Red Girl Rat Boy
Autor Cynthia Flooden Limba Engleză Paperback – 14 oct 2013
A Quill & Quire Best Book of the Year
A Globe & Mail Best Short Fiction Title
A National Post Best Short Fiction Title
A January Magazine Best Book of the Year
Shortlisted for the 2014 Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize
Longlisted for the 2014 Frank O'Connor Award
"Complicated, passionate, genuine."—Chatelaine
Women. Young women, old women. The hair-obsessed, the politically driven, the sure-footed, the bony-butted, the awkward and compulsive and alone. Sleep-deprived and testy. Exhausted and accepting. Among the innumerable wives, husbands, sisters, and in-laws vexed by short temper and insecurity throughout this short story collection, Cynthia Flood’s protagonists stand out as citizens of a reality that the rest of the world will only partially understand. New from the Journey Prize-winning author, Red Girl Rat Boy is a collection of astonishing range and assured technique, whose voices—gothic, peculiar, domestic, and strange—remain as passionate and complex as ever.
Praise for Red Girl Rat Boy
“Revenge and politics season this potent and passionate collection of stories. Flood excavates indelible histories that haunt even those who’ve shaken the dust of the past.” —Aritha van Herk, author of Judith
“Flood’s eye is unflinching, her language energetic and precise, her vision bracing, passionate and entirely lacking in sentimentality.”—Nancy Richler, author of The Imposter Bride
“The notary in ‘Dirty Work’ has ‘retired from witnessing how rough human existence is.’ Fortunately for us, Cynthia Flood has not … these stories prove her to be among our great North American fiction writers.”—Betsy Warland, author of Breathing the Page: Reading the Act of Writing
“Raw energy is Cynthia Flood’s territory. This is a superb collection.”—Laurie Lewis, author of Little Comrades
“Cynthia Flood is full of surprises. If there’s one thing that characterizes her elegant, crystal-sharp short stories, it’s that element of surprise … they reward the attentive reader with surprise and delight”—Dave Margoshes, author of A Book of Great Worth
A Globe & Mail Best Short Fiction Title
A National Post Best Short Fiction Title
A January Magazine Best Book of the Year
Shortlisted for the 2014 Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize
Longlisted for the 2014 Frank O'Connor Award
"Complicated, passionate, genuine."—Chatelaine
Women. Young women, old women. The hair-obsessed, the politically driven, the sure-footed, the bony-butted, the awkward and compulsive and alone. Sleep-deprived and testy. Exhausted and accepting. Among the innumerable wives, husbands, sisters, and in-laws vexed by short temper and insecurity throughout this short story collection, Cynthia Flood’s protagonists stand out as citizens of a reality that the rest of the world will only partially understand. New from the Journey Prize-winning author, Red Girl Rat Boy is a collection of astonishing range and assured technique, whose voices—gothic, peculiar, domestic, and strange—remain as passionate and complex as ever.
Praise for Red Girl Rat Boy
“Revenge and politics season this potent and passionate collection of stories. Flood excavates indelible histories that haunt even those who’ve shaken the dust of the past.” —Aritha van Herk, author of Judith
“Flood’s eye is unflinching, her language energetic and precise, her vision bracing, passionate and entirely lacking in sentimentality.”—Nancy Richler, author of The Imposter Bride
“The notary in ‘Dirty Work’ has ‘retired from witnessing how rough human existence is.’ Fortunately for us, Cynthia Flood has not … these stories prove her to be among our great North American fiction writers.”—Betsy Warland, author of Breathing the Page: Reading the Act of Writing
“Raw energy is Cynthia Flood’s territory. This is a superb collection.”—Laurie Lewis, author of Little Comrades
“Cynthia Flood is full of surprises. If there’s one thing that characterizes her elegant, crystal-sharp short stories, it’s that element of surprise … they reward the attentive reader with surprise and delight”—Dave Margoshes, author of A Book of Great Worth
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Specificații
ISBN-13: 9781927428412
ISBN-10: 1927428416
Pagini: 169
Dimensiuni: 124 x 188 x 13 mm
Greutate: 0.16 kg
Editura: BIBLIOASIS
Colecția Biblioasis
Locul publicării:Canada
ISBN-10: 1927428416
Pagini: 169
Dimensiuni: 124 x 188 x 13 mm
Greutate: 0.16 kg
Editura: BIBLIOASIS
Colecția Biblioasis
Locul publicării:Canada
Cuprins
Red Girl Rat Boy
12321
Addresses
Blue Clouds
Care
Eggs & Bones
The Hunter
Red Girl Rat Boy
The Sister-in-Law
Such Language
The Relict
To Be Queen
12321
Addresses
Blue Clouds
Care
Eggs & Bones
The Hunter
Red Girl Rat Boy
The Sister-in-Law
Such Language
The Relict
To Be Queen
Recenzii
"In Red Girl Rat Boy Cynthia Flood has pared her style down to a clipped staccato that is at first jarring, then mesmerizing. How does she scrape the narrative so close to the bone, yet still manage to emotionally engage the reader? Because she’s a master, carefully maximizing the potential of each word ... poetry."—Caroline Adderson, The Globe & Mail
"Flood is a highly accomplished stylist, whose technique is tightly calibrated and precise ... Anything superfluous is ruthlessly pared away … The stories in Red Girl Rat Boy are brief, but dense, requiring concentration and attention ... [yet are] as emotionally engaging as any flat-out storyteller.”—The National Post
"Flood challenges, enlightens, disturbs ... a stunning fifth book."—The Vancouver Sun
"As we have come to expect, Flood’s stories reward attentive reading. Realism is the dominant technique, but there are also quirks that bend the reader’s ear and excite. Carol Shields used to talk about female storytelling that avoided the “classic” duality of climax and release. Flood’s stories are Shields-type stories: multi-orgasmic. Ahem."—Quill & Quire
"The Journey Prize-winning author packs a lot [of] power into 11 taut stories that celebrate and challenge women of all types. Flood is unflinching, but her readers might not be so brave. The author is honest to the point of occasional emotional and unsentimental brutality. This is amazing stuff."—January Magazine
"With the agility of an acrobat, Flood navigates shifts and turns within time, often lifetimes, while employing a free indirect style that catapults the reader from a character’s most immediate experience to retrospective narration and then back again ... These stories are told in a voice that navigates like an underground stream through the deepest channels of the psyche. These stories are felt in the marrow."—The Coastal Spectator
"Diverse and peculiar, elliptical and compressed, with no linkage between them other than the spare, sure skill of the writer ... Flood is a master of doing more with less. There are no wasted words, yet each story has a huge expanse and a high ceiling ... Flood, in scant and careful images, places us in stories that require us to see and to think about perspective, about where we are situated, what it is we see, and what to make of it."—The Malahat Review
"A unique breed of confident, highly stylized writing … Creative writing courses would benefit from studying why she does what she does … Flood’s stories are also commendable for covering much emotional ground and character history in very little space.”—The Telegraph-Journal
"Do not search for a grand overarching theme in this collection of short stories by the prize-winning Canadian author. Flood freely experiments with a style she describes as ” elliptical, compressed, imagistic” and features protagonists who are flawed, varied, and – enticingly – only partially relatable."—Toronto Review of Books
"A strong collection from a Journey Prize winner who knows how short stories ought to work."—Salty Ink
"Flood’s narratives know no bounds … her stories break through barriers, surprise at turns … Flood herself is the hunter shooting right between the eyes.”—Pickle Me This
"Compulsively readable."—CultMontreal
Praise for The English Stories
"Cynthia Flood's complex and intricate collection of linked stories takes a deep pleasure in words and language. And the characters stay with you long after you put down the book.—Globe & Mail
"Taken together, the stories ultimately achieve a brooding resonance that captures the literal and spiritual dampness of a provincial scene that all but died out with the last remnants of the British empire."—Quill & Quire
"Vancouver writer Cynthia Flood has won a slew of prizes for her fiction, and her latest book, a collection of linked short stories called The English Stories, shows why the accolades are so well deserved. Flood is a thoughtful writer whose richly dense prose opens up worlds to explore."—Vancouver Sun
"Like metaphors, myths are nearly everywhere. Red Girl Rat Boy tells us that metaphor and myth are not separate from the so-called real world, but that they help to define its politics. And while critics may treat the words and actions of politicians with skepticism, Flood treats most of her characters non-judgmentally—a gesture of respect for them and for her readers."—Literary Review of Canada
Praise for Cynthia Flood
Winner of The Journey Prize,
The Western Magazines Gold Award for Fiction,
and a National Magazine Gold Award for Fiction
"In Cynthia Flood's remarkable first novel, there's no tidy shuttling between present and past, no chronological storytelling. . . . The complex narrative demands that you pay attention, and it works; like the lives of its characters, this novel is complicated, passionate, and genuine."—Chatelaine
"Linguistic dexterity is Flood’s primary strength." Sam Knowles, Canadian Literature
"Flood is a highly accomplished stylist, whose technique is tightly calibrated and precise ... Anything superfluous is ruthlessly pared away … The stories in Red Girl Rat Boy are brief, but dense, requiring concentration and attention ... [yet are] as emotionally engaging as any flat-out storyteller.”—The National Post
"Flood challenges, enlightens, disturbs ... a stunning fifth book."—The Vancouver Sun
"As we have come to expect, Flood’s stories reward attentive reading. Realism is the dominant technique, but there are also quirks that bend the reader’s ear and excite. Carol Shields used to talk about female storytelling that avoided the “classic” duality of climax and release. Flood’s stories are Shields-type stories: multi-orgasmic. Ahem."—Quill & Quire
"The Journey Prize-winning author packs a lot [of] power into 11 taut stories that celebrate and challenge women of all types. Flood is unflinching, but her readers might not be so brave. The author is honest to the point of occasional emotional and unsentimental brutality. This is amazing stuff."—January Magazine
"With the agility of an acrobat, Flood navigates shifts and turns within time, often lifetimes, while employing a free indirect style that catapults the reader from a character’s most immediate experience to retrospective narration and then back again ... These stories are told in a voice that navigates like an underground stream through the deepest channels of the psyche. These stories are felt in the marrow."—The Coastal Spectator
"Diverse and peculiar, elliptical and compressed, with no linkage between them other than the spare, sure skill of the writer ... Flood is a master of doing more with less. There are no wasted words, yet each story has a huge expanse and a high ceiling ... Flood, in scant and careful images, places us in stories that require us to see and to think about perspective, about where we are situated, what it is we see, and what to make of it."—The Malahat Review
"A unique breed of confident, highly stylized writing … Creative writing courses would benefit from studying why she does what she does … Flood’s stories are also commendable for covering much emotional ground and character history in very little space.”—The Telegraph-Journal
"Do not search for a grand overarching theme in this collection of short stories by the prize-winning Canadian author. Flood freely experiments with a style she describes as ” elliptical, compressed, imagistic” and features protagonists who are flawed, varied, and – enticingly – only partially relatable."—Toronto Review of Books
"A strong collection from a Journey Prize winner who knows how short stories ought to work."—Salty Ink
"Flood’s narratives know no bounds … her stories break through barriers, surprise at turns … Flood herself is the hunter shooting right between the eyes.”—Pickle Me This
"Compulsively readable."—CultMontreal
Praise for The English Stories
"Cynthia Flood's complex and intricate collection of linked stories takes a deep pleasure in words and language. And the characters stay with you long after you put down the book.—Globe & Mail
"Taken together, the stories ultimately achieve a brooding resonance that captures the literal and spiritual dampness of a provincial scene that all but died out with the last remnants of the British empire."—Quill & Quire
"Vancouver writer Cynthia Flood has won a slew of prizes for her fiction, and her latest book, a collection of linked short stories called The English Stories, shows why the accolades are so well deserved. Flood is a thoughtful writer whose richly dense prose opens up worlds to explore."—Vancouver Sun
"Like metaphors, myths are nearly everywhere. Red Girl Rat Boy tells us that metaphor and myth are not separate from the so-called real world, but that they help to define its politics. And while critics may treat the words and actions of politicians with skepticism, Flood treats most of her characters non-judgmentally—a gesture of respect for them and for her readers."—Literary Review of Canada
Praise for Cynthia Flood
Winner of The Journey Prize,
The Western Magazines Gold Award for Fiction,
and a National Magazine Gold Award for Fiction
"In Cynthia Flood's remarkable first novel, there's no tidy shuttling between present and past, no chronological storytelling. . . . The complex narrative demands that you pay attention, and it works; like the lives of its characters, this novel is complicated, passionate, and genuine."—Chatelaine
"Linguistic dexterity is Flood’s primary strength." Sam Knowles, Canadian Literature
Notă biografică
Cynthia Flood’s stories have won numerous awards, including The Journey Prize and a National Magazine award, and have been widely anthologized. Her novel Making A Stone Of The Heart was nominated for the City of Vancouver Book Prize in 2002. She is the author of the acclaimed short story collections The Animals in Their Elements (1987) and My Father Took A Cake To France (1992). She lives on Vancouver’s East side.
Extras
Eggs and Bones
The eggs hit the pan. Too much sizzle. Probably he’d set the heat at 5 again, not 3. For sure he hadn’t whisked the eggs long enough, she’d counted the strokes. He’d see the mixture was streaky, then stir too late and disturb the setting process.
Kyra lay in their king-sized bed, listening to Norman cook.
Likely he’s using butter and oil. Stupid. That metal spatula, skr-skrskr. It’ll wake Maeve. I can’t bear it, truly I can’t. Why won’t she sleep through the night? Oh lucky me with my mat leave! A whole year to enjoy my baby. Her birthday next week. !Use the plastic one. There, in the utensil jar. That pan’s scarred already.
The colic’s over months ago but still she wakes, wakes, wakes. She
has daytime naps, I’m exhausted, I sleep too. No work. I’m thirty. It’s time.
He shouldn’t scrape yet anyway. Just tip to slide the liquid under, but those eggs’ll be nearly cooked now. Frizzled more like.
For Norman, earplugs work, but even if I shove them in till I think they’re touching my brain and move her crib right to the end of the hall I hear Maeve. She’s not hungry. Won’t feed. Cries a while, sleeps again. I don’t. I can’t. The clock-radio’s turned to hide time rushing on, but in May the birds start at four, and if I do sleep it’s like an instant till she cries again.
What’s he taking out of the fridge? Please not chorizo.
I sense Maeve. Not just with my ears. Three floors away I’d feel her crying. Mushrooms? I’m starting now to work from home. So many women want to. Lucky me. Cheese? The office. I’ve tried to stay connected, but when I visit there with Maeve it feels unreal. Maybe once I get into my projects? How can I? In all the hours, where’s the time? I have to sleep.
Oh God, he’s slicing onion.
I will not rage about Norman’s damned tibula, fibia, whatever. Not not not. Recrimination does no good, Kyra, especially to you. We all make mistakes, I’ve told you that five hundred times, easy, since it happened and he’s been here here here in this small apartment 24/7 except for physio.
Raw cold onion inside leather: breakfast, after another hellish night.
Now he can get about, he takes Maeve out a bit so I can work. They just go to Starbucks. That’s fine. I don’t care. She crawls about and people say, “So cute!” I sleep, after setting the alarm so I can pretend to have been busy. But soon he’ll be back at work. I can’t bear it. We need to get out of this. The weather’s warmer these days.
He’s got the pan in the sink. Tap’s running. Where the hell’s my food?
Coffee’s on. That’s something.
I know, he’s trying to wash off the mushy egg-scum. Won’t work. The problem’s underneath, because Norman won’t use butter alone. “Too fatty,” he says. Oil isn’t? When overheated, the two form a hard scale all round the pan, just where the sides curve up. It looks like just the slightest discolouration, but run a finger over the metal. Rough, scabby.
Where? A park. The beach. Maeve loves sun. Sweet, her little dresses.
Further use causes more harm. Foods catch, stick on that scale, scorch. With uneven heat, the pan becomes unusable. Has to be tossed.
We’d take the bus. He won’t like that. Maeve will love it.
Sluicing, sluicing. He’s trying the scrubber. Now the dish-brush.
Plastic is not effective. How many times have I shown him?
I’m so hungry. So tired.
Ah. He’s remembered baking soda. Dampen a soft cloth, dip it, rub. Rub rub rub, soft, almost soothing. But how long? When will this end?
Maeve’ll walk soon. I can’t bear it.
Now rinsing. Now stopped. I’ll have to check that pan. Still no coffee.
Somewhere beautiful. I want a new summer dress.
Beside her in the bed, the flung-back duvet suggested the shape of Norman, Maeve’s father. Impossible.
Enough! The kitchen smells juiced up her mouth. From their bed to the stove was fifteen steps. Kyra got there in ten.
Leaning against the sink, Norman niggled at the pan, his gaze concentrated as when reading student papers. On a white plate, a thick yellow envelope had split to ooze chorizo, onion, salsa, melted cheddar. Grabbing a fork and the food, Kyra shoved in one huge bite of red orange yellow before crying out. For the first time in their shared life Norman had heated a plate. It slid from her hand to the counter’s edge, stayed. Just.
Kyra crossed her smarting fingers over her body and into her armpit for comfort while she glared at him and ate.
“Let’s all go out,” she said through a mouthful of eggs.
!!!!!
@ @ @ @ @
His wife had purchased for the occasion a red sundress with ruffled straps. The colour seemed too deep for the tentative heat of May on the west coast.
Red filled Norman’s vision as he sat in the crowded bus holding the baby, while Kyra stood gripping the hand-hold above. He looked up at her face and arms. Bony. At least the skirt hid her legs. His glance went off to other passengers’ summery bags and sandals, their bare limbs, then past the sleeping girl and down to his cast. So heavy. Wasn’t there better ones now, high tech foam or something? Weeks of physio, and still the crutch.
Walking to the bus-stop, he’d felt himself a prisoner attempting escape with the irons still attached.
His eyes couldn’t resist. Kyra’s jaw, chin, cheekbones -- such hard lines. Short hair, brushed back severely. It didn’t dare tickle her soft earlobe.
A cramp began. With effort Norman adjusted himself so his daughter’s relaxed body weighed less on his good leg, more on his arm.
Kyra said, “Don’t look put-upon. At least you’ve got a seat.”
The baby’s eye-lashes, so delicate.
As the bus lurched, he glanced up again. Kyra’s arm stretched downward from the hand-hold, straight and lean to a fully-exposed pit.
Norman closed his eyes.
Opened.
Kyra’s stance made of her armpit a startlingly large hollow. Dark but not hairy, no no, shorn, more than shorn, chemically denuded (perhaps below the epidermis some brave follicles endured), and dry, and deep. Inches deep. Rimmed by taut lumpy muscles, ligaments, Norman didn’t know. Bones? There must be bones. Then that red frill. Ruffle, something. If a person put a thumb in the pit and an index finger on the frill and squeezed, the digits might meet through the gristly band. He couldn’t do it.
“What’s that ugly look for? Does she need to be changed?”
“Maeve’s fine, Kyra. It’s just a few blocks to the beach.”
“Garbage, shopping, laundry, I’ve been on my feet for hours already.”
“You wanted this outing.”
When his wife frowned anxiously at Maeve, her eye-shadow wrinkled and flakes of mascara jostled one another. Bending, she exhibited her clavicle and chest, not quite her cleavage, but the red fabric stuck out. The breasts must still be there. To touch, unimaginable. Norman winced, making pain needle his bad leg. He lost hold of his crutch. Maeve stirred.
“Can’t you even sit still? She’ll wake.”
“If you had a driver’s license, we could have come in the car.”
“Norman, you know I don’t have a good spatial sense.”
“Adults do learn to drive, Kyra. Of course, some effort’s required.”
“It’s her birthday! Can’t you think about anyone but yourself?”
Turning away, she switched to the hand-hold across the aisle. Maeve happily crawled further into her dream, drawing on a year of life to create peacock-blue fantasies that swirled, grew cloudy, and broke into the gold stars her dad had shown her through the apartment window. Norman travelled too, riding the Number Five up up and away into the brightness over English Bay, past the Planetarium and south to Pacific Spirit Park. Here the bus landed by a trail-head. Easily he stepped off, to walk into the forest smelling of warm resin, bark, earth, leaves and needles, animal scat. Nearby sounded dropping water. In all the green, the only noise. No birds. What made birds fall silent? He knew he knew, but couldn’t say till he saw the little merlin on a swaying cedar branch. Her beak, such a curve! Sharp, to rip. All the other feathers in the wood folded down still, still, while she stared. At him? No, at a world hard to live in.
At the beach, Norman insisted they have their picnic by a bench.
“Why not the sand, like everyone else?”
“If I go down that far I’ll never get up. Is that what you want?”
“Can you at least get our lunch out? Find the bottle-opener?”
“I don’t see any pickles.”
“They’re in the fridge. You know, in the kitchen?”
“It hurts me to walk, remember?” Norman waved his crutch.
“So. I’m to spend all afternoon trudging about with her.”
They ate.
Then Maeve smiled at the sloshing noisy blue as her mother applied sunscreen to the exquisite skin. Eased the child into her yellow bathing-suit. Set on a floppy hat. Kissed her.
“The water looks great. Wish I could wade!”
“Whose fault is that?”
When Kyra removed her dress, her bikini (black and white stripes, unfamiliar) enabled sight of each knob. How many bones did humans have, three hundred? Two? In wrists and knees alone, dozens. Norman had only broken his tibia and fibula, fibia tibula, whatever. How had he ever desired her? If he tried to remember the afternoon when they’d made Maeve (enchanting sweetness), his penis shrank. Her cheeks shone. “I try to look nice.”
With the baby in her arms, his wife walked into the ocean. A teacup Yorkie barked angrily at the waves, and Maeve laughed.
Unable to sketch a scenario in which his wife would drown but his daughter survive, Norman turned to memories of his skiing accident. This video now slid by as if professionally directed. On the mountain. A last run, maybe the last of the season. Late afternoon, still bright, no, not too late, but just ahead something broke the smooth dim white, what, how? Lurch, tumble. Bone-crack, snowy echo.
An abandoned ski-pole.
“It shouldn’t have been there.”
“You shouldn’t have been there.”
Kyra had repelled all attempts to edit that dialogue. Norman gritted his teeth. Tomorrow he’d be back on campus. Hours of solitude. New hearers for his tale.
Smiling, he saw on the ocean Maeve’s yellow bum. Alongside floated
the hat. Where was Kyra?
How did Norman stumble across the collapsing sand and wade
through loud water, hurting cursing brandishing his crutch and shouting
their names?
His wife stood up. God but she looked tired. Mother and baby kissed, giggled. He fell on them, full of tears. Through the wet bikini Kyra’s breasts were warm. Other bathers helped them to shore, brought their gear to the curbside, phoned for a taxi.
The pain was huge.
Maeve stopped howling.
His wife sniffled, wringing out the hat. “I will learn to drive.”
“My leg, my fault.” He patted a red frill. “It’s been hard for you.”
Thus they spoke, helplessly tangled in and wounded by these early attempts to manage, to make a meal of it, to articulate the bones, to marry.
The eggs hit the pan. Too much sizzle. Probably he’d set the heat at 5 again, not 3. For sure he hadn’t whisked the eggs long enough, she’d counted the strokes. He’d see the mixture was streaky, then stir too late and disturb the setting process.
Kyra lay in their king-sized bed, listening to Norman cook.
Likely he’s using butter and oil. Stupid. That metal spatula, skr-skrskr. It’ll wake Maeve. I can’t bear it, truly I can’t. Why won’t she sleep through the night? Oh lucky me with my mat leave! A whole year to enjoy my baby. Her birthday next week. !Use the plastic one. There, in the utensil jar. That pan’s scarred already.
The colic’s over months ago but still she wakes, wakes, wakes. She
has daytime naps, I’m exhausted, I sleep too. No work. I’m thirty. It’s time.
He shouldn’t scrape yet anyway. Just tip to slide the liquid under, but those eggs’ll be nearly cooked now. Frizzled more like.
For Norman, earplugs work, but even if I shove them in till I think they’re touching my brain and move her crib right to the end of the hall I hear Maeve. She’s not hungry. Won’t feed. Cries a while, sleeps again. I don’t. I can’t. The clock-radio’s turned to hide time rushing on, but in May the birds start at four, and if I do sleep it’s like an instant till she cries again.
What’s he taking out of the fridge? Please not chorizo.
I sense Maeve. Not just with my ears. Three floors away I’d feel her crying. Mushrooms? I’m starting now to work from home. So many women want to. Lucky me. Cheese? The office. I’ve tried to stay connected, but when I visit there with Maeve it feels unreal. Maybe once I get into my projects? How can I? In all the hours, where’s the time? I have to sleep.
Oh God, he’s slicing onion.
I will not rage about Norman’s damned tibula, fibia, whatever. Not not not. Recrimination does no good, Kyra, especially to you. We all make mistakes, I’ve told you that five hundred times, easy, since it happened and he’s been here here here in this small apartment 24/7 except for physio.
Raw cold onion inside leather: breakfast, after another hellish night.
Now he can get about, he takes Maeve out a bit so I can work. They just go to Starbucks. That’s fine. I don’t care. She crawls about and people say, “So cute!” I sleep, after setting the alarm so I can pretend to have been busy. But soon he’ll be back at work. I can’t bear it. We need to get out of this. The weather’s warmer these days.
He’s got the pan in the sink. Tap’s running. Where the hell’s my food?
Coffee’s on. That’s something.
I know, he’s trying to wash off the mushy egg-scum. Won’t work. The problem’s underneath, because Norman won’t use butter alone. “Too fatty,” he says. Oil isn’t? When overheated, the two form a hard scale all round the pan, just where the sides curve up. It looks like just the slightest discolouration, but run a finger over the metal. Rough, scabby.
Where? A park. The beach. Maeve loves sun. Sweet, her little dresses.
Further use causes more harm. Foods catch, stick on that scale, scorch. With uneven heat, the pan becomes unusable. Has to be tossed.
We’d take the bus. He won’t like that. Maeve will love it.
Sluicing, sluicing. He’s trying the scrubber. Now the dish-brush.
Plastic is not effective. How many times have I shown him?
I’m so hungry. So tired.
Ah. He’s remembered baking soda. Dampen a soft cloth, dip it, rub. Rub rub rub, soft, almost soothing. But how long? When will this end?
Maeve’ll walk soon. I can’t bear it.
Now rinsing. Now stopped. I’ll have to check that pan. Still no coffee.
Somewhere beautiful. I want a new summer dress.
Beside her in the bed, the flung-back duvet suggested the shape of Norman, Maeve’s father. Impossible.
Enough! The kitchen smells juiced up her mouth. From their bed to the stove was fifteen steps. Kyra got there in ten.
Leaning against the sink, Norman niggled at the pan, his gaze concentrated as when reading student papers. On a white plate, a thick yellow envelope had split to ooze chorizo, onion, salsa, melted cheddar. Grabbing a fork and the food, Kyra shoved in one huge bite of red orange yellow before crying out. For the first time in their shared life Norman had heated a plate. It slid from her hand to the counter’s edge, stayed. Just.
Kyra crossed her smarting fingers over her body and into her armpit for comfort while she glared at him and ate.
“Let’s all go out,” she said through a mouthful of eggs.
!!!!!
@ @ @ @ @
His wife had purchased for the occasion a red sundress with ruffled straps. The colour seemed too deep for the tentative heat of May on the west coast.
Red filled Norman’s vision as he sat in the crowded bus holding the baby, while Kyra stood gripping the hand-hold above. He looked up at her face and arms. Bony. At least the skirt hid her legs. His glance went off to other passengers’ summery bags and sandals, their bare limbs, then past the sleeping girl and down to his cast. So heavy. Wasn’t there better ones now, high tech foam or something? Weeks of physio, and still the crutch.
Walking to the bus-stop, he’d felt himself a prisoner attempting escape with the irons still attached.
His eyes couldn’t resist. Kyra’s jaw, chin, cheekbones -- such hard lines. Short hair, brushed back severely. It didn’t dare tickle her soft earlobe.
A cramp began. With effort Norman adjusted himself so his daughter’s relaxed body weighed less on his good leg, more on his arm.
Kyra said, “Don’t look put-upon. At least you’ve got a seat.”
The baby’s eye-lashes, so delicate.
As the bus lurched, he glanced up again. Kyra’s arm stretched downward from the hand-hold, straight and lean to a fully-exposed pit.
Norman closed his eyes.
Opened.
Kyra’s stance made of her armpit a startlingly large hollow. Dark but not hairy, no no, shorn, more than shorn, chemically denuded (perhaps below the epidermis some brave follicles endured), and dry, and deep. Inches deep. Rimmed by taut lumpy muscles, ligaments, Norman didn’t know. Bones? There must be bones. Then that red frill. Ruffle, something. If a person put a thumb in the pit and an index finger on the frill and squeezed, the digits might meet through the gristly band. He couldn’t do it.
“What’s that ugly look for? Does she need to be changed?”
“Maeve’s fine, Kyra. It’s just a few blocks to the beach.”
“Garbage, shopping, laundry, I’ve been on my feet for hours already.”
“You wanted this outing.”
When his wife frowned anxiously at Maeve, her eye-shadow wrinkled and flakes of mascara jostled one another. Bending, she exhibited her clavicle and chest, not quite her cleavage, but the red fabric stuck out. The breasts must still be there. To touch, unimaginable. Norman winced, making pain needle his bad leg. He lost hold of his crutch. Maeve stirred.
“Can’t you even sit still? She’ll wake.”
“If you had a driver’s license, we could have come in the car.”
“Norman, you know I don’t have a good spatial sense.”
“Adults do learn to drive, Kyra. Of course, some effort’s required.”
“It’s her birthday! Can’t you think about anyone but yourself?”
Turning away, she switched to the hand-hold across the aisle. Maeve happily crawled further into her dream, drawing on a year of life to create peacock-blue fantasies that swirled, grew cloudy, and broke into the gold stars her dad had shown her through the apartment window. Norman travelled too, riding the Number Five up up and away into the brightness over English Bay, past the Planetarium and south to Pacific Spirit Park. Here the bus landed by a trail-head. Easily he stepped off, to walk into the forest smelling of warm resin, bark, earth, leaves and needles, animal scat. Nearby sounded dropping water. In all the green, the only noise. No birds. What made birds fall silent? He knew he knew, but couldn’t say till he saw the little merlin on a swaying cedar branch. Her beak, such a curve! Sharp, to rip. All the other feathers in the wood folded down still, still, while she stared. At him? No, at a world hard to live in.
At the beach, Norman insisted they have their picnic by a bench.
“Why not the sand, like everyone else?”
“If I go down that far I’ll never get up. Is that what you want?”
“Can you at least get our lunch out? Find the bottle-opener?”
“I don’t see any pickles.”
“They’re in the fridge. You know, in the kitchen?”
“It hurts me to walk, remember?” Norman waved his crutch.
“So. I’m to spend all afternoon trudging about with her.”
They ate.
Then Maeve smiled at the sloshing noisy blue as her mother applied sunscreen to the exquisite skin. Eased the child into her yellow bathing-suit. Set on a floppy hat. Kissed her.
“The water looks great. Wish I could wade!”
“Whose fault is that?”
When Kyra removed her dress, her bikini (black and white stripes, unfamiliar) enabled sight of each knob. How many bones did humans have, three hundred? Two? In wrists and knees alone, dozens. Norman had only broken his tibia and fibula, fibia tibula, whatever. How had he ever desired her? If he tried to remember the afternoon when they’d made Maeve (enchanting sweetness), his penis shrank. Her cheeks shone. “I try to look nice.”
With the baby in her arms, his wife walked into the ocean. A teacup Yorkie barked angrily at the waves, and Maeve laughed.
Unable to sketch a scenario in which his wife would drown but his daughter survive, Norman turned to memories of his skiing accident. This video now slid by as if professionally directed. On the mountain. A last run, maybe the last of the season. Late afternoon, still bright, no, not too late, but just ahead something broke the smooth dim white, what, how? Lurch, tumble. Bone-crack, snowy echo.
An abandoned ski-pole.
“It shouldn’t have been there.”
“You shouldn’t have been there.”
Kyra had repelled all attempts to edit that dialogue. Norman gritted his teeth. Tomorrow he’d be back on campus. Hours of solitude. New hearers for his tale.
Smiling, he saw on the ocean Maeve’s yellow bum. Alongside floated
the hat. Where was Kyra?
How did Norman stumble across the collapsing sand and wade
through loud water, hurting cursing brandishing his crutch and shouting
their names?
His wife stood up. God but she looked tired. Mother and baby kissed, giggled. He fell on them, full of tears. Through the wet bikini Kyra’s breasts were warm. Other bathers helped them to shore, brought their gear to the curbside, phoned for a taxi.
The pain was huge.
Maeve stopped howling.
His wife sniffled, wringing out the hat. “I will learn to drive.”
“My leg, my fault.” He patted a red frill. “It’s been hard for you.”
Thus they spoke, helplessly tangled in and wounded by these early attempts to manage, to make a meal of it, to articulate the bones, to marry.
Descriere
A new collection from a noted feminist author and winner of the prestigious Journey Prize for short fiction.