Red Girl Rat Boy Part 15

To accommodate Raoul, the French Trotskyist, an entire month of forums had been rescheduled. He-a short, plain man, the first disappointment-came to the hall with Pete and Sally the evening before his talk.

Just then comrades and contacts were doing a mailing about the Caravan to Ottawa planned by Vancouver's women's liberation: a cross-country drive to the capital, en route gathering supporters to demand changes in the abortion laws. A Great Trek, as in the 30s. Something big could happen. Everyone sensed that. Ma.s.s action, even. We folded leaflets, stuffed envelopes.

The task brought me as close to the sisterhood as I ever got. Yes, I'd attended some meetings of independent WL groups. The girls-no, young women-were friendly, but because of work I couldn't stay up late on weeknights, nor could I sit on the floor as they did for hours, talking. Already it wasn't easy to kneel for a full morning's paddle in a canoe. Also my hair was permed. I wore heels and suits and a girdle and a st.u.r.dy bra. A living fossil. Now I'll admit that their s.e.xual exuberance intimidated me. Nothing to be done about that, then or now.

After introducing Raoul, Pete and Sally left for an external meeting. She walked out first, looking back as if puzzled he wasn't at her side. Only when she reached the street door did he follow.

The Frenchman helped us, efficiently, and in spite of his exoticism the atmosphere soon normalized. He learned some names (not mine), asked about local women's politics and anti-war, but the conversation jolted. His English was far from fluent. We had to rephrase, oversimplify. I hoped he planned to read his speech.

Our work done, Raoul yawned, smiled. "I'd so much wish to ski while at Vancouver!"

Silence. Ski! How bourgeois! Not among French revolutionaries, evidently.

Pete and Sally never even headed out to camp, paddle, hike. Never drove to Seattle for a weekend. Rarely saw a movie. However, some of my friends skied. I went cross-country myself occasionally, though I've always loved liquid water best.

My voice sounded. "Rowena might drive you up to Cypress."

By coincidence she arrived in the hall soon after, long coat swaying, hair shining. Now, in the photo heading Rowena's theatre column and in her spreads on glamorous Down syndrome and lupus fundraisers, her hair's still black. She's only mid-fifties, though. Dye won't yet cause that awful stiffness characteristic of hollow white hairs.

"Of course!" Lightly, smiling.

After this foray I was breathless.

The next night, Raoul stood before an overflow audience. He glanced at Rowena. To me she was in profile, eyes unseen, but I'd have bet a month's income on the quality of her gaze. Sally introduced the speaker. His smiling thanks, so patronizing: handsome male to plain female. Anger ran me up and down. Already fired with joy at what I'd instigated, I sensed a sudden all-over heat and for a while heard nothing.

When sound began again, the atmosphere had gone wrong. Everyone lay open to the delights of political seduction, but that Frenchman, so expert and experienced, just hadn't the tongue. We weren't inside French anti-war. We were nowhere special. Fidgets, coughs. Flirtatiously, Raoul glanced at Sally for help. Once, twice, she supplied an English word or phrases. Then quit. Stared.

Before the reception began, Sally left the building.

That storefront.

For years, I walked blocks out of my way. Since the comrades vacated it's beckoned pa.s.sersby to a hair salon, commercial real estate, now a travel agency. Some arcane evangelical sect uses the main hall and kitchen. Even now, nostalgia's poison streaks the air. I dip and dodge. Often those who appear aren't the hardened bureaucratic layer but the dead, or crazy Nora, or Richard, tossed aside.

After the Frenchman limped to his conclusion, in the loud hall I glimpsed Rowena as I drained my Gallo red. Serpent to vermin, she neared Raoul. He hadn't noticed her yet, didn't see me. I was getting my coat when Pete pa.s.sed me. Such a vulnerable look. Then Duncan took him by the arm. To shove the old boy aside, cross the hall, pull his love Rowena close. . . No. For the organizer of revolution, impossible.

Serve him right. That breathlessness again, born of making something bleed and writhe. Something to itself huge: a worm a bug a belief a love.

Not just a middle-aged single self-employed notary who'd sensed her body's first helpless waver towards menopause, I walked home. Red glowed on the beach, illicit bonfires. Beyond lay the night-filled park, where thousands of trees grow unrestrained except by storms or fire. Unseen, mountains tower behind. From first light they dominate. As for the land, if you're even a little way out from sh.o.r.e its curves and wrinkles flatten, disappear.

With old eyes it's hard to be sure what's still there, what never was.

As I opened my apartment door, Sally lunged at me.

"How dare you do that to Pete? Hurt him so?"

I nearly fell over her suitcase.

"What gives you the right to sic that woman on to Raoul?"

She varied her queries, making each s a hiss. Response wasn't permitted.

"You're as bad as her." Sally grabbed her case.

"Where will you go?"

"Nowhere you know about."

Slam.

I still get the radical press, such as it is, and read recently of Raoul's demise at sixty-eight. He'd stuck with the Fourth International in that distant Centre far more central than Toronto, New York even. Imperial.

As for Sally, her photo often appears in press coverage of public sector unions. On TV through the 90s she critiqued NAFTA. Clear, capable. Her term as union president ends soon. In retirement she'll learn how fast work drops away, abandons us.

I was her Samaritan. She could f.u.c.k nearby because I, unreal, couldn't notice. Also I had no one to tell. The beach-towels we hung up? Fiction. By acting as I did, I'd come off the page.

Thirty years ago Sally left me alone to contemplate her love and scorn. She headed down the street, thence rapidly to Fredericton. Later, Halifax. Thus she missed Friday supper the week following Raoul's talk.

Pete was absent too, at a film about British colonialism in Africa. Did that start his trajectory from revolution? Today he's an aid consultant in Ottawa.

As I cleared dirty plates and brought clean ones, the cracked timbre of Duncan's voice went on and on about Spain. Rowena listened.

"Could you draw it? I'd love to see what you did!"

Duncan pushed his coffee away, got out a pencil. Though his eyes watered, his hand sketching the battle-scene moved confidently.

"We were here." He put x x x near his coffee cup, then not far off some cl.u.s.ters of o o o o o o. "They were there. 1938."

"You were in charge?" That admiring gaze.

"Yes." The pencil fell. "So many died." He stared at his marks.

Richard spooned up his raspberry Jello.

That night Helen spoke on postal mechanization.

Every danger that plain Ca.s.sandra foresaw, every lost deskilled devalued job, was realized in two decades. Once, mail sorters scanned handwritten envelopes by the thousand, tossed them at high pigeonholes so fast the air blurred white. Encyclopedic urban knowledge, emptied out of human brains.

Next afternoon the Caravan departed.

Before the Courthouse another small group, all women this time, excited, nervy, smoking, flaring into laughter. The shouting cars, bright with painted slogans, headed off to Ottawa and history. That autumn the War Measures Act would refill the plaza, chop off yet another past and force everyone to breathe differently.

Later in the 70s I found an apartment nearer the park. I watch tides, try to remember.

In September 2001, why on earth would Rowena see herself as a tree? Catherines abound; to her my name will signal nothing. Nor does my tiny hate, except it's the same as the huge ones. We're all relicts now.

If I could go back thirty years to that hall, would I recognize anyone?

That question went to bed with me yesterday after hours of televised filthy clouds, rage, wreckage, wild faces, distorted or disa.s.sembled bodies, hours of phone calls repeating many words.

When I woke in a later darkness, my head said Grenada. Richard.

In 1983 the US used the pretext of Maurice Bishop's a.s.sa.s.sination to invade the island, with Operation Urgent Fury the attack's codename. During a quickly organized protest at the American consulate, some placards riffed on that, Operation Urgent Withdrawal, Urgent End Imperialist Attack. Richard and I had both made signs reading US Out of Grenada Now.

It was good to see him. His red hair was already greying, thinner. I asked how he liked working at VanCity.

"I've always wanted to be part of a community. How are you, Catherine?"

He knew my name.

"Do you miss the old days, Richard? The movement?"

The demo was only sporadic chanting in front of American plate gla.s.s coated to exclude the world's eyes, so we talked. We remembered Josie, Bruce. We noted Pete's job in Kenya, Sally's steady rise in her union. I wouldn't have mentioned Rowena.

"Aren't her columns fun?" That curly smile. "Good for her, too, letting people know about these causes."

Grenada: eighteen years ago. Under what beach-towel did I conceal Richard's forgiveness?

To sleep again this morning, impossible. The vile screen required witness.

This afternoon my condolence card waited in my mailbox, with Scotch tape over the flap, Rowena's address inked out, mine inserted. That meadow is broader than in memory, the sky more s.p.a.cious, soaring even. No fiery planes. Past tall rushes, a little stream winds who knows where. One old tree leans to the other as Richard did to her, loving, eager to hear.

I put no return address on the envelope. Rowena's dug it, me, up somewhere. She's remembered, even if she didn't scribble f.u.c.k you Cathy or Go to h.e.l.l.

Ha!

Got to her though, didn't I?

Made her mad.

The Hunter IF THE CAT STRETCHED TILL SHE HURT, her front paws reached the bars on one side and the tip of her long black-ringed tail, thick and plushy, touched the other side.

He'd constructed the steel cage for her sight unseen, a cube, five-sided, and lapped wire mesh all round. It resembled a parcel. His present. Pretty arrived tranquillized, in a plastic travelling container; he decanted her beauty into the cage as if pouring cake mix into a pan. The fit pleased him. Her body was three feet long, her tail another three. All over, the oily exudate of his Pretty's fur coated the mesh.

She didn't see sharply but had little to observe. A windowless bas.e.m.e.nt room, pale featureless gyproc. One door to a bathroom, another to stairs. In the cage, a metal stool. Early on, she used it as a change from lying or pacing, now only when he ran the hose. For water, a metal cake pan. At the beginning of their shared life his Pretty often knocked it about, clash bang ring! He worked hard, needed sleep. Couldn't she tell night from day by the rhythms of the house's lighting systems? Would she adapt? Now the pan stayed still.

The wire mesh made for easy clambering. The green video had shown Pretty's superb climbing skills, and for toys he'd provided k.n.o.bs and rings of tough plastic. They lay still. He shook his head. Here she was, acquired at such cost and risk, safe and warm and fed and cleaned-up after and talked to, yet her eyes always angled off. To what? When he put her food through the slot he might shout, or slap the cage. If she startled, he got a moment's satisfaction.

As to flooring, he'd thought wire mesh would be uncomfortable, so bolted the cage into the concrete below smooth industrial linoleum. Her pads wore an X-trail and one round the edge. She scratched the lino, stained it too, the acids of her excretions corroding the surface while he worked or slept or watched teenaged Asian girls m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.e. His Pretty came already spayed, of course. Shreds of meat got mushed about the floor, too. Drinking, she slopped. Every day he hosed down her living quarters, then ran heat lamps and fans. She developed a cough. Inaudibly, pain shot up her legs from beneath the concrete, from the deep cold midden studded with millennia of clam and oyster sh.e.l.ls. The room smelled of her.

Sometimes his Pretty lay dead-still, a limp tumble of tawny, ochre, silver-grey, black. His heart thumped until under the supple skin he detected a throb. He'd jiggle the steel pins securing her food-slot. Could she resist? Never quite. A small victory, but often she didn't bother to get up, or ate little, even if he'd on purpose delayed a feeding.

Above her, in the rest of the rented house, flourished hundreds of plants, their lushness suggesting the green video of her homeland. During the years of saving and planning and fear that at last brought his Pretty, he'd watched the images repeatedly, learned her special name, neofelis nebulosa. With her sibs, Pretty frolicked enticingly to expose the stunning black ovals on her belly. That vision gave him strength.

As Mumma taught, he made a list: (1) get pa.s.sport; (2) buy plastic containers for cake; (3) leave Vancouver for the first time ever, to hunt his clouded leopard and bring her home. He didn't learn that she'd entered the world on a Texas game ranch. Soon after he'd placed his online order, nearly fainting as he logged out (What have you done, son?), his cellphone rang. Obedient, he drove the van to Bellingham. No one asked to see his pa.s.sport, and he'd only needed one plastic cake-container. Ten cakes had fitted in the pack he'd bought for the much longer hunt expected, in that green Nepalese forest.

As for the cannabis, his skill ensured that the plants' exposure to light was shortened every twenty-four hours by the right number of minutes, that measured fertilizer was applied at the most fruitful moment, that water arrived constantly, that useless foliage got plucked off just when buds would thirstily absorb the resulting surge of nutrients. Capacitors, switches, transformers, drip-lines, timers-for all, he was accountable. Orderly and dutiful, he did a good job. Mumma would have to agree.

Grow lights intensified the plants' rank scent. Other odours formed as drywall, carpet, hardwood responded with mould to the hydroponics. The humid air bore also vanilla, chocolate, orange, b.u.t.terscotch, for daily he baked up a cake mix. No other groceries were stored in the house, but his takeout Greek, Mexican, and Chinese enriched the diverse gases moving through his Pretty's lungs. Her own food, picked up in the van from a wholesale butcher, lay in a large freezer.

During harvest, he'd seen her waver, even stagger. Was she stoned? Sick? The latter option he never dwelled on; nothing could be done. But if only she were more lively! One twitch showed off her coat's extravagant patterns. He longed to glimpse that splendour while taking a break from his lonely work, but she lay still, still, her rather short stocky legs splayed out. She never climbed to her roof any more. So. Again. The old agenda: (1) strip the plants; (2) bag them; (3) at night, carry the heavy plastic sacks out to the van; (4) drive them to their destination (obeying all the rules of the road, he was never pulled over); (5) replant.

Nine harvests thus. The limit, for security's sake, of his and Pretty's tenure, but he wanted to break the rule and stay. To move her cage, make her home cleaner, nicer.

So neighbours wouldn't wonder about the blind house, he mowed the lawn, set out garbage, cleared gutters. One week children's toys and bikes lay on the front steps, the next week at the back. He parked the well-washed van properly. Inside, while grow lights gulped power off the grid in staggering amounts, he maintained strict surveillance on all mechanical systems. He sc.r.a.ped incipient black mould off the carpet, using Mumma's old-fashioned vinegar mix, never bleach, in case of contamination.

Each individual plant, luxuriant, purplish, viridian, was known to him, and he adjusted the gifts of fertilizer by sixteenths of a teaspoon. First-cla.s.s and abundant product resulted. Mumma couldn't criticize.

His masters, busy with their profits, acquiesced. "Okay, one more year." Unlike some of their grow-ops, the r.e.t.a.r.d's caused no trouble.

Pretty now ate so erratically that drugging her food wouldn't be a reliable precaution. To move the cage, therefore, he made a list. (1) drill new holes in the concrete, check the new plants, bake; (2) loosen and remove the present bolts; (3) lift and tug the cage's lowest bar, now held down so tightly it indented the lino; (4) push the cage, Pretty inside, to the new site; (6) insert and tighten the bolts in their new location, check the plants; (5) eat brownies and watch the special TV girl, the winking girl with the sliding hands.

During (3), could a paw slide under the cage? Doubtful. Maybe so. He rehea.r.s.ed frequently the necessary motions of arms, legs, hands. How smoothly Pretty would travel!

Drilling the new bolt-holes made a dreadful noise, though, and concrete dust fogged the bas.e.m.e.nt room. In distress, Pretty folded back her soft round ears-he'd never seen that. She paced, coughing hard.

"I'm sorry, Pretty." He opened the bathroom window and went upstairs. For each new crop he set up the lighting system from scratch, again, and for the hydroponics he checked each pump and switch and gauge. If he found he'd missed one, he started over. Good job. While nestling the seedlings in their containers, his fingers practiced in miniature the grips, hoists, and shoves to come with (2) and (3). His Pretty would blink gold. Gobble her food, lick her paws. Maybe to sleep she'd curl up sweetly in the way he loved, her long tail wrapped all round.

All was well.

Now the brownie mix. He never used drugs, despised the smokers who threw away their lives on fantasies. The pan in the oven, he set the timer and adjusted the fan. The homey fragrance would vent outside, rea.s.suringly meet a neighbour's nose. Ahead now lay an hour's work, max. Pretty's clouds would shimmer. Might he touch them? Once or twice, indifferent, she'd paced so near the mesh that softness met his fingertips.

When he dropped the first freed bolt, Pretty raised her elegant head, sat up as he moved from one face of the cage to the next. Her glorious tail rippled. Alert, she watched the wrench, watched him shuffling on his knees from bolt to bolt, as if praying. Mumma always prayed. He didn't any more. Did she know? Pretty stretched her neck out, stared. Her whiskers, barely sketched wings, moved as she sought his purpose.

He'd got all the bolts loose. Out.

Now the quick sharp lift-and-tug.

Done! All that needless anxiety over. Good job.

Now lean and push. Push. He grimaced, his cheeks heated, he smelled chocolate, and slowly the container shunted across the ravaged lino. His Pretty, as the cage distanced itself from her on one side and neared her on the other, sat peering on her metal stool. Then she got down to pad about her voyaging prison, not in her usual tranced trudge, but curiously.

The metal cake pan tipped over. He and Pretty startled. She lapped at the spilled water, batted at the pan so it flew up to the cage's ceiling and fell, flew and fell. Clatter ring bang! Her play made his heart glad. A few more pushes, to line the cage up with the new bolt-holes. Neofelis nebulosa now licked a paw, extended and retracted her claws, blinked. Her lashes: tiny gold feathers.

Movement stopped. What? One leg of the stool had lodged in an abandoned bolt-hole. The stool, jammed against a corner, braked the cage.

Shake, bang. No good. Leverage, yes, but the tire iron was too big to go through the mesh, the plastic tubing from the grow-rooms too light. Pretty patted at it, gave a small jump. From her throat rose a resonance. Her kind of cat didn't purr, he knew, but the noise sounded happy.

The kitchen timer rang.

Eating hot brownies hadn't been on the list, but he needed energy. No fork, Mumma would fuss. Her knitting needles, they'd be perfect. Wiggle one to distract, the other to shake that stool loose. Perfect knitting, never a dropped st.i.tch. He put the half-empty pan back in the oven to stay warm and got calves' liver from the freezer. To his Pretty, cooked food was even worse than dead, so as soon as the blood-smell rose he took the meat from the microwave.

The revised list: (1) use the toilet; (2) barely open the cage door and fling the liver across it; (3) reach in with the tire iron to dislodge the stool.

Attending to (1), his bowels were loose and foul. Nerves. (2) went well, with Pretty sniffing the meat all over. For (3) he rehea.r.s.ed the sequence of movements. Her glance at him was golden.

Five seconds, a scream and a crack of bone, an empty cage. Mumma's knitting needle, somehow, stuck out of his leg. Agony. His cellphone, as far off as Texas or Nepal, on the kitchen counter. Even if, whom to call? Communication with the masters was one-way. And he'd forgotten to turn off the oven. Carbonized chocolate, venting to the world.

He let go into pain. Psychedelic visions of the grow-rooms, green and lush, heralded glimpses of his kitten padding through her jungle, dapples melting in leaves and light. Rapidly, the filth from Pretty's claws inflamed the wounds on his face and arms.