Not Suitable For Family Viewing (10 page)

I have to clench my teeth to keep from smiling. I can feel the cold hovering over the water. Where’s this warm current he was talking about? I start making these stupid peeping sounds every time a wave laps up closer.

“Look,” he says in this Mr. Reasonable voice. “I’m just trying to be helpful. You must be exhausted carrying this huge weight around all day. I mean, it’s tiring
me
out and I’ve only had it for a couple of minutes. The water will make you feel lighter. It will ease your poor overburdened bones.”

I laugh and then I hit him because I’m mad I laughed.

The waves splash up and soak my ass. I squeak and try to lift myself out of the way. It’s like I’m trying to scramble up onto his shoulder or something.

He’s going, “Down, girl! Down, girl!” and laughing.

I’m laughing too. This whole thing is ridiculous.

Levi takes a few more steps and says, “Okay, my fat little friend, the time has come. You’re going for a swim.”

I go, “No!”

I clamp my lips together like a Muppet and shake my head. I practically crush his neck. He tries to pull my arms apart but I won’t let him.

“Gee,” he goes, “I thought it was all blubber but there must be some muscle in there too. You’re strong.”

“You’re horrible,” I say.

He looks me right in the eyes. “And you’re stupid,” he says. “You don’t really think you’re fat, do you?”

I don’t know how to answer that. Why don’t we just stick to the fun stuff?

He goes, “You do. I can tell. What? You want to look like a boy or something?” He pops his eyes out at me. “Good thing you’re pretty, because you’ve got a serious mental problem. Luckily, I know the cure.”

“Yeah, right,” I say. “Okay, Dr. Freud, what do you prescribe?”

“It’s called shock therapy.” I laugh. “Ooh…I don’t like the sound of that.”

“It’s very effective,” he says. “I’ll show you.”

Then, with me still in his arms, he falls backwards into the freezing water.

Monday, 1 p.m.

Mimi: The Magazine

The Summer Love Issue. It’s hotter than ever out—but it’s not global warming. Love is in the air. Make the most of it. Mimi shows you how!

I fly up out of the water with my mouth wide open and my eyes bulging. I must look like that kid in
Home Alone.
In my entire life, I’ve never been so surprised or so cold or—so cold. That’s all I am. One-hundred percent cold. I start to run ashore. I can feel the arches of my feet curling in on themselves like someone’s pulling them closed with a drawstring. Levi grabs me by the T-shirt.

“Ah-ah-ah. Not yet. I promised Kay you’d go swimming.”

“I…I…did!”

“That’s not swimming. That’s dunking. There’s a difference.”

I don’t have time to argue. A wave knocks me off my feet. I come up sputtering with hair all over my face. Levi laughs.

I push him as hard as I can. He goes under. I start to run ashore again.

He comes after me. I don’t have a chance. He picks me up, runs back out and throws me in.

This time, I swim underwater as long as I can. When I come up, I see him looking around in a panic. He must think I drowned.

I go, “Yoo-hoo! Over here!” He gives me this
I’m going to murder you
look and starts dolphin-diving toward me. I take off. I’m a pretty good swimmer. By the time he catches me, we’re both too tired to do anything except splash each other in the face a few times. We catch our breath and just sort of hover around for a while. His hair’s all slicked back like he’s an old-fashioned magician or Ralph Lauren model or something. It makes him look really grown-up. He has a very straight nose.

“You’re shivering,” he says.

“Surprise, surprise,” I say. He takes my hand. I sort of float toward him.

He looks at me for a while, then says, “Your eyes are exactly the same colour as the water.”

I don’t know how to react. I let go of his hand. I turn away. I say, “Um. Do you want to go in now?”

There’s a pause as if he’s going to say something, then he just nods. “Yeah, okay. Sure. If that’s what you want.”

I don’t answer. I catch the next wave. We bodysurf in to the beach. It’s so much fun I drag him out to do it again.

Monday, 2 p.m.

You, You and Mimi

“Love in a Lunchbox.” Guest chef and culinary historian Chris Filliter sheds new light on the humble sandwich. Is tuna fish on white really the food of love?

I peel off my wet T-shirt and shorts. Seeing me in my bathing suit might give him second thoughts about me not being fat but I’m so cold I don’t care. It’s the only way I can get warm. We sit on one towel. He puts the other one around my shoulders. He dries himself off with his shirt.

“Hungry?” he says.

I nod. He opens his mouth to say something. I go, “Don’t even try.”

He says, “What?”

“You were going to make a fat-girl joke.”

He sighs and hands me a sandwich. “Am I really that predictable?”

“Yes.” I take a bite. It’s a classic old-lady tuna sandwich—squishy bread, crunchy lettuce, lots of Miracle Whip. I don’t know what I’d think about it normally, but right now, it’s delicious. I sit with my
knees pulled up to my chest, eating, shivering, looking out at the ocean. My life is suddenly perfect. It’s scary.

Levi rubs my back. “Cold?” he says.

I can’t look at him. “Un-huh,” I say. “Sorta.” He rubs harder and edges a little closer to me. I lose the ability to eat. I’m either really cold now or really hot. I can’t tell which.

He takes his hand away. I suck my breath in. Why did he do that? Did I do something? I look at him.

“Want another sandwich?” he says. He opens one of the waxed paper packages and peers inside. “I think it’s chicken.”

I shake my head. I’ve only managed to eat two bites of the one I’ve got.

He looks at my unfinished sandwich and lifts his eyebrows way up. He puts his hands on either side of my waist and squeezes.

He says, “I don’t know how you manage to keep any meat on your bones…”

All I can think of is how flubby I am. I go to push his hands away.

He says, “You eat like a bird!”

I’ve got one hand on his hand. I’m looking him in the face. I forget about how fat I may or may not be. Suddenly all I can think about is “Eat Like a Birdie.” Should I tell him? Would he believe me? Would it ruin everything? People are never the same once they know I’m Mimi’s kid.

He’s looking at me too. He’s waiting for me to say something.

I go, “Uh…” I’m not sure what comes next.

He lets go of my waist and moves back.

“Oops. Sorry,” he says. “Was that a touchy subject? I didn’t mean anything by it. Frankly, it was just another cheap excuse to get
my hands on you…” He pulls his head back and checks me out. “You’ve got a really small waist, you know.”

I can’t help myself. “You mean, compared to everything else.”

“Yeah,” he says.

I knew it was too good to last. “Gee, thanks,” I say.

He leans back on his elbows. “That’s
good,
Opal! Small waist. Big…other things.” One side of his mouth smiles. “I hate to break it to you but that’s the way the male mind works.”

My heart makes one big thump as if it just ran headfirst into my chest bone. I have to turn away. Did he actually say that to me? I bite my mouth closed so I don’t smile or laugh or, I don’t know, squeal or something.

Then, out of the blue, my heart slams into my chest again.

I’m an idiot. Why am I falling for this? I know what’s going to happen. He’ll say what he needs to say. He’ll act like he cares. He’ll dump me. Same old, same old. Just a variation on the pattern I got used to with those girls at school, with Selena—with Mom, come to think of it.

I can still feel where he was touching me. Hot orange palm prints sort of throb away at my waist as if I’m a victim on
CSI.

Neither of us talks for a long time. I don’t feel happy any more, but after a while I don’t feel particularly bad either. That’s just the way things go. He probably didn’t mean what he was saying anyway.

“Last chance,” he says. He waves a waxed paper package in front of me. “Speak up or I’m eating it!”

I’ve been holding my sandwich so tight that my fingers have pinched through. I shake my head in the most neutral way I can. I’d like to get through this with some dignity.

“Oh-oh,” Levi says. “Did I step over the line there?”

He’s lying on his side, one hand propping up his head. The skin on the inside of his arm kind of sticks out where the muscle is. It’s really white and smooth.

“Look, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have joked about that again.”

“No,” I say. “It’s not that.” I pick some grains of sand off my leg.

He sits up. “Then what is it?” He’s sort of smiling at me, concerned, waiting.

I don’t care what all those other people did or what they thought about me. I get this sudden urge to trust him. Wouldn’t everything be perfect if I could trust him?

He puts his hand on my back again. “Is something wrong?”

“Um,” I say.

I turn to tell him—tell him my real name, who my mother is, that stuff about the ring, everything—but his face is right there, just inches away. He could use a shave and he’s got these little gold lines kind of radiating out from his pupils and there’s still the purple ring from where I punched him and he goes, “What is it?”

I say, “I…I need to go to the bathroom.”

Monday, 3 p.m.

You, You and Mimi
(rerun)

“Surviving a Home Invasion.” Hostess extraordinaire Nicole Kelly shows Mimi how to deal with unexpected, unwanted and even unwashed visitors.

I chickened out. Fine. Probably just as well. After all, I promised myself I wasn’t going to tell anyone about Mom.

But did I really have to say I needed to go to the bathroom?

Could I not have come up with something else? Anything else?
I’ve got a stomach ache. The Mob’s after me. I’m worried about money/global warming/my breath.

Anything would have been better than providing Levi with this nice mental image of me squatting, virtually naked, in the great outdoors like some big old cave woman giving birth or something. It’s gross.

And speaking of squatting, what kind of park is this anyway? You’d think they’d have bathrooms around here—but he laughed at that too. It’s a wilderness park. It’s not fully functional yet. Washroom facilities come in Phase 2. Whatever. It all means the same thing. This is a toilet-free zone. Bend your knees.

He points to the back of the beach. “Just go behind the dunes,” he says. “Don’t worry. I won’t look.”

I trudge off with the towel around my waist. The dunes form a little trench. I’d probably be okay but there’s no way I’m going to strip off right here in broad daylight. What if somebody else comes along?

I’m glad I didn’t tell him. Not for Mom’s sake—for mine. It would just make things weird. I’d be setting myself up again. I want him to like me because of who I am, not because of Mimi.

I turn and look at him. He’s sitting there leaning against his knees, staring out at the water. I can see all those little bumpy things going down his spine.

I can’t pee here. I’m too close.

I scramble up over the other side of the dunes, walk through the beach grass and into the woods. The first part is scrubby. Bushes mostly. I squat down behind one and check. If he turned around, he wouldn’t be able to see anything except my head, but still. I’d feel ridiculous. It would be so obvious what I’m doing.

He knows what I’m doing. Everyone does it. I’m normal. It’s the people who don’t pee who have the problem.

I know that but I still walk farther back into the woods. It must be the cold—I actually really need to go now. I keep sort of practice-squatting behind trees and looking out at the beach to check if Levi can see me.

He rubbed my back. He saw me in my bathing suit. He wasn’t grossed out. He wanted another excuse to touch me. He
said
that. I’m out here all by myself, looking for a place to pee, smiling like an idiot.

I find a little pine tree. I peer out from behind it. He could probably still see me if he was really looking hard, but it doesn’t matter. This is good enough.

I gather a bunch of dry leaves for toilet paper and make sure I position myself so that the pee runs away from my feet. I take another last look out at the beach. I start to pull my straps down. A shiver runs up my back.

I hear this raspy voice go, “What do you think you’re doing, maid?”

In some part of my brain I know it can’t be Levi because I saw him on the beach a second ago—but I guess I don’t process that.

I swing around. I go, “Levi!”

There’s a man standing there pointing a rifle at me.

Monday, 2:30 p.m.

Radio Mimi

In “A Rocky Start,” Mimi looks at how to step back into relationships that got off on the wrong foot.

I cover myself with my hands as if he caught me naked. I start to shake even worse than when I was swimming.

The guy wags the gun at me and says, “Who are you?” He’s got this dirty-old-man voice and an even stronger accent than Levi’s. It almost sounds like he’s saying “ye” or something.

I can’t get my mouth to work. My brain is overloaded, taking him all in, dealing with dying, suddenly needing to pee more than I’ve ever needed to pee in my life.

I’m terrified. The guy looks like Rumpelstiltskin. An armed Rumpelstiltskin. His face is unbelievably wrinkled. He’s tiny—maybe five-two or five-three—and skinny. Like a little bird or baby rat before its fur’s grown in. He’s wearing boots and long pants and a winter jacket and one of those hunter’s hats with the flaps turned up, but I can still see how skinny he is. His clothes must have been different colours at one time but they’re so dirty now that they’re
all just variations on grey, as if someone took a charcoal pencil and shaded the whole picture in.

He says something that sounds like, “You durst not make me ask you again, maid. Who are you?” His voice is louder this time. He’s missing all the teeth on his right side.

“Robin,” I say because I’m not thinking. It comes out in a shaky little whisper.

“What? Louder!”

“OPAL,” I say.

He turns his head and spits. “So yer one a those, are ya? It won’t help you none here, maid. What yer doing on my land?”

He takes a step toward me. He’s got a limp. His gun’s pointed right at my belly button. Should I grab it? I’m way bigger than he is. I could take it. If I could move, that is. But I can’t.

“I just needed…to go…like…to the bathroom…sir.”

He jumps back at that. “You come here bold as brass to make yer water on another man’s land? You people with yer high and mighty ways! You comport yourself like the Good Lord gave you dominion…” He suddenly stops talking. He perks up his head like a hunting dog.

“Hey, Embree! What’s up?” It’s Levi.

The guy nods and says, “How do.” He’s not actually hiding his gun but he’s sort of pretending that it’s nothing to worry about.

Levi puts his arm around me. “I see you’ve met my friend Opal.”

The guy rubs his scraggly beard. “I did.”

Levi acts like he’s introducing me to his grandmother. He says, “The two of you should have a talk one day. Opal’s doing research on the area. I told her—you want to know something
about Port Minton, Embree Bister’s the man to go to! He knows it all.”

I can tell the guy’s not too pleased. He looks me up and down as if I’m the one with the filthy clothes and stringy hair.

He says, “I thank you for that, Levi, but I’ll not be sharing my knowledge with the likes of her. I know her kind. Making her water on my property! That’s a slight I won’t forget, Levi. As you rightly implied, I’m a man with a long memory.”

Levi pauses like he’s going to say something, then changes his mind. He smiles and says, “I never argue with a man holding a gun, Embree, so I think we’ll just take off now. I’ll tell my mother I saw you. I know she was hoping you’d come into the clinic and get that foot looked at. Take care of yourself now, Embree.”

Embree has a little laugh at that. “You needn’t be worrying about me.” He pulls back his scrawny shoulders just to prove his point and says, “It’s the others what got to worry.”

We don’t stay around to find out what that means.