Red Girl Rat Boy Read Online Free PDF

the girl’s stuff to his place. Every single thing.
    Roy’s quitting the movement. No, refused to quit. Cited women’s liberation, the girl’s right to control her own body, choose lovers freely.
    At this the mother shouted, “Bullshit! God damn you to hell.” Lots of atheists still curse by God.
    The women’s fraction mostly on side with the mother, two women leaders against. The O undecided. Expel Roy? Don’t?
    As the vacuum noses towards its cave, the old one leaves the kitchen, wades into the hissing gossip. “Shut up, the lot of you! Can’t you see it’s a tragedy?” Throws off her apron, blunders out weeping into summer rain.
    About this handyman’s work. After the vacuum’s quiet, no one says, “Wow, look at the floors!”
    Stocky, not young, not authoritative, not admired. Who’ll observe a toilet’s blanching? An unspotted mirror, shelves cleared of particles? Young coms assume things clean themselves. Telling is cleaning. Without, the slide from malfunction to breakdown, mess to filth.
    Rare, to eat supper at the hall. The tables packed, loud. Who peeled the spuds after the old one left? No matter. Plain food, plentiful.
    All await, none saying so, the arrival of—Roy? He’d have the nerve. Jennifer? Raging Marion?
    None.
    Staying to hear the speaker is beyond rare, but to leave feels incomplete. Plus disloyal to the old one still AWOL.
    The draft dodger at the lectern is black Irish, his family raw from Dublin to New York somewhere in the 19th century. Witty yet dead serious. A vocabulary to stun. Vietnam his theme. His topic, divisions in the anti-war movement over slogans. With vigour he parses Victory to the Vietcong, Bring the Troops Home, Stop Canadian Complicity, US Out Now , arrives at the right conclusion—and leaps off to a prosecutor’s summing up of capitalism’s bellicose crimes. Then a paean to the Vietnamese. To the sacrifice and glory of the workers’ movements around the world. Their history. Future.
    When with a startled look the speaker ceases, applause. All rise spontaneously to sing the Internationale. He blushes, and here’s the old one up the aisle, tiara damp with rain, to clap him on the back, the first of many.
    Not including her daughter. When did she sneak in? The bleak face scornful of hall, speaker, song, applause. Oh why tonight, her mum happy? How to get rid? The handyman’s hand to pocket too slow, the forum over, everyone in motion, and those pairs of eyes find each other.
    A kind of finish?
    Not yet.
    To the Cavalier as a customer, alone, to think of that young man’s exultation, the old one’s sorrow. Days of blaming till she’ll be anything like herself. If hand quicker, would all have altered? That daughter’s determined to wound. So. No, this error isn’t like not telling about the girl, which might have changed things.
    Coward. Worse. A second beer.
    The daughter’s contempt targets her mother, but it’s common everywhere these days, on the call-in radio shows, TV, the talk on buses. Fear of the left, loathing even.
    What if no young rebelled? Just grew old?
    Before departure, a visit to the men’s room. Disgusting, though scrubbed savagely this morning. There’s the answer to What if .
    The dark hike down to English Bay. Will Roy’s bedroom light be on? No, dirty coward. They’re elsewhere.
     
    N
     
    A sunset.
    Here on the beach at English Bay, a sharp curve in the seawall makes good shelter to watch the sky turn gold and orange. People come round that point squinting westward, don’t see anyone at their feet on the sand.
    Can that be Roy, hungry, hang-dog?
    Be certain!
    Up from beach to path, scurry ahead of the pair. Dip down by shrubs.
    She’s in view first. Cat got the cream, look at me! Not a glance at that figure by her side, desperate, starved.
    Watching a handsome man thus: hot tasty spite. Meanness. Typical. The colours in the sky go on for hours.
     
    N
     
    Weekly, the bissell beats as it sweeps as it cleans the carpet-runners