The High-Rise in Fort Fierce Page 6

  “Here she comes, Marly! Get ready!”

  Marly’s knees knocked on the floor as she tucked her feet beneath her thighs and balanced on her haunches. She was expecting to see Ms. Baker shuffle into the room, but instead there was a toad, right down there on the floor, its webbed and slimy feet slapping along the grooves of the wood. It was dark and green with swooping black lines along its jaw and a slow pulse in its upturned throat. It hopped and stopped, then looked around. It hopped again, then blinked. Already Marly was reaching out to touch it, a squeal rising in her throat, which she managed to choke off because too much enthusiasm was stupid.

  “It’s a wood toad,” said Ms. Baker, leaning on her cane in the door frame. “I met her this morning, and I thought maybe you might give her a good home. And you know what else? I thought Marsha would be a good name for her.”

  Marly’s eyes were almost as wide as Marsha’s. She touched her bumpy skin and imagined her hopping along the forest floor, everything cool and wet and all around the sound of life like blood rushing in her ears.

  “There’s a very interesting thing about Marsha, Marly. Do you know what it is?”

  Marly’s head moved from side to side, her finger following the toad as it hopped in circles.

  “She can freeze solid. Every winter, Marsha spends her energy freezing completely solid. And she stays that way all winter long, hard as a hockey puck. Then, when the summer comes back and the sun stays up all night, Marsha thaws out again and goes about her life. Isn’t that just amazing?”

  II

  Marly took Marsha home in a bulk-buy jam jar with holes poked in the lid and moss on the bottom. She forgot her chocolates on Ms. Baker’s living-room floor, but that was okay, because she left stuff there all the time. Ms. Baker didn’t mind. Marly walked along the bank of the long, winding river that drained into Little Raven Lake, skipping over roots and under branches, then onto the hard-packed sand and then back into the treeline. Her dress was getting a little dirty, but she didn’t care. She was done selling for the day. She wanted to spend time with her new toad, maybe in her room, or maybe in the woods. She wasn’t sure which was safest.

  She passed Carolyn’s property. Her family had so much money. Her backyard was full of ATVs and tarped-over snowmobiles. They had two purebred German shepherds chained to wooden posts in the ground. The dogs spent all summer outside panting in the sun, and during winter they curled up in stiff, mouldy blankets under the stoop of Carolyn’s back porch. Marly felt sorry for them, but they’d turned mean from neglect, so she never tried to pet them.

  She wouldn’t let Marsha get mean like that. She stopped to whisper this promise through the lid of the jar and watch the toad’s gulping throat.

  “Are you talking to a toad now? Really? ”

  Niles Willis was standing in the shallows holding a fishing rod in one hand and a thrashing fish in the other. He wore brown corduroy pants rolled up past his knees, and Marly knew right away that the T-shirt he had on was his dad’s because it was way too big for him and no kid should wear clothes with drawings of animals drinking beer. His lower lip curled out like a slug and he tossed the fishing rod ashore.

  “Does this mean that in addition to being a fat thing you’re a stupid thing, too? Is that what this means?”

  Marly tried to think of something to say, but all she could picture was Niles Willis on the back of his father’s four-wheeler, holding on tight as they sped along the side of the road, dust and sand swirling around them, and he looked both terrified and embarrassed to be seen that way, but she stared at him anyway, and Marly couldn’t tell if this was something she had seen before or something she was going to see soon, or maybe neither.

  Then a door slammed and Carolyn walked into her backyard. She threw a plate of gnawed chicken bones at her dogs and they lunged and snarled over the scraps. Marly held her breath, but it was too late. Carolyn turned her lightly freckled face to the river and spotted them. Smirking, she rooted her hands to her hips and watched.

  “Look at the pig talking to the toad!” Niles shouted, pointing, and then he broke into a sprint, water foaming around his legs as he sloshed out of the river. “Better beat them with a fish!”

  As soon as she started running, Marly felt her body jiggle. Ms. Baker was right. She’d eaten too much chocolate. Now Niles Willis would catch her and make her eat a live fish. She tramped through the shore’s long reeds and sucking mud. She felt it spatter her bare calves, saw it fleck the hem of her dress. Bulldog flies dive-bombed her head as she ran. She could feel poor Marsha banging against the glass sides of the jam jar. She could hear Carolyn laughing, Niles catching up fast.

  He threw the fish and it slapped her butt like two fat hands clapping. The sound sent Niles into hysterics. Marly tripped over a root, fell to the ground, and lost her grip on the jar. It bounced off a stump and rolled out of reach. The fish lay beside her and she stared into its terrified eyes and reached back to yank her dress over her butt, which had been exposed in the fall; she could feel her underwear bunched up where it shouldn’t be.

  She rolled over and Niles appeared, looming. Drops of sweat ran through the dirt on his cheeks, clung to his jaw, and fell on her lips. He tasted like pretzels when she watched TV. He held the jar in his hand, tossed it up and down, got a feel for its weight.

  “Pig with a toad by a fish,” he kept saying. “Pig with a toad by a fish.”

  He took a few steps back, planted his back foot, and raised his front knee. Marly pictured him watching baseball and eating the burnt kernels from the bottom of a bag of popcorn. He threw his front foot forward and launched the jar into the middle of the river, sent it flying in a long and graceful arc.

  The jar splashed into the water, sank, then bobbed back to the surface a little farther down the current. Marly scrambled to the edge of the river. There was nothing she could do. The breathing holes would suck in water. The jar would fill and sink, and Marsha would be trapped. She would drown.

  “You killed my toad,” Marly whimpered, but Niles was already walking away, fish in hand. Carolyn went back inside, the hinges on her screen door shrieking as it closed. Marly knelt in front of the river, watching the jar float out of sight.

  Maybe it would wash ashore? Before it took on too much water? That seemed possible. She’d think about it hard, will it to be so, because that was all she could do. Things like this happened to Marly. Each time they did, she told herself it was okay. She told herself she was less and less disturbed, which was true in a way, but only a small way.

  At dinner, she wore baggy jeans and an oversized T-shirt. She’d hidden her muddy dress under her bed upstairs. Her dad’s hands reeked of the fish-processing plant, like always. She imagined his hairy fingers soaking in fish guts all day long and his twiggy arms reaching out from behind his splattered apron, sawing and slicing, his boiling eyes locked on his work and his stringy hair pulled into a limp little bunch above the base of his neck. But whereas most people were turned off by the foods they worked with, Marly’s dad never tired of fish. Pickerel. Whitefish. Trout. Whatever came out of the lake or river. He got discounted product from work, and occasionally he splurged on vacuum-sealed fillets from fishermen all up and down Shorelines Road. He piled them into the deep freeze and her mother dutifully cooked them four or five times a week.

  They ate in silence. Her mother always finished first. She’d set her fork down on her napkin and settle her eyes on the serving plates in the middle of the table. She’d be hungry still, anyone could see that, but her needs could only be met with more fish, that was it, always more fish. She’d go for it sometimes, just give her head a tiny shake and refill her plate, but other times she’d stand up and walk around the narrow dining room, the floor creaking under her feet as she fixed their few crooked pictures: a close-up of Marly laughing in her crib; a wedding photo beside it, her mom pregnant and holding hands with her dad, the two of them standing an awkward distance apart. Then maybe she would pause below the tarnished silver cruci
fix hanging over the doorway. She would stare at it and her lips would move and Marly would try hard not to notice, because that way her dad might not either.

  But it didn’t really matter how hard she tried. If it got to that point, he’d notice eventually, slam his fork against his plate, and say something like: You’re making me nervous, sit down, finish your fish. Then no one would talk for the rest of the meal, which was standard, except when her dad got angry his hands reeked extra strong, and so the whole family would be trapped in the dense odour of fish, the raw stuff coming off his fingers and the cooked stuff coming off their plates.

  The trick, Marly learned, was to say something early in her mother’s consideration, before she passed on seconds, and well before she stood up to wander, because if Marly started talking, her mother would draw out the moment, even if it meant another plate of barely seasoned trout. Marly put her thumb in her mouth, picked at one of her molars, then took it out and said, “I had an idea today. It was really good, too.”

  “Fingers,” her dad said without looking up. “Ain’t you a dirty little girl playin’ in the bush? Come home and put your fingers in your mouth? Don’t do it.”

  Under the table, her mother’s stocking foot hooked and poked at the back of Marly’s knee. “What was your idea, honey?”

  This wasn’t the time to tell them about Marsha. There wouldn’t be a time. She’d have to keep that loss to herself. Because to tell that story, she’d have to admit to hanging around Niles Willis and it wouldn’t matter that she hadn’t wanted to, that he’d chased her down and Carolyn had watched and laughed. Her dad bought fish from Mr. Willis, and whenever Marly complained about Niles being a bully, her dad said she should stay away from strong young boys if she couldn’t learn to play rough. Probably she could’ve told her mom about it, maybe before bed, but that was risky, because Marly would’ve cried if she had to describe the way the current had swept the jar away, and if she cried too loudly, her dad might hear, so no, she resisted the urge to pick at her molars and vowed to focus on happier things.

  “I went into business!” She gave her fork a triumphant wave. “’Kay, so Ms. Baker always buys stuff in bulk, right? Like, for her garden, because it’s always getting washed away in the spring when the river’s high. She buys huge bags of soil and, like, big bags of fertilizer and bags full of compost, and she won’t say, but I think Niles helps her bring it out of the car, so that’s a nice thing he does. And Ms. Baker says she’s going to start buying sandbags to protect the garden when the river flows over, and she says that’s going to happen more often now, she can feel it in her bones.”

  “Old bat’s a kook,” her dad said, his mouth full. “You get soft spending time with kooks, Mar. You talk too much.”

  “Jim,” her mom said, and her dad finally stopped chewing and glared across the table. Her mom tensed a little bit, averted her eyes. “So what was your business, honey?”

  “Chocolate,” said Marly, giving her fork another victorious wave, and she explained her strategy.

  Her dad leaned back in his chair. His cheeks sunk in and out as he worked at chunks of fish lodged between his teeth. “Chocolate, eh? Don’t you spend enough time with chocolate, Marly? You’re gettin’ too big. It ain’t healthy to be as big as you are.”

  “Jim.”

  “Rose.”

  “It’s a business,” said Marly.

  “And what the hell you need a business for?”

  “To save for camp next year. So I can go with Carolyn.”

  Her dad hunched over his plate, stabbed his fork into a hill of rice, and chewed with his mouth open. “No camp, Marly. I fuckin’ said it, didn’t I? It’s too much money and you don’t learn shit at them places, anyway. No fuckin’ camp for you, not ever. Now get.”

  III

  All throughout the summer, bulldog flies lived and died. They were so common, people just called them bulldogs. Their fat, scratchy bodies piled up in the window tracks in Marly’s bedroom. They squeezed in through holes in the screen and circled manically round the window, smashing against the glass, struggling to escape. And that’s probably how they died, because of the sun, burning all day and night, baking their panicky guts away. Marly pushed her finger into their coarse bodies, wiggled it around, and ploughed them out of the track, over the sill, and onto the threadbare carpet. The poor flies must’ve been terrified in their last seconds, woozy from the heat as they spiraled from the sky. Then, in the moment of death, they crashed into a landfill of their brothers and sisters.

  Too bad her dad wasn’t an ugly little bulldog. She could hear him through the floor of her room, yelling at her mom, and why? Because Marly had put forward a business proposition? Why should that have made him angry? After she paid for camp, she could’ve helped out around the house, maybe got new screens for the windows. He should’ve thought of that. He should’ve been happy, but he wasn’t, because he was her dad, and that was that. If he’d been a bulldog, she could’ve trapped him in the garage for a weekend, left his body to dehydrate in an ugly pile of angry dads who’d wandered in and couldn’t find their way out.

  A plate smashed.

  Then another.

  Outside, the Shorelines was tranquil. Light winds stroked the grass and batted the loose siding or hanging plastic on the houses across the street. In the window, Marly could see her own dim reflection, her pasty cheeks clinging to baby fat, her lips crowded together by her chin and nose. Why were her parents so thin and she was not? Was it chocolate? Was that all it was?

  She saw Ms. Baker inching down the street, struggling with her cane in the rutted road, rubber boots up to her knees even though it hadn’t rained in weeks. Ms. Baker’s face was pinched and focused, and Marly could tell she was afraid to fall. Sandflies stormed around her fuzzy head as she shuffled to the bank of mailboxes across the street from Marly’s house. Maybe she was expecting a birthday card or a bill or a coupon booklet to Northern Groceries. Or maybe not expecting anything at all. Maybe just hoping for something, the way Marly hoped her dad would turn into a fly.

  Ms. Baker made it to the mailboxes and Marly thought about opening her window all the way and shouting for her chocolates—throw them away, or bring them over? She was trying to decide when an odd shudder shook Ms. Baker’s shoulders like she’d been shoved. The wind died off. Her floral gown fell slack. She dropped her cane and slumped against the mailboxes. They shook but didn’t fall as she slid to the ground.

  Marly called her name and Ms. Baker looked up, mouth wide open and all the pinkish wrinkles on her face stretched taut. Marly thought Ms. Baker was going to spit her dentures out again, but she didn’t. She didn’t do anything. She just stared at Marly and Marly stared at her, and then after half a minute or so the wind picked up again. A cloud of brown dust twisted into the air around Ms. Baker’s body. It swirled in the renewed wind and blew back down the road toward the old woman’s house.

  IV

  School started after that. A kid in her class said they were lucky to live where they did, because terrorists would never target them the way they had New York. No one knew there was anyone to target in the first place. The teacher nodded, but Marly didn’t feel lucky. She’d been having nightmares. Even though it was only September, an aurora unfurled over the river, bright green with purple spears. Ms. Baker’s bones flowed down to the road in front of Marly’s house, her skeleton clattering together as new pieces arrived from the grasping colours, and all night long she tapped her fingers against Marly’s window. The air hissed in Marly’s ears. Was it whispering? It was. It was saying she’d be alone all her life, just like the dead, just like Ms. Baker—rotten, cold, forgotten.

  She was tired at school and her teachers said the new year had started off very poorly and likely she would not be able to turn the momentum around. She was slowly deteriorating. That’s how they put it. Slowly deteriorating. Her mom was worried, always wanting to talk, sending little invitations, like a cinnamon heart in the centre of Marly’s pillow. But Marly w
as afraid to look at her mother: What if she collapsed on the living room floor, mouth stretched impossibly open?

  Her dad came home one afternoon and refused to eat fish, said he was sick of it, just like that. Her mom didn’t know what to do for dinner, had to throw out pounds of frozen fillets. They ate grilled cheese sandwiches the first evening, and pickles cut length-wise on the sides of their plates.

  Some nights, Marly dreamt of her sausage-plump fingers pressing numbers on a screen. She heard herself saying swipe-right-stripe-inside. For a while, there was a man to hold her hand. Then, for a long time, there was no one. One night, she was kneeling in an elevator with another little girl who wore blonde braids and the two of them were kissing a wood toad she held in her palm. This didn’t seem like a bad dream, not at first, but then there was a shift in colour, in the size of objects, and Marly was the toad and she wasn’t in an elevator; she was trapped in a jar and sinking in the river.

  She woke up, and her dad was in the room. He was sitting on the edge of her bed with his head in his hands. It was the beginning of October, chilly, and the dark was thick and sequined with stars.

  “You awake?”

  She nodded.

  “Those must be bad dreams, honey.”

  “Dad?”

  “What?”

  “Can you kill someone if you’re angry?”

  “Course you can. What a question.”

  She could smell his hands.

  “I think I killed Ms. Baker.”

  He laughed, caught himself. Apologized. “Think you’re a witch, do ya?

  “That old broad died of an aneurysm or something. Some shit with her brain, Mar. I was just chatting with her daughter this evening. Girl’s about ten years older than you, eh? Kinda lumpy when she was a kid, but not no more. Already got a husband, lucky fella. They were sprinkling the old lady’s ashes in the river behind the house.”