“Oh no, no,” Hilda says, her rosy cheeks turning grey, “Miss Perry is no longer with us.”
“What?” I yelp.
Hilda’s nostrils flare.
“She was insubordinate. Her skirts were unbecoming. She constantly mispronounced Caravaggio. She giggled all the way through your first tour last week which showed a lack of decorum.”
My hands dangle at my sides. My jaw drops open. I can’t blink. The girl of my dreams got fired because of my stupid jokes? How could this be any worse?
“But the final straw,” Hilda continues, “was when I caught her in a compromising position in the cloakroom with that boyfriend of hers. Of course I had to terminate her employment then.”
Jimmy got Zoe into a closet in the gallery? I feel like I might puke.
“Don’t you worry, though, Mr. Sifter,” Hilda says, resuming her sing-song voice. “I’ve hired a new girl to help you give the tours. I think you’ll like her!”
In through the office door skips — no! It can’t be!
“Good morning, Miss Hilda!” says my sister Charlotte, grinning smugly. “I’m all ready to start my first tour!”
“She’s just as qualified as yourself, and I figured the two of you would work well together as a team, being siblings,” Hilda beams.
“Yeah,” Charlotte says, “and you’ll be able to drive me back and forth to work, too!” She grins widely, relishing my suffering. “Won’t that be fun, big brother?”
Charlotte turns to a reproduction on Hilda’s office wall.
“Oh!” she squeals, “It’s a Georgia O’Keefe! How beautiful!”
“Yes,” Hilda smiles, “her work speaks to me.”
“It speaks to me, too,” Charlotte concurs.
Behind Hilda’s desk hangs an old woodcut, which speaks to me. It’s an illustration from Dante’s Inferno, which shows a man being dragged down to hell.
Cheeseburger Subversive
(Grade twelve)
It has finally happened: My chance for redemption! Zoe Perry is sitting next to me on the squeaky, torn bench seat of my 1972 Ford pickup. Despite the size of the seat, she is pressed up against me, her cheek on my shoulder. Her position causes some difficulty when I have to shift gears, but hey, this is Zoe. Third gear will just have to wait.
This isn’t a first date, exactly — Zoe and I were out on a date once in grade ten, but since it resulted in the engine of my car blowing up and in Zoe deciding to explore relationships with other guys, I’ve decided to look at this as a new beginning. And a major new beginning it is! Zoe is pressed up against me! Of her own free will! And all I had to do to get her here was manufacture a new personal ideology.
“It’s supposed to be thirty-two degrees Celsius by noon,” Zoe says. “The hottest day of the year so far!”
Indeed.
I softened her a little with a new-found knack for writing poetry, I softened her a little more with a new-found appreciation for art, and I warmed her nearly to the melting point by finding her jewellery when she lost it at the beach. I wanted so much for her to love me, I was beginning to fear that maybe she was too good for me. To think that I nearly blew it forever when I admitted, during one of our grade twelve political science classes, that, if I had been old enough to vote, I would have voted for the Conservatives in the last federal election. Zoe’s look of disdain made me feel like crawling under my desk.
I suppose I should have known that Zoe had become a political subversive. I should have known it from her all black wardrobe, and from the dangling silver earrings shaped like the head of Karl Marx. While I was drawing doodles of airplanes and electric guitars in the margins of my notebook, Zoe was carefully carving slogans like Question Authority before Authority questions You across the top of her back row desk.
So, in my ignorance, I very nearly erased forever the possibility of having a torrid love affair with Zoe Perry. I blame it on the fact that she fooled me for years, first by wearing cute, pink jumpsuits and flowery sun dresses all through elementary school, then by wearing short skirts and tight jeans in grades nine and ten (which often caused me some major blood relocation). But more important, I blame nearly losing Zoe on my father.
My father votes Conservative. Always. Without question. “In our family,” says Dad, almost threateningly, “we vote Conservative. My father voted Conservative, as did his father and grandfather, and his great grandfather, too.” Dad even carries a blue-and-white card in his wallet that confirms his lifetime membership in the I-Vote-Conservative-No-Matter-What Club.
It was from my father that I got the impression that political subversives are all hunchbacked, gap-toothed, babbling homicidal maniacs. To my father, Charles Manson is the type of guy who probably never voted Conservative. Subversives spend all of their time bombing police stations and belonging to clubs called fronts. They seldom bathe, wash their clothes, or shave. Dad says, “They’re almost as destructive as the Liberal Party!”
So naturally, being raised to believe that conservatism is the major trait in normal-functioning brains, I was a little surprised when Zoe announced to everybody in class that she is an anarchist. She does wear black, of course, and she’s got the earrings, but I was confused somewhat by her membership in the glee club and the prom committee. Also, quite unlike Charles Manson, she has a nice figure and exquisitely manicured nails. Her legs are slim, shaved, and generally very non-subversive looking.
“Anyone who votes Conservative votes against the working class!” she snapped.
Well, my dad is a working man (I think) so I was a little puzzled by her remark. At the same time, though, my heart was crushed.
How could I let politics triumph over love! I had to act quickly or lose her forever! Luckily, right before class, I had consumed two cans of Coke and three Ding Dongs at the local Quickie Mart, so my brain was spinning like the wheels of a supercharged Chevette.
“Well,” I asserted boldly, “the bigger they are, the harder they fall, right? Since the pre-election polls indicated a landslide victory for the Conservatives anyway, I figured that the best strategy would be to help them win the election. That way, when we anarchists convince the rest of the country to rise against the government, the Conservative Party will be decimated in the process!”
Zoe’s expression changed, which inspired me to continue. Summoning all I could remember from a Socialist Party of Canada leaflet that was once left under the windshield wiper of my truck, I jumped to my feet, my caffeine and sugar charged head buzzing, and chanted:
“Heck, give ‘em all seats in the House of Commons! All the more Conservatives to fall on their big corporate butts when we pull the seats out from under them! And when the Conservatives fall, so shall the military-industrial complex! The strength will be sapped from the corporate stranglehold around the necks of the proletariat and the workers of our land will rise like a flood, cleansing all in their wake, washing away the sins of greed! So let ‘em have the House of Commons! That way, they’ll all be in one convenient location when we pull the green rug out from under them!”
The class was silent. I was out of breath. Zoe’s eyes were glistening with tears. How could she have misjudged me so? Ah, the loquaciousness of love! The rhetoric of romance!
“Uh, yes, thank-you, Dak,” muttered my astonished teacher. “A lovely speech, especially considering that your father holds a Progressive Conservative Party barbecue at your home each summer.”
I wish he hadn’t mentioned that.
“And yes,” he says, “you are correct insofar as you point out that the rug of the House of Commons is indeed green. I’ll give you a bonus mark if you can tell me what colour the Senate chamber is.”
I was stumped. It could be meringue yellow for all I know. Nevertheless, Zoe met me at my locker after class.
“You were great in class today, Dak!” she says. “I’m sorry I was so short with you initially. I misunderstood you. Mr. Hawthorn was awestruck!”
Wow. Awestruck!
“I never
would have guessed that you were an anarchist like me. I mean, I know you like poetry and art, but you wear pleated pants and loafers! You don’t dress like a subversive at all! You part your hair on the right, too, which I always thought was supposed to be a subconscious confession of right-wing attitudes.”
“Ah, but that’s the idea, Zoe,” I reply, trying to sound whiskey-smooth with my Coca-Cola voice. “Destroy the process from the inside. Act like one of them, dress like one of them, and they’ll never know what hit ‘em when we, the masses, turn on ‘em.”
“Wow,” she says, “I hadn’t considered that strategy before.”
Okay, okay. I know that lying is wrong, and I have a nagging feeling that Zoe is smart enough to know that I don’t really know any more about being a political subversive than I know about being a subatomic particle physicist. But I can’t help it. I’m eighteen-years-old. I’m a man now, and I am subject to the dictatorship that biology holds over the higher morals of men. I seem to have Zoe’s attention, and to keep it, I’m willing to undergo a philosophical transformation. Even if it means buying a black T-shirt.
“Would you like to go with me to a demonstration in Ottawa this weekend?” she bubbles. “It’s a protest against killing animals for fur coats — like, I read about it in this underground magazine my dad got for me while he was in Toronto on a business trip. If it was in this magazine, there’ll probably be about a million people show up, don’t you think? I mean, we could wipe out the fur industry forever!”
Well, I personally don’t have any special affinity for fur coats, since my mother has a mink that stinks like a skunk whenever it gets wet. Also, I think fur coats are overkill on anyone who isn’t Sergeant Preston of the Yukon. This is a cause I could really support!
On the other hand, though, I’ve seen news footage of protesters getting hit by billy clubs, knocked down with water jets, and thrown into police cars by hairy armed cops. I’m not sure that the smell of wet fur offends me that much.
Nevertheless, I am hungry to know her better, to get beyond the physical attraction, and learn what makes her the way she is, so I accept her invitation.
“Can you drive?” she asks. “I’d drive myself, but Mom’s got an I.O.D.E. meeting this weekend and Dad’s got a golf game.”
I agreed to drive, even though driving my octane-inhaling Ford tank all the way to Ottawa will cost me at least three weeks wages from J.D.’s Gas-O-Rama. It’s worth it, though. I’m with Zoe, the most attractive woman in my political science class, perhaps in the entire world. Maybe, if we’re lucky, we’ll even get sprayed by a high-pressure water cannon together! Won’t that be something to talk about in political science class! After all, Mr. Hawthorn is always telling us to get involved in the political process.
So, here we are, on our way to Ottawa.
“What’s that weird noise?” Zoe asks, as we thunder along in the passing lane of Highway 401.
Despite the acute ideological embarrassment it causes Zoe, she has to admit that her mother drives an air-conditioned, leather-upholstered Saab, and her father rides around in a silver Mercedes the size of an aircraft carrier. The only sound Zoe is normally accustomed to hearing while riding inside a vehicle is the catatonic drone of her parents’ Perry Como tapes.
“The noise — it’s getting louder,” she says. “Maybe we should pull over and look under the hood!”
I’m not sure which noise amid the cacophony is troubling her. There are so many from which to choose — the clattering of the valves, the hissing of the power steering pump, the buzzing of the alternator, the rumbling from the holes in the exhaust manifold, the clinking of the timing chain. The noises of proletarian conveyance.
“What does it sound like? Clatter? Hissing?”
“No,” she says, cocking her head, “it’s more of a whining sound — high pitched. Do you hear it?”
I listen through the din of mechanical breakdown for the noise she describes. Yes, she’s right. A shrill new voice has joined the chorus.
“Yeah, I hear it,” I say, “but I’m damned if I know what it is.”
The whine becomes a shriek as we speed along.
“Maybe it’s crying because it was due for retirement about a hundred thousand miles ago,” I muse.
With that said, there is a loud thump, and the whining stops. Seconds later, the red TEMP light blinks on. With some situation-appropriate cursing, I slide the senile old truck onto the gravel at the side of the road.
As soon as I lift the hood, I see the problem. Hanging from an I-beam is the frayed remnant of what once served as a fan belt. I manage to limit my swearing to non-“F”-words, since Zoe is standing right beside me, peering into the under-hood cavern of doom.
“Fan belt,” I say, gritting my teeth so hard they might shatter.
I tend to take it personally when my truck fails me. After all, I did pay two hundred dollars of my own hard-earned money for it! And I even fork over the cash for an oil change once a year! And this is the thanks I get!
I kick the bumper in a very subversive way. Zoe is gazing into the oil-blackened engine compartment, which radiates heat and chemical stench like the mouth of a volcano.
“Oh no. Look.”
She points to the radiator that is peeing a steady green stream onto the ground.
Okay. Now I am going to lose my temper. I will scream, I will swear, I will jump around, and I will kick dents on top of the dents that already pock the surface of this stupid worthless truck! I am going to elevate the word tantrum to a whole new level of meaning!
Zoe, who is leaning on both palms against the front of the truck, looks up at me and does something completely out of place. Strands of her hair are hanging in her face, and she blows them away with a very gusty sigh. Then, oddly enough, she grins; a big, goofy grin.
It is as if she has reached inside me and snipped the right wire just nanoseconds before the explosion. Inexplicably, I find myself grinning, too.
She begins to laugh, shaking her head, her hair falling back into her face.
“What are the odds of these two problems happening at exactly the same moment?” she says, practically choking on laughter.
I find myself laughing along with her. It is like being towed out of quicksand.
I think I am in love with her. For Zoe, I would definitely commit an act of subversion against the military-industrial complex! Even if I’m not sure which city it’s in! Even if it resulted in losing my driver’s licence! I would do it for her!
No other woman has ever caused this many exclamation marks to appear in my thoughts! I’m so inspired by her presence that I think I’ll start ranting!
“It’s a damned conspiracy against the working man, I tell you! Who drives trucks? Corporate executives? No! The working man, that’s who! It’s a plot to keep the proletariat immobile!”
I kick the side of the truck just for effect. I kick it so hard that I throw myself off balance, twisting my ankle in the process. Is a pronounced limp considered subversive-looking? I hope so.
“Wait!” Zoe yelps, “I’ve got it!”
“Got what?”
“They taught us in home ec that you can use a pair of pantyhose as a temporary fan belt!”
“Really?”
“Really. I’m not kidding.”
A miracle! Her own legs are sheathed in fan-belt black, with exactly the material we need to make the repair! It is surely the first time I have stared lustily at a girl’s legs with intentions of auto repair. We’re saved! What a stroke of luck! We will not miss the revolution for lack of transportation!
“Well?” she says.
“Well what? Let’s fix the stupid thing and get back on the road!”
“First you’re going to have to turn around so I can take these off.”
I’m not sure if the expression on her face is one of genuine modesty or of calculated coyness. My female-expression-decoding-system is not very well calibrated. I haven’t been a man for very long, after all.
&nbs
p; “Oh yeah,” I grunt. “Sorry.”
I spin around on my heel, the one which isn’t throbbing with pain. The sun is hovering just above the treeline, directly behind me. Zoe is behind me as well, just to my left. Her shadow stretches casually in front of me, sprawling out on the surface of the highway like a slender house cat. I am trying SO hard to ignore it, to remain true to my mission to ignore her physical attributes for a while and get to know Zoe better as a person, but dammit! It’s difficult to stop the blood from migrating south as I watch Zoe’s shadow-shorts descend the length of her shadow-legs, and as she peels the nylons from her long, two-dimensional leg-shadows. I see her shadow bend over into an elongated arc, and I watch the shorts shimmy back up her shadow-legs into position around her waist.
Is it immoral to watch the shadow of a girl removing her shorts? Is it wrong to picture in one’s mind what the actual girl at the other end of the shadow might look like beneath the black drapery? In the space between my eyes I can see her, all milky-white, smooth and beautiful.
I’m sure my father would tell me that I am being immoral right now. My sister Charlotte would tell me I’m being a P.I.G. — a Pitiful, Ignorant Guy. Parts of my body are quite suddenly acting very subversive. A definite uprising is underway! My new black jeans are even less comfortable than they were moments earlier.
“Okay, I’m done,” she says. “You can turn around now.”
I hope my subversion isn’t showing too much.
She tosses the pantyhose at me. I run the former leggings around the alternator, pump, and fan pulleys, and I tie a knot in the rigging. If only installing a real fan belt was this easy!
“There!” I grunt, slapping my hands together to shake loose the dirt (It’s a hormonal law that a man must do this every time he touches anything under the hood of a vehicle).
“Now, what are we going to do about this damned radiator leak?” I had meant the question to be rhetorical, but Zoe supplies an answer.
“Well, in home ec they told us that if you put a teaspoon of pepper into a radiator, it will seal any small leaks. For a while, anyway.”
Cheeseburger Subversive Page 13
