The Selected Short Fiction of Lisa Moore Read online

  What I feel on the side of the highway, ozone in the air, the epic sky: I am falling hugely in love. Hank, the guy who picked us up in his black truck. Brian Fiander. Melody, myself. Whomever. A hormonal metamorphosis, the unarticulated lust of a virgin as errant, piercing, and true as lightning. A half hour later the truck hydroplanes.

  Hank slams on the brakes. The truck spins in two weightless circles. I listen to the keening brakes of the eighteen wheeler coming toward us, ploughing a glorious wave of water in front of it. The sound as desperate and restrained as that of a whale exhausted in a net. I can see the grill of the eighteen wheeler’s cab through the sloshing wave like a row of monster teeth. The transport truck stops close enough, our bumpers almost touching.

  After a long wait, the transport driver steps down from the cab. He stands beside his truck, steely points of rain spiking off his shoulders like medieval armour. Melody opens her door and steps down. She walks toward the driver, but then she veers to the side of the road and throws up.

  The driver of the transport truck catches up with her there. When Melody has finished puking he turns her toward him, resting his hands on her shoulders. She speaks and hangs her head. He begins to talk, admonishing, cajoling; once bending his head back and looking up into the rain. He chuckles. The thick film of water sloshing over the windshield makes their bodies wiggle like sun-drugged snakes. After a while he lifts her chin. He takes a handkerchief from an inside pocket and shakes it out and holds it at arm’s length, examining both sides. He hands it to her and she wipes her face.

  Hank whispers to me, I’m not responsible for this. He lays his hand on the horn.

  Melody gets back in the truck. She’s shivering. The other driver climbs into his cab. His headlights come on. The giant lights splinter into needles of pink and blue and violet and the rain is visible in the broad arms of light, and as the truck pulls out the lights dim and narrow, as if it has cunning. Then it drives away. Hank takes off his sunglasses and folds the arms and places them in a holder for sunglasses glued to the dash. He moves his hand over his face, down and up, and then he rests his forehead on the wheel. He holds the wheel tight.

  What did you say to him, Hank asks. He waits for Melody to answer but she doesn’t. Finally he lifts his head. He flings his arm over the back of the seat so he can turn the truck and I see the crackle of lines at the corners of his eyes.

  I watch Melody inside the Irving station a couple of hours later, her pink sleeveless blouse through the window amid the reflections of the pumps and the black truck I’m leaning against. She passes through my reflection and, returning to the counter, passes through me again like a needle sewing something up. Hank opens the hood and pulls out the dipstick. He takes a piece of paper towel from his back pocket, draws it down the length of stick, stopping it from wavering.

  Melody comes out with a bottle of orange juice. It has stopped raining. Steam lifts off the asphalt and floats into the trees. Sky, Canadian flag, child with red shirt — all mirrored in the glassy water on the pavement at our feet. A car passes and the child’s reflection is a crazy red flame breaking apart under the tires. The juice in Melody’s hand has an orange halo. A brief rainbow arcs over the wet forest behind the Irving station.

  You married, Hank? Melody asks. He’s still fiddling with things under the hood.

  I believe I met you at the El Dorado, Melody says.

  Hank unhooks the hood, lowers it, and lets it drop. He rubs his hands in the paper towel and gives her a look.

  I don’t think so, he says.

  I believe you bought me a drink, Melody says.

  You’re most likely thinking of someone else, he says.

  Could have sworn it was me, Melody says, it sure felt like me. She laughs and it comes out a honk.

  I’m going to carry on by myself from here, Hank says.

  But you’re probably right, Melody says, the guy I’m thinking of wasn’t wearing a ring.

  Good luck, he says. Melody hefts herself up onto a stack of white plastic lawn chairs next to a row of barbeques and swings her legs. Hank gets in his truck and pulls out onto the highway.

  I can take care of myself, Melody yells. But now we’ve lost our ride, and it’ll take a good hour to get to the clinic in Corner Brook from here.

  The nurse leans against the examining table with her arms folded under her clipboard.

  You’ll need your mother’s signature, she says. Anybody under nineteen needs permission from a parent or guardian. You’ll need to sit before a board of psychiatrists in St. John’s to prove you’re fit.

  Tears slide fast to Melody’s chin and she raises a shoulder and rubs her face roughly against the collar of her jean jacket.

  She wouldn’t sign, Melody says.

  The nurse turns from Melody and pulls a paper cone from a dispenser and holds it under the water cooler. A giant wobbling bubble works its way up, breaking at the surface. It sounds like a cooing pigeon, dank and maudlin. I can hear water rat-a-tatting from a leaky eaves trough onto a metal garbage lid.

  My mother has fourteen children, Melody says.

  The nurse drinks the water and crunches the cup. She presses the lever on the garbage bucket with her white shoe and the lid smacks against the wall. She tosses the cup and it hits the lid and falls inside. Then she wipes her forehead with the back of her hand.

  You can forge the signature and I’ll witness it, she says. She takes the top off the Bic pen with her teeth. She flicks a few pages and shows Melody where to sign. Melody signs and the nurse signs below.

  I don’t need to tell you, the nurse says.

  I appreciate it, says Melody.

  That year I live on submarine sandwiches microwaved in plastic wrap. When I peel back the wrap, the submarine hangs out soggy and spent, like a tongue after a strangling. The oozing processed cheese hot enough to raise blisters. I wear a lumber jacket over cheesecloth skirts, and red Converse sneakers. I learn to put a speck of white makeup in the outer corner of my eyes to give me an innocent, slightly astonished look. On Valentine’s Day in the dorm elevator I tear an envelope; dried rose petals fall out and whirl in the updraft of the opening elevator doors and there is Brian Fiander. I see I was wrong; he isn’t skinny. If he still wants me, he can have me. I will do whatever Brian Fiander wants and if he wants to dump me after, as he has Brenda Parsons, he can go right ahead. He seems to go through girls pretty quickly and I want to be gone through.

  Melody and I get tickets on the CN bus into St. John’s for the abortion. I wait for her outside a boardroom in the Health Sciences. I catch a glimpse of the psychiatrists, five men seated in a row behind a table. Melody comes out a half-hour later.

  What did they say?

  One of them commented on my hat, she says. He said I must think myself pretty special with a fancy hat. He asked if I thought I was pretty special.

  What did you say?

  The same smile as when she kissed me. Learning to smile like that will take time. The rainbow must belong to some other story. Stretching over the hills behind the Irving station, barely there.

  After the abortion I hold her hand. She’s lying on a stretcher and she reaches a hand out over the white sheet that is tucked so tightly around her shoulders that she has to squirm to get her arm free.

  Not too bad, she says. She is ashen. Tears from the corners of her eyes to her ears.

  Sometimes you have to do things, she says.

  During the rest of the winter I spend a lot of time with Wavy Fagan. She’s marrying her high-school woodworking teacher; they have to keep the relationship secret. Wavy smokes, holding the cigarette out the window. I fan the fire alarm with her towel.

  I don’t spend much time with Melody; time together is exhausting. Wavy smokes, and she taps the window with her hard fingernail and tells me to come look. Six floors below, Melody is crossing the dark parking lot. It
’s snowing and a white circle of snow has gathered in the brim of her hat and it glows under the streetlight.

  She’s the one had the abortion for Hank Mercer, Wavy says.

  – 2 –

  I am drunk and in profound pain, my tooth. I am a forty-year-old widow in someone else’s bed. Whose bed? Robert turns on the bedside light. Primrose Place is where I am. Robert’s new house with new everything. Big housewarming party. I can feel the throb of it through the floorboards. Wrought iron this and marble that. Where I’ve woken up for the last eleven months. He untangles his bifocals from the lace doily on the side table and comes over to my side and gets down on his knees. He takes my cheeks in his hands. I can smell the alcohol in his sweat, on his breath.

  Open up, he says.

  I say, You have to take care of it.

  It’s five in the morning. He pays the taxi. I lean against the glass door of his office while he finds the keys. Everything behind the door leaps into its proper place just before the door swings open. The fluorescent lights flutter grey, then a bland spread of office light. The office simulates an office. A sterile environment for extracting a tooth. Robert passes down a hall of convincing office dividers. Turns on the X-ray machine.

  That’s got to warm up, he says.

  Just pull it out, I say.

  Robert gets a small card from the receptionist’s desk and slings himself into a swivel chair. The chair rolls and tips and he is flung onto the floor. He grips the desk and drags himself up and sits in the chair. He puts a pen behind his ear and feels around on the desk for it and remembers it behind his ear. The top of his head shines damply.

  Any allergies, abnormal medical conditions, sexually transmitted diseases? He’s slurring. I don’t bother.

  He leaves the room and I hear water running in a sink. The rip rip rip of paper towels from a dispenser. He comes back and pulls on a pair of latex gloves, letting them snap at his wrists, flexing his fingers.

  Who was the man you were talking to, Robert says.

  The gloves are the smell I’ve noticed on his hands, like the smell of freshly watered geraniums. He takes an X-ray and leads me to the chair.

  Make yourself comfortable, he says. There’s a poster of rotting gums — enlarged, florid gums oozing pus, the roots of the blackened teeth exposed and bleeding. Photographs of everyone who works in the office, the other dentists, the dental hygienists, and receptionists. I look for the redhead. A brief, uncomplicated affair, he said, terrific sex. Long after it was over Robert tidied away her student loan and Visa. Braids and a lab coat covered in teddy bears and balloons. I sink into the chair and a moment later feel myself sink into the chair. Robert prepares a syringe. He drops it. He picks it up and looks at the tip. He scrutinizes the tip of the needle for some time.

  That man was all over you, he says.

  I’m allowed to have a conversation.

  He tosses the syringe toward the garbage bucket; it hits the wall and bounces end over end across the room. Robert holds up one finger.

  I’ll get another one.

  You do that, Robert. I can hardly open my mouth. He puts his hands on my face and leans in to look, his entire weight rests on my sore cheek. He steadies himself and straightens up.

  The infection is too severe, he says.

  Coward, I say.

  We should run a course of antibiotics first.

  Robert, please.

  This is unethical, he says, I love you. He begins to sob. He sobs silently with his mouth hanging open, his shoulders curled in, cradling himself. I don’t care what position I’ve put him in. His house with the new, leakless skylights and cedar sauna. The spacious greenhouse, pong of aggressive rose bushes, dill, peat. Asking his dinner guests to pull the pearl onions from the earth. Orchids in aquariums with timed sprinklers. Philip Glass on the sound system, building tense, cerebral crescendos. Density of pixels this, lightweight that, gigs of this, surround sound. Pull my fucking tooth, you drunken idiot.

  You are so remote, he says, wiping his eyes.

  If you’re crying about that guy.

  Don’t you feel anything?

  He sticks the needle into my infected gum and I dig my nails into his wrist and my heel kicks the chair. The numbing spreads up my face and partway across my upper lip. My cheek is cold and stupid and the pain is gone in less than a minute. My nails break his skin.

  We’ll wait until you’re good and frozen, he says. He leaves the room. I hear him walk into the reception area. He crashes into something. A coffee maker starts to grumble. The smell of coffee. He turns on a radio. A woman says, That’s the reality of the situation, then static and classical music. He returns with the X-ray. He seems to have sobered.

  The bacteria think they died and went to heaven, he says. He has become reverent.

  Robert, I need to know you’ll stop if I ask you to. He clips the X-ray to a light board. My teeth look blue and ghostly. The white jawbone. I think of my husband buried in the cemetery near Quidi Vidi Lake. Robert goes into the reception area, I hear him pour a coffee. He opens a filing cabinet drawer.

  He shouts, Are you good and frozen?

  The toothache had been mild for weeks. I think I’m awake but the bed is facing in the wrong direction. Or I’m in the wrong bed. A toilet bowl filling continuously. Wet leaves and earth, is there a window? Stenographers on squeaky keyboards wait for a breath of wind and resume. A car unzips a skim of water. Hard fingernails clicking glass, the leaves, the skylight, keying data. Data dripping from leaf tip to leaf tip. A religious cult in the sewer can be overheard whispering in the toilet bowl. A conspiracy and the stenographers ache to crack it. Wind sloshes through the trees and the typing subsides. The trees are just trees. I am my tooth, a monolithic grief. A man beside me. Please be Des; please. It is Des.

  The beach to ourselves, the park closed, early September. What heat, so late in the season. Each wave leaves a ribbon of glare in the sand as it withdraws. The sun is low and red, scissored by the long grass. Des strips to his underwear, trots toward the water. Stands at the edge of the ocean. High up, a white gull.

  Des charges, arms raised over his head, yelling. The gull is silent. So high up it’s barely there. Wide circles. It dips closer. The wave’s crest tinged pink, fumbling forward. He dives through the falling crest. The soles of his feet. He passes through, bobs on the other side. Flicks water from his hair. His fist flies up, wing of water under his arm. The gull screeches. Metallic squawk, claws outstretched, reaching for the sand. The sun through the grass on the hill laserbeams the gull’s eye, a red holograph. The gull’s pupil is a long midnight corridor to some prehistoric crimson flash deep in the skull.

  He calls, Water’s great. My shirt, jeans, one sock stretches long. I have to hop. The sock gives up. I run hard. The wave is building beneath the bed. Except how cold. My body seizes.

  Look at the one coming, Des says. The wave comes with operatic silence. Such surety, self-knowledge, so cold and meaningless and full of blase might. I reach out my hand. Here it comes. A wave full of light, nearly transparent, lacy webbing on the underside. The ocean sucking hard on my spine. The sandy bottom drops away.

  It smashes us. The bed plummets and thumps the floor. The room makes itself felt. Dresser, a housecoat on a hook. Des died four years ago of heart failure. Peanut butter jar on the floor, fridge open. Holding the knife. Smoking toast in the stuck toaster. The red light of the ambulance on the walls of the hallway. Now I’m awake.

  Tequila I drank, scotch. Elasticky top and sarong. Beer. Robert warned me, when he throws a party. Dancing. Slamming doors, laughter, the Stones. I have dated, since Des died, no one: an air traffic controller, a very young painter, no one, the reporter guy, absolutely no one, the carpenter. The tooth became unbearable two days ago. I didn’t tell Robert. Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name. You can’t leave. How can you leave? Bodi
es pressed close, smoky ceiling. Blow the speakers. We took a cab. Hope you guess my. Get a taxi. If we dance. In the fridge door. Mine are the cold ones. Pleased to meet you. Have one of mine. The cold ones. I got laid. Tell me. I’ll tell you after this. We need a toast. Our coats are where? Forget the coats. Don’t leave, it’s a party. Because the toilet. What happened to the tequila? Your own stupid fault. My wife took the traditional route. Does it have a worm in it? I’ll put one in if you like. There have been women, yes. There have been women, I’ll admit. We’ll call ourselves the Fleshettes. The people impressed me most. I’m not responsible. Hope you guess my. We haven’t talked. We’re talking now. This is talking? Name. I love you. Don’t say that. I love you, what do you think? I think more beer.

  The sky is the deepest blue it gets before it begins to look black. The stars are blue. The trees roar with wind and become quiet. I lie flat on my husband’s grave and look at the stars. Freshly mowed grass, a faint marshy smell, the ducks at the edge of the lake. This morning, resting my head against the hand dryer in the bathroom of Robert’s office. Tears start this way: the bridge of my nose, my eyelids, the whole face tingling, the clutch of a muscle in the throat. The smell of burnt coffee — homey, unloved office coffee — makes me cry. Some songs: Patsy Cline. Bad blue icing on the birthday cake the girls bought for the boss. I cry at least four times a day. The tears catch in the plastic rims of my glasses. My eyelids like slugs. While waiting for the elevator I hear laughter inside, ascending, inclusive, sexual. I cry with jealousy. Marcy Andrews coming into the bathroom after me. Unclicking her purse, getting the cotton swab out of a pill bottle, tapping two pills into my hand. Marcy smoothing her thumbs over my wet cheeks. She turns me to the mirror and she looks hard at me.

  She says, Lipstick will give you a whole new lease.

  I can’t be alone, I say.

  The leaves in the graveyard smell leathery, pumpkinish. The branches creak when the wind rubs them together. Des’s hands folded over a rose, his wedding ring. When do the teeth fall away from the skull? Does that happen? It’s beginning to get cold. Snow on his headstone makes me panicky.