The Age Read online

  While they’re clearing the dishes, her mom clasps her hands together, remembers Randy’s VCR still hooked up in the living room. “We’ll get our movie after all.” She carries soupy bowls of strawberry ice cream into the darkened room, settles on the couch, licks ice cream from the back of her spoon while Gerry flips through the rented tapes, chooses Alien, Sigourney Weaver battling a brood of orphaned monsters, a horror movie about motherhood.

  Her mom watches with one hand over her eyes, the other a pressured cuff around Gerry’s ankle, squeezing, releasing. The strobelike flicker of the TV in the dark room reminds Gerry of those first weeks without her father. After being put to bed, she would creep back downstairs in her pyjamas, bundled in a blanket, sway in the archway until her mom noticed her. Her mom would give her a stern look, then make room on the couch, catch her up on the show she was watching. After the eleven o’clock news, they did rounds of the house, checked every door and window. This was their new job, to finger latches and locks, secure themselves against whatever darkness might try to get in. They climbed the stairs reassured by deadbolts and brass levers. Until one night, alone in her bed, Gerry figured out that a gang of men who wanted to break in had only to smash a window, a thin, shivery pane of glass. And what could they do to defend themselves, a woman and a child? Her mother offered no real protection. The realization made her sleepless with worry. She began to pay closer attention to the news, reports of murders, kidnappings, escaped prisoners, regimes threatening war, anxious to familiarize herself with the dangers of the world, hopeful that familiarity would, if not protect her from, then at least prepare her for attack.

  Her mom squirms into the couch, presses her face into Gerry’s shoulder. When the carnage becomes too much, she covers Gerry’s eyes, a warm, yeasty palm on her face. Her other hand cradles Gerry’s shoulder. “Don’t watch, Ger-Bear,” her mom whispers. “You’ll have nightmares.” The sound of her concern makes it hard for Gerry to resist falling into her, burrowing in her arms.

  After the movie, as her mom settles in to watch the news, Gerry sneaks the upstairs phone into her room. The long cord loops on the carpet as she locks her bedroom door. She hides under the covers, fabric cool against her arms and ankles, Henry’s folded paper in her hand. Her fingers circle the telephone, first tracing its faded numbers, then tripping as she pulls on the dial. It takes two tries to get the number right. The ring drones low and long, the receiver a cold cup against her ear. The voice that answers is a child’s, then two. Hello? Let me talk. Who’s calling please? Let me. No one’s there. Dad, he won’t let me! No one’s there, okay? It’s probably a wrong number, just hang up the phone. The man’s voice, distant and watered down by background noise, floats through her without catching.

  She waits, then listens to the receiver clatter in its cradle, the hollow of the dead line, the stir of breath in and out of her body. She wonders if it was even him.

  FROM THE OUTSIDE, THE PREGNANCY appears normal. The girl’s stomach grows, a bubble of skin that strains against her clothes. The women try to remain remote and disapproving but find themselves lured by her awkward gait, the thinness of her face and wrists despite her expanding middle. Anonymous gifts arrive outside the cabin door: portions of food, warm blankets. Someone leaves a perfectly knitted baby hat and booties, bright yellow, the wool impossibly clean and soft. The boy and the girl lay them on the bed, speechless.

  Dr. Joan visits, supply bag in hand. She takes the girl’s blood pressure, feels her stomach, nods and smiles at her progress, laughs a squealing, tearful laugh when the baby pushes out against its flesh-walled home, a surreal triangle jutting from the girl’s stomach. The boy stares in amazement.

  But despite the doctor’s assurances, something is not right. At night, the girl cries and whimpers in her sleep. The boy wakes and massages her knotted back, her hips’ cinched muscles. During the day, she winces with pain.

  Something sharp and prickly, she says, this baby’s covered in spikes.

  The boy fears what lives inside her, a thorn-covered, squid-tailed beast. His dreams are ripe with the doctors’ warnings, bloody births of giant writhing larvae, shrivelled infants with faces of old men, a baby that appears perfect from the birth canal, until its torso ends in a mess of squirming entrails. After these visions, he lies in the dark, restless and drenched with worry.

  In her pocket, the girl keeps a square of paper, a list of names: Samuel, Tobias, Alistair, Harold, Richard, Niall, Wallace, Constance, Beatrice, Penelope, Moira, Beryl, Jeannette, Grace. When she shows the boy the list, he laughs, teases her.

  These are old people’s names.

  Her face blazes with anger, then tears. These are the names of her family, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles. He apologizes, but she is inconsolable, grief hauled up from her belly.

  The boy wraps her in a blanket, rocks her until she quiets, settles her at the woodstove. In the desk, he finds a clean sheet of paper, a worn pencil, its eraser chewed. He goes out to the beach, past the fire, follows the water’s edge until he’s alone.

  Paper balanced on his leg, he writes carefully, in tiny block print, the pencil awkward in his hand. He begins with his parents, Caroline and James. Then Caroline’s parents, James’s parents, their brothers and sisters, their children. It takes time to remember. Some names cue memories that play like slow, elaborate films, others a hurried montage, the corner of a photograph, a mitten’s frayed cuff, the curl of pipe smoke.

  He prints the girl’s name beside his, draws a line to join them, then marks a space below.

  The boy walks back to the cabin and shows the girl his list. She smiles, eyes swollen and dark, reaches for his hand and places it on her belly.

  He’s awake.

  A shift and bump under the boy’s hand. He wants to pull away but forces himself to stay for her sake. You should choose the name, he tells her. He strokes the smooth stretch of her skin, tries not to feel what turns inside.

  GERRY DREAMS SHE’S AN ESKIMO standing on an ice floe in the Arctic night. Above her, dozens of stars arc across the heavens. She tips back her head to admire their trails, then sees that they are manmade stars, missiles that grind as they pass overhead. Her body, wrapped and bound in layers of animal pelts, braces against a cold wind, the tickle of fur at her chin. Under her feet, ice cracks, glassy fractures she cannot see. The pelts are bound too tight for her to run. The ice buckles, seesaws beneath her feet. She waits to fall through.

  She wakes with a jolt, blankets wound around her clothes. Cracks echo in her mind, faint and intermittent. A metallic splatter against glass. She shuffles out of bed, to the window, opens it wide.

  The night air is humid and still. Ian stands in the driveway. She holds up a warning hand, leans out to check her mom’s window, finds it dark.

  “I’m going to a party.” His whisper scrambles up from a deep pit.

  She remains lost in the world of half-dreams, her feet glued to ice. “So, go.”

  He hucks his handful of gravel into the street. Gerry hears it skittle and ping. Ian brushes his palms on his legs. “Come on. Could be our last night.”

  Together. The word surfaces without him saying it, a bottled message set adrift. From above, he looks shrunken, diminished. His uncertain posture reminds her of how she once liked him best, all nervous kindness and pink, unwhiskered skin. “Wait in the car.” She eases the window closed, careful to hold the latch to keep it from banging. In the dark, she searches her floor for a change of clothes, chooses a tighter pair of jeans, an oversized T-shirt with the word vicious emblazoned across the front, a baggy black cardigan. In her dresser drawer, buried under a mess of useless hair ties and barrettes, behind the bottle of Clem’s medicine, she finds a tube of lipstick, brushes the colour quickly over her lips, pushes the tube into her pocket. She opens her bedroom door and listens, the house deep in its night breathing, the refrigerator’s low purr as the furnace begins a shuddery exhale. Before the breath is through, she is down the stairs, through the foyer, jacket
and high-tops in hand, out the front door.

  Ian’s stereo blares Young Americans, signals high spirits, his face slack and easy as he sings along. He’s dressed up, white shirt and a thin, black leather tie under his leather jacket, his hair combed back. Gerry wants to say something but doesn’t want to ruin his mood, risk a failed compliment coming across as an insult. “So, Megan’s okay?” She shouts it above the music.

  He nods to the beat. “She just needed some rest.”

  “We’re on for tomorrow?”

  He doesn’t answer right away, and she finds herself hoping for complication, an obstacle or setback to carry the struggle of plotting and solving through the night and into morning.

  “So she says.”

  She nods, tries to ignore the burr of disappointment that things aren’t harder. “Whose party is this, anyway?”

  He turns to look at her, and his head jerks back in surprise. “Holy shit, Gerry Mouse!” He laughs. “Are you wearing lipstick?”

  “Fuck you.” She swipes her mouth with the back of her hand, drags the slick from her lips, closes her eyes, and tries to enjoy the speed of the car, the wind against her face. The sticky perfume of honeyed flowers blows back at her. She slips her hand down beside her seat, smears the waxy evidence on his leather upholstery.

  Def Leppard pumps from the small house. On the stairs, lanky headbangers press beer cans to their lips, make moves on Pat Benatar clones in leather miniskirts. Gerry follows Ian, steps over arms roped together, feather plumes of hair, toward the living room and its pounding bass, purple glow of black light. Inside, bodies speckled with fluorescent dust, radioactive grins. She follows Ian into the easier light of the kitchen. He slaps his case of beer onto the counter, tears open a corner of the box, and passes her a bottle. The fridge door peels open, sucks shut. The back door rattles each entrance and exit. She picks at the label, rears back against the tide of strangers until the counter jabs at her spine. Ian stretches to scope the crowd.

  “Who do you know here?”

  “No one.”

  “How did you hear about this party?”

  “I just heard.”

  Gerry has her answer when Lark, decked out in a tiered miniskirt and fingerless lace gloves, materializes from the haze of cigarette smoke, all eyeliner and lashes. She flutters her fingers over Ian’s wrists, her nail polish neon green. As she kisses him, her hair, teased high in jagged tentacles, fuels an illusion of her face as a giant spider moving in for the kill.

  Gerry bangs her sneaker against a cupboard door in an increasingly frantic rhythm until Lark steps back, tosses her a glance. “I see you brought your brother.”

  “Easy now.” Ian strokes her chin, his mouth sloppy and lopsided.

  Gerry makes a retching sound in her throat.

  “Well.” Lark hops on the spot. Gerry half expects her to break into a dance routine, the crowd behind her falling mechanically into step, lifting their jazz hands. “Find me later.” She sashays through the bodies.

  Gerry groans in disgust.

  “Keep it to yourself.” Ian takes a swig of his beer.

  “Thanks for letting her trash me.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sakes, lighten the fuck up, will ya?” He reaches into the case and offers her another bottle. “Pick up the pace.”

  She stands with a bottle in each hand. Her gut twinges as she watches him play a ridiculous game, track and pinpoint Lark, turn his head when she looks. The beer settles like ditchwater, sends brackish gas up into her throat. “Hey,” she says finally, her decisiveness firmed with a kick to Ian’s boot.

  “What?” He speaks without looking at her.

  “Since this might be our last night, maybe we should go somewhere. Just the two of us.” She tugs at his leather tie.

  He nods in rhythm. “Done. We’re here.”

  “I mean alone.”

  “Do you get what this is?” He waves his bottle at the room. “We’re soldiers before the fucking war. So get the hell out of here. Blow off some steam, catch a thrill, live a little for once in your short and meaningless life. And for crying out loud, don’t let me catch you mopin’ in some corner.” He clinks his beer against each of hers and drains his bottle, slams it on the counter. “I’m gonna find Lark.”

  She reaches for his hand, threads her fingers through his, rubs her thumb against his palm to push her offer into him. “What about me?”

  He squeezes her hand tight, stretches over her until the top of his head rests against the cupboard above, his body like a blanket between her and the room. “You. Gerry Mouse. Will have to get your own damn girl.” He steps away, picks up his case of beer and pushes into the crowd, his departure a slow, quiet landslide inside her. She leans back against the counter, tries to wait it out, finishes one beer, then guzzles the second. The kitchen flattens like a Polaroid, the ceiling’s sharp white corners, blurry faces. She shuffles along the counter, opens the fridge, and grabs without looking, a cold metal can she camouflages with shrugged shoulders.

  The music in the living room has mellowed to viscous Floyd, the room glazed with smoke. Bodies clog every pathway, every seat. She leans against the closest wall. Beside her, a row of guys stares blankly forward like suspects in a police lineup. Across the room, Lark and Ian take up most of a couch. He stretches on top of her, kisses her as if trying to pulverize her face. Her arms and legs writhe around him, the limbs of a trapped insect. Gerry shivers. The beer can chills her hands.

  Lark’s skirt rises high over her hip, exposes the bright white of her panties. Gerry watches the guys down the wall, serious eyes, open-mouthed concentration.

  “Young love.” The guy beside her leans in as he says it but doesn’t look at her. His shoulder touches hers. He offers his cigarette, his hand slim, the hair of his forearm peeking out over his wrist. Gerry shakes her head. Smoke tendrils over his lips up into his nose. He smiles. He wears a tattered blazer over a faded Who T-shirt, a grey fedora pushed back on his head, his chin and neck dark with stubble. “I don’t want to watch, but I can’t look away. It’s like one of those Warhol film loops. I bet if we went up to the 89 Inn, ate a pizza, and came back, they’d still be going at it.”

  “I know them,” she says.

  He thumps the guy beside him with the back of his hand. “She knows them.”

  The friend, a Robert Plant wannabe in a denim jacket, hair like an unwashed poodle, gives her a toothy smile and a thumbs-up.

  Farther down the wall someone hoots as Lark’s tanned leg rises over Ian’s hip.

  Gerry rolls her eyes.

  “I know.” The guys beside her nods. “Disgraceful, right?”

  She can’t place his age, whether he’s long out of high school or just looks that way. He reaches into his blazer and pulls out a plastic medicine bottle half-full of orange liquid. Without breaking his gaze, he unscrews the cap, tips the bottle to his lips. He grimaces as he swallows. “Want some?”

  “What is it?”

  “Bronchitis last week.” He points at his neck. Mousey hairs curl up over the edge of his T-shirt. He smells like stale smoke and sweat. “The doctor gave me this stuff with codeine. It tastes like shit, but, man, it makes you feel like a fucking cloud.” He rotates his palms to the ceiling and tilts his head back in a pose that reminds her of Jesus on the cross.

  She takes the bottle from him, tips it without touching it to her lips. The taste makes her gag. A ball of muscle rolls up in her throat. She worries for a second she’ll spray it all over him, then manages to swallow. The vile chemical sting jitters through her.

  “Gross, right?”

  She nods.

  “Just wait.”

  She drains her beer, lets it wash her mouth clean. Her tongue feels softer, padded, a small animal napping in the cave of her head. A lightness circles her eyes, hidden muscles in her face fall slack and untethered. She stares at Ian and Lark but can’t remember what’s wrong about watching them. Their bodies churn, a slow and perfect machine.

  “Go
od stuff, right?”

  Her head floats as she nods.

  “Do you want to find a bedroom?”

  She recognizes the words but not their meaning. “What?”

  He cups his hand against her head and speaks right into her. His voice crinkles, a paper bag inside her ear.

  The sound is what she understands. “Okay,” she says.

  He leads her by the hand, grips and regrips, tight, but tentative. As he walks ahead, he removes his hat, shrinks in front of her. She wonders if by the time they reach the room, he will have disappeared to nothing.

  The bedroom is a single bed cramped against a wall with a barred window. An ironing board leans beside the closet door. A thin bedspread drapes the narrow mattress, skims the floor with worn chenille flowers. She can’t imagine how they will manage it all in this tiny space, small talk, kissing, awkward increments of touch, her hands conducting and controlling like traffic signals, stop, stop, stop, go. And nakedness. For that, she is sure they need a bigger room. She steadies herself, hand on the edge of the bed, the bedspread strangely dry and crisp, the mattress boxy, hard, searches for the best place to sit.

  Near the foot of the bed, he takes off his clothes. Before she can tell him to stop, she’s staring at the brush of hair across his chest, the shadowed thatch between his legs, and the pink, wrinkled tube that sways as he moves. He wrestles the covers over himself, then holds them open for her.