The Summer Is Ended and We Are Not Yet Saved (2 page)

“I got the job!” Martin’s mother announced. She tossed her bag on the pile of shoes by the front door and came into the living room, scooping Martin up in her arms. “I’m going to be spending three weeks making flaps of wet torn skin, jutting white broken bones, and drooling chunks of flesh for
Blood Socket 2. Blood Socket 2
, Martin! Pus! Spleens! Teeth! I’ll be spreading fake guts all over the walls. They said they loved my work on
Undead Hungry Grandmother Birthday Party
in particular. I didn’t think anyone even saw that movie.”

Martin squeezed his mother while she spun him around the room. He kissed her neck. She was so happy. This would be good for them. She was always happiest when she was working on movies. She was too good for the makeup counter at the mall. She was too smart.

“You may have to go and stay with your aunt and uncle for a few weeks,” she said. “A lot of the filming is going to be in Toronto, so I’ll have to go there and stay in a hotel. Those filthy big city streets will run with blood. They’ll have to install blood gutters!”

She set him down on the floor and then she spun around by herself, her arms raised and her eyes closed. She was beautiful. Martin put his own arms up, too, and spun, laughing. Later tonight, she would probably invite her friends over to celebrate, but right now it was just the two of them. It was their time.

“What should we have for dinner?” his mother said, stopping her spin and staggering a little, like she was dizzy. “Lobster? Caviar? Should we eat the children of our enemies?”

“My enemies aren’t old enough to have children,” Martin told her.

“Then we’ll have to eat the parents of our enemies,” she said. “They might be chewier.”

“Ice cream cake!” Martin said. He climbed up on the edge of the couch, and held his arms up to the roof. “Ice cream cake!” He knew that ice cream cake was her favourite. So it was his favourite, too. She lifted him in her arms again.

“Calm down there, killer,” she said. “Ice cream cake it is.”

The ice cream place was downtown, and on the bus ride Martin let himself drowse against his mother’s shoulder while she told him everything she knew about Toronto.

“There are a lot of people,” she said. “It’s not like here. There are people from all over the world there. Chinese, Koreans, Ugandans, Persians. I was only there once, but it was so different. When I came back I couldn’t believe that I never noticed how white everyone here is. It’s just white people as far as the eye can see.

“I went the year before you were born,” she said. “When I decided to keep you, I knew I had to go somewhere before you were born. It was my last chance to get away before I had to be a mom. I stayed in a hotel for travellers right downtown. Somebody was shot right down the street while I was staying there.”

“Is it dangerous?”

“Everything’s dangerous,” his mother said. She kissed him on the top of his head. “You can’t let that stop you.”

They got off the bus downtown and held hands crossing the street. The girl working at the ice cream shop looked unhappy, and Martin smiled as wide as he could for her.

“Hello,” he said. “We’d like to order an ice cream cake for our dinner, please. It’s a celebration.”

“That’s nice,” she told him. She pushed a small plastic sheet of paper across the counter. “Which cake style would you like, sir?” she said. There were birthday cakes and Halloween cakes and celebration cakes of all kinds. But one caught his eye.

“This one?” Martin pointed at a pink graduation cake, and looked up to his mother for confirmation.

His mother nodded. “An excellent choice.”

“And what would you like the cake to read?” the girl asked.

“Congratulations, Mom!” Martin said, but his mother put a hand on his arm and shook her head.

“No, no, something better than that,” she said. She turned to the girl, and leaned forward so that Martin couldn’t hear.

The girl behind the counter listened, and gave his mother a strange look. But then she shrugged her shoulders.

“Whatever you like,” she said.

Martin and his mother went for a walk while the man in the back of the shop made their cake. The public gardens were right across the street, and Martin peeked through the huge wrought-iron gate while his mother sat and drank her coffee. It was locked for the day, but inside the gardens Martin could see one of the swans curled up beside a little stone bridge.

“I’m very proud of you,” Martin said. “Nobody else’s mom works on horror movies.”

“Maybe they do and it’s a secret, that’s all,” she said.

Two teen girls walked past them, giggling. One of them looked over at Martin and met his eyes. With his baggy shirt and wire-rim glasses, Martin looked like he’d been picked too soon. He was eleven years old, and he wore button-up shirts that were always too big on him. He looked like the kind of kid who was proud when people called him a nerd. And he was proud.

His mother was a nerd. Sure she was a violent and unpredictable nerd who dressed like a panhandling teen, but she was a nerd. She knew more about chemistry than any of his teachers. Sometimes, just for fun, she made the strangest things boil and ooze for Martin. For his last birthday, she set a Halloween mask over a shot glass full of mystery sludge so that sickly foam drooled and spat from the mouth. Martin made her repeat the trick again and again, watching the foaming grin in horror. Who wouldn’t be proud?

“Our ice cream cake is probably ready,” Martin’s mother said, standing up. She held out her hand for him to hold.

They took the cake home, and his mother refused to let him see it until he was sitting at the table and the lights were dimmed. Then she came into the room holding the cake out in front of her. Three candles flickered and lit her face with their orange glow.

It was the pink graduation cake, but they had decorated it with little white Halloween skulls, and three candles, each in the shape of the number six. On the top of it, in red glossy icing, it read, “Happy Birthday Lucifer, Our Sugary Dark Lord.”

They sat at the kitchen table eating their ice cream cake, while Martin’s mother sketched ideas for movie gore effects. Martin rested his head on her shoulder and together they planned the perfect dangling kitten eyeballs.

Martin had a picture he’d clipped from a magazine of a goat standing on the back of a cow. It seemed otherworldly to him, but neither the goat nor the cow looked concerned. They didn’t care that the goats in picture books never stood on cows. They pulled this shit all the time. This was just how it was. His mother had that same look on her face, up on the kitchen table with someone else’s bottle of wine in her hand, head tilted to avoid the light fixture. Martin could see mud caked around the edges of her boots, smeared on the tabletop.

He stayed quiet, out of sight. He knew how this worked. It was against the rules for her to wear her boots in the house, but if he spoke up the response would be, “Bedtime, kiddo.” And he didn’t want to go to bed. He liked to watch his mother when she was around her friends. She acted like a different person, and even though it was scary, it was interesting, too. She was so complicated, and he felt like if he watched long enough, he might understand. As long as the table didn’t break again, it was okay. Mud was easy to clean up.

He watched her from the hallway for a while, and then crept back to his bedroom. He could hear his mother laughing, and it made him smile. His bedroom was not quite clean, and so he listened to the party through his open door while he remade his bed, folding the corners tight the way his mother never remembered to do. It wasn’t important to her, so she never remembered. She didn’t think it was important to make the cans in the cupboard line up properly by size, and she didn’t think it was important to wash your hands every time after using the bathroom. Martin folded a dry cloth and wiped down his dresser top, lifting his books and piggy bank to wipe underneath them. Then he wiped the window sills. Outside, the neighbourhood was lit up in the dark.

He couldn’t see downtown through the window, even though the apartment building was up on a hill, but he could see down to the northwest arm and make out the yacht club there. Some of the boats were lit, floating orange lights out in the water by themselves. The dark water reflected them so that each light was two lights, one exactly on top of the other. If they lived on a boat, his mother wouldn’t need to have her friends come over in order to have fun. They could sail around the world together, just the two of them. The perfect team. Maybe they could finally have a dog. Something small because it wouldn’t be fair to have a big dog on a boat. Besides which, small dogs seemed smarter. Cleaner. Martin imagined that there was a whole apartment down inside of each boat, with a kitchen and a bathroom. With windows looking out under the water from the bedrooms, so that he could stand in his dark room and watch the fish swim by at night. Peaceful.

“Martin?”

He jumped and turned to find his mother standing in the doorway.

“Martin, honey, are you okay? Are you having nightmares again?” she said.

He smiled and stepped away from the window.

“No, I’m just looking at the boats,” he said. “Do people ever live on boats?”

But his mother didn’t seem to hear him. Her smile was gone, and she was serious in the way she could only get when she was drinking.

“You don’t have to be scared,” she said. “Especially not in your own house. You know that, don’t you?”

“I know,” Martin said. He was still holding the dust cloth in his hand. He placed it on the dresser.

“I would do anything to protect you, Martin,” she said. “I would kill someone to protect you. So don’t you worry.” She reached out and pulled her son into a hug, and he hugged her back. “It’s way past your bedtime,” she said.

“I would protect you, too,” Martin said.

“I know you would. I tell you what. If anyone ever hurts me, I’ll tell you. And you tell me if anyone hurts you, okay? We aren’t allowed to have secrets from each other.” She squeezed his arm. “Even if he says he’s a friend of mine. You tell me,” she said.

“I promise,” he told her.

“Where did you go?” someone yelled from the hallway. The door opened and it was his mother’s friend, Carol, with her hair all fancy and curly.

“We kicked him out,” Carol said. “Who the fuck does he think he is, treating you like that? I’ve half a mind to slap the smile right off his head.” She had glitter on her face, and a glass of white wine in her hand. “Oh, oh sorry!” she said, noticing Martin. “Hi Martin!”

He waved at her politely.

“I promise,” he said to his mother, and she squeezed him.

“Good.” She said. “Now, I should get back to the party. Give me a kiss.”

He kissed her on the cheek, and then she was gone, closing the door behind her.

Martin waited awhile, and then turned the knob slowly and quietly, pulling the door open so he could hear. Out in the kitchen, everyone was laughing again and glasses were clinking.

After a while, Martin snuck back down the hallway to peek into the kitchen. Up on the table, his mother cleared her throat to quiet the room. When that didn’t work, she stomped her boot. Martin pulled back from the doorway instinctively, like the loud noise had exposed him. But nobody was looking. Everyone’s eyes were on his mother, and their voices quieted down. She gave a small curtsy. She took a drink from the bottle of wine, an empty glass in her other hand, then she raised both over the whole room.

“To the Royal fucking Bank of Canada,” she said, “and their kindhearted vat-grown employees, for being so understanding of the plight of a young single mother. God bless their tiny little hearts and may none of them be out sick or on vacation when I go down there to burn their building to the ground.”

Everyone laughed. She was like a rock star up on stage in front of her fans. She was wearing a white t-shirt with the sleeves torn off. Across the front there was a black drawing of a crow, clinging to a branch that ran around to her back, out of sight. It was one of her favourite t-shirts. The tail end of her snake tattoo came winding down along the skin of her arm from her shoulder.

“No wait!” she said. “This is a celebration. Fuck the banks. I got the job! I am gonna help make people feel sick to their stomachs! I’m contributing to society! Little kids hiding behind couches, that will be my legacy! Turn the music up,” his mother yelled. “Turn it up!” She stomped her boot on the table. “Let’s see how those shit dicks downstairs like it for once.”

Everyone sang and laughed at the same time, and someone turned the music up. Martin’s mother took another drink. She stomped again. She stomped her boot one more time, and the table broke under her weight.
Crack
.

Martin’s heart closed for that half second while his mother’s eyes were white and her arms were thrown up in the air. He lost track of the wine. He lost track of her friends. All Martin could see was the startled look on her face.

She landed on the broken table and slid to the side, rolling when she hit the floor. Martin held his breath. She sat stunned on the floor, and he held his breath for as long as she wasn’t moving.

Everyone seemed to be waiting. The music had gone quiet, and the whole room was frozen with her.

Then she smiled and came alive.

“Fucking bullshit!” She scrambled to wipe up the red wine with the bottom of her shirt and with the tablecloth. “Fucking dog garbage,” she said. She was ruining her shirt and the tablecloth, and she was laughing.

She wasn’t hurt. Martin couldn’t help it, he laughed, too. It was a cheap table they’d bought at a yard sale to replace the last one. Next time they were going to have to buy something that could support her weight.

“Dog garbage” was something she said all the time. Martin had started saying it, too. Not on purpose, but he caught himself saying it every once in a while. When people spend all their time together, they start to talk the same.

“Your shirt is filthy,” said Tom, one of his mother’s friends—the skinny one. “I advise you to take it off immediately.”

Laughter. They were all crowded around, and Martin couldn’t see.