Smoke (20 page)

On Boxing Day Jelly Bean wakes and reaches for the boutonniere she tucked beneath her pillow the night before. She lifts it to her face as if she might inhale a sweet scent. The bow is flattened so she pulls its petals open. It's a colour she cherishes; the most vibrant in her set of water paints, the colour of her new winter coat and as shiny as laughter. Passionate as an exotic dance from a faraway land. Its bright crimson with a hint of orange mixed in is a woman's colour and it makes her feel grown.

Hazel pokes her head into the room and the sharp smell of ammonia wafts in. “Up and at 'em, lazy bones. Time to do your hair.” Jelly Bean shoves the paper flower under the covers. “What's that?” Hazel's eyes land on the boutonniere.

“Nothing.”

“Doesn't look like nothing, Judy. Let me see.”

Jelly Bean lifts the covers and watches her mother's spine fix into a straighter position. Hazel's brow stiffens and a small blue vein beneath her left eye pulses. There are clearly things going on that she knows nothing about. Her mouth opens but she is dumbstruck and Jelly Bean knows that her mother's voice, when it pushes through the shock, will be filled with disapproval. “Buster gave it to me.” She slips it protectively under her pillow once more.

“I knew it. I knew we shouldn't have allowed you to go traipsing off alone. If I've told you once I've told you a thousand times, boys only want one thing and you my dear are not open for business. Besides, that young man may be trouble. In any case he's not for you. Not any more. And it's unkind of you to get his hopes up.”

Jelly Bean is silent. She knows better than to argue with her mother on this or any other matter. When she wants something badly enough she's always gone to her father, made her case plainly and with reason, and he then took on negotiating with her mother, or sometimes went over her mother's head, as he did last year when he drove her to Brantford to visit the reserve. But Jelly Bean can't ask her father about boys.

“I like him, Mother.”

“Well, I like bread pudding but you don't catch me falling silly and sideways for it, do you? Certain things just aren't good for us and we all have to accept the fact.” Hazel is now standing in Jelly Bean's closet inspecting her clothes. “Wear this today.” She turns, holding up a prim pleated skirt and blouse that Jelly Bean hasn't worn in over a year. “Mauve goes with your complexion.”

“I'm not wearing that. I hate that outfit.”

“There are so many other boys, Judy. Don't make a big fuss over nothing. What about Ivan Rombout, his father's successful. Or even Donny Bryson? What about
Hank
McFiddie? Now there's a young man with prospects, and he's good looking to boot.”

“He's not Buster.”

“This is nonsense.” Hazel drops the skirt and blouse at the end of the bed. “Buster is out of the question. I forbid it and that's that. Hurry up; I've got a million things to do this morning. Now. Before the peroxide sits too long and wastes.”

“Leave me alone.” Jelly Bean kicks the clothes onto the floor. “Stop telling me what to do. And I'm not bleaching my hair, so there!” She is sick and tired of being dictated to, primped and curled. She'll bloody well make friends with whomever she pleases. “I like him, Mother,” she repeats, clearly and without confrontation this time, so that it sounds as if it's an already established fact. “I like him and I'm going to keep seeing him.” This is when she knows for certain that it's true. She throws off the bedclothes and reaches for her bathrobe. The floor is cold on her bare feet. Her ankles are stiff from skating and her hip a bit sore from her fall on the river. She finds her slippers by the side of the bed. She knows what her mother wants for her, and she wants none of it. She hates her mother. She hates her hair and clothes and she even hates herself.

Hazel cracks the bedroom window an inch and icy air fills the room. She darts around the side of the bed, pulling up the covers and fluffing the pillow. She reaches for the red bow, finds it, crumples it in her palm.

“Hey that's mine. You've got no right!”

“I won't have my daughter parading around with that boy and that's all there is to it. You are going to finish high school young lady, and then you will attend business college in London as planned. Don't even think about going to your father. Someone has to take over at the hardware store one day. And I know all about Ivan Rombout's party. You aren't going. End of discussion.”

J
ELLY BEAN SITS ON THE TOILET
seat while her mother pulls a metal comb through her long, thick hair. The prongs of the comb scrape her scalp and the peroxide burns and makes her head itch. The smell coats the inside of her nose and her lungs. She refuses to breathe it in; holds her breath for as long as she can, exhales and immediately inhales again, the way children passing cemeteries do. The bleach is evil and she must somehow hold that evil at bay.

“We just did this two weeks ago. It stinks.”

“Grooming takes organization and preparation, my dear. Your roots are showing. You don't want that, do you?”

There's never been any question of being a natural brunette. Jelly Bean has been sitting on this very spot having her hair bleached and dyed ever since she can remember. The smell is sickening and leaves a brackish chemical aftertaste in her mouth. Her hair is losing its softness; it's beginning to dry and frizz and feel like straw to the touch.

Hazel finishes combing the bleach through, rinses the comb in the sink and wraps her daughter's hair in clear plastic to hold the heat and help the peroxide do its job. “There,” she says, drying her hands on a towel. “Almost done. Sit like that for twenty minutes and I'll be back to rinse you.” She removes her wristwatch, sets it on the counter by the sink and leaves.

Jelly Bean turns to the mirror. Her hair is swept up off her face, and without the blond curls tumbling all around, her face is plain and strong and open. Her jaw is solid. Her eyes look wider, she thinks, and behind them lies an unmistakable longing to be praised without relentlessly being improved upon. Fussed over without condescension. It seems the harder she tries to pass for perfect the less she feels herself to be so. The more she determines not to be clumsy, the more she trips or bumps into furniture. When she strips her hair of colour, the less alive she feels. She is beginning to suspect that the pedestal her mother insists upon for her is pointless after all. A pedestal can't save a girl from herself. She leans in. Yes, her eyes look wider today, and bluer, and they are hiding much. Golly, she thinks, smiling. I look like Daddy.

Jelly Bean rises from her place on the sofa in the den and yawns.

“I think I'll turn in early.”

“Already?” asks Walter. “I thought we'd pop corn and listen to Times Square.”

“Night,” says Hazel, without looking up from her knitting.

In her bedroom, Jelly Bean slides past her bible without a thought for placing it on her head, opens the closet and lifts out the outfit she's already pressed and hung. The skirt is cherry blossom pink and the knit sweater matches. She changes into both and into a new pair of tights she purchased especially for tonight. She pins a pale pink barrette into her hair, fastens clip-on earrings and pinches her cheeks to give them colour. Her saddle shoes are on the closet floor and she slips them on. Delicately, so that not even a whistle from the cold wind outside will alarm her parents, she lifts her bedroom window. An icy gust. Gooseflesh. She crawls out onto the slanted tar roof as though she is crawling out of a coffin and then she closes the window. Her breath appears before her face in tiny white puffs and fades. Her fingers and toes are already numb. Quickly, she brings her knees in tight to her body and balances herself so that her weight is evenly distributed between her feet and rear end and so she won't snag her leg on a nail or a splinter of wood and put a tear in her tights. She inches down the steep slope.

The roof comes out onto a flat area, the ceiling above the store's stock room. She is nervous about getting caught, nervous about slipping and falling though she knows that once she's successfully manoeuvred across the stock-room ceiling there will be but a small jump down to the ground where she will scoot around the back of the store and retrieve the coat and scarf she's hidden. She goes down with a thud, landing on her rear. Has anyone heard? Is she injured? No. She rises, wipes the back of her dress where there is now a wet spot, and finds her coat. Shivering, she covers herself, wraps the scarf around her neck and half of her face, and runs.

B
USTER IS WAITING
behind the Bank of Commerce just as he said he would be. He walked the two miles into the village from the farm and he is now jumping up and down to retain warmth. Because of nerve damage from the fire his face isn't able to feel the cold as it should and Doc John has warned him to be careful of extreme temperatures. He's to monitor his skin in winter especially, and not catch frostbite. Now he cups his hands around his mouth and breathes into them for warmth, rubs them together. He's been waiting three quarters of an hour. Maybe she changed her mind and isn't coming after all? And then there she is, speeding through the clear black night like a red plaid beacon. She stops in front of him, out of breath.

“Sorry I'm late. I couldn't get away.”

They hurry along Main Street, past the streetlight, and turn near Doc John's house where the giant maple tree stands. This road, unpaved and covered in snow, will guide them a mile up a small incline, and at the top of Palmer's Hill they'll find the United church where his parents were married and where Mrs. Gray taught them both Sunday school. Beyond that sits the Rombouts' property. Buster walked this route many times when he was younger, with Donny if they fetched Ivan for exploring or hanging out in the tree fort, or later, the root cellar.

As they approach the house figures cross the living room through the big front window. A truck is parked in the driveway but the town car is gone. Ivan's parents have driven to Niagara Falls to celebrate their wedding anniversary. He steps up to the front door, hesitates. Bill Haley and the Comets blast on the radio inside, and behind the loud crest of music there is an excited wave of chatter. “Sounds like the whole school's in there,” he says.

Jelly Bean has never been to a party that wasn't chaperoned. “C'mon.” She grabs him by his hand and pulls him inside.

Buster does as she does. He taps his boots on the welcome mat. He nods at faces he recognizes. He does not stop to think about where they are for he knows if he does he'll turn around and go straight back to the farm as fast as possible. He follows Jelly Bean into the living room where the song ends abruptly and they face the crowd. Conversations wane. People turn. Thirty or more pairs of eyes stare. There is jostling, elbowing. Sandra and Diane pinch each other. Jelly Bean drops Buster's hand and removes her mittens. Now it's her turn to be self-conscious. She slips out of her coat, unwraps the scarf from around her neck and stuffs it and her mittens into her coat pockets.

Buster is immediately buried by his surroundings. Walls ripple and claw as though they are about to collapse. The ceiling presses down. Beer mugs hang above the bar like unspoken fears. A mounted buck's head brags of long brown antlers. The panicked pressure builds in Buster's chest, whirs in his ears, and he can't breathe until gradually music registers again and he hears Donny's voice. “Buster? Jelly Bean? Over here!” Donny waves from the far end of the room where he's leaning against a wood-panelled wall.

“Been here long?” Buster shakes off his coat.

“About an hour.”

“Where's Ivan?”

“Upstairs.” Donny makes a rude gesture with both hands to show what he means.

Jelly Bean blushes. She knows that some girls make out. The ones with older boyfriends drive to Little Lake and park so they won't be found, or in the summer they go to Courtland for a drive-in movie. Back-seat bingo, she's heard it called, though she has only her imagination to help fill in the details. Her mother says a lady should keep her legs closed at all times or else she'll wind up with a belly full of regrets, so Jelly Bean can't help but conjure a picture of a girl in an upstairs bedroom, her legs tightly crossed and her belly growing ever bigger as Ivan tries to persuade them apart. Jelly Bean has never permitted any boy to kiss or touch her in places that are forbidden, not that anyone's tried, though she knows she would if Buster wanted to. All at once she feels her cheeks burning. What if Buster wants to go upstairs with her? She doesn't know how to interact in social situations—what to say to engage idle chit-chat, or even how to flirt. She isn't good at superficialities; she certainly won't know how to manage something more intimate.