by Fran Kimmel
Every time I got up to go to the bathroom she was staring at the ceiling.
Vic smoked up a storm, and when her Players were all gone, she sent me to pick up a pack from the vending machine in the coffee shop. I felt my skin getting crisper, like burning rice paper. It hurt to breathe and a sharp pain drove through my forehead when I moved, like I’d been buried in hot sand upside down with my eyes wide open.
I don’t know why I walked past the cigarettes and sat down in the red booth. I concentrated on the napkin holder, which was almost empty, only two wrinkly blue ones, like somebody had used them and shoved them back in. I stared at the salt and pepper shakers shaped like cows.
“You feeling okay?” The waitress wore nylons under her frilly orange uniform, and when she reached across the booth to put down a cup, the darker brown of the nylon showed at the top of her thick legs.
“You want a menu, hon?”
My hand felt as hot as my head. Smouldering.
“Just a coffee.” I clenched the coins for Vic’s cigarettes and let them clink to the table. The waitress was back with the coffee pot before I noticed she’d been gone. I almost reached for the cow instead of the sugar. That waitress stood there beside me like a bodyguard, staring at my mallet finger, its floppy pink end. I put that hand under the table and sat on it.
“You let me know if you need anything else,” she backed away, but I could feel her stare even though she was gone.
I sipped the awful coffee and thought how nice it would be to disappear. I’d seen it happen once when the Shriners did a show in Calgary and the third-graders got free tickets. When we spilled off the bus, the boys stamped on all the girls’ toes while the teacher split us into partners, and we had to hold hands as we marched down the aisle to the right row. I was the extra, two making three, and the girls let go of my hand as soon as our shoes hit the carpet. Girls were oohing and giggling, boys elbowing each other to get to their seats. I inched myself down to the end, to the open space between the front row and the stage. When I looked back, I couldn’t spot a single face I recognized. An usher shoved me into an empty seat in the front row just before the lights went down. I sat by a girl with thick glasses. She had the hiccups.
First clowns and jugglers. Then a man in a glittery vest with long tails and a puffy shirt. He stood on the stage pulling fire from air and rabbits from a hat. The halo of light surrounding him surrounded me, too. He was looking right at me. Then he disappeared in a puff of smoke and the auditorium went black, and all the children gasped. It got so quiet the room stopped breathing. A beam of white shot out of the ceiling and landed right on me. I thought for sure God would strike me down even though Harmony says God is nowhere you can find him. I thought I had made him disappear. But then, poof. There he was. In the seat beside me, his face shiny with sweat, eyes twinkling. All the children started clapping; I clapped too, and the man touched my shoulder and then hopped back on the stage and bowed. The waitress came back with the coffee pot. “You sure you feeling okay, honey?”
She leaned in close. I was afraid she might reach down and touch my head.
I pressed against the plastic.
“I’m real sorry, hon. Hope things get better for you.”
“I’m good, thanks.” My throat hurt so much I nearly choked.
“Take all the time you need.”
I wanted to stay in that booth, close to the waitress who was sorry, and not go back to the sisters who weren’t. The coffee tasted terrible. I swallowed a few more mouthfuls and slipped off the bench, self-consciously teetering on wobbly legs. That’s the last thing I remember. I don’t know how they got me out of there, whether the whole town came to gawk or whether it was just Harmony and Vic and the waitress in the frilly uniform. I don’t know who said what, or whether any of it was kind, or whether my mother might have cried that day.
* * *
I woke up slowly, my body numb as my mallet finger. All the gunk blistering beneath the surface had flushed itself out somehow. I thought how rage must hurt in the beginning, but a person gets so used to it, she thinks it’s a heat a body’s supposed to feel. Now I felt just a heaviness, like I’d been buried under the dirt. The sound of waves splooshed inside me, voices in the distance.
I opened my eyes and found myself in a bed with metal rails, a needle in my hand, fluid dripping from a bag.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were sick?” The room was dark and Harmony looked awful, more pale than I’d ever seen. She looked smaller, too, her eyes enormous, framed by dark circles.
“I did.”
“There’s telling, and there’s telling, Rebee.” Harmony leaned in close, perched on the bed.
Vic wove in and out of the room, along with a smiley-button nurse named Gertie. Gertie said I had double pneumonia, which didn’t mean I was twice as sick, only that both my lungs were infected. She said lots of thirteen-year-olds had walking pneumonia, a sickness so mild they don’t even know they have it, but bad news for me, I didn’t have the walking kind. My lungs were squawking like a barnyard of chickens.
A lady came in when I was alone behind the curtain. She smelled too sweet, lilacs maybe, and she was holding a basket like she was the Easter bunny. I pretended to be asleep. The lady sat down in the armchair beside the bed and I cracked open one eye a smidge. Her basket was filled with sample packets, hand lotions I think, a tube of Vaseline and a couple of paperbacks with pink covers. She looked about the room, clucking and hemming. Maybe she expected balloons or stuffed bears.
Just as the lady stood up to pull back the curtains, Harmony came back, stopped cold and stared without blinking. The lady was so startled she crashed against the chair, her basket tumbling to the floor.
“Oh goodness,” the lady said, because lotion packets scattered everywhere. The Vaseline tube slid under the tray table and she had to bend awkwardly and push it out with her shoe. She inched her way along the bed, stooping for all the stuff. Harmony watched, still as a statue, as the lady reached and scooped.
The lady was puffing from all that bending, but she straightened her flowery dress, stood up, and said, “I’m Ruthie. With the Hospital Pals. You must be Rebee’s mother.” She held out her hand but Harmony didn’t take it. Harmony didn’t move.
“I’ve brought a basket for your daughter.”
Harmony didn’t acknowledge the basket. Or me either.
“It’s what we do in this town,” the lady added. “For new mothers. And our young patients.” Then she smiled down at me, and I tried to prop myself up on my elbow.
“Hello there, Rebee,” Ruthie said. “I’ve brought you a little something. From the town. A get-better gift.”
“Rebee doesn’t need anything from this town.”
I’m sure no one had ever turned down a basket before, not in all Ruthie’s years.
“You can go now,” my mother said, waving her away. I tried to say thank you before the door wheezed shut, but my voice had rusted and nobody could hear.
* * *
After that, Harmony just hung onto my mallet-fingered hand, the one not attached to the tube. She must have taken bathroom breaks and she had to eat once in a while. But that’s how I remember it. She held on tight for days.
Whenever Vic came into the room, the two of them would go at it. Right on top of me. Vic kept telling Harmony to grow up, to get herself help. Harmony told Vic to go back to her damn casino and leave the two of us alone.
A tube at the head of my bed gave off a yellowish light that blinked in and out. I kept my eyes shut.
The fog lifted, eventually. I remember waking with a start and craving toast so badly I could have cried for it. It was early morning, the sun behind the curtains coating the room like a crabapple peel, birds calling to each other at the window. Harmony was in the armchair beside my bed, her legs curled under her and one arm bent behind her head. We woke together and turned to each other at the exact same moment, and she climbed out of her chair and stretched out beside me, her head resting on th
e pillow facing mine. I was so shocked I held my breath, counting the seconds until I would wake up again and get it right.
“You scared me, Rebee,” she whispered in my ear.
I didn’t know what to say to her. After all my watching at some window, waiting for her to come back.
“I’m hungry,” I said.
Harmony rolled away and stood. “Good. I’ll see what I can scrounge up.”
“Maybe some toast?”
She was dragging her fingers through her messy hair as she walked into the bathroom. “And strawberry jam?”
I couldn’t see her, so I wriggled to a sit, my bruised hand still taped to its leash. “That would be nice,” I said. When was the last time she’d asked me what I wanted?
I could hear the toilet flushing as I pulled the covers to my chin. When she came out, she’d splashed off any tenderness in the bathroom sink. She looked more like her old hard self. “We’re leaving today,” she announced from the doorway. “We’ve been here too long.”
* * *
Harmony forgot about the toast. But Gertie came in with two slices, a big glass of orange juice and a bendy straw. I asked if I was allowed more, and she laughed, and said she would bring a whole loaf if that’s what I wanted. I liked her Mickey Mouse watch. Her dark plum nail polish. How she smacked the pillows to puff them up.
In no time flat I had four more slices slathered in butter and jam. You’d think I was a half-starved dog.
She sat beside me on the bed. “Can we talk for a minute?” She looked over her shoulder as if she might be caught. Where was my nail box? I could feel my face burn.
“There’s a social worker stopping by.”
I pictured Gertie’s white runners, whisking in and out of the room without making a sound. She’d been doing it for days, me dribbling in my sleep.
“This afternoon. Before your discharge. Just to ask a few questions.”
Gertie put her hand over mine, but I pulled it away and crammed a crust into my mouth. Then I remembered. My nails were hidden under the floor mat in Vic’s back seat. No one would find them.
“Have you seen my mother?”
“I’m sure she’s around.” Gertie passed me my juice.
I guzzled through the straw until I sucked air.
“I think maybe I’ll rest now,” I said, crumpling my napkin on top of my toast plate.
“She’ll want to talk to your mom, of course. The social worker. But she might want to talk to you, too.” I can’t even imagine it, her eyes were saying. “By yourself. Would that be all right?”
“Yeah, whatever.” I pushed the tray back and flopped against my pillow.
“There are just a few things.” Gertie would not get off my bed. “With your paperwork. Not a big deal.”
“We’ve got money.”
“No, no, nothing like that.” She reached down, picked crumbs off my sheet with her plum nails. “It’s about where you live, Rebee. Where you go to school.”
Gertie kept tucking her brown curls behind her ear, but they kept springing loose. “Why don’t you tell me about it? I’ve got time.”
“I’m kind of sick of talking. But thanks anyway.”
She stared at me, not budging, so I turned away and mumbled into my pillow. “My mom and me. We talked all night practically.”
All that toast inside me, pushing against my gown. “Like what I need for school. If I should take dance or piano. Whether we should get a dog.”
What if nurses had X-ray vision and could actually see lies, rising warm and yeasty under a patient’s gown?
“We do that all the time. Talk about stuff. Sometimes we make popcorn and crawl into bed and yak all night long.”
I held my breath and waited. Finally, her weight lifted off the bed.
“Okay then,” Gertie said. “You won’t be needing this anymore.” She slipped the needle out quick as anything and dragged the pole to the other side of the curtain. I didn’t feel a thing. Just stared at my hand, as shrivelled as an old man’s. “She’ll be coming by this afternoon. Clara Martin is her name. Have a little chat. And then you can go home.”
I was dressed by the time Harmony came into the room. She looked used up, but relieved to see me sitting in the chair, runners tied, ready to bolt. My jeans and T-shirt seemed miles too big, like it was a different girl who stepped out of them a few days before.
On our trek to where Aunt Vic waited, smoking in the car, my legs shook so bad I thought I’d keel over. I looked back, in case Gertie watched behind the Emergency sliding door, but she’d moved on already, smacking the pillows in a real girl’s room.
“I hate that hospital smell,” Harmony said.
“Me too.”
“Get it together, Rebee.”
“I will.”
“We’re not going to wind up in a place like this again.”
“We won’t.”
I didn’t know where we were going. But Harmony slowed down at least so we could walk side by side.
JOEY
THE OLD GUY NEXT DOOR OFF ED HIMSELF IN HIS UPSTAIRS BEDROOM. Judge Shore was his name.
Not with a gun. Nobody’s sure how. He was found dead in his judge’s outfit and polished black shoes, sitting in the chair beside his made bed, eyes open, yellowish and filmy. They say he’d combed his bushy eyebrows and slicked down the strands of his white hair in a straight part to one side, and that his stiff fingers clutched the deed to his house. It was signed over to his granddaughter, Rebee Shore.
At first, people thought he might have just expired dressed up like that — he was really old. Except that he pre-ordered that gravestone with the exact right end date, which was a pretty sure sign he had something fishy up his sleeve.
Rebee Shore showed for the funeral with her mom and her auntie. The three moved into the dead guy’s house. Next door. Then the mom and the auntie moved out. Rebee Shore stayed. In between, there was yelling and swearing and stuff thrown all over the front lawn. People handle grief in their own ways.
* * *
I’m staying in Chesterfield with my grandma. Really. Chesterfield. It’s just a pinprick on the map beside the wrinkly mountain. And she’s not my real grandma. Everyone ’round here calls her Missus Nielson, even though there’s never been a mister. Missus Nielson has managed to get hold of six Mixmasters and four toasters and twelve Nativity sets, but not one TV, not even one of those old styles with stickout knobs and rabbit ears. She’s eighty-three years old. When my mom was a little kid, Missus Nielson looked after her, her first and last foster kid. I guess the whole motherhood thing didn’t turn out like Missus Nielson hoped.
Motherhood isn’t working too good for my mom either. Her name is Carla. It’s her fault I’m in Chesterfield. Carla sent me here on my last day of school. I walked out of my Grade Eight classroom, and there she was, standing in the hallway, a Greyhound ticket in one hand and a new King James Bible in the other. She’d stuck three twenties under the King James flap — spending money for the rest of my life.
When she told me where I was going I nearly puked. “Missus Nielson’s house? You’re nuts.” The last time I had seen Missus Nielson I was like five and she was a hundred. A herd of reindeer candy canes hung on her Christmas tree with pipe cleaner antlers and bows around their necks. Missus Nielson and Carla got into a big fight that day, and I had to polish off my turkey leg in the back seat of the car. I never even managed to swipe a candy cane.
“She’s probably in a nursing home. What if she’s dead?” I was pretty sure that lady didn’t want her thirteen-year-old zit-faced no-relation fake grandson landing on her doorstep. “Don’t wreck this for me, Joey.” My mother was off to save orphans in Africa. There would be no stopping her.
“You talked to her, right? Right?”
“Your grandma loves you. Jesus does, too.”
“She’s not my grandma. When are you coming back?” I knew her newfound calling wouldn’t last, I just didn’t know how many orphans it would take.
�
��Don’t be a dick,” Carla said. “It’s a vacation. She’s a real nice lady.”
That’s the last thing she said before she pushed me onto the Greyhound. Don’t be a dick. I thought she might change her mind at the last minute. She does that all the time. Billy, that was Carla’s most recent dumpee, Billy used to say stuff like, Joey, that mother of yours is the kind of woman who has drunk, shot, popped, snorted, and laid every angle this side of China. But when the bus driver slid the door shut, she slunk off quick as a wink.
I don’t know how long this God kick of hers is going to last, but if you ask me, it’s her worst try at a high yet. I’m so mad I could spit at those two guys in blue suits. They were the ones got her going. When they showed up at our door that first time they left a pamphlet. The second time they dumped four bags of groceries on our kitchen table. Then they took care of the gas bill and shovelled the sidewalk. The next thing I knew, we were sitting in the front pew, Carla freshly scrubbed, a picture of innocence, her string of tattoos submerged under a purple shawl and her fingers clutching the hymn book. Now she’s off to Africa. Just like that.
The Greyhound actually stops in Chesterfield. There’s no station. I got dumped on Main Street at the LetterDrop, which is like a post office, gift shop, card store, and bottle depot in one. The guy who runs it, Melvin Peevley, lives upstairs, and his supper smells pour out through the heat ducts and mix with the soap displays and the empty beer bottles people throw in the back room. Melvin also runs the funeral parlour, which is how I got the details about the polished boots and the combed eyebrows. Melvin says nearly the whole town showed up — Albert Shore being the circuit judge and all — and that the service was shorter than expected, just twenty-two minutes. The flowers were donated, snapdragons and delphiniums, plus a buggy bouquet of pink petunias. Melvin also says his National Geographics date back to 1946, he prefers a gun with single-shot bolt action, and he thinks the ocean smells like wet dog.
