“You should make soup for them,” Eleanor was saying. “It’s supposed to get colder again.” Thoughts of running started to recede. “Carrot or pea.” Thoughts of soup were bubbling up. Green pea, yellow pea, lentils, potato and leek. Sharon was moving forward, pulled by the cooking talk, and Lyssa slipping back inside. “Throw in some rice.”
Her hand went up toward a cupboard, opening it so that she could check for ingredients. Sharon was forward now all the way, remembering the sound of herself joking around in a voice that was not really hers.
“Are you there?” her sister-in-law asked.
“Hang on.” She turned to open the glass doors, the cool breeze coming in from the yard fanning her hot face. Better to think about food and not the uneasiness in the pit of her stomach. “I just want to see what I’ve got in the freezer,” she said. “How about stew and a thick lentil soup? I can bring that over tomorrow evening. Tons of time. No problem. Sure. See you.”
When Emmie came into the kitchen, she found her mother chopping, eyes light green with flecks of gold, skin warm from cooking. Céline Dion was singing through the boom box. Sometimes Dan teased her about her old-fashioned tastes and technology, accusing her of being stuck in time.
“I’m Dr. Grizzly and Sister Bear is sick, Mama.” Emmie was draped in one of her dad’s old white shirts and a stethoscope, wobbling in her mother’s shoes. Even as a baby, she’d slept well, woken well. Sitting in a high chair, she’d thrown things to see them fall; Nina had thrown things to see them picked up.
“Is Nina playing, too?” Sharon asked.
“She doesn’t want to. She’s staring.”
“What do you mean, staring?”
“She’s mad. Can we have some raisins?”
“Sure.” Absently, Sharon took down the big box as she wondered what Nina could be mad about. She’d have to see for herself and while she did, her youngest took the opportunity to sneak the whole box of raisins into the living room, where she turned on the TV.
Nina was sitting on the top bunk, arms crossed, glaring as her mother cleared the dress-up stuff off the futon couch they used for sleepovers. No, she wouldn’t come down. No, she didn’t want her mom to sit beside her. As Sharon climbed up the ladder to join her, she looked away. Opposite the bunk beds, above the children’s table and chairs, there was a sign taped to the wall, ART GALLRY, ADMISHIN $1. Around it were drawings of multicoloured houses under suns and rainbows and puffy clouds. Nina huddled into herself, arms wrapped around her legs, and when Sharon was close to her, she said, “You lied, Mom!”
“What about?” Sharon stroked her daughter’s hair, flinching as Nina flinched. Her middle child, quiet, brave.
“You said people die when they’re old.” She stared straight ahead at the art gallery, at the window that divided her pictures from her sister’s, at the rooftop across the street. “Heather wasn’t old.”
Nina’s eyes welled up and she pursed her lips to hold on to any sound that might wish to come out. Sharon’s heart groaned. “What did you hear about Heather?”
“She died. Deceased. That’s what my teacher said. That’s what deceased means. Lots of kids in my class knew that Heather died and the ambulance took her away.”
“Most people die when they’re old. Do you know how Heather died?” Nina shook her head. “She decided to end her life. That’s called suicide.”
“How?”
“She shot herself with a gun.”
“Did it hurt?”
“I don’t know. I hope not.”
“But why, Mommy?” Nina let her mother put an arm around her, though she wouldn’t rest her head on her mom’s shoulder. “Why would she do that?”
“Sometimes people have something wrong with their brain.” Heather had tried out all the settings on the high chair. Up and down, forward and back. Touching the thick padding. Asking how old a baby had to be to sit up like that. Her brain had seemed just fine. “It makes them so sad they can’t stand it and they forget that lots of people love them and need them. They kill themselves to get away from the sadness.”
“But then their people are sad, aren’t they, Mommy?” Nina said. And she let herself lean, she let her head fall on her mother’s chest. She let the tears soak into her mother’s shirt as her mother kissed her head and stroked her hair and made soothing noises with words that didn’t signify. Only the sound of her mother’s voice mattered, the sound she’d heard before she was born, making the world possible to live in. And when she was done, she went downstairs to watch TV and her sister offered her handfuls of raisins.
Sharon was working at the computer in the dining room while she waited for Josh to get home from school. There was a stack of invoices on her left and a smaller stack face down beside it. Click on pay bills. How was she going to talk to him about Heather? Click on vendor name. She had to do it right. Peerless Printing. What if she said the wrong thing? Click on enter invoice: $2,212.52. What if she made things worse? Account: office expense. Turn it over. Next.
She listened for his arrival. Every door hinge in the house had a different creak, every floor a different rumble depending on whose hand or foot was on it. The compressor in the fridge, the air conditioner on the third floor, the furnace in the basement, each had their thumps and clicks, touching off a flicker in a different set of lights when they went on and off, as distinct and familiar as her own breathing. If there was any change, she would know it as surely as she would know a strange pain in her body. A key turned in the front door. First there was a jiggle, then the smack of the long chain with the whistle on it—Josh was home. Now all her children were safe.
“Mom!” he called. His backpack hit the floor. Those were his footsteps and someone else’s, lighter steps, slower, along the hall.
“I’m in the dining room.”
“Mom, can you make us something to eat?” He stood in the doorway. “We’re starving. Can Cathy stay for supper?” She was hanging back a bit as if uncertain of her welcome today. Josh had hold of her hand.
“Hi Cathy.” Sharon’s voice was warm.
“Hi Mrs. Lewis.” Cathy was a good student and while hanging out with Josh, she had made him a better one. Even today her hair was perfectly parted, falling on either side of her face like a gold frame. She wore a cropped shirt and tight jeans, like any kid, except that she didn’t slouch as she looked around at the half-open cabinet with yarns and fabrics poking out, the yard-sale tabletop on end against a wall, the kids’ crafts on the oak sideboard, balanced precariously under the bag with the sweater inside that had been intended for her sister.
“Shouldn’t you be at home?” Sharon asked.
“Nobody’s there.” Cathy shrugged. “They didn’t want me with them.”
“Is that right?” Sharon kept her voice gentle, though her eyebrows shot up in surprise.
“They were staying at the hospital to talk to the doctors about the baby. Then going to the funeral place. They said I should go to school, try to have a normal day.” Cathy’s eyes were as vague as if she was stoned, which she probably was. Everyone in her family, the ones who were left, had to be stoned on medication strong enough to keep them standing. “How am I supposed to have a normal day?”
“Your parents might be home by now. They’ll be missing you.”
“No they won’t.”
“You don’t mean that,” Sharon said, though Cathy looked as if she did. “Well, you’re welcome to stay. Just let your parents know where you are.” She listened to the kids’ footsteps as they went upstairs and called after them, “Leave the door open.”
When she got back to the kitchen, she took out another lamb chop to defrost for supper, and made popcorn for the kids, pouring melted butter over it. Then she blended shakes with frozen strawberries, thinking that even if Cathy couldn’t eat she would manage that. She carried the tray up to Josh’s room, pushing the door wider, but they were just sitting at his desk, both of them wearing headphones, looking at the monitor. Only a mom would notice tha
t their feet were touching.
Six vinyl chairs had come with the kitchen table. When it was extended, it could accommodate two more chairs, or a single high chair if it was wide and thickly padded like the one that was down in the basement. By six-thirty everyone was at the table, even Dan. His offices were in the old Ford factory on Hammond Street, and in the evening, he’d do some work upstairs in his home office. He had software to keep track of his contacts, his appointments and his Internet passwords, synchronized with his smartphone and networked to his company’s computer system. His desktop wallpaper was a photograph of the kids and Sharon, looking stiff as she always did as soon as a camera was pointed at her.
“Would you like some broccoli, Cathy?” she asked.
Cathy had a lamb chop, cucumber salad and mashed potato on her plate. “Yes please,” she said, accepting the broccoli, too. She wasn’t really eating any of it, just cutting and poking bits around so that she had something to do at the table.
“What time are your parents expecting you home?”
Cathy poked her food some more. “Maybe eight.”
“I’ll walk her home, Mom.” Josh was sitting next to her, tilting his chair back and balancing on it while Emmie fussed over her lamb chop, having suddenly realized it came from an actual animal like the stuffed lamb she slept with every night.
“Eat it,” Josh said. “It’s just meat. What difference does it make how old an animal is? It’s raised to be eaten.”
“Chicken isn’t an animal,” Emmie said. “It’s chicken.”
“Sure it is. All of your stuffed animals are meat. In some places, dogs aren’t pets and people eat them because they’re meat. They’ve got the same rights as pigs. Or not.”
“Pig?” Emmie asked, her face appalled. “Like Miss Piggy?”
“Yeah. Bacon, ham, pork chops. That’s all Miss Piggy.”
Emmie pushed her plate away. “I don’t want any meat,” she said, her face screwed up, tears rolling down her chipmunk cheeks.
“Thanks, Josh.” Sharon put an arm around Emmie, brushing back the mop of red curls as unruly as her own.
“No problem, Mom.” He grinned.
“So make your sister a peanut butter sandwich,” Dan said, his tone wiping the grin off his son’s face. On Saturdays the two of them liked to play board games, keeping a running score from week to week. Josh looked so much like him, round black eyes, tanned skin, long legs and long arms, and then a touch of his Jewish grandpa, with those sticking-out ears, but nothing of Sharon, as if her genes were just on the inside.
She glanced at Nina, who had Dan’s colouring but her pointed chin, struggling to cut her lamb chop, refusing to ask for help. “How was your spelling test?” she asked.
“I didn’t know all the words,” Nina said.
“That’s good,” Sharon said decisively, all the more decisive because spelling tests had always scared her to death.
“It is?”
“Of course. You get another test next Friday, right? Well, if you knew all the words today there wouldn’t be anything to learn.”
Cathy stopped pecking at her food. “If I don’t get an A, I get grounded,” she said, using a napkin to wipe imaginary smears off her lips. “Because people who do well, do well. And people who don’t, don’t. Like my sister.”
If Sharon had been looking at Cathy, she might have seen something unexpected in her eyes. But Sharon’s attention was on her middle daughter’s mouth wobbling as she looked down at her plate, knife and fork motionless in her hands. Maybe her mom was lying to her again. Maybe she was in trouble or dumb, dumber than Josh anyway. He knew how to spell everything. All of these thoughts, Sharon could read on her daughter’s face just as well as if she’d said them out loud, for she’d been listening to the language of her children’s eyes and lips and fingers and toes since their birth. Nina hooked her right index finger over the other when she was upset. She was doing it now.
“Everybody has to start out not knowing,” Sharon said. “I just want my children to learn.”
“As long as you try your best,” Dan added. “What counts is effort.” And he believed it, sincerely. He got up to stand behind Josh at the counter, where he was slicing bread for Emmie’s sandwich. Don’t saw at it, cut it, Dan instructed. Not like that. Thinner. But he was still wearing the hideous tie the girls had bought him for his birthday and he always accepted Josh’s word, even when the evidence was stacked against him.
This was what Sharon saw reflected in the glass doors of her kitchen that evening: a blue table, the father of her children, her oldest, who looked nothing like her, her middle one with just a bit of her in the chin, her youngest exactly alike, as if child by child, she was becoming visible on the outside, frightening her with what she might be bringing to them. And last she turned her eyes to gaze at a good girl with long blonde hair framing her face, biting her fingernails.
CHAPTER
FIVE
Eleanor’s house was on a corner lot at Macklem and Lumley. It was big for this neighbourhood, renovated, with a garage attached, the porch painted in shades of purple, a dream catcher with wind chimes hanging from a hook above the door, the chimes ringing in the wind that brought rain Saturday morning and snow in the evening. Sharon walked over, pulling the children’s wagon, in it plastic containers of soup and stew. She carried the food up first, then brought the wagon up the stairs, leaving it on the porch as she tried the door. Unlocked. Not unusual in Seaton Grove. Bending down, Sharon stacked the containers one on top of another, using her chin to balance them as she straightened up and walked in.
Eleanor’s husband, Bram, had knocked down all the non-weight-bearing walls to make the most of a long but narrow space. A grouping of two couches and an armchair was at the front end where stairs led to the second floor. Here a bay window faced the street. The dining area was at the far end on the right, the galley kitchen on the left, separated by a counter. Beyond the round dining table, a window overlooked the backyard and a door led outside to it. Knickknacks were everywhere, on shelves, on the ledge of the bay window, on top of the stereo, all of them dusted. A rubber-tree plant loomed in the front corner, the great green leaves wiped clean every day. Goldfish swam around in a glass bowl on an end table. It was a room that belonged to people who worked with their hands in practical ways, painting porches not pictures, or rewiring houses as Eleanor’s husband did. There were a few of these still around in Seaton Grove, a mechanic on Lumley, a couple of retired construction workers in the houses that had been refaced with white stone on Ontario Street.
“Eleanor?” It had taken Sharon a moment to realize that the house was full of women.
“Oh good, you’re here.” Eleanor bustled toward her. She was wearing one of her plus-sized outfits that came with a plus price tag, a silk scarf and matching earrings. “Do you have any idea where I put the corkscrew? I can’t find it anywhere and you always know where things are.”
Sharon paused, ignoring the sound of chatter in the living room, a picture forming in her head: Eleanor in the kitchen, trying to do too many things at once. “Try the oven,” she said.
“The oven?”
“That’s what comes to mind.”
“Okay, you’ve got the magic. I’ll check. Let me help you with that,” she said, taking the containers out of her arms. Sharon clung to her coat, under it a cashmere sweater, ancient, shrunken but warm.
The other moms circulated, voices low and slow, faces serious. They’d come with food and cards, and were dressed in dark clothing as if to make amends for their relief that the tragedy wasn’t theirs, for enjoying this unexpected night out, for being nosy, for feeling superior. They stood in groups of three or four, breaking apart and reforming around the couches at one end, the dining room table at the other. On the kitchen counter, wine glasses were lined up.
I like this tulip shape, especially for red wine. And a good size. You don’t want to look cheap. My new wine glasses are all ten ounces. It must be so hard on the famil
y. You never get over that kind of loss. Life has to go on. I heard … You heard? I heard that Heather’s tried this before. Then why would they keep a gun in the house? They didn’t. She stole it. You can’t stop someone if they really want to. Don’t you think there but for the grace of God? To be honest it made me grateful that my son just has Down’s. I couldn’t deal with mental health issues.
“You didn’t tell me that people were coming over,” Sharon said. She didn’t do well in crowds. She avoided the breakfast club at Magee’s and she wouldn’t be dragged to Moms’ Night Out, which rotated through the neighbourhood.
“It was a last-minute thing,” Eleanor said. “Since everyone was coming anyway.”
“Where’s Bram?” Sharon scanned the living room for Eleanor’s husband, who disliked parties too.
“He took Judy to a hockey game. You need to get out more. Be around people. Hang up your coat.”
“I shouldn’t stay.” But she unzipped her coat and hung it in the hall closet while Eleanor took the containers to the kitchen. She couldn’t explain to Eleanor what being around so many people did to her. She barely understood it herself though her therapist had explained it, more than once.
When she was pregnant for the third time, the house several doors down was demolished and rebuilt. The construction noise had driven her completely crazy, and she believed it was this noise that had pushed her back into therapy. That and having a child born with red hair.
Web of Angels Page 3
