One Good Summer
The summer after I finished grade eleven, I moved back to London to escape my life. I lived there with an Italian girl named Gina Pezzi, inspired initially, in my melodramatic phase, by Friedrich Holderlin, ‘the William Blake of Germany,’ who prayed in a poem: “Give me one good summer.” Even after all this time, when I breathe in, I can still conjure up the scent of the mould and mildew that grew in the bottom corners of the kitchen of the drafty old house where we lived. When I listen, I can hear the clang of the hot water radiator that sat in the front window of the living room and shook when it reached its peak. And when I bring myself to remember, I can still see clearly all that went on and happened there.
It was at the beginning of that summer after I’d lived on Sunnypoint Crescent for a year, above the Scarborough Bluffs; it was that same summer when my mother began a love affair with the TV repairman. It was right after I’d brought home a kitten in a shoebox and named him Rundle—because he was too small, a runt, taken too soon from its mother, rescued from being drowned in a bucketful of water along with the rest of the litter. I used to soak my fingers in warm milk for him to lick, then later fed him from a doll’s bottle until he was big enough to drink from a bowl.
A week and a half later, when I arrived in London, I walked up and down Adelaide Street, searching for the house. Through dapples of sunlight came deep purple shadows on the skyline, azure at dusk. I found the address my friend Dave had given me and looked up to see one of those grand old character homes, painted in an odd mix of colours, at once both unique and familiar. Then, at the end of the cobblestone path leading up from the trodden-down hedge of blossoming rose bushes, I saw the girl. Somehow, I felt like I already knew the stained-glass window above the alcove, the wide set of stairs to the front door. Like a dog with a sixth sense of danger, I knew the narrow passage up to the apartment and its tarred linoleum floors. I knew the furniture and sideboard cupboard filled with chipped blue willow dishes, the oxidized aluminum pots and tarnished cutlery.
I arrived on the doorstep of the old house wearing my long, blue silky rayon coat and a silver Cleopatra necklace I’d bought from the Salvation Army. I balanced Rundle awkwardly in his shoebox under one arm, carrying a few books of Russian literature and Kahlil Gibran’s Thoughts and Meditations under the other.
On that first day, as I walked down the cobblestone path towards the front door before my friend Dave introduced us, I thought Gina looked quiet and unobtrusive. Easy to take.
She sat on the top step, wearing a sleeveless cotton top and blue jeans, holding an Export A between two fingers. She sucked and dragged in on it, long and slow, then exhaled. Her print blouse made her look very womanly, almost matronly, I thought. Her hair was still wet from her shower, and a meadow of soft golden tufts sprouted from under her armpits, like a Russian or European girl. A whiff of her deodorant drifted up into the air and lingered; a faint scent of baby powder.
Dave stood to her right, looking pensive. Gina glanced up at him, with a bit of a curled lip and an expression on her face that seemed to say, ‘fuck me if you’re man enough.’
“You’re Dave’s friend,” she said, with a slight nod and a nervous laugh, not bothering to rise to greet me. Instead, she sucked in another long drag. “And who’s this,” she said, sounding blasé again, pointing to the shoebox.
She was soft-spoken, but she had a bit of a presence about her, I thought. She was not overly pretty, though, with thin hair, a big nose, and a joyless mouth. Nevertheless, she gave me a crooked smile that momentarily transformed her when I said, “Hi,” and I smiled too, pleased that she’d asked about the kitten.
Dave knew Gina from the group home where he worked, and she was looking for a roommate too, having just come off a stint in a foster home that ended when she threw a party while her foster parents were on vacation, and their place got trashed.
In his book, Kahlil Gibran says, ‘He who loses his mother loses a pure soul who blesses and guards him constantly,’ and I wondered what he would make of this.
We shared the house with the new owners, a young couple with a baby who lived on the ground floor. Gina showed me around the apartment at the top of a narrow set of stairs. The house felt old-fashioned and smelled musty and cramped. In the bathroom, a clawfoot tub sat on polished black and white squares. A large window in the darkened living room overlooked a tree-lined street. A wash of nostalgia came over me as I thought of my bright, modern bedroom at home, with its glass door that led out into the garden. But then I remembered my mother’s lover, and it strengthened my resolve.
During that first week as I got to know her, Gina seemed free and easy, heedless even, as though she didn’t have a care in the world. Laisse-faire as the expression goes. After I’d hung out with her a few times, I noticed all the guys were crazy about her. I couldn’t understand it. She had an average figure and was a bit broad in the hips, but she dressed well in her colourful tops and prints that complimented her. She wore blue jeans, everyone’s uniform, but hers were always clean and neatly pressed. Her hair shone and smelled faintly of Baby Shampoo.
“She’s sexy,” Dave said when I asked him why he wasn’t the one moving in with her. “But you know what they say—it’s the quiet ones you’ve got to watch out for.”
But I still couldn’t see what the fuss was all about with Gina. I guess you had to be a guy to understand it. And because of that, I never would have thought in a million years that any guy could actually break her heart. Or that it would ever mean that much to her. She didn’t look like she needed anyone. And yet, what she seemed to want, more than anything in this world, was to marry Rome Kurlig—even though he was almost ten years older than her and she’d known him for only a few months.
When I first met him, I thought Rome looked like a drugged-out hippie who thought just a bit too highly of himself. Not necessarily marriage material in my eyes. He wore tinted, wire-rimmed shades most of the time, even indoors, and was on the quiet side too, like Gina. He was very handsome, though, with shoulder-length dark hair and a beard he’d run his fingers through when he sat with his elbow on his knee, deep in thought. An air of self-assurance hovered over him like he could take care of himself—and like he’d take care of Gina too. He sat languid and rigid most of the time, with his dark hair and sunglasses keeping anyone unwanted at bay.
“There’s no way I want to end up alone—a spinster. Or old, fat, and divorced like my mother. I want a family of own,” Gina confided to me one night while we were drinking gin and tonics. Suddenly her eyes looked softer, vulnerable almost.
She told me that her mother wanted her to move back home, and she couldn’t bring herself to tell her Family Services wouldn’t allow it. Gina went into foster care when she was fourteen due to a history of violence between the two. Dave had told me it was something about her coming home past her curfew one night and her mother charging after her, chasing her into her bedroom with a broom handle, ramming it at her stomach, then pummelling it through to the other side of the door as she slammed it in her mother’s face. She went to a youth hostel first, and they contacted the Children’s Aid Society, then they put her into a foster home. My parents had always been kind to me, had never laid a hand on me. I couldn’t imagine what that would be like, to be hurt by those who are supposed to be there to protect you. It was like Gina didn’t even have a chance, right from the start.
She asked me to come with her the day she went to tell her mother we’d moved in together.
“Fungoula, la merda, la fica, pisciare,” Mrs. Pezzi ranted in Italian, kneeling on a thick ragged towel as she scrubbed the kitchen floor. Crucifixes hung on the walls, and pasta sauce bubbled away on the stove. “You never for want to make me happy,” she cried. Gina was silent on the walk all the way back to our apartment.
Dave’s mother, Ruby, was a psychiatric nurse and advised me strongly not to move in with Gina. “She’s a very unstable young lady,” was all she said when I asked for an explanation. I hadn’t seen much evidence of anything that would give me that impression, though, and I thought she must be mistaken, being over-protective, trying to encourage me to go back home.
Gina and I both managed to get jobs for the summer, working nights twenty-five hours a week at the brand-new Ponderosa Steakhouse. My uncle had just started working in their head office and helped us get the jobs. It took up most of our time, between getting ready for work, getting to and from work, being at work, and then recovering from work. We were excited, though—our own jobs, our own apartment, independence. Despite protestations from my parents about me leaving home and not having a telephone, my father insisted on paying for one. Initially, I didn’t want to take his money. Afterwards, I knew I wouldn’t be staying for that long.
On opening night at the Ponderosa, Martin, the boss, handed us our uniforms—brown cowboy hats and short-sleeved dark yellow cotton blouses with brown bolo ties and plastic pin-on badges with our names on them. Chocolate brown culottes finished them off with a thick leather belt and a western buckle.
Martin wore the same uniform we did, except he had brown slacks instead of a culotte, and his badge had “Manager” stamped on it. He gave us a form to sign, authorizing Ponderosa to take a weekly withdrawal from our paycheques to cover the cost of the uniforms. Martin was tall with sandy-coloured hair and looked so impossibly young it seemed almost comical to be taking instructions from him. He even had a giant pimple in the middle of his forehead. After giving us our uniforms, he took us to the back room, behind his office, and showed us our lockers for our coats and boots and purses.
The next time we came into work, Gina brought her shoes and the rest of her stuff in a backpack. Then, while Martin was out on the floor, she filled it with items from the supply room—a package of serviettes that were to go in dispensers on the tables, rolls of toilet paper, a bottle of industrial cleaner and a few sponges. Each week she added to her stash.
“What?” she said when I stared at her the first time as she unloaded her stolen items out of her backpack onto our kitchen counter.
“My uncle got us these jobs. What if somebody sees you?”
“Well, with what they’re paying us, we shouldn’t have to buy our own uniforms, so now we’re even.”
“Why would you turn yourself into a thief over a few bucks’ worth of lousy cleaning supplies?” I asked.
“Oh, save me,” she said as she slammed a bucket into the sink and poured in some of the industrial cleaner she’d just pinched.
