Читать книгу The Footstop Cafe - Paulette Crosse - Страница 11

Panic descends on Andy. More than anything else — well, as much as any of his other phobias — Andy is terrified that his parents will divorce. Plenty of kids in his class have two sets of parents, and they wear that shameful brand with as much dignity as nine-year-olds can muster. Kids desperately rely on their parents for order, for conformity, for equilibrium — everyone knows that; divorce screams the opposite.

It is an unwritten rule that the divorce of one’s parents should never be targeted during a schoolyard attack, but in Andy’s case, he knows things would be different. Kids like to pick on him, even now in the new school where, theoretically, they have no reason to think of him as a wimp, save for his meatless limbs, pearly skin, and telescope glasses.

If his parents divorce, his life will become sheer hell. A lonely hell at that. His father is his only friend. And his mother...he chokes back tears as he cleans his mother’s vomit off the kitchen floor.

To Andy, his mom is a red-haired Marilyn Monroe, an awesome alabaster-skinned vixen. When he first heard the word vixen, he imagined a kind of industrious ermine, but a Concise Oxford English Dictionary set him clear on that misconception a year ago. Now that he knows the real definition of vixen — a female fox — he still feels his mother lives up to the word. The term alabaster-skinned dignifies the appellation, gives it a royalness that erases all negative meaning. In his eyes, beyond a doubt, his mother is an alabaster-skinned vixen.

And he knows, with equal conviction and a great deal of fearful guilt, that his father somehow falls short of being an adequate vixen keeper.

So the stark evidence that his mother has been entertaining people this afternoon — a tea tray with two dirty cups on it, and two more cups cradling new tea bags awaiting on the counter — accompanied with the inexplicable vomit on the floor, fallen electric kettle, and his mom’s damp dress, sends tears of dread racing to clog Andy’s sinuses.

Sure, she said she must have caught the flu. Sure, she said she heard Dilly knock the kettle off the counter while she was lying in bed. But what about the four cups, the pulled-out chairs? And most damning of all — for it guaranteed that her guests weren’t female friends — what about her whispered request to refrain from mentioning any of this to his father?

So Andy not only clears up the vomit while his mother painstakingly hauls herself out of bed to prepare dinner, but he also cleans and puts away the teacups, even washes the unused ones, feeling they have, in some way, been sullied. His guilt at concealing this evidence and agreeing to withhold this information from his father makes him miserable. His mother seems unaware of his misery as she hobbles into the kitchen, looking far too ashen for even an alabaster-skinned vixen.

They peel potatoes and carrots together as the clock ticks towards dinnertime. Not once does either of them speak.

In a way, Candice hasn’t lied. She and Gloria are collaborating on a school project. Sort of. Like, it is biology, isn’t it?

Okay, so sure, she and Gloria are no longer in the same biology class, but hello? Is that her fault? If Candice’s demented parents hadn’t hauled her out of her high school, then, of course, she and Gloria would still be in the same class, and they wouldn’t have to sneak around like this against their parents’ wishes. No, not wishes: demands. Like, court orders.

“Mr. and Mrs. Vermicelli agree with us,” Candice’s parents said. “This is the best for both of you girls.”

As if! Putting them both into different high schools only guaranteed they had to see each other more often, ’cause Candice wasn’t able to make friends at her new school. Not award-winning friends, anyhow. Not friends you could trust.

As Candice strips off her sweater and casually tosses it onto Gloria’s bed, she feels another twinge of guilt for leaving that hasty message on the answering machine at home. She deliberately spoke fast, hoping Karen would still be searching for her crutches by the time Candice got off the phone.

Of course, there would be a major crisis to deal with later for even admitting to being at Gloria’s house, but why bother lying? Gloria’s rank brother saw Candice come in the back door when he should have been out smashing his head against other football players. He had a practice scheduled, Gloria said so, but no, the ignoramus caught a cold, came home straight from school, and it was guaranteed that he would tell his parents, and they in turn would fall all over themselves to phone Candice’s parents.

“Don’t worry about it, okay?” Gloria now says. She cracks her gum and unbuttons her jeans. “If you stick to the school project story, what can they do about it? Crucify us?”

“Yeah, whatever,” Candice says with a shrug. She pulls her Calvin Klein sports bra over her head and drops it to the floor. From the corner of one eye, she sees Gloria — naked, olive-skinned, raven-haired — check the lock on her bedroom door and turn the music higher. Her burgeoning body reminds Candice of one of those Italian sausages Mr. Vermicelli sells — shiny, spicy, stuffed so full it threatens to burst its seams.

Parental-focused guilt flees and instead wet impatience fills Candice. Her nipples go rigid, the skin on her scalp tautens. She continues to undress, taking her time, oh-so-casual ...

But what if Gloria doesn’t make the first move? Then what? As if Candice will! No, it has to be Gloria, always Gloria, ’cause Candice is too cool for that, even though between her thighs she is steaming and pulsing like a potato in a microwave.

But what if Gloria doesn’t make the first move? What if Gloria starts laughing instead? What if all their prior games — none as committed as this — have just been part of a setup to get Candice completely exposed while some hidden camera records her total humiliation?

Gloria approaches her. “You’re just so spinal,” she says, running a finger across Candice’s back. “I’d totally kill to be as thin as you.”

Candice shrugs, though her skin puckers at Gloria’s touch and the baked potato between her thighs releases a jet of steam.

“And your skin is sooo white, like a swan or something.”

“Yeah, but I burn easily. In the summer, you know.” She can’t turn around, can’t face Gloria. Her heart is a bullhorn in her ears, her legs whimper to sink into the bed. So bad she wants to turn around, to press and slide her skin all over Gloria in a wild feeding frenzy, but she can’t, no way.

She feels two cool, soft breasts press against her back, feels Gloria’s fuzz against her own naked buttocks.

“You sure you want to go ahead with this? You don’t have to, you know.”

“I know,” Candice says calmly, almost indifferently.

“We’ve got plenty of time to change our minds. Mom and Dad won’t be home for a couple more hours yet.”

“Do you want to change your mind?”

“Do you?”

Candice shrugs again, as if she cares less.

“I mean, we’ve talked about this, right?” Gloria says. “It’s not as if we’re lesbians or anything. We’re just practising, so we don’t make idiots of ourselves when it comes time to do it with a guy. Right?”

Candice doesn’t want to hear that word, not right now when she’s burbling and rippling down there, all briny with heat. So she turns and says, “Sometimes you talk too much, Gloria. Let’s just fuck, okay?”

And Gloria says, “Okay.”

Which is, like, what she’s supposed to say.

Morris finishes work at 5:15, says good-night to Clara, his receptionist, and heads home. He thinks of Karen while he drives — specifically, how he first met her. His last appointment prompted the memory: Penny Edmonds, a twenty-five-year-old delicately laced with lavender perfume. For a half-second, until Morris noticed her weak arches, her feet took his breath away.

Karen had feet like that when he first met her — slender and smooth, the nails tiny translucent crescents topping perfect alabaster toes. Impeccable cuticles cupped nail bed to toe. The ankles were slim and strong, the heels uncracked, the creamy skin flawless, soft, and cool as satin.

Usually, even the best feet suffer some flaw, some minor imperfection. The big toes sprout a few hairs, or a thick vein protrudes on the ankle bone. Toes can look like squat sausages, not in proportion to the length of the foot, or like thin, groping fingers. Something always mars the foot’s elegance.

So although Penny Edmonds’s weak arches are only a minor flaw, Morris’s connoisseur eye noticed them instantly. As he drives, a pang shoots through him and, wistfully, he remembers the first time he saw Karen’s feet.

Lying on Ambleside Beach, baring his lean, student-white frame to a lukewarm sun, eyes safely shielded beneath his Hawaii Five-O sunglasses, Morris was studying the myriad of feet walking by him. He was stretched out on his belly, of course — so many exposed feet in a constant dizzy parade provoked an impertinent bulge in his blue Speedo bathing suit.

Then they passed him: naked, dusted with sand, a thin band of gold around the right ankle — the perfect feet. He gaped, he became dizzy, a strangled cry escaped his throat. As the feet walked away, he scrabbled from his beach towel and stumbled after them.

Above the smell of hot dogs, coconut oil, and vinegar-doused french fries, the smell of lavender perfume drifted, coming from the owner of those wondrous feet. Like a drunken man, Morris introduced himself, ignoring the fact that the girl was at least ten years younger than himself. He was immune to the derision on the faces of her friends. All he cared about was her feet.

Morris shifts on the cracked vinyl seat of his car, restless from the memory. He carefully applies the brakes as he approaches the corner of Mountain Highway and Lynn Valley Road and admonishes himself to concentrate. This area is rife with hazards, positively rife. Bicyclists cluster around the Starbucks coffee shop to his right, attracted to the heavy, cloying aroma of roasted java beans like hummingbirds to nectar. That’s what they always remind Morris of, those cyclists — gaily coloured, spandex-sheathed hummingbirds. And the bicycles are hummingbird wheelchairs.

To his left, smelling of gasoline and grape bubblegum, stands a 7-Eleven convenience store made hazardous by the horde of teenagers lurking outside, dressed in their immensely baggy pants, ski toques, and brand-name sweatshirts. More than once Morris has witnessed an accident between a cyclist, a teenager, and a car at this busy junction. And Morris hates accidents. Getting Karen pregnant was an accident.

He frowns and turns the corner onto Lynn Valley Road a little too sharply.

Morris would have eventually married Karen even if she hadn’t ... if he hadn’t ... if the Accident hadn’t occurred, because as well as her feet, he was infatuated with everything else about her — her bubble-filled laugh, her bizarre religious background, her clumsiness, her attention to his needs, her wildly frizzy hair, her industriousness, her loyalty, her willingness to try anything. This last was his undoing, since it provoked the Accident.

Never once did she flinch, hesitate, sneer, or display shock at his attraction to her feet. Not even the first exquisite time he placed her feet sole to sole and slid his penis into the wonderful, smooth hole her two marblelike arches made. Whether he suggested inserting one of his own immaculate big toes into her, or masturbating himself while she lovingly cradled his feet between her lush breasts, Karen was willing to try anything.

And so when she shyly suggested that perhaps, if he didn’t mind so much, they might actually try intercourse...well, he felt obligated to perform.

Of course, he enjoyed it immensely — he was still able to feel her exquisite feet sliding up and down the backs of his calves as he pumped away. But being a fool, he assumed she was protected. A mistake, that. An accident.

Morris turns — again, a trifle too sharply — onto Peters Road and thinks: It shouldn’t have happened. The odds were against it.

He recalls something from the biology classes he was required to take to get his podiatry degree, something about a woman being fertile for only twenty-four hours once a month, and out of the twenty million sperm the average man ejaculates into a vagina, only fifty reach the egg alive. The odds of Karen falling pregnant that first time were entirely against it. But, nonetheless, it happened.

Morris’s fingers whiten on the steering wheel, and the pleasure of the whole memory vanishes, chased away by self-recrimination. He turns too quickly onto his gravel driveway, tires splashing through potholes and kicking pebbles into the street.

No, he can’t forgive himself for his oversight, for not ensuring Karen was on the Pill before so glibly agreeing to have intercourse with her. Because pregnancy altered her. Specifically, it changed her feet. Where once smooth, slim ankles existed, stouter ankles marred by small, permanent folds now lived. Curvaceous arches were exchanged for slightly flattened ones; two perfect size 7AA feet were transformed into two size eights. During her pregnancy, calluses rudely took up residence on either side of her big toes, and even to this day, they refuse to leave. In a word: ruined. Morris ruined the only pair of perfect feet he’s ever encountered.

Wearily, he climbs out of his Tercel and trudges through the rain to the back door, wondering how Karen can possibly love him after what he did to her.

Andy has fallen into the habit of visiting the suspension bridge every evening as dusk descends. How this compulsion started, he doesn’t remember; he’s not even conscious that it is a compulsion, that within him ticks some clock that guides him to the creaking, slimy planks of the hanging bridge at precisely the same hour each day.

After he finishes his homework, or practises his trumpet, or helps his mother chop broccoli/carrots/ eggplant for dinner, he slips into his jacket and shoes and races to the bridge. Every dusk. His mother warns him not to be late for dinner.

If it’s raining, he runs, rubber boots splashing through the puddles that pock the gravel road of the park; if it’s sunny, he also runs, sucking in swift, deep breaths of moss-and-cedar-scented air. No, he doesn’t run; he flies. Occasionally, he flaps his arms, glasses bouncing up and down on his nose and turning his vision staccato and trembly.

In the fall and winter, dusk comes early, almost as soon as he arrives home from school, and the park is silent save for the roar of the creek. Sometimes a dog walker passes him; he knows a few of the dogs by name. There is Bear, the barrel-size black Labrador with ropes of drool hanging from his mouth, and there is Grizzly, the exuberant malamute who stinks like a mildewy raincoat.

But the summer is different; the parking lot is packed with cars and buses. Tourists crowd the park’s single, paint-flaking totem pole, attempting to take pictures of one another. The German tourists wear big bellies, big cameras, and big voices. The Asian tourists swarm around their guides like bees around their queen. From the concession stand wafts the smells of Pine-Sol disinfectant, hamburger grease, and spilled orange soda.

No matter the season, Andy’s little form is ignored. He expects this invisibility because he is of the canyon, while the tourists are not. They no more see him than they do the purple periwinkle that grows by the roadside in the spring, or the orange lichen that grows like tiny inverted suction cups on the north side of fallen logs in the fall. The tourists are only interested in the bridge that swings above the creek, in satiating their lust for awe. They visit each headstone in the park, they pore over the dangers graphically displayed on the billboard, they jump up and down on the bridge so that the cables creak as white foam crashes on the rocks far below.

Likewise, Andy ignores the tourists.

He doesn’t think during these flights, not at all. Not of his tormentors at school, not of his fall from Candice’s grace, not of his parents, his homework, his inadequate twig body. He has given himself permission not to think of these things. During this special half-hour, he merely flies, inhaling the fragrance of wet rock and decaying leaves, sucking into his lungs the scent of swordferns, hemlocks, and the long tresses of beard moss.

In the spring and summer he runs to Twin Falls, which is relatively free of tourists because it requires a ten-minute hike downstrean from the suspension bridge — too much like work for most tourists. There, he climbs onto the wooden bridge (a stout, short, normal bridge plastered with gum and engraved with initials), leans over its slimy wooden railings, and gazes at the crashing green water below.

In the fall and winter he doesn’t need to escape the tourists (there are few), so he heads to the suspension bridge. Here he either watches the swirling water far below or he looks up and gazes at the sky. Either way, he witnesses magic: the magic of the creek or the magic of crows.

Crows, yes. For in the fall, against the smoky lavender of dusk, myriads of black forms wing their way southeast. Their silence is intense, their numbers staggering. Andy tried to count them once and gave up, overwhelmed after reaching a hundred for the seventh time. Only occasionally this creek of feathered black is broken by an empty stretch of sky, marked by a star or a lone, straggling crow.

Andy has discovered that it isn’t just here that this phenomenon can be seen. While visiting Nanny and Grampa Woodruff, the exodus of crows can be witnessed from their backyard. While strapped in his parents’ Tercel, stuck in traffic on the Second Narrows Bridge, he has also seen this flood of crows.

They appear out of the distant sky, black dots from West Vancouver, North Vancouver, and Deep Cove. The dots resolve into glossy wings and powerful beaks. The crows always appear in the fall, never in the spring or summer, and they always fly southeast, never north or west.

No one seems to notice this bizarre twilight ritual except Andy. He never sees anyone else look up. Crow after crow wings its way southeast, and no one notices save Andy. He wonders what strange, dark purpose the crows have, and how the thousands of people in the city can be unaware of this fantastical sunset journey. It fills Andy with awe and fear: he is surrounded by people oblivious to a great gathering of nature.

Once, he mentioned this phenomenon to his father, even managed to get him outside into the gravel parking lot adjacent to their house to look upward.

“Probably heading to a rookery somewhere, or migrating,” was all his father said, and Andy gaped at him, stunned. So many crows heading to the same rookery? So many thousands gathering unerringly each autumn night at the same place? That was too incredible to picture! And migrating, how could that be? Vancouver is no less short of crows in the winter than in the summer, so the crows aren’t leaving.

Unless, of course, phantom crows fill their places, shape-shifting spirits that choose to disguise themselves as crows ... It is this thought that currently shivers over Andy as he stands on the suspension bridge, neck craned back, glasses blurred with rainwater, fat cold droplets splattering his pale face and trickling down his neck. He is not thinking about his mother’s frightening request that he refrain from mentioning her vomit to his father, nor is he thinking of the fallen tea kettle and the four teacups. Instead, he is merely watching the crows.

And thus he doesn’t see something large, antlered, and white moving ponderously along the creek bank, just a few hundred yards upstream from the canyon falls below. Thus Andy misses the only opportunity in his entire life to see a live white hart.

Karen’s head aches and her eyes refuse to focus; the last thing she needs is a confrontation. In all honesty, she has forgotten Candice’s brief message on the answering machine; all events immediately following her painful fall to the floor have mangled together in a haze. But now that dinner is over, now that Morris and Andy have retreated to the living room with their slices of carob cream cake, Karen wearily remembers the phone message and realizes that a confrontation is inevitable: Candice disobeyed orders by visiting Gloria, and Karen will now have to inform Morris and discipline of some sort will be required.

To her surprise, Candice brings up the subject first.

“Look, I know I’m not supposed to see Gloria except on weekends, okay? But I have this biology project due, and I haven’t made any friends yet at Sutherland.” Candice scrubs viciously at a pan, soap suds flying like spittle from her scouring pad. “I mean, how can I make friends at that stupid school? They’re all retroactive abortion candidates. And so Gloria helped me out, just this once. I mean, Dad doesn’t have to know, okay?”

“I can’t conceal it from your —”

“Reality check, Mom. I’m not asking you to conceal it. All I’m saying is, because you banished me from the only real friend I have in the world, I wasn’t able to finish my homework. I needed Gloria’s help. Her school is way ahead of mine. I mean, we’re still learning about circulation and they’re already doing reproduction —”

“Why couldn’t you ask a teacher for help?”

“There was a staff meeting right after school, the report is due tomorrow, and it’s worth twenty percent of our marks in biology. If I didn’t have it ready in time, I’d have flunked. You don’t want me to flunk again, do you?”

Candice avoids Karen’s eyes and concentrates on removing crusts of baked cheese from the pan. Karen studies her daughter, dishtowel hanging limp and forgotten in her own hands. Something looks wrong in this scenario, sounds wrong: Candice’s flushed cheeks, her atypical dishwashing energy, her lack of defiant glaring .

“You aren’t making this up, are you?” Karen asks.

Candice’s head snaps up. Her flush deepens. She clenches the scouring pad with white fingers. “That’s great, Mom, just great! I didn’t have to phone you, you know. Mr. and Mrs. Vermicelli weren’t even home. But, no, I decided I’d do the right thing and tell you about it, and what do I get in return? You call me a liar. That’s just great!”

“But you seem so agitated.”

“Of course I’m agitated! Why shouldn’t I be agitated? You blame my marks at school on my friendship with Gloria, you separate us, and then when I try to improve my marks at my new school, you call me a liar ’cause I’m honest enough to tell you I met with my only real friend to get help with some stupid homework!”

Karen knows there are a half-dozen flaws in her daughter’s logic, but she also knows that the tears of frustration welling in Candice’s eyes, the taut quaver in her voice, and the frustration emanating from every pore in her body are more important than the flaws. Not for the first time, Karen feels a pang of guilt at complying with the decision Morris and Angelo Vermicelli made to separate Candice and Gloria.

“Tell me what we should have done then,” she says, pressing her fingers against her throbbing temples and trying to concentrate. “We tried everything for you, Candice — tutors, curfews, rewards, mentor programs ... nothing worked. Both you and Gloria failed Grade 11 and it looked like you were going to do the same again this —”

“What has that got to do with anything?” Candice cries. “That’s just so typical of you to change the —”

“I’m not changing —”

“Yes, you are!” Her voice cracks, and a tear drags mascara down one cheek. “Look, I’m not a liar, okay? I went to Gloria’s and was honest enough to phone you about it! I don’t know why I even bothered!” She throws the scouring pad into the sink. “You can wash the dishes yourself for all I care!”

Karen watches her barge through the swinging doors, hears her thump down the hall...One second, two seconds, three seconds, wham! The whole house reverberates as Candice slams her bedroom door closed. Karen winces; the sound feels like a cannon placed against her temple. She gropes for the counter, eyes watering, and inadvertently knocks her crutches to the floor. They land with a repercussive clamour.

“Mom?” a small voice says behind her. “Dad wants to know what’s going on.”

“Nothing,” Karen whispers hoarsely. “Nothing. Your sister is having some female problems, that’s all. She’s feeling a little under the weather.”

A pause. “Do you want me to help you finish the dishes?”

“Oh, Andy ...” Karen whispers, and this time it is her turn to release a tear. “What on earth did I do to deserve you?”