Year of Lesser by David Bergen Page B

he would fall. It was only later that Johnny saw Charlene as the earth’s moon, halved, light and dark. It’s the mother, Johnny thinks. Spreading herself like thick butter on Charlene. The mother calls Charlene and Charlene whispers into the phone and then finally hangs up and heads straight for the bottle. Clink, clink. These days she pours the drink while she’s on the phone, as if this were a small form of rebellion.
    One time Johnny said, “Why do you talk to her? She’s poison.”
    “She’s my mother,” Charlene said and she swung her head back and forth and her hair followed.
    “She changes you, makes you ugly,” Johnny said.
    “Does she?” Charlene’s voice was tougher, as if the bile she’d collected from her mother would fall onto Johnny’s brow. He didn’t mind. He’d rather Charlene fight back than sit and pout and get slapped around.
    “Yes, she does, look at you,” and he pointed at the half-full glass in her hand where the clear liquid waved.
    “Maybe you do this to me,” Charlene said, and Johnny ducked his head quickly as if avoiding something solid hurtling through the air.
    “Don’t blame me,” he said, and he pulled Charlene onto his lap. Asplash of her drink fell onto Johnny’s chest and Charlene put her mouth there and licked. Johnny’s stomach lurched, but he said nothing, holding her head instead, wondering how it was that there were so many other people in the world who lived happily. How did they do it?
    Bending over the sleeping Charlene now, Johnny touches her cheek and her nose and her mouth. He pats her rump through the blanket and thinks that he loves her and if it weren’t for Loraine they could be happy sometimes. Charlene is like a field that has lain empty for years and needs to be harrowed, ploughed, even seeded. In her best moments, like when they are out in Winnipeg for dinner, just the two of them, and she sits across from him and her shoulders are big and she consumes food and drink and cigarettes and she says how much she trusts him and she is proud of him the way he’s taking care of the youth of Lesser, that’s when Johnny loves her best and then he wants to keep her forever. He wants to lay the length of her out and tell her, first in one ear and then the other, how her simplicity excites him.
    But this is not always so. And Johnny sometimes sees that he too may be at fault, as if he has through the years been erasing Charlene; he is a waterfall, just big enough, and Charlene is a rock upon which he falls and he is slowly wearing her down. Johnny takes his hand off her bum now. Smooths her hair. Bends to kiss her. Like a child, she is easiest to love when sleeping.
    That afternoon Johnny does another drug talk. This time it’s to fifteen-and sixteen-year-olds. The supervising teacher is Ms. Holt, who never really liked Johnny when he was her student. He remembers a line she often said: No event occurs twice. He shakes hands with her and makes small talk. Odd, how things equal out, how this woman no longer has any power over him.
    The kids this time are sleepy and uninterested. He recognizes one girl, Melody Krahn; she’s friends with Chris. He sees them together at thecentre. Ms. Holt gives Johnny an overhead projector to use in case he has notes or something important to show the group. He looks down at the glass top and sees himself; small-headed, sharp-nosed, a loose neck, a mouth that’s too big. He smiles and gets his image back. Takes a breath.
    “At your age,” he says, “I was known as a stoner. I thought it was cool. I’d walk down the hall of this school, pull out a blunt instrument, and light up. Needless to say I didn’t last long in school. I think you could ask Miss Holt here how appreciated I was by the teachers.” The kids laugh. He’s got their attention now. Ms. Holt offers a slight lift of her mouth.
    “Movies, music, they make drugs look sexy. But I’m not sure, personally, how much we should celebrate them.” Johnny