What is Going to Happen Next

by Karen Hofmann

  You’ll have the house to yourself, she says to him. Yes, she can see he is now looking forward to it.

  Cliff and Ben will sleep in tents. Cleo and the children will stay in the house.

  You’d better keep an eye on the kids, Trent tells Cleo, threateningly.

  MANDALAY AND CRYSTAL are watching Olivia from the deck. She has been riding her tricycle — they have brought it with them in the van — around the plantain-choked lawn, but now abandons it and wanders over to the shed, where she picks up one of the rods Darrell had left leaning up against the shed. He had been showing Olivia how to cast, at the stream, in the morning. Cleo has gone on a hike, with the guys. Mandalay has persuaded her to leave the kids with her and Crystal and Darrell.

  God, Crystal says. You can’t take your eyes off her for a minute. Darrell should have put that away. Olivia, honey, she calls, don’t touch Grandpa’s fishing rod, okay? Put it back.

  Olivia is well within earshot, but ignores Crystal.

  She’s so defiant, Mandalay says. It’s amazing that she can be so — autonomous, determined — at her age. She has just an inkling, now, why Cleo seemed so anxious about leaving the kids with her and Crystal and Darrell, going off for a hike with the guys. There are three of us and two of them, she had said to Cleo, but now she has to wonder if that’s enough.

  The house and yard aren’t exactly childproof, Cleo had said.

  What, is that like bear-proof? Darrell had joked. It was turning out not to be a joke. Darrell had just finished nailing a sheet of plywood across the top of the deck stairs; before that, Mandalay had caught Sam in mid-air on his way to the bottom.

  Che was like that, Crystal says. Your dad tried to beat it out of him, but he just got worse.

  Mandalay thinks: One of those Crystal bombshells, as she and Cleo call them, when Crystal says something outrageous without an apparent sense of its impact.

  Olivia has thrown the rod back over her shoulder now, as if she’s going to cast. Come on, honey, Crystal calls to Olivia. Let’s put that down. She starts for the stairs.

  Something small flies across Mandalay’s vision. There is a tiny, tinny jingle, a light tap on her nose, and then a sudden jab in her left nostril. Crystal says, from the steps, Oh, look out, honey! Olivia, across the yard, stands still, the rod clutched in her two hands, her eyes and mouth perfect Os. And then she begins to turn the handle of the reel.

  The scream that comes out of Mandalay, involuntarily, is louder than any sound she has ever made before. It’s more of a bellow. The pain is excruciating. That or the tears that start in her eyes blind her. She stumbles forward, puts her hands out, gropes for the filament. Crystal is running toward Olivia, calling, Oh, honey, don’t. Then Darrell comes around the corner of the shed.

  It’s his breaking into a run that seems to panic Olivia. She begins to run, too, but keeps a firm professional grip on the rod and the reel handle. She heads off down the driveway. She does not let go. It takes Darrell, a heavy man not used to running, quite a long time to catch her.

  Mandalay runs too, fumbling for a grip on the line, which continues to elude her. She can taste the blood channelling down her philtrum into her mouth. She doesn’t understand how her nose is still attached. Darrell tackles Olivia gingerly, the way a man might tackle a porcupine, and then the tension is released and Mandalay stumbles, falls to her knees on the gravel of the driveway. Blood and snot are streaming from her chin.

  She has an almost irresistible urge to slap Oliva upside her head, but Crystal is there, lifting Olivia, who is now sobbing (why is she crying?) into her arms, saying, Oh, honey, were you scared?

  And Darrell is already laughing. He laughs as he inserts the tip of his wire cutters into Mandalay’s nostril, as he extracts the bloody barb with his needle-nose pliers, as he reels up the line and puts the rods into the shed. He’s a really silent laugher. His shoulders shake, tears run down the creases of his upper cheeks and the bristles of his jowls, and he wheezes, but does not make a sound. He’s still laughing when he asks Mandalay if she thinks she needs stitches.

  It’s only a small tear. She has packed her nostril with toilet paper, has managed to staunch the blood for an instant, long enough to see that the rip is only half a centimetre or so.

  Likely you should have a tetanus shot, he wheezes.

  No.

  When she goes outside later, there’s a trail of blood spots across the deck and the yard and down the driveway. Even on the lawn, the blood spots glisten, clinging darkly to the grass blades and the plantain.

  CLEO WANTS VERY MUCH to lie down and close her eyes. It’s partly the sun, and partly that she really doesn’t ever get enough sleep. It’s so rare to be just sitting. She and Cliff and Ben have been hiking — she is so tired, but they had wanted to go to the lake, and she had thought she remembered the way. Her eyes keep closing. She thinks that she might just fall asleep. It’s afternoon; there’s sun, a light breeze in the surrounding brush.

  They have followed the trail along the hill; the terrain familiar only in segments, like a coded message. She hadn’t been entirely sure that they were heading in the right direction: then a lone blackbird warbling its liquid call, flashing its scarlet wing patches, and the path opening out, not onto beach, as it used to, but to black cottonwood and aspen and willow, and then bulrushes.

  The lakeshore is inaccessible now: The trees have grown back thickly, this end of it has grown marshy. The land is being reclaimed. There is no getting at the lake, though behind the vigorous hedge they can hear the calls of different birds, splashing that might be something large. Bear or moose, even. They can’t get at the lake, anymore, from this path, to see, though. The bush is completely impenetrable.

  They stop in a small clearing beneath trembling aspen, at the edge of the bulrushes, where the ground is spongy but not too muddy, throw themselves down on the moss. They have picnic things, not in a basket but in a backpack.

  Cleo dozes a little, then is aware of someone moving beside her. Cliff? she asks, but she knows without opening her eyes that it is not. Knows by smell or some other sense that it is not.

  She can hear him breathing. She hardly breathes herself, as if she’s found herself next to a deer or other wild creature and doesn’t want to startle it.

  Ask me if I remember you, she wills. Ask me. I will tell you that I remember every single thing about you. That I spent more time with you, that last year before you left us, than anyone else did. That I have thought of you every day. She can’t speak; she is too sleepy.

  She wakes later: forty-five minutes or an hour; she’s not sure. He’s asleep; she can tell by his breathing, by the dampness of the hair. He is sprawled half across her, his arm around her, his right hand clutching her breast, his face pressed into her neck. Under the new, young-man smell of him, she can smell something deeper, more intrinsic, more familiar. He is sleeping against her the way he slept so many times, in his first not-quite-two years. In his sleep, he has remembered. He has moved through the doorway of sleep into the little space that they shared, he and she, for those short years. Here he is, now.

  She lifts his hand, gently, from her breast and he sighs and shifts, but doesn’t wake up.

  MANDALAY SAYS, I met a cougar, once, along this road. Just up at that corner.

  They all stop. Cleo looks confused; then she says, You did not. That was me. It was me who met the cougar.

  What?

  Me, Cleo says. That was me.

  No, I swear it was me. I’m positive. (Is she, though? She has told this story so many times that she doesn’t know if she’s remembering the event or her telling of it, now.)

  Maybe both of you met cougars, Ben says.

  No, Cleo says. It was only me. It was a big deal. Everyone talked about it for ages.

  But she remembers so clearly its yellow-grey coat, dappled, its clear amber eyes watching her as she backed away, backed up as far as the next turn, and then ran.

  What about you, Cliff, Ben asks. You meet any
cougars?

  No, Cliff says, seriously. I don’t remember anything.

  They follow the loop of dirt and gravel road back down to where it curves by the school. The kids are already shrieking at the sight of the playground equipment. You were here yesterday, Cleo says, but Mandalay thinks: That is why they want to come again.

  Only the old swing set remains, of the original equipment. She lifts Sam into one of the bucket swings, and Cleo begins to push him, methodically, almost dreamily.

  Cleo says, remember?

  And she does. She does. And she has to let this out, now: There has been too much swallowing of emotion the last couple of weeks. She must let it out.

  Dadda’s funeral, she says.

  Then, to Ben: This is how we abducted you.

  It had taken the community of Butterfly Lake three weeks to arrange Dadda’s funeral. In that time, they had all stayed at different places — Che at Myrna Pollard’s, where he spent so much of his time anyway, and Mandalay at a friend’s in town. Cleo had had an offer from the mother of a one of Mandalay’s classmates, but she had turned it down.

  She had said she turned it down because the offer didn’t include Cliff. But really, that was Cleo. She always sided with the adults. So Cleo and Cliff had stayed in town, in temporary care. Neither she nor Cleo knew where Bodhi was. She was allowed to telephone Cleo, twice, and both times they speculated, for as long as the conversation lasted, on where Bodhi was. Mandalay had been confident that he’d be left with her, but that had not happened.

  They had been on time for the funeral, which in Butterfly Lake meant that they were among the first to arrive at the community hall.

  The children were to sit in the front row. Mrs. Carlson, Mandalay’s friend’s mom, sat there, too. Che had fooled around, and tried to mess up Cliff’s hair. Myrna Pollard sat behind him. Mandalay noticed that Cleo and Cliff had new clothes, though she and Che did not. She’d had to borrow an outfit from her friend.

  Cleo was turning around in her seat, scanning the arrivals. Where is Bodhi? she was thinking. Mandalay knew this without Cleo saying anything.

  Where was Bodhi?

  Then Mrs. Carlson, who had seemed not to be paying attention — who was talking to Myrna Pollard — said, likely a baby would not be brought to a funeral, as if she knew what they were thinking.

  Everyone comes to funerals in Butterfly Lake, Mandalay said, which was true.

  But the hall filled, and the service started, and there was no sign of him.

  There was a lot of talking. A long procession of grey-haired, baggy-clothed men and women took the microphone to tell stories about Dadda. They were really talking to each other, not to her and her siblings — though they all did remember at points to look at the four of them in the front row and say things like “We honour your daddy.” It was as if there were two groups of people there — Dadda’s friends and neighbours, who the funeral was really for, and his children, who were strangers and due some recognition but who were, on the whole, intruders.

  Then one of the old guys said “And that’s when he met Crystal, here,” and nodded to somewhere at the back of the hall. And Mandalay, Cleo, and Che swivelled around in their pinky-grey metal folding chairs — Cliff wasn’t paying that much attention — and there she was, Crystal, sitting by Myrna Pollard. Cleo could only see her head through the forest of people, but it was Crystal alright. What was she doing here? Did she have Bodhi?

  After the service they all ran to the back of the room where Crystal was still sitting, but there was no Bodhi. And then Che dived in, crying, to wrap himself around her, and then Mandalay. Hugging and crying. Hi Mandalay, hi Che, hi Cleo, hi Cliff, Mam said, as if she were an acquaintance seeing them at a party. She was wearing a blue dress they hadn’t seen before, flowered, with fluttery short sleeves, a fitted bodice, flared skirt. It was a style of dress Mandalay admired, that some girls she knew wore. Crystal’s hair was shining and fell in loose curls like a catalogue model’s, and she had eyeliner and lipstick on and her skin looked very smooth and clear — it looked translucent, like she was still a young girl. She had no wrinkles, not even tiny ones like Jean the social worker.

  She did not look like a person who was in a mental ward of a hospital. Mandalay knew from stories she had read that people in mental hospitals had slack, doughy skin and dull hair. She did not look like a person whose husband had died, either. She did not look like a person who could look after five children.

  Someone must have arranged for Crystal to have a visit with her children, because suddenly after the funeral they were all left alone together in the Butterfly Lake Elementary School playground. Or not quite alone. There, on some benches, were Myrna Pollard, Mandalay’s friend’s mom, and another woman who they didn’t know, but who had been sitting with Crystal, and the woman Cleo and Cliff were staying with. When Mandalay looked over, Mrs. Carlson waved to her and smiled and nodded her head, once.

  Then there was the sound of a car door, and everyone’s eyes turned to the car, and Mandalay looked up to see Jean the social worker walking toward them with Bodhi in her arms.

  Now here they all were, the five of them and Crystal in the playground, with five other people watching them from a distance, or pretending not to watch them. They were so oddly here — not at home or anywhere they usually would be together — here in the playground with its swing set and teeter-totter and the chain of the tetherball hanging from its pole. The tetherball was always taken away at the end of the day and locked in the equipment closet. There was only the chain, now.

  Mandalay noticed that Bodhi had also got new clothes. He was wearing a little sweater with fake leather elbow patches and corduroy pants, and little suede boots. And his hair, too, had been cut — his shoulder-length white-blond curls cut off. She wanted to cry, because of his clothes and his hair and not looking like Bodhi anymore.

  Mandalay had taken Bodhi from Jean’s arms, and Crystal was trying to get him to come to her, but he would not. He did not remember Crystal at all.

  They all wanted to hold Bodhi — even Cliff wanted to. When it was her turn Cleo put her face in his hair and just smelled him. Then Cleo had put Bodhi in the bucket swing and pushed him over and over, away from her, and he laugh-screamed and tried to kick her when she pushed in front, their old game. He remembered her, for sure.

  It looked like Crystal was better. Would they all be going home now?

  She took turns with Cleo, pushing Bodhi. He was laughing, his mouth open, his little white milk-teeth in a perfect row, his eyes locked on hers so there was no space between them, even as he advanced and retreated. She saw the tiny shift in his eyeball, the infinitesimal movement, as he moved closer and then further way.

  How could their mother look after them all? She was too young. She was not much older than they were. She was not really a grown-up. She was not going to be allowed to have them back.

  Suddenly Mandalay knew that. They weren’t going home. They weren’t going to see Bodhi again. She knew it in the way the women sat, the way Crystal stood, her shoulders slumped, her bright girlish face blank, the way she and the others were being allowed to play together.

  It had come to her, what was going to happen, and then right after, what she needed to do.

  Mandalay said to Cleo: You need to take Cliff over there and say he has peed himself.

  But he hadn’t. Cleo was indignant in his behalf.

  You need to do that, Mandalay said, get over there and get them all fussing over Cliff, and don’t look back at us, do you hear?

  Che was grinning. Yeah. Don’t look back or I’ll shoot you in the eye.

  Cleo didn’t get it.

  Then we split, Mandalay said. We split, and then when they notice we’re gone, you take Cliff and run.

  Run where?

  Home, Che said. Somehow he was connected, telepathically, but Cleo wasn’t.

  Cleo said that the women, the watchers, would just get in their cars and come after them. They would get there before an
y of them did.

  Not if we cut through the bush, Che said. We can make it home in, like, five seconds.

  It wasn’t that fast, Mandalay knew. Cleo was right.

  The next idea had come to her again fully formed, but so much better than the first.

  We’ll hide out on Knucklehead for a few days, Mandalay said. We can sneak back to the house and steal food and stuff. Then when they give up, we’ll move back there. (How had she thought that it would work? How had she been so ignorant, even at thirteen?)

  How would they get to Knucklehead?

  Mandalay said, just stay here for a minute. I am going for a little walk. When you hear a car beep, pick up Bodhi and run.

  She had made it. She had walked quietly to the edge of the playground, and slipped into the trees, and then had sprinted home. She knew where the spare keys were, knew how to drive the car — Dadda let her drive it as far as the highway, all the time, if he gave her a ride to school in it. She started it — it had coughed a couple of times, but she remembered how to give it a little gas, not too much. She was taller than Crystal; she could easily reach the pedals and see. She lurched out of the driveway, then got the feel of it back as she coasted along the road.

  She’d felt like Faye Dunaway, in Bonnie and Clyde, which they had watched on TV. She’d felt, those few moments between the house and the schoolyard, that she knew what it was to be totally, terribly free. It wasn’t like being a bird or butterfly, as kids in her class wrote. It was like being a hollowed-out log, completely hollow, and the air just blowing through.

  She slowed the car, not as smoothly as she wished, beside the playground. Go, Mandalay thought to Cleo and Cliff. Don’t over-think it. Just go. And Cleo did. She picked up Bodhi and she walked over to the car and got in before anyone noticed.

  It was Che who spoiled it, of course, running, looking back and laughing, as if it were a game. Carol the social worker and the woman who was accompanying Crystal had run toward them then, faster than Mandalay had known grown-ups could run. She’d hit the gas and taken off, leaving Che still running after them, now shouting.