Cage of Bone

by Leanne Beattie

  There hadn’t been anything to talk about last week and there would be nothing to talk about today either. This concern for my well-being was a joke.

  I knocked on Mr. Wilkins’ door after last period. The sooner I got in there the sooner I could get out, I hoped. He looked up from his desk and shuffled some papers.

  “Come in, Ronnie,” he said, pushing his eyeglasses up higher on his nose. “I’m happy you decided to join me again.”

  I slouched down into a chair. “It’s not like I really have a choice.”

  “We all have choices, Ronnie. Some are just better than others.” Oh gag, here we go. Cue the After School Special theme music.

  “I hear congratulations are in order. Your poem was a hit!”

  “Whatever.” I stared at the wall behind his head. “Can we talk about something else?”

  “Don’t you want to talk about your success?”

  “It’s no big deal. Just a stupid poem. I banged it out in like half an hour. A monkey could’ve done it.”

  “I’m no writer but it’s my understanding that poetry is usually pretty difficult to write. The fact that you wrote a poem at all shows that you cared very deeply about the subject. Am I right?”

  I slumped down even further in my seat. “I’m not going to talk about my feelings. Don’t think you can trick me into opening up. It’s not going to happen.”

  “I’m not trying to trick you, Ronnie. I still believe you are in a lot of pain. In fact, I have something for you.” Mr. Wilkins rummaged around in his briefcase and pulled out a book. “I think this will help you a lot.” He slid the book across the desk so I could read the cover: On Death and Dying by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross.

  “It was written to help terminally ill patients deal with their impending death but there is a lot of information there that will help you work your way through the grieving process.”

  “I’m not going through any stupid process.” I pushed book away.

  “Kubler-Ross determined there are five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. And while I’m not a therapist, I think it would be safe to say that you are in the anger stage, maybe even depression.”

  I stood up, ready to walk out the door. “I have every right to be angry, so don’t go trying to make me into some crazy, emotional freak.”

  “Of course you aren’t, Ronnie. That’s not what I meant. You’re going through an especially difficult period right now and I just wanted you to know that everything you’re feeling is normal. Everything.”

  “You can’t even begin to know what I’m feeling.” My throat tightened with the threat of tears. “I am fine. I am dealing with everything just fine.”

  “Please sit down, Ronnie. We need to keep talking. I can feel the tension in the air when you get upset, like you’re going to explode.”

  “I’m fine. Really”.

  “At least take the book with you. Read it, please. And work on your journal. Keep writing. It will help you, I promise.”

  I slid the book into my duffel bag without looking at it and left his office. He still didn’t understand his help was not wanted. And I didn’t need it either.

  Griffin was waiting for me at my locker, keys jangling in his hand. “Ready to roll?” he asked.

  “God, get me out of here, please!” I slid my arm around his waist and breathed in his boy-scent, my shoulders relaxing as I clung to him. “I am so sick of this place. I just wish people would leave me alone.”

  “Come over to my house. My parents are out tonight at a Chamber of Commerce banquet. We’ll be alone. And I know where my dad keeps the keys to his liquor cabinet.”

  “Mmmm, vodka. You said the magic words. Let’s go!”

  Griffin’s bedroom smelled like dirty socks with a hint of Brut cologne. I gripped my very full glass of vodka and orange juice and set it down on his desk next to his alarm clock. Griffin followed behind me, closing the door with a click and turning up the stereo. The bass was thumping in my chest and the vodka was thumping in my brain when I stretched out on his bed and sighed.

  “What’s wrong?” Griffin slid down next to me on the bed, our bodies entangling, all legs and arms and breath.

  “I need to shut off my mind for a while.” I reached up and stroked his face, tracing circles over his cheekbones and lips. “I’m so tired of thinking.”

  Griffin’s hand slid down to my crotch and my hips began to rise with excitement. I gasped as he traced circles through my jeans and my muscles clenched, wanting more. “I need you,” I whispered as I pulled off my t-shirt.

  He ran his fingers down my belly. Shivery, delicious goose bumps rose along my skin. His touch was electric, each kiss another spark.

  “What the hell is going on here?” A man loomed in the doorway.

  “Oh God, it’s my dad,” Griffin threw a blanket over me and jumped off the bed.

  “Get her out of here. Now!”

  I scrambled into my clothes, grabbed my boots and stumbled down the stairs and out the front door. Oh my God, Griffin’s father saw me naked! I ran a block in my bare feet before finally putting on my boots.

  The house was empty when I got there.. I checked the answering machine and erased a very irate message from Mr. McNay. No way was I going to pass that one along to Mom.

 

  Chapter Fifteen

  Griffin was waiting outside of my house the next morning, idling at the curb in his tin can of a car. I climbed in, tossing my duffel bag into the back seat with a thud. “What’s going on?” I asked.

  He stretched across the seat to give me a kiss, then started driving. “It’s my dad. He is totally nuts about last night. Says he’s going to call your parents and everything.”

  I wrapped my fingers through his and shook my head. “Don’t worry about it. He called last night but I erased the message. My mom will never know.”

  “Fuck, I hope so. He was out of mind insane. Swearing like crazy, throwing stuff and calling you every name in the book.”

  “Humph.” I pulled my hand away. “Of course it was all my idea.”

  “No, that’s not what I meant,” Griffin clarified. “We both wanted it. I guess it’s easier to blame you though, the evil woman who has led me down the path of destruction.”

  “Oh yeah. I am such a bad influence on you. I hadn’t even tried alcohol before you started pouring it down my throat.”

  “Well, don’t worry about it. I’m not dumping you, no matter what my old man says.”

  “He told you to break up with me?”

  “Yep. Right after he started spouting off all these venereal disease statistics. Apparently we are a walking cesspool of infection.”

  “Speak for yourself,” I said as we pulled into the school parking lot. “I was a virgin until you came along.”

  The problem with having a sister who was a cheerleader, on the student council, in the drama club, and a member of any other school activity imaginable, was that I was constantly reminded of how great she is. Was. Pictures of Katherine lined the hallways. As lead actress in Brigadoon in Grade 9. Running for Head Girl last year (her shot at controlling the school, and hence, the entire universe). And last but not least, as a beaming captain of the cheerleading squad, all golden and perfect.

  No matter where I turned, I couldn’t escape her achievements. Compared to everything Katherine had accomplished in the past four years, my third place poem meant nothing. Nobody would remember me if I died tomorrow.

  I struggled through the day, ignoring anyone who looked my way. I dodged into the bathroom when I saw Danielle approaching. I was not in the mood for her happy outlook on life.

  I escaped into a bathroom stall, slid the lock shut and sat down, pulling my feet up on the seat. If I held my breath, nobody would know I was there.

  The main door to the bathroom opened a few seconds later and someone stopped in front of my stall. White low top Keds and neon pink ankle socks. Danielle.

  “I know you’re in there, Ro
nnie. I saw you come in. You can’t hide forever.”

  “Fine.” I sighed and unlocked the door. “I just wanted to be alone for a while.”

  Danielle grabbed me by the arms and pulled me into a hug. I tried to squirm out of it but she had me in a death grip. “Are you okay? Griffin told me about last night. You must be totally traumatized. God, if some old man saw me naked, I would puke. That is so gross.”

  “So does the whole school know about this?”

  “As if,” Danielle said, releasing me. “My lips are sealed.” She turned toward the mirrors and started to effortlessly flounce her hair. “You suck at the whole best friend routine though. I should not be hearing about this stuff from the guy, even if he is the love of your life. You need to tell me these things, open up a bit.”

  “We’re still best friends?” I stared at her in disbelief, shocked that she wanted to be friends with me at all when I was blowing her off. Again.

  “Of course we are,” she replied with an open smile. “I like a challenge. So when are you going to invite me to the awards ceremony?”

  “Oh God, not that. I don’t even want to go myself, let alone bring someone along. They can mail me my copy of the magazine.”

  “Why aren’t you excited about winning? I don’t understand you.”

  “I just don’t want to go,” I pulled open the door to the hallway. “It’s not really an accomplishment. I feel like the kid who gets a ribbon just for showing up at the track meet. Par-ti-ci-pa-tion. And besides, it’s not like Katherine’s going to be there, so nobody really cares.”

  “Ronnie, wait!” Danielle cried, tugging me back into the bathroom. “You need to go to the ceremony. For you. No matter what the poem was about, this award is yours, not hers. You’re important too.”

  “Try telling that to my parents.”

  There was a four-door navy sedan parked in our driveway when I got home after school. Griffin’s father paced the living room in a three-piece pinstriped suit and coordinating tie while Mom sat at the kitchen table.

  “Ronnie,” Mom said. “This is Mr. McNay. He says you know his son, Griffin.”

  “I’m his girlfriend. What’s going on?”

  Mr. McNay glared at me. “You know what this is about. Don’t play dumb. I’ve told your mother about last night and now I’m telling you: stay away from Griffin. He does not need this sort of trouble in his life.”

  “Dating me is trouble?”

  “Risking pregnancy and disease is. Leave Griffin alone. He needs to concentrate on his grades for the next two years. It’s very important that he gets into a good university and that’s not going to happen if he’s distracted by you.”

  “Does Griffin know about your big plans for him? Or are you going to force him to do what you want?” I asked.

  “Shush, Ronnie. Don’t be rude,” my mother said. “It’s okay,” she continued. “I’ll deal with this.”

  I sat fuming on the couch as Mr. McNay and his big fancy car pulled out of the driveway. “You can’t make me stop seeing Griffin.”

  Mom walked to the kitchen and began pouring herself a drink. Her ice cubes clinked as the rye and ginger ale mixed in the glass. “Sex! What the hell were you thinking about, Ronnie? After all that happened to Katherine, how can you even consider sleeping around? What if you get pregnant?”

  “I am not ‘sleeping around’, Mom. Griffin is the only guy I’ve been with.”

  “Oh, so I shouldn’t worry at all then? Remember what happened to Katherine.”

  “God, I am so sick of everything being about Katherine! For once can’t you just think about me?”

  “This is about you,” she said, taking a gulp. “I know bad things can happen and I’m petrified every time you walk out the door, wondering if today’s the day I have to bury another child.”

  “You have a shitty way of showing it. You care more about your next drink than you care about me.”

  “Maybe I haven’t been dealing with this the best way I should and I’m sorry. But people haven’t exactly been beating down the door to help me cope. I’m handling this all on my own. So cut me a bit of slack, okay?”

  I could hear the baby crying but I couldn’t find it. I searched the house, going from room to room, opening dresser drawers, searching under beds, digging through kitchen cupboards but no baby. The cries grew more and more frantic. Faster, hurry before it’s too late. I finally found it in Katherine’s closet, wrapped in her cheerleading sweater. A fetus with tissue paper skin, a heartbeat visible through its translucent chest, each vein a ribbon just beneath the surface.

  The health unit was just around the corner from the public library. I had never gone in before but if Griffin and I were going to keep on having sex, I needed to go on the pill.

  The walls of the clinic were papered with health propaganda flyers, both terrifying (don’t drink when you’re pregnant or your baby could be deformed) and exuberantly cheerful (take this birth control pill and you too can skip through fields of wildflowers without fear of unwanted pregnancy). I flipped through an issue of Ladies Home Journal from 1979 and waited for my turn to see the doctor.

  “Veronica Campbell? You can go in now.” I put down the magazine and went into the examination room. The doctor was waiting there with a clipboard in hand. She asked me some basic questions (Was I sexually active? When was my last period?), then handed me a prescription for the birth control pill and a free pack to get me started, along with a pamphlet about the side effects I might experience.

  “I’m on the pill?” I asked, as the doctor turned to leave. “It’s that easy?”

  She smiled at me. “Yes, it’s that easy. Come back in a year and we’ll issue you a new prescription. If you have any questions before then, just give us a call.”

  I was in and out of the clinic in under an hour and, if I took the pill properly at the same time every day, I’d be almost completely safe. No babies for me. But if it was this easy to get birth control, why hadn’t Katherine done it? Why did she get pregnant at all?

  I still had Jamie Holloway’s phone number, the mystery guy from Katherine’s photos. The phone rang three times before a familiar voice spoke. Jamie had answered.

  “Were you sleeping with Katherine? Did you have actual sex with her or did you just mess around?”

  “Whoa, Ronnie. That’s kind of personal”.

  “Screw your personal boundaries. Tell me the truth”

  Jamie sighed. “Well no, we never had sex, you know, intercourse. Katherine wasn’t into that. She was all into saving herself for the right guy. And I guess I wasn’t that guy.”

  “But you let everyone think you were sleeping with her, right?”

  “Everyone assumed we were sleeping together and I didn’t tell them otherwise. What’s this all about anyway?”

  “She was pregnant when she died. How do I know you weren’t the father?” The phone line was so quiet I thought he had hung up. Then I heard a sob.

  “I loved Kat. I would’ve waited forever for her but she dumped me. Oh my God, I swear I never knew.”

 

  Chapter Sixteen

  Three weeks had passed since I had last seen Katherine. I was desperate to talk to her and apologize. I looked everywhere for her: the library, Kresge’s, even roller skating at the arena on Friday nights. I saw her in every crowd. At least I thought it was her until I got closer and realized it wasn’t my sister.

  I was at the cosmetics counter at Woolco on Saturday morning trying out the perfumes when the magnitude of it all hit me again. I spritzed myself with Love’s Baby Soft, Katherine’s favourite, and the familiar scent made me miss her so much. I left the department store in a blur of tears. I cried all the time now.

  I didn’t mean to steal the perfume. I didn’t even know it was still in my hand when I left the store until a security guard came running up to me demanding that I empty my pockets. I looked at my hand and dropped the bottle with a sudden jerk, the glass shattering as it hit the pavement, a c
loud of powdery sweetness filling the air.

  Dad came and talked the security guard out of pressing charges. “Veronica’s going through a really tough time right now,” my dad told him. “We all are. This isn’t her normal behaviour. She’s just hurt and confused.”

  I climbed into Dad’s truck and turned on the radio. King of the Road by Roger Miller was playing again on the oldies station. “Thanks for not yelling at me.”

  We jostled over potholes on the way to my house. It felt like my whole heart was shaking too. “I tried on the perfume because it was the type she always wore. I never meant to steal it.”

  “I know you didn’t.”

  I stared out the window, seeing but not seeing. My head was so full of thoughts, so many words on the tip of my tongue, words I had been afraid to say aloud.

  “Do you ever miss her?” I finally asked as we pulled up to a stoplight.

  “I miss her every day, Ronnie. This isn’t easy for me. I know you’re angry and you think I don’t care but I do”. He wiped his eyes and accelerated when the light turned green. “I feel like I failed her. By not keeping her safe and not being the kind of father she could open up to. It kills me inside to think my own child was hurting so much and I never knew.”

  “I thought I was the only one who felt that way. Like I was the worst sister ever for not being able to help her. Why didn’t she tell anyone?”

  “We’ll never know.” Dad was crying now. I had never seen him so upset. He had been so strong during the funeral, keeping himself together for me and Mom. I thought he was a bastard because he didn’t seem upset enough. But he really did care.

  “I’m sorry I’ve been so awful to you, Dad. I do want you to be happy. I want to be happy too.”

  Dad wiped his eyes and smiled through his tears. “Thank you, Ronnie. Thank you for understanding.”

  “I don’t know if I can get all excited about the baby yet or anything, but at least I won’t totally hate it. Him or her, whatever it is.”

  “That’s all I can ask right now. You might feel differently someday.”