Going Down Swinging

by Billie Livingston

  She’s really been pretty good about the whole thing this last couple months, all the new stuff, leaving the old stuff: she left: her father, her friend Pearl. Had to leave her cat with Clive’s youngest son. That last bit took the most convincing, she was determined, said something about taking a cat cage on the plane—Pearl told her she could—then started on a rant about how Shadow was like her child. She snapped at you, Why don’t you just go ahead without me. Your mouth opened and she said, There—see! How do you feel! She was all mouth the days before you left, but you let it go, explained sweetly that the two of you would have to live in an apartment, at least for a while, and here was Clive’s son in Toronto with a house and a big backyard. It would be cruel to put that poor cat through a plane trip. Her eyes were bugging. But I’ll be with her, she won’t be nervous if I’m there. That clinched the deal; you explained that the animals had to stay in the belly of the plane with the luggage and dogs and idiot baggage handlers tossing them around. She narrowed her eyes as if wondering what the hell you were trying to pull.

  The morning of your flight, she and Pearl just stared at one another. Grace gave Pearl all those crazy little plastic sheep and pigs you’d bought her. The two of them used to sit on the floor hours on end playing with them. You were amazed Grace gave anything. Usually she’s so territorial. Then they sat on the front step and exchanged addresses. Then they stared some more, didn’t touch one another, just stared like two old men.

  It’s not that you disliked Pearl, but she was an incessant gossip. Had to keep her at arm’s length. Although, as long as you weren’t starring in her stories, her big mouth could be the best thing about her. The kid had the goods on everybody—wasn’t two weeks before Grace got a carefully printed juicy letter telling all about Mrs. Barrington, the social worker, showing up. Apparently, the morning after you left Toronto, she banged on the front door long and hard, screaming Mrs. Hoffman! Mrs. Hoffman! Open the door. Mrs. Hoffman I know you’re in there so you open this door right now. She even ran around peeking through windows on her way to the back door. Pearl said that Mrs. Barrington was so crazy mad, Pearl thought she was going to hurt herself. That letter kept you entertained for weeks. Grace would come up to the bathroom door nattering in whispered shrieks, Mrs. Hoffman, I know you’re in there. I mean it! This instant! And you’d laugh yourselves dizzy.

  And then Grace’s father. She didn’t have all that much to say about leaving him really. Danny came and took her for a drive before taking the two of you to the airport. Wonder if it was hard, that last hour or so alone with him. It gave you a little twinge, wondering if he would ever try anything; turn into a born-again father and not bring her back. But Gloria told you he never even bothered to visit when she had Grace with her. Gloria told you that put the kibosh on Danny as a human being as far as she was concerned. So you let him take Grace for a last drive. May as well leave your kid with a half-decent impression of him.

  Tried to pump her for information afterward but she didn’t say much, just that he took her for Kentucky Fried Chicken and a car wash. She said they didn’t talk a lot but that he’d asked her if she was going to write to him. She said she would and asked him if he’d send her the money from the bank account he’d started for her. God almighty, two peas in a pod. Didn’t think a cash obsession could be passed down the genes.

  The thing is, it’s not as if you didn’t try and discuss it with Danny before you made the decision to leave. You phoned. I think I’m going to go to Vancouver before things get any worse here, you said. And it was silent at the end of the line, until he finally came out with a Yeah. You tried to give him a chance to not let go. So, well, what do you think, I mean if you want me to stay, I’ll stay. Just, what do you think?

  Deadpan voice, dull, nothing, he said, It don’t matter. You’re just gonna do what you wanna do anaways.

  And so you told Clive. He didn’t try to talk you out of it either. He said he knew it was something you had to do right now, that he hoped it wouldn’t be the last he saw of you. Guess he knew the two of you didn’t have much chance as lovers. Christ, he was nearly seventy—older than your father. It wasn’t really sex that you had anyway, more like holding on to each other for dear life. Clive took you seriously though, seemed like he was falling in love a little. If it weren’t for him, you might not of made it here, he gave you the other fifty you needed for plane fare and a hundred to take with you. Even bought you a suit for the teaching job you were going to apply for.

  Margo taps you on the shoulder and tells you it’s time for your break, you have twenty minutes, don’t be long now. Straighten up (you’ve been leaning again) and brush off your skirt; it’s the skirt to the suit Clive got you. Feels like you’re casting his pearls before swine.

  When you get home, Grace is already parked in front of the TV. Hard to peel her off the thing sometimes. Sometimes her concentration is so concentrated, it’s cement; nothing gets through when she’s got her eyes on a Get Smart rerun or Scooby-Doo on Saturday mornings. She hears you tonight though. You tell her hi before you go and hide the record you got her for her birthday. She’s eight next month and has developed a mad crush on Donny Osmond. Her last allowance went on Tiger Beat magazine.

  Album in closet, you join her on the couch in the living room. She’s watching a Brady Bunch rerun. The one where the family goes to Hawaii.

  Hey, I was thinking today, what would you think of having a birthday party next month?

  She unsticks her gaze from Greg Brady and looks at you, with concern or nerves or something. So you say, What’s the matter? It’d be fun. We could make a list and you could invite a bunch of kids from your class and we could have a cake and play games.

  I don’t really have much friends at school.

  Why does she always think that? She never brings anyone home. Oh you do so. You always say that. Even in Toronto, and your teacher there said you had lots of friends.

  Yeah, then how come they called me names and stuff.

  Because kids are monsters, but deep down they’re OK. So come on, let’s do it, it’ll be fun. We have to throw a party here so till feel more like our place. And we’ll play corny games like Pin the Tail on the Donkey and I Spy. OK, pruneface?

  She shoves your shoulder with the side of her head. And smiles. OK. When the phone rings, you kiss her temple, tell her in the voice of one of her cartoon chickens, It’s going to be so much fun. She jumps up and runs to get the phone in the kitchen, yells back that it’s for you.

  It’s Stewart. You wait until Grace resumes watching television.

  Stewart’s craggy voice catches you at the other end of the line, asks you what you’re doing, if you’re free tonight. You say sure, for a little while, after dinner, you want to have dinner with Grace tonight. And you want to see if you can find a babysitter. How’s eight o’clock, he says. Eight’s fine, I think, but just lemme call this girl to see if she can come sit with Grace a couple hours. He says, Right-eeo, dear, call him back and hangs up. You sit for a moment thinking.

  Sweety? … Sweety pie?

  What?

  I think I’m going to go out with Stewart for coffee tonight. So I’ll phone Darlene—you like her, don’t you? How’s that?

  She doesn’t look up. I thought you had AA tonight.

  Shit, she’s right. You tisk. Yeah. Well. Well, I went night before last. I’ll go to an afternoon one tomorrow. She says, Yeah, and keeps watching the tarantula on screen, so you flip your phone book to D for Darlene, the sitter you found through the office at Grace’s school.

  Stewart’s the only one you’re still—well, with whom you have this sort of relationship. Met him in Vancouver years ago, back when Danny was in jail and you were short on cash. Called him from Toronto when you were trying to figure out a plan, asked him if he’d be able to front you money for rent. He said he would but he never came through and you called Ray and Alice instead. The only time he was reliable, as you recall, was when you were there in front of him with your palm open.
But he’s not a—sometimes you just have lunch: he’s more like a sugar daddy really. And you wouldn’t, but if you’re going to buy all these vitamins and meat and fresh fruit and vegetables and whole milk and keep the two of you clothed, well, welfare plus a hundred ain’t gonna cut it.

  It’s no big deal. Stewart’s OK, he’s bald and divorced and a little sad. Easy enough. And it’s whatever you feel like at the time: fast or more social. He gives you whatever he’s got on him, sometimes extra because he knows you’ve got Grace, sometimes fifty, sometimes more. And Grace thinks he’s just a family friend. She never asks—sometimes you mention how much money he gives you and she believes he does it as a humanitarian gesture or something.

  Hi may I speak with Darlene please—oh hi Darlene, I didn’t recognize your voice, it’s Eilleen Hoffman.

  You wonder sometimes if Grace knows on some level. If she just doesn’t say anything. She’s met Stewart once, he was dropping you off just as she got home from school. She seemed indifferent to him for the most part. She thought he was a little on the dopey side, truth be told. She does dopey cartoon imitations of him after he calls. She kind of likes his big yellow car, she calls it the Yellow Submarine, and she likes it when he gives you an extra couple bucks for the kid. Anyway, a lot of women have boyfriends who take care of the bills; at least this one isn’t getting in your hair twenty-four hours a day.

  Just that sometimes you half expect someone to come tiptoeing up to your baby and whisper in her ear, tell her her mother is the unspeakable. Tell her something to make her never want to look at you again. You even told her a story once about being mistaken for a hooker, and you laughed uproariously, just in case. Just in case; you’ve laid the groundwork to roll your eyes with believable head-shaking frivolity.

  Had a dream last week. Grace was tiny again, two or three. One of those slow thick dreams where your legs and arms are leaded and your voice is molasses congealed behind your tongue.

  Holding her propped on one hip as you answered the door, you could feel her soft damp arms against your neck, fingers and wrists entwined at your nape. The strangers at the door were in dark suits, arms extended mechanically. The man on the left wore a charcoal fedora like your father used to. He reached out and pulled Grace from your hip. You could feel her fingers losing their grip but your mind was a tar baby and every thought you punched or yanked lay stuck in its viscous belly. Couldn’t think or move, but you could hear the bawl of mummy and the man holding her turned and walked away, hysterical sobs erupting over his shoulder. The one still at your door jotted words in a pad with a china blue cover. He seemed to be writing notes on the condition of your home, your housekeeping skills. Your hand moved to your hair, which only called attention to your personal appearance. The fastest movement was his scribbling pencil. As he turned to leave, you made out Stewart’s name and old Clive’s, highlighted in yellow ink in his blue notebook.

  You shake off the dream, pull yourself back in your living room in time to hear the Bradys’ closing music, say, Lamby? Why don’t you come sit with me in the kitchen and make a guest list for your birthday party while I start dinner. Oh shit, just let me call Stewart back quick.

  Grace Four

  FEBRUARY/MARCH 1974

  IT WAS SATURDAY and I was up in Sadie’s room with her, playing Donny Osmond records while Mum was downstairs in the kitchen with Sadie’s parents, Alice and Ray, and I was wondering how come we had nothing better to do. We’d been in Vancouver around five months and Mum was never sick any more—it seemed like we should’ve spent the day at Stanley Park or something. Instead I could hear Sadie’s dad, Ray, laughing at my mum, making fun of her all afternoon—“Jesus-Mary-and-Joseph, Eilleen! You’re a wingnut, you’d get lost in a phone booth”—while Sadie told me Donny Osmond would never even kiss me never mind marry me because I was skinny and bucktoothed and way too young. Sadie was nine. Nine and three quarters.

  Then she sat down at her electric keyboard, in the spare room, and plunked out “Heart and Soul,” the only one she knew off by heart. And right in the middle of it, she said how she was going to take ballet lessons at the community centre. I sat beside her and felt the music vibrate in my ears, expecting her dad to tear up the stairs any second just to plink out the sidekick part at the other end of the keyboard. Sadie’s fingers plopping their way through “Heart and Soul” was practically a surefire way to get Ray to come play with her no matter what he was doing. He thought his kids were musical geniuses and loved to get both of them to sit and sing “Night and Day” into the microphone of this huge reel-to-reel tape recorder he had. But especially Sadie; he said lots of times how he was going to get her a voice coach—that voice of hers could take her places. I thought it might too, the way it cracked and snagged the music. In fact, I wished on the sore throats I’d been getting since the winter, that they’d give me the kind of Sadie-voice I was going to need if I wanted go places.

  I sat beside her on the piano bench and watched her play, wanting like crazy to get my own lessons. Then I said how maybe I should take ballet too. Sadie laughed and brought one hand to the other side of the keys to play her own sidekick part. I followed her fingers and knew I was a feeb compared to her; Sadie was taller than I was with long thick almost-black hair and big black eyes, deep in her always-tan face. She wasn’t clumsy like me; she didn’t trip on rugs or knock stuff down. She was dead sure about everything and it made her seem tough and right all the time. Hardly anyone ever looked at Sadie and didn’t say how beautiful she was.

  She kept her eyes on her fingers and laughed. “But you’re accident prone, even my mum says—yesterday she goes, ‘Gees, Eilleen picked a dandy of a name for that kid. Shoulda called her Thumper.’ And it’s true, man, you always got scabs on your knees from where you fell and you got no coordination and plus you’re too skinny; my dad says you ain’t got enough on your bones to even hold you up half the time.”

  It was hearing it from Sadie that got me saying “ain’t” for a while. Until my mum made me stop by telling me that it was the ugliest thing about her: Sadie couldn’t speak proper English—that and the fact that she was going to have a hawk-nose just like her dad. It kind of bugged me when my mum said that, because anyone would want to be like Sadie and that’s why you’d do stuff to be like her so that everyone would want to be like you too—tough and pretty and getting away with stuff other kids would be in trouble for. On the other hand, though, it sounded like I could be smarter and prettier and sort of Sadie-Plus if I added Mum’s big words and took out the ain’ts. But in the meantime, while I waited for her to be nothing but a pile of nose and bad English, I wanted to catch up. In a few classes I’d be leaping through the air in a crispy pink skirt; ballet was going to make me into a pretty, dainty girl-girl. It would make my teeth straight and flatten my cowlick and give me leopard eyes like Sadie’s. She kept going with her sandpapery laugh, though, telling me more and more reasons why I couldn’t take ballet. I missed Pearl all the sudden. Pearl would’ve wanted to do ballet to the song “Country roads, take me home” and she would’ve thought I’d be good at it.

  But Sadie and me were still best friends and the fact was, she rather’d have me there than not. It was better to get up Sunday morning and trudge through the snow with me than to have to go alone.

  The first morning of class, I waited at Sadie’s back door with my boots leaking, trying not to melt on Alice’s warm kitchen floor. Sadie was upstairs screaming, “Give it! Give it back now or you’re dead! Eddayyyyy!” It was quarter to ten; class was starting in fifteen minutes. The house shook a little and Eddy thumped down the stairs with Sadie running behind, yelling, “Give it back, you friggin’ nature! I’m tellin’—give it!” When he got to the bottom, he went sliding across the kitchen floor in his socks, jumping and swan-leaping and yodelling this noise, like Ethel Merman if she was falling off a roof, while he waved Sadie’s new leotard over his head.

  Alice, their mum, yelled, “What the hell is going on in there!” right wh
en Sadie got hold of her leotard and yanked. Eddy’s socks slipped out from under him and he cracked his back down on the floor. So Sadie stood over him with her leotard and yelled, “Serves you right, y’lez!” in his face and stomped back up to her room. Eddy crunched shut his eyes and moaned his guts out.

  Alice ran in the kitchen and went down on her knees so she could rock Eddy in her arms and holler, “Sadie! Get your smartass back down these stairs right now and apologize to him or you’re not goin’ anywhere, young lady,” over his head. The clock said almost five to ten.

  I got rocks in my stomach. There was no way I was going to walk in that classroom alone.

  A few seconds later Sadie skipped down the steps, all bundled up and ready to go. Ray, her dad, came in the kitchen and looked bored at Eddy. “What’s wrong with him?”

  “You know damn well who’s always the instigator in these things!” Alice was looking at Sadie and still holding Eddy.

  Ray grinned at Sadie, like he knew for sure that she was going to be a star if people would just get the hell out of her way. Then Ray noticed me. “Hiya Grace, here’s a nice good morning for you, huh? Geez, the two of you better get your rears in gear if you’re going to make it to this ballet class.” Sadie whipped past her mum and Eddy and pulled me with her.

  We scuffed along the sidewalk, some of it shovelled, some with thick snow that got walked into being ice. We chewed gum in time to our steps and Sadie talked between chomps. “You know if you swallow your gum, it stays in your stomach for seven years.” I didn’t answer. She was probably right. She blew a bubble and said, “Is your mum still working at Eaton’s?”