Margaret Lives in the Basement

By Michelle Berry

Michelle Berry has one of the most darkly playful and unique voices in Canadian literature and her second collection of short stories, Margaret Lives in the Basement, is no exception. At its heart are characters full of longing, trapped by circumstance and unable to reach out or connect with one another. Whether it's Margaret in the basement and her neighbours above, or two couples working out their family melodramas over dinner, there is always the presence of others but rarely a connection between them. By twists and turns, Berry subverts what we know to be normal and arrives at something, though strange, more real than we like to admit.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Turnstone Press
• Release date: Jul 15, 2013
• ISBN: 9780888014306

Book preview

Margaret Lives

in the Basement

Michelle Berry

Other Michelle Berry Titles Available from Turnstone Press

Blind Crescent

Blur

How to Get There from Here

I Still Don’t Even Know You

What We All Want

Margaret Lives in the Basement

copyright © Michelle Berry 1998

Turnstone Press Edition, 2013

Turnstone Press

Artspace Building

206-100 Arthur Street

Winnipeg, MB

R3B 1H3 Canada

www.TurnstonePress.com

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or ­transmitted in any form or by any means—graphic, electronic or ­mechanical—without the prior ­written permission of the ­publisher. Any request to photocopy any part of this book shall be directed in writing to Access Copyright, Toronto.

Published in Canada by Turnstone Press in 2013. First published in Canada by Sommerville House Publishing, in 1998, Toronto.

Turnstone Press gratefully acknowledges the assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Manitoba Arts Council, the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund, and the Province of Manitoba through the Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Book Publisher

Marketing Assistance Program.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Berry, Michelle, 1968–, author

Margaret lives in the basement / Michelle Berry.

Originally published: Toronto : Somerville House Publishing, ©1998.

Short stories.

for Mom and Dad

Contents

Fire

The Woodshed

Margaret Lives in the Basement

Burning Builds Character

Dust

Darlene Here

Do You Want to be in the Movies?

Heat

Under the Apple Tree

Rosemary’s Vacation

Duck Blind

Fire

Kelly is holding her wineglass at a tilty angle.

What would you do, she says, if your house burned down? If you lost everything? All your photo albums, all your papers, everything.

Max looks out at Kelly from the sliding-glass door. He is in the kitchen. She is on the deck. He watches her wine as it tips and spills. He watches her talking.

The guests, Peter and Tara, sit across from Kelly. They have moved down the street. The moving van left just hours ago and there are boxes upon boxes of their items piled high in the new house.

We might as well go over, Tara had said to Peter after the invitation for dinner came, after Kelly strolled off down the street, waving see you soon, wineglass in hand. We really should get off on the right foot. Meet the neighbours. Start again.

Peter said he didn’t feel like being around anyone and barbecue ribs give him indigestion.

They sit on the deck and listen to Kelly talk. They sip wine and eat cheese and crackers. Kelly is animated. She is drinking heavily and eating quickly. Kelly chews like a rabbit, tiny, fast chews, as if she’s afraid someone will take her food away from her. Her beauty frightens Tara, it makes her conscious of her pale lips and straight, boyish figure. Kelly’s blood-red lips flap open and shut.

Really, Kelly laughs. What would you do? You two know exactly what’s in your house right now because you just packed everything. You know how important everything is. Imagine a fire, a quick fire, ripping through the house, burning everything up. Kelly rolls her eyes.

When does the new job start? Max asks as he comes back out on the deck, raw ribs in hand. He moves over to the barbecue and opens the lid.

Next week, Tara says. I’m really very excited. Tara looks down. She doesn’t know what else to say.

Peter slumps in his chair. He is facing the street and can see their new house down the block. He studies the roof and the lawn, thinking of all the things that he’ll have to do just to make it livable.

More wine? Kelly gets up and pours out the glasses. I wanted to make sangrias but Max says it isn’t warm enough. He says you have to be dripping sweat before you can drink sangrias.

Max smiles politely.

How long have you lived here? Tara asks. She is feeling frustrated with Peter. He isn’t helping the conversation any. He just sits there, staring at the new house, paying no attention to their hosts.

Peter is angry at Tara. He is furious. He can’t seem to get over his anger. Everything happened too fast. Tara just took the job quickly, without consulting him, and here they are, miles away from the city he grew up in, from his friends and his doctors, and his medication doesn’t seem to be working and Peter wants to shake something hard, shake his anger out.

Ten years, Max says. When the kids were just little.

Kids? Peter brightens. He loves children, small ones, unthreatening ones.

They’re teenagers now, Kelly says. They’re off at camp. Bill is thirteen and Amanda is ten.

Peter sinks back down in his seat.

Max barbecues the ribs. The fire shoots up when the grease hits the flame. He thinks about Kelly and her fire question. He thinks about what would happen if their house burned down. Ten years in one place is an awfully long time. The notches on the kitchen trim where they measured their kids’ growth, the hole in their bedroom wall behind the bed from that amazing love-making session. Max feels sad when he thinks about fires. Since a couple of days ago he’s felt sad when he thinks about most things.

Kelly is laughing. She pours herself more wine. Her words are beginning to slur.

I don’t usually have this much to drink. It’s just a celebration, she says. Celebrating the new neighbours. And, God, it’s great to get new neighbours. I’m sick to death of all the snoops around here.

Kelly, Max says.

Really, Max, they are such bores. And they watch you from behind their curtains. They know everything you do. You can’t keep a secret around here. Kelly laughs. She points to the house directly across from them. They are on a corner lot and so the deck faces everything—the entire street and the backyards and the street behind. See that house? Kelly says. The man there just died. Just up and died. He was young, too. In his fifties. Kelly shakes her head. Then she laughs. Well, I went over with chicken and, wouldn’t you know it, Beatrice, that’s the woman, wouldn’t take my chicken. She said she wouldn’t take food from a—

Kelly, honey, Max interrupts. Would you mind getting me the sauce?

Kelly stops talking and looks at her manicured fingernails. She studies them carefully. She gets up and goes into the house.

Sorry about that, Max says. She’s not usually so vocal. He tries to laugh.

Peter hasn’t heard a thing. He is trying to do what his therapist said he should do in situations like this. He is trying to imagine a world with no noise, a peaceful, quiet world, a white world. He has his eyes shut and he is pushing his anger away and down and out through his toes. But the medication isn’t working and his eyes shoot open and he feels crazy and wild.

Tara looks at Peter. She looks into his eyes and she thinks that they should be getting back to the house. Something is wrong. We should go, Tara says.

But Peter says no a little loudly. No, Tara, we haven’t eaten yet.

Max looks at his guests. He shrugs. It was Kelly’s idea to invite them here. All he wanted was a quiet night of conversation. He wanted to talk to Kelly about what she has done, make her see the consequences of her actions, make her understand how cheated he feels, how horribly empty. It angers him that she just up and ran down the street, wineglass in hand, and invited the new neighbours for dinner. Now he’s trying to make the best of the situation. Tara seems nice. Peter is strange, Max suspects something’s off-kilter with him, but Tara seems kind and easygoing. He sips his drink and puts the lid down on the barbecue. He leans on the deck railing. The kids are at camp for a week.

Kelly comes out on the deck. Max, she says. It’s Amanda. She’s on the phone. She says she snuck into a locked phone booth at the camp. She says they won’t let her use the phones. She says she wants to come home.

Max looks at the barbecue and then at his wife. He goes into the house to talk to Amanda.

Kelly sits down. She has forgotten the sauce. She has a full glass of wine in her hand and a lit cigarette. Amanda says all the girls do at camp is talk about boys and make-up. She says she just wants to ride horses and swim but all the girls want to do is dress up and parade around. Kelly sucks on her cigarette. Imagine, she says. Make-up at camp.

My camp was like that, Tara says. I was like Amanda. All I wanted to do was have fun.

She climbed under the door of the phone booth. Kelly laughs. She said it was locked somehow and so she had to push herself under the door. She’s crying right now. Kelly laughs again.

Tara finds it strange that Kelly laughs when her daughter cries. But she doesn’t have a daughter so she doesn’t know how she would feel if her daughter was crying. She looks again at Peter. Again he has his eyes closed.

We should probably go soon, Tara says. She plays with her fingers in her lap. I think Peter’s tired.

I’m not tired. Peter’s lids snap open. He smiles at Kelly.

Kelly smiles back. She thinks this new man, this neighbour, is quite interesting. And, if she heard right, he is staying home, he doesn’t have a job. He’ll be home every day. Kelly likes that. He seems quite mysterious, she thinks, as if something wild is going on in his mind that he can’t take control of.

Max signals to Kelly through the glass door. He is still holding the phone. Kelly takes her wine and cigarette and goes inside. What’s wrong? Tara whispers. Are you feeling all right?

Peter looks at his wife. How should I be feeling?

Peter. Tara feels at a loss. She feels like she wants to run and hide. It’s a good job. More money. We had to get away.

And my medication isn’t working.

What?

You heard me.

Kelly and Max come out on the porch. Sorry about that, Max says. He looks at Tara’s face. Are you all right?

Yes, fine. Tara closes her mouth and looks anywhere but at Peter.

I’d like more to drink, Peter says. Something stronger if you have anything. If you don’t mind.

Of course, Kelly says. She runs into the house. She grabs the scotch off the kitchen counter and runs back out again. Peter watches her breasts as they move in her thin cotton sweater. Kelly knows he is watching. She pours out two glasses of scotch, Tara and Max don’t want any, and she toasts the new neighbourhood with Peter.

Amanda will be all right, Max says. He looks nervous. We told her she should stay another day or two and if it doesn’t get any better, we’ll come and get her.

No one is listening to him.

Tara looks frightened. Peter really shouldn’t drink, Tara says. He’s on medication. For his heart. He really shouldn’t be drinking.

Peter laughs. I’m okay. Really.

Tara looks up at Max. He tries smiling at her. She looks away. Where’s the rib sauce, Kelly?

Peter stands up. I’ll get it, he says. Where is it?

Max shrugs. In the fridge.

Kelly watches Peter go into her house and dig through her fridge. You really should loosen up, she tells Tara. You really should try to have a good time.

Tara opens her mouth to say something but then decides that what she wanted to say wouldn’t have been nice at all.

He’s a nice-looking man, Kelly whispers to Tara. You should lighten up or you might lose him. She laughs.

Tara blanches. She looks over at Max. He has his hands on the deck railing and he’s looking out at the yard. He’s studying the grass.

Max’s heart is aching. He’s been married to Kelly for over fourteen years. And now this. And he wonders how many other men there have been, how many times Kelly has done this. He can’t imagine why she would do this to him, to the kids.

Peter is digging around in the fridge. He opens a jar of olives and sucks the pimiento out of one. He puts the empty olive back in the jar. He does this a couple more times until he thinks that it will be noticeable, and then he digs some more for the sauce. His mood has altered considerably since sipping on the scotch. He feels lightheaded and happy. But the anger, the mind-numbing anger, flashes through him every so often and he has to fight to control the urge to punch something, shake something, smack something.

Fire, Kelly is saying when Peter comes back onto the deck carrying the sauce, can be devastating. It can alter so much so quickly. Imagine: you wake up in the middle of the night, the alarm ringing, and you have to climb out on your roof and down into the front yard. And I sleep naked so that would be embarrassing enough. Kelly laughs. She looks at Peter. Then you have to stand there, helpless, while your house goes up in flames. You can see everything melting. Your bedroom suite, your living-room drapes, your children’s toys. Kelly stops talking for a second. Do you have children?

Tara shakes her head, no.

It would be horrible, Kelly continues. I just can’t imagine.

Peter smiles. You’d get to start again, he says. New identity, new person, new belongings. Not so bad if you ask me. And then it occurs to him that this is what Tara was doing, this is what she did when she accepted the job without asking him. Get away. Become unknown. Disappear.

Tara looks at him. She wishes Kelly would stop talking about fires and stay on a topic that was a little less harmless. She doesn’t like it when people plant ideas in Peter’s head. Peter’s therapist was planting ideas, crazy ones, about white space and individuality, about the ability to be free with his thoughts, let them loose, act on his emotions.

We have so much unpacking to do, she says. She sips her wine.

Ribs are ready, Max says. He drops the rib plate in the middle of the table. Nothing but ribs, half-charred, dripping with sauce. Kelly fills her plate with ribs, piles them up in a circular pattern, and sips her scotch. Her fingers leave sticky marks on the glass.

Dig in, she says. There’s enough for everyone. She picks up a rib and sucks on it suggestively. Peter watches her. Max watches Peter watching.

Isn’t there anything else? Max asks. Salad? Bread?

Kelly laughs. Her mouth is full and she’s licking her fingers. There’s plenty of food here, she says. Dig in. A good old meat-fest. She giggles. There is sauce dripping down the corner of her mouth.

Max caught Kelly in bed with his friend, Bob, a couple of days ago. He came home from work early and he heard a noise in the bedroom. Typical story. Max can picture the scene from TV movies, from books, from films. Only Max didn’t kill anyone. He didn’t take a gun, or a knife, and murder the lovers and then kill himself. Instead, he cried. He sat down on the bed beside Bob and Kelly and he sobbed and sobbed. Kelly sat beside him, naked, and patted his shoulders. Bob put on his pants and ran out of the house. And now, days later, they are sitting on the back deck eating ribs with a man who will probably be her lover too. Max doesn’t know what to do. He feels humiliated and angry and also sorry for Tara.

Yummy, Kelly says. She pats Max on the hand. You make great ribs, honey.

Kelly doesn’t care that Max finally found out. It was bound to happen. Max would laugh if he knew how many men she’s been with. Really, she thinks, he would laugh. Something in Kelly’s stomach aches and so she eats more and more ribs to fill up, to take up that space in her belly, that painful spot. She sips her drink and licks her fingers, trying not to look at Max. She looks closely at Peter’s lean figure, his contemplative expression.

Peter eats his ribs thoughtfully. He can feel Kelly watching him. The scotch warms up his belly. He looks over at Tara, at her pale face, her stick-like figure, her reddish-brown hair. Then he looks at Kelly, shining golden hair, pink cheeks.

More scotch? Peter reaches over and fills up his glass. He fills up Kelly’s glass too.

What kind of work are you in? Max asks Tara.

I’m an engineer, Tara says. I’ll be working for the Transportation Commission. I’ll work on the roads.

"I’ve been working on the railroad, Kelly sings. All the live-long day" Peter laughs.

That’s interesting, Max says. I don’t know any women engineers.

What’s wrong with that? Kelly says. What’s wrong with a woman engineer?

Nothing, Max says. I just said I don’t know any.

Is that what you’d say to a man? Kelly is angry. Is it?

Calm down, Kelly, Max says. He smiles apologetically to his guests.

It’s a normal reaction, Tara sighs. I’m used to people being surprised.

Makes her feel special, Peter says. He laughs. The only woman in the company.

Kelly laughs.

Tara and Max glance at each other.

There is silence.

So, Kelly says. No one answered my fire question. No one said anything about it.

What was the question? Peter asks You didn’t really ask a question.

What would you do if your house burned down?

Peter thinks about this. Tara and Max remain silent. They pick at the ribs on their plates. Tara moves one around and around, painting red saucy smears on the white plate.

I’d move away from the place, Peter says. Get a new job. I’d hire a moving van, pile some boxes in a new house, and have dinner with the new neighbours. He laughs.

After eating all of the ribs they sit back in their chairs and watch the houses around them. They sip their drinks. Tara feels light-headed.

She’s been lifting boxes into the truck and out of the truck all day. She feels slightly ill. The streetlights flicker on and all the house lights glow up and down the street. Tara and Peter’s new house stands dark and deserted. Maybe they’ll try again at having a baby, Tara thinks, and then she laughs at herself for thinking something so impossible, so crazy.

Peter’s had too much to drink. He can’t shake that numb feeling in his head. He feels woozy and out of control. The world around him is starting to spin.

Max sits back in his chair. Nice night, he says. Good night to have a barbecue. It amazes him that he can be so polite to the new neighbours when his wife has just had sex with Bob.

What does that mean? Kelly is very drunk. She is swaying in her chair, back and forth, back and forth. What the hell does that mean? Say what you mean. She laughs.

I think we should go, Tara says, but she doesn’t feel like going back to that deserted, dark house and dealing with Peter. She doesn’t want to watch him explode and then hold him until he calms down. She’s tired. Tara is starting her new job next week and she is thinking that she should have left Peter behind and began again by herself. Had a fresh start. Then she feels ashamed for thinking that. She feels horribly ashamed and sad.

Peter suddenly stands up, leaps over the deck railing, lands in the grass, and starts running around the yard.

What ever are you doing? Kelly says. She laughs. What a character. What a great man for a party.

Max stares at Peter. Is he all right? he asks Tara.

Tara sighs. He’s had too much to drink, she says. He’s always like this when he’s had too much to drink.

Peter runs around in circles in the grass, half jogging, half sprinting. And then he lies down, face forward, and begins to punch the grass. He punches hard and angrily.

Well,