Blasted (31 page)

“You're hopeless,” I complained.

“So are you, if you don't know who we're talking about,” Tad said.

“Hey, I thought you told me to shut up!” Steve protested, punching Tad's arm.

“Ow, I'm driving,” Tad yelped. I spent the rest of the trip to Blue's trying to get them to confess who they were talking about, but they clammed up entirely and started talking in an exclusionary sort of way about baseball. Jerks.

As we drove by Christie Pits I saw a woman dragging one of those bundle buggies, packed with clothes and colourful oddments, pie plates hanging off the side and dazzling in the sun. She was wearing layers and layers of clothing and had a sort of turban wrapped around her head; atop the cart bobbled a tomato plant in a pot. I craned my neck, wondering, Izzie? – but we were around the corner and on Grace Street before I could get a proper look.

Blue was off doing something arty, but he'd left a key with Tad who presented it to me with mock solemnity. We got all my stuff up and into the vast, expensive, woody loft in less than twenty minutes. I was to stay in the guest room, a little enclosure off the east side of the main space, with a skylight window and a pretty loft bed. I felt the strangeness of not being able to see the horizon, but the room had a nice feeling, like a ship. We dumped my motley collection of boxes and suitcases, then I generously offered them beer from Blue's fridge.

“I couldn't possibly, it's before noon,” Tad said, cracking his open.

“Sorry, I gotta get going,” Steve said. “Work.”

“Painting or the bar?” I asked.

“Bar,” he grimaced. “Man, I'm getting sick of that place.” He stretched, joints cracking, “I think I feel another show coming on. Gotta get some work done; couple of months tops, or I'll end up killing somebody.”

“I don't know how he does that,” Tad said, shaking his head admiringly after Steve left.

“Make all his joints crack?”

“Work full-time at a bar and keep his painting going too. When I'm working some shit job I can't write a song to save my life, or chase down gigs; the whole thing grinds to a halt.”

“I want to know where he finds time to work out.”

“That too.”

I asked how things were with the band; well, he said, they had done all the recording work for their CD and were now waiting for it to get mixed, apparently an endlessly expensive and frustrating experience. “But gigs are good, and we're writing new songs all the time.” They'd acquired a hot-shot producer, were on the cusp of something big.

And then, inevitably, he mentioned the wedding. I tried not to wince, but couldn't believe he didn't see the strain in my manufactured smile. He and Judith were doing the big church thing – I was curious how they were going to pull that off without bloodshed, given that his family were drunken Welshmen, hers, teetotaling Baptist Jamaicans.
And
they'd chosen October 31st as their date, which struck me as positively perverse – something about cheap flights for the families and Judith always loving Hallowe'en. “It's already gotten out of control,” he said.

“Family interference?” I hazarded.

“You don't know what it's…” He took a deep draw on his beer. “When Judith's grandmother saw her sketch of one of the potential wedding dresses, she said she wouldn't bother coming.”

“Why the hell not?”

He went into a frighteningly good imitation of a regal old Jamaican woman. “My presence is obviously not required, as this is obviously not a wedding
per se.
”

“What is she wearing?” I asked, picturing jeans or silver-plated lingerie – it could be anything with Judith.

“She still hasn't decided – and that's
another
point of contention – but the design Grannie didn't like was just a dress – you know, white, kind of simple – I think Judith called it a ‘sheath' or something. Can dresses be called sheaths?”

“Don't look at
me
, b'y. So what's the problem? Isn't it up to her what she wears?”

Tad looked at me pityingly, full of vast, suffering wisdom. “The
last
thing weddings are about is the bride and groom. But as to the grandmother – Judith's supposed to wear a big dress – you know, with the wedding-cake skirt and such. And my aunt is offended by the whole Hallowe'en thing and says she won't come to some pagan revelry and we might as well be spitting on the Christ child…” He trailed off, staring into space.

“Want another beer?” I asked.

His face lit up. “Good old Rube.” I fetched us some more frosties. When I surfaced from my deep swallow he was looking at me, eyes brimming with amusement.

“What?”

“I was just trying to picture you walking down the aisle.”

“Oh, very funny.”

“You'd never do it, would you? Tell me you wouldn't.”

“What's it to you?”

“I wouldn't want to lose my favourite drinking buddy.”

After he left, I sat there and finished my beer alone. It was all very well, I reflected, for him and the others. They knew I was always up for a party if that's what they were in the mood for; but their lives didn't seem to end up like this, like mine. I drained my bottle and threw it into the corner.

CHAPTER 21

I walked softly around Blue's loft, trying to make it feel familiar. The kitchen ranged along one wall. Blue's bedroom was, like the guest room, closed off from the main space, and I glanced in. It was white-painted and sparsely decorated – wooden beams and a brick wall, a big draped bed and a few photographs. The tiny bathroom contained only a sink and toilet.

The bathtub was the main problem: it reigned in solitary splendour on a platform in a corner of the main space, under a skylight, with a showerhead and a clear plastic curtain, plants arranged artistically around it. Plants, yes, but not enough to conceal the bather from view. I'd have to time my washes; that, or confine myself to sponge baths from the sink.

A laptop on the coffee table whirred into life when I jostled it. To my surprise I figured out how to access one of Blue's playlists and music came over his sound system. I lay on his futon, listening to the music fading up and down with beautiful, sonorous clarity. Something abstract, sounds, strings maybe and brass, like being in a ship at sea. Cradling me, rocking me to sleep. Unimaginable depths beneath, miles of cold, cold, black water, rushing and hissing against the frail hull, high winds singing, and down.

A key in the lock and the front door opening woke me. Blue came in, looking tired. “You hungry?” I asked.

“Like a bear.”

He wanted to order pizza, but I looked in the fridge and nixed that. I'd make him a proper Toronto meal, I told him, the kind I'd never have dreamed of when I'd first arrived. I hadn't even heard of focaccia, and looked upon tossed salads with grave mistrust. But now I dug around in the fridge and found some red bell peppers, charred them on the gas stove, then threw them in a paper bag to cool. I stripped the flesh off part of a roasted chicken and put it in a big bowl of fresh spinach with some garlic and pinenuts. I warmed a bit of focaccia in the oven, rinsed the hard, blackened shell off the cooled peppers under cold water, and cut them into succulent, glistening strips to lay alongside the salad.

“Is that enough food? It's all I could find,” I said, laying the plates out on his table.

“Where'd you get
that
?” he asked, eyeing the spread with mystification. “I thought the cupboard was bare.” He met my eyes and grinned.

“
Yes
, it's enough food!”

Over the meal Blue told me to treat the place as my own, that he didn't need any financial contributions, that it was a joy to live with me.

“I haven't gone into one of my moods yet,” I warned him.

“I know all about your moods, darling,” he said. “They don't hold a candle to mine.”

“I'd feel better if I could…” I stared at my half-empty plate and played with my fork, raking strips of red pepper into gory shreds. “I'd like to think of myself as a sort of live-in maid, if that's okay. You know, cook and clean and all that. It'd make me feel better.”

When he remained silent for a time, I looked up. He extended his hand across the table, and we shook on it.

It was a pleasure to cook and eat with someone else. It seemed like ages since I had – though it had been mere days since that miserable breakfast with Grandpa and Queenie.

After dinner Blue had some calls to make, while I did the dishes. The setting sun cast a few last rays of rich light across the wooden floors, and sank from sight. Deep shadows emerged, and I turned on some lamps.

Blue was still talking, administering his next media installation it sounded like – he stayed on top of every aspect of his work. I admired that; I'd never had that much focus for anything. I wandered into the bathroom to brush my teeth and managed to knock about five zillion little jars off the shelf, onto the floor and into the sink. I swore, bent to retrieve them, and straightening up, whacked my forehead on the corner of the open cabinet door.

“God-FUCKING-damn!” I dropped the jars and clapped my hand to my head. Blue came rushing in, then caught himself up short when he saw me.

“Hit my head, sorry about the commotion. Jesus!”

“You're bleeding.”

I looked – my palm was covered with gore. I flinched as blood ran into my right eye. “Christ on a crutch.” I pressed the heel of my hand to the wound once more.

Blue was calm – he got some gauze and applied pressure until the bleeding slowed. The cut wasn't big, just a little gap in the skin on my forehead. “You could probably do with a couple of stitches.”

“No. No, no and a thousand times no. I am not going to any fucking hospital.”

“O-
kay
. That'd be a no vote from Ruby.”

“Just wrap it up. I feel fine. I'd feel more fine if I had a stiff drink. But really, I'm fine.”

He disinfected the cut and put gauze over it, wrapping white strips around my head. We cleaned the blood off the floor and out of the sink, and I stripped off my Tshirt, modesty forgotten – it was spattered with blood. “Spectacular,” Blue murmured, staring at the red lacing on the fabric before I plunged it into the sink.

“Stop it, you sound like Brendan over my fridge.”

I got my stiff drink into me, caught sight of my reflection in the bank of windows on the wall, and started laughing.

“You certainly liven things up around here,” Blue remarked.

I gazed at myself in the window, quietening. My long hair was held back by the bandage, and in the strange half-mirroring of the glass against the darkness outside I looked not quite myself, oddly familiar. “I look like my father,” I heard myself say. “The bandage.” I sat down and poured myself another shot of whiskey. “I'd almost forgotten.”

“What?” Blue looked amused, his long brown fingers cradling a mug of tea.

“Well, my father hurt his head one time… oh, it must have been when I was three or four. Very small, anyway.” I tried to remember. “He'd just come back from one of his excursions – have I ever told you about those? How he used to go off for days and days?”

“Yes, I remember you talking about that. Reminds me of one of my grandmothers. Except she had to bring the kids along. Family legend has it that she once walked the entire breadth of Saskatchewan and Manitoba with a babe in arms and a two-year-old – my mother, eh? – in tow.”

“Why was she walking that far?”

“She had somewhere to get to. That's how people used to get around – on foot – even your people.”

“Naw – we painted ourselves blue and floated around in coracles.”

“And she liked walking, being outdoors. She kept it up until just before she died. Drove the family crazy.”

“Well, Dad never seemed to be
going
anywhere that I could tell. He just got taken by this… lust. I don't know how else to describe it.”

“Must have been scary for a kid, her father taking off like that.” He squinted at me through steam as he took a sip of his tea.

“I guess so,” I said dubiously. “I don't know.” I knocked back the rest of my drink and scowled.

“So what about this bandage incident?”

“What? Oh, yeah.” Somehow I didn't feel like talking about my father any more. I took a deep breath and tried to remember what I had been going to say. “I just remember seeing him like this,” I gestured at my own head, leaning forward to see myself in the window again, “with this white bandage. His hair all mussed up above it. I was sitting on the stairs, listening through the railings – it was late, I think I was supposed to be in bed – but I heard my father's voice in the kitchen and I knew he'd come home. It was dark, a dark night with lots of wind, in the fall. I started to go down the stairs to see him, but I stopped because my mother was crying.” I paused, and looked longingly at the liquor bottle; I already felt tipsy and reckless. “She was saying something like,
I can't stand it any more, Neil
! and she was crying and angry… did I say that already?” I took a breath. “Dad was saying something over and over – at first I thought he was swearing, but – he sounded scared.
They blasted me
, he said.
They blasted me,
and then,
Get it out, Brenda. Get it out of me.
Mom was whimpering, and Dad said,
Open it up, here's my knife.
There was some sort of scuffle over sterilizing the knife, and then my mother whimpered again and Dad gave this strange groan. I couldn't stand it any longer and ran down into the kitchen, and my dad was sitting with blood on his face from a cut on his head, and my mother turned as she heard me run in. Her fingers were all bloody, holding these feathers and blasty twigs…”