The Calling

by Inger Ash Wolfe

  Earlier that afternoon, Wingate had appeared at the door, his cap in his hand. She noted the absence of the traditional New Year's bottle, and for a moment she felt that he was being critical of her, but she knew in her heart that Wingate was kind. No bottle was a way of saying it might very well be a new year indeed. What he did have was coffee and a bag of pastries (one vice at a time), and the two of them sat in the front room. To his surprise, Hazel declined a cruller. Since coming home, she hadn't had any craving for sweets.

  'How's your back?'

  'I'm going to need another operation. There's no disc there now. They'll probably do a fusion when this heals up.'

  He grimaced. 'And your mother?'

  She peeled back the lid of her coffee cup and stuck the flap down. 'Dr Sumner says she made it by the skin of her teeth, but she's still weak. The only reason he let her come home is because she used to get his father off his parking tickets when she was mayor.'

  'Your people are made of stern stuff.'

  'I had no idea what I was made of until four weeks ago, James.' She drank, staring down into the steam that rose up to obscure her face. 'First, I was scared I was going to die, and then I knew I was going to die. And that was a completely new thought, you know? A feeling I'd never had before. Imagine getting to sixty-one and having a feeling for the first time in your life.'

  He was shaking his head slowly from side to side. 'I can't. It must have been awful.'

  'But now, nothing feels like bad news. You could tell me I had six months to live and my thought would be, How am I going to fill six whole months?'

  He was smiling at her and he reached across the back of the couch and gripped her shoulder. 'Well, there's no bad news this week. I heard yesterday that Terry Batten is going to drop the charges.'

  'Yeah, I heard that too.'

  'I guess she doesn't want to be the one to add insult to injury.'

  'That's Ian Mason's job.'

  'We'll see,' he said. 'I doubt he wants his last official act to be canning the person who brought down Peter Mallick.'

  'Peter Mallick brought himself down. I just survived it.'

  Wingate pressed his lips together. He'd been around enough now to know when it was time to stop reassuring her. He tried to imagine what the lay of the land would be when he marked a year in Port Dundas, and he had to admit, he could not picture it.

  'Did you speak to Sevigny?' she asked.

  'Yeah,' he said. 'They gave him four months' suspension, no pay.'

  'Christ.'

  'He'll be okay. We took up a little collection and sent it to him.'

  'Put me down for five hundred,' she said. 'Tell me something.' He held his coffee halfway to his mouth. 'Did you like him?'

  He lowered the cup to his lap. 'What do you mean?'

  'I mean did you like him? He's back on the job in four months, but I can't imagine he's going to be the most popular guy in his detachment. We could use another body here.'

  'Sure,' Wingate said quickly. 'He'd be a good addition. He's disciplined.'

  'He's crazy, James.'

  'That too.'

  'He'd fit in,' she said, and he laughed.

  She pushed herself off the couch with some difficulty and went into the kitchen, where she poured the rest of her coffee into the sink. Her stomach couldn't take much excitement right now: even a cup of coffee was a challenge. She braced herself against the sink to let the pain from standing discharge itself down her leg. She was aware of Wingate in the doorway to the kitchen, watching her.

  'Here's the question that keeps going through my mind, James.'

  'What?'

  'Zemba or Tonga?'

  'Sorry?' he said, smiling.

  'The cougar, James, what was its name?'

  The smile widened into a huge grin. 'Dave,' he said.

  Sleep was difficult. She was afraid to turn off her light and berated herself for being foolish, but still, she could not bring herself to be alone in the dark. On New Year's Eve, long after her mother had fallen asleep in the makeshift bedroom downstairs, Hazel had sat alone in her bedroom with the lights burning and listened to the faint sounds of celebration reverberating from down the street, from over the treetops. At midnight, there was a tiny roar from everywhere. A communion, she thought ruefully.

  On New Year's Day they watched the Rose Bowl Parade first thing in the morning and then the football game. They ate no meals, just snacked out of bowls all day: chips, garlic bread, popcorn. By five o'clock, when night fell, Hazel felt as if she'd eaten the contents of a vending machine. Her mother announced that she wanted to spend the first night of the new year in her own bed, and between the two of them, they got her up the stairs. Her mother was in bed by seven. 'Happy New Year, Hazel,' she said, her thin hands along the top of the sheet.

  'Many more,' Hazel had replied.

  Later that night, she lay in her own bed with her eyes open, staring at the yellowy lamplight blooming across the ceiling. She saw, again and again, the back of Peter Mallick's head opening in that terrible room, his wasted body falling away from her, and she felt anew the strange sensation that her life was going to continue. But all of those people, in their faith, who had given themselves to him: what had they died for? If you are the only person left to hold a belief and you're right, then you're a prophet. If you're wrong, you're a fool. But who had died in that cabin in the trees? The prophet or the fool? And who had survived? Her limbs buzzed. An hour later, she was still awake. She walked down the hall and pushed her mother's door open. The radio played quietly beside the bed. Emily opened her eyes. 'Hazel?'

  'Can you move over?'

  'What?'

  'I want to get in.'

  Emily Micallef stared at her daughter standing at the side of the bed, then slid aside with some difficulty, and Hazel pulled the sheet back. 'I'm okay, Hazel.'

  'I know you're okay. But I don't feel like letting you out of my sight right now.'

  She saw her mother smiling faintly in the near dark. 'You mean you don't want to be alone.'

  'Sure,' she said. 'That too.'

  'I won't be able to stay awake with you, Hazel. I'm too tired.'

  'That's okay.'

  'You can turn the radio off if you want.'

  'No, I like it.' An orchestra was playing softly, something from another time. She couldn't identify the music – she had perhaps never developed her listening abilities very well – but it was peaceful and she could picture the roomful of people who had made this music, all of them working together to produce something that sounded like a single voice.

  'Mum.'

  'I know, Hazel.'

  They lay there listening to the music. 'We're not a little town any more, are we?'

  'No,' replied her mother. 'Those days are gone forever.'

  When she opened her eyes again, she wondered if she had fallen asleep. She listened to the house. Under the quiet music, her mother's breathing, slow and deep. The old wood beams crying in the walls. This was their home. Outside, the bare branches tapped hollow in the dark ravine and beyond the trees it was the middle of the night in the town where she'd been born.

  THE END