First Things First, page 20
Danny was quite a few years older than Mavis and worked pumping gas at the Indian Mound Esso. His family had a pig farm just west of town but it was never really clear where Danny lived. He was liable to turn up anywhere in that wonderful car, drinking a beer. Mavis knew that sometimes, when the weather was bad, he rented a room for a week or so upstairs at the Indian Mound Hotel. She suspected that the rest of the time he slept in the car. She loved this about him, this unanchored itinerant quality. He could go anywhere, do anything; he could take care of himself.
To tell the truth, Danny Singer was the only guy that Mavis had ever really wanted. Secretly, hugging herself, she thought of him as “forbidden fruit” . . . something tropical, succulent and potent, slightly bruised, possibly poisonous. He was a vagabond living just this side of the law. Mavis had no reason to suspect that he would ever change.
TRUE OR FALSE?
TRUE.
How was she supposed to know that Danny Singer would gain weight, lose his tan and some of his hair, take up bowling and stamp collecting, quit drinking, send his aging parents to a retirement village in Florida, fall in love with mowing the lawn, trade the convertible in on a station wagon? How was she supposed to know that Danny would mutate into the perfect husband, the perfect father, the perfect Little League baseball coach?
* * *
When the phone rings the second time it is Tess Berry, Mavis’s best friend. She teaches the watercolour class which Mavis attends every Thursday night at the art college and is, of course, tall and slim and intense, with long, curly black hair and wild-looking eyes. Having travelled extensively, now she dresses in elegant, inspired outfits picked up for a pittance on other continents—Asia, Africa, South America. At various times in the past, Tess has experimented with photography, body-building, and cocaine. Now she writes poetry, plays the mandolin, raises doves, sculpts, and grows her own herbs. Except for Mavis, the crowd Tess travels with is composed exclusively of painters, playwrights, sculptors, poets, actors, and musicians. Her husband, Russell, is an actor and a good one at that. They do not plan to have children.
Today Tess and Mavis make plans to drive to class together tomorrow night. Afterwards they will go for a couple of drinks at The Black Cat, a jazz club, one of those new hybrids, the deli/bar, which are springing up in the more fashionable neighbourhoods around the city. Mavis finds such clubs convenient because now she can say, “I’m going to the deli,” when what she really means is, “I’m going to the bar,” a more determined and dangerous announcement somehow, one more likely to meet with resistance.
Mavis prolongs the telephone conversation as long as is casually possible, telling Tess about the accident in the alley, how the peaches went rolling every which way, how she ran out to help that poor careless child. Mavis is flattered by this friendship with Tess who, she imagines, has no doubts about herself and no secrets either. Tess is everything that Mavis wants to be.
TRUE OR FALSE?
TRUE.
Tess is everything that Mavis wants to be now.
* * *
Mavis Clay and Danny Singer were getting more and more restless while everyone else in Indian Mound got more and more sluggish, lazier and lazier as that relentless suffocating summer wore on. Existing for weeks in a sulky state of perpetual excitement, they were looking for adventure, whatever came their way, planning their escape in endless and abundant detail.
Mavis only went home when she felt like it, to grab a change of clothes or a half-decent meal, home where they usually said, “At least you’re not pregnant,” or “At least you’re not in jail,” and then went on about their business. Mavis’s parents had other things to worry about, what with that tribe of hellions they’d managed to bring into the world. Mavis figured that another body more or less in that zoo didn’t make much difference and she was probably right. Every time she did go back to the farm there was a different brother or sister sleeping in her bed anyway. Most of the time she stayed with Danny, in the car or in his room at the hotel.
One morning Danny said, “I can’t stand it one more minute,” so they packed up the convertible and drove to a public beach about forty miles west, Deadman’s Point, where they spent the afternoon in and out of the shallow water, drinking beer and collecting shells. It wasn’t until the next morning, after spending the night at Deadman’s and then heading west again instead of turning around and going back to Indian Mound, that Mavis realized they were really doing it this time.
They made their way across the prairies, pretending to be tourists, sleeping in the car, sometimes in a cheap motel. Mavis had no idea where Danny got the money and she didn’t like to ask. They ended up in Euclid, Alberta, because the place where they stopped for gas needed a mechanic.
Pretending to be married, they lived together in two rooms in back of the station, sleeping on a mattress on the floor and cooking their meals on the grill in the restaurant out front. Mavis helped out in the restaurant when it got busy, dishing up endless pork chops, mashed potatoes, and hot rhubarb pie to punks and truckers. Some of the girls who came in tried to make friends, but Mavis ignored their overtures, figuring that she already knew enough people to do her for a while. She and Danny kept to themselves. These girls struck her as too innocent, too eager anyway, and certainly untrustworthy. She was always feeling crabby and her feet were just killing her but she made better tips if she smiled and winked and bent over a lot when she cleaned tables.
By November Mavis knew she was pregnant but she figured that if she just ignored it, it would go away by itself, like the flu or a mosquito in the bedroom in the dark. Mavis wasn’t stupid, she knew this couldn’t really happen, but still . . .
One day she took all her tip money out of the jar and caught the bus back to Indian Mound. The driver dropped her off at the side of the highway because the town was too small to be a regular stop. She was scared to death.
TRUE OR FALSE?
FALSE.
Mavis was bored to death. Euclid by this time had become just like Indian Mound, except that it was hillier and she didn’t know anybody there but the kind old couple who owned the station. Once they’d got there it seemed as if Danny’s sense of adventure had just dried right up.
The gossip stirred up by Mavis’s return to Indian Mound alone was scant substitute for the initial intoxication of their escapade, but it was better than nothing. Even that didn’t last long though, as the townspeople quickly forgot about her and got busy with Christmas. Only Molly was interested in all the juicy details.
* * *
When the phone rings a third time, it is probably either Molly again, the doctor calling about Mavis’s Monday appointment, or a wrong number. Mavis, who is cutting back the spider plant, just lets it ring.
TRUE OR FALSE?
TRUE.
Mavis lets the phone ring and ring until the fool on the other end finally gives up. This makes her feel gaily indifferent and powerful, too.
* * *
Danny Singer was no dummy: he went back to Indian Mound, too, but not for another month or so, until he’d given Mavis some time to think about it.
Mavis and Danny were married in a simple ceremony in the Indian Mound Church in January. Molly Florence was maid of honour and one of the bride’s older brothers, John Allan, stood up for Danny. The bride wore a knee-length white dress which caused a minor flurry of interest. Both sets of parents disapproved of the marriage but had resigned themselves to the fact that there was nothing else to be done. The wedding dance was held in the Legion basement and everybody had a good time in spite of themselves.
With Danny’s savings (which were far more than Mavis or anyone else would ever have guessed), they bought a small old house on Main Street. Danny got his old job back at the Indian Mound Esso, where he was quickly promoted to head mechanic. Mavis fell easily into the role of young housewife, spending her days sewing curtains and slipcovers, fixing up the nursery, planning a garden, and cooking good nutritious dinners for Danny every night. Danny bought Mavis a blue budgie for her nineteenth birthday, to keep her company, he said, until the baby was born. Mavis, who would have preferred a fluffy white kitten or a horse but didn’t like to complain, named the bird Julie. The baby, a girl they named Amy, was born in June, barely six months after the wedding, thus satisfying everybody’s suspicions. They were making improvements on the old house while saving up their money to buy a new one and Danny was nursing his dream of owning the Indian Mound Esso himself someday.
For a few years, Mavis, Danny, and little Amy Singer lived quietly and happily in the little house on Main Street.
TRUE OR FALSE?
TRUE.
For a few years, the young Singer family threatened to live happily ever after and disappoint everyone.
* * *
Mavis Singer is having her afternoon nap, a secret indulgence she feels guilty about but just can’t give up yet. In the dream Amy is riding a black horse on a beach. The horse bursts into flames and runs into the water which is a hundred feet deep. Danny is trapped under somebody’s car and can’t save her. Mavis is afraid of fire and has forgotten how to swim. In the dream there is no sound.
TRUE OR FALSE?
TRUE.
The dream disturbs Mavis for the rest of the day.
* * *
One morning just before Amy’s fifth birthday Mavis took $100 from Danny’s sock drawer (she called this borrowing, not stealing, because after all they were married), got Amy all dressed, and caught a bus back to Euclid, Alberta. The old couple who owned the gas station was still there and Mavis got work in the restaurant again. The suite in back was occupied so Mavis took a room in a boarding house just until she could afford something better.
Back in Indian Mound, rumour had it that an older man, a married man named Joe Fletcher, was involved. Joe had disappeared at about the same time, went out for a loaf of bread and never came back.
TRUE OR FALSE?
FALSE.
Joe’s disappearance at the same time was just a coincidence. He went east, not west, and, as it turned out, came slinking back to Indian Mound three months later, tail between his legs.
Danny Singer was no dummy and when he tracked Mavis down back in Euclid, she was at the laundromat, folding clothes and reading The National Enquirer while Amy played with her dolls on the floor.
* * *
Mavis is out working in the garden, sweating and hacking worms in half with the hoe.
TRUE OR FALSE?
TRUE.
Mavis hates worms, even though she knows they’re good for the soil. Mavis hates the garden, which was not her idea in the first place, because it reminds her of Indian Mound and the old house on Main Street. There are some things that can no longer be thought about.
* * *
Back in Indian Mound, Mavis and Danny began saving their money in earnest. They’d had about all they could take and wanted to buy a house in the city. They went in most weekends all through that boring summer, just checking it out, and by the end of August they knew exactly what they wanted, which is more than most people can say.
Danny was working all the time, ten or twelve hours a day, six or seven days a week, and Mavis was spending a lot of time over at Molly’s, who was married now, too, to Bub Hammer, and living right across the street. They had coffee together most days, at one house or the other.
One afternoon, after Mavis had put Amy down for her nap, she wandered across the street to Molly’s just for a few minutes. This day it was too hot for coffee, too humid to sit inside that little hotbox of a house, so they were having a beer in the backyard, admiring the garden and the gladiolas and whining about the heat, when all of a sudden the fire siren went off, freezing activity all over town, curdling Mavis’s stomach just like it always did. The one thing she was most afraid of was fire.
It took Mavis only a minute to realize that it was her house that was on fire. She was up and running, screaming, and before anyone could stop her, she was inside the burning house, inside the flames, flailing through the smoke to Amy, coming back out through the picture window that had exploded, her hair ablaze and the child lying limp in her arms as if she were already dead.
TRUE OR FALSE?
TRUE.
The house was reduced to a smoking black skeleton, faulty wiring, all of their accumulated treasures lost. Poor Julie, the budgie, was cooked in her cage, so much roast meat, and all of Mavis’s beautiful hair was burnt off. The insurance money would enable them to move to the city sooner than anticipated but, of course, they weren’t thinking about that yet. Mavis knew that she and Amy both were lucky to be alive. Afterwards, when people went on and on about her bravery, she felt hazy and surprised. Brave is not something you think of yourself as being.
* * *
Mavis is in the kitchen starting supper when Amy gets home from school and Danny gets home from work. Amy’s books and lunchbox, Danny’s boots and coveralls, all drop in a heap beside the back door. He is co-owner of a garage down on East 27th now. He’s handing Mavis a peach he found lying in the backyard so she tells him the story of the accident, the true story. Danny is understanding, comforting, he puts an arm around her shoulders, rests his cheek on the top of her head. He knows everything about her by now. There are no secrets, no surprises, between them. Anything can be discussed, examined, dealt with maturely. Amy is in the living room, watching reruns of Mister Ed, The Talking Horse.
After supper, the Singer family will have a quick game of Old Maid which is Amy’s favourite. Then Mavis and Danny will do the dishes, she washes, he dries and puts away, and talk about Amy’s eighth birthday party coming up on Saturday. Amy has already invited all her little friends from school. Mavis decides that a barbecue, just burgers and dogs, would be the best idea. Danny will go out and mow the lawn while Mavis helps Amy with her homework, runs her bath, and then tucks her into bed. Then Mavis and Danny will watch the early movie and go to bed right after the news.
TRUE OR FALSE?
TRUE.
After supper, all of these things will happen and the Singer family will sleep peacefully all night long in their cool blue house, as if they’ve been doing it all their lives.
TRUE OR FALSE?
FALSE.
After supper, Mavis Singer will go down to The Black Cat Deli/Bar with Tess Berry and pick up some young guy in leather pants and spend the night at his place.
TRUE OR FALSE?
FALSE.
After supper, Amy Singer will accidentally electrocute herself with the curling iron in the bathtub.
TRUE OR FALSE?
FALSE.
After supper, Danny Singer will go and visit Molly Hammer from Indian Mound, with whom he is having an affair.
TRUE OR FALSE?
FALSE.
After supper, Mavis Singer will go and visit Bub Hammer from Indian Mound, with whom she is having an affair.
TRUE OR FALSE?
FALSE.
After supper, Danny Singer will stroll down to Murphy’s Corner Grocery for a loaf of bread which Mavis forgot this afternoon (silly woman) and never come back.
TRUE OR FALSE?
FALSE.
After supper, Mavis Singer will ask Danny Singer for enough money for a one-way ticket back to Indian Mound.
TRUE OR FALSE?
FALSE.
After supper, the Singer family will live happily ever after.
SHE WANTS
TO TELL ME
(1985)
You’re sitting there like a bouquet of flowers, pastel, perfumed, and conspicuous. You want to tell me your whole life story. You also want another drink. How can I refuse you either? How can I refuse you anything?
You say, “Your geraniums are lovely.”
It’s that special single hour on a late summer’s evening when the light has gone all sentimental, the birds are singing dementedly, and way out in suburbia, some beautiful virgin boy is mowing his mother’s lawn, flexing his thighs, and dreaming he’s the singer in a rock and roll band.
“I’ve never had much luck with flowers myself,” you tell me. “I find it easier just to let some man buy them for me.”
Here our downtown birds are ratty old pigeons, circling aimlessly, preening and cooing at nothing. Our downtown boys in their black leather jackets are always playing video games, flexing their fingers, hooked, and I can’t imagine what they might be dreaming. Most of them will survive.
“They always die on me.”
You sniff the breeze, which is supposed to smell like berries or white sand, but in this neighbourhood is mostly exhaust. You massage it into your bare arms anyway, stretching your legs, kicking off your shoes (which are perfect) and settling in. The soles of your feet are dirty and smooth, like a child’s.
“The flowers, I mean.”
Our ice cubes are melting. I’ll go in and get some more. I wish I had an ice bucket, a silver one. You do. You must.
“Expensive feet, I’ve always had expensive feet. I can only wear Italian shoes. It gets to be like a curse. I had to search the whole city to find such marvellous shoes.”
And here I sit, me with my plain old peasant feet, domestic feet propped up on a flower pot, swelling and smelling in the heat.
I get more wine. Also domestic. But you are, I imagine, too well-bred to notice.
“It hardly smells like summer anymore,” you observe. “The nights are getting cooler, longer. Where does the time go? It seems to pass so slowly but always carries on, and then in the end, it’s nothing but gone. This wine is delicious.”
You think you’re in Italy, Paris, on the Riviera or the Virgin Islands, anywhere but here, examining your fingernails, tucking your hair behind one ear, pulling up your lacy white skirt to catch the last of the sun. You think that I’m just like you—which is flattering but nerve-wracking. I’d hate like hell to disillusion you.
