The Chrome Suite

by Sandra Birdsell

  She walks back to their car parked in front of the butcher shop. “It’s my new shagging wagon,” Garth says and pats the top of his father’s new Chrysler Town and Country. Yuck, is what Amy thinks about sex with Garth, who still wears his greasy hair slicked back at the sides and falling across his forehead. Caught in a time, she thinks. He slides in behind the wheel and turns on the ignition. Mel hesitates beside the open door and Amy feels her throat tighten. The urge to cry wells in her chest. Don’t go, she thinks, wanting to hurl herself into him. “So,” he says. “You coming with us or not?”

  “Longing,” “loneliness”: words Amy feels but doesn’t allow to have a shape because she isn’t sure what she longs for or misses. “No.”

  “I didn’t think so, but I thought I’d ask. Let me tell you, though, you sure as hell could have picked a better place than this dump.” He reaches over into the back seat for a paper-wrapped package. He hands it to her. “I was supposed to mail this off ages ago.” She sees her name and address written in the sprawling flourish of Margaret’s hand.

  Amy watches as their car sweeps around the U-turn at the war memorial. Garth taps the horn as they pass by. She watches as they cut through the screen of trees, cross the bridge, and disappear. Laura stands behind the venetian blinds, looking out, expecting that Amy will come inside now. Instead, Amy walks back down to the end of Main Street. She looks out over the land and sees that it has become solid and flat. Not at all like an Impressionist painting, as she’d come to think of it after she’d discovered a book on that period in art in the library. Mel’s arrival has changed Spectrail.

  As she walks back towards the butcher shop Marlene appears on her bicycle in the middle of the street as if by magic. She moves gracefully and effortlessly, as if she were floating. Her hair streams out on both sides of her head and the sausage ringlets part, exposing her clear forehead. “Look at me,” she calls and lifts her hands from the handlebars. She glides by, riding free-handed, her arms flung out on either side. “Neat, eh? I finally figured it out.” She grins as she passes by and it seems to Amy that Marlene is caught in a photograph, her hair still streaming out behind her, frozen that way, and that her eyes have become a doll’s glass eyes looking out across the street at Amy. Eyes that seem to say they know all but will give nothing away. Marlene will go to school until she finishes, Amy knows. Then she’ll probably get on another bus and become a nurse or a teacher or a secretary and work in another town and come home to Elaine every weekend and be happy to do it. She will be one of the lucky ones, Amy thinks, content with a meat-and-potatoes life.

  “Seems like a nice fella, that brother of yours,” Steve says as Amy enters the shop.

  “My, yes, wasn’t that nice of them to drop by and see you,” Laura says.

  Well, at least they’re agreeing with each other, Amy thinks. “Yes, nice,” she says and hurries to the bathroom. She rips the package open. Inside are several items of clothing which are vaguely familiar, but it’s Margaret’s note that holds her attention. She scans the lines that boil down to, How are you? I am fine. Keeping busy and please keep in touch. Amy sees the word “Shirley” and her eyes drop to the bottom lines. “Shirley’s mother wanted you to have these clothes. I don’t know if you’ll want them but I did promise that I would see you’d get them.” The package contains a pair of bell-bottom jeans, an orange sweater, and a bracelet with a mother-of-pearl inlay. Amy was with Shirley when she’d stolen every single item. I wonder if her stepfather misses taking inventory of the fridge every day? she thinks, sliding the bracelet onto her arm. She sits with the clothing on her knee and sees Shirley kneeling beside the bathtub, cooing babytalk to her little stepsister. She knows she should feel remorse over not telling Shirley the real story on Dave, and she could if she tried. But what purpose would it serve? It would only make me feel good about myself, she thinks, because I can feel those things; it wouldn’t change a thing. She sets the clothing aside and goes over to the sink and splashes cool water against her face. All right, she tells her reflection in the mirror. You have been raped. I know, the reflection says. But there’s no need to slit your throat over that one, is there?

  “Oh!” Laura exclaims as Amy enters the shop. “You’ve changed your clothes. You do look nice, dear. Is it a gift from your brother?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, you’d better get a clean apron. You wouldn’t want to get dirty.”

  Amy walks out of the butcher shop without acknowledging that Laura has spoken. She walks down the street to Elaine’s house and goes upstairs where the tobacco can rests in the bureau drawer. She will take only what she has on, Shirley’s clothes, what she wore when she arrived and has since bought, and her notebook. She hears movement on the other side of the wall, the sound of wheels gliding across the floorboards. Goodbye, you old bugger, Amy thinks, but he’s already gone, a dream forgotten upon awakening. The room, too, disassembles as she walks out into the street and, behind her, the house vanishes entirely.

  A week later Amy is sitting in a dark movie theatre in the city watching The Bridge on the River Kwai. It’s an old movie but a long one and a way to fill time among strangers who by their presence agree to suspend memory of the world outside the theatre and for a short time become as one. Halfway through the movie someone comes in and sits down several seats away. Gradually her attention is drawn from the film by an awareness of a different odour permeating the ever-present smell of popcorn. Lifebuoy soap. “You,” she says without looking away from the screen.

  “Hi.” Hank slides across the space between them and slips his arm over her shoulders. Her eyes stay fixed on the screen for several more minutes. When she chances a quick glance at him she meets his large eyes, which are soft with adoration. As she turns back to the sweaty face of Alec Guinness she can no longer concentrate. She looks at Hank once again and their faces are only inches apart. Clean, she thinks. Safe. Thoughtful. In the enclosing semi-darkness, the soft light that bathes his face, she sees his love, and it’s possible for her to believe that she loves him too.

  They hold hands as they walk beneath swaying elm trees on Ruby Street towards the furnished room she’s rented. When they reach the rooming house they stand outside her door, both hands entwined now, their bodies inches apart. “I don’t have any place to stay,” Hank says. As the door closes behind them, Hank embraces her, holding her still against him for several moments and she feels the steady thundering of his heart and the growing heat of his body against hers. He sighs and begins rubbing against her. He moans into the top of her head and rotates her body, her back pressing into him now, and she feels his hardness and his hands stroking the length of her from her thighs and up over her breasts in a single sweeping motion. Then he turns her into himself again and heaves against her, wanting to fuck all of her, to get in everywhere he can, she knows. And when he does enter he’s gentle, not wanting to hurt her, he says, and he takes the care to use a condom so she won’t become pregnant until she wants to. Amy hangs on to his heaving back as he moves inside her. She hangs on because he feels good, warm, and for a moment she’s tempted to let go and ride free-handed with her heart. She holds him even more tightly then, so that she will not fall, and is able to think clearly about how he smells and feels, and what she’s experiencing during this first time of lovemaking.

  When it’s over he strokes her hair and pleads with her to sleep in the crook of his arm, head nestled against his heart. “Now you’ll have to marry me,” he whispers and Amy sends him away then, to the couch across the room, because his body is too hot and she won’t be able to sleep and she has to get up early the next morning to go out job-hunting. But she lies sleepless, listening to the sound of Hank’s steady, even breathing across the room, and thinks about how his presence is settling, enough so that she could turn her back to the darkness and fall asleep instantly. She imagines being with him, travelling across the country together, earning a bit of money here and there and then moving on.

  Hank lies awake,
too, thinking that across the room from him is his motivation and his reason to grow up. He is twenty-six years old. He has to face the fact that he doesn’t have what Stu Farmer Junior has, doesn’t have what it takes to become more than what he is: a second-rate guitar player running at the drop of a hat whenever his so-called friend, Jerry, happens to remember his name and throw some work his way. He will go down to the Manitoba Institute of Technology and get an education. He will register for a course in Major Appliance Repair and become a provider. And he does.

  13

  ank and I were married the next month, October, an afternoon wedding held in the United Church in Carona. Timothy sent a set of steak knives and sheets. Mel escorted me down the aisle. He came with one in what would be a string of girlfriends, a tall, thin woman who kept clearing her throat throughout the entire service. Margaret held a small reception for us at the house. She had bought a new dress for the occasion, a violet and grey floral cotton sateen, and she wore pink gloves and a hat. Among the guests were my grandparents, Uncle Reginald and Aunt Emily, and of course their entire family, which included Garth, who kept singing under his breath, “Oh, there’ll be a hot time in the old fart sack tonight.” Hank’s only guest was his best man, Jerry, a sometime promoter of country and western bands and a full-time welder at the CN yards in Transcona. I had written to Elaine and Marlene, inviting them to come, asking Marlene to be my bridesmaid, but they declined. The expense of the dress, Elaine explained, and Carona was too far away.

  Only an hour before the ceremony was to take place, I sat in the back booth at Ken’s Chinese Food, watching the clock. Ken had greeted me warmly, with a shy smile and nervous little chuckles. He knew I was getting married that day. I imagine everyone in Carona did, supposing, no doubt, that little Amy Barber was up the stump. The cafe was empty, everyone gone, disappeared into their own lives. Then I saw Jerry’s car pass by the cafe window; Jerry and Hank arriving for the ceremony. They were heading towards the Sleepy Hollow Motel and the room Hank had reserved in order to dress for the wedding. My stomach dropped when I saw him. There wasn’t anyone I could tell what I was thinking: I don’t want to do this. “My, my,” Ken said as I set change onto the counter. “You very nervous, yes?”

  Margaret was already dressed when I entered the house, and looking worried. “You’re going to have to hurry,” she said. “I bathed early so there would be lots of hot water for you.” She’d also decorated the dining room, hung paper bells from the ceiling, twisted and strung streamers, pastel yellow and green, the colours of my wedding, and pinned them to the corners of the dining-room table. In its centre was a two-tiered wedding cake, and I was surprised because we had agreed not to go to the expense of the traditional cake. Around it were plates of food encased in plastic wrap.

  “Nice.” I meant the cake, the room, and Margaret too, who looked unusually elegant.

  “It was Bunny’s idea. She came over and gave me a hand. And why not? You only get married once,” she said and rushed off to tend to something in the kitchen. This had been the pattern of our encounters since I’d returned several days earlier. Brief, light chatter interrupted by a supposedly just-remembered errand that took her out of the room. We were two billiard balls glancing off one another in passing and veering off into opposite directions. “I’m getting married.” I had broken the news on the telephone. I’d expected shock, not her brightness, her immediate acceptance of Hank, her barely concealed relief. I followed her into the kitchen. I knew I couldn’t say that I was now doubting my decision to marry Hank because she would only ask, What about the guests, the gifts? What am I to tell everyone? What about Hank? But most of all: Well then, what are you going to do?

  I stood in the doorway, watching her work at the counter. I had an unreasonable desire to touch Margaret. She turned. “What are you doing? It’s getting awfully late.”

  “Mom.”

  She stood rooted, her eyes going wide. “What is it?”

  “I need to talk to you.” As I stepped towards her, she moved away from me, but I’d seen the evasive look in her eyes.

  “There’s no time for that, not now.”

  “Please.” It suddenly became imperative that we talk. If I was going to be married I needed Margaret on my side. “I want to straighten a few things out,” I heard myself say.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She dismissed me, impatient to get on with the next item on the list.

  “Please.” My voice sounded whiny, a child’s begging for attention, as she pushed past me and left the kitchen. I followed her through the back porch and outside, down the walk beside the house. She broke into a little run and so I chased my mother until the front gate when I reached and grabbed at the back of her dress. She whirled and lunged at me, features contorted with rage; the fear of a cornered animal.

  “Stay away from me.” The words were spat as though she’d just bitten into something rotten. I saw clearly the bare face of hatred. “I don’t have to talk to you. Not now, or ever. Now go in and get dressed and marry that nice man and consider yourself lucky.”

  I stood in front of the mirror in my bedroom that day, the room I used to share with Jill, watching my hands set a sequined tiara and its veil onto my head. I stood beside Hank in the musty-smelling church, a bouquet of red roses and white carnations trembling at my waist. All eyes were fixed on the bride, a rodent in a jar held up to the light to be scrutinized. Or perhaps they stared out the window or up at the ceiling, bored and impatient for the fiasco to end.

  After the ceremony, Mel stood beside the car Jerry had lent us for our week-long honeymoon to Devil’s Lake, North Dakota. “Jesus,” Mel said quietly, “you must be nuts.” He shook my shoulder as though to jog me awake. “Just make sure that turkey uses a rubber, okay? You can always get out of it as long as he uses a rubber.” The tall woman he’d brought to the wedding stepped to his side, and I recall her crimson slash of a mouth moving in a sneer as she said to Mel, “The Wheels are going to fall off that one in about six months. Tops. I kid you not.”

  I was stung by her comment and angry as I slid in beside my brand new husband. Is that what they all thought? Margaret backed away from the car, her duty done. She smiled and waved goodbye. A shower of confetti billowed against the windshield and Bunny North blew a kiss. Goodbye, good luck. There’ll be a hot time in the old fart sack tonight. Hank tooted “Shave and a Haircut” on the car’s horn as we pulled away. When I turned to look they were all preoccupied, walking back towards the house or their own vehicles. Not one person stood looking after us. It was clear to me then that I was definitely on my own. I moved over into Hank’s side and he put his arm around me. I studied the jubilant face of my husband, a stranger, the man with whom I would spend nearly nine years of my life.

  Indian summer overtook the entire following week in North Dakota and the weather turned hot. The humid air left me gasping for breath and moving away from Hank in bed, constantly in search of a cool spot. We lounged around the motel room in our bathing suits, drinking beer and feeding quarters into a radio but without getting much more than static. We swam in the community pool and ate chips and gravy in crowded, smoky bars and toured the Aylmer’s soup factory. At night my dreams were fragments of different places and people. In one dream I walked down Main Street in Spectrail holding Timothy in my arms. He was ill and neither Margaret nor Aunt Rita wanted to care for him and so I snatched him away from them and carried him to Spectrail and promised to nurse him until he got better. But the most vivid dream I had and recorded in my notebook was of lying on my stomach on the floor beside the bed. I was naked beneath the cape that I was wearing and had spread all around me. I had just bathed and my hair was still wet and my body cool, Hank lay on the bed watching me. I closed my eyes and my fear was great as I commanded myself to fly. Fly, I repeated over and over, and just when it seemed possible, just as I felt the lightness infuse my limbs, Hank got out of bed and stood above me. Then he knelt beside me and flipped me over onto my b
ack. His stiff cock swayed above my belly. “You promised, not without a rubber, not until I’m ready,” I said. “Don’t worry, I won’t penetrate you,” Hank said. Then he groaned and his milky stream spurted down the length of my body, falling between my breasts and against my belly. “Fuck you! Fuck you!” I yelled and wiped his semen away with the cape. Now I would have to begin the process all over again. Scrub the cape, cleanse my body, wash my hair, try again.

  It was to be the last of my flying dreams for too many years.

  She doesn’t write about Hank very much. He’s a nice man, she tells herself, therefore not interesting enough to record at great length. Insipid, she would tell you, but clean. Lifebuoy soap. A man to hang on to. A lie.

  During the first few years of our marriage Hank’s hair turned completely grey and he relished making jokes about that. On Sundays I would wind my legs around his waist and sing to him about finding silver threads, and growing old, while I squeezed blackheads on his back and popped the tops off pearl-shaped pimples that grew there because he was allergic to the synthetic fabric in the uniform that Eaton’s required he wear. Synthetic fibres and the city made him perspire. He was uneasy all the time now, complaining that he had less freedom and rights in the city. This seemed to him to be confirmed from the first day when he made a bonfire in the backyard out of his packing boxes and, minutes later, a fire-truck came to a screaming halt outside our yard and then the police arrived and gave him a ticket for parking on the boulevard. He would never feel comfortable in the city.

  In our first year Hank bought a used Chrysler 450, maroon, a gas guzzler, nine miles long and nine miles to the gallon; for protection, he said. Hank took personally any traffic infraction against him, and while he wasn’t one to threaten to dim anyone’s lights, he did fume about the incident for days afterwards. He grew quieter, defensive, his fluttering eyelashes often the only betrayal of his frustration or anger. I discovered that Hank had a streak of stinginess in him and that he mistrusted information to be found in newspapers and books; he mistrusted anything he himself had not experienced. I discovered, too, that Hank could barely read.