Free Close to Spider Man by Ivan E. Coyote Page A

what had happened to your hair was the sight of my very first naked man, hairy and dark and smelling of aftershave.
    My mom had a logical explanation for this.
    â€œWell, you know how the Salezes are different from us? Like how Grace lets you guys colour on the walls in Val’s room, but I would kill you both if you did that here? Well, that’s why Pierre had no clothes on. They’re French.”
    This made perfect sense to me at the time.
    I don’t remember the day you left, I just remember you being gone. I think it was the first time I ever missed someone. Everyone else I loved never went anywhere. And France was such a far away place, farther even than Vancouver, too far away to phone, too far away to hope you would ever come back.
    Twenty years later I saw your name on an ad. You had a video camera and were looking for gigs. It couldn’t be you, but I called anyway.
    â€œIs your name Valerie Salez?”
    â€œDid you used to live in the Yukon?”
    â€œWas your father French? Did your mother talk a lot?”
    We were only blocks away. I went to your place that same night. We said the same thing to each other at exactly the same time right before you hugged me.
    â€œYou haven’t changed a bit.”

WALKS LIKE
    THE FABRIC OF THIS MEMORY IS FADED, its edges frayed by time.
    The young girl who lived it is now just a ghost inside of me. I can remember only her bones; the skin and flesh of her are brought to me in the stories of others. Mothers, uncles, and aunts remind me of the kind of child I was then.
    There was the smell of Christmas everywhere, I do remember that, pine trees and woodsmoke and rumcake. The women smelled of gift perfume, the men of new sweaters.
    Everywhere were voices, maybe a dozen different conversations woven together in the rise and fall of talk and laughter that is the backdrop of all my mind’s snapshots of my family then, a huge room full of people connected to me by their blood.
    I was sitting almost too close to the fire. Iced window panes separated us from the bitter white of winter outside. Everyone I’d ever known was still alive.
    I was about four years old.

    Both of my grandmothers sat in overstuffed chairs next to the fireplace, talking, a trace of Cockney, and a hint of an Irish lilt, respectively.
    I sat on the thick rug between them, rolling a red metal firetruck up and down my white-stockinged legs, making motor, gear-changing, braking noises. Listening.
    â€œYou should have seen the fuss this morning, getting her into that dress, I tell you, Pat, Fd’ve never stood for it from any of my girls. You’d’ve thought I was boiling her in oil, the way she was carrying on. She wanted to wear those filthy brown corduroy pants again, imagine that, and she knows we’re going to mass tonight.” My mother’s mother clicked her tongue and sent a stern glance in my general direction.
    â€œThat was what all my boys were like, Flo. Really, if you could have seen me the day that portrait on the wall there was taken, I swear I didn’t have a nerve left for them to get on. Like pulling teeth, you know it was, to dress those four.”
    â€œWell you’d expect it from the boys, you know, it’s only natural. But her, I don’t understand it. Her mother always liked to dress up, and never a speck of dirt could you find on my Norah . . . look here, come here you.” She curled an arthritic finger at me.
    I stood up reluctantly and dragged my feet across the car-pet toward her, hoping for a good spark.
    â€œLook, see what I mean? Look at her knees, how does she do it? It’s only been a couple of hours, and there’s only snowon the ground out there. I couldn’t find any dirt right now if I went out looking. Here, let me fix up that zipper. . . .”
    My small fingers shot up to intercept her, and a rather large bolt of static electricity flashed between us. She pulled her gnarled hand back for a