Eve's Rib, page 8
“Xanax? Like the prescription drug?” Eve asked. “What kind of a band is that?”
“It’s Zanax, Mom, with a Z, and it’s not a band, it’s EDM. Jesus.” Electronic dance music. Eve knew what that was. She quite liked the Chainsmokers.
“Is it like a rave or something?” Eve asked, concerned. She’d heard the stories of kids dancing to the mind-numbing beats, pumped full of Molly and ketamine. Abbey had never shown an interest in that sort of thing. She and Selena rarely even went to parties, too busy with their studies and extracurriculars.
“No, Mom. It’s not a rave.” Abbey dragged out the o in Mom in exasperation.
Maybe Abbey had developed new friends to go with her new interest. This opened up a whole other can of worms, stuffed with wriggling teens who Eve didn’t know. Perhaps even a boy. Although Eve wasn’t sure Abbey was interested in boys. Or girls for that matter. Perhaps she was interested in both? Physical attraction was so fluid these days. Who wouldn’t choose both genders if they had the chance? Right away it doubled the pool of prospective partners. But a romantic association of any type had yet to surface in Abbey’s life, despite her preternatural attractiveness.
“Who else is going?”
“I don’t know who else is going.” Abbey sighed. “Does it matter?”
Eve supposed it didn’t. She was being an alarmist, but alarm seemed to be her default setting when it came to her daughter.
“Is Selena going?” Eve pressed.
“No,” Abbey said, turning away. She fetched a mug down from the shelf and dropped a perforated tea strainer that was shaped like a silver acorn in it. It clattered against the hard ceramic sides of the cup. “She has to stay home with the kittens.”
“How come?” This felt more like a conversation than what had come before. Less stilted and rehearsed. But by Abbey’s reaction, Eve sensed she’d gone off script.
“Listen, it’s a Friday, so it’s not like I have to go to school in the morning. I don’t know what your problem is.”
“It’s just —”
“Don’t you trust me?” Abbey demanded, cutting Eve off. Her speech was tight, each word a trigger, because the question itself was loaded.
Eve knew from experience you couldn’t trust a typical teenage girl any farther than you could throw her. Mostly because she used to be one. Maybe Selena’s parents had forbidden her from going to Zanax with a Z because they knew more about EDM than Eve did. Maybe all the stories she’d heard about ketamine and Molly and young people’s vital organs melting from the inside were true and she shouldn’t let Abbey go either. Not that she was at all sure she could stop her.
“But you two usually do things together,” Eve said. “I just wondered why she wasn’t going.”
“Because her cat’s disappeared and her parents are away, and for fuck’s sake what’s with all the questions!” Abbey grabbed a much-too-big knife from the block beside the cutting board and a lemon from the fridge. She slammed the white door shut, causing all the glass bottles of sauces they never used to rattle against one another on the shelves.
“What do you mean? Has something happened to Cuchulain?”
Abbey ignored her, bringing the knife down hard on the kitchen counter to slice open the lemon, forgetting the cutting board. She appeared genuinely upset about the animal’s disappearance and it surprised Eve. She’d always thought Abbey was jealous of Selena’s pet and the time and attention it seemed to take away from their friendship.
Her daughter had never done well with animals. That was another reason Eve had said no to a kitten. Michael had kept a succession of white mice when he was in kindergarten that he’d play with for hours. The first one “fell” down the stairs while being carried in a pocket. The second one got caught under the gerbil wheel where he’d been crushed like a medieval torture victim. The final two appeared to have fought each other to the death. Eve had found them lying broken and bloody at the bottom of their cage, wood shavings stuck to the deep gashes in their white furry sides. In every case, Abbey had been close at hand.
The teakettle started a high-pitched scream, but Abbey didn’t take it off the hob. She turned to face her mother with one hand on her hip and the other holding the butcher’s knife. “Do you trust me or not?” she demanded.
The knife dripped cloudy lemon juice to the kitchen floor and the scent of its bitter freshness filled the room.
Eve didn’t move, kept her own hands stuffed in the pockets of her jean shorts to hide their twitching. Abbey’s irises were the steely grey of drill bits, untempered by the underlying blue that hid within. In a better mood, they could look like the inside of an oyster. But not now. Eve looked past her daughter’s eyes and tried to enter her mind, though she knew she shouldn’t. She caught a glimpse of sleek fur, a flash of something bright. But before she could even process the pitiful cries of the kittens, she was knocked back by the vivid image of Michael lying broken on the floor. Eve could see herself as well, holding his body, her mouth opened in the overemphasized O of an Edvard Munch painting. She dropped the connection between them before the wail from that mouth flooded her mind like a tsunami. The teakettle shrieked on the stove.
“Well, Mom.” Abbey smiled, holding the knife closer. “Do you trust me, or not?”
“Yes.” Eve leaned against the kitchen counter for support, looking away. “Of course, I trust you.”
“Good.” Abbey stepped behind her and threw the knife into the sink with a clatter. She switched the burner under the teakettle off, but it still took a few moments for the screaming to die down.
* * *
BY THE TIME EVE WENT out to the driveway to see what Richard was up to, he was gone. She was about to go back in the house when he came through the side gate from the backyard with a shovel and a tall brown leaf bag in his hands.
“Hi,” he said, not expecting to see her there, wondering why she was.
“Hi,” she said.
“I was picking up the dog crap,” he said, possibly expecting praise. She expressed her thanks, but they both knew it wasn’t the same thing.
Richard opened up the green bin beside her and started dumping the brown turds into it. Eve was still skittish from her confrontation with Abbey. When he banged the lid shut, it made her jump and protectively bring her hand to her right side. Eve looked over at the battleship-grey can reserved for refuse that wouldn’t rot away into the earth, the one that had hurt her.
“I wouldn’t look in the garbage can,” Richard said, following her gaze.
“Why?”
“I found something, under the bushes. A wild animal must have got to it.” He propped the filthy shovel up against the side of the house next to Eve’s overgrown attempt at a herb garden. “It’s not a pretty sight.”
The sun was beginning to fade behind the trees, and Eve could see the long shadow of her husband cast across the driveway. The silence between them multiplied with all the things they chose to leave unsaid. She was accustomed to that silence, would normally feel no anxiety from it. But slowly she felt her adrenalin start to flow. One of her hands started to shake. She shoved it in the front pocket of her cut-off shorts and felt a familiar sickness well up inside her. It was an intense premonition, threatening to take over, to spill out of her like the rancid red wine of the night before.
“Are you okay?” Richard looked less concerned than wary. It wasn’t like her to break the rules, to let him see up close that there was something wrong. “Listen, about last night. There’s nothing to worry about. You have to believe me, Eve. I don’t know what you —”
“I’m fine,” Eve said, cutting him off. But she wasn’t. There was a voice calling to her now, becoming louder. She needed to get rid of Richard so she could deal with what it had to say.
“Could you have a look at the shed door?” she asked, gritting her teeth against the voice inside her head. “It’s come loose again.”
“Okay,” Richard said slowly, trying to get a sense of her real feelings. He waited for her to say something more, about the affair, about anything. When she didn’t, he walked over to the garage and started rooting around through his tools. His whole body was relaxed now that he’d been given something constructive to do, something tangible that he could fix with his hands, something where no emotions were required. He still gave her a cautious look before he opened the latch on the gate and returned to the backyard.
Eve stared at the large grey garbage can with the hard plastic lid and rubbed at her side. She didn’t want to open it, to return to the scene of the crime, but the cries had moved from her head to the can. She couldn’t drown them out.
Look at me! Look at me! Just like Michael on the railing that day. But this was not the innocent call of a child for attention. It was a command.
She didn’t want to look. Richard had told her not to. She shouldn’t. She needn’t. She should just walk away. But the portent became even louder, more insistent. It seemed impossible that Richard or even the rest of the neighbourhood wasn’t hearing it.
Look at me! Look at me!
She held her hands over her ears trying to block it all out. The grey garbage can wavered and morphed in the air until she couldn’t see it properly through tears. No longer the colour of a battleship, the can was now the colour of a dove. Dove grey, like the softer version of her daughter’s eyes or the pearl finish of a child’s much-too-small coffin.
Look at me, goddammit!
Those had been the last words Eve had heard when she’d reached in to clean the grime deep inside the garbage can. Before the push that sent her roughly against it, feet desperately trying to gain purchase on the asphalt driveway as the hairline crack in her rib spread.
She took her hands away from her ears and walked toward the source of the cries. They stopped only when she lifted the lid and looked down at the cat torn to pieces. Eve could see the ragged slashes across each one of Cuchulain’s pink swollen teats.
Eve slammed the lid back down and hurried back to the house, feeling unable to trust anyone, even herself, anymore.
Eleven
So, today was “Take Your Kid to Work Day,” which is easily the dumbest idea the school board has ever come up with. Every kid in their final year is supposed to spend the day at work with one of their parents or some other adult so the teachers can get a day off. As if they don’t get enough holidays anyway.
When I got up, Dad was about to leave. He’d forgotten I was even coming. But that’s him. Mom made a big deal about it, as if it was HER he had forgotten about. Anyway, she let me borrow her pencil skirt and blazer from when she used to go to work in an office. She was thinner back then, so it fit okay. I had to borrow a pair of “sensible pumps,” as she put it, as well, but they were a half size too big and I had to stick a wad of toilet paper behind each heel when I went for a pee at break time.
I thought I’d spend the whole day with Dad, doing what he does, but mostly he goes to meetings and doesn’t do anything. In the meetings, they all just sit around a big table and argue about stuff. It was so boring. So, at eleven o’clock, when he tried to make me go to another “roundtable discussion,” I asked him if I could just stay in his office and do some filing or something. He didn’t seem too happy about that, but he was late for the roundtable. He asked an underling to put together some papers for me to put in alphabetical order or something else completely useless, but they never did, so I just closed the door and searched the internet for epic tattoo fails.
That’s when SHE came to the door. She had honey-blond highlights and her hair was long and straightened, not cut into one of those professional bobs that most women have in order to be taken seriously. She had librarian glasses on, not the ones that you actually need to see, but the ones girls wear so you’ll think they’re smart when they’re not.
But it wasn’t what she looked like that tipped me off that she was Dad’s squeeze. It was the way she opened the door. Quick, like she was planning to slip in with no one noticing. And no knock. No knock means you feel like you own the place.
Her name was Julia. She asked where my dad was. I told her he was in a meeting. Then she got this pissed-off look on her face and asked who I was. I think she actually thought I might be competition or something. Gross! Like I would go out with a guy as old as my dad. He’s like practically retirement age. It’s disgusting that someone as young as even her is fucking him. But when I told her I was his daughter, she got all sickly sweet, saying how she’d heard all about me, and how much she loved my blazer. Total suck-up. She even asked if I’d like to go to lunch sometime, already trying to win over “the daughter” to her side. Like it was important for us to be friends. I would never be friends with someone like her.
I saw the texts she sent my dad on the burner phone I found in his desk drawer. He’d locked it, but the keys weren’t too hard to find. What a ho. I mean I’m okay with using sex to get what you want, but that bitch has no self-respect at all. I know her type with their duck-face selfies on Instagram. Drunken photos taken next to microblade-brow airheads just like themselves with “Besties forever!” written underneath. A person like that my dad will just chew up and spit out anyway.
When she closed the door, I watched her walk back to her desk through the window Dad has that looks out on his cubicle farm of employees. She looked back and gave me a sheepish smile before she disappeared behind the half-wall of her stall.
Anyway, it was a good thing she took off, because not long after that Mom showed. When I saw her coming, I tossed the phone back in the drawer and slammed it shut. I didn’t even bother locking it, just stuffed the keys back in Dad’s hiding place. I don’t care if he knows that I know.
Mom had come up with this idea weeks ago, when I was pissed that she wouldn’t let me stay home to watch her “work.” She said we’d all go out together for lunch, one not-so-happy family. Jesus, maybe we should have invited Julia and we could’ve all pretended to be fucking besties. My mom is so deluded. And get this, she knocked before she came in. That kind of says it all.
Dad was late getting out of his meeting. He’d probably forgotten about lunch too, so I went to get him. I had to stand outside the Algonquin meeting room for ten minutes before I finally caught his eye through the window to the hallway. All the meeting rooms at Dad’s office are named after Indigenous tribes of the region. They have one of those plaques in the lobby that acknowledges we are all on land that belonged to the original peoples of Canada and to be respectful. As if admitting you stole shit from someone makes it okay. I think if you asked a kid living with no running water on one of those shitty reserves, he’d tell you he’d rather have the land back and you can stick the plaque and your respect up your ass.
Once Dad finally figured out that I was waiting for him, he came out and I went to the washroom to stuff more toilet paper down my sensible pumps and fix my makeup a little. By the time I came back to Dad’s office, they were both in there waiting for me. We went for lunch at a Thai place. Neither Mom or Dad said much, so I had to do all the talking. Honestly, it’s like I’m totally fucking responsible for both of them.
In the afternoon, the underling finally showed up with work for me to do, so I spent the next two hours stuffing envelopes with these huge stapled quarterly reports. There were like a thousand of them. How many trees does that kill? Hasn’t anyone heard of the internet? They should just post that shit on a website, and if people are too backward to figure out how to use a computer to access it, they’re going to be run over by the future anyway.
Anyway, I’m glad that day’s over. What a shitshow. At least I have Zanax to look forward to. Mom finally let me have the car, but not before she interrogated me. I should be the one interrogating her. She and Dad haven’t slept in the same room since that night I caught her smoking on the deck. But that’s just another thing I’m supposed to ignore and not ask about, like that Julia slut trying to be my buddy today. She must really think my dad is going to leave my mom for her. Guess Mom isn’t the only one that’s deluded.
We dropped the new Funnel Head poem in Dylan Penske’s locker yesterday after school, but we couldn’t gauge his reaction today because of this “Take Your Kid to Work” bullshit. Selena got to go downtown with her parents to where the symphony practises, which I have to admit sounds even more boring than my day. She said she spent the time studying, trying to get an edge on me in Chemistry probably. I can’t believe she even has her name in for the Thompson scholarship. I mean, it’s not like she needs the money to go away to school like me. Her mother’s family is loaded, made all their money with some cog in the 1860s that revolutionized electric engines. Who even knew they had electric engines in the 1860s? Her grandparents had a hundred grand set aside for her tuition when she was born for Christ’s sake. Anyway, Selena says her dad is making her apply for it. But I don’t know whether to believe her or not. The reality is, I don’t know who to believe anymore. Seems to me that the only truth you can count on is that everybody lies.
Zanax is tonight. I got an old blond wig from the thrift store that I’m going to dye blue, and some body glitter. Also, some crazy sunglasses so I won’t go into an epileptic fit from the strobe lights. Selena put up the missing cat posters for Cuchulain this morning before she went downtown with her parents. She scanned and blew up a picture of the cat that she took at Christmas. It’s wearing a ridiculous red Santa hat with padded white antlers sticking out on either side. I mean, are you Santa or are you a reindeer for fuck’s sake? But it was the only photo Selena had. I wonder who took care of the kittens while everyone was at work?
Twelve
Andre Mueller is such an asshole.
Richard sat at his desk, trying to wrestle a spreadsheet into submission so he could validate his department going 150 percent over budget for the last system upgrade. Mueller was supposed to do it. But when Richard looked at the figures the scheming little German had put together, they didn’t add up to anything except Richard getting his ass handed to him on a platter by the executive committee. Mueller had conveniently sent the spreadsheet out by email before he left for a week’s vacation in Aruba. A perfect place to sit and wait out his co-worker’s demise before returning to take full advantage of it.
