All I Ask

by Eva Crocker

  “Hang on,” he said quietly to me and then hollered at the girl on cash: “She’s just stepping out of the line to sign up, can she head straight to the checkout after?”

  People turned to look at me. I felt ashamed. Now everyone knew I was giving away all my personal information, offering myself up for identity theft. I should have gone to the Army-Navy store.

  The sales guy unclipped the elastic belt between us from its post. I stepped out of the line.

  “I’m going to need a picture ID, do you have a driver’s licence on you? Something like that?”

  I got my wallet out. What if Kris came in and saw me talking to this guy like a little old lady buying fistfuls of iTunes cards for phone scammers. When I handed him my licence, he surprised me by taking a picture of it. The iPad was on full volume and the picture-taking sound rang out.

  “What’s that for?” I asked.

  He handed me back the card.

  “Just part of the process. What do you do?” He looked me up and down.

  “I work at a theatre.”

  “Movie theatre?”

  “No, like for plays, I bartend and do box office.” I thought about adding “I also act” or “sometimes I act” but it seemed pathetic.

  “Oh okay, that’s pretty cool, I think you’re my first theatre person, showbiz.” He was scrolling through a drop-down list of possible professions. “Let’s say ‘entertainment industry.’”

  I resented his attitude.

  “Okay, so how much do you make a year? Just roughly, an estimate?” He was scrolling through another drop-down menu.

  “That seems like a lot of information,” My voice came out in a croak. I was so deep in it already.

  “You know what, it doesn’t really matter, let’s just go with this.” He pressed $50,000.

  “Well —”

  “Almost done, it’ll just take fifteen to twenty minutes to be approved. Do you want to wait or is it okay if the card is mailed to you?”

  “I get the discount either way?” I felt stomach-sick.

  “Absolutely, if it’s approved.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay, mail it?”

  “Yeah, and I can just go straight to the counter?”

  “She’s okay to come up to the counter?” he yelled at the woman on cash, who nodded.

  I stepped in front of the person at the head of the line without making eye contact. I put the box on the counter.

  “So you get the discount?” the cashier said.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  The guy with the iPad was pacing the line again. The cashier waved him over. “She gets the discount?”

  “It’s not approved, you’re getting the approval by mail, you chose approval by mail,” he said.

  “It’s not a credit card though, right?” I said to the cashier.

  “It’s definitely a credit card, he wasn’t clear?”

  “No.”

  She grimaced and nodded.

  “Can you cancel that? I want to cancel that,” I said to the guy.

  “I can’t cancel it, I’m not authorized to do that.”

  He shrugged and started walking away. I accidentally met eyes with the man whose place I’d taken in the line.

  “Call and cancel it as soon as you get home.” She shone the barcode reader at the side of the box. “You can find the number online.”

  She passed me the debit machine and I tapped my card against it. Anxiety cycloned in my chest as the receipt started working itself out of the printer. Probably it wouldn’t be approved, but what about the $50,000 lie? Could I be charged with fraud? And what about my photographed ID card? I thought of the cops storming through the house, and I wanted to get home to Snot and Courtney.

  “Just call as soon as you leave here,” the girl told me as she slid the box into an enormous plastic bag. She could feel the panic radiating off me.

  I waited outside the store for Kris. I held the box between my knees so I could unzip my coat. It hurt to breathe because the air was cold but my body was sweaty.

  “You got boots!” she said.

  “Want to see?” I started pulling off the crinkly bag.

  “I do but I’m just going to run in there for a second, is that okay? They have these gloves, I want to get them while the sale is on.” She cut the engine.

  “Yeah, of course.” I sank back into my seat, pulling the box into my gut. I could see two possible futures stretching out in front of me — one where I phoned Mark’s Work Wearhouse immediately and possibly resolved the situation, and another where I let myself forget about it until it inevitably came back to haunt me, months or maybe years later.

  Kris opened her door. “You’re not coming in? Come in with me.”

  I climbed out and laid the box on the seat. The sun was setting, all the stores across the road were lit from behind with popsicle-pink light.

  I stood beside Kris at the glove display. I could see the guy with the iPad making his way down the line. Every so often he stopped beside someone and launched into his pitch. From where I stood at the sock rack he looked younger and less confident. A man in a Gore-Tex jacket shook his head no and stared straight ahead when the boy started his spiel. That was the appropriate response.

  “That guy tricked me into applying for a credit card.” I had decided not to tell Kris about it but it slid out of me.

  “Who?” She was holding a pair of neoprene gloves.

  “When I was buying my boots, I thought it was some kind of discount thing, a loyalty card.” I pointed. “I said I wanted to cancel the application and he wouldn’t let me.”

  “What a smarmy little prick.” At first her outrage was satisfying. “Go talk to him again.”

  She slid her hand into a glove and made a fist. The other glove hung limply from her wrist.

  “He said he’s not authorized to cancel it.”

  “No fucking way he’s not authorized.”

  “I’m just going to call when I get home, the girl at the counter said I could cancel it over the phone.”

  “You let people push you around. Go over there.” Kris took the gloves off and returned them to their hook. She picked up a fleece-lined pair. “Go, go on.”

  “I already talked to him.”

  “You’re being ridiculous, you’ll never get through on the phone.” Kris held up the fleece-lined gloves and walked away from me. “I’m getting in line now, go talk to him.”

  The guy was near the cash, talking to a woman with three of the same polar-fleece vest in her arms. I stood beside them waiting for a break in the conversation. Kris watched from the back of the line. I resented the feeling of her eyes on me.

  “What do you do?” the guy was asking.

  “I’m a psychologist, I have my own practice,” she told him.

  “Wow, cool, you’re my first psychologist.”

  The woman smiled; I wondered if she found him attractive.

  “Excuse me,” I said.

  “I’ll be with you in a minute,” he said, keeping his face turned away from me. “Okay, and roughly how much do you make in a year?”

  The psychologist looked at me. “You can help this young lady.”

  “I need you to cancel that, you didn’t make it clear that it was a credit card, I don’t want it. And you made up my income, you said I make way more than I do.” It came out in a rush, all my syllables sliding together.

  The sales guy stepped away from the line and started walking backwards into the store, forcing me to follow him away from the psychologist.

  “There’s nothing I can do, you have to phone them.”

  “Who do I call? Do you have a number?”

  “Here, I’ll put it in your phone.”

  I checked to see if Kris was watching as I handed him my phone. He held the
iPad in his armpit and typed the phone number in.

  “Okay, thank you,” I said.

  I found Kris in line.

  “Can I have the keys? I’m going to wait in the car, I’m too warm,” I said to her from the other side of the elastic belt.

  “Did you get it taken care of?”

  “Yes.”

  Kris reached into the breast pocket of her padded vest and dangled the keys in front of me. I expected her to snatch them back when I reached for them but she let me close my fist around them. Outside, the sky was inky blue, all the pink had bled out of it.

  I sat with the shoebox in my lap and turned the ignition. The radio came on, epic orchestral music flooded out of the dashboard. I breathed through my nose, inhaling and exhaling on the beat.

  Kris got in the car with a smile on her face. She tossed the plastic bag with her new gloves in it at me.

  “Ten bucks! That’s an amazing deal on those gloves.”

  I didn’t answer but she didn’t notice. She turned the radio off.

  “Aren’t you glad you got that taken care of? That would’ve been a nightmare.”

  “Yeah,” I said as flatly as possible.

  “Should we get McDonald’s? I’m kind of craving a chicken wrap. Are you hungry?”

  “I guess.”

  Once we were in line for the drive-through window she said, “Why don’t you show me the boots?”

  “I’ll show you later, I don’t want to get them out now.”

  “You can just open the lid — you don’t have to take them out.”

  I shimmied the box out of the crinkly bag and opened the top. Kris inched the car forward. She glanced at the boots.

  “Oh, those are great.” She sounded genuinely impressed.

  I felt the anger shrinking in my chest. I admired the bright purple laces.

  “They’re my style.”

  Kris reached over and felt the lining.

  “They’re going to be very warm. Are they waterproof?”

  “Yeah, I think, I’m pretty sure it said that on the box. Maybe just water-resistant.”

  The car in front of us turned the corner and we pulled up to the speaker. I shut the lid.

  “What do you want?” Kris asked as she put her window down.

  “Chicken wrap, I guess. And a medium Coke.”

  I twisted around and laid the shoebox in the back seat. I put my window down and emptied the half-full drinks sitting in the cup holder out the window. I would call first thing in the morning.

  * * *

  Every year my parents host a Christmas party. They invite family and friends and also students and students’ parents. My mom makes punch in a cut-glass bowl my nan gave her and my dad bakes a ham with cloves stuck in it and a brown sugar glaze. I come over in the afternoon to vacuum and clean the bathroom. I spread out poinsettia napkins on the table where people lay the cookies they’ve brought. Viv and her mom always come to the party with homemade hummus and mini pita breads.

  This year I invited Kris, sort of impulsively.

  “I told them you’re coming,” I said.

  “Do they know we’re seeing each other, though?” she asked.

  “My dad’s best friend is gay,” I said. “There’s a picture of my dad at Pride in Toronto in the eighties. Him and Clive are sitting on the curb with their arms on each other’s shoulders, it’s really sweet.”

  “Oh god,” she said.

  “My aunt is gay.”

  “Stop,” she said.

  * * *

  My mom picked me up after a matinee shift to go Christmas shopping. There was a film crew making a documentary about Mary Walsh at the theatre that afternoon. They were filming her doing a stand-up set with a live audience, then they were going to boot it to Signal Hill to get a shot of Mary up there before the daylight faded.

  I served a lot of coffee and tea, the occasional glass of red wine. The crew told me to help myself to the granola bars and two-bite brownies they’d set out. I had a Mary Oliver book Kris lent me open on the counter and got a splash of red wine on a poem about the ocean. I tried dabbing the page with a wet paper towel but the stain smeared and spread.

  I heard the theatre door creak open and the thundering of an audience pouring down over the stairs. I didn’t know Kris well enough yet to know whether she would be upset by a stain in a book. The camera crew hustled Mary Walsh out of the building, shouting, “We’ve got a half hour of light, twenty minutes of light.” Only a couple of audience members lingered and ordered a second glass of wine. I texted my mom to let her know I’d be done soon.

  After locking up, I climbed into the front seat of my parents’ car and swung my bookbag into my lap. Mom had the heat on high and CBC Radio on. There was a scientist on, talking about the likelihood that flooding the dam at Muskrat Falls would cause the North Spur to collapse, flooding surrounding communities.

  “It’s evil what’s going on up there,” my mom said, tapping the dial to turn the radio off.

  “I know.”

  “They don’t even have an escape plan for people, they’re saying — this guy is saying they need an escape plan, the government won’t make one.”

  “So Kris, who I’m bringing to the party —” I’d decided to have the conversation, so I began it.

  “This is your new friend, Kris?”

  “Yeah.”

  “The bike mechanic?”

  “We’re seeing each other.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like, romantically.”

  “Sexually?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve had sex?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you enjoyed it?”

  “You’ve never asked me that about a boyfriend,” I said, even though I’d only ever had one real boyfriend.

  “I’m asking because, if this woman is really a lesbian, you can’t mess around with her feelings. She might be really invested in this.”

  “I’m not messing around with her feelings.”

  “You’re serious about it? How long has it been going on?”

  “Going on?”

  “How long have you been seeing her? That’s a normal question.”

  “Anyway I’m just telling you because she asked me to, because she’s coming to the party.”

  The wipers dragged back and forth on the slowest setting, making arcs of slush on the windshield and erasing them.

  “You’re saying you’re a lesbian?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Okay, this is what I’m talking about.”

  “What?”

  “At your age you can’t be reckless with other people’s feelings,” she said.

  “Stop saying that! I just mean I don’t know about lesbian, the word ‘lesbian.’”

  “You’re not attracted to men? You never were? What about Dan?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’re bisexual?”

  “No, I hate that.”

  “What? You hate what?”

  “Let’s talk about something else,” I said.

  “I don’t understand your attitude.”

  “I want to get Angela’s kid a lava lamp, I saw them on sale at The Source,” I said.

  We passed the high school, where a handful of students were crossing the parking lot with instruments in brown leather cases.

  “I’m just telling you because she was worried about the party,” I said.

  “Well she’s obviously welcome at the party, obviously.”

  “Okay, great. Well, that’s all. The lava lamps are two-for-one.”

  I turned on the radio and switched the station to VOWR. They were playing “Frosty the Snowman.”

  “The only thing is,” Mom turned down the radio. “Your grandmother.”
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  We were passing the junior high now — some kids were standing in groups talking, others were tossing balls of icy snow into the road.

  “You think she’ll be at the party?” I asked.

  “If she’s well enough.”

  “She won’t know,” I said.

  “She might not,” my mom said. “She’s a pretty smart woman.”

  Traffic had slowed in front of the school; parents waited for their kids to jog across the road and climb into their cars, then pulled ahead.

  “Don’t worry, we’ll figure it out,” Mom said eventually. “A lava lamp is a great idea. Maybe I’ll get one for Rory too.”

  * * *

  On the afternoon of the party, Kris called me for the first time ever to ask if she should wear a button-down shirt or something more casual.

  “Is it a formal thing? What are you wearing?”

  “Just wear whatever you’re comfortable in, no one will care,” I said.

  “What would make me comfortable is to be dressed appropriately.” I was surprised by the edge in her voice.

  “Wear the button-up, I guess.”

  Kris brought my parents a bottle of wine with a red velvet bow tied around the neck. Her shirt was buttoned all the way up and tucked into her pants. I leaned in and gave her a kiss on the cheek in the porch and she stiffened.

  “Don’t,” she said.

  “What?”

  The door opened behind us, more people were trying to come in, we had to make room for a woman with a big stew pot in her arms. Kris reached down and squeezed my hand.

  We were pushed into the kitchen by the wave of people squishing themselves into the porch behind us. My mom was microwaving rum sauce for fruitcake. She was rubbing the small of her back, she’d been on her feet but she told me the pain never completely subsided.

  “Kris brought you this.” I handed my mom the bottle.

  “Thank you, Kris, so nice to meet you,” my mom said.

  A student walked up to us, presenting a sloppy yule log he’d made, and my mom started fawning over the boy. I turned to lead Kris to the food table and Mom put a hand on my arm. She pulled me close to whisper, “Your grandmother is over there. Go say hello.”