The Chrome Suite

by Sandra Birdsell

  That was Shirley. She was seventeen.

  Amy sits down beside the young woman and begins talking past her to the waitress, well aware that Shirley is listening in, and Amy is not surprised as Shirley’s mask of contempt begins to slip and that she almost smiles. As the song ends and the waitress is called away to another customer, Shirley turns to Amy. “You come across as being a snob, but you aren’t. What a relief. This is such a tight-assed town.” Amy had won Shirley over, she knew, because she had peppered her conversation with swear words. She invites Shirley to join them in the back booth, the one they have come to think of as being exclusively theirs. Cam, Gord, Amy. Over the years they’ve been hanging out at Ken’s there have been others invited to join them in the back booth, those who were in the transient stages of rebellion. But it’s Amy, Gord, and Cam who have proven to be the hard-core oddballs. When they were younger they were explosive and loud, sometimes laughing for no reason other than that someone had belched. Ken, the good-natured proprietor, doesn’t object to their presence as long as they buy a reasonable amount of food. Each year he paints over the graffiti and names they have carved into the plywood booth. Now that they’re older they’ve grown quieter, tense, a rather pitiful-looking group sitting there wearing silly little masks of bravado. At sixteen and seventeen, they are edgy about where they might be heading. Shirley is a welcome diversion.

  “You guys want to help me do the shopping?” Shirley asks.

  Shirley’s question is a challenge, and because her green eyes promise an adventure, Amy, who has become a lazy, mediocre student, is all too willing to skip school and accompany Shirley on her hitchhiking jogs into the city, and to try her hand at shoplifting. She reasons that she’s simply helping Shirley out with “her problem” – the problem being Shirley’s father dying too young of a heart attack and her mother remarrying. Her new husband is foreman of the Hydro crew, recently arrived to rewire the town of Carona, and there is another child. Shirley’s presence is barely tolerated by the new husband. When he comes home from work Shirley leaves the house. She calls from the cafe before returning, to check if the coast is clear. Her stepfather does an inventory of the refrigerator before he leaves for work in the morning and again when he returns, to determine if she’s eaten anything that belongs to him. Amy figures she is helping out, because at first all they steal is food and cigarettes.

  It takes them only two rides to reach the city. Then they get on a transit bus and head towards Shirley’s old neighbourhood in the north end. Amy sits next to the window, watching people strolling along Memorial Boulevard. Several young men and women, hippies, she believes, are long-haired and wild-looking in their frayed jeans and floppy hats. She imagines herself walking among them, wearing white cotton, sandals, wooden beads maybe, her hair long and straight to her tail bone. As Amy watches the “flower children,” she thinks that while she’s the one on the bus and moving, it seems as though she’s the one standing still.

  When they get off the bus, the long face of Stanley Knowles stares out at them from an election poster taped to the window of Pete’s Grocery and Meats, the store Shirley remembers going to with her real father on Friday nights, treat night, to spend her allowance. The politician’s face is a solemn one, Amy thinks, as she enters the store behind Shirley. The man, she will learn, though unpopular and feared in the municipality of Carona, is this neighbourhood’s totem.

  “Pete!” Shirley shrieks as she enters the store. She opens her arms to receive an embrace. A tall, muscular man grabs her in a hug.

  “Doll! How you been?”

  “I told you, this guy is a mark,” Shirley says later, and winks. “While we talk you get me tuna, solid white. It’s the only kind I can hack.”

  The houses in the neighbourhood where Shirley lived in happier days with her mother and real father are identical wartime prefab single-storey houses built on cement slabs and constructed on lots so narrow that their eaves troughs meet over the strip of walkway running between them. There’s a stingy look about the neighbourhood in the way most of the yards are enclosed behind chainlink fences. Amy feels she is intruding as she stands with Shirley in front of the house where Shirley used to live. Amy doesn’t know that in not much more than a year she’ll leave Carona and wind up in this neighbourhood, in one of these very houses. That several years later she will bring home a bundled up spring baby, and in summer watch, amazed, as he zooms around the front yard on all fours, stopping now and then to taste a bug. That in autumn the child will pull himself up at the chainlink fence, suck at the wires, and screech with delight at the sight of a garbage truck lumbering by. Or that in her memory she will always frame her child, Richard, as being five years old and out behind the house sitting on the clothesline stoop, making an airplane, the summer she almost killed him.

  Amy comes home late one night in December, and Mel, diligent in his final year at university, is still up, at the kitchen table studying, as usual. But he is also waiting for her, she realizes, as he stretches and pushes his books aside.

  “Look,” he says and begins to scratch at his chin exactly as Timothy would do when he was forming what to say. “You’re going to make a mess of your life. Why not play it smart for a change? Why not put the necessary time into the books and then you can get out of here. Because the time’s going to pass by anyway, and you do have the brains to accomplish something if you want to, you know.”

  For a moment Amy is struck dumb by this rare display of brotherly concern. Mel goes on to tell her what their cousin Garth discovered while riffling through the secretary’s files at school: the results of a recent test which show that Amy’s intelligence quotient is among the highest of all the students. As Mel talks, it dawns on Amy why the teachers have suddenly begun to take an interest in her. It explains the reason for their requests that she remain after class so they can have a friendly but concerned chat. They use hackneyed phrases such as: Nose to the grindstone, Apply yourself, Pull up your socks.

  “Were you ever tested?” she asks.

  “Yes.”

  “Know your score?” She notices the blood rush to the tips of his ears.

  “Average.” His candid expression disappears as he reaches for a textbook and begins flipping through it. “But I’ll get there.”

  The old tortoise-and-hare crap, she thinks. She laughs and tosses a package of Black Cats across the table. “They’re on me.”

  “Hey, thanks,” he says, genuinely pleased.

  Steady, plodding, dull, Amy thinks. And poor. Mel only smokes when he can get o.p.’s. “Shirl and I are going Christmas shopping tomorrow. You got a wish list?”

  He grins and then attempts to look serious. “That’s another thing,” he says. “You’re going to wind up in reform school if you’re not careful.”

  She laughs to cover what she’s feeling as she leaves the room: dread. Not of being caught and being shipped off to a reform school, forever wearing the badge “juvenile delinquent,” but because it’s true that Mel is going to get where he wants to go, while she doesn’t even know what she wants. When she looks around at the people of Carona, there isn’t a single one among them that she’d like to be, and this confirms her growing suspicion that being struck by lightning may have made her unsuitable for a life of normalcy.

  She undresses in the dark and boosts herself up onto her bed. She falls asleep instantly and dreams of flying. She dreams she is borne upwards, up above the street and far away she flies, now, outside of town, above other towns, and above the giant sleeping city to the east.

  The following morning she dresses for her date with Shirley in baggy too-large pants, an oversized shirt. She puts several bangles on her wrist and at least two rings on each hand. She will not wind up in a reform school. She will not get caught. No sweat, she tells herself, as she stands in front of the mirror brushing her henna-red hair until it crackles with static and puffs out around her tiny white face. Witchy, she thinks, and likes it. She ties her hair back with a black velvet ribbon,
like an r.b. She studies her profile. Snobbish-looking, perfect, she thinks. I look like a rich bitch from Balmoral Hall.

  Frost crystals hang in the air, and the snow-packed road crunches loudly beneath her feet as she walks to the other side of town to meet Shirley. It’s a hollow sound, as though during the cold night the earth’s core has shrunk, and walking now across its fragile mantle, a thin crust of frozen earth, makes Amy feel a bit off balance, wondering if she’s wrong to think it will support her weight.

  Shirley has taken Amy from piking cans of tuna and cigarettes from Pete’s to the Metropolitan Store downtown where she has learned to tie several scarves onto her head, slip rings onto her fingers, bracelets onto her arms, and stroll away, selling them later to the kids in Carona. Recently, they have graduated and begun to “shop” at Simpsons. For Amy, these trips into the city to shoplift are like touching an electrically charged wire on a dare and then spitting on her finger and touching the wire again for an even stronger jolt. She likes to see how long she can stand the buzzing of electricity in her body. That day, as they enter Simpsons, Amy imagines that she has become a well-oiled machine, precise and with no nerves at all.

  They join the flow of people moving down the centre aisle of the store, beneath the sparkling revolving snowflakes suspended from the ceiling. They walk among the sounds of paper rustling, the whirr of cash registers, and the murmur of many voices. Gold and silver garlands wound around pillars glitter harshly, and poinsettias appear like red clots on the wall in front of her. She sees the whole floor at once and yet every detail of it too. She misses nothing. She sees her mind as a camera clicking and storing information. They’re on the first floor, near the south exit, she notes, and near the car park. Sporting Goods is to the left, Toys to the right, where a baby howls in disappointment as its mother pries a package from its fingers. Paint and Wallpaper directly across from Toys.

  They step out of the traffic moving down the centre aisle and stop to look at a display of skis. Amy notes three clerks, two at the sports counter and one speaking to a customer. She’s searching for security personnel. She and Shirley cross the aisle and stand in front of a counter of model airplane kits. Shirley takes one from the shelf while Amy scans the toy section for security personnel, and spots one, a middle-aged woman in Paint and Wallpaper. What she is doing, Amy sees, is pretending to tidy up shelves, while really watching two kids huddled together on the other side of the model airplanes. Amy knows where that security person will be for the next little while. Shirley sets the model kit back onto the shelf and they move into the main artery once again. Amy follows her as they pass by Optical and the row of green vinyl chairs where people wait to have their eyes tested.

  They enter the jewellery department. Shirley stops at a carousel of gold chains and begins to rotate it slowly, as though deep in thought, and then appears crestfallen, as if she can’t find what she wants. There are only two clerks in Jewellery. One leans against the counter with her back to them, chatting, while the other tidies up around the cash register. That means two counters of jewellery unattended, Amy realizes. Another display rotates slowly, Shirley searching for what she wants, but Amy knows that she already has several gold chains hidden inside her coat sleeve.

  Just then a woman steps up beside Shirley. At her side is a little girl, mitts dangling from both sleeves on idiot strings. The girl twitches with impatience as her mother stops to browse. “Gosh, they cost the earth, don’t they?” the woman exclaims, and Amy detects a British accent. It’s not Security, but Shirley moves away, not taking any chances. Chicken, Amy thinks, and steps into her place.

  “I’d like to have a look at the rings, please,” she says loudly, impatiently, as though she’s been standing and waiting for some time now for the clerks to be finished with their little visit. They both turn, surprised and then a bit annoyed. The woman with the child moves up beside Amy to look, too, as she examines the tray of rings the clerk has set down. She hovers at Amy’s shoulder as Amy slips onto her finger a pearl ring surrounded by a cluster of emerald chips. “It’s for my mother,” Amy says. “For Christmas.”

  “Quite nice,” the woman comments as Amy holds up her hand to better admire the ring. The child at her side sighs deeply and begins yanking at her mother’s coat.

  “Not bad. But she has a large hand. I don’t think this will suit her.” Without removing the pearl ring, she selects another, a plain band with a single clear stone. Too much like a wedding ring, she thinks, and puts it back into the velvet tray.

  “I beg your pardon?” Shirley calls for attention from the other jewellery counter and draws the remaining clerk away. Amy picks out a third ring, a large moonstone surrounded by tiny red stones. She slips it onto her middle finger and spreads her fingers, on each one a ring, two that are her own. “I just don’t know,” she says. “What do you think?” she asks the woman.

  “Your mother must have a November birthday, then,” she says. Their attention is arrested suddenly by the sound of a carousel display crashing down against the glass counter. The clerk turns from the tray of rings, watching as Shirley, profusely apologetic, assists the other clerk in righting it. Too much make-up, Amy thinks suddenly. Exaggerated. Shirley has plastered on too much eyeshadow and mascara. But this works to Amy’s advantage, because the clerk handling the tray of rings becomes suspicious and her attention is diverted.

  With the moonstone ring still on, its stone now twisted to the palm side of her finger, Amy removes the pearl ring and wedges it carefully back into the velvet display case. “It’s okay, thanks a lot,” she says to the distracted clerk. The bulge of the stone is cool against her skin. A seventy-five-dollar ring. A gift for Margaret for Christmas, if she can think of a way to explain how she came to afford it. The clerk smiles in answer, still preoccupied by the fuss at the counter where Shirley and the other clerk gather up the spilled cards of earrings and pins. Amy wants to grin and hold the ring up for Shirley to see. Check this out, eh? Got you beat this time. But her exhilaration vanishes with a sudden chill of fear. She’s being watched, she senses it. She looks down and into the face of the young girl at the woman’s side. The girl stares at the moonstone’s silver band. Amy’s stomach lurches. Even while she knows it’s not possible, it is the face of Jill she’s looking into. The child’s mother crosses the aisle, calling for the child to follow, and the girl walks backwards, mitts dangling like another pair of hands at her side. She grins up at Amy, her expression knowing, and at the same time her dark eyes are filled with scorn. Then she turns away and, with a little skip, catches up to her mother. Amy watches brown braids shift against the child’s red coat until the girl and her mother are swallowed up in the jittery kaleidoscope of Christmas.

  “Have you decided if you want the moonstone?” The clerk’s voice intrudes bluntly.

  Amy swears under her breath. She twists it from her finger and drops it onto the counter. “I don’t want it. It’s overpriced garbage.”

  The clerk’s mouth drops open. “Well, I am sorry,” she snaps. “I don’t price it. I just sell it.”

  Amy hears Shirley call her name, looks up, and sees that she’s on the escalator, going to the second floor. Behind her, and staring straight at the back of her head, is Security, a man wearing glasses and brown cords. Come on, Shirley beckons, and then looks puzzled as Amy turns away and walks towards the north exit of the store.

  It had begun to snow while they were in the store, light dry crystals, but now as Amy walks along Portage Avenue, heading downtown to the bus depot where she’ll wait for Shirley, the snow grows heavier, like huge wet pieces of tissue, and melts in her hair, making it stringy and limp. Her white bucks grow sodden from the stinging cold and her toes stiff, as though welded together. The sky turns mauve and begins to brighten the closer she gets to downtown, the avenue becoming festive then with the coloured lights of Christmas entwined in wreaths of spruce boughs mounted along the centre boulevard. When she reaches the Hudson’s Bay store, she stops for a moment. R
ecorded carol music floats out across a manger scene above the main entrance. The window display is a living room on Christmas morning. A tall blond man is standing in a plaid bathrobe off to one side, one hand in his pocket, the other casually holding a pipe. Two mannequin children crouch at the Christmas tree looking at the gifts. Their beautiful, well-groomed mother smiles and watches from where she sits in a Queen Anne chair, an unopened gift on her lap. Wet snowflakes tumble down from the top of the department store, down through the music, children’s voices singing “White Christmas.”

  The warm and happy family Christmas display fades and in its place Amy sees her reflection in the plate glass, hands plunged into jacket pockets, thin shoulders hunched up to her ears. Reflected above her head in the window is the sign on a building directly across the street: ROYAL BANK. She walks to the intersection and waits for the light to change. Tinny-sounding, she thinks of the carol music pushing through the traffic sounds.

  When Amy returns moments later and enters the Hudson’s Bay store, her pocket heavy with five dollars’ worth of quarters, she thinks, What do I want for Christmas? Anticipating Timothy’s question. Her fingers begin to thaw and tingle in the warm air as she feeds quarters into the pay phone. I want to get on a bus. Visit you for Christmas. She frames what she will say. Her breathing becomes fast, suddenly, with the quickening of her heartbeat. She listens as the first ring cuts through the crackling of static. I want to live with you. He has been waiting for her to make the first move. Perhaps he’s been hurt or puzzled over why she stopped writing and calling, thinking that she doesn’t care or is too happily occupied in her own life. On the third ring he answers and her mouth freezes. She thinks her heart will stop.