by Jill MacLean
What an amateur. “Doing a little shopping?” I said.
“I gotta go.”
“I’m done here, too. Let’s leave together.”
No shouts, no alarms, no security guy on our heels. Once we were two stores down, I gripped her by the arm, steering her toward the nearest bench. “Sit a minute, Vi.”
She tried to wriggle free. “Can’t—I’m late!”
My fingers biting into her flesh, me smiling the whole time so it looked like two friends having a nice visit, I eased her down on the bench. “So you like elastics in your hair, do you?”
Never much color in her cheeks, but right then they were a good match for my white t-shirt. She started chewing her nails.
“Freebies are fun, are they, Vi?”
She’s made her cuticle bleed. Pathetic. Why didn’t she fight back? Show some spunk? “If you’re gonna shoplift, at least take something worthwhile.”
“I didn’t—”
I hauled out my phone and showed her the photo.
“What did you do that for?” she whispered.
Because I’m mad at the world and I’m taking it out on you.
“Tate’ll be interested in seeing it, don’t you think? Mel, too.”
“No…”
“Should be worth twenty bucks, minimum.”
Two tears dripped down her cheeks. I didn’t want the other shoppers guessing what I was up to, so I put my phone away. “We’ll be in touch. Start saving your money, Vi—you don’t want Mel on your case.”
I drew my finger across my throat, smiled at her, and walked away.
We got thirty bucks out of her that time.
I hurry out of Walmart without the toothpaste, shame and guilt squirming in my belly. How could I have been so mean to a hopeless case like Vi?
Not just mean. Enjoying being mean.
My feet have brought me to the bank where I keep my money in a savings account. I stare at my reflection in the big plate-glass window.
Fifty dollars a month has a habit of adding up because Seal pays for my clothes. And, of course, I made money as a Shrike. Twenty dollars or we’ll rough up your little sister. Forty dollars or we’ll post that photo online. Give Tate her due, after she took her fifty percent cut, she always gave me and Mel twenty-five percent each.
My share from Vi and the elastics? $7.50.
This spring, we squeezed a lot of bucks out of Prinny after we got her drunk on vodka at my place. The photos of her mother sloshed at the club didn’t hurt, either.
I stare at the bank machine like I never saw one before.
I know how I can change my ways. How I can make amends for all the bad stuff I was part of.
Pulling out my bank card, I punch my code and hit the button for Withdraw Cash. How much cash is the question? I settle on eighty bucks.
After treating myself to a cheeseburger at McDonald’s, which breaks up one of the twenties, I head out of town, keeping a weather eye for Mel at the Long Bight turnoff and for Tate in Fiddlers Cove. By the time I reach Ratchet, I’m out of breath. Prinny’s house looks some different since they painted it. The door is a deep green, and there’s flowers planted out front.
My heart’s thumping, and it’s not just from the bike ride. Using the new brass knocker, I rap on the door.
“C’mon in,” Prinny’s father hollers.
I walk through the front porch into the kitchen. The tablecloth has yellow daffodils all over it, the walls look freshly painted, and the cupboards are new, too, a smooth, pale wood. Prinny’s da raises his face from the newspaper. “Oh,” he says, “it’s you. What can I do for you?”
“Hello, Sigrid,” Prinny’s ma says, from where she’s standing by the sink.
“Um…is Prinny home, please?”
“She’s over to Laice’s.”
Despite all the new-looking stuff, the kitchen’s right homey, as if the people who live in it are happy to be there. “Thanks,” I say.
Laice Hadden has been staying with her grandparents, Mattie and Starald, because her parents are divorcing. Her and Prinny are tight, like me and Hanna used to be.
Mattie’s garden is sprinkled with shrubs and plaster gnomes, the grass a dense green. Not one dandelion. I contemplate biking home, doing this tomorrow. Or never.
I ring the bell.
Mattie opens the door. The smell of fresh-baked cookies tickles my nose. She smiles at me, wiping her hands on her apron. “Can I help you, dear?”
“I’m looking for Prinny.”
“She’s with Laice in the bedroom. Come right this way.”
I shuck off my sneakers because it’s that kind of house, cross the thick, beige carpet in the living room, noticing frilly curtains at the windows, and magazines neatly lined up on the coffee table. I don’t bother searching for dust bunnies. One look at Mattie and they’d be on the fly.
She taps on the bedroom door. “You have a visitor, Laice,” Mattie says, beams at me, and goes back to the kitchen.
When Laice sees it’s me, she half-closes the door, stationing herself in the gap.
Pretty doesn’t cut it when it comes to Laice Hadden. She’s so beautiful she could be a model. She says, throwing her words over her shoulder, “Prinny, it’s Sigrid.”
As Prinny comes to the door, I glimpse more frilly curtains, pink and white, and a white-painted bed with a pink spread. I take my wallet from my pack, hold out fifty dollars, and say in a rush, “I quit being a Shrike, Prinny. So I’m giving you back my share of the money we took.”
“I don’t want it,” she says.
I remember how Nicole dropped my card in the dirt, how Kim refused to even touch the envelope. My heart stutters in my chest. “But it’s your money!”
“Give it to the animal shelter in St. Fabien,” she says. “Or to Dr. Larkin, the vet—her clinic has a fund for stray cats.”
My face heats up like someone flicked a switch on the stove. Me, Tate, and Mel let Prinny’s two cats outdoors last spring, and one of them got lost on the barrens. Took until the next day for Prinny to find him.
I was the one who dropped them out the window.
I back up, hurry across the living room, thrust my feet into my sneaks, and I’m out the door. After jumping a flowerbed, I run across the lawn and pedal away as if fifty stray cats are yowling at my heels.
Ten
to scour
When I pad into the kitchen in my bare feet the next morning, Seal’s standing by the window. His shoulders are slumped and he’s frowning so deep that for a minute he looks like a stranger.
I accidentally-on-purpose bang my hip against the table. He jumps. Looks at me as though I’m the stranger.
My mother was home last night. Is that what’s wrong?
“You okay?” I say uncertainly.
“Yeah…yeah, I’m fine. You want to do groceries later this morning?”
“Whenever.”
“Think I’ll mow the lawn,” he says and he hurries out like there’s grass sprouting between his toes.
I pour some cereal, chew it like it’s pebbles, and make a list. He’s done the dishes—sink empty, counters wiped. I feel a twinge of guilt. We divvy up the kitchen chores, the two of us, because Lorne and my mother don’t do chores; lately I haven’t been carrying my part of the load. I rinse out my bowl, wipe it dry, and put it in the cupboard. Dish soap, I write on the list.
The whole way to St. Fabien, Seal doesn’t say a word. When we reach the vet clinic, I ask if he’ll drop me off and I’ll catch up with him at FoodMart in ten minutes. He gives me a blank look. “Sure,” he says.
My chest sore, I jump down and watch him drive away. Then I walk up the path to the clinic. It’s already busy: cats in cages, dogs on leashes, their owners stroking and patting them. Drool running from one dog’s jaws; a cat mewling like a sick baby.
“Little diddums, poor little diddums,” one lady is saying to a pint-size dog whose face is squashed into a permanent snarl.
I’d pictured myself and the vet
having this cosy chat, just the two of us.
I walk up to the front desk where the receptionist, whose name tag says Colleen, is scowling at her computer. She transfers the scowl to my face. “Yes?”
“Is the vet in? Dr. Larkin?”
“She’s booked solid until 3:25.”
Colleen hits a button and the printer whirs. I say, over the noise, “I want to make a donation.”
That gets her attention. “What kind of donation?”
“For stray cats.”
“How much?”
I take the bills out of my pocket, smoothing them flat. “Fifty dollars.”
“That’s a lot of money for someone your age.”
“I saved it up,” I say, which is a complicated mix of truth and lies.
“I’d have to check with Dr. Larkin to see if we’re allowed to take donations from minors,” she says. “Take a seat.”
“I can’t stay.”
“Then come back on a weekday when the regular receptionist is here.”
I turn around. Customers are staring at me. As I beat a retreat, Little Diddums growls.
Colleen’s scowl should be posted online. In her spare time, I bet she kicks puppies. I bet she dumps kittens on the side of the road.
You shoved two cats out a window…remember?
Seal and me whip along the aisles at FoodMart in record time. Only person we meet is Mr. Corkum, Mel’s dad. He’s a big guy with stooped shoulders and eyes sadder than a chained dog. He looks at Seal and Seal looks at him. Neither one smiles.
Mr. Corkum picks up a box of All Bran. I pick up a box of Weetabix. Then we’re past each other.
Mel’s mother was a big, cheerful woman who wore bush pants, and earrings made of peacock feathers; she used to drive eighteen-wheelers. She wasn’t home much, but when she was, you could hear her laugh all the way from Long Bight to Fiddlers Cove. Her truck jackknifed in a snowstorm on the 401. We went to the wake. Everyone along the shore did because she acted the same no matter if you were Danny Grimsby in his cups or the mayor in his fancy suit.
Mel’s dad changed after she died. Closed right down. And Mel turned into Tate’s muscleman.
Seeing him makes me feel right heavy; I don’t have the heart to try the animal shelter today. So after we’ve loaded the groceries in the truck, we drive straight home. Lorne’s car is gone because he’s doing his Saturday stint at the garage.
The lawnmower clipped off all the dandelions.
Seal helps me carry in the plastic bags. “Guess I’ll have a shower.”
I put away the groceries. When he comes out, he’s wearing his best jeans and a new shirt with blue and white stripes, a blue that matches his eyes. He says, “You got plans for the rest of the day?”
“Maybe I’ll rake the lawn.”
“That’d be good. You’re staying clear of Mel and Tate?”
“Looks like you’ve got plans,” I say.
He looks anywhere but at me. “Yeah…guess I’ll head out. Your mother’s taken off again, back the first of the week. But I won’t be late, and you can call me on my cell if you need anything.”
“Okay,” I say, but I’m saying it to myself because he’s already gone. I’d bet my fifty dollars I know where he’s going and it’s not Tim Hortons and the reason he was so edgy this morning is because he’s nursing a guilty conscience for dating Davina Murphy.
So here I am at 11:45 on a Saturday morning with nothing to do. Normally, all three of us Shrikes would be in town casing the mall—Tate amusing herself with a bit of shoplifting, Mel getting in the occasional kick at a kid whose mother’s attention has wandered, me eyeing the racks of jeans and tops.
A Snickers bar—that’s what I need. I go into the pantry, where I stashed all the new stuff in front of the old. The box of Snickers is way at the back and suddenly I’m so mad I can hardly breathe.
The pantry’s a mess.
The house is a mess.
My whole life is a mess.
So what am I going to do, stand here gawping at a box of Snickers?
I start turfing stuff onto the floor: cereal boxes, canned beans and corn and peas, double-chocolate cookies for Lorne, Tostitos for Seal, plastic bottles of ketchup, mustard, and relish. The shelf needs a good scrub. I head for the sink, dump the contents of the blue plastic bucket on the kitchen floor, and fill the bucket with pine cleanser and hot water. Lots of rags under the sink, and first thing you know I’m scouring the shelf as though my whole messed-up life depends on it.
I used too much cleanser. The pantry’s gonna stink of pine.
I empty the next shelf and by the time I’ve scrubbed it, the first one is dry. Okay, Sigrid, you need a system.
I dump another shelf, scrub, then start lining up the cans and boxes, veggies here, fruit next to it, cookies together, cereal on the top shelf. I check expiry dates, bring out a garbage bag, throw out stale Ritz crackers and some powdered milk from five years ago. Five years?
Last thing I tackle is the floor. The scrub brush does wonders. The floor is pretty, little green flecks in swirls of beige. So if the floor has green in it, why do we have pink curtains on the kitchen windows?
By the time I finish the pantry, I’m out of breath and my arm aches. I dump the dirty water down the sink, rinse the bucket, wring out the rag, and then I stand at the door of the pantry and admire it. So neat. So orderly. I adjust a package of cereal, restack the cans of corn. The first guy to make a mess in here, Lorne or Seal, will get an earful.
Where I left off scrubbing the floor, there’s a line, pale beige with green swirls on one side, dark beige with the green hardly showing on the other.
I eat lunch at the kitchen table, and the whole time that line is pulling my eyes.
The pink curtains hang limp at the windows.
I push back from the table.
I go through all the kitchen cupboards, throwing out chipped plates and glasses and non-stick fry pans so old and scratchy that everything sticks, including cooking oil and dust.
Wipe the shelves, stack everything real tidy.
Pull down the curtains, bundle them into the garbage.
Windex the glass.
Scrub months of grease spots off the kettle and coffee pot.
Look into the oven, shudder, and close it.
Call Lorne on his cell, tell him to bring home oven cleaner and rubber gloves, don’t ask questions, just do it, and you’re taking me to Walmart, I don’t care if you’ve got a date.
Measure the clean windows.
Spray the oven as soon as Lorne comes home.
Listen to him complain all the way to town.
Buy new curtains, dish rack, dish cloths, dish towels, hand towels, and oven gloves, using his credit card.
Don’t answer when he asks what I’m doing because I don’t have a clue.
By nine p.m., the green swirls on the beige kitchen floor are picking up the green leaves in the crisp, off-white kitchen curtains. A green towel is hanging on the rail of the shiny-clean oven. A green cloth is folded neatly on the new white sink tray. The table and chairs gleam with lemon oil.
I look down at myself. Oven cleaner on my shirt, knees of my jeans stained gray, hands reeking of pine and lemon, and every muscle aching.
Just as well Lorne went to Sally’s for supper and Seal didn’t come home. I wish I had the energy to stay up and see Seal’s face, but already I’m yawning. I leave him a note by the front door.
Hi, Seal! Shoes off before you go into the kitchen!! Don’t make a mess!!! Luv, Sigrid.
Luv, Sigrid…
Eleven
to remember
In the morning when I go into the kitchen, Seal’s already up. Guiltily, he wipes a few coffee grains from the counter.
“Looks right nice, Sigrid.”
“I bought some new stuff with Lorne’s credit card. I hope that’s okay.”
Something flickers in his eyes. “Sure,” he says, “it’s okay. Long overdue. How about I cook supper tonight?”
“Just don’t spill anything on the floor,” I say, and we both laugh.
Was I cleaning the kitchen so he could see I’m trustworthy?
Maybe so, because right after breakfast—he does the dishes with the nice new cloth—he takes off. Doesn’t say where he’s going.
When he doesn’t trust me, he stays home being a stepdad and looking grumpy. When he does, he disappears.
I have a shower in our dingy bathroom, which has a faded gray mat and no two towels the same color.
Sunday is the one day of the week I’m safe from Tate, so I take my bike out of the garage. I’m not going near Walmart; I ride east toward Gulley Cove again. The wind’s off the sea, smelling of salt—not a whiff of oven cleaner—and the sky is a clear, fresh blue like it’s just been rinsed and hung out to dry.
Being on a bike doesn’t use your scrubbing muscles.
I come level with Abe Murphy’s. His truck’s not in the yard, nor is his dog. On impulse, I leave my bike leaning against his fence and walk up the path to the barn. The cow in the field eyes me, chewing thoughtful-like, flicking flies with her tail. Her coat is light brown, clean, and shiny. I better not get hooked on that word clean.
The barn door creaks open. I catch a flash of white and see a cat leap from the floor and scale five bales of hay to the loft. He stands on the crossbeam, tail thrashing, eyes huge. I overheard Prinny and Travis talking on the bus one day about a cat called Ghost who no one can tame and who lives in the barn.
“Hello, Ghost,” I say.
The cat vanishes into the shadows of the loft. A chicken hops up the wooden ramp into a wire pen equipped with water and food dishes, all nicely topped up. There’s a pig in a roomy enclosure, and he’s clean, too. He grunts at me.
Mel’s lashes are near as light as the pig’s. I wonder what she’s up to today.
Carefully, I close the latch on the barn door and walk down the path beside a garden where potatoes and peas are already poking up.
Picking up my bike, I wander across the road and stare out to sea. If Abe knew I shoved two cats out the window, he wouldn’t be too happy with me visiting his barn.
