tell everything
tell everything
SALLY COOPER
Copyright © Sally Cooper, 2007
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.
Editor: Barry Jowett
Copy-editor: Andrea Waters
Design: Alison Carr
Printer: Marquis
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Cooper, Sally (Sally Elizabeth)
Tell everything / Sally Cooper.
ISBN 978-1-55002-775-4
I. Title.
PS8555.O59228T44 2007 C813’.6 C2007-904681-9
1 2 3 4 5 11 10 09 08 07
We acknowledge the support of The Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and The Association for the Export of Canadian Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishers Tax Credit program, and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.
Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.
J. Kirk Howard, President
Printed and bound in Canada.
Printed on recycled paper.
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for Daniel
Give me your skin
as sheer as a cobweb
let me open it up
and listen in and scoop out the dark
“Rapunzel”
Anne Sexton
My mother told me a story once about a foolish princess. We were hiking up the path to Banana Rock. Sunlight slanted through the branches. She made up the story, and I held her hand and matched my steps to hers. The princess was vain and not very pretty. When an old baron asked to marry her, her mother celebrated. The baron called the princess beautiful. She believed him and fell in love. The night before the wedding, the baron invited her to his house. Her mother insisted she wear a veil until she’d sealed the union. But the princess wanted her fiancé to admire her. When the princess walked into a hall of mirrors inside the castle, she threw off the veil and found herself in a dungeon packed with demon brides. A sorcerer turned her into a toothless old woman with a smelly, aching body. Because the princess was vain, the sorcerer made her sit in the hall of mirrors, where her ugly image stretched out in every direction. She warned each of the baron’s new brides-to-be not to look at herself, but none would listen. Even her mother said she’d be better off dead. “It’s not my fault,” cried my mother in the foolish princess’s voice. Her own voice rang with a smug glee that meant she thought it really was.
My mother took short steps and looked down at me while she talked. As she told her story her hand heated up, though it stayed dry. Her voice flared too, then got thin, flowery. I could hear how much the princess wanted to be beautiful and loved. I heard how silly she was, and how doomed. The story got me angry, and I kicked at the sand. At Banana Rock we took off our sandals and wiggled our toes in the sun. I cried a little and threw stones into the pool below. My mother took my chin in her free hand and said, “Don’t worry. One day a smart girl comes along who doesn’t need a mirror or a prince to know how beautiful she is. The crone becomes young again and escapes with her beautiful new friend.” My mother pulled me into her lap, even though I was getting too big for it. Then we climbed down to wade in the water and the story left me until long after my mother was gone.
chapter 1
I woke up hot. My eyes burned. Images of cellar windows, angled light faded into joy. I pulled the duvet over my head and tucked in my feet.
“Kiss me so I can go to work,” Alex said. He stood over me in his trench coat, two plums clutched to his chest. I lifted my head off the pillow, eyes shut, and we pressed lips.
In June, after we’d graduated, Alex and I had rented the bungalow on Shelby Street. Flats Mills had a Lucky Dollar, a diner, two churches, and a strip of antique and craft shops. Beyond the town sat hundred-acre fields of corn, potatoes, soy, and sod. The land moved higher to the north, and in certain darknesses its hills gave a view of Toronto lit-up, an hour away. We’d got what we wanted. Country and city. Space and each other.
We painted the living room Chimayo red and hung it with nudes. Some originals, some prints. Nobody dropped by, nobody had our phone number. Living here felt like an escape trick.
“I’m bushed,” I said.
“You screamed last night. And punched me once.” He sat on my feet. Images of wet hands, a dripping mattress seeped into me.
“I do that sometimes.” I stroked the sheet.
“Nightmares are hot. And I get to do the protective guy thing.” He swelled his chest and sucked in his cheeks.
I scratched his beard where the skin was peeling underneath. Last night Alex had hugged me as we walked around Flats Mills inhaling our skunky weed and our neighbours’ sweet maple firesmoke. We’d shared a pocket and a glove and talked about his internship at St. Mary’s Hospital. He’d called me his girl and said he’d buy us a farmhouse once he set up his practice. I liked his love, though it felt simple, finite. My own, lesser love dwelled on his staying and left it at that. I’d clutched his cuff and called him “Sweetness” to stop myself from showing him anyone but the person he knew he loved.
“You’d be surprised what I know, my dear.”
I found Alex’s statements cryptic, but they had their appeal. They kept us from talking about what made us uncomfortable.
We never said “I love you” or discussed what our love felt like and what it meant to us, and we didn’t talk about marriage or children or why he gave up art for medicine. Cozy, we stayed hopeful.
“What do you know?”
“Everything is good between us, and we made a good choice coming here.”
“Any choice we made would have worked.”
“But we made this one and we’re happy.”
“We are happy,” I said.
He got up, and the nerves in my feet sputtered. Then he was leaving — shutting off the stereo, rattling keys, closing doors. The hatchback’s engine turned over with a screech, tires swashed puddles, and the house fell silent.
I called Vangie and said I had a migraine.
“The flashes and bangs stopped