Natalie Appleton - I Have Something to Tell You

We tell ourselves stories in order to live.

JOAN DIDION, The White Album

Above us, the moon inches up the sky

as if being lifted by string. Orange, pregnant with light

and hazy with waves of heat. He looks up, hopeful,

sweet. Innocent of all this.

My voice, its a whisper. I have

something to tell you.

December 2004August 2005

J UNIE AND I are sucking in our stomachs and studying the lineup on the stairs. He is wading through the peacoats and parkas. My whole world, until tonight, like the pop songs between us. Every verse familiar.

My mind flashes to Stuart, my boyfriend. Out somewhere with his friends, watching hockey. His eyes, so blue. The ring in the glove box of his Ford.

Its the night before Christmas Eve, and Im at Gringos with the kids who stayed and the kids who left. Its like a reunion: get drunk and brag about what youve been doing. And I was fine with that. Until I saw him.

My throat turns rusty. My palms sweat.

Oh, Girls Just Wanna Have Fun!

Junies cold, sticky hand yanks my wrist to the dance floor. So we slither, through all the other girls in sparkly shirts, fists knocking at the chorus. Chanting the words, pointing at each others cheeks when Cindy sings, Girls.

Junies arms ribbon around her hair. Her hair, as long and straw-yellow thick as the tail of a horse. Has the same musk too. She rides. Ran for Stampede queen with her blind Appaloosa and lost. Even though she was the prettiest. Even though she could ride, like hell she could ride.

I love this song, she calls.

I know, I say, drink jangling along my limbs, my lips. I know. Even though were just twenty-three, our devils, they dance with us. Especially here.

My head draws a W at the Oh-oh-oh part. I pretend not to search, for him. Even when I find him. Dark hair, spiked like before. Brown eyes set close. A blue Ralph Lauren shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Mr. President.

Four years ago, Scott Wicks was the president of the Medicine Hat College Students Association and I was the editor of the student newspaper, Express This! I didnt like him because he liked himself enough. He didnt like me because I didnt like him. I wrote editorials deflating him for his attachment to multisyllabic euphemisms, the least of which was fiscally responsible. (At the time, where we come from, those were big words.) I didnt vote for him, and said so. Often.

Cindys lyrics quaver, mute. The DJ s voice thumps and spits. Under the black lights, teeth and lint glow. The bar, about the size of a school gymnasium, is now packed. Like I knew I would, Im shuffling toward him. He is talking to a few guys who mostly come up to his shoulders, one with fish eyes, one with salts of hair but mostly bald already.

And I just stand there, shy-like, nails scratching my bottles label.

Hey, says Scott.

Hey.

Jeez. Its been a while. He stops himself from looking me down and up. What, uh, what have you been doing?

Graduated from J-school. Last year.

Back in college, before we both left to finish our degrees at university, there was tension between us. Even more than what might be expected from two people in these positions. If some of it was sexual, we ignored it at the time. But tonight, tonight he is suddenly that tension and that time, when we were two of a kind, about to take on the world.

What?

Journalism school.

Oh, right.

I went to the University of Regina. What Id wanted was to become a foreign correspondent. Roam in the echo of bullets. Hole up in the shacks of son-less mothers and listen as they told. Win awards for stories thatd break your heart. Come back and give talks at the library.

I got on at The News. I was really lucky. Most of the people I went to school with couldnt get a job. Or they did. In Butt-fuck, Saskatchewan.

My laugh, so awkward and rehearsed. I bite my straw, hold back that I left the Medicine Hat News months ago and am now a largely unemployed freelancer. That what I ended up writing about was corn-eating contests and community theater. That it turned out I liked it, being known. Calling familiar names for quotes. Feeling important at talks and meetings, with my ragged notepad and inky wrists. Big fish.

You still with Stuart?

Yeah. We bought a house. A corner lot with a double garage.

Our black-and-white 1970s bi-level, just steps from the edge of my high school football field. When I was fourteen, a classmate, Grant Cuz, lived there. He wore Wranglers and chewed tobacco and had always been too big and goofy for his age. There was a sweetness to him, though. His family moved, to Grande Prairie or Fort Mac, one of those. And then a cube van hit his truck head-on.

There are three high schools in Medicine Hat. The one I went to. The one Scott went to. And the Catholic one Stuart went to. None of us knew each other then. Stuart didnt go to college so he doesnt know Scott, but he might know of him.

Wow. Scotts forehead crumples. Good for you. Good for you.

And you?

Still with the party.

Scott, a gofer with the Liberals last election. We ran into each other at a political columnists book launch in Calgary two falls ago. I was a TV station intern capturing the fake smiles and frozen handshakes. He was handing them out. It had been the first time wed run into each other since college. After the election, the party gave him a job as someones assistant in Ottawa.

I kept thinking youd beat me there.

What?

Natalie, he says, until were in a gaze that storms up the truth, I didnt think youd b e... here.

Here: This bar. The black cotton tube top I have on. My boyfriend who drives a backhoe and cheats at Scrabble. Here, a bad word. Medicine Hat.

Thousands of moons ago, they say, in a battle with the Cree at the lip of the river, a Blackfoot medicine chief took an arrow in the heart. The wind took his headdress. The water took the chief. The Crees took their flag, the medicine mans hat, and the Blackfoot fled. Today, Medicine Hat is home to the worlds tallest teepee but no First Nations people.

In a part of town near the river, old men get down on their knees with scissors to cut their green grass even. In other parts of town, men come home once a month in the big fat trucks theyve bought with their big fat oil-patch paychecks. A lot of men are divorced. A lot of women are divorced. Remarriage brought my brother and me first to the freshly paved streets of Ross Glen, and later to a dusty rose bungalow in Crescent Heights, high above the train tracks and the tiny war-era houses of Riverside. I went to school with our blind paperboy, spent Saturdays at the mall, sitting around the fountain that divided its four aisles, and didnt see a traffic jam or a black person until I was nineteen. In Calgary.

Scott, I love Medicine Hat.

A truth, and a lie. Hometowns, how they tug us. With memories of hide-and-seek in scorched coulees, and kissing in dusty trucks after dark. With streets and faces as familiar as a mothers breath. But its not the place we leave or long for. Its how a town makes us feel. Like a child, loved. Like an old woman, rocking over boredom and regrets.

He pauses.

We take in the damp of the air, the snow and spilled drinks that streak the floor.

Look, I say. When I was in university, this documentary maker from Africa came to our class.

Ive told this story so many times I nearly forget that its not mine; it belongs to an older News colleague and fellow U of R alumnus. Ive told this story so many times I nearly believe the ending.

And he said you dont have to be in a big city to make a big difference, you know? Im happy here.