Monkey Beach (40 page)

“Watch the couch!” Bib roared as they threw cake at each other. “That’s real leather! Stop it!”

Frank leaned against the wall, not saying anything.

“I’m going to get another beer,” I said.

“I’ll do it.”

“You stay here and sulk. You seem to be enjoying it.” I walked away. I saw some people I knew from school on the back porch and went out to say hi. When I went back inside, Frank was gone. Karaoke was opening her presents, which were mostly booze. She opened every bottle she got and passed it around. I was too irritated to enjoy myself.

The party wound down about midnight. I wondered if Jimmy had chickened out. It would be just as well if he did, I thought, since Karaoke was by now mostly toasted. She leaned against me at one point and said, “Pooch thought you were rea—rea—really special.”

“Thanks,” I said, turning my head to avoid the fumes.

“Josh-u-wa, wa-wa does too. He says you remind him of Mick, Michael, Michelle, elle.”

“Okay,” I said, trying to push her off. “That’s great. Thanks.”

“You know,” she said. “I’m gonna kick his ass one of these days.”

“Good,” I said, not caring who she was talking about. “I think he’s over there. Go get him.”

Jimmy came through the door a few minutes later.
He had two dozen long-stemmed red roses. He made a quick survey of the room, spotted me and casually strolled over.

“Where on earth did you get those?” I said.

“Rupert.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Is she still here?” he said, peering around.

“Technically.” I looked into his very earnest face and pointed in the direction I’d last seen her go. I silently wished him luck. A few minutes later, I heard an unholy chorus of shrieks from the backyard. When I looked out the window, Karaoke and Ronny were pouring him tequila shots. Bib started kicking people out at one-thirty. I waited around for Jimmy to give me a ride home, but had to walk when I couldn’t find him.

I had the worst headache. I took three aspirin and waited for the throbbing in my temples to ease. I drifted off when the sky started to lighten to grey. In my dream, Ma-ma-oo and I were driving in Mick’s truck down a logging road. She had her berry bucket on the seat beside her. We drove farther up the mountain until the trees started scratching the roof and sides. She pulled the truck to a stop and said, “Find mimayus.”

He didn’t come home that night. Mom was pissed because he was supposed to take her to Terrace. Her mood wasn’t going to improve when she found out he’d ditched her to boogie with Adelaine, a girl who got her nickname from drunkenly monopolizing a karaoke machine with a switchblade. I wondered what Karaoke would do when Jimmy broke up with her. He said most of the girls knew when they met him that he
wasn’t in it for anything serious. I wasn’t sure if he understood his effect on women. Still, she didn’t seem to be the kind of girl who would mourn for too long.

Jimmy still hadn’t come home by evening, and Mom began to worry. She sat at the kitchen table until Dad came home, and then they sat together. I went over to Uncle Geordie’s and asked to borrow his car.

The road turned off the Terrace highway near the municipal dump and snaked into the mountains. At first, the road was wide enough to turn around on, but then the trees crowded close and bushes sprouted along the centre. It was much more overgrown than when Ma-ma-oo had brought me there. The sun set. As I went farther up, I wondered if the dream had just been a dream, when I saw the sparkle from a fire up ahead. Jimmy stood in the centre of the road and waved. Behind him, Karaoke sat on the trunk of the car, wrapped in an aluminum emergency blanket, and rubbed sleep-encrusted eyes.

“Jesus,” Jimmy said. “How the hell did you find us?”

“Mom’s going nuts. Come on, get in.”

“Hey,” Karaoke said.

“Evening,” I said.

Jimmy was in a gentle, silly mood, and that was out of character for him these days. He opened the back door for Karaoke and she clambered in, still wrapped in the blanket. He slammed the door shut and got in the other side. I backed the car up to a spot where the logging road widened. Jimmy put an arm over Karaoke’s shoulders. She rested her head against him and slept for the whole ride back. Jimmy brushed a stray lock of hair off her face.

Mm-hmm, I thought as the car came to the turnaround place. I maneuvered the beast slowly around and we bumped down the mountain. Every few minutes, I’d peer into the rearview mirror and watch Jimmy watching Karaoke.

The day I sketched my last art assignment, I decided to make dinner. Since I hadn’t cooked anything in years, I decided to stick to rice, canned fish and seaweed. I bought a cake at Safeway and stuck a Congratulations! candle on top. Jimmy asked if he could bring Karaoke. Still high from surviving the first half of grade eleven, I said enthusiastically, “Sure!”

Mom and Dad exchanged a glance when Jimmy told them Karaoke was coming over. They sat beside each other at the table. We waited for her to show up. Jimmy stood by the window. I picked the skin off the salmon. Dad liked all of the salmon mushed together, but the rest of us could handle only the smaller bones and the dark flesh. As I was mixing in the mayonnaise and fancying the salmon up with pickles and carrots, Jimmy snapped to attention and I knew he’d seen her. He had that flushed, nervous look. When he opened the door for her, his smile was so bright that it could have powered a solar car.

Karaoke herself was looking pale. She came in quietly, nodded to everyone and sat down, staring at her plate as if she expected to be chopped up and eaten herself. Jimmy made loud small talk about the weather.

“Well, it’s ready!” I said, bringing the rice and fish to the table.

“I don’t believe it,” Dad said, sitting back. “You cooked.”

“Three years of home ec and I think I still burned the rice,” I said.

“Mmm,” Jimmy said. “It’s crunchy too.”

Mom and Karaoke were quiet through the whole meal. I think this was probably the smartest thing Karaoke ever did. Mom warmed up to her enough to ask if Karaoke’s mother was okay. Karaoke nodded. She excused herself from dessert, saying she had to watch her weight.

I lit my candle and blew it out, glad that Mom hadn’t insulted Jimmy’s new girlfriend. If she had, Jimmy would’ve spent the summer not talking to her. Karaoke wandered out onto the back porch for a smoke. I went up and stood beside her. She stared out at the grass. “We used to live here. Our old house was a few feet away from your smokehouse. All this was marsh. In the summer, you could hear the frogs.”

“I remember that,” I said. We smoked. Jimmy came and leaned over Karaoke. They began kissing, so I went back into the kitchen and helped Mom load the dishwasher. She pursed her lips.

“Looks like you’re going to get grandkids after all,” I said.

“Bite your tongue.”

“Love is blind,” Dad said, pouring himself a cup of coffee. “I married you, didn’t I?”

She gave him a withering look. “Men.”

“You weren’t exactly an angel yourself,” Dad said.

“Maybe a snow angel,” I said.

They looked at me, startled. Dad grinned.

“Who’ve you been talking to now?” Mom said, irritated.

“Mick told me. He said you got toasted and made snow angels on—”

“
Na
’,” she said. “Mick and his big mouth.”

“How long ago was that? Thirty years?” Dad said, kissing her.

Mom decided to scrub the stove. Recognizing the signs, I left the kitchen and headed back to my room. As I sat at my desk, I wondered how serious Jimmy was about Karaoke. With all the other girls, they did the phoning, they did the picking up and dropping off, they arranged the places to meet. Jimmy simply went along with them. Karaoke hadn’t called once. He called her every night. He went over to her house and drove her around. The weeks turned into their one-month anniversary. Mom’s expression went sour when he mentioned her name, which was every five minutes when he was home.

Spring came and went and as summer loomed, I wanted to get back out onto the water. I’d missed my bump-around days and had a hankering for crab fresh from the pot and halibut straight out of the ocean. Uncle Geordie helped me fix up the speedboat. It hadn’t been used for years and needed a new paint job. We pulled it out of the water to scrape the gunk off the bottom. He shook his head when he saw the motor. “I
don’t like it. This is an old boat. You should have a twenty-five-horsepower outboard at the most. Thirty-five is too powerful for this old girl.”

“Oh, we’ve used this motor for years,” I said. “It’ll be fine.”

He showed me the engine, gave me an oar and a lifejacket and said, “Be careful.”

On our first test drive, he drove us around the bay. The first of the little kids were bouncing off the docks. One of them dived into the water and I watched until his head popped out of the water and he screamed at his friends to wait for him.

Frogs croak to potential mates as darkness settles over the village. Their love songs grow loud enough to drown out the distant hum of Alcan. The frogs hide in the tidal flat grass that hisses and bends in the early-evening breeze. The water laps the shore, hesitating before the tide turns. In the distance, the sound of a seiner.

Crows land on the beach, down the way from me. They peck at the empty shells. They are not alarmed by the whispering from the trees. I stand by my boat, my forgotten bailer in my hands. I’m soaked. I don’t know what time it is, and don’t want to lift my arms to check.

“We can help you,” a voice says. “Give us meat.”