Rockets Versus Gravity (16 page)

A
s the Queen emerges from the alley behind the dry cleaner's shop on Dundas Street, a small child collides with her borrowed Loblaw's shopping cart. The little girl stumbles backward, her eyes wide.

The Queen asks in her gravelly voice, “Did you get away from your momma, little one?” The child drops her chocolate-glazed doughnut on the sidewalk; it leaves a brown streak down the front of her pink, officially licensed Disney Princess Jasmine sweatshirt. She fixates on the scar that cuts diagonally through the Queen's upper and lower lip. She takes another step backward and takes in the large woman's yellowish skin, her matted, Medusa-like hair, her dark stubbly moustache, her chipped, clawlike fingernails. Five years of watching Disney Princess movies has taught her that old women who look like this one are witches.
Evil
witches.

The Queen smiles at the moppet and extends her hand. The child interprets the baring of her sporadic yellow-brown teeth as a threatening snarl, and the intrusion of the Queen's gnarled, claw-nailed fingers as an attempt to kidnap her. Kidnapping precious little girls is what evil witches do.

The child opens her mouth wide, pitches back her head, and shrieks, “MOMMY! MOMMY! MOMMY!”

Her mother races around the corner, clip-clopping like an injured racehorse atop stiletto heels. She pauses to drop her
state-of
-
the
-art smartphone into her oversized purse (which is festooned with big brass tags advertising the brand name), and then she wails, “You stay away from my baby, you bitch! You stay away from my baby!”

The child bursts into tears as her mother tugs her away from the Queen. “Bitch” sounds so much like “witch”! Mommy has just proved that evil witches exist in the real world, outside the safety of Disney Animated Classics™.

“Did she touch you, Amberlindzy?” her mother frets. “Did she touch you, precious?”

As they rush toward the safe haven of an upscale shoe store, the fashionable mother frantically digs inside her purse for a bottle of Safety First!™ antibacterial hand sanitizer (with Aloe Vera), to protect her offspring from whatever vile venom the Queen may have transmitted to her.

With a grunt, the Queen bends over to pick up the chocolate-glazed doughnut from the sidewalk.

Everyone needs to eat.

B
randy Foley is wearing a shimmering imported kimono, which she has allowed to fall open to reveal the deep valley between her Malibu Barbie breasts. She admires her reflection in the glass case that displays her Miss Theodore Buttermilk Festival Pageant crown.

A few weeks ago, Brandy removed the sash from the case and took it to a dry cleaner on Dundas Street that specializes in cleaning fine gold lamé, and who also claimed to have the “Best Seamstress in Toronto” working on site. In red silk letters, the words
BUTTERMILK FESTIVAL BEUTY QUEEN
had been sewn onto the sash, and although Brandy had folded it inside the case to conceal this imperfection, the Beuty Queen had decided that it was finally time to have the error corrected.

Now Brandy opens the case again, and she gingerly plucks the
red-rhinestone
-encrusted, gold-electroplated tiara from the prongs that hold it in place. She nestles it atop her hair, which is salon-perfect, despite Brandy having just crawled out of bed. She turns around and glides through the foyer, her crown sailing through the air like a ruby yacht atop gentle waves. She allows her surgically enhanced breasts to spring free from the confines of her robe; they bob before her like hanging tetherballs, or emergency floatation devices.

“Mom,” Tiffany says, “what are you doing?”

Brandy Foley pulls the kimono closed over her chest, tugs the crown from her hair, and says, “Well, um, since I'm having my pageant sash refreshed, I thought maybe my tiara could use a little recharge, too. There's a jewellery store downtown that specializes in ultrasound-polishing large items like crowns. Want to come with me, sweetie?”

“Um, well …”

“We can go out somewhere nice for lunch.”

Tiffany's stomach rumbles and gurgles; although there are nearly three hundred bottles of wine stored in the climate-controlled basement cellar, there is rarely any food in the walk-in refrigerator, since Mr. Foley is rarely ever home, and Mrs. Foley rarely ever eats.

Tiffany Foley shrugs. “Okay, I guess. Can we eat
before
we go to the jeweller?”

Everyone needs to eat.

T
iffany is so hungry now, she feels like she might faint.

Her mother took almost an hour to cram her amplified curves into a satiny minidress, which likely cost more than the maid's monthly income. Then she took nearly another hour to “put on her face” and “accessorize.”

Tiffany, on the other hand, was ready to go in five minutes: two minutes and a dozen bobby pins to do her hair up like a Motown backup singer, and three minutes to pull on the vintage sixties dress she picked up at the Goodwill store downtown, the Wonder Woman bracelets from Chinatown, and the sheer smoky nylons from a discount store in Kensington Market.

Tiffany's friend Abby showed her the hairdo trick, and where to find cheap used clothing. Abby is one of the few girls at Ladycrest who is there on a scholarship (to raise the school's official academic average, Tiffany theorizes). Tiffany's entire outfit cost less than forty dollars, and this makes her feel proud of herself. Abby is right; Tiffany could survive without her father's money if she had to.

Now Tiffany and her mother are sitting on the patio at Trattoria Mercatto, a sit-down, table-service restaurant adjoined to the Eaton Centre mall. Tiffany would have been happy to just devour a Taco Bell burrito to satisfy her hunger, but her mother just rolled her eyes and gasped, “The
food court
, Tiffany? Did I raise you in a
barn
?”

Brandy Foley has decided that this place will do, since they aren't anywhere near Scaramouche or Sotto Sotto. The well-groomed planters around the patio show that they are at least
trying
to be civilized here, and the natural sunlight is a small bonus; it will add some tone to Brandy's heat lamp–bronzed skin.

Tiffany looks up at the canvas awning that hangs above the restaurant's windows. Its valance is printed with the words
INSALATE, ZUPPA, ANTIPASTI, PIZZE, VINI
; if it had simply read “Salads, Soup, Appetizers, Pizzas, and Wines,” her mother certainly would have turned her nose up at this place, too.

“Sorry for the wait, ladies,” the harried server says as she arrives with menus. She is not much older than Tiffany. “It's so busy here today!”

Brandy wheezes, “I guess they should hire more servers, then, shouldn't they?”

“It's okay,” Tiffany says apologetically. “We weren't waiting long.”

Her brain feels like it's eating itself, and she can't get her eyes to focus on the fine print on the menu, so Tiffany just orders the first thing she recognizes without reading the description underneath. “I'll have the pepperoni pizza,” she says.

“Hmm …” Brandy says, taking a long, deep breath. “I'm wavering between the scallops and the calamari … but tell me, is your seafood flown in fresh, or is it previously frozen?”

“I'm pretty sure it's fresh.”

“Are the scallops
bay
scallops or
sea
scallops?”

“They're the big ones. Sea scallops. Bay scallops are the little ones they put in the pasta.”

“Are they seared or grilled?”

“I'm sure I can have them prepared either way, ma'am.”

As her mother interrogates the server as if she's negotiating the Treaty of Versailles, Tiffany's gaze wanders across the square to the Church of the Holy Trinity. It's where the Cowboy Junkies recorded their album
The Trinity Session
. Abby played it for her the last time that Tiffany slept over. Abby's parents' apartment is small, but they've got an incredible vinyl collection.

A Cowboy Junkies song is playing in her head now, and Tiffany thinks to herself,
I've been to the Eaton Centre a hundred times, and I've never poked my head inside Holy Trinity. Maybe today I will.

She's brought back to the patio of Trattoria Mercatto by her mother's continuing interrogation of the server.

“Are the scallops breaded?

“No, ma'am. They're fresh, brushed with a touch of garlic butter.”

“Could you have the chef use extra-light virgin olive oil instead? Or, even better, fine-filtered almond oil, if you've got it.”

“I can ask.”

“Oh, and one more thing. Are they Atlantic or Pacific scallops?”

“Um … Atlantic? I think the distributor is based in Newfoundland.”

“Wild or farmed?”

“Well, um, wild, I suppose, if they're from the Atlantic Ocean.”

“Hmm …” Brandy says, knitting her brows as if she's contemplating theorems of fractal relativity. “You know what? I prefer
Mediterranean
scallops. So I think I'll just have the
misticanza
.”

Tiffany resists rolling her eyes when her mother pronounces
misticanza
with an exotic-sounding invented accent. She's pretty sure that in Italian,
misticanza
just means “house salad.”

The server is halfway to the kitchen inside, when Brandy calls out after her, “Miss! Miss!”

The saintly, patient young woman weaves her way through the crowded restaurant back to their table.

“You know what? I'd like a glass of champagne as well.”

“Well, it's an Italian restaurant, ma'am, so we've got Prosecco, not champagne.”

Brandy sighs and blinks her eyes. “That will have to do, I suppose.”

She waits until the server is back inside the building again before crying out, “And no tomatoes on my salad! I'm
very allergic
to tomatoes!”

Tiffany shakes her head. Her mother is
not
allergic to tomatoes; Brandy read on some scientifically dubious weight-loss website that tomatoes cause post-menopausal women to retain water, so now she has to avoid them
at all costs
!

Brandy's phone rings. “Hello-ooo!” she sings into it. “Brandy Foley speaking.… Oh, yes … is my sash cleaned already? Oh, good, I'll pop over and …
what
?” Her eyes bug out as if they're going to pop. Thanks to the Botox paralysis, though, her eyebrows and forehead remain eerily unanimated. “You have got to be kidding me. You have got to be fucking
kidding
me!”

She's screaming now. People are glaring at her. Tiffany wants to crawl under the patio table and hide.

“I will be at your shop in one hour,” Brandy rages into the phone, “and you had better find it by then, or there will be hell to pay. My husband is Stringfellow Foley. He can put you out of business with one phone call. Understood? Good.”

Tiffany's mother slams her phone down on the tabletop, rattling the tableware. “Those idiots at the dry cleaners lost my pageant sash. Can you believe it?”

“I'm sure they'll find it,” Tiffany says, secretly hoping that they won't.

Their orders arrive quickly; the server must have discerned that Brandy Foley is the
particular
sort. Tiffany immediately devours her pizza, while her mother waits for the server to bring her a replacement fork, since her previous fork was “dirty” in some way visible only to her own blue-tinted eyes.

A rumpled, bearded man crosses Trinity Square and approaches the rails of the patio. He holds out a calloused, sun-leathered hand. Practically whispering, slurring his words as if he's had a stroke, he says, “Sssssspare change for sssome fffood, prrrretty llllladies?”

Maybe it's the hunger-headache that is still ringing inside her skull, or maybe it's the rush of blood from her brain to her stomach to digest the food she's finally eating, but the scolded-dog sadness in this wrinkled man's dark eyes, and the desperation in his hushed, blurred words make Tiffany feel like bursting into tears.

As she leans over to reach into her purse, her mother shrieks, “Shoo! Shoo! Go away! Git! Git!” She waves her hand at him, as if this bent, skeletal man is a raccoon who has just knocked over her garbage can.

“Mom! Gawd! He's just hungry!”

But it is too late. He turns and hobbles away, toward the steps of Holy Trinity.

“Good
gawd
!” Brandy says. “There are
more
of them over there. Is there a bum convention at the church today, or what? I suppose they'll
all
be over here soon, begging for our money instead of going out and earning their own.”

Tiffany is about to say,
“When did you start earning your own money, Mother?”
but then the server appears with a new clean fork. Spit-polished, Tiffany hopes.

Brandy turns to the server. “Can't you do something about these” — she pauses. She can't
publicly
call them bums — “these
vagrants
hanging around your patio? They're harassing your customers! What kind of business are you running here, anyway?”

“Well, ma'am, it's a public square, so we can't really control who uses it.”

“Their
smell
makes the food unappetizing,” Brandy says, wrinkling her nose. “Now bring me another glass of champagne.”

“Please,” Tiffany adds.

“Another glass of Prosecco right away,” the server says, choosing wisely to retreat.

Tiffany gazes over at the tall, grey doors of the church across the square, if only to avoid looking at her mother, by whom she is even more embarrassed than usual.

About two dozen people are now gathered in a scattered semicircle around the church entrance. Some of the people look frayed and scruffy: women with weathered skin and matted, windblown hair, men with downcast eyes and wild wizard beards; people that Tiffany's mother classifies as “bums.” Some of the people are dressed in nondescript workday clothes, with sensible haircuts and shoes designed for comfortable walking; people whom Brandy Foley calls “plain Janes.”