The Age Read online

  Megan smiles as she guides Gerry to turn her chin and starts on the other side. “Andri’s a good person, but he’s old-fashioned. He expects a woman to do what he tells her. You should set your sights higher than that.”

  Gerry scratches at a crust of dried blood on her knee, picks to lift the edge, glimpse the rawness underneath. She wonders about letting Lark’s name slip, showing Megan she knows more than she gets credit for. The urge ripples, then recedes. “Remember the first time we met?”

  “Sure.”

  On the sidewalk in front of Ian’s house, the late August sun burning a hole through her. Megan was solid and tall, not the wispy type Ian usually went for. Her voice didn’t trill up. The curves of her body under a loose summer dress. Gerry watched her lips move but couldn’t hear her words. When Megan said goodbye, she took up Gerry’s clammy hand and held it. Behind her, Ian stood sun-bleached, fading. “I thought you were pretty.”

  Megan smiles but says nothing. Her silence warms a blush through Gerry.

  “Don’t squirm.”

  “What happened with that guy last night?”

  Megan rolls her eyes. “Total waste of time. But he says he knows someone.”

  “Did you still have sex with him?”

  The clippers clack off. Gerry scoops a fistful of dead hair, rolls it between her fingers, waits, then turns, curious why Megan has stopped. Megan’s face is still but tense, as if she’s trying to solve a math problem in her head. “What makes you think I had sex with him?”

  Gerry worries she’s gotten it wrong, that she’s about to look stupid. “Isn’t that how you’re getting the door code?” She says it quietly, hopes tentativeness will make it sound less like an insult.

  The clippers clack back on. Gerry waits for Megan to speak, tries to distract herself by braiding loose strands of hair.

  “If we had money, it would be different,” Megan says finally. Before Gerry can nod to show her understanding, Megan tells her to hold still.

  “So. I guess Ian didn’t listen to you about driving me home, huh?”

  “Did you listen?”

  “Are you still gonna let him do the drop?”

  “Don’t fidget.”

  “Because I could do the drop.” Gerry waits. The clippers’ echo a drone against the tiles, insects in a Plexiglas box. “I’m the one who marked and timed the route. He was too stoned.” Gerry wants to tell it in detail, how she came up with the cut-through from Robson to Alberni, how Ian fake tap-danced down the alley, shouted, “Let me in!” at the back door of the revenue building, and fell over laughing, but Megan doesn’t seem interested. She turns Gerry’s head, feels for uneven patches, her hands rough and impatient. She flicks the clippers off, then stands, throws Gerry a thin orange towel. “You’re done.”

  The towel makes Gerry feel suddenly exposed. She drapes it over her chest, wipes the hair off her body as she stands, hurries into her shirt and jeans. She catches herself in the bathroom mirror. Despite the distortions of bruising and swelling, she can see the contours of her bones, the almond shape of her eyes. She would never call herself beautiful, but seeing herself this way slows her breath. Megan stands with her arms crossed. “Well?”

  Gerry stuffs her hands in her pockets, tries to push down her welling confidence. “I’m good at numbers.”

  With her fingertips, Megan brushes errant hairs from Gerry’s face, the bathroom light reflected in the feathery grey of her eyes.

  “I know the route.” Gerry whispers, their secret in the closed, airless room.

  Megan turns back to the sink. The rush of water thins her voice. “Maybe you shouldn’t come around here so much.”

  In the kitchen, Michelle is on her feet, clapping. “I told you, I told you!”

  Gerry bows her head as her mouth pulls in untamable directions.

  Andri looks up from his newspaper. “A gesture. This is more like it.”

  Ian leans his elbows on the kitchen table, fiddles with a toadstool saltshaker, jimmies the cap off and on, refuses to meet her gaze.

  They cram together on the living-room sofa, Clem’s chair angled to the side, so they can all see the TV. Megan digs through her stack of Betamax, plastic tapes cracking against one another. Ian lights a torpedo-shaped joint. A dishtowel of ice against her face, Gerry watches him, her tongue heavy with anticipation. Michelle takes short sips, then waves her hand in front of her face, “I really shouldn’t.” Megan draws a long drag for herself, then a second for Clem, blows the smoke into his mouth. Andri holds it like a cigarette. Gerry takes as many hits as she can before Ian pinches the joint from her fingers. She closes her eyes, lets the high untangle the pain in her face. Something jabs into her leg. She opens her eyes to a rectangle of newspaper, corners folded sharp. Andri nods for her to look. A photograph of blurred dashes across a grainy field of white. “They take that picture with satellites. Soviet warships. Look how many.”

  “They’re like ants.”

  “It’s coming. Didn’t I tell you?”

  “Do you think they’ll really do it?”

  “What will stop them? People? Families?”

  Gerry nods.

  Andri snickers. “You think like the sheep. Where I come from, the soil is the best in the world for growing and everyone knows why. Mass graves. Blood feeds the soil. Germans took a third of our people, okay, that’s war. Then our own mother nation turns against us, does far worse.” Gerry tries to imagine Andri’s home, endless crops, women with scarves tied under their chins. Andri waves at Clem. “He fought for families losing their land. Look what your government did to him.”

  Gerry wills Clem to turn his head, acknowledge Andri’s words, but Clem stares at the darkened TV.

  “Last month, my aunts write me to say something is wrong with the reactor across the border. The men who work there are nervous. I write back, Leave, right away, the government will do nothing to protect you. But what differences does it make. If you believe this.” He taps the page. “Missiles will get them first.”

  Gerry traces the tiny vessels. “What do you think it will it feel like?”

  He pinches his fingers together, then bursts them apart. “Pfft. Nothing. Life is nothing. Death is nothing.”

  Michelle leans in, her body contorted so that her belly juts at an odd angle under her dress. “Don’t listen to him, he always gets like this when he’s stoned.”

  “What about the baby?” The dishtowel leaks as Gerry adjusts it, sends a cold dribble down her neck.

  Andri shrugs. “You will be ash. The baby will be ash. I will be ash.”

  “Yeah, a regular ashhole.” Michelle smiles. “He doesn’t really believe that.”

  “Don’t tell me what I believe!” Andri’s voice hushes the room, spurs Megan and Ian to glance up from their conversation. Michelle stares at him. Gerry notices that the silver of his sideburns has slipped down into his beard.

  He turns away from Michelle, points to the newspaper. “This is proof, undeniable.” Behind him, Michelle stares into space. When Megan reaches up to pat her knee, Michelle shakes her head, lowers her chin, and wipes at her eyes. The bones of Gerry’s head ache with cold. “I can keep it?”

  “Of course. A memento.” Andri leans toward her and lifts the ice-pack from her face, scowls as he examines her. She turns her chin to give him a better look. He smiles, cups her hand with his, presses the freezing pack back to her skin. “Now, who do you look like?” He raises two fists to his face, takes cartoonish punches at the air. “Rocky.”

  She grins into the dishtowel, leans against him to feel the pressure of his arm through his shirt.

  They watch tapes of protests, die-ins in London, blockades in Austria, human chains in Germany. Gerry tries to imagine how their own protest will look on tape, tens of thousands marching for peace, a calculated burst, panic in the streets. The news will get it all wrong, call Andri a spy, because of where he comes from, a place Gerry thinks of as Beautiful Russia, even though he insists it isn’t Russia at all. Megan
will be a homegrown terrorist, expertly trained by her father. Michelle and her unborn child will be the hardest to understand. Ian will be easy, a dropout and pot-head, ruined by drug-dealing hippie parents. And what will they say about her? Maybe that she came from a broken home, a phrase she hopes will lodge itself inside her father.

  Andri stops the tape during the bust-up of Greenham Common, points to background, tents in flames. “That’s what they should have done in the first place. Three years of peaceful protest, for what? Breastfeeding.”

  Michelle slaps him in the chest. He grabs her hand in his fist and kisses it, pulls her against him and whispers into her hair until her face softens. Gerry tries not to giggle, shifts away from them on the sofa, feeling too much like she’s sharing their bed.

  “That’s why what we’re doing is so perfect. The city expects another march that everyone can ignore.” Megan shakes her head. “Peaceful protest is an oxymoron.” Her earnest tone only makes the words seem funnier. A chuckle burbles in Gerry’s throat.

  “People block one base while missiles get shipped in and out of two others just down the road.”

  Soundless laughter peels out of her in thin, hissy strips.

  “Grandmothers chain themselves to fences.”

  The dishtowel shifts under Gerry’s hand and she keels into Michelle’s lap, body racked in guffaws. A crazed bray erupts from her and she writhes in hysterics. Slowly, her energy drains, detonations settle into long sighs. She blinks through tear-filled eyes at the four of them staring down at her.

  “Jesus Christ,” Megan says. “Take her home.”

  THE DAMP AIR SOBERS HER, Starts her teeth chattering. Ian says nothing as he loads her bike into the trunk. He drives with the windows down, blares side one of The Wall, helicopters and machine-gun fire. The passenger seat stiff, Gerry shifts to buffer herself from the wind, rubs at her aching jaw, counts passing streetlights. Her mind struggles to find something to say. The pot makes her nostalgic. She creeps back to the past, the cold beneath her legs turning to the chilly floor of her elementary school gym where she sits cross-legged, arranged with her class along a painted white line. At the end of each row, teachers perch like sentries on wooden chairs. They gather to watch a movie, the principal snaking the film through the open guts of the projector, volume so loud, the room’s echo doubles the warbling soundtrack, so that all that reaches her is nonsense. On screen, boys drag bare feet across parched prairie, swing gophers by their tails. Women in bonnets dig at the hard ground, hail pummels wheat, snow falls. Gerry doesn’t care about the movie, loses herself instead in the gym’s darkness and the sensation in her back, an awareness of the older kids rows behind, Ian’s class lined up against the climbing equipment. Without checking, she knows his arms are folded and he is half-sitting on one of the climbing rungs. He has found her in the crowd, traced her outline, and if she glances over her shoulder, he will nod.

  When she looks at him now, his drawn, bony profile, she sees how changed he is, their friendship left behind in backyards, school fields, his parents’ basement. Even the effort of talking is too much, like having to whisper across a great distance. For the first time, she thinks she will not know him for the rest of life. The truth carries an unexpected sadness.

  “It’s a Pinarello.” She shouts it over the music, waits. “The bike.”

  “I saw.” His usual manufactured disinterest.

  “My mom will hate it.” If she looks at him as a stranger, he’s partway handsome, his dimpled chin, the pad of his bottom lip, the way his eyes turn down at the outer edges. “My granddad bought it for me.”

  “He’s not your granddad.”

  “He’s my father’s father. That makes him my granddad.”

  “Your dad hardly even knew him. It’s not the same thing.”

  He makes anger so easy. The heavy bass line of “Young Lust” thumps through the door, whiny guitar riffs and dirty girls. She keeps her face turned away.

  They pull up to the house. Her mom stands at the living-room window, curtains behind her like a veil. A tiredness settles over Gerry. She had hoped for one more night, a chance for her face to heal.

  Ian turns off the music, flips down the sun visor, then flicks it back up. “So I need to ask.” He reaches for her bandaged wrist, holds it loosely between his thumb and middle finger, as if measuring her. The surprise of his touch makes it hard to breathe. She remembers imagining him as her husband, a silly, sexless fairytale that centred around her standing at a clothesline on a sunny day, hanging bright white bedsheets.

  “When you were in the bathroom with Megan?” His index finger traces the veins that crawl up into her palm.

  “Yeah?”

  “What did you say about Lark?”

  She pulls her hand away. “I need my bike.”

  Outside the car, her sneakers skid on muddy grass. She tugs her sleeves into fists, waits by the trunk.

  He takes his time, door creaking open, steps slow. “I won’t be mad.” He unlocks the trunk. “I just want to know, so I can, you know, take care of it.”

  The pain of hoisting the bike onto her shoulder forces her to grit her teeth, tense her muscles until she feels the wheels touch ground.

  “So, you didn’t say anything?”

  “Do you think she likes doing it with those men?” With the butt of her hand, she punches the words into his chest. “Do you?”

  He grabs her arm. “Cool it. Your mom’s right there.”

  She twists from his grip. “Why is it impossible for you to be a good person?” She hefts the bike over the curb and onto the sidewalk. Wheels click out the seconds until he slams the car door.

  Gerry sinks between the couch cushions as her mom leans in to dab at her forehead and face. Wet cotton pads, bubbly and cold, leave a sour smell as they lift from her skin. The scab over Gerry’s eye splits under her mom’s pressure and the raw tissue beneath burns. “Ow!” Gerry jerks away.

  “Well, what do you expect?” Her mom sits back on her heels, rolls the stained cotton in her hands, and shakes her head. “Why would you hide this from me?”

  Lying to her mom isn’t difficult. Like racing her up a gravel hill, Gerry just needs to keep her eyes ahead. “I didn’t. I thought he told you.”

  Randy’s plaid-shirted body leans in the archway.

  Her mom gives him an exasperated look. “You knew?”

  He shifts his weight, rubs the back of his head. His jacket and the front door are within arm’s reach and Gerry is sure he’s thinking of escape. Gerry offers him an exit. “Why is he still here, anyway?”

  “Gerry.” Her mom points a warning finger.

  “He’s always here, on the couch, in the kitchen, in your room. I never get to see just you.” She musters a glare in his direction. “He told me to die in my sleep.”

  “Christ, last night, I mean–” Randy squints, then presses his forehead against the arch.

  Her mom’s face is placid, immovable. “Do you think we should take her to the hospital?”

  He shrugs. “Whatever you think.”

  “You know, he got fired and didn’t even tell you.” Gerry waits for him to bolt.

  His hands fiddle with his pockets. “That die in your sleep thing – she’s making it sound–”

  “You lost your job?”

  “No.” He chews his lips, the edges of his beard knitting together. “Yes. But it’s temporary.”

  “I thought Bill said six months and you’d be permanent.” Her mom pushes against the couch to stand, folds her arms across her chest.

  “He did. But the union reps started making–”

  “Well, for crying out loud, Randy, stand your ground.”

  “How? How should I do that?”

  “I don’t know. Keep showing up.”

  “So I can watch someone else do my job?”

  “You can’t just loaf around here.”

  “Oh, really? Because that was my plan.”

  Gerry picks at a loose tag of skin on her thumb
, tries to catch it in her teeth. “I was in a fight with some girls. In case anyone even cares.”

  Her mom turns, her expression a perfect parental cocktail of guilt, worry, and exhaustion. Gerry hopes for a moment of softness, but instead her mom advances like an overwound toy. “Was it some gang? Did they attack you? I’m calling the police.”

  “There was no gang. It was just something stupid about someone’s boyfriend. And then it was over. No big deal.” As she says the words, she wills her lie to falter, for her mom to read her bruises and guess the truth.

  “No big deal? Look at your hair!”

  Gerry snorts at her mom’s predictable shallowness. “I did that.”

  “Priceless,” Randy mumbles.

  “Fuck you.”

  “Geraldine!” Her mom steps in close, reaches for Gerry’s arms.

  Gerry slackens, opens herself to her mom’s touch.

  “I mean it. This isn’t some joke for your own personal amusement.” Her mom’s thumbnails graze her skin. “Why would you cut off your hair?”

  “I’m totally laughing, can’t you tell? These bruises are hilarious. That hurts, by the way.”

  “Answer me.”

  “I said it hurts.” Gerry hauls herself back into the couch. Her mom’s nails catch and scrape as she struggles to grip then release Gerry’s arms.

  Randy takes a step into the room. “Okay, maybe we should–”

  “You can go.” Her mom doesn’t look at him.

  His mouth opens as if to speak, then his face scrunches, eyes closed in thought. Finally, he shakes his head, grabs his jacket, balls it in his fist like a shopping bag. He nods at Gerry. “Are you okay?”

  She blinks at him. “What do you care?”

  He slams the front door. Her mom stares at the empty foyer, hands on her hips.

  Gerry traces the red lines on her arms, scored skin like tiny shreds of eraser. “So, which do you think you suck at more, being a mom or being a girlfriend?”

  The slap comes like a flat, hot shock. Gerry draws a breath through her teeth, tries to smile against the pain as tears spring up behind her eyes.

  “Go to your room.”