Manic Gnome Dream Girl
Mike was in his bathrobe, scrambling eggs, some ambient techno ticking, when: ding-dong. “Better not be that dick from Go Fresh,” he muttered, taking the pan off the heat.
The girl was dressed in green, with a hippy hat and a lanyard. Mike’s first assessment was Greenpeace fundraiser. He opened his mouth to tell her he was already a donor, when something gave him pause.
It wasn’t the old-fashioned Dictaphone in her hand that gave him pause; it wasn’t even her ears, adorned with pointy prosthetics. No, what gave Mike pause was the girl’s face, which he recognized but couldn’t place.
“I’m from the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Gnomes,” she said.
“Right,” said Mike.
She held up her lanyard for inspection. The ID had a logo, a photo, and a name – Alice Woods. A reflective seal proved its authenticity.
“We’ve had a report from a concerned citizen,” she said, “and we’d like to perform a wellness check.”
“On the gnomes?” asked Mike.
The girl nodded.
“It means asking them some questions. Nothing they’ll find distressing. You have the right to refuse, of course, but then the case gets escalated.”
“Escalated how?”
“You know, it gets moved up, bureaucratically, to a more serious level.”
“What happens at a more serious level?”
“A dragon comes.”
Her brown eyes were mirthless.
“That doesn’t sound great,” said Mike.
“We’ve never had any complaints about the dragon.”
“Because he’s a nice guy?”
She laughed – a lovely sound – but kept laughing a little too long.
“Sorry,” she said, “not because he’s a nice guy, no.”
“Best to co-operate, I guess,” said Mike, gesturing towards the front yard.
Mike lived in the downstairs flat of a Victorian semi-detached, which he’d bought after his Dad tapped out and left a surprising sum of money. He'd been in film school back then. His friends, maybe grating against the gravity of it all – the death, the deeds, – bought garden gnomes as housewarming gifts.
Mike’s place was soon the pre-game venue for nights out, and the gnomes became part of a sadistic drinking ritual. There'd been five originally. For reasons best left shrouded, only three remained. These days, a guest might occasionally tie a muslin sack over a gnome head for old times’ sake, but, all told, the little guys had hardly moved in years.
The girl pressed a button on her Dictaphone and advanced towards a gnome suspended upside down from a plant hook.
“Hello,” she said, “I’m Alice from the SPCG. What’s your name?”
“Winston,” said the gnome.
“Have you lived here long, Winston?”
“Must be a decade.”
The gnome’s accent was mid-Atlantic, its pronunciation clipped.
“Do you like it?”
“I have no particular complaint.”
“That’s good. And are you comfortable?”
“If you’re asking, dear girl, would you mind scratching behind my left ear?”
“Happy to,” said Alice, taking off her glove, “how’s that?”
“A tonic,” said Winston.
“I’ll leave my details,” said Alice, “in case you ever want to reach out.”
She took a business card from her bag and tucked it into the groove of Winston’s inverted arm.
“I rather think it’s him you should worry about,” said the gnome, swinging gently back and forth.
“Who?”
“Michael.”
“Oh?”
“He got into a scrape last week with some young fellow from, let’s see, Go Fresh, a, what is it, a meal preparation service. Right there on the doorstep. Neighbours listening. Quite the scene.”
“That would only concern the SPCG if it affected his care of you.”
“Ah. Never mind then,” said the gnome.
Alice gave Winston a last scratch before crossing Mike’s muddy patch of lawn, mincing around a few try-hard snowdrops.
She stopped next to a figure lying supine. Two dollarama Halloween ravens, more polystyrene than feather, perched on this gnome’s shoulders, their beaks positioned at ominous angles to its face. One of the gnome’s eye-sockets was filled with red nail-polish.
Alice held her Dictaphone near the gnome’s chin.
“Hello. I’m Alice. I’m from the SPCG.”
“It is I, Odin,” said the gnome.
“How are you, Odin?”
“Fine.”
Odin sounded one part Ragnar Lodbrok, one part Swedish chef.
“Are these crows bothering you?”
“They’re good birds, these birds.”
“Your eye looks like it might be injured.”
“Yes, there is a slight ache.”
“I could send someone to look at it for you?”
The gnome considered.
“If it wouldn’t be any trouble.”
“No trouble.”
“Then I would be grateful.”
“Is everything else okay around here?” Alice asked.
Another pensive beat.
“I am worried about the human,” admitted Odin.
“Why’s that?”
“I am trying to recall what he shouted at the frightened young man last week. The raven will know.”
Alice tilted the Dictaphone toward one of the birds, which cawed:
“So now I’m supposed to let some corporate asshole decide what I eat for dinner, because it’s not the unpaid overtime I work in the gig economy that’s destroying my life, oh no, it’s the effort it takes to peel a fucking onion.”
“That was it, yes,” said Odin.
“Did the incident make you feel unsafe?” asked Alice.
“No.”
“That puts it outside of the remit of the SPCG, I’m afraid. But if you do need me for any reason, Winston has my card.”
“He’ll make me scratch him for it, you know.”
“You’d prefer one of your own?”
Odin assented, and Alice slotted a card under his arm. She nodded to the ravens in turn and made her way to Mike’s final surviving garden gnome. This one had a broken pickaxe glued to his head, caulk creating the illusion of seeping grey matter.
Alice introduced herself, held the Dictaphone under the gnome’s chin, and asked its name.
“Leon,” said the gnome.
“How are you, Leon?”
“Our planet is being turned into a filthy and evil-smelling imperialist barrack, comrade Alice.”
Leon had a woeful Russian accent.
“Yes,” Alice said, “but I’m wondering if you, personally, are keeping well.”
Leon sighed.
“Life is not an easy matter,” he said, “you cannot get through it without falling into frustration and cynicism unless you have before you a great idea which raises you above personal misery, above weakness, above all kinds of perfidy and baseness.”
“Like, a purpose?” Alice asked.
“Or a dream,” said Leon.
They lapsed into a silence that Alice seemed reluctant to break.
Eventually, she said, “I wanted to mention the pick in your skull.”
“A compliment, comrade – to the revolution of the proletariat.”
“Would you like someone to remove it?”
“Never.”
“Well, Winston and Odin know how to reach me if you change your mind.”
“Wait,” said Leon, and Alice tilted her head to attention.
“Concerning Comrade Mike, once loyal to the revolution, now living in false consciousness, prostituting himself as a purveyor of Bourgeois luxury…”
Mike, in thrall from the doorstep, thought this was one way to describe a career in marketing.
“…I fear for him,” said Leon.
“But you’re not afraid of him,” said Alice.
Leon laughed, and Alice, appearing satisfied, put the Dictaphone in her bag and walked back across the yard.
She smiled at Mike, and something inside him turned liquid.
“I don’t see anything to worry about. But, one question. According to our file, there are five gnomes living at this address.”
“Oh, yeah,” said Mike, “the others moved.”
“Where to?”
“A place called Green Lane, near London.”
At least he thought that’s where his household waste went to landfill.
“London, Ontario?” said Alice, producing a notepad and scribbling something down.
“Yeah. Not like they emigrated to England.”
That smile again. Mike’s stomach flipped. And Alice left.
It was hard to know how long to wait before calling a girl. But Mike figured that if someone turns up at your house in full fancy dress with pre-recorded dramatic dialogues to perform with your garden ornaments, it signals enthusiasm. He phoned the next day on his lunch break.
A distinguished voice answered, not unlike Winston’s.
“Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Gnomes,” it said.
“Hi,” said Mike, “can I speak to Alice Woods?”
“Who may I say is calling?”
“Michael Roy.”
“Just a moment please.”
Mike knew the hold music from somewhere: “look around you, there are many things to see, that some would say could never be…”
“Hello.” Alice’s voice, crisp.
“Alice, hi, how’s it going?”
“Good, thanks. What can I help you with?”
Mike wasn’t sure what he’d expected. A dissolution of the fourth wall, maybe. A sweet shared laugh over her ingenious method of breaking the ice.
“I’d, eh, I’d like to volunteer,” he said.
“For the SPCG?” said Alice.
“Yeah. I was talking with, ah, Leon after your visit, saying how much I admired your dedication. And I thought, why not give something back?”
“Are you free Saturday?”
“Saturday, sure.”
“Do you know McCleary Park? On Lake Shore East?”
“I can find it.”
“Meet me at the Logan and Lake Shore corner, 10:30am.”
Between buses and trains, it’d take Mike an hour and a half to get there.
“See you then.”
For the rest of the week, soulless client conversations bled into the background, while Mike’s future – for the first time since his Dad…, well, for the first time in a long time – took on dimension. He thought of Alice – with her Dictaphone, her pointy ears, her whole ridiculous bit – and something hopeful flickered. He allowed himself to blow on the spark and was mesmerized by shadows of the encounter she had so painstakingly crafted between them.
And her face. Its mystery twisted him up. She could be a neighbour: that'd explain how she’d overheard his debate with the Go Fresh schmuck. Or a film school acquaintance – she knew about his lapsed Trotskyism, after all.
Friday, coming home from work, he glanced at Odin. The red paint was gone, the gnome’s eye restored to its original Nordic blue.
On Saturday morning – bright, cold, dry – he got the subway to Union, then took the 72 along the Harbourfront until he reached McCleary park.
He was in good time, but Alice was already waiting. Even in her elvin attire, she looked businesslike.
“The plan for today,” she began, gesturing for him to walk beside her, “is to liberate some gnomes from a garden centre.”
“Like, shoplift them?” said Mike.
“That’s not the language we use at the SPCG.”
He tried to slow their walking pace, but Alice turned expectantly and he jogged to her side.
“What if we’re caught?” he asked.
“Protocol is, we give them our card and inform them they’re being recorded. People are usually willing to enter into dialogue. On the sole occasion the police were involved, they called SPCG reception and ultimately took no action. They actually seemed to find it amusing.”
Alice looked disgusted by this.
“Right,” said Mike.
“It’d help if you were in uniform,” said Alice, “wait.”
She produced a pair of pointy, flesh-textured ears from her pocket and attached them to Mike’s head.
“Hide the tips under your hat for now,” she said, recommencing her speed walk.
As they neared their mark – Beech Nursery – Alice offered more instruction: “we’re roommates, shopping for effects for our garden. We start in seeds, then find the gnomes.”
“Roommates?” said Mike, “not a couple?”
“Would a couple be better?” Alice asked.
“I think so,” he said, taking her hand.
She led him through the petalled aisles. They enacted a stilted conversation about geraniums in front of a rack of seed packets before approaching the display of gnomes, all hoeing, digging, wheeling their barrows.
“They have to work like this all day,” Alice whispered.
She picked up a little guy with a watering can, removed his barcode, and concealed him in her bag. Mike grabbed a gnome at random, clawed at its sticker, and shoved it under his coat.
“Now what?” he asked, fighting the urge to run.
“We pay for the seeds.”
They went to the counter, exchanged floral pleasantries with the horticulturalist, and left.
On the street, adrenalin coursed through Mike’s body, screaming that he was alive.
“Should we bring them back to my place?” he asked.
“Oh no,” said Alice, “we’re going to free them.”
“Where?”
“Tommy Thompson.”
It was a full hour’s vigorous walk to Leslie Spit and the gnomes were heavy. Mike was grateful when Alice chose an outcrop of rock overlooking the harbour and they could finally sit down.
The day had warmed, shrubs cradled buds, waterfowl swooped and cried. Lake Ontario lay peaceful at their feet. Alice placed her gnome on a stone beside them, her hazel eyes glinting triumphant in the noon light. Mike did the same with his guy, who, it turned out, had an apt little fishing rod.
“Alice…” said Mike, the name turning over in his mouth like a key.
His lips, unaccustomed to converting emotions to words, revved clumsily to life.
“…for a long time, since, well, maybe we can talk about that later, but, for a long time, I’ve been trapped. In my job. In this system. I knew that already. But it’s not … I see now, I’ve really been trapped in myself, in my own strangled sense of … possibility. And whatever happens or doesn’t happen between us, I want, I want you to know that you’ve changed me. You’ve shown me that life, life can come knocking, that nothing, you know, nothing has to be this way.”
He turned to her. “Can I kiss you?”
Alice’s eyes – were they green now? – searched his for an agonizing moment. Then she smiled her liquifying smile.
“I’d like that,” she said.
He kissed her, gently. Her lips tasted like honey. Afterward, she laid her head on his shoulder.
“I’m happy you’ve volunteered,” she said, “it can feel like I’m the only one who cares about the gnomes.”
Mike wondered when she’d drop the routine
“I’m not trying to spoil the mystery,” he said, “the mystery is beautiful, trust me. But I’ve been driving myself crazy – how do I know you? Your face is so familiar.”
Alice brushed a stray twig from her coat.
“We try to be discreet. In the course of an investigation, I mean. I might have slipped up.”
It was impossible to ignore the irk this time, but Mike knew he was always like this, picking holes in things, finding fault with people. He needed to learn to be. Wasn’t that Alice’s lesson for him: to stop rationalizing, to just be?
Her head was still on his shoulder, her sweetness on his mouth. Mike turned his face to inhale the leafy scent of her hair. He was about to reach for her small, gloved hand, when a shadow came across the sun and she sat up very straight.
“Mike?” she asked.
“Yeah?”
“The gnomes that moved…”
“Yeah?”
“To Green Lane…”
Her voice held a note of panic.
“Near London, Ontario,” said Mike.
“The gnomes that moved to Green Lane, near London, Ontario…”
The shadow deepened. Mike followed Alice’s gaze skyward, where a muscle of red leather contorted towards them, furiously bending the blue. Eyes of the abyss, nostrils calligraphically arching, smoke billowing under a canopy of wings. Fire creeping and withering, fire creeping and blossoming.
***
Originally from the West of Ireland, Emer O'Toole now lives in Montreal, where she teaches Irish theatre, performance and film at Concordia University. Her widely-acclaimed non-fiction book "Girls Will Be Girls" (Orion: 2015) is a funny introduction to academic theories of gender. It has been translated into French, Spanish, Italian, Swedish, Icelandic, and Korean. Emer has contributed features and columns to a wide variety of publications, including The Guardian, The Irish Times, The Independent, Paper Visual Art, Winter Pages, Mirror Lamp Press, and Somesuch Stories.