Bad Ideas Page 8

  And when it was all over,

  when Tammy was sleeping, her cheeks still purple-red from pushing,

  when Trudy took the baby from her sleeping sister’s arms,

  when she ran her hand over the tiny baby’s head and smoothed down her sparse, soft, dark hair,

  when Trudy held that baby against her breast, leaned in and smelled her skin, kissed her plump cheek, she had felt something new. This was a new kind of love. The kind that was mixed with terror.

  Mercy, she thought. God, have mercy on this child. Make her different from us. Make her better, stronger, faster.

  Make her relentless and clever and mighty.

  And she would be. She was.

  Trudy knew it right away. Mercy was all that and much, much more.

  Because everybody remembers everything

  On her weekend off, Trudy drove Mercy to the Point to see the boats. The sun was getting warmer now, making her believe that summer was possible after all. They rolled down their windows and reclined in their seats and waited for a ship to come through the locks. The light on the rippling water was blinding. Mercy shielded her eyes with one hand, looking east then west, licking her pistachio ice cream with her already-green tongue. She ordered it every time; mostly, because of the colour.

  “I remember my mom, Trudy.”

  “I know. Me, too.”

  “She had brown hair like mine. Light brown.”

  “Yup.”

  “She was pretty.”

  “That’s true.”

  “She gave me a necklace.” Mercy touched her throat. “Where is my necklace, Trudy?”

  “Not sure, babe. It’s around somewhere. We can look when we get home.” Trudy remembered the necklace, too. A tiny silver shamrock pendant with a fake emerald, on a short silver chain. In some box or drawer or jam jar somewhere in that house. Needle in a shit-stack.

  “It’s not lost,” asserted Mercy.

  “No.”

  “Maybe my mom is lost.”

  “No, I’m pretty sure she knows her way home. It just might take her a little while, that’s all. She’ll be back.” Spoken with less conviction than she would have liked, than Mercy would have liked, but Trudy had never been a great pretender. She made an attempt at distraction. “Should we go see those unicorns again tomorrow?”

  “Sure,” said Mercy, staring out the windshield. “I can show everybody my necklace!”

  Trudy looked out her window at the water, glittering gold, the sun lifting a bit of mist off the surface. As always, the boat came from the direction you weren’t looking in. It came toward the back of her turned head, its enormous bow looming up out of the distance, wedging into the narrow channel.

  Its smokestack-topped stern as big as a high-rise apartment building, unmoored from a city street and floating away down the river.

  Away, away. Always away.

  Because if you look hard enough it is probably there

  And there it was. After an hour of searching, there it was in the back corner of the bedroom closet. There, tangled in the deep shag of the carpet, its chain a complicated snare of a knot. Trudy, her bare knees being tattooed by the carpet, leaned down onto her elbows and pulled the shamrock necklace carefully away. She sat cross-legged on the floor and started at the knot. Mercy crawled over, knelt down right beside her, and put her head against her shoulder, watching every move. “You can fix it. Right, Trudy?”

  “Not if I can’t use my arms. Shove over.” Mercy moved over a bit, folded over on herself, and rested her forehead on her knees. She stayed very still. Praying, possibly.

  Finally, Trudy put her hand under Mercy’s chin and lifted it up. “There. See?” The necklace dangled off the end of her index finger, the green stone glinting in the light. Mercy held her hair up off the back of her neck and let her aunt put the necklace on.

  “Never taking it off now, Trudy!”

  “That’s right, pal.”

  “Even when I take a bath.”

  “Sure.”

  “Thank you, Trudy.” Mercy said this with alarming seriousness, her small hand on her heart.

  “No sweat.” Trudy pulled Mercy close for a bone-crushing squeeze. She hated her sister sometimes. Most of the time, really.

  Tammy (and Fenton)

  Because there is another skin beneath your skin

  If you followed the bank of the river to the west, only thirty miles away from Preston Mills, you would find Tammy, in Brockville, Ontario. She worked in a strip club but was not a stripper. She was something even dumber than that: she was a topless waitress. Serving drinks, emptying ashtrays, wiping up tables, taking crap from drunken idiots. All with her shirt off. In a bar called Jiggles.

  Dumbest job ever.

  When she had first started working at the bar, she had felt so exposed, like she had been peeled. She didn’t know how to stand, how to walk, how to bend over and pick things up. Everything felt like a pose. And she couldn’t keep her eyes off the girls on the stage, their legs in the air, opening and closing like fans. But it didn’t take long to forget, for it all to seem normal. For the dancers to fade into the background. For her own skin to start to feel like a uniform she slipped into at the start of each shift.

  Until the day she met Fenton. Fucking Fenton.

  A mouse of a man, sitting with a loud tangle of municipal workers in the back corner of the bar. One night, he had detached himself from the group and started following her around. Clearing tables for her, helping her restock the bar at the end of the night, asking her questions about her life. Her family. And suddenly, she felt nude all over again. And angry. And in love.

  In love with Fenton Osborne. How could it be? Short and skinny, crazy as a loon. But he just wore away at her like sandpaper on a board until everything was smooth and easy and she couldn’t imagine her life without him anymore.

  Because you don’t know what makes it happen

  Fenton had problems. Nobody could argue otherwise. He lacked ambition and he smoked a lot of pot. When Fenton was alone and when he smoked pot, he was not nervous. Take away either of these variables, and he was quite nervous indeed. It had always been this way. When he was a kid, he couldn’t talk without pacing. He would look to the ground, thinking about what he should say, and the second he started speaking, at the sound of his own voice, he would begin to walk in circles. His mother used to grab his hands before asking him a question so that he would stay still when he answered her. It made him feel like he was going to explode.

  But in spite of his nature and his habits, as a grown man, Fenton had found a way to be happy. He was in love and he had a job. Each day, he got up, put on his coveralls, and walked out into the sunshine. Or into the rain or sleet or snow, depending on the season. He smoked a joint as he walked to the depot and got into a truck. He cut grass, raked leaves, flooded rinks, plowed the streets. Some days, he washed windows or picked up litter from the side of the road with a spike at the end of a wooden pole. He was almost always outside, and he was almost always alone. All of this was good.

  Until the spells started again.

  Last week, for example, he was cutting grass. It was bright mid-morning, and he was driving the tractor across the wide green expanse of St. Lawrence Park. He headed slowly toward the river, turned to the right, and rode along the bank, getting as close as possible to the rocky shore, then turned to the right again toward the town. He was riding up and down over gentle hills, turning right and right again in diminishing rectangles around the park, making semi-circular detours around trees, leaving dark green lines of cuttings on the bright green grass. The air smelled of grass, brine, sunlight, and soil. He was alone and his heart was happy.

  Fenton turned off the mower and stepped down from the tractor. A giant laker was edging into view from the west. A long red-and-white ship against the grey-blue water and the clear blue sky. Black smokestack high at the stern. Fenton leaned
on his rake and watched the big boat go by, feeling the thrum of the engine pulsing through the earth under his feet. It had taken ten, maybe fifteen minutes for the ship to pass out of sight. He watched the blunt, cut-off stern of the boat as it moved away, the sun in his eyes. Like a factory on the water, his mother used to say. That working on boats was just like working in a factory, only on the water. Fenton didn’t think this could be true. Not entirely. Not when you could walk out onto the deck and smell the water, see the cities and towns go by. Houses and farms and forests all crowded up to the very edge of the land. Dogs in yards, cows in fields like specks. You couldn’t see or smell anything in a factory except the factory. He knew that from experience.

  Dragging his rake across the grass, Fenton felt it beginning. Maybe it was the vibration of the ship that brought it on. He didn’t know why the spells came, but he knew that if one came, others were likely to follow. One after another, day after day until they went away for a month or two.

  Here it was. He could see it and he could hear it. There was a high sound like the breezy summer air had crystallized and was ringing like a million tiny bells. The edges of things glittered and sparked and magnified. He could see everything in a sharp, sparkling light. The cut end of each blade of grass, the grain of the wood of the rake handle, the web of tiny diamond-shaped lines on the backs of his hands. This was it.

  Fenton’s knees buckled and he fell onto the grass. He was out.

  When he woke up, there would be a sharp pain in his head. He would have trouble with numbers for a few days. Nothing would sound right. And he would long to get it back, that dreamy, spacy feeling that knocked him out cold.

  It was as though the universe had allowed him to step out of the stream of time for a moment, to be suspended and let it all flow past him. Every time it happened, it came as a great relief.

  Because you’re nobody’s baby

  Tammy understood very well the desire to step out of your life, to resist the current dragging you forward. Or down.

  It was safe to say that motherhood was not what she had expected. Not that she had spent a great deal of time thinking about it, even when she was pregnant. Being pregnant felt like a dream. It had all seemed so unbelievable, so absurd: her pumpkin belly, her enormous breasts, the baby moving around in there. She could actually see it moving, pressing against her flesh from the inside, creating humps and ripples across her stomach. Even watching this — the movements of the baby inside her body — even when the contractions started, the whole idea had seemed far-fetched. Like science fiction. A practical joke.

  She had spent the first six months of her pregnancy brainwashing herself into believing it was not really happening at all. Her periods had stopped, and everything started tasting like aluminum foil. She started eating only peanut butter on toast and bananas. She drank only cold milk or ginger ale. When her bras stopped fitting, she went to Beamish and bought stretchy ones. Likewise, her jeans. She mentioned none of this to anyone. She did not even allow the words to form inside her own head.

  Until one morning, her mother stopped her in the kitchen, her hands heavy on both of Tammy’s shoulders, and she started to cry. Tammy told her to stop blubbering and get off. But the jig was up.

  Predictably, the news spread through Preston Mills like proverbial wildfire. It was spread with joy and sanctimony. As though the words were printed on ticker tape — Tammy Johnson is pregnant! — and floats paraded through the town, showering the news over everybody. It serves her right, Tammy supposed was the general feeling. Though Preston Mills seemed to relish the idea of an impregnated Tammy, they did not favour being faced with her real fleshy self. At first, she almost enjoyed the discomfort she caused people on the street, but the novelty soon wore off.

  Three boys who had slept with her had pre-emptively denied being the father of the baby. Several boys who had not slept with her had also stepped into the spotlight and made passionate denials. Her boyfriend of the moment, Gary Petty, evaporated in a puff of Player’s Light Navy Cut smoke. Tammy quit her job at the gas station and camped out on the couch. Her mother made casseroles. Trudy, the centre of the universe, acted like the whole situation was a personal insult, a plot designed to make her life more difficult.

  And when the baby was born in a flash of terrible blinding pain — brilliant in the seemingly endless tedium of the crushing pain of labour — when they finally handed the baby to Tammy, she felt cold panic spread through her chest. What went through her mind was this: It isn’t mine. This isn’t my baby. She stared at the baby and the baby stared back, and she thought:

  This is not mine.

  Later, when the baby cried, warm milk would soak the front of Tammy’s shirt, turning cold and sticky within seconds. Cursing, she would storm upstairs to change her shirt while Trudy or Claire warmed a bottle, scooped up the baby, and fed her.

  Even though Tammy would stay for almost three more years, she was already never there. They were already getting along just fine without her.

  Because it can never be far enough

  It was the middle of winter when Tammy left. She got ready to go to work at the gas station as usual. She picked up Mercy and gave her a quick squeeze before trying to set her down. The toddler cried and tugged on her shirt, grabbing at her pant legs as she headed for the door. All business, Claire picked Mercy up and headed toward the kitchen. Trudy was upstairs in bed. Nobody said goodbye as Tammy stepped out into the freezing January morning, the cold air making her shaky breath visible.

  Claire and Trudy had been angry with her for months, pouring on the guilt. Tammy had been out a lot lately, had started not coming home after work once a week, twice a week. And she found that the more time she spent away from home, the better she felt.

  So, that morning, while Trudy slept, Tammy shuffled around the darkened bedroom, packing a bag. Some of her own things, some of Trudy’s. She brought the bag downstairs and put it by the door in plain sight. Who would notice with the amount of junk jammed into the tiny entryway? When she left for work, Claire was so caught up in comforting poor Mercy, in showing Tammy how it was done, she didn’t notice the bag. Had she even noticed her leaving? Tammy doubted it. She left the house. She worked her shift, and at quitting time, she just waited around in the parking lot in front of the garage. When the Voyageur bus pulled up, she got on it.

  She hoisted her bag onto the rack and settled into her seat. She watched thirty miles of grey-blue river go by her window, then the low stone walls of the outskirts of Brockville, with its psychiatric hospital, its boarding school for girls. A movie theatre, a dairy bar, a strip club, a row of shops. The courthouse. The bus pulled to a stop outside another gas station, and she hauled herself up and walked down the aisle, down the steps, and out onto the gravel lot. Snow was starting to fall in big fat fluffy flakes, glowing in the beams of the street lights.

  It wasn’t very far from home. Not nearly far enough. But it was a start.

  Because you feel the only feeling you can bear

  Her baby would be five years old soon. One year, eight months. That was how long it had been since Tammy had seen her child. Or her own mother or her sister. She tried not to think about Mercy, but every time she did, she felt angry. There was a series of micro-emotions — passing almost too quickly to be detected — between the idea or image of her daughter coming to mind and the feeling of burning, sickening anger. These feelings probably included love, guilt, anxiety, and simple sad longing, but none of them stuck. Anger was the one that took hold.

  Anger was the only one she could bear.

  Because sometimes it all mixes together

  The sound of the smoke alarm was almost drowning out the sound of the timer on the stove. Fenton could hear both now, one on top of the other.

  “Fucking retard.”

  “I didn’t hear it!”

  “How is that possible?” Tammy pulled open the oven door and thick black smoke rolled out li
ke thunderclouds. She launched the tray of desiccated fish sticks and sent it sailing through the air. Fenton ducked as the smoking tray spun over his head and bounced off the wall behind him. He stared at the tray on the carpet and at the scattered charcoal-crusted rectangles of fish. The light was catching in the threads of the carpet, in the crispy black coating of the fish. Gold light was pouring in from all sides, filling in all the spaces between all the objects he could see.

  “I don’t believe this.”

  The alarm stuttered and Tammy’s voice became slower, deeper. Fenton leaned back against the couch and looked at her through the golden haze. She was just standing there, hands on her hips.

  “The parade is on Sunday,” he said, eyelashes fluttering.

  “Fantastic,” said Tammy.

  “The fish will be there.”

  “Great. Perfect.”

  “And pumpkin pie.”

  Fenton thought he could hear a great cheer rising up from a crowd as he closed his eyes, as the room shuddered to the right and toppled him sideways onto the floor.

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

  He knew it was a bad idea. It couldn’t be worse, really. But Fenton couldn’t help himself. This was the fourth time this week. He parked the truck at the yard and walked the wrong way. Instead of walking home to where Tammy was waiting — likely fuming, she was always fuming lately — he walked three blocks in the wrong direction, then turned north. The idea was to travel north in as straight a line as possible, no matter what got in his way. He walked between two red-brick houses, then climbed a fence, walked through a flower bed, across the lawn, splashed through an old plastic wading pool, through another flower bed, over another fence. Down the alley. He walked across the street, between the houses, through another yard, and scrambled up onto the roof of a shed and jumped to another shed in another yard. And so on. Until he was north of town on the other side of the highway, climbing over barbed-wire fences and walking through the yellow-green pastures.