The View From the Lane and Other Stories
Page 10
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At fourteen when I woke in my dimly lit room on a winter day, hearing the television below me and my mother in the kitchen, I moved to the window to see the sky’s anemic blue. I had begun to feel that life was elsewhere, past the yards, the glum rows of houses, past the field of snow between the school and industrial park, past the railway tracks, creeks and fields that marked the boundary of my neighbourhood. Out there, somewhere. I did not want to turn back to my room, to see the bed, the desk against the wall, chipped and shabby, to feel the inherent aimlessness in these objects. But I did turn from the window, left the room, moved through the house, onto the street, and although I’d done this many times, I did it now with a sense of detachment, as if I were somewhere high above my own lone figure walking along the street, looking down at the miniature houses, the yards in stamp-sized squares, at the tree branches like exposed nerves, and at myself, the single figure focused on escaping those streets, fighting through the acres of heavy space, hunched against that winter day. Suppertimes, when my family sat around the dinner table, their faces over the plates were as blank as fingernails and their conversations equally bland.
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Walking to high school I had to cross a major thoroughfare into a more affluent neighbourhood of bungalows and two-storey houses. I grew to know the moods of those streets, to know how evening fell by four o’clock as winter approached and the houses isolated by the cold of those winter mornings. I knew the trees along the road that in autumn shed their leaves and in winter stood like etchings against a white linen sky. My days then were divided into classes linked by crowded hallways, and my mind was consumed by now forgotten, but at the time, crucial intrigues. For years I trudged this same route, past the long line of houses, recognized as markers to my way home. I traveled the route so often that it seemed my life would always be the same, but years later when I found myself unexpectedly back there I remembered the way the streets looked through the seasons and remembered too that sense that nothing would change, and yet everything had.
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When I was sixteen I used to see Vancie’s girlfriend standing in the laneway between our two houses while he worked on his car. I knew her because we were in the same class at school. She’d see me too, and sometimes look away, or sometimes greet me. “Hi, Amy. What’s new?” This was the summer a boy was murdered not far from our home, one hot night in July. Both Vancie and I were in the crowd that had gathered, both of us had seen the boy stagger and fall, coil around his death like a shell hardening. Standing in the eerie silent heat, I looked up to see Vancie across from me, staring at the body of the dead boy, until one of his friends hit his arm and said, “Let’s get the fuck out of here.” I too left quickly, returning to the steps at my back porch where I could feel the splintered wood of the veranda under my bare feet. The air was swampy and I was fanning myself, drinking a soda when I heard the sirens and saw Vancie approach from the unlit path at the back of my house. My mother came to the back door. “Is that Vancie?” she said. “What is he doing out there in the dark?”
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A day in November, a few months after the murder, when the first snowstorm of the year began and large flakes fell, slowing time itself, the houses of the neighbourhood hunkered down against the new cold and snow covered the flowers already dead from an early frost. It was still snowing at four o’clock in the morning when the sound of a taxi woke me. At the window, I saw Vancie’s mother hesitate in the back seat, then move onto the path where Vancie met her, putting his arms around her shoulder, and together they began moving back to the house. The next morning at school I heard that Vancie’s father had died of a heart attack at work the day before.
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By the time I was eighteen I lived alone with my mother. My sister and oldest brother had married and my other brother had been hospitalized for manic depression. In my room under the window where the bed was, on late spring mornings before leaving for school, I would wake to see the curtains move from a weak morning breeze and to hear the swarm of children’s voices below on the street. The sound flooded through me and I longed to return to sleep. My mother downstairs made coffee to take to the back porch, where she sat on a lawn chair and listened to the children. I’d imagine her there, staring ahead, thinking of my brother in the hospital, at intervals the cup in her hand rising to her mouth. I knew if I were downstairs, the sight of her would make me want to escape the house, the neighbourhood and the day, so I stayed in bed as long as possible.
Alone that afternoon in the living room, I turned the television off and sat in a hot silence with the curtains backlit by a bright sun that would have flooded the room if open. Panic and an inability to move overtook me, as if I were being held underwater. The room with its mismatched furniture: chairs, a large chesterfield, tables, the television with rabbit ears perched unevenly, a grey area rug and beneath, worn wood floors, all lay in silence, as if the space was holding its breath. There is no escape, I thought, closing my eyes against the room and the moment.
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Years later, when I’d moved back to the city and was on the bus waiting at a traffic light of an intersection close to the neighbourhood where I had grown up, I saw a man leaving a three-storey apartment building and thought, could that possibly be Vancie? It was a late spring day, the snow was melting and what remained was sooty and partially dissolved, so that it looked as if banks of black lace rimmed the walkway. I could see water in long braids of light and shadow moving along the road into the gutter. Houses cowered beneath the simmering clouds of the approaching storm. It was a day not unlike the day I stood in the lane watching the street when Vancie had passed me without speaking. An ordinary day, when nothing exceptional happened. The man was smoking and he frowned as he looked away from the traffic. There was something in the slouch of his walk reminiscent of Vancie, reminiscent of that street with its sense of ruin and neglect. I could not tell if he was content or saddened by where his life had led him, and I thought, as I waited, that maybe it’s not that simple, that maybe I’m not meant to know. When the light turned green, the bus drew up beside the man and I saw him flick his cigarette butt into the ditch, saw him turn to look toward the traffic, and saw behind him a heavy sky with grey clouds pressing down hard on the scene.
Suicide Notes
When I think of Landy, as I often do, I see her sitting in the kitchen of the house where I lived as a teenager—the table shoved under the window, thick bands of sunlight streaming in from the backyards divided by an assortment of bent and uneven fences. She lived at the end of my street, beside a neglected field, and in grade nine we’d meet on the path behind the church to walk to school. Our long hair straight—mine dark, Landy’s sandy blonde—we dressed in short skirts and leotards, our eyes lined in black. The year was 1967. We viewed the ruckus around us—the loud gang of teenagers, streets with cars lining the curbs and the mess of bikes, lawnmowers and abandoned vehicles in laneways—with melodramatic disdain. This brooding landscape crept into us, of this I am sure, and that at the core of our lives—we thought in such broad terms then—there was a kind of shapeless despair.
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One humid day in the summer I was sixteen, walking to the corner store, wearing flip-flops, cut-off shorts and sleeveless T-shirts, our hair in ponytails, we passed neighbours who also suffered the heat, some drinking beer on verandas, others lying half-clothed on latticed lawn chairs. “Well, there’s a pretty sight,” Landy said, moving her head in the direction of a neighbour. A large woman dressed in a bathing suit that seemed to expand with soft rolls of skin like rising dough, she was moving the hose over her legs and feet, sitting on the distressed rim of her child’s plastic wading pool.
“Cute,” I said, wiping sweat from my upper lip.
“Are you going with Jimmy to the drive-in tonight?” she said. Most Saturday nights that summer were spent there, in Jimmy’s car, or in the unpaved parking lot by the concession stand, where a crowd of us stood
as the night came in and cooled our bare arms. The music from car radios and the smell of popcorn and marijuana surrounded us and became the air we breathed. Behind our talk and laughter, the intrigues we created, movies played on, their images of high-heeled women and adventurous men in air-conditioned rooms contrasting to the close summer heat, the unceremonious slurp of soda and the outline of our feet propped on the dashboard.
“Yeah,” I said, “Where else would I go?”
That night, alone in the back seat of Jimmy’s car, her legs stretched out, crossed at the ankles, Landy said, “I hate this movie. It’s so lame.” She wore blue jeans, ragged at the knees and hem. “Don’t you think?” Her blue eyes huge, larger even than was attractive, gave her a look of someone frightened or overly alert. Her lips were full and her nose had a stubborn groove at the tip, something she hated. Both her parents were Italian, “red-blooded,” she said. And she was thick boned, not dainty as she wished.
From the front seat I turned to look at her. As a staple of late night drive-in movies, we’d seen the movie, The Birds, many times before. “Well the part with that guy in his pajamas and his eyes pecked out,” I said. “That’s pretty scary.”
“It’s a dummy, you know, dressed up; it’s not a real person,” Landy said.
“Speaking of dummies dressed up, look who’s here.” In the line of parked cars in front of us a group of teenagers surrounded a blue and white 1957 Chevy. Some of them were leaning in the windows or against the doors, some standing outside in groups of two or three, smoking and laughing, and as we watched, a boy and girl moved behind the car directly in front of us. He had grabbed her hand and she was trying to yank it back. The boy, Maurice, lived one block over and the year before had been Landy’s boyfriend. “What a dickhead,” she said.
Jimmy came back from the concession stand with a bag of popcorn for me and strawberry liquorice for Landy. “Hey, I saw Robbie in there. He’s here with Maurice, said we should go see them.”
“Yeah, we know, there’s Chevalier right there,” Landy said. She’d given him the name Chevalier after they broke up. “Who does he think he is?” she said, “Maurice fucking Chevalier?”
“And, look, he brought his car,” Jimmy said. “He loves that damn car.”
The girl Maurice had been pursuing finally broke free and ran away as he yelled after her, “You’re not worth the chase.”
Landy said, “Yeah, Chevalier’s Chevy, I remember. Let’s go over.”
“Why?” I said.
“Let’s just go,” she glared at me. “Why do you have to always question when it’s something I want to do?”
Later with Landy and me in the back seat of the Chevy, Jimmy in the front, the movie scene we’d discussed began, when the mother walked past the chipped teacups to the hallway and the bedroom where she’d discover the corpse. Maurice was outside leaning into the car at the driver’s window. “That’s so stupid,” he said. We turned to the screen. “Like that could happen.”
“What do you think, Maurice?” Landy said. “That movies are supposed to be things that always happen? Like maybe they’ll put a camera in your living room and put that on the screen? Yeah, that’ll pack ’em in.”
“Why are you such a bitch sometimes?” He stood and walked over to a group of friends at the back of the car.
“Thank God, he’s gone,” she said. “One more minute looking at that face and I was going to shove something into it.”
We turned to watch the movie, the mother now racing away in her truck, then pushing the lovers apart as she ran into the house. “Oh no,” Landy said. “The damn armrest just fell off.”
“What? Are you kidding?” I said. “You know he’s going to kill us, right?”
In Jimmy’s car ten minutes later, we crept away from the field of docile cars lounging in front of the screen, where now a flock of birds were swooping down on a group of schoolchildren, “You did it on purpose, didn’t you? Landy?” I said.
“Well, it was loose, that’s what gave me the idea.”
The car crept to the exit, its lights off, when we heard Maurice. “My armrest. Who broke my fucking armrest? Everyone. Out of the car. Now.” His voice grew distant, lost to the crunch of gravel under the wheels and Procol Harum’s “Whiter Shade of Pale” low on the radio. It was then, when we reached the gate and the road leading to the drive-in, that we broke down laughing, laugh attacks we called them, when we were unable to stop the flood of laughter erupting from somewhere deep within us where everything seemed irrevocably funny.
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Shortly after I met Landy, her mother was admitted to the hospital with what was then referred to as a nervous breakdown. At the time she was convinced that members of her family had been taken over by other people or forces not to be trusted. When I went with Landy to visit, we found her mother in the sunroom, staring out the window and refusing to look at her daughter. “Mom,” Landy said. “I’m here with my friend, Amy. Remember Amy?” She looked up at us, suspicious. Her eyes, pink-rimmed, gave her a raw look as if even the sight of us caused her pain. “A friend,” she said slowly.
The day she came home from the hospital a month later, she planted herself in a large, ripped chair, her hands clutching its arms, her gaze never leaving the television. Eventually, though, her suspicion abated and she again began to take part in her routine: working as a secretary at an insurance company, cooking supper at night, singing in the kitchen on Saturday mornings. A large woman, Landy’s mother had a beautiful face, framed by thick black hair cut short, and her eyes seemed the colour of some changeable gem. I’d hear the swish of her nyloned thighs and always knew where she was in the house, so heavy was her step. But her voice was light, pitched with a high lilt, as if she was trying to catch her breath. I can see her still, sitting in that ripped lazy-boy, rubbing a foot, “My dogs are barking today,” she said. And the incongruity between her words and the sweetness of her voice gives a comic overtone to the image.
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Landy was the middle child, between an older sister and younger brother. Her sister, Honey—I never knew if this was her given name or a nickname that stuck—was known for her drama. It was in her attitude and appearance; her features pronounced, heavy arched eyebrows over nearly black eyes, and her lips red and thick. It was beauty skewed somehow, beauty recognized because of its uniqueness. Her thick hair was so black it shone blue and flowed down her back to her waist, mane-like, or she’d pull it from side to side as she spoke. Her friends were always about the house, laughing as they moved en masse to her room upstairs, or standing in the vestibule, animated and high. Often I smelt marijuana when I came over, but Landy’s parents seemed to not notice. “Honey tells them it’s incense and they believe her,” she said, her voice tinged with contempt. Honey was two years ahead at school, but when I’d see her there she’d pretend she didn’t see me. “She’s just a bitch,” Landy explained when I asked why.
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“My paws are frozen,” I said one winter day on the way to school and Landy responded, “Fore or hind?” We were walking hurriedly, not bothering to do up our jackets, even though it was twenty below, occasionally chanting under our breath, “fuckin’ cold, fuckin’ cold, fuckin’ cold”.
A clump of kids walked ahead of us, lured to the school as if we were all under the same spell. “Idiots,” she said with her head bent.
“What?”
“Those kids, look at them, brainless monkeys, and look at those two.” Those two were a couple walking on the outskirts of the rowdy group, the girl pulling her coat closed and carrying a purse that looked like my mother’s, with a tiny, stiff clasp on the top, while the boy hovered over her in a protective way, an arm along her waist at the back. Landy said, “Looks like that stupid arm of his is glued there.” Unlike the kids they were with, the couple looked straight ahead, not speaking or laughing. “Leave them alone,” I said. “They’re in love.”
He worked sorting mail and wore the navy blue uniform of the Post Office with his name, Ray, stitched in gold on the breast pocket. I have memories of him in the doorway of their kitchen, dancing and singing show tunes, his favourite “Oklahoma,” his high voice in contrast with his stocky build, the disheveled sandy blond hair and bushy eyebrows. He filled their home with a sense of dangerous gaiety as he made potato chips from scratch, dressed in pajamas, his slippers shuffling across the linoleum, and he renamed me Audrey because he said my name did not suit. “What were your parents thinking?” he asked.
I’d been fatherless since the age of four and it fascinated me how Landy loved and hated him, how there was this center in her life that wasn’t in mine. It made me see the way I lived alone with my mother—now that my siblings, a sister and two brothers, were gone—as somehow lopsided.
After school our habit was to come to my place; my mother worked and was not home until after five o’clock and even when she was there, in contrast to Landy’s home, mine had an atmosphere of consistent calm. We made toast, sometimes with honey or jam, and sat by the kitchen window when she’d say, “Okay, so what would you write?” And we’d start composing the notes we’d leave to be found after our suicide.
“I mean think of it,” she said as I sat over the notepad, pen poised, unable to think what to write. “Nothing you would ever write could ever be as interesting as your suicide note.”