Rosie O'Dell (15 page)

“Sure, you’re not even friends with them anymore.”

“Well, no, not like we used to be, but that can change.”

Dad turned on the television and Mom went in the bathroom. I’d say it was a
good thing they loved me so much because otherwise, going by the looks on their
faces, they would have cheerfully taken turns killing me. And I had no idea
why.

The next day at the London Zoo, Mom and I gawked at the massive,
fearsome-looking Guy the Gorilla. What I found most eerie about him was that
sometimes, though his face was turned slightly away, you would suddenly realize
that his eyes were swivelled to peer right into yours all the time. When I first
noticed this, it actually made me jump back in startled surprise. It
half-reminded me of Brent’s father. Then a small bird flew into Guy’s cage and
landed on the ground beside him. He quietly reached his long arm out, took the
bird into his hand, and brought it close to his face to examine it gently and
tenderly.

“By the way, Tom,” said Mom, “it’s not a big deal, but there’s no need to
mention to Rosie or Dr. Rothesay or anyone else that I was inquiring about
him over here. It was an innocent attempt at contact on my part,
but, out of context, it might be subject to misunderstanding, as happened to
you.”

“I won’t mention it to anyone, Mom. I never see him anyway. I haven’t even been
in their new house.”

“Haven’t you? Even with all the bicycling with Rosie this summer?” She looked
away for a few seconds and I saw a very slight shake of her head before she
smiled at me and said, “Let’s go look at William Blake’s ‘Tyger, Tyger, burning
bright.’”

NEAR THE END OF
last school year, I’d heard our teacher
Miss Pretty say that Principal Curly Abbott had described Rosie as a butterfly.
From the start of grade eight, that would not have been my take on her. I would
have called her a hornet. She seemed to be hell-bent to make up for the time
she’d lost to last winter’s melancholic funk. In the first weeks, she became
editor of the student newspaper, president of the student council, and head
prefect. On top of her editorials, popular among the students ( “Let’s Start
Grading the Teachers”), she also wrote earnest articles for the newspaper in her
own name on human rights and abuse of power, abstract pieces that no one except
Suzy and me and, I was surprised to learn, Brent, ever seemed to finish reading,
but which some teachers, perhaps in anticipation of a teacher-grading system,
called so insightful, so cutting-edge, for anyone to write, let alone a girl her
age. By Christmas not one of her marks on tests was less than an A plus. And she
was playing volleyball and basketball and indoor tennis.

I was Rosie’s best male friend, which was not saying much, because apart from
Brent on the fringes, who spent most of his time at hockey, I was her only male
friend. And any time I spent with her was usually associated with some activity
at school—student council, prefects, newspaper—that I was also involved in. Two
or three times I went to important inter-school games she was playing in and
cheered along with Suzy from the gallery. And every now and then Rosie and Suzy
would come to a swimming meet and cheer loudly for me. It kept alive in my mind
that Rosie and I were still special to each other, but somewhat below her
relationship with Suzy,
which reminded me sometimes of the
warmth and closeness that we’d possessed when we were exclusive best friends and
innocently budding lovers at eleven years old.

Boys in grade eight were forever asking Rosie to parties and school dances and
she always declined. The boys’ failure to sway her with their charms, and the
slight edge she showed in her personal contacts with them, her somewhat icy
distance, turned the thirteen- and fourteen-year-old lads into Freudians. Some
opined that she was “frigid” and that the real tragedy of her refusal to go out
with them was that they had the gear and knowhow to cure what ailed her. Others
diagnosed her as a closet “nympho,” hiding her urges behind her stuck-up mask
for fear of opening up those floodgates of lust if she ever got close to them.
The rest of the barely pubescent Lotharios dismissed Rosie’s otherwise
incomprehensible failure to fall for them by lumping her and Suzy together:
“Where’s the big mystery? A couple of lesbos.”

I asked her only once to go with me to something and she replied, “Not this
time, Tommy, if you don’t mind. I’m not into that stuff these days. But if I
was, I’d want to go with you.”

I discussed my dilemma with Brent the following Saturday night during
commercial breaks in the Leafs and Habs game. On the one hand, I really wanted
Rosie, who was playing hard to get, while apparently teasing me with a forlorn
hope, but on the other hand, there were three other cute chicks who were giving
me the eye, two in our school and another at the last three hockey games I’d
watched Brent playing in.

Brent didn’t think Rosie was trying to manipulate me or jerk me around: “She’s
not like that. She’s a great girl.” But if I wanted more than just friendship
and wasn’t getting anywhere, it was time to move on. He was planning himself to
ask Kirsten, the head cheerleader, to the next dance or party that came along.
Meanwhile, he was leaving hints in the hope that she would twerp him. Twerp
Week, a venerable institution in grade eight at Smearies School, occurred around
Valentine’s Day. During the week girls were encouraged to invite boys to events.
I’d already accepted one invitation to a party—from the Miss Christmas Princess,
no less—and was joshed about it at the newspaper editing board meeting after
school. That night, Rosie called me up. She was “twerping” me, she said. Could
she take me to that “Wallowing in chocolate and marshmallow” party that Brenda,
the captain of her basketball team, was holding next weekend?

I blurted, “But where’s Suzy?”

Rosie laughed. “We’re undergoing a one-day trial separation. Was that a
no?”

“Jeez, Rosie, yes. You know it was a yes.”

“I didn’t know but that yet another beauty queen had snapped up my old
buddy.”

“Well, you were just lucky this time.”

“Speaking of Suzy, do you think Brent would go with her if she asked
him?”

“I don’t know, Rosie. Between the two of us, he’s got his eye on the head
cheerleader, Kirsten. But I’ll find out from him if you want.”

“Could you do it on the q.t. and let me know? I can tell you right now that
Kirsten is not invited to this party. Brenda and most of the other girls on the
basketball team are too pissed off with the cheerleaders for always going to the
boys’ games and hardly ever coming to cheer at ours.”

I called Brent with the intelligence about my invitation from Rosie and
Kirsten’s banishment from the party. Did he want to go? No, he said, not the way
they were treating Kirsten. I asked him if she had twerped him for anything yet.
He replied she hadn’t, but he thought that was because she was a bit shy. I told
him how I thought he should de-shy her—the same way I had with Rosie—accept an
invitation to this party from another girl. “Let me guess,” said Brent.
“Suzy.”

“She’ll certainly ask you if she thought you’d say yes.”

“I don’t know, Tom. I don’t want to give her the wrong idea.”

“You won’t. I’ll make sure Rosie knows you don’t have any long-term interest so
she can get that across. I want you to come and Rosie does, too. Look at the
great times we had last summer.”

THE NIGHT OF BRENDA
’
S
party was
cold and breezy with a light but constant fall of snow. Brent and I agreed to
meet the girls there and everyone got drives from their homes. The first sign of
trouble that night was when a friend of the hostess’s fifteen-year-old brother
collapsed drunk and unnoticed in a snowdrift outside on the lawn before he could
make it to the door. What saved him from death by hypothermia was that someone
spotted him being humped in the beautifully swirling snow by the family German
shepherd. Brenda’s brother managed to half-walk, half-drag him through the side
door and down to a couch in the basement rec room without Brenda’s parents
knowing anything about it. Her mom and dad were
upstairs on the
second floor trying to be inconspicuous so as not to spoil the youngsters’
party.

While Brenda’s brother was down in the basement, two more of his
fifteen-year-old friends showed up at the party drunk and strutted about the
kitchen and living room among the awed thirteen-year-olds. One of them was
evidently a celebrity. Brent pointed him out to me. He was a hotshot in
competitive midget hockey and named Dake or Zack or something. “Oh God,” said
Suzy when she spotted him. “What’s he doing here? I didn’t even know he was in
St. John’s.” She knew him from central Newfoundland from a couple of years
before. Brent said he was now in high school here, his family having moved to
St. John’s last summer. He was tops in hockey.

“Suzy Martin!” said Dake or Zack or whatever. “What a pleasant surprise. I was
wondering what happened to you after they kicked you out of the school back
home. My night is made. What do you want to do later, blow job or hand job? I’m
easy.”

Suzy turned her back on him and walked out of the room. Everyone, including me,
looked at Brent. He walked over to the Dake or Zack guy and said, “What did you
want to go and say that for? That wasn’t very nice. Apologize to Suzy.” Brent
was about four inches shorter than him.

“Who the shag are you, demanding apologies? Oh, it’s the Bantam star. What’s
your name?” He snapped his fingers to fake trying to remember. “I saw you at
practice the other day. Hey, keep at it. It’s coming.”

“I said apologize to Suzy. She’s here with me.”

I didn’t know what to do. Rosie moved towards Brent and I followed. “Let’s go,
Brent,” she said. “Suzy is out by the door. We’re leaving. She doesn’t want you
to be doing this.”

“You’re here with Suzy Martin?” said Zack or Dake or whatnot. “You’re kind of
young to get a dose of the clap, aren’t you?”

Brent’s fist flew straight from his shoulder to the other’s solar plexus. The
guy abruptly sat down on the floor. Gasping, he got to his feet quick and came
at Brent. When he was in range he aimed a kick at Brent’s crotch. Brent stepped
back and took hold of the toe and heel of his boot. Then he twisted the foot
hard. I heard a crunch or a rip as the guy flopped over on his belly, followed
by his shriek of pain. The other friend first crouched down by the injured guy
and then got up to go at Brent. Rosie and Brent and I stood there waiting for
him.

By now Brenda’s brother, and her father, summoned from upstairs by
her screeched “DAD!” were in the room and held back his other
friend from behind. Then the father found out between groans of “I’ll fucking
get you for this, Anstey,” the reason Zack or Dake or whatever couldn’t get up
and walk, and said they’d have to get him to the hospital.

Brenda’s father said to his son, “Your friends smell like a goddamned
still.”

His son’s third friend, the one they’d found being romanced by the dog in a
snowdrift, emerged from the door to the basement now and staggered into the
living room, mumbling, “What’s all the fucking fuss?” Spotting his friend on the
floor moaning, he lurched to him in great concern, bent over to examine him, and
vomited on him.

Brenda’s father bawled at the top of his lungs, “This party is over. Everyone
out. Everybody go home.” He received no argument from the invitees, most of whom
were already shrinking from the room. Brenda, the hostess, ran up the stairs
bawling her eyes out.

Brent leaned into Brenda’s brother’s ear and muttered, “Tell your buddy that
this time it’s only the rest of the hockey season. Next time, the prick will be
out for life.”

“No need to get like that, dude,” said Brenda’s brother. “He’s only an
arsehole.”

Brenda’s father said to Brent, “Anstey, don’t let me see you around here
anymore, okay?”

Brenda’s brother said, “It wasn’t his fault, Dad. Jamieson started it.”

Brenda’s father said to Brent, “Your father is Anstey Motors, right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Yeah, well, he sold me a bloody lemon, okay?” He started to walk away but
turned around. “I’m going to have to report Jamieson’s violent injury to the
police.”

The plan had been that our mothers would pick us up when the party ended in
three or four hours. Meanwhile, they were busy at something else themselves. My
own parents had gone to a movie. Rosie and Suzy and Brent and I decided to walk
back to my house together because it was the closest. On the way Suzy tried to
apologize for the trouble, but we wouldn’t have any of it. “Even his best
friends think he’s an idiot,” said Brent.

Rosie said, “Poor Brenda told me that a couple of her brother’s hunky high
school friends were coming to the party. That was supposed to make it the party
of the year, the envy of all the grade eights.” She turned to me. “How do you
like our date so far?”

“Oh, excellent. But the night is still young. I hope nothing
happens to spoil it.” We laughed, but then I realized it wasn’t very amusing for
Brent. He’d probably be getting a visit at home from the cops tomorrow, charging
him with assault. “Sorry, Brent, that’s not funny. Make sure you call us to give
statements for the police.”

“I hope your father doesn’t get mad at you when he finds out about all this,”
said Suzy.

“Who, Dad?” Brent snorted. “He’ll be delighted—twice. One, because I crippled a
guy who pissed me off, and two, because he’s selling so many wrecks I actually
ran into a guy by chance who bought one.”

At my house, we had the place to ourselves. We got Coke and chips from the
kitchen and settled down in the sitting room to watch a
Here’s Lucy
rerun. Brent and Suzy sat in two separate armchairs and Rosie and I sat on the
sofa. She shifted over close to me and said, “It’s been a while since I’ve been
here. Not much has changed, I’m glad to see. We used to sit here together all
the time, remember?”

“Yeah. Nothing will ever change here. Mom and Dad are too busy all the
time.”

“I saw this show before,” she said. “Don’t mind me if I have a little nap. I
had a busy week. But wake me up if anything good comes on.” She rested her head
back and closed her eyes. Within a minute, she gave a little jump and started
the slow audible breathing of sleep.

The light was dim and the other two were side on to me, gazing at the TV. I was
moved to reach into Rosie’s lap and take her hand in mine. As soon as I did so,
it triggered something in her sleeping brain. She leaned towards me and lowered
her head until her face was a few inches above my crotch, while at the same time
placing her free hand on my pants and stroking my penis gently. Then she removed
her other hand from mine and used both hands to begin to open the zipper of my
fly. I was paralyzed with astonishment. I don’t know what I would have done if
Rosie hadn’t suddenly straightened up and opened her eyes. “What?” she muttered.
“Who…?” She looked down at her hands and abruptly pulled them away, turning
wide-eyed to study my face. For a few seconds she said nothing and her face
reddened with embarrassment. I could almost see her brain churning behind her
eyes. Worry on her face, she looked over at Suzy who, like Brent, was still
watching the screen.