All the Anxious Girls on Earth Read online

  ZSUZSI GARTNER

  All the Anxious Girls on Earth

  Zsuzsi Gartner is an award-winning journalist and fiction writer who has worked as a senior editor at Saturday Night magazine, books editor at The Georgia Straight, and as a newspaper reporter and current affairs TV producer. Her short stories have been published in numerous literary magazines as well as in Saturday Night, Western Living, and The Canadian Forum. She grew up in Calgary and has lived and worked in Ottawa, Toronto, and Vancouver.

  for my mother

  better a live liar than a dead hero

  —Tessie Greenglass’s advice to her daughter,

  Ethel Rosenberg

  contents

  How to Survive in the Bush

  The Tragedy of Premature Death among Geniuses

  City of my dreams

  Pest Control for Dummies™

  boys growing

  Measuring Death in Column Inches

  (a nine-week manual for girl rim pigs)

  The Nature of Pure Evil

  Anxious Objects

  Odds that, all things considered, she’d someday be happy

  acknowledgements

  How to Survive in the Bush

  The first thing he will tell you is that all the men who graduated with him from helicopter school—and they were all men—are dead. At the age of thirty-seven he was the only one left, so he quit. Now he reconstructs vintage aircraft in a hand-built hangar the size of a three-car garage.

  You will ask: “How do you live with all those ghosts?”

  He will say: “Every day is Halloween.”

  The last thing he will tell you is that you’re welcome aboard, as he folds himself into an impossibly small cockpit to test-fly a rebuilt 1941 Tiger Moth from the East Kootenays to Calgary. An impossibly long distance that far off the ground. You will search for something in his eyes but will find only cumulonimbus clouds reflected from a turbulent sky. The impossibilities will seem overwhelming and you will get into your car and drive, low to the ground in your bruise-blue Mazda, sturdy as a Tonka toy all the way back to the coastal city.

  What will be more difficult will be what comes in between. The day-to-day survival.

  Make Noise: At first it will all seem funny. You’ll sing, with a Hungarian accent, “DarlingIloveyoubutgivemeParkAvenue!” But you haven’t worn high heels since high school. You loathe miniature poodles. Penthouse suites make you dizzy The contrasts will be more a matter of belief. You believe the bush is a place to go visit, not a place to live. It’s unbearably quiet at night. But love, you will think—great big, gasping, groaning, slurping, sucking, moaning, jubilantly insane love; that waltz you dirty, hold you to the ceiling, push you up against the brick wall love; that clanking, spewing, honking, cotton candy-coloured, tuba large, tom-tom patterned, choo-choo train whooshing through the tunnel love—will fill in that silence, make a wailing mess of the coniferous, deciduous night that shrinks you down, makes you small. But his kisses will fall like moths. He will wrap you in a lazy, silky cocoon. The silence will grow more intense.

  You have a friend who would be happy out there. A woman who notices the thinly veined, silvery undersides of leaves and has paddled a canoe on a Northern Ontario lake within yards of a moose. She can even name that flap of skin hanging from a moose’s neck. “Dewlap,” she tells you, but you always forget. Face to face with a canvas of Emily Carr’s thickly barked trees, her hands reach out, wanting to touch wood. You still think of landscapes as jigsaw puzzles, something to labour over in musty cabins while outside the rain conspires to turn the vegetation even larger and more ominous.

  But this friend likes women and although she’d appreciate the aviators way with wood, she would have little use for the things his hands can do once the lights go out.

  It will be your cowboy boots that catch his eye. Outside Helens Grill you’ll be unlocking your bike and this man will walk by. You’ll know he’s there because his shadow blocks the sun.

  He will say: “Nice boots.”

  You will tell him: “They’re riding boots.”

  That will make him laugh, although to you it seems perfectly normal the way the notched heels fit the pedals of your sleek plum-coloured Kuwahara eighteen-speed. Giddyap.

  Later, he’ll make you leave them on, licking the rounds of your calves near the tops of the boots. That’s when he’ll tell you about helicopter school. Then he’ll also tell you that if you were a real cowgirl, you would have had to take your boots off because the smell of manure has never aroused him.

  The aviator will tell you about his twenty-four wooded acres. How one particular woodpecker has made its home on his land. How the stream—Doggie Creek—that runs through the property is clean enough to drink from. How its miles from anywhere. He will say this as if its a good thing: miles from anywhere. Your mouth will form the words: “It sounds so idyllic.” And, one hand cupping his warm balls, you’ll cast your eyes around your room, wondering what to take with you, wondering what you can do without.

  Play the Country Wife: At first it will all seem like such fun. You will learn to chop wood, splitting it clean, watching it in the fireplace later with poorly concealed satisfaction. You will make your own soap, although it congeals into gritty little knobs best used for deterring silverfish. You will plant an herb garden, already dreaming of running a stem of Spanish tarragon along your neck, making you taste of licorice. He will be amused by all this.

  He will say: “We do have stores around these here parts,” popping your soap into his mouth, pretending its candy.

  You will say: “Its more fun when its not so easy.” For a moment, you might even believe this.

  The CBC will come to the East Kootenays, having learned its chock-full of interesting characters. Vicki Gabereau will romp through the area, interviewing a woman who breeds wallabies and a playwright whose works demand that the audience sit high up in trees. Then she will come to interview the aviator, this man who reconstructs vintage aircraft miles from anywhere. The morning she’s due to arrive, he will take longer in the bathroom, shaving carefully, knowing the botched job he usually does, the blood stemmed with little pieces of tissue, just won’t do. And although you know that if it wasn’t for you liking clean-shaven men, he wouldn’t shave at all, you decide to be nasty. “It’s only radio,” you’ll tell him, as if he didn’t know.

  When Vicki arrives, breathless and larger than life, touching the well-fitted corners of the log house and exclaiming loudly, you will play the country wife. You’ll make soup and serve it wearing an apron. Sighing heavily, she will tell you, “I wish I had time to make homemade soup,” knowing full well she wishes no such thing.

  She will say: “What do you call this?”

  You will say: “Campbells.”

  Its not so much that you will miss working. Designing marketing campaigns for flavoured mineral waters does have its challenges, but you will find yourself becoming more and more preoccupied with the quality of lettering on the bottles. You used to dream of writing the great urban Canadian novel. Now you try to think up visual metaphors to convey sparkling clean taste. “At least its not hurting anyone,” your father always says, happy that you’re earning a living. Your brother writes poetry, which makes your father curl his lips inward until they disappear.

  Celebrate: The aviator will throw you a party, decorating the airplane hangar because it’s more accommodating than the house. He will winch up the Tiger Moth so it sways suspended over everyone’s heads, still a skeletal frame, too fragile to be airborne. He will not have made the wings yet, so the shadow the plane casts will resemble a lace cigar.

  Susannah, his ex-wife, will be there and you’ll prepare yourself to hate her. Y
ou will know these things about her: the woodpecker, the one you will hear but never see, used to calmly look over her shoulder as she read on the porch; she is a qualified ranger and speed rock climber; she speaks Nepali like a Sherpa; and she knit the Cowichan sweater he’s seldom seen without. But when she shows up, tiny and delicate in a brown poncho and holding a casserole of steaming lentils towards you, with wise child eyes, you will want to gather her up in the palm of your hand and tuck her under your armpit for warmth.

  Later, when you’ve drunk too much Canadian Club, you will start calling her Lady Pinecone and the three of you will dance arm in arm under the belly of the unfinished plane. He will be pleased you get on so well and you’ll feel sad that their marriage failed. This will make you want to jump up, grab tight hold of the planes frame and just dangle there kicking your legs while the guests gasp and the Doobie Brothers play some funky Dixieland. Of course, he will catch you mid-leap and pretend it’s part of a dance move. That night you’ll hunch over the sink and cry, “How could you have left that wonderful little Lady Pinecone?” He will splash cold water on your face and tuck you in.

  Write Letters: You will let your friends know it’s not just desire keeping you there, but that you’re reaching inside of yourself, finding inner resources you never thought you had. You’ve planted herbs, you’ll write, and corn. What you won’t tell them is that there are so many trees the plants don’t receive enough light. They are stunted. Dwarves.

  What you will write them are funny, ironic letters that describe you doing battle with the wilderness, as if the wilderness were a surly bank teller or a waiter who’s brought your Corona without the requisite lime.

  You won’t write them that you often stand for long hours at the front window, squinting out beyond the hangar where ferns curl under cedars, their spores loud inside your head. The mushrooms, out there where you won’t venture, moist like skin, will spread their fungal roots for miles under the ground, rumbling, forever rumbling.

  To be fair, the aviator will try to be understanding. He will see the real you—the you that walks in the city with a bounce in your step, cocky, stepping out among moving vehicles, not bothering to cross at intersections; dodging cars in some mad, happy dance or yelling at drivers who cut you off on your bike. Places to go, people to see. Out of my way, hombre! The insistent hum in the air addictive music to move by. Adrenaline snaking through your body like electric light, the voltage so high in your eyes the lashes burn to the touch, vibrating until you practically lift off.

  In the city you are hardly earthbound.

  He will say that he likes the way your nerves lie on the surface of your skin like antennae tuned into the world. But twenty-four acres choked with trees isn’t a world, you will think. Your friends will write: “You are so lucky getting away from it all.”

  Be Creative: He will even recast the wing nuts to screw the original windscreens back onto the Tiger Moth. Watching his concentration as he carves the wooden moulds—because those kinds of wing nuts can’t be bought anymore—you will decide to make something, too. You’ll punch holes in all the cutlery and string it up on fishing lines stretched across a row of cedars behind the house. When the wind comes up, the clatter will be deafening. The ringing of forks and spoons and knives will rush into all the empty places inside of you. He will calmly put wax plugs in his ears and continue to carve.

  He will believe in doing it all from scratch, which will lead you to believe in him. You who love instant cup o’ noodles and whose idea of homemade is buying furniture from IKEA and fumbling in the screws yourself. He will fell a Sitka spruce, make lumber, and then saw the planks into strong, flexible strips. He will reinforce the frame of the small plane with this wood, and construct the wings, which will then lie folded in racks along the ceiling. What you’ll like the most is the mounds of sweet-smelling sawdust all over the floor. It will make you high. You will pull him down, wanting to make love in a pile of Sitka dust, but he’ll pull away.

  He will say: “That stuff can kill you if you breathe in too much.”

  That something so soft could kill will surprise you.

  You will be thrilled when he comes with you to the city for a day, your rusty synapses firing again. But when you return, all he will remember is the guy who carried his bicycle seat around so no one would steal it. He won’t even lock his hangar at night. Oh, sure, you will think. Who’d want to steal a plane with no wings, anyway?

  Your brother will send you a poem in the mail, the mail you pick up once a week in the nearest town. Out there, you will even miss your letter carrier, the snarly woman who uses her pregnancy as an excuse to bend your magazines in half and crumple postcards from friends in exotic places. O snarly bitch goddess, you will think, come crumple my mail all over the porch and I will humbly bend over to gather it up and then make you mint tea with real leaves. But of course, no one will come. The mail will be delivered to a postbox number thirty-two miles away.

  The poem will be no ordinary poem, but a sonnet:

  Wearing a stiffened dress of scaly bark,

  She moves like thickened shadows through the trees

  That would much rather see her naked, stark,

  But then, unclothed, most likely she would freeze

  Her street flesh so unused to forest air.

  Nearby a creature stirs within its lair

  And soon a coffee-coloured feeling spills

  So slowly down her loins and finally kills

  Her longing to be one with all these beasts

  Of rooted wood. That she had thought the bush

  Was something more than ground gone wild and lush

  Was simply foolish on her part; a feast

  Of folly—a thin penny dropped in haste—

  A high ideal best left alone, not chased. (or “chaste”?)

  What do you think?

  your loving brud, the bard

  The fact that he wants you to decide will trouble you. But it won’t occur to you to fold the sonnet into a paper airplane and send it wafting into the trees. Lying in bed that night you will read it over and over, wondering if he’s just a bad poet or if he’s trying to be funny. You will dream that you, with your skin of birchbark, and Lady Pinecone are shopping for clothes at The Block, snagging runs in all those beautiful crepe de Chine dresses by Zapata while the funky salesclerks sharpen their axes behind the cappuccino counter. You will wake up wanting a long espresso and almond biscotti so badly your tongue throbs.

  Listen Up: Mountains don’t move you. On a clear day, you’re hard-pressed to make out the shape of the North Shore Lions. Yet there are people who don’t even need to look, the ones who can know a mountain with their hands. You will meet the aviator’s friend, a man who’s climbed St. Mary’s rock face so many times he can do it blindfolded. He knows where the rock will rise to meet him. He will come to visit after a day of climbing, and over homemade beer, bitter and weak, they will talk about altitude while you sit stone-faced, wanting news of the world. They will talk about how high they can climb and how high they can fly. Later that night you will write furiously in your diary: Altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, altitudealtitudealtitudealtitudealtitudealtitudealtitudealtitude, until, when a page is covered and the word blurs into attitude, you will finally und
erstand.

  Learn How to Fly: You will go out to the hangar at night where the Tiger Moth hangs slightly suspended like a wingless dragonfly. You will climb shakily into the cockpit. Inside the skeleton of the plane you will become more aware of your own bones—less fixated on your skin and your viscera. You will peer through the windshield, considering the possibilities for flight. The wind, you will think, the wind through your hair might be a good thing.

  It will be dawn when you return to bed, but he has not wakened, hasn’t sensed your absence. You will lie there watching him talking in his sleep to his dead friends, all those dear boys from helicopter school whose bodies were left scattered on mountain ledges, glassy lakes and runways. And you will go lie on the floor, pressing your body to the ground.

  The day he finally attaches the wings, he will offer the invitation to join him. But in your mind you are already hugging the highway and he is hugging the sky You will drive straight to the busiest intersection in the city, get out of your car and lie down on the sidewalk. There, with the rumble of traffic in your very bones, the nerves buried below your skin will rise to the surface again, gaining altitude, shyly at first, and then like a thousand-legged centipede will begin excitedly waving to all the people rushing by.

  The Tragedy of

  Premature Death among Geniuses

  I am in the garden with Edgar the Human Cheetah when it starts to rain something awful. Big hard drops that smack the tomatoes silly and flatten the pansies. I know I shouldn’t have planted pansies, they’re such weak flowers, but I like their little faces.

  Edgar beats me to the porch, of course. He is the Human Cheetah.

  “Quick,” Edgar says over cereal one morning. “Is any animal faster than a cheetah?” I am not quick to answer though, and he answers himself, his mouth full of Froot Loops swollen with milk. “A gazelle, you say? Ha! A cheetah can eat a gazelle alive.” Edgar tears his paper napkin in half to demonstrate and stuffs a piece into his mouth. I’m worried he may be too smart for his age. It’s one thing being too fast, but being too smart can be dangerous. I lie awake at night worrying that he might be a genius. He’s five years old and the perfect companion for me. If he is a genius and turns six, he will probably leave me behind. Then I remember: This fall he goes to school full-time and will leave me behind anyway.