by William Bell
Crabbe
Absolutely Invincible
Death Wind
Five Days of the host Forbidden City
No Signature
Speak to the Earth
Zack
Stones
Alma
The Blue Helmet
PICTURE BOOKS
The Golden Disk
River, My Friend
WITH TING-XING YE
Throwaway Daughter
For William Leeson Kavanagh
What’s that you’ve got there?
Oh, nothin. Just some stuff I wrote.
Can I read it?
I guess so.
contents
The “Scream” School of Parenting
The Staircase
The Leaves in this Country
Apollo and Dionysos
Window Tree
Chumley
The Promise
Beer Can Man
Acknowledgements
the “scream” school of parenting
I’m thinking of starting a Losers’ Club at our school. I’ll be president, secretary and membership coordinator, all wrapped up in one. I’ll let in gangly, zit-speckled boys whose legs and arms have grown faster than their bodies (not to mention their brains), whose Adam’s apples bob like golf balls, whose voices moan like cellos one minute and screech like cats the next. You know the ones I mean. They lean against the gym walls at dances, making sarcastic, sexist remarks, and think that farts are funny. The females I accept will be like me, girls who hate their hair, who always feel they’ve chosen the wrong clothes for the day, who have no boyfriends, no boobs (maybe our first meeting will be about whether there’s a connection), no life.
Okay, I’m feeling down. Way down. I just came from a Drama Club meeting where I found out I didn’t get the part I auditioned for, again. This time it was Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire. The drama teacher, Ms. Cummings, a dumpy, mousy-haired hag who wouldn’t know a good actor if she tripped over one, told me I missed the part because I hadn’t mastered the “Nawlins” accent. Really, that’s the way she says “New Orleans.” As if she’s ever been there. The real reason is because I’m small (Mom says “petite”) and skinny (Mom says “slender”) and my chest isn’t noticeable from the audience (Mom says nothing). Cummings rattled on for days before the auditions about how she’d be looking for actors who can develop sexual tension. “You have to drip sensuality,” she urged. “This is Nawlins. This is the South—hot jazz, torrid, sweaty nights, passion,” blah, blah, blah. I felt like saying, You try to pulse with sexual tension when you’re almost sixteen and you’ve got a body like a rake handle and you can’t remember the last time a boy gave you the eye.
Ah, who cares. It’s my birthday and I’m going home to get dinner ready. I hope Mom and Dad make it home on time.
I climb the curved staircase, trailing my hand on the oak bannister, pad down the corridor to my room and toss my backpack on my desk. My CDs have been put away, my clothes hung in the walk-in closet. The bed has been made up, my TV and VCR and stereo dusted. I hate this. The cleaning lady has been in here again. I’ve asked Mom a million times to tell Audrey to stay out of my room.
I close the door and strip down to my underwear, tossing my clothes over my shoulder onto the carpet—take that, Audrey. I stand before the full-length mirror. What a disaster. Wheat-coloured hair. A plain, thin-lipped face, like the “before” picture in a makeup ad. A body as straight and boring as a throughway.
“Naomi, I hate you! You’re so deliciously thin,” Gillian bubbled the other day as we were dressing for gym. “You could be a model!”
For what? I wanted to ask. A Feed the Children campaign? Gardening clothes?
In my shower, as the hot needles of water prickle my skin, I wonder if I’ll feel different tomorrow. Some of my friends make a big deal about turning sixteen, but to me the only positive thing is that I’ll be taking my learner’s permit test soon. Dad promised to buy me a car when I get my permanent licence next year. That’ll be great. I won’t be trapped in an empty house any more. If only I had somewhere interesting to go. Or someone to go with.
I put the three steaks I took out of the freezer this morning in some marinade and set them aside. I’m planning my birthday dinner for six o’clock, so I have time to make a tossed green salad and prepare three big potatoes to be nuked. To save time, I hung some bunting paper around the kitchen last night. Just as I’m taking off my apron, the phone rings.
“I’m running a bit late, darling, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be home on time,” Mom says, breathless as usual. I can tell from the hollow rumbling in the background that she’s calling from her car.
With my preparations done, I pop a can of cola and take it out onto the deck off the kitchen to enjoy the last warm rays of the sun. The planks smell of sawdust and resin and wood stain. Our house, situated on three partially wooded acres, is brand new, designed and built by my father. It’s very secluded—except for the decrepit houses behind us that were supposed to have been torn down a year ago to make way for a golf course. Dad and the country-club developers have been in civil court time after time. The owner of the old houses wants the tenants out but they keep getting delays. Dad’s furious, calls them no-goods and welfare bums, taking him to court on free legal aid while he has to shell out real money for his lawyer. He ought to hire my mother, but she’s too busy. The view out the back of our house, which should have included stands of young trees, streams and emerald fairways, is still a rural slum.
There are two semidetached brick boxes. One stands empty, waiting for the wrecking ball. The second contains two families. Behind the deserted building a dilapidated shed slumps in the yard, along with an ancient Buick sagging on concrete blocks, two broken motorcycles with flat tires and, believe it or not, an asphalt-paving machine. The other yard is graced with a teetering pile of used lumber, two wheelbarrows without the wheels, a doghouse without a dog and a yellow snowmobile seamed with rust.
Three preschoolers, two boys and a girl, are playing in this yard, yelling at each other at the top of their lungs as they pull a wagonload of stones across the bare, hard-packed ground. “IT’S MY TURN!” “IS NOT!” “I’M TELLING!”—that sort of stuff. These kids learned to communicate from the adults in the house—there seem to be four or five of them—who are honour graduates of the “Scream” School of Parenting. They shout, holler, bellow, whoop and bawl at each other as if deafness was in their genes. Right now, for instance, the mother is sitting by the kitchen window. I can see the smoke from her cigarette curling up through the screen.
“YOU STOP THAT RIGHT NOW!” she hollers.
“WE’RE NOT DOIN’ NOTHIN’.”
“I’M TELLIN’ YA, STOP FIGHTIN’! AND SHUT UP YER DAMN YELLIN’ OR I’M COMIN’ OUT THERE!”
“I DON’T CARE!”
She doesn’t come out. She’s too lazy to haul her carcass off her chair.
“I’M GONNA COUNT TO THREE, THEN I’M COMIN’ AFTER YIZ! ONE!”
The three brats ignore her.
“TWO!”
“THREE!” I almost yell, just to end the racket, but the kids continue to scream at each other until the girl takes a rock from the wagon and bounces it off the head of one of the boys. The other boy laughs. The screaming intensifies as I get up and step through the patio door and into the kitchen. So much for country relaxation.
It’s six thirty and Dad is still at the construction site. He hasn’t even checked in yet. I’m watching a sitcom rerun in the family room when Mom charges through the front door.
“Hello, Naomi!” she trills.
Even after a day of phone calls, meetings, tension and deals—she’s a lawyer in one of the big f
irms in the city—she looks attractive, stylishly dressed, her makeup and jewellery understated. Too bad I didn’t inherit her looks. She plunks her briefcase down on an empty chair.
“Happy birthday, darling!”
“Thanks, Mom.”
“Has your dad called?”
As the word no forms in my mouth the telephone rings.
“Hi, honey. I’m just leaving the site now,” he says. “See you in fifteen.”
In the kitchen, I remove the salad from the fridge and put it on the table, then take out the steaks. Mom is perched on a bar stool at the counter across from me. I wipe the marinade off the steaks and lay them on a platter. Mom is fidgeting, tapping her lacquered nails on the side of her highball glass.
“How was school today?” she asks as she opens her appointment diary.
“Not so good.” It’s clear she’s forgotten about the audition. “I didn’t get the part, just in case you’re wondering.”
“That’s a shame, darling. I’m sorry. I know you worked hard on it.” She takes a sip of her rye and ginger. “So who’s going to play Ann?”
“That was last year, Mom. This year it’s Streetcar. Sarah Taylor got the part I was after—Blanche.”
“Oh, well, Sarah’s a nice girl.”
Nice if you like stuck-up and obnoxious.
A chirrupy noise comes from Mom’s jacket pocket. She takes out her phone and flips it open.
“Yes? Yes, I—Oh, god, I was afraid of that.
Yes—”
While she talks I step out to the deck and pull the tarp off the barbecue. One of the adult-male screamers in the other yard is squirting lighter fluid on some balled-up paper and bits of wood piled on a hibachi that’s balanced on the end of a picnic table. He seems to be the dominant male of the household—a late-middle-aged scarecrow with stringy grey hair held out of his face by a dirty baseball cap, a gaunt face grizzled with a few days’ growth. With a loud poof the fire bursts up from his barbecue, forcing him back. He takes a pull on his beer and stares at the smoky fire as if he’d never seen flames before.
Starting our barbecue is a matter of turning the valve on the tank, switching on the dials and pushing a red button. Pop! goes the blue flame. I adjust the dials, lower the lid to let the heat build up and go back inside just as the scarecrow begins to bellow at the kids, who are digging a hole beside the snowmobile.
Mom flips her phone closed and puts it down next to her empty glass, frowning.
“What’s up, Mom?”
If you’re the daughter of a lawyer you have to be able to keep secrets. Mom knows I never ever pass on what she tells me about her cases.
“It’s the nursing home action. It looks like we’re going to lose—the first round, anyway. Jack is with their lawyers now, trying to work out a settlement.”
The Red Pines Retirement Community on the other side of town always seems to be in trouble for code violations. The firm Mom works for represents Red Pines.
Her phone, a little thing, blue with a stubby black antenna, chirps again.
“Yes? Uh-huh. No, no way we’ll agree to that. They’re bluffing. No, I can’t, not yet. Maybe later. I’ll call you.” She flips it closed. “I think I’ll take a shower and get into something fresh,” she says, slipping off the stool.
In the other yard, my pyromaniac neighbour seems to have his fire under control. He has been joined by the dumpy woman, another cigarette dangling from her mouth, and two men. The four of them are sitting on kitchen chairs on their porch, drinking beer from bottles and discussing something with a lot of energy. Occasionally, a burst of laughter punches into our kitchen.
I’m tossing oil-and-vinegar dressing into the salad when Dad bursts in.
“Hi, kiddo, how’s it going?”
My father doesn’t look like a builder. He’s small for a man—“Not short, on the lower end of average,” he says—slim, with black hair and rugged features. He takes his phone—wood-grain finish, very appropriate—from the pouch on his belt and puts it on the countertop beside Mom’s, then pulls an imported lager from the fridge and pours it carefully into a tall, tapered glass.
“What a day,” he sighs, a moustache of white foam over his lip. “Sometimes I wonder if those idiots can spell the word schedule, never mind keep one.” He wipes away the foam with the back of his hand. “How’s things with the smartest almost-sixteen-year-old at Woodlawn High?”
“Okay, I guess.” I wait, but he doesn’t ask. “I didn’t get the part,” I tell him. “Blanche, in Streetcar.”
“Shoot. I know you wanted that one badly. Oh well, there will be other roles.”
Maybe so, but I won’t get them. I’m obviously going to go through life playing walk-ons. The microwave beeps, and I jab each potato with a fork to make sure it’s done.
“I’m going to put the steaks on now, Dad, okay?”
“Great. I’m hungry as a wolf.”
I take the platter of meat outside and slap the steaks on the hot grill, where they immediately begin to hiss and splutter, then set my watch for two minutes.
“HATTIE, I TOLD YOU TO LEAVE HIM ALONE!”
“I DIDN’T TOUCH HIM!”
“YES, YOU DID—I SAW YOU. STOP THE DAMN LYIN’.”
“YOU’RE THE LIAR, NOT ME.”
“WATCH YOUR TONGUE, MY GIRL, OR I’M COMIN’ DOWN THERE AND WHACK YOU A GOOD ONE.”
“BETCHA WON’T!”
The kid knows what she’s talking about. The adults holler threats but remain parked in their chairs. Only a nuclear blast would budge them. Or a drained beer bottle.
My watch beeps and I turn over the steaks and set the timer again.
Scarecrow is flipping hamburgers in a cloud of smoke. “SANDY, BRING OUT SOME MORE BEER WITH THE POTATOES.”
“ALL RIGHT, ALL RIGHT,” comes a muffled female voice from the house. “I ONLY GOT TWO HANDS, YOU KNOW. ONE OF YIZ COULD SET THE TABLE.”
I lift the steaks off the grill with the tongs and turn off the barbecue, then carry the platter inside, slamming the patio door behind me.
At the table, Mom and Dad look anything but relaxed as they cut into their steaks.
“This is delicious, kiddo,” Dad offers. “Best steak I’ve ever—”
A phone chirps. Both Mom and Dad look at the countertop where the two phones rest like little soldiers, ready for action.
“Do you think we could possibly get through my birthday dinner without your little friends over there?” I ask my parents.
“It’s mine,” Mom says, standing and snatching up the blue one. “Yes?”
“So are there any other parts in the play you can get?”
“Okay, that’s a bit more reasonable.” “Not really, Dad. It’s basically a three-hander.”
“Oh. I’ve never seen that play. Never liked O’Neill.”
“No, we won’t budge on that point. We can’t.”
“It’s Williams, Dad.”
“Oh, yeah, right.”
Mom sits down again. “I’m sorry, Naomi, but I’m going to have to go out later.”
“Aw, Mom, it’s my birthday. I rented a video and everything, that French flick you guys were talking about last week.”
“I know, dear, but it can’t be helped. I’ve got to be there. The whole thing’s falling apart.”
We eat in silence for a few moments. I’m doing a slow burn, wondering why I bothered to go ahead with this charade of a birthday party to begin with, but no one seems to notice. As if on cue, a phone squeaks.
“My turn, I guess,” Dad says. Then, into the phone, “Magee here.”
“I’ll try to be back as quickly as I can, darling.”
“What do you mean, the insulation won’t be there in the morning? They promised.”
“Can we watch the video later, Mom?”
“Sure, that will be fine. I’m looking forward to it.”
“But we can’t proceed until the drywall comes. I was hoping to get it up and taped tomorrow.”
“Okay.
I guess I could work on my project until then.”
“Oh hell, you really think I need to come over there?”
“Is that the essay on teenage alienation?”
“No, I handed that in long ago. Got an A, too.”
“Wonderful. I’m proud of you.”
Dad plunks himself down in his chair. “I’ve got to slip out for a half-hour or so after dinner.”
Mom frowns. “Well, why don’t you open your gift now, dear, just in case we’re held up?”
The other yard is lit by a spotlight dangling from the clothesline pole. The whole bunch of them are munching hamburgers, sloshing down the beer, yakking and laughing. I sit on our deck in the dark, holding my gift in my lap. It’s a portable CD player, pink-pearl finish, with lots of buttons—all the features. It’s expensive, a real gem.
The colour is different, but it’s the same model Mom and Dad bought me for Christmas five months ago.
I hold it in my lap, my fingers caressing the smooth plastic. In the other yard, somebody turns on a radio.
the staircase
TAPE #1
— Okay, I think we can start now. For the record, I am Sergeant Carl Poole, badge number 1875. Case number 09 dash 03. It’s May 5, and the location is the principal’s office of Hillcrest High School. This interview begins at 1:15 p.m. State your name and address for the record, please.
— Malcolm Henry. 234 Oak.
— That’s here in Lakeville?
— Yes.
— Do you know Akmed Khan?
— Not really. I know who he is. He’s in my grade.
— That’s grade eleven?
— Yeah.
— Do you share any classes with him?
— Gym.
— So you weren’t friends.
— No.
— On May 3, during the lunch period, were you in the vicinity of the staircase that leads from the second floor to the lobby outside the library?
— I wasn’t right there. I could see it, though. Me and Bo were hanging around my locker at the other end of the hall.
— Did you see anything unusual?
