by Joey Comeau
And Jackie’s not a monster. She hears the fear in Mrs. Hubert’s voice and suddenly she can see what this looks like from the other side.
Mrs. Hubert cut down a tree. Everyone cuts down trees. She didn’t even do it herself. This was just a bit of yard work, one of a dozen chores her son helps her with. She called him and he came out in the morning with a coffee in one hand and a chainsaw in his trunk and he cut down a tree and poor Mrs. Hubert had no way of knowing about Jackie’s first kiss underneath that tree.
She had no way of knowing that Jackie had spent all last night going over and over in her head what she would say to Ann. It is not an easy thing for a girl to ask her best friend on a date. Oh god.
But Mrs. Hubert couldn’t have known any of this.
The tree is in pieces on the ground. Cut down. Jackie needed to see it today. She needed to sit underneath it, but she can’t. When Jackie saw Ann at school today, down at the other end of the hallway, she waved. She waved and Ann closed her locker and walked away, like she didn’t see. Maybe she didn’t see.
It was just a chore to Mrs. Hubert. It was a bit of yard work, and then she answered her door and said, “Oh hello, dear,” and then violence. Jackie knows that Mrs. Hubert isn’t the bad guy.
But what can Jackie do? Run? There’s already glass everywhere, and if she doesn’t look over and see Mrs. Hubert’s face, this feels right. On this side of the door there are no tear-stained faces. Just tree branches on the ground, and justice. Jackie shakes her head. No. It isn’t right. She should stop. She should leave Mrs. Hubert alone and just run. This isn’t right.
She bends down and picks up another big rock.
You know how mothers play Mozart against their bellies during pregnancy? Jackie’s mother went around swinging a tire iron, bashing headlights in the street all night, belly enormous. Who else could say their mother had been in a riot while pregnant? Kicking in windows while little Jackie grew inside. Throwing bottles against police cars while little Jackie listened and learned. That was the real Patricia. She was the glass-bashing mayhem, even pregnant. Good old Tire Iron Pat. She wouldn’t be caught dead in a hospital gown. Or crying. Well, Jackie is her mother’s daughter. Smash!
The glass sounds so perfect.
Anger seems to be solving this quite nicely, actually. Her father never got angry about anything. Sometimes he took his glasses off, and he folded and unfolded them really slowly, but he never got angry. He wrote letters to his local representative, instead.
“That’s how you get things done, chickadee,” he said. He calls his daughter chickadee now that they live together. He didn’t have a nickname for her before, when her mother was still alive.
Mrs. Hubert opens the window further. “I’m calling the police!” she yells. Jackie can hear the fear in Mrs. Hubert’s voice, but she yells right back at her anyway.
“It’s really opening up the back seat, don’t you think?” Jackie says.
her
3
“It is an ordeal,” Charlie tells his dog. “Walking you is an ordeal.”
Mitchie isn’t listening. He’s licking the filthy hands of apparently homeless children. Again. Every day with this. His stump of a tail is wagging like crazy.
“Don’t you go to school? Don’t you have mothers?” Charlie says to the children. But they don’t answer him. The blond one with the missing teeth looks like he might have several mothers. Mitchie loves the attention, though, and so Charlie tolerates them a while longer. The things he will go through for that dog.
When the children are gone, Mitchie looks up at Charlie with cloudy eyes. Cataracts make the little guy half blind, but he doesn’t seem to care. It hasn’t changed him at all. There’s a siren nearby, getting louder. Truant officers, probably.
I’m
4
Jackie can hear the siren, not too far away. She reaches into the back seat of the car and brushes the glass off the little boy rock. She kicks glass off her sneaker. The cuff of her pants is full of glass.
All the car’s windows are broken and she doesn’t feel any better. This was a mistake. She could run. She knows these backyards. She grew up here. She could be long gone before the police arrive. But nothing feels right.
The sirens are getting louder, and she’s having trouble thinking new thoughts. She is supposed to leave before the police arrive, but they’re early. They cut the siren. The police cruiser pulls into the driveway, slow and calm. They’re so quiet now.
They are getting out of the car, and Jackie’s all covered in glass. Mrs. Hubert comes outside, and she’s crying.
“I didn’t know what to do,” Mrs. Hubert says. “I didn’t want to call, but I was so scared. And then I was worried she would hurt herself.”
Jackie wants to touch her. Or calm her down somehow. But if she does, she knows that she’ll start crying too. She has to stay strong. She is her mother’s daughter. Jackie looks away from the older woman and grinds the glass under her shoe. Focus. What is Jackie supposed to say?
She could try to explain about her tree. About all the trees, and about memories. But that’s not all this was. This was some kind of tantrum, too. And it will feel worse to pretend it wasn’t. Better not to explain at all. One of the cops pulls out his handcuffs.
“That’s embarrassing,” Jackie says to him. “You both wore the same outfit today.”
okay.
5
“Two grown men with guns for one dumb kid. Do you see that, Mitchie?” Charlie reaches down to untangle Mitchie’s leash from where the fat little idiot has wrapped it around the bus stop. Mitchie, meanwhile, is busy wrapping himself around Charlie’s leg. “You want me to fall over right here on the sidewalk, is that it?” Charlie says to his dog. Mitchie looks up at him happily.
“Come on, Mitchie,” Charlie says, and they start up the hill again. It’s none of their business what goes on in people’s driveways. It is not their problem. Charlie loops the leash around his hand. At the next pole, Mitchie stops to do his business. Then Charlie starts pulling Mitchie up the road again. They stop at the next pole, too. A little girl in a pink dress comes down the driveway from her house.
Will it never end?
“Have you seen Wednesday?” she says. She’s holding out a poster with a crude drawing of a cat on it. Charlie doesn’t even pretend to look at the picture.
“No,” he says.
The little girl holds out the poster again. “My cat Wednesday ran away,” she says. Mitchie’s fat little tail is going berserk now that he’s heard the little girl’s voice. She bends down to pet him, and he starts licking her like they’re old friends. She says, “Oh, hello! How about you? Have you seen Wednesday?”
What is she, slow?
“No he hasn’t,” Charlie says. “He’s been with me all day.”
“She’s real small, and she’s all black except for her nose,” the little girl says to Mitchie.
“We have to go.” Charlie pulls on the leash and waves her off with his other hand. She stands watching as Mitchie and Charlie start walking up the hill again.
Mitchie stops at the next lamppost. Charlie looks back at the little girl, making sure she doesn’t take this as a sign to start talking to them again.
“Christ almighty, Mitchie. I want to get home. How would you like it if we stopped at every house, so I could go inside and use their toilet?”
Mitchie doesn’t care — he’d probably like that just fine.
Tell
6
The cop says “Sorry” when he cuffs Jackie’s hands behind her back. He guides her head gently as he helps her into the cruiser. Jackie doesn’t fight. Then both cops go to talk to Mrs. Hubert, and Jackie is stuck listening to the police radio with her hands cuffed under her butt.
It’s uncomfortable sitting on handcuffs. Jackie rolls over on her left leg, which isn’t comfortable, either. She rolls o
ver on her right leg. The police radio people are having a great time, using their code words and sounding very official. “One-Mike-one, are you dealing with a fifty-one-fifty?” Jackie can hear her own breathing too clearly. The first-kiss tree used to be between the house and that fence. You could have seen it from here. It’s gone.
Maybe if she had come yesterday she could have saved her tree. But that’s stupid. If she came yesterday it would have been there and she would have sat underneath and thought about Carl and his rat-tail haircut and his dog. Then, the next time she got sad, she would have come and found nothing. She would have rung the doorbell then. This would have happened either way.
After a few minutes, the cops close their notebooks and Mrs. Hubert comes over to the car with them. The cops stand and talk some more, ignoring Jackie for now, but Mrs. Hubert looks down through the window. Jackie smiles at her before she even realizes what she’s doing. Mrs. Hubert looks startled.
And then the cops are in the car and they’re driving. Jackie feels a bit better now. Mrs. Hubert is okay. She probably has insurance. It was just glass. And now Jackie feels strong and tough, handcuffed in the back of the police car, driving through her old neighborhood. She couldn’t protect her tree, but at least she did something.
The cops keep trying to get her name. Jackie just looks out the window. There go the tennis courts. When she was in elementary school, she used to come down through the path in those woods every day to play basketball. There’s a path through the backyards of these houses, a shortcut to and from school. Trees and rocks and little Jackie’s backpack and juice containers. She doesn’t remember if she felt strong and tough back then.
The cruiser stops behind a bus, and a bunch of girls get out. They’re younger than Jackie and they’ve all got matching school jackets. Two of them look over, and Jackie wishes she could wave. The girls are all watching now, hoping to recognize her from school. Jackie always used to get excited when she saw a police car with someone in the back. Was it a murderer? A shoplifter? Murderers probably wish they could wave, too.
The cop car turns right, at the corner where you turn left to get to the broken-arm tree.
her
7
At the police station, the cops put Jackie in a room with a big mirror along one wall like a blackboard. They tell her that they’re going to call someone from youth services. She’s not really listening. She still hasn’t told them her name.
“I’m not stupid,” she says. “I watch .”
The cop writes something down on his piece of paper.
“Go soak your head,” Jackie tells him.
Someone has carved initials into the table. P.H. There’s a line under it. Those are the same as her mother’s initials. Maybe they are her mother’s initials. Could be. Jackie wonders how old this table is. The wood is stained a dark colour and it’s oily looking. Tire Iron Pat, she thinks, and she smiles.
The cop smiles back. “Did you carve that?” he says.
“You know I didn’t carve it. You were watching from the other side of the mirror.” She touches the P.H. with her fingertip. It’s smooth. Old.
“We don’t have to be enemies,” the cop says. “I’d love to get your side of the story. That’s all.”
Jackie rolls her eyes. “There is nothing you can say to a cop that will ever help you,” she says.
Her mother taught her that.
I’m
8
Every day, in the front lobby of the retirement home, Mitchie gets stuck in the corner. He gets too excited, coming back from his walk, pulling at his leash. And every day Charlie has to help him.
“Careful, Mitchie. Watch where you’re going.” But poor blind Mitchie hobbles into that corner anyway. He’s reliable. Every day, stuck in the corner. And every day, without fail, that woman is standing on the other side of the glass door, her own severed head in her arms, watching them.
Charlie opens the door, and he gives Mitchie’s leash a sharp tug. The fat little dog pulls back a bit, and then walks into the wall again. He totters from foot to foot. The headless woman is still standing there, blocking the way, blood trickling. She’s talking, and Charlie can see her lips moving, but no sound is coming out. If he was a younger man, maybe he could read her lips a bit, but his eyesight isn’t so good anymore. Charlie is getting tired of her anyway. He pulls at the leash again.
“God damn it, Mitchie,” Charlie says. “Come on, now.”
Mitchie has himself turned around the right way, and he starts toward Charlie, panting a bit. Each little step is an effort. He walks right past the door again, and Charlie has to give the leash another tug, to turn him in the right direction. They squeeze past the woman, and Charlie grits his teeth against the cold where he brushes against her skin. He can feel her eyes looking up at him.
“What do you think she wants today, Mitch?” Charlie asks the dog. They’re in the elevator lobby now. “She just won’t give it up, eh? What was it yesterday?” Charlie turns to the ghost. She’s on the other side of the lobby. “Is it your email again? Are you having trouble with your email?”
The ghost takes a shaking step toward them. She’s off balance, not that Charlie could blame her. Having your head cut off would certainly affect your equilibrium. She takes another step, and then another. She’s so slow. Mitchie is chewing on himself while they wait.
okay
9
Margaret and Ann are home from school. Downstairs their mother is waking up again. They can hear her voice through the basement door. No words yet, just a constant howling. An animal sound. It will get worse as the night goes on.
“This is stupid. We know what she needs,” Margaret says, putting her books on the table. Ann shakes her head again.
“No,” she says.
“Don’t be an idiot,” Margaret says. “The hamster and the bird were both alive. That’s the connection, and that’s what she needs.”
Ann knows her sister is right. But they have to be sure. Of course they have to be sure. Why is this so easy for Margaret? Already it’s “the hamster and the bird,” and not Herman and Blue Guy.
“We have to try other things,” Ann says. “What about raw meat? We can get something fresh from the grocery store. The best steak they have. Or we could try fish. Or dog food.”
“We’re not feeding her dog food,” Margaret says. “Jesus. She’s our mother.”
and
10
“We want you to call your parents.” A new cop takes Jackie to a small room with lots of old desks and bored-looking police officers. They have old computers too, and old telephones, and everyone is frowning.
“Good evening, everybody!” Jackie says. Her head is clear now. That tree is dead and gone. Okay. That is not what she would have chosen, but it’s done now and she is in a new situation and she has to act accordingly. Ann ignored her at school, but that is not the problem on the table at this time. Ann didn’t know Jackie was going to ask her out. She couldn’t have known. It wasn’t a rejection because Jackie didn’t get a chance to even ask.
Clear your head, Jackie thinks. It is not time to worry. It is time to escape.
The police are still frowning.
“Are you this unhappy all the time?” Jackie says. But they don’t look unhappy. They look bored. She wishes she had a water balloon. That would cheer them up. Splash! Why do they keep coming to their jobs if they hate it here so much? She wants to tell them that they can escape with her when she goes.
“Press nine to call out,” bored cop #1 says. He is all business, Jackie thinks, and these people are in the business of frowning. Well, not Jackie. Jackie is in the business of escape. Jackie is in the business of magic, and magicians always tell jokes.
She picks up the phone and presses nine for an outside line, just like the cop says. Nothing up my sleeve! Can we all agree that this is just a regular telephone, ladies and gent
lemen? But she doesn’t dial her own telephone number. Her father wouldn’t be home anyway. Jackie dials the number for the police station, which is printed right on the phone itself. Line two starts flashing. The phone on the next desk begins to ring.
“Yes?” bored cop #2 says into her phone.
“Is your refrigerator running?” Jackie says.
that
11
Ann looks down at her homework but still can’t seem to see it. All day she went to classes. Wrote down notes. Anything to try to forget about what was happening. She didn’t even see Jackie. What would she have said? But now she regrets it. She should have gone and found her. Not to tell her. Just to see her. Tomorrow she’d go and find her friend.
Downstairs Ann’s mother is screaming the same word over and over again, “Taste, taste, taste, taste, taste!” and Ann can hear Margaret’s quiet voice, trying to soothe her.
The plate breaks against the wall down there, and then silence. Ann looks down at the homework and she wants to believe that their mother is eating the steak they bought her. The silence goes on and on and after a while it gets easier for Ann to believe this. She should be down there, too. She shouldn’t have made her sister do this alone.
She hears Margaret again, singing a song that Ann forgot they even knew. It’s been so long. It was a song they only ever heard when they went camping.
Ann remembers the cabin by the lake. Their mother carrying Margaret screaming out into deeper water, shampoo in Margaret’s hair. The terrible blackness of the outhouse at night. Frogs on the wooden step. The way the lake shone first thing in the morning.
