Requests and Dedications

  ACCLAIM FOR ELISE LEVINE’S FICTION

  “One tough cookie of a writer.… Her canvas is the Canadian working-class family, her location the rural fringe of the Torontonian megacity, her theme, that pain outlives, while love can only endure.… Levine is clever and talented.…”

  – Quill & Quire

  “A cutting-edge literary sensation.”

  – NOW Magazine

  “Reading Elise Levine is akin to a wild ride down a dark road at night.… Bold and startling.… Precipitous and exhilarating.”

  – Globe and Mail

  “An accomplished first novel.… Levine uses language deftly … skilfully creates a sense of place.”

  – Eye Weekly

  “Elise Levine’s writing compresses the distance between art and audience.… She is a visceral imagist.…”

  – Ottawa Citizen

  “Exciting and fresh.…”

  – Vue Weekly

  “No reader can make his or her way through [Levine’s] stories and retain any kind of complacency.”

  – Calgary Herald

  “One of Canada’s finest fiction writers.… Levine demonstrates a kind of incandescent knowing about human affairs which she deploys in stunningly nuanced passages.… A sensitive, cagey dominatrix of literary form and human psychology.”

  – George Elliott Clarke, Mail Star

  BOOKS BY ELISE LEVINE

  Driving Men Mad (stories, 1995)

  Requests and Dedications (2003)

  Copyright © 2003 by Elise Levine

  Trade paperback with flaps edition published 2003

  First Emblem Editions publication 2005

  All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher – or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency – is an infringement of the copyright law.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Levine, Elise, 1959–

  Requests and dedications / Elise Levine.

  eISBN: 978-1-55199-208-2

  I. Title.

  PS8573.E9647R47 2005 C813′.54 C2004-905949-1

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  The epigraph on this page is an excerpt from the poem “Anna Liffey,” from In a Time of Violence by Eavan Boland. Copyright © 1994 by Eavan Boland. Used by permission of W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

  SERIES EDITOR: ELLEN SELIGMAN

  Series logo design: Brian Bean

  EMBLEM EDITIONS

  McClelland & Stewart Ltd.

  75 Sherbourne Street

  Toronto, Ontario

  M5A 2P9

  www.mcclelland.com/emblem

  v3.1

  David

  “Is it only love

  that makes a place?”

  – EAVAN BOLAND

  contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Part I Chapter 1 Cavalcade

  Chapter 2 Touch and Go

  Chapter 3 Little Red Rooster

  Part II Chapter 4 The Odds

  Chapter 5 School of Velocity

  Chapter 6 The Moon in June

  Part III Chapter 7 Lick

  Chapter 8 The Jet Boys’ Girl

  Chapter 9 Requests and Dedications

  Chapter 10 Erie Redux

  Chapter 11 Not One Thing and Not Another

  Part IV Chapter 12 Boxing Not Bingo

  Chapter 13 The Hour of Charm

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  PROLOGUE

  First came the merry-go-round, smeary yellow on a damp afternoon, then a parade in which the morning sunshine spun a filigree of golden horses. Memories like sno-cones, jewel-toned cups of flavoured ice. A tall bunny in a tuxedo and top hat, a miracle carrot-peeler. A woman in a floral-print dress with full pleated skirt leaning over from the waist, head floating above in an aureole of pink cotton candy, the warmth of sugared breath. And once, at a schoolyard fair, a ride on a pony called Pickles. Look mom – no hands!

  Now, on this November afternoon, my thirty-seven-year-old arms deliciously overburdened with stuffed animals, tin belt buckles, plastic lampshades – having stormed the kiosks, driven by a nearly boundless love of sour-cream fudge and guaranteed never-to-chip fingernail polish – it’s still me all right, the queen of par-tay. No point making sense. You live your life and that’s that. It’s a credo that’s got me this far – I’ve only just begun to realize the good times can’t last forever.

  What the?

  Walker refuses to notice me, and my practised sneer goes to waste. Instead he keeps whistling, pursing his thin wormy lips, gazing into the rafters and down at the hay-wisped concrete floor. He checks over his fleshy shoulders once or twice then shrugs, shaking his head as if to say, What can you do? His whistle is high and soft, a wooing sigh with little rolls and flutters, notes ascending then curling over the top like tiny waves, the scrolled song folding over on itself like the folds of his own decadently wrinkled skin. The horse beside him pays scant attention, flicking its bony head up and down, tapping the ground with its front hooves in boredom.

  Must be losing it, Walker, the horse’s groom says.

  Sitting on an overturned steel bucket next to the horse’s rump, he’s a gnomish man, short and wiry with an oversized head and an off-centre mouth, a sneaky, ventriloquist’s voice. Impossible to guess his age. He raises his buggy eyebrows and winks at me, leering. I smile icily, just in case, though Walker doesn’t seem to notice.

  The horse stiffens and spreads its back legs. When the pee comes Walker holds his hands palm out and looks upward. The groom scrambles forward onto his knees, upends his makeshift perch, rocks back onto his heels.

  Crouching low to aim the bucket, he grudgingly shakes his head and squeaks, Still the best, my man.

  Then off he trundles, taking the sample to the makeshift veterinarian’s office where it will be tested for illegal substances.

  My guy – the official whistler at the Royal Winter Fair. He stands with his arms crossed over his massive belly, not quite looking at me.

  Want something? he says.

  After all these years we save our expressions of interest for the late harvest of prize-winning pumpkins in exhibits A and B, admit to a longing only for blue-ribbon peaches-and-cream corn, admire only the glass jars gleaming with orange-blossom honey stacked in pyramids on the mezzanine floor. And this armload of toys and trinkets I won at the plastic rifle range? Where is the pleasure, the panties-in-a-knot pleasure? The cheap darlings only remind me of what we no longer feel – gifted, extraordinary in each other’s presence. That once upon a time we were the main fucking attraction.

  All this stuff! My arms are killing me. I can see the apple-cider vendor in his white peaked hat watching from his stand at the end of the aisle – checking out my high-heeled boots and pouffy hair, my tight, lace-thonged ass in skinny jeans as I stand in relief against Walker – but he can forget it, nothing to see here, folks, nothing but no-show as I turn and walk away.

  Where is she, Mimi? Walker booms out after me.

  Terrific. This is how I have to win his attention? Somewhere along the way I lost his porky twelve-year-old daughter. I last saw Jena in the Coliseum, at the opposite end of the fair buildings, filling up on cream puffs, skipping from one butter sculp
ture to the next, oohing and aahing with slack-jawed abandon. Why should I be the one to keep track of her? I’m busy.

  Any guesses? he says. Because otherwise this could take me a while.

  Fine by me, I say over my back. I won’t hold my breath.

  Along the mazy aisles of stalls in the horse palace, packs of lanky teenage girls – all pouty anorexic attitude with their pointy Wonderbra’d breasts, their J. Crew cargo pants and baby tees, their barn jackets tossed carelessly on bales of hay, one looking-good, hip-chick posse – snack on California rolls and guzzle Evian, time out from braiding the manes and tails of their pedigreed hunters. A Jack Russell and a miniature schnauzer sniff each other in front of a team of men yoking the massive, blinkered Carlsberg Clydesdales to a green-and-gold wagon. Between this crowded centre and the security-patrolled outer aisles that house the international show jumpers – those priciest of the pricey – lie a few rows of mostly empty stalls.

  Here’s one that’s occupied – a seven-foot-square box stuffed with trunks and cots and folding lawn chairs, Walker’s plaid Markham Co-op work shirts and greasy, horse-shitty jeans in a pile in a corner. Carefully hung on a makeshift clothes rack, the snow-white breeches and leather field boots, handmade in England, that belong to his niece, Tanis, beneath which lies Jena’s scatter of half-eaten bags of Doritos and Cheezies, wincingly sweet beer nuts, empty cans of Mountain Dew.

  I toe open the door, stand at the threshold, fling my junk to the floor. Hope you break a leg, you bastard! I can dream, can’t I?

  Then I turn back into the dusty light filtering three storeys through the precious dreck of the crowds, the high-stepping hackney ponies, the taffy apples and silver harnesses and hoof goo.

  In the practice ring Tanis works Walker’s best horse, really just a so-so creature with little talent and a flawed conformation. Not to mention borderline lame half the time. Lodged in the saddle like a boulder of determination, face closed as a fist, Tanis herself isn’t much to look at. Unpronounced overbite – nothing to write home about – with a slight lean to the front teeth. Average in height and weight. Hair a stick-in-the-mud brown I’ve practically begged her to let me lighten – a little colour can work wonders for a girl. Average in school, is what her report cards have stated for years. A sourpuss, is what her teachers have called her since fourth grade. But her rage – average? they might as well have branded her forehead – makes her something to watch. Witness the way she sometimes treats her cousin – sheer torture.

  Put it up, Tanis barks at the ring attendant when she takes the straight, single bar, now up to a shocking six feet.

  Each time she makes her pass there’s the short bunched gallop before the toss into air, then the hanging second when the horse shakes loose of gravity’s boring hold. Put it up. The ring attendant shakes his head, but does what she tells him.

  Wish I could do that, but oh well.

  Some of these rich prissy girls with horses so much better than themselves – horses they don’t deserve – are watching Tanis tough out jump after jump. Take that! I’m thinking as I look around at the perfectly straight noses, the knifing glint of expensive metallic mouths.

  So I miss what happens. The casual misstep, a moment’s easy hesitation when the dumb beast loses faith – balk or go? – and crunches into the bar, hits the ground, and rolls over. When I look, the horse is down and Tanis is nowhere to be seen.

  Falling is percussive, sound stunned from the body. My first time Walker stood over me in dim outline and I could hardly hear him yell, You fucked up, as I began to black out, a cartoon whoosh! as I spun down the drain. I found that under the earth the horses are thunder that bring the dead to sound – a tonal clash in black and white, a jazzy scherzo in reverse. I heard temple blocks and crotales, exotics rung out by rickety bone-fingers. Fucked up! It only took the first fall to know there was no going forward from there.

  The horse stumbles to its feet. I can see Tanis now, on the ground, rolled over on her left side. Walker pushes into the ring and takes the dazed horse by the reins.

  You okay? he shouts.

  He looks as if he’s seen a ghost, right up until the gate at the top of the ring swings open and the paramedics rush in with a stretcher.

  In a few minutes Walker will lead the horse back to its stall. He’ll remove the tack, slip the halter on, lead the horse back out, and walk off the sweat. He’ll take care of things, do what has to be done – I’ve seen this before. Later, much later when the fuss has died down, he’ll sit on a bale of hay with his big head in his hands.

  Christ, he’ll say, lord jesus fuck me to tears.

  (Because at moments like these he feels certain of his relationship to god, who seems, in Walker’s sappy brain, to bear a curious yet unmistakable resemblance to his mother, Rose – how many times have I watched him gaze with soulful devotion at the hand-tinted photo he so predictably keeps by the side of his bed? A transplanted New Brunswicker with a wooden stare, she died when Walker was eleven.)

  Then, with a start, he’ll lift his head from his hands and, rising from his prickly seat, wonder aloud if he should call the police.

  Jena, he’ll say.

  Come off it, Walker, I’ll tell him. Sometimes there are more important things to worry about.

  Dirt and dust from the practice ring’s floor, the oiled dirt with its ancient earthy smell, rise like smoke. It’s hard to see anything from where I sit craning my long neck in the hushed stands. Somewhere in the distance, from the main fair building where along the crowded aisles there are back bacon on kaiser buns and wild-rice risotto – ticky-tack kitchen gadgets and catcalls and dollars – a calliope snores into action, house sparrows flit above the mezzanine, and pigeons click in the rafters.

  But for now, here, there is only the blackness rich as velvet, a bitter chocolate thickening the tongue.

  Curtains.

  I

  1

  CAVALCADE

  We tie the fat girl up. Her face is caked with barnyard crap but surprisingly unalarmed. Tears glide from her as if she were naturally inclined, gifted from above. We threaten to bury her alive if she tells, we wave a stick in front of her face and for the first time in my seventeen-year-old life – here in the heady, hay-stinky shade – everything is control and clarity, the arrest of relations. Suzanne stands beside me, tall and thin in her platform sneakers and boot-cut jeans, the tight orange baby tee with the word suck printed in white. Her skin is sweat-shiny, eyes open wide, and I feel a secret power arise like armies. Beneath us the pink lardy bundle wets herself in the straw.

  Jena, we say, as tears tick from her like clockwork. Don’t you dare tell.

  Girls go! In the white Explorer’s wake a creamy dust laps the dirt road. The radio’s cranked, the windows down all the way, the air conditioning turned full blast. We cross Highway 7, go up past Bloomington Road, turn back the way we came, stop at the bridge. Suzanne’s hottie dressage instructor flipped her Jeep over the guardrail one night last spring, snapped her neck in the Rouge riverbed and died. A month later her Rhodesian Ridgeback died too, ripple-ribbed and lovesick. O silence, Camels dangling from the sides of our mouths. Tiny sparks of water fly off the rocks below us. When the dark sugar of a country wailer starts I lean forward to really pump up the volume: you, me, she is his. A bright waltz blithering about whirligig nights, a tall tale of sunshine and no regrets.

  Too hick, Tanis, Suzanne says, and I bump the sound back.

  We make a left past hayfields and red brick farmhouses then a right at the mall then another right, into nerve system central of the new subdivision, pinging among its circular drives and cul-de-sacs, its fake Tudor and Georgian mansions, its baby weeping willows and black maples – none more than five feet high – limp and useless against the smoggy apeshit heat.

  In Suzanne’s darkened bedroom: iMac-topped cherry desk, cherry armoire and sleigh bed with pale Laurens, ecru matelasse cover, and blond cashmere toss pillows. The vanity on which two bottles of Tangerine Wavelength
Fruitopia bead with water. The room is scentless and huge, Miele-groomed, the sci-fi and comic-book collections cascading from the floor-to-ceiling bookcases the only messy gesture.

  I lie stomach down on the bed, stroking Suzanne’s Goddess polish in aqua Miriamne – “Peace be in my thoughts, my words and in my actions,” the bottle reads – across my nails while the Sony across the room dishes a dusty: Marilyn Manson zipping through a sticky black tunnel on a pig, lip-synching “Sweet Dreams Are Made of These.” Close my eyes, and a light like video, blindingly neural, splashes against my lids and somewhere down the hall in her father’s teak-lined study, sitting in his Eames rip-off lounger at his Eames rip-off desk, privacy-obsessed Suzanne lisps secrets into a phone, fogging the Lexan with a beautiful code I imagine endlessly helixing.

  I wait for my nails to dry – feel like I’m in drag! – they dry, I get up from the bed and go to the window, draw up the whipped-cream Duettes. Suzanne’s mom, slender as a model in a zebra-striped swimsuit, stands on the cedar pool deck among the array of wrought-iron tables and teak chaise longues, the terracotta urns of impatiens and pansies. She stretches a white bathing cap over her hair, adjusts a pair of tinted goggles, and dives into the pool, parting the flawless turquoise as she laps through chlorine. I wander over to the vanity and try another Goddess selection, Psyche in baby pink. “I bask in my own opulence; I belong to myself.” Swab away, masking the old colour.

  Suzanne appears in the doorway. She yanks at her crisp black hair. A natural white-blonde, her usually porcelain-pale face is flushed, a rosy dab at either side of her downy lower jaw.

  Oh my god, she says breathlessly, baring her excellent orthodonticized teeth. My day has been so out of control.

  Yeah, I say. Tell me.