Cherry Bites (7 page)

That summer of ’69 my brother got his driver’s licence. He was sixteen and I was nineteen, getting ready for my third year of studies at the university. Pete would be entering grade twelve at Nelson McIntyre Collegiate.

Sometimes Nora lent him her car to run errands for her or to go out with his friends if he promised not to drink or carry on. Her car at that time was a 1966 Chevy Malibu.

“If I find out you’ve been drinking and driving my car, I’ll have your balls in a vise,” she said to Pete more than once.

She had a way of putting things that made my body shrink up into itself. I don’t know what her words did to Pete. Nothing, to all outward appearances; they looked to breeze right by him and his lazy smile. He reminded me of a silvery Airstream trailer with its hard surface and smooth shoulders, gliding down a shimmering highway to its end and on. Most things slipped off those shoulders.

Pete loved driving Nora’s Malibu and he made sure she never caught him drinking.

“When I drink, I drive more slowly,” he said.

I heard him explain this to Henry, who was waiting for me at the kitchen table. It was an August evening and we were going out to see
Midnight Cowboy
.

“It balances out with my slower reaction time,” Pete said.

“Hmm,” said Henry.

Pete was more of a doper than a drinker, anyway, and Nora hadn’t caught on to drugs yet. We were all sure that smoking pot turned you into a better driver, or a more cautious one, at least. And Pete was a lucky guy; everyone said so.

Later that same night Henry and I were kissing at the back door pretty much as usual. He had twisted the light off and as I remember it, he was flailing about to an unprecedented degree. My heart wasn’t in it.

“Your breasts are tremendous,” he said.

Henry still said “tremendous.” It irritated me that he used the same descriptive words as he had used years before. Couldn’t he come up with something new?

He undid my cutoffs. I did them up again. He undid them once more. And I did them up again.

Pete was out in Nora’s car. He most likely hadn’t been drinking or smoking dope because the damage he did as he swerved into the driveway required a normal to fast speed.

We didn’t hear him coming. I do remember hearing Thunderclap Newman singing “Something in the Air,” a song about callin’ out the instigators and haulin’ out the ammo. It must have been playing on the car radio when the front end of the Malibu slammed into me.

Pete, of course, didn’t see me.

He stayed behind the wheel of the car staring straight ahead. Someone was in the passenger seat; it was his girlfriend, Eileen, but I didn’t know it at the time. The headlights were on.

Henry wasn’t hit. He held me in his arms and said, “Keep still, Cherry. You’re going to be okay.”

I didn’t feel a thing.

Eileen’s screams brought Nora and Dougwell running. And then I passed out for the most part; I was in and out. I recall the ambulance attendant telling me in an irritable voice to stop pushing. That confused me because I hadn’t realized I was doing anything at all.

It turned out I needed a new hip as a result of the accident. My right hip was ruined. I was one of the first people to undergo that operation at the St. Boniface Hospital.

But it was the back door light being out that was the part of the event that Nora wanted to dwell on. That way she could blame me.

I stared at her in disbelief from my hospital bed. Dougwell stood silent. I wondered why he was there. How could he stand her? My theory about his attraction to her hadn’t yet been formed at this stage.

My body ached and I shook with anger.

“Have you even spoken to Assface about his part in all this?” I asked.

It had been years since I had called Pete by his old name. I’d outgrown it. I hated that I used it now.

“He didn’t see you,” Nora looked to her man for help.

Dougwell shifted from one foot to the other.

I liked him very much for not speaking right then.

“The bulb was unscrewed in the bulb hole,” Nora said.

“He didn’t see me because he chose not to,” I said. “Sister? Duh. What sister?”

Nora sighed and walked over to the window. She lit a cigarette (you could smoke everywhere in those days) and gazed out, probably wishing she could leave the mess of her family behind.

“Isn’t it time that my punishment ended?” I said.

She didn’t turn around.

“Punishment?” Dougwell asked. “Punishment for what?” He looked from one of us to the other.

I don’t know why I was so sure Nora would have told him what I had done to Pete when I was four years old. As I watched a delicate blush creep up the side of her neck I realized that, of course, she was too ashamed to tell even him about what her daughter had done. It would reflect on her.

What I wanted to do then was blurt it all out. But when Nora turned her eyes from their place in the distance to my face, I changed my mind. There was always darkness in her eyes; it never went away. But at that moment it turned black and it hurt my new hip to keep looking at her.

How had she explained Pete’s behaviour toward me all these years? Maybe Dougwell wasn’t curious. Some people aren’t. No, that wasn’t it. Nora would have written it off to a typical rivalry between a brother and sister, glossed it over and then gotten snappish when he pressed her for more. That was the way she would have done it.

Things changed between Pete and me after the accident. That’s what everyone called it: an accident. I called it attempted murder, but only to myself. And only some of the time. I couldn’t make up my mind. I vacillated between certainty that he had tried to kill me and belief that it was an accident. I think I know the answer to that now, but I still have doubts in the middle of the night when I lurch awake in my sweat-drenched bed.

Pete came to see me in the hospital where I spent fourteen days. And he did see me, for what appeared to be the first time, or the first time since he was one year old, anyway. He still didn’t speak, but he looked—man, did he look. Shyly, at first. At least, I took it for shyness; I don’t know what the hell it really was.

I said, “It’s okay, Pete. Look at me long and hard if you want. I don’t mind.”

And I didn’t. So he sat in a hospital chair when no one else was visiting, or even if they were, sometimes, and stared at me. Stared till he must have known the sight of me as well as anyone could know it, as well as Henry. He had to know every freckle on my smooth nineteen-year-old face, every nuance of colour in my auburn hair, looking at me like that.

Sometimes Eileen came with him. I didn’t like my brother’s girlfriend. She was short and chunky, with a wide mouth and teeth so tiny they looked like baby teeth. They didn’t go with her mouth at all.

Eileen was in training to be a practical nurse and I guess she figured this was a chance for some hands-on practice. She bustled around my hospital room, plumping my pillows, freshening my water, discussing me with anyone who happened in.

“I think Cherry has more colour in her cheeks today,” she said to a nurse I’d never seen before. “Don’t you?”

The nurse smiled at me, and I smiled back, conspiratorially, I hoped.

Eileen even called me
dear
.

Once, when I sighed, she said, “What is it, dear?”

“It’s that I want to go to sleep,” I said.

“Oh. Well.”

I closed my eyes and she took the hint and shuffled off, after whispering loudly to Pete. He stayed on to look at me some more.

It puzzled me that she was his girlfriend. He could have done much better. Myrna would have been better, although I wouldn’t have liked it. Maybe Eileen gave good blow jobs. Her teeth certainly wouldn’t get in the way.

On the sixth day of my hospital stay, an orderly helped me to stand up. I was a little woozy, but the dizziness passed quickly. On the seventh day, the same orderly wheeled me to the physiotherapy department where I took a few steps with the help of parallel bars. Soon I graduated to crutches. I practised in the hall outside my room. Before long I was confident enough to enter other halls and travel to other floors.

Pete accompanied me on these walks, taking in my height, which was tall for a girl—five feet, eight inches—and my slim shape beneath the thin hospital garb. I was a little self-conscious as I watched him looking at my breasts and long legs, but I figured it was important for him to do it, so I genuinely didn’t mind. My brother was seeing me for the first time. I really believed that.

If Henry or Joanne or Myrna dropped by, Pete would fade into the background while we visited but his eyes never left me. Joanne thought it was creepy, Myrna thought it was sexy and Henry thought it was interesting.

The nurses marvelled at Pete’s attention to me, telling me how lucky I was to have such a brother. They didn’t hesitate to allow me to leave the floor because they knew I was in such good hands. They didn’t have a clue.

A couple of times I tried to get him to talk, just a hello or how are you doing, but that wasn’t going to happen. Not yet, anyway. I thanked him once for being there and a look of puzzlement flashed on his face and was gone. No one was more puzzled than I was.

Dougwell was excited about this breakthrough behaviour on Pete’s part. He thought we were all going to live happily ever after.

I was grateful to him in a guarded sort of way. It was as though I was seeing him for the first time. He played Murray’s part; my dad would have been ecstatic by the new development.

Nora remained cool. It would have taken a lot more than Pete seeing me to fire her up.

I didn’t return to university in the autumn after the accident. Physically, I could have. The crutches were a snap—I could dance with the crutches. But I didn’t feel like it; I wanted a break, some time off—to get used to my new hip and, bigger than that, the fact that Pete could see me. And I needed time to listen to
Abbey Road.

My decision worried the hell out of Nora. She was concerned that if I took time away I’d never go back. That’s what had happened to Donna Wright from over on Birchdale Avenue. She had been so smart in school.

“And look at her now,” Nora said. “She’s twenty-five years old and a cashier at the Dominion store.”

It was a warm Saturday in September and we were in the backyard, in an area Nora referred to as the patio. It was a slab of cement with clover growing through the cracks. Nora and I sat on the wooden chairs that Dougwell had brought home; he sat on one of Nora’s nylon ones. He looked horribly uncomfortable.

“There is something to be said for getting your schooling when you’re young,” Dougwell added. “It gets harder and harder to go back.”

Nora must have talked him into taking part in this conversation. It wasn’t like him to offer me advice.

“Remember how hard it was for your dad?” Nora said.

When Pete and I were small, Murray had taken university courses at night to finish up his education degree.

“And I’m paying for your education now,” Nora added. She lit a du Maurier with a gigantic table lighter shaped like a swan. “You might not be so lucky when you’re Donna Wright’s age. Anything could happen.”

“Like what?” I said.

Nora sighed and two streams of smoke escaped her nostrils.

She looked like a dragon, a beautiful, worn-out dragon-lady. For the first time I noticed the vertical lines around her lips. She couldn’t like those.

I looked at Dougwell, who was staring at her. Maybe he was noticing the same things as I was.

“Like, we may decide we have better things to spend your father’s hard-earned money on,” Nora said.

“It wasn’t hard-earned,” I said. “It’s a life insurance policy. What could be more easily earned?” I apologized to my dad in my head for being such a jerk. Tears welled up in my eyes.

“He had to die for us to get that money,” Nora said. “I’d say that’s a pretty steep price to pay.”

Dougwell stood up and walked over to the hose reel by the garage. The hose was uncoiled and he began the noisy job of winding it up. It was a homemade contraption that Murray had built and no one ever thought to give it a lube job.

I was ashamed of both my mother and myself.

Nora got up and went in the house. I sat and watched Dougwell struggle with the hose. He went inside the garage and came out with a can of oil which he squirted into the joints of Murray’s makeshift rack. It helped. By the time he was done a quiet creaking sound was all the noise it made.

“Way to be, Dougwell!” I wanted him to know I didn’t blame him for anything.

He smiled at me.

I sailed down to the river on my crutches and found a bench to sit on. I wore long skirts that fall while getting used to my new hip. Joanne made two of them for me; she’s always been a good sewer, just like her mother.

The smell of sugar beets was in the air. When I made my way home I saw Pete and Eileen getting into Nora’s car in front of our house. Eileen saw me and waved. She touched Pete’s arm and he turned around to look. I stopped mid-stride so I could wave at him without losing a crutch, but he didn’t wave back. I flushed with embarrassment as though I had been picked last for the baseball team.

“Prick,” I said quietly.

“Asshole!” I screamed after the car as they pulled slowly away. How could he not wave back after staring at me for weeks? He owed me way more than waves. How in the fuck could he not wave back?

When I got to the house Dougwell made me a grilled cheese sandwich and sat with me in the backyard while I ate it. I think he knew I was upset and he wanted to help me without prying.

We were alone. Nora had gone over to Norwood United Church to help with a rummage sale. Dougwell told me about his wife, Barbara. It was the first time I’d heard anyone talk about her.

“We were planning a Central American holiday when Barbara’s illness began to get the better of her,” Dougwell said.

“I’m sorry.”

From the way he spoke, quietly and constantly glancing over his shoulder, I knew he was telling me something that Nora didn’t want me to know: Barbara wasn’t dead yet.

Or as Dougwell put it, “She lives in one of the municipal hospitals in Riverview.”

Everyone knew what that meant. You were never going to get out; you were a goner.

He thought I should know.

It wasn’t long after Barbara had been hospitalized that Dougwell bumped into Nora at the Safeway. He had met her before at school functions when she was with Murray. He had admired her, he told me, and blushed. So I knew he meant her appearance, maybe her full breasts and her sultry air.

“Nora’s so different from Barbara,” he said. “She scares me a little.” He chuckled. “But that’s okay. It keeps me on my toes.” He ran his hand over the new paint job on the arm of his chair. “Barbara never frightened me at all.”

I wondered afterwards if he felt he’d said too much. It was as close as Dougwell ever came to me in those years, but it was through no fault of his. And I know it would have been different if he hadn’t moved away.