The Checkout Girl (11 page)

Sometimes I lie awake at night and I ask, “Where have I gone wrong?” Then a voice says to me, “This is going to take more than one night.”

— Charlie Brown

Kathy should be getting up but she doesn't want to move. If she moves she'll vomit. There's nothing in her stomach, but that doesn't mean she won't throw up, so she lies absolutely still in her bed with its new Marimekko rip-off sheets, happy stylized daisies splashed over a mosaic of blues and greens. Poly-cotton, wash and wear that she hopes won't pill like the nubbly sheets in the garbage bag in the corner of the room. She'd tied the bag shut against the vomit smell because it made her want to vomit more. The first morning she was sick, she threw up on the Liberace clothes and the bed linen she'd tossed on the floor after The Doug Incident.

That's what she calls it, “The Doug Incident.” As if it was a nuclear accident, or a terrorist attack, or something. She wishes the Doug part of the incident could be hanged, like the cop-murderer, William Rosik, who's supposed to be executed on April 21st. Kathy taped a newspaper article about him to Connie's refrigerator under a new heading
: Worry (And Prayers)
.

Connie explained that she wasn't going to pray for the killer because he was alive, at least for now. He still had time to pray for himself. She did
worry
, though, but not for him, for us — for the country — because our antediluvian government was going to hang the poor bastard by the neck until he died. She said capital punishment was immoral; it was condoned revenge, an eye for an eye, and it didn't work as a deterrent. A calculated killer will murder a cop because he wants to, and one who is angry or desperate isn't going to stop and think, Oh dear, I had better not kill this policeman because then I'm going to be hanged. No time for that.

And she didn't think that by hanging, William Rosik would automatically be redeemed. Redemption by fire was hollow. Real redemption required an action. Rosik had to want to redeem himself, had to take responsibility for what he had done and try to make up for it. She believed he'd have the rest of his natural life to redeem himself because in the end, the death sentence would be remanded, and eventually Trudeau would do the right thing and repeal this last remnant of legalized barbarity.

Connie figured the dead policeman needed her prayers, and his widow needed both her prayers and worry. I pray for him, she told Kathy, because he likely didn't have time to pray for himself. He was living and breathing and just like that — and she snapped her fingers — he was dead. I also pray that his wife has lots of insurance, and that the police force doesn't leave her stranded in a few years, expecting her to remarry and have someone else look after her. Connie said she felt for all widows and their children. They needed all the help they could get.

That's when Kathy made the mistake of asking, “Why are you so upset about these people? You don't even know them.”

“Just listen for a change,” Connie told her. “Try to learn something.”

“Like I have a choice,” Kathy was murmuring when her mother started getting personal, which was a clear sign to shut up.

“I pray for the widow,” Connie continued, “because I know what she's going through. One minute she has a certain kind of life. An ordinary life with smelly socks under the bed, and fights about how to make the g-d toast the right way, not burned every g-d time. About putting the cap back on the toothpaste or changing the toilet paper roll when it's empty.

“All worthy reasons for a fight,” Connie added. “But the next thing she knows, her life is changed beyond anything she could have imagined, because her husband is dead.”

And Connie knew, she told Kathy, what any widow wouldn't give to have a minute, just one, to say something pleasant, or perhaps to give that smile she'd withheld the morning her husband left for work.

“I pray she kissed her husband goodbye when he left that morning,” Connie said, “or had sex with him the night before he went on shift. One final bit of kindness to be grateful to have given.”

Connie started to cry.

“You know the last thing I said to your father when he left for work the day he died?” Connie asked Kathy, and by this time Kathy really didn't want to hear one more word.

“Nothing,” Connie said. “He called out from the back door that he was leaving. He asked if I needed anything from the supermarket. I was sitting in this very chair. I was trying to feed Shelly. She was screaming and fighting me like always. I didn't bother to look up, didn't say a word. I thought, OK, you gaw-damned bastard, go to work and leave me with this screaming baby one more time. I thought other things as well and none of them were kind.

“Now I've forgiven myself for that lapse of kindness and for those harsh thoughts. They were true to the moment and I don't regret them. But I'm glad I didn't say anything. Saying nothing rather than speaking my mind turned out to be a bit of a blessing for me.

“So when some poor woman I don't happen to know personally becomes a widow when she had no idea it was going to be her turn, well, I believe she deserves my thoughts, and my prayers and worries both.

“Now put this article on the fridge,” she ordered Kathy, waving her hand toward the kitchen. “Put it under
Worry (And Prayers)
.”

Kathy can't lie here forever. She has to get up. It's Saturday, and she promised Connie she'd take Shelly skating at the Varnum Auditorium. She sits up slowly, wrapping her arms around her tummy and holding it tight, for comfort really. She situates her bum on the edge of the mattress and puts her head between her knees. She waits while her stomach settles.

These days, once she gets up, Kathy goes to work. She comes home and lies on her bed. She sleeps. Sometimes Barry leans in the doorway and watches her, but he never speaks, never crosses the threshold. She senses him there. He leaves little offerings on the floor: a package of cigarettes, a Mars bar, an 8-track of
Déjà vu
. Kathy tosses the presents in the garbage bag, except for the tape, which she plays endlessly in the car
.

She'd tied the sheets in the garbage bag after Pete came down one night to tell her she was supposed to call Connie. Kathy was curled on her side, her hands tucked between her knees. Though she was bitterly tired, she was awake, looking at patterns in the paint on her wall: faint bristle lines like veins, areas thickened by overlap where light flattened to nothingness.

“Kathy?” Pete said from the doorway.

“Hmm,” she said. She wasn't moving then either.

“Are you all right?”

“Hmm?”

“I said, are you all right?”

“No,” Kathy said to the wall.

“Do you want to smoke a joint?”

“Not really,” Kathy said.

“Do you want to talk?”

“No,” Kathy said.

“What's that smell?” Pete asked.

“Laundry,” Kathy told him. She turned her head to look at him. “It's dirty, that's all.” And she looked back at the wall.

Pete walked to the corner of the room. Kathy heard him there, heard him kick the sheets, heard his knees creak when he squatted down. She heard Pete whisper,
Shit
. When he got up, his knees creaked again.

He came and sat on the edge of Kathy's bed. Kathy didn't care that he was there until she felt him shift and suddenly he was curled up behind her. Then she wished herself away from him. She looked at the paint on the wall and willed herself part of it. He warmed her, though they weren't touching. Pete could be so quiet, so utterly still, especially when he was stoned, that his body seemed to disappear and his presence enhance. That's what she felt now, that the essence of Pete was touching her even if his body wasn't. She felt his breath on her hair and wished she'd washed it.

Soon she was breathing the same cool-warm rhythm as his breath, its absence and return. And she began to fall asleep. When she woke, Pete was gone, and she was sweating under a blanket that didn't belong to her. Pink wool with satin edging, it was grandmotherly and smelled of mothballs and marijuana.

After Pete's visit, she had a shower and washed her hair. She found a garbage bag and rolled the vomitty sheets and Liberace clothes into it. She threw in the letters Doug had sent her from Vancouver, and Barry's offerings. She tied the bag shut and tossed it into the corner. When she was ready, when the time was right, she'd know exactly what to do with it.

All winter, Kathy's life had been so flat she should have been able to see anything coming. But she didn't. Even the vomiting hadn't registered right away. Then it did, and she knew she was pregnant.

She bought a pregnancy test kit and confirmed it, and she made a doctor's appointment. The doctor warned her that getting past the abortion board at the hospital was a long shot; besides, he wasn't sure he could recommend her. She could go to the States — New York City or Boston, maybe Detroit. Or England, there was a clinic in England that did abortions on Canadian girls. He'd have to think about it, he said. He'd call her the next day with his decision.

But in the end he didn't call and she finally called him because the next day had turned into four. He said there would be no abortion, perhaps Kathy could keep the baby, or there was always adoption. When Kathy asked if he'd refer her to another doctor who might recommend an abortion, he said he didn't think so, no, he didn't think he could do that. He said he was sorry, and he hung up. But sorry wasn't the impression Kathy got. Dickless was more like it, because he wasn't even going to call to tell her he wasn't going to help.

She hadn't told him what Doug did, hadn't thought he'd believe her. She imagined all unmarried pregnant girls had elaborate stories to tell their doctors about why they were turning up in their offices pregnant and needing abortions.

After fretting and throwing up for another week, and trying to get through her work days without appearing to be sick or in distress, Kathy drove to Guelph to see the doctor who'd given her and Darlyn their first birth control pills. He'd been sympathetic, but said he couldn't recommend her to the board at his hospital. He couldn't do that for a woman outside his practice. Birth control was one thing, but abortions were another. There were rules. But he did give her the number of the Women's Liberation Abortion Referral Service in Toronto. When she called, she was given the name of a doctor in Montreal listed in the Quebec medical register who might do an abortion.

The woman she spoke to asked Kathy to call her back and let her know if she was able to get an appointment in Montreal. Kathy never called her back. She was making her calls from a phone booth in the Beamer Street bus station, slipping change into the slot every time the operator told her to. Both her change and her patience were limited.

On her twentieth birthday, Kathy called Montreal and was told to come in two weeks to the day. She was asked how far along she thought she was and the date of her last menstrual period. She was asked if this was her first abortion. Her first pregnancy. She was asked if she had been using birth control at the time she became pregnant. (This was a routine question, the woman said, not a reason to say no to an abortion; mistakes happen.) She was asked if she was married. She'd have to have her husband's permission if she was married. She was asked if she was in good general health.

Kathy's answers were monosyllabic whenever possible. She glanced around the station waiting room hoping no one she knew came in. No one did. But there was a man with his long hair tied with a paisley bandana. He wore a red lumberjack coat, tight patched jeans with elaborate embroidery up the legs. He slouched on a wooden bench and smoked. He watched her, a look of deliberate inattention. A hippie, she thought, one of the dopers from Regent Park. He probably just needed a place to warm up.

Kathy was given instructions on how to get to the clinic. She was told to definitely not, under no circumstances, enter the clinic if she noticed a police car or anyone who might be a policeman in the vicinity. Err on the side of caution, she was told. She was to walk past the clinic and call from a payphone to get further instructions, or to rebook the appointment if she suspected anyone was watching her. She was to bring two sanitary napkin belts (in case one became bloody and needed washing), and it would be a good idea to bring a small box of maternity size napkins. She was to bring $200 cash, which she would pay in advance of the procedure, and for which she would not receive a receipt. She wasn't asked if she was able to afford $200. She would be booked under her first name, they didn't record last names, but could she please bring a piece of paper with her emergency contacts on it and have it in her pocket. Just in case.

Just in case of what Kathy didn't ask. She didn't want to know. Details were becoming overwhelming. Being accidentally pregnant was beginning to feel like an act of espionage, a betrayal of her country. She expected she'd have to eat the paper on which she wrote the name of her emergency contact once the abortion was over. Leave no traces; it would be as if nothing had ever occurred.

“Do you have any questions?” the woman asked.

“No,” Kathy told her, though she had many questions, hundreds of questions.

“Is everything clear?” the woman asked. Her voice was gentle but firm, tinged with a French-Canadian accent.

“Yes,” Kathy said, and there was a click on the line.

Kathy was lying. Nothing was clear. Everything was impossible to understand. Except that it was her birthday, and she was pregnant, and she felt horrible. What was most clear was that she needed not to be pregnant, and that she'd do whatever was necessary to achieve that. And she needed to tell someone.

“Darlyn?”

“Kathy. Happy birthday,” Darlyn's cheerful voice said over the phone. “I was going to call you. Are you doing anything special? Do you want me and Donny to come over? We can take you out.” After the Liberace concert Darlyn broke up with George, and Donny broke up with Brenda, and Darlyn and Donny began going out together.