The Monkeyface Chronicles (11 page)

As another mud bomb splatters at my feet, I load up a second time. My muscles burn as I launch this one even harder. It bursts like a brown firecracker right in Sam Simpson's face. Sam rolls around on the ground, shouting out every obscenity in his vocabulary, to cover the fact that he's crying uncontrollably. I don't blame him; I'll bet that hurt.

Brandon Doggart's luck is a bit better; as he bends over to help Sam get up, he inadvertently ducks the mud ball I've thrown at him. As they all run through the gap in the fence, Brandon yells, “This isn't over, Monkeyface!”

“We'll be back, assholes!” Turner Thrift hollers.

Sam Simpson's swaggering bravado, however, has gone missing in action.

Up until this point I had only been aiming at Brandon, Turner, and Sam, but when Lara Lavender yells out, “You BITCH, Adeline!” I decide that she's got one coming too. I manage to hit her in the ass with my last shot just before she ducks through the hole in the fence. SMACK! She looks like she's shit in her lace-trimmed lavender pants.

“Wow! What an arm!” Adeline pants, as we run beside the railroad tracks. “I can't believe you hit them from that distance! It was like watching a superhero in action.”

That makes me smile as much as my deformed mouth will allow. “The Amazing Adventures of Monkeyface, the Mud-Throwing Superboy,” I say. “I'll bet Marvel and DC Comics will be fighting for the rights to
that
idea.”

“You really pounded Sam,” Adeline says. “Do you think he'll be okay?”

I walked along these same tracks yesterday, bleeding and limping after the beating that Grum and Grunt laid on me. Today I'm walking almost normally, and the bruises look worse than they feel. The body heals faster than the soul.

“Sam will be okay,” I say. “He might need to use some extra soap in the shower.”

“You got Lara pretty good with that last throw.” Adeline giggles. “She's probably got mud in her lavender panties.”

“She wears lavender panties?”

“Educated guess,” Adeline says.

Adeline finds it difficult to run in her heavy Tabernacle uniform, so we pause for a moment beside an overgrown vacant lot. “You know they'll never leave us alone,” she says, gasping for breath. “We'll never be able to just hang around together at school without them trying to wreck it.”

I have to admit that she is probably right.

We start moving again, neither of us saying anything until we've arrived at the outskirts of the Eastern Subdivisions, Cardboard Acres, where Adeline lives.

“Well, here's my street. I should probably go the rest of the way alone. My mother will freak out if she sees me alone with a boy.”

“We're just walking.”

“Well, you know what
walking
can lead to,” she says, rolling her eyes.

We just stand still for a moment. A few stray snowflakes flutter down between us.

“Hey, Philip,” she says, “maybe we could meet once in a while outside of school. I could pretend to be sick and skip a Bible-study class every so often.”

“Okay,” I tell her.

She studies my face for a moment, cocking her head to one side. “Can I ask you a personal question?” she asks.

“Sure.”

“With your cleft lip, does it hurt when you kiss someone?”

“No,” I blurt out. “It doesn't hurt. I don't think so. No.”

“Just curious,” she says. “See you soon, Philip. Have a nice Christmas.”

“You too, Adeline.”

She puts her arms around me and hugs me close. I didn't expect this; I'm not used to being spontaneously embraced by anyone other than my mother. We press up against each other through the open fronts of our coats. I can feel the softness of her breasts against my chest, her nipples hard little bumps. I think she's noticed my erection this time; she pushes me away, but then steps toward me again, and places a slight, moist kiss on the side of my neck.

She steps back, buttons the front of her coat, and turns to walk up her street.

“Don't forget to bring that A encyclopedia for me,” she says. “I want to know as much as you do.”

Make Big Bucks

W
hen I enter our house through the back door, my mother is standing at the counter, paring vegetables for dinner. Her head is cocked to one side, and her long hair, which she ties back in a loose ponytail when working in the kitchen, flows over the back of one shoulder. She often strikes this pose when she's contemplating things, from the mysteries of the universe to whether or not she should slice up an extra carrot.

“I'm sure you
are
shocked, Lynette,” Mom says, “
and
dismayed.” She is talking on the phone, with the receiver cradled between her shoulder and ear. “Three hundred dollars? For a pair of pants? Uh huh . . . right . . . uh huh. Yes I'm listening to you, Lynette. Yard work . . . at your house . . . oh, I don't think so, Lynette. I'd like to hear his side of the story first. And even then, I'm not sure that's . . . ”

After a long pause, Mom finally says, “You're right Lynette. That a son of mine would do such a thing
is
hard to believe. So don't believe it. Goodbye, Lynette.” She places the phone back onto its cradle on the wall, emphatically, but with enough control that it can't be described as slamming.

“Hi, Mom,” I say. “I'm home.”

“Hi, sweetie,” she says crisply. “You're a bit later than usual.”

“Was that Lara Lavender's mother on the phone?”

As I say this, Michael strides into the kitchen from the living room. “I'm off to Toby's, Mom,” he says cheerfully, kissing Mom on the cheek. “See you tomorrow. I'll call if anything changes. Need me to pick up anything for tomorrow? I'll be passing the stores.”

“That's okay, Michael. Have fun.”

He waves through the window as he departs. Mom smiles. What a good son.

When we were born, Michael slid out effortlessly, causing my mother almost no pain or stress. One of the attending nurses swore he had a smile on his face as he entered the world. My own emergence was less perfect. Although Mom tries to minimize it when telling the story in front of me, the next four hours and thirty-two minutes were the most grueling and painful of her life. I turned sideways inside her as Michael left the womb, and extracting me required all the sweat, blood, and fortitude Mom could spare, as well as a lot of pulling from the outside with many hands and metal tools.

I've never once heard Mom complain about it, but I suppose her labour with me never really ended. She had to quit her job working for my grandfather in the mayor's office when the decision was made to school me at home. And now that I'm at school I'm causing her even more grief, while Michael continues to glide through life, pleasing everyone and doing everything right. The only phone calls she ever gets about him are to inform her that he's won another athletic or academic award.

“So,” I ask her again. “Was that Lara Lavender's mother who called?”

“Yes, it was,” she says. Her expression is difficult to interpret. She's wearing that furrowed-brow look of parental concern, but her pursed lips are fighting back a smirk. “Mrs. Lavender claims that you, and I quote, ‘
went berserk in the schoolyard and
began randomly hurling mud at innocent bystanders.'
”

“That sounds like something a monkey in a zoo would do, doesn't it?” I say.

“I think monkeys throw their feces, actually,” Mom says, the captive smirk breaking free. “I'll bet you have a slightly different version of the story.”

We sit down together at the kitchen table, and I tell her everything: Sam, Brandon and Trevor's reaction to the ten floor hockey goals that Michael and I scored together in gym class, Adeline's story of what Lara, Carrie and Caitlin did to her, what happened in Science class, the Little Colour Girls coaxing the Little Brain Boys as they threw mud bombs at Adeline and me, and my surprisingly accurate retaliation.

When I'm finished, Mom sighs, “Well, I see that those little nuts haven't fallen far from their respective trees.” She gets this distant look in her eyes, and says nothing for a minute.

“Mom?”

“Sorry, Philip. I was just thinking about how history tends to repeat itself.”

“Mom? Am I in trouble?”

“Someone should have hit Lynette Lavender in the ass with a mud ball when she was in school,” Mom says. “Maybe then she'd have sense enough not to send Lara to school in three-hundred-dollar pants.”

“So I don't have to pay for her pants?”

“Philip, it will be a cold day in Hell when anyone in this family hands over so much as a nickel to Lynette Lavender.”

The door swings open and clangs against the side of the refrigerator, and Dennis strides into the kitchen from outside. His studded leather boots, the latest piece of gear in his Teen Rebel Ensemble, clip-clop across the floor tiles. “Hey, Douchebag,” he says. This is what he always calls me. “
Dennis!
” Mom yelps. This is how she always responds.

“Hello,
Mother
,” he says, in that acidic way of his. “Am I interrupting something? Are you having a
moment
with your
son
?”

“Please don't call your brother that name,” she says.“
Half
brother,” Dennis corrects. “And I suppose
Father
is still down in his lab?”

“Actually, your father . . . ”

“
Step
-father,” Dennis interrupts.

“ . . . is out riding his motorcycle. But he should be back in time for dinner.”

It seems out of character that our father, a man who spends most of his life locked inside a windowless basement laboratory, would spend time racing along back roads astride a motorcycle, but I suppose he has to clear his conundrum-cluttered head somehow. That he owns a Honda CBX, an enormous machine built in the late seventies with a huge six-cylinder engine, does seem somewhat at odds with his rational, efficient scientific persona.

Dennis shrugs. “Where's Dickhead, then?” This is what he always calls Michael.

“
Dennis!
” Mom snaps.

“Michael went over to a friend's place for the night,” I tell him.

“Great!” he says to me. “With Dickhead away, maybe the two of us can have some quality step-brother time together, eh, Douchebag?”

“Both of you be ready to eat early tonight,” Mom says. “One of your father's associates is stopping by this evening, and everything needs to be cleaned up by then.”

“Ooh!” Dennis wheezes. “An
Evil Scientist
meeting? Are they plotting the destruction of Earth?”

“Dennis,” Mom sighs, this time almost as an afterthought.

“Don't bother setting a place for me,
Mother
,” he says. “I won a few bucks playing pool at Jackie Snackie's. I had a coupla burgers.”

“You know I don't like you gambling, Dennis,” Mom says.

“It ain't gambling when you always win,” Dennis says. “Think of it as a part-time job.” He turns and clip-clops away.

“Please don't wear your boots in the house,” Mom says.

Without saying another word, Dennis kicks his boots off in the middle of the kitchen floor and lopes into the living room. She sighs.

With both Dennis and Michael absent from the table, there isn't much conversation during dinner. My father, who isn't very chatty to begin with, says almost nothing. As usual, he cuts his food into mathematically equal pieces, alternating mouthfuls in a meat/vegetable/starch/beverage pattern, frequently pausing mid-cycle to squint at the refrigerator door as if he's trying to see through it. He clasps and unclasps his hands between chewing and swallowing, his biceps and triceps twitching beneath his shirt. I've never seen him quite this nervous about the impending arrival of one of his mysterious scientific colleagues.

“Important meeting tonight, I guess?” my mother asks.

My father looks directly at her, which he hasn't done for the entire meal, and says, “June, this could be the one. This could really be the one.”

“I hope so, Landon,” she says. “You've been searching for a long time.” Mom gets up from the table, and begins spooning leftover food into a large orange Tupperware container. “Landon, I told your father I'd bring him dinner tonight,” she says. “I'll stay over there a while and visit, to give you some time with your
colleague
.”

She says ‘colleague' with a strange inflection; not like the obvious tone Dennis uses when he says ‘mother' or ‘father,' but in a way that casts a slight shadow. I guess she's mad because he spends so little time with her.

“I'm sure Dad will appreciate the
visit
,” my father says, with the same subtle undertone. “Have a nice time.”

“You too,” Mom says. She crosses the kitchen with the plastic container in her hand and takes her coat down from its hook. “I'll see you boys later, then. Philip, find something quiet to do in your room, okay?”