to me when I was a kid. Jack says that it’s his penance to look after me now. Because of the girl from the house, and because of the chef lady he shot.”

  “Wanda!” Jack yelled from the counter. “Shut up and leave the man alone.”

  Wanda turned around in her chair. She sat for a moment, shredding a napkin, then leaned back and whispered to the man out of the corner of her mouth. “I told him, bullshit, I don’t give a damn what my dad did to me. Maybe he didn’t do anything, and Mom was right. Jack says maybe I was just born this way, and it was only a matter of time till I popped.”

  The old man picked up his muffin and coffee, and moved to a table on the other side of the room. Wanda kept talking. “I said, like a bottle of champagne, and he said, like a jack-in-the-box. He thinks he’s so funny. He says it doesn’t matter why now, anyways, and tells me to just take the meds and pipe down. He’s nice, though; don’t let him fool you. He just pretends to be badass because he’s so soft inside. We’re all soft inside, that’s what I think. I never had a skin like other people. Where everyone else gets to have skin on the outside, all I have is raw flesh and nerve endings. There isn’t anything else to cover me. There never has been. If you ask me, that’s why all the trouble and the meds now and nothing else. Nothing else.”

  Jack drummed his fingers on the counter. Wanda could hear it like Morse code without even turning around. She went silent for a few minutes, then whispered, “Me and Jack, we know how to go in and out of each other’s minds without any effort. That’s how Mrs. Dalloway describes it.”

  Jack turned toward her, walked over to the table with their coffees, and sat down. “Don’t bother people, Wanda,” he said. “Jesus, you want us to get kicked out again?”

  Wanda put the napkin down. “Listen Jack, Mrs. Dalloway is driving me crazy. She keeps shaking me, and saying she wants to go to Toronto. She says she never gets to go anywhere, and it would be such a lark and a plunge – but I told her I wasn’t going back there and that’s that.”

  “Drink your coffee,” Jack said.

  “I don’t care if they sell that old house,” Wanda continued. “It’s fine by me. Tell the lady to send the papers here and I’ll sign them and mail them back.”

  “You’re going, Wanda,” Jack said. “It’s your mom’s funeral. Nina … the lawyer lady on the phone said she’d pay for the ticket, all you have to do is get on the plane. I told her she’d better meet you at the airport.”

  Wanda looked up from her coffee. Jack laughed.

  “I know you, Wanda. I warned her. Told her to keep an eye on you or you’d split.” Jack laughed again. “Yeah, I warned her. Told her you’re a real live wire.”

  “Live wire,” Wanda laughed so hard she almost peed, then, she stopped and coughed for a few seconds.

  “It’s not your fault,” Jack said. Wanda smiled. Jack could be a pain in the ass, but at least he was her friend. He cared, not like some people.

  Wanda knew that doctors had told Jack she would never get better, and the cops said they were tired of coming to the house all the time because of Mrs. Dalloway’s yelling. The cops had told Jack he should kick her out, and Jack had said, “What do you want me to do? Leave her on the street? They treat dogs better in this country!” As far as Wanda was concerned, all the doctors and social workers didn’t know shit. Jack had tried to tell them that Wanda wasn’t always like this. She had dreams. When she had first met him, that time when she had come to get the little brown girl, Wanda had told him about her plan to go back to school. She had wanted to be a chef, and work on a cruise ship someday.

  Wanda sipped her coffee. She knew Jack would check to make sure she finished it. She felt the urge to talk to the old man again. She turned to look at him, caught his eye, but then he looked away. She wanted to tell him that things had gotten better lately, ever since the cops had taken her away in handcuffs that last time. She had only been in jail for a week before they sent her to the psych hospital. She hadn’t minded it there. It was quiet, and she got to make crochet potholders, beaded necklaces, key chains, and dream-catchers. Jack still used the hand-painted teapot she gave him. It was striped with red and yellow and green and black and white and blue, and it was beautiful.

  Jack had said he was glad she stopped with all the knitting, because yarn didn’t come cheap, and now it was time to stop going to the dollar store to buy all those glass figurines and marbles and bags of smooth stones. He said they were a big waste of money. He didn’t have to worry for long though. They wouldn’t let Wanda in the dollar store now, even though she didn’t yell anymore. They remembered her from the time before. The last time she tried to shop there, the man at the cash looked at her and said, “Oh, no you don’t.”

  Wanda felt her face grow hot at the memory. All she had wanted was to hold the beautiful things for a while. That had been why she had gone back to the house that time. She’d sworn that she never would, but once she had decided to leave Toronto, and go back out west to find Jack, she’d known it would be a good idea to take something with her so she’d remember what she was leaving behind – the funny boy and the nervous girl, and the little brown one who talked to animals. So she had taken her key and opened the door to number 66 in the middle of the night. She had felt a little bad, like a thief, when she had gone downstairs, and gotten the tie out of that toy oven, and the track and field medal with the red ribbon from the box in the laundry room. The boy had won that one. Wanda remembered that he used to be fast as lightning. She had tried to be invisible when she walked up the stairs. If the mother had gotten out of bed and caught her, she’d be done for.

  The brown girl had been sleeping, and hadn’t moved a muscle when Wanda walked in her room. She had felt around on the bedside table for the turtle necklace, and after she’d found it, she stood there and listened to the little girl breathe for a while. She’d looked beautiful asleep like that. Everything was so easy when people were asleep.

  Wanda had gotten out of the house that night without anyone hearing her. She had all the things in her bag. After that she had left town, and started all over again.

  “How did they find me way out here?” Wanda asked. Jack looked away from the window and sighed.

  “What did you think? That you were invisible? You get your disabi
lity cheques sent to the apartment. There’s a paper trail. You should have known they’d come looking for you eventually.”

  “You’re going to come too, right?” Wanda’s voice was getting louder again.

  “Keep it down,” Jack said. “No, I told you. You’re going alone.”

  “I’m going outside for a smoke,” Wanda said. She stood up, and bits of shredded napkin fluttered to the ground.

  Wanda stood outside the coffee shop, smoking and pacing. Mrs. Dalloway was shaking her hard. Wanda thought she should have been happy that she was going to Toronto, but no matter what happened, Mrs. Dalloway seemed angry all the time. Jack thought that sometimes Mrs. Dalloway went away, but Wanda had just gotten better at hiding her, was all.At first, her anger had ripped through Wanda like lightning. Made her want to tear her eyes out. Wanda had known that back in the old days, they used electric shock therapy. More electricity racing through the veins, like that was what a sick person needed. Good thing they had never tried it on Wanda.

  In the beginning, all the lightning had made her throw things. And the voices, there had been more of them, then. She had to do what they said or they wouldn’t shut up, wouldn’t let her sleep. One of them told her to go buy a dozen ceramic bunnies for the garden. Then Mrs. Dalloway had come in and told her to smash them, one by one, on the backyard patio stones. The voices had told her not to take any more pills, so she had hidden them. But that just seemed to make everyone yell more. The cops had tried to make her go to the hospital to get shots once a month after that. It had stopped Mrs. Dalloway from yelling, but it also made Wanda sleep, all day, every day, for months. She couldn’t remember that winter at all. Jack had called it the year she hibernated like a bear. Since then, she let him crush up the pills and put them in her coffee. Mrs. Dalloway hadn’t figured it out yet. She didn’t trust Jack. She didn’t trust anyone.

  When he had gotten off the phone with the lawyer lady that day, Jack had been shaking. He kept saying Goddamn, Goddamn, what were the chances, and then he had said he was being punished. Wanda had said that if it was God who was punishing him, then maybe he could ease up on all the damning, but Jack had just walked out the door. He had only been gone a few minutes, and when he came back, he told Wanda her mother was dead, and that she had to go back to Toronto to deal with the house.

  “No way, Jack,” Wanda had said. “I’m not going back there.” But Jack just gave her a look that said she was going and that was that. So, Wanda went outside, smoked cigarettes, and let Mrs. Dalloway shake her and use her mouth to yell at the world. Somebody must have heard all the yelling, a neighbour or something. At least they hadn’t called the police on her. They must have gotten tired of doing that. Instead, they had called Jack to complain and he had come outside and told her to shut the fuck up.

  Mrs. Dalloway. Of course she would make herself real. That book – Wanda can’t even remember the name of the author who wrote it; she only remembers Mrs. Dalloway and the sad, true things she said.

  She had the perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very, dangerous to live even one day.

  When Wanda read these words, it was as if electricity suddenly buzzed through her veins. Yes, Wanda thought, because it is very dangerous, but nobody ever talks about it. Mrs. Dalloway was the only person Wanda had ever known who told the truth about what it was like to be alive.

  It was the only book Wanda ever read cover to cover. None of the other books ever called her to finish them. All the other books said: sure you can go and do something else if I’m boring you. And they were, so Wanda did. But Mrs. Dalloway? She dug right in and said, Wanda you will listen to me from start to finish. You will listen to me until I seep into your pores and you become me. Only then will I let you go.

  Wanda didn’t want to become Mrs. Dalloway, but she didn’t really mind her so much most of the time. Even with the yelling. Wanda knew that it was because she refused to throw any parties, and Mrs. Dalloway had to do something to cover the silence – just like the mother, with all her music. Wanda supposed it was normal, that everyone needed to do something to drown out the noise of old ghosts rattling their bones. It was a silly, silly dream, being unhappy.

  Jack came out of the coffee shop. As he walked past her, he said, “Come on, Wanda. Get in the van. We’re going home, and then you’re going to pack. You’re going to Toronto. Get used to it.”

  The lady from the law office came to meet her at the airport in Toronto. Wanda felt messy when she saw her, like she should have picked out better clothes that morning. They got in a taxi, and the driver didn’t know where the funeral parlour was, so they drove around and around for a while. The driver had an accent, and said they could help and look at the map while he called dispatch. Him and the lawyer lady argued about whether or not he should turn the meter off. The lady said her phone was dead, and asked the driver if she could use his. He said no, and she called him an ass. Wanda didn’t give a damn if they never found the place. She just wanted them to keep driving.

  When they finally found the funeral home, it looked like a big gas station on the outside. Mourning Glory. Ha! Whoever wrote that had never tried to forget. Had never wished they could be the one in the casket, instead of the one who had to face all the people left behind.

  The service was nice. Wanda saw them right away. All three of the children were sitting together, up at the front. Well, the new versions of them were. It was like a TV sitcom where the kids you once knew had grown up and were now being played by new actors. They sort of looked the same, and if the story was good you went along, but really, you knew they weren’t the same people anymore. The lost girl, the brown one, she went up to the front and read a poem. It was a good poem, all about the history of the universe, and how we’re all a part of life, and how the poem wasn’t really a poem at all – just a test, like they used to do on television, with that multi-coloured bar pattern and that end-of-the-world tone going on and on. The brown girl’s words sang, and slid into each other nicely in the ear, even if the poem really didn’t make much sense at all.

  After that a young man played “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore” on the trumpet. He did a good job, too. Wanda remembered that song from the old days. The mother and father, slow dancing in the living room, with Lawrence Welk flickering on the television in the background. The father, laughing and twirling the mother, round and round and round. Those nights they would tell Wanda about what life was like in war-time.

  “As soon as you heard the air-raid siren it was lights out Kiddo! Suddenly it went pitch black, all over the town,” the father would tell her.

  “You should have seen it, Wanda,” the mother would say. “We saw an enemy plane explode and break open in the sky right above us.”

  Wanda didn’t know if she had said goodbye to the father the last time she saw him. She just remembered feeling relieved when she heard the news, like a big exhale that let the places he had touched her begin to breathe again. She knew she had been there, at his funeral, but she didn’t remember the service. She hoped she wouldn’t remember this one either. It was possible. Even when there was someone scratching at the door, you could find a way to keep it closed, and keep what was outside out. It would all feel better when she got back home to Jack’s place.

  The part of the service when the minister spoke was boring, but after that, there was this feeling of excitement, and a bunch of people came in with big tin drums. A steel band set up in front of the altar, and then the music began: Day O! And just when Wanda started to forget about the mother and the father and all the babies that had grown up to become spooky, familiar strangers, the lost brown girl got up and started singing.

  It made Wanda want to dance for a moment. It wasn’t just her, the music made everyone stand up and sway or shuffle right there, in the gas station church.

  When it was over, everyone
left the big room with the ashes at the front. That was all that was left of the mother now. Wanda knew she should be crying, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t be sad to lose someone she had already lost so long ago.

  The mother had almost forgiven her. Wanda could feel she had wanted to. Sometimes she was nice for no reason, and would let Wanda do her hair and put on her nail polish. Those times, she wouldn’t even get mad if Wanda made a mess, she’d just say: the past is the past and that’s that.

  But when the father had died, everything changed. It was like the mother had thought it was all Wanda’s fault. Like she had killed him by being the only person in the world who knew what he was like when there was no one else around. At the reception after the funeral, Wanda remembered catching a glance at the mother. Wanda saw her, standing there with her gardening friends, drinking sherry. The mother had been staring at her with ice in her eyes, and Wanda could hear it – the mother’s voice, moving across the room, past all those sad faces in black, back to where Wanda stood. This is all your fault, the voice had said.

  It was doomed from the get go, everything between the mother and Wanda. She hadn’t been thrilled about being pregnant, Wanda knew that much. The mother had said it was all flowers and crooners and tea for two until Wanda came along. Wanda had heard her tell the father one time, “Good thing I never did throw her out the window.” And then the mother had laughed. They both did.

  Right about then Mrs. Dalloway started to shake Wanda and tell her to snap out of it. She said that everyone was getting up and leaving the room, and it was time for Wanda to go as well. She said to stop wandering off into the memory pit, or she’d forget why they had come in the first place. All she had to do was get through the day, then, she could get back on a plane and go back to Jack’s basement apartment in Gastown – their cave, their hole in the ground. Jack always complained about the leaks and mice and mould, but it was home. Wanda could come and go whenever she wanted. Even though she didn’t. She just stayed inside and smoked, mostly. But that was better than before, when she first moved out west. Before she tracked Jack down, and she slept somewhere new every night, and sometimes no place at all.