by Carrie Mac
“There was this girl, on the ferry….Well, before that, at the bus station. Did you see her? She was playing violin outside? At the edge of the park?”
“No, I did not see a girl playing the violin.”
“Well, I saw her again, in the waiting room at the ferry terminal, and Corbin was telling jokes, but I thought that he was begging for money.”
“Can this wait?” He wasn’t getting it. He didn’t understand how it all came together and lifted up into something bigger. He didn’t understand how serendipity was at play here. Or luck. Or chance. Or God. He wasn’t even listening. Not really. He didn’t care. That was the message I was getting. He didn’t even care.
“I guess.” I wasn’t mad. I should’ve been. But I was just sad. Because it would be different to tell him later. I wanted to tell him now, with all the excitement like a sparkling halo. That wouldn’t last. “I—I—I just really wanted to talk to you.”
“Everybody’s okay?”
“Yeah,” I murmured. In the background I heard the noon chimes from the steam clock in Gastown, which made no sense at all. The movie lot he was working on was far away, down by the Fraser River. Nowhere near Gastown. A half-hour drive away at least. My stomach tightened. He was lying. “I thought you were at work?”
“I had to come downtown for an errand.”
“Oh.” Suddenly there was an edge in his voice. Something dark. Something that could cast shadows. Or doubt. The conversation in the hospital came flooding back, pushing away my sparkly excitement. “You didn’t mention that yesterday.”
“Why would I?” Darker and darker. Sharper and sharper. “Look, I have to go.” Then he was saying something to someone with him. “Just a sec, man. I told you.”
“Who’s with you?” I wanted to know. And I didn’t want to know.
“One of my crew.”
I wished I hadn’t called him in the first place. I wished I’d kept it all to myself.
“Okay. Well. Bye, Dad.”
“Aw, come on, Maeve.” His voice buoyed up suddenly. “Don’t say goodbye like that.”
Maybe he cared. Or maybe he didn’t want me reporting back to Claire that he’d been an asshole on the phone. An asshole who was in Gastown doing who knew what when he was supposed to be on the movie lot. An asshole who was the boss of a big crew. An asshole who could have sent any one of them downtown on “an errand.”
“I can give you two minutes,” he said.
“And then what?”
“I have to get back to the set.”
“What was so important downtown?”
“Really?” The edge was back. “You’re wasting your two minutes? Tell me. A girl. Bus station. Ferry terminal. You’re going to meet her at the airport next?”
Was it a woman he was with? Was that it? He didn’t sound drunk. It had to be a woman. Another affair.
“Dad?” Is it a woman? Are you with a woman, Dad? But the words wouldn’t come, and I gave up.
“One minute, Maeve.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Did you ask her out?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Sure it does!”
“You have to go.”
“Don’t make me fish here, Maeve.”
“Fine. Yes. She asked me on a date. Or at least I think she did.”
“That’s really great, Maeve.” Behind his voice, a siren wailed. So close that we couldn’t speak for a moment. When it faded, he said goodbye. “Give my love to everyone. Kiss Claire’s belly for me. Love you guys. That’s so great about the girl. I’ll give you money. You can treat. Where are you going?”
“Continental.”
“You drink coffee?”
“Only if it has whipped cream.” Now I was the one who wanted to get off the phone. “Anyway, you need to go, right?”
“Right. Love you. Kisses for everybody, got it? The belly baby too.”
“Love you too.”
“Bye.”
—
Salix was still playing, but it was a different song now. Nothing that I recognized. I wanted to go back across the street and take her hand and walk to the beach and sit on a log and count the seagulls, or the dogs running up and down along the shore, or the children building sand castles. I didn’t want to go into the restaurant and sit there with the others and tell them everything, or parts of everything, or nothing at all.
I wanted to tell them that Salix wasn’t just some girl. I wanted to tell them that she was the one from the bus station and the ferry terminal and how that meant something, it really did. And the phone call with Dad. Would I tell them that he said hello and he loves us all? Or would I tell them that he was in the wrong place, and he was a jerk, and I didn’t believe for one minute that he was at work at all? I could see the twins and Grandma and Claire at a table by the window, laughing as Corbin stuck raspberries on the tips of his fingers of his broken arm.
I texted Mom.
I met a girl. Her name is Salix. She asked me out. I think. Also, Corbin broke his arm.
And Dad is acting weird.
For the first time since I’d left, she texted back almost right away.
A date! Email me the details. I want to know everything. Sign Corbin’s cast for me, will you? Hot here. Very hot.
And then a second text.
Raymond says hi.
I doubted that, but okay.
Salix was playing something classical now. Something that sounded like it could be happy or it could be sad. Like the composer wasn’t quite sure. I peeked around the shrubs. Salix had moved into a slice of shade at the edge of the forest beside the store. The music, the trees, the blue sky, the girl who looked like she could be a boy apprentice to a composer a hundred years ago, or a hundred years from now. It felt good watching her, but when I turned toward the restaurant, my stomach flipped with worry. Dad was messing up again.
When we got back to the city and unpacked, the boys went straight out to Gnomenville to return the troops and see how the rest of the Wrens and the Percivals had managed while they were gone. I put in a load of laundry, and when I came back upstairs, I noticed a box beside the couch that hadn’t been there before. It was open, a stack of disposable bed pads resting on the top, and a small brown bag with a label on it: LABOR TEA. And an illustration of a goddess pushing out a baby, her legs spread, stars raining down, smiling blissfully.
“Birth supplies.” Claire sat on the couch with a book. Birthing from Within. “They came while we were gone.”
The pads would be for the mess. When her water broke. The blood and mucus and shit.
I will not be at this birth.
I will not be at this birth.
I will not be at this birth.
“I’m going over to Mrs. Patel’s,” I said. “I owe her a game of rummy.”
“Sure.” Claire pointed to the counter. “Can you take that plate back to her?”
—
I knocked on Mrs. Patel’s door, but there was no answer. I could hear the television from inside, so loud that I could tell it was a soap opera. Someone was breaking up with someone else. Crying, dramatic music, then a commercial. I knocked again. No answer.
The door was unlocked, so I stepped inside. Just like I had a thousand times before.
“Mrs. Patel?” I slipped off my flip-flops and parked them beside Mrs. Patel’s sensible old-lady shoes. She liked footwear to be neatly lined up. “It’s Maeve.”
When there was still no answer, I put my hand on the banister and leaned up the stairs.
“Hello?”
It made sense that she didn’t answer, because the TV was so loud. Mrs. Patel was pretty deaf. If she didn’t have her hearing aids in, she might not hear me at all. Even with them in, I had to holler sometimes. I climbed the stairs into the living room.
“Mrs. Patel?”
She was slumped on the floor in front of her butter-yellow recliner, a deck of playing cards scattered around her. Half sitting, half lying, her head rest
ing on one shoulder, vomit streaking her hair and her pink cardigan—the one with the hole at the elbow and the missing button. The smell of piss and shit, and for a moment it all got confused in my head and I thought that maybe I was still next door looking at the disposable pads and thinking about Claire shitting herself and bellowing like a cow. But that wasn’t right. This wasn’t right.
“Mrs. Patel?” I dropped the plate. I glanced at it. I should pick it up. I thought, What a relief that it didn’t break. I thought, None of this makes sense at all.
And then all those first-aid classes came to mind, and I rushed to her side and dropped to my knees. I grabbed her arm and shook it hard.
“Mrs. Patel!”
Her head rolled forward, her chin resting on her chest, her lanky gray hair a curtain across her face. I groped for her wrist and pressed my fingers to where her pulse should be. I must be in the wrong spot. I walked my fingers in tiny steps around Mrs. Patel’s bony wrist. No heartbeat. No pulse. Just cold skin, and Mrs. Patel’s hand flopping, lifeless.
Lifeless.
Dead.
I scrambled backward, knocking over the TV table Mrs. Patel kept beside her chair, spilling her phone and her crossword magazine and an abandoned dinner of fries and samosas to the floor. The soap opera hollered at me. “He’s leaving you! And he’s never coming back! He never loved you. Never! Not ever!”
Time fell onto the floor too, and slithered away. I have no idea why I didn’t just run. I have no idea how long I sat there beside Mrs. Patel’s body. I have no idea how long it took me to call 911. But I must have picked up the phone and dialed. Just as I must have reached for the crocheted throw from the couch and covered Mrs. Patel with it.
Mrs. Patel died suddenly in her living room, where she was found by her sometime neighbor Maeve Glover, who was shocked and horrified. She is survived by—
I wondered about all of this after. Of course I did. After the paramedics came, and the cops, and it was only then that Claire showed up, summoned by the commotion.
“Maeve?” she called from the door. “What’s happening?”
But I couldn’t answer. The two cops stood on either side of Mrs. Patel’s body like sentinels. She was still propped up by the chair. The paramedics hadn’t even slid her onto her back. She was that dead, as if there were degrees of deadness, which I had never considered before. The paramedics threw questions at me instead of helping Mrs. Patel. What’s her name? How old is she? Did she have any medical conditions? When was the last time you saw her?
“Hardeep Patel. Seventy-two. Or three. Or one. She takes a lot of pills. Last Thursday,” I said. “She was wearing that pink cardigan. And I thought, Oh, she needs a new sweater.”
“But she was okay then?” the paramedic said. “Had anyone seen her since?”
“I thought, Oh, she needs a new sweater.”
And then Claire was pulling me away, down the stairs and outside, where the smell of lilacs hung in the thick, hot, windless city air and it wasn’t any easier to breathe.
—
Back home, Claire steered me to the couch. But I didn’t want to sit. I just stood there, staring at the far wall. Mrs. Patel was on the other side. Still dead. “Maeve?” Claire stood too close. I could smell garlic on her breath. I almost gagged. “What do you need? A glass of water? Something to eat? Are you cold? Do you want a blanket? Sometimes people in shock get the shivers.”
“I want to talk to my dad.”
“Of course,” Claire said. “I’ll call him for you. Right now.”
She dialed and then held the phone to her ear.
“He’s not answering.” She dialed again. “It’s just going to his voice mail.”
I put my hand out. Claire gave me the phone. I had the idea that if I was the one to dial him, if I was the one to call, then of course he would pick up. Of course he would. Because he was my father and I was his daughter and there should be a telepathic connection that would give him the knowledge that this was an emergency. A true, genuine emergency. I needed him.
It rang and rang and rang. Claire stood even closer. The smell of garlic made me want to retch. Her face was so full of sadness and sympathy and concern that I had to look away.
You’ve reached Billy Glover, scenic artist and portrait artist. Please leave me a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.
The phone felt suddenly hot in my hand. I tightened my grip.
“Dad?” The word caught in my throat. “Daddy? I need you. I really, really need you. Please come home right away.”
I gave the phone back to Claire and kept standing there.
Of course he’d call back. It was an emergency. He was my father. I needed him.
But he didn’t call. And he still didn’t call. And he didn’t come home. And I was so, so mad at him. Furious. I had just had the most devastating day of my entire life, and he just was not there. He was somewhere in the city, near enough to come to me. Mom would probably have come all the way from Haiti, if I’d asked her to. He was close enough to get here fast and pull me into the hug that I needed from him, not from Claire. From him. I wanted to be held by my dad, his big arms tight around me, holding me so that I wouldn’t have to hold myself. But he just wasn’t there.
The boys went to bed without protest, climbing the stairs with heavy steps, glancing back with red-rimmed eyes. For an hour the house was still and quiet. I sat on the couch, still staring at the wall we shared with Mrs. Patel. Claire busied herself with one of her dolls, stitching the yarn hair to its head. We both looked up when we heard soft, slow footsteps coming down the stairs. It was Owen, his face blotchy, the tears still coursing down.
“Can I sleep with you, Maeve?”
“Oh, honey.” Claire put down the doll and went to him, hugging him to her. “I don’t think Maeve wants company tonight.”
“He can sleep with me,” I said. “I don’t mind.” I hadn’t spoken since leaving the message on Dad’s phone, and my throat was dry and my words were scratchy. “Come on.” I took his hand. “Let’s go to bed.”
“Thanks, Maeve.”
“Thank you, Owen.” I squeezed his hand.
“I didn’t want to be all by myself.”
“Me either.”
I couldn’t get Mrs. Patel out of my mind. I tried thinking about my mom in Haiti. I tried thinking about Salix. I tried thinking about all the things I could come up with, and nothing stuck. I tried counting sheep, counting up to one hundred, counting down from one hundred. All I could think about was Mrs. Patel. Dead Mrs. Patel.
Mrs. Patel was dead.
Mrs. Patel was dead.
Whenever I closed my eyes, I saw her. The TV tray toppled over. The folds of Mrs. Patel’s sweater. The image of the man and woman on the TV, arguing, gripping each other, their faces contorted in anger. I don’t love you! Go away!
Sleep just never came.
Every once in a while I would slide one hand across until I found Owen’s. I’d hold his wrist lightly, my fingers resting on his pulse. I was glad he was there, to remind me that life was the common denominator, not death. Although I supposed one equaled the other when it came right down to it.
Sleep just never came.
It didn’t come and it didn’t come, until I finally got up and turned on the light beside the bed. Owen didn’t stir. I found Dad’s illustrated anatomy book and looked up heart.
One page showed a human heart, sketched in black, suspended in white space. Another image was in color: reds of all shades, and purple, and black, white plaque, blue blood pumping out one side, red blood flooding in the other. On the next page the heart was sectioned. Halved, and then quartered. It looked like meat. Like each quarter should be wrapped in butcher paper, a label on the front, priced accordingly. This week, on sale. A quarter heart. A dollar ninety-nine a pound. Or a million dollars a pound? What was it worth when it didn’t work anymore? When it was just meat?
Did Mrs. Patel still have her heart?
Did the morgue man
cut it out? Did it rest in his gloved hands, wet and cold? Did he put it in a bowl? Did he look at it and examine it and poke it and slice it open? And then did he put it back, placing it in her chest cavity, held open by angry metal spacers?
I found an empty page in my sketchbook and drew the outline of a whole heart, intact. Not butchered quarters. Not sections revealing the clockwork. Just a heart. A vital muscle so strong it could power the whole body. So vital that if it didn’t work, a person died.
According to the book, Mrs. Patel’s heart would’ve been about the size of her fist. She had tiny hands, with short slender fingers, like a child’s. I read on. The heart was located not so much to the left, but almost midline. I made a fist and placed it where my heart would be. Where her heart had been.
Myocardial infarction. Ischemia. Death of heart muscle. The heart couldn’t function without oxygen. It started to die as soon as the vessels were blocked by plaque or a coronary spasm or a thrombus—a blood clot—which could be sudden.
That was when I realized that I had killed Mrs. Patel.
She’d died from the heart attack I had wished for. The one that had been meant for Raymond. The one I’d tried to take back.
Mrs. Patel died suddenly in her living room, where she was found by her killer and sometime neighbor Maeve Glover, who was shocked and horrified when she realized what she had done—
What had I done? The heart attack had been for Raymond. And then I’d taken it back. I had! But somehow it had still been floating around, and it had found Mrs. Patel.
This was my fault.
Her death was my fault.
Unintentional homicide. But murder nonetheless.
This was a terrible, terrible realization, and I wanted to rewind so badly.
I hadn’t wanted Raymond to have a heart attack. I hadn’t meant it. I hadn’t wanted that awful thing to float out of my grasp before I could pull it back in and throw it away. But it got away from me and made it as far as Mrs. Patel’s house, where it slammed into her while she was just sitting there, watching TV and doing absolutely nothing wrong. It gripped her and set off all those tiny explosions as she clutched her chest and gasped and then slid to the floor and died right there with her slippers on, her scrawny, hairy legs splayed out in front of her.
