View From a Kite (24 page)

To tell the truth, most times I just went out walking the dark streets by myself, and hid in the bushes every time I thought I heard footsteps. I just wanted to be able to come and go as I pleased, to walk in warm rain in August after midnight or sneak down to the small shingle beach just outside town and worship the full moon riding in on the wavelets.

“Hungry,” I said, the night he appeared in the darkened dining room arch and asked me what I was doing up in the middle of the night.

“I got hungry. I went to the garage for some of those Gravenstein apples.” Blood flooded so fast my arteries ached. I thought my heart might explode. I was terrified he was on to me. “I couldn't find any. You scared me to death,” I accused him.

He stared past me to the back door. Finally he said, “The apples went bad weeks ago. Your mother threw them out.”

“Well, I'm going to bed.” I snatched a banana from the fruit bowl on the washing machine and stepped past him. Almost safe. Just roll the blankets out of the bed and take their place. Halfway up the stairs I bent and looked through the spindles, down the hall and into the kitchen. He stood in the black arch where I'd left him, his gaze still fixed on the back door.

I thought maybe he'd been drinking. He'd been drinking a bit, then. He'd had some kind of disagreement with his principal at the start of the year because she didn't like his teaching style—he wasn't giving enough tests or something. He'd started to talk about giving it all up and trying to write plays like he'd wanted to in teachers' college, and Mama'd had panic attacks thinking we'd starve to death and not be able to pay the taxes and end up out on the street. So he stopped talking about it. After a few weekends of locking himself in the dining room, scribbling and throwing books against the wall, he tossed his pile of writing in the burning barrel, set it on fire, and that was that. He gave up just like that. Took to drinking and pretty much quit talking to us. If Mama weren't around, I suddenly realized, I probably could have waltzed out the front door dressed as a belly dancer and he wouldn't have noticed or cared.

“Eleven-thirty,” says Denise, “after Morissette's though sticking her little flashlight through the keyholes to see if anyone's moving. Rogers is on duty with her, so by eleven-fifteen they'll be in the staff room with the orderlies, playing poker, drinking up the good coffee and eating butter tarts. Don't make the blanket too lumpy; long and lean looks more realistic.”

“I know how to do it. It's a particular talent of mine. I just don't know if I want to go.”

“Don't be ridiculous. Of course you do.”

A hand slaps over my mouth and holds tight, mashing my lips against my teeth. I yank it down.

“Stop that.”

“Shut up,” she hisses. “Holy God, you're noisy. I heard you coming all the way down the hall.” She catches the door handle behind me and eases it quietly shut.

“You didn't have to do that.” I am cross. “You scared me silly. What if I'd screamed?”

“Come on.” She picks up a bag and creeps down the stairs. “Don't thump. Pick up your big feet.”

“I never thump.”

“Shhh.”

On the second floor she leads the way to the laundry room, unlocks the window and pushes it open. A fire escape runs down the side of the building, past the window, and ends a few feet farther down. She drops the bag off the last step, sits on the edge, and jumps down into the dark. I can't see a thing. Serve her right if I land on her.

“Ouch! You cow!” she says. “Get off me.”

The half-dead grass is wet and cold through my slippers. The grounds are lit here and there with fake Edwardian lampposts—wrought iron painted the same black enamel as the stair railings inside. It's warmer than it was this afternoon, really too mild for December, and the air is misty in the yellow light of the lamps. Pools of shadow offer shelter along the walls and under trees. We slither and slink until we reach the parking lot. Crouching behind the dumpster we put on shoes and lipstick, whip off our bathrobes and stuff them into the bag. Denise jams the bag between the brick wall and the back of the dumpster. The smell of orange peels, coffee grounds, and spoiled meat wafts forward, making me want to puke. That, or shriek. Déjà vu, déjà vu, I whisper. Oh, I feel sick; my heart is boiling and my blood is careening around in my veins.

“Get a hold of yourself,” she says. “Now, we make like we've just gone off duty.”

“And what? Steal a car? Are you crazy?”

“Poor working girls like us? With a car? Do you have any idea what they pay kitchen staff in this place? We're in plenty of time to catch the bus.” She links her arm in mine and hauls me into the light.

“Why are we kitchen staff?” I ask. “They wear ugly hairnets all day long. Why can't we be student nurses or something?”

“How much nursing have you done?”

“I've been observing them since last spring.”

“How many dishes have you washed?”

“Kazillions.”

“Exactly. Now stroll,” she says.

“You are crazy.”

But no sirens begin to wail, no spotlights pin us to a wall, no one opens a window and threatens to shoot us, no platoon of guards comes running out to throw us to the ground and arrest us. At the gates Denise stops and checks her watch. I want to shake her and run, I'm so nervous.

“We're early,” she yawns. “Let's walk a bit, to get the kinks out. I thought the shift would never end.”

I look around to see who she is performing for. Not a soul. How well do I know Denise? Maybe she's been put in the wrong kind of hospital. She ambles down the street, away from the gates. I hurry to catch up.

“What's wrong with you?”

“I'm getting into character. I'm Barb, you're Lindy. We work in the kitchen. Don't, for God's sake, let on you're a patient here, or they'll treat you like a leper. And we don't want it getting back to the hospital that we skipped out either, or they'll bolt the doors and windows from the outside and no one will be able to go anywhere for months.”

After two blocks I can't see the Alex anymore. I suck in some real air. Fluff up my hair. Decide Lindy is twenty-two, comes from Toronto, and is new in town. Barb grabs my arm as lights come over the hill and we hustle for the bus.

“It's Lyndy,” I say, panting, “with two y's. You spell it with two y's.”

“If you say so.” She shoves me up the steps.

The bus drives through the night forever. It shakes and lurches, throwing us from side to side and back again. We stop at lightless intersections with dirt roads that trail off into scrub. Everybody on the bus is getting off, stop by stop. No one gets on. Finally Denise hauls me off when we pull into an Esso station and the driver gets out for a coffee.

“We walk from here,” she says. “It's not far.”

It's colder now, not so misty, and I button my coat. There will be shell ice by morning. We walk a half-mile up a paved road, the music drawing us on. It's coming from a long, low, rectangular building, with a lot of trucks pulled up in front, and light spilling out of small windows.

“If you see anyone from the Alex, just shut up and make like you don't know them.”

“Who? Who would be here?”

She pushes open the door. The thumping noise blows back into my face, laughter and fiddles a rich roil on top. A skinny kid with long curly brown hair and a silver stud set with black coral in one ear takes two bucks from each of us and stamps our hands with a smear of ink. He's wearing a Reardon Community Hall t-shirt with a fresh pizza stain down the front.

I turn the back of my hand around and squint at it.

“What does it say?”

He shrugs and turns back to his
Rolling Stone
. Beyond him is a haze of cigarette smoke and bar lights. Small tables and folding chairs line the walls. The dance floor, twice as big as the sunroom, is filled with couples. I trip over some guy's feet, his long legs stretched out past the table edge.

“Sorry.”

But he doesn't seem to notice, he shifts to see around me. His eyes are welded to the shirt front of a short redhead dancing with, presumably, her boyfriend. Breasts like honeydew melons roll and swing under her shirt. They are mesmerizing. I could hit him with a brick and get no response.

“Great crowd,” I say.

Denise has squeezed her way up to the bar and is ordering drinks.

“Grab a table,” she yells over her shoulder. The only empty one is beer-sticky and wobbles on three and a half legs. A rail runs along the wall, at the perfect height to help prop it up.

“Just don't kick it,” I say, “and keep hold of your drink.”

“We need a plan,” she yells into my ear. “If we get separated, meet me by that red-and-white post at the end of the parking lot at three o'clock. The dance starts to break up around then and we need to hook a ride home.”

“What's wrong with the bus?”

She looks at me like I am too simple to live.

“That was the last bus we took getting here.”

This is not a good time to have a panic attack. I take a big gulp of my drink. Disgusting. Rye is disgusting.

“Don't you leave me,” I yell at her. “If you leave me here alone, I'll murder you in your sleep. I'll shave you bald.” I take another drink and feel a little better. Don't get drunk, I remind myself, you really don't know where on God's green earth you are or how far it is to walk back to the hospital. You don't want to end up dead in a ditch.

I have another drink and try to relax. We're here to have fun, I should try to have fun.

“Mind my drink,” says Denise, and she steps onto the floor with a serial rapist in leather and chains.

Stop it, Gwen, I think. You can't judge a book by its black leather cover—he could be a divinity student on holiday. Then someone asks me to dance and I stop thinking at all. Everything gets fun and fast, the lights get dizzy as the room spins to the music. The sweet tang of aftershave is in my nostrils and I'm fixated on rolled-up sleeves on muscled arms—too sexy altogether, they make me sweat. Nuzzles in my hair as we waltz. Free drinks.

“Where do you live?”

“Where's your boyfriend tonight?”

“Sure you don't want to come outside for a toke?”

Honey heat in all the dangerous places. I am twenty-two, I am beautiful. I decide my name is spelled with an “e” at the end: Lyndé, or Lyndè, with an accent on the “e.” I can't remember which way the accent should go, I'll have to look it up when I get back to my room. It's much classier than Lyndy. I tell everybody to spell my name with an “e” at the end.

“Like Anne of Greengages,” says someone.

“No, not like Annie Greengages.” I am indignant. “Like Lyndè, from Toronto, for God's sake. Toronto's not in Greengages, everybody knows that.”

Everyone in the bathroom agrees that Toronto is not in Greengages. I pee in the bright white of a stall in the ladies', borrow lipstick from Denise, share a smoke, fuss with my hair. We link arms and go back out into the hall.

The hall's being a little silly, the music booms and retreats. The world goes around like a musical top, all flash and dazzle and fun for everyone. Denise is funny, I'm funny, the whole world is a funny, funny place. Whoops, somebody's spilled my drink, but hey, here comes another. The table falls off the ledge for the third time and I laugh so hard I have to sit on the floor to catch my breath.

CHAPTER 52

I have to puke.

“Not here. Not under the light. In the bushes, you fool.”

Rye is so disgusting. Twice disgusting. Worse disgusting the second time around. My head is beginning to hurt. Denise is here, Denise has got me.

“You idiot. It's a good thing I'm here to babysit you.”

“I want to go home. Can we go home?”

“Ten minutes ago I had to arm-wrestle you out the door. You said you wanted to live here. Stay put, for God's sake, don't move an inch. I've got to go find our ride before he forgets and leaves without us. He's none too sober, either.”

Don't care. Want to lie down and sleep. Something's wrong. Ocean soaked up under the ground, rolling and heaving. Here we go again, half-chewed peanuts and rye. I choke and gag on peanut bits that stick to the back of my throat. I'm amazed at the stuff coming out of me. No wonder I feel sick, my stomach's full of puke.

“For God's sake don't step in it.” Denise shoves me at a tree. “No one'll give us a ride home if you've got puke all over your goddamn shoes.” She wraps my arms around the tree trunk. “Hang on to this and don't move. I'll be back in five minutes.”

I want to explain to Denise about puking as a cure for tuberculosis. About how they decided that it was the sea-sickness—not the sea air—on those voyages that was so beneficial. How they built revolving chairs for people who couldn't afford to go on a sea cruise, chairs especially designed to make you throw up. How they swung TB patients round and round and round and round until they heaved their guts out. She's not interested. All my research, and she couldn't care less. I hang on to the tree. It's a white birch, smooth silvery bark. No rough prickles, no needles, no pokey little branches. I put my lips to the trunk and kiss it, lean my forehead against its cool, smooth brow, and lock my knees as best I am able. Dear tree, I whisper, dear little sister, please help me get home to bed before I die. I promise to be good from now on.

It's the screwdriver that wakes me. One minute I'm jouncing along, drifting in and out of the world, then suddenly there's a flathead screwdriver as long as your arm, with a sharp steel edge as big as a chisel, rimmed in red from the dash lights. Denise has chosen wrong and Bing, the guy whose mother ate Bing cherries every day for nine months straight from the can through the whole pregnancy, is a nasty drunk—one who wants to be sure he gets a reward for driving us home. Denise is trying to cajole him, trying to jolly him along, but I can hear terror in her voice. The van is not moving, we are stopped and he is telling her to get out and get in the back with him or he'll slit her throat for her. He calls her a bitch and a cocktease and says she owes him. All at once I am very sober. The air is black and full of evil. Denise is so frightened I can feel her shaking against my arm. Bing is very big and he stinks like a drunken goat; he's whining as he threatens. The screwdriver is monstrous and is pressed hard against Denise's throat.