All My Friends Are Superheroes (5 page)

Tom held the receiver close to his ear. He listened to the phone ring three times.

‘Hello?’ Hypno answered.

‘It’s Tom.’

‘So?’ Hypno said.

‘Don’t,’ Tom said. ‘I think I’ve killed her.’

‘While she was sleeping?’ Hypno asked.

‘Yes?’

‘You touched her while she was asleep?’

‘I held her.’

‘You shouldn’t do that.’

‘It’s our wedding night,’ Tom said.

‘You can’t do that.’

‘What should I do?’

‘She’s still sleeping?’

‘You’d better hope so.’

‘She’s fine,’ Hypno assured. ‘Go back and check on her, and you’ll see. She’s fine.’

Tom dropped the phone. He ran to the bedroom. The Perfectionist was sleeping (perfectly). Tom watched her to make sure. He sat at the foot of the bed. Ten minutes passed and her breathing was easy and regular.

Tom got off the bed still watching the Perfectionist. He stepped on her wedding dress, then picked it up, searched around and found a wooden hanger. The dress rustled as he hung it up. It took up almost half the space in the closet. He walked back to the kitchen and saw the phone on the floor. Tom picked up the receiver.

‘Hello?’ Tom asked into it.

‘She’s fine, right?’ asked Hypno.

‘How do I make it stop?’

‘It’s pretty simple.’

‘Tell me!’

‘Are you that afraid of her, Tom?’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘If you can’t figure this one out, you don’t deserve her. You really don’t,’ Hypno said. He hung up.

Tom listened to the dial tone. He held the receiver away from his head and looked at it. He threw the phone. The receiver was skidding across the floor as the Perfectionist walked into the kitchen. She stepped over it without looking down, went to the sink and filled a glass with water. She sat at the kitchen table, staring straight ahead.

‘See me!’ Tom screamed. He waved his hands in front of her face. He pushed the kitchen table away. The Perfectionist reached down. She took hold of a glass that wasn’t there, raised her arm and drank from her empty hand.

Tom opened a cupboard. He took out a dinner plate. Raising it over his head, Tom let it fall. The plate shattered.

The Perfectionist didn’t look up.

Tom dropped another plate. The Perfectionist stared at the wall in front of her. Tom threw a plate into the wall she stared at. The Perfectionist didn’t look up. Tom reached to the back of the cupboard. He stacked all the remaining plates.

‘Look at me!’ he screamed. He lifted the stack over his head and his housecoat bunched up under his arms.

The Perfectionist didn’t look at him.

Tom dropped the plates. They hit the floor and shattered into countless bits. The Perfectionist got up from the kitchen table and set her imaginary glass in the sink. She stepped on the bits of broken plate and cut her feet to ribbons. She didn’t say a word. She tracked blood all the way to the bedroom.

Tom discovered that touching her feet made her seasick. The Perfectionist threw up into a bowl as he pulled slivers of china out of her feet. He washed her feet. He bandaged them and slept on the floor.

In seat
F
27 the Perfectionist continues snoring. Tom puts his head in his hands. He leans forward, reaches into the pocket of the seat in front of him and pulls the plastic off a pair of headphones. He plugs them in. The last passenger left the volume at nine and opera plays so loud he can hear it with the headphones still on his lap.

Tom looks at the headphones. He can hear the music, but he can’t see it. ‘If music is invisible, can being invisible be all bad?’ Tom thinks to himself.

Tom unplugs the headphones. He puts them back into the pocket of the seat in front of him.

NINE
SIX HUNDRED CIGARETTES LATER

One morning exactly five months after their wedding, the Perfectionist woke up even earlier than usual. She walked to her corner store to buy a package of cigarettes but when she got to the counter she hesitated. She asked for three cartons of cigarettes and bought a pink disposable lighter as well. From the corner store she walked to a thrift store where for $3.99 she bought the largest ashtray they had.

In the same plastic bag she carried the cigarettes, the ashtray and the pink plastic lighter back to the apartment. She upended the plastic bag on the kitchen table, the ashtray wobbling as it hit the tabletop.

Using a letter opener she unwrapped the three cartons of cigarettes. She took the plastic covering off the twenty-four
packages. She took all the cigarettes out of their packages and made a stack of 600 cigarettes.

The Perfectionist started smoking. Six hundred seemed like an incredible number of cigarettes to her. She was sure Tom would return before she smoked the last one.

Twelve days later the 600th cigarette was between her nicotine-stained fingers. The plastic pink lighter was slippery in her hand. Her thumb flicked. She pushed the flame into the tip of the cigarette. She inhaled, didn’t cough, and somebody knocked on her door.

The Perfectionist exhaled. She set the lit cigarette on the edge of the ashtray. On the way to the door her inner voice said not to open it. ‘He wouldn’t knock,’ it told her. She opened the door anyway.

The man who stood in front of her was tall. His hair was freshly cut and greying at the temples. His black suit, white shirt and black tie were pressed. His shoes shone. Beside him on the sidewalk was a sample case big enough to hold a vacuum cleaner. He smiled at the Perfectionist.

The Perfectionist has always hated vacuum salesmen. There’s no reason, no traumatic episode in her past, no exlover or absent father who is one. She just doesn’t like them.

‘I don’t want a vacuum,’ the Perfectionist said.

‘I’m not selling vacuums,’ he answered. His voice was lyrical, calm and reassuring.

‘What are you selling?’ the Perfectionist asked.

‘I’m selling love,’ he answered.

The Perfectionist leaned against the door jamb. The smell of cigarettes came from her hair and her clothes. She backed out of the doorway and he followed her inside.

In the kitchen he set down his sample case. He tugged up his pant legs as he sat. He crossed his right leg over his left, revealing argyle socks.

‘What kind of love are we interested in today?’ he asked.

‘What kinds do you have?’

‘Well,’ he said. He stood up. ‘I’ve got the love you want, the love you think you want, the love you think you want but don’t when you finally get it ... ’

‘That must be very popular.’

‘It is.’

‘What else have you got?’

‘I’ve got the love that’s yours as long as you do what you’re told, the love that worries it’s not good enough, the love that worries it’ll be found out, the love that fears being judged and found lacking, the love that’s almost – but not quite – strong enough, the love that makes you feel they’re better than you ... ’

‘Stop.’

‘What?’

‘I don’t want any of those.’

‘What kind do you want?’

‘I want the kind I had with Tom.’

‘And what kind was that?’

‘It was true love,’ the Perfectionist said.

She locked eyes with the salesman. He swallowed. It made his eyes look sad.

‘Then you’ll need one of these,’ he replied. His eyes didn’t look sad any more. They sparkled. He dipped to his right, picked up his sample case, lifted it as high as he could and slammed it onto the kitchen table. He snapped the left clasp open. He snapped the right clasp open. He flipped open the lid, reached in and pulled out a vacuum.

‘You are a vacuum salesman?’ the Perfectionist hissed.

‘You don’t really believe true love exists outside one of these?’ he asked.

The salesman stood motionless, holding out the vacuum. The kitchen was silent. His arms got tired. He lowered the vacuum and put it back in the sample case.

‘Thank you for your time,’ the Perfectionist said. She took his card and gently escorted him to the front door of the apartment.

The Perfectionist returned to the kitchen and noticed her lit cigarette in the ashtray. It was half burnt. She reached out and extinguished it. She flipped through the yellow pages and phoned the first travel agency she saw. She purchased a one-way ticket to Vancouver.

TEN
TASKS #5 TO #7

The Perfectionist wakes up. She watches clouds and mentally rechecks her ‘Things To Do Before Leaving’ list. Tasks #5 to #7 were all ‘call sister’ (#4 final mop and wax; #8 call airport to check for a flight delay). The Perfectionist replays these phone conversations in her mind. The first call (#5) was to her eldest sister, the Face.

The Face was eight years old when she first noticed how photographs taken of her were slightly out of focus. When the Face looked in mirrors, even if she kept very still, her reflection was always blurry. During high school she was very popular but she had no close friends.

After high school the Face studied at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax, Nova Scotia. In
painting class the first assignment was a self-portrait. Holding her brush, the Face studied her classmates. They mixed colours and applied thick brushstrokes to the canvas. The Face’s brush was still. She didn’t know how to begin.

That night she phoned three of her classmates and asked them to describe what she looked like. They all responded that she was the most beautiful woman they’d ever seen. But when she asked for details, they couldn’t provide any. They couldn’t tell her what colour her eyes were. They didn’t know if her teeth were straight, or if her hair was wavy, or if her lips were thick. They only knew she the most beautiful woman they’d ever seen.

The Face submitted a blank canvas and got an A+. Everyone agreed it was the most beautiful self-portrait they’d ever seen and it looked exactly like her. That afternoon she started sewing a hood. She finished it the following Wednesday. She hasn’t taken it off in seventeen years.

The Face wasn’t home. The Perfectionist had planned this. She left a message apologizing for missing her and a promise that she’d call as soon as she landed in Vancouver.

The Perfectionist went on to task #6. She called her other older sister, the Elongating Woman, who was named Donna at birth. On Donna’s eighteenth birthday her boyfriend was the passenger in a Toyota Corolla that was t-boned by a pickup truck. He died on his way to the hospital and for the next three years all Donna could think about was timing. What if he’d stopped for something? What if
they’d hit a red light? What if he’d gotten into that car ten seconds later? It seemed like such a simple thing, so easy to change, and she started believing she could change it. All she had to do was reach back into time and delay him, so she stretched out her arms.

She stretched her arms down Queen Street, past people and streetcars. She stretched her arms onto the Gardiner Expressway. She stretched her arms faster than highway traffic. She stretched and stretched and stretched but she was only able to put her arms around the city. She couldn’t reach back in time and she’s never forgiven herself.

The Elongating Woman answered her phone.

‘It’s me,’ the Perfectionist said.

‘Don’t go,’ said the Elongating Woman.

‘I can’t wait any longer,’ the Perfectionist said. ‘There are limits.’

‘I know,’ the Elongating Woman said. ‘I know that.’ The Perfectionist promised to call the moment she landed in Vancouver. She hung up the phone and called her younger sister, the Ticker (task #7).

The Ticker is a quiet superhero who makes everyone nervous. Her superpower is her amazing potential. Sitting at the edge of parties, responding to inquiries but never starting them, the Ticker is always watching and waiting – as is everybody else.

Certainly she could do anything she wanted to, but what would that anything be? Brilliant art? Mass crime?
World peace or medical school? And will she ever do it? Not even the Ticker knows. She answered her phone on the first ring.

‘I’ll miss ya,’ said the Ticker.

‘I’ll miss you too,’ said the Perfectionist.

‘Perf?’ asked the Ticker. Her voice made the Perfectionist nervous. The Ticker rarely sounded this serious.