Flannery Read online

  Amber could tell, in the same telepathic way, as soon as she opened the back door of her house, whether her mother was drunk.

  It was a particular kind of low-watt tension that wafted out when the door creaked open. Sometimes it was the noise of ice tumbling down inside the fridge.

  They had an ice-making fridge — very unlike Miranda’s harvest gold number that was second-hand and a thousand years old, and had come from the Sally Ann and had rust all over the front, and you had to lean a chair against it to keep the door closed. The rubber seal on our fridge had hardened up and yellowed and had no suction.

  I loved Amber’s fridge. It was stainless-steel, ultramodern and looked like a spacecraft you could climb inside and shoot for the stars.

  I loved the levers built into one of the doors where you pressed a glass and it would fill with ice, two kinds: slushy or chunky.

  I loved the soft kiss of the rubber seal on Amber’s fridge. It provided excellent closure.

  The ice tumbled down inside a secret chamber and Amber would feel that something wasn’t right.

  Something to do with how quiet the rest of the house was in comparison. Silence was a good indication that Cindy, Amber’s mom, was blotto.

  But sometimes, depending on how drunk she was, Amber’s mother would be banging away on the piano, so loud the geraniums on the windowsills would shiver. A sole white petal would drop into the dry earth in the pot below.

  It wasn’t the volume that gave her away. It was the precision. When Amber’s mom was drunk she played without mistakes. Loud and perfect, each note crisp and glittering.

  But that day, when I started my period, the house was empty. Just Amber and me.

  Sitting there on the side of Amber’s bed, I could feel the warm blood leaking out of me in a gush.

  I’m going to bake you a cake, Amber said.

  I think I’ll just stay here, I said. My stomach was cramping. I felt a little nauseated. I lay back and I woke up much later to the smell of chocolate cake baking in the oven. A dense, velvety smell that had made its way into my dreams and woken me up. I went downstairs to the kitchen and there was a pile of stainless-steel bowls in the sink. I picked up the spatula and licked it clean.

  Where are you? I called.

  Down here, Amber said.

  She was in the basement bathroom. I hated going down there. The indoor/outdoor carpet smelled moldy and there was old exercise equipment that must have cost a fortune but that nobody ever used. A pile of fur coats flung over a corduroy sofa. They looked like an animal lying in wait.

  What are you doing? I said.

  It’s cool down here, Amber said. There was a light on in the bathroom at the back of the basement and I went to the doorway.

  Amber had cut off most of her hair. All of her curls lay in the sink like a big nest. Her face looked bigger, like she’d had a growth spurt. Her eyes.

  Her eyes were shiny and wet.

  I’ll be able to swim faster, she said.

  I moved closer to her. My back was against the doorframe and I slid down so I was hunched on the floor, my knees under my chin, just looking up at her. She turned back to the mirror and fanned her hands like hummingbird wings.

  I can feel the breeze, she said. It feels nice. She picked up the scissors again and then I stood up, too quickly, because I felt a little rush of dizziness and lurched forward, steadying myself on the counter. I took the scissors out of her hand.

  Sometimes the pressure of competitive swimming got to her. And she was terrified her father would leave her mother, because of the drinking. And if her father did leave, she was afraid she’d be left behind. She knew the swimming was the one thing that made her father happy. So she swam as fast as she could.

  16

  On Saturday there’s our usual family outing at the Aquarena, with the significant difference that this time, as per our new arrangement, I’ll be in charge of Felix while Miranda gets in her workout.

  Felix is bouncing off the insides of the truck before we pull into the parking lot, and I’m having serious doubts that any new bathing suit is going to be worth the ordeal of the next hour.

  Miranda has a lifetime free pass to the gym/pool because one of her artist friends is married to one of the managers.

  Sometimes the free pass includes bracelets for the waterslides, the inflated obstacle course, the five-and ten-meter diving platforms, and — though Felix hasn’t worked up the nerve to try it yet — the Tarzan rope.

  And sometimes Miranda’s pass does not include the bracelets. The young women at the counter always check the computer for our names, which don’t appear on the list, but they often say, Oh yes, here you are, and print the bracelets anyway.

  It’s pretty hard to look Felix Malone in the eye and deny him anything. His little pointy chin reaching up to rest on the edge of the counter. He widens those big blue eyes and out pours all his burning hope.

  Felix cannot stand the suspense. He tries to see the screen for himself. He pouts his lower lip. He turns on an inner tap that allows the flow of a fire hose full of charm.

  Incredibly, the girl at the counter seems oblivious to this pressurized charge of adorableness coming straight out of his eyes. It’s me she’s looking at instead. She has her septum pierced with a little silver ring, and a patch of her hair is magenta and another patch is green. She is chewing gum and a big pink bubble balloons from her pursed lips and breaks, draping itself over her chin. She peels it off and sticks it back in her mouth.

  Then I know who she is. She’s the girl who was riding the escalator with Tyrone.

  The girl sees that I recognize her and then she turns to Felix and gives him a smile so big that, charm-wise, it gives his own smile a run for its money. She flicks her eyes over the list and says, Looks here like you get bracelets for full access to the waterslide.

  Yay! says Felix. The printer near the girl’s hip spits out a few bracelets and Felix is hopping up and down, demanding that I give him his, telling me he can put it on himself.

  Thanks, I say. He loves the waterslide.

  He’s a cutie, the girl says. I’ll probably see you around. I think we know some of the same people.

  The pool is full. The shallow end is a riot of kids and parents, neon noodles floating on the surface, striped beach balls and kickboards everywhere.

  The baby pool is full of little babies with water wings and life jackets, mothers with white dimpled thighs. And fathers. And fathers. And fathers.

  There are fathers everywhere. I’ve never really noticed that before.

  But the hour goes by pretty quickly. Felix even stays obediently in the shallow end when I ask him to so that I can get in a few laps on my own.

  The only dicey part of the whole morning is trying to get him to go with me into the family change room. Miranda wants me to get him dressed so she can take a five-minute sauna after her workout. I finally get him to cave by promising that he can go into the men’s change room by himself the minute he turns seven.

  On the drive home Miranda says she can tell I’m preoccupied. I’m actually thinking about the parrot-haired girl, but Miranda assumes I’m worrying about Part B of my Entrepreneurship project, the interview. I’ve already told her there’s absolutely nothing usable in my recorded interview with Ms. Rideout.

  You know, Larry is an extremely gifted marketer, Miranda is saying.

  Who the heck is Larry? I ask.

  Sensei Larry, squeals Felix.

  The karate instructor? I ask. What does karate have to do with love potions?

  Karate is an ancient art that requires self-discipline, fast moves, balance and creativity, Miranda says. And those are some of the essential ingredients of the art of being in love as well.

  Being in love is an art?

  Absolutely, she says.

  So you’re saying that karate and love have a lot in common? I ask.

  Yes, Flannery, Miranda says. She sighs as if everyone on the planet knows this but me.

  17 />
  So on Thursday evening I find myself in the gymnasium of my own school watching my little brother take his karate class. I’m going to interview Sensei Larry as soon as the class is over. That way I can get the voice recorder back to the scary secretary before inventory tomorrow.

  I am sad to report that Felix Malone is not a very good karate student.

  He does have a passionate love of holding up his two hands, straight as boards, in the classic karate defense position and standing absolutely still, looking all focused and mysterious. He also (and this fact was already known to me) really likes his outfit, those black pajamas with the wrap-around belt (also useful for hanging my old dolls by the neck over the stair-rail at home).

  And he really, really likes the bow thing they do at the beginning of class.

  The purpose of the bow is to act out, in a physical gesture, all the respect you have for your sensei and fellow students. This is something that was explained to me at great length over breakfast this morning after Felix found out I’d be sitting in on his class.

  It turns out he has a great deal of respect for Sensei Larry and his fellow students. At the start of class Felix bends his forehead all the way to his knees and makes a point of staying that way for as long as he can, holding up the whole class.

  Finally, Sensei Larry has to say, Enough bowing, Malone.

  But Felix says he doesn’t think he’s had enough time to demonstrate all the respect he feels for Sensei Larry.

  He has only demonstrated about two-thirds of it, he says. (Felix has recently come upon the concept of fractions and is always eager to display his knowledge and uses them wherever possible.) He tells Sensei Larry that if they could just wait for a minute or so he will have demonstrated the other third of his respect.

  So the class waits a little bit more and finally Felix straightens up and is very red in the face and pleased with himself.

  And of course he is very fond of jumping in the air and yelling at the top of his lungs and crashing into people when they are trying to work out their karate routines in a calm, orderly fashion.

  But what he doesn’t seem especially fond of is listening to Sensei Larry explain the precise moves and steps required to earn your yellow belt, the very first belt a karate expert must achieve.

  Sensei Larry has a black belt and if there is a belt higher than black, he probably also has that.

  At the end of the class Sensei Larry does a little demonstration and he kicks his feet up higher than his shoulders and his arms move like helicopter blades and it’s a miracle he doesn’t just lift right off the floor and float up to the ceiling.

  Miranda has filled me in on several other noteworthy things about Sensei Larry as well.

  For one, he was in a trad/rock band that used to play all over St. John’s and went on the road in the early eighties and once signed with a big record label.

  And perhaps even more impressively, Larry collects medieval armor. It is his goal, Miranda has told me, to re-enact a medieval battle at Bannerman Park this year amid a herd of ice-sculpture dragons. He hadn’t even known that Miranda was an ice-sculpture artist, but now they’re thinking of a collaboration.

  I have also learned that Sensei Larry isn’t married and cares for his aging mother in his home. In fact, Miranda is full of information about Sensei Larry.

  As you can imagine, it is my sincere hope that Sensei Larry will ask Miranda out on a date, or the other way around. Though mentioning this hope to Miranda would pretty much ensure it would never happen.

  Instead, I must wait patiently to see how things unfold. Patience with your parent may or may not bring its own rewards, but sometimes you have to wait whether you like it or not.

  After class, Felix runs wild around the gym while Miranda chats with Sensei Larry about wind power, fracking and a gender-studies course they both apparently did back in 2000, though not in the same class.

  They discuss ice fishing and performance art and efficient wood stoves. The work of a film animator who actually scratched right into the emulsion of the film (back in the Middle Ages when they actually had film) and how Sensei Larry really must see these films. Miranda knows he’s going to love them.

  Sensei Larry chats back about his armor collection and the sort of pewter goblet that it was fashionable to drink mead out of in the 1400s and what it takes to be a good jouster.

  He is clearly spending way more time with Miranda than is totally necessary, even ignoring the other parents, who are milling around waiting to hear about the karate fundraiser for the provincial all-ages meet in Gander, and what outlet sells the cheapest karate suits.

  Sensei Larry and Miranda both seem to be forgetting that I’m here waiting to interview him. Felix has to drag Miranda out of there by the hand. She walks backwards out of the gym, still talking about her tiara and the feminist leanings of the conceptual art project she’s involved in and something about dress codes in schools being sexist.

  Finally the gym has emptied out and we hear the doors slam and Sensei Larry settles himself in a lotus position right in the middle of the gym floor, and I sit opposite him and turn on the recorder.

  I ask how he advertises his classes and he talks about Instagram and Twitter and the importance of social media. But he says the strongest advertising tool is still the oldest one: word of mouth.

  If people start to hear good things, Sensei Larry says, they want to check it out for themselves. We talk for a bit about making a product that has integrity or that is especially creative or fresh, something that has the potential to stir up excitement.

  Then I hit him with the hard question. How are karate and love alike?

  He laughs, and it’s a high-pitched, totally unexpected, unselfconscious laugh that makes him shake all over. He has thrown his head back and I can see his tonsils trembling back there, he’s laughing so hard. But he finally straightens up and gets serious. He talks about being thoughtful.

  That’s all I got, he said. You have to work at both of them, and you have to be thoughtful.

  Thoughtful, I say.

  Yup, he says. Full of thought. About everything.

  And in that moment, Sensei Larry looks like the kind of man who has taken the time to think deeply about life, about everything. He looks like he has a sense of humor, and he also looks kind. He makes “being full of thought” sound wise and necessary.

  And I switch off the audio recorder. I have everything I need.

  Afterward, I stay at the school to transcribe the interview so I don’t have to fight with Miranda for the computer at home (she’s been moaning about having a blog post overdue). The secretary is doing some extra filing and says it’s okay.

  When I’m finally ready to leave I can see that it’s well past dark and the streetlights are on. The wind is blowing hard and I have to press my whole body against the door to get out of the school. There are swirls of gritty snow swaying low across the road like ghostly serpents.

  The orange Sunbird is idling on the other side of the street. The engine revs a couple of times as soon as the door shuts behind me. I can hear the hole in the muffler. Music is thrumming from the inside. I decide to go back into the school so I can come out another exit. I don’t trust the guy in that car, and there’s nobody else around. The parking lot is empty.

  But the door has locked behind me.

  I detour around the side of the school so I can cut through the back parking lot. That way I won’t have to walk past the Sunbird.

  I’m halfway across the parking lot when a swarm of girls appears on the top of the hill that leads to the supermarket. There are at least six of them.

  Mercy Hanrahan is in the front of the pack.

  Hey, she says. You’re that one Amber’s friend. I’ve got something I’d like you to tell her. A message you can pass on.

  I have to get home, I say. But Mercy and all the girls with her have stepped up close to me and they’re in front of me and behind me too. The girl next to Mercy is texting something.


  I try to step between them but they nudge me back.

  Where are you going? Mercy says. We just want to have a chat. You don’t have to be so rude. Why is everybody so stuck-up around here?

  Her skin is golden from a spray-on tan and her hair is flying around in the wind. It flies over her face and she turns into the wind and it flies back over one shoulder, flickering out straight.

  Her eyes are narrowed and watering from the wind. She’s chewing a big wad of gum and the scent of simulated grape and the smell of cigarette smoke hang in every word she says.

  That Amber is the most stuck-up of all, Mercy says. Some kind of swimmer or something. Who gives a fuck about swimming?

  There’s five or six more girls running down the hill now. They must have been in the supermarket too. That’s who the girl beside Mercy was texting. Kids go there after school to get food from the deli. One of them has a greasy box of taters in her hand.

  These new ones are girls from the east end. Their school has been closed because of asbestos, and they’ve just been transferred to Heart. They have greasy hair and too much blue eyeshadow and clothes from Pipers and everybody says they’re skanks and skeets and Welfare.

  Just like I’m Welfare.

  People also say Mercy has done coke, and that her older sister Sienna dropped out of school to have a baby and social services took the baby and now she’s working at the supermarket behind the school, but I go to that supermarket with Miranda all the time and I’ve never seen anyone who looks like Mercy and anyway Miranda was only nineteen when she got pregnant with me.

  Mercy lifts her chin at me as if she’s decided that we can probably talk this thing out, whatever it is. She drapes an arm over my shoulder, drawing my neck in tight.

  This won’t take very long, she says. I got something I need your friend to know. Either we tell you, or we get your friend Amber back here behind the school. How would you like that? Here’s the message. We don’t like her very much.

  The girls have moved in close and I’m in the center of the crowd. They’re pressing in on me. I look up at the windows of the school, but they’re black and empty. I think about what Miranda says about foul language.