Magnetism Page 19

  1979

  The Cockerel

  Outside it’s humid and hot, but inside this too-small tent it’s like a sauna. Scott is asleep next to me, and up close the paper-thin peeling skin on the top of his shoulders is irresistible. He shifts slightly, but there is no resistance when I begin to gently tug at the delicate white flakes, pulling inchlong then two-inch strips, producing a rosy pink and beige brown map on his back. At first the skin seems to melt on my tongue just like a snowflake, but then it wads up and is disgusting, like a newspaper spit-wad. I shoot it out of my mouth into the corner of the tent behind him and wipe away the taste with the back of my hand. My mouth is dusty dry but I can’t drink. The nausea that hit right after the peyote hasn’t completely stopped and I’m afraid of being sick.

  We are in the Organ Pipe Cactus Park, and we’ve been here, near a place called Why, Arizona for days. Right now I can’t think about exactly how long we’ve been here. That would take a mathematical genius, which I am not.

  The tent is beneath some shade, but now that the sun is straight up – and I can see this through the canvas – we are being baked alive.

  Then I remember that we’re in here to avoid getting more sunburn and to rest a while. It seemed like a good idea at some point when Scott said this was what we must do, but he’s asleep and doesn’t know that he’s being roasted. He has a higher boiling point maybe, because he’s bigger than me. But on reflection I don’t think that’s logical. It must be to do with cold blood or something. Scott is a desert creature. He must have cold blood. That’s why he’s okay now.

  We did the peyote together this morning standing at the side of the visitor centre. My first time. The plan was to do it at sunrise but we woke up too late. No one else was around anyway.

  We sat, backs to the wall, in the shade, side by side. He said it was better not to try to walk, or talk – just allow it to wash over. I felt sick but he said not to throw up, whatever. Then I seemed to suddenly slip my mind – actually everything slipped: his face changed into a stranger’s – first beautiful then old – and I felt my nose grow, my feet too stretched longer in front of me. I couldn’t feel them. I tried to walk and fell over, I think. I was lying flat and I heard laughing. The sound throbbed and tinkled and shrieked and bounced all around inside my head and then bounced right out of it, right away.

  I’d grazed my face, Scott said, and he helped me up. Then he licked the scratch and his tongue was like a lizard’s and I saw how he belongs here and I felt sad and lonely because I don’t. ‘I’m not a lizard,’ I said. ‘I will never be a lizard.’

  ‘Shut up,’ he said.

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Shut the fuck up. You’re shouting.’

  ‘I said okay.’

  ‘Don’t be a bummer, babe. People are looking. I can’t fucking deal with that. I want to enjoy this.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘And stop saying okay. It’s boring.’

  I put my hand over my mouth but it bubbled out anyway, ‘Uh huh,’ I said. ‘Uh huh. I’m not a snake either.’

  And that’s when he said we had to walk back to the campsite. Because I couldn’t be cool about anything.

  Now I check to see if there are any snakes in here. I can hear one hissing. The hiss worms its way into my ear, one at a time, right then left. ‘Scott, Scott.’ I shake him awake. ‘There’s a snake.’

  ‘Shush, shush.’ His voice is now the snake and I pull away and try to stand, but I can’t stand – my head hits some soft resistance and I have to crouch. I push against the canvas ceiling with my head again, then my hands, my elbows.

  ‘Let me out, let me out.’ My voice sounds like a baby’s cry. I am desperate to escape a womb. I am suffocating. I will die if I don’t get out. ‘I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe,’ I shout.

  Scott prods the tent flap open and I clamber over him out into the air. ‘I want to go home,’ I say to the sky, and then some woman in the distance speaks back.

  ‘Are you okay, honey? Are you lost? You were crying.’

  Out here in the middle of nowhere there’s a fat woman dressed in shorts and a pink T-shirt that says Florida with an alligator wrapped around the lettering. And there’s a little bald man behind her who is dressed identically, except that his T-shirt – same design – is blue. He is tugging at her hand, like Lassie trying to pull his master from danger, and I can hear him tell her, ‘Don’t get involved.’

  ‘I just want to go home. I feel sick.’

  She points to the tent. ‘Is there anyone else in there? Where are your clothes?’

  I start to cry. ‘I am so uncool. That’s my main problem.’

  Scott throws my stuff out of the tent. My cut-offs and purple tank top and then my backpack erupt before him and then he comes out too. He’s completely naked. When he stands up from crouching I see that his penis and scrotum are shrivelled up. Because of his tan everywhere else, he looks like he’s wearing a stupid-looking swimsuit.

  ‘She’s got some problem. She’s messed up. In the head,’ he says making a crazy sign with his forefinger and his own head.

  The woman picks up my top and shorts and hands them to me. ‘Where are your parents?’

  ‘I’m not a kid. I’m nineteen.’

  ‘Where do you live?’ Her voice is patient, like she’s a guidance counsellor in real life or something. She’s all round with no edges, even her face, even her glasses; everything about her is curved.

  ‘I really do. I want to live.’

  ‘Let’s phone your mom,’ she says. ‘Have you got a mom?’

  ‘Jesus H. Christ,’ Scott suddenly shouts. We all step backwards with the force. ‘You are so pathetic,’ he says to all of us, but I know he really means me.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You need to wash out your potty mouth, young man,’ the woman says.

  ‘You need to fuck yourself, lady, and this chick is nothing to do with me.’

  ‘Loretta, honey,’ the man behind her says, ‘we’re nearly in Mexico. It’s obvious they’ve been doing drugs.’

  ‘Nothing to do with me, man,’ Scott says.

  ‘No. No. I am not high,’ I say. ‘I am very, very low.’

  It is Dad who collects me and Loretta sits with me in the visitor centre to wait for him. We’ve waited for hours. She lets me put my head on her shoulder. Her husband is annoyed because this is a major interruption to their vacation and also because he has to explain to Dad what happened. He glares at me. ‘What am I supposed to say?’ he asks Loretta.

  ‘Oh, man up. Just tell him what happened,’ she says.

  Then when he’s walked away because dad’s car has pulled up, she tells me to not pay any attention. ‘Hank might be height-challenged, but there’s nothing my man cannot do.’

  ‘He is very short,’ I say.

  Dad doesn’t say much when I get in the car. Through the open window he thanks Loretta and Hank for taking care of me. A couple of hours later we stop off the highway at an Arby’s and I eat a sandwich even though I still feel a bit nauseous. He tells me that he doesn’t want to know exactly what happened, because people make mistakes. That making mistakes is not the problem as long as you don’t go on making mistakes. ‘Are you going to go on making mistakes?’ he asks. Cheese sauce is dribbling down the side of his mouth.

  ‘I really hope not.’

  ‘This boy,’ he says. ‘You’ve got to find yourself someone decent.’

  ‘Where’s Mom? Is Mom at home?’

  ‘I have no idea where your mother is this week. She’s on some woman’s thing, I think. Some event. Some thing … I don’t know.’

  ‘How’s work going, Dad?’

  ‘Oh, you know,’ he says, which is ironic because I really don’t know and he knows I don’t know, but this is what he always says whenever anyone asks him about his job.

  ‘I love you, Dad. It’s all okay,’ I say next, because this is the truth. We have no conversation. It’s the only thing left that I can say.

  �
��I know, honey.’ He looks very sad, like he might cry. ‘You were the best thing that ever happened to me, and to your mom.’

  ‘And I love Arby’s.’ Then I have to run to the restroom because I’m about to chuck up.

  Mom turns up on Saturday. She’s got a haircut, colour and perm and looks completely different and completely ridiculous.

  Dad doesn’t seem surprised. He goes to hug her and she wriggles out of his arms.

  ‘Mom, your new hair makes you look like Daisy.’ This is the Pomeranian dog that lives next door.

  She ignores me.

  ‘Is it what they call strawberry blonde?’ he asks.

  ‘I guess so,’ she says. ‘I’m still missing Maurice. God, I’d give anything for another Maurice.’

  ‘Have you ever wondered if they know what they’re doing?’ I say.

  ‘That’s enough,’ Dad says.

  ‘We need to talk about arrangements this summer,’ Mom says.

  ‘I don’t think we need any more instability,’ Dad says.

  ‘I’m not suggesting that. I just think we need to make some arrangements.’

  ‘Not a family vacation,’ I say. ‘Please not a family vacation.’ They both turn and look at me like I’ve just suggested a trip to Mars. ‘I mean, I’m going to get a job. I want to get a job. I’m going to get a job. I can’t do any vacation over the summer. I’ll be working.’

  She says, ‘We’re not talking about you.’

  ‘We need to talk about her,’ Dad says.

  I get up and leave the room.

  Upstairs the air-conditioning has been left on very low and it’s cool. I change the sheets on my bed for fresh pink ones from the linen closet and strip off my clothes and climb underneath and sleep.

  In the morning they’re both gone and I watch TV and eat a couple of hotdogs and a bag of chips and then sleep again.

  Mom is away until Tuesday evening and when she returns she slams the front door shut behind her and goes straight upstairs with her bag. The door to the hall is open and so I can see this from where I’m sitting on the sofa in the den. Dad has heard it too. He and I look at each other. A door slams upstairs and he shifts in his seat. I think he’s going to go after her, but instead he shrugs and goes over to the TV and turns up the sound. Happy Days is on. He doesn’t even like the show.

  An hour later, she joins us in the den. Her hair today is like an Afro. ‘Your hair is different again,’ Dad says.

  ‘It looks terrible, Mom.’

  ‘It’s a hairdo.’

  ‘Say it loud!’ I make a fist in the air.

  ‘Stop that, young lady,’ they both say at the same time.

  ‘We need to talk,’ Dad says.

  I leave the room.

  In the morning it looks like she’s gone again and Dad’s gone to work as well. The house feels cool and calm. I roll a joint, put a record on the stereo in the sitting room and lie down on the sofa. I feel every inch of my lungs fill as I inhale the smoke and I hold it until I’m bursting. I crank up the sound. I let the music into my body, into my veins, right up into my heart, which begins to beat in time to ‘Sway’.

  The clock in the kitchen tells me it’s nearly two hours later than I thought. I am discovering how Captain Crunch is the most delicious food and I think it should be a food group on its own. It must not, it cannot, be compared to cornflakes, or Frosties, or even muesli. There’s a bag of the stuff in the cabinet. I check it out. Muesli has regenerative qualities. In the bowl when you add milk it seems to grow and swell invitingly. It is a pulsing, nutritious, fibre-filled grain that wants to be eaten. A co-operative food. This sincere heart of muesli is something important and I think I’m getting to the bottom of what exactly this is, beyond the fact that it’s just there for me – and I’m also getting to the bottom of the bowl – when the phone rings.

  It’s Mom.

  ‘Are you up?’

  I have to think for a moment. I say, ‘Do you mean am I awake, or am I standing or maybe am I high?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. Is your father there?’

  ‘No. He’s at work. He’s at work, Mom. He goes to work.’

  ‘Meet me at the Mall. Tommy’s.’

  My beat-up old Pontiac has just got back from the shop because I forgot to put oil in, and I think they must have sprayed it with something because it smells different, like what leather should smell like, or a terrible aftershave, and then I see that they’ve hung a complimentary scented thing from the rear-view mirror. It’s got a picture of Superman on it. I unhook it and pitch it on to the driveway, but the smell doesn’t go away. It’s so fake and I am trapped in this smell. I wind down all the windows and head off to the highway.

  Tommy’s is a dingy fake Irish pub stuck on the second floor of the mall, next to the Kinney shoe store. The hostess who leads us to the table is dressed in a stupid French maid outfit – overflowing tits and short black frilly skirt – and the waiter is a leprechaun wearing lederhosen and I think he’s got stick-on Spock ears. ‘However much they’re paying, you’d never, ever get me doing a job here,’ I say when he hops away having brought us some water.

  Mom lights a cigarette. I open up the menu. There’s a whole load of food here. So much choice, it’s amazing. Mom inhales and blows the smoke out through her nose, like a dragon. Then she takes the menu from me and looks at me. Thunder mode. ‘Wise up,’ she says, and I don’t know what she means, but I’m guessing she’s noticed I’m eating too much or maybe Dad has told her about the trip south.

  She will erupt if I say the wrong thing. I must not ask her where she’s been lately, or what she does, or what’s up with her and Dad.

  ‘Why’d you want me here,’ I say.

  She just looks at me.

  ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘What the hell are you doing with your life?’ she says. And then she bursts into tears, the back of her hand on her forehead, just as the leprechaun is back with our coffee on a tray. She waves him away.

  I take charge. ‘We’re talking. Could you give us some space?’

  His expression says it all. He’s already disappointed because we only wanted coffee and now I see what we must look like to him: one high chubby-ugly chick with one hysterical black-hair white woman.

  Her hair really is awful. It’s the sort of thing someone should be able to sue over.

  ‘What am I doing with my life?’ she asks next. She seems to be asking both of us, because the leprechaun hasn’t moved away fast enough and she’s looking at him as well. He kind of nods, then shakes his head and leaves the tray on the table in the empty booth next to us.

  ‘What’s the hourly rate, do you think?’ I ask. Then, ‘Can a person sue a hairdresser? Do they have lawyers? Is there any mileage in it? My car had a really bad smell, Mom. It was so fake.’

  She uses a handful of napkins to dab at her eyes and then another lot to blow her nose. Her mascara has run. She looks even more crap. I’ve got to pay attention. I try to concentrate. I have to concentrate, but her hair is taunting me. ‘Hey,’ I say, ‘Mom, is something wrong?’ I try to say this as casually as possible. Do you want to talk to Louelle or Patty or Freda, or someone?’

  ‘Everything,’ she says then she gets angry again. ‘They won’t understand. I’m talking to you. Can’t my kid ever listen?’

  It’s suddenly all too much to handle: this place like a cave, my mother like a clown. I don’t know what she wants from any of us. ‘I’m moving out,’ I say.

  She straightens up. ‘Well, that’s probably best. Good luck to you.’

  Next day, Jay picks me up in his Corvette. He used to work at the McDonald’s by the crossroads and that’s where I first met him. He works in some warehouse now, but evenings he hangs about at the ice-cream parlour in the strip mall near the house and I asked if he could give me a place to stay. I have a garbage bag full of clothes and a red plastic vanity case that Mom gave to me when I was twelve. I’ve stuck my toothbrush and paste, hairbrush and shampoo inside and I ca
n’t think of what else I might need, but there’s always a supermarket. Jay said his apartment is near a Target. Target sells everything. Mom has given me a hundred bucks and I make the mistake of telling Jay about it, when I say that we might need to stop at Target but it’s okay because I’ve got some cash.

  ‘Let’s go score,’ he says, and I don’t contradict him.

  Later, as he opens the door to his apartment, Jay tells me that he is a cat person. ‘I hope you’re cool with cats,’ he says as a mangy, mottled grey thing begins to wind itself around my legs.

  ‘Sure. How many have you got?’

  ‘I don’t know. I always leave that window open.’ He points into the room beyond and I try to see what he’s showing me, but my eyes haven’t adjusted to the darkness in here. ‘So, they bring in their friends, I guess. I feed a heap of felines. They come and go as they want. I like a free spirit.’

  This is a bad neighbourhood and I must look alarmed because next he says, ‘Don’t worry, baby. There’s a gun under the bed. You’re safe. I’m here.’

  The first night we make love on the floor next to the bed because there’s a moving pile of cats sleeping on the bed and he doesn’t want to disturb them. When he finishes, I feel the way the carpet beneath me looks: stained and used. And, after he pushes the animals off to allow us to get under the blankets, his sheets are grubby and worn. I want to retch at the smell. I try not to think about my clean sheets at home. If only I’d been nicer to Mom. I try not to think about Mom, who must be going through some sort of major mental breakdown the way she’s behaving.

  We smoke another joint and that helps reduce the nausea and also slides me into sleep.

  In two days it’s the fourth of July weekend and Jay is going to visit his family. I’d like to tell him that I want to see mine, too, but no one is answering the phone at home and I’ve no idea what’s happening with either of my parents. I offer to stay behind in his apartment even though the prospect of spending a whole day alone in his stinky apartment with his flea-ridden cats is unpleasant, but he is insistent and, when we get going along the highway in his beat-up car, he says he’s real pleased to have me along with him. He comes from a big family, he says and they have a party in the park every year. He didn’t go last year, but wishes he had. It’s a blast, he says: barbecue, hog roast, the whole nine yards.