Mitochondrial Curiosities of Marcels 1 to 19 (17 page)

‘Maybe no. Smoke inhalation,' she says. But we stay huddled under the tree, watching.

It takes six days for my headache to go away and I'll probably never be able to blanket stitch as fast as I could pre-asbestos. Seriously. But brain damage was helpful the morning after the fire because that's when it all came down – the Plan, the special account, the credit card, Toronto. Low verbal ability was an asset.

I'm hoping there's a total lifetime amount of remorse everyone must have, which would make me advanced in one area of life. Driving to Timbley with Joan for the Talking Circle, actually a Talking Rectangle, takes care of a decade's worth of sorries. The signal light's broken again, so Joan rolls down her window to hand-signal, and the window gets stuck. We drive for two hours in silence and icy wind.

In the basement of a generic square building, Jessie and Rose are already at the table. I keep my eyes on the industrial carpet. A middle-aged guy sits at each end of the table, Man 1 mountainously still, Man 2 twitchy. A frizzy woman in teal sits beside Rose and Jessie, and a woman cop with incredibly precise bangs sits on the other. Joan points to the chair beside her.

We have the power
says a poster of workers in hardhats and I go all mitochondrial because that's the perfect title for our bio presentation. I can draw a cute little mitochondrion doing a power salute.

This is amusing, Dree?, says Man 1, and I look up to serious disapproval all around. Let the executions begin.

I say an unfortunate
What?
which requires more, so I launch right into being really really sorry, especially for hurting Joan when things were really hard for her but also for putting Jessie at
risk in the hospital especially once we knew Dr. Rinkel was there. Man 1 nods and turns to Jessie. ‘The key here,' he says, is complete clarity.' He reads something official about breaking and entering and generally makes us sound evil. Jessie apologizes too, but he won't leave her alone, keeps bringing up ‘the key thing,' then teal woman goes at her about responsibility and boundaries, then Rose comes down like thunder.

‘Hey,' I say. ‘It was my idea.' Everyone ignores me. While Jessie cries in big choking sobs, I run my fingers over small gouges in the table.

‘What the hell were you thinking,' booms Rose. ‘You think your father wanted this?'

When the torture finally stops, something shudders in my chest. The big wall clock spasms another minute. Papers are moved, pens clicked, coffee sipped, legs recrossed. Please let it be over. How much sorrier can we be, for god's sake. And, hello people, what about Rinkel?

Man 1 puts his papers into a file folder and takes others out. Joan's voice is so soft the haircut cop paraphrases everything, sometimes twice, as in, ‘I feel so betrayed,' ‘You feel betrayed, Joan?' ‘Betrayed,' ‘Hmm, betrayed.' They talk about me like I'm not there, teal woman telling the guys that what concerns her is the series of deceptions over a long period of time, haircut cop says she counts five chargeables, Man 2 says they're possibly dealing with pathology here given the family history. That gets an
Excuse me?
from Joan and a lot more volume. ‘When will the hospital be taking responsibility for Dr. Rinkel, who is not even here?' she says. He is not the issue, say both guys in different ways, and Joan's hands fly up. ‘Excuse me? That worm has been the issue for fifteen years.' The room pretty much crackles as everyone tries to read everyone else, eye contact
criss-crossing the table. Ha. There's something they don't want us to know.

Man 2 says, ‘Dr. Rinkel has retired.' Joan says, ‘Meaning you fired him,' and Man 1 snaps questions at me until everyone joins back in. Everyone except Joan, and that's what gets me, how she sits there not hating me, how she says another
Excuse me?
after Man 2 says I'm pathologically selfish, how she says, ‘Actually, Dree has been working very hard on her biology presentation,' after Man 1 says perhaps I'm amotivational. I don't care what I look like and anyway it's what I'm supposed to do, be so sorry I forget myself. As mucous floods my face, I feel their relief. The teal social worker nudges the Kleenex box to me then bonks it against my elbow.

‘I thought you were dead,' Joan says. ‘First I didn't know where you were, then Grandma called in a complete state.'

‘Damn,' says Rose. ‘Should have called you myself.' She called Grandma after the fire guys called her, and Grandma heard wrong and thought we had inhaled smoke and were unconscious in the hospital, not Rinkel, and because of her whole fire thing, Grandma was basically incoherent when she phoned Joan and Joan completely freaked and thought I was dead so Paige freaked and told her everything.

The social worker shoves a Kleenex into my hand. There's a lot of crying. Lots and lots. But eventually things get quiet and sniffly, probably because I run out of bodily fluid.

Man 1 tugs on his tie. ‘The key in this case is complete clarity.' We are back to key number one. I press the key around my neck and have a severely anti-climactic moment. The kind of discovery that oozes instead of sparks. Teal woman asks her how-crazy-are-you questions like what did I feel as I took the money from Paige's account. Man 1 and cop go one-two one-two about
all the laws I broke, how next time will make this look like Brownies, which is actually a poor analogy because Brownies was so lethal I thought about walking into traffic and I was only eight.

Everyone except Joan and Rose has to make an official statement about how my life and Jessie's will basically be over if we do anything less than saintly for the next fifty years. There are agreements about school and how I'll pay back Paige. After a weighty pause, Man 1 asks us what we have to say. Jessie shakes her head. I have my eyes closed. I'm trying to remember every inch of the little plaid suitcase. ‘I have been a complete moron,' I say.

‘Well, you can make new choices for the future.' Teal woman couldn't be more pleased.

‘My suitcase,' I say. ‘Does anybody know what happened to the little plaid suitcase?'

‘Oh yeah,' says Jessie. ‘She de finitely had it in the old hospital. Maybe she left it there?'

‘Girls, the hospital burned to the ground,' Rose says.

Everyone looks confused or maybe just done, cups and papers gathered, chairs pushed away from the table.

The key is for the suitcase. I had thought jewellry box, ironically cheap piggy bank, or maybe a secret diary. Rita must have too. Otherwise, why did she care about a dumb little key. But no. Duh. It's for the suitcase. The envelopes were in the suitcase, the suitcase was for me, Leonard wanted me to take it to Toronto. Could there have been anything in the side pockets? I had looked. No way I could have missed anything. No way.

Presentations were invented by people who got reincarnated way too fast after being killed by firing squad. We're talking becoming a zygote before the bullets stopped moving. How else? Apart from generating terror, what, exactly, are presentations for?

The class is all pre-Christmas agitation. Sugar content up, exams hanging over us like smog, half of us semi-violent, the other half narcotized. Ms. Riddell belongs to group two. She's wearing Rudolph earrings and playing with the projector like she's all alone in the woods. The back-row boys are doing their
Hey hey so her, would you do her, yeah yeah, wouldya
thing. I don't hear them say Paige's name, but Darrin says, ‘Oh yeah, like I'd wanna do a nun, frigid much?' and his moron friends laugh in our direction. Shannon turns around and says, ‘As if, dickwads.' ‘Dyke,' says Colm. ‘Bitch,' says Shannon. ‘Fat dyke,' says Colm. And ‘Cocksucker,' blurts Lawrence with a head twitch. Pro-Lawrence people activate with mumbled ‘Hey you guys,' et cetera, increasing the violence factor to explosive. Colm has just finished saying, ‘Watch yourself, shitface,' when Ms. Riddell turns around and says, ‘Well, Paige and Dree, we're ready for you now.'

She smacks the desk with her book and says, ‘Remember, the rest of you, every brilliant word that's uttered in the next twenty minutes could be on the exam, and the exam is savage. I'd sit up smartly if I were you, there will be no chances for redemption, none at all, you do understand. Girls, if you please.'

My finger has been poised over Enter for some time and happily hits the first slide.
The wonder of mitochondria
. As the back row scribbles pervy cartoons for each other, Paige stands there
frozen, arms crossed, head fixed, possibly not breathing. Riddell clears her throat. I hit Next by accident, bring up
Eukaryotes and U
, and reverse back to slide one. I'm maybe two seconds away from springing up and babbling if Paige doesn't start talking.

But ha, her eyes. Paige acupuncts the back row with murderous disapproval and, yes, they feel it. A moronic titter, then quiet, then averted eyes. One at a time, she takes them down. Colm tries to outstare her but, god, he's holding his neck. He fluffs his hair. Nice try, dogmeat.

How excellent to see Paige offing someone else with her porcupine hate. Her hatred for me has morphed into disdain, deep disdain some days, with random flashes of something we'll call love for the sake of brevity.

‘As you know,' she says, ‘mitochondria are the powerhouses of the cell. Every single thing you do, no matter how small, correction, no matter how stupid, is fuelled by mitochondria.' The slides are genius. I took pictures of people in class and this one shows Dexter throwing a dead frog at Colm. Paige continues. ‘Mitochondria turns food into adenosine triphosphate, or
ATP
, and
ATP
becomes the fuel. It's basically like making fossil fuel.
ATP
is to us like gas is to cars. Dree will explain the connection later.'

She goes through the Krebs Cycle, gets everybody to stand up for the electron transport chain and do a kind of line dance, tossing bean bags for oxygen molecules. How did I ever have a bad thought about Paige? Look at her in her grey skirt and perfect lint-free black tights, her little turtleneck and flipped hair, and most of all, her belief in what we're doing. ‘Trust me, Dree. An A feels better than chocolate.' That's what she said at lunch. She took my hand to say it. ‘Sorry,' I said. Again.

‘That concludes my section of the presentation,' she says after
ten minutes of presentation perfection. Her unspoken subtext is, ‘which will be marked separately from whatever comes next.' I stand and smell fear rising through my clothes. I drop my notes. My hands shake as I pick them up. I turn red. The back row smells blood. ‘It's okay,' Paige whispers.

I focus on the posters of Girls in Science at the back of the room, Girls in Science with perfect white shirts and teeth, but whatever. They must have some issues. My first slide gets an
oh yeah
chorus then the choppy laughter that follows anything with the word
sex
. Ms. Riddell stands up and says, ‘What remarkable zeal, class, excellent, but let's hear the details, shall we, get yourselves in order, do consider dignity won't you, Colm.' She nods at me and I look back at the slide.

How mitochondria invented sex
.

I hear my voice floating around the room and see nothing. In my dreams, I figured Riddell would be entertained plus impressed and that would equal at least an A, maybe an A+ with fabulous visuals. I can't look at her but keep hearing her voice saying ‘Mercy' as I talk. Talking is maybe an exaggeration. I read so fast the words feel like mud. All ten slides are suddenly done. The class is quiet in that lethal way.

Paige puts a Kleenex in my hand, squeezes it, and whispers
eyes
. We're talking extreme sweat and slight weeping. I turn to wipe mascara off my cheeks and hope for sudden death, turn back and magically see twenty- five people. There they are, not looking at me at all. The entire class is glued to that last slide – silent and wide-eyed. We're talking epiphany. Yes, peer group of mine. You're looking at something so much better than anything you'll find under that dead pimped-up family Christmas tree next week.

To save the planet, we must bring back sex. This is the mission of our generation
.

‘Well, then,' says Ms. Riddell, ‘how intriguing, but do take us through those assumptions again, yes, Paige, three slides back, so encouraging to see independent thought, but the scientific method does have its protocols, there we are. Dree, if you would.'

Assumption
#1.
Mitochondria invented sex to ensure continuation of the species
. ‘Okay,' I say. ‘A billion years ago, MitoC wanted to make sure that messed-up
DNA
in the nucleus didn't keep reproducing itself. So it had to get mixed up with other
DNA
.'

‘Wicked,' says Shannon who I now adore.

Assumption #2. A) Since sex is about the species, the better the sex, the more people care about the species. B) Since the species is in such huge trouble, obviously very few people are having good sex. ‘In fact, no one in Alberta,' I say. ‘Possibly a few in Toronto.'

‘Oh yeah?' says Colm, his buddies doing their best manly-man laugh.

Paige bounces up to decimate Colm one more time. ‘Correction?'

Riddell interrupts and starts coming over in that you're done, definitive way of the worried teacher.

‘I just wanted to mention Christmas.' My voice comes from me again.

‘Mercy.'

‘We have lots of time,' says Shannon. A general
yeah
follows.
Assumption
#3.
Shopping killed sex
. There were a few
yeah right
s. ‘But look,' I say. ‘If you have fabulous sex, you can't buy something made by oppressed, starving people because you'd care too much about them. So if you want fabulous sex, start making your own stuff.' I hold up a Marcel and laugh with them.