by Ian Williams
Heather
Ecstasy
The third Friday in August, Skinnyboy drove Heather to a bar on Queen West, between Bathurst and Spadina. Heather was underage, she had no ID, so she tried to be as inconspicuous as possible by carrying parts of a drum set into the bar. With makeup she was a passable twenty-one. Security said of course they believed her but they could lose their licence if they gave her a wristband without ID, they didn’t care if she was two hundred. She sipped from Skinnyboy’s glass. He told her not to worry and put a pill in her mouth.
Skinnyboy’s band, Murmur, comprised a boy skinnier than Skinnyboy with a big nose, the drummer who wore eyeliner, and Skinnyboy, who that evening wore a black undershirt torn at the armpit, black jeans and black trainers. All the band members had the same haircut as Skinnyboy. They all initiated sentences by flicking their hair out of their eyes. None of them used their hands. None of them had girlfriends.
They got there at nine but Murmur didn’t go on until eleven. Heather sat through three bands trying to be Nirvana, gazing at their shoes, mumbling and dragging their lip over mics, then stepping back and headbanging at least once per song. It felt like a talent show more than a show-show. Murmur, though, did an Unplugged version. Brushes on the drums. Skinnyboy sat on a stool, let his hair cover his eyes, and lifted his voice into the Alps. Phrase after phrase he never took a breath. The crowd was silent, split between boredom and rapture.
Afterward, Skinnyboy’s friends kept asking her what she thought. She went through all of her adjectives: cool, mellow, sick, dope, fly, tight (more Army’s words than hers by the end) and the one they seemed to like best was real. You guys were really real. Skinnyboy cupped her skull and put another pill in her mouth. She just wanted to be alone with him.
So you thought we did all right? Eyeliner said.
I’m telling you, she said.
You heard how I changed up the ending of “Same”? Skinnierboy said.
We should keep that, Skinnyboy said.
Totally, Heather said.
They went up Spadina and had Chinese food in an orange-lit takeout place. They ate on the curb, then Eyeliner drove them down to the lake in Skinnyboy’s car. He kept looking at her and Skinnyboy in the rearview mirror. She was tired, deeply, in her muscles. She wanted to lie down. She put her head on Skinnyboy’s shoulder, he kissed her head, she kissed his neck, he fondled her shoulder, she ran her thumb along his zipper and closed her eyes. She initiated, he could say. She opened her eyes when he kissed her on the lips. Her eyes met Eyeliner’s in the rearview mirror.
At her new school in Massachusetts, they joked about orgasm face. Mindy Lauren did the best imitations. For one girl she bucked her teeth and twitched her upper lip, for herself she sloshed her hands through her hair and coughed in slow motion, for Heather she lowered her lids disdainfully, put her elbow on her wrist and pretended to smoke a cigarette. While brushing her teeth, Heather would sometimes practice an orgasm face and end up laughing into the foam. Sometimes she’d practice how far back she could push her toothbrush into her mouth.
The car had stopped. She wanted to lie down. She was lying down. She heard car doors close. She wanted to lie down deeper. She heard gravel. She heard smoke voices. She thought about all of the orgasm faces as the shadow of Skinnyboy’s hand crawled under her shirt. Maybe, as he looked at her face through his hair, he was seeing orgasm face, not dying face.
* * *
+
The second time, if there was a second time and not a third or fourth, it was like Skinnyboy was angry with her. Only it wasn’t Skinnyboy, it was Skinnierboy, was it, then it was Skinnyboy again, then laughter, and smoke and the muttering, all like the beginning of a headache between her legs. She didn’t feel anyone dragging her jeans down to her knees. She woke up on a Ferris wheel. But even that she couldn’t be sure of, how their faces kept changing, every time they swished hair out of their eyes, and she was awake, but not. How many pills—what pills—had she had? It was just Ecstasy, no? She wanted to be awake when he opened her centrefold. She wanted to set her face a certain way. Why was he so skinny? The top of her head was counting against the door handle. How many sips was this? She felt like she was upside down. She decided that she was asleep. It was dark. There was no way.
And when she awoke, definitively awakened by someone shaking her shoulder, she was curled up in the backseat with her head on Skinnyboy’s lap. Skinnierboy and Eyeliner were gone.
The sunrise, he said. Watch a little bit.
She sat up. She had to twist the waist of her pants to sit right and set the seam of her shirt along her shoulders. The sunrise. Right. She couldn’t muster enthusiasm for it. Saturday morning. She felt her hair. It was frizzing. Her stomach boiled. She opened the door and threw up in the pocket of the interior panel.
Skinnyboy reprimanded her for being a drag, a joykill, sorry that he woke her in the first place, and she said that it was early, that she hadn’t seen the sunrise in years, and he said all the more reason to feel something now, you know? I’m not dead, she said. Of course I feel something but like you always want me to express, like give it a rest, it’s like five in the morning.
He didn’t say anything for a moment, looked at her eyes, then her lips, then smoothed her hair, and said he was sorry. Sometimes all this beauty, you know, makes my soul, like, quiver. Like, my music’s dark and everything, but inside, I’m like more sunrise than sunset.
Heather wanted to roll her eyes but didn’t have the energy.
He took her to McDonald’s for breakfast (she vomited a second time in the parking lot, the motion of the car, she couldn’t hold until the bathroom), counted out his remaining change to buy them each coffees. He offered her a bite of his Egg McMuffin. She couldn’t. He ordered her to eat something. His authority, she liked. He was so concerned about her. She picked at his fries across the acrylic table and gathered extra napkins to clean the vomit from his car.
I have the whole day off, he said.
Heather already knew that.
We can do anything you want.
She wanted to go home and have a shower. She didn’t want to go back in the car and hear Soundgarden, whose songs had warped like hot vinyl, whose music she would never be able to listen to again when it came on overhead in a clothing store, say, without thinking of Skinnyboy, the standard car, the interminable night and the interminable sunrise.
* * *
+
Later, she omitted the part of the story between Skininierboy and McDonald’s to Army. But he asked her directly, Did you have sex?
Heather considered whether she could tell Army the truth and she must have paused too long. Any answer apart from an immediate and definitive no would be problematic and she was too late to respond immediately now.
So you did, Army said.
I didn’t want to, Heather said.
And then Army said the most devastating thing that anyone had ever said to her.
* * *
+
Heather put three fries in her mouth and went to the McDonald’s restroom. Her period might be coming soon, she thought. That explained a lot.
* * *
+
The whole day off. Joy.
We could make it to Montreal, Skinnyboy said.
Why don’t we just head back? Heather said.
He accused her of not carpedieming and she conceded that they could hang out in Toronto for a while.
Skinnyboy took Oliver’s guitar out of the trunk and put it in the backseat. Respect the art, he said. Heather wished she was with anybody else so she could say, It looks like a coffin for his music career, but she was stuck with SkinnyboyWhoFlickedHisHairOutOfHisEyes in a car that smelled like Egg McMuffin for some reason, bleach, and boy. Did she even like boys? she wondered. Would she even like them if they weren’t always tickling her with their attention?
Skinnyboy knew where every Zellers was around the area.
He stopped for allergy medication.
; He read the free entertainment papers with his ankle on his knee like a grown-up.
Heather could tell from how often Skinnyboy was looking over, checking the side of her face, that he wanted to make sure they were cool. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to get in trouble, because she didn’t think that he thought he did anything wrong. And she didn’t want to make him feel like he did anything wrong because, she realized, she didn’t know him very well and he seemed pretty normal, like with his own room and posters of Soundgarden on his wall, and because she wanted to go home. She knew Skinnyboy would not take her home until she was herself again.
He tried to make amends. He offered her Oliver’s guitar. Piece of garbage, he called it. He wrapped his plastic bracelet around her wrist then gave her a gimp bracelet he was wearing. She didn’t say much. Her hair needed attention.
Skinnyboy was waiting for her to stop being such a, what, joykill. He said, Why’re you acting like you’re in Grade 8? which intimated that maybe it was normal for sex to be pressed out of you in a lemon squeezer after high school. She thought about her mother, not the plump always-on-a-diet version of her, but the girl she must have been when her father used to write her songs. (Skinnyboy never wrote her songs.) Her mother’s top getting ripped by her father, no, a boy like her father. His fist, gripping the fabric beyond reasonable force, like a hammer pummelling a grape into skin.
Skinnyboy was saying something. Heather had to squint in order to listen. He had been talking for a while now, she realized. What’s the deal with her energy? Something about what happened in the car and something if you’re just going to suck and something—for she really could not process any of it—and she came onto him and what did she think they were going to the lake for—exercise?
I’m tired, Heather said. I’m tired, okay?
He went on.
She pretended to be asleep most of the way through afternoon traffic. When they were nearing home, she said just take her to the mall and she’d walk home.
He said, Whatever. And nothing else until he pulled into a parking space, turned off the ignition. They both sat there staring ahead.
* * *
+
And she would say to Army later, He made me feel as if it was all my fault. Like I was the one who made the whole trip miserable and whatnot. Like I don’t get why guys do this. Like you turn it back on me somehow.
Army shrugged.
Like, you’re doing it right now, Army, she said. I’m telling you something and you’re—she folded her arms and pushed out her lower jaw.
I’m listening.
Well, don’t listen like that.
What do you want me to say? You shouldn’t have gone off with him.
* * *
+
Heather tried to smile. What was she doing smiling? She wanted to run from the car, have a shower and eat some cereal with her feet up on the coffee table.
What was she doing making a feeble joke? Now you can write a song about me.
He snorted.
She undid her seat belt.
Bye, she said.
Bye, he didn’t so much reply as repeat.
* * *
+
Heather walked up the street with her hair up in a loose, shaggy ponytail that made her head look twice as big. The sun was setting huge behind her. Not really. But it seemed to. She seemed a silhouette against the suburban backdrop, a shadow walking on a person.
Army spotted her from the garage then dominoed to Hendrix who was training his ants then dominoed upstairs to Oliver who came pounding out then to Felicia who heard his footsteps and Hendrix’s shrill announcement from downstairs. They all lined up at the edge of the garage. Army was holding his wrists.
I’m back, Heather said, glittering jazz hands.
You think this is funny? Oliver said.
She knew she would be in trouble while she was planning her escapade with Skinnyboy but with less than two weeks left in Canada she didn’t care. She said, Just do whatever you’re going to do.
You don’t tell me what to do. I tell you what to do.
I’m sorry, all right. I was going to tell you, Heather said.
It’s over, Oliver said. Over. Over. For you.
It just went late. I was supposed to come back, but—
You could have been dead, Heather! What kind of—
I’m not dead, all right.
The least you could— And now you come back with attitude.
I don’t have attitude.
With lip. I have a good mind to send you back to your mother. Now.
I said I was sorry.
Oliver pointed Heather up the stairs. She looked at Army but he looked away quickly. When Oliver saw this pass between them, he grabbed Heather’s arm to lead her away.
Don’t touch me. She pulled her arm away with such force that her elbow was pointing at Oliver’s face.
But when Felicia took Heather’s shoulders and lowered her elbow it was somehow okay. Without saying a word, Felicia told her everything that was blacked out. Some man had bought her a bagel and talked and talked and she thought she was the first girl, and then he rubbed circles into her forehead, and opened his chest as he would open a shirt and showed her his bleeding sacred heart, and she took a white washcloth and dabbed at it and stitched him up and made him soup and tuna sandwiches, all the while he was promising that he would buy her a unicorn.
Then Heather ran up the stairs and Oliver chased her.
* * *
+
The skinny boy who flicked hair out of his eyes had a name. It was Carter Hardwick.
Oliver
Explosion
The time had come. Thursday, September 1. The Thursday before Labour Day. Per the divorce understanding, Oliver drove his children to the airport. Check in two hours early at 10:20. He tried to be light, to make their last memories of him those of a father who was going back to an incredible life, full of vague happiness.
Hendrix was sniffly in the car. Oliver had been stern with him when he was loading the luggage and found that Hendrix had scattered all the hair he had gathered over the summer across the lawn. A slight breeze lifted the curls up from the grass. In the rearview mirror, his lawn looked like the crown of a gigantic baby emerging from the dirt.
Hendrix was also sniffly because he wanted Army to come to the airport with them and Oliver, enraged by the hair he’d have to rake, said no. The night before, Hendrix had wanted Army to shave Army into the side of his head. But the boy had just enough decency to make Hendrix ask permission (Oliver said, Absolutely not, of course) and Army shaved a series of X‘s instead. His seven-year-old son was going to school with XXX shaved into his hair and he thought it was the coolest thing. The ex-wife would, no doubt, be on the phone. And now, Hendrix was rubbing his eyes under the camouflage hat that Army had given him. It was a lot of stress for a little boy. Why was their mother doing this to them?
Baby, Heather said from the passenger seat. She was fingering a gimp bracelet and another that looked like a hospital bracelet.
Hendrix slapped her hand away when she leaned from the passenger seat to flick the brim of his hat. Oliver didn’t intervene. Tough love. It was good for Hendrix to develop some fortitude. The boy was sniffling far less than he would have at the beginning of the summer.
Oliver looked out the window. Out the right side along Airport Road, planes were queued for takeoff. Heather turned to Hendrix again and screwed her knuckles under her eyes and Oliver finally said, Leave him alone.
Heather said to Oliver, He’s going to miss his boyfriend.
Oliver was about to make a little joke himself.
But with all the disaster his little voice could contain, Hendrix said, Yeah, well, you’re the one who was kissing him.
Oliver turned his eyes from the road to look at Heather, who was going red. A plane seemed to land on the roof.
I wasn’t kissing him.
I saw you.
Shut up!
I saw you
guys.
What’s he talking about? Oliver said.
On his bed, Hendrix said, kissing and rubbing on each other. Then he wrapped his arms around himself and wiggled and wormed and kissed the air.
What’s he saying, Heather? Oliver shouted.
He’s making stuff up.
But Oliver knew. He knew. He knew.
And your hands were in his pants.
Heather! Oliver said.
Dad, he’s just causing trouble.
Heather Elizabeth Soares. Oliver slapped her bare thigh. Even her shorts were too short. You tell me the truth.
I am telling you the truth.
You tell me the truth right now. Oliver slammed her shoulder into the side of the car. You’ve been messing with that boy right under my nose all summer. All summer, Heather! From one thing to the next.
Heather’s face crumpled.
Baby, Hendrix said. Baby. Baby. Baby.
Shut up! Oliver said, then turned to Heather. When did this start?
I didn’t do anything, Heather said.
They used to go through the black door when you weren’t home.
You’re dead! Heather’s face was puffy and red.
Oliver turned his attention back to the road. Barely. He was driving manically, winding around the terminal toward departure parking.
I’m going to kill him, Oliver said. With the Mr. O and the Mr. O. And you, Heather, when I [he thumbed his chest] went to bat for you against your mother and you come and do this to me. What is wrong with you?
