Prerequisites for Sleep (2 page)

 

I'm sitting in the front passenger seat of our van, a seventeen-year-old Dodge Caravan, the most popular minivan ever sold, according to Billy. This one is rusty and probably won't pass its next safety inspection. Lucy is on my lap, the two of us squished into one seat belt. I know this is illegal, but Amy, Charlotte, and Eli are in the back along with Grapefruit, our mixed-breed dog, who likes to slobber all over the place. Already the van is beginning to smell like dog saliva and sweat. Further back is all our stuff, a few suitcases and an entire package of green garbage bags with our clothes and lots of sheets and towels and other household items that Ma stuffed into them when she ran around the house screaming at Billy and calling him an effing no-good piece of shit.

Ma is turning the key and the ignition is clicking and clicking. Sometimes it will take several minutes of turning and clicking before it catches. She is cursing under her breath, like she doesn't want anyone to hear her, which makes me wonder if she remembers that only forty minutes ago she was expressing every four-letter word known to man at top volume. I had to cover Lucy's ears with my hands 'cause she is only four and didn't need to hear all that. Eli is nine, and he didn't need to hear all that either; but I couldn't cover two sets of ears at the same time, so I just motioned with my head for him to follow me outside, while I headed for the door stooped over Lucy so I could keep my hands on her ears as she walked. We went over to the swing set, where I held Lucy on my lap with my arms wrapped around the chains and my hands still over her ears. She was thinking it was some kind of game and giggled and squirmed a bit, but not enough to make my hands slip from where I held them. Eli sat and twisted the swing in semicircles back and forth while he scuffed his running shoes in the worn spot where there is no grass under the swings. We could still hear Ma swearing, only at a lower volume.

Billy is standing outside the van in bare feet. I can see tears flowing down his cheeks. He is twitching, like he needs a cigarette or a drink. He has been trying to quit both. He told me yesterday that he has been off the bottle for two months, six days, and fourteen hours, but is having a little trouble with the cigarettes.

Billy is the closest thing I have to a dad. My real father, Rod, is gone, to Calgary, I think. I haven't seen him since I was about three years old. I couldn't even tell you what he looks like except that he must look somewhat like me because sometimes Ma gets mad and tells me to stop looking at her like that, and I say like what? and she says like your father. I don't have any pictures to see exactly which parts of us look the same.

Charlotte is three years older than me, and Amy is four years younger. They both have Clyde for a father. Ma married Clyde when she was pregnant with Charlotte. Then she left Clyde and moved in with Rod, stayed a few years and had me. When she left Rod, she was still married to Clyde so we all went to live with him. Amy was born the following year. I never felt close enough to Clyde to think he could be a replacement father. On a scale of one to ten, Clyde was a four point five. He never really bothered with us kids, except when he yelled for us to get our grubby paws off his car. Clyde was more interested in sex and beer and sometimes pickup hockey, when it didn't interfere with sex and beer. Billy once said that Clyde was a cliché. I think I know what he was getting at. I could never figure out myself why it took Ma over five years to get tired of it all the second time round, when surely she would have known what she was getting into.

Billy is Eli's real dad, so Eli is kind of upset back there because he has never experienced the up and leaving that Ma has a habit of doing. I know he's trying real hard not to cry, or at least not cry too loud. His forehead is pressed against the window and his eyes are shut so tight they look like they hurt. Every so often I hear a partially suppressed sniffle.

Eli and Billy are pretty close. They go fishing and play lots of video games together. Sometimes Eli and Billy go away, just the two of them, on what Billy calls a boys' weekend. I don't know what they do for the entire two days, but I do know Eli gets pretty excited every time they start planning one. I figure it must be like an extended sleepover, where they stay up really late and eat a lot of junk food and do crazy things that they don't have to explain to anyone. I did see Billy pack his rifle last time and have to admit that I wished I could have gone with them, just once, 'cause taking potshots at cans seems like a whole lot more fun than painting toenails and applying fake tattoos.

Billy has been pretty good to us, considering. Except for Eli, who is still fairly young, we weren't the best-behaved kids. I skipped a lot of school to drink, toke, and do plenty of other stuff with Brian Simpson, things that scare the crap out of me when I think about Lucy ever doing them. All that stopped when I got pregnant. Now I'm trying really hard to be a good parent, which I have to do by myself 'cause Brian wouldn't believe me when I told him that he was the only person I ever had sex with. He called me some not very nice names, and that's when I decided that I didn't want him to be the other parent anyway. Ma didn't say much, other than I better get used to changing shitty diapers; but Billy told me that I was strong enough to do it on my own and that Lucy still had a family.

You wouldn't know it by looking at him, 'cause he appears pretty down and out, but Billy has a university degree. It shows sometimes when he's talking serious and his sentences get peppered with big words. The last real serious talk he had with me was about six months ago when he suggested I take something called the
GED
. He and Ma had just had a big fight about Amy 'cause she was skipping classes and doing things with Brian Simpson's younger brother Gil that she shouldn't be doing. Ma told him to mind his own
GD
business 'cause Amy was her kid, not his, and he had no right to interfere. When Billy mentioned the
GED
, I looked at him like I always do when he talks about things that I don't understand, so he explained it some more. He said that it was a high school diploma test. If I passed it, it would mean that I graduated from high school and I would be able to get a better job or, if I wanted to, go on to college or university. It would mean I would be able to take better care of Lucy in the future. I don't want to sound pessimistic, he said, but things happen. If you have some education, it will be a lot easier to get yourself and Lucy out of a situation you don't want to be in. Billy offered to help me and bought the book when he drove to Halifax one day to pick up some parts for his truck. We have been working on the practice problems ever since. I have an appointment to take the test a week from Wednesday. Billy said he would drive me there and take Lucy to a movie while I did the writing.

Lucy adores Billy. He pushes her on the swings and takes her fishing with him and Eli. Last winter, when she had a really bad cold and looked like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, he bought her a box of Puffs tissues 'cause they have lotion in them and would be softer on her nose. You would have thought he gave her a gold brick the way she held onto that box, sleeping with it and gently packing it into her Dora the Explorer knapsack whenever she had to go anywhere. Up until this morning, it was still somewhere in our room with the last tissue in the bottom 'cause she didn't want it to be empty and have to throw it in the garbage.

Right now Lucy is silent and not moving, which is how I know she is upset 'cause normally she fidgets and asks a billion questions. She is sideways, facing the passenger window with her head tucked into the space between my boob and armpit. I keep playing with the curls in her hair, trying to distract her a little bit and let her know that I'm here for her.

After I had Lucy, Billy never once said anything about having another kid in the house and another mouth to feed. He did say in the middle of an argument with Ma that he didn't want another one of us kids doing something stupid with some horny teenager who would never live up to their responsibility. I didn't ask him, but I'm pretty sure the another one he was referring to is Amy, and I can understand that, even though I love Lucy to death and would never consider giving her up, 'cause I know my life is going to be a whole lot different than how I thought it would be back when I was in school.

Amy can't understand this right now 'cause she is in the middle of her toking, drinking, and fooling-around-without-thinking stage. When I try to talk to her, 'cause I've been there, she tells me to shut my effing trap and mind my own
GD
business. Amy sure can swear. She's a lot like Ma in that way. She is also really pretty, like the pictures of Ma when she was younger. I'm not saying that any of us are ugly, but Amy is definitely the prettiest. I overheard Mrs. MacLeod, who lives across the road, say that Amy was far too pretty for her own good. That spells
T-R-O-U-B-L-E
, she said right before she saw me standing by the milk cooler at the variety store. Then she shut up and pretended she didn't see me; but I know she did because before she stopped talking she had added the words, just like, to her sentence.

Charlotte is really pissed at Billy right now so I know she doesn't care whether Ma leaves or not. Charlotte moved back in with us after her husband Chester was convicted of burning down a mobile home belonging to Harold Richards. Harold's daughter Wendy and her boyfriend Norman King were living there at the time. The rumours said that Chester burnt them out because they owed him some money. The rumours also said that it was money for coke. The worst thing about the whole situation was that Wendy and Norman were passed out in the trailer when it burnt and now they are both in pretty rough shape. This got Chester sent away for attempted murder, and Harold mad as hell at Billy, who used to maintain all his trucks and construction equipment. Now Billy works at the fish plant, a low-wage, seasonal job that doesn't allow him to use his best skill: the ability to keep motors going in cars, trucks, lawn tractors, chainsaws or any other electrical or gas-powered machine you can name, long after most people would junk them and buy new ones.

The reason Charlotte is so angry is that Chester is getting out of prison in a couple weeks, and she figured that he was going to come live here with all of us until the two of them worked out what they were going to do. Ma didn't seem to have a problem with this, but when Billy found out, which wasn't until this morning, he put his foot down and said that there was no way in hell that Chester was staying under his roof, and if Ma wanted to welcome somebody like that into the house after all the things he did, then she better find another house to live in.

That's when Ma started her cursing and screaming at Billy and gathering things into garbage bags, 'cause Ma is like a wild animal when it comes to her kids. When she gets her hackles up, there is no way that anyone will stop her from doing what it takes to make sure they get what they want. That's just the way she is. It's the way she's always been. Right around then, when I was stooped over Lucy, protecting her ears from all the swearing, I realized I had never mentioned to Ma how much I wanted to take that test.

I'm staring out the window at Billy. He is standing on the grass. His nose is running and he wipes it on the sleeve of his denim shirt. I want to smile and raise my hand in a half wave but Ma is watching. The engine catches, then stalls, and Ma swears again, this time not under her breath. She turns the key once more and the van coughs and sputters back to life. Eli begins to sob real loud in the back seat. Grapefruit, being sympathetic, 'cause Eli is his favourite person in the whole world, starts to whine. Then Ma pumps the gas pedal and the engine revs, almost loud enough to drown it all out.

 

Several months ago, Andy and I moved in together. Before that we had existed in two apartments for over a year. Some of my clothes were in his closet, and a great deal of his stuff was stored at my place. One day, we drove up the 404, Andy behind the wheel of his newly leased Ford, took the exit at Newmarket and continued northward until we found a house we could afford. This particular house, constructed in the early '70s, was well kept, with new doors and windows and ceramic and hardwood floors as recent upgrades. Andy wanted a kitchen large enough to add his dream island. This one fit the bill.

Andy works as an apprentice chef at an upscale restaurant in a downtown hotel. He rarely has a night off. We had re-met on one of those rare nights, when I bumped into him at a party that I attended with my friend Steph. He was leaning against the wall by the bathroom door, waiting to get in. Happy to be on my way out, I practically knocked him over. “Hey, I know you. Lisa, right?” In a previous life called college, Andy studied culinary arts and I took costume design, a single English class being the only thing we had in common. He had an easy appearance and a demeanour that was goofy but nice. During my college days, I had been too busy to notice such things.

I peddle my services to theatre companies and festivals and am often hired in the costume departments of movies that take place in Toronto. Stephanie and I are currently working on the same production, glorified dressers of elves in a made-for-
TV
Christmas movie. Sipping coffee outside a trailer on Queen West, we watch curious pedestrians, who slow their pace around us, hoping to spot someone famous, or at least someone wearing fake snow and a winter jacket in July.

“How's life with Andy?” she says.

“Great. He spoils me rotten. He doesn't work until later in the day but still gets up most mornings and does breakfast. Today he made poached eggs on toast with an amazing herb sauce and peach cobbler. And you should see my lunch. Living with a guy who cooks certainly has its perks.”

Coffee slurps over the Styrofoam rim of her cup. “What about the drive?”

“It's a drag. There's always traffic to contend with and bad weather. I'd take the Go Train, but you know how it is, the hours aren't exactly standard. During my last contract, I had to be on location by 6:00 a.m. Plus, I need my car to pick up fabric and notions at various locations in the city.”

“So why are you living way up there? Think about it, Lisa. It's tough enough to have a career in this business.”

“We like it there. We have so much space, and a backyard with a maple tree. Andy wants to plant some vegetables next year.”

“Are you guys for real?” Steph tries to make it sound like she's kidding. I have been around her long enough to know better.

 

A week later, the movie has wrapped and I am looking at a small ad in the Newmarket paper, nothing spectacular, one column wide, a few lines deep.
Wanted, designer for three-dimensional advertising products. Must have pattern drafting and sewing experience. Call Magnus Johannsson.
I dial the number. Within an hour, I'm holding the directions in front of me, pressing the slip of paper into the steering wheel with my thumb at the two-o'clock position and glancing down to check the trip meter. Take Mount Albert Road east at Leslie, drive about five kilometres, look for brick farmhouse on the north side. The meter reads 4.8 when I first see the house.

The property is large, with a long driveway. Subdivisions are encroaching from both the south and the east. The west and north directions are still open. Who knows for how long? I park and fetch my portfolio from the back seat. There is a sunroom across the front of the house. It's obviously an add-on, but nicely done. When I knock, a clanging sound of pots comes from somewhere inside, then two sets of feet across a wooden floor, a scamper and a stride. A woman and a girl of about three appear at the door.

“Hi, I'm Zoe,” the child says, wrapping her finger in a blonde curl.

Smiling, I direct my words towards the woman eyeing me through the screen. She is holding the door handle but makes no effort to turn it. I feel as if an important button on my blouse is undone or there is something unpleasant hanging from my nose. “I have an appointment with Magnus Johannsson.”

“That's my daddy!” Zoe is bouncing on her toes with a head full of yellow slinkies.

“In the workshop,” the woman says and jerks her head towards the back of the house.

The driveway leads to a large white building. In a skirt and heels, it is difficult to walk on the gravel. I should have known better. He told me I was coming to a farmhouse.

The door opens before I get there and a man greets me with his hand extended and a smile that stretches across his face. “You must be Lisa.” The accent I detected on the phone sounds more pronounced. Before I can answer, he takes my hand and shakes it vigorously, to the point that I fear for my arm. “You brought something for me to see.”

“Yes, my portfolio.”

“Very good, let's take a look.”

Inside the building, fluorescent lights buzz above my head and rolls of material lean against plywood walls. Some of the rolls are shiny, like waterproofed windbreakers. Others have a flat finish.

“What kind of fabric do you use?”

“Nylon,” says Magnus. “We have two types.”

“What's the difference?”

He points to a roll with the dull finish. “This is for my balloon.”

Before I can digest the word
balloon
, he leads me into an office and clears space on a cluttered desk, then sits next to me at the front. We are so close that I slide my legs away and my left knee rubs against the w­ood. Slowly he turns the pages that hold my sketches and photos. When he is finished, he closes the portfolio and I wait for his words.

“When can you start?” he says, drumming his fingers on the back cover.

“Right away.”

“Good, start tomorrow.” Both his voice and expression are deadpan.

“But what exactly will I be doing?” I'm so stunned that my words come out like popping bubbles.

At this, Magnus laughs. His eyes twinkle and I laugh too. Then we talk, both of us talking much too fast, for a couple of hours.

Before I leave, he shows me around and introduces me to the seamstresses. May is cheerful with flushed, menopausal cheeks. She chats for a few minutes before returning to her work. Lin, the name an abbreviated version of something longer, is originally from Thailand. She offers a shy smile and a nod of her head.

 

Shortly after midnight, Andy comes home from work. I'm propped up on the bed, trying to read. My adrenalin is pumping too fast to concentrate on the text. “I have a new job.” I blurt it out before he kisses me.

“Already? It usually takes you a couple of weeks.” He sneaks in the kiss and I take a breath.

“This one is full-time and close, ten minutes, tops!”

Andy peels off his shirt and lets his jeans fall to the floor. As a chef, he is conscious of how easy it is to put on a few extra pounds so he exercises every morning after I leave for work. I pause to appreciate the moment as he crawls in beside me with his boxers on.

“It's a dream job, designing advertising inflatables, three-dimensional shapes that fill with air when they are connected to a fan.”

“Won't they explode?” He begins to plant kisses in the vicinity of my left ear.

“No, they have zippers and vents, plus some of the air leaks out the seams. My boss is a famous balloonist from Iceland. You should see him. What a character.”

“I think this calls for a celebration.” He slips his hands under my
T
-shirt and skims my face with his lips.

“You smell like chocolate,” I tell him and we both laugh.

 

For the first few days, Magnus instructs me in the physics of inflatables and the need for reinforcements and baffles — inside walls that force them to keep a desired shape. Without them, everything would be round. When he isn't available, I help May and Lin mend older inflatables. On the morning of my fourth day, I am sitting at a sewing machine when Magnus approaches, stops and looms above me. He is cartoonish in appearance, round eyes behind aviator-rimmed glasses and a fixed smile that pushes his cheeks back to his ears, Iceland's version of the Grinch after returning Christmas to Whoville. He is tall and lanky, with thick blond hair that looks like it was cut with a mixing bowl. I have come to the conclusion that style means nothing to him. He has too many other things to do. For someone only nine years older than I am, he has accomplished so much more, including breaking the world altitude record in a hot air balloon. “Lisa, I have decided on your first project,” he says.

“This is good news.” I try to sound confident, but my stomach is immediately invaded by Mexican jumping beans that can't decide whether they are excited or anxious.

“I would like a large cake, three tiers with icing and candles, something that can be rented out for celebrations. Each tier should also be able to hold a six-foot-high banner. Is that possible?”

A cake. I'm pretty sure I can make a cake, at least one out of fabric. The beans in my stomach slow to a skip. “I don't see why not. I can break it down into basic shapes. Let me do some sketches to show you.”

It is easy to tell that Magnus is pleased. When I show him my sketches, he looks like an excited little boy with dollar signs in his eyes. “How much time will it take?”

“I don't really know. I've never done anything like this before.”

“Take Lin when you're ready. She's fast and can help sew it.”

 

I do the math first, the circumferences and diameters that make up the shapes, additional measurements for inside baffles. These are easy; large rectangles of fabric sewn together can make cylinders for the layers; giant donuts and circles will do for the tops. The same idea will work for the candles. Based on the circumferences, I draft patterns for wavy tubes that will create two colours of piped icing. Then I design faux-icing flowers to be made from twelve petal-shaped pieces.

In a few days, Lin and I are cutting and sewing yellow nylon to create sixty-eight flowers. Lin is a lot faster than I am. She brushes aside my words when I thank her. I try to engage her in conversation, succeeding when I ask about kids. She has two, one in university and one finishing high school. “I'm a proud mother,” she says. “My children are my greatest accomplishment, but they are a lot of work. No matter how hard you try, you can never tell how they will turn out.”

“Like inflatables,” I say, but she doesn't smile and I realize I am making light of something she takes very seriously. “Only harder,” I tack on.

It takes the two of us three weeks working flat out to build the cake. I can't sleep at night for fear it will fall apart or fail to inflate properly. I get a cold and my nose runs constantly and turns bright pink. Andy makes me hot rum toddies and rubs all the right places to help me relax. He comes to work with me on the morning the cake is going to be inflated.

“This is Andy, my better half,” I say to Magnus. He is puzzled by my colloquial expression. “My boyfriend,” I say. Then Andy looks puzzled. This is not a term we've ever used. “We live together. He came to see my cake.” Magnus nods and walks to the fan and plugs it in.

When the air starts to enter the pile of fabric, I hold my breath. We watch as the layers slowly rise upwards. Then each icing tube and yellow blossom takes shape, reminding me of a slow-motion nature sequence on
TV
. For a moment, we are suspended in time as we wait for the candles to stand up on top. They bounce into position and I imagine a cartoon boing. I jump up and down and hug Andy while Magnus tethers it to a couple of trees, then crawls inside to check the baffles. When he comes out, he says nothing, but I recognize his look.

“It's amazing,” says Andy. “When it started to rise, it actually looked like it was baking, like it contained yeast or baking powder. And I thought you couldn't cook.”

Later, Andy is making us a special dinner to mark the occasion. I watch him cutting celery, mesmerized by how he rolls the knife on the curve of the blade with one hand and slowly advances the stalks with the other. There is no chopping sound, just a slice of stainless steel and a green crunch. This is his art. I am sitting on a tall stool next to the island, jabbering on about my cake, when it registers that I am bordering on annoying so I change the subject.

“You never tell me about your work.”

He stops and looks up. “Not much to tell. I go into the kitchen. I cook someone else's menu, then I leave.” He finishes the celery and reaches for a package of chicken livers. “A chef doesn't really exist unless he is cooking his own creations.”

 

The next day Magnus tells me that the cake has been rented for the weekend and we need to create the banners. He hands me a paper with the words
HONEST AL'S BIRTHDAY SALE
, and tells me to have Lin do them. He is smiling more widely than usual, something I didn't think was possible. “I should take you up in the balloon,” he says.

“Really! What's it like?”

“Peaceful. You're drifting above the earth with only a basket between you and falling. Of course, things appear small, but not like when you see them from a plane — there is no glare from glass, so things have more depth. People sometimes reach out to try to touch them. For some reason, they need to make sure they are real. Some people can get carried away and you have to pull them back.”

“Sounds surreal.”

“I'll take you sometime so you can experience it for yourself.”

When I turn around, Magnus's wife, Joanne, is glaring at me. She is sitting at the front desk training Nancy, the new secretary. Nancy is focused on the phone in front of her as if it is about to grow legs and walk away.