Eleanor Rigby (12 page)

*    *    *

Oh—before I forget, my mother never knew about the cluster of abortions that occurred in the few months after the Italian trip. It was common lore at the school, even for outsiders like me: those girls sauntering off to the Elf station brought back souvenirs, four in all. I still have a photo of the Elfs, who probably have offspring circling the globe. I took the photo the day before we left. The bus crapped out on us and we were marooned at the hostel, so we all went over for a group shot. The photo is yellowed, and you can sense the stinking, noisy
autostrada
just to the side of the station, and you can see something in the eyes of the girls. They’d changed.

*    *    *

After Jeremy fell asleep again that first night, he woke up sweating into his second hour. I’m not sure if he even knew it was me, but he said, “The women on the porches! Oh! Suddenly they’re far more beautiful than they were before. They’re in white dressing gowns. There are flowers in vases on porch railings and in their hair—shasta daisies and bachelor’s buttons. These beautiful women are asking the voice what it was they’re supposed to do next.”

“What is it?”

“They’re told to believe that we’re all sick in our own way—and that life is work—and rewards often seem more accidental than based on merit. And they’re told about the delay, and that they won’t be receiving their gift—not that year—they have to make it through the winter first.”

“And?”

“The voice stops there. The men and women are frightened. It’s too late to plant seeds. Their stored foods have been destroyed. They know winter will soon arrive, and they don’t know what to do.”

Jeremy paused, then fell asleep once more.

*    *    *

It’s an axiom of family life that children in their late teens yearn to meet and befriend aunts, uncles and cousins across the country, relatives of whom little has been said over the years, and whose presence throughout their life has been fleeting.
I bet Mom and Dad never gave so-and-so a chance. I’ll be the one who discovers their unmined charms, and I’ll be the one who uses my spunk to knit the family closer together.

The newly discovered aunts, uncles and cousins are then revealed to be just like our immediate family, except funnier and more charming and less disciplinary. They inflate our sense of adulthood.

And then the years pass, and with them the ease and confidence around the new-found relatives. Intractable personality problems emerge and tempers flare. Chances are that you, yourself, are turning into one of your parents—the exact people your relatives chose to avoid in the first place. It all turns into a mess, which is fine; families are messy.

I mention this because that’s the way it started with Jeremy. He was an undiscussed relative living far away who showed up on my doorstep one afternoon. Of course I wanted him to be witty and smart and wonderful, but Jeremy, to his credit, never tried to see me as perfection embodied. Which is probably why I liked him so much. And he’d been, if not spying, keeping his eye on me for all that time before we met. My life couldn’t have surprised him in any way.

On Jeremy’s first morning in my place, I woke up to the smell of breakfast in the air. I sat bolt upright: eggs, butter, salt and oil and a touch of chives were like tendrils from under the crack of my bedroom door. I threw on my terry cloth housecoat and poked my head out into the hallway to the kitchen. Jeremy, fresh as a Gap clerk, asked, “Do you like your omelettes chunky or
baveuse?”

“What’s
baveuse?”

“Runny.”

“Baveuse
, please.”

In my bathroom mirror, my cheeks had only slight yellow bruising, and the swelling was down, if not gone. And there was
another person
in my apartment. Cooking eggs. He was family, but he … I’d never had anybody spend a night in my apartment. I began to wonder about practical things like the bathroom and whether its contents sent out bad signals. Not stupid things like women’s products, but whether or not it seemed like a
real person’s
bathroom. Whimsical bathroom gadgetry is so embarrassing; dried-out starfish and sponges make me worry about extinction; all-white tile bathrooms remind me of the hostel bathroom in Italy.

I inspected my surroundings, both architecturally and biologically. Odours? Stains? Discolorations? Failures of imagination?

When I finally went into the kitchen, Jeremy said, “Mornings are the best time for me. My body rarely turns freaky until the afternoon, so I try to do what I can as quickly as I can.”

“You didn’t have to cook breakfast.”

“Being useful has always kept me safe.”

“That’s how I feel.”

“You do?” One lip of pale yellow egg was being folded on top of another; he must have beaten extra egg whites into the mix.

I said, “Unless I contribute to society, I pretty much figure they’ll scoop me up in the middle of the night and toss my condo and job and bank account to people who are more deserving than me.”

“How long have you thought that?”

“It’s not thinking; it’s a feeling. Ever since I can remember.”

He handed me the omelette, which was thick like a pancake but full of air, too. It deflated when I forked it.

Jeremy asked if I liked my work.

“I think big companies are like marching bands. You know the big secret about marching bands, don’t you?”

“No. What is it?”

“Even if half the band is playing random notes, it still sounds kind of like music. The concealment of failure is built right into them. It’s like the piano—as long as you play only the black keys, not the white ones, it’ll sound okay, but on the other hand it’ll never sound like real music either.”

“How’s your omelette?”

“Good.” From the kitchen table I glanced at the living room. It was spotless. “Jesus, Jeremy, you didn’t have to clean the whole place.”

“I noticed that there are no family photos anywhere in your place, not even on your fridge.”

“I’ve always meant to put some up.”

“Sometimes when I’d stay with one family for long enough to make friends, I’d go to my friends’ houses, look at their family photos, and it was so strange, seeing the same people, always in the same kind of photos, but growing older together. I only have maybe three photos of me before the age of twenty. School pictures.”

“You were a beautiful baby. Even I could tell that the moment you were born.”

The compliment was lost on him. “I used to steal family pictures from my friends,” he said. “Smaller ones that they’d never miss. Those pictures and my clothes were the only things I ever took from one placement to the next. My plan was that when I finally escaped the system I could hang up all of these photos on my walls, and girls would look at them and think it was great that I had a family, and that I liked my family.”

“Smooth.”

“I’ve always liked those super-healthy girls who smell like freshly mown lawns—the ones who secretly want to make love to chestnut-coloured horses named Thunder. All of my stepsisters had mall hair, and if they tried to make it with me and I said no, they’d blame me for eating the leftover Kentucky Fried Chicken in the fridge, even though they were the ones who did it. When you’re in foster care, even something dumb like that can make them trade you in.”

I finished eating and lit a cigarette. “I look like hell.”

“So?”

“Point well taken. You know what?”

“What?”

“Let’s go shopping for a fold-out bed this morning.”

“That’s a good idea.”

*    *    *

Soon we were in my Honda driving to Park Royal mall, the windows wide open on a glorious summer morning. I asked Jeremy if he had a job.

“I was grill cook at a diner, but once I started falling apart I had to stop. My fingers went all numb and I’d just stand there by the chopping board with blood flowing over me like strawberry compote.”

“Not too good.”

“No. And when the numbness went away, I’d get the jitters. Carbon steel blades are no longer a part of my life. A year ago I landed a job doing breakfasts at a tourist-bus hamster wheel of a downtown hotel. Nothing special, but I was able to hold that together, but that’s over too as of last month. Out of nowhere, my arms and legs will seize up—not too often, but enough to make kitchens risky. Lately I’m feeling tired a bit more often. Today’s a good day for me, but it could all turn to sawdust inside of one breath.”

We arrived at the mall a few minutes later, at a chain discount-furniture store called The Rock. We opened its glass doors and I was overwhelmed by hundreds of mattresses and furniture of all types, assembled into no particular departments, the store’s air swirling with the fragrance of spooky synthetic molecules. We found an area that seemed to have slightly more mattresses and, not really knowing what to look for, we just stood there looking dumb beneath unflattering yellowy lighting.

“Hi, I’m Ken. Can I help you?” A man approached us—slightly older than me, with a complexion that said,
I like vodka.

“We need a foldaway bed.”

Jeremy said, “And you also need a queen-size bed.”

I was baffled. “What?”

“Look, Mom, sorry, but you just can’t stay with the twin bed. You’re a grown-up woman. Imagine the signal you send out if you bring home some guy and you have a twin bed—like you were fifteen again.”

He was right—what
had
I been thinking all these years?

Ken said, “Let’s find both. Let’s start with the queen-size. Did you have any preference?”

“No.” This was all happening so quickly.

“Do you like a hard or soft mattress?”

“I’ve never thought of that before.”

“Let’s go try a few.”

“Any mattress at all is fine. I really don’t need a salesman, and …”

“I’m not a salesman, I’m a Sleep Consultant. And before you jump in blindly, let’s start you off on this one here.” Ken took a sheet of clear solid plastic and spread it out at the foot of the mattress. “Lie down. You can put your feet on the plastic square.”

I did, and Ken gave me a thoughtful look. “I see you’re a left-handed sleeper.”

“A what?”

“A left-handed sleeper. People have handedness in their sleeping too, just as they do in writing or baseball. I sleep on my right side for most of my sleeping.”

“What a novel idea.”

Ken bent down to look at my back. “Uh-oh.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Just as I thought: loose spine. You need a mattress with more support. Let’s try that one there.”

I have to hand it to Ken—he was good. I was bouncing on and off mattresses like the town slut, as Jeremy asked sensible questions. I’d never shopped with someone other than Mother or Leslie before. It was fun, and in the end I found a mattress and box spring combination that had me longing for nightfall.

“Now,” said Ken, looking at Jeremy, “let’s see what we can find for you. Any specific needs?”

“I’d like one that’s quite high up so that it’s easy to get on and off.”

“A young guy like you?”

“I’ve got, uh—” Jeremy never liked saying the actual name of the beast.

I said, “MS.”

Jeremy added, “Sometimes it’s a bit hard to stand up.”

It was as if we’d switched on a light bulb within Ken’s being. “MS? Why didn’t you say so? My brother-in-law has it. Gruesome disease.”

I thought this was rude, but Jeremy didn’t mind. “Tell me about it!”

Ken said, “What’s your name?”

“Jeremy.”

“Jeremy, let’s find your perfect sleep solution.”

We headed toward the folding couches, which had come a long way design-wise since the sixties when I stayed at my grandmother’s place.

When it came time to pay for everything, Ken made a tally and asked, “Liz, would you prefer a thirty-dollar discount on the price of your mattress and box spring or a free twenty-inch TV set?”

“Very funny.”

“No, I’m serious.”

“A free TV?”

He motioned for Jeremy and me to come in closer. “Look, here’s the deal. I’m quitting in a few days, so I can tell you. The mattress makers are all locked in a death match right now, and so the deals you can get are insane.”

“But a
TV set?”

“Think about mattresses for a second. They’re nothing but air. They’re like popcorn at a theatre. They cost about eighteen cents to make. Hell, they’re still using the machines they used back in the
1950
s. It’s all one big scam.”

I said that I’d never thought of it like that before.

“Good God, yes. And Jeremy, do you want a gas barbecue to go with your foldaway couch?”

Jeremy said, “Hey, Ken—a gas barbecue would nicely complement my lifestyle.”

“Smartass. But you’re getting one anyway. What about a job—do you have one?”

“Nope.”

“Good. Start here right away, and really play up the MS thing. Do you have a wheelchair?”

“I do.”

“Good. It’ll up your sales twenty-five percent.”

“Really?”

“Oh yeah. The gimp factor. You can’t change things, so you might as well work them.”

I was appalled but fascinated.

Jeremy asked, “How many people with MS does it take to put in a light bulb?”

Ken didn’t know how many.

“Five million—one person to do it, and four million nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine to write depressing on-line web logs.”

“You should meet my brother-in-law. He’s Mr. Victim. Drives me nuts.”

They continued in this vein.

Jeremy asked, “Do I have to fill out an application?”

“I’ll get one for you from Shelagh. She’s a battleaxe, but tell her you like her sweater and she’s in your pocket.”

I said, “You can just hire people like that?”

“Absolutely—when the economy is as good as it is now, we have to snare salespeople any way we can. I also get a free microwave for finding a new staffer.”

Ken went away to get a form from Shelagh.

“Look, Maw, I done got me a job!”

“Jeremy, isn’t it kind of tempting fate to play up your disease?”

“No. Like Ken says, I can’t change it, so I may as well work it.”