The Chrome Suite

by Sandra Birdsell

  “There’s no indication of fibroids,” he said. “Are you experiencing discomfort?”

  “No,” Margaret said, determined to be clear. “It’s just that I don’t feel anything.”

  He laughed. “Well, what do you expect? That you’ll feel the earth moving? Hear bells?”

  Yes, Margaret thought. Yes, yes, yes.

  Margaret’s eyes remain fixed on the white triangular shape that hovers above the lake, only several yards away or perhaps a mile. It could be three feet tall or thirty, solid or the substance of the evening air, a reflection cast down from the other side of things, it’s difficult to tell. Fool, Margaret thinks, and winces against the image that leaps unbidden behind her eyes. She sees herself kneeling on the floor of the kitchen, looking down at Bill’s feet, at a contrast of colours, his brown socks set against the green-and-white tile floor, which she had polished earlier that day, before everything else, before the heat, before the children had come down from their beds, still warm, wanting cold cereal and milk and listening to her instructions on how to behave at the Lutheran Sunday School picnic. Before she had put on the new blouse she made. Two coats of paste wax polished to a high shine with woollen sweaters wrapped around her feet. The new liquid waxes don’t give as high a shine: her mother’s voice, speaking to her as she worked. “Your account at the store is too high, I can’t let you add to it for a floor polisher at this time,” Reginald had said, sounding like Mr. Block, a high-school teacher they had once played Hallowe’en pranks on. Bunny and herself and others she had forgotten who had left Carona. At night, first snowfall, hiding and waiting for the man to make his regular journey to the back of the yard and the privy, she remembered as she polished the kitchen floor and tried not to think that Bill North would be coming over later on in the day. The floor shone like a mirror all around Margaret as she knelt in front of Bill, the tape measure, clammy against her neck, swinging back and forth. The cat was at her side, batting now and then at the tape as it moved.

  Or, the floor shone like fresh ice, its surface having just been flooded with water and hardened. But already there were scuff marks on it. She could see them from the angle at which she knelt, the little hook-shaped marks her children’s shoes had made on its surface, and when Bill spread his feet apart, she saw the outline of his socked feet in perspiration on the shiny floor. Heat radiated off his leg as she held up the tape to take his inseam measurement. He had touched the back of her neck and her skin tingled.

  “Margaret,” he’d said as he ran his fingers across her hot skin, and she heard in his voice what she believed to be amazement that he was finally, at last, able to touch her. “Margaret,” she whispers to herself as she leans back into the warm sand, saying her name the way she thinks he’d said it, examining its tone. I wonder whatever happened to Mr. Block? Bunny had asked recently, and she’d told Bunny what she’d heard, that their bachelor teacher had found happiness in the arms of a widow in another town. You have to let the first coat of wax harden thoroughly before you apply the second, she hears her mother instruct. “Margaret,” she repeats to herself, but she cannot put away or change or deny the sound of Bill’s zipper sliding open or the memory of the yeasty smell of him as he drew her head towards him. Oh my God, she’d thought. Oh God. The light finally dawning. What am I going to do? How can I get out of this gracefully? He doesn’t smell clean, she thought, as he thrust his hips towards her. She hadn’t been able to think of a single graceful thing to do and so she gave in to the pressure of his hand at her neck and became a reluctant child, eyes closed, mouth opening to receive him.

  She had wondered how to do it. How to arrange her mouth, what to do with her tongue and teeth. She’d thought suddenly that Bunny’s small mouth was probably not large enough to hold him. “Good,” Bill said. “Good, good,” he repeated with each thrust and Margaret wondered how not to gag. “Good,” he said as he came. His stream bubbled in the back of her mouth, filling it, and she wanted to pull away from it but he held her head in place. She waited for it to end, and at last he grew limp and slid from her mouth. There was more liquid than she’d expected and so she kept her mouth large inside, holding it, not wanting to swallow, and waited until he turned away to fix himself. She looked around quickly to see what she might do with it and saw the tray of pins resting on the freshly polished floor. She bent over it, opened her mouth, and the semen dropped in a gush down onto the pins. The cat crouched beside Margaret, watching, and then rose to his haunches, padded over to the small plastic tray, and sniffed at it.

  Idiot, Margaret thinks as she burrows more deeply into the warm sand. Twice a fool to have agreed to come here. She scoops up handfuls of sand, imagines time trickling away, minutes, hours, years. “So what if you’re turning thirty-five?” Rita had said. “I’d give my eye-teeth for someone like Timothy.”

  The sound of male voices begins to push through Margaret’s thoughts. Sometimes she wakes up in the middle of the night to a similar sound of voices and thinks she’s left the radio playing downstairs. It goes on all night, the voices, and Margaret accepts it, thinking that it could be the residue of a conversation that occurred during the day, the outward ripple of soundwaves reversed by the barrier of a weather front. Or it could be a conversation that took place in another time, blown back now by stellar winds, and perhaps the television antenna fed the sound into the room. She realizes then that the white shape on the water has disappeared and wonders if it was a sail after all and if the boat has come ashore. The voices rise and she hears soft laughter. Sound travels far in moisture-laden air, they could be miles away, but she decides to investigate. She walks until she comes to a wall of dark rocks, a solid arm laid down against the water. She kicks her sandals free and wades along the length of the rocky peninsula, thinking to walk around it, but the sand bottom drops away too steeply and too soon she’s thigh-deep in water. She returns to shore, puts on her sandals, and decides to attempt to climb over it.

  As she reaches the top of the rocky arm, she sees the light of a bonfire in the distance where the shoreline appears to draw back into a seemingly endless curve of white sand. The breeze off the lake feels cool against her legs and thighs and she begins to shiver as she approaches the fire and two men; young men, she realizes, as she draws closer. One leans forward and pokes the fire with a stick, causing the flames to flare brighter, sparks to snap and shoot off in all directions. How would it look to turn away now that they’ve seen her coming? Unfriendly, she thinks, and so she will stand beside their fire for a moment.

  “Hello,” one of the men calls. “Nice night for walking.”

  The man who has stirred the fire smiles widely and waves.

  “Yes,” Margaret says. She’s close enough now to see the beer bottles shoved down into the sand between the two men and then she sees the carton of beer half-submerged in the water. There’s no evidence of a sailboat. Their faces flicker with the light of the flames. Early twenties, she thinks. She begins to shiver violently.

  “You’re welcome to join us,” the young man who greeted her says. “Why don’t you come and get warm?” He’s spoken quietly, with the proper degree of respect. Well brought up, Margaret surmises as she drops to the sand and tucks her long legs up beneath her.

  He senses her uneasiness; she realizes this in the way he smiles, clear, open, and friendly. Only he speaks, while the other man nods occasionally in agreement or draws stick-figures in the sand. They wear white tee shirts and boxer trunks and Margaret notes a well-muscled calf and hopes for Mel to be as healthy and strong-looking one day. He explains that they’re graduates of architecture on an extended graduation celebration before they part and go their separate ways to work. One to Toronto, the other to Montreal. They have been friends since grade school, he explains, and names an area in the city, Silver Heights, which Margaret doesn’t recognize. She can’t fathom anyone having been born in the city, much less growing up in its streets. When she says this they laugh and he tells her that they have backyards and neigh
bourhoods, too.

  There’s a lull in the conversation. She realizes that they haven’t once sipped at their beer and thinks that it’s out of deference to her presence, or perhaps they believe they ought to offer her one and don’t want to. She thinks it’s time to leave and is about to get up when the silent man speaks. “The water’s as warm as a bathtub,” he says. Then he peels his tee shirt up over his head, rises, and strides down towards the lake. His white legs reflect the dancing light of the fire. She sees him sprint through the shallows and then hears the sound of his body meeting water as he plunges in. The other man looks Margaret full in the face for the first time. He smiles. His features are even, a perfect drawing, no blemishes, not even the hint of whiskers. His eyes are the darkest she’s ever seen. She hears the smooth rhythm of the swimmer’s stroke.

  “Why not go in for a swim?”

  “Oh, no.” Margaret laughs. “I’m afraid I’d sink like a stone.”

  He stands up and takes off his tee shirt and then holds out his hand. “Come on. It’s true, at night the water is as warm as water in a bathtub.”

  Margaret allows herself to be pulled up, thinking that she’ll dust sand from her shorts and say, Well, it’s been nice meeting the both of you, but instead she lets him lead her down towards the lake. It is warm, Margaret thinks, as it rises up about her knees, thighs, and then her waist. She gasps as the water rises beneath her armpits.

  “Put your arms around my neck,” he instructs.

  She does and he walks out further and Margaret feels her body rise in a float. The rhythmic sound of the swimmer has become fainter and then fades completely under the sound of their own breathing. It’s just the two of them now, faces only inches apart, breathing each other’s breath. “There,” he says. “I’m treading water now. Isn’t it warm?”

  “Yes,” Margaret agrees. “Like water in a bathtub.” It’s beautiful, she thinks. It seems they are dead centre in the path of moonlight that leads to a vanishing point in the dark horizon.

  “And you are not sinking like a stone.”

  “No,” Margaret says and laughs. His eyes are clear and steady.

  “That’s because I’m holding you.” His hands grasp her arms and gently he pries her hands loose from his neck. Margaret floats away from him, secured only by the lightest touch of his fingertips. “You trust me,” he says.

  She can no longer see his face. “Yes.”

  “I could let go,” he says, “and no one would ever know.”

  Yes, he has that power, she thinks. She’s given it to him by agreeing to come. She sinks then and sputters as water fills her mouth. His strong hands circle her wrists and drew her towards him. She rises in front of him gulping for air and then he turns her away from himself. She feels his hands under her armpits as he lifts her and throws her out across the water.

  Margaret breaks through the dark surface of it and it closes over her head. She sinks further and then feels the sandy bottom rise to meet her. When she stands up she discovers she’s only in waist-deep. She turns to speak to him but the words are forgotten as he raises a hand in farewell. “You’ll be okay now,” he says and rolls over and swims down the broad path of moonlight.

  As Margaret waits beside the dying embers of the fire for them to return she becomes aware for the first time of the roar of night sounds all around her, a constant chattering and sawing of crickets, the hum of mosquitoes, the rustle of poplar leaves flipping in the breeze.

  When the sky begins to lighten and still there’s no sign of the two swimmers, Margaret decides to head back to the cabin. She thinks that she’ll listen to the radio, search the newspaper for mention of bodies washing up on the opposite shore. She will find nothing, though. Later, when Margaret embraces the ecstasy of her new religious faith, she will remember the man’s parting words: “You’ll be okay now.” After Jill is gone, Margaret will come to believe that the young men were sent to deliver her a message.

  Her clothing is still wet as she walks back towards the cabin. Suddenly she sees the thick dark hair on Bill’s chest as he advances along the path through the trees. She imagines lifting her head and looking him square in the eye and that if he should happen to make the slightest move to touch her, she would say, “Not on your life, buster.” But at the same time her eyes veer from the path and search among the trees for a suitable hollow where they could make love.

  Bill hears her coming and looks up. “Oh good,” he says, “I found you. Bunny says she thinks you ought to come and have a look at Jill.”

  7

  t first it was thought that Jill had rheumatic fever but when Timothy returned home he said he wanted another opinion, and he and Jill disappeared into the city and returned several weeks later, Jill thinner, her limbs sensitive even to the slightest press of cool breeze against them. Then even the weight of a single bed-sheet would cause her to cry out. Timothy grew morose and silent and took an extended time off from work, spending the majority of it out back in the garage, and hardly a day passed when I didn’t hear the whine of his electric sander. I spent most of my time on the swing, and as the summer drew to an end, a huge splinter from the swing seat pierced my buttock and began to fester into a boil. I began to limp but no one noticed.

  “You know what happens to a caterpillar,” Grandfather Johnson said to me one day near the end. He was trying to explain to me that my sister was dying. I had just returned from the locker plant where I had been sent to get a bowl of ice. Mr. Beever, the owner, said that I should help myself. I suspected that he wished to avoid the eye contact that would have been necessary through the giving and receiving of the bowl. I entered the cloud of frost that billowed out from the door of the walk-in cooler and passed among the hanging carcasses of pigs, sides of beef, to the end of it and the bin of ice. Above it, hanging upside down, was a row of eviscerated turkeys. Their stiff limbs seemed stretched and thin as though in shock and their skin had turned pebbly yellow with fleshy blue bumps.

  When Jill finally did die early in the month of September, Margaret ran from the house with her hands covering her mouth. She ran out of the yard and across the street and stopped just inside the school grounds as though she’d run into a wall. She turned and retched into the grass, I went inside the house in time to see Timothy carrying Jill down the stairs to lay her out on the couch. Aunt Rita walked behind him, carrying a blanket, and when she saw me she tried to shoo me away, but I was mesmerized by the sight of Jill’s stiff, yellowish limbs, which bobbed as Timothy descended the stairs. I thought, Jill looks like a frozen turkey.

  The day following the funeral, silence in the house radiated outward, pushing against the walls, so that it seemed to me that the sides of the house bulged into the yard. I felt tension in the house’s groaning timbers as I walked out onto the veranda. There were hands out there, I thought, palms raised against the windows to contain our bulging silence. A silence faintly permeated by an odour that to me would forever be connected to the smell of a sick child. The odour came from cankerworm droppings, a dry, dark stain on the sidewalk and in the street beyond; the smell almost gone now. But throughout the previous month the stink of worm droppings rose from sticky patches, overpowering all other smells. Timothy had raged against the fetid sweet odour, and each evening attempted to get rid of the droppings by taking the hose to them and washing them away into the sewer. By morning, the smell and wet stain would have returned. “It’s like the abattoir in Saint Boniface,” Aunt Rita had commented. But it wasn’t that, nor was it the wind blowing in from the direction of the sugar beet factory, nor leaves erupting with sap, as we’d first thought, but the effluence of millions of chewing worms. It was September now, cooler. The worms were gone and in their place were sluggish wasps, crawling across spattered veranda windows, feeding.

  Mel was upstairs in his bedroom. I stood out on the veranda with my navy-blue cape, which I wore constantly now, wrapped tightly around me. Margaret was closeted in her room with Mrs. Hardy, who had been sent, she said, to give mean
ing to Jill’s death. Mrs. Hardy was attempting to teach Margaret to raise her hands in prayer and say, “Thank you, Jesus, for taking Jill away from me.” Timothy was out driving the countryside. He was out in the rolling Pembina Hills watching through blurred eyes how the road climbed to meet the late summer sky. Beside him in the car, with a solicitous hand placed against his thigh, was my Aunt Rita.

  I noticed the absence of birds on the television antennas, and even Amy the squirrel could not be seen. Out of respect for our loss, the school had been closed for several days to spare us the pain of the sight and sounds of happy children playing in the school grounds. No one walked or drove past the house. It was as though Jill had taken everyone with her.

  Ashes to ashes, I had heard someone say as I watched the clumps of black earth drop from Timothy’s hand. Because I had been struck by lightning, I should have been the one reduced to a pile of ashes, I thought. Elsa Miller stood behind me. I heard her weeping. Josh had driven her out from the city, where they now lived, closer to the medical care Elsa required for her epilepsy, Josh explained. And much to my Uncle Reginald’s relief, Josh had closed up his shop. The cape Timothy had bought me absorbed the heat of the sun, which beat down against my shoulders and back. I was hot. I hoped we wouldn’t have to be there much longer. I recall seeing the grounds-keeper, Alf, standing on the periphery of the group of mourners, Jill’s classmates, the teachers, distant relatives, the whole town of Carona. Alf looked out of place, as usual, in his manure-stained coveralls. He bowed his head and clutched his cap against his chest, thinking no doubt about his own boy, Harry, who had narrowly escaped death from a vicious bout of pneumonia after wandering soaked to the skin for several days. A shame, that, the people of Carona said. A shame that Jill had died and the mentally retarded Harry hadn’t.