Skinny (9 page)
"What's on your mind, G.? You seem distracted."
I look at Sol's eyes, sombre and full of longing. I notice how when the light hits them they aren't black at all, but almost
hazel, warm, trusting. Suddenly, I'm filled with dread. The thought of going on with the rest of the afternoon, let alone
the rest of my life, is overwhelming.
"I don't know, I think I need another drink. I think you need one, too."
Sol jumps up. "I'll get them, just one though. There's a police press conference I gotta go to soon."
When he comes back with two beers, we clink bottles and I grab his hand and he kisses me again, filling up my delicate confusion
with his sunshine mouth until the dog next door starts barking ferociously.
"Sol?"
"Yeah?"
"I think my mother had an affair," I say, staring straight ahead at the dead-end cracked grey concrete of our quiet little
street, willing the dog to stop.
"What? With who?" Sol gets down on one knee and bends his head, listening, ever listening.
"With our dad."
I'm standing at the window of the hospital room, waiting for our car to come into the parking lot. It's a beautiful day. I
picture Jen and everybody kicking a soccer ball around and wonder if Marco has even noticed that I'm gone. The pain's not
so bad today and I'm feeling less groggy. I put on my uniform—the only clothes that I can see are around—there's still blood
on my collar and shirt front. I can't find my socks so I put on a pair of paper hospital socks and then my shoes. When I finally
see Mom, a nurse comes in with a wheelchair and my file.
"Do I really have to?"
She nods and smiles and then places my knapsack, full of books and sneakers and damp clothes, in my lap. She wheels me out
to the entrance, where Mom's waiting, looking a little red. Her hair's all messed up and when she kisses me she smells grainy,
like Dad used to smell after coming home late at night after staff parties.
"Are you all right?" I ask her. "You seem weird."
"I'm not, I'm fine."
I walk to the car, slowly 'cos it hurts to move too fast, to breathe too deep. Mom holds my arm and looks down at the ground.
She starts the engine and takes the first turn a little wide.
"Am I in trouble?"
Mom slants her eyes at me.
"For what?"
"For this, the hospital, the fight."
Mom looks at the road as she speeds up to stop at a red.
"No, Holly, you're not in trouble."
"Because you can ask Mr. Saleri, you can ask Jen, Ma . .. Look, those girls just jumped on us."
Mom nods and glances down at her hands, which are red and raw.
"I know, honey, I'm believing you."
"You do?"
"Yeah."
We stop at a dessert shop and Mom has coffee and a glazed nut cake and I order cheesecake and a Coke. Mom stares at me as
I gulp it down.
"Do you feel all right? Do you have any pain?"
I nod and continue eating the cake.
"Yours is better, your cheesecake. This thing tastes like a box."
Mom looks so worried and messy, like she needs to be comforted, so I reach out my hand and she takes it, open-palmed.
"I need you to promise me one thing though, Holly."
I throw my fork down. "I told you! It was messed up,
we
were the losers, they'd already beaten us, why would we—"
"It's not about that. I need you to finish high school. I know you don't like it, but you have to try."
I pick up my fork. "They have a hockey team in high school."
Mom laughs, "No hockey. Pick two sports, just two."
"Can't I pick hockey?"
But Mom doesn't hear my question. She's staring into the grains of her espresso cup, and then, without looking at me, she
says, "We're a family. Aren't we?"
I don't say anything, mushing the crumbs of my cake onto my fork. Then a group of university students comes in. The girls
are Giselle's age. They're wearing cool black and beige clothes and their crisp, citrusy smell fills the warm shop instantly.
They all have long, silky blond hair, and their faces are round and pink. Everything about them seems soft to touch. They
open their schoolbooks while the boys with them go to the counter. I can't stop staring at the girls. They all seem to have
big eyes that roll around a lot as they talk to each other. They seem so constructed, so put-together; their looks and clothes
are so alien compared to Giselle's angles, the holes in her socks and jeans. I think about Giselle's big, raw-boned gestures,
how mannish she is.
I think about how, sometimes at night, I remember a stupid joke I heard at school that I forgot to tell Mom and Giselle, and
then I start thinking about all the trips we still need to take, all the living left for us in the same house, how time might
be running out. I want to tell Mom about those floating night thoughts and jokes and plans and worries but somehow I can't
assemble it. And I can't tell her about his ghost. Although he has no fear of endings, and watches us from a dark corner of
the sky.
Students of medicine will learn to respect boundaries (i.e., learn the appreciation of differences between personal and professional
roles) in the doctor-patient relationship.
I wake up to Holly kicking my bare feet with her tennis shoe. Sol is nowhere to be seen. She pushes her kilt down between
her knees as she sits and I remember then that we forgot to bring Holly any other clothes while she was in the hospital.
"What you guys been doing?" She pulls a dried piece of grass and puts it in her mouth.
"Sleeping."
She nods and squints into the fading sun. "Mama been telling you her stories?"
I nod, then reach over to grip the long blades of grass to get myself up.
"We gotta mow this crazy lawn."
Holly nods, spitting pieces of grass out of her mouth. "Don't worry, your new boyfriend already said he'd do it. Geez, how
much did you guys drink?"
"Not much," I say, kicking the bottles as I raise myself up on my arms.
"I gotta go," Sol says, coming out of the house, smiling. "But I'll be back later to check up on our patient." He winks at
Holly. "How are you doing?"
"Still hurts, no long jump for a while, that's for sure."
We go in and Mom's making dinner, Holly's favourite: potato salad and tofu dogs with macaroni and cheese. I eat a couple of
bites, but feel too upset to eat much, so I finish the floor, iron the curtains, and Mom falls asleep on the couch, in front
of the eleven o'clock news.
Later that night, Holly comes into my room, where I am staring at old X-rays from school and still trying to process the fact
that Mom knew Thomas before Misha. I don't know where to put this information, where and how to file it in my case against
him. The implications are tremendous.
Holly stands in my doorway, freshly showered. Her hair has grown out from her severe crew cut and she's got it slicked back.
She's in her favourite outfit: a sports bra and Dad's pyjama bottoms. Her foot's hooked against her ankle, her chest is bruised,
purple-blue butterflies bloom beneath the white cotton of her bra, the lowest part of the wing reaching out to her taut belly
button. She stands there sniffing her armpits. Holly's bigger than me, wider hips and shoulders. She also probably weighs
about ten or fifteen pounds more than me, all lean muscle. She's nicely proportioned, her breasts look full and perky at the
same time, everything about Holly is strong. Seeing her, I wonder how it is that I can look at her and see skinny but when
I look at myself I see a bloated mess.
"C'mere, stinky."
"What? I just had a shower."
I touch the bruises lightly. "You want something for it?"
"No, I'm OK. . . it's kinda cool hey? Like those psychology ink pictures."
"Yeah."
Holly looks down the hall. "Should I bother waking her up for bed?"
"No."
She juts her chin out, defiantly, words pushing at the bottom of her lip.
"What is it, Hoi?"
"When I go back next week, I gotta write this math test, a final. I suck at math. I suck so hard, Giselle."
"What about your teacher?"
"Yeah, she explains it all and does the questions but then, when I'm alone, doing a test or something... I just forget it.
I just don't have that math-brain gene. It's missing in me, I think. I'm gonna ask to bring it home, you know."
I laugh, "And I'm going to write your grade-eight math exam?"
"But the numbers, they get all screwy, and now I missed all this school, so I have no idea what's going on . . ."
She stretches her long body up and grips the top of the doorway; I count her ribs.
"So, you'll do it?"
"I'll show you how. Tonight, come on, bring your books in."
Holly blows out a frustrated breath. "What about Sol?"
"Sol's terrible at math, come on, Holly."
"Come on what? I'm not going to be a doctor or an accountant, it doesn't matter." She's clenching her jaw now, grinding her
teeth together.
"But there are basic things you need to know that you don't. You won't be able to get through high school even, when the time
comes."
"Were you good at math?"
"Not really."
"So?"
"So, what?"
"Get up," she says, pulling on my arm.
"Stop it," I say, trying to wrench myself away.
"Get up and look at me."
I stand up, trying to extend my spine so I can match Holly's height.
"Look at me."
"I'm looking."
"Look at me, at this."
Holly plunges her hand into her hair and pulls out her hearing aid. She slaps it on my desk. Then she sweeps her arm along
my desk, pushing everything onto the floor. I get scared that she's going to try to throw me across the room again, or hurt
me, so I start backing away, but instead she just stands there and cries:
"I can't do school, Giselle, I can't do it. I can barely hear the teachers. I can read and write on my own but I can't do
it, do you understand me? Do you know what that's like?" she yells, a little too loud now, without her ear.
The piece has become part of her, literally wedged into the side of her head. It's small, shell-shaped, beige-brown, dirty
with age and wear. It's creepy, it looks like what it is: a spliced organ missing from the body and made external, the transparent
wires dispatching sound-words.
Holly's slit-eyes stare at me and, with her mouth slightly open, she looks like she did when she was very young. Suddenly,
I am transported:
It's late at night and no matter how many pillows I pile over my head I can hear our father's sobbing through the thin walls
of our suburban house. There's nothing worse than hearing a grown man cry, I think inside my twelve-year-old head. This is
the day they have finally taken Holly to the specialist who has diagnosed her with a hearing problem and a slight learning
disability. And no matter how many times our mother says,
It
doesn't matter, Thomas, can't you see, she is perfect?
he won't listen and keeps crying.
When Holly can't sleep with Mom and Dad, like tonight, she sleeps with me, sprawled all over my single bed, her long hair
spilling into my mouth, but she can't hear his sobbing.
Shut up. Oh please please please please please stop it.
And no matter how many Magic-Markered pictures of our happy family she brings home from junior kindergarten, no matter how
many King-of-the-Family gold-sprayed macaroni crowns she makes him with Ts on them, no matter how many endless hours I spend
teaching Holly how to hold her mouth to form vowels, filling her with the names of animals, colours, and numbers, disappointment
continues to collect in the wrinkles in his brows and ages his long, handsome face.
One day, after months of constant badgering and trickery on my part and so much candy that half of Holly's baby teeth have
gone rotten, it has all, finally, paid off. A miracle: Holly learns to read six months into senior kindergarten—almost a full
year before the rest of her mud-poking peers and, in the meantime, I have been bumped up a grade; I have become such a precocious
child that the teachers are loath to have me in their classes.
"Look, Papa, the doctor was wrong."
We are in the living room, my hands on Holly's shoulders. I push her forward to read him a short paragraph from a children's
book about how even spiders have bad days and, when she's finished, he opens his arms and she crawls into them. He nuzzles
the plastic beneath her hair, then folds his body over hers. I shift from foot to foot on the dirty hardwood floor, feeling
awkward.
He looks up. His eyes examine my oily preteen moon face. He looks at my little nipples poking through my washed-out Mickey
Mouse T-shirt, my strong arms. He fixes his eyes on my thick calves: the result of riding up hills on a broken bicycle in
high gear, the cost of being big-boned. My squat little in-between body is still waiting for the legendary Vasco genes that
should kick in any day now and stretch out this tightly packed mass of muscle and fat and make me long and lean like the rest
of them. I smile at him proudly, waiting for compliments on my patience and dedication to rain down on me. Waiting.
Then he does something awful. He reaches out and squeezes my thick leg, pinching the fat next to the knee. It is meant to
be a playful gesture, maybe, I don't know. And then I do an awful thing too. I lean over and say right in his face:
"You piece of
shit''
I turn on my heel and run out the front door before he can catch up to beat me within an inch of my life as if we are in the
old country where children can be poked and pinched and thrashed like barn animals.
He dies three weeks later and Mom takes leave from work so she can sit at home like a zombie. Holly is put in the advanced
reading group at school, and takes speech classes twice a week and writes haikus about frogs and heaven.
And I grow three and a half inches the month after Thomas dies.
Bodily wounds may be classified according to the mode of damage,
Holly reinserts her hearing aid and then lies down on my bed silently, touching the soft flannel on the edge of my sheet while
I pile the books back on my desk.
"Sorry for throwing your stuff." Holly's eyes glaze over. She seems very tired suddenly.
"Listen, we'll do something, I'll ask Mom to get you a tutor, we'll get your ears retested. But Holly, and don't get mad at
me for saying this, you can't blame this on your hearing."
"Why not?"
I make a face. "Because, lazy-ass, you're acing English, because, somehow, miraculously, your batteries only seem to die during
math class."
Holly throws a pillow at me.
"Am I right?"
"No!" She peeks out at me through the sheet.
"I don't believe you."
"Look, I don't really care. I just don't want everyone freaking out when I flunk junior-high math, is all."
"Nobody's flunking anything. Do you want to go to summer school?" Holly makes a barfing sound.
"OK, so turn on your hearing aid."
I pause, about to ask her about something else, when she leans herself out of bed, splays one hand on the floor and asks,
"Did she tell you? About how she got him kicked out of the house?"
My back arches, I crawl over to her, pull her half on the bed, half off the bed, body to me. I hold her up to my face but
her eyes slip away from mine again.
"You know that story, Mom's told you before?"
Holly shakes her head, her lids slide closed. "I've never heard it from Mom, I heard it from Dad."
"Dad?"
"Yup. Daddy tells me everything," she says, her eyes half-closed.
"That's right, I forgot, you talk to ghosts."
"Just his."
"So, who do you think she loved more?"
"Dad," Holly says, without missing a beat.
"Dad? Why Dad?"
"Why
not
Dad?"
Holly lies back down on the bed and turns away, tracing her fingers over the flower patterns in the wallpaper. Before she
passes out, I get her to take out her hearing aid again to do an informal ear examination. She cups her hand over the right
side of her head and I drop my books on the floor.
"Can you hear that?"
"Well,'sort of."
"What do you mean,
sort of?'
"I can hear it in my feet."
"In your feet?"
"Well, yeah, the vibrations."
"OK, go to bed, baby."
When she's bundled in my sheets and has her head against the wall, I look at the tiny piece of plastic, the source of so many
of Holly's and Dad's frustrations. The reason she moves through the world intuitively: touching, feeling, falling into the
space around her, careening brightly from sky to earth to floor. I pick up the greasy bit of plastic and try to read her,
to feel out her aches, her longings, from that battered little machine that helps her think.
And I think about Thomas, again, how Holly could be persuaded to do anything, possibly even pass grade-eight math, if he were
still around.
When we were young he used to take us fishing. He woke us early in the morning, offering cups of hot chocolate as consolation
for waking us up. We'd drive about an hour out of the city, then he'd park by a lakefront, take the canoe off the top of the
car, and paddle us to the darkest part of the shore. He'd burn through the ends of the plastic lines with the butt of his
cigarette and tie our hooks on carefully. Around this time I'd wake up and start chatting, asking him questions.
"How come those sunfish have pointy things on top that hurt so much?"
"I dunno, Giselle, but you're being quiet or you'll scare the fish."
I could never stay quiet for long. I'd start imitating the morning bird calls and pestering him.
"Why can't we keep that one?"
"Too small . . . a good fisherman knows what to keep, what to throw back."
A good fisherman I was not. After a couple of Saturday mornings of rocking the canoe and exhausting both of them with my questions
and squawking, I gave up, and only Holly went with him.
Look at this picture: a voiceless three-year-old patiently watching her father cast his line into the warm velvet morning
water. She is wearing a white Gilligan hat, her nose is freckled from the sun. She is staring intently at the red-and-white
buoy on the surface. Her father is wearing a white undershirt, his face sweaty, his doctor-hands are soiled with worm-dirt
and grease and the eternal cigarette dangles from his mouth. He accidentally blows smoke into her face.
But Holly never complains. She cannot hear the birds, or his swearing when he tugs too quickly and yanks the hook out of a
bass's mouth and tangles his line. Doesn't want to sing, like in the daycare when they make her and her voice comes out screeching
and high. She doesn't question anything he does because it makes sense: the shore, the trees, the muck at the bottom of the
canoe, his cigarette smoke, his fishy, musky smell. It is all she understands.
He brings in the line and when she sighs in quiet frustration he paddles away from shore; the wind has blown them too close
now.