Your Sad Eyes and Unforgettable Mouth (25 page)

“Ooh, yummy,” I said. “Thanks, Rosie.”

“How did it go at Patrick’s?” she asked.

“It was crazy. Patrick played chess with his mother and they talked about
Hegel
!”

And the word, for teenaged-girl reasons, made us collapse into helpless giggles.

1973

I
’ve come to the last diary, the one that seems to glow like kryptonite, the one that marks off a before and an after. This is where they make their appearance, the demons who rise from the underworld to clutch at our ankles.

It’s silver, in fact, this notebook, not kryptonite green; I remember how pleased I was with the colour when I bought it, just before we graduated—how fitting it seemed, for soon I’d be starting a new life, and who knew what splendour it would bring?

You think you can change things when you’re young, that you control the plot, and if something goes wrong, that you can step over it and move on. If your raft capsizes, you can swim to shore, even make a sport of it.

I did swim into this afterlife, this aftermath, but it strikes me, now and then, that I may have headed in the wrong direction.

We wrote our last matriculation exam on a Friday morning in late June. I could hardly believe as I put down my pencil that I was free, absolutely free, for the rest of my life, to do as I pleased.

I had picked up a velvety blue-green corduroy shirt, and I wore it everywhere. My mother had sewn two embroidered bands onto the ends of my bell-bottom jeans, and I’d found a perfect pair of leather sandals with braided straps for only three dollars. I had a hat too—a funny, floppy felt hat, and Janis Joplin sunglasses. Janis herself had died, along with other music celebrities, and we were at the tail end of the hippie era, but the defiant, pacifist spirit and flower-strewn iconography were still a part of the landscape.

What I wanted now was a celebration. “I’ll die if I don’t go somewhere,” I said for the third time that afternoon. Rosie and I were sitting at my kitchen table, nibbling on Bubby’s fruit salad. Rosie didn’t like the grapefruit, I didn’t like the sliced banana, so
we traded. “Where can we go?” I whined. “There must be somewhere.”

Rosie was also at sea: that morning, her parents had left for Paris with a small group of post-war immigrants from Europe. Mr. Michaeli had resisted at first, but his wife was suddenly animated—even the colour of her eyes seemed to change from dull grey to soft blue. As far as I could tell, Mr. Michaeli felt it would be inexcusable to hold her back; he had commented more than once that she hadn’t known what she was going into when she married him. As for his health, a new drug had worked wonders, and his doctor said he could travel if he didn’t overstrain himself.

The wonderful coincidence—Rosie available just as I was hankering to get away—proved that it was meant to be.

“We need someone rich,” I said. “Someone who can drive us and pay all our expenses.”

“Patrick!” we exclaimed in unison. Rosie wasn’t entirely serious, but I immediately began looking for his number.

Though Patrick and I had not stayed in touch, and I hadn’t heard from Anthony, I often thought of the Moores in their various hideaways around the globe: monastery, attic, mansion, LA.

I dialled Patrick’s number. “This isn’t Giovanni’s Gardening Supplies,” he said glumly.

“Patrick? Is that you? It’s Maya.”

“Oh, hi.” He seemed pleased to hear from me. “I keep getting calls for this gardening supplies store. They printed my number on some flyer or something.”

“How are you?” I asked. “Rosie’s here, she says hi.”

“I’m the same,” he said with his signature sigh.

“Listen, can we come over? We want to ask you something.”

“Yeah, sure. You want a lift?”

He remembered my address and said he’d be there soon. Rosie and I sat by the front window, on the lookout for a white Mercedes. “Where should we ask him to take us?” I wondered, drumming my fingers impatiently on the sill.

“Ottawa?”

“Ottawa! I was thinking of something a little more exciting, Rosie—like the Rockies, maybe. A road trip, right across Canada—that would be cool. Like
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
, except we wouldn’t be as obnoxious as those guys. Or stoned out of our skulls.”

“Let’s get stoned!” Rosie cheered, and we belted out an unrestrained, partly improvised rendition of “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35.” We moved on to “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” and were in the midst of making loud, silly sniffing noises along with reluctantly aging Lather when Patrick’s car screeched to a stop in front of the house. We sprinted downstairs and toppled onto the leather seats. Patrick was half-baffled, half-relieved by our giddiness. He’d grown a beard since we last saw him, a friendly, curly beard with surprising threads of gold.

“Cute beard,” I said. “Makes you look like Che Guevara.”

“I just got bored shaving. What did you want to ask?”

We told him what we had in mind.

“The Rockies ...” he said doubtfully. “That seems like a long way off. I mean, what if we get on each other’s nerves? We’ll be stuck. But … well, I’m not sure it’s still around, but we used to have a country house up north. You could go there, if it hasn’t been vandalized. Or sold. I’ll have to ask my mother.”

Rosie, who was sitting in front, touched Patrick’s shoulder in gratitude. He drew away with an unmistakable flinch. Rosie wasn’t offended. She turned around and said, “It is kind of far. What if I have to come home suddenly? What if Daddy has to come back? I wouldn’t want to be way out in Alberta!”

Patrick’s body relaxed, though whether because Rosie had withdrawn her hand or the plan, I wasn’t sure.

We asked him what he was doing with himself these days. He told us he’d missed the application deadline for Cégep, and for the past year he’d been working, rather pointlessly, at a sleazy magazine store downtown.

“Better than studying for matrics,” I said. “Thank God that nightmare’s over.”

The matriculation exams, in those days, were the only ones that counted for graduation, and I knew I’d have to pass them all. I’d discovered that I didn’t need Biology to graduate; I only needed one science credit and, with the help of Miss O’Connor’s after-school tutoring, I’d been initiated into the esoterica of chemical inclinations.

That left History, which I’d managed to ignore for four years. I had no choice but to cram, and I spent several nights making lists of calamities, for history in the end was nothing but a series of disasters strung together by treaties and agreements. War and more war; there was always someone with an army, ready to fight. My extracurricular reading helped a little. I knew from Lenny Bruce that Hoover was president of the United States during the Depression, and from Hemingway that the Spanish Civil War had Franco on one side and the Republicans, who hid in caves, on the other. Exams were easy back then, and I managed to pull through.
The first city in history to be atom-bombed was a) Hiroshima b) Tokyo c) Munich d) Nanking
. Now I wanted to rid myself of the superfluous information I’d been forced to house, exhaustingly, in my brain.

We found Dr. Moore executing an effortless backstroke in a kidney-shaped swimming pool. Rosie and I hadn’t noticed the pool before; it was concealed by a high wall of cedar hedges and wasn’t visible from Patrick’s side of the house. The expression on Dr. Moore’s face as she glided through the water—all worldly woes forgot—was one I hadn’t seen before. As soon as she noticed us, she swam towards the edge of the pool. She looked like a pink sea plant with her long-sleeved, water-darkened pink leotard and matching cap of jiggling flowers and protruding dots.

“Hello,” she said with casual courtesy. She lifted herself out of the pool and wrapped a towel around her waist. “Are you both well?”

Before we could answer, Patrick interjected, “Do we still have that country house?” He never addressed his mother by name. He never addressed anyone by name.

“The cottage in the Laurentians?”

“Yeah. Is it in one piece or has it gone to wrack and ruin?”

“The house is intact as far as I know. Were you thinking of going up there?”

“It’s us—we’re the ones who asked,” I explained. “Me and Rosie.”

“Ah. So you would like to go into retreat.” I saw that she wanted to be invited; or rather that she wished it were all different, that she was part of a large, happy family. I almost asked her to come along, but Patrick would have killed me. And I don’t think she would have accepted the invitation; she knew we wanted to be on our own—that was the whole point. “I can understand that,” she said evenly, and her controlled, forlorn voice made me think of one of those shipwrecked sailors you read about, who hang on to sanity by repeating the Latin names of trees.

We discussed the practicalities of opening the house, and it became evident that Patrick would have to come along. He didn’t mind being roped in—he was bored with his job and feeling restless. For the first time in our lives there was nothing to hold us back, and we decided to leave the following day. Patrick said he wouldn’t be missed at the magazine store; the owner, Sam, was insane and wouldn’t even notice.

Rain fell intermittently on the morning of our departure, but I wanted to wait for Patrick downstairs. My mother and Bubby came with me; they huddled under two umbrellas and tried to persuade me to join them. Instead, I lifted my face to the fine drizzle. Soon I’d be playing house with Rosie; the two of us would recline on a rug in front of the fire, go for long walks in the forest. In this sylvan setting, Rosie would realize that what she really wanted was me, and on a leafy bed I’d finally do with her all the things I’d been dreaming about for four years …

I was expanding on these
Girl’s Own
adventures when Patrick’s Mercedes appeared like a ship against the horizon, ready to take me on board. My mother sniffed and wiped her eyes as I bounced into the car with my knapsack. But she relied on Patrick, who clearly had resources, and I promised to phone from the corner store every day.

Rosie was waiting inside the doorway of her house, with her new guitar—a gift from Avi—by her side, and her arms crossed in front of her as if she were cold or stranded. She was wearing jeans and a black, close-fitting sleeveless top I hadn’t seen before. I knew all her clothes, and I wondered whether the top belonged to her mother.

“I’m so glad you’re here! What a night—all the rooms creaked, I had to keep the lights on, and I don’t think I slept at all. I’m sure there were ghosts.”

“You should have called me,” I moaned.

“Well, I kept thinking I’d get brave, but it only got worse. I’m never spending a night alone again. Let me get my stuff.”

Rosie’s stuff turned out to be two enormous, battered suitcases with rusty metal clasps. Her parents had taken to Paris only what they could fit into a small shoulder bag—a change of underwear, T-shirts, their toothbrushes. This eccentric adherence to the bare necessities was in keeping with their usual low-key style, but maybe there were other reasons this time, maybe the old suitcases reminded them of their relocation, or dislocation. They were embarking on a different kind of trip now, a return not exactly in triumph but at least with pleasure in mind.

“The trunk’s full,” Patrick said. “We’ll have to try the back seat.” Then, totally out of character, he blurted out, “What do you have in there?”

“Just things we might need. You know. Pillows, sheets, kitchen stuff.”

“The house has all that, and my mother gave me sheets. Whatever’s missing, I can buy.”

We unclasped the suitcases and I helped Rosie remove dishes, cutlery, pots, linen, scissors, rope. “What about games?” she asked hesitantly, pulling out a tattered Monopoly box held together by a rubber band.

“I’m pretty sure we have Monopoly,” Patrick said.

Under her black top, Rosie’s breasts announced themselves modestly to the world, and in a rare moment of forgetfulness, Patrick stared at the curved outlines as she repacked. He caught himself with a start.

“I love your top,” I said slyly. “It suits you. Very femme fatale.”

“I don’t know about that! I figured now that school’s over I’d look kind of weird wearing white shirts, so Mummy bought me some things.”

“Patrick, what do you think?”

“About what?”

“Doesn’t that top suit Rosie?”

To my delight, Patrick blushed. “Okay. Yes. I think we’re all set.”

Now that we’d removed the household items, Rosie found she didn’t need either suitcase. She stuffed her things in a plastic bag and headed for the car. I asked her to sit in front so I’d have room for my legs.

We were about to set off when she exclaimed, “Wait! Is there a stereo there?”

“I’m not sure it works. But I brought a radio.”

“Hold on.” She ran back in and returned with her portable record player and the Mother Goose record. “It helps me fall asleep,” she said, a little sheepishly.

“Mother Goose?” Patrick was amused, and I think charmed, by Rosie’s open admission.

I stretched out on the back seat with two pillows under my head and Rosie’s guitar next to me on the car floor. Even when he was home from the hospital, Mr. Michaeli was no longer up to accompanying Rosie on the piano, and she’d stopped singing arias. The
Saturday-night parties weren’t the same without Rosie’s performances, so Avi bought her the guitar and taught her a few chords. Visionary narratives came to life as she sang; her voice echoed subway wall prophecies, rang out from a lonely tower. We were the ones who wanted to travel with her—but no one had touched Rosie, neither her body nor her mind, not really.