First Things First, page 23
Holly is surprised to see a raccoon ambling across the close end of the park, right here in the middle of the city. And sometimes in the morning there is the stink of skunk in the air.
Once she asked Nick why the squirrels here are black, when out west they were brown. And she still marvels at the sound of the cicadas, which she never heard in the west, a vibration like a plucked high wire, a sign of hot weather.
“Well, that’s Alberta for you,” Nick said, satisfied.
“Groundhogs last year,” he says now.
Steve Winwood on the stereo is singing: All the doors I closed one time/ Will open up again/I’ll be back in the high life again.
“I been in three times now but the Lord He forgives me.”
Nick puts an arm around her with unusually obvious affection. “And He understands about a man needing a woman now and again too.”
Holly has been waiting for just the right moment, this moment, to give him the card she is fingering fondly inside her sweater pocket. The size of a credit card, it is covered with tiny white printing on a shiny silver background, which reflects Nick’s face as he leans close to the bug light to read.
The blue title in italics says Footprints:
One night a man had a dream.
He dreamed he was walking along the beach with the Lord
and across the sky there flashed scenes from his life.
In each scene there were two sets of footprints in the sand:
one belonging to him and the other to the Lord.
Looking back at the scenes,
the man saw that many times along the path of his life
there was only one set of footprints.
This bothered the man so he questioned the Lord.
“Lord, You said that once I decided to follow You,
You’d walk with me all the way.
But during the lowest and saddest times of my life,
there is only one set of footprints.
Why did You leave me when I needed You most?”
The Lord replied,
“My son, I love you and would never leave you.
In your times of trouble
when you see only one set of footprints,
it was then that I carried you.”
Nick was telling Holly the story from jail about this guy who tried to cut off his thing, you know, his thing, with a plastic spoon, then a comb, and then finally he slammed it in a steel door. “It was those doors,” he said, “those steel doors slamming all night long. It was those doors made me feel like I was being tortured. Never slept the whole time for the sound of those doors slamming. It’s those doors I dream about, slamming.”
Holly, horrified, asks, “Did he die? What happened to him?”
But Nick doesn’t know. He can’t remember and seems never to have wondered. This is not the point of the story.
They are camped out on the sofa bed in Holly’s living room, which is the only room in the house cool enough (not very) to sleep in, for though the quickening evening darkness of September has moved the whole neighbourhood back inside most nights, the humidity still hangs and the air will not move.
They are watching a TV documentary called In Search of Dracula in which the narrator says, “Story-telling wards off vampires.”
Nick says, “Garlic.” He does not talk much about the Lord anymore.
Talking this night before they fall asleep in each other’s arms, they discover that they both always wear pajamas for fear of having to get up in the middle of the night and run (Holly) or fight (Nick).
During this night they both dream, at different times, that someone is standing at the front door looking in at them. Close to morning, Holly gets up and pulls down the blind.
When Nick sneaks home across the driveway at 6 a.m., Holly can hear Gran hollering, “Where the hell have you been?” She goes into her bedroom and shuts the door so she cannot hear the details of the lengthy argument. All day long she wonders what he said.
Holly and Nick are lying on Gran’s couch watching rock videos and she has her head in his lap. There is so much big furniture jammed into the little room that there is hardly space to walk around. On the wall facing Holly’s house, there is a large velvet painting which, in the flickering television light, might be of horses rearing or of women dancing, but Holly keeps thinking it’s a window and she catches herself looking over every few minutes, trying to see out. Nick is telling her about the new bunk beds Gran has ordered so he and Nicky won’t be so crowded in their little bedroom. They are whispering for fear of waking Gran or the boy. None of his people, it appears, are to know about their relationship yet.
Nick says, “Don’t get me wrong sometimes.”
“What?” His thought processes are often hard to follow.
“Sometimes when I don’t see you, don’t get me wrong. I just don’t want to get serious. After Cherie I know all about love, just don’t want no part of it no more. It aches my mind.”
Holly reaches up and strokes his face, which she loves, consoling him and not believing a word of it.
“Just gonna live here forever,” Nick says, stretching. “Never pay no rent again.”
“But how can you stand it? A grown man still sleeping in bunk beds. I could never live with my family now.”
“But my people, they’re different, let me do what I like. They’re always trying to give me things. The bike. Now she wants to buy me a car. Camaro, I want a blue Camaro.”
Holly is reading in bed when she hears Nick ride up. Over the sound of the bike there comes a delighted wild whooping.
Holly goes into her kitchen to peek out at him. He is already inside Gran’s house where the kitchen light comes on. He leans against the sink with his back to the window, his helmet still on him like a huge insect head. He takes it off, bending forward so she can see his mouth moving but she can’t hear the words: the screen is closed now against the cool night. The other person puts a small hand up on each of his shoulders and he kisses her.
They come back outside, the girl drunk and staggering around in the driveway until Nick steadies her tenderly. She is wearing blue jeans, a white t-shirt under a baggy black cardigan with a can of beer in each pocket. She is pointing at something in Holly’s backyard and laughing her dizzy head off. Holly can see her clothesline reflected by moonlight in Gran’s kitchen window. She has hung from it this morning her new summer dresses all in a row. In the window in the wind now, they flap and collide like decapitated bodies, headless chickens, hopeless. They will hang there for two days before they dry in this humidity and then they will be spotted with mildew which will never wash out.
Nick and the girl drink the beer. Then he wheels the bike down the driveway with her on the back clutching him, saying, “Are you sure about this?”
Holly goes back to bed, saying out loud, “So what? Who cares? I don’t care what you do or who you do it with,” goes back to reading her poetry books because classes have started.
A few minutes later she can hear sirens. They would be, she estimates, just to the far corner of the park by now, somewhere between the black cannon that points down Clergy Street and the monument to that dead minister who founded the church on the corner in 1893. She imagines them crumpled together on the cool grass, his head like an egg now inside the helmet and hers just flattened and still, like a plate.
He could end up back in jail, the fool, when they arrest him for violating his parole.
Or he could be dying even now, repenting as the scenes of his life flash like sheet lightning, promises out of the southern sky.
NONE OF THE ABOVE
(1987)
The city is a conglomerate of oil-rainbowed bubbles, all of its unknown neighbourhoods dissolving one by one behind David and Belinda Boyce as they pass obliviously through on their way home in the five o’clock Friday rush-hour dark of early December. In other parts of the city,
(A) a lonely woman may be eating Kraft Dinner right out of the pot, standing there in her housecoat, watching The Young and the Restless, trying not to cry in her condo on Elm Street.
(B) an old woman may be lying dead in her bed-sitting room on Sixteenth Avenue, having been there four days, the newspapers piling up outside her door: maybe tomorrow someone will miss her or smell her.
(C) a desperate young woman may be holding up a liquor store at the corner of Centre and Tenth, making off with all the cash and two magnums of French champagne.
(D) a scorned woman may be slashing up the waterbed in a high-rise on Dalhousie Drive, stabbing her unfaithful husband twenty-six times in the back, letting his lover go naked and screaming and free through the puddles already leaking through to the apartment below.
(E) all of the above.
David Boyce is driving the old blue Pontiac, having stopped to pick up Belinda at the plant store where she works on his way from the pet store where he works. In the plant store, Belinda sells
(A) African violets.
(B) Wandering Jews.
(C) geraniums.
(D) rubber trees.
(E) cacti and succulents.
In the pet store, David sells
(A) guppies.
(B) parakeets.
(C) lizards.
(D) guinea pigs.
(E) pitbull puppies.
Belinda is
(A) beautiful.
(B) short.
(C) tired.
(D) young.
(E) too young to be so tired.
David is
(A) handsome.
(B) tall.
(C) smug.
(D) young.
(E) too young to be so smug.
Belinda is
(A) innocent.
(B) carefree.
(C) contented.
(D) lovable.
(E) only occasionally depressed.
David is
(A) responsible.
(B) hard-working.
(C) ambitious.
(D) lovable.
(E) only occasionally insensitive.
Tonight, December 8, it is
(A) windy.
(B) snowy.
(C) icy.
(D) twenty below.
(E) pretty miserable for this time of year.
David drives with extra care because Belinda beside him holds in her lap
(A) a baby.
(B) an aquarium.
(C) an angel food cake.
(D) a bouquet of rare orchids.
(E) a snowball melting all down her thighs.
David and Belinda (née Johnson), high-school sweethearts, were married the summer after graduation at 3 p.m. on Saturday, August 8, three years ago. At the time, they expected their linked lives to play out happy and long. So far, they are
(A) correct.
(B) mistaken.
(C) convinced.
(D) surprised.
(E) still waiting.
In their early twenties now, they are still living in the same city where they were both born. Their city, it seems to them, will always be
(A) solid.
(B) snug.
(C) friendly.
(D) comfortable.
(E) home.
They have never had, either one of them, the slightest desire to move to
(A) Toronto.
(B) Los Angeles.
(C) Indian Head, Saskatchewan.
(D) Amsterdam.
(E) Argentina.
With the generous help of their parents and the Bank of Montreal, they have been able to purchase and furnish a semi-detached home on Edelweiss Crescent in the new subdivision of
(A) Canyon Meadows.
(B) Silver Springs.
(C) Tuxedo Park.
(D) Greenview Estates.
(E) Briar Hill Heights.
In their new home, there is
(A) a 12-cup Philips Coffee Maker. Dial-a-brew system with showerhead design water spreader. Pause control for one-cup convenience. “On” light and dust cover. Two-hour automatic shut-off if you forget! Drip reservoir in basket.
(B) a 20” Colour Television. Quick-view feature means a clear picture seconds after you turn the television on! Off-timer automatically turns off television at a predetermined time. Charcoal-grey styling adds the perfect modern touch to your home!
(C) a Proctor-Silex Broiler Oven. Will bake, broil, toast, and keep warm! Continuous-clean interior, large window, all-purpose bake pan, dual-weight oven rack, easy-clean crumb tray.
(D) a Sunbeam Electric Blanket with BodySensor feature. Personal Monitoring System monitors your entire body while you sleep, compensating for any temperature changes it senses! 80% polyester, 20% acrylic.
(E) a Water Pik Home Dental System. The Command Control Pik allows you to control the water flow! Includes oral irrigator, electric toothbrush, 4 colour-coded jet tips and 4 brushes.
They are also saving their money for
(A) wall-to-wall carpeting.
(B) a microwave oven.
(C) a CD player.
(D) a new car in the spring, maybe a Volvo or a Ford Mustang Cobra GT Convertible.
(E) a trip to Hawaii next winter or maybe to the West Edmonton Mall.
Having discussed the future at length, David and Belinda would like to have
(A) 12 children.
(B) 2 children.
(C) 0 children.
(D) a cat.
(E) a dog.
If they have a cat, she is sleeping like a sweater in the middle of the kitchen table when they get home. If they have a cat, her name is
(A) Puff.
(B) Tiger.
(C) Muffin.
(D) Bubbles.
(E) Bert.
If they have a dog named Rex, he is
(A) a cocker spaniel.
(B) a Doberman pinscher.
(C) a poodle.
(D) a chihuahua.
(E) not house-trained yet.
If they have a Doberman named Rex, he is watching for them loyally from his mat by the door. He greets them with exuberance and his jaws come shut with the sound of a wet handclap. While David has a beer and wrestles around with Rex, Belinda makes for their supper
(A) Stuffed Herbed Chicken Breasts with Vinegar Sauce.
(B) Steamed Broccoli Nouvelle.
(C) Baked Parmesan Rice with Mushrooms and Sautéed Almonds.
(D) Eggplant-Zucchini Salad.
(E) Perfect Apple Pie.
Over their meal, they talk amiably about
(A) how tender the chicken is, just delicious, done this way, also the broccoli.
(B) how glad they are it’s finally Friday and they can just relax.
(C) how Belinda would really like to get her hair permed.
(D) how David has a nasty corn on his left baby toe.
(E) what they will do tomorrow.
Tomorrow being Saturday they will
(A) stay in bed all day.
(B) defrost the fridge.
(C) wallpaper the bathroom.
(D) watch football and drink beer.
(E) go shopping at the mall.
At the mall, they will buy
(A) a cookie jar shaped like a duck.
(B) a shower curtain with dolphins on it.
(C) mauve sheets.
(D) a shovel.
(E) a hand grenade.
Over their meal, they do not discuss
(A) the fact that David’s younger sister, Andrea, has been arrested for shoplifting after stealing a blow dryer and a Rolling Stones tape from Woolworth’s when she had $100 in her purse and had just come from her weekly session with the shrink.
(B) the fact that Ginny Andrews who works with Belinda at the plant store is having an abortion, her third, in the morning.
(C) how yesterday there was fighting all night next door, Al and Suzanne screaming, glass breaking, and something round and solid, but soft too, like a head or a cabbage, hitting the wall.
(D) Belinda’s recurring nightmare in which she is chasing David around Edelweiss Crescent with an axe until he stops dead in his tracks, turns around and shoots her, with a face on him like Bruce Springsteen.
(E) the threat of nuclear war which has permeated their whole young lives.
David and Belinda Boyce think of themselves as
(A) a lucky couple.
(B) an unlucky couple.
(C) a happy couple.
(D) an unhappy couple.
(E) they do not think of themselves.
After the dishes are done, Belinda puts on her terry cloth bathrobe which she bought last weekend at Woolworth’s for $70. The bathrobe, which she loves, is the colour of
(A) peaches.
(B) peppermints.
(C) lilacs.
(D) her eyes.
(E) broken glass.
Curled up in the corner of the sectional, Belinda is
(A) watching Miami Vice.
(B) knitting a green sweater for David for Christmas.
(C) painting her toenails that great new colour called Red Alert.
(D) playing solitaire.
(E) reading her horoscope in the evening paper.
Belinda is
(A) a Virgo.
(B) a Cancer.
(C) a Libra.
(D) a Pisces.
(E) an Aquarius.
David is
(A) an Aries.
(B) a Taurus.
(C) a Leo.
(D) a Scorpio.
(E) a Sagittarius.
If Belinda is reading her horoscope, it says
(A) Influential people are less likely to support your ideas. Postpone entertaining a new alliance. Relaxing at home appeals more than a night on the town.
(B) You finally see the light at the end of the tunnel! Have faith in your talents and let other people handle their own problems.
(C) Your optimism is contagious today. You will be happiest with your family and pets.
(D) Anything can happen this weekend and probably will. You love surprises! Stay in touch with friends overseas. You may want to take a trip.
