Swing in the House and Other Stories Read online

  “And do you get paid well for all this cheap work?”

  “Ya, actually, I get paid quite a lot.”

  Later, as they left the gallery, Max said in his light, singsong voice, “Dinnertime. Your husband waits for you now.”

  Julie thought about what to say to this. Finally, she said, “Yes.”

  They had come to the gallery separately, Julie in her beige hatchback, Max on his gleaming black motorcycle. He walked toward his bike, sat down and revved up the engine.

  That’s it. No kiss. Julie felt both relief and disappointment. I didn’t really have the stomach for this. I’ll just drive home now, back to my life.

  Max said something that was lost in the motorbike’s roar. Julie pointed to her ears, shook her head and shrugged.

  “Sorry,” he said, as the bike went into idle, “Fucking noisy bugger, this one.”

  “It’s okay,” Julie said quickly. “I kind of like the noise.”

  Max raised his eyebrows, put his head to one side in an exaggerated, quizzical way. Like someone who was not really interested, only humouring her. On his bike, ready to go. But Julie couldn’t help it; the words came gushing out.

  “It’s very quiet at home. We live in this sort of rural suburb. It is very isolating. I live in a house that is just so… so cold. My husband never talks to me. Ever.”

  Max was looking at her intently as she spoke. His gaze warmed her for a moment; then, the theatrical eyebrow thing returned and, suddenly angry with both of them, she turned and walked towards her car.

  As she started her engine, she heard him calling her. She rolled down her window.

  “What?”

  “I was saying… I said… it sounds like you could really use a piano.”

  *

  One evening Patty called Julie and invited her over to watch a little film.

  “Max made it,” she said. “We were wondering if you would be interested in translating it and dubbing it in French. Do you think you could pretend to be a little girl?”

  Julie was too surprised to speak.

  “He is applying to film school all over Canada, you know,” said Patty.

  She didn’t know. She wondered why he hadn’t asked her himself. What was this “we”?

  “It’s not the sort of thing he usually makes,” Patty was saying, “you know, experimental stuff featuring fire, people on drugs, avant-garde music…”

  Instead, the subject of the film was little Angeline, who talked to the camera about herself.

  “I am only in kindergarten because I was sick last year so I missed a lot of school, and I can only count to thirteen and you have to be able to count to twenty. I live with my mother in the chickenhouse, but upstairs. My grandparents live in the other house, just across the yard. My father lives in Montreal, and he said he was coming to visit us, but then when we got to the airport, he wasn’t even there. We have a little dog, and once she ate a pile of shit, so now we call her Sheila the shit-hound.”

  Patty watched the movie. Julie watched it too, but glanced often at her friend’s face.

  “I wish I didn’t have hair like this,” Angeline was saying, pulling on her dense curls. “I wish my hair was yellow and straight and pretty like my cousin’s.”

  “He loves her,” Patty said wistfully.

  “Yeah,” Julie agreed.

  Later that week, Mike and Julie had guests to supper: two young women, Rikako and Yuki, and a young man named Hiro who seemed to be their common boyfriend, or some kind of pet. They were students from the university where Julie worked. They offered to come over and cook Julie and Mike supper at their house. Julie hesitated at first, but gradually understood that if she didn’t accept she might be committing a grave social error. She envied them this, their rules, the security of always knowing what to do. She told them, though, that such an offer was unheard of in Canada.

  “You can do it, but you know, if you go to much trouble you will make us, your hosts, feel bad.” She enjoyed their momentary uncertainty as they digested this information.

  “In this case,” said Yuki, who had a strikingly angular haircut, “we will bring only packaged foods.”

  Mike picked them up after work, and they all enjoyed a feast of Ramen noodles. Paul was thrilled and willingly sat in laps and exchanged exotic clapping games with the guests. After a while, Rikako, who was tall and wore her hair in ribboned braids, announced that they had a gift.

  “We did not want to embarrass you,” said Yuki. “So we spent no money.”

  Giggling, both girls nudged Hiro.

  “Ah,” Julie said in a bold voice, “so Hiro is my present.”

  Mike gave her a look.

  “This is my job,” Julie muttered to Mike.

  She thanked the girls for the present. “I never thought you would part with him.”

  “No, you see, they want me to sing,” explained Hiro. “But I told them that I only sing with music.”

  “Daddy plays the clarinet,” offered Paul. Mike said nothing. There was an awkward pause.

  “Well, Mummy says he does,” Paul added.

  “He leaves it at work,” Julie said without an explanation, since, as far as she was concerned, there was none. “I am sorry, Hiro. You will have to do it a cappella.”

  She was asking him if he knew what that meant when Rikako shook her head vigorously, waving her finger. She was looking out the window and had evidently seen something she had no words for.

  The five of them—everyone but Mike—crowded before the wide living room window and watched as something resembling a Trojan horse made its halting way across their muddy front yard. It was raining; it was hard to see, but Paul and Rikako agreed that there were at least eight pairs of legs involved in this scene. And some kind of structure, and a black… tarp? Then someone ran ahead, and with a pang of guilt, Julie realized it was Patty. She watched as her friend set a dolly on the ground.

  “Mummy,” Paul cried. “It’s a piano! And more friends! Mummy, we can have a real party now!”

  As Mike shot Julie an angry look, Max appeared in the doorway, his eyes registering Mike’s expression. He nodded at the group and said nothing. He was out of breath. Julie introduced everyone to him.

  “Ah, you are Julie’s students. I am charmed to meet you.”

  Rikako explained that they were students, but not Julie’s. “But Julie is helpful to us, like a good teacher.”

  “And you? You are a friend? This piano is a surprise, no?” asked Yuki.

  “No, I am just a student,” Max replied. “I just wanted to thank Julie for being something like a good teacher.”

  The Japanese girls exchanged a disconcerted look. Max spotted Paul, who was staring at him with his wide, dark eyes, and bent forward to give him a poke in the stomach.

  A chorus of youngish voices called Max’s name. A group of men and women, most of them in leather jackets, their hair soaking wet and sticking to their faces, were leaning on the piano, which was halfway up the front stairs.

  “I wanna help,” Paul cried in his flutey voice.

  “Yes, of course,” Max answered. “Can you say, ‘Heave ho, heave ho’?”

  Several heave ho’s later the piano emerged through the doorway, followed by Max’s friends.

  Afterwards, they all sat on the floor and listened to a man called Skunk play the piano. Patty told Julie that she had been wondering why Max wouldn’t come out dancing with her that night. “He said he got roped into delivering this piano.”

  “He used those words, did he?” Julie asked. Strange how, when she should have been feeling incredibly grateful, honoured, loved, even, everything seemed complicated and stressful. Maybe because Mike was standing at the entrance to the living room by himself, glaring at everyone.

  Max, sitting across the room with his chin in his palm, looked up at her then, his eyes gleaming like a cat’s.

  Max got accepted at film school at S.F.U. To pay for his courses, he moved to a cheaper neighbourhood, began to do constru
ction jobs, and put his little films on hold. When Julie called him with a question about the film she was dubbing, he asked her to meet him at an unfinished house he was working on, and bring the tape with her. He told her he would be alone.

  “You’re working on a house alone?”

  “Ya, I don’t work too good with other people.”

  When she arrived at the address in North Vancouver, she was startled to see that there were no walls yet. Exposed wooden struts, nails sticking out of boards. She heard the sharp screech of a chainsaw. She peeked around a corner and saw a cloud of smoke-filled dust and Max in a toolbelt, leather pants, woodchips in his hair. A cigarette was dangling from his mouth, and his face was tight with concentration as he bent close to a table to cut a piece of wood. When he looked up and noticed her, he let the cigarette and wood fall to the floor, and beamed.

  He held his arms out to her. His sleeves were rolled up to reveal his muscles, strange on such a slight body, and his skin, a striking coppery brown. They hugged, and he led her around the naked broken house, up a narrow half-built staircase, to the roof. The sky was overcast. There was a dreary murmur of traffic below. He showed her where he had tripped a few days before, lurched backwards, flown three stories down, and then landed miraculously on his feet.

  “My cat!” she heard herself say, surprising both of them. She put her hand up under his shirt and stroked his back. He purred. She looked at him wonderingly, dimly, almost recognizing something.

  “Well, I’d better get back to work,” he said, stretching, yawning, and winking. He gave her a gentle push toward the hole in the roof. There were two steps missing. She wondered what would happen if she fell through. How would she land?

  Downstairs again she started to say she had to go too, a million things to do before she had to go pick up Paul, but then suddenly he was grabbing her and walking her over to one of the worktables. There were more nails, tools, sawdust, splintery projects everywhere, but he didn’t swipe anything aside as he pushed her down on a table and leaned over her, opening her mouth with his, washing it again and again with heavy strokes of his tongue. She was not comfortable; she could feel the shape of a drill under the curve of her back and wondered if it was plugged in—but she lay back with a sigh and let her mouth answer his. Then, feeling more dizzy than aroused, she fell into a dream.

  She became conscious of her surroundings again when he leaned back and she heard him reach into his back pocket and rip open a condom. She soon felt stabs of pure pleasure, but it ended quickly and she fell back into a dream as he rested in her arms.

  She opened her eyes to see a dusty sunbeam falling on them. The grey had gone. What time was it? She glanced at the chaos around her, remembering, thinking of the errands awaiting her, and then, with alarm, of Paul, who would be looking out the window, brown eyes grave, understanding only that she wasn’t there.

  A few days later, Paul was excited: a rare bus journey. He stared at everything and everybody with round brown eyes. Julie held him by a belt loop as he kneeled and gazed out the window. They sailed across their rural enclave, crossed the bridge into town, quickly passed synagogues, temples, a shopping mall and a church, residential streets of hodgepodge houses, each structure ill-fitting in its own way. Paul, suddenly overwhelmed and exhausted, collapsed and slept in Julie’s lap.

  Then, as they approached the Downtown Eastside, where Max had recently moved, the bus began to fill with street people. Sassy, gum-chewing prostitutes; jittery, pencil-thin drug addicts; a chocolate-brown transvestite in a red wig—Paul woke up, his jaw comically open, as he began to sing—and people so poor and bedraggled they looked like characters from a nativity scene.

  They arrived at Max’s street, a row of abandoned warehouses inhabited by artists. Julie instructed Paul to get up and ring the bell and as he did an old woman in a blanket dropped into his seat and pressed a coin into his hand.

  “Wow! A loonie!” Paul exclaimed as they prepared to jump off the bus. “What did she give me that for?”

  “I guess because you gave her your seat.”

  “But we were getting off anyway,” Paul said, frowning at his treasure. Then he looked up at the people and the sidewalk around him. A woman with long, stringy grey hair shouted, “Hey!” at them. A little person was relieving himself in what Julie suddenly realized was Max’s doorway. Someone had written ‘ “Jesus lives here” on the boarded-up window. When the little man had finished, Julie said, “Excuse me,” and he let them pass.

  “It smells,” Paul said.

  They knocked on the door and waited for what seemed like minutes. Julie wondered if Max had forgotten about their visit. That would be like him. But the door swung open and there he was, crying, “Welcome, my sweeties,” in his wonderfully exotic way. He cupped each of their faces in his hands and planted a noisy kiss on their lips, like an elderly foreign aunt. He was wearing an orange shirt covered with cartoon cowboys and Indians. It was long, almost reaching his knees.

  Suddenly he held up a finger, swung around, then back, and began to cough violently, managing to utter, “Something in my throat,” between loud, plaintive barks. Paul looked alarmed. Finally, Max made a spitting noise, and seemed to spit on the floor, ending the coughing fit. A theatrical pause, and then he bent down very low and picked up four miniature farm animals, a tiny plastic revolver, a toy car, two marbles, a die.

  “I knew there was something in my throat,” he told them. “Here, you’d better take them.” He stuffed Paul’s little palms.

  Take us away, Julie thought. Put on a cowboy hat. Get on a white horse, and come to our house at midnight. We’ll be waiting.

  But when Max finally looked at her and returned her smile, his was grave and apologetic. This is all I’ve got, is what it said.

  On a whim, Julie decided to invite Max to Paul’s birthday party. The two were lovers now; they were each other’s habit. Paul had invited five small friends. The children drew pictures on the paper tablecloth as they waited for Julie to serve them juice and cake. Mike had to go to his studio but was due to return in a few hours. Julie wondered if Max would show, and if so, when. He could be counted on to be late. She wondered whether there would be awkwardness if he arrived at the same time as Mike. She was standing on a chair, wearing a white apron, trying to reach a bottle of juice in the cupboard over the fridge. The children were calling out their orders, not realizing they would all have to settle for the same generic fruit blend. Julie had a headache. The phone rang, startling her. The bottle flew out of her hands, hitting two of the seated children, before shattering on the table. Blood-coloured liquid washed over the table.

  Some of the children were shrieking, but Paul was oblivious. He ran to answer the phone, shouting, “My birthday, for me.”

  “Hello? Oh, hi Max.”

  Julie gathered up the tablecloth and mopped up the mess. A sliver of glass stung her right palm. The children wanted to know when they could have their apple, orange and grape juice. There was also a request for Orange Crush.

  When Paul had hung up, Julie asked what Max had wanted, and whether he was coming.

  “He said, Are you having fun?”

  “And?”

  “And I said yes.”

  “And?”

  “He wanted to know my favourite colour rope.”

  “Rope?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  An hour later, the children were running around upstairs and Julie was still cleaning up in the kitchen when there was a knock on the door. It was Max, in a motorbike helmet and his leather suit. In his hands, a metal toolbox, a small plank of wood, and a few feet of orange rope.

  “Where are the kids?” he asked, as they kissed. She pointed upstairs, towards the noise of complete chaos.

  “I like it,” he said thoughtfully.

  “And what’s this?” Julie asked, indicating the pile of rope.

  “A present for Paul. But it’s for everybody, really.”

  “Everybody?”

 
“Anyway, get out of here, woman,” he said, pulling at her apron and then pushing her away. “To the kitchen now. I have work to do.”

  Twenty minutes later, Mike was the first to see Max’s present. Julie stood in the doorway of the kitchen to see Mike standing in the entrance, looking enraged. In the hallway between the living room and the kitchen, Max had installed a swing. Both men looked at Julie.

  “Want to try it out?” Max asked her.

  “It won’t bear her weight,” Mike said.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Julie said, putting on a falsely polite voice, pretending that she had to be careful with Max’s feelings, that he was merely a foreign stranger she had to be gentle with. She was acutely aware that the two men had not said hello to each other.

  “Oh well,” Max said. “It was just for a little fun. Maybe let it stay for as long as it does.”

  He asked if Angeline was there. Julie shook her head. She hadn’t invited her, afraid she wouldn’t be able to look her mother in the eye.

  “Oh,” said Max. “I could have taken her home on the motorbike.”

  Mike rolled his eyes, brushed by Julie, and opened the fridge.

  Max said he had to leave. He pointed upstairs, where a collective giggle, a ball, and some sort of wheeled toy were rolling around noisily. “You give your boy a big smooch for me.”

  Julie walked him outside, wondering if he would dare kiss her in front of her house. His eyes were soft and lost in thought. He told her he was disappointed not to see Angeline.

  “You know, I often used to wish I was attracted to Patty, since I get along so well with her. I think that little girl could really use another adult in her life.”

  Julie watched him, surprised.

  “At first, she never trusted me,” he told her. “Patty had these feelings for me, and she didn’t like that. And you know, this father of hers always saying he’s gonna show up, and he never does.”

  Julie found it strange to hear Max describe himself as more dependable than someone else. She had never met someone who was more consistently late. She had a feeling nobody had ever told him off. She felt like screaming at him sometimes, but knew it wasn’t appropriate, given their sort of relationship. Their affair. Patty wouldn’t scream at him either, she realized, being hopelessly in love.