“Yup,” Colette says, but I know she’s lying. I’ll bet anything that when Colette is over, Tante Hélène is busy in her kitchen making herbal potions—or brownies.
Colette runs her fingers through Mom’s hair. As I watch her, I think how I haven’t really touched Mom since she came home. Sure, I kiss her hello every morning, and I kiss her goodbye when I leave for work, but it’s hard to hug someone who’s in a wheelchair. And Mom’s hair looks so greasy, I don’t feel like touching it.
But Colette doesn’t seem to mind. And I can see Mom’s face softening. Maybe she misses us touching her.
“Let me do your hair, Mom,” Colette says softly. “I’m going to make it so pretty. I’ll wash it in the sink for you. It’s going to smell so nice.” Colette’s voice is gentle, almost as if she is singing a lullaby.
Dad and I exchange looks. I think we’re both worried Mom’ll have another outburst.
But she doesn’t. “Okay, baby,” she tells Colette. “I’d like that.”
Mom doesn’t object when Colette wheels her into the bathroom. I follow behind, thinking Colette will probably need my help. But Colette wheels the wheelchair right over to the sink. I watch as she runs the water, testing with her fingers that it’s not too hot or too cold. “Okay, you can put your head back now,” she tells Mom.
Colette, who can never concentrate on anything, is concentrating now, putting a rolled up washcloth under Mom’s head so she’ll be more comfortable.
“Ouch!” Mom calls out suddenly. “Stop pulling my hair!”
Dad is standing behind me, and the two of us bristle at the same time. We’re both expecting trouble.
Colette laughs. “Oops,” she says, not bothering to apologize. “I hate it when that happens!”
The sink is full of suds. Mom sighs as Colette massages her head.
Fourteen
Dad just calls out “Bye” from the front door when he leaves to do the banking. He doesn’t kiss Mom on the cheek, tug one of Colette’s curls or tweak my nose. Mom doesn’t seem to notice something’s different, but Colette and I do.
“He didn’t tweak my nose,” I tell Colette once he’s gone.
Colette is standing by the door, rocking on the balls of her feet. “Poor Daddy,” is all she says.
Colette is working at Saintly Souvenirs today. I see her loading on the lip gloss, which means Maxim is probably going to be dropping by. I wonder if, when there are no customers, they make out there too. For a second, I imagine Maxim’s hands on Colette’s grapefruit breasts and what that would feel like. But the thought disturbs me and makes my own small breasts ache in a way I’m not used to, so I make myself stop.
I’m home with Mom today. I offer to read to her, but she says no. She doesn’t want to watch tv either. So I just sit with her in the living room and try to make conversation.
“Do you need a pillow for your back?”
“No.”
“Do you want to see today’s newspaper?”
“No.”
“We could do the crossword.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Are you hungry? I could make you a sandwich with bacon and tomato.”
“Not right now.”
“You sure? Because I think I’m gonna make one for myself.”
“I already told you no.”
On my way to the kitchen, I pause in front of Mom’s wheelchair. I don’t look down at her legs and feet, but I make a point of reaching out to stroke her hair. Soft and gentle, the way Colette did last night. At least now Mom’s hair is clean. But her face doesn’t relax the way it does when Colette touches her. Maybe Mom can sense how uncomfortable I am around her. How the thought of her paralyzed legs—just hanging there, limp and useless— makes me queasy.
I wash my hands after I’ve laid out the bacon strips in the fry pan. Jesus is watching me from the crucifix over the sink. He’s tired, aching from hanging on the cross, but even so, I can feel His disappointment. He’s telling me I need to be better with Mom. More understanding, more patient, and definitely less grossed out. Mom knows exactly how I feel and so does He.
The bacon sizzles in the pan. Its smoky smell fills every corner of the kitchen and seeps into the rest of the house. When the doorbell rings, I turn down the heat.
“Don’t let whoever it is in,” Mom warns. “I’m not up for visitors today.”
She’s not up for visitors any day.
At first when I look out the glass pane on the door, I don’t see anyone. Maybe it was some kid playing a trick.
But then I see a muscular suntanned arm reaching up to ring the doorbell again. The arm drops and now I see fingers in leather-and-mesh weight-lifting gloves. “Oh my God,” I tell Mom. “It’s him. It’s Marco Leblanc.”
I didn’t think he ever left his house, but I can’t very well leave him sitting outside our door in his rickety old wheelchair. Besides, he knows I’ve seen him.
Mom is wheeling herself out of the living room and into the hallway where I’m standing. “Let him in,” she whispers, but I already have.
I don’t like how Marco is looking at me. Staring really. As if he actually knows me.
Mom wheels herself so she is next to me. “Thérèse,” Marco says. His face is all sweaty and so are his arms and hands. “It’s been a while.” His voice sounds rusty, which is what must happen when you hardly ever talk to anyone.
“I—uh—have to take the bacon off the stove,” I say. Because I don’t know what else to say, I ask Marco if he wants a bacon and tomato sandwich.
Marco looks surprised. I guess no one ever offers to make him anything. “Sure,” he says. “That’d be good.”
I don’t really want to go back to the kitchen. Even though he gives me the creeps, I’m curious about Marco. This is the first time I’ve seen him up close. His upper arms are even bulkier than I thought; the blue veins near his hands are so swollen I’m afraid they might burst.
Marco has a colorful striped Mexican blanket over his lower body, but I’ll bet underneath the blanket, his legs are sweating too. His hair looks like it’s been dyed black. No one has hair that dark. But how could a man in a wheelchair dye his own hair? Maybe he gets the nurse to do it, or the delivery boy from the IGA.
I’ve got to take the bacon out of the fry pan before it burns.
“I’ve been watching you go up and down the ramp,” I hear Marco tell Mom.
Marco speaks slowly, like it’s an effort to get the words out.
“Is that so?” I don’t understand why Mom isn’t upset by the news that this weirdo has been stalking us.
“That’s why I came. I’m worried about you.”
“I thought you didn’t want anything to do with me,” I hear Mom say. She sounds hurt, almost as if she’s disappointed Marco didn’t show up on our doorstep years ago.
“I didn’t. But now I do.”
The bacon is draining on a paper towel, and I am slicing a ripe tomato into thin red rounds, but I don’t want to miss what happens next. I lay the knife down on the counter and go to stand by the kitchen door. Marco and Mom have wheeled themselves into the living room; I can just see them from here.
Marco’s wheelchair faces Mom’s. But his eyes are darting around the room—up to the ceiling, over to the bed, then back up to the pair of crucifixes on the wall. It’s like he’s a bird that flew indoors and can’t find his way out. His eyes land back on Mom. Again, I get the feeling that talking is hard for him. “You’re not using your wheelchair right,” he says.
When Mom laughs, it comes out sounding harsh, almost like a bark. “So you came over here to give me a lesson?”
“You got it,” Marco says without lifting his eyes off her face. “If there’s one thing I know something about— it’s using a wheelchair. I’ve been in this damn thing for seventeen years.” He sighs. I figure that’s probably the most Marco has said to anyone in all that time.
“Seventeen years,” Mom says slowly. It’s as if she’s remembering all the thi
ngs that happened in between then and now. How she fell in love with Dad and how they had me and Colette. Maybe even how she blew smoke rings behind the Scala Santa with Emil Francoeur. “We were just teenagers. A lot happened that year.”
“To all of us,” Marco says softly.
“Yes, to all of us.” For a minute, they’re both quiet. Are they both remembering the night of Marco’s accident?
Mom looks up at him. “So when are you going to show me all the things I’m doing wrong?”
Marco uses the back of his glove to wipe the sweat off his forehead. He takes a deep breath before he starts speaking again. It’s not hard to see that coming over here wasn’t easy for him. Maybe he’s got a phobia about leaving his house. “You need to work your arms more,” he tells Mom. “Most people in wheelchairs have the same problem. They use their hands. Or their feet—if their feet work. But it’s a waste of energy. It’s all in the arms.” He flexes his arms when he says this. They’re so bulky, I take a step back.
“How would you know what most people in wheelchairs do?” Mom asks, and again, I can hear that harsh laugh behind her voice. “You never leave your house.”
Marco looks down at his feet, which are dangling out from under the blanket. “It’s true. I don’t leave the house.” He sounds as if he knows there’s something wrong with him. “But I watch people. And in a town like ours, a lot of people happen to be in wheelchairs.”
“And now there’s one more,” Mom says.
Something pinches inside my chest when she says that.
“It takes strong arms to use a wheelchair right,” Marco says. “All these years, with all that hiking and bicycling, you’ve been building up your legs—not your arms.”
This guy is really creeping me out now. What’s he been doing—taking notes about our family?
Mom must be thinking the same thing. “I didn’t know you knew about my exercise routine.”
“I’m very observant.”
“Apparently,” Mom says.
“Like I said, you need to use your arms more to get that chair moving right. You see this?” he asks, grabbing the round metal rim over the wheel on his wheelchair. “That’s what you need to use for control. You keep getting your fingers caught in the wheel.”
Mom’s cheeks redden. “Now how would you know something like that?”
Marco just shrugs. “Your fingers are all messed up, aren’t they?” I’m thinking the guy’s probably got binoculars. How creepy is that?
“You’re right,” Mom says, showing Marco the tips of her fingers on her right hand. “They’re all scratched up. I keep catching them in the spokes.”
“That’s because you’re sticking your fingers in too far. You’re supposed to grab just the rim.” Marco wheels his wheelchair over so it’s even closer to Mom’s. He zips around in that thing the way Iza drives her Mini Cooper. “Like this—”
If I were Mom, I wouldn’t want Marco getting so close, but she doesn’t seem to mind. She doesn’t seem creeped out by him the way I am.
“The occupational therapist at the hospital showed me that already,” Mom tells him.
“So how come you’re not doing it right?” Marco asks. I think he smiled, but it happened too fast to know for sure.
“I am.”
“You’re not, Thérèse.” Marco looks Mom in the eye. “Don’t fight me!”
“I’m not figh—” Mom stops herself in midsentence. Maybe she realizes she is fighting him—saying that stuff about how he never leaves his house and refusing to admit that she hasn’t been using the wheelchair right— the way she’s been fighting all of us the last couple of weeks. “Okay,” Mom says, grabbing just the aluminum rim with her fingertips, “how’s this?”
Marco wheels himself so close to Mom their wheelchairs touch. When he presses his hand down on her fingers, I can’t help cringing. “This is how it should feel,” he tells her.
“Okay.” Mom closes her eyes, as if that’ll help her remember what he’s showing her. “I’m getting it now.”
Marco backs his wheelchair up against the bed.
“Well, show me then.”
Mom crosses the room in her wheelchair, then crosses back. Though she isn’t half as quick as Marco, she is wheeling herself a little more smoothly and she has better control at the corners.
I know I’d better make those sandwiches before the bacon gets cold. “Would you like a glass of water with your sandwich?” I call out to Marco. He hasn’t stopped sweating.
“A glass of water would be great.” He looks over to where I am standing. “When you stay inside all the time, leaving’s not so easy.”
I pop four slices of whole-wheat bread into the toaster and take the mayonnaise from the fridge. I can still hear Mom wheeling herself around the living room. “Don’t go too fast now,” Marco tells her. “Especially around the corners. That’s another mistake a lot of people make.”
Mom’s breathing hard. This is the most exercise she’s had since she got home from the hospital. I think how much she used to love hiking and bicycling, how pink her cheeks got after she’d been out at the canyon, and suddenly I’m sadder than ever. Mom may never get to do those things again. It’s just not right.
But Marco isn’t feeling sorry for Mom the way I am. “Have you ever worked with free weights?” I hear him asking her. “I think a little weight training might help build up your biceps, triceps and shoulders. As long as you’re not doing too many reps at first.”
Fifteen
By the time Dad gets back, Mom is sound asleep in her wheelchair. I’m tidying up in the kitchen. “She had quite a workout this morning,” I tell Dad. He’s pulled a tall stool up to the kitchen counter so he can keep me company.
“A workout? What do you mean?”
“Marco came over. He gave Mom a wheelchair lesson. And he wants her to start lifting free weights.”
Dad whistles. “Wow,” he says, “I thought Marco never left his house. And it’s been years since he talked to your mom.”
I hang the fry pan on a hook over the stove. Then I turn back to Dad. “Maybe it’s a miracle.”
Dad tweaks my nose and we both laugh. It’s a sound I haven’t heard for a long time.
“I’m going to bike over to Beaupré,” I tell Dad once everything is put away in the kitchen. “You okay with Mom for a bit?”
“Sure. But wear your helmet, okay? And stay on the side of the road. And look out for those eighteen-wheelers.”
The wind’s against me as I bike down Avenue Royale, so I have to pedal extra hard. Dad never used to worry about stuff like helmets. I guess Mom’s accident is changing all of us.
There’s a sporting goods store on the highway in Beaupré. In winter, they sell mostly ski equipment; in summer, bikes. I lean my bike against the metal rack outside the store. Other bikes are parked there too, and since none are locked I don’t bother locking mine.
The second I open the door, I get a whiff of the dry rubbery smell of bicycle tires.
I know my way around, so I head straight for the aisle that has miscellaneous sporting equipment. I pass a stack of orange lifejackets and kayak paddles. The free weights are at the back, piled up in a pyramid. I wonder if this is where Marco got his free weights, and if so, how did he get them? Maybe one of the guys Colette and I have spotted going up to his apartment runs errands for him.
The weight-lifting gloves should be here too. I want to get Mom a pair. We’ve got some old free weights in the basement. This will be my way of encouraging her to use them and to build her upper body strength the way Marco says she has to.
I hear a clicking sound in the next aisle and the end of a beam of silver light flashes on the floor where I am standing. “This one’s really cool,” I hear someone say. The voice is familiar. But it’s only when he laughs that I know for sure it’s Maxim. He’s checking out bicycle lights.
“Turn that thing off, will ya? It’s killing my eyes.” It’s Armand.
I’ll grab a pair of gl
oves for Mom—there are some pale blue ones here that look nice and are about the right size—then I’ll go over and say hi to them.
But Maxim won’t turn off the light. I can still see the silver beam at my feet.
“When you’re out on the road at night, you gotta think about safety, man,” Maxim says to Armand. “This thing’s got power.”
“Yeah, I can see it’s got power. It’s gonna blind me if you don’t turn it off.”
“Safety first, man, safety first. Even before your vision,” Maxim says, laughing. Maxim must be pointing the beam right into Armand’s eyes because I hear Armand say, “You’re giving me a headache with that thing.” Maxim laughs before he finally clicks the light off.
“If you cared so much about safety”—Armand drops his voice a little so I have to lean into the glove display to hear him—“you’d have used a condom with your girlfriend the other night.”
The tops of my ears feel like they’re on fire. If Maxim had used a condom the other night! Armand had better be talking about some old girlfriend Maxim’s got in Quebec City! Colette’s impulsive, but she’d never have unprotected sex. Or would she? Besides, Colette’s my little sister. She can’t be having sex before me!
No, there’s no way she’d have unprotected sex. Not after all the warnings we get in MRE. Even Mom and Dad have talked to us about safe sex. It wasn’t easy for Mom because she’s so religious—I’ve never seen her blush like that—but Dad said we needed to be well-informed, that it was a matter of our personal safety.
When Maxim speaks, he doesn’t even bother to lower his voice. It’s as if he doesn’t care if the whole world hears him trashtalking. “Yeah, Colette wanted me to use one, but I talked her out of it. And she was too excited to argue…if you know what I mean.” He practically hoots when he says this. “Man, that girl’s wild!”
My first thought is, there’s no way Maxim can be talking about my sister. Maybe his old girlfriend’s name was Colette too.
The pale blue weight-lifting gloves have fallen out of my hands and are lying on the floor.
“I sure wish Josianne would let me do it without a condom,” Armand says.
Miracleville Page 8
