by Julie Paul
They’re back to waiting.
When Owen suggests they play hangman on the window, Heidi agrees. Her father better not complain about finger-smeared glass after making them wait.
Owen climbs into the back seat again.
“My mother used to do this. She would stop in at a damned bar, and I’d wait in the car for hours.”
“This isn’t a bar,” she says. “And my father never does this. It won’t happen again.”
Owen needs to know that none of this is normal.
She blows on the glass to fog it up and they play hangman. She needs to pee so bad. They’re both freezing. She wants a hug. Every time a car passes, she feels it in her stomach. Not her mother. Not her. Finally, her.
But instead of coming over to the car, her mother goes up Paula’s porch stairs in her puffy blue coat. She knocks, looks back at them, waves and smiles. After she stands there for another few seconds, peering through the window, she tries the door, then goes inside.
“Three more letters,” Owen says, pointing at the window.
“Spaghetti?”
He high fives her. “Nice one.”
She watches the clock; four, five, six minutes pass. Her mother isn’t coming out, either.
“Let’s go in,” Owen says. “This is effed up.”
But suddenly, her mother appears. She’s running down the stairs; there she is, on the snowy lawn, on her knees, screaming, her mother, she’s—
Owen reaches over and takes Heidi’s hand, and they watch as her mother’s hands meet the snow and leave it red. The blood is all down her jacket too, and all at once, the pee Heidi’s been holding just won’t be held any longer.
There goes Owen’s hand.
There goes everything.
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Heidi will not imagine a future, but it will come anyway. When her mother tells her what happened, hours later, after her aunt has brought her and Owen home, she will plug her ears, refuse to listen. NO, NO, NO, not this, not her life, no way. Her mother’s face will be unrecognizable, she’ll be down on her knees—
And she will tell Heidi, and Heidi will hear because fingers are a terrible way to fight sounds. They’re only good for one thing, holding Owen’s fingers—
But Owen, he’ll be gone in the morning, before Heidi is up. He’ll need to be removed from the situation—a family now unfit for fostering. And Heidi will cry like a—she will cry, oh, shit, cry like a—she doesn’t know what cries like this.
Tom was shot by Paula’s husband, who thought Tom was having an affair with Paula, although anyone could’ve told him they were just friends. Then he turned the gun on Paula, and then himself, thank God, and not the little girl watching The Lion King in the family room with her headphones on.
When the house holds just two people, Heidi will cradle her father’s leather wallet in her hands and feel embarrassed by the curve in it from his bum. After she opens it, she will find herself in the plastic window, a smiling school picture, hair in ponytails.
Then from behind that photo, Heidi will see another photo’s edge. When she slides it out—a second face.
Paula’s little girl.
And from then on, Heidi will try—and fail—to separate the tears about her father from those about Owen from those about how, when her father was dying, she was thinking about going pee and spelling spaghetti and listening to backfiring skidoos and wondering if Owen’s hand in hers meant she was his girlfriend.
//// Meteorites
On a dark Saturday evening in November, Cassie, Pete, and June Brownley made their way to another family’s house for dinner. Alicia, Iain, and Chloe Dawson were new to town and lived just outside of Stevens Falls in a farm-field subdivision, past the truckers’ breakfast joint and the John Deere dealership. The houses there, spaced some distance apart compared to the ones in town, seemed naked, self-conscious, the planted maple and birch trees not yet big enough to give privacy to the joined backyards.
Cassie first spotted this new family during the summer, in the Shoppers Drug Mart where she worked, and then, come September, Chloe had ended up in June’s classroom. In the schoolyard, Cassie and Alicia had begun to talk. Alicia was a nurse looking for work, and her husband, Iain, had “a portable career” as a writer. By October, dinner invitations had been extended, and although Cassie had offered first, Alicia insisted that Cassie’s family come to their place instead.
“Entertaining is my middle name,” she’d said that day, lightly touching Cassie’s arm when she said it, while they waited for their daughters by the jungle gym. Alicia’s fingernails were painted apple green, with a kind of sick shine to them, and they brought to Cassie’s mind a counter filled with filo-pastried appetizers, a smiling pig’s head, everything glistening dangerously. Despite Alicia’s insistence on her only bringing wine, Cassie knew she would pack whole-wheat dinner rolls and a salad, so at least she and June, a picky eater, would have something to eat.
Holidays and dinner parties were danger zones according to her Weight Watchers leader, as if Cassie needed reminding. The calories were ready to gang up on anyone who so much as dared to look at a cheese plate, she announced last meeting, and Cassie had seen the woman beside her visibly wilt.
However, their leader told them, it wasn’t about being perfect.
“For victory,” she said, “you’ll just have to win more battles than you lose.”
Cassie was on a winning streak, logging a new low daily, although her leader didn’t recommend the scale more than once a week. She couldn’t help it; she liked to know where she stood. She was fond of measuring steps as she walked a staircase, counting every one, tapping out an untethered rhythm on her slowly shrinking thighs.
She didn’t attend meetings in Stevens Falls, but in the next town over, just for a little more privacy, although she probably didn’t need to worry: Stevens Falls was practically half strangers now. It had become a bedroom community for Ottawa, just an hour’s drive away.
Cassie hadn’t asked Alicia about her motives yet, but her sense was that, in general, the people moving in wanted red-brick history and a return to country livin’, a place where the cashiers at the Dollar Store and Tim Hortons knew most people by name and trucks were a part of the family. Above all, they wanted cheaper real estate.
The next town over had been voted “Prettiest Town in Canada” three years running. It was an easy pretty: old, restored limestone buildings and a clock tower, a grassy, treed park on either side of a meandering river, with cute little bridges to cross and leave all your troubles behind. Cassie liked to walk through the park a couple of times before her meetings, one last blast before weigh-in, casting off her old self as she went.
A river also ran down the middle of Stevens Falls, but it would never win the award. It was a railway town, with more than a few abandoned warehouses and factories and a reputation for bar fights and youth gangs. And despite its proximity to the capital, it had always seemed to operate by a different set of rules. Yet, she and Pete liked their rough-around-the-edges town and their side-street house, red-bricked and white-porched, a hundred years old. It was unpretentious. It was home.
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The Dawsons’ doorbell played “Jingle Bells” although Christmas was still weeks away. After a shy hello at the beige-sided split-level’s front door, young Chloe took June by the hand and led her away, proclaiming, “The kingdom awaits!”
Cassie had never met Iain before. She fumbled the kiss-on-the-cheek greeting he gave her so that their lips touched. Alicia, luckily, offered only a hug.
“Leave your shoes on,” she told them. “The floors are freezing.”
Pete disobeyed her; he’d gone to a lot of trouble to find matching socks that didn’t have holes, but Cassie left her heels on as instructed. Heels could take a good five pounds off a silhoue
tte.
Alicia’s feet were encased in matted-looking wool slippers, but Iain wore soft leather boots with skinny laces. Cassie’s imagination leapt to life: she pictured Alicia untying them with her green-tipped fingers, or maybe even her little white teeth. Everything about Iain screamed urban life, from his purple dress shirt and non-denim jeans to his sculpted hair and the way he spoke with a lifted chin. When Cassie tried to picture herself undoing Pete’s work boots by mouth, she nearly laughed out loud.
These people wouldn’t know it to look at him, but scruffy-headed and thick-shouldered Pete was quite intelligent. She had to stop herself from saying so, like a dog owner who calls out, Don’t worry, he’s friendly! even when the dog’s got his muddy paws on a person’s chest. But was furniture-builder Pete all that friendly? He may have come from the prettiest town, but his mouth could spit out some rather unpretty things. Cassie hoped he would mind his hockey-player tongue tonight.
Iain accepted Cassie’s bottle of Zinfandel and poured her a glass while she looked at the huge photo on the wall, the smiling family sporting bright sarongs and messy hair.
“Bali,” Alicia said, when she saw her studying it. “Ever been?”
Cassie shook her head. “If it’s not in Florida, we haven’t been there.”
Alicia smiled and nodded. “Florida’s nice. Why don’t we graze a bit?”
Cassie and Pete sat on the bar stools by the kitchen island and began to sample the appetizers. The crackers under the cheese had the consistency of dried soap scum, and the cheese spread was light and creamy, but it fizzed a bit when it met her tongue, and what was that burning aftertaste, sharp as a fingernail on the roof of her mouth? Chili flakes? Pepper?
“It’s a sort of crushed insect from South America,” Iain explained. Cassie’s face was burning. “We brought back a fine selection from our journey last winter,” he continued. “I hope it’s not too spicy.”
“How interesting,” Cassie said. Her mouth had begun to water the way it did during the flu.
The other appetizer was some sort of orange fruit with its leafy wings still attached, a bunch of them gathered around a dish that held a tarry dip. “Have a bit of marmite,” Iain urged them both. “Something from my parents’ homeland.”
“Put some shrimp on the barbie, mate,” Pete said, after which Iain smiled coldly. It was the only Australian thing Pete knew to say.
Cassie wanted nothing more than a simple shrimp ring with a no-points cocktail sauce to dip their bottom-feeding bottoms into. She ate one of the flying fruits. Although they were tart, they were more recognizably digestible than anything else on the table. She took three more.
In between smiles and bursts of inane small talk, she gulped her wine and uncrossed her raspy, pantyhosed legs so she wouldn’t fall off her stool. Bar stools were not meant for ladies. She felt nothing like a lady, anyway—more like a buzzard perched beside the counter. A hungry, sad bird of prey with nothing to eat in sight. Why had she dressed up so much?
Pete took another Molson from Iain. Iain held up the bottle of wine and raised his eyebrows at her. Was more wine a good idea? She forgot how many points per glass. And who was driving home? Before she could figure out her answers, Iain topped up her glass.
“I love your hair,” Alicia said. “How do you get that kind of volume?”
Cassie giggled. “My little secret. Next time you’re in the store, I’ll let you in on it.”
She was used to this kind of compliment; Cassie still looked like the Mary Kay lady she used to be, back in the late nineties, when she’d wanted more money than her cashier’s wage at the Independent Grocers had offered. She’d been so young and hopeful back then, pencilling the life back into the eyes of the older women of Stevens Falls, following a script of compliments that worked its magic every time. She tried to believe she was making a difference in their lives, that the women would reorder once their favourite magical elixirs ran out, but then the Shoppers Drug Mart came to town, and that was that. She got a job at the makeup counter, worked up to beauty boutique manager within a year, and now did most of the hiring and firing. She knew every product on the shelves in every department.
Pete and Iain had begun talking sports, sans hockey. Cassie felt a small jolt of pride that Pete could talk about Federer and FIFA without making a joke.
Alicia shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. Would you like to see our Hall of Shame?”
“Sure,” Cassie said, all smiles and confusion, and Alicia took her arm and led her down the hallway.
“A different trip each frame,” she said, proudly. “My God, look how skinny we were before kids.”
In the first set of pictures, a younger, tanned version of Iain and Alicia grinned out at them, poolside and on the beach, except for the one where they were nearly naked, looking at each other, foreheads touching.
“Honeymoon?” Cassie asked.
“No, that was the trip where we met. Thailand.” Alicia made a hooting noise. “It’s a wonder we have any pictures with us wearing clothes.”
Cassie laughed a bit and quickly moved on to the next one. There they were, looking down at an infant Chloe; another showed baby Chloe smiling, and a third captured her holding a dandelion in her little toddler hand.
“Adorable,” Cassie said. Truthfully, Chloe looked starved and tentative, but who was she to judge? June had been an unusually beautiful baby, with her Shirley Temple curls and big dimply grin.
“Yeah,” Alicia said. “The good old days.”
Cassie suddenly felt like something had come to life in her stomach, so she quickly excused herself and went to the bathroom. She sat on the toilet and waited for something worse to follow. Could she get some kind of traveller’s bug just by eating those weird foods? Could they rehydrate in her gut?
The bigger question was, where was she? Cassie felt completely lost. She did not recognize the soaps or creams in there, nor did she recognize the scents wafting out of the oven or the toys strewn about the place. Alicia and Iain seemed nice enough, but they didn’t exactly have a lot of common ground with her and Pete. Maybe it was the pink wine talking, but she was starting to feel like this house was completely foreign, as if a pod from a distant planet had dropped into this subdivision, and the locals were expected to welcome the newcomers and say nothing about their third hands, their strange way of talking, their silvery skin.
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Dinner eventually came: some kind of bony fish, a bitter grain flecked with slimy whole garlic buds, and a bowlful of unadorned boiled kale. Both girls flatly refused all of that and instead grabbed two buns each and a decoration of lettuce and cucumber, upon which they both poured half a cupful of Thousand Island Lite dressing.
“You’re our first guests!” Alicia proclaimed, raising her glass. “To new friends.”
They all clinked and repeated the toast. Cassie and Pete both reached for the bun basket at the same time.
After they dug into their meals with varying degrees of enthusiasm, Iain started up the conversation.
“Peter, we’re in the market for an armoire,” he said. “What kind of wood do you work in?”
Pete shrugged. “Armoire, you’re talking maple or oak, if you want it to last. But we can do pine too. All depends on what kind of coin you’re willing to part with.”
Iain nodded. “Do you have examples online?”
“Nope. No website. We’re strictly in person, in cash.” Pete half-smiled—it was a point of pride for him, staying off the web. “Plus, we’re backed up about three months right now, so you’re gonna have to wait a bit.”
“Wow,” Alicia said, apparently impressed. “That’s a good position to be in.”
Cassie swore she saw her wink at Pete. Ha! Position.
After dinner, Iain sat on the lean, cream sofa
and held his own hands, looking like a priest or an odd uncle. He was done drinking, it seemed—a drink being the most appropriate hand-held object after dinner. Or before dinner. Or during dinner, especially when the food had not been all that edible, other than the chocolate ice cream—totally worth the eight points—for dessert. But he didn’t even have a cup of tea. Had anyone offered tea?
Cassie was holding her hand-blown wine glass, rubbing the charm—a wire ring with a blue bead on it—up and down the stem, trying not to empty it as quickly as she wanted because somehow the bottle was over half gone. Pete gave her the look. The stem was not a penis, nothing like a penis, and yet it had to remind them all of a penis, with her gliding that hoop up and down the thick glass stalk. She couldn’t stop. It was keeping her from jumping up and running into the bathroom to escape, again, where she would try not to look in the cabinets, again, and fail. Had Alicia winked at her husband?
Iain was describing their former life in the city. “All Volvos with bumper stickers. Greenpeace and baby seal love and Save the Earth.” He shook his head. “We wanted real,” he said, gesturing at the dark windows. “Gritty. Closer to the actual land, rather than just hot air about it.”
“Salt of the earth,” Cassie said, because if she didn’t say it, somebody would, and then she would have to hide her annoyance.
“Exactly!” Alicia said. “Real raccoons, not back-alley trash ones.”
“We got those too,” Pete said. “You’ll have them around here, for sure.”
“You know what we mean, though,” Iain said. “Once you travel to other countries, where people live closer to the land, you realize how false a life can be.”
Pete burped quietly behind a fist. “Can you smell the 3M plant from here? I hear it gets bad when the wind’s blowing from the south.”
Cassie laugh-hiccupped, but no one joined her. That was her Pete, always telling it like it was. They were both just so tired of people believing that small-town living was country living. It wasn’t. It was closer to city life than any city person knew, even once they moved, because they still had their notions, their filters of rustic gold through which they saw—and filmed and posted about on social media—their new, simpler life.
