They went to see Gypsy. Even in the privacy of the theatre’s darkness Cyril tried not staring too hard at Natalie Wood’s thighs and cleavage, yet he need not have worried because Connie was so rapt she forgot he was even there. They sat in the seventh row, her favourite row, the perfect row, just close enough but at the same time far enough away that your neck didn’t kink. She sat deep in her seat, gripping the armrests, absorbing the silver screen’s transcendent radiance. There was Natalie Wood in pink feathers squaring off against her mother, Rosalind Russell, clad in black. “Look at me, momma. Look at me. No education. From Seattle. Look at me now. I’m a star!”
Seattle, just down the road from Vancouver. Cyril remembered going to Seattle in the Nash Rambler, the top down, his dad’s wrist draped over the wheel, his mother in sunglasses and a polka-dotted scarf, Paul happy watching the American countryside spinning past even if it was identical to that north of the border.
When the film ended they remained in their seats while the others moved in a slow herd up the aisles and lit cigarettes. Only when the theatre was empty and the lights came on did Connie seem to breathe again. She blinked and stood, slowly, and when she looked at Cyril he had the eerie sensation that she didn’t recognize him.
“You okay?”
She didn’t answer, she turned and headed up the aisle. They were out of the theatre and down the street when Cyril took her hand. She hadn’t said a word since the lights had gone down at the start of the movie. “Hello.”
She looked at him, and in a perfect Rosalind Russell—deep and sinewy—said, “I was born too soon and started too late.”
It was uncanny: she was Rosalind Russell, taller, older, with a sweet and agonized scorn in her eyes. All the way home she riffed bits of dialogue. Not Wood’s, but Russell’s. Striding ahead she whirled to face Cyril. “You like it, well I got it.” Clenching her fists at her sides she shook her chest. “How do you like these egg rolls!”
The last Monday before school resumed they bussed to Kits Beach. Freighters filled the harbour and limp-sailed yachts sat on their own shadows. As they walked along the sand Connie brushed her palm against the back of Cyril’s head feeling the bristles of his crewcut while he stroked her hair as though petting a mink. The beach was crowded but they found a secluded spot at the far end by a log, dropped their towels and plunged into the water. He caught her around the waist and lifted her high and they rolled and wrestled.
Baring her teeth like a shark she asked, “Would you eat human flesh?”
“Only if I didn’t know whose it was.”
“Yeah, that makes sense.”
“And only a woman. This is a weird conversation.”
“You think so?”
“Kind of. But I wouldn’t mind taking a bite out of you.”
She pretended to slap his face. He caught her hand and kissed it giving the palm a quick lick. She put her licked palm to his cheek then pinched his earlobe at which he caught her thumb between his teeth as if to take a bite. They swam to shore and waded out holding hands. She was wearing a backless one-piece displaying a surprisingly curvy figure. Her nipples stood as stiff as light switches beneath the sunflower yellow suit and Cyril desperately wanted to touch them. He quickly turned away and lay face down on his towel.
“Can you do my back?”
She was kneeling over him holding a tube of Coppertone. When she was on her stomach Cyril got up and poured the oil where her suit dipped to the small of her back. She moaned as he massaged it in, feeling the smooth surface of her skin, the bumps of her spine, the gentle ridges of her shoulder blades, the rise of her hips, and, within inches of his hand, her bum under the taut wet fabric and below that her parted thighs. He did the backs of her knees and her calves and stopped at the soles of her feet which were coated in sand. He envisioned sliding his fingers between her toes and then sucking them slowly one by one. He quickly put the cap back on the oil and lay down, his face turned away, studying the tiny fragments of broken glass in the sand, breathing the hot scent of the sea, feeling the towel against his cheek, and trying to will away his erection. He should have dug a hole in the sand to make room for it because it felt as if he was lying on a rolling pin.
Shutting his eyes he struggled to think of something boring, his job stocking shelves at the iga, making sure all the labels faced out, like good little soldiers: canned soup, canned peas, canned tomatoes. Tomatoes. Tomatoes was another word for breasts. But the cans were hard and cold and clammy, just like the IGA where everyone looked deathly pale under the fluorescent lights, especially Norm, the Assistant Manager, a humourless goof who did not appreciate Cyril turning all the labels to the left or to the right, but what else could you do to entertain yourself in such a boring job, a job that Norm seemed to regard as a calling? The pressure in his groin began to ease.
“You’re burning.”
His eyes opened and he looked up to find Connie leaning over him, smelling sweet and creamy with lotion. “I’m okay,” he said.
“Your back’s going to get blisters.”
“I’m fine.”
“Cyril, turn!”
When he did her eyes widened.
“What did you expect?” he said, sullen, defiant, embarrassed.
She drew her finger down the middle of his chest and stopped at his belly button. “Anything less and I’d be insulted.” For a long moment they remained that way, looking at each other, her finger circling his navel. He reached up and put his hand on her breast. Her nipple hardened under his touch and she put her hand on his and held it there—then she pushed it away. “I’m sorry, Cyril,” she whispered, “but I’m saving myself for my leading man.”
THREE
THE NEXT DAY was the start of Grade 12 and Connie didn’t show, nor was she there the following day or the day after. She missed the entire week. Each afternoon Cyril detoured past her house but saw no sign of her. Friday he went up the steps and knocked but there was no answer. Cupping his hands around his eyes he peered through the stained glass yet saw nothing.
When he got home he went into the basement. It faced south and the windows were large so it had made a good workshop for his dad. Cyril was ten when his father had died, and he had become obsessed with everything his father had used: razor, brush, hacksaws, screwdrivers, level, chisels, a wood drill with its various bits. Studying each item, weighing them in his hands, smelling them, he was convinced they were imbued with something of his father’s essence. He put his father’s welding mask on and looked at the world through a grey tint. Was it possible that the mask, having spent so much time on his dad’s head, held his dad’s thoughts? He began drawing all these things, as if by recreating them he recreated him, or so it seemed, so it felt, and over the years he filled sketch pads with drawings of hammers, saws, torches, boots, subject matter to which he continued to return. Now Cyril had an easel in the basement, his sketch pads and boxes of pencils and charcoal sticks, as well as a mirror and some lights.
He scuffed around the basement wondering what was up with Connie. Wasn’t he her leading man? The night she’d come over for supper she’d wanted to see where he worked. That had sounded so mature, so committed: “Where do you work?” As if art was his job. She had looked at everything with great care. When she saw the welding mask she’d put it on and went all stiff like Gort, the robot in The Day the Earth Stood Still.
He looked at the jam jars suspended from a plank shelf by a screw through each lid. The jars contained nails and screws and washers and hinges and nuts and bolts. The September sun angling in ignited the hardware in each jar like a row of light bulbs. The basement smelled of metal and concrete. His father’s welding equipment stood darkly in a corner: canisters, tubes, torches, even his overalls hung on a nail, all of it as it had been, untouched, as though to interfere with it would be a form of desecration, an unholy attempt to erase his memory. Cyril knew his mother still came down and put her face to his overalls. He’d seen her through the window, leaning there, face to the cloth, an image out of the bible. Cyril had done the same. They worshiped secretly in the cavern of the basement like members of a persecuted sect.