	RodMer Short Story Package CC In Real Life
by Merike Lugus	for on-line reading now in your browser

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Here is Short Story Package CC a short story by Merike Lugus.

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This is the third in a series of five stories about an immigrant girl, Annika, who ended up in Germany, then Sweden and then Canada after WWII. This was not an unusual route for tens of thousands of DP's, or Displaced Persons, as they were called.

Annika, now age thirteen, has made the basketball team, but is struggling to hold on to her sense of accomplishment and to the importance of her own feelings when they come up against her father's vast universe of drama and loss.

IN REAL LIFE

Approximately 4,400 words

Annika is walking down the street with three princesses.

She laughs inwardly. She has no container for his kind of happiness. It rushes in and out as through a sieve. By the time she reaches Elm St., she expects, it might all have run out.

Whatever else happens, she thinks, I still made the team.

The princesses are smiling at her. Annika is dazzled, sees them as an indivisible trinity. They ruled the team the year before, and will again this year. Next year they'll be in high school. Tall, slender, their hair shines like copper, ebony, chestnut. Their mouths are supple, free to spit, swear, sigh, laugh. Tongues unexpectedly protrude and mimic panting dogs or lick at invisible ice cream cones.

Maybe she's good enough, she thinks. Or she's fooled them. No, she really did it. Those balls really did go through the hoop.

The form letter in her hand is damp. Her thumb is nervously stroking the paper. Tiny rolls of fibre come loose. She folds the letter carefully and puts it in her skirt pocket.

Carol's graceful fingers move along the strand of pearls around her neck. Coral nails. Perfect. Thin long hands looking so bird frail. Misleading, thinks Annika, knowing how they escort the orange ball down the court.

Sandy's fingers are playing with the gold cross resting between her breasts. Her wide feet are now squeezed into a pair of black pumps. Those same feet which held their ground, could not be budged. Her body, so threatening on court, like a cube of steel, is almost graceful in a Shetland sweater and plaid skirt. Her breasts, hidden by the shapeless gym suit and team marker, push out like hard cones through her sweater, a white bra gleaming through at the tips like snow caps on blue mountains. In the shower room Annika had caught a glimpse of Sandy bending over, coaxing her breasts into the cups of her bra. The cups have concentric seams. Two conical bull's eyes.

Where'dya come from? Sandy asks.

Annika isn't sure. She smiles. Looks down the front of her blouse, jolted back from her rapture of swimming with swans. Three royal heads turn in her direction. She feels hot, uncomfortable under the bright light of their sudden curiosity. What could the question mean? Which galaxy? Kingdom? Duck or swan? Who would come to her rescue when her back was against the wall?

Or had they simply noticed her accent, slight as it was?

She means what school, says Wendy.

Wendy is the quietest. Most cautious in the way she moves or speaks. But on the floor, every move she made was towards some larger purpose. She was always in the right place. In the clear, her hands already poised in the vise-grip that would receive the pass. Even in the short time on the team, Annika discovered her stillness, the space around her which singled her out amidst the mad sea of waving arms and torsos.

She wears no make-up or jewels like the other two, but Annika has heard she lives in the grandest castle of all. Her family has owned a big shop on Bloor Street for three generations. And somewhere, a factory.

In truth, this is Annika's third year in the same school with them. She has always known of Sandy-Carol-Wendy.

But, being a grade behind, there was no reason why they should ever have noticed her before today, before her three-in-a-row long-shots. Heads had turned. Who was she?

She, Annika, suddenly tall with four obedient limbs, had had an out-of-body experience in public. The inside of her head still reverberates with the solid thump against the back-board. The angle had been magic. Whooosh. Hands came at her, pulling and pushing simultaneously. She became one of The Chosen.

She shrugs off Sandy's question with a few inaudible words. To keep abreast she is walking one foot on the sidewalk the other in the gutter, scuffing the red and yellow leaves that have already fallen. She makes it look like a game, using the curb like a balance-beam, kicking the leaves to make them fly. Awkwardly aware of three choices: she could walk behind or in front or hobble alongside.

She's pretending to be enjoying the balancing act, thinking maybe they wouldn't catch the implications. Or perhaps the implications were at this moment being communicated telepathically. She decides to intercept the message, falls behind a bit and gets up on the curb. Walks as she imagines a young lady should, as if she's balancing a book on her head.

Later she would hear rumours that she had moved to the neighbourhood from Montreal, or Iceland, or Transylvania. No one asks her to clarify. Whenever she thinks of home, the necessity to describe it, she smiles and changes the subject.

They cross Walnut Street. A brief glimpse of the black hole. Very brief, just enough to alert her. Getting closer. Just a little flash of The Big Question. She knows what it is, pushes it away, pushes her father away. He pops up in another place in her mind.

From the corner of her eye she sees Sandy pass something to Wendy, Wendy to Carol. Each takes out a cigarette, places it between their lips. Carol holds the small green carton in front of Annika's face. Six eyes watch her intently.

It's an offer she has not dared to hope for. One she could brag about some day. A slender thread by which to connect herself to the three that rule.

She thinks she sees Sandy's eyes glittering with amusement. As if she were watching someone paint red lips on a child. But Wendy is already involved, squint-eyed, with the smoke entering her lungs, with holding it there, letting it swirl about her face. Carol's large brown eyes are warm as she proffers the cigarette, her mouth slightly open, a mother feeding her baby.

Yes or no. The requirement is simple enough. Were it only something other than a cigarette. A grasshopper, a shard of glass, a bit of poison, she might say yes. But now the excitement of walking down the street with the royal trio is dampened by impossibilities.

The place where she lives swirls with smoke. She breathes it in night and day. Only a few nights before, she had made a momentous decision. Up to then, her father had taken advantage of her diffidence to make her his accomplice. Through rain or snow, any time of night, he used his parental privilege to get her to go the corner store to buy him cigarettes. "Players, please", the large blue pack. Thirty-five cents.

Three nights ago she had said no. No more, never again. Get your own. Unknown insolence. Traitor daughter. In the dark, her heart beating outside her body, so loud anyone could hear. Stinging tears, new-born defiance clutched close to her body, a creature braver than herself. She had braced herself for a blow, but he did not touch her. Only grumbled. Then stopped talking to her.

For two days her father has not spoken to her. But she could never predict. Today he might have forgotten the confrontation. He might be filled with vodka, and then, who could tell what might happen?

And now she needs his signature on this letter in her pocket. Bad timing. Being one of The Chosen, being on the team involves trips to other schools. Involves parental permission. And a bit of money for-Annika had stopped listening as the coach enumerated expenses and responsibilities ahead. Her mother was still away, in that other country, visiting her own mother who was very ill. Bad timing.

An apology to her father was out of the question. She had been right to confront him.

But how, then? The signature she could manage. She'd forged it before. To be more precise, she'd made it up. Anyway, the school had no record of his real signature.

But the money?

In her thoughts she shed her father, bellowed him into the distance, her insides flowing like lava, streaming into words. Shouted away his horns, his fire, his face. He receded, shrank, became small and solitary, like herself, but on a different galaxy. No contact. No words.

Oh, daddy.

But there was another dream.

She and her father, a heroic duo on the balcony on the third floor where the pigeons nested and spent their summers, encrusting the railings, everything, with ... guano. That's what her brother called it. He said it in mock deference to her sex, as if she were too delicate to hear the word shit. He didn't even know she was thinking of using the word herself. He didn't know about the three princesses. That shit was practically their password.

She and her father on the balcony, united in battle. He with rifles shooting in a mad fury at the enemy below. She ripping up clean white sheets for bandages, covering him with bandages, trying to contain the blood. Blood seeped into each white bandage as quickly as she had got it on. United? Her father never stopped shooting, never noticed what she was doing. She ripped and ripped as furiously as he fired. There were never enough bandages. The battle never came to an end. Simply picked up the next night, or a month later.

Annika thought the dream was about the war. The big one that had made her father lose everything, his country, his friends, his job.

It never occurred to her that he had not lost his wife and children. Rather, it seemed his family was something he had to endure because of the war.

He recited their names, his colleagues, his university brothers, and how they had met their deaths, one by one. Siberia. Murder. Murder. Suicide. Foul murder. Siberia and gangrene.

Why, he wanted to know, had he alone been chosen to live on? He asked rhetorically, gesturing to an imaginary drinking buddy.

Annika stood by helplessly. She could think of no answer.

Nevertheless, she has finally decided to do something about the smoke.

She looks up at Carol and the packet of Exports. She smiles and says very politely, no thank you, at the same time takes in the quick exchange of glances. I told you so.

Annika notices that Sandy holds her cigarette like a man, like her father, with three fingers on top, the pinkie separated. Wendy and Carol hold it between two fingers, the way ladies do it in movies.

They walk the next block not speaking a word, their synchronized steps proclaiming their invincibility. Carol falls a step behind to bridge the gap and brings Annika almost into line. Annika is grateful to Carol for this. Wendy adjusts her step. Sandy's pointed breasts lead the way.

We're the team that can't be beat.

She wants to keep this moment forever, this moment which is taking place somewhere else altogether. She would gladly be their pet for a while.

At the next corner Sandy splits off down Shaw. Half-way down the next street, Wendy disappears down an alley-way, a short-cut to her house. There are no castles down that way, as far as Annika knows. Her perception adjusts a notch.

Carol and Annika walk on. The closer to home they get, the smaller Annika grows. She feels a nothingness simmering around her.

They're nice, she says.

Yeah, says Carol. She's down to the butt, examines it, throws it down and stops to stub it out with her toe.

What d'ya think of Chester? Out of the blue. She studies Annika's face with her large brown eyes.

Who's Chester? she almost asks, then remembers a surly face with a scar. A boy with a D. A. Blue denim jacket, hunched shoulders. There is something that makes Annika uneasy, but it's nothing she can explain.

I don't know, she says. Wasn't he expelled once? Being expelled, for Annika, was like being sent to Siberia, only worse, because it was your own fault.

A couple of times. Carol moves her head as if to toss a fly off her cheek. It was only for smoking in the school yard.

So, why are you asking?

Oh, no reason. Just wondered if you liked him.

Should she say, he's not my type? She's more interested in the spit curls on each side of Carol's face. They hug her cheeks and had stayed in place throughout the whole ordeal of the try-outs. Maybe she would try them on herself. The thought of something new, the possibility of changing herself makes her feel hopeful.

Can you keep a secret?

Sure. Annika can't believe her luck. Her mind is a velvet box ready to receive a jewel from Carol's coffers.

Promise not to tell the others?

Promise.

I'm in love with him.

Oh, says Annika calmly, having no idea how a true friend might receive such information. How the jewel might be scrutinized and in what light. She has seen girls jump up and down and squeal in delight when sharing secrets. Annika's mind is blank.

She knows nothing of love between a man and woman, boy and girl, in the real world. Sensation, a burning which later she would come to call desire, yes. Burning, yes. She is all burning. She even knows what to do when her body burns. Had discovered it by accident or instinct eons ago. A burning so strong she ignored her mother's disgust when once she detected something under her blanket, just below the tummy, scurrying about in a little circle. The relief would have no name until she came across the word ecstasy.

Did Carol experience the same burning? Was this what Chester was for? It struck her as dumb now, that she had not been curious or perceptive enough to figure things out. After all, she was not blind, not even stupid. She thought she knew, more or less, what Pat and Gus did in the park at night while she stood guard by the bushes in the moonlight. Now she's not sure. She knows about kissing and Gus's hands under Pat's sweater. Mysterious purple patches on Pat's neck. Whispering. Moaning. She knows about ripped clothing. But none of this did she relate to the thing she did to herself.

On a private planet, that's where she lived much of the time, words and glances flying over her head, caught by others. She saw Pat's mother anxiously waiting at the front door, asking detailed questions about where they'd been and with whom. Pat's mother who didn't even know her daughter smoked, never mind she reeked of spearmint and tobacco; who never noticed her daughter's friend was two years younger, perhaps because she was three inches taller. Pat's mother, who above all, must never know that Gus loved Pat: kissed her, threw her down, dragged her into the bushes, while she laughed and gurgled her pleasure.

Sometimes Gus kissed her, Annika, on the cheek, put his arm around her shoulder, his hand dangling dangerously close to her breast, called her a good kid for keeping their secret, Pat pulling at him, away from her, but laughing. Annika suddenly embarrassed that she scarcely had breasts.

Well, this summer has rearranged her body a little.

She wants to be a good kid for Carol, whatever that entailed.

Well, now you know, says Carol. I know it's stupid, but for a while I thought you maybe liked him, or something.

Chester? Her voice goes up incredulously, her nose wrinkles. Careful not to show actual disgust for Carol's beloved. Just enough disinterest to show there's no contest.

But don't you think he's a dreamboat? She asks with a sudden passion, her eyes like pillows.

Annika laughs, but she knows she will never be a close friend. Because she is uncomfortable and can't make her eyes roll or her tongue pant. She is out of her league.

I think he's nice, she says, and for balance, asks, Does he know?

I don't think so. But I hope he will.

The uncertainty with which she says it surprises Annika. She looks at her with new curiosity. Surely Chester would love her. But Annika knows nothing about Chester. Or how to make people love you.

He'd be crazy not to like you, she says slowly, careful not to let her adoration gush out.

Thanks. Carol looks at her warmly.

She turns in at her house, leaving Annika to go the next few blocks alone.

* * * * *

Love comics piled up under the sofa. A torrent of tears that threaten to spill out across the floor into the centre of the living room. She can imagine her father's anger when he slips on the pile, his contemptuous dismissal of her secret life. Her mother's quiet amusement, even more humiliating. They must never know her secrets.

There is no safe place for that stack. Her secrets are oozing from every corner of the room. The couch is her bed at night, her corner where she does her homework, and when no one is home, it becomes the place for her dreaming. She could not think of anyone she could trust with her secrets.

She ponders Carol's confidence in her, the simplicity of a life that would permit such candour. In her own life, the best thing is to be very still, very good, no trouble at all. Then there would be no suspicion, no reason to look under the couch. No reason to investigate into her secret life.

Love, if it ever came to her, involved anguish. That was clear from the sad faces of the cartoon women. They had huge blue eyes, like bathtubs filled to the brim, spilling over every time a man approached, or worse, didn't approach them.

The tears interest her. She might be good at this, someday, this thing called love.

She turns her attention to what is to come next. Ever since her father was laid off from work, there's been no way to avoid him. As the couch and the corner behind it are her space, so the dining table has become his. There's no way around it. It sits in the very heart of their third floor flat.

As Annika approaches her home it is as though she enters into a different, though parallel world. Her mind starts to calculate.

Chances were: 1. her father would be home alone; 2. she'd be the first to test his mood; 3. he might be sober or he might be drunk; 4. if drunk, it could be a good drunk or an angry drunk; 5. if sober, a reasonable sober or a sullen sober. 6. (a) if good drunk she would stay; if angry, she would go back down to the street. (b) if reasonable sober, she would stay; if sullen sober she would leave. 7. she might or might not be able to assess the situation without him noticing; if not, the Joker was wild.

She stops for a moment to formulate possible getaway plans.

In the distance she sees Vera going into her house with her mother. Vera's piano lesson would be starting right after they'd had supper. There was always a warm glow in Vera's home. Sometimes she'd let Annika play the scales she had just learned, coaching her on how to tuck the thumb under, gracefully, as she proceeded up the keyboard.

Vera has an older sister. Old enough to wear lipstick. Renata had informed Vera and her friends that she was in love and that it was serious. She had quit school and got a job.

One evening when Annika and Vera were playing Monopoly by the piano, Renata had joined to watch for a while. That's when she told them, as she brushed her long brown hair, what it was like to be in love. Like Heaven. She had sighed. Annika could see she wore more than lipstick. Her eyebrows were carefully arched with brown pencil. The pimples around her chin were oddly the same pink as the rest of her skin. She was beautiful in love. Her eyes and hair shone like those of the tearful heroines. There was no sign of tears, though.

Not many kids outside this close to suppertime. Where is her brother, Annika wonders. Only God knows what corners he inhabits. Where he goes after dark. His life is another mystery to her. Someone, a friend, had once called him an ass-hole. Why? And why did she think she could say this to her, his sister?

Back to the Big Question.

She closes her eyes. The orange ball whizzes across a blue sky at precisely the right angle and falls clean through the net. It's beautiful. She makes it happen over and over. Whoosh! and again, Whoosh!

Very well, but what mood is her father in?

Quietly up the stairs. Move silently along the hall, just far enough.

Father sitting by the table. This tells her nothing. Bottle of vodka in front of him. Her stomach tightens. His hands flat on the table. That's a good sign.

Or she could call on Pat. Pat's mother liked to see her come around. Told Pat she should be more like her friend Annika. It surprised Annika that Pat didn't mind being called dumb. She had tits and she had Gus. But Annika is getting bored going to the park with them. Bored with standing guard. On the spot, she decides she won't do it again.

Annika!

Too late.

Annika! her father calls out. His strong voice registers: friendly, almost encouraging. She takes a step forward out of the shadows.

But the way he stands up from the wooden chair, wavering on his feet, she can tell he'd been drinking a lot. This could still go either way.

He manages to balance himself, his weight distributed evenly on two feet. Knees bent, chest out, chin down, eyes leveled at Annika. He stands like that, a Samurai warrior taking the measure of an adversary, psyching her out with a studied smile.

What do you think of your father? he asks. He pulls his eyebrows into his fierce eagle look. When the eagle smiles, sometimes she can talk to it.

Annika shrugs her shoulders.

I made the basketball team, she says, working her way towards him, slowly.

I'm very happy, she adds matter-of-factly, bracing her fingers, her expectations, on the table opposite him.

She feels a vague desire to keep him informed about such things. Other girls apparently told their parents about events at school.

He smiles and nods his head, as if comprehending a joke. He folds his arms across his chest and she can feel the strength in those bulging forearms, those large callused hands. It's still not too late to run downstairs.

But something compels her to stay. And there is a weakness in her knees. She's not sure she'd be in control of her legs running down the stairs. She's his prey, frightened but fascinated.

Ah, Annika. Sit down, sit down, he says, gesturing with his hand as he drops into his chair. Yes, basketball, that is all right, Annika. That is good. But life, Annika, real life...ahhhh. Hmmm. He closes his eyes and begins to hum an old folk song.

His chest begins to heave. The tune comes out in short spurts between deep breaths. He opens his eyes and looks at her with fierce concentration. He's smiling now, and, to her astonishment, she realizes he's showing off. Then he takes his glass of vodka and gulps down the last of it and clambers back up on his feet. He sways precariously as he moves to the centre of the room where he resumed the Samurai pose. Elbows raised, his fists held tightly to his chest. His forward stance like that of an elegant stallion.

He moves with grace. The movement of passion, a taut circling. One leg slides forward along the floor, feeling every inch of distance. Stomp stomp. Sideways, slowly, one, two, three. Stomp, stomp. Then forward again, dip, sway, one two three, stomp, stomp. As he moves he continues to sing, eyes closed. The song comes from deep inside his chest, and then transforms, soars to a beautiful falsetto. For this he draws back his lips into a tight grimace. His eyes shut so tight that tears are squeezed into the outer corners. He sings in Russian and she doesn't understand a word. And yet, she understands everything. She looks on helplessly, a witness to an invisible life that had existed long before her. A life much richer, more fabulous, more painful, than anything she would ever experience.

All is lost.

To make the basketball team ... perhaps it truly is nothing, truly nothing. Yes, she wanted to learn the secrets of the Canadian children, to understand why they were happy. But even more than that, she wanted to know the connection between pain and ecstasy, for they were so clearly mingling in her father's face.

That night she tosses and turns, unable to sleep. There's no retreat from either world and no bridge between them. The three princesses march on through the night. We're the team that can't be beat! They are strangers, and yet...it seems to Annika that, at least, to their world there is an entry point.

She feels for the permission forms for the basketball team under her pillow. Gets up and rummages for a pen. Under the bathroom light she carefully writes her father's name on the line marked parent or guardian. For a long time she stares at the figure $20.

There'd been an ad on the bulletin board for a newspaper boy. The Globe and Mail. The paper was delivered before anyone woke up. No one from school would even have to know. It was a boy's job and she didn't like to be laughed at.

Back in bed, the branches of the Catalpa tree with its floppy heart-like leaves brush against the window. It's easily the most beautiful tree on the street. Its leaves are yellow now, half of them already carpeting the ground. Every night its branches are the last thing she sees before she falls asleep.

Whoosh!