Nights Below Station Street (18 page)

She’d walk about like a ghost and refuse to see him when he called for her. But then she would call him up and tell him she had a present for him. She would look at him, and using the same expression as Vera had, she would say: “Why is it, do you think – h’m Ralphie – that only women are interested in the causes of peace?”

“I don’t think that’s true,” Ralphie would say.

“Men have created all the wars – and try to blow things Up –
HAVEN’T THEY?”

“Well, Ralphie,” she said one day, when she was particularly angry, “everyone knows how wrong you are, and everyone just takes advantage of you. I can see it in this here apartment – people always did whatever they wanted to, and you never put your foot down one little bit, did you!” She left the apartment and sat on the steps outside.

“What in hell are you up to?” he said, coming after her.

“Don’t worry about me, Ralphie – I am fine. Just because my father is a drunk I am fine. Just never mind me. Just because he forgot me on a river bank and I almost drowned – never mind. Just never mind, Ralphie –”

She sat there stone stiff on the steps, and yet every now and then glanced about to see if he was watching her.

Joe’s back had taken a turn for the worse again, so a great comedy of sorts took place in the house. Adele had to help him up and down stairs on a number of occasions – that is, both Adele and Rita, with Milly following up the rear. Then they would collect all the pillows in the house and put them around him. He would sit his bum carefully on a cushion, and they would place one at the small of his back, another behind his head, and another on his left foot.

In the middle of the night Rita would awaken to find Joe lying on the living room floor, or pacing up and down. He had the prescription Dr. Savard had given him but still hadn’t filled it. And one night Rita came down and sat in the chair in the corner:

“Joe.”

“What?”

“If you are in pain – I wouldn’t mind if you had a drink.”

“I know, Rita, I know.”

He was silent for a moment. Under the light from the street his arms were white and she could make out the tattoos on his arms. His body was still strong and thin. His shoulders were large and seemed larger in proportion to the rest of him. He had once carried a piano singlehandedly on his back up Myhrra’s stairs and he had also picked up an engine block and moved it across the lawn from its tripod. He also had been a diver and used to help take cars out of the water after accidents. His chest bones seemed to jut out in the light and there was a smell of cigarettes in the room. A pale-yellow half-moon shone on the snow, and branches struck out clearly on the trees a ways away.

“If I take a drink, I’ll still wake up to the pain,” Joe said and then optimistically he added that he’d heard Tate Reed’s back was much better and so he just had to wait this out.

In fact he didn’t take a drink, and the next morning his
back was improved enough so he could walk about and smile, and eat a good breakfast.

One particular evening, Ralphie brought over a game called Risk – a game where everyone had a certain number of armies and tried to take over the world. Ralphie, with his usual excitement over things, wanted to get everyone to play – they would take sides and form strategies. And he was sure also that he and Adele could take over the world, if they just got lucky.

On the other hand, Joe was certain he could take over the world, that he and Rita had always planned to take over the world, and now it was time to do it.

Myhrra, her cheeks rouged, and her eyes with new eye liner, said that she could take over the world but she didn’t want to. The doctor had come to play, with a huge box of assorted candy under his arm, ready for this new challenge.

“What’s this game?” he said. “Let’s get at it – does it have tanks? I want tanks – destroyers. I want destroyers. …”

He handed the candy to Milly, kicked off his toe rubbers, and walked into the kitchen.

The game, with its pieces, and the board, with its eccentric map of the world, lay open upon the kitchen table. Chairs had been brought in from the living room and had been placed around to accommodate everyone. Myhrra stood at the back of the kitchen against the wall, under three pieces of Indian corn, smoking a cigarette, and staring gloomily at them all.

“I’m not sure I want to play this game. I’ve come down – but I didn’t know it was a game like this.”

“Like what?” the doctor said immediately.

“Well – you know – a game that depends on aggression.” Then she blinked.

Ralphie sitting at the table began to explain the game.

“Now we all get a certain number of armies, and we all go about in rotation placing our armies on the board, taking territories, until all the territories are taken. The best way to go about it is not to spread yourself out but consolidate yourself so you’ll be able to withstand attacks, and then from that position you’ll be able to attack others.”

“And who’s going to attack me?” Myhrra said, as she sat down. She looked first at Ralphie and then Adele, and then over to Rita and Joe.

“It’s just a game,” Joe said.

“I know it’s just a game, Joe – I’m not stupid.”

As they set up their pieces, both Myhrra and Adele said they were being discriminated against, because it was the doctor and Ralphie who set the pieces down for them, since they were their team members.

“Here, Myhrra,
you
put the pieces down,” the doctor said.

“Doesn’t matter – let’s start over.”

“Yes, and I don’t want United States – I want Europe,” Adele said. “Let’s start over.”

Joe said nothing. Rita shrugged, and kept flipping an army from one hand to another.

Then Adele and Myhrra started to put the pieces down in rotation with Rita.

“I was going to put a piece here, Myhrra,” Adele whispered, standing over the board, wearing
a
loose top and a big pair of black corduroys that had caught a whole bunch of lint. “Do you mind?”

“Well. …” Myhrra said. “Okay, go ahead. I was going to take it – doesn’t matter.”

“Okay, I promise not to attack you on that side if you
don’t attack me on this side,” Adele said, putting the piece down.

“Rita, Rita,” Myhrra said. “You have all of Africa.” She lit a cigarette quickly and stared at the board.

“Well, no one else seemed to want it,” Rita said, looking about as if she had done something wrong.

“We should all take parts of countries and no one take a whole country,” Myhrra said.

“At the apartment when we play. …” Ralphie started to explain.

“Well, you give me a part of Africa and I’ll give you a toe hold in South America,” Myhrra said. Adele was still standing over the board, blinking her shortsighted eyes (she refused to get her eyes checked, because she was scared she would have to wear glasses).

Finally when they had the pieces all placed, and their armies faced each other, Joe had first roll of the dice. Since he and Rita’s armies were closest to Myhrra’s, Joe turned to her.

“Pick up your dice there, Myhrra, and we’ll go to war,” he said.

“Why me?” Myhrra said. “Why not attack Ralphie?”

“Let him attack us – we’re ready for him,” the doctor said.

“I don’t know, then – who do you want me to attack, Rita?” Joe said.

“Come on, Myhrra,” Rita said, moving her bum on the chair, as if signalling she was getting ready, and wrapping her feet about the chair legs as if to brace herself for assault.

But Myhrra said if everyone was going to attack her then she may as well not play. The doctor gloomily puffed on his pipe, and everyone listened as the wind rose against the side of the house.

Then Milly crawled up on Rita’s knee to watch, and started yelling that she didn’t have a chance to play. Then Adele had to go to the bathroom and Ralphie wasn’t allowed to roll the dice until she got back.

Finally, when it was ten o’clock, Rita had to drag Milly upstairs, and Joe and Ralphie and the doctor were left alone. Ralphie tossed five armies up above his head, and they fell headlong into the Atlantic.

Sometimes Rita would ask Adele why she spent so much time in her room and why she didn’t mention her friends.

“Because I’m much too busy to be bothered with friends,” Adele would say.

Adele had not seen her friends in a while. Janet and Ruby had not bothered with her since that day at Zellers. The only one who said hello to her now was Cindi, following Janet and Ruby about with peace signs all over her coat. In the winter Cindi went to the hockey games, and since Adele loved to go to them and screech to her heart’s content at the referee, Cindi, in her army jacket and tam, would meet Adele there.

Cindi would always say: “Huh, Adele!” and smile. Her teeth were brown and she had a hole in one of them. She was going out at night with Ruby now, and she had been to Madgill’s garage, where they had parties. Adele was perplexed by this and worried, but didn’t know what to say about it Cindi used to smile and say as long as she took her medicine she would never have another seizure, and then she would blink her albino eyelashes and grin. The biggest thing that Cindi had which allowed Ruby to alternately protect her and humiliate her was her disability. Sometimes
when they went out, Ruby, with a toss of her head, would say: “Try not ta be an epileptic for one night.”

Adele, who knew this, was now concerned with what they might say about her, and of all the reasons she wanted to stay one of their group, the biggest was the fear that they would talk about her if she didn’t. Especially she worried that they would talk about her father – just the way she had, and the various businesses he’d set up and the cards he’d had printed to hand out, or the time he’d left her on a rock in the river to paddle his canoe up across the rapids and fish, or the time he was going to put Rita’s brothers out of the house. Adele told all of these stories with a great deal of exaggeration, with her feet tapping, smoking cigarettes, believing Ruby and Cindi would be eternally grateful to her for telling them.

What if they told things about her or made fun of her and Ralphie? What if they told her father all the things she told about him? How he used to get drunk and wrestle with the big German shepherd across the road – and the things she had said about her mother as well. Like all teenagers, she believed her parents had tremendous faults. All of these faults were visible to her, yet now that she had told all about them, she looked upon them in a new light, as being inoffensive, and as if she, in the telling of these stories, had taken on responsibility for some of the very mistakes she bragged about her parents committing.