Mitochondrial Curiosities of Marcels 1 to 19 (9 page)

Here's the main issue about sex. If it's the main thing we do then it has to be the thing that feels best, otherwise why would we, and if it's the thing that feels best, then why do we just hear about disease and pregnancy and how normal
all
sexual feelings are which, seriously, means what? Talk about goals, why isn't How to Have the Best Sex Possible on the curriculum, since it's the
only
activity the entire species is programmed for. As opposed to How to Dissect an Earthworm.

So, imagine MitoC having a groovy little time floating around in primordial soup with all its friends. Hey, make you a deal, buddy,
it says to a cell. Let me stay and I'll provide a continuous power supply. They do a deal, but it's not about domination because MitoC says, I'll keep reproducing my own
DNA
, as in, I keep creative freedom, nothing personal. Must be some sort of creature I can make that can demonstrate that. But that's not complicated enough for Riddell. There's all that oxygen stuff.

Deep thoughts of a sexual nature. Snowy woods. Do not belong together. Someone should have told me. Because
OMG
where am I.

Tree tree tree.

Sky.

Tree.

Tent.

Tree.

A few neurons fire, and, right, it's a hill. If I'm going down, I'm going the right way.

Tent? Anyone weird enough to sleep in a tent in November on Hospital Hill wouldn't normally be anyone I'd want to chat with in the woods, alone. And, yes, I do have the instant axe-and-spurting-blood images. Nonetheless, my feet move forward a couple of steps, then a new personality emerges with ‘Hey, there! Hi! How
are
you?' Jesus. I sound like Joan at Save-on Foods.

Only his head pokes out from the tent and it's very old with some appalling facial stuff going on. He's sitting on a big pile of clothes and possibly small animals and I crouch down. ‘You got any toast,' he says and I tell him no, but how about some crackers and Cheez Whiz. He nods, and I use my backpack for a table and make him Cheez Whiz sandwiches, talking manically the whole time about how I've got to bring the Cheez Whiz back to Grandma Giles and isn't it cool that it never rots. I don't know what my repulsion is all about, and it's something that needs
figuring out, but this is not the time. I stare at the ice around my feet, embedded with cigarette butts, and hand over three cracker sandwiches one by one. This guy's maybe done some hospital time. ‘Have you heard of Leonard Johnson, my dad?' No answer, but it's nice to hear Leonard's name in the quiet. ‘Okay, well, bye. Cool tent.' Once I'm far enough not to see his beard, I turn again and say, ‘Leonard Johnson, you know him?' I yell it loud enough so as many small mammals and insects as possible can hear it. He can't be completely gone. As long as you say someone's name out loud, they can't be completely gone.

All the way down the hill, I say
Leonard Johnson
and imagine the sound waves carrying it far around me. I head to the Sally Ann because whatever happens with Grandma, it will go better if she has a new picture frame. And I can't stop thinking about more Marcels which means eyes and therefore buttons. Anyway, I have to keep walking for my thoughts to sort themselves out from their current hairball.

Biology is soothing, maybe that's what Riddell discovered, as in we're all just a bunch of cells moving around. Possibly there's one massive organism and we're basically its bacteria. These trees scraping the hell out of my legs are stubble on a tiny part of the chin. Hopefully not inside a nose. I'm one of ten million bacteria on that chin, say North America, just like there are ten million bacteria in the mucous of the beard of that guy who might know Leonard and maybe knew something if I could have stayed unrepulsed enough to talk to him. Which I couldn't. Which makes me feel even more microscopic.

My cold sores hurt and what if Jojo B's right about the micro-macrocosm thing. I mean, do we make the same kind of deal as mitochondria? I get to the Sally Ann and there's a woman outside smoking, and I go in thinking, ha, what I need are more eyes for
more Marcels. So I ask the woman in the store where the picture frames and buttons are and she looks at me like I've asked for powdered elf bones and I think, So what deal did you make? Give me a job, I'll give you energy? No, it was Give me minimum wage and in return I'll treat people like crap. But what a jerk am I, because when she walks away and I think she's ignoring me, she turns around to say, ‘You coming or what?' and digs out a box of buttons from underneath a shelf. We're digging through them when Smoking Woman comes in and they talk about all these dolls they've made and what buttons make good eyes. So I tell them about sewing websites and how they have to get internet, it's a basic need, and they can get all these free fabric samples. We get so excited about the huge and magical world of sewing, things get a bit intense and I look out the window.

On the sidewalk, members of my peer group shuffle like they're off to be executed. Yeah,
that's
how school works, like MitoC gone wrong. Here we come with all our youthful energy, the future, in fact, and we say, Give us a warm comfortable place and we'll have ideas, more and more ideas. But, no. Instead, they suck out our souls until all we're good for is the cubi-farm which is clearly the heinous point. Anyway, I'm watching them and when I see the girl at the back and especially what she's wearing, I forget that I'm socially challenged,.

All of a sudden I'm walking beside Amazing Girl saying, ‘Hey, just got to ask you about those gloves because I've been trying for two years to figure them out, tried once but totally screwed it up.'

‘What pattern did you use?'

‘Pattern World download.'

There isn't anything exact about how cool she is, apart from the gloves. She's one of those girls who does eclectic well, as in style queen not anxiety disorder, one of those girls you just want to stare
at because there are so many pieces and they all go together. Her name is Jessie and she doesn't ask what Dree is short for.

‘Pattern World is
not
reliable,' she says. ‘Their mitts suck.'

‘Okay.'

By the time she stops in front of a door two blocks away, we have pretty much covered our craft activities and life philosophy. We don't have to say a lot, more like check check check. Love –, hate –. ‘I've got to get inside,' she says. ‘Because, yeah, this is a field trip. Every couple of months, the
Timbley Times
. Nowhere else to go.' She swings the door open without looking at it and tells me her Aunt Rose is the editor. ‘Yeah, I've got it the worst.' So I follow her into the
Timbley Times
, all crooked cubicles and metal shelving, and we keep going to a room with rank coffee and more shelves. Jessie's class slumps against them but Jessie says, ‘C'mon,' and we go through swinging doors into a workroom where people huddle around a big computer table. ‘Who the hell did this, what are we a bunch of morons?' A woman thumps her fist on the table. ‘What's with the bleed on Page 4? Where the hell is Janey?'

‘Hi, Auntie Rose,' says Jessie.

The voice melts into a purr. And belongs to someone I've seen before. ‘Jessie, my girl.'

‘Dree, Auntie Rose,' Jessie says.

‘I'll be damned.' Rose holds out her hand to shake mine. ‘Well, what do you know,' she says like she just won the lottery. ‘Her dad was an old friend, also from Saskatchewan.'

‘Weird,' Jessie says.

‘He and I go way back.'

Went, I think but don't say. Ha. I do know that smile: pancake number six. She smiled at me during Leonard's memorial.

‘Excuse me.' She turns around to a hunched-over guy wearing extremely high-waisted pants. ‘What the hell are you doing? Get that hp guy back here.' Back to me, in auntie voice, it's ‘I'm so glad you're here,' then ‘What the goddamn hell' when a machine squeals.

‘C'mon.' Jessie pushes the swinging doors and I follow like a puppy. ‘What'd I tell you,' she says. ‘Intense.' The class is getting a talk from someone in a ponytail so tight it lifts her eyebrows. Jessie sails past like she has nothing to do with any of them, and no one looks at her except for one guy who makes up for the rest of them. Talk about intense. And surprising. First time I've seen dreads or a beanie in Timbley.

On the other side of a cubicle divider, Jessie shoves papers aside from a computer and we go onto etsy.com and get twenty-four hits for crocheted gloves. We can hear the talk without having to listen, how brilliant.

I keep hearing the word
archive
from the other side as I gently stretch one of Jessie's gloves to figure out the pattern.

‘These archives are important records of Timbley's history,' says the other-side voice.

‘That's Kim, she does all the tours.' Jessie fakes pulling her hair back into a ponytail and grimaces. Instant facelift.

‘Fifty years of information,' says Kim. I get this way-too-clear picture of Kim's face falling to the floor every time she takes out her hair elastic, kind of a nightly secret like someone cross-dressing, and it's funny in the way nasty things are because you're shocked at your own mind for thinking them.

‘The thing about school,' Jessie says, ‘is people either believe it which makes them delusional or they don't which makes them depressed. Either way, total disconnect.'

I love you, I think. I love love you.

‘What's so funny?'

‘Sorry. Kim's face.'

‘You're, like, beet red.'

Kim gets louder, probably trying to keep people awake. ‘See, this says 1954, so that means that all the
Timbley Times
for 1954 are right here in this book. If you ever need to know who was born, who died and who won the Ladies' Auxiliary Raffle in Timbley in 1954, this book's for you.'

‘Although Clyde,' Jessie says. ‘Clyde's an alien.'

‘The guy with dreads?'

‘Uh-huh, who gets on a steer every year at the stampede. Is he not comprehensive?' She leans over to whisper in my ear. ‘As in, Clyde, stay on that steer more than ten seconds and I'll do you.'

‘You
said
that?'

‘Last two stampedes. My life is so mundane.' Jessie snaps both hands up in stop mode.

I've never heard anything so funny, way funnier than it should be. ‘Where's the bathroom?' I manage to say. Jessie whips a Kleenex from the box on the desk, stands up to imitate Clyde getting on the bull and I am going to die from laughing. Hopefully. But I don't. ‘Bathroom.' Jessie falls back into her chair, all bewildered like Clyde must be, face-down in the dirt.

The bathroom is way in the back and god, my face is still red plus sweaty and I breathe until I can feel my feet. On the way out, Rose is right there as if she were waiting. ‘I'm sorry you had to lose him, it must be very hard.' I snort. The horrible sound of anxiety crashing into grief.

I turn back to ask her how she knew Leonard but, no, what if they were best friends or something and she assumes I know.
Awkward. ‘Did you ever know Mrs. Brandt?' I say instead. ‘I think she knew my grandma because she called me Rowena?'

‘Poor old Gerta. She and Rowena were neighbours. And of course – ' but Rose stops herself. ‘Small town,' she says. ‘People have no privacy. But you must know all about that.'

‘Oh yeah.'

‘Poor Leonard.'

‘Yeah, really.'

‘And your mom. Charlie Sims ran the paper in those days – didn't give a damn about anyone.'

‘That's what Dad said.'

‘Headlines, day after day. I felt terrible – '

‘Oh, yeah, yeah, he knew that.'

‘I had to look after my own family.'

‘Exactly.'

Rose tears up. ‘Really? He got that?'

‘Totally.' She looks at me so long I'm in major danger of emotion.

‘He left me this key.' I pull it up from underneath my T-shirt. She looks at it, is maybe going to say something, but the swinging doors swing. ‘About bloody time,' she yells, then turns back to me. ‘Let's have a coffee before you go back.' She touches my arm and marches away.

‘I go back tomorrow,' I say to her back. Wow. So, something went down with Leonard, something messy, before we were born, because when they were first married, Joan and Leonard lived here.

Jessie is sketching something in a notebook. The class clomps by, Clyde looking back at us.

‘You okay?' she asks.

‘Yeah, great. Well, my dad died.'

‘Jesus.'

‘Ten days ago. And I'm supposed to be living in Toronto.' I tell her about the treasure hunt and visiting Grandma Giles so Joan could process but not about the credit card and not about Leonard working at the hospital. ‘He left me this key – I think it was a clue, maybe rhymed with something.' Jessie has gone quiet and possibly hostile.

‘Oh, hey.' I pull out Marcel. ‘This is goofy, but, hey. My grandma gave me all these baby socks.' I sit him on the desk.

‘Cute.' She checks out Marcel's feet. ‘My dad's dead too.'

‘Sorry.'

‘When I was a baby.'

‘God. So you never knew him.'

‘Oh, I know him. I know him.'

The right words didn't come which means a thick awkward pause after which the wrong totally insensitive words come really fast. ‘So I've got to get this mitochondria project done so Paige won't decimate me, so Riddell doesn't kick me out, so – '

Jessie draws the whole time, looks up every once in a while.

‘
OMG
, that's gorgeous.' She's sketched Marcel and Marcel is so much more than a stuffed sock. ‘He looks noble,' I say.

‘Mitochondrial,' she says. ‘Here. For you.' And she tears out the page and places it in my sweaty hands.

Rose sticks her head in to tell Jessie to stop drawing and do her Social project, to ask me if I want pizza, and to smile at us for a very long time. I phone Grandma and she sounds strained but not mad. ‘I'm having a rest,' she says. ‘Ohhh, I'm tired but your sister has made us a tuna casserole. It looks just lovely.' As in, It looks like a disease please help.