by Heidi Wicks
Driving down Lemarchant Road, she stares at the gray, damp sky.
“Hey,” Dan takes her hand, his other on the steering wheel. His kind, excited, childlike eyes, “You were badass back there.” He squeezes her hand. “You know you’re my raisin for smilin’.” His grin is expectant, his penchant for mischief apparent.
She looks at him and rolls her eyes at his nerdery before chuckling out of obligation. Her best friend, besides Cait. Her partner. She has known him for so long. Together, We Rock says the poster over their bed. When she goes to bed early, she loves the thump of Pink Floyd that comes from his office.
“Thanks.” Her heart crackles like the ice on their windshield. It was the kind of ice that looked tough to scrape. Sturdy. Unmovable. But at first touch, it just slides away. Matt had always stayed there, in her mind, in East Side Mario’s, lurking.
Ripped bits of colouring sheets, plastic cups sticky with ketchup and ice-cream fingerprints, a budda boom budda bing tornado at East Side Mario’s in the Holiday Inn, out for supper to celebrate The Rooms escapade. Dan had insisted they give Mom a break from supper duties. Sam and Liam make explosions, using their Transformer toys to attack their ice-cream sundaes. The entire drive there, her heart pulsed. Adrenaline subsiding, perhaps. Partially, anyway. The flurry of thoughts seemed to always be present—worry over the boys, her father, heavy grief for her mother, but underneath it all, at the core, is a nagging craving for some kind of change in direction. Some kind of providence, or universal interference. There was a longing for something, for someone. A deep desire to reconnect with a simpler and more innocent time in her life.
Matt Bohmer: he crept into her mind on the drive from The Rooms to East Side Mario’s, where Jess worked throughout her undergrad. They broke up after her first two semesters, but
“Your mother is a superhero.” Dan’s grin is goofy as he drives. “Superheroes deserve nights off, hey boys?”
“Yeah!” The boys love East Side Mario’s, where little balconies and a miniature Statue of Liberty and graffiti and mini-lights frame the restaurant walls, as if they’re dining in a New York City borough.
They pull up in front of her parents’ house, and out comes her father, his movements more sloth-like since her mother died. He steps out of the house, gives them a slow wave before turning to lock the door. He pauses to look at the sky before stepping down onto the driveway to saunter towards the car. He opens the car door and slowly lowers himself into the back seat with the boys. His vibe is serene, thinks Jess, and she can feel that he is happy to get out of the house and join them. Any little escape from his house of memories is welcome—even if New York City is in a dinky restaurant in the east side of St. John’s.
Their party of five is seated at the large circular table in the front window. As she sits down, Jess spots a server wheeling a room-service order from the back of the restaurant on a trolley.
Room-service orders were always such a pain. They took too long, the tips weren’t very good, and you’d stress to make sure the other tables were being taken care of.
That first year Matt was away, when he’d left for Queen’s, that one year after high school that they stayed together, he came in to visit her at the restaurant while he was home for Christmas.
They’d stayed in touch with weekly phone calls during the winter semester, but the phone calls stretched to bi-weeklies, the conversations shorter and less spirited. During the early summer of 1998, Matt ended their relationship.
“Please don’t do this,” she said, screeching, as they sat on Middle Cove Beach, at the curve in the horseshoe of Klondyke Gulch. The evening sun was blazing, warming the surrounding rocks and cliffs orange. But the wind was up, and the waves were on the volatile side. White, rolling and building high, and then crashing. “But…we’re meant to be together.” She wiped her eyes and nose on the sleeve of her waffle shirt.
“I’m sorry,” he put his arm around her and she couldn’t quite believe she’d never be close to him again in this way. “It’s just that our lives are diverging now. We should both be open to new possibilities. I’ll always love you, Jess. You’re always going to be my first. There’s no one who’ll ever be special to me the way you are.”
First love is an excavation project that never quite gets refilled. An abandoned road that’s never forgotten.
Liam is glued right next to her; the paste from the ice cream on his hand sticks to her. Tiny bits of napkin and crayon wrapper a papier maché on his arms.
“Mommy, I love you.” His hair smells like ice cream, too, and caramel sauce, and she breathes him in as she kisses his little head. She wells up in fear, thinking about what might’ve been if that raisin hadn’t been extracted. She stares through the window, across the road, towards Kent’s Pond. The water is flat and still. Black, shining like glass. A peaceful flatline against the furious waves in her gut.
On the night of their high-school grad, Matt had borrowed his dad’s Mustang. Rolled it into the Holiday Inn parking lot, peering around for anyone who might bust them for renting a room underage. Imitating an army cadet, he’d grabbed her hand when they got out of the car.
“Let’s roll.”
They crawled, weaving in and out amongst the cars, Jess holding up the skirt of her satin back crepe dress so as not to get it dirty. Matt’s arms were on her waist, from behind. Their room, once they reached it, smoldered, breathed, like the New York steam system pictured on the walls in the restaurant. The heat wasn’t working.
“I’m on the pill.” She smiled at him. He smiled back. She just wanted their bare chests together. She pulled down her dress, one satin back strap at a time.
Her breath was short as Matt slipped the other strap off her shoulder. Pulled her dress down. Awkward and cumbersome. Trying to be smooth. His hands were clammy when he squeezed her breast, massaging it, working his mouth to it quickly, jamming his lips around her nipple and sucking, a little too hard, a little too much tooth, but she was still into it. Her love. Her first love. Her first sex. Ever. Afterwards, they got in the shower. Naked. Piddly little droplets of water on them, the water pressure was pathetic, but to them it was sexy. To her it was a romance novel.
The server arrives with the bill.
“Drop that right here, please! There’s no raisin for anyone besides me to pay this bill!” Dan holds his hand up. “I’m buying supper for the lady tonight.” The boys crack up, beaming. Liam grips Jess around her body so hard she can hardly breathe.
Dan autographs the Visa bill, with flair.
One of the first movies they watched together was Office Space on DVD, with bonus features. The summer of ‘99. Jennifer Aniston works at a restaurant, not unlike East Side Mario’s, at which the flair an employee wears as ornamentation on their uniform is somehow representative of their level of enthusiasm for their job, and therefore, the more flair one wears, the more they are celebrated by the restaurant manager. Sometimes during sex, Jess would wear suspenders like Jennifer Aniston’s, and she and Dan would make jokes. “You do want to express yourself, don’t you?” He’d say the line that Jennifer Aniston’s boss says in the movie. The level of enthusiasm during sex, to them, was flair.
Dan flicks a glass-eye candy towards everyone at the table. Great. More candy for the boys. She watches Dan collect his personal effects. Keys. Wallet. Phone.
“Ready, team?” The boys shove their chairs back and Sam’s falls backwards and he dashes to the hostess station to rummage through the bin for extra candies.
Liam bends like Gumby while attempting to put on his coat, trying to get his other arm in the hole where the sleeve is. Jess’s father holds it for him. These little details, these moments that her mother was always so in tune with, her father has tuned in to. Like a connection to the past. Doing the things her mother would’ve done. She is a part of him.
The boys’ boots splash the street sludge as they tromp to the minivan. Jess’s father sits in the front passenger seat, while she sits behind Dan. She watches her
husband. The back of his hair. These days, she can see bits of white scalp amongst the curls. There’s a flat line with Dan, like Kent’s Pond when it’s smooth, despite the surrounding tornado of two young boys. It’s calm, and she knows that’s good. But there isn’t a desire to sneak through a parking lot like spies not wanting to be caught. She wants to feel like she doesn’t want to be caught. She wants crashing waves. Piddly showers. More flair.
dream whiplash
1986
Jess’s mom always makes a discreet escape from their dinner parties, to sneak a plate of dessert to her daughter. Chocolate mousse dessert with a graham-crumb base, and Dream Whip on top—her trademark.
Mellie and Karl Smith are coming over tonight, and Jess can’t wait for the formalities to be over so she can go to her room and finish Anne of Avonlea. Mellie teaches children’s literature in the Faculty of Education, and she’s always asking Jess why she does or doesn’t relate to the characters and story.
Jess’s middle brother, Neil, hops from one foot to the other, fiddling with his penis.
“Are we gonna sneak downstairs tonight?” Jess and her brothers have a secret dinner-party ritual. After they say hello to the guests, like good little children, they listen for when the plates are being cleared. Then they convene in the hallway to sneak downstairs and spy on their parents in the rec room. Disco parties: that’s what her parents call them. Exercises in a return-to-high school, to the youthful stupidities of too much weed, drunken dancing and sloppy smooching. Disco would never be dead in the hearts of Jess’s parents.
There’s a closet door at the foot of the stairs that leads into the rec room, and this is where the disco parties unfold. They have never questioned, to this day, why it was a closet door and not a regular door. But to them, that door is magical. Like the wardrobe in C.S. Lewis novels, it leads to a different world, in another time, where things don’t mean the same thing, in this 1970s flashback land that sounds like disco but smells like funk.
“We can sneak downstairs if you can stay awake for long enough.” Jess is eight and Neil is six. Tom is only four. Whenever they sneak downstairs, her belly feels like there are sparklers inside.
Mellie yoo-hoos, “Jessica!” She’s dressed in her typical garb. Gaudy, shoulder-padded floral blouse, blue plastic hoop earrings. A Braemar ensemble. Jess’s least favourite store. “Jessica, do you like my new earrings?” She looks from Jess to Jess’s father.
“Oh, Mellie, you’re always the fashion icon.” Jessica’s father smiles at Mellie, holding her gaze for a half-a-second too long, then side-glances towards his wife. Pours a Lamb’s and Pepsi for Mellie’s husband.
Mellie puts her hands on her knees and bends to Jess’s eye level. “So, Jessica, what are you reading right now?”
“Anne of Avonlea.” Now please be quiet so I can go finish it, she thinks.
“Ohhhh!” She claps her hands together and looks at everyone around the room. Always a performance, anything to be the centre of attention. Her husband gawks at her, deadpan, through the bottom of his glass of Lamb’s. “Do you just love it?”
“Yeah.”
“And what is it about Anne-with-an-E that you relate to?”
Jess glares at Mellie, right into the pupils of her wide-as-saucers eyes. “I like how Anne doesn’t let anyone tell her what to do. She just does whatever she feels is right. She’s strong. I want to be like her.”
Jess can practically see the hearts in Mellie’s eyes. The woman radiates a sort of unnatural, uncomfortable affection towards her that makes Jess want to flee in the opposite direction.
“Okay, kids,” Jess’s mom saves the day by handing Mellie a glass of white wine, “get on to bed now.” She kisses each of the boys. Kisses Jess and winks at her—the secret symbol that dessert will be along shortly.
Five chapters of Anne later, Jess hears her mother’s laugh—full, free, loud—from the kitchen, and she knows it’s dessert and Drambuie time. The trademark mouse-quiet knock at the door arrives and there’s Mom, holding a plate of dessert. She drunk-tiptoes in, perches on Jess’s bed, hands over the plate. “How’s the book?” Her eyes are shiny with Drambuie-flavoured love, framed with blue eyeliner. Her hair is fluffed more than usual, and the way the light from Jess’s Care Bears lamp illuminates it, she seems celestial.
“Anne is a teacher. I think I might be a teacher.”
“Like your old mom, hey?” Her mom has a thousand-watt smile. She adores her girl. “Now,” she points to the plate, “don’t tell the boys about that. They’ll be through the ceiling if I give them sugar at this hour.”
Jess smiles an almost-shy smile. “I won’t.” She accepts the plate and her mother creeps out of the room, waving as she goes.
“Night, sweetie.”
“Night, Mommy. I love you.” The Dream Whip is cool but melty in her mouth and the crust has fallen apart, but she dabs up the remains with her finger and sucks the buttery graham crumbs onto her tongue, where they dissolve and slide into her belly and soul.
From the basement she hears the bass thump of the Wonderful Grand Band. Not-quite-disco, but from the same era as disco, in the land of resurrected disco. She swings her legs over the side of the bed and pushes the empty plate, white with a blue-flower border, under her bed with her foot. She pushes the boys’ bedroom door open and peeks in. They are both passed out on the bottom bunk, their hair plastered to their foreheads, their matching Batman pajamas rolled up over their pot bellies. Neil’s hand rests on his penis. She flips off the light switch and closes their door. Her heart thumps in her throat as she tiptoes towards the closet door at the bottom of the stairs. The entrance to the adult world, filled with mystery. Narnia. The pulse of the disco party reverberates in her eardrums. This particular trek, alone, without her brothers, feels momentous. Tha-thump. Tha-thump. Anne-with-an-E would do this. Anne-with-an-E would enter Narnia.
You can drink your coffee from a plastic cup, spill it on the floor and never have to wipe it up, at the maaaaallll, at da Babylon Ma-mah-mah-mahmah, ba-ba-ba-bah! Pays to pee at da mall…
Her nose mere inches from the door, she spies her father through the closet slats, doing his best Tommy Sexton kicks. Like Tommy does in the video, his legs fly up, he’s clapping his hands underneath each leg as he hurls them into the air. Her mother shrieks and cackles with laughter. Jess doesn’t find it very funny, but her mother clearly thinks otherwise. Of course, Mellie makes certain to laugh harder than her mother. It’s pathetic, really.
Red and blue flashing lights slice through the slats. Laser beams bounce off the disco ball and shoot towards the closet door. The bathroom door right across from the closet is open. She can see inside the bathroom.
“Babylon Mall” fades into “Sonny’s Dream” on the mix tape her father had made for this specific disco party, and Jess jolts backwards as he suddenly appears through the slats and goes into the bathroom. The door remains open, and she can see him clearly as he splashes water on his face, neck, chest. He unbuttons his shirt, ready to dab away some of his sweat with a towel. Suddenly, a whiff of cheap Avon perfume mixed with the stink of Braemar assaults her nostrils.
“Oh! Kevin! I didn’t realize you were in here.” Mellie twists her jet-black, shoe-polished hair around her finger. “It’s so warm, isn’t it?”
Her mother’s laugh, in a spiral with Karl’s. Her father’s lips, smacked onto Mellie’s. It’s as if Jess’s vision zooms into warp speed until her pupils are a macro lens focused on their mouths. Soft and wet against each other. Licking and sucking the salty sweat from each other’s top lips. Her father gropes Mellie’s breast and she pushes her pelvis against his. And, just as sudden as it started, her father pushes Mellie gently away. Turns and splashes water on his face. Turns back to Mellie, who is all overcome. He looks her momentarily in the eyes. Shakes his head back and forth. This never happened, he seemed to say.
Jess clamps her hands over her mouth. Mellie’s Avon-Braemar stench and the Dream Whip and her mother’s graham-cr
umb crust gurgles in her guts and tha-thump-tha-thump-tha-thump her eardrums pulsate and pound and a whoosh of the previously digested gushes up her esophagus and just as fast as her father kissed Mellie the dessert is back in the atmosphere, back in this reality, all over Jess’s palms and her fingers. She holds her nightgown to her mouth. Swirling in confusion, she crawls up the stairs to the bathroom. Washes her face. Brushes her teeth. Cries herself to sleep in this new and confused existence. In one fell puke, she has been hurtled from Avonlea to Narnia.
a cubist existence
2016
Cait sits on the floor in the bedroom doorway of her new house. In front of her is a cubist mountain range of Ikea boxes that reminds her of Picasso’s Girl with Mandolin painting, laid on its side. The monochromatic colour scheme of the painting, the subject’s angular, sharp-edged face and body parts, yet with subtle infusions of female curvature, the plasticity of the image, how easily it could be taken apart and reformatted into something entirely different, its bland fragility seems to stifle the air in the room.
She took an art history course during her undergrad. The prof, whose shaggy hair and ratty sweater was appealing to Cait, explained that in analytical cubism, the idea is taking something apart, analyzing each piece, and reconstructing it in a different way.
The FaceTime app pops up on her phone screen.
Jake
FaceTime…
Cait gulps back tears. She has easily been taken apart. Presses the answer button, and Maisie’s face fills the screen on the video call.
“Hi Mommyyyy!” Maisie is holding the phone from a low angle, so Cait can see what’s up her nose.
