Ophelia by Charlotte Gingras

Author:Charlotte Gingras
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Groundwood Books Ltd
Published: 2018-06-19T16:50:15+00:00

It’s weird. Ulysses and I pretend not to know each other at school, and yet without ever saying a word, we have a standing date at the workshop every Sunday. He brings dark bittersweet chocolate, I bring my famous bag of jalapeño chips, and we share. The floor is now covered in all the bits he managed to pull out of Caboose’s entrails, which he examines, auto repair book in hand, looking worried. He’ll never be able to put them all back together.

I know nothing about him. I sometimes want to ask questions like “Do you have sisters, brothers, parents? Tell me!” but quickly change my mind. There are too many things I don’t like about him. For starters, he’s too fat. Then there’s the fact that they say a Vandal made fun of him in the locker area again, called him a glasses-wearing nerd, and he didn’t defend himself. Plus, he doesn’t see the me that exists under all these layers. We can’t say we’re friends.

At any rate, we’re together in the workshop today. I open the gallon of white primer and stir the paint with a stick. I’ve decided to paint the north wall, the one across from the grid windows, where I traced the outline of my upside-down girl. I’m going to paint the wall right up to the dividing line.

“You going to repaint your fresco?” he asks, looking up from his manual.

“No. The light looks better on a clean white wall than on a bare concrete one.”

He turns back to his reading, seated among his dismantled engine parts. He looks like the plaster Buddha. He hasn’t said a word about it. Maybe he doesn’t like it? Oh well. I start applying the white with a roller. The thick paint penetrates the concrete, the wall brightens up. My right-side-up girl smiles from the back wall. Time passes.

Suddenly, Ulysses stands and walks toward the chalk line.

“I’d like to have a dog in the workshop. He could spend nights here, like a guard dog, and you and I could take him for walks in the vacant lot whenever we’re here. I’ll pay for the food.”

I start to laugh.

“Hard to get a dog out through the window!”

“You could just go out the door with him.”

“Cross your territory? Never. Then you’d want to come into mine!”

“I won’t! You’d only walk through with the dog once a day, that’s all. I give you permission.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“I’d like a sheep-herding dog,” adds Ulysses, “because I’m going to raise sheep later on after my travels. Or be a vet.”

I don’t respond. But I do think it’s a good career choice. Better than a rock singer or lawyer. Or cell phone salesman.

I’d happily live surrounded by trees and fields with tons of kittens. Or in a place like this, a place to paint, draw, write in. Or both. But that’s not a career. I still don’t know what I’ll do later, when it’s time to be grown-up and responsible, with nothing around anymore but old folks and almost no kids.

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