All the Anxious Girls on Earth (2 page)

In the city you are hardly earthbound.

He will say that he likes the way your nerves lie on the surface of your skin like antennae tuned into the world. But twenty-four acres choked with trees isn’t a world, you will think. Your friends will write: “You are so lucky getting away from it all.”

Be Creative: He will even recast the wing nuts to screw the original windscreens back onto the Tiger Moth. Watching his concentration as he carves the wooden moulds—because those kinds of wing nuts can’t be bought anymore—you will decide to make something, too. You’ll punch holes in all the cutlery and string it up on fishing lines stretched across a row of cedars behind the house. When the wind comes up, the clatter will be deafening. The ringing of forks and spoons and knives will rush into all the empty places inside of you. He will calmly put wax plugs in his ears and continue to carve.

He will believe in doing it all from scratch, which will lead you to believe in him. You who love instant cup o’ noodles and whose idea of homemade is buying furniture from IKEA and fumbling in the screws yourself. He will fell a Sitka spruce, make lumber, and then saw the planks into strong, flexible strips. He will reinforce the frame of the small plane with this wood, and construct the wings, which will then lie folded in racks along the ceiling. What you’ll like the most is the mounds of sweet-smelling sawdust all over the floor. It will make you high. You will pull him down, wanting to make love in a pile of Sitka dust, but he’ll pull away.

He will say: “That stuff can kill you if you breathe in too much.”

That something so soft could kill will surprise you.

You will be thrilled when he comes with you to the city for a day, your rusty synapses firing again. But when you return, all he will remember is the guy who carried his bicycle seat around so no one would steal it. He won’t even lock his hangar at night. Oh, sure, you will think. Who’d want to steal a plane with no wings, anyway?

Your brother will send you a poem in the mail, the mail you pick up once a week in the nearest town. Out there, you will even miss your letter carrier, the snarly woman who uses her pregnancy as an excuse to bend your magazines in half and crumple postcards from friends in exotic places. O snarly bitch goddess, you will think, come crumple my mail all over the porch and I will humbly bend over to gather it up and then make you mint tea with real leaves. But of course, no one will come. The mail will be delivered to a postbox number thirty-two miles away.

The poem will be no ordinary poem, but a sonnet:

The fact that he wants you to decide will trouble you. But it won’t occur to you to fold the sonnet into a paper airplane and send it wafting into the trees. Lying in bed that night you will read it over and over, wondering if he’s just a bad poet or if he’s trying to be funny. You will dream that you, with your skin of birchbark, and Lady Pinecone are shopping for clothes at The Block, snagging runs in all those beautiful crepe de Chine dresses by Zapata while the funky salesclerks sharpen their axes behind the cappuccino counter. You will wake up wanting a long espresso and almond biscotti so badly your tongue throbs.

Listen Up: Mountains don’t move you. On a clear day, you’re hard-pressed to make out the shape of the North Shore Lions. Yet there are people who don’t even need to look, the ones who can know a mountain with their hands. You will meet the aviator’s friend, a man who’s climbed St. Mary’s rock face so many times he can do it
blindfolded. He knows where the rock will rise to meet him. He will come to visit after a day of climbing, and over homemade beer, bitter and weak, they will talk about altitude while you sit stone-faced, wanting news of the world. They will talk about how high they can climb and how high they can fly. Later that night you will write furiously in your diary: Altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitudealtitudealtitudealtitudealtitudealtitudealtitudealtitude, until, when a page is covered and the word blurs into attitude, you will finally understand.

Learn How to Fly: You will go out to the hangar at night where the Tiger Moth hangs slightly suspended like a wingless dragonfly. You will climb shakily into the cockpit. Inside the skeleton of the plane you will become more aware of your own bones—less fixated on your
skin and your viscera. You will peer through the windshield, considering the possibilities for flight. The wind, you will think, the wind through your hair might be a good thing.

It will be dawn when you return to bed, but he has not wakened, hasn’t sensed your absence. You will lie there watching him talking in his sleep to his dead friends, all those dear boys from helicopter school whose bodies were left scattered on mountain ledges, glassy lakes and runways. And you will go lie on the floor, pressing your body to the ground.

The day he finally attaches the wings, he will offer the invitation to join him. But in your mind you are already hugging the highway and he is hugging the sky You will drive straight to the busiest intersection in the city, get out of your car and lie down on the sidewalk. There, with the rumble of traffic in your very bones, the nerves buried below your skin will rise to the surface again, gaining altitude, shyly at first, and then like a thousand-legged centipede will begin excitedly waving to all the people rushing by.

I
am in the garden with Edgar the Human Cheetah when it starts to rain something awful. Big hard drops that smack the tomatoes silly and flatten the pansies. I know I shouldn’t have planted pansies, they’re such weak flowers, but I like their little faces.

Edgar beats me to the porch, of course. He is the Human Cheetah.

“Quick,” Edgar says over cereal one morning. “Is any animal faster than a cheetah?” I am not quick to answer though, and he answers himself, his mouth full of Froot Loops swollen with milk. “A gazelle, you say? Ha! A cheetah can eat a gazelle alive.” Edgar tears his paper napkin in half to demonstrate and stuffs a piece into his mouth. I’m worried he may be too smart for his age. It’s one
thing being too fast, but being too smart can be dangerous. I lie awake at night worrying that he might be a genius. He’s five years old and the perfect companion for me. If he is a genius and turns six, he will probably leave me behind. Then I remember: This fall he goes to school full-time and will leave me behind anyway.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, composer. Died at age 35.

I buy some sheet music and leave it on the kitchen table. Edgar ignores it. This is a big relief. I make us hot chocolate even though it is not night yet and not cold.

Edgar’s parents, my sister Marie and her husband Angus, were smart. A few times I would visit when they had guests over and all that talk never made much sense to me. Even if I listened very hard it all turned into blah blah blah blah. Once I pulled Marie into the bathroom and shut the door behind us. She had a very strong-smelling cigarette in her hand that gave me a sick feeling in my stomach, but she looked pretty with all that smoke around her face, like an angel on a calendar. “What language are those people talking out there?” I asked her. “English,” she said. “Oh, Pearly, they’re just talking plain English.”

Edgar’s parents liked parties very much. On New Year’s Eve they did a terrible thing, though. They drank too many cocktails and then got in the car and drove into another car parked at the side of the road. At the funeral, Edgar wore a little black bow tie and narrowed his eyes as if he was trying hard not to cry. Later he told
me he was pretending his eyes were the periscope of a submarine and he was trying to find a target to sink.

I cried a lot at that funeral. After all, Edgar’s mother was my sister. But I was happy to inherit Edgar. I don’t know what it is really, but ever since he was born I’ve liked his little face. I used to lick it when Marie wasn’t looking. I never tell Edgar. I used to lick his face. He’s disgusted when he sees the cat cleaning her kittens. He has made a suggestion that we cut out the cat’s tongue, but I let him know this wasn’t a very good idea.

I am larger than average, but not as big as those people they bury in piano cases. Edgar, though, is a thread. I tease him with the poem: “Jack Sprat could eat no fat, his wife could eat no lean…” Edgar’s eyes go small. “You’re not my wife,” he says. And he disappears for the rest of the day.

Percy Bysshe Shelley, poet. Died at age 30. Vincent van Gogh, painter. Died at age 37. (My age!) John Keats, another poet! Died at age 26.

I don’t know who these people are, but the librarian tells me they are certified geniuses. “They are in the canon,” she says. I picture the geniuses fired through the air at the circus. They wear helmets, of course. They land in the net and jump up and everyone claps, glad they have not broken their necks. I ask the librarian why they died so young. “Blew their fuse, I guess,” she says.

The TV people are at the door again. You would think they could telephone before they come. The woman says they did telephone but the line kept ringing busy. That could be. I was listening to the weather report around the province. The names they come up with for places—Hope, Kamloops, Ucluelet. It’s much better than dial-a-joke, which many times I don’t get. The reporter has the most amazing outfit on, like the scales of a fish. I ask her if I can touch it and she agrees! This makes me shy and I reach out just one finger and touch it so quickly I don’t even feel anything.

“Where is the boy?’’ she says. “Where is the Cheetah Boy?”

I tell her he comes and goes.

“He comes and goes?” she says, nudging the camera guy, and I see a little red light go on.

I look right into the camera. “He comes and goes, talking of Michelangelo.” This cracks the camera guy up, so I say it again, this time moving my hands like a movie star, like the air in front of me is water.

On the TV news later, I look fatter than I am. I wonder if they did that on purpose. After they show Edgar running, so fast he’s almost a blur, they show me, as big as a house, saying the thing I said. Then two people talk to Carol, the host. I like Carol. She has cheeks like a chipmunk and smiles often. If I meet her on the street, I think I might even say hello. The man is very serious and says he doesn’t understand why they let Edgar keep on living with me. The other person, an older woman, interrupts and talks about love. She has written a big
book about love. Edgar says, “This is boring,” and changes the channel to “The Simpsons.” I can see that he gets irritated explaining the jokes to me, so I pretend I have to go to the bathroom. I sit on the toilet and cry and remember when I used to lick his little face.

The woman at the library has become curious about my interest in geniuses. “My boy might be a genius,” I tell her—quietly, because it is a library—thinking now she will feel sorry for me. She snorts. “All parents want their kids to be geniuses.” How can a librarian be so stupid?

“You sweat a lot,” Edgar said to me today.

“Yes, I do, I do sweat a lot, Edgar.”

“More than average?”

“I don’t know about averages.”

“I’ll bet your sweat could drown a whole village of Indians.”

“Edgar!”

“A town of monkeys! A country of people! The whole world gushing down a mountain, drowning in B.O. juice!

Edgar became the Human Cheetah while my sister Marie and her husband Angus were still alive. Edgar was only four, which would make him one year younger than he is now. They were picnicking in a park and some men were throwing a Frisbee around. Edgar raced their dog for it and beat the dog every time! This was one of those wonder dogs that had been a star on television. I
have even seen it. It wears a blue handkerchief around its neck and is called Decker. But I think it might be dead by now. In the dog world it would have been considered a genius.