Waiting for the Cyclone Read online

  WAITING FOR THE CYCLONE

  For my family, both chosen and not

  CONTENTS

  WAITING FOR THE CYCLONE

  MALAD

  TIEBREAKER

  LIBERTAD

  THE FOUR BRADLEYS

  PROVERBS

  CONFLICT ZONE

  CENTRE OF THE UNIVERSE

  ONE LAST TIME

  SEPTEMBER

  MONTERRICO

  GONE TO SEED

  SHELTER FROM THE STORM

  WAITING FOR THE CYCLONE

  THE LAST TIME I SAW Michael was in New York City. It was two years ago, almost to the day. I remember how the Brooklyn Bridge traipsed across the horizon outside the hotel window and the scent of ripe garbage wafted up the fire escape. That morning, Michael and I both ate a grapefruit and half a bagel for breakfast. I remember exactly what I was wearing: jean skirt, yellow shirt, black sandals. Michael wore jeans and Doc Martens and we argued about him wearing boots to the beach.

  It was a Sunday, mid-August, too hot. We took the D train to Coney Island and peered at the mismatched architecture when the train emerged above ground—shops with faded awnings, brownstones, postwar ghettos, and grandmotherly houses with dirty windows. I leaned against Michael’s shoulder the whole time. He kissed the top of my head and lingered there as if he might forget the smell of my hair once I was gone.

  Coney Island was exactly the way I imagined it: slow-driving cars on the boulevard, the smell of sugar-powdered grease in the air. A man with flipper arms played the drums outside the Coney Island Freak Show and a woman in fishnets prowled across a stage, waggling a jar. “Behold the space alien embryo!” she said, thrusting the jar toward us. Inside, there was a glowing fetus with slit eyes.

  Michael stopped in front of a ground-floor apartment at a corner on Mermaid Avenue. Behind a paisley curtain, a typewriter sat on a red sixties-style table. The typewriter looked identical to Michael’s. A FOR RENT sign was taped inside the window. Michael placed his hand on my stomach the way a man might do to his pregnant wife.

  “We could live here this winter,” he said.

  I knew what he was doing and I didn’t like it. I removed his hand from my stomach. Something tugged at the lines on his face, and I thought he might slap me the way he did in bed when I asked him to. I almost wished he would so we could start talking about what was happening to us instead of pretending everything was fine.

  We followed the tinny beach music and carnival sounds to the boardwalk. Children were scattered like marbles across the wooden surface. Girls in boxy bikinis waited for their mothers to catch up and little boys stuck out their stomachs and fiddled with their shorts strings. Inside the amusement park, people waited in lines, shifting their weight from one foot to another. Spindly legs hung from rides that spun into the sky and back; screamy open-mouthed laughs rose and fell in unison.

  Michael had been on the Cyclone before. On our very first date, in a dark basement bar with old chandeliers, he told me nothing in his life had prepared him for the first drop. When the coaster careened downwards, his jaw clacked with such force that one of his incisors broke. He pulled at the corner of his mouth to show me. I slid close beside him and ran my tongue over the damaged tooth, feeling the bumps like it was my own mouth.

  How we met was accidental. I was looking for a ride from Montreal to Halifax on Craigslist and ended up browsing the missed connections. The ad read, You: riding your bicycle, singing Etta James. Me: at the corner of Duluth and Esplanade, reading The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. We must meet. I answered on a whim. Michael and I wrote back and forth about the problems of the human spirit and our grandmothers who both came to Canada from Hungary during the revolution. When we finally met, I could tell by the look on his face that he’d seen a different girl riding her bike, but that I was somehow better.

  Fast forward through steam-heated nights and whisky-fuelled marriage proposals after three weeks of knowing each other. Linger, perhaps, on a Thursday in June when we stayed up all night because the first hot day was coming and we wanted to feel the slow, restless vigour of it coming to life. That morning on the roof, bathed in sunlight and sleepy ecstasy, I told Michael he was not allowed to love me. I was moving for school. He laughed and said, “You will never leave me.”

  Two months later we were in Coney Island spending our last weekend together. It was the kind of day where heat punches you in the stomach. The lineup for the Cyclone stretched all the way past the last souvenir shop. Michael stood beside me with his arms crossed. Perspiration glittered on his forehead and he said it again:

  “We could live here this winter.”

  As the end of summer approached, Michael started to test me. Suggesting plans that would only work if I dropped out of school. “Let’s run away to Hungary,” he said. “We’ll have a gypsy wedding in a dark forest near Vajszlo. Let’s build a cabin and live off the land. Anywhere in the world—you choose.”

  At first, the part of my brain where logic lives started to shake and crack. In the dim glow of his bedside lamp, skin on display, I said, “Let’s do it. Fuck everything.” But by August, I had an apartment rented in Vancouver.

  Michael probably would have come to Vancouver if I’d asked him. Commercial Drive could have been our Mermaid Avenue. We could have sold our meagre everything, skipped town, left our ghosts in Montreal. But I didn’t ask. I never wanted to see a tarnished version of what we’d been that summer. The expiry date made us perfect.

  WE WAITED FOR the Cyclone for almost an hour. The roller coaster shrieked along the tracks while the riders’ screams pinballed through the metal scaffolding. Michael and I didn’t talk much. In front of us, a man and woman spoke to each other in sign language. The woman had short grey-blonde hair and her face reminded me of a German soldier I’d seen in a film. Her husband was a thin black man with brassy curls and one pierced ear. I could not imagine what circumstances had brought them together. The woman signed delicately as if she was conducting a small opera; the man’s pink palms flashed as his hands laced the air.

  “It’s a sign,” Michael said.

  He believed in signs from the universe. Number eights or tigers could mean his life was on track; the number four or wolves could be reason for concern. At first, I was annoyed that someone so intelligent could move through life that way. But I started to see things, too. Once, my bank account balanced to Michael’s birthday. Then, just as I was emailing my lease to Vancouver, “Please Don’t Go” came on the radio.

  For Michael, seeing the deaf couple signified that we were destined to be together. It had something to do with the chapter he was reading in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter when “I” cycled by singing Etta James. I guess he’d forgotten I wasn’t actually that girl. I think about her sometimes. It makes me feel weird, like I accidentally stepped into her life. Did she feel a shift when I met Michael? Is she still out there somewhere, silently dealing with the unexplainable weight of a lost opportunity?

  Up close, the Cyclone looked fragile with its outdated graphics and weathered paint. Giddy riders climbed out of the sweaty bench seats, still reeling from the speed. The deaf couple sat in front of us. The man was so tall that his knees pressed against the front of the wagon. The woman took a bobby pin from her hair and slipped it into her pocket. Someone swept a video camera over the crowd and zoomed in on each rider. When it was our turn, Michael and I moved our faces together as if posing for a photograph. I could still smell grapefruit on his breath. An employee walked from wagon to wagon and clicked the safety bars into place. Michael moved in close and put his hand between my thighs. I tightened my muscles to keep it there. In front of us, the deaf couple gripped the bar and exchanged a look. It could have been fear, confusion, or somethin
g else.

  The roller coaster jerked as it climbed and we rose into a crosswind that sent our hair flying. Just past the beach, the Atlantic Ocean stretched and swallowed. There was a pause at the top before the first drop where Michael had broken his tooth. I wanted to kiss him right then so we would both remember how it had been, but it was too late. We were already falling fast.

  WHEN THE RIDE was over, Michael slid out of the wagon. I wasn’t ready to leave. My stomach had recorded every hairpin turn and rapid descent. I rubbed the muscles along my spine and rolled my shoulders back. The deaf couple was still in the wagon in front of me. Something was wrong. A baffled silence had overtaken the woman’s face. She shook her husband’s arm so hard that when she let go, his head struck the front of the wagon. It didn’t take long for the strange siren of her distress to fill the air.

  “Everybody out,” someone ordered. “Clear the area!”

  We stayed as close as the park staff would let us. Parents held their children’s hands a bit tighter and everyone stretched a few inches taller as if it might change what they saw. The park medics arrived first. The ambulance wasn’t far behind. It was clear the man was dead, but none of us could leave until we knew for sure.

  AFTER THE AMBULANCE took away the man’s body, we didn’t feel like going to the beach. Michael unbuttoned his shirt and let it sail as we walked down Surf Avenue toward the D train. I took off my sandals and walked barefoot. When we passed the apartment with the paisley curtains, a man was standing by the window. His chest was caved in like he’d been in a car accident and never fully recovered. You could see his entire life from the sidewalk: one sad plant, a stained futon, and a half-eaten sandwich by the typewriter. When the man looked at me, his tight-lipped stare seemed to say, You don’t want this, missy.

  I still wonder how we looked to him. He might have seen through our relationship the way some people could. Or perhaps he saw the shimmery mirage: how we kissed so many times the night we met, each time swearing it was the last. When we finally let each other go, an audience had gathered around us. People clapped like we were the best thing they’d ever seen, and someone shouted, “Look! They’re in love!”

  MALAD

  TWO WEEKS BEFORE CHRISTMAS, DAD came home from work and said, “Guess what, kids? We’re going to Arizona.”

  “Yeah!” me and Jordan shouted, giving each other high-fives. Next thing we knew, Dad was in the principal’s office telling old Bancroft we’d be gone for a while.

  The alarms went off at five the next morning. The house sounded like a fire truck! Everyone kept snoozing until Dad got mad and knocked on everyone’s doors, yelling, “Get your butts out of bed!”

  I jumped up fast and groped for the light switch, but I couldn’t see two inches in front of me. You can really lose yourself in that kind of darkness.

  I checked the fridge for juice but the carton was pretty much empty. The house was freezing! I put on Mom’s sweater, the one with two dogs balancing on a bowtie, and did some jumping jacks to warm up. Dad paced around the living room while the CD player blasted “Blue Moon.” Dad thought it might lure Mom out of bed because she used to love that song. Now all she listens to are annoying tapes with chirping birds and ocean sounds. Dad says it’s a mid-life crisis, but I think she’s just going nuts. At the dining room table, Jordan shovelled chips into his mouth. “I’m tired,” he whined. What a brat. Dad left his USA shopping list on the counter: Fish smoker, Beef jerky, Bubble lights for the Christmas tree. You can’t get bubble lights in Canada, but Dad knows where to buy them in Missoula. He knows a lot about the USA even though he’s Canadian.

  Mom and Dad met at a music festival in Nevada. Mom had been living in a tin can trailer with a snake charmer and a fortune teller named Ramona. Ramona had already told Mom about Dad, so love at first sight didn’t come as a surprise to anyone but him. I can’t imagine Mom living with snakes, but Dad swears it’s true. “You should’ve seen,” he said. “All different shapes and sizes. One of the pythons ate the neighbour’s dog.”

  After breakfast, I helped Dad pack up the Subaru. Suitcases, more suitcases, pillows so me and Jordan could have fights, a radar detector, and pork rinds to snack on. Mom was still in bed, even though we were ready to leave.

  “Mary!” Dad yelled. “Get your ass out here right now!”

  He sent me and Jordan to wait in the car. When he came out with Mom, she was wearing sunglasses, even though it was dark outside. She slid into the passenger seat and put on her seatbelt.

  “Everyone buckled up?” she asked.

  “Yes!” we said in unison.

  Mom twisted around in her seat to check. Jordan had a pillow over his lap.

  “Show me,” she said.

  “It hurts my stomach!” Jordan whined.

  “Jordan!” Mom barked. She flipped up her sunglasses and gave him the evil eye. The whites around the irises were cracked like junkyard windshields. She stared him down until he buckled up.

  Dad backed the Subaru out of the driveway and accidentally knocked over the neighbour’s trash can. He didn’t even bother to get out and pick up the garbage.

  The car smelled like old Chinese takeout and turpentine—the stench was coming from Mom. Dad sniffed the air and rolled down the window, even though it was snowing. “Hey,” Mom said. “You want us to get sick?”

  Dad pretended he didn’t hear. He just kept his hands on the wheel and whistled like it was a fine, sunny day. You would’ve thought he was off strolling in a cornfield by himself instead of sitting in the car with the three of us.

  THAT NIGHT, WE stopped in a town called Malad. Malade in French means “sick.” It’s one of the few things I remember from French class. I almost said, “Hey, Jordie, it’s a town for people like you!” The doctors couldn’t decide, but Jordan either had ADD or Tourette’s. It must be Tourette’s because he’s such a spaz. You should see what he does to Mom sometimes. He follows her around the house and wrenches his arm back and forth like he’s a trombone player in a marching band. It makes her so mad!

  For some reason, Dad chose a pet-friendly hotel even though we left the cat with Grandma. The room smelled like wet fur. Jordan went in first and took an entire bed for himself. He took his Game Boy out of the stupid Big Bird tote he carries around like a baby and barked out every Tetris move, fast and snappy like a sports announcer: “L block comin’ in quick, gotta slide in for the home run under the Z block . . . square falling fast, missed it! Strike one, losing ground, code red . . .”

  “Told you we should have flown,” Mom said.

  Dad shrugged and turned on the TV. Mom took a bottle from her suitcase, poured something into a cup, and drank it in one gulp. Then she unrolled her yoga mat. A few months ago, she turned into one of those crazy yoga people. Sometimes we’ll be looking all over the house and find her in the basement, tucked into lotus position when she’s supposed to be making dinner or helping Jordan with his homework. Even in the kitchen, she alternates between basting the chicken and doing forward bends.

  Mom sat cross-legged on her mat, breathing loud through her nose. Dragon’s breath, she called it. Snort snort. Dad perched on the edge of the bed, super excited about all the TV channels. He flipped around for a while until he found something great: Cops. Everything was going okay for a while—I read a book, Jordan stayed in his nerd world, and Dad watched TV while Mom snorted on her mat. But then Mom got into a standing pose at a crucial moment during a high-speed chase.

  “Hey,” Dad said. “Get out of the way.”

  Mom ignored him. She reached an arm in the air and stretched her fingers wide.

  “Mary, for Chrissake, will you move?”

  Mom twisted around, turned off the TV, and resumed her pose.

  “Jesus fucking Christ!” Dad yelled. I thought he was going to hit Mom, but he just yanked his coat off the bed and shoved on his boots. The door slammed and the windows shook. Mom covered her face with her bony hands. I looked over at Jordan. He was still glued to the Game Boy. M
om didn’t move for a while and I wondered if I should say something. Eventually, she grabbed the bottle from her suitcase and went to the bathroom. I heard her lock the door.

  I put on my coat and went looking for Dad. Frozen, empty cars filled the parking lot. I thought maybe Dad would be in the Subaru listening to the Beatles or Jimi, but he wasn’t.

  I went to look in the park behind the hotel. Right in the middle was a small lake with figure eights scratched into the ice, but no one skated. I could see a van parked on the other side with someone in the driver’s seat and it made me think about those TV shows where creepy pervs lure kids into their vehicles. The door opened and someone came out. I thought maybe I should run, but then I saw a lady, not a creep.

  “Howdy,” she said. “Nice night, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Hi,” I said, feeling shy.

  “In the summertime there’s loons all over that lake. Y’ever heard a loon call?”

  “No,” I said. “I mean, I’m not sure.”

  “They sound like this: ahooo . . . ahooo. Sometimes I stay up all night listening to them out there, talking to each other. It’s really something.”

  Her name was Maureen. I bet she was old like Mom, but it’s hard to tell with some people. She had a nice smoky voice, like a country singer.

  “Are you gonna sleep in that van tonight?” I asked.

  “Yeah. It’s home, y’know? I travel all over the place, working through the warmer seasons. I’m a shroomer.”

  “Shroomer?”

  “Yeah, a shroomer. I pick mushrooms for a living. Morel season starts up in March, then I pick chanterelles in the fall. I dry ’em up and sell ’em to restaurants. I don’t work for nobody but myself.”

  “Do you live in your van?”

  She laughed in a way that made me believe she laughed all the time. “I guess I do,” she said. “That must seem strange to you, but it makes sense to me. You know where I’m going next?”

  “Where?”