Cinnamon Toast and the End of the World (7 page)

‘So this is it, then. You’re leaving.’

‘Yes,’ I said. I really was.

Lana had a letter of her own. ‘University of Toronto,’ she said. ‘Beat that. I’ll start with History. Should come in handy
for when I take over the entire world.’

We were halfway up the north mountain, looking over the valley – the perfect backdrop for a speech like that. Walking here
had been Lana’s idea. She was on a weight-loss programme she’d worked out herself so she could look sexy for the prom, and
for Captain Hormones in Halifax. This was the first day.

And the last. Because when we got to the foot of the mountain, gravity really kicked in, and after about an hour of heaving
and sweating and suffering Lana announced that she wasn’t taking another frigging step.

‘Never doing this again.’ She collapsed against the guard rail that separated cars and hikers from an inconvenient death tumbling
into the valley. ‘I mean, is this guy really worth it?’

‘No.’

‘Who asked you, Stephen?’

She was laughing and stretching up an arm to wipe the sweat off her face. I caught her elbow just in time. With all that make-up
she’d look like a kid’s smudged finger-painting, I told her. I was perched on the next guard rail post, waiting for my own
breathing to steady. Maybe four years of smoking hadn’t been such a smart idea after all.

This was when we got talking about university. I watched her going on about Toronto and how great it was going to be – the
clubs, the coffee shops, the people – smiling as if she could see it all in front of her. And I was surprised to feel a little
tug of something like anger. She was so damn happy to be leaving. Leaving Riverside. Leaving the Maritimes. Leaving me.

‘I don’t know why you didn’t apply to U of T yourself, Stephen,’ she was saying. ‘You would’ve got in easy. Then we could
be together.’ A sudden blush under that thick make-up. ‘All of us, I mean. Adam’s going too.’

‘Jeez. Is that why you chose it?’

‘Course not. By the time I get to Toronto, I won’t need
him
. I’ll have a whole harem of my own.’ She was grinning at me. ‘You can join if you want, but there’s a membership fee.’

The valley was a checkerboard patchwork below us: light new yellow-green of hardwoods coming into bloom, darker drifts of
spruces, brown fields freshly ploughed. From this distance, it looked almost misty, like you’d expect to see castles with
banners and turrets below instead of the usual bark-coloured Legoland houses.

‘Aren’t you gonna miss this place at all?’ I said.

She rolled her eyes. ‘I’ll buy a postcard.’

I smiled, but my expression felt like my mother’s watching me from across the breakfast table. What was I going to do without
this girl?

Lana Kovalenko had moved to Riverside from Toronto in the middle of Grade Nine, when I was fourteen. I liked her right away.
We’d met at her parents’ house-warming party, the night my mom had that drunken meltdown and started spilling family secrets.

I remember it was January. Sunday afternoon. One of the first days of 1984, the last day of Christmas vacation before school
started again. I felt kind of resentful for being dragged off to this thing – I was still really shy at that point.

Mom hauled me up out of the corner where I’d been sitting with my Walkman, ignoring everybody, and we joined the group clumping
together in the living room. Mr Kovalenko started talking to my mother – phrases from a language I couldn’t make out. She
looked at him like she was trying to do math in her head.

‘Sorry, Andrij. I’m not great with Ukrainian. Worse with Russian too, really. Just a few words here and there.’

‘And your son doesn’t speak it at all, huh?’

‘No, Stephen’s Canadian, I guess.’ Mom dipped her head.

‘You are? Ew!’ It was somebody at my elbow. A girl, my age. She was all in black, her hair gelled up and her eyes dark, little
gold hoops and studs running along the edges of her ears. The same roundish dumpling shape as her parents, but still. You
didn’t see girls like that in Riverside.

‘Lana’s … well, she’s fluent,’ said Mr Kovalenko. ‘The grammar, though. My God! We sent her to Saturday school, but she never
seemed to absorb much.’

‘That’s cause I was always high,’ Lana whispered in my ear, and I’d laughed. She’d had to stand on tiptoes to reach me. I
was at least a head taller than her.

My mother was starting to smile. ‘Oh, Andrij, they like each other!’

‘Come on,’ Lana said. ‘My room. You can tell me about this hillbilly redneck school for retards my parents are forcing me
to attend.’ She yelled out over her shoulder at her dad, as if it were an afterthought, ‘Hey,
Tato
! I’m gonna take this fresh meat up to my room now, okay?’

My mother gave a shocked little laugh, and Mr Kovalenko told her that his daughter had an unusual sense of humour.

‘Keep your door open, Svetka,’ he said.

The Kovanlenkos’ place was all creaking staircases and little angular rooms – like our house, like so many of these old Riverside
buildings. Lana took us on a quick detour to the kitchen so we could grab a couple of beers. I hid them in the sleeves of
my shirt. I guess it was a bit too big for me.

I was wearing the Riverside guys’ uniform. All the boys here wore the same thing year round: jeans, T-shirt, another shirt
with sleeves (usually plaid) and boots that looked like they were made by a tractor company, with the laces undone. Every
few months, your mother would drag you off to get your hair cut by some old creep who’d learned how to barber in the army.
I looked just like everybody else. I was always careful about that.

But I have to say, I was starting to feel like some kind of farm boy dork next to this Toronto girl.

Her room was crowded with boxes, most of her stuff still packed up from the move. I helped her put posters on the wall: pictures
of bands they didn’t play on the radio in Riverside. The Cure. Siouxsie and the Banshees. The Violent Femmes.

‘Your father’s nice,’ I said. ‘What did you call him? Taco?’

Lana laughed, dropped a corner of the poster she was holding and nearly lost the whole thing. ‘It’s
Tato
!’ she said. ‘Ukrainian. Means
“Dad”! Don’t you do the ethnic thing at home? Your mother never calls you Stepanchik?’

‘Fuck, no! Are you kidding?’

‘I think it sounds nice. What are you anyway? Like, what do you consider yourself? You can be Ukrainian if you want. Your
mom’s half or we wouldn’t have you in the house. Or ‘Shulevitz’ is Jewish, isn’t it? Polish Jewish? That’s okay too. But don’t
be Russian. They’re bastards.’

Who could keep track of all this? Most families around here had spent the last five generations in Riverside.

Later it was my turn to go get more beer. I got lost coming back from the kitchen, which was a funny L-shape with too many
doors leading off everywhere. But I figured it out, took my two bottles and scooted past the living room where all the adults
were gathered. Nobody saw me. Perfect. But I saw them. And then I had to go back and look.

My mother, standing on her own, clutching her wine glass in her fist. She seemed to get taller and shorter as she hovered
near this one chair, unsure of whether she should be standing up or sitting down. Somebody bumped into her and she apologised.

Then she was gathered into a conversation with a group of people, and I just about died watching. That vague spooked look,
breaking off in the middle of a sentence, not sure what anybody wanted her to say next. Looking down, looking awkward, smiling
as if to say sorry, waiting for all this to go away.

I stayed by the door, weighed down with stubby bottles in my sleeves. Everybody was chatting so easily, laughing, enjoying
each other’s company.

Say something, Mom. Come on.

I couldn’t look at this anymore. Turned my back and climbed the stairs with more beer for Lana.

Lana was still sticking posters up over her blue striped wallpaper, playing her tapes of cool bands I’d never heard of and
talking for a very, very long time about the Ukrainian Famine of 1933, probably because it proved Russians were evil and so
I shouldn’t be one.

‘They came and took the grain away in trucks! A third of the population of Ukraine gone; I mean, how come nobody ever talks
about this?’ Lana lunged for the volume knob on her tape player. ‘Oh, my God, this is the best song ever! He pushes his daughter
down a well and then hangs himself. You’ll love it.’

At about four in the afternoon, the light started to fade. Out the windows you could see that sulky bruise colour on the horizon,
trees making a dark lattice against the sky. We were downstairs searching for unattended packs of cigarettes so we could sneak
a few. I risked another quick look at the living room.

Okay, so now Mom was talking. Good.

She was the only one talking. Not so good.

My mother’s face was red, her voice higher than usual and cracking in places. She was making vague gestures with her empty
wine glass.

‘Well, no, Papa wasn’t anti-Semitic exactly – he just didn’t like Jews much and, wow, he just hated Stanley! I made it worse,
of course, running off and not finishing school, and then there was the baby. You know, when I had the baby out of wedlock
and they both said they never wanted to see me again, and I was young, so I believed them …’

Jesus Christ. Was she drunk? I realised that Lana was standing beside me.

‘The baby?’ she said. ‘Is that you?’

‘Let’s get out of here.’ We headed back upstairs and stayed there.

I was sitting on the floor fooling around with her guitar, which we’d
just unpacked. Lana was lying on her bed, hanging upside-down off the edge.

‘Come on, tell me about these Riverside country boys.’

I shrugged. ‘Everybody’s boring.’

‘So you’re the only interesting boy.’

I grinned into the neck of the guitar. ‘Basically.’ Then I felt a bit disloyal. ‘Oh, except for my friend Mark.’

‘Is he good-looking?’

Everything stopped. I got this nervous, panicky sensation. Something very close to fear.

It was a simple question. Yes, or no.

A simple question, about something I wasn’t allowed to think about. Except here she was, asking me to think about it.

‘Well, he’s …’ I took a second, forced my voice into the shape of something normal. ‘I mean, you know Mark. He’s …’

He’s beautiful.

I’d felt my face going red, a shocked feeling in the pit of my stomach. Beautiful. Was this Mark I was thinking about? Same
old Mark McAllister, spitting phlegm on the side of the road on the way to school? Yes.

I kept my head down and picked at the strings on the guitar. Come on. Snap out of it.

‘He’s … he’s really hideous-looking actually,’ I said. ‘No eyes and no nose. Got in a fight with a dog when he was a baby.
And instead of ears he’s got these big bone growth things, look kind of like antlers …’ I was starting to make myself laugh,
went on and on, talking about how Mark drooled so much we had to take it away in buckets, and that he could only say the word
‘loofah’, and he had this one hairy eyebrow that kind of moved around all over his face depending on
what mood he was in and … Lana finally had to throw a pillow in my direction to shut me up. Whatever dangerous moment had
just come to me, it was over.

‘You are so weird,’ she said.

I smiled at her. ‘Yeah, I know.’

She’d smiled back, very slowly. ‘I like weird.’

Just then Lana’s dad called us for supper and we ignored him.

We went downstairs later and grabbed some food from the kitchen, looked in the fridge for more beer, but it was gone.

‘Vodka,’ said Lana. ‘I know where there’s vodka.’

There was a white door in the wall beside the fridge. She opened it, walked us into this tiny room full of shelves, about
half stocked with cans and jars, bags of apples and potatoes, twisty lengths of garlic. I followed her. The ceiling sloped
a bit: we were under the stairs. A collection of clunky-looking bottles full of clear liquid sat on the back shelf. Lana picked
up the tallest and took a drink out of it.

‘This one’s nice. It tastes like star anise.’

I tried it. Choked. Lana laughed, but it didn’t sound like a mean laugh. She took the bottle out of my hands, and when she
set it back on the shelf, she still had her fingers linked through mine. We looked at each other for a second.

‘Lana, you’re, like, the coolest girl ever.’

Her voice was as soft as air. ‘C’mere.’

I imagined she’d taste like star anise. Whatever that was.

But before anything could happen there were noises in the kitchen. We froze. It was our mothers. Right next to us, on the
other side of the wall. I peered out a crack in the larder door but couldn’t see them. Instead I was looking at another doorway
across from me, open to a room full of half-packed boxes and house plants.

Mom’s voice sounded weak, gravelly. She was apologising over and over, asking about the kids, were we still upstairs.

‘He can’t see me like this,’ she said. ‘And has anyone actually been up there to check on them? What if they’re having sex?
I mean, she could get pregnant and they’ll have to leave school and get married and they’ll ruin their lives …’