Sharla’s husband, Harold, was waiting in his truck when I came out of the library the other day. I’d been working on a group project with Pammy, Cammy, Jennifer, and my new boyfriend Amos.
(The real reason we went to the library to work on the project is because there is a private room at the back, where me and him can fool around.)
The other girls dared me to french-kiss Amos in front of them. I did once, but then it got uncomfortable. I stopped kissing him and looked over at them.
“You guys look hungry,” I said loudly, without meaning to.
They blinked and looked away.
“You kiss weird,” said Cammy.
“Yeah,” said Pammy.
“Who’s weirder, me or you perverts watching?” I asked them.
They left the room.
I have to admit, kissing guys is not that exciting. They’re kind of drooly. The cute thing about Amos is that he stops to look at me, very soulfully, in between kisses. That’s the part I like best. I smile at him, and he smiles at me. Then, sluurrrrrrrrp.
I mean, what’s the point?
I’ve noticed that life seems to be full of unpleasant but necessary things. I think adulthood must be what happens when you finally accept that truth, and you get used to trying for something nearly as good as pleasure, even if it’s just the thought of it.
My mom is like that. The thing she wants more than anything is to be loved by a nice man. What she spends her life doing is working and watching TV shows and taking care of us. She spends a lot of time at Harold and Sharla’s, talking about how she doesn’t want to find a boyfriend. Somewhere in between, she watches television shows about nice men and nice women getting married and loving each other. From the outside, it looks like insanity.
It’s like the kissing thing. I can’t figure out why I don’t like it for more than a few minutes. Girl #1 likes it just for the fact of it – that’s she’s making out with a boy. I don’t want to admit that sometimes it bores me and it tastes weird. But I guess kissing is necessary, just like getting with boys and falling in love and getting married and having sex. Maybe I’ll feel excited about that later on in life.
Right now – see, here’s where the best of Girl #2 comes in – I secretly long to actually be working on the project for school. Reading, writing, thinking, studying – when I’m doing those things, a calm energetic feeling comes over me, like I’m being absorbed into the universe, doing the work of the universe.
The other day, I went down to the Slimes for a rendezvous with you. I was trying to get that God feeling, but I couldn’t find it. I used to be able to sit down there for hours, completely absorbed in doing nothing. I always came back full to the brim with you – steady, calm, throbbing, alive. But now it takes more work. I need to get absorbed in a project or something creative, and the doing is what brings a sense of your presence in me. I wait for it in Nature, but there is always the need to do, lurking at the back of my brain.
So anyway, I was working there at the library after publicly french-kissing Amos, and Harold showed up in his monster truck outside. At first I thought he was just there to give me a drive home, which was nice. But when I stepped out into the steamy cold night, he said, “How would you like a job?”
Just like that. Just one Wednesday night and all of a sudden I’m a working woman. Girl #2 can now add “shop employee” to her list of goodie-two-shoes accomplishments.
I start at the pet store early on Saturdays, before anyone else arrives. They’ve given me a key. And there, I have discovered another secret place where I can find you. At 7:45am, I slip inside the glass front door, turn on a few lights, and clean cages for one-point-five uninterrupted hours. Just me and the quiet expectant ruffling of birds. I sing and whistle to them while I methodically clean and re-line everything. And they sing back to me. I smell like dust, droppings and feathers by the time I’m done. The birds and I are close friends.
It’s very dark when I arrive in the morning and by the time I’m done, Sharla is getting there with armloads of flower supplies and other stuff. I can never tell whether she is fresh or crabby and I wait to find out. It can be either. When she’s had a bad morning, her upset never takes on a personal slant the way it does with my mom. She just gets a little snippy, and there’s not much joking.
These winter mornings are black and quiet with white snowflakes falling down. When Sharla comes in and starts turning on the lights, I miss the cozy near-darkness I shared with the birds. I help her open the store and get the fridges ready full of de-thorned red roses. After all the busy-making things are done, I’m set to dusting the fish tank and gerbil supplies. Finally, Harold comes in and I know there’s a light on the horizon. He checks my work and scolds me for not properly dusting the items at the back of the row. Then we siphon the fish tanks together. He is very tall and lean with a shock of auburn hair and an auburn beard too. He acts totally impersonal and personal at the same time, like a boss, big brother, friend, father and uncle all at once. It’s nice and comfortable when we’re together because I don’t have a crush on him like I used to obsess about Mr. McGillicutty.
There’s always a rush at opening time. Flower orders to go out, bouquets to be picked up. Everyone is stopping in for something. Occasionally there is a line-up. I help customers find their items and sometimes I am the cashier. I make $5.00/hour. I’m saving up for a fedora. There’s only one store in town that sells them and I’ve seen people wear them in Los Angeles on television. I was the first in this town to wear MC Hammer pants and I’ll be the first to bring back the fedora too. I’ll wear them together with shiny black shoes, and everyone else will be wearing a hockey jersey with snow boots.
The best part of my Saturday at the pet store is break time. Travis, the widowed husband of Marjean – he’s long re-married now with several stepkids who aren’t as nice as Marjean’s kids – runs a donut shop up the hill. It’s a steep walk, but they are the best donuts ever made. We don’t have Tim Hortons or any of those other fancy donut store chains, but we don’t need them. Sharla gives me ten bucks each Saturday and sends me to the donut store while the coffee is brewing at 10:15am. This is after all the dusting and cleaning and boredom are over. She gives me their order, which is usually just a few plain glazed and a Danish, and says I can spend the rest on whatever. I always get a long-john for myself and bring a whole assorted box back down to the shop. Pure, fresh-baked, Mennonite donuts.
I’ve been drinking coffee since beginning my job. Only on Saturdays and with so much cream. It’s the best thing ever with fresh donuts. Sometimes we sit there talking for more than an hour, and I can tell they know this is my favourite part and I don’t want to go back to work. But eventually Sharla gets me back at pruning rose stems and helping customers. She’s teaching me how to arrange and wrap flowers; I’m pretty good at it because I have an artistic sense, she says. After a day’s work I get almost forty bucks. And a big fat belly-full of amazing donuts. And a minimum of two cups of creamy coffee. So if this is what working life is all about, I can take it.