Rat Medicine & Other Unlikely Curatives. Lauren B. Davis
Lee-Anne’s dinner. It looked like macaroni and cheese, with Spam.
“Oh, gross!”
“What the fuck......!”
“My mother’s new carpet!” wailed Barbara.
The carpet, I must admit, did look spectacularly revolting. Even more revolting than pale blue shag carpeting usually looks.
“She was choking,” I said.
“You couldn’t get a bucket first?!? What are you, nuts?! Jesus, I’m gonna get killed,” said Barbara.
Lee-Anne seemed to be finished spouting vodka now and moaned. Her hands went up to her face and tried to wipe away the last of the vomit.
“Rose, you have to clean this up!”
And you know, I might have cleaned it up, if she hadn’t ordered me. I surely would have helped her clean it up. But I just didn’t want to be told to clean it up, as though I personally had puked.
“Barbara, I am not going to clean up Lee-Anne’s barf. It’s your house, you clean it up. I didn’t barf on your carpet! She did! Christ, she could have died!”
“Don’t be ridiculous! You’re such a fucking drama queen! Clean it up!” Barbara stamped her foot. She actually stamped her foot.
“Fush off,” said Lee-Anne, to no one in particular.
“No,” I said, to Barbara.
Well, I figured right then and there that I had worn out my welcome with my companions of recent weeks.
“Get out,” said Barbara, “You bitch, get out! Nobody wants you here.” And as no one spoke up to deny this, I assumed it to be true.
So, leaving them to clean up, I went home. And yes, I cried. But it was as much out of a sense of terrible injustice as hurt.
I saw Lee-Anne hanging around outside our school a couple of days later. She skipped out of her school a lot and would stand around chain smoking in our parking lot. I never could figure out why that was better than staying at the Catholic school. I half expected her to say thanks, or at least acknowledge what had happened. It was just the two of us, after all, with no one else to hear.
She stared at me.
“I hear you made me puke the other night.”
“You were choking,” I said.
“Lighten up, for Christ sake.” She snorted out a cloud of smoke.
For the tiniest, briefest nano-second, I thought I saw Lee-Anne’s eyes flick down to the ground. Just for a second, I thought I saw her drop her eyes. Then she raised her head and spit through her teeth. The slimy oyster wad landed on the hood of Miss Craig, the Phys. Ed. teacher’s, turd brown hatch back.
“Poor old Rose, you just don’t get it, do you?”
“Nope, I guess I just don’t get it.”
“Live fast, die young, and leave a good looking corpse behind. Words of wisdom, kiddo.” She put her cigarette back in her mouth and let in dangle from her chapped lower lip. She pushed her red gloveless hands into the pockets of her imitation leather jacket and stared at the leaf-bare trees, wind tears forming in the corners of her eyes.
I turned and went back into class, leaving Lee-Anne leaning up against the side of the red brick building. She blew smoke rings. Caught by the wind gusts, they blew apart to nothing in the cold November air.
DROP IN ANY TIME
Word of what happened to Stewart circulated quickly. Did you hear? Did you hear? Did you hear? The story swept through the streets like water in the gutter.
The Toronto neighbourhood was one of oak-lined streets and second hand bookstores, coffee shops and bars with tiny spaces called ‘open stages’ where on Friday or Sunday night anyone could grab the mike and read poetry, rant about the conservative provincial government or sing the song they’d just written.
Stewart knew every shopkeeper by name, knew how many kids each had; was recognised by every panhandler, plus Elio, the guy who ran the news-stand, depended on him to drop off a hot coffee every day on his way home from work. Stewart was a neighbourhood fixture, an always-smiling face. He was kind and so, if people made jokes about his bad comb-over or his brightly patterned vests, or his sometimes overpowering aftershave, they never teased him to his face. He was also, if the truth be told, a bit of a gossip. If you wanted to know anything about anyone in the neighbourhood, Stewart was the man to see. He knew where Mrs. Cheung’s daughter was hiding out when she ran away from home, and why. He knew the amount Mr. Davidson had to pay when he was audited last year and why the Campbell’s marriage broke up. He even knew the name of the girlfriend.
Every Sunday morning Stewart went to the Renaissance e for a vegetarian brunch. There he met with four or five friends and they talked over each other’s romantic problems, job problems, talk about the books they’d just read or were attempting to write, the politics that influenced them. He was the sort of fellow who made friends with strangers at the next table, drew them into conversation, and later exchanged phone numbers.
He worked in the printing department of the University of Toronto, copying reports and dissertations, brochures and lesson outlines. The job paid the rent. But he knew he was far more sophisticated than his career indicated. His real interest lay the healing powers of music and one day he dreamed of travelling to Mongolia to study shamanic chants.
“I’ve never heard of a sickness or an injury that could not be made better by listening to the Vivaldi’s Four Seasons,” he said. “You can laugh, but just try it the next time you get a bad cold.”
On a day in June, warm enough that you could finally do without a jacket, Stewart stood in line to pay for his Globe and Mail and noticed a boy standing behind him. He was eighteen, or nineteen, tall and lanky, dressed like a million other kids his age: running shoes, jeans, a T-shirt that read “There’s no such thing as gravity, the earth just sucks.” He wore a gold ring through the right side of his lower lip.
“The news just keeps getting worse and worse, doesn’t it? Just for once I’d like to see something in the paper about someone not doing something despicable to someone else, wouldn’t you?” said Stewart.
“Yeah, I guess. What a world, eh?”
That was pretty much the extent of the conversation, but it was enough to make them remember each other the next time they passed in the street and Stewart said hello. The kid asked Stewart if he could spare any change. Stewart gave him a couple of ‘loonies’ and introduced himself. The kid said his name was Philip.
And so it went. Stewart and Philip met in the street, turning the corner, in the convenience store, in the donut shop on Bloor and St. George. Once or twice they struck up a conversation. Stewart bought Philip cups of coffee, heard about his troubles. He had that knack. People he barely knew were always telling him their troubles.
Philip told Stewart how hard it was to make ends meet, to pay the rent on the room he shared with his girlfriend, Pam. Philip said he’d had to sell his stereo, his guitar. He was looking for work, he said. Stewart sympathised. Times were hard. Now and then he slipped the kid twenty bucks, bought him a hamburger, or gave him a few dollars for bus tokens, just to help out. He liked Philip, felt a soft spot for the kid. He wanted to do what he could to make his life a little easier until his situation improved.
Once he invited Philip to eat at his apartment. The kid sat hunched over his pasta, fiddling with the ring in his lip, the pierced hole red and inflamed, slightly crusted with infection. It made Stewart a little queasy to watch, and he spent the time focused on fussing about the tiny kitchen. Philip seemed ill at ease, looking around constantly and shifting in his seat. Stewart put this down to Philip’s embarrassment with is own reduced circumstances. He concluded this was why he’d never learned where Philip lived - because it would make him uncomfortable to have Stewart see his dingy lodgings.
Late