After by Francis Chalifour Page B

gross.”
    “Me, too! There’s nothing on earth that I hate more than tomatoes!” This was not precisely true. I actually had never taken a stand on the tomato issue, but apparently there’s a Talking to Girls Monster that’s as independent of rational thought as the Grief Sea Monster. I seemed to have lost all control of my brain.
    “But I love Dijon mustard!” I couldn’t believe I said that. But anyway, we both laughed. She had warm hazel eyes, brown hair, and best of all, she was shorter than I am. I like girls who are shorter than I, though there aren’t many of them. She was also younger. I was born in April, and she was born in October. I liked the way she was handling her soda. So sexy! She had a nice, white toothy smile. Teeth are always the first thing I notice in girls. Well, the second thing. She must have noticed my fixation.
    “I had braces for at least five years. My teeth were terrible! I could have given Dracula a scare!” This brilliant conversation went on until the other kids had left and Mr. Bergeron was clearing his throat loudly at the door.

    On meeting nights, I spent hours in my bedroom picking through what you might generously call my wardrobe for my least dorky clothes, and–very important–shaving. I tried to comb my hair like Tom Cruise, and I patted eaude cologne on my face. That was something I’d never done before. I used Papa’s because I didn’t have money to buy a new bottle. I could never figure out the point of cologne before, but it seemed like a good idea.
    The highlight of my week was talking to Jul after Group. We’d take our plate of cookies and our cans of pop and perch on the edge of the dusty stage that ran across one end of the basement. We talked about her mother and my father. What she went through was different from me. I guess every death is different. Her mother died from breast cancer when Jul was eleven. Last year her father sold his construction company in Barrie. Jul went to Paris on a school exchange while her sister and dad moved to Montréal. After that first conversation about tomatoes, no matter where we started we always ended up talking about death. She told me that she had had time to prepare herself for her mother’s death, but when it came, it was still a shock. Jul told me that since her mother had died she had more or less stopped eating. I noticed that she hadn’t touched the cookies.
    You’d think that after that kind of heart-to-heart, talking to Jul at school would be no problem. Wrong. Outside the church basement, Mr. Cool, here, was tongue-tied. It took me ages to psyche myself up, but finally, on a Friday afternoon when classes were over, I asked her to go to Deli Delight with me. The owner’s an old potbellied man who wears a skullcap and speaks French with a strong Yiddish accent. He is one of thosepeople that you can know forever, without ever knowing his name. Even Papa, who had known him for years, called him
Mister Deli.
Mr. Deli had been at the funeral.
    We slid into a booth and I ordered sodas, tuna salad on bagels, and fries. We picked up the familiar Theme of Death conversation before the food came. Jul began.
    “She suffered a lot. I’ll never forget every minute of the last day. The nurse came to her room and gave her a shot. An hour later, she was dead. She held my hand till the end. I didn’t want to cry in front of her. I didn’t cry for the whole two years she was sick.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because I wanted to show her that I was strong and that she wouldn’t have to worry about what would happen to me after she was gone. I wanted her to be able to go in peace.”
    “In a way, you’re lucky. You knew your mother was going to die. You could tell her that you loved her. I never got the chance.”
    “I did say it a lot to her, but I also said stuff I can’t believe now. Once, about six months before she died I was mad at her for something. I don’t remember what–maybe because I had turned the radio up too