“Shall we, ladies … and gentleman?”
With that, Lish polished off the rest of the wine from her glass and mine. She grabbed the wine bottle, and, holding it over her head like a beacon of hope, led us out of the restaurant and into the dark street. I guess nobody had called us a cab, but it was probably a good thing. Lish threw up twice on the way home. She dumped the leftover curry in a puddle and accidentally dropped the wine bottle, too. It smashed on the sidewalk and an old guy looked out of his window and shook his fist. Lish tried to moon him, but it was too much work. She wasn’t much of a drinker.
We walked the whole way in the rain singing dumb songs like “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary” and “Show Me the Way to Go Home.” I taught Lish a couple of the songs my mom sang to me as lullabies when I was a little kid. “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right out of My Hair” was one. She used to sing that song with quite a lot of conviction. “Take Me out to the Ball Game” was another one. When she came to the line I don’t care if I never come back my mom’s voice would get loud and brazen and her top lip would roll up to her nose. Before she got to the one two three strikes you’re out part, she’d shift me around on her lap so she could do her umpire routine. At “You’re out” she’d say it like a real umpire, You’re really fast and high and out low and dragged out. Then, if I was in the right position on her lap, she’d slice her arm across and out in front of her with her index finger pointing to the closet door. There was just enough space between the bed and the closet for her to do this, but still, every time she did her umpire act, I worried that she’d thwack her hand on the closet door. Afterwards, she’d lie down with me and close her eyes, her chest heaving from all that singing. I’d watch my skinny arm going up and down on her chest until I fell asleep.
Walking home from the curry place Dill fell asleep in my arms and the twins walked backwards all the way to Half-a-Life. When we got there Sing Dylan was at the wall, scrubbing the graffiti in the dark. He stopped and looked closely at all of us. He said, “Good evening. How are you?” I was about to say fine when Lish lurched over to him and said, “The answer to that, my good friend Sing Dylan, is blowin’ in the wind.” And then, of course, she started to sing. Sing Dylan shook his head and went back to his scrubbing. I could see how the busker would have missed Lish.
The next morning the sun was shining. At about 6:30 Lish pounded on my door, yelling at me to get up and come outside, the sun was shining, the sun was shining. The twins had their pails and shovels, and the older kids had their beat-up old bicycles. Lish had planned a walk to the park on the corner of Broadway and Young. She said, “Even the mosquitoes are too stunned by the sunshine to bite.” She was wearing a hot pink dress. Her black hair shone. She stood right in the middle of a sunray that had pierced through the window into my kitchen. Little bits of dust flew up around her. She was eating a bagel with cream cheese. She told me I had a crusty line of red wine on my lower lip. By the time I had thrown on a pair of cut-offs and a t-shirt and changed Dill’s diaper and gotten him dressed and given him some cereal, the sun was starting to disappear.
We hurried outside and caught the tail end of the sunshine. It had shone for twenty-four minutes. The rest of the time we played in the rain. A couple of guys at the park were sleeping in the grass next to the sandbox. They were covered with a big orange shag carpet. They woke up when the kids started hollering and they said, “Good morning.” We played in the thunder and the lightning. Maya told me that the chances of us getting hit by lightning were slimmer than the chances of us being killed by terrorists. Lish and I lay on the wet ground. We tried to ignore the mosquitoes. Once you start slapping, that’s it, you’ll never quit, and you have to admit defeat and go inside. So we lay there quietly and agreed with each other that life was grand and we were made for just this sort of activity: lying on the grass, talking, looking after the kids. For Lish it was especially grand. She was the one who got the letter. We had to admit, however, that it would have been grander still without the rain and the mosquitoes. Eventually we had to leave the park because Maya and Hope had to go to school.
When we got back to Half-a-Life, Sing Dylan was outside trying to get the water to run somewhere other than into his apartment. He had given up trying to get the graffiti off the wall for the time being. When he was done digging and draining and piling and drilling, Sing Dylan asked us if we could help Sarah drag out his soaked carpet. It must have weighed two thousand pounds. Each of us, even the twins, grabbed a handful of wet carpet and pushed and pulled it up the stairs and out the back door. By this time we were surrounded by swarms of mosquitoes.
I thought about my friends from high school. What would they be doing now? When Dill was born, they were all really enthusiastic. They brought me and Dill presents and they asked to hold him and offered to babysit. They loved to hear me talk about his birth. “Didn’t it hurt?” Then one by one they stopped calling. Once in a while I’d meet one of them somewhere and they were always really friendly, promising to call to get together. But that never happened. I had heard that Sheila had moved to Toronto to study law. She was living out there with a lawyer in a place called Forest Hill next to a castle. I thought of Lish. I thought of the two of them together. Sheila had been really poor as a kid; her dad had tried to kill her mom and was eventually committed to some kind of looney bin. Her mom sometimes put make-up on one eye and forgot to do the other one.
Lish, on the other hand, had grown up in a wealthy home. Her dad had invested in the future, made sure they were all secure. Her mom stayed at home and sewed them Hallowe’en costumes and cooked their favourite meals. In the evenings they played board games together. They had a summer home in France and a French au pair to help their mom look after them there and teach them the right kind of French. Her dad flew in for a few days at a time. Now Lish lived in Half-a-Life, trying to raise four kids on welfare. So much for security. As my mom would have said, “Tricky life, this.”
We got the wet rug out onto the grass. Sing Dylan gave each of the kids a loonie for their help, even Dill, who had made Sarah trip on the last step. Dill tried to put the loonie in his mouth and Letitia grabbed it away from him and gave it to me. She had a very solemn expression on her face. Sing Dylan patted the kids on their heads and then he slapped Sarah’s cheek. She smiled and said thanks. A big glob of blood stained her cheek and Sing Dylan flicked the remains of the mosquito off his hand. Somehow his safari suit managed to stay white even with all that blood and rain and dirt.
That afternoon Lish came over to my place with the twins. Dill was having his afternoon nap, so the twins played quietly and Lish and I watched Y & R: our lives were nice and dull compared to those in the soap. Some people watched them to escape from their normal lives. We watched them to appreciate ours. I had heard of a soap opera in Brazil where the audience was allowed to vote on what would happen next: should Officer João Carlos go to the chair for killing those street kids or should he be promoted? Should Branca tell her chubby husband that he repulses her or should she just go ahead and have an affair with the handsome doctor? “Well, that’s an easy one,” Lish said. If it had been up to me I would have brought all the couples together. They would stop trying to kill each other and fool around behind each others’ backs and steal the kids. They would be funny, I told Lish, and instead of all that skulking around they would shout out their problems and cry and laugh freely and love one another and leave the kids alone. “Oh, pa-lease Lucy,” said Lish. “People don’t want to see that. They want blood and revenge and sorrow. That’s what makes them feel better.”