Bad Ideas Read online

  Bad Ideas

  A Novel

  Missy Marston

  Contents

  Why do they do it?

  Part 1

  Trudy

  Because it had been years

  Because the air became water

  Because they had no right

  Because everything stopped making sense

  Because never is a long time

  Because sometimes you can see things coming from a long way away

  Because everyone makes mistakes

  Because it would kill her mother

  Because small towns are unbearable

  Because enough was enough

  Because some solutions can fix more than one kind of problem

  Because you can’t help looking

  Because the black water wanted to swallow you whole

  Because the light at sunset can make anything look golden

  Because sometimes you have to set the world on fire

  Because not everything has to make sense

  Because not all unicorns have horns

  Claire

  Because you can’t just lay down and die

  Because it wasn’t called “The Number Two” for nothing

  Because love at first sight is real

  Because there was no stopping it

  Because you can definitely make the same mistake twice

  Because memories are more important than remembering

  Because hate can be love

  Because the sadness can just start leaking out of you

  Because Mama needs love

  Because you never get a moment to yourself

  Darren

  Because trouble will find you

  Because everything inside you has been rearranged

  Because you don’t get to choose your dreams

  Jules

  Because it’s hard to tell the difference between flying and falling

  Because everything looks left behind

  Because in the country, birds make an unbelievable racket

  Because you can only do some things for so long

  Because so many sad stories are almost the same

  Trudy

  Because even monsters can be lovable

  Because you should be careful what you wish for

  Because you learn something new every day

  Because it doesn’t take much

  Because that’s life

  Because real love is always mixed with terror

  Because everybody remembers everything

  Because if you look hard enough it is probably there

  Tammy (and Fenton)

  Because there is another skin beneath your skin

  Because you don’t know what makes it happen

  Because you’re nobody’s baby

  Because it can never be far enough

  Because you feel the only feeling you can bear

  Because sometimes it all mixes together

  Because sometimes you don’t know what’s happening until it’s over

  Because the impossible is not the possible

  Mercy

  Because nothing is ever quite the way you want it to be

  Because dreams can march right into the daylight

  Because there is always someone eager to deliver bad news

  Because you just keep making things up until they seem true

  Because a little progress would be nice for a change

  Trudy

  Because you never know what you might see in the moonlight

  Because nobody will ever love you enough

  Because there is no point in lying

  Because you think you’re so fucking good

  Part 2

  So Long at the Fair

  Because the end of summer means the beginning of something else

  Because what goes up must come down

  Because there are rude surprises in this life

  Because sometimes it’s better to just turn around and walk away

  Because joy can fill you up and send you right up into the sky

  Because you don’t always want to hear what other people think

  Because some rides are too rough

  Because sometimes you just want to go home

  Because the sun on the water looks like diamonds

  Because a tumour is the last thing you need

  Because Sunday is the Lord’s Day (not yours)

  Because the hospital is never fun for long

  Because the new day is pink

  The Circus

  Because you think you know what you’re in for

  Because nobody invited you

  Because time travels in both directions

  Because family can get on your very last nerve

  Because crying when you are happy makes no sense to children

  Because sometimes you lose the thread

  Because sometimes you feel like a sheet on the clothesline

  Because you don’t want to hear it

  Because it’s always just the beginning

  Because the years come charging in

  Because love is weird

  Because sooner or later you have to make your move

  Because it will all end one way or another

  Because they’re only numbers

  Because there are two kinds of surprises

  Because sometimes it seems like there is only one kind of luck

  Because some things just don’t feel natural

  Because some people never learn

  Because it has always been serious

  The Stunt

  Because maybe they really are trying to kill you

  Because you don’t have to see people go to know they are gone

  Because sometimes you can smell a rat

  Because you made it this way

  Because some people are harder to love than others

  Because it has already happened without you

  Because the wind makes your eyes water

  Because you wouldn’t

  Because you don’t even know who to be mad at for what

  Because it is just a body in the end

  Because there are no diamonds

  Acknowledgements and thanks

  About the Author

  Copyright

  For John & Cathy, Don & Dave

  Why do they do it?

  Why do they do it? What makes them drive their fists through walls, through windows, into each other’s faces? What makes them press the burning ends of cigarettes into the backs of their hands while staring into each other’s eyes? Why do they ride wild horses, bucking bulls, motorcycles, whatever crazy, dangerous, stupid thing they can climb onto? And when they are thrown, trampled, broken to pieces, what in God’s name makes them get back on?

  What makes a man imagine that he can drive a car up a ramp and fly over bales of hay, buses, creeks, canyons and forget that he will break his ankles, his ribs, puncture his lungs, bounce his brain off the inside of his cranium when he lands? If he is lucky. If his sorry life is spared one more time.

  And why are these the ones? The ones making noise, wasting space. The ones that are covered in scars, that should be dead. The ones with less than hal
f a brain inside their heads. Why are these the only ones she ever loves?

  And here comes another one — sad story and all. His jeans riding so low, his T-shirt so thin, his eyes so dark. Jesus Christ. She’s a goner.

  Again.

  Part 1

  Trudy

  Because it had been years

  When those strangers walked into the Jubilee restaurant, Trudy Johnson was twenty-two years old and she had not had sex in five years. Her horniness was closing in on her every thought. It was making her edgy, irritable. But she had made herself a promise. She had decided to forgo the physical for a while. She was in recovery.

  Trudy had the kind of body that caused no end of trouble. Her mother had the same one. Her sister Tammy had it. And her little niece, Mercy, would likely have it one day, too, God help her. The kind of body that grew up too soon, that alienated you from your later-blooming classmates. That attracted the attention of the wrong men. Or maybe it made men act wrong. It made them call you a goddess but treat you like trash. Impregnate you and evaporate. The Johnson family had, at this point, three generations of females living in their house and zero generations of men.

  She had the kind of body that, if you lived in it long enough, confused you about love. It could lead you to believe that any man who really cared for you would not want to have sex with you. Because he would be able to see that sex was not your only purpose. That you had other things to offer. So far, she had not met such a man.

  Except once, in a way.

  Once she had met a man who was not the least bit interested in having sex with her. Maybe because he saw people naked every day, all bodies — even hers — had lost their magic. Dr. Noel Cameron had saved her life once. No questions asked. Every time she saw him in town, he nodded at her, then looked away. The sun always seemed to be behind him, shining all around his big head.

  That was it: one shining exception to the rule. One good man. The rest, Trudy was pretty sure, were complete bastards.

  Because the air became water

  That first spring evening seemed like a long time ago now. A lot can happen in seven months. A lot can fall apart. Trudy would say that it was like a scene in a movie, except no movie she had ever seen was set anywhere that looked anything like Preston Mills, Ontario. Scrubby shit-town clinging to the bank of the cold grey St. Lawrence River.

  Eight hundred inhabitants, one grocery store, one gas station, one corner store called Smitty’s where you could fill tiny paper bags with stale penny candy. Swedish berries, toffee nuggets, black balls, licorice nibs.

  One pool hall that no female would dare enter and that hollering, fighting men tumbled out of at hourly intervals each evening.

  Six churches, one of them Catholic, one evangelical — complete with snake-handlers and speakers of tongues — and four barely distinguishable flavours of Protestantism: Presbyterian, United, Lutheran, Anglican.

  A mile east of town, one massive set of locks that huge tankers eased into and then were slowly lowered and released to continue along the river to the ocean.

  And there was a mill, WestMark Linen Mill, that employed Trudy and her mother, Claire, as well as most of the other working adults in the town.

  There must have been other mills at some point, at least one other, to justify the town’s name. Maybe a long time ago, when it was Preston Mills, the first. Because this was Preston Mills, the second. Preston Mills, the ugly.

  In the 1950s, the town had been taken apart and reassembled between the river and the railroad tracks when the Seaway went through. Highway H2O, they called it. The way of the future. Higgledy-piggledy little Preston Mills — with its winding streets and courtyards, its barns and chicken coops and crooked lanes, its docks and boathouses and pebble beaches — was taken apart and put together again in straight lines. Houses jacked up, wrenched from their foundations, lifted onto trailers behind trucks, dragged back from the water, and deposited on dirt lots along a grid of new streets. Schools and churches were taken down brick by brick and built again. The scar of the old town was still there, at the bottom of the river: the streets, the sidewalks, the rectangular concrete foundations, the fence posts. A map-like outline of the whole town imprinted on the riverbed. And every day giant ships passed overhead, casting shadows over the sunken town like long black clouds.

  Graveyards were moved, too. Coffins dug up and tombstones moved to flat treeless fields. People worried that the workers had lost track, that the bodies no longer matched the names on the stones. But how would they ever know? They wouldn’t. The empty graves were flooded along with everything else. Slowly erased by silt and stones and shells and waving fields of seaweed.

  (There were still bodies under there, though. Everyone knew it. For some of the dead, living relatives could not be found, and in the absence of a decision-maker, the bodies were left where they were. And some people were too squeamish or too superstitious to have their loved ones disturbed. Slabs of stone were placed over the graves to ensure the coffins didn’t float up to the surface after the flood. A sad fleet of haunted little boats bobbing around here and there on the surface. Nobody wanted that.)

  A new arrow-straight highway bordered Preston Mills to the north. The old highway was underwater about a hundred feet from the shore. In a couple of places, it rose out of the water and dipped back in, like the humps of the Loch Ness monster. Enough grass had broken through the asphalt and grown weedy-high that the hills looked like small islands. But if you swam out to one, you could see it was a road. There was a faded yellow line down the centre, and you could walk along until the road sloped back down underwater. In some places you could walk for half a mile before you lost your footing and started to float above the road.

  That was how Trudy had felt when she first saw him: like the ground was suddenly dropping away beneath her feet, like the air had become water and she was floating up toward the bright blue sky.

  Because they had no right

  It was April 1978. Mercy was only four years old and it seemed like the whole town had turned grey. The grey river washed against the grey shore. The grey trees stood against the grey sky, biding their time, refusing to bloom. Trudy and Mercy were sitting in a booth at the back of the Jubilee, and Mercy was peeling the cheese off her slice of pizza and cramming it into her mouth, her little hands covered in sauce. Trudy was smoking, staring past Mercy out the front window of the restaurant, when the door opened and the bells jingled. Two men came in, laughing so hard that they staggered and bumped against each other as they made their way past the front counter.

  Both tall. Both lean.

  Both dressed like they were from somewhere else. Lower, tighter jeans. T-shirts with dumb slogans.

  I’m with Stupid. Keep on Truckin’.

  One of the men was pale and freckled with curly dark hair and giant sideburns. The other man had broad shoulders and a broad smile. His skin was a deep, rich brown. This was a show-stopper. Every single one of the eight hundred inhabitants of Preston Mills was as white as paste — of English, Irish, Dutch, or German extraction — and not one of them had ever seen a black man except on TV.

  “What?” said Mercy, seeing Trudy’s eyebrows lift. “What are you looking at?”

  Trudy scowled at her and shook her head, reached across and touched her finger to the little girl’s lips. Quiet.

  Mercy wrapped her hand around her aunt’s finger and pulled it aside. She whispered, “Trudy, what?” Not waiting for an answer, she rose to her knees to look over the back of the booth.

  “Sit down, Mercy.” Trudy ground her cigarette out in the ashtray and took a sly look around at the other patrons. Nine or ten others, mostly men. Frozen. Staring. That giant fool, Jimmy Munro, pushed his chair back from the table, stood up, and lifted his chin at the strangers. He was always looking for a fight. Trudy could see him sizing up the newcomers, assessing his chances. Mercy brushed a fly off her forehead and looked from Jimmy to the s
trangers and back again. Jimmy said, “Can we help you with something?”

  The freckled one pushed his hands deep into his front pockets, rocked back on the heels of his boots, and smiled. Trudy could see a good three inches of tanned skin between his belt and the bottom of his shirt. She could see the shadowy trail of dark hair down the middle. Like an oasis in the desert. Unable, or unwilling, to take her eyes off this welcome sight, she reached blindly across the table and tugged at the back of Mercy’s shirt so that the little girl dropped back onto her seat.

  “You know what?” said the stranger. “That’s nice of you, but we’re just here to see our friends.” He caught Trudy’s eye and nodded. Then he and his companion walked right over to their table and sat down.

  As if it were true. As if they had any right.

  “Thanks for letting us join you, ladies. Such a friendly little town.”

  Trudy knew she was being observed. Her feelings about this stranger were equal parts rage and attraction. And she was painfully tired. Her eyes were burning from cigarette smoke. She had a full night shift at the factory ahead of her and she had been chasing Mercy all day. And now she found herself in the middle of this ridiculous standoff.

  “Listen,” she said.

  “Jules,” he interrupted.

  “What?”

  “Jules Tremblay. That’s my name. And this is James.” James nodded. Trudy thought she would die of irritation.

  “Listen, Jewels. And James. Nobody in this restaurant believes that you are my friends.”

  “Why not?”

  Trudy sighed. “Because they all know me, and they know I don’t have any friends.”

  “I’m your friend,” said Mercy.

  “Right,” said Trudy. “I have one friend.” She looked over at Jimmy and his table of galoots. Flipped her middle finger at them. They looked away. “Time to go, Mercy. Say goodbye.”

  “Bye, friends,” said Mercy, quietly.

  “You guys should probably go, too. Nothing good is going to happen here.”