Natural Order (5 page)

He lifts his head and I notice his eyes are glistening. “That wasn’t so bad,” he says in a peculiar voice.

I can’t believe I’ve done something so bold. He lets go of me and walks over to the radio, which is now broadcasting the news. He’s going to find another station playing music. Something slow and romantic. Then he’s going to walk back to me and take me into his arms again and—

“I’m not sure about the movie tonight,” he says quietly. He switches off the radio. “I have some things to take care of.”

“Oh?” I manage.

“But why don’t you come for dinner on Sunday night?” His voice is back to its usual pitch. “Mother will positively squeal with excitement. Do you like roast? She makes one every Sunday. Tough as shoe leather, but I don’t have the heart to tell her. Just sharpen your teeth before you come.”

Helen and Fern want me to go over the details again. We’re sitting in Helen’s bedroom with the door closed.

“Was his mouth open?” Fern asks.

“Of course not.” I told them that Freddy was the one who kissed me.

Helen’s nose scrunches up. “I don’t know about this. It’s
Freddy Pender
, after all.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“You know what I mean.” She rubs half a lemon against her elbow. I watch a sprinkle of juice land on the carpet.

“I’d kill for someone to kiss me,” Fern says. “Anyone at all.”

“Be careful what you wish for,” Helen says.

“Do you like him?” Fern asks.

“I’m not sure,” I say, feeling myself blush at the lie. Ever since our kiss, I can’t stop thinking about Freddy. He’s so much more interesting than anyone else I know. He’s passionate and funny and he’s got talent in spades. But there are things about him that make me feel uncomfortable, too. Shouldn’t I want a quarterback instead of a baton twirler? Could I have someone like that as a boyfriend? I glance at Helen. She said Freddy was a fruit. But she was wrong. I know what I felt the other night. I know that Freddy felt it, too. That’s what those tears meant, wasn’t it?

“He obviously likes you,” Fern says. “Otherwise, why would he invite you to dinner?”

“Something’s fishy,” Helen says and begins to work on her other elbow.

“The only thing fishy around here is your attitude,” I say, hearing my voice get louder. “It’s not always about you, Helen. It’s not always about your dumb wedding.”

Mrs. Pender and Freddy live on Bleeker Street, on the west side of Balsden. It’s not far from the refineries, so most people avoid that area if they can help it. The streets are wide and the bungalows are set back from the sidewalks in a way that makes them seem shy. I’m carrying a banana loaf wrapped tightly in waxed paper. My mother made me take it.

“It’s good manners,” she said. She seemed nervous. “Don’t be late.”

“Stay off the roof,” my father said.

Mrs. Pender’s house isn’t hard to find. It’s the only one on the street painted burgundy and buttercream. Freddy picked the colours.

“It came to me in a dream,” he’d told me. “Mother said it seemed more like a nightmare to her, but she came around. She always does.”

A crooked path leads me to the front steps. On the porch, there’s a large wicker rocker with an overstuffed floral-print pillow and a Hollywood gossip magazine draped over the arm. From inside, I hear piano music. I stop and gather my nerves. When I get Freddy alone, I’m going to ask him to Helen’s wedding. Then I’ll kiss him again. I don’t care if it makes me seem bold. There’s too much at stake.

The piano stops abruptly when I ring the doorbell. Freddy appears behind the screen.

“Hello, stranger.” He holds the door open for me. He’s wearing a crisp white shirt. I can see a snippet of chest hair poking out and my knees turn to gelatin. “It’s nice not seeing you knee-deep in maple walnut.”

I wait for him to touch me, to put his hand on my arm. Or even peck my cheek. But all he does is hold the door.

“I brought this,” I say, passing him the loaf. “My mom … made … banana …” Where did my words go?

It’s hard for my eyes to adjust to the darkness once I’m inside, but I begin to make out the shape of a sofa. An armchair. A radio in the corner. And then Mrs. Pender, coming out of the kitchen wearing a blue apron with white daisies.

“Look who’s here!” she says. Her hair looks like white candy floss and her mouth is a circle of red lipstick. “It’s been years since you were in my class. Now here you are. All grown up. I’m glad Freddy has someone besides me to take to the movies now. I was so excited when he told me you were coming for dinner.”

I feel Freddy pinch the back of my arm. She offers me iced tea in a jam jar. I notice dried orange pulp around the rim. The tea isn’t sweetened, she says, and hopes that’s not a problem for me.

“I’m trying to cut back on my sugar intake. Freddy was just practising some songs.” She reaches for Freddy’s shoulder. “Why don’t you play a few songs for Joyce while I finish up in the kitchen? Joyce, have a seat on the couch.”

Freddy rolls his eyes and whispers, “Sorry.” Then he goes over to the piano and plays a song I think I’ve heard before, but can’t place. My eyes wander the cluttered living room. Everywhere I look, there’s a chair or a lamp or a footstool. It’s as though one day the room shrunk in half and all the furniture got pushed towards the centre. On the mantel, a large picture of Freddy with his baton smiles back at me. He’s wearing that same white suit.

A silence interrupts my thoughts and I realize the song is over. Freddy has swung around on the piano bench, facing me.

“That was very good,” I say.

“You weren’t even listening.” The name of the song, he tells me, is “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered.” “From
Pal Joey.”

“Of course,” I say. I have no idea who Pal Joey is.

He comes over and sits next to me on the sofa.

“Can I be frank with you for a moment?”

“Sure,” I say. I try not to stare at his lips. In my mind, I say, “Tell Mama … Tell Mama all.”

“I’m glad you came, especially after the other night. It took me by surprise.”

“Me, too. But I’m glad it happened.”

“I like you, Joyce. You’re smarter than most girls. If things were different, I think we could have hit it off.”

“Could’ve? What do you mean?”

“There’s something you don’t know.” His mouth stretches between a grin and a frown. “Can you keep a secret?”

“Sure.”

“I’m taking off for New York City in two days,” he whispers, and waits for me to respond. I hear a sound, a low rumble like the approach of a tornado, inside my head. I press my eyes shut to try to block it.

“This woman took a tap class with me and one day, her husband came to pick her up. We got talking and I told him about how I wanted to get going on my film career. Turns out he’s originally from New York. He offered to take me there and help get me started. Says he knows a bunch of people who’d be
very
interested in me.”

The sound grows louder. I jab my pinkie fingernail into the pad of my thumb.

“He’s going to drive me there and set me up with one of his friends. Then he has to come back. He wants to stay, but it’s complicated. He’s married, after all.”

“And your mother doesn’t know this?”

“She’d blow a gasket.”

“But she wouldn’t want you to go to New York alone.”

“I’m not going alone. I told you. Besides, I have to get away from her. You have no idea what it’s like for me. I can’t breathe.”

Then Mrs. Pender’s voice comes floating from the kitchen. “Freddy, I’m not hearing any music.”

“Please don’t tell anyone, Joyce. I’m counting on you.”

Over dinner, Mrs. Pender makes a point of telling me things about Freddy. He sang in the church choir when he was a boy. He used to put on plays for her and Mr. Pender. He once broke his wrist doing a cartwheel. He started dancing at eleven. He has such a natural flair. An innate showman. She has no idea where it comes from, although can’t remove herself entirely from taking credit.

I feel like I’m going to vomit all over Mrs. Pender’s plates and cutlery. I can’t concentrate. Inside, I’m stone. Set in place.

“I used to write poetry,” Mrs. Pender confesses as she heaps another mound of mashed potatoes onto my plate. “Sonnets and that sort of thing. I guess that’s why I loved teaching English so much. You were a good student from what I remember, Joyce.”

Throughout dinner, Freddy remains silent. The colour of his face varies from light pink to crimson. Occasionally, he looks horrified. Other times, apologetic. But most of the time, he seems constrained, as though he’s been strapped to his chair. At one point, I drop my napkin. When I reach down to pick it up, I see his leg bouncing like a jackhammer under the table.

She wants me to stay after the chocolate pie has been finished, but I tell her I have to go.

“My sister is getting married next week. There’s so much to do.”

“Did you hear that, Freddy?” Mrs. Pender says. “Joyce’s sister is getting married.”

There’s a flick of a blade in her tone.

“I know,” Freddy says, his eyes on me.

Mrs. Pender insists I stay for one more song. Her voice has gotten higher, her mannerisms more exaggerated. It’s like she’s doing an impersonation of someone, but she doesn’t know who that person is. We go into the living room and Freddy takes his place on the piano bench while Mrs. Pender and I sit side by side on the sofa.

“What would you like to hear?” he asks.

“Why do you even need to ask?” Mrs. Pender says.

Freddy rolls his shoulders and begins to play. When the song ends, I look over at Mrs. Pender and see that her eyes are sparkling with tears.

“That’s called ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone,’ ” Freddy says, and his voice is both gentle and robotic. “From the musical
Carousel.”

“Look at me,” Mrs. Pender says with a wet laugh. “I turn into a complete mess every time. Freddy, pass me your handkerchief, will you?”

I say I have to leave then and hurry out the door before I’m forced to endure any more. When I reach the end of the crooked path, I turn around briefly and see the two of them standing side by side, watching me from behind the gauze of the screen door. They look like they’re trapped inside a box, but I know it’s really the other way around.

I manage to hold my tears until I reach the end of the street.

CHAPTER THREE

T
HERE ARE TREES
behind our house: evergreens and maples and birches with thick curls of white bark that flap like flags. On the other side of the trees is an open field filled with clover at this time of year, dense constellations in a green galaxy. I like June. The days are warm with thick clouds and the nights are cool for sleeping. Daylight breaks early, as well. It’s comforting to open my bedroom curtains and see sunlight spilling across the backyard.

The trees won’t be around for much longer. A second phase of housing is planned to start soon. That’s what the Sparrows told me. Hal and Eileen live across the street. Eileen seems to know most things that go on in the neighbourhood. Charlie claims to have caught her looking at him with a pair of binoculars once, but Hal told me she bird-watches, so I don’t know. She seems to pay Charlie a lot of attention, but I could be reading into things. I have a habit of doing that.

The new development is scheduled to start in a few days. I’m not looking forward to the commotion. John is six, an exploratory age. I keep imagining him sneaking off and falling into a mud pit or getting pinned underneath some dinosaurish piece of machinery. I play these scenarios over and over in my head until I feel nauseated.

“Everything around here is about to change,” Charlie likes to say. He’ll stand out on the back porch, his hands in his pockets, rocking back and forth, the swirl of his growing bald spot like the eye of a hurricane. “We made a good decision with this house.”

“When do you think the basement will be ready?” I’ve been anxious for him to finish the rec room. No one else we know has one, not even Helen, who seems to have everything under the sun, even though Dickie can’t make
that
much as an electrician. I’m desperate to have a party. I think of laughter and music, a passed plate of hors d’oeuvres, tinkling ice. I imagine myself in a dress that I’ll never be able to afford, pearl-drop earrings that I don’t own, a trail of perfume on my neck. Who is this woman? I sometimes wonder. Where did she come from? How could she possibly fit into this landscape of shift-working husbands and exhausting six-year-old boys?

“Soon,” Charlie will say. “We’ll have everything soon enough. Maybe another baby, too.”

“Don’t talk like that. You know what the doctor said.”

“Doctors don’t know everything. You just need a little faith.”

I’ll be sad to see the trees go. There’s something peaceful and hypnotic about the dark pockets between their trunks. I once saw a deer step out from the trees so matter-of-factly that I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I watched it walk towards the edge of the backyard. I would’ve called for John, but he was at school, and Charlie was working days. The deer cocked its head and paused. I held my breath. Then, as quickly as it appeared, it slipped back into the trees.

I think about that deer often. I wonder what will happen to it once the dump trucks and bulldozers and chainsaws move in. Who will protect it? Where will it go?

We moved here five years ago, when John was just a toddler. Before that, we lived in the apartment on Cecil Street. It was small and dark and I hated smelling what strangers were having for supper. Charlie was working overtime shifts whenever he could and I did some sewing on the side until I got pregnant. We used to drive by the areas we wanted to live in, wondering what it would be like to have a backyard. A porch. Our own driveway. Charlie wanted a workroom more than anything else. He can build or repair just about anything. He’s quite the handyman, Charlie Sparks. Born and raised in the Prairies. When the work out there dried up, he bought a car and drove east.

“You didn’t know
anyone?”
I asked him once.

He shook his head.

“But how could you leave like that, without knowing what might happen?”