by Alice Zorn
Ben had hated when his dad sat too near the moose head. It was an enormous hulk, dry with dust and dead flies, scraped patches on its neck, its blunt snout withered, eyes dead glass. Only the great, branching rack of its antlers belonged to a fairy-tale about a moose roaming the forests. Here in the tavern, the only story was the owner’s. He bragged about how he’d killed the moose with one clean shot, gutted it in the woods, and needed four men to drag it to the trailer. He was a backwoods hero in his own eyes — but too cheap to have the head stuffed properly. Kids used to dare each other to sneak inside the tavern and sling their toques onto the antlers. If the bartender caught you, he shoved you out the door with his boot. What was his name? Gros … Gros something. Thickets of hair bushed out his ears and up the neck of his shirt. He had arms like shaggy clubs, with the sleeves always rolled up. The men liked the show of a boy being booted across the tavern, so they always gave a holler to alert him.
Ben always had to slink in alone to get their dad. Xavier stayed by the door, too afraid of the bartender, the grizzled moose head, the sullen men at the tables — but just as frightened of the older boys who might saunter along the street. So he crept in after Ben and hid by the door. Tagalong kid brother. He hadn’t started his crazy stunts yet.
Ben tilted the bottle to his mouth and downed the last swallow. The waitress, walking by, scooped the empty from the table. He nodded. How many had he had already? Four or five? Who was counting?
He’d waited for a couple of days to see if the cops were going to bang on his door to ask why he was stealing into other people’s backyards. Backyards weren’t B and E, were they? Damn lucky he was that he didn’t get caught inside the house. Whatever the story with that hippie lady, she didn’t seem to have called the cops. He’d still better not go back to the house.
He glanced at the door that had swung wide on shrill laughter and had to quell his gut instinct to slouch lower in his chair. What in hell was Anouk doing here? She and her friend were scanning the men at the tables, wondering whom to bless with their giddy presence — who was flush enough to pay for their rum and Cokes.
“Ben!” Anouk sashayed to his table. Touched a turquoise fingernail to the back of a chair. “You don’t even say hello anymore?”
“You just walked in,” he managed. His lips were dry. Her flowery perfume held the scent of déjà vu. That hazy feeling of knowing this had happened before, but not what would happen next. The coy mounds of her breasts framed by a scalloped neckline.
Anouk pursed her lipstick mouth. “Grump.” She swung her tight hips between tables and sucked dimples at Henri, who’d moved to Ville Émard but still worked on houses in the Pointe. Windows, doors, cement, plumbing. People had to call someone when their basement pipe started pissing puddles and they couldn’t afford anyone listed in the Yellow Pages.
Anouk’s friend joined her at Henri’s table. Henri was a moron, hoisting himself up in his chair, trying to puff out pecs he didn’t have. So what, he had two girls at his table? Every other man in the tavern knew what that meant: Henri would go home that night with an empty wallet.
Still. To have that bubbly laughter in his face. To breathe that perfume. Her smooth arm next to his on the table. The energy in her slim, agile body. Lots about Anouk had bothered Ben when they’d lived together, but he’d always loved how he could gather her close inside his arms.
He scowled at his beer and lifted it for a swallow. Down the long cannon neck of the bottle he saw that Anouk was watching him. Grinning at Henri, but with her eyes on Ben.
Maddy
Maddy shuffled upstairs, yawning. Rain drummed on the skylight in the hallway. She clicked on her bedroom lamp, unzipped her shorts, and tossed them with her foot onto the settee that was scattered with clothes she’d worn yesterday and the day before. An ex-boyfriend, Winston, had given her the settee. He’d said the antique carved legs and satin upholstery, though faded, would look good in her house. She’d been pleased, believing it was a sign he was going to leave his wife and wanted to move in. Only later did she discover his wife was redecorating and had told him to cart the settee to the dump. Oh boy. What was the message there? But by then, she’d grown used to dropping her clothes onto the settee, which was a handsome piece of furniture. Why blame it for Winston’s sloppy disregard?
She yawned again, so hard that tears squeezed out. Why had she stayed up past midnight to watch such a meandering, pointless movie? The characters were so pathetic. No backbone, no sense of imperative. They weren’t even prompted by the basic selfishness that kept an animal alive.
At least her excuse was that she’d been young, with no idea what to do and no help from her parents. They’d shouted at her to get help from the baby’s father. She hadn’t even known what that meant until the school nurse explained. Even then, what the school nurse explained about boys and penises had happened months before. Neil and his family had already moved away. It didn’t make sense to think of him as the father — any more than that she was the mother.
She’d thought the worst that had happened was that she’d embarrassed herself when she’d followed Tonya, the new girl, home after school. Tonya had a deep voice — like someone who should sing in the church choir, but on the boys’ side. Tonya walked next to her, brushing against her arm, showing her the coral lipstick she kept in her jacket pocket. She said Maddy could try it, but Maddy was afraid people watching from the windows of the houses would see.
Tonya said to come in and see if anyone was home. Her older brother was watching TV with a friend. Her brother had red hair. He said his name was Neil. He looked right at Maddy the way the boys at school never did. Up and down, smiling. He said, How about a game of cards. Maddy played euchre at lunchtime at school. She liked cards.
In the kitchen Neil rummaged under the sink until he hooked a bottle. He lined up four Mickey Mouse glasses and poured. Only a bit, he said, and added ginger ale. Maddy’s father sometimes let her have a swallow of beer. It made her feel tipsy. When you were tipsy, it was easier to laugh and feel comfortable.
But no one laughed as they sipped their drinks. Mickey Mouse glasses in hand, they trooped downstairs to the cellar, where a bulb was screwed into a fixture that hung from wires. The floor was part concrete, part dirt, with an area covered with sheets of warped plywood. Tonya shook out a blanket so it settled on the wobbly squares. Everyone sat across from each other like they were at a table. The air was damp with the smell of earth and spiders. A mushroomy stink. It wasn’t nice down here, but maybe it was the only place they were allowed to play.
The boys said strip poker. Maddy didn’t know that game. No sweat, Neil said. We’ll show you. Maddy expected Tonya to explain because Tonya had invited her, but Neil hitched himself closer. Show me what you’ve got, he said, which made the other boy laugh. I know what she’s got, he said. Shut up, Neil said. Maddy liked that he helped her and told the other boy to shut up.
Maddy giggled when they started playing for real and the other boy lost and had to take off a sock, but no one else laughed. Neil gathered up the cards, shuffled, and dealt again. No one spoke. The light bulb shone on their hair, casting their mouths and eyes in shadow.
Maddy lost the second hand. She followed the boy’s lead and slipped off a sock, flattening it on the blanket beside her. Then she lost again. Next sock.
And again. What now? Did they really mean she had to take something else off ? She only had her blouse and her skirt. If she took them off, the others would see her underpants or her bra. In her deep voice, Tonya said, That’s why it’s called strip poker.
Maddy tried to remember what underpants she was wearing. Any pair had to be nicer than her church-rummage-sale bra that didn’t fit. She unzipped her skirt, pulled it off, and sat with her legs tucked close, her blouse yanked low.
Then Tonya lost, but instead of pulling off a sock, she peeled off her blouse. She sat across from them, her back straight as a model’s, in
a pink bra. You can take off what you want, she told Maddy. I keep my socks for last.
For last? How far were they going? It wasn’t a question Maddy could ask. Without understanding, she’d stumbled from the schoolyard into an adult world. A game with risks. Liquor in their glasses. She felt nervous, but bold, too. Ready. The expectant silence of the others pressed against her. She thought of a trick now — like Tonya’s. If she lost again, she wasn’t going to take off her blouse, but her bra underneath. The bra with the cups too big for her breasts.
Neil lost a few times and was down to his Y-fronts. Maddy didn’t want to look, but then she peeked and had to look again. He had something shoved inside his underpants, poking out the cotton. He held his cards as if unaware. It couldn’t have been comfortable, though he sat cross-legged as if at any other game — as matter-of-fact as his sister in her pink bra.
The other boy snickered. She wants it. She keeps looking.
Maddy blushed. Didn’t they all notice? She kept trying not to look, but across the edge of her cards, she could see the bulge in his green Y-fronts.
She lost and — calmly, she thought, proud of herself — reached under the back of her blouse, unhooked her bra, and slid the straps out her sleeves and over her hands.
Hey, Neil said.
She took something off, Tonya said. That’s how she wants to play.
Maddy felt pleased she was getting the hang of the game. Pleased, too, that she’d bunched her faded and ugly bra under her knee so no one could see it.
Tonya lost the next hand. With a sly smile she daintily tugged off a sock. She sat poised, her pleated skirt smoothed to her knees, her breasts in her pretty bra perked on her chest.
Maddy tried to copy how she sat, angling her back and her hips.
Neil’s friend had shuffled and dealt. Maddy picked up her cards. She had no pairs. Her highest card was a six. Was she going to sit before them with her bottom or her top naked? That was the choice. She could feel how, under her blouse, her nipples were soft, blind eyes butted against her shirt.
Maddy shuddered in bed, wide awake now. Why hadn’t she realized she could have stood up, put on the clothes she’d taken off, and left that house? She curled on her side and tucked the sheet closer to her cheek with her fist. She’d never in her life — ever — played cards again.
Maddy and Yushi cycled side by side along the path above the marshy shoreline of the river. A wispy cloud cover dulled the gleam of light on the water. Poplars rippled leafy coins in the breeze.
“This is great,” Yushi said. “I had no idea you could get so close to the water.”
“A lot of people don’t.” Urban fact #6: people tended to stick to their own hoods.
Their knees — Maddy’s tanned from a summer of cycling, Yushi’s more slender — pumped up and down in tandem. They’d cycled as far as the marina and were on their way back to Maddy’s for another cooking lesson.
“It doesn’t help,” Maddy went on, “that there’s a highway between the city and down here. Makes you wonder if it’s deliberate or just dumb city planning. The highway’s like a mini Berlin Wall between the beautiful people and the grubby hoi polloi.” She heard herself and stopped. A concrete line of non-stop traffic like the Berlin Wall was one of Brian’s metaphors. He’d always thought city hall councillors sat around a table plotting how to further isolate the already disadvantaged southwest sector. With luck, the old rotten houses would slide into the river and disappear.
“That could be okay,” Yushi said. “I think I’d like to be so close to the city but separate from it, too.”
“Nothing’s stopping you. You can move to the Pointe any time. Then you wouldn’t have to cycle all the way down from the Plateau to get to work.” She’d said it lightly — half a joke, half the logical follow-up to Yushi’s comment — but as she said it, she thought, yeah, it was a good idea. Yushi could move to the Pointe.
Yushi had to drop back now that they were leaving the river path to cycle along Wellington. Under the overpass, past the factory that recycled glass, past the park with its great, bar-onial poplars. Maddy waved an arm at the trees so Yushi would look, then wished she hadn’t because there stood a man, leaning against a tree trunk for balance, bobbing with the violence of his coughing as he horked great gobs of phlegm.
They turned into the alley, getting a view onto the back sides of houses. Some sagged like faces without teeth — the mortar between the century-old bricks crumbling. Weeds thrived around abandoned, sun-bleached toys and boards left to rot. Here and there, new people like Fara and Frédéric were trying to revamp their scrap of ground by installing a deck or planting a garden.
“It’s so green,” Yushi said.
“This all used to be swampland. The water table is still pretty high.”
Maddy coasted to a stop at her gate. She felt a little guilty — but only a little — to have asked Yushi come to her house for the next cooking lesson. She’d said that her kitchen was larger, which was true. Also true was that she hadn’t felt comfortable with Rose when they’d had supper at the apartment. Rose seemed not to know that she could pretend to be listening, even if she had nothing to say. Without a word she’d dabbed pieces of buss-up-shut through the chickpea stew on her plate. Maddy couldn’t recall the name of the stew, but she remembered the fanciful burst-up shirt name for the roti. And aloo. She remembered the word but not what it meant. Eggplant, chickpea, or potato?
Maddy had bought all the ingredients Yushi had told her they would need. Flour and eggs, baking powder and yeast, turmeric. She’d set out steel cooking bowls and put the new wok on the stove.
Yushi had Maddy slice green onion while she minced garlic. Chopped green chilies, parsley, and coriander were already dotted in separate heaps around the rim of a dinner plate. Yushi’s mother’s system.
“Okay.” Yushi rinsed her hands and lifted the wok. “Is this brand new?”
“You said you needed a wok.”
“You didn’t have one?” An incredulous look.
Yushi twisted her silver bangle off her wrist and dropped it on the table behind her. She shovelled scoops of flour into the largest bowl and added a spoonful of baking powder.
“How much of which?” Maddy asked, though she could see Yushi hadn’t measured.
Yushi didn’t answer, not even to squint her eyes at her. She stirred the flour and baking powder with her hand then doused them with some water from the bowl she had ready.
“Did you mean what you said about living in the Pointe?” Maddy asked.
“That it would be a good place? Sure, why not? You’re comfortable, aren’t you? You’ve got this big house.”
“That’s what I was thinking. I’m going to be looking for a tenant. And it would be so much easier for you to get to work.”
“You mean for me to live here?” Yushi shook her head slightly. “I’ve got Rose.”
“What about Rose?”
Yushi shrugged but didn’t explain. She had both hands in the dough now and nodded at the bowl of water. “Throw it.”
Throw it?
“T’row it,” Yushi said again, her intonation more musical.
Maddy dribbled water across the dough Yushi kept punching and squeezing.
“More. Okay. Bust the eggs now. Swizzle ’em to take de skin off.” She smiled but looked sad. “My mum always said that. Bus’ de eggs an’ swizzle ’em.”
Maddy cracked the eggs into a bowl.
“I always think that,” Yushi said quietly, “when I’m beating yolks to make mousse or crème pâtissière.”
Maddy showed her the eggs she’d swizzled. She would think that too now, whenever she used a whisk.
“T’row it.”
Maddy scraped the eggs onto the dough Yushi was still squishing with her hands. It was thinner than roti dough, more a thick batter.
“Yeast.”
> Maddy sprinkled some yeast.
“More. Where’s the cod?” Yushi looked along the counter.
“In the fridge.” Maddy went to get the bowl. Yushi had told her to buy salt cod, soak it, and drain it for one whole day as often as she remembered. Then she had to squeeze the water out and shred the fish with her fingers.
“Add it,” Yushi said.
“You don’t want me to throw it?”
Yushi frowned. “Why would you throw cod?”
Perhaps only liquid got thrown.
Yushi folded the cod into the batter with her hand. She’d told Maddy she was going to fry it in the wok to eat with the tamarind chutney she’d brought in a jar. Cod fritters, Maddy thought. She’d forgotten the Trinidadian name Yushi had told her.
The kitchen smelled of fish and Maddy kept expecting Jim at the screen door. He could smell fish from beyond the gate in the alley. Fish always called him home — the fish she ate, not the adulterated by-product served up as cat food. Jim assumed she would share her fish with him as he shared his mice with her. Quid pro quo.
“That.” Yushi lifted her chin at the plate of chopped herbs.
“How much?”
“All of it.”
Maddy scraped the fragrant mounds of greenery and garlic over the batter. She forbore asking why they’d kept the mounds separate only to mix them together.
“Now turmeric.”
“How much?”
“You always ask how much. Don’t you have a gut feeling?”
“For something I’ve never even eaten? No.”
Yushi sniffed. “That’s no excuse. You should still have a sense. I’m not Viennese but before I ever baked a hazelnut torte, I knew how the batter should turn out from reading the ingredients.”
