A Year of Lesser

by Bergen, David

  One night after Loraine had left the house and flown across the yard, her feet flicking behind her, Chris went to his mother’s bedroom and lay down on her bed. He curled up in the still-warm recess she had left. He smelled her smell. He climbed out of bed and rummaged through her drawers and put on a pair of her panties. Pink. Cotton. He picked up another pair and held them to his nose. Her. He heard a noise and crawled back into her bed. He blushed and stripped.

  He fell asleep and vaguely remembered his mother sliding under the covers later, her knees cold, her hands on his neck as if he were the headboard or a pillow. She didn’t move him. In fact, she held his head for a while as if it were a precious and delicate bowl. In the morning he awoke to discover the twisted blanket, thrown aside by his mother, and her bare speckled shoulders. He lay still for the longest time and watched her body rise and fall. She had a different smell this morning, a mixture of the barn and something wet and old. Johnny. The little room. Chris shuddered. His experience with Melody so far had been less than grand and it was by this he judged all sex. Why then, he wondered, would his mother run headlong through the dark and the snow, to a man who was chubby and weak, and who smelled of sweat? He reached out a finger, brushed his mother’s spine and understood that she didn’t know he was there; in the darkness of the room last night she had not noticed him.

  Johnny was moving around in the kitchen now. Chris didn’t worry about him coming up. He never did. He only worried about Loraine waking. And yet, he did want her to open her eyes, to discover him beside her. He climbed from the bed. Loraine moved slightly and adjusted a leg so her foot peeked from beneath the cover. Chris went to his bedroom and lay there, full of regret. He must have slept briefly, because he became aware of Loraine and Johnny talking downstairs, their voices muffled and distant as if the house were underwater.

  What Chris felt was dirty and lovely. It was full of possibilities and surprises and weakness and doom. On subsequent nights, he watched his mother cross the yard to Johnny’s place and always she fairly flew, her elbows moving out and sideways, her long heavy coat, hiding her pregnancy, swaying back and forth as she aimed her mounded body at the glowing yellow rectangle. Chris watched her go and then he studied the window and the shadows and he imagined Johnny filling his greedy hands. He fell back onto his bed.

  He returned to his mother’s bed a few times, even dug again amongst her underwear. One other night he fell asleep, his face on his mother’s pillow, and she reappeared to discover and wake him, calling him “sweetheart” and kissing him, guiding him from her bed and back to his own. That night she smelled of saltwater and melon. Her body was like a sheet waiting to be folded. She laid him down, pulled his blanket up, and said, “Good night.”

  His disappointment was bitter.

  With the coming of spring and the nearing of the birth, Loraine’s journeys out to the shed become fewer and fewer. Chris keeps track. One week she goes twice. The next, not at all. The following week, once, skittering around the large puddles which now occupy the yard. Chris wonders if perhaps he is sleeping through these meetings. He forces himself to lie awake and listen, but no, she is not leaving the house.

  Her presence becomes bigger and bigger. Some days Chris feels she may split the house apart. She is solid, nothing moves her: not his anger, not his desire, not his fear. She is unaware.

  Johnny has Chris doing some work at the centre; Chris is still filling in the hours for community service. Together, they go to Bill’s Hardware and pick up some studs, drywall, screws, tape, and mud. They buy a new sink and toilet too. Pink, because it is on sale. Chris is surprised by Johnny’s knowledge of wood and plumbing; it is as if Johnny were shining a light back onto himself and revealing secrets. One day he asks, “Where did you learn all this?”

  “My father,” Johnny says. “I just don’t use it much. Lazy, I guess.”

  Chris likes working beside Johnny and having little diagrams drawn on the plywood floor. One time Johnny describes the guts of a toilet bowl; leans over and pencils the snake-like design. “There’s an air trap right here,” he says, tapping at the scribbles. “Very necessary, otherwise you’d get the perfume of the sewer coming back into the bathroom.”

  Chris learns to snap a line and lay out walls with sixteen-inch centres. Screwing the drywall is the hardest; Chris keeps missing the stud and the first sheet especially is riddled with holes. Johnny doesn’t seem to mind, claims it can be patched. One Saturday they’re running a vent from the sink up through the roof. Johnny is standing on a step ladder and Chris is down below so that when he looks up he can see the bottom of Johnny’s boots and his crotch.

  Johnny is talking, something he likes to do while he works. He calls down from his perch and says, “I was thinking last night, sitting around with the kids here, about what’s important. I mean to those kids. To you.” He pauses, looks down at Chris, and asks, “Could you say really?”

  Chris is holding a hacksaw. The handle is made of wood and it’s smooth. He knocks the hacksaw against the ladder and says, “I dunno.”

  “I figure it’s feeling good,” Johnny says. He climbs down, takes the saw, and cuts the PCV pipe to length. There is a slight smell of burning plastic. “Or fitting in. Or sex, maybe.” Johnny looks at Chris and lifts an eyebrow. This is an invitation to speak, or confess, or share.

  Chris doesn’t answer. He wonders if Johnny masturbates.

  Johnny is back on the ladder, sliding the pipe up through the hole in the ceiling. The pipe gets stuck. He sends Chris up into the attic to grab the pipe as it passes through. The attic is dark and stale. Chris takes care not to walk on the tiles; “Step on the trusses,” Johnny warned.

  Chris finds the pipe and pushes it up until it touches the planking of the roof. Shingle nails poke through and tear at his hands. Johnny’s voice rises through the pipe, telling him to come down. Chris can hear another voice now, a girl’s, talking to Johnny. When he comes down later, sweaty, his eyes itchy from the insulation, he sees Allison Dueck. She’s holding a can of Pepsi and she’s spinning around on an old piano stool, telling Johnny about her mother.

  “She’s got all these kids, see? Seven now, and I’m supposed to be the oldest. I am, that’s true, but that doesn’t mean I have to do everything for her. She’s always pregnant. I don’t even know what she looks like skinny.” Allison sips her drink, sees Chris, and says, “Hi.”

  Chris nods. Rubs the itch with the back of his hand. He knows Allison; they’re in the same class. She’s sort of like Melody; feel-good. Only, Allison is run-down, poorer than Melody, and so doesn’t have that same smooth disdain Melody has. Still, she’s all right. She likes Johnny, that’s obvious.

  Allison wants to work. Johnny suggests she hold the drywall while Chris sets the screws. So they work together for about an hour, lifting the awkward sheets and hushing them against the studs. While Allison plants her back to the wall Chris fumbles with the gun and seeds the floor with screws, succeeding finally in setting the one screw which will hold the sheet.

  Allison and Chris don’t really talk, but Chris likes working with her; she has a nice rhythm, and when they face each other across a sheet of drywall, the tendons in her forearms stretch and Chris thinks of lying with her in the sun on a beach somewhere. One time she asks to try the gun, so Chris hands her the dark blue drill and it rests heavily in her small hand. He holds her elbow and helps her aim. Her mouth goes tight and thin and the drill zips and stops. “There,” Chris says. “No problem.”

  Allison does a few more on her own, and Chris stands back and wipes at his damp hair. He watches Allison’s elbows. Something safe about this girl, he thinks. Lighter than Melody, in a way. The week before in English class Allison had an unfinished assignment and so had to memorize a poem and recite it before the class. Chris doesn’t remember the poem or the author, but he can recollect a phrase and he remembers this only because of the way Allison’s hand went up and out as she spoke.

  Chris says these words now, “witches�
� broth,” watching the back of Allison’s head. Allison groans and turns and says, “Oh, Jesus. And my mother thinks it’s so neat because Frost is her favourite poet. I wonder if he wrote about babies?”

  Chris goes, “Ha.”

  Then Johnny needs help with the tank on the toilet, so Chris does this. Allison goes to the front room; she’s given up on drywalling. She is knocking pool balls around. Chris can hear the occasional scratch of chalk on the cue tip. He wonders what Allison’s breasts look like.

  Melody calls. She’s got something to say, but not over the phone. “There’s a party at the river tonight,” she says. “Can I pick you up?”

  “Sure,” Chris says, though he’s wondering if his mother will be alone tonight. It’s still a while to her due date but Chris worries about her. He doesn’t tell Melody this.

  Driving out to the river, Chris sits in the passenger’s seat and watches Melody’s hands hold the wheel. Her knuckles are boxy, fingers square, nails chewed. Chris likes this. Her wrists are thin and her forearms have a light almost bluish covering of hair, as if an artist had shaded in the growth.

  It’s a cool night; Chris is wearing a warmer jacket, Melody has on this down vest and a flannel shirt, sleeves rolled up. Chris reaches out and touches Melody’s elbow. Then takes her hand and holds it. They don’t talk. He doesn’t ask her what she has to say. He’ll wait. She’s far away tonight, pouty, maybe angry. She does what she does. Chris follows.

  Melody slips a joint from the glove compartment and hands it to Chris. He lights it, draws, and gives it to Melody. Her fingers reach out and she takes her turn. The dim light from the dash makes her face ghostly.

  Before they get out of the car Melody decides she wants to kiss. Chris slides his tongue over the roof of this girl’s mouth, then down along her bottom gum. She smells good tonight. Like lilacs. He touches her vest, looking for what he loves. She grinds her lips on his and comes up wet, eyes shining. He waits. When she says, “Let’s go,” he opens the door.

  Everybody’s talking. Nobody’s talking. Gary Wohlgemut, the oldest one present, brings the beer. He’s nineteen but still hangs around at the centre and tries to squirm into the action. He’s socially retarded. Nobody really likes him. He tries to date younger girls.

  Walker, one of Chris’s friends, raises a beer and says, “Hey.”

  “Hey,” comes an echo.

  Melody’s sitting between Chris’s legs. She’s got her head against his chest. She’s quiet and her eyes are closed. At one point she whispers, “I think I just saw someone holy walking through this big white door.”

  “You sad?” Chris asks. It’s darker now and the wind has picked up. Sparks jump out at the group. Melody opens her eyes. Chris can see the whites and the flame from the fire reflected in them. She doesn’t speak, just looks up at him while the chatter revolves around them. He takes his jacket, covers her, and slides his hands underneath and seeks out the warmth of her belly. She doesn’t mind.

  Then Wohlgemut says he wants to swim and he has his clothes off and he’s standing there naked by the fire. He’s a man, Chris can see that now, and it’s frightening in a way. A lot of hair. Is that what girls like? Wohlgemut goes down to the riverbank and there’s a splash and a shout from the group. Chris doesn’t move, neither does Melody. Someone yells that he’s gone and then there’s another shout, something about the other side.

  “If he hits the Red, he’s finished,” comes a voice.

  Footsteps running across the bridge. Laughter. Shouts. The noise of trees breaking. Bushes. “Here he is.”

  “Fuck, you’re stupid.”

  Melody and Chris move under the bridge, up against the cement supporting wall and out of the wind. They huddle there and Chris puts his mouth on Melody’s but her teeth are chattering and they knock his. This is a bad sign, Chris thinks, and he is confused; he senses he may be losing Melody Krahn.

  Finally, after listening to the scramble and flurry of Gary Wohlgemut being pulled out of the water, Melody says, “Your mom. Did she want that baby?”

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  “I mean, did she say to herself beforehand, I’m gonna lie with Johnny Fehr and we’re gonna have a baby?”

  Chris laughs, “Lie with Johnny, that’s great.”

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Huh? Sorry. Jesus, Melody.”

  Melody pushes away from Chris’s lap and hugs her knees. “It’s the grass maybe. I’m blue.” Together they watch Gary Wohlgemut pull on his clothes near the fire. His body is shaking and he’s hopping on one foot, then the other. He’s talking, and kids are actually listening.

  “What a hero,” Chris says.

  “We lie together,” Melody says.

  Chris looks at her but can only see the back of her head. Her hair is long and has a bit of a wave. If he runs his fingers through it he comes up with strands that twist and float and fall to the ground.

  “I’m not saying anything,” Melody continues. “It’s more like What if? and Now what?”

  “You’re scaring me,” Chris says. And it’s true, there’s a pain in him that only Melody can produce. Like she has this long spike and whenever she likes she drives it through Chris’s palm, or foot, or gut.

  “Sorry.”

  She doesn’t mean it. Doesn’t care. She laughs and says, turning to him, offering shadows and her too-sweet breath, “Wouldn’t that be fun, lying with someone who’s fat and big like your mother?”

  Yes, Chris wants to say, it is lovely. Melody can’t know that though. It’s impossible. He doesn’t understand. “I like you, Melody,” he says.

  A quick toss of her head. Perhaps disgust for him. Impatience. “Little boy,” she says, and gets up and goes over to the fire.

  Later, he follows and sits across from her and, through the flames, watches her drink and drink and then she’s beside Gary and holding on to him, fool, and by the end of the evening she’s in his lap and at one point she looks across the fire and smiles at Chris and his heart leaps. He smiles back.

  And then Walker brings up forms of torture. “There’s this one,” he says, “called the skull crusher. An iron cap is fastened onto the head by a metal chin strap. As it tightens the teeth are forced right out of the jaw.”

  Someone laughs.

  “Pol Pot,” he continues, “killed the educated. People with glasses, teachers, intellectuals.”

  “Who the fuck was he?”

  “I guess that’d make you dead, hey, Walker?”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment,” Walker says. “There was this guy in France who had his tongue pierced and attached to his cheek with an iron pin. Then he was burned alive.”

  Chris is listening to all of this and watching Melody. Wohlgemut has pulled her in really close. His mouth is on her neck and she’s not resisting. Her eyes are closed.

  “Or,” Walker says, “ram a glass rod up a guy’s penis and then break it into small pieces.”

  “What, the penis?”

  “No, dildo, the glass.”

  “Water torture,” someone offers. “Funnel water down the throat and almost drown the guy. Let him come up for air and then hit him again.”

  “Use boiling water.”

  “You’re sick,” one of the girls says.

  “The mind,” Walker continues. “That would be the worst. To have someone play with your mind.”

  Wohlgemut’s trying to touch Melody’s breasts. It’s so obvious. She’s not really stopping him but Chris has figured out by now that she’s drunk and dazed. He sees that he will have to save Melody. It is only right. And so later, as the crowd disperses and Gary pulls Melody towards his car, Chris intercepts them.

  “Whaddya want, tiny boy?” Melody giggles. She wavers, teeters towards Gary who wraps an arm around her and pulls her in. Gary is not terribly confident and Chris realizes this. In fact, the older boy seems dizzy with all this attention tonight and is probably already planning another cold swim at the next party. It was just last year that R
oger Emery attacked Gary Wohlgemut. Pulled him from his car and pummelled him, left him mangled, his face battered, body propped against the curb. Gary’s father, manager of the Credit Union, had the police charge Roger, who scoffed and claimed he had every right to beat on any guy who lusted after his ass. And so, Chris, remembering this, looks up at the older boy.

  “She’s gotta get her dad’s car home,” he says. “She’s late. Come here, Melody.”

  Gary hesitates. He has a dumb way of staring.

  “Come,” Chris says and takes Melody’s arm. This touch seems to awaken something at Melody’s core, a brief flicker of light, and she falls towards him. But just as quickly the light dims and she pushes him away.

  “Groovy,” she says.

  “I’ll take her,” Gary says.

  “Fuck you,” Chris says. “Just fuck off.” He would like to hit the faggot. Mush his face.

  Gary moves off. Melody has her head on Chris’s shoulder. He can’t hold her much longer. She’s a dead animal in his arms. “Come with me,” Chris whispers.

  Melody chirps as he drags her to the car and lays her in the passenger’s seat. He drives her home, stopping once to allow her to throw up on the side of the road. He pulls into the Krahns’ driveway, headlights out, and wakes Melody.

  “Quietly,” he says, “quietly.”

  He deposits her inside the front door. Hands her the car key. She clutches at him. Noses his neck. “Fuck,” she says, too loudly. Then, “Something. Something to tell you.” Chris pushes away, listening for the wrath of Mr. Krahn. The house is a tomb. Chris covers her mouth; her tongue pushes against his palm.

  “Not now,” he whispers. His lips are on her ear. He wishes her good luck and kisses her, catching a whiff of vomit as she stabs at him with her head. Then he is gone. And he runs. Through the south end of town, past the Mennonite church, up towards Main Street and past the centre and Chuck’s, and out of town past OK Feeds. It’s quiet, there are no vehicles. No people. The world is a deserted and empty place. Just Chris and the moon. And then he’s out on the highway walking along the shoulder and he feels awfully big. And small. He slows down and walks the five miles to his house.