One Good Hustle

FOURTEEN




I DIDN’T STAY in Marlene’s room that long. Couldn’t stand the clumsy feeling, as if she and I don’t really know each other any more. I liked the part where we laughed about group therapy. But we shouldn’t have. Christ, she’s painting her face green to prove she’s nuts enough to stay in the nuthouse.

When I left Oak Shore, I didn’t want to get back on the bus either. Didn’t want strangers gawking at me. Feels like you can read it all over me: Loser Orphan Annie. So I’m walking home—no, I’m walking back to Jill’s.

At least last week I could imagine that Marlene missed me and wanted me there with her. And Sam. Where the hell is Sam?

Drew keeps climbing into my head. I hear him say I love you again and my insides feel squirmy with it. Thing is, he was probably telling the truth the second time he called—he didn’t mean it like that, he meant it as a friend. He loves me in that Jesus-y way. Not like a guy. The only guys who ever think of me that way are old perverts like Fat Freddy.

I’m staring at the sidewalk, moving on autopilot. Midway through July and now that the rains have stopped, it’s summer for real. The sun is so hot and heavy my clothes are sticking to my skin. These jeans are too tight; it’s a workout just to walk in them.

When I look up, I realize that I’m on Sardis Street—almost at our building. Like a homing pigeon. I don’t know why I’m going here. Part of me expects to walk into the apartment and see Marlene and me sitting in front of the boob tube just like old times.

We used to have a blast making fun of crap on TV. The best was watching glitzy beauty pageants—Miss Universe, Miss America. We’d heat up a frozen pizza and pop some kind of fizzy drinks and we’d time it so that everything would be ready before the show started. When the pageant music began, I’d always yell, “Release the hounds!” Marlene would laugh every time I said it.

Later on in the show, I might ease up and say something like, “Miss Texas is pretty.”

“Pretty good at fetching papers,” Marlene would answer. “Look at Illinois, I think she’s smuggling pumpkins in her pants.”

We’d laugh our heads off.

I guess I kind of do want to go home. I want to see for myself how messy it is. Plus, I need more clothes.



I always cut through the little path in the shrubs at the rear of the building to get to our apartment on the ground floor. But I feel like a burglar doing it now. What if I run into George or Nadia? I wonder if the rent is paid up. I wish I could just slip over the railing and go in through the sliding glass door, but it’s locked from the inside.

When I get to our patio, I stand there for a second, hand on the railing, squinting into the living room. Can’t see anything; the curtains are pulled tight.

Eventually, I walk down the cement path to the back door. I keep still in the corridor a few seconds, listening for footsteps or movement. The building is dead quiet.

Rushing down the hall, I jam my key in the lock.

When our door opens, the garbage-stink hits me like a truck. The place is sweltering. I check the thermostat. Holy shit, Marlene had it cranked up to eighty. I pull it back twenty degrees.

In the kitchen, dishes are piled up and the tap is dripping, one splat at a time on the top plate. It’s not that terrible. Definitely reeks, though. I open the cupboard under the sink. Fruit flies rise in a cloud and waft out into the air around me. The garbage pail is full and rotting.

Ruby tsks in my head, Disgusting. I’d like to see Ruby pause to take out the garbage before they load her onto a stretcher.

Batting fruit flies out of my face, I pull the pail out onto the floor, grab the ends of the bag and pick it up like a dirty diaper. The Dumpster is in the basement. I hate going down there. Creeps me out.



The cool cement of the garage sends a jolt up my bare feet into my shinbones. The slap of each step echoes around the walls. I glance over my shoulder, thinking about all the horrible rape stories that take place in underground parking lots—and slam face-first into George.

“Hello, Sammie,” he says.

Up close like this, George is enormous, a wall.

“And what are you doing with bare feet, you little rascal?” He reaches out and slaps my butt.

A stupid laugh comes out of me. I skitter away toward the Dumpster.

“Sammie-girl, how is your mother? She’s still in the hospital, yes?”

“She’s better.” The bag drips as I chuck it into the big steel bin. “She just had a—She fainted.” I head back to the door.

“Are you home all alone?” George’s voice echoes.

“She’s fine.”

He walks alongside me. “You give any more thought about the class?” His eyebrows form an A-frame over his glasses. “I told you that I’m coaching the drama, yes?”

He’s told me—about a hundred times. He complained that he used to coach great theatre actresses in Romania, but here all anyone wants to do is get acting jobs on crappy TV shows. If he’s so great, how come he’s stuck managing this dump?

“Thinking about it.”

“Don’t waste time thinking,” he says as he plucks my wrist up. “You got something.” My hand is sandwiched between both of his now. “I know what I’m talking about. You have great potential.”

I catch his wink through the tinted glasses he always wears.

“Ha ha,” I say, and pull my hand back. Marlene would be pissed off with me for not telling him to eff off. But I’m not sure if he’s technically done anything that bad. Plus, there’s the fact that George is the only thing standing between us and the street.

I reach the basement door and unlock it. “I’ll ask my mom.”

Pulling the door open for us, he follows me into the hall. “We’ll work it out, Sammie-girl,” he says, and pats my shoulder with a heavy thump.

I step away as he pokes the elevator call button. “I’m gonna take the stairs,” I say. “I’ll see you.”

I slip into the stairwell and run two at a time back up to the ground floor.



In the living room I open the sliding door and the windows and then go back into the kitchen and open up the fridge: nothing much here. The cheese that Ruby and Lou bought. Milk’s about to expire. In the freezer there’s a loaf of bread. I throw a slice in the toaster.

These jeans are cutting off my circulation. Probably why I can’t think straight: I’m strangling from the waist down. I undo the zipper and head for my bedroom.

Once my shorts are on and my sweaty socks off, I grab a duffle bag and start chucking in underwear and T-shirts. The floppy straw hat that Drew gave me for my birthday last year is scrunched on the floor of the closet. I’m lonesome just looking at it. I put it on my head. The smell of the straw reminds me of Drew at the Hollow Tree Ranch. You’re bad. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

The toast pops. Back in the kitchen, there’s no clean knife. I wash and dry one quick, grab the peanut butter and slather it on, take a big bite and feel better.

Back at the open balcony door, I take in fresh air and look at the shrubs and trees, and try to feel normal. Now that I’m here, I don’t want to be. I want to be back at Jill’s where it’s clean. Not cleanliness clean. I mean where it doesn’t feel dirty with bad memories.

Once I’ve popped the last of the toast in my mouth I head back to the kitchen. “Dirty dishes piled in the sink and on the counters. How can she live like that?”

There’s still a jungle’s worth of fruit flies staggering through the air. I walk over to the counter, pick up the soap and squirt some over the pile of dishes. The washcloth is hard and crusty.

I turn on the hot water. It ricochets off the top plate and gets me in the face. Shit! I swing the tap to the side. There’s barely room to rinse one cup. But I start in anyway. We’re not pigs, Ruby. We just have a lot to contend with.

That’s what Marlene always says. We have a lot to contend with. I used to like it when she said that. Made me feel as if we were put-upon in a sophisticated sort of way. She said it to Mr. Walters when he called to complain that I’d skipped out. That happened when Sam was in town last, when I was feeling shitty about how it had all played out.



Sam had already been in town a few days when he called. I think he often waits until the last minute to decide if he feels like seeing me.

I had started grade 11 a couple of months before, so he offered to take me shopping. Kind of a combined birthday present/new school clothes thing. Didn’t have to ask me twice. Better than the alternative: just before I started grade 9, he mailed me a bunch of clothing but it was all girls’ size 10/11—as if he thought I was still a little kid.

My dad never sends any kind of child support whatsoever. I guess he feels he has to witness each purchase. He told Marlene once that there was no point in sending her cash—she would just drink it all away. That used to piss me off; now I think he might have had a point.

I asked him if we could go to Pacific Centre Mall in Vancouver. He didn’t see the reason. Why deal with the hassle of parking downtown, he said, when all the Burnaby stores have the same stuff.

Easy for him to say. He gets to be downtown whenever he feels like it.

So we drove ten minutes to Brentwood Mall. Sam stood around in his crisp orange shirt and his fancy creased slacks while I yanked on pair after pair of jeans. I kept looking at that orange shirt of his. In the expensive stores, they don’t say “orange,” they say “apricot.” Marlene said he gets a lot of his stuff tailor-made.

He watched me stand in the mirror, inspecting each pair of jeans. He frowned a lot. “Aren’t those too tight? How can you sit down in pants that tight?”

Sam is pretty out of it in that department. Jill has to lie down on her bed to do up her fly every morning. Jill said Crystal Norris has to lie down, take a wire hanger and hook it through the zipper tab so she can get the fly up without ripping the crap out of her fingers.

Sam bitched, but he still took me from store to store and bought me whatever I asked for: a new bomber jacket with a sheepskin collar, jeans, tops, running shoes, sweatshirts and a sharp-looking charcoal grey pantsuit because I said I might apply for a Christmas job.

Early on in the spree, he asked about whether I needed “panties.”

Jesus Christ, he said panties! I hate when guys say that word. They sound like skeevy old perverts.

Pass! No thanks. I wasn’t about to get new undies with him around anyway. Let’s face it: I barely knew Sam any more.

He also toured me around the drugstore and bought me tons of stuff that Marlene hates to spend money on like wheat-germ-oil-and-honey shampoo, baby-powder-scented deodorant, Noxzema and zit cream.

We were probably together two or three hours but we barely spoke. He asked a few monosyllabic questions: How’s school? How’s your grades? Got a plan for later? By “later,” he meant after I graduated high school.

Nope. Not exactly.

Mr. Walters and the other guidance counsellor had just taken the grade 11 class on a field trip to University of British Columbia and then on another one to Simon Fraser University. This was meant to give us the flavour of each post-secondary institution, help us decide which way we might lean: toward fancy-assed doctor or sock-and-sandals social worker. Both schools looked like hell as far as I was concerned.

I figured there had to be other options. Even George’s acting idea.

“The manager of our building is a drama coach,” I told Sam as we walked in the mall. “He thinks I should be an actress.”

Sam didn’t answer, just kept those hard thin lips of his zipped tight. My mind flashed to his face the day he climbed Mel’s front porch in Toronto, the way his mouth opened in shock when skinny Rick shoved him down the stairs. I felt bad for remembering.

“George said he doesn’t usually let someone as young as me into his classes,” I explained to Sam, “but he thinks I’m interesting. Like, highly so.” I wasn’t going to take any damn class with George. I just wanted Sam to realize what a valuable asset I could be.

Before he could respond, a little kid started to scream just a few feet from us. His mother threw her cigarette on the floor and crushed it with her sneaker. The kid was down on the tiles now, wailing his head off, tears and snot all over his chubby red face. His mother bent over and grabbed him by the T-shirt. I remember the sight of her flesh bulging through her hot pink polyester stretch-pants, spilling over the elasticized waist. Welfare pants, I thought. Her blouse rode up as she jerked him onto his feet, smacked his butt and told him to knock it off. Welfare clothes, and welfare fat and welfare pissed-off. The kid choked it back, screamed some more and choked it back again.

I caught Sam’s look of disgust before his eyes snapped away. He thinks that’s us, I thought. Marlene and me. That’s what he thinks. My face felt hot.

He walked faster toward Eaton’s.

“Maybe you should learn a trade or somethin’,” he said. “Or why don’t you be a schoolteacher?” This from a man who referred to people with regular joe jobs as suckers. “I’m no sucker,” Sam used to brag. “I don’t carry a baloney bucket to work.”

“Like you’d ever say that if I was a guy,” I huffed. “God!” If I were a guy, Sam would teach me how to be a professional. I know he would. He said it before I was born. Then I turned out to be a girl. “How about I just throw in the towel and be a nurse,” I said to him.

Sam’s face lit up a little, as if he was impressed that I might end up changing bedpans.

“1956 called,” I muttered, “they want their girlie shit-jobs back.”

No response from Sam.

In the accessories department of Eaton’s, I picked four pairs of the priciest socks on the rack and then stomped into the lingerie department. Sam had it coming after that teacher crap. I made a show of holding up lacy black “panties” and he loitered in the aisle, with his back turned, hands jammed in his pockets.

After we left the mall, he took me home.

It’s always awkward saying goodbye to Sam. He wouldn’t come in, just sat there in the car, idling in front of our building. I gathered up the store bags and said thank you, told him I was sorry for getting cranky earlier.

He said he’d give me a call before he left town and gave me a stiff pat on the arm. “You just keep doin’ good in school.”

I nodded and got out of the car, and felt suddenly lonely. As if my father had just dropped me off at the side of the highway.

He waved. I did the same, turned and headed for the door.

I came into the apartment with masses of crunchy store bags. My Bonnie Tyler record was playing on the stereo.

“Sammie?” Marlene’s voice was thin and startled. She came out of her cave of a bedroom with big black pupils, staring like a lemur.

Still in her nightie, a pair of my argyle knee socks bagged around her ankles. Two years ago, Marlene wouldn’t have been caught dead in that getup. Then, somehow it got to be normal.

“It’s a heartache,” Bonnie Tyler kept rasping. “Nothing but a heartache.”

Marlene stared at the shopping bags and turned back to her room.

“What’s the matter?” I said.

No answer. I asked her again.

“I was scared he wouldn’t bring you home, okay! You’ve been gone for hours.”

“Where the hell was he going to take me?”

“Away. With him.”

“Mom, I’m almost sixteen. A little large for kidnapping, don’t you think?”

A strangled sort of snort came out of her. She slumped down on the edge of her bed.

“Can I turn this record off?” I said. “It’s depressing.”

“It’s your record.”

I shrugged, hauled my bags into her room and sat down beside her on the bed. “You wanna see what I got?”

Marlene watched as I pulled out each item. She fingered tops and T-shirts. She held the pantsuit jacket up to herself and looked in the mirror. I couldn’t make out the expression on her face.

The next afternoon, I came home from school wearing my new bomber jacket and jeans. I was feeling stylish and expensive—the way Sam must feel every day. The apartment seemed dark and bleak, though, after I’d been out in the sunlight.

Marlene leaned in my door and watched me toss books on the bed. “You wear those goddamn jeans so tight—why didn’t he buy you a coat that covers your ass?” Her s’s were sloppy.

I kicked off my new running shoes.

She chewed her cheek a second. “He just left.”

“Dad? What was he doing here?”

“What do you think?” She blinked at the floor. “Compensation. Wasn’t here five minutes before he started in.” Marlene put on Sam’s voice. “Come on, Momma.” She mimed with her hands as though corralling livestock. “Pushing me into the bedroom. Come, on, Momma, come on … Nice guy, eh.”

“What are you saying?”

She stood in my doorway and I sat on the bed and we stayed that way, staring, until her voice broke a little.

“I had to. He bought you all those clothes.” She pushed her hair out of her eyes and then steadied herself on the door frame as she moved back into the hall. “Never mind. You’re too young.”

A minute later, the new top tore as I yanked it off. I swore and threw it on the floor. Marlene came back and asked what I was doing. She didn’t look like she cared much.

I wanted to smash Sam’s head into the sidewalk. “He pushed you? That’s, like, rape.”

“It wasn’t rape. If he was with me, then he wasn’t with her, was he.” My mother’s expression moved from slack to something like her old smugness for a second and then she went back to her room and closed the door.



Her meant Peggy, Sam’s girlfriend. But I wonder now if it meant me too. Me and my bags of new clothes.

The kitchen sink is finally empty of dishes and I’m standing here with my hands in the dirty water, letting it drain, watching it swirl in circles and circles.

What’s wrong with me? I’m just like them and I’m nothing like them.

When I was a kid, Marlene used to laugh at how easy it was to read my thoughts. “You ain’t no poker-face, honey.”

I used to picture an iron poker, the kind people use in a fireplace. I took it as a compliment.

I get it now, though. They can read me and I can’t read them. I see what they want me to see. Although Marlene’s no poker-face these days either. The only sharpy in this family now is Sam.

When you mark cards, you mark the flip side, the side the other players—the suckers—see, but only the hustler knows how to spot the marking. A good hustler can steer the game so that the cards go right where he wants them, but I’m no hustler. I’m a gold-plated sucker.