Her grandmother shifted her feet in her thick-soled shoes, and that gave her away. She was embellishing, as she sometimes did for comic effect. And Summer loved her for it. Loved her more than any other person. “Christ, Nan. That would shock the ass off Mother. She’d have you whipped out of there, put in an all girls’ old-age-home in jig time.”
Summer’s grandmother was a woman who surprised her frequently – with her openness, her quirky humour, her soft cool hands. Summer had often heard her mother say how frigid her grandmother was. Distant. Detached. Perpetually distracted. But, from Summer’s perspective, nothing could be further from the truth. Many times Summer imagined that instead of sliding forth from her mother’s womb, she had budded off the side of her grandmother. A human hydra. Taken a neater route from dark oblivion into life.
Inside the building, Summer pressed the back of her hand against her nose. Every Sunday, the hallways smelled the same – cabbage and boiled salt meat. Perhaps this heavy stench was a daily occurrence, but she was mostly there on Sundays. She tapped lightly on door 310, and as she listened for the sound of slippers shuffling over linoleum, she chewed on the end of her braid, touched the damp hair against her neck.
Stella Edgecombe grunted as she pulled open the door. She was dressed in black polyester pants, crisp white blouse, a necklace of unreasonably large glossy orange beads. “I swears,” she whispered, “this door is getting heavier and heavier every day.”
“It’s a conspiracy, Nan,” Summer whispered, leaning her bony backside against the door. “Every night they spray it with weighted paint. Just enough to make you question your own strength. Don’t you be fooled now.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised in the least.” Stella lifted her arm, sleeve moving upwards, stringy tendons in her wrist showing. “Time to come in? Something to eat?”
Summer’s foot tapped and she ground the wet end of her braid in her fingers. “Nah. I got to stop off somewhere first. Shouldn’t take more than a few minutes. And you know how your firstborn frowns on tardiness.”
“All right, my dear. Let me get my coat.”
Summer bowed. “Your chariot awaits, Nanny E.” On their way towards the still-sputtering car, Summer stopped, said, “Look at those flowers, Nan. I can’t believe it. Already.”
“I knows,” she replied. “’Tis terrible. I can’t even bear it. Frost is going to get them any night now. A touch of it’ll kill a marigold. Don’t they know that? ’Tis a sin, if you asks me. And an awful waste.”
“Then why do they plant so early?”
“Well, folks is . . . Well, most don’t buy green bananas, if you gets what I means. And as soon as the ground is soft, they wants a few flowers put in. They reckons they might be the last they ever sees.” Stella shook her head, tut-tutted. “All I can do is think about them, half froze, waiting for some late shock of snow to finish them off. Queer, but it makes me right upset.”
Summer yanked open Betty Blue’s passenger door for Stella, helped her slide into the seat. Then she went around to the driver’s side, put the car in gear, and drove down the second half of the semi-circle driveway. As she passed the raised beds, she considered the fate of the flowers and how they would look most striking when suspended in frost. A single moment of absolute sanctity. They would have that, at least. But when sunlight touched them, they would wither almost instantly. She decided against mentioning this to her grandmother.
They drove several minutes in silence, Summer humming along with the scratchy radio, her grandmother staring out the window. Bands of sunlight bent through the windshield, making the two women squint. “Days are getting longer,” Summer said as she flicked down her visor.
“That they is. ’Tis awful welcome after that winter we had.”
“Some bright, the sun. That colour.”
“You don’t like that colour? Do you think this necklace is all right? Jane sent it to me. I reckoned I should wear it at least once. Get some use out of it.”
“No, no.” Summer glanced over. “It’s fine.”
“All right. I weren’t sure. Maybe it’s too young for me. Too shiny. I should give it to you.”
Summer laughed. “Sure, Nan, you’re still plenty young. Got lots of spark. Sparks coming off you left and right.”
“That I allows.”
Summer drove out of the city, onto beaten roads where the pavement fell away from the sides in chunks. “We’re going to be late,” she said. “But not by much, if I hurry.” Foot hovering above the brake, Summer eased Betty down a steep hill, wall of solid rock on one side, drop to nothingness on the other. Around a final turn, and they came upon a small community, pink and blue and yellow box homes, every window reflecting the sun as it dipped into the ocean. Dust billowed up around the car, crept in through unseen holes.
“Almost there,” Summer said, quick cough, and she turned into the driveway beside a darkened house. “You okay to wait?”
“I. . .I guess so, maid.”
“You can listen to whatever you want,” she said, motioning towards the radio. “Just press those buttons. Don’t go nowhere and don’t talk to no strangers.” Summer laughed lightly, then stepped out, and slammed the door. As she walked past a chained dog, in a frenzy now of yips and squeals, she paused, clapped her thigh, called, “Hi Precious. I know, my puppy, you want to be free. Don’t we all.”
Instead of going to the front of the house, knocking at the dented screen door, Summer strode around the back, towards a shed with peeling paint, a flat roof, hazy light over a black door. How many times had she been here since she’d met James and Scott? Summer couldn’t count, and she would never admit to another the reason why she kept coming back. James and Scott were not friends, instead she viewed them as leeches. Draining her.
After the let-down of her conversation with her mother, she had told her grandmother about the vertigo, her fear of plunging downwards. Confided about her sensation of being suspended, thick hands gripping her waist, twisting and turning her as though she were a human airplane. And how Summer was teetering there, uncertain. “You won’t let that happen, will you, Nan? Won’t let me strike – strike bottom?” She had expected her grandmother to reassure her, as she often did when Summer was a child. Say something along the lines of, “Of course not, honey. I’d catch you right up.” But, instead, she was quiet for a while, stared at nothing, then replied solidly, “Sometimes you just got to let yourself go.”
She took her grandmother’s words to heart. Spending time in this shed with James and Scott, she was slowly descending downwards, easing her body through an ocean of broken promises, feeling the edges of wasted potential. Letting herself go in the only way she knew how. And it was comfortable there, scraping away at the bottom, picking at all of her loose threads. Keeping herself on the floor, she felt safe. There was nowhere to go. Nowhere to fall. In this place that smelled of rot, thick with blue smoke and roaming hands, her emptiness was verified and coated, and what blood she had left had no other purpose than to move in a circle, holding her steady. Holding her still.
Telling herself she would only stay a moment, she lifted the latch, and disappeared inside.
Stella angled her watch towards the dim light, squinted at it. A thin silver band, delicate face, single diamond below the twelve like a twinkling third eye. The watch had been one of the less practical but more appreciated gifts from her daughter-in-law Jane. In recent years, the “tone” of her Christmas parcels from Toronto had changed. Blouses and smart shoes had turned into pajamas and bathrobes. Scented salts replaced bath oil. Without fail, each box contained a fresh package of no-slip flower stickers that were to cover the bottom of her tub. One year, Stella had adored a lovely pair of slippers, cream coloured with criss-crossing golden thread, but the accompanying note, heralding their no-slip rubber soles, had tarnished them completely.
The light was scant, and with the miniscule numbers, Stella couldn’t tell the time. She wasn’t certain how long she’d been waiting, though it felt like a go
od hour or more. Sunlight had evaporated, and the bit of glow from the shed cast long lonely shadows. She could hear passersby, their crunching footsteps in the road behind the car, but when she twisted to see, no one was there.
Stella glanced about. In the driveway, there were potholes in the earth large enough to hide a wheel. The fence was half falling down, and every third or fourth picket missing. The skinny dog that had recognized Summer now stood motionless on the porch, hackles raised, staring at Stella, and before the light had evaporated, she’d noticed the grimy rope holding it was unraveling. From that point on, she gripped the door handle, fearing the door might fall open if she let go. Inadvertently offering “Precious” an invitation to a meal of porous bones.
After what felt like hours, the dog lay down. Cars passed up and down the lane in front of the house, but the dog didn’t budge, never even lifted an ear. Stella unhooked her fingers from the door handle, rubbed her palm over the glass face of her watch. She would have to go and find the child. Go to that shed and enter through the dimness beneath the crooked awning. Walk in the muck in her Sunday shoes. Straight past that dog.
She eased open the door of the car, but the shriek of dry metal hinges alerted the dog, and he was up again, waiting. Harriet came to mind then. Harriet and her thick fur disguising a trim body, her sharp teeth, claws like talons. An imposing figure she cut, but Harriet was a baby. Perhaps Precious was the same. Sometimes appearances were deceiving.
Slowly, Stella moved up the driveway without looking sideways at the dog. And it never budged, never burst free from its rope, galloping towards her, taking her thin ankle into its mouth. As was so often the case, her fears weren’t warranted, and she felt that increasingly frequent wave of foolishness drape over her shoulders. She reached the side of the house. Precious was about to disappear from view, and when Stella turned, a light came on over the front porch and she was able to see the dog from another angle. One that revealed a taut abdomen, fur pulled over flaring ribs. Her fear transformed into pity, and she dug her hand into her purse, retrieved a Cherry Blossom bar, tore off the wrapper and tossed it within the dog’s reach. He was on top of it in an instant, and the chocolate was gone.
As Stella moved down the slight incline towards the shed, her shoes sank into the mud, each step making a sucking sound. The air smelled of decomposing garbage. Springtime had taken over, was making short work of the trash discarded during the winter months, and the wind was reluctant to pick up the odour and move it. When she reached the shed, her heart began to beat, and for a moment, she placed her hand against the wooden door, felt the dampness in her palm.
She knocked. “Summer, you in there? Summer?” Music moved out through the walls, and she could hear voices, a mixture of high and low, slow cadences. “Summer? It’s your Nan.”
At once, Stella felt silly again. ’Tis only young folks courting, she thought, and she pushed the door open, stepped inside without hesitation. Her breath caught, and she stared from one confusing corner to the next. She tried to find her granddaughter in the heavy air, but it was like searching for a beloved animal in a slaughter house.
From the ceiling, a lone flickering bulb hung, inconsistent electricity surging through the wires. The walls were covered with posters. One depicted a man with a bare upper body, skinny arms outstretched. Another showed a dark-skinned man, hugging a guitar, hair like a halo of chaos around his distorted face. A back door was propped open with a thick stick, and on the stoop outside, a hibachi smoked, pieces of burnt meat feeding a steady stream of dead air into the shed. Unlit candles jammed into wax-coated bottles stood on uneven shelves. High-pitched laughter erupted from two skinny girls, clutching each other in a corner, while two skinny boys (she couldn’t fathom that they might be men) moved around them like feral creatures. On the opposite side, near the back door, another girl, leaning against a wall, rolled her body one way, then rolled back again, wailing or singing, Stella couldn’t tell. In the middle of the room, a boy lay next to a hole in the floor, piece of soggy pressboard moved aside, what looked like vomit gliding out of his jerking body.
“Summer Lane?” Her granddaughter’s very name did not belong in this place, let alone the girl herself.
Music moved through the smoke, sharp and jagged, in a tune Stella could not describe, though the very sounds made her feel as though there was something wrong with her heart muscle, the tendons in her thighs. “Summer?” Louder, this time, and Stella’s dry voice cracked.
Squinting, she saw her. Recognized her shape, her shoulders. Against the back wall, Summer was sprawled on a collapsing chesterfield, torn piece of blanket beneath her dozing head. Upon seeing Stella, a boy seated next to her removed his hand from her upper leg, then reached up with a bare foot and tried to twist the volume of the stereo down with his toes. Music diminished, and he nudged Summer, then lay his head back, closed his eyes.
“Huh?”
“Summer,” Stella yelled.
Summer stumbled across the room, fell into her grandmother, then righted herself.
“Summer, I’ve been waiting this long while.” Summer looked up at Stella, then held out her bent arm, looked at her wrist. “Sure, I haven’t been not more than a minute. Look. Not a minute passed. Look.” She showed Stella her Mickey watch. “Are you sure you’re not talking about another time, Nan? Waiting for someone else?”
“No, honey. Are you ready? I’m–” Words cut short when she noticed the boy on the floor moving, his hand reaching out, fingers crawling closer to Summer’s shoe.
“Summer, mind your foot. Is he okay?”
“Couldn’t be better,” she said, kicked his hand away. “Ran out of seats, is all.”
“Ah, ladieth,” he slurred. Up on his knees, then on his feet, he swayed once, twice, then stepped towards Stella, rubbed his hands up and down his dirty shirt, fabric a repeat of whimsical cowboys with miniature guns. Bang, bang. “Wanna a drink, Dolly?”
“No thank you, sir.” Stella’s arms locked across her chest. “I’s quite fine.”
“C’mon, Dolly. Danth wit me.” His eyes were slits in raw goose skin, front teeth missing.
He leaned in, breath like bitter tea and curdled milk, and grabbed her around the waist, transferring his unsteadiness onto Stella’s sore left hip. Stella twisted, and her arm jolted, thumb catching in her necklace, thread breaking on her beads, orange baubles dancing everywhere.
“Ah, shit,” Summer said. “Shitity shit. Look, you fucker, look what you did.” She shoved him, and he fell backwards, rolled on his side, holding his stomach and giggling.
“Ah c’mon ladieth. Danth. Love me.” Flat on his back now, he lifted his hips off the floor, once, twice, moaned, slurred, “Fff-uh-uh-uh-uck.” Then, with blackened nails, he scraped one of the bright beads off the grimy floor, shoved it into his mouth, crunched down hard as though it were a jawbreaker. Within seconds he spat the bead out, and it bounced against Stella’s calf, rolled away. “My tooth,” he cried, laughed, cried, “My ff-uh-uh-cking tooth.”
Summer moved closer to him, but Stella clutched her elbow, said, “Never mind, never mind. Let’s just go.”
On their way back to the car, Summer lurched, caught herself, then lurched again. Stella picked her way slowly through the muck and the pebbles, eyes locked on the car, but when she came around the corner, she glanced at Precious. Curled in a ball and sleeping. Poor dog. No wonder it’s as surly as it is.
“I’m gonna get you new beads, Nan. I’m gonna do that for you. I’m gonna, I swears. If I got to thumb it all the way to Toronto to get ’em.”
“That’s the last thing I wants now, is new beads. Believe you me. The very last thing.”
When Summer stopped to look at her, Stella had to avert her eyes, would not be able to disguise her dismay. Summer swayed again. And this time, as she watched her granddaughter in her peripheral vision, she reminded Stella of someone. Not so much the balance dance, but it was something else. Perhaps the tottering of the head. Or her arms, maybe, elb
ows bent, hands, fingers slightly curled. It was the way they were held out in front of her, as though she was reaching for something. Something that kept moving away as her granddaughter walked towards it.
“What was you doing in there? All that time.”
Weakly, “Talking.”
“Talking?”
“Yes, Nan.”
“About what, for God’s sakes? Lordy, Lordy. Whatever happened to a cup of tea at a proper table?”
Summer backed Betty Blue down the driveway, narrowly missing a gate that swung slightly on its hinges, even though there was no breeze. Stella stared at the house as it receded, and it did not look happy. Clusters of shadows, grey patches emerging underneath peeling pinkish paint. Even though it was inhabited, the house appeared empty, lonely, troubled, no doubt, by activities taking place within its walls. When they converged in her view, the fence pickets looked like thin rotten teeth. A final peek at the house, and the windows were now black. Stella wondered if someone were standing there, disguised by darkness, watching them leave.
Once they reached the high road, Stella sighed. Though she didn’t enjoy traveling in a car, she was glad to be moving away from that community into which they’d descended. Summer was speeding and swerving on the road, and when Stella noticed the sharp drop just outside her window, she said, “Do you want to pull over?”
“No,” Summer replied. “Not now. I’m good.”
“We’ll both be good if we goes over the edge. We can say that to Saint Peter when he asks us.”
Summer braked slightly, leaned forward, squinting when headlights came upon her, horns blaring. As they reached the outskirts of St. John’s, she relaxed in her seat, turned up the radio. Jammed her forefinger on the tabs, channels hiccupping, music finding its way. A voice arrived in the car, and he sang words that made Stella’s lips turn downwards. “Ooooh, the time to hesitate is through, there’s no time to wallow in the mire. . .”
“I like the Doors,” Summer said flatly. “I like his voice.”
The Seary Line Page 27
