Rockets Versus Gravity (17 page)

A tall, slender man dressed in black places a small candle in each person's hand. The candles are topped with little white plastic cups, to prevent their tiny flames from being extinguished by the breeze.

A few people in crisply pressed suits and knee-length, business- district skirts accept the candles tentatively, as if they have accepted the King's shilling and they're about to be shanghaied. They glance around nervously, worried that they will look like jerks if they just continue on into the Eaton Centre food court without pausing to observe whatever solemn affair is going on here.

A woman with a microphone begins reading a list of names: “John Doe, July third … Jane Doe, July seventeenth … Russell ‘Red' Brown, July twenty-first … John Doe, July twenty-second … ‘Rhymin' Simon Jones, July twenty-ninth …”

Brandy Foley's unamplified voice interrupts, ringing in Tiffany's ears.

“Oh. My. GAWD!” she yelps. “There is a
tomato seed
in my
misticanza
! I told that idiot
specifically
that I am
allergic
to —”

“For gawd's sake, Mom,” Tiffany sighs. “It's just a
cucumber
seed. There are
cucumber slices
in your salad.”

Brandy Foley shoves her plate away. “Well, I'm not eating it, and I'm not paying for it. And I'm not tipping her, either. Snotty little bitch. Did you hear the attitude she was giving me?”

Tiffany predicts what will happen next. Her mother will pick a fight with the waitress. The management will be summoned. Reparations will be demanded. Stringfellow Foley's name will be mentioned, as if he is some kind of vengeful deity.

Tiffany slides her chair back; it screeches angrily against the patio bricks. “I'm going for a walk. Text me when you've finished getting your crown polished, okay?”

“Don't go giving your money to any of those bums.”

“I'll do what I want with my money,” Tiffany says. “My allowance isn't as big as yours, but it's still mine.”

She stands, turns, and walks through the patio gate and into Trinity Square, toward the rumpled, sad-eyed man, who stands at the edge of the gathered crowd.

A
lthough others are sniffling and wiping away tears, the Queen does not cry when Rhymin' Simon's name is read. When you've got Royal Blood pumping through your veins, you don't cry in public. You can't. It would not be regal behavior.

Her lower lip quivers, though, and she repeats his name in a low, rumbling whisper, “Rhymin' Simon Jones. Rhymin' Simon Jones.”

The Queen has acquired some new clothes for the occasion, to show respect for her deceased comrade. She's wearing her usual long beige raincoat, which is pocked with rust-coloured stains from the bridge's drippings, but underneath she's dressed to the nines, as a queen should be when attending a function. She obtained a lovely purple velveteen blouse from the donation box in front of the Sally Ann, and a golden royal sash that called out to her when she peeked through the unlocked back door of that dry cleaner's shop on Dundas.

The sash was destined for the Queen. It was displayed by Providence specifically for her. Its fine gold lamé was meant to be worn by someone with Royal Blood. It even has the word
QUEEN
sewn onto it in red silk letters. (With her saw blade finger­nails, the Queen picked off those other unnecessary letters:
BUTTERMILK FESTIVAL BEUTY.
)

Simon would have liked her new sash. He once brought her a brooch that someone had tossed into his begging cup. It was a chubby Siamese cat with a faux ruby for a belly. After he handed it to her, he said:

Queen Elizabeth One had a Siamese kitty,

and here is another for the Queen of the City.

The brooch is fastened to the Queen's gold lamé sash now.

The memorial service is over. The church people and the social workers and the hungry file into the Church of the Holy Trinity for the free meal that follows the vigil, to be fed, to be hydrated, and to receive temporary shelter from the heat and bright sunlight. The Holy Trinity, indeed: Food. Water. Shelter.

The politely trapped and the curious passersby hand their cup-topped candles back to the slender man in black, and they head for the revolving glass doors of the Eaton Centre, back to their own realities. Hundreds more flit about inside the urban mall, eating burritos and burgers, buying smartphones and purses and shoes, unaware of the little church just outside.

B
y the time Tiffany crosses the square, the crowd is dispersing, and the sad-eyed bearded man is already gone. Beside the church steps stands a lopsided, wild-haired woman wearing a stained beige overcoat. She is facing a sign that reads:

TORONTO HOMELESS MEMORIAL

Memorial Service — Second Tuesday of Each Month at 12 Noon

Tiffany watches the woman reach out to touch the glass case below the sign; her arthritic fingers are gnarled like the twigs of an ancient tree branch, and her long claw-nails are yellowed and cracked. Tiffany moves to stand beside her; she is going to help
somebody
today.

Without looking at Tiffany, the woman says, “His name isn't in there. They ran out of room for new names a while ago.”

Tiffany reads the small note tucked into the bottom corner of the case:

This list includes 700+ names of men, women, and children who have lived and died on the streets of Toronto as a direct result of homelessness. Stop, pause, and remember all of these people and the many more who continue to struggle as they live on our streets. Then call your local city councillor, the mayor, your MPP, and your MP. Help solve the homelessness disaster.

The woman turns and shuffles away across the uneven bricks of Trinity Square, dragging her left foot, listing to one side.

“Ma'am,” Tiffany says, “do you need some help?”

The Queen is a lot more stable when she has her borrowed Loblaw's shopping cart to hang on to, but today she has left it behind in her secret hiding place near the bridge. It would be unbecoming to arrive all sweaty and dirty to Simon's memorial service. She came on the subway, entered without a token. “The Queen needs no fare!” she screamed at the sleepy-eyed operator inside the ticket booth. He made no attempt to stop her.

“I'm fine,” the Queen says, holding her regal nose high in the air. “I am the Queen, my dear. My chariot will take me to my Rosedale estate.”

Tiffany strides up beside her. “I'm going to Rosedale, too. May I assist you, then, my queen?”

Tiffany offers her arm, and the Queen takes it. They move through the mall together and descend into Dundas station; Tiffany somehow understands that the Queen's chariot is the Yonge subway line.

When the Queen unbuttons her
size-too
-small raincoat to allow herself to sit down inside the subway car, Tiffany sees the gold lamé pageant sash. Her eyes widen.
It couldn't possibly be, could it?

Then she sees the remnants of red thread, outlining the shape of the words
FESTIVAL BEUTY
.

Oh. My. Gawd.

Tiffany digs her phone out of her purse and immediately types a text to Brandy Foley:

Hey, Mom. Don't wait for me. Taking the subway home.

A smirk spreads across Tiffany's face. She taps another text to her mother:

BTW, any luck with the dry cleaners?

A
t the abutment of the Rosedale Valley Bridge, the Queen says, “I must leave you now, my dear. The location of my abode is a closely guarded secret.” Then she smiles her spacious, yellow-brown smile. “Thank you for your help.”

The Queen stands there with her nose in the air, and Tiffany understands that she is being dismissed.

As she turns to walk away, The Queen says, “Wait! What is your name, dear?”

“Tiffany. My name is Tiffany.”

“I thought that your name might be Mary. My daughter's name was Mary,” says the Queen. “They took her away when the bad things happened.”

This is the first time that the Queen has said her daughter's name in a long, long time.

“I'm sorry,” Tiffany says.

The Queen reaches inside her speckled beige overcoat, steps toward Tiffany, drops a warm, round object into her hand. It's a sprayed-gold Siamese cat, with a red plastic ruby for a belly.

“The first Queen Elizabeth had a Siamese cat,” The Queen says. Then a dark cloud passes over her expression, and she looks away. “You had better go now, dear.”

Tiffany takes several dozen steps before looking over her shoulder, to see the Queen hobbling over the edge of the Rosedale Ravine and disappearing beneath the bridge.

B
randy Foley's Cadillac Escalade and Stringfellow Foley's Porsche Cayenne are both parked outside their turreted Victorian mansion.

“Mom! Dad!” Tiffany cheers as she bursts through the front door. “I've decided what I'm going to do to earn my volunteer —”

She is interrupted by her mother, who pushes past her.

Brandy Foley is sobbing hysterically, her face cobwebbed with tear-diluted black mascara. “What do you care, you fucker!” she screams at her husband, who stands just inside the grand entry foyer.

The glass door of Brandy's Beuty Queen display case swings gently on its hinges, and Brandy's ultrasound-polished pageant crown dangles from her fingertips.

She pauses in the doorway and cries, “If you don't care, then I don't care either, you son of a bitch!”

Dramatically, Brandy Foley steps out onto the portico and flings the tiara out onto the immaculately groomed golf-green lawn that surrounds their perfect Rosedale home.

“Come back inside, Brandy,” Stringfellow Foley commands. “Do you want someone to see you in this … this
state
?”

“Oh, am I
embarrassing
you, String?” Brandy rages, looking as angry as her Botox-paralyzed facial muscles will allow. “You can't
possibly
be as embarrassed as I was when I found out that you're
fucking your assistant
!”

“My gawd, Brandy,” String barks, “we were just having lunch! Everyone has to eat.”

“
Somebody's
getting eaten, I'll bet!” Brandy shrieks, spittle exploding from her collagen-plumped lips. “It's the last straw, String! I'm leaving you!”

She storms from the portico. The door slams on the Escalade, and its tires screech as she speeds away.

Stringfellow Foley turns to his daughter. “Apparently I wasn't upset enough about her losing her pageant sash.”

Tiffany just stares at him.

“Don't worry, Princess, she'll be back. She couldn't survive for a week on the money she'd get from the pre-nup.”

“Dad?” Tiffany says.

“Yes, Princess?”

“Don't call me Princess anymore, okay?”

Tiffany wanders outside, and she sends a text to her friend Abby.

Hey, can I sleep at your place?

Sure. Tonight?

Maybe indefinitely.

As she strides away from the mansion, Tiffany's foot nicks something in the grass. She leans over to pluck her mother's tiara from the turf with her left hand. Then she opens the fingers of her right hand and looks at the red-bellied Siamese cat nestled in the warmth of her palm.

Maybe this is a sign
, Tiffany thinks.

T
he Queen awakes to the sound of tires whirring across the bridge above her. She crawls out from under her tarpaulin and glances up at her borrowed Loblaw's shopping cart, to make sure that nobody has made off with any of her treasures during the night. She is sure that she heard an intruder in the night, but she was too tired and sore to move.

Her eyes widen. Perched atop the cart is what appears to be a tiara. A monarch's crown.

The Queen staggers to her feet and hobbles over to the cart.

It is a crown. Gold, with rubies.

Maybe this is a sign
, the Queen thinks.

She plucks the tiara from its place atop her other treasures; she nestles it into her matted hair, and the suppressed memories surge, a rolling wave that the Queen can no longer hold back.

My grandmother was a beautiful woman. She had a queen's name, too: Mary.

The Queen stands a little straighter.

My mother had a queen's name, too. She was called Victoria.

“My name is Elizabeth,” she says out loud. “I gave my daughter a queen's name, too: Mary. After my grandmother.”

When the bad things happened, they sent Mary to live with some farmers. Nice people, they said. Responsible, decent, churchgoing people.

When she places the crown back atop her borrowed Loblaw's cart, she notices something else there, something that she didn't see before.

It's a silver ring. She picks it up. There are some words engraved inside:
Forever More.

What did they rename her? Valencia? Something like that. Something orangey.

The Queen slips the ring onto her swollen, scabbed ring finger, and her eyes widen.

“No,” she says. “It was Clementine. They renamed my baby Clementine.”

Between the thumb and index finger of her right hand, the Queen twists the simple silver ring.
Clockwise,
counter-clockwise
. Clockwise,
counter-clockwise
.

And then she does something that she has not done in a very, very long time.

The Queen makes a wish.

(Epilogue)

T
hen, out of nowhere, a storm arrives.

You know that it didn't really come from out of nowhere. It isn't as surprising as that. We're still members of the animal kingdom, we humans. We can still feel storms coming. We just don't pay as close attention as the other beasts do. We have other things on our minds. But in the back of our head, in that little space left over from our savage beginnings, we feel them coming. We know.

There is that lull, that eerie peace, when everything is just a little too quiet, a silence too perfect to ever be anything but temporary. We hear the absence of the wind; we rarely notice anything usual until it disappears.

No birds chirp. No footsteps are heard. There are no blurred conversations from the backyards beyond the parking lot outside.

Silence and stillness slip away, and the prelude begins: a distant tympanic rumble, a sound like a rocket climbing up through the atmosphere.

rrrrrrrrRRRRRRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrrrrrrr …

The sky is a bruise, greyish-purple and soft. Fingers of cloud spread overhead like a wounded hand, then the whole palm cups the sky, obscuring the pinpoint lights of stars.

tick

A single raindrop strikes the glass, an invitation. You rise from your purring-cat position atop the furniture, drawn to the edge of the screen door, where a current of air ruffles the curtain, swirls the silky material like the dress of the belle of the ball.

tick

Maybe you escaped on a train. Perhaps you have just made love to the stranger who sat beside you on your flight out of the country. Perhaps you were never strangers at all.

tick tick

You are perhaps a young woman who has just been contacted by her birth mother. Perhaps you have just made love to celebrate this revelation.

tick

You are perhaps the great-grandson of a man who loved the great-grandmother of your lover. Perhaps in some way they have just made love also.

tick tick

Perhaps you are genetically predestined to want each other. Perhaps that is why you have just made love.

tick tick tick

Maybe you just received a phone call from your doctor's office, informing you that your file was mixed up with another, and that you probably have more than a month to live. Maybe you have just made love to celebrate this revelation.

tick

Maybe you received no call at all. Maybe you still feel like you could die at any moment, and maybe this makes you want to make love as if it's for the very last time.

tick tick

Perhaps you met her atop the tower. Or perhaps neither of you could wait six weeks. Perhaps your own affair to remember is about to begin.

tick tick tick

Maybe you have just given a ring as a gift. Perhaps you have just received one. Maybe the ring is for a woman, not a man. Perhaps it is engraved with the words
For Evermore.

tick tick tick tick

Perhaps you think, or even say, “We got it right this time.”

tick tick tick tick tick ticktickticktick

hisssssssSSSSSSS …

An unspoken mutual decision, you step through the screen door, to feel the wind flow against you, your feet bare and tentative upon the cool concrete outside.

The drumroll of thunder begins, builds to a slow crescendo — like a rocket's engines roaring against gravity.

hrrhrrrrrrhrrrrRRRRRRRRROOOOOOOOOMMMmmmm …

Do you tremble with delight? Anticipation? Fear? Or is it just the rush of thunder reverberating inside your chest?

Rain assaults the pavement now, crackling, roaring defiance against the horizontal wall of pavement that prevents it from streaking downward forever.

Rain hisses upon the lawn, forcing the blades of grass to bow over, to submit.

Rain roars like a million cheering voices, a frenzied crowd at a rally — a chorus at first, then a ghostly choir, but now a mob-like roar; the sound of a rocket breaking free.

rrrrrrrrrCCRACKOOOOOOWWwwwwwwwww

Do your fingers grip a little tighter, increase your stake in this tantrum of nature?

Above it all, chain lightning dances a fragmented streak across the sky, free, alive with energy, immortal.

But only for a fraction of a second. Its pattern is burned red, purple, then blue into your eyes when you blink, a mere afterthought of the free, crazy energy.

The lightning is receding; the next flash is farther away, as is the next flash, and the next, and the flash that follows that. And soon the light is distant, and there is just a gentle, infant sprinkling, a small reminder of what had been.

It is cool now, the air reborn, almost sweet to the lungs.

You still have each other's hands.

And you are not the only ones.