The Chrome Suite

by Sandra Birdsell

  She will tell them absolutely nothing about the country and western band because they ran off on her. “Three boys on bicycles,” she says through a chunk of bread and notices how Jill’s and Mel’s faces grow sharp. “In the duck pond. Quack, quack.” She draws her lips back to reveal a wad of half-chewed bread stuck against her teeth.

  Mel shoves his sandwich aside, his appetite gone. “I think I’ll go out for a while. That okay?”

  Margaret appears not to have heard. “I think your father should be home quite early in the morning.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Jill says.

  Margaret becomes suddenly alert and Amy, anticipating her next move, plucks up another sandwich before she can clear them away. “Haven’t you all had enough of the outdoors today?” Margaret asks.

  “Just for a while. It’s so cool now. I thought I’d look up Garth,” Mel says casually, although he knows that his cousin is probably waiting for him.

  “Well, all right. But don’t be long,” Margaret says as she goes to put the sandwiches away. Her foot meets George napping in front of the refrigerator door. Her face turns red and all three look up in astonishment as Margaret heaves the plate of sandwiches at the cat. “Melville Barber! I have had it up to kingdom come with that cat of yours! You’re going to have to do something about it!” She turns and flees the kitchen.

  “What now?” Mel stares at the shattered plate, the sandwiches fallen open, meat and cheese and egg salad scattered across the shiny new floor.

  Jill shrugs. “I’m not a walking encyclopaedia.”

  They leave together and Amy sits at the table alone. She sets her hands onto her lap, palms up, lying there limply. Her head drops forward until her chin almost rests on the table. She hears Margaret’s heels thumping on the ceiling overhead and then the squeak of bed-springs. She stares at the wall as she chews and wonders, Why did Margaret throw the plate of sandwiches at the cat? She eats methodically, steadily, to still a gnawing at her centre. Why does Timothy have to go away? Why can’t he stay home and work in town like other fathers do? She remembers Timothy out back, chopping wood, heat radiating from the woodstove, the happy smell and crackle of it. She remembers it being more orange when Timothy stayed home. A glowing orange fire, friendlier than the house is now, warmer. There is something about the house that is too hard and shiny with Timothy away. She gulps back tea to wash down the sandwich, and reaches for Mel’s half-eaten one. “Born July 4th, 1946. Jill Anne. A beautiful, bouncing baby girl. Eight pounds, four ounces.” Amy has read this in Margaret’s Blue Book. Sometimes the entries are cryptic: “I don’t know.” Or, “Over my head.” Sometimes they’re clearer: “Tim goes away.” “Tim returns Thursday.” Margaret records her cycle, the onset of menstruation, with single Words: “bloated,” “cramps,” “depressed.” Amy has read pages of tiny script that summed up a day or a conversation, or their own antics recorded in a tone of high exuberance, her love for them declared in a flourish of curlicues, sometimes followed on the next page by an abrupt printed sentence such as: “I can’t stand this any more.”

  “Amelia Jane, born April 29th, 1950, seven pounds, twelve ounces.” Amelia’s a name for an old woman, Timothy had protested, and so, although the birth certificate said otherwise, she became Amy. Amy has read puzzling descriptions of herself in Margaret’s Blue Book which, if it weren’t for her name written there, she would not have recognized as being herself.

  Usually when Margaret throws herself onto the bed it’s over a slight disagreement with Timothy or after a visit from her mother. And usually the springs squeak again only moments later when she gets off the bed and comes back down to them, subdued and shamefaced with apologies. Amy listens now. The silence in the house draws back and up, at its centre a hole, the pause before the wind rushes in and fills it. She scoops globs of creamy mayonnaise from bread and sucks it from her fingers. When she finishes the insides of Mel’s sandwich, she pushes away from the table, her stomach distended.

  She leaves the house, going out the back way to avoid a chance meeting with Mel or Jill. As she crosses the yard towards the garage, the rope swing is a dark silhouette, a skinny U suspended under the branches of the shade tree. Gravel crunches under her feet as she follows the driveway to the back of the yard. The air inside the garage rushes forward to meet her as she opens the door, hot, heavy with a sweet smell of paint. Timothy’s jalopy is covered with a tarpaulin. When he works on it, she sits behind the wheel practising for the time she will drive it. She feels through the dark until her hands rest against the rungs of a ladder. She lifts it down from the wall. A can of paint topples from a work-bench as she swings the ladder around and out the door. It scrapes against the roof of the garage as she sets it in place, teetering beneath her feet as she climbs upwards.

  “Where are we going?” Jill hears a noise in the backyard but she doesn’t mention it. She’s afraid Mel will leave without her. They lean against the side of the veranda. Across the street the cries of several children playing in the school yard float up to meet the coming night, and, set against it, is their light-coloured clothing, phantoms dancing, gliding in a strange waltz.

  “You mean, where am I going.” Mel leaves the yard and walks down the street, quickly passing from view into the shadows cast by the trees.

  “Mel!”

  He turns and his heart becomes sick with the sight of Jill’s limping, gimpy walk as she tries to catch up to him. He drops to the grass beneath a tree and waits. “So Howdy Doody has a sister.”

  Jill sits down beside him. “Jerks. They were just jerks.”

  Mel yanks at a blade of grass. He cups it and blows. He’s been trying for years but he never succeeds in making it shriek. “Howdy Doody. They meant my ears, of course.” He feels the flutter of her cool mouth against his cheek. “I should have gone for the cola. Not you.”

  “I don’t think it would have been the same.” She laughs and he feels himself blush. She hugs her knees and presses her face into them, running her tongue across the taut, smooth skin, tasting salt, and feeling the slippery smoothness of her kneecap against her lips. Is that what it’s like, she wonders, a wet kiss? A wet mouth sliding across another wet mouth? “So?” she asks.

  “So, what?”

  “So did you and Elsa do it?” She grins at him and her white teeth shine out from her wet lips.

  “Yes.” And he would like to do it again. Soon. He feels the rush of desire.

  “I thought so.” She leans back onto the grass and shivers as dew soaks through her thin cotton top. She looks up at the dim pinpricks of new stars. The children in the playground still seem to be dancing, their muted voices saying, We have secrets. Adults will call from doorways. Come on in, now, they will say. You’ll catch your death. Time to pack it in. Time for sleep. Children having fun seems to make adults nervous, Jill thinks, as she hears the first call and listens to the anguished pleading. Adults want to stop their children’s playing quickly with a warning that is really a veiled threat. The children continue their play, choosing for several moments at least to close their ears to the beckoning cries of their anxious parents, who offer safety in the rooms of houses, as they wait in doorways for their children to return and for their own lives to continue.

  “Well, so? What was it like?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Jill springs on him, beats him down onto the grass with her fists. “You have to. You have to.” She straddles him with her thin bruised legs and wraps her hands around his throat. “You have to.” She threatens murder. Mel’s eyes bulge, his tongue lolls grotesquely, and then his head drops to one side as he feigns death. She flicks the end of his nose and rolls away. It’s not fair, Jill thinks. She picks at a small scab on her knee. It stings as she pulls it away. And then her tongue stings too with the sudden craving for something salty. “Pickled herring,” she says. She would die to sink her teeth into a piece of pickled herring. Her tongue shivers as she imagines the salty taste of it, her teeth slicing cl
ean through its blue skin, feeling the texture of its flesh, salty, tangy. She feels the heat of Mel’s fingers against her cool ones. “God, I’d kill for some pickled herring.” He lifts her hand and sets it against his groin. She feels the bump that is his penis. “It’s hard!”

  “That’s what it was like.”

  She withdraws her hand. The children playing in the school yard have all gone home. She misses their voices. “What’s it look like? Hard.”

  He groans. “Aw, come on.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “For the love of Mike,” Mel complains but he unzips his fly and shows her.

  His knob is bluish, cold-looking, she thinks, as though it must hurt. “It’s –”

  “It’s what?”

  “Kind of …” Ugly, she thinks. “Show-offy.”

  Mel leaps to his feet and walks away.

  “Hey, wait up! I meant big. It’s big.” She grabs his arm and slows him down. Her mouth fills with saliva as she thinks of brine and sucking at a chunk of pickled herring. “So are you and Elsa going steady now?”

  “No. I don’t think so.”

  “But you are going to ask her to the dance, aren’t you?”

  “Maybe.” He wouldn’t be caught dead going anywhere with Elsa.

  They walk down towards Main Street, their destination the hardware store where their cousin Garth Johnson waits for them. Beyond, cars pass beneath the yellow bug-repellent lights at the filling station.

  “I don’t think you have Howdy Doody ears. I really don’t.” Laughter bubbles in her throat. “Actually, your ears are more like Prince Charles’s ears.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  The air has grown cool and goose bumps rise on Jill’s arms as she and Mel walk downtown. The sudden chill is a reminder that spring had been swallowed up overnight in May, causing those who had murmured against the unusual almost-tropical weather and its offspring (salamanders spawning in sump holes in basements, clumps of moist penis-shaped mushrooms erupting in lawns during the night, their pale new skin turning leathery-brown beneath the sun of the day) to wonder aloud now whether it has been just too darn good to be true, this marvellous weather. “Don’t you forget, it’s only June,” they remind themselves as they step out onto back stoops, hands on hips, confronting their wet gardens. “At least there’s no sign of rain tonight. Good thing, that. Enough is enough, eh? About all we’re gonna wind up growing this year is slugs and mosquitoes and little boys.” They bite back the dreaded thought of punishment, an unseasonable frost.

  As Mel and Jill walk beneath the street lamps, past houses and then the shops of Main Street, the streets they pass through feel as familiar as the lines running across the palms of their hands. Unlike Amy, who treats her travels through Carona’s streets as something she has to do in order to arrive at her destination, Mel and Jill have the ambling gait of landowners. They pause in front of Hardy’s Gem Store. While all the other stores are closed, windows dark, there’s a light in the Hardys’ window. The abalone shell lamp has been left burning. Jill has always been drawn to the shell, by how its colours appear to vibrate, iridescent waves curling over a landscape of spiky coral. Usually when Jill looks at it, she thinks that it’s what an ocean would look like on the moon. But tonight as she looks at it, she thinks of pickled herring. The craving is for more than its tangy brine, it’s the texture of its flesh she desires as well. The sensation of shredding thin skin between her teeth.

  A display of jewelled ties and key chains hang from a wire in the window, their semi-precious stones gleaming in the shell lamp’s light. Mel sees Mr. Hardy sitting on a stool at the counter, his visor pulled low on his forehead as he hunches over a pool of light. He must have just emptied a tumbler, Mel thinks. He taps on the window. Jill protests and then groans as the man beckons for them to come inside.

  The bell above their heads tinkles softly as they open the door. The shop smells arid, of sand and of the elderly couple Mel and Jill know from the United Church. Mr. Hardy used to usher. The Hardys are rock hounds and have turned their hobby into a business. They travel to New Mexico or Arizona every winter in search of precious and semi-precious stones. Jill follows Mel through the narrow aisle in the centre of the cluttered shop. Dusty showcases display oddly shaped rocks, rocks split open to reveal bristly purple quartz crystals, and some shells too, a polished moon shell, its centre resembling an intense blue eye. It’s the sound of Mr. Hardy’s shop that Mel likes. He likes the grinding sound of the drums on shelves all about the room, rocks tumbling and sliding through sand and water, each canister seeming to revolve at a different speed. Mr. Hardy holds a stone out for them to admire. “Moss agate. I sent for it down in Iowa.” His hand shakes with excitement. The cream-coloured stone feels cool and heavy in Mel’s hand. Green trees of moss sprawl across its convex surface. “Look at that, son. There’s a world inside that stone.”

  Japan, Jill thinks. A volcanic mountain range framed on both sides by bonsai trees. “Nice.”

  “Oh my, yes, I should say so.” He chuckles softly. The man has always been rather solemn; taciturn, people say. But he’s become a new person now, he tries to explain to anyone who cares to listen. He met Jesus Christ in the desert of Arizona and gave his life over to him. In the past his faith had no substance, he says, like the faith of most of the people who worship in the seven churches of Carona. So he crossed the road to the new church, the Alliance Gospel, and was pleasantly surprised. However, the congregation of worshippers, who came from all over, weren’t surprised to see the Hardy couple; they’d been expecting them because they had been praying for them. The people of Carona have noticed the change, how the reclusive couple has become more outgoing, friendlier, though most aren’t comfortable with the weekly meetings the Hardys have begun to hold in their living room. A prayer cell, they call it. An exclusive holy few who are tight-lipped about what it is they pray for.

  Jill goes over to the pan sitting on the counter and stirs through wet silica sand and polished stones. The man’s hand drops down on top of her head. “Choose something you like.”

  “It’s okay,” she says, wondering what makes adults think that children like to be touched by them. She almost prefers the crabby, aloof Mr. Hardy to this new model.

  “Go on.” His long fingers reach down and pluck up an almost clear purple stone. “Amethyst. It’s an ancient gem. Even mentioned in the Bible. In the new Holy City. I could set it into a nice little pin if you like.”

  “I like it like this.” She hears car doors slam and then people’s voices as they pass by the window. Her tongue quivers for the salty fish. Mr. Hardy reaches around her, picks up the pan filled with polished stones, sand, and water, and holds it beneath the lamp. He swills them around. “I was a proud man, once.” His voice becomes scratchy and unnatural. “See this?” He tilts the pan so they can see. “This is what God’s doing to me now. Smoothing the edges off the old curmudgeon.”

  Jill drops the stone into her pocket. “We promised our mother we wouldn’t be late,” she says, nudging Mel in the side.

  Mr. Hardy smiles down at her and nods his approval. He puts the pan aside and plucks a tract from a stack beside the cash register. “Here.” He hands it to Mel. “You might like to read a bit of this before you go to bed tonight.”

  “Amen,” Jill says as they step from the store.

  “Where does he get off? He gives you a stone and me a lousy religious tract.” He crumples it and tosses it into the street. “What am I, second class?”

  “A sinner.” Her laughter echoes in the buildings across the street. “Here.” She presses the piece of quartz into his palm.

  They pass by Ken’s Chinese Food. The ivy-covered windows glow with light and activity as Ken, a tiny man, and his two equally diminutive sons dart from table to table in the almost-full cafe. A fan above the door turns out warm air and the smell of ginger into the street. Beyond they see the flare of a match: Garth standing on the steps of the hardware store, lighting a cigarette. />
  “So, what’s up?” He sounds annoyed, as though he had better things to do than meet Mel.

  “You’re going to have to get me some pickled herring.” Jill’s craving throbs like a toothache. She sits down on the bottom step and hugs her knees.

  Mel slides the mickey of whisky from his back pocket and holds it up to the light. “We didn’t drink much. Must be two bucks’ worth here.”

  Garth snatches the bottle from Mel, and, as the headlights of a car sweep across them, he slips it inside his shirt. “I don’t give refunds,” he says. He smiles with one corner of his mouth. He spends hours in front of the mirror practising that smile.

  Mel feels a surge of envy as the grey Impala sweeps by and he recognizes several grade-twelve students who will soon graduate. Probably going to the city to take in a movie. He imagines them entering a nightclub using false identification.

  “Come here.” Jill reaches out and pulls Garth down beside her. She winds an arm around his neck. “Come on, Cuz, you can do it. Go over to Waller’s and get me a jar of herring.”

  “You serious?”

  “Serious.”

  “What, is she really serious?” Garth asks Mel.

  Mel shrugs. Television screens in Josh’s store window flicker with bright images, and, above, in the suite of rooms where he lives with the two women and Elsa, the windows glow with the light pressing softly against orange curtains. One of the windows darkens with the shape of a person passing back and forth behind the curtain. Mel wonders if it’s Elsa.

  Garth yanks at Jill’s hair. “It has to be herring, eh? Nothing else will do? What brand do you want?” he asks as he gets up and shakes the creases from his drape pants. “Not bad, eh? Thirty-six inches at the knee.”

  “And twelve at the ankle. We know, we know,” Mel says drily. Garth has been the first in Carona to wear the baggy draped pants which, he boasts, he wheedled his mother into bringing back from Grand Forks, U.S. of A.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Garth says and saunters off into the shadows. But he knows he can get what Jill wants because he is a thief. He was born a thief. He possesses a cunning intuition about people and their movements. He knows which of the young women in town “has the mitt on,” which women “have a bun in the oven.” What kind of underwear they have on beneath their clothing. He admits to having snuck into houses and stuck pins into packets of condoms lying inside drawers of bedside tables. But few people in Carona know this side of Garth Johnson. They know him as a congenial, if not a bit smart alecky, boy. He is, after all, the son of Reginald, who is the son of Thomas, and so on. Those who know him well keep silent and Garth delivers whatever it is they want.