Chapter 7: Lavender - Asbestos

Saturday, August 23, 1986

I had to go to the corner store to stock up on cherry gum before heading to the fort for the day. The kind that came in individual waxed-paper wrappers – we liked them better than the rock-hard Bazooka Joes. We called them five-cent gums. I had two quarters, two dimes, and a handful of nickels. Poulie was in charge of lunch – thanks, Camille! – and I was on gum duty. I skirted the vacant lot and then pushed my bike through the field of tall grasses and anthills that was too sandy to ride through. Tall cockspur and other grasses gently lashed my legs and grazed my thighs, my small sandalled feet and the backs of my knees damp from the dew still on the ground. Dandelions were tall and in full puff in the drowsy air that would stay thick until the sun sucked it all up around eleven o’clock. By then we’d be nestled in the arms of our big pine tree, in the cool shade, as our wobbly incisors bit into the soft white of our sandwiches. Light wafts of pink peppercorn rose up from further off.

A rattlesnake-like rustling caught my attention: a plastic bag of a translucent lavender was crinkling in the air. Yet there was no breeze. I knew in my gut that this call was meant for me. The bag had been dropped vertically, or nearly, leaning it upright against a clump of long grass, a step away. Through the thin shimmering plastic, I could make out a pliable, slumped object, but not its shape, and a red stripe – letters? My heart began to race for reasons I couldn’t fathom, and I started sweating too. I bent down to reach between two tufts of couch grass and cautiously grasped the edge of one of the bag’s handles. When I lifted it and caught a furtive glimpse of the nature of the loot, I was overcome by a languid dizziness, a sharp and stabbing fever. As a small fleet of tiny fairies sparked with a brightness that rivalled the sun, two violent conflicting emotions eddied inside me: a terror like my father’s gaze and an unprecedented erotic surge in my veins. So intense was the clash of these twin sensations that my first rational thought was that this bag and its contents must belong to my father – absurd given this strange location and the great range of possible scenarios for a pornographic magazine ending up in a field of long grass three hundred yards from my home.

I was too startled to take the magazine out of the bag. In my confusion and haste, my trembling hands could only summon the courage to open it wide enough to see what was undoubtedly the detail of a woman’s tanned body with a shock of brown fur between her legs and cheeks.

In a panicky rapture, I hid my loot long enough to regain composure and plot my next move – where, when, and how I might further explore this collection of unfamiliar images in peace. I could only conceive of this as a complicated, perilous operation. I’d summon the courage, of course I would; the opposite was unthinkable. But what would I summon the courage to do? As these questions raced through my mind, I made my way toward a blue spruce whose massive branches hung over the ground, forming a dry cavern near the trunk, into which I slipped the bag and magazine. My thoughts then gravitated to their natural endpoint, their abiding tropism. Poulie. Who was probably already waiting for me in our fort.

By the time I got to our tree, my cheeks, neck, and ears were all red.

Hi. Got the gum?

Shit! I stammered an excuse and headed back toward the corner store.

Once out of the pine grove, I began to run again, making sure my change didn’t fall out of my shorts pocket. But I had mental space for one thing only. As I ran, my every thought was on my magazine, secreted away under the branches of a spruce tree.

At the Jovi corner store, I traded all my coins for cherry-flavoured gums, five cents apiece. The lady at the register rarely bothered to count out the exact total, she was happy to round up. With my short pockets full of gum, I sped off toward our fortress.

As I ran, my every thought was still on my magazine, secreted away under the branches of a spruce tree. Could the corner-store lady tell I was keeping a secret? I hadn’t dared glance over at the magazine rack, especially not the ones on the top shelf, the ones with naked women, also concealed here in the store.

I was out of breath and a bundle of nerves when I neared the field of tall grass. What if the magazine was gone? Could someone have stolen it? I bounded toward the spruce tree and dropped knee-first against the rough ground at the tree’s centre. The branches scratched my forearms. I was sweaty, agitated, on high alert before the plastic bag.

I had next to nothing on me that morning, I remember, except for that bag, except for that secret I planned to share with my best friend – the idea had sprung up, fully formed and crystal clear. I was carrying twenty or so five-cent gums, I remember, and wearing nothing but my fruit-patterned short shorts and a striped undershirt and sandals, with sand crusted into my knees and red splotches on my arms; carrying a collection of pictures in a lavender, translucent plastic bag that I couldn’t quite decide how best to clutch against my small, damp, almost naked body. I worked myself up into a frenzy as I disappeared into the pine forest.

* * *

September 29, the previous year

My bliss turned to shame in a quarter of a day, something that happened all the time but almost never quite so drastically.

On that glorious last Sunday of September, Charlélie and I were busy closing down our fort before fall – mainly packing up our respective belongings (hammer, nails, pocket knives, slingshots, bungee cords, unused tarps, a garbage bag full of gum and granola bar wrappers). We started off as usual, basking in the lap of idleness, savouring the unseasonable warmth. Charlélie had brought The Seven Crystal Balls, which we pr -ceeded to read in our bowered room, together, side by side in silence, our backs against the wide trunk of the pine tree and our knees raised up. Most other things we read at different speeds – I was always faster, Charlélie eternally distracted – but with Tintins it had taken only a few weeks to find a corresponding pace, obviating the need to signal when it was time to turn the page. I was disappointed that Charlélie hadn’t also brought Prisoners of the Sun, the sequel to The Seven Crystal Balls, with the expedition into the snowy Andes and the character of Zorrino, two of my favourite things. As it happened, my accomplice had something else in mind. At any rate, from the moment Ragdalam the Fakir takes the stage, at the variety show Captain Haddock dragged Tintin to, I was fully absorbed in The Seven Crystal Balls. I must have read it at least five times before. The most memorable scene is of course when a fireball disturbs the eternal rest of the mummified Rascar Capac – He-Who-Unleashes-Fire-From-The-Sky – who returns to haunt the dreams of Tintin, Captain Haddock, and Professor Calculus. Charlélie slowed the pace a bit through the scary scene when the bony mummy breaks into the house. Thirty pages later, our reading had come to an end. Poulie grinned mischievously.

And now! he began, taking something from his bag, the highlight of the day. For your birthday … Rascar Capac’s bracelet!

Taken aback by this surprising gesture, my first thought was What about my gift for Poulie? Then I remembered that my mom had bought him a little Lego Space Shuttle.

But we’re doing presents tonight, I don’t have –

He interrupted me, all smiles: No, I’ll give it to you here! My mom got you another present, for later. He looked at his gift. It’s not exactly like Rascar Capac’s, it’s not as wide! But it’s pretty close! Poulie giggled with glee.

The bracelet of He-Who-Unleashes-Fire-From-the-Sky! Pretty, hey? It’s for you.

My second and subsequent thoughts – Where did you find it? How did you pay for it? Did you steal it? – I kept to myself, lolling in the pleasure of being given such a fascinating object. It was an elegant gold-plated metal cuff bracelet with an amber cabochon stone. Charlélie slipped it over my small fist onto my left wrist. His attention was exhilarating.

Do you like it?

Oh how I liked it. There were a few simple spirals engraved around the stone.

Have you ever seen a stone like this? It’s called a tiger’s eye!

I was grinning, beatific, swayed by his charm. A cloudlike silence descended. I marvelled at the way the light refracted off the gem, under Charlélie’s watchful gaze. His hair, the soft down just below his ears, and his princely eyelashes were bathed in the sunlight filtering through the branches of our hideaway. Poulie looked up, meeting my gaze, and for a moment the light bathed his face in an orange glow. Tiny coppery, almost red flames sparkled in his dark brown irises.

An eternity.

When Poulie asked what time our birthday dinner was, I answered that it wasn’t a birthday dinner, it was a birthday snack. Seeing his uncertain look, I added with an embarrassed shrug, My mom called it a ‘birthday snack.’ She doesn’t want it to go too late, ‘cause it’s a school night. Even if my birthday’s actually tomorrow … Anyway. It’ll just be my brother and you and your parents. I paused for a second. It’ll still be cool, though!

I’d never invited anyone to my birthday before, and I didn’t care all that much about birthdays in the first place, to be honest. Except for my present, which my mom always wrapped beautifully. But this year would be different. My best friend and I would celebrate our twin birthdays together. In these halcyon early days of a friendship that was a mere thirteen weeks old, we had already turned up a host of serendipities between our little worlds. One funny one was our age difference: a year minus a day. I was born on September 30, Charlélie one day later on the previous year. Thanks to the Act Respecting Public Education, Poulie’s parents had to wait a full year to put him in school, hence the great good fortune of our being in the same grade.

It’s almost four, we’d better get going. The Sunday silence of the mine was hard to get used to.

With a few quick moves, we closed up the fort, climbed down from our tree, and ran to my house, two kids infatuated with the simple joy of being together, simply and totally together. Our fealty was sworn that summer, sealed forever.

When we got to my house, my dad took in my smile and my bracelet in a single glance.

If one of the girls in the neighbourhood lost her bracelet, you should take it to the lost and found.

Charlélie appeared not to hear him, or maybe the comment went over his head. I felt sick to my stomach. My eyes stayed glued to the floor, and I had no idea where to hide my arm.

After the little triangular sandwiches – ham and margarine or egg salad with pickles – followed by my mom’s lemon cake, with tea for her, coffee for Pit, and beer for Camille, Daniel, and my dad (Dammit, Claire, we forgot to buy wine), and grape juice for Charlélie and me, we opened our presents (Lego, pyramid puzzles, Matchbox cars, a dart game, books). The Poulins left early since it was a school night. As silence fell on the house for the first time that evening, I headed to the living room. My brother was watching football as we waited for supper – just pea soup and soda crackers tonight, we’ve already eaten. It was one of my favourite meals.

As I made my way over, my loose-fitting bracelet slipped off my wrist and rolled across the floor toward my father, who was crossing the room. In a move so spontaneous it seemed almost like a reflex, my dad intercepted the object with a soft but accurate side-footed kick, making contact with force enough to crack a branch, sending it sliding straight down to the end of the hallway, where the cuff crashed into the wall and toppled over onto its side in front of my bedroom door. I don’t think Dad was exactly proud of his impulsive move; I was petrified with humiliation, too scared to retrieve this most precious of gifts. Without a word, I walked over to the couch and sat with Daniel in front of the TV, brooding with contempt and anger. As if there were such a thing as a neighbourhood lost and found!

On the screen, two armies of real men battled over a ball bouncing on the ground.

* * *

Saturday, August 23, 1986

With my purple plastic bag pressed against my stomach, I used my one free hand to clamber up the ladder of short boards nailed to the trunk, and then hoisted myself into our fort. Poulie was waiting for me, nibbling on a granola bar while he patched up a section of flooring, half boards and half branches.

The floor is too crooked, it hurts when you sit on it. I’ve been thinking: we need some carpet! It’ll dry quick if it rains. I’m sure Monsieur Joly has some in his warehouse! What’s that? Poulie had spotted my bag.

That, I said, feverishly and grandiloquently, is a surprise. Fate has spoken!

I knelt and pressed my palms down on the floor on either side of the bag. I could now make out the carmine letters through the thin plastic of the bag. PENTHOUSE. The moment was solemn, precipitous, fraught. I shot a glance at Poulie, who was settling down in front of me.

Sitting here is really uncomfortable, hey?

I ignored his complaints, fully absorbed in extracting the magazine from the bag, like an archaeologist peeling off a mummy’s bandages. The cover showed a woman from behind. Her back, shoulders, and bum were bare, and she was looking back over her shoulder, staring straight into the camera through the O in the magazine’s title. Curiously, the issue was exactly one year old. I opened it at random: a two-page ad for cigarettes, illustrated with a wicked sports car. Then, delicately, with my fingertips, I flipped through a few other pages – comic strips, a car stereo ad, a profile of a Vietnam vet – until I came to the image I had glimpsed in the vacant lot. The thighs, the bush, the flesh of her sex. Hands gloved in black lace, pearls around her neck. Red mouth, white triangles on her breasts. Everywhere openings.

An opening in my stomach. An opening in Poulie’s gaze.

I flipped through the pages slowly, breathing heavily. None of the other images I found – not the centrefold, not the extra-busty models, not two women writhing together in ecstasy – gave me the same thrill. Some of the poses disgusted and repulsed me, and I wasn’t old or good enough in English for the articles on Bolivian cocaine or dwarf bullfighters in Spain.

As if moved by a volition of their own, my fingers leafed back to the pages that had stirred me so. I was captivated by her tan lines in the shape of a bikini top, her paleness contrasting with the darker skin of her areolae, yes, but also by her tender, contemplative gaze and how the pearly grain imparted a haze that washed over any vulgarity. I was at peace. Was it the same woman on the cover? I was about to check the table of contents, to investigate further, when Poulie spoke up.

Are you done already? That’s not what we were gonna do today.

He didn’t exactly snap, but his voice conveyed a sense of tepid weariness. My mouth opened.

His: It’s just a bunch of naked girls.

Yeah, I know. I just thought that …

I no longer knew what I thought. Poulie shrugged.

Does any language on this earth possess a word for angry shame, crestfallen embarrassment, sad fear? The preposterous table of contents of this July 1985 Penthouse was of no help to me and clearly of no interest to my best friend. I was demoralized, dumbstruck, flustered.

As I closed the magazine and, with it, this chapter of my first encounter with pornography, Poulie tried to make me smile by shaking my shoulder. A few pieces of gum fell out of my pockets, which Poulie grabbed and stuffed into his mouth one by one. He salivated like a clown as he worked up to blowing a gigantic bubble.

For the rest of the week, this episode was all I could think about. I cursed my discovery, my choice to share my discovery, and, soon enough, my panicked decision to hold on to my stupid discovery.

I was nervous that my parents – unsure which of the two I most feared here – would discover the magazine I’d hidden at the back of a drawer in the small desk in my room, along with the bracelet Poulie had given me, the one I didn’t dare wear. I had cleverly folded back the cover of the Penthouse to conceal its nature, so that the cigarette ad on pages two and three made it look like a motocross magazine. But above all it was the fear that I’d pushed Charlélie away that distressed me. Tears welled up in my eyes as I dwelt on the disappointment I might have caused him. It gnawed at me that he might think I was a pervert or, worse, that I didn’t care about our friendship. I felt as if I’d given Poulie every reason in the world to hate me, or tell on me, or punish me. Or ignore me.